Wilkie
The Clubbists
Stoddart
The Clubbists
Stoddart
WINDUS, BENJAMIN GODFREY
(1790-1867)
Gadsden, Tottenham Green, Middlesex
Occupation
Director of insurance company, landowner and patron of Turner
Biography
BGW, the son of Edward William Windus (1766-1832) and Mary Godfrey (1768-1819), inherited wealth from both his parents. His paternal grandfather Arthur Windus (1737-1818) came from a line of Hertfordshire parsons and lawyers: he started a coach building business which included the commission to maintain the coach of the Lord Mayor of London. BGW is often mistakenly described as “a coachmaker” rather than a “Coachmaker”, a member of the Coachmakers’ Company. Like his grandfather and father before him, BGW became Master of the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers, in 1826.
From his maternal grandfather, Benjamin Godfrey (1740-1812), he inherited a share in the recipe for Godfrey’s Cordial as well as extensive property in Bishopsgate. Godfrey’s Cordial was one of the most notorious of the opium-based remedies that sometimes did more harm than good.
In 1793 the family moved to Tottenham Green. BGW was sent to boarding school in Hackney and later to a school for merchants in Tower Street in the City. Although keen to attend university, it was a condition of the inheritance from his Godfrey grandfather that he joined the business. In due course BGW became successful as a Director of the Globe Insurance Company. This was established in 1803 at Cornhill in the City of London to offer fire and life insurance: acquired by the Royal Insurance in 1919, it now forms part of the RSA Insurance Group. He was also a significant landowner in Tottenham and in 1851 sold 36 acres of meadow land in 87 lots, by auction at the mart opposite the Bank of England.
On 27 September 1814 BGW married his first wife Mary Rowe, daughter and heiress of William Rowe of Page Green, in All Hallows Church, Tottenham. They had one son, William Edward in 1827, but tragically she died in January 1830, shortly after the birth of their daughter also called Mary. BGW commissioned Edward Hodges Baily to carve a memorial to her for Holy Trinity Church, Tottenham Green. In 1831 BGW married Margaret Armiger, a first cousin of his first wife, but there were no children. Following Margaret’s death in August 1842 he did not marry again.
BGW was active in local life with Holy Trinity Church, almshouses and schools. He was a trustee of Reynardson’s Almshouses from 1832-1854; a trustee of Tottenham Free Grammar School and trustee and treasurer of Green Coat School for Girls. He was also Clerk to the Parochial Charities until his retirement in 1864.
The two children (who appear in John Scarlett Davis’s painting of BGW’s library), were William Edward (1827–1910), who was a founding partner in the publishing firm of Chatto and Windus and a minor poet. Mary Windus married Pierre de Putron, the curate at Holy Trinity Church, in 1853 and moved to Rodmell, East Sussex, when he became Rector of St. Peter’s Church in that parish in 1858.
BGW died on 8 July 1867 in Tottenham and is buried in Rodmell. There is a memorial plaque to him in Holy Trinity Church, Tottenham, and a window commemorating him in the church at Rodmell. The house at Tottenham Green was bought by a railway company after his death and demolished in 1878.
Collection and taste
BGW is best known as one of JMW Turner’s great later patrons and one of the first serious collectors of watercolours in general. He inherited the family home, Gadsden on Tottenham Green, on his father’s death in 1832, following which he was able to devote himself to art and literature. This coincided with increased private patronage of the arts after the passage of the Reform Bill in the same year.
BGW started acquiring watercolours around 1820, when he was 30 years old and by 1823 he was lending his watercolours to exhibitions and publications. These included (1823) JMW Turner’s Margate (Coventry) for Cooke’s exhibition; (1824) the Somerset House Gazette records two publications with loans from BGW one of which was Thomas Girtin’s Chelsea Reach, looking towards Battersea; (1829) JMW Turner’s Saltash (BM) for an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly; and (1833) 16 watercolours by JMW Turner to the Moon, Boys and Graves exhibition of Picturesque Views of England and Wales and Walter Scott’s Poetical Works
BGW was passionate about the art of JMW Turner, and by 1840 had assembled more than 200 of his finest works. He added extra rooms to his home including a library to accommodate his growing collection of Turner watercolours; these were elaborately framed in gold and close-mounted as Turner intended. He sought the watercolour originals for Turner’s publications because they were particularly detailed for the engraver.
