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Symbolizing the civic ideal: the civic portraits in Belfast Town Hall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

GILLIAN MCINTOSH
GILLIAN MCINTOSH*
Affiliation:
School of History and Anthropology, Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast, University Road, Belfast, BT7 1NN
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Abstract

Belfast's civic portraits provide an unbroken narrative of the city's municipal identity dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Their layers of meaning can be understood within the context of the social, political and cultural concerns of the period in which they were produced and presented. An examination of these complex and coded works of art is revealing about the political and religious tensions, as well as the personalities, of mid-Victorian Belfast's intricate urban landscape.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , December 2008 , pp. 363 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Pointon, Marcia, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in the Eighteenth Century England (London, 1993), 13Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 27.

3 Maguire, W.A., Belfast (Keele, 1993), 92Google Scholar.

4 See Beckett, John, City Status in the British Isles, 1830–2002 (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar, for an analysis of the process by which Belfast became a city.

5 See author's own Belfast City Hall. One Hundred Years (Belfast, 2006).

6 Hill, Kate, ‘“Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of ancient Greece”: symbolism and space in Victorian civic culture’, in Kidd, Alan and Nicholls, David (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism. Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800–1940 (Manchester, 1999), 106Google Scholar.

7 See for comparative examples of other cities and towns Gunn, Simon, Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar; Beckett, City Status; Vernon, James, Politics and the People. A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar; Hunt, Tristram, Building Jerusalem (London, 2004)Google Scholar; Joyce, Patrick, Work, Society and Politics. The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Hassocks, 1980)Google Scholar.

8 Gunn, Public Culture, 163.

9 Beckett, City Status, 47–8.

10 Gerard Slater, ‘Belfast politics, 1798–1868’, University of Ulster Ph.D. thesis, 1982, 267.

11 Maguire, Belfast, 48.

12 Ibid., 98.

13 Beckett, City Status, 49.

14 Budge, Ian and O'Leary, Cornelius, Belfast: Approach to Crisis. A Study of Belfast Politics, 1613–1970 (London, 1973), 64Google Scholar.

15 It should be noted that many leading citizens served on all three bodies, sometimes simultaneously.

16 Of the latter those extant depict Sir William G. Johnston, mayor in 1849 (by Richard Hooke); Sir William Ewart MP, mayor in 1859 and 1860 (by Sir Thomas A. Jones); Sir Edward Coey, mayor in 1861, by Sir Thomas Jones; John Lytle, mayor in three successive years (1863–64-65) and also by Sir Thomas A. Jones; William Mullan, mayor in 1866 and by Philip R. Morris; and Sir David Taylor, mayor in 1867 (and again in 1883 and 1884) by Richard Hooke. There is also a portrait of Samuel McCausland, mayor in 1868. These portraits are now all hung in Belfast City Hall.

17 A notable exception is Mullan.

18 In 1899 Sir James Henderson's civic portrait was hung in the Robing Room. Sir Otto Jaffe's civic portrait was presented to the Art Gallery of the Free Public Library in 1900. Charles C. Connor's portrait (mayor in 1889–90/91) was also hung in the Free Public Library. Belfast Street Directory, 1901. Thus the Free Public Library, in the decade before the opening of the city hall, provided a temporary space where the city's civic portraits could be hung.

19 Gunn, Public Culture, 169.

20 Belfast Newsletter (BNL), 23 Oct. 1874.

21 Pointon, Hanging the Head, 24.

22 Belfast Street Directory (BSD), 1884, 16–17.

23 BSD, 1895, lxv.

24 Gunn, Public Culture, 163.

25 See Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, for greater detail of Belfast politics 1798–1868.

26 Bardon, Jonathan, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 1992), 105Google Scholar.

27 The special respondents in 1855 were John Potts, William Hamilton, Samuel Nelson, Samuel Graham Fenton, Samuel Thomson, Robert S. Lepper, Frederick Harry Lepper, Daivd Grainger, Joseph Young, James Sterling, William McGee, William Carson, Philip Johnston, John Cuddy, James Hart and Samuel McCausland. Hand written list at the back of The Town Council in Chancery. The Attorney-General at the Relation of John Rea, Esq., v The Belfast Municipal Corporation (Northern Whig publication, June 1855) Special Collections, QUB.

