Miss Mab Paul is Too Good at Kissing

 I seem to begin every post at the moment with 'This is going to be a bit ramble-y/cross' but I promise I'm not intentionally in my Grumpy Era.  However, saying that, this one is going to a bit ramble-y and grumpy. Sorry in advance.  I'm also writing this in order to sort out how I feel about the use of young girls in art. Yikes.

Look Out! Teen Knockers Alert! (Allegedly)

I'm sure we all remember the 2018 controversy over the removal of Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) by John William Waterhouse from the walls of Manchester Art Gallery.  Depending on who you believed, it was due to the objectification of women (crikey, there will be nothing left on the walls of most museums that this rate!) or raising awareness of how young the models were (without any actual proof that the models were young or not acting with what agency they had etc etc) or just because they fancied a shufty round of some paintings and a bit of controversy is always fun. Well, while I roll my eyes at most of this because it is a crap way to have a conversation, I was particularly miffed that we can't seemingly have a nuanced conversation about Victorians and woman/girls without imposing what we think we know all over it.  Also, this is not a good painting to use if you want to tak about women/agency/girls stuff etc as it is literally a painting of a bunch of girl-sprites about to murder a bloke because they can, and they suffer absolutely no repercussions at all.  Yay! Girl Power! I do beg your pardon, how very naught of them.  Anyway, I think there is a conversation to be had about how we view art works and more essentially the men who paint them, and possibly a good place to start is Miss Mab Paul...

Mab Paul (c.1905)

As you can see from this postcard of Miss Paul, she was an actress at the turn of the 20th century, hence my interest in her. However, before there was Mab Paul, there was Mabel Hall, artist's model, hence my very great interest in her indeed. Mabel was the third daughter of Richard Hall and Frances Paul (hence the adoption of 'Paul' as her stage name).  Richard and Frances had married in the late 1870s and were comfortably middle class, showing up in the 1881 census living in Kensington, Richard engaged as a Verger. For some reason (no doubt ecclesiastical) by the time Mabel was born in 1882, the family were out in the colonies and little Mabel entered the world in Uttar Pradesh in India. The family had returned by 1887 when Richard jnr was born (in London) and Daddy Hall had moved from the clergy to running a club of some sort. He was also a Chelsea Pensioner, so I'm not entirely sure I can work out his working life at all, but the family all seemed to do okay, and during the 1890s Mabel and her elder sister Edith (b.1878) had become artists' models. I'm going to ease you in slowly, as it gets a bit dodgy. Let's start with John Collier...

The Laboratory (1895) John Collier

Mabel is 13 years old. The painting was fairly well received, although it was felt by some newspapers to be a bit old-fashioned.  Mabel was referred to as the 'fair visitant" purchasing poison (according to The Gentlewoman) or the 'imperious beauty' who wishes to kill her rival (according to the Evening Star).  So, how do we feel about 13 year old Mabel? Hold that thought...

Lady Godiva (1897) John Collier

Have we all done our maths?  Good.  This is 15 year old Mabel (I'm being generous as I'm guessing this was painted when she was 14) naked on a horse. The Coleshill Chronicle called the painting 'frigid and prosaic' which is a bit rude. The London Evening Standard saw that this Lady G was very young, which is something, and they felt that she was charmingly painted, but no-one raised the question whether or not this child should have been naked on a horse in the first place.

The Prodigal Daughter (1903) John Collier

Also, John Collier gives us Mabel in a very dramatic piece.  Aged 21, Mabel is the prodigal daughter, returning to shock her parents in her frankly awesome dress. I wonder if this was a response to the fact that Mabel had indeed taken to the stage by this point, but I'll come back to that as Mr Collier wasn't Mabel's only employer...

Mabel Hall and Ethel Warwick (c.1899) Edward Linley Sambourne

I came across Mabel first when looking at Ethel Warwick's time with Edward Linley Sambourne.  I obviously wanted to know more about this girl that Ethel posed with. Ethel and Mabel were the same age, both 16-17 in this image.  I have chosen my images carefully for this bit, as I will explain.

