When Florence Nightingale got to the hospital, she saw that wounded men were sleeping in overcrowded, dirty rooms without any blankets. Wounded soldiers often arrived with diseases like typhus, cholera and dysentery. More men died from these diseases than from their injuries. When she arrived at the hospital, the army doctors who worked there did not want the nurses helping. Soon after they arrived, however, there was a very large battle and the doctors realized they needed the nurses’ help. Florence Nightingale realized that if the doctors were going to allow her nurses to work then they had to do a very good job.[*]
The Crimean War was fought between October 1853 and March 1856, the combatants being Russia on one side, and Turkey, Great Britain, France, and Sardinia on the other. The Crimea is a peninsula jutting out into the Black Sea, and is bordered by Russia (Ukraine) to the north and the Austro-Hungarian Empire including the Balkans (Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Serbia) to the west. Turkey—at that time, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and Armenia were to the south and southwest; and east of the Black Sea were the Caucasus Mountains. The Crimean War was a chaotic conflict involving the Ottoman Empire, Russia, France, and England over an area disputed for centuries. Even during the Byzantine and Roman Empires, the Crimea was a strategic location as a peninsula between the European and Asian continents (and continues to be so today. This war was a nightmare to England because of the complex bureaucracy which had developed in the British Empire, especially with regard to military operations. The bureaucratic maze made timely decision making—an urgent necessity in time of war—difficult if not impossible.
See more:
The Sisters of Mercy in the Crimean War: Lessons for Catholic health care
and
THE FORGOTTEN NURSE OF THE CRIMEAN WAR
[*] An extract from the ‘Report upon the state of the hospitals of the British Army in the Crimea and Scutari’ (WO 33/1)
"Besides the above hospital attendants, we have to notice the staff of nurses under the superintendence of Miss Nightingale. That lady arrived at Scutari on the 4th November, accompanied by thirty-eight nurses. These are employed to attend to such cases as the medical officers in charge, and the staff surgeons of their divisions, concur in considering cases requiring such attendance. They are employed chiefly, according to Miss Nightingale’s evidence, among the wounded, the operation cases, and the severe medical cases. Their duties consist, in surgical cases, in washing, and preparing for the morning visits of the medical officer, such wounds as they are directed by that officer to treat in this way; to attend upon him in dressing the wounds; and to receive, and take to Miss Nightingale, his directions as to diet, drink, and medical comforts. In surgical cases, a corridor and two wards are generally assigned to four nurses. In medical cases, their duties consist in dressing bad sores, seeing that the food of the patients is properly cooked and properly administered, and that cleanliness, both of the wards and of the person, is attended to. We have reason to believe that the services of these hospital attendants have been extremely valuable.
"Besides the above hospital attendants, we have to notice the staff of nurses under the superintendence of Miss Nightingale. That lady arrived at Scutari on the 4th November, accompanied by thirty-eight nurses. These are employed to attend to such cases as the medical officers in charge, and the staff surgeons of their divisions, concur in considering cases requiring such attendance. They are employed chiefly, according to Miss Nightingale’s evidence, among the wounded, the operation cases, and the severe medical cases. Their duties consist, in surgical cases, in washing, and preparing for the morning visits of the medical officer, such wounds as they are directed by that officer to treat in this way; to attend upon him in dressing the wounds; and to receive, and take to Miss Nightingale, his directions as to diet, drink, and medical comforts. In surgical cases, a corridor and two wards are generally assigned to four nurses. In medical cases, their duties consist in dressing bad sores, seeing that the food of the patients is properly cooked and properly administered, and that cleanliness, both of the wards and of the person, is attended to. We have reason to believe that the services of these hospital attendants have been extremely valuable.
