Boston Massacre 1770 -> revolution

Puritanism was a British Christian faith originating in the early C17th. The ideals which separated Puritans from other Christ­ians in­cluded their strict belief in predestination i.e that God already chose those who would be saved, or not. When William Laud became the Archbishop of Canter­bury in 1633, the new beliefs he brought were unacceptable to Purit­ans who sought to purify the Church from all Catholic influence. Laud’s new beliefs included individual acceptance or rej­ection of God's grace, tol­eration for many religious beliefs, and the incorpor­ation of High Church symbols.

Early in the C17th, Puritans were leaving Europe for the Am­erican colonies, centred in New England and soon the Puritans were able to control most of the colonies' activity there. Each war or colonial expansion left Britain’s finances struggling, so new taxes were levied to bolster the treasury. Alas for Boston, British King George III and Parliam­ent taxed the col­onies with­out repr­es­ent­ation. So when res­is­t­ance emer­g­ed, locals gat­hered at Bos­ton’s Old Meeting House to chal­len­ge British rule.

  British infantry men

The British needed facilities. Boston Common was bought in 1634 as a militia training field and later British soldiers used the Boston Common as their camp. And a brick, two storey Faneuil Hall was rebuilt in Georgian style in 1763. Its first floor served as a market place and the second floor contained a large hall used for meetings.

   

Regiments of British troops occupied Boston in Sept 1768, aft­er citizens had resisted British taxes levied on goods like tea and paper to pay for the costly French and Indian War. Sent to enforce these taxes and keep the peace, the 1000 soldiers were heav­ily resented by Bostonians as an affront to their local aut­onomy. From the beginning of the occupation, conflicts periodically flared up between British soldiers and townspeople, and by early 1770, fights had become regul­ar. The presence of Irish and black British soldiers occupying Boston further inflamed white, Prot­estant Boston­ians, many of whom held slaves and had fought against French Cathol­ics in the French and Indian War.

On 5th March 1770, clashes between locals and soldiers broke out across Boston. This Boston Massac­re was a turning-point in relations between Americans and British authorit­ies. British Capt Thomas Preston soon arrived at the scene with six grenadiers and formed a semicircle in front of the square, fully armed. And as the church bells pealed, more citizens filled the streets to join in and hurled rubbish at the British. Suddenly a projectile hit the rifle of one grenadier Private Hugh White, causing him to mis­takenly discharge his musk­et. As a crowd began to gather, shouting insults and throwing snowballs, White called for reinforcements. Other grenadiers shot into the crowd as people ran for cover but 5 towns­­people were killed.

  

The Boston Massacre
Old State House in the background.
Engraved by Paul Revere and published in 1770

After the shooting, Capt Preston ordered his soldiers to re­treat, fearing retribution. The crowd continued to grow, with some Bostonians attending to the wounded and others brought muskets antic­ipating a wider fight. Preston soon ord­ered much of the 29th Regiment to the Custom House.

Gov Thomas Hutchinson, senior British administ­rator in Mass­ach­usetts Bay, feared that endless thousands of colon­ists would flood into Bos­ton to expel the British regiments from town. Indeed import­ant Bos­tonians demanded the troops’ removal immediately. Seeking to pacify the locals, Hutchinson arrest­ed Capt Preston and the grenadiers, and demanded a trial.

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Old State House, Boston

The cobblestone ring in front marks the site of the massacre

In the days after the event, 5,000+ people were led by Samuel Adams, leader of the fight against British colonial rule, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and cousin of  later President John Adams. Each year from 1771-5, large meet­ings were held at Old South to com­m­emorate the Massacre, with rousing patriotic speeches. Samuel Adams and other revol­ut­ionary colonists protested in particular in the Taxation without Represent­at­ion debate.  And the site of the massacre was marked by a cobblestone ring on the traffic island in front of the Old State House (see photo). Visitor centres in Concord and Lexington explain where the Brit­ish re­treated under the fire of col­onial militiamen. 

