John Ralston (artist)

Manchester had been a large market town (and the centre of Lancashire's textiles industry) for several centuries, but as the 19th century dawned the city was experiencing an unprecedented population boom due to the Industrial Revolution. Large cotton mills and other factories were being constructed rapidly, as well as new slums to house the thousands of immigrants from elsewhere in the United Kingdom and overseas who came to work in "Cottonopolis".[6] However, the city was not associated with the arts; even as late as the 1870s, the prominent Victorian art critic John Ruskin believed that Manchester could "produce no good art and no good literature" due to its intense focus on commerce and industry.[7][8]

Windmill and Sailing Boats (1813), an early sketch in graphite

Within this historical context it is plausible that Ralston's family moved south to Lancashire to find work, rather than Ralston deliberately picking the area as an appropriate place to study art. Some modern sources do claim that he moved to Manchester at the age of 17 specifically to study at the Manchester School of Art, though that institution was not founded until five years after his death.[9][10][11]

However he came to Manchester, his talent was first recognised and encouraged by Francis Astley, the wealthy owner of a large estate in Dukinfield. Francis' father, John Astley, had eked out a living as a professional painter for many years before marrying a wealthy widow and inheriting her fortune, and Francis was himself an amateur painter, and a patron of many local artists, who "was enabled to trace, in the rude attempts of the unassuming boy, the budding power of Linnaeus which ripened to so great maturity."[12][13]

Ralston then studied under Joseph Parry, or "Old Parry" as he was known to his contemporaries—a Liverpool-born painter who was given the title of "The Father of Art in Manchester" after relocating to the city in 1790 and earning acclaim for his depictions of urban life.[14][15][16] Ralston also studied under John Rathbone, an oils and watercolours landscape painter known in his day as "the Manchester Wilson".[17][9][18] Rathbone died in 1807, implying that Ralston was no older than 18 when he moved to Manchester.[17]

Ralston lived at 26 Brazennose Street from the time he settled in Manchester until shortly before his death.[19] By the late 1810s he had built a reputation as a skilled artist, and much like his teacher Rathbone he had a fondness for "the picturesque," producing several paintings of "castles, ruined abbeys, and dilapidated cottages."[20] However, he was most well-regarded as a marine painter.[13][21][22]

He was particularly fond of walking through the city and surrounding countryside, making sketches from everyday scenes that caught his eye—a habit inherited from Old Parry—and over time he became increasingly interested in Manchester's new urban environments, including its mills and factories, as much as traditional rural scenes.[15][16][20]

Old Blackfriars Footbridge over the River Irwell (c.1825)—oil painting by Ralston, based on the earlier drawing he made for Views of the Ancient Buildings in Manchester

Like many of the UK's rapidly growing cities during the Industrial Revolution, Manchester's existing medieval urban fabric came to be seen as a hindrance by civic leaders—its small, old wooden buildings were unable to host large machinery, and its narrow streets limited the flow of traffic. In 1821 Parliament passed the Manchester Streets Improvement Act, which empowered local commissioners to begin a 12-year project of modernising the city centre by widening several key roads by up to 15 feet either side, as well as lowering them all to a uniform level. The most dramatic impact was on Market Stead Lane (now known as Market Street), the city's main east–west throroughfare, which had to be lowered up to six feet in some stretches, and where some of the city's most well-known buildings were demolished.[23][24]

Ralston was commissioned that same year by local publisher D. & P. Jackson to document Market Street before its transformation. A prospectus announcing the series, Views of the Ancient Buildings in Manchester, stated that subscribers could expect 20 lithographs, split across four volumes—although in the end only just over half of the pictures were actually published between 1823 and 1825, which were gathered into a single volume after Ralston's death.[19]

It is unknown why Views was cut short. In 1869, Manchester's deputy mayor Thomas Baker (himself an antiquarian) reported that the series had had 124 subscribers ("a sufficiently large list"), and that the original engraved plates were by that point in the hands of private collectors—with most owned by John Knowles. He listed the titles of the pieces in Views as follows:

1. Dedication page (including illustration by Mather Brown of "a female figure holding an escutcheon bearing the bendlet of Manchester")
2. Market Place, Manchester
3. The late Dr. White's house, King Street
4. Market Street (depicting Sharp's ironmongery shop and Hyde's tea warehouse)
5. Market Street (view towards the Exchange, including Newall's grocery shop)
6. Market Street, Manchester (another view towards the Exchange, including Styan's gun shop)
7. Blackfriars Bridge (the old footbridge, dismantled in 1817 and presumably first sketched by Ralston around that time)
8. Top of Market Street, Manchester (depicting the Swan coach office opposite the corner of Brown Street)
9. Middle Market Street, Manchester (depicting the state lottery office)
10. Mr. Hyde's Shop, Market Street (two versions, with a large crowd, including a coach and four horses, in front of the shop)
11. Salford Cross (figures in the street are credited to Denis Dighton)
12. Salford Cross (an alternative view with slightly different perspective)[19]

At least one further drawing was published in the series, but not included in the collected volume which Baker was describing—Smithy Door looking to Cateaton Street (1825)—though he had seen its plate exhibited in 1857 and noted its similarity to the other pieces in Views.[19] This "missing 13th plate" resurfaced in an auction at Sotheby's in 1975, allowing its inclusion in a reprint of Views published that same year which used the original plates for all the pieces.[25]

