Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Epilogue: 1862 onwards
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
THE end of 1861 was marked, for the Victorians, by the death of Prince Albert on 14 December. Henry had written: ‘I cannot help thinking of our good Queen. As a National loss it is, I think, greater than we have allowed ourselves to imagine.’ For Henry's generation of artists and entrepreneurs, especially those living and working in London, the loss was indeed great. Even before the Great Exhibition of 1851, Albert had proved himself their champion – as Chairman of the Royal Commission he had taken charge of the decoration of the Palace of Westminster, seven years after it was burned down, instituting a competition among living artists for the privilege of contributing to it. He was also an enthusiastic private patron, collecting both old masters (including works by Fra Angelico and Lucas Cranach) and contemporary paintings by Winterhalter, Landseer and others. He was strategically involved in planning the Crimean Campaign, not least the taking of Sevastopol, which looms so large in the Boyce-Wells correspondence. As Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (from 1847) he pushed for educational reform and lent his support for the British Association for the Advancement of Science. As President of the Society of Arts from 1843 onwards, it was largely his energy and vision that inspired the Great Exhibition itself. He had been heavily involved at the time of his death with plans for the International Exhibition of 1862, so it is hardly surprising that his death, just before that plan was to come to fruition, left such a gaping hole. Indeed, with the Queen in deep mourning, all the necessary pomp and ceremony to launch it were absent, and in spite of attracting more than 6 million visitors, the enterprise was, very nearly, a financial disaster. The cost was £458,842, the receipts £449,632 – a profit of £790.
Nevertheless the exhibition, which ran from 1 May to 1 November and which was sponsored by the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Trades, proved a magnificent showcase for the arts in general and the decorative arts in particular.
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- Information
- The Boyce Papers , pp. 861 - 888Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019