Word of the massacre was unhappily received in Lon­don. Am­er­ica-sup­port­ers in Parliament expres­sed a minority view when they urged the with­drawal of soldiers from Bos­t­on, but the oppos­ite occurred - more sold­iers were sent to the mutinous colonies. Parliament hoped that more British aggression would succeed.

  

Paul Revere silversmith, engraver, industrialist and patriot
Painted by John Singleton Copley, 1768

When the fin­al negotiations failed, Samuel Adams gave the signal that start­ed the Boston Tea Party Dec 1773. The Sons of Lib­erty led the way, dump­ing hundreds of chests of tea into Griff­in's Wharf harb­our. To punish the locals for the Tea Party, Br­it­ish soldiers destroyed the pews and pulpit in Old South. When tensions began to rise again in 1773 and 1774, Bostonians responded more forcibly than in 1770.

Paul Revere’s wooden house, where he lived from 1770-1800, was built in North Square Boston. Here he did his famous pat­riotic night ride, to warn the Lexington and Concord residents of the Brit­ish Red­coats. Pat­riot's Day is cele­brated in the state to remember those events. With its huge front gate, the Granary Burying Ground was the site for notable Revolut­ion­ary people, including 3 signers of the Declaration of Independence: John Han­c­ock, Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Adams. Also Paul Revere, Peter Fan­euil and the Boston Massacre victims.

The grenadiers stood trial in Boston, well defended by future Pres John Adams. Only two of the soldiers were found guilty, and both eventually received light punishments. Thus the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party prov­ided two of the issues that sparked revolut­ion­ary feelings and solidified the threat of British military occ­upat­ion in Bostonians’ minds.

British forc­es actually arrived in Boston in May 1775. In June, col­onial sold­iers were sent onto the Charlestown Peninsula to oc­cupy Bun­ker Hill. This became the first major battle of the American Rev­olut­ion (1775–1783), reinforcing local desire for indep­endence from the British crown.

Ivor Weiss: talented UK artist.

 The Waiting Room, 1964

The Discussion, 1968 

Spitalfields Life introduced Ivor Weiss (1919-86) who was born in Stepney in the East End of London near Cable St, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who came from Bucharest. Ivor’s talent for draw­ing was apparent from an early age and en­couraged by his parents. 

His studies at the Northampton Rd Polytechnic London, were cut sh­ort by the outbreak of WW2. He ended up in the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to the North African campaign in Egypt. He then spent most of the war with the Brit­ish 8th Army in Malta where he was all­owed to study at the Malta School of Art in Valetta. There his tal­ents were first recognised at a serious level. 

When demobbed in 1946, he enrolled at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea, where he gained a diploma in painting. It was his time there and its long tradition of figurative art that had the greatest imp­act on his art. And then St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Rd, where he studied paint­ing and art history, like many other Eastern European artists. And he met his future wife, Joan Dare, also an art student and painter.

Ivor’s brother was a pilot in the RAF who had been seconded to Mont­gomery USA. After graduating in 1950, Ivor and Joan in­vited to Al­ab­ama to live. There they set up an art school called the Weiss Gall­ery. And he had 3 exh­ibitions in the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. To supplement their income they undertook commissions from commerc­ial clients, creating large murals and mosaics. And two of the child­ren were born in US. Unfortunately the normal family practice of holding multi-racial classes was at odds with Alabama’s segregated society. But only by 1955 had they saved up enough money to return.

On returning home, Ivor Weiss designed glass windows for the Stock Ex­ch­ange in Johannesburg S.Africa and a large mosaic in Maid­st­one. Ivor was offered a locum art teacher position at Lanc­ing Coll­ege near Brighton for six months. Then he and his family decided to move to Brightlingsea Essex, a sea­side town where he taught art at the local high school. In 1958 they had their third child.

