/r //^ jmJi 
 
A CENTURY OF PAINTERS 
 
 OF THE i 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL, 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 a 
 
A 
 
 CENTURY OF PAINTERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL ; 
 
 WITH 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES OF THEIR WORKS, 
 
 AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE 
 
 PROGRESS OF ART IN ENGLAND. 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD REDGRAVE, R.A. 
 
 (surveyor op her majesty's pictures and inspector general for art,) 
 AND 
 
 SAMUEL REDGRAVE. 
 
 "THERE ARE MANY WRITERS ON OUR ART WHO NOT BEING OF THE PROFESSION, 
 AND CONSEQUENTLY NOT KNOWING WHAT OAN OR WHAT CANNOT BE DONE, HAVE BEEN 
 VERY LIBERAL OF ABSURD PRAISES IN THEIR DESCRIPTIONS OF FAVOURITE WORKS. 
 THEY ALWAYS FIND IN THEM WHAT THEY ARE RESOLVED TO FIND, AND PRAISE THEM 
 FOR EXCELLENCIES WHICH CAN HARDLY EXIST TOGETHER."— Reynolds' Fifth DisCOUVSe. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. n. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 1866. 
 
[ The Right of Translation is reserved!] 
 
 rHE GETTY CENTEK 
 I IPPADV 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Early Teaching and winning Talents, but neg- 
 lected Education — Commences Portraiture at Bath — Comes to 
 London — Studies at the Royal Academy — Introduction to Rey- 
 nolds — Elected Associate of the Academy — His early Distinction 
 and Patronage — Manner and Quality of his Painting, and its Merits 
 — Tries Historical Subjects — His " Satan" — Continues to improve 
 in Portrait Art — And increases his Practice — Steadily advances 
 his Position — Some Interruption to his Progress by Scandal con- 
 nected with the Princess of Wales — Gains the Favour and 
 Patronage of the Prince — Commissioned to paint the Allied 
 Sovereigns — Knighted — Goes to Aix-la-Chapelle to execute his 
 Commission — Vienna and Rome — On his Return elected President 
 of the Royal Academy — Criticism on the Works painted for the 
 Prince — His Studio in London again filled with Sitters — His 
 Academy Duties — Collection of Drawings — His best Portraits of 
 this date — Short Illness and Death — Personal Recollections— 
 His Treatment of the Costume of his Time — Opinions and Criti- 
 cism upon his Art 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Contemporaries of Lawrence. 
 
 Sir Henry Baeburn, B.A.— Native of Scotland — Apprenticed to a 
 Goldsmith — Turns to Art — Successful in Miniature — Afterwards 
 in Oil Life-size — After travelling in Italy, settles hi Edinburgh 
 — And gains Distinction — Opinion upon his Art — John Hoppner, 
 B.A. — Gossip connected with his Birth — Chorister in the Chapel 
 Royal— Studies Art— Gains the Academy Gold Medal— Marries 
 
vi 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 — Adopts Portrait Art — His Progress — Enjoys the Court Favour 
 — Called the Whig Portrait-painter — Rivalry with Lawrence — 
 Ill-health — His Temper tried by Sitters — His Subject-pictures 
 and Portraits criticized — William Owen, R.A. — Early Love of Art 
 — Student of the Academy — Pupil of Catton, R.A. — Commences 
 Portrait Art — Establishes his Reputation — Elected into the 
 Academy — Portrait Painter to the Prince Regent — His Portraits 
 and Subjects from Rustic Life — Long Ill-health — And Death — 
 Sir Martin Archer Shee, P. R.A. — Parentage — Studies in the 
 Dublin Art-schools — Tries his Fortune in London — Paints Por- 
 traits — Chiefly Theatrical — Attempts History — His Prospero and 
 Miranda — " Rhymes on Art " and other Writings — Elected Presi- 
 dent of the Academy — Witness before the House of Commons' 
 Committee — Zealous Defence of the Academy — Opinion upon his 
 Art— "The Tiptoe School"— Death— Thomas Phillips, R.A. — 
 Apprenticed to a Glass - painter — Adopts Portrait-painting — His 
 Subject-pictures — Character of his Art — John Jackson, R.A. — Son 
 of a Village Tailor — Becomes an Artist — Finds Friends — Comes 
 to London — His Success in small Water-Colour Portraits — Fol- 
 lowed by Portraits in Oil — Elected into the Academy — Visits 
 Italy— His Art Merits — Character and Death — George H. Harlow 
 — Left with a widowed Mother — A spoilt Boy — True Genius for 
 Art — Commences its Study — Pupil of Lawrence — Tries Portrai- 
 ture — Paints Theatrical Portraits — Falls into Extravagance and 
 Difficulties — Visits Italy — Returns bent on History — Illness and 
 early Death — His Art criticized — " The Trial of Queen Catherine ! " 
 — Sir Watson Gordon, R.A. — Of a Berwickshire Family — Intended 
 for the Army — Turns to Art — Settles to Portraiture — Paints the 
 Scottish Celebrities — Becomes President of the Scotch Academy 
 — Opinion upon his Works — Henry Peyronnet Briggs, R.A. — 
 Enters the Schools of the Academy — Begins Life as a Subject- 
 painter — His Works described — Elected into the Academy — Turns 
 to Portraiture to provide for his Family 41 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 Joseph William Mallorb Turner, R.A. 
 
 The Associations of his Birthplace — Not calculated to awake Land- 
 scape Art — Early Works — Architectural Ruins and topographical 
 Landscape — Finds new Scenes at Bristol and on the Wye — Truth- 
 ful Power of his Drawing — His Study from Nature and at the 
 Royal Academy — His impulsive Manner of Painting — Causes of 
 the Decay in some of his Works — His characteristic Teaching 
 described — His Lectures — Leaving his first Manner, attempts 
 Nature's grandest Effects — The early Appreciation of his Art — 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 His mystic Poems— His Practice in Oil and Ids imitative Powers 
 —Mistaken Charges of unfair Rivalry with other Painters— Effect 
 of his Water-Colour Art upon his Practice in Oil— His early and 
 later Maimers described— And his best Works examined— Com- 
 pared with Claude— Reminiscences of him— The "Varnishing 
 Days "—Summary of his Art— Had no pre-Raphaelite Tendencies 
 —His great Industry-Gift to the Nation— Death— Increased 
 Value of Ms Works 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Patronage of Art. 
 
 True Art not the Child of Patronage— Plans to promote historic Art 
 —The British Institution— -Its Objects and Management— From 
 which Artists are excluded— Plan of its Exhibitions— Results of 
 the first Three— Novel Arrangements— Their Failure— Boasted 
 Progress— Odd Conditions of Competition for premiums— Awards 
 of the Directors— Scheme to increase their Funds— Change then- 
 Plan of Premiums— James Ward, R.A.— Failure of the new Plan 
 —Abandon the Offer of Premiums— Capricious Rewards to Exhi- 
 bitors—Artists' Opinions upon their Acts— Exhibition of the Works 
 of the Old Masters— Its Value to Artists— Exhibition of the Works 
 of the early Painters of the English Schools— Success of this Exhi- 
 bition—Annual Exhibitions of the Works of living Artists— Unwise 
 Regulations— Decline and Degradation of these Exhibitions — 
 Failure of the Institution to realize its professed Objects 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Howard, Hilton, Haypon, and Etty. 
 
 Henry Howard, R.A. :— His early Training— Travels in Italy— Paints 
 Poetic and Classic Subjects— Occasionally Portraits— Character of 
 his Art.— William Hilton, R.A. .-—Studies at the Royal Academy 
 —Historic Art his sole Aim— His first Works— Premiums gained 
 at the British Institution— Appointed Keeper of the Royal Academy 
 —Decayed State of his Works— His " Crucifixion "—Opinion of 
 his Merits — Benjamin Robert Haydon : — Determines to be a 
 Painter— Comes to Loudon to Study— Admitted into the Schools 
 of the Royal Academy— His Enthusiasm for Art— Paints his 
 " Dentatus "—Inflated Opinion of his own Work— In Debt— 
 Obstinately pursues his own Way — His " Solomon " and " Christ's 
 Entry into Jerusalem "—Again in Difficulties— Claims Public 
 Assistance— Still deeply Embarrassed— Commences the " Raising 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 of Lazarus "—Opinion upon this Work— Thrown into the King's 
 Bench— The " Mock Election," and " Chairing the Member "— 
 Paints Portraits and anything—" The Reform Banquet "—Lec- 
 tures in London and in the Provinces— Napoleon Portraits— The 
 Fresco Commissions— His Claims to Employment— Utter Disap- 
 pointment and sad Death— Criticism on his Art— William Etty, 
 B.A.— Serves his Time to a Printer— Cherishes a love of Art- 
 Comes to London— Enters the Schools of the Royal Academy— 
 His Perseverance and Manner of Painting — The Beauty of 
 Woman his Theme — His Choice of Subjects — " Cleopatra," 
 "Judith," and "Benaiah," critically described— His smaller Works 
 —Recollections of his Character and Art 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Tableaux de Genee.— Wilkie, Mulready, and Leslie. 
 
 Rise of this Art in England— Its domestic Character and true Aims- 
 Illustrated in the Works of three eminent Artists— David Wilkie, 
 R.A.—His, early Life— Student at the Trustees' Academy, Edin- 
 burgh—Paints his Pitlassie Fair— Subject described— Then tries 
 some Portraits— Starts for London— Admitted to the Royal Aca- 
 demy Schools— His patient Studies— William Mulready, R.A.— 
 His first Art-attempts and early Teaching— Studies at the Academy 
 —Makes rapid Progress— Marries— His first Pictures— Charles 
 Robert Leslie, R.A. — His Birth and Boyhood— Intended for a 
 Bookseller— Will be a Painter— Fortune favours his Desire- 
 Comes to England— Devotes himself to Study— Opinions upon 
 Teaching— Critical Comparison of the Genius of these three Pain- 
 ters—Their distinguishing Characteristics— Early Attempts in 
 historic Art— Then- different Modes of Painting described— And 
 varied Choice of Subject— Remarks on Leslie's Sancho and the 
 Duchess— And other Works— Mulready's Tendency to combative 
 Subjects— His simple domestic Incidents— Development of his 
 Style— Wilkie's little Sense of Beauty— Want of Elegance, Cha- 
 racter, and Humour common to the three— But in different degrees 
 —Their relative Merits as Colourists— Their Modes of Painting 
 —And Influence of Continental Art upon them 5 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 David Wilkie, R.A. 
 
 Commences his Career in Art— " The Village Pohticians "— " King 
 Alfred" — "The Rent-day"— Early elected an Associate of the 
 Royal Academy— His Mediums used in Painting— He attempts 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ix 
 
 an Exhibition of his own Works— Its Failure— Home Associations 
 —Bachelor Life— "Blind Man's Buff"— The Academy Hanging 
 Committees— His " Duncan Gray "—Its Repair and History— He 
 visits France— The "Distraining for Rent" — Condition of this 
 Picture— " Penny Wedding "— " Reading the Will "—And " Beading 
 the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo"— Its Conception and Popu- 
 larity—Companion Picture by Burnet— The " Parish Beadle "— 
 Commences "George rV.'s Entry into Holyrood" — Domestic 
 Troubles — Illness — Travels in Italy, Germany, and Spain — Influ- 
 ence of the Spanish School— Changes his Style of Art— And 
 Manner of Painting— His Spanish Pictures described— And his 
 new Art criticized— Defects of his Drawing— He is passed over 
 in the Election of President of the Academy— Paints Works of a 
 larger Scale — Opinion upon them — His Voyage to the East— And 
 its Impressions — His Death there — Personal Character; and 
 Recollections of him 256 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 William Mulready, RA. 
 
 FEarly Inclination to Landscape Art — " Old Kaspar" his first Subject 
 Picture — Studies the Dutch School — "The Carpenter's Shop" 
 described — And " The Barber's Shop " — Assists in Panorama and 
 Scene Painting — His Landscapes and Art-progress — " Idle Boys " 
 — Elected Associate of the Academy — Commences his " Fight 
 Interrupted" — And gains his Election as Royal Academician — 
 Forms his own Maimer — " The Convalescent horn Waterloo " — 
 Its Mode of Painting — Transition and Change of Manner — " The 
 Young Painter " — " Interior of an English Cottage " — Combines 
 his highest Qualities in Art— His "Out-door Scenes"— "The 
 Seven Ages" described — Attains the Perfection of his second 
 Manner — Culmination of his Art — "The Whistonian Contro- 
 versy " — " Choosing the Wedding Gown " — " Train up a Child " 
 — In his own Opinion his best Work— Decline of his Painting 
 — His Vehicles and Modes of Execution— Great Powers as a 
 Draftsman— Finished Studies from the living Model— Their rare 
 Excellence and Beauty— His last Days and sudden Death 298 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Leslie, Newton, and Egg. 
 
 (Charles Robert Leslie, B.A.— Finishes his Pupil Life— First attempts 
 high Art — Visits Paris and Brussels and Antwerp — True Bent of 
 his Genius— Paints " Slender and Anne Page "—Influenced by his 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Friend Washington Irving—" Sir Roger de Coverley going to 
 Church "—Establishes his Reputation— " The Gipsies "—" May 
 Bay in the Time of Queen Elizabeth "— « Sancho Panza and the 
 Duchess "—Great Success of this Picture— His Marriage— Elected 
 Associate of the Academy— Paints Don Quixote in the Sierra 
 Morena— His Landscapes unsuccessful— Home Life and Friend- 
 ships—Joins the Sketching Society— The "Dinner at Page's 
 House "—Comparison of the original and the replica Pictures- 
 Different Influences under which they were painted— Accepts the 
 Office of Teacher in the Military School of the United States- 
 Resigns and returns to London— Resumes his Art— Influence 
 of Constable, RA.— Paints "The Queen's Coronation "—And 
 " The Christening of the Princess Royal "—Family Influences on 
 his Pictures— " The Mother and Child "— " Playing at Horses" 
 —The Grosvenor Portraits— His failing Health and Death— His 
 gentle Character— Genius— Art full of Grace and Beauty— His 
 Females inimitable— His Treatment of Costume— Gilbert Stuart 
 Newton, R.A.— United in Art and Friendship with Leslie— His 
 Birth and early Training— Comes to Europe— Visits Italy, France, 
 and the Netherlands— Settles in London- An irregxdar Student— 
 His first Pictures— "The Forsaken "—" Lovers' Quarrels" — 
 " The Importunate Author " — His Portraits— Elected Associate of 
 the Academy— Paints " The Vicar of Wakefield reconciling his 
 Wife to Olivia" — The Picture described and criticized— His 
 Spanish Pictures— The " Portia and Bassanio "—Its true Excel- 
 lence-Becomes Insane and dies— His Art— And Character— 
 Augustus Leopold Egg, R.A.— Birth and Early Progress— Exhibits 
 m Suffolk Street— Elected into the Academy— IUness and Early 
 Death— Characteristics of his Art 82 Q 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Old Crome and the Norwich School. 
 
 n Crome— His Birthplace and Origin— Picturesque Surroundings 
 —Tries House-painting and Sign-painting— Sketches the local 
 Scenery— His Poverty and the attendant Difficulties— Finds a 
 Patron— And has Access to Dutch and Flemish Art— Helped by 
 Sir William Beechey— Teaches Drawing— Founds the Norwich 
 Society and the Norwich Exhibition— His mode of Painting— 
 And Choice of Subject— Follower of the Dutch School— Influence 
 of Wilson's Art— His " Mousehold Heath," " Hautbois Common," 
 " Coast Scene near Yarmouth "—Etchings— Death— The Norwich 
 School— James Stark— Articled to Crome— Comes to London- 
 Studies at the Academy— Gains a Premium at the British Institu- 
 tion— Returns to Norwich— Publishes the Scenery of the Rviers 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 of Norfolk— Comes again to London— Then resides at Windsor 
 —Character of his Art— George Vincent also a Pupil of Crome— 
 His Art— And fine Painting of Greenwich Hospital— Falls into 
 Difficulties and Neglect- John Sell Cotman—Ris Early Career- 
 Teaches Drawing— His Publications— Opinion upon his Art— The 
 Norwich Society 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Landscape Painters— Constable, Callcott, and Collins. 
 
 John Constable, R.A.—Ris Birth and Parentage— Decides to be a 
 Painter— His truly English Art— And original Manner— Seizes the 
 peculiar Characteristics of our Scenery— Truthfulness of his Pic- 
 tures—Effect of his own Manner of Painting under the Sun— His 
 Maxims— Our English Scenery described— The Source of his 
 Inspiration — His Execution and Manner of Painting — Pre - 
 Raphaelitism— Defects of mere Imitative Art— His early and 
 later Manner contrasted— The Painter's Materials poor Substi- 
 tutes for imitating Nature — Constable tried great Breadth of 
 Treatment — Abandoned the Practice of Painting direct from 
 Nature— Description of his studied Sketches— His Appreciation 
 of the Old Masters— Visitorship at the Boyal Academy— His 
 Character and his Art— Death— Augustus Wall Callcott, R.A.— 
 His Boyhood and bringing up— Turns Artist— Becomes Student at 
 the Academy— And Pupil of Hoppner— Tries Portraiture— Finds 
 his true Bent in Landscape— Elected R.A.— Contributes largely 
 to the Exhibition— Then restricts himself to one Picture yearly— 
 Attains a high Reputation— Varley's astrological Prediction— He 
 Marries— Travels in Italy— His Popularity and Success— Knighted 
 —His Raphael and the Fornarina— Opinion upon this Work- 
 Recollections of him and of Lady Callcott— His "Milton dictating 
 Paradise Lost to his Daughters "—Loss of Health— And failing 
 Powers— Appointed Surveyor of the Crown Pictures— Death— 
 William Collins, R.A.— Birth— Begins Life in Art— His first 
 Studies — Admitted to Morland's Painting-room— Influence of 
 Morland's Art— Student of the Academy— Exhibits his first Pic- 
 ture—His - Industry — And Art-friendships — Paints Landscapes 
 with Figuries— Makes Progress but slowly— His Works become 
 popular— The "Sale of the Pet Lamb "—Subject described- 
 Elected Asisociate— His Difficulties— Tries Coast Scenes— Gains 
 high Patronage— His "Sunday Morning" and "Happy as a 
 King"— Visits Italy— But does not add to his Reputation— Death 
 —His Art — His Manner of Painting and Materials— Choice of 
 Subjects 381 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ideal Landscape.— Martin and Danby. 
 
 John Martin-ms Birth-Early Attachment to Art-Apprenticed- ^ 
 Runs away— Commences his Art-education— Muss the Enamel- 
 painter— Martin comes to London— Applies himself to Study- 
 Paints in Enamel at Collins's Manufactory— Exhibits at the R.A. 
 1811— His first Pictures—" Belshazzar's Feast "—Opinions upon 
 this Work— Description of it— Repeated in Glass— Discontented 
 with the R.A.— But exhibits there— Not satisfied with the British 
 Institution— Joins the Society of British Artists— Paints large 
 Scraptural Subjects— Which engraved, spread his Reputation— His 
 Illustrations of Milton— His Schemes of public Utility— Sketches 
 round London— In the midst of his Labours, struck with 
 Paralysis— Death-Opinion upon his Art- Merits— Francis Danbxj, 
 A.R.A.— Son of a small Irish Farm Proprietor— Commences Art- 
 study in Dublin— Pupil of O'Connor-Exhibits his first Work- 
 Comes to London— Difficulties of his intended Return— Stops at 
 Bristol— Determines to remain in England— His " Upas Tree " 
 described— And his "Disappointed Love "-Anecdote of Mr. 
 Sheepshanks-" The Clearing-up after a Shower"— And " Sunset 
 after a Storm "—Elected Associate of the Academy— But excluded 
 from the full Honour— His " Delivery of Israel from Egypt "— 
 Comparison with Martin— Long Residence Abroad-Resumes his 
 Place at the Exhibitions— Death— True Poetry of his Art 423 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Roberts, Nasmyth, Bonington, and Mulijsr. 
 
 rid Roberts, R.A.—His Birth-And Apprenticeship to a Painter and 
 Decorator— Tries successfully Scene-Painting— Comes to London 
 —Engaged as Scene-Painter at Drury Lane— Exhibits Easel 
 Pictures— Joins the Society of British Artists on its Foundation 
 —Becomes President — Leaves the Society — Elected into the 
 Royal Academy— Travels on the Continent— And in the East- 
 Popularity of his Art- Visits Italy-His Views of " London from 
 the Thames "—Sudden Death— His published Works— Opinions 
 upon his Art-Patrick Nasmyth— The Son of a Landscape 
 Painter— His early love of Nature— Comes to London at the Age 
 of twenty— FaUs into dissipated Habits— Paints English Scenery 
 with great Truth— Richard Parkes Bonington— Difficulties of his 
 early Life-Tries Art in Paris— Gets his Art-Education there— 
 His Genius and early Success— Premature Death — His great 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Xlll 
 
 Talent for Art — William J. Mutter — His early Genius — Leads 
 him to Art — Travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy — Ex- 
 hibits in London — Then visits Greece and Egypt — Joins the 
 Expedition to Lycia — On his Return settles in London — Finds 
 Patronage — But disappointed — His Illness and Death 450 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The School of Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 J John James Ohalon, R.A. — Commences Art as a Painter in Oil — Takes 
 up Water Colours — Joins the Water- Colour Society — Secedes, to 
 seek Academy Honours — His eventual Success — Opinion upon his 
 Talent — Description of his Art — Thomas Heaphy — His Apprentice- 
 ship — Art- Studies — Early Marriage — Practises as Portrait Painter 
 — Occasionally exhibits Subject-pictures — His "Fish-market" — 
 Follows the Army in the Peninsula — Paints the Officers' Portraits 
 — The Duke of Wellington and his Staff— Promotes the Foun- 
 dation of the Society of British Artists — And the new Water - 
 Colour Society — Opinion upon his Art — David Cox — His Child- 
 hood — And Beginning in Art — Becomes Scene Painter — Tries 
 Water- Colour Painting — His earnest Studies and Success — His 
 Writings on Art — Manner of Painting — Its Individuality and par- 
 ticular Merits — The "Welsh Funeral" — Samuel Prout — Sickly 
 Boyhood — Early Training — Engagement with Mr. Britton — 
 Drawings for him — Joins the Water-Colour Society — His Pub- 
 lications, his Style, Manner, and Choice of Subject described — 
 Peter De Wint — His Parentage — Commences the Study of Art — 
 Hilton, R.A., his Fellow- student and Friend — Exhibits with the 
 Water-Colour Society — His Art Career — And Art described — 
 Manner of Painting — George Fennel Robson — His Art Teaching 
 — Early Success — Study in the Highlands — Love for Mountain 
 Scenery — Progress in Art — Sudden Death — William Hunt — His 
 Birthplace — Attachment to Art — Apprenticed to John Varley — 
 Early Study — Long Art Career — Death — Character of his Art — 
 And Manner of Execution — Copley Vandyke Fielding — Son of an 
 Artist — Educated for Art — Pupil of Varley — Member and Presi- 
 dent of Water-Colour Society — Effect of Teaching upon his Art — 
 Opinion upon his Powers 467 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Fresco-Painting and State Patronage. 
 
 ' The Public recognize, in the Destruction of the Houses of Parliament, 
 an Opportunity to promote Art — House of Commons' Committee 
 
xiv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 recommend the Opportunity should not be lost — Royal Commission 
 issued to effect this Object — Its Constitution and Influence — 
 Inflated Hopes raised among Artists and the Public — The Com- 
 mission adopt Fresco - painting for the Decoration of the new- 
 Parliamentary Palace — And invite Competition — A second Com- 
 petition — And a third — The Exhibition in Westminster Hall — 
 Disappointment of the Profession — One Fresco completed — Delays 
 of the Commission — And strange Conditions proposed to the 
 Artists — A Competition in Oil Paintings — But no Employment to 
 the Competitors— The Public lose Patience — The House of Com- 
 mons refuse a Vote of Money — The fancy Tudor Portraits — Com- 
 missioners defend their Proceedings — And abandon Fresco — 
 Their final Beport — And Failure — Opinion upon their Acts — And 
 their Influence on Art 514 
 
 CHAPTEB XVI. 
 
 Dyce, BA., and Schools or Design. 
 
 His Birth and Education — Early Visit to Italy — Its Advantages — And 
 Influence on his Art-career — His first Picture — Second Visit to 
 Borne — His peculiar Studies — On his Beturn paints Portraits — 
 Appointed Director of the Schools of Design — He reports on the 
 Continental Schools — His Drawing-book — Besigns his Office — 
 Employed on the Decoration of the Houses of Parliament — 
 Opinion upon his Work — Be-appointed to the School of Design — 
 But resigns, and devotes himself to Fresco-painting — His " Legend 
 of King Arthur" — Unfinished Work — And Death — Defects in his 
 Character — Schools of Design — Dyce's Plans and Labours — His 
 Purpose to teach Design and establish Free Exhibitions not 
 carried out — Establishment of the Department of Practical Art — 
 Its large Schemes — And their complete Success — First Aims of the 
 Art- Superintendent — His Plans for teaching Design — Improve- 
 ments effected — Opinions of the French Authorities — Godfrey 
 Sykes as a Decorator 550 
 
 CHAPTEB XVII. 
 
 Other Institutions Affecting the Spread of Art. 
 
 Prevalence of Galleries on the Continent — Want of a National Col- 
 lection of Paintings in England — Purchase of the Angerstein 
 Pictures — Formation of a choice Collection of Works of the Italian 
 School — British Art not duly represented — Valuable Gifts of 
 British Pictures to the Nation — Suggestions for a Gallery of 
 British Art, and the proper Bepresentation of the British School 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XV 
 
 in the National Gallery — Great Increase of Artists — Want of 
 Room for the Exliibition of their Works — Foundation of the 
 Society of British Artists — Its first Members — Its Exhibitions, 
 Schools, &c. — Thomas G. Hofland, Landscape Painter — John 
 Wilson, Marine Painter — George Lance, Painter of Still Life — 
 William Duffield 509 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Preservation of Pictures. 
 
 ( Causes of Decay — Absence of Care in Materials used — Their Prepara- 
 tion by Artists' Colourmen — Reynolds's Practice — Importance of 
 the Ground — Works suffering from bad Grounds — Improper Pig- 
 ments used — Made worse by Varnishings — Use of Asphaltum by 
 Reynolds, Wilkie, Hilton, and others — Wilkie's Mode of using it 
 — Sound State of Gainsborough's Works — Compared with Rey- 
 nolds's — Attempts to repair Defects from Asphaltum futile — Only 
 Means to be used — Other improper Vehicles — Their Effects and 
 Means of Remedy — More Caution now used by Painters — Neg- 
 lected State of Paintings — Absence of all Care — Injudicious 
 cleaning — And dusting — Ventilation of Galleries — Use of Gas — 
 Transport of Pictures — Plans of Packing — Restoring Paintings — 
 Reckless Repairs — False Methods used — Care of Water-Colour 
 Drawings — On the Construction of Picture Galleries 588 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Present State of the English School. 
 
 ] Painters of the past and present Generation — Their Independence — 
 Saved them from Imitation — Outbreak of Realism — In the 
 German and French Schools — Pre-Raphaelism in England — Its 
 Principles and Aims — Truth before Beauty — Nature before Grace 
 — Not without some good Results — Errors of Non-selection — 
 And the Imitation of Details instead of general Truths — Realistic 
 Landscape — Its attempted minute Truth — Does not convey the 
 Truth — Comparison with Turner's Art — Tends however to Im- 
 provement — Is opposed to showy Facility — Art-Unions — Dangers 
 of Prosperity — Increased Prices of Art — Picture -dealers — Spread 
 of Art — Now common to all Classes — Proposed Changes in the 
 Royal Academy — Future of the English School 615 
 
 ] Index to Volume I. and Volume II. 
 
 633 
 
A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A. 
 
 EBirth and Parentage— Early Teaching and winning Talents, but neglected 
 Education — Commences Portraiture at Bath — Comes to London — 
 Studies at the Royal Academy — Introduction to Reynolds — Elected 
 Associate of the Academy — His early Distinction and Patronage — 
 Manner and Quality of his Painting, and its Merits— Tries Historical 
 Subjects — His " Satan "—Continues to improve in Portrait Art — And 
 Increases his Practice — Steadily advances bis Position — Some Inter- 
 ruption to his Progress by Scandal connected with the Princess of 
 Wales — Gains the Favour and Patronage of the Prince — Commissioned 
 to paint the Allied Sovereigns— Knighted— Goes to Aix la Chapelle to 
 execute his Commission — Vienna and Rome — On his Return elected 
 President of the Royal Academy — Criticism on the Works painted for 
 the Prince — His Studio in London again filled with Sitters — His 
 Academy Duties— Collection of Drawings— His best Portraits of this 
 date — Short Illness and Death — Personal Recollections — His Treat- 
 ment of the Costume of his Time — Opinions and Criticism upon his 
 Art. 
 
 TThomas Laweence afterwards Sir Thomas, and the 
 faourth president of the Koyal Academy, was born at 
 BBristol on the 4th of May, 1769. His father was the 
 scon of a clergyman, and although originally bred to the 
 laaw, was at the time of his son's birth, the landlord of 
 vol. ii. 35 
 
2 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the White Lion Inn in that city. His mother, who could 
 reckon her ancestry for some generations, was also the 
 child of a minister of the church, the Vicar of Tenbury. 
 The marriage of the parents of the painter had been some- 
 what clandestine, and Mrs. Lawrence was disowned by 
 her family on that account ; she seems to have been a 
 woman of much refinement and sweetness of disposition, 
 and hardly fitted for the hostess of an inn. Thomas 
 Lawrence, the father of the painter, after completing his 
 articles in an attorney's office, had spent some of the 
 best of his early years in rural idleness — reading the 
 poetry of our best authors, and making some vain endea- 
 vours at compositions of his own, being his chief amuse- 
 ments. This taste for reading and reciting poetry he had 
 cultivated in his early childhood. In 1772, when young 
 Lawrence was about three years of age, the father having 
 failed in his business in Bristol, removed to Devizes, and 
 was aided by his friends to take the Black Bear Inn in 
 that town. These were the days when all travelling was 
 comparatively slow, and when all the better class travelled 
 post ; and as Devizes was on the high road to Bath, then 
 the great centre of fashionable resort when the London 
 season was over, the Black Bear, the principal inn, was the 
 resting-place of most of the visitors to that city of waters. 
 
 Young Lawrence, as a child, was eminently beautiful ; 
 by his father's zealous teaching he had committed 
 many fine passages from our poets to memory, and 
 was able to repeat them with much taste and innate 
 feeling ; added to this he early developed a power of 
 sketching likenesses, and would readily pencil either 
 profile or full face of those who sat to him. The father 
 was very proud of his child's beauty and precocity, and 
 
LAWRENCE'S BOYISH PRECOCITY. 
 
 3 
 
 would often introduce him to his guests to exhibit his 
 talents. It is said that the innkeeper himself had some of 
 the airs of an independent gentleman ; he dressed in the 
 height of fashion at a time when our national costume 
 was far richer and more varied than at present, and 
 with his full suit of black, his starched ruffles and flowing 
 periwig, he caused the envy of brother tradesmen, and 
 possibly also hurt the pride of some of his customers. 
 . It is added that the landlord of the Black Bear was at 
 1 times somewhat intrusive to his customers, both of his 
 ( own company and that of his child, yet the boy attracted 
 ithe attention of many eminent persons quite competent 
 ito judge of his abilities, and these, charmed with his 
 (childish graces and beauty as well as the pretty way in 
 ^ which he delivered his poetry, talked of him in the fashion - 
 sable coteries of Bath and the metropolis, so that many 
 travellers wished to see the extraordinary boy, and those 
 ''who did not, and who at first resented the idea of being 
 ] bored with the child and his performances, were soon 
 (charmed with his youth and loveliness. 
 
 Lawrence's biographer tells us that in 1775, Mr., sub- 
 sequently Lord Kenyon, arrived with his lady late in the 
 (evening at Devizes. After the fatigues of travelling — slow 
 cenough in those days — they were not in the best possible 
 lhumour when the innkeeper entered their sitting-room, 
 rand proposed to show them his wonderful child ; he told 
 tthem his boy was only five years old and could take their 
 llikeness or repeat to them any speech in Milton's " Pande- 
 rmonium." To that place the offended guests were on 
 tthe eve of commending their host, when the child rushed 
 iin ; and as Lady Kenyon used to relate, her vexation and 
 aanger were suddenly changed into admiration. He was 
 
 35—2 
 
4 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 riding on a stick, and went round and round the room in 
 the height of infantile joyousness. Mrs. Kenyon, as soon 
 as she could get him to stand, asked the child if he could 
 take the likeness of that gentleman, pointing to her 
 husband. " That lean," said the little Lawrence, " and 
 very like too." A high chair was placed on the table, 
 pencils and paper were brought, and the infant artist soon 
 produced an astonishingly-striking likeness. Mr. Kenyon 
 now coaxed the child, who had got tired by the half-hour's 
 labour, and asked him if he could take the likeness of 
 the lady. " Yes, that I can," was his reply once more, 
 " if she will turn her side to me, for her face is not 
 straight " — an indication of his early sense of correct 
 form, which produced a laugh, as it happened to be true. 
 He accordingly took a side-likeness of Mrs. Kenyon, of 
 which it is said, that twenty-five years afterwards the 
 likeness could still be recognized. This drawing seems 
 to have been nearly half life-size, and delicately shaded. 
 
 Soon after this, at the age of six, young Lawrence 
 was sent to school at Bristol for two years, at the end of 
 which time his father's increasing difficulties occasioned 
 his recall. These two years were all young Lawrence was 
 allowed to devote to his education ; he not only went no 
 more to school, but it will be found as we proceed, that 
 he had to employ the years mostly set apart for education 
 in making drawings and portraits. A few lessons in 
 French, which enabled him to translate with difficulty, 
 and the desultory instruction of his father, mostly turned 
 towards reading and recitation, forming the only exception. 
 The painter's education was, indeed, rather carried on by 
 conversation with the many distinguished and cultivated 
 persons who sat to him, or sought his society as he 
 
COMMENCES PORTRAITURE AT BATH. 
 
 5 
 
 advanced from childhood to early manhood. Even 
 instruction in his art was denied him. It is said that 
 a Devonshire baronet took such a liking to the boy 
 that he offered to send him to Rome to study, even 
 at the cost of a thousand pounds, but Lawrence, the 
 father, declined, saying that " his son's talents required 
 no cultivation." In 1779, the elder Lawrence was 
 obliged to leave Devizes with his family; they repaired 
 first to Oxford, where the youth, whose fame had preceded 
 him, found many sitters. The College dignitaries, on 
 their way to Bath, had travelled by Devizes, and many, no 
 doubt, had witnessed the performances of the boy-painter. 
 
 From Oxford, after a short stay at Weymouth, the 
 Lawrence family went to Bath, where the eldest brother 
 of the painter, who was a clergyman, had obtained the 
 '. lectureship of St. Michael's, and the studio of the 
 ; younger quickly became the resort of the idleness and 
 : fashion of that pleasure-town. His first works were in 
 • crayons — his charges one guinea, and one guinea and 
 ; a half for heads in ovals. At Bath he became acquainted 
 " with Mr. Hoare, R.A., who was eminent in this walk of 
 :art, and highly esteemed for his crayon portraits, and 
 '. Lawrence acknowledges having received much advice and 
 ; assistance from him. The collection of the Hon. Mr. 
 ] Hamilton, of Lansdowne Hill, afforded him the means of 
 i studying — it would appear at second hand — some of the 
 works of the Italian painters. Lawrence made crayon 
 ( copies of the " Transfiguration "of Raphael, the "Aurora" 
 (of Guido, and the " Descent from the Cross " of Daniel 
 (de Volterra. For the first of these works, done in 1783, 
 when Lawrence was only thirteen years of age, he 
 ( obtained, two years later, the silver pallet of the Society of 
 
6 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Arts. The Council would have awarded the work their gold 
 medal had the rules permitted, but this was not possible. 
 To mark their sense of the merits of the work, however, 
 they had the pallet " gilded all over," a good omen for 
 the young painter. Meanwhile his sitters increased, as 
 did his prices ; and he was in the habit of completing three 
 or four portraits in each week at two or three guineas each. 
 The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Siddons 
 were among his sitters ; a portrait of the latter as Aspasia 
 in the Grecian Daughter was engraved, and proved highly 
 remunerative. 
 
 The biographer of Lawrence is not very clear 
 in the account of his progress : we are told that in 
 1779, " at the age of ten, our young artist burst from 
 mere portraits to original compositions of the highest 
 class. He now painted, as a subject, ' Christ reproving 
 Peter for his Denial of him before Pilate,' £ Reuben's Ap- 
 plication to his Father, that Benjamin might accompany 
 him into Egypt, &c.'" yet, afterwards, he says, " It was 
 not until 1786, when he had passed his seventeenth year 
 that I can find any trace of his having made an attempt 
 at oil painting. ," Probably his early works were in chalk 
 or crayons only ; but this year he spread a whole-length 
 canvas, and painted life-size, " Our Saviour bearing his 
 Cross." What has become of this work, we have not been 
 able to ascertain, nor of a portrait of himself — three- 
 quarter size — which he finished immediately afterwards. 
 Of this latter, the painter had no mean opinion, for he 
 writes to his mother respecting it : — " Excepting Sir 
 Joshua, for the painting of a head, I would risk my repu- 
 tation with any painter in London." In fact, the young 
 painter had set his heart on a journey to London. The 
 
THEN PRACTISES IN LONDON. 
 
 7 
 
 previous year, as we have already said, he had obtained 
 a prize from the Society of Arts ; such rewards were more 
 estimated in those days than they afterwards became. 
 Many artists made them the object of their first struggle, 
 and in the provinces the awards of the Adelphi Council 
 had an added importance. The successful youth was 
 desirous of becoming a student of the Koyal Academy, 
 of seeking an interview with Reynolds, of seeing the 
 works and entering into rivalry with the great portrait- 
 painter of the metropolis. 
 
 In 1787, the elder Lawrence removed with his son to 
 London, and on the 13th of September, the young painter, 
 then in his eighteenth year, was admitted a student of the 
 Royal Academy. Mr. Howard, the secretary, said, " His 
 proficiency in drawing, even at that time, was such as to 
 leave all his competitors in the antique school far behind 
 him. His personal attractions were as remarkable as 
 his talent ; altogether he excited a great sensation, and 
 seemed to the admiring students as nothing less than a 
 young Raphael suddenly dropt among them. He was 
 very handsome, and his chestnut locks flowing on his 
 shoulders gave him a romantic appearance." Lawrence 
 soon after obtaine'd his wished-for introduction to Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds ; he took with him the Bath portrait of 
 which he had thought so well, but with all his self- 
 confidence he trembled as he awaited the judgment of the 
 great President. Sir Joshua was at the moment engaged 
 with another aspirant for fame, whom he dismissed with 
 but negative encouragement. Young Lawrence's work, 
 however, he regarded some time, and with great atten- 
 tion, then turning to him said, " Stop, young man — I 
 must have some talk with you— I suppose, now, you 
 
8 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 think this is very fine, and this colouring very natural : 
 hey — hey ! " and then began to criticise the work and to 
 point out its various faults. After a time he took the 
 picture away into another room, probably to examine it 
 more at leisure and freer from the observation of the 
 young painter ; returning, he advised Lawrence to study 
 nature diligently rather than the old masters, and with 
 a general but impressive invitation to visit him often, 
 dismissed him. Lawrence, who at once took advantage 
 of this opening to Reynolds's house, soon became a fre- 
 quent visitor, and had no occasion to feel that he 
 trespassed on the welcome given him. 
 
 Lawrence at this time had made but few painted 
 copies from the old masters — had made little practical 
 study of his art ; and the method he had adopted was of 
 the simplest. Keynolds, on the contrary, was continually 
 endeavouring after a new manner, — Rembrandt to-day, 
 Vandyke to-morrow, and then Velasquez changed places 
 with Titian in the estimation of the president. Many 
 pictures by the old masters were bought simply to have 
 parts rubbed down that he might, as far as possible, 
 examine their dead-colouring, or pry into the ground on 
 which they were painted. In our own student's days we 
 were intimate with a pupil and countryman of West's 
 who had purchased one or two of these heads, and used 
 to show the parts carefully scraped down to permit 
 Reynolds, to whom they had belonged, to examine their 
 secrets. This led Reynolds into his various experiments 
 in grounds, pigments, and vehicles, from which his 
 pictures have suffered, and from which, at the time, he 
 knew they were suffering ; for many were the complaints, 
 even in his life, of the decay of his works. It was kind, 
 
EARLY OPINIONS OF HIM. 
 
 9 
 
 therefore, of the elder painter, now fast approaching the 
 end of his own art -career, to warn the rising student 
 of his dangers ; and whether it arose from Lawrence's 
 profiting by the advice given, or that he had neither 
 taste nor aptitude for the like course, valuable to art 
 though damaging to Reynolds's fame, certain it is that 
 Lawrence at once adopted a simple method of execution, 
 and continued the same in all his after practice. Thus 
 his pictures remain at the present day much as he left 
 them, and if they fall short, far, very far short, of the 
 richness of impasto, the golden hues, and the broad 
 simplicity of Reynolds, they have at least been spared 
 much of the degradation from time, and more of the 
 cruel wrongs from restoration, that befel the works of 
 his predecessor almost as soon as he had laid down his 
 pallet and was removed from the scene of his labours. 
 
 Mr. Shee, afterwards P.R.A., writes of Lawrence in 
 1789, — "He is a very genteel, handsome young man, but 
 rather effeminate in his manner. A newspaper that puffs 
 him here (in London) very much, says he is not yet one- 
 and-twenty ; and I am told by the students, who knew 
 
 him in Bath, that he is three-and-twenty 
 
 He is wonderfully laborious in his manner of painting, 
 and has the most uncommon patience and perseverance. 
 As yet he has had the advantage of me in length of 
 practice and opportunities of improvement. This is his 
 fifth year of exhibiting in London. His price is ten 
 guineas a head, and I hear he intends raising it. There 
 is no young artist in London bids so fair to arrive at 
 excellence, and I have no doubt that he will, if he is 
 careful, soon make a fortune." 
 
 Lawrence's career as a student of the Royal Academy 
 
10 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 was a very short one ; the Queen and King were both 
 interested in what they had heard of the provincial 
 prodigy. The painter became an aspirant for higher 
 honours than studentship, although much below the 
 academic age. In November, 1790, being then little 
 more than twenty-one, he came on the ballot at the 
 election for associates, and received three votes against 
 sixteen, with which his opponent Wheatley was successful. 
 Peter Pindar, ever ready to attack the Academy, and here 
 with some cause (its departure from its own laws) wrote 
 on the occasion a scurrilous poem called " The Eights of 
 Kings," in which he attributes two of the votes to Keynolds 
 and West, who, he insinuates, had received an intimation 
 from royalty that the rising wonder should be elected of 
 the body. Pindar ironically advises contrition on the 
 part of the sixteen " Royal Mules," and says : — 
 
 " Go, sirs, with halters round } T our wretched necks, 
 Which some contrition for your crimes bespeaks, 
 
 And much-offended Majesty implore. 
 Say, piteous kneeling in the Royal view, — 
 ' Have pity on a sad abandoned crew, 
 
 And we, great King, will sin no more : 
 Forgive, dread sir, the crying sin, 
 And Mister Lawrence shall come in.' " 
 
 It is probable that West, who owed so much to royal 
 patronage, and most likely felt satisfied with the superior 
 talent of the candidate, may have used his influence in 
 Lawrence's favour, and have been one of the three 
 voters. But Reynolds had had little of court patronage 
 beyond his barren office of " Painter in Ordinary," and 
 few inducements to act otherwise than conscientiously, 
 and in the interest of art. Moreover, he could not have 
 given a vote in this instance, the president only having 
 a casting vote in case of an equal ballot. However this 
 
HIS ELECTION INTO THE ACADEMY. 11 
 
 may be, at the election of the ensuing year, 1791, 
 Lawrence was successful in obtaining his associateship. 
 Honours came thick upon him. Sir Joshua died in 
 February, 1792, and ere the month was out the King 
 had directed that Lawrence, then not twenty-three years 
 of age, and not yet a full member of the Academy, should 
 be appointed his successor as painter in ordinary. The 
 Dilettante Society also, setting aside one of its important 
 rules in his favour, elected him a member of their body, 
 and their painter at the same time. Never, perhaps, in 
 this country, had a man so young, so uneducated, and so 
 untried in his art, advanced as it were per saltum to the 
 honours and emoluments of the profession. 
 
 In February 1794, Lawrence, then nearly twenty- 
 five years of age, was admitted to the full honours of the 
 academic body. Sir Joshua's death, and Lawrence's 
 appointment as his successor to the Paintership in Ordi- 
 nary, speedily opened to him enlarged and successful 
 practice. How rapidly he obtained employment in the 
 metropolis is shown by a reference to the early catalogues 
 of the Academy. He had not ventured to exhibit there 
 before 1787, in which year there were seven pictures by 
 him on the walls ; following out his career until 1793, 
 when he sent six pictures, we find he had up to this period 
 exhibited sixty- five works, with but one or two excep- 
 tions, portraits, including those of the King, the Queen, 
 the royal children, and many of the most distinguished 
 personages of the age ; a pretty good catalogue of seven 
 years' labours. But henceforth, instead of second, Law- 
 rence was to take the first rank in his profession, and 
 to have a great influence on the school to which he 
 belonged. The modes of execution adopted by Reynolds, 
 
12 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Gainsborough, and Eomney, were to give place to one 
 less painter-like in quality, of less richness and inipasto, 
 more facile, and wherein drawing was placed before 
 painting, and purity more esteemed than tone. Law- 
 rence began with some slight attempts to follow in the 
 footsteps of Eeynolds. The head presented to the 
 Academy on his election has a meretricious appearance 
 from glazing and forced colouring, and shows that the 
 attempt was ill judged, and not in harmony with his 
 powers. After Eeynolds and Gainsborough, Lawrence 
 looks pretty and painty; there is none of that power 
 of uniting the figure with the ground — that melting of 
 the flesh into the surrounding light which is seen in the 
 pictures of the first president — Lawrence's work seems 
 more on the surface — indeed only surface— while his 
 flesh-tints have none of the natural purity of those by 
 his two predecessors ; we think them pretty in Lawrence, 
 but we forget paint and painting in looking at a face by 
 Eeynolds or Gainsborough. The picture of the children 
 of Mr. J. B. Calmady is a good instance of this, and 
 also of how vastly superior, in painting children, Sir 
 Joshua was to his successor, who had no apparent 
 admission into the inner heart of childhood. His infe- 
 riority in this respect — and how much his children 
 depended on mere prettiness and fashion for their charm 
 — will be felt on looking at such pictures as " Lady Grey 
 and Child," or " The Daughter of Lady Augusta Murray," 
 or " Young Lambton." 
 
 Lawrence's heads are well drawn, and at times pass- 
 ably well modelled ; but the flesh is flesh-colour and not 
 flesh, having the appearance of being painted on a hard 
 ground, such as china, and a thin and somewhat starved 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS ART. 
 
 13 
 
 appearance as compared with the works of his predeces- 
 sors. Thus, when hanging near to one another in the 
 International Exhibition in 1852, even Ramsay's " Duke of 
 Argyle " made Lawrence's portrait of " Cardinal Gonsalvi " 
 — certainly one of his best works — look poor and washed- 
 out. This poverty and thinness was less seen in his 
 early works than afterwards, when the pressure upon 
 him for portraits became great, and he was obliged to 
 use the most facile means of rapid completion. 
 
 The portrait of Lady Cremorne, now in the possession 
 of Mr. Granville Penn, a whole-length painted shortly 
 after Lawrence's arrival in London, which was exhibited 
 in the British Institution in 1864, is an excellent speci- 
 men of his art at that period, and we cannot but feel 
 that if he had continued to paint such pictures he would 
 have enjoyed a far higher reputation than can now be 
 accorded to him. It appears to be a faithful, and is 
 certainly a characteristic likeness ; much more powerful 
 in contrast than are his latter works, and of a far richer 
 tone. The flesh and white drapery are clear and spark- 
 ling, without that look of being lately washed which is 
 peculiar to the flesh of his later portraits. Lady Cre- 
 morne is dressed in black, with the enormous mob-cap 
 of white cambric (trimmed with black ribbons) character- 
 istic of the period, and assisting to increase the principal 
 light. The action is most simple ; there is no affec- 
 tation of making the portrait more beautiful than the 
 original, and the robes are exceedingly well introduced 
 behind the figure as part of the back-ground. For this 
 work we are told that he received only forty guineas. 
 When fashion and beauty flocked to his doors and begged 
 to be painted at prices increased twenty-fold, it is no 
 
14 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 wonder that he was obliged to use every artifice to 
 lighten his labours. 
 
 We are aware that his contemporaries had a far higher 
 opinion of Lawrence's powers than we have expressed. 
 Fuseli said, " The portraits of Lawrence are as well if not 
 better drawn, and the women in a finer taste than the 
 best of Vandyke's : and he is so far above the competition 
 of any painter in this way in Europe, that he should put 
 over his study, to deter others who practise the art 
 from entering, the well-known line — You who enter 
 here leave hope behind." We have, however, spoken 
 upon our own convictions, not hastily formed. 
 
 In the year 1793, Lawrence made an attempt at 
 poetic art ; he painted and exhibited a picture from the 
 Tempest, — " Prospero raising the Storm." What were its 
 merits we are unable now to ascertain, as the picture is 
 destroyed, and no reminiscences of it remain. We 
 should not have adverted to it but as one of his historic 
 failures, had not a story been published concerning the 
 picture which is not borne out by facts. A writer in 
 the Fine Arts Magazine, in 1831, tells the following 
 anecdote, which he says, " Though well known at the 
 time, has not been lately repeated. Fuseli had made a 
 rough sketch of ' Prospero and Miranda' in the Tempest, 
 which had been neglected in his study. A short time 
 before the opening of the Exhibition a friend called upon 
 him, and enumerating the works preparing for the Aca- 
 demy, mentioned a 'Prospero and Miranda' by Lawrence. 
 Fuseli pricked up his ears at this, and quietly asked 
 what sort of a design it was. The visitor described it 
 generally, and there the subject dropped. Fuseli hastily 
 finished his design, and, without mentioning it to any 
 
HIS HISTORIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 15 
 
 one, sent it in as a sketch for a large picture, and it was 
 hung in the same room with Lawrence's picture. The 
 striking similarity of the two designs attracted general 
 notice, and this, we believe, was the last poetical com- 
 position that Lawrence attempted. Over it, on the same 
 canvas, soon after the close of the Exhibition, he painted 
 Kemble as 'Bolla.'" The fact that he obliterated the 
 picture by painting the " Rolla" over it is confirmed by 
 Lawrence's biographer, but all the other facts give way 
 upon examination. Fuseli must have painted his " Pros- 
 pero and Miranda" much earlier, as it was exhibited in 
 the Shakspeare Gallery in 1791. Moreover, in 1793, 
 Fuseli only exhibited two works : one a sketch from 
 Macbeth, " The Disappearance of the Witches' Cauldron," 
 No. 110 ; the other, " Amoret and Britomart," No. 177. 
 While in the four following years, 1794-7, he did not 
 exhibit with the Eoyal Academy at all, being occupied, 
 no doubt, with his own unsuccessful adventure— the 
 Milton Gallery. Lawrence may have been disappointed 
 at the cold reception his picture received, and it may 
 have had some resemblance to the well-known picture 
 — for it must have been well known by that time — of 
 Fuseli. But the simultaneous exhibition and the cunning 
 expedient by which Fuseli is said to have claimed his 
 own idea, quite falls to the ground. 
 
 Walter Scott writing to Wilkie at the time of Law- 
 rence's death, says of him, " I used to think it a great 
 pity that he never painted historical subjects ;" and then 
 goes on to remark that, like Sir Joshua, Lawrence often 
 approached the confines of history in his portraits. How 
 far this latter is the case may be estimated by those who 
 remember his "Cato" (1812), or " Coriolanus" (1798); or 
 
16 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 will take the trouble to look at his " Hamlet" (1801), in 
 the National Gallery, and to compare either with Bey- 
 nolds's " Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse," at Dulwich. 
 But his powers as an historical painter may be judged of by 
 the " Satan calling up his Legions," which was exhibited 
 in 1797, and after being for some years in the posses- 
 sion of the Duke of Norfolk, is at present the property of 
 the Academy. Satan is lanky and ill drawn ; the action 
 of the figure is stagey, the disposition of the limbs all 
 abroad, and the colour of the flesh tough and leather- 
 like. There is a great want of style in the drawing of 
 the figure, which seems to be a mixture between the 
 living model and the Apollo. It is a large canvas 
 covered with a subject which the artist has failed to 
 make interesting. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lawrence himself, from some passages 
 in his letters, thought he had achieved success. He 
 says, apparently in allusion to his "Satan," "I have 
 gained fame, not more than my wishes, but more 
 
 than my expectations The work I 
 
 have undertaken has answered my secret motive in 
 beginning it. My success in portraits will no longer 
 be thought accident and fortune ; and if I have trod the 
 second path with honour, it is because my limbs are 
 strong to reach the higher walks." And again, writing 
 to Mrs. Boucherette, he says, "lam very glad you like 
 my ' Hamlet,' which, except my « Satan,' I think my best 
 work." Many of his brother artists praised the work 
 highly, — and some of his contemporary critics. The 
 writer of " The Touchstone to the present Exhibition, 
 by Anthony Touchstone" (1797), amongst other com- 
 plimentary criticism, says, " This picture is not much 
 
" SATAN CALLING UP HIS LEGIONS." 
 
 17 
 
 inferior to the best conceptions of the divine Buonarotti, 
 ;and the extravagant Goltzius (a strange combination ! ). 
 The figure of Satan is colossal, and drawn with excellent 
 i skill and judgment. Before we entered the room we 
 •confess we felt, for a moment, a secret wish that it had 
 •come from the pencil of Fuseli ; but the instant we saw 
 iit, and the more we looked on it, the more was the eye 
 of criticism filled with satisfaction. We esteemed it as a 
 ^wonderful production of the human mind, and equal to 
 ;anything of the kind produced in modern days. Satan 
 iis ably and nobly conceived, and conveys to the imagina- 
 tion every due idea of fallen majesty and terrific power." 
 .Another critic says : " The figure of Satan, after recent 
 (defeat and ineffable disgrace, has all the ferocious energy 
 ;and violent dignity of his character .... He ap- 
 pears no less than angel fallen." 
 
 Knowles, in his life of Fuseli, speaks of it as "the 
 (splendid picture which for a long period was a prominent 
 ifeature in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk, and 
 ^which by the style of drawing as well as its tone of colour 
 {abundantly proves that this artist would have been 
 (equally distinguished for his powers in treating epic 
 subjects as in portraits, if he had employed his pencil 
 (exclusively thereon." But this is said rather as an apology 
 tfor Fuseli's having declined the offer of a place in the 
 Milton Gallery to this great work. And we know that, 
 con another occasion, Fuseli described the Satan "as a 
 
 cd d thing, certainly, but not the devil." On the 
 
 cother side, Pasquin was more than ordinarily bitter and 
 ^scurrilous when he said, "This picture is a melange 
 imade up of the worst parts of the divine Buonarotti and 
 tthe extravagant Goltzius;" and here the conjunction of 
 TOL. II. 36 
 
18 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the two names is at least intelligible. He adds — " The 
 figure of Satan is colossal and very ill drawn ; the body 
 is so disproportioned to the extremities that it appears all 
 legs and arms, and might at a distance be mistaken for 
 a sign of the spread eagle. The colouring has as little 
 analogy to truth as the contour, for it is so ordered that 
 it conveys the idea of a mad German sugar-baker danc- 
 ing naked in the conflagration of his own treacle ; but 
 the liberties taken with his infernal majesty are so 
 numerous, so various, and so insulting that we are 
 amazed that the ecclesiastic orders do not interfere in 
 behalf of their old friend." Such was the character of 
 contemporary criticism, displaying, as it too often does, 
 far more partisanship than desire to promote the best 
 interests of art and artists. Time, however, has enabled 
 us to arrive at a just estimate of Lawrence's powers, and 
 few would now think otherwise than that he chose wisely 
 when he became a portrait painter; or would be of 
 opinion that the world was greatly a loser by his neglect 
 of epic art. Mr. John Bernard, in his " Ketrospec- 
 tions of the Stage," tells us that the boy Lawrence had 
 a great desire to recite " Satan's Address to the Sun," 
 which, however, his father had interdicted. Once when 
 in company he was urged to give it, but on opening the 
 forbidden page a slip of paper dropped out ; this was 
 picked up by one of the company and read aloud, — 
 " Tom, mind you don't touch Satan." It would have 
 been well, perhaps, when he spread his canvas for his 
 great work, that he had remembered his father's inhi- 
 bition : — " Mind you don't touch Satan." 
 
 Lawrence's practice continued to increase, and he 
 steadily advanced beyond his numerous competitors. 
 
HIS INCREASING PRACTICE. 19 
 
 Hoppner alone, sustained by his appointment as painter 
 to the Prince of Wales— a prince who, at that time, led 
 tthe fashion in matters of taste, was able to rival Law- 
 :rence in the extent of his practice and the beauty and 
 jfashion of his sitters. From time to time, as already 
 moticed, Lawrence painted what he calls " half history," 
 Ibut which we should call costume portraits; such as 
 Ihis Kemble in Coriolanus, and the same great actor 
 tas Hamlet. Kemble had often sat to our artist, 
 which made Pasquin say, "Another representation of 
 JKemble the actor, of whose visage we have so many 
 ccopies, that we are led to think that half his time is 
 wasted in sitting for his multifarious portraits." Per- 
 Ihaps the costume portraits painted from the actor may 
 lhave led Lawrence into theatrical action and forced 
 expression from studying the character on the stage as 
 well as in the studio. 
 
 Even if it were our province to enter minutely into 
 tjhe lives of the artists who come under notice in this 
 work, there would be little of incident in that of Law- 
 rence. A yearly catalogue of his sitters affords us 
 ailmost the only subject for comment; an occasional 
 motice of more or less successful works — of some portrait 
 o)f a distinguished sitter, or a noted beauty,— is all that 
 csan be told of most portrait painters. As to Lawrence 
 tlhis is more particularly the case, since his style once 
 atdopted, he changed but little— he tried no experiments 
 im pigments— he sought no new methods of execution. 
 Hie did not travel abroad to examine the pictures of other 
 miasters, or to study art for his improvement. Having 
 olbtained a good position in the profession, and plenty of 
 occupation for his pencil, his life henceforth had some- 
 
 36—2 
 
20 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 what of routine in the fulfilment of his various engage- 
 ments. The death of Reynolds, followed in a few years 
 by the retirement of Romney, left a great opening to 
 him, yet he had at first many competitors. Opie was 
 in full practice till his death in 1807; though his 
 coarse strength of manner in a degree unfitted him for 
 the first rank in female portraiture, yet in his male 
 portraits he held his own against the future president. 
 Hoppner lived until 1810, patronized by all who loved 
 the school of Reynolds and worshipped the rising sun. 
 While as to court patronage, even the King, who had 
 hastened to grace Lawrence with the office of Sergeant 
 Painter, left vacant by Reynolds, sat to Beechey for those 
 portraits which seemed to belong almost of right to the 
 Painter in Ordinary. 
 
 In 1801 an incident occurred which is here alluded 
 to as having had an indirect influence on Lawrence's 
 practice. He was required to attend at Blackheath to 
 paint a portrait of the unfortunate Princess of Wales 
 and her daughter, and in order that he might lose 
 no time in journeys to and fro, he asked permission 
 during the progress of his work to sleep at Montague 
 House, a convenience that, on a like occasion, had been 
 accorded to Beechey. His agreeable manner, pleasant 
 conversation, and fine taste in reading poetry, together 
 with his intimacy with the Angersteins and other families 
 in the neighbourhood who visited her Royal Highness, 
 introduced him occasionally to a seat at the dinner-table, 
 —and on one or two occasions when the Princess was 
 alone with her ladies, he was admitted to read aloud to 
 her, and even to amuse her at the chess-table. The 
 painter, it must be remembered, was young and hand- 
 
VISITS THE LOUVRE. 
 
 21 
 
 some, as well as talented and agreeable, and the circum- 
 stance was seized upon as a source of scandal, which 
 was inquired into by the commissioners who sat in 1806 
 on what is called " The Delicate Investigation." Though 
 the commissioners, in their report to his Majesty George 
 III., attach to the Princess a levity of conduct with 
 Captain Manby, they make no such allusion to Lawrence ; 
 yet it would appear that for some time his female sitters, 
 those whom his art most suited, fell off. Thus in the 
 next seven years, we find the proportion of male portraits 
 to females was twenty-four to seven : after 1810 this 
 feeling passed away, and in 1815, the Prince Regent, 
 who had hitherto avoided Lawrence's studio, sat to him, 
 and, pleased with his agreeable manners, as' well as the art 
 which Lawrence certainly possessed of making his sitters 
 ladies and gentlemen— at once gave him full employment 
 in Court orders. 
 
 In 1814, as soon as the Continent was open to 
 travellers, Lawrence hastened to Paris to see the won- 
 derful collection in the Louvre, before it was dispersed. 
 Writing to his friend, Miss Crofts, he says:— "Had 
 I delayed my journey one day longer, I should have lost 
 the view of some of the finest works of this gallery, the 
 noblest assemblage of the efforts of human genius that 
 was ever presented to the world." His stay, however, 
 on this occasion, was but a short one ; he was recalled 
 home by order of the Prince Regent on important busi- 
 ness. The Prince was desirous that the kingly person- 
 ages, the statesmen, and military officers who had aided 
 in the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty should sit for 
 their portraits, to form a commemorative gallery — and 
 that the opportunity of their expected visit to London 
 
22 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 should be taken advantage of for this purpose. Such 
 a commission was highly honourable to Lawrence; it 
 raised him to the summit of his fortunes, and if satis- 
 factorily accomplished, was likely to give him a European 
 reputation. His whole time on his return was taken 
 up in watching for the short irregular sittings which he 
 could obtain, during the intervals of leisure from feast 
 and festival, from the Emperor of Eussia, the King of 
 Prussia, Prince Blucher, and the Hetman of the Cos- 
 sacks : but the length of their visit did not admit of 
 the scheme being fully carried out on this occasion, and 
 shortly afterwards the country was again plunged into 
 war by the flight of Napoleon from Elba. 
 
 In the April of 1815, the Eegent, pleased with 
 the present success, conferred on Lawrence the honour 
 of knighthood. The Prince had now fully accepted 
 Lawrence as the Court painter, and although some time 
 intervened before the full execution of his project, it 
 was not forgotten, but simply postponed to a more fitting 
 opportunity. Meanwhile, the most distinguished persons 
 of the time, the court beauties, and the military officers 
 who had taken part in the crowning victory of Waterloo, 
 sat to the painter — among them the Duke of Wellington, 
 in the dress he wore and on the horse he rode, on that 
 great day, — almost the only equestrian portrait by Law- 
 rence's hand. Honours flowed in upon him. Foreign 
 academies sent him diplomas of membership, America 
 vieing with Florence, Vienna, and Rome, while the 
 French King, Charles XII. , made him a Chevalier of 
 the Legion of Honour, and our own King relaxed the 
 iron law as respects civilians to whom this honour has 
 been given, and allowed the painter to wear it. 
 
PORTRAITS OF THE ALLIED SOVEREIGNS. 23 
 
 The stay of the allied sovereigns in London in 1815 
 had been far too short to enable the Regent to carry out 
 his favourite scheme. He felt that the one great act of 
 his government was the pacification of Europe, and the 
 settlement of its divisions after the great war; and he 
 would not allow his intention of collecting the portraits 
 of those great warriors and able statesmen who had co- 
 operated in bringing about the event, to be frustrated. In 
 1818, the allied sovereigns, their ministers and coun- 
 cillors, assembled at Aix la Chapelle, to lay out the new 
 map of Europe, and it was thought a fitting opportunity 
 for obtaining sittings from the principal actors, in their 
 intervals of leisure from the active duties of congress. 
 In selecting Lawrence for this honourable mission, 
 besides the influence of his suave and gentlemanly 
 manners, it was felt that the best of living portrait 
 painters would be employed to do justice to the theme. 
 The terms were not especially liberal, but the fame and 
 honour to be achieved were great. Lawrence was to be 
 paid 1,000/. for travelling expenses and loss of time, and 
 his usual terms for the several portraits. He seems, 
 from a letter to his old friend Mr. Angerstein, to have 
 named these terms for himself, and to have felt that the 
 honourable distinction of the commission was far more to 
 him than any direct profit. The Government desired to 
 give him every aid towards the accomplishment of his 
 task. A portable wooden house was prepared for him, 
 (consisting of a painting-room, 50 by 18 feet; an ante- 
 room, 20 by 18 feet; and a vestibule, 12 by 18 feet; 
 w T hich it was intended, on its arrival at Aix la Chapelle, 
 ito erect in the grounds of Lord Castlereagh's Hotel. 
 !But by some mismanagement, this temporary erection 
 
24 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 did not arrive in time to be useful. The magistrates of 
 the city, however, fitted up for him the large gallery of 
 the Hotel de Ville, a painting-room which he found very 
 suitable and convenient for his purpose. In this room, 
 Lawrence had as sitters the great arbiters of the fate 
 of kingdoms, and received from them such courtesies as 
 the great masters received from the kings and princes 
 they served. He tells us how the Emperor of Kussia 
 condescended to put the pegs into his easel, and to help 
 him to lift his portrait on to them, and compares it with 
 Vae well-known incident of Charles V.'s stooping to take 
 ap Titian's pencil for him. But more substantial 
 honours were the presents of snuff-boxes and diamond 
 rings, and the many orders for copies of his portraits 
 from princes and ministers, insomuch that it was said at 
 the time that his year's labours were worth to him more 
 than 20,000/. 
 
 While at Aix la Chapelle, the Prince Regent sent his 
 further commands to Lawrence to proceed to Rome to 
 paint for him the Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Pope. 
 Lawrence would have wished to defer this visit to 
 another year, but the Prince was anxious for the full 
 accomplishment of his scheme, and the painter could but 
 obey. From Aix la Chapelle he travelled to Vienna, to 
 paint another portrait of the Emperor Francis and Prince 
 Schwartzenberg. His journey from the borders of the 
 Rhine to Vienna was a very different affair to what it is 
 in the present day. He tells us that during eight nights 
 on the road he only slept one out of his carriage. In 
 Vienna new honours and new labours awaited him, and 
 although, as we learn from his letters, the fine paintings he 
 had seen on the Continent had somewhat lowered his self- 
 
RECEPTION IN ROME. 
 
 25 
 
 esteem, the flattering manner in which he was received, 
 and the admiration expressed for his works, were suffi- 
 cient to elate any man. He reached Vienna early in 
 January, 1819. Notwithstanding excessive labour, he 
 foTimd it impossible to leave before the 10th May. In 
 the interval he had painted four whole-lengths, three 
 half-lengths, and eight three-quarter portraits, besides 
 making twelve chalk drawings. The faces of the paint- 
 ings were entirely finished, and part of the figures; every 
 figure being accurately drawn in. No wonder that he 
 wsas worn out with such continued excitement and exer- 
 tion, and wrote to his niece :— " My mind and spirits are 
 aft times so relaxed and worn when professional exertion 
 is over, as to make the act of taking up this little imple- 
 ment (the pen) a hopeless exertion." 
 
 When he left Vienna, his journey towards Rome was 
 very rapid. He again slept in his carriage throughout 
 the route, only staying for a few hours at Bologna to 
 renew his acquaintance at the fountain-head with the 
 masters of a school then far more popular in England 
 tlhan at present. On his arrival at Rome he was received 
 with every mark of attention, and lodged in apartments 
 in the Quirinal. He was much pleased with the subjects 
 for his pencil :— the Pope, a gentle and amiable ecclesi- 
 astic, with an air of great benevolence ; the Cardinal, 
 with a physiognomy full of sagacity and energy. Both 
 w/ere very desirous of giving Lawrence every assistance ; 
 amd what with his pleasure in the subjects, and his desire 
 t(0 uphold his fame among his countrymen and others at 
 tlhis seat of art, le produced two of the best portraits of 
 tlhe series which was the object of his journey. During 
 hiis stay he found time to visit the great frescoes of the 
 
26 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Vatican, and declares himself deeply impressed with the 
 great superiority of Michael Angelo over his contempo- 
 raries. Comparing him with Raphael, he says:— "The 
 diffusion of truth and elegance, and often grandeur, 
 cannot support itself against the compression of the 
 sublime. There is something in that lofty abstraction, 
 in those deities of intellect that people the Sistine 
 Chapel, that converts the noblest personages of Raphael's 
 drama into the audience of Michael Angelo, before whom 
 you know that, equally with yourself, they would stand 
 silent and awe-struck." But it is difficult to perceive 
 that either wrought the slightest change in Lawrence's 
 style or manner. 
 
 Before leaving Italy he paid a short visit to Naples, 
 and in the middle of December turned his face home- 
 ward. Visiting in his way Florence, Parma, Cremona, 
 Mantua and Venice, he arrived in London on the 30th 
 of March, 1820. He found that many changes had 
 taken place during his absence. The Regent was now 
 King ; and West, the Pesident of the Academy, having 
 died on the 10th of the month, the election for the new 
 president took place on the very evening of Lawrence's 
 return. By an almost unanimous vote he was chosen 
 "West's successor, and the King, delighted with the 
 manner in which his commission was fulfilled, presented 
 the new President with a medal and chain of gold, 
 inscribed, "From his Majesty, George IV., to the 
 President of the Royal Academy." 
 
 Lawrence left England on the 29th of September, 
 1818, and, as we have just seen, returned to London on 
 the 30th March, 1820 ; so that he was absent exactly a 
 year and a half. We are unable to ascertain the precise 
 
THE WATERLOO GALLERY. 
 
 27 
 
 amount of work he completed in the time ; for if we knew 
 tlhe number of portraits, the state of completion to which 
 hie carried them on the spot is uncertain. As to those 
 executed in Vienna, a statement has just been made, and 
 we know from his letters, that some of his portraits were 
 S(0 far completed that he carried them with him to Rome 
 ais specimens of his powers, whilst others were finished 
 atnd left with those for whom they were painted. We 
 know also that these portraits were executed under cir- 
 cumstances that must have occasioned a great strain 
 mpon his powers, and that, compared with the time he 
 oxacted and the opportunities given him by visitors to his 
 s5tudio at home, the sittings given him for his foreign 
 portraits were much less numerous and lengthy. 
 
 He says that the Emperor of Austria sat seven times, 
 tlhe Emperor of Russia seven times, the King of Prussia 
 ssix times, each sitting averaging about two hours. The 
 Pope, we are informed, sat to him nine times ; but even 
 tthis is far below the time he usually required, especially 
 iif we remember that he completed the hands as well as 
 t;he heads from his foreign sitters. It is no wonder, 
 therefore, that, contemplating the portraits collected 
 tcogether in the Waterloo Gallery at Windsor, these 
 works look somewhat starved and poor, having a tendency 
 tto decorative art rather than to take rank with portraits 
 tby the great masters, or with those of his predecessor 
 IReynolds. Whatever there was of meretriciousness in 
 Hiis art is here more particularly visible, and although 
 (Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Pope are usually spoken of 
 sas Lawrence's best works, we do not feel them comparable 
 tto such of his male portraits as he was able to carry to 
 ffull completion in the quiet of his own studio— for instance, 
 
28 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Lord Liverpool, or more especially his fine portrait of 
 Lord Eldon. 
 
 On his return, Lawrence's studio was soon thronged 
 as before, and what with constant engagements to sitters, 
 his new duties at the Academy, and his endeavours to 
 increase his collection of drawings from the old masters, 
 which had of late become quite a passion with him, his 
 time was more than fully occupied. On the 10th of 
 December, 1820, Lawrence for the first time presented 
 the medals to the successful students of the Royal 
 Academy ; when it is usual for the president to address a 
 short discourse to the assembled schools : it was on such 
 occasions that the celebrated Discourses of Reynolds were 
 delivered. This by Lawrence was, we believe, not pub- 
 lished ; but his biographer relates to us that the president 
 wore a full-dress court suit — an evidence of his attention 
 to the effect of personal impressions which is very cha- 
 racteristic : but this ceremony has of late years quite 
 fallen into desuetude. 
 
 In the year 1823, Lawrence took a deep interest in 
 the purchase, for the nation, of the pictures belonging to 
 his late friend, Mr. Angerstein ; and the arts certainly 
 owe him a debt of gratitude for his earnestness and 
 effective aid in this national object. During the suc- 
 ceeding years, his life and his art quietly progressed. 
 Working more at his leisure, and giving more time to 
 finish his works, they were more conscientiously painted. 
 Some of his best portraits are of this date. Such are 
 the "Children of Mr. C. B. Calmady" and " Sir William 
 Curtis," 1824; "Young Lambton," 1825; "Miss Croker" 
 and " Mrs. Peel," 1827 ; " Countess Gower and Child," 
 "Lady Georgiana Agar Ellis " and "Lord Eldon," 1828; 
 
HIS BEST PORTRAITS. 
 
 29 
 
 thee, lovely Duchess of Richmond and Lady Salisbury, in 
 18i29. His biographer opens the history of this year 
 witth these words:— "It would be difficult to conceive a 
 mam more completely happy or at least possessed of all 
 thee means and appliances of happiness than Sir Thomas 
 Laiwrence at the commencement of the year 1829." Cer- 
 taiinly there was no appearance of decay in his powers. 
 H(e himself says in a letter just after the opening of the 
 Exhibition in 1828, " Perhaps one or two whole-lengths 
 of ' the Duchess of Richmond and Marchioness of Salis- 
 bury, are the best I have painted ;" and in this, the 
 peiriod of our student life, we well recollect the delight 
 wiith which the young artists of that day, and the public 
 wlho were visitors to the Exhibition, hailed the works we 
 haave enumerated. On the 10th of December, the 
 anniversary of the foundation of the Academy, Lawrence 
 waas as usual in the chair, distributing the prizes, and 
 deelivering a short discourse. He most probably dined 
 wiith the changing council on the last day of the old 
 yesar, and, except that he had complained of being over- 
 worked, there was no reason to think that the end of his 
 caireer was at hand. 
 
 In fact, Lawrence had begun to feel that a man of 
 siixty cannot continue the active exertion that did not 
 ower-tax him at forty. He longed for rest, but had no 
 leisure to take it. The time was come when, in spirit at 
 lesast, the painter could ask with the poet— 
 
 « While all things else have rest from weariness— 
 AU things have rest ; why should we toil alone. 
 We only toil, who are the first of things, . . . 
 Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings? 
 ' There is no joy but calm.' 
 
 Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things t 
 
30 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 He had been intending to eat his Christmas dinner with 
 his sister Ann. On the 17th of December he writes,— 
 " I am grieved to the soul that urgent circumstances 
 keep me at this time from seeing you ; but in the next 
 month I will certainly break away from all engagements 
 to be with you;" on the 19th he again writes, "Be 
 assured, dear love, dearest sister, that nothing shall 
 detain me from you on the day, and for the days you 
 mention;" the day after Christmas-day he reiterates his 
 pledge. " On the sixth 1 have sacredly pledged myself 
 to be with you." He was making great exertions to 
 finish the portrait of Canning, his engagements were 
 pressing ; yet while continually sympathizing with the 
 distressing illness of his sister, which called forth all 
 his tenderness, he seemed quite unaware that an illness 
 of a more alarming character was hanging over himself 
 Though unwell, he dined with Sir Eobert Peel on the 
 2nd of January, and the next morning was well enough 
 to invite two or three of his most intimate friends to 
 .dine, spending with them one of his usual social even- 
 ings. He was busied during the following day or two 
 in painting on the portrait of his Majesty, but on the 6th 
 he was obliged to have recourse to Dr. Holland ; yet he 
 again painted during the day for more than an hour on 
 the King's portrait. He found it necessary, however, to 
 
 write to his sister Ann— the last note from his hand 
 
 and even then he only proposed delaying his visit till the 
 morrow : that morrow which was but to precede his last. 
 " I meant, my dearest Ann," he writes, " to be with you 
 at dinner time to-morrow, and have made exertions to do 
 so, but it may not be ! You must be content to see me 
 at a late simple dinner on Friday." That evening he 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 31 
 
 was taken much worse, and Dr. Holland being sent for, 
 bled him ; he seemed to rally a little next morning, but 
 ais the bleeding was renewed by accident on two separate 
 occasions during the day, he sank rapidly from exhaus- 
 tion, and died rather suddenly in the arms of his servant, 
 om the evening of Thursday, the 7th of January, 1830. 
 
 Lawrence, beautiful in infancy and in boyhood, was, 
 ais a man, of handsome presence and elegant manners, to 
 which Nature had added a well-toned and persuasive 
 v/oice ; these natural advantages are said to have told 
 nnuch in his favour with the great personages who sat to 
 mini at Aix la Chapelle, as no doubt they did in the for- 
 tunes of his life. He was very tender in speaking or 
 writing to women. One of his lady apologists says, " It 
 ciannot be too strongly stated that his manner was likely 
 tbo mislead without his intending it ; he could not write 
 ai common answer to a dinner invitation, without its 
 aissuming the tone of a billet-doux. The very com- 
 nnonest conversation was held in that soft low whisper, 
 aand with that tone of deference and interest which are 
 sso unusual and so calculated to please." A very dan- 
 gerous manner from a man with a handsome person, 
 jprominent position, and yet unmarried — a manner which 
 lied each woman to think that he regarded her with 
 jpeculiar interest. He certainly loved female society, yet, 
 tthough on one or two occasions he was too particular in 
 Ihis attentions, and had even entered into engagements, 
 Ihe still lived and died a bachelor. 
 
 His habit of reciting, and pleasure in it, continued 
 tthrough life. The gold medal subject for 1827 was from 
 Milton — " The Expulsion of Adam and Eve." On this 
 (occasion none of the candidates were successful ; and we 
 
32 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 well remember, on the evening of distributing the other 
 medals, the rounded melody in which the President 
 commented on the failure, and pointed out that the 
 candidates, while reading the lines which describe 
 how 
 
 " In either hand the hastening angel caught 
 Our lingering parents, and to the Eastern gate 
 Led them direct," 
 
 had one and all forgotten the fine background which the 
 poet has imagined when 
 
 " They, looking hack, all the Eastern side heheld ' 
 Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 
 Waved over hy that naming brand ; the gate 
 With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms." 
 
 Lawrence was during all his life in difficulties as to 
 money, although, latterly at least, in the receipt of large 
 sums from his profession. His prices, after 1820, were 
 as follows :— head, or three-quarter size, 210/. ; kit-cat, 
 315/.; half-length, 420/.; Bishop's half-length, 525/.; full 
 length, 630/. Lord (rower paid him for his portrait of 
 "Lady Gower and Child," 1,500 guineas. Lord Durham, 
 for "Master Lambton," 600 guineas; yet we find him 
 writing for payment in some instances before the portraits 
 were completed. This improvidence has been much com- 
 mented upon, and a charge of gambling entered against 
 him, but we think without foundation. A portion, at 
 least, of his family were for years dependent upon him, 
 and his only extravagance seems to have been in works 
 of art : it was too-well known that a fine drawing by the 
 old masters was a temptation too strong to be resisted, if 
 money could be had at whatever disadvantage. His col- 
 lection of drawings, which sold for 20,000/. after his 
 death, is said to have cost him 60,000/.— a large sum 
 
FASHION AND COSTUME. 
 
 33 
 
 to> set aside from his income, even if he had no other 
 diifficulties to contend with. 
 
 All portrait painters are under the necessity of suc- 
 cuimbing to the imperious dictates of fashion ; not always 
 thte fashion of the dress of the period — perhaps only the 
 fasshion of its portraiture, as in the god and goddess 
 sclhool, or the Roman toga period of French art, a costume 
 wlhich we cannot suppose to have been the habit of the 
 tiime. Thus also Lely and Kneller materially modified 
 thte sack and bodice of their day into the loose and 
 decgage drapery in which the lovely court shepherdesses 
 exiposed those beauties which pastoral innocence would 
 haxve taught them to hide. Reynolds and Gainsborough, 
 toco, had a most difficult phase of fashion to deal with in 
 thte mountains of pomade and powder, of ribands and 
 feaathers, which the " artists in hair" of their days built 
 oni the heads of their submissive patients — structures of 
 sutch consummate artifice, that, once erected, they were 
 lefft as a seven days' wonder before being pulled down 
 anid re-edified. Even against these monstrosities of 
 fasshion the genius of our two great painters prevailed, 
 anid we look with admiration on the loveliness that such 
 a ^sacrifice to fashion could not destroy. 
 
 Lawrence was not exempt from the general bondage 
 whiich had trammelled his predecessors, but by the time 
 he) had attained the first rank in portraiture, the fashion 
 thsat had hidden the golden hair and grizzled the flowing 
 loc3ks of his lovely countrywomen had passed away, and, 
 if still imperious in its sway, clothing their limbs in 
 gairments so tight as to impede motion, and altering the 
 grgaceful proportion and flowing lines of the female form 
 -by waists under the arm-pits rather than where nature 
 ^vol. ii. 37 
 
34 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 placed them, it at least left the complexion free from paint 
 and patches, and the amber locks and golden ringlets 
 from the paste that stiffened them or the powder that 
 changed them into the ashy hue of age. But while we 
 acknowledge the simpler taste introduced with the pre- 
 sent century, and praise the fashion as more akin to 
 nature, it is certain there is less of courtly dignity in the 
 works of Lawrence than in those of his predecessors. 
 Under the altered fashion of his day we look back on 
 the beauties of the last century almost as we do to the 
 quaintness of mediaeval times, and are apt to think 
 Nature, with her unrestrained ringlets, her mottled flesh 
 and simple drapery, somewhat commonplace beside the 
 pompous barbarisms which added many cubits to the 
 stature of the beauty of the previous age. 
 
 In making up his pictures, Lawrence was far in- 
 ferior to his predecessors. There is far less variety 
 in his compositions, far less of art in his arrange- 
 ments. We miss the happy, rich suggestions of land- 
 scape scenery that their works exhibit, and too often 
 instead are treated to repetitions over and over again, 
 with slight re-adjustments of the stale commonplaces 
 of pillar and curtain, or vase and pedestal, which it 
 may be hoped will be banished from true art, since 
 they now form the stock properties of the carte de 
 visite and the photographic studio. It has always been 
 said that the portraits of Sir Joshua were not likenesses, 
 yet to us they have a great appearance of individuality. 
 Sir Thomas was subjected to the same remark both from 
 his sitters and from his brother artists. Wilkie says 
 that " with all the latitude allowed to Lawrence in ren- 
 dering a likeness, still those who knew and could com- 
 
CONTEMPORARY OPINIONS. 
 
 35 
 
 pa,re the heads he painted with the originals must have 
 been struck with the liberties he would take in changing 
 and refining the features before him. He adds that, 
 " (compared with Reynolds, Lawrence was confined and 
 limited in the arrangement of his pictures far more than 
 his powers justified, admitting but small deviations in 
 the placing of the heads, small variety of pictorial com- 
 position. The features in nearly all his heads were 
 painted in the same light and in the same position ; but 
 they derived from this a perfection of execution never to 
 be equalled." Such was the opinion of Wilkie : we should 
 rafeher have said, a dexterity of execution which was quite 
 his own. 
 
 Haydon said that "Lawrence was suited to the age, 
 an<d the age to Lawrence. He flattered its vanities, 
 pampered its weakness, and met its meretricious tastes. 
 Hi s men were all gentlemen with an air of fashion, and 
 the dandyism of high life— his women were delicate but 
 notfc modest— beautiful but not natural, they appear to 
 look that they may be looked at, and to languish for the 
 sake of sympathy." Opie had made a similar remark, 
 butt far more tersely. Lawrence, said he, " made cox- 
 combs of his sitters, and his sitters made a coxcomb of 
 Lawrence." These are hard sayings, and were remem- 
 bered when death closed the fashionable career of the 
 painter. As much as he had risen above his true rank 
 in jart he then fell below it, and it has taken a quarter of 
 a century to reinstate him — not to the place which he 
 held in his lifetime, but to the true place which as a 
 painter he should occupy among his countrymen. It 
 must be allowed that many of his faults arose from his 
 couirteous weakness to his sitters ; they lived and moved 
 
 37- 2 
 
36 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in the atmosphere of fashionable life, then far more 
 exclusive than at present, and he submitted to their 
 dictation ; hence it was said that " his women look the 
 slaves of fashion, glittering with pearls and ornaments, 
 his children the heirs of coronets and titles, the tools and 
 the pupils of the dancing master." Something also 
 must be attributed to his overtaxed powers, which obliged 
 him to give over much of the making-up of his pictures 
 to his assistants ; backgrounds and even hands were 
 entrusted to them, and the numerous repetitions of 
 public portraits which were called for, were necessarily 
 the almost entire work of the Simpsons, father and son, 
 Pegler, and others, who were in Lawrence's constant 
 employment. The repetition of Keynolds's portrait of 
 the Duchess of Devonshire and child — attributed to 
 Lawrence, and now in the corridor at Windsor — is said 
 to have been the work of Etty, during the time he was 
 with Lawrence in Bedford Square. 
 
 Yet, with every allowance, we can hardly place Law- 
 rence in the first rank as a painter. There remained a 
 sense of the crayon draughtsman to the last, a tinty 
 mode of colouring, assimilating in some degree to the 
 false brilliancy of paste. Even his drawings, though 
 delicate and refined in line, were somewhat effeminate, 
 and showed little of the force of true genius : they never 
 rose beyond the elegant insipidity of artificial life. As a 
 painter there can be no doubt that he helped to intro- 
 duce that chalky brilliancy into our school which struck 
 Wilkie so forcibly on his return from the Continent. 
 Lawrence had adopted a system depending on contrasts 
 rather than on harmonies, and the meretricious qualities 
 of his art in this respect certainly left a bad influence, 
 
LAWRENCE'S MANNER OF PAINTING. 37 
 
 somewhat qualified by the greater attention to precision 
 and drawing which his manner of commencing his pic- 
 tures initiated. Wilkie, in his remarks on portrait 
 painting, gives us an insight into Lawrence's practice 
 of the art, he says : — " He wished to seize the expression 
 rather than to copy the features. His attainment of 
 likeness was most laborious. One distinguished person, 
 who favoured him with forty sittings for his head alone, 
 declared he was the slowest painter he ever sat to, and 
 he had sat to many. He would draw the portrait in 
 chalk, the size of life, on paper ; this occupied but one 
 sitting, but that sitting lasted nearly one whole day. He 
 next transferred this outline from the paper to the 
 canvas : his picture and his sitter were placed at a 
 distance from the point of view where to see both at a 
 time. He had to traverse all across the room before the 
 conception which the view of his sitter suggested could 
 be proceeded with. In this incessant transit his feet 
 had worn a path through the carpet to the floor, exer- 
 cising freedom both of body and mind; each traverse 
 allowing time for invention, while it required an effort of 
 memory between the touch on the canvas and the obser- 
 vation from which it grew." 
 
 Thus we see that the happy facility with which, as a 
 boy, he had been able to seize the likeness of individuals 
 had left him ; or his knowledge of the difficulties, and 
 sense of the perfection of art, had induced in him patient 
 effort and continuous repetition. This practice, in 
 important pictures, was carried even into the accessories 
 and subordinate parts. It used to be told that for the 
 legs alone of the small portrait of George IY. seated on 
 a sofa, the king gave Lawrence nearly twenty sittings ; 
 
38 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 but then his Majesty is said to have had very fine legs, 
 and the painter, in his Majesty's opinion, did not do 
 them justice. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lawrence had many facile methods of 
 giving the appearance of labour where the work was 
 really slight ; thus the texture of his furs was rendered 
 by a dexterous handling of the scrubby hog tool, which 
 often produced the sense of imitation more exactly than 
 the most laboured execution. He was once reproached 
 that he resorted to tricks in painting, and this habit of 
 splitting up his brush given as an instance ; but he 
 retorted with justice that if his method gave as true an 
 imitative appearance of fur as could be obtained by the 
 laborious process of painting it hair by hair, it was 
 equally satisfactory and far more painter-like. It is 
 probable that had Lawrence trusted in his own powers as 
 he did in early days before he had name and fame to lose, 
 he would have been more successful as a painter. He was 
 fettered latterly by his very fastidiousness and desire of 
 surface-finish, as well as by his endeavour to give the 
 most polished aspect of his sitter. Reynolds and Gains- 
 borough, the latter more especially, struck off some of 
 their best portraits at a single sitting, and it is told of 
 Lawrence, that having tried a portrait of Curran, and 
 after many sittings totally failed, he met the great Irish 
 orator at a party, saw the fire of his eye and the energy 
 of the natural man under the influence of after-dinner 
 freedom, and exclaimed that the portrait he had laboured 
 over was no portrait at all. He asked and obtained 
 another sitting on the only day that intervened before 
 Curran's departure for Ireland, and at that one sitting 
 completed a fine likeness of this extraordinary man. 
 
ADOPTED A STYLE OF HIS OWN. 
 
 39 
 
 Howard, R.A., tells us Lawrence "painted that 
 admirable picture of Hamlet in so short a time as one 
 week," — a very remarkable fact, if correct ; but he also 
 adds that " in the latter part of Lawrence's life, when his 
 great practice might have been expected to make him 
 more rapid in the completion of his works, the increased 
 pains he took, arising, no doubt, from his improved per- 
 ceptions, acquired for him the character of slowness." 
 Howard wrote a long criticism on Lawrence as an artist, 
 in which he gives him indisputable claim to rank with 
 Titian, Vandyke, Reynolds and Velasquez ; he says that 
 Reynolds, " in rich and mellow colouring, came nearest 
 to Titian," and in his exquisite representations of infant 
 character, surpassed him. " If Lawrence," he adds, " must 
 yield to his great rivals in these points, he went beyond 
 them and Vandyke too, as a draughtsman — indeed, 
 against the latter and Velasquez he may dispute the 
 palm in all respects, and with greatly the advantage in 
 point of variety and invention." This passage shows 
 how Lawrence was estimated by his immediate contem- 
 poraries ; it is needless to say we cannot agree in it, but 
 if Lawrence cannot be placed in the first rank as a por- 
 trait painter, he has this merit at least, that immediately 
 succeeding Sir Joshua, he yet adopted a distinct and 
 characteristic style of his own. Others of his contem- 
 poraries were content to be mere followers of Reynolds, 
 repeating his arrangements and copying his manner, 
 even in those faulty executive processes for which he, at 
 least, had the excuse that they arose from his continued 
 search after something higher and better than he had yet 
 attained, while their aim was merely to be like him. 
 
 Lawrence, on the contrary, after his first start, while 
 
40 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the glory of Reynolds rilled as it were the atmosphere of 
 art, and the j 7 oung painter made some slight attempts at 
 imitating him, soon adopted and ever continued to main- 
 tain a manner of his own ; it had this good influence 
 on the school, that it encouraged more careful drawing, 
 and the study of the head by this means, before commenc- 
 ing painting. It also contributed to restrain awhile the 
 use of bad vehicles and fugitive pigments, and hence also 
 the faulty execution which had arisen from the pranks of 
 Reynolds ; but Lawrence's example tended to bring about 
 that prevailing chalkiness of which Wilkie complained 
 on his return from the Continent, and which, after Law- 
 rence's death, he laboured by such-fatal means to change. 
 To this effect on our school, Howard unconsciously bears 
 witness when he says, " In vivid and varied characters, 
 he (Lawrence) has, perhaps, no rival, and may be said to 
 have enlarged the boundaries of his art, changing by 
 degrees the character of our annual exhibitions, and 
 giving them at length one of acknowledged and unprece- 
 dented splendour," or, as we should say, that somewhat 
 clinquant character which it should be the effort of our 
 artists to restrain. We would conclude our notice by 
 saying, that while we are obliged to allow that Lawrence 
 ranks below his immediate predecessors of the English 
 school, it was hardly possible, at his death, to point to a 
 successor likely to stand beside him in the opinion of 
 posterity. 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE CONTEMPORARIES OF LAWRENCE. 
 
 Sir Henry Baebum, B., 4— Native of Scotland— Apprenticed to a Gold- 
 smith — Turns to Art — Successful in Miniature — Afterwards in Oil 
 Life-size— After travelling in Italy, settles in Edinburgh— And gains 
 Distinction — Opinion upon his Art — John Hoppner, R.A.— Gossip 
 connected with his Birth— Chorister in the Chapel Royal— Studies 
 Art— Gains the Academy Gold Medal— Marries— Adopts Portrait Art 
 His Progress— Enjoys the Court Favour— Called the Whig Portrait- 
 painter— Rivalry with Lawrence— Ill-health— His Temper tried by 
 Sitters — His Subject-pictures and Portraits criticized — William Owen, 
 B.A.— Early Love of Art— Student of the Academy— Pupil of Catton, 
 R.A. — Commences Portrait Art — Establishes his Reputation — Elected 
 into the Academy — Portrait Painter to the Prince Regent — His 
 Portraits and Subjects from Rustic Life— Long Ill-health— And Death 
 — Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. — Parentage— Studies in the Dublin 
 Art- schools— Tries his Fortune in London— Paints Portraits — Chiefly 
 Theatrical — Attempts History — His Prospero and Miranda — " Rhymes 
 on Art " and other Writings— Elected President of the Academy — 
 Witness before the House of Commons' Committee — Zealous Defence 
 of the Academy — Opinion upon his Art — " The Tiptoe School " — 
 Death— Thomas Phillips, R.A.— Apprenticed to a Glass - painter- 
 Adopts Portrait-painting — His Subject-pictures — Character of his Art 
 —John Jackson, R.A.— Son of a Village Tailor— Becomes an Artist- 
 Finds Friends— Comes to London — His Success in small Water-Colour 
 Portraits — Followed by Portraits in Oil— Elected into the Academy — 
 Visits Italy— His Art Merits — Character and Death — George H. Harlow 
 —Left with a widowed Mother — A spoilt Boy— True Genius for Art- 
 Commences its Study— Pupil of Lawrence— Tries Portraiture— Paints 
 Theatrical Portraits — Falls into Extravagance and Difficulties — Visits 
 Italy— Returns bent on History— Illness and early Death— His Art 
 criticized — "The Trial of Queen Catherine!" — Sir Watson Gordon, 
 E.A.—Oi a Berwickshire Family— Intended for the Army — Turns 
 to Art — Settles to Portraiture — Paints the Scottish Celebrities — 
 Becomes President of the Scotch Academy— Opinion upon his Works 
 — Henry Peyronnet Briggs, R.A. — Enters the Schools of the Academy 
 — Begins Life as a Subject-painter — His Works described —Elected 
 into the Academy — Turns to Portraiture to provide for liis Family. 
 
 While Reynolds, with the single exception of Gains- 
 borough, who in his day was styled a landscape-painter, 
 
42 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 stood alone and far above rivalry in portrait-art, Law- 
 rence had many rivals who, far from yielding the palm, 
 long contested with him the pre-eminence which, assisted 
 by fashion and court-favour, he at last secured. The 
 men and the times had alike changed. Lawrence when 
 at the head of his profession was far from obtaining the 
 unapproachable excellence of Reynolds and Gainsborough, 
 and the ranks of art had also been largely extended since 
 the foundation of the Royal Academy, by distinguished 
 artists chiefly trained in its schools, who became the 
 formidable competitors of Lawrence. 
 
 In commencing with Sir Henry Baeburn, R.A., the 
 earliest of these men in point of date, we can hardly 
 designate him as a competitor. A native of Scotland, 
 the most distinguished portrait painter of that country 
 since the days of Jamesone, he was born 4th March, 1756, 
 at Stockbridge, a suburb of Edinburgh, and had there 
 his art training and practice. The son of a respectable 
 manufacturer, and at an early age left an orphan, he was 
 educated at Christ's Hospital ; and at the age of fifteen 
 was apprenticed to an eminent goldsmith at Edinburgh. 
 His love of drawing led him to attempt portraits, and he 
 soon attracted notice by his skill in miniature, so much so 
 that he gained sufficient employment to enable him to 
 obtain his release from his master. He had had no teach- 
 ing, it is said, except some hints from David Martin, a 
 portrait painter, who then had the chief practice in the 
 Northern metropolis, but his miniatures show such art 
 treatment as could not have been attained without the 
 means, at least, of studying fine works. As his powers 
 increased he tried full-size portraits in oil, and his success 
 raised the jealousy of his quondam adviser. His sitters 
 
SIR HENRY RAEBURN, R.A. 
 
 43 
 
 increasing, he abandoned miniature, and devoted himself 
 exclusively to oil. He worked in a free-spirited manner, 
 and aiming at character succeeded in impressing it on 
 his canvas. He was advancing in his profession by the 
 strength of his own genius, when in his twenty-second 
 year, fortune assisted him in taking a firmer footing, by 
 the help of an estimable wife with whom he acquired 
 some property, and he soon afterwards came to London. 
 His early miniatures evinced a knowledge of the works of 
 Reynolds, and his object was to obtain advice from the 
 great painter. We are told that he was cordially received, 
 that Sir Joshua saw his merits, admitted him for two 
 months to his studio, and advised him to visit Rome, 
 offering to assist him with funds. Though this was not 
 needed, Reynolds gave him letters of introduction, and 
 he set out for Italy with his wife. 
 
 Here he remained for two years, and then returning, 
 settled in Edinburgh, in 1787, and soon gained full 
 employment as a portrait painter, for years taking the 
 lead in that branch of art. The most distinguished men 
 of the Northern metropolis became his sitters, and many 
 of them his personal friends. He was fond of architec- 
 ture, and in 1795 he built a large house in York Place ; 
 the basement of which formed his studio, with the re- 
 quired offices, and the upper floor a handsome gallery 
 for his pictures, lighted from the roof, while his family 
 dwelling was at St. Bernard's, Stockbridge. He appeared 
 to have quite taken root in the congenial soil of his native 
 city ; both his art and his society were highly esteemed, 
 and he was surrounded by friends. He made no long 
 visits to London, and had few opportunities of knowing 
 the works of his contemporaries in that metropolis ; yet 
 
44 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 lie probably longed for a larger sphere, and to measure 
 himself with men whose fame at least must have been well 
 known to him. He was ambitious too of the distinction 
 which admission to the Royal Academy confers on its 
 members, and had placed his name on their list of those 
 who sought election. "We are told that late in life he 
 thought of establishing himself in London, but that Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, whom he consulted, succeeded in 
 dissuading him ; and this advice, it is insinuated, arose 
 from the desire to keep him out of the way. Probably 
 this was in 1810, in the May of which year Wilkie 
 records that he " had a call from Kaeburn, who told me 
 he had come up to London to look out for a house, and 
 to see if there was any prospect of establishing himself :" 
 and a month later, Wilkie again notes, "Went with 
 Kaeburn to the Crown and Anchor to meet the gentle- 
 men of the Royal Academy. I introduced him to Flax- 
 man ; after dinner he was asked by Beechey to sit near 
 the president, and great attention was paid to him." 
 He was evidently thought well of by his brother artists 
 in London, and we can find many reasons why Lawrence, 
 without laying himself open to any narrow-minded suspi- 
 cions, might very conscientiously recommend an artist, in 
 his fifty-fifth year, not to quit a field where, surrounded 
 by tried friends, he had earned and maintained an undis- 
 puted pre-eminence in his profession, and thus break away 
 from the companions whose society he loved, and enter 
 into a contest with established rivals on a new field. 
 
 Honours, however, at last fell thick upon Raeburn, 
 and in his native city. In 1812 he was elected President 
 of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh; in 1814 associate; 
 and in the following year, a full member of the Royal 
 
HIS ARTISTIC MERITS. 
 
 45 
 
 Academy in London ; and on the King's visit to Scot- 
 land in 1822, Eaebum was knighted, and soon after 
 appointed his Majesty's Limner for Scotland. He did 
 not long enjoy these honours. After a very short ill- 
 ness, without any marked symptoms, he died on the 8th 
 July, 1823. His portraits were distinguished by great 
 breadth, both of treatment and character. Commencing 
 with the brush, he aimed to secure at once the indivi- 
 duality of his sitter, rather than to attain a likeness by 
 the studied drawing of the features, and he succeeded 
 in seizing a truthful and characteristic expression. 
 
 In characterizing the art of Raeburn we are placed 
 im some difficulty from his practice being confined 
 aLmost wholly to Scotland. Little opportunity has thus 
 been afforded us of seeing many of his works. Those 
 possessed by the National Gallery of Scotland do not 
 impress us with so high an opinion of Raeburn's merits, 
 as his reputation among his brother artists would imply. 
 Moreover, his works are simply portraits, and do not 
 command that attention as pictures, apart from the 
 individuals they represent, as do those of Gainsborough 
 off Reynolds, which are admired and purchased as works 
 of art, and find their way into galleries and collections 
 when the person portrayed is unknown or an object of 
 total indifference. No doubt, Raeburn in some degree 
 founded his art upon that of Reynolds, though, from the 
 great difference in their execution and handling, we 
 smspect that he studied Reynolds through the fine mezzo- 
 tints of MacArdell and others, rather than direct from 
 his paintings. We find the same value given to breadth 
 of light and shade — so distinctive a quality of the 
 English painter, and very fully given in the prints 
 
46 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 from his works ; but we find none of the richness, none 
 of the impasto, of Reynolds. The Scotch painter's 
 manner of execution is more like that of Gainsborough 
 m its thinness and once-ness, with a certain appearance 
 of facility which may have made Wilkie, when in Spain, 
 remark that the works of Velasquez reminded him of 
 Raeburn— but the low tone adopted by the Scottish 
 president gives to his thin execution a somewhat starved 
 and impoverished look, and he loses entirely the pearly 
 freshness, so great a charm in Gainsborough ; while the 
 rich wealth of broken tints, or the glowing sunniness 
 arising from the luminous brown shadows opposed to flat 
 masses of light flesh colour in the pictures of Reynolds, 
 are wholly absent. 
 
 It is said that Raeburn had a theory that as 
 portraits are intended to be seen at some elevation 
 on the walls of the apartment in which they are hung, 
 so ought the sitter to be viewed from below, and that, 
 acting on this principle, he painted his whole lengths as 
 if level with the feet of the sitter. This obviated any 
 danger of his being included in the " tip-toe school," 
 but it caused the painter's subject to be seen under the 
 least pleasing aspect— namely, looking under the jaw 
 and up the nostrils of the sitter ; the forehead also, the 
 portion of the face which expresses the higher qualities 
 of the cultivated man, being foreshortened, the more con- 
 siderably in proportion as it recedes over prominent 
 brows. It was no doubt from this practice of Raeburn 
 that Sir Walter Scott complained that his portrait made 
 him look clownish and jolter-headed— the animal fea- 
 tures of the face, thus viewed, being increased, and the 
 fine but peculiar and conical head of Scott reduced in 
 
JOHN HOPPNER, R.A. 
 
 47 
 
 height and otherwise seen to disadvantage. Eaeburn's 
 airt was more suited to male than female portraiture — he 
 fiailed in giving the grace and loveliness of his female 
 slitters, and it may fairly be assumed that he owed part of 
 tihe reputation which he enjoyed to his somewhat isolated 
 position as the head of his profession in Scotland, and 
 nnight not have been able to sustain it to the full, had he 
 removed to London. 
 
 John Hoppner, R.A., has been characterized as the 
 nnost daring plagiarist of Reynolds, and the boldest rival 
 of Lawrence. In the meagre information of his early 
 dlays, given by his biographers, mystery and scandal have 
 been attached to his birth. His mother is said to have 
 been one of the German attendants at the royal palace, 
 aind George III. so particularly interested in him as to see 
 ihat he was well-nursed and educated. We find it stated in 
 tihe British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits, published 
 by Cadell, the printer to the Royal Academy, — " This 
 eminent artist was of German extraction. His father, we 
 believe, came to this country some time before the 
 commencement of the present reign, and he was born 
 ait Whitechapel on the 4th April, 1758," a date which 
 its also given by his brother academician, Dance, in a 
 brief memoir which accompanies his well-known portraits. 
 We think this precise statement, and the fact that 
 IHoppner was born above two years before George III. 
 was king, or the occupant of the royal palace, may be 
 aiccepted rather than the vague undated statements rela- 
 tfcive to Hoppner's birth, and the scandals which have been 
 ffounded upon them. So far upon the vexed question of 
 this parentage. There seems, however, none as to his 
 lhaving been at an early age a chorister in the royal 
 
48 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 chapel, and that, manifesting a strong inclination for art, 
 the king gave him some assistance for its study. This 
 was probably when his voice naturally became unfitted 
 for the choir, and we find that he entered the Royal 
 Academy as a student in 1775, being then in his seven- 
 teenth year. 
 
 As a student he laboured diligently, and in 1782 
 gained the gold medal, the great prize of the academy, 
 for an original painting from King Lear; and in the same 
 year he married a daughter of Mrs. Wright, the celebrated 
 modeller in wax. He showed much aptitude for land- 
 scape art, but at once adopted the portrait branch of 
 his profession ; then, it may be said, the only one to 
 insure the artist a living. Early in his career he pro- 
 duced a portrait of Mrs. Jordan as the Comic Muse. This 
 picture is at Hampton Court, and was an attempt beyond 
 the young artist's powers. The group consists of two 
 females life-size and whole length ; the figures have a 
 straddling action, with little taste and without poetic 
 feeling ; the drapery is wooden and without flow, and the 
 colouring disagreeable and heavy. Later in his career 
 (in 1791) Mrs. Jordan again sat to him as Hippolyta. 
 
 That he lost no time in entering upon the practice of 
 his profession is evident, since we find his name in 1780, 
 when barely twenty-two years of age, in the catalogue of 
 the Royal Academy, where he exhibited No. 112, "A 
 Primrose Girl," a subject he repeated more than once, 
 and " A Portrait of a Lady." For some years he con- 
 tinued to exhibit portraits of " A Lady," of " A Gentle- 
 man," as they were then entered in the catalogue, 
 leaving us in perfect ignorance as to the individuals 
 represented, and their verification perfectly hopeless. 
 
ASSISTED BY COURT INFLUENCE. 
 
 49 
 
 As;, however, his practice increased, we learn the increase 
 of his reputation by the dignities of his sitters, the 
 catalogue recording portraits of "An Officer," " A 
 Bishop," " Two Ladies of Quality," and when in 1784 
 he was residing in the fashionable neighbourhood of St. 
 James's Square, he ranks among his sitters "A Noble- 
 man's Son." This absurd practice, by which every one 
 not of the blood royal was vaguely designated in the 
 catalogue, was common to all the portraits it contained, 
 until 1797. In 1798, searching for Hoppner's pictures, 
 we were struck by his exhibiting twelve portraits, and 
 that the names and titles of all the personages were 
 given in full; surprised at the change, we examined 
 the list of those by Lawrence, Beechey, Shee, and 
 others, and found the same change had taken place, so 
 it would seem that some custom which had hitherto 
 prevailed, was by general consent broken through at this 
 peiriod, since which time common sense has prevailed — 
 the records are more perfect, and the endeavour to parti- 
 cularize a painter's works has ceased to be an impossibility. 
 It is to be wished that a still further change could be 
 effected, and the description : head size, three-quarters, 
 kit -cat, half, or whole length, affixed to the list of such 
 wo rks ; this would facilitate many inquiries, adding but 
 little to the trouble of the compiler of the catalogue. 
 
 However obtained, it is clear that Hoppner retained 
 some influence in the palace. In 1785, he exhibited 
 three portraits of the Princesses Sophia, Amelia, and 
 Mairy, and in 1789 is designated as portrait painter to 
 the Prince of Wales, and is often employed by the prince 
 and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Clarence, 
 as well as by many of those most distinguished for 
 wol. ii. 38 
 
50 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 rank and fashion. His reputation largely increased; 
 he was esteemed by many the first portrait painter 
 since Keynolds, and Lawrence owned him to be a for- 
 midable rival ; in 1793 he was elected an associate, 
 and in 1795 a full member of the Eoyal Academy. By 
 this time Lawrence, much his junior, had rapidly risen 
 into court favour and fashionable distinction. He had 
 been appointed portrait painter to the king, while, as we 
 have seen, Hoppner held the same office under the 
 prince, and the two artists are represented as of the two 
 factions which then unhappily prevailed. We are amused 
 by the tale of Hoppner having offended the king, who 
 had been his friend, by praising Keynolds ; and the tattle 
 of his having used his ready wit and influence in support 
 of Whiggism, whose talents and beauty were the reward 
 and objects of his pencil alone. Art is of no party ; and, 
 above all parties, is indifferently sought by all. A glance 
 at the names of the sitters who graced the studios of 
 Lawrence and Hoppner will show at once how little such 
 tales have to rest upon. Of the nature of the rivalry 
 which existed between these two men, we speak on the 
 best authority when quoting, from two of his letters, the 
 words of Lawrence himself. He writes in 1810, — " You 
 will be sorry to hear it, my most powerful competitor, he 
 whom only (to my friends) I have acknowledged as my 
 rival, is, I fear, sinking to the grave. I mean, of course, 
 Hoppner. He has always been afflicted with bilious 
 liver complaints (and to them must be greatly attributed 
 the irritation of his mind), and now they have ended in 
 confirmed dropsy. But though I think he cannot recover 
 I do not wish his last illness should appear to be so 
 reported by me. You will believe that I sincerely feel 
 
RIVALRY WITH LAWRENCE. 
 
 51 
 
 the loss of a brother artist from whose works I have 
 often gained instruction, and who has gone by my side 
 in the race these eighteen years." And shortly after- 
 wards, in a second letter, Lawrence adds, — " The death 
 of Hoppner leaves me without a rival." 
 
 Hoppner had to contend with a chronic state of 
 ill-health, arising from a constitution naturally weak ; 
 and much of his proverbial irritation, if not produced, 
 was aggravated by the ailments which attend a diseased 
 liver. He must have been often tried by his sitters — 
 restless, impatient, crotchety, having their own ideas of 
 their own perfections and the manner in which tbey 
 should be rendered : for, let it be said, an agreeable 
 sitter is the rare exception ; and the painter must keep 
 his sitter amused by conversation suited to his habits. 
 an<d capacity, if he does not wish to see before him a 
 listless, emotionless face, which it would not do to 
 perpetuate on his canvas. Hoppner told the critic 
 Gilfford, as an example of his annoyance, how " a 
 wealthy stockbroker drove up to his door, whose 
 carriages emptied into his hall, in Charles Street, a 
 gentleman and lady, with five sons and seven daughters, 
 all samples of Pa and Ma — as well fed and as city 
 bred a comely family as any within the sound of Bow 
 bells. 'Well, Mister Painter,' said he, 'here we are, a 
 baker's dozen ; how much will you demand for painting 
 the whole lot of us ; prompt payment for discount ? ' 
 ' Why,' replied the astonished painter, viewing the 
 questioner, who might be likened to a superannuated 
 elephant, ' why, that will depend upon the dimensions, 
 
 style, composition, and ' ' Oh, that is all settled,' 
 
 quo)th the enlightened broker ; ' we are all to be touched 
 
 38—a 
 
52 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 off in one piece as large as life, all seated upon our lawn 
 at Clapham, and all singing God save the king.' " 
 
 Hoppner was essentially a portrait painter. Iu 
 the long course of his practice we find a few fancy pic- 
 tures, such as "Jupiter and Io," half length; "Belisa- 
 rius," a kit cat; "A Standard-bearer," " A Nymph," 
 "A Bacchante," "Cupid and Psyche," "A Sleeping 
 Nymph," &c, commonplace subjects — most of them but 
 slight deviations from portraiture, and none that can be 
 truly classed as poetical or historic. As we have seen, 
 Hoppner copied Sir Joshua, the attitudes of whose sitters 
 he even adapted to his own compositions ; he also followed 
 Gainsborough in his backgrounds. Many of the portraits 
 which he painted for the Prince of Wales are in the 
 State apartments at St. James's^ — among them whole 
 lengths of the Prince, the Duke of York, and two dis- 
 tinguished naval officers, Lord Nelson and Lord Kodney. 
 These portraits are among his best works ; they might 
 pass even for indifferent works of the first president, 
 which we own is but indifferent praise. Two or three 
 of his whole lengths are at Hampton Court, to which 
 place they have probably been banished from their sad 
 state of dilapidation, arising from the painter's having 
 copied the defective materials of Beynolds as well as his 
 compositions and general arrangement. Those remaining 
 at St. James's, painted after Reynolds's death, are less 
 injured by the use of asphaltum ; but they are devoid of 
 any special originality in art, though highly respectable 
 as portraits. Hoppner's colouring was thought brilliant, 
 and yet mellow, by his contemporaries ; but it has 
 changed with time, and is now somewhat heavy and 
 horny. We can well understand, however, that the tone 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS PORTRAITS. 
 
 53 
 
 of his works, and their being painted more in the rich 
 imanner which Reynolds had made popular, gave them, 
 in the eyes of those who had lived under the influence of 
 thie great master, a merit which placed them above the 
 works of Lawrence — painted with a more starved manner, 
 anid aiming at brilliancy rather than tone — thus raising 
 liiim unduly into rivalry with the king's painter, and 
 phacing him at the head of the old school, vacant by the 
 deiath of Reynolds. 
 
 Hoppner was sometimes very happy in his por- 
 tr£aits of ladies and children ; his handling was free, his 
 excecution unlaboured, but his drawing often faulty. A 
 portrait of Lady Culling Smith, with her daughters, 
 thie property of the Duke of Wellington, is a good 
 excample of his method, and of its relation to that 
 of other painters of his day. It is unfinished ; the 
 right hand of the child standing in front of the mother 
 haxs been sketched in, and the flesh colour painted with 
 a broad tool down to the wrist, and left in the irregular 
 fo)rms of the brush. The flesh of this limb — in harmony 
 as; to tone with the rest of the picture — shows a tint 
 miixed on the palette and painted at once ; the left hand 
 of ' the other child is very imperfect, and is evidently also 
 paiinted with solid tints at once. The browns stand well, 
 altthough the vehicle has been so sloppily used that there 
 arce streaks where it has dropped from the brush down 
 thie face of the picture. The head of the mother, which 
 is very tender in expression and sweet, would not have 
 beeen painted had there been no Reynolds. The painter's 
 illl-health shortened his days, and he died on the 23rd of 
 Jaanuary, 1810, aged fifty-one years : a time of life which 
 miight still have left some years of promise. 
 
54 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 In examining the works of Lawrence's contemporaries 
 it is remarkable how repeatedly we are reminded of the 
 great influence which the works of Reynolds have had 
 upon our school. The artists to whom this chapter is 
 devoted painted under this influence. They did not 
 exhibit any high or original qualities in art. But though 
 they did not obtain great distinction, or leave us works 
 we may point to with full satisfaction, they yet form not 
 unimportant links in the history of English art, and 
 their portraits of many great personages will long occupy 
 places in our mansions and public edifices. 
 
 William Owen, R.A., is no exception to this class. 
 He was born at Ludlow, in Shropshire, in 1769 — the 
 more precise date is not recorded — and was the son 
 of a bookseller. He received a fair education in the 
 grammar school of his native town, and gave early 
 indications of genius by sketching the beautiful scenery 
 surrounding the town. In 1786 he came to London, 
 as the pupil of Catton, R.A., and was admitted to the 
 schools of the Royal Academy. He also gained an 
 introduction to Reynolds, who was pleased with his 
 indications of ability, and assisted him with his kindly 
 advice. In 1792 and the following year he appeared on 
 the walls of the Royal Academy as a portrait painter ; 
 but his natural talent appears to have inclined him to 
 subjects of rustic life, elevated both above common 
 life and mere portraiture by some reference to poetry 
 or story. Of this class were his "Blind Beggar of 
 Bethnal Green," " Village Schoolmistress," " The Road 
 Side," " Fortune-teller," and many others, which would 
 have held higher rank had not Gainsborough laboured so 
 successfully before him in the same field. 
 
WILLIAM OWEN, R.A. 
 
 55 
 
 Owen's art was, however, portraiture. In 1797, lie 
 exhibited a portrait of two sisters, by which he gained 
 great credit, one of whom he soon afterwards married ; 
 and his proficiency and his sitters steadily increased. In 
 1800 he settled with his family in Pimlico, and kept a 
 studio in Leicester Square. He now commenced some 
 of his best works. A fine portrait of Mr. Pitt established 
 hi:s reputation, and was followed by successful portraits 
 of Lord Grenville, the Duke of Buccleuch, and a long 
 list of distinguished sitters. He was at the height of 
 hi:s practice, and was elected an associate of the Royal 
 Academy in 1804, and a full member in 1806 ; followed 
 in 1810 — on the death of Hoppner — by the appointment 
 of portrait painter to the Prince of Wales. At the 
 suimmit of his prosperity his income, though it received 
 but little increase by the prince's appointment, now 
 reached 3,000/. a year, and in 1818 he removed both 
 his family and his practice to Bruton Street. Here 
 has health soon failed, probably from over-work, and for 
 fiwe years he was confined to his room, and unable to 
 continue his art. In this state he died suddenly on the 
 11th of February, 1825, from the effect of laudanum 
 wirongly labelled by the chemist who made up his 
 prescriptions. 
 
 To the genius and aptitude for art with which Owen 
 w;as gifted by nature, he added unwearied diligence. His 
 drawing was superficial, but his manner of painting did 
 not want power, and his colour, though with a tendency 
 to> be hot and monotonous, was good. His feeling for 
 landscape was shown in the taste displayed in his back- 
 grounds. His subject pictures were pleasing, and enjoyed 
 a high reputation in his day, which has not been main- 
 
56 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tained in our own. A small work of this class, " The 
 Dead Robin," is now in the Vernon collection at South 
 Kensington. It hardly does justice to his talents in such 
 subjects, but will serve to illustrate our remarks ; the 
 colouring is a little stainey — but the flesh round and 
 pulpy ; the whole has little character of the country, the 
 dead bird has been taken out of a wicker cage, such as 
 is used for thrushes and the larger songsters : the 
 meshes of the wicker would not keep in so small a bird 
 as a robin for a minute. The costume of the children 
 is not of country, but of town children with their frocks 
 off ; the light and shadow is that of the studio, but the 
 sentiment of the smaller child is well rendered. The pic- 
 ture has sadly failed, from the vehicle it is painted with. 
 
 It seems to require an apology to the memory of Sir 
 Martin Archer Shee, P.B.A., as hardly befitting one distin- 
 guished by such varied talents, who attained the rank of 
 president of the Royal Academy, that we have given him 
 a place only in this chapter ; and yet in the plan of our 
 work it is here that he finds his true place as an artist. 
 He was descended from an Irish family of old Connaught 
 lineage, and was born in Dublin, 20th December, 1769. 
 His first attachment was to art, and he was fortunate in 
 being placed under Robert L. West, then the talented 
 master of the school connected with the Dublin Royal 
 Society. He very early commenced portraiture, and soon 
 met with some encouragement and success. In the summer 
 of 1788, he tempted fortune by removing to London. Dis- 
 appointed in the hope of what patronage was to do for 
 him in our metropolis, he set steadily to work. He painted 
 such portraits as offered, and found some profit in 
 making reduced copies for the engraver, of the paintings 
 
SIR MARTIN A. SHEE, P.R.A. 
 
 57 
 
 forming " The Macklin Gallery," and was stimulated by 
 the success of Lawrence, who he says, writing in 1789, 
 " Of all the young artists stands foremost, and deservedly 
 carries away the greatest share of praise. He, I think, 
 will be of service to me, as you may be sure I am not 
 a little incited to exertion by his merit. The small 
 difference in years between him and me, rouses me 
 more to emulation than all the artists in London put 
 together." 
 
 Shee soon after met with friends in London, who were 
 well disposed to assist him. He had exhibited two heads 
 in 1789, and he now completed four portraits, which he 
 submitted for exhibition in 1790, but was grievously dis- 
 appointed that they gained no place on the academy 
 walls. Made known by an Irish relative to Burke, he 
 was by him favourably introduced to Reynolds as "his 
 little relative," and by the advice of Sir Joshua, entered 
 the schools of the Royal Academy ; though with some 
 hurt to his pride, as he thought he had finished his 
 pupilage in Dublin. In 1791 he exhibited his first 
 whole length, and struggling on like others have done 
 before him and since, now elated by a good work well 
 placed in the exhibition, now depressed by want of suc- 
 i cess, he quietly gained a name and a place in art. His 
 earliest works were mainly theatrical portraits ; Lewis, 
 Stephen Kemble, Pope, Fawcett, and others, were 
 painted by him in character ; and he tells of an historical 
 attempt exhibited in 1794, which had cost him at inter- 
 vals, three years' thought and toil, "The Daughter of 
 Jephthah lamenting with her Companions." In 1798 
 he exhibited a large equestrian portrait, which added to 
 his reputation; and in the following year gained his 
 
58 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 election as associate, and in 1800, as member of the 
 Academy. 
 
