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The old adage that a picture paints a thousand words is only true if you know the language being spoken. Take the Victorians; how many of their painted images appear to us at first glance so prim and proper, even twee. But beneath those buttoned-up, straight-laced exteriors, there lurks a deep, concealed well of emotion. To break through to the real significance, you need to translate the signs, decode the symbols whose meanings are no longer obvious to us. 

What are they all trying to tell us, those ladies in bonnets, those cute animals, those flowers and climbing plants that you’ve seen when wandering through a room of Victorian paintings in a provincial museum? You can find out in Telling Tales: The Story of Victorian Narrative Art at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth, an exhibition that reveals that British 19th-century art is as full of hidden meanings as those Dutch Golden Age interiors we love so much. 

There are no really big names in this show and, let’s be brutally honest, nothing that you’d classify as really great art. Barring a couple of paintings by James Tissot and a canvas by John Everett Millais, it mostly features painters you’ve never heard of or have seen once and forgotten. But this is one of those shows that adds up to a lot more than the sum of the parts because of the way it’s presented. The captions explaining the pictures make for a superb exhibition you will want to linger over. 

It’s one of the Tissots that greets you at the start: The Captain’s Daughter, subtitled The Last Evening. It’s a very intricate picture, as so many Tissots are: all that wood in the railings and weatherboarding, the masts and piles and windows, providing a backdrop to the action involving the girl on the left and the older and younger men on the right. But what is that action? What’s actually happening? 

Boats and trains to take them to distant places: Victorians were a lot more mobile than people had been in the past, and by the 1850s, rail travel was no longer a novelty. But a train journey had many meanings, and much depended on how rich or poor you were. Abraham Solomon painted contrasting versions of first- and second-class travel…. pictures which he reprised on more than one occasion. The two on show here are from Southampton City Art Gallery, which has put on this exhibition in conjunction with the Russell-Cotes and to which it will move in spring 2023. Even the weather in these pictures betrays the class difference.

It’s a sad scene in second class, subtitled Thus Part We: Rich in Sorrow, Parting Poor. This is a family fallen on hard times; the widowed mother and pale, weeping daughter are seeing off the rather anxious-looking son. The posters on the end wall of the spartan carriage offer passage to Australia, suggesting the young man is off to seek his fortune in the 1851 gold rush, a possibility further hinted at by the ships’ rigging seen through the window, against a backdrop of dark threatening clouds above scrubland. 

There’s a much more scenic view through the window in first class, with blue sky and pink-tinged cloud and a sight of the sea and hills. Things are much more comfortable in this luxury compartment, with deeply padded seats and headrests. One of those chance meetings on a train finds the young officer engaging in lively conversation with a gentleman whose daughter looks demurely on. But, we learn, the pink roses on the seat in front of her symbolise a gentle, sweet love which she waits for the handsome stranger to reciprocate….

The subtitle is And at First Meeting Loved, but this is a toned-down version of Solomon’s original idea. The first version of the painting was deemed scandalous, because it showed the young people apparently flirting while the old gentleman had nodded off in the corner of the compartment over his newspaper. 

Where were we? Roses…. once you get started on flowers and plants you can’t stop in Victorian art. Pots of chrysanthemums stand for a heart left to desolation; ivy stands for fidelity. And, would you Adam and Eve it, apples represent temptation, while oranges symbolise fertility, wealth and prosperity, though also the transience of beauty. 

What a Victorian painting Love Locked Out is. So many symbols to decipher: There’s an arrow on the ground next to a broken blue vase with a pink rose, while on the thorny bush, there’s only one pink flower left — the rest have turned into autumn red rose hips, while autumn leaves are also piling up round the threshold. Does anyone have the key to unlock the door through the heart-shaped surround of the keyhole?