William Dobson: The Forgotten Genious (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] [Music] in 1642 a terrible civil war broke out in england [Applause] brother attacked brother friend betrayed friend the nation was torn in two to ensure this dark moment was never forgotten britain needed an artist to step forward and witness her turmoil such a man was found history doesn't often feel graspable does it touchable under your nose it's usually something that takes place far away out there in the past you can read about it in books you can learn about it from david starkey on the telly but where it really counts in here you can't really feel it unless that is something or somebody manages to bring it back to life for us make it tangible give it flesh [Music] there's only one way that can be done with art it's what art's really good at capturing the moment taking you there if an artist is eloquent enough and talented enough then even an event as chaotic and unruly as the english civil war can be brought back to life and felt again [Music] this is a film about a lost genius of english art a painter of deep and real talent who was there and who put a face to a particularly traumatic moment in our history [Music] his name was william dobson he's the one in the middle the handsome one with the cavalier ringlets and that combative stare dobson was the first truly great british painter our first native genius if you've never heard of him before don't beat yourself up about it most people haven't history isn't always fair to its heroes and william dobson was certainly one of those dobson had an exciting life to go with his exciting talent it was short and fateful because these were not relaxing times dobson was born in london in 1611 and baptized in this fine city church saint andrews hoban on march the 4th the register of his birth has survived it's one of just half a dozen documents of the times that bear his name we know that his father also called william dobson was prosperous a gentleman it says here but he frittered away the family fortunes on what his contemporaries called licentious living dobson senior it seems wasted his estate on women [Music] and you know what they say about the sins of the father how they're visited again upon the sun well that certainly seems to have been true in this case our william dobson the first great english painter would also gain a reputation for loose living we don't know exactly what went wrong with the dobson family fortunes but something did and in around 1625 dobson jr was forced to start making his own living so he decided to become something rather ungentlemanly and done in english he decided to become a painter mind you william dobson could not have picked a better time to become an artist because there hasn't been a better time the english king charles the first was an unusually cultured monarch charles loved art with a passion that england had never seen before in a king look how superbly he rides into history in this fine van dyke that now hangs in buckingham palace buckingham palace hadn't even been built in dobson's time and the king didn't think much of this place either windsor castle he allowed it to fall into ruin instead the king preferred to reside in another of his sumptuous palaces one which isn't even there anymore at whitehall in london [Music] whitehall palace was the largest palace in europe located roughly where 10 downing street is today it burned down in 1698 bigger than the vatican bigger than versailles it stretched all the way down to the river [Music] whitehall was gigantic it had 1500 rooms yes 1500 and the plushest of them were filled to the rafters with great art [Music] if you think windsor castle looks impressive today you should have seen whitehall palace in around 1630 when william dobson must first have encountered it all these man tenures were in charles's collection nine of them the first rembrandt ever to leave holland hung in whitehall in the longest gallery [Music] and naughty veronasies displaying such unenglish nudity and this famous leonardo now so popular in the louvre in paris then there were all these raphaels showing the gospels of the apostles the finest cycle of renaissance art ever to leave italy what an education a young painter starting out on the road of art would have received in here just by wondering about and looking dobson must have done more than that somehow he got the opportunity to study the royal collection in depth [Music] and he studied it so fiercely that he ended up as good as this this is such a revolutionary image you have to remember that charles believed in the divine right of kings that had been put on earth by god to command the english and educate them charles lavished all this money on art because he thought it was his divine duty to do so it's what god wanted him to do whatever the cost but dobson didn't paint a divine monarch that wasn't his way dobson gives us a small and troubled man so nervous so unsure these are sensitive insights and they're completely new in british art the question is how did william dobson get to be this good not knowing the exact details of dobson's apprenticeship is very annoying [Music] i've stomped through the straightly homes of britain but the information just isn't there [Music] you'd have thought an artist of william dobson's importance a man who changed british art would have had everything about him noted down but these are turbulent times he was living through and when history swallowed up william dobson it swallowed up his past as well [Music] one exciting story about him is that he worked for the royal tapestry works