This page is a direct continuation of Louise in Wales and the west Midlands (here),
hence the lack of introduction!
OXFORD
Above: the only picture we currently have of Oxford is this painting of Oriel College. A modern-day photograph used for comparison (see louiserayner.co.uk/oxford.php) shows how the church has been pulled forward into her composition to add drama - something she was fond of, for example in her Chester paintings. What it also shows is that the buildings have barely changed, but this (apparently) tranquil scene has been violated by modern paint schemes and the needs of modern traffic. Of course, Louise could impose tranquillity by omitting what she didn't want - like bustling horse and cart traffic squeezing down the narrow streets, and the smells of horse dung and poor drains - so comparisons need to be made with care!
 The quality of the painting is sufficient that we can close in on the details. The first view (right) shows a mix of life - handling a horse in the foreground with lecturers and possibly students nearby. Then a window cleaner, perhaps. Beyond them a man drives a horse and open carriage, there are ladies with parasols, and in the distance a woman in a red dress.
The lower scene is the left foreground of the painting - a lecturer possibly talking to the parents of a student while boys play with a dog and two adults look on from the other side of the street - one possibly resting from carrying her baskets. Note the lampost in the middle of the street, the dishevelled road surface, and how well executed the fence is.
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CHIPPENHAM
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We've known about this painting - Chippenham Market Day 1865 - for some time as a consequence of finding the small mono image on Chippenham's local government site (Wiltshire). At least two paintings exist showing very much the same view but with a different arrangement of figures. This one strikes us as the more attractive of the two.
The Baltimore Museum of Art contacted us in late summer 2007 to ask for identification. As they rightly said, the lack of a distinctive church or other unique feature could well have rendered the scene anonymous, and we've certainly had trouble with others. But this one was immediately identifiable for the reason already given. [Image courtesy of The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Rhoda Oakley, Baltimore BMA 1997.310.]
| If there are other viewpoints of Chippenham, we don't know them, but would be very happy to learn of them. But there is one more painting of the market place. This one is called Market Day Ashbourne, Derbyshire, but it doesn't take more than a moment to realise that it is a mistitling for Chippenham. The modern Rayner family have tried - without success - to get this corrected. |
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The reason for apparent intransigence is thought to be "provenance", the art world's sales history defence against spurious works being passed off as genuine. Retitling the picture would break the provenance chain and put its value severely at risk. So it's still called Ashbourne - and it still shows Chippenham! And if you want Chippenham and like this particular view, you can get a print from several art print suppliers such as EasyArt. Just make sure they don't print a spurious identity on it!
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SALISBURY
In July 2007, Chris Bullivant sent us photographs of his miniature Louise Rayner painting of Salisbury seen in the mist. He says the original is only 2.5 inches by 4 inches (62mm by 100mm). We don't have an official title for this - it may just be Salisbury, and we have no further hints on the date or circumstances.
Andy King's thoughts on it are "I guess it was painted in the early morning from Louise's room on one of her stays (perhaps a Sunday as I can almost hear the bells - which may have startled the pigeons or rooks!)... I haven't seen this before and I expect it could be a one-off which makes it all the nicer."
Below: Castle Street, Salisbury in 1870, with the cathedral in the background. Other images of the same painting show that this one has been cropped slightly at left, more substantially in the foreground (the horse does have legs!), and a whole building has disappeared from the right. The picture was kindly forwarded by Debbie Cutten; she was foraging for paintings for her family history in South Petherton, Somerset - which we'll shortly come to.
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 On the right we have Salisbury High Street, with no date. It could be 1870 as above, but the feel is of a rather later period, and looking at the ladies' dresses on the right hand pavement, we wouldn't be surprised by 1890. Local historians may be able to identify the period of years it would be consistent with. The church is St. Thomas's Chancel, or Sarum St. Thomas and St. Edmund.
The street off to the right just before the church is Silver Street, with the Poultry Cross just a short distance along it.
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The next picture is High Street Salisbury - the same street, but looking in the opposite direction, south towards Salisbury Cathedral. The two views overlap, with the distinctively-roofed building helping to relate each to the other. Some of the buildings along the road still survive today. In the distance, the road goes through High Street Gate, also known as St. Stephen’s Gateway.
We'd suggest 1870s for this painting, but again, local historians would be better able to be definitive about it.
Below, we have two almost identical views of the Poultry Cross, Salisbury, but painted on separate occasions. According to Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, this market cross dates from c.1450, the peak of the city's prosperity - itself replacing a High Cross that had stood in a similar position since the city's earliest days.
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The larger painting was originally dated 1870, but this has been revised to circa 1880 (probably the following year as Louise is known to have visited Salisbury in 1870 and 1881). This now makes it feasible to date the smaller painting c.1870 - there could, after all, have been a confusion between the two paintings in the past. There is an evidential reason for doing this: the Poultry Cross had repair work done on it in the mid-1870s. If we look at the near-left footing of the cross, there is a clear difference, and the larger painting matches more recent photographs. Unfortunately, we've seen no earlier images to confirm this, though they should exist: the curving buttresses which support the pinnacle and cross were only added in the early 1850s. That allows 20 years for early for photographers or other artists out sharpening their bristles to capture the new. It could just be an anomoly in Louise's work but she could be meticulous about detail even while losing entire buildings she didn't want. Since she included the footing, she probably rendered it accurately.
