Mr. Peregrine Touchwood Breaking in upon the Rev. Josiah Cargill
Date:
1831
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on panel
Dimensions:
21 × 17 inches (53.3 × 43.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.473
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
literary theme | interior | blue | men | reading | chairs | cabinets (case furniture) | coats | trousers | stockings | cravats | boots | books | rod | portrait | hat | inkwell | redingote (overcoat) | bicorne | collar | Saint Ronan's Well by Sir Walter Scott, 1823
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
William Mulready (National Gallery of Ireland, - )William Mulready (Ulster Museum, - 1987-03)William Mulready (Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986-06 - )
Publications:
Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 166-167, N590.2 A83 (YCBA)Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p. 46, ND466 G67 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
The subject of this humorous picture is taken from chapter seventeen of Sir Walter Scott’s novel St. Ronan’s Well (1823), which begins with a quotation—seen on the frame—from Samuel Butler’s satirical poem Hudibras (1663–78). The painting shows the meddlesome nabob Peregrine Touchwood barging in on Josiah Cargill, the learned minister of St. Ronan’s, while the latter is deep in studious contemplation. The scene sets up the classical distinction between two competing ways of life: the vita activa (the life of action) and the vita contemplativa (the life of contemplation). But, as Scott’s story explains, after the two spend an afternoon together discussing their knowledge of the Holy Land (Touchwood’s comes from experience, Cargill’s is from books), both come to understand each other better, “and the familiarity led to their forming a considerable estimate of each other’s powers and acquirements.” Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016