20 December 2023

Finding a Ruskin portrait
with family links and
vivid Victorian colours
at the Ashmolean

John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) in the ‘Colour Revolution’ exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I have tried – but failed – during recent visits to Oxford, to search in the Ashmolean Museum for a Pre-Raphaelite portrait that inspired a late Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

The formal portrait of John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) has been held by the Ashmolean for the past ten years. But each time I went in search of it the painting was on loan to another exhibition. So, when I was in Oxford last week, I returned to the Ashmolean Museum to see this painting which is part of the current exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design.’

Ruskin was an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite circle in Oxford. His book The Stones of Venice was influential as I was developing my interests in architecture and later as I developed my interests in Venice. His portrait, painted by Milais 170 years ago in 1853, captures Ruskin in a style that fulfils Ruskin’s ideals.

But I also had family reasons for wanting to see this portrait. When my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), was young and successful, he had his portrait taken in a way that presented him as a young Victorian man with confidence looking forward to the future.

I had always imagined that the photograph was taken in a Victorian photographer’s studio, but with the intent of creating the impression of an ideal rustic background, with a cascading waterfall, rocks, rich vegetation, and a clearing in a thicket. Stephen Comerford is dressed in a three-piece suit and wing-collar shirt, holding a walking cane in one hand and a hat in the other. But his shoes are well-made and highly-polished, so this is clearly a studio scene rather than a setting at the Powerscourt Waterfall near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, or at a waterfall in Killarney, Co Kerry. It is certainly not in the Scottish Highlands.

It seems like a photograph that a man confident a full and successful career lay ahead of him would like to have taken. I only have a copy of the photograph, from the house in Terenure where my grandmother lived, rather than the original. So I have no idea of the original date of the photograph, or of the name of the photographer. When it was announced in 2013 that the Ashmolean had acquired Millais’s portrait of Ruskin, I realised that my grandfather’s photograph was modelled on this celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Stephen Edward Comerford (left) like a cut-out figure at a waterfall, and John Ruskin (right) in the portrait by John Everett Millais (Photomontage: Patrick Comerford)

This is the painting that led to the breakdown of Ruskin’s marriage, and until it was acquired by the Ashmolean it was ‘one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings’ that had remained in private ownership.

The Ashmolean has such a rich collection of Pre-Raphaelite works because of the many connections members of the movement had with of Oxford. A number of them – including Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Alfred William Hunt and John Ruskin – studied at the University.

Ruskin left much of his collection, including his teaching collection, to the university. He was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1836 to 1842, when he lived with his mother on High Street. His Modern Painters, published anonymously in 1843, was credited to him as ‘a graduate of Oxford’. His writings were highly influential and he became irrevocably associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, befriending Millais and Hunt, and then Rossetti, Siddal and Burne-Jones.

Ruskin was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1869. He was critical of the teaching methods at the art schools of his day, and founded the School of Drawing in 1871.

When I set out in search of Ruskin’s portrait by Millais in the Ashmolean in September, I learn it has been on loan for some months to another exhibition. Instead, I spent an educational and enjoyable afternoon in Pre-Raphaelite Gallery, but shall have to return soon again to find the portrait that may have inspired the pose in that Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

‘Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute (1835) by JMW Turner, lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Thankfully, I found the portrait last week when I visited ‘Colour Revolution’, the Ashmolean’s autumn exhibition which presents a dazzling version of the Victorian world, surprisingly one of the most colourful periods in history.

Ruskin was one of the most influential writers on art and architecture in 19th century Britain, and strove to restore colour to its rightful importance in art. Since the Renaissance, colour had been considered by many as secondary to composition and draftsmanship.

Ruskin argued that colour was a God-given gift and should be embraced as it had been in mediaeval art. He believed the colours of the natural world could inspire and guide artists who should replicate them as truthfully as possible. ‘You ought to love colour, and to think nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it,’ he wrote in The Elements of Drawing in 1857.

Ruskin was a passionate defender of JMW Turner, and considered him one of the greatest colourists. Both Ruskin and Turner were profoundly influenced by the colours and patterned architecture of Venice. Ruskin also taught art at Oxford. His lectures and writing helped shape debates around colour and greatly influenced the Pre-Raphaelites.

This exhibition dispels the myth that the Victorian era was a dreary landscape of ‘dark satanic mills’ and cities choked with smog. Instead, it shows how developments in art, science and technology resulted in an explosion of colour that was embraced by artists, designers and regular people in the 19th century.

