When the author bought a falling down fortified house on the Staffordshire moorlands, he had no reason to anticipate the astonishing tale that would unfold as it was restored. A mysterious set of relationships emerged amongst its former owners, revolving round the almost forgotten artist, Robert Bateman, a prominent Pre-Raphaelite and friend of Burne Jones. He was to marry the granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle, and to be associated with Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, and other prominent political and artistic figures.
But he had abandoned his life as an artist in mid-career to live as a recluse, and his rich and glamorous wife-to-be had married the local vicar, already in his sixties and shortly to die. The discovery of two clearly autobiographical paintings led to an utterly absorbing forensic investigation into Bateman's life.
The story moves from Staffordshire to Lahore, to Canada, Wyoming, and then, via Buffalo Bill, to Peru and back to England. It leads to the improbable respectability of Imperial Tobacco in Bristol, and then, less respectably, to a car park in Stoke-on-Trent. En route the author pieces together an astonishing and deeply moving story of love and loss, of art and politics, of morality and hypocrisy, of family secrets concealed but never quite completely obscured. The result is a page-turning combination of detective story and tale of human frailty, endeavor, and love. It is also a portrait of a significant artist, a reassessment of whose work is long overdue.
Nigel Daly is an antique dealer and house restorer.
Industry Reviews
‘If ever there were a life that proves the adage about truth beating the wildest imaginings of fiction it’s that of Robert Bateman, an artist almost lost to memory. It entailed both the brutal suppression of a love affair between a Victorian artist and his social superior and the extraordinary lengths to which the lovers and their accomplices went in order to ensure that their story didn’t see the light of day in their life time. More lurid than any Victorian novel, it features an unconsummated marriage, a crucial will, a cruel stepfather, an abandoned child, a selfless vicar and a sudden death. Buffalo Bill also puts in a critical appearance.
But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this strange story is that it has only come to light because the lovers left a trail of evidence hidden in plain sight, in the paintings of Bateman, an odd, unclassifiable painter associated with the Aesthetes and Romantics.
The clues have been pieced together by Nigel Daly in a new book: The Lost Pre-Raphaelite; the Secret Life and Loves of Robert Bateman. He only stumbled on the trail because he bought and renovated Bateman’s old home, and the truth he uncovered--revealed in the final chapter—would not, with all its twists and turns, have been out of place in a novel by Wilkie Collins.’ Telegraph-London- Richard Dorment-July 19,2014
"The Lost Pre-Raphaelite is fascinating and engrossing book, as well as an important contribution to our knowledge of Victorian painting, Victorian gardening, and the crippling rule of Victorian social convention. Remembered because of his contemporaries' admiration, Robert Bateman, with only a single intriguing work in any public collection, has until now been an extremely difficult artist to see, truly a "Lost Pre-Raphaelite". Daly has fleshed him out with biographical information and a corpus of often beautiful (and beautifully reproduced) works, largely unearthed by his determined sleuthing, and has composed a totally unexpected but convincing portrait of the man, which bears directly upon the content of his otherwise often inexplicable pictures. This is not a book by an art historian, but perhaps a better book for that, written with an engaging freshness and originality which make it a pleasure to read." Allen Staley, Professor (Emeritus) of the History of Art at Columbia University, New York, and author of The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape.