To supplement his income, he moved into teaching evening classes and into art dealing from the Brightlingsea home. By 1965 they’d made enough money to buy a big house in Colchester Essex. Ivor con­tinued as the art dealer, while Joan did the restoration. Weiss was a mem­b­er of Colchester Art Society in the 1950s and again later on.

In the 1960s Weiss’ mature work came to the attention of the prest­igious Mayfair Gallery in Carlos Place, near Lon­­don’s Conn­aught Hotel. There he exhibited several times, plus in Cambridge, Harlow and at Ben Uri Gallery London.

Four Drinkers, 1968

The Onlooker, 1968 

Stylistically Weiss’s paintings provide an evident love for the feel and texture of the paint itself . The black lines, which form a st­ructure to contain the paint, have soft contours softened by square brush strokes. Line and colour merge together with dramatic effects.

Note his most powerful works, of Jew­ish rituals and traditions, con­veying streng­th of faith. These works showed the importance of family and communal ties. They were characters who, alth­ough grouped in social acts like eating and drinking, often appear isolated. Their eyes disappeared into the black lines, a metaphor for avoidance of eye contact and distance. For a non-religious man, Weiss was prod­ucing an impressive body of works of orth­od­ox Jewish men at prayer eg he had a solo ex­hib­ition at the Colch­est­er Art Society called Rabbi and Ritual in 1971. More recently one of Ivor Weiss’ rabbinic paintings was hung Sandys Row Synag­ogue, Spitalfields.

Ivor was multi-talented: he taught pottery and made enamel jewell­ery, text­iles and fur­n­iture. His work was exhibited at the R.A and the White­chapel Gallery as well as inter­nat­ionally, and some pictures are in the collections of Cambridge Uni and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. In the last decade of his life he became ins­pired by Judaic scenes probably influenced by Mark Gertler (1891-1939). 

A long struggle against cor­onary disease evoked memories of Ivor’s youth. These scenes expressed a need for an identity. And his trip­le bypass strengthened ever further his need to go back to his Judaic heritage and his East End child­hood. 

Ivor’s eldest son Mark took on the family business and Ivor was able to spend more time paint­ing both at home and on Italian holidays. How­ever in 1986 he died, at 67. His emotive paint­ings remained hang­ing in the family houses in storage with Joan, until she died at 92. Weiss Gallery was filled large bold paintings that possessed a tender hum­an­ity. These pictures embodied the cultural memory of the Jewish East End, speaking movingly of a good life and a great tal­ent.

Albemarle Gallery, in London's West End, organised a post­humous exhibition of his work in 2005, accompanied by a richly il­l­ustrated catalogue by Julian and Debra Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist.

Mark moved the Weiss Gallery to 59 Jermyn St, one of the last truly grand gallery spaces in London, where the Ivor Weiss show opened on Oct 2017. This Portrait of an Artist: Ivor Weiss Exhibition showed 31 works, many of them featuring Jewish symbols. 

I enjoyed reading Ivor Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist exhibition catalogue.

 Ivor Weiss rabbinal painting,

 donated to Sandys Row Synagogue. Dec 2017

British Brothers' League 1901-5, London

Britain’s monarch could expel foreigners to protect the security of the realm in the late C19th, but free movement of labour was gener­al­ly unquestioned. Migration wasn’t an urgent issue until Conserv­ative politicians agitated in the 1880s-90s, and the media got on board. 

Migrants in a crowded Poplar market, 1904

The Guardian

The feared immigrants were mainly East Europ­ean Jews. In the Pale of Set­tlement, they were allowed to live on a permanent basis. From 1880s on, with the terrible anti-Semitic pogroms, many fled. 150,000 settled in the UK, including my Russian grandmother. Then there were other Russ­ians and Poles, Ital­ians and Ger­mans who moved to the East End, and were seen to lower living standards in the UK.

Emerging trade unions were worried that low-skilled migrants acc­epting long hours and low pay would undermine real English workers’ struggles. During the 1890s, the Trades Union Congress/TUC passed 3 resolutions calling for immigration controls.

