ae isi bri Vast ix c >> 5, aoe es rene i IN THE yr R f PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HERBERT REIACH, LTD., 43 BELVEDERE ROAD, LONDON, S.E.1 } HOINOAOITSNIVD SVWOHL ADT “AdVOSGNVI AGOOM ENGLISH ART IN THE XVIII CENTURY By C. Reginald Grundy 9 8 a NEW YORK: ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI, INC. 66 FIFTH AVENUE LONDON: THE STUDIO LTD., 44 LEICESTER SQ. Uniform with this volu GREAT PERIODS IN THE ART OF GREECE. ByE.A. 2. DUTCH PAINTING OF THE SE CENTURY. By C.H. Collins Baker ( National Gallery). 3. MAYA AND MEXICAN ART. By’ 4. FRENCH ART IN THE XIXth Cl By Gabriel Mourey. ; Others in preparation. CONTENTS Bibliography Introduction Chapter I—Painting oy IJ—Miniatures ee I1I—Sculpture ‘3 IV—Engravings a V—Architecture . VI—Furniture a VII—Metalwork ,5, WVIII—Ceramics LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Beechey, Sir William Copley, John S. Cotes, Francis PLATE XXXII XXX XXII Gainsborough, Thomas Frontispiece, XXII, XXIV, XXVI Girtin, Thomas Highmore, Joseph Hogarth, William Hoppner, John Hudson, Thomas Kneller, Sir Godfrey Lambert, George Morland, George Raeburn, Sir Henry Ramsay, Allan Reynolds, Sir Joshua Richardson, Jonathan Romney, George . Rowlandson, Thomas Sandby, Paul XIV : III, 1V ViEEAVs VII XXXVIII IX I XIII XXXVII XXXVI : xX XVII, XVIII II XXV, XXVII, XXIX XXXIV, XXXV XXXII Vv Scott, Samuel. ee ee eee Serres, Dominic —_. : ms Smith, George . ie : Stuart, Gilbert. ; : Stubbs, George : : Towne, Francis. a Wilson, Richard . Zoffany, Johann , : eee CaM. ‘ val MINIATURES Cosway, Richard - : Hone, Nathaniel . ; : Unknown Artist . 4 : SCULPTURE Cheere, Sir Henry : ; ENGRAVINGS Dupont, Gainsborough . . Green, Valentine . ss ae Hogarth, William Sh ee temas McArdell, James . ; fe Murphy, John : ig ee ea Pether, William . earn Eek. Reynolds, S. W. . : cee, Smith, J. R. Ward, William . ; ; e . e ARCHITECTURE | Bath Street, Bath : : Bedford Square, Houses in Bedford Square House (Interior) Birch’s Shop Front ; : Georgian House in Hampshire . Pine Panelled Room : 5 vi FURNITURE Dolls’ Houses 2 Chippendale Clock Commode, semi-circular . Mahogany armchair Walnut armchair Walnut chair (Windsor tye) Winged armchair METALWORK Coffee Pot Kettle on Stand Mug Saucepan LXVI, LXVII LXIII LXXV LXXVI Sheffield Plate (Teapot and Sauce Tureen) Spirit Lamp ‘Tankard Water Jug CERAMICS Battersea Enamels Battersea Enamel Hot Water Jug Bristol Delft Dish ; f)wWortune Jeller, The ’’ (Bow) Leeds Earthenware Canister Needlecases (Chelsea) Staffordshire Dish Staffordshire Figures Toby Jug ; Wedgwood Cruet LXXII, LXXIII LXIX LXXIV LXXI LXXVII LXXX]I LXXXIV LXXXV ~ LXXXVIT _ LXXX, LXXXII : . LXXXIII LXXVITI, LXXIX ». LXXXVI LXXXVITII vii Sir Ay RL: Chubctis? Boglant arthen’ Sir As vids Church. Basia, pee Collection. 2nd Edition. 1923. Emil Hannover. Pottery and “Porcelain Bernard Rackham). Vols. I and III, 1925. _ a Bernard Rackham and Herbert Read. _ Englis - 1924. ; | William Turner. Transtae! Printing: on Aa Porcelain and ae FOO: a ey %) 7 VilI—Metal Work. J. Starkie - Gardner. Foglia Jar rk _ Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 19) Sir Charles James Jackson, 2 vols. IgItI. Sir Charles James Jackson. Their Marks. 2nd Edition. 1921. W. W. Watts. Old Enel Silver. INTRODUCTION: By devoting nearly half of this volume to the study of painting, I may have laid myself open to the charge of giving an excessive proportion of space to one of several subjects, each equally worthy of attention. But it was in this matter that the English made by far their most important contribution to Eighteenth Century Art. For good or evil their pictures initiated the beginning of a new era, and led the way to that revolt against tradition which may be said to have formed the basis of most European modern art movements. In other spheres, the achievements of English artists and craftsmen of the period, though considerable, were less momentous. Their sculpture was more or less an echo of classical or Continental ideals. They successfully exploited mezzotint and, to a lesser extent, stipple engraving, but, though their work in these media was extensively bought on the Continent, it was not imitated there. English architecture was noteworthy, more especially in domestic buildings, but being designed for national or local requirements only made its influence felt in parts of America where taste ran in similar channels. Much the same may be said regarding furniture and metal work. In ceramics, indeed, towards the end of the eighteenth century England dominated European markets, but her success was achieved more as a result of technical efficiency than by virtue of zxsthetic genius. In most of these spheres, however, England’s work is worthy of high praise, and if in some instances I have treated it with apparent brevity, exigencies of space rather than any lack of appreciation must be my excuse. Taking it as a whole the eighteenth century may be regarded as the culminating period of English Art. Its influence might have been still greater had not progress been interrupted by prolonged and costly wars, and the invasion by machinery of spheres which formerly were occupied by artists and craftsmen. The esthetic results of this invasion proved disastrous to English taste, which xi during the nineteenth century * reaction has been brought ~ methods and in favour of more small degree to the surviving examples of English Ei ‘Ctaftsmanship. | Pare a% .f CHAPTER I PAINTING The concluding issue of the ‘‘ Spectator’’ for December 4, 1712, in a comparison between British and Continental art, claims that ‘‘ Face-Painting is nowhere so well performed as in England.’’ The reason adduced is that: ““ No Nation in the world delights so much in having their own, or Friends’ or Relations’ Pictures; whether from their National good-nature or having a love to Painting, and not being encouraged in the great article of Religious Pictures, which the Purity of our Worship refuses the free use of or from whatever other Cause.”’ This claim for the pre-eminence of the English in portraiture is considerably weakened by the essayist’s confession that its most able exponent is a foreigner. For he goes on to state: ‘Tis said the Blessed Virgin descended from Heaven, to sit to St. Luke; I venture to affirm, that if she should desire another Madonna to be painted by the Life, she would come to England; and am of opinion that your present President [of the Academy of St. Luke], Sir Godfrey Kneller, from his Improvement since he arrived in this Kingdom, would perform that office better than any Foreigner living.’’ The essayist’s ingenious plea for Kneller marks the latter’s primacy in British painting, a primacy universally acknowledged from the time of Sir Peter Lely’s death in 1680, until long after his own death in 1723. Indeed thirty years later we find John Ellys trying to confound the young Joshua Reynolds, then revolting against the Kneller tradition, by exclaiming: ‘‘ Shakespeare in poetry and Kneller in painting, damme! ’’ Kneller, indeed, was the third and most absolute of the trio of foreigners—Van Dyck, Lely, and himself—who dominated English art for nearly a century. It says little for the quality of native talent that this dynasty of alien painters should reign almost I without opposition and certainly without a _ feasible alternative for so lengthy a season. Yet it is noteworthy that these distinguished artists instead of forcing foreign ideas on British patrons were compelled to modify their own styles to suit the latter’s taste. The pictures painted by Van Dyck in England are neither Flemish nor Italian in their inspiration and are quite distinct from any of his early work. He, indeed, may be said to have initiated that compromise between the classical formalism of later Latin art, and the imitative realism of the Dutch painters, which was to prove a permanent feature of British portraiture. Lely whose pre-British work is practically unknown, was a more plebeian painter than Van Dyck, lacking the latter’s keen perception of the aristocratic traits of his sitters, and in his feminine portraits apt to substitute voluptuousness for dignity and refinement. Nevertheless with a somewhat halting gait he conformed with the Van Dyck tradition. Kneller, the last of the trio, fell further away from it. His instincts were those of the Dutch masters and it was his misfortune that he lived in an era when the sober reticence ~ and quiet colour of their works were no longer appreciated. It was an age of pomp and affectation. Louis XIV, small and insignificant without his robes, his imposing wig and high-heeled shoes, had set the prevailing taste by always having himself portrayed with king-like or even god-like mien and state. The fashion influenced English art. The aristocratic elegance of Van Dyck and the sensuous allure of Lely were succeeded by a more formal style of portraiture in which the individuality of the sitter was sacrificed to the expression of his dignity and trappings. Conventional poses were adopted, with the result that the walls of many of our country houses are peopled with figures so alike in their stiff and pompous dignity, that at first sight one suspects that the same individual sat for the entire series. Kneller was largely responsible for this plethora of soulless work. His studio, like the studios of Van Dyck and Lely before him, was a manufactory for 2 o irc on pot boilers, produced with little assistance from the master’s own hand by a large company of assistants and pupils, His efforts were supplemented by those outside copyists and imitators, and as most of their misdeeds now go under Kneller’s name, it is not surprising that his posthumous reputation has been under a cloud for over two centuries, Only now, largely through the efforts of Mr. Collins Baker, we are beginning to realise that Kneller was a great painter. A man of small invention and indolent in the practice of his profession, it is only on comparatively rare occasions that he chooses to give his talents free play and shows himself an artist of consummate ability. An able draughts- man, possessed of a sensitive but limited appreciation of tone and colour, he was also a superb executant. His touch is always swift and certain, doing. exactly what he wants with the greatest economy of means. The fine quality of his best work is illustrated in examples like those of John Smith and the Marquis of Tweeddale which rival Sargent in the dexterity of their handling; form, texture and substance being suggested with a minimum of effort. These qualities ensured Kneller’s supremacy among the artists of his time, a mediocre company whose efforts were chiefly confined to portraiture. Landscapes and animal and subject pictures had hardly come into being, historical painting was practically confined to the representations of Saints and heathen divinities—chiefly the latter—which Verrio and Laguerre were sprawling over the walls and ceilings of the Royal Palaces. Portraiture, then, constituted the only living current in British painting and_ its exploration resolves itself into an attempt to discriminate between the artists who fell wholly under the sway of Kneller and those whose art was originally based on earlier traditions, | | What may be termed the main stream of native portraiture was that transmitted through the personality of John Riley (1641-1691). He had learnt his art from Gerard Soest (d. 1681) who, a contemporary of Van Dyck, had fallen to 3 some extent under the sway of that master. Riley’s best known pupil was Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745) an important link in the apostolic succession of British painters. Before his death he became the most fashionable portrait | painter, to be succeeded in that position by his son-in-law and pupil, Thomas Hudson, who was presently displaced by his own pupil, the famous Joshua Reynolds. Richardson merits the adjectives correct and scholarly. He knew how to model a face, and his whole length figures, if inclined to be stiff, at least possess substance and stand firmly on their legs. Of his British contemporaries, the Irishman Charles Jervas or Jarvis (c. 1675-1739) is perhaps _ best remembered, if only for his inordinate conceit. Of him, it is told that after copying a picture by Titian he was so much impressed with the superiority of his own version over the original that he naively exclaimed ‘‘ Poor __ little Tit! how he would stare!’’ Though a pupil of Kneller he managed to escape from the latter’s stereoty ped conventions by studying in Italy, being one of the earliest of British painters to visit that country, which a generation later became the Mecca of all serious aspirants to fame in art. Walpole, who testifies that ‘‘ he sat at the top of his profession,”’ stigmatises his work as ‘‘ wretched daubings,”’ but this is unjust, for though Jervas was weak in drawing he had at least a feeling for pleasant and decorative colour. Jervas’s light style of painting—‘ flimsy ’? Walpole calls a. it—is hailed by Mr. Anthony Bertram as an anticipatory attempt at the manner which, later on, Gainsborough was to perfect. Most of the native-born painters of the period were ; content to interpret Kneller’s style with varying degrees of British stolidity. Among them may be mentioned the “a Scot William Aikman (c, 1682-1731), master of Allan Ramsay, Gavin Hamilton (1697 ?-1737), Edward Luttrell (¢. 1650-1710), Thomas Murray (1666-1724) and Arthur Pond (1705-1758) all men of capability, but a dull company on the whole, generally most interesting when the 4 personality of a sitter has occasionally surprised them into departing from their usual conventions. | Apart from Kneller the foreign portraitists did not form a distinguished assemblage. Perhaps the best of the bunch was Michael Dahl (1656-1743), one of the little colony of Swedes whom the turmoiled state of their country exiled to England. He, at least, had sufficient originality in his colour to induce Kneller to borrow from it. For the rest he is a weaker and more placid edition of that painter, not quite so certain in his drawing and smoother and less varied in his brushwork. The weakened productions of this prolific artist in his old age, and the inferior contemporary portraits now passed off as his handiwork, have somewhat dimmed his reputation. In Scotland Sir J. B. de Medina (1659-1711) a Flemish born artist of Spanish extraction was, according to Mr. Collins Baker, following the Kneller formula with such fidelity that only the slightly more reddish tone of his work prevents it from being confused with that of the master. The German, Johann Baptiste Closterman (1660-1711), an erstwhile partner of John Riley, Started in a Lelyesque vein, but after an absence abroad, he returned in 1703 to swell the flood of Knellerites. Another German, Balthasar Denner (1685-1749), produced portraits of meticulous finish but mechanical execution, while to the decorator Louis Laguerre (1663-1721) a few dignified portraits, French in style, have been assigned. A multitude of other names might be mentioned, for portraitists of a kind were then almost as numerous in London as to-day, when the camera has almost entirely usurped the place of the painter in inexpensive likeness- taking. One must disregard them, however, to turn to historical painting which, under the guise of decoration, was the only other branch of art which afforded its votaries the prospect of a living. Naturally it was virtually monopolised by foreigners, for it demanded a higher standard of draughtsmanship than could be attained by artists who had practically no opportunity of drawing from 5 the living model. This failing was not remedied until 1711, when the Academy of St. Luke was founded under the presidency of Kneller. Despite its high-sounding title, it was little more than a sketching club, held originally in a room in Queen Anne Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where a model was hired to draw from in the evenings, and a collection of casts from the antique assembled. This little institution, located in various premises, and undergoing occasional interregnums, served a useful purpose, until 1769, when it was superseded by the Royal Academy and its properties handed over to that body. In 1700 the leading idea of decoration was apparently to give an illusion of illimitable space. Walls were turned into the semblance of stately halls, with long columned vistas extending into beautiful gardens all crowded with figures. Ceilings were painted to represent the Olympic heavens with innumerable gods and goddesses poised above the spectators’ heads and contemplating the latter’s actions. To the bashful occupants of a state bedroom the effect of the countless eyes watching the mysteries of their toilettes might well prove embarrassing, so that the high four-poster beds, curtained and canopied until they resembled pi 05 would serve as arks of refuge. In 1700 Antonio Verrio (1639-1707) was still engaged on those decorations of Hampton Court which after much persuasion he had deigned to continue for William III, whom he regarded as an usurper. They are competent examples of an art revived in England to emulate the meretricious glories of Versailles, but never thoroughly naturalised here. When Verrio died his mantle fell upon his assistant Louis Laguerre (1663-1721), French in birth and training. An unassuming man, he was presently ousted from this position by Sir James Thornhill (1676-1734) who owed his success and his knighthood less to his abilities, which were considerable, than to his influence as a member of Parliament. Thornhill, as almost the last English exponent, on a large scale, of this extraneous art, 6 Sa ; ma a a 5 “a a may be dealt with here, for this style of decoration, though practised throughout the first quarter of the eighteenth century, was merely a survival from the preceding one, and had little part in the future development of English art. Unfortunately for himself, Thornhill’s more ambitious performances, dimly visible in the interior altitudes of St. Paul’s, through the gloomy murk of the London atmosphere, or forced into subordination by the crowded walls of the Greenwich picture galleries, are not seen to advantage. If not great, they are more than respectable performances. In his smaller work, for instance, the Study for a miracle of St. Francis at the National Gallery, he shows himself a considerable artist, combining pleasing colour and good draughtsmanship with a feeling for design, hardly to be as well exemplified in English religious art until after the close of the century. William Hogarth (1697-1764) was. the first British born painter who can be unequivocally termed an_ original genius. Son of an ex-schoolmaster who corrected proofs for the press—‘‘a low tradesman’’ as he was termed by Walpole—Hogarth belonged to the lower middle class. His creed, a materialistic Puritanism, tempered by good nature, was inspired by his early environment. He taught that virtue and industry were rewarded by wealth and good living, regarded polite learning and accomplishments with Suspicion and reprobated equally the vices of the idle rich and indigent poor. His contemporary fame was won as a didactic teacher and satirist, for contemporary critics, in company with Walpole, regarded him ‘‘ as a writer of comedy with a pencil ’’ and overlooked his greatness as a painter. His success in the former capacity indeed had momentous results, for the topical attraction of his pictures inspired the public to buy thousands of the prints taken from them, and so started a popular demand for contem- porary art which later on was to transfer the main support of British painting and engraving from the aristocracy: to the commonalty. Hogarth’s popularity came through his 7 ability to tell a story dramatically and in full detail sta ins his immense knowledge of London life which he realised’ with the close observation and broad humour of a street gamin. Sedulous practice at engraving, sketching from life in the streets, and drawing from the living model, first at a new Academy at St. Martin’s Lane and later at the St. Luke’s — Academy, under the presidency of Thornhill, gave Hogarth a better technical training than most artists of his time. He essayed painting by way of small family portrait groups —conversation pieces as they were called—which bored him exceedingly, but at any rate gave him an insight into composition which he turned to good stead in his later story- telling pictures. Generally immature and sometimes posed) with a stiffness and regularity of arrangement that seems: deliberately satirical, they reveal Hogarth in their colour, quality and brushwork. Charles Phillips (1708-1747) produced similar works, more heavily handled and marked by a less delicate sense of colour; Francis Hayman and Joseph Highmore also essayed them and in the next generation John Zoffany and various of his imitators greatly popularised this style of portraiture. Hogarth abandoned it after his elopement and marriage with Thornhill’s daughter drove him to adopt speedier ways of | making money. The six pictures of ‘* The Harlot’s Progress ’’’ (1733) were the outcome; they created a furore and Hogarth floated into prosperity on the sale of — the