William Allen Brunning (1818–1850)
McLean Museum and Art Gallery – Inverclyde Council
Brunning was a theatrical scene-painter, and marine and landscape artist, born in Osborne Place, Whitechapel, on 27th November 1818. He was the son of John Brunning, a butcher, and his wife Elizabeth, and was baptised at St Mary's, Whitechapel, on 20th December. He had at least three siblings: Elizabeth (b.1821, Whitechapel), John (b.1823, Shoreditch) and Edward (b.1827, Shoreditch), the two latter baptised at St Leonard's, Shoreditch. How Brunning became a scene-painter is not known – though apprenticeship was normal – but he was already one at the Surrey Theatre under the management of George Bolwell Davidge (1793–1842) from at least 1835, and still there as head scene-painter under Davidge's widow from 1843 to at least 1845. The Surrey majored in nautical melodrama, Brunning painting maritime scenes among others.
He also did impressive moving panoramas/dioramas in Christmas spectacles there, on the pattern set at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the 1820s by Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867) and the Grieve family respectively. One of a steamer voyage from London to Boulogne, which was his ‘magnificent annual panorama’ in the Surrey Christmas pantomime of 1841, was well described and reviewed by The Satirist, 2nd January 1842.
At the time of the 1841 census (6th June) Brunning was living at 5 Melina Place in the Westminster Road, Southwark, with his wife Priscilla and his brother Edward. He gave his profession as ‘artist’, though his age is misleadingly recorded as 20. Priscilla's (née Chartres) was recorded as fifteen and she was clearly stated to be a ‘minor’ (b.1824/25) when she and Brunning married at St Mary's, Newington, on 1st June 1840. At that time both were living at 14 Royal Street, Lambeth (possibly her mother's home), though until then Brunning had been at Melina Place since 1838. The marriage entry also notes that both his and her father, Daniel, were already dead.
The young couple's daughter, also Priscilla, was apparently born at Melina Place in 1841, since she was baptised at St George's, Southwark, that July. Other children have not been found. By then Brunning was also producing oil paintings. His first exhibit at the Society of British Artists (SBA) in 1837, sent in from 3 Whitechapel Road, was of The Fire at Knight's Soap House, Old Gravel Lane, as seen from the Thames, December 15, 1836. He showed a total of 26 works there from his various shifting London addresses, being absent only in 1839, 1840 and 1848. He also showed 19 paintings at the Royal Academy (RA), with at least one in all years from 1840 to 1850. Most were landscape, Thames or coastal marine subjects in southern and south-west England and in Normandy, which he must have visited no later than 1840. A Sketch near the falls of Terni (RA, 1843) and an Italian port-scene (SBA, 1846) suggest he may also have travelled there. He also showed one work a year at the British Institution from 1841 to 1848 (excepting 1843), with the ‘Royal Surrey Theatre’ as the last stated submission address in 1844. After leaving the East End, his personal submission addresses show he lived consistently south of the river and for longest at 4 West Place, Southwark, 1845–1848, until moving to 7 Brecknock Terrace, Camden, in 1849. This probably mirrored the needs of his parallel career as a theatre painter, and perhaps increasing prosperity.
From October 1846 Brunning was principal scene-painter for George Bolton's management of the Olympic Theatre off the Strand and appears to have joined the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street for the winter season of 1847. The following year (1848–1849) he was at Sadler's Wells, working under Frederick Fenton, and with him again painted the Christmas pantomime assisted by Laidlaw and others.
According to the Examiner of 29th September 1849, when James Anderson became the new lessee of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane at that time, he engaged Brunning as one of his painters and in the Christmas pantomime of ‘Harlequin and Good Queen Bess’ Brunning did a ‘Grand Moving Panorama ... Illustrative of Her Most Gracious Majesty's Visit to Ireland’ which was praised (as a ‘diorama’) in the Morning Post of 27th December. This was also the subject of a painting he showed at the SBA in 1850. On 29th December the same paper reviewed favourably the scenic and ethnographic Panorama of New Zealand, shown in the exhibition rooms known until 1845 as Miss Linwood's Gallery (of needlework pictures) at Saville House, Leicester Square. This was executed by ‘W. A. Brunning, J. Zatter, E. Hassel, H. S. Melville and W. Wilson’, under the supervision of S. C. Brees, who appears to have been its promoter. How long this continued is unclear but Brees offered it for sale in 1851.