at mortlake in london and was somehow involved with the design of these stunning [Music] hangings another story about dobson doing the rounds is that he was actually a pupil of van dijk the king's official painter who came over to london from antwerp in 1632 and who proceeded to lord it over charles's great golden age van dijk was the king's flatterer in chief the official improver of the royal image [Music] this is his portrait of charles's detested queen henrietta maria a catholic from france whose teeth according to the venetian ambassador stuck out like the guns on a battleship but that was in real life not in van dijk's portrayals of her but if dobson really was van dyke's pupil he was headstrong enough to see things very differently and become his own man for one thing dobson could not or would not flatter he just couldn't do it instead his art makes a beeline for character and truth for plainness bluffness and even ugliness [Music] telling it like it is is a uniquely british talent and to show it off properly you need a uniquely british situation so having finally found an artist who could paint with the best the fates decided to test him mightily by dumping him in the middle of some of the most traumatic events in british history there are many complicated reasons why in 1642 a savage civil war broke out in england why parliament took on the king royalist took on round head and cavalier took on puritan in 1642 i knew what i had to do leave my home and family too and fight for good old charlie charles had become a deeply irritating monarch people didn't like his catholic wife they didn't like his foreign policy his taxes were unpopular they really didn't like that immodest claim of his to be god's representative on earth but perhaps what gold the most was his extravagant appetite for art and the huge amounts of money that have been spent on it many men died to uphold the law fighting for old charlie hey art was an affront to puritan thinking the second commandment actually bans the making of it thou shalt not make any graven image it says of anything that is on earth or on the sea below so for the puritans on parliament's side art wasn't just immodest and popish it was actually sinful the most notorious of all the puritan art haters william prin published a thousand page book on the subject in which he stamped on dance theater painting and men with long hair the gates of heaven spat prin will always be closed to the morris dancers but i had gone he's come too late fighting for old shy the extravagant years of charles the first had found a magnificent witness in van dijk how effortlessly he seemed to capture the elegance and swagger of charles's court van dyke was the perfect painter to record charles's golden age the days of elegance and extravagance but when the civil war broke out somebody up there realized he was no longer the right artist for the job and with a sense of symmetry that's almost scary in december 1641 just a few weeks before the civil war broke out the fates arranged for van dyke to die and for a vacancy suddenly to appear for the king's painter [Music] dobson took over van dijk's job and became charles the first's sergeant painter it should have been a cushy job a job for life painting royalty for royal wages but history had other plans [Music] the first pitched battle of the civil war was fought here at edge hill on the 23rd of october 1642 a sunday [Music] the king's forces were gathered up here on edge hill itself so they had the advantage from the start the cavalry commanded by the king's dashing nephew prince rupert charged down on the parliamentarians coming in from over there the south west and sent them scattering but the parliamentarians fought back and the battle was to splutter on all day long ending uncertainly with a small advantage perhaps to the royalists [Music] charles's eldest son the prince of wales the future charles ii was at edge hill with his father he was just 12 years old and he watched the opening cavalry charges with the schoolboy's excitement the prince narrowly escaped death when an enemy cannonball just missed him and he was nearly captured as well in a friendship parliamentarian counter-attack afterwards to commemorate the royalists successes at age hill and the presence there of the prince of wales the king commissioned a portrait of his son from his new official painter the englishman born and bred into whose hands the fates had unexpectedly thrust the english civil war [Music] this is dobson's first great war painting and look at the explosion in him of color confidence bravado a new mood has entered baroque art and it's unmistakably an english mood direct four square in your face [Music] young charles stands commandingly at the front of the battle as edge hill rages behind him his page holds up his helmet and the king to be fixes us with a forceful stare but this isn't just a portrait it's a picture loaded with symbolic meaning packed with it in the end it's not even a picture about war really but a superb slab of royalist propaganda about peace the prince of wales the future charles ii represents england's best hopes for the future the nation's salvation see down here the madly grimacing fury with all the snakes in her hair she represents the strife and chaos in the land but look how firmly charles commands her to stay he's like a man ordering a dog to sit [Music] and in the background above the stormy skies gathered over england a break in the clouds has appeared the storm is abating peace is at hand it's a great painting but a lousy [Music] prediction parliament was in control of london so the king needed a new