George Edward Bonsor Saint Martin

George Edward Bonsor (generally identified in Spanish language sources as Jorge Bonsor) was born in the rapidly expanding industrial city of Lille in northern France, while the Second French Empire was still basking in its full untested pomp. The spirit of the age was driven, especially for the middle classes across much of Europe, by rising prosperity and optimism.[1] His father, James Bonsor, was an entrepreneur-engineer originally from Nottingham in England.[2] His mother, born Pauline Marie Leonie Saint Martin Ghislaine, was a native of Lille. Pauline Bonsor died, still aged just 25, a few months after her son's birth. She fell victim to general ignorance on the part of the medical profession, as top medical scholars and practitioners across Europe failed to pay attention to the findings of Ignaz Semmelweis, concerning the heightened risk to women in labour of Asepsis, contracted from surgeons, doctors and midwives disinclined to wash their hands and sterilize medical instruments.[3]

James Bonsor, an Englishman with affection for the continent, had worked in Spain as an engineer in Andalusia at the copper mines of Minas de Ríotinto. He had also, at some stage, worked for a French gas company responsible for the street lights in Cadiz and Seville. He had grown so attached to southern Spain that he seems to have recommended that his son should travel to the region.[3]

At the time of George Bonsor's birth James Bonsor, still aged only 32, was living in Lille with his French wife, but soon after she died, in 1856, he married an English widow called Sarah Gregory (born Sarah Taylor). By this second marriage were born three more children, George's half-sisters Claire and Suzanne Bonsor and his half-brother, Willy. Meanwhile, George was cared for by his father's sister and her husband, John and Louise Marie Batley at "Seaborough Court", a manor house in Seaborough (a couple of miles to the south, across the county border from Crewkerne in Somerset), until he was old enough to be sent away to boarding school. He would always think of his aunt and uncle's home in Dorset, which was rebuilt on a more lavish scale following a major fire in 1877, as his own home-base in England.[4] George's uncle, John Batley (1823-1891) was, like his father, a wealthy man, described in sources as a factory owner and, according to the 1861 census, a "machine maker employing 270 men and 112 boys". Ten years later he was being described as an "ammunition manufacturer".[5] John Batley had a substantial second home at Englefield Green, a short distance to the south of London, where he also lived, with his wife, their sons and daughters, Ralph, Armitage, Blanca and Inés. Through their mother, his aunt, these children were George Bonsor's cousins: he would always retain the warmest of relationships with them.[3][6]

Although English-language sources focus on Bonsor's childhood with his English cousins, other sources pay more attention to time spent with his late mother's family in northern France. A short distance down-river of Paris, in the village of Guernes, lived the Payot Saint-Martin extended family consisting of his mother's uncles and their children. Four of these, Henri, Pierre, Valentine and Pauline were also first cousins of George Bonsor. According to Pauline, his French cousins treated George like another brother. He was a joyous addition to the family when he was staying with them in France, living alternately with the Batleys in southern England with his Guernes cousins while his father, James Bonsor, continued to pursue his various business interests in different parts of the European mainland.[3][6]

George Bonsor's family was relatively wealthy on both his mother's and father's sides. That was reflected in his education, which was nevertheless far from conventional on account of its cosmopolitan extent. Her was fluent in both English and French as a young teenager, and was able to acquire an equivalent mastery of Spanish without too much difficulty as a young adult. His fathers work as an engineer involved working in various parts of Europe, according to the location of whichever project he was engaged on. When he was old enough to undertake secondary education, it was determined that George should accompany his father. The boy therefore attended secondary schools in a succession of different countries, united by the fact that they were undergoing industrialisation at the time. There is no surviving record of the precise dates of Bonsor's itinerant school career, nor of the durations and sequences. Juan de Dios de la Rada and subsequent biographers list them as follows, however: the "Athénée" school in Tournai (Belgium), the "German college" in Moscow, a lycée in Albi and another in nearby Montauban as well as a school in Huddersfield (England).[7] The habit of constant travel thus acquired became a permanent feature of Bonsor's life. It was an extremely important aspect of his schooling, in terms of developing his intense curiosity, observational abilities, love of geography and appetite for knowledge.[3]

There are no very obvious reasons why, on completing his schooling, Bonsor's interests turned towards the fine arts. There are suggestions that on his extensive boyhood travels with his father he had gained an exceptionally broad exposure to various aspects of Europe's cultural heritage. During the later 1870s he attended fine arts academies in London, and later in Brussels .[3][7]

