Robert William Buss
Encyclopedia
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, etcher and illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
perhaps best known for his painting Dickens' Dream.
Early career
Born in Bull and Mouth Street, AldersgateAldersgate
Aldersgate was a gate in the London Wall in the City of London, which has given its name to a ward and Aldersgate Street, a road leading north from the site of the gate, towards Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington.-History:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1804, Buss served an apprenticeship
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
with his father, a master engraver and enameller, and then studied painting under George Clint, a miniaturist, watercolour and portrait painter, and mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
engraver.
At the start of his career Buss specialized in painting theatrical portraits, with many of the leading actors of the day sitting to him, including William Charles Macready
William Charles Macready
-Life:He was born in London, and educated at Rugby.It was his intention to go up to Oxford, but in 1809 the embarrassed affairs of his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical management. On 7 June 1810 he made a successful first...
, John Pritt Harley
John Pritt Harley
John Pritt Harley was an English actor known for his comic acting and singing.-Early years:Harley was the son of John Harley, a draper and silk mercer, and his wife Elizabeth. He was baptised in the parish church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 5 March 1786. At the age of fifteen, he was...
, and John Baldwin Buckstone
John Baldwin Buckstone
John Baldwin Buckstone was an English actor, playwright and comedian who wrote 150 plays, the first of which was produced in 1826....
. Later Buss painted historical and humorous subjects. He exhibited a total of 112 pictures between 1826 and 1859, twenty-five at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, twenty at the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
, forty-five at the Suffolk Street gallery of the Society of British Artists
Royal Society of British Artists
The Royal Society of British Artists is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy.-History:...
, seven at the New Watercolour Society, and fifteen in other places.
The Pickwick Papers
Buss was commissioned by Dickens' publishers, Chapman and HallChapman and Hall
Chapman & Hall was a British publishing house in London, founded in the first half of the 19th century by Edward Chapman and William Hall. Upon Hall's death in 1847, Chapman's cousin Frederic Chapman became partner in the company, of which he became sole manager upon the retirement of Edward...
, to provide two illustrations for The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
after the original illustrator, Robert Seymour
Robert Seymour (illustrator)
Robert Seymour was a British illustrator. Seymour is known for his illustrations of the works of Charles Dickens and for his caricatures.-Early years:...
, committed suicide. Buss immediately set aside his other work and prepared a dozen or so preliminary sketches for the novel, then in its second of twenty instalments. Five of these sketches are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. His drawings were regarded as adequate, but the process of etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
on a steel plate was unfamiliar to him so he hired an expert etcher.
Buss realised that the "free touch of an original work was entirely wanting", and that the printed images lifed from his plates seemed lifeless and uninspired. But, he concluded, "Time was up", and the unsatisfactory illustrations for part 3 had to be issued. The publishers summarily dismissed him, which worried Buss throughout the rest of his life. The commission went instead to Hablot Knight Browne
Hablot Knight Browne
Hablot Knight Browne was an English artist, famous as Phiz, illustrator of books by Charles Dickens, Charles Lever and Harrison Ainsworth.-Biography:...
, but Buss never held his dismissal against Dickens. Instead, Buss remained his lifelong admirer and went on to produce several painting celebrating the author's work, including the unfinished Dickens' Dream.
Later life
Frederick Marryat
Captain Frederick Marryat was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story...
's Peter Simple and Henry Colburn hired him to illustrate Frances Trollope
Frances Trollope
Frances Milton Trollope was an English novelist and writer who published as Mrs. Trollope or Mrs. Frances Trollope...
's The Widow Married in 1840. These the artist managed to etch satisfactorily, and afterwards he successfully gained several commissions for illustrating fiction. For some years Buss worked for Charles Knight
Charles Knight (publisher)
Charles Knight was an English publisher and author.-Early life:The son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, he was apprenticed to his father...
, designing wood-engravings for his editions of 'London' (1841–4), 'William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
' , (1842–3), and 'Old England' (1845–6).
Buss married Frances Fleetwood on March 21, 1826, and the couple settled in Camden Town
Camden Town
-Economy:In recent years, entertainment-related businesses and a Holiday Inn have moved into the area. A number of retail and food chain outlets have replaced independent shops driven out by high rents and redevelopment. Restaurants have thrived, with the variety of culinary traditions found in...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, where they had ten children, six of whom survived infancy. Their only daughter, Frances Mary Buss, became a distinguished educationist
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, and was assisted for many years by her father and her clergyman brothers Alfred and Septimus Buss.
In 1845, worried by ‘money anxieties’, Buss's wife started a school for young boys and girls at 14 Clarence Road, Kentish Town
Kentish Town
Kentish Town is an area of north west London, England in the London Borough of Camden.-History:The most widely accepted explanation of the name of Kentish Town is that it derived from 'Ken-ditch' meaning the 'bed of a waterway'...
, London. In the same premises his daughter Frances began a morning school offering young ladies a liberal education. In 1850 the two schools moved into larger quarters in Holmes Terrace, and Buss assisted by teaching drawing and later science, literature, and elocution. In 1850 Buss's wife retired from the school.
Buss also researched earlier British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
printmakers, and lectured on the topic in his daughter's schools and, from 1853, he delivered a series of four talks, accompanied by 300 examples reproduced on sixty scrolling cartoons, at literary and scientific institutions in London and the provinces. These talks he published privately in 1874 as English Graphic Satire, a book for which he supplied in various mediums examples of his predecessors' work. Buss also gave lectures on fresco painting and on the picturesque and the beautiful, though these were never published, and from 1850 to 1852 he edited The Fine Art Almanack.
On hearing of Dickens' death in June 1870, Buss was moved to attempt a large watercolour, 'Dickens's Dream', which portrayed the dozing author seated in his Gad's Hill Place study surrounded by many of the characters he had created. The desk, chair and background of the painting were closely based on The Empty Chair, an engraving made at Gads Hill Place
Gads Hill Place
Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era....
in 1870, shortly after Dickens's death, by Samuel Luke Fildes
Luke Fildes
Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RA was an English painter and illustrator born at Liverpool and trained in the South Kensington and Royal Academy schools....
. The painting was Buss's last attempt to illustrate Dickens's characters, and he modestly reproduced the images of the artists who had succeeded him. However, before he could finish it Buss died at his home at 14 Camden Street, London on 26 February 1875 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
in Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
.
Today the painting is exhibited at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
External links
- Buss' biography on The Art of Robert William Buss
- Buss on Artnet.com
- Buss and Dickens' Dream
- http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/full/person.html&_IXTRAIL_=Names%C2%A0A-Z&person=18647Buss on the Royal AcademyRoyal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
Collections website] - http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?ID=6370Buss on the Smithsonian American Art MuseumSmithsonian American Art MuseumThe Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
website]