Brunning was elected a member of the SBA early in 1849 and that April exhibited two works there: A fishing boat putting about for her rudder off Elizabeth Castle, Jersey—Morning and A peep under Westminster Bridge. They were bought by the Art Union of London, for £60 and £25 respectively (Morning Post, 2nd June). The following year saw his largest single group of works (10) exhibited, again at the SBA, but this was also his last appearance. He died that summer at Brecknock Terrace, aged 31, and was buried at Highgate Cemetery (of St James's) on 16th July. His widow later moved to 3 Orchard Place, Kentish Town, from which their daughter Priscilla was married (aged 17) on 1st July 1858 to a 24-year-old stockbroker, William Charles Dale, son of the Reverend Thomas Dale, a canon of St Paul's Cathedral. Mrs Priscilla Brunning herself died, aged fifty-three, in the July–September quarter 1877, still in the St Pancras registry district.
The 'Antaus' under Repair (McLean Museum and Art Gallery) is not one of Brunning's exhibited easel paintings. The subject of a merchant ship under repair in a dry-dock would have been unusual for a work of its large size. This and its dramatic perspective suggest it is possibly a section from some sort of panoramic entertainment, though the scale is probably too small for a theatre piece, the ship apparently invented (since none of the name is obvious) and the location uncertain, though probably based on the Thames waterfront. Since this piece was first drafted, Chris Ellmers has pointed out that it is the same general view as appears in the engraving titled, Ship on the Stocks building: and ship in Dock for repairs, facing p.459 in George Dodd’s Days at the Factories (1843) at the start of two chapters (20 and 21) on ‘Days at a Ship-Yard’. If so it is at ‘Messrs Green, Wigrams and Green’ – i.e. Blackwall Yard, east London – which is the one Dodd visited and gives a detailed account of.
Brunning was clearly a capable scene-painter. The ‘Antaus’ image shows his capacity for visual drama in oils as well and he otherwise seems to have been a competent gallery artist. When the Morning Post (18th April) reviewed the SBA exhibition of 1849 it took notice of his ‘Fishing boat’ picture, suggesting that as a marine composition it was overly indebted to the manner of Stanfield – whose stage work may also have influenced him – but suspended judgement based on a single example. This is a useful comment insofar as it suggests that Brunning's intended course was following that of Stanfield and David Roberts (1796–1864) who had earlier made their names as theatre painters before becoming Royal Academy exhibitors and, in their cases, founder members of the SBA. Whether Brunning would also have followed them into the ranks of Royal Academicians is hypothetical, but his longer-term aim was probably also to graduate from the theatre into the greater liberty, potential rewards and respectability of full-time gallery work. Whatever caused his early death, the hard labour of stage painting from late boyhood and trying to forge an easel reputation at the same time may have contributed to it.
Gallery works by Brunning occasionally resurface: A lane in Kent (probably exh. RA 1843) was sold at Hall’s, Shrewsbury, on 28th March 2007; Fisherfolk by the Sea at Christie’s East in New York on 29th October 1992, and Market Scene, Normandy at Bonham’s, London, on 7th October 1976.
Adapted and updated from Pieter van der Merwe, 'William Allen Brunning, S.B.A. (1818–50): a forgotten artist scene-painter', in 'Theatre Notebook' (Journal of the Society for Theatre Research), vol. 66, no. 3, October 2012.
At the time of the 1841 census (6th June) Brunning was living at 5 Melina Place in the Westminster Road, Southwark, with his wife Priscilla and his brother Edward. He gave his profession as ‘artist’, though his age is misleadingly recorded as 20. Priscilla's (née Chartres) was recorded as fifteen and she was clearly stated to be a ‘minor’ (b.1824/25) when she and Brunning married at St Mary's, Newington, on 1st June 1840. At that time both were living at 14 Royal Street, Lambeth (possibly her mother's home), though until then Brunning had been at Melina Place since 1838. The marriage entry also notes that both his and her father, Daniel, were already dead.
The young couple's daughter, also Priscilla, was apparently born at Melina Place in 1841, since she was baptised at St George's, Southwark, that July. Other children have not been found. By then Brunning was also producing oil paintings. His first exhibit at the Society of British Artists (SBA) in 1837, sent in from 3 Whitechapel Road, was of The Fire at Knight's Soap House, Old Gravel Lane, as seen from the Thames, December 15, 1836. He showed a total of 26 works there from his various shifting London addresses, being absent only in 1839, 1840 and 1848. He also showed 19 paintings at the Royal Academy (RA), with at least one in all years from 1840 to 1850. Most were landscape, Thames or coastal marine subjects in southern and south-west England and in Normandy, which he must have visited no later than 1840. A Sketch near the falls of Terni (RA, 1843) and an Italian port-scene (SBA, 1846) suggest he may also have travelled there. He also showed one work a year at the British Institution from 1841 to 1848 (excepting 1843), with the ‘Royal Surrey Theatre’ as the last stated submission address in 1844. After leaving the East End, his personal submission addresses show he lived consistently south of the river and for longest at 4 West Place, Southwark, 1845–1848, until moving to 7 Brecknock Terrace, Camden, in 1849. This probably mirrored the needs of his parallel career as a theatre painter, and perhaps increasing prosperity.
