In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, paintings followed the literary trend into detective stories, first posing the viewer an open-ended narrative, then inviting them to be a detective for problem pictures. Although now remembered for just one of these paintings, William Frederick Yeames was among the leaders, who even depicted a notorious suspicious death.

Yeames was the son of a British consul in Russia and was born in Taganrog, on the shore of the Sea of Azov, to the north of the Black Sea, when it was part of the Russian Empire. His father died when he was only seven, so he was bundled off to Dresden in Germany to be educated, and to start learning to draw and paint. His family brought him back to Britain, where he received private tuition before travelling to Florence at the age of only 17. He studied there, copied the Masters, and finally returned to London in 1859.

He took up residence in Saint John’s Wood, then an affluent and leafy suburb of the city, and formed what became known as the Saint John’s Wood Clique, with Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Frederick Goodall and George Adolphus Storey.

Yeames’ particular interest, and the basis for many of his best paintings, was the Tudor and Stuart period in English history. In Hiding the Priest (1868-74), he shows a ‘priest hole’ used to hide Catholic priests during several purges that took place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A priest is shown ascending into the hidden chamber by ladder, as one of the family, at the left, watches for the arrival of pursuivants who pursued Catholic priests during a purge. The room shown here is now known as the Punch Room, in Cotehele House, a superb sixteenth century manor house on the border between Devon and Cornwall, to the north of Plymouth, England.

For the Poor from about 1875 shows two nuns collecting food door-to-door to feed the poor during a bitter winter, probably on the edge of Dartmoor, Devon.

Yeames became fascinated by the macabre story of Amy Robsart, who had died in suspicious circumstances in 1560.

He introduces her in his 1877 narrative painting. She married Robert Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland, shortly before she reached the age of eighteen. He was then condemned to death after his father failed to stop Mary I’s accession as queen in 1553, but was released the following year. Dudley was called to court as Master of the Horse to Queen Elizabeth I when she acceded to the throne in 1558, became a favourite of hers, and allegedly one of her loves if not lovers.

Amy didn’t follow her husband to court, and hardly ever saw him. On the morning of 8 September 1560, when she was staying at a country house near Oxford, she dismissed all her servants, and was later found, as shown here, dead with a broken neck at the foot of the stairs. Although an inquest found no evidence of foul play and returned a verdict of accidental death, Amy’s husband was widely suspected of having arranged her death.

In the gloom above Amy’s body, Yeames shows Anthony Forster, one of Dudley’s men, leading his manservant down the stairs when they discover Amy’s body. The implication here is that Forster murdered Amy on Dudley’s orders, one of many speculative accounts of her sudden death.

In 1884, Yeames painted this portrait of Amy Robsart.

Like most of Yeames’ history paintings, And when did you last see your Father? (1878) is plausible but imaginary rather than based on historical records. It shows a Royalist household during the English Civil War between 1642-51. The men present are Roundheads, Parliamentarians, who are trying to locate and capture the head of the household, the small boy’s father.

The boy shown is based on Gainsborough’s famous portrait of The Blue Boy (1779), and modelled here by the artist’s nephew. Although he’s being questioned amicably if not sympathetically, the question put to him in the title of the painting exploits the openness of childhood in an effort to get the boy to betray his father’s whereabouts, an unpleasantly adult trick. Next in line for a grilling is an older girl, who is being comforted by a Roundhead soldier, but is already upset. Their mother and an older daughter wait anxiously at the far left.

Towards the end of the century, Yeames turned these open narratives into increasingly popular problem pictures, culminating in one of the finest of the sub-genre.

Defendant and Counsel (1895) would have been exhibited in London, illustrated as an engraving in newspapers, and no doubt generated a flurry of opinionated letters completing its story, and passing judgement on its subject. It shows an affluent married woman wearing an expensive fur coat, sat with a popular newspaper open in front of her, as a team of three barristers and their clerk look at her intensely, presumably waiting for her to speak.

As she is the defendant, the viewer is encouraged to speculate what she is defending: a divorce claim, or a criminal charge? This also opens the thorny issue of counsel who discover that a defendant is lying, but still mount their defence in court, and may succeed in persuading the court to believe what they know to be false. Like And when did you last see your Father? this may be an exploration of truth and the problems posed by it.

Yeames died at the age of 82, on 3 May 1918, in the Devon Riviera resort of Teignmouth. And when did you last see your Father? was bought by the Walker Gallery in Liverpool shortly after it opened in 1877. A tableau of the painting has also been in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London for many of the intervening years. But no one knows who killed Amy Robsart, or whether it was just a tragic accident.

Wikipedia

William Frederick Yeames
Amy Robsart