Abstract

Of the various interpretative resources on art that were available to the Victorian viewer, the catalogue had a particularly immediate connection to the objects it described and was carried into the gallery for words to be linked directly to images as eyes travelled between page and painting. Casually consulted, pored over, brandished, fumbled with, the catalogue is a ubiquitous element in depictions of nineteenth-century galleries and museums. This essay looks at how behaviour with a catalogue was used to characterise viewers and stratify the gallery crowd. The catalogue could represent the interface between the idea of institutional, printed knowledge and the interpretation of the individual. The image of the visitor who carefully followed his or her catalogue, relying on words to explain images, played into narratives of both educating and limiting the viewer, while responses mediated by a catalogue threw ideas of ‘correct' taste into conflict with a concern for integrity. I go on to examine the possibility that annotation allowed gallery visitors to renegotiate this oppressive characterisation of the catalogue. As a case study I analyse a copy of the official catalogue for the ‘Art Treasures' exhibition of 1857 that has been extensively written and drawn in.

How to Cite:

Flood, C., (2007) “‘And Wot does the Catlog tell me?' Some Social Meanings of Nineteenth-Century Catalogues and Gallery Guides”, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 5. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.461

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  Fig. 1

  Charles Samuel Keene (1823-1891), Oil and Water, published in Punch (1870), wood engraving. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 2

  Attributed to Philippe Jacques Linder (active 1857-1880), English Tourists at the Louvre (c. 1861), oil on board. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 3

  Maude Alethea Stanley (1833-1915), Ary Scheffer's St Augustine and St Monica (1857), pencil drawing and annotation opposite page 107 in Stanley's copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857, bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 4

  Maude Alethea Stanley (1833-1915) and Richard Doyle (1824-1883), Reynold's portrait of Nelly O'Brien with a group of spectators (1857), drawing in pencil and ink opposite page 74 in Stanley's copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857, bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 5

  Richard Doyle (1824-1883), Girls looking at Armour (1857), drawing in ink in a copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857, bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 6

  Charlotte Isabella Ellis (d. 1891), Gallery scene (1857), drawing in pencil and ink in a copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857, bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 7

  Maude Alethea Stanley (1833-1915), Titian's daughter holding up a jewelled casket (1857), pencil drawing and annotation opposite page 31 in Stanley's copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857, bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).
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  Fig. 8

  Maude Alethea Stanley (1833-1915), list of dates and names written on a blank page in Maude Stanley's copy of the Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857 (1857), bequeathed by H. H. Harrod. Reproduced courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London (www.vam.ac.uk).