The guitar and the Bristol school of artists

Abstract

This article examines the special relationship that developed between guitarists and artists in Bristol in the first decades of the 19th century, an event previously known of only from the pages of local newspapers, diaries and obscure literary writings. It was the confluence of two disparate events which enabled this to happen: the emergence around 1810 of the Bristol School of Artists, and a concurrent European-wide surge of interest in the guitar, generally referred to as la guitaromanie (‘guitar frenzy’), which reached its peak in England in the early 1830s. Bristol, neighbouring Clifton, and Bath were at this time fashionable destinations for the leisured rich, and their less competitive atmosphere also proved attractive to many professional musicians working in London. Among those who travelled to the West Country to give concerts and teach were some of the greatest contemporary guitar virtuosos, including Fernando Sor, Trinitario Huerta, Giuseppe Anelli, Andreas Schulz and Karl (or Charles) Eulenstein. These players found favour not only with the concert-going public but also with the local artistic fraternity, some of whom were inspired by their playing to take up the guitar, in particular genre artist Edward Villiers Rippingille (1789–1859). An enduring bond developed between the two groups, which resulted in much socializing and creative collaboration. In addition, a strange and poetic cult of the guitar derived from their activities, documented in a series of whimsical yet erudite articles by the amateur artist and poet John Eagles. This forgotten episode represents a small but vital chapter in English Romanticism, and is important also for the light it sheds on the guitar’s role in English provincial life in the 19th century.