William Stirling Maxwell
Bishopbriggs, 1818 - 1878, Venice
LC Heading: Stirling Maxwell, William, 1818-1878
Biography:
Maxwell, Sir William Stirling, ninth baronet (1818–1878), art historian, historian, and book collector, was born William Stirling on 8 March 1818 at Kenmure House, Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, the only son of Archibald Stirling of Keir and Cawder (1769–1847) and Elizabeth Maxwell (1793–1822), daughter of Sir John Maxwell, seventh baronet, of Pollok. He had two sisters, Hannah-Ann (1816–1843) and Elizabeth (1822–1845).
Family background and early life
Stirling was proud to belong to one of Scotland's ancient families, who traced their descent from Walter de Striueling (fl. 1150), grandfather of Thomas de Striueling (d. 1227), chancellor of Scotland, and he encouraged William Fraser's The Stirlings of Keir and their Family Papers (1858). His family's loyalty to the Stuart kings was reflected in its Episcopalianism and fuelled Stirling's romantic interest in the Jacobites. His mother's equally ancient family, the Maxwells of Pollok, however, brought different traditions: they had a covenanting past and were reforming whigs, in contrast to the Stirlings' conservatism. These opposing standpoints, which sometimes caused family tensions, helped form Sir William's liberal character. His toryism was regarded by many ‘as a matter of family tradition rather than of personal predilection’ (The Scotsman, 17 Jan 1878), while his religious tolerance was demonstrated on many occasions, such as in 1853, when he supported the right of Jews to enter parliament.
Stirling was educated at private schools run by the Revd D. B. Langley at Pilton rectory, Northamptonshire, and by the Revd John Babington at Cossington rectory, Leicestershire, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. His tutor at Trinity, where he was a fellow-commoner from 1835 to 1839, was William Whewell, and contemporaries such as Ralph W. Grey, Lord John Manners, Francis, Baron Napier, and Trinity fellow John Donaldson became his friends. He graduated BA in 1839 and proceeded MA in 1843. In 1839 he went on a grand tour of Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy in the company of George Holland and enjoyed the opportunity to sow wild oats as well to see great art and architecture. He failed to become tory candidate for Perthshire before the 1841 election, mainly because, in the crisis over patronage in the Church of Scotland, his family had given support to the non-intrusionists who opposed the right of lairds to veto a congregation's choice of minister. Bitterly disappointed, he set out on an extended tour in 1841, this time including the Middle East, where his experience as ‘a dweller in tents, by the Red Sea’ resulted in his Songs of the Holy Land (1846), which made rich associative use of biblical language and place names.
Historian of Spain and Spanish art
Stirling also paid a first brief visit to Spain, where he was enchanted by Seville. By early 1843 he had decided to write a history of Spanish art to answer a growing demand for publications on Spain. He began collecting the important source books on Spanish art and toured Spain again, as well as visiting British private collections containing Spanish art. The resulting three-volume Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848) was by far the most comprehensive and scholarly work in its field in English by that date. It was a remarkable achievement for an author of thirty and it was innovative in a number of important ways, such as its arrangement of material chronologically according to monarchs' reigns and geographical areas, its placing of art in Spain within a broad social, cultural, and historical context, and its publication of the first catalogues of the works of Velázquez and Murillo.
The Annals was well received at the time, notably by the art critic Richard Ford, who became a close friend. Ford compared it favourably with the shorter, less ambitious work by Sir Edmund Head which appeared the same year, describing Stirling's work in the Quarterly Review as ‘an olla podrida ... stuffed with savouries, the national garlic not omitted’ (Quarterly Review, 83, June–September 1848, 11). The scant discussion of artistic technique, however, prompted the German writer Karl Justi to label Stirling as ‘far more of a historian ... and man of letters than a connoisseur’ (Justi, 10). More recently, opinion has swung back in favour of Stirling's broad perspective, with Jonathan Brown's praise of the Annals' ‘extraordinary ... scope and seriousness’ (Brown, 6). A project in 1857–9 to translate the Annals into Spanish unfortunately failed. Stirling's care over the design and illustrations of the Annals was typical: a bibliophile, he was fascinated by printing and reproduction. A fourth volume of twenty-five copies consisted of extra illustrations using the Talbotype photographic process developed by William Fox Talbot and became the first use of photography in an art history book.
Stirling wrote a number of other books on Spain and Spanish art. In 1855 Velazquez and his Works reworked the Annals material on the artist, with a new catalogue of prints after his works. It was soon superseded by Justi's comprehensive study but it heralded the new monographic approach in art history. A Spanish translation was serialized in the Gaceta de Madrid and there were also German and French translations, the latter with notes and a catalogue by the French art critic William Burger (Théodore Thoré).