Mavi Boncuk |
at National Gallery, London
10 December 2019 - 1 May 2020 | Room 25, Floor 1
Hot on the heels of George Eliot’s 2019 bicentenary display is a new one
commemorating 200 years since the birth of another remarkable Victorian woman,
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). Nightingale’s pioneering care of sick and wounded soldiers during the Crimean War (1853–6) catapulted her into the public eye, making her a national cultural icon and an exemplar of female virtue. The newspaper press nicknamed her ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ owing to the nightly rounds she made by lantern light to tend to the soldiers. Like George Eliot, Florence despised sitting for her portrait and did so with the greatest reluctance. Consequently, and despite the demand for her image, few portraits of her survive.
Florence contracted a serious illness during her inspection of the Crimean field hospitals (now believed to have been the bacterial infection brucellosis), which left her bedridden for much of the rest of her life. But this did not curtail her efforts to improve the standards of nursing. Performed away from the public eye and largely from her sickbed, she campaigned for public healthcare reform, supervised the modernisation of nursing, and advised governments on army health provision, sanitation improvements and hospital design. In 1883, she was awarded the Royal Red Cross and, in 1907, was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit, Britain’s highest civilian decoration. A trailblazer of her time, her legacy lives still on today.
This new display, which includes watercolours, photographs and a commemorative medal, traces the image of the woman who transformed the public image of nursing.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Reformer of hospital nursing and of the Army Medical Services. Sitter associated with 36 portraits.
by William White
watercolour, circa 1836
Portraits – paintings, sculpture, photographs – which Florence Nightingale would have actually posed for are rare. So the gift of this watercolour, though showing her still young, was welcomed by the National Portrait Gallery in 1945.
Now little known, William White was sufficiently successful in the 1820s and 1830s to exhibit portraits at the Royal Academy and at the Royal Society of British Artists. [1] A sketch of his mother Mrs White, presently at the British Museum, shows a similar precise handling of paint to NPG 3246. [2] White was at one time the drawing master to Florence’s Bonham Carter cousins, and this was probably the source of the commission. [3]
This large watercolour shows Florence seated, eyes lowered over her embroidery while her sister Frances Parthenope looks out at the viewer. Both girls are wearing day dresses with fashionable wide collars and dropped shoulders; Florence also wears black mitts and a striped apron. Their attributes seem strangely reversed: Florence sews while her older sister holds a book. Yet when William Nightingale took over his daughters’ education in the 1830s, it was Parthenope who excelled at things artistic, while he and Florence formed a ‘college of two in the library’. [4] Florence was prodigiously bookish. Her commonplace book for 1836 (about the time of White’s portrait) reveals that her lessons included ‘rudiments’ of chemistry, geography, physics and astronomy, mathematics, grammar, composition, philosophy and history; and her languages were French, Italian and German. [5] According to her Aunt Mary she also displayed ‘industrious tendencies … on music & needlework’. [6]
William Nightingale’s academic programme was noted by the biographers; and one, Marion Holmes, wrote: ‘Luckily for his daughters, he did not believe that a girl’s education was complete when she had [merely] acquired a knowledge of Berlin wool-work, and a few elegant accomplishments.’ [7] The decision to show the younger girl absorbed in ‘wool-work’ is partly a pictorial convention – and, as Harriet Martineau pointed out, Florence’s youth was ruled by conventions, in common with ‘[other] little girls who have wealthy parents, and carefully chosen governesses, and good masters’. [8]
The double portrait may have been commissioned to mark Parthenope’s presentation at Court, which took place in the summer of 1836; and it records the Nightingale sisters in their mid- to late teens, as they may have looked before the family’s continental tour of 1837–9.
The offer to the Gallery came from Sir Harry Lushington Stephen, Bt, [9] whose wife Barbara, Florence’s great-niece, had lived at Embley Park, Hampshire, and Lea Hurst, Derbyshire. Barbara died in March 1945 and in May her husband offered the portrait, framed, [10] and another portrait of Nightingale (NPG 3254), writing that ‘both have always been in the possession of the family’. [11] The double portrait was ‘unanimously accepted’ by the Gallery trustees on 25 October 1945.