prints that he himself engraved from them. He had naturalised in England a new type of art—the anecdotal picture. His success was many times repeated, his best known pictures in this metier being the famous ‘* Marriage — a la Mode ”’ series. These works by Hogarth are so fine — that they almost make us forget his failings—his lapses into vulgarity, which caused him to intrude coarse or comic incidents into some of his more serious pictures, and above all his exaggerated literary outlook. The latter induced him | to treat his subject pictures not as tableaux but as crowded 8 % 4 “3 a ae : Ne Sirs ar. . . wall wins, | L a hae ae ee at”: -da tl, ae De id chapters in a three-volume novel, so that incident is crowded upon incident, and even the pictures, prints and other subordinate objects, depicted on his canvases, are made to convey, by aid of symbolism, a weight of Meaning altogether disproportionate to their pictorial significance. Hogarth’s genius enabled him so to disguise this failing as to make it appear a virtue. Nevertheless his pictures, how- ever deftly composed, not occasionally suffer from the over- crowding and diffusion of interest inseparable from his ‘methods. | Though his outlook and the themes of his art were largely original, Hogarth’s technique is based on that of ‘Kneller. Hence he must be regarded less as initiating a _hew departure in painting than as uttering the Swan Song of established tradition. He had a more lively sense of colour than his exemplar and_ greater psychological insight. Instead of suffering from the boredom induced by unmerited affluence, Hogarth retained an_ intense interest in humanity. With his other gifts he should ‘have been a great portrait painter, but here his reputation as a caricaturist interfered. One feels that in his large commissioned portraits Hogarth had to turn.a blind eye to his subject’s less polite idiosyncrasies and set him down with full regard to his dignity and respectability. His portraits of James Quinn and Captain Coram, fine _-as they are, give no such incisive revelation of character as the wonderful study of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, where hands, attitude and figure, as well as countenance, ‘are all redolent of personality. Hogarth’s genius could not work trammelled, he painted best when for his own pleasure without thought of ulterior consequences. Thus his picture of Miss Hogarth is’at once attractive and intimate. ‘Even more convincing is Hogarth’s Servants, their heads simply and succinctly recorded on canvas without.a single unessential stroke being added to give the work surface finish. Better still is the Shrimp Girl a marvel of free ‘flowing and spontaneous brushwork, In some sort these last two pictures better enable us to — understand the era in which Hogarth lived than even his dramatic tableaux. The eighteenth century was a period — of contradictions. It was an age of fervent piety and frank animalism, of heroic patriotism and sordid nepotism, of — devoted self-sacrifice and unredeemed brutality. Wesley was typical of it, as well as Wilkes; John Howard, who toured the filth-laden, fever-infected gaols of Europe seeking to alleviate the miseries of their inmates, as well as Thomas Bainbridge, whose three murders and other numerous cruelties, committed when warder of the Fleet Prison, shocked even the robust sensibilities of the age. Hogarth’s two pictures, painted without didactic motives, suggest the source of these contradictions. Their subjects are drawn from the commonalty. Both are equally English but each represents a different England. The cluster of domestics, restrained in mien and garb, grave-mouthed, and with features decorously quiescent, reveals the Puritan stock accustomed to curb both desire and self-expression, and resolute to pass through life along the straightest and narrowest of paths. The Shrimp Girl appears almost the antithesis of this. Robust, bubbling with mirth, untram- melled by convention and quick to take what joys life offers her, she gives free vent to a personality that in the main is guided only by nature’s instincts. Like all great portraits these pictures are not only records of individuals - but also of types of humanity—types which in Hogarth’s days were still fundamentally distinct, but which now have - been largely merged through the leavening effects of universal education. bos Hogarth’s fatal reputation as a caricaturist prevented him from ever attaining a place among the fashionable portrait painters of his time. Thomas Hudson (1701-1779) _ remained their doyen until ousted from this position by the — young Joshua- Reynolds. A capable painter with a knack of catching a pleasing likeness, he sometimes failed in proportioning his bodies to his heads. There are full 10 lengths by him in which the figures are correctly drawn and set firmly on their legs, but these were reputed to owe not a little to Joseph Van Aken (1709-1749), the leading drapery painter of the day, who worked for all the portraitists who could afford his assistance. —© Hudson followed the Kneller tradition, painting soundly, fluently and with a solid impasto. His colour is pleasant in a ‘Sedate kind of way. More lively is that of a little group ‘of painters who studied in Italy. They seem to have been more interested in contemporary than in restrospective work, and as the Continent was then largely dominated by French taste, their pictures often reveal a distinct Gallic savour. The pomp of Louis XIV had given place to the lighter elegance of Louis XV, and this is reflected in the work of the Anglo-Italian group. John Smibert, (¢. 1684-1751) a Scotsman, and one of the earliest of the Italian pilgrims, proceeded to America in 1728, and the keen attention paid to costume in the portraiture of the Colonial. School, may be partly ascribed to his influence. Joseph Highmore (1692-1780) is an artist of somewhat higher calibre. A pupil of Kneller, he both studied in the St. Martin’s Lane Academy and visited the Continent, That he learnt how to draw is shown in his series of illustrations to Pamela (two of which are at the National Gallery) the only genre works of the period which bear comparison with those of Hogarth. Broader and more vigorous in its treatment is his Portrait of a Man (National Gallery) in which the costume of the sitter is rendered with delightful gusto and appreciation of textile values. Of the same school is Hogarth’s crony Francis Hayman _ (1708-1776), history and portrait painter. His large pictures representing Britain’s triumphs, which decorated the Rotunda at Vauxhall, have been lost. But that the contemporary fame which these won him is not unjustified may be gauged from the portraits which he has left behind. The best of these are little inferior to those of Highmore, being deftly handled with a nice appreciation of pose and II costume. ‘Though somewhat later in. date, Henry Walton (1720-1790) may be mentioned here. A painter of portrait — groups and interior scenes, he often attains a Chardin-like quality in his smaller work. . The office of John Shackleton (d, 1767) as ‘‘ Principal — Painter ’’ to Kings George II and George III may excuse his mention; he is well represented in royal palaces, but a his works count merely as dignified survivals of a past age. To him succeeded Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) a cultured and much travelled man, who reveals a subtle but fascinating French air in his work. His coronation a portrait of George II won universal admiration and evoked — i) Reynold’s emulation for its elegant rendering of the well- turned leg of that monarch. Ramsay’s best work, however, was done earlier, before he had become literary and lazy, — a. earning a large income by fathering his pupils’ replicas 9 of his own royal portraits. | Walpole’s much derided DD Set. criticism written in 1759, that whereas * Mr. Reynolds seldom succeeds with woman: Mr. Ramsay is formed to 3 paint them ”’ is justified by two of the latter’s pictures now cle in the National Gallery of Scotland. The canvas of his wife, with its intimate revelation of the sitter’s mingled Aah diffidence and shy allure, is one of the most charming portraits of a young matron extant; the other—Mrs. Bruce — t of Arnot—with its air of high breeding, rendered with 5 delightful refinement of handling in subtle and tender colour, is a triumph of finished elegance. Reynolds ae. painted greater pictures, but in 1759 he had still to achieve the more superb representations of feminine beauty which were to add so much to his laurels as a portrait painter. With Richard Wilson (1714-1782) British landscape began to assume an esthetic standing compatible with that ae of portraiture. In England neither landscapes nor a TOR seascapes had been regarded as attractive themes for art ; but had gradually intruded themselves as backgrounds into pictures of ships, houses and hunting scenes. The — first named owed much to the influence and example of 12 Dutch Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707), one of the greatest marine painters of all time, who spent the last thirty-two years of his life in London. Van de Velde’s spirited renderings of sea and ships were more feebly echoed in the correct though monotonous seascapes of Peter Monamy (1670-1749) who however sometimes strikes a more resonant note in his occasional landscapes with buildings. Charles Brooking (1723-1759), well known for his pictures of naval engagements, was perhaps more interesting from his fuller knowledge of ships. Dominic Serres (1722-1793), somewhat later in date, still belonged to the same school but depicted his scenes with greater strength and accuracy and often on a more ambitious scale. Another renowned foreigner, Giovanni Antonio Canale, better known as Canaletto (1697-1768), who spent the better part of a decade, 1746-1756, in England, gave birth to what may be called a local urban topographical school. Samuel Scott (1710-1772) in his London views emulated him very closely, and also produced soundly painted landscapes and seascapes. There were numerous other topographical artists, but of pure landscape painters only a few. John Wootton (1686-1765) cannot be included under this heading, for his pictures derived their chief contemporary attraction from the horses and_ hounds represented in them. His landscape backgrounds, however, are generally well painted, and in one or two instances in which he altogether eliminates hunting incidents, he attains a dignity of composition and serenity of tone which make them hold their own with any English landscapes painted before the time of Wilson. Wootton, however, must be chiefly remembered as the first painter who induced English fox-hunting squires to take an interest in art. From his pictures of their favourite sport he drew a_ substantial income, and when he liked he could paint a portrait of a horse or hound with vigour and comparative accuracy. His success gave birth to that school of sporting painters, who, since his time, have gained for England an 13 unquestioned supremacy in the branch of art they practised. Among other early well-known sporting painters were James Seymour (1702-1752), Francis Sartorious (1734-1804) Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807), and Philip Reinagle (1749-1833). The two last were artists of considerable ability and Reinagle, who was pupil of Allan Ramsay, painted portraits as well as animal pictures. Of landscape painting pure and simple, Wootton’s pupil, George Lambert. (1710-1765) was the most notable exponent. The trend of public taste caused him to adopt two styles— one, simple and naturalistic, in which he depicted English — rural scenery with sincere appreciation of its quiet charm, and the other, reminiscent of Salvator Rosa and Claude, showing romantic scenery pictured with theatrical but not unimpressive effect. The latter style was also suggested in the work of the three Smiths of Chichester—William (1707-1764), George (1714-1776), and John (1717-1764)—a_ trio of brothers who frequently attained a certain impressive- ness in their work, in which English scenery, often closely observed in individual details, was re-arranged to conform — with the romantic, scenic grandeur of Salvator Rosa. Generally speaking the interest of their work increases in the exact proportion that they escape from the influence of their model. Their attempts and those of numerous contemporaries to localise pseudo-classical landscape in this country were an outcome of Walpole’s long-continued peace policy. It permitted and indeed created a vogue for Continental travel, by which the art treasures of Italy were revealed to the British upper classes. Nearly every landowner or representative of the now wealthy merchant classes who went the ‘‘ Grand Tour ’’ returned with so-called Italian old masters strapped at the back of his travelling calash; | and a want of appreciation of these treasures, among the — members of fashionable society, was held to imply that the critic was an untravelled rustic. Generally, these so-called works of art may be classed as spurious, dubious or second 14 rate. Such masterpieces as reached this country were almost always secured through the intermediacy of a few more or less reliable experts, and their rarity was in proportion to their merit. The prevalent lack of expert knowledge is satirised by Goldsmith in the Vicar of Wakefield, where he makes George Primrose’s cousin explain that nothing was easier than to become a *“cognoscento.’’ ‘‘ The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two rules: the one always to observe the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.”’ The influx of bad Italian art threatened to vitiate English taste. Hogarth’s protest against it was ridiculed, while Hudson, who a little later made a hurried scramble through Italy on purpose to decry its painting, found himself so out of fashionable favour that he retired from portraiture. The danger was averted by the action, not of English die- _hards, but of the two pro-Italians, Richard Wilson (1714- 1782) and Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Without impairing the national character of English painting, they succeeded in grafting on to it certain novel and vital elements derived from Italian art, which gave it sufficient vitality to establish a tradition of its own and maintain it against future foreign aggression, Like most of the aspirants to art of the time who could afford the necessary premium, Wilson was taught portrait painting, though there is evidence to show that before he left for Italy he had produced some capable landscapes, topographical in character but distinguished by a fine sense of design, aerial perspective, and silvery tone from any English landscapes that preceded them. In Italy he was persuaded to devote himself entirely to landscape. Under the influence of Claude and the sunny Italian skies he acquired a largeness and serenity of style, a mastery of design, and a power of expressing sunlight and atmosphere, which render him one of the great masters of all time. His 15 failure to command public support after his return to ~ England was probably due in no small degree to his own intractable and independent temper, but in any case landscape painting was not then sufficiently popular in England to reap a rich reward for any of its exponents. In the long run, perhaps, Wilson has been the most influential of English landscape painters. He was closely studied in turn by Gainsborough, the Sandbys, Girtin, Turner and Constable. His poverty prevented him from going far afield in search of subjects and this induced a habit of repetition—not altogether a disadvantage, for it — assisted him to acquire ease and breadth in handling and to concentrate on the essential principles of landscape design instead of busying himself with the record of local detail. What Wilson did for landscape, to a large extent Sir a Joshua Reynolds did for portraiture. The situation in regard to these two métiers was, however, not altogether analogous. Landscape, largely in the hands of scene painters and drawing masters, was an unprofitable pursuit. In England hitherto it had neither produced great exponents nor attracted many votaries, so that Wilson was explor- ing relatively new ground. On the other hand portraiture was a_ well-established profession, endowed with long traditions and already becoming overcrowded. The return of Reynolds from Italy in 1752 synchronises with the beginning of the greatest era in English portraiture—an era he was to dominate. Hogarth and Ramsay were still in full practice and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) and George Romney (1734-1802) if relatively unknown, had given evidence of their genius. With these leading stars were grouped men who were not mere supers, but on a less crowded stage might have enacted the réles of principals. _ William Hoare (1706-1792), who studied in Italy with Pompeo Batoni, was a capable and scholarly portraitist in both oils and crayons. He successfully maintained himself against the rivalry of Gainsborough at Bath, and 16 i ee. Te or i i Ue wee on , a * PaaS Wey et Ee Ss ee ea ee ae Ce <7) A ese some of his best works are so near in their quality to Sir Joshua’s as to be occasionally mistaken for them. Francis Cotes (c. 1725-1770) was deemed by Walpole to be superior to Reynolds. Pupil of George Knapton (1698-1778), a general practitioner in oils of considerable merit but more successful in his crayon portraits, Cotes worked like his master in both mediums. He was a considerable artist. His pastels, soundly and somewhat solidly painted, are excelled in delicacy of handling by those of his pupil, John Russell (1744-1806), perhaps the greatest English master of that medium. The close resemblance of some of Cotes’s © oil paintings to early works by Reynolds has probably arisen through similarity of period and fashion rather than _by conscious imitation. Normally he is tighter in his handling, attains greater surface finish and endows his subjects with a more conscious elegance of pose and costume that is not without its fascination. Cotes died relatively young, and judging by his prices in 1770, the year of his death, his contemporary reputation was at least equal to that of Gainsborough. For full length portraits Cotes was then receiving £84, Reynolds £157 1os. and Gainsborough, isolated in Bath, only £63. Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788), who is said to have earned #1,500 a year at portrait painting, his one-time assistant John Zoffany (1725-1810), a brilliant painter of portrait groups on a small scale and producer of scholarly and highly finished works on a large scale, and Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1717-1784), who excelled in enamels and was nearly as good in oils, are only a few of the portrait painters who _ might reasonably be mentioned. But the two great figures in English eighteenth-century portraiture are Reynolds and Gainsborough and its history is largely summed up in the story of their rivalry. The latter was not merely the competition of two artists for the same prize. It was an antagonism of principles, for the two men represented two fundamentally different schools of thought, and their temperaments, early environments and artistic trainings 17 were so diverse, that they had few common bonds of sympathy, 3 Nominally an innovator Reynolds was really the exponent of established tradition. Son of a Devonshire clergyman and schoolmaster, he probably inherited to an exaggerated degree a respect for sound scholarship and authoritative precedent. This may have been fostered during his twenty months’ apprenticeship to Hudson, not by the teaching of his master, which he despised, but by the study of Hudson’s fine collection of prints and drawings, after and by the old masters. In 1749, when he went to Italy, he studied the masterpieces there with the zest that a High Church theological student might experience at his first introduction to the works of the early Christian Fathers, — and returned to England three years later with a profound contempt for the stereotyped conventions that now repre- sented the noble Van Dyck tradition, transmitted through the more prosaic personalities of Lely, Kneller and Hudson. Reynolds had brought back with him a cultivated sense of plastic form, design and colour, and his powerful intellect gave him a deep insight into psychology, while he was also an able and fluent executant. He was thus better equipped as a portrait painter than any artist who had set up in London since the time of Van Dyck and he ey, excelled him both in range, and power of characterisation. Reynolds’s greatest weakness was in his draughtsman. ship. Though he had a good eye for form, he had never studied from the life, and his drawing of the figure was not immaculate. Partly on this account and partly because he possessed that scholastic turn of mind which strives to express itself according to established precedent, he leant on adventitious aids, using the great collection of — studies, prints and pictures that he accumulated, to afford him hints for designs and poses of his portraits. He had sufficient skill to make these borrowings his own, but their introduction sometimes prevented him from attain- ing close rapport with individual sitters. He was like a 18 Lan, pe atu ae ey ; — - , > ~ i c ea Le = a eh a, Ae as ee ge > Bact a ls \ a> Ande . 