A Liverpool Exemplar - James Carling

 

James William Carling was born on the 31st of December 1857 at 38, Addison Street, Liverpool, in the Holy Cross parish. James was one of six children born to Henry and Rose Carling who had been married in Roscommon, Ireland and emigrated to England after being evicted from their tenant farm during the Irish Famine. He went to Holy Cross School in Fontenoy Street but unfortunately was just six when he lost his mother and his father died 4 years after the death of his mother. Little James began to work at five years old, busking, reciting Shakespeare on the street, doing whatever errands he could get paid to do. He and his brothers, Willy, Johnny and Henry, earned pennies singing in parish festivals and went onto the streets as very young boys, practising their art on the city pavements for money in or around the town centre, in streets frequented by the more privileged class. Here James became known as 'the little chalker' and, with his brothers, highlighed anything that was fashionable, becoming the lampooners of their time, but among their favourite images would be actors, sportsmen or great characters of the day. Unlike most of the street artists in Liverpool, James didn't draw the same picture twice. On some days rain washed away his work, on other days the police would chase him away if gentry were using the street as he preferred to draw in the vicinity of the large houses as the toffs threw more coppers. Poor folk who wanted to show their admiration for his work gave him cockles, shrimps and periwinkles. At the age of eight, after being hauled off the street by a policeman, James was forced to spend six years in St George’s Industrial School, under the care of headmaster Father Nugent; and it was there he learned to read and write. It was during this time that his father died.

James in his youth

 

Aged 14 he travelled to Philadelphia in America to join his elder brother Henry in an attempt to become a successful artist. Here he renewed his career as a sidewalk artist, and even joined a vaudeville troupe where he would do portraits and caricatures whilst on stage, billing himself as the 'Lightning Caricaturist' and 'the Fastest Drawer in the World'. He travelled the country with the early musical variety spectacular 'The Black Crook' before moving to Chicago in 1880 where his brother Henry had founded an art school. James as well as being outstanding in portraiture work, even developed as a poet, and many celebrated artists began their careers at the art school under the brothers' tutelage. It was in Chicago, at the age of 23, that James entered a competition in Harpers magazine to illustrate a special gift edition of The Raven poem, by Edgar Allan Poe. James loved Poe, considering him 'the greatest poet this world has ever seen' and made 43 illustrations, entering 33 of them in the contest. However he was not to be successful and returned to Liverpool in the spring of 1887 with intentions to further his artwork and career. 

One of James' illustrations for The Raven

The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, is now the proud owner of the little-known and seldom-seen collection of the illustrations for Edgar Allen Poe’s 1845 masterpiece The Raven, drawn by James in 1882. His brother Henry had kept his brother's Raven illustrations for more than 50 years, finally putting some of them on public display in a 1930 exhibit of his own work. They were very well received. Henry died six years later and the Poe Museum was delighted to purchase the complete set from Henry’s daughter Stella in 1937.

When James became ill he was admitted to Liverpool Workhouse on the 17th of June 1887 and died on the 9th of July 1887 aged 29 and was so poor, and there being no known next of kin, that he was buried along with 15 others corpses in an unmarked paupers grave in Walton Park Cemetery. He is the first named pavement artist whose life is fully documented and in his honor, since Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, The James Carling International Pavement Art Competition takes place in Liverpool every year on Bold Street, about which he said in his unpublished autobiography, "I not only could not draw in that street, I could not walk in it." 

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/12/a-liverpool-exemplar-richard-gildart.html