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotes
1) Graves 1895, p.301; Graves [1905–6] 1970, vol.4, p.257, exh. 1824–38; and Johnson 1975, p. 498. White seems to have come from Swansea: see Mallalieu 2002, vol.2, p.261 (‘William White of Swansea’); and Joyner 1997, p.127.
2) William White, Mrs White, dated 1836, BM, 1971,1011.7. With thanks to Kim Sloan for this information.
3) Bostridge 2008, p.57.
4) Bostridge 2008, p.39.
5) Bostridge 2008, p.38.
6) Bostridge 2008, pp.70–71. There are also sketches of Florence sewing by Parthenope, coll. NT, Claydon, Bucks.
7) Holmes 1910, p.3.
8) I. Scott [H. Martineau], ‘Representative Women’, Once a Week, 17 Mar. 1860, p.260.
9) See NPG 1748 for a Nightingale gift by Sir Harry and Lady Stephen in 1915.
10) According to note from NPG conservator, 16 Aug. 1993, NPG RP 3246, an ‘Edwardian compo oil gilt frame’.
11) Letter from Sir H. Stephen to NPG, 26 May 1945, NPG RP 3246. He dated the White watercolour 1839 (without supporting evidence). The date was corrected to ‘c.1836’ in the 1947 NPG catalogue, on the basis that the girls’ physique and style of their dresses pointed to an earlier date; see note by J. Kerslake, 29 June 1955, NPG, RP 3246. Rogers 1993 reverts to 1839 date.
Physical description
Florence whole-length seated to right in a high-backed chair, wearing a striped apron over a pink dress, hair plaited and curled into a bun at crown of head, working at embroidery; Parthenope standing at right in a yellow dress; curtain, balustrade and landscape in background.
by Jerry Barrett
pencil and watercolour, 1856
6 3/4 in. x 4 3/8 in. (170 mm x 110 mm) overall
Given by wish of Miss H.T. Neild, 1946
Left-hand sheet inscr. in pencil by the artist: ‘Florence Nightingale / Barrack Hospital / Scutari’;
inscr. in pencil by Henry Newman: ‘Drawn by / Jerry Barrett.’;
inscr. in pencil by ?H.T. Neild: ‘National Gallery of [?]Portraits’.
On reverse inscr. by ?Newman: ‘a a. hutch. / Burial ground. / Hamal carrying / a piano in a case’.
Right-hand sheet inscr. in pencil by the artist: ‘Florence Nightingale’;
dated in paint, lower right: ‘27.7.1856’.
To ensure the success of his second Crimean picture Jerry Barrett knew he must go the extra mile. For the first picture, Queen Victoria’s First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers, 1856 (NPG 6203), he had been praised for the truthfulness of the portraits, sketched as ‘the affecting incident took place’ at the Brompton Hospital, Chatham. [1] To succeed with the next subject – Florence Nightingale nursing soldiers at the Barrack Hospital, Scutari – he would have to go to Turkey, and soon, as a peace treaty had been signed on 30 March and the troops were being transported home.
Barrett went in the knowledge that Nightingale ‘had refused everybody, and would not allow her likeness to be taken’. [2] He travelled with a friend, Henry Newman, one of whose jobs was to smooth Barrett’s path: ‘I am fully employed in attending on Jerry and making an occasional sketch,’ he wrote from Scutari. [3] So Newman distracted Nightingale in the Scutari studio while Barrett drew her; as Newman’s nephew later wrote, ‘Florence Nightingale, though unwilling to sit, did show interest in the picture [see NPG 4305], and its progress. During her visits while she was enjoying not only Henry Newman’s graphic and beautiful sketches, but also his own interesting personality, Jerry Barrett was quietly occupied in making careful sketches of her which proved invaluable.’ [4]
The profiles in NPG 3303 were also obtained opportunistically. The date recorded in Barrett’s inscription ‘27.7.1856’ was the eve of Nightingale’s departure, by which time she and the artist were surely off speaking terms; she looks cross and tired, and Mark Bostridge suggests the images were sketched as she walked by the harbour. [5] Confusingly, the profiles were discovered in Newman’s sketchbook – perhaps Barrett grabbed it at an unexpected opportunity. Examination of Newman’s Syria and Palestine sketchbook at Friends’ House Library, London, confirms that the Nightingale profiles in NPG 3303 are indeed by Barrett, as Newman’s drawings were never so bold or confident; notations on these pages are, however, by both men.