28 Budge and O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis, 70.

29 Pointon, Hanging the Head, 141.

30 Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, 417.

31 Sir John Preston's portrait was unveiled on 14 Apr. 1887.

32 In 1868 28 members of the corporation were merchants and manufacturers, 3 were gentlemen, 2 doctors, 3 solicitors, 1 ship owner, 2 architects, 2 jeweller. Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, appendix 1.

33 Louis Purbrick, ‘The bourgeois body: civic portraiture, public men and the appearance of class power in Manchester, 1838–50’, in Kidd and Nicholls (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism, 84.

34 Pointon, Hanging the Head, 13.

35 In its first decade seven civic portraits were presented to Belfast Town Hall: Samuel McCausland, JP (by R. Hooke), mayor in 1868, Dr Samuel Browne, RN, JP, the gift of ‘some of his past pupils’ at the Royal Hospital (by R. Hooke), mayor in 1870, Philip Johnston, JP (by R. Hooke), mayor in 1871, Sir John Savage, JP (by R. Hooke), mayor in 1872, James Alex Henderson, JP (by Sir T.A. Jones), mayor in 1874, Sir Robert Boag (by Sir T.A. Jones), mayor 1876, and John Browne, JP (by R. Hooke), mayor 1879 and 1880. The portrait of Philip Johnston was unveiled in 1874, James Alex Henderson's was unveiled in 1876, Sir Robert Boag's was unveiled in July 1877, Dr Samuel Browne's was also placed in the chamber in 1877, Sir John Savage's was placed in the chamber in 1880 and both John Browne and Samuel McCausland's were unveiled in 1882. Black, Eileen, Art in Belfast, 1760–1888 (Dublin, 2006), 255Google Scholar.

36 BNL, 25 Sep. 1882.

37 There appears to be no portrait of Thomas G. Lindsay.

38 Black, Eileen, Paintings, Sculptures and Bronzes in the Collection of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners (Belfast, 1983), 23Google Scholar.

39 Jones was commissioned to execute portraits of Belfast's earlier mayors, such as Edward Coey, mayor in 1861, John Lytle, mayor in 1863, 1864, 1865, William Ewart MP, mayor in 1859 and 1860. Thomas A. Jones joined the RHA in 1860 became president in 1869. Knighted in 1880, by the lord lieutenant, duke of Marlborough. A successful portraitist, he completed portraits of Lady Randolph Churchill, Sir Edward Harland and the duke of Cambridge. He died 10 May 1893.

40 Samuel Browne was Presbyterian.

41 John Browne was Presbyterian (and a supporter of Rev. Dr Henry Cooke) and a Conservative. Obit, BNL, 18 Sep. 1893.

42 Budge and O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis, 73. Philip Johnston, who began his career in the wholesale tea trade, was a senior partner in Brookfield Linen Company and later joined his sons in Jennymount Mill where he remained until his death. Obit, BNL, 25 Sep. 1882.

43 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online at www.oxforddnb.com.

44 Sir John Savage was proprietor of John Savage & Co. flax spinners; a councillor for St Anne's Ward (1855) and for St George's Ward (1861), he was knighted in 1872. Obit, BNL, 16 Jun. 1883.

45 The British Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual conference in Belfast in 1852, 1874, 1902 and 1952.

46 Boag was a founding member and ruling elder of Elmwood Presbyterian Church. Dewar, James (ed.), A history of Elmwood Presbyterian Church, with biographical sketches of its pastors and founders, 1859–1899 (Belfast, 1900)Google Scholar.

47 Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, 334.

48 Philip Johnston (1871) left £17,156 8s 1d; Thos. G Lindsay (1875) left £89,362 16s 10d; Sir John Preston (1877 and 1878) left £94,086 9s 7d; John Browne (1879 and 1880) left £58,723 17s 10d. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, online wills.

49 The chain bore the arms and crests of each mayor, with the name and year of office engraved on the back. Belfast City Corporation archive, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (BCC)/LA/7/2EA/11, report of General Purposes Committee, 1 Jan. 1875.