base he chose oxford it was excellently located easy to guard and all those rich colleges could be handily transformed into makeshift palaces so for the next four years of the war this was to be home for the king and his court including the new royal painter william dobson dobson's job was to paint the king and all the other court-worthies who turned up in oxford he was if you like artist in residence to the royalist cause he painted the king's diplomats come hither to serve their monarch the haughty administrators working in the king's rang shackle new court a ship's captain who'd lost his boat a musician who'd lost his joy poets princes and family supporters but above all dobson painted the soldiers coming in from battle the royalist heroes the fighters the cavaliers [Music] is this a picture that means something special to you this is one of the portraits that i remember from childhood i mean for the very un artistic reason that the man in it has a very long neck and i remember being intrigued as a child by was that real or was that artistic license it's one of the earliest memories that i have from the collection here is this portrait of colonel russell and when you began finding out about who colonel russell was what sort of uh image did you create of him well i think the portrait shows a man who looks rather sort of self-important and um without any form of humor but when you read about him and learnt we learn what he did he was involved really in the vanguard of the great years of the royalist cause and uh he was a hero of that cause and and a great man in his own right and he was in charge of one of the crack regiments of infantry that the royalists had so the more i delved into him the more i realized that this wasn't just a courtier having his portrait painted uh in a sort of battle pose but actually a genuine soldier who probably saw some pretty tough action that's right you get such a sense of glamour don't you from these cavalier portraits of dobson's we forget don't we looking at these handsome men with their ringlets and their that sort of swaggering air really what tough times they had to go through well it was a really brutal time the civil war and you can glamorize it as much as you want but it was it was really the fighting was vicious and in fact russell's regiment when when they went hand to hand in one fight uh that they were fighting with each other's muskets and staving each other's heads in it wasn't uh lots of uh fancy cavalry charges etc it was brutal visceral fighting and i i think you can see in colonel russell's face a sort of battle-hardened weariness already and that's a lot for a painter to suggest uh you sound to me like someone who shares my admiration for the often forgotten unfairly so william dobson i'm a great fan of dobson and i think that he's very underrated and sadly i'd have thought his name has almost no recognition around britain today but british people should know that he's the best painter that this country had produced up until that point [Music] the king lives here at christchurch oxford's poshest college good morning good morning we brought with him the house of commons which met over there in the great hall [Music] the queen was here at merton college she took over all these rooms here and they're now called the queen's rooms [Music] dobson meanwhile had to make do with lodgings in the town all we know is that he lived off the high street up against saint mary's church so that's somewhere around here dispersed pleasantly about oxford the strangers as the king of his court were called tried at first to pretend that all was well in the land in modern parlance they were in denial and this chap in particular and demian porter seemed determined to prove that nothing of significance had changed porter was a pampered courtier a royal favorite before the civil war he'd been one of the king's main art buyers a friend of artists and poets there's a fine portrait of him in the prado by van dijk in which the swath porter and van dyke himself buddy up together in an elegant oval porter saw himself as the king's mycenas a fixer and taste maker he's the embodiment of the smarmy royal lick spittle clinging to the king's side like a barnacle to a ship's hull [Music] when he wasn't collecting art or writing egregious plays porter loved to hunt and when dobson came to paint him in oxford it wasn't as a soldier or a dashing cavalier but as an english squire out hunting as if nothing had happened [Music] those people who admire william dobson and there aren't nearly enough of them will generally tell you that this is his finest painting dobson's masterpiece and it's definitely one of them porter stands there with his musket while his page brings him the hair he's just shot his loyal gun dog looks up adoringly and to show what a fine patron of the arts porter was dobson has placed a bust of apollo the god of the arts at his shoulder if you examine the symbolic figures on which he leans you'll find embodiments of painting and sculpture and poetry [Music] so all this stuff down here this busy collection of symbols has been put there to tell us what a cultured fellow porter wars to advertise his great love of the arts and all that is fascinating of course but what i find even more interesting about this picture is what it tells us about the way dobson actually painted the character of his art since van dyke painted porter as well we're in a position here to make a telling comparison van dijk makes porter thin and elegant he brings out the greyhound in him dobson meanwhile puts a stone or so onto him maybe even a couple of stone he notices