The National Portrait Gallery was offered the sketches as a gift by Newman’s granddaughter in January 1946:
Herewith enclosed two sketches of Florence Nightingale, found in the sketch-books of the late Henry Newman. He & his artist friend Jerry Barrow [sic], went to Scutari & they found, it is said, the greatest difficulty in getting a sketch, as the lady was not interested. Donor is the late Miss H.T. Neild granddaughter of Hy. Newman. [6]
The Gallery was interested, and wanted to know if the drawings were by Barrett or Newman. The reply was inconclusive:
The story goes that Flo Nightingale disliked the idea of having her portrait taken, but Jerry Barrett got the sketches done while Henry Newman exerted his personal charm on the lady & diverted her attention from J.B.’s activities. The sketch on the back of the two heads is by Newman – so I cannot tell – & no one seems able to make a positive statement. [7]
The Nightingale sketches came on two little sheets: one with two watercolour profiles and the other with a pencil profile outline. They were accepted in February 1946 as ‘probably’ by Jerry Barrett and given a single accession number, NPG 3303. [8] The profiles bear no relation to the portrait of Nightingale in The Mission of Mercy (NPG 6202), which Barrett finished painting in 1857.
For other works at the Gallery directly connected to Barrett’s Crimean War paintings see NPG 2939; NPG 2939a; NPG 4305; NPG 6202; NPG 6203; and NPG D43044.
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotes
1) AJ, 1858, p.191.
2) See [Newman] 1910, p.551.
3) ‘Henry Newman with his love of travel and art, readily accompanied his friend and former school fellow’ ([Newman] 1910, pp.543, 545). Newman (1818–1908) was a bookseller and artist from Leominster, Herefs.; a Quaker, his papers were deposited at Friends’ House L., London.
4) [Newman] 1910, p.552.
5) Bostridge 2008, p.266. See NPG 6202 for further details.
6) Letter from E.M. Grantham to NPG, 17 Jan. 1946, NPG RP 3303. Present whereabouts of Newman’s 1856 Scutari sketchbook are unknown.
7) Letter from E.M. Grantham to C.K. Adams, 24 Jan. 1946, NPG RP 3303.
8) ‘Drawings of 1856, probably by Jerry Barrett. Presented February 1946, in accordance with the wishes of Miss H.T. Neild. Two pages from a sketchbook belonging to Henry Newman who was a fellow traveller with the artist. (1) Two heads in pencil and watercolour in profile facing to left, wearing a bonnet. On the reverse a landscape with figures inscr. ‘MYDER PACHA’ and ‘CEMETARY’. (2) Head in pencil in profile facing left, wearing a bonnet’ (NPG Report of the Trustees 1945–46 (typescript)).
Physical description
Left-hand sheet: head, pencil outline, profile to left in bonnet. On reverse: sketch of man with box on back.
Right-hand sheet: two heads (one above the other), pencil and watercolour, profiles to left, pinkish nose and short hair under grey bonnet with lace and ribbons. On reverse: watercolour landscape by Henry Newman.
