Exhibition 1776
E. V. Gatacre The British Story of the American Revolution, or. as the posters and wall charts have it, 1776, is at the Maritime Museum, Greenwich, until 2 October (85p, 45p for a child). Backed by the Thomson Organisation, the organisers—led by Kenneth Pearson of the Sunday Times—have needed all the accumulated experience of their previous, but very different and far less demanding popular successes: Tutankhamen at the British Museum and the Chinese Exhibition at the
Royal Academy.
In the exhibition at Greenwich time and space have also been against them. The prospect of having only two years to decide the content and to borrow or make the ingredients for such a complex subject, in competition with countless other bicentennial exhibitions, must have been daunting. Most of the 16,000 square feet of the new galleries of the west wing at Greenwich are more suited to evoke a Bristol slave ship than the corridors of power in late eighteenth-century London—the buckled shoes in the Reynolds portrait of the colonial stamp duty 'Chancellor, Lord Townshend, have had to be accommodated in a specially excavated trench. Apart from lack of headroom for exhibits, low ceilings impose electric lighting of the most artificial kind which generates, together with people in a confined space, considerable heat, as well as being a dreadful leveller of quality.
'The Exhibition of an historic event lies somewhere between the printed page and the theatre . . . two factors control its final appearance: a strong narrative story and drama in three dimensions', writes Pearson of his exhibition. Pearson's narrative, breezily subtitled 'A question of duty', 'Storm in a teacup'. 'The road to Bunker Hill' etcetera, is interspersed with sections of background; on London, George III, the King's Army, and the Loyalists; on the Rebels, their ideas and their army; on the French and the war at sea. Despite the efforts of graphic artists, model makers and illuminated diagram constructors, the narrative is more easily followed in the catalogue (£1.50, well illustrated, but unindexed) or, best of all, by reference to the bibliography. But much of the background to the events is marvellously provided by the contemporary paintings and objects assembled. The character of the King's men is especially well portrayed: Midshipman Joseph York, aged thirteen (by Romney) and the bespectacled and avuncular Naval Captain Peter Rainier (Mather Brown); the studies of the Hanoverian Officers, de la Motte and Dachenhausen (J. S. Copley) and the British Guards Officer Cosmo Gordon (Francis Wheatley ?); Sir William Johnson (Reynolds?), superintendant of Indian affairs, and his brother-in-law, the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (Romney, and the portrait is accompanied by Brant's tomahawk); the young irregular cavalryman Banastre Tarleton (Reynolds) and the infantry colonel, Simcoe (Mosnier, shown together with the illustrated journal the colonel presented to George III).
The division of opinion in England is most dramatically illustrated by Copley's monochrome study of Chatham's collapse while speaking against Richmond's address to the Crown for the withdrawal of troops from the Colonies; the conflict amongst the colonists themselves by Benjamin West's picture of five young cricketers—Americans educated together in England, who were destined to return home and then become hopelessly divided by the rebellion.
The composition and equipment of the King's army are admirably displayed by Sandby's watercolour of the 'Encampment on Blackheath', the 'Review of an artillery train at Warley Camp' by Philip de Loutherbourg (who knew more about popularising historical events than any of our generation), and by 'A Provincial Review at Phoenix Park' (printed on linen). The particular circumstances of the war are illustrated by such items as military surveyors' equipment, an ice-creeper (four metal prongs to tie under a boot) and the iron camp stove of Colonel Baum, a Brunswicker.
The imagination should need no further aid, beyond clear simple labels in large enough lettering (Robin Wade Design Associates' type is sometimes too small and the labels occasionally hard to relate to the object); but the director and designer of the Exhibition seem over-conscious of the shortcoming described by Pearson: 'Too many pe
museum officials in this tr ry 5 June nee 197 audience for granted . . . putting articles uP Sccotuantot a their 6 for display with little regard for the niall who comes to the item'cold".' To tell the story of the tarring and feathering of the fortunate Commissioner for Customs Boston, the real thing (a mezzotint) seein5 to have been considered inadequate bY self, so the event has been re-created oPP°site with a life-size figure on a polystYrene quay. Perhaps the most ill-judged 'aid' t'd ,th,e, imagination is the sound of a gale in as' rigging. This sound fills the ears when kV'. ing at Thomas Mitchell's painting of t,11,,e, Bonhomme Richard (John Paul Jones's shir engaging HMS Serapis in a moonlit aeti°,r1 taking place in light airs. Close by areshiPh models (some contemporary, one not) Whicis have been set in fibreglass waves: the Yessee are not under sail, so presumably theY meant to be at anchor, but they are not 1Y. ing head to wind. The real and the replica are mixed CO ingly in the area devoted to the British ArcuYe where muskets are scattered profusely. S°n/a5 are given descriptive texts, two are relliic„ and labelled as such, others are unlabelled. is a great relief, much later in the exhibilicint; to come across the lay figure of the Freiled grenadier from the Brunon collection antic read the unequivocal statement, `onlY ,ted waistcoat is modern'. The confusion is ad° to by the duplication of a number of re; items, like the undocumented fifealong' the fife of the 7th Pennsylvania Line ge.g, ment ; is this a result of the short preparatic::: time, which must have meant that the org,ast isers could not risk waiting to hear if the Pro choice was available, before committrnent t the second ? id Photographs (enlarged, or ifesiZe1. 3 Cut Out, in the case of the portraits of Pr6nie, nent rebels) have been used where the , Pr,,, determined narrative required an dot! tion. Other substitutions of the reproduci'r,.' for the real take place where the scale 0f original is considered too small for it to (113iii the point. Sometimes, as with a flintlock jot laid on the butt with a small thirteen-Pest silver star inscribed 'UNITED: STATES: V4 /toil ONE', the enlarged photograph of the dethe is laid beside the object itself (where, i:ady joy of discovery ?). The painting 01 is Harriet Acland travelling up the Hudsn.to considerably diminished by backing it gil jog hugely enlarged photograph of an engilv ic, of the same subject; but in front of this Poi ture is an example, and only one of rilarlAd, Kenneth Pearson's amazing energy in tol ing related objects: in this case the ac,,,od Laissez passer which Lady Harriet AO° holds in her hand in the picture. There is a real danger in the 1776 f7t,Iliiibf; tion that the visitOr will tire himself poi'd by over the information and become sa,Alecl the 'aids' to such an extent that his a.u"tbe senses will be too exhausted to take 1,41101 extraordinary collection of pictures alw...dly objects which have been so painsta:0 assembled at Greenwich and whose Or°
• • ate appeal should not be underestimated
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