As with his schooling, so with his university-level studies, more precise dates are unknown. There are nevertheless widely repeated (though otherwise undocumented) reports that at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels he won a significant prize for "archaeological technical drawing".[3] This reported prize may reflect "an element of archaeological training", also mentioned by biographers, which otherwise remains unattested. A mastery of archaeological technical drawing certainly proved useful after he decided to pursue Archaeology as a career. Bonsor became the first (otherwise) self-taught gentleman-archaeologist who would systematically make use of technical drawings in documenting materials and structures discovered, which he saw as genuinely artistic items. He himself was a strong advocate of the importance of recording archaeological discoveries. Some time later he shared his opinion that "no one not intending to provide serious drawings [should be encouraged to embark on an archaeological dig]. I consider it a crime to undertake an excavation without providing a minutely detailed drawing of the excavation".[3][lower-alpha 1] Important as those technical drawings were at the time, and to subsequent generations, Bonsor was always eager to exploit newly emerging technologies, complementing the drawings with photographs. When it came to photography, howqever, he generally preferred to invoke the help of locally based professionals, principally Ramón Pinzón or Augusto Pérez Romero.[8]

For Europeans the status of the British empire as the sole surviving super power had gone little unquestioned since 1805. George Bonsor, as the son of an English father, was unfailingly content to present himself as a British subject throughout his life. It was nonetheless striking that when he wrote documents or articles for publication he almost invariably did so using French or Spanish. He rarely wrote anything in English. In 1922 Bonsor provided his own explanation of this seeming contradiction in a card he wrote to Reginald Smith of the British Museum: "I know how odd it must sound that, being an Englishman, I am not able to provide my article in English, and on this I must explain myself. I was born in France, of an English father, and I grew up in Belgium. I came to Spain as a young man, some 40 years ago. I came here to paint, but I soon abandoned art in favour of archaeology".[9]

Having concluded his academic studies, Bonsor decided he needed to travel to southern Europe to deepen his understanding of Spanish art, in part as a way to consolidate his own painting style. Bonsor's own paintings from this period concentrate on figures of people and costumbrismo scenes. Funding arrived in the form of periodic remittances from the family.[3][10]

The diaries in which he meticulously recorded his visit to Spain reveal Bonsor to be a very systematic man.[lower-alpha 2] There is no obvious indication that when he set out to visit Spain, it had occurred to him that he would be living in the country for the reat of his life. His impressions of what he saw and the accounting for his expenses are recorded with impressive clarity and in great detail. The language used is French.[13] For most of the tour he was accompanied by Paulus, a Belgian Roman Catholic and a companion from his time at the Beaux-Arts Académie in Brussels. They traveled from Brussels to Bordeaux by train, and from there continued by train via Biarritz and the border at San Juan de Luz, where they crossed over to Irun and a broad gauge Spanish train, continuing to Burgos, where they made their first stop. The underlying objective of the trip was to visit the artistic monuments, art museums and anything else that might be of interest to youthful artists from the north. In his diary Bonsor recorded the names of more than ten of his former fellow students from the Beaux-Arts Académie who were taking the opportunity to visit other countries of the European south in pursuit of artistic experiences. Several of the former student contemporaries he names later became members of the "Les XX", the group of twenty Belgian artists who would form the nucleus of an artisrtic revival in and around Brussels during the 1890s.[3]

In Burgos they befriended the young artist Primitivo Carcedo, who showed them the city, paying particular attention to the great Gothic cathedral and the Miraflores Charterhouse (Carthusian monastery). Carcedo also helped the travellers improve their Spanish and supervised their first visit to a Spanish "taverna". Reflecting the relatively unchallenging topography of the admittedly indirect route from Burgos to Madrid via Valladolid. there had been a rail connection from Burgos to the Spanish capital since 1860, of which Bonsor and Paulus now took advantage. On their arrival they immediately made their way to the oconic Puerta del Sol. Bonsor also records in his diary their visit to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando where they were particularly keen to admire Francisco Pradilla's reccently completed "Doña Juana La Loca" (1877), a work very much in keeping with the tastes of the times. There were many other respected masterpieces at the Real Academia which they were also able to study closely. Naturally they also spent time at the Prado, making their own copies of paintings in order better to understand the underlying techniques of the originators. Shortly before their departure from Madrid they visited the National Archaeological Museum, at which point Binsor had evidently made up his mind about Madrid, confiding to his diary that the place bored him supremely.[3][lower-alpha 3]

They moved on to Toledo, a short train ride to the west of Madrid. The city in which El Greco had lived out his final decades immediately captivated Bonsor: "The city of Toledo I liked enormously, from the first glimpse: I see that there are many things that I have to paint here".[lower-alpha 4] It was the local customs and the idyosyncracies of some of the characters that he came across which most obviously grabbed his eye. The people he picked out were the types that tend to capture the attention of many foreign visitors, the street beggars, the gypsies and the priests. His diary entries include precisely observed descriptions of historical and artisanal monuments. On some of these he also produced brief literary essays that accompanied the letters of thanks that he sent to relatives for the cash remittances on which he was still dependant.[3]