The exhibition reveals a spectacular and flamboyant array of artworks, costume and design that sprung from this ‘colour revolution’. It features 140 objects from international collections ranging from Ruskin’s exquisite studies, Turner’s and Whistler’s experiments with colour harmony, and elegant designs by William Morris and his company, to fashion, jewellery and homeware that enlivened the streets and homes of Victorian Britain and Europe.

The exhibition opens with an evocative object, encapsulating our dark preconceptions of the period: Queen Victoria’s mourning dress – she spent 40 years in black following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. But examples of Victorian fashion show people of the 19th century embracing the products of the Industrial Revolution, no more so than new aniline dyes. While the coal industry blackened Britain’s landscape, aniline, a by-product of coal-tar, introduced a rainbow of possibilities to Victorian wardrobes.

The display includes a purple dress, crinoline and shoes dyed with the first aniline colour, Mauvine, all retaining their shocking brilliance. As production increased, the price of dyes reduced, making bright colours available to the masses.

Although pigments had been manufactured for thousands of years, the term ‘synthetic’ is synonymous with the 19th century because of the scale and advances of chemical technology. It was an 18-year-old chemistry student, William Henry Perkin (1838-1907) who discovered Mauvine in 1856. This encouraged chemists across Europe to find more synthetic colours.

Perkin succeeded in 1867 in making alizarin, the active colorant of madder root, a traditional vegetable dye for reds, pinks and browns. Soon new anilines were being used to print postage stamps, make inks, pigments, paints, to colour paper and even food.

The Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was designed by William Burges and painted by 13 Pre-Raphaelite artists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Advances such as these were celebrated in the International Exhibition in 1862, an important cultural event in the 19th century. It brought together examples of British, colonial and scientific products and it was the first time synthetic anilines were shown to an international audience. Two of the most fashionable aniline colours on display, vivid pinks - Magenta and Solferino – had been named after recent French victories over Austria in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence.

The Ashmolean’s extraordinarily colourful Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was the centrepiece of the Exhibition’s Mediaeval Court. At three meters high, the bookcase echoes the polychrome porch of a Gothic cathedral, although its style is more eclectic.

The bookcase was designed by the architect William Burges (1827-1881), and it was painted by 13 promising young Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).

Analyses show that Burges and the artists used contemporary materials including aniline green.

‘Vivien’ (1863) by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904) … Sandys uses peacock feathers to highlight her role as a sexual enticer, appropriating the colourful plumage of the male (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Revivalist and Pre-Raphaelite artists were working in the context of rapid scientific progress and the popularisation of new scientific ideas by figures like Charles Darwin (1809-1882). His concept of natural selection and the use of colour in the animal kingdom led to particularly gruesome Victorian appetites for two of nature’s most beautiful animals, beetles and hummingbirds. Unlike the feathers of a peacock, whole bird and beetle bodies were incorporated into Victorian fashion and jewellery.

The jeweller Harry Emmanuel created coveted designs including a Hummingbird necklace (1865) made of seven decapitated emerald and ruby-topaz birds. There was such a hummingbird craze that in one week alone in 1888, 400,000 ‘skins’ were auctioned, and a further 370,000 in the following week.

In 1884, the Portuguese ambassador to London presented the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, with a piece of jewellery made of the bodies of 46 iridescent green South American weevils. Granville had these mounted on a tiara and necklace for his wife in 1885.

‘Minton Peacock’ designed by Paul Comolera for Minton & Co … majolica contained high traces of lead that poisoned many of the female workers in the Minton factory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Colourful fashion had a human cost too: in 1862 a factory girl making artificial flowers for women’s headdresses died from poisoning. She was said to have vomited green slime and had green tinged eyeballs. The killer was the main ingredient of the new green dye – arsenic. The incident prompted a review of the use of green in fashion and homeware, and green wallpaper became known as ‘walls of death’.

Scandals such as this and the ever-growing use of colour in popular culture prompted discussions on colour theory and different colours’ moral qualities. The exhibition shows artists who had famously different attitudes. Ruskin believed artists should stick to the God-given colours of nature, while James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) disagreed entirely and followed a philosophy of ‘colour for colour’s sake’. His extravagant use of colour was made easier by the invention of collapsible metal paint tubes.

Certain ‘unnatural’ colours were embraced by the ‘Decadent’ movement – such as the dyed-green carnation sported by Oscar Wilde. Another Decadent favourite was yellow, epitomised by a series of French novels that had distinctive yellow covers. The avant-garde periodical, The Yellow Book appeared in London in 1894. Its bright yellow cover was designed by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). Uncompromisingly stylish and ready to push boundaries, The Yellow Book came to define the decade as ‘the Yellow ’90s’.