7 * See ee clothier possessing a wonderful variety of ready made garments of irreproachable cut and style. With slight alterations they should fit every type of figure. But individuals rarely conform exactly with types, and when there is a discrepancy the clothier is apt to try and adjust his client’s figure to the style and not the style to the figure. This too was Reynolds’s temptation, he sacrificed likeness to dignity and grace. Hence the immense series of portraits—over two thousand in all—that he has left behind, gives but a bowdlerised idea of eighteenth-century character. We may accept his Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, reminiscent though it be of Michael Angelo, as a majestic embodiment of Drama, but we know that Gains- _borough’s long-nosed beauty is the real woman. Yet on the whole Reynolds’s works constitute as noble a range of likenesses as ever emanated from a single studio. His flattery of his sitters was never sordid, but dictated by a desire to give fullest expression to their most attractive characteristics. In like manner, his borrowings from retrospective work were inspired by the ambition to base his art and—through his example—that of England on the best models. When on occasion he did get en rapport with his sitters, he set them on canvas with an insight, sympathy and conviction, hardly to be surpassed. Thus his likeness of Lord Heathfield, at the National Gallery, stands out as one of the great portraits of all time, and may be regarded as the best representation extant of the virile type of eighteenth-century Englishman. Rubicund of visage, harsh-featured, this massive-jawed, big-nosed man _ with lips compressed into unyielding determination, reveals himself as one able to face the clenched antagonisms of fate with a sheer bull-dog courage that conquers because it ignores the possibility of defeat. The portrait of Dr. Johnson, which the sitter himself said would make everyone call him ‘‘ Peering Tom,’’ is a revelation of another type. It unmasks Johnson of his - 19 i: 5 Be ts ; ree de Re Be EL — ae | i re ke 3) 2 ee a . baie oe ie Pe 745 Jas . waa ; self-sufficiency—that dogmatic, brow-beating, aggressive side of his personality which he presented to the world— and shows the man as his Maker knew him, sensitive and — tender-hearted, peering forward with purblind eyes, as though to pierce the mysteries of death and future life, — the fear of which haunted him during his lonely and leisured hours. With these may be grouped many other portraits of different types, the majestic Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, the charming Duchess of Devonshire playing with her baby, Lady Cockburn with her children clambering about her, and numerous. other representations of men, women and children. With children, indeed, the confirmed old bachelor, never to have a child of his own, was invariably successful. He knew them in all their — moods: the demureness shown in The Age of Innocence ~ or The Strawberry Girl is equally true to life as the ~ impishness of Puck, the arch roguishness of the Brummell Children or the unconscious cruelty of Muscipula. It must regretfully be confessed that the constant demand on Reynolds’s brush caused him to turn his studio into a picture factory, whence emerged works of which only the design and some of the more essential portions of the brush work were wholly from the master’s hand. Also, that in his zeal for attaining fine colour, he frequently used pigments that faded or darkened, so that many of his pictures are ghosts of their former glories. In various works the carmines have fled, leaving countenances of — corpse-like pallor, while in others the colours have so darkened that the canvases appear as gloomy caverns in which murky figures dimly loom. Gainsborough was saved by his initial poverty and subsequent well-to-do marriage from all the temptations — that beset Reynolds. In the main his art is derived from nature, and throughout his later career he is unconsciously * 7 ge eT ON Se a pee Pe Es Pe ae ee - El A OS ee He CAE en erg i impelled forward as the protagonist of individualism in Bi direct opposition to Reynolds’s advocacy of tradition. 20 Born at Sudbury in Suffolk, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) went, when fourteen, to London where he worked for Henri Gravelot (1699-1773), a French-born designer and engraver of considerable ability. The boy appears to have kept himself by modelling animals and painting small portraits and landscapes. He must have come into contact with Francis Hayman, for from 1744 to 1746 Gravelot was engraving a series of illustrations to Shakespeare after him, in which Gainsborough probably assisted. His career in London was cut short in 1746 by his marriage to Margaret Burr, a natural daughter of the Duke of Beaufort. She had an economical mind and an annuity of £200 a year, so spirited her husband back to Suffolk, where such an income meant comparative wealth. For the next quarter of a century, Gainsborough remained apart from London life and culture. Ten years of this he vegetated in Suffolk with little to study but nature. The fashionable movement towards classicalism in art can hardly have reached him there, and beginning with direct interpretation of form and scenery as he saw it about him, he must have become more and more interested in problems of light and colour. He approached portraiture with the vision of a landscape painter, treating his sitters as integral with their environment, instead of utilising the latter as a conventional framework wholly subordinated to the figures it encircled. Moreover his practice in sculpture had endowed him with a subtle appreciation of form, so that the modelling of his heads is often more searching than that of Reynolds. The stages of his progress may be traced from the early London days. A small sized portrait of a young man and woman in the open air, at the Dulwich Gallery, while painted with conviction, is heavily handled and the colour- ing is opaque and heavy. The Wood Scene, Cornard, in the National Gallery, shows a surprising advance. It combines minute, realistic treatment with a feeling for breadth and atmosphere that marks it out as perhaps the 21 finest naturalistic work of its kind that up to then had been painted in England. The Bath period brought with it greater facility and lightness of touch. At this time Gainsborough was probably able to study pictures by Van Dyck and Rubens of which good examples were then to be found in the neighbourhood of the city. Gains- borough used the hints afforded by these artists’ work as waymarks for his own explorations in light and colour. He cultivated delicacy of touch and transparency of pigment so that his pictures are nowhere heavy and opaque, and even his heaviest shadows are refulgent with reflected light and varied tone. This trait gives his work a superficial appearance of slightness, and it seems thinly | ae painted when compared with the more solid impasto of Reynolds. Yet there is no lack of firmness in the handling, — and the faces of Gainsborough’s portraits are often more searchingly and convincingly rendered than those of his great rival, ) These qualities are charmingly illustrated in two pictures of the painter’s daughters, respectively at the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which in the airy lightness and certainty of their touch, their delicate silvery colour and the sense of joyous spontaneity which permeates them, strike a new note in English art. These belong to the Bath period, an early example of which is Orpin, Parish Clerk of Bradford, Wilts, a pleasing and soundly painted picture, but more dry and reserved in treatment than the brilliant and luminous Dr. Schomberg of 1770, the same year in which the famous Blue Boy was painted. In landscape as in portraiture Gainsborough made great strides during his nineteen years at Bath. His landscapes painted then, and those subsequently painted in London, a ge a a. Oe i eg show less close observation of local truth in their rendering _— of nature. Yet they reveal a sense of design, only rivalled by Wilson, and a richness and brilliancy of colour and a 22 refined delicacy in their handling that make Wilson’s pictures seem simple and obvious in comparison, During his London period, 1774-1788, the general quality of his work was so high that even pictures of the calibre of the Hon. Mrs. Graham (1777), Mrs. Robinson as Perdita (1782), and The Mall (1783) evoked no special sensation. In truth, Gainsborough’s art, though it won the praise of his contemporaries, was never adequately appreciated by them, His contemporary success as a portrait painter largely originated through his ability to secure a good likeness, and he left behind no direct followers with the exception of his nephew and pupil Gainsborough Dupont (¢. 1755-1797) who for a time echoed his style with some success. In landscape Gainsborough’s influence was much stronger. Many of the early rural scenes of Thomas Barker of Bath (1769-1847) have a strong superficial resemblance to the works of the master, though their heavier handling and more opaque treatment generally betray their author- ship. Morland, too, was not a little indebted to Gains- borough, and the latter’s influence is strongly marked in the productions of some of the early English water-colour painters. The death of Gainsborough, in 1788, left Reynolds’s influence supreme in_ portraiture. Though the latter _ himself died four years later, his ideas still persisted and in an emasculated and commonised form were to dominate English portraiture for the next half-century. This was largely owing to the power of the Royal Academy, a body which from its inception was organised to maintain the cause of orthodox art, and has pursued a consistently conservative policy. To understand its record, however, it is necessary to tell the story of its immediate predecessors, In 1760, the year of King George III’s accession, the first successful attempt to form an exhibiting body of artists was inaugurated. Officially christened the Society of Artists, it held its initial display in the ‘‘ Great Room of 23 the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce ’’ then located in the Strand. It was a catholic body, including in its roll of over two hundred members everyone who had the slighest claim to be considered a competent painter, sculptor, architect or engraver, besides a number, whose appearance can hardly be . explained. | Hogarth, though not represented in the exhibition, contributed an elaborate allegorical design for its catalogue, in which Britannia, having laid down her shield though not her spear, is shown in flowing classical robes and sandals deftly wielding a watering can over some scrubby trees typifying the various arts. The can, which with its rose-nozzled spout and two handles might appropriately form an illustration to a modern ironmonger’s catalogue, is expressed with a certainty and conviction that hardly characterises the rest of the design. Ramsay and Hudson, though both on the membership roll, did not - contribute, and Gainsborough, lately established at Bath, was also among the absentees. But what may be termed the old gang—the pre-Wilson and pre-Reynolds schools of painters—was strongly to the fore. The former, indeed, in the persons of the Smiths of Chichester, monopolised the honours of landscape painting, George securing the first premium of fifty guineas, and John, the second of twenty- five, while Wilson’s famous National Gallery picture of Niobe received no distinction, The success of its first exhibition induced the body to part company with the Society of Arts, the members of which desired to retain control of the arrangement of its future displays. New quarters for the artists were found at the Great Room, Spring Gardens. This provoked a secession, the recalcitrant members starting the Free Society of Artists, which continued to hold exhibitions until 1783. The opposition of this new body had little adverse effect on the parent society, but the latter carried the seeds of dissolution in its own ranks. Its first directors were men of repute who, knowing that their works were the chief 24 attractions of the Society’s exhibition, paid too little regard to the wishes of the other members. The result was a desperate struggle between the Council and the rank and file; the former was ousted from power and the government of the Society entrusted to a body of mediocrities chiefly belonging to the older school of artists. Probably jealousy at the continuous invasion of artists of foreign birth or training did something towards originating the conflict. The ejected Committee included several members, who, from their influence with the King, commanded forces which their opponents had not taken into account. Chief among these was Benjamin West (1738-1820). Of American birth, after three years’ study in Italy he arrived in England in 1763, possessed of an intense belief in his own genius, a knowledge of draughts- manship uncommon at that time among British artists, and a correctly formed classical taste. In an age when every public schoolboy knew the history and mythology of Greece and Rome far better than the story of his own country, West’s gifts were valuable. Though neither his brushwork nor colour were good, he had great facility in painting, and his historical pictures modelled on late Italian works filled a void in English art. The King proved a regular and liberal patron, and West, as the only correct exponent of classical art in the country, commanded an influence second only to that of Reynolds. Sir William Chambers, the King’s architect, and the brothers, Thomas and Paul Sandby, who had been closely connected with the King at Windsor, were all among the dismissed Council members of the Society of Artists, and in 1768 they suggested to His Majesty the formation of the Royal Academy of Arts. The King agreed to give his countenance and support to the projected institution, but it was apparent that its ‘future success hinged largely on the adhesion of Reynolds. Universally regarded as the doyen of English artists, his influence was materially strengthened by his intellectual 25 ability and his cool, cautious and equable temper. He never actively quarrelled with anyone, and his actions were always inspired by sound common sense. The King’s wishes, and possibly the implied promise of the knight- hood, which was actually bestowed in the following year, induced Reynolds to accept the Presidency of the new institution which held its first exhibition in 1769. Its membership amounted to forty only, a limitation which ensured the permanent government of the Academy being of an oligarchial character. The foreign element was strong and practically monopolised historical painting, then — considered the highest phase of art. West, its most distinguished exponent, though technically a British born subject, had only been two years resident in England. With him were Francesco Bartolozzi (1728-1815), an Italian who had arrived in England in 1764, his compatriot Giovanni Battisa Cipriani (1727-1785), and the Swiss Maria Anna Angelica Catherina Kauffman (1741-1807). Of these, Bartolozzi was smuggled in as a painter because engravers were not eligible for membership. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffman were both competent artists in a small way and their graceful prettinesses of nymphs and cupids serve to keep their memory green. With them may be associated Antonio Zucchi (1726-1795), chiefly employed in decorative work which Cipriani and Angelica Kauffman also practised to a limited extent. Another exponent of what may be termed the chocolate box historical school was William Hamilton (1750-1801) who did some good decorative work and some dainty water colours of children, James Barry (1741-1806) was more of the West type and indeed went beyond him, for he was the only artist who consistently followed the idea that the dignity of a historical subject demanded that it should be treated in a strictly classical style with appropriate costume. In 1771, despite the opposition ‘of Reynolds and the Archbishop of York, West gave an effective blow to this theory by painting The Death of General Wolfe, a picture which enjoyed an 26 enormous success in the Academy and provided the subject for an engraving by Woollett of which many thousands of copies sold. West had in fact founded the modern school of historical painting and exploited it with considerable Success. He was, however, surpassed in this branch of art by his compatriot John Singleton Copley (1737-1815). The latter permanently settled in England in 1776, and finding that his slow and careful style of painting was not suited for the réle of a fashionable portraitist—the children of George III went on strike when he was painting them, because of the number of sittings he demanded, and the authority of the King had to be invoked before they con- sented to resume—turned his attention chiefly to historical painting. His Death of Lord Chatham (1779-80), Death of Major Pierson (1783), and The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar (1790) at the Guildhall, are the finest works of their kind anterior to the rise of the French school of historical painting, called into birth by the victories of Napoleon. John Trumbull, (1756-1843), also an American, painted some of the American revolutionary battles with success, and Jacques Philippe de Loutherbourg, 1740-1812-14, a Frenchman who became an Academician, painted land and sea battles as well as genre scenes and landscapes. His work, though scenic and apt to be exaggerated in colour, is effective, and exercised considerable influence on the art of the day. Copley’s slowness of execution was brought about by the conscientiousness of his outlook, which caused him to make long journeys and go to considerable trouble and expense to acquire reliable data for his historical pictures. The Same trait is exemplified in his portraiture. It is less flattered than that of almost any fashionable artist of the day, but its firm modelling and pleasant and well studied colour make it rank not very far behind the work of Reynolds. A compatriot of Copley, Gilbert Charles Stuart (1755- 1828), after a short visit to Scotland in 1772, returned to 27 Great Britain in the following year and remained there until 1792. It says much for the high state of portraiture during the period that though the merits of Stuart’s work were recognised, it enjoyed no special vogue and his final departure for America created not a ripple of excitement in the London art world. A somewhat unequal genius, Stuart at his best is an artist of great power and ability, and though his work had little influence in England, it exercised a profoundly beneficial effect on the American school of painting, The relative failure of Copley and Stuart to attain popularity in portraiture may be partly set down to their failure to flatter inordinately their lady sitters. Reynolds had set a bad example in this respect, but his flatteries were largely inspired by art. His crowning ambition was always to. make a fine picture, and if his sitter’s looks interfered with his conception he modified them. His imitators went a stage further. In their hands, beautification became the supreme qualification of the portrait painter. One of the greatest offenders in this respect was George Romney (1734-1802). Born at Dalton in Furness, a little Lancashire village, Romney was unable to command any training in art until he had turned twenty, when he became assistant to an obscure itinerant portrait painter named Christopher Steele. An early and improvident marriage jeopardised Romney's prospects of success. It was not until 1762 that he was able to set up in London and it took ten years before he had saved sufficient to enable him to study in Italy. In 1775 he was back again, and taking a house in Cavendish ~ Square, at once became the most formidable rival to Reynolds. For a time he attracted an even larger number of sitters than the elder artist, who bitterly resented the | success of the ‘‘ Man in Cavendish Square,’”’ as he con- temptuously termed him. Reynolds’s attitude, if ungenerous, ~ was not altogether unjustified, for Romney, in coping with the rush of sitters, cannot altogether escape the charge of 28 pot-boiling. The meretricious pictures of simpering maidens that he produced are the more unpalatable because no man could render feminine fascination and beauty more convincingly than Romney at his best. His sketch of Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante at the National Gallery and the famous picture of a similar subject in Mr. Tankerville Chamberlayne’s collection, reveal a vivacity and allure hardly to be matched elsewhere in portraiture, nor are some of his portraits of more pensive maidens less attractive. His large style and fondness for simple flow- ing draperies often impart to his work a classical air more convincingly Greek in feeling than Sir Joshua’s nymphs and goddesses. Yet this largeness of style sometimes _degenerates into emptiness. Though Romney’s pictures of young women realise the higher prices, they are often sur- passed in quality by his likeness of old men and matrons in which he was compelled to put forth his full powers to render the subjects interesting. His colour, if limited, is nearly always pleasant and sometimes highly effective, while his simple broad style of painting and sound pigments have stood the attacks of time without appreciable loss. Contemporary with Romney were a number of more or less able painters who made the presentment of feminine charms the keynote of their work. Matthew William Peters (1742-1814), the only Academician who ever became a clergyman, deserves a little niche to himself for his ability to suggest sensuous charm in some of his smaller work. His best portraits closely touch Reynolds, while his scenes of spirits of departed children and angels achieved wide contemporary popularity and heralded the future intermittent vogue of the allegorical religious picture. Ozias Humphrey (1742-1810) was better at miniatures than at oil portraits. The latter trail after Romney, and one of them was close enough in_ its resemblance not only to sell for £15,000 as an original work of the master, but also to induce a formidable host of experts to bear testimony to its authenticity. 