Jewish trade unionists wrote the remarkable Voice from the Aliens to counter a nasty resolution at the 1895 cong­ress. They unionised themselves and made strenuous efforts to co­op­erate with existing labour bodies. Influential non-Jewish activ­ists in William Morris’ Soc­ial­ist League support­ed them, as did tailors’ leader George Mac­donald etc. But the dockers’ leader, Ben Tillett, described Jewish immigrants as the "scum of the contin­ent who made slums even more foetid and congested".

Maj Evans Gordon MP and Parliamentary colleagues

to address restricting further immigration of destitute foreigners

BBL Poster, 1902

The migrants organised their own public meetings to challenge BBL propag­anda through an ad-hoc Aliens Defence League, temporarily housed in Brick Lane. They proposed practical solutions: unionising migrant workers so they could fight alongside indigenous workers for better conditions for all, and creating fair rent courts to deal with landlords.

The Daily Mail continued its campaign against the arrival of Jews from Russia: "In Feb 1900, a British liner called the Cheshire moored at Southampton, carrying refugees from anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. They had breakfasted on board, but they rushed as though starving at the food. These were the penniless refugees and when the relief committee passed by they hid their gold, and fawned and whined, and in broken English asked for money for their train fare."

In 1901, hatred continued. Bishop Cosmo Lang of Stepney in East London accused immigrants of swamping areas once populated by Eng­lishmen. Major Will­iam Evans-Gordon, Conservative MP for Stepney in 1900 elected on a strong anti-immigration platform, ag­reed. Along with neigh­bour­ing Conservative MP Samuel Forde-Ridley and Capt William Stan­ley Shaw of the Middlesex Regiment, Evans-Gordon forged a pop­ul­ist anti-immigrant movement called the British Brot­h­ers’ League/BBL. It was launched in the East End in May 1901.

Init­ially the BBL was most int­erested in protectionism, although it soon emphasised more rabid anti-foreigner rhetoric. Henry Norman Wolverhampton MP publicly deplored the UK being made into the "dump­ing ground for the scum of Europe". He joined the campaign and advised other nations to "dis­in­fect their own sewage".

The Eastern Post and City Chronicle happily reported BBL activities and demanded that the government end the foreign flood which had submerged East London. Within months the league claimed 45,000 members, although a member was anyone who signed the BBL's petition. The League promoted its cause with large meetings, with guards whose role was to eject disruptive opponents.

The BBL’s East End strongholds in Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Limehouse solidified around the immigrant ghetto of Aldgate and White­chapel. BBL members, mostly local factory workers or unempl­oyed, were convinced by BBL propaganda that their precarious work sit­uation (low pay, overcrowded housing, poor sanitation) was caused by immigrants. But Captain Shaw also boasted of his elite recr­uits: Oxford grad­uates, city merchants and 40 Tory MPs.

The league’s opening rally in 1901 drew opponents. BBL supporters wrote to the press about socialist foreig­ners upsetting the meeting. Local newspapers noted that 260 big brawny stewards roughly ej­ected foreigners. So when the BBL held another large rally at the People’s Pal­ace Mile End in Jan 1902, the 4,000 supporters were again protected by guards. [A technique later used by the British Fascists]

BBL supporters filled a petit­ion pressing MPs to halt immig­ration. When the government launch­ed a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1903, Evans-Gordon chaired it and set the agenda. The Royal Commission inves­tigated the BBL’s own charges - that immigrants:
ar­rived destitute and dirty;
practised insanitary habits;
spread in­fectious diseases;
were a burden on the rates;
disposs­es­sed nat­ive dwellers;
caused native tradesmen to lose trade;
worked for rates below local workers;
included crim­in­als, prostitutes and anarch­is­ts; and
formed a non-assimilating commun­ity.