Stirling's most successful book in terms of sales and editions was The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth (1852), following his two articles on the subject in Fraser's Magazine. It also appeared in German, Dutch, and Spanish translations. The great Renaissance figure was one of Stirling's heroes and, like many historians, Stirling was fascinated by the emperor's decision to abdicate power and retreat to a Spanish monastery. His study was inspired by an evocative drawing of the monastery at Yuste by Ford, to whom he dedicated the book, and he also composed a romantic ballad on the abdication. His book was nevertheless an important and rigorous piece of scholarship as well as a popular and accessible history, but as a standard reference work it was soon eclipsed by studies by Mignet and Gachard.
Stirling also had a fascination for Charles's illegitimate son Don John of Austria. As early as 1842 he noted that ‘a good history of him in English would be popular’ (‘Hints on things in general’, 1842, Stirlings of Keir MSS, T-SK 28/9). His two-volume Don John of Austria, or, Passages from the History of the Sixteenth Century (1883) was finally published posthumously and was a scholarly yet very readable history. Most of the work for the book had been completed by 1859, and in 1864 a single-volume edition of ten copies was printed. The delays reflected Stirling's perfectionism as both historian and book designer.
Bibliophile and art collector
Stirling succeeded to his father's estates of Keir and Cawder in 1847, and in 1852 sold the loss-making Jamaica plantations which he had also inherited. Between 1849 and 1852 he commissioned a young London architect, Alfred Jenoure, to carry out alterations to Keir House. The ambitious scheme transformed the neo-classical pile into an idiosyncratic expression of Stirling's tastes and interests. At the centre was his magnificent two-storey library, lined in cedar, with specially designed furniture and fittings. Dr Waagen found it ‘too remarkable a room not to be mentioned’ and noted that every surface was carved with mottoes, ‘the study of which would occupy an ordinary length of life very profitably’ (Waagen, 453). The books were beautifully bound and embossed with Stirling's armorial devices, and he himself designed the ex libris slips which incorporated his mottoes, such as Gang Forward and Poco a Poco.
Stirling's book collecting covered several related areas, as documented by his catalogues: An essay towards a collection of books relating to the arts of design, being a catalogue of those at Keir (1850; updated, 1860) and An essay towards a collection of books [of] proverbs, emblems, apophthegms, epitaphs and ana (1860). The obsessive nature of his collecting was exemplified by his large accumulation of emblem books, now in Glasgow University Library, which numbered around 1200. It was probably the largest collection ever amassed and its owner was one of the most important figures in the nineteenth-century revival of interest in emblems.
Stirling also became an active art collector, particularly during the 1850s, when there were several important auctions of Spanish art in London, most notably of Louis-Philippe's Galerie Espagnole in 1853, and of Frank Hall Standish's collection, which had been left to the French king. Stirling's Spanish art collection became the most extensive in Britain, with works by (or then attributed to) artists ‘whose names have hardly crossed the seas and mountains that bound the Peninsula’ (Annals of the Artists of Spain, 1891, 1.61–2). Its contents reflected many of the themes of the Annals, such as the exploration of art patronage by Spanish rulers, which was echoed by the inclusion of many royal portraits. Similarly, as one of the first art historians of Spain to discuss the role and status of the artist, he was attracted to portraits of artists, especially self-portraits.
Perhaps surprisingly, the collection did not contain major works by Velázquez and Murillo, the best-known Spanish artists in Britain by that date, but Stirling did become the first important British collector of both El Greco and Goya, neither of whom was hitherto much known or appreciated in Britain. The majority of his Goyas, not surprisingly, were prints, most of them rare proofs acquired from his friend Valentín Carderera (1796–1880), one of the most important figures in establishing Goya's reputation in Spain. Another of Stirling's advanced tastes was for the paintings and illustrated books which accompanied the poems of William Blake. The relationship between word and image in Blake's work must have been of special interest to a collector of emblem books. He also collected paintings and prints of the Stuart kings and the Jacobite pretenders.
Stirling's collecting of copies, both painted copies and prints after paintings, was also unusual. These were the source of many illustrations for his books and often provided valuable visual references before photographs were readily available. His Essay towards a catalogue of prints, engraved from the works of ... Velazquez and ... Murillo (1873) was based on his own extensive collection and that of his friend Charles Morse. Stirling's interest in copies, and his tendency to focus more on content than on style and technique in art, certainly laid his collecting open to the criticism that it lacked connoisseurship; but equally his approach can be seen as challenging modern assumptions that ‘connoisseurship’ is the only important quality of a collector. He was also a better connoisseur in the traditional sense than he has generally been given credit for. Further evidence of his commitment to the multiple image was provided by his pioneering books of facsimile prints using the new photolithographic methods, including Examples of the Engraved Portraiture of the Sixteenth Century (1872), Solyman the Magnificent Going to Mosque (1563; facsimile edn, 1877), and the anatomical tables of Vesalius (1538; facsimile edn, 1874).
