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In London in the late summer of 1770, a young poet named | 0:00:14 | 0:00:19 | |
Thomas Chatterton returned to his roomy house in Holborn | 0:00:19 | 0:00:23 | |
and climbed the narrow stairs to his third-floor garret. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:27 | |
Without knowing it, he was about to create a myth that has dogged | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
poets like me ever since. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
A myth that has compelled | 0:00:36 | 0:00:37 | |
many of our finest poets to follow in his footsteps. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
When the door was prised open a few days later, | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
Chatterton's corpse was found stretched out on his pallet bed, | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
an empty phial of arsenic lying near his lifeless hand. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
He was 17 years and 9 months old. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:59 | |
But Thomas Chatterton was to die not once, but several times. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:05 | |
His death would be replayed in the works of romantic poets, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:10 | |
Pre-Raphaelite painters and pioneering Victorian photographers. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
And through these repeated deaths he would become | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
a paradigm of literary Bohemianism. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
In 1856, the painter Henry Wallis | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
made Chatterton the subject of a new oil painting. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
It is now one of the 19th century's most enduring images, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:34 | |
but when it first appeared, this delicate, desolate scene caught | 0:01:34 | 0:01:39 | |
the public imagination to an extent that no-one could have anticipated. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
Poets have a strange image in our culture. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:49 | |
There's a persistent myth that in order to write great poems | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
the poet has to risk everything. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
And there is a roll call of 20th century poets, Sylvia Plath, | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
Dylan Thomas, John Berryman, who seem to endorse that view. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:03 | |
Wallis' painting is perhaps the ultimate icon of the doomed poet. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:08 | |
But how did this painting become | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
so much more famous than the poet who inspired it? | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
It's a very powerful image, a tortured poet, broken by poverty | 0:02:14 | 0:02:20 | |
and obscurity, driven to madness and self-destruction. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:24 | |
As a poet I hate it, or at least I hate the myth it made. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:31 | |
Despite its beauty and technical mastery, there is something | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
repellent in the painting's declaration that the true | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
poet must be prepared to sacrifice his or her life to serve the muse. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:45 | |
It is a painting that haunts me. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
To understand the myth of Thomas Chatterton, | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
we have to know a little of the life. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:08 | |
18th-century Bristol was an unpropitious background for a poet. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:16 | |
A clamorous, intensely commercial city built largely | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
on the profits on the trade in wine and sugar... | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
and, notoriously, slaves. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
It was into this hive of commerce in 1752 | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
that Thomas Chatterton was born... | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
..here in this modest house | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
attached to the school where his father taught. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
Young Chatterton was a moody, | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
introverted boy at odds with brash, mercantile Bristol. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:52 | |
From an early age he would spend hours escaping into his own | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
fantasy world. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
With the aid of folios, manuscripts | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
and the family's black-letter Bible, he taught himself to read. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:04 | |
But it was the looming edifice of St Mary Redcliffe, | 0:04:06 | 0:04:09 | |
just across the way, that really took hold of him. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:13 | |
As one acquaintance recalled, Chatterton would often fix his eyes | 0:04:13 | 0:04:17 | |
upon the church and seem as if he were in a kind of trance or ecstasy. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:22 | |
Once inside, beneath its magnificent vaulted ceiling, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
Chatterton began to lose himself in his very own gothic reverie. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:40 | |
The church became Chatterton's medieval playground. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
He would spend hours among the tombs and effigies, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
and in particular he liked to sit here, | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
immersed in an old book beside the monument to William Canynges, | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
former mayor of Bristol and one of the church's great benefactors. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
But there was another more secluded part of the church which | 0:05:06 | 0:05:12 | |
became Chatterton's private sanctuary... | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
..and the place where his imagination really began to form. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
Chatterton liked to hide himself away | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
up here in the muniments room, high above the north porch. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:31 | |
He was fascinated by these great oak coffers | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
and in particular by what they contained - | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
vellum and parchments, some as old as the Wars of the Roses. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
It was here that the 16-year-old Chatterton claimed to | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
have discovered a treasure, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