29 Romney in many respects may be considered the last great portrait painter of the eighteenth century. Sir William Beechey (1753-1839), though carrying on the traditions of the Reynolds school in an efficient spots rarely rises to distinction; and John Opie (1761-1807), a vigorous and masculine personality, was only mastering the defects of his early want of training when the century came to a close. Over-black in colour and often exaggerated in his contrasts of light and shade, he neverthe- less commands a respect for the strength and sincerity of his work which must sometimes be denied to his more successful rivals John Hoppner (1758-1810) and Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). The former was an uneven artist, occasionally rising to excellence but often falling below his true level, more especially in his feminine portraits, by his habit of flattering his sitters. It is said that he was accustomed to paint in a beautiful face of the same type as that of his subject and then little by little to introduce a likeness. As soon as the sitter’s friends commenced to detect a resemblance, he stopped for fear that he should deprive the countenance of its attraction. Some of his finest pictures, however, will stand comparison with the best work of his predecessors. | Lawrence unequivocally belongs to the nineteenth century, | Had he died in 1800, he could be described as a crayon painter of considerable refinement and charm, who painted oil portraits in the manner of Reynolds with singular success. The great contribution that he made to British — art was that, by his example, he introduced a greater respect for good draughtsmanship. Reynolds and his school drew their portraits practically direct on to the canvas with their brushes. Such procedure suited only an able draughtsman, and the minor artists who followed it’ often got into sad _ difficulties with their figures. Lawrence, whose want of training always made his draughtsmanship weak, presently adopted the habit of carefully drawing in the heads and features of his sitters 30 } with crayons. To a certain extent this revolutionised the whole style of portraiture. The substantial impasto of Reynolds gave way to a thinner style of painting, througH which the guiding pencil lines could be kept visible, until the portrait was sufficiently far advanced for them to be dispensed with. Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769-1850) and Sir Francis Grant (1810-1878) carried this thin style of painting even further than Lawrence, so that eventually under their hands portraiture degenerated into insipidity and chalkiness. Scotland was spared this degeneration through the influence of Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), a master of virile and resonant brushwork. He regarded humanity with a shrewd, impartial and unsusceptible outlook and was, if anything, happier in painting douce matrons and shrewd lawyers than in recording the charms of fashion- able beauties. Limited but effective in his colour schemes, and with a narrower range of vision than either Reynolds or Gainsborough, he yet attains a place beside them through the sincerity of his art. Portraiture and, in a lesser degree, landscape were the ' two crowning pinnacles of English eighteenth-century art, but the deaths of Wilson and Gainsborough had left the latter genre without notable exponents. Indeed to a certain extent Gainsborough had diverted its course. His landscapes had been popular according to the interest of the figures they contained, and his example brought into vogue pictures both of rural life and urban life. They may be considered together, for the same artist frequently painted both. George Morland (1763-1804), the youngest and ablest of the group, set the fashion, for the engravings from his works filled the print shop windows and were ‘exported by thousands to the Continent. He may have owed something to his older friend Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817), since much of the latter’s landscape closely resembles Morland’s early work. Ibbetson, however, generally keeps his canvases on a small scale and cives 3I ee ee, My | hs) ~. On = ae ae a less prominence to his incidental figures, but when the figures are the leading theme of a picture he can draw them as accurately as, and with more refinement than Morland himself. The other older artists, Francis Wheatley (1747- 1801) and William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828), with whom may be coupled Richard Westall (1765-1836), all were competent landscape painters, though using it generally merely as a background to their figure subjects. Wheatley is best remembered for his Cries of London, works which are pretty rather than fine, and the same description may be applied to the productions of all the trio, except on the rare occasions when they forgot the supposed necessity of catering for public consumption and painted nature as they actually saw it. Had Morland remained a respect- able member of society he might well have fallen into their — ways. He was the best equipped of the company. Brought up by his father to copy and possibly to forge old Dutch and Flemish genre pictures, he has assimilated both their technique and schemes of composition. This enabled him to dovetail his close but piecemeal observations of nature into well balanced and convincing pictures, the best records of English rural life that have yet been ~ produced: for though various artists have painted British rustics with more careful and accurate attention to natural phenomena, no one else has placed us on such intimate terms with them. It may be said of Morland that he pot-boiled himself into being a great artist. In his early days he laboured his works, overcrowded them with detail and endowed them with didactic motives according to the most respectable teaching of the day. As he became more spendthrift, and the necessity for filling his purse more urgent, he broadened his style, simplified his compositions and was content to paint the real denizens — of the countryside without converting them into actors in moral dramas. In his middle and later periods, when he worked at tremendous speed, his craftsmanship is generally superb. The many halting and feeble paintings which are 32 C8 ee ge ae ee ea assigned to him, may be set down to the copyists, good bad and indifferent, whom the dealers of the time employed to turn out spurious replicas of his work while it was still wet on the easel. Thomas Hand (d. 1804) produced some capable works in the style of Morland, and JamesWard, (1769-1859) the latter’s brother-in-law, a number of feebler ones. Ward’s fine landscapes and animal pictures, painted after he had developed an independent style of his own, all belong to the nineteenth century. The Morland tradition, emasculated and sentimentalised, was followed by Edmund Bristow, William Collins, William Shayer and other men whose work commanded ready appreciation in the early eighteen hundreds, but the main stream of English landscape, which reached _ its greatest splendour in the work of Turner and Constable, was really derived from the water-colour painters of topo- graphical views. Early in the century a demand had risen for prints of country seats and other notable places, and artists were employed to make drawings, from which these could be reproduced. It was necessary that these drawings should be decided in outline, correct in tone and effective in chiaroscuro, for the engravers to get good results from them. Hence their artists were accustomed to outline the details in their compositions with reed pens and carefully wash in the shadows in neutral tones. Brighter tints to suggest local colour were at first only sparingly added, as for one thing the colour was not of much assistance to the engravers, and for another the water-colour painters until about 1780 had to prepare their own pigments. Before then, they were generally content with a palette of seven or eight colours and the combinations that they could make by mixing them. | Roughly speaking the century may be divided into three periods. In the earliest, which lasted until about 1780, the drawings produced were as a rule devoid of any but topo- graphical interest, the chief exceptions being sketches by oil painters who frequently used water colours for making 33 studies for their pictures. From the middle of the century onwards this medium was extensively used by a large number of skilled artists, who, while occasionally exploiting oil painting, did their chief work in water-colours. In 1770 aquatint was introduced from France. This form of engraving, or rather of etching, is chiefly dependent for its effect on its expression of light and shade. It is primarily adapted for the reproduction, not of pen or pencil drawings, but of wash drawings. Though the new medium was used largely in conjunction with etching for the translation of the old style of drawings, its utility for the reproduction of water-colour paintings was extensively recognised and stimulated the demand for them. Moreover aquatints were issued in large numbers to be coloured by hand and this caused a demand for originals in which colour was made a more prominent feature than heretofore, __ , The first water-colour artist who gave in his work some- thing better than simple topographical records was Alexander Cozens (c. 1700-1786); he, and his son John Robert Cozens (1752-1799), to an even greater degree, achieved tone, atmosphere and quality. Their drawings embodied their subjects with true regard to air, sunlight and pictorial effect, raising them from the status of transcriptions of isolated facts to artistic interpretations of nature as a whole. Owing, however, to the limited range of colours at their disposal the works of the two Cozens’ are apt to be somewhat monochromatic in their effect. Francis Towne (1740-1816) to a certain extent was the antithesis of the Cozens’, for he gained his effects by accentuating the outlines in his drawings and painting in flat tones of colour, thus often attaining a pleasing decorative — feeling in his work. Paul Sandby (1725-1809), a capable painter in oils as well as in water-colours, was more topo- — graphical, but his was topography of a high order, for he had pleasing colour, composed his works with considerable skill and drew foliage with appreciation and knowledge. But one cannot linger long among these early pioneers of 34 water-colour. There is a strong family likeness among much of their work. Their drawing is_ invariably carefully studied and highly detailed. The colour varies more, showing delicacy and refinement in the antiquarian views of Thomas Hearne (1744-1817), bolder and broader handling in the street scenes of Michael ‘‘Angelo’’ Rooker (1743-1801), a firm preciseness in the architectural views of Thomas Malton (1748-1804), and a light and dainty handling in the topographical views and figure scenes of Edward Dayes (1763-1804). The last named was the master of Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), while Malton taught his friend and companion Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). Girtin in his short life suggested almost all the possibilities of water-colour as a medium for landscape painting. His early drawings are practically pure Dayes—carefully drawn forms tinted with preciseness and delicacy in more or less conventional local colour. He speedily excelled his master, adding greater boldness and strength to the latter’s delicate touch, and turning more and more closely to the study of nature. He embodied in his art all that the Cozens’ had achieved, but with greater truth, for he invested their atmospheric and tonal effects with fine colour. He died at the early age of twenty-seven, just when, having mastered the capabilities of his medium, he was in a position to exploit his knowledge to full advantage. His death makes a fitting termination to the story of English landscape in the eighteenth century. The three giants, Turner, John Constable (1776-1837) and John (Old) Crome (1768-1821), who were to make the succeeding era notable by their work, were still more or less in their ’prentice stage. Turner, who was the most advanced of the trio, had sent enough oil paintings to the Royal Academy to secure his election as an Associate in 1799, but his more original work in that medium was all to come, and in his water- colours he was still behind Girtin. Constable was not even admitted as a student to the Royal Academy until 35 1801, and Crome, having with some qualms relinquished his business of house and sign painting, was earning a living as a drawing master while trying to teach himself art. Outside these artists the future of English landscape was largely in the hands of the aquarellists such — as John Sell Cotman (1782-1842), David Cox (1783-1859), Peter de Wint (1784-1849), and Anthony Vandyck Copley Fielding (1787-1855). In Scotland, Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) having retired from portrait painting in which he was eclipsed by Raeburn, was beginning his career in landscape. His fame, however, is derived more from his place as one of the earliest exponents of the medium in the Northern Kingdom than from the quality of his work, which was smooth and insipid. : Of other branches of art, animal painting owed much to George Stubbs (1724-1806), a Hercules in strength, who finding that there were no reliable guides to animal anatomy, set to work to produce one himself. He kept a dissecting room on his first floor up to which he used to carry bodies of horses and other animals on his back. His book on the subject, illustrated with anatomical plates engraved by himself, formed a work of great utility to his successors. His pictures, scrupulously correct in the anatomy of the animals represented, are finely finished in pleasant and correct colour, and their landscape back- grounds are both appropriate and well painted. His — work was highly popular in its day, and his portrait enamels of horses commanded a higher price than Reynolds obtained for his full-length pictures. His lead- ing successors, Benjamin Marshall (1767-1835), John James Chalon (1778-1854) and James Ward all did their best work in the nineteenth century, Marshall in some of his equine portraits attaining a painter-like quality which since his time has been rivalled by Munnings only. ! The end of the eighteenth century saw a number of artists trying to record restrospective history. They conceived the notable personages represented largely from 36 their inner consciousness, inspired by studio models, and clothed them in stage properties. Copley was an honour- able exception to this rule for he toured the length and breadth of England in search of original portraits from which to realise the historic celebrities shown in_ his picture of The Dissolution of the Long Parliament. Opie, by aid of powerful chiaroscuro, succeeds in investing some of his historical scenes with tragic feeling, but John Hamilton Mortimer (1741-1779), Johann Heinrich Fuseli (1741-1825) and James Northcote (1746-1831), who practised with indifferent success in every sphere of painting, never get over the footlights. Fuseli, indeed, had his better moments; his historical pictures with stage figures clothed in skin tight mail Carry no conviction, but in some of his more purely imaginative works, his Night Mare for instance, he is impressive, though he is seen to better advantage in the prints from these pictures than in the originals, for the latter are marred by poor colour. Yet by far the greatest figure in imaginative art was the then obscure engraver, water- colour and tempera painter, William Blake (1757-1827). A visionary, possibly a madman, he more than anyone seems able to give embodiment to spiritual ideas. His realisations of the unseen are so vivid and intense that they impress one less as imaginary conceptions than as visions actually experienced and recorded by the painter. Possessed of a fine sense of rhythmic decorative arrangement and a mastery of beautiful and vibrating colour, Blake was a reincarnation of Gothic mysticism, striking a note which made little appeal to the general mundane spirit of the eighteenth century, and has only been fully appreciated in our own time. With Blake’s name may be coupled that of Thomas Stothard (1755-1834), whose picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims, in its popular appeal, quite eclipsed that produced by Blake at the same time. Stothard, however, was a far more commonplace artist; a prolific book-illustrator, he is 37 now chiefly remembered for his 1 though not undistinguished by CHAPTER II MINIATURES Though in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the English had built up a strong school of miniature painting, about the time of Queen Anne’s accession the principal exponents of the art were foreigners. Of these the most notable were Charles Boit (1662-1727) and Christian Friederich Zincke (1684-1767). The former, after paying a flying visit to England in 1698, came back in 1703, and at once leaped into favour as the most popular enamellist of the day. About 1706 he engaged Zincke to come to assist him in copying in enamels an allegorical design by Laguerre showing the genius of Victory introducing the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene to Queen Anne and her court. Boit had commenced this in 1704. It was not, however, completed in 1714, and Boit, who had received large sums on account of it, had to fly the country, to which he never returned, Zincke succeeding to his fashionable practice. Both painters did work of technically high quality, but largely confined themselves to small copies in enamel from oil paintings by other hands. Bernard Lens the Younger (1682-1740) also enjoyed considerable popularity in a more or less similar réle, but the best period of original miniature painting did not commence until after the middle of the century. Among the earlier exponents of this revival was the Irishman Nathaniel Hone (1718-1784) who, after studying in Italy, settled in England in 1752, and succeeded to Zincke’s position as the most popular enameller of his time. Hone did good original work, in oil as well as in miniature; but his vogue in the latter metier was eclipsed by that of a trio of younger painters, all born during the fourth decade of the century. The most popular of these was Richard Cosway (1742-1821) who painted beautiful women with a soft, fluent grace that did more than justice to their 39 charms. It must be confessed that many of his works are somewhat cloying in their prettiness, but in his presentments of men and old ladies he rises above this weakness, and the best of these are both well characterised and marvels of fluent, ‘deft handling. In the latter respect he surpasses John Smart (1740 ?