Abstract
While Shaw became known as a dramatist, a novelist, an essayist, an orator, a prolific correspondent—as well as a drama critic, music critic, and book reviewer—literature was not what first attracted him. It was, of all things, the visual arts that aroused his interest at the outset. By way of illustration, there are two anecdotes that show how crucial the relationship with the plastic arts was for Shaw—both as a writer and in the shaping of his public persona. To begin with, what Shaw metaphorically calls his “power of accurate observation,” which is the basis of the sharp social critique in his plays, extends to his physical abilities as an observer of art. As he notes in The Sanity of Art,
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Notes
- 1.
Shaw, Bernard. The Sanity of Art : An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (London: The New Age Press, 1908), 21–22.
- 2.
See, for example, Victor Molev’s “George Bernard Shaw, dreaming that he is Leo Tolstoy weighing fish on a mountain” (2015). Available at https://victor-molev.pixels.com/featured/george-bernard-shaw-victor-molev.html.
- 3.
Another type of visual experience of the opposite kind, the sight of the Dublin slums, nauseated Shaw, again attesting to his visual sensitivity; his nurse would take him to her friends’ squalid tenements: “I saw it and smelt it and loathed it” (Pearson, 26). This experience probably resulted in his lifelong hatred of poverty. See Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One Volume Definitive Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 15.
- 4.
Hesketh Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1942), 26.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 15.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 26.
- 9.
Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 16.
- 10.
Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 26.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
William Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949). 26.
- 13.
Stephen Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw (New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1949), 16.
- 14.
Holbrook Jackson, Bernard Shaw (Freeport, New York: Books for Library Press, 1909), 48.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 16.
- 17.
Stanley Weintraub, The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical Approaches to G. B. S. and His Works (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982), 61.
- 18.
Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 86.
- 19.
Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 54.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 118.
- 22.
Ibid., 119.
- 23.
Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 21.
- 24.
Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 122.
- 25.
Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 58.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), 179.
- 28.
Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 121.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Bill Jay and Margaret Moore, eds. Bernard Shaw on Photography, Foreword by Michael Holroyd (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1989), vii.
- 31.
Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 227.
- 32.
Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 60.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Stanley Weintraub, ed. with an Intro., Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene: 1885–1950 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 60.
- 35.
Ibid., 60.
- 36.
Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, 173.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Jan McDonald, “Shaw Among the Artists,” A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880–2005, Mary Luckhurst, ed. (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 73.
- 41.
Weintraub, London Art Scene, 5.
- 42.
Ibid., 2.
- 43.
Stanley Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 61.
- 44.
Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, 188.
- 45.
Bernard Shaw, Bernard Shaw: The Dairies, 1885-1897, Vol. I, Stanley Weintraub, ed. (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1986), 130. It should also be noted that as an art critic, Shaw championed Impressionism, the relatively new movement coming out of France, on several grounds. For one thing, Shaw saw that Impressionism offered greater freedom for the artist and that modern artists need more freedom rather than more control (Irvine 123). Moreover, Shaw viewed Impressionism as the birth of a new energy which was badly needed in an environment where convention, tradition, and repetition dominated, and he campaigned on behalf of painters such as Whistler, Burne-Jones, and Madox Brown (Pearson, 87). Finally, Shaw puts forth a powerful statement and defense of Impressionism in his essay The Sanity of Art , where he states that “because, being the outcome of heightened attention and quickened consciousness on the part of its disciples, it [Impressionism] was evidently destined to improve pictures greatly by substituting a natural, observant, real style of a conventional, taken-for granted, ideal one” (Sanity 291–2).
- 46.
The spelling “Velasquez” is quite common in English and French, although the painter’s original last name is “Velázquez.” His full name, as registered in his baptism records, is Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez. The digitized original of this document is at https://guiadigital.iaph.es/sys/productos/Velazquez/img/partidaBautismo.gif.
- 47.
Bernard Shaw, Immaturity, Preface (London: Constable and Company Limited, 1931), xlii–xliii.
- 48.
Bernard Shaw, Major Critical Essays, “The Sanity of Art” (London: Constable and Co., 1932), 288.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Regarding this passage, Burton says that it helps us see “a side of Shaw easily overlooked perhaps, but of cardinal importance in our view of him [in a chapter on Shaw as a mystic] … I consider it [the passage] to be central and illuminating to the extreme circumference of his thought.” Richard Burton, Bernard Shaw: The Man and the Mask (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916), 232–33.
- 51.
A reproduction of the painting can be seen in Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works Cincinnati: Steward & Kidd, 1911), 262. Available at https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha01hend/page/n5/mode/2up.
- 52.
Nigel Glendinning and Hillary Macartney, eds., Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1920 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Tamesis, 2010), 72.
- 53.
Ibid., 130.
- 54.
Ibid., 60.
- 55.
The collection of Roman plaques that belonged to Wetherell can be seen at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG81217.
- 56.
Frank Hall Standish, Seville and its Vicinity (London: Black and Armstrong, 1811), 144, 153, 283–284. Available at https://ia803204.us.archive.org/31/items/dli.granth.36514/36514.pdf.
- 57.
Ibid., 63.
- 58.
Ibid., 221.
- 59.
Ibid., 152.
