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Tate Britain
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Robert Vernon
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-mulready-392" aria-label="More by William Mulready" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Mulready</a>
Fair Time Returning AleHouse
Presented by Robert Vernon 1847
adults
architecture
bench
boy
children
cottage
diseases and conditions
drunkenness
fair
farmland
furnishings
girl
group
groups
jug
landscape
leisure and pastimes
man
music and entertainment
objects
people
playing
recreational activities
residential
townscapes / man-made features
vessels and containers
village
wooded
<p>This light-hearted scene shows children trying to get coins from two drunken men. Such ‘rustic’ subjects were popular in the 1800s. William Mulready likely hoped this engaging image would appeal to the largely wealthy urban audience for art. However, when Mulready exhibited it in 1809 as <span>Returning from the Ale-House</span>, its portrayal of drunkenness outraged many viewers. The criticism was likely encouraged by the growing Temperance Movement and concerns about the many drinking establishments across the country. Mulready later re-worked the painting and re-exhibited it in 1840 with the new title <span>Fair Time.</span></p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
1 April 2003 – 12 July 2004
2004-07-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-04-01
Images of Rural Life
Collection based display
20 April 2009 – 4 October 2009
2009-10-04
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-04-20
William Blake: The 1809 Exhibition
Collection based display
21 November 2012 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
17 November 2012
2012-11-17
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-21
Gallery 10
Collection based display
16 November 2015 – 13 November 2016
2016-11-13
16 November 2015 – 13 November 2016
2016-11-13
2015-11-16
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-11-16
Art and Alcohol
Collection based display
26 September 2022
26 September 2022
2022-09-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2022-09-26
Gallery 10
Collection based display
Fair Time (‘Returning from the Ale-House’)
support: 787 × 660 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999978" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Robert Vernon</a> 1847
<div><p><span>Mulready exhibited this painting in its first state at the Royal Academy in 1809, with the title </span><i>Returning from the Ale-House</i><span>. It is an early example of the rustic narrative scenes, full of anecdotal detail, which later brought Mulready success. In the foreground a group of village children collect the coins distributed drunkenly by two ruddy-cheeked men staggering home from the ale-house, witnessed with disapproval by two dour schoolmasters in the building nearby. The background is a serene, bucolic landscape in the evening sun. The subject and style of the painting refer both to the early genre scenes of Mulready’s contemporary David Wilkie (1785–1841) and to those of Dutch seventeenth-century painters, in particular Adriaen Van Ostade (1610–85).</span></p><p><span>Although the painting was intended to be a humorous and engaging rustic low-life scene, its exhibition in 1809 resulted in critical and public disapproval. The scene was perceived to be unacceptably vulgar, and there was mounting public concern, associated with the newly formed Temperance movement, about the increasing incidence of public drunkenness at ale-houses. One critic noted:</span></p><blockquote><span>Are all violations of decency and propriety to be tolerated, because the Dutch painters practised them? To our feelings, human nature does not present any more obscene or disgusting spectacle than a drunken father surrounded by his children; and yet, this is what Mr. Mulready has chosen to make the subject of a picture.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span>(</span><i>Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce</i><span>, June 1809, vol.1, p.490, quoted in Heleniak 1980, p.82.)</span></blockquote><p><span>Undoubtedly as a result of this sort of response to </span><i>Returning From the Ale-House</i><span>, Mulready failed to sell the painting, and it remained with him until 1840, when he exhibited the work at the Royal Academy under the less provocative title </span><i>Fair Time </i><span>(or </span><i>Returning from the Fair</i><span>). Mulready is known to have re-worked areas of the painting, either as early as 1817 or in 1839, shortly before it was shown again. He repainted the background landscape and brightened the colouring of the foreground figures with the clearer, more luminous palette of his later work, which foreshadowed that of the Pre-Raphaelites. The writer William Makepeace Thackeray described the painting:</span></p><blockquote><span>It contains specimens of the artist’s old and new manner. The picture in its first state is somewhat in the Wilkie style of that day ... having many greys and imitating closely Dutchmen. Since then the painter has been touching up the figures in the foreground with his new and favourite lurid orange-colour and you may see how this is stippled in on the faces and hands, and borrow, perhaps a hint or two regarding the Mulreadian secret.</span><br/><span>(As M.A. Titmarsh, ‘A Pictorial Rhapsody by Michael Angelo Titmarsh’,</span><i> Fraser’s Magazine</i><span>, June 1840, vol.21, pp.720–32.)</span></blockquote><p><span>Thackeray ultimately disapproved of the painting’s tonal appearance, referring to the work’s ‘gaudy, prismatic colours ... But, for consistency’s sake, a protest must be put in against the colour; it is pleasant, but wrong; we never saw it in nature.’ (Titmarsh 1840, pp.720–32.)</span></p><p><span>Public taste had changed by 1840, and subject-matter of </span><i>Fair Time</i><span> was seen to be less controversial on its second appearance at the Royal Academy, where it was hung with two other works by Mulready, </span><i>First Love</i><span>, 1838–9 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and </span><i>An Interior</i><span> (</span><i>The Artist’s Study</i><span>, 1840, location unknown). According to Mulready’s account book for 1840, </span><i>Fair Time</i><span> was bought for £420 by Robert Vernon (1774–1849), a wealthy collector and patron. Vernon gave his notable collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century British art, including this work, to the nation in 1847, with the intention of helping to establish a national gallery of British art.</span></p><p><span>It has been noted that the subject and central figure group in David Wilkie’s </span><i>The Village Holiday</i><span> (</span><i>The Village Festival</i><span>, </span><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/N00122" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'N00122');" title="View details of this artwork"><span><span>N00122</span></span></a><span>), exhibited in 1812, relate closely to those of </span><i>Fair Time</i><span>. Wilkie also changed the title of his work, probably to avoid censure, from the original </span><i>The Alehouse Door</i><span>.</span></p><p><span>When </span><i>Fair Time</i><span> was exhibited at the major Mulready exhibition at the South Kensington Museum in 1864, </span><i>The Art Journal</i><span> noted that the painting’s surface showed signs of cracking as a result of the unstable asphaltum which, according to Richard and Samuel Redgrave, Mulready had used early in his career but abandoned around 1816.</span></p><p><b>Further reading</b><a name="Heading23"></a><br/><i>William Mulready 1786–1863</i><span>, exhibition catalogue, City Art Gallery, Bristol 1964.</span><br/><span>Kathryn Moore Heleniak, </span><i>William Mulready</i><span>, New Haven and London 1980, reproduced p.81.</span><br/><span>Marcia Pointon, </span><i>William Mulready 1786–1863</i><span>, exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1986, reproduced p.98.</span><br/><a name="Heading24"></a><span> </span></p><p><span>Cathy Johns</span><br/><span>May 2002</span></p></div>
Summary
2024-06-27T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>This light-hearted scene shows children trying to get coins from two drunken men. Such ‘rustic’ subjects were popular in the 1800s. William Mulready likely hoped this engaging image would appeal to the largely wealthy, urban audience for art. However, when Mulready exhibited it in 1809 as Returning from the Ale-House, its portrayal of drunkenness outraged many viewers. The criticism was likely encouraged by the growing Temperance Movement and concerns about the many drinking establishments across the country. Mulready later re-worked the painting and re-exhibited it in 1840 with the new title Fair Time.</p>
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Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
adults architecture bench boy children cottage diseases and conditions drunkenness fair farmland furnishings girl group groups jug landscape leisure and pastimes man music and entertainment objects people playing recreational activities residential townscapes / man-made features vessels and containers village wooded