a sequence of ancient poems | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
dating from the reign of Edward IV by a monk named Thomas Rowley. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:57 | |
The poems featured as their principle character | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
the very same William Canynges beside whose effigy | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
in the church below Chatterton had spent so many of his waking hours. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:08 | |
But the Rowley poems were, in fact, a marvellous fabrication, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:16 | |
a hoax written by none other than the young Thomas Chatterton himself. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:21 | |
Delving into dictionaries of old English, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
studying the poetic techniques of Chaucer, Dryden | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
and Shakespeare, he managed to create an authentic medieval style. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:32 | |
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn, | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
Drain my heartes blood away, | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
Life and all its good I scorn, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
Dance by night or feast by day, | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
My love is dead, | 0:06:50 | 0:06:51 | |
Gone to his death-bed | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
All under the willow-tree. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
Once you get beyond the fake medieval spelling | 0:07:00 | 0:07:03 | |
and construction of these poems, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:05 | |
you can hear a real lyric ear at work. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
He clearly, although he was only 16 when he wrote that, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
had a prodigious natural talent. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
With a cannon of work around 700 pages long, the sheer quantity | 0:07:15 | 0:07:20 | |
of his poetry is remarkable, yet so is its inventiveness and range, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:26 | |
incorporating different verse forms, rhyme schemes and metrical patterns. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:31 | |
The so-called discovery of the Rowley poems caused quite a stir. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:38 | |
They were released in tantalising fits and starts and all backed | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
up with learned footnotes provided by their editor and discoverer, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:47 | |
T Chatterton. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
In the spring of 1769, Chatterton caught | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
the attention of the celebrated antiquarian Horace Walpole. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
Walpole was intrigued by the Rowley poems | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
and even considered printing them, but grew suspicious when | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
Chatterton rather rashly disclosed his age and lowly social status. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:12 | |
Then, when Walpole's friend the poet Thomas Grey declared | 0:08:12 | 0:08:16 | |
that the Rowley poems were not real antiquities, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
Walpole cut Chatterton dead. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
Young Thomas was devastated. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:25 | |
It brought home just how much his youth and humble roots | 0:08:25 | 0:08:29 | |
counted against him with the higher echelons. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
Following Walpole's snub, | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
Chatterton abandoned not only the Rowley poems | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
but also Bristol itself. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:41 | |
He headed for London where he took up political journalism, | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
penning article after article raging against government policies. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:50 | |
He did the rounds of London editors, bombarding them with ideas | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
and articles, many of which were eagerly snapped up. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
His work ranged from political diatribes | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
and eclogues to songs and burlesques in verse and prose. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
Within a year of his falling from grace with Walpole, | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
Chatterton had sold 31 articles, many under pseudonyms | 0:09:11 | 0:09:16 | |
like Vamp, Decimus and Harry Wildfire. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:19 | |
His career was on the up again | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
and a confident Thomas was granted an audience with | 0:09:24 | 0:09:26 | |
the Lord Mayor of London, William Beckford, | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
to try and win his support. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
The mayor liked him and his work and promised to back him. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
But two days before his endorsement was due to appear in print, | 0:09:37 | 0:09:42 | |
Beckford dropped dead of a fever. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
As over his misfortune with Walpole, Chatterton was scuppered again. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:56 | |
And at a time when the government was taking steps to curtail | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
the freedom of the press, | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
Chatterton felt that yet another door had slammed in his face. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
Two months later, in August 1770, the beautiful boy was found | 0:10:10 | 0:10:15 | |
dead in his garret and the myth of the doomed, tortured poet was born. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:20 | |
To start peeling back the layers of this myth, I have come to | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
Bristol Library to talk to the chairman of the Chatterton Society | 0:10:30 | 0:10:34 | |
and see some of the revealing artefacts that prove how the legend | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
was propagated almost immediately after Chatterton's death. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:43 | |
So what we have here, Michael, are the very makings of a myth. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
One of the early illustrations you can see here shows Despair | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
handing Chatterton a bowl of poison. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
So already, the illustrator here is focusing on the suicide, | 0:10:54 | 0:10:58 | |
the poison and not the poetry. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
Also what is immediately striking about these images | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
