(Photo credit: Stephen Bird, great-great-grandson of the artist Samuel Bird.)
“Clubbism is a mystery,” insisted George Augustus Sala. I disagree; but prefer to say that Clubland contains many mysteries. Among them is the fate of lost art. This feature is about a lost ‘Clubland’ painting from 1894, showing 84-year-old recently-retired former British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, standing on the terrace of the National Liberal Club, which had only been completed seven years earlier.
While the painting’s fate has been unknown for nearly 130 years, what survives is a detailed photogravure (an early high-quality, fine-art print made from a photograph, and then ‘enhanced’ with airbrushing), so that we still know what the missing painting looks like. And at the foot of the piece below, I have attempted to reconstruct the missing painting in colour.
The painting
The Wrexham and Denbighshire Advertiser and Cheshire, Shropshire and North Wales Register was the local paper of the Hawarden area, where Gladstone had his stately home. The 30th November 1895 issue reported:
“There is now in the reading-room of the National Liberal Club a picture of considerable interest to the members. It was painted on the terrace of the Club buildings last year, by the late Mr Samuel Bird, and it poetically represents Mr Gladstone standing on the terrace in the twilight of the closing day, and peering through the hazes towards St. Stephen’s, where for more than sixty years he played so great a part. The buildings of the Houses of Parliament are shown in the fading light, and there is even a glimpse of Lambeth Palace away beyond the bridge on the other side of the river. But the only living figure is that of Mr Gladstone, who for the purpose of the picture gave the artist special opportunities at Hawarden, so that while the setting has been painted on the spot the actual figure has been taken from the life. Mr Gladstone stands bare-headed and erect, not using for support the stick which he holds by his side.”
The painting was to prove the last portrait of Gladstone, and the last work by Bird. Indeed, Bird, who died in February 1895, appears to have fallen ill sometime sometime after the summer of 1894, when he completed the painting.
The scene shown was somewhat artificial - as noted by the paper, Gladstone, whose eyesight was failing at the time, sat separately for his part of the portrait at his home in north Wales, while the artist then returned to London to fill out the background of the canvas from the Club’s terrace.
The setting is of interest. Not only had the National Liberal Club only recently been built, but the same could be said of almost the entire land seen behind it - the Victoria Embankment of the 1870s was a major testament to Victorian engineering, which improved the drainage of the river Thames (ending the near-annual mid-Victorian horror of “the great stink” of the river’s open sewer during summers); narrowing, deepening and straightening the channel, while also expanding the amount of developable land in central London, on the banks of the Thames. Note in the background of the picture that what are now mighty trees in Embankment Gardens today were still narrow, newly-planted saplings at the time.
Gladstone was a keen patron of the National Liberal Club. While it was not his initiative, as often claimed (it was a grassroots Liberal effort at creating a “popular”, mass-membership London club; and if anyone was its founder, it was the Welsh barrister and later Liberal MP Arthur John Williams), it very much fit into his plans for the Third Reform Act, in hoovering up the new lower-middle-class and “labour aristocracy” voters who were keen Liberal supporters, and he enthusiastically accepted the Club’s Presidency for the rest of his life. By this stage of his life, Gladstone was not extensively using clubs socially, as he had done in the 1840s and 1850s when he had been an active member of the Carlton and United University Clubs. But he frequently turned up at the NLC in the late 1880s and early 1890s to make setpiece speeches, seeing it as a bridgehead to the Liberal Party in the country.
The artist
Samuel C. Bird (1829-1895) was a successful painter from the mid-1860s until the early 1890s. The Dictionary of Victorian Painters noted that, “Bird, Samuel C. flourished 1865 - 1893,” with a footnote recording that he was a:
“London painter of coastal and genre scenes, and dead game. Exhibited at the RA 1866 - 1883 and at the British Institution and RBA Suffolk Street. Titles at RA ‘Who Killed Cock Robin’ and ‘The Many Twinkling Smile of Ocean’ etc.”
He was also an active Liberal, being a member of the National Liberal Club by the late 1880s, so as well as being a skilled artist, he was also broadly sympathetic to his subject.
Multiple sources give his death as being in 1893, but as noted elsewhere, his death was actually reported in The Times on Wednesday 20th February 1895:
Bird on 18th Feb at 15 Sussex Villas, Kensington W, on his 66th birthday, SAMUEL BIRD. No cards. Funeral on Friday, 22nd inst, at Hanwell Cemetery, 3 pm.
The Worcestershire Chronicle, in its notice “Death of an artist” on 23rd February 1895, noted the passing of, “Mr. Samuel Bird, artist, who was last summer engaged in painting a picture of Mr. Gladstone standing on the terrace of the National Liberal Club.”
