Annandale may be the Wilde-st house in Canada

Annandale House curator Kate Bakos spoke about the Aesthetic Movement and its influence on the decor in Annandale House during the recent Lunch and Learn series. The series continues with a presentation on Annandale Farm presented by Patti Phelps on May 28 and 29. (Robin Krafft Photo)

Robin Krafft, Post Contributor

The popular Lunch and Learn program at Annandale NHS on April 24 featured a lecture on how philosophy and art history informed and influenced the decor and design of one of the finest houses in Canada.

The program started in 2000 as a millennium project and is offered on the last Thursday and Friday of the month. Every Lunch and Learn is an opportunity to delve into and discover a piece of Tillsonburg’s compelling history.

“Keeping Tillsonburg’s history alive is at the heart of this program,” curator Kate Bakos said. “History is a living thing, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to help steward and champion it in our community.”

Guests enjoyed a lunch catered by Beres before the lecture was delivered by Bakos, who leaned into her extensive study and research into the period that informed the Aesthetic Movement, which influenced the interiors of Annandale House.

Bakos traced the origins of the movement, beginning in 1712. She unpacked the British philosophical and political idea of politeness, Joseph Addison’s essays on the arts and The Aesthetic Triad, and how later thinkers and theorists expanded and transformed his ideas. It was thought that the uniquely human experience of Beauty was an integral aspect of progress and an essential element of our lives.

Notions of Beauty in the 18th century were also influenced by gardening. While nature was deemed the highest form of Beauty, it was often ‘improved’ by deliberate arrangement and refinement by the human hand in an unobtrusive way. Rejecting the perfect symmetry of French formal gardens, the English landscape garden appeared natural.

"The English landscape garden was not just an aesthetic object," Bakos said. "It was an ideological one. When British colonists settled in Upper Canada, in Australia, and India, they brought their aesthetic sensibilities with them, not as a neutral cultural preference, but as a marker of identity and 'civilization' ... to assert cultural continuity."

Throughout her discourse, Bakos made it clear that these were not notions reserved for an aristocratic class, but were meant for everyone. She explained aesthetics as the philosophical study of how and why we experience Beauty.

"Not just what we find beautiful, but why Beauty matters, what it does to us, what it means that human beings are the kind of creatures who stop in front of a painting or a frescoed ceiling or a garden and feel something," Bakos said.

In the late 1800s, the Aesthetic Movement grew. Art for art's sake, incorporating nature and natural forms, was an entirely democratic principle which advocated for beauty for everyone. The philosopher behind the movement was Walter Pater.

"Pater argued that the purpose of life was the intense cultivation of beautiful experience, to burn with a hard, gem-like flame in pursuit of beauty, was the highest human calling," Bakos said. "One of his students was Oscar Wilde."

Wilde was an Irish author, poet and playwright, and he didn’t just popularize these ideas, he took it one step further.

"He lectured about wallpaper, fireplace surrounds, tiled hearths, and the colour of your dining room walls," Bakos said. "He took the aesthetic argument inside the home, and in doing so made it available to anyone with a house, not just anyone with an estate. Every household a small argument, in fabric and colour and ornament, about what kind of civilization this was."

The Aesthetic Movement was brought to North America and popularized by Wilde, who became the most famous aesthete in the English-speaking world. In January of 1882, he sailed for New York. Over the next 10 months, he gave lectures in 100 cities, including Woodstock, ON.

Bakos also described the extensive criticism and ridicule that the Aesthetic Movement faced, heavily satirized both in the media and on the stage. Preceding Wilde's tour, a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera (that mocked the movement’s sensibilities) shaped public ideas, but even costumed hecklers failed to rattle Wilde, who said, "Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius."

The lampooning and mockery proved the genuine cultural power of the Aesthetic Movement and did nothing to affect its popularity. E. D. and Mary Ann Tillson’s home was nearing completion when Wilde lectured at the city hall auditorium in Woodstock.

There is no definitive proof the Tillsons attended the lecture, but they were connected to the organization that sponsored his visit, and according to a local paper, “the Who's Who of Oxford County” attended. When E. D. Tillson launched his new steam-powered boat onto Lake Joseph four months later, it was painted with Oscar Wilde's signature sunflowers and carried his name. It was also around this time that the decoration of Annandale House began.

In 1883, fresco painter James Walthew arrived from Detroit and spent four years working with Mary Ann Tillson on the interior of the house. Visitors will be able to recognize the local flora and fauna that are featured throughout the house, in accordance with Wilde's ideals.

A Toronto firm supplied the fireplaces, a focal point of each room. Bakos explained that the decorative tiles and tiered overmantels were typical of the Aesthetic Movement. The parquet floors feature five distinct types of wood. Most striking, however, are the elaborately hand-painted ceilings.

There were several owners of the house after the Tillsons passed, but credit must be given to Dr. Charles Van Dyke Corless. An antique and art collector, his updates and repairs deliberately spared the interior features. His daughter inherited the house, and after her death in 1980, demolition was being considered.

"A committee of concerned citizens formed in 1983," Bakos said. "They borrowed $145,000 from the town to purchase the property ... and the restoration work began."

As repairs were made and layers were removed, the splendor of the original ceiling paintings was gradually revealed. Heritage Canada was notified and grant dollars, fundraising, private donations, curator and artist expertise and volunteer hours spanning 15 years brought this historically significant house back to the outstanding and beautiful piece of art that it once was.

In 1998, Annandale House received federal designation as a National Historic Site of Canada.

"It is a philosophical argument made tangible in plaster and paint and carved wood and parquet floors," Bakos said. "Every surface is a canvas, as Wilde said it should be. Every canvas makes the same claim: beauty is a democratic right. It belongs to anyone who chooses it. A mill owner in a small Ontario town chose it. A painter from Detroit spent four years realizing it. A generation of curators and Tillsonburgers spent their lives recovering it. And we get to enjoy it, celebrate it and take up the mantle of stewardship for our beautiful house."

With this conclusion, there was applause and several questions from the audience, followed by a flurry of conversation. Enthusiastic supporter and lifetime museum member Bonnie Sitts recalled the numerous fundraisers.

"There were people doing demonstrations during the fundraisers," Sitts said. "I came as a demonstrator doing chair caning. I remember a fundraiser before they put the wallpaper up, and you could sign your name on the wall. Did you know there are scrapbooks at the entrance? All of the renovation photos are there, a lot of them taken by Bill Pratt."

Local author and historian Dr. Jason Pankratz will be giving a lecture at the Lunch and Learn at Woodstock Museum on May 26, focusing on Oscar Wilde's visit to Woodstock and that space in 1882, also connecting with the Aesthetics Movement and Annandale House.

"Kate did a wonderful presentation that really connected the origins of the Aesthetic Movement - the visual but also theoretical,” Pongracz said. “It was fascinating to hear how it directly related to the decoration of Annandale House."

Before everyone departed, and reflecting the collective emotion of the room, one guest concluded "We're blessed to still have it."