In 1835 he commissioned John Scarlett Davis to record the appearance of his Library. [Illustration ●] The watercolour, The Library at Tottenham, the seat of BG Windus, Esq, was missing for many years, but reappeared at auction in 1983 (BM). The watercolour is so precise and accurate that, of the 31 watercolours depicted, 20 have been identified by Eric Shanes.
During Turner’s lifetime the Windus collection was one of the largest and most distinguished of its kind and recognised as the best place in London to see Turner’s work. John Ruskin (Praeterita, p.161) observed that: “Mr Godfrey Windus was a retired coachmaker, living in a cheerful little villa, with low rooms on the ground floor opening pleasantly into each other like a sort of grouped observatory, between his front and back gardens: their walls beset but not crowded with Turner drawings of the England series; while in his portfolio stands, coming there straight from the publishers of the books they illustrated, were the entire series of the illustrations to Scott, to Byron, to the South-Coast, and to Finden’s Bible.”
Ruskin claimed that the collection was “to the general student, inestimable, and, for me the means of writing Modern Painters”. He noted “Certainly the most curious failure of memory - among the many I find - is I don’t know when I saw my first! I feel as if Mr Windus’s parlour at Tottenham had been familiar to me since the dawn of existence in Brunswick Square”. And later that: “Nobody, in all England, at that time - and Turner was already sixty - cared, in the true sense of the word, for Turner, but the retired coachmaker of Tottenham, and I”.
Turner frequently attended BGW’s birthday dinner on 15 January, but they were not intimate friends. They fell out in the 1840s; two reasons have been proposed – one that BGW was selling Turner’s work without consulting the artist and the other that Turner would not accept commissions from BGW. Ruskin brought about the rapprochement on 20 October 1844: “I ought to note my being at Windus’s on Thursday, to dine with Turner and Griffith alone, and Turner’s thanking me for my book for the first time”. Turner finally accepted a commission from BGW after the reconciliation. The two watercolours, both painted in 1845, were Lake of Lucerne from Brunnen and A Fete Day in Zurich, Early Morning, and cost 80 guineas each; the first was later given to William (Indianapolis) and the second to Mary (Zurich).
BGW bought his first oil paintings by Turner in 1841, buying two tondos The Dawn of Christianity, Flight into Egypt (Ulster Museum) and Glaucus and Scylla (Kimbell). Turner’s Approach to Venice, exhibited at the RA in 1844, was viewed by Ruskin as: “…the most perfectly beautiful piece of colour of all that I have seen produced by human hands, by any means, or at any period”, although by 1856 Ruskin commented that it was a “wreck of dead colours”. This oil painting was later owned by Joseph *Gillott (briefly) and by Sir Charles *Tennant (NGAW).
Turner painted two pairs of Venetian views, shimmering with light, exhibited at the RA respectively in 1845 and 1846 – Venice, Going to the Ball (San Martino) and Venice, Morning, Returning from the Ball (St. Martha). Carrying the same titles, their provenance has become confused. Their mixed critical response (including a satirical cartoon in Punch) resulted in both original patrons reneging on their commissions. In their catalogue raisonné of Turner’s paintings (Yale University Press, 1984), Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll state the 1845 pair now belong to Tate Britain and that BGW owned the 1846 pair (priv. coll.).
BGW’s daughter Mary commented: “When Turner’s later pictures were scoffed at by the many for their supposed eccentricity, he revelled in their wonderful beauty and boldly declared them to be far in advance of the earlier works of the painter, which the public were just beginning to appreciate.”