-1811), whose work though more sincere and always accomplished, looks somewhat over studied when compared to that of his more famous contemporary The third of the trio, Ozias Humphrey (1742-1810), was a painter of oil portraits and a friend of George Romney, both of which circumstances helped to give his miniatures a pleasing largeness of style. His draughtsmanship, some- times faulty in his life-sized portraits, is generally fully % adequate in these works on a smaller scale, while their dignity and restraint invest them with something of the large feeling of contemporary masterpieces in oil. | The two Plimers, Nathaniel (1757-1822) and Auilice (1763-1837), were both of them pupils of Cosway and acquired something of his facile grace, but were less competent in their drawing. An irritating mannerism about their work is their exaggeration of the size of their sitters’ eyes with a view to enhancing their looks. George Engleheart (1750-1829), a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who turned to miniature painting, rivalled Cosway in his popularity. He flattered, but not so obtrusively as the latter artist. He has greater power of characterisation, more especially in his male portraits, and his firm handling and good colour make him one of the most attractive miniature painters of the period. Adam Buck (1759-1833) is less remembered on account of his miniatures than for — his small portrait water-colours and pastels. Many of these, chiefly representing children, were engraved and attained considerable vogue. John ‘Downman (1750-1824) also executed similar work with refinement and delicacy, investing his feminine portraits with great charm and creating a distinct style of his own. Samuel Shelley (1750-1808) and William Wood (1768-1809) may be 40 a a “9 4 ; 2 ie mentioned as competent and popular painters, but the list of them might be extended almost indefinitely, for miniaturists then took the place now occupied by fashion- able photographers and obtained the patronage not only of the rich but also of the middle classes. Allusion should be made to the fact that various celebrated artists in oil such as Lawrence, Raeburn and Hoppner are all credited with having painted miniatures. That they made essays in the metier is not impossible, for Raeburn commenced his career as a painter of small portraits, and Lawrence during his youth practised chiefly in pencil and _ water-colours. But the attribution of miniatures to these and other well-known artists largely originated through the custom of sitters to the fashionable painters of the period having miniature copies of their portraits made for presentation to their friends. Lawrence himself employed a special miniaturist for this purpose, who earned his living entirely from commissions given by the painter on behalf of his clients. 4! CHAPTER III SCULPTURE Sculpture, from the close of the Gothic period until recent times, has always been more or less an exotic art in England. Its record during the early part of the eighteenth century is merely that of a succession of foreigners, who brought their styles ready made from the Continent, and left behind them a medley of statues which, however competent, are characterised by no distinctively national trait. Grinling Gibbon (1648-1720), Anglo-Dutchman and master of wood-carving, was also responsible for a few dignified statues. His James II in Roman costume, now standing at the west front of the Admiralty, and his — Charles II similarly attired, at Chelsea Hospital, are his best known works in this métier. A pupil of his and of the Anglicised Dane, Caius Gabriel Cibber, was Francis Bird (1667-1731) responsible for the statue of Queen Anne formerly standing in front of St. Paul’s, which was at least better than the altered version of it by Richard Belt which — now occupies its place. A more admired work by Bird is the statue of Dr. Busby in Westminster Abbey. John Michael Rysbrack (1693-1770), a Dutchman, Peter Scheemakers (1691-1780), a Fleming, and Louis Francois — Roubiliac (1695-1762) enjoyed almost a monopoly of English monumental work until past the second quarter — of the century. They were competent artists—more especially Roubiliac, who was one of the greatest of the exponents of rococo sculpture. The work of all of them may be seen in various monuments at Westminster and in a few statues scattered about London, but it cannot be said to have greatly affected British art. The English born sculptors, who succeeded this trio of foreigners, are on the whole a less interesting company. They all belong to the neo-classical movement, and their work is generally the exploitation of a tradition that rany ai : 42 failed to re-vitalise. Joseph Wilton (1722-1803), one of the foundation members of the Royal Academy, possessed a good working knowledge of anatomy which he was so desirous of displaying that in his monument to Wolfe, at Westminster Abbey, he revealed as much of the dying hero’s form as possible by divesting him of all raiment save his shirt and stockings. He was responsible for various other elaborate memorials, in which his rendering of angels’ wings was much admired. His best works were his single figures, and he was popular for his portrait busts until in this department he was eclipsed by Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823). The racy life of this sculptor by J. T. Smith has conferred on him a somewhat chequered immortality, _his parsimony, his eccentricities and the shifts he made to utilise to advantage every atom of marble being even more fully dealt with than his work. But Nollekens was a considerable artist in a minor way. His more ambitious memorials are on the whole inferior to those of Bacon and Banks, but he had the knack of catching ‘a likeness, and in the hundreds of busts that he produced, he left behind him a collection of contemporary portraits of famous people almost rivalling that of Reynolds in extent. - Thomas Banks (1735-1805) showed more than a respect- able ability in producing classical themes in a classical manner, but these uninspired echoes of the past are less interesting than the one or two efforts in which he shows a more naturalistic outlook. The best of these is the monument to Penelope Boothby, in which the child is shown reclining on a mattress and is rendered with a pathos that moved Queen Charlotte to tears. “That masterly statuary,’’ John Bacon (1740-1799), as Walpole styles him, if not quite so consistently classical as Banks, garbed most of his monumental figures in flowing draperies, which caused—Mr. Beresford Chancellor tells us —his statues of John Howard and Samuel Johnson at St. Paul’s Cathedral to be mistaken for representations of SS. Peter and Paul. These works and the more florid 43 monument to Lord Chatham give a good idea of Bacon’s style which was large, dignified, and occasionally picturesque. Now better appreciated for his drawings and his ceramic designs for Wedgwood, than for his sculpture, John Flaxman (1755-1826) cut an important figure in the eyes of contemporary critics who deemed him a great original genius. The monument to Lord Mansfield, at Westminster Abbey, exhibits the placid serenity of his style at its best, but his work though dignified is apt to be heavy and uninteresting, The other sculptors of the time may be dismissed briefly. Tragedy touched the careers of the Liverpool sculptor John Deare (1759-1795) and of Thomas Proctor (1753- 1794). The former died as the result of a chill, incurred while sleeping on a block of marble, in an effort to find inspiration for the subject he was going to carve from it; and the latter died of want in a garret, after destroying his greatest work. Both men showed promise, but neither of them had arrived. John Charles Felix Rossi (1762-1839) was only in the second rank, William Theed (1764-1817) was even poorer, and the Hon. Mrs. Damer (née Anne Seymour-Conway) (1748-1828), despite Walpole’s eulogy, never mastered the technicalities of her profession sufficiently to produce work that rose above amateur status. PLATE 1! DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE. BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER (1646-1723) Duke of Devonshire’s Collection, Chatsworth WILLIAM, Adaqjpyy) JouoiwN ay (821-2691) ANONHDIH Hdasolf Ad "pry ‘&ya1205 t1payy ayy fo ksazanor kg ‘LAA TAA AVANAW NI NVYNATLINAD (chLT-€991) NOSGMVHOIN NVHLVYNOL AG “NOGNAXO SND HIS III 8 Il SHLVT1d PLATES IV & V ILLUSTRATION TO “ PAMELA ”’; MR. B. FINDS PAMELA WRITING BY JOSEPH HIGHMORE (1692-1788) The National Gallery FAMILY GROUP. BY JOHANN ZOFFANY (1733-1810) The National Gallery Kaan [ouowUMN 2YT (F9ZT-2691) HLMVDOH WVITIIM Ad ‘“SINVAYAS S.HLYVIOH AO SLIVALYOd IA ALV Td Ksayjvy [ououvN ayy (F9ZT-Z4691) HLMVDOH WVITIIM AD ‘“VaddO S.AYVDDAA AHL. IA ALV Id PLAT bier, THE SHRIMP GIRL BY WILLIAM HOGARTH (1697-1764) The National Gallery on PLATE IX GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL. BY THOMAS HUDSON (1701-1779) The Bodleian Library, Oxford PLATE X PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S WIFE. BY ALLAN RAMSAY (1713-1784) The National Gallery of Scotland * ‘ > ‘ rae . ~ . sajpj fo wnasnp pououvN ays (ZOST-FIZIT) NOS'TIM QGUVHOIN AD ‘“ATLSVO NVA SYNIGC sap fo wnasny 1DU01IDAT AY (COST-FIZT) NOSTIM GUYVHOIN AMD «'MNOW ALIHM AHL » “ANAOS NVIIVLI IIX ALVTd PLATES XIII & XIV RICHMOND, YORKS (1734). BY GEORGE LAMBERT (1710-1765) Collection of Colonel M. H. Grant DURHAM. BY THOMAS GIRTIN (1775-1802) Collection of Sir Hickman B. Bacon, Bart. PLATES XV & XVI LANDSCAPE. BY DOMINIC SERRES (1722-1793) Collection of Colonel M. H. Grant THE COTTAGE SCHOOL. BY GEORGE SMITH (1714-1776) Collection of Colonel M. H. Grant PLATE XVII MRS. SMITH AND NIECE. BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. (1723-1792) Iveagh Collection PLATE XVIII PORTRAIT OF LORD HEATHFIELD. BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. (1723-1792) The National Gallery PLATES XIX PHAETON AND PAIR. BY GEORGE STUBBS, R.A. (1724-1806) The National Gallery GIMCRACK. BY GEORGE STUBBS, R.A. (1724-1806) Collection of the Duke of Westminster (photo by courtesy of Knoedler and Company, Inc.) & XX yung ‘ksajjv4y youowN ayy (6221-321) LLOOS ‘ISNWVS ADT ‘ADGINA NOGNOT AIO IXX HLV Id PLATE XXII x PORTRAIT OF A MAN. BY FRANCIS COTES (1725-1770) The National Gallery PLATE XXIII JOHN KIRBY AND WIFE. BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788) The National Portrait Gallery (‘soaq uaaang fo Ksajzsnoa kq ojoyd) piusofyvg ‘uoyrayjog) uopsuyuny “ay kauazy (8841-2221) HONONOMSNIVD SVNOHL AG “TIVW FHL ss AIXX HLVId Sury oy? Mysalvpy sip fo uotssiusad snows Kg (8821-221) HDNOUOUSNIVD SVNOHL Ad : aSpUqung ‘wnasnpy mops y “OUNANOH—ASSAH AO HLAAVZITA SSHONIN (cO8T-FEzT) AANNOY ADNOAD AM “NVW ONNOA V AO LIVYLNOd JAXX ® AXX SALV Id ae PLATE XXVII eT THE PARSON’S DAUGHTER. BY GEORGE ROMNEY (1734-1802) The National Gallery uo1zajj0j Yysvany (ZO8T-FEZ1) AANWOM ADYOAD AG K1aqoy) fvsqsog [DUONDN ay, “THHHM ONINNIdS AHL LV NOLTIINVH AQGVT (S28T-S¢21) LUVALS LYAMTID AD “ISAM NIWVWINAG XIXX 8 IMIAXX SHLV1d “tok ‘ee My . . r p F s 7 ; i Had » Ksayoy [oUuoyMN ayy (SI8T-2ZE21) AATdOO “S NHOf AM “AVLIVASID AO ADITAY GNV ADAIS AHL XXX ALV1d f PLATES XXXI & XXXII BRIDGE AND WATERFALL NEAR LLYNGWELLYN. BY FRANCIS TOWNE (1739-1816) Laing Art Gallery and Museum, Newcastle-upon-Tyne THE SWANN INN. BY PAUL SANDBY (1725-1809) Collection of C, Morland Agnew, Esq. W JOHNSTONE. BY SIR WILLIAM BEECHEY (1 The National Gallery PLATE XXXIV 1756-1827) ( AS ROWLANDSON h Museum BY THOM AND GEORGE MORL itis The Br wnasny 149Q]p PUY vt40}914 (2281-9921) NOSGNVIMOU SVNOHL AD “AIVA NAAAD AOOAA AXXX ULV'Id MRS. GEORGE KINNEAR. BY SIR HENRY RAEBURN (1756-1823) The National Gallery of Scotland Asay) [ouoyvnN ayy (FOST-69Z1) GNVIYOW ADUOAD AA “AOIMALNI ATAVIS IIAXXX HLV 1d Pun sAaqwunyyso0 N fo aynq ayy fo u0149a]]0) (OI8T-8$21) WANddOH NHOf AM ‘“SUNALSIS SIH GNV ‘GNVIYAANOHLYON AO ANNG GYIHL ‘HONH IIAXXX ALV'Id duvyonvag fo avy ayy fo u01499]]0.) (F82ZT-ZTZT) ‘Vu “HNOH TAINVHLVN Ad ‘AGNOWAO AO SSHINNOOD AHL XIXXX ULV Id Aya190§ JAP (1Z8T-GP LT ) AVMSOO aut dav HOla Ad yp ayy fo Ksaqanoa Kg AVMSOO ‘SAW yonajvong fo aynq ayy fo uor2a1/0) LSILUYV NMONYNN NV Ad SONILSVH NaYaAVM PLATE XL STATUE OF WILLIAM III AT THE BANK OF ENGLAND (1734) BY SIR HENRY CHEERE By courtesy of the Governors CHAPTER IV ENGRAVINGS Prince Rupert’s introduction of mezzotint into England in 1660 placed at the disposal of English engravers a medium which they were to make peculiarly their own. By 1700 the broad lines of its technique were definitely established, and though little practised elsewhere, it had already become the most popular form of engraving in this country. Etching, which earlier on had been exploited with success by Hollar and other foreigners resident here, was chiefly used for uninspired topographical work or as a substitute for line engraving. The latter medium was only sparingly employed and not for some time to come did English exponents of it reach the standard of proficiency commonly attained by French engravers; while work in wood was restricted to rude cuts, used for broadsides and other catch-penny publications, which have little zesthetic merit. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, mezzotinters were just getting over the difficulty of laying their grounds. It was not hard work, but it was laborious and tedious, and various engravers tried to invent short cuts for doing it. Thus Edward Lutterell (c. 1650-1710) experimented with a roller instead of a rocker, and his plates suffered in consequence. George White (c. 1671-1734), a far more capable artist, introduced the practice of etching the out- lines of his portraits before laying the grounds, which was extensively followed and developed by later engravers who found that the addition of etching, judiciously con- cealed, gave longer life to their plates without marring their appearance. The danger of this practice is, when the plate becomes worn the etched lines show up with disastrous results. A finer mezzotinter than White was his rival John Smith (1652 ?-1742) who was responsible for about 300 plates. Smith attained the full gamut of mezzotint 45 chiaroscuro. The fine quality of his deep velvety blacks and brilliant high lights makes one regret that his talents were not better employed than in translating the prosaic portraits by Kneller and his contemporaries. Yet Smith’s prints attained great popularity; the coppers from which they were struck off became nearly worn smooth from over printing and the later impressions from them look like ghosts in comparison to the earlier ones. The other mezzotinters of this time were not particularly noteworthy. Among the best were John Faber (c. 1655-1721) a Dutch- man, who scraped a number of small portraits generally cramped and stiff in their handling; his abler and more prolific son, John Faber, Jun. (1684/92-1756) ; the Frenchman, John Simon (1675-1755), who commanded much of Smith’s artistry but wanted his strength; and Peter Pelham (c. 1684-1751), who deserves mention, as having introduced mezzotint to America, where he executed several capable plates and taught his stepson, John Singleton Copley, the rudiments of painting and engraving. Smith’s retirement, which happened not later than 1730, left mezzotint sinking into a sonambulant mediocrity when about the middle of the eighteenth century it was revived by the influx of a number of talented Irishmen. The greatest of these was James MacArdell (1728/9-1766), a man of genius who had the advantage of working under the supervision of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The latter, as James Ward was to testify nearly a generation later, gave his engravers considerable trouble by the care with which he corrected the reproductions after his pictures, but the high standard of quality he imposed raised the level of mezzotint nearly to its zenith. MacArdell satisfied Sir Joshua’s ideals, and so earned the artist’s much quoted enconium: that if his pictures faded away they would still be preserved for posterity in MacArdell’s engravings. The Irishman, indeed, treated his subjects with a liveliness and ease never attained by Smith, in his introduction of high lights often using his scraper with the freedom of a brush. 46 Of his fellow countrymen, Richard Houston (1721/2-1766) rivalled him in some of his best plates, while neither Charles Spooner (d. 1767) nor Richard Purcell (fl. 1746- 1766) attained quite the same level. With the Irish contingent should be included Thomas Frye (1710-1762) who made an innovation by executing a number of original heads about the size of life, which, however, are rather flat, the largeness of their scale not assisting them in this respect; Edward Fisher (1722- c. 1785) who was classed by Walpole with MacArdell and _ Houston and cultivated a broader and freer style; John Dixon (c. 1740-1811), responsible for some brilliant and richly toned plates after Reynolds; and James Watson _ (c. 1740-1790) a careful and refined worker whose large output .is characterised by high finish. Richard Earlom (1743-1822) occupies a_ distinctive place from the fact that most of his plates are from subject pictures. Using a fine ground and extensively employing etching to reinforce its strength he succeeded more especially in plates requiring minute and delicate work, his Fruit and Flower Pieces after Van Huysum being among his most successful efforts. His series of 200 plates after Claude’s Liber Veritatis afforded Turner the prototype of his Liber Studiorum. William Pether (1731-1795) was a pupil of Frye, and his plates—some of the best are after Rembrandt—are rather flat like the works of his master. With Valentine Green (1739-1813) the greatest period of British mezzotint may be said to commence. He rocked his plates with a fine close grain producing an intense black ground, which, combined with his brilliant and finished scraping of the high lights, results in a range of tonal contrast almost unrivalled in mezzotint. This, however, was often attained at the cost of a certain metallic hardness. ‘The latter failing was avoided by Thomas Watson (1743-1781) who was a surer draughtsman than Green and possessed a more sympathetic manner. His rich and luminous plates, such as Lady Bampfylde after 47 Reynolds, and Lady Rushout and Children after Gardner, are among the most attractive mezzotints ever produced. During the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century the medium was at the zenith of its popularity, and its capable exponents were so numerous that the majority of — them must be passed over with the briefest mention. William Dickinson (1746-1823) was a partner to Thomas Watson, and his work, while not quite attaining the same depth of tone, had close affinity to the latter’s productions. John Dean (c. 1750-1798) may be summed up as a less powerful understudy of his master Valentine Green; John Jones (c. 1740 ?-1797) possessed a broad, fluent touch which admirably suggested the brush-work of the painters whose works he engraved; and William Doughty (d. 1782) executed a few fine plates, chiefly after Reynolds, whose pupil he was for a time. But the most brilliant exponent of mezzotint at this period was John Raphael Smith (c. 1745-1812). Starting life as a linen draper, he successively united to this vocation the réles of engraver in mezzotint and stipple, print publisher and dealer, and painter in pastel, oil and water-colours. He produced close upon 200 plates; that in addition to his other labours he was responsible for all the work upon them is, of course, an impossibility, and he only attained this large output by utilising the services of his assistants and pupils to the full. Serving in both capacities were the brothers William Ward (1762-1826) and James Ward (1769-1859) who appear to have worked for Smith until 1792, when the younger of the two set up for himself. Smith, an original artist of considerable ability, wielded the graver with the same ease as a paint brush, and, vary- ing his manner to suit his subjects, ranks perhaps as the greatest interpretative engraver of his time. His handling is remarkably fluent, and he was able to combine strength with delicacy, and depth of tone with brilliancy, to an almost unrivalled extent. The two Wards were little behind their master. The trio were the earliest exponents 48 ie PRET Ty: of Morland in mezzotint, and the success of their plates, after this artist, not only caused some hundreds of his pictures to be engraved, but also enhanced the demand for prints after other painters of genre and rural subjects such as J. R. Smith and James Ward themselves, Francis Wheatley (1747-1801) and William Redmore Bigg (1755- 1828). Among the mezzotinters who exploited this sphere with success were Philip Dawe (fl. 1769-1808), John Dean, Joseph Grozer (c. 1755-c.1799), George Keating (d. 1842), Samuel William Reynolds (1773-1835), and James Young (1755-1825). The decline in mezzotint was brought about by the incidence of the war with France which broke out in 1792. _ This not only impoverished the buying public but also completely cut off the Continental market, which had been importing British prints by the thousand. The effect of this was soon made manifest. John Boydell, the great print publisher, was compelled to dispose of his entire stock and premises by lottery to save himself from bankruptcy. Valentine Green, who had launched into a publishing business, did go bankrupt and retired from engraving to become Keeper of the British Institution; and John Raphael Smith, after struggling some years, practically relinquished mezzotinting to devote himself to painting. ‘It is all over with engravers and publishers,’’ he said to James Ward, who himself was turning his whole attention to painting. In following the history of mezzotint, other methods of engraving have been lost sight of, but in these English artists did not achieve nearly so much distinction. Etching was little used in original work except as a medium of caricature. Of this metier, Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) and James Gillray (1757-1815) were the most notable exponents. Of all three artists it may be said that their plates are more interesting for their subjects than for their