 Shee's constant occupation in art was portraiture, 
 yet he found time to try his hand at subject -pictures. 
 " Lavinia," "Belisarius," (his presentation picture to the 
 Eoyal Academy), "A Peasant Girl," and, taking a still 
 higher flight, "Prospero and Miranda, the Storm Scene." 
 Most ambitious young painters, who have mastered the 
 figure, are tempted to make at least one great historic 
 effort on a grand scale : this last subject was Shee's. 
 We do not know the work; indeed, it is a strange 
 mystery and a wonder what becomes of such works. 
 Some, we fear, suffer from the ruthless hands of their 
 authors in later years ; this, however, we are told, 
 remained in the painter's gallery till his death. It 
 was exhibited in the Academy, and Sir Martin's bio- 
 grapher says that it was, in " the unusual amount of its 
 superficial extension, fully kept in countenance by a still 
 more ambitious production from the pencil of Mr. Law- 
 rence,"— the " Satan Calling up his Legions," described 
 in the preceding chapter. Shee received, we are also 
 told, a candid criticism from an acquaintance, in answer 
 to his question upon the general effect of the exhibition 
 where they casually met : — " Why, sir, it's well enough 
 in its way ; but I can't imagine, sir, what possesses the 
 artists to send such large, ugly things. Now, there, for 
 instance," — pointing up with his cane to the " Prospero 
 and Miranda," — "there is a great, ugly thing, sir; and 
 there again, sir," — turning round, and with equal disgust, 
 and directing his cane towards the " Satan," — " there's 
 another, great, ugly thing. What can the painters mean 
 by it ? " The wits also had their say ; and of these two 
 
HIS LITERARY REPUTATION. 
 
 59 
 
 works — as unmarketable in size as in subject — suggested 
 
 that " Satan Calling up his Legions " would have a 
 : symbolical historic propriety in the lecture-room of the 
 Incorporated Law Society; and " Prospero Raising the 
 
 Wind," find a fit place in the Stock Exchange. A good 
 ! story and a witty commentary, derived also from the best 
 ■•authority ; the more's the pity we have to spoil it. But a 
 <careful examination of the Academy catalogues, to enable 
 ms to verify the facts, has revealed to us that Lawrence's 
 Satan Calling up his Legions," was exhibited in 1797, 
 ((No. 170), and Shee's "Prospero and Miranda," in 
 1806 (No. 229). 
 
 To his portraits — not his historical attempts — Shee 
 ; acknowledged that he owed his election into the Academy. 
 
 Bj portraiture he had established his reputation, and 
 (steadily following this art, he found employment, if it 
 <did not lead to fortune. But he was not a man of one 
 1 talent. He was early known as a critic and writer on 
 jart. His Rhymes on Art, published in 1805, gave him a 
 Hiterary reputation, and he was apostrophized in Byron's 
 (satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: — 
 
 " And here let Shee and genius find a place, 
 Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace." 
 
 ]In 1809 he published a continuation of his rhymes 
 i under the title of Elements of Art, and next, among 
 (other lesser writings in 1824, Alasco, a Tragedy, which 
 was withdrawn from the theatre in consequence of some 
 (considerable expurgations absurdly insisted upon by the 
 (deputy licenser of plays. He also published anony- 
 nnously, in 1829, Old Court, a novel, which attracted but 
 ] little attention. He had gained the esteem of his profes- 
 sion. A man of both artistic and literary talent; of 
 
60 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sound judgment and good business talents, of gentle- 
 manly breeding and manners, able to express himself 
 well on all occasions, and devoted to the interests of 
 art, he was deemed by his friends a worthy successor to 
 the presidential chair on the death of West. But he 
 himself at once candidly admitted and supported the 
 superior claims of Lawrence, on whose death, in 1830, 
 he was almost unanimously elected to the rank of Presi- 
 dent, and received the honour of knighthood. The 
 office of portrait painter in ordinary, which had been 
 held by his predecessors Lawrence and Keynolds, and 
 brought some lucrative commissions, had been given to 
 Sir David Wilkie, and Shee was placed in an ostensible 
 position, entailing much expense and great devotion of 
 his time, without the emolument which had theretofore 
 been enjoyed with it. 
 
 Sir Martin's presidency had fallen on troubled times. 
 The vexed questions connected with the erection of the 
 National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, of which the Royal 
 Academy was to occupy one wing, came at once upon 
 him. He had to maintain the privileged rights the 
 Academy had so long enjoyed without question at 
 Somerset House, and their interests as affected by the 
 proposed removal. He had to assert the character of 
 the Academy in the face of attacks made by a party in 
 the House of Commons, and before the Parliamentary 
 Committee of Inquiry which sat in 1836, to which we 
 have already referred in a previous chapter. In all these 
 weighty matters the president acted with promptitude, 
 zeal, and ability, not in the cause of the Royal Academy 
 alone, but in the interests of art in their widest sense ; 
 and signally justified the choice of his colleagues, which 
 
HIS EARLY PORTRAITS. 
 
 61 
 
 placed him in a position to render important services to 
 his profession. 
 
 Among his later works he painted in 1834-5, the 
 portraits of William Hi*- and Queen Adelaide, which are yy 
 now at Windsor; and in 1842, a portrait of Queen 
 Victoria for the Royal Academy. We may judge of 
 Shee's early art by the picture of Lewis the comedian 
 in the character of the Marquis, in " The Midnight 
 Hour," bequeathed by the comedian's son to the 
 National Gallery (No. 677). This was painted in 1791, 
 and was the first whole-length by him which obtained a 
 place on the Academy walls. It is an exceedingly clever 
 work, and not too much like Reynolds, — the common 
 fault of the young painters of that time. Easy in action 
 and well-drawn, it has much individuality of character, 
 and no doubt was a good likeness, with just a flavour of 
 the natural affectation of the actor. Like most portraits 
 by young men (Shee was in his twenty-first year), it is 
 very carefully finished ; the flesh is a little ruddy, and 
 the cheeks have the appearance of rouge, not unsuitable 
 in the portrait of an actor, but a fault apparent in most 
 of Shee's after works. The handling is sharper, and 
 the touch more square than in his later works, in which 
 he fell into a method of painting as if with a thick and 
 somewhat viscid vehicle ; the colour, after being laid by 
 the brush, softened and smoothed by an extensive use 
 of the "sweetener," giving the flesh an unnatural soft- 
 ness, while it is wanting in that interchange of cutting 
 with softened edges, so valuable in aiding relief. The 
 portrait of Morton the comedian (No. 368), painted 
 some twenty years afterwards, will illustrate the faults of 
 this latter method : the darks of the crimson curtain in 
 
62 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the whole-length have a little failed ; which is seldom 
 the case in his works. The promise of his early portrait 
 was not carried out in his after-years ; that is to say, he 
 did not improve very greatly upon this early work, which 
 is certainly in some qualities equal to his best portraits, 
 and free from the over-laboured appearance of those 
 painted in his full career. 
 
 It has not been our good fortune to see any of his 
 larger historical or poetical attempts. He says of himself 
 on his first arrival in London, "I am making an experi- 
 ment in the historical line, and have nearly finished a 
 picture of King Lear in the storm with Gloster and 
 Edgar. Whether it will be well enough to do me credit, 
 I cannot say. The trial has, however, showed me that 
 I have more invention than I thought." This invention, 
 however, is not apparent in the small poetical attempt in 
 the Vernon Collection, " An Infant Bacchus ;" a work that 
 has none of the riant look of infancy which charms us so 
 much in Sir Joshua's sprites and children, nor has it any 
 particular look of Bacchus except his plumpness and the 
 bunch of grapes, that the child holds up for its special 
 gratification : in fact, though a tolerably good common- 
 place work, it does not seem to have an atom of inspiration. 
 
 We have before alluded to Haydon's sneering attacks 
 on the portrait painters of his day, in his continuous 
 advertisement of "the Tiptoe School;" which was 
 mainly levelled at Shee, who had incurred Haydon's 
 wrath, by his manful conduct before the House of Com- 
 mons' Committee of 1836. Haydon asserted that the 
 portrait painters always painted their full-length figures 
 standing on the tops of their toes, and he ironically gave 
 linear rules how to draw the feet properly in perspective. 
 
" THE TIPTOE SCHOOL." 
 
 63 
 
 But he was himself ignorant of the cause of the appa- 
 rent error ; which, moreover, to suit his own purposes, he 
 greatly exaggerated. The feet were mostly right in per- 
 spective, in relation to the objects in the foreground, 
 but the loose and careless habits of the portrait painters, 
 or their desire after some effective arrangement of light 
 and shade, often led them into the gross error of having 
 one horizon for their foreground objects, and a totally 
 different one for the background. This is seen in 
 Shee's " Portrait of William IV. " now in the Council 
 room of the Royal Academy, although in a less degree 
 than in many other works. In this picture, the top of the 
 table in the right, on which the crown rests, is just on 
 ;a level with the eye, and the circular lines of the crown 
 are drawn as if in plain elevation, as an architect would 
 .call it ; but Windsor Castle on the left, whose round 
 tower is seen just above the ground plane on which the 
 king is standing, from the perspective curve of its lines, 
 :and as we do not see the top, must have a horizon two 
 feet lower down than the table, so that we have two 
 horizons in the same picture ; and if the feet of the king 
 ;are referred to the lower one, he has partially the appear - 
 ,ance of standing on his toes. 
 
 We would not, however, credit Shee particularly 
 with this fault : Lawrence is a frequent and far greater 
 s sinner ; and we remember that when the late Pro- 
 cessor of perspective pointed out to an eminent painter 
 ;a like fault in a portrait of the Duke of Devonshire, 
 :in which Chatsworth was seen in the distance in very 
 jfalse perspective, the painter justified it by saying that 
 iit must be recollected Chatsworth was on a " devil of 
 ;a hill," showing twofold error in his very justification : 
 
64 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 first, that anything could justify the eye being supposed 
 in two places at once ; and, secondly, his want of know- 
 ledge, that if the mansion were on a hill — the higher 
 the hill the higher the horizon would seem to be ; 
 instead of this being a reason for lowering it down to 
 the ground. 
 
 Shee's last contributions to the exhibition were 
 in 1845. Age, and the exertions he had undergone, 
 had begun to tell upon him. He had for some time 
 suffered from illness, which increasing, he resigned his 
 office of president in 1845, but was induced by the affec- 
 tionate wishes of the Academy to resume it. It was well 
 known that his duties as president had encroached upon 
 his means, and the Academy assigned him 300Z. a year 
 from their funds. The Queen also granted a civil list 
 pension of 2001. a year to Lady Shee. But though he 
 consented to resume his office, his health gradually 
 declined, and his death, accelerated by the sudden death 
 of his wife, took place at Brighton on the 19th August, 
 1850, in his eighty-first year. 
 
 Thomas Phillips, R.A., another contemporary who 
 passed a long life in the practice of portrait-art, was 
 born of respectable parents at Dudley, in Warwickshire, 
 18th October, 1770. He was placed by them with Mr. 
 Edgington, the well-known glass-painter, at Birmingham, 
 but fostering higher aims he came to London at the end 
 of 1790 ; and West, P.K.A., is said to have found him 
 employment connected with the execution of his designs 
 for the painted glass windows at Windsor. In 1792, 
 Phillips appears as an exhibitor of a view of Windsor 
 Castle, and the next year of a more ambitious work, 
 " Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of 
 
THOMAS PHILLIPS, R.A. 
 
 65 
 
 Chatillon," and also of " Ruth and her Mother-in-Law." 
 In 1794, he exhibited works of the same class with one 
 portrait, and henceforth adopting portraiture as his chief 
 pursuit, he steadily and industriously made his way. In 
 1804, he was elected associate, and in 1808, a full 
 member of the Academy. The subject of his presentation 
 picture was " Venus and Adonis." His portraits were 
 faithful, and he found full employment, many persons of 
 distinction sitting to him. In 1824, he was appointed 
 Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, and tra- 
 velled to Rome, the better to fit himself for the office. 
 Hiis lectures were published. He wrote some articles on 
 art subjects for " Rees' Encyclopedia," and occasionally 
 for other publications. He died, 20th April, 1845, in his 
 seventy-fifth year. 
 
 The portraits of Phillips are marked by soberness and 
 propriety, by negative rather than positive qualities ; they 
 are generally good as to likeness, solid and careful in 
 execution, free from meretricious colour and truthful as to 
 character. He takes no rank as a colourist, but a plea- 
 sant tone pervades his works. These remarks apply, in 
 a degree, to the picture he presented to the Academy on 
 his election ; it is prosaic and not poetical— though clas- 
 sical in subject it has no flavour of antiquity. " The 
 Woodland Nymph " in the Vernon Gallery, is amenable 
 to tthe same criticism, it is simply a lady of the artist's 
 circle. The hair is cut and dressed to the fashion of the 
 day, and though termed a wood-nymph, it can only be 
 dee med so, by the same courtesy as was extended to the 
 poeits who wrote, in the previous century, pastorals of 
 Coffydon and Phyllis, without a thought of pastoral life. 
 Thie drawing of the hands and arms, moreover, is defec- 
 wol. ii. 39 
 
66 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tive, poor, and wooden ; and we feel that he wisely left 
 such subjects and devoted himself to portrait-painting, for 
 which he was in many respects so much better qualified. 
 
 John Jackson, R.A., is another example of one pos- 
 sessing many fine qualities in art, yet falling short of 
 excellence. He was the son of the village tailor, at 
 Lastingham, in the North Eiding of Yorkshire, where he 
 was born on the 31st of May, 1778. He was apprenticed 
 to his father's trade, but was soon known in this out-of- 
 the-way village by his attempts to draw the portraits of 
 his companions ; by these attempts he attracted the notice 
 of Lord Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont, the latter 
 of whom induced him to make a trial at painting in 
 oil, and lent to him, for that purpose, Sir Joshua's por- 
 trait of George Colman the Dramatist ; but in his native 
 village the materials were wanting, and Jackson was 
 indebted to the kindness of a friend, a house -painter, 
 who gave him the use of his workshop, and by whose 
 aid the young artist soon improvised tools and colours 
 sufficient to make a copy that surprised his patron, and 
 satisfied him that Jackson was intended by nature for the 
 pursuit of art. Sir George is said, after consultation 
 with Jackson's other patron, Lord Mulgrave, to have 
 advised the young painter to go to London, as the best 
 means of enabling him to study for the profession, and to 
 have generously offered him a table at his own expense 
 and 501. a year until he had gained a footing in the 
 great capital. Under these favourable auspices he came 
 to town, and in 1805 was admitted a student of the 
 Koyal Academy. 
 
 His attempts, although, as we have seen, he had painted 
 in oil before he left the country, had hitherto been like- 
 
JOHN JACKSON, R.A. 
 
 67 
 
 nesses taken in pencil and slightly tinted with water- 
 colour, and his first portraits in oil did not give much 
 promise. His water-colour portraits were, however, 
 as he improved, universally admired ; the heads were well 
 drawn, the likenesses faithful, and spiritedly though care- 
 fully finished. Many of the heads engraved in " Cadell's 
 Portraits of Illustrious Persons of the 18th Century," 
 were drawn by Jackson in this manner, and his water- 
 colour practice was extensive and already produced him 
 a handsome income. He did not, indeed, abandon the 
 hope of the higher distinction to be gained by portraiture 
 in oil ; and trying the wide-spread canvas of that medium, 
 he soon attained complete success. 
 
 In 1816, he was elected an associate of the Koyal 
 Academy, and travelled through Holland and Flanders, 
 studying the art of the Dutch and Flemish Schools. In 
 1818, he became a full member of the Academy, and in 
 the following year he visited the chief cities of Northern 
 Italy and Rome. Sitters gathered round him. He 
 wrought with great facility and extraordinary rapidity, 
 and during the last years of his practice his portraits 
 displayed great ability : solidly and powerfully painted, 
 faithful, but wanting elevation of character ; in his female 
 portraits simple, without any meretricious attempts at 
 simpering graces or the millinery of dress. He parti- 
 cularly excelled in the subdued richness of his colour, a 
 quality in which Leslie, R.A., said " Lawrence certainly 
 never approached him," and in another place, "that he 
 stood with Lawrence and Owen, and occasionally before 
 either of them, in the first rank of portraiture." 
 
 His portrait of Flaxman was greatly admired by his 
 brother artists, and when exhibited, Sir Thomas Law- 
 
 39—2 
 
68 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 rence praised it warmly at the public dinner before 
 the opening of the exhibition, speaking of it as " a great 
 achievement of the English School, and a picture of which 
 Vandyke might have felt proud to own himself the author." 
 We are well aware that Sir Thomas was rather a politician 
 in praise, but though so many years have passed, we can 
 well recollect our own great pleasure at seeing this portrait 
 on the walls. The execution was different to that of most 
 of the other painters' works ; it appeared laid in with pure 
 and somewhat crude tints, as he would have laid in his 
 first broad hatchings in water colours. Over this a thin 
 painting gave the broken and mottled hue of flesh, and 
 put the work into unity ; it was then lowered in tone 
 by a slight general glaze. It is related that a French 
 artist of eminence, standing before this picture in the 
 exhibition, was heard io say " fine — very fine — almost as 
 fine as Gerard," and, growing in admiration as he con- 
 tinued to examine it, " quite as fine as Gerard," which, 
 from a Frenchman, was a high proof of his appreciation 
 of its excellence. 
 
 Two portraits by Jackson are to be found in the 
 Sheepshanks' Collection, one of himself and one of the 
 great Keform Minister, Earl Grey; that of himself is 
 firmly painted, as at once, with great vigour, with a full 
 brush and much impasto ; the colour is much finer than 
 most of Lawrence's heads. The portrait of Earl Grey 
 is more tame, and somewhat sleepy; it seems over- 
 anxious in execution, and has less of individuality than 
 the former work. Jackson's manner was original, differing 
 from that of his contemporaries, and when he laid him- 
 self out to produce a fine work, he showed that he had real 
 powers ; too often, however, his portraits were of neces- 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS PORTRAITS. 
 
 69 
 
 sity painted too much as a matter of business, and were 
 poor and weak in execution. Such is the portrait of 
 Miss Siddons in the Vernon Collection. Although a 
 clever man, he made less impression by his art than 
 others of far less merit. 
 
 Jackson was of the Methodist persuasion, and his 
 connection with that body led to his being usually em- 
 ployed to produce the monthly portrait for the Evangelical 
 Magazine, the organ of that body, and thus also to a 
 connection extensive, although not lucrative. Unlike 
 sectarians in general, he was liberal in his feelings to the 
 (Ohurch, and had such an affection for his native parish 
 of Lastingham, as to copy, on an enlarged scale, the 
 picture of Christ in the Garden, by Correggio, which he 
 Itiad borrowed for that purpose from the Duke of Wel- 
 lington, and present it as an altar-piece to the village 
 church. He was a man of deep religious feeling, but in 
 t;he two last years of his life fell into a desponding, low 
 state of health, frequented prayer-meetings, and some- 
 times officiated in the choir. He was twice married : his 
 second wife was the daughter of James Ward, R.A., who 
 on her husband's death, June 1, 1831, was left with three 
 children ; they would have been wholly without provision, 
 but for that generous aid the Academy extends to distress, 
 both of its own members and of the artistic body gene- 
 rally. Jackson had in early life been indebted to the kind- 
 mess both of Lord Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont ; 
 be followed both to the grave, and on the occasion of the 
 mineral of the latter, was smitten with the illness that 
 p>roved fatal to himself. He was a frank and amiable 
 rman in private life ; his friend Constable wrote thus of 
 mini : — " He is a great loss to the Academy and the 
 
70 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 public. By his friends he will be for ever missed; and he 
 had no enemy. He did a great deal of good, much 
 more, I believe, than is generally known, and he never 
 did any harm to any living creature. My sincere belief 
 is, that he is at this moment in heaven." 
 
 George Henry Harlow, one of those painters who, it is 
 thought, had he been spared, might have proved a com- 
 petitor of Lawrence more formidable than any other, had 
 the misfortune to be a posthumous child. His father, 
 who had realized money in the China trade, died some 
 few months before the birth of his only son on the 10th 
 of June, 1787. The mother was left a widow with five 
 daughters and one infant son, who was petted and spoiled, 
 as a matter of course, by the whole family, and grew up 
 to think himself, almost before his boyhood was passed, 
 a man, and a most important personage too. Some 
 excuse may well be made for the females of the family, 
 since young George early gave indications of great talent, 
 and must have been a handsome youth. 
 
 So clear was the bent of his genius towards art, that 
 his mother was induced to agree to his following it as a 
 profession ; she placed him first with De Cort, afterwards 
 with Drummond, the Associate, and finally with Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, who was paid a sum of money to 
 allow the young man the run of his studio, and to pick 
 up any accidental scraps of information that might fall 
 in his way — seeing Lawrence's pictures in progress, if 
 he did not see him paint, the set of his pallet, his 
 vehicles and processes, and occasionally getting a sen- 
 tentious scrap of wisdom from the president, which he 
 might apply or not as he had the ability or wisdom. He 
 did not continue with Lawrence above eighteen months ; 
 
GEORGE HENRY HARLOW. 
 
 71 
 
 but he imbibed somewhat his manner. He quarrelled 
 with the mechanical part of the work assigned to him, 
 {and did not like the cold graciousness of his master. 
 This, added to his vain appreciation of his own powers, 
 lied to their separating, not on the best terms. When 
 B3arlow left the studio of Lawrence he had to depend 
 mpon his own industry and ability for his support. There 
 iis no doubt that he had adopted much of the peculiarity 
 (of Lawrence's manner and execution ; a manner which, in 
 lhis life-size works, gave them even a greater impression 
 cof meretriciousness than is seen in his master's ; while in 
 tthe small portraits of painters and men of eminence, which 
 llatterly he sought to paint for his own profit and im- 
 provement, the manner induced breadth with refinement, 
 {although it appeared empty and poor in the larger heads. 
 
 His early training had been that of a spoiled child. 
 ^When he began to practise his profession as a means 
 (of livelihood, he painted, at a low price, portraits of 
 imany of the actors of the day, and thus fell into the 
 society of men whose life is seldom the most regular; 
 {and being of an easy and careless disposition, he was 
 lied into dissipation, and soon became embarrassed 
 iin his circumstances. He had ever been noted for 
 lhis love of dress, and his great attention to personal 
 {appearance — valuable qualities in the young if arising 
 lfrom a sense of neatness, and not the result of vanity ; 
 which last, it is to be feared, was the motive with young 
 jHarlow. What wonder, with these causes at work, that 
 {a young and thoughtless boy, who commenced house- 
 keeping and the practice of his profession at sixteen, 
 {should, as Smith tells us, have " had many tailors' bills 
 tto discharge, without an income to discharge one," and 
 
72 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 that he soon found himself mixed up -with bill-brokers 
 and attorneys, while with the elders of his profession he 
 got a character for extravagance and dissipation. 
 
 The first time Harlow exhibited at the Royal 
 Academy was in 1805, when we find No. 125, " A 
 Portrait," and he continued to exhibit until the year 
 of his death, with the exception of the year 1813. His 
 works are almost wholly portraits; only three pictures 
 that are not evidently portrait compositions, being 
 included in the whole series, although historical com- 
 positions are by some enumerated in the list of his 
 works. He was a competitor for Academy honours, but 
 was unsuccessful ; having only one scratch, that of 
 Fuseli, who declared (very properly), that he voted for 
 the painter, and not for the man. It must be remem- 
 bered, also, that Harlow was only thirty-one when he 
 died, and that had he lived to an average age he 
 might have overcome the prejudice arising from his 
 conceit, and would have had ample time to achieve the 
 highest reputation and honours. He met with plenty 
 of encouragement as a portrait painter, latterly charging 
 forty guineas for a three-quarter, and having as many 
 sitters as he could paint ol those terms. In June, 1818, 
 he went to Italy, and stayed some time in Rome, where 
 he received many flattering attentions, and was elected 
 member of several Italian Academies, of which he was 
 justly proud, and not a little vain. On the 13th 
 January, 1819, he was again in England, his head full of 
 historical pictures, and his art no doubt improved by the 
 study of the works of the great masters ; but, in the full 
 ardour of youth and hope, and with many works com- 
 menced, he was attacked by a cold which resulted in a 
 
ESTIMATE OF HIS ART. 
 
 73 
 
 glandular disease of the throat, and ended in his death 
 on the 4th of February, 1819. He was buried in a vault 
 of St. James's Church. 
 
 Harlow's reputation was great in his own day, and 
 the public placed him higher as an artist than a review 
 of his works will allow us to do. It is evident his 
 genius was wholly for portraiture, that he would very 
 probably have failed in historical compositions, and that 
 even in portraiture he had probably done his best ere his 
 early death. Several of his works were engraved, among 
 others two groups of female heads, the subject of the 
 first being " The Proposal," and of the second, " The 
 Congratulation ; ' ' they were rather of the class pretty 
 and pleasing, but were extremely popular — as was also 
 the engraving from the picture of Matthews, the come- 
 dian, contemplating himself in some of his characters. 
 In 1815, he commenced painting a series of small 
 portraits of eminent painters and other notorieties of 
 the day, and for this his art was extremely well suited ; 
 they are broad without being empty, and refined in 
 execution without being minute. Among them we find 
 the President West, 1815 — Beechey and Northcote, 1816 
 — Miss Stephens, Fuseli, &c. He repeated the portrait 
 of Northcote. Of the two portraits of Northcote, the 
 second, exhibited in 1817, was painted for Sir John 
 Swinburne, Harlow having declined to repeat it unless 
 Northcote would sit again. As it progressed, Harlow 
 was at a loss what to introduce - into the background, 
 and, applying to Fuseli for advice, an hour-glass was 
 suggested. Desirous to please his sitter, the young 
 painter requested a friend to name this to Northcote — 
 and we are told that Northcote was " ludicrously en- 
 
74 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 raged," and desired Harlow to be informed that if he 
 introduced the hour-glass, he had better put in the 
 death's-head and cross-bones also, as these would, no 
 doubt, be consistent with his personal appearance. Har- 
 low blushed at not having understood Fuseli's sarcasm, 
 and remembered that when he had been shown the 
 portrait he had said, " My goot friend, you have given 
 us a bag of bones." Small proof this of tact, but 
 paralleled by the story Knowles tells of Harlow's observa- 
 tions as to his own scholarship, and his remarks on that 
 of Fuseli. " Harlow was very vain," says Fuseli, " and 
 among other things desired to be thought a scholar. ' 1 
 was educated a scholar at Westminster,' was his remark 
 on one occasion; on another, he said, 'It is extraor- 
 dinary that Fuseli, who is so fine a scholar, should suffer 
 engravers to place translations under the plates taken 
 from classical subjects painted by him ; I was educated 
 at Westminster School, and therefore wish to see the 
 subjects given in the original language.' This was told 
 to Fuseli, who, being certain of his ignorance, took 
 occasion to expose it, by chalking on the wainscot in 
 large letters a passage from the Greek of (Edipus, and 
 requesting Harlow to read it ; finding by his hesitation 
 that he did not know a letter of it, he advised him to 
 rely on his merit as a painter of small portraits, and not 
 to pretend to scholarship." 
 
 From Knowles also we learn that Harlow's " Trial 
 of Queen Katharine " owed much to the critical remarks 
 of Fuseli, " for when he first saw the picture (chiefly 
 in dead colour), he said, 'I do not disapprove of the 
 general arrangement of your work, and I see you will 
 give it a powerful effect of light and shadow j but you 
 
HIS " TRIAL OF QUEEN KATHARINE." 75 
 
 lhave here a composition of more than twenty figures, 
 (of I should say parts of figures, because you have not 
 shown one leg or foot ; this makes it very defective. 
 Now, if you do not know how to draw legs and feet, I 
 wiU show you,' and taking up a crayon, drew two on 
 fthie wainscot of the room. Harlow profited by these 
 remarks, and the next time we saw the picture, the 
 whole arrangement was changed. Fuseli then said, ' So 
 ff&r you have done well ; but now you have not introduced 
 ai back figure, to throw the eye of the spectator into the 
 piicture,' and then pointed out by what means he might 
 iinnprove it in this particular. Accordingly Harlow intro- 
 duced the two boys who are taking up the cushion ; that 
 winch shows the back is altogether due to Fuseli, and is 
 (certainly the best drawn figure in the picture. Fuseli 
 afterwards attempted to get him to improve the drawing 
 coif the arms of the principal figure (Mrs. Siddons as 
 (Qoieen Katharine), but without much effect; for, having 
 witnessed many ineffectual attempts of the painter, he 
 (desisted from further criticism, remarking, ' It is a pity 
 tthiat you never attended the Antique Academy.' " 
 
 Our own opinion of this picture is that it is clever, but 
 ssUagey, with rather too much of the tableau and attitude 
 ssehool ; and, although the painter prided himself upon it 
 aiffi an historical picture, that it has none of the qualities 
 tfco) uphold its claim to that rank. All the figures appear 
 tthiinking of the spectator — posed for effect as to an 
 saradience, and looking out of the picture ; which, no 
 cd(oubt, arises from the nature and source of the subject : 
 ssfcill, it mars the effect when translated from dramatic 
 tfco) pictorial art — the former differing wholly from what 
 ssbould be a painter's treatment of the subject, since with 
 
76 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 him the interest should be wholly within the picture. 
 Here we see King Harry, seated on his throne in the 
 background, and Katharine appealing, not to him, but to 
 a supposed audience, while the Cardinal looks out, as if 
 to observe the effect she produces on them. His con- 
 temporaries speak of the picture as one of extraordinary 
 ability ; but its reputation was of a mixed character, 
 partly arising from the youth of the painter and his 
 exaggerated estimate of his own merits, partly from 
 the reputation of the great actors whose portraiture oc- 
 cupied a scene rather adopted from the stage than the 
 offspring of the painter's own conception ; and it is more 
 than doubtful, if he had liyed to commence historical 
 painting as he proposed on his return from abroad, 
 whether he would have achieved any success in this 
 difficult branch of art. 
 
 Su John Watson Gordon, E.A., the last of our 
 portrait painters whom death has taken from us, was 
 born in Edinburgh, in 1790, being the son of Captain 
 Watson, of Overmans in Berwickshire, — a post-captain 
 in the British navy. Through his father's family, young 
 Gordon claimed a Scottish cousinship with Sir Walter 
 Scott, through his mother's relations with Eobertson the 
 historian, and Falconer the seaman, who wrote "The 
 Shipwreck," and afterwards perished in a storm at sea. 
 Young Gordon was educated with a view to the army, 
 and interest made for his entering the Royal Military 
 Academy at Woolwich, but being too young for admission 
 he was remitted for a time to the Trustees' School at 
 Edinburgh, to improve himself in drawing. John Gra- 
 ham, who then was head master, must have been either 
 an exceedingly clever teacher, or particularly fortunate 
 
SIR JOHN WATSON GORDON, R.A. 
 
 77 
 
 iin his pupils, since Wilkie, Allan, and Burnet were 
 among them, besides many others who afterwards at- 
 tained a higher reputation than their master. Here 
 Gordon remained four years, and whether it was the 
 atmosphere of the place inspired him, or the clever com- 
 panions by whom he was surrounded, after a time he 
 turned his views towards art as a profession. His first 
 efforts, like those of most young men, were in the direc- 
 tion of history painting. Shrewd no less as a youth 
 t:han as a man, he soon found that his talent might 
 be better employed in portraiture, and succeeding in his 
 efforts, continued true to this branch of art all his 
 liife. After Raeburn's death in 1823, Watson Gordon 
 became his successor in his Edinburgh practice, and all 
 tlhe celebrities of the Scottish capital visited his studio, 
 — from Walter Scott to Professor Wilson among literary 
 nnen ; with Dr. Chalmers, among the theologians ; Lord- 
 JTustice-General Hope and Lord-Justice Boyle, among 
 tihe lawyers ; the Earl of Hopetown, and a host of other 
 eminent Scotsmen. Watson Gordon was one of the 
 earliest members of the Scottish Academy ; and in 1850, 
 om the death of Sir W. Allan, became their president. At 
 tlhe same time, her Majesty gave him the vacant appoint- 
 ment of Queen's limner for Scotland, and conferred on 
 hiim the honour of knighthood. Sir Watson Gordon had 
 been elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Lon- 
 dlon in 1841, and obtained the full honours of the body 
 im 1851. Loving his profession, he lived in the practice 
 olf it, and led a single life in the social circle of his Scot- 
 tish friends. True to his native city till the last, he died 
 tlhere, rather suddenly, on 1st June, 1864 
 
 His portraits are bold and manly, his figures well 
 
78 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 placed on the canvas, and he at all times seized happily 
 the best expression of his sitters, giving them cha- 
 racter without an approach to caricature — the sagacity 
 and shrewdness of the Scottish character in all its best 
 aspects, when united to intellect and a high cultivation. 
 He had little sense or feeling for colour, and never 
 seemed to wish to escape from the black garments of 
 his male sitters by the introduction of the furniture, in 
 which most portrait painters so largely indulge. Fre- 
 quently in his male portraits the only colour is that of 
 the flesh, with a negative warmth in the background ; 
 yet there was a great harmony in the grey tones of his 
 work, which prevents us feeling so much the absence of 
 colour ; and even his female portraits, in which the same 
 scale predominated, did not lose so much from this cause 
 as might have been expected. He was most successful 
 in his male heads of persons advanced in life, which are 
 painted more as completed sketches than pictures, and 
 gain thereby great force, freshness, and vigour. His 
 works when exhibited in Paris, in 1855, were greatly 
 admired, particularly the portraits of Professor Wilson 
 and the Provost of Peterhead, and won for him a medal 
 on that occasion. 
 
 It is not right to close our list of the contemporaries; 
 of Lawrence without some notice of Henry Perronet 
 Briggs, E.A., although he can hardly be so designated. 
 Born in 1792, he entered as a student of the Koyal. 
 Academy in 1811, and beginning life as a subject painter, 
 won his way to honours by pictures which, if not of the! 
 highest class of art, have great merit in the construction 
 of the subject, the frequent originality of action in the* 
 figures, and the mode of telling his story. " The first, 
 
HENRY PERRONET BRIGGS, R.A. 
 
 79 
 
 Conference between the Spaniards and Peruvians," now 
 in the Vernon Gallery, and " The Attempt of Colonel 
 Blood to Steal the Crown," presented to the Royal 
 Academy on his election in 1832, are good specimens 
 of his powers. The drawing is usually correct, the 
 colouring forced and somewhat rank, and the flesh has 
 often a polished and shining look, very different to the 
 tender and somewhat absorbent nature of its true surface. 
 There is also a large work by him in Greenwich Hospital, 
 " George III. on board the Queen Charlotte presenting 
 a sword to Earl Howe after the Victory of the 1st of * 
 June, 1794," a work for which the British Institution 
 gave him a premium of 100 guineas. 
 
 After his election as a full member, Briggs almost 
 entirely devoted himself to portraiture, finding himself 
 compelled, from the confined patronage of art at that 
 time and the necessities that followed upon his marriage 
 of providing for the future household, to adopt this more 
 lucrative branch of his profession. Many of the most 
 eminent persons of the day sat to him. His portrait of 
 Lord Eldon is one of his most characteristic works ; but, 
 in both his subject-pictures and his portraits, his colour- 
 ing was rather strong than true, and his flesh painting 
 hot in the shadows and forced in the lights. His wife, 
 to whom he was much attached, died some years before 
 him ; his own death took place on the 18fch January, 
 1844, in his fifty-first year. 
 
80 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JOSEPH WILLIAM MALLOKD TURNER, R.A. 
 
 The Associations of his Birthplace — Not calculated to awake Landscape Art 
 — Early Works — Architectural Ruins and topographical Landscape — 
 Finds new Scenes at Bristol and on the Wye — Truthful Power of his 
 Drawing — His Study from Nature and at the Royal Academy — His 
 impulsive Manner of Painting — Causes of the Decay in some of his 
 Works — His characteristic Teaching described — His Lectures — 
 Leaving his first Manner, attempts Nature's grandest Effects — The 
 early Appreciation of his Art — His mystic Poems — His practice in Oil 
 and his imitative Powers — Mistaken Charges of unfair Rivalry with 
 other Painters — Effect of his Water-Colour Art upon his Practice in 
 Oil — His early and later Manners described — And his best Works 
 examined — Compared with Claude — Reminiscences of him — The 
 "Varnishing Days" — Summary of his Art — Had no pre-Raphaelite 
 Tendencies — His great Industry — Gift to the Nation — Death — In- 
 creased Value of his Works. 
 
 His birth-place and the scenes among which Turner 
 passed his childhood, may be thought not the best fitted 
 to form a landscape-painter, and to fill his youthful mind 
 with images of beauty. Born 23rd April, 1775, the son 
 of a hair-dresser of small means, and bred in Maiden 
 Lane, in the heart of this great metropolis, he could enjoy 
 very little of the sight of " fresh fields and pastures new." 
 In the hovels and sheds of the Covent Garden of that 
 day, he might make acquaintance with a few specimens 
 of roots and flowers, and, strolling down to St. James's 
 Park in the summer evenings, get a glimpse of trees and 
 greensward. But even the park was far less foliated 
 
JOSEPH W. MALLORD TURNER, R.A. 
 
 81 
 
 than in the present day. Many of the old trees were 
 stagged and dead, and new ones were not yet planted ; 
 the enclosure was merely a green field with a strait 
 carnal down the middle, strictly guarded, however, from 
 the intrusion of the London boys by a high wooden 
 fence in a dry ditch, a few sheep and oxen, waiting for 
 the butcher, alone privileged to rove in the rank grass. 
 Still there was green, and the sky had somewhat of a 
 horizon, whilst in the nest of close and intricate alleys 
 that bordered on Maiden Lane, and led from it into the 
 great thoroughfares — alleys so narrow, that literally in 
 some of them the inhabitants could shake hands out of 
 opposite windows — it was but a mere strip of the bright 
 heavens that could be seen by the world below. 
 
 But, winding down another set of lanes and alleys, 
 young Turner might, and no doubt often did, wander away 
 to the strand of the broad river ; a river unequalled in the 
 woirld for its picturesque variety, and not as yet spanned 
 by so many bridges, or cumbered with steamboats, 
 andl steamboat-piers ; not as yet quite so muddied and 
 thic3kened with the refuse of the extra million dwellers 
 on its shores. Here his love of rivers and river scenery, 
 no doubt, was fostered. The first drawing he exhibited 
 was a view on its southern bank, as was also the first oil 
 picture — "Moonlight," a study at Millbank, now in the 
 national collection ; and his last days were passed in an 
 obscure dwelling by its side, whence he could see its broad 
 bosom gleaming under the western sun. The quaint 
 pictmresqueness and curious relics of architecture in the 
 streeets of his own neighbourhood may also account for 
 his love of cities, and of architecture. Some of the cha- 
 racteristic relics that surrounded the home of his young 
 tol. ii. 40 
 
82 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 days are as they then were, and the unstudied irregularity 
 of the main thoroughfares, still remains : Holborn, with its 
 bars, and the Strand, with its churches in the midst ; but 
 some, like old Exeter Change, the mews at Charing 
 Cross, and the picturesque old market in Covent Garden, 
 have already been taken out of the way, and many 
 others are doomed to be replaced by the ugliness of 
 tubular girders and iron railroad bridges, while great 
 spaces in the vicinity of his birth-place are being cleared 
 for new bridge approaches and central railroad termini. 
 In the young days of the painter, London had been 
 untouched for nearly half a century, and it was not until 
 Waterloo had, at a long interval, succeeded Trafalgar, 
 and the land had had time to rest from war, that bridge 
 and column grew to commemorate them, and wealth 
 began to show itself in larger buildings and wider 
 streets. 
 
 It is not very clearly stated by any of his biographers 
 when young Turner began to show a love for art ; but it 
 is most probable that it was developed early, since in 
 1789, when only fourteen years of age, he was admitted 
 a student in the Koyal Academy, and in 1790 exhibited 
 on its walls foi the first time, "A View of the Arch- 
 bishop's Palace at Lambeth," No. 644. Some sketches, 
 which must be prior to either of these periods, are now 
 exhibited at South Kensington. One of them is a rude 
 pencil drawing, the sky and the water only being tinted 
 blue, of the river Avon at Clifton (Frame No. 1), on which 
 the artist has written, in a boyish hand, " Looking up the 
 Eiver from "Wallace's Well ; " another drawing is a slightly 
 varied sketch, in colours, of the same river ; and the 
 sketch of " The North-west View of Malmesbury Abbey," 
 
HIS FIRST ART-WORKS. 
 
 83 
 
 inn the same frame, which was made in 1791, seems to 
 inndicate a somewhat earlier date for the Bristol drawings, 
 wvhich were probably done on some visit to his uncle, a 
 fe'ellmonger at Bristol; while many bright glimpses of 
 hiiis native river, and most likely much early practice of 
 skketching, must have arisen from his residence with 
 arnother maternal uncle at Brentford, where he was sent 
 too be nursed after one of his boyish illnesses. 
 
 Turner was from the beginning diligent in the pur- 
 suuit of his profession, and soon began to turn it to 
 profitable account: it is said that he exhibited his 
 ju^venile performances for sale in the windows of his 
 fatither's shop in Maiden Lane ; that he was employed to 
 coolour prints for Baphael Smith, the engraver, and to 
 waash in backgrounds for the architects, a practice more 
 reesorted to half a century ago than in our own day. 
 Eviven at this early time, and under such unpromising 
 circumstances, there was an originality in his work : we 
 are-e told that he was employed by a Mr. Dobson, an 
 arcchitect, to colour the perspective front of a mansion, 
 anad that in putting in the windows, Turner showed the 
 effdect of reflected light rrom the sky, contrasting with 
 thee inner dark of the room on the uneven surface of the 
 pannes. This was a new treatment, and his employer 
 objected to it, declaring that the work must be coloured 
 as a was usual ; that is, the panes an unvarying dark grey, 
 thee bars white. "It will spoil my drawing," said the 
 artifcist. " Bather that than my work," answered the 
 arcbhitect ; " I must have it done as I wish." Turner 
 dogggedly obeyed, and when he had completed the work, 
 left t his employer altogether. The sequel of the story is 
 curirious : some time after, it occurred to the architect to 
 
 40—2 
 
84 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 try a drawing on the principle he had disapproved, 
 and remembering Turner's work he coloured it nearly 
 the same. It was sent to the Royal Academy, and 
 accepted, and was so much admired by Smirke, that he 
 sought the acquaintance of Dobson, which led to a 
 union between the families. So much for genius in 
 the mere colouring of a window. 
 
 It would appear from the un-numbered sketches 
 Turner left behind him, that he thoroughly appreciated 
 and acted up to the maxim of " no day without a line," 
 and that his sketch-book was always in requisition. 
 Smith, it would seem, introduced him to Girtin ; and also 
 to Dr. Munro, who employed both Girtin and Turner, 
 as we have already told, to sketch for him, paying them 
 at the rate of half-a-crown an evening, and providing 
 them with a supper after their labours. We also know 
 that Turner gave lessons ; receiving five shillings and even 
 ten shillings per lesson— a large sum in those days. 
 
 Although London and its noble river afforded some 
 of the earliest subjects for his pencil, he soon began to 
 travel, to enlarge his field of study. His journey to his 
 Bristol relatives had led him into river scenery widely 
 different from that of the flat alluvion of the Thames ; to 
 a river walled and prisoned, and in places apparently 
 land-locked in its stony channel. His early architectural 
 and topographical labours gave him a taste for, and led 
 him to examine, the noble ruins spread over the land. 
 As a proof of this architectural and topographical feeling, 
 Mr. Wornum tells us that of thirty-two drawings exhibited 
 by Turner from 1790 to 1796, no less than twenty-three 
 are architectural ; principally views of the great cathedrals 
 and abbey churches of the kingdom. As evidence of his 
 
AND TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
 
 85 
 
 diligence and promptitude, we learn that Girtin having 
 mentioned, in the presence of Turner, his intention to 
 pay a sketching visit to St. Albans, but delaying to do 
 so for a few days, he was surprised to meet his friend 
 returning with a book of sketches ; Turner having fore- 
 stalled him and already reaped the harvest, while Girtin 
 w:as thinking of starting to win it. 
 
 Mr. P. Cunningham says that, " finding topo- 
 graphical drawing a profitable pursuit that gave him 
 fresh opportunities for sketching new compositions of 
 mature and art, Turner never, even at this early period, 
 alllowed a season to pass without fresh excursions into 
 the English counties. Thus from the pictures which he 
 exhibited in 1795, we find that he had been within the 
 previous year to Cambridge, Peterborough, Lincoln, 
 Shrewsbury, Tintern, and Wrexham;" and before he 
 beecame an associate of the Royal Academy in 1800, 
 hiis exhibited works range over twenty-six counties of 
 Emgland and Wales, many of which he had apparently 
 vitsited several times, at a period when travelling was far 
 letss easy than in onr own day. Turner long continued 
 hits topographical labours for the booksellers, which led 
 om to his undertaking, later in life, a series of works 
 illiustrating our cities, rivers and coast scenery. For 
 so)me years prior to 1801, he designed the headings 
 foir the Oxford Almanack, which were engraved by M. 
 A.. Rooker until his death in that year. Wyatt, the 
 fname-maker of Oxford, used to relate a characteristic 
 stcory of Turner, but whether of this period or later 
 is uncertain. He had employed this painter to make 
 so>me drawings of Oxford, which obliged him to sit 
 im the public street. The price to be paid for the work 
 
86 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 was a liberal one, but, as annoyances and hindrances took 
 place from the curiosity of spectators, before Turner 
 began the drawing of Christ Church he made Wyatt 
 obtain for him the loan of an old postchaise, which was 
 so placed in the main street that Turner could work 
 from the window ; and when the drawing was paid for 
 the painter insisted on receiving three shillings and six- 
 pence which he had disbursed for the use of the old 
 vehicle. 
 
 Turner, we have seen, began his art by sketching 
 from nature, and never omitted any opportunity of 
 enlarging his knowledge by the same means ; continu- 
 ing the practice to the latest period of a long life, as 
 the following incident, related to have happened within 
 two or three years of his death, will prove : — He had 
 wandered away in the summer months along the coast 
 of Normandy, as he said himself, looking out for storms 
 and shipwrecks : he carried nothing with him but a 
 change of linen and his sketch-book. Arrived at Eu, he 
 found it necessary to have his shoes repaired, and took a 
 lodging in the house of a fisherman. He had not been 
 long there before an officer of the court inquired for 
 him, and told him that Louis Philippe, the King of the 
 French, who was then staying at the Chateau, hearing 
 that Mr. Turner was in the town, had sent to desire his 
 company to dinner (they had been well known to one 
 another in England). Turner strove to apologize — 
 pleaded his want of dress — but this was overruled ; his 
 usual costume was the dress-coat of the period, and 
 he was assured that he only required a white neck- 
 cloth, and that the king must not be denied. The 
 fisherman's wife easily provided a white neckcloth, by 
 
THEIR GREAT NUMBER AND MERIT. 
 
 87 
 
 cutting up some of her linen, and Turner declared that 
 he spent one of the pleasantest of evenings in chat with 
 his old Twickenham acquaintance. On starting for these 
 excursions, he never intimated the route he intended to 
 take, nor the time of his stay or of his return, this heing 
 ■determined by the weather and his success. The National 
 'Gallery alone possesses nearly 1,000 of his sketches, 
 works of high excellence and of the most varied character, 
 ^which were the fruits of these rambles. 
 
 In sketching, Turner used all methods ; but rarely, 
 wery rarely, the medium of oil. And it is this water- 
 colour tendency of his art, and this constant recurrence 
 tto nature, that gives the interpreting key to all his after 
 practice : this will be seen as we proceed. Some of the 
 ^sketches are merely a pencil outline, faithful as if traced 
 ffrom a camera — no timidity, no carelessness, no hesita- 
 ttion— but a clear, well-defined outline of the whole, and 
 cof its many details, as in the best topographical drawings. 
 Firm must have been the hand, and well-educated the 
 ©ye, of him who produced such works ; no want of drawing 
 ]power is evinced, although some must have been pro- 
 duced almost as rapidly as by the camera : done on the 
 ccoach top, or on the deck of the boat tossed on the rest- 
 lless sea, under every circumstance of inconvenience and 
 lhaste. Every form of nature is represented, foliage and 
 weedage, leaf by leaf (as in Nos. 50 and 51). Birds, 
 ffrom the skein of flying ducks (No 22) , to the swans, 
 ((No. 122). Beasts (as No. 52 and 53), and human beings 
 iin repose and in action. Slight "bits" from the wayside 
 rare there, as well as whole cities, house by house and 
 eadifice' beside edifice (as Nos. 6 and 115). Cathedrals 
 with all their varied details and enrichments. 
 
88 
 
 A CENTUKY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Passing from the mere outlines, we find sketches of 
 colour reckoned by thousands ; of which some hundred 
 or two are hung on the walls of the National Gallery, as 
 a sample of what the nation alone possesses by this 
 man's liberality, while of the numbers of such works in 
 private hands it is impossible to form an estimate. Here 
 again we have every variety of subject and every amount 
 of labour, from the simplest blots of truth of relation, as 
 in the two dark ships near the horizon on a sunset sky 
 
 (87) , or the slight splash of blue and distant Alps 
 
 (88) , to the most complete studies for the finished 
 picture of the "Val d'Aosta." Sometimes simple flat 
 washes of local tint indicate the whole of a wide ex- 
 tended landscape (98, 99, 100), sometimes the relation 
 of mountain to sky, or of a bit of foreground to distance 
 (76) , is happily and minutely given ; of mere studies of 
 skies it is said that Turner's are to be reckoned by 
 thousands. As he advanced in art he made sketches for 
 his pictures, and sketches from nature on grey papers, 
 heightening the lights, or giving the points of expression 
 by white or body colour, but still using the colour of his 
 masses translucently as if on white paper ; some of these 
 sketches, mere broad flat masses of colour, are so truly 
 beautiful and effective, rendering nature so fully to us, that 
 we seem to want no more completion, but are thoroughly 
 satisfied with the result before us. Strange to say, these 
 rare sketches that sparkle with the freshness of nature's 
 dew-drops, are, while we write these notes, hung in juxta- 
 position on the same wall with the picture of the man of 
 rules — the " brown tree" baronet who, although but an 
 amateur (a clever one, truly) , laid down the law 'to the 
 born artists and men of genius of his day. Sir George 
 
HIS ACADEMIC STUDY. 
 
 89 
 
 Beaumont's " Jacques Moralising " is side by side with 
 Turner's sketches. The subject is very cleverly treated, 
 the scene chosen would be beautiful did it remind us of 
 the dews of nature or the breath of heaven ; but these 
 never seem to have fallen to moisten it, or breathed upon 
 to refresh it. Yet all is strictly according to rule : the 
 dark spot of the picture, the man's head, is duly brought 
 out against the highest light, the foam of the waterfall : 
 the focus of colour, the red vest of Jacques, contrasts 
 learnedly with the grey of the placid water beneath the 
 fall : the foreground is dark, according to rule : the 
 trees have ranged themselves, or been arranged by the 
 painter, with elegance and grace : the principal forms 
 being repeated in a secondary group. Everything is in its 
 right place ; it is without fault ; yet one of the little 
 sketches that sparkle around it is well worth a dozen 
 such proper pictures. 
 
 We have stated that in 1789, when only fourteen 
 years of age, Turner was admitted a student of the Royal 
 Academy. Here he went through the usual course of 
 study, and, from some of his works that remain, would 
 seem to have been admitted into the School of the 
 Living Model. It has been objected to him that he could 
 not draw the figure ; and the ignorant laugh at many of 
 the figures which he has introduced into his landscapes, 
 while others detract from the Academy teaching for the 
 same reason. But Turner's sketches show that he was a 
 most ready and able draughtsman, while his effort is rather 
 to give the right treatment to his figures — the true effect 
 of light and sun and air, their true keeping in the picture, 
 and the indefinite mystery of sunshine upon them — than 
 to define their forms or to complete their outline. 
 
90 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin says : — " The Academy taught Turner 
 nothing, not even the one thing it might have done, — 
 the mechanical process of safe oil-painting, sure vehicles, 
 and permanent colours." Such assertions as these are 
 easily made, and difficult to disprove ; but this is certain, 
 Turner himself was not ungrateful to the Academy, 
 either as to its teaching or its friendly membership, as 
 his life-long fellowship with its members clearly proves. 
 Moreover, his early pictures — when modes of painting 
 learnt in the schools, clung about him — were safely and 
 solidly painted, and show no signs of cracking. Wit- 
 ness his " Crossing the Brook," his " Richmond Hill," 
 and many others of this period. Some notes upon 
 nine or ten pictures of various periods, made on the 
 occasion of Mr. Bicknell's sale in 1863, show that the 
 works of his earlier time were in the soundest state, 
 simply and carefully painted, and without any failure of 
 colour. It was only when his eager pursuit of the effects 
 of sunlight, mist, and extensive distance bathed in air 
 and vapour, led him on to frequent scumblings, and at 
 times to the use of water colours in his oil paintings, 
 and his impulsive genius carried him away to paint 
 hastily, and to force his works with rapid driers, that the 
 foundations of these failures were laid. 
 
 Another cause of failure has also been hinted at, 
 — Turner's known practice of painting largely upon 
 his pictures on the " varnishing da}^s." His care- 
 less indifference on such occasions to the preserva- 
 tion of his works, is seen in so many of his pictures, 
 that it seems almost needless to give instances ; but 
 we may refer to one or two. The fine picture of 
 "The Beach at Hastings," the property of Sir A. A. 
 
" THE VARNISHING DAYS." 
 
 91 
 
 Hood, is painted solidly, carefully, and in his best 
 manner, but in the upper part of the sky there are 
 large patches of pure magylph that have been put in — 
 perhaps on the varnishing days — as golden cloudlets; they 
 are spread on with the knife, while lower down the edge of 
 rolling cloud is outlined with the same vehicle : when first 
 done, they were no doubt wonderfully luminous and bril- 
 liant, but have now become brown and horny, and a blot 
 to this otherwise perfect picture. In the same — almost 
 wilful — mood, large patches of white have been spread over 
 some of the fleecy clouds in the picture of "Line Fishing 
 off Hastings," No. 207, in the Sheepshanks' Collection, 
 which, from the pigment not having been used with the 
 same vehicle as the rest of the picture, and from the pure 
 surface obtained by spreading with the knife, has retained 
 its brilliancy, and is out of keeping with the other parts of 
 the painting. Moreover, at these times, such was his 
 love of colour, that any rich tint on a brother painter's 
 palette, so tempted him, that he would jokingly remove a 
 large portion of it to his own, and immediately apply it to 
 his picture, irrespective of the medium with which it was 
 made up. From our own palette he has whisked off, on 
 more occasions than one, a luscious knob of orange 
 vermilion, or ultramarine, tempered with copal, and at 
 once used it on a picture he was at work upon with a 
 mastic magylph. Such a practice, productive of no 
 mischief at the moment, would break up a picture when 
 the harder drier began to act on that which was of a less 
 contractile nature. 
 
 Again, as to the pictures left on his own walls 
 
 for any time, — and this relates to all those now in the 
 
 » 
 
 national collection, as well as to many others which 
 
92 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 remained for years in his studio, — the utter neglect 
 and carelessness with which they were treated, would 
 have destroyed pictures of the strongest constitutions, 
 much more the delicate, fragile works which he loved to 
 produce. The scene in his rooms on the occasion of his 
 funeral would have saddened any lover of art, for the 
 works left behind, almost as much as for the genius that 
 had passed away. The gallery seemed as if broom or 
 dusting-brush had never troubled it. The carpet, or 
 matting (its texture was undistinguishable from dirt), was 
 worn and musty ; the hangings, which had once been a 
 gay amber colour, showed a dingy yellow hue where the 
 colour was not washed out by the drippings from the 
 ceiling : for the cove and the glass sky-lights were in a 
 most dilapidated state, many panes broken and patched 
 with old newspapers. From these places the wet had 
 run down the walls, and loosened the plaster, so that it 
 had actually fallen behind the canvas of one picture, 
 11 The Bay of Baise," which, hanging over the bottom 
 of the frame, bagged outwards, with the mass of accumu- 
 lated mortar and rubbish it upheld. Many of the pictures 
 — " Crossing the Brook" among others — had large pieces 
 chipped or scaled off ; while others were so fast going to 
 decay, that the gold first, and then the ground, had 
 perished from the very frames, and the bare fir-wood 
 beneath was exposed. It may well be supposed that in 
 such a damp and mouldy atmosphere any pictures would 
 suffer, much more the fragile works of Turner's last period, 
 irregularly carried out as has been described. Many of 
 those belonging to the nation have required a great deal 
 of restoration to fit them to appear at all, and all have 
 lost a portion of their first beauty and their first precious- 
 
HIS ACADEMY LIFE-VTSITORSHIP. 
 
 93 
 
 ness. But surely when we learn that his earliest works 
 are the best as to mere execution, and find the painter 
 recklessly departing from good methods, careless and 
 indifferent in the selection of vehicles and materials, 
 and as to any proper consideration of his works, it is too 
 much to enter such unfounded charges of bad methods 
 and bad teaching against the schools : in which, more- 
 over, he is said to have learnt nothing. 
 
 As no lists of the attendance of students were kept at 
 that time, it is impossible to tell how much or how little 
 Turner worked in the schools of the Academy ; but it 
 would seem fair to infer that much of the power of 
 drawing and readiness of hand shown, soon after the 
 date of his admission, in his sketches, resulted from the 
 teaching of the Academy, rather than, in the absence of 
 all evidence, except as to his studentship, to imply that 
 one so diligent and laborious learnt nothing there. One 
 thing is certain, that his brother members believed in his 
 power not only to draw the figure but to instruct others, 
 since they repeatedly elected him a Visitor in the life 
 school (a duty not usually confided to a landscape 
 painter) ; and those who studied in the schools during 
 his visitorship will recollect the valuable assistance that 
 he gave the students at those times. We, at least, truly 
 valued his teaching. When a visitor in the life school 
 he introduced a valuable practice, which it is to be 
 regretted has not been continued : he chose for study a 
 model as nearly as possible corresponding in form and 
 character with some fine antique figure, which he placed 
 by the side of the model posed in the same action ; 
 thus, the "Discobulus of Myron" with one of the best of 
 our trained soldiers : the " Lizard Killer" with a youth in 
 
94 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the roundest beauty of adolescence : the " Yenus de' 
 Medici " beside a female in the first period of youthful 
 womanhood. The idea was original and very instruc- 
 tive : it showed at once how much the antique sculptors 
 had refined Nature ; which, if in parts more beautiful 
 than the selected form which is called ideal, as a whole 
 looked common and vulgar by its side. 
 
 Turner's conversation, his lectures, and his advice 
 were at all times enigmatical, not from want of know- 
 ledge, but from want of verbal power. Rare advice it 
 was, if you could unriddle it, but so mysteriously given 
 or expressed that it was hard to comprehend — conveyed 
 sometimes in a few indistinct words, in a wave of the 
 hand, a poke in the side, pointing at the same time to 
 some part of a student's drawing, but saying nothing- 
 more than a " Humph ! " or " What's that for ? " Yet 
 the fault hinted at, the thing to be altered was there, if 
 you could but find it out ; and if, after a deep puzzle, 
 you did succeed in comprehending his meaning, he would 
 congratulate you when he came round again, and give 
 you some further hint ; if not, he would leave you with 
 another disdainful growl, or perhaps seizing your porte- 
 crayon, or with his broad thumb, make you at once 
 sensible of your fault. To a student who was intent 
 on refining the forms before he had got the action of his 
 figure, he would thrust with the point of his thumb at 
 the place of the two nipples and the navel, and — very 
 likely with the nail — draw down the curve of the depres- 
 sion of the sternum and linea alba, to show that pose, 
 action and proportion were to be the first consideration. 
 To another who, painting from the life, was insipidly 
 finishing up a part without proper relation to the whole, 
 
AND LECTURES ON PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 95 
 
 he would — taking the brush from his hand, and without 
 a word — vigorously mark in the form of the shadow and 
 the placing of the high lights, to indicate that the rela- 
 tions of the whole should be the student's first considera- 
 tion. The schools were usually better attended during 
 his visitorships than during those of most other members, 
 from which it may be inferred that the students appre- 
 ciated his teaching. This, however, relates to the middle 
 period of his life, and not to the time now under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 His lectures on perspective, after he was elected to 
 the professorship, were, from his naturally enigmatical 
 and ambiguous style of delivery, almost unintelligible. 
 Half of each lecture was addressed to the attendant 
 behind him, who was constantly busied, under his mut- 
 tered directions, in selecting from a huge portfolio draw- 
 ings and diagrams to illustrate his teaching ; many of 
 these were truly beautiful, speaking intelligibly enough 
 to the eye, if his language did not to the ear. As illus- 
 trations of aerial perspective and the perspective of 
 colour, many of his rarest drawings were at these lectures 
 placed before the students in all the glory of their first 
 unfaded freshness. A rare treat to our eyes they were. 
 Stothard, the librarian to the Eoyal Academy, who was 
 nearly deaf for some years before his death, was a con- 
 stant attendant at Turner's lectures. A brother member, 
 who judged of them rather from the known dryness of 
 the subject, and the certainty of what Turner's delivery 
 would be, than from any attendance on his part, asked 
 the librarian why he was so constant. " Sir," said he, 
 "there is much to see at Turner's lectures — much that 
 I delight in seeing, though I cannot hear him." 
 
96 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 It has already been remarked that the art of water- 
 colour painting had its origin in topography, and that 
 the minute attention to facts and details so necessary in 
 topographical works was a direct and valuable initiation 
 to the careful study of Nature. We have seen also that 
 Turner began art as a water-colour painter, labouring at 
 drawings of local scenery. The works which he exhi- 
 bited at the Koyal Academy for the first seven years were 
 all views. But Turner's genius was not of a nature to 
 allow him long to continue painting simply representative 
 landscapes, or to treat his subjects merely topographi- 
 cally. In 1793, we note the first indication of an 
 attempt to treat his picture as modified or changed by 
 passing atmospheric effects. One of his works of this 
 year is " The Rising Squall — hot wells from St. Vin- 
 cent's Rocks." Still he continued for some time to con- 
 fine himself principally to views of buildings, towns, &c. ; 
 no doubt studying effects in which he was hereafter to 
 prove so great a master. In 1796, when he exhibited 
 eleven works, we again find a pure subject picture, 
 " Fishermen at Sea " (305). In 1797, he exhibited his 
 first oil picture of " Moonlight," already alluded to, and 
 another subject, " Fishermen Coming Ashore." In the 
 exhibition previous to his admission to the associateship, 
 and when we may presume his works were of sufficient 
 importance and merit to justify the election which so 
 shortly took place, he again exhibited eleven works : mere 
 localities had now given place to the embodiment of some 
 sentiment, some characteristic treatment of his subject, 
 as sun-lighted, or shrouded in mist or storm. Of these 
 eleven works, the description in the catalogue shows 
 seven at least to have been of this character : we have 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS ART. 
 
 97 
 
 " Fishermen previous to a Storm " (55). " The Battle 
 of the Nile " (275), " Kilgarran Castle, hazy sunrise " 
 (305). " Sunny Morning " (325), " Warkworth Castle, 
 Thunderstorm, approaching sunset," " Abergavenny — 
 clearing up after a shower " (326), " Morning," &c. 
 In this, and the former year also, he began to append 
 long poetical quotations to his works. The first of 
 these quotations seems almost to foreshadow the great 
 features of his future art, it is appended to his picture of 
 " Morning among the Coniston Fells, Cumberland," 
 No. 196 (1798) : 
 
 " Ye mists and exhalations ! that now rise 
 From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey, 
 Till the sim paint your fleecy skirts with gold, 
 In honour to the world's great Author, rise : " 
 
 For mist and vapour lit by the golden light of morn, or 
 crimsoned with the tints of evening — spread out to veil 
 the distance, or rolled in clouds and storm — are the 
 great characteristics of Turner's art, as contrasted with 
 the mild serenity, the calm unclouded heaven, of Claude. 
 Henceforth, his quotations from the poets are frequent, 
 : first from Thomson s Seasons, or Milton's Paradise 
 . Lost, but afterwards strange confused stanzas from some 
 ] mythical manuscript called "The Fallacies of Hope." 
 'This is first quoted in 1812, as illustrative of "The 
 ! Snow Storm, Hannibal Crossing the Alps," and thence- 
 i forth to the end Turner was constant to this MS., for in 
 ]1850, the last year in which he exhibited, No. 259, 
 ' " The Departure of the Fleet," is illustrated with a closing 
 c couplet more than usually vague and halting. 
 
 " The Orient moon shone on the departing fleet, 
 Nemesis invoked, the priest held the poisoned cup." 
 
 INo one knows who is the author of this poem, or whether, 
 
 VOL. II. 41 
 
98 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 indeed, it exists at all ; we rather infer that the quotations 
 were manufactured as occasion arose by the painter him- 
 self : they are in the strange ambiguous style of his con- 
 versation, and his attempts at wit, understood only by 
 himself. In 1839 he exhibited a picture at the British 
 Institution called " The Fountain of Fallacy," and the 
 quotation from the MS. is the acme of turgid am- 
 biguity :— 
 
 " Its rainbow dew diffused fell on each anxious lip, 
 Working wild Fantasy, imagining ; 
 First, Science, in the immeasurable 
 Abyss of thought, 
 Measured his orbit slumbering." 
 
 Certainly if Turner understood this, no one else can, 
 and had his pictures been as unintelligible as his poetry, 
 he would have added little to art. 
 
 Bearing in mind the assertions which have been 
 made, that Turner was always misunderstood and under- 
 rated by his contemporaries, it may be instructive to 
 notice such early opinions as we meet with. Mr. Peter 
 Cunningham, in his memoir of Turner, thus notices the 
 criticisms of this period. " It was usual, for some years, 
 to publish 'Companions' and 'Guides ' to the Exhibitions 
 of the Royal Academy, and from these we learn what his 
 ' Fishermen at Sea ' was considered to be like by the 
 critics of the Exhibition of 1796. ' As a sea piece,' says 
 the critic in ' the Companion,' this picture is effective. 
 But the light on the sea is too far extended. The 
 colouring is, however, natural and masterly; and the 
 figures, by not being more distinct and determined, suit 
 the obscure perception of objects dimly seen through the 
 gloom of night, partially illumed.' The author of 'the 
 Critical Guide ' for the same year is still more enthu- 
 
AND CONTEMPORARY OPINIONS. 99 
 
 siastic in his comments on the same picture. ' We 
 recommend this piece, which hangs in the ante-room, 
 to the consideration of the judicious ; it is managed in a 
 manner somewhat novel, yet the principle of that ma- 
 nagement is just : we do not hesitate in affirming that 
 this is one of the greatest proofs of an original mind in 
 the present pictorial display ; the boats are buoyant and 
 swim well, and the undulation of the element is admi- 
 rably deceiving.' " Mr. Cunningham adds : — " The 
 leading critic of this early period was Williams, better 
 known as Anthony Pasquin, the terror of artists, both 
 within and without the Academy. Turner, however, was 
 a favourite with him, and in his ' Touchstone to the 
 present Exhibition,' that of 1797, Anthony tells us what 
 he thinks of ' Fishermen Coming Ashore at Sunset, 
 previous to a Gale.' 4 We have no knowledge of Mr. 
 Turner,' writes this terror among artists, ' but through 
 the medium of his works, which assuredly reflect great 
 credit upon his endeavours. The present picture is an 
 ■undeniable proof of the possession of genius and judg- 
 ] ment ; and, what is uncommon in this age, is, that it par- 
 1 takes but very little of the manner of any other master : 
 ]he seems to view Nature and her operations with a 
 ] peculiar vision, and that singularity of perception is so 
 {adroit, that it enables him to give a transparency and 
 i undulation to the sea, more perfect than is usually seen 
 (on canvas. He has a grace and boldness in the dis- 
 position of his tints and handling which sweetly deceive 
 tthe sense ; and we are inclined to approve him the more, 
 cas all our painters have too servilely followed the steps 
 (of each other, and given us pictures much like japanned 
 ttea-boards, with ships and boats on a smooth glassy 
 
 41—2 
 
100 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 surface, than adequate representations of that inconstant, 
 boisterous, and ever-changing element.' " 
 
 Mr. Caldwell, of Dublin, who was the companion of 
 Athenian Stuart in his travels, has a naive notice of 
 Turner in his correspondence, printed in Nicholls's 
 Literary Illustrations. He says, 14th June, 1802 : — " A 
 new artist has started up, one Turner; he had before 
 exhibited stained drawings, he now paints landscapes in 
 oil : beats Loutherbourg and every other artist all to 
 nothing. A painter of my acquaintance, and a good 
 judge, declares his pencil is magic ; that it is worth 
 every landscape painter's while to make a pilgrimage to 
 see and study his works. Loutherbourg, that he used to 
 think of so highly, now appears mediocre." The Literary 
 Panorama, in 1807, says of " The Smith's Shop" — " This 
 is a truly masterful performance. The artist has pro- 
 duced a breadth, a harmony, and a variety which show 
 that he understands his art thoroughly." Such opinions 
 might be quoted to any extent ; but we must add one by 
 Uwins, a brother artist, who in a letter dated 1815, says, 
 in reference to Turner's works then in the Royal Academy 
 exhibition, that he is " the greatest of all living geniuses, 
 whose works this year are said to surpass all his former 
 outdoings;" and one by Leslie, who writes in 1816 to his 
 friends in America, " Turner is my great favourite of all 
 the painters here. He combines the highest poetical 
 imagination with an exquisite feeling for all the truth 
 and individuality of Nature ; and he has shown that the 
 ideal, as it is called, is not the improving of Nature, but 
 the selecting and combining objects that are most in 
 harmony and character with each other." 
 
 Surely here is enough to show that, even by critics, 
 
HIS PRINCIPLE OF LANDSCAPE ART. 101 
 
 Turner was appreciated from the very commencement 
 of his career. His election as associate of the Koyal 
 Academy at the very earliest period which, according to 
 the rules, he could be chosen ; and, further, his elevation 
 within little more than two years, and when only twenty- 
 six years of age, to full membership, sufficiently prove 
 that his talent and genius were fully appreciated by his 
 brother artists, and received all the honour that their 
 choice could give. 
 
 But to return to the period preceding his associate- 
 ship. Not only did Turner from this time eschew repre- 
 sentative landscape and topographical art for that which 
 is far higher and more noble — for a generalized treat- 
 ment of Nature, avoiding minute details, and looking at 
 his subject as a whole, with all the poetry arising from 
 accidents of storm and sunshine, of driving mist, of early 
 morn or dewy eve — but he actually held as a principle 
 that accurate topographical treatment, mere imitative 
 landscapes, painted as they might in our day be photo- 
 graphed from a given point, embracing all that could be 
 seen from that point, and no more, did not represent the 
 place so fully as a far more general treatment would do : 
 a treatment bringing in, it may be, buildings or objects 
 which from that identical spot were not to be seen, 
 being hidden, perhaps, by nearer objects, or out of the 
 field of the picture — but which from their importance, 
 their magnitude, or their singularity, were especial fea- 
 tures of the scene. Thus he would say that no one 
 should paint London without St. Paul's, or Oxford 
 without the dome of the Bodleian ; and constantly in 
 his pictures he would move a building of importance 
 i considerably to the right or left, to bring it into what he 
 
102 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 considered its best place in the picture. And this is 
 quite consistent with reason, for no one^ but an artist 
 views a town or any scene from a rigidly fixed point. 
 The eye of an ordinary spectator takes in a series of 
 objects as he moves along some line from which they are 
 seen to the best advantage; as, for instance, the low 
 ground from the range of Kichmond Hill, where, as the 
 spectator moves, now this, now that object is blotted out 
 awhile by some nearer one, to reappear and disappear, 
 and again to take its place, perhaps, as the very eye and 
 centre of the scene. Again, we may look upon scenery 
 under some aspects, or at one time of day, and see in it 
 neither feature nor beauty : it may even seem essentially 
 commonplace, from those very details which some would 
 delight in giving so imitatively; but the same scene 
 presents itself, perhaps, in the purple gloom of sunset, 
 massed large and solemnly against a luminous golden 
 sky, and we look with surprise and wonder at its 
 beauty. The true mission of the artist, then, is to seize 
 these golden moments, rare and fleeting — unheeded, 
 perhaps, even in their beauty by common minds — and 
 fix them by his art for ever. What, compared with this, 
 is the merit of building a tree up, leaf by leaf and branch 
 by branch ; of drawing, as if by the camera, every name- 
 less house and every crumbling stack of chimneys, brick 
 by brick ? What is there in such, even if true as truth 
 itself, that affords us delight ? 
 
 After he commenced painting in oil, Turner for some 
 time continued in his exhibition pictures, chiefly to use 
 that medium. We do not find him all at once striking 
 out a new art for himself, but rather walking reverently 
 in the old paths and deferential to old authorities. Many 
 
IMITATION OF OTHER PAINTERS. 
 
 103 
 
 of his earliest works, and of these some of his best, are 
 founded on the Dutch School : as, for instance, the noble 
 picture of " The Shipwreck," painted in 1805 (National 
 Gallery, No. 476), and " The Sun rising in Mist," 
 painted in 1807 (National Gallery, No. 479) ; while in 
 the same collection may be seen imitations of Poussin, 
 as in " The Tenth Plague," 1802 (National Gallery, 
 No. 470), and in " The Goddess of Discord choosing the 
 Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides," 
 1806 (No. 477), in which even the figures are borrowed 
 from that painter ; as in No. 479 they are, with but slight 
 alteration, from Teniers. Wilson, again, is palpably 
 imitated in many of his pictures : thus in " iEneas 
 with the Sybil, Lake Avernus," No. 463, and "A View 
 in Wales," No. 466, both painted in 1800 ; and Claude, 
 notably, in very many of his works. Indeed, Turner 
 evidently felt a strong spirit of rivalry with Claude, and 
 a desire to measure himself, and be measured by the 
 world, in comparison with the great French landscape 
 painter ; as he proved by the special bequest of two of 
 his works to hang between two of the best Claudes in 
 the National Gallery, where they have since been placed. 
 Even the figure painters were not beyond his imitative 
 rivalry ; as in " The Holy Family and St. Joseph," painted 
 in 1813, No. 473, " The Harvest Home," No. 562, and 
 " The Blacksmith's Shop," No. 478, painted in 1807. 
 
 This latter picture is curious, as showing how ready 
 ■our painter was to match himself against any aspirant for 
 .fame. The year before, 1806, " The Village Politicians," 
 rthe work of Wilkie, then only in his twenty-second year, 
 was exhibited in the Eoyal Academy, attracted general 
 attention, and was highly praised. Turner painted " The 
 
 I 
 
101 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Blacksmith's Shop," evidently in direct imitation of the 
 manner and characteristics of the young artist who had 
 so suddenly taken rank before the public, and the work 
 was exhibited the same year with " The Blind Fiddler," 
 the second picture that Wilkie painted in the metropolis. 
 Mr. Wornum, in his Catalogue, very properly notices this, 
 and, in a note to No. 478, says — " This picture, so 
 different from Turner's usual works, is said to have been 
 painted in consequence of the very great praise awarded 
 to Wilkie's ' Village Politicians,' exhibited at the Academy 
 in the previous year." Now, even if this were done with 
 an envious feeling on the part of Turner, and not in a 
 spirit of generous rivalry — rivalry, be it remembered, 
 wherein the younger man, fighting as he did on his 
 own ground, must at least have had many advantages 
 in his favour, and was much more likely to be victorious 
 than to suffer defeat — it at least gives no ground for the 
 insinuations against both Turner and the Royal Academy 
 which are contained in the Life of Wilkie, by his country- 
 man, Allan Cunningham, who mistakes the whole affair ; 
 shifting the contention to a time and place wherein Turner 
 would have it all his own way, and be able to give his 
 competitor a blow without the chance of receiving one 
 in return. 
 
 Mr. Cunningham's version of the story is as follows : 
 — " Now, those who imagine that the Royal Academy is 
 wholly composed of high-minded men of genius, who are 
 not only generous by nature, and free from envy, but 
 proclaimed ' Esquires' by letters patent, are really gentle- 
 men one and all, can know but little of human nature, 
 and less of bodies corporate. The fame of Wilkie, which 
 was almost on every lip, was not heard, it is said, without 
 
ALLEGED UNFAIR RIVALRY. 105 
 
 a, leaven of bad feeling on the part of some of the mem- 
 bers whose genius ought to have raised them above such 
 meanness, and whose works, being in a far different line 
 o>f art, were fairly out of the embittering influence of 
 rivalry. We know not how this was of our own know- 
 ledge, but we know that in arranging the pictures on the 
 walls of the exhibition-rooms, an envious academician 
 c;an make one fine picture injure the effect of another by 
 a startling opposition of colour, while a generous acade- 
 mician can place the whole so as to avoid this cross-fire 
 of colours, and maintain the harmony which we look for 
 im galleries of art. When the doors. of the Exhibition 
 were opened in 1807, while painters, as usual complained ; 
 siome of pictures being hung in an unsuitable place, and 
 o>thers of works placed in injurious lights ; the public were 
 mot slow in observing that ' The Blind Fiddler,' with its 
 sitaid and modest colour, was flung into eclipse by the 
 unmitigated splendour of a neighbouring picture, hung, 
 fior that purpose, as some averred, beside it, and painted 
 into its overpoivering brightness, as others more bitterly 
 Siaid, in the varnishing time, which belongs to academi- 
 cians, between the day when the pictures are sent in and 
 tlhat on which the Exhibition opens. There must be some 
 mistake, we trust, in this ; the arrangement, of which 
 we know complaints were openly made, must have been 
 accidental, for who can believe that a studied attempt 
 .c<ould be made to push back into darkness a youthful 
 i sjpirit struggling into light, or that an able artist could 
 mot but know that he might as well try to keep the sun 
 firom rising, as a genius such as Wilkie's from shining? 
 Lf such a thing occurred, Wilkie was amply avenged in 
 tHie praises of his picture, which were too loud to 
 
» 
 
 106 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 permit even the voice to be heard which averred that 
 his drawing was not in the academic style of art, and 
 that his colouring was too subdued and cold. The human 
 nature which he had stamped on the whole scene tri- 
 umphed over all ; the pictures of the academicians in the 
 same room, with all their scientific drawing and glow, 
 failed to attract. The visitors crowded to ' The Blind 
 Fiddler;' and ' Jupiter presenting to Diana her Bow and 
 Arrows,' ' Flora Unveiled by the Zephyrs,' nay, even 
 ' The Sun Rising through Vapour,' or ' The Blacksmith's 
 Forge,' were disregarded in comparison." 
 
 We might doubt to whom this tirade and these sar- 
 castic insinuations refer — whether to Westall and Kigaud, 
 the painters of the two first-named works ; named only 
 because they follow in the sequence of number — or to 
 the painter of the two last. But Cunningham's son, in 
 his memoir of Turner (p. 24), complements the informa- 
 tion given by his father, and says, that in 1807 Turner 
 " painted and exhibited ' The Sun Eising through Mists,' 
 « Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish ' (No. 162), and, 
 more extraordinary still, 1 A Country Blacksmith disputing 
 upon the price of Iron and the price charged to the 
 Butcher for shoeing his Pony' (135), two pictures which, 
 killed every picture within range of their effects. Oddly- 
 enough, a modest picture thus injured by being hung 
 between two fires, was 'The Blind Fiddler/ then the 
 second picture of a lad raw from Scotland, contriving to 
 exist, without getting into debt, on eighteen shillings a, 
 week. On the varnishing day, set apart for the privi- 
 leged body to which he belonged, Turner, it is said, 
 reddened his sun, and blew the bellows of his art on his 
 'Blacksmith's Forge,' to put the Scotchman's nose out 
 
THE CHARGE PEOVED UNFOUNDED. 
 
 107 
 
 of joint, who had gained such reputation by his ' Village 
 Politicians :' the story is told without naming Turner, in 
 A. Cunningham's 'Life of Wilkie,' and condemned as an 
 untruth by the reviewer of the 'Life' in the Quarterly 
 Review. But there is no doubt of the truth of the story, 
 and that Wilkie remembered the circumstance with some 
 acerbity, though he never resented it openly. I can 
 undertake to say, when ' The Forge' was sold at Lord 
 De Tabley's sale, Wilkie was in Italy, and Collins the 
 painter, in describing the sale to him, in a MS. letter 
 now before me, adds, ' and there was your old enemy 
 < The Forge.' " 
 
 Now it is to be observed that the elder Cunningham 
 does not ground his charge against Turner upon his 
 having painted a picture in imitation of the style of Wilkie, 
 which he really did ; but abuses the Koyal Academy, the 
 " Esquires by Letters Patent," for having intentionally 
 injured the young painter by hanging in juxtaposition 
 with his picture, one " startlingly opposed to it in colour," 
 and calculated, by its " unmitigated splendour," to fling 
 it into eclipse ; and he insinuates that Turner, during 
 the varnishing time, painted this work into " overpower- 
 ing brightness," to the further injury of the rising artist. 
 As the younger Cunningham explains : — " Reddening 
 his sun, and blowing the bellows of his art on the black- 
 smith's forge, to put the Scotchman's nose out of joint." 
 Fortunately for justice, all the three pictures are now 
 national property, and the truth of the charge can easily 
 be tested, not only by the connoisseur, but by the intelli- 
 gent public. It is almost needless to say that the first 
 of the two pictures — " The Sun Rising through Mist" — 
 bung too far away from that of Wilkie in the 1807 
 
108 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Exhibition to do it any injury ; they were many numbers, 
 almost the side of the room, apart. But any one who 
 will take the trouble to look at the picture, will see but 
 little of the "unmitigated splendour" alluded to : will see 
 that it is really a grey picture, and • that the sun, so far 
 from being " reddened," is of the palest yellow, really 
 rising through a grey haze or mist, as the title implies ; 
 so that we may at once take up the charge as against the 
 Blacksmith's forge only. Now, strange to say, this 
 too, instead of being a work " startlingly opposed in 
 colour" to that of Wilkie, is painted imitatively in the 
 grey tones of the latter : instead of a red and blazing 
 forge, as we might expect, a burst of grey smoke, and 
 the palest of yellow flames, is all that the bellows of 
 Turner's art has blown on this occasion, and every one 
 will see that the colour of Wilkie's work is of the two the 
 most "overpowering; " the only red in Turner's picture 
 — the cap of the butcher — being far less in quantity than 
 that of the fiddler, carried out as it is by the red waist- 
 coat of the delighted peasant playing with his child. 
 Why, then, did Collins speak of "your old enemy the 
 forge ? " Certainly not because it was so different from 
 Wilkie's work that the latter had been injured by its 
 neighbourhood ; but more probably because it was so 
 like, and showed by its dashing bravura in painting, 
 how easy such art is, and how easy it is to give the 
 appearance of finish, without the labour that the younger 
 painter had bestowed, — how easy to imitate this style 
 that had so suddenly risen into fame. 
 
 Then as to the Academy, surely it is strange that the 
 world is led to believe that each rising artist has, through 
 much tribulation, and by ways little short of torture and 
 
HIS LABOURS IN WATER-COLOUR. 109 
 
 martyrdom, to enter into that paradise ; yet that no 
 sooner are they safe in the haven of rest, than in their 
 turn they also become tormentors and persecutors. Here 
 was Turner, whose talents one great critic asserts were 
 unknown to the Academy, or at least unappreciated, 
 until in his old age, they were set forth in the writer's 
 own eulogies, — and Wilkie, against whose progress 
 another critic asserts the members of that body were 
 unjustly conspiring. Yet, strange to say, both were 
 elected associates at twenty-four, and full members of the 
 body at the advanced age of twenty-six, and, of course, 
 immediately became in their turn oppressors and con- 
 spirators. 
 
 But we are led aside by these questions. We have 
 seen that Turner's art, however far it might advance, 
 had hitherto been based on old examples, and followed 
 the precedent of his great predecessors. While he 
 was painting for the walls of the Exhibition those noble 
 works, which we at least are inclined to think, with 
 one or two exceptions, his best, and the period during 
 which he produced them (viz., from 1800 to 1820), his 
 best time, he was diligently labouring at the new art of 
 water-colour painting ; very rarely exhibiting the works 
 in this medium publicly, but mostly preparing them for 
 the engravers. This practice seems to have led him to a 
 perfectly new view of his art. Water-colour, depending 
 for its lights on the purity and whiteness of its ground, 
 ; and susceptible of the most infinitesimal gradations of 
 tint and colour by mere dilutions of the pigments with 
 water, has, so far, a wider range than oil is capable of, 
 wherein the tints, when painted solidly — as all the lights 
 must almost of necessity be — are gradated by mixing 
 
110 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the coloured pigments with white ; this admits of far 
 fewer gradations in scale, and has, moreover, the evil of 
 altering somewhat the nature of the colour by such ad- 
 mixture, making the tint produced in a degree absorbent 
 of light, and far less brilliant than in its transparent state 
 by mere dilution. It is true that by glazing the colour 
 over a light ground, some of the advantages of water- 
 colour are obtained, and some even in a higher degree 
 than in that medium; such as increased depth, brilliancy, 
 and force, far greater from the unctuous richness of oil 
 than in water-colour. But even thus treated, the grada- 
 tions are far less delicate, from the fluidity of the medium 
 being less ; while from there being a sensible colour in 
 all oily media which tinges or tarnishes the delicate tints, 
 the use of oil in this manner is almost precluded. 
 
 Turner, in his water-colour art, was led insensibly 
 into these refined gradations ; by them he sought detail 
 with great breadth, and managed to give at least the 
 appearance of the multitudinous details of mountain 
 range or extended plain, the effects of air and light, and 
 the mists that are ever floating in our island atmosphere, 
 — a manner that no one had thought of before him, much 
 less accomplished ; and this manner he sought to carry 
 out in his oil pictures also. His water-colour practice 
 led him to the use of the white ground. He soon 
 perceived the far greater luminousness thus to be 
 obtained; that works so treated, when seen in a room, 
 had as it were light in themselves, and appeared as if 
 the spectator were looking forth into the open air, as 
 compared with the solid paintiness of the works of his 
 contemporaries. But how to use his colour in sufficiently 
 delicate gradations to achieve the same result on a light 
 
VALUE OF HIS WATER-COLOUR PRACTICE. Ill 
 
 ground in oil, as on the paper ground in water-colours, 
 was one of his first difficulties ; and he was led to adopt 
 the use of scumbling, that is to say, of driving very thin 
 films of white, or of colour mixed with white, over a 
 properly prepared ground. By this means he not only 
 obtained infinitely delicate gradations, but successfully . 
 imitated the effects of air and mist ; the brighter tints 
 beneath being rendered greyer and more distant at the 
 same time by the film of white. This enabled him 
 to make the points of the composition — his figures, or 
 other coloured objects in the foreground — stand out in 
 extreme brilliancy, from the use of transparent colour 
 boldly and purely used over the white. 
 
 By these means Turner obtained the whole range of 
 ithe scale, from white — to him the intensest representative 
 <of light— to the purest reds, oranges, blues, purples, &c, 
 ithat the use of the transparent pigments in oil permitted. 
 • Or by a black object, such as a black hat, a dog, or a 
 (cow, the extreme range of his palette from light to dark. 
 'Thus he abandoned the old maxim of art — that a painter 
 i should reserve his palette, and always have something 
 ito enhance the black, the white, or the colour of his 
 jpicture — and expended all the force of his pigments so as 
 tto realize the utmost brilliancy possible. 
 
 This change in Turner's art became manifest about 
 ttbe year 1820. This year was a year of transition ; after 
 iit we find his execution, as well as the principles on 
 which he wrought, entirely changed, from the solid cha- 
 rr&cter of his first manner. For the sake of comparison, 
 ttake the " Shipwreck," (No. 476), painted in 1805, and 
 The Bay of Baise," " Apollo and the Sybil" (No. 505), 
 painted in 1823, wherein the transition to the water- 
 
112 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 colour system is complete. In the former, the principle 
 is dark, with a very limited proportion of light ; in the 
 latter, light with a very limited proportion of dark. Again 
 in the former the work throughout is painted solidly, 
 and with a vigorous and full brush : the sky is solid, the 
 sea is solid and opaque in its execution, even in the 
 darks much of it laid on boldly with the knife. With 
 the single exception of the red jacket of the man at the 
 helm, the few patches of colour that break the solemn 
 monotony of the storm are not glazed, but mixed as 
 opaque tints. Though the scheme of the picture has 
 relation to the Dutch School, it is not Dutch, either in 
 execution or finish, but simple, massive, and large. In 
 " The Bay of Baiae," on the contrary, the whole scheme 
 of the picture is light : instead of the keeping being the 
 result of contrasts of different planes, it consists of infinite 
 gradations of delicate tint ; the hills and distant bay are 
 scumbled into a misty haze ; the foreground has been 
 painted white, or in a very light hue, and broken up into 
 delicate tints, finished with refined diaphanous glazings 
 of colour. The weedage, leafage, and flowers have been 
 painted white, or approaching to it, and have their 
 gorgeous hues given by glazing with colour unmixed 
 with white. The shadows and the principal darks of the 
 foreground were liquid and dark, with the brown amber 
 of rich asphaltum. Were ! yes, alas, were ! for the 
 picture is now but a wreck of what it was. In 1823, 
 when it hung on the walls of the Boyal Academy, we 
 well recollect it a vision of glorious beauty. Now Time 
 has worked its evil will upon it, aided by the neglect of 
 its author, the system of painting he adopted, and the 
 treacherous pigment used for the darks. The aerial blue 
 
EFFECT UPON LANDSCAPE ART. 
 
 113 
 
 of the far-off bay and the hills that marge its shores, are 
 here and there dark with discoloured patches ; the middle 
 distance has been tampered with, the hand of the restorer 
 is visible. The bright hues on the foliage and flowers 
 of the foregronnd have proved as evanescent as the 
 things they represent, the crimson drapery of Apollo 
 hangs like a rent and faded rag, and the darks, strength- 
 ened with asplialte, are cracked and blackened as if the 
 breath of a furnace had passed over them. Wonderful 
 tints here and there speak to the eye, as rare music does 
 to the ear, showing through the faded glazings with 
 which they were once enriched, like the hues of life 
 lingering on the face of death ; it is but the wreck, the 
 beautiful wreck it is true, of a picture that is past. 
 
 Burnet, whose critical remarks on Turner's works are 
 usually sound and well considered, has shown us how 
 contemporary art was affected by this change of principle 
 in Turner. He says (Turner and his Works, p. 61), " The 
 light key upon which most of our present landscape 
 paiinters work, owes its origin to Turner ; the presence of 
 hiss pictures on the walls of the Academy engendered this 
 change from the darker imitations of Wilson and Gains- 
 boirough, or the contemplation of the landscapes of the 
 Duitch School ; light pictures certainly attract more atten- 
 tion than dark, but the question is, how far this style 
 may be carried with safety ; in the opinion of many, the 
 English School are extending this principle to excess. 
 WOkie used to relate an anecdote, that while he was one 
 of ttlie hangers of the pictures, he carried a copy of ' The 
 Woman taken in Adultery,' by Eembrandt, and put it up 
 arn<.ongst the works on the walls of the Academy ; there 
 was a general slhout of triumph in favour of lights — one 
 wol. n. 42 
 
114 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 cried out ' Away with the black masters ! ' another said, 
 £ It looks like a hole in the wall ; ' but after listening to 
 their congratulations in praise of their own style, Wilkie 
 quietly observed, ' If we are on the right road, then the 
 greatest masters of the Italian and British Schools have 
 all been wrong.' " 
 
 We also know that Wilkie, on his return from Italy, 
 complained that the English works were, to his eyes, 
 painted up in the darks, but left flat in , the lights, that 
 is, looking thin and poor. We well remember our- 
 selves the effect of the British pictures when hung in the 
 same building with the works of the French School at 
 the Paris Exhibition, in 1855. They had generally an 
 appearance of chalkiness that had never struck us until 
 we saw them thus juxtaposed, for the French paint 
 lower in tone than we do even in their landscapes, and 
 always seem to reserve their palette, so as to retain 
 both white and colour more intense than is found in the 
 picture, to enable them to emphasize and give focussing 
 points to their works ; while our artists seem lavish of 
 the full power of the palette, and to leave nothing 
 beyond for that little more light, which, according to 
 the well-known painter's paradox, may serve to ma,ke 
 the picture darker and richer — that brighter pigment 
 which is to neutralize any too prevailing colour ; or 
 that still darker touch which is to take out the dairk 
 from a picture, and give it clearness. Such, however, 
 was no longer the art of Turner in the new manner 
 he adopted, and continued until he en<ded his labour 
 with his life. Perhaps this style reached its climax in 
 the picture of "Phryne as Venus going to the Baths," 
 painted in 1838, (No. 522). 
 
TURNER'S " PHRYNE " DESCRIBED. 
 
 115 
 
 This picture represents a wide extended country under 
 the intense blaze of noonday light, compacted of all the 
 mystery of broken tints, of scumblings, and of diapha- 
 nous glazings, of intense contrasts of colour and white, 
 of hot and cold, of breadth of light opposed to small 
 points of extreme dark. The distance is full of details, 
 a rich country of woods and temples sleeping in the sun, 
 all perfectly in keeping ; in the foreground, a crowd of 
 figures accompany the half-draped beauty ; the flesh of the 
 faces is intensely white in the sun's blaze, the dresses are 
 the crimson and purple silks of the East ; across the fore- 
 j ground is thrown a flood of prismatic rays, almost startling ; 
 :it seems as if there were a real sun-ray in the picture, 
 ; and all this obtained almost in the absence of darks : the 
 ] picture is as light as one of his own water-colours, this 
 <one, at least, retaining its brilliancy, having been less in- 
 jjured than most of those which remained on the neglected 
 1 walls of his own studio. Soon after this picture, Turner's 
 ;art began visibly to decline ; he pushed his principle of 
 1 broken tints, of intense light confusing and commingling 
 (the forms, to its utmost extreme ; and some of the last 
 works of his hand, while the artist may regard them 
 with wonder not unmixed with admiration at what they 
 ^suggest, must ever be but caviare to the multitude. 
 
 To us one of Turner's most poetical works is the 
 Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," which he exhibited 
 iin 1829, with the following quotation from Pope's 
 (Odyssey : — 
 
 " Now off at sea, and from the shallows clear, 
 As far as human voice could reach the ear ; 
 With taunts the distant giant I accost, 
 Hear me, O Cyclop ! hear, ungracious host ! 
 'Twas on no coward, no ignoble slave, 
 Thou meditat'st thy meal in yonder cave. 
 
 42—2 
 
116 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Cyclop ! if any, pitying thy disgrace, 
 Ask who disfigured thus that eyeless face ? 
 Say, 'twas Ulysses, 'twas his deed declare — 
 Laertes' son, of Ithaca the fair, 
 Ulysses, far in fighting fields renown'd, 
 Before whose arm Troy tumbled to the ground. 
 
 Thus I : while raging he repeats his cries, 
 With hands uplifted to the starry skies." 
 
 Far in the East the morning is breaking, the horses 
 of the chariot of the sun spring wildly upwards with the 
 " car of day," the luminary is just rising above the blue 
 hills that bound the ocean's shore, flinging a fan of 
 radiant beams up the vault of heaven, whose arch is 
 underhung with fleecy clouds. Here and there are 
 openings into the far blue depths beyond, and flitting 
 like birds with golden plumage athwart the space, are 
 severed cloudlets tipped with the gold and purple hues 
 of morn. On the other side of the picture, the gilded 
 galley in which the hero and his friends escape, is just 
 standing out of a dark cove in the mountain chain. 
 Ulysses is on the poop with hands uplifted, shouting 
 derisively to the blinded giant, while his companions, 
 thickly clustered on mast and yard, unfurl in haste the 
 vast sails, and one by one the red oars are thrust forth 
 from the vessel's burnished sides, ready to sweep away 
 from the inhospitable shore, and out of reach of the 
 missiles the monster may hurl after them. The undula- 
 ting sea, dyed by the rising sun to golden green, reflects 
 on its burnished waves the galley with its flags and 
 pennons, the brawny sailors and the creamy sails. The 
 nymphs of the ocean sympathize with the island hero, 
 and gambol round the vessel's prow, while shoals of flying 
 fish herald his way from the dangerous shore. On the 
 
HIS " POLYPHEMUS " AND " SHIPWRECK." 117 
 
 beach he has left the fires still burning in which the 
 sharpened stake was heated, and far above, on a steep 
 promontory of rock, the wounded monster, dimly seen, 
 large in the purple mists of morn, " lies many a rood," 
 bellowing and writhing in his anguish, so that the ravines 
 echo to his groans. The snowy mountains, whose tops 
 are mingled with the amber sky, shake with the sound 
 and roll their avalanches to the plains below. 
 
 It is impossible to go beyond the power of colour here 
 achieved ; it is on the very verge of extravagance, but 
 yet is no way gaudy. How near it is, is seen in any 
 attempt to copy the picture ; such copies are more surely 
 failures than those from any other of the painter's works. 
 The mere handling is a marvel, the ease and freedom of 
 the work, the thick impasto of tints that are heaped on the 
 mpper sky, making the lower parts recede in true perspec- 
 tive to the rising sun ; the grand way in which the vessel 
 ]moves over the " watery floor," the dream-like poetry 
 <of the whole, make up a picture without a parallel in the 
 world of art. Or, look at his " Shipwreck " (No. 476), 
 .1805, a work whose characteristics are of the Dutch 
 [School, but in which the theme is so treated as to speak 
 Iby its terrible poetry to all, but more especially to 
 JEnglish, minds. The heaving and boiling sea, torn by 
 tthe winds, is mingled with the black heavens all along 
 what might be the horizon : the foam from the crests of 
 tthe broken waves is driven like a snow-wreath across the 
 (dark overhanging thunder-cloud ; yonder, almost hidden 
 Iby the mist and smoky drift of the torn waves, the 
 (doomed vessel lies tost and helpless, the hopeless sea- 
 rmen dropping from hull and bowsprit into the swamp- 
 iing boats. In the foreground, lit up by a fitful gleam, 
 
118 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 are other boats hasting to aid the drowning crew ; 
 one is almost engulphed in the boiling surge ; in the 
 other, the mariners strain hard at the helm to steer clear 
 of their companion. Terror is on every face. 
 
 Turner as an artist was quite aware of the greatness 
 of his own powers, and jealous of their proper recogni- 
 tion ; many indications of this feeling will occur to those 
 who read his life. It was this, and not any want of 
 appreciation of the great French painter, that made him 
 so desirous of measuring himself with Claude, whom the 
 cognoscenti of the day placed on a pinnacle of glory, 
 to which they deemed it impossible for a modern, and 
 more especially for an Englishman, to aspire. It was 
 this induced him to bequeath two of his works to the 
 National Gallery, coupled with a condition that they 
 should be hung side by side with the finest pictures of 
 that classic painter ; and it seems to us that in the choice 
 he made he selected subjects which might be compared 
 with those of Claude, rather than those which by their 
 imaginative qualities would place the modern far above 
 the old master ; and that, if Turner may be considered as 
 second in this contest, w r e have but to recur to such noble 
 epics as the "Polyphemus," the ' ' Shipwreck," and a 
 host of others, to find a field in which he is without 
 a competitor. 
 
 Even in the comparison he has chosen to institute 
 there are many points wherein he is quite equal to his. 
 rival, many in which he is decidedly superior; let us: 
 stand before the pictures and compare the "Carthage" 
 and the " Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba." There; 
 can be no doubt that Turner's composition is the richest; 
 and the most elegant; the eye is led gradually into the; 
 
COMPARED WITH CLAUDE. 
 
 119 
 
 ■picture from the foreground to the extremest distance, 
 ^while Claude in comparison seems hard and like the set- 
 iscenes of a theatre, cut out into one, two, three, distances. 
 'The perspective of the water is better in Turner, the 
 ]heaving roll of the Mediterranean wave better in Claude. 
 In Turner the rocky height on the left, the foliage and 
 ithe sky near it, are fine ; the whole of that side being 
 imisty, intricate, and mysterious ; the colour of the 
 fsky round the sun has failed, but in its first glow it 
 must have been beautiful indeed ; Claude's may have 
 Ibeen warmer, and has the advantage that it has stood. 
 (Claude's figures are badly drawn, but there is a mist and 
 {air about those in the foreground, and they seem bathed 
 iin the sunlight around them, while Turner's are painty, 
 ^wooden, and wanting in the atmosphere that befits their 
 jplace in the picture. The grand mystery of the ship- 
 building in the middle distance, however, is far before 
 {anything in Claude, whose imaginative qualities were 
 Ibelow those of Turner. As a whole the " Embarkation" 
 iis spotty, liney, and hard, and looks vacant and empty 
 Ibeside the " Carthage." Although something must be 
 {allowed for the clear atmosphere of Italy ; its very clear- 
 mess is against it, the boats seem less a part of the work 
 tthan placed to fill up void spaces. Turner's is more 
 irich as a composition, more graceful, and the parts more 
 mnited, but it fails in execution, and is somewhat lumpy 
 rand heavy. 
 
 In person Turner had little of the outward appear- 
 ance that we love to attribute to the possessors of genius. 
 ]In the last twenty years of his life, during which we 
 lknew him well, his short figure had become corpulent — 
 lhis face, perhaps from continual exposure to the air, was 
 
120 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 unusually red, and a little inclined to blotches. His dark 
 eye was bright and restless — his nose, aquiline. He 
 generally wore what is called a black dress coat, which 
 would have been the better for brushing — the sleeves 
 were mostly too long, coming down over his fat and not 
 over clean hands. He wore his hat while painting on the 
 varnishing days — or otherwise a large wrapper over his 
 head, while on the warmest days he generally had 
 another wrapper or comforter round his throat — though 
 occasionally he would unloose it and allow the two ends 
 to dangle down in front and pick up a little of the colour 
 from his ample palette. This, together with his ruddy 
 face, his rollicking eye, and his continuous, although, 
 except to himself, unintelligible jokes, gave him the ap- 
 pearance of one of that now nearly extinct race — a long- 
 stage coachman. In the schools his eyes seemed ever in 
 motion, and instantly to spy out any student who was 
 sketching his portrait — which we were all anxious to do 
 on the margin of our drawings, but out of many attempts 
 none succeeded, for he knew, as if by intuition, when any 
 one had his eye on him for this purpose, and would 
 change his posture so as to preclude the chance of its 
 being finished. Thus stolen likenesses of him are rare. 
 On the varnishing days he was generally one of th»e 
 earliest to arrive, coining down to the Academy before 
 breakfast and continuing his labours as long as daylight 
 lasted ; strange and wonderful was the transformation he 
 at times effected in his works on the walls. Latterly 
 he used to send them in in a most unfinished state, 
 relying on what he could do for them during the three 
 days allowed to the members — and so much did he 
 value this opportunity, and the fellowship of that period, 
 
VALUE OF THE " VARNISHING DAYS." 121 
 
 that it is certain the varnishing days would never have 
 been done away with while Turner lived. 
 
 Soon after Turner's death the "varnishing days" 
 were, however, abandoned for a time, and only reinstated 
 in 1862. It had been found in the interim that Turner 
 was right in the value he placed on these days of meeting. 
 The English School is constituted on the system of indi- 
 vidual independence ; each artist after having learnt the 
 mere technical elements, the handicraft of his art, 
 practises it almost irrespective of the rules and traditions 
 ■of his predecessors. In England, the atelier system of 
 ithe Continent — a system where the pupil enters upon 
 ;all the knowledge of his master, and follows all the 
 itraditions of the school— is all but unknown ; while even 
 <our Academic system leaves the student, after he has 
 .obtained a command of the language of his art, quite 
 jfree as to his mode of using it, and has the merit of 
 jforming artists of varied originality, because untram- 
 imelled by rules and systems ; if it has also the fault of 
 Heaving the rising body ignorant of any general code of 
 ]law or precedent to guide them in their practice. 
 
 Now on the " varnishing days," when painting was 
 jgoing on in common, much of precept, much of practice, 
 ;and much of common experience, were interchanged. 
 r The younger members gained much from the elder ones, 
 ;and many useful hints and suggestions from one another. 
 "'Who does not recollect the valuable remarks of Wilkie, 
 ]Etty, Leslie, Constable, and Mulready, and, above all, of 
 '.Turner ? though from him, as has been already seen, it 
 was conveyed in dark hints and ambiguous phrases. A 
 llittle anecdote, which happened to one of the writers, on 
 Ihis first admission to the privilege of these meetings, and 
 
122 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 must be told with the singular pronoun, will illustrate 
 what has been said; at the same time it is quite charac- 
 teristic of Turner, and of his keen perception of what a 
 picture required to set right an apparent defect, and is 
 on both accounts well worth insertion here. " The first 
 varnishing days at the Royal Academy to which I was 
 admitted on my election as associate, I was trying to spoil 
 my picture of ' The Castle Builder,' when Howard came 
 up to me and said, in his most frigid manner, ' that the 
 bosom of my figure was indelicately naked, and that 
 some of the members thought I had better paint the dress 
 higher.' Here was a dilemma for a new associate. Of 
 course, with due meekness, I was about to comply with 
 his advice, although greatly against the grain, and with a 
 sort of wonder at myself that I could possibly have been 
 ignorantly guilty of sending an immodest contribution to 
 the Exhibition. Meanwhile, Turner looked over my 
 shoulder, and, in his usual sententious manner, mumbled 
 out, £ what-r-doing ? ' I told him the rebuke I had just 
 received from the secretary. ' Pooh, pooh,' said he, 
 ' paint it lower.' I thought he was intent upon leading 
 me into a scrape. ' You want white,' he added, and 
 turned on his heel. What could he mean ? I pondered 
 over his words, and after a while the truth struck me. 
 The coloured dress came harshly on the flesh, and no 
 linen intervened. I painted at once, over a portion of 
 the bosom of the dress, a peep of the chemise. Howard 
 came round soon after, and said, with a little more 
 warmth, ' Ah ! you have covered it up — it is far better 
 now — it will do.' It was no higher however; there was 
 just as much of the flesh seen, but the sense of naked- 
 ness and display was gone. Turner also came round 
 
turner's water-colour paintings. 123 
 
 again, and gave his gratified grunt at my docility and 
 apprehensiveness, which he often rewarded afterwards hy 
 like hints. Now this was not a mere incidental change, 
 but it was a truth, always available in the future, the 
 value of linen near the flesh — a hint I never forgot, and 
 continually found useful. Mauy such have I heard and 
 seen him give to his brother landscape painters — either by 
 word of mouth or with a dash of his brush ; and it is a 
 great satisfaction to all that by a fair compromise with the 
 other exhibitors, the Academy has again partially restored 
 the varnishing days, and that members can again inter- 
 change opinions and advice with one another." 
 
 But we resume. Hitherto Turner has been spoken of 
 principally as an oil painter, and this art has furnished 
 most of our illustrations of his methods and practice. 
 Yet as a water-colour painter, he is, perhaps, even more 
 eminent. It has already been said that his treatment of 
 oil was greatly influenced by his practice in water-colour, 
 amid that his success, or the novelty of the results, in- 
 fluenced the whole art of the period, introducing a lighter 
 aind brighter scale of painting than had heretofore pre- 
 vailed. His influence on the growing school of water- 
 colour was treated of in a former chapter ; but it is 
 impossible to conclude our notice of Turner and his 
 airtt, without some more definite account of his works in 
 waiter-colour. Perhaps, it is not too much to say, that 
 hie shows even as a greater artist in these works, than in 
 those painted in the nobler medium. In oil he had the 
 b)0)dy of ancient art before him, and great masters of 
 execution in almost every varied style. There was, for 
 hiifs choice and study, early Flemish art, with its clear and 
 precise manipulation, its jewel-like brightness and rich 
 
124 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 transparency. The minute and exquisite finish, joined 
 in some cases with the most facile handling of the Dutch 
 School. The broad and fluent manner of the school of 
 Eubens. The Venetian with its gorgeous colour and its 
 textural treatment of surface in every variety of rich 
 material. The drier, but severe dignity of execution of the 
 other Italian schools, or the varieties of the Spanish and 
 French methods for him to adopt or to modify ; but in 
 water-colour, what was there in the beginning to guide 
 him — what had he to adopt — what to improve upon ? 
 The art all but began with him ; weak and feeble, in its 
 very childhood as to executive means, hardly a resource 
 had been invented by which to express the wonderful 
 qualities which Nature presents to the artist's eye, and 
 which Turner, more especially, was gifted to perceive. 
 Nature revealed to him a flood of atmospheric light, a 
 world of infinitely tender gradations of tint and colour, 
 gradations so minute as to be almost unappreciable by 
 other men, and such as it seemed hopeless to realize by 
 the practice which then prevailed ; he had, therefore, to 
 invent his own methods. 
 
 Turner soon found that an untrue heaviness resulted 
 from the old process of diluting or strengthening a 
 grey tint and treating every part, first as a mere gra- 
 dation of light and dark, afterwards tinting with colour, 
 thus to represent the hue of the object in the 
 lights, and by passing the same tint over the sha- 
 dowed ground, the hue as affected or changed by shade. 
 He proceeded, therefore, to view every object and 
 part of an object, the whole surface of his picture, as 
 colour ; the local colour modified and often absolutely 
 changed by light or the absence of light, by atmo- 
 
LOVE OF FLEETING EFFECTS. 
 
 125 
 
 sphere, reflection, or distance, but each portion still 
 looked at for its own colour ; and then, resorting to 
 the pigments which, either separately or mixed, would 
 represent that colour, to execute the tint or hue at once 
 on the paper. This was a great advance in the true 
 direction, but here was another danger to be avoided, 
 muddiness of tint, and loss of the translucency from the 
 white ground ; partly from the imperfection of the pig- 
 ments, and partly from the needful repetitions of the 
 washes. Hence arose delicate hatchings and stipplings, 
 which in his hands achieved wonderful qualities of broken 
 hues, air tints and atmosphere ; and various modes of 
 removing from the surface any overloaded parts. All 
 these, with numerous other resources, were, if not in- 
 vented by him, applied so judiciously, and with such con- 
 summate manipulative skill, that we never for a moment 
 are led to a consideration of the process by which the 
 effect is produced, being so fully satisfied with the truth 
 of the impression it imparts. Water-colour seemed to 
 lend itself readily to the imitation of those effects in 
 nature he so much loved to represent — nature lost in a 
 blaze of light rather than dimmed with a twilight gloom — 
 and thus it happens that his works in this medium mostly 
 embody some evanescent effect, be it flood of sunshine 
 bursting forth after storms, or careering in gleams over 
 the plain, the mountain, or the sea ; or some wrack of 
 clouds, some passing shower or rainbow of promise 
 refreshing the gladdened and glistening earth. 
 
 Turner's water-colour paintings, indeed, epitomize 
 the whole mystery of landscape art. Other painters 
 hiave arrived at excellence in one treatment of Nature. 
 T'hus, Cozens in grand and solemn effects of mountain 
 
126 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 scenery ; Robson, in simple breadth and masses ; De- 
 wint, in tone and colour ; Glover in sun-gleams thrown 
 across the picture, and tipping with golden light the hills 
 and trees ; Cox, in his breezy freshness ; and Barret, 
 in his classical compositions, lighted by the setting sun. 
 These were men that played in one key, often making 
 the rarest melody. But Turner's art compassed all they 
 did collectively, and more than equalled each in his own 
 way. Compare any sunset of Barret's with the " Tivoli" 
 of Turner ; see how the latter runs through endless gra- 
 dations of tints and colour, and yet exhausts only half 
 the means at his command : for there is neither black 
 nor any approach to it in his picture, and the mysteries 
 of colour are so subtle and so true, that Barret's work 
 almost looks like a painting in monotone beside it. Alas, 
 the "Tivoli" is faded from its first glory! but even so 
 faded, what an appreciation of its priceless art was given 
 in its purchase at Mr. Allnutt's sale in 1863, for 1,800 
 guineas. Again, if we have seen one Barret, we seem 
 to have seen all ; the same scale of colour, the same 
 principles of composition, the same gradations. Not so 
 with Turner : place the " Tivoli" beside the " Chryses 
 Worshipping the Setting Sun." The composition is 
 wholly different ; the broken misty tints of the " Tivoli " 
 are replaced by the broad, washed masses of the Chryses. 
 Yet both are sunsets — both are beautiful — but very dif- 
 ferent ; and if we take twenty sunsets by the master, we 
 shall find each with its own characteristics, each with 
 some new phase of cloud or mist, cold and silvery, or 
 hot and glowing, as the varied atmospheric conditions 
 require. Barret's sunsets were wrought by simple gra- 
 dations of rather negative colour, fading away from the 
 
HIS "TIVOLl" AND " CHIiYSES." 
 
 127 
 
 olive green of the foreground into the haze of warm 
 yellow light around the sun. Turner, on the contrary, 
 revelled in brilliant warmth, and fully appreciated the 
 Talue of hot and cold colours in opposition. He had 
 thoroughly studied Nature, and well knew that it was not 
 by light and dark that the truths of sunset effects are 
 achieved, but by the opposition of warm lights and cold 
 shadows, hardly distinguishable in scale of light and 
 dark, but the cold colour telling as shadow by contrast 
 with the hot light. Every exact observer of Nature must 
 have seen the startling blueness of the' shadows even 
 upon hot sandy roads when the sun is low and near the 
 horizon, and following this, Turner, with hardly an 
 absolute dark, obtained the true effect of sunset we have 
 described in the " Tivoli." If we look into any mass of 
 tint in Barret's picture we shall find it so far homo- 
 geneous that it consists of mere gradations of the same 
 monotonous hue ; but any mass of colour in Turner's 
 pictures is an aggregation of an infinite number of tints, 
 forming by their broken union the richest and most aerial 
 hues. Let any one examine the picture of "Hornby 
 Castle," in the Sheepshanks' Collection, and he will at 
 once appreciate this remark ; the work alluded to being 
 named, as has been before stated, simply because it is 
 accessible. Far better illustrations would be afforded by 
 many of his other works. Even Cox, who has great 
 variety in the tints he washes on, and thereby gives 
 greatly the effect of air in his works, is tinty when com- 
 pared with Turner. 
 
 It had been almost a dogma in art that the darkest 
 colour of a picture must, in open-air subjects, be in the 
 foreground. But Turner, by his knowledge in the appli- 
 
128 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 cation of hot and cold colours could place his dark in the 
 distance, and yet he true, although the foreground was 
 glowing with golden sunlight. Thus in the "Heidel- 
 berg" (which was in the International Exhibition, 1862), 
 a few small touches of warm dark in the foreground are 
 all that counterbalance a mass of blue dark in the 
 distance. 
 
 Turner began in water-colours, as he did in oil, by 
 imitating the art of his predecessors and contemporaries. 
 In many of his early works the inspiration is evidently 
 caught from Cozens. Other works suggest the low 
 tones and broad manner of Girtin, as the " Warkworth" 
 and the " Easby Abbey:" perhaps the golden manner 
 which the latter painter adopted just before he died, led 
 to Turner's rich and golden tones ; but if so, he speedily 
 surpassed his early competitor, and began to range over 
 the novel and hitherto untrodden field of fleeting effects, 
 such as painters term accidental ; his readiness and 
 boldness in seizing these is as remarkable, as is the fear- 
 lessness with which he pushed them to the very verge 
 of truth. Thus the wonderful contrasts in which he at 
 times indulges, bringing some prominent building, tower, 
 or spire off a dark storm-sky, by lighting it with the full 
 glare of the sun just burst forth from the pall of clouds, 
 as in the " Stamford," where the streets glittering and 
 splashy with the shower just passing off, reflect the greys 
 of the thunder-clouds and give increased brilliancy to the 
 gleam thrown on the tower. " Malvern Abbey and Gate- 
 way" is another rather more subdued instance of the 
 same treatment ; but his works supply a host of such 
 examples : sometimes, as in these, the light is thrown 
 on a principal building, sometimes the last glories of the 
 
HE REPUDIATED MERE IMITATION. 
 
 129 
 
 setting sun light up with ruddy hues the moorland hill- 
 side, and contrast it with the iron-grey of the rising 
 storm. He was among the first to adopt this startling 
 "accident," and he revelled in displaying his genius in 
 such treatments. 
 
 In the last decade of Turner's life a party of young 
 artists, repudiating all the old laws and rules of art, 
 determined to regulate their practice by two dogmas — 
 one being the literal and direct imitation of the indi- 
 vidual details of Nature; the other, that as every part 
 of Nature is equally beautiful, all should be taken without 
 selection. II is not the intention here to enter upon the 
 mixed good and evil arising from such principles ; but as 
 an endeavour has been made to prove that Turner's art 
 was founded upon like principles with theirs, and a world 
 of ingenious sophistry has been written to support the 
 assertion, it is necessary to allude to it. It would rather 
 seem that the least consideration of his art and practice 
 would prove the very reverse. He repudiated the mere 
 imitation of Nature, and never cared to represent her 
 commonplace aspects : those, indeed, which from their 
 abiding, are the only aspects which can be literally copied. 
 Although he made hundreds of studies from Nature, he 
 never seems to have painted a picture out of doors. He 
 cared only to» reproduce those varied effects which are 
 fleeting as they are beautiful — like the passions which 
 flit across the human countenance, and can raise the 
 most commonplace and stolid face into the region of 
 poetry, or those expressions which, whether on face of 
 man or the wide-spread champagne, pass as suddenly 
 as they arise, and can only be reproduced by the 
 hand of genius, working with the stores of a schooled 
 vol. ii. 43 
 
130 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 memory, enriched by the treasures of long and patient 
 study. 
 
 Moreover, Turner's art was completely an art of 
 selection : of selection as to time and circumstance, as 
 to effect of light, shade, or colour ; of selection by omis- 
 sion or addition of parts. Of what are called views, he 
 painted few or none in oil ; and those in water-colours, 
 which are illustrations of scenes and places, are so 
 idealized by the poetry of effect — by the time of day 
 chosen, by the adoption of a treatment forcing into 
 prominence the principal object (as in the impressive 
 drawing of "Norham Castle," on the Tweed), by the 
 accessories of cattle or figures, of incidents of life and 
 action — as entirely to remove them from imitative realiza- 
 tions of scenes or places. 
 
 If we look even to his foregrounds, where, if any- 
 where, the details of Nature would be imitatively rendered, 
 we find no such attempt on his part. Even there he 
 sought to give the impression of foliage, flowers, and 
 fruit, rather than to render them imitatively. We recog- 
 nize, it is true, some of the typical plants, the leading 
 growths, such as the vine hanging from branch to 
 branch, or the gourd trailing over fallen column or 
 sculptured stone, rendered, it may be, with the utmost 
 truth of general effect and of relation to the tone of the 
 picture, whether of grey storm or of golden sunlight. 
 Still never rendered with any curious perception of minute 
 beauties arising from direct individual imitation, but rather 
 with relation to the masses of light and dark in his pic- 
 ture, or to the forms he wished to emphasize or to hide. 
 
 If Turner had a defect it was too great generaliza- 
 tion ; and, as our defects grow upon us in our old age, 
 
AIMED AT GENERAL EFFECT. 
 
 131 
 
 his latter works in oil seem rather schemes for pictures — 
 the hold and startling laying on of masses preparatory 
 to future completion — than attempts at any detailed 
 realization. In many of them we try in vain to make 
 out the minor forms in the masses. It seemed sufficient 
 for the painter that the great truths of sun and shade, 
 of hot and cold were faithfully rendered, and then — did 
 we not know his perfect manipulation in water-colours 
 even late in life — we might think that either his eye 
 failed him, or that the will was wanting to cope with the 
 tedious labour of completing the parts whilst maintaining 
 the requisite breadth. The pallet knife, the broad hog- 
 tool for scumbling the broken surface, were the means 
 he employed — means quite incompatible with minute 
 completion. 
 