50 The Council spent £200 on ‘providing a more suitable chair for the Mayor than the present one’. BCC/LA/7/2EA/11, minutes of the General Purposes Committee, 1 Apr. 1874.

51 BNL, 23 Oct. 1874.

52 Ibid.

53 BCC/LA/7/16AB/3/2, meeting of the town hall committee, 25 Sep. 1868.

54 Wright, Frank, Two Lands on One Soil: Ulster Politics before Home Rule (Dublin, 1996), 216Google Scholar.

55 He was also Robert Lindsay's brother-in-law, Lindsay who later became the Conservative leader of the corporation. Ibid., 217.

56 Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, 258.

57 Their numbers were 20 in 1860, 12 in 1863 and 8 in 1868.

58 Wright Two Lands on One Soil, 217, 260.

59 Slater, ‘Belfast politics’, 282.

60 BNL, 23 Oct. 1874.

61 Ibid.

62 Mullan's portrait is now in the city hall.

63 BNL, 24 Dec. 1874.

64 Ibid., 24 Dec. 1874.

65 See Hirst, Catherine, Religion, Politics and Violence in Nineteenth Century Belfast: The Pound and Sandy Row (Dublin, 2001)Google Scholar.

66 In 1871 Catholics were 48.9% of the Ulster population, Protestants 51.1%. Of the latter figure, 26.1% were Presbyterian, and 21.5% were Episcopalian. McMinn, Richard, ‘Presbyterianism and politics in Ulster, 1871–1906’, Studia Hibernica, 21 (1981), 137Google Scholar.

67 Ibid.

68 BNL, 3 Jan. 1876. A public library eventually opened in 1888.

69 Wright, Two Lands on One Soil, 481.

70 BNL, 2 Jan. 1877.

71 BNL, 16 Aug. 1876.

72 BNL, 2 Jan. 1877.

73 Ibid.

74 Times 6 Dec. 1876.

75 Belfast Morning News (BMN), 31 Jan. 1877; BNL, 31 Jan. 1877.

76 BNL, 2 Feb. 1877.

77 With Robert McGeagh, J.F. Hodges, MD, and Charles H. Ward acting as secretaries. The Witness, 22 Dec. 1876.

78 The ‘powerful deputation’ was composed of Edward Harland, JP, William Ewart, JP (who had been mayor in 1859 and was proprietor of a large spinning mill), W.B. Ritchie, JP, George Horner (proprietor of Clonard Foundry), Robert McGeagh (a Conservative councillor St George's Ward in 1880), Nicholas Oakman (in 1880 a managing director of the Ulster Banking Company), Charles H. Ward and Rev. Charles Seaver. Others named as supporters were James Alex Henderson, William Allen, Edward P. Cowan (mayor in 1881 and 1882) and the moderator of the General Assembly. Slater's Directory of Ulster, 1870; BSD, 1884.

79 BNL, 2 Feb. 1877.

80 Ibid.

81 Purbrick, ‘The bourgeois body’, 82.

82 Ibid., 83.

83 BNL, 23 Jul. 1877.

84 The Witness, 8 Dec. 1876.

85 Ibid.

86 The Witness, 22 Dec. 1876.

87 McMinn, ‘Presbyterianism and politics’, 132.

88 John Spencer-Churchill, Lord Blandford, lord lieutenant 1876–80.

89 Weekly Northern Whig, 3 Feb. 1877.

90 The Witness 16 Nov. 1877.

91 Obit, BNL, 13 Jan. 1880.

92 BCC/ LA/7/2EA/12.

93 BCC/LA/7/2EA/12.

94 BNL, 23 Jul. 1877.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 BMN, 23 Jul. 1877.

102 BCC/LA/7/2EA/12, special meeting of the council to receive the duke of Abercorn, 22 May 1876.

103 Northern Whig, 23 Jul. 1877.

104 Ibid.

105 Belfast Evening Telegraph, 12 Nov. 1877.

106 Vernon, Politics and the People, 49.

107 Purbrick, ‘The bourgeois body’, 84.

108 Beckett, City Status, 49.