Eight pencil drawings in the style of the Views (all dated 1822) were uncovered by a private collector in 1875 and published in the book Olde Manchester to "complete" the set, but Smithy Door was not among them. Instead, it was included in an appendix of "other plates illustrative of Manchester in bygone days." These nine drawings also have a "rough and unfinished character" compared to the pieces that appeared in the final version of Views—for example, the Olde Manchester version of Smithy Door depicts fewer people in the street, and the view of Manchester Cathedral in the distance is obscured.[12][25] Ralston first sketched the scenes in Views on location in pencil or watercolour, then returned home to produce more detailed, "final" versions, from which the lithographic plates were copied—the nine sketches included in Olde Manchester were likely Ralston's original first drafts for prints which were cancelled. (He also produced oil paintings of some of the scenes in Views; they tend to be traditional landscapes, with less of a focus on architectural detail.)[12]

The inconsistency over Smithy Door's inclusion by later writers reflects inconsistency in the numbering of the original series. Baker notes that a revised second version of Mr. Hyde's Shop was printed due to the poor quality of the lithography of the first version, and that there was a similar issue with Salford Cross—but he only counts the latter as two separate works, despite both versions of each being included in the final volume. The dedication page may also have only been produced for the collected volume, and Baker was mistakenly counting it as one of the planned 20 lithographs intended for subscribers.[19]

• 
  Market Place, Manchester (1823)—reproduction published in 1875; likely derived from an original sketch in 1821.
• 
  Market Stead Lane, Manchester (c.1825)—a later oil painting of the scene from Market Place, Manchester (1821).
• 
  First version of Salford Cross (c.1823)—additional figures by Denis Dighton.
• 
  Second version of Salford Cross (c.1823)
• 
  Old Smithy Door, Manchester (1822)—graphite sketch, looking toward the Cathedral.
• 
  Smithy Door looking to Cateaton Street (1825)—final lithograph version; additional figures by Dighton.

Though not considered especially remarkable during Ralston's lifetime, Views is his most enduring body of work as it contains the only known images of several of the buildings and landmarks within (such as the Salford Cross).[26] The prints are considered to be faithful representations of pre-modern Manchester's architectural heritage and street life, and have been reproduced in a number of history books, magazines, newspapers, and academic texts.[27][28][23][29][30][31]

An Extensive View of Manchester, from the South-West, with Wood-Sawyers in the Foreground (c.1820)

The landscape painter George Wilfred Anthony—who also penned art criticism in The Manchester Guardian as "Gabriel Tinto"—studied under Ralston in the 1820s.[32][33]

In 1823, a group of local leaders voted to establish the "Manchester Institution for the Promotion of Literature, Science and the Arts" at a meeting to address the widely held perception of Manchester as a cultural backwater (and especially relative to the city's greatest rival, Liverpool). The Royal Manchester Institution (as it would shortly become known) purchased a plot of land on Mosley Street for the construction of a large headquarters and exhibition space, designed by the architect Charles Barry, in 1825.[34]

However, the building (now Manchester Art Gallery) would not be finished until 1835; in the meantime, the Institution held the very first painting exhibition in Manchester, in 1827, at 83 Market Street. Ralston was one of 18 local artists selected for inclusion.[30] Until 1830—when enough of the Mosley Street building had been completed for a partial opening—the Institution would hold a series of further exhibitions at 83 Market Street, featuring both nationally and internationally renowned works alongside those of artists working locally. In each of these exhibitions there was a core group of Manchester-based artists—Ralston, brothers Charles and Michael Pease Calvert, Henry Liverseege, Arthur Perigal, Thomas Henry Illidge, and James Parry (son of Joseph)—whose works were always included.[35]

However, despite this critical success Ralston consistently struggled to actually sell his works. For example, The Manchester Courier's report on a September 1830 exhibition at the Royal Institution notes that Ralston's Storm is "[a] most splendid and spirited production; the execution is vigorous, and the colouring deep and effective, though tender ... and [we] very much doubt if there be half a dozen men in the kingdom who could surpass it," but then adds that it is "(unsold!)"—almost in disbelief.[36]

The historian Janet Wolff has pointed out that Ralston was not unusual at this time, noting that the stereotype of the "starving artist" was very much grounded in fact in 19th century Manchester. In the period up until the 1870s, all of Ralston, Liverseege, William Bradley, David Henry Parry (another son of Joseph Parry), James Gregory Pollitt, and Henry James Holding died from some combination of poverty and illness, while some high-profile painters who came to Manchester to explore its emerging art market—such as Mather Brown—quickly left after failing to find a foothold.[23]

In 1830, a group of painters, sculptors, and architects formed "the Manchester Artists", a "fraternity society" which was intended to represent their interests within Manchester's nascent cultural establishment. Ralston was one of six men—alongside Perigal, Illidge, Charles Calvert, James Parry, and William Bury—who were elected as the "nucleus" of this new society.[37][38]

Despite the best attempts of the city's elites to encourage a homegrown art scene, the general public was less enthusiastic—in a report on an exhibition at the Royal Institution in 1832, The Manchester Courier bemoaned "a lamentable falling off in the number of productions by our resident artists," with the blame laid squarely at the feet of "our fellow townsmen" for not "encouraging resident talent." The writer notes that Illidge, Perigal, Bradley, and Benjamin Rawlinson Faulkner had all left the city to make more money elsewhere, leaving behind a "general desertion and sterility"; two of Ralston's works, Sea Calm and A View of the Friends' Meeting House, were cited as rare examples among what was left to exhibit "which really deserve the attention of the lover of excellence in art."[39]