Frederic James Shields (1833-1911)
Provenance
CJ Pooley, 1887;
Christie's, London, 29 October 1991, lot 32;
Christie's, London, 7 Nov 1997, lot 32
Exhibitions
Royal Jubilee Exhibition, Manchester 1887, no 1410
The subject is from Defoe's A Journal to the Plague Year, an account of the Black Death of 1664/5 which killed a third of the population of London, based on the journal of Defoe's uncle. A comet appeared shortly before the outbreak, and visionaries prophesying doom walked the streets. Solomon Eagle, a semi-crazed Quaker preacher (an actual person whose real name was Eccles, mentioned also by Pepys), who saw the plague as divine retribution for the sins of the populace, wears only a burning charcoal grate (to fumigate the air) on his head, and a loincloth. As he stands astride a narrow, cobbled street, with his long hair trailing down his back, he gesticulates at a group of drinkers who lean out of an inn and denounces them for their impenitence.
The Civil War of the 1640s, followed by the Black Death and then the Fire of London in 1666 (the 666th year of the second millennium - 666 was the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation) made it seem to the English that the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse were actually amongst them, and that the Second Coming of Christ and the Last Judgement were imminent. Society creaked and cracked; it was a time of fear, superstition and insurrection, of Levelers, Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists and Quakers.
There is a watercolour study for the main figure 57cm x 29.4cm and a monochrome watercolour study for the finished composition 12.3cm x 7.9cm in Manchester City Art Gallery. At Hartlepool AG is a small, loosely painted colour sketch, oil on card, 20cm x 13.4cm. Ours is the most finished version of the subject. As was regular practice, the wood engravers, Swain and Morton, destroyed the original drawings by cutting through them to engrave the blocks that were used in the book (published in 'a cheap paper-covered series entitled Laurie's Shilling Entertainment Library’).