Britain is the Promised Land and immigrants are undesirable

The 1905 Aliens Act satirised

The Royal Commission struggled to back up its charges in its 1903 report. After all, the immigrants themselves lived in overcrowded conditions and mostly worked 12+ hours a day. Their dedication to educ­ation and self-improvement denied claims that the migrants low­ered living standards. 

Still the Tory government passed Br­itain’s first modern immigration law, 1905 Aliens Act. Alth­ough the word Jew did not appear in this Act, the legislation was large­ly seen as a success for the BBL, which could then close down.

This Act put an end to the Vict­or­ian Golden Age of migration which had benefited from cheaper trans­port costs and growing labour dem­ands. The Alien Act’s most important provision was that Leave to Land would be refused to those migrants who could not support them­selves. To screen the migrants properly, the Act allowed them to disembark only in app­roved ports where an Immig­ration and a Health Officer could in­spect them.

By the time the Act passed, the Tories had fallen to Lib­erals in a landslide. The discretionary powers were transfer­red to the new Home Secret­ary, Herbert Gladstone, who used them to instruct all members of the Immigration Board. From 1906 the press was allowed to attend board meetings and in 1910 im­m­igrants were permitted legal assist­ance. The refusal rate under the new Act was low alth­ough some groups, eg gypsies, were disprop­ort­ionally af­fect­ed. The act remained for eight years before being subsumed into the more stringent 1914 Alien Restriction Act.

Tailoring workshop, East End c1910

The Guardian

Nothing is new; the League left behind a legacy of support for far-right groups. Enoch Powell warned of rivers of blood, Oswald Mosley wanted forced repatriation of Caribbean immig­rants who flooded in, Margaret Thatcher spoke of Britain’s towns being swamp­ed and Nigel Farage said parts of Britain were like a horrid foreign land.

New Hampshire's Hood Museum of Art

Eve Kahn wrote that Dartmouth College in Hanover N.H  gathered much of its experimental architecture along the edges of its cam­p­us, which was otherwise dominated by Georgian and colon­ial quadrang­les in brick and white clapboard. At the SE corner, a few imagin­ative buildings dedicated to the arts are hud­dled together. The best so far is the Hood Museum of Art, which was originally de­sig­n­ed in the 1980s by the influential post-modernist Charles Moore. Its gabled brick pavilions are crowned in a domed finial with a necklace of raised copper triang­les. Moore laid out a meandering path from the campus’ main green, meant to pique curios­ity. He flanked a gateway with layers of square columns, which all­owed glimpses of courtyards and galleries beyond. But the signage was poor, and the gateway’s brick, con­crete and copper surfaces aged poorly in winter.

Hood Museum of Art, 

Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire

Hood director, John Stomberg, says that for many students and visitors, Moore’s scheme was too obtuse. Stomberg supervised a $50 million renov­ation and expansion by the Manhattan firm Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects (of Barnes Collection in Philadelphia fame) that added badly needed classrooms, gal­leries and an atrium. The ever-growing permanent collect­ion (c65,000 pieces) spans from Assyrian palace reliefs to C19th Native American battle­field sket­ches, Papua New Guinea head­dresses, and a 2018 painting by Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu.

Each year, thousands of schoolchildren visit the gal­leries. There’s no entry fee, and few rival institutions nearby. Dartmouth und­er­grad­uates have to take some art classes, and have to visit a museum.

We pass the New Guinea wooden drums, masks and shields in poly­chrome swirling patterns, and through a forest of cross-hatched poles car­v­ed by Aboriginal Australians. A teacher and her class choose an elab­orately coiffed Af­rican mask to sketch. A 2016 teepee-shaped sculpture was made by Choctaw-Cherokee Jeffrey Gibson, topped with a birdlike cer­am­ic head and draped in bells.

Side galleries have more predictable works: Calder’s mobile, Rot­hko’s abstraction, Picasso’s Guitar on a Table (1912). In Perug­ino’s C16th tableau Virgin and Child with Saints, men gaze up at Mary and her infant on a pedestal; the paint­ing is studied in various Renaissance classes. Under-appreciated masters from the 19th and early C20ths were also displayed.

