Navigating Networks in the Victorian Age: Mary Philadelphia Merrifield’s Writing on the Arts

When Mary Philadelphia Merrifield (1804–1889) wrote her three major published works on the fine arts in the 1840s, she was simultaneously fulfilling several additional demanding roles. Married to a Brighton barrister with delicate health, and mother to five children between the ages of eight and eighteen living at home, Merrifield’s domestic management alone would have consumed the waking hours of most Victorian women. Her ageing mother also lived with the family, and the education of the younger children was undertaken at home. On the surface, this setting seems an unlikely one for a researcher whose investigation into the authentic materials and methods of the old masters would bring her to the attention of the Fine Arts Commission, convened in response to the challenge of rebuilding the Houses of Parliament after the fire of 1834. Close reading of Merrifield’s published works, together with her own correspondence and that of her broader family and associates, illuminates the complex networks that were fundamental to her ability to research, write, and publish. She was supported by strong and constant encouragement from her husband and collaboration from her family. At the same time, her non-official status seems to have allowed a degree of familiarity in her correspondence with some of the powerful figures in the art-political world, such as Sir Robert Peel or Sir Charles Eastlake, whose support was also key. The pursuit of her research missions on the Continent allowed her to develop her own network of specialist researchers. In the libraries, art academies, and galleries where her identity as a foreign woman seems to have mitigated the social censure normally expected for those of her sex who ventured into activities associated with the male sphere, she secured respect and even friendship. Merrifield’s publications on the materials of the old masters have stood the test of time extraordinarily well. Her writing is not only of note because the author was a woman. Merrifield is still an authoritative source often cited in the publications on technical art history, and her words retain scholarly value related closely to her original aims. Perhaps the informally collaborative nature of her research, writing, and publishing brought the components of opinion and rigorous argument into a just equilibrium.