 Turner's art, even at the time when he finished his 
 works most, differed entirely from the new school and its 
 theorists. They seek the whole by a gradual agglome- 
 ration of parts painted imitatively, bit by bit ; while he 
 treated his work from the beginning as a whole, adding 
 just as much detail in the parts as was consistent with 
 the general effect and that sense of mystery, which he 
 ever studied to preserve. This quality of mystery is 
 most valuable to the painter, as Turner very well knew. 
 " Hang that fellow's works," said a great living painter, 
 on looking at a pre-Raphaelite picture ; " one sees them 
 all at once, and there is nothing left to find out." In the 
 somewhat allied art of landscape gardening, how much 
 may be obtained by intricacy and mystery ; a small 
 place may be made large, and the visitor invited by 
 hidden terminations to seek out what he imagines may 
 be beauties rarer than those he at first sees. So it is 
 
 43—2 
 
132 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 with the landscape painter. His office is to lead his 
 spectator on into his picture ; to place before him pas- 
 sages of his work which he would desire to search into ; 
 passages like those in Nature, which, seen afar, suggest 
 delightful glades, sunnier and fairer than those which 
 are near, and which we long to reach and to range in. 
 The suggestiveness of a work of art is one of its richest 
 qualities ; and the veriest blot of Turner is suited to 
 suggest more than the most finished picture of imitative 
 details. If we add to this the meanness of that art 
 which, depending upon imitative rendering, cannot 
 attempt the transient, and must content itself with 
 those effects which being the most persistent are there- 
 fore the most commonplace, we can estimate how widely 
 it differs from that of Turner, and how little right the 
 new sect has to proclaim him as its prophet. 
 
 The wonderful industry of the painter is apparent 
 even from his exhibited works. Rodd, who published 
 in 1856 a catalogue of the pictures painted by Turner 
 and exhibited at the Royal Academy, gives a list from 
 1787 to 1850, of 259 pictures ; to which he adds sixteen 
 more, exhibited between 1806 and 1846, at the British 
 Institution, making in all 275 pictures. This, which 
 might well represent the whole life of an ordinary man, was 
 but a fraction of Turner's labours. How many fine easel 
 pictures by him were never exhibited ? and how shall we 
 estimate the addition which should be made to the list 
 by the drawings made solely for the engraver ? In 1808 
 he commenced his first work of this class, pitting him- 
 self against Claude, in his Liber Studiorum ; and from 
 that time his engagements with publishers never ceased 
 — his Southern Coast Scenery, his England and Wales, 
 
HIS LEGACY TO HIS COUNTRY. 
 
 133 
 
 Rivers of England, Rivers of France, Bogers's Italy, 
 Rogers's Poems, &c. 
 
 The large property he had accumulated by his art, 
 and his generous disposal of it (though partially frus- 
 trated) for the benefit of his brother artists and his 
 countrymen, are well known. It does not need our 
 comments ; but we would in conclusion remark, that in 
 giving his pictures to the nation, his request relative to 
 their disposition was a mistake, rendered more glaring 
 by the manner of their arrangement in the national 
 collection. Turner wished that his finished pictures 
 should be hung in the National Gallery, in company and 
 in rivalry with the best works of the old masters. He 
 was conscious of his own power ; he felt that in many 
 respects he was the greatest landscape painter of his age, 
 or, indeed, of any age. He was quite willing to abide 
 comparison with the best of past ages, and the decision 
 of the world as to his position and merits. But to 
 crowd a multitude of any man's works together, is not 
 the best way to give pleasure to the spectator, or to raise 
 the artist to the pinnacle of fame. This is unhappily 
 the case with Turner's pictures. The limitation to his 
 finished works is disregarded, and numbers of the un- 
 finished productions of his old age, numbers of mere 
 sketches, numbers of pictures painted almost as the 
 furniture of exhibitions are huddled one above the other, 
 — the cru de and the incomplete — and fill the walls of the 
 gallery where only the finest efforts of his genius, the 
 most treasured jewels, should have been displayed. 
 
 Of Turner's life, passed entirely in the pursuit of 
 art,, enough has been said. He was elected an associate 
 in 1799 ; a full member of the Eoyal Academy in 1802. 
 
134 
 
 A CENTURY OF FAINTERS. 
 
 In 1807 he was appointed professor of perspective, the 
 duties of which office he fulfilled for nearly thirty years. 
 Secretive in his habits, he loved to make his journeys 
 alone, as has already been illustrated by a characteristic 
 anecdote. To the last he continued to absent himself 
 for uncertain periods from the knowledge of his household 
 and his friends. His death was as characteristic as his 
 life. Just below the picturesque old timber bridge which 
 spans the Thames from Chelsea to Battersea the river 
 widens out into a deep bay. In the centre of the curve 
 just at the bottom of a little half-country lane, two small 
 cottages still remain, such as might be inhabited by the 
 boatmen whose craft lie along the curving shore. These 
 houses look out on to the broad expanse of river, ever 
 as the day declines, reflecting the glories of the setting 
 sun, and the evening sky. Towards London is the 
 quaint old bridge, backed by the old world buildings, the 
 dusky tower and tree-lined river bank at Chelsea. 
 Looking westward the elms of Cremorne, the long low 
 lammas land, the sparkling river with its numerous 
 swans — all shut in sky-ward by Wandsworth Rise and 
 the Surrey Hills. Although science has injured art by 
 spanning this glorious view with its rigid road of iron, it 
 is still a scene to be visited for itself and for its own 
 beauties. But seek it out, ye lovers of art ! Hence- 
 forth it must be a place of pilgrimage. In one of these 
 cottages Turner died. That he might enjoy solitude 
 and Ins lonely studies he was accustomed to lodge here 
 under the assumed name of Brooks. Here, evening and 
 morning, he could look out on his beloved Thames, and 
 what was better still, see sky, ever changing, clean down 
 to the hilly horizon. Here, unknown as the great 
 
INCREASING VALUE OF HIS WORKS. 
 
 135 
 
 painter, his last illness seized him ; from his sick bed 
 he could yet see the setting sun, and here he died on 
 the 19th of December, 1851. His body was conveyed 
 to his house in Queen Anne Street, West, and thence to 
 its last resting-place in the Crypt of St. Pauls. 
 
 We will conclude with a recent instance of the in- 
 creased value of Turner's works. During his lifetime, 
 Mr. Bicknell, of Dulwich, had been a purchaser of his 
 pictures, some from his easel some at occasional sales, 
 at prices even then thought high for landscape pictures, 
 which are mostly of small size. On Mr. Bicknell's death, 
 his collection came to the hammer in 1863, and the follow- 
 ing are the prices obtained for those by Turner : — 
 
 Purchased for. Sold for. 
 
 Ivy-Bridge, Devon £283 10 £924 
 
 Calder Bridge, Cumberland 288 15 525 
 
 The Wreckers 288 15 1,984 10 
 
 Antwerp : Van Goyen looking for a Subject 315 2,635 10 
 
 Helvoetsluys 283 10 1,680 
 
 Port Ruysdael 315 1,995 
 
 Ehrenbreitstein, on the Rhine 401 1,890 
 
 Venice, the Giudecca 262 1,732 10 
 
 Venice, the Campo Santo 262 1,732 10 
 
 Palestrina 1,050 1,995 
 
 Totals : £3,749 10 £17,094 
 
 Thus we find that in certainly less than thirty years 
 these ten pictures had advanced in value nearly five- 
 fold. The country meanwhile had advanced in material 
 prosperity. The great manufacturers abounding in sur- 
 plus capital had found in pictures, not only a source of 
 pleasure and personal aggrandisement, but a good invest- 
 ment — and they at once became patrons of art, and large 
 purchasers. Hence a new system of change, a new phase 
 in the history of art, the effects of which will have to be 
 weighed in our estimate of future art progress. 
 
136 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PATRONAGE OF ART. 
 
 True Art not the Child of Patronage — Plans to promote historic Art — The 
 British Institution — Its Objects and Management — From which Artists 
 are excluded — Plan of its Exhibitions — Results of the first Three — 
 Novel Arrangements — Their Failure — Boasted Progress — Odd Condi- 
 tions of Competition for premiums — Awards of the Directors — Scheme 
 to Increase their Funds — Change their Plan of Premiums — James 
 Ward, R.A. — Failure of the new Plan — Abandon the Offer of Premiums 
 — Capricious Rewards to Exhibitors — Artists' Opinions upon their Acts 
 — Exhibition of the Works of the Old Masters — Its Value to Artists — 
 Exhibition of the Works of the early Painters of the English Schools — 
 Success of this Exhibition — Annual Exhibitions of the Works of living 
 Artists — Unwise Regulations — Decline and Degradation of these Ex- 
 hibitions — Failure of the Institution to realize its professed Objects. 
 
 The literature of our country has long since emancipated 
 itself from patrons and patronage, while art is only just 
 freeing itself from such illusions ; and the term still 
 lingers as applied to art alone. The purchaser of two 
 or three modern pictures rejoices in the appellation of a 
 "patron of art." Yet our artists are in no sense patro- 
 nized, and would, with true independence, repudiate in a 
 purchaser the title of patron. As some amass wealth 
 without the heart to use it, so many purchase pictures 
 without the taste to enjoy them : some from vanity, 
 holding them only so long as the whim lasts ; some 
 as a good investment, and bide their market ; some — 
 now a large class — as mere dealers, selling as soon as 
 cent, per cent, can be realized. But the few, — the true 
 
ILLUSIONS OF PATRONAGE. 
 
 137 
 
 amateurs — prompted by a love which endures to the end, 
 retain their treasured objects. Yet all — in the language 
 of the day — are alike the patrons of art. 
 
 Patronage was long assumed to be the true panacea 
 far producing high art, — the hot-bed in which it was to 
 be forced to a stalky maturity. Yet patronage, whether 
 of individuals or of States, has rarely produced or 
 cherished high art ; while fashion, proverbially fickle, 
 has more frequently adopted flashy mediocrity than true 
 genius. We have some pertinent instances in the short 
 history of our own school. George III., with an earnest 
 desire to promote the arts of his country, became, in the 
 truest sense, the patron of Benjamin West, graciously 
 encouraging him with his royal favour, and with great 
 liberality providing him with a yearly income. Yet 
 West's contemporary, Barry, living under all the irrita- 
 tions of neglected poverty, has left a finer work in his 
 epic series at the Society of Arts, than the greatest 
 works of the Court favourite. The same sovereign 
 neglected Reynolds, the ornament of his reign, and the 
 great portrait painter of our school, while fashion 
 adopted him ; yet fashion at the same time coldly passed 
 by Richard Wilson, the greatest landscape painter we 
 had then known, and made the fortune of a foreigner 
 whose meretricious landscapes it lauded and purchased. 
 
 The impulse to promote art which followed the 
 establishment of the Royal Academy, was manifested 
 in many ways, when its exhibitions had grown to an 
 established maturity. Its members were forward in the 
 discussion of schemes to naturalize historic art. As we 
 have shown, they offered gratuitously, in 1773, to deco- 
 rate St. Paul's Cathedral with their works. They 
 
138 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 submitted to George III., in 1801, the proposal to erect 
 a gallery to be progressively filled with busts, statues, 
 portraits, and historical paintings, representing the 
 heroes and heroic exploits of this country ; a plan parti- 
 ally resumed in our own day. They also proposed the 
 establishment of a gallery for the works of the rising 
 artists of the English school ; and at the beginning of the 
 present century they suggested the formation of some in- 
 stitution which should reward and encourage our artists. 
 This last suggestion, which was earnestly advocated by 
 Benjamin West and Martin Shee (who both afterwards 
 successively filled the president's chair at the Academy), 
 alone took some shape at the time, though not exactly 
 in the manner they had contemplated ; it led to the 
 foundation of the British Institution, which sought, by 
 the union of some of the most distinguished individuals, 
 to patronize native art. We purpose to trace the 
 generous efforts of this influential body, both in regard 
 to its fostering aims and their results, as an exemplifica- 
 tion of patronage, as well as an example of a purely lay 
 management ; and in a future chapter to show the efforts 
 of the Government in the same direction, and under 
 similar conditions, as displayed more recently in the 
 internal fresco decoration of Sir Charles Barry's great 
 work, — the Legislative Palace at Westminster. 
 
 " The British Institution for Promoting the Fine 
 Arts in the United Kingdom," was founded in 1805. 
 Its defined objects were " to open a public exhibition for 
 the sale of the productions of British artists, to excite 
 the emulation and exertions of younger artists by 
 premiums, and to endeavour to form a public gallery of 
 the works of British artists, with a few select specimens 
 
THE BRITISH INSTITUTION. 
 
 139 
 
 of each of the great schools." The King became the 
 patron, the Prince of Wales the vice -patron, and the 
 Institution commenced with fifty-six hereditary governors, 
 subscribing 100 guineas each, twenty-seven life-governors 
 subscribing fifty guineas each ; which, with annual and 
 other subscriptions, at once raised a fuud of 7,1611., 
 which subsequent subscriptions gradually increased to 
 more than double that sum. But in the following year the 
 hereditary memberships were, with consent, abolished, 
 and the subscription for a life-governor raised to 100 
 guineas. The management was confided to a committee 
 of directors and a committee of managers, selected from 
 the governors ; and these committees, we are told in an 
 authorized report, " were composed of some of the most 
 illustrious and dignified characters in the kingdom." 
 Yet while we find among these managers the names of 
 some well-known dilettanti, we do not recognize the name 
 of a single artist : not one man who could assist or advise 
 with any professional knowledge. We shall therefore 
 find in the conduct of the new art institution an example 
 of what is now termed " the lay element," in its most 
 unmixed form. 
 
 The directors were so fortunate as to purchase the 
 lease of the Shakspeare Gallery in Pall Mall for 4,500L, 
 upon which they spent 700Z., in fittings, and were thus 
 enabled to give prompt effect to their plans. They pro- 
 posed to open their gallery for the exhibition and sale of 
 modern works in January, and closing it about Midsum- 
 mer, to re- open the gallery again in August for the study 
 oif the works of the old masters, to be obtained on loan 
 from the governors and others. The exhibition of modern 
 airt was to comprise all works of painting and sculpture ; 
 
140 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 except portraits, either in oil or miniature, water-colour 
 drawings, and architectural drawings, which were declared 
 inadmissible. The first exhibition was opened with some 
 eclat in February, 1806. Seventy-one artists, of whom 
 sixteen were members and ten associates of the Royal 
 Academy, sent works for exhibition, and forty-five works 
 were sold, producing above 2,500Z. In the second and 
 third years' exhibitions there was a progressive increase 
 in the number of exhibitors, and of works exhibited, and 
 in these three exhibitions about one-fourth of the exhi- 
 bited works found purchasers. But the receipts for 
 admission — for here also, shillings were taken at the 
 doors — did not cover the moderate charges incurred for 
 the management. 
 
 Some experience had at this time surely been gained 
 in the arrangement of exhibitions, some principles esta- 
 blished by which this difficult task would be assisted ; 
 but the lay directors did not seek to avail themselves of 
 professional help. They evidently had their own notions 
 and wished to walk in new paths unfettered ; so, as Prince 
 Hoare tells, the works of their first exhibition were clas- 
 sified : one room was devoted entirely to the historical 
 paintings, another to the landscapes and sea-pieces, and 
 a third to compositions of familiar life, cattle, birds, and 
 flowers with the surplus of the works assigned to the 
 first two rooms ; an arrangement which does not appear 
 to have been tried a second time. We have a parallel 
 instance in the recent recommendation of the Royal 
 Academy Commission, that all the works of an artist 
 sent to the same exhibition, should be hung together : 
 a dilettante notion only, to which a dozen well-founded 
 objections could be shown by any experienced artist ; but 
 
THE VAUNTED EARLY SUCCESS. 
 
 141 
 
 passing by the questions of the diminished facilities for 
 grouping in a limited space, the greater attraction of a 
 mixed arrangement, and the many advantages to the 
 exhibitors themselves, as more recondite matters, it might 
 have occurred to her Majesty's Commissioners how funny 
 the eight half-length portraits of a popular portrait 
 painter would look all of a row, and what endless cross 
 purposes might be suggested to a cynical critic, by some 
 unfortunates thus placed most mal-a-propos, vis-a-vis, or 
 dos-d-dos. 
 
 The governors, however, expressed themselves satis- 
 fied with the successful establishment of the Institution 
 to which they had so liberally subscribed ; and in May, 
 1808, the executive congratulated the governors on its 
 progress, and " on the effects produced and producing, 
 in favour of British Art." They go on to say, " The pre- 
 judices against living and native merit are already done 
 away, and the encouragement afforded to artists by the 
 rapid sale of their productions, assisted by the study of 
 the sublime works of art in the gallery of the Institu- 
 tion, has already produced a considerable improvement 
 in the British School, not merely in the exhibitions of 
 the Institution, but in the Koyal Academy and others." 
 G-reat results indeed, which it requires a faith exceeding 
 the limits of experience to attribute to an institution not 
 yet two years old, and we withhold our opinion till its 
 nearer approach to maturity. 
 
 After the close of the first exhibition of the works of 
 the living painters, the gallery was opened with a selec- 
 tion of thirteen works by the old masters, made by the 
 influence of the governors for the study of young artists ; 
 and by this means one great, and hitherto unsupplied 
 
142 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 want of the painter was satisfied. We possessed then 
 no National Gallery, or collection of pictures, to which 
 he could resort, no collection of antique sculpture which 
 was open to him ; and no doubt this means of studying 
 and copying the works of the great masters of painting, 
 was gratefully appreciated by the rising artist. Possibly 
 those who lent their pictures did not approve, and with 
 some reason, of the literal copies which were made from 
 them, for in the following year copies were prohibited, 
 unless with the express consent of the owner ; the 
 ground of this prohibition being, however, " the opinion 
 of the committee that the objects of the Institution may 
 be generally obtained by studies and sketches, and by 
 the endeavour at producing companions to the pictures 
 lent." 
 
 It is clear that the opinions here expressed, ema- 
 nated from a body of men who did not understand the 
 true wants of the student, or the manner in which he 
 should pursue the study of the old masters; and the 
 directors may claim without dispute, the very original 
 idea that a young artist will find the improvement he 
 seeks from the old masters, by producing companion 
 pictures — an attempt which would try the ability of an 
 old master himself. It is in such matters we see the 
 erroneous attempts of the lovers of art to dictate the 
 modes of study to those who are to become its professors. 
 Young artists were, however, glad on any conditions to 
 obtain access to fine works, and a large number, many 
 of whom afterwards attained eminence, filled the gallery. 
 They did not need to make complete copies, far less to 
 produce companion pictures ; but they desired to imitate 
 the manner of painting and the means of using their 
 
NOVEL PLANS ADOPTED. 
 
 143 
 
 materials employed by the most reputed artists, as well 
 as their separate excellencies in light and shade, colour, 
 drawing, and the other qualities in which they were dis- 
 tinguished. But no such assistance was provided for 
 them by the directors as might have been afforded by 
 the advice of a professional visitor, whose precepts would 
 have given additional value to the means of study they 
 had provided. 
 
 The directors had been enabled in 1807, to invest 
 3,313/. in the funds, and they felt themselves in a con- 
 dition to stimulate the younger artists by the offer 
 of premiums, one of their original projects ; and again 
 adopting the novel principle which we have already 
 mentioned, they offered premiums for the first, second, 
 and third best " original picture proper in point of 
 subject and manner to be a companion " to such three 
 or more pictures selected by them from the works of the 
 old masters lent for exhibition; the premiums to be 
 awarded by a committee of their own body. Three 
 premiums were adjudged in the following year, to pain- 
 ters whose names even are forgotten, and we suppose 
 on the above scheme ; but if so, it was not tried again, 
 for we find no farther mention of such strange conditions, 
 though premiums were awarded in each of the two fol- 
 lowing years. In their first four Exhibitions, the direc- 
 tors state that 424 works of art were sold, producing 
 20,899/., something less on an average than 50/. 
 each ; and upon this they again take occasion to talk 
 bravely of their doings. In their report of 1811, they 
 say " a tasteless and disgraceful preference is no longer 
 given to the wretched fabrications of French and Italian 
 picture-dealers, our artists are no longer entirely confined 
 
144 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 to portrait-painting, but they have some, though not 
 adequate encouragement, to exert their talents in the 
 higher branches of art ; " but the directors express a 
 confident hope that by their exertions an adequate en- 
 couragement will at length be given to British artists. 
 Did the directors in penning this report overlook or 
 ignore the talents of Northcote, Copley, Opie, Fuseli, 
 Stothard, and others, who then, as in our own time, 
 have been esteemed as talented painters of subjects, both 
 of history and poetry ; and when taking such high credit 
 for their labours of only four years, did the directors not 
 know that for above forty years, the Royal Academy had 
 been steadily educating a large class of students in the 
 highest branches of art ? 
 
 Their finances prospering, the directors increased 
 their premises, and in 1811 offered 200 guineas, 100 
 guineas, and 50 guineas respectively, for the three best 
 paintings, but strangely adjudged these sums to be 
 equally divided between : — W. Hilton, for his "Entomb- 
 ment of Christ ; " G. F. Joseph, for his " Eeturn of 
 Priam with the Dead Body of Hector ; " and G. Dawe, for 
 his " Negro overpowering a Buffalo." It says little for 
 the discriminating judgment of the dilettanti directors 
 who undertook the patronage of high art in England, 
 that abandoning their own published scheme, and evad- 
 ing a decision which they thus showed their own in- 
 competence to pronounce, they by this means virtually 
 placed these three artists on the same level. We 
 find no record of the dissatisfaction which must have 
 ensued, but can well conceive the effect of their de- 
 cision ; nor are we at all surprised that the still higher 
 premiums of 300 guineas, 200 guineas, and 100 guineas 
 
THE ADJUDICATION OF PREMIUMS. 
 
 145 
 
 in the next year did not tempt artists of merit again to 
 submit their works to such a judgment, and that only 
 the lowest premium was awarded to Mr. Joseph, one of 
 the fortunate sharers in the equal division plan of the 
 previous year, for his "Procession to Mount Calvary." 
 But, as if to salve their decision, the directors weakly, 
 but no doubt kindly, voted thirty guineas each to five 
 of the competitors " on account of the expense of the 
 frames, &c." 
 
 The payments of the governors and subscribers had 
 now risen to 10,390/. guineas, and the directors were 
 encouraged to enter into a speculation, which they state 
 added largely to their funds. They purchased West's 
 large picture of " Our Saviour healing the Sick in the 
 Temple " for 3,000 guineas, and engaged Charles Heath 
 for 1,800 guineas, to make a large engraving from it. 
 By the exhibition of this painting alone the directors 
 realized above 3,000/., and in the following year (1812), 
 the subscriptions for the engraving had reached 2,730/. ; 
 so that the titled directors may claim the merit of having 
 initiated a scheme which speculative publishers have 
 since so successfully followed, by purchasing, engraving, 
 puffing, and publishing popular works of art, yet to the 
 ruin of the highest class of engraving. 
 
 By this time the directors must have learned that 
 the high art they wished to produce could not be obtained 
 by their system of competitive rewards, for in 1813, 
 they again withheld two premiums of 100 guineas each ; 
 awarding 300 guineas to Edward Bird, R.A., a painter 
 of domestic scenes, for his " Death of Eli," and 200 
 guineas to J. Halls, a name now unknown, for his 
 " Raising of Jairus' daughter." They also purchased 
 vol. ii. 44 
 
.146 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 H. Richter's "Christ giving Sight to the Blind," for 
 500 guineas, and R. Westall's " Elijah restoring the 
 Widow's Son to Life," for 400 guineas, and presented 
 the former picture to a new Church at Greenock, and 
 the latter to a Church at Egham. In 1814, the directors 
 made some tardy amends to Hilton, whom they had 
 treated with such capricious want of judgment in 1811, 
 and purchased for 550 guineas, his large picture of 
 " Mary Anointing the Feet of Jesus." They also 
 awarded 200 guineas to Washington Allston, for his 
 " Dead Man restored to Life hy touching the Bones of 
 the Prophet Elisha;" 100 guineas to H. Munro (an 
 artist of whose works we have known nothing since), 
 for his " Disgrace of Wolsey," and the same sum to 
 Hoffland, for a " Storm on the Coast of Scarborough," 
 and to Haydon for his " Judgment of Solomon." 
 
 The directors neither wanted the funds, nor, we readily 
 admit, the desire, to promote art within the limits they 
 had proposed to themselves; but they were sadly deficient 
 in that judgment and knowledge which were equally essen- 
 tial to the success of their plans. They were on friendly 
 terms with the Members of the Royal Academy and the 
 heads of the profession, but whether from a misplaced 
 reliance upon themselves or from whatever cause we 
 know not, they did not seek that professional assistance 
 which would have been invaluable. They might safely 
 assume that an artist would feel encouraged, though the 
 profession might not, by the receipt of a handsome pre- 
 mium under any circumstances ; but how much higher 
 would he appreciate and feel stimulated by the award, if 
 it had been adjudged by the heads of his profession, and 
 stamped by a judgment to which even his unsuccessful 
 
TRUE CONDITIONS OF SUCH AWARDS. 147 
 
 competitors must bow. In one case a mere pecuniary 
 gratuity is adjudged, in the other it is accompanied by a 
 coveted honourable distinction. The common fortune of 
 chance could not have left the directors always in the 
 wrong — but to those who have any remembrance of the 
 artists and the works rewarded, a judgment by lot would 
 surely have been as often right. Art could not have been 
 encouraged by premiums so distributed ; an artist could 
 have felt no confidence in such decisions. But, whether 
 these or other reasons led to a change of this portion of 
 their original plan, the directors now gave notice " that 
 instead of any particular premiums for history or land- 
 scape painting, they have set apart 1,000 guineas, to 
 be applied in their discretion in giving premiums for 
 finished sketches illustrative or connected with the suc- 
 cesses of the British army in Spain, Portugal, and France." 
 And by a subsequent notice these premiums were ex- 
 tended to " Sketches of the Battle of Waterloo, or 
 the Entry of the British and Prussian Armies into 
 Paris." 
 
 This large sum, which appears in the light almost 
 of a bribe to the artists, stimulated a concourse of 
 competitors, from whose sketches the directors selected 
 sixteen to be admitted to competition and for exhibition ; 
 and they awarded 150 guineas to Abraham Cooper, for 
 his " Sketch of the Battle of Ligny," and the same 
 sum to Luke Clennell, for his " Overthrow of the French 
 Army at the Battle of Waterloo— sauve qui pent." But 
 tempted also by the grand historical idea with which 
 they had started, they selected the sketch by James 
 Ward, K.A., " The Battle of Waterloo—an allegory," 
 and commissioned him to paint a picture, three times 
 
 44—2 
 
148 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the size of his sketch, for 1,000 guineas. Ward was 
 highly distinguished as an animal painter. He had 
 great power of execution, and we have no doubt that his 
 sketch was vigorously painted and coloured, and such as 
 would be most likely to allure a judgment not tempered 
 by professional knowledge ; yet surely no artist of re- 
 putation would have counselled this selection : and it 
 seems most probable that the painter himself, com- 
 peting be it remembered only by the production of 
 a finished sketch, would not have elected to paint a 
 picture from it upon a scale so largely magnified — 
 exaggerating both difficulties and defects — had he not 
 been tempted by what at that time was so liberal, 
 and we think unexpected, a commission. We are 
 induced to copy the painter's description of his sketch, 
 which in itself is a corroboration of our opinion. The 
 large picture would have been a trial and a task for 
 Eubens himself. 
 
 " The genius of Wellington on the Car of War, 
 supported by Britannia, and attended by the seven 
 Cardinal Virtues, commanding away the demons Anarchy, 
 Eebellion, and Discord, with the horrors of War. Bel- 
 lona is endeavouring to take the reins and urge on the 
 horses with her many-thonged scourge, but which are 
 tightly held in by Love, seated upon the head of Britan- 
 nia's Lion ; while they (sic) are regulated by Prudence, 
 Fortitude, Temperance, and Justice. Usurpation is sinking 
 under the feet of the horses; Opposition and Tumult 
 under the wheels of the car, on the sides of which are 
 the Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock, and on its end the 
 palm of Victory, to which are endeavouring to fasten 
 themselves Anger, Cruelty, and Revenge, but falling 
 
WATERLOO— AN ALLEGORY. 
 
 149 
 
 under the foot of Charity, whose other foot treads on the 
 Emblems of Slavery. She is endeavouring to raise her 
 children into the bosom of Religion, who rising above 
 the clouds of Folly and Superstition, is pursued by 
 Malice, Calumny, and Detraction, and bowing under the 
 pressure of Prejudice and Obstinacy, emerging from the 
 dense clouds of Ignorance and Error, she stretches out 
 her arms to Britannia for protection, supported by Faith 
 and led on by Hope who, through the medium of the 
 Cross, directs her attention to the Deity in the three 
 incorporated triangles expressive of the Trinity, imme- 
 diately under the glory of which is the Dove of Peace 
 and the Angel of Divine Providence expanding her arms 
 over the whole group, and under whose wings, as her 
 offspring, is Victory ready to crown the Hero, and Plenty 
 with the full cornucopia to pour upon Britannia in the 
 event of Peace, while the children, as the lesser victories, 
 have and are scattering the Boses of their conquest upon 
 the Genius of Britannia." Need we go further with our 
 extract to include the groups of Heroes— hydra-headed 
 monsters — Death endeavouring to unveil herself and 
 send forth her various shapeless and horrid forms. 
 Humanity, like Love, seated on the head of the British 
 Lion — and so on ? 
 
 The result was fatal to the judgment of the directors. 
 This great allegory when completed was we believe 
 never exhibited. The directors presented it to the 
 Royal Hospital at Chelsea. Like the Vicar of Wake- 
 field's family group, "it was so very large they had 
 no place in the house to fix it," and it is stowed away 
 rotting on a roller, in an oblivion that is well both for 
 the reputation of the directors, and the fame of its really 
 
150 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 talented painter. The fact was, the age of allegory 
 was past, and all the munificence of the donors, com- 
 bined with Ward's real talent as a painter could not 
 revive it. It has been our lot to see this great work — 
 great at least in the sense of size — truly it is going 
 to decay, and for any credit to the painter, or for any 
 great merit as a work of art, it is little loss to the 
 world. Were there found a space to stretch it on the 
 walls, it would only he a monument of the false taste of 
 the directors in encouraging such art, and the hopeless- 
 ness of attempting to impose on the public the art of an 
 age that has passed away. 
 
 In tracing the management of the Institution, we 
 are anxious that James Ward's talents as an artist 
 should not be estimated by our opinions upon the am- 
 bitious work which, on the mistaken commission of the 
 directors, he was induced to attempt. He was of an 
 art family. George Morland married his sister. Bred a 
 mezzotint engraver, he early distinguished himself; his 
 engravings possessing very great merits, from their truly 
 artistic character. He became no less distinguished as 
 a painter of landscape with figures, and of animals ; 
 particularly the latter. His great work of " The Bull," 
 has found its proper place in the National Gallery. He 
 had a strong, but peculiar feeling for colour. His style 
 of drawing was vigorous, though imbued with an evident 
 desire to exhibit his knowledge. He was elected an 
 associate of the Academy in 1807, and a full member in 
 1811 ; and living to the age of ninety-one years, he died 
 on the 17th November, 1859. 
 
 Following this failure, one prominent feature of the 
 directors' plan was abandoned. They had failed to 
 
CAPRICIOUS REWARDS TO ARTISTS. 151 
 
 discover and reward the early germs of talent struggling 
 to obtain recognition, they had not only passed by the 
 right man, but had too often chosen the wrong — 
 and now to avoid the difficulties of selection, for which 
 they were not in any way qualified, they announced 
 that no further premiums would be offered to com- 
 petition ; and determined in lieu to adopt a system 
 of gratuities, and to give commissions for pictures on 
 a large scale — they had not yet learnt that a large 
 picture is not necessarily a great work — for presentation 
 to our public buildings. The sums awarded in 1817 
 were on this plan, and were "expressly stated to be 
 donations presented in compliment and encouragement 
 of merit." Here the directors were on safer grounds. 
 They incurred no responsibility in their judgments 
 when scattering their donations among painters of esta- 
 blished name ; not for the merits of a single picture 
 even, but as a general homage to public opinion, not 
 the far-seeing distinction of unrecognized genius. We 
 find these donations then were made for the "general 
 merits" of an artist's works, "in approbation" of his 
 works, and " in compliment for merit ; " and we must 
 note that in 1828, after Etty had exhibited at least 
 seventeen years on the walls of the Institution, the 
 " general merits of his works " were at last found out, 
 and " an acknowledgment of 100 guineas " awarded to 
 him. These capricious rewards, gradually diminishing 
 and intermittent, finally ceased in 1842 ; the directors 
 having in thirty-four years given 6,080/. in " premiums 
 and complimentary donations." Then, with such results 
 as we have shown, they gave notice " that the effect of 
 these premiums was not commensurate with their expec- 
 
152 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tations, and they do not therefore think it advisable to 
 continue them next year." 
 
 How art must have winced under such patronage — 
 such waste of large means intended for its true culture ; 
 while a large public were misled by the pompous 
 decisions of the lay directory ; and merit, pushed aside, 
 stood reproved before the world by such blunders. 
 Among many, too many instances, we select one from 
 Mr. Uwins, then Secretary to the Water-Colour Society, 
 who says in 1815, " There is one thing which will excite 
 a great bustle among artists and amateurs ; it is a most 
 extraordinary picture of Havell's, in which he has painted 
 sunshine so near the truth that it absolutely makes the 
 eyes ache to look at it. The artists are all alarmed, and 
 the patrons stand aghast ; but Havell, strong in the 
 power of genius, goes on in spite of the world combined. 
 At the British Institution the picture was refused on 
 account of its novelty and originality ; it puzzled their 
 wise heads, and in the true spirit of ignorance and bar- 
 barism, because they could not understand it, they turned 
 it out. Poor England ! The fine arts are in a hopeful 
 condition, when those who assume to themselves the 
 character of patrons are too ignorant to lead, and too 
 obstinate to be led ! But it is an ill wind that blows 
 nobody good ; it falls to us to publish the rejected ad- 
 dresses, and now let the public be the judge. Fortun- 
 ately for the arts, while our Society exists, there will 
 always be an appeal to a higher tribunal than that which 
 the contemptible aristocracy of the British Institution 
 have attempted to set up. I use strong language, I 
 cannot help it ; however excellent it is to have a giant's 
 strength, it is pitiful to use it like a giant." 
 
THE DIRECTOR'S FALSE JUDGMENTS. 153 
 
 The judgment of the directors was no less impugned 
 in their selections for the exhibitions of the works of the 
 old masters. In the Catalogue Raisonne for 1815 and 
 1816, published anonymously, but well known to be 
 written by Reinagle, E.A., we find : — " « Virgin and 
 Child.' Raphael. P. J. Miles, Esq. So you believe 
 this to be by Raphael, Mr. Miles ! ' Adonis going to 
 the Chase.' Titian. Earl of Darnley. And you believe 
 this to be by Titian, Lord Darnley ! God help you both ! 
 ' Landscape, with the Flight into Egypt.' A Carrachi. 
 Earl of Suffolk. Oh, most worthy and most renowned, 
 most noble and well-informed directors ! How low, how 
 very low do we bow to you for the selection of such a 
 picture as this. Entertaining a just contempt for this 
 silly piece of puerility, we cannot but imagine its owner 
 may very possibly be of a class upon whom it is by no 
 means difficult for himself or others to impose, &c. 
 'Europa.' Titian. The Earl of Darnley. When a 
 lady is permitted to exhibit herself in this pickle, it 
 would but be decent to insist on her putting on clean 
 linen. Of all the disgusting drabs we ever saw, this bears 
 away the bell. She is, however, very well matched in 
 the ' Risk.' What Jupiter could see in such a mawks, or 
 what the mawks could see in such a Jupiter, we are at 
 a loss to comprehend." Such was the style of attack, 
 such the barren criticism at that time; which, though 
 we quote, we are far from admiring. 
 
 We must now revert to the manner in which the 
 directors disposed of the works of which they became 
 possessed. Their original purpose was "to endeavour 
 to form a public gallery of the works of 'British artists,' 
 with a few select specimens of each of the great schools:" 
 
154 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 a noble intention which still awaits its development, for 
 we have yet no avowed national collection of the British 
 School ; though Mr. Sheepshanks, Mr. Vernon, Mr. 
 Turner, B.A., and others, have made such generous 
 contributions towards one. This seemed the most pro- 
 mising and, with competent management, the best part of 
 the directors' plan; yet no steps were ever taken to carry it 
 out. Of the grand works of historic and sacred art which 
 they had. stimulated and purchased, we have told how two 
 were presented to churches distant from the metropolis, 
 a third, Hilton's " Mary Anointing the Feet of Christ," 
 was buried in one of the City churches; and Ward's 
 " Great Allegory " among the lumber at Chelsea Hospital. 
 But we have not mentioned the purchase, in 1816, of 
 Wilkie's most characteristic work, " The Distraining for 
 Bent," for 600 guineas. Of this picture Washington 
 Irving says, " The British Institution bought Wilkie's 
 ' Distraining for Bent,' and put it in a cellar;" and he 
 describes going to see it with his friend Leslie, B.A., 
 who, he tells, " stood long before it saying nothing, but 
 when he turned to go away the tears were flowing fast, and 
 he declared it one of the most touching pictures he had 
 ever seen." The directors had then purchased a fine 
 work, which might have been indeed an ornament to the 
 British Gallery they had talked about ; but it was neither 
 heroic in size or subject, and they sold it — sold it, in 
 1822, to Baimbach the engraver, " who was permitted to 
 become its possessor on paying them, by four instal- 
 ments, the sum they had paid for it." It is interesting 
 to know that Mr. Sheepshanks offered the same sum for 
 this picture after Baimbach had made an engraving of it, 
 and was promised the first refusal. It, however, became 
 
PURCHASES MADE BY THEM. 
 
 155 
 
 the property of Mr. Wells of Redleaf, we do not know on 
 what terms, and remained in his collection till his death. 
 
 We will complete the short list of the directors' pur- 
 chases. In 1820 they purchased, for 500 guineas, the 
 "Battle of Waterloo," by George Jones, R.A., and 
 presented this picture to Chelsea Hospital, where it still 
 hangs. In 1825, for 1,000 guineas, Hilton's fine work of 
 " Christ Crowned with Thorns," presented to St. Peter's 
 Church, Pimlico, where it narrowly escaped destruction by 
 fire ; and Northcote's " Entombment of our Saviour," for 
 150 guineas, presented to Chelsea New Church ; and in 
 1827, his " Christ's Agony in the Garden," 100/., pre- 
 sented to Hanover Chapel, Regent Street. The directors 
 also presented to Greenwich Hospital, where in the large, 
 but ill-lighted gallery, they find from their subjects an 
 appropriate place, four works which were painted on com- 
 missions given by them — Arnald's "Battle of the Nile," 
 500/.; Drummond's "Admiral De Winter surrendering 
 his Sword to Admiral Duncan," 500/. ; H. P. Briggs's 
 " George III. presenting the sword to Lord Howe on 
 board the Princess Charlotte," 525/. ; and George 
 Jones's, R.A., "Battle of St. Vincent— Nelson Board- 
 ing," 525/. To these purchases we must add a por- 
 trait by Jackson, R.A., and three portrait-busts ; the 
 last purchase made in 1830. 
 
 The directors had, up to this time, spent 10,161Z. 
 upon the works of living artists, and to that extent must 
 have assisted them individually. But this essential part 
 of the directors' scheme then collapsed ; no premiums or 
 commissions have since been given, yet art has survived 
 and flourished. The directors also purchased two pictures 
 by ancient masters : in 1811, " The Consecration of St. 
 
156 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Nicholas," by Paul Veronese, for 1,575Z. ; in 1823, "The 
 Vision of St. Jerome," by Parmegiano, for 3,302L ; and 
 two pictures by deceased artists of the English School ; 
 in 1829, " The Holy Family," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 1,950 guineas ; and " The Market Cart," by Gains- 
 borough, 1,050 guineas; and these four fine works, 
 with the "Christ Healing the Sick," an unworthy com- 
 panion, they presented to the public on the formation 
 of the National Gallery, of which the first four are now 
 distinguished ornaments. On the occasion of the pur- 
 chase of the " Saint Jerome," Leslie tells us, that Lord 
 Egremont called on him and asked if he had a list of 
 the directors of the Institution, " for," said, he, " 1 want 
 to see who are the men who have given so much money 
 for that broken-backed * Saint John.' A poor way, I 
 think, of encouraging art." The purchase of the above 
 pictures by deceased artists of the British School, was, 
 however, more in accordance with the avowed objects of 
 the founders of the Institution. 
 
 The exhibitions are the remaining feature of the 
 Institution — the exhibition of the works of living artists 
 in the early spring ; and of the great men who had pre- 
 ceded them, in the summer. The latter of which we 
 propose to treat first, appears to have grown out of 
 the small collections made up for the students ; for 
 whose use the directors had contributed from their own 
 collections, and, by their example and influence, had 
 induced others to lend, the valuable paintings they pos- 
 sessed ; and then, having introduced and established the 
 practice of loans of works of art, a custom from which 
 such true gratification and improvement have ensued, 
 they extended their scheme, and were enabled to make 
 
EXHIBITION OF THE EARLY PAINTERS. 157 
 
 a collection of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
 exhibit them to the public in the summer of 1813. The 
 idea was a happy one, and merits the fullest recognition. 
 It was an assertion of English art, and an honour to our 
 great painter ; and the directors earned the gratitude of 
 the artists and the public. The exhibition opened with 
 no less than one hundred and forty-three of Reynolds's 
 selected works, to which others were subsequently 
 added. 
 
 Following up this successful celebration in the next 
 summer, the directors formed a collection of the works of 
 four of the most distinguished of our early painters, com- 
 prising fifty- eight pictures by Hogarth, seventy-three by 
 Gainsborough, eighty-five by Richard Wilson, and twelve 
 by Zoffany. Then, still selecting from the rich collections 
 of our countrymen, the directors, in 1815, exhibited the 
 works of the great masters of the Dutch and Flemish 
 Schools, and in 1816 the works of the Italian and 
 Spanish Schools. In 1817, reverting to our English 
 painters, the directors exhibited a miscellaneous selec- 
 tion from the works of Dobson, Nathaniel Hone, Opie, 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Runciman, Mortimer, Wright, 
 Peters, Wheatley, De Loutherbourg, Hodges, Hoppner, 
 Wilson, Hogarth, Stubbs, Dance, Copley, Romney, 
 Gainsborough Dupont, Gavin Hamilton, Rigaud, Sey- 
 mour, George Morland, Webber, Brooking, Gilpin, 
 Marlow, Barret, Burnet, Bourgeois, Cipriani, Scott, 
 and Gainsborough. Here were the works of the chief 
 artists of the previous generation; the founders of a 
 school of art in England ; the first members of the 
 Royal Academy ; all men whose names and works will 
 find a place in art memories, though some of them have 
 
158 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 fallen from the height of their living reputations into the 
 second rank, or even still lower. Yet the works of all 
 possess an interest, and the united collection formed an 
 epoch from whence to trace the progress of our art, 
 which did not occur again till the larger collection in the 
 International Exhibition of 1862. In the two succeeding 
 years the directors exhibited miscellaneous collections 
 from the great masters of the Continental Schools ; and 
 in 1820 they made a novel exhibition of painting and 
 sculpture, interesting both to the lover of art and the 
 antiquary, consisting of portraits representing distin- 
 guished persons in the history and literature of the 
 United Kingdom ; and though in company with several 
 foreign artists who had practised in England, the col- 
 lection again contained many of the works of the early 
 painters of our school — Walker, Dobson, Murray, Riley, 
 Lely, Kneller, Hogarth, Pine, Hudson, Dance, Reynolds, 
 Gainsborough, Copley ; and the sculptors, Nollekins, 
 Bacon, and Joseph. 
 
 With great satisfaction we have described the highly 
 interesting collections made from year to year by the 
 influence and enterprise of the directors. They were 
 continued with much success. In 1823 one room was 
 devoted exclusively to the works of Reynolds. In 1825 
 the collection consisted of the works of living British 
 artists, each painter selecting what he deemed to be his 
 best work. In 1826, George IV. 's private collection 
 from Carlton Palace was lent for exhibition. In 1830, 
 the works of Sir Thomas Lawrence, then recently de- 
 ceased ; and in 1833 the works of the three first 
 Presidents of the Royal Academy — Reynolds, West, and 
 Lawrence. On several subsequent occasions, a room 
 
SUCCESS OF THESE EXHIBITIONS. 
 
 159 
 
 has been set apart for the works of a deceased painter 
 of our school. In 1835, the enamels of Henry Bone 
 were so distinguished. In 1840, the works of Hilton ; 
 in 1841, of Stothard ; in 1842, of Wilkie ; in 1845, of 
 Callcott. But in the following years the collections 
 showed less originality of selection ; the field was nar- 
 rowed as the works of one great painter after another 
 were collected, and one distinguished gallery after another 
 ransacked. Yet this yearly gathering of fine works so 
 graciously lent for exhibition has not failed to bring for- 
 ward pictures of the highest character and interest. It 
 forms the one branch of the directors' scheme which 
 they were enabled to conduct successfully. To them the 
 renowned works of the great masters were well known ; 
 and to their influence the possessors were accessible. It 
 required little nice discrimination for the selection and 
 arrangement of those works, and the exercise of no 
 judgment challenging appeal ; the exhibitions of the old 
 masters, therefore, have been eminently successful. 
 
 The Exhibitions of the works of the living artists are 
 the subject of more tender remark ; yet they challenge 
 criticism. They were established specially to encourage 
 high art : original compositions in history, here, if no- 
 where else, were to find an honoured place, fostered by 
 premiums and donations, sheltered by the most dis- 
 tinguished patronage ; and at a time when money was 
 proverbially scarce, they found purchasers and thus 
 allured the artists to an institution so favoured by fashion- 
 able dilettantism. Yet the murmurs of dissatisfaction 
 were soon heard, and soon grew louder at the selection, 
 and more particularly the arrangement, of the pictures 
 sent for exhibition. It would be so, if the task were 
 
160 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 assigned to an angel ; but when undertaken by the heads 
 of the profession, who know the relative merits of the 
 contributors and can distinguish the meritorious attempts 
 of a young and unknown artist, they can defend them- 
 selves from incompetence, at least, and if charged with 
 exclusiveness or favouritism, may authoritatively appeal to 
 the justice of their decisions. Not so the seven illus- 
 trious directors to whom this duty is assigned by the 
 governors; but, as alleged, usually engrossed by some one 
 or two only who have their favourites. Be this as it may, 
 one painter after another has felt himself aggrieved by 
 the decisions of an authority which the profession would 
 not recognize ; and from this, with other causes — the 
 establishment of other exhibitions, and the absorbing 
 interest of the Royal Academy Exhibitions — this exhibi- 
 tion has been long in a gradual state of decline. We 
 find one instance in point, inKnowles' " Life of Fuseli." 
 This eminent painter, he tells us, wished the new-formed 
 Institution to succeed, yet thought, to use his own words, 
 " from the colour of the egg that it was more likely to 
 produce an ichneumon than a sphynx," and expressed his 
 reluctance to become a contributor. And not without 
 reason, for having, by the advice of his friend, Mr. 
 Coutts, sent his painting of " The Lazar House," the 
 leading members of the Institution hesitated to give it 
 admission, considering the subject too terrible for the 
 public eye; and they had three meetings before they 
 came to the resolution to admit it." And these were the 
 self-constituted patrons and judges of historic art ! 
 
 The directors had made regulations from time to 
 time with respect to the admission and arrangement of 
 paintings sent for exhibitions. They had notified that in 
 
THE EXHIBITIONS OF LIVING ARTISTS. 161 
 
 the selection preference would be given to those not pre- 
 viously exhibited ; that those works not exhibited before 
 should have a prior claim to the most elegible places ; 
 then that pictures previously exhibited should be inadmis- 
 sible, except those from the Koyal Academy exhibitions ; 
 and finally, after these and other regulations, all works 
 previously exhibited were excluded in 1844, by a notice 
 rescinding the exception with regard to works from the 
 Eoyal Academy. This resolution was seriously damaging 
 to the exhibition which had shown so many retrograde 
 symptoms. The first desire of a painter is to distinguish 
 himself on the Academy walls, the members of the 
 Academy send their finest works there as a matter of 
 course, and the young painter is eager to see his first 
 efforts side by side with the works of the heads of his 
 profession. But the works of both, unsold at the 
 Academy, were often sent to the Institution for the 
 second chance of a purchaser, and by the regulation 
 now made, the directors deprived their future exhibi- 
 tions of many pictures which would have greatly added 
 to their strength and importance. 
 
 It would, however, serve no useful purpose to follow 
 the course of the exhibition from its commencement, 
 when so many distinguished artists contributed to its 
 success, to its present fallen estate. We propose only 
 to describe how low that now is ; confining our remarks to 
 the general character of the exhibition — avoiding all 
 individual criticism — prompted only by a pained con- 
 sciousness of truth. On entering the Exhibition of the 
 year 1864, we can scarcely express the sad feelings with 
 which we passed from picture to picture ; lovers of art, 
 desirous at all times to see and admire merits before we 
 vol. ii. 45 
 
162 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 criticise defects, anxious to seek out even the germs of 
 future promise, till, cruelly disappointed, a depressing 
 feeling of humiliation seized us. In these rooms the 
 grand style was to be naturalized and the English School 
 trained in sacred and epic art ; but around us not one 
 virtuous attempt at high art could be discovered : a most 
 meretricious and mischievous style pervaded the whole — 
 we can hardly make an exception — an utter absence of 
 even attempts which might lead to better things. Crude 
 incompleteness ; a vulgar bravura of manner without 
 drawing or truth, a gaudy colouring shewing no regard 
 for nature, no invention in the choice of subjects ; but 
 daring imitations of the successful art of others, both in 
 subject and manner — such were the pervading characteris- 
 tics of the exhibiton, abandoned alike by genius and hope. 
 
 The whole were painted for a market : made to 
 sell, like the Sheffield hawkers' razors, and made for a 
 price. Now we would not quote price, as a test either 
 of the merit or value of a picture ; but taken in the 
 aggregate, what can be said of an exhibition of modern 
 art, an exhibition founded with great pretensions, when, 
 contrasting the really very high prices readily given for 
 every work of true merit, we find that more than one 
 half of the pictures exhibited are priced by their painters, 
 at sums not exceeding twenty guineas each, and more 
 than one fourth at ten guineas and under. To speak 
 exactly, there were in this exhibition 633 paintings, 
 several of which were not priced ; but of the whole 
 collection, 351 were priced at twenty guineas and under, 
 and of that number 165 at ten guineas and under. The 
 arrangement of the pictures was also bad, and showed 
 great want of discernment ; for in the very exceptional 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTION. 
 
 163 
 
 case of an artist, probably a young beginner, evincing any 
 earnest attempt to imitate nature, or to draw or finish his 
 subject with clue care, it had gained him no preference : 
 his work was placed in a corner or on the ground, and 
 that without the excuse that better places were occupied 
 with better works, but glaringly the contrary. 
 
 The extended influence of the directors, the liberal 
 subscriptions by which they were assisted, the support of 
 the artists, and the time, were alike favourable to the 
 scheme ; yet with all these advantages, bit by bit the 
 plan has been a failure, — the proposal to make a public 
 collection of the works of British artists, the encourage- 
 ment of high art by rewards and premiums, and lastly 
 the exhibition of modern works. The objects and 
 intentions of the founders of the institution were patriotic, 
 yet they have not proved attainable by patronage, and we 
 have shown how they have failed to be attainable under 
 lay management. The exhibition has been deserted by 
 the heads of the profession, and is in a chronic state of 
 decline, leading to dissolution. We do not think that 
 this will be arrested, and we question further whether its 
 revival under the original conditions would prove in the 
 interests of art. It is, from its concurrent period of 
 opening, the competitor of the Exhibition of the Society 
 of British Artists, in Suffolk Street, and in conflict with 
 the interests of that body ; which merits higher recogni- 
 tion and support. Could it attain this by any amalga- 
 mation of the two exhibitions, by which the united 
 collection might be brought under professional manage- 
 ment, and Suffolk Street removed to the more favoured 
 locality in Pall Mall, art would be the gainer. 
 
 45—a 
 
164 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 HOWARD, HILTON, HAYDON, AND ETTY. 
 
 Henry Howard, R.A.:— His early Training— Travels in Italy— Paints 
 Poetic and Classic Subjects— Occasionally Portraits — Character of 
 his Art. — William Hilton, R.A. : — Studies at the Royal Academy 
 — Historic Art his sole aim— His first "Works— Premiums gained at 
 the British Institution— Appointed Keeper of the Royal Academy- 
 Decayed State of his Works— His " Crucifixion "— Opinion of his 
 Merits— Benjamin Robert Haydon :— Determines to be a Painter- 
 Comes to London to Study— Admitted into the Schools of the Royal 
 Academy— His enthusiasm for Art— Paints his " Dentatus "—Inflated 
 Opinion of his own Work— In Debt — Obstinately pursues his own 
 Way— His " Solomon " and " Christ's Entry into Jerusalem "—Again 
 in Difficulties— Claims Public Assistance— Still deeply Embarrassed— 
 Commences the " Raising of Lazarus "—Opinion upon this Work- 
 Thrown into the King's Bench— The " Mock Election," and " Chair- 
 ing the Member "—Paints Portraits and any thing—" The Reform 
 Banquet "—Lectures in London and in the Provinces — Napoleon 
 Portraits— The Fresco Commissions— His Claims to Employment- 
 Utter Disappointment and sad Death— Criticism on his kri— William 
 Etty, R.A. .-—Serves his Time to a Printer— Cherishes a love of Art- 
 Comes to London— Enters the Schools of the Royal Academy— His 
 Perseverance and Manner of Painting— The Beauty of Woman his 
 Theme — His Choice of Subjects — " Cleopatra," " Judith," and 
 "Benaiah," critically described— His smaller Works— Recollections 
 of his Character and Art. 
 
 An influential attempt to foster historic art in this country 
 has been described in the previous chapter ; and in this 
 we propose to trace the career, marked by struggles and 
 neglect, of four talented men, who devoted themselves to 
 naturalize the grand style in the English school, and to 
 assert its power. They were contemporaries in the 
 
HENRY HOWARD, R.A. 
 
 165 
 
 schools, and competitors in the race of fame, but one 
 came a few years before the other three, and had a more 
 lengthened career ; and to him we give the precedence. 
 Henry Howard, R.A., was born in London 31st January, 
 1769. He left school at thirteen with an average educa- 
 tion, and a little knowledge of Latin, and then from time 
 to time accompanied his father to and from Paris, and 
 picked up French. Though not intended for an artist, 
 he showed a predilection for drawing, which growing 
 stronger, at the age of seventeen he became the pupil of 
 Philip Keinagle, R.A. In 1788 he was admitted a student 
 of the Royal Academy, and in 1790 he gained the two first 
 medals — the first silver medal in the life school, and the 
 gold medal for his original painting of Caractacus — 
 the president Reynolds complimenting him, that his pic- 
 ture was the best which had been submitted to the 
 Academy. 
 
 Having thus distinguished himself, he determined, in 
 pursuit of his art, to visit Italy, and set off early in 1791. 
 He went by Paris and Geneva over Mont Cenis to Turin, 
 Milan, Parma, Bologna and Florence, seeing and sketching 
 many of the fine works of art in those cities, and finally 
 to Rome. Here he pursued his studies, and painted in 
 competition for the travelling studentship of the Royal 
 Academy a large composition, the figures life-size, of 
 " The Death of Abel, a subject from the text of Gesner." 
 The treatment, which was hardly scriptural, was unfor- 
 tunate, and he was not only unsuccessful in his competi- 
 tion, but his work narrowly escaped rejection at the 
 Academy Exhibition in 1794. He returned by Florence, 
 Venice, and Trieste to Vienna, Dresden, and home by 
 Hamburg. He was now in his twenty-sixth year. He 
 
166 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 had been trained at the Royal Academy in classic art, 
 and had gained the first medals ; he had travelled 
 and studied the works of the great Italian and Ger- 
 man schools, but with an evident attachment to the 
 former ; and thus, well prepared for the effort, he com- 
 menced his career. His tastes led him to the poetic and 
 classic, rather than to the more severe and grand style, 
 and in 1795 he exhibited three small-sized pictures, "Puck 
 and Ariel," " Satan awaking in the Burning Lake," and 
 a portrait ; and in the following year a finished sketch of 
 the " Planets drawing Light from the Sun," — 
 
 " Hither as to their fountain, other stars 
 Repairing, in their golden urns draw light — " 
 
 which, with some modifications, he twice repeated, first 
 as " The Solar System," exhibited in 1823, and later on 
 the ceiling of the Duchess of Sutherland's boudoir. 
 
 He continued to paint works of this class from the 
 English and Latin poets, with occasionally a subject from 
 the Scriptures, and at times found much employment as a 
 portrait painter. He also made a few designs for book 
 illustration, and for the ornamentation of Wedgwood's 
 pottery ; some of which latter he executed himself on the 
 clay. His classic tastes received further development by 
 his employment in 1799 on a series of drawings for the 
 Dilettante Society, from the antique sculpture in Eng- 
 land ; a work which he completed with great accuracy 
 and finish. In 1801 he married Miss Reinagle, the 
 daughter of his old master, and in the same year was 
 elected an associate of the Royal Academy. In 1808, 
 upon exhibiting his " Christ Blessing Little Children," 
 the figures life-size (a work which is now the altar-piece 
 of the church in Berwick Street, St. James's), he was 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS WORKS. 
 
 167 
 
 elected a member of the Academy ; three years later he 
 was appointed to fill the office of secretary, and in 1833 
 was chosen professor of painting. From 1794 to 1847 
 he was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy. 
 Among his best works are " The Pleiades," for which 
 the directors of the British Institution awarded him a 
 premium in 1810; " The Birth of Venus," probably his 
 most esteemed picture ; "The Solar System;" "The Story 
 of Pandora," and the " Lady in a Florentine Dress," a 
 portrait of his daughter. His works are in the col- 
 lections of the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquis of 
 Lansdowne, and in the Soane and Vernon Cralleries. 
 He died at Oxford, where he had gone on a visit to his 
 son, 5th October, 1847. 
 
 Howard will not be able to maintain a high rank in 
 the English school. Distinguished in the outset of his 
 career by the highest honours to be gained as a student, 
 he fell short of the genius that will live. His works are 
 graceful and pretty, marked by propriety, pleasing in 
 composition ; his faces and expression good, his drawing 
 correct ; but his style cold and feeble. His chief works 
 were painted to a small scale, and were suited to the taste 
 of the day ; but he was glad to eke out his income by 
 portraiture, and as a designer. As a lecturer he had 
 little originality of thought ; his matter wanted interest, 
 and failed to catch the mind or impress itself upon the 
 memory of the student. He is a part of our school — a 
 link in the chain — but he has not exercised much in- 
 fluence either by his pictures or his teaching. His life 
 was uneventful — neither marked by great success or by 
 failure. He possessed the esteem of his profession. 
 
 William Hilton, R.A., was another history painter, 
 
168 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 whom the Royal Academy may fairly claim as an off- 
 spring, and the English school as a representative. With 
 more talent than Howard, and with greater resolution, 
 he devoted himself exclusively to high art, and was 
 neither tempted aside by the gains of portraiture or of 
 applied design. Yet his works, from their large size and 
 subject, were less suited to the public taste, and had, in 
 his day, little chance of finding purchasers. He was the 
 son of a portrait painter at Newark, and was born at 
 Lincoln, 3rd June, 1786. He early evinced a love for 
 art, and in 1800 he became the pupil of John Raphael 
 Smith, the mezzotint engraver. He entered as a student 
 at the Royal Academy in 1806, and applying himself 
 zealously to anatomy, soon made himself master of the 
 figure. One of his first works was a series of designs 
 carefully finished in oil for the Mirror, followed by a 
 second series for the Citizen of the World. He had 
 previously, in 1803, exhibited " Banditti," and now, 
 asserting his power, he commenced his classic works, 
 exhibiting "Hector re-inspired by Apollo," " Cephalus 
 and Procris," "Venus carrying the wounded Achilles," 
 " Ulysses and Calypso." In 1810 he completed a 
 subject from English history, " The Citizens of Calais 
 delivering their Keys to King Edward III.," for which 
 he was awarded a premium of fifty guineas by the 
 directors of the British Institution. 
 
 He next year attempted sacred art, and in 1811 
 received from the Institution a second premium of 
 122Z. 10s. for his " Entombment of Christ." This was 
 followed by " Christ restoring Sight to the Blind " and 
 " Mary anointing the Feet of Jesus ; " and for this 
 latter picture he was fortunate to find purchasers in the 
 
WILLIAM HILTON, R.A. 
 
 169 
 
 directors of the institution, who gave him 550 guineas 
 for it, and in 1821 presented it to the church of St. 
 Michael in the City. We do not find that he had 
 hitherto sold his pictures, yet he quietly and unobtru- 
 sively pursued his own high path in art. His father, 
 who lived till 1822, probably continued to assist him with 
 money, yet in his twenty- fifth year, and after producing so 
 many fine works, he must have bitterly felt, gentle as he 
 was in spirit, that he was neglected — his talent without 
 reward. Hay don tells an anecdote which has reference 
 to the picture we have just mentioned and to Hilton's 
 condition at this time. He says: " Hilton, my fellow- 
 student, had been successful in selling his 1 Mary 
 anointing the Feet of Christ,' in the British Gallery, 
 for 500 guineas, which saved him from ruin. I told him 
 he was a lucky fellow, for I was just on the brink of 
 ruin. ' How ? ' said he. I explained my circumstances, 
 and he immediately offered me a large sum to assist me. 
 This was indeed generous. I accepted only 34L, but his 
 noble offer endeared him to me for the rest of his life. 
 A more amiable creature never lived, nor a kinder heart ; 
 but there was an intellectual and physical weakness in 
 everything he did." In 1825 Hilton painted his fine 
 work, " Christ Crowned with Thorns." This work was 
 also purchased by the directors of the British Institution 
 for 1,000 guineas, and was presented by them to the 
 new church of St. Peter, Eaton Square, in 1828 ; and 
 on a fire in that edifice in 1838, was happily rescued 
 from the flames. In 1834 he was again fortunate in 
 obtaining a premium of 100 guineas for his " Editha 
 Searching for the Body of Harold." 
 
 It is a pity that, of one so talented and so well known 
 
170 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 to a generation of students — to whom we ourselves are 
 indebted for so much friendly teaching — so few facts 
 have been recorded. In his earlier career, his quiet, 
 homely habits, added to his weak health, kept him from 
 society ; and he was by nature opposed to all that 
 brought him into personal notice : he gave the public 
 his works ; but he avoided the notoriety which his talents 
 would have gained him. In 1818 he visited Italy, and 
 was at Rome with his friend Phillips, R. A. ; and the same 
 year he exhibited his " Rape of Europa " and " Rape of 
 Ganymede." He was elected in 1814 an associate of the 
 Royal Academy, and in 1820 a full member. In 1827 
 he was appointed the Keeper of the Academy, an office 
 for which he was specially qualified ; and in the follow- 
 ing year he married. In 1835 he had the misfortune to 
 lose his wife. Her loss, to a man of his habits a severe 
 affliction, aggravated an asthma, from which he had some 
 time suffered ; naturally silent and pensive, he gave way 
 to great depression, and never altogether rallied. He 
 died 30th December 1839, in his 54th year, of disease of 
 the heart, and was buried in the churchyard of the Savoy 
 chapel ; where his sister — the widow of his true friend, 
 De Wint — has placed a font in memory of him. 
 
 On his death, several of his finest works remained 
 unsold — a sad instance of the little encouragement he 
 had met with. Among them his " Angel releasing 
 Saint Peter from Prison," " Sir Calepine rescuing 
 Serena"- — both exhibited in 1831 — and his " Editha," 
 for which he received a premium from the British 
 Institution in 1834. His " Christ delivering Peter," 
 conceived in the same spirit as Raphael's well-known 
 work in the Vatican, was painted during his Keepership, 
 
STATE OF HIS PAINTINGS. 
 
 171 
 
 and having tempted no purchaser, usually hung in the 
 Lecture Theatre. As students, we recollect it fresh 
 and beautiful, the face of the angel finely conceived and 
 grand in style. Alas ! When we again saw it at the 
 International Exhibition of 1862 it was a mere wreck : 
 the face seemed to have been entirely repainted ; it looked 
 shrunk and weazened, and the other parts of the picture 
 either corrugated, or gaping in wide glistening fissures. 
 How much truly has the broivn School to answer for : 
 how many fine pictures has it brought to utter ruin ! 
 His " Editha," the swan-necked lady, has twice 
 nearly slipped from the canvas ; and though it is still 
 exhibited in the Yemon Collection, is only a seamed 
 wreck of his genius. His " Sir Calepine," which 
 was bought by the subscriptions of the students — who 
 loved him as their teacher, and honoured his persistent 
 efforts in historic art — has been removed from the 
 National Gallery, to which they presented it, as unfit 
 for exhibition in its ruined state. His " Crucifixion," 
 purchased by the corporation of Liverpool, is a fine 
 work, and an honour to the English school ; but, sad 
 to say, like his other works, from the unfortunate pig- 
 ments he used, added to the want of proper attention, it 
 is in a very dilapidated state. The composition forms a 
 triptych, a centre and two wings ; the centre much higher 
 than the wings. In its treatment it is solemn and grand, 
 and free from commonplace repetitions ; a supernatural 
 light streams down from heaven on the crucified Saviour, 
 whose body hangs on the cross in the pallor of death ; 
 the repentant thief, placid and calm, on the left ; on the 
 right the writhing reviler. At the foot of the cross are 
 the women, cast down in terrible agony. The fainting 
 
172 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Virgin Mother is supported by St. John, while the two 
 other Marys hang dreadingly over her. In the right 
 wing, a Roman soldier, terrified by the earthquake and 
 the supernatural light, rushes out of the picture. In the 
 left, the Scribes and Pharisees who have witnessed the 
 crucifixion, are also hurrying from the terrible scene, 
 hateful yet fearful. The action is fine, and finely given ; 
 the drawing correct, but a little rigid, and there is less 
 memory of the works of others in this picture than is 
 usual with him. Hilton's art was chilled by neglect, 
 and never fully developed. He was a man of more talent 
 than genius, and not inclined to depart from precedent ; 
 but his reputation will be maintained if his works endure. 
 
 We have regretted the absence of information neces- 
 sary to do justice to our notice of Hilton ; but we have 
 no cause for such remark with regard to Benjamin Robert 
 Haydon, who left behind him an autobiography and a 
 mass of journalism, extending to the last hour of his fitful 
 life, which have been published under the careful editor- 
 ship of Mr. Tom Taylor. He was born at Plymouth 
 26th January, 1786, and was the son of a bookseller 
 there who claimed a descent from an old Devonshire 
 family. Having gained a little knowledge of Latin and 
 Greek, and made some attempts at drawing, he was 
 apprenticed to his father's trade ; but of unsettled habits, 
 and preferring art to bookselling, he determined, in spite 
 of the entreaties of his parents, that " he must be a 
 painter." He started for London in May, 1804, with 20Z. 
 in his pocket, and set himself closely to his studies. He was 
 by nature obstinately self-willed and self-reliant. He had 
 already made anatomy his study, and with the most 
 exaggerated opinion of his own powers he aimed at 
 
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 
 
 173 
 
 the highest style in art. He brought with him an 
 introduction to his townsman Northcote, who cynically 
 said to him : — " Heestorical peinter ! why yee'll starve, 
 with a bundle of straw under your head." But he was 
 neither discouraged nor depressed, by an opinion which 
 after-experience proved too painfully near the truth. In 
 1805, he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy. 
 In the following year, at the age of twenty-one, he 
 pompously records his commencement: — "Ordered the 
 canvas for my first picture (6 ft. by 4 ft.) of ' Joseph and 
 Mary resting on the road to Egypt,' and on the 1st. 
 October, 1806, setting my palette, and taking brush in 
 hand, I knelt down and prayed to God to bless my career, 
 to grant me energy to create a new era in art, and 
 to rouse the people and patrons to a just estimate of 
 the moral value of historical painting." Then, rising 
 with calm gratitude, he tells how "looking fearlessly at 
 his unblemished canvas, in a species of spasmodic fury 
 he dashed down the first touch." 
 
 He afterwards describes his work on its completion : 
 f ' The subject I had chosen was a pretty one, if poetically 
 treated, and I had so treated it. In the centre was 
 Joseph holding the child asleep ; the ass on the other 
 side ; above were two angels regarding the group, and 
 in the extreme distance the pyramids at the break of 
 day. The whole was silently tender. (But where was 
 his Mary, the principal figure ?) The scenery divided 
 interest with the actors. The colour was toned and 
 harmonious. I had! tried to unite nature and the antique. 
 I never painted without nature and never settled my 
 forms without the antique. I proceeded with the utmost 
 circumspection, and I believe that it was rather an extra- 
 
174 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 ordinary work for a first picture. It was an attempt to 
 unite all parts of the art as a means of conveying thought, 
 in due subordination. It had colour, light and shadow, 
 impasto, handling, drawing, form and expression. It 
 took me six months to paint, and when I saw it twenty- 
 five years after I was astonished." Then he tells that 
 his friends were divided as to the policy of exhibiting the 
 picture, but that he sent it, and then worried himself 
 into a fever " with those cursed torturing anxieties that 
 are the bane of this mode of making your name known 
 to your countrymen." He had furious dreams also about 
 the fate of his picture, and he owns that he bored 
 Fuseli, R.A., then the Keeper of the Academy, about it, 
 till one day he was greeted by him with, " Wall, is it 
 you ? for your comfort then you are hung, be Oode ; and 
 d — d well too, though not in chains yet." 
 
 These extracts give an insight into the character and 
 the restless and importunate vanity of the man, and are 
 the key to his conduct through life. On the exhibition 
 of his picture he went back to Plymouth for a season 
 " and painted his friends at fifteen guineas a head, a 
 good price, at which he soon got full employment ; " and 
 he candidly adds, " execrable as my portraits were, 
 (I sincerely trust that not many survive), I rapidly 
 accumulated money ; not probably because my efforts 
 were thought successful, even by my sitters, but more 
 because my friends wished to give me a lift, and thought 
 that so much enthusiasm deserved encouragement." 
 This practice, however, he says advanced him and gave 
 him confidence, and he recommends it to the young 
 history painter. On his return to town he commenced 
 his "Dentatus," a commission from Lord Mulgrave ; 
 
PAINTS HIS " DENTATUS." 
 
 175 
 
 and after telling that he was puzzled to death to reconcile 
 the antique forms with his anatomical knowledge in his 
 conception of this figure, he by chance accompanied his 
 friend Wilkie, who had obtained an order to see the Elgin 
 marbles. In a fit of vain enthusiasm he finds that he 
 has been pursuing the true Grecian road, and exclaims, 
 "Here were the principles which the common sense of 
 the English* people would understand ; here were the 
 principles which I struggled for in my first picture with 
 timidity and apprehension ; here were the principles 
 which the great Greeks in their finest time established ; 
 and here was I, the most prominent historical student, 
 perfectly qualified to appreciate all this by my own deter- 
 mined mode of study." And then he tells us, " I drew 
 at the marbles ten, fourteen, and fifteen hours at a time, 
 holding a candle and my board in one hand and drawing 
 with the other ; and so I should have stayed till the morn- 
 ing, had not the sleepy porter come yawning in, to tell 
 me it was twelve o'clock ; and then I have often gone home 
 cold, benumbed and damp, my clothes steaming up as 
 I dried them ; and so spreading my drawings on the 
 ground, I have drank my tea at one o'clock in the morning 
 with ecstasy, as its warmth trickled through my frame, 
 and looked at my picture, and dwelt on my drawings, and 
 pondered on the change of empires, and thought that I 
 had been contemplating what Socrates looked at and Plato 
 saw ; and then lifted up with my own high urgings of soul, 
 I have prayed God to enlighten my mind to discover the 
 principles of those divine things, and then I have had 
 inward assurances of future glory, and almost fancying 
 divine influence in my room, have lingered to my mattress 
 bed, and soon dozed into a rich balmy slumber." 
 
176 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 If this is a true account of Haydon's mode of study 
 and state of mind in his twenty-second year — if he thus 
 fed his excited vanity, and thought that he was nourishing 
 true genius by such extravagancies, his prospects in art 
 and in life were already visionary ; and it is all of a piece 
 when soon after he chronicles that, feeling very hungry 
 on his road to the City, he " went into Peel's Coffee- 
 house for some soup. It was such an idle thing to do in 
 the middle of the day, that I shrunk back blushing, for 
 fear of meeting Michael Angelo's spectre crying, ' Haydon ! 
 Haydon ! you idle rascal, is this the way to eminence V " 
 He was now at work upon his " Dentatus ; " and he 
 notes his progress from day to day :■ — " rose in a fever 
 of anxiety and commenced my work — blotting out and 
 painting in again — put my head in once again — went on 
 with my head — improved my head — finished my flying 
 drapery, thank God ! at last I think it is not badly 
 arranged." But Fuseli, who called upon him, thought 
 otherwise, and saying it wanted support, with a bit of 
 chalk drew a prop, for fear the flying drapery by its fall 
 should break the leg of his " Dentatus." 
 
 Haydon's bane was his inordinate, insupportable 
 vanity. Lord Mulgrave, who had given him a com- 
 mission for the " Dentatus," was courteous to him, and 
 invited him frequently to his table ; but this was too much 
 for his weak head. He says he talked more grandly to 
 his artist friends (and we may be sure he did, as he 
 owns it), and that he did not relish the society of the 
 middle-classes ; then he tells us — " My room began to 
 fill with people of rank and fashion, and very often I 
 was unable to paint, and did nothing but talk and 
 explain. They all, however, left town at Christmas, and 
 
HIS VANITY AND DISAPPOINTMENT. 177 
 
 I worked away very hard, and got on well, so that when 
 they returned I was still the object of wonder ; and they 
 continually came to see that extraordinary picture by a 
 young man who never had the advantages of foreign 
 travel. Wilkie was for the time forgotten. At table I 
 was looked at, selected for opinions, and alluded to con- 
 stantly. ' We look to you, Mr. Haydon,' said a lady of 
 the highest rank, < to revive the art.' I bowed my humble 
 acknowledgments, and then a discussion would take place 
 upon the merit and fiery fury of ' Dentatus ; ' then all 
 agreed that it was a fine subject, and then Lord Mulgrave 
 would claim the praise of the selection. Then people 
 would whisper, he has himself an antique head, and then 
 they would look, and some one would differ. Then the 
 noise the picture would make when it was out : then 
 Sir George (Beaumont) would say, that he had always 
 said, that a great historical painter would arise, and that 
 I was he." 
 
 All this, the poor misguided painter says, he " believed 
 as gospel truth." He believed that the production 
 of his picture " must be considered as an epoch in 
 English art." He sent it proudly to the Koyal Academy, 
 and was disgusted that it was hung in the centre of the 
 ante-room. But those who remember the old Academy 
 and the fine works which have hung on this very centre, 
 will think that the young painter should have been happy 
 that his second effort was promoted to so favourable a 
 place, and that his work had been treated with so great 
 consideration. But how could his high-flown excited hopes 
 have been satisfied ! His picture, when exposed to the 
 public judgment, found its true level. The disappointed 
 painter laid all to the Academy, who, he says, " deter- 
 
 vol. ii. 46 
 
178 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTP^RS. 
 
 mined to check him the moment he got in their power." 
 Lord Mulgrave, who kindly paid him 200 guineas for the 
 picture, was cold. Wilkie shrank from its defence. His 
 painting-room was deserted. He felt like a marked man, 
 and the Academy had done it all. Poor fellow ! with 
 some the lesson might have proved salutary, but it was 
 not so with him, for he writes : — " Here was a work, the 
 principles of which I could do nothing but develope for 
 the remainder of my life, in which a resolute and visible 
 attempt had been made to unite colour, expression, 
 handling, light, shadow, and heroic form, and to correct 
 the habitual slovenliness of the English in drawing 
 based upon anatomical knowledge of the figure, wanting 
 till now in English art ; for West and Barry had but 
 superficial knowledge. The first picture which had 
 appeared, uniting the idea and the life, under the influ- 
 ence and guidance of the divine productions of Phidias, 
 seen for the first time in Europe, and painted by the 
 first artist ever permitted to draw from those remains ; 
 and this picture was ruined in reputation through the 
 pernicious power of professional men, embodied by 
 royalty for the advancement of works of this very 
 description. I, the sincere devoted artist, was treated 
 like a culprit, deserted like a leper, abused like a felon, 
 and ridiculed as if my pretensions were the delusions 
 of a madman. Yet these delusions were founded on 
 common sense, on incessant industry, on anatomical 
 investigation, and on a constant study of the finest works 
 of the great masters of the world ! This is, and has 
 been the curse of European art for 250 years, ever 
 since the establishment of those associations of vanity, 
 monopoly, intrigue, and envy, called Academies ; and 
 
ATTACKS THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 179 
 
 until they are reformed and rendered powerless, except 
 as schools of study, they will be felt as an obstruction to 
 the advancement of art." 
 
 In 1810 he began a third picture— "Lady Macbeth," 
 a commission given to him some time previously by Sir 
 George Beaumont who wished to befriend him ; yet he 
 managed to pick a quarrel with Sir George, and to be 
 sadly, we think, in the wrong. He owns, " I was fearless, 
 young, proud of a quarrel with a man of rank, which 
 would help to bring me into notice : " a painful avowal, 
 enough to make friends shy, and to keep men of rank 
 aloof. But he afterwards admitted the folly of his 
 conduct. Though he had by this quarrel forfeited his 
 commission for the "Macbeth," he continued to work 
 upon it, " resolving to make it the most wonderful work 
 which ever issued from human hands." He was in debt 
 and desperate. His father would assist him no further, 
 and, " exasperated by the neglect of my family (we use 
 his own words), tormented by the consciousness of debt, 
 cut to the heart by the cruelty of Sir George, fearful of 
 the severity of my landlord, and enraged at the insults of 
 the Academy, I became furious. An attack upon the 
 Academy and its abominations darted into my head." 
 Thus instigated, with no higher motives, he turned 
 upon the Academy, and published his attack in the 
 Examiner newspaper, and "never (he says) since the art 
 was established were its professors in such a hubbub of 
 fury and rage. . . . From this moment, the destiny of 
 my life may be said to have changed — my picture was 
 caricatured, my name detested, my peace harassed; so great 
 was the indignation at my impertinence, that all merit was 
 denied to ' Macbeth,' " and he afterwards adds, that " West 
 
 46—2 
 
180 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 went clown and did his best, as president, to damn the 
 picture in a crowded room : " a statement which we 
 feel bound to say we believe to be without foundation 
 with regard to West, and utterly inconsistent in our 
 own experience with the conduct of any member. His 
 friends remonstrated with him, reasoned calmly and 
 affectionately on the course he had taken, and he admits 
 that in moments of depression he often wished he 
 had followed their sincere advice ; and yet in full- 
 blown vanity he adds, — "but then I should never have 
 acquired that grand and isolated reputation, solitary and 
 unsupported, which while it encumbers the individual 
 with a heavy burthen, inspires him with vigour propor- 
 tioned to the load." 
 
 In this crooked state of mind he began his large 
 picture, " The Judgment of Solomon," while living in a 
 small confined room, using his blankets or his table-cloth 
 for drapery — suffering from sickness aggravated by dread- 
 ful necessities ; painting, as he tells us, on one occasion 
 till three o'clock in the morning from ten the morning 
 before, he continued his work, alternating sorrows and 
 suffering with intense enjoyments. But, "after the most 
 dreadful application, influenced by an enthusiasm stimu- 
 lated by despair almost to delirium, living for a fortnight 
 upon potatoes because he would not cloud his mind with 
 the fumes of indigestion, he broke down." His eyesight 
 failed, and while he was in this sad state, his picture 
 began to make a noise, and (we tell it in his own words) 
 after what he had just before so hastily alleged of the 
 president, "West called and was affected to tears at the 
 mother. He said there were points in the picture equal 
 to anything in the art;" and though we know that 
 
THE " JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON." 
 
 181 
 
 West's income from the King had been just stopped, he 
 generously sent Haydon a cheque for 15/. 
 
 When his " Solomon" was finished he sent it, not to 
 the Academy, but to the Water-colour Exhibition at 
 Spring G-ardens, which then admitted oil paintings ; and 
 a prominent centre place was given to the work. He 
 was fortunate. He sold it for 600 guineas, and the 
 British Institution awarded it a premium of 100 guineas. 
 He was raised from the depths of his despair, and was at 
 once in the clouds. He paid his most pressing debts, 
 "his table was covered with cards of fashion —of noble 
 lords, dukes, baronets, literary men ; " cold friends again 
 held out their hands, and dinner invitations succeeded. 
 Exultingly he writes, — " The success of ' Solomon ' was 
 so great and my triumph so great that had I died then, 
 my name must have stood on record as a youth who had 
 made a stand against the prejudices of a country, the 
 oppression of rank, and the cruelty and injustice of two 
 public bodies. It was a victory in every sense of the 
 word." With some money in his pocket he started off to 
 Paris with Wilkie, and enjoyed himself, seeing and com- 
 menting upon the great collection of works which then 
 temporarily crowded the Louvre. But returning home, 
 he soon after says in his journal that " not a single com- 
 mission, large or small," followed his success. His local 
 exhibitions of his picture were failures ; a damp warehouse 
 eventually became the resting-place of the " Solomon," 
 and he breaks out, " Shame on those who have the power 
 without the taste to avert such a fall; who let a work 
 which was hailed as a national victory, rot into decay, 
 and dirt and oblivion. But it will rise again, it will shine 
 forth hereafter, and reanimate the energy of a new gene- 
 
182 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 ration, when the falsehood of Germanism shall have 
 ruined the school, and the rising youth are gasping for 
 examples which may be safely imitated." Thirty years 
 later, when he superintended the re-stretching of the 
 canvas, his early work had by no means fallen in his 
 esteem, for he exclaims, " I really am astonished by the 
 picture, and so will the country be by-and-by." It is inte- 
 resting to record that the work was, according to his own 
 account, painted in oil, glazed in oil, varnished, and then 
 oil rubbed in to prevent chill. It might be some grati- 
 fication to Haydon's proud and wounded spirit, if he 
 knew that this picture was purchased by Sir Edwin 
 Landseer, his old pupil, and that it was one of those 
 selected to represent his art at the International Exhi- 
 bition of 1862; though it did not attract any especial 
 notice or enthusiasm. 
 
 He had, before his journey to Paris, commenced his 
 " Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," and he tells us "at 
 this time my enthusiasm was intense. I held intercourse 
 only with my art, and my great Creator. I shunned 
 society ; I looked upon myself as called to produce a 
 great reform, and I devoted myself to it with the pas- 
 sionate self-seclusion of an ascetic." Such statements 
 are, however, part of the exaggeration of Haydon's 
 character, and must not be taken too literally ; yet 
 there is no doubt that he worked hard and enthu- 
 siastically upon his "Jerusalem," and that, as usual, 
 his resources were soon exhausted ; for we find that at 
 the beginning of the year 1815, with large engagements 
 to pay money, he had not a sixpence in his pocket. Still 
 he clung to his easel, and worked incessantly ; his appli- 
 cation increasing his power, and encouraged "by per- 
 
HE CLAIMS PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. 
 
 183 
 
 pefcual and irresistible urgings of future greatness," 
 and by two commissions, on each of which advances 
 were made to him. Then by these paroxysms of appli- 
 cation, and long occasional fasting, his health became 
 deranged, his eyes suffered, and he was unable to work. 
 In 1816 he continued to labour upon the "Jerusalem," 
 and in the following year he was still engaged on the 
 same great work ; and again suffering in health, he was 
 assisted by a friend, and enabled to remove to a healthy 
 house, with a handsome studio, at Lisson Grove. Here 
 he was visited by beauty and fashion ; and for a time, 
 short indeed, basked in the rays of an illusive prosperity. 
 
 Haydon's art, his whole existence in fact, was illusory. 
 He thought his talents should make him the pensioner of 
 the State ; and when advised to paint smaller and more 
 saleable works, he said, " All my friends are advising me 
 what to do, instead of advising the Government what to 
 do for me." He would not yield the question of public 
 support, as " he had made up his mind to bring that 
 about by storm." Terribly hampered for the means to 
 continue his large picture, he did not scruple to solicit, 
 nay, to claim, pecuniary help from any who had the 
 means, and who were, he thought, likely to assist him. It 
 is perhaps surprising to find how much was generously 
 given to him ; and to learn the way in which he justifies 
 himself: — "And now one word as to my applications, 
 too frequent, alas ! for pecuniary assistance. It would 
 hardly be believed that I had brought myself to consider 
 I had, by my public devotion to high art, a claim on all 
 the nobility and opulent of the kingdom. This was no 
 crime, and it was, perhaps, reasonable, but it was not 
 delicate or manly. There can be no doubt I ought to 
 
184 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 have been helped by the State ; and I should have been 
 if the Academy had not existed, which obstinately in- 
 trigued against a vote of money either to individuals or 
 bodies where art was concerned." In such opinions we 
 cannot concur. The manner and the repetition of his 
 begging applications were such as no independent honest 
 mind could have adopted. 
 
 In 1820, the "Jerusalem" was completed, and was 
 exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, and we have 
 again his shout of triumphant success. Money he admits, 
 too, came pouring in, and he kept paying off debts ; but 
 not fast enough, for his success brought a multitude of 
 claims, though he received no less than 1,760/. in the 
 season. Encouraged by this, he married, in 1821, a 
 widow lady, to whom he had been for several years 
 attached. His picture did not, however, find a purchaser, 
 and a subscription set on foot to present it to the church, 
 failed. Subsequently (in 1831) it was purchased for 
 only 240/., and sent to America. 
 
 He had, on the completion of the "Jerusalem," im- 
 mediately commenced another great work, on a canvas 19 
 feet long by 15 feet high. His subject was — " The Kaising 
 of Lazarus," the conception of which rushed into his 
 mind when looking over the prints in the British Museum. 
 He was now, as ever, deeply in debt ; yet harassed by 
 duns and executions, he set to work, fitfully indeed, 
 stirred by his love for his divine art ; " if it were not for 
 which," he says, " I should certainly go mad " — painting 
 to-day, long and successfully, to-morrow hurrying over the 
 town to put off, but for a few hours, and at a great sacri- 
 fice, his most importunate creditors. The moment and the 
 action chosen by the painter for the Lazarus is in the text 
 
HIS " RAISING OF LAZARUS." 
 
 185 
 
 43rd and 44th verses of the 11th chapter of Saint John : 
 "And Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come 
 forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand 
 and foot with graveclothes." The gravestone has just 
 been taken away ; the two men, by whom it has been 
 removed, in violent action and hiding their faces in their 
 hands, draw back in haste and terror from the opened 
 sepulchre. In the centre, contrasting with this action, 
 Christ stands erect, the face calm, the body quietly poised, 
 the right hand and arm raised above the head, as he 
 exclaims, " Lazarus, come forth." Facing Christ, and 
 occupying the left of the picture, Lazarus appears at the 
 divine command, wrapt in the white graveclothes, and 
 with his hands tears away the napkin bound about his 
 face. Grouped immediately with Christ are the kneeling 
 figures — Martha, facing the spectator, on his right hand ; 
 on his left in profile, Mary, her feet extending quite to 
 the front line of the picture. Behind her, leaning for- 
 wards, stands St. John, with clasped hands ; and in the 
 extreme right, a group of nine well-conceived figures. 
 On the left, but retired, the mother and father of 
 Lazarus fill the canvas between him and Christ ; and 
 the corresponding group on the right is made up of two 
 Jewish priests. 
 
 The first impression of the picture is imposing ; the 
 general effect powerful and well suited to the subject ; 
 the incidents and grouping well conceived ; the colouring 
 good, and in parts brilliant. Then the mind, at once 
 fixing, upon the chief figure, feels unsatisfied with the 
 Christ. The head is in direct profile and heavy, the eye 
 sleepy and wanting in due expression, and the attempt at 
 calm dignity results in inanition. The drapery is clumsy 
 
186 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and loaded upon the right arm and shoulder. The hands 
 are good and are well painted ; hut the feet, though also 
 well drawn, seem hardly suited in action to the poise 
 of the figure. On the whole, the Christ is weak ; 
 probably the weakest, though the chief figure, in the 
 picture. The head of the Lazarus is finely conceived 
 and painted ; the mouth and general expression of the 
 muscles of the face still retain the rigidity of death, but 
 the eyes wide open, and fixed upon the Saviour, are filled 
 with an expressive gaze of wonder. When commencing 
 this head, the painter tells us he was arrested, and that with 
 his mind struggling to regain its power he set to work, 
 and scrawling about with his brush, he gave an expres- 
 sion to the eye of Lazarus. " I instantly got interested," 
 he adds, " and before two I had put it in. My pupil, 
 Bewick, sat for it, and, as he had not sold his exquisite 
 picture of ' Jacob,' looked quite thin, and anxious enough 
 for such a head." The Martha is certainly finely con- 
 ceived ; the face, almost colourless from emotion, is well 
 and brilliantly painted, the feeling of sorrowing resigna- 
 tion beautiful ; the whole action of the figure expressive 
 of quiet, subdued grief. Haydon says, " The Martha is 
 a complete specimen of my own style of art. For once 
 I have realized my notions as to idea and nature, colour 
 and expression, surface and handling." The Mary is 
 comparatively a failure ; the figure clumsy, giving the 
 idea of bigness ; the head and shoulders very large, the 
 left arm long ; the expression of the face not reaching 
 above a confused stare, but the drawing and colouring of 
 the hands excellent, and the feet very good. The St. 
 John is rather extravagant, both in action and expres- 
 sion ; the latter unctuous and simpering, and somewhat 
 
THE PICTURE DESCRIBED. 
 
 187 
 
 effeminate — the drapery, particularly the vest, well thrown, 
 and well coloured and painted. The father and mother 
 are good in expression and action, particularly the mother, 
 for whom his washerwoman served as a model. The 
 two Jews are contemptuously expressive without loss 
 of dignity, and the group, including St. Peter, piled 
 upon the cemetery wall, is well conceived — the action 
 and expression good, and the colour and general effect 
 brilliant. 
 
 The " Lazarus " comprises twenty figures, on a scale 
 of about nine feet high ; the composition is natural and 
 original — no straining figures into attitudes to fit spaces 
 or fill corners. Each has its appropriate action and 
 place in the great story. Some parts possess high 
 merits, and very painter- like qualities, with a peculiar 
 luminous brilliancy of flesh colour unknown in the 
 English School since Keynolds. Can we wonder that 
 there are inequalities in this great work when we see 
 the painter hurried on by his necessities — the enthusiasm 
 and thought of to-day, damped and obliterated by the 
 trials of the morrow. In March, 1823, his picture was 
 exhibited, and he records, " It has made the greatest 
 impression. , No picture I ever painted has been so 
 universally approved of." But the money taken for 
 admission would hardly stop gaps from day to day. 
 Haydon was arrested and thrown into prison, and his 
 picture sold for 300L It is at this day exhibited for 
 sale at the Pantheon in Oxford Street. Would that 
 we could say anything to promote the realization of 
 the unhappy painter's prayer for his " Lazarus : " — " 
 G-od ! grant that it may reach the National Gallery in a 
 few years, and be placed in fair competition with the 
 
188 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Sebastiano del Piombo. I ask no more to obtain justice 
 from the world." 
 
 On his release from the King's Bench Prison, Haydon 
 tried portrait painting, but notwithstanding all his efforts 
 he was reduced almost to actual want. He finished at 
 this time a "Puck" and a " Silenus," and sketched several 
 compositions for pictures ; but he continued in great 
 difficulties — how great, an entry made in his journal at 
 the commencement of 1824 will show. How character- 
 istic, too, it is of the man, and the sad trials under which 
 he pursued his art ! — " Completed my yesterday's work, 
 and obliged to sally forth to get money, in consequence 
 of the bullying insolence of a short, wicked-eyed, 
 wrinkled, waddling, gin-drinking, dirty-ruffled landlady 
 — poor old bit of asthmatic humanity ! As I was finish- 
 ing the fawn's foot, in she bounced, and demanded 42. 
 of me with the air of a demirep duchess. I irritated her 
 by my smile, and turned her out and sat down quietly 
 and finished my feet. Fielding should have seen the 
 old devil." Such scenes, we may be sure, did not come 
 singly, and use could hardly lessen their sad distractions. 
 They must have led him to think and to moralize, for we 
 find him noting, " I am not yet 40, and can tell of a 
 destiny melancholy and rapturous, bitter beyond all 
 bitterness, afflicting beyond all affliction, cursed, heart- 
 burning, hearfc-breaking, maddening. Merciful God ! 
 that thou shouldest permit a being with thought and 
 feeling to be so racked." And he finishes the following 
 year (1825) with a description of his state, which is pain- 
 fully sad : — " My fits continue. I am all fits — fits of work, 
 fits of idleness, fits of reading, fits of walking, fits of 
 Italian, fits of Greek, fits of Latin, fits of French, fits of 
 
HIS SAD DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 183 
 
 Napoleon, fits of the navy, fits of the army, fits of reli- 
 gion. My dear Mary's (his wife's) lovely face is the only 
 thing that has escaped — a fit that never varies." 
 
 In 1826 he finished his " Venus appearing to 
 Anchises," a commission ; and after some scruples sent 
 it to the Academy for exhibition. He notes that this 
 gave much satisfaction ; that he wished to be reconciled 
 to the profession ; and that with a stubborn heart he 
 called upon the members to make peace, and was well 
 received by all. He then began " Alexander taming 
 Bucephalus," and in the following year his " Euclus " — 
 both commissions — and was again thrown into prison for 
 debt. He appealed to the public through the newspapers, 
 and a public meeting was called and subscriptions raised 
 to restore him to his art and his family. He was 
 released, and then painted his "Mock Election " from a 
 burlesque scene which he had witnessed in prison ; and 
 though it did not meet with a purchaser, he found a 
 moderate success in its exhibition. He was now losing 
 his enthusiasm — his trials and troubles began to tell. 
 He was painting lesser subjects for bread, and wanted 
 the excitement of the great works he had hitherto under- 
 taken. He grew at last apathetic. Then he tried, as 
 a companion picture to the " Mock Election," " Chairing 
 the Member," and suddenly his hopes were again raised 
 by the purchase of the former picture by the King : his 
 condition should have been far from desperate, for the 
 net receipts from these two pictures was 1,396Z. 
 
 He had always spoken with disgust of portrait painting, 
 for which neither art nor nature fitted him ; but in 1829 
 he was again compelled to have recourse to it, and he 
 makes this unprincipled note in his journal : " Finished 
 
190 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 one cursed portrait, have only one more to touch, and 
 then I shall be free. I have an exquisite gratification in 
 painting portraits wretchedly. I love to see the sitters 
 look as if they thought, Can this be Haydon's painting ? 
 I chuckle. I am rascal enough to take their money and 
 chuckle more." He at this time made a sketch for his 
 " Napoleon at St. Helena," and finished his "Punch;" 
 a subject we should think having less relation to the 
 grand historic than even portraiture. In 1830 he was 
 again arrested. He had commenced, while surrounded 
 by distress, a large subject — his " Zenophon," and on his 
 release began it on. a smaller canvas ; but he was without 
 means, the butcher impudent, the tradesmen all insulting, 
 when Sir Eobert Peel gave him a commission for the 
 " Napoleon," but having named what we should think a 
 liberal price, he offended the minister by expressing 
 dissatisfaction on being paid the sum he had named. 
 
 Stirring political times now arrived. Haydon was 
 much excited by the Keform agitation, and under this 
 influence painted ''Waiting for the Times," which is well 
 known by the mezzotint engraving. In 1832, encouraged 
 by Earl Grey, he commenced a sketch for the Keform 
 Banquet, for which his lordship afterwards gave him a 
 commission for 500 guineas. During the greater part 
 of that and of the following year, he was busily engaged 
 with all the great men of the Eeform party, painting their 
 portraits into his picture and journalizing their gossip. 
 He was happy over his work, " a more delightful work 
 an artist never had," when in the midst of all he was 
 arrested, but was soon released' by his generous friends. 
 His painting contained ninety-seven heads, all portraits. 
 When finished he exhibited it, but the exhibition did not 
 
HIS LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 191 
 
 pay. He was again in difficulties and again assisted by 
 his friends ; the Duke of Sutherland giving him a com- 
 mission to complete his sketch of Cassandra. 
 
 His troubles seem to have culminated in 1835. " The 
 agony of my distresses (he says) is really dreadful ; for 
 this year I have principally supported myself by the help 
 of my landlord, and by pawning everything of any value 
 I have left, until at last it has come to my clothing : a 
 thing, in all my wants, I never did before." He was 
 reduced also to try to supply his daily wants by his brush ; 
 small pictures were rapidly finished, and repeated, and sold 
 for what they would fetch. A subscription raffle amount- 
 ing to 840L was, however, got up for his "Zenophon," 
 which was won by the Duke of Bedford, who presented it 
 to the Eussell Institution. In 1836 he was prominent 
 before the committee of the House of Commons on the 
 constitution of the Royal Academy, of which body he 
 was again a bitter opponent ; and about the same time 
 commenced his career as a public lecturer, and for the 
 next two or three years, found engagements which 
 materially assisted in the support of his family. He 
 lectured in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birming- 
 ham, Leeds, Hull and other large towns. He met with 
 much encouragement, and, while he gratified his love of 
 display, had also the satisfaction of asserting his own 
 views about art. 
 
 State employment had been the dream of Haydon's 
 life : he had for years persistently teased every Minister 
 who would listen to him. He had suggested the decora- 
 tion of the great hall at the Admiralty, and of other 
 public buildings ; but especially of the House of Lords, 
 for which he made a series of six designs. He said, " I 
 
192 
 
 A CEXTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 first planned the decoration of the Lords in 1812, made 
 sketches in 1819, and put them before all the Ministries 
 in succession down to Sir Robert Peel's." When there- 
 fore the opportunity arrived, and a Royal Commission 
 was issued to carry out the decoration of the New Houses 
 of Parliament — which he claimed as his own suggestion 
 — he was greatly excited ; and in 1842 he eagerly, but 
 not without some misgivings, entered into the cartoon 
 competition. His drawings finished, he shouts out — and 
 this at the mature age of 56 years — " My cartoon is 
 up, and makes my heart beat, as all large spaces do and 
 ever have done, — difficulties to conquer, victories to win, 
 enemies to beat, the nation to please, the honour of 
 England to be kept up. Huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! and 
 one cheer more." But great trials and troubles followed ; 
 his competition was unsuccessful ; the object for which he 
 had all his life contended so ardently was missed : his 
 powers had failed, a life of contention and trouble had at 
 last had its unvarying result, and in the midst of his 
 distress he wrote to the secretary whom he claimed as 
 his old pupil and friend. " 1 appeal to the Royal Com- 
 mission, to the First Lord, to you the secretary, to Barry 
 the architect, if I ought not to be indulged in my here- 
 ditary right to do this, viz., that when the houses are 
 ready, cartoons done, colours mixed, and all at their posts, 
 I shall be allowed, employed or not employed, to take the 
 first brush, and dip it in the first colour, and put the first 
 touch on the first intonaco. If that is not granted, I'll 
 haunt every noble lord of you, till you join my distracted 
 spirit on the banks of the Styx. Keep that in view, if you 
 regard my peace of mind, my ambition, my pride, and my 
 glory." He did not compete at the second exhibition, 
 
DECORATION OP THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 
 
 193 
 
 but his heart was filled with the desire for employment. 
 He says, " I hanker after lime, and have begun my third 
 cartoon for it, and have been busy preparing lime. If 
 ever an artist was fit for fresco I am. I have always done 
 everything at once." 
 
 Meanwhile he was painting for his daily bread, he 
 may be said to have almost lived upon his " Napoleon at 
 St. Helena," which he repeated over and over again ; also 
 " Napoleon in his Bedroom ; " " Meditating at Marengo ; " 
 " In Egypt ; " " Musing at the Pyramids ; " and we know 
 not in how many other moods. In 1844 he notes, "I have 
 painted nineteen Napoleons, thirteen of them ' At Saint 
 Helena ;"' and he adds, " by heavens ! how many more." 
 And soon after we find that " he sent home," we suppose 
 to order, " six ' Napoleons Musing,' at five guineas each, 
 got orders for three more at six guineas each; " and 
 again " began and finished ' A Napoleon ' in two hours 
 and a half, the quickest I ever did." Still he worked on ; 
 the smell of paint he declared was incense to his nostrils, 
 his palette the only real source of happiness ; and in 1845 
 he exhibited at the Royal Academy, " Uriel and Satan." 
 Gradually the cherished hope of employment by the 
 Royal Commission, to which he had so tenaciously clung, 
 abandoned him ; he felt that the Commission ignored his 
 efforts and his claims, and he tried yet another struggle. 
 He determined to complete his six designs for the 
 decoration of the House of Lords, as a sort of justifi- 
 catory appeal. Overwhelmed with difficulties, he finished 
 the first— "The Banishment of Aristides "— to show 
 the injustice of democracy ; and the second (which now 
 hangs in the Pantheon), " Nero playing his Lyre, while 
 Rome is burning," to prove the heartlessness of des- 
 vol. ii. 47 
 
194 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 potism ; and he then made a private exhibition of these 
 two works, which was, alas ! an utter failure. He cleared 
 out his exhibition with a loss of 111Z. He had a rival 
 under the same roof in the renowned " Tom Thumb," 
 and he said, "Next to a victory is a skilful retreat; I 
 marched out before General Tom Thumb, a beaten but 
 not a conquered exhibitor." 
 
 But he was conquered. He had struggled "through 
 appalling difficulties. He had known troubles of every 
 complexion ; but hitherto his vanity had been invulnerable 
 and had sustained him. He was now deeply wounded in 
 spirit ; young men were selected for the work which he 
 had made the ambition of his life, and he was contemp- 
 tuously passed by. Yet involved in debt, mortified and 
 depressed, he commenced the third picture, " Alfred and 
 the Jury." But the struggle had become too hard ; " he 
 sat staring at his picture like an idiot, his brain pressed 
 down by anxiety : " and so his mind gave way ; and, without 
 warning (unless it is to be found in the above letter to the 
 Commission), on the 22nd June, 1846, he made this sad 
 entry in his journal, " God forgive me ! amen. Finis. 
 B. R. Hay don. ' Stretch me no longer on the rack of this 
 rough world.' — Lear." And then he died by his own hand. 
 
 There can be no doubt of Haydon's true love of his 
 art : it was his ruling passion. He followed it with a fitful 
 enthusiasm, unchilled by the most severe trials ; which it 
 would be difficult to say were not, in their excitement, an 
 essential stimulant to his progress and suited to his irrit- 
 able nature. It may be doubted if under more tranquil 
 conditions he would have done more. He seemed at 
 times to commence his pictures without any plan or fore- 
 thought, and to begin painting in the fervour of his first 
 
OPINION UPON HIS ART. 
 
 195 
 
 conception, without even drawing in ; how, then, can it 
 be wondered that the gross faults they exhibit were often 
 very severely commented on ? The " Lion Hunt " is a 
 case in point ; the drawing of the principal figure, and 
 of the horse on which he rides, is most careless and 
 incorrect ; the head of the man is far too big for his 
 body, the arms too weak for the lower limbs, the horse 
 much too small to carry the man, who sits quite on its 
 neck, and is so evidently too heavy for the animal, that 
 it is quite weighed down in the hind quarters, not by the 
 attack of the lion, but by the weight of the warrior. 
 Like its rider the horse has too big a head, which is 
 moreover fitted on to a short neck that the lion-killer's 
 face may not be hidden ; it has opened its jaws so wide 
 as to include nearly half the neck of the lion within its 
 teeth, while, with the hind legs almost paralyzed, it 
 stands firmly enough on one fore leg to be able to twist 
 the other over the lion's back and to place it on the 
 opposite flank. Another rider comes up in such hot 
 haste to the aid of the first, that he has either run his 
 horse and himself against the trunk of a tree, or else 
 Haydon thought he had had trouble enough with the 
 heads of one warrior and one horse, and deliberately 
 blotted out the other two by painting the trunk com- 
 pletely across them ; added to this the whole work is 
 heavy and coarse, without style and without execution. 
 
 Again, let us look at one of his smaller works, 
 " Punch on May-day" (Nat. Gal. 602). This picture 
 shows Haydon's coarseness of conception and taste, his 
 want of drawing and his off-hand composition. The cha- 
 racter and expression of his figures are more caricature 
 than art, the incidents most commonplace, and with the 
 
 47— a 
 
196 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 most obvious contrasts. Tims Punch performing on one 
 side and beating his wife is contrasted on the opposite 
 by a wedding cortege, where the bridegroom is seen 
 through the window of the carriage, toying with his not 
 very youthful bride. This again is contrasted with a 
 funeral procession ; the black undertaker's men, with 
 their white trappings for one who has died unmarried, 
 opposed to a black servant behind the bridal carriage, 
 exulting in his enormous favour. In front of the wedding- 
 party is a group of chimney-sweeps and Jack-in-the-green 
 dancing in all their finery and idleness, while on the 
 other side Industry, barefooted, is keeping an apple-stall. 
 A soldier contrasts with a sailor, a countryman with a pick- 
 pocket : there are, in fact, as many incongruous incidents 
 as could well be brought together on a single canvas. 
 
 Hay don, while continually parading his want of means 
 to live, could find money to animadvert on the errors of 
 the portrait painters of his day, in advertisements in the 
 Times of the " Tiptoe -school," as he satirically called 
 them. Yet he made great mistakes in his own per- 
 spective ; this is very apparent in the circular campanile 
 of Marylebone Church in the background of the Punch, 
 which wholly disagrees with the perspective line of the 
 cornice, as do the lines of the two bow- fronts of the 
 houses near it. Some excuse may be made that this is not 
 the walk of art he originally chose, and that we must not 
 compare him as to completeness with his contemporaries, 
 Mulready, Wilkie, or Leslie : perhaps also the picture 
 was produced under adverse circumstances ; and we are 
 bound to add, with all its faults, it has a vigour of hand- 
 ling and richness of colour that speak of the true artist. 
 
 Such were the general characteristics of Haydon's 
 
WILLIAM ETTT, R.A. 
 
 197 
 
 art, and we are prepared to admit his merits as a painter. 
 He was a good anatomist and draughtsman ; his colour 
 was effective, his treatment of his subject and conception 
 original and powerful ; but his works have a hurried and 
 incomplete look ; his finish is coarse, sometimes woolly, 
 and not free from vulgarity. His power and rapid 
 execution, his aptitude to work on a large scale, and 
 other qualities, fitted him for employment in the decora- 
 tion of the Houses of Parliament ; and he had also 
 claims upon the consideration of the Commissioners. 
 Men with far less qualifications were selected, and we 
 think that to him especially, as well as to some others, 
 the Commissioners did great injustice in sheltering 
 themselves behind a competition, and thus dexterously 
 managing to evade a responsibility with regard to the 
 selection of artists of established reputation, which they 
 were bound to have assumed : but of this we purpose to 
 speak more at large in a future chapter. 
 
 William Etty, R.A., was another man of mark in the 
 British School, who formed a style of his own, which, 
 amidst much discouragement in the beginning of his 
 career, he persevered in until he arrived at great ex- 
 cellence ; introducing a class of subjects which had 
 hitherto been but little attempted, or attempted very 
 imperfectly by our native painters. In one view of his 
 labours he cannot be said to have greatly influenced the 
 school, since he had but one or two followers, and these 
 did not inherit their master's talent ; thus the apparent 
 result of his works has not been large. Yet his influence 
 on the students of his time was really great ; as must be 
 that of every earnest and patient labourer who really 
 loves his work and is able to attain mastery in it. 
 
198 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Etty was born on the 10th March, 1787, at York, 
 where his father was a baker, and also owned a mill. He 
 demonstrated his love for art very early by defacing every 
 plain surface. His schooling was short, and he mastered 
 little more than reading and writing ; but he was piously 
 taught by his parents, who were Methodists. As a boy 
 he was of a reserved and shy, yet affectionate, disposi- 
 tion. In 1798, when in his twelfth year only, he was 
 apprenticed to a printer at Hull, and notwithstanding 
 hard work during long hours, he managed to nourish his 
 love of drawing, conscientiously drudging on during seven 
 years, without giving up the hope of becoming a painter. 
 Then, his printer's work done, an uncle who had settled 
 in London, invited him to town, and assisted him in the 
 study he had so zealously commenced. We know, for 
 he was proud to tell us, that his labours during his 
 apprenticeship made future work light to him, and that 
 commencing art late only stimulated him to make up 
 for lost time. In 1807, when in his twentieth year, he 
 was admitted a student in the Koyal Academy. He was 
 from the beginning one of the most constant in attending 
 the schools, and when he passed from the antique into 
 the life school, he became wholly absorbed in the study 
 of the nude, and permanently formed his style as a flesh 
 painter ; for when he had arrived at a proficiency in the 
 study of the figure that qualified him for admission to 
 paint from the life, he took with avidity to the use of the 
 brush, and ever after painted his studies ; thus he gained 
 a power over the imitation of flesh, both as to colour and 
 texture, beyond that of any other artist of our school. 
 
 Traditionally, his progress was slow, — so much so 
 that his fellow-students were rather inclined to say, 
 
HIS PERSEVERING STUDIES. 
 
 199 
 
 "poor Etty!" and to think that he had mistaken his 
 vocation ; but his self-confidence never nagged : he went 
 perseveringly onward in the course he had prescribed to 
 himself, and attained such facility and perfection by his 
 persistence, that as new students surrounded him they 
 began to regard him with veneration, and his studies 
 with great admiration ; and, so far as the laws allowed, 
 to imitate his practice. Always among them, nightly and 
 every night during the school sessions, seated with them 
 at their studies, gathering frequently a little party at his 
 home in Buckingham Street to drink tea and to chat over 
 art matters, it is no wonder that his talents and his habits 
 made him a great favourite, and a model for imitation. 
 His first inclination was to paint landscape ; he then 
 tried the heroic. In the uncertainty of his aim, he 
 was attracted by the works of Lawrence, and in 1808 
 became his pupil, by the liberal help of his uncle. His 
 first attempt did not meet with encouragement. He was 
 an unsuccessful competitor for the Royal Academy medals. 
 His works sent for exhibition were returned to him, and 
 it was not till 1811 that he gained a place on the walls 
 of the Exhibition. 
 
 Etty's brush in some degree supplanted the crayon, 
 and a great facility in its use became the characteristic 
 of the painters who immediately succeeded Etty. Some 
 of the older members were inclined to disagree with this 
 mode of study, and when, on his election as a member, 
 Etty still continued to frequent the schools as usual, 
 they thought it, to say the least, irregular. But his 
 habits were too confirmed to change, even if he had 
 riot been thoroughly convinced of the value of the 
 practice. Hence, almost to the end of his life, he was 
 
200 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 as constant in attendance as in the days of his student- 
 ship. In his studies in the schools he seemed to play 
 rather than to labour, so easy was his brush, and such 
 beautiful colour seemed to flow from it, as if accidentally. 
 This is visible in his studies merely commenced and laid 
 in, as well as in those he had most completed. His 
 practice was very simple. He usually drew in his figure 
 with white chalk or charcoal, on a raw millboard, which 
 he then inked in and took home to prepare by merely 
 rubbing size over it. The next evening in the school, he 
 dead- coloured his study in the broadest and simplest 
 manner, taking great care to mark in the relief of the 
 figure from the ground at those points where it was 
 visible in nature, by a close appreciation of the light 
 and dark of the contrast ; and these points he constantly 
 kept in view, and renewed as he proceeded, only rubbing 
 them over with some general uniting tint to form the 
 background when the study was completed. These con- 
 trasts of dark upon light and light upon dark, or of 
 flesh upon colour, of such value for relief and about 
 which he was so careful, are still to be seen in most 
 good studies from his hand ; although it is to be re- 
 gretted that few remain in an entirely genuine state — 
 many having been altered and completed pictorially ! for 
 the dealers, by painters who lent themselves to such a 
 practice. 
 
 He proceeded to finish his studies by passing over 
 the dead colour a glaze of some brown pigment (asphal- 
 tum in early days, latterly we think bone brown), dashing 
 in dexterously bold touches of lake in parts — in parts, 
 ultramarine for greys, and then painting his white, 
 slightly charged with Indian red, into the glaze ; often 
 
HIS CHOICE OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 201 
 
 with his scrubbing brush (he loved an old and well-worn 
 hog-tool) drawing in touches of pure madder here and 
 there in the finishing, producing great brilliancy of effect 
 in his studies ; and by his dexterous execution, preserving 
 a nicety of tone, beautiful pure tints, and very tender 
 gradations. This is written from remembrance of his 
 manner of working. In his own words, as given in his 
 life by Gilchrist (vol. i. p. 58) , it is a little different, yet 
 substantially the same. He writes thus : — " Resolution. 
 First night, correctly draw and outline the figure only. 
 Second night, carefully paint in the figure with black and 
 white and Indian red, for instance. The next, having 
 secured with copal, glaze, and then scumble in the 
 bloom. Glaze into shadows, anct touch on the lights 
 carefully — and it is done." By his rapid execution he 
 kept his colour pure and unmuddled, never teazing the 
 tints ; and from painting so constantly by gaslight, he 
 became accustomed to great breadth of light and shade. 
 
 The subjects which he adopted were of a voluptuous 
 character, and arose somewhat out of the nature of his 
 studies, varied by his love of poetry, fairy, and classic lore : 
 such as "Perseus and Andromeda," "Hero and Leander," 
 the " Syrens," " Sabrina," &c, mostly chosen with a 
 view to the introduction of the nude. Even when his 
 theme was from history the same feeling prevailed : as in 
 the " Cleopatra," "The Storm," from the Psalms, and 
 " The Eve of the Deluge." Such he delighted to paint. 
 Above all, he delighted in the beauty of women. He was 
 used to say that, " as all human beauty was concentrated 
 in woman, he would dedicate himself to painting her." 
 His first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811, 
 was " Antiope rescued by Telemachus from the Wild 
 
202 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Boar." His first which gained hini reputation was " Cleo- 
 patra sailing down the Cydnus," now in the possession 
 of Lord Taunton ; and to which Leslie refers when he 
 says, " One morning he woke famous, after the opening of 
 the Exhibition." This was in the spring of 1821, when 
 this picture was given to the world. Let us examine it, 
 for it was well suited to Etty's powers. In it he has carried 
 his scale of colour to the verge of gaudiness. The com- 
 position is a little too scenic. The flesh painting differs 
 from the Venetian in that it is completed at once from 
 nature, and painted into a glaze rather than glazed. 
 The Cleopatra lies recumbent in the centre of the com- 
 position, in loveliness unrobed — the lovely colour of the 
 queen made more beautiful by its contrast with the dark 
 skin of an attendant eunuch. Such contrasts in the 
 colour of his flesh will be found in most of his works, 
 and add greatly to their richness. The same treatment 
 occurs again in this picture, in the varied hues of the water- 
 nymphs and river-god in the foreground, and between 
 the male and female attendants, the amorini which hover 
 over the group, &c. From painting direct from nature 
 Etty was apt to introduce some of the false individuali- 
 ties of common life, and the bad proportions of his 
 models ; but there was always a superadded grace and 
 style even in their faultiness. The " Cleopatra" is tra- 
 ditionally said to have been painted with a large addition 
 of wax to the medium, and has suffered much since it 
 was first executed. Nevertheless, even now the flesh 
 painting maintains as happy a medium between the 
 silvery hue and the rosy as it is possible to achieve. 
 
 But Etty was not content to remain a painter of 
 cabinet -sized pictures. He possessed a strong feeling 
 
COMMENCES HIS HEROIC WORKS. 203 
 
 for the heroic, and early set himself a great task — that 
 of painting a series of pictures of heroic subjects, with 
 figures the size of life. Two years after his fame was 
 initiated by the exhibition of the " Cleopatra," the 
 president, Lawrence, bought his "Pandora crowned by 
 the Seasons," a work which confirmed his talent, and 
 won his admission to the Associateship of the Royal 
 Academy ; and now he determined to begin what he had 
 some time contemplated — the large works by which he 
 hoped to win still higher fame. He commenced with 
 " The Combat — Woman Pleading for the Vanquished." 
 The subject represents two combatants just at the crisis 
 of their struggle. The younger is wounded and forced on- 
 to his knees, his broken sword at his feet, his long hair 
 in the grasp of his terrible adversary, who is about to 
 give him the death-stroke. A woman, rushing forward, 
 throws herself at the feet of the victor ; clasping him, in 
 the energy of her appeal for mercy — by voice, by look, 
 by action — she restrains him from vengeance. 
 
 Here are all the materials for a noble picture, and 
 finely has the painter availed himself of them. The 
 forms are heroic ; the drawing is grand and large ; there 
 is not the slightest appearance of mere posed models ; 
 no pause in the action ; the muscles are in full play, 
 starting with the energy of the strife. Those of the 
 chest and abdomen of the vanquished man, drawn up by 
 the arms raised over his head to clutch the wrist that 
 has seized him, are finely understood. The drapery also 
 is well studied ; the linen garment of the overthrown 
 combatant is stamped under the feet of the victor, and 
 by the passing action of the struggle is drawn into the 
 most rigid tension, while that of his enemy is flying loose 
 
204 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 with the rapid motion of the fight. But fine as the 
 drawing is, it is by the beauty of his colour that Etty 
 made his mark in the British School. Here again we 
 have his principle of contrast introduced in the flesh of 
 the three figures — the victor with the browned hue of a 
 manhood passed in heroic exercises ; the vanquished, 
 younger and fiercer, pale with his wounds and with the 
 overhanging vengeance ; and both contrasting with the 
 pearly hue of the interceding woman. The modelling 
 and painting of the flesh are very fine, and place Etty 
 high as a colourist in a school which is at least a school 
 of colour. In this picture he was the inventor, as well 
 as the painter, of his story. 
 
 In the next of this series of heroic works, Etty took 
 his subject from the Scriptures, and treated it with great 
 originality, and in a manner unlike to any of his pre- 
 decessors in art. To show that he was prepared to 
 meet difficulties, he chose a continuous action — a drama 
 as it were, in three acts, and requiring three separate 
 canvases to give its beginning, middle, and end. The 
 theme he chose was the delivery of the Jewish people from 
 the armies of Holofernes by the hand of Judith. The 
 scene, from the nature of the story, is at night, and this 
 (as two pictures of the series are in the open air) places 
 difficulties in the way of colour that the painter has most 
 ingeniously overcome. The arrangement is after the 
 manner of the old triptychs ; the principal subject being 
 in the centre, the two secondary subjects arranged to 
 form the wings. The story of Judith's heroism is too 
 well known to need repeating ; the way the painter has 
 treated it is alone interesting. In the centre picture 
 Judith is preparing to execute her terrible vengeance 
 
THE " JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES." 205 
 
 upon the destroyer of her kindred. She is alone with 
 Holofernes in his tent. There he lies stretched naked 
 in drunken impotence on his couch ; the vessels of his 
 carouse lie empty around. Judith, in the front, stands 
 appealing for help to her God. Perhaps the attitude 
 may be taxed as statuesque : but consider the terrible 
 moment represented ! At the risk of her own life, and 
 of her maiden honour, dearer to her than life, she has 
 vowed to rid her people of their malignant enemy. The 
 moment for the attempt is come : the sword of the 
 victim is in her raised right hand, the left gradually 
 gathers his long black hair in her grasp, that she may 
 strike more steadily and more surely ; the slightest cry 
 — a groan even — the writhing of her victim in the 
 death-struggle, may bring the watching soldiery upon 
 her : a thin wall of canvas only is between them. She 
 prays for help, and putting her trust in the Most High, 
 gathers strength for the performance of her vow. 
 Lighted by a lamp, the gloom of the tent looks obscure 
 and terrible. Rich arms are grouped around, steel and 
 gold inlaid ; the hangings, the fruits and golden vessels 
 of the banquet, the spread skins of the tiger and the 
 bear, the dim blue sky of the East, seen out of an 
 opening of the tent, with one lone star shining — these 
 all tend to aid the richness of the colouring and the 
 effectiveness of the grouping. On the right of this 
 picture, the wing represents the episode of the maiden 
 waiting for her mistress. It is as finely treated as the 
 centre. The woman is alone amid the rude soldiery, 
 who should have watched ; but the Lord has sent on 
 them a deep sleep. There they stand, leaning on their 
 massive spears, sleeping beside the palm-trees under 
 
206 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 which the tent is spread. And, seated at their feet, her 
 back towards them, unwitting whether they sleep or 
 watch, is the pale, anxious, listening maid. Is the deed 
 done ? She hears a stir within the tent. Hardly does 
 she dare to turn her head — her fingers rise to her lip 
 with a spontaneous hush ! Will the soldiers hear ? Will 
 her mistress succeed, or must they both die ? The next 
 moment will decide ; longer delay would be as fatal as 
 failure, for the morn is rising grey over the distant town, 
 and the watch-fires pale in its light. And in the left- 
 hand picture we see that the next moment has been 
 decisive. Judith is rushing from the tent with the head 
 of the oppressor in her grasp. The courage which sup- 
 ported her in the dreadful moment has partly given way 
 with the completion of her intent. She rushes out past 
 the sleeping guards ; the maid, starting to her knees, 
 looks at her noble mistress as one inspired : as one whose 
 deed shall be sung with those of Deborah and of Jael, 
 the deliverers of her race. In the next instant they will 
 depart, guided by the star and the watch-fires, to their 
 mountain home. 
 