Unusually BGW opened his collection to visitors in the 1840s on Mondays and in the 1850s on Tuesdays. In 1851 Murray’s Handbook for Modern London, or London as it is noted that: “Mr. B. G. Windus’s Turner Drawings, at Tottenham, five miles from St. Paul's; shown every Tuesday to strangers bringing letters of introduction”. Even Turner sent visitors to BGW’s gallery: “...may I trouble you to give me permission to a Lady to see your Drawings who hesitates fearing a trespass without your concurrence therein...” His uncle Thomas Windus, a collector of engraved gems, noted the “liberality” with which BGW opened his collection to the public.
The collection was still open after Turner’s death as The Gentleman’s Magazine noted in February 1852: “It is at Mr. Windus’s on Tottenham-green that Turner is on his throne. There he may be studied, understood, and admired – not in half-a-dozen or twenty instances, but in scores upon scores of choice examples.”
For the public the Windus Collection was synonymous with Turner. But Turner was not the only string to his bow. The collection also contained works by William Blake, Richard Bonington, John Brett, William Etty, Henry Fuseli and Piranesi. In his History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, London, 1840, William Robinson noted the breadth of BGW’s taste by recording works by (among others) Richard Westall, George Cattermole, John Frederick Lewis, David Roberts, Joshua Christall, Alfred Edward Chalon, Henry Liverseege, and Henry Edridge. BGW had a particular admiration for Sir David Wilkie, by whom he owned over 650 drawings and a complete collection of engravings from his works. He also had a large collection of drawings by Thomas Stothard..
BGW’s interactions with artists were not always cordial, as letters sold at Bonhams in 2009 reveal. John Martin complained in a letter of 1 October 1832 that BGW had sold his Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still (possibly NGAW) without giving him first refusal: “I believe it customary, whenever any gentleman has a work of a living Artist to dispose of, for the first offer to be given to the artist.” Leighton asked Windus for the loan of A Roman Lady, La Nanna (Philadelphia) for exhibition but was refused, and in turn Leighton declined his commission to paint a replica of another head stating that “I never undertake repetitions”. Nonetheless BGW lent JF Lewis his Sketches and Drawings, of the Alhambra, 1833-34, when he asked to borrow them to show Queen Adelaide.
Despite the praise given to his late Turner watercolours, described by John Ruskin as “lovely thoughts realized”, Thomas Tudor’s judgement in 1847 that Lake Nemi (BM) was “perhaps the finest work in the collection” and Heidelburg with a Rainbow (Sotheby’s 31 January 2013, lot 101, sold for US$ 4.6m) being acknowledged as one of the greatest watercolours ever executed by Turner, BGW changed the direction of his collecting. In 1849 he became an early patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, buying some of their most radical works including both versions of Holman Hunt’s masterpiece, The Scapegoat (prime version, Lady Lever AG), a picture described by Richard Dorment (Daily Telegraph review, 22 October 2008) as possibly being “the most horrifying image in British art”.
He owned Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lucrezia Borgia (Tate Britain), but became particularly fond of Millais’s paintings. BGW bought Millais’s first Pre-Raphaelite painting Isabella (Liverpool), exhibited at the RA in 1849 and retained by BGW until he died. He owned three more well-known paintings by Millais, all today in Tate Britain: Ophelia, viewed by many as the most famous painting in that gallery, The Vale of Rest, Millais’s own favourite painting, and Mariana - Reflections, which Ruskin viewed as “on the whole the perfectest of his works”.
An insight into BGW’s determination is revealed in an anecdote recorded in The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, London, 1899, vol.VI, p.306, concerning Pot Pourri (priv. coll.), portraying Effie Grey’s sister Alice, which had been commissioned from Millais by a Mr Burnett who was unable to pay for it. Millais then sold the picture to the dealer David White. “When Mr. Burnett saw it he was most anxious to get it, and White promised it to him if he came on a certain day not later than four pm. Mr. Windus, however, was equally determined to have it; and, arriving early on the appointed day, he waited till the clock struck four, and then carried off the picture in a cab, to the great disgust of Mr. Burnett, who arrived a quarter of an hour late.”