From October 1846 Brunning was principal scene-painter for George Bolton's management of the Olympic Theatre off the Strand and appears to have joined the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street for the winter season of 1847. The following year (1848–1849) he was at Sadler's Wells, working under Frederick Fenton, and with him again painted the Christmas pantomime assisted by Laidlaw and others.
According to the Examiner of 29th September 1849, when James Anderson became the new lessee of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane at that time, he engaged Brunning as one of his painters and in the Christmas pantomime of ‘Harlequin and Good Queen Bess’ Brunning did a ‘Grand Moving Panorama ... Illustrative of Her Most Gracious Majesty's Visit to Ireland’ which was praised (as a ‘diorama’) in the Morning Post of 27th December. This was also the subject of a painting he showed at the SBA in 1850. On 29th December the same paper reviewed favourably the scenic and ethnographic Panorama of New Zealand, shown in the exhibition rooms known until 1845 as Miss Linwood's Gallery (of needlework pictures) at Saville House, Leicester Square. This was executed by ‘W. A. Brunning, J. Zatter, E. Hassel, H. S. Melville and W. Wilson’, under the supervision of S. C. Brees, who appears to have been its promoter. How long this continued is unclear but Brees offered it for sale in 1851.
Brunning was elected a member of the SBA early in 1849 and that April exhibited two works there: A fishing boat putting about for her rudder off Elizabeth Castle, Jersey—Morning and A peep under Westminster Bridge. They were bought by the Art Union of London, for £60 and £25 respectively (Morning Post, 2nd June). The following year saw his largest single group of works (10) exhibited, again at the SBA, but this was also his last appearance. He died that summer at Brecknock Terrace, aged 31, and was buried at Highgate Cemetery (of St James's) on 16th July. His widow later moved to 3 Orchard Place, Kentish Town, from which their daughter Priscilla was married (aged 17) on 1st July 1858 to a 24-year-old stockbroker, William Charles Dale, son of the Reverend Thomas Dale, a canon of St Paul's Cathedral. Mrs Priscilla Brunning herself died, aged fifty-three, in the July–September quarter 1877, still in the St Pancras registry district.
The 'Antaus' under Repair (McLean Museum and Art Gallery) is not one of Brunning's exhibited easel paintings. The subject of a merchant ship under repair in a dry-dock would have been unusual for a work of its large size. This and its dramatic perspective suggest it is possibly a section from some sort of panoramic entertainment, though the scale is probably too small for a theatre piece, the ship apparently invented (since none of the name is obvious) and the location uncertain, though probably based on the Thames waterfront. Since this piece was first drafted, Chris Ellmers has pointed out that it is the same general view as appears in the engraving titled, Ship on the Stocks building: and ship in Dock for repairs, facing p.459 in George Dodd’s Days at the Factories (1843) at the start of two chapters (20 and 21) on ‘Days at a Ship-Yard’. If so it is at ‘Messrs Green, Wigrams and Green’ – i.e. Blackwall Yard, east London – which is the one Dodd visited and gives a detailed account of.
Brunning was clearly a capable scene-painter. The ‘Antaus’ image shows his capacity for visual drama in oils as well and he otherwise seems to have been a competent gallery artist. When the Morning Post (18th April) reviewed the SBA exhibition of 1849 it took notice of his ‘Fishing boat’ picture, suggesting that as a marine composition it was overly indebted to the manner of Stanfield – whose stage work may also have influenced him – but suspended judgement based on a single example. This is a useful comment insofar as it suggests that Brunning's intended course was following that of Stanfield and David Roberts (1796–1864) who had earlier made their names as theatre painters before becoming Royal Academy exhibitors and, in their cases, founder members of the SBA. Whether Brunning would also have followed them into the ranks of Royal Academicians is hypothetical, but his longer-term aim was probably also to graduate from the theatre into the greater liberty, potential rewards and respectability of full-time gallery work. Whatever caused his early death, the hard labour of stage painting from late boyhood and trying to forge an easel reputation at the same time may have contributed to it.
Gallery works by Brunning occasionally resurface: A lane in Kent (probably exh. RA 1843) was sold at Hall’s, Shrewsbury, on 28th March 2007; Fisherfolk by the Sea at Christie’s East in New York on 29th October 1992, and Market Scene, Normandy at Bonham’s, London, on 7th October 1976.
Adapted and updated from Pieter van der Merwe, 'William Allen Brunning, S.B.A. (1818–50): a forgotten artist scene-painter', in 'Theatre Notebook' (Journal of the Society for Theatre Research), vol. 66, no. 3, October 2012.
Text source: Art Detective
