James Collinson

With Charles Nicholls & Son, Manchester

Sale, Christie’s, London, 1936 (possibly)

Sale, Phillips, London, 13 December 1982, lot 132

With Christopher Wood Gallery, London

From whom acquired by Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick, Dobbs Ferry, New York, 1983

By whom sold, Sotheby’s, New York, 28 February 1990, lot 132

Where acquired by the present owner

London, Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1855, no. 217

London, Christopher Wood Gallery, Life and Landscape, 1983

New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection, 11 January–26 February 1984, no. 7

Phoenix Art Museum, English Idylls: The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection of Victorian Art, 9 January–13 March 1988, no. 8

“The Royal Academy,” The Art-Journal, no. 17, 1 June 1855, p. 174

Thomas Bodkin, “James Collinson,” Apollo, no. 31, London 1940, p. 132

Leslie Parris (ed.), The Pre-Raphaelite Papers, London 1984, pp. 73-74

Susan P. Casteras (ed.), The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection, exh. cat., New Haven 1984, pp. 11, 30-31, no. 7, illustrated on p. 31 and cover

Christopher Wood, Life and Landscape, exh. cat., London 1983, illustrated

Susan P. Casteras (ed.), English Idylls: The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection of Victorian Art, exh. cat., Phoenix 1988, no. 8

James Collinson was one of the seven original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He subtitled this anecdotal work Bleeding a Freshman. The story, according to The Art Journal, is that "of two Eton boys, of whom one is just returning to school, and holds in his hand a piece of money, for which the other offers him some article of hardware... The scene is the bed-room of him who is just arrived, and every object in it is most carefully made out" (The Royal Academy, p. 174).

Susan Casteras interprets the narrative thus: "A field surgeon's knife, with a blood-letting instrument (fleam), is being traded for a crown coin, hence the pun in the subtitle inscribed by the artist on the back. The trunk label is marked "G.W.R./ Slough", this probably indicating the Great Western Railway route to the destination close to Eton. However, the attire, type of bedding, and the room decorations do not correspond with actual Victorian Etonian customs... The details of the contents of the chamber - the carpet bag, Puginesque wallpaper, Inverness cape, and oversized cricket equipment - are all meticulously rendered. A kindred work of similar size that functions almost as a pendant is Collinson's 1858 The Bankrupt" (Casteras, ed., p. 30).