technical qualities. Hogarth’s greatness as an artist has already been considered. He used etching as 49 a medium for some of his book illustrations, satirical prints and subscription plates, working so as to produce much the — same effect as a line engraving, His larger plates are in line, but are grounded with etching.. In both mediums his work clearly expresses what he wants to say, but it is the work of a self-taught artist who never gained complete command over these methods of expression. Rowlandson, a better draughtsman, was far more fluent and obtained his effects with a fine economy of effort. Yet the exaggeration of personal defects and foibles in his presentment of humanity, which was inseparable from the humour of his period, generally interferes with one’s enjoyment of his efforts, and it is only on comparatively rare occasions that he frees himself from this handicap. Gillray, the least competent artist of the trio, was even worse in this respect, and his caricatures are chiefly interest- ing for the light they throw on contemporary English history. Captain William Baillie (1723-1810), on his retire- ment from the army, efficiently copied a number of the etchings of Rembrandt and other northern. continental artists, and did a few original works. aes Line engraving did not possess many distinguished exponents, and their work was frequently devoted to uninteresting subjects. One of the most prolific translators of portraiture was George Vertue (1684-1756), who collaborated with the Dutchman, Jacob Houbraken (1698- 1780) in engraving Birch’s Heads of IIlustriows Persons of Great Britain (1743-1752). He also executed some hundreds of independent plates, including book illustrations, but the chief merit of his work is its accuracy, and his fame rather rests upon his researches into the history of English art than on his talent as an engraver. Possessed of far higher ability was Sir Robert Strange (1721-1792), who, except that he is sometimes weak in his draughtsmanship, ranks among the greatest masters of English line engraving. Owing to his participation in the ’45, Strange spent much of his early career abroad, where he executed 50 a large number of plates after masters of the Italian school which, despite the broad and vigorous manner in which they were handled, are now more or less a drug in the market. Among his later works are two or three portraits after Van Dyck which still command respect in the sale-room. William Woollett (1735-1785), who used preliminary etching as ground work to his line to an unusual extent, largely confined himself to reproductions of contemporary landscapes and historical subjects. His earliest success was Wilson’s Niobe (1761) but this subject was greatly exceeded in popularity by West’s Death of Wolfe, of which over 15,000 copies were sold. A third popular line engraver was William Sharp (1749-1824) who perhaps exceeds both of the others in the technical accomplishment of his work; his portrait subjects more especially are both brilliant and sympathetic inter- pretations of their originals; while George Townley Stubbs (c. 1756-1815) executed some successful line plates from his father’s pictures. William Wynne Ryland (1732-1783) is credited with having introduced stipple engraving into England about 1764. It is a slight modification of the crayon manner initiated in France, in which the engraver sought to imitate the texture of a chalk drawing by etching the design in dots. Stipple is practically the same method applied to the reproduction of pictures, when the dots have to be arranged in closer masses to simulate the denser tonal effect of paint. The style proved highly effective for rendering the slight but dainty classical fancies of Angelica Kauffmann, and attained great popularity. It was adopted by Francesco Bartolozzi (1728-1815), an Italian who arrived in England in 1764. Already an accomplished line engraver, he practised stipple with great success, using it to reproduce the work of his compatriot Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1726-1785). The latter exploited the same vein as Angelica Kauffmann, with perhaps more correct classical feeling and certainly with surer draughtmanship. Ryland, 51 who in 1783 was hanged for forgery, was unrivalled for the delicacy and smoothness of his work, but it by no means attained the vigour and certainty of Bartolozzi’s. - The Italian applied it to all classes of subject, and some of the portraits he executed after Reynolds and other artists rival the work of the great mezzotinters in their power of suggesting the beauty and quality of the originals. The plates—perhaps 2,0o00—which bear his name, are by no means of even merit for he fathered the productions of numerous pupils, some of whom, themselves, became distinguished engravers. To give a list of the notable exponents of stipple would need the duplication of many names already mentioned, for various distinguished mezzo- tinters, such as J. R. Smith and William Ward, successfully exploited the method. Stipple, however, was more frequently practised in conjunction with line engraving or reproductive etching, and some of the following did good work in both of the latter mediums, as well as the first :-— Thomas Burke (1749-1815), the favourite interpreter of Angelica Kauffmann; John Keyse Sherwin (ce. 1751-1790), who succeeded Woollett as engraver to the King; Peltro William Tomkins (1759-1840), an able pupil of Bartolozzi; Thomas Gaugain (1748-1810), William Nutter (1759-1802) and F, D. Soiron (fl. 1790-1795), who were responsible for some of the most pleasing translations of Morland into stipple; Giovanni Vendramini (1769-1839), Antoine Cardon (1772-1813) and Luigi Schiavonetti (1765-1810), whose most popular works are their plates from Wheatley’s Cries of — London; and George Sigmund Facius (fl. 1750-1814) and Johann Gottlieb Facius (fl. 1750-1802) who were imported in 1766 by Boydell to work on his Shakespeare and other publications. | Aquatint was introduced into England in 1776 by Paul Sandby, who claimed to have re-discovered the process for himself, and certainly introduced some modifications of the methods then employed in France, where this form of engraving originated. The process may be briefly 52 ae a oe summarised as a species of etching, in which the acid used in biting in the design is allowed to percolate through a porous ground, thus producing a granulated surface on the plate, somewhat resembling the effect of mezzotint but much slighter. It is specially suitable for the reproduction of water-colour drawings, and came into vogue when the latter acquired popularity. Chiefly employed as a medium for illustrating books and _ reproducing topographical drawings, sporting, military and naval scenes, it was extensively exploited by Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834) and other publishers. Among its chief exponents in the eighteenth century were Paul Sandby, Rowlandson, Gillray, Thomas Malton (1748-1804), Samuel Alken (1756-1815), Thomas Daniell (1749-1840), William Daniell (1769-1837), William Gilpin (1724-1804), Francis Jukes (1745-1812) and William Henry Pyne (1769-1843). A special paragraph must be given to the work of William Blake (1757-1827). He was a competent stipple engraver, and a few of his fine original works in line, such as his illustrations to Young’s Night Thoughts, come within the eighteenth century. It is, however, chiefly as an exponent of his own original methods of engraving that he figures in the prescribed period. He bit his plates with acid so as to leave the designs in high relief, and with the aid of colour, partly printed and partly added by hand, produced some most striking and original illustrations to his own poetical works. Another engraver of great originality was Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) who by the introduction of the white line method gave a new lease of life to wood engraving. So far no mention has been made of printing in colours, _a form of work which was greatly in demand in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In France, colour printing was generally executed with separate plates, one plate being given to each colour, in somewhat the same manner as the modern three- and four-colour processes. In England, this procedure was rarely adopted, most of the 53 plates that were used for colour printing being also employed for monochrome. In this process, the printers had to paint the plate for every impression, using colours instead of ordinary inks, and tinting the design on the plate in much the same manner as_ they would paint a drawing. This method was first adopted with stipple plates, but later on was used with aquatints, mezzo- tints and even line plates. In most instances the impressions after being printed were touched up by hand. This was generally necessary, for it was found that plates which were too worn to be used for monochrome could still be employed for colour; and consequently many prints in colour were struck from coppers almost polished clean with over-much use. The impressions from these are often chiefly handwork, staffs of boy colourists having been employed by the publishers to do the work. 54 CHAPTER V ARCHITECTURE The eighteenth century left its mark on architecture chiefly in regard to dwelling houses and_ clubs. Ecclesiastical buildings showed little original development. St. Paul’s Cathedral, though its coping stone was not put into place until 1710, must be regarded as belonging to the previous century. The twin towers of Westminster Abbey, if interesting as a reversion to the Gothic, are not particularly successful, and though Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1728) had still one or two city churches to build in 1700, they showed no marked innovations from those he had already executed. His pupil Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736), and his disciple, James Gibbs (1682-1723), perpetuated the Wren tradition in several churches, most of which at least were started during the master’s lifetime. In St. Mary-le-Strand (1714-1717), St. Clement Danes (1719), and St. Martin-in-the-Fields (1721-1726), Gibbs designed churches which, both in exterior and interior, tank with those of Wren himself, whose style he closely followed in the shapely Renaissance steeples, which are among the happiest of the great architect’s inventions. Hawksmoor showed more originality in his Christ Christ, Spitalfields, in which he broadened out the facade of the tower supporting the spire, and in St. George, Bloomsbury, in which the apex of the spire is a solid pyramid surmounted by a statue, but scarcely achieved the happy effect gained -in Wren’s lighter structures. In St. John, Westminster, and St. Philip, Birmingham (1711-19), Thomas Archer (d. 1743) resorted to four imposing angle turrents, while at St. George, Hanover Square (1720), John James (d. 1746) made an innovation in causing a tower to rise from the body of the church, behind its handsome portico—a feature admirably represented also at St. Martin which, as 55 previously indicated, was commenced by Gibbs shortly afterwards. In secular architecture a feature of the period was the building of grandiose country seats designed without any consideration for the comfort of their inmates, and of such colossal size that their maintenance in full state for any extended period became an impossibility to their owners. One of the earliest of these white elephants was Blenheim Palace intended by Queen Anne’s government as a reward for the Duke of Marlborough for his victories over the French. Designed by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), it was started in 1703 but hardly completed at the time of his death twenty-three years later. Its costliness caused the government eventually to tighten its purse strings, and involved the architect in a law suit. He built a stately and sumptuous palace in which the halls and reception rooms were magnificent for state occasions, but which hardly contained a single comfortable room. The mansion, which is 850 feet long, is built in the form of a central block with wings, a form generally adopted in the eighteenth century for great country seats. The wings being exactly balanced, the design produced a finely symmetrical effect, but the necessity of precisely matching the exterior of the ‘stables at one end of the house with the kitchen quarters at the other, and of fronting both large and small apartments with similar windows caused much inconvenient planning. Castle Howard, Yorkshire (1702-1714) by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor, Houghton, Norfolk (begun 1722) by Colin Campbell (died 1734), Wentworth Woodhouse (1740) by Henry Flitcroft (1697-1769), Prior Park, Bath (1736-1743) by John Wood (c. 1705-1754), Holkham Hall, Norfolk (1737-1760), and Kedlestone, Derby (1761-1765), on which Matthew Brettingham, James Paine and Robert Adam were successively employed, are among the most noted of these patatial but inconvenient mansions. Often planned on similar lines, the larger town houses were confined to more reasonable dimensions by lack of 56 space. Almost invariably buiit of brick, with stone dress- ings, these mansions attain their effect by the symmetry of their design and their well-balanced proportions. Monotony is avoided by varying the heights of the rows of windows, those on the first floor being generally tallest as fronting the chief reception rooms. Ornament is sparingly used, being generally confined to the intro- duction of stone architraves above the entablatures of the principal windows, and to making an important feature of the doorway. Devonshire House (1735), lately pulled down, was perhaps the best known work of William Kent (1684-1748), and though a somewhat squat and heavy build- ing in appearance, possessed a very fine suite of reception | rooms on the first floor, to which access was originally gained from the outside. Chesterfield House (1748) by Isaac Ware dates from a little later. The wings which originally belonged to it and formed an _ integral part of the original design, are now pulled down, but even in its shorn condition it presents a dignified and stately ‘appearance. Spencer House, for Earl Spencer, completed about 1760, had its facade designed by James Stuart (1713-1788) whose book ‘‘ The Antiquities of Athens,”’ published in 1762, paved the way for the adoption of a more purely classical style of architecture. Robert Adam (1728- 1792), who perhaps did more than any other individual architect, except Sir Christopher Wren, to change the aspect of London, was largely responsible for the exploita- tion of this movement. In Lansdowne House (1765) he has added to the impressiveness of the facade by centring it with a classical portico rising on four columns from the ground story; a similar treatment is followed by him in regard to Stratford House (1775). In Boodle’s Club (1765), one of his most original designs, he varies by making the most important features the great central windows flanked by porticoes on either side. Among other of his important works in or about London may be mentioned Ken Wood, Hampstead, largely remodelled by him in 1767, a the screen in front of the Admiralty (1760), and the entrance gates to Syon House (1762). His most stupendous work in London, however, was the creation of the Adelphi, commenced in 1768, which comprised the erection of all the streets between Adelphi Terrace and the Strand, their whole site including the roadways being elevated to the level of the latter thoroughfare by being built on series of arches forming a vast underground cellarage. In this area Adam treated all the rows of houses as single conceptions, composing them together, by giving the central and end houses of the blocks some distinctive features such as increased height or additional ornament. The south and east sides of Fitzroy Square, commenced 1790, were similarly treated, and the practice, followed by Nash and others, became a leading motive in early nineteenth-century town architecture. Adam is responsible for many other buildings in London and elsewhere—more especially in Edinburgh, where Edinburgh University (1789), and Charlotte Square (1800), not actually built until after Adam’s death, are among his most successful designs. Space forbids the mention of Adam’s other numerous works, but testimony should be paid to. the beauty of his interiors, which constitute a distinct feature in eighteenth-century architecture. He succeeded in adapting classical decorative conventions to modern domestic residences, their fittings and furniture. He largely employed stucco for the decoration of his walls, using it for reliefs, mouldings and pilasters, and thus provided an inexpensive material for the ornamentation of smaller private houses. His ceilings decorated with elaborate classical tracery and occasionally with paintings by Angelica Kauffmann and other classical painters of the period show great refinement and delicacy. In dealing with Adam as an architect of middle-class houses, one has overshot the period of many of the most — delightful examples in this métier which was successfully exploited by Queen Anne and early Georgian architects. Brick was the favourite material, and relief was given to 58 the otherwise plain exteriors by the treatment of the doors, and to a lesser degree that of the windows. Some fine specimens of houses belonging to the first decade of the eighteenth century are to be seen at Queen Anne’s Gate; the deep canopies which characterise some of the doorways in this thoroughfare are, however, unusual. Other typical eighteenth-century houses can be seen in Downing Street, Grosvenor Square, Smith Street (Westminster), Barton and Cowley Street, and, indeed, in many of the older streets in Mayfair and other parts of the Metropolis. The same may be said of most of the older towns and villages in Great Britain. Bath, indeed, is largely an eighteenth-century city thanks to the efforts of John Wood (1705 ?-1754) and his son and namesake (1727-1782). The elder men anticipated Adam in laying out Squares and streets as definite architectural conceptions, and converted Bath into the most stately English city of the period. The Woods were moreover responsible for the design of the Liverpool Town Hall, a finely proportioned building, which with St. George’s Hall and the new Cathedral, remains one of the three greatest architectural attractions of the city. Other important public buildings that should be mentioned include Somerset House (1776-1786), the master work of Sir William Chambers (1726-1796) which, though shorn of some of its effect by the intrusion of the Victoria Embankment in front of its main facade and water gate, is a stately and impressive piece of Georgian architecture. The Horse Guards (1751-3) with its central archway and picturesque cupola-crowned turret is the most attractive of Kent’s essays in urban architecture; Guy’s Hospital and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital still retain some eighteenth- century features; while Sir Christopher Wren’s chaste and finely proportioned Orangery at Kensington Palace, remains as practically the only noteworthy piece of any of the palaces built during the eighteenth century. The Colleges received some important additions at Oxford; the Radcliffe Library 59 (1737-1747) by Gibbs, with its impressive and original circular construction, is one of the noblest buildings there, while the effective Gateway, Queen’s College (1710) by Hawksmoor, and the Radcliffe Observatory (1772) by Adam, also testify to the high quality of the architects of the period. The same may be said of various of the Cambridge build-— ings among which the Senate House (1722-30) by Gibbs and the University Library (1754-1758) are perhaps pre- eminent. To give, however, anything like a complete list of the beautiful buildings which distinguished English eighteenth-century architecture would be an impossibility. They are to be found in all parts of the country and many of the more charming are hidden away in remote rural districts. Often the work of designers whose names are forgotten, they serve to remind us that in architecture at least the eighteenth century was an era of general good taste, exemplified as fully in the building of minor manorial houses and country cottages as in the more ambitious works erected in the larger cities. CHAPTER VI FURNITURE The accession of Queen Anne did something towards restoring a national style to furniture. Under William III, Dutch influence had predominated, though the styles intro- duced from Holland had been refined and lightened through the superior taste and craftsmanship of English cabinet makers. The increased wealth of the country resulted in a larger demand for furniture from the middle-classes, who desired plain and substantial pieces, and this trait appears generally to have influenced the output of the Queen Anne period. Carving was comparatively little used, being chiefly confined to the legs and backs of chairs and settees ; while marquetry, which had been fashionable during the _ previous reign, gradually waned in popularity. In its later stages it was usually limited to seaweed and arabesque patterns executed