Sketch of 'The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari'
Pen and iron gall ink on paper, 1857
8 7/8 in. x 12 1/8 in. (226 mm x 308 mm) overall
Inscr. throughout in iron gall ink:
signed lower left: ‘Jerry Barrett.’;
titled below centre: ‘“The Mission of Mercy”’;
vertical inscriptions at top, from left to right:
‘Dr Linton. CB. / Alexis Soyer. / Maj.G. Sir Hen. Storks KCB / Miss Tebbutt. / Superintendent
of the General Hospital / The boy “Robert” / a page to Miss N / Mrs Moore / the Reverend mother
of Convent Bermondsey / Dr Cruikshank. / Colonel Sillery / The artist / Miss F Nightingale. /
Mrs Roberts. / Mrs Bracebridge / Mr Bracebridge / Maj Gen Lord Wm Paulet CB’;
two horizontal inscriptions, upper right: ‘Soldiers whose portraits were taken /
in the Barrack Hospital Scutari’; ‘This sketch was made in order to explain the picture / to the Queen and was placed by the side of it / in Buckingham Palace. / JB’.
This is Jerry Barrett’s rough key to his painting The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari, 1857 (NPG 6202). It was drawn for a single, specific occasion: the viewing of the painting by Queen Victoria, as stated in his inscription at top right: ‘This sketch was made in order to explain the picture / to the Queen and was placed by the side of it / in Buckingham Palace. / JB’. Barrett’s inscriptions on the key confirm the integrity of his Crimean painting project, indicating that even the groups of wounded men at right – ‘Soldiers whose portraits were taken in the Barrack Hospital Scutari’ – were life drawings. The painting made two journeys to the palace, as the Queen was first too busy and then in Manchester visiting the Art Treasures Exhibition. She viewed it on 4 July 1857 or shortly afterwards. Barrett described these events to the dealer Thomas Agnew, who purchased the picture a month later. [1] The following year Agnew published a key plate to the print, after an untraced intermediate drawing by Barrett: see ‘Florence Nightingale, All known portraits, Paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, Contemporary portraits from life, publ. 1858’.
NPG 2939a has been mistaken for a preparatory sketch for The Mission of Mercy, but when it entered the Collection in May 1938 its function was rightly understood. Initially, however, it was deemed unsuitable for the National Portrait Gallery’s primary collection. [2] In the end it was ‘thrown in’ with the purchase of a Barrett drawing of Nightingale that the Gallery Trustees were keen to acquire; see NPG 2939 for transaction details. The vendor was P.F. Armstrong of Messrs Harry Armstrong & Sons, Kings Road, London, and the sale was handled by the Palser Gallery. After acquisition Barrett’s sketch key entered the Gallery’s reference collection. [3]
For related works by Jerry Barrett at the Gallery see NPG 2939, NPG 3303, NPG 4305, NPG 6202 and NPG D43044.
Fourteen figures identified
From left to right:
Sir William Linton (1801–1880)
Sir Henry Knight Storks (1811–1874)
Alexis Benoît Soyer (1810–1858)
Miss Tebbutt (1810–1896)
Robert Robinson (active 1857)
Mary Clare (Georgina Moore) (1814–1874)
William Cruickshank (died 1858)
Charles Sillery
Jerry Barrett (1824–1906)
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)
Eliza Roberts
Selina Bracebridge (c.1800–1874)
Charles Bracebridge (1799–1872)
Lord William Paulet (1804–1893)
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotes
1) Letter from J. Barrett to T. Agnew, 3 July 1857: ‘Before the Queen went to Manchester I went to the Palace and ascertained that in consequence of the multitude of different ways in which Her Majesty had been occupied my picture had not been seen; I obtained an interview with Colonel Phipps (previous to which I had been told that he desired it might remain in the Palace) he said it would do just as well if I took my picture home and returned with it after the Queen had been to Manchester, which I decided to do; I have accordingly written again to Colonel Phipps and my picture goes to the Palace tomorrow morning’ (Scrapbook relating to ‘Queen Victoria’s first visit to her wounded soldiers’, NPG Archive, NPG46/63/2/1/1).