Mabel Hall (1900) Edward Linley Sambourne

I have such complicated feelings about Sambourne and his photographs.  I must at this point say that the staff at Sambourne's house are amazing and have been no end of help with my investigations into Ethel's time with Sambourne.  I do need to tread very carefully and pick my words.  To start with, Mabel began modelling for Sambourne in January 1899 when, as he wrote in his diary, she was 16 years old, 'very elegant' and 'very tall'.  According to the excellent catalogues Public Artist, Private Passions, Sambourne (born in 1844, so just shy of 40 years older than Mabel) was definitely smitten by his teen models, although he did them no harm that we know of and provided these working class young women with a safe and comfortable living.  I have a lot of questions about the Camera Club in London, founded in 1885, as the majority of Sambourne's naked teen images are taken there.  Also, the above image of Mabel on her own is one of a pair where she is naked in exactly the same pose. I also have questions about why he needed images of the girls naked in the same poses as when they were dressed.  Don't say it is for artistic reasons because we all know it isn't.

Mab(el) in 1902

Like many of Sambourne's girls, Mabel did not remain long in his employ, and like Ethel Warwick, she headed for the stage.  Mabel Hall became Mab Paul, and whilst posing for Sambourne in 1900, she was also treading the boards in Plymouth, selling chocolates at a charity performance at the Theatre Royal. By 1902, Mab had a beautiful full page photograph in The Sketch (above) for her role in Ulysses at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, which also appeared in Tatler. Collier actually painted 'Mab Paul' in 1901 while she was performing in Beau Austin in Henley...

Mab Paul (1901) John Collier, from the Tatler

My favourite review of Mab's acting is from The Stage in June 1902 when she appeared in the comedy Lord of His House.  Whilst the paper liked Mab's performance, they felt that she might 'wisely tone down the kissing...young women may act so, but I think that a gentleman of refinement would want to back out if he found that the young lady who a moment before was "Miss Jones" is permitting him to kiss her décolletée, shoulders and giving hearty busses on the mouth.' Well, that's us told.  Sorry Mab, you are just too good at snogging.

Mab, c.1910

A bit like Ethel Warwick, Mab made her way over to Australia to perform around 1910, and remained there until at least 1916 when she seems to have vanished.  I am currently waiting for a couple of books on Australian theatre of this period, but if anyone has any knowledge about how there was seemingly such an easy transition from the West End to Sydney, I'd be delighted to have a chat.  A few people seem to have her death date in the 1930s but as I don't know if she married, I can't find that out. I hope she had a long and happy life, but knowing my luck probably not. However, what we can say is that her career began at 14 and her experience as an artist's model, no matter how young, enabled her to progress into the theatre.

Mab, in the Sporting and Dramatic News, 1903

So, I think my point is we need to have a nuanced conversation about girls in art. I feel very differently looking at Collier's Lady Godiva and one of Sambourne's nudes, but should I? Especially when you consider that Collier was drawing a literal schoolgirl for his naked lady (she was at Honeywell Road School in 1895) whereas Sambourne does not seem to have employed a girl below 16. Both Collier and Sambourne were much older than Mabel and were producing works that would be consumed by older men, so should we feel protective? Arguably, Collier's art output was entirely for public consumption, but how do we know?  We only know that Sambourne took and kept the nude images independent of his cartoons because there is an archive of them. If we are outraged and remove a painting just because a girl is 14 years old, we are ignoring the fact girls worked in the adult world at 14.  My grandmothers were both working away from home at that age, most probably in jobs that paid less than what Mab was getting from Messrs Collier and Sambourne.  I think my point is that a 14 year old working-class girl had agency to earn money and by hiding paintings, historians are indulging in benevolent sexism, wishing to protect girls who arguably do not need protecting. As far as we know, Sambourne, creepy though I find him, did no-one any harm.  The exploitation that Collier, Sambourne or their ilk indulged in was entirely intellectual - the girls had no say in the way their image was used (or abused) after it was taken, but I very much doubt that either of these men considered what they did to be exploitative.  If Waterhouse (to go back to the ravenous nymphs) really did pay a bevy 14 year old girls to pose naked in a duck pond for his painting, he was paying them.  They could equally be paid possibly less money to work long hours in physically exhausting conditions. At least no-one got an arm ripped off in a loom while posing as Lady Godiva.

Mab in Ulysses, 1902

So, in conclusion, we need to separate our modern sensibilities from the realities of life as a working class person in the nineteenth century when looking at the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers.  To remove a painting off a wall because you feel the subjects are being exploited is negating the work of those girls who received a wage for their time.  Just because you feel squeamish seeing a 14 year old naked, it doesn't mean you get to cover up the agency she had to go out their and earn her money.  Also, branding every male artist that employed a 14 year old model as some sort of predatory animal is also problematic.  We can talk about the power imbalance, we can talk about how uncomfortable it makes us feel, but in the end we should admit that how we feel doesn't have supremacy over historic reality and young female agency. One thing is for certain, shoving it in a cupboard isn't going to help.