 There is fine drawing in these three pictures, although 
 they are more especially pictures of colour. The central 
 figure of Judith is grand in action ; the maid in the 
 right-hand picture particularly fine in expression. The 
 action of the Judith in the left-hand picture is rather 
 too violent, the head too much turned round ; but the 
 sleeping guards — sleeping as they stand — are particu- 
 larly grand and characteristic. Designed as ttiey were 
 before Layard had laid bare the buried slabs of Nineveh, 
 Etty seemed to have had a singular prevision of these 
 sculptures. The same simple massive grandeur is in both 
 
AND THE " BENAIAH." 
 
 207 
 
 works, and they carry us back to the remote age when 
 Assyria oppressed the people of God. But it is to their 
 colour that these works owe their special grandeur. The 
 principal picture, with all its gorgeous accessories, has 
 already been described. The painter has finely brought 
 his largest and brightest light into contrast with his 
 deepest shade, by the shadow from the falling arm of 
 Holofernes thrown on the sheet on which he lies ; while 
 the contrast of the strongest colour in the picture is also 
 made with the brightest light, by the same drapery in 
 contact with the red skirt of Judith. The side pictures 
 are cleverly lighted by the lamp from within the tent 
 through one of the raised folds, and thus the warm colour 
 of the light from within is happily contrasted with the 
 cold colour of the outer night just illumed with the 
 breaking morn. The general hue is lurid and well suited 
 to the subject ; the execution very varied : wholly 
 different from the solidity and heaviness of modern Con- 
 tinental schools, and full of the variety of impasto of thick 
 and thin painting — of glazing and transparent colour, 
 that show the painter a perfect master of his means. 
 
 There is yet another of these large works that 
 should be mentioned, as in most respects it is the best of 
 the series. The subject is also from the Scriptures — 
 " Benaiah, he slew two lion-like men of Judah " — a 
 composition of three figures, like the " Combat." It is 
 full of vigorous action, but very different from the former; 
 far richer in colour, and, saving one or two faults of 
 proportion, finer even in drawing. One of the men of 
 Moab is already slain ; the staff of his spear broken, he 
 lies prostrate on the ground, his body finely fore- 
 shortened, his shield trampled under the feet of the 
 
208 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 conqueror, who has his companion also down, and his 
 hand uplifted to smite him to death. Nothing can be 
 finer than the way in which Benaiah seizes his adver- 
 sary's uplifted sword-arm : he literally grips the bone ; in 
 a moment the sword must fall from the paralyzed limb. 
 The bend of the body also, under the backward pressure 
 of the grasp, is exceedingly fine and full of knowledge ; 
 the action of the Benaiah is good, but there is a faulti- 
 ness about the length of the thighs, arising partly from 
 Etty's having seen his model from too near a point of 
 view, and partly from the action chosen, which adds all 
 the length of the gluteal muscles to one thigh, and makes 
 the other appear shorter from their separation from it. 
 Here again we have the contrasts of colour in the three 
 figures ; and again the conquered is the palest ; thus 
 heightening the pallor of the overthrown by the contrast 
 with the embrowned hue of the conqueror. The back- 
 ground is a daylight sky, and the white Etty loves to 
 introduce to give richness to his colouring, is in the 
 fleecy clouds hanging in the blue summer sky. 
 
 It must be remembered that Etty painted these great 
 works without a commission, and with small hopes of a 
 purchaser. Martin, the painter, himself not troubled 
 with wealth, bought the " Combat," it is said, for 2001. , 
 a sum small in those days, — ridiculous in our own, when 
 one of Etty's cabinet pictures, " Perseus and Andromeda," 
 has realized 1,500/. ; but it was highly to Martin's 
 honour to have appreciated his brother painter's talent, 
 when the rich and the titled overlooked it ; and it is a 
 great satisfaction that this, with the other noble pictures 
 we have described, has found a fitting resting place in 
 the Boyal Scottish Academy. 
 
HIS CABINET PICTURES. 
 
 209 
 
 " Benaiah " was the culminating work of the series ; 
 in it Etty evinced his greatest power, both as a draughts- 
 man and a colourist. In the " Syrens," though a fine 
 picture, there was evidence of a decline ; and the triptych 
 from the life of " Joan of Arc," finished in 1847, showed 
 how much disease and physical weakness had told upon 
 him: how much the size of the canvas and the mere 
 physical labour were beyond his failing powers. 
 
 But these great works were spread over a series of 
 years, during which he produced numerous pictures of 
 cabinet size, replete with beauty and poetry. Some- 
 times the theme he chose was such as to require strong 
 and gorgeous colour, which he always brought in the 
 most masterly manner into an harmonious whole. Such 
 are " Youth at the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm." 
 " Cymocles on the Idle Lake," &c. Sometimes the 
 subjects called for a more solemn treatment, and became 
 in his hands pictures of tone ; where, with an ever present 
 sense of colour, there was little of its actual presence : 
 such as the picture in the Manchester Institute of 
 the " Storm" from the 104th Psalm— " They that go 
 down to the sea in ships and transact their business in 
 the great waters, these same see the glory of the Lord 
 and His wonders in the great deep, for at His word the 
 stormy wind ariseth," &c. Another picture of this class 
 is the " Hylas carried away by the Nymphs." A greyish- 
 green is here the prevailing hue, and the flesh, the only 
 warm colour opposed to it, except the golden vase which 
 Hylas drops when his beautiful fates hurry him away. 
 
 It cannot be said, however, that Etty's talents, and 
 the beauties so visible in his works, nor even their 
 fine colour (a quality that, as seizing the eye, is more 
 vol. ii. 48 
 
210 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 readily appreciated by the uninstructed than those which 
 appeal to the mind) won the painter present fame or 
 profit. We have told the purchase-money of his " Com- 
 bat ; " it was three years after this noble picture was 
 painted before he was elected to the full honours of the 
 Academy, and it was quite late in his life before his 
 pictures began to realize good prices ; and even then 
 more fell to the dealers than to the painter. Mean- 
 while, there were other causes than a want of perception 
 of their merits that prevented his pictures being sought 
 after by the public. Though himself a particularly pure- 
 minded man, with a most chivalrous respect for women, it 
 must be allowed that many of his pictures were of a very 
 voluptuous character, and clashed with the somewhat 
 prudish temper of the age. There has always been a 
 stronger objection to the nude figures of the painter, than 
 to the more tangible works of the sculptor ; this had to be 
 slowly overcome. It was difficult to tolerate such works 
 from a living artist, in pictures in their first glow of 
 beauty and freshness — unspoiled with age and fiddle-brown 
 varnish ; so that those who saw no objection to cover 
 their walls with such subjects as " Lot and his Daughters," 
 " David and Bathsheba," or " Joseph and the wife of 
 Potiphar," if reputed to be from the hand of a Guido 
 or Caracchi, could not tolerate the nude from a native 
 painter, even when the subject itself was unobjectionable. 
 
 Though a great student of nature, Etty's imitation 
 was ever general rather than individual : perhaps no one 
 painted flesh more largely from nature than he did ; but 
 how unlike it is to the microscopic detail of Denner, or 
 the ivory smoothness of Vanderwerf. Of his treatment 
 of flesh, besides those pictures already mentioned, the 
 
LANDSCAPE BACKGROUNDS. 
 
 211 
 
 " Venus descending," the property of Mr. Young of 
 Eyde, the "Perseus and Andromeda" of Mr. Huth's 
 collection, the " Cupid sheltering his Darling " in the 
 Sheepshanks', and the "Wife of Candaules " in the 
 Yernon Galleries, may be examined as fine examples. 
 His landscape, although but an accessory and back- 
 ground to his groups, is treated with the same largeness 
 of imitation ; no details are given, but the happiest 
 rendering of the general colour or tone of nature in true 
 accord with the feeling of the subject. Thus, in the 
 "Eve of the Deluge," the great rolling clouds, laden 
 with judgment on the " lovers of pleasure more than 
 lovers of God," not only add richness to the dancing 
 group, but are truly indicative of the coming storm, 
 sending cool breezes before it, stirring the floating 
 draperies of the dancers, whose garments are lighted 
 by that rich glow which irradiates the foreground when 
 the heavy grey clouds are rising on the opposite hemi- 
 sphere. The landscape to the "Hylas," the " Storm," 
 the "Bathers," and numerous other works, is broad, 
 simple, and truly effective. When his collected works, 
 130 in number, were exhibited in his honour at the 
 Society of Arts, in June, 1849, he came up to London 
 to be present at the exhibition, and was much moved 
 by the congratulations of his friends. In answer to our 
 inquiries, he then pointed to his "Hero and Leander," 
 as his favourite and best work. 
 
 Early in his career Etty paid a short visit to Italy. 
 In 1814, assisted by his brother, he set out on a long 
 contemplated journey to see the Continental schools. 
 He reached Paris, and crossed the Alps to Florence ; but 
 weak health and an accidentally sprained knee, formed 
 
 48— 2 
 
212 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 an excuse for his return within three months, which may 
 rather be attributed to depressed spirits and a touch of 
 home sickness. In 1822 he paid a more lengthened 
 visit, and during his eighteen months' stay, saw Rome, 
 Florence, Naples, and Venice, and copied some of the 
 great works of the Italian school, particularly the 
 Venetian. In 1824 he was elected an associate of the 
 Royal Academy, and in 1 828 a full member ; and he 
 then commenced the series of large pictures we have de- 
 scribed. From 1826 to 1848 he lived in Buckingham 
 Street, Adelphi. Then his health failing, he retired to 
 his own city of York, to which he was fondly attached ; 
 and there he died, 13th November, 1849, and was 
 buried in a quiet corner of the churchyard of St. Olave, 
 almost within the shadow of the old Cathedral he loved 
 so well. 
 
 He had realized about 17,000Z. by his art, to 
 which the sale of his sketches and materials after his 
 death added 5,000/. more. In person Etty was short 
 and thick-set, with somewhat massive features, deeply 
 scarred with smallpox, a face expressive of great bene- 
 volence, and a head large — disproportionately large 
 indeed — but tending to a look of power. Slow in speech 
 and slow and measured in action, rather increased in 
 late years by an asthmatic affection ; of a kindly and 
 gentle nature, and of extreme simplicity of character. 
 Such is our recollection of Etty, and we are told further, 
 that his tender nature was shown by his repeatedly 
 falling in love with one fair object after another ; which 
 we can well believe, though he was in his habits decidedly 
 a bachelor, and he died unmarried. 
 
( 213 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TABLEAUX DE GENRE.— WILKIE, MULREADY, AND LESLIE. 
 
 Rise of this Art in England — Its domestic Character and true Aims — 
 Illustrated in the Works of three eminent Artists — David Wilkie, R.A. 
 — His early Life— Student at the Trustees' Academy, Edinburgh — 
 Paints his Pitlassie Fair— Subject described— Then tries some Por- 
 traits—Starts for London— Admitted to the Royal Academy Schools 
 —His patient Studies — William Mulready, R.A. — His first Art- 
 attempts and early Teaching— Studies at the Academy— Makes rapid 
 Progress— Marries — His first Pictures — Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. — 
 His Birth and Boyhood — Intended for a Bookseller — Will be a Painter 
 — Fortune favours his Desire — Comes to England — Devotes himself to 
 Study — Opinions upon Teaching — Critical Comparison of the Genius 
 of these three Painters— Their distinguishing Characteristics— Early 
 Attempts in historic Art — Their different Modes of Painting described 
 — And varied Choice of Subject — Remarks on Leslie's Sancho and 
 the Duchess — And other Works — Mulready's Tendency to combative 
 Subjects — His simple domestic Incidents — Development of his Style 
 — Wilkie's little Sense of Beauty — Want of Elegance, Character, and 
 Humour common to the three — But in different degrees — Their relative 
 Merits as Colourists — Their Modes of Painting — And Influence of 
 Continental Art upon them. 
 
 In the English school, pictures of this class may be said 
 to take their rise from its great founder, Hogarth, whose 
 works were of cabinet size, and of a dramatic, rather 
 than historic tendency. After his death, although small 
 pictures were occasionally painted by ZofFany, Hamilton, 
 Peters, and others, yet the general efforts of our figure 
 painters, stimulated by the example of Barry, West, and 
 Copley, were for a time directed to works of the scale of 
 life, and to subjects of a religious or historic character, 
 rather than to those domestic and familiar incidents from 
 
214 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 home life and the affections, those cabinet illustrations 
 of poets and writers, which in France have obtained the 
 name of Tableaux de Genre, and which we, from want of 
 a better, have hitherto consented to call by the same 
 name. It was, however, soon apparent that our country- 
 men cared little for battle pieces — for canvases covered 
 with war and glory, until lately almost the staple material 
 of history ; nor were they desirous of seeing the sacred 
 subjects of their creed surrounding them in their every- 
 day life. In England the churches are not open to the 
 painter's art, and the burgesses and aldermen of our 
 provincial towns were little likely to forego the pleasures 
 of the table at the guild and corporation feasts, that the 
 walls of the guild-halls might be decorated at the expense 
 of their good cheer. Hence the zeal for producing works 
 of heroic size could not be expected to endure, since, even 
 were he disposed to forego the due reward of his labours, 
 the artist could find no place to display them ; and when 
 young men, in the first enthusiasm of art, have laboured 
 to complete important pictures of a sacred or historic 
 character, they have had to turn them to the wall of the 
 studio, a life-long encumbrance and annoyance, or to roll 
 them up and consign them to the cock-loft or the attic. 
 It was soon found that pictures to suit the English taste 
 must be pictures to live by ; pictures to hang on the walls 
 of that home in which the Englishman spends more of 
 his time than do the men of other nations, and loves 
 to see cheerful and decorative. His rooms are com- 
 paratively small, and he cannot spare much wall-space 
 for a single picture. His eye, too, must be pleased before 
 his mind, and colour is to him one of the first sources of 
 gratification. 
 
CHARACTER OF ENGLISH SUBJECTS. 215 
 
 Although pictures of the Dutch school were favourites 
 with English collectors, who admired them for their rare 
 technical qualities, their brilliant colouring and great 
 completeness, they were low and grovelling in subject, 
 and void of any expression but such as is gross and 
 sensual, mostly without beauty or any appeal to the 
 higher sentiments ; and hence they were unfitted for the 
 study of our rising artists, except for their fine qualities 
 of execution and composition. Thus the painters who, 
 at the commencement of the present century, sought 
 to introduce a class of pictures suited to English tastes, 
 chose their subjects from domestic life ; either illus- 
 trations of our poets and authors, or, more frequently, 
 incidents which the painter had caught from the life and 
 manners of the people around him ; differing somewhat 
 from the drama-pictures of Hogarth, in that it was 
 seldom the object of the artist to point a moral in his 
 work ; differing also in this, that beauty and loveliness 
 were sought rather than the deformity occasioned by 
 crime and sensuality ; while the first object was to please 
 the eye before the gratification of the mind. 
 
 No doubt our school suffered somewhat by this 
 change from heroic and religious to familiar art — suffered 
 in the grandeur of its attempts at least, more especially in 
 the estimation of Continental nations — and really suffered 
 by adopting too generally subjects of a somewhat tame 
 and familiar class, to the exclusion of\ the ideal and 
 the poetical. It gained, however, in care, in refinement 
 of execution, in attention to the completion of the parts 
 and the perfection of the work as a whole ; and of late 
 years there has been a marked tendency in our artists 
 to leave the commonplace and the familiar for subjects 
 
216 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 which not only appeal to the eye but interest the mind 
 also. We find that soon after the commencement of the 
 present century, several painters almost simultaneously 
 rose into notice, whose works had at least a common 
 likeness, in that they were of cabinet size and bore some- 
 what the same relation to historic art that the tale or 
 the novel does to history. It is our intention to take 
 three of these painters who held, and still hold, the 
 highest place in public estimation, and from their practice 
 to illustrate the new direction which art took in their 
 hands. 
 
 It is noteworthy that these three artists, whom all 
 will admit to have attained the highest eminence in this 
 class of art, should at the same time represent the three 
 sections of our countrymen ; that in Wilkie, Scotland, 
 in Mulready, Ireland, and in Leslie, England, have 
 reason to be proud of men who have left behind them 
 pictures so varied in manner, original in treatment, and so 
 characteristic of British art as to be wholly different from 
 those of any other country. It will enable us to develope 
 the progress of art of this class if, in the first instance, 
 our attention is confined to the works of these three 
 representative men ; afterwards noticing those of their 
 companions and fellow labourers in the same walk 
 who were their contemporaries or successors. 
 
 David Willrie, the Scotch representative of the branch 
 of art we are now entering upon, was the oldest of the 
 three painters whom we have included in this chapter. 
 He was born on the 18th of November, 1785, at Cults 
 in the county of Fife, of which place his father, also 
 named David, was at that time the minister. The 
 painter was his third son. The minister, it seems, if 
 
DAVID WILKIE, R.A. 
 
 217 
 
 his own assertion may be accepted, married for his first 
 wife a lady of great beauty ; for he enters in his 
 diary of October 18, 1776, " Was this day married to 
 one of the most beautiful women of Fife." He lost her 
 in the short space of five months, and shortly after 
 married a far away cousin ; perhaps from gratitude, 
 since through her father's influence he had received his 
 call to Cults. She, too, was shortly taken from him, 
 dying in child-bed; and for a third wife the minister 
 took the notable daughter of a neighbouring miller 
 of the village of Pitlassie, of whom the painter was the 
 third child. 
 
 It may be presumed that, with an increasing family 
 and the small stipend of a minister of the Scotch Church 
 of that day, the young David would be brought up with 
 the strictest frugality. A few acres of glebe and a 
 stipend of 100L a year must be carefully laid out to 
 secure necessaries, let alone luxuries ; and much of the 
 artist's frugality of disposition, much of his acquisitive 
 habits must have been owing to the teachings of his 
 early life — acquisitiveness, be it noted, in the best sense, 
 since it led him to gather at all times, and of every kind, 
 materials for his art, and to acquire art-knowledge as 
 well as riches. As with all other painters, we hear of 
 Wilkie's precociousness ; that he drew before he wrote, 
 which most children do, and that ere his seventh year, 
 when he was sent to the village school of Pitlassie, he 
 surprised his parents by chalking a head on the floor, 
 and by drawing on the walls. While at Pitlassie school 
 he improved in the use of his pencil if he gained little 
 else, and when overtaxed by his schoolfellows with 
 demands for sketches and portraits, cannily turned his 
 
218 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 skill to small profit by demanding slate-pencils, marbles, 
 pens, &c. in return. 
 
 As he advanced in boyhood, we are told by his 
 biographer that he was a great observer of workmen 
 and their habits and actions ; even gaining skill in some 
 handicrafts. This talent of observation will be more 
 especially spoken of when we note his pictures ; it is one 
 that indicates the true painter more than all the rude 
 attempts with chalk or charcoal, or scribblings on the 
 margins of books, or even the portrait sketches of his 
 schoolfellows ; on which much stress is laid, but which is 
 common more or less to all boys. Of his precocity in 
 art, however, Cunningham gives evidence in a book of 
 sketches made between 1797-8, containing illustrations 
 of the seasons, perhaps copies, and other drawings, 
 "the figures slightly coloured, and the fields and woods 
 and waters which belong to them faintly shaded in ; they 
 are," he says, "rude and unartistlike, but remarkable 
 for that sense of quantity and distance, which belongs to 
 mathematical minds." 
 
 In Fifeshire, beyond a portrait or two by Sir Joshua, 
 there were no pictures to inspire the prospective painter, 
 and although he was occasionally thrown into the com- 
 pany of David Martin, yet that artist died before Wilkie 
 was twelve years old, and his example and conversation 
 could have had but little influence. As the lad grew in 
 years his love of art increased, and the minister soon 
 felt that his son was set upon being a painter. This 
 choice was hardly one that could be pleasing to the 
 Presbyterian clergyman, who would doubtless consider 
 art as one of " the lusts of the eye ; " nor was it more 
 agreeable to the lad's maternal grandfather, for the miller 
 
HIS FIRST STUDIES. 
 
 219 
 
 and elder had set his heart upon little David's becoming 
 a minister like his father : still, when the parents of the 
 lad saw that his bent was decidedly to art, they cast 
 about for the best means of cultivating his talents, and 
 after some hesitation upon the part of the secretary, who 
 doubted the lad's fitness, he was admitted into the 
 Trustees' Academy at Edinburgh, and studied there under 
 John Graham, in company with William, afterwards Sir 
 William Allan, John Burnet, and Alexander Fraser. 
 Burnet, speaking of Wilkie at this period, says, " When 
 he came to our class he had much enthusiasm of a queer 
 silent kind, and very little knowledge of drawing : he 
 had made drawings, it is true, from living nature in that 
 wide academy the world, and chiefly from men and boys 
 or such groups as chance threw in his way ; but in that 
 sort of drawing in which taste and knowledge are united 
 he was far behind others who, without a tithe of his 
 talent, stood in the same class." Wilkie himself con- 
 firmed this, for adverting to his having obtained an 
 entrance to the school with much difficulty and chiefly 
 through the influence of the Earl of Leven, he says, " I 
 for one can allow no ill to be said of patronage ; 
 patronage made me what I am, for it is plain that merit 
 had no hand in my admission." When admitted, how- 
 ever, the young artist was a most diligent student, 
 readily apprehending the character and sentiment of 
 what he was at work upon. He speedily sent home to 
 his parents some specimens of his studies from the 
 antique ; which, however, were Greek indeed to the village 
 worthies, for when they were shown to one of the kirk 
 elders, taking up a drawing of a foot he inquired of the 
 minister, "And what is this, sir?" " It is a foot," 
 
220 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 replied the minister. " A foot ! " exclaimed the elder, 
 " it ismair like a fluke (a flounder) than a foot." The 
 youth, however, was soon to achieve a work more com- 
 prehensible by the elders and villagers of his native 
 place. 
 
 Young Wilkie left Edinburgh and the Trustees' 
 Academy in 1804 and returned for a while to his 
 native village. Unlike many other artists he seems 
 at once to have found the true bent of his genius 
 and the class of subject best suited to his powers. 
 In the adjoining village of Pitlassie, where the family 
 of his mother resided, there was an annual fair held, 
 and the strange characters, the rustic humours, the 
 many incidents of merchandise and barter common to 
 such gatherings, were taken by the young artist for the 
 subject of his first picture. It is characteristic of his 
 beginnings in art that we find him making a careful 
 study of the locality — walking the ground, as it were, to 
 note anything that would add to the local truth of his 
 work. This practice he continued throughout his career. 
 One of his pupils, on a like occasion, accompanied 
 Wilkie to the Tower, when he was bent upon painting 
 a subject connected with that building. Sketch-book in 
 hand they traversed that part of the time-honoured 
 fortress which was the traditional locality of his incident. 
 Nothing was to be seen but a high bare wall ; a closer 
 inspection, however, revealed a long spike projecting 
 from it. " Note it in your book, lad," said the painter ; 
 " it might have held a traitor's head, perchance." In 
 after years, when about to paint the picture of " Reading 
 the Gazette," he made a like careful survey of the 
 approach to the Soldier's Hospital. Cunningham relates 
 
PITLASSIE FAIR. 
 
 221 
 
 his visit to " the old rabblement of houses which in days 
 before the cholera and amended taste " formed the main 
 thoroughfare to what was and is called Chelsea College : 
 ay, and forms it still, with almost the same ill-matched 
 and picturesque range of public-houses with swinging 
 signs, teeming cellars, provision-stalls, and tobacconists' 
 shops that then existed ; " cholera and amended taste " 
 having made little inroad on one side of the road, 
 although they have, perhaps, helped to throw down the 
 wall of the soldier's cemetery which skirts the opposite 
 side of the way, and to purge its murky gloom by turfing 
 and planting. 
 
 This, however, has led us away from Pitlassie, and 
 the painter's first picture — begun in August, 1804, and 
 finished within the year. Though a work of small size, it 
 contains much subject and many figures, and enables us 
 to see that Wilkie was a diligent as well as a ready work- 
 man. As far as execution goes, " Pitlassie Fair " seems 
 painted at once, and in most cases direct from Nature. 
 It has little promise of the colour and tones which he 
 subsequently sought and achieved. A red rank hue 
 pervades the picture ; and we see the flat manner and 
 want of textural truth, combined with a certain broad- 
 ness of touch, that prevailed with the artists of the day. 
 The work, moreover, is allied to the Dutch School in 
 some of its incidents, which are such as in after years 
 he would have rejected from his canvas ; as, for instance, 
 the two idiotic children with the toy, in the left-hand 
 corner, &c. Some of the other incidents of his picture 
 he again used in other works, as the man with the jew's- 
 harp, which he worked into a subject. His early skill in 
 handling is seen in the execution of some of the acces- 
 
222 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sories, the crates of pottery, the tables, and other pro- 
 ducts displayed in the fair. It perhaps arises from the 
 onceness of execution above alluded to, and the sim- 
 plicity of his materials, that the picture has stood so 
 perfectly, while other of his works have well nigh 
 perished ; and whatever faults or shortcomings it may 
 evidence, it certainly is an extraordinary work for a lad 
 of nineteen years of age. 
 
 Wilkie remained some time at Cults, engaged in 
 painting the portraits of persons in the neighbourhood, 
 and even made trips to other Scotch towns in search 
 of sitters. During this time also he finished " Pitlassie 
 Fair," and another smaller picture called " The Village 
 Kecruit." But his ambition led him beyond the narrow 
 bounds of a Scotch village, or even beyond the Scotch 
 metropolis itself, and he determined to start for London. 
 He had carefully husbanded his gains by portraiture, 
 and having sold his picture of the " Fair " for 25/. 
 to Mr. Kinnear, with the sum thus at command he 
 took his passage from Leith on the 20th May, 1805, 
 to try his fortune in the great city. No doubt he had 
 heard many accounts of its size, of the vast number of 
 inhabitants it contained, and of all the dangers that 
 then, far more than at present, beset the youthful and 
 inexperienced traveller; and as he entered London by 
 its great port, surrounded with dirt and coarse brutality, 
 the city could hardly impress him favourably on any 
 ground but that of its picturesqueness ; and we can well 
 imagine his sense of loneliness as he hurried westward, 
 and the many tender longings he felt for the kind hearts 
 he had left behind in the manse at Cults. 
 
 Wilkie' s first endeavour on his arrival in London was 
 
COMES TO LONDON. 
 
 223 
 
 to obtain admission as a student in the Royal Academy. 
 He found the rooms in which the schools are held occu- 
 pied by the annual exhibition, and it was only on its 
 close, at the end of July, that he was entered as a pro- 
 bationer. Here he became acquainted with Jackson, the 
 portrait painter, who describes him in a letter to Haydon 
 (also a student) as a " tall, pale, thin Scotchman." 
 A lad of delicate health then, he continued all his 
 life to suffer from maladies which baffled the acumen 
 of his physicians, which often interposed to prevent his 
 labours, and which finally carried him off at a time of 
 life when the world might have hoped to see many 
 more fine works by his hand. Wilkie, on his arrival, 
 had taken lodgings in Norton Street, Portland Place, 
 and with the usual providence of his countrymen, he 
 sought to make proper provision for the future. He had 
 brought to London with him the small picture of " The 
 Recruit ; " this he found means to display in a window 
 near Charing Cross, where it met with a purchaser at 
 the modest price of six pounds, which our painter was 
 glad to add to his little store. At the close of the exhi- 
 bition he began to devote a large portion of his time 
 to his studies at the Royal Academy, and in Decem- 
 ber obtained admission as a student. He gradually 
 advanced from the antique to the life school, and 
 studied from the living model with great interest and 
 satisfaction. During the next four years we find, from 
 frequent entries in his diaries, that he not only continued 
 his studies in the schools, but attended diligently the 
 lectures of the professors ; and this while he was at work 
 at pictures which were gradually raising him to great 
 reputation. But at this point we will leave him for 
 
224 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 awhile, to bring the other two painters whom we have 
 chosen as representative men to the same point of com- 
 parison. 
 
 William Mulready, the Irish representative of the 
 class of art of which we are now treating, was born on 
 the 30th of April, 1786, at Ennis, in the county of Clare. 
 It is strange that of one so lately removed from amongst 
 us, with whom we were personally intimate, so little of 
 the details of his life should be known, — the more so that 
 though generally taciturn as to his affairs, Mulready was 
 accustomed on occasions to speak freely of himself and his 
 avocations. His father followed the trade of a leather 
 breeches maker, and was a master workman in his craft. 
 Shortly after the birth of his talented son, he removed 
 to Dublin with his family, where he continued to carry 
 on his trade for awhile ; but he passed over to London 
 about the time that the lad was five and a half years old, 
 and took up his abode in Old Compton-street, Soho. 
 
 The boy had already shown some aptitude for 
 drawing ; having, it is said, at three years old copied a 
 hare with sufficient accuracy to be known without 
 labelling. In 1805 appeared a little book, called " The 
 Looking Glass ; a mirror in which any little boy or girl 
 may see what he or she is, and those who are not quite 
 good may find out what they ought to be." This book 
 is said to have been written by W. Godwin, under the 
 name of Theopilus Marcliffe, and is the history and 
 early adventures of a young artist. It is known that it 
 was compiled from conversations with Mulready, who 
 was then engaged in illustrating some juvenile books for 
 the author ; and the facts in it related to the painter's 
 early life. It is now very scarce. It contains illus- 
 
WILLIAM MULREADY, R.A. 
 
 225 
 
 trations of the talent of the subject of the tale, done at 
 three, five, and six years old, and presumed to be 
 imitations of Mulready's own drawing at the same age. 
 Many children at a like age produce such works, which 
 are made no account of when the after bent of the youth 
 is not to art, but which are looked upon as treasures of 
 precocious genius, when in riper years, study or accident 
 have developed the lad into a painter. 
 
 Soon after the arrival of the family in London, 
 young Mulready was put to school ; at first, to one 
 kept by a preacher of the Methodist persuasion, where 
 he had for a schoolfellow, Heath, afterwards celebrated 
 as an engraver. But the parents of Mulready were 
 members of the "old faith," as he used to designate 
 it ; and at ten years of age the boy was removed 
 to a school in Castle-street, Long Acre, kept by a 
 Eoman Catholic, and afterwards placed under the Irish 
 chaplain of the Neapolitan ambassador, who gave in- 
 struction at No. 7, Newman-street. Here young Mul- 
 ready continued nearly two years, learning a little Latin, 
 besides the usual English rudiments. At the end of 
 that time, Mr. Eyan was unfortunately burned to death, 
 and the lad was transferred to another Catholic teacher, 
 who resided in the neighbourhood of Buckingham-gate ; 
 then an entrance into the park and Birdcage -walk, 
 shut at all times against any vehicles, except the most 
 exclusively privileged, and even against foot-passen- 
 gers at a very early hour in the evening. It is not 
 possible to say what amount of knowledge the youth 
 obtained under these various masters. In after life he 
 claimed to be able to read the JEneid in its original 
 tongue, and was able to detect a false quantity in one, 
 vol. ii. 49 
 
226 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 who, presuming him to be ignorant, undertook boastfully 
 to interpret to him a quotation from that work. He, at 
 least, knew the Greek alphabet, since on a sheet of 
 sketches and small pen-and-ink hints as to the mode of 
 thinking out his pictures, there are many memoranda 
 written in its characters. 
 
 No doubt while at school, his pencil was as active 
 as it had been in his younger days. " A First Attempt," 
 the whole length of a gentleman painted with water 
 colours, the costume pointing to about 1795 or 1796, 
 was probably done at this time ; and has the appear- 
 ance of a copy from a print. This being the only 
 relic preserved to us, his progress must be merely a 
 matter of surmise. By some means he was thrown 
 into the way of artists, since Mr. Graham, who was 
 engaged in painting one of the subjects for Macklin's 
 Bible, "David Instructing Solomon," exhibited at the 
 Academy 1797, saw the boy, and, struck with his beauty 
 and fair proportions, made interest with the father to 
 let him sit to him as a model for the young prince. 
 No doubt this admission to the study of an artist, and 
 the sight of some of the arcana of painting, stimulated 
 young Mulready, already prepared to love and take a 
 delight in art; and this makes the wonder less, that 
 we find him while yet of a mere schoolboy age, endea- 
 vouring to get into the only really good school where he 
 could at that time study— the school of the Royal 
 Academy. When only just thirteen he applied to Banks, 
 the sculptor, for a letter to the keeper, in order to gain 
 admission as a student. He took with him a copy in 
 chalk from a cast of the Apollo. Banks saw dawnings 
 of ability in the boy, although the work was hardly 
 
HIS EARLY STUDIES. 
 
 227 
 
 sufficient to win him entrance. He recommended him 
 to try again and return in a month— advised him to join 
 a drawing academy in Furnival's Inn Court, and on the 
 failure of that school very shortly afterwards, allowed the 
 young lad to study in his own gallery. 
 
 From this time he drew in Banks' studio, and under 
 the sculptor's eye, for nearly twelve months ; after the 
 first six his kind instructor thought he might send 
 in a figure to the Council, but his drawing from the 
 Hercules was not approved ; at the end of that time, 
 however, Mr. Wilton, the keeper, struck with a drawing 
 the boy had made from a statue by Michael Angelo, 
 admitted him to draw as a probationer with the other 
 pupils ; and a few weeks after, when fourteen years and 
 six months old— that is, in October 1800— he obtained 
 his student's ticket. When once a student, his ambition 
 and diligence must have been indeed great, for among the 
 drawings exhibited at South Kensington, in March 1884, 
 was one from the group of the Boxers, signed in a boy's 
 round hand, and dated 1800, with this inscription also, 
 " for permission to draw from the living model in the 
 Boyal Academy." About the same time he obtained the 
 greater silver palette of the Society of Arts ; and it is 
 said that from the day he completed his fifteenth year 
 he required no more aid from his parents. 
 
 What the works were on which he was employed 
 when he thus went forth to fight the battle of life alone, 
 it is not possible now to tell ; he used to say that he had 
 tried his hand at everything, from a miniature to a 
 panorama ; we know that all his life he was a teacher, 
 and he declared of himself that he had passed through 
 life as a drawing-master, giving a little of his superfluous 
 
 49—2 
 
228 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 time to painting. Perhaps this life-long habit of teaching 
 others may lead to the secret of the careful completion 
 that marked all he did ; to that habit of making sure of 
 everything beforehand, of studying out all the parts and 
 details that he might be accurate and assured in all he 
 said, and, moreover, able thoroughly to convince others 
 that he knew to the bottom what he was employed upon. 
 It is far too much the habit of some of our artists who 
 think that all precise knowledge is opposed to genius, to 
 do things empirically, "by feeling," as they desire to 
 express it. Not so Mulready, who first convinced him- 
 self on all points — whether it were drawing, perspec- 
 tive, composition, light and shade, or the pigments 
 and vehicles he was to make use of— and then was so 
 entirely master of his whole subject, that, besides being 
 an excellent teacher and adviser of others, his works 
 come nearer to perfection than those of any other painter 
 of our school. Among the drawings exhibited at South 
 Kensington by his executors, previous to their public sale, 
 were some landscape sketches of Kirkstall Abbey, dated in 
 July and August, 1803 ; and the first picture he exhibited 
 at the Royal Academy, the " Crypt in Kirkstall Abbey," 
 now or lately in the possession of Mr. C. W. Cope, R.A., 
 which was, no doubt, painted at the same time. 
 
 How Mulready became first acquainted with John 
 Varley, the water-colour painter, is not told ; whether 
 during his country journeys to sketch, or at his home in 
 London where Yarley gathered many of the rising artists 
 of the day. From that little school, Mulready, Linnell, 
 W. Hunt and others, no doubt learnt much of the love of 
 art. Mulready there found his wife, who was a sister 
 of Varley's. The young painter seems to have entered 
 
HIS FIRST PICTURES. 
 
 229 
 
 upon his married life with much less thought and 
 prudence than he gave to his art life : before he was 
 eighteen years of age, and when he must really have 
 been earning his daily bread, he was a husband ; before 
 he was nineteen, a father. Four sons were the issue of 
 the marriage, which, to say the least, was not a fortunate 
 one : the pair were early separated and never afterwards 
 resided together. 
 
 It has been said that Mulready began, as other young 
 artists have done, and as it is inferred students in the 
 Royal Academy must do, by attempting works in the 
 grand style ; that among his first productions in this way 
 were "Ulysses and Polyphemus" and the "Disobedient 
 Prophet ; " that these were his first offerings to the 
 Academy exhibition, and were both rejected. We have 
 seen above, however, that he exhibited first in 1804 a 
 picture painted when he was little more than seventeen 
 years of age, so that it is little likely he had made any 
 previous efforts ; and from that time till 1807 all his 
 exhibited works are landscape studies. Moreover, the two 
 sketches just named were certainly of a very much later 
 date, and there is no evidence that they were ever carried 
 further than sketches. His first attempts in figure 
 painting exhibited, were " Old Kasper," from Southey's 
 "Battle of Blenheim," in 1807, and "The Rattle," in 
 1808, both at the British Institution ; and both subjects 
 treated familiarly and founded on Dutch art. The only 
 evidence that Mulready ever contemplated high art was 
 afforded by his picture of " The Supper at Emmaus," 
 painted in 1809. This had never been exhibited prior 
 to its forming a part of the collection at Kensington in 
 1864 ; it was on millboard, of the dark brown school, 
 
230 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and, if ever rejected by the Koyal Academy, Mulready 
 himself must have confirmed that decision, as he did not 
 bring it forward in the collection of his works, gathered 
 together in his lifetime and under his own superin- 
 tendence, at the Society of Arts. Even after his death, 
 and when a great desire prevailed to possess any charac- 
 teristic work of his hand, it excited no competition. 
 
 Thus, at the early age of nineteen, we find Mulready 
 a student of some five years' standing in the Koyal 
 Academy, and one who had already " given hostages to 
 fortune as a husband and a father. We know, from 
 the number of his works of about this period — studies he 
 left behind him, both from the antique and the life — that 
 he was a diligent student then, and that for his life long 
 he continued to work and to take the deepest interest 
 in the schools. His last words in evidence before the 
 Royal Academy Commission, " I have, from the first 
 moment I became a visitor in the life-school, drawn there 
 as if I were drawing for a prize," — testify to this, if we 
 had not the stronger evidence of the wonderful studies 
 that he wrought on up to almost the last days of his life. 
 
 Here, following the arrangement we have adopted, 
 we will turn to the life of Leslie (the third of the 
 trio whom we have classed together), preparatory to 
 entering into some comparison of their labours and the 
 influence they have had on our national art. Charles 
 Robert Leslie, the youngest of the three artists whom 
 we have selected as representatives of the domestic 
 and dramatic painting of the present century, was born 
 in London on the 11th October, 1794. In the short 
 autobiography which he has left, the painter does not 
 give the exact place of his birth, but only tells us that 
 
CHARLES ROBERT LESLIE, R.A. 
 
 231 
 
 his first recollections were of living in a house in Port- 
 man Place, Edgware Road. Though born in our 
 metropolis, Leslie was of American parentage, being the 
 son of Robert Leslie and Lydia Baker, natives of Mary- 
 land, both originally of British descent. Robert Leslie, 
 the father of the painter, was a clock and watch maker, 
 who, settling in Philadelphia, took a partner into his 
 business, and then, in 1793, made a voyage to London 
 with all his family, in order to purchase stock-in-trade on 
 advantageous terms in the mother country. His stay in 
 England extended over several years. Some months after 
 his arrival Charles Robert was born, it is said, in Clerken- 
 well, where the manufacturers of clocks and watches then, 
 as now, mostly resided. A brother was also born in this 
 country. His partner dying, the father was constrained 
 to return to America, taking his family with him. 
 
 The journey was in many respects a long and 
 troublesome one. The United States were then at 
 war with France, and the American ship in which the 
 family sailed was attacked by a privateer of superior 
 force, which, though beaten off, inflicted so much 
 damage on their vessel, that it was necessary to put 
 into Lisbon to refit. Battered by fight, and tossed by 
 tempests, the voyagers did not reach Philadelphia until 
 the 11th May, 1800. They had left London on the 
 13th September, 1799, and had been seven months and 
 twenty-six days on their tedious passage. The watch- 
 maker found his affairs greatly entangled, and was 
 obliged to commence a lawsuit with the executors of his 
 partner. The trouble and anxiety attendant on this suit 
 preyed upon his mind, and before his eldest son was ten 
 years of age, he was left, with the rest of the young 
 
232 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 family, to the care of a widowed mother. Leslie ever 
 spoke warmly and tenderly of his father's kindness and 
 affection, and those who had the happiness to know 
 him when himself a parent, can well feel that, if his 
 father resembled him, sad and deep indeed must have 
 been the loss ; for one more tender, or more devoted 
 to his children than the painter, it is hardly possible 
 to picture to ourselves. 
 
 At the father's death the widow was left in very 
 straitened circumstances, and was obliged to eke out her 
 means by opening a boarding-house, whilst the eldest 
 daughter aided to maintain the household by teaching 
 drawing in the families of the once capital city. The 
 citizens of Philadelphia seem to have shown much con- 
 sideration for the widow, and kindliness for her fatherless 
 children. The professors of the university abated their 
 charges in favour of the boys ; although the painter con- 
 fesses that the liberality of the professor of mathematics 
 was not met by corresponding exertions on the part of 
 his pupil. He felt but little interest in the study, and 
 little power in its prosecution ; the mathematical faculties 
 being, perhaps, those least active of the many qualities 
 that go to make up a perfect painter. Meanwhile the 
 boys, in the summer and autumn, were frequent visitors 
 to the farmhouses in the neighbourhood, where uncles 
 and aunts, both on the father's and mother's side, 
 practised the primitive occupations of farmers and 
 millers, on the pleasant creeks of the Brandy wine ; 
 where the painter learnt to enjoy the loveliness of 
 natural scenery, and treasured up for his future years 
 happy memories of the country sports, the free kindly 
 manners, and the harvest frolics of the people. 
 
HIS PRENTICE DAYS. 
 
 233 
 
 But life wore on, the boy Charles approached his 
 fourteenth year, and it was time to determine his course 
 in life. He himself tells us his early wish was to be a 
 painter ; but the widow knew that with her straitened 
 means she could not afford him proper instruction. She 
 herself thought of the more business-like profession of an 
 engraver; but herein, too, the education was difficult, 
 and the success uncertain; and finally the boy was 
 bound apprentice to the firm of Bradford and Inskeep, 
 booksellers and publishers of the city of his abode. 
 Mr. S. Bradford, the senior partner, was a true man of 
 business, and wished his young assistant to devote his 
 whole heart to his duties. The boy loved painting, and 
 ever lingered at the print-shop windows, or made a 
 hasty visit, when on errands of business, to the open 
 studio of Mr. Sully, the principal painter of the city, 
 whereby not only his love of art increased, but also his 
 sense of what was good and beautiful in its practice. 
 The old bookseller at first repressed his attempts. " If 
 he found me drawing," says Leslie, " he shook his head, 
 and seemed so much displeased, that the most distant 
 hope of his ever assisting me to become a painter, never 
 entered into my mind." But man proposes, and God 
 disposes. What the apprentice wished, and the master 
 objected to, was at length to be brought about by his 
 very means, and he eventually aided, with great liberality, 
 in our painter's art education. 
 
 This event happened on the occasion of the visit of 
 George Frederick Cooke, the English tragedian, on a 
 starring engagement to Philadelphia. The young painter 
 - — a great lover of the stage — was present at the first 
 representation of Richard, and was deeply impressed with 
 
234 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the actor's powers. He managed to make from recollec- 
 tion a telling sketch of the tragedian, which astonished 
 the sedate bookseller, who henceforth encouraged him to 
 practise his art. A friend carried this sketch to the 
 Exchange Coffee House, at the hour when it was most 
 thronged with men of business. The work was con- 
 sidered wonderful for so young a lad, and the good book- 
 seller, contributing liberally himself, found no difficulty 
 in raising a fund sufficient to enable the young artist to 
 visit Europe for two years' study. 
 
 Before leaving America, Leslie received some instruc- 
 tions in the use of his materials from Mr. Sully, to whom 
 he had been introduced. Copying part of a picture in 
 Leslie's presence, the painter put his palette into his 
 pupil's hands, and required him to proceed as far on 
 another canvas. This he continued from day to day until 
 both copies were finished, and the pupil had learnt at 
 least the accidence of his art, and understood what was 
 meant by scumbling, glazing, and other executive pro- 
 cesses. Leslie's execution continued throughout life to 
 be of the simplest character; his vehicle, latterly at 
 least, was merely linseed oil, and he rejected systemati- 
 cally those executive processes which serve to enrich and 
 give brilliancy to the pigments, and to produce variety in 
 the handling of a picture : but this we shall have to 
 speak of more fully in treating of his art. 
 
 Leslie sailed from New York on the 11th of Novem- 
 ber, 1811, provided with letters of introduction to West, 
 Beechey, and other artists. He travelled in company 
 with one of his late masters, Mr. Inskeep, and entered 
 London early in December— a gloomy month to find 
 himself alone, parted from all the companions of his 
 
HE COMES TO ENGLAND. 
 
 235 
 
 early days— at the early age of sixteen. It argues well 
 of his training that a lad at such a time of life could be 
 irusted to the temptations of London ; trusted to his 
 own good sense to devote his hours to study, and to a 
 orudent use of the means placed at his disposal. He 
 delivered his letters of introduction, and was kindly 
 received. He took lodgings in Warren Street with a 
 Mr. Moore, who had also come from America to study, 
 .1 youth but two years older than himself, and the two 
 began to devote their days to painting, their evenings to 
 the Koyal Academy. 
 
 Here, then, was the young painter established in 
 London. His probation in the Koyal Academy was ter- 
 minated by his admission as a student in 1813. West 
 and Allston opened their studios to one they looked 
 upon as their countryman. They permitted him to see 
 their works in progress, aided him with counsel and 
 advice, and introduced him to society. In West's 
 gallery he made several copies, but whether of the pre- 
 sident's own works he does not give us to understand. 
 The British Museum contained the Townley collection 
 of marbles, and these Leslie studied, besides rising at 
 six in the morning to join his friend Moore in working 
 from the Elgin collection, at that time at Burlington 
 House. 
 
 Leslie placed little value on instruction, and thought 
 that, given the materials for study, every man will best 
 instruct himself. He found that Fuseli paid little atten- 
 tion to the students, and he approved of this course ; 
 telling us " that under Fuseli's wise neglect, Wilkie, Mul- 
 ready, Etty, Landseer, and Haydon distinguished them- 
 selves, and were the better for not being made all alike 
 
236 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 by teaching." In after years he carried out these views 
 with respect to his own children; he gave them no 
 instruction himself, nor did he ever seem to wish them 
 to enter as students of the Eoyal Academy : where at 
 least they would have found the best materials and 
 means. They had the run of their father's painting 
 room, and were left to their own devices until feeling- 
 should develop them into artists. He says, "Art maybe 
 learnt, but cannot be taught" a maxim that sounds well, 
 but puts a part for the whole ; for though invention and 
 feeling cannot be taught, the language in which they 
 are to be expressed may : young painters have many 
 difficulties as to drawing and the executive processes of 
 painting, which may be cleared away by judicious advice 
 and teaching without in the least interfering with that 
 originality or invention which is the true gift of Nature 
 to the born artist. 
 
 While following out his studies in his own manner, 
 Leslie did not forget that he must find means to live, 
 and he seems early to have gained employment in por- 
 traiture of the small size, which he continued to adopt 
 through life. Allston introduced him into society, and 
 he soon threw off the gloom that had gathered around 
 him at the first feeling of the loneliness of his situation ; 
 while his cheerful nature, always highly appreciative of 
 wit and humour, seems to have made all who came near 
 him fast and constant friends. 
 
 Here, then, we find the three painters whom we have 
 chosen as representative men in this class of art, past 
 the first period of study, and coming before the public 
 with their works ; let us, before proceeding with their 
 career as individuals, endeavour to compare them with 
 
HIS CLASSIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 237 
 
 each other, to arrive at their several characteristics, and 
 the points in which they advanced British art. 
 
 One thing they had in common : they had all three 
 received some part of their education in the Royal 
 Academy, had been for some time subject to its teaching, 
 and to the influence of its members and professors ; and 
 while in each there is some trace of that period of 
 student life in which the aspiration is to high art, classic 
 or religious, they all speedily adopted that essentially 
 characteristic class of subjects for which afterwards each 
 became celebrated. Wilkie's classic and historic period 
 was passed indeed before he entered the Royal Academy ; 
 having culminated while he studied in the Trustees' 
 Academy, when he painted his "Ceres in Search of 
 Proserpine," and " Diana and Calisto with Nymphs." 
 It is true he had somewhat of a revival of the feeling 
 when he undertook to paint for Mr. Davison the "Alfred 
 in the Neatherd's Cottage," and from time to time we 
 find it recurring in after-life. As to Mulready, we have 
 already stated that this period only produced one very 
 indifferent attempt, " Our Lord at Emmaus." 
 
 Leslie's classic period endured longer than with either 
 of the others ; but it arose more probably from the ex- 
 ample of his friends and compatriots, West and Allston, 
 than from any direction given to his studies by the 
 Royal Academy. Thus in a letter to his sister, written 
 in August 1812, before his admission to the schools 
 even as a probationer, we find him saying : — " I am now 
 reading Telemachus again, and intend to paint some 
 subjects from it." He speaks of painting from " Gothic 
 poems, such as Scott's, because I have an opportunity 
 of making parts of my figures naked, and I am now 
 
238 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 studying the human form as much as possible. It was 
 for this reason I chose Timon of Athens and Hercules." 
 Shortly afterwards, in 1813, he exhibited " The Murder 
 Scene from Macbeth ; " and in the Exhibition of 
 1814, " Saul and the Witch of Endor," which may also 
 have been painted before his admission as student. 
 Thus we have seen that his bent to high art was 
 manifested before he entered the Academy, and it is 
 evident that he had a strong natural feeling in that 
 direction, for in after-life he continually recurred to 
 such subjects ; painting " Martha and Mary" in 1833, 
 and repeating it in 1847 ; also " The Pharisee and 
 Publican " in the same year, and " Christ and his 
 Disciples at Capernaum " in 1843, and again in 1858. 
 
 We should therefore arrive at a safe conclusion in 
 saying that the education these three artists received, 
 while it armed them with technical knowledge and exe- 
 cutive power, did not in any way interfere with their 
 originality. If we compare the methods of the three in 
 the conduct of their pictures we shall find their practice 
 very diverse. Wilkie began by a rough blot of the 
 treatment, afterwards preparing a somewhat finished 
 sketch in oil. He at times made a few studies of the 
 action of the hands, but his real work was direct from 
 the life on the canvas j and, although he altered and 
 changed the action of the hands, the inclination of the 
 head, or the attitude of a figure, or even substituted a 
 more for a less characteristic model, yet he retained the 
 general grouping and arrangement, the general effect 
 and composition of his sketch. The blots of colour in 
 his sketches were at times somewhat arbitrary, and it was 
 difficult to assign them to any definite object or form ; 
 
THE THREE PAINTERS COMPARED. 239 
 
 but having pleased him in the sketch, he was very 
 solicitous to keep them in the same place and of the 
 same quality in his picture, and often took much pains 
 to invent suitable details for the purpose. The young 
 artist, to whom such hints are most valuable, may study 
 the ingenious way in which the small blots of red have 
 been carried round the somewhat grey and slaty picture 
 of " The Blind Fiddler." As to the alterations Wilkie 
 made in the progress of his pictures, we find frequent 
 allusions in his diaries such as, " Rubbed out to-day 
 what I did yesterday." " Made several alterations in 
 my picture," &c. 
 
 As he advanced in art and obtained more power, he 
 seems to have made his previous sketches slighter, and 
 to have painted more at once on the panel or canvas. In 
 " The Sacrament of John Knox," left unfinished at his 
 death, and of which a previous sketch exists., heads and 
 hands, painted at once to a very low key consistent with 
 the chiaroscuro of the finished work, are surrounded by 
 the colour of the raw canvas, and no doubt would have 
 fallen properly into their places as the work proceeded ; 
 as it is, they show the certainty with which he latterly 
 carried on his pictures. 
 
 Mulready appears to have commenced his works 
 after much more preparation even than Wilkie. Before 
 beginning a picture, we find " first thoughts " for it in 
 pencil, blots in pen and ink, larger sketches in chalk, 
 :and then frequently a small completed sketch in oil. 
 All these progressive studies for the picture of " Punch " 
 were to be seen when his works were collected at South 
 Kensington— the first chalk sketch, then a larger chalk 
 sketch, and a small sketch in oil, were amongst the 
 
240 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 gifts by Mr. Sheepshanks to the nation. After this 
 stage Mulready often made slight sketches of individual 
 figures ; studies for varied actions of the hands or the 
 head, changed attitudes, variations in character or ex- 
 pression, as, notably in the head, the hand with the 
 comb, &c, for the principal figure in " The Barber's 
 Shop : " studies which are also at South Kensington. 
 At times, when he had found a characteristic model, 
 Mulready still further enlarged and thought out a study 
 from it in pen and ink, or in chalk ; and after all, more 
 especially for his later works, put the whole together in 
 a most elaborate and highly finished cartoon — finished 
 with such care and anxiety that these works are almost 
 equal in beauty to his pictures. He seemed to have a 
 great dislike to losing his ground, and always to have 
 drawn his picture most carefully on the panel or canvas 
 before commencing with colour. If, which was rarely 
 the case, he did alter after the work was commenced, 
 the part changed was carefully removed to the ground. 
 
 The habit of preparing careful cartoons, and of drawing 
 the work elaborately on the canvas, grew on him latterly ; 
 his cartoons became more elaborate, as was shown in 
 the unfinished one of " The Bathers with Lizards." 
 The large " Toy Seller," left unfinished at his death, had 
 been commenced by a beautiful drawing on the canvas 
 before colour was added to it ; notwithstanding the 
 elaborate studies in pen and ink for the sunflowers and 
 trees which had preceded its commencement, as well as 
 the beautiful little completed picture in the Sheepshanks' 
 collection made many years previously. Other com- 
 pleted pictures, as " Pinching the Ear," in the same 
 collection, Mulready seems to have looked upon only as 
 
LESLIE'S MAXSTER OP WORKING. 
 
 241 
 
 preparatory studies to larger works, since he afterwards 
 finished a picture of the same composition, but much 
 larger size, for Mr. Vernon. 
 
 Leslie in his mode of commencing his pictures 
 differed widely from both Mulready and Wilkie. His 
 practice was the very opposite of Mulready's ; Wilkie's 
 being as it were between the two. We may presume 
 that Leslie made some sketch of the arrangement of his 
 picture previous to beginning to paint, although there is 
 little or no material of this kind by his hand. Certainly 
 he did not like to exhaust himself by making previous 
 studies either for the whole picture or separate parts. 
 He mostly painted direct from the model on to his 
 canvas, seizing any happy attitude or expression that 
 arose naturally ; consequently he often made changes in 
 the progress of his work, and removed and destroyed 
 very beautiful passages in his pictures, to adopt some 
 better or more graceful action that arose as he proceeded, 
 and pleased him by its novelty. He is said not to have 
 given much trouble to his sitters, often hardly requiring 
 them to pose for him, but merely referring to Nature at 
 various points of his work, or when difficulties occurred. 
 From these two causes his pictures generally seem pro- 
 duced without labour ; they delight us by their freshness 
 and ease, and are the very opposite to the elaborate and 
 somewhat over-studied excellence of Mulready. 
 
 In one respect Leslie differed wholly from Wilkie and 
 Mulready in the choice of his subjects. The two latter, 
 as soon as they had emerged from historic art, began by 
 inventing the incidents which they painted. Such were 
 "The Village Politicians," "The Card Players," "The 
 Barber's Shop," and " The Fight Interrupted," subjects 
 
 VOL. II. 50 
 
242 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in which truth of character, humour, and close observa- 
 tion of nature were the great requisites. Leslie, on the 
 contrary, passed from the " grand historic period " of the 
 student, to the illustration of incident in the works of the 
 poets and classic writers, and continued through life to 
 choose such subjects for his pencil. They presented to 
 him an added difficulty which did not lie in the way of 
 those chosen by his two contemporaries ; since all who 
 have read Goldsmith or Sterne, Cervantes or Shakspeare, 
 (but especially the latter two), have formed to them- 
 selves special ideas of the principal characters in these 
 works, and are apt to object at once to a new or tangible 
 representation of them, either by the actor or the painter. 
 The painter's presentation of Quixote or Sancho, of 
 Falstaff or Bardolph, of Perdita, Katharine, or Anne 
 Page, not being that which they, in reading the author, 
 had pictured to themselves. In this very difficult posi- 
 tion, Leslie was pre-eminently successful in realizing 
 characters in harmony with the general idea; and his 
 Uncle Toby, Sancho, Katharine and Perdita are accepted 
 by most people as the very individuals Sterne, Cervantes, 
 and Shakspeare created. The painter entering into the 
 true spirit of the poet or writer, has placed before their 
 eyes a bodily presentment of the being with which the 
 author had filled their imagination. 
 
 As a painter, Mulready almost wholly avoided this 
 difficulty, his principal pictures being subjects and inci- 
 dents of his own invention. It is true that after the pub- 
 lication of Van Voorst's edition of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 which Mulready illustrated, he was induced to carry out 
 some of the designs into pictures, and also true that one 
 or two of these rank as his best works ; but it is more for 
 
mulready's ideal of character. 243 
 
 their beautiful art, their colour and completion, than from 
 his having mastered the characters of whom Goldsmith 
 wrote. No one can accept the figure making hay, in 
 the "Haymakers" — almost a portrait of the painter him- 
 self—as the Burchell of Goldsmith ; or the young lady 
 with the rake in the same picture as the simple-minded 
 Sophia. Nor with all their beauty do the pair in " The 
 Wedding Gown " bring home to us the quaint simplicity 
 of Dr. Primrose and his wife, whom he chose " as she 
 did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but 
 such qualities as would wear well " — the " good-natured 
 notable woman, who could read any English book with- 
 out much spelling, and whom none could excel in 
 pickling, preserving, and cookery." In the picture, the 
 Doctor looks like a modern high-church parson, and his 
 wife like a lady of fashion, rather than the comely maiden 
 the vicar describes as his early choice. 
 
 In the Whistonian controversy, in which he has suc- 
 ceeded better in seizing character, the best figure is that 
 of Mr. Wilmot, a true picture of a stubborn, obese 
 pluralist, and quite acceptable as a realization of Gold- 
 smith's ideal ; but principally because few have pictured 
 this subordinate character in their own minds. These 
 three pictures, with one from Walter Scott, and " The 
 Seven Ages," are the only subjects not the inventions of 
 the painter ; and certainly the characters displayed are 
 not equal to those by Leslie, in the few instances in which 
 he was inventor as well as painter— such as " Who 
 can this be ? " or " Who is this from ? " and others 
 of the like class, wherein the painter has thoroughly 
 realized an individual exponent of the idea suggested. 
 Like Mulready, Wilkie took few of ' his subjects from 
 
 50—2 
 
244 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 writers or poets ; although he did paint a few historical 
 incidents. Were we to judge him hy his " Alfred 
 in the Neat-herd's Cottage," we should not rank his 
 realization of historical characters very high. " John 
 Knox " was better, but it is known that it was founded 
 on that true orator and divine, Edward Irving. And his 
 " Columbus," although really a noble picture, and a fine 
 rendering of the intense self- occupation of the world 
 discoverer in the demonstration of his thesis, has yet 
 but little of the Genoese, and less of the seaman in its 
 presentation. 
 
 The subjects chosen by Leslie in the beginning of his 
 career, after he had left the " grand historic " with which 
 each young student considers it his duty to commence, 
 were of a much higher class than the early works of 
 either Wilkie or Mulready. He seems from the first to 
 have had an innate refinement in his choice, and to 
 have thrown a sense of gentle blood into all he did. His 
 works abound in beauty, elegance, character, and quiet 
 humour, making them irresistibly pleasing. Take as an 
 instance the picture of " Sancho Panza in the Apartments 
 of the Duchess" (National Gallery, No. 402), a repeti- 
 tion of an earlier picture at Petworth. How lovely is 
 the duchess, how perfectly at her ease, how truly one of 
 Nature's gentlewomen as she sits listening to Sancho's 
 tale. "What a round full form ! The light of a happy 
 smile iri her eyes ; the amused satire of her dimpling 
 mouth, pleased at the simplicity of the peasant squire 
 who takes her into his confidence, and binds her to 
 secrecy as to his master's escapades, putting his finger 
 to his nose as he tells his tale. Contrasted with the 
 rare beauty of the lady, and serving as its foil, is the 
 
Leslie's sancho panza. 
 
 245 
 
 stately, frigid duenna, drawn up to her full height, her 
 hands crossed in front, her keen, observant eye seeing 
 all that is going on; but no smile is ever likely to 
 twinkle there nor to part her thin dry lips. What a 
 contrast to the laughing black damsel on the opposite 
 side of the picture, who grins and shows a mouthful of 
 teeth, at the unconscious assurance of the garlic-loving 
 Sancho in relating his adventures to her noble mistress. 
 Then — if anything is wanting to prove the purity of the 
 painter's conceptions — let us turn to the lovely lady in 
 waiting, who leans over the squire, and shows a rounded 
 shoulder of rare beauty, and such a bosom as none but 
 £eslie could paint ; and only he could paint so as not to 
 awake an improper thought. And Sancho himself — 
 what an honest, guileless soul he looks ! quite alive to 
 creature comforts — the very antithesis of his lenten 
 master — yet happy and content with all that befalls him ; 
 quite prepared to believe that master the hero he purports 
 to be, and no ways abashed at grand society. 
 
 Look again at the same Sancho (No. 132 Sheep- 
 shanks' Collection) when, irritated at the persevering 
 interdict of the physician, he sees dish after dish of the 
 most savoury morsels removed from before him, all but 
 untouched. Here he is the man of authority, suffering 
 under the excess of care for his well-being ; the dignity of 
 a governor is upon his shoulders, he is royally apparelled, 
 but the bald shining head, the unformed hands, the red, 
 coarse complexion, and far more, the petty fretfulness he 
 displays, bespeak him the peasant still. Even when 
 Leslie deals with rogues and the simpletons they prey 
 on, it is not the common rogue he represents ; and 
 Autolycus, with his ballad " on the hard heart of maids," 
 
246 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sung by the great fish "that appeared on Wednesday 
 the fourscore of April," is still as Shakspearian a vaga- 
 bond, as the straw-hatted shepherd, brown with toil, is far 
 removed from the clodhopper of to-day, who has lost all 
 development of calf from stiff- soled boots, and looks to 
 end his days in that parish paradise, the union. Even 
 Leslie's servants are raised above the common house- 
 hold drudges who are expected to be perfection on 10/. 
 per annum : Leslie raises them up to dramatic equality 
 with the other characters of his tale ; and whether it be 
 " Toinette," the cleverest of abigails, circumventing 
 M. Purgon (Sheepshanks, No. 118), or " Nicole " pink- 
 ing M. Jourdain (Sheepshanks, No. 116), they seem the 
 very individuals the author dreamt of, and the spectator 
 anticipated. In this latter picture, M. Jourdain himself is 
 the model of pompous ignorance and weakness ; his two 
 legs planted in the due attitude of fence, but so tho- 
 roughly weak in the knees, so thoroughly wrong from 
 their very rightness ; the hand with the foil so attempt- 
 edly correct, but so hopelessly out of place ; the lef^ 
 hand raised as that defence which is hopeless from the 
 foil, all fill us with a full perception, a thorough repre- 
 sentation of the plebeian citizen trying to remedy 
 the defects of his early education, and are so full of 
 character that it may be doubted if the dramatist could 
 have been better illustrated by one of the cleverest of his 
 own countrymen. 
 
 Mulready, as we have already said, mostly invented 
 his own subjects, and sometimes without any great 
 subject-matter in them. It has been objected that his 
 irascible disposition and love of fighting is shown in too 
 many of his pictures, and that most of them have some 
 
mulready's choice of subject. 247 
 
 tendency to brutality and cruelty : but this is surely very 
 unfair towards him. Five or six of his pictures out of 
 the eighty or hundred that he painted may be amenable 
 to this criticism. Thus his " Idle Boys," painted in 
 1815, wherein an evidently vindictive schoolmaster is 
 using the ruler unmercifully on the palm of one of the 
 lads detected at playing "fox and geese" instead of 
 doing his sum. Then, again, in " The Fight Inter- 
 rupted " and " The Wolf and the Lamb," we have a 
 well-told tale of a coward and a bully ; and in these, as 
 well as "The Careless Messenger" and "The Dog of 
 Two Minds," the fighting element prevails. Moreover, 
 there are episodes of the same nature in " The Conva- 
 lescent," in " The Seven Ages," and even in " The Last 
 in," where we are well assured that the ironical polite- 
 ness of the master will end in a good caning to the 
 truant scholar : but this is all. Besides these we have 
 numerous pictures turning on some simple domestic 
 incident, oftentimes well told: as in " The* Travelling 
 Druggist," " The Gamekeeper's Cottage," " Crossing 
 the Ford," and " The Sailing Match ; " sometimes 
 commonplace, as " The Origin of a Painter " and 
 "Firing a Cannon;" sometimes obscure, as in "The 
 Village Gossips "and " Train up a Child ; " and some- 
 times, as in "The Butt," and still more notably in 
 " The Widow," vulgar and even indelicate. 
 
 Mulready's first subjects were evidently chosen in 
 emulation of Wilkie, who preceded him by a year or two 
 in public favour ; and in his " Carpenter's Shop," painted 
 in 1808, and " Barber's Shop," in 1811, he had an eye 
 to the popularity of his Scotch rival. This feeling even 
 lingered in his " Punch " and his " Fight Interrupted ; " 
 
248 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 after which pictures he began gradually to develope a style 
 of his own, and to adopt a changed manner of execution, 
 while the character of his subjects also changed slowly, 
 and tended to a higher class ; some degree of sentiment 
 being added to his domestic drama, as in " The Game- 
 keeper's Wife," and still more fully in " First Love," one 
 of the best of all his invented subjects. 
 
 Wilkie had little sense of beauty. The lady in " The 
 first Ear-ring," " The Spanish Mother," or the two 
 females in the group in the left corner of " John Knox," 
 represent as much perhaps as he was capable of, and this 
 much is small indeed. The proportion of his typal 
 female face is long, particularly in the nose, the eyes are 
 too small and too close together, the lower part of the 
 face round rather than oval ; neither, as a rule, is there 
 much elegance in his female figures: the rollicking action 
 of the Spanish mother is about one of the best things 
 he painted. To the homeliness of the female in the 
 "Kefusal," he might, if beauty was denied to his pencil, 
 have added a little more comeliness ; as it is, we feel that 
 Duncan Gray has on the whole the best of it, and that 
 the lady has no loveliness, and little loveableness that he 
 need regret. Nor had Mulready any very great feeling 
 for female beauty ; although, from his great power of 
 drawing, he was able to represent, much more perfectly 
 than Wilkie, what beauty he found in Nature. The 
 young girl in " First Love" is one of the fairest of his 
 creations. The female head in his "Mother and Child," 
 and young Mrs. Primrose in " The Wedding Gown," 
 are the only other heads that, in his pictures at least, 
 approach the beautiful. In his female life studies we 
 find much more that is lovely ; but, as we have already 
 
LESLIE'S FEELING FOR COLOUR. 
 
 249 
 
 said, this arises rather from his accurate imitation than 
 from innate feeling : moreover, it is remarkable how 
 little there is of voluptuous feeling in any of the 
 numerous figures he produced ; in which respect they 
 are quite a contrast to the life studies of Etty. 
 
 If we compare the power of perceiving and delineat- 
 ing character and humour in the three painters, they 
 each possessed it in a remarkable, although in a very 
 different degree. In Wilkie and Mulready, character 
 and expression formed the basis of their first works, and 
 they both rather abandoned it in after life for other 
 qualities of art ; while Leslie, in his later pictures, 
 studied character and individuality perhaps more than 
 even in his early works. 
 
 Leslie never had a strong innate feeling for colour. 
 He says of himself, " It was Allston who first awakened 
 what little sensibility I may possess to the beauties of 
 colour. For a long time I took the merit of the Vene- 
 tians on trust, and, if left to myself, should have 
 preferred works which I now feel to be comparatively 
 worthless. I remember when the picture of ' The 
 Ages,' by Titian, was first pointed out to me by Allston 
 as an exquisite work, I thought he was laughing at me." 
 Yet Leslie's taste and feeling generally led him right in 
 the end, and few of his pictures are really ill-coloured. 
 In the general opinion of his contemporaries his colour- 
 ing was best while he was under the influence of his 
 friend Newton, with whom he was very intimate. New- 
 ton had a fine eye for colour, but he was fettered by his 
 feeble power of execution ; whence he was ever feeling 
 out his pictures rather than painting them, and was 
 prevented achieving those preciouis qualities which arise 
 
250 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 from a proper preparation of the ground, and after paint- 
 ings with transparent colour, glazing, &c, as seen in the 
 noble works of the Venetian school. 
 
 When Newton ceased to paint, about 1834, Leslie 
 fell under the influence of Constable, and a marked 
 change took place in his pictures. In a letter to 
 Constable from Petworth, in the latter part of this year, 
 he says : — " I am not aware that I have painted a 
 picture since I have known you, that has not been, in 
 some degree, the better for your remarks; and I con- 
 stantly feel that if I could please you with what I do, I 
 should be sure to please myself." What the nature of 
 this change was is very apparent in comparing the two 
 pictures of " The Dinner at Page's House." The first 
 oue, which is the fullest composition, and the largest of 
 the two works, was painted in 1831 ; its repetition, now 
 in the Sheepshanks Collection, in 1838. The first is 
 certainly far the richest picture of the two, and contains 
 many passages of colour, possessing great harmony and 
 beauty. Years ago, wheu the change took place, we, as 
 others, sorrowed over it, and even thought it a great falling 
 off; but on comparing the two pictures in 1862, we found 
 much to appreciate in the new manner. Apart from the 
 mere fact that the last picture is painted on a much more 
 lasting principle of execution, there is a freshness, a day- 
 light about the work, an absolute forgetfulness of paint, 
 and a sense of cool surrounding air, that compensates 
 largely for the rich passages we have alluded to. No doubt 
 some changes have taken place in the greys of Leslie's 
 pictures, as there certainly has in those of Constable, but 
 the change has been for the better in the repetition pic- 
 ture, and all for the worse in the larger and earlier work. 
 
wilkie's early colouring. 
 
 251 
 
 Wilkie's natural feeling for colour was far more acute 
 than Leslie's, if less so than Mulready's. As soon as his 
 residence in London gave him an opportunity to consult 
 the works of the old painters, he began by founding him- 
 self on Teniers, — Teniers in his somewhat grey and 
 slaty manner. " I have seen," says he, about this time, 
 " some pictures by Teniers, which for clear touching, go 
 to the height of human perfection in art." Strong 
 language, but at least showing his appreciation of that 
 master. "The Blind Fiddler" is an example of this 
 period, wherein not only the colour and execution, but 
 all the other painter-like expedients of the Dutch artist, 
 as to light and shade, focus of colour, and mode of carry- 
 ing his colour about the picture, have been well studied ; 
 although it is somewhat brighter in key, and gayer in 
 colour than the best works of Teniers. In " The Village 
 Festival," we find this system modified, the execution 
 less flat and more broken up, and the whole picture 
 with more tone. Cunningham says Wilkie gathered his 
 leaden hues from setting his pallet by Ibbetson's work 
 on oil painting, but rather perhaps from his study of 
 Teniers ; and Wilkie probably afterwards inclined to the 
 brown key from the continued admonition of Sir George 
 Beaumont, who certainly was a kind and warm friend to 
 the young artist, helping him at times of much difficulty, 
 and giving him advice which he often remarks upon as 
 valuable and judicious. 
 
 Wilkie gradually approximated to painting as much 
 as possible at once, and finishing the part he was at 
 work upon while wet, without any interval for drying. 
 During his travels in Italy he continually spoke of the 
 starved lights and opaque shadows of the English school, 
 
252 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and said that our works were chalky and white ; and 
 that water-colour drawings had tainted our exhibitions. 
 Writing to Collins from Florence, he says, " perhaps 
 I say more for colour than I ought," and again from 
 Spain, " with me no starved surface now ; 110 dread of 
 oil, no perplexity for fear of change. Your manner of 
 painting a sky is the manner in which I try to paint a 
 whole picture," that is to say, at once and while the 
 whole is wet. We have even heard from Mr. Ston- 
 house, who joined him while in Spain as a pupil, that 
 on his return so anxious was Wilkie to carry out this 
 practice, that he would make a wall of wax round a head 
 unfinished during the day's work, and laying the panel 
 flat, cover the uncompleted part with oil, to enable him 
 to continue his work in the same state on the morrow. 
 This manner is illustrated in his Spanish pictures, and 
 in " The First Ear-riDg " (National Gallery, No. 328), 
 where the whole of the work appears as if it had been 
 fluent at the same time, and the several forms, draperies, 
 and shadows, to have flown into one another as they 
 were painted. 
 
 " The Parish Beadle," if rather black in the darks 
 and shadows, is one of the best coloured pictures of 
 Wilkie's early class of subjects, and a good specimen 
 of his ability as a colourist. It is mainly painted 
 direct from the ground into a brown uniting colour. 
 The shadows in most parts of the picture seem laid 
 in with some brown pigment made fluent with abun- 
 dant medium. Into this brown the white lights appear 
 painted, and over them, while still wet, the local 
 colour rapidly manipulated with a soft brush, a little 
 white being added for half tints or high lights. No 
 
 ■ 
 
HIS " PARISH BEADLE." 
 
 253 
 
 doubt the painter has seized the happy moment when, 
 at the latter part of the day, the work has in some degree 
 set, before applying the local colour as a secondary 
 painting ; but, under the best circumstances, such execu- 
 tion would require great skill and rapidity of touch to 
 prevent muddiness from the mixing of the upper and 
 under painting, and the medium or vehicle would require 
 to be abundant and flowing : an examination of the 
 lavender-coloured apron of the female with the hurdy- 
 gurdy, and of the same deeper coloured drapery on the 
 dog, will show that they have been accomplished by 
 some such sleight of hand. The rich focussing crimson 
 reds, as in the cape and lining of the beadle's coat, 
 are transparent over a white ground, and give great 
 clearness to the work. Notwithstanding Wilkie's con- 
 stant apostrophes to colour, and his assertion that " no 
 master has as yet maintained his ground without it," 
 we cannot but think that his tendency as he advanced 
 in art, was to tone rather than to colour. 
 
 We have seen him, even before his Italian and 
 Spanish journey, tending to the over use of a brown 
 key in his pictures; and after his return our own 
 experience is that this practice greatly increased upon 
 him. He used asphaltum as his universal shadow, and 
 even mixed it with all his lights to take off that chalky 
 crudity which he found in our English works. Thus he 
 killed the brilliancy of his local colour, although at the 
 same time, by this simple expedient, he increased the 
 tone of his works. As colourists, however, neither 
 Leslie nor Wilkie had the same innate perception as 
 Mulready. 
 
 There is yet one point on which these painters may 
 
254 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 be compared before we proceed to the history of their 
 individual art progress, that is, their acquaintance with 
 the art of other countries. Wilkie, as we have seen, 
 made diligent study of such foreign art as was accessible 
 to him in his own country, and as soon as opportunity 
 offered, visited the schools and collections abroad. Partly 
 from ill-health, and partly with a view to improvement, 
 he spent some years of his art-life in Italy and Spain ; 
 and we have the evidence of his works, as well as of his 
 letters and diary, that Italian and Spanish art, but more 
 especially the latter, greatly influenced his work, and 
 indeed, ended in his thorough change of style : although 
 it must be allowed that the change was not wholly bene- 
 ficial, and that his fame will rest on his English, rather 
 than upon his Spanish pictures. An admirer of the great 
 Venetian colourists, he never attained to those executive 
 processes to which their works owe so much of their 
 lustre and richness, but continued to paint to the last as 
 at first ; varied in his method, however, after his Spanish 
 journey. 
 
 Leslie, although full of admiration for the best works 
 of the old masters, never visited the great seats of their 
 art: his knowledge of the Continent was limited to 
 France and Belgium ; the monumental art of Italy or 
 Germany he never saw ; nor was his practice much 
 influenced by the fine works of the old masters that did 
 come within his observation at home. Mulready never 
 visited the Continent at all, or at most only the French 
 coast, and was wholly unacquainted, except from prints 
 and copies, with the mural works of the great painters. 
 Encumbered with difficulties at the time of life when 
 most young artists travel for improvement, he arrived at 
 
THE STUDY OF FOREIGN ART. 
 
 255 
 
 eminence without having seen the great Continental 
 schools, and seemed latterly rather to pride himself upon 
 never having left his own country, and being unindebted 
 to foreign travel. From his birth a member of the 
 Romish communion, had he in his youth seen the simple 
 art of the fifteenth century, it might have influenced his 
 practice ; but art would have been a loser thereby. Pos- 
 sessed of little imagination, and not very refined in 
 choice of subject, he was content to labour on the repe- 
 tition of his own thoughts. Had his art been turned to- 
 religious subjects, he might have laboured on the 
 thoughts of others, and realized the letter without the 
 spirit of religious art ; so that we should have lost what 
 little originality he possessed. Although he never visited 
 Italy, he understood well the principles of the great 
 colourists ; and it- were to be wished that, for their rich 
 and varied execution, his own works should influence the 
 British school, and lead to a better understanding of the 
 preparatory processes which give lustre and variety to 
 painting. 
 
256 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DAVID WILKIE, R.A. 
 
 Commences his Career in Art — " The Village Politicians " — " King Alfred" 
 — " The Rent-day" — Early Elected an Associate of the Royal Academy 
 — His Mediums used in Painting — He attempts an Exhibition of his 
 own Works — Its Failure — Home Associations — Bachelor Life — " Blind 
 Man's Buff " — The Academy Hanging Committees — His " Duncan 
 Gray" — Its Repair and History — He visits France — The " Distraining 
 for Rent" — Condition of this Picture — " Penny "Wedding" — " Reading 
 the Will" — And " Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo" — 
 Its Conception and Popularity — Companion Picture by Burnet — The 
 "Parish Beadle" — Commences " George IV. 's Entry into Holyrood" 
 — Domestic Troubles — Illness — Travels in Italy, Germany, and Spain 
 — Influence of the Spanish School — Changes his Style of Art — And 
 Manner of Painting — His Spanish Pictures described — And his new- 
 Art criticized — Defects of his Drawing — He is passed over in the 
 Election of President of the Academy — Paints Works of a larger Scale 
 — Opinion upon them — His Voyage to the East — And its Impressions 
 — His Death there — Personal Character ; and Recollections of him. 
 
 We have been led into a somewhat long digression in 
 the preceding chapter, in order to bring into direct com- 
 parison, the art of our three great genre painters, both 
 in regard to their choice of subject, their mode of putting 
 it on the canvas, their distinct methods of execution, 
 feeling of colour, and sense of beauty. We left Wilkie 
 simply a student of the Royal Academy. He had, it is 
 true, chosen a walk in art of his own, and painted a 
 picture, "Pitlassie Fair," which would have been no 
 disgrace to many far more advanced in years and art 
 than himself. But as yet he was without patronage, and 
 
DAVID WILKIE, R.A. 
 
 257 
 
 dependent on himself for his future. Like many other 
 young artists, Wilkie resorted to portraiture for his sub- 
 sistence, and to gain the means to enable him to work for 
 fame ; to pay for models and canvas and colours for pic- 
 tures, whose sale might after all be uncertain. But with 
 the peculiar forethought of his countrymen, he borrowed 
 for a time his first work, which, as we have already said, 
 he had sold before leaving his native place; and had 
 " Pitlassie Fair " sent up to London to show as a speci- 
 men of his powers, to those who sought the aid of his 
 pencil. He was fortunate in making the acquaintance of 
 Stodart the pianoforte maker, who recommended him 
 sitters ; and fortunate also in the choice of the next 
 subject for his pencil. Lord Mansfield, who had seen 
 his "Fair," encouraged him to proceed with a picture of 
 " The Village Politicians," giving him, however, no 
 distinct commission when Wilkie named the modest 
 sum of fifteen guineas as the price of the work. When 
 exhibited in the Royal Academy it attracted much notice, 
 and Wilkie was advised to ask for it a larger, but still 
 very inadequate sum ; to which the earl demurred, and 
 claimed the picture at the first-named price; but as 
 no acceptance on his part had been given, Wilkie 
 maintained his ground, and the earl finally sent him 
 a cheque for the full sum, thirty-five guineas. In the 
 May of this year, the painter not yet of the mature 
 age of twenty-one, but full of exultation at his success, 
 writes to his father, " My ambition is got beyond all 
 bounds, and I have the vanity to hope that Scotland 
 will one day be proud of David Wilkie." Oh for one 
 glimpse of the exultant hopes and buoyant-heartedness of 
 our young days ! Wilkie's ambition was fully realized 
 vol. ii. 51 
 
258 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in the end, and Scotland has a right to be proud of her 
 son ; but many were the sad hours, many were the dis- 
 appointments that were to beset his course, which was 
 fated to end when his hopes of gaining yet further honour 
 for his native land were still high. 
 
 Wilkie was not a man to be made idle by success. 
 His picture of the "Village Politicians" had been accepted 
 and hung in the Royal Academy, it had attracted great 
 attention, and its sale had at least placed him beyond 
 immediate anxiety. But while the work on the walls at 
 Somerset House was receiving deserved approval, the 
 young painter was labouring diligently upon another of 
 the same class, yet of even more interest. " The Blind 
 Fiddler " was finished by the middle of August, 1806, 
 while the painter was yet in his twenty-first year, and 
 it deserves careful examination as an evidence of the 
 amount of real knowledge, in many qualities of art, he 
 had thus early achieved. We have already had occasion 
 to refer to it in this respect, and its accessibility in our 
 national collection makes it less needful to describe it 
 more fully. 
 
 The painter's next work was not a fortunate one. 
 The age of illustration had hardly passed away ; the 
 influence of Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery and Macklin's 
 Bible still continued, when Mr. Alexander Davison, of 
 St. James's Square, commissioned pictures from various 
 artists to form a gallery of English history, and applied 
 to Wilkie to paint one of the series. It was hardly 
 to be expected that the young painter, at a time 
 when commissions were not too frequent, would decline 
 such an offer ; the more especially as he was allowed to 
 choose his own subject for illustration. He selected the 
 
HIS "ALFRED" AND "RENT DAY." 259 
 
 well-known incident related of King Alfred, who, while in 
 disguise in the cottage of a herdsman, leaves the cakes 
 the housewife had committed to his care to burn, more 
 intent upon trimming his bow than thoughtful of his 
 homely charge. As far as we can learn from his diaries, 
 the picture appears to have given him much trouble, 
 and, in the end, after many changes, was certainly not 
 a success. The Alfred wants dignity and character, the 
 housewife is too much of a scolding shrew, and the herd, 
 who enters during the altercation, and fears the effect of 
 his wife's tongue, yet dares not disclose the rank of his 
 visitor, has a loutish and stupid air, quite inconsistent 
 with a rude age and the quick perception of half-savage 
 life. The picture did not increase Wilkie's reputation at 
 the time : it was pronounced out of his line, and perhaps, 
 also, beyond his powers, and, when finished, it was not 
 exhibited. 
 
 In the spring of 1807, Wilkie revisited his native 
 village, there to enjoy the gratifying approval of his 
 parents and the reputation that had already preceded 
 him. Shortly after his arrival, however, he was seized 
 with an attack of fever, from which he but slowly 
 recovered, and although carefully nursed by his affec- 
 tionate mother and sisters, it was not until October that 
 he was able to return to London and to the work of his 
 easel. This susceptibility to disease and the slowness 
 with which his constitution acted to throw it off, is a 
 marked feature of his life, and shows some innate weak- 
 ness which neither change of air, diet, nor scene could 
 readily overcome. On his return, he proceeded with a 
 picture of " The Kent Day," commissioned by the Earl 
 of Mulgrave. It is a characteristic incident of English 
 
 51—2 
 
260 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 life characteristically rendered ; the story is well told, the 
 grouping and arrangement excellent, and the execution 
 an advance on his former works. It was not sent to the 
 Royal Academy in the following spring, but, nevertheless, 
 was much seen, and added to the artist's reputation 
 among his brethren and patrons. It would be tedious, 
 nor is it within the scope of our work, to follow the 
 painter step by step in his progress ; those who wish to 
 do so in detail may consult his life by Allan Cunningham, 
 enriched by extracts from the artist's diaries, to which 
 we are indebted for many facts ; it is sufficient for us to 
 take the marked incidents of his art course — those which 
 influenced his practice, or which show great advance or 
 change of style. 
 
 His biographer takes opportunity on various occasions 
 to insinuate an opposition on the part of the Academy to 
 the young and rising painter ; he tells a long story, to 
 which we have already alluded (p. 103), of the attempt 
 made by Turner to injure the effect of Wilkie's picture of 
 the " Blind Fiddler " on the walls of the exhibition ; but 
 it seems a good answer to all such insinuations that as 
 early as the laws of the body would permit, even when 
 he had not attained by a few days the prescribed age, 
 Wilkie was elected an associate member of the body : this 
 was on the 10th November, 1809, when he yet wanted 
 eight days of completing his twenty-fourth year. 
 
 On the 29th September, 1809, Wilkie tells us in 
 his diary that he began the " Village Festival," which 
 was at first called " The Alehouse Door." He says, 
 " after employing some time in preparing colours, I 
 chalked it out on the canvas, to assist me in which 
 I dotted out the picture and the sketch into several 
 
"THE VILLAGE FESTIVAL." 
 
 261 
 
 compartments. I began with rubbing in all the shadows 
 with umber, and the lights with white, and succeeded 
 in getting in the principal group." He afterwards tells 
 us that he used the sweetener to prevent the surface 
 interrupting him in the finishing. We find him con- 
 tinually removing the work he had done during the 
 day, rubbing out heads, hands, and whole figures, not- 
 withstanding he had prepared a careful sketch before- 
 hand. Many other details of the progress of this 
 picture are noted by him ; but unfortunately he has 
 omitted to name the vehicle with which it is painted. 
 Haydon, however, who was intimate with him at this 
 time, says that it was pure oil. Writing in 1829, 
 he tells us : — " Wilkie was full of wax, and the Lord 
 knows what. His first pictures will stand for ever, and 
 so will mine, and now he has almost tempted me to 
 quack as well as himself, with his wax and magylph. 
 'Solomon,' 'Jerusalem,' 'Macbeth,' ' Dentatus ' are 
 painted in pure oil, so are the ' Fiddler,' ' Politicians,' 
 ' Card Players,' ' Chelsea Pensioners,' ' Village Wake,' 
 in fact all his early works." Yet notwithstanding 
 this assertion, we are inclined to think that magylph 
 was really used. " The Blind Fiddler " stood per- 
 fectly until it was varnished about ten years ago, and 
 then in the course of one short month it cracked in 
 widening hair cracks down to the white ground ; and as 
 to " The Village Festival," at the time we are writing 
 much of the thinly-painted background (more particu- 
 larly the staircase and window, with the figures in that 
 part of the composition), is entirely broken up with 
 cracks of the same kind, which are gradually opening, 
 and in like manner exposing the white ground of the 
 
262 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 canvas ; so that at least the assertion " that it will 
 stand for ever " is not true, and we may be permitted 
 to doubt also its being painted in " pure oil." 
 
 It will be seen that in our opinion pictures painted in 
 mastic magylph do not crack when left unvarnished, but 
 are liable to fail when this is done ; yet it must be con- 
 fessed that it is very doubtful if the " Fiddler " had 
 been left unvarnished until the time spoken of above. 
 Wilkie was evidently accustomed to have his pictures 
 varnished very soon after their completion ; perhaps 
 agreeing with West's maxim, that you should " lock 
 them up " with varnish as soon as possible. Thus we 
 find an entry in Wilkie's diary in May, 1808 : — "Accom- 
 panied Seguier to the Admiralty to varnish the picture 
 of ' The Rent Day ; "' and again in July, " Seguier var- 
 nished for me ' The Village Politicians,' and the sketch of 
 Miss Phipps. So that without it was a particular wish of 
 the owner not to have a work varnished, it would appear 
 to be the usual practice of the painter to varnish. " The 
 Village Festival " is differently executed from those which 
 preceded it, the flesh and the draperies being made up of 
 broken tints, although the general tone is grey. Wilkie 
 had now mastered all the varied modes of execution, 
 such as thick and thin painting, painting into a glaze, 
 glazing, &c, although he ever used the latter quality 
 very sparingly. The improvement in execution as well 
 as in expression is very marked ; some of the separate 
 groups are fine, such as the miller between jollity and 
 duty ; and the varied characters of the host and his cus- 
 tomers are true to nature. As compared with "Pitlassie 
 Fair," a work of a somewhat parallel subject, the advance 
 is almost that of a lifetime. 
 
HIS FIRST SERIOUS ILLNESS. 
 
 263 
 
 " The Village Festival " was a picture containing too 
 many figures and too much material to permit of the 
 painter's finishing it in time for exhibition in 1810, and 
 Wilkie, perhaps somewhat too hastily, painted a small 
 work to keep his place on the walls. This he called 
 " No Fool like an Old Fool," but subsequently changed 
 to "The Wardrobe Ransacked." His friends in the 
 Academy thought it did not maintain his reputation; 
 they advised him to withdraw it, and he reluctantly 
 complied with their wishes. His biographer seems to 
 lean to the opinion that some jealousy on the part of 
 the members, or some secret satisfaction at seeing the 
 sudden fame which he had achieved waning before the 
 rising talent of Bird, was at the bottom of the recom- 
 mendation; but his reasoning refutes itself. The painter's 
 friends and companions might have erred in their coun- 
 sel, but it appears from Wilkie 's diary that he worked 
 much on the rejected picture before he again submitted 
 it to the judgment of the public ; and notwithstanding 
 that the painter was ill-represented in their exhibition, 
 the Academy elected him in the ensuing spring to the 
 full honours of their body. 
 
 In this year (1810) Wilkie had the first serious attack 
 of the illness which afterwards distressingly haunted him. 
 He complained to Dr. Baillie that he could neither paint 
 nor think for a quarter of an hour consecutively without 
 experiencing a giddiness almost amounting to fainting. 
 This ended in fever, which confined him for many 
 weeks, and prevented his painting ; indeed his weak- 
 ness lasted almost to the end of the year. He had 
 long been meditating upon a scheme for profiting by 
 the exhibition of his own works. He thought — as Fuseli 
 
284 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and others had done before him — that the public, which 
 took especial pleasure in his pictures when seen with 
 others in the Academy exhibition, would flock to a 
 collection brought together for his own profit. He 
 took a house, No. 87, Pall Mall, opposite the British 
 Institution, and in May, 1812, opened a collection of his 
 own pictures, partly new and partly borrowed from his 
 patrons. Notwithstanding his recent election to the full 
 honours of the Academy ; and that as in the previous 
 season he had been but poorly represented it was 
 desirable he should justify its choice to the world, he 
 withheld his new picture of " The Village Festival," the 
 fame of which had, no doubt, hastened his election, and 
 sent it, together with " The Village Politicians," " The 
 Blind Fiddler," " The Cut Finger," " The Rent Day," 
 " The Card Players," and several portraits, sketches, 
 and minor works, to this private exhibition. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the members were 
 vexed to see their new colleague diverting his chief 
 works from their walls, and putting them off with mere 
 studies and sketches ; but if so, they had their revenge. 
 Wilkie, though sufficiently a man of business and canny 
 at a bargain, as his diary shows, was at least not fitted 
 to puff an exhibition of his own works; and the time 
 was yet distant when this was to become a profitable 
 business to middle -men and dealers, who, given a 
 banquet scene, the entry of a royal personage, or 
 indeed any outre or singular work, can, by dint of sheer 
 advertising puffery, draw large sums of money from the 
 public, whether the art is good or bad. We are not 
 surprised, therefore, that the attempt was unsuccessful 
 and a loss. Wilkie was accustomed to shake his head 
 
HIS UNSUCCESSFUL EXHIBITION. 
 
 265 
 
 when the affair was mentioned, A distraint was made 
 on his pictures for rent due from his landlord for the 
 premises sublet to the painter ; " The Village Holiday," 
 as it was then called, was seized, and had to be redeemed. 
 The only benefit accruing to the artist was that it sug- 
 gested the fine subject, " Distraining for Rent," which 
 the painter shortly commenced. 
 
 In December of the year 1812, Wilkie's father died, 
 having lived long enough to witness the full reputation 
 of his son. This caused a great change in the painter's 
 household ; eventually his mother and sister came to live 
 with him at Kensington, where he had removed ; and, 
 henceforth cared for and tended by those who loved him, 
 surrounded in his home by female influence, he had less 
 inducement to change his bachelor condition for the 
 married state : into which we find endeavours to tempt 
 him by parties who would have liked to share his repu- 
 tation at least, and the comforts with which it had 
 surrounded him. Thus we trace him relating with much 
 simplicity in his journal for 1810: — " Had a valentine 
 to-day, from whom I know not, but certainly in the same 
 handwriting as one I formerly received." And shortly 
 afterwards : — "A young lady called and made use of the 
 name of one of my friends to see my pictures ; she 
 expressed in strong terms her regret at not finding any 
 picture of mine in the exhibition, and said she had seen 
 a print of me, but it looked much too youthful. Though 
 she said nothing at all improper, I am inclined to doubt 
 her character, as well as her motive for calling on me. 
 It is altogether a strange matter." We fancy we can see 
 the sedate young painter of twenty-five bowing out the 
 somewhat bold lady who would have liked to remain to 
 
266 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 share his home. Now, with his mother and sister at 
 hand to add to his comforts and to keep off such visitors, 
 Wilkie was able to resist all such attractions ; and having 
 passed through his period of temptation he remained 
 single to the last, devoting himself wholly to the art. 
 he loved. 
 
 He had exhibited his picture of "Blindman's Buff" 
 (which he had taken in hand after "The Village Fes- 
 tival ") among his other works in Pall Mall. He finished 
 it for the Academy exhibition of 1813, where, according 
 to the rules of that body, he was on this occasion to 
 act as one of the members of the hanging committee. 
 Many sinister remarks are made in his biography as 
 to the arts of former councils and committees towards 
 our painter, and the injuries he received at their hands. 
 It is reasonable to suppose that all such committees are 
 somewhat alike, and that painters, like other men, differ 
 as to the comparative merits of pictures. Wilkie says 
 himself on this occasion, " We had many a squabble, 
 as you may suppose, during the arrangement, about who 
 should have the best places ; but as no one was admitted, 
 this was all confined to ourselves, and although we had 
 the interests of all the members to balance and take care 
 of, as well as those of our own particular friends, and 
 those of the many poor fellows who had no friends, we 
 have adjusted them all so well that there is not a single 
 complaint : " but he also adds with much naivete, " The 
 first persons we thought of were our own three selves, as 
 you may suppose ; and, acting on this principle, my 
 picture of ' Blindman's Buff was accordingly placed in 
 the principal centre in the great room — ' showing that he 
 also knew how to take care of his own interests. Not 
 
" HANGING COMMITTEES." 
 
 267 
 
 that this is characteristic of the memhers of hanging- 
 committees, who often sacrifice their own works for those 
 of their brother artists. When one of the writers was 
 on the hanging committee with Leslie, the latter with- 
 drew a picture of his own to make way for one that, if 
 not more deserving, would have injured its author more, 
 if misplaced, than could be the case with the work of 
 a painter so distinguished as Leslie. And it is pleasant 
 here to record that on a similar occasion the same 
 writer was assured that when a place could not be found 
 on the line for his picture of " Ellen Orford " (one of his 
 works first which attracted public attention), Wilkie took 
 down a picture of his own from the line, to give it a 
 place. The first endeavour of the hanging committee 
 is usually to do justice according to their best judgment, 
 and plenty of instances might be adduced where the 
 members have striven to take care of the interests of 
 " the many poor fellows who have no friends." 
 
 Wilkie's next important pictures were " The Pedlar," 
 " The Letter of Introduction," and the "Duncan Gray." 
 These two latter are of the same size, and originally the 
 "Duncan Gray" was painted in the same thin delicate 
 manner, and of the same silvery tone, as the "Letter of 
 Introduction." They were both sent to the Royal 
 Academy in 1814, having been previously sold; the 
 " Letter of Introduction " to Mr. Samuel Dobree, the 
 "Duncan Gray" to Dr. Baillie. Cunningham tells us 
 that " in less than a year Dr. Baillie exchanged it with 
 Wilkie for the < The Pedlar.' " To lend fresh interest 
 to an exhibited picture, Wilkie worked anew at the 
 " Duncan Gray," gave it some of its minute and faithful 
 finish, and sent it to the British Institution, where it 
 
268 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 was purchased by Lord Charles Townshend." Mulready, 
 however, who was well acquainted with the painting of 
 " Duncan Gray," used to say that it was originally a grey 
 silvery picture like the " Blind Fiddler" or " Letter of 
 Introduction," hut that when nearly finished, Wilkie 
 became enamoured of tone, and went all over the picture 
 with asphaltum, painting into it, and repeating this 
 process even a second time. The result was fatal to the 
 picture ; for while at Mr. Sheepshanks', into whose hands 
 it passed from Lord Charles, it cracked and went into a 
 very sad state, of which a photographic record has been 
 preserved. Mulready, who was the authority appointed by 
 the deed of gift to the nation to sanction any reparations, 
 had it given into the hands of a restorer to put it into a 
 state for exhibition. By him the cracks were filled up ; 
 and, much to the disgust of Mulready, one hand which 
 was in a very bad state (the left hand of the old father) 
 was entirely repainted, and is to this day a blot on this 
 otherwise very fine work. It is now again slowly parting 
 either in the old cracks, or probably new ones are form- 
 ing. Mulready himself sat to Wilkie for the " Duncan 
 Gray," Mulready' s father for the father of the unwilling 
 damsel ; and for her Wilkie's sister sat. Sketches for 
 some of the hands in varied actions are among the artist's 
 drawings in the collection at Kensington Museum. 
 
 In 1814, Wilkie made his first trip to the Continent, 
 remaining five or six weeks in France, where he visited 
 the schools and galleries, but seems to have come back 
 without being much impressed by French Art. On his 
 return he commenced the picture of " Distraining for 
 Rent," a work of great dramatic merit, bought by 
 the directors of the British Institution, and afterwards 
 
"THE READING A WILL." 
 
 269 
 
 for many years in the possession of W. Wells, Esq., of 
 Kedleaf. This thinly painted picture, seen in Mr. Wells' 
 gallery about twenty years ago, was in a very fine state, 
 but latterly it has given way in hair cracks throughout 
 a large portion of the surface. " The Penny Wedding " 
 followed in 1819, and in 1820, " The Reading a Will," 
 a very characteristic subject, said to have been suggested 
 to him by Jack Bannister, the comedian ; it was a com- 
 mission from the King of Bavaria, and almost the only 
 instance in which a British painter has been asked to 
 paint for a foreign gallery. When Wilkie visited Munich 
 in 1826, he naturally wished to see his picture, which 
 was understood to have been hung with the works of the 
 older masters, and to note how it stood in their company. 
 
 But he found the king who had given him the 
 commission, dead, and the picture sealed up with the 
 other royal treasures, preparatory to their sale. An 
 application to see his own work was, however, favourably 
 received, and the seal of the apartment broken in the 
 presence of a commissioner, who accompanied him for 
 that purpose. Wilkie says of the work, " its look and hue 
 gratified me exceedingly : it looked rich and powerful, 
 and remarkably in harmony with the fine specimens of 
 Dutch art which surrounded it : " he adds, " observed the 
 picture had been varnished about a twelvemonth ago, 
 on looking narrowly I could discover the beginning of 
 small cracks in the varnish." These cracks subsequently 
 enlarged greatly ; thirty years after they had become 
 wide and deep ; but in a second visit to Munich which 
 we made in 1863, on a careful inspection of the picture, 
 the evil did not seem to be progressing. It is now 
 among the modern works in the new Pinacothek, and 
 
270 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 it is some comfort, in the wreck of English pictures, 
 to think that ours are not singular in this respect ; 
 many German works in the same gallery being in a 
 far worse state than the " Reading of a Will." This 
 picture was hung in the place of honour at Somerset 
 House in the exhibition of 1820, and greatly increased 
 his reputation. Yet we cannot agree in Cunningham's 
 assertion that "no painter existed equal to dispute the 
 palm of public favour with Wilkie." Mulready had 
 already exhibited his " Barber's Shop," his " Fight 
 Interrupted," " Idle Boys," and " "Wolf and Lamb," 
 and was preparing for next year's exhibition the touch- 
 ing picture of " The Convalescent from Waterloo." 
 Leslie, also, was rising into fame, and with two such 
 rivals it was much that Wilkie could hold his own. 
 
 He was now about to commence one of his most 
 important pictures, one that eventually became almost 
 historical, although not undertaken with that idea. He 
 tells us that "in the summer of 1816, the year after the 
 Battle of Waterloo," the great duke requested to have 
 a picture by him, the subject to be " British Soldiers 
 Regaling at Chelsea; " and he adds, "in justice to the 
 duke as well as to myself, it is but right to state, that 
 the introduction of the Gazette was a subsequent idea of 
 my own to unite the interest, and give importance to the 
 business of the picture." This is best seen in a letter 
 written by the painter in 1816 to Haydon, wherein he 
 describes a visit from the duke, who called by appoint- 
 ment to give a commission for the work. The duke 
 looked at his pictures and sketches with much attention, 
 but was silent. " At last Lady Argyle (who was of the 
 party) began to tell me that the duke wished me to paint 
 
READING THE GAZETTE OF WATERLOO. 271 
 
 him a picture, and was explaining what the subject was, 
 when the duke, who was at that time seated in a chair, 
 turned up his lively eye to me, and said that the subject 
 should be a parcel of old soldiers, assembled together on 
 their seats at the door of a public-house, chewing tobacco, 
 and talking over their old stories. He thought they might 
 be in any uniform, and that it should be at some public- 
 house in the King's Koad, Chelsea. I said this would 
 make a most beautiful picture, and that it only wanted 
 some story or principal incident to connect the figures 
 together. He said, perhaps playing at skittles would do, 
 or any other game. When I proposed that one might 
 be reading a newspaper aloud to the rest, and that in 
 making a sketch of it many other incidents would occur, 
 in this he perfectly agreed, and said I might send a 
 sketch to him when he was abroad." 
 
 Wilkie made various sketches for the duke's approval, 
 and after consultation with him and with Mr. Long (after- 
 wards Lord Farnborough), he began to work with great 
 delight on his subject, and worked at it so unceasingly 
 that his health began again to suffer ; a little relaxation, 
 however, restored him sufficiently to complete it for 
 exhibition in 1822. It greatly advanced the painter's 
 fame. High and low flocked to see it. The soldiers 
 to find out their comrades in arms, who in India, in 
 the Peninsula, and finally at Waterloo, had fought 
 with them under the command of the great captain. 
 The public were delighted with it, the artists were 
 equally delighted, and the visitors to the exhibition had 
 to be railed off from it, waiting en queue their turn to 
 pass in front. 
 
 " Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo " 
 
272 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 is one of Valine's best pictures ; in it he carried his 
 early style to its completion, and has shown all those 
 qualities of thought and invention, and of the cumulation 
 of episodal details which make his works, like those of 
 Hogarth, pictorial histories rather than mere pictures. 
 The subject or incident is a good one. The veterans 
 who have gone through their day of strife and come off, 
 if not wholly unscathed, yet victorious from a hundred 
 fights, are receiving the news of the great victory won 
 by the young who have succeeded them in the ranks of 
 battle. The locality is well chosen. In the background 
 is Chelsea Hospital, that restful paradise of the battered 
 veteran, misty and beautiful in the mid-day sun. The 
 wayside is lined with taverns, blissful halting-places to 
 these loquacious heroes, who love, above all things, to 
 drink and " fight their battles o'er again." And over 
 the dark wall on the right is that place of last repose, 
 where rank and file, soldier and officer, rest together 
 from their earthly labours and fight no more. 
 
 In the midst of the roadway, seated at a deal table, 
 are some of the Chelsea pensioners, smoking and drink- 
 ing with their younger comrades of the line and the 
 guards. A hussar orderly has just ridden up with a 
 copy of the Gazette, and one of the old heroes is reading 
 it aloud to the group, who neglect the beer and the pipe 
 to rejoice in the news of the glorious victory. On the 
 left, a young soldier is repeating the news in the ear of a 
 deaf and somewhat imbecile collegian, and beyond them 
 a soldier of "the Blues" turns fondly to his wife, and 
 raises his crowing babe triumphantly aloft — peace is 
 come ! peace which will leave him awhile with those he 
 loves. Above them a jovial group, from the windows of 
 
THE CHARACTERS INTRODUCED. 
 
 273 
 
 the " Duke of York," listen eagerly to catch the words 
 of the reader. The composition is filled up with many 
 figures — the negro bandsman, the o>ne-legged veteran now 
 turned civilian, the oyster wife opening her luxuries for 
 their delectation, the Scotch Highlander, and the figures 
 that lead the eye away into the picture and the distance. 
 
 The features of the background, while they are 
 felicitously pictorial, are literally exact. Our young days 
 were passed in this very locality, for we were at school 
 in Chelsea. Then, and even now, in a degree, " Jews' 
 Kow — " for so the road leading to the college was called 
 — daily presented such a scene as this would have been 
 prior to the arrival of the joyful mesisenger. And from the 
 "Duke of York," to the curious old bow-fronted wooden 
 tavern, the " Snow Shoes " and the " Royal Hospital," 
 the last in the row, a range of public-houses line the 
 path. The iron gate on the left was there, perhaps is 
 even there still; many of the veterans introduced into 
 the group were then well known to us boys, to whom 
 the college was a playground and place of resort : we 
 used to go and see the old men fiire their one volley of 
 the year on Oak- Apple Day, or the final salute over the 
 grave of some comrade who had passed away for ever. 
 The coJlegian eating oysters was " Old Ball," who in his 
 days of rest had resumed an earlier trade, and was 
 botcher to the school ; equally well-known were the cha- 
 racters in the Welsh wig, and the deaf old man in the fore- 
 ground. 
 
 How different is this picture to the "Greenwich 
 Hospital and Naval Heroes " (a clever work), painted by 
 John Burnet for the duke, as its companion. Wilkie's 
 work strikes us for its life-likeness amd reality. Burnet's 
 vol. ii. 52 
 
274 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTEES. 
 
 companions well with it as a composition, and has all 
 the well-worked incidents for making a picture ; but the 
 old men, instead of being very literal and individual, are 
 affable old tars, to whom the boys of the naval school, like 
 lads tamed for the occasion, are bringing their quadrants 
 and sectors, to confer with their amiable seniors how to 
 take the longitude, or keep a ship's reckoning, while the 
 stage sailor waves his hat with a hurrah, and a banquet 
 is set out under the flag-draped trees, that they may all 
 feast together. Wilkie's soldiers, whether serving or 
 superannuated, are not only types of the species, but most 
 characteristic individuals ; the locality, as has been said, 
 is topographically correct, the very mid-day sun shines 
 from its true place at the hour of the day chosen. 
 
 It is delightful, after seeing the decaying state of 
 so many of "Wilkie's pictures, to find this one uncracked 
 and sound. It has been what is technically called 
 "painted into a glaze" throughout, apparently bone 
 brown, with perhaps, from the greyness of the half 
 tints when they melt into the shadows, the addition of 
 a little black. The heads have the appearance of 
 being completed at once, and not gone over and over 
 in seeking expression. The brown ground in the 
 shadows has the solid colour painted into it, so that 
 the ground rarely appears through; thus the brown 
 horse of the hussar, and the wall of the burying- 
 ground, also in shadow, have the shadows solid; and 
 this is so throughout, with the exception of the shadow 
 from the chair of the deaf man. Wilkie, it is said, on 
 his return from Italy, complained that in English pictures 
 the lights looked flat and empty, and the shadows 
 worked into and solid; and this picture has these 
 
THE PARISH BEADLE DESCRIBED. 
 
 275 
 
 qualities, while in the next important work he painted, 
 " The Parish Beadle," the shadows are even still more 
 solid and black. He changed after his first return, and 
 the "John Knox" was the result. It is worth noting 
 that this Waterloo picture, which has stood so well, has 
 certainly been varnished. 
 
 " The Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo " off his 
 mind and completed to the satisfaction both of the public 
 and its owner, Wilkie prepared the sketch for the picture 
 commissioned by George IV., as a companion to the 
 " Penny Wedding" and "Blindman's Buff." A little 
 elated, perhaps, with the success of his semi-historical 
 work, he pitched on a truly national subject of the same 
 character, and made a sketch for " John Knox Preaching 
 before the Lords of the Congregation." But when it 
 was named to his Majesty, it did not meet with his 
 approval ; he liked Wilkie's humorous homely subjects 
 better, and John Knox was laid aside for the present, 
 the painter proceeding with the "Parish Beadle," which 
 he exhibited in 1823. His early art culminated in this 
 work ; it is true he painted one or two small works in 
 the same style before his long illness drove him abroad, 
 but they are works of less than his usual vigour and 
 power. The " Parish Beadle " is a beautiful picture for 
 character, expression and colour, although a little black 
 in the shadows. The patient submissive imbecility of 
 the boy with the monkey, the anger of the Savoyard 
 mother, and her meretricious-looking husband with a 
 ruffianly cast in his eye, the truculent burly beadle, are 
 extremely characteristic. The action of the woman is 
 excellent, her fingers ready to score marks of her wrath 
 on the official's face ; the poor dog with his tail between 
 
 52—2 
 
276 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 his legs, and his gaudy trappings (a beautiful passage 
 of colour by the way), the bear and bear- ward bringing 
 up the rear. The difference between the burly bumble- 
 dom of the full-blown man of authority, and that of his 
 assistant clad in the left-off clothes of his superior in 
 office — the very boys jeering the Bohemians they so lately 
 feared, but now may revile, seeing they are under the 
 wings of authority itself in its laced coat and cocked-hat 
 — are all excellently chosen and depicted. 
 
 In the autumn of 1822, George IV. determined to 
 make a royal progress to Edinburgh, and as it was the 
 first time that such a visit had been made by a sovereign 
 of the House of Hanover, all true Scotchmen were on 
 the alert. Amongst others, Wilkie wended his way 
 thither to seek a subject connected with the king's visit ; 
 intending to paint either his first step on Scottish land, 
 his visit to the Castle, his appearance at kirk, or his 
 entrance to the ancient palace of the Scottish monarchs 
 at Holyrood. From various causes he chose the last of 
 these subjects for his canvas. 
 
 In the following July, Sir Henry Raeburn, who had 
 been the king's limner for Scotland, died, and Sir Eobert 
 Peel recommended Wilkie to his Majesty for the appoint- 
 ment. This was graciously acceded to, and the painter 
 began to work diligently on his historical picture of " The 
 Royal Entrance." His Majesty was pleased to approve of 
 the choice, and promised to sit for it when the work was 
 sufficiently advanced. But the king had his own idea of 
 a dignified attitude, and posed to show how he received 
 the keys of the seneschal : much to the distraction of the 
 painter ; added to this there had been far too much of 
 stage clap -trap in the whole affair — fat city aldermen clad 
 
DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 
 
 277 
 
 in Highland tartans, lowland Scots assuming a dress quite 
 foreign to them or to their fathers. Courtly sitters also 
 troubled him ; the work proceeded slowly ; appointments 
 were not kept as by the humble models he had heretofore 
 employed ; nevertheless he laboured on, paying another 
 visit to Scotland to sketch the details for the picture, 
 the regalia, the landscape-background, the dresses, and 
 whatever might help him; — and at the same time having 
 an eye to the subject on which he had set his heart, 
 " The Preaching of Knox." While in Scotland he was 
 induced to undertake a life-size whole-length portrait of 
 Lord Kellie — wishing, as he says to his brother, " to 
 have the practice of painting large, in case I should have 
 anything to paint for the king in the same way." 
 
 His Holyrood picture had, no doubt, caused him 
 much trouble and anxiety, and while away, troubles 
 began to gather around him ; his mother sickened, and 
 after a slight improvement, relapsed and died ere his 
 return. His brother James, with a wife and family, came 
 back from Canada invalided, and a defaulter : Wilkie 
 not only having to help him, but being also his surety 
 for 1,000/., he became liable for that sum. James 
 died shortly after his return, and early in the new year, 
 1825, the painter learnt that his elder brother David, 
 then in India, had succumbed to the climate, and 
 left a widow and four children imperfectly provided 
 for. His sister also, on the point of marriage, lost the 
 man of her choice by death. This accumulation of 
 sorrows weighed heavily on the sensitive mind of the 
 painter, already overtaxed by his art labours, and his old 
 malady returned upon him ; he managed to finish some 
 small works for the exhibition, and then was advised to 
 
278 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 seek a renewal of Iris health in foreign travel and an 
 entire cessation from his art. 
 
 Wilkie having tried the waters of Cheltenham with- 
 out success, set off in July 1825 for Paris, in com- 
 pany with Newton the painter. Here he was soon 
 joined by his cousin and future travelling companion, 
 David Lester. His malady was singular ; physical weak- 
 ness there was none. He himself says : — "Walking up- 
 hill, or to the tops of spires of churches, has no effect 
 upon me. But he adds: — "Heading, writing, or any 
 sort of study, except a little at a time, produces weari- 
 ness and pain." Finding no relief in Paris, although 
 plenty of contrary opinions as to his case, he started 
 with Lester for Italy. At Florence he was joined by his 
 friends Hilton and Phillips, with whom he carefully 
 examined the works in that treasury of art. And then 
 by easy journeys he proceeded to Rome, arriving in the 
 middle of November of the same year. 
 
 Wilkie's health had gradually improved as he jour- 
 neyed southward ; but in Rome, the fever of admiration 
 which was on him in viewing the great works of the 
 greatest painters, and criticising them in company with 
 Hilton and Phillips, somewhat retarded his improvement. 
 The impression made upon him, was, however, such as to 
 determine him to modify his method and style, if health 
 permitted him to renew his practice on his return to 
 England. This fever of excitement induced him to leave 
 Rome to visit other schools, and the works of other 
 masters. Ere he left in February 1826, he heard of 
 new troubles in the failure of his publishers, Hurst 
 and Robinson. But though the shock was great, 
 hopes of returning health enabled him to bear it. He 
 
WILKIE'S ITALIAN TRAVELS. 
 
 279 
 
 says : — " With health I could surmount everything ; and 
 feeling strongly as I do what I said to you in my last, 
 ' that it is in health alone I can be either better or worse,' 
 I really must say that I am less affected by this new 
 threatening disaster, than with any former one by which 
 we have been afflicted." David Lester also, his travel- 
 ling companion, received at the same time bad news and 
 a recall ; and he writes, " The accumulation of evils that 
 are said to have had a share in bringing on my illness, 
 have now come to such a height, that one would doubt 
 whether recovery is possible. All, however, here assert, 
 doctors as well as others, that I am recovering." And 
 recovering he was, notwithstanding his troubles. He 
 began to make some coloured sketches in the Sistine, 
 the first art-work he had done for twelve months. He 
 left Eome for Naples on the 25th of February, and 
 arrived on the 28th. Here new troubles awaited him ; 
 his hopes that Hurst and Co. might get through their 
 difficulties were quenched : his bills were returned dis- 
 honoured. 
 
 Again he journeyed northward ; at Bologna, as the 
 year advanced, the symptoms of his complaint a second 
 time became alarming. He had followed the advice of 
 his physicians, and lived abstemiously ; but he found it 
 only increased the evil. On the 17th of April, while at 
 Venice, there is this touching entry in his journal: — 
 " Sent Mr. Rice an order on Coutts and Co., for bills on 
 Hurst and Robinson, amounting to 1,730/. lis., the 
 amount of my very heavy and hard-earned claims upon 
 their house." And can we wonder to find, on the 26th, 
 " I ha\>e now been eight months in Italy, and have seen 
 a world of objects for amusement and for study. Every- 
 
280 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 thing, under happier circumstances, would have delighted 
 and improved me, but for one object of my journey 
 have been quite unavailable, that of the recovery of 
 health." Trouble still gathered around him. " Had it 
 come to its height with them ? " he asks his brother. 
 And when he recurs to the bond of security he had 
 given to the Ordnance, he says that, as he walks the 
 Eialto, he can but picture to himself "the pound of 
 flesh and the forfeited bond." He was advised to spend 
 another year in Italy, but finding that through many 
 physicians he grew none the better, but rather the worse, 
 he determined to visit Germany. Thither, then, he 
 shaped his course from Venice. 
 
 Wilkie remained during the summer in Germany, 
 visiting Dresden, Prague, and Vienna. He tried the 
 baths of Teplitz, but found no relief; and still resting 
 on the advice of his various physicians, in the autumn 
 revisited Italy. He remained there during the winter, 
 feted and made much of by our countrymen, and 
 apparently progressing slowly to health. Beginning by 
 painting "three half-hours in a day," he more or less 
 completed three pictures. About the end of April he 
 wrote to his brother Thomas : — " I have again begun to 
 paint; this is an immense thing for me." He soon after 
 left Rome. He has given us some hints of his new 
 practice and new mode of execution. Writing of the 
 pictures he painted there, he says: — "Every figure and 
 every group required to be preconceived and pre-arranged 
 — no changings, no rubbings out, no repetitions — every 
 touch was final. The last of the three was painted up 
 at once on the bare canvas, and was left in that state 
 when packed off for London." 
 
SPAIN AND ITS INFLUENCE. 
 
 281 
 
 He made some short stay in Geneva, still progressing 
 with his art, and then resolved, instead of returning, to 
 pay a visit to Spain, almost an unknown land to that 
 generation of artists. He arrived in Madrid early in 
 October, 1827, was delighted with the novelty of Spanish 
 art — looked much at Velasquez, an artist but imperfectly 
 known out of Spain— painted several pictures, now in 
 the Royal Collection — and writing home to his sister, 
 says : — " Will the London public, with my former style 
 in recollection, judge of these new subjects, and new 
 manner of treating them, with the same favour as those 
 who see them now for the first time ? This is what 
 I mean to try. I have now, from the study of the old 
 masters, adopted a bolder and more effective style ; and 
 one result is rapidity. The quantity of work I have got 
 through, all seem surprised at. If it excites the same 
 interest in London that it does here, it will probably 
 bring better times." On leaving Spain, he said : — 
 " I return highly satisfied with my journey. The seven 
 months and ten days passed in Spain I may reckon as 
 the best employed time of my professional life." 
 
 We have seen how deeply Wilkie was afflicted by the 
 loss of friends and relatives, added to his heavy and 
 repeated pecuniary losses and difficulties, brought on by 
 no imprudence of his own ; and it is instructive to compare 
 the difference of his bearing under his troubles to that of 
 his friend, Haydon. It is true they were of very different 
 temperaments, but while the one acted as if genius was 
 to be the excuse for intruding his affairs for ever on 
 public attention, the other used the most prudent means 
 to regain his health, and then set himself diligently to 
 retrieve his deranged affairs ; and he succeeded. 
 