The fate of the painting
After Bird’s death, in June of 1895 it was suggested by NLC member John Charles Buckmaster (1819-1908), himself an artist of some ability as well as an educationalist and reformer, that the Club should display the painting by his late friend. The Art Committee of the NLC agreed to put the painting on display in the Club’s Committee Room (which is now the Meston Room of the Royal Horseguards Hotel, atop the surviving portion of the Club).
(Photo credit: Charles Gillett, Archivist, National Liberal Club.)
It stayed on display for some time, judging by the previously-quoted press cutting mentioning it there in November 1895, though by then had moved to the Reading Room on the same floor (now the Reading & Writing Room of the Royal Horseguards Hotel); and then in January 1896, again at the instigation of Buckmaster, it was offered for purchase. The Art Committee passed the following resolution:
“That the membership be informed that the Art Committee will be pleased to accept the picture on behalf of the Club provided it be presented by Mr. Bird’s friends.”
However, after this, the Club’s minutes then went cold, with further no mention of the painting in the NLC’s minutes, and no appearance of the painting in the Club’s annual art catalogues of the period, suggesting that it did not purchase the painting itself. It seems likely that at some point, either in 1896 or 1897, another buyer purchased the painting, having made a larger offer than the Club’s.
Yet the painting turned up the following year, for an exhibition of some forty of the late artist’s works, presumably either on loan from the new owner, or using the exhibition as a platform to put it up for sale.
More details of the exhibition can be found in the 6th February 1897 issue of The Freemason which reported:
“THE LARGE PICTURE, painted by the late Mr. Samuel Bird , of Mr. Gladstone standing on the terrace of the National Liberal Club and looking towards the Houses of Parliament, will be exhibited, together with the photogravure of the same, and a number of other oil paintings by Mr. Bird, at the Gallery, 175 , New Bond-street, about the middle ot this month.”
Tying in with the exhibition on New Bond Street, a circular was created with details of the painting, advertising the limited edition of 300 photogravure prints of the picture. Gladstone himself seems to have approved of the initiative, having authorised a reproduction of the signature on the prints:
(Photo credit: Stephen Bird, great-great-grandson of the artist Samuel Bird.)
It is thanks to the circular and the 300 photogravures generated that we know what the painting looked like. Yet at the time, not everybody was so appreciative - The Sketch thought it a gauche promotion, writing on 10 March 1897:
“An exhibition of the late Samuel Bird’s work at 175, New Bond Street, has a passing interest. Its chief plum - if so irreverent a word may be permitted - is the last work which the painter accomplished, his portrait of Mr. Gladstone. Whatever the merits of the picture may be, and it has merits, it was a pity, perhaps, to issue a circular dealing with its merits from the symbolic point of view. Mr. Gladstone, in the picture, stands on the terrace of the National Liberal Club, looking at the Houses of Parliament, “shrouded,” says the circular, “in a soft mist, as if to convey the idea that the scene of his labours is left behind.” Moreover, “a quiet sunlight bathes everything,” to symbolise that “hope and confidence and the influence of a noble life can never die.” And so forth, and so forth. Surely it is a pity to make conscientiuos work in itself, apart from even intentional symbolism, look ridiculous.”
“Q.E.D.” in The World took a similarly nuanced view, on 3 March 1897:
“The late Mr. Samuel Bird was not a very widely known painter, but he had a good deal of quiet merit, which may be seen in the collection of some forty of his works now on view at 175 New Bond Street. They are chiefly landscapes, and the best deal with certain atmospheric effects in Sicily and at sea. The artist was not happy in his figures, and where he has introduced any he has marred his pictures. This is the case even in his last and most important work which may be said to have been painted solely for a figure, that of Mr. Gladstone standing on the terrace of the National Liberal Club and looking towards the scene of his former triumphs and labours, the Houses of of Parliament. The beautiful view over the Embankment Gardens and up the river is charmingly treated, and the thin silvery London haze that beautifies and idealises so many of our city views, is admirably rendered; but the figure which should give the chief interest and meaning to the picture is poor and ill-drawn, with an unduly large head and an impossible arm. It is a pity, for the rest of the picture deserves nothing but praise.”
After the exhibition, there is no further record of the painting. The most likely explanation is that it was sold into a private collection - it was unlikely that such a notable work would have been destroyed at the time.
Its fate since then is unknown. It may still be be languishing in an attic, or hanging in a home. But just as plausibly, it could have been damaged in the Blitz, or disposed of by an heir of the purchaser who did not realise its value. Unless someone comes forward with further details, its fate beyond 1897 is likely to prove a mystery.
With that in mind, I have used AI to generate an approximation of the original painting, using both the surviving black-and-white photogravure, and the above comments about the colour palette. While by no means an exact reconstruction, I hope it gives a general impression of what has been lost.
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.