something english and beefy and robust about porter dobson nearly always used a square canvas and most of his sitters were painted from the knees up from about here which makes them look chunky and solid like me van dyke on the other hand was the master of the elegant full length he preferred elongated canvases that made you look finer and taller so the van dyke approach is back here but the dobson approach is here [Music] dobson's fine portrayal of endymion porter gives british art its first country gent red-faced and solid but the leisurely rural mood he captures here couldn't and wouldn't last back at the front line of the civil war reality had returned from the hunt and oxford was too busy with its war effort to pretend that nothing had changed [Music] all souls was where the arsenal was where they kept the muskets and pistols and pikes new college was the magazine where they stored the gun powder and all the brass cooking vessels belonging to the townsfolk were melted down and used as bullets [Music] armies need uniforms so the schools of astronomy and music were taken over by tailors busily sowing buff coats and tunics [Music] and in the school of logic they stored the horse fodder for the cavalry as oxford gave its all for the royalist [Music] cause someone once said the weak only repent meaning only weak people say sorry do you know who said that it was byron lord byron the poet now byron was actually the sixth baron byron so he would have known something about a notorious ancestor of his the first baron byron john byron the man they called bloody byron byron was one of charles's most loyal supporters he fought bravely for the king at edge hill marston moore nan twitch and here too at burford on the 1st of january 1643. [Music] byron was in command of a small royalist garrison of 14 men when 2 000 parliamentarians from sirencester launched a surprise attack the 14 royalists defended the town fiercely and beat back the 2 000 rebels at the height of the battle byron was hit in the face with a hal bud he was almost knocked off his horse but he survived a few months later the king made him a baron and dobson commemorated this honor and the great defense of burford with a supreme piece of english baroque [Music] portraiture we're in the presence of such a haughty warrior a black page brings him his horse while byron himself points to the background where the scene of his bravery at burford is reenacted [Music] those big twisty columns that byron's standing in front of are called salamonic columns because people believed that these are the kinds of columns that stood in front of the great temple of solomon in jerusalem [Music] they were popularized in england by raphael in those superb tapestry designs in the royal collection and they were favored too here in oxford in the porch of saint mary's church next to where dobson was living [Music] these salamonic columns had a big symbolic meaning they embodied solomon's famous wisdom and steadfastness which is why dobson put them in the backgrounds of several of his best pictures to represent the wisdom and steadfastness of the king's men [Music] the parliamentarians didn't like them though they were too popish and see those bullet holes up there in the statue of the virgin and child those were made by cromwell's soldiers shooting at this popish porch [Music] the parliamentarians didn't like byron either in fact they hated him with a rare figure they called him the bloody braggadocio the braggart with blood on his hands he was notoriously arrogant and cruel and dobson captures that doesn't he [Music] i have an instinctive fondness for most of dobson's cavaliers but not for this man he's too proud and showy standing there like a roman emperor [Music] dobson's pictures tell us so much about the people who are here he really brings them to life but what about dobson himself what was he like and what sort of life did he lead [Music] very little information has survived we know that he came here with his entire family because the church records here at the modeling church show that his little daughter judith died here in 1644. a year later his father-in-law died presumably from one of the many plagues they had here at the time usually typhoid caused by the cramped and squalid living conditions [Music] we know when he got married because the wedding records have survived [Music] and we also know what his wife looked like because he painted her her name was also judith and she's exactly the kind of woman i imagine him falling for bold brassy and magnificently bosomy judith dobson would look good in a tavern wouldn't she she's the first such wench in british art and her descendants are still pulling points today in the rover's return and the queen vic dobson himself had what they call an irregular lifestyle he was certainly bad with money probably like to drink and seem to have enjoyed some bad company as for his looks well there we don't need to speculate because he's left us a dramatic and swaggering self-portrait i think it's my favorite self-portrait in the whole of british art it hangs at anec castle in far off northumberland surrounded by great van dykes and dramatic canelettos but when i come to anik what i head for is this before dobson appeared british painters didn't generally do self-portraits their task was to paint others not themselves and they certainly didn't consider themselves to be artistic heroes that would have seemed unenglish immodest and perhaps even a touch popish but not to william dobson see those cascading ringlets that unwavering gaze with its delightfully british soup song of nervousness [Music] he rates himself