which were decades and decades before Wallis' famous painting, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
The Death Of Chatterton, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
he must have seen these, | 0:11:08 | 0:11:09 | |
because, although in both these images the bed is the other | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
way around, all the accoutrements of the suicide scene are there. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
The chest open at exactly the same angle as in the Wallis painting, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:20 | |
the medicine bottle on the floor, the heap of papers. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
There's no question he must have known about these. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
You're absolutely right. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
What Wallis was doing was essentially | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
embellishing these images. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:31 | |
He simply painted it again, if you like, but in beautiful colour | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
and in a Pre-Raphaelite style. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
And this is illustrated, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
but it's on cloth, not like the other images. What's that? | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
Yes, so this artefact is a handkerchief. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
Chatterton handkerchief? | 0:11:47 | 0:11:48 | |
And if anything indicates an industry growing | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
around the phenomenon of this sad boy's fate, it would be this. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:56 | |
Not only with people selling his poems onto publishers and so on, | 0:11:56 | 0:12:02 | |
but products being made in this way. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
So, this is the dead Chatterton merchandise, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
but this is actually something he had his hands on, isn't it? | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
Oh, it is indeed, yes, and perhaps the greatest myth of all. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:16 | |
This is Chatterton's pocket book of 1769 | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
that he took with him from Bristol to London. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
And he kept his accounts in it, but it's not the accounts | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
that are of particular interest, it's this on the back. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
You can see here this brown stain. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:32 | |
It was studied forensically | 0:12:32 | 0:12:34 | |
and found to contain opium deposits. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
So it's reasonable to suppose that Chatterton was taking laudanum | 0:12:38 | 0:12:45 | |
because he had the foul disease. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
What was the foul disease? | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
Well, it was a term used at the time to denote a venereal disease. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:55 | |
So I believe that he took the laudanum or opium | 0:12:55 | 0:13:00 | |
to deaden the pain from the vitriol and calomel medication | 0:13:00 | 0:13:05 | |
he was taking for the foul disease. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
And so, therefore, a more likely cause of his death, would have been | 0:13:07 | 0:13:12 | |
an overdose of his self-medication, an accidental overdose. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:16 | |
So he got the balance of his medicines wrong | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
and didn't commit suicide at all? | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
Well, that is currently the most plausible explanation. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:24 | |
So it now seems that the long-held belief in Chatterton's suicide | 0:13:25 | 0:13:30 | |
is, in fact, part of the very myth itself. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
His death was more than likely a terrible accident. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:36 | |
And yet, a tragic young suicide suited the purposes of sculptors, | 0:13:38 | 0:13:43 | |
illustrators and playwrights who, into the 19th century, began to | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
embroider the myth with their own sensibilities. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
And the next generation of poets, the Romantics, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
were to resurrect Chatterton as one of their own. | 0:13:56 | 0:14:00 | |
Keats dedicated Endymion to him... | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
..Shelley commemorated him in Adonais | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
and Wordsworth hailed him as the marvellous boy. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:11 | |
But these eulogies would be as nothing compared with the | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
impact of his death on canvas. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:20 | |
In 1856, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis | 0:14:22 | 0:14:27 | |
unveiled his painting and it caused a sensation. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:31 | |
I've come to examine it at Tate Britain with curator | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
Dr Carol Jacobi. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:36 | |
Carol, the first thing that strikes me | 0:14:36 | 0:14:38 | |
seeing the painting in flesh is the strength of the colour. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
From having seen reproductions of it over many years, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
I always remember the red of his hair and the blue of the breeches. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
He's all hair and trousers in my memory, but how is that achieved? | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
Well, the optical effect that you get with this painting is | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
different in real life than it is with a reproduction. | 0:14:57 | 0:14:59 | |
And the reason is that instead of using | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
a dull background to paint on, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:04 | |
which was the traditional way of doing it, he's used | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
a pure white background underneath the paint, so here, you can | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
see that he's laid on this beautiful prismatic colour over a white ground | 0:15:12 | 0:15:17 | |
and the white ground is shining through and lighting it up | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
and the effect is particularly beautiful | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
in the area of his red hair. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
Yes, it's as if it's back-lit somehow. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:27 | |
-It's an extraordinary effect. -Yes, that's exactly right. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