282 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Wilkie's illness, and the foreign journey that it 
 necessitated, brought to a close the first period of his 
 art. Hitherto he had usually invented the subject of his 
 picture, as well as the mode of treating it. He had 
 sought to illustrate the homely pleasures of his country- 
 men — the domestic drama of their e very-day life. The 
 figures which he introduced were such as daily sur- 
 rounded him, characters which he selected, and vivified 
 by expression suitable to his simple stories. These stories 
 were such as all would understand, both high and low, 
 and the art was allied to them ; pleasant in its appeal to 
 the eye, both as to colour, and light and shade, and care- 
 fully executed without over-much finish ; what wonder is it 
 that his pictures were so deservedly popular ! Moreover, 
 Wilkie was happy in finding in his countrymen, Kaim- 
 bach and Burnet, men so well qualified to spread a 
 knowledge of his pictures by the engraver's art. As 
 fast as Wilkie painted, Kaimbach and Burnet engraved, 
 and as the subjects appealed equally to all classes, and 
 to foreigners as well as natives, these engravings found a 
 ready sale, and added greatly to the popularity and repu- 
 tation of the painter. 
 
 We have seen a change coming over him before 
 his Italian and Spanish journey; the position he now 
 occupied as king's limner opened up a new species 
 of labour, and a new source of profit, which he would 
 no doubt have followed out, even without the stimu- 
 lant of his foreign observations. As his difficulties in- 
 creased, arising from his long abstentation from paint- 
 ing, his losses from over-trading capitalists, or from the 
 misfortunes of his relatives, he began to find his early 
 art too laborious; he felt, as Cunningham says, "that 
 
HIS SPANISH PICTURES. 
 
 283 
 
 if he continued to work in his usual laborious style 
 of detail and finish, he should never achieve indepen- 
 dence ; " and while these thoughts troubled him, he 
 saw the master works of Velasquez, and instantly became 
 a worshipper. "With his views changed as to art exe- 
 cution, he returned from the Continent to his duties 
 as Court limner, required to paint whole-lengths and 
 half-lengths to command, and still further to loosen his 
 hand and enlarge his style. The first thing to be 
 noted of the pictures painted in Spain, and generally of 
 the new style he had adopted, is its facility and the 
 absence of the minute finish that characterizes his 
 early Works ; there is also a change in the nature of his 
 subjects which are of a higher class than formerly. 
 This may have partly arisen from the incidents which 
 came under his eyes during his journey, but had in 
 some degree been adopted before he left England — 
 when he was engaged on the historical picture of 
 " John Knox." 
 
 Most of the pictures actually painted in Spain are in 
 the possession of her Majesty, — " The Guerilla Council 
 of War," " The Guerilla taking Leave of his Confessor," 
 " The Maid of Saragossa," as well as " The Guerilla's 
 Keturn to his Family." These are all painted into a 
 brown key, and seem completed at once ; they are fine 
 in general effect and tone, and have a Spanish air about 
 them, but are more defective in drawing than his earlier 
 works. The best of the series is, however, that of the 
 " Two Spanish Monks in the Cathedral of Toledo," 
 which he painted in England. It belongs to the Mar- 
 quis of Lansdowne. The subject is " The Confessional." 
 .A passive old monk is listening to the tale of the young 
 
284 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 one's fiery temptations — temptations he may himself 
 have known once, but which have long passed from him. 
 He listens with somewhat of irritable impatience to the 
 deep earnest outpourings of the younger one. The ex- 
 pressive hands, as usual in Wilkie, are a perfect study 
 for action, the tone and accessories in fine keeping with 
 the solemn subject. The confessional in which the monk 
 sits is painted of a full rich brown in all the darks ; this 
 brown is laid on so thickly, that it has even run down, as 
 asphaltum will do ; yet there is no change, and the picture 
 is not cracked at all. The brown used appears to be bone 
 brown, but with what vehicle ? The brown is laid so full 
 from the brush, and so much at once, that it looks like 
 a raised ornament on the confessional at the back of 
 the figures ; the colour is in lumps on the incense burner 
 in the foreground, and has streamed down in the darks 
 of the book which lies beside it, but yet there is neither 
 crack nor corrugation. It is doubtful if it has been 
 varnished. The Spanish pictures belonging to her 
 Majesty are also much loaded in the brown darks, but 
 not so much so as " The Confessional," and they are 
 equally sound. Painted in Madrid, as we find from the 
 journal, and from the painter's signature to the works, 
 he was perhaps out of the way of colourmen's materials 
 — and his pictures are the sounder for it. 
 
 When the Spanish pictures were exhibited, they 
 raised a storm of criticism ; all reverted to his early art, 
 and to the class of subjects which had won him fame, 
 and few were ready to admit that the change was for 
 the better. But although the art-world, true to its first 
 love, hesitated to consider Wilkie' s change of style an 
 improvement, we, who at a distance of time compare 
 
AND CHANGED MANNER. 
 
 285 
 
 the two, are able to give a less biased judgment, and 
 can find many beauties in these works. It is rarely 
 that an artist goes so completely out of himself as 
 did Wilkie ; between Mulready's first and last style 
 there was almost as great a change, but it was very 
 gradual. Wilkie made the contrast far more start- 
 ling by the sudden change. He had begun to loosen 
 his hand before leaving England, as we see in " The 
 Pensioners," but on and after his Spanish journey he 
 not only ignored all executive finish, but considered it 
 as tending to bad art. Thus we find him writing to Sir 
 W. Knighton in 1838, of the exhibition of that year, 
 " A smooth and finished style also gains, and is indeed 
 exacted, bringing us nearer to Wynants, Gerard Dow, 
 and Mieris, and aiming at that which our own great 
 masters had not, and which the old great masters we 
 value most among all the schools had not." Also, when 
 on his last journey, he visited some of the Dutch col- 
 lections, he writes, — " One feels wearied with the per- 
 fections of the minor Dutch paintings, and finds relief 
 in contemplating even the imperfect sketches and incom- 
 plete thoughts of those great Italians." True, no doubt, 
 but showing the great change of feeling travel had 
 wrought in him. 
 
 It must be allowed that there is great beauty in the 
 rich tone, and the mellifluent melting of the colour into 
 it, in these latter works ; and we have already said that 
 the subjects chosen are of a higher class ; but the rich 
 tone was obtained at too great a sacrifice of permanency ; 
 and in choosing historical rather than merely dramatic 
 subjects, Wilkie shut himself out from his strongest 
 quality — character. Moreover, there can be little doubt 
 
286 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 that the change led him out of his depth and beyond 
 his powers. Although he drew readily and imitated his 
 model well, he never was a good draughtsman, and when 
 he attempted beauty his defects became apparent ; still 
 more so when he increased the size of his pictures, and 
 introduced figures of the scale of life. He says himself 
 that the critics thought that the helmet did not come 
 down enough over the face of Sir David Baird. It is 
 many years since it was exhibited, but we well remember 
 that the effect was as if the general had a difficulty in 
 balancing it, and was thinking of that more than of 
 Tippoo. As to his powers of foreshortening, let any 
 one examine the head of the whispering girl in the 
 " Peep of Day Boys " (National Gallery No. 332) : 
 not only is it impossible to place it properly on the 
 shoulders, but the lines of the features have no per- 
 spective. The left shoulder and bosom of the principal 
 figure are also very ill-drawn, and the drapery is an un- 
 distinguishable mass. Again, in " The First Ear-ring," 
 the face of the young mother, though in many respects 
 the figure is charming, is very ill-drawn ; and this is the 
 case with many of his latter works. Yet, whatever the 
 defects, there is a charm about the playfulness of " The 
 Spanish Mother," a deep earnestness in the "Columbus," 
 and in the " Two Monks," that gives these works a 
 high place in art; while the " Knox," (now, alas ! sadly 
 changed,) in the state it left the painter's hands, added 
 to many of the best qualities of Wilkie's early pictures 
 the higher claims of historic art. 
 
 Though not insensible to the opinion of the public 
 and of his brother artists, the painter himself was well 
 satisfied with the change, and settled down to com- 
 
THE KING'S ENTRY INTO HOLYROOD. 287 
 
 plete his engagements. " The Entry of the King to 
 Holyrood " had to be finished, and his Majesty had also 
 commissioned a whole-length of himself in the Highland 
 costume. Others also sought for portraits, and, for a 
 time, Wilkie was much occupied in this branch of his 
 art. Notwithstanding the troublesome nature of the 
 work, Holyrood was completed and exhibited in 1830. 
 It adds nothing to the painter's reputation. In the 
 early part of the year, Sir Thomas Lawrence died, and 
 many thought Wilkie ought to be his successor. Sir 
 Walter Scott, writing to him, says, " The loss to the 
 Academy is no doubt very great : a star has fallen, a 
 great artist is no more ! I cannot but think the loss 
 will be filled up, however, so far as the presidency is * 
 concerned, by adding it to the designation on this letter. 
 All who have heard you, speak in high terms of your 
 powers of eloquence ; and of your talents as an artist 
 there can be but one sentiment. I heartily wish, for 
 the honour of the Academy and the electors, that they 
 may be of my mind, and I am sure that the judgment 
 will be approved by all Europe." But the Academy 
 thought otherwise ; although the king had notified to 
 the painter on the morning of the election, his appoint- 
 ment to the vacant post of principal painter in ordinary, 
 the members elected Shee ; and it is even said that only 
 one vote, that of his devoted friend Collins, was given 
 for Wilkie. Wilkie himself was wise enough to swallow 
 quietly his disappointment, if it were one, and to busy 
 himself with his portraits, and his long-delayed picture 
 of the preaching of the great Scottish reformer. He 
 resumed this picture with every determination to make it 
 a great success ; the subject was a popular one, studied 
 
288 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 before the painter left for his long Continental journey ; 
 it was founded on the principles of his early style, linked 
 with all his sympathies, and peopled with his country- 
 men ; the figures not too large for his powers. It 
 proved one of the most successful pictures of his second 
 style. 
 
 Wilkie had always used nature as largely as possible 
 in the progress of his pictures, seeking out the most 
 characteristic models, the most suitable and picturesque 
 dresses and accessories. At the time the Knox was on 
 the easel, the celebrated Edward Irving was pouring 
 forth his fervid eloquence to warn a London audience of 
 the second advent of our Lord. Not bound by the staid 
 proprieties of the Establishment, and hurried away by his 
 own earnestness, his action was often perfectly unre- 
 strained. Wilkie studied him for the great reformer; 
 the action he has chosen we have often seen when 
 Irving in Kegent-square was preaching his sermons on 
 the " perilous times," and he even sat to Wilkie for the 
 expressive head. 
 
 As usual the painter visited the locality of his picture. 
 He found the pulpit of the great reformer stowed away, 
 in company with the gallows, in a cellar of the old 
 town ; and one of Wilkie 's young friends made a careful 
 drawing of it for his use. For this picture Wilkie 
 resorted to another expedient to enable him to get 
 the fullest impression of his subject. To study the 
 light and shade, and relative relief of the several 
 groups and figures, he modelled them small, draped 
 them ? and placed them in a box fitted up to repre- 
 sent the interior of St. Andrews. An engraver who 
 lived in the neighbourhood of the painter, and who 
 
wilkie's portrait art. 
 
 289 
 
 dabbled a little in painting himself, affecting, however, 
 " the grand style," took occasion to sneer at this 
 practice of Wilkie's, and to instance it as a great want 
 of originality on his part. " The whole scene," said he, 
 " was set up in a box with little draped dolls for the 
 figures : any one could paint a picture in that way." It 
 would have been well for him to have tried — even when 
 Wilkie's skill and knowledge had arranged the groups — 
 and he would have found how little value such helps are 
 without the genius to use them. This practice Wilkie, 
 no doubt, adopted on other occasions : he tells Lady 
 Baird in 1837, " The figure of Tippoo Saib I have taken 
 great pains with, and have been making a model of the 
 scene for the light and shadow ; " in fact, Wilkie knew how 
 difficult good art is with every aid that can be had, and 
 was far too wise to throw away any assistance he could 
 ob tain ; and the result of the care and pains he took, 
 was usually an assured success. 
 
 During the period which had elapsed since his return 
 from Spain, Wilkie had been much employed in por- 
 traiture, both of the members of the Koyal Family and 
 others. In 1833 he exhibited his whole length of the 
 Duke of Sussex, of which Cunningham, in that spirit of 
 partisanship which seems necessary when one Scotsman 
 .writes of another, speaks as "that first of all modern 
 portraits, for truth of character and harmonious brightness 
 of colour, the Duke of Sussex, as Earl of Inverness, in 
 the costume of a Highland chief. Against it no picture 
 in the exhibition of 1833 could stand : it seemed to 
 lighten all around." He also painted William IV. and 
 his Queen, the Duke of Wellington for the Marquis of 
 Salisbury, and many others. 
 
 vol. ii. 53 
 
290 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 As a portrait painter, Wilkie succeeded worst in the 
 most important part. When first painted, his portraits 
 looked well as pictures ; the colour and general distribu- 
 tion being mostly agreeable ; but the heads wanted 
 drawing, and worse still, wanted high character. Wilkie 
 had not the power of either Reynolds or Gainsborough 
 to seize the mental characteristics of his sitter, or to 
 give the best expression ; in some cases the heads look 
 as if the painter had made a vain endeavour to coax the 
 paint into a reluctant likeness : the hair is also a 
 difficulty, it seems full of a fatty pomade, stiff and 
 colourless. The head of J. Daniell, R.A. (National 
 Gallery, No. 231), will illustrate our remarks. It must 
 be at once conceded that this is a very poor and 
 unimportant sketch by our painter ; but the defects in 
 method, the want of drawing, the blocked out look of 
 the whole, are more or less apparent in his very best 
 works. The portrait of William IV. at Windsor has the 
 same qualities in a subdued degree as that alluded to 
 above ; and even in his small portraits done in early life, 
 and of a size in which he was more at home, we feel a 
 certain degree of vulgarity, and that the best charac- 
 teristics of the sitter are not given. No doubt portraits 
 added greatly to his income, but as surely little to his 
 fame. In 1836, William IV. bestowed on him the 
 honour of knighthood, and when he died, and our pre- 
 sent beloved Queen came to the throne, Wilkie retained 
 his office in the household, and was required to paint her 
 Majesty's first council ; a subject of high interest, but 
 carried out too quickly to be entirely satisfactory : and 
 its present state, we grieve to say, is most deplorable. 
 Large canvases, and life-size figures, as well as por- 
 
HIS VOYAGE TO THE EAST. 
 
 291 
 
 traits, now occupied his time : "Napoleon and the Pope 
 at Fontainebleau," " The Empress Josephine and the 
 Fortune-Teller, " " Sir David Baird discovering the 
 Body of Tippoo Saib," were among the works he 
 exhibited. To our mind they are far less satisfactory 
 than the smaller pictures resulting from his Spanish 
 journey. 
 
 In the autumn of 1840, Wilkie suddenly determined 
 on a voyage to the East. In the full practice of his 
 profession, with commissions for pictures and portraits 
 uncompleted, he resolved to visit the localities of the 
 sacred narrative, and, as a painter, to try to realize for 
 himself, as much as possible, the scenery and accessories 
 of Scripture history. Much speculation was rife at the 
 time as to his inducements to take this lengthened 
 journey ; but the painter has himself so plainly expressed 
 them in his letter from Jerusalem to Sir Kobert Peel, 
 that we cannot do better than quote his own words of 
 explanation " why, with pressing occupations at home, 
 and without a pursuit to demand such a field of study," 
 he " should yet mount the staff and scallop shell for such 
 a peregrination." "It is a fancy or belief," he continues, 
 " that the art of our time and of our British people may 
 reap some benefit, that has induced me to undertake this 
 journey. It is to see, to inquire, and to judge, not 
 whether I can, but whether those who are younger, or 
 with far higher attainments and powers, may not in 
 future be required, in the advance and spread of our 
 knowledge, to refer at once to the localities of Scripture 
 events when the great work is to be essayed of represent- 
 ing Scripture history. Great as the assistance — I might 
 say the inspiration — which the art of painting has 
 
 53—2 
 
292 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 derived from the illustration of Christianity, and great as 
 have been the talent and genius this high walk of art 
 has called into being, yet it is remarkable that none of 
 the great painters to whom the world has hitherto looked 
 for the visible appearance of Scripture scenes and feel- 
 ings, have ever visited the Holy Land." After adverting 
 to the attempted revival at Munich of sacred art from 
 Byzantine, or early Italian sources, and doubting its 
 propriety, he adds : — " The time is now come when our 
 supply in this walk of art must be drawn from the 
 
 fountain-head I am highly grateful at being 
 
 permitted to see with my own natural eyes what Jeru- 
 salem in our day can still present to us." His letter 
 gives, no doubt, the main inducement for the journey ; 
 perhaps, something of disappointment that his latter 
 pictures had not won popular applause may have con- 
 duced to it, and some prospect of a new field of art, and 
 visions of extended fame, — fame, alas ! which he was 
 not to achieve — also influenced him. 
 
 He started to the East in company with one of the 
 Woodburns ; going by way of the Hague, Cologne, 
 Munich, and Vienna, and dwelling with renewed pleasure 
 on the works of art in the countries he passed through. 
 From Vienna he took steamer on the Danube, and 
 reached Constantinople on the 4th of October, 1840. 
 Here he was delayed some time on account of the war in 
 Syria, and made use of his somewhat enforced leisure 
 to paint the Sultan. As soon as the cessation of 
 hostilities permitted, he set forth for the final object of 
 his journey, by way of Smyrna and Beyrout, and reached 
 Jerusalem on the 27th of February. There, and in the 
 neighbourhood, he remained about five weeks, deeply 
 
SUDDEN ILLNESS AND DEATH. 
 
 293 
 
 impressed with all he saw, and making sketches and 
 notes of local incidents. On his return, while at Alexan- 
 dria, he commenced a portrait of the Pasha of Egypt, 
 and after his long absence began to weary for home. He 
 has carefully noted in his journal the chief incidents of 
 his; travel ; these, with the interesting letters he wrote 
 while absent, to various friends, will be found in his Life 
 by Cunningham, from which we have obtained some of 
 our data. 
 
 Wilkie left Alexandria in the Oriental steamer, ap- 
 parently in his usual health. He had had occasional 
 attacks of illness on his voyage, but nothing serious ; 
 indeed, on his fifty-fifth birthday, which he spent at 
 Constantinople, he writes in his journal : — " Many 
 circumstances to rejoice and be thankful for, good health 
 being one." At Malta, however, he committed an im- 
 prudence in eating fruits and ices, and had an attack of 
 sonne complaint in the stomach ; it yielded apparently to 
 the) care of the surgeon, but recurred during the night 
 previous to the vessel's leaving the island. Wilkie was 
 found fast sinking when the ship cleared the harbour, 
 and died within an hour, on the 1st of June, 1841. 
 Th<e vessel put back, but the authorities would not allow 
 the body to be landed ; and that same evening it was 
 committed to the deep with all due rites and honours. 
 His fame and its due commemoration was left to the care 
 of his countrymen ; but his mortal remains it was not 
 given to them to enshrine. 
 
 Had Wilkie lived to return to England with the 
 ske tches he had made during his visit to the East, we 
 may presume that he would have again changed his class 
 of subjects and style of treating them, if not his mode of 
 
294 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 execution. He would not only have painted Oriental but 
 most likely religious subjects. But it was ordained 
 otherwise, and we can only speculate upon the effect 
 his new views on these subjects might have had on the 
 world. For our own part we do not feel that he would 
 have succeeded in religious art, although his pictures of 
 Oriental life might have been successful from their very 
 novelty. Perhaps, however deeply we must regret his 
 loss, it was better for his fame that he did not live to 
 make the attempt. To have opened new ground, to have 
 directed the way to younger men— men not as yet com- 
 mitted to any walk of art — and to have shown by the 
 sketches he had accumulated that there was a new source 
 of inspiration open to them : this is a great result ; this 
 he did, and it has borne fruit ; many of the rising artists 
 of the day having followed, and followed successfully, in 
 his track. 
 
 In person, Wilkie was tall and somewhat ungainly in 
 figure, and ever of a pale and colourless complexion. 
 We have seen that through life he was subject to con- 
 tinual attacks of sickness ; his constitution was too weak 
 to bear the strain and confinement of continuous labour. 
 Perhaps the world is not sufficiently aware how laborious 
 art is, especially when it rests, as Wilkie's early art 
 did, on the truthful imitation of individual nature. 
 Having conceived his subject, the artist has a world 
 of difficulties in realizing it : difficulties in finding suit- 
 able characters, irritation from troublesome or rest- 
 less models — or models who stiffen into rigidity in 
 attempting the commonest action or expression ; or 
 are unable to retain either, while the painter looks 
 from his palette to his canvas. All these, added to 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND NATIONALITY. 295 
 
 the difficulties of the mere executive of art, are very * 
 exhausting, and a great strain upon human endurance. 
 
 Wilkie's art was of a character particularly laborious, 
 and his health unequal; this, and perhaps his native tem- 
 perament, made him frugal ; but he was very just, and 
 generous even in his justice, in fulfilling his engagements. 
 He was of a very cautious disposition, slow to make 
 promises, but careful to keep them when made ; and — 
 like all Scotsmen — clinging strongly to his countrymen. 
 Some good instances of this are related in his Life, and 
 one of his colleagues on the hanging committee tells 
 how Wilkie carried a picture about from room to room 
 for two or three days, trying it in every conceivable place 
 in hopes of hanging it especially well. " Why do you 
 carry that picture about?" asked his brother member. 
 "It's Geddes'," answered Wilkie. But he was mistaken ; 
 it proved to be the work of an Englishman, and the 
 picture was immediately dropped, to take the common 
 fate. On the same occasion, his two companions being 
 away for a short time, found on their return one of the 
 rooms hung entirely with Scotch pictures on the line. 
 Wilkie had taken advantage of their short absence to 
 serve his countrymen ; but this arrangement was soon 
 set aside : " This won't do ! " they both exclaimed, " it 
 is a perfect Scotland yard : take it down, carpenter ! " 
 
 Wilkie's mind was very slow,, but fixed itself perti- 
 naceously on any subject, and this led him to brood on 
 whatever struck him. Like all Scotchmen, he was not 
 alive to pun or equivoque. We have heard Callcott tell 
 curious stories of this lack of readiness. On one occa- 
 sion, when they had been at an evening party at Sir 
 John Swinburne's, and came away together, Wilkie sat 
 
296 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in the cab, entirely absorbed and silent. After some 
 time he suddenly cried out, " Verra good ! Verra good ! " 
 and on his companion asking him what was very good, 
 Wilkie spelt out and put together a little witty equivoque 
 whose sparkle had amused the company in the early part 
 of the evening, and of which Wilkie had been chewing 
 the undigested cud, unable to comprehend it, until he 
 was half way on his road home from the party. 
 
 He was fond of society— especially the society of his 
 brother artists, and entered with great earnestness into 
 any amusements connected with art ; we frequently find 
 him masquerading while in Eome. On one occasion he 
 tells us how Campbell, Westmacott, Severn and Rennie 
 got up a little masquing at Torlonia's, wherein David 
 Leslie, his cousin, figured as Lord Dundee, " and I, in 
 a Vandyke dress, such as the Marquis of Montrose might 
 wear." Washington Irving, in the fourth volume of his 
 Life, describes Wilkie at a fancy ball at Madrid acting a 
 picture " in costume, putting one hand on the pummel 
 of his sword, and extending the other, as he had seen it 
 in some old painting ; occasionally he would step out of 
 his frame to talk to some one, and then go back." We 
 can picture to ourselves the business-like way in which 
 he would enter into his part and, with great affability of 
 manner, go in and out of his subject. 
 
 His early art certainly made a great impression on 
 the English School ; showing how Dutch art might be 
 nationalized, and story and sentiment added to scenes 
 of common life treated with truth and individuality. As 
 to his middle time, such pictures as the " John Knox " 
 also had their influence on the school, and the new 
 mode of execution as supported by Wilkie's authority, 
 
INFLUENCE OF HIS ART. 
 
 297 
 
 a very evil influence; bringing discredit upon English 
 pictures as entirely wanting in permanency. His 
 methods and the pigments he used were soon discarded 
 in England ; but at the time they influenced, and have 
 continued to influence, his countrymen long after his 
 death. The effect of his Eastern journey, in inducing 
 young painters to visit the East, we have already noticed. 
 
298 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WILLIAM MULKEADY, R. A. 
 
 Early Inclination to Landscape Art—" Old Kaspar " his first Subject Pic- 
 ture— Studies the Dutch School— " The Carpenter's Shop" described 
 — And " The Barber's Shop "—Assists in Panorama and Scene Paint- 
 ing—His Landscapes and Art-progress—" Idle Boys "—Elected Asso- 
 ciate of the Academy — Commences his " Fight Interrupted " — And 
 gains his Election as Royal Academician— Forms his own Manner 
 — " The Convalescent from Waterloo " — Its Mode of Painting — Tran- 
 sition and Change of Manner—" The Young Painter "—" Interior of 
 an English Cottage "—Combines his highest Qualities in Art— His 
 " Out-door Scenes "— " The Seven Ages " described— Attains the Per- 
 fection of his second Manner— Culmination of his Art — " The Whis- 
 tonian Controversy "— " Choosing the Wedding Gown "— " Train up a 
 Child "—In his own Opinion his best Work— Decline of his Painting 
 — His Vehicles and Modes of Execution— Great Powers as a Drafts- 
 man—Finished Studies from the living Model— Their rare Excellence 
 and Beauty— His last Days and sudden Death. 
 
 We resume the narrative of Mulready's art from the 
 completion of his student career. It would be a matter 
 of great interest, when we consider the art of his latter 
 years, if we could trace, subject by subject, the works 
 which young Mulready was obliged to undertake to 
 enable him to live, and to support the family which 
 began so early to rise around him ; but to this at pre- 
 sent we have no clue, and must rest content with his 
 own assertion that his labours were of the most varied 
 nature. As far as we can trace him by the works he 
 exhibited, he first came before the world as a landscape 
 painter, and for some time exhibited such works rather 
 
WILLIAM MULREADY, R.A. 
 
 299 
 
 than subject pictures. We find his name in the Royal 
 Academy Catalogue for the first time in 1804, appended 
 to three landscapes ; careful, precise, and imitative 
 works, as far as we can judge of them by the " Crypt in 
 Kirkstall Abbey," in the possession of Mr. Cope, R.A. 
 In 1805 he again exhibited three landscapes ; and in 
 1806, four. But in this year there was a great change 
 in the execution of his pictures : the careful, precise, 
 and rather minute execution of his former works was 
 changed for one somewhat larger and broader, but 
 approaching mannerism in the use of the browns, and 
 the mode of painting into a brown key. It is evident 
 that he was not satisfied with this new manner— no 
 doubt adopted from some of the more advanced painters 
 of the day— as he soon reverted to his own elaborate 
 mode of viewing Nature, and with slight modifications 
 persevered to the end in this treatment of his art. 
 
 In 1807, together with one or two landscapes, Mul- 
 ready exhibited his first subject picture, " Old Kaspar," 
 from Southey's poem of The Battle of Blenheim. It is a 
 small work (about 10£ inches square) on panel, and has 
 an interest from being his first figure picture, rather 
 than from any intrinsic excellence as a work of art. It 
 is solidly and crisply painted, with the evident want of 
 knowledge of a beginner, but showing that the painter 
 had looked to his Dutch predecessors. It has stood 
 well, and is still fresh, although it has failed a little in 
 the darks. The composition, light and dark, and even 
 the colour, have been well considered; but there is a 
 great want of truth and knowledge of the constructive 
 details in the parts of the cottage shown in the back- 
 ground : a want soon overcome by the painter's great 
 
300 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 perceptive imitation. There is a foreshadowing of his 
 future finish in the hair and beard of the old man. 
 
 In 1808, Mulready was again a contributor to the 
 exhibition of the Koyal Academy, both of landscapes and 
 figure pictures; and one of these, "The Battle," now 
 the property of Mr. Joseph Gillott, shows the rapid 
 advance of the painter. He had evidently made great 
 preparations for this picture, small as it is, and with 
 characteristic perseverance had finished, the previous year, 
 a careful study for it, now in the Sheepshanks' Collec- 
 tion, and many minutely finished studies of groups of 
 still life, pots and pans, &c, such as those belonging 
 to Wilson Lowry, to Mr. Mac Connel, and Mr. Ansdell, 
 A.B.A., painted in or before 1807. By these means 
 he had achieved perfect power of execution and great 
 mastery over his materials. " The Battle " is painted 
 very much in the manner of Teniers, except that the 
 background is more solid. It is executed with a flat 
 crisp touch, very little glazing or scumbling, and no 
 appearance of the stippled manner of his latter years, 
 but a dexterous onceness, such as the Dutch master was 
 so well skilled in. The scheme of light and dark is like 
 Teniers, and all the colour is focussed to a single object in 
 the foreground. The spectator sees through the back 
 part of the picture into an outer loft with a step-ladder, 
 and the keeping and grey rendering of this part of the 
 picture is excellent : though a small work, it ranks him 
 at once as an artist. 
 
 But at the time this was exhibiting Mulready had 
 a work of yet more importance on his easel, perhaps 
 far advanced; as, instead of waiting for the opening 
 of the Academy exhibition in 1809, he sent this, his 
 
HIS " carpenter's shop." 
 
 301 
 
 first large picture, to the British Institution : induced 
 to do so, most probably, by the prizes offered by the 
 directors on this occasion. We find allusion to them in 
 Wilkie's diary of the 8th July, 1809. " I heard to-day," 
 he says, " that at the Institution the prizes were awarded 
 as follows : Dow, for an historical picture ; Sharpe, for 
 a domestic subject ; and Master Linnell, for landscape." 
 And in another entry on the 17th he tells us that " Sir 
 George Beaumont called. He said he had been at the 
 Institution, and liked Mulready's picture better than he 
 did Sharpe's." Beferring to the catalogues of this date 
 we find the historical painter was George Dawe, after- 
 wards a member of the Academy, his subject " Imogen 
 found at the Cave of Bellarius ; " while that of M. W. 
 Sharpe was " The Music Master ; " the prizes each fifty 
 guineas. Such a sum would at that time have been a 
 great boon to Mulready ; and there is little doubt that 
 the verdict in our day would be with Sir George Beau- 
 mont in favour of Mulready. We believe that the Sharpe 
 here mentioned is the painter of " The Bee's Wing " and 
 « The Last Pinch," which as engravings were very 
 popular about thirty-five years ago. 
 
 This picture of Mulready's that Sir George Beaumont 
 did like, while the directors of the Institution preferred 
 one by Sharpe, is " The Carpenter's Shop and Kitchen," 
 and is the painter's first important figure picture. The 
 story told is very simple. The wife of the workman, 
 neither pretty nor young, sits beside the fire in the 
 living room ; her little son is asleep on her lap, and the 
 father has come from his work-bench to have a loving- 
 look at his youngest child ; on the other side of the 
 fireplace is an older boy, with his back to the spectator. 
 
302 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 These constitute the material of the picture, which is a 
 little history of a workman's life, true from its very 
 homeliness, and touching, because without any false 
 sentiment. It has been tritely said that one half the 
 world does not know how the other half lives ; here, at 
 least, the upper ten thousand may look upon the every- 
 day life of the lower ten million, under, perhaps, its best 
 aspect. Here is the carpenter, both as he works and as 
 he lives ; the wife, with her baby and its bed ; the 
 little fire, with its humble cookery ; the one table, with 
 its preparation for the mid-day meal; the unmatched 
 knives and forks, the salt-cellar, and the single spoon ; 
 in the chimney-corner the flat-iron, the little store of 
 fuel, and the husband's solace in his leisure hours, his 
 treasury of pipes. The boy has the bellows beside him 
 — that poor man's instrument, for fuel must be carefully 
 husbanded, and the fire, usually a mere handful, easily 
 quickened for hurried use. All the accessories are of the 
 simplest and rudest : on the mantel-shelf the appliances 
 for tea, the tinder-box (now a thing of the past), the 
 single candle swealed down as the housewife ran about 
 with it in her household labours ; the bread-grater, and 
 a few half emptied medicine bottles, probably containing 
 Daffy's elixir or Godfrey's cordial for the child. Beside 
 the table is a tub, and some half-prepared vegetables 
 ready for cooking ; the child's dinner is in a pipkin on 
 the hearth. The painter's own life at this time was no 
 doubt full of suggestions as to hardships and makeshifts, 
 and of living on the smallest means and with the fewest 
 appliances for domestic comfort. In the background, 
 not parted from the living room, is the carpenter's work- 
 shop ; his bench (for which there was more than one 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURE. 
 
 303 
 
 careful sketch among the drawings), the jack-plane, the 
 oil-stone, the ripping and mortice chisels, mallet and 
 hammers, all are there, and in a small cage the bird, 
 that universal solace of the workshop. In the mid- 
 distance is the rude step-ladder that leads to the sleeping 
 loft. Small materials for a picture you will say, since 
 beauty there is none, expression none, or next to none, 
 nor is there much room for character; story there is 
 none beyond the quiet appeal of every-day life ; yet it is 
 a picture that gives great pleasure to the spectator. 
 
 In this picture the system and principles of the Dutch 
 masters Jan Steen and Teniers are seen to have been 
 well studied and clearly understood. How well has the 
 painter appreciated their principle of giving great breadth 
 to the light, and accumulating it round his principal 
 group. Also that of spreading his warm colour, his reds 
 by yellows into light, as in the red dress of the female, 
 and the yellow frock of the sleeping child; while the 
 cooler light of the fire-place expands and enlarges that of 
 the group ; the red also is sedulously carried round the 
 picture by all the little art devices of the masters whose 
 works our painter had so far built upon, and knew so well 
 how to use, and how to conceal the use. The execution of 
 the picture, still of the same character as " The Rattle," 
 is sincere and masterly, painted at once, and with a degree 
 of easy freedom, and great completion in the accessories ; 
 which indeed are carried further than the figures in point 
 of finish, and speak the future art of the painter : thus 
 the texture of the coarse shawl of the woman, the cradle, 
 the old worsted stockings turned into sleeves for the 
 working waistcoat of the carpenter, are wrought like 
 miniature painting, while they have also the higher 
 
304 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 finish of keeping. The picture in its present state 
 looks a little spotty, as the darks have somewhat lost 
 their richness; but when painted it must have been 
 thought a striking picture for a young man of twenty-two. 
 
 We have already said that Mulready was stimulated 
 by the success of Wilkie, and there can be little question 
 that such was the case. It is true, no doubt; that they 
 had both studied the same masters, but beyond what 
 would arise from this cause, there is a great similarity 
 in their early pictures. Nor is it to be wondered at. 
 Wilkie had already made a very successful appeal to the 
 public, and had exhibited, among other pictures, his 
 "Blind Fiddler," his "Card Players," and his "Kent 
 Day." Mulready's " Carpenter's Shop " was an attempt 
 to cope with the popular favourite, and as far as it went, 
 a very successful attempt ; but as yet he had not sought 
 to give character, expression, or even much action, all 
 of which are to be found in the above-named pictures of 
 his rival. 
 
 We may very well suppose that Wilkie' s friends, one 
 of whom does not hesitate to call him " a consummate 
 dramatist — the only one who had appeared since the 
 days of Hogarth," had not failed to make these objec- 
 tions against Mulready, for we find him in his next 
 pictures making an effort to show that he was quite 
 capable of achieving these qualities also. In 1811, he 
 produced his picture of the " Barber's Shop," in which 
 the execution is perhaps less refined than the " Car- 
 penter's Shop," while it has less apparent finish with far 
 more of local truth ; but the great advance is in charac- 
 ter, and expression. A grandmother has brought a 
 loutish boy to the village barber, to have his redundant 
 
"THE BARBER'S SHOP." 
 
 305 
 
 red locks clipt and reduced to order. The lad is seated 
 in the centre of the picture, a perfect study of character 
 in body and limb, his legs dangling, the toes kissing 
 each other, the heels wide apart, the hands clasped 
 between his thighs, the head down, and brows and eyes 
 quite hidden by the matted and ropy tangle of hair. 
 The barber, who is just combing a single lock to its 
 full length, is a truly characteristic individual, one who 
 could be nothing but a barber, and as such, holds to the 
 dignity of his craft ; he wears a linen coat, and his wig — 
 poverty-stricken it is true, and like its master, somewhat 
 the worse for wear — is carefully dressed and adjusted to 
 the head with a nicety that seeks to defy scrutiny, and 
 to pass it off as the natural hair of the wearer. The 
 grandam herself stands looking at her red-headed lout, 
 with silent, self - satisfied complacency, as if he were 
 a real cherub ; her hands are crossed on her bosom 
 with admiration, in one she holds her spectacles, in 
 the other the boy's hat. Another boy with his back 
 to the spectator, hangs at the pocket-hole of her dark- 
 spotted cotton dress. At the fire-place are two men, the 
 one reading the newspaper, the other eagerly peering 
 over his shoulder ; a bill on the wall beside them, " To 
 the Electors of Middlesex," shows them to be politicians 
 rather than gossips. In the foreground, a black cat with 
 her kittens spits at an intrusive dog, and serves as the 
 strongest point of dark. A lad in the background on 
 the left waits his turn for the barber's craft. 
 
 The " hair-cutting saloon " is formed merely by 
 hanging a coarse and tattered baize on a line ; the stock- 
 in-trade is of the simplest and rudest kind : two brushes 
 well worn, and with but few tufts of bristles left, and 
 VOL. II. 54 
 
306 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 looking far more like scrubbing-brushes than hair- 
 brushes* a pair of razors, a strop, a soap-dish on the 
 chimney- shelf and a powder puff, one wash-ball, part of 
 a former stock in trade in a cracked upright glass jar, 
 and a tin shaving-pot : all these have given the painter 
 an opportunity of luxuriating in painting details ; while 
 on the irregular stone floor is a barrel for a seat, and a 
 rude rickety form on which the boy sits to submit his 
 tanned pole to the man of skill, who enters upon the 
 mystery of his craft as if it were the one duty of life. 
 The principal light is thrown on the crisply painted 
 white cloth around the lad's neck. The head and hands 
 are solidly painted, but with less laborious finish than in 
 his former pictures. The reds are skilfully carried 
 through the picture and focussed on the cap of the child 
 standing beside the woman ; a bright red seal on the 
 strop, the collar of the man reading, the jar on the 
 mantel-shelf, and the red tiles on the stone floor, serve 
 to carry the colour round the picture. The blue hand- 
 kerchief on the neck of the grandam contrasts cold with 
 the hot colour of her tippet. The material is repeated 
 from other pictures ; the tub, jars, &c. have done other 
 duty, but they are wonderfully executed, and as compared 
 with the accessories in Wilkie's pictures of the same date 
 are certainly better painted. The curious studies for the 
 barber's head and hands among the drawings in the 
 Sheepshanks Collection, and the studies shown at South 
 Kensington after the painter's death, teach us how care 
 fully he thought out his works. 
 
 During this period the painter must have had a hard 
 struggle to live. His family was increasing (all his four 
 sons were born before Mulready was twenty-four years of 
 
mulready's landscape art. 
 
 307 
 
 age), and there were times when — the country at that time 
 being engaged in a long and costly war— the necessaries 
 of life were at famine prices ; while the purchasers of 
 pictures were few in number, and the prices obtained 
 insignificant as compared with those of our day. It 
 must have been about this period that the painter 
 assisted Sir Robert Ker Porter in getting up his pano- 
 rama of Seringapatam, and occasionally painted on the 
 scenery of the Lyceum, then under the management of 
 Arnold. He also found purchasers for his landscapes. 
 In one of the two of this date, taken from the neighbour- 
 hood to which he had now removed — the Mall at 
 Kensington Gravel Pits — the house in which he resided 
 is seen. They were painted as a commission, through 
 the kind influence of Callcott, R.A. ; but when finished, 
 did not meet his approval, and were thrown on the 
 painter's hands, where they remained until purchased 
 by Mr. Sheepshanks, of whose collection they now 
 form a part. No doubt Mulready also taught at this 
 time, as in later days; and from all these sources he 
 managed to make a sufficient income to support his 
 rising family. 
 
 It is not our intention to give a description of the 
 many fine works of this great painter, but simply to 
 describe his progress in art ; and perhaps it may be as 
 well, before proceeding further, to advert to his power as 
 a landscape painter, the direct practice of which art he 
 almost concluded at this period. In landscape, as in 
 figure subjects, he would no doubt have attained to 
 the first rank had he continued to practise it; but 
 after the picture of " Boys Fishing," the property of 
 Miss Swinburne, painted in 1813, we have no pure 
 
 54—2 
 
308 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 landscapes by him for nearly forty years, till in 1852, 
 he painted the "Blackheath Park," being the view from 
 the front gate of the house in which Mr. Sheepshanks 
 then resided. 
 
 Though he would no doubt have achieved excellence 
 as a landscape painter, he would perhaps have been 
 rather imitative than inventive. The "Boys Fishing," 
 the background of the " Punch," and of " The Fight 
 Interrupted," show his best early manner: broad, flat, 
 somewhat empty, and wanting that vigour and boldness 
 we find in the early pictures of John Chalon and of 
 Callcott ; as for instance, the work by the latter, pre- 
 sented to the Royal Academy on his election, which is 
 very vigorous, and totally unlike the manner he fell into 
 after his Italian journey. Mulready's works at this time 
 are very highly finished, but all the finish is thoroughly 
 subservient to breadth and general effect. No one look- 
 ing at the picture of " The Mall " (No. 36, Sheepshanks 
 Collection), or " The Old Houses at Lambeth"— the 
 property of Mr. Hope — would believe, without close 
 examination, the amount of earnest labour they contain, 
 so completely is it subordinate to the work as a whole. 
 Callcott used to say:—" Finish as much as you please, 
 if you can keep the parts of your picture in their right 
 place." And Mulready, who was his neighbour, and no 
 doubt had often heard this doctrine laid down, had felt 
 its truth, and duly attended to it. In his latter days 
 Mulready changed his views somewhat, and the finish 
 in his landscapes is rather too apparent. A painter 
 whose feeling for landscape art is that of complete 
 subordination of everything to local truth of colour, used 
 to call the minute finish of the " Blackheath Park," pin- 
 
THE " IDLE BOYS " DESCRIBED. 
 
 309 
 
 fiddling ; and certainly if the best art is that in which 
 one never thinks of the labour bestowed, there is too 
 much appearance of it in that work. But Mulready 
 shows, perhaps, to most advantage in that which is to the 
 painter so great a difficulty — the treatment of landscape 
 backgrounds ; as the figures must be principal, to give 
 truth of imitative detail and precision of form under such 
 circumstances, and to have the parts in true relative keep- 
 ing, requires the power of the skilled artist. But in his 
 backgrounds Mulready has shown himself greater even 
 than in his pure landscapes : most of the backgrounds 
 in his later works are painted from drawings or from 
 memory, which in him was very clear and strong. But 
 as we shall have to speak of some of them in relation to 
 the figure subjects, we may revert to the further con- 
 sideration of his subject pictures. 
 
 Passing over his "Punch," we come to the "Idle 
 Boys" and the "Fight Interrupted," produced in an 
 important year of the painter's life. The first of these 
 pictures, which from the greater facility of the execution 
 might be thought the later of the two works, were it 
 not for the order in which they were exhibited, was 
 sent to the Koyal Academy in 1815, and was no doubt 
 the cause of his being chosen an associate at the election 
 which took place in November. It is a perfect work 
 for arrangement, strong action, expression, and suitable 
 colour. The schoolmaster seated at his desk, to which 
 he has summoned the two offenders, has a very cha- 
 racteristic head, (it is from the painter's father) ; his 
 face is red and angry, his appearance that of one who 
 would rule by fear rather than by love, and he has just 
 administered a tingling blow on the palm to one of the 
 
310 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 urchins who has been detected playing in school hours : 
 he seems to be snarling out, " This is the "way you do 
 your sums," as he points with his ruler to the game of 
 tit-tat-toe on the boy's slate, and to take a keen delight 
 in the punishment he is administering. True and 
 natural also is the action of the culprit, that of smart 
 and suffering ; not in the face alone but in the writhing 
 action of the head, the two hands squeezed in one 
 another and pressed between the thighs, one leg drawn 
 up and the foot twisted beneath the knee of the other 
 leg on which the lad is standing ; while his companion, 
 his throat swollen and his heart in his mouth, waits for 
 his turn which will speedily follow. There is a slight 
 change in the execution of this picture ; in some places 
 the ground is seen through a semi- solid painting, as in 
 the coat of the boy who waits for punishment, the master's 
 desk, and in parts of the background ; true glazings also 
 are adopted, as in the master's cap, the green breeches 
 of the beaten boy, and the green back of the master's 
 chair. " The Fight Interrupted " was in a forward state 
 at the time of Mulready's election to the associateship : 
 it was ready to exhibit in 1816 as a justification of the 
 Academy's choice. But higher honours awaited him : 
 the members, alive to the talent of the young painter, 
 selected him for the full membership of the Academy in 
 the February following his election as associate ; a course 
 of which there is no subsequent instance. 
 
 It was fortunate that he was ready with the most 
 perfect picture in his first manner, to justify to the public 
 the wisdom of the choice. In " The Fight Interrupted," 
 the story is well and simply told ; the big bully of the 
 school soundly thrashed by one of the lesser boys, over 
 
" THE FIGHT INTERRUPTED." 
 
 311 
 
 whom he had endeavoured to tyrannize, is but too glad 
 of the opportune arrival of the Dominie : this great 
 coward leans in a flaccid and exhausted attitude against 
 the school pump, and is piteously regarding the marks 
 on his fingers from his cut lips ; it is evident he has had 
 enough of it, whilst the little lion, whom the master 
 has taken by the ear, is red with anger and with the 
 blows of his big opponent, but his clenched fist and 
 teeth firmly set show that he is ready to renew the 
 contest. Mulready's children were by this time grown 
 into boys and did their part in standing as models for 
 this fine work. 
 
 The execution and handling are the same as in his 
 earlier pictures ; it is true there are some indications of 
 glazing, but it is used to enhance and enrich colour 
 rather than to produce it. The red cap of the boy 
 addressing the master is the only instance of colour 
 produced direct from the white ground, as in his later 
 pictures ; but this bit of painting was renewed in 1861, 
 when Mulready had the picture in order to restore one 
 or two injuries it had received before it came into Mr. 
 Sheepshanks' possession. There is, nevertheless, a 
 little change in manner from the " Barber's Shop " and 
 " Punch ; " the execution is rather more facile, and the 
 light ground shews through the semi- solid once -painting 
 of parts of the picture, as in the brown coat of the bigger 
 boy speaking to the master, and the trowsers of the 
 beaten bully. But his election had established Mul- 
 ready's confidence in himself and his own powers, 
 and he was no longer inclined to emulate Wilkie, nor 
 even to take his art from the Dutch School ; he had 
 seen works of higher quality, and from this time we 
 
312 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 begin to trace a change towards a manner far more 
 peculiarly his own ; gradual at first but afterwards more 
 strongly marked. 
 
 It is unnecessary to follow Mulready year by year, 
 and picture by picture ; we rather propose to show the 
 changes that took place in his art as he advanced in 
 life and increased in knowledge. Beginning, as we have 
 said, with the methods of the Dutch School and emula- 
 ting the art of his companion Wilkie, he gradually 
 obtained complete mastery of this manner and continued 
 the practice of painting at once, up to 1822 : " The 
 Village Buffoon," " The Dog of Two Minds," "The 
 Wolf and the Lamb," " The Careless Messenger," with 
 other works, being painted in this manner. In the 
 above year he painted " The Convalescent from Water- 
 loo," in which there are traces of a slight change and a 
 tendency to a higher class of subjects. The colouring 
 is much thinner and less solid than heretofore, the 
 ground more used throughout ; the whole of the land- 
 scape shows through the very thin semi-solid painting ; 
 the outline, never seen in his earlier works, but charac- 
 teristic of his later time, begins to be seen through the 
 thin painting, as in the figures in the distance, the hair 
 of the young wrestler, &c. The landscape more par- 
 ticularly has been painted into a fluent glaze (probably 
 copal) , and has flowed into it ; it is hard and firm and 
 uncracked, the whites remaining fresh and clear without 
 horniness. Glazing has been still more resorted to in 
 the principal figures, and we even see pure colour 
 (unmixed with white) from the light ground, as in the 
 lining of the woman's gown, while in the whole picture 
 the Dutch scheme of colour has been modified for a 
 
CHANGED MANNER OF PAINTING. 
 
 313 
 
 fresher and more brilliant scale. The sense of daylight 
 is beautifully rendered, and although the scene is a 
 flat level, is in perfect keeping. The face of the con- 
 valescent soldier is excellently treated for expression, 
 the lassitude of sickness struggling with the pleasure of 
 seeing the energetic courage of the younger boy in the 
 wrestling bout. There are curious faults of drawing in 
 the picture, but it is a work of rare excellence. 
 
 Between this period and 1832 the painter seemed to 
 be feeling his way to a new mode of execution. Hitherto 
 he had painted at once and from the object ; now he 
 began to work from drawings and studies. Although the 
 change resulted in a number of pictures of a character 
 wholly different from any others in the English school, 
 it did not at first appear for the better. Of the transition 
 time there are three illustrative works : "The Travelling 
 Druggist," " The Origin of a Painter," and "Firing the 
 Cannon." In these the crispness of al-primo painting is 
 almost gone, and a degree of woolliness throughout has 
 resulted from the mode of execution. The colour is 
 obtained by glazing over a prepared ground, as in the 
 robe of the rhubarb merchant, the leaves of the vine over 
 the door, or the yellow shawl in which the sick boy is 
 wrapped. Some process has been used to give texture 
 to the prepared ground, either by stabbing, pressing 
 cloth on the wet layer of paint, or some such means. 
 On this the design seems made out in brown ; Mulready's 
 son Michael said bone-brown was used, and that himself 
 and his brother burned the bones to make it : the brown 
 ground in all the three pictures predominates too much. 
 The ground in the "Druggist" is very thin, and has 
 gathered up into small pin-holes ; and in the ' ' Origin of 
 
314 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 a Painter," into sharp, wiry cracks. This failure may be 
 noticed in the other works, and seems to result from the 
 vehicle used, since the " Druggist " has failed also in the 
 solid painting ; as in the breeches of the sick boy, and 
 the dress of the mother. The use of bone-brown to lay 
 in the chiaroscuro of the picture, is one of the features of 
 his new mode of working. The weakness arising from 
 painting from drawings is most evident in the girl with 
 the skipping-rope, in the sick boy, the dog, and the 
 foliage over the door. These have a certain roundness 
 of form in touch and texture, entirely different from the 
 crisp precision of the ' 'Fight Interrupted;" even the 
 stone steps up to the door have somewhat of a woolly 
 texture. All this is very much exaggerated in " The 
 Origin of a Painter," and the picture has a faded look, 
 as if the colour had passed away and left the brown 
 ground : the whole appears dried up and starved, and 
 the figures very poor and weak ; the head of the young 
 woman wants individuality, and is of a common class of 
 idealization. In the " Cannon," Mulready has partly 
 overcome the difficulties of the new treatment ; the 
 browns are fuller and richer, and the semi-solid flesh 
 and draperies more powerful ; the full force of crimson 
 lake from the white ground is given in the bonnet of the 
 young girl, and the tassel of the boy firing the cannon : 
 the inner effect of the room in half-shadow is good, 
 and is luminous without rottenness. Still, however, this 
 is the weakest period of Mulready' s art : a period of 
 transition to a better, which the painter had as yet not 
 achieved. 
 
 In 1828, Mulready exhibited the picture of " The 
 Interior of an English Cottage," in which he seems to 
 
THE "INTERIOR OF AN ENGLISH COTTAGE." 315 
 
 have completely overcome the difficulties of the new 
 methods he had adopted. He had obtained a perfect 
 vehicle and durable pigments ; the textural preparation 
 of the ground has been laid aside and a semi-solid 
 execution direct from the white ground substituted. 
 This picture deserves great study : the treatment of the 
 interior is wonderfully luminous, and the look-out from 
 the window into the open beyond is very true to the effect 
 of light ; the cottage is full of material, all adequately 
 finished without over apparent labour, all truly in keeping 
 and properly subordinate to its position in the picture 
 and the general effect. The whole interior is of a rich 
 luminous brown ; the various objects — the cradle, child, 
 ducks, hare, jars, pots, pans, &c. — are just sufficiently 
 tinged with their local colour to give them individual 
 truth. Out of the window the sun is seen setting in a 
 bed of ruddy clouds, the red of the sunset being the 
 focussing red of the picture ; yet thoroughly keeping its 
 place in the distance, and led up to in the composition 
 b}* the warm tones of the jar standing in the glow of the 
 hidden fire on the cottage hearth. The light in the 
 distance is very low in tone, yet it looks brilliant ; the 
 greatest dark, clearing up all the darks in the picture, 
 is that of the black cat in the foreground : the scale of 
 light and dark, from the sky to the black of the cat, is 
 very much diminished by this lowness of tone, but there 
 is no light at all approaching that of the sky in bright- 
 ness, no dark equal to the cat in intensity. This is one 
 of the few pictures of sentiment Mulready has painted, 
 and the feeling is poetically tender. The day is dying 
 calmly out, the sunset glow pervades the room ; in the 
 cradle is a sleeping child, an older girl has fallen asleep 
 
316 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 on the knees of the mother, who sits quietly watching the 
 good man's return. The fire is low, the supper prepared 
 for the husband's return is on the hearthstone, the slip- 
 pers airing by the blaze, the solemn quiet of eventide 
 unbroken save by the ticking of the clock and the purring 
 of the cat. The expectant husband is seen in the far 
 distance waving his hat to the watching housewife. 
 This period of Mulready's art culminates in "The Last 
 In," in which most of the beauties, and some of the 
 faults of this middle manner may be traced. The chief 
 of the figures are painted from drawings, and not direct 
 from nature. 
 
 Though so successful in his in-door scenes, Mulready 
 had not yet arrived at certainty in his new method, as 
 respects exteriors. Thus, the first picture of " The 
 Sailing Match " (1831) seems wholly worked from 
 drawings ; the flesh has none of the freshness of his 
 earlier works, and the picture, although out of doors, 
 wants air. A great improvement in these respects is 
 discernible in the small repetition of 1833 : it is more 
 fresh in colour ; has more finish and completeness, with 
 less of woolliness, less of a certain staring, tinted appear- 
 ance observable in the larger work : in which, strange to 
 say, colour of a wrong quality is introduced, as in the 
 trees of the background and the dark green meadow 
 behind the foot-bridge, where the colour is rank and the 
 brown uniting key wholly lost. Indeed, it was not until 
 he painted " The Sonnet " and " Train up a Child " 
 that he arrived at the full power of subordinating his 
 landscape to the colour and chiaroscuro of his pictures 
 in this his second method. 
 
 " The Seven Ages," which shortly followed, is the 
 
MULREADY PERFECTS HIS ART. 
 
 317 
 
 picture of the greatest pretension that the painter 
 undertook ; but it can hardly be called a success, nor 
 does it form a mark in his practice : nevertheless, 
 being incomplete, it is a picture that reveals some 
 of his methods. All the work seems carried out from 
 drawings, or completed without referring direct to 
 Nature ; but this procedure is more concealed than in his 
 former works. The colour is produced by transparent 
 painting over a slightly prepared ground, on which the 
 lights are heightened and rendered with impasto ; or by 
 painting solidly a pale version of the colour sought, and 
 then glazing it into richness. The mode is best seen on 
 the left of the picture (the spectator's right), where the 
 work is not carried so far as on the right. Thus the 
 hose of the lover have been laid in of a reddish hue, 
 then delicately glazed, and some of the colour wiped off, 
 leaving it in the texture of the painting, and afterwards 
 the folds enriched by the same means. The buildings 
 on the left, the cap of the bowing pantaloon, and the 
 ground on that side of the picture are evidently un- 
 finished; while the justice, the flitting peasants, the 
 buildings, and landscape on the other side of the picture, 
 are perhaps carried up to the tone and strength to which 
 Mulready would have wrought the whole had he taken 
 up the picture again. This he much wished to do after 
 the picture left Mr. Sheepshanks' possession, but time 
 and opportunity never served. The pictures of "Bob 
 Cherry " and " The Sonnet," which followed, are painted 
 on a white ground so thinly that in many places the 
 pencil lines by which the parts are drawn-in show 
 through the painting. Mulready had now arrived at the 
 perfection of his second manner. The works completed 
 
318 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 by liim between 1839 and 1848 are the most complete 
 in story, colour and execution of any of his productions. 
 "The Artist's Studio," "First Love," a true rustic 
 idyll, " Crossing the Ford," " Train up a Child," " The 
 Whistonian Controversy," " Choosing the Wedding 
 Gown," and "The Butt," have qualities of execution 
 not to be found in any other works of the English 
 School ; to which must be added great perception of 
 character, as in "The Whistonian Controversy" and 
 " The Butt; " with greater simplicity of action than in 
 his earlier works, and far more refinement of treatment. 
 
 In the pictures just named, Mulready's art culmi- 
 nated ; the chiaroscuro is excellent, the colour rich and 
 jewel-like, the execution refined and perfect of its kind. 
 " The Whistonian Controversy" is somewhat hot, but it 
 is most agreeable as a whole, full and harmonious, and 
 the furthest possible removed from paintiness. An 
 autumnal hue seems to pervade the picture, suitable to 
 the ease-loving age of the disputants; while " Choosing 
 the Wedding Gown " is fresher and more spring-like in 
 colour, agreeing with the opening life of the young vicar 
 and his fair and notable wife. In this picture the full 
 force of the palette is given — the brightest vermilion, the 
 richest green, the purest ultramarine ; yet all are tho- 
 roughly harmonized. Some of the colours are obtained 
 by rich glazings ; some by painting the semi- solid pig- 
 ment directly over the pure white ground of the panel ; 
 and the Venetian methods have been better understood 
 than by any painter of our school. The discrimination 
 of the textures, also, as seen in these two pictures, is 
 well worthy careful study. The parchment books and 
 table-cover in the first, the rich stuffs at the foot of the 
 
" TRAIN UP A CHILD." 
 
 319 
 
 tradesman's counter in the second ; while the end of the 
 counter itself, is curious, and shows that it is an imita- 
 tion of imitative mahogany : what a nice distinction to 
 achieve in its pictorial reproduction ! But the picture 
 by which the painter himself considered he had arrived 
 at the greatest excellence is the " Train up a Child," 
 painted in 1841, just before " The Whistonian Contro- 
 versy." It was, some years later, injured by fire at 
 Mr. Baring's, and came into Mulready's hands in an 
 apparently hopeless state ; patiently and thoroughly he 
 repaired the injuries, and then set himself to add all that 
 his increased experience suggested for its improvement. 
 The two females and the child were carried further in 
 beauty and expression, the dog was completed, the 
 noble avenue of trees, before only suggested, now com- 
 pleted in drawing, the landscape greatly enriched and 
 increased in tone, the colour of the Lascars greatly 
 enhanced, and the whtfle brought into a fuller harmony. 
 Altogether, this is now certainly one of his best works ; 
 although the subject is obscure, and the Lascars some- 
 what theatrical in action and grouping. 
 
 " The Butt," apart from its subject, is equal to any 
 of the painter's works, but it was largely completed long 
 before this period ; setting it aside, therefore, it will be 
 seen that after 1846, Mulready's art increased in finish, 
 but declined in power. " The Haymakers " looks smooth 
 and like china painting; "The Bathers," beautifully 
 drawn, is somewhat like the art of Vanderwerf. " The 
 Mother and Child," his last completed work, is timid 
 and inclined to prettiness ; and his " Toy-seller," left 
 unfinished at his death, is an evidence of labour wrongly 
 applied. 
 
320 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Mulready painted dogs well, and introduced them 
 into many of his pictures, and always most character- 
 istically. Thus, the brindled mastiff in " The Butt "— 
 a true butcher's dog ; the little pet spaniel in " The 
 Wedding Grown," the old disabled hound in " The Seven 
 Ages," and the sneaking cur in " The Dog of Two 
 Minds ; " so varied are these animals that an illustrative 
 series might almost be formed from his pictures. 
 
 It would be very desirable to have a thorough record 
 of Mulready's vehicles, and his methods of using them in 
 the production of his pictures. Having early become 
 convinced of the danger of using asphaltum, he wholly 
 abandoned it after 1816 ; he also gave up the use of mastic 
 magylph, and, latterly, painted with copal, and was ex- 
 tremely careful that one painting should be dry before 
 another was placed over it. He was very minute in his 
 execution, using a powerful glass to look at his work. 
 His palette was of the smallest dimensions, and often 
 contained only the one or two colours or tints of the 
 drapery on which he was working. In his early pictures 
 he used the colour freely, and with a broad, flat manner 
 of handling ; but in his later works he inclined more to 
 stippling, although he managed to hide the method 
 when the work was complete. As he made ample notes 
 of his processes, it may be presumed that accurate par- 
 ticulars will be obtainable hereafter. 
 
 We must not overlook his remarkable powers as 
 a draughtsman. This is evidenced in his early studies 
 for his pictures, his sketches for backgrounds, and 
 details of birds, plants, foliage, &c. ; but latterly he 
 gave great attention to drawing the figure, and developed 
 a remarkable style. It has already been said that 
 
mulready's elaborate drawing. 
 
 321 
 
 Mulready made careful cartoons, finished in black and 
 red chalk, for some of his works. Among the earliest 
 is that for " The Last In," (1835) ; for " The Sonnet," 
 the property of F. Miller, Esq., of Preston, (1839), and 
 about the same date for " The Artist's Studio," the 
 property of Major Burchell, of Ribblesdale. The beauti- 
 ful drawing for " The Wedding Gown," (1844), the 
 property of T. Baring, Esq., and that for the " Mother 
 and Child," may also be noted. These drawings led 
 the painter to the use of the same means in working 
 from the living model, and resulted in a series of 
 studies made after 1846, which for truthful drawing, 
 modelling of the forms, and beauty and refinement 
 of execution, may well rank with the greatest works 
 of the kind by the greatest masters. It was the 
 painter's view that all the characteristics of the model 
 chosen should be strictly attended to, and that it was no 
 part of the student's business in drawing from the nude, 
 to mould it to some preconceived idea, to the proportions 
 or idealization of the antique. Yet in religiously fol- 
 lowing out this plan of study, nature is rarely repre- 
 sented otherwise than beautiful. The proportions of 
 length or thickness may vary greatly ; but they serve to 
 characterize the individual, and while we have none of 
 the elegant insipidity of Bartolozzi or Cipriani ; neither 
 have we the coarse ugly contours seen in the life-drawings 
 of their contemporaries. West used to say that if you 
 wished to see the faults of your picture, you should set 
 a strident to copy it, as he would be sure grossly to 
 exaggerate the worst points of your work ; and so it is 
 with a bad draughtsman : in studying from the life he is 
 sure to caricature every defect of the figure before him. 
 vol. ii. 55 
 
322 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Mulready, while he preserved all the individuality of the 
 forms, kept them truly subordinate to the character of 
 the whole. The mere execution of these drawings is of 
 the rarest beauty ; the paper chosen is a delicate straw- 
 colour, the drawing is laid in lightly with red chalk, 
 which is then slightly rubbed, and the lights taken out 
 with bread, the shadows and grey half-tints being added 
 with the black chalk. So subtilly are these simple means 
 used, that the most beautiful appearance of flesh colour 
 is often given ; in some cases finer even than in his paint- 
 ings with the varied pigments of the palette at his 
 command. 
 
 Mulready was ever a willing and diligent visitor in 
 the life school, and, like Etty, was always a worker there. 
 The earnest and careful study which these drawings 
 evidence, many of them made before the eyes of the 
 students, should lay the foundation for better drawing in 
 the British school. During the painter's life-time the 
 Department of Science and Art purchased several of the 
 best of his life-studies, for the use of the schools of art 
 throughout the land, and both the Eoyal Academy and 
 the Department were purchasers at the sale after his 
 death. The sight of such earnest works ought to be 
 extremely useful, and it is to be hoped that students 
 will not merely copy the manner, but be led to imitate 
 the deep study by which such excellence was achieved. 
 
 All the painter's last years were passed at Kensing- 
 ton, first in the Mall, and afterwards at No. 1. Linden 
 Grove, Bayswater, which he moved into when these 
 buildings were erected in 1827 by Mr. Allison, who 
 built a painting-room according to Mulready's plans and 
 directions. Here he resided until his death in 1863. 
 
HIS HABITS OF LIFE. 
 
 323 
 
 Among the drawings sold by his executors, is a set of 
 curious pen and ink sketches, showing the disposition of 
 the rooms, the arrangement of the furniture and pictures, 
 the plan of the gardens, the very trees and shrubs that 
 were to be planted in it. He had no doubt pictured to 
 himself the little comforts, conveniences and elegancies, 
 that he would gather around him in his new abode. His 
 means were now assured, his family grown up, his fame 
 won, his course of life fixed. Alas ! how hope is still in 
 the future : the painter had no doubt planned a course for 
 his children, but he left them to grow up almost without 
 restraint, and they caused him endless vexations ; he 
 planted his garden also with choice trees and rare shrubs 
 and then left it to its own wild and tangled luxuriance ; 
 his ideal of a painter's house was left incomplete. 
 Yet he continued to reside here for the remainder of his 
 days, rarely leaving home except for a short visit to 
 Capheaton or Blackheath ; but his little plans were never 
 realized : his house remained bare of furniture, and in 
 it he led a sort of half-hermit life, latterly with his son 
 Michael, who tended him to the last, was with him when 
 he died, and was no doubt the chief depository of all 
 his views and wishes. 
 
 But if his life was a solitary one, and a life of labour, 
 he had at least the happiness of working at his beloved 
 art to the very last ; and may, to the very last, have been 
 said to have extended some section of art-practice. Thus 
 his wonderful life-studies were almost entirely the work 
 of the last ten or twelve years. When above seventy- 
 five years of age, he set himself to practise drawing 
 hands and heads rapidly in pen and ink, at the little life- 
 school held by the painters of the neighbourhood at 
 
 55 — a 
 
824 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Kensington. " I had lost somewhat of my power in that 
 way," said he, " but I have quite got it up again : it 
 won't do to let these things go." He was constantly 
 speaking of the works he purposed commencing, and 
 said that now he was prepared for what he had long 
 looked forward to, and for what he seemed almost to 
 think his former pictures only preparatory— painting 
 works of life size. Large canvases were in his rooms, 
 and during the last two or three years of his life he 
 laboured diligently on his large repetition of the " Toy 
 Seller : " laboured, it may be truly said, for his art was 
 not fitted for works of the life size ; as this picture most 
 clearly shows, both in its execution and in the wonder- 
 ful studies he prepared for it. 
 
 He died with his mind clear, and his faculties 
 unimpaired ; perfectly aware of the insidious disease to 
 which he was subject, he yet hoped to fight off its 
 attacks by his resolute will, and did not consider his 
 end so near. The week before he died he attended 
 a committee meeting of the Royal Academy, and took 
 an active part in some animating discussions ; we accom- 
 panied him on his way home, and in crossing Waterloo 
 place, Mulready had one of his spasmodic attacks; 
 seizing our arm, he remained motionless in the middle 
 of the road for about two minutes, regardless of the 
 vehicles that thronged by. After a period of appa- 
 rently absolute powerlessness, he exclaimed— " It is all 
 over now ; I know well when I have conquered it : 'tis all 
 right, I shall have no more ;" and when we reached the 
 corner where our roads diverged, he was deaf to our 
 request to allow us to see him home. That night week 
 he was again at the committee, apparently well— at least 
 
SUDDEN DEATH. 
 
 325 
 
 without pain. Again we proposed to walk away together, 
 but he remarked that Hardwicke was such an invalid, 
 that he thought it right to convoy him on his way, and 
 they left together. This was at eleven o'clock at night ; 
 at seven the next morning, the 7th July, 1863, Mulready 
 was at rest. 
 
828 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 LESLIE, NEWTON, AND EGG. 
 
 Charles Robert Leslie, R.A.— Finishes his pupil Life — First attempts high 
 Art — Visits Paris and Brussels and Antwerp — True Bent of his Genius 
 ■ — Paints " Slender and Anne Page " — Influenced by his Friend Wash- 
 ington Irving — " Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church " — Establishes 
 his Reputation — " The Gipsies " — " May Day in the Time of Queen 
 Elizabeth " — " Sancho Panza and the Duchess "—Great Success of this 
 Picture— His Marriage — Elected Associate of the Academy— Paints 
 Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena — His Landscapes unsuccessful — 
 Home Life and Friendships — Joins the Sketcliing Society — The 
 " Dinner at Page's House"- — Comparison of the original and the replica 
 Pictures — Different Influences under which they were painted — Accepts 
 the Office of Teacher in the Military School of the United States — 
 Resigns and returns to London — Resumes his Art — Influence of 
 Constable, RA— Paints "The Queen's Coronation" — And "The 
 Christening of the Princess Royal "—Family Influences on his Pic- 
 tures—" The Mother and Child " — " Playing at Horses " — The Gros- 
 venor Portraits— His failing Health and Death— His gentle Character 
 — Genius — Art full of Grace and Beauty— His Females inimitable — 
 His Treatment of Costume— Gilbert Stuart Newton, R.A.— United in 
 Art and Friendship with Leslie — His Birth and early Training — 
 Comes to Europe— Visits Italy, France, and the Netherlands — Settles 
 in London— An irregular Student— His first Pictures— " The For- 
 saken " — " Lovers' Quarrels " — " The Importunate Author " — His 
 Portraits — Elected Associate of the Academy — Paints " The Vicar of 
 Wakefield reconciling his Wife to Olivia " — The Picture described and 
 criticized— His Spanish Pictures— The "Portia and Bassanio "— Its 
 true Excellence— Becomes Insane and dies — His Art — And Character 
 —Augustus Leopold Egg, R.A.— Birth and Early Progress— Exhibits 
 in Suffolk Street— Elected into the Academy— Illness and Early 
 Death — Characteristics of his Art. 
 
 In concluding the early life of our three drama- 
 painters, we left Leslie, a student of the Royal Academy 
 using his best leisure to perfect his art-education ; and 
 adding to his means by painting the portraits of his 
 
CHARLES ROBERT LESLIE, R.A. 
 
 327 
 
 American friends. The art of his two countrymen, 
 Allston and West, had so impressed him that his first 
 attempts were in the grand style ; and even when 
 descending from "Saul and the Witch of Endor," to 
 Shakspeare, he turned to the historic plays rather 
 than the comedies, his subject being " The Death of 
 Rutland." The former of these works the governors of 
 the British Institution, with their usual sagacity, turned 
 out of the gallery ; the latter, after exhibition at the 
 Royal Academy, where Leslie tells us it had an " excellent 
 situation/' was purchased for the city of Philadelphia, 
 his American home. In 1817 he paid a visit of two 
 months to Paris, Brussels, and Antwerp, making diligent 
 study of the pictures by the old masters ; and in 1818 
 made a journey into the south of England, where he 
 obtained much insight into the characteristics of rural 
 life. As the year advanced he began to find that the 
 true bent of his genius was neither for historic nor 
 religious art, but for humorous comedy ; which he 
 treated with beauty and character of a far more refined 
 kind than either of the distinguished painters we have 
 classed with him. 
 
 The same year he painted a small picture of 
 " Slender and Anne Page," from the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor ; a comedy which afterwards afforded subjects 
 for some of his finest works. At this time of his life 
 he was not only on intimate terms with Washington 
 Irving, but was engaged in illustrating his " Sketch 
 Book," and it is more than probable that Irving, whose 
 predilection for the papers of Addison is so evident, may 
 have turned his young friend's attention to the subject of 
 his next picture ; a subject which thoroughly suited his 
 
328 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 art and his feelings, and which, when finished and 
 exhibited, at once established his reputation. 
 
 He tells ns that on his return from Devonshire in 
 1818, he painted for his friend Mr. Dunlop, (to whose 
 then residence in Dawlish his visit had been made,) 
 the picture of " Sir Eoger de Coverley going to 
 Church accompanied by the Spectator," which was 
 very popular in the exhibition of 1819. That Irving 
 suggested the subject is seen to be more likely since 
 we find him in 1821 writing to suggest others. "What 
 do you intend to paint for the exhibition ? Have you 
 done anything to Sir Roger ? ... Do you think of the 
 Shakspeare subject ? — one of these ought to be your 
 choice in preference to the ' Heiress,' " a subject of the 
 painter's own choosing. Leslie had evidently hit the 
 right vein and found a lode as yet unworked. Wilkie 
 had monopolized the games and merrymaking of the 
 lower classes, and Mulready was as yet in the same path. 
 Leslie took up genteel comedy. It was perhaps fortunate 
 that Allston had left for America, and West, at a very 
 advanced age, had almost retired from art ; thus leaving 
 Leslie uninfluenced and at liberty to follow the true bent 
 of his genius, and to develope those scenes of domestic 
 life in which he afterwards excelled, and peopled with 
 forms of beauty and excellence combined with delicate 
 humour and character. Gracefully has Addison treated 
 this incident of English life, and in a like spirit has 
 Leslie rendered it ; perhaps there is no scene so full 
 of episodes of peaceful beauty and kindly feeling as the 
 gathering of a rural population to the service of the 
 village church. Such is the case even now, when the 
 iron rail has so deluged the country with the worn 
 
HIS " SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY." 329 
 
 habitues of great cities ; still in the nooks and corners of 
 the land are spots of retired and pastoral peace where 
 old customs linger, and where, on every sabbath morn, 
 the people, clad in the costume of bygone times, may 
 be seen trooping by meadow and by path, over stile and 
 foot-bridge, to the house of God. Its grey walls mantled 
 with ivy, usually crown some low hill or rising ground, 
 its shingle-covered spire glistening and grey against the 
 deep blue sky. Under the yew-tree in the quiet church- 
 yard, the small magnates of the village, the farmer, the 
 blacksmith, and the squire's bailiff, discuss the harvest 
 and the crops, waiting for the " tolling in," and for 
 the squire — the immemorial lord — surrounded with his 
 family, to enter by the little footpath to the chancel door, 
 dispersing valued tokens of recognition to his neighbours, 
 rich and poor, and happy in their manly respect and 
 regard. No doubt Irving and Leslie in their rambles 
 through the land had seen such scenes ; and it was a 
 happy thought that led the painter to a kindred subject 
 from one of England's classic authors, and including in 
 the Bachelor Knight one of the most genial creations 
 of his pen. Leslie's kindliness, his sweet nature, general 
 feeling of humour and fine taste, well qualified him for 
 this class of subjects. He was a true gentleman, and 
 therefore could thoroughly enter into and represent 
 scenes in which humour is subordinated and refined in 
 its display, as exhibited by the educated and gentle 
 class. 
 
 Leslie was not slow to perceive the impression these 
 subjects had made, and followed up his success by paint- 
 ing in 1820, " Londoners Gipsying," and in 1821, 
 " May Day in the Time of Queen Elizabeth." This 
 
330 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 latter was a commission for engraving : he was to be 
 paid 200 guineas for the copyright with the right of 
 selling the picture ; a large sum for a young man just 
 rising into notice : when completed it was considered 
 a great success, and won for him his election as associate 
 in the ensuing November. Here then we find him 
 with a well-defined walk in art, and seemingly determined 
 to pursue it in this country ; for there is no recurrence 
 to his desire to re-visit America. In 1816 he wrote to his 
 sister, "Nothing has occurred to alter my determination 
 of returning at the time I have fixed;" but now with 
 academic honours, and commissions for future works, his 
 return was set aside, not to be renewed until after many 
 years. 
 
 The Arabian story-teller relates an endeavour on the 
 part of a rich man to improve the fortunes of a poor but 
 honest neighbour, by lending him a sum of money to 
 trade with, which ended in the twofold disappointment 
 of the patron ; but goes on to tell that what could not be 
 done by forethought was brought about by chance— a 
 happy accident establishing the fortunes of the man whom 
 his good intentions had failed to benefit. The moral of 
 the story is that much of our success in life arises out of 
 apparently fortuitous circumstances : thus it happened to 
 Leslie. Lord Egremont, one of the kindest and best 
 friends of artists, and a true lover of art, had a little grand- 
 child at the point of death, and asked Phillips, E.A., the 
 portrait painter, to go down to his country seat to make 
 a sketch of the dying child. Phillips' engagements, 
 however, prevented him, and he proposed Leslie, who was 
 thus introduced to his lordship. Leslie only reached the 
 seat of the child's father after the little sufferer's death, 
 
" SANCHO PANZA AND THE DUCHESS." 331 
 
 but sat up all night making sketches of her really 
 beautiful features. The sketches and the picture he 
 painted from them gave great satisfaction to the owner of 
 Petworth, and resulted, in the first instance, in a com- 
 mission for a picture, and afterwards, in a friendship 
 that lasted until the death of Lord Egremont. 
 
 The picture commissioned was painted and exhibited 
 in 1824, " Sancho Panza in the Apartment of the 
 Duchess," from Don Quixote. Sancho is telling the 
 graceful Duchess, as a great secret, that he considers 
 his master as no better than a madman — " as mad as a 
 March hare " — and is bragging that, knowing well his 
 master's blind side, "whatever crotchets come into his 
 own crown, though without either head or tail, he can yet 
 make them pass on him for Gospel." This picture, full of 
 beauty, elegance and humour, has already been described ; 
 it was so great a favourite that Leslie repeated it with 
 variations no less than three times : the replica painted 
 for Mr. Vernon is now in the National Collection at Ken- 
 sington. Leslie always attributed much of his success 
 to this commission. He was at this time paying his 
 addresses to Miss Harriet Stone, one of six sisters, 
 spoken of from their personal attractions as the six 
 precious stones ; and the success of " Sancho Panza " and 
 a further tentative commission from its owner, together 
 with the various demands on his pencil that it called 
 forth, enabled him to terminate his engagement by 
 marriage. He writes to Irving in the ensuing January, 
 " I have (as you know) made the greatest change in life 
 that it is in our power to do, and find myself so much 
 the happier, and I trust the better for it, that I scarcely 
 seem to have lived before. All the evils of matrimony 
 
332 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAIXTERS. 
 
 that I have heard or read of appear to me to be slanders, 
 and all the blessings to be underrated : " the language of 
 the early days of married life it may be said, but as far as 
 our experience of Leslie goes, he felt and said the same 
 to the end. 
 
 In February, 1826, Leslie was elected a full member 
 of the Royal Academy, and that season exhibited the 
 picture he had painted for Lord Essex, " Don Quixote 
 in the Sierra Morena, deceived by the Curate Barber and 
 Dorothea," of which there is a small study in the Sheep- 
 shanks Collection. It was not equal to " Sancho and 
 the Duchess :" landscape was not an art in which Leslie 
 excelled ; indeed those pictures in which a landscape back- 
 ground forms an important part are weaker than others, 
 at least as far as the background is concerned. Thus his 
 " Sir Roger and the Gipsies," his two pictures of " Who 
 Can This Be ? " and " Who Can This be From ? " " Fair- 
 lop Fair," and " Jeannie Deans' Interview with Queen 
 Caroline," are the least agreeable of his works. Yet he 
 was a great observer of Nature, and of natural effects ; 
 and his friends will remember with pleasure his constant 
 remarks on light and dark, on colour and reflexion, as 
 he walked beside them. Often has he stopped us in the 
 midst of some artistic colloquy, to look at a changing 
 effect that had struck him ; sometimes in the most public 
 thoroughfares — standing shading his eyes with his hand, 
 and looking over his spectacles, he would reason of the 
 cause, wholly regardless of the passers-by. Yet he was 
 not made for a landscape painter, as the two or three 
 small landscapes which he painted sufficiently testify. 
 The little garden scene in the Sheepshanks Collection 
 will show how weak and timid his handling was in 
 
" THE DINNER AT PAGE S HOUSE." 333 
 
 foliage ; and even before he was intimate with Constable, 
 his greys were cold, and his greens unnaturally vivid. 
 
 Leslie's life passed on smoothly and with few inci- 
 dents. First one child was added to his household, and 
 then another, greatly to the increase of his pleasures ; for 
 he was very fond of his family and very indulgent to the 
 whims and ways of children. He continued a warm 
 friendship for Washington Irving, with whom, now in 
 Spain, he kept up a constant correspondence ; and the 
 letters which passed between them evidence their true 
 regard for one another. Among the painters of note, New- 
 ton, his countryman, and then Constable were amongst 
 his most intimate acquaintances. In 1828, he joined 
 the Artists' Sketching Society, which widened the circle 
 of his friends, and brought him into constant fellowship 
 with the two Chalons and Stanfield ; with all of whom 
 he continued, till parted by death, on terms of kindliest 
 intimacy. It is in this year that, writing to his sister in 
 America, he says, " I have begun a very large picture 
 from The Merry Wives of Windsor, containing FalstafF, 
 and most of the characters, to the number of fifteen." 
 This picture he completed and exhibited in 1831. It 
 was painted while his art was influenced by his friendship 
 for Newton, a superior colourist to Leslie ; and it was 
 repeated on a smaller scale and with fewer characters, 
 for Mr. Sheepshanks. This was in 1838, after Newton's 
 death, and while Constable was the great crony of the 
 painter, and it affords a good opportunity for comparing 
 the effects of the two influences. The picture of " The 
 Dinner at Page's House," now or lately in the possession 
 of Lady Lawley, is certainly one of his finest works. 
 The execution is broad and easy, the drapery quite free 
 
334 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 from the tendency to raggedness observable in some of 
 Leslie's works, and there is an absence of any sense of 
 paint. The character of the various personages intro- 
 duced is well discriminated. How truly Shakspearian is 
 the befuddled, claret-muddled expression of Bardolf, and 
 the stupid, loutish look of the serving-man, Simple ; con- 
 trasted with the equally stupid but wholly different 
 silliness of his master. The Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford 
 in the first picture are not equal to the same characters 
 in the repetition ; in which there is much more beauty 
 and sweetness, and a far greater feeling of fun and 
 engoument, restrained however by the good breeding of 
 the two ladies. Falstaff, on the contrary, is better in 
 the first picture than in the repetition : in the latter he 
 has the appearance of being stripped to his shirt- sleeves 
 on a hot day; in the former, quite equal in character, 
 attitude and expression, the costume is beautiful in its 
 happy harmonies of colour, and is really a masterpiece of 
 negative hues — the gray yellow of the waistcoat and 
 trunks, the olive green of the vest with its maroon lining 
 and silver fastenings, the grey boots with the crimsonish 
 silver- tipped tops, are a study ; and contrasted as the dress 
 is with the gray hair and beard, the white ruff and the 
 ruddy flesh of the old sinner, it forms a combination 
 which Newton probably suggested, and could hardly have 
 improved. The same may be said of the colour through- 
 out, and it surprises us that Leslie, whose sense of colour 
 was not innate, could have followed out suggestions so 
 happily. 
 
 Those who had been accustomed to Leslie's first 
 manner— that in which he painted " The Dinner at 
 Page's House," the " Scene from the Taming of the 
 
INFLUENCE OF CONSTABLE. 
 
 335 
 
 Shrew," &c. — felt a change for the worse in the pictures 
 painted under the Constable influence. At the time of 
 the change we had the same feeling ; but after-judgment 
 does not entirely confirm this. Thus there is a great 
 sense of daylight and air in the second " Page's Dinner " 
 which we look for in vain in the first : in the second 
 the light throughout is pure, cool, and grey, the outlook 
 through the window very truthful, and there is far more 
 atmosphere than in the earlier work ; there is not an 
 inch of hot or foxy colour, the oak panelling of the 
 room has the true gray of old oak upon it, so seldom 
 given, a clammy varnished brown being usually substi- 
 tuted for it. Some figures in the first are left out in the 
 second — Pistol for instance, who is rather forced in 
 character, and has too much of the theatrical make up : 
 a rare fault in Leslie, whose innate sense of delicacy 
 rather led him to refine than exaggerate characteristics. 
 This has prevented him giving much of the libidinous 
 side of Falstaff's character. In the Sheepshanks repe- 
 tition this is admirably illustrated in the females, and 
 shows an improvement upon the first in taste and delicacy. 
 Mrs. Page is a charming matron and mother, Mrs. Ford 
 has not an atom of evil in her hearty jollity, but a sense 
 of fun in her smiling half-opened mouth, showing a range 
 of fair white teeth, and speaking of sport with the fat 
 sack-loving knight. In their full matronly beauty they 
 contrast happily with Anne, come forth for the first time 
 into society, and also more lovely, more girlishly inno- 
 cent and timid in the latter than in the former work. 
 The earlier picture has been painted with a vehicle that 
 has failed in the browns — the repetition, painted with 
 pure linseed oil, is as fresh as from the easel. 
 
336 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to enter further into 
 the biographies of our painters than as the incidents of 
 their lives may be supposed to have influenced their art. 
 It is therefore not necessary to describe the causes that 
 led Leslie's friends to obtain for him, or Leslie to accept, 
 an appointment from the American government as teacher 
 of drawing at the Military Academy of West Point on 
 the Hudson. No doubt his friends in America would 
 desire to have a relative so much loved, and who had 
 already achieved such celebrity, once more amongst them ; 
 and, looking to the uncertain income at that time to be 
 derived from the arts, and the expenses incident to an 
 increasing family, Leslie was induced to value the offer 
 of a settled income. We can well recollect how much 
 regret was expressed, both by his companions in art and 
 the public when, in 1833, it became known that Leslie 
 was returning to America. With that honest right- 
 mindedness which ever characterized him, he offered, 
 before leaving, to resign his membership of the Academy. 
 From this course, however, he was dissuaded by the 
 president ; not only because his journey was avowedly 
 experimental, but that other members of the Academy 
 had resided abroad during a long series of years, while 
 some even discontinued aiding its exhibitions. 
 
 It is strange that Leslie, who it is well known thought 
 any kind of art-teaching unnecessary, and who himself, 
 though richly accomplished as an artist, was not much 
 grounded in its elements — painting from feeling rather 
 than from knowledge — should have undertaken the office 
 of teaching elementary art to others. To those already 
 sufficiently advanced to appreciate his advice and in- 
 struction, they would have been indeed invaluable ; but for 
 
LESLIE RETURNS TO AMERICA. 
 
 337 
 
 the routine of elementary instruction he was of all men 
 the most unfitted. It is no wonder, therefore, that the 
 task was wearisome and his duties irksome; but when 
 to this was added letters, reports, and attendance at long 
 sessional examinations, he soon found the post a burden 
 not to be borne, and that the irksomeness of his duties 
 quite overbalanced his pleasure in the society of affec- 
 tionate relatives, the fixity of his income, or the hopes 
 of future advantages to his children. Moreover, the 
 climate did not prove so healthy as had been anticipated, 
 and the change was not agreeable to Mrs. Leslie ; what 
 wonder, then, that ere six months had passed he was 
 again on ship-board to return to England ? He had 
 quitted it in September, 1833, and he left America in 
 April, 1834. He left West Point ere yet a leaf was on 
 the trees ; and after a quick run across the Atlantic, as 
 they neared the Isle of Wight, he had the pleasure of 
 seeing the land green with the first honours of spring, 
 " which," says he in his journal, " increased our joy at 
 finding ourselves again in England, from which I have 
 felt from that moment no inclination to estrange myself." 
 
 It has been urged that as the pursuit of litera- 
 ture, poetry, or the arts is but too often scantily remune- 
 rated, Government places or appointments, in which the 
 duties are in any way analogous to these pursuits, should 
 constitute some of the rewards to which poets and 
 painters may look forward. We do not agree with the 
 views that would tie down a finely-touched poet to the 
 dull duties of an exciseman, or, as in this instance, spoil 
 a man of real genius for art by saddling him with the 
 drudgery of a government drawing-mastership. Fortu- 
 nately, Leslie speedily found out his mistake. He 
 
 VOL. II. 56 
 
838 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 returned to England in the full vigour of his art powers, 
 and with plenty of encouragement to use them. He 
 found on his arrival that a sad change had taken place 
 in his former intimate, Newton ; whose mind had given 
 way, and it had become necessary to place him in a 
 private asylum. From this time Constable exerted 
 much influence over Leslie's art ; an influence which he 
 was quite ready to acknowledge. Writing to him from 
 Petworth, in 1834, Leslie says : — " I am afraid you did 
 not quite understand what I meant by your keen eye. I 
 am only afraid of it, because I know no fault can escape 
 it." Constable, no doubt, was a valuable critic, though 
 certainly he was a sharp one, and could say cutting 
 things to others, when he could hardly bear a retort. 
 As we have seen, Leslie was much swayed by his opinion. 
 He tells us that Constable had what the phrenologists 
 call " love of approbation " largely developed ; but he 
 quite overlooks the landscape painter's intense self- 
 esteem, which made him strong in his expression of 
 opinion, and enabled him to overweigh, at times, the 
 better judgment of his friend. From Constable, as has 
 been already said, he adopted the coolness and greyness 
 seen in his latter works; and it may also be that the 
 looser handling and sketchy execution of many of them 
 were derived from the same source. Leslie soon settled 
 down to his usual quiet and his usual class of pictures. 
 It is to this period we owe some of the best works in the 
 Sheepshanks Collection ; now, by the munificent gift of 
 the owner, at South Kensington, and the property of the 
 nation. Such are the " Autolycus," the " Perdita," 
 the " Infant Princes in the Tower," and the second 
 "Dinner at Page's House." 
 
HIS "CORONATION" AND "CHRISTENING." 339 
 
 In 1838, Leslie had a commission to paint the 
 Coronation of our beloved Queen, and produced a 
 picture bright with sunshine and female loveliness, 
 and of a far different character to what is usually the 
 result of such commissions. In 1841, he again received 
 a royal commission ; this time to paint the " Christening 
 of the Princess Eoyal." His friend Constable had 
 died in 1837, a great grief to Leslie, who says of 
 himself that before he knew Constable he really knew 
 nothing or worse than nothing of landscape ; for, he 
 adds, " I admired as poetical, styles which I now see 
 to be mannered, conventional, or extravagant." His 
 admiration continued after his friend's death, and the 
 landscape backgrounds to the two pictures of " Who can 
 This Be ? " and " Who can This Be From ? " show that 
 this influence was still predominant. 
 
 There are few more very marked incidents in the 
 life of our painter. His powers were now fully estimated 
 and his works were eagerly sought for. He was active 
 in his duties as a member of the Academy, and in 1826 
 was elected Professor of Painting, a post which he held 
 for five seasons. In his early years he had opposed the 
 admission of engravers to the full honours of the Academy, 
 but latterly being convinced of their claim, he re-opened 
 the question before the general assembly and became one 
 of the warmest advocates of the measure ; which he had 
 the satisfaction of seeing carried and approved by her 
 Majesty, as it was by the profession and the outside 
 public. His children grew up around him and his home 
 life was a very happy one ; and in this respect we may 
 fairly contrast him with Wilkie and Mulready, as we 
 have no doubt that his home life greatly influenced his 
 
 56-2 
 
340 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 art. Wilkie lived and died in the coldness of celibacy. 
 Mulready, though married early, had little of happiness 
 in his family circle. But Leslie, surrounded by sons 
 and daughters, exceedingly fond of their childish fun 
 and humour, and a great observer at all times, has 
 given us pictures illustrative of the simple happiness of 
 childhood, which stand quite apart from the recipe 
 notions of second-rate painters. Such for instance is his 
 lovely group of the " Mother and Child," belonging to 
 Mrs. Gibbons. The young mother has taken her child 
 from the cot on to her lap, and as it lies on its back, is 
 burying her joyous face in its little bosom and revelling 
 in happy kisses. And the " Playing at Horses," the 
 property of Sir R. Wigram ; what an insight does it give 
 us into the small pleasures that make up the happiness 
 of childhood ! What a pretty little quaint incident, picked 
 up from the playhours of his own children ! There, in 
 the painter's parlour, seated in a chair as proudly as if 
 in a gilded chariot, is his youngest daughter, with the 
 look of a grand duchess taking an airing, her parasol up 
 to screen her from an imaginary sun ; two other much 
 younger little ones act the part of horses, and are har- 
 nessed with string to the chair, their pretty little prancing 
 attitudes as they give pace without moving, so true to 
 childish action, with the little fat feet in blue shoes, are 
 perfect, as is the action of the hands and arms. 
 
 Then again how happily has Leslie seized the 
 incident of the children's prayers in his own household, 
 to give a touch of matter-of-fact truth to " The Two 
 Young Princes in the Tower ; " and who but a father, 
 who had watched the little shy ways of his own young 
 daughters, could have embodied such sweet presentments 
 
FAMILY INFLUENCES. 
 
 341 
 
 of the children of the vicar ; or the timid anxiety to get 
 satisfactorily through their task of the young ladies in the 
 portrait picture of the " Grosvenor Family:" a work 
 which, after many years, dwells on our memory from 
 this finely touched sentiment. And as the painter's 
 children grew to maidenly years and to manhood, we 
 often see in his pictures glimpses of their forms and 
 faces ; and we know that many graceful actions in his 
 best works arise from the hints obtained from his family 
 circle. But this happiness was to have a rude shock 
 and a sad termination : early in 1857 the painter's 
 second daughter, Caroline, was married, greatly to the 
 satisfaction of her parents ; everything seemed to pro- 
 mise a bright future for the young couple, but a 
 sudden change in her health took place almost from the 
 marriage day, and she gradually faded away, dying 
 shortly after the birth of her little boy, in March 1859. 
 Leslie did not long survive the blow occasioned by 
 her death. He paid a visit to Petworth to seek relief 
 in change of scene, but seems to have found none, and 
 although at first his complaint was not thought fatal, 
 he sank by degrees and died on the 5th of May 1859. 
 
 It is somewhat singular that his last' entry in his 
 pleasant gossiping diary was a story of Mr. Rogers, 
 that " those who go to heaven will be very much sur- 
 prised at the people they find there, and very much 
 surprised at those they do not find there ; " and on a 
 slip of paper attached to his will he writes, " I trust I 
 may die as I now am, in the entire belief of the 
 Christian religion, as I understand it from the books 
 of the New Testament, that is, as a direct revelation of 
 the will and goodness of God towards the world, by 
 
342 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Jesus Christ the Saviour and Judge of the world." 
 So lived and so died this rare artist and good man. 
 Those who read his diary and letters will feel how 
 full he was of true Christian charity — how prompt to 
 speak well, how slow to speak ill of others — how glad 
 to find beauties rather than to criticize defects : while 
 those who had the happiness of knowing him will treasure 
 in their memory the pleasant recollections of a kind friend 
 and a man of true genius, and hope at least to find him 
 there; if, through God's mercy, they should obtain 
 entrance to his future kingdom. 
 
 Leslie was an artist from feeling rather than from 
 instruction ; he had little early grounding in his profes- 
 sion, yet he drew correctly, from an innate perception of 
 form and sense of grace ; and he painted well from 
 having obtained a simple method for the expression of 
 his first thoughts, to which he remained constant to the 
 finish. He was happy in his choice of subjects, and his 
 own good taste and sweet nature led him to treat them 
 suitably. He was far beyond either of his competitors in 
 his sense of beauty. 
 
 Leslie's embodiment of female beauty was not of that 
 eclectic kind sought for by the artists of Italy, who aimed 
 to present to us the purity and excellence of divine or 
 saintly persons ; it was rather the fullest embodiment of 
 the loveliness with which we are surrounded in our daily 
 life. Theirs was an abstract beauty, cold and impassive, 
 removed from the sphere of human passions into the 
 calm atmosphere of holiness, and hence their beauty had 
 little variety ; while his was but true English flesh and 
 blood, not glorified — for it is hardly possible to add to the 
 beauty of the race — but lighted up by passion, feeling, 
 
DELINEATION OF FEMALE BEAUTY. 343 
 
 and the nobler sentiments and affections, and enhanced 
 by purity and truth. Thus his beauty was varied in 
 every character ; first, from being individual, and further, 
 from the varied characters he had to delineate. Take, as 
 an instance, his lovely duchess, in the picture already 
 spoken of; how different is her beauty from that of her 
 waiting maidens, what a riant expression, what an inward 
 sense of humour, what a self- composed grace and 
 matronly dignity, repelling every intrusion upon that 
 sweetness and condescension which leads her to enjoy 
 pleasure in the midst of her attendants. How different, 
 again, is the beauty of the sweet, modest shepherd- 
 princess, Perdita ; she whom our great poet had 
 imagined, but whom it was left to Leslie to present 
 before us, so lovely, yet so noble, that as the poet says — 
 
 " Nothing she does or seems 
 But smacks of something greater than herself." 
 
 These, too, are wholly distinct from the matronly 
 beauty of the two Windsor yeomen's wives, or the some- 
 what fretful fairness of the old burgomaster's wife, in 
 " Who Can This Be ? " proud, and somewhat dissatisfied 
 and rather loving the flattery, although she contemns 
 the false flatterer. Then, again, we have the simple 
 girlish beauty of the vicar's daughters, regarding, with 
 somewhat of envious wonder, the easy impudence of the 
 frail impertinents who impose upon their unsophisticated 
 innocence as courtly ladies ; and the females that are 
 assembled to greet the merry monarch at Tillietudlem : 
 well might his Majesty bear with the stately salute of the 
 mistress of the mansion, to be allowed to pay his devoirs 
 to her fair followers. Nor may we forget that bevy of 
 lovely aristocracy, so beautiful, yet so diverse in beauty ; 
 
344 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 no dreams and shadows of the painter's brain, but real 
 English maidens attendant at the coronation of England's 
 queen. 
 
 Leslie was very happy in his illustrations of Shak- 
 speare, the more that he has made the poet's cha- 
 racters individuals, rather than abstractions. Fuseli's 
 illustrations of Shakspeare were very grand, but often 
 very intangible, and certainly his characters had little of 
 individuality ; his women were all of one type, and that 
 rather of the Doll-tear-sheet class, neither lovely nor 
 loveable : even his Mirandas and Cordelias were more 
 masculine than feminine. His men, massive in style but 
 abstract in character, impress us with somewhat of awe, 
 but with little of humanity ; and still less with that deep 
 English humanity that pervades all the plays of Shak- 
 speare, even when the scene is laid in other lands. West 
 painted little from the great dramatist, and what he 
 did bordered on the mock heroic ; as in the " Lear in the 
 Storm." Northcote had some English individuality about 
 his illustrations, and Opie some English strength, dege- 
 nerating into coarseness : none of them had any sense 
 of the racy humour of the^poet ; while Smirke, who had 
 humour, verged somewhat on caricature, and failed to 
 carry us back in any degree to the poet's age. It was 
 from his sense of beauty and grace, his individuality in 
 the treatment of his characters, and his fine appreciation 
 of humour, that Leslie approximated to the spirit of his 
 author, and has given us more pleasure in his pictorial 
 illustrations of Shakspeare than those whose works were 
 of far greater pretensions. 
 
 Before his time, little attention had been paid to 
 costume, and though we cannot praise Leslie for any 
 
LESLIE'S ART AND CHARACTER. 
 
 345 
 
 amount of accuracy in this respect, yet his dresses 
 have at least an air of truth ; look as if they were 
 made for the wearers, and are far beyond the vapid 
 conventionality of Peters, Hamilton, Wheatley, and 
 others, whose costume seems to have been devised at 
 second-hand from the stage dresses of their own period. 
 In painting his costume, Leslie used drapery, but 
 rarely dresses ; he had the happy art to improvise them 
 from scanty materials. He tells us that he " made them 
 up from old prints and pictures," and we know that he 
 was able so to dispose loose drapery on his model (for we 
 believe he never used a lay figure), as to enable him to 
 represent his costume without the aid of the milliner. 
 Thus he managed to clothe his figures without detracting 
 from their grace and elegance, and without the passing 
 peculiarities of fashion. In his art there is nothing 
 stilted, nothing extravagant, and it is without the 
 slightest taint of vulgarity. The treatment of his subjects 
 is so simple, that we lose the sense of a picture, and feel 
 that the incident is presented to us as it must have 
 happened; fashion had no part in his works, and we 
 have no doubt that a future age will own them as true as 
 the present, and with no less love : it may be said that 
 he popularized the class of refined drama-pictures. 
 
 Without being too imitative, Leslie was true to 
 Nature, and has left us this example : that a work which 
 is generally true as a whole, is far more true than that 
 which is built up from an exact imitation of the several 
 parts. As an instance of this, his treatment of utensils 
 of glass or silver in his dinner scenes may be quoted ; 
 thus the vessels on the table in " The Dinner at Page's 
 House," or " The Duke's Chaplain Enraged and Leaving 
 
346 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the Table ; " or again the jewellery and trinkets in " The 
 Pack of Autolycus." In all these instances, by means of 
 a very few touches, more effect of truth, more real glitter 
 and sparkle is given, than by the most elaborate imitation. 
 The same may be said of the treatment of candlelight 
 effect in his picture of " Trissotin reading the Sonnet, 
 from Les Femmes Savantes," now in the Sheepshanks 
 Collection ; there a truer effect is given of the brilliancy 
 of candlelight by the slightest means, than in the most 
 laboured works of Schalken or Hornthorst. 
 
 Leslie was an agreeable companion, full of anecdotes 
 of his brother painters, and of others who had been 
 thrown into his company ; the sense of humour so pre- 
 vailed in him that a story with little real point became 
 interesting from his mode of telling it. As a writer on 
 art he is pleasant, intelligent and kindly, if not very 
 deep. His diary, published after his death, gives us a 
 very agreeable insight into the painter's home life and 
 gentle nature. His life of Constable is a picture not so 
 much of that painter as others saw him, but as clothed 
 with the kindlier nature of Leslie. Of the three 
 painters we have classed together, we value a picture 
 by Wilkie ; we are surprised by a picture of Mulready's, 
 but we love a picture by Leslie. As to the impression 
 he made on our school, it may be said that he perfected 
 the class of drama-pictures, and has been greatly instru- 
 mental in banishing vulgarity and coarseness from that 
 branch of art. 
 
 The art, as practised by Leslie, naturally leads us to 
 that of Newton, who was so closely linked to him both 
 by ties of country, friendship, and by the class of art 
 both followed. There are, in fact, so many points of 
 
GILBERT STUART NEWTON, R.A. 
 
 347 
 
 resemblance, that much of the criticism on Leslie applies 
 equally to the art of his friend and companion. 
 
 Gilbert Stuart Newton, R.A., was born at Halifax, 
 Nova Scotia, 2nd September, 1794. He was the son" of 
 an officer in the British Commissariat Department, or, 
 according to other authorities, of an officer of Customs 
 in that province, who had left Washington when the 
 British were driven from Boston by G-eneral Washington. 
 His uncle, on his mother's side, was Gilbert Stuart, 
 distinguished in America as a portrait painter ; and after 
 his father's death his widowed mother returned with him. 
 in 1803 to Charleston, near Boston. Dunlop, the 
 American biographer, says : — " Newton congratulated 
 himself upon being born a subject of the king and 
 aristocracy of Great Britain, and on one occasion in New 
 York, at a large dinner-party, got up and disclaimed 
 being a citizen of the United States ; " but he adds, 
 " Newton cannot, however, shake off the stigma of being 
 an American painter." 
 
 Newton was "reared" at Boston, and intended for 
 commercial life, was placed with a merchant ; but art 
 prevailed. We do not know from his early history what 
 led him to foster this desire, unless it was the reputation 
 of his uncle Stmart, under whom he was early placed for 
 study. Stuart himself had practised his art for some 
 years in England, from whence he returned in 1805. 
 One of his countrymen tells, that he left the brightest 
 prospects in England, and returned to his country from 
 his admiration of her new institutions, and a desire to 
 paint the portrait of Washington. "On hearing this" 
 (we quote from Leslie's diary), " Sir Thomas Lawrence 
 said, ' I knew Stuart well, and I believe the real cause of 
 
348 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 his leaving England was his having become tired of the 
 inside of some of our prisons.' On which Lord Holland 
 remarked, ' After all, then, it was his love of freedom that 
 took him to America.' " In 1817, one of Newton's elder 
 brothers, who was engaged in commerce, brought the 
 future painter with him to Italy and left him at Florence, 
 that he might see some of the master-works before finally 
 settling down to his studies. 
 
 He remained some months in Italy, and then repaired 
 to Paris, where he met Leslie ; they travelled together 
 through the Netherlands, arriving in London in 1817, 
 and from that time were firm friends. Leslie intro- 
 duced him to Washington Irving on an excursion to 
 Richmond, and tells that the three passed a day of such 
 frolic and fun as became such men ; and from that time 
 they were three inseparables. Irving says in one of 
 his letters that on Newton's arrival in London, " he did 
 nothing for three days but scamper up and down like a 
 cat in a panic ; " and in the same letter adds, "New- 
 ton's manikin has at length arrived, and he is to have it 
 home in a few days, when it is to be hoped he will give 
 up rambling abroad and stay at home, drink tea, and play 
 the flute to the lady." He made many visits to Sloane 
 Street, which were in pursuit of " the lady " with whom 
 he was much smitten. Irving again alludes to this in 
 1820. " I find," says he, " the Sloane Street romance 
 is still Unfinished .... Newton is busy with a 
 brush in each hand, and his hair standing on end, 
 turning Ann's portraits into likenesses of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, General Washington, and the Lord knows who." 
 
 Newton, however, settled down to work in 1820, and 
 became a student of the Royal Academy ; although, as we 
 
HTS STUDIES IN ENGLAND. 
 
 349 
 
 find from the same sources, he was very fond of society 
 and naturally formed for it ; hence we may infer that he 
 was not very constant in his attendance at the schools, 
 which may account for his weakness and want of skill as 
 a draughtsman. From this time he was a constant 
 companion of Irving and Leslie ; and a very pleasant trio 
 they must have been. " Nothing," says Leslie, " could 
 be more agreeable than our daily intercourse ; we visited 
 in the same families, chiefly Americans resident in 
 London, and generally dined together at the York Chop 
 House, in Wardour Street : " a house that we believe still 
 remains, and has been the resort of many successions of 
 young artists, when the struggle to get one's head above 
 the crowd was far greater than at present, and the chop 
 or eating-house was the usual resource after the labours 
 of the day. 
 
 But, although Newton loved society, he had real 
 genius, and made rapid improvement in his art. In 
 1821, he painted and exhibited at the British Institution 
 a small head, which he called the "Forsaken," and a 
 picture of "Lovers' Quarrels," and about the same time 
 his clever picture of " The Importunate Author." This 
 was a most successful work, and gave evidence of his 
 great observation of humour and character. Two figures 
 are pacing up and down a raised terrace ; the victim, 
 manly and erect, of a noble presence, but with a look of 
 the deepest disgust and weariness, holds his watch in 
 his hand, as if to intimate in the most marked manner, 
 that the time of another and more pleasant appointment 
 is passing away. The poet hangs on him and holds him 
 fast ; reading as they walk along, he is determined to 
 inflict on his companion every stanza of his dreary and 
 
350 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tedious composition : he heeds not — he will not heed — ■ 
 the expressive hints of impatience and contempt it calls 
 forth. Leslie tells us, incidentally, that Peter Coxe 
 volunteered to sit to Newton for the poet: he was the 
 author of the " Social Day," a poem which he victimised 
 artists to illustrate, and certainly must have looked the 
 character. Wilkie relates that Coxe came to him to read 
 some of his poetry, and being interrupted by a visit of 
 Lord Mulgrave, he waited for his departure, and then 
 resumed and read the remainder ; Wilkie, most likely to 
 get rid of him, proposed a walk, and bored, no doubt, 
 went into a house which had a notice of being to let, to 
 inquire about it: "When," says he, "Mr. Coxe pulled 
 out his manuscript and began to read it to the woman 
 who had charge of the house." Such a man needed no 
 "making up " to sit for " The Importunate Author." 
 
 In 1821, Newton was for the first time an exhibitor 
 at the Royal Academy, where he sent two portraits ; and 
 again in 1822, he exhibited two portraits : one of them, 
 his friend Irving, was engraved for " The Sketch Book," 
 which Murray published in 1823. In his dislike for the 
 labour of study, Newton took to portrait-painting as 
 requiring less exertion of mind. Irving, who felt his 
 talent, remonstrated with him ; but as he defended a 
 weak part of his picture, so he defended the propriety of 
 his choice, talked of Vandyke and Reynolds, and parted 
 with his friend in a huff. Some time after Irving called, 
 and finding him at work on his poet reading his verses 
 to an impatient gallant, complimented him on being in 
 the right road ; and from that time Newton devoted him- 
 self to those subjects in which he became so eminently 
 successful. 
 
HIS FIRST PICTURES. 
 
 351 
 
 From 1823 till 1833, Newton was a continuous 
 exhibitor at Somerset House. In 1823 he sent the 
 first subject picture, " M. Pourceaugnac, or the Patient 
 in spite of Himself." In 1828, he was elected an 
 associate of the Royal Academy, his picture of that 
 year having been " The Vicar of Wakefield reconciling 
 his Wife to Olivia." This picture, as treated by him, 
 is of touching interest, and he well deserved the 
 honours it won for him. Mrs. Primrose sits apart in the 
 wretched barn to which their misfortunes have reduced 
 them, determined to be firm and unyielding in her anger 
 to her erring daughter; but while rigidly fixed in her 
 seat, it is evident that every muscle quivers, every nerve 
 thrills with desire to turn to her lost child. Sophia 
 kneels tenderly and entreatingly beside her mother — 
 never sweeter face looked pleadingly into a mother's eyes 
 — the delicate fingers touch her mother's clasped hands 
 with the most refined perception of the inter-communion 
 of feeling through the sense of touch. The two little 
 brothers look on with the truest expression of childish 
 dread and wonder. The father has a manly form and 
 characteristic head : he is the picture of a Christian gen- 
 tleman ; to him Olivia instinctively clings, while Moses, 
 dreading his mother's anger, lingers at the door. The 
 face of Olivia is hidden ; Sophia's is the true type of inno- 
 cent maidenhood, the flesh rendered more delicate and 
 fresh by its contrast with black drapery. As to its faults, 
 the textures are hardly sufficiently imitative, and some of 
 the accessories are much neglected ; the toys of the chil- 
 dren are mere splashes of colour, on a mass of dirty brown. 
 This should not be, in a picture, which from its size 
 claims to be hung directly opposite the eye. The im- 
 
352 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 pasto of the picture is excellent, and the colouring very 
 perfect. 
 
 English painters have been sneered at for their cir- 
 cumscribed reading, because they so often take their sub- 
 jects from Don Quixote and the Vicar of Wakefield ; but 
 they might rather shift the blame on the public, for 
 whom they paint. This view was entertained by Irving, 
 who, writing from Madrid says, " Don Quixote and Gil 
 Bias are universal works known throughout the world, 
 and painting from them is like painting from the Bible." 
 In fact as the theatrical public rather enjoy an old Joe 
 Miller, well put, than a new joke which wants some 
 reflection to catch it ; so the painters' public like pictures 
 from books which they have known from childhood, 
 better than from works with which they are less inti- 
 mately acquainted. 
 
 Newton justified his election as associate by his 
 picture of " Camilla Introduced to Gil~Blas at the 
 Inn," exhibited in 1829. He had previously painted 
 in 1827, " The Prince of Spain's Visit to Catalina : " 
 indeed his taste seemed much directed to Spanish 
 subjects ; and as Leslie was at the same time painting 
 from Don Quixote, Irving, then at Madrid, congratulated 
 them on their choice, and regretted that, as they were 
 now painting Spanish pictures, they could not get a peep 
 at the Spanish people. This has become a common 
 journey with our painters since Wilkie led the way ; 
 but it may be doubted if the pictures of 'either Leslie 
 or Newton would have been much improved by a more 
 direct Spanish flavour. In the years 1830 and 1831, 
 Newton painted and exhibited some of his finest works : 
 namely, in 1830, " Yorick and the Grisette," now in the 
 
HIS " PORTIA AND BASSANIO." 
 
 353 
 
 National Gallery, " Shylock and Jessica," and the " Abbot 
 Boniface " from Walter Scott's novel of The Abbot. 
 Leslie says that Newton took the idea of the figure from 
 Sydney Smith, whom he met when on a visit to Walter 
 Scott. In 1831, Newton's pictures were " Portia and Bas- 
 sanio," with " Cordelia and the Physician." The former 
 is in the Sheepshanks' collection, and although sadly 
 injured by the use of asphaltum, it deserves attention as 
 exhibiting some of the painter's best qualities. We well 
 remember the impression it made on ourselves when first 
 exhibited. It shows Newton's great feeling for colour, 
 expression and beauty, his small power of drawing, and 
 his weak execution. Bassanio has just received the 
 letter which relates the danger of his friend. His 
 startled surprise at the news which greets him is that 
 of a gentleman, subdued, but real. The action is ex- 
 cellent ; yet the legs are like sticks, and the mouth 
 wholly awry ; though this may have been added to by 
 the injuries arising from the use of bad pigments. The 
 dogs at his feet have hardly the semblance of the canine 
 race. The Portia is very sweet ; the action graceful, 
 the face full of tender solicitude, her deep earnest eyes 
 questioning the sad thoughts flitting across the brows 
 of Bassanio; thoughts which she claims her right to 
 share. The colour is very agreeable, the flesh delicate ; 
 the blue robe of the lady is well chosen as to colour, 
 and elegantly contrasted with that of the sleeve of the 
 under garment, although this, at the shoulder, appears to 
 join to nothing. The neck is sadly swelled, and hardly 
 compatible with beauty ; but, as a whole, the picture is 
 a work of such feeling, elegance, colour, and sweet 
 expression, as to make us entirely forget its defects. 
 vol. ii. 57 
 
354 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 These pictures had made a great impression in New- 
 ton's favour, and in 1832 he was elected to the full 
 honours of the Academy. 
 
 He now sought to establish a home for himself, and, 
 the romance of Sloane Street forgotten, he made a 
 voyage to America to find a wife, with whom he returned 
 to this country at the end of the year. Newton had so 
 continually painted the same type of beauty in his 
 pictures, that his brother artists thought he must be 
 favoured with sittings by some female friend with whom 
 they were unacquainted. On his return from America 
 with the lady whom he had married, her features were 
 so like the face he had usually pictured, that those 
 who were unaware of the circumstances thought they 
 had at length discovered the hidden beauty he had 
 so long worshipped; but it was afterwards understood 
 that this was not the case, his acquaintance with the 
 lady not having dated previous to his journey. 
 
 During Newton's American visit slight symptoms of 
 insanity had manifested themselves ; unhappily, these 
 rapidly increased soon after his return. He painted no 
 more pictures of any importance after his election, and 
 it was soon found necessary to place him in a private 
 asylum, where he died on the 5th August, 1835, and 
 was buried in Wimbledon Churchyard. Leslie tells us 
 in his diary, that Newton's mind seemed somewhat 
 restored a few days before his death. During the rapid 
 consumption that ended his life he read only the Bible 
 and Prayer-book, and when he became too weak to read, 
 they were read to him by an attendant. The day before 
 he died he desired to hear the funeral service, saying, 
 " It will soon be read over me." He listened with great 
 
OPINION UPON HIS ART. 
 
 355 
 
 attention, and remarked that "it was very fine." His 
 wife and son returned to America shortly after his death, 
 and the widow soon married a second time. 
 
 As a painter, Newton was sadly deficient in execu- 
 tive power, and as he also drew timidly he worked out 
 his pictures from feeling rather than with knowledge. 
 His sense of colour was far greater than Leslie's ; and, 
 as we have seen, Leslie was much influenced by him. 
 Although his pictures are very unequal in other respects, 
 they are always agreeable for colour ; a quality which 
 the most easily attracts the multitude, and pleasantly 
 introduces them to the higher qualities of the painter. 
 His " Shylock and Jessica," his "Vicar of Wakefield," 
 and his " Captain Macheath " are all fine examples. 
 How rare is the appreciative power that could place in 
 pleasant juxtaposition the peculiar orange-red and blue- 
 green of the dress of Moses in the "Vicar! " while the 
 "Macheath" is quite a bouquet to the eye. Newton 
 displayed great beauty and loveliness in his females; 
 there is a peculiar tender innocence of expression in his 
 Sophia, Cordelia, and Portia, as well as in the fancy 
 heads which he painted. He had some humour, though 
 not nearly so much as his friend Leslie, and a tolerable 
 appreciation of character. Thus his " Captain Macheath 
 with Lucy and Polly," now at Bowood, and certainly 
 one of his best works, is somewhat Hogarthian in its 
 character and expression, with a sense of colour through- 
 out, and a beauty and tenderness in Polly, which Hogarth, 
 with all his power, could not approach. It is satisfactory 
 to observe that it is less changed than his other works ; 
 for, unfortunately, Newton did not exclude asphaltum 
 from his palette, nor confine himself to simple vehicles 
 
 57—2 
 
356 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 for his pigments, and the result has been that all his 
 works have more or less suffered, while some are in 
 danger of perishing altogether. He was not a prolific 
 painter ; and we should judge from his pictures that, 
 though working rapidly, he arrived at their completion 
 after many changes and much elaboration. From his first 
 picture in the Academy, in 1821, until his last in 1833, 
 he only exhibited thirty-three works ; of which eight were 
 portraits, three only heads, and twelve subject pictures. 
 
 Newton must have had many agreeable qualities as a 
 companion, for we find him more frequently alluded to, 
 and remembrance made of him in Irving' s letters to 
 Leslie, than any other of his friends in England ; he 
 seems to have delighted in his society as much as he 
 admired his works. Yet with all his sociable qualities 
 he was said to delight in contradiction, especially of 
 widely-received opinions, and he overflowed with self- 
 esteem. A certain amount of self-esteem is a very neces- 
 sary ingredient in the character of an artist, counteracting 
 those fits of depression which the difficulties of the art 
 call forth, and sustaining him during the tedious progress 
 to that excellence which too often seems to recede as 
 we advance, and is but partially achieved even by the 
 greatest ; but it is of all mental qualities the most dan- 
 gerous if over-indulged, in such cases often landing its 
 unfortunate victim in insanity. 
 
 Many stories of Newton's conceit and vanity were 
 current at a time when the narrators little dreamt of the 
 sad calamity in which they were to end. Thus it is said 
 that on a brother artist pointing out some strange mis- 
 take in one of Newton's pictures, he replied, " Yes, it is 
 purposely left so ; every picture should have a fault, this 
 
HIS HABITS AND CHARACTER. 
 
 357 
 
 is the one fault of mine." And Leslie said, " If a friend 
 who sees the progress of a picture objects to any part, 
 Newton defends it vehemently, perhaps, like Sir Fretful, 
 asserts that it is the best portion of his work ; but if the 
 friend returns the next day, he may find that part ex- 
 punged and repainted. So great is his facility that he 
 never hesitates to dash out a figure or a group ; and, as 
 Mr. Irving has said, if one of his figures on the surface 
 of his canvas could be scraped off, we should find half a 
 dozen under it, or might detect six legs to one man, four 
 painted and covered over before the artist had adopted 
 the last pair." 
 
 Newton loved to Jhave it thought that he lived 
 expensively and kept a recherche table. An artist calling 
 on him just as dinner was served was invited to partake 
 of it. It consisted merely of some mutton-chops, but 
 when these were removed Newton asked the servant with 
 an air of surprise why there were no ices, as if these 
 luxuries formed part of his daily meal, and had been 
 strangely overlooked on this occasion. When Newton 
 was painting the picture of " Portia and Bassanio," a man 
 of fashion, who was as conceited of his legs as the painter 
 was of his art, criticized those of the principal figure. 
 Newton asked him to pose that he might study them 
 from him, to which he readily consented, and was duly 
 invested in silk tights for that purpose. He had, how- 
 ever, stood but a few minutes when a lady visitor was 
 announced, and the model was requested to retire for a 
 minute or two into the painter's back study ; there, 
 in the depth of winter, half dressed, without the means 
 of completing his toilet, and without a fire, he was kept 
 shivering for a long half-hour while the lady was examining 
 
358 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the studies and sketches ; a visit which Newton did not 
 hurry to a conclusion, perhaps well satisfied that he who 
 had criticized his drawing was suffering for his meddling. 
 
 From the shortness of his life, and the few pictures 
 he painted, Newton's art was eclipsed by Leslie's, and 
 he left very little impression on our school ; yet, had 
 he lived, his art would most probably have diverged from 
 that of his friend, and his colouring and sense of beauty 
 would have obtained for him a far higher reputation than 
 he even now enjoys. 
 
