4374. RB to William Page
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 110–111.
[Rome]
[April 1859] [1]
My dear Page,
You will see what has happened, by the Regent’s letter. [2] To any one but yourself I should say more fully what I feel on the subject,—what I think of the folly & injustice, &—perhaps,—treachery of such a decision: and I might also endeavour to reassure any other but yourself after such a misfortune (for it is that, at all events, to everybody). You, however, need no such attempts at help: I am rather inclined to pray you not to neglect any means that may still be at your disposal for attempting to procure even yet a reversal of this silly sentence—or, failing that, to bring your picture before the public in some other way. I write this in the utmost haste, & with the natural irritation. Do consult with dear Miss Cushman,—your truest of friends—who brought the note here, and fancied—as we talked of its contents with my wife,—that I might the more gently let in this bad news by prefacing it by a word or two of hers or mine– So they are uttered, poorly & inadequately enough, but with the best will & most affectionate wishes of
Yours ever
Robert Browning
Address: Sigr W. Page. / 39. Babuino.
Publication: None traced.
Source: Microfilm at Smithsonian Institution.
1. Date supplied by RB’s reference to “the Regent’s letter”; that is, Page’s notice of rejection from the Paris Salon of 1859 (see note 2 below). Rejection notices were evidently sent in April. Another submitter to the Salon that year, Edouard Manet, received his for “The Absinthe Drinker” (“Le Buveur d’absinthe”) in April (see the Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue, Manet, 1832–1883, New York, 1983).
2. The Paris Salon rejected William Page’s “Venus Guiding Aeneas and the Trojans to the Latin Shore” for indecency. Later that same year, the painting was exhibited in the United States, where patrons were charged admission. Although the work was condemned by the press as immoral, the negative publicity helped increase receipts and earned over $600 for the artist (see Garnett McCoy, “William Page and Henry Stevens: an incident of reluctant art patronage,” Archives of American Art Journal, 30, 1990, 13–18).
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