And like a lot of these Pre-Raphaelite paintings, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
it's full of narrative detail, as well, isn't it? | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
One of the ways they departed from traditional art of the time | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
is that the detail goes right to the edges of the painting. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
So here, for example, he's taken enormous trouble over | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
the torn up pieces of paper. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
Yes, they look like they've been torn up in a fury. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
Exactly, exactly. So we sort of get insight into the storm | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
before the calm, if you like. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:56 | |
The painting had an extraordinary after-life, didn't it? | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
With the help of Ruskin giving it a push, | 0:15:59 | 0:16:02 | |
it became phenomenal in its popularity. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
Ruskin praised it as faultless and wonderful in every way, | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
and it was hugely admired. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
And, in fact, in these days | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
they began to tour paintings, a bit like a film. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
So they'd be exhibited on their own in a darkened space | 0:16:19 | 0:16:21 | |
and people would buy tickets to see it and, of course, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:25 | |
because there's such intricate narrative told by all the details, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
it was a little bit like seeing a film in an age before film. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
This is famously a picture of a very young man, | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
but it's also a picture by a very young man. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:37 | |
Henry Wallis, who painted it, was in his mid-20s, I gather, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
when he painted this. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
I wonder what drew him to Chatterton? | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
Pre-Raphaelites and Wallis were a young man's movement. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
And they were particularly interested, I think, | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
in the idea of Chatterton, who was only 17, | 0:16:53 | 0:16:56 | |
representing the misunderstood artist, | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
the artist who is struggling in an unsympathetic society. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
And in a way, the unsympathetic society is represented | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
by the poverty of the room, but also by the city beyond, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:12 | |
because, of course, Wallis himself | 0:17:12 | 0:17:15 | |
was struggling in a newly industrial age | 0:17:15 | 0:17:18 | |
in which it was difficult to know what an artist should be. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:23 | |
What art was going to be for in this new modern world. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
The myth of the suicidal poet is so strong | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
that it's hard to face the facts, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
and the facts seem to be stacking up that this was not a suicide at all. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
He was earning a good living from his pen in London, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
and what seems to be an act of self-poisoning | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
could, in fact, have been getting his medicines out of balance | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
when he was trying to treat himself for a venereal disease. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
That's the extraordinary thing about the figure of Chatterton, | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
the way he's propagated myth after myth after myth, | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
so by the time Wallis was thinking about Chatterton | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
it was a sort of hall of mirrors of myths stretching back | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
and, of course, it carries on. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:00 | |
This painting contributes another mirror, if you like, to it | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
and by using these echoes of Chatterton, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
the figure becomes much more than just one poet. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:12 | |
It becomes a much more sort of resonant icon of the artist. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
I think he's come to haunt poets. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
This idea of the true devotion to the muse ending up in disaster | 0:18:18 | 0:18:23 | |
and that that's the price of great poetry. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
I find it beautiful, but I also find it quite disturbing, | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
and every time I look at it, I kind of think, it's his fault. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:34 | |
The myth of the doomed poet is his fault. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:36 | |
Whether by him I mean Chatterton or the painting... | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
I think I probably mean the painting. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
Shows like the colossal Art Treasures Exhibition | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
in Manchester in the summer of 1857, | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
which ran for 141 days and attracted over a million visitors, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
provided the perfect showcase for The Death Of Thomas Chatterton, | 0:18:59 | 0:19:03 | |
as the painting had come to be known. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
Being toured round the country, the painting was disseminated to | 0:19:06 | 0:19:10 | |
a far wider spectrum of society, including the new urban poor, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
than if it had remained in private ownership in London. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
And tapping into a growing Victorian fascination with death, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Wallis' painting proved a palpable hit. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
At a time of great and rapid urbanisation, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
the doomed and beautiful Chatterton | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
represented a glimpse of something other. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
This was the poet as dandy, yes, but more than that... | 0:19:38 | 0:19:42 | |
this was the poet as counter-cultural, | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
self-sacrificial, utterly intoxicating... | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