 We cannot close this chapter without adverting to 
 the loss art suffered in the untimely death of Augustus 
 Leopold Egg, R.A. One who worked somewhat in the 
 spirit of Leslie, and who, had he lived longer, might in 
 some degree have compensated for his loss. He was born 
 in Piccadilly on the 2nd of May, 1816, the son of the 
 well-known gunsmith. Showing a desire to follow art, on 
 leaving school he was placed in 1834 in Sass's academy; 
 there he made such progress that in the succeeding year 
 he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy. In 
 1837 he exhibited his first picture at the gallery in Suf- 
 folk Street, and in 1838 at the Academy, " A Spanish 
 Girl," which was much praised. After this time, we 
 find his name, with but few intervals, as an annual ex- 
 hibitor on the walls of the Royal Academy ; his pictures 
 increasing in interest and excellence, the subjects chosen 
 being of the class painted by Leslie and Newton, with- 
 out, however, the genial humour of the former. In 
 1849 he was elected an associate, and in 1861 a full 
 member of the Academy. His health had for many years 
 been delicate, his lungs were weak and he suffered from 
 chronic asthma, which obliged him, in the latter years of 
 
AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD EGG, R.A. 
 
 359 
 
 his life, to retire to the warmer climates of Italy or the 
 south of France to avoid the rigour of our winters. The 
 winter of 1862-3 was passed in Algiers with the same 
 object, and his health seemed so much benefited by the 
 climate of Africa that he resumed his painting, and there 
 was every prospect of his return to England and the 
 practice of his profession, when his imprudence in taking 
 a long ride on a bleak day caused a renewal of the worst 
 symptoms of his disorder, to which he succumbed on the 
 25th of March, 1863, and was buried in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the city of Algiers. 
 
 We have said that Egg's range of subjects was some- 
 what similar to that of Leslie and Newton ; but his vein 
 was oftener sad than humorous, and he was without the 
 abiding sense of beauty and gentleness that characterize 
 the females of both of these painters. Egg's first 
 pictures were painted with a broad and free pencil, and 
 a clear touch, and his execution gave the sense of great 
 ease and facility. The picture, " A Scene from Le 
 Diable Boiteux," painted in 1844, and now No. 444 in 
 the Vernon collection, is an example. It shows his 
 ready handling, his delicate appreciation of harmony of 
 tint and general tone, and from his simple manner of 
 painting stands well. His sense of colour was greater 
 than that of Leslie, but inferior to the colouring of 
 Newton, while he greatly excelled both in his execution. 
 As he advanced in art he became impressed with the 
 manner of the pre-Raphaelites ; he purchased some of 
 their pictures, and encouraged them by his own example, 
 giving to his own works more laborious completion and 
 greater force of colour. Of these, the best specimens 
 of his pencil are " Pepys's Introduction to Nell Grwynne," 
 
360 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 painted in 1852 ; and a scene from Thackeray's History 
 of Henry Esmo?id, Esq., illustrating the following pas- 
 sage : — " 1 Kneel down,' says Mrs. Beatrix, ' we dub 
 you knight with this,' and she waved the sword over 
 his head." This was exhibited in 1858. We miss in 
 the "Pepys" the beauty Leslie would have given to 
 Nelly, whom Pepys takes care to tell us was " a most 
 pretty woman ; " adding, " I kissed her, as did my wife, 
 and a mighty pretty soul she is." 
 
 The picture wants the saucy sweetness Leslie would 
 have added, but it was richly coloured, and a work of great 
 merit. Egg was less successful in the picture painted the 
 same year, exhibited without a title, and with only the 
 following suggestive quotation: — "Aug. 4: Have just 
 heard that B. has been dead more than a fortnight ; so 
 his poor children have now lost both their parents. I 
 hear She was seen on Friday last, near the Strand, 
 evidently without a place to lay her head. What a fall 
 hers has been ! " The picture, in three compartments, 
 represented the miseries arising from a wife's unfaithful- 
 ness. The painter's treatment of the subject was too 
 painful to please, and it remained on his walls until his 
 death. The same was the case with his " Life and 
 Death of Buckingham," painted in 1855. This was in 
 two compartments : the first showing Buckingham in the 
 midst of riot and debauchery with the young bloods of his 
 day ; the second, his death, as described by the poet : — 
 
 " In the worst inn's worst room." 
 
 The moral was a good one, but it was too sad ; and after 
 its sale at Christie's, in 1863, the purchaser is under- 
 stood to have separated the two pictures, to prevent the 
 extreme pain arising from their contrast. 
 
( 361 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OLD CROME AND THE NORWICH SCHOOL. 
 
 John Crome — His Birthplace and Origin— Picturesque Surroundings- 
 Tries House-painting and Sign-painting— Sketches the local Scenery 
 —His Poverty and the attendant Difficulties— Finds a Patron— And 
 has Access to Dutch and Flemish Art— Helped by Sir William Beechey 
 — Teaches Drawing— Founds the Norwich Society and the Norwich 
 Exhibition — His Mode of Painting— And Choice of Subject— Follower 
 of the Dutch School— Influence of Wilson's Art— His " Mousehold 
 Heath," " Hautbois Common," " Coast Scene near Yarmouth " — 
 Etchings — Death — The Norwich School — James Stark — Articled to 
 Crome — Comes to London — Studies at the Academy — Gains a Pre- 
 mium at the British Institution— Returns to Norwich— Publishes the 
 Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk— Comes again to London— Then 
 resides at Windsor— Character of his Art— George Vincent also a Pupil 
 of Crome— His Art— And fine Painting of Greenwich Hospital— Falls 
 into Difficulties and Neglect— John Sell Gotman— His early Career- 
 Teaches Drawing — His Publications — Opinion upon his Art — The 
 Norwich Society. 
 
 The landscape painters of whose art we have hitherto 
 treated, were men, whatsoever their birth or origin, who 
 eventually established themselves in London to take part 
 in the fierce struggle for reputation with which artists 
 have to contend in that great city. We have now to 
 notice the labours of an artist born in a county town far 
 distant from London, where he chose to remain, seeking 
 fame in his own lesser world, satisfied to be first there 
 rather than second in the metropolis. John Crome 
 (generally called Old Crome to distinguish him from his 
 eon, who also became an artist,) was born in Norwich on 
 
362 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the 21st of December, 1769. He was the son of a 
 journeyman weaver, and first saw the light in a mean 
 public-house in that city. We have no account of his 
 childish years, but the elder Mr. Bacon of Norwich tells 
 us that he could hardly be said to have enjoyed even the 
 common instruction of the most ordinary schools. At 
 twelve years of age he was placed as a servant in the 
 house of Dr. Rigby, where his principal duties consisted 
 in carrying out the medicines prescribed and prepared 
 by the doctor. He was a boy of a lively and enterprising 
 disposition, and when of the suitable age apprenticed 
 himself to Frank Whisler, a house and sign painter of 
 Norwich ; partly, it is said, moved by a love of art and 
 a desire to make himself acquainted, however roughly, 
 with art processes. 
 
 Thus far, then, we find the future painter wholly 
 without those advantages which now lie at the doors 
 of people of all ranks. Day and night-schools for 
 elementary education abound in all cities, and there 
 are few which do not — none which cannot — have a 
 well-appointed school of art, wherein the artisan and 
 the mechanic, the tradesman, and the children of the 
 resident gentry, may obtain sound instruction in the 
 rudiments of art, and be taught to overcome the diffi- 
 culties of execution which beset the beginner. In 
 Crome's time this was not the case. Before the age 
 of railroads, Norfolk and its capital city were outlying 
 districts as it were ; rarely visited by the curious — rarely 
 subject to change or improvement. The city itself was 
 picturesque, full of antiquarian interest, and seemed as 
 if it had slept while other cities of the kingdom were up 
 and at work. The lanes in the suburbs, the banks of 
 
OLD CROME OF NORWICH. 
 
 363 
 
 the river, the heaths, the commons, were wild, untrimmed, 
 and picturesque ; the old labourer's cottage with its 
 thatched roof, the farms with their rural homesteads, 
 were scattered close around the city ; villas and terraces 
 had not yet, like drilled intruders, broken in upon their 
 picturesque decay; the river as it wound with silvery 
 surface through the fat meadows, or stretched away 
 towards the sea, widened into lakelets called broads, and 
 bore on its way, inland or seaward, the picturesque 
 barges, or wherries as they are locally called, whose 
 tanned sails, ruddy in the sunlight, contrasted so well 
 with the green of the landscape. Thus the very 
 sleepiness of the land, not yet awakened to afford 
 instruction to its children, was yet peculiarly fitted to 
 call into life an instinctive love of art such as that with 
 which young Crome was gifted. 
 
 Meanwhile, Crome followed his trade as a house 
 painter, painting, as he advanced in skill, signs as well as 
 houses, and in his leisure hours sketching the local 
 scenery we have just described — scenery he loved through 
 life, and which forms the subjects of some of his best works. 
 He early formed an acquaintance with a fellow-towns- 
 man of the name of Robert Ladbrooke, then a youth of 
 about his own age, and the two lodging together, sketched 
 and painted for their mutual improvement. Many tales 
 are told of the poverty of our painter, of his having 
 manufactured his own brushes, and used his mother's 
 apron as a canvas whereon to practise his art ; such tales 
 are common to other painters as well as Crome. No 
 doubt he had his difficulties ; no doubt, coming somewhat 
 irregularly into art through the introduction of house and 
 sign painting, it was hard to obtain his first footing ; but 
 
364 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 friends generally are found when the man is resolved and 
 in earnest, and Mr. Thomas Harvey, of Catton, is spoken 
 of as one who aided the young artist with his advice (for 
 he was himself a painter) and introduced him to others 
 as a teacher of drawing, by which he obtained means of 
 following art in the intervals of his teaching. Better still, 
 Mr. Harvey had a small collection of Dutch and Flemish 
 pictures, and to the study of these Crome diligently applied 
 himself; and through them we may no doubt trace the 
 affinity many of his pictures have to those of Hobbema. 
 
 Mr. Harvey gave young Crome an introduction to 
 Sir William Beechey; who, his biographer states, also 
 commenced life with a house painter of Norwich, but 
 was then in the height of his reputation as a portrait 
 painter. Be this as it may, Beechey felt an interest in 
 the young landscape painter from the first interview, as 
 he himself tells us. 4 'Crome," says he, " when first I 
 knew him, must have been about twenty years old, and 
 was a very awkward, uninformed country lad, but ex- 
 tremely shrewd in all his remarks upon art, though he 
 wanted words and terms to express his meaning. As often 
 as he came to town he never failed to call upon me, and 
 to get what information I was able to give him upon the 
 subject of that particular branch of art which he made his 
 study. His visits were very frequent, and all his time was 
 spent in my painting room when I was not particularly 
 engaged. He improved so rapidly that he delighted and 
 astonished me. He always dined and spent his evenings 
 with me." Beechey had gone to Norwich in 1781, and 
 lived there four or five years, painting portraits of the 
 clergy and gentry of the town and neighbourhood. 
 Shortly after Crome's introduction to him, which must 
 
HIS CAREER IN ART. 
 
 365 
 
 have been about 1790, Beechey was elected into the 
 Academy ; he was a rising man, and soon to become 
 the court painter, so that Crome, through him, would no 
 doubt learn much of the art and artists of the metropolis. 
 
 Crome married early in life, and having to struggle 
 to maintain an increasing family, he gave himself up 
 largely to that branch of his art yielding the most 
 steady and certain remuneration ; teaching drawing both 
 in the families of his townsmen and of the neighbouring 
 gentry, as well as in the surrounding schools. Teaching 
 brought him many friends, and gave him local fame, but 
 did not provide purchasers for his pictures. At that 
 time purchasers, or as they then proudly termed them- 
 selves, " patrons of art," were few, and it was only when 
 a reputation had been already won, that an artist was 
 likely to have his works sought after. During his life- 
 time this was hardly the case with Crome : he sold his 
 pictures it is true, but at low prices, and it is only since 
 his death that his talent has been appreciated. 
 
 We have seen that he paid many visits to London, 
 but that he continued to reside in his native city. He 
 was not even an exhibitor at the Royal Academy until 
 1806, in which year he sent two landscapes, and con- 
 tinued to exhibit occasionally until 1818. Yet in all 
 these years he only contributed eight times, and the 
 whole number of his works seen in London was only 
 fourteen ; what wonder, then, that before the age of rail- 
 roads, an artist working locally in a remote angle of the 
 kingdom seldom visited for its scenery, should achieve 
 only a local fame. 
 
 But there were other causes besides the occupation of 
 his time in teaching, that prevented Crome being an 
 
366 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 exhibitor in London. He had gathered around him the 
 artists of his native city into a little fraternity, and in 
 February, 1803, they formed themselves into a society 
 for their mutual benefit and improvement, and eventually 
 for the public exhibition of their works. The society 
 was called " The Norwich Society, for the purpose of an 
 inquiry into the rise, progress, and present state of 
 Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture, with a view to 
 point out the best methods of study to attain greater 
 perfection in these arts." It was something of the nature 
 of a joint-stock association, since every member on his 
 election had to contribute his proportion of the value of 
 the property of the body. It was not confined to artists 
 by profession, since we find in the list of members, 
 tradesmen, clergymen, and literary men ; among others, 
 Mr. R. M. Bacon, editor and proprietor of the Norwich 
 Mercury, from whose columns much of our information 
 has been gleaned. Every member, however, prior to his 
 election, had to submit to two tests — one of his ability, 
 by submitting his works to the general body; the other, of 
 his personal popularity ; each member was balloted for, 
 the votes of three-fourths of the members present being 
 required to secure his election. The members met once 
 a fortnight for the purpose of reading works on art, and 
 the discussion of art topics. A subject was given out for 
 the next evening's discussion, in order that the members 
 might reflect upon it in the interim, and be prepared for 
 its free discussion at the ensuing fortnightly meeting. 
 Out of this institution arose the Norwich Exhibition of 
 Works of Art — one of the earliest, indeed we believe 
 the first annual exhibition of pictures in a provincial 
 town. It was not, however, until 1805 that the artists 
 
HIS MANNER — AND SUBJECTS. 
 
 367 
 
 were sufficiently prepared for the public exhibition of 
 their pictures; on the 6th of August in that year the 
 "Norwich Society of Artists" opened their works to 
 the public in the great room in Sir Benjamin Wrench's 
 court, and Crome was naturally a large contributor. 
 We find in the catalogue twenty-two of his pictures, and 
 he continued until his death to be a constant supporter of 
 the society. We learn from Mr. Wodderspoon's extracts 
 from the Norwich Mercury, published in 1858, that from 
 the first exhibition in 1805, until his death in 1821, 
 Crome 's pictures in the catalogues of the Society 
 amounted to 196; many of them, no doubt, are sketches, 
 some in oil, some in water-colours, some merely drawings. 
 It is a strong indication of his love for the scenery of 
 his native county that so few of his subjects are derived 
 from places he visited. He made journeys to Wales and 
 to the North of England, and we find a few pictures and 
 sketches from Wales and the lake country. He visited 
 Paris and the low countries, and we have three pictures 
 from these places ; but the great mass of his works are 
 from the lanes, the heaths, the rivers and shores of his 
 native county. 
 
 It was not Crome's practice to paint his pictures on 
 the spot ; he made drawings and sketches, and occa- 
 sionally painted before Nature in water-colours ; but his 
 pictures, the result of careful study and observation of 
 Nature, were painted in his studio. He wanted but little 
 subject : an aged oak, a pollard willow by the side of 
 the slow Norfolk streams, or a patch of broken ground, 
 in his hands became pictures charming us by their sweet 
 colour and rustic nature. Not but that he painted many 
 subjects which are quite unworthy of him, and many 
 
368 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 repetitions of pictures that had been popular favourites. 
 He was very facile in his execution, painted with a full 
 brush and very much at once ; and often, under the 
 pressure of necessity, produced slight works or repeated 
 others, to supply an immediate demand upon him. 
 Moreover he was fond of society, and, latterly, was apt 
 to indulge a little too freely. He loved boating, and no 
 doubt frequented the regattas and water frolics on the 
 Waveney, the Yare, and the Bure; was fond of the 
 pleasant idleness of watching the boats and boating 
 parties as he took refreshment and repose with good 
 companions in the Hinsby Gardens at Thorpe, and other 
 like resorts for citizens' ruralities. His palette and 
 canvas were often in demand to meet the wants arising 
 from such outbreaks, and his talents as a teacher were 
 in constant requisition. Had his art been laborious, the 
 production of so long a list of works would have been 
 an impossibility. The elder Mr. Bacon even says that 
 he was through life a drawing-master, that his fine 
 landscapes were painted in his holiday leisure, and that 
 he was a wine-bibber and improvident, often receiving 
 money on his unfinished works. We are told also that 
 very many of his pictures were never exhibited at all, 
 and that amongst such, several of his very important 
 subjects were included. 
 
 Crome seems to have founded his art on Hobbema, 
 Ruysdael, and the Dutch School, rather than on the 
 French and Italian painters ; except so far as these 
 were represented by our countryman "Wilson, whose 
 works he copied, and whose influence is seen mingled 
 with the more naturalistic treatment derived from the 
 Dutch masters. He had less finesse of execution, 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS ART. 
 
 869 
 
 and paid less attention to details than the Dutchmen, 
 but had a fine sense of generalized imitation. His picture 
 of "Mousehold Heath," painted probably in 1816, is a 
 good example of his style. It shows how very little 
 subject has to do in producing a fine picture. A sky, 
 a barren heath spreading away into the far distance, a 
 bank in the foreground, with a few weeds, are all the 
 materials the painter had to treat ; but the manner of 
 treating them has resulted in a beautiful work. The 
 sky is very luminous, with grand rolling clouds, acci- 
 dental shadows from which are thrown over the distance 
 and the foreground, leaving the middle distance luminous, 
 clear and cool, though rich and full of colour. A few 
 thistles and large weeds in the foreground, and some 
 small figures going away into the picture, complete 
 this interesting work: interesting from its painter-like 
 treatment, certainly not from subject. This picture has 
 a curious history, illustrative of the art of the picture- 
 dealer, which has been already alluded to. It was bought 
 by some sacrilegious brother of the craft, and cut down 
 the middle to enable him to sell it as two pictures — 
 indeed the work was, we believe, sold separately in this 
 state. Some more reverential possessor of pictures then 
 repurchased and reunited them ; and the picture has now 
 found its final resting-place in our national collection. 
 
 Another fine picture by this master is " A Clump of 
 Trees, Hautbois Common," probably that in the Norwich 
 Society's catalogue, in 1810. This was formerly in the 
 possession of Mr. Ellison, of Sudbrook Holme, near 
 Lincoln, and was given by his widow, with many other 
 British pictures, to the Fitzwilliam Gallery at Cambridge. 
 In it the painter has shown his skill in the use of acci- 
 
 vol. ii. 5 8 
 
370 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 dental lights. The foreground and middle distance are 
 in shadow, for Crome clung to the old traditions in art. 
 A gleam of light passes through the picture, barred by 
 the dark stems of the group of trees, and shows on the 
 borders of the common a distant village. This picture, 
 like many of his works, is rather one of tone than of 
 colour, and proves the painter's full knowledge of the 
 resources of his art. Mr. Wynn Ellis has "A Coast 
 Scene near Yarmouth," which has some of the qualities 
 of Turner ; although the effect is more forced, and it has 
 less of art, and is too solid in execution. A storm of the 
 murkiest character is rising over the sea, fast covering 
 the sky with a black shroud ; one bright and silvery gleam 
 yet uncovered, showing grand rolling cumuli touched 
 with the last light of the sun. A lugger, with a rich 
 gleam in its broad sail, is running into harbour ; a large 
 dismasted man-of-war lies high and dry. The work lacks 
 the grandeur of Turner. The boat seems small and tug- 
 like ; the fishing village on the shore is mean, and wants 
 quantity and detail ; the contrasts are too violent, but 
 the sky is nobly conceived. " Slate Quarries," the 
 property of Mr. Fuller Maitland, is another characteristic 
 picture by the master. It is founded on Turner's early 
 versions of Poussin, and seems a somewhat unfinished 
 work, yet with great local truth of colour and a fat 
 impasto of execution. There is also one small specimen 
 of his powers in the Sheepshanks Collection. In some 
 of his small pictures of heath scenes and broken ground, 
 Crome closely approximated to his Dutch prototypes. 
 We ourselves saw one of his pictures of this class sold at 
 Christie's as a Wynants. Yet in his more important 
 works there is great breadth of treatment, largeness of 
 
HIS PUBLISHED ETCHINGS. 
 
 371 
 
 manner, and mastery of execution, and, in all, a fine eye 
 for the general colour of Nature. 
 
 The Norwich Society, which had established itself 
 successfully as a public institution of the city, continued 
 its exhibitions until the year 1816, when a split in the 
 body of artists caused a separation. While many con- 
 tinued to exhibit in the old rooms— some, under the 
 leadership of Ladbroke, opened another exhibition in the 
 Assembly-rooms Plain. Crome, however, remained true 
 to the old party, and although he had of late years 
 decreased the number of his contributions, he sent, in 
 1816, eighteen works to their exhibition, among them one 
 of his few foreign pictures, " Bruges River— Ostend in the 
 Distance— Moonlight ; " the result of a visit to the Conti- 
 nent in the previous year. He continued to exhibit with 
 the Society until 1821, but died on the 22nd of April in 
 that year, previous to the opening of the exhibition. His 
 last illness was of an inflammatory nature, and carried 
 him off in the short space of seven days ; his constitution 
 having it is said been somewhat impaired by his early 
 labours as a house painter. He was buried at St. 
 G-eorge's, Norwich, and a large number of artists of his 
 native city as well as others attended his funeral. 
 
 Crome etched many plates of the scenery of his 
 native county, which, however, were not published until 
 after his death, when they were issued under the title of 
 " Norfolk Picturesque Scenery, consisting of a series of 
 thirty-one etchings by the late John Crome, founder of 
 the Norwich Society of Artists, and printed from plates 
 left by him, &c. 1834." Another issue appeared in 1838, 
 with a memoir of the painter by Mr. Dawson Turner, 
 which contained some additional etchings, and a portrait 
 
 58—a 
 
372 
 
 A CENTURY OP PAINTERS. 
 
 of Crome by D. B. Murphy, engraved by Sevier. After 
 his death an exhibition of his works in the hands of his 
 relatives, friends, and neighbours, took place. One 
 hundred and eleven pictures and studies were collected, 
 the catalogue of which will be found in Wodderspoon's 
 brochure. Crome not only painted landscapes, which 
 since his death have obtained increased and increasing 
 reputation, but he may claim to be the founder of a 
 provincial school of art at Norwich; a school with 
 peculiar characteristics, and in some respects differing 
 from metropolitan practice. His influence and maxims 
 had great weight with his contemporaries and friends, and 
 of his pupils, two at least, Stark and Vincent, deserve 
 some notice at our hands ; while his brother artist in the 
 society, John Sell Cotman, has obtained a name both 
 at home and abroad. 
 
 Of Crome's two pupils, James Stark is the best 
 known in London. Like his master, he was a native 
 of Norwich, born in the year 1794. He was the son 
 of a dyer in that city, a man well to do in his trade, 
 into which he had introduced many improvements, 
 was much respected in his native city, and honourably 
 mentioned by the local press at his death. Young Stark 
 early indicated a love of art, and in 1811 was articled 
 for three years to John Crome. He must already have 
 obtained some proficiency, since in the same year he 
 contributed five landscapes, in oil, to the Norwich Exhi- 
 bition, and in 1812 was elected a member of the Society, 
 exhibiting in that year several works. On the comple- 
 tion of his articles with Crome, young Stark came to 
 London in 1817, entered the schools of the Royal 
 Academy, and soon became an exhibitor at the British 
 
JAMES STARK — PUPIL OF CROME. 
 
 373 
 
 Institution, where he was successful in selling his works, 
 and even received a prize of 50/. from the governors. 
 From some unexplained cause he returned to Norwich, 
 where he settled for a time,, married, and remained 
 nearly twelve years. In 1827, he issued proposals for 
 the publication of a work on " The Scenery of the 
 Rivers of Norfolk ; " this was completed in 1834, when, 
 notwithstanding a good list of subscribers, it is understood 
 that his enthusiasm in producing a work of such merit 
 and interest led to little adequate reward. This pub- 
 lication gives us a good insight into the rural beauties of 
 this somewhat neglected county — beauties that must soon 
 pass away in this age of improvement. It does much 
 credit to the painter's talent, and to the school of art in 
 which he was educated. In 1830, Stark returned to 
 London, where he remained ten years. In 1840 he went 
 to reside at Windsor, finding many subjects for his canvas 
 in that beautiful locality. After many years' residence 
 there, he returned to London for the advantage of edu- 
 cating his son in art, and died on the 24th March, 1859, 
 in the 60th year of his age. 
 
 Stark exhibited at Suffolk Street, with the Society of 
 British Artists, intermittently from 1824 to 1839, and at 
 the Royal Academy, with intervals, from 1831 to 1859, 
 besides contributing frequently to the British Institution. 
 His works are simple, but very truthful and unobtrusive. 
 His " Rivers of Norfolk " give a favourable impression 
 of his talent as an artist ; the character of the local 
 scenery is well preserved, the scenes are full of appro- 
 priate figures and incidents, and the individuality of each 
 subject makes us feel sure of the painter's truth. Stark 
 founded his art on the principles of Crome, and the 
 
374 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 study of the Dutch landscape painters ; hut his treatment 
 of his subject, his handling and execution are petite and 
 mean when compared with his master's — thin, and want- 
 ing in the impasto and richness of Crome ; while in seeking 
 the quiet tone of colour of his Dutch examples he has 
 failed to obtain their brilliancy and richness. His pic- 
 tures have few faults, at the same time there is little in 
 them to warm into enthusiasm or to awaken delight. 
 
 Of Crome's other pupil, George Vincent, we have very 
 scanty information, although he is an artist of far higher 
 powers than Stark, and does honour, or might have 
 done, to his school and his master. He was a pupil 
 with John Crome, about the same time as Stark, and 
 with him first appears as a contributor to the Norwich 
 exhibition in 1811, his works being evidently quite ele- 
 mentary. In 1812, he again sent two pictures, still 
 showing a state of pupilage, since they are described in 
 the catalogue as " after Crome." He made rapid pro- 
 gress from this time, in 1814 exhibiting no less than 
 fifteen pictures. He exhibited two landscapes in the 
 British Institution in 1817, and four in 1818, at which 
 time he seems to have finally left Norwich to reside in 
 London, as his direction is given — "Wells Street, Oxford 
 Street." In 1820, we find him contributing to the 
 Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 
 "London from the Surrey Side of Waterloo Bridge." 
 (The society had thrown open its exhibition to others 
 than members, and did not confine itself to works in 
 water colours.) The picture, we believe, was afterwards 
 in Lord de Tabley's collection. But the work which 
 places him very high as an artist, and shows that he 
 would have proved a worthy rival of the great landscape 
 
GEORGE VINCENT — PUPIL OF CROME. 375 
 
 painters of his day, had he persevered in his course, is 
 the picture of " Greenwich Hospital," now or lately the 
 property of Mr. Fordham of Stourton Castle, who pur- 
 chased it at the sale of the pictures of the late Mr. 
 Wadmore. 
 
 Mr. Carpenter, the esteemed keeper of the print- 
 room in the British Museum, relates that some papers in 
 the possession of Mr. Wadmore were necessary to the 
 completion of a work he was at that time publishing, 
 and in negotiating to obtain them, Mr. Wadmore agreed 
 to part with them on condition that Mr. C. should give 
 Vincent a commission for a picture at the price of a 
 hundred guineas, without, however, mentioning its des- 
 tination, and that this picture should be the price of 
 the manuscripts. Vincent executed his work thoroughly, 
 giving all his powers to the task, and all parties were 
 well satisfied. The subject chosen is the hospital as seen 
 from the river, the sun being in the picture. The river 
 at full tide is crowded with craft and shipping, the sky 
 pearly and luminous, the sun obscured by the vessels, 
 and the light dispersed. When again seen in the 
 International Exhibition of 1862, this fine picture was 
 greatly appreciated for its talent and art. Latterly, 
 Vincent painted subjects seen under the sun, as did 
 Constable, but his treatment was wholly different ; broad 
 masses of greyish shadow were tipped and fringed with 
 the solar rays. 
 
 Soon after the date of the " Greenwich Hospital " 
 picture, Vincent fell into bad habits and money diffi- 
 culties ; his pictures were to be seen in the shop windows 
 of dealers, and gradually became more slight and less 
 studied. He had married a daughter of Dr. Cunoni, 
 
376 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and furnished a good house at Kentish Town, but when 
 he fell into difficulties he was gradually lost sight of by 
 the art world. The time of his death is unknown ; his 
 widow afterwards married Mr. Murphy, a writer for the 
 public press. 
 
 John Sell Cotman, another of the friends and asso- 
 ciates of Crome, and one who has won for himself a re- 
 putation in art far more than local, was born in Norwich 
 about the year 1782. He was the son of a linendraper 
 who carried on his business in London Lane, and sent 
 his boy to be educated at the Norwich Free Grammar 
 School, when Dr. Forster, who afterwards became the 
 first vice-president of the " Norwich Society," was prin- 
 cipal. On leaving school young Cotman evinced a great 
 love for art, much it is said to the annoyance of his 
 father, who wished the good-looking youth to take his 
 place behind the counter and follow him as a draper. 
 We have little account as to the early life of young 
 Cotman ; but have been informed by Miss Turner, the 
 daughter of Dawson Turner who was associated with 
 Cotman in several of his works, that much of the artist's 
 early life was spent in London, studying design, in com- 
 pany with Turner, Girtin, and Munn, and that with them 
 he used to frequent the well-known meetings at the house 
 of Dr. Munro — whence so many artists who afterwards 
 reached the goal of excellence, made their first start in 
 the race of art. 
 
 Cotman must have returned to Norwich soon after 
 the foundation of the Norwich Society of Artists, which 
 he joined in 1807. He then styled himself a portrait 
 painter; and in 1808, when he contributed no less than 
 sixty-seven pictures to the exhibition, several of them 
 
JOHN SELL COTMAN. 
 
 377 
 
 were portraits ; while others were in that class of art in 
 which he afterwards became so distinguished. Cotman 
 married early, and soon learnt that neither portrait nor 
 landscape painting yielded him sufficient means to main- 
 tain his increasing family. He therefore found it neces- 
 sary to become a drawing-master ; and being a young 
 man of very gentlemanly appearance and agreeable 
 manners, was welcomed at the houses of the surrounding 
 gentry, whose children he taught, and whose parks and 
 houses he sketched and painted ; and from the study of 
 whose pictures he drew knowledge and pleasure. He 
 left Norwich and settled at Yarmouth, where, in the 
 capacity of drawing-master, he made the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Dawson Turner, and taught his children. 
 
 As all the early water-colour art arose out of the 
 practice of the antiquarian draughtsmen, the painters 
 at the beginning of the century were still imbued with 
 somewhat of the spirit. Dawson Turner found in 
 Cotman a congenial worker, and soon began to con- 
 cert with him works illustrative of his own antiquarian 
 pursuits. In 1811, Cotman commenced publishing a 
 series of etchings of " The Architectural Antiquities of 
 Norfolk," and "Engravings of the Sepulchral Brasses." 
 In 1817 he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Turner, and 
 their three daughters, on a tour in Normandy, which 
 country he again visited in 1818 and in 1820 ; and the 
 result was a work in two folio volumes, written by Daw- 
 son Turner, and illustrated by Cotman, called Archi- 
 tectural Antiquities of Normandy, published in 1822. 
 In 1825, although still continuing to reside in Nor- 
 wich, where he had again returned, he appears as an 
 associate exhibitor of the London Society of Painters 
 
378 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in Water Colours, contributing to their exhibition con- 
 tinually until 1839. Obtaining the appointment of 
 drawing-master in King's College School, he removed 
 to London about the year 1834, and resided in Hunter 
 Street, Brunswick Square. Here his health began to 
 decline. He was afflicted with severe nervous depres- 
 sion, which gradually terminated in mental aberration, 
 and his death took place on the 28th of July, 1842, at 
 the age of sixty. 
 
 Cotman not only painted in water colours, but in oil 
 also ; in this medium, however, he was hardly successful, 
 and his works are solid and heavy. As a painter in 
 water colours he adopted a manner of his own, somewhat 
 derived, perhaps, from the art of Turner, but without his 
 refinement. He was a master of the principles of light 
 and shade, but at times made his knowledge too obvious. 
 His masses of light and dark were broad and simple ; 
 and he managed to indicate with little labour the 
 smaller forms in the masses without losing breadth in 
 his lights, or leaving his shadows sombre and obscure. 
 His smaller forms were sometimes added with the reed 
 pen. There was but little of literal imitation in his 
 pictures, which latterly became mannered, and showed 
 a want of renewed reference to Nature. His mode of 
 treating his subject was well suited to advance his pupils ; 
 to enable them to see Nature as a whole, capable of 
 being easily rendered on the reduced scale usually 
 attempted in water colours. One of his critics said 
 justly that " he had the happy and unusual gift of 
 converting the dryest architectural subjects into pictures 
 by an artist-like disposition of the light and shade, 
 by the arrangement of subordinate objects, and by the 
 
THE NORWICH SOCIETY. 
 
 879 
 
 pleasing introduction of accessories." His figures are 
 generally well-placed, and carry brilliant spots of light 
 or colour into the dark parts of his picture. He was, 
 above all things, ready with his pencil : it shows through 
 all his colour ; it supplies the detail and drawing of his 
 architecture, giving its sharp angles or its mouldering 
 decay, and when used without colour, giving the masses 
 of dark, the greys, and almost the colour of his subject ; 
 yet in colour itself he was defective, and merged all the 
 finesse of broken tints and of gradations in the broad 
 hue of sunlight or shadow. His architectural works led 
 the way to the pictorial study of the Norman towns, 
 and the rich and picturesque structures with which they 
 abound. 
 
 It remains for us to add a few words on the Norwich 
 Society of which these men were members. While those 
 who still remained true to the old society, Crome among 
 the number, continued in their old premises in Wrench's 
 Court, the seceders who formed the new society in 
 1816, did not long maintain it ; not that they deemed 
 it a new society, for their first exhibition in 1816 
 was called the twelfth, the last, apparently, in 1818 
 being named the fourteenth. Nor is it to be won- 
 dered at that it was unsuccessful. Norwich citizens and 
 Norfolk gentry did little for the arts, if we may judge 
 from the circular of the old society when it also was 
 removed to Exchange Street. " They had taken upon 
 themselves," they say, " a responsibility equal to about 
 2001. per annum, for the charges incidental to their 
 exhibition, in the conviction that the taste of the county 
 and city would not be backward to assist their efforts for 
 the promotion of art." But their hopes were unfounded. 
 
380 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Norwich might support a few portrait painters, and 
 require the services of some score of drawing-masters, 
 but patrons and purchasers of pictures did not abound ; a 
 local historian records "that since their establishment the 
 Norwich Society of Artists have exhibited about 4,600 
 pictures, the production of no fewer than 323 individuals, 
 while scarcely a single picture has been bought in the 
 Norwich rooms ; and the receipts at the door have never 
 amounted to a sum sufficient to meet the expenses." 
 After Crome's death, and Stark's and Cotman's removal 
 to London, the exhibition ceased to be mainly supported 
 by artists of the Norwich School, but was largely supple- 
 mented, as are those in other provincial towns, by works 
 of metropolitan artists who are invited to contribute ; 
 and the Norwich School as a peculiar provincial school 
 ceased to exist. 
 
( 381 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE LANDSCAPE PAINTERS — CONSTABLE, CALLCOTT, 
 AND COLLINS. 
 
 John Constable, R.A. — His Birth and Parentage — Decides to be a Painter 
 — His truly English Art — And original Manner — Seizes the peculiar 
 Characteristics of our Scenery — Truthfulness of his Pictures — Effect 
 of his own Manner of Painting under the Sun — His Maxims — Our 
 English Scenery described — The Source of his Inspiration — His Exe- 
 cution and Manner of Painting — Pre-Raphaelitism — Defects of mere 
 Imitative Art — His early and later Manner contrasted — The Painter's 
 Materials poor Substitutes for imitating Nature — Constable tried 
 great breadth of Treatment — Abandoned the Practice of Painting 
 direct from Nature — Description of his studied Sketches — His Appre- 
 ciation of the Old Masters— Visitorship at the Royal Academy — His 
 Character and his Art — Death — Augustus Wall Callcott, R.A. — His 
 Boyhood and bringing up — Turns Artist — Becomes Student at the 
 Academy — And Pupil of Hoppner — Tries Portraiture — Finds his true 
 bent in Landscape — Elected R.A. — Contributes largely to the Exhi- 
 bition — Then restricts himself to one Picture yearly — Attains a high 
 Reputation — Varley's astrological Prediction — He Marries — Travels 
 in Italy— His Popularity and Success — Knighted — His Raphael and 
 the Fornarina— Opinion upon this Work — Recollections of him and of 
 Lady Callcott — His " Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughters" 
 — Loss of Health — And failing Powers — Appointed Surveyor of the 
 Crown Pictures — Death — William Collins, R.A. — Birth — Begins Life 
 hi Art — His first Studies — Admitted to Morland's Painting-room — 
 Influence of Morland's Art — Student of the Academy — Exhibits his 
 first Picture — His Industry — And Art-friendships — Paints Landscapes 
 with Figures — Makes Progress but slowly — His Works become popular 
 — The " Sale of the Pet Lamb " — Subject described — Elected Associate 
 — His Difficulties — Tries Coast Scenes — Gains high Patronage — His 
 " Simday Morning" and " Happy as a King" — Visits Italy — But does 
 not add to his Reputation — Death — His Art — His Manner of Painting 
 and Materials — Choice of Subjects. 
 
 Turner, of whom we have already spoken, was not with- 
 out contemporaries, distinguished men practising the 
 same branch of art, yet in a manner quite their own, and 
 
382 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 aiming at original excellence. Of these John Constable, 
 R.A., was remarkable as the first who wholly emancipated 
 himself from the schools. In his works we find no lean- 
 ing to Dutch, French, or Italian art. His art is purely 
 and thoroughly English — English in subject, English in 
 feeling, English in treatment and execution. Turner, in 
 his early works at least, built much on the art of Claude 
 and Poussin ; so did Callcott. Gainsborough, English 
 as he was in almost every phase of his art, was not 
 clear of the dark masters and the " brown tree " school. 
 Morland was a Dutchman in subject, and in the mode of 
 composing his pictures. Crome built upon Ruysdael and 
 Hobbema. But Constable began with studying Nature ; 
 he was ever deep in the love of it, and ended as he 
 began. His nature, too, was English nature ; he never 
 visited Italy ; he did not even care for the mountain and 
 the torrent of his own land, but loved the flat pastures 
 and slow streams of his native Suffolk. The utmost south 
 to him was Salisbury ; in its grey cathedral and rippling 
 water he found subjects that suited his art far better 
 than the wild campagna of the seven-hilled city, or the 
 palaces that surround the enchanted bay. 
 
 Constable was born at East Bergholt, Suffolk, on the 
 11th June, 1776. He was the son of a wealthy miller, 
 who had inherited considerable property. He was first in- 
 tended for the Church. Then his father tried to make a 
 miller of him, but he had a loving preference for art, and 
 after a year he was left to follow his own bent. In 1795 
 he came to London. In 1799 he was admitted a student 
 of the Boyal Academy ; and in 1802 we find him exhibit- 
 ing his first picture. Soon gaining confidence in his 
 own powers, he wrote in the following year, " I feel now 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
 
 383 
 
 more than ever a decided conviction that I shall some 
 time or other make some good pictures, pictures that 
 shall be valuable to posterity if I do not reap the benefit 
 of them." He made one or two attempts at history, 
 then lost much time in painting portraits, the only art 
 which he found paid, and at last settled down to his true 
 art, as a landscape painter. In 1819 he gained his 
 election as associate, and ten years later his full mem- 
 bership. 
 
 The banks of the Stour made him, he owns, a 
 painter. He treated the Nature which he saw in a 
 thoroughly original manner, and chose it under an as- 
 pect that had previously been overlooked. Landscape 
 painters had hitherto usually painted with the sun at 
 their backs, to the right, or to the left, out of the picture, 
 looking to the landscape as the sun looks on it. But 
 Constable took another view ; he loved to see his subject 
 under the sun. Many had painted the sun in the picture 
 gradually sinking in the low horizon, and casting a 
 dreamy mist and glow over all the earth. Such treat- 
 ments Claude loved and painted finely ; Cuyp also loved 
 them, and gave them with unequalled breadth and beauty. 
 And Turner also loved to paint such, advancing a step 
 beyond either of his great forerunners. But Constable 
 chose the time when the sun was high in the heavens, 
 far above, out of his canvas, but still in front of him, 
 and painted almost always under the sun ; and much that 
 is peculiar in his art arose from this cause. 
 
 Moreover, he fully appreciated the special character- 
 istics of the English climate of our sea-surrounded land ; 
 its moisture causing all that wealth of foliage unknown 
 elsewhere, that lovely verdure which foreigners so deeply 
 
384 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 admire and wonder at. Its breezy freshness delighted 
 him, the rolling clouds drifting tender showers over the 
 rich meadows, and giving those accidental gleams of 
 light mingled with shade so lovely to watch, as their 
 shadows slowly float over hill and plain. He never 
 thought nature too green, nor left the full foliage of 
 summer for the brown tints of sun-dried autumn. Was 
 not England above all things green ; was it not so dis- 
 tinguished from other lands ? So he thought, and so he 
 ever painted. 
 
 Thus his skies were generally masses of warm grey 
 clouds rounded off with edges of silver ; here and there a 
 rift opening through them into the blue depths of heaven 
 beyond. Such skies he loved and painted in preference to 
 the calm and cloudless ; he knew that they produced those 
 flying shadows and contrasts of warm sunbeams and 
 cool greys, of deep blue under the emerald foliage, which 
 he felt to be the character of our scenery. But his 
 greatest peculiarity in the eyes of his critics arose more 
 particularly from the habit he had adopted of painting 
 under the sun — that glitter and sparkle of white lights on 
 his foliage, which by those who had never observed Nature, 
 or who had no eyes to read her aright, was nicknamed 
 " Constable's snow " — was laughed at as spotty, and 
 ever treated with ridicule by those who loved the patina 
 of brown pictures, and in whose eyes all freshness was a 
 sin against both taste and truth. It is told of Chantrey — 
 who, as having begun art as a landscape painter, ought 
 to have had some sense of Nature — that he took the 
 brush out of our painter's hands on one of the varnishing 
 days, and as poor Constable said, " brushed away all his 
 dew ; " passed a dirty brown glaze over all his truthful 
 
ORIGINALITY OF HIS ART. 
 
 385 
 
 sparkle to tone it down to the dull hue of conventional 
 truth. And his friend Leslie, speaking of his fine picture 
 " The Opening of Waterloo Bridge," says, " What would 
 he have felt could he foresee that in little more than a 
 year after his death, its silvery brightness was doomed 
 to be clouded over by a coat of blacking, laid on by the 
 hand of a picture dealer ; yet that this was done by way 
 of giving tone to the picture, I know from the best 
 authority, the lips of the operator ; who assured me that 
 several noblemen considered it to be greatly improved by 
 the process. The blacking was laid on with water, and 
 secured by a coat of mastic varnish." 
 
 Now, to convince oneself of the true and original 
 view of Nature that Constable took, it is only necessary 
 to look at Nature as he did, and we shall find these 
 white high lights, this sparkle and glitter, to be the 
 very characteristics of sun-light. All leaves that have 
 a polished, or semi-polished surface, such as the holly, 
 the walnut, the Spanish chestnut — indeed all leaves 
 more or less — when not grimed with smoke, or foul 
 with dust, are fitted to reflect light, and when so seen 
 between the sun and the spectator do, like mirrors, 
 reflect light from their surface — rays of crystal as from 
 bright jewels, which can only be represented, if at all, 
 by pure white. Still more do they sparkle and glitter 
 when the dew of morning, or the freshness of summer 
 showers is upon them, and this Constable as a painter 
 was the first to treat. This original view of Nature led 
 him to depict many other beauties, which he rendered 
 most truthfully : thus, seen under the sun, the shadows 
 are broad and liquid, with fulness of rich colour in them ; 
 at the edges of trees the true local colour in all its fulness 
 vol. 11. 59 
 
386 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 is found, while in other parts where the sun-rays pass 
 through the thinner foliage, the colour is enriched by 
 transmission, as it is through stained glass, and is in vivid 
 contrast with the full shadows. But this is never the 
 case opposite the sun, where the colour is modified and 
 somewhat neutralized by the reflected grey or blue of 
 the heavens. Even in the broad masses of the nearer 
 foreground, as seen under the sun, there is somewhat of 
 transmission through the waving blades of grass and the 
 weedy herbage, in which the painter revelled, adding to 
 the sense of colour and fulness ; while the bright glitter 
 and sparkle of the japonica leaves, of the dewdrops, or of 
 the shower, enrich it still further by contrast, and refresh 
 by the variety they give. When points of pure colour 
 arise from flowering weeds, how jewel-like are they with 
 the transmitted light through their bright petals ; the 
 mallow or the field-poppy burn as it were, and sparkle 
 in the ray. All this the painter has felt, and much more, 
 has taught us to feel also ; but it required a generation 
 to do so — a generation of ignorance to pass away, a new 
 and more Nature-loving generation to arise. The brown- 
 fiddle school did not appreciate him ; the lovers of smoke- 
 dried masters could not see any merit in him. Fuseli, 
 whose pictures are, as to colour, but honey and treacle, 
 could see in him nothing but a painter of watery skies 
 and coming showers, and thought it witty to call to the 
 Academy porter, " Stroulger, bring me my umbrella, I 
 am going to see Mr. Constable's pictures." 
 
 Thus we have seen that he was original in his mode 
 of viewing Nature — inventing, as it were, the practice of 
 painting under the sun wheri |ft llia^4wiaina*y. is high in 
 the heavens ; inventing — ay, truly inventing, — so clearly 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND MAXIMS. 
 
 387 
 
 inventing a new method of seeing Nature that, were 
 patents granted in art, he might have described his inven- 
 tion for a patent. It has also been said that he was one 
 of the first landscape painters to emancipate himself wholly 
 from the influence of foreign schools ; and a glance at 
 his pictures, his " Salisbury Cathedral," now belonging 
 to Mr. S. Ashton of Manchester, his " Hay- wain," now 
 belonging to Mr. C. Young of Eyde, his " Jumping Horse," 
 his "Flatford Mill," "Dell in Helmington Park," or 
 any of his bits of "Hampstead Heath," will show how 
 little he adhered to the recipe " composition " school. 
 He was satirical by nature, and could justly be so on the 
 connoisseurs who asked, " Where is your brown tree ? " 
 or who would lay down rules of what "foregrounds 
 should or should not be." He well knew what they 
 should be ; that they should be carefully studied from 
 nature ; that water- weeds should grow on the banks of 
 his streams, and not on high uplands ; that each plant 
 had a separate individuality, characteristics different from 
 all other plants ; and that weedage should not be done 
 to pattern, as was rather too much the case even with 
 Claude. He was accustomed to say, " Paint your fore- 
 ground well and truly, and the middle distance will take 
 care of itself," showing at least how much he valued his 
 foreground. To him painting was wholly a matter of 
 feeling, not of rule ; he was heard to lament after a visit 
 from one of the tribe of small critics, who had assured him 
 that this was wrong and that against all rule, that he 
 wanted a tree here, a light there, and changes everywhere 
 — " Ah ! there is my day's painting done; that little fellow 
 with his cockettyhoop manner, has taken away all my 
 feeling." Then, again, he was entirely English in the 
 
 59—2 
 
388 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 subjects he chose— locally English, no doubt, but still 
 purely English. Look at any or all of his pictures and 
 see how England rises before us — England in all her 
 wealth of picturesque beauty — not "trimmed and 
 frounced," not clipped and cropped as the corn-manu- 
 facturers disfigure her ; but English nature as it holds its 
 own in our rude heaths and ferny commons, and as it re- 
 asserts itself in every forsaken nook or neglected corner 
 where, left alone awhile, it breaks loose from the bonds 
 of cultivation, and bursts into a wild weedage of teazle 
 and burdock, a rich growth of foliage and wild flowers 
 such as few other lands can boast. 
 
 Our scenery is picturesque and strangely contrasted ; 
 nowhere more contrasted than in the neighbourhood of 
 the monster city. There a population of thousands, nay, 
 of millions, are in close contiguity to vast spaces of 
 uncultivated land, open and undivided, thinly populated 
 by the labouring poor; yet now, alas! disappearing 
 before the greed of enclosure. Tangled heaths and bare 
 commons, stretching even to the far-away sea, inter- 
 change at intervals with fields of waving corn parted off 
 by wild hedgerows sweet with the May-flower in its month, 
 with the honeysuckle and the rose in their season. Ever 
 and again the wooded park with its noble trees, and rich 
 pastures where the cattle graze at their leisure or 
 ruminate idly in the shallow rippling stream, is succeeded 
 by the marshy moor with its reedy canal, over whose 
 sluggish waters " slow barges heavy trailed " (the halyer 
 seated sideways on his horse), wind through the land ; 
 leaving behind the fleck of blue smoke from the low 
 chimney, drifting athwart the dark woods that clothe the 
 sides of the distant hills. Bordering the moor and the 
 
HIS SUBJECT — ENGLISH SCENERY. 
 
 389 
 
 marsh, the heath and the common, are the grey cottages 
 of the tillers of the soil, the hoary thatch capped with 
 deep green velvet moss ; the few sheep, the straggling 
 geese, the village asses, tenants of the waste, add to the 
 picturesque ; here and there a winding road, deep and 
 rutty, barred with green stripes between horse-track and 
 wheel ruts, leads to the distant windmill on the uplands, 
 whose sails turn slowly in the summer breeze that waves 
 the feathery bracken and shimmers away over the 
 heaven-blue waters. 
 
 Such is our English pastoral scenery ; such Constable 
 played in in his infancy, and painted in his manhood. 
 How totally different from what Claude saw and painted 
 — his broad campagna with its ruined aqueducts, his 
 olive-clothed slopes and remains of classic cities ; or to 
 Poussin's castles and chestnut forests, and the wild 
 ravines of the Alban Hills ; or even to Hobbema with 
 his brown stunted oaks ; or Kuysdael with his fir forests 
 and his cascades ! Not that it is desired to set Con- 
 stable in contrast with the art of these great painters, 
 but to indicate the different scenery of his choice. 
 
 Free from the shackles of the schools, Constable was 
 free also to choose his own mode of execution. With 
 him the tool was nothing, nor the workmanship, but 
 only the effect produced. There was on his part no 
 wish to astonish by eccentricity of execution — like the 
 painter in Queen Elizabeth's day, who, affecting to find 
 painting with his fingers too easy, took to working with 
 his toes — but simply as setting up feeling and truth 
 above labour and execution. He mostly laid in his 
 works with the palette knife, thus obtaining great flat- 
 ness and breadth of touch ; and avoiding all littleness 
 
390 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 of execution and attention to mere details, he was 
 enabled to treat the general truths of Nature as to 
 colour and chiaroscuro largely and simply. A minor 
 beauty arising from this practice was the full purity of 
 white or other solid pigments, or tints mixed with them, 
 as left by the flat knife, unchanged in the slightest degree 
 by the greyness occasioned by the texture of brush- 
 marks. 
 
 What he really sought, however, was the thorough 
 abstraction of his attention from details, to concentrate 
 his whole feeling on the general effect of Nature ; to allow 
 his memory to recall those deep impressions of beauty, 
 often most evanescent and transient, but which, as 
 delighting the painter, it is his peculiar province to pro- 
 duce for the delight of others. Constable's practice thus 
 wholly differed from the new school of landscape painting 
 which arose out of what is called pre-Kaphaelism. That 
 system inculcates the exact and literal imitation of parts, 
 gradually merging them into a whole ; while Constable 
 viewed his work from the first as a whole, afterwards 
 adding just sufficient detail to give truth of form without 
 destroying the higher qualities arising from generaliza- 
 tion. The new system is admirably adapted for study, 
 for the early practice of the young painter ; but really 
 fine art, such as the art of Turner, of Gainsborough, of 
 Wilson, of Claude, or of Cuyp, will never be achieved if 
 literal imitation becomes the end instead of the means. 
 Mere imitation, bit by bit, is certain to produce works 
 less like Nature than when its general expression is 
 sought after. Not only are there numerous transient 
 effects, which can only be reproduced by an act of 
 memory; such as the storm and the cloud shadow 
 
HIS MANNER DESCRIBED. 
 
 391 
 
 passing over the long-distant ranges, the rainbow, the 
 fleeting glories of sunset and sunrise, but even the 
 momently changing of the sun in his daily round alters 
 the light and shade and changes the colours ; so that if 
 he who proceeds by imitation does not subordinate his 
 imitation to a preconceived idea or poetical feeling, it 
 must be a medley of incongruous parts ; and if he does, 
 he is only doing by a compromise what was the master- 
 principle of the older painters. That Constable was 
 capable of exact and literal imitation, of working out of 
 doors direct from Nature, is shown in various of his 
 early works. "A View of Hampstead Heath," No. 36, 
 in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington, is 
 an excellent example. It is a minute and careful study, 
 painted on the spot, and is as perfect in its handling as 
 any work of the new school. That he deliberately and 
 from judgment chose to work from studies and from 
 memory in his studio, must be inferred from his having 
 abandoned the practice of out-door painting and adopted 
 the other method. A contrasting example to the one 
 just named will be found in No. 35, also "A View of 
 Hampstead Heath," wherein the general treatment he 
 latterly adopted, and all the peculiarities of execution he 
 delighted in, maybe compared with the imitative method. 
 In this the details are suppressed, and breadth of colour 
 and light and shade sought after ; and it will be allowed 
 that for freshness, a prevailing sense of daylight, and for 
 richness of colour, it is of the two far the finer work. 
 
 Painting is, and must be, a sacrifice of less signi- 
 cant truths in order to obtain truth as a whole. How 
 can we, with our poor pigments, represent the lumin- 
 ousness and the infinite gradations seen in Nature, 
 
392 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 either of light and dark or of colour ? Black and 
 white, for instance — the pigments which represent for 
 us the extremes of light and darkness — what relation 
 has white paint, seen in the subdued light of room 
 or gallery, where pictures must be seen, to the bright 
 light on the rolling cumulus in the summer heavens ; 
 let alone the sun, the source of light, or its reflec- 
 tion on stream or from polished surfaces ? or black, 
 to that intensity of darkness when from sunny daylight 
 we look into some deep cavernous gloom ? The same 
 may be said of all the pigments which represent colour ; 
 they are but sorry substitutes for Nature's hues, played 
 upon by every varying sunbeam, and changing in every 
 breeze — the light sometimes reflected from, sometimes 
 transmitted through leaves and petals, subdued by greys, 
 and by infinite reflections from cloud or sky ; while the 
 artist's gradations can only be obtained by degrading his 
 colours into tints with white, or diluting them with a 
 changing and changeable medium. The infinite grada- 
 tions that exist in Nature are almost unattainable in art ; 
 so refined and delicate are they that the coarse media of 
 pigments and varnishes cannot produce them. Look at 
 our English skies in a hazy summer noon, when there is 
 little wind, and the firmament is covered with fleecy 
 clouds ; or at the distant mountains seen under the same 
 influence, when every ravine, every rock and boulder 
 and stunted tree, may be seen miles away, marked and 
 distinct to the eye, with gradations so infinitely tender 
 and delicate that they are all included in one haze of 
 blue ! What pigments, what execution will render such 
 delicate transitions ? Certainly not the crude colours 
 at our command, or the oil vehicles with which we 
 
INSUFFICENCY OF ART-MATERIALS. 393 
 
 temper them. Hence the painter has to substitute 
 other truths, and resorts to "breadth," whereby he 
 masses the parts and loses the gradations ; suppressing 
 details, he makes the general colour of the mass to 
 include the many minor forms and hues which his 
 limited means prevent him from producing with adequate 
 truth. For such as are important to retain he reserves 
 his palette ; refusing for awhile to avail himself even of 
 the full purity of the pigments he has at his command, 
 in order that he may have means, by enhancing points 
 of light or of colour higher, purer, and brighter than the 
 rest, to make some object of interest sparkle and glow on 
 the spectator's eye. 
 
 Again, reduction in size compels the painter to the 
 same expedients. Objects in Nature that tell palpably 
 in the eye, are, when reduced to the relative scale of 
 our picture, so microscopically small, that we must 
 either unduly enlarge them, or suppress them, and seek 
 compensation in that " breadth " which includes them. 
 In working direct from Nature these minute beauties 
 enchant us ; telling on the eye of the painter, he can 
 hardly avoid the endeavour to imitate them, and thus 
 the whole is sacrificed to the parts. It must be remem- 
 bered, also, that what may appear to the painter, when 
 in face of Nature, almost faithful imitation of the scene 
 before him, becomes tame and changed when his work 
 is brought into the subdued light of his own room. It 
 is said that the Dutch painters of candle-light effects 
 wrought by daylight, looking through a small aperture 
 into a room where their subject was seen illuminated by 
 candle-light. Now, whether true or not, this is the 
 effect to be obtained — the candle-light must appear to 
 
894 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 be candle-light when seen by daylight ; and the sunny 
 landscape must not merely be bright and glowing when 
 the painter is on the field of his out-of-door labours, but 
 must bring the sun and the glow of daylight into our 
 rooms : and as every painter must be aware of the 
 change that takes place when out-of-door work is seen 
 in-doors, he will be aware that some treatment must be 
 adopted to insure that his work when seen in-doors shall 
 have the effect of out of doors. 
 
 All these considerations, joined, no doubt, to a fine 
 perception of truth and an accurate memory of form and 
 colour, led Constable to forego painting direct from 
 Nature, which he was so well qualified to excel in, and 
 to form instead, a style and manner built on careful 
 studies ; by which he was better enabled to place before 
 us all those large truths of landscape scenery, which 
 had impressed him with their poetry and beauty, and 
 thoroughly to enable us for all time to enjoy them 
 through him. 
 
 There are in the possession of Mr. H. Vaughan, of 
 Cumberland Terrace, Kegent's Park, commencements for 
 two of Constable's pictures, which are invaluable, not 
 only for their intrinsic qualities, but as illustrations of 
 his mode of conducting his pictures. They are studies 
 for " The Hay- wain," one of his finest works, the pro- 
 perty of C. Young, Esq., of Hyde ; and for " The Jump- 
 ing Horse," sometimes called " The Canal," exhibited in 
 1825. The canvases are the size of the completed works. 
 The subjects are laid in with the knife, with great breadth 
 and in a grand and large manner. Various glazings 
 have then been passed over the parts, to bring together 
 and enrich them (even the skies are glazed) ; and then 
 
constable's manner of working. 395 
 
 the whole has again had enhancing points of colour 
 added, and brightness and daylight obtained by further 
 draggings and knife touches. With the exception of the 
 glazings, it would seem as if the brush had not been used 
 upon them ; hence there is a complete absence of any 
 sort of detail. In " The Jumping Horse " — perhaps the 
 finer of the two studies — are several figures in a boat on 
 the canal ; they are in shadow, and are merely flat 
 masses of grey ; the chestnut horse jumping the bar of 
 the lock, with his red-waistcoated rider, are mere blots 
 of colour, yet of the purest local truth. The trees are 
 masses of green, with grand, simple, grey branches, but 
 no indications of leafage. Viewed at a distance, the 
 scheme of the picture is complete, the local truth of 
 colour beautifully felt, and the freshness and daylight 
 are startling. 
 
 When Constable had carried his study thus far, and 
 was pleased with the indications it contained, he would 
 leave it without further completion, perhaps fearing to 
 lose what he was so satisfied with — for it must be con- 
 fessed that Constable was a man who had sufficient self- 
 esteem, in the language of the phrenologists, to think 
 well of his own works — he would leave it without com- 
 pletion, and commence again on a new canvas, endea- 
 vouring to retain the fine qualities of the studied sketch, 
 adding to it such an amount of completeness and detail 
 as could be given without loss of the higher qualities 
 of breadth and general truth. How completely this was 
 effected would be at once seen by comparing the incom- 
 plete with the completed work. There was an opportunity 
 for doing this during the International Exhibition of 
 1862, when Mr. Vaughan's studies were hung for a time 
 
396 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 on loan in the Sheepshanks Collection, and Mr. Young's 
 pictures were in the adjacent gallery. It was a lesson that 
 might be most valuable to young artists if they could read 
 it aright, and to the despisers of the method followed 
 by the older masters of our school. Constable hiniself 
 knew the value of such studies, for he rarely parted with 
 them. He used to say of his studies and pictures that 
 he had no objection to part with the corn, but not with 
 the field that grew it. Since his death, however, several 
 of these studies have been dispersed. A fine one for 
 " The Lock" is in the possession of Mr. W. Bashall, of 
 Farington Park, Preston. 
 
 Because Constable despised the painters who were 
 content to see Nature only through the eyes of others, 
 it must not be presumed that he did not feel the merits 
 of the great painters among the old masters, or was 
 untouched by the beauty of their works. He was a 
 great admirer of all that was truly good in landscape 
 art ; he made studies from Ruysdael's pictures, pointing 
 out their merits with great delight, and the power of 
 observation they evinced. Even the landscape art of 
 the higher schools was fully appreciated by him ; and 
 one of his latest labours was lecturing upon the beauties 
 of the landscape of Titian's Peter Martyr. 
 
 Moreover, it is rather contrary to the usual practice of 
 the Royal Academy that a landscape painter should be a 
 visitor in the life-school, but at Constable's desire he was 
 elected to that office. He selected for study some of the 
 finest figures from Raphael, and from Michael Angelo's 
 Sistine Chapel, and posed the models in the life-school 
 in like attitudes ; an excellent mode of study, enabling the 
 students to see how these great masters had treated nature. 
 
HIS TEACHING IN THE LIFE-SCHOOL. 397 
 
 Among other figures, lie placed one in the attitude of a 
 well-known Eve, and thought it would be useful to the 
 students to contrast the flesh with real foliage. Accord- 
 ingly he had a large laurel bush cut down from his 
 garden at Hampstead, to stand in the place of the tree 
 of knowledge. Unfortunately (as his visitorship was 
 just at Christmas time), the man employed to convey it 
 to Somerset House was seized by the police as a garden 
 robber, who had stolen the tree for Christmas decora- 
 tions ; and notwithstanding his protestations, both he 
 and the tree were carried to the station-house, which Con- 
 stable had to visit in order to redeem them from durance. 
 Finally, the bush with a few oranges tied on to give colour, 
 and to represent the forbidden fruit, did service as a sup- 
 port to the female representative of Eve ; much to the 
 satisfaction of the students, and the gratification of Etty's 
 love of colour, who, as usual, was at his post on this 
 occasion. 
 
 Constable has been most fortunate in his biographer, 
 but Leslie has painted him couleur de rose, and transfused 
 his own kindly and simple spirit into the biography. 
 The landscape painter, though of a manly nature, was 
 eminently sarcastic, and very clever at saying the bitterest 
 things in a witty manner. This had no doubt been in- 
 creased by the neglect with which the would-be con- 
 noisseurs had treated his art, and the sneers of common- 
 place critics. He may be said to have been born a little 
 too early ; before the time when Nature was appreciated 
 rather than pictures, and within the period when Dutch 
 finish was thought indispensable to a fine work. Yet 
 he certainly was the forerunner of the race of artists 
 who, about the period of his mid- career, began to rely 
 
398 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 upon their own impressions of Nature in the treatment 
 of their subjects, and to reject the traditional dogmas of 
 art. There can be no doubt that Constable had great 
 influence on the landscape art, both of his own country 
 and of France, inducing much of that candid acceptance 
 of Nature, as contradistinguished from compositions, which 
 some of the artists who succeeded him here, affect to 
 follow even too minutely. Yet Ins peculiar treatment of 
 his subject has not been followed up by auy. One painter 
 only of his own time, whether from original observation, 
 or following in Constable's footsteps, adopted the same 
 practice ; this was George Vincent, of whom we have 
 already spoken, who almost invariably practised painting 
 " under the sun." As to Constable's influence on 
 French art, arising from the picture of " The Hay- wain," 
 which he sent in 1824 to the Paris Exhibition, and for 
 which he was honoured with a gold medal, it is acknow- 
 ledged even by their own art critics ; and there is no 
 doubt that the school of which Troyon was so able a repre- 
 sentative, was initiated by the admiration these fine works 
 obtained. Constable's influence upon Leslie and his art 
 has been spoken of in the account of that painter's 
 works. 
 
 Constable died in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, 
 on the 1st of April, 1837. He had worked hard for 
 appreciation and fame, and it must have been with pain 
 that he said of himself in reference to his work engraving 
 by Lucas — " The painter himself is totally unpopular, 
 and will be so on this side of the grave ; the subjects 
 nothing but art, and the buyers wholly ignorant of that." 
 Again — " My art flatters nobody by imitation, it courts 
 nobody by smoothness, it tickles nobody by petiteness, it is 
 
AUGUSTUS WALL CALLCOTT, R.A. 
 
 399 
 
 without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee : how can I there- 
 fore hope to be popular ? " But his conviction that his 
 works would be valued by posterity soon found its fulfil- 
 ment. His friends purchased his fine work, " The Corn- 
 field," and presented it to the National Gallery. A better 
 feeling for his art at once arose, and his pictures are now 
 treasured in all collections, and prized to their worth. 
 
 His competitor, Callcott, passed through life side by 
 side with him, exhibiting from year to year with him on 
 the walls of the Academy, but with what different success ; 
 fashion favoured the one and turned her back upon the 
 other. The one was in his day the popular favourite, 
 the other unknown and neglected. Now, if we had to 
 adjudge the precedence, it would be given to the purely 
 original English art of John Constable. 
 
 Augustus Wall Callcott, R.A., was born on the 20th 
 of February, 1779, in the quiet suburb of Kensington 
 Gravel Pits, not as now abounding with art and artists, 
 but a rural neighbourhood separated from London by 
 green-fields and workmen's villages, by the parks and 
 gardens, in our day so trim and well-frequented, but then 
 neglected and run to waste— the park stocked with 
 deer, the gardens tangled and unhealthy ; but from which 
 "dogs and livery servants" were rigorously excluded. 
 Callcott's family had resided long in the neighbourhood ; 
 his elder brother had adopted the profession of music, in 
 which art he developed rare genius, and became the cele- 
 brated Dr. Callcott. He had studied under Dr. Cooke, 
 at Westminster, and his younger brother, the future artist, 
 was in his boyhood a chorister in the Abbey, until his 
 voice broke, and his desire for art outweighed his love 
 of music. In 1797, he was admitted a student of the 
 
400 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Koyal Academy, and became for a time a pupil of Hopp- 
 ner the painter, then in the zenith of his professional 
 career. Following the direction of his studies he began 
 life as a portrait painter, and we find him exhibiting in 
 1799,'forthe first time, a " Portrait of Miss Koberts," 
 and again appearing as a portrait painter in 1801. In 
 1802, he exhibited a portrait of Dr. Gray, the father of 
 the distinguished naturalist, Dr. Gray of the British 
 Museum ; it is now in the Koyal Society, and is a work 
 of much merit for so young a painter. But Callcott's 
 natural bent was evidently in another direction. In the 
 same year he exhibited five landscapes ; and landscape 
 art constituted the labour of his life until a late period 
 of his career. 
 
 In 1804 he was not an exhibitor, but in the five 
 following years he contributed twenty landscapes, which 
 showed such increasing merit that in 1806 he was 
 elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1810 
 a full member ; in which year he again exhibited a 
 single portrait. His presentation picture, " Morning," 
 will give us a good insight into his art at this period. 
 It is a vigorous and manly production, painted with 
 a full pencil and much impasto, in a crisp, large, flat 
 manner. It has great freshness, and is far removed 
 from the over-laboured tameness of his later works. 
 " The Old Pier at Littlehampton," painted in 1812, 
 and now in the Vernon collection (No. 345), is a picture 
 of less merit, but is a proof of his early adoption of a 
 quiet, prevailing tone in his landscapes, rather than 
 seeking for colour ; a principle which, modified by the 
 nature of the work, continued to be characteristic of his 
 landscape and figure subjects to the end. 
 
HIS PROGRESS IN ART. 
 
 401 
 
 In 1811, the year after his election, he exhibited ten 
 landscapes, and in 1812 six; but whether it had been 
 whispered to him that his art was not up to his early 
 promise, or that with his sound judgment he felt such to 
 be the case ; or, it may be, struck with the grand works 
 of Turner, or the rising talent of Constable, he seems 
 from this time to have determined to limit his appear- 
 ance in public. For the two next years he exhibited 
 nothing, and thenceforth, for the next twelve years, put 
 all his strength into a single picture for the annual ex- 
 hibitions. During this period he painted his finest pic- 
 tures and undoubtedly raised his reputation to the first 
 rank. His best works were mostly English landscapes ; 
 " The Entrance to the Pool of London," exhibited in 
 the Eoyal Academy, in 1816, and " The Mouth of the 
 Tyne," in 1818, both of which were in the International 
 Exhibition of 1861, are evidences of his claim to this 
 distinction ; they had an individuality of their own, and 
 showed an appreciation of English atmosphere and 
 English scenery not to be found in the works of his 
 later years. 
 
 Callcott and Mulready were neighbours from early 
 times, and being seven years the elder, Callcott was a little 
 looked up to by his junior. Yarley also was intimate 
 with them. A curious story used to be told among the 
 members of Callcott's family, and during the life-time of 
 both parties, relating to Varley's practice of, and belief 
 in astrology. Varley asked Callcott to give him his exact 
 age, and having obtained it, cast his nativity, sealed it up 
 and gave it to Mulready, charging him to keep it safely 
 until Callcott was fifty years old. The paper, it is said, 
 was laid aside and forgotten until Callcott, then in his 
 vol. ii. 60 
 
402 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 fiftieth year, wrote to Mulready, to invite him to his 
 wedding, which was about to take place with Mrs. 
 Graham, the widow of Captain Graham. Mulready 
 recollected Varley's sealed paper and his injunction, and 
 took the document with him, opening it in the presence 
 of the assembled company ; the contents ran thus— 
 " Callcott will remain single until he is fifty, and then 
 will marry and go to Italy." As the painter really was 
 to make a trip, shortly after his wedding, to that country, 
 it was thought a wonderful coincidence. Over and over 
 again have we heard this tale told, with many other of 
 Varley's wild fancies; but if our dates are accurate, 
 Callcott was married on the 20th February, 1827, his 
 forty-eighth birthday, and started for Italy on the 12th 
 of May following, so that we have a false date, or Varley 
 made a false prediction. This was Calico tt's first journey 
 to Italy, but he had previously been in Paris and in 
 Holland. 
 
 On Callcott's return from Italy in June, 1828, he 
 seems to have entirely changed his views as to exhibiting ; 
 perhaps it was necessary, as he was now married, to 
 provide for a larger establishment. His wife also assisted 
 with her pen ; and her work on early Italian painters added 
 to her husband's reputation from his pencil. His studio 
 in "The Mall" was frequented by the titled and the 
 rich ; his art became fashionable ; the painter himself 
 was courteous and somewhat of a courtier — far different 
 from his great competitor, Turner. His pictures, bright, 
 pleasant of surface, and finished in execution, were suited 
 to the appreciation of his public, and not beyond their 
 comprehension ; commissions poured in upon him. In 
 the week before the pictures were sent into the Academy, 
 
RAPHAEL AND THE FOKNARINA." 403 
 
 the occupants of lines of carriages usually waited their 
 turn to be admitted to see his works before they left 
 the painter's easel. Instead of the one picture of rare 
 excellence which he had formerly shown as the public 
 pledge of his improvement, he began to send the full 
 number allowed by the Academy laws; instead of the 
 careful study of Nature and Nature's effects, which he 
 made with a view to perfect such works, he began to rely 
 on sketches and on his memory— to rely on his art- 
 knowledge, his composition, his sweet execution; and 
 his works increased in art, or what is called art, and 
 decreased in Nature. 
 
 In 1837, on the accession of her Majesty, he received 
 the honour of knighthood, and this year, reverting 
 rather to his early art, he sent to the Academy a picture 
 of " Eaphael and the Fornarina," the figures life-size, 
 the whole finished with the careful execution of a cabinet 
 picture. When again exhibited in 1864, at the British 
 Institution, it looked much as it did when it left the 
 artist's studio. Callcott himself used to say— "A bad 
 picture never did crack," and his, as to surface, was 
 what it is as a picture, very respectable. A tame couple 
 very tamely executed; tediously proper and tediously 
 true : not an atom of fire, not a fault ; except that the 
 whole was a mistake, and made us long for the happy 
 easy blotting of Gainsborough and Eeynolds : it had 
 neither sparkle nor life ; neither the mental nor physical 
 complexion of Italy in either of the lovers. It is the 
 property of Sir G. E. Philips, Bart. 
 
 Callcott's health was not strong as he advanced in 
 years. Lady Callcott's, after a time, wholly failed ; and 
 for many years before her death, which happened in 
 
 60—2 
 
404 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 1842, she was a complete invalid, confined to her 
 chamber, almost to her bed. Yet in that sick chamber 
 she managed, in the intervals of her suffering, to draw 
 around her a circle of friends, of literary companions, of 
 artists young and old ; to learn of, and be interested in, 
 the advance and social progress of the outer world from 
 which she was so much cut off. In the long summer 
 evenings, when these occasional gatherings took place, as 
 the sun declined in the west and the day faded into 
 twilight, the room and the company formed a picture 
 such as memory reverts to with many regrets, and we 
 are reminded of our own art aspirations, and the subjects 
 of interest there discussed. The little bed on which the 
 lady sat, partly dressed and propped up with pillows, 
 covered with rich draperies, was placed before one of 
 the windows of a room in the old house— a copyhold 
 tenement of the Callcotts— in which the painter lived and 
 died. Yines were trained across and across the window, 
 and through their leaves the rays of the setting sun came 
 tempered and moderated into green coolness. Inside 
 the room there was usually a small selection of rare 
 plants in pots, and little bouquets of choice flowers on 
 the tables. Two or three dogs formed part of the com- 
 pany one of large size was a great favourite with the 
 
 mistress; while the visitants, seated about on the old 
 furniture of a quaint, picturesque, and irregular room, 
 gave the painters of the party many hints of colour and 
 effect as the light sank away into gloom. Lady Callcott 
 mostly supported the conversation. She was somewhat 
 imperious in her state chamber ; the painter being more 
 of a silent listener, until some incident of travel, some 
 question of art, roused him up to earnest interest or 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF CALLCOTT. 
 
 405 
 
 wise remark. He was a kindly-hearted man, and always 
 seemed interested in the progress of the young ; being 
 quite willing to communicate to them his art-lore, and 
 to advise with them on the progress of their pictures ; 
 and for his sake the young painters (who in the latter 
 days of his life had begun to flock to Kensington, for 
 that its air was clearer and its daylight longer than in 
 Newman Street and Charlotte Street,) made it a rule to 
 take their works on the morning of sending in to the 
 Academy, and range them before the sick lady who 
 could not leave her chamber, that she might have a 
 sight at least of some portion of the coming exhibition ; 
 and then, their labours done for awhile, off they trooped 
 to Willesden or Eichmond, or some quiet suburb, to let 
 off their exuberant spirits — for artists are right merry 
 fellows — in quoits or football, in hockey or rounders : 
 a custom which has continued to this day, although 
 the cause of its institution has long since left us. After 
 Lady Callcott's death, Callcott's nieces took charge of 
 his household. 
 
 Some time prior to the excitement which pervaded 
 the whole art world when the commissioners for deco- 
 rating the Houses of Parliament called for competitions 
 in historic painting, Callcott, incited perhaps by the 
 success of "Raphael and the Fornarina " (for in the 
 eyes of many it was a success), again came forward as 
 an historic painter, and sent to the Academy, in 1840, 
 a picture, with the figures rather larger than life, of 
 " Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughters." It 
 was a large picture, rather than a great one ; a picture 
 that would have taxed the strength of a man in the 
 prime of his art to produce, and was too much for one 
 
406 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 enfeebled by illness, and in the decline of his powers. It 
 impressed the spectator with an oppressive sense of the 
 labour that had called it forth, and of the labour that 
 had been given to its completion ; rather than with the 
 grandeur of the subject and the severity of its treatment ; 
 yet it satisfied most of the conditions and rules of art, 
 and wanted but the fire of youth and genius to make it a 
 real and impressive work. It was indeed too much for 
 the physical powers of the painter, whose health rapidly 
 declined from this time. On the death of Mr. Seguier, he 
 was appointed to the duties of surveyor of Crown pictures, 
 but was prevented from entering upon the active duties 
 of his office. In the same quiet nook in " The Mall, 
 Kensington Gravel-pits," in the house wherein he was 
 born — with the same clipped old elms in front of it that 
 he had looked on when a child, but which were shortly 
 after to be removed from the face of the earth by 
 the buildings rapidly advancing from the outskirts of the 
 metropolis — he passed the short remainder of his days, 
 and died regretted by many, on the 25th November, 
 1844. He was buried at Kensall Green. 
 
 In commenting upon his art it will be seen that we 
 consider his best works to have been painted between 
 1812 and 1826, when those we have already named 
 were produced, together with his "Entrance to the Pool 
 of London," 1816 ; " Calm in the Medway," 1820 ; 
 " Rochester," 1824, and others of the same character, 
 which will place him in the first rank as a landscape 
 painter. He early became aware that with the limited 
 scale of light and dark, of colour and negation, at the 
 command of the painter, as compared with that of 
 Nature, a compromise must absolutely be made, and 
 
DESCRIPTION OF HIS ART. 
 
 407 
 
 he adopted the principle of reducing the positive tints 
 of his pictures to negative ones, diffusing light pretty 
 generally throughout the whole, and making the figures, 
 which he introduced with great skill, the telling points 
 of the composition ; both the strongest lights and darks, 
 and the purest hues of colour, being focussed in their 
 draperies. As these were naturally the points of most 
 interest the system was a sound one ; the picture gained 
 great breadth, and was from its lightness and the salient 
 brilliancy of the figures, always pleasing in our dark 
 rooms. By this system the secondary green of trees 
 became, as treated by Callcott, a tertiary citrine ; his 
 skies rarely contained azure blue, and his buildings were 
 varied hues of brown. It is not so obvious in his early 
 works, since in them his reference to Nature modified it ; 
 but when in after-life his works were in great demand, 
 and he was obliged to produce them by system rather 
 than by immediate reference to Nature, the principle of 
 his composition became very apparent. This may be 
 seen in the two works in the Vernon collection (No. 340), 
 " Dutch Peasants returning from Market," painted in 
 1834 ; and (No. 346) " The Entrance to Pisa from 
 Leghorn," painted in 1833. In the first, note the in- 
 variable hue of Callcott's greens in the trees ; and that 
 the only actual bit of primitive colour is in the red 
 bodice of the principal figure, and the petticoat of the 
 one walking through the water ; while in the latter, the 
 whole surface of the picture is of negative hues of grey 
 and brown, over which the figures are dispersed as 
 telling points of colour. 
 
 This practice made his small pictures very agree- 
 able, as will be seen in some charming specimens both 
 
408 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in the Vernon and Sheepshanks collections, but was 
 apt to be a little vapid and empty in larger works ; and, 
 carried to excess in his latest works, resulted, as was 
 naturally to be expected, in weakness and insipidity. 
 This was the case with his last large picture, painted 
 in 1842, "An English Landscape;" the subject being 
 a group of cows standing in a pool of water under 
 some trees, of which an eminent figure painter, who was 
 asked what he thought of it, answered, perhaps even 
 more wittily than justly, " I should say it was milk and 
 water." In his early pictures he painted with a firm and 
 manly execution ; in his latter, when his works became, 
 as we have said, more conventional and less realistic, 
 and when he was influenced, perhaps insensibly, by the 
 practice of Turner, he endeavoured to achieve air tint — 
 infinity of parts combined with breadth of light — by 
 scumblings and scraping the surface, by glazings and 
 thin paintings, which further contribute to give his 
 pictures an artificial look. We greatly prefer the Eng- 
 lish landscapes of the period already named ; but some 
 of his Italian compositions have an air of classic grandeur, 
 which, if we cannot place him near Turner, at least 
 induces us to regret that such art is fast dying out of 
 our school : dying out before those merely imitative 
 landscapes which are painted out of doors and direct 
 from Nature. The " Italian Landscape," the property 
 of D. Ward Chapman, Esq., exhibited in the British 
 Institution in 1863, is among the best of this class. 
 It consists of many grand features of landscape scenery 
 well brought together ; the figures suited to the subject, 
 well drawn, and introduced with the truest taste into the 
 composition. On comparing it with similar works by 
 
HIS FIGURE SUBJECTS. 
 
 409 
 
 Turner, its fault appeared in its great deficiency of air 
 tint. This is more especially the case with the middle 
 distance ; but it is seen even in the foreground, where 
 the masses are too brown and solid, and all the waving 
 intricacy of branch and leaf is lost in the endeavour after 
 solidity and breadth. 
 
 Still, with all the faults of this picture, and of the 
 school to which it belongs, how much is the loss to be 
 deplored of the talent which produced it ! What a 
 refined art ! What an attempt to lift us out of the 
 commonplaces of Nature ! It generalized too much, no 
 doubt, and was deficient in imitation ; but it is succeeded 
 by a school which objects to all generalization, all selec- 
 tion — art being rejected for the literal imitation of 
 unselected Nature; the art of dwelling but too often 
 on the meanest and most trivial details. Callcott him- 
 self never painted direct from Nature, but from drawings 
 and studies ; his art would have been better had he 
 studied Nature more by colour. His pictures wanted 
 this, as much as the new school wants the study of com- 
 position, arrangement and selection ; and will assuredly j 
 lose by neglecting art altogether, and thinking that a 
 particular rather than a general study of Nature is all 
 that is required. Callcott's early study enabled him, as 
 we have seen, to paint the figures in his landscape well ; 
 but it did not fit him for a figure painter. His weakness 
 is shown in his smaller figure pictures as much as in 
 his larger. His " Anne Page and Slender," his " FalstafF 
 and Simple," both in the Sheepshanks Collection, if they 
 evidence the painter's taste, do not prove his powers. 
 They are weak and tame, and have rather the appearance 
 of being painted from the lay figure than from Nature. 
 
410 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 While it is given to but few, very few, artists to 
 attain the highest rank in art, it is an honourable end 
 to have stamped a marked individuality on any of its 
 varied modes of appealing to mankind. If the former 
 was denied to William Collins, R.J., it at least was given 
 to him to find a somewhat untrodden path in art for him- 
 self, and to make the latter success his own by the way 
 he treated his subjects. William Collins was bom in 
 Great Titchfield Street, on the 18th September, 1788. 
 Although an Englishman by birth, by parentage he was 
 allied to each of the sister kingdoms ; his mother being 
 a native of Edinburgh and his father born at Wicklow 
 in Ireland. The elder Collins had settled in England 
 as a writer and journalist, and to these, considering them 
 as precarious means of supporting his family, he added 
 the business of a picture dealer. The love of landscape 
 scenery in the younger Collins might be derived from 
 both parents, born as they were in places remarkable 
 for picturesque beauty ; the two sons, William and Francis, 
 moreover, were from their father's business early thrown 
 among art and artists ; and brought up in its very atmo- 
 sphere, what wonder that William, the eldest, chose it 
 for his pursuit in life. His first studies, we are told, 
 were from the objects around him, and these alternated 
 with "copies of pictures and drawings for the small 
 patrons and dealers of the day." 
 
 Collins' father was intimate, among others, with 
 George Morland (an intimacy which subsequently led 
 to his writing the life of that artist) ; and the son was 
 very anxious to be introduced to a man who was 
 everywhere spoken of as a wonder of erratic genius, 
 and who had promised to admit the lad to his studio, 
 
WILLIAM COLLINS, R.A. 
 
 411 
 
 that he might at least see the conduct of his pic- 
 tures. It so happened that the boy's first sight of 
 the famous animal painter was at his father's house, 
 under very questionable circumstances, sleeping off, 
 in the kitchen, a fit of filthy intoxication ; this may 
 have been a lesson for our young painter, who was 
 through life a man of the most correct habits. From 
 this time Collins was a visitor at Morland's painting- 
 room as often as the irregularities of that painter would 
 permit. He seems to have had a high sense of his talents, 
 and to have taken great interest in the places where he 
 had been in company with Morland, when in after-life 
 he revisited them. We are told, however, he did not 
 consider that he gained any remarkable advantage in the 
 practical part of his art from the kind of instruction 
 which Morland was able to convey ; but those who 
 examine the works of the two men will see that the 
 early impression made by the art of the eccentric painter 
 had a marked influence on the future art of Collins, and 
 perhaps first led him to those rustic subjects which he 
 handled so skilfully, and treated with a refinement which 
 was denied to the man of gross sensuality and intem- 
 perate habits. 
 
 Pursuing his desultory studies under his father's 
 superintendence, alternately painting trom a group of 
 objects, perchance jars or blacking bottles, with his 
 friend John Linnell ; sketching from Nature and copying 
 pictures spurious and original, with the advantage also 
 of seeing the rapid pencil of Morland at work to produce 
 means to continue his excesses, young Collins reached his 
 nineteenth year, and was sufficiently advanced in 1807 to 
 obtain admission as a student in the Royal Academy 3 and 
 
412 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 also fortuitously to become an exhibitor on its walls. 
 Of these first pictures, " Two Views of Millbank," there 
 is no record further than their insertion in the catalogue. 
 
 Had we no other data on which to reason, we might 
 be assured from the steadfast character of the man that 
 the habits of the youth were diligent and orderly, and 
 that he made every use of the advantages for study 
 that the schools of the Academy supply ; but his com- 
 panions speak of Collins' industry in the pursuit of art ; 
 and his choice of these companions was so judicious 
 that he made friends with men who continued warmly 
 attached to him through life : of these Wilkie was one of 
 the most intimate. 
 
 In 1809, Collins was advanced to the life-school, and 
 in the same year his pictures, both in the Academy and 
 in the British Institution, obtained some share of public 
 notice; and, what was even of more importance to a 
 struggling artist fighting his own way in life, they found 
 purchasers also. It is to be noted, moreover, that 
 though studying the antique and the nude figure, the 
 subjects of his pictures, in the Institution, both in 1808 
 and in 1809, as well as in the Academy, were either 
 landscapes, or landscapes combined with rustic figures. 
 As years passed on, young Collins improved in his art, 
 though not rapidly ; his works had little of the richness 
 and less of the free handling he arrived at afterwards, 
 if we may judge of them by the somewhat respectable 
 study of "A Country Kitchen," painted in 1811, and 
 now in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington. 
 Early in the year 1812, Collins lost a father to whom he 
 seems to have been tenderly attached ; a short diary of 
 this period, preserved by his son, very touchingly paints 
 
HIS EARLY TRIALS AND SUCCESS. 
 
 413 
 
 the few anxious days which preceded his death, and the 
 destitution of the family, now left wholly dependent on 
 the young painter ; but friends rose up to help, as they 
 mostly do for those who are true-hearted, and we find 
 one kind friend coming forward to assist them with 
 furniture in lieu of that which the creditors had laid 
 their hands on ; while another, Sir Thomas Heathcote, 
 one of Collins' first patrons, not only paid him half the 
 price of a picture in advance, but offered a loan of money 
 in addition. From this time, in young Collins' pictures, 
 the figures were more predominant than the landscape ; 
 his subjects, mostly the joys and sorrows of children, won 
 their way in public estimation, and seem to have found 
 ready purchasers. 
 
 This is very evident when we turn to the list of 
 pictures by Collins appended to his Life by his son. In 
 1813, when as yet only twenty-four years of age, the 
 painter received for his works no less than 5571. ; a large 
 income at that time, when purchasers were few, and the 
 prices of works by the best artists, perhaps less than 
 half those of the present day. It is true this was rather 
 an exceptional year, the receipts of 1812 being only 
 230L, and those of 1814, 350Z. ; but even the average of 
 the three years, 379L, is large for a youth of twenty- 
 four to realize by his art ; and it shows how popular were 
 the subjects of his choice, and how true it is that the 
 quality of colour in art is the most attractive to the 
 public ; and, when joined to subjects appealing as did 
 those of Collins, to the heart and understanding of all, is 
 sure to win an early success. Both these qualities were 
 united in a work of this period which became very widely 
 popular, and is a representative work of the painter's, 
 
414 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 some of whose best pictures give us the sports and 
 labours, the trials and games of rustic children, com- 
 bined with the truly pastoral scenery of our beautiful 
 and picturesque land. " The Sale of the Pet Lamb," 
 painted in 1812, united the best qualities of the painter's 
 art very happily. 
 
 The incident is one of frequent occurrence in rural 
 life, where the cade lamb, as it is called, — a lamb 
 which by accident has lost its dam — is given away 
 to the cottager, that it may be petted into life, if 
 possible, by the active sympathy of his children ; it 
 gradually grows into their young hearts as companion 
 and playmate, until its age, or some pressing need, gives 
 it up to the usual fate of its kind. In the painter's 
 treatment of the subject, the butcher-lad has come to 
 lead away the unconscious victim ; he does his duty 
 kindly for the children's sake, although (as labouring in 
 his vocation) he is untouched by any sentiment the 
 others feel. One of the children pushes him away from 
 their playfellow, another feeds it for the last time, while 
 a little girl clings to the mother, who is receiving the 
 price of the lamb, tearfully urging that it should not be 
 taken from them. The incident was touchingly and 
 simply rendered, and free from false sentiment in the 
 elders of the party who are bargaining the sale : such 
 sentimentality, dangerously incident to this class of sub- 
 ject, does not belong to a rural population, but to a rank 
 apart from, and above them. We ourselves once remarked 
 to a cottager who was followed about by a well-grown 
 sheep which had been her companion from its lambhood, 
 that it was as " tame as a dog." "Ay, sir," she replied, 
 " it's far better nor a dog, for when one is tired of it, 
 
HIS COAST -SCENES WITH FIGURES. 
 
 415 
 
 we can eat it." But children of all classes are alike in 
 tenderness and fondness for animals, and these are the 
 leading actors in this rural tragedy. This picture, with 
 one or two others of the same class, so advanced Collins 
 in the estimation of his brother artists that in November, 
 1814, he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. 
 
 The painter having obtained his first promotion in 
 art, had taken a new and larger house ; but although his 
 works were popular and many were purchased, he had 
 still difficulties to struggle with ; in subsequent years 
 fortune was not equally favourable, and we find an entry 
 in his diary in the spring of 1816, " A black-looking 
 April day, with one sixpence in my pocket, 700/. in 
 debt, shabby clothes, a fine house, and a large stock of 
 my own handiworks." It must be remembered that the 
 young painter had his mother and brother at this time 
 to provide for, that he had entered upon the respon- 
 sibilities of a larger establishment, and also that, on 
 looking down the list of pictures and their prices, affixed 
 to his Life, it is evident from statements in his diaries, 
 that some of the pictures were not purchased at the 
 time they were painted, but afterwards, when he was 
 growing still more into fame and notice. 
 
 In the troubles of this period of his life, he cast 
 about for some new class of subjects to attract the atten- 
 tion of the public, and made journeys to the sea-coast, 
 first at Cromer, and afterwards at Hastings, painting 
 coast scenery, enlivened with groups of fisher-boys, boats, 
 fish, &c, which he treated with great freshness and 
 truth. In 1818, one of this class, " Scene on the Coast 
 of Norfolk," attracted the attention of the Prince Regent, 
 by whom it was purchased, and is now, with a picture 
 
416 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 subsequently painted, in the corridor at Windsor Castle. 
 This patronage by royalty led to many other commis- 
 sions, so that the painter gradually overcame his early 
 difficulties, almost gave up painting portraits, which he 
 had resorted to as an aid to his precarious income, and 
 having made himself a place of his own in art, was 
 elected a full member of the academic body in February 
 1820. In 1822, during a visit to Scotland in company 
 with his friend Wilkie, Collins completed a long-standing 
 engagement by marrying Miss Geddes, by whom he 
 had two sons. Both are at present living, and men of 
 literary reputation ; the elder having written a Life of his 
 father, full of matters of interest both to artists and the 
 general public. 
 
 Collins was now established in life, having obtained 
 the highest honours of the profession, and having in his 
 particular branch of landscape art, as Wilkie told him, 
 the ball at his feet, he had but to paint as he had 
 begun, to widen his popularity. There was no fear of 
 any lack of subjects in the inexhaustible field he had 
 chosen, nor of their palling on the public taste. Such 
 subjects he continued to paint until the year 1836, when 
 he produced two of his very best works — " Sunday 
 Morning," and " Happy as a King ; " a repetition of the 
 latter picture, through the generosity of the late Mr. 
 Vernon, is the property of the public. Wilkie Collins 
 tells us that the subject of the picture was first suggested 
 to his father by the story of the country boy whose ideal 
 of kingly happiness was swinging upon a gate all day 
 long and eating fat bacon ; but this must have been a 
 lazy lout, and his swinging as listless and sleepy as a 
 swine in the sun, whilst Collins has made his rustic 
 
RESULT OF HIS ITALIAN TOUR. 417 
 
 boiling over with active mirth, seated on the top rail, 
 one foot entwined in the bars to sustain him, the other 
 kicking off his shoe. Two other children hang beside him, 
 a boy and a girl, while a third pushes wide open the gate 
 to let it slam with a force that would have sadly discom- 
 posed the bacon-feeding monarch. The picture is full of 
 life and action, the landscape is broad and simple in 
 manner, and beautifully suggestive. 
 
 "Such," as his son says, "were the works with 
 which Mr. Collins took his leave for a time of the 
 English public." Wilkie, while on the Continent, had 
 in his letters repeatedly urged his friend to see the 
 beauties of Italy ; the many subjects he would find there 
 for his pencil, and the desirableness of filling his mind 
 with new ideas ; and at length Collins made up his 
 mind to the journey, and on the 19th September, 1836, 
 he left England to make some stay in the South. 
 
 To us who look back over his whole course and 
 review his art life, it may be permitted to doubt if the 
 Italian journey was at all beneficial to his reputation. 
 It is true that some beautiful landscapes resulted from 
 it ; such as that seen " From the Caves of Ulysses at 
 Sorrento, Bay of Naples," a work of great truth and 
 beauty. The sea, pure and pellucid, is seen stretching 
 away to the far horizon, where it joins the sky, looking 
 as if those Mediterranean waters, waking up as they do 
 into sudden and raging storms, were a haven of rest 
 which could never know change. But Collins was essen- 
 tially an English painter ; from his youth up he had 
 lived among the rustic children he loved to paint and the 
 rural scenery in which he placed them ; and although 
 Italian mendicants, priests, and lazzaroni might be a 
 VOL. II. g2 
 
418 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 change to the public, yet even at the time, they were 
 hardly thought a change for the better ; while to our- 
 selves, one such picture as "Happy as a King" is 
 worth all the figure pictures, the fruits of his Italian 
 journey. Nor can we forget that to the treacherous 
 smiles of an Italian sun we ultimately owed the loss of 
 the artist. While at Sorrento, he could not be persuaded 
 that it was dangerous to paint out of doors in the heat 
 of the day. The temptation to do so was great; the 
 artist was incapable of idleness, and continued against 
 the remonstrances of his friends to work at all hours ; 
 the result was a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which 
 lasted many weeks, and left behind it a disease of the 
 heart, which troubled him during the remaining years 
 of his life, and finally resulted in his death on the 17th 
 February, 1847. 
 
 As a landscape and figure painter, Collins was not of 
 that imitative school who paint direct from Nature ; his 
 practice was to make drawings of all the parts and details 
 which he intended to use in his work, to study the effects 
 of air and light on the spot, and then to paint his picture 
 in his studio from these materials. He sketched in, first 
 the general composition of his picture, the disposition of 
 the parts, the rack of clouds, the figures he intended to 
 form part of the composition ; often arranging and re- 
 arranging, until he was satisfied with this stage of his 
 labours. From this he proceeded to the dead colouring. 
 He began, as is usual, with the sky, which he endea- 
 voured to finish at once, and, failing to do so, would 
 hang a wet sheet before it during the night, to keep it w T et 
 for the next day ; and this part of the work he finished 
 with the sweetener. He then painted from the horizon 
 
MANNER OF PAINTING AND MATERIALS. 419 
 
 forward, finishing the various distances towards the 
 foreground. To secure the true light and shade of his 
 figures, he adopted at times the method of his friend 
 Wilkie, grouping clay figures or dressed dolls in a box 
 lighted for that purpose. His son tells us that he was 
 ever most anxious to execute his works with such durable 
 materials and pigments as would ensure their preserva- 
 tion not only during his own lifetime, but to posterity. 
 He does not appear to have given in to the use of 
 asphaltum, which his friend Wilkie used so largely to 
 the destruction of his own pictures, and recommended 
 so warmly to others ; he used magylph, it is true, but 
 with proper restraint. 
 
 In his diaries he has left us some valuable records 
 of the vehicles with which various of his pictures are 
 painted — records well worth careful investigation by 
 those who have the opportunity of comparing them with 
 the several works. Thus, "Feb. 23, 1819.— 4 Fisher- 
 men on the Look-out'" (purchased by the Earl of 
 Liverpool), "is painted entirely in copal, thinned with 
 turpentine, without wax." " Apl. 5. — ' Fisherman's 
 Return,' in linseed oil, boiled with copal varnish— copal 
 varnish in the colours as a dryer, upon an unprimed 
 cloth." "19th.— Began a portrait of the 'Duchess of 
 Newcastle,' the face in copalled oil, the other parts 
 in copal varnish." "Sketch of 'Boothby's Children,' 
 1st April, varnished the whole thickly in copal, and 
 finished it in the same." Then again, in December, 
 1819, we find an entry, " ' Coast Scene, with Fishermen 
 hauling up Boats,' " &c, for Sir Thos. Heathcote, which 
 " is painted in linseed oil, and turpentine and magylph, 
 made of the shook-up drying oil and mastick varnish, 
 
 61 — 2 
 
420 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and mastick varnish with gold size in the slow dryers ; 
 chrome yellow, and Field's orange, and French cobalt 
 used occasionally." In some of his works he has nsed 
 his vehicle too freely, and cracking has been the result ; 
 while in those where he has used copal largely, we should 
 expect the lights to have become somewhat homy. 
 
 Much of Collins' reputation was derived from his 
 happy choice of subjects. These, in many respects, 
 correspond with the subjects chosen by Morland, but 
 are treated with far more refinement ; and as many of 
 his actors are children, and he entered thoroughly into 
 their sports and habits, they interest us much more. 
 His landscapes are always an important feature of the 
 picture ; the handling and execution a little akin to 
 Gainsborough, having his freshness and a little of his 
 ease, with greater finish ; the figures, in what are almost 
 pure landscapes, are often extremely well introduced and 
 important in themselves, yet do not interfere with the 
 importance of the landscape. His picture of " Seaford, 
 in Sussex," one of his latest works, and now in the 
 Sheepshanks Collection, is an instance both of his 
 powers as a landscape painter, and the judicious intro- 
 duction of figures without detracting from the scene. 
 It is one of his carefully painted pictures. A clear day- 
 light sky, with large cumulus clouds floating over a 
 sea that rolls lazily on to the distant beach, with just 
 sufficient swell to indicate the monotonous sound that 
 breaks the rest of a summer noon. Over the wide 
 expanse the shadows of the clouds flit idly from shore 
 to sea, from sea to far horizon. On the cliffs from which 
 the scene is viewed are three children, two boys and a 
 girl, engaged in carving out and rigging a boat. They 
 
" SEAFORD " AND " RUSTIC CIVILITY." 421 
 
 are better drawn than usual with the painter : the heads 
 properly set on the shoulders ; the limbs and flesh well 
 painted ; the colour not forced, but well adapted to the 
 landscape ; and the whole work carefully completed, 
 without mean details. The picture of " Rustic Civility," 
 in the same collection, is another instance of his happy 
 choice of subject. Some youngsters have opened the 
 gate leading from a common to a coming stranger, whose 
 shadow is projected before him on the way ; the eldest 
 lad pushes open the gate with his back, and touches his 
 shaggy locks to the horseman. With such simple mate- 
 rials, Collins has made a charming picture, the landscape 
 background being very pleasing and suggestive. 
 
 Collins was a devout imitator of Nature, but in its 
 generalities rather than in details. He had a strong 
 feeling for colour, but was a very indifferent draughtsman. 
 Even when he had nature to rely on, as in his English 
 rustics, he was often sadly deficient in drawing : of this, 
 the boy pushing and the boy hanging back from the 
 gate, in " Eustic Civility " are instances ; theirs were 
 actions of some difficulty which his young models could 
 not sustain, and the painter's memory did not supply 
 the loss. Almost all his foreshortened heads (and he 
 was very fond of the pretty shy action when children 
 look upwards with the head depressed) are well intended, 
 but wholly out of drawing. He painted his Italian 
 sketches in this country, away from the models that had 
 suggested them, and in such works his drawing and 
 execution were still more timid and feeble. Then again 
 his draperies are often merely rags, suggestive of pleasant 
 colour it is true, but distasteful to those who desire some- 
 what of form or fold and flow. 
 
422 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 He carried on the art of Morland and Gainsborough 
 with a difference, for as an animal painter he had no 
 power. He was of the school of artists, and not mere 
 imitators, and has been followed in his peculiar walks by 
 Hook and others, who, perceiving the thoroughly English 
 character of his art, have adopted it not servilely but 
 with feelings of their own, increasing the popularity of 
 such subjects by the originality and skill with which they 
 treat them. 
 
( 423 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IDEAL LANDSCAPE.— MARTIN AND DANBY. 
 
 John, Martin — His Birth — Early Attachment to Art — Apprenticed — Runs 
 away — Commences his Art-education — Muss the Enamel-painter — 
 Martin comes to London — Applies himself to Study — Paints in Enamel 
 at Collins's Manufactory- — Exhibits at the RA. 1811 — His first Pic- 
 tures — " Belshazzar's Feast " — Opinions upon this Work — Description 
 of it — Repeated in Glass — Discontented with the RA. — But exhibits 
 there — Not satisfied with the British Institution — Joins the Society of 
 British Artists — Paints large Scriptural Subjects— Which engraved 
 spread his Reputation — His Illustrations of Milton — His Schemes of 
 public Utility— Sketches round London — In the midst of his Labours 
 struck with Paralysis — Death — Opinion upon his Art Merits — Francis 
 Danby, A.R.A. — Son of a small Irish Farm Proprietor — Commences 
 Art-study in Dublin — Pupil of O'Connor — Exhibits his first Work — 
 Comes to London — Difficulties of his intended Return- — Stops at Bristol 
 — Determines to remain in England — His "Upas Tree" described — 
 And his " Disappointed Love " — Anecdote of Mr. Sheepshanks — " The 
 Clearing-up after a Shower" — And " Sunset after a Storm"- — Elected 
 Associate of the Academy- — But excluded from the Ml Honour — His 
 " Delivery of Israel from Egypt " — Comparison with Martin — Long 
 Residence Abroad — Resumes his Place at the Exhibitions — Death — 
 True Poetry of his Art. 
 
 In our preceding chapters we have given some account 
 of the contemporaries and successors of Turner, who were 
 purely landscape painters, relying on natural scenery 
 as influenced by storm and sunshine, by noonday or 
 twilight, their figures being merely accessories to give 
 life and interest ' to the scene ; but Turner himself, in 
 addition to his art as a landscape painter, depicting the 
 scenery of the present age and of classic antiquity, of 
 
424 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 plain and mountain, of ocean and river, painted works 
 wherein the scenery was subordinate to the subject, such 
 as the pictures of " Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," the 
 " Jason," &c. 
 
 This chapter will treat of painters whose works are 
 wholly of the latter class ; who rarely painted realistic 
 landscape, but occupied themselves largely with the 
 poetical and ideal. Of such was John Martin, who 
 studied Nature not to realize her pastoral or rural aspects, 
 but to embody for us, subjects derived from history and 
 poetry, in which the landscape is made to sympathize 
 with the story, and is equally necessary with the figures 
 to the effect on the spectator. 
 
 John Martin was born in the north of England, at 
 a house called Eastland Ends, Haydon Bridge, near 
 Hexham, on the 19th of July, 1789 ; as he grew to 
 the age when it was necessary to settle his future career 
 in life, his taste and inclination were so decidedly towards 
 art, that his father adopted a somewhat practical appli- 
 cation of it, and determined to make the lad a herald- 
 painter. The family having removed to Newcastle, he 
 was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to one Wilson, a 
 coach-builder of that town, and, with little inclination to 
 the branch of art he was to pursue, continued to labour 
 as an apprentice for twelve months. At that time, by 
 the terms of his apprenticeship, he was to begin to 
 receive a weekly payment for his work ; but his master 
 asserting that three months of the period had been 
 passed as on trial, demurred to the payment, wishing to 
 postpone it yet three months longer. Martin, who 
 disliked his work, ran away from the workshop; his 
 father approved the step, and supplied him with colours 
 
JOHN MARTIN. 
 
 425 
 
 and materials to practise art. He had just begun to feel 
 happy in his emancipation from trade drudgery, when he 
 was brought before the alderman of the town as a run- 
 away apprentice ; but his answer to the charge, showing 
 that his master had himself broken the contract, was 
 upheld by the town authorities, and from the ability with 
 which he conducted his case, his indentures were given 
 up, and he was set free to follow the art he loved. 
 
 His father then placed him under the instruction 
 of an Italian practising art in Newcastle — Bonifaccio 
 Musso, the father of Charles Musso, or Muss, afterwards 
 well known as an enamel and miniature painter. At the 
 end of the year, Charles Muss, who had settled in 
 London, and was gradually making his way, invited his 
 father to town to reside with him, and asked Martin to 
 accompany him. After a few months' delay, Martin, 
 with the permission of his father, repaired to London, 
 where he arrived in September 1806. After residing 
 some time with Muss, he became dissatisfied with his 
 accommodation in the family, and removed to Adam 
 Street West, Cumberland Place, and, as he tells us, 
 worked hard during the day to support himself ; while 
 at night he diligently studied architecture and perspec- 
 tive, by the knowledge of which he was hereafter to 
 achieve so much of the reputation he enjoyed. Muss 
 had introduced Martin to Collins, a glass manufacturer, 
 who resided at No. 106 in the Strand, and much of 
 Martin's employment at this time consisted in painting 
 in enamel colours on glass and china. At the age of 
 nineteen, as the painter has himself recorded (although 
 other authorities say twenty-two) , Martin married, and 
 he says that he had to use every available means for his 
 
426 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 support, teaching, painting small oil pictures, glass and 
 enamel painting, water-colour painting, &c. 
 
 In 1811 we find him for the first time an exhibitor 
 at the Royal Academy; his work is described as " Land- 
 scape, a composition ; " and his residence, " Thanet Place, 
 Temple Bar," shows that he was living near the scene of 
 his daily labours. Speaking of his marriage, which, if it 
 took place when he was nineteen, must have been in the 
 year 1808 or 1809, the painter himself says, " It was now 
 indeed necessary for me to work, and, as I was ambitious 
 of fame, I determined on painting a large picture, and in 
 1812 produced my first work, ' Sadak in Search of the 
 Waters of Oblivion,' which was executed in a month ; " 
 and he adds, "You may easily guess my anxiety when I 
 heard the men who were to place it in the frame, disput- 
 ing as to which was the top of the picture : " it was, 
 however, to the inexpressible delight of himself and his 
 wife, sold for fifty guineas, so that his first start in life 
 was of good augury. 
 
 His next year's work was " Paradise, Adam's first 
 Sight of Eve," exhibited in 1813, and also sold, as was 
 the "Clytie," exhibited in 1814. The painter tells us 
 that he sent it for Mr. West's inspection, who received 
 him with great urbanity, and introduced him to Leslie, 
 saying the two young painters should be acquainted, 
 as he prophesied they would reflect honour on their 
 respective countries. The " Paradise " was exhibited 
 in the great room of the Royal Academy, but when, 
 the next year, the " Clytie," and subsequently the 
 " Joshua," were hung in the ante-room, he considered 
 himself insulted by the place allotted to them. The 
 " Joshua " was afterwards exhibited at the British Institu- 
 
HIS FIRST PICTURES. 
 
 427 
 
 tion, and obtained one of their prizes of 100 guineas, 
 but continued unsold for many years ; it was exhibited 
 at the Academy in 1816, three years after the " Adam 
 and Eve," and at the British Institution in 1817. Cer- 
 tain it is that Martin early began to entertain a high 
 opinion of his own abilities, leading him to think his 
 position in art one that could not be questioned, and that 
 ought to command for him the first rank and the best 
 place. He continued, however, to exhibit at the Royal 
 Academy, but sent his more important works to the 
 British Institution. A conversation with Allston, in 
 which Martin wholly differed from that painter, led him 
 to paint " Belshazzar's Feast." Leslie, he says, spent 
 a morning in attempting to convince him that his treat- 
 ment was wrong, but he persevered, and in 1821 com- 
 pleted his subject, and exhibited it at the British 
 Institution; on this occasion he was rewarded with a 
 prize of 200 guineas ; the picture was considered a new 
 mode of treating such subjects, and created a sensation 
 among the general public. 
 
 Martin had in 1817 been appoiuted " Historical 
 Landscape Painter to the Princess Charlotte and Prince 
 Leopold," but artists objected to such pictures being 
 classed as historical. In historical painting, they said, 
 the principal source of interest must ever lie in the 
 action and expression of the human beings with whom 
 the painter peoples his canvas; and wdiile the public 
 were startled into admiration, the artists too largely 
 denounced Martin's pictures as meretricious, because the 
 effects introduced were forced — the work scenic— a cross 
 between architecture and landscape, in which the human 
 figures (shapeless masses of limbs and drapery) tell only 
 
428 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 by their quantity, the architecture serving rather to 
 contribute to perspective immensity than necessary to 
 the impression of the subject. These opinions, how- 
 ever, were not shared by all ; some of the best artists 
 thought highly of the genius of the painter. Wilkie, 
 writing to Sir G. Beaumont in 1821, says, "Martin's 
 picture is a phenomenon. All that he has been 
 attempting in his former pictures is here brought to 
 maturity, and although weak in all those points in which 
 lie can be compared with other artists, he is eminently 
 strong in what no other artist has attempted. 'Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast ' is the subject : his great element seems 
 to be the geometrical properties of space, magnitude, 
 and number, in the use of which he may be said to be 
 boundless. The contrivance and disposition of the 
 architecture is full of imagination." 
 
 The painter made use in this picture of all the pro- 
 perties at his command — the hanging gardens — the tower 
 of Babel — range upon range of massive columns, and 
 terraces one above the other, are there, and made clever 
 use of by the aid of perspective ; the light which lights 
 the impious feast is derived by the painter from the 
 letters of light, the handwriting on the wall, which the 
 prophet is explaining to the terrified king— the light, hot 
 and fiery, is shed on the hurrying group of frightened 
 revellers who are expressing their alarm in a somewhat 
 melodramatic manner. The seven-branched candlestick 
 from the holy place is over the throne of Belshazzar ; 
 but if the ornaments on the banqueting table are the 
 other sacred utensils of the temple, they are anything but 
 oriental in their fashion, and might well have been lent 
 for the painter's use by the great silversmiths of that 
 
" belshazzar's feast." 
 
 429 
 
 clay, Messrs. Rundell and Bridge. The hot brown of the 
 foreground is carried into the sky by the clouds of the 
 rising storm, so that the hanging gardens and the 
 monster tower, with all the range of impossible buildings 
 and mountains of structure, are of a hot, foxy hue. On 
 the left the young moon is seen in the heavens. A 
 better artist would have improved the picture by 
 spreading its cool light through parts of the work, 
 contrasting it with the supernatural illumination of 
 the foreground, and bringing out tower and column, 
 lighted as in nature by its beams, from the dark solid 
 masses. Martin, who was still connected with glass- 
 painting, repeated the subject on a sheet of plate -glass. 
 This was shown in the Strand, inserted in a wall, so that 
 the light was really transmitted through the terrible 
 handwriting ; the effect was startling, yet it was surely 
 allied more to the diorama than to fine art. 
 
 Though Martin quarrelled with the Academy about 
 the hanging of his " Clytie " and "Joshua," and sent 
 his " Belshazzar " to the British Institution, he did not 
 wholly secede from Somerset House ; between 1819 and 
 1821 he exhibited six works there, in the latter year 
 his — "Revenge" — from Collins' Ode to the Passions. 
 He again exhibited in 1823 and 1824. The picture in 
 1823, " The Paphian Bower," was a work of some size ; 
 and if we can trust our recollection, it subsequently figured 
 at the British Institution under a new title, "The Graces 
 culling Posies," a part having been pasted over, and a 
 new subject inserted in the centre of the canvas. Martin 
 soon found, however, that even the British Institution 
 did not use him so well as he thought he deserved. He 
 says in his evidence before the Committee of the House 
 
430 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 of Commons, in 1836, that there was some connection 
 between the directors of the Institution and the Academy 
 that made them give the academicians the best places, so 
 that he rarely hazarded sending a large work to Pall 
 Mall. He then became an exhibitor at Suffolk Street 
 with the Society of British Artists ; but here also he was 
 no doubt ill-used, or thought he was, for after 1836 we 
 find him for the rest of his life again at the Royal 
 Academy, pretty constantly exhibiting there his impor- 
 tant works, as well as others of minor interest. In all, 
 between 1836 and 1852 he exhibited sixty-seven pic- 
 tures, an average of more than four per annum. 
 
 After the " Belshazzar's Feast," which many thought 
 his best picture, Martin continued to cover large can- 
 vases with poetical and scriptural subjects, such as 
 "Adam and Eve entertaining the Angel Raphael," 
 "The Deluge," " The Eve of the Deluge," "The Fall 
 of Nineveh," " Pandemonium," &c. Many of these 
 works were engraved, and as that art was peculiarly 
 suited to display his pictures, the impressions had a large 
 sale both at home and abroad, and greatly spread his 
 reputation. Some of the plates he engraved himself, and 
 complained before a Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons of the injury that he, in common with other artists, 
 sustained by the insufficient protection against piracy 
 afforded to such works. His popularity led to his being 
 engaged on illustrations of Milton, and many of those to 
 the Paradise Lost have a dreamy grandeur beyond what 
 might be supposed possible in works of such small size. 
 For these illustrations he is said to have received 2,000L 
 
 Martin had an eye to other subjects besides art, sub- 
 jects of public utility ; such, for instance, as the supply 
 
HIS INGENIOUS PROJECTS. 
 
 431 
 
 of pure water for the metropolis, which engaged the 
 painter's attention in 1827, 1828, and 1829. In view of 
 this, it is evident that he visited all the water sources of 
 the surrounding country ; we fear that it never advanced 
 his pecuniary interests, but to these visits must be attri- 
 buted many of the very clever studies in water-colours of 
 the valleys of the Thames, the Brent, the Wandle, the 
 Wey, the Tillingbourne, as also from many of the hills 
 and eminences within a circle of twenty or thirty miles. 
 Though Nature in these works is treated with the peculiar 
 manner he has adopted, there is in many of them a 
 poetry that elevates them out of the region of common- 
 place. Besides his labours towards giving us a supply 
 of pure water — for which, if unsuccessful on the definite 
 plan he advocated, he deserves our gratitude, since the 
 attention at all hands called to the subject led to the 
 adoption of remedial methods — he was also occupied in 
 controversies and plans for improving the sewerage of 
 the metropolis, and for connecting the various roadways 
 that lead to and from London ; but to these schemes, as 
 not specially connected with our subject, it is only neces- 
 sary to allude. 
 
 He was yet labouring assiduously at his art, with 
 large pictures in various stages of progress on his easel, 
 when, on the 12th of November, 1853, while at work on 
 a picture, he was struck with paralysis, which rendered 
 him speechless and deprived him of the use of his right 
 hand. From the first there was no prospect of his 
 recovery ; but he lingered on, and was taken to the Isle 
 of Man in hopes of some improvement. He seemed, 
 however, to have entertained an idea that abstinence was 
 a remedy for his complaint, and to have resisted taking 
 
432 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sufficient food ; so that he sank rapidly, and died on the 
 17th of February, 1854. 
 
 We can hardly agree with Bulwer, who said that 
 Martin was " more original, more self-dependent than 
 Eaphael or Michael Angelo ; " but if, in his lifetime, 
 Martin was overpraised, he was certainly unjustly depre- 
 ciated afterwards. Many, both of his brother artists and 
 the public, when the first astonishment his pictures created 
 had passed away, called his art a trick and an illusion, 
 his execution mechanical, his colouring bad, the figures 
 he introduced vilely drawn, their action and expression 
 bombastic and ridiculous. But granting this wholly 
 or partially, it must also be remembered that his art, 
 or manner if you will, was thoroughly original ; that it 
 opened up a new view, which, in his hands, yielded 
 glimpses of the sublime, dreams, and visions the art had 
 not hitherto displayed, and that others, better prepared 
 by previous study, working after him, have delighted, and 
 are still delighting, the world with their works. Had 
 he painted but one or two pictures, the impression made 
 on the public mind might have remained ; but when it 
 became evident that his succeeding pictures were really 
 but repetitions of the first novel idea, they palled even 
 upon his admirers, and their manner became tedious. 
 
 It is disgraceful to a country which has received such 
 noble bequests of art from patrons of art, and from 
 artists themselves, that nothing has been systematically 
 done towards forming a national collection of British 
 art. Were there such a collection, at least one fine 
 work by Martin would have found a place there, and we 
 should have had a picture to refer to in support of our 
 remarks. No such work is at present accessible, and the 
 
PECULIARITY OF HIS ART. 
 
 433 
 
 public of the present day know the painter mostly through 
 worn-out prints from his pictures. The " Coronation of 
 her Majesty," the property of Mr. Edwin Atherstone, has 
 been some time on loan at South Kensington. Though 
 the incident chosen is a fine one— her Majesty rising 
 from her throne to assist the aged Lord Kolle, who has 
 fallen in climbing the steps to do homage ; yet it is not 
 a subject that is at all suited to Martin's art— it is too 
 real and actual a fact. We may, however, refer to it to 
 show how helpless he was wherever the figure had to be 
 treated. The peers, in their long robes, with their mantles 
 of ermine and coronets, look like stuffed dummies; and her 
 Majesty, the centre-point of the picture, is wholly without 
 dignity in form or action : in fact, it was the masses 
 of figures, piled up from front to back of the grey old 
 Abbey, that seized the imagination of the painter— the 
 ceremonial as a whole, far more than the expression of 
 the particular incident selected. This repetition of quan- 
 tities in the architectural structures he loved to introduce, 
 was one of the great elements of the grandeur, space, 
 and magnitude of his scenes ; but applied to figures, it 
 was less appropriate and less successful. Even the 
 details of his architecture, too often repeated, occa- 
 sioned the remark that his pictures were done by recipe ; 
 and St. John Long, who, before he took to curing con- 
 sumption, was in search of some wonder to advertise 
 himself, was led to ask Martin if he would " sell him his 
 secret." It was even said at the time that these multi- 
 plied forms were done by stamp and stencil. 
 
 In his colouring, Martin was not successful ; gay 
 colours, and want of tone and harmony, he never over- 
 came, and there was somewhat of a sense of the china- 
 vol. ii. 62 
 
434 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 painter to the last. A reaching after startling effects by 
 wrong opposition of colours, by extreme opposition of 
 light and dark, and by forced and contorted action of the 
 figures introduced, was but too apparent in all he did. 
 His earlier pictures have sadly failed from the faulty 
 pigments and vehicles used ; but in this he is no worse 
 than the greater number of his contemporaries. 
 
 His differences with the Academy had their rise from 
 overweening self-esteem. In his evidence before the com- 
 mittee he says his " Clytie " was hung in a dark room, 
 in a corner, and far too high ; Sir Martin Shee asserted 
 that it was not ill-placed : and we may remark that as 
 Martin complains also that some academician on the 
 varnishing days, spilt varnish on the " Clytie," it is 
 evident that a picture by some academician must have 
 been hung in the same dark room, in the same corner, 
 and higher up still. 
 