Public life and connections
In 1852 Stirling became Conservative MP for Perthshire and gained a reputation as an independent who voted according to conscience. He lost his seat in 1868 but regained it in 1874 and held it until his death. Education, particularly higher education, became one of his principal concerns and he served on the Scottish education board and the University of London senate. In the 1860s he campaigned for separate parliamentary representation for graduates of Scottish universities, as was enjoyed by Oxford and Cambridge. He was elected rector of St Andrews University in 1863 and of Edinburgh University in 1871, and in 1875 was elected chancellor of Glasgow University. On the issue of whether women medical students should be awarded degrees, which was fiercely debated at Edinburgh at the time, he supported the women's cause, and was instrumental in getting the law changed on this matter.
From 1853 Stirling served on the government select committee on the fine arts and he later became a trustee of the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the British Museum. He spent much of his time in the reading-room of the latter, where his private writing-case was kept for him in the inner library and was opened with a tiny key from a ring on his finger. He was also one of the founding members of the Philobiblon Society in 1854, along with his friends the duc d'Aumale and Richard Monckton Milnes, and a number of his essays and special editions were published by the society. He was a great admirer of Sir Walter Scott, and many of his ideas on history as well as politics can be traced to Scott's influence. In 1871 he was involved in organizing an exhibition in Edinburgh to celebrate the centenary of Scott's birth. He was also on the committee formed in 1856 to commission stained glass for Glasgow Cathedral, which controversially chose Munich glass. Stirling later asked the committee secretary, the architect Charles Heath Wilson, to design his family monument for Lecropt church, near Keir.
As an agriculturist, Stirling was an important breeder of traditional strains of livestock, notably shorthorn cattle and Clydesdale horses, and a pedigree which included Keir blood added considerably to an animal's value. He was honorary secretary of the Highland and Agricultural Society from 1868 and also served as president of the Glasgow Agricultural Society.
In 1865 Stirling succeeded his uncle Sir John Maxwell to the Pollok estate near Glasgow, though he continued to live at Keir. He was also permitted to succeed to the Maxwell baronetcy and became Sir William Stirling Maxwell, while in 1876 he was made knight of the Thistle, a rare honour for a commoner. On 26 April 1865 he married Lady Anna Maria Leslie Melville, daughter of the earl of Leven and Melville; they had two sons, John and Archibald. In 1874 Lady Anna died tragically after a burning accident at Keir. On 1 March 1877, despite the opposition of some of his family, Sir William married his long-time friend Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, née Sheridan (1808–1877), just months before her death on 15 June that year. His own death from a fever occurred soon afterwards in Venice on 15 January 1878. He was buried on 31 January in the Keir vault at Lecropt church.
Stirling Maxwell was remembered as a rigorous scholar and a man of enlightened views whose hospitality was enjoyed by many at Keir and his London house at 128 Park Street. His friends included Thackeray and Disraeli, while he corresponded with bibliophiles in many countries and with specialists on Spanish topics in Spain and America. He was made honorary member of Spain's Real Academia de la Historia and corresponding member of its Real Academia de Bellas Artes. He has sometimes been dismissed as a dilettante, an assessment that misses the remarkable originality and modernity of many of his ideas and his seriousness as a scholar. Photographs and descriptions highlight the fierce eyebrows which belied his kind nature. John Gray, curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, lamented the lack of a good portrait which would have recorded:
the powerful individuality of the furrowed face which one remembers so well. It is greatly to be regretted that we have no more ... adequate memorial of this eminent Scotsman, than whom few indeed of our own times have been worthier of perfect portrayal and continued memory. (Gray, 41)
According to his will, Stirling Maxwell's collections were divided equally between his sons, and the elder, John (1866–1956), was required to choose between the Keir and Pollok estates. He chose the latter and succeeded to the baronetcy and represented the College division of Glasgow as a Conservative from 1895 to 1906. Keir House was sold by Sir William's grandson Lieutenant-Colonel William Stirling, and its collection dispersed. Much of his collection can, however, still be seen at Pollok House, Glasgow.
