The quotations at the head of each section are taken from Graves' list of Royal Academy exhibitors, and represent the inspiration for the painting, as submitted to the Academy's catalogue by Eyre Crowe.

Title: Queen Eleanor's Tomb (1880)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1880

Athenaeum, 1 May 1880:

... a fine view of the chapel of Edward the Confessor at Westminster, and the monument of Eleanor of Castile. The chief charm of the place was destroyed when most of the authentic surface of the ancient stone was removed, and the whole saturated with lac dissolved in spirit. The result of this deplorable blunder has been to banish the ineffably beautiful tints of time and substitute a brown, horn-like surface, which by-and-by will turn black.

Title: Forfeits (1880)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1880

Athenaeum, 1 May 1880:

Mr. Eyre Crowe contributes an animated and solidly painted picture called Forfeits (448), showing ladies and gentlemen amusing each other in a room. A group in front comprises a fair dame in the bloom of life, clad in a striped black-and-white dress; her attitude is very graceful and lifelike; behind her sits a younger damsel, wearing a similar dress. These figures are a little too sharply-defined, their dresses are slightly hard. There is much sound and good painting in the foreground accessories, although equal care has not been bestowed on those of the background and the smaller figures of an extremely happy design.

------------------

This painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in London in 1983. The picture is reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.

Title: Matthew O'Reilly-Dease Esq in the Reform Club (1880)

Medium: ink drawing

Current owner: Private collection

Little is known about this drawing, except that it came up at auction in 2000. Crowe was a member of the Reform Club from 1861 until his death, and must have sketched many of his fellow clubbers.

Title: Sir Roger de Coverley and the Spectator at Westminster Abbey (1880)

Medium: oil

Size: 61 by 45.7 cm

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1881

Athenaeum, 19 March 1881:

Mr. Eyre Crowe will probably contribute to the Royal Academy Exhibition ... Sir R. De Coverley seated in the Coronation Chair at Westminster, while the Spectator (Addison) and the verger are looking on.

Athenaeum, 14 May 1881:

The incident of the knight's seating himself in the coronation chair is not one of the best of Mr. Crowe's works. Still, the figure of Sir Roger is typical and his pose is good.

Art Journal, August 1881:

Represents the incident narrated in Addison's Spectator of Sir Roger seating himself in the coronation chair at Westminster, and inquiring, on the verger's telling him that the stone underneath was called Jacob's Pillow, what authority there was for saying that Jacob had ever been in Scotland.

------------------

This painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York on 2 December 1986, fetching £933/$1,400. The picture is reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.

Title: Explosion of the Cashmere Gate at Delhi, Sept. 14, 1857 (1881)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1881; St Jude's, Whitechapel, 1886

Athenaeum, 19 March 1881:

Mr. Eyre Crowe will probably contribute to the Royal Academy Exhibition ... the attack on the gate of Delhi during the critical point of the Indian Mutiny, and at the moment when the explosion of a petard, laid before the walled-up gate by Lieut. Salkeld and others, is imminent. The leader of the assailants is on the shattered wooden bridge, and about to apply the match to the fuse, while some of his companions have jumped or fallen wounded into the ditch below.

Athenaeum, 14 May 1881:

It is full of incidents well selected, excellently designed, and carefully painted, and there is much energy and abundance of character in the expressions and actions of the figures.

Art Journal, June 1881:

The story, as told at length in the catalogue, is depicted with great skill and directness. Sergeant Smith, kneeling on the battered bridge, is in the act of stooping to ignite the fuse; down in the ditch lie the bodies of Lieutenant Salkeld and Sergeants Burgess and Carmichael, who have been mortally wounded in the attempt; near them stand Lieutenant Home, who had jumped from the bridge after placing the first powder bags, and Bugler Hawthorne, who was to sound the call to advance.

Title: 'Sandwiches' (1881)

Medium: oil

Size: 39.4 x 61 cm (15 x 23.5 inches)

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1881; Manchester, 1987  

Athenaeum, 19 March 1881:

Mr. Eyre Crowe will probably contribute to the Royal Academy Exhibition ... 'There are Sandwiches and Sandwiches', a view of Trafalgar Square, with a party of 'Sandwich-men' discussing their luncheons on the steps and the terrace. This is a small picture, with numerous figures, very happily composed and rich in expression.

The Scotsman, 7 May 1881:

Very remarkable in its individualisation of curious types is a small canvas by Eyre Crowe, displaying an assemblage of those nondescripts commonly known as 'sandwich men', in some public place that looks not unlike Trafalgar Square. How so many of the characters in question could have been got together, and got to dispose themselves in such a picturesque variety of attitudes, it is for the artist to explain. Enough for us that there they are, and that every figure of the strange miscellany has an intense reality that fairly fascinates the eye.