2) Letter from H. Hake to G.D. Thomson, 12 Apr. 1938, NPG RP 2939/2939a.
3) NPG Report of the Trustees 1938–9, p.6.
Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers
by Jerry Barrett[*]
oil on canvas, 1856
58 1/4 in. x 86 3/8 in. (1480 mm x 2193 mm) overall
Purchased with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, 1993
oil on canvas, 1856
58 1/4 in. x 86 3/8 in. (1480 mm x 2193 mm) overall
Purchased with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, 1993
The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari
by Jerry Barrett
oil on canvas, 1857
57 7/8 in. x 85 7/8 in. (1470 mm x 2182 mm) overall
Purchased with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund,
1993
Christies Lot Note
The painting is a sketch for the much larger and more finished work that was sold in these Rooms on 5 March 1993, lot 107. The pendant, Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers, was lot 108. The two monumental canvases, which are of great historical interest and were well known in their day through the medium of engravings, were bought at the sale for the National Portrait Gallery.
The underlying theme of both paintings is the Crimean War, the most foolhardy and traumatic military adventure of the Victorian age. Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers is the less iconic of the two images, and it might therefore be assumed that it was conceived as a comparison-piece to the pre-existing Mission of Mercy. But in fact it was painted first. It represents a visit paid by the Queen, Prince Albert and their two eldest sons to the Brompton Hospital, Chatham, on 3 March 1855, to see some of the disabled troops that had returned from the conflict. Jerry Barrett, a young London-based artist, not well known but evidently ambitious, witnessed the event and made sketches on the spot. The painting was completed by the summer of 1856, when it was exhibited to great acclaim by Agnew's at their premises in Manchester and London. The firm also commissioned a mezzotint from Thomas Oldham Barlow, publishing it in November 1858 with a dedication to the Queen.
Hardly had Barrett completed Queen Victoria's First Visit that he set out for the Crimea to gather material for The Mission of Mercy. The picture was to be on the same scale and to show Florence Nightingale in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, the scene of her heroic endeavours to improve the medical treatment of the British army engaged in the war. She had gone out in October 1854, charged by the government with superintending the nursing hospital, which had been condemned as scandalously inadequate by William Howard Russell in his first-hand reports in the Times. Conditions were so appalling that they were killing solders faster than the war itself. The most rudimentary medical supplies were lacking, while the military authorities were slaves to beaurocracy if not actively obstructive.
His expenses paid by Agnew's, Barrett arrived at Scutari in June 1856, establishing a makeshift studio in the hospital itself. The setting of his picture is the building's quadrangle. On the right is the great gateway over which Miss Nightingale said the words 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here', the inscription above the entrace to Hell in Dante's Inferno, should have been written; and in the distance can be seen the Bosphorus, with the gardens of the Seraglio on the near side and Constantinople glittering in the sunlight beyond. Casualties are being helped up the steep slope which led from the rickety landing-stage to the hospital, while around Miss Nightingale are gathered many of those who were associated with her work in the Crimea. They include her close friends Charles and Selina Bracebridge of Atherstone Hall, near Coventry, who had accompanied her to Scutari in 1854 and for nine months acted as her lieutenants; Major Sillery, the ineffectual commandant of the hospital when she arrived; his even more useless successor, Lord William Paulet; and his successor, General Sir Henry Storks, under whom reforms were finally introduced.
Two senior medical officers, Dr William Linton and Dr Cruikshanks, are also present, while Mrs Roberts, Miss Nightingale's most efficient nurse, albeit an irritating chatterbox, kneels beside the solder on a stretcher at the centre of the whole group. Also present are Revd Mother Mary Clare, the superior of the five Bermondsey nuns who joined the mission; Alexis Soyer, the French chef at the Reform Club in London who revolutionised the hospital's cooking; and the boy Robert Robinson, an invalided drummer from the 68th Light Infantry, who appointed himself Miss Nightingale's personal servant and took charge of the famous lamp which she carried with her when she toured the wards at night. Several Turks, including a Bashi-Bazouk, two yashmaked women and a child, complete the group, and the artist shows himself looking through a heavily-barred window in the far wall.