Although Millais’s Cherry Ripe was not in the Windus collection Joshua Reynolds’ Penelope Boothby (priv. coll. UK), on which it is clearly modelled, was, and it must have been seen by the painter. BGW and Millais fell out when Effie Ruskin left her husband and married Millais. According to the author Violet Hunt: “After the Ruskin-Millais affair, he [Windus] would not even allow Millais to make a sketch of his own picture for reproduction”. She also wrote that: “Everyone went there though they never saw Mr. Windus. His taste was exquisite and all the artists sat at his feet. Ruskin drove his Effie over and poor Brown walked all the way from Finchley. Windus was rich and spent the money he made on the Cordial on buying Turners, with which he never parted, for he was not a dealer and gave himself tremendous moral airs.”
Ford Madox Brown , the associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, wrote: “Heard that Windus had bought four of my pictures from White; the cunning old rogue never told me this. I consider this may save me from going to India”. The paintings which Windus purchased included, germanely, The Last of England (Birmingham).
Sales and bequests
BGW sold paintings in his lifetime by auction at Christie’s in 1842 (Wilkie drawings), 1853 (Turner oil paintings), 1859 (English paintings and drawings) and 1862 (English paintings) and at Sotheby’s on 22-23 February 1839. It appears that BGW also sold anonymously several times through Foster’s, auctioneers, of 54 Pall Mall.
In 1868, the year after his death, his collection of paintings and drawings, along with household goods including furniture was sold at Christie’s over three days in a total of 540 lots. BGW also collected rare books and his distinguished but little known library was also sold at auction in 1868. This included works printed by Caxton, Wynken de Worde, Pynson and other early English printers, eight of the original 4to editions of Shakespeare’s plays and copies of each of the four Folio editions of his collected plays.
BGW generally bought Turners through Thomas Griffith (Turner’s agent) and later through the dealer David Thomas White, also known as ‘Old White’, through whom he gradually sold his Turners. John Ruskin senior in a letter to his son in 1852 wrote: “Windus is bringing out his Turners quietly and slowly for sale – what a coachmaker of serpentine springs this Windus is …”. Furthermore his habit of buying and selling through dealers and private collectors has made the recording of his collection particularly difficult.
Despite his generosity in allowing visitors to view his collection, BGW left no public bequests of his paintings. However some Turner watercolours formerly owned by BGW are now in public collections thanks to other collectors. These include John *Ruskin’s gifts to the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums, Henry *Vaughan’s bequest to both the NGSE and NGI in 1899 and RW Lloyd’s bequest to the BM (1958). Two oil paintings by Turner have likewise passed to public collections in the UK through the generosity of Thomas Wrigley, who gave Calais Sands at Low Water: Poissards Collecting Bait to Bury Art Gallery and Museum in 1897, and of Lady Currie who gave The Dawn of Christianity (Flight into Egypt) to the Ulster Museum in 1913.
Select bibliography:
1840. W. Robinson The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, in the County of Middlesex, vol 1.
1854. Waagen, Treasures of Art, vol. II, p. 339 (refers only to BGW’s “choicest” drawings by Turner and to works by Stothard, but Waagen regretted his inability to vist the collection.)