Bonsor's next stop was Cordoba, where he stayed just one night. That was long enough to see the city walls, the Roman bridge (till 1953 Córdoba's only bridge over the Guadalquivir river) and Córdoba's remarkable Mezquita-catedral. It is nevertheless apparent that, for Bonsor, Córdoba at this stage represented little more than a transit point along the route from Madrid to his intended destination in the south, Seville. His diary indicates that his first visit to Seville was also something of a disappointment, however.[3]

Bonsor found little that he wanted to paint in Seville. He nevertheless visited the cathedral, albeit with the sole purpose (he wrote) of admiring the works of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, whom he very much admired. He also visited the provincial museum and the famously ornate Hospital de la Caridad, where he serendipitously came across a painting by Juan de Valdés Leal. While respectful of Seville's rich artistic legacy, Bonsor was underwhelmed by contemporary Sevillan painters, whom he found "mediocre". Based on a recommendation from his father, who back in 1845 had visited the pretty little town of Carmona in the hill country a short distance inland from Seville, in 1881 Jorge Bonsor decided to visit the place for himself.[2][3]

Bonsor's first visit to Carmona lasted just four days. He spent his time identifying and in some cases sketching scenes to which he would later return in order to paint what he saw, both in oils and in watercolours.[11] After thoroughly exploring the little town and its surrounds, and locating some of its hnidden corners, he was obliged to leave Carmona and make his way to Gibraltar, where he had arranged to meet his autn and uncle, Marie and John Batley, together with their elder son, Armytage Batley. He accompanied his relatives on a little tour of the region, taking in visits to Málaga, Granada and Seville, where he left them, returning again to Carmona on 4 March 1881. He stayed at a little guest house at "calle de Prim nº 13", where he had enjoyed an evening meal during his first brief visit to the town. A few weeks later he was back in Gibraltar, re-acquainting himself with the British empire, and where he unexpectedly came across his friend and student contemporary Paulus again. They decided to travel to Tangier, staying in Morocco together for ten days between 7 and 17 May 1881. After that unscheduled trip he returned again to Carmona where he remained for the next nine months. He had found his new home.[3][11]

He loved to observe and to paint scenes from the vibrant daily life of the townsfolk, much of which in those days was centred round the church. There is a painting of altar boys in the "patio de los Naranjos" (gounds) of the priory church of Santa Martia. Another is a landscape with the Monastery of the Virgin of Grace at its centre. (The monastery, which no longer exists, was located opposite the Carmona Alcázar.) There is a picture of the road passing the Convento de Santa Clara, with interest added by the inclusion of a water carrier with his donkey, and others of the market place.[12][lower-alpha 5] He sometimes added his own jocular notes to his paintings: "The poor Spanish beggars are numerous, cheerful, and heavy smokers. When I paint, the poor blind folks passing by always come across to evaluate what I am doing with an expert eye! Which goes to show that when it comes to my own work, these guys are not as blind as the others."[12]

During Holy Week in 1881 Bonsor prepared a detailed painting of the Carmona Procession of St. James on Maundy Thursday. He was still only 26, and his diary record indicates a loss of the famous reserve that people associated with well-born English gentlemen: "When night came, I watched from my balcony the procession passing with all its lights. On the balcony opposite there were several girls who began to gossip and giggle as soon as they saw me: 'It's that foreigner! It's the painter!'. One of them, her face half covered behind her black mantilla, seemed to be asking me for something! So I concentrated only on her, and no longer watched the passing procession".[12][14]

Quite soon Bonsor became well-known and widely liked in the town, known to his fellow townsfolk as "the English painter". When he painted in the streets, people would stop and pass comments such as "How beautifully painted that lamp is", which gave rise to the comment in his diary "I am building a reputation as a painter of oil lamps".[12] He received a commission from Father José Barrera, one of the priests in the town, to produce a portrait of Father Sebastián Gómez Muñiz, the town's vicar. Bonsor was paid four duros "for materials". He confided his delight to his diary, "See how in Spain today it is only the priests who encourage painters".[12]

Another of the local spectacles in which Bonsor took delight was "Toro de cuerda" (literally "bull on a rope"), an old tradition often associated with bull-fighting, though purists insist that the two ritualised events have nothing in common beyond the involvement of bulls, and some of the bull-related perils for the young men involved. Bonsor also enjoyed watching groups of young people returning from the fields at around sunset, climbing the twisting hill road in their white shirts and blouses towards the town, with brightly coloured scarves fixed across their chests, still wearing the palm-leaf hats characteristic of the locality, which had protected them from the sun's heat during the day, and leading donkeys laden with children and whatever produce from the fields they had gathered. What he liked best about it was watching the boy who went at the front of each group, blowing a sound on a large sea shell in order to announce their approach.[12][15]