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Romantics in the Channel Islands Now on at Jersey Museum
The Channel Islands rugged coastlines, extreme weather, atmospheric light and lush interiors were perfect ingredients for the early 19th century Romantics. This exhibition in association Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery, will bring together for the first time the work of many of the artists such as John Le Capelain in Jersey, Peter Le Lievre in Guernsey and Sarah Louise Kilpack who were inspired by local scenes. It will also explore Romanticism in other art forms and will include the work of one of the Channel Islands most famous exiles, Victor Hugo.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was perhaps France’s most influential advocate of the French Romantic movement. He lived in the Channel Islands from 1852 until 1870, originally as an exile, and later through choice. He completed some of his most popular literature whilst residing here, including Les Misérables and Les Travailleurs de Mer, the latter being inspired by the landscape and folklore of Guernsey and Sark. His major poetical works Les Châtiments and Les Contemplations were mostly written in Jersey, his three years on the Island proving amongst some of the most inspired of his career. Victor Hugo was chiefly a writer, but also experimented with photography and drawing during his stays on the Channel Islands. The natural elements of the sea, the rocks and the weather inspired him as a poet and novelist, but also prompted him, his oldest son Charles Hugo and family-friend Auguste Vacquerie to make a photographically illustrated book of the Channel Islands entitled Jersey and the Channel Islands. These photographs were made by the Hugo circle as part of a creative experiment in photography and some of the pictures of Jersey have been described as ‘masterpieces of photographic Romanticism’. They are also significant in being amongst the earliest surviving photographs of Jersey. Although the book was never published, the remaining photographs show the artist’s ability to capture the spirit of a place. Amongst the photographs taken by Charles Hugo were many portraits of Victor Hugo posing within the coastal landscape of Jersey. In all of these photographs his posture is resolute, determined and somewhat theatrical. Often, his singular figure sits or stands on a craggy rock as he stares into the distance, his determined profile echoing the steadfast nature of the rocks below. Victor Hugo represents himself as a Republican hero who has exiled and isolated himself in support of his cause.
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The Romantic movement which flourished in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, has great relevance today. Not only did painters such as Turner, poets like William Blake and Lord Byron and novelists as enduring as Jane Austen help to create the modern world, their legacies influence how we now perceive the arts and the environment.