1984. E. Shanes, ‘Picture Notes: John Scarlett Davis: The Library at Tottenham, the Seat of BG Windus, Esq., showing his collection of Turner watercolours’. Turner Studies vol 3, no 2, Winter 1984 pp 55-58
1988. Selby Whittingham, 'The Turner collector: Benjamin Godfrey Windus 1790-1867', Turner Studies, vol. 7 no. 2, 1988, pp. 29-35
1993. Selby Whittingham, 'Windus, Turner & Ruskin: New Documents', J.M.W. Turner, R.A., no. 2, December 1993, pp. 69-116
For further information see www.turnerintottenham.uk
Author: Margaret Burr
(1790-1867)
Gadsden, Tottenham Green, Middlesex
Occupation
Director of insurance company, landowner and patron of Turner
Biography
BGW, the son of Edward William Windus (1766-1832) and Mary Godfrey (1768-1819), inherited wealth from both his parents. His paternal grandfather Arthur Windus (1737-1818) came from a line of Hertfordshire parsons and lawyers: he started a coach building business which included the commission to maintain the coach of the Lord Mayor of London. BGW is often mistakenly described as “a coachmaker” rather than a “Coachmaker”, a member of the Coachmakers’ Company. Like his grandfather and father before him, BGW became Master of the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers, in 1826.
From his maternal grandfather, Benjamin Godfrey (1740-1812), he inherited a share in the recipe for Godfrey’s Cordial as well as extensive property in Bishopsgate. Godfrey’s Cordial was one of the most notorious of the opium-based remedies that sometimes did more harm than good.
In 1793 the family moved to Tottenham Green. BGW was sent to boarding school in Hackney and later to a school for merchants in Tower Street in the City. Although keen to attend university, it was a condition of the inheritance from his Godfrey grandfather that he joined the business. In due course BGW became successful as a Director of the Globe Insurance Company. This was established in 1803 at Cornhill in the City of London to offer fire and life insurance: acquired by the Royal Insurance in 1919, it now forms part of the RSA Insurance Group. He was also a significant landowner in Tottenham and in 1851 sold 36 acres of meadow land in 87 lots, by auction at the mart opposite the Bank of England.
On 27 September 1814 BGW married his first wife Mary Rowe, daughter and heiress of William Rowe of Page Green, in All Hallows Church, Tottenham. They had one son, William Edward in 1827, but tragically she died in January 1830, shortly after the birth of their daughter also called Mary. BGW commissioned Edward Hodges Baily to carve a memorial to her for Holy Trinity Church, Tottenham Green. In 1831 BGW married Margaret Armiger, a first cousin of his first wife, but there were no children. Following Margaret’s death in August 1842 he did not marry again.
BGW was active in local life with Holy Trinity Church, almshouses and schools. He was a trustee of Reynardson’s Almshouses from 1832-1854; a trustee of Tottenham Free Grammar School and trustee and treasurer of Green Coat School for Girls. He was also Clerk to the Parochial Charities until his retirement in 1864.
The two children (who appear in John Scarlett Davis’s painting of BGW’s library), were William Edward (1827–1910), who was a founding partner in the publishing firm of Chatto and Windus and a minor poet. Mary Windus married Pierre de Putron, the curate at Holy Trinity Church, in 1853 and moved to Rodmell, East Sussex, when he became Rector of St. Peter’s Church in that parish in 1858.
BGW died on 8 July 1867 in Tottenham and is buried in Rodmell. There is a memorial plaque to him in Holy Trinity Church, Tottenham, and a window commemorating him in the church at Rodmell. The house at Tottenham Green was bought by a railway company after his death and demolished in 1878.
Collection and taste
BGW is best known as one of JMW Turner’s great later patrons and one of the first serious collectors of watercolours in general. He inherited the family home, Gadsden on Tottenham Green, on his father’s death in 1832, following which he was able to devote himself to art and literature. This coincided with increased private patronage of the arts after the passage of the Reform Bill in the same year.
BGW started acquiring watercolours around 1820, when he was 30 years old and by 1823 he was lending his watercolours to exhibitions and publications. These included (1823) JMW Turner’s Margate (Coventry) for Cooke’s exhibition; (1824) the Somerset House Gazette records two publications with loans from BGW one of which was Thomas Girtin’s Chelsea Reach, looking towards Battersea; (1829) JMW Turner’s Saltash (BM) for an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly; and (1833) 16 watercolours by JMW Turner to the Moon, Boys and Graves exhibition of Picturesque Views of England and Wales and Walter Scott’s Poetical Works
BGW was passionate about the art of JMW Turner, and by 1840 had assembled more than 200 of his finest works. He added extra rooms to his home including a library to accommodate his growing collection of Turner watercolours; these were elaborately framed in gold and close-mounted as Turner intended. He sought the watercolour originals for Turner’s publications because they were particularly detailed for the engraver.