Barrett's object in this painting was not to illustrate a specific incident, as he had in Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers, but to create an image that would sum up and symbolise Miss Nightingale's 'mission of mercy'. Despite what the Athenaeum called its 'air of truthfulness', the picture is a highly artificial construct. The dramatis personae could not all have been present at the same time. There are deliberate echoes of one of Raphael's cartoons, Peter and John healing the Lame Man at the Gate of the Temple, and Mrs Roberts's gesture of offering the wounded man a cup gives the scene an almost sacramental quality. The presence of the Turks, gazing in amazement at the ongoing ritual, reinforces this impression.
Barrett did not being work on the full-scale painting until he returned to London. It is indistinctly dated but was presumably finished by August 1857, when it was bought by Agnew's for £450, including copyright. Two oil sketches survive, the present painting and another, of exactly the same size (16 x 24 in.), in the National Portrait Gallery (for the latter, see G. Reynolds, Victorian Painting, revised ed., London, 1987, p. 101, pl. 65). Ours is clearly the later since it is closer compositionally to the finished work, although there are still significant variations of detail.
Barrett also painted a 'reduced copy' of the completed work, possibly for the engraver Thomas Oldham Barlow, who engraved the picture in mezzotint, as he did Queen Victoria's First Visit. In fact the reproduction of The Misson of Mercy appeared first, being published on 21 April 1858 in an edition of 1,025 impressions. The 'reduced copy' was completed as early as July 1857 (presumably giving us a terminus post quem for both sketches), and was with the Fine Art Society, London, in 1984 (see their catalogue Spring '84, no. 2, illustrated).
The underlying theme of both paintings is the Crimean War, the most foolhardy and traumatic military adventure of the Victorian age. Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers is the less iconic of the two images, and it might therefore be assumed that it was conceived as a comparison-piece to the pre-existing Mission of Mercy. But in fact it was painted first. It represents a visit paid by the Queen, Prince Albert and their two eldest sons to the Brompton Hospital, Chatham, on 3 March 1855, to see some of the disabled troops that had returned from the conflict. Jerry Barrett, a young London-based artist, not well known but evidently ambitious, witnessed the event and made sketches on the spot. The painting was completed by the summer of 1856, when it was exhibited to great acclaim by Agnew's at their premises in Manchester and London. The firm also commissioned a mezzotint from Thomas Oldham Barlow, publishing it in November 1858 with a dedication to the Queen.
Hardly had Barrett completed Queen Victoria's First Visit that he set out for the Crimea to gather material for The Mission of Mercy. The picture was to be on the same scale and to show Florence Nightingale in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, the scene of her heroic endeavours to improve the medical treatment of the British army engaged in the war. She had gone out in October 1854, charged by the government with superintending the nursing hospital, which had been condemned as scandalously inadequate by William Howard Russell in his first-hand reports in the Times. Conditions were so appalling that they were killing solders faster than the war itself. The most rudimentary medical supplies were lacking, while the military authorities were slaves to beaurocracy if not actively obstructive.
His expenses paid by Agnew's, Barrett arrived at Scutari in June 1856, establishing a makeshift studio in the hospital itself. The setting of his picture is the building's quadrangle. On the right is the great gateway over which Miss Nightingale said the words 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here', the inscription above the entrace to Hell in Dante's Inferno, should have been written; and in the distance can be seen the Bosphorus, with the gardens of the Seraglio on the near side and Constantinople glittering in the sunlight beyond. Casualties are being helped up the steep slope which led from the rickety landing-stage to the hospital, while around Miss Nightingale are gathered many of those who were associated with her work in the Crimea. They include her close friends Charles and Selina Bracebridge of Atherstone Hall, near Coventry, who had accompanied her to Scutari in 1854 and for nine months acted as her lieutenants; Major Sillery, the ineffectual commandant of the hospital when she arrived; his even more useless successor, Lord William Paulet; and his successor, General Sir Henry Storks, under whom reforms were finally introduced.