Athenaeum, 14 May 1881:

... 'boardmen' grouped on the steps in Trafalgar Square, and taking their luncheons after the fashion of their tribe. A good deal of character, some humour, and the painter's unfailing care in working may be found in this solid and well-studied picture.

The painting was exhibited in Manchester in 1987 as part of a retrospective on Victorian social realist art, and was reproduced in the accompanying catalogue by Julian Treuherz, Hard Times: Social Realism in Victorian Art. Treuherz considers that the painting shows 'a story of poverty and failure', writing that the sandwich-board men were 'the lowest of the low among casual labourers', and remarking that one of the men is sleeping on the pavement, and several others 'have the air of down-and-outs'.

'Sandwiches' is also reproduced in Christopher Wood's Victorian Panorama: Paintings of Victorian Life (1976), where it is described by the author as 'one of the most realistic and unsentimental of street-scenes'.

It was sold to the Fine Art Society at auction at Sotheby's on 16 October 1968, and sold on again to a private owner in 1972. It was sold at auction at Gorringe's in Lewes, East Sussex, in 2005, for £2,500.

Title: 'How Happy Could I Be With Either' (1882)

Medium: oil

Size: 39 x 69 cm

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1882

Athenaeum, 6 May 1882:

It has not a little humour and spirit. It depicts two girls in a garden where a Skye terrier is divided in mind as to whether he will go to one or the other temptress. Behind we have the outside wall of an old house and a garden.

------------------

This painting measuring 39 by 69 cm, was auctioned at Sotheby's in Billinghurst, West Sussex on 28 July 1998, fetching £2,070. The picture is reproduced in the auction catalogue.

Title: The Defence of London in 1643 (1882)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1882

The Scotsman, 2 May 1882:

An incident of the defence of London in 1643 has been realised with notable force, if not without a strong dash of his peculiar mannerism, by Eyre Crowe.

Athenaeum, 6 May 1882:

Mr. Eyre Crowe has more than sustained the reputation acquired by his larger work of last year. He has sent to the Academy a long canvas, placed landscape-wise, and representing a procession of men and women carrying earth in gabions or entrenching tools. A more compact group are at work, or are looking on with animated interest. The picture is styled The Defence of London in 1643 (840), and it represents an incident of great historical importance which is described in the Somers Tracts, the narrative of William Lithgow. The figures move to our left and are directed by the drummer, and led by a standard-bearer, on whose black and yellow flag is written 'St George'. At our right the Parliamentarian commander Skippon, a portrait, is discussing the plan of the circumvallation of London with a military engineer in a blue dress. A citizen's wife is clad in sober grey, with the oak-leaf badge of her party in the stare; this decoration appears in the headgear of most of her neighbours. Among the crowd a stalwart, lean fellow trundles a laden barrow, on which is a gabion. In the mid-distance is Mount Mill Hill Fort, which stood at the upper end of Aldersgate Street, and is here set forth with its bastions and the flying standard of the popular party. The characters, attitudes, and expressions in this picture are varied, full of animation, and perfectly appropriate. The painting would be more agreeable than it is if the tones were more varied and the colour clearer as well as richer.

Illustrated London News, 13 May 1882:

Mr. Eyre Crowe has lighted on a capital subject in 'The Defence of London in 1643' (840) by the Parliamentary forces; but what has happened to the painter that he should conceive our ancestors to have been such hideous, ill-made mannikins as he has depicted them, and that he should restrict his palette to hues so leaden, opaque, and inartistic?

The Times, 13 May 1882:

This is a large, long picture of a train of citizens of both sexes and all classes and occupations, hastening towards the fortifications, 'carrying on their shoulders mattocks, spades and shovels, with roaring drums, flying colours, and girded swords' ... Mr. Eyre Crowe at no time surrenders over much to the seductions of beauty, but this work is marvellous in its straitened ugliness of colour and form, And there is a uniformity of expression in the people's faces that tells us nothing of what they are thinking. If this 'Defence of London' were the greatest joke in the world, they could not take it more unemotionally. A certain ability of draughtsmanship we must recognise, and certain perseverance, and accuracy of evenly-distributed work, but beyond and above that we find little.

Art Journal, August 1882:

The general composition is animated and bustling; but when we have said that, we have said all that we can in its praise. There is nothing which, by any stretch of courtesy, can be called colour; the drawing is careless and the modelling childish.

Title: A Man Sleeping in the King's Gallery of the British Museum (1882)

Medium: chalk drawing

Size: 163 x 211 mm

Current owner: British Museum

An image of this sketch appears on the British Museum website (type 'Eyre Crowe' into the Compass search of museum objects). It was donated to the museum by Mrs J. Naimaister.

Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.