Photography and electricity also had revolutionary impacts at the time, and some of the first innovators were women. ‘Colour Revolution’ features one of the earliest colour reproduction techniques, cyanotypes, made by Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who used the process to create ethereally beautiful ‘photograms’ – made without a camera – of British algae, published between 1843 and 1853.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Ashmolean Museum, and Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol of the Sorbonne Université, Paris.

The exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ continues in the John Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries in the Ashmolean Museum until 18 February 2024. It is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, and tickets are from £6 to £17.



Daily prayers in Advent with
Leonard Cohen and USPG:
(18) 20 December 2023

‘You who build the altars now / To sacrifice these children / You must not do it anymore’ (Leonard Cohen) … the Sacrifice of Abraham depicted in the East Window in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the final stages of countdown to Christmas, with just five days to go to Christmas Day. The last week of Advent began on Sunday with the Third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday (17 December 2023), and this is a very short Advent this year.

I have spent a few days in Dublin, and after an evening flight from Birmingham I got back to Stony Stratford late last night. Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer, reflection and reading this morning.

Throughout Advent this year, my reading and reflection each day includes a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

‘xxx’ (Leonard Cohen) … Abraham preparing for the sacrifice of Isaac … a stained glass window in Saint John’s Church, Wall, near Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 18, ‘Story of Isaac’:

The poem and song ‘Story of Isaac’ by Leonard Cohen was first recorded by Judy Collins on her album Who Knows Where the Time Goes, released in December 1968, and it was the second track on Leonard Cohen’s second album, Songs from a Room, released in April 1969.

This song has also been covered by a number of musicians including Suzanne Vega, Linda Thompson, the Johnstons, Pain Teens and Roy Buchanan.

‘Story of Isaac’ is of the Biblical story in Genesis 22 of Isaac’s planned sacrifice by his father Abraham, but told now from Isaac’s perspective. It is also an anti-war song, specifically about the Vietnam war, and it’s a story about the children being sacrificed on behalf of the older generation.

Almost 20 years after it was first recorded, Cohen explained to John McKenna of RTÉ in 1988 that ‘Story of Isaac’ was an anti-war protest song. But he added, ‘I was careful in that song to try and put it beyond the pure, beyond the simple, anti-war protest, that it also is. Because it says at the end there the man of war the man of peace, the peacock spreads his deadly fan. In other words it isn’t necessarily for war that we’re willing to sacrifice each other.’

He added: ‘We’ll get some idea – some magnificent idea – that we’re willing to sacrifice each other for; it doesn’t necessarily have to involve an opponent or an ideology, but human beings being what they are we’re always going to set up people to die for some absurd situation that we define as important.’

The song is a commentary on the nature of sacrifice and faith, and the idea that we may think God is asking us to give up something we love in order to serve a higher purpose. The song also touches on themes of war and violence, as well as the relationship between father and son.

Overall, the message of the song is one of questioning and reflection on the nature of sacrifice and faith, and the idea that sometimes we may be called on to give up something we love in order to serve a greater good.

According to Leonard Cohen, the song is ‘about those who would sacrifice one generation on behalf of another.’

In another interview, he reflected: ‘There’s a story in the Bible about Isaac, how his father summoned him to go and climb a mountain, how his father built an altar there after he had been commanded to offer up his son. And just at the last moment before he was about to sacrifice Isaac, an angel held the hand of the father. But today the children are being sacrificed and no one raises a hand to end the sacrifice. And this is what this song is about.’

Rabbi Aubrey Glazer, formerly of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, discusses ‘Story of Isaac’ and many other poems by Leonard Cohen in his book Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen’s Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish and Beyond (2017). The book is part of a series, ‘New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism.’ Glazer notes the sudden and effective change of perspective as father and son ascend up the mountain and have a bird’s-eye view of the valley now far below. They are so high up that it takes a full minute for the bottle to fall and shatter, but Abraham calms his young son with a warm touch.

The tension is heightened, however, by Isaac’s continuing confusion over whether the scene was hurtling towards life, power and triumph, symbolised by the eagle; or towards imminent death, captured by the vulture. Either way, Abraham is secure in Isaac’s compliance and certain their destiny is firmly in God’s hands.

A stunning change of time and place juxtaposes the Biblical story with the still-unfolding tragedy between the descendants of Abraham. Cohen brings this ancient tale right up to the present, as he, through the voice of Isaac, begs us to tear down the altars upon which the children of our age are still sacrificed to settle age-old grievances.

He crystallises the parent’s grief and ambivalence by describing his ‘trembling hand,’ even as Abraham, and so many today, stands in awe of the divine command he believes he is obeying.