doesn't he and strikes me as the type of chap who checks himself in the mirror [Music] this is the first truly cocky british self-portrait the first attempt by a british painter to make himself the hero of his own art but as you can see there are two others in the picture so who are they and what are they here for the fellow on the left mr chubby in satin is nicholas lanier charles the first musical supremo the first master of the king's music hear that tune playing around me that's by lania he was a skilled composer and musician and also a collector and an art dealer it was lanier who pioneered the collecting of renaissance drawings in britain which is why dobson has stuck a drawing of venus in his hand and given him a bust of apollo the god of art to lean on the other fellow the thin one is sir charles cottrell who was master of ceremonies for the king in oxford a friend and supporter of dobson's so why has dobson put the three of them in this picture and huddled them up like this the answer lies in this sumptuous painting by veronasy that's now in the frick collection in new york but which once hung in britain in the palace of the earl of arundel where dobson must have seen it the veronese depicts a popular baroque subject the choice of hercules [Music] hercules that's him in the middle has been forced to choose between two symbolic women representing pleasure on the left and virtue on the right [Music] he goes for virtue as you'd expect hercules to choose [Music] so dobson has adapted varanasi's pose swapped the women for men and turned it into the supremely cocky piece of self-promotion now he is in the middle the hero the hercules of oxford loyal to his king loyal to his country and choosing virtue represented by the lean sir charles cotterell in black over pleasure represented by the plump nicholas lanier with his double chin and his rich and expensive satin suit [Music] of course this isn't a real quarrel we're watching it's all symbolic the three temporary oxfordians are pals in it together acting out a crucial civil war choice in which virtue triumphs over vice as it must also triumph in the nation at large and will you look at william dobson at the center of all this attention isn't he just loving it [Music] music played a crucial role in the oxford court the civil war was tearing england apart but the band played on the court was full of it chamber music psalms masks the puritans may not have approved but charles adored english music and was famed for encouraging the writing and playing of [Music] so when the court came to oxford the royal music came with it and did what it could to raise everyone's spirits we have very little information about who was in oxford playing what which is why a particularly mysterious oxford painting by dobson has remained one of the biggest puzzles in his career [Music] it now hangs at the fair ends art gallery in hull and is called oh so unhelpfully the unknown musician [Music] see the symbolic embodiments of music gathered in typical dobson fashion at the back of the picture [Music] a singing goddess and if you look carefully the fragmentary remains of a shadowy loot player who is this dark and sober figure in black this particularly mysterious musical cavalier the answer began winking at me several years ago back in 2002 when a hitherto obscure english composer called william laws was plucked out of the ether and dangled tantalizingly before us [Music] 2002 was the 400th anniversary of laws's birth records were issued articles written and portraits dug up including this one of the very young william laws that's been in the music school at oxford since the 17th century william laws and his more famous older brother henry laws spent almost all of their careers working for charles the first as court musicians and composers young william laws a loot player was a particular favorite of the kings and i'm now pretty certain that the unknown musician in hull is a portrait of him when he wasn't so young anymore [Music] this sad english tune gather ye rosebuds is his most famous lyrical setting [Music] it's soppy i know but heartbreakingly lovely [Music] william laws fought for the king on the battlefield as well as in his song book and in 1645 just a few months after this was painted he was killed at chester upholding the royalist cause the king was devastated and was said to have mourned him so fiercely when he died he called william laws the father of music [Music] so for me the clearest evidence that this is william laws is the mysterious bust on which he rests a caring hand [Music] do you recognize him it's the king himself charles likely disguised as a classical god seen from the side and crowned with laurel a particularly loyal musician is swearing his allegiance to a particularly musical monarch in a painting which like so much of dobson's oxford work brings an unexpectedly personal touch to this huge historic moment [Music] fortune is a fickle friend as the royalists in oxford were now discovering in the cavalier skies storms were gathering over there on that horizon is where the battle of nasby was fought on june the 14th 1645. naysby was a disaster for the royalists outnumbered out fought they were comprehensively routed a thousand killed five thousand captured in just three hours of fierce morning combat the hopes of the cavaliers were crushed for dobson 2 the end game was at hand you can actually see his art changing its mood darkening the canvas is growing smaller scratchier [Music] gloomier the usual interpretation of this change in his art is that it was part of a more monumental failure the royalist cause was falling