In 1835 he commissioned John Scarlett Davis to record the appearance of his Library. [Illustration ●] The watercolour, The Library at Tottenham, the seat of BG Windus, Esq, was missing for many years, but reappeared at auction in 1983 (BM). The watercolour is so precise and accurate that, of the 31 watercolours depicted, 20 have been identified by Eric Shanes.
During Turner’s lifetime the Windus collection was one of the largest and most distinguished of its kind and recognised as the best place in London to see Turner’s work. John Ruskin (Praeterita, p.161) observed that: “Mr Godfrey Windus was a retired coachmaker, living in a cheerful little villa, with low rooms on the ground floor opening pleasantly into each other like a sort of grouped observatory, between his front and back gardens: their walls beset but not crowded with Turner drawings of the England series; while in his portfolio stands, coming there straight from the publishers of the books they illustrated, were the entire series of the illustrations to Scott, to Byron, to the South-Coast, and to Finden’s Bible.”
Ruskin claimed that the collection was “to the general student, inestimable, and, for me the means of writing Modern Painters”. He noted “Certainly the most curious failure of memory - among the many I find - is I don’t know when I saw my first! I feel as if Mr Windus’s parlour at Tottenham had been familiar to me since the dawn of existence in Brunswick Square”. And later that: “Nobody, in all England, at that time - and Turner was already sixty - cared, in the true sense of the word, for Turner, but the retired coachmaker of Tottenham, and I”.
Turner frequently attended BGW’s birthday dinner on 15 January, but they were not intimate friends. They fell out in the 1840s; two reasons have been proposed – one that BGW was selling Turner’s work without consulting the artist and the other that Turner would not accept commissions from BGW. Ruskin brought about the rapprochement on 20 October 1844: “I ought to note my being at Windus’s on Thursday, to dine with Turner and Griffith alone, and Turner’s thanking me for my book for the first time”. Turner finally accepted a commission from BGW after the reconciliation. The two watercolours, both painted in 1845, were Lake of Lucerne from Brunnen and A Fete Day in Zurich, Early Morning, and cost 80 guineas each; the first was later given to William (Indianapolis) and the second to Mary (Zurich).
BGW bought his first oil paintings by Turner in 1841, buying two tondos The Dawn of Christianity, Flight into Egypt (Ulster Museum) and Glaucus and Scylla (Kimbell). Turner’s Approach to Venice, exhibited at the RA in 1844, was viewed by Ruskin as: “…the most perfectly beautiful piece of colour of all that I have seen produced by human hands, by any means, or at any period”, although by 1856 Ruskin commented that it was a “wreck of dead colours”. This oil painting was later owned by Joseph *Gillott (briefly) and by Sir Charles *Tennant (NGAW).
Turner painted two pairs of Venetian views, shimmering with light, exhibited at the RA respectively in 1845 and 1846 – Venice, Going to the Ball (San Martino) and Venice, Morning, Returning from the Ball (St. Martha). Carrying the same titles, their provenance has become confused. Their mixed critical response (including a satirical cartoon in Punch) resulted in both original patrons reneging on their commissions. In their catalogue raisonné of Turner’s paintings (Yale University Press, 1984), Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll state the 1845 pair now belong to Tate Britain and that BGW owned the 1846 pair (priv. coll.).
BGW’s daughter Mary commented: “When Turner’s later pictures were scoffed at by the many for their supposed eccentricity, he revelled in their wonderful beauty and boldly declared them to be far in advance of the earlier works of the painter, which the public were just beginning to appreciate.”