Hilary Macartney
Sources W. Fraser, The Stirlings of Keir (privately printed, Edinburgh, 1858) · W. Fraser, ed., Memoirs of the Maxwells of Pollok, 2 vols. (privately printed, Edinburgh, 1863) · DNB · The Scotsman (17 Jan 1878) · R. Monckton Milnes, The Academy (26 Jan 1878), 75 · The Athenaeum (19 Jan 1878), 89 · Glasgow Herald (17 Jan 1878) · The Times (17 Jan 1878) · R. Guy, ed., ‘Biographical note’, in Miscellaneous essays and addresses: the works of Sir William Stirling Maxwell, large paper edn, 6 (1891), xxix–xxxii, 461–84 · BL cat. · G. F. Waagen, Galleries and cabinets of art in Great Britain (1857), 448–53 · J. M. Gray, Notes on the art treasures at Keir, Perthshire (privately printed, Edinburgh, 1887) [repr. from The Scottish Leader] · J. L. Caw, Catalogue of pictures at Pollok House (privately printed, Glasgow, 1936) · R. L. Douglas, ‘Catalogue of paintings at Keir House’ · H. Black and D. Weston, eds., A short title catalogue of the emblem books and related works in the Stirling Maxwell collection of Glasgow University Library (1988) · [R. Ford], review of E. Head, A handbook of the Spanish and French schools of painting, and W. Stirling, Annals of the Spanish artists, QR, 83 (1848), 1–37 · K. Justi, Velazquez and his times, trans. A. H. Keane (1889) · J. Brown, ‘Observations on the historiography of seventeenth-century Spanish painting’, Images and ideas in seventeenth-century Spanish painting (1978), 3–18 · A. Rowan, ‘Keir House, Perthshire, III’, Country Life, 158 (1975), 506–10 · ‘Funeral of Sir William Stirling Maxwell’, Glasgow Herald (1 Feb 1878) · W. W. Rouse Ball and J. A. Venn, eds., Admissions to Trinity College, Cambridge, 4 (1911), 414 · E. Harris, ‘Sir William Stirling-Maxwell and the history of Spanish art’, Apollo, 79 (1964), 73–7 · I. G. C. Hutchison, A political history of Scotland, 1832–1924 (1986), p. 21 and n. 131
Archives Mitchell L., Glas., Glasgow City Archives, account by Rawdon Brown of Sir William's fatal illness, death certificate, permissions to transport body, T-SK 34 · Mitchell L., Glas., Glasgow City Archives, corresp., T-PM 119 · Mitchell L., Glas., Glasgow City Archives, corresp. and papers, incl. diaries, T-SK 28–33 · Mitchell L., Glas., Glasgow City Archives, Maxwell family MSS · Mitchell L., Glas., Glasgow City Archives, Genealogical history of the Stirlings of Keir and Cadder, 1854, T-SK 38/3 · NRA, priv. coll., letters to the Stirling family · Pollok House, Glasgow, collection · U. Glas., collection and emblem books :: Bodl. Oxf., letters to Benjamin Disraeli · Bodl. Oxf., letters to J. and J. Leighton, booksellers · National Monuments Record of Scotland, inventory of Keir plans, drawings, and photographs · NL Scot., MSS · Trinity Cam., letters to Richard Monckton Milnes, Houghton MS 16 · U. Edin. L., letters to David Laing
Likenesses G. Richmond, chalk drawing, c.1856, priv. coll. [see illus.] · F. J. Williamson, bronze bust, 1873, Scot. NPG; related plaster bust, NPG · F. J. Williamson, marble bust, 1878, Pollok House, Glasgow · W. Douglas, oils (as a child), Pollok House, Glasgow · J. Graham-Gilbert, oils (as a young man); Christies, 22–24 May 1995, lot 477 · W. Holl, stipple (Grillion's Club series; after drawing by G. Richmond, c.1856), BM · R. B. Parkes, mezzotint (after photograph by T. Rodger), repro. in Guy, ed., ‘Biographical note’, frontispiece · T. Rodger, carte-de-visite, NPG · F. J. Williamson, terracotta bust, NPG · engraving (after G. Richmond), repro. in Annals, 1 (1891), frontispiece · photograph, priv. coll. · portrait, miniature, watercolour (when a child), probably priv. coll.; repro. in J. L Caw, Catalogue of pictures at Pollok House, 189 · wood-engraving, NPG; repro. in ILN (25 Nov 1871)
Wealth at death £202,817 6s. 6d.: confirmation, 26 April 1878, CCI · £1225 3s. 7d.: additional estate, 8 July 1886, CCI · £1190 11s. 3d.: additional estate, 3 April 1889, CCI · under £25,000 effects in England: resworn double probate, June 1878, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
(“Maxwell, Sir William Stirling, ninth baronet (1818–1878),” Hilary Macartney in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2006, accessed September 2015.www.oxforddnb.com)
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