and dead. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:49 | |
But even Wallis' painting, like Chatterton himself, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
was to have a curious afterlife. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
One of the many eager visitors who had queued to see Wallis' | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
painting on its tour was a dental surgeon turned photographer | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
named James Robinson. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
And so moved was he that he decided to recreate | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
the scene in the popular new form of 3-D stereoscopy. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
And now we can see it in an exhibition at Tate Britain. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
Displayed alongside Wallis' painting for the very first time | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
is Robinson's remarkable take on the Chatterton myth. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
At first glance, it looks identical to Wallis' painting | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
with composition and colours painstakingly copied. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
But look closer and you begin to notice differences. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
Chatterton's face is not the same | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
and the colours don't look as vivid as they do in the oils. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
But in order to fully appreciate the stereoscopic image | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
you need to view it as the Victorians did. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:08 | |
but it's extraordinary when they do. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:10 | |
It's like a hyper-real version of Wallis' painting. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:14 | |
You're in the garret with Chatterton. It's quite remarkable. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
The driving force behind this exhibition | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
comes as something of a surprise, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
as it turns out to be none other than Queen guitarist Brian May, | 0:21:26 | 0:21:31 | |
who owns one of the world's greatest collections of stereoscopic cards. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
For me, it goes back a very long way to my childhood | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
when we used to get little stereo cards in Weetabix packets. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
I remember the first time | 0:21:44 | 0:21:45 | |
it fell out of the packet, thinking, "What is this?" | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
Two little images which looked very flat and quite boring, | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
but then you send off your one and six pence for your viewer | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
and you put the card in the viewer | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
and suddenly this magic happens | 0:21:55 | 0:21:57 | |
and you can feel like you can walk in there | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
and it becomes a sort of real-life experience, an immersive experience. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:05 | |
It's an odd effect. When I first looked through the viewer | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
at The Death Of Chatterton painting, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:09 | |
which is a painting I know very well, it's been so often reproduced, | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
there is a strange hyperreality to it, | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
which is a slightly odd thing with a death scene. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
How do you feel it sits in relation to the painting | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
when you step into the stereoscopic world of Chatterton's garret? | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
Yes, the painting is already immersive in its way, isn't it? | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
It's designed to draw you in | 0:22:28 | 0:22:29 | |
and feel like you're in that room with him. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
Of course, it lends itself perfectly to the stereoscopic medium | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
and Robinson, in 1859, obviously paid his six shillings to go | 0:22:35 | 0:22:40 | |
and see the painting and thought, "Ah! I can do this at home | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
"and I can make a stereoscopic version of this." | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
It seems like it took him less than a week to do it | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
and he had it advertised within a week. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
If you put the original James Robinson stereo, though, | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
into a stereo viewer of the period, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
a Brewster viewer, this is how it's done. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
-You then open up the top to get some light in... -I see. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:04 | |
And the view you get is quite stunning. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
Now, this is a very old, faded and damaged card, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
but the effect is still there. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:12 | |
-You still get this immersive experience. -Thank you. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:14 | |
It is. It still works. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:19 | |
It's like stepping into the room, isn't it? Yeah. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:21 | |
You get the Victorian experience. Beautiful. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
But I have a very interesting thing here | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
which, really, nobody knows about. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
We discovered another version of the James Robinson view. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
He's alive! | 0:23:34 | 0:23:35 | |
He's alive! | 0:23:35 | 0:23:37 | |
But this is never, ever seen. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
We now realise that there were two views, at least, of Chatterton, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
one with him alive and one with him sadly passed away. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
He's alive, but it looks like | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
it's about 30 seconds before the painting. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:51 | |
His shoe's off and he's got all his torn up poems beneath him | 0:23:51 | 0:23:55 | |
so he's not that cheery, is he? | 0:23:55 | 0:23:56 | |
No, he's got his poison ready, I think. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:58 | |
He's got his poison ready. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:00 | |
But isn't it strange and ironic, this icon of the poetic death | 0:24:00 | 0:24:04 | |