 Sir Martin Shee, while speaking with high respect 
 of Martin's talent, said that " a young man of twenty- 
 two might well have waited and said to himself, I am 
 young in the profession and must undergo trials and 
 difficulties which all others have encountered, and to 
 which juniors in all pursuits must necessarily submit; 
 had he thought thus and continued to exhibit, he would 
 have been long since a full member of the Royal 
 Academy." Perhaps Martin felt so himself in after life ; 
 but the failing belonged apparently to his family. The 
 painter had three brothers, one of whom used to write 
 under the signature of Anti-Newton, and dubbed himself 
 a philosopher ; no doubt De Morgan has included some 
 of his lucubrations in his " Bundle of Paradoxes : " 
 there seems to have been a bee in his bonnet as with 
 
DIFFERENCES WITH THE ACADEMY. 435 
 
 other members of the family. In conversation with one 
 of the great statesmen of the past age on whom he had 
 obtruded himself, he said, " There are four brothers of us, 
 — one is a soldier ; one is a painter, that is my brother 
 John; one is a philosopher, that is myself; and one 
 is a church reformer, that is my brother Jonathan :" the 
 same whose first act of church reform was the burning of 
 York Minster. Martin's desire to reform the Academy, 
 certainly was not to burn them out, but to turn them out. 
 It is satisfactory, however, to see by his evidence, that 
 he was on terms of friendship with, and admired many 
 individual members, if he disliked them as a body. 
 
 While we have thought it right in the interests of 
 truth to show that Martin's difference with the Koyal 
 Academy was captious, and arose from too high an 
 opinion of his own early talent, we must also protest, on 
 his behalf as well as on behalf of all the brotherhood, 
 against the little allowance that is made for the sen- 
 sitiveness of the artist's temperament, without which in- 
 deed none can be true artists. The old myth tells us 
 that he who sought to rival Apollo had his skin stripped 
 off his back for his pains, and it indicates pretty clearly 
 how the artist shrinks from the rough touch of the rude, 
 or the sharp sting of the critic. A picture may have taken 
 a man of refined mind and poetic feeling months of labour 
 in its production, yet no sooner is it exhibited than he 
 is mortified either to see it passed by without a look, 
 or, after a mere glance, bitterly criticised or abusively 
 condemned. How few strive to place themselves at the 
 stand point of the artist and examine the subject from 
 his point of view. Few, indeed, have had the least 
 training to know right from wrong in art; and how 
 
 62—2 
 
436 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 painful is it to the artist to have his labours excepted to, 
 and his works depreciated by men utterly incapable to 
 judge of anything beyond what is merely eye-pleasing, 
 their taste not having been cultivated beyond the 
 appreciation of the lowest or the most meretricious 
 
 qualities of art. 
 
 Self-esteem is almost a necessary ingredient of an 
 artist's character: working out an idea day after day; 
 tediously endeavouring to overcome the difficulties of 
 execution ; worried with his models ; the freshness of 
 the first thought, the first impulse, quite evaporated; 
 aiming at something continually beyond his power of 
 realization; if he is not self-conscious of his powers, 
 what is to buoy him up through such difficulties ? Men 
 like Martin and Haydon have some mental support in 
 that the Creator has endowed them with— may we not 
 call it— self-confidence ? At the same time it must be 
 remembered that when the public verdict is to be 
 pronounced on their works, the bitterness of disappoint- 
 ment in such minds is proportionate to the estimate they 
 had formed of their own success. There are others, and 
 these the truer artists, whose ideal is such that they 
 can never hope to realize ; who are quite as much dis- 
 satisfied with their own labours as is the most implacable 
 critic; who, when they have even achieved a great 
 success, feel it so far below what they had hoped to 
 attain that they are quite prepared to adopt the most 
 ignorant verdict against themselves as true; and suffer so 
 much from self-judgment that they are cut to the heart 
 with what they think confirms it. This it is that makes 
 the day of opening the exhibition such a day of misery 
 to most painters ; every man thinks his own work the 
 
FRANCIS DANBY, A.R.A. 
 
 437 
 
 worst ; and while confident men, like those we have named, 
 endeavour to escape from despondency by attributing their 
 failure to a bad place or unjust hanging, what wonder 
 that others, suffering in silence, give way under the bur- 
 then, when bitter criticism is added to their miseries ? 
 
 Francis Danby, AM. A., was another of the disap- 
 pointed sons of genius. He was one of twin brothers, 
 born near Wexford, on the 16th of November, 1793. 
 His father, James Danby, was a farmer and small pro- 
 prietor of that neighbourhood. About the time young 
 Danby arrived at an age to prepare himself for the active 
 duties of life, his father, who had removed to Dublin with 
 his family, died. Francis Danby had been placed in the 
 drawing classes of the Eoyal Dublin Society, and soon 
 evinced such a desire to follow art as a profession that his 
 mother was induced to consent. He afterwards studied 
 under O'Connor, a landscape painter whose works have 
 hardly been sufficiently appreciated. They have a certain 
 massive and somewhat melancholy character, that may 
 have influenced his pupil in the choice of the peculiar 
 phase of landscape art which he adopted, and in which 
 he was, during his lifetime, without a rival. Thus 
 Danby's first work, publicly exhibited in Dublin in 1812, 
 was a " Landscape — Evening." The bias had already 
 been given towards that period of the day when breadth 
 of effect and colour predominate, and the mystery of 
 gloom and twilight divests even the most homely scene 
 of its commonplace, and clothes the tamest forms with 
 grandeur and ideality. 
 
 After painting some time with O'Connor, master and 
 scholar managed between them to make up a purse to 
 enable them to visit London, and see for themselves the 
 
438 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 state of art in the capital. If Danby was an exhibitor 
 in 1817, this journey most probably took place in 1816. 
 It is related of them that they soon exhausted their 
 means, and finding themselves almost penniless, they 
 started on foot to Bristol, hoping to make their way 
 back from that port to Dublin. When, however, they 
 reached Bristol, they had difficulty, on the first night of 
 their arrival, in paying for their night's lodging. In the 
 morning Danby set to work, and made three drawings, 
 which he carried for sale to a fancy stationer on Col- 
 lege Green, and was fortunate in selling them for seven 
 shillings each. By similar exertions he was soon 
 enabled to provide a passage for his friend O'Connor 
 back to Ireland. Danby, struck with what he had seen 
 in London, and with a desire to enter lists where he 
 had such powerful competitors to stimulate his exertions, 
 determined to remain in England. We know from the 
 pictures he exhibited in the Koyal Academy that he 
 stayed some time in Bristol. In 1817, we find a picture, 
 " A View in Scotland," exhibited at Somerset House, by 
 G. Danby, of Clifton, and there is every reason to sup- 
 pose that the initial of the Christian name is a misprint, 
 and that the picture was really by Francis Danby. 
 
 It is usual for his biographers to refer to " The 
 Disappointed Love," which was exhibited in 1821, as his 
 first picture. But the first really important picture — 
 if, as we have seen, it was not the second — was " The 
 Upas, or Poison Tree of the Island of Java." It is on a 
 large canvas, 5 ft. 6 in. by 7 ft. 6 in., and was exhibited 
 at the British Institution in 1820. This fabulous tree 
 was said to grow on the island of Java, in the midst of a 
 desert formed by its own pestiferous exhalations. These 
 
HIS " UPAS, OR POISON TREE." 
 
 439 
 
 destroyed all vegetable life in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the tree, and all animal life that approached 
 it. Its poison was considered precious, and was to be 
 obtained by piercing the bark, when it flowed forth 
 from the wound. So hopeless, however, and so perilous 
 was the endeavour to obtain it, that only criminals 
 sentenced to death could be induced to make the 
 attempt, and as numbers of them perished, the place 
 became a valley of the shadow of death, a charnel-field 
 of bones. To succeed in such a subject required a 
 poetical mind, joined to powers of the highest order : 
 no mere landscape painting, no mere imitation of Nature, 
 would suffice to picture to us the gloomy horrors of this 
 land of fear. Danby's interesting picture is now in the 
 possession of the Kev. C. Hare Townshend. It represents 
 a deep chasm in a valley of dark slaty rocks, into which 
 the pale light of the hidden moon only partially pene- 
 trates. Above the- black crest of the gorge is a space of 
 star-lit sky, with the pointed summits of a mountain 
 range stretching away into the distance. The sides of 
 the cleft are rugged, full of refts and seams, and wholly 
 bare. Vegetation there is none, but the solitary Upas 
 growing out of the thin soil at the bottom of the valley. 
 The whole rests in the silence of death, broken only by 
 the dripping of a little fall of water from the gloomy 
 rocks. The poison-seeker is in the foreground, about 
 half-way down into the cavernous pit, and has just 
 arrived within view of the tree and within the influence 
 of the pestiferous vapour. He turns sickening from the 
 sight ; for at his feet are the bodies of several of his 
 latest predecessors, while around the fearful tree the 
 ground is white with the dry-bleached bones of multi- 
 
440 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tudes who have gone before him, and perished at the 
 moment they had reached the goal. Animals there 
 are none, instinct has warned them from the fatal 
 spot ; but a vulture, flying over the chasm, has fallen 
 with extended wings almost at the feet of the fainting 
 poison-seeker. The story has been vividly told, and yet 
 the horrors do not painfully obtrude. It is a wonder- 
 ful first attempt, and shows the original poetry of 
 Danby's mind. 
 
 In 1821, Danby, then living at Kingsdown Place, 
 Bristol, exhibited " Disappointed Love," the picture now 
 No. 65 in the "Sheepshanks Collection." This -also 
 serves to show how from the first the painter had a 
 higher aim than mere landscape painting ; sought indeed 
 to treat his picture as a poem, and to give ideal interest 
 to his works. This picture tells at a glance a long tale 
 of perfidy and disappointment, and nature sympathizes 
 with the story. The work has the faults of a young 
 man, but it has also the freshness of thought of a young 
 mind. The painting is heavy, the figure ill-drawn, the 
 weeds in the foreground outrageously out of proportion, 
 growing also out of a rock, which could never have 
 nourished them, and flagging and hanging as if painted 
 from half withered specimens. But the poetical inven- 
 tion displayed makes us forget all this. The scene 
 represents a dark, deep, black pool, overhung with a thick 
 screen of foliage, curtaining it with sombre melancholy 
 gloom, through which the joyous sunbeam never pierces. 
 On the bank, seated on the damp ground, is a young 
 girl, her thin clothing suited to the happy household 
 circle, and ill-assorted with the dank marge of that 
 dreary pool. Her head between her knees, she has sunk 
 
" DISAPPOINTED LOVE." 
 
 441 
 
 down in hopeless misery, sobbing out her last sigh ere 
 she plunges into the deep ; her bonnet is beside her on 
 the shore, a token for those who shall seek the lost one. 
 The fragments of the cruel letter that has broken her 
 heart, float slowly away on the sullen stream. One 
 moment more, and she will be — at rest ? 
 
 The full effect of the work is marred by the want of 
 beauty in the girl, who is certainly not an " interesting 
 female : " she is decidedly ugly. One of the writers 
 having been entrusted by the late Mr. Sheepshanks 
 to offer his noble gift to the nation, accompanied the 
 then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Corne- 
 wall Lewis and Lord Palmerston, to Rutland Gate, to 
 view the collection. Mr. Sheepshanks of course was 
 present, and on this occasion even more full of anecdote 
 about the pictures than usual ; the visitors paused before 
 " Disappointed Love," struck by the deep gloom of the 
 spot the painter had chosen for the scene of his story. 
 Lord Palmerston remarked that it was a pity the girl 
 was so ugly. " Yes," replied Mr. Sheepshanks, " one 
 feels that the sooner she drowns herself the better. 
 She always reminds me," he continued, " of the reply 
 made by one of the judges who had tried a girl on the 
 Northern circuit for destroying her child. Some lady 
 who was deeply interested in the young woman's fate, 
 met the judge at dinner, and ventured to say imploringly, 
 did he mean to leave the poor girl to be hanged. 
 ' Hanged, madam ! ' replied the irritated judge ; ' hanged, 
 madam, certainly ; what else is she fit for, she is so con- 
 foundedly ugly V " No doubt said to stop impertinent 
 inquiries, but containing a great truth, that beauty goes 
 far in the worst cases to win favour, and that in the 
 
442 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 painter's language at least, ugliness is the expression of 
 evil, as beauty is of goodness. 
 
 In Danny's next work, a subject which in the 
 hands of most painters would have been sadly pro- 
 saic, we again see the poetry of his view of Nature 
 brought prominently out. In 1822, he exhibited a pic- 
 ture of " Clearing up after a Shower;" it is on a thick 
 panel, and is said to have been painted for a former 
 mayor of Bristol, but is now the property of Mr. Coxe, 
 of Pall Mall. A heavy cloud that has caused the 
 just-passed shower, forms the grey background of the 
 picture ; on the left is a group of chestnut and other 
 trees, their wetted leaves coming like emeralds off the 
 dark cloud. Under the broad foliage some passengers 
 have taken shelter, and in front, one aged and weary 
 traveller is seated. He looks with an air of sadness 
 on the happy sports of a group of boys, who— just let 
 loose from school — are, boy-like, dancing and leaping 
 with delight in the last droppings of the shower. The 
 lads are on a sandy hill-side, which, with them also, is 
 lighted by that wondrous sunlight following a heavy 
 storm, when the rain has burnished all the foliage into 
 gold and jewels, and it is contrasted with the leaden 
 gloom of the retiring storm. The group is full of action, 
 one boy throws his hat on high and leaps to catch it, 
 one rushes after a butterfly, others are splashing water 
 from the swimming runnels over a black dog, who enjoys 
 the sport. The whole has a look of life, poetry, and 
 truth, that lifts the work out of the region of paint. 
 The figures are very well drawn, and remind us of those 
 of Mulready in his early works, both as to manner and 
 colour ; or perhaps still more of Eippingille, himself a 
 
RUPTURE WITH THE ACADEMY. 
 
 443 
 
 Bristol artist, who in his early pictures painted subjects 
 of humour and character in a manner that should have 
 brought him great reputation. When Danby painted 
 the " Sunshine after a Shower," he was still living at 
 Bristol; his address given on the panel is, Woodfield 
 Cottage, Cotham Lane, Bristol. 
 
 In 1824 Danby exhibited his " Sunset at Sea after a 
 Storm." Forty years have passed since we saw this 
 picture, yet we could almost describe from memory the 
 lurid red of the setting sun, the broken waves of the 
 subsiding storm, the few survivors of the wreck, alone on 
 a raft on the limitless ocean ; perhaps if we saw it now 
 we might think it less impressive than its memory, yet it 
 was a work that made the painter's reputation. Law- 
 rence, the President, purchased it, it is said, at a much 
 higher sum than the painter's price, and the world of 
 artists and outer world of art-lovers were so struck with 
 it, that in the next year, when he followed up his success 
 by a still greater effort, " The Delivery of Israel out of 
 Egypt, and Host of Pharaoh overwhelmed in the Red 
 Sea," the Academy elected him an associate of their body, 
 and the road to wealth and fame seemed to lie open 
 before him. 
 
 The road to fame seemed open before him. Why, 
 then, was he disappointed ? why was Danby never elected 
 to the full membership of the Academy ? It is a story 
 ill to tell, with faults, and no doubt recriminations, which 
 the grave has partly closed over, and which we will not 
 venture to re-open ; suffice it to say, most emphatically, 
 it was not for want of a sense of the great merit of the 
 painter : not that his art was unappreciated by his brother 
 members; hardly even that he made a false step involving 
 
444 
 
 A CENTURY OP PAINTERS. 
 
 the council of that day in many annoyances, and bring- 
 ing disgrace on art; since this might have been over- 
 looked as time dimmed its recollection, had not Danby 
 defended the fault to the last rather than regretted it. 
 It would, indeed, have found no mention here had not 
 the Academy been exposed to continual taunts on ac- 
 count of Danby's non-election. One who wrote during 
 Danby's lifetime, and when the cause of his being over- 
 looked in the Academy elections must have been well 
 known, after abusing the Academy in vulgar language 
 for its neglect of the painter, passes over his offence, 
 merely saying, " An unhappy marriage and its con- 
 comitants shivered his household gods;" fine words and 
 ambiguous, and so let them remain. There was evi- 
 dently some obliquity of moral sense in Danby's mind in 
 regard to this affair ; since when the older members were 
 passing away and younger men arising who would will- 
 ingly have forgotten the past, and, as a man of true 
 genius, sought to have him of their body, Danby was not 
 one to let his faults slide out of memory, but was rather 
 in the mood to justify and excuse himself, and to attribute 
 his neglect to every possible cause but the right one. 
 
 It has been said that in " The Delivery of Israel out 
 of Egypt," and in pictures of that class, Danby was but 
 an imitator of Martin ; and certainly it is true that the 
 multitude of figures, and the vastness of the scene, have 
 some of the characteristics of that master. But the 
 grand ideality of his treatment was truly Danby's own, 
 and was kindred to the feeling which had already pro- 
 duced " The Upas-tree," the " Sunset at Sea," and 
 " Disappointed Love ;" and was afterwards to inspire the 
 " Solitude," the "Enchanted Island," "The Spring," 
 
AND LONG RESIDENCE ABROAD. 
 
 445 
 
 and numerous other works that have little in common 
 with those of Martin, except that they are ideal landscapes. 
 Even in this " Passage of the Eed Sea " there is far more 
 of colour, far more of terrible grandeur, and less of the 
 tricky and mechanical qualities of art than in Martin. 
 Danby drew the figure better, had far more feeling for 
 form, and we find little of the overstrained theatrical 
 action which is so frequent in the figures of Martin. Of 
 course, in such subjects by either painter where multi- 
 tudes of figures have to be introduced, and the impres- 
 sion has to be made by numbers, rather than by passion 
 and individual expression, the grandeur and solemnity 
 of the general effect has to be relied on. In this we feel 
 that Danby was far more of an artist than Martin. The 
 effect in this picture is wonderfully attained ; the pillar 
 of fire looks like a real lambent flame, putting out the 
 dim crimson sunset, lighting up the massive clouds and 
 rising storm that is to dash the waves of the Red Sea 
 over the hosts of Pharaoh. 
 
 The rupture between Danby and the Academy was 
 one of the causes which made him leave England for the 
 Continent in 1829. During the next eleven years he 
 resided principally in Switzerland, boat-building, yacht- 
 ing on the Lake of Geneva, making studies and draw- 
 ings, and painting some few works on commission. It is 
 understood, also, that he visited Norway; but of this 
 period and its labours we have little knowledge. Between 
 1829 and 1841, with only two exceptions, his name 
 disappears, not only from the catalogue of the Royal 
 Academy, but from that of the British Institution also. 
 About 1841 Danby returned to London, residing for a 
 time in its immediate neighbourhood. He again renewed 
 
446 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Lis contributions to the exhibitions, both at Trafalgar 
 Square and Pall Mall; and his pictures exhibit the 
 same characteristic style, the same power, and the same 
 poetic feeling. Among the best works of this latter 
 period are, " The Grave of the Excommunicated," 1846 ; 
 "The Evening Gun," 1848; "Spring," 1850; and 
 " A Wild Seashore," 1853. Such works quite upheld 
 Danby's former reputation, although occasionally his 
 pictures were fatiguing in execution, and the intention 
 not always realized. In 1847, he retired to Shell House, 
 near Exmouth, to enjoy the neighbourhood of the sea 
 and the rich foliage of Devonshire. 
 
 The members of the Academy have few opportunities 
 of meeting one another, except on their assemblages for 
 business ; and the varnishing days have always been much 
 prized, as almost the only occasion of bringing together, 
 in unrestrained freedom, those who otherwise might have 
 remained almost strangers. Danby usually came up to 
 these meetings, and was cordially received by those who 
 loved his art. But there was a remnant of mistrust on 
 the part of the elder members, and on his own of the 
 sense of neglect, and, as he considered it, ill-treatment 
 — that his just claims, as an artist, to membership, were 
 overlooked— and he never seemed really at home at these 
 meetings. From the earlier days of the Academy there 
 had existed an Academicians' Club, the members dining 
 together at the Thatched House at stated intervals. 
 Only members were eligible for election ; but in 1853 
 its rules were revised, and the associates, as a body, 
 were invited to join the club, Danby among the rest. 
 Premising that a ballot was required at all elections, an 
 extract from Danby's answer to a member who wished to 
 
HIS RANK AS LANDSCAPE PAINTER. 
 
 447 
 
 propose him will show his irritation at the position he 
 held, and also how completely he seemed unaware that 
 any misconduct of his own was the original cause of his 
 claims being overlooked. " I shall," he says, " ever 
 consider it my greatest pride to associate with all its " 
 (the Academy's) ' ' members ; but I have held the doubt- 
 ful honour of being at the head of the ' list of associates ' 
 for so many years, (the result of prejudice and illiberality, 
 or want of merit on my part,) that I should fear to subject 
 my name to the additional distinction of rejection in the 
 Academicians' Club. However I may desire the honour 
 and pleasure of joining in those convivial meetings of our 
 brother artists (under these circumstances), nothing less 
 than a decided invitation from them would induce me to 
 intrude myself into a more prominent position than I 
 hold, with sufficient pride and perfect content, at present." 
 The breach was not to be healed. His early error had 
 separated him from his brother artists ; and he remained 
 apart from them until his death, which took place at 
 Exmouth, the 9th of February, 1861. 
 
 Whatever were his failings as a man, as an artist 
 Danby should take high rank. His pictures are true 
 poetry as compared with the prose — noble prose it may 
 be — of many who. have great reputation as landscape 
 painters. The very list of his works shows the imagina- 
 tive aim of all his labours. Of forty-six pictures, mostly 
 landscape in their general character, registered in the 
 Academy catalogues between 1817 and 1861, there are 
 only three whose titles bear any relation to actual 
 scenery ; and of the large number exhibited during the 
 same interval at the Institution, only one. 
 
 Danby's art was totally opposed to that of the realistic 
 
448 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 school. He was not one to sit down to imitate Nature 
 leaf by leaf, to photograph her maze of branches, to 
 count the myriad blades of grass, or the wild -flowers she 
 strews with so lavish a hand. His effort was rather to 
 combine the large general truths of Nature— her grandest, 
 saddest aspects, with the imaginative and ideal creations 
 of poetry. Take, as an example, his picture of the 
 coming forth of " Spring," a large and important land- 
 scape, formerly the property of Mr. Birch of Birming- 
 ham. In the present day, the painter of such a subject 
 would sit down in his hut or tent to paint the bursting 
 buds as they clothe the naked sprays of winter ; choosing 
 of course some actual scene that strikes him as beau- 
 tiful or characteristic : and then, without alteration, 
 omission or change, copying conscientiously the details 
 before him, give us at the best, truth*, but not poetry. 
 
 Danby, on the contrary, choosing from a store of 
 materials the landscape scenery best adapted to display 
 the sweet attributes of spring, clothes it with the hues of 
 morn, the spring of day ; groups together the trees that 
 by their varied periods of bud or blossom, mark the 
 morning of the coming year. The chestnut, already 
 robed with leaves, and ornamented with its thousand 
 cones of blossom ; the aspen, from which the catkin has 
 i just fallen, still yellow with its opening leaves. Apart 
 from these a small group of gloomy firs, as it were the 
 last relics of winter passed away ; under the trees, the 
 sward, rich with its early green, and enamelled with a 
 wealth of flowers, is banded with the long golden rays of 
 the early sun ; rising mists unveil the distant hills, 
 glittering with many falling streams from spring-tide 
 showers. The broad expanse of clear water, around 
 
MODE OF PAINTING AND VEHICLES. 449 
 
 the islet on which the trees are growing, reflects from 
 its pure surface the fresh sky and rolling clouds. In the 
 foreground, one with music and singing heralds a group 
 of fair women, bearing the young Spring aloft. She is 
 scattering flowers from her lap to the laughing Loves 
 who gambol in her train. The whole is a sweet idyll — a 
 song of spring-time without words. 
 
 Danby's execution was far less mechanical than 
 Martin's, and certainly more varied ; but the labour was 
 rather too apparent, and the manner somewhat tedious, 
 the surface too smooth and polished. He seems to have 
 used some vehicle, such as gold-size, that has darkened 
 with age, and in some cases has caused the darks to 
 crack. This, with the glassy surface of his pictures, 
 renders them very obscure when hung in the dark rooms 
 to which too many of our fine works are condemned ; 
 but they well repay examination, and grow upon us the 
 more the longer we view them. As an artist he ranks 
 far above Martin, and dying, he left no one to succeed 
 him in ideal landscape. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 63 
 
450 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ROBERTS, NASMYTH, BONINGTON, AND MULLER. 
 
 David Roberts, R.A.—Ris Birth — And Apprenticeship to a Painter and 
 Decorator — Tries successfully Scene-Painting — Comes to London — 
 Engaged as Scene-Painter at Drury Lane — Exhibits Easel Pictures — 
 Joins the Society of British Artists on its Foundation — Becomes Pre- 
 sident — Leaves the Society — Elected into the Royal Academy — 
 Travels on the Continent — And in the East — Popularity of his Art — 
 Visits Italy — His Views of " London from the Thames " — Sudden 
 Death — His published "Works — Opinions upon his Art — Patrick 
 Nasmyth — The Son of a Landscape Painter — His early love of Nature 
 — Comes to London at the age of twenty — Falls into Dissipated Habits 
 ■ — Paints English Scenery with great Truth — Richard ParJces Bonington 
 — Difficulties of his Early Life — Tries Art in Paris— Gets his Art- 
 Education there — His Genius and Early Success — Premature Death 
 — His Great Talent for Art — William J. Mailer — His Early Genius — 
 Leads him to Art — Travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy — 
 Exhibits in London — Then visits Greece and Egypt — Joins the Expe- 
 dition to Lycia— On his return settles in London — Finds Patronage — 
 But Disappointed — His Illness and Death. 
 
 It is not intended to include in our work every painter 
 who has produced meritorious pictures. Many have 
 taken good rank in art whose works are a delight and 
 a pleasure, yet possess no marked character of their own. 
 It is only those who have enlarged the scope of British 
 art by the originality of their manner, their choice of 
 subject or novelty of execution, that claim a particular 
 notice at our hands. Such a one was David Roberts, 
 R.A., whose works we are about to review. He was 
 born at Stockbridge near Edinburgh, on the 24th 
 October, 1796. His parents, though in a humble 
 
DAVID ROBERTS, R.A. 
 
 451 
 
 sphere of life, gave him, as is usual with his country- 
 men, an education beyond that which would have been 
 the lot of a youth of the same class in England. 
 Before the usual age he was apprenticed to a well-known 
 decorator and house painter in Edinburgh, whom he 
 served for seven years, learning all the trade processes 
 — the rapid execution of the decorator, and the mere 
 mechanical appliances which shorten labour. . This gave 
 him great readiness of hand, as well as a simple and 
 somewhat matter-of-fact mode of using his pigments, 
 which he retained during life. 
 
 By an innate feeling for art, Boberts was easily led 
 to apply his trade-knowledge to something beyond house- 
 painting, picking out mouldings, or dashing in a frieze ; 
 for, shortly after his apprenticeship was completed, we 
 learn that he had tried scene painting, and painted his 
 first scene for a company of strolling players at Carlisle. 
 Thus early the young painter found the true bent of his 
 genius, the source of his future power. Perhaps with 
 the varied practice of his 'prentice training, completed 
 before he was nineteen, he was better prepared for the 
 branch of art he adopted, than half the artists of his 
 age, when schools of design were unknown in England 
 and schools of art gave little instruction in the use of 
 the brush and the palette. It is true that Boberts 
 entered as a student at the Trustees' Academy, when 
 Andrew Wilson was at its head— a master under whom 
 many of the Scotch artists who afterwards attained 
 eminence were formed— but Boberts was either satisfied 
 with what he knew and preferred his own methods, or 
 he found it necessary to seek employment for his main- 
 tenance. He remained in the school only one week, 
 
 63—2 
 
452 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 made a drawing or two from the extremities, and then 
 left, to trust henceforth to a ready hand, a self-sustained 
 temper, and the rough knowledge he possessed ; taking 
 nature for his mistress and teacher. 
 
 He was first engaged in 1820 in scene painting at the 
 Glasgow and Edinburgh Theatres, and then with an 
 introduction from the principal of the latter, he made 
 his way to London, where he soon found employment in 
 the scene-room at Drury Lane Theatre, and in 1822 was 
 appointed scene painter. For this art his great rapidity 
 of execution peculiarly fitted him, and he soon distin- 
 guished himself : he produced at a very short notice 
 the characteristic scenes for Mr. Charles Matthews' At 
 Home. But scene painting did not satisfy him ; he aimed 
 at distinction as a painter in oil. He had, in 1820 and 
 the following year, sent pictures to the Edinburgh Exhi- 
 bition; and in 1824 his works first appear on the walls of 
 a London Exhibition. He joined the Society of British 
 Artists in Suffolk Street, of which he was one of the 
 foundation members, and in that year sent to their first 
 exhibition three small views, " Dryburgh Abbey," and 
 "The East Front" and "South Transept of Melrose 
 Abbey." In the same year he strayed to France and 
 visited the coast towns of Dieppe, Havre and Rouen, in 
 pursuit of a class of art the scenic picturesqueness of 
 which had already possessed him. In 1825 he exhibited 
 with the new society, two views of " Notre Dame, 
 Rouen," the west front and the south transept; the 
 entrance to the Church of St. Martin, in the same 
 city, and " St. Jacques, Dieppe ; " and at the same 
 time contributed to the British Institution a small pic- 
 ture of Newby Abbey, Dumfriesshire. 
 
HIS EARLY ART-CAREER. 
 
 453 
 
 The next year Boberts exhibited his first work at the 
 Royal Academy, " A View of Rouen Cathedral ; " and at 
 the British Institution one picture; at Suffolk Street, 
 three. In 1828 he produced a work of another cha- 
 racter, " The Departure of the Israelites out of Egypt," 
 which he sent to Suffolk Street. Then during the next 
 seven years he sent only one work to the Boyal Academy, 
 and occasionally exhibited a picture at the British Insti- 
 tution. He sent the best works from his easel to the 
 young society in Suffolk Street, to which he appears to 
 have attached himself; became in 1830 its vice-pre- 
 sident, and in 1831 its president, and was in both years 
 a large supporter of its exhibitions. In 1832 he ceased to 
 fill the office of president ; in the three following years 
 he exhibited only one work with the society ; and in 
 1836 resigned his membership, paying such fines and 
 share of liabilities as were due from him ; yet he exhi- 
 bited two works there the following year, perhaps as an 
 expression of good will, and then his connection with the 
 society entirely ceased. 
 
 He had been attracted by the greater distinction 
 which the exhibitions at the Royal Academy' afforded. 
 He was rapidly advancing in art, and his interests led 
 him to seek admission to that body, of which he was 
 elected an associate in 1838, and an academician in 
 1841. He had already, in the pursuit of his art, tra- 
 velled in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Morocco, 
 and Holland. Then seeking novelty in more distant 
 lands, in the autumn of 1838 he started for Egypt and 
 Syria, and for the ten following years his works, with 
 only an occasional return to his former subjects, were 
 Eastern. He was now at the height of his reputation, 
 
454 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 exhibiting almost exclusively at the Koyal Academy, and 
 producing his best pictures. Among them, in 1840, 
 " The Greek Church of the Holy Nativity at Bethle- 
 hem;" "The Statues of the Vocal Memnon on the 
 Plain of Thebes— Sunrise." In 1841, "Jerusalem, from 
 the Mount of Olives, with the Return of the Pilgrims ; " 
 " The Portico of the Temple of Dendera, in Upper 
 Egypt." In 1843, "Ruins of the Island of Philoe, 
 Nubia ; " " Gateway of the Great Temple, Baalbec." In 
 1844, " Pyramids of Ghizeh— Sunset." In 1849, " The 
 Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans." 
 
 In 1851 he visited Italy for the first time, returning 
 by the way of Vienna, and from that year to 1860 his 
 themes were Italian ; the decaying grandeurs of Rome, 
 Venice, Pisa, and Milan were the inspirations of his 
 pencil. Then as age crept on and the desire of travel was 
 satiated, he found his subjects nearer home, and com- 
 menced a series of pictures for Mr. Lucas (one of the 
 contractors for the Exhibition Building, 1862), " London 
 from the River Thames.", This was a fine theme, and 
 well suited to his pencil. It was commenced at a time 
 when the banks of the river afforded the most picturesque 
 combinations ; these, if they are now rapidly disappear- 
 ing, to give place to the nobler works of the architect, 
 yet have cherished associations in connection with our 
 great city, which we rejoice to see preserved in the 
 works of such a painter. Of this series, Roberts exhibited 
 in 1862, " The South Elevation of the New Palace at 
 Westminster, from the Horseferry ; " and "A View from 
 Westminster Bridge, embracing St. Paul's, Somerset 
 House, and the Temple;" "The Embarkation of the 
 Lord Mayor from Blackfriars' Bridge ; " and a second 
 
HIS CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 
 
 455 
 
 "View of the New Palace at Westminster;" and in 
 1863, " St. Paul's from the River Thames, looking 
 West," and another "View, looking East." He was 
 painting on another of the series on the morning of the 
 25th November, 1864; towards the afternoon of that 
 day he left his home apparently in perfect health, but 
 was seized with an apoplectic attack in the street, was 
 brought home speechless and unconscious, and died the 
 same evening. 
 
 Roberts's choice of subject, its picturesque treatment, 
 and the characteristic groups with which his pictures 
 were tilled, eminently fitted his art for publication. He 
 made, for four years, drawings for the Landscape Annual. 
 In 1837 he published, in lithography, his Picturesque 
 Sketches in Spain; and in 1842, commenced his well- 
 known work, Roberts s Sketches in the Holy Land and 
 Syria, which was completed in 1849. In 1859, he pub- 
 lished Italy, Classical, Historical, and Picturesque. The 
 development of the art of lithography, and particularly 
 chromo -lithography, and the talented artists who assisted 
 him in these publications, greatly tended to their popu- 
 larity. They had, as they deserved, an extensive sale ; 
 and from them and his paintings, Roberts realized a 
 considerable fortune. 
 
 It is hardly correct to call Roberts a landscape 
 painter, in the sense in which we should apply the term 
 to Turner or Constable. The art as practised by Roberts 
 was essentially scenic ; his pictures almost always consist 
 of buildings, towns, or ruined cities; of exteriors or 
 interiors of palaces, cathedrals, or temples ; these he 
 treated less with a view to those atmospheric effects 
 which are the delight of the true landscape painter, than 
 
456 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 with the desire to give us an idea of the splendour and 
 magnificence of his structures, by simplicity and large- 
 ness of parts, by breadth of daylight, and by enriching 
 his subjects with groups of accessories. His early 
 labours for the theatres formed his style, and he clung 
 to it through life ; or, might we not rather say, that his 
 art was naturally fitted for the subjects on which he 
 began to exercise it ? He had no sympathy with the 
 imitative or realistic school ; in all the hundreds of 
 sketches by his hand, there is not one that indicates an 
 attempt at individualized realization. Broad, simple and 
 very conventional, with the details suggested rather than 
 given, his pictures charm us by their onceness, their 
 direct appeal to the eye, and the extreme ease with which 
 they are executed. The colour is agreeable, though not 
 like nature, but generalized to what he thought best 
 suited for the scenic display of the class of subjects he 
 loved to paint ; so that whether his buildings are on the 
 banks of the Clyde or the Thames, the Nile or the Tiber, 
 there is a sameness of tint and hue pervading them 
 which is quite independent of the dingy tones of our own 
 city, the damps of Venice, or the clear sharpness of the 
 dry atmosphere of the East. While other painters 
 excruciate over crumbling stones, stained by time or 
 storms, or mossed with age, aiming to give the very 
 texture of decay, Roberts cared little for such imitative 
 renderings, laying in the masses in the general colour 
 of light, with little alteration of tints or tone. His con- 
 duct of his picture was very simple, it being little more 
 than an enlarged sketch. He saw his subject complete 
 from the commencement— the quantities and masses — 
 even the general effect of the figures which were to enrich 
 
AND MANNER OF TREATMENT. 
 
 457 
 
 it, being laid in with the dead colouring. On the clean 
 canvas he drew very carefully with his pencil all the lines 
 and forms of his work, using the ruler as freely as an 
 architect would ; such ornamental details as he intended 
 to admit were also boldly sketched, as were the figures, 
 both near and distant ; the perspective of his work being 
 most fully and carefully considered. Over this pencil 
 outline the general masses of local colour and shadow 
 were laid in with a full pencil and a facile hand, rather 
 negative in tint than otherwise ; the general light, shade 
 and colour of the groups of figures being laid in at the 
 same time. 
 
 It is to be observed that, consisting as his pictures 
 generally do, of large masses of cool stone colour, the 
 figures form an important part of the composition ; 
 enabling the painter to introduce strong contrasts of 
 light, dark, and colour to give life and animation to 
 the work, and to draw the eye at once to the principal 
 object — the altar, the tomb, or monument, which forms 
 the point of the picture. Up to his intention he drew 
 figures easily and well, and had a picturesque eye to 
 groups and processions of priests or soldiery ; though it 
 must be confessed that they remind us somewhat of 
 stage supernumeraries, and green-room properties. His 
 first painting when completed, showed much of the firm 
 pencilling with which he outlined his work, still remain- 
 ing ; in the second, the masses are again gone over with 
 semi-solid tints to break them up, to enrich them, and 
 to bring the parts together ; the details and ornamental 
 parts are touched cleanly, and the forms defined, some- 
 times by the use of the end of the brush- stick, drawing 
 firm lines of light in the wet colour. The drawing of 
 
458 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the figures completed, and the colours and draperies 
 enriched, then a few slight after-glazings and touches to 
 heighten the lights completed the picture. 
 
 Roberts's manner throughout his career varied but 
 little. Latterly he no doubt obtained greater facility, 
 and learned exactly how little would suffice for the 
 expression of his work, how much he might afford to 
 leave out. * Throughout his career his pictures have a 
 marked equality in manner, in colour, and in excel- 
 lence. This was curiously illustrated in the 600 or 700 
 sketches in oil and water colour that were exhibited 
 after his death. The earliest and the latest had hardly 
 an interval between them : he seems never to have had 
 a difficulty, perfectly accomplishing what he intended, 
 never rising beyond himself, but never falling below. 
 
 We do not see in his works an effort after anything 
 new or uncommon, either in effect or process, an effort 
 to get beyond himself, resulting as such efforts do in 
 other men, at times in failures, and at times in startling 
 successes. In his art and his method of painting 
 Roberts was like Canaletti ; in the choice of architecture 
 and buildings as the subjects of his pencil ; in his love of 
 a firm, decided outline and the use of the ruler ; in pre- 
 cision of hand, and the ready way in which he touched in 
 his accessories ; and the scenic groups of figures, &c, 
 with which he animated his pictures. He was less precise 
 than the Venetian, less minute in his details, but also 
 less conventional. Canaletti was very correct in deli- 
 neating all the objects that came within the scope of his 
 pictures, in which we can note every building as it stands 
 in the city of the sea ; Roberts suppressed such details, 
 and hid such parts of the scene as he thought undesirable. 
 
PATRICK NASMYTH. 
 
 459 
 
 The views on the Thames by Scott or James give every 
 wharf and every shed as it stood on the Thames' hank ; 
 but Koberts, in the series of " Views of the River," which 
 were among the latest of his works, suppressed much, 
 and hid more by shadow, or by the river craft he intro- 
 duced. Thus in the " Sketches of Victoria Tower," all 
 the group of picturesque sheds that cluster at its base are 
 gone*; the same is the case in that subject where the 
 Cathedral towers above the wharf of St. Paul's ; but by 
 this treatment he increased the magnificence of our native 
 river at the expense of its picturesque truth. 
 
 Though Roberts had studied decorative painting, 
 and all his subjects were architectural, we are not aware 
 that he had more architectural knowledge than is derived 
 from his mere observation of such works, as a painter. 
 Yet so easily does the world give a man of talent credit 
 for more than he possesses, that Roberts was considered 
 an architectural authority ; his brethren were accustomed 
 to defer to him on such matters, and he was placed on 
 more than one important committee as a judge to award 
 prizes and premiums. In some respects, he was well 
 qualified : as an arbiter he possessed good common 
 sense, he was very honest, and had sufficient of the 
 dogged resolution of his countrymen to hold his own 
 opinion against even the titled and the great ; but his 
 real knowledge of architecture was that of the scene 
 painter, or at the best, of an architectural draughtsman ; 
 and of the science of that art, of fitness or constructive 
 utility he was wholly ignorant. 
 
 The art of Patrick Nasmyth is a complete contrast to 
 that of his countryman Roberts, being chiefly remarkable 
 for its homely imitative truth, and the absence of all 
 
460 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 accident or effect. His father, Alexander Nasmyth, was 
 a pupil of Allan Kamsay's, and became a landscape 
 painter of much merit. He was born in 1758, and 
 settled in the Scotch capital, where he died in 1840. 
 Young Patrick was born in Edinburgh in 1786, and 
 early showed a great love of Nature ; playing truant from 
 school to idle in the sunny fields, and to sketch, or 
 attempt to sketch, the scenery of that beautiful neigh- 
 bourhood. As he had little aptitude for learning, and 
 paid little attention to his books, he was gradually al- 
 lowed to take his own course, and to follow his disposi- 
 tion for art. His father no doubt helped his studies, and 
 seems indeed to have made all his children love and 
 follow art. Young Nasmyth came to London at the age 
 of twenty, where his talents were soon appreciated and 
 his works found ready purchasers. In 1812 we find him 
 for the first time exhibiting at the Eoyal Academy " A 
 View of Loch Katrine in Perthshire ; " but it is by more 
 simple and rustic scenery that he is generally known, 
 and his best landscapes are essentially English. 
 
 In early life an injury to his right hand obliged him to 
 learn to use his left in painting, and when about seven- 
 teen years of age, having had the misfortune to sleep in a 
 damp bed, it brought on an illness which resulted in 
 deafness, by which, and his want of taste for literature, 
 he was shut out from many sources of enjoyment ; and 
 in his solitude early addicted himself to habits of 
 excess indulged in with low company. We are not told 
 where he obtained his knowledge of Dutch art, but his 
 works show that he founded himself on that school, and 
 imitated the execution, while he adopted the class of 
 subjects of Hobbema and Wynants ; delighting in lane 
 
RICLIARD PARKES BONINGTW. 
 
 461 
 
 scenes, hedgerows, the skirts of commons, and village 
 suburbs, and choosing the dwarf oak with its contorted 
 limbs and scrubby foliage, in preference to other trees. 
 He is said latterly to have painted to live rather than 
 lived to paint, working from necessity and to supply his 
 actual wants ; yet he painted to the last, and his last 
 illness arose from an attack of influenza caught in 
 sketching, which his frame, enfeebled by his bad habits, 
 was not able to resist. He died at Lambeth on the 17th 
 of August, 1831, during a thunder-storm, which he was, 
 at his own request, raised in bed to contemplate. He 
 was buried in St. Mary's Church. 
 
 His art was popular at first, from its likeness to the 
 Dutch school then in high favour with art patrons. 
 This school had some small tendency to lead our young 
 painters to a closer imitation of Nature ; but with all its 
 excellencies, and it has many, it has little originality. 
 Nasmyth's manner is rather mean, his foliage over-de- 
 tailed, and his work somewhat black in the shadows, but 
 the execution is solid and satisfactory, and his paintings 
 stand well ; painting in rather a low tone, his skies look 
 fresh and brilliant, but they show the simplest effects of 
 cloud and daylight. No tendency to poetry or invention 
 is found in his works ; but he wisely confined himself to 
 painting that in which his strength lay. The oaks of 
 Epping, Penge, or Penshurst, the lane scenery of Nor- 
 wood or Dulwich, were his subjects, and these he ren- 
 dered with simplicity, force, and truth. 
 
 The genius of Bichard Parhes Bonington led him to 
 the same class of art as Eoberts, and would probably, 
 had he lived, have led him to higher excellence. He was 
 born at Arnold, a village near Nottingham, on the 25th 
 
462 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 October, 1801. His grandfather was the governor of the 
 county gaol at Nottingham, and on his death was suc- 
 ceeded by his son, the father of the painter ; who seems 
 to have been one of that unhappy class born to be 
 the torment of others. He soon lost his appointment 
 in the gaol, and then, with what previous acquirements 
 we know not, attempted to earn a living as a portrait 
 painter ; he also published some prints of little merit 
 in coloured aquatint. His wife meanwhile kept a 
 school. 
 
 Under such influences the young painter was passing 
 his boyhood. His first inclinations were divided between 
 art and the drama, and his future career for a time hung 
 in the balance, when his father's imprudence, love of 
 low company and violent political opinions, broke up 
 his wife's school, which was probably the mainstay of 
 the family, and they fled to France and made their way 
 to Paris. Young Bonington was then fifteen years of 
 age ; art seemed to lay open to him, and with the most 
 limited means, if any, he gained permission to study in 
 the Louvre, and commenced most diligently to improve 
 himself in art as his profession. He made rapid progress ; 
 though we know little of him in his student days. He 
 became a pupil at the Institute, drew in the atelier of 
 Baron Gros, and gained a gold medal in Paris for one 
 of his marine views. About the year 1822 he went to 
 Italy, and we have some fine subjects by him, which have 
 the true odour of that glowing land. 
 
 He was rising into reputation in Paris ; his works 
 both in oil and water colours, were sought after and 
 commanded large prices. He was even claimed by the 
 French artists as belonging to their school, in which he 
 
VARIED EXCELLENCIES OF HIS ART. 463 
 
 had surely developed his genius, while he was unknown 
 in his own country. In 1826 some longing desire of 
 fame among the artists of his own land, induced him to 
 send for exhibition to the British Institution two views 
 on the French coast, and their high merit received the 
 most cordial recognition. Gratified by this, he sent in 
 1827 to the Royal Academy " A Scene on the French 
 Coast," and the following year three subjects, " Henry III. 
 of France in Council, Surrounded by his Pet Dogs and 
 Parrots," "A Coast Scene," and "The Grand Canal 
 and Salute Church, Venice." He had now attained a 
 reputation in both capitals ; his genius attracted commis- 
 sions which overwhelmed him. Sketching imprudently in 
 the sun in Paris, brought on brain fever, and subsequent 
 severe illness. He came to London for advice, but was 
 seized by rapid consumption, which terminated his life 
 on the 23rd April, 1828. He was buried in a vault at 
 St. James's Church, Pentonville. We are indebted to 
 a writer in Arnold's Library of the Fine Arts for these 
 facts ; but some other accounts say that Bonington died 
 in Paris, which we think improbable, as he certainly 
 came here for advice, and was buried in London. 
 
 Bonington's works were marked by their originality. 
 He was a master of the figure, which he painted with 
 much grace. He succeeded equally in his marine and 
 coast scenes, and his picturesque architecture of the 
 Italian cities. His drawing in these various classes was 
 characteristic ; his light and shade powerful, his colour 
 rich and pleasing. His works differed from those of 
 his countrymen mostly from the simple breadth of the 
 masses, both of light and of shadow, and from his 
 appreciation of the change which shadow induced on 
 
464 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the local colour; the handling and execution is very 
 broad and flat, and a happy union of the best qualities 
 of the French and English schools : it is curious that 
 the only marked impression made on the French school 
 by English art has been through two landscape painters, 
 Bonington and Constable. It is difficult to say to which 
 particular class of art Bonington might have devoted 
 himself had he lived. His genius promised success in 
 all. His influence in art was already felt, particularly in 
 water colours. A series of his works were published in 
 lithograph, and his drawings — sold by Sotheby after his 
 death — realized 1,200/. His appearance was that of a 
 man of genius. We are told that he was affectionate 
 and generous, with a countenance bearing an expression 
 of melancholy thought. 
 
 We must include in this chapter William J. Mutter, 
 whose art possessed much in character with that of both 
 Roberts and Bonington. His father was a German, who 
 settled at Bristol, was curator of the Museum there, 
 and was known as the publisher of some works of a 
 scientific character. In this city the painter- son was 
 born in 1812. From his birth he had the character of a 
 genius. He early showed a taste for botany and natural 
 history, and was an apt scholar ; but his strongest incli- 
 nation was to drawing. He received some instruction 
 from J. B. Pyne, a fellow-townsman ; but self-reliant, he 
 soon left him, and commenced to study from nature alone. 
 
 In 1833-34, he visited, for his improvement, Germany, 
 Switzerland and Italy, and, then returning to Bristol, 
 resumed his profession there, and worked for some time 
 without much encouragement. In 1836, he exhibited 
 for the first time in London, sending to the Academy, 
 
WILLIAM J. MULLER. 
 
 465 
 
 " Peasants on the Banks of the Ehine, Waiting for the 
 Ferry Boat," and to the Society of British Artists, 
 " Venice," and " Hoar Frost — Autumn Scene near 
 Monmouth." He exhibited for the next three years with 
 the British Artists alone. In 1838, probably induced by 
 the example of Roberts, he visited Greece and then 
 Egypt, and, with his sketch-book stored with rich material, 
 returned again to Bristol. He made but a short stay, 
 however, in his native city, for about the end of 1839, he 
 had settled himself in London. Here he soon found 
 purchasers for his works, which he was able to finish 
 with great rapidity, realizing the fruits of his travels. 
 He appears again as an exhibitor in 1840, contributing 
 to the Royal Academy " Athens, from the Road to 
 Marathon," and "Ruins at Gornon, Egypt — Sunset;" 
 and to the Society of British Artists, " The Memnons — 
 Sunrise." The following year he sent to the Academy 
 his " Slave Market, Egypt," and " The Sphynx; " and 
 also published his Picturesque Sketches of the Age of 
 Francis the First. 
 
 Soon after Government projected the Expedition to 
 Lycia. This he solicited and obtained permission to 
 accompany, and that he might be at full liberty to follow 
 his own art, he defrayed his own expenses ; making the 
 voyage from his own resources. He found abundant mate- 
 rials peculiarly suited to his art, and on his return home 
 painted " A Turkish Burial Ground," and a " Zanthian 
 Tent Scene," both highly meritorious works. But he 
 complained that he was not appreciated ; that his paint- 
 ings were badly hung at the British Institution, and that 
 he fared no better at the Royal Academy. He returned 
 to Bristol dispirited and unwell, and was advised that his 
 vol. ii. 64 
 
466 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 heart was diseased. His merits were acknowledged ; he 
 had many commissions to execute, but he was unable to 
 work. His disorder gained ground ; he was weakened 
 by repeated attacks of bleeding from the nose, and 
 though he continued to paint occasionally, his health 
 gradually succumbed, and he died at Bristol on the 8th 
 September, 1845. He had that year made his largest 
 contribution to the Royal Academy : — " Great Canon 
 formerly belonging to the Knights Templars at Rhodes," 
 " Head of a Cingari — Zanthus," " Burial Ground, 
 Smyrna," " Tent Scene, Cingaris playing to a Turkish 
 Family — Zanthus," " Turkish Merchants, with Camels, 
 Passing the River — Valley of Zanthus." 
 
 Miiller had attained a large and simple manner of 
 his own, and rather a glittering feeling for colour, with- 
 out a full sense of space, keeping, or distance. For 
 instance, his "Baggage Waggon," the property of Mr. T. 
 Ashton, of Manchester, which is one of his best works, 
 is fine in composition, and sparkling in colour; the 
 figures are appropriate, and lead the eye well into the 
 picture ; but the various distances seem a little too much 
 cut out, and have not those refinements of space which 
 belong to our best landscape painters, and of which in 
 the works of Turner, Miiller must have had so many 
 examples before his eyes. His pictures of Eastern 
 scenery are truthful, and carry us away to other climes : 
 his " Rhodes " has a truly Eastern look, and if a little 
 too white, is broad and luminous, and a work that could 
 hardly have been painted, had not the painter studied on 
 the spot the peculiar aspects of Nature in the Mediter- 
 ranean isles. 
 
C <A<37 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS. 
 
 John James Ohalon, R.A. — Commences Art as a Painter in Oil — Takes up 
 Water Colours — Joins the Water- Colour Society — Secedes, to seek 
 Academy Honours — His eventual Success — Opinion upon Lis Talent 
 — Description of his Art — Thomas Heaphy — His Apprenticeship — Art- 
 Studies — Eaidy Marriage — Practices as Portrait Painter — Occasionally 
 exhibits Subject-pictures — His " Fish-market " — Follows the Army in 
 the Peninsula — Paints the Officers' Portraits — The Duke of Wellington 
 and his Staff — Promotes the Foundation of the Society of British 
 Artists — And the new Water-Colour Society — Opinion upon his Art — 
 David Cox — His Childhood — And Beginning in Art — Becomes Scene 
 Painter — Tries Water-Colour Painting — His earnest Studies and Suc- 
 cess — His Writings on Art — Manner of Painting — Its Individuality 
 and particular Merits — The "Welsh Funeral" — Samuel Prout — 
 Sickly Boyhood — Early Training — Engagement with Mr. Britton — 
 Drawings for him — Joins the Water-Colour Society — His Publications 
 — His Style, Manner, and Choice of Subject described — Peter De Wint 
 — His Parentage — Commences the Study of Art — Hilton, R.A., his 
 Fellow- student and Friend — Exhibits with the Water-Colour Society 
 — His Art Career — And Art described — Manner of Painting — George 
 Fennel Robson — His Art Teaching — Early Success — Study in the 
 Highlands — Love for Mountain Scenery — Progress in Art — Sudden 
 Death — William Hunt — His Birth-place — Attachment to Art — Appren- 
 ticed to John Varley — Early Study— Long Art Career — Death — 
 Character of his Art — And Manner of Execution — Copley Vandyke 
 Fielding — Son of an Artist — Educated for Art — Pupil of Varley — 
 Member and President of Water-Colour Society — Effect of Teaching 
 upon his Art — Opinion upon his Powers. 
 
 The foundation of the Society of Painters in Water 
 Colours was the means of establishing the art on a firm 
 footing; and while uniting its members, made them 
 emulous of progress, and zealous for the interests of the 
 body to which they belonged ; which was for many years 
 
 64— 2 
 
468 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the sole representative of water - colour art. Their 
 exhibitions brought their works and their talents fully 
 before the public, free from the overpowering contrast 
 with the works of the oil painters ; from their exclusive - 
 ness they were always attractive and never wearied ; and 
 confined to their own members, the Society was spared 
 the loud cries from without of works rejected or ill- 
 placed, which the larger policy of the Royal Academy 
 entails upon its members. For a time, indeed, there 
 were factions in the Water- Colour Society, and opinions 
 differed as to the exclusion of all works but their own, 
 and as to the policy of admitting only works in pure 
 water colours. But these dissensions soon ended. The 
 discussions to which they gave rise, ended in confirming, 
 as the true one, the original object of the Society ; and 
 as a body of painters in water colours, they have main- 
 tained for many years their high position, and numbered 
 among their members most of the best painters of the 
 school. Some two or three men of talent, it is true, 
 never joined the Society, and there were some seceders 
 from the body. This chapter is not, therefore, devoted 
 exclusively to its members ; indeed the artist with whom 
 it commences was a seceder, who turned early in his 
 career from the practice of water colour to oil. 
 
 John James Chalon, B.A., was born at Geneva in 
 1778 ; he was the elder brother of Alfred Edward 
 Chalon, a distinguished painter, in our notice of whom 
 we have already told such particulars of the family as 
 were known to us, and of the early days of John James, 
 of whom we are now about to speak. His first appear- 
 ance as an artist was in 1800, when he exhibited 
 " Banditti at their Repast," at the Royal Academy, 
 
JOHN JAMES CHALOX, R.A. 
 
 469 
 
 followed, but not till 1803, by two pictures, " A Land- 
 scape," and "Fortune-telling." In 1804 he exhibited 
 two landscapes, and in 1805 four. Up to this time 
 John Chalon's exhibited works had been in oil ; but in 
 1806 he became a "fellow-exhibitor" of the Water- 
 Colour Society, and then turned to water-colour art. In 
 1808 he was elected a member of the Society, and in 
 that year exhibited, with other pictures, his " Shorwell 
 Eocks on the Wye," a work which gave him a distin- 
 guished place as a water colour painter. It was ex- 
 hibited in the International Exhibition of 1862. On the 
 alterations which took place in 1813, when it was pro- 
 posed to dissolve the Water-Colour Society, John Chalon 
 was among the members who seceded. He had up to 
 that time contributed one painting each year to the 
 Eoyal Academy Exhibition ; and in the five following 
 years he sent two works yearly — except in 1816, when he 
 exhibited only one fine work, full of interest, " A Scene 
 in Plymouth Sound in August, 1815 — the Bellerophon 
 with Napoleon on Board," which he presented to the 
 gallery at Greenwich Hospital, where it is now accessible 
 to the public. 
 
 It is probable that John Chalon's withdrawal from 
 the Water-Colour Society may have been influenced by 
 his desire to become a member of the Koyal Academy. 
 In 1812 his brother Alfred was elected an associate, and 
 many of the contemporary artists thought even more 
 highly of John's abilities than of Alfred's. When in 1816 
 the younger brother was advanced to full honours, John 
 made great efforts to appear well on the Academy's 
 walls, sending his " Napoleon on board the Bellerophon." 
 The brothers were deeply attached to one another, and 
 
470 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 having attained rank in art himself, Alfred was most 
 anxious for his brother's advancement also ; but although 
 he exhibited from time to time works of great merit, it 
 was not until 1827 that John Chalon was elected an 
 associate, and he continued in that rank until 1841. 
 
 It has been said of John Chalon, and this within ten 
 years of his death, that " during a long life, he painted 
 a multitude of pictures mostly in water colours," so little 
 is really known of his art ; yet Leslie who knew him 
 well, and was at least a competent judge, thought him a 
 man of great and original powers. " Few painters," he 
 said, " had so great a range of talent." Moreover, his 
 principal works were in oil, although he was in early life 
 an accomplished water-colour painter ; and we can admit 
 that, if invention were the great qualification of an artist, 
 few better deserved that title than John James Chalon. 
 For nearly half a century he was a member of the 
 Sketching Club, and a constant attendant at their meet- 
 ings, and those who look over the collections made by 
 the several members, will give a high place for fertility 
 of idea, for rapid execution, and for apt illustration of 
 the subject, to the sketches by his hand. In his more 
 important works, had his colouring been more effective 
 and his execution equal to his originality, he would not 
 have been classed disparagingly as a painter in water 
 colours ; nor would his best works have remained on his 
 own walls to be disposed of after his brother's death, at 
 prices wholly inadequate to their value. But a certain 
 dryness and solidity, a want of interchange in executive 
 processes, and a tendency, at times, to blackness, ob- 
 scured the higher qualities his works unquestionably 
 possess. Nevertheless, some of his earlier works are of 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS WORKS. 
 
 471 
 
 very high merit; such is the "Village Gossips," ex- 
 hibited in 1815, now in the South Kensington Museum, 
 an upright landscape with a fine mass of trees and 
 houses bordering a pond; these, with the whole fore- 
 ground, are in shadow ; under the trees is a group of 
 horses also in shadow, contrasting with a gleam of light 
 on farm and stack-yard in the mid-distance. This large 
 mass of shadow, although solidly painted, is very lumi- 
 nous, and by no means sacrificed to the lights. It is an 
 evidence of Chalon's just taste that he has resisted the 
 obvious temptation to introduce a ray of light on the 
 three figures of the Gossips in the extreme foreground, 
 and has with great skill treated them subdued and in 
 shade : a painter of less originality would have resorted 
 to the trick of making them in sunlight, their bright 
 lights and colours contrasting with the large mass of 
 neutral shade. 
 
 Another picture of about the same time was exhi- 
 bited at the International Exhibition in 1862, and called 
 " The Gravel Pit," (No. 205), though this is perhaps 
 not its original name. It is, on the whole, one of 
 John Chalon's best works, broad, simple, and manly in 
 treatment, square and facile in handling, and free from 
 faults of colour that overtook him in later practice : it is 
 really a finely-coloured picture ; the sky is a luminous 
 mass of rifting clouds through which a sun-ray breaks 
 and lights up lines on the distant plain, while the fiat 
 cutting of the steep side of the gravel-pit is lighted with 
 warm rich sunlight, telling against the neutral green 
 in the foreground, which is all in shade ; two or three 
 female figures at the foot of a tree on the right tell like 
 jewels against the negative masses. 
 
472 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Another very masterly work by the painter is a 
 "View of Hastings," exhibited in 1819, and now at 
 South Kensington Museum. It is a grand treatment of 
 coast scenery, free from those littlenesses of detail so often 
 resorted to by incompetent artists. A storm is rising 
 over the sea, and the fishing-boats are running to shore 
 — one on the crest of a breaking wave is just about to 
 be beached ; the hill beyond the town is in full light, 
 and over it, a large mass of cumulous cloud, luminous 
 with golden orange light ; the moment chosen being 
 just before the driving rain-cloud closes over the last 
 sun rays. The waves beyond the surf are broken, chop- 
 ping, and restless ; the town, partly obscured by a dark 
 shadow from the storm-cloud, and partly lit up by the 
 last gleam of the sun, tells now light upon dark, and 
 again dark upon light, on the grey masses of the cloud, 
 so that the light and dark are happily intermingled and 
 carried with great skill through the picture : the rela- 
 tions between the dark objects on sea and shore, and the 
 light of the sky, are very truthfully rendered. It is 
 painted with too solid a palette, and the waves are too 
 edgy ; but it is a fine, manly work. 
 
 Chalon's faults of blackness were more apparent in 
 his water colours than in his oil pictures. The work 
 already alluded to, " Shorwell Rocks on the Wye," and 
 "A River Scene in Devonshire," the latter in the South 
 Kensington Museum, are specimens of his best art in this 
 medium ; they are simple in execution, fresh and bold in 
 manner, and of the Girtin and Varley school, rather than 
 with any leaning towards Turner. Of his other large land- 
 scapes in water colour, of which there are two in the same 
 collection, it suffices to say that they are heavy, black, 
 
THOMAS HEAPHY. 
 
 473 
 
 and overwrought ; and, though fine as compositions, have 
 rather the appearance of being copied from Berghem's 
 oil pictures, than endowed with the lightness and facility 
 of water colours. John Chalon made beautiful studies 
 from Nature, both in oil and water colours ; and had it 
 been the fashion in his day to paint direct from Nature, 
 would have produced very fine imitative landscapes. In 
 his early days much of his time was given up to teaching, 
 and although he was an exhibitor for fifty years his works 
 are comparatively few. 
 
 In 1847, while walking with his brother, he was 
 suddenly seized with paralysis, and lost the power of 
 supporting himself. His disorder gradually increased ; 
 and with his physical, his mental powers also declined. 
 The attentions of his younger brother were unremitting, 
 until his tedious illness terminated fatally on the 14th 
 November, 1854, when in his seventy-sixth year. In his 
 habits and manners John Chalon was entirely English ; 
 frank, hearty, sociable, full of wit and anecdotes of art, 
 a musician and a lover of music. For forty years the 
 two brothers were the life and support of the Sketching 
 Society, which seems to have drooped as the health 
 of John Chalon declined, and not to have survived his 
 absence. The centre of a group of distinguished men of 
 their own profession, the brothers, inseparable during a 
 long life, were equally steadfast in their friendships and 
 hospitality. 
 
 In our list of artists, who in the early part of the 
 centtfry obtained reputation as painters in water colours, 
 Thomas Heaphy must be included as one of the best of 
 those who painted figure subjects. He was born in 
 London, in the parish of Cripplegate, about 1779-80. 
 
474 
 
 A CENTURY OF FAINTERS. 
 
 His father, John Heaphy, was descended from a French 
 family, who in the seventeenth century had settled in 
 the eastern part of London, where his countrymen who 
 fled on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had 
 introduced the manufacture of silk, which then took root 
 in our city. John Heaphy took Katharine Gerard, a 
 Frenchwoman, to wife, and the taste characteristic of the 
 race, descended to their son Thomas, who early in life 
 showed a predilection for art. His father apprenticed 
 the boy to a dyer, perhaps hoping that his art-feeling 
 might tend to improve the silk dyes of the district ; but 
 the occupation was very distasteful to the youth, and his 
 evident dislike led to his indentures being cancelled 
 within a few months, and a new direction given to his 
 life. He was now articled to an engraver of the name 
 of Meadows, who obtained some reputation by engraving 
 book plates from the designs of Richard Westall. There 
 was, at the time we are writing, about 1796-7, an art- 
 school of some repute in Finsbury, conducted by a 
 painter of the name of Simpson, who numbered among 
 his pupils Thomas Uwins, Ross the father of Sir 
 William, and others who afterwards became known in 
 the arts. Heaphy, who was more inclined to painting 
 than to engraving, after his master's work was finished, 
 attended in the evening very regularly at Simpson's 
 school, and studied diligently with the view of fitting 
 himself for future practice as an artist. 
 
 Before his apprenticeship to Meadows expired, 
 Heaphy, with the improvidence characteristic of artists, 
 had married Miss Stevenson, the sister of one of his 
 fellow students at the school, and to enable him to sup- 
 port her had recourse to colouring prints after Westall 
 
HIS FIRST WATER - COLOUR PICTURES. 475 
 
 and others, works at that time of ready sale ; he also 
 began to paint portraits. In the year 1800 we find 
 him exhibiting at the Royal Academy for the first time, 
 two of these portraits, one of his young wife, and one 
 of Mrs. Meadows, doubtless the wife of his master. 
 When little more than twenty-one years of age, he 
 painted his first subject picture in water colours, a girl 
 stooping over a river bank to gather a water lily ; and 
 having completed his time with Meadows, he obtained 
 admisssion as a student of the Royal Academy. There 
 also, he continued to exhibit — principally portraits- 
 ending in 1804 with one subject picture, " The Portland 
 Fish Girl." He did not join the Water-Colour Society 
 on its foundation, although we learn that he was already 
 a somewhat popular favourite ; but in 1807 he was ad- 
 mitted as an "associate exhibitor," and contributed 
 three subject pictures. 
 
 Pyne tells us that when Heaphy's picture of " Juvenile 
 Poachers Disputing for their Stolen Game" was exhibited, 
 the then President of the Academy, West, pointed it out 
 before a room full of persons of rank and position as a 
 work of great merit and original talent. This criticism 
 of course spread from one to another and greatly 
 increased the young painter's reputation. His "Fish 
 Market," exhibited in the Water-Colour Exhibition of 
 1809, raised him to the summit of success; it was 
 painted with great care, full of truth and character, the 
 colour tender and delicate, the hues of the fish rendered 
 with great purity. His pictures found ready sale at 
 prices high for our own day; but remarkable for his 
 time, if, as has been said, his " Hastings' Fish Market " 
 was sold for the sum of 500 guineas. But Heaphy 
 
476 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 was versatile and somewhat volatile. In 1807 he was 
 appointed portrait painter to the Princess of Wales 
 whom he painted in miniature, as he did many other 
 persons of rank and fashion. His subject pictures 
 having less of his attention, the sale of them about 
 this time began to decline, and many remained on his 
 hands. Soon afterwards he left the Water - Colour 
 Society • exhibiting there for the last time in 1811. 
 
 He now gave himself up to portraiture, and with this 
 view he quitted England for the British Camp in the 
 Peninsula, where he occupied himself in painting por- 
 traits of the principal officers. Here he must have led 
 a life of adventure, since he continued with the army 
 throughout the rest of the campaign and until the war 
 ended with the Battle of Toulouse. On his return 
 to England he painted a large picture of the Duke of 
 Wellington, and the officers of his staff, some of whom 
 had fallen victims to the strife, and their memories are 
 thus preserved to us. The work was engraved, and had 
 much success. 
 
 Although Heaphy owed some portion of his art- edu- 
 cation to the Royal Academy and was on friendly terms 
 with individual members, the whole of his artistic life was, 
 we are told, " characterized by active hostility to that 
 body : " this was the source of most of his friendships, 
 and of his personal relations with other artists ; and 
 this feeling led him to endeavour to form a rival society. 
 For some time after the completion of his portrait pic- 
 ture, he had practised art only at intervals and in a 
 desultory manner ; much of his time being occupied with 
 a building speculation into which he had entered in the 
 neighbourhood of St. John's Wood. But when his 
 
A FOUNDER OF NEW SOCIETIES. 
 
 477 
 
 thoughts again reverted to art, he was aware that his 
 long absence from England had entirely severed him 
 from the Water-Colour Society, and he began to agitate 
 the foundation of the Society of British Artists. He 
 worked energetically to bring together, and to unite into 
 a body, those artists who favoured the movement. He 
 sat continually on their Committees, and when at length 
 the society was fully formed, he was nominated their 
 first President. To the first exhibition in 1824 he con- 
 tributed nine pictures, two of which were works in oil, 
 and his life-long wishes seemed now realized. 
 
 But dissensions arose, as they are always likely to 
 arise in newly-formed societies ; the Academy in the 
 beginning of its career had had its troubles, the Water - 
 Colour Society its dissolutions and re-constructions, and 
 the Society of British Artists had to undergo its share 
 before finally settling into a well-reqognized position in 
 art. For some cause into which it is needless to inquire, 
 Heaphy ceased to be President after the first year ; after 
 the second he ceased to be an exhibitor, and his con- 
 nection with the society terminated. Years passed away 
 during which Heaphy contributed little to art ; but he 
 was still interested in all new associations of artists. 
 He was again active in the formation of the new Society 
 of Painters in Water Colours, of which he became a 
 member ; but died shortly after its foundation on the 
 19th November, 1835, aged about fifty-five years. 
 
 Heaphy's works won upon the public by their truth- 
 fulness and direct reference to Nature. His brother 
 painters had attempted fashion, false rusticity, and 
 classicality ; he went to Nature both for his character 
 and expression, and did not scruple to represent her as 
 
478 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 he found her. Of this his best picture in the South 
 Kensington Museum (No. 604), " The Wounded Leg," is 
 an example. It is not an agreeable subject to choose, 
 but Heaphy made no compromise in representing it ; the 
 wounded leg forms a prominent feature. The labourer 
 smarting under the removal of the plaister, the somewhat 
 stolid gaze of the labourer's wife, and the patient care- 
 fulness of the old mother taking off the dressing, are 
 excellent for their character and for truth of expression ; 
 they do not recall the painter's model, and are widely 
 removed from the conventional features, the head drawn 
 by recipe, of Westall and his school. The picture is 
 much faded, but still shows that the execution was free, 
 and less laboured than that he afterwards adopted in his 
 miniatures and portraits. 
 
 Practising his art in the cottage, the field, or by 
 the sea-beach rather than in the studio, it is little to 
 be wondered that he habitually undervalued what he 
 termed academic art; using the phrase in reference to 
 the mode of study adopted by the old masters, whose 
 works he probably persuaded himself he held in less 
 estimation than was actually the fact ; for on visiting 
 Italy towards the close of his life he evidenced his true 
 appreciation of their power by the earnestness with 
 which he made copies from their works. Heaphy's life 
 illustrates the necessity of unceasing practice on the 
 part of him who would continue to improve. We have 
 said that his picture of " Wellington and his Staff" 
 completed, Heaphy, for several years, painted only occa- 
 sionally and at long intervals. When he again desired 
 to assume the active practise of his profession, although 
 still in the prime of life, he felt that he had fallen off 
 
DAVID COX. 
 
 479 
 
 rather than improved, and exclaimed with grief, " My 
 art has gone from me." 
 
 David Cox, an eminent water-colour painter, was 
 born in Birmingham on the 29th April, 1783. His 
 father was a blacksmith, a healthy handicraft which 
 has been the specialty of the town and neighbourhood 
 from time immemorial ; the whole population being- 
 more or less workers in metal. The mother of the 
 painter, a woman of strong good sense and deep religious 
 feeling, gave their only son David such an orderly and 
 careful training in his childhood, as served to guide him 
 aright in the difficulties and dangers to which he was 
 exposed on his entry into life, and to form the sincere 
 character of the man. While yet a child the boy had 
 the misfortune to break his leg ; this, joined to a some- 
 what delicate constitution, obviously unfitted him to 
 follow his father's trade. While laid up from the effects 
 of the accident, a box of colours and some paper pro- 
 vided for his amusement, was a source of such unceasing 
 delight to the invalid, that his father, on his recovery, 
 sent him to a drawing school in the town, conducted by 
 Mr. Barber, Sen., a local teacher of the day. Here he 
 must have made great progress, and showed a true 
 vocation for art ; since, when not yet sixteen years of 
 age, he was apprenticed to a locket-painter, to paint the 
 devices and ornaments of various kinds, which mounted 
 in metal form what is called toy jewelry, for which Bir- 
 mingham is almost as much noted as for its coarser works 
 .in iron. He lost his master at the end of about eighteen 
 months, and was obliged to seek other sources of im- 
 provement and employment : a locket of his painting 
 still in the possession of his family, shows that he had 
 
480 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 obtained great mastery ol his work, even during the 
 short time he had been engaged in it. 
 
 Not readily finding other employment in art, to 
 which he instinctively clung, he undertook, like his 
 great predecessor Claude, to grind colours ; and in 
 this way he laboured for the scene painters at the 
 Birmingham Theatre ; gaining at the same time, from 
 his habits of observation, a knowledge of their art and art 
 processes. Macready, the father of the tragedian, was 
 then stage manager, and wishing to improve the scenery 
 of his theatre, he sent to London and engaged De Maria, 
 who at that time was painting scenes for the Italian 
 Opera, to come and prepare a set for him. Of this 
 artist we have no records, but his works seem to have 
 awakened in Cox the desire to become a landscape 
 painter. He used to compare the ready handling and 
 broad manner of his scenes to Wilson's landscapes. 
 De Maria, who soon perceived young Cox's talent for the 
 art, set him to carry on the less important parts of his 
 own works, and to paint side scenes. Shortly after, Mac- 
 ready, who accidentally found out the skill and readiness 
 of the young assistant, employed him to copy, on his 
 own account, a set of scenes for the Sheffield Theatre. 
 Of scenic art, more than any other art, the essential 
 object is to please the eye — to make effective points 
 tell, and to express the intended effect with facility and 
 ease. It may be presumed that young Cox, during the 
 four years he remained with the company as scene 
 painter, laid the foundation of those very qualities, which 
 are so characteristic of his works, and which, added to 
 his refined sense of the colouring of landscape, of the 
 effects of air, and the fresh atmosphere of English 
 
TRIES SCENE PAINTING. 
 
 481 
 
 scenery, make his pictures such favourites with all who 
 love art. 
 
 The management, as is customary with most pro- 
 vincial companies, moved from place to place, and the 
 scene painters travelled also. This unsettled life was 
 very distasteful to Cox. After remaining the time we 
 have named, he left and proceeded to London ; where, in 
 the first instance, he sought and obtained employment 
 in the scene-loft at Astley's Theatre. In his journeys to 
 and from his labours there, he was attracted by the 
 water-colour drawings in Palser's well-known shop, then 
 on the Surrey side of the river ; the works there exhi- 
 bited determined Cox to become a water-colour painter. 
 He was fortunate enough at some of his subsequent 
 visits to Palser's to make the acquaintance of John 
 Varley, who invited him to his painting room, and intro- 
 duced him, no doubt, to the clever knot of rising artists 
 who assembled in his studio, and who profited so largely 
 by the maxims and methods inculcated there. Colonel 
 Windsor, afterwards Earl of Plymouth, struck with some 
 of Cox's works, which he saw at Palser's, obtained many 
 pupils for our artist ; who was thus enabled to leave the 
 theatre, and take more entirely to the art he loved. 
 
 In 1805, Cox made his first visit to North Wales, 
 and on his return exhibited first in Bond Street, and on 
 the breaking up of that society, with the one in Spring 
 Gardens. Kesiding on Dulwich Common, then some- 
 what of a sequestered nook, though in the immediate 
 vicinity of London, Cox made a diligent study of Nature ; 
 not by elaborate imitation, but, as he said, always with 
 some direct purpose — to learn to render the aspects of 
 some one of the several periods of the clay, with its 
 vol. it 05 
 
482 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 varied effects and the incidents and characteristics suit- 
 able to it. He also studied the old masters — Velasquez 
 and Ruysdael being his chief favourites. He copied 
 Gaspar Poussin for his improvement ; nor were the 
 works of Girtin, Turner, Havell, and Varley without 
 their direct influence upon him : thus searching the art 
 of the past and the practice of his contemporaries, to 
 give himself a foundation on which to form his own 
 style direct from the observation of Nature. 
 
 These studies were for a time suspended by his being 
 appointed, in 1814, teacher of drawing to the senior 
 officers of the Military College near Farnham ; but find- 
 ing the duties irksome and unsuited to his disposition, 
 he resigned after a few months, and retired, in 1815, to 
 Hereford ; visiting London usually in the spring, at the 
 exhibition season, to keep up his acquaintance with art 
 and artists, and to prevent that falling off which is too 
 apt to arise when an artist secludes himself from his 
 brethren. At Hereford he continued to reside until 
 1829, when he returned to the vicinity of London, and 
 lived at Kensington until 1840. Then, weary of teach- 
 ing and making small drawings, and wishing to practise 
 art for itself and to indulge in his own feeling for it, 
 he retired to Harborne, a village in the neighbourhood of 
 his native city, and devoted himself almost entirely to 
 painting in oil. His works in this material are rarely 
 seen in London, remaining principally in the hands of 
 his friends ; but he continued to contribute to the Water - 
 Colour Society's Exhibition in Pall Mall until his death, 
 on the 7th of June, 1859. 
 
 In 1816, Cox published a Treatise on Landscape 
 Painting in Water Colours, containing progressive les- 
 
HIS " TREATISE ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING." 483 
 
 sons, with examples of the various effects of morning 
 and evening, of storm and calm, of winter and sum- 
 mer. He gives us his own views of the aim of the 
 landscape painter. "In the selection of a subject from 
 Nature," he says, "the student should keep in view the 
 principal object which induced him to make the sketch. ' 
 The prominence of the leading feature should be clearly 
 supported throughout ; the character of the picture should 
 be derived from it ; every object introduced should be 
 subservient to it." Elsewhere he says, " The principle 
 of landscape painting is, that it should convey to the 
 mind the fullest impression that can be produced from 
 the various classes of scenery; such, indeed, as shall 
 excite in the spectator an interest beyond any other 
 effect that might be chosen. This," he adds, " can only 
 be obtained by the most judicious selection of tints, and 
 the skilful arrangement and application of them to 
 differences in time, in seasons, and situations." The 
 beauty of the " Liber Studiorum " incited Cox to 
 attempt a rivalry. One hundred fine drawings in sepia, 
 lately belonging to Mr. Quilter, of Norwood, were pre- 
 pared for publication : highly excellent they are, yet 
 markedly different from those of Turner, showing how 
 separate were the conceptions of these two artists, 
 working with a like aim. They are a lesson to the 
 new school of painters, of the study both these great 
 artists made of arrangement, effect, and the agreeable 
 disposition of parts. The intended publication of those 
 by Cox was not, however, proceeded with. 
 
 Cox's handling in water colours was peculiar to him- 
 self, and was somewhat analogous to that adopted by 
 Gainsborough and Constable in oil-painting. He worked 
 
 65 — 2 
 
484 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 ■with wet colour, repeating broken tints loosely hatched 
 over one another until the local colour was obtained. 
 From the fluency of his brush, and the liquidity of his 
 tints, they dry with richness and fulness, the gum rising 
 to the surface. Many of his best works are wrought in 
 this manner, the knife being sparingly used to give glitter 
 and sparkle. We have already said that a painter's pecu- 
 liar execution is part of his idiosyncrasy ; that it has less 
 to do with his education than with his feeling. It is the 
 readiest way by which he can express to others what he 
 feels in art, or sees in Nature — it is personal, and could 
 hardly with advantage to his art expression be changed 
 for any other mode of execution. This being the case, 
 we cannot agree with a distinguished critic, who says : — 
 " The execution of Cox is merely a condition of northern 
 palsy, through which, in a blundering way, a true sense 
 of certain modes of colour, and of the sweetness of 
 certain natural scenes, finds innocent expression." We 
 think that Cox adopted his peculiar execution advisedly ; 
 and from judging it the best suited to give his impression 
 of Nature. 
 
 It has been objected to great completion in art, that 
 it leaves nothing to the imagination of the spectator. 
 This is certainly not the case with the works of Cox. 
 Like the two great painters we have quoted, he seems 
 more intent upon obtaining the exact tone and colour of 
 Nature, than in defining form; which is gradually deve- 
 loped in his pictures by the juxtaposition of hues and 
 tints rather than by drawing. Apparently simple tran- 
 scripts of Nature, his works are yet cunningly dominated 
 by art. The light and shade are well distributed, the 
 figures in the very rightest place, the keeping always 
 
HIS " WELSH FUNERAL." 
 
 485 
 
 excellent. His great characteristics are a generalized 
 treatment of Nature rather than individualized imitation ; 
 breadth, luminous freshness and breezy motion. He had 
 a true genius for landscape art, a thorough perception 
 of the colouring of Nature ; but, unlike Turner, who 
 mastered the whole realm of landscape, Cox was con- 
 tented with a more limited range, in which, however, he 
 reigned almost without a rival. No painter has given us 
 more truly the moist brilliancy of early summer time, 
 ere the sun has dried the spring bloom from the lately 
 opened leaf. The sparkle and shimmer of foliage and 
 weedage, in the fitful breeze that rolls away the clouds 
 from the watery sun, when the shower and the sunshine 
 chase each other over the land, have never been given 
 with greater truth than by David Cox. 
 
 Many of his works are truly imaginative ; the very 
 looseness of the handling already adverted to adding to 
 their sentiment. His noble picture of "A Welsh 
 Funeral," the property of Mr. F. Craven, is character- 
 istic both of his modes of executiou, and of that highly 
 imaginative feeling, which he added to truth, of the 
 general impression of Nature. It is one of his largest 
 and most impressive works. The time chosen is twilight 
 — day, just dying out into the gloom of evening — an hour 
 so full of mournful impressions, so suitable and so in har- 
 mony with the subject. The picture is nevertheless full 
 of colour and freshness, and not by any means heavy or 
 grey. The funeral procession moves away into the picture, 
 along a road bordered with stone dykes, and overhung 
 with trees ; these contrast with the barren stony hills in 
 the near background, the desolate stony region onwards 
 to which they are bearing the corpse. The backs of the 
 
486 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 throng of mourners are all turned to the spectator; going 
 away, as it were, from life into the gloomy solitude of 
 death : to the grave in the little hill- side churchyard, a 
 sepulchre in the rocks seen beyond. A gleam of light 
 illuminating the belfry shows the bell on the swing ; we 
 seem to hear its mournful knell, while over the path of 
 the funeral, above the chapel and the desolate hills, a 
 rift in the dark clouds opens up to us a glimpse as it 
 were of the calm heavens, the glorious home and future 
 rest of the departed. 
 
 Latterly Cox used at times a low-toned paper, coarse 
 in manufacture, with fragments of straw appearing on 
 the surface, and he freely resorted to wiping out the 
 lights, and even to the use of body colour ; glazing 
 over it, to give richness, but reserving points of pure 
 light, to focus and give requisite tone to the whole. 
 The "Funeral" is painted in this manner: the execution 
 is loose and apparently undecided ; when seen near, it 
 is a mass of blots and scratches, but from a few feet 
 distance we feel that any further completion would 
 take from the perfect impression it makes on us, and 
 deprive the picture of the solemn truth of dim imagina- 
 tive twilight which hangs over the whole. The scene is 
 from the neighbourhood of Bettws y Coed, which was 
 latterly as much Cox's country as Dedham and Flatford 
 were Constable's. There he painted many of his finest 
 works; and it shows how readily genius finds a subject, 
 where others only find tameness and commonplace, that 
 many of his pictures are from a single field. As a 
 painter, he had a marked individuality, and his pictures 
 are an honour to the Water-Colour School. 
 
 Samuel Prout adds another name to the long list of 
 
SAMUEL PROUT. 
 
 487 
 
 Devonshire artists. He was born at Plymouth on the 
 17th September, 1783. When barely five years old the 
 child, rambling in the copses and beside the ample 
 hedgerows of the neighbourhood in search of nuts and 
 wild fruits, was smitten with a sun-stroke, carried home 
 insensible, and not only suffered much at the time, but 
 in all his after life was subject to constantly recurring 
 attacks of headache, so severe as to confine him to his 
 bed and wholly to prevent any labour while they lasted. 
 He early showed a great fondness for drawing, but as 
 he advanced in years his father proposed that he should 
 follow him in his own profession ; though we are not 
 informed what that was. The lad, however, had heard 
 of the fame of his townsmen and their success in the 
 great metropolis : the love of art had taken possession 
 of him. His kind-hearted schoolmaster, too, had some- 
 what encouraged the pupil's propensities ; he used to set 
 young Prout beside him to make pen and ink sketches 
 of the pedagogue's favourite cat, and thus that predilection 
 for drawing, which the parent had thought a mere devo- 
 tion to an idle amusement, was silently fostered and 
 gradually became the fixed wish and decided aim of the 
 future artist. 
 
 The Kev. Dr. Bidlake was then master of the grammar 
 school. Placed under his instruction Prout became the 
 schoolfellow and companion of his townsman, Haydon, 
 whose hopes and aims were of a like character ; and on 
 their half-holidays the two lads used to wander forth 
 together on the shores of the Sound, in the grounds of 
 Mount Edgecumbe, among the deep shady lanes, or 
 beside the rocky Devonshire streams, to sketch and to 
 enjoy Nature. No doubt their early efforts were very 
 
488 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 different ; Prout's careful and imitative, Haydon's bold, 
 hasty, and sketchy; but they were at least united in 
 their love of art. It will be remembered that Payne, 
 holding some office in the dock-yard, was a resident of 
 Plymouth and enjoyed a local reputation for his water- 
 colour drawings of scenery in the vicinity ; his works 
 seem to have stimulated the exertions of Prout in the 
 same art, and he was allowed to have a few lessons from 
 S. Williams, a local teacher. Hence he had obtained 
 some skill when, in the winter of 1801, Mr. Britton, 
 journeying westward in search of materials for his forth- 
 coming work, Picturesque Beauties of England, was intro- 
 duced by Dr. Bidlake, to young Prout. Britton says, 
 "He showed me sketches of rock scenery, and certain 
 humble stone cottages which had no feature of archi- 
 tecture, masonry, or carpentry, and were as shapeless 
 as if put together by uncultivated men. They consisted 
 only of unworked stones piled up to form something like 
 four walls, with two or three holes for doors and windows, 
 and were covered with straw, thin stones, and heath 
 clods." Picturesque objects, no doubt, and proving thus 
 early the picturesque tendency of Prout's art, a quality 
 which never left him ; but having little relation to the 
 precision and accuracy so necessary to an antiquarian 
 draughtsman. Britton, however, saw, or thought he 
 saw, promise in the lad, and offered to take him on his 
 journey into Cornwall, and to pay all expenses in return 
 for his assistance in sketching objects of interest for the 
 forthcoming work. The offer met with a willing assent 
 on the part of the elder Prout ; but the journey was very 
 unpropitious : it began with wet and stormy weather, the 
 accommodation at the little country inns on the route was 
 
HIS BEGINNINGS IN ART. 
 
 489 
 
 the reverse of comfortable, while Britton tells us that 
 he soon found the youth was unable to render him the 
 assistance he expected and was depressed at his own 
 deficiencies and want of success. When they reached 
 Truro they parted for the present, Prout to return to 
 Plymouth, Britton to continue his journey to the Land's 
 End. 
 
 Their connection, however, was not to end here. 
 Prout had found his deficiency in drawing, his ignorance 
 of construction, and his want of knowledge of perspec- 
 tive ; he saw that he was quite unable to make correct 
 transcripts of ruins or buildings for such a work as that 
 of Britton's, and he set himself diligently to conquer his 
 deficiencies. He studied and sketched all such objects 
 within his reach, and in 1802, was able to send up a folio 
 for Britton's inspection — sketches of Launceston, Tavis- 
 tock, Okehampton Castle, &c, some of which were found 
 of sufficient excellence to permit of their being engraved 
 for Britton's work. This led to a renewal of intercourse 
 between them, and resulted in an invitation to the young 
 painter, who came to London, and lodged with Britton 
 for nearly two years in Wilderness Kow, Clerkenwell ; 
 employed, greatly to his improvement, in copying the best 
 sketches and drawings of Hearne, Alexander, Turner, 
 Cotman, Mackenzie and others. In 1803-4, Prout was 
 sent by Britton to make sketches in Cambridge, Essex 
 and Wilts, but in 1805, was obliged to return home, 
 chiefly on account of his health, which unfitted him 
 from continuing a close application to his studies. 
 
 In 1804, we first trace Prout as an exhibitor in the 
 Royal Academy, (No. 662), " St. Keyne's Well, Corn- 
 wall," and again in 1805, when he contributed subjects 
 
490 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in Devonshire, Somersetshire and Wiltshire ; and here 
 he continued to exhibit until his election into the Water- 
 Colour Society in 1815. Much of Prout's time— as, 
 indeed, was the case with many of his brother water- 
 colour painters— was devoted to teaching ; this led him 
 to publish on his own account many educational works. 
 Studies for Learners was published by Ackerman in 1816, 
 and followed in 1818 by a set of Progressive Fragments, 
 by Rudiments of Landscape, Views in the North and West 
 of England, &c. The early works executed by soft 
 ground etching in a simple and large manner. 
 
 Born in a country richly wooded, and with an 
 abundant weedage, Prout seems to have been naturally 
 deficient in the power of representing foliage, and he 
 rarely introduced trees into his pictures. His style was 
 simple and large, without imitative details ; the pictu- 
 resque effect of the whole being sought somewhat at 
 the expense of the individual parts. Having passed his 
 early years in the neighbourhood of our great naval 
 arsenal ; conversant from his childhood with the beach 
 and cliffs of Devon, and the boats and craft that people 
 its shores, it would have seemed, that with the above- 
 named deficiency, he would have become a marine 
 painter ; and this probably would have been the case but 
 for his early introduction, through Britton, to employ- 
 ment on subjects connected with architecture. Many 
 of his early pictures are marine subjects, and those who 
 recollect his fine painting of " The Indiaman Ashore," 
 exhibited in the Society's rooms in 1819, will feel 
 Prout's great qualification for such works. This picture 
 probably arose from the impression made on him by the 
 wreck of the Dalton, East Indiaman, on the rocks under 
 
LED TO PICTURESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 491 
 
 the citadel of his native town. The crew were saved by 
 the great personal exertions of Sir E. Pellew, afterwards 
 Lord Exmouth, and the hull held together on the sands 
 for hours after the wreck. Prout and Hay don are said to 
 have watched it as it rolled in the surf and spray, and 
 gradually broke up. Both at the time attempted pictures 
 of the subject, and both failed ; but the scene seems to 
 have made a great impression upon Prout, and served to 
 incite him to the fine work he afterwards produced. 
 
 But the circumstances we have named turned Prout 
 from marine subjects to architecture, and it is as the 
 painter of churches and cathedrals, of picturesque Nor- 
 man cities and market places, that Prout is most 
 celebrated. Yet we cannot feel that Prout had any 
 particular qualification for such labours beyond his great 
 sense of the picturesque. It is true that he seldom 
 misses the general proportions of his buildings, or the 
 relation of the several parts to the whole, yet that 
 want of knowledge of construction which Britton com- 
 plained of, he never overcame ; and he hid his lack of 
 perception of beauty and refinement of detail, under 
 the broad markings of the reed pen. In all that related 
 to the " making up " of his picture, Prout was unrivalled 
 in his own art, and may be compared to Koberts as an 
 oil painter ; whose art his own in many respects resem- 
 bled. Like Boberts, Prout was skilled in the appropriate 
 introduction of figures, and peopled his pictures with a 
 host of living accessories, for which Normandy and Venice 
 amply supplied him with picturesque materials. The 
 crowded market-places of Normandy are usually under 
 the shadow of the cathedral ; there are gathered in 
 masses, fruit and vegetables, shaded by huge coloured 
 
492 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 umbrellas; the market people in quaint costumes, rich 
 with many dyes : the outskirts crowded with cumbrous 
 vehicles drawn by horses under a panoply of harness 
 studded with brazen nails and jangling bells, gay with 
 tassels and fringes ; the colour of the groups below 
 carried upwards into balcony and window by flowers and 
 draperies, by gaily painted signs and lattices. Such 
 material, in Prout's hands, produced pictures that make 
 us overlook their paucity of details, and the sacrifice of 
 individual realization at the shrine of the picturesque. 
 
 Prout's election as a member of the Water-Colour 
 Society in 1815 brought him fully before the patrons of 
 that art, and when in 1818, in search of health, he 
 visited the Continent and began to paint the picturesque 
 towns of Normandy, so well suited as subjects for his 
 pencil, he had made a manner of his own and taken an 
 acknowledged rank in his art. In 1824 he visited 
 Venice, a city filled with subjects for his brush, and ex- 
 tended his journies gradually to other Italian cities, to 
 Germany, Bohemia, &c. The invention of lithography 
 about this time introduced an art admirably fitted for the 
 dissemination of Prout's works, and by its means he was 
 enabled to publish Facsimiles of Sketches made in Flanders 
 and Germany, Views in France, Switzerland, and Italy; 
 with others of the like nature. 
 
 During the latter years of his life he was a frequent 
 sufferer from ill-health ; he died at his residence in 
 Camberwell, 10 February, 1852, aged sixty-eight. We 
 have already said that Prout, as an architectural draughts- 
 man, aimed at generalization rather than that precise 
 imitation which characterized the well-trained pupils who 
 were formed by the elder Pugin. Yet he brought before 
 
PETER DE WEST. 
 
 493 
 
 us admirably, if with a degree of chique, the general 
 aspect of the ruined buildings, the churches and towns 
 he so loved to paint ; his art was that of the period, and 
 had little relation to the precision required by the new 
 school. His reputation in his own day was greatly ex- 
 tended by his numerous publications ; but there is no 
 doubt that the brilliancy of his colouring, the apparent 
 care and freedom of his execution, and the largeness of 
 his style, will always make his pictures sought for, and 
 retain for them a place in the folios of collectors. 
 
 The De Whits, as their name imports, are of Dutch 
 origin, and the family had long been wealthy merchants 
 in Amsterdam. Somewhat more than a century ago, 
 while the population of New York still consisted largely 
 of the descendants of Dutch settlers, one of the De 
 Wints left the sleepy canals and slow counting-houses 
 of Holland, to try his fortune among the more active 
 settlers of the new country, and in the young city of New 
 York, Henry De Wint, the father of the painter, was 
 born. He was the second son of a merchant of ample 
 fortune, and in due time was sent to Europe to study 
 physic in the university of Leyden ; there he took a 
 doctor's degree and went to London to complete his 
 medical education. His father had determined, that on 
 his return to New York he should marry his cousin, that 
 the family wealth might continue with the name ; but 
 this was not to be ; young De Wint fell in love with an 
 English lady of good family but no fortune, and married 
 her at the early age of twenty-one. The father, offended 
 with the step, withdrew the allowance of 300/. a year 
 which he had hitherto paid his son, and never again saw 
 the young physician. He received an injury shortly 
 
494 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 afterwards from the overturning of his carriage, and died, 
 leaving all his wealth to the eldest son. No doubt the 
 struggle of the young couple was for a time severe ; 
 youth is no recommendation for a physician, nor was the 
 matter improved by his being a foreigner. He fixed his 
 residence in Staffordshire, where he gradually established 
 himself in practice, and where he continued to reside 
 until his death in May, 1807. Peter De Wint the painter 
 was the fourth son of the physician, and was born on the 
 21st of January, 1784. He was at first intended for his 
 father's profession, but showing a great dislike to it as 
 he grew up, and at the same time a great love for draw- 
 ing, his father consented to his being an artist, and 
 placed him, in 1802, with John Raphael Smith, the 
 crayon painter and engraver. Here he met with a fellow 
 pupil in William Hilton, the future historical painter, 
 and a friendship was formed by the two lads that ended 
 only with their lives. About the year 1807 the two 
 young men entered as students of the Royal Academy 
 during the keepership of Fuseli ; the one to follow history 
 painting to his life-long cost, and the disappointment of 
 his best hopes ; the other to practise landscape and to 
 achieve competence and reputation from the new art of 
 water-colour painting. In the year 1810 we find De 
 Wint for the first time making his public appearance as 
 an exhibitor. He sent three works to the Royal 
 Academy, two being views in Staffordshire, and one in 
 the neighbouring county of Derbyshire. 
 
 The intimacy of the two students soon ripened into 
 a closer connection. De Wint visited the home of his 
 friend. He found in Lincoln and its neighbourhood 
 numberless subjects for his pencil : some of his best 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH HILTON, R.A. 495 
 
 pictures are of the noble cathedral, towering high above 
 the town which nestles at its foot. Better still, he found 
 in the only sister of his companion — the daughter of 
 the clergyman — a congenial nature, suited to the serious 
 earnestness of his character ; and in 1810, Miss Hilton 
 became the wife of De Wint. The union was a happy 
 one for all parties, but especially for Hilton. Years were 
 to elapse ere history painting would afford an establish- 
 ment for him ; meanwhile, in his sister's house he found 
 a happy home. He only left it when his election to the 
 keepership of the Royal Academy obliged residence ; 
 and after his late marriage and the loss of his wife, 
 he returned to die at his sister's in Gower Street. 
 
 In 1810, De Wint became an exhibitor with the 
 Society of Water- Colour Painters, and eventually a 
 member of the body ; and, though from time to time he 
 sent a picture to the Royal Academy, he contributed 
 for nearly forty years to the annual exhibitions of the 
 Society. It is not to be supposed that De Wint's course 
 was without its trials and difficulties. His father's death 
 had occurred while the painter was yet a student. Marry- 
 ing young, and at a time when art-purchasers were not 
 so numerous as at present, he had to take to teaching — 
 the usual resource of his brethren. This gradually intro- 
 duced him to a wider circle : his pleasant manners and 
 kindly nature made attached friends of those who had at 
 first been pupils. He loved his art, particularly that 
 branch of it he had made his own. He loved to paint 
 direct from Nature, making sketches and studies for his 
 more elaborate pictures : he was never so happy as 
 when in the fields. Often tempted to extend his studies 
 to the Continent, the scenery of his native country was 
 
496 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 so congenial to his taste, and his love of home so strong, 
 that, except a short visit to Normandy, he never left 
 England. And after a happy life with those he loved, 
 he died of disease of the heart, on the 30th June, 1849 ; 
 leaving a widow, to whom we are indebted for many of 
 the above facts, and an only daughter. He was buried 
 near his friend and brother-in-law, in the ground of the 
 Koyal Chapel in the Savoy; and his widow has lately 
 erected a handsome altar-tomb in Lincoln Cathedral, to 
 the memory of the two friends who loved each other in 
 life, and in death were not divided. 
 
 As an artist, De Wint formed a style of his own, 
 sufficiently marked and distinct from his contemporaries 
 to prove his originality. His art was neither realistic 
 nor ideal ; but he had a fine sense of colour, and truly 
 appreciated the tints and harmonies of natural scenery. 
 He was a very indifferent draughtsman, and had little 
 executive handling. Thus, in his trees, the delicate 
 forms against the sky, the intricate mystery of boughs, 
 the multitudinous leafage are all merged into masses, yet 
 so locally true that we hardly regret the omission of 
 details. The figures also which he introduces into his 
 landscapes, though well placed, and effective as to light 
 and shade, and as enhancing points of colour leading 
 the eye into the picture, are clumsy and feeble in their 
 forms. He frequently used a drawing paper with a 
 coarse surface ; partly to give texture to his flat masses, 
 partly to hide his deficient handling, as well as for its 
 value in giving the appearance of finish with little labour. 
 From his habit of laying in his effect at once in broad, 
 flat washes, his works have great freshness and purity. 
 He avoided those executive processes to which others 
 
GEORGE FENNEL ROBSON. 
 
 497 
 
 resorted. He occasionally took out his high lights, but 
 did not make liberal use of the process ; when he did, 
 the forms are still large and clumsy, and do not improve 
 the handling, but merely tell on the general effect of the 
 work. He rarely flattened his tints by stippling, though 
 he occasionally resorted to broad hatchings in his skies. 
 Like most of the artists of his period he objected to the 
 use of white or of body colours in his works ; though in 
 some few instances we find his figures a little forced into 
 sharpness by touches of solid white, as on the cattle of 
 his picture of "Nottingham" (No. 516, South Ken- 
 sington Museum). This picture, with (No. 517) " Wal- 
 ton on Thames," are good specimens of ready freedom 
 of handling, with a certain sketch-like facility and ease ; 
 while " The Cricketers," (No. 515,) represents him in his 
 more elaborate and finished compositions. In these, 
 seeking for completion and richness, he loses somewhat 
 of the freshness and ease of his less laboured works. He 
 belonged to the middle period of water-colour art ; to a 
 school whose representatives have almost departed from 
 amongst us. 
 
 George Fennel Robson was the son of a wine-merchant 
 of Durham, in which city he was born in 1788. In 
 early childhood he showed a power of imitation that 
 seemed in the eyes of his friends to indicate the future 
 artist. When only four or five years of age, he made 
 careful outlines from Bewick's woodcuts, and, as he 
 grew in years, was fond of loitering in the company of 
 any artists who were attracted by the picturesque scenery 
 of Durham ; while in school hours he was apt to devote 
 himself to miscellaneous sketching rather than to his 
 tasks. His father seeing the bent of the boy's inclina- 
 vol. ii. 66 
 
498 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 tions, placed him for instruction in drawing with a local 
 teacher of the name of Harle, with whom his progress 
 was so rapid that the teacher soon found himself 
 distanced by the pupil. In the spring of 1805, the 
 year of the first Water-Colour Exhibition, young Robson 
 came to London, with five pounds in his pocket, lent 
 by his father to enable the lad to see the art and 
 artists of the metropolis. Eobson was so delighted with 
 the works of Yarley, Hills, Havell, Glover, and other 
 of the exhibiting members of the society, that to rival 
 them became his highest aim, and he decided to practise 
 as a water-colour painter. He remained in London, and 
 was so successful in the sale of his drawings, that he was 
 enabled to maintain himself, and at the end of twelve 
 months to return the five pounds to his father. 
 
 It may truly be said that Robson was a citizen of 
 no mean city. The fine old Norman cathedral towering 
 up on a well-wooded eminence, at the foot of which 
 runs the river, widened out into a broad sheet by dams 
 and weirs, and serving as a mirror for wooded banks, 
 for towers and spires, with an expanse of sky against 
 which the cathedral stands in bold relief — such a scene 
 might well inspire a painter. Young Robson came to 
 London with a portfolio of sketches of his native place, 
 as a part of his stock-in-trade. In 1808 he published a 
 view of Durham, which was so successful as to afford 
 him the means of making a journey in the Highlands of 
 Scotland, the Grampians and the fine scenery of the 
 Lake district; laying up stores for future pictures, and 
 studying nature under all the varied aspects of moun- 
 tainous districts. The climate of England is peculiarly 
 suited to the landscape-painter ; the moisture of its 
 
HIS STUDIES IN THE HIGHLANDS. 499 
 
 atmosphere induces those hazy mists that give breadth 
 and size to our mountains, diminutive as they are when 
 compared with those on the Continent. In the clear 
 atmosphere of Italy and the East, hills, a day's journey 
 in advance, seem to the traveller as if close at hand, and 
 the distant town, the monastery, or the -ruin, have their 
 sharp, clear lines defined to his eye ; but in our cloud- 
 land, vapour, even in the day-time, interposes its blue 
 veil between him and the distance ; and as the sun 
 declines, the hills, not hidden as are Alp and Apennine 
 by rounded spurs, the outworks of their range, but start- 
 ing almost at once from valley and plain, are shrouded 
 with a dim mystery of purple haze that elevates them, 
 and gives them the apparent magnitude of the moun- 
 tains of other lands. This effect of the atmosphere of 
 our climate Kobson diligently studied, and it became 
 one of the distinguishing features of his art. 
 
 On his return from Scotland, he published a set of 
 outlines of the Grampian Hills. He seems to have 
 studied thoroughly and lovingly the scenery of lake and 
 mountain, and those grand effects which are peculiar to 
 mountain districts, and annually made excursions into the 
 north to renew his acquaintance with such scenes. In 
 1814, Eobson was elected a member of the Water-Colour 
 Society ; and his works being much admired, they began 
 to be eagerly sought for by patrons and collectors: in 
 1820 he was for one year president of the Society. 
 After his election he was ever an active member, and 
 in the years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831, contributed 
 nearly two hundred works to the exhibition. In 1826, 
 Britton published Picturesque Vieivs of English Cities, 
 from water-colour paintings by Bobson. Britton gave 
 
 66—2 
 
500 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the painter 256 guineas for thirty- two finished paint- 
 ings, or at the rate of eight guineas each : as several 
 of the pictures had to be reduced to the size of 
 the engravings, (9 in. by 6 in.,) we may be satisfied 
 that none were less than this, and as the price was 
 thought satisfactory at that time, it enables us to com- 
 pare prices forty years ago, with what is the present 
 value of such works. Later than this, it became the 
 fashion for ladies to have a scrap-book or album on the 
 table of the boudoir. The Countess Demidoff while in 
 Paris determined to have a superb work of this kind, 
 and gave commissions to the principal French artists 
 for sketches and studies. Mrs. Haldimand, the wife of 
 the London banker, followed in the same path ; Kobson 
 was intrusted by her with the selection of contributors, 
 and the sum of ten guineas named as the limit for each 
 painter's work. This was thought liberal, and it served 
 to increase the general popularity of the art ; many 
 charming works being executed for the album and 
 subsequently exhibited. Years afterwards, when these 
 books were broken up and the works dispersed, many 
 of the sketches doubled and trebled their original value. 
 
 The Rev. Hare Townshend, of Norfolk Street, 
 Park Lane, possesses a fine specimen of Robson's later 
 manner ; it is a Scotch tarn, high up in the bosom of 
 the mountains, the time chosen being just when the sun, 
 not yet set, has sunk behind the jagged crest of hills 
 that wall around the dark tarn. The hills are of a 
 purple gloom, and the only lights are the tints from the 
 hidden sun on the stormy clouds, and the reflection of 
 the same in the margent waters of the pool. A few 
 goats, and two or three figures of a chieftain and his 
 
WILLIAM HUNT. 
 
 501 
 
 followers, are on the rugged boulders in the foreground, 
 and the whole has a grandeur and solemnity that make 
 it a fit companion for Danby's " Upas Tree," hanging 
 opposite to it in the same room. 
 
 Kobson at times worked in conjunction with Hills, the 
 animal painter, painting the backgrounds and scenery to 
 Hills' animals. In the autumn of the year 1833, the 
 two made a journey to Jersey, and after a short stay in 
 that island, Kobson took passage on board a Scotch 
 smack for the north. He was landed in a distressing 
 state of sickness at Stockton-on-Tees, and notwith- 
 standing every care and attention, after a week's illness 
 he died on the 8th of September, 1833. A post-mortem 
 examination failed to reveal the cause of his death : he 
 himself in his last agonies declared that he was poisoned ; 
 and it was thought that his decease was to be attributed 
 to his having, while on ship-board, eaten of food cooked 
 in unclean copper vessels. 
 
 Periodicals that devote some part of their space to 
 art and artists, are now so numerous, that few painters 
 of any eminence pass from amongst us without some 
 particulars relating to them, some notice given us of our 
 loss. But in searching these notices it is curious to find 
 how largely they consist of opinions as to the merit of 
 the artists and the character of his art, how few are the 
 facts as to his life and career which they contain. Such 
 is even the case with William Hunt, so lately lost to us. 
 During his lifetime his birthplace was often differently 
 stated as at Hastings and in London. In like manner, 
 during Turner's lifetime, it was asserted by one who had 
 made a short trip in his company, and as on Turner's own 
 authority, that he was a Devonshire man, born at Barn- 
 
502 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 staple. The world now knows that he was a Londoner, his 
 birthplace in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden ; and in the 
 same neighbourhood it is equally well ascertained that 
 William Hunt first saw the light. He was born at 
 No. 8, Old Belton Street, Long Acre, on the 28th of 
 March, 1790, the son of John and Judith Hunt, and 
 was christened shortly afterwards in the church of St. 
 Giles' in the Fields. His father carried on the business 
 of a tin-plate worker, and those who are curious in 
 searching for the birthplaces of men of note, will still 
 find the old house standing, and the old business still in 
 the hands of one of the same name and the same lineage ; 
 the altered street now bearing the name of Endell Street, 
 but the number of the house remaining as it was at 
 Hunt's birth. Not that the neighbourhood is the same 
 as when young Hunt passed his sickly childhood there. 
 
 In that day, passing from Charing Cross to High 
 Street, St. Giles's, the passenger would have threaded 
 a labyrinth of narrow courts and alleys, now largely 
 removed to make way for wider thoroughfares, but then 
 inhabited, back and front, from cellar to garret ; the haunt 
 of low traders, the mart for second-hand clothes and 
 musty commodities ; the air poisoned at the very portal 
 of the district by the crowded churchyard of St. Martin's, 
 with its reeking soil raised by continual burials many feet 
 above the level of the pavement. What wonder young 
 Hunt was sickly ! How could he be otherwise ? his 
 childhood passed in such a tainted atmosphere ; far away 
 from the fresh air of field or orchard, the breath of the 
 apple -blossom and the may- flower, that in after life he 
 loved so well and painted so truthfully : the neighbour- 
 hood even now is not of the pleasantest, and wretched- 
 
APPRENTICED TO VARLEY. 
 
 503 
 
 ness and want, filth and destitution, are in its near 
 vicinity ; but the air and the sun have been let into the 
 district in many places, and especially into the broad 
 street wherein the old house still stands unchanged. 
 We have no record of the artist's mother, of her 
 influence on his childhood, or of the instruction which 
 he received in his youth. Judging from his letters in 
 after life, it must have been scanty ; for though the 
 matter of his correspondence is well expressed, it was 
 said to be with difficulty, and after many corrections. 
 
 When the time arrived for settling the future voca- 
 tion of the lad, his own inclination was decidedly towards 
 art, while his father is said to have been strenuously 
 opposed to it. Like most tradesmen, he was well 
 acquainted with the steady profits of business, sure if 
 slow, and could perhaps see little prospect for his son in 
 the arts ; luxuries required only by the few, and in the 
 hard times to which men then looked anxiously forward, 
 unlikely to be a very profitable source of income. 
 When the delicacy of the sickly youth, the necessity of 
 finding some light occupation for him, and the lad's own 
 steadfast wishes overcame his objections, the father deter- 
 mined to follow the old practice, and to apprentice the 
 boy to a master who should thoroughly teach him his 
 calling. Whatever had been the boy's education in other 
 respects, he had certainly made some progress in art 
 thus early, and must have had some encouragement from 
 his parents in his pursuit of it ; since we learn that his 
 early friend, Mr. Linnell, who was intimate and worked 
 with him at the time, possesses paintings by him made 
 in the year 1805, months previous to his beginning 
 regularly to learn art as a profession. 
 
504 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 When about sixteen years of age, young Hunt was 
 bound apprentice for seven years to John Varley, then 
 living at 15, Broad Street, G-olden Square. In our 
 account of water-colour painting, we have already noticed 
 Varley's influence on the rising school. In Varley's house, 
 Hunt met with many fellow-students, among others, with 
 Mulready, who no doubt contributed to Hunt's future 
 career by that example of careful and earnest study 
 which has made his name so well known in art ; and, 
 most probably by his advice, Hunt sought and obtained 
 admission as a student of the Koyal Academy in the 
 year 1808. 
 
 Hunt must have made rapid progress under John 
 Varley's instruction, since in 1807, when little more than 
 seventeen years of age, three of his pictures, which 
 appear to have been works in oil, were hung in the 
 Exhibition of the Royal Academy ; and he continued to 
 exhibit there during several following years. As a pupil 
 of John Varley, and companion of the frequenters of 
 that school, Hunt became a visitor at Dr. Munro's 
 house in the Adelphi ; followed, no doubt, the practice 
 of the other painters who assembled there ; and on the 
 summer evenings, after their study at the Academy, in 
 company with his friend Linnell, used to go forth to 
 make those sketches whose production the Doctor encou- 
 raged, by his purchases of the young students; or to 
 copy Gainsborough's drawings, it is said, for the sum of 
 one shilling and sixpence each. Doctor Munro, who saw 
 young Hunt's docility and talent, took him down to his 
 house at Bushey, near Watford, to paint from Nature 
 under the Doctor's own instruction ; who, we are told, 
 did not hesitate to sponge out large portions of these 
 
JOINS THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY. 505 
 
 sketches, when their execution or colouring did not meet 
 with his approval. Hunt often stayed with him for a 
 month at a time, and was paid at the rate of 7s. 6d. per 
 diem for his labours for the folio of Munro. 
 
 While sketching in the neighbourhood of Watford, 
 the young student became known to the Earl of Essex, 
 and was invited by him to paint some of the scenery of 
 the park at Cashiobury. In Britton's account of that 
 mansion there are engraved two interiors from paintings 
 by Hunt ; and from the farm-servants, gamekeepers, and 
 others many of his early figure subjects were sketched. 
 While serving his time to John Varley, Hunt's address is 
 given in the catalogues at the house of his master, but in 
 the catalogue of 1811 we find that he had returned to 
 the old home in Belton Street. His name first appears 
 in connection with the Water-Colour Society in 1814. 
 In this year the Society had been nearly broken up by 
 a change in its objects — its exhibition being opened to 
 works in oil as well as in water colours, and Hunt's con- 
 tributions as " fellow exhibitor " were most likely pic- 
 tures in oil. In 1824, when the Society had resumed 
 its original character, Hunt was elected an associate, 
 and in 1827 a full member of the body ; and he con- 
 tinued to be a constant exhibitor with them to the last, 
 one of his latest contributions being his own portrait. 
 
 A sickly child, he was throughout his life more or 
 less of an invalid, and never married. For his health's 
 sake he resided many years at Hastings, and by great 
 care continued to live and paint until nearly his seventy- 
 fifth birthday. Attending at the rooms of the Society, 
 to examine the paintings of the candidates for its mem- 
 bership, he caught a violent cold, which terminated in 
 
506 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 apoplexy, and caused his death on the 10th February, 
 1864. 
 
 The works of Hunt differ widely from those of his 
 contemporaries : they have a character of their own, and 
 many qualities which place him as an artist, in his some- 
 what narrow range, on a level with the highest. He 
 painted landscapes, figures, and, latterly, fruit and flowers 
 equally well. His great characteristics are perfect imita- 
 tion, without littleness or mean details ; truthful colour- 
 ing, never overcharged, never meretricious ; a remarkable 
 power of rendering the effect of daylight on the surface 
 of objects, giving each the greatest textural truth, and 
 marking its distinctive qualities of absorption or reflection. 
 His sense of daylight was equal to that of De Hooghe, 
 with the greater truth that arises from more luminous 
 materials. Though a close imitator of Nature, it was 
 never without selection ; and if he made no attempt to 
 add those effects which give ideality or poetry to his 
 subject, yet even his objects of still-life were raised 
 almost to the dignity of fine art by the taste with which 
 he rendered them. 
 
 As a figure painter, Hunt drew passably well and 
 rendered rustic Nature with truth both of character and 
 expression. If he is at times vulgar in his humour, and 
 in the choice of his subjects, he at least avoids the vapid 
 prettinesses from poets and novelists, of the Stephanoffs, 
 or the sleek, mannered, china painted tableaux of Kich- 
 ter. There may be a smell of the barn or the stable, the 
 aroma of the labourer's cottage about his boys and bump- 
 kins ; but they are the children of the soil, the rustics of 
 real life and not of the stage or the studio. Such are 
 " The Attack," a young lout sitting down to feast on a 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS ART. 
 
 507 
 
 huge pie ; " The Defeat," the same youth overcome 
 with food fast asleep, the almost emptied dish beside 
 him ; " The Combat," a glutton of the same order, 
 parrying the attack of a wasp on his viands ; " Cymon 
 and Iphigenia," a rustic burlesque on the classic pair; 
 the bumpkin lover stealing a furtive gaze at his sweet- 
 heart sleeping on straw in a barn ; or " The Brown 
 Study," a mulatto boy vainly endeavouring to master 
 the mysteries of an addition sum, the hopelessness of the 
 effort well shown on his weakly knitted brow. Better 
 than these was " The Cricketers," now in the possession 
 of Miss Sheepshanks, which, in the exhibition of 1855, 
 was examined with much interest by the French artists. 
 
 In the pictures of Hunt we find every variety of exe- 
 cution ; from tinted drawings, such as those of the early 
 water-colour painters, to the thorough adoption of the 
 pigments and processes of the present school. In one 
 of his earliest works, " A Cottage Door," (No. 350, 
 South Kensington collection), we find him retaining the 
 tinted process, drawing in the whole with a reed pen in 
 Prout's manner, and applying the local tints over the 
 grey ground. Yet, in this early work, we clearly trace 
 the dawning of those qualities which we have described 
 as characteristic of his art. As he advanced, his land- 
 scapes exhibit more and more of these qualities ; more 
 and more of the luminous glitter of the atmosphere, the 
 varied treatment of surface, of which we here trace the 
 indications. In No. 341, South Kensington Museum, 
 "A Boy with Goat," the colour is produced by tints 
 coarsely hatched beside and over one another, the flesh 
 finished by stippling, and the knife freely used through- 
 out to give texture to the various surfaces. In some 
 
508 
 
 A CENTUEY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 parts advantage is taken of the roughness thus obtained 
 to give texture by tinting over it. The hair of the 
 goat is wholly made out by scratching up the paper with 
 the knife. Very little body colour is used, and that 
 merely to give absorbency to some of the surfaces ; the 
 work is well worth careful examination for the great 
 effect obtained by the use of what would appear very 
 incommensurate means. " The Monk," (No. 644) in 
 the same collection, shows the same handling, with a 
 larger use of body colour, as in the high lights of the 
 flesh, the cover of the book, &c. Yet even here the grey 
 hairs are almost wholly rendered with the knife. In 
 " The Brown Study," (No. 526,) all the same methods 
 are employed, but with greater refinement. It is curious 
 to notice, in parts of this picture, how indifferent the 
 painter was to the surface of his paper being kept intact ; 
 large portions in this picture have been destroyed by 
 changes and the very roughness made to assist the 
 required effect. 
 
 In his last manner Hunt entirely left the transparent 
 system of the founders of the Society ; his works of this 
 period are wonders of colour and imitative execution, 
 but they have not the excellence of his middle period. 
 Take the " Plums" (No. 526 in the same collection) as 
 an example. This drawing is treated almost wholly in 
 body colours ; the traditions of the old school have been 
 disregarded, and Hunt has followed, if he did not lead, 
 the way in the new. The man of true genius easily 
 adapts himself to new processes : the tints are mixed 
 with solid colour ; the bloom on the fruit is body colour, 
 the background is loaded into texture with body colour ; 
 indeed the picture is so purely a work in body colours 
 
COPLEY VANDYKE FIELDING. 
 
 509 
 
 as to approach what in old times would be called tempera 
 painting. Such is the modern practice as opposed to 
 the self-denying transparency of the early water-colour 
 school ; such were Hunt's latter pictures, and to the end 
 he worked on with little apparent decline in his powers, 
 little feebleness of eye or hand. The old painter con- 
 tinued to labour and to love his labour till the last. 
 
 We are obliged to pass over the names of many men 
 whose works are creditable to the school and would 
 claim place for them in dictionaries or in memoirs of 
 artists, but who have not contributed sufficiently to the 
 progress of art to have place in this work. Such were 
 Francois Louis Francia, Francis Stevens, James Holmes, 
 John Byrne, and some others. Copley Vandyke Fielding, 
 however, must be noticed here not only for his art, 
 but also for his influence during many years as the 
 President of the Water- Colour Society ; and as the 
 fashionable teacher of the day, whose pupils swelled the 
 crowds who visited the exhibition and purchased the 
 pictures from its walls. He was one of four sons 
 of Theodore Nathan Fielding, an artist of considerable 
 local reputation who resided near Halifax, painted in oil 
 with the careful finish of Denner, and was much patronized 
 by the gentry of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Copley, his 
 second son, was born in the year 1787, and showing in 
 due time a liking for art, he received an early education 
 from his father ; who seems to have been more careful 
 than most parents in instructing his children, since 
 Theodore, Copley, Thales, and Newton, his four sons, 
 were all either artists by profession or practised art with 
 success. 
 
