Stephen Brumwell, Paths of Glory
Portrait Of General Wolfe by J.S.C. Schaak approx. 1760-1770.
Photograph by : CanWest News Service
'Brumwell narrates the
action with the skill of a spy novelist ... [his] biography offers a
convincing argument that Wolfe triumphed through skill and energy rather than
sheer luck' - David A. Furlow, Books in Canada
Rare Wolfe portrait expected to fetch $175,000
Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, May 25, 2007
He's Canada's most mythologized man, and the 250-year-old painting that triggered Gen. James Wolfe's transformation into a national icon has emerged from obscurity in Britain to be sold next month at auction.
Long thought lost, the small oil portrait shows the ill-fated victor of the Plains of Abraham - the 1759 battle that led to the fall of New France - striking a heroic pose while his troops scramble up the cliffs outside Quebec City to vanquish Gen. Montcalm and seize Canada for the British.
The picture, apparently painted by artist J.S.C. Schaak within months of Wolfe's death at Quebec, was soon being reproduced in magazines, posters and books, fuelling a cottage industry of printed memorials to the fallen general throughout the British Empire.
The craze reached new heights in the 1770s after the renowned Benjamin West produced his Death of Wolfe, a Christ-like depiction of the mortally wounded general that is laughably inaccurate in its details but widely deemed a masterpiece of historical art - making Schaak's portrait an iconographic also-ran.
Significantly, though, the Schaak painting is considered one of the few known images to have captured Wolfe's true appearance around 1759, since it was believed to have been based on an eyewitness sketch by Hervey Smyth, the general's aide-de-camp in Canada.
"Portraits (of Wolfe) which can be said to originate in an authentic likeness from life are very rare," the Sotheby's auction house notes, "and this fine portrait by Schaak is one of only a few which have claims to show Wolfe as he was at the time of his great Canadian campaign."
Sotheby's, which expects the portrait to draw bids of up $175,000 at its June 6 auction of important British art, says the painting's value is enhanced by its "important early provenance" among descendants of Lieut.-Col. Henry Fletcher, who fought at Wolfe's side in Canada.
The painting "really widened the awareness of Wolfe" and his exploits throughout the English-speaking world, Angus Haldane, Sotheby's expert on British paintings, told CanWest News Service.
"Because of emergence of new printing technologies, prints became so widespread that it was an easy way to disseminate an iconic image like this."
In fact, Schaak's painting of Wolfe spawned a lucrative black market in unauthorized copies of the portrait by second-rate artists and engravers keen to cash in on Wolfe's posthumous fame.
"The market for the print based on Schaak's full-length portrait of Wolfe was sufficiently large to attract unscrupulous publisher/printsellers," noted Canadian art historian Alan McNairn in his 1997 book Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the 18th Century.
McNairn added that "the original version of Schaak's picture has disappeared."
In fact, according to Sotheby's, the painting had been handed down from generation to generation of Fletcher descendants. Then in was sold in the 1960s to a private collector whose widow is now selling it again.
Historian Stephen Brumwell, author of last year's Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe, describes Schaak's portrait as "the best known public image of Wolfe" in the decade after his death.
"Although the precise origin of the design is unclear, the fact that a simple line version appeared in the Grand Magazine of 1760, and that Wolfe is depicted in the plain uniform he is known to have favoured throughout the Quebec campaign, suggests that it was based upon the work of an eyewitness, rather than a London-based artist."
Notable among the details depicted in the painting is the black arm band Wolfe apparently had tied around his left bicep - a show of mourning for his late father, but also a foreshadowing of his own death at Quebec.
In his book, McNairn observed that "except for his painting of Wolfe, Schaak merits less than a footnote in the history of English 18th century art. He was one of a multitude of mediocre painters historically eclipsed by the several greater stars of his era. His place in the history of art is equivalent to that in the history of literature of those many amateur poetasters who bent their quills in praise of Wolfe."
Stephen Brumwell is available for comment.
Contact:
Jacqueline Davis, Publicist
514.398.2555
phone
414.398.5443
fax
Jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca
Wolfe Howls Again
Roger Hall
Globe and Mail Review
Paths of Glory
By Stephen Brumwell
432 pages
In this new book,
Amsterdam-based British historian Brumwell examines James Wolfe, the ultimate
"redcoat," as both man and monument. The central point that interests Brumwell
is not so very different from those contemporary newspaper or magazine articles
entitled, "Whatever happened to . . .?" For nearly two centuries, Wolfe was a
celebrity of the first rank, and not just a British one, but perhaps the first,
and maybe the only, Imperial Anglo-American hero, celebrated for his national
achievements equally on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet was he celebrated for
his life or for his dramatic battlefield death, so inexorably recounted in
various memorabilia and so enthusiastically portrayed in wildly inaccurate but
hugely popular canvases, the best-known of which is that of the expatriate
American Benjamin West?
Brave, victorious Wolfe, and his virtuous death,
became a model for many, not least Admiral Horatio Nelson, who in 1802 was
promised the same grand treatment by Benjamin West himself if he were to die in
battle. (The painting eventually was exhibited, to nowhere near the acclaim of
the Death of General Wolfe).
Wolfe's renown began to slip away during the
last century as British power ebbed; his memory became largely irrelevant as
valour and sacrifice took on new meanings relevant to that century's inexorable
industrial warfare.
Then, additionally, some 70 years ago, the academy
began what has been a prolonged assault on Wolfe's professional soldierly
abilities. Beginning with E. R. Adair's address to the Canadian Historical
Association in 1936, continuing through popular writers such as Christopher
Hibbert and climaxing with Col. Charles Stacey's account in the Dictionary of
Canadian Biography, Wolfe has largely been made into a smug and swollen-headed
second-rater, an indecisive campaigner who -- largely due to the skill of his
subordinates -- gained fame through one lucky victory. Moreover, he has been
branded an insufferable prig, an uncaring martinet, and maybe even -- horrors!