and it's the one of the death that survived. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
-Yeah. The legend lives on. -The legend lives on. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
Do you find the painting and its stereoscopic image that striking? | 0:24:10 | 0:24:14 | |
What draws you? | 0:24:14 | 0:24:15 | |
I'm fascinated, yes. I think to all of us who have been | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
involved in this, it becomes something that lives with you. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:20 | |
It's a kind of haunting experience. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
Chatterton was a kind of Victorian icon, I suppose, | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
representing the purity of the artist and the pain of the artist. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
And, yeah, I think we feel very drawn to it. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
In fact, we've been trying to recreate it ourselves... | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
as you have magnificently done it here, this is amazing! | 0:24:36 | 0:24:40 | |
Comparatively recently, Pete Doherty on a Babyshambles album cover | 0:24:40 | 0:24:44 | |
uses the image of The Death Of Chatterton, | 0:24:44 | 0:24:47 | |
and I guess he has a similar image | 0:24:47 | 0:24:49 | |
as a sort of popular Bohemian figure. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
Do you think it's stretching it too far to think of rock stars | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
in a similar kind of vein to Chatterton? | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
There is a parallel, isn't there? | 0:24:58 | 0:24:59 | |
He's the kind of the tortured artist figure, I suppose, | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
and you could think of Kurt Cobain. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
I think there's a lot of truth in it, actually. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
I think, you know, the artist frequently is this way | 0:25:07 | 0:25:12 | |
because he is tortured. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
And sometimes it leads to great creativity and success. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
Sometimes it leads the other direction down to despair and death. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
And I feel it still, definitely, you know. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:22 | |
I achieved success and fulfilled a lot of my dreams, | 0:25:22 | 0:25:29 | |
but I still very often get that feeling, | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
is it really worth anything? | 0:25:31 | 0:25:32 | |
You know, what am I really doing here? | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
You know, what's my motivation? | 0:25:34 | 0:25:35 | |
It runs through your life as an artist, | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
this kind of self-questioning. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
So in its extreme form, maybe this is it. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:42 | |
Maybe... | 0:25:42 | 0:25:43 | |
Here's the torn up poetry of the man who killed himself. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
It is a real story. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
It's a fictional painting and it's a fictional stereoscopic card, | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
but it's a real story. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
So maybe it's the ultimate Bohemian rhapsody. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
THEY CHUCKLE | 0:26:00 | 0:26:01 | |
That's completely ruined it for you, hasn't it? | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
That's great. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:05 | |
The hyper reality of a stereoscopic image of The Death Of Chatterton | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
is an attempt to bring us into the emotional heart of the scene, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:22 | |
rather like religious painters focusing on the wounds | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
of Christ to shock the viewer into seeing the scene afresh. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:30 | |
It's meant to evoke pity at the beautiful young poet | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
broken by devotion to the muse. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
But if the mythic Chatterton is a sacrificial victim, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:42 | |
what was his sacrifice for? | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
For the purity of his art. For poetry itself. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
Of course, the irony is that Chatterton's work | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
is largely forgotten. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:55 | |
More of us are likely to remember the colour | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
of his breeches in a painting than a line from any of his poems. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
But the myth of his death has been a powerful, shaping influence | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
on poetic lives and reputations | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
and it still has some purchase today. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:11 | |
"Give me a Chatterton attic," pleaded Dylan Thomas in a letter | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
written when he was 19. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
Thomas had been seized by the notion of the pale Romantic poet | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
dying in his garret | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
and his own much-mythologised death aged just 39 in New York would | 0:27:25 | 0:27:30 | |
cause him to be seen as a latter-day Chatterton. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:34 | |
His death had a profound effect on that ill-fated generation | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
of American poets including Sylvia Plath, John Berryman | 0:27:38 | 0:27:45 | |
and Anne Sexton, who were all to follow Dylan into an early grave. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:52 | |
But why do we need these poets to burn themselves out for their art? | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
Perhaps because they are living a life of extremes on our behalf, | 0:27:58 | 0:28:03 | |
bringing back bulletins from the edge of experience. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
It would be fanciful to blame the myth of the doomed | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
poet on one painting. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
Still more to blame it on the young Chatterton himself | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
whose death was misread as a suicide. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
But in the hands of the 19th-century poets and artists, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
he became the ultimate literary Bohemian | 0:28:24 | 0:28:29 | |
and the founder of an image of the poet which, even now, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
we can't quite shake off. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:34 |