in naturally coloured woods. The taste for plain pieces necessarily resulted in greater attention being paid to design and construction, and in both respects Queen Anne furniture will hold its own with that of any period. One of the most pronounced characteristics of the time is the use of cabriole legs which were generally employed on all pieces of furniture requiring supports, and remained in almost universal vogue until after the middle of the eighteenth century. With the introduction of this form of leg, chair stretchers were for the most part eliminated and hardly make their appearance again in English fashionable furniture until the time of Chippendale. Walnut, which had become popular with the Restoration, remained almost universally in use except for the rougher types of country furniture. On _ flat surfaces it nearly always took the form of a veneer and great skill was shown in displaying the figuring of the wood to the best advantage. Mahogany was introduced soon after the beginning of 61 the Georgian era, and before the middle of the century had quite displaced walnut in popular favour. During this transition of fashion, furniture became heavier and more elaborate. Massive pieces were required for the large and lofty apartments in the brobdingnagian mansions which were being erected, while the influence of the French rococo movement brought about a taste for rich and profuse ornamentation. Both of these characteristics were exempli- fied in the work of William Kent who, like various other architects of the period, not only designed buildings, but also the furniture which they were to house, the actual pieces being made by practical cabinet makers from the architects’ drawings. This architectural direction is most strongly shown in large pieces, such.as bookcases or tall bureaux, which at this period were often crowned with heavy broken pediments of a strongly classical character. These pieces were generally of walnut or mahogany and were left unpainted, though sometimes when the book- cases were planned as part of the permanent fittings of a library they were made of painted pine. Pinewood, too, was often used for the panelling of early eighteenth-century rooms, but was invariably painted, the white wood, destitute of attractive figuring and readily showing dirt and stains of all kinds, being quite unsuitable for the purpose, if left plain. Panelling, however, was ceasing to be fashionable, its place being taken by silken hang- ings or wall papers. The latter, unless they were Chinese, or of especially fine quality, were reserved for minor rooms, Much of the furniture used in state apartments was gilded. Kent was responsible for a number of pieces of this character, generally inspired by Italian renaissance work. Heavy and apt to seem over ornate to our modern taste, they nevertheless look both handsome and appropriate amid the surroundings for which they are designed. Side-tables, more especially, wanted substantial as well as ornate supports to bear the weight of the heavy marble ‘ops which frequently surmounted them. 62 - Orthodox fashionable furniture was marked by similar exuberance to that of the gilded work. This was notice- able in such pieces as chairs, stools and settees, their legs —and where they possessed them their arms—being boldly “and ornately carved. Cabriole legs retained their popularity, but were now richly adorned both on the feet and knees. For the former the claw-and-ball foot which came into vogue about 1710 was used in the more expensive pieces, and the clubfoot in those of a less costly type; but other animal, bird and even marine motives were also employed, such things as eagles’ talons and dolphins’ heads occasionally appearing. The _ knees of the better pieces were carved with masks or other adorn- ments, lions,’ and sometimes human, heads being among the more valued types of the former. Occasionally the legs of animals were simulated, to form the supports to a piece of furniture, hair, claws, muscles and hocks all being realistically rendered. With the middle of the eighteenth century the names of some of the greatest cabinet makers begin to come into prominence. In this regard a broad distinction has to be drawn between furniture designers and furniture makers. The former, who were generally architects, merely made designs, which the latter put into practical form and embodied in suitable materials. Some of the greater cabinet makers evolved styles of their own, which are named after them, but in every instance it is the name of the designer and not that of the maker, which governs the terminology of furniture. Thus the term ‘‘ Chippen- dale piece ’’ does not necessarily mean a piece made by Chippendale, but only that it conforms with one of the styles that is associated with his name. In a similar way, pieces which Chippendale himself is known to have made from the designs of Robert Adam, are classed as Adam furniture, even though the fact that they are the handiwork of the great cabinet maker himself greatly enhances their interest and value. 63 Most of the popular architects designed furniture, but only Robert Adam, and to a lesser degree William — Kent, who have already been mentioned, did so to a sufficient extent to have special styles associated with their names. The cabinet makers who are similarly perpetuated, are those who published successful books on furniture design. The best known work which comes under this category is The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director published in 1754 by Thomas Chippendale (1718- 1779). | Chippendale has become so famous that many pieces with which he has no palpable connection are associated with his name. Practically nothing is known aS to his career as a cabinet maker before he set up in Conduit Street in 1748, and consequently the term of Early Chippendale, used in connection with various types of furniture made between 1730 and 1750, has no other warrant than the fact that the pieces concerned resemble some of his published designs. Of itself, this is no guarantee, for Chippendale’s book must be considered somewhat in the light of a trade catalogue, in which he illustrated all types of furniture currently popular, as well as those for whose design he was personally responsible. Chippendale’s reputation is largely posthumous; that he deserved it is shown not only by the originality of many of his designs but also by the fine carving and invariable high quality of the pieces known to have been produced by his firm. Yet it must be remembered that Chippendale was only one of the numerous important cabinet makers flourishing at the time. His work is invariably distinguished by a fine sense of line, and he took advantage of the toughness of mahogany—his favourite wood—considerably to lighten the furniture of this period. Chippendale may be said to have had three or four distinct styles. His earlier known pieces were largely a development of older English traditions; then he gathered much inspiration from Louis- Quinze and Louis-Seize furniture; while in Chinese and. Gothic Chippendale, he practically originated styles to 64 conform with the passing vagaries of fashion, even though in some instances they had been partly suggested—though not actually executed—in designs made by Chambers and other architects. Chippendale mostly discarded animal for geometrical motives, and frequently used combinations of C shaped curves in his decorative forms, such as the splats of his chairs, though one of his most admired devices for the latter was festoons of ribbons. In his ‘‘ Gothick ”’ and Chinese styles he introduced chairs with straight legs, the backs of those in the Chinese style—which proved the more popular of the two—being filled with lattice work. The exuberance of Chippendale carving reaches its height in some mirrors, the frames of which are loaded with elaborate and fantastic ornament executed with great delicacy and often of a highly fragile nature. The success of Chippendale’s Director, which went through several editions, probably inspired the publication of The Universal System of Household Furniture, issued in 1762-3 by William Ince and Thomas Mayhew, a firm of noted cabinet makers. This was followed in 1765 by The Cabinet and Chairmaker’s Real Friend and Companion, of Robert Manwaring, a trade rival. These books were largely reminiscent of Chippendale’s work and failed to add sufficient new creations to constitute separate styles. George Hepplewhite’s Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, published in 1788, two years after the author’s death, was more original, though no doubt it had been greatly influenced by the designs of Robert Adam. Adam, thrust forward on the crest of the classical movement, was practically the means of revolutionising furniture styles. The rococo luxuriance of Chippendale was replaced by classical elegance; straight lines were substituted for curves, except in such pieces as side-tables or cabinets in which graceful serpentine fronts were frequently intro- duced with fine effect. Legs, now so slender as to appear fragile, were no longer curved, but appeared either in the guise of fluted columns, or with four flat surfaces, tapering 65 towards the base, and frequently enriched with conventional decoration inspired by classical motives. Compo was sometimes used as a substitute for wood, delicate moulded ornament in this material being employed for the embellish- ment of mirrors and pieces of a similar character, but more frequent resource was made to inlay, marquetry and paint- ing. These necessitated the utilisation of other woods besides mahogany, among which satinwood, introduced from the West Indies about 1760, was especially popular. The furniture made under Adam’s own supervision was destined for the various princely mansions that he built or remodelled, and was consequently of a most costly character. Well-known artists such as Angelica Kauffmann, ~ Cipriani, W. Hamilton, Rebecca, Zucci and various of their followers designed and in many instances executed the painted embellishments of these pieces, often of the most refined and exquisite character. In some instances Wedgwood jasper plaques were pressed into service; ormolu mountings designed by Pergolesi and other sculptors were also employed; in a word the furniture designed by Adam was more suitable for a palace than for any dwelling of humbler pretensions, Hepplewhite (d. 1786) largely achieved success by developing the designs of Adam into forms that made them more adaptable for household use. To a lesser degree, the same may be said of Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806), who was not, however, a furniture maker, but a designer only. His fame rests on his publication, in 1791-4, of The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers’ Drawing Book. Hepplewhite varied the used of straight lines by employing shield-shaped backs for chairs, while other motives he frequently affected included the Prince of Wales’s plumes, the lyre, and the wheat ear. Sheraton also used the lyre motive, while the well-known ‘‘ Sheraton shell ”’ is another feature, much affected at the period, which is popularly associated with his name. There were, of course, various other makers such as Thomas Shearer who brought out 66 Designs of Household Furniture in 1788, most of which closely conformed in style to those of Sheraton; while the firm of Gillow, founded in Lancashire early in the eighteenth century, and still existing as Waring and Gillow, commenced a large export trade to America and Northern Europe. Another firm, started by George Seddon, had probably a far larger turnover than Chippen- dale, for (according to the Dictionary of English Furniture) in 1789 it was carrying £120,000 worth of stock. So far no allusion has been made to the humbler types of furniture in use in rural and the less pretentious urban residences. Often lagging behind current fashions, they may be said to constitute a class by themselves, and this is especially so in regard to pieces such as settles, dressers -and chests, which hardly came within the province of the more fashionable cabinet makers. These, however, continued to be largely made in oak, and though influenced by the prevailing vogues, it was only to a limited extent, and many dated pieces exist which reproduce both in form and decoration types of several decades earlier. In rural districts, local carpenters employed the woods most readily available, and beech and other woods as well as oak frequently occur in country-made furniture. ‘Without investigating closely these homely pieces, attention should at least be drawn to the so-called ‘‘ Windsor ’’ type of chair, which, after suffering a period of neglect, now enjoys considerable popularity among collectors. In this, the splats frequently displays some distinctive motive, such as the wheel or star, and sometimes the Prince of Wales’s Feathers, while numerous others are perforated with purely decorative patterns. Occasionally settees of the Windsor type are encountered and an example in walnut with plain vase shaped splats and cabriole legs is in my possession. 67 CHAPTER VII METAL WORK The plain symmetry of design which we are accustomed to regard as a salient beauty of Queen Anne plate was largely inspired by the action of William II in. issuing a new silver currency. This happened in 1696-97. The old silver coinage became so worn, sweated and clipped that it no longer passed current at its face value, and new — issues, which were made to supersede it, were largely absorbed to be melted for plate. During the seventeenth century, indeed, plate-chests were regarded in much the same light as private savings banks, to be filled in prosperous times and drawn upon when any financial emergency arose. This practice was followed largely by the City Companies, who could buy their plainer plate at 53s. 2d. an ounce, and sell it to be melted down into bullion at from 4s. 10d. to 5s. an ounce, a transaction which ~ entailed only a relatively small loss. Before 1697 standard silver plate was made of metal of the same purity as the coin of the realm, that is of 925 parts of silver to 75 parts of alloy, so that it was easy to transform silver coins into plate. To prevent this operation, an Act was passed, decreeing that all silver plate should contain 958.3 parts of silver to only 41.7 parts of alloy. The silver coinage was still kept at the old standard and the cost of ridding it of its superfluous alloy rendered it useless for conversion into plate. The Act remained in force from 1697 until 1720, and all the plate made under it was stamped with the figure of Britannia, which by the way must not be taken in itself as evidence of age, for silver of the higher standard is still stamped with the same device. It was found that the purer silver wore far more readily than the metal of the old sterling standard, so that decoration was simplified and plain surfaces, which offered little opportunity for wear, 68 became fashionable. This was especially the case with household silver, which during the reign of Queen Anne took on much the same general forms as those in use to-day. There were exceptions to this rule. Four-pronged forks, which had been introduced in the seventeenth century, did not become fashionable until the second half of the eighteenth. Sauce-boats failed to come into vogue until the reign of George I, but during the reign of Queen Anne, soup-tureens, cream-jugs, cruet-frames, sugar- tongs and tea-caddies all came into use, though caddy- spoons do not seem to have been invented until a generation later. Coffee-, tea-, and chocolate-pots, which in the reign of Charles II had all been made with the same high taper- ing bodies, had already become differentiated; coffee-pots alone retaining the general appearance which had once been common to all three utensils. An early eighteenth- century innovation was the making of teapots with globular bodies, on moulded bases, a type which has remained popular ever since. Restricted largely to plain surfaces, the Queen Anne silversmiths were compelled to study symmetry of form. Instead of generally confining themselves to cylinders or oblongs, they frequently used polygonal shapes, the play of light on the more numerous facets affording variety and relief. Work in repoussé was avoided, while pierced work came greatly into vogue. The plain surfaces of Queen Anne silver offered fine opportunities to the engraver and his craft assumed greater importance and beauty. The lower sterling silver standard was restored in 1720, though for some time many makers continued to use the finer metal. By 1725, however, the Rococo style which was in full sway in France, became fashionable in England, and necessitated the use of the more heavily alloyed and consequently tougher material. The most noteworthy exponent of Rococo in English silver was Paul Lamerie (fl. 1712-1751), a consummate craftsman, who, however, frequently allowed his desire to exhibit his technical skill 69 to overpower his consideration for form and utility. On this account his more restrained work, which includes nearly all his early pieces, is generally the more pleasing. Lamerie, however, was only one of numerous silversmiths, many of them French immigrants like himself, who were doing work of fine quality, and various of whom showed better taste though they did not excel him in craftsmanship. Rococo exuberance is strikingly shown in pieces intended for use only on formal occasions. Thus a large wine cooler made by Charles Kandler in 1734, for the Russian court, of which a reproduction is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is supported by four chained leopards; the handles are formed as demi-figures of a man and woman, while the body is replete with ornate decoration of all kinds. This huge vessel, which weighs about 8,000 ounces, was probably the largest of its kind ever made; its purchase for the Russian Crown conclusively shows that English silversmiths had acquired an European reputation. Other objects on which decoration was lavished included table centre-pieces—fashionable from the reign of George I]—rose-water ewers and bowls, cake-baskets and sweet- meat baskets. The ordinary table-wares though generally less ornate showed the influence of the time in increased decoration. The Rococo Age, as in architecture, pottery and furniture, was succeeded by a classical revival, when dignity and simplicity of form, combined with chaste _ decoration, became ruling considerations. Many utensils excavated at Pompeii were actually reproduced and served as the basis of the new designs. Thus the eighteenth century, which had opened on a note of striking simplicity derived from classical motives, ended on one somewhat similar; though in the later time classical forms were drawn upon not merely for suggestion but also for imitation, Closely allied to silver was Sheffield Plate, composed of copper thinly overlaid with silver. The process of fusing the two metals together was discovered in 1743, and the 70 compound was used to produce practically all forms of house- hold plate. Generally speaking, the fashions in Sheffield Plate exactly follow those obtaining in silver, but naturally appeared slightly later, a consideration which also applies to some extent to household wares in brass. Another form of metal work that was highly popular was the well-known enamels, which were manufactured at Battersea in the last half of the eighteenth century. Chiefly the wares took the form of snuff-boxes and knick-knacks generally, and were decorated with enamel laid on a copper ground and ornamented with either hand painting or transfer printing. As Mr. Rackham has pointed out, however, Battersea was not the only place in England that produced these enamels, and a large number of pieces must be assigned to Bilston, where the manufacture was flourishing after that at Battersea had fallen into decay or was actually extinct. 7v CHAPTER VIII CERAMICS During the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, nearly all the western European counties were trying to emulate and surpass the ceramic productions of China. England, one of the last competitors to enter the lists, lagged behind the others; for while on the Continent most of the ruling families deemed it a point of honour to initiate and support a royal ceramic factory, in this country the potters were left without government aid and so were compelled to make wares to suit the pockets and requirements of the general public. In the long run this restriction proved a commercial if not an artistic advantage to England. British potters largely concentrated — their efforts on economy of production. Instead of slavishly imitating Chinese fabrics they invented cheaper substitutes, and so successfully solved the problem of pro- ‘ducing useful, inexpensive and tasteful wares, that by the end of the eighteenth century they were supplying the middle classes of half Europe, and large numbers of the smaller Continental factories had been compelled to close -down. 3 At the opening of the reign of Queen Anne, in 1702, nothing seemed less probable than this triumph. English ‘ceramic products were then practically confined to slip- ware, majolica or delft, and stoneware. The first named was habitually used for the commonest utensils; but highly ‘decorated pieces, such as large dishes, tygs and posset-pots were made to commemorate marriages, christenings and other domestic events, and often attain extraordinary rich- ness of effect. For the first half of the eighteenth century and even later, these pieces continued to appear, but their gradually dwindling glories and less elaborate technique show that they had ceased to be popular among the ‘wealthier classes. 