- 60.
Ibid., 34.
- 61.
Ibid., 148.
- 62.
Bd.Ms.25 ++, D Inventory & Valuation of Property at 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C., London. 1908. Bernard F. Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Cornell University Library. The editor would like to thank Dr. Alice McEwan for bringing this to our attention.
- 63.
Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books and Prints Removed from 4 Whitehall Court SW1, and Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, and Sold by Order of G. Bernard Shaw (London, 25 July 1949).
- 64.
Christian Zervos, ed., Catalan Art from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries (London: W. Heinemann, 1937); Masterpieces of the Prado Museum, introduction by Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor; translated by Edith Raybould; illustrations selected and the descriptions completed by Paul Wescher (London: Faber and Faber, 1948). Both books are listed in the online catalog of Shaw’s Corner’s library, available from the National Trust website at http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk.
- 65.
Glendinning and Macartney, Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 73.
- 66.
Ibid., 74–75.
- 67.
Ibid., 177.
- 68.
Ibid., 137.
- 69.
Ibid., 198.
- 70.
Ibid.
- 71.
Ibid., 206.
- 72.
Ibid., 210.
- 73.
Ibid., 216.
- 74.
Ibid., 22. Of course John Ruskin had a certain aversion for naturalism and even went so far as to notoriously burn a copy of Caprichos, even though others expressed their admiration for Goya (Glendinning, 212).
- 75.
Ibid., 226.
- 76.
Jay and Moore, Bernard Shaw on Photography, 79.
- 77.
Ibid., 81.
- 78.
Ibid.
- 79.
Ibid.
- 80.
Ibid.
- 81.
London Art Scene, 383.
- 82.
London Art 301, The World, 9 January 1890.
- 83.
Ibid.
- 84.
Ibid.
- 85.
Ibid., 20.
- 86.
Ibid., 302, The World, 9 January 1890.
- 87.
Ibid., 302, The World, 9 January 1890.
- 88.
Ibid., 53, Our Corner, 8 December 1885.
- 89.
Ibid., London Art Scene, 86, The World, 31 March 1886.
- 90.
Ibid., 241, The World, 20 March 1889.
- 91.
Ibid., 268, The World, 20 March 1889.
- 92.
Ibid., 188, The World, 2 November 1887.
- 93.
Ibid., 244, The World, 31 October 1888.
- 94.
Ibid., 86, The World, 31 March 1886.
- 95.
Ibid., 189, The World, 2 November 1887.
- 96.
Ibid., 210, Pall Mall Gazette, 28 March 1888.
- 97.
Ibid., 336, The World, 5 November 1890.
- 98.
Ibid., 270, The World, 3 April 1889.
- 99.
Ibid., 357, The Star, 18 August 1892.
- 100.
Ibid., 73, Our Corner, February 1886.
- 101.
Ibid., 331, Truth, 22 May 1890.
- 102.
Ibid., 148, The World, 23 March 1887.
- 103.
Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 222.
- 104.
Ibid., 139.
- 105.
Ibid.
- 106.
Ibid., 203.
- 107.
London Art Scene, 419, obituary essay on Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema in The Nation, 18 January 1913.
- 108.
Ibid.
- 109.
Ibid., 423. Shaw letter, The Nation, 1 March 1913.
References
Álvarez de Sotomayor, Fernando. 1948. Masterpieces of the Prado Museum, trans. by Edith Raybould. London: Faber and Faber.
Glendinning, Nigel, and Hillary Macartney, eds. 2010. Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1920. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Tamesis.
Henderson, Archibald. 1956. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Holroyd, Michael. 1998. Bernard Shaw: The One Volume Definitive Edition. New York: Vintage Books.
Irvine, William. 1949. The Universe of G. B. S. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jackson, Holbrook. 1909. Bernard Shaw. Freeport, New York: Books for Library Press.
Jay, Bill, and Margaret Moore, eds. 1989. Bernard Shaw on Photography. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books.
McDonald, Jan. 2006. Shaw Among the Artists. In A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880–2005, ed. Mary Luckhurst. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Pearson, Hesketh. 1942. G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.
Shaw, Bernard. 1908. The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists Being Degenerate. London: The New Age Press.
———. 1931. Immaturity. London: Constable.
———. 1932. Major Critical Essays, ‘The Sanity of Art’. London: Constable.
Sotheby & Co. 1949. Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books and Prints Removed from 4 Whitehall Court SW1, and Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, and Sold by Order of G. Bernard Shaw. London, 25 July.
Standish, Frank Hall. 1811. Seville and Its Vicinity. London: Black and Armstrong.
Weintraub, Stanley, ed. 1982. The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical Approaches to G. B. S. and His Works. New York: Frederick Ungar.
———, ed. 1986. Bernard Shaw: The Diaries, 1885–1897. Vol. I. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press.
———, ed. 1989. Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene: 1885–1950. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Winsten, Stephen. 1949. Days with Bernard Shaw. New York: The Vanguard Press.
Zervos, Christian, ed. 1937. Catalan Art from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries. London: W. Heinemann.
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Oncins-Martínez, J.L. (2022). Shaw and Spanish Artists. In: Rodríguez Martín, G.A. (eds) Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World. Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_4
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