Two senior medical officers, Dr William Linton and Dr Cruikshanks, are also present, while Mrs Roberts, Miss Nightingale's most efficient nurse, albeit an irritating chatterbox, kneels beside the solder on a stretcher at the centre of the whole group. Also present are Revd Mother Mary Clare, the superior of the five Bermondsey nuns who joined the mission; Alexis Soyer, the French chef at the Reform Club in London who revolutionised the hospital's cooking; and the boy Robert Robinson, an invalided drummer from the 68th Light Infantry, who appointed himself Miss Nightingale's personal servant and took charge of the famous lamp which she carried with her when she toured the wards at night. Several Turks, including a Bashi-Bazouk, two yashmaked women and a child, complete the group, and the artist shows himself looking through a heavily-barred window in the far wall.
Barrett's object in this painting was not to illustrate a specific incident, as he had in Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers, but to create an image that would sum up and symbolise Miss Nightingale's 'mission of mercy'. Despite what the Athenaeum called its 'air of truthfulness', the picture is a highly artificial construct. The dramatis personae could not all have been present at the same time. There are deliberate echoes of one of Raphael's cartoons, Peter and John healing the Lame Man at the Gate of the Temple, and Mrs Roberts's gesture of offering the wounded man a cup gives the scene an almost sacramental quality. The presence of the Turks, gazing in amazement at the ongoing ritual, reinforces this impression.
Barrett did not being work on the full-scale painting until he returned to London. It is indistinctly dated but was presumably finished by August 1857, when it was bought by Agnew's for £450, including copyright. Two oil sketches survive, the present painting and another, of exactly the same size (16 x 24 in.), in the National Portrait Gallery (for the latter, see G. Reynolds, Victorian Painting, revised ed., London, 1987, p. 101, pl. 65). Ours is clearly the later since it is closer compositionally to the finished work, although there are still significant variations of detail.
Barrett also painted a 'reduced copy' of the completed work, possibly for the engraver Thomas Oldham Barlow, who engraved the picture in mezzotint, as he did Queen Victoria's First Visit. In fact the reproduction of The Misson of Mercy appeared first, being published on 21 April 1858 in an edition of 1,025 impressions. The 'reduced copy' was completed as early as July 1857 (presumably giving us a terminus post quem for both sketches), and was with the Fine Art Society, London, in 1984 (see their catalogue Spring '84, no. 2, illustrated).
[*] Jerry Barrett (1824–1906) was an English painter of the Victorian era. His most notable work was the Crimean War depiction "The Mission of Mercy: Nightingale receiving the wounded at Scutari" (1858) which is in the National Portrait Gallery (London), paired with "Queen Victoria's First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers". There is documentation to suggest that Barrett traveled to the Crimea to obtain sketches for his pictures. Queen Victoria's First Visit to Her Wounded Soldiers was exhibited at the Royal Exhibition Gallery in Piccadilly in May, 1856, and engraved by Agnews. It was Thomas Agnew who purchased The Mission of Mercy from the artist in August 1857, and exhibited it at Leggatt and Hayward Gallery in Cornhill in the summer of 1858 at the height of the Indian Mutiny.
Florence Nightingale by Jerry Barrett
pencil, pen and ink and watercolour, 1856
6 7/8 in. x 5 in. (174 mm x 128 mm) overall
Purchased, 1938
6 7/8 in. x 5 in. (174 mm x 128 mm) overall
Purchased, 1938
after William Edward Kilburn, 1864-1877 (circa 1856)
National Portrait Gallery, London
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