72 For nearly two centuries majolica, later known as delft,. had been made in England, and by 1700 there were flourishing factories for its production at Lambeth, South- wark and Bristol while others were being started at Liverpool. The best English delft was produced at the two last-named towns during the eighteenth century, the London factories largely turning their attention to purely utilitarian pieces. The Bristol decorators, among whom may be mentioned John Niglett, Joseph Flower, John Bowen and Michael Edkins, drew their chief inspiration from Chinese models, sometimes frankly imitating the figures and foliage of the East, but more generally int ducing English motives treated in the Chinese way. ‘These pieces, from the freedom and ease of their handling’ and their high decorative feeling, attain an esthetic attraction often denied to later and more _ technically perfect work. The delft of Bristol surpassed that of Liverpool in the variety and artistry of its decoration. In the northern city the designs are more purely English in their character and realistic representations of shipping are frequently introduced. Tentative efforts to manufacture stoneware had been made early in the seventeenth century, and in its last quarter John Dwight, of Fulham (d. 1703), and the brothers Elers in Staffordshire had produced _ statuettes, ornaments and domestic wares of high quality. Thomas Astbury (c. 1678-1743) who is said to have mastered all the secrets of the Elers by working at their factory disguised as an idiot, is generally credited with having whitened the body of stoneware by introducing calcined flints among its ingredients. Astbury was one of the most original and enterprising potters of his time; his name is now given as a generic term to teapots and other domestic pieces manufactured by him and by some of his contem- poraries and successors. These articles, from the fine quality of their bodies and the effectiveness of their ornamentation with stamped reliefs, incised patterns, or 73 other adornments, became popular among the richer classes. Later on an economy was effected by the substitution of moulds for stamps, the use of the former allowing for the duplication of the ornament to any extent. Astbury also gave his name to the little pottery statuettes and groups, varying in height from six to ten inches, and generally coloured in polychrome, which now attract such keen competition from collectors, prices ranging to several hundred pounds being often given for fine individual examples. Besides Astbury, Thomas Whieldon (d. 1798), Ralph Wood (1715- 1772) and various other potters produced these pieces. Though broadly treated and often inaccurate in detail, their free and spirited modelling and quaint design makes them highly attractive. It was not until nearly half way through the century that the manufacture of porcelain was definitely started in England, and discrimination between the wares of the early factories is often difficult. Most of these enterprises were initiated with the idea of imitating and underselling the popular types of Oriental and Continental porcelain, more especially those emanating from Sévres, its fore- runner—Vincennes, and Meissen. Various of the Continental marks were copied in different factories, which moreover freely pirated the same Continental designs and repeated each other’s wares almost without intentional modifications. The two earliest porcelain factories to be started in England, Bow and Chelsea, which were both in regular work by 1745, made soft paste china. Bow being more remote from the fashionable quarters of the town had to turn out fewer fancy pieces and a larger proportion of domestic wares. The production of a less fragile porcelain became essential to the success of the factory. This was presently attained by the introduction of calcined bone ash among its ingredients, which made the resultant body considerably tougher. This invention, though anticipated 74 on the Continent, was never put to practical use there. Gradually improved by various potters, it was perfected by Spode about sixty years after its production at Bow, and the mixture of ingredients, which he then formulated, of which bone ash is an important feature, now serves as the basis for the manufacture of staple English china. The bone mixture was introduced into the Bow body about 1750 and into that of Chelsea some eight years later. Both factories worked on much the same lines, though each developed certain specialities. Thus Oriental designs, more especially Japanese Kakiyemon patterns, were far more freely used for the decoration of china at Bow than elsewhere. The Chelsea factory produced large numbers of small scent-bottles, bonbonniéres, seals, étuis and dainty knick-knacks of all kinds, known as Chelsea toys. Both factories imitated Continental wares and groups and figures, but at the same time produced original work at least equal in standard. These included statuettes of English celebrities such as actors and actresses, allegorical figures and other works, some of which were made from similar designs at both factories. The Chelsea figures were perhaps as a rule the more finely finished, while the factory became famous for its coloured grounds, some of which were imitations of foreign inventions, but others, includ- ing its superb claret colour, were original, as were also the maroon purple of Bow and the scale blue of Worcester. The last-named factory was started about 1750, those at Derby, Longton Hall, and Bristol (Lowdin’s Factory) being inaugurated virtually at the same time. At Derby and ‘Longton Hall the orthodox soft paste was used, and was continued at the latter factory until it was closed in 1758, while at Derby bone ash was introduced about 1770. The Worcester and Bristol factories made an innovation by employing soap-stone. This had already been utilised in China and had resulted in a porcelain having affinities to fine stoneware. Liverpool, started by 1756, employed the same material at first, but about 1770 substituted bone ash. 75 Lowestoft which was at work by 1757 used bone ash from the beginning, and at Caughley (started 1772) only bone ash was employed. The method of working hard paste porcelain, already found out at Meissen as early as 1708, was rediscovered sixty years later by William Cookworthy, who established a factory for its manufacture at Plymouth, which was moved in 1770 to Bristol, where Richard Champion became its proprietor. The large number of factories started, each of which produced wares which, though often unlike in texture, were very similar in their purpose and general appearance, resulted in a plethora of English porcelain. Most of the enterprises were short lived. Though in 1763 the Chelsea — factory disposed of a single dinner-service for £1,200, in the same year it commenced to reduce its staff, and in 1770 the whole of the concern was bought by the proprietors of the Derby factory and presently closed down. Bow suffered the same fate at the same hands in c¢. 1775. Liverpool survived until about a decade later. Largely to save the Bristol hard paste factory, a duty of 150 per cent. was imposed on French china in 1774; nevertheless eight years later Champion had to sell his patent rights and works to a little syndicate of Staffordshire potters, who re-established them at the New Hall factory at Shelton. Caughley was bought by John Rose in 1799 and transferred to Coalport, where he had set up works in 790, and though Lowestoft survived the end of the eighteenth century, it collapsed in 1803. | The partial débacle in English porcelain factories was largely brought about by the competition of the Stafford- shire potteries. Largely inspired by the influence and example of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), such great improvements were effected in the production of stone- ware and other types of pottery, that they rivalled in their attraction the more expensive forms of porcelain. Wedgwood came of a family which had been engaged in potting for several generations. He himself started life 76 aS at it when nine years of age, and ultimately became the most famous of English ceramic manufacturers. Not only was he a capable potter, but he possessed a natural artistic taste, and a keen sense of public requirements. More- over he was an excellent organiser, had an alert eye for labour-saving appliances, and a faculty for choosing capable subordinates. He became a master potter when he was nineteen, and in 1754 entered into partnership with Thomas Whieldon, whose name has been mentioned already. Whieldon was one of the most skilled and enter- prising potters of his time, and his connection with Wedgwood was probably of value to both men. It was terminated amicably in 1758, and henceforward Wedgwood, though he had more than one partner, must be regarded as the guiding spirit of his factory. When Wedgwood commenced his career various wares were being produced in Staffordshire, some of which have been previously described. The manufacture of porcelain statuettes in London and elsewhere had inspired the Staffordshire potters to improve their own pieces of a similar character. The Wood family are especially cele- brated for their modelling of these figures and also of toby jugs and small groups—generally of a humorous character. The elder generation of the family included two potters, Ralph Wood (1715-1772) and his brother Aaron Wood (1718-1783); each had a son on whom the talents of the father descended, Ralph Wood, Jun., (1748-1797) being son of the elder brother, and Enoch Wood (1759-1840) being son of Aaron. The family at different periods of their respective careers worked both on their own account and for other firms, all attaining a high reputation for the quality of their modelling. With them may be coupled John Voyez, onetime a modeller with Wedgwood, who executed various works in wax, some of which he showed at the exhibitions of the Society of Artists and its rival the Free Society. The pottery figures included many examples imitated from Continental and English porcelain, 77 but also original work of high quality; various of the groups and all the Toby jugs are exclusively and peculiarly English in their feeling. | . Wedgwood is supposed to have produced many of these Staffordshire figures in his early days, when he was also making Mottled, Marbled and Agate pottery as well as Cauliflower, Pineapple and Cabbage Ware. The three former wares are produced largely by the combination of clays of different colours. The clays are placed in separate layers, on top of one another, and then cut through with a wire so as to reveal the different hues. When well done this process results in a body resembling varigated marble in appearance. The same process modified was also used to produce the Mottled and Marbled potteries, which were likewise made in a less costly fashion by the use of coloured slips. What may be termed the fruit and vegetable wares were imitations in polychrome pottery of the natural objects, adapted to form teapots, vegetable- dishes with covers and other objects of domestic use. These wares, some of which were invented by Wedgwood, were produced by numerous firms and enjoyed a considerable vogue. Salt glaze, both white and _ decorated, continued to be produced in large quantities, and remained more or less in vogue until about 1780, by which time it had been superseded by Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware which effected a revolution in pottery production. A fine cream-coloured stone ware, lead-glazed, had long been manufactured in Staffordshire. An unknown inventor improved this by adding flint and sand to the glaze, while Wedgwood still further improved the ware by introducing china-clay and china-stone into its body, thus making it more closely resemble porcelain. His earlier improvements in this cream- coloured ware were made about 1753 and it was perfected ten years later. It was called Queen’s Ware after a tea-service of it was made for Queen Charlotte. By 1767 it had become so popular and so widely known that 78 Wedgwood, in a letter, quoted by Mr. Barnard, was able to write: ‘‘ The demand for this Sd Cream color, alias ‘ Queen’s Ware,’ alias Ivory still increases. It is really amazing how rapidly the use of it has spread almost (sic) over the whole Globe, and how universally it is liked.” Wedgwood’s triumph was largely brought about through science and organisation. He avoided the haphazard methods of the older potters, and did everything in his power to ensure that all his wares were of uniformly high quality. His clays and other raw ingredients were evenly ground with the aid of machinery—he was the first potter to employ a steam engine for this purpose—and their proportions were accurately determined by weight and measure, instead of being arrived at by guesswork. His lathes, moulds and other appliances were kept up to date, his kilns designed according to scientific principles, while his employees, instead of being suffered to perform various tasks, were each set to a specialised branch of work. Ina word, his pottery was conducted on much the same principles as a modern Ford factory, and -his wares of every description were produced with mechanical exactitude. Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware, if now somewhat forgotten, was the most potent influence in popularising England’s ceramic wares on the Continent, and so paved the way for her future supremacy in this branch of industrial art. Another powerful factor was the invention of transfer printing. Utilised a little before the middle of the century for the decoration of Battersea enamels and porcelain, it was applied by John Sadler and Guy Green of Liverpool, to the decoration of pottery tiles. In 1756 they deposed that they themselves, without assistance, had printed 1,200 earthenware tiles in six hours, a larger nymber than “‘ one hundred skilful pot painters ’’ could have decorated in the same time. The process was applied to all kinds of pottery and porcelain, and the cheaper forms of hand- decorated earthenware, such as Dutch Delft, suffered so 79 severely from the competition that most of the factories producing them were ultimately closed down. | Wedgwood had revolutionised the craft of the potter by putting it on a firm commercial basis. Henceforward the chemist, the engineer and the business organiser were to have as much say in the production of ceramic wares as the artist. Where Wedgwood led the way, there were plenty to follow. Great factories came into being, and from the wide range and volume of their output enjoyed many advantages over the smaller potters who limited their production to one class of ware. | Wedgwood, by commercialising the production of china and pottery, was the means of ultimately lowering their standards of artistry, but during his life-time this debase- ment was not apparent. Indeed he gathered about him designers of such high calibre that for a time it seemed as if he had elevated potting from an applied to a fine art. The classical vogue which prevailed during the latter part of the eighteenth century caused him to turn to Greece and Rome for sources of inspiration, and he succeeded in embodying the beauty and symmetry of classical design in wares that rivalled those of China in their technical excellence. Included among the latter were Black Basaltes, perfected about 1772, a red ware (Rosso Antico)—not quite so successful—produced about the same time, and Jasper Ware which was first made about 1775. All three wares were used for pieces either actually reproducing antique work or conforming with the latter in their general style and character. The Basaltes was specially employed for vases, statuettes and reliefs. The first named were some- times decorated with encaustic painting, or with figures and designs in relief, but the hardness of the material permitted it to be utilised for almost any form of work that could be executed in bronze, and numerous smaller pieces such as candelabra, inkstands and table utensils were produced in large numbers. For these lesser items however, Basaltes was speedily eclipsed in popularity by. 80 Jasper Ware. In the latter a coloured ground was almost invariably employed, decorated with finely executed designs in raised white relief. Blue was by far the most popular colour for the body, but lilac, pink, sage green, olive green, yellow and black also occur. In his Jasper Ware Wedgwood set himself the task not merely of rivalling the creations of the potter but also those of the sculptor and gem cutter. The hard, finely grained body of the ware permitted it to be worked almost with the same certainty and minuteness as a gem, and it was used for a wide variety of ornamental objects ranging from tiny trinkets to large vases and bas-reliets. Much of the output was closely copied from antique pieces, but the original work turned out from the Wedgwood factory at Etruria is at least of equal interest to the reproductions, and in. executing it some of the finest modellers of the time were employed. Most famous among them is John Flaxman (1755-1826), afterwards well known as a sculptor, though, as Mr. Barnard points out, much of the work popularly assigned to him was really executed by other artists. Amon these were William Hackwood, James Tassie, Joachim Smith, and a number of Italians, who made casts and_ repro- ductions from the antique. Not the least important of Wedgwood’s work was the series of busts and portrait medallions of contemporary celebrities which are mostly excellent likenesses. These fancy pieces and portraits, though all taken from moulds, are so well modelled and finely touched up by hand that they attain much of the quality of original sculpture. During Wedgwood’s lifetime his wares achieved an unrivalled reputation and his finer pieces were secured not only by the English aristocracy but also by the reigning houses on the Continent. Among the best of his many imitators were John Turner, of Lane End, and William Adams, of Tunstall, whose Jasper ware closely approaches in quality that of Wedgwood himself. In other parts of the country, potteries had been established, such as Leeds, noteworthy for its cream ware, 81 and Sunderland, where most of the lustre ware was pro- duced, but the great centre of the industry at the end of the eighteenth century was Staffordshire. Here Wedgwood’s example brought about the establishment of huge potteries well supplied with machinery and turning out wares distinguished for their technical excellence and uniform quality. But the scarcity of money induced by the war with France caused manufacturers to direct their attention more to useful products than to ornamental, and after the vogue for the classical wares introduced by Wedgwood was ended, there was no artistic movement of any import to replace it. The wave of industrialism, which was to submerge the early part of the Victorian era, had commenced to flow, and henceforward English potters suffered them- selves to be borne along with the tide. 82 a PLATE XLi 4 pes eee serra ao fy ETCHING AND LINE ENGRAVING NDON. BY WILLIAM HOGARTH (1697-1764) LORD MAYOR OF L *PRENTICE Y,DUSTRIOUS ea an ial SGIONATA WOAHSO! AIS AULAV ‘NAAAOD HONOUOASNIVD SVNOHL WALAV ‘LNOdNG ANILNATVA AG LNILOZZAWN *, : O'TOD VGITIVH ANVE ACV HINOUOUSNIVD. AD LNILOZZAN aHOaT Ls" Ta CELAXS ROE ISS SL Tel PLATE XLIV MR. GARRICK IN “ HAMLET,” ACT I, SCENE 4. MEZZOTINT BY JAMES McARDELL, AFTER B, WILSON PRATEEALV MRS. ROBINSON. MEZZOTINT BY J. R. SMITH, AFTER GEORGE ROMNEY ts PLATES XENI & XEVII THE LADIES WALDEGRAVE. MEZZOTINT BY VALENTINE GREEN, AFTER SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS LOVE IN BER EYES: SITS'-PLAYING.” MEZZOTINT BY J. R. SMITH, AFTER M. W. PETERS PLATES XLVIII, XLIX, L & LI ‘“ PRIDE.”? MEZZOTINT BY JAMES McARDELL, DAUGHTERS OF SIR THOMAS FRANKLAND. AFTER C. A. COYPEL MEZZOTINT BY WILLIAM WARD, AFTER JOHN HOPPNER ELIZABETH, MARCHIONESS OF EXETER. MEZZOTINT BY S. W. REYNOLDS, AFTER SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE MARY, DUCHESS OF ANCASTER. MEZZOTINT BY JAMES McARDELL, AFTER THOMAS HUDSON PLATES LII & LII! “A PHILOSOPHER GIVING A LECTURE ON THE ORRERY.” MEZZOTINT BY WILLIAM PETHER, AFTER JOSEPH WRIGHT, OF DERBY “ THE PERILOUS SITUATION OF MAJOR MONEY AND HIS BALLOON AT SEA.”” MEZZOTINT BY JOHN MURPHY, AFTER PHILIP REINAGLE PLATE ELV. HOUSES IN BEDFORD SQUARE (ce. 1770). ARCHITECT, THOMAS LEVERTON (Photo F. Yerbury) * 4 * " : ‘ % ! . 4 t iS ie : \ Bi t = oos a . ‘ j . s ‘ * r + : ral 34 . » : a : * - * : ‘ t ‘ » PLATE LV HOUSES IN BATH STREET, BATH (ce. 1790). ARCHITECT, THOMAS BALDV (Photo. F. Yerbury) PLATE LVI ee - an conan:

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