Unusually BGW opened his collection to visitors in the 1840s on Mondays and in the 1850s on Tuesdays. In 1851 Murray’s Handbook for Modern London, or London as it is noted that: “Mr. B. G. Windus’s Turner Drawings, at Tottenham, five miles from St. Paul's; shown every Tuesday to strangers bringing letters of introduction”. Even Turner sent visitors to BGW’s gallery: “...may I trouble you to give me permission to a Lady to see your Drawings who hesitates fearing a trespass without your concurrence therein...” His uncle Thomas Windus, a collector of engraved gems, noted the “liberality” with which BGW opened his collection to the public.
The collection was still open after Turner’s death as The Gentleman’s Magazine noted in February 1852: “It is at Mr. Windus’s on Tottenham-green that Turner is on his throne. There he may be studied, understood, and admired – not in half-a-dozen or twenty instances, but in scores upon scores of choice examples.”
For the public the Windus Collection was synonymous with Turner. But Turner was not the only string to his bow. The collection also contained works by William Blake, Richard Bonington, John Brett, William Etty, Henry Fuseli and Piranesi. In his History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, London, 1840, William Robinson noted the breadth of BGW’s taste by recording works by (among others) Richard Westall, George Cattermole, John Frederick Lewis, David Roberts, Joshua Christall, Alfred Edward Chalon, Henry Liverseege, and Henry Edridge. BGW had a particular admiration for Sir David Wilkie, by whom he owned over 650 drawings and a complete collection of engravings from his works. He also had a large collection of drawings by Thomas Stothard..
BGW’s interactions with artists were not always cordial, as letters sold at Bonhams in 2009 reveal. John Martin complained in a letter of 1 October 1832 that BGW had sold his Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still (possibly NGAW) without giving him first refusal: “I believe it customary, whenever any gentleman has a work of a living Artist to dispose of, for the first offer to be given to the artist.” Leighton asked Windus for the loan of A Roman Lady, La Nanna (Philadelphia) for exhibition but was refused, and in turn Leighton declined his commission to paint a replica of another head stating that “I never undertake repetitions”. Nonetheless BGW lent JF Lewis his Sketches and Drawings, of the Alhambra, 1833-34, when he asked to borrow them to show Queen Adelaide.
Despite the praise given to his late Turner watercolours, described by John Ruskin as “lovely thoughts realized”, Thomas Tudor’s judgement in 1847 that Lake Nemi (BM) was “perhaps the finest work in the collection” and Heidelburg with a Rainbow (Sotheby’s 31 January 2013, lot 101, sold for US$ 4.6m) being acknowledged as one of the greatest watercolours ever executed by Turner, BGW changed the direction of his collecting. In 1849 he became an early patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, buying some of their most radical works including both versions of Holman Hunt’s masterpiece, The Scapegoat (prime version, Lady Lever AG), a picture described by Richard Dorment (Daily Telegraph review, 22 October 2008) as possibly being “the most horrifying image in British art”.
He owned Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lucrezia Borgia (Tate Britain), but became particularly fond of Millais’s paintings. BGW bought Millais’s first Pre-Raphaelite painting Isabella (Liverpool), exhibited at the RA in 1849 and retained by BGW until he died. He owned three more well-known paintings by Millais, all today in Tate Britain: Ophelia, viewed by many as the most famous painting in that gallery, The Vale of Rest, Millais’s own favourite painting, and Mariana - Reflections, which Ruskin viewed as “on the whole the perfectest of his works”.
An insight into BGW’s determination is revealed in an anecdote recorded in The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, London, 1899, vol.VI, p.306, concerning Pot Pourri (priv. coll.), portraying Effie Grey’s sister Alice, which had been commissioned from Millais by a Mr Burnett who was unable to pay for it. Millais then sold the picture to the dealer David White. “When Mr. Burnett saw it he was most anxious to get it, and White promised it to him if he came on a certain day not later than four pm. Mr. Windus, however, was equally determined to have it; and, arriving early on the appointed day, he waited till the clock struck four, and then carried off the picture in a cab, to the great disgust of Mr. Burnett, who arrived a quarter of an hour late.”