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Salisbury Poultry Cross, left, doesn't show us anything really new, but it is more of a close-up of the cross, and gives us much more of an impression of the people buying or trading there.
The near-left footing noted earlier is in the condition matching what we believe is the later painting above. The buildings visible behind are all identical to those in the other two paintings, but Salisbury may have been slow to change in this area in the 19th century.
The church behind the Cross with the somewhat changeable castellations and roof slope (see other paintings) is Sarum St. Thomas and St. Edmund, at the north end of the High Street.
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St Ann Street, Salisbury is estimated to have been painted circa 1875, which places it handily between the two known visits! Like the Poultry Cross painting above, the purchase (for £5000 in 1993, we think) was supported by the Art Fund, and this painting, too, can be seen at the Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum (when on display) as a result.
St Ann Street's broad road made it a major route through Salisbury when Louise painted her picture, a claim it has lost in the 130 years since. We've been trying to work out what the cart in the foreground is for. Assuming the Salisbury authorities had installed a sewer system by this date, it wouldn't have been a night soil collector - and we wouldn't expect it to be around in broad daylight. Another possibility is a road-mending cart (basically pothole filling). Or the owner could be selling different materials by the shovelful or perhaps sackful. Any better guesses?
Behind is the well-known Salisbury cathedral with its towering spire - except that it doesn't really awe you here, so we'd guess that Louise shrank it to give her picture better balance.
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Here we have St. Stephen’s Gateway, Salisbury which we know was painted before 1877 because it was mentioned in Ellen Clayton's book (see Sources). However, the location itself was quite fugitive. Salisbury cathedral is surrounded by a defensive wall, and the painting certainly resembled the High Street Gate, but not closely enough to be confused with it. It had the same arch and the same castellation along the top, but the decoration was quite different.
We began to suspect that the two sides of the gate might have different faces, and Andy King was able to show that this was indeed the case. We did further searching and learned that the knight on the face that Louise painted is in early 14th century armour and faces the cathedral, whereas the side we kept finding faces the city and carries the Royal Coat of Arms.
Both sides have buildings hard up against the arch, so the Cathedral's fear of invasion has evidently declined. But we still don't know why the painting is called St Stephen's Gateway.
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Other Salisbury scenes we know of but haven't yet seen are: The Close, The Town Gate, Salisbury (1881); and Silver Street. We would be very pleased to receive images of them. Thank you!
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SOUTH PETHERTON
To our pleasure, Ted Hodgetts of Ontario, Canada, forwarded this untitled painting and asked for information. I wondered immediately if it could be South Petherton, but didn't want to prompt anyone into a false identification. But Andy King also thought it might be that so we sent it to Debbie Cutten (see above), and her cousin Gina Taylor enjoyed herself touring the local villages and was able to confirm it was indeed South Petherton.  The church itself is called the Parish Church of St.Peter and St.Paul South Petherton. It has been suggested that the church spire looks taller in the painting than it is today. Perhaps a local historian will be able to help on that - and can anyone suggest a date?
Also, this isn't the painting of South Petherton that we knew of, so there is another one out there somewhere. If you know of it and can supply details (or better still an image), we would be delighted and it would make Debbie Cutten's life complete!
The painting was auctioned by Waddingtons (Canada) in November 2006 as Old Market Village, South Petherton, Somerset and it sold for C$9600.
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DARTMOUTH & KINGSWEAR
This painting comes to us with the title Kingswear Dartmouth, but no more exact location. Since Dartmouth and Kingswear are separate towns facing each other across the mouth of the River Dart (albeit almost close enough to shout to each other), this lacks precision, and we'd be glad if anyone could identify the scene more closely. But it does have a minor point of interest: Louise usually left her signature in the road or on the pavement - but here it's under the window cill (right).
We don't have any real idea of the date and we don't know how many times Louise went to the south west, but we do know (see below) that Louise had created south western paintings in time for them to be mentioned in Ellen Clayton's book of 1876.
THE UNCAUGHT...
Finally, we know that Louise did a painting of Winchester's Market Cross; of Kingswear, Devon (perhaps the one above - perhaps not); and of the 'soft Devonian landscapes' that Ellen Clayton mentions in her book. We believe prints exist of scenes in Bristol, and surely of other scenes in south and the south-west. But we'll have to wait for someone to send us images before we can include them here.
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Harry Drummond, February 2010.
Please take note: we claim no art expertise, and in no way do we offer provenance for any paintings.
What you see here was compiled out of interest in Louise Rayner's paintings and those by her family, but is based on
sometimes very fragmentary evidence. As such, it is inevitable that there will be errors, though we naturally hope
to reduce these over time.
We would gratefully receive any information or corrections that will help us to fill the gaps and
resolve unproved links - for example confirmation of dates of birth, death, etc., and details of other addresses the family
lived at (and roughly when). Images of any of the family's paintings would also be very welcome. Thank you!
Copyright © 2010 DudleyMall.
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Email DudleyMall at: dudleymall@dudleymall.co.uk
DudleyMall, 62 Gervase Drive, Dudley, West Midlands DY1 4AT
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