apart and so was dobson but i prefer to see it as something more impressive than that as proof of his sensitivity this unique relationship he had with the times that spawned him dobson was as sensitive to failure as he was to triumph this is rockingham castle in leicestershire they have two dobson's here and they're both late works they're not always on show basil but i know the archivist basil morgan and he's always welcoming take me to those dobson's so where are we exactly in the house now i found it quite confusing getting around it well the actual dobsons are in the salving wing put on in the mid 19th century and there it is one of the last dobson's painted his celebrated portrait of lewis watson first lord rockingham now what can you tell us about about louis watson basil well he'd been a courtier under james the first and charles the first in his younger days and when the civil war came up in 1642 uh he was very lukewarm as far as royals are concerned so he wasn't uh a fervent royal he was he wasn't an active royalist now and in 1643 uh the castle was taken by the local parliamentarian commander and what is more the king who thought he'd been feeble about defending rockingham carted him off to oxford where he had to plead his case for a couple of years to be let off punishment basically so this castle rockingham castle was taken over by the parliamentarians in 1643 yes right and watson himself he was here at that time he was uh no he he was imprisoned he was captured by the royals funnily enough who thought he'd been feeble about letting this place go so of course you're very lucky here because not only do you have this superb late portrait by dobson but uh you have another one as well you have the picture of his of his wife yes what can you tell us about her well she's a manners from uh the beaver castle family uh the family traditionally at parliamentarian so she came from a parliamentary family parliamentarian family and so um one of the charges against it was that she had actually led lord gray in by the hand when the castle was captured by parliament so that's right you're saying that when the parliamentarians surrounded the castle not only did the watsons not put up a fight but that lady watson actually led them in by the hand that was the charge yes [Music] dobson's final paintings at oxford are such sad and quiet things [Music] so small and almost see-through the fact is he was running out of materials by the summer of 1645 parliament's forces were closing in on the city and everything was in short supply no paints no canvas the mood in oxford had grown gloomier too even the most stubborn royalist was having to accept they were losing the war this forlorn portrait of the king was painted round about now the royal confidence has drained away and the spirit of the times as always with dobson seems to guide the painter's hand [Music] they lasted the winter but only just and after months of hesitation the king finally sneaked out of oxford in the small hours of april the 27th 1646 disguised as a servant a few weeks later the city fell to the parliamentarians and those royalist supporters who remained among them william dobson slipped discreetly out of oxford and returned home dobson arrived back in london in the summer of 1646 and he seems to have made some sort of attempt to continue with his career because his name appears in the records of the painter stainers company the artist's guild but there was no point really because three months later he was dead don't ask me how or why no one knows there's no description no evidence just the bare facts of his passing supplied curtly in the parish records october 28 1646 before he died dobson was imprisoned for dead and according to a brief note from his first biographer he died very poor at his house in saint martin's lane just over there he was aged just 36. they buried him here in his local church saint martin in the fields although inside there's no record of him they're rather chuffed though that nel guin charles ii's notorious mistress is buried here and that famous maker of english chairs thomas chippendale but of william dobson the man who put a face to the english civil war there's nothing which can't be right a century before hogarth england had a painter who painted like an englishman robust earthy in your face [Music] destiny singled him out and dumped him in the middle of the most tumultuous events in british history he was there he saw it he recorded it in its tragic way it's the perfect career [Music] there should be monuments to william dobson out there in trafalgar square his face should be on our banknotes his name on all our lips instead there's just me wandering about in this empty church banging on about him in 1642 i knew what i had to do but hang on that's wrong of course there's more than that out there scattered about the land perhaps in a great house near you there's a handful of the finest paintings that any british artist has ever produced those round heads there he were after me but we were a honor so go on find one admire it love it and show you care [Music] many men die to uphold the law charlie hey

Channel: Perspective

Views: 149,880

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, waldemar januszczak, art history, william dobson, history documentary, baroque (art period/movement), baroque documentary, art documentary, art history documentary, british art, ancient art, waldemar januszczak documentary, waldemar januszczak baroque, earl spencer, princess diana, william dobson artist

Id: F3vnzNfWWI0

Length: 59min 15sec (3555 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020