Although Millais’s Cherry Ripe was not in the Windus collection Joshua Reynolds’ Penelope Boothby (priv. coll. UK), on which it is clearly modelled, was, and it must have been seen by the painter. BGW and Millais fell out when Effie Ruskin left her husband and married Millais. According to the author Violet Hunt: “After the Ruskin-Millais affair, he [Windus] would not even allow Millais to make a sketch of his own picture for reproduction”. She also wrote that: “Everyone went there though they never saw Mr. Windus. His taste was exquisite and all the artists sat at his feet. Ruskin drove his Effie over and poor Brown walked all the way from Finchley. Windus was rich and spent the money he made on the Cordial on buying Turners, with which he never parted, for he was not a dealer and gave himself tremendous moral airs.”
Ford Madox Brown , the associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, wrote: “Heard that Windus had bought four of my pictures from White; the cunning old rogue never told me this. I consider this may save me from going to India”. The paintings which Windus purchased included, germanely, The Last of England (Birmingham).
Sales and bequests
BGW sold paintings in his lifetime by auction at Christie’s in 1842 (Wilkie drawings), 1853 (Turner oil paintings), 1859 (English paintings and drawings) and 1862 (English paintings) and at Sotheby’s on 22-23 February 1839. It appears that BGW also sold anonymously several times through Foster’s, auctioneers, of 54 Pall Mall.
In 1868, the year after his death, his collection of paintings and drawings, along with household goods including furniture was sold at Christie’s over three days in a total of 540 lots. BGW also collected rare books and his distinguished but little known library was also sold at auction in 1868. This included works printed by Caxton, Wynken de Worde, Pynson and other early English printers, eight of the original 4to editions of Shakespeare’s plays and copies of each of the four Folio editions of his collected plays.
BGW generally bought Turners through Thomas Griffith (Turner’s agent) and later through the dealer David Thomas White, also known as ‘Old White’, through whom he gradually sold his Turners. John Ruskin senior in a letter to his son in 1852 wrote: “Windus is bringing out his Turners quietly and slowly for sale – what a coachmaker of serpentine springs this Windus is …”. Furthermore his habit of buying and selling through dealers and private collectors has made the recording of his collection particularly difficult.
Despite his generosity in allowing visitors to view his collection, BGW left no public bequests of his paintings. However some Turner watercolours formerly owned by BGW are now in public collections thanks to other collectors. These include John *Ruskin’s gifts to the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums, Henry *Vaughan’s bequest to both the NGSE and NGI in 1899 and RW Lloyd’s bequest to the BM (1958). Two oil paintings by Turner have likewise passed to public collections in the UK through the generosity of Thomas Wrigley, who gave Calais Sands at Low Water: Poissards Collecting Bait to Bury Art Gallery and Museum in 1897, and of Lady Currie who gave The Dawn of Christianity (Flight into Egypt) to the Ulster Museum in 1913.
Select bibliography:
1840. W. Robinson The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, in the County of Middlesex, vol 1.
1854. Waagen, Treasures of Art, vol. II, p. 339 (refers only to BGW’s “choicest” drawings by Turner and to works by Stothard, but Waagen regretted his inability to vist the collection.)
1984. E. Shanes, ‘Picture Notes: John Scarlett Davis: The Library at Tottenham, the Seat of BG Windus, Esq., showing his collection of Turner watercolours’. Turner Studies vol 3, no 2, Winter 1984 pp 55-58
1988. Selby Whittingham, 'The Turner collector: Benjamin Godfrey Windus 1790-1867', Turner Studies, vol. 7 no. 2, 1988, pp. 29-35
1993. Selby Whittingham, 'Windus, Turner & Ruskin: New Documents', J.M.W. Turner, R.A., no. 2, December 1993, pp. 69-116
For further information see www.turnerintottenham.uk
Author: Margaret Burr