There are calm waterfront scenes by the African-American painters Robert Seldon Duncan­son and Henry Ossawa Tanner, and luminous por­traits of women by Cecilia Beaux and Lilly Martin Spencer. A grey-green stoneware jar was made in South Carolina c1830 by enslaved potter David Drake. Snakes sprout from the forehead and ribs of Harriet Hosmer’s 1850s marble bust of Medusa, near Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s C19th painting of an ancient Roman sculpture gallery.

Dartmouth School opened in 1769. soon starting collections eg fragments of mastodon tusks excavated in Kentucky and a ruffle-edged silver bowl made in Boston. Over the centuries, museum displays were installed at var­ious buildings, incl at neigh­bouring Wilson Hall, a 1880s turreted Romanesque former library. The Hood’s construction in the 1980s was financed by rich al­umnus Harvey Hood.

The Hood site is sloped and narrow, tucked between Wilson Hall and a 1960s theatre building, Hopkins Centre for the Arts, designed by modernist Wallace Harrison. The Hop has concrete archways and cantilevers. Moore described his contribution to the campus as unobtrusive, in reaction to modernists’ macho construct­ions.

The Hood attracted many gifts e.g New Guinea woodcarvings from L.A collector-dealer Harry Frank­lin and Native Amer­ic­an drawings from art historian Mark Lansburgh. But there was lim­it­ed room to show them. Classroom space was cramp­ed as faculty incor­p­orated art into the curricula and there was little flexible in­door space for events.

Stomberg arrived in 2016 from Mount Holy­oke College Art Museum, when construction plans and fundraising were underway. Charles Moore’s defenders were protesting against TWBTA’s partial eras­ure of the original building and gateway. TWBTA has pointed out that the firm has the greatest respect for Moore’s oeuvre – Tsien had been one of his architecture students in the 1970s.

Much of the 1980s brick skin has been preserved, along with the signature domed finial. The galleries and staircases still have Moore’s expanses of raw concrete and quirky ziggurat forms sculpted on the column capitals and light fixtures. A variety of dark and pale oak floorboards adds a sense of patina to the redone galler­ies. Sunlight streams in through skylights, staircase windows and the bay, which keeps visitors oriented as they roam through disp­lays that explore continents and millennia.

Reactions to the renovations have been fav­ourable, albeit with some traces of nostalgia. The lofty atrium, lined in the same brick, is already serving as a major campus attraction for stud­ents. Live saxophone music wafts upstairs. Stomberg says he is hop­ing to schedule some dance performances in the window, which has a sweeping view of the Georgian and Colonial campus.

Thank you Apollo for the history and the photos.

African Art
architecturalrecord.com

Modern American Art
Artforum

Assyrian Reliefs and ancient Greek pottery

artscope

An art critic, who visited the Hood since it re-opened in Jan 2019 after nearly three years and $50  million renovations, wrote this response: Clearly the old gallery was too dark, too small and poorly equipped for students and outside visitors. The gallery literature says the space of the old Hood was greatly expanded, and there are now 16 galleries instead of 10. Even more importantly the galleries are now beautifully light-fitted. And the Hood is much better connected to the university campus.

But the contents on display and the flow of visitors are less satisfactory. The new director clearly wanted to map and display the entire world of art his­tory, within one gallery! When I go to a gallery it is to see what they special­ise in eg Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, or Rus­sian decorative arts during the Czarist reigns. I can broaden my horizons in art history, but I don’t want to be involuntarily moved from one era to other eras within a single room, from cont­in­ent to continent without a cup of coffee in between. I agree with Murray Whyte: “In one of the mus­eum’s few unavoid­able paths, you have to pass through a coll­ect­ion of contemporary Native American art to reach the Hood’s trad­it­ional American collection”. It was confusing.