-- a repressed homosexual.
To be fair, scholarship has not been very
kind to his opponent on the Plains of Abraham, the Marquis de Montcalm. This
once-gallant foe has been reduced almost to the ranks and, despite his career of
hard-won victories in Europe and America, is frequently portrayed as a hopeless
defeatist, retreating into reveries of a relaxed life on his estate in Candiac
instead of grappling with military reality.
What Brumwell aims to do in
this book is to strip Wolfe of two centuries and more of melancholy reflection
and seven decades of armchair carping about his military capabilities, and to
re-examine his whole career and achievements. His conclusion: Wolfe was much
more than the bloodthirsty, hesitant prig that recent historians have suggested,
much more than a one-battle wonder, and much more than the forlorn, white-faced
figure in those paintings that assured he would be remembered for his death more
than his life.
Wolfe was born into a military family in 1727; his father,
Edward Wolfe, was a middle-aged lieutenant-colonel. He and his wife Henrietta
raised James and his younger brother, also Edward, in privileged society, first
in Westerham, in Kent, and then at fashionable Greenwich.
The year of
James's birth saw the accession to the throne of the last British monarch
personally to lead his troops into battle: George II. His 33-year reign almost
exactly matched the lifespan of James Wolfe. The era, which saw the beginnings
of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, was marked by enormous expansion --
commercially, demographically and politically -- as Britain's American Empire
swelled until, as Brumwell reminds us, "by mid-century the colonies held a
population of one and a half million -- no less than a quarter of the estimate
for England and Wales."
Britain was, of course, a sea power, and the
commercial entanglements of overseas empire often ensnared the island nation in
European wars -- sometimes against old enemies, such as its diminished rival,
Spain, and, at other times the "perpetual enemy," France. Besides, Britain had
more than a casual commitment to the Continent; the British monarch was, after
all, elector of Hanover as well, and had to protect his German territory.
But not all of these wars were fought in Europe, and young James became
an officer cadet in his father's newly minted Regiment of Marines in the West
Indian Expedition that struck at Spanish America in 1740. He was 13.
The
details of the massive British failure at Cartagena drew lessons for the Wolfes,
père et fils. They were lucky not to be among the 10,000 who died (of 14,000 who
took part in the campaign), and this baptism of fire was a combined operation
where the elements failed to combine, where poor training of troops and
inexperience of officers assured defeat, and where the equipment was inadequate
(scaling ladders shorter than the walls they were meant to surmount, for
example).
It was an object lesson on how not to run a campaign, and
Wolfe learned it well -- and went on learning on the job for the next 15 years,
seeing active service in the Low Countries, in Germany and closer to home in
unruly Scotland: He was present at the Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria in 1743,
and at Culloden in 1746.
Then it was back to Germany and the Battle of
Lauffeld, where he was wounded. In 1748, he was sent home (at 21) to garrison
duty in Scotland. By 1750, he was a lieutenant-colonel. Before he saw active
duty again, when he was dispatched to North America in 1758, Wolfe learned
French, published military pamphlets and courted young women, although he could
scarcely be considered a handsome catch.
Certainly he was distinctive: a
towering (for the 18th century) six feet, he had flaming red hair, full lips, a
long pointed nose and what Brumwell calls "a pitifully weak chin and a high,
backward-sloping forehead." The inner man was anything but weak, and although he
chafed at his Scottish "exile," he made the best of it, immersing himself in
regimental life and winning the respect of his men -- despite, or perhaps
because of, his emphasis on discipline and drill. Accounts of his severity seem
entirely balanced by that of his understanding and charity toward ordinary
soldiers.
Brumwell's telling then shifts to the better-known episodes of
Wolfe's career: Louisbourg in 1758 and Quebec in 1759. Here he gives us a
portrait of a capable young commander, at least at the tactical level, with
courage almost to the point of recklessness. Wolfe's supportive role to General
Jeffery Amherst in the taking of Louisbourg was pivotal, and he was celebrated
for it during his lifetime. In fact, the publication of his role played no small
part in his being selected to lead the Quebec expedition a year later.
And then came the battle that changed the world. It was no near thing
when it came to the clash of armies outside Quebec's gates; Wolfe's professional
army demolished Montcalm's mixed band of regulars and irregulars.
But
was Wolfe indecisive and uncertain in the planning if not the execution?
Brumwell reminds us of what a tough nut Quebec proved to be and how uncertainty
was entirely justified about how best to plan the attack. Moreover, it seems
clear that Wolfe's subordinates, the jealous brigadiers, were as much hindrance
as help, although in the end Wolfe took their advice to attack from above the
town rather than the Beauport side.
And, no small matter (shades of
Napoleon at Waterloo?), by this time Wolfe was a sick man, suffering from what
he called the "gravel" and what we know to be the overwhelming pain of kidney
stones caught in his urinary tract.
The inevitable question: What if he
had lived? He was only 32 when he died. Brumwell asks if he might have become
another Marlborough or Wellington, and argues convincingly that "any assessment
of Wolfe's claim to greatness as a British general of the front rank must . . .
hinge upon the conduct of his one and only independent command . . . Quebec."
His final verdict: "Even if not a great general, Wolfe was undoubtedly a
great soldier." Soldiers always win battles; generals sometimes do. This
generous reassessment is overdue.
Roger Hall is graduate chair of history
at the University of Western Ontario and general editor of the Champlain
Society.