Cohen, whose father, like Abraham in this poem/song, also had blue eyes, always returned to his own Judaism. He refers to one of the most poignant messages of this Biblical passage, and one that recurs throughout the history of the Abrahamic people: this is a story of brothers. Earlier in the Biblical narrative, Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael was banished. Although they later come together to bury their father (Genesis 25), the effects of Ishmael’s exile and Isaac’s near-sacrifice reverberate through time.

Cohen deftly expresses the pain and power in this eternal family feud. In the end, he prays for mercy as these brothers take up arms against each other, and on which side one stands determines who is cast as the ‘man of peace’ and who is the ‘man of war.’

In Cohen’s telling, this tale becomes an anti-war hymn and a cautionary warning against all the ways we still sacrifice our children. Cohen expressed this in a BBC interview: ‘Just at the last moment before he was about to sacrifice Isaac, an angel held the hand of the father. But today the children are being sacrificed and no one raises a hand to end the sacrifice. And this is what this song is about.’

The near-sacrifice of Isaac, or the Akedah as it is known in Jewish tradition, is a gripping, chilling and troubling story, and a story that seems to ask more questions than it answers.

Each time I hear it, I am listening in horror as Abraham seems to be preparing to sacrifice his only son. And the story comes with all the gruesome details, as Abraham climbs the mountain, builds the altar, arranges the wood, binds his son, places him on the altar, and takes the knife into his hand. The looming tragedy is averted only at the very moment second.

But at a time when child-sacrifice was a cultural norm in that part of the ancient world, when people believed that sacrificing their first-born children was a way of appeasing the gods, this story turns those old superstitions on their head.

Abraham knows the old ways. But his relationship with God becomes a startling new relationship, founded on love. And this God is different from all the so-called gods. No, he does not demand human sacrifice. No, he does not have a mean and violent, capricious streak.

Instead, this God that Abraham has begun to get to know, wants a relationship with us that is built not on fear and brutalism, but on love and on freedom.

The child who was at risk is saved, the child who was bound up is set free, the child who was the victim of old-fashioned, out-dated superstitions now becomes part of the relationship between God and humanity and the promise for the future that is sealed not by sacrifices like this, but by love.

How could Abraham hav forgotten God’s earlier promise so soon, the promise made to Abraham and Sarah that they would have children and through them they would be the spiritual ancestors of all nations?

And it is a story that challenges us to reassess our own notions about God.

Are our relationships with God founded on fear or on love?

Do we believe in a god who would treat us as slaves who must obey, or as faithful partners who are caught up in his love?

Once again, we are offered a choice between death and life, between slavery and freedom, between blind obedience and love.

‘Abraham, our Father in Faith,’ by the Liverpool sculptor Sean Rice (1931-1997), in the west apse of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Leonard Cohen, Story of Isaac:

The door it opened slowly
My father he came in
I was nine years old
And he stood so tall above me
Blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold
Said, ‘I’ve had a vision
And you know I’m strong and holy
I must do what I've been told’
So he started up the mountain
I was running, he was walking
And his axe was made of gold

Well, the trees they got much smaller
The lake a lady’s mirror
We stopped to drink some wine
Then he threw the bottle over
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture
I never could decide
Then my father built an altar
He looked once behind his shoulder
He knew I would not hide
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You who build the altars now
To sacrifice these children
You must not do it anymore
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god
You who stand above them now
Your hatchets blunt and bloody
You were not there before
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father’s hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word

And if you call me brother now
Forgive me if I inquire
‘Just according to whose plan?’

When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must
I will kill you if I can
And mercy on our uniform
Man of peace or man of war
The peacock spreads his fan.

‘The peacock spreads his fan’ (Leonard Cohen) … a peacock spreads his fan in a vineyard in Rivesaltes near Perpignan in France (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 1: 26-38 (NRSVA):

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ 34 Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ 35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.’ 38 Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

The Annunciation depicted in a panel in the altar in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 20 December 2023):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Joy of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (20 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

O Lord, help us to see the wonder in your creation, to find the joy amidst the trials. For in you, we can rejoice and be glad. No matter what the world brings, we can find joy in you.

The Annunciation depicted in a stained-glass window in Saint Mary’s Church, Bletchley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Collect:

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

We give you thanks, O Lord, for these heavenly gifts;
kindle in us the fire of your Spirit
that when your Christ comes again
we may shine as lights before his face;
who is alive and reigns now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

God for whom we watch and wait,
you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son:
give us courage to speak the truth,
to hunger for justice,
and to suffer for the cause of right,
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow



Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org