 We are not informed at what period Copley left home, 
 
510 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 but early in the eentury he was placed with John Var- 
 ley, the master of so many pupils afterwards famous ; 
 though whether apprenticed or not we are uncertain. 
 Fielding, with his master and fellow-pupils, was a con- 
 stant visitor at Dr. Munro's, and there formed those 
 friendships which connected his future with water-colour 
 art. Not that he neglected entirely the nobler medium of 
 oil ; but his reputation wholly rests on his water-colour 
 painting. Intending to follow landscape art, he refrained 
 from the labour necessary to obtain admission as a 
 student in the Eoyal Academy ; hence the figures he 
 introduces in his pictures do not reach beyond the usual 
 properties of the landscape painter. In 1806 Fielding 
 married the sister of Mrs. Varley, by whom he had two 
 daughters, one of whom survives. In 1810 we find his 
 name for the first time as an associated exhibitor of the 
 Water-Colour Society, contributing five landscapes, and 
 he continued to exhibit through all the changes of the 
 society until his death. In 1818 he was treasurer, and 
 in 1819 secretary of the society ; and during this period, 
 when the society was in some difficulty, he seems to have 
 made great efforts to support the exhibition, sending in 
 1819, forty-six frames containing seventy-one paintings, 
 and in 1820, forty-three frames, with fifty-six paintings. 
 Most of these must have been such as he executed in 
 lessons before his pupils, works of slight merit which 
 had perhaps better not have been exhibited. In 1831, 
 on the resignation of Cristall, Fielding was elected 
 president of the society ; a position which he held until 
 his death, which happened on the 3rd of March, 1855, 
 in his sixty-eighth year. He was buried at Hove, near 
 Brighton, where he had resided for many years. 
 
EFFECTS OF TEACHING ON ART. 
 
 511 
 
 We have seen the "drawing-master practice" of 
 Payne and Glover, leading, in the one case, to extreme 
 mannerism, in the other, to a stereotyped handling, 
 common to all parts of his work. Fielding's art also 
 gradually suffered from his practice as a teacher. 
 Obliged to make showy drawings before his pupils, and 
 occasionally to indulge them with special " fire- works," 
 in the shape of rapid and dexterous execution, methods 
 of obtaining texture and handling by working on wet 
 paper, by breading-out, or by the free use of the sponge ; 
 these manipulative tricks gradually became too apparent 
 in his pictures, and individuality and truth are some- 
 times sacrificed to them. 
 
 Space is one of the qualities Fielding obtained in his 
 pictures: he delights in distances, extensive flats, and 
 rolling downs. It is true that while space is often attained 
 the result is emptiness. Thus, in the <£ South Downs, 
 Devon," (No. 519, South Kensington Museum,) we have 
 space, but with it we have also poverty. One wonders what 
 has induced the painter to take such a subject for his 
 picture ; and it is but one of many of the same kind. It 
 consists of a broken, sandy foreground with little weed- 
 age, a middle distance of barren down, with a thin thread 
 of road leading to a mill on a far-off hill-top, a labourer 
 driving three or four cows into a hollow, a splash of weak 
 blue distance, and a thin, vapoury sky, with one cloud in 
 the zenith. It is true that the moisture and mist of a 
 dewy morning are well expressed ; but the picture is poor 
 and vapid — the more so that the effect is produced by 
 washing and sponging : by removing what little of detail 
 the painter had put on the paper, rather than, with 
 delicate tints, building up the mysterious intricacy of 
 
512 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 objects partially veiled by mist and distance. The diffe- 
 rence will at once be seen if we turn from this picture to 
 i ia f the "Hornby Castle," by Turner, which hangs near it. 
 -y- Examine his distant hills, and we shall see the multi- 
 . . tudinous foliage of the hill-side treated with the most 
 delicate breadth of misty sunlight. Searched with the 
 glass as we should sweep the distance in Nature with 
 a telescope, details treated with the most refined truth, 
 yet thoroughly subordinate to the effect of the whole, 
 open out to our examination. " The Vale of Irthing " 
 (No. 519 in the same collection,) is a better specimen of 
 Fielding 5 s powers ; but even this is far too much washed 
 and scraped and rubbed and teased, so that the execution 
 preponderates, to the loss of freshness and truth. In 
 seeking to give a general tone to the whole picture, he 
 has made even the sky hot and brassy, and the lights of 
 the clouds, as of the whole picture, having been obtained 
 by wiping out, the result throughout is an unpleasant 
 woolliness ; while not a single weed in the foreground is 
 executed with sharpness, or distinguishable truth. These 
 pictures were painted severally in 1846 and 1850. 
 
 Fielding painted many marine pictures. From his 
 long residence on the coast, constantly in presence of 
 the ocean under every effect of calm and storm, some of 
 these are among his best works. But they have too 
 much of recipe in them ; too much of that power of 
 achieving at once a pleasant respectability which is so 
 fatal to improvement. We have constantly the same 
 alternations of sunlit sea with ranges of shade ; the same 
 ochrey sail contrasted with the spreading rain-cloud ; 
 varied and shifted in position, no doubt, in different 
 pictures, but essentially the same. Though not wanting 
 
INFLUENCE OF HIS ART. 
 
 513 
 
 in truth, and agreeable and pleasant to the eye, his 
 works rarely excite us with the feeling of any new com- 
 bination or novel treatment of natural effects. 
 
 We have said that early connections turned Fielding 
 from practising oil painting ; but this was not wholly the 
 case — he continued occasionally to paint works in that 
 medium. Sir Matthew White Ridley, Bart., of Carlton 
 Terrace, has two large paintings in oil, of much ability, 
 by him, which will be admired by those who like " com- 
 positions " in the brown school, having merit for the 
 combination of grand forms, put together with skill, if 
 without much nature. But the time for such works had 
 passed away with the advent of such painters as Collins, 
 Constable and Cox, gradually leading on to the imitative 
 school — a good initiative for the landscape painter, but 
 which has been wrongly upheld as the end, instead of 
 the beginning, of true art. On the whole, it must be 
 said that Fielding influenced the social status of art, 
 rather than advanced it, by his own powers. His pictures 
 show much talent, arising more from his adopting the 
 progress made by others than from any large share of 
 natural genius of his own. He was a man of kindly 
 nature and gentlemanly manners, and promoted the 
 interests of water-colour painting by his practice, though 
 he did not advance the art. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 67 
 
514 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FRESCO-PAINTING AND STATE PATRONAGE. 
 
 The Public recognize, in the Destruction of the Houses of Parliament, an 
 Opportunity to promote Art — House of Commons' Committee recom- 
 mend the Opportunity should not be lost — Royal Commission issued 
 to effect this Object — Its Constitution and Influence — Inflated Hopes 
 raised among Artists and the Public— The Commission adopt Fresco- 
 painting for the Decoration of the New Parliamentary Palace — And 
 invite Competition — A second Competition — and a third-— The Exhi- 
 bition in Westminster Hall — Disappointment of the Profession — One 
 Fresco completed — Delays of the Commission — And strange Condi- 
 tions proposed to the Artists — A Competition in Oil Paintings — But 
 no Employment to the Competitors — The Public lose Patience — The 
 House of Commons refuse a Vote of Money — The fancy Tudor Por- 
 traits — Commissioners defend their Proceedings — And abandon Fresco 
 — Their final Report — And Failure — Opinion upon their Acts — And 
 their Influence on Art. 
 
 In a previous chapter we have traced the zealous attempts 
 made by the lay directors of the British Institution to 
 foster and promote art in England. The scheme of our 
 work now leads us to consider the efforts which have 
 been made by the State with the same great purpose. 
 The first attempt of the State to patronize art, was the 
 employment of our sculptors to commemorate the heroes 
 of the French revolutionary war, by the erection of public 
 monuments in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster 
 Abbey ; but the great and primary object really was to 
 distinguish the brave soldiers who had fallen, irrespective 
 of any scheme for the advancement of art. There was 
 
AN OPPORTUNITY TO PROMOTE ART. 515 
 
 little difficulty in giving commissions to our most eminent 
 sculptors, and appointing places for their works in our 
 two great national mausoleums ; and having done this 
 the public purse-strings were again drawn tight, and art 
 and its interests were overlooked and forgotten. Much 
 had not been achieved, and upon what had been 
 attempted criticism was very severe. But the public were 
 not disabused of the notion that high art — by which 
 they meant large historic works — could only succeed in 
 this country when aided by public patronage. State 
 bounties had been given for catching and curing herrings, 
 and this false commercial principle was thought to be 
 applicable to the productions of mind and genius. 
 
 So when accident brought opportunity, all were ready 
 to seize it; and when one evening in October, 1831, 
 the Houses of Parliament burst into flames, and the 
 trusty porter of the Koyal Academy announced the event 
 to the students in the library — " Now, gentlemen; now, 
 you young architects, there's a fine chance for you ; the 
 Parliament House is all afire ;" he only expressed what 
 soon became the received public opinion. The extensive 
 destruction caused by the fire was looked upon by all as 
 affording a large opportunity for the development of 
 native art by State patronage ; and accordingly, when Sir 
 Charles Barry's great design began to assume complete- 
 ness in its magnificent proportions, the House of Com- 
 mons (on the motion of Mr. Benjamin Hawes, an inde- 
 pendent member), without explanation or discussion, 
 appointed, in April, 1841, "a select committee to take 
 into consideration the promotion of the fine arts of this 
 country in connection with the rebuilding of the Houses 
 of Parliament." This committee sat nine times; they 
 
 67—2 
 
516 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 examined Sir Charles Barry (then Mr. Barry), Sir 
 Martin Shee, president of the Royal Academy, Mr. Dyce, 
 the superintendent of the Government School of Design, 
 Sir Charles Eastlake (then Mr. Eastlake), Mr. Fradelle, 
 an artist, and two or three well-known amateurs. Then 
 the dissolution of the Parliament being imminent, the 
 committee were compelled to close their inquiry, and 
 they reported that they "had obtained the opinions of 
 some very distinguished professors 1 and admirers of art, 
 and are unanimous upon one point, viz., that so impor- 
 tant and national a work as the erection of the two 
 Houses of Parliament affords an opportunity which 
 ought not to be neglected, of encouraging not only the 
 higher, but every subordinate branch of fine art in this 
 country." 
 
 The committee had not had time to consider the 
 plan by which the great national work they recom- 
 mended should be carried out, but they thought that a 
 Royal Commission might be appointed to assist, both 
 with information and advice, some department of the 
 Government which should be solely responsible ; and 
 that the advice and assistance of persons who are com- 
 petent from their knowledge of art and their acquaint- 
 ance with great public works, both at home and abroad, 
 should be called in to propose, in conjunction with the 
 architect, the most effectual means of attaining the chief 
 object aimed at — the encouragement of the fine arts of 
 the country. The pattern presented to the committee by 
 the dilettanti was Munich — the theme, the munificence 
 of the Bavarian monarch. Fresco painting which had 
 been revived there, was to be introduced and naturalized 
 here, and we are at once told by the committee, that this 
 
CONSIDERED BY PARLIAMENT. 
 
 517 
 
 great art " must depend for its encouragement upon 
 direct public patronage," and that " the space which it 
 demands for its free development, and the subjects which 
 it is peculiarly fitted to illustrate, combine to point out 
 national buildings as almost the only proper sphere for 
 the display of its peculiar characteristics, grandeur, 
 breadth, and simplicity." And the committee recom- 
 mended fresco painting for adoption. Yet they did so, 
 quite unsupported by the distinguished artists whose 
 opinions they had sought. Sir Martin Shee did not 
 recommend fresco : he believed that, in our country, oil 
 would be much more durable than fresco. Mr. Fradelle 
 preferred oil to fresco, and thought oil of more certain 
 preservation : he was decidedly of opinion that oil would 
 stand better than fresco in this country. Mr. East- 
 lake thought "the peculiar merits of the English school 
 are of a nature which are perhaps the least fit to be 
 displayed in fresco," and when pressed as to which he 
 recommended, oil or fresco, as giving the greatest 
 encouragement to art, he said — and his answer shows 
 that he clearly foresaw the great difficulties of the pro- 
 posed scheme, — " One great advantage in oil painting 
 would be that the employment would be more diffused. 
 I have already said that in an extensive cycle of fresco 
 subjects, it would be absolutely necessary that there 
 should be one directing head, and that it would be very 
 difficult for established painters of equal reputation to act 
 in concert in that way, as it would be only possible to 
 have a director and subordinate assistants. In the other 
 case, of detached oil pictures, any number of artists 
 might be employed independent of each other ; " and 
 then in order to attain individual control, he admits 
 
518 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 that fresco would be more desirable. He, in fact, saw 
 the necessity, if fresco were to be used, of adopting the 
 atelier system, which has never found favour among the 
 artists of the English school. 
 
 When the new Parliament met, Sir Robert Peel, 
 then prime minister, stated that instead of re-appointing 
 a select committee, he purposed to recommend the 
 appointment of a Royal Commission for the completion 
 of the inquiry ; and no time was lost. Her Majesty's 
 commission was opened in November, 1841. It com- 
 prised twenty-one members, and directed them to inquire 
 and report "whether advantage may not be taken of 
 the rebuilding of our palace at Westminster, wherein 
 our Parliament is wont to assemble, for the purpose of 
 promoting and encouraging the fine arts in our United 
 Kingdom, and in what manner an object of so much 
 importance would be most effectually promoted." The 
 lamented Prince Consort was placed at the head of the 
 commission, surrounded by the most eminent statesmen 
 of all parties, with some representatives of the literature 
 and dilettantism of the country : art was strangely 
 omitted, except by the appointment of Mr. Eastlake as 
 the secretary. The commission was, in fact, admirably 
 constituted for the determination of the most abstract 
 questions of State policy, rather than to descend to 
 technical art matters, such as the relative merits of oil 
 or fresco, the most fitting subjects, or the most appro- 
 priate places for picture decorations. Yet we cannot 
 suppose men of such high rank, so able in their own 
 sphere of action, so used to judge and to decide, would 
 be consulted and remain silent. No ; with the lights 
 they possessed, and applying the principles of reasoning 
 
AND BY A ROYAJj COMMISSION. 
 
 519 
 
 to which they had been trained, they would, we must 
 conclude, express confident opinions ; which, having no 
 basis in a trained art judgment, might by chance be 
 right, but must by rule be wrong. Such an array of dis- 
 tinguished men was therefore illusory; and worse:— they 
 could not be rulers in art matters, and could hardly 
 be ruled. The Prince was young to us. We had not 
 yet had the fortune to appreciate his knowledge and 
 love of art, his sound judgment, and his zealous desire 
 to promote the art and industry of his country. Yet we 
 should have had better hopes of the commission, had its 
 decisions depended upon the Prince and their execution 
 upon his secretary; than whom none could possess 
 higher qualifications for this • difficult, almost invidious 
 task. 
 
 But at the time the special capabilities of her 
 Majesty's commissioners were not discussed : all were 
 dazzled by their rank and influence. The court, the 
 senate, the public purse even, seemed subject to them. 
 All thought that a new era had arrived for art. Young 
 painters dreamed of heroic subjects and unlimited State 
 commissions ; and if a few of the elder and more expe- 
 rienced took a more correct view of the situation, yet all 
 expressed a desire to assist in such a great scheme for 
 the promotion of high art in England. Haydon, who 
 was of opinion that by the closing of the Continent to 
 English artists, " we escaped the contagion of David's 
 brickdust, which infected the Continent ; and that the 
 frescoes are but a branch of the same upas-root, grafted 
 upon Albert Durer's hardness, Cimabue's Gothicism, 
 and the gilt inanity of the middle ages," now changed 
 his note, and in a lecture at the Royal Institution said — 
 
520 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 " If the commission heroically adopt fresco, the effect on 
 British art will be tremendous. The provinces I know 
 to be silent volcanoes ; and all classes will be astonished 
 at the interest suddenly displayed, if fresco be baffled by 
 timidity or intrigue : " — opinions emanating from the 
 unfortunate painter's excited imagination, rather than 
 founded on his judgment. 
 
 Expectation was on tip-toe, and it was soon gratified. 
 Within six months the commissioners made their first 
 report. They, of course, expressed their opinion, echoing 
 the words of their commission, " that it would be expe- 
 dient that advantage should be taken of the rebuilding of 
 the Houses of Parliament, for the purpose of promoting 
 and encouraging the fine arts of the United Kingdom." 
 And then with regard to the employment of fresco, they 
 cautiously say, " They have not yet been able to satisfy 
 themselves that the art of fresco painting has hitherto 
 been sufficiently cultivated in this country to justify them 
 in recommending that it should be so employed ; and in 
 order to assist them in forming a judgment, they proposed 
 that artists should be invited to enter into a competition 
 by cartoons ; " and they announced premiums chiefly, but 
 not exclusively, in reference to fresco ; explaining that 
 oil painting and sculpture would receive further con- 
 sideration. The conditions of competition were appended 
 to the report. The premiums offered were three of 300/. 
 each, three of 200/. each, and five of 100/. each. The 
 time named for the reception of the works was the first 
 week in May, 1843. There was also appended, among: 
 other matter, a valuable report by the secretary— " The 
 general Object of the Commission, considered in relation 
 to the state and prospects of the English School of 
 
RECOMMEND FRESCO DECORATIONS. 521 
 
 Painting," in which it was argued that high art is hest 
 displayed in large works ; that large paintings have not 
 met with encouragement from private patronage ; and 
 that fresco is the hest material for the display of high 
 art on a grand scale. 
 
 The commissioners thus came to the same con- 
 clusions as the committee of the House of Commons, 
 and they virtually adopted fresco as the medium of 
 decoration ; but they desired to proceed tentatively, cau- 
 tiously, and took care to secure a means of retreat. They 
 proposed to naturalize and apply to great purposes an 
 alien art — an art which rose in Italy by slow degrees, 
 grew up step by step in the hands of earnest men, 
 religious enthusiasts, working in the spirit and feeling of 
 their age, who believed themselves to be, and truly were, 
 the teachers, not only of ignorant men who knew not 
 how to read, but of all classes, and especially of those of 
 their own religious faith. So inspired, a succession of 
 great artists reached excellence. In our own times we 
 had seen the same art transplanted into Germany, and 
 under the patronage of a generous Prince, the attempt 
 made by one effort to transplant to a strange soil, the 
 thought and labour of generations alien in all things. 
 But who that has seen these attempts — works of the 
 intellect rather than the feeling — without spontaneity, 
 descending even to the burlesque, will say that they 
 afford examples for our imitation ? 
 
 In France, where the national art was better suited to 
 fresco, it was also tried : the Church of St. Vincent de 
 Paul was decorated in fresco painting before the year 
 1825 ; but the French artists have reverted to oil, and 
 few great works in their capital have been executed in 
 
522 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 fresco. Our own artists had long admired the fresco 
 works of the great Italian painters, which are well known 
 to them : but they had not thought fresco suited to the 
 qualities in which they excelled, or to the expression of 
 their art ; though some exceptional attempts had been 
 made by them. Sir David Wilkie wrote from Rome in 
 1827, " It has frequently occurred to me, that the 
 restoration and introduction of fresco painting into 
 England would give a chance for the cultivation of the 
 higher styles of art. We that possess so much, and 
 think we know so much, know nothing of fresco. . . . 
 Its qualities are essentially different from oil painting. 
 It is more abstract, less deceptive, can be seen further in 
 any light and in less light ; though equally ornamental, 
 it has not the palliatives of oil ; though advantageous for 
 the display of beauty, grandeur, and style, it cannot, 
 like oil, give interest by softening or concealment to the 
 mean form or the low subject. An oil picture is a piece 
 of furniture to be changed or removed at pleasure, while 
 the fresco is a part of the fabric itself, combining 
 sculpture and architecture, historic truth and poetic 
 fiction, in one wide range to illustrate the purpose of 
 the building, which, be it the gorgeous palace or the 
 solemn temple, derives from fresco a most impressive 
 splendour and dignity." While nothing could be more 
 foreign than fresco to the art which Wilkie practised, 
 its merits and advantages were well understood and 
 described by him. Its processes are, we assume, generally 
 known to consist in the application of the colours on the 
 surface of a wall newly plastered, in which they are 
 imbibed by the chemical action of the lime in drying ; 
 and that so much of the surface only is prepared from 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PAINTERS. 
 
 523 
 
 day to day as may be finished at once by the artist, who 
 traces such daily portions of his work from a prepared 
 cartoon drawing of his whole subject, removing after the 
 labour of the clay is completed, all that he had not time 
 to finish completely. 
 
 The commission had adopted the principle of com- 
 petition : perhaps with the extended hopes that had been 
 raised, they had no other alternative than to give all a 
 chance, however illusory ; yet competition is very distaste- 
 ful, and it can be hardly expected that artists who have 
 already established a reputation will peril it by entering 
 into public competitions, where they are, moreover, usually 
 exposed to the uncertain issue of a lay judgment. We 
 know that many eminent men in every branch of the 
 profession habitually refuse to do so, and Sir Martin A. 
 Shee, when before the House of Commons, went out of 
 his way to say, unasked, that he was opposed to compe- 
 tition. Nor can it be conceded, that by such a course 
 State patronage aided by State premiums can generate 
 artists ; that there is any trained genius whose light is 
 hidden till called to life by such unhealthy stimulants, 
 or that, with the large facilities to publicity which our 
 numerous exhibitions afford, there could exist any artist 
 who had attained excellence, even in drawing the figure, 
 whose merits would not be well known in his profession, 
 and of whose powers a good estimate might not be 
 formed. The system of competition in art has, we fear, 
 been generally prejudicial. We believe that the true 
 mode of obtaining a good work of art is to select the 
 artist of the highest acknowledged ability, and explaining 
 fully the object desired, to leave the work as much as 
 possible to his unfettered judgment and skill; relying 
 
524 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 rather upon his reputation, which is at stake, than upon 
 the conflicting opinions, and, too frequently, the crude 
 notions, of a committee. Their powers would he suffi- 
 ciently exercised in the selection of the artist whose 
 talent most specially fits him for the production of the 
 particular work they contemplate. 
 
 But to return. In July, 1843, the commissioners 
 made their second report. They stated that the com- 
 petition in cartoons (which we have just described) had 
 taken place, "and that they are satisfied with the evi- 
 dence of ability afforded," and they added, " having satis- 
 fied ourselves respecting the attainments of many British 
 artists in the practice of cartoon drawing, and respecting 
 their capacity to attain excellence in those qualities 
 which are essential in historical painting, we now pro- 
 pose, in pursuance of the plan before announced by us, 
 to invite artists to exhibit specimens of fresco painting 
 of a moderate size, which, by being portable, will enable 
 all candidates for employment in that method of paint- 
 ing to send in works exhibiting their qualifications 
 therein as painters and colorists, and which taken to- 
 gether with their larger compositions in drawing which 
 they have exhibited or may exhibit, and with other 
 existing evidences of their talents, may enable us to pro- 
 ceed to the selection of artists for the decoration in fresco 
 of certain portions of the palace." To this second invita- 
 tion many of the artists again responded, and a second 
 exhibition of their works took place in Westminster Hall 
 in the summer of 1844. Omitting sculpture, which is 
 without the scope of our work, we find that eighty-four 
 works were contributed by fifty-six painters. They were 
 chiefly by young artists rising into note ; and by men who 
 
PROGRESS OF THE COMMISSION. 
 
 525 
 
 had been long known for their large historic composi- 
 tions, which they had not found a public to appreciate ; 
 with some crude attempts by men hitherto unknown. 
 
 The commissioners were again " satisfied." In their 
 third report, dated 9th July, 1844, they state that the 
 exhibition proposed in their preceding report has taken 
 place, " and that, considering the inexperience even of 
 the best artists in the practice of fresco painting, we are 
 satisfied with the promise of superior skill which has 
 been afforded ; and we are of opinion that several of the 
 specimens of fresco painting which have been submitted 
 to us, taken together with the cartoons before exhibited 
 by the artists, or with other existing evidences of their 
 talents, justify us in suggesting further measures, with a 
 view to the execution of fresco paintings in portions of 
 the palace at Westminster. With this view, we propose 
 to commission six artists, selected by us from among the 
 present exhibitors in Westminster Hall, to furnish designs, 
 coloured sketches and specimens of fresco painting, for 
 certain subjects proposed by us to be executed in the 
 House of Lords, at the same time not binding ourselves 
 to employ such artists finally." 
 
 The commissioners had already allured the profession 
 into two competitive displays of their works. First, of 
 cartoons drawn to a large scale, and necessarily involving 
 the cost, not only of much thought and labour, but also 
 of models ; always a serious expense to the young artist. 
 Secondly, of specimens of fresco painting, a new material 
 requiring some experimental practice, and, while attended 
 by expense, leading men aside from the direct pursuit 
 of their own art — the promptings of their own imagin- 
 ings. Yet, after these labours and trials, the commis- 
 
526 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sioners proposed, not to select the painters for employ- 
 ment on the great works in the expectation of which 
 they had been stimulated to make such costly efforts ; 
 but to select six, and to require these fortunate men 
 to furnish cartoon designs from subjects appointed to 
 each, with coloured sketches and specimens of fresco 
 painting; so that these men's power of drawing, — of 
 which the commissioners had already expressed them- 
 selves as " satisfied with the evidence of ability afforded " 
 in the cartoon competition, and also as "satisfied with 
 the promise of superior skill which had been afforded " 
 in the fresco specimens sent by them to the second 
 competition, — was still to undergo another ordeal : for the 
 commissioners " did not bind themselves to employ such 
 artists finally," and in fact did not. But this was not 
 all : the commissioners, subsequently we assume, for the 
 notice in the printed documents to which we have 
 referred nowhere bears a date — " being desirous of 
 giving a further opportunity to artists other than the 
 above, to exhibit specimens of their ability in cartoon 
 drawing and fresco painting, hereby give notice : — 
 1. That the six subjects above mentioned are offered 
 for general competition. 2. That three premiums of 
 200/. each will be given to the artists who shall furnish 
 specimens which shall respectively be deemed worthy of 
 one of the said premiums, by judges to be appointed to 
 decide on the relative merits of the works. 3. Each 
 artist is required to prepare a cartoon, being a design 
 for one of the aforesaid subjects, 9 ft. 3 in. wide by 
 16 ft. high," also a coloured sketch and a specimen of 
 fresco painting. 
 
 The commission was approaching the completion of 
 
COMPETITIVE EXHIBITIONS. 
 
 527 
 
 its third year of dilettante labour, without having yet 
 given a single commission for a painting on the palace 
 walls, and the commissioners now issued a notice for a 
 third competitive exhibition. After having selected six 
 artists, who had already twice competed, and assigned to 
 each a particular subject, her Majesty's commissioners 
 then invited the profession, with the offer of premiums, to 
 compete with the painters they had chosen, and upon the 
 subjects given to them. Looking back at this proposal 
 we feel surprised that it should ever have emanated 
 from such a body. It was truly a strange example of 
 State patronage, this protracted experiment made at the 
 expense of the artists ; her Majesty's commissioners 
 avoiding the true responsibility which belonged to them ; 
 having the courage neither generously to approve nor 
 to reject ; showing no confidence in their own judgment, 
 or in the artists whom, after such ordeals, they had 
 selected ; but making the victors in two competitions 
 both the competitors and the objects of competition in 
 a third. 
 
 The commissioners' fourth report, dated in April, 
 1845, refers to the employment of sculptors, and the 
 selection of persons renowned in history whose effigies 
 may be represented. But in an appendix, dated six 
 months later than the report, premiums are offered for 
 oil paintings — three of 500/. each, three of 3001. each, 
 and three of 200/. each — the paintings to be submitted 
 in June, 1846. In the interim, that is, in 1845, the 
 third exhibition of paintings in fresco was held in West- 
 minster Hall, in which the six chosen artists were to 
 compete with all comers, were to defend and maintain 
 the judgment of their judges and their own pre-eminence, 
 
528 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 or, failing in this third proof, were to be set aside. The 
 conditions issued by her Majesty's commissioners were 
 sufficiently onerous. They required each candidate for 
 employment to exhibit a large cartoon, a coloured sketch, 
 and a specimen in fresco. The ardour of the young 
 artists was still un chilled. Several, commencing a career 
 of good promise, were again tempted to turn aside and 
 try the grand style, to enter the lists in a competition 
 which to their warm imaginations seemed to bring a 
 tempting future yet nearer; while others, even against 
 their own convictions, and quite unsupported by a talent 
 for historic art, were led hopelessly to waste another year 
 of their time and their substance. But in this exhibition 
 no artists of established reputation, no member of the 
 Academy, competed with the six elected painters. Thirty- 
 seven painters only exhibited 116 works. Some had 
 wisely given up further efforts, some had certainly not 
 the means left to continue them. Most of the works * 
 sent were in fresco, some few were oil paintings on a 
 very large scale ; and it was painfully apparent that the 
 artists had hoped by much labour and a wide- spread 
 canvas to supply the want of that genius which alone 
 qualifies for such works. 
 
 The fifth report, dated in August, 1845, followed 
 within six months. After reciting that they had, as we 
 have seen, employed six artists to make designs, without 
 binding themselves to employ them finally, and had also 
 advertised another general competition, the commis- 
 sioners recommended, on the result of the examination 
 of the specimens exhibited, that the six arched com- 
 partments in the House of Lords, for which they had 
 themselves chosen the subjects for competition, should 
 
COMMISSIONS TO PAINTERS. 
 
 529 
 
 be decorated with fresco paintings. But having been 
 at last able to deliver themselves of this momentous 
 decision, after nearly four years' gestation, they were 
 " however, of opinion that it would be desirable to pro- 
 ceed gradually with the execution of the fresco paintings, 
 and that one should be completed before the others were 
 commenced ; " and they resolved that this one should be 
 the Baptism of St. Ethelbert, by Mr. Dyce, whose recent 
 loss we have to deplore. The commissioners " mean- 
 while, being desirous to afford opportunities for the 
 further practice of fresco painting, and for the cultivation 
 of the style of design which is fitted for it," appointed 
 five other painters, who had been distinguished in 
 their competitive exhibitions, to fill spaces in the upper 
 hall ; and they deferred for one year, that is, till June, 
 1847, the competition in oil painting. To these works in 
 the upper hall we propose to revert when their comple- 
 tion is reported by the commissioners. 
 
 After the lapse of another year the commissioners 
 were able, in a sixth report dated August, 1846, to 
 approve of one completed work, " The Baptism," in the 
 House of Lords ; taking care to record that they had 
 previously approved of the design for it. "It presented," 
 they said, " no imperfections as an example of fresco 
 painting," and they considered " that it promises to 
 agree well with the architectural and other decorations 
 therein adopted, or to be adopted." They therefore 
 44 confirmed their former recommendation, and proposed 
 that the remaining five compartments should be deco- 
 rated when the several designs for them shall have been 
 approved." And they add, " Being also of opinion that 
 the satisfactory effect of Mr. Dyce's fresco is to be 
 vol. ii. 68 
 
530 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 referred, in a great degree, to the- style of design and 
 colouring which he has adopted, and considering it 
 desirable that a certain conformity of style and execution 
 should pervade paintings employed in the decoration of 
 architecture, and which must be seen together, we deem 
 it important (without wishing to impose undue restric- 
 tions on the invention or taste of the other artists com- 
 missioned to execute the remaining frescoes in the House 
 of Lords), that such artists should be recommended to 
 adapt the size of their principal figures, their style of 
 colouring, and the degree of completeness in the execu- 
 tion of their works, so as to make them agree suffi- 
 ciently with each other, and with the specimen already 
 executed." 
 
 The above parenthesis is a saving clause for the com- 
 missioners; not for the artists. An opinion so expressed, 
 from a body so carefully retaining the power of final 
 approval, is as absolute as it was ill-judged. Fuseli said, 
 and it is a truism, " He that follows another must be 
 behind." To imitate another, if a Raphael, in style, 
 colour and finish, is to abandon all originality, to substi- 
 tute a tame subserviency for the freshness of thought fol- 
 lowing its own impulses, to deprive genius of its highest 
 characteristics. And yet fresco painting offered peculiar 
 scope for every mode of original thought and method ; a 
 point which is especially enlarged upon by Mr. Wilson, 
 one of the masters of the Government School of Design, 
 who was employed by the commissioners themselves to 
 visit Italy, and who made an elaborate report to them on 
 the subject of fresco. But we will quote this paper, which 
 they printed in an appendix to their second report : — 
 " In the works of the old masters we shall find painting 
 
COMMISSIONERS REPORT THEIR PLANS. 531 
 
 in fresco in as many styles, and exhibiting as much 
 diversity of touch and handling, as may be observed in 
 the works of the same artists in oil. There is the same 
 liberty of thought in the treatment of both methods, and 
 genius exhibits its powers with as endless a diversity in 
 the one art as in the other. We find in the frescoes of 
 the old masters every quality of execution that has a 
 name in oil painting, although these qualities are neces- 
 sarily exemplified in different degrees ; we have trans- 
 parency, opacity, richness ; we have thin and thick 
 painting, nay loading, and that to an extent that cannot 
 be contemplated in oil. We have the calm, transparent, 
 elegant painting of the Florentines and Romans, the rich 
 variety of the Venetians, and there are cases in which 
 the well-nourished brush of Rembrandt seems repre- 
 sented in the works of the fresco-painters of the old 
 Italian times." 
 
 Having then approved, subject to such conditions, 
 of three out of the remaining five designs, the commis- 
 sioners say, " It would not be expedient, with reference 
 to the encouragement of British Art, or with reference 
 to the claims which may be hereafter urged, for the 
 commemoration of great events, to complete the series 
 of paintings on the walls of the said palace at the present 
 period ; " and the commissioners came to the further 
 conclusion that it is their duty " for the better guidance 
 of present and future artists, and in order to maintain 
 a character of harmony and unity worthy of such a 
 building, to determine a complete scheme for the future 
 decoration of the palace." Her Majesty's commis- 
 sioners were appointed in 1841, and were commanded to 
 report to the Queen, " the mode in which, by means of 
 
 68—2 
 
532 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the interior decoration of the palace of Westminster, 
 the fine arts of this country can be most effectually 
 encouraged ; " the sole object of the commission was 
 assuredly the encouragement of the fine arts, the decora- 
 tion of the Houses of Parliament as surely only the 
 means to that end ; yet in 1846, after five years of 
 sittings and deliberations, her Majesty's commissioners 
 were only able to report that one painting was finished 
 and three others commissioned. And then, turning 
 aside to the question of decoration, they proposed, if we 
 understand them, to consider a scheme in which the 
 possible great events of the future may be commemorated 
 by the artists of another generation. Was it to be 
 supposed that the full encouragement which the very 
 words of the commission led the artists of that day to 
 expect — the men who, on the invitation of the commis- 
 sioners, had made such serious sacrifices and exertions — 
 was to be deferred for their successors in an uncertain 
 future ? We do not hesitate to say that bitter dis- 
 appointment was experienced — disappointment founded 
 on just expectations unfulfilled. 
 
 In the interval, the works of the painters in oil, 
 invited by the commissioners in 1845, were received and 
 exhibited in Westminster Hall ; forming the fourth 
 competitive exhibition. The oil medium was the practice 
 of the English School, and many artists had lain by to 
 make their powers known in this long-promised com- 
 petition ; and, stimulated by the national work before 
 them, which all hoped to share, the profession once more 
 with unchilled enthusiasm, though with abated confidence, 
 submitted their works. We are not told how many were 
 rejected — for the commissioners reserved this right — but 
 
COMPETITION IN OIL PAINTINGS. 
 
 533 
 
 the catalogue shows that 124 paintings by 103 painters 
 "were deemed by the commissioners to possess sufficient 
 merit to entitle them to the privilege " of exhibition. 
 
 The paintings were, with few exceptions, of unusually 
 large size ; the canvases averaging more than 100 square 
 feet, but many exceeding twice that size. The competi- 
 tors were chiefly ambitious, young and rising men ; but 
 there were several of the elder men well known in the 
 profession, and among them, this time, two members of 
 the Royal Academy. Then followed the commissioners' 
 judgment in their seventh report, dated July, 1847. The 
 nine premiums of 300Z. were awarded to nine of the 
 competing exhibitors by a committee of three members 
 of the commission, with whom were associated three 
 Royal Academicians; and her Majesty's commissioners 
 state "that the evidence of the ability afforded (in the 
 competition) not only by the works of the successful 
 candidates, but by those of many others, has been most 
 satisfactory to us. We remark that several of the artists 
 who had before distinguished themselves in cartoon 
 drawing, have shown by their works exhibited on this 
 occasion, that they are well qualified to execute oil 
 pictures on a large scale." Then referring in a few 
 words to the commissions for fresco painting and to the 
 sculpture, the commissioners submit, in an appendix, 
 their complete scheme for the future decoration of the 
 palace ; which will in all probability be relegated to a very 
 distant future indeed. 
 
 In the conditions issued by her Majesty's commis- 
 sioners relating to this exhibition, the 10th runs thus :— 
 " Paintings which may combine appropriate subjects 
 with a high degree of merit, shall be considered eligible 
 
534 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 to be purchased by the nation, in order to be placed in 
 the apartments of the palace at Westminster." Now we 
 cannot for a moment suppose that this shadily-worded 
 promise was meant to deceive, and after the declaration 
 of the commissioners that the ability shown by several 
 of the exhibitors was most .satisfactory, many would 
 naturally expect that their works would be purchased, 
 and find an honourable place on the walls of the palace. 
 With the artist, his time is his wealth ; on its proper 
 employment is based both the future fame and fortune 
 of the young artist. But those who endured this com- 
 petition, and indeed all that had gone before, had further 
 to bear the large expense for models and for materials, 
 with the necessary hire of large studios ; and it is within 
 the mark to estimate that these expenses would involve 
 an outlay which averaged 50/. at the least to each of the 
 103 competitors, or a total of 5,1501., — a -sum which 
 would probably be raised to nearly 7,500/., if we knew 
 the number of rejected pictures, and of those commenced, 
 where the heart failed before completion crowned the 
 work. For this outlay, taking no account of the loss of 
 time, and the sad struggles of mind and heart by which it 
 was accompanied, the commissioners awarded 3,000/. in 
 premiums, and made purchases to the amount of 1,300/.; 
 and this was absolutely all. No other purchases were 
 made. Yet these works, on the large scale in which they 
 were executed, and on the class of subjects proposed 
 — like the large cartoons and the fresco specimens of 
 previous competitions — were quite unsaleable, and artists 
 were in many cases obliged to rent places where they 
 could stow away pictures, which were only sad and 
 depressing remembrances, and which in some cases even 
 
EXHIBITION IN WESTMINSTER HALL. 535 
 
 they destroyed. What a curious tale would be told if 
 we were able to trace the difficulties and hopes under 
 which some of these works were completed, and to 
 ascertain their ultimate fate ! 
 
 But this is not all. The commissioners did not even 
 think it necessary in their report to say one word on the 
 subject of purchase, which formed one of the prominent 
 inducements to competition ; but, tagged to the report in 
 the appendix, we discover a curt letter to the Treasury : 
 " Her Majesty's Commissioners on the Fine Arts are 
 desirous to preserve to the nation some of the paintings 
 now submitted to the public in Westminster Hall. They 
 have reason to think that this object may be accom- 
 plished, though not to the extent they could desire, by 
 the employment for such purchase of the proceeds of the 
 exhibition in Westminster Hall, without making applica- 
 tion to the Government for additional funds at a time 
 when the public expenditure has been unavoidably great; " 
 and then they propose (to which the Treasury generously 
 assents) to lay out the monies received for the exhibition 
 of the artists' pictures (the 1,300/. we have mentioned) 
 in the purchase of three of the works which stood at the 
 head of their premium list, with a fourth which had not 
 found a place there. State patronage of art ! with what 
 bitter truth did many in their disappointment exclaim, 
 " mockery, delusion, snare ! " This was making the 
 war pay for the war indeed. We know little of the 
 finance of the commission, nothing whatever of the 
 "sums taken at the doors" during the four exhibi- 
 tions by her Majesty's commissioners carrying out a 
 great national plan. We can trace in the parliamentary 
 papers the sums paid to the artists in premiums, and 
 
536 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 for the works they executed, and the sums voted for the 
 expenses of the commission ; but we know nothing of 
 the many other charges connected with this patronage 
 of art, which were paid by the Office of Works, or under 
 other departments or other estimates ; and it is to such 
 we assume that the commissioners refer in their strange 
 mention of the unavoidably great public expenditure ; 
 apparently as an excuse for their petty recommendation 
 to lay out the competitors' own earnings in the purchase 
 of their works for the nation. 
 
 Was there one upon the commission who, gifted 
 himself with a true love of art, felt a warm sympathy 
 with the labours and disappointments of the artists, 
 to whose high influence we may attribute the more 
 earnest progress evinced by the commissioners, as an- 
 nounced in their eighth report, dated September, 1848 ? 
 After stating in this report that three more frescoes had 
 been completed in the House of Lords, they say, "We 
 consider these works, the designs for which have been 
 before approved by us, are highly satisfactory examples 
 of fresco painting ; their effect confirms us in the opinion 
 that under certain circumstances of light and distance, 
 fresco painting is well calculated for the purposes of 
 decoration ; while, from requiring the preparation of 
 careful designs, the method recommends itself as being 
 fitted to promote the study of form ; " and the commis- 
 sioners gave the execution of the two remaining frescoes 
 in the House of Lords to two of the artists who had 
 already completed subjects therein. They also employed 
 the late Mr. Dyce, E.A., to decorate the Queen's Robing- 
 room with the "Legend of King Arthur;" stipulating 
 that he should receive 800/. a year for six years, within 
 
DISAPPOINTED EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 537 
 
 which time the work (which his death in 1864 left 
 unfinished) should be completed ; and further, they 
 had authorized four artists, whose designs they had 
 approved, to commence their frescoes in the upper 
 Waiting Hall. A lapse of eighteen months ensued 
 before the next report. It was dated in March, 1850, 
 and announced the completion of the two remaining 
 frescoes in the House of Lords ; it said they were 
 highly satisfactory, and indicated increased skill on the 
 part of the artists in the management of the material : 
 it also announced the completion of the four smaller 
 frescoes in the Upper Waiting Hall. The commissioners 
 also gave a commission to Sir Edwin Landseer, K.A., 
 to paint in oil three subjects connected with the chase, 
 for the three compartments of the Peers' Refreshment 
 Koom, naming 1,500/. for the three paintings : a price 
 which proved that the painter's motives in accepting it 
 were far other than pecuniary. 
 
 The expectations with which the first proposal to 
 promote art and decorate a palace for the Legislature 
 had been received, could hardly have been satisfied ; but 
 they had long since been chilled by protracted delays, 
 followed by small performances ; while the profession had 
 been wearied out by fruitless competitions and contests. 
 It was as difficult to understand the proceedings, as the 
 objects and aims of the commission. At the outset its 
 views seemed to embrace the whole profession, but its 
 first steps alienated those who enjoyed an established 
 reputation and represented the art of the British School ; 
 and it then appeared to be the aim of the commission to 
 train a school of young artists to whom the decorations 
 might be entrusted. They might be led to exhibit works 
 
538 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 in repeated competitions ; to accept the subjects selected 
 for them ; to carry out recommendations as to style, 
 composition, colour, and even execution ; and they would 
 submit their sketches, cartoons, and finished works for 
 approval at every step. But no great work has ever 
 been achieved by such means ; no true genius has ever 
 been exhibited in such leading-strings. Nor was this the 
 idea which suggested itself to the great president of 
 the commission, or to the future secretary, when the 
 subject was first propounded to him by the House of 
 Commons' committee. He contemplated entrusting com- 
 plete portions of the work to one master, assisted by 
 trained pupils, whose mind should pervade and give 
 harmony to the whole ; not, we believe, that her 
 Majesty's commissioners should divide the work among 
 several young artists, and attempt, by an impossible 
 control, to attain unity and completeness by forcing 
 them all into one groove. 
 
 In the four frescoes completed, the artists, with pro- 
 bably one exception, had not succeeded in adapting their 
 art to the peculiar conditions demanded in fresco decora- 
 tions. They had been tokl in the admirable reports by 
 the secretary, that imperfect light requires magnitude 
 and simplicity of parts, that distinctness may be attained 
 by light and shade, form or colour ; but they had missed 
 these essential qualities, the principal figure in one being 
 absolutely invisible ; and they had failed to attain that 
 dignity and repose which belong to fresco, and that 
 subordination and symmetry of composition which are 
 indispensable when the painter's art is employed in the 
 decoration of the architect's. It is true that the painters 
 had to contend with insuperable difficulties. The situa- 
 
PARLIAMENT LOSES PATIENCE. 
 
 539 
 
 tions selected for them by the commissioners were quite 
 unsuited to the proper display of high art in any 
 medium. The three paintings opposite the throne are so 
 deeply recessed, that they are seen as in a dark hole, and 
 with the three opposite, have to contend against a side 
 light, admitted on their level, and through richly stained 
 glass ; and also, with the great absence of repose, arising 
 from the extensive employment of colour-gilding through- 
 out the forms in the general decoration of the chamber. 
 The architect had said, when questioned by the House 
 of Commons' committee, that fresco paintings might 
 " supply the place of tapestry;" but we think, in the 
 places chosen for the painters in the House of Lords, 
 that tapestry would have proved by far the most suitable 
 decoration. 
 
 Meanwhile the public lost patience ; they thought 
 that little had been done, and that little unsuccessfully, 
 and the failure of the whole scheme was already pre- 
 dicted. The House of Commons had, in the previous 
 session, with grumbling and grudging, voted the sums 
 asked for the Commission. They were irritated with the 
 absence of responsible control over the monies when 
 voted, and dissatisfied with the work they had got for 
 their money ; upon which they turned very critical, and 
 when the Government asked the sum of 1,500/. to pay for 
 the three oil-paintings by Sir Edwin Landseer, the House 
 by an adverse vote, while expressing the highest estima- 
 tion for the artist's talent, made him the scapegoat, and 
 struck that amount out of the estimate. This was a very 
 plain expression of want of confidence in her Majesty's 
 commissioners, and a rude check to their proceedings. 
 They had till this reported their doings yearly, but now, 
 
540 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 above four years elapsed before another report appeared. 
 Their tenth report was dated July, 1854, and reported the 
 completion of eight frescoes in the Upper Waiting Hall, 
 apologetically stating the desire of the commissioners 
 " to afford opportunities for the further practice of fresco 
 painting, and for the cultivation of the style of design 
 which is fitted for it ;" and they say, " these experimental 
 works will be of use in showing what are the external 
 qualities generally essential in fresco painting, and espe- 
 cially so under given local circumstances :" referring 
 in this to the bad lighting of the apartment. The six 
 frescoes in the House of Lords filled spaces which are, 
 architecturally at least, well suited. But these eight in 
 the upper hall are crammed into the four corners ; two 
 in each, at right angles, and so close that the frescoes 
 actually meet in the angles : an arrangement which is 
 not only utterly opposed to the architectural decorations 
 of the chamber, but to every principle of true taste ; and 
 the lighting indeed needed the implied apology. The 
 "given local circumstances" must truly have been a 
 crucial test to the painters : a worse place could hardly 
 have been found for their works, which, after above ten 
 years' experiments, are cruelly called " experimental." 
 Then, as to the works themselves. They were hardly 
 completed when decay seized them ; the colours under- 
 went changes utterly destructive, flesh tints became pain- 
 fully livid, greens disappeared, blues and browns changed 
 places — a general mildew seized the whole. The ground 
 itself was soon destroyed, it blistered, became loose and 
 disintegrated, and soon these eight works will be out of 
 the reach of criticism. 
 
 The commissioners also reported that four of the 
 
FURTHER COMMISSIONS. 
 
 541 
 
 frescoes proposed in their seventh report for the Queen's 
 Kobing-room had been finished, and that they consider 
 them altogether satisfactory in regard to their general 
 treatment, and as examples of the method of fresco 
 painting. And further, that they have commissioned 
 Mr. Herbert, E.A., to prepare designs for a series of 
 frescoes in the Peers' Kobing-room, according to the 
 scheme of their seventh report ; that they have assigned 
 subjects to Messrs. Cope, R.A. and Ward, R.A., in the 
 corridors; and propose to employ Mr. McClise, R.A., 
 to paint the "Marriage of Strongbow and Eva," in the 
 Painted Chamber. 
 
 Then again a long silence intervened ; public opinion 
 had not changed or moderated, when in June, 1858, 
 the eleventh report appeared. It commenced by the 
 announcement of error and want of judgment. Bad 
 as had been the spaces already selected by the com- 
 missioners, for decoration, that assigned to Mr. McClise 
 in the Painted Chamber was absolutely unfit ; and 
 the commissioners, with many words, say, " Some 
 difficulties having been found to exist with regard to 
 the lighting of some compartments in that locality, 
 the work was postponed, and the artist was, at his 
 own request, finally released from such undertaking, 
 and the grant of public money amounting to 1,500Z. 
 which had been voted by Parliament for this object, 
 was, with the consent of the Lords Commissioners of 
 the Treasury, appropriated to the painting of twenty- 
 eight whole-length portraits of personages connected 
 with the Tudor family ; " and of these works her 
 Majesty's commissioners say, " Being taken from au- 
 thentic sources, and executed in methods fitted to pro- 
 
542 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 duce the style of the original works, they at once serve 
 a decorative purpose, and constitute trustworthy resem- 
 blances of the historical personages represented." 
 
 It was clear from this report that matters had not 
 mended. One of the most able artists who had devoted 
 himself to the decoration of the parliamentary buildings, 
 was commissioned to bury the offspring of his genius in a 
 chamber so dark that the work would be invisible, and on 
 his declining his hopeless task, the money specially voted 
 by the House of Commons for this work, was diverted by 
 her Majesty's commissioners — as if to show their inde- 
 pendence of parliamentary control and remonstrance — 
 to works of mere decoration, hardly within their province. 
 Then as to these Tudor portraits, for which the actual 
 cost was no less than 1,960/., or 70/. each ; they are 
 as apocryphal as the famed Holyrood series. The artist 
 employed, whose talent and fitness are well known, 
 describes the " authentic sources " for his whole-lengths 
 to be in some instances miniatures of the head only, 
 and these doubtful, old prints and such material. For 
 instance, the authority for James 4th of Scotland, is 
 " several scarce old engravings, but the head only 
 copied from the sources referred to." One of Henry 
 VIII. 's queens is from " a half-length etching by Hollar," 
 probably less than three inches in size, and a "sketch 
 from a miniature at the Manchester Exhibition." Others 
 are described as from a small copy of a picture destroyed 
 by fire — a contemporary miniature — and such like. 
 Truly these are a series of fancy portraits ; and what 
 can her Majesty's commissioners mean by their state- 
 ment that such mere inventions " are executed in 
 methods fitted to produce the style of the original 
 
APOLOGETIC REPORT. 
 
 543 
 
 works ? ' ' However, in lieu of the work and the locality 
 Mr. McClise had abandoned, the commissioners proposed 
 that he should paint in fresco one of the subjects in the 
 Koyal Gallery for 1,0007. ; and they reported that Mr. 
 Herbert had completed to their entire satisfaction a large 
 cartoon of " Moses bringing down the Tables of the 
 Law to the Israelites." 
 
 Hitherto the reports of the commissioners had been 
 made in a style of the most strict official brevity; but 
 the current of public opinion and criticism ran strongly 
 against their doings ; the completed frescoes had most 
 of them failed, and those which afforded the most pro- 
 mise if completed, stood still : so in the face of these 
 difficulties, an altered manner was adopted in the 12th 
 report, dated in February, 1861, and the commissioners, 
 feeling themselves on their defence, began to reason and 
 explain. In Mr. Herbert's fresco there has undoubtedly 
 been unnecessary delay; Mr. Dyce's, " to their extreme 
 mortification, is still unfinished." It was not possible for 
 Messrs. Cope and Ward to paint their frescoes on the 
 walls, and an " expedient of painting them on movable 
 frames was necessary." But Mr. McClise's work was 
 the bright spot, and " his unremitting industry " was, as 
 it richly deserved, the subject of the commissioners' 
 especial mention. Then after all that had been said of 
 the prominent merits of fresco, which was to create a 
 new art in England, the commissioners quietly add : — 
 " Finding that the process of fresco painting is imper- 
 fectly adapted for subjects containing a multiplicity of 
 details, Mr. McClise, with the sanction of the commis- 
 sioners, proceeded in the autumn of 1859 to Germany, 
 in order to make researches into the practice of the 
 
544 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 stereochroine or water-glass method of painting. The 
 result has been that he adopted that method in the 
 execution of the large wall-painting referred to, ' The 
 Meeting of Wellington and Blucher after the Battle of 
 Waterloo.' The method has also found favour with 
 Mr. Herbert, who having, after repeated experiments, 
 modified it according to his own views, professes his 
 entire satisfaction with it." 
 
 The question, however, arises, was fresco the best 
 method to be adopted ? Did the commissioners, in the 
 first instance, take the trouble to examine those exam- 
 ples of wall painting within their reach, in order to test 
 the durability of the methods employed upon them ? 
 We had lately an opportunity of closely examining the 
 ceiling of the Queen's bed-chamber at Hampton Court, 
 the work of Verrio. It is painted in an oil medium on 
 the plaster ; yet it is fresher, brighter, and in better con- 
 dition than pictures on canvas of the same period. The 
 flesh is pure and rosy, the whites extremely bright, the 
 ultramarine draperies, which seem thinly laid on over a 
 white preparation, are most brilliant; the yellows (ochre), 
 painted with some degree of impasto, are hard and 
 strong when touched with the knife, the gilding in the 
 decorative parts wholly unaltered ; the only failure is in 
 the browns, which have been thinly painted, and have 
 partially cracked ; but, as a whole, no work in fresco 
 could have shown greater brilliancy and purity. Of 
 course the art is meretricious and flashy, but the execu- 
 tion, vigorous, free and facile, is perfect. From below, 
 it is so bright and luminous, that it looks like water 
 colour or tempera. We must also recollect the pictures 
 by La Guerre, on the staircase and the walls of the hall 
 
FRESCO ABANDONED. 
 
 545 
 
 at Marlborough House, which have been subjected to all 
 kinds of contumely and injury, yet after a century and a 
 half, are sounder than our newly painted frescoes. Also 
 the curious wall paintings in Dean Street, already men- 
 tioned in the account of Hogarth. From all these we 
 doubt if the chief question submitted to the commission 
 received due consideration. 
 
 Having, as we have shown, upon the principle of 
 "the least said the soonest mended," abandoned their 
 dearly cherished fresco scheme, the commissioners pre- 
 pare for the winding-up of their commission, and express 
 their " opinion that the employment in the palace at 
 Westminster of the best professors in painting may 
 conduce to the credit of the artists and of the country : " 
 adding, " At the same time, when we consider the great 
 encouragement which has of late years been extended to 
 painting by opulent lovers of art, — a state of things which 
 did not exist to the same extent when this commission 
 was appointed, — we are bound to admit that those artists 
 could, in almost every case, be more profitably, though 
 not more honourably, employed in other and possibly 
 less arduous undertakings." A very significant admis- 
 sion of failure ! The commissioners proposed no further 
 commissions to painters or additional grants for paintings. 
 And the end soon followed : the thirteenth and final 
 report bears date in the succeeding month, the 11th 
 March, 1861. The commissioners are " of opinion that 
 the term of their prescribed duties has now arrived. 
 The whole scheme of decorations for the palace of 
 Westminster has been considered and decided ; and 
 trusting that the series of works now in progress can be 
 carried on to their completion, it does not appear to us 
 vol. ii. 69 
 
546 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 that the commission need be continued to superintend 
 the execution." The date of this report must, however, 
 from the facts in the report, be erroneous, and it was not 
 transmitted to the Secretary of State till March, 1863, 
 when it was laid before Parliament. But we are quite 
 unable to supply the correct date : suffice it to say the 
 commission had expired. 
 
 We have traced the proceedings of her Majesty's 
 Commission, with the minuteness which its intimate 
 relation to the scheme of our work requires, as an 
 instance of lay management, of State patronage on a 
 large scale ; and an attempt to naturalize a new art. If 
 our opinions are not without bias, they are at least, we 
 trust, without prejudice, and the bias such as those truly 
 anxious for the success of the commission could scarcely be 
 entirely free from. The constitution of the commission has 
 already been the subject of remark. The only confidence 
 which the artists could have felt, must have centred in 
 the unfettered action of its royal president, and the hope 
 that its secretary was selected as his adviser ; the majority 
 of its members were renowned for the high and onerous 
 offices they filled, which must in reality prove a dis- 
 qualification, and, the dilettanti added, did not much 
 improve the selection ; since artists, to tell the truth, have 
 not generally much reliance on dilettanti judgments. 
 The composition of this important commission was 
 certainly exceptional. It did not include one of the 
 many distinguished men who were then devoted to the 
 practice of art : not one man who professionally repre- 
 sented art. Yet we know of no parallel instance. In 
 commissions relating to questions of law, jurisprudence, 
 or ecclesiastical matters, and there have been many, 
 
CAUSES OF FAILURE. 
 
 547 
 
 their chief members have been of these professions, and 
 the same course has been followed in the numerous 
 similar inquiries in matters of science. Why should art 
 be an exception, and the artist be told, as is so often 
 the case, that every one is better fitted to judge of art 
 and art interests than himself ? 
 
 The artists then had a ground of distrust when the 
 commission was issued, but they looked forward to its 
 acts with a hope that had no foundation. It is not 
 left to us to express an opinion upon the commission. 
 Its failure has been generally pronounced and admitted. 
 But passing by the inherent defect in its constitution, we 
 may say, in conclusion, a few words on its acts. Led 
 aside by the desire to walk in new paths, and thus give 
 greater eclat to their undertaking, the commissioners 
 attempted the introduction of fresco in opposition to the 
 opinions of the profession, both that it was unsuited to 
 the genius of the English School, and that it was not so 
 likely to stand our climate as oil painting. In this 
 attempt they failed. After several years lost in ex- 
 pensive experiments, we can point to no completed 
 works in fresco equal to those by the same painters 
 in oil, while the greater part of their attempts are 
 already fast perishing. The commissioners also made 
 competition the rule of their proceedings and the only 
 road to their commissions, — a course by which they 
 knew, or should have known, they would fail to secure 
 the co-operation of artists of established reputation, 
 the true representatives of the art of our school ; and 
 they not only selected and prescribed the exact sub- 
 jects (not merely the events) for illustration, leaving 
 as little as possible to the inventive genius of the artist, 
 
 69—2 
 
548 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 but they, a body of laymen, fruitlessly attempted to 
 control and direct him, by requiring the repeated sub- 
 mission of his works to their judgment at every stage of 
 progress. In the selection of the localities best adapted 
 for decoration, which the commissioners considered their 
 especial province, they were, as we have shown in re- 
 spect to the upper hall, the Prince's chamber, and, in 
 the important consideration of light, in the House of 
 Lords itself, singularly unfortunate ; and no less so in 
 the two corridors, mere ill-lighted passages, quite un- 
 worthy the talents of the two "able painters to whom 
 they were assigned. In these and many minor matters, 
 the commission would have been better advised had art 
 been duly represented. 
 
 The sole object really entrusted to the commission by 
 her Majesty was the inquiry how the fine arts of the 
 country might be encouraged and promoted. But the 
 commission proceeded to attempt to carry out the plans 
 they recommended ; and the attempt proved disastrous. 
 In the end, we find that two or three talented artists had 
 been tempted to devote themselves to fresco painting, 
 who, the commissioners admit, might be more profitably 
 employed ; and instead of the honour and reputation 
 which the commissioners apply as a salve, we only see 
 the works which should sustain it fading in dark places. 
 But Mr. Hallam, one of the commissioners, said, and we 
 think justly, " I must confess that, by the encouragement 
 of the fine arts, as expressed by the terms of our com- 
 mission, I never understood the giving employment to 
 particular individuals, but the elevation of the national 
 character, by the development of powers which, in ordi- 
 nary circumstances, could not be adequately displayed." 
 
RESULTS OF THE COMMISSION. 
 
 549 
 
 What, then, has been the influence of the commission 
 upon the profession generally ? So far from art having 
 been encouraged and promoted, we fear it has been 
 checked and discouraged ; that young men were allured 
 from their own walks in art, tempted into hopeless com- 
 petitions, with their attendant expenses, and then left sick 
 at heart, with diminished means, and unable to regain 
 the position they had lost. We could quote several such 
 instances, but not one of hidden genius brought to light 
 and fostered into excellence. As to those few employed, 
 the case is hardly better. Not only their gains, but their 
 true distinction in art, would have been greater had they 
 never left their own studios ; and the country might have 
 possessed some fine works by them on canvas, instead of 
 wasted labours in fresco. 
 
 " The commissioners were, in one respect, unfortunate. 
 They terminated their own existence — unless that may 
 be at the last attributed to atrophy — before the comple- 
 tion of some works in which they might have found just 
 cause for exultation. But these works are not in fresco. 
 They are in the new water-glass process, by which a 
 silica surface is given, by means of a fine syringe, to a 
 painting in water colours. There is, unfortunately, no 
 lengthened experience that this new process is more 
 durable than the abandoned fresco ; or that our painters 
 are not entrusting works that would do credit to our 
 school, with their own labours and fame, to a medium, 
 under any circumstances, uncertain, and probably only of 
 short duration. 
 
550 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 DYCE, RA., AND SCHOOLS OF DESIGN. 
 
 His Birth and Education— Early Visit to Italy— Its Advantages— And 
 Influence on his Art-career— His first Picture — Second Visit to Rome 
 — His peculiar Studies — On his Return paints Portraits — Appointed 
 Director of the Schools of Design— He reports on the Continental 
 Schools — His Drawing-book — Resigns his Office — Employed on the 
 Decoration of the Houses of Parliament — Opinion upon his Work — 
 Re-appointed to the School of Design — But resigns, and devotes him- 
 self to Fresco Painting — His " Legend of King Arthur " — Unfinished 
 Work— And Death— Defects in his Character — Schools of Design — 
 Dyce's Plans and Labours — His Purpose to teach Design and establish 
 Free Exhibitions not carried out — Establishment of the Department of 
 Practical Art — Its large Schemes — And their complete Success — First 
 Aims of the Art-Superintendent — His Plans for teaching Design — 
 Improvements effected— Opinions of the French Authorities— Godfrey 
 Syhes, as a Decorator. 
 
 Twenty-five years have elapsed since, as we have shown 
 in the preceding chapter, the Government of the day, 
 with a view to encourage historic art, offered premiums 
 for designs for the decoration of the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment ; more than twenty years since the commencement 
 of the real labours of the artists employed. Of those to 
 whom the work was entrusted, it has been our good 
 fortune hitherto to lose but one ; the others are still 
 with us, to see the completion of their first works, and 
 to receive their due meed of fame. 
 
 William Dyce, E.A., who has been lately taken from 
 us, has many claims to our notice. He was not only 
 eminent as an artist and as a representative of the new 
 
WILLIAM DYCE, R.A. 
 
 551 
 
 school of fresco painting, but he was engaged in initiat- 
 ing the system of Government art-teaching, intended, in 
 the first instance, to provide instruction for our artisans, 
 and designers for manufactures ; but which, under the 
 direction of his successors, has been extended to provide 
 sound elementary instruction open to all. This teaching 
 is certain to have a great future influence on public taste 
 and art progress, and its success is partly owing to the 
 wise direction given to the system at its commencement. 
 
 William Dyce was born in Aberdeen, on the 19th 
 September, 1806. His father was a physician in extensive 
 practice in that city. It is not recorded whether young 
 Dyce was from the first intended for the arts, but he 
 received a liberal education, fitted to form his mind and 
 to qualify him for any future pursuit or profession. He 
 early graduated at the Marischal College in his native 
 city, and at the age of sixteen took the degree of Master 
 of Arts. Soon after, having adopted art as his profes- 
 sion, he left his native city, and in his seventeenth year 
 entered the schools of the Royal Scottish Academy. 
 Whether from any cause other than the desire of im- 
 provement in the metropolitan schools we know not, but 
 he came early to London, and obtained admittance as a 
 probationer at the Royal Academy. He himself tells us 
 that he was dissatisfied with the instruction in these 
 schools; and as he did not obtain his admission as a 
 student, he determined to avail himself of opportunities 
 afforded him of visiting the Continental schools of art. 
 
 In 1825, Dyce, being then only nineteen years of 
 age, made a journey to Italy, to prosecute his studies 
 amidst those great historical and monumental works 
 which can only be fully appreciated in situ. On this 
 
552 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 occasion he spent nine months in Kome. In thus early 
 visiting the great seats of art, he differs from most of our 
 British painters, and we can trace the influence of this 
 early visit on all his future career. With a cultivated 
 mind, but as yet unfettered by the prevailing tastes of his 
 brother artists, he was brought face to face with the 
 great works of the masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, and the impression made on him was deep 
 and enduring. The "propriety" and refinement of 
 Kaphael's labours seemed congenial to his taste, and 
 gave aim to his future efforts. For a time, perhaps, 
 the veneration with which the early masters were 
 regarded by him, led rather to imitation than to origin- 
 ality, but as strength and confidence increased with 
 years, this was cast aside, and he sought rather to work 
 in their spirit, and to sacrifice whatever was meretricious 
 to the higher qualities of simplicity, feeling, and expres- 
 sion which he found in their works. 
 
 There was another result arising from the young 
 painter's visit to Italy, and his study of the great 
 lunettes of Raphael, the arabesques of the Vatican, the 
 Farnesina, and generally of the palaces and churches of 
 Italy. He early learnt to appreciate the decorative 
 nature of the art of the great Italian fresco painters, and 
 to understand, as it had not yet been understood by the 
 great body of his brother artists, that the painters of 
 the quattro and cinque-cento were ornamentists as well 
 as historical painters, and thought it a part of their 
 labours to give unity to the whole scheme of decoration, 
 by controlling the design and execution of the orna- 
 mental as well as of the pictorial parts. 
 
 This led young Dyce on his return from Rome in 
 
HIS FIRST WORKS. 
 
 553 
 
 1826, to prepare a set of arabesque designs, and to 
 decorate a room in his father's house in Aberdeen ; and 
 was, no doubt, the introduction to that fuller study of 
 ornamental art which conduced so largely to his future 
 fame and his future usefulness. While working at this 
 labour of love, Dyce was also employed in painting his 
 first picture, " Bacchus Nursed by the Nymphs of 
 Nyssa," a bold attempt as a commencement. It was 
 exhibited in 1827 in the Koyal Academy, and in the 
 autumn of that year he again set out for Eome to con- 
 tinue his studies under the inspiration of the great works 
 of Raphael, which had deeply impressed him ; and which, 
 with those of Raphael's precursors, remained throughout 
 the rule of his faith, and the models for his imitation. 
 Endowed with a congenial mind, he delighted in their 
 simplicity, earnestness, and truth. On this, his second 
 visit, Dyce remained in Italy the greater part of three 
 years, studying diligently the frescoes and wall decora- 
 tions of the earlier masters ; the purity of their pictorial 
 art, and the elegance and simplicity of the ornamental 
 accessories with which - it is often surrounded. Too 
 many of our British artists in their visits to Italy have 
 looked at its art merely as pictorial, and have compared 
 with the art of other countries, its easel pictures, or at 
 most its altar-pieces on panel or canvas, which, as 
 capable of being detached from the walls, could be trans- 
 ferred from their original surroundings, and placed in 
 museums and public galleries. 
 
 The great monumental works, the wall paintings at 
 Padua, at Pisa, at Florence, at Assisi, at Rome, and a 
 host of other Italian cities, had not been properly studied 
 for their unity with the walls of the edifices they adorn, 
 
554 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 for the monumental character which attaches to them, 
 or that peculiar treatment which makes the spectator, in 
 a measure, a party to the scene and subject represented. 
 Dyce had not failed to appreciate these qualities, and if 
 he was constrained to paint nymphs and madonnas, it 
 was because the opportunity was as yet wanting to work 
 out the larger views these studies had opened up to him : 
 nay, so little encouragement was there at that time for 
 the art he desired to follow, that on his return to Edin- 
 burgh in 1830, he passed several of his best years as 
 a portrait painter, exhibiting, both in that city and in 
 London, many portraits of children and others ; hoping 
 for the future when he should be called to nobler labours. 
 Meanwhile, in 1835 he was elected an associate of the 
 Koyal Scottish Academy. 
 
 In 1836, Dyce sent to the Royal Academy a large 
 picture of " The Descent of Venus," which attracted 
 much notice, as, since his first work already mentioned, 
 he had contributed only portraits to our exhibition. 
 About this time many voices were raised to call the 
 attention of our Government to' the want of taste in the 
 design for our staple manufactures, and the loss conse- 
 quently sustained by our manufacturers in the markets 
 of the world. Among others, Dyce, who was interested 
 in the Trustees' School at Edinburgh, published, in con- 
 junction with Mr. Charles Heath Wilson, a letter ad- 
 dressed to Lord Meadowbank, suggesting means for 
 improving the course of instruction given there, and 
 making it bear more fully on design, as applied to 
 manufactures. This pamphlet led to Dyce's appoint- 
 ment as secretary and director to the schools just 
 opened in London at Somerset House, and in connec- 
 
APPOINTED TO SCHOOL OF DESIGN. 555 
 
 tion with them, to his being sent to visit and report 
 upon schools of the same character in France and Ger- 
 many. His report, dated April 27, 1838, was published 
 in the parliamentary papers of the year 1840, and con- 
 tains much valuable information as to the then state of 
 the Continental schools, and the deficiency in all of them, 
 except that of Lyons, in any actual production of pat- 
 terns or designs for manufactures ; and he infers the 
 necessity for such instruction, and for the production of 
 designs in the schools newly founded in this country. 
 This report led to the remodelling of our schools in 
 conformity with Mr. Dyce's views. He undertook to 
 prepare proper elementary works for the students, but 
 soon found that this, together with his duties as super- 
 intendent and secretary, intrenched too much on his 
 time to allow of the practice of his profession ; and when 
 urged in 1843 to give up more of his time to the schools, 
 he declined to do so, and resigned his appointments in 
 May of that year ; accepting instead the office of in- 
 spector of the provincial schools, with a seat in the 
 council, which offices he also resigned on the 10th of 
 June, 1845. 
 
 In 1844, Dyce was elected an associate of the Royal 
 Academy, consequent on his exhibition, in that year, 
 of his picture of " King Joash Shooting the Arrow of 
 Deliverance ;" a picture of singular severity of style 
 and simplicity of parts. In 1848, he was raised to full 
 Academy honours. When the competition took place 
 for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, he was 
 one of the first five commissioned to prepare cartoons for 
 the frescoes to fill the spaces in the House of Lords ; 
 and his work, " The Baptism of King Ethelbert," was 
 
556 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the first one selected for execution on the walls. Without 
 detracting from the merits of the other painters, it is 
 clear that Dyce, from his previous study of mural paint- 
 ing, had best adapted his work to its purpose as a wall 
 decoration ; while his ' knowledge of architectural style 
 and ornament enabled him to treat it in the spirit of the 
 age represented. It may be objected that he has made 
 the relations of the regal to the ecclesiastical authorities 
 too slavish and servile, even if they are chronologically 
 true ; but if the king is slavish and mean in his sub- 
 mission, the priests are dignified and noble; and there 
 are lovely contrasts of youth and childhood among the 
 spectators, while the whole is more in the true spirit of 
 decorative art than the picturesque treatment of his 
 companions. He was commissioned by the Prince Con- 
 sort to paint a fresco on the staircase at Osborne, of 
 " Neptune giving the Empire of the Sea to Britannia," 
 and also to fill one of the lunettes of the decorated 
 summer-house in the gardens at Buckingham Palace. 
 The former of these frescoes— a work of importance, 
 the figures being life-size— as seen at a late visit, has 
 remained unchanged, and may lead us to infer that those 
 in the Houses of Parliament have suffered from acids 
 in our gas-charged atmosphere, rather than from bad 
 materials, imperfect execution, or an ill-constructed wall. 
 
 In 1847, Dyce again resumed his connection with the 
 Government School of Design, being appointed one of 
 three head masters, among whom the instruction was 
 divided. But with great abilities he was somewhat im- 
 practicable, and constitutionally unfitted to fill any position 
 of joint authority. He again, and finally, resigned his 
 duties in 1849, and henceforth devoted himself almost 
 
HIS WORKS IN FRESCO. 
 
 557 
 
 exclusively to fresco painting ; for, although he continued 
 occasionally to contribute works to the exhibition at the 
 Koyal Academy, his attention was almost wholly occu- 
 pied with mural painting and decorative art. During 
 this period he made a design for a window to be executed 
 in stained glass for Ely Cathedral, and another as a 
 memorial to the Duke of Northumberland for Alnwick. 
 He also designed the decorative and mural paintings for 
 the church of All Saints, in Margaret Street, Caven- 
 dish Square, and executed them in fresco on the walls ; 
 it is to be regretted that the " dim religious light " 
 admitted into the edifice hardly suffices for their exami- 
 nation. But the great labour of Dyce's latter years was 
 the preparation of cartoons for the decoration of the 
 Queen's Robing-room in the Houses of Parliament ; the 
 subject given him by the royal commission being the 
 mythical legend of King Arthur. The painter himself 
 was not well pleased with the choice ; but he engaged to 
 finish the series in eight years, and during that time 
 received the whole sum agreed upon for its completion. 
 It no doubt is true, that the time likely to be occupied in 
 such works was not properly ascertained when the engage- 
 ment was made, and that the remuneration for artistic 
 labour had greatly advanced during the last fifteen years : 
 yet the House of Commons, irritated by the non-com- 
 pletion of the work and the incessant delays of the 
 painter, arising partly from causes over which he had no 
 control and partly from ill-health, complained loudly of 
 Dyce's shortcomings, as well as of the inertness of the 
 commission in not enforcing the engagement. The 
 clamour was a source of great irritation to the painter, 
 and no doubt increased a wasting illness which had 
 
558 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 seized him. He gradually grew worse; to relieve his 
 mind of the anxieties of the position, he wished to throw 
 up the commission, and offered to return the amount 
 which had been overpaid him in advance ; but meanwhile 
 he rapidly declined, and died on the 14th of February, 
 1864. A committee of the House reversed the whole of 
 the engagements made by the Fine Arts Commission with 
 the several artists employed, and the Government more 
 than justified Dyce by the additions they made to the 
 prices to be paid to the other artists for the works they 
 were engaged upon on the walls of the national building. 
 
 Dyce drew the figure correctly and with grace, but 
 without much originality of style ; indeed in his work 
 generally, he rather founded himself on the style of 
 others than formed a style of his own. After he had 
 passed his imitative period, his colouring was pearly and 
 agreeable ; yet we cannot rank him as a colourist. This 
 is very apparent in the pictures in which he sought to 
 imitate the Venetians, as in that of " Moses Watering 
 the Flocks of Jethro," in which Giorgionewas his model, 
 but which rather caricatures Giorgione's manner than 
 indicates the delicate contrasts and rich and full tones of 
 the master. Animals he did not draw well, and when 
 introduced, as in the frescoes of the Robing-room, they 
 are wooden and stiff, and have little life or movement. 
 Generally his works are learned rather than original, 
 and call forth our approval in a greater degree than our 
 love. 
 
 We have noted that the best years of Dyce's life were 
 occupied either in fresco painting, or in forwarding the 
 new art movement in the establishment of Schools of 
 Design ; but though winning great reputation in both 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 559 
 
 directions, in both he failed to carry out his own views. 
 With great art knowledge, and much real talent in its 
 application, together with methodic habits in matters of 
 mere business, so seldom found conjoined with art, some 
 quality was wanting to enable him to achieve complete 
 success : he seemed ever right in theory, but in practice 
 fell short of full fruition. He did not possess the power 
 of controlling other men to work in harmony with him, 
 nor of subjecting his own will, in things indifferent, to 
 those who were his colleagues in labour or in aim. This 
 is evidenced in both the great undertakings he was 
 engaged upon. He was one of the earliest in the field 
 as a fresco painter ; so well prepared by the previous 
 direction of his studies that he had little to learn of the 
 processes, and had already mastered the true character- 
 istics of the art, which fitted him for the great under- 
 taking which the Prince Consort sought to initiate. His 
 first work was very successful. His second commission 
 was the honourable one of having the decoration of an 
 important chamber allotted wholly to himself. He 
 had, or should have had, the royal commission entirely 
 with him, had he united persuasiveness with a proper 
 degree of firmness. He was master of the position ; 
 the subject of the series of pictures appears to have been 
 considered almost as his own suggestion ; yet we know 
 he disliked it as given to him to carry out. He com- 
 menced it, nevertheless, but delayed its completion. 
 He contended with the authorities, and bore for years 
 a series of complaints at his delay. Yet what he did 
 finish was very successful, and we can only regret that 
 any part of the work was left to other hands. 
 
 His labours connected with the first effort on the part 
 
560 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 of the Government of this country to promote the spread 
 of art were also most important ; they have too inti- 
 mate a connection with the future, and thus with the 
 subject of this work, to be dismissed without a somewhat 
 lengthy notice. In the foundation of Government schools 
 of art, perhaps the more important work of the two in 
 which Dyce was engaged, he was continually contending 
 with a committee which he had not the art to lead 
 nor the power to convince ; thus his wise suggestions 
 were either disregarded or only partially adopted, and 
 finally it was left to others to carry into execution what 
 he had proposed, and to enlarge on the basis he had 
 endeavoured to prepare. Dyce's first contribution to the 
 new movement was his valuable report on the Continental 
 schools, and his endeavour, from their action or short- 
 comings, to start our own schools in the right direction. 
 His first labour was in preparing a set of examples for 
 their use, and he proceeded so far as to produce an 
 elementary work of great merit, which still retains its 
 place as the best for the purpose. 
 
 Dyce reported that in the best Continental school, 
 that of Berlin, instruction in art, and instruction in the 
 processes of those manufactures which required art for 
 their decoration, was given, but that no school existed 
 for the actual production of patterns or designs for 
 manufactures ; this third element Dyce sought to intro- 
 duce into our art schools. But neither manufacturers, 
 artisans, nor the public were prepared to meet the effort. 
 Even in France the production of designs in such schools 
 was unknown everywhere but in the school at Lyons. 
 Invention indeed was not cultivated. Dyce tells us that 
 the seventy or eighty schools of France, with the above 
 
THE DEPARTMENT OF PRACTICAL ART. 561 
 
 exception, were mere drawing and modelling schools. 
 This is home out by M. Belloc, director of the then 
 principal school of Paris, that in the Rue de l'Ecole de 
 Medecine, in his reply to one of a set of questions pro- 
 pounded to him by the then committee at Somerset 
 House. Question 5. "Are pupils allowed to try to invent 
 during the course of instruction ? or are pupils allowed to 
 invent or make original designs after passing through 
 the whole course ? " He answers : "La composition 
 en dessin n'a pas ete encore introduite a l'ecole ; on 
 a le projet de le faire." Still it is to be noticed that 
 seventy or eighty schools of art at least were then in 
 existence in France ; nay, M. Hittorf, the architect, 
 assured Dyce that mere drawing and modelling schools 
 abounded in almost every street of Paris, and adds, 
 " that they have done more for the improvement of the 
 state, and even of the morals, of the people than could 
 be anticipated." This led Dyce to insist upon two 
 conditions for the improvement of the artisan : namely, 
 first, the free exhibition of works of art to these classes, 
 and, secondly, gratuitous drawing-schools for their in- 
 struction ; neither of which propositions he was enabled 
 to carry out. 
 
 It was not until the formation of the Department of 
 Practical Art that much progress in any of these directions 
 was made : it is true that sixteen or seventeen schools 
 for art instruction had been opened in the provinces, 
 but the course to be followed was not laid down ; the 
 instruction was rigidly confined to the artisan classes, 
 while any collection or exhibition of objects of rare 
 excellence in design and art-workmanship had not been 
 even attempted. When the Department of Art was formed 
 vol. ii. 70 
 
562 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 and placed under a Minister of the Crown, her Majesty 
 permitted it temporarily to occupy Marlborough House. 
 Mr. Cole was appointed general superintendent, and Mr. 
 Kedgrave (now inspector-general for art) art-superin- 
 tendent, under the President of the Board of Trade ; 
 and the Board at once passed a minute providing 
 for the extension of art schools — for opening them to 
 all classes — and making instruction in drawing a part 
 of the teaching in schools for the poor ; thus prepar- 
 ing the children of the artisan for a higher future 
 training in schools of art. In connection with this 
 extension of art teaching, provision was made for forming 
 a collection of works wherein the best art was allied 
 to handicraft skill ; historical, but chiefly of those periods 
 when the union of art and manufacture was most perfect, 
 and the taste exercised in such productions of the highest ; 
 the museum thus formed to be opened to the public. 
 The choice of the general superintendent was a most 
 fortunate one ; his zeal may now be measured by his 
 success. His efforts have ever received the fullest 
 support from the Ministers presiding over the new 
 department. The success of the poor-school teaching 
 may be estimated by the number at present under in- 
 struction (94,000 in 1865) ; while the Museum now at 
 South Kensington has already become a great national 
 institution, and has had immense influence on general 
 art, as well as on the public taste. 
 
 Thus two objects which Dyce had thought desirable, 
 but had been unable to accomplish, have been fully 
 carried out. Hitherto the teaching afforded by the 
 art schools had been expressly confined to artisans and 
 designers, and every effort upon the part of others to 
 
TEACHING IN THE ART SCHOOLS. 563 
 
 participate in the instruction systematically discouraged ; 
 but the general superintendent wisely perceived that it 
 was necessary to extend the instruction, so as to improve 
 the knowledge of the manufacturer by whom the skilled 
 artisans were to be employed, and the taste of the con- 
 sumer who was to purchase the results of their skilled 
 labour. Under the new department the schools, formerly 
 called Schools of Design, were now named Schools of 
 Art, and the sound teaching they offer is thrown open 
 to all. The result has been the increase of the art 
 schools in the country to 100 ; while their pupils during 
 the last year have reached above 16,000. 
 
 On the formation of the department a great effort 
 was made to produce original designs suited to the 
 manufacturing processes by which they were to be exe- 
 cuted. In the end this attempt temporarily failed — partly 
 from the jealousy of the manufacturers, who dreaded lest 
 the special designs of their own workshops should be 
 betrayed ; and partly because designers, when fully 
 educated, had for a time difficulty in obtaining employ- 
 ment on remunerative terms. The effort was not laid 
 aside, but only postponed, and the great aim of the 
 central school in London directed to the thorough train- 
 ing of teachers to take charge of the various art schools 
 throughout the country. For this purpose the first 
 labours of the art -superintendent were directed towards 
 laying down a sound course of instruction suitable for all 
 schools, and the selection or preparation of examples of 
 a high class for the use of the students; with, at the 
 same time, a mode of examination, both to test the 
 instruction given, and to justify the department in certi- 
 fying the ability of its teachers when trained, as well as 
 
 70—2 
 
564 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 that of the general pupils, who were admitted to share 
 the instruction offered in the schools. 
 
 The course of instruction is hased on a careful and 
 rigid training in form; the student commences from 
 examples of mere abstract symmetrical forms, and is led 
 up through ornamental forms and foliage to the highest 
 aim of the draughtsman, the human figure ; on each step 
 in the course the student alternates examples from the flat 
 with fuller practice from " the round," and from " the 
 life," drawn, modelled, or painted. The next effort is to 
 exercise the invention of the student. In a conversation 
 with the then President of the Scottish Academy, Sir 
 John Watson Gordon, wherein the necessity of exercising 
 the inventive faculties of the student was dwelt upon, 
 and of leading him on to the preparation of new designs, 
 he wholly discouraged the attempt, saying, — " Teach 
 invention — the thing is impossible." This, at first sight, 
 appears a self-evident proposition ; but it does not con- 
 tain the whole truth, either in reference to art or to 
 manufacture. If the student cannot be taught inven- 
 tion, he can be led up to it ; he can be taught where 
 to seek materials for new ideas, to store them up, and 
 to arrange and combine them in a novel and effective 
 manner. For this purpose the students were required 
 at stated periods to produce collections of careful 
 sketches of the best ornament of all periods, noting 
 the source whence it was obtained, and the material it 
 decorated, to improve them in the history of styles, and 
 to give them an insight into the best practice of the best 
 artists. 
 
 To exercise their invention, the following method was 
 devised by the art superintendent — a method wholly 
 
MODE OF TEACPIING DESIGN. 
 
 565 
 
 new in the use thus made of it. It consisted first in 
 the ornamental analyses of plants and flowers, display- 
 ing each part separately according to its normal law of 
 growth, not as they appear viewed perspectively, but 
 diagrammatically flat to the eye; so treated, it was 
 found that almost all plants contain many distinct 
 ornamental elements, and that the motives to he derived 
 from the vegetable kingdom were inexhaustible. More- 
 over, this flat display of the plant was specially suitable 
 to the requirement of the manufacturer, to reproduction 
 by painting, weaving, stamping, &c 3 to which natural- 
 istic renderings do not readily lend themselves ; while 
 this treatment of the plant is also in conformity with that 
 followed by the Oriental nations, and by the best artists 
 of the middle ages. The third part of the course of 
 elementary design was also entirely new in its appli- 
 cation. It was intended to teach the pupils the laws of 
 distribution, and the rules best adapted to cover given 
 spaces with ornamental forms and colours. A bounding 
 form being given, such as a circle, a lozenge, a hexagon, 
 triangle, &c, the students were first required to place 
 simple spots of black or white with agreeable inter-spaces 
 over the surface. Afterwards some simple floral or leaf 
 form is given, then a flower, or a flower combined with 
 suitable foliage ; or the students are allowed to use any 
 ornamental forms obtainable from a given plant, to vary 
 the colour, the colour of the ground, &c. From year 
 to year these forms and fillings are changed throughout 
 the schools. The plan has had a valuable effect in 
 stimulating invention, and leading on to designs for 
 fabrics, wall-papers, carpets, &c. 
 
 In the annual display in London of hundreds of 
 
566 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 studies of the same form filled in with the same plant, 
 sent up from all the schools of the department, many 
 of them of very great merit, it is hard to find any two 
 that approach to sameness. All the students have sound 
 instruction in geometry, perspective, the anatomy of the 
 bones, aud exterior muscles, (tec. ; and those training for 
 masters are also taught mechanical and architectural 
 drawing. They are required to use the museum as a 
 field for study, and thus are prepared not only to teach 
 others, but to produce designs for manufacture in ac- 
 cordance with the principles of the best artists of the best 
 times. This sound course of instruction, coupled with 
 the teaching of the noble museum which has sprung up 
 at South Kensington, has already made great impression 
 on the manufactures of this country, and on the public 
 taste by which they must be stimulated and encouraged ; 
 and we find some of the best authorities in France 
 uniting to urge on the Emperor the necessity of new 
 efforts to improve the Continental schools, if their manu- 
 factures are to hold their acknowledged place in the 
 markets of the world. 
 
 Thus M. Michel Chevalier, in his introduction to 
 the reports of the French jurors, 1862, says, " Kivals 
 are springing up, and the pre-eminence of France in the 
 domain of taste may, ere long, receive a shock, if we do 
 not take proper care .... The upward movement is 
 visible, above all, among the English. The whole world 
 has been struck with the progress they have made since 
 the last Exhibition in designs for stuffs, and in the distri- 
 bution of colours, as also in carving and sculpture, and 
 generally in articles of furniture. Previously to that 
 date, it must be said, they were chiefly renowned for 
 
RESULTS OF ART-TEACHING. 
 
 567 
 
 their bad taste; but they have felt the question to be 
 one of education," &c. And then, after speaking of the 
 formation of the department, and the foundation of the 
 South Kensington Museum, M. Chevalier adds that, in 
 the schools, " A large number of young persons, of both 
 sexes, are being trained in the arts of design by the aid of 
 good models, and under the guidance of good professors." 
 M. Charles Robert also, in his reports relative to primary 
 instruction, after praising highly the superior intelligence 
 of the French workmen, says, " While rendering to our 
 countrymen this testimony, to which they are perhaps 
 too much accustomed, we emphatically point to the 
 remarkable progress of their (English) competitors ; and 
 we urge those persons who may be blinded by an exag- 
 gerated confidence in the traditional superiority of the 
 French workmen, to reflect on the fable of the hare and 
 the tortoise." M. Prosper Merimee also, in a report 
 alluding to the schools at South Kensington, remarks, 
 " With regard to the influence exercised, within so short 
 a period, by this great institution, we fully admit the 
 testimony of our colleagues, the English members of the 
 jury. When questioned by us as to the causes to which 
 they ascribed the progress so obvious in the products of 
 their manufactures, all have assigned a chief place to the 
 resources opened to industry by the schools at South 
 Kensington." 
 
 Many others bear testimony, perhaps unwilling testi- 
 mony, to the influence of the schools and their teaching, 
 on manufactures. Our work relates rather to their bear- 
 ing on art-teaching generally. The effect of opening the 
 schools of art to all those who are willing to enter them, 
 and receive a thorough grounding in the language of art, 
 
568 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 has been to prepare a generation more competent to 
 enjoy and appreciate it ; especially in cases where genius 
 and talent were latent, and opportunity of instruction 
 only was wanted to give that which, while it is as neces- 
 sary as "the accomplishment of verse" to the poet, 
 is far more difficult of acquisition than his language; 
 more opposed, in the labour of acquisition, to the higher 
 mental qualities which alone constitute the true artist ; 
 and which many, no doubt, lacking these opportunities, 
 faltered and fainted in the strife to achieve. 
 
 In concluding this chapter we may be pardoned an 
 allusion to the success of the art-teaching of the depart- 
 ment, as evidenced in the terra cottas of the exterior and 
 the painted decorations of the interior of the new courts 
 at South Kensington. These are due to the genius of 
 Mr. Godfrey Sykes and a staff of assistants educated in 
 the Sheffield School of Art. They give proofs of a dis- 
 tinctly formed style and great fertility of invention con- 
 trolled by sound principles. It is painful to add that 
 the revision of these sheets for press enables us to record 
 the untimely death of Mr. Sykes, on the 28th February, 
 1866, in his forty-first year. 
 
( 569 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 OTHER INSTITUTIONS AFFECTING THE SPREAD OF ART. 
 
 Prevalence of Galleries on the Continent— Want of a National Collection 
 of Paintings in England— Purchase of the Angerstein Pictures— For- 
 mation of a choice Collection of Works of the Italian School— British 
 Art not duly represented— Valuable Gifts of British Pictures to the 
 Nation— Suggestions for a Gallery of British Art and the proper 
 Representation of the British School in the National Gallery— Great 
 Increase of Artists— Want of Room for the Exliibition of then- Works 
 —Foundation of the Society of British Artists— Its first Members- 
 Its Exhibitions, Schools, &c— Thomas C. Hofland, Landscape Painter 
 —John Wilson, Marine Painter— George Lance, Painter of Still Life 
 — William Duffield. 
 
 In tracing the progress of the arts, we have noted the 
 formation of various societies for their promotion ; both 
 by the king, by the artists themselves, and by amateurs 
 and patrons of art. Two other institutions connected with 
 the spread of art yet demand notice at our hands. 
 
 When the long period of almost universal war had 
 ended, and a general peace had restored the finances of 
 our country and increased the wealth of individuals, our 
 countrymen, always the most prone to travel, resorted in 
 great numbers to the Continent. In all the great cities 
 of Europe they found, not only museums of works of art, 
 but picture galleries containing the easel pictures of the 
 great masters, freely opened for the instruction of their 
 artists, and the use and pleasure of the public. Returning, 
 they noted that our artists, our public, had no such 
 
570 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 advantages, and they the less wondered that our country 
 enjoyed no reputation on the Continent for the talent of 
 its artists, or the taste of its manufactures. The public 
 taste wanted cultivating to appreciate works of higher 
 art and nobler aim, and to create a desire for manufac- 
 tures decorated with less pretence and more refine- 
 ment. This feeling, arising among the more travelled 
 and educated, rapidly spread through all classes. Public 
 opinion, gradually awakened, influenced the Government 
 of that day, and when, on the death of Mr. John Julius 
 Angerstein, his collection was for sale, the opportunity 
 was taken, by its purchase in 1824, to commence a 
 National Gallery of Pictures. 
 
 The Angerstein collection contained many very choice 
 works, and since it became the property of the nation, it 
 has been gradually added to by gift and by purchase ; 
 it has been of great benefit to art, a source of great 
 instruction to the public, and, under the wise director- 
 ship of Sir Charles Eastlake, the pictures, especially by 
 masters of the Italian school, have been increased to 
 form a collection of which the nation may be justly 
 proud. But for many years British art found no real 
 place in the collection. Mr. Wornum tells us in his 
 catalogue that " up to the year 1847, nearly a quarter of 
 a century after its foundation, the National Gallery con- 
 tained only forty-one pictures of the British school." Of 
 these, thirteen were portraits ; and of the whole number, 
 only nine, obtained with the Angerstein collection, were 
 purchased by the Government : the rest consisted of the 
 irregular gifts of individuals. Even after Mr. Vernon, 
 Mr. Sheepshanks, Mr. Turner, Mrs. Ellison, Mr. Bell, 
 and other liberal donors, had endowed the nation with 
 
PUBLIC NEGLECT OF BRITISH ART. 571 
 
 their noble collections, there seemed no disposition on 
 the part of the directors to purchase works of British 
 art, so as to represent painters of merit whose works 
 were not included in these gifts. Indeed, the British 
 pictures were separated from the works of foreign 
 painters, first at Marlborough House, and afterwards 
 at Kensington ; none of even our greatest masters being 
 left to take rank with them, nor to represent our school 
 in the great national collection. Well might one of the 
 writers on the part of his profession declare, in an exami- 
 nation before a committee of the House of Lords in 1861 : 
 — "I feel that injustice is done to the British school; 
 that it is not represented in the National Gallery ; that 
 the Gainsboroughs, the Wilsons, and the Reynolds' are 
 thrust out," and further that " the English school should 
 have a place there as well as any other school." 
 
 Shortly after these views were expressed a change 
 for the better took place, and a few British pictures 
 were purchased ; among others, Gainsborough's fine 
 " Portrait of Mrs. Siddons," Ward's " Bull," and 
 Crome's " Mousehold Heath." In the report for 1864, 
 made by the same writer, as keeper of the collection 
 of British pictures in the South Kensington Museum, 
 this change was dwelt upon, and the following propo- 
 sitions were made as to the disposal of British art in our 
 public galleries. This portion of his report begins with 
 noting that " during the last two or three years the 
 trustees and director of the National Gallery have taken 
 a course which appears to have given much satisfaction 
 to the public, and to fulfil the just expectations of 
 British artists, by purchasing, as opportunities arose, fine 
 works of deceased British painters, to supplement the 
 
572 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 collections already belonging to the nation by gift or 
 purchase;" and the report goes on to say, " The ques- 
 tion suggests itself as to how these collections may be 
 combined and brought into unity with one another and 
 with the National Gallery. There can be no reasonable 
 doubt that our National Gallery should include some of 
 the works of eminent deceased artists of the British 
 school, as in the parallel case of those of French artists 
 in the National Gallery of the Louvre. But a national 
 gallery cannot be supposed to include— First, works by 
 living artists, however eminent. Secondly, more pictures 
 by any one artist than are sufficient properly to represent 
 him according to his rank and position with regard to 
 the art of all ages. Thirdly, works of artists which, 
 whatever temporary reputation they may have had, are 
 not of sufficient excellence to form part of a gallery of 
 paintings of all schools and all periods. 
 
 "The Sheepshanks, Vernon, Turner, and other col- 
 lections, though placed under separate control, contain 
 works in all these categories ; and, if it were advisable 
 to bring them into unity, Mr. Sheepshanks, although he 
 intended his pictures to form part of a national collec- 
 tion, has especially guarded those of his gift remaining 
 at Kensington. What, then, could be done with the sur- 
 plus in the event of any possible arrangement being 
 practicable to bring the chief works of the best artists 
 into the National Gallery ? 
 
 " Here, again, the practice followed in France might 
 afford some suggestions towards a solution of the diffi- 
 culty. The pictures of living French artists are de- 
 posited in the Luxembourg, only to be removed into the 
 Louvre when time and the death of the artist have esta- 
 
SUGGESTION FOR A BRITISH GALLERY. 573 
 
 blished his reputation, and have given him a title to be 
 so placed. Would it be possible that while the general 
 collection of British pictures should remain at Kensing- 
 ton, any arrangement could be adopted by which the 
 National Gallery, wherever placed, should select from 
 time to time representative works of the most eminent 
 British painters from any of these collections, the rest 
 being brought together to form a separate gallery of 
 British art ? " — Eleventh Report of the Department of 
 Science and Art, 1864. 
 
 Whenever the subject of our national collections shall 
 have its proper consideration, and a suitable division of 
 our pictures, historically and into schools, shall be 
 carried out, some such treatment must be adopted. It 
 would palpably interfere with all classification to admit 
 the collection of any donor to be kept together in the 
 National Gallery. If such gift contained pictures by 
 both British and foreign artists, grouping into schools 
 would be entirely prevented by keeping the collection 
 intact. If it consisted of a large number of pictures by 
 a single artist (as the Turner gift, for instance), such 
 artist, whatever might be his talent, would be unduly 
 distinguished among the worthies of all art. Or if the 
 gift consisted solely of pictures of the British school, its 
 donor would most probably have been biased by per- 
 sonal feelings in the selection he made. It would consist 
 of works of very unequal merit, and it would evidently be 
 impossible to allow it to form an imperium in imperio in a 
 great national classification. In the gallery of the future, 
 justice must be done to the British school. The por- 
 traits of Reynolds and Gainsborough must find space to 
 contend with those of Vandyke and Rubens ; our land- 
 
574 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 scape painters, Wilson and Turner, to compare with 
 Claude and Poussin, or Constable with Euysdael and 
 the realistic painters of Holland ; while Etty would hold 
 successful rivalry with the great colourists and flesh 
 painters of Venice. British art must have due recogni- 
 tion, and the works of our painters no longer be thrust 
 out as unworthy to be compared with the works of 
 foreigners ; or to be hung in the same building with the 
 pictures of the Continental schools. 
 
 About the time the Government were considering the 
 purchase of the Angerstein collection, many causes had 
 induced a great spread of art, a great increase in the 
 number of artists. The schools of the Koyal Academy 
 had now been open more than fifty years for the gratui- 
 tous instruction of all who could prove any aptitude to 
 receive it. The pictures sent to the annual exhibition 
 had become so numerous that the space on its walls was 
 wholly insufficient to satisfy the numerous claimants who 
 sought to exhibit there. It may give some idea of the 
 great increase of artists and works of art to compare the 
 numbers of each in the first exhibition with those at the 
 time of which we are now writing. In 1768, one hun- 
 dred artists contributed 228 works of art ; these numbers 
 being but little exceeded in the following year. But in 
 1823 we find five hundred and forty-eight artists con- 
 tributing 1,091 works ; irrespective, at both periods, of 
 honorary exhibitors. These latter numbers do not 
 include the other metropolitan exhibitions— the British 
 Institution, and the exhibition of the Society of Painters 
 in Water Colours ; and yet they show that the number 
 of those following the art professionally had increased 
 more than fivefold. The W 7 ater- Colour Society, which 
 
THE SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS. 
 
 575 
 
 for a time had opened its exhibition to the works of 
 persons who were not members, and to pictures in oil as 
 well as in water colours, had again reverted to its original 
 principles of exclusiveness. The spring exhibition of the 
 British Institution, as managed by lay directors, was 
 unsatisfactory to the profession. The time seemed ripe 
 for change, and in 1823 a number of artists met together 
 to form another society to promote the better exhibition 
 of their works. Preliminaries having been discussed, 
 premises were secured and suitable galleries erected in 
 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East ; and in 1824 the new 
 " Society of British Artists " opened its first annual 
 exhibition. 
 
 The preface of the first catalogue recites the above 
 reasons for the formation of the society, and its use- 
 fulness as a place of sale for works of art ; and invites 
 the co-operation of artists, by stating that its regulations 
 are framed on the most liberal scale. This appeal was 
 well responded to, and on the first opening the new 
 galleries contained 754 works by two hundred and fifty- 
 six exhibitors. It was known that many of the pro- 
 moters (the first president among the number) were 
 strongly opposed to the Koyal Academy, but no such 
 hostility was expressed. A plan somewhat analogous to 
 that of the British Institution was adopted to provide 
 funds for the new society. Donations were sought for, 
 and annual subscriptions, while sums were requested on 
 loan at five per cent., with contingent advantages of 
 admittance to the exhibitions. It would seem that the 
 Academy was not adverse to the new society, since Sir 
 John Soane, K.A., was one of the two most liberal donors, 
 who contributed 100 guineas each, and we find the names 
 
576 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 of three academicians, Northcote, Kossi, and Drummond, 
 on the list of exhibitors. Among the first members of the 
 society were some men already eminent, and others who 
 soon became so. Heaphy, of whom we have already 
 given a memoir, was the first president ; Hofland, the 
 landscape painter, the first vice-president, while the list 
 also contained the names of J. Glover, P. Nasmyth, D. 
 Roberts, C. Stanfield, and J. Wilson the marine painter. 
 Among the contributors to the first exhibition (beside 
 the above) are Hay don and his pupil Gr. Lance ; Martin, 
 and Rippingille; together with six others now living, 
 who subsequently became members of the Royal Aca- 
 demy. It seems to have been the principle of the 
 society at its first formation to change its officers annu- 
 ally, if with occasional re-elections. Thus, in the 
 second year Hofland held the office of president, and in 
 succession we find Stanfield, Holmes, Roberts, Prentis, 
 Linton, &c, holding the office; but in 1841 the system 
 appears to have been changed. In this year Mr. Hurl- 
 stone was elected president, and has held this honour- 
 able office to the present day. 
 
 In the catalogue of their second year, the members, 
 pleased with their success, stated that the purchases and 
 commissions from the previous year had amounted to 
 nearly 4,000L, and that the receipts for admission greatly 
 exceeded the expenses. Like statements were continued 
 in the catalogue up to the year 1835 ; after which they 
 were not repeated. In each of the three years previous to 
 1835, the members " presume that the usefulness of the 
 society will be admitted by all, more especially since they 
 have never opposed, directly or indireptly, any existing 
 institution for the promotion of the fine arts, but have 
 
ITS EARLY DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 577 
 
 uniformly sought to go hand-in-hand with whatever 
 tended to their general advancement." But while this 
 is true, the new society had to contend with a difficulty 
 to which the founders of the Water- Colour Society had 
 not been subjected. They had no speciality, the scheme 
 of their exhibition was only supplemental to that of the 
 Academy, and it was inevitable that the older institution 
 should offer attractions to painters of talent that would 
 make them at times unfaithful to their first engagements. 
 As its members rose into distinction, some of them left 
 the society to seek admission into the Koyal Academy. 
 Stanfield and Eoberts paid a pecuniary fine, and se- 
 ceded. Martin and Haydon, men who throve best on 
 a grievance, and hardly desired to be well treated, 
 returned to the Institution, and even sent their pictures 
 to the much-abused Academy. While many clever young 
 artists who first won public notice at Suffolk Street, 
 turned aside to Trafalgar Square as soon as their merits 
 seemed to entitle them to an advantageous place on the 
 Academy walls. This must have been sorely felt, when 
 in 1841, the members announced that " many of those 
 now holding a high place in the world of art, have been 
 fostered by the society, although their works have been 
 withdrawn from the society's exhibitions :" a result to be 
 deplored, but which might well have been anticipated. 
 
 The affairs of the society were not prospering ; the 
 members complained that it did not receive that assist- 
 ance so munificently bestowed on other art bodies. They 
 tried to attract attention by lectures on art, by conver- 
 sazioni, by opening the gallery in the evening, and by 
 a winter exhibition of works of deceased artists. In 
 1841, a charter of incorporation was obtained from the 
 vol. ii. 71 
 
578 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Crown, and shortly after, in 1847, schools were opened 
 for the study of art. In 1848, the society announced 
 that 100 students had entered, and that the schools were 
 well attended : this congratulatory notice was repeated in 
 1849 ; but the Academy schools retained their old pres- 
 tige, and the new school of design at Somerset House 
 attracted all those who found difficulty in obtaining 
 admission at Trafalgar Square, so that after 1849 the 
 schools of the Society were closed. But while some of 
 the members seceded from the body, and many of those 
 who were only exhibitors were led rather by interest than 
 by gratitude, there were still those who remained staunch 
 to their membership. The Society of British Artists has 
 outlived one or two other attempts at active competi- 
 tion, and, as managed entirely by artists and in the 
 interests of art, we trust that it has at length obtained a 
 footing, which for the future will ensure its prosperity 
 and success. 
 
 We have already written of some of those who were 
 connected with the early history of the society; of 
 Heaphy and Glover, in our account of the Water- Colour 
 School ; of Martin and Haydon, of Nasmyth and Eoberts. 
 Hofland, one of the first presidents, deserves some 
 notice as a successful landscape painter; John Wilson, 
 as a painter of marine pictures ; George Lance, the pupil 
 of Haydon, as a constant exhibitor for the first ten years 
 of the society's existence, after which, as rather a 
 favourite with the directors of the Institution, and 
 usually finding his pictures well hung on the walls of 
 the Academy, he ceased to be an exhibitor with the 
 Society of British Artists. 
 
 Thomas Christopher Hofland was born at W r orksop, 
 
THOMAS CHRISTOPHER HOFLAXD. 
 
 579 
 
 in Nottinghamshire, on Christmas- day, 1777, the only 
 son of a cotton manufacturer. The father removed to 
 London in 1780, and, after struggling some years in his 
 business, eventually failed just as his son had attained 
 his nineteenth year. Young Hofland had now to settle 
 upon some occupation for life, and devoted himself to 
 landscape painting. Beyond a few lessons from Kath- 
 bone he had to struggle on unassisted, and to obtain 
 knowledge as he best could, by examining such pictures 
 as came in his way. Like most other young artists in the 
 branch he had chosen, his chief dependence for subsist- 
 ence was on teaching ; but in 1799 we find him for 
 the first time in the Academy catalogue exhibiting a 
 "View in Cumberland," followed in 1800 by two pic- 
 tures of "Morning" and "Evening," landscapes with 
 figures, illustrating long quotations from Thomson's 
 Seasons. 
 
 In the early part of the present century, when our 
 land was continually threatened with a French invasion, 
 men of all ranks and all ages enrolled themselves as 
 volunteers, and young Hofland joined the King's Own 
 company at Kew. The King took much pride in the 
 loyalty displayed by his people, and frequently reviewed 
 his volunteers. Hofland had the good fortune to attract 
 his particular attention as fugleman of the corps, and 
 was employed to make drawings of the rare plants in 
 the collection at Kew, the King also seeking to promote 
 the painter's interests in other quarters ; but illness frus- 
 trated his Majesty's kind intention. 
 
 An opening for a teacher of drawing at Derby led 
 Hofland to settle there for a time. After residing 
 there several years, he came up to town to take the 
 
 71 — 2 
 
580 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 opportunity of copying some landscapes by the old 
 masters at the British Institution. His love of art 
 influenced him to remain, and he settled in London at 
 the close of 1811. He was very successful as a copyist, 
 finding ready purchasers for his repetitions of Claude, 
 Wilson, Poussin, and Gainsborough. He painted a large 
 landscape, " A Storm off the Coast of Scarborough," 
 obtained a premium of 100 guineas for it from the 
 British Institution, and sold it to the Marquis of Stafford. 
 His smaller pictures of lake scenery, founded on the 
 studies he had made, were admired and purchased, and 
 he became established in reputation as a landscape 
 painter. 
 
 With a view to his art, he removed in 1816 to 
 Twickenham, and was employed to paint a series of 
 pictures for the Duke of Marlborough of his estate of 
 White Knights, to which work he devoted several years. 
 He became responsible to the engraver employed to 
 engrave these pictures, and disputes arising, the painter 
 was exposed to cruel disappointment and heavy loss, 
 through confiding in the duke's promises. Hence he 
 was obliged to return to London, and to renew his 
 engagements as a teacher ; occupying his spare time in 
 painting, and producing at this period some of his best 
 pictures, among others, " A View of Lake Winder- 
 mere," purchased by Lord Durham, and which was 
 exhibited in the International Exhibition of 1862. We 
 have already seen that he was a promoter of the Society 
 of British Artists, and one of the first members. From 
 the time of its foundation until his death he remained 
 true to the society, and was a regular exhibitor at Suffolk 
 Street. In his sixty-third year he was enabled by a 
 
JOHN WILSON. 
 
 581 
 
 commission from that true friend of art and artists, the 
 late Earl of Egremont, to fulfil a long-cherished wish to 
 visit Italy. He reached Naples, made many sketches at 
 Pompeii and other spots, but on his return was seized 
 with a fever at Florence, and reached home with his 
 health thoroughly broken up. He lingered about two 
 years, and journeying to take the advice of Dr. Jephson, 
 died at Leamington, of a cancer in the stomach, on the 
 3rd January, 1843. His widow, who obtained some 
 celebrity as a writer, did not long survive him. To the 
 Suffolk Street exhibition of the year he died, he con- 
 tributed three pictures. Singularly enough the last in 
 the catalogue is the same subject as that by which he 
 made his fame, No. 480, " A Storm off the Coast of 
 Scarborough ; " it was not quite finished, and was accom- 
 panied by a very appropriate line, " Here the last touches 
 fell from Holland's hand." 
 
 Hofland's landscapes were not of the imitative or 
 realistic school. They are mostly studied compositions ; 
 he aimed, at least, at treating Nature under a poetical 
 aspect and divested of commonplace. But the tone he 
 adopted throughout gave great monotony to his works ; 
 while his handling wanted variety, his surface texture, 
 and the softness with which the parts too often melted 
 into one another, added to the prevailing want of colour, 
 gave a feeling of insipidity to his pictures. As a painter 
 he never rose to the first rank, since propriety rather 
 than genius was his great characteristic. 
 
 John Wilson was another of the original members of 
 the society who remained true to the institution, and 
 continued to exhibit there to the last. He was born at 
 Ayr on the 13th of August, 1774, and like his country- 
 
582 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 man and friend Roberts, was, in his fourteenth year, 
 apprenticed to a house painter and decorator. He served 
 his master, Mr. John Norie of Edinburgh, duly and truly, 
 and attained at least a knowledge of the processes of 
 painting as adapted to larger surfaces than the usual 
 canvas pictures of the artist ; this knowledge he after- 
 wards found highly useful, when, as an artist, he gained 
 employment in the scene-loft of our London theatres. 
 When he left Mr. Norie he took a few lessons in oil 
 painting from the elder Mr. Smith, which were his only 
 direct art-teaching. From Edinburgh he turned his 
 steps northward, and for more than two years resided 
 in Montrose, practising as a drawing-master. But the 
 prospect of wealth and fame which London holds out 
 would not allow him to remain satisfied with such 
 unimproving drudgery. He journeyed to the metropolis, 
 and soon found an engagement as a scene painter at 
 Astley's Theatre in the Lambeth Eoad. 
 
 In 1807, we find his name for the first time as an 
 exhibitor at the Royal Academy, No. 697, " The Falls 
 of Clyde," the painter then living in Lambeth Marsh ; 
 again in 1809 he contributed a landscape of "Bothwell 
 Castle," and was still residing near the place of his 
 labours as a scene painter. Both these pictures were 
 well placed by the "hanging committee" of that day, 
 and each found a purchaser. In 1810 Wilson married, 
 and was fortunate in his choice. Of a genial nature 
 himself, fond of the society of his friends and country- 
 men, his married life was a happy one while it lasted ; 
 Wilson having survived his wife more than twenty-four 
 years. In 1813, the painter exhibited at the British 
 Institution, " The Aqueduct on the Kelven near Glasgow," 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS WORKS. 
 
 583 
 
 and was afterwards a frequent exhibitor ; in 1826 the 
 directors awarded him 100/. for a sketch for the " Battle 
 of Trafalgar," which he had exhibited in response to a 
 prize offered by the Institution. We have seen that he 
 was one of the prime movers in founding the Society 
 of British Artists, and after the formation of the institu- 
 tion continued to be a constant contributor to their 
 exhibitions. 
 
 During the latter years of his life he resided at 
 Folkestone, where he was constantly within view of the 
 ever-changing sea, whose moods and motions were his 
 constant study ; there he died on the 29th April, 1855, 
 having contributed to the exhibition of that year five 
 pictures : thus he laboured on his beloved art to the last. 
 Wilson's education as a decorator did him good service 
 when he turned to scene painting, and his qualities as 
 a scene painter pervaded his easel pictures. They are 
 bold, free, and unlaboured, the freshness and dash of 
 the waves, the roll of the sea-borne clouds, the vessels 
 that traverse the ocean, the boats and craft on its shores 
 are well and faithfully rendered. The pictorial feeling 
 was strong in him ; his works want refinement of execu- 
 tion and are not very varied in range, but they present 
 themselves agreeably to the eye, and render Nature 
 vigorously and with rude truth. Social, affectionate, 
 and true to his friendships, those who knew him per- 
 sonally regretted the loss of a warm friend as well as of 
 a true artist. 
 
 Some others who were originally members of the 
 society have elsewhere found record in our work, and we 
 abstain from noticing the talented men who are living 
 members of this or other art bodies. Of those also 
 
584 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 who were early contributors to the exhibitions at Suffolk 
 Street, some have been noticed conjointly with painters 
 who practised the same branches of art ; but there is one 
 who, as a constant exhibitor with the Society for the 
 first ten years after its foundation, may well obtain that 
 notice here which his talent deserves, as standing alone 
 and for a long while unapproached in the walk of art he 
 adopted. 
 
 George Lance, the painter of still-life, was bom on 
 the 24th March, 1802, at the old manor-house of Little 
 Easton, in Essex. His father, who had previously been 
 an officer in a regiment of light horse, was, at the time 
 of young Lance's birth, an adjutant in the Essex Yeo- 
 manry. A handsome young man and a soldier, he won 
 the heart of his future wife while she was yet at boarding- 
 school, and used to relate that he eloped with her from 
 one of the school windows. She was the daughter of 
 Colonel Constable, of Beverley, in Yorkshire, and if the 
 match was a hasty one, she made a good wife and 
 mother. The elder Lance afterwards held for many 
 years the office of inspector of the horse patrol, who 
 were so useful in ridding the environs of London of the 
 daring highwaymen and footpads in that day infesting 
 the roads leading to town. As young Lance grew 
 towards manhood, his parents determined to bring him 
 up as a manufacturer, and placed him with some rela- 
 tions at Leeds ; but the boy, who in youth had loved 
 picture-books in preference to all others, had a great 
 distaste for his new labours, and his friends soon per- 
 ceived that they were not suited to him. He was allowed 
 to return to London, and soon found a profession for 
 himself. Walking through the British Museum, where 
 
GEORGE LANCE. 
 
 585 
 
 young artists were then, as now, permitted to copy from 
 the marbles, he was struck with the work of one who had 
 written on his study, " pupil of B. R. Haydon." Lance 
 mustered up courage to ask him if Mr. Haydon would 
 take other pupils. It was Charles Landseer whom he 
 thus fortuitously addressed, who told him he had better 
 make the inquiry of Haydon himself. Thither, full of 
 trepidation, the young painter took his way, and admitted 
 to the presence of the historical painter, faltered forth the 
 question, "I am anxious to become an artist, and want 
 to be one of your pupils — I am come to ask your terms." 
 " Terms, my little fellow," answered the impetuous but 
 generous painter, — " when I take pupils, I never look 
 at the fathers' purses ; bring me some of your works, 
 and if I think they promise success, I will take you for 
 nothing." And Haydon did become his master, and 
 under him, and as a student in the Royal Academy, he 
 learnt his art. 
 
 The adoption of his future walk in art was the 
 result of an accident. Being set to paint some still- 
 life as a means of improving his execution, the work 
 was good enough to find a purchaser in Sir George 
 Beaumont ; other patrons gave like commissions, and 
 the young artist, finding the work profitable, was gra- 
 dually confirmed as a painter of still-life. In this class 
 of art Lance was for a long time unrivalled, not only for 
 truthful imitation of fruits, foliage, flowers, and all the 
 varied accessories of vessels of glass, rich plate and 
 draperies, with which they are grouped ; but for most 
 delicate execution and pleasing arrangement. To these 
 qualities he added a strong feeling for colour, yet at 
 times verging on meretricious vividness. His renderings 
 
586 
 
 A. CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 of dead game and birds of rare plumage have rarely been 
 excelled in any school. In his picture of " Melancthon's 
 First Misgivings of Rome," wherein a young monk, 
 painted of the size of life, regards with pain the sen- 
 suality of an elder brother sleeping off the effects of his 
 attack on the banquet beside him ; and " The Sene- 
 schal," executed to fill one of the compartments in the 
 dining-room at Somerleyton, he has shown powers of 
 higher order than those of a mere painter of still-life. 
 He died on the 18th of June, 1864, at Sunnyside, near 
 Birkenhead. 
 
 His pupil, William Duffield, died before him — died 
 just as he was developing even higher powers than his 
 teacher. Born at Bath, he entered the schools of the 
 Royal Academy, and afterwards studied his art under 
 George Lance. As he advanced, he gradually adopted 
 a larger manner than his teacher. Of this, his last 
 exhibited picture, a " Swan and Peacock," at the 
 British Institution in 1865 (the background painted by 
 his friend and fellow pupil, Gilbert), is a good example, 
 and is a work of great merit. Lying right across the 
 front of the picture is a dead peacock, his head resting 
 on the snowy bosom of a swan. The contrast between 
 white and colour, light and dark, is most artistically 
 treated without the appearance of artifice. The colour 
 and tone are good, the execution excellent in finish, 
 yet without the sense of tedious labour. Gilbert's 
 share in the work which is wholly confined to the back- 
 ground is well defined, and is happily suited to sup- 
 port that of his friend. Duffield died on the 3rd of 
 September, 1863, in his forty-sixth year. He owed his 
 last illness to the earnest pursuit of his profession. He 
 
WILLIAM DUFFIELD. 
 
 587 
 
 was painting a dead stag, which remained in his studio 
 for that purpose until it became extremely decayed. 
 Unfortunately the painter, from a prior illness, had lost 
 his sense of smell ; and in the absence of the organiza- 
 tion given to warn us of the presence of miasma he 
 continued to work unconscious of the danger, until 
 infection took place which caused his death. 
 
588 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 PRESERVATION OF PICTURES. 
 
 Causes of Decay — Absence of Care in Materials used — Their Preparation 
 by Artists' Colourmen — Reynolds's Practice — Importance of the 
 Ground — Works suffering from bad Grounds — Improper Pigments 
 used — Made worse by Varnishings — Use of Asphaltum by Reynolds, 
 Wilkie, Hilton, and others — Wilkie's Mode of using it — Sound State 
 of Gainsborough's Works — Compared with Reynolds's — Attempts to 
 repair Defects from Asphaltum futile — Only Means to be used — Other 
 improper Vehicles — Their Effects and Means of Remedy — More Cau- 
 tion now used by Painters — Neglected State of Paintings — Absence of 
 all Care — Injudicious Cleaning — And Dusting — Ventilation of Galleries 
 — Use of Gas — Transport of Pictures — Plans of Packing — Restoring 
 Paintings — Reckless Repairs — False Methods used — Care of Water- 
 Colour Drawings — On the Construction of Picture Galleries. 
 
 It has been said that " pictures have strong constitu- 
 tions," which, if true, is a wonder, considering the evils 
 they derive from their parent the painter, who indiffer- 
 ently employs in their production bad materials, bad 
 vehicles, and bad execution; clothes them in bad var- 
 nishes, and gives them over to the care or carelessness 
 of guardians or keepers, without one word of advice as 
 to their treatment : perhaps even without the knowledge 
 to give it. Passing out of the hands of the painter, what 
 perils beset the after- existence of his works ; how indif- 
 ferently are they sheltered and preserved ! Exposed to 
 every variety of light and temperature ; to the careless 
 broom of the housemaid, to smoke, and dust, and gas ; 
 
DEFECTS FROM BAD MATERIALS. 
 
 589 
 
 as premature old age and decay come upon them from 
 all these causes, shrivelling their skins and drying up 
 their juices, quack renovators and conceited restorers 
 are called in, who make it a boast that ignorance of 
 the first principles of art fits them especially for their 
 office, and that from their hands a picture comes forth 
 " better than new." In a work like this, it will not 
 surely be out of place, and most probably will be accept- 
 able, if we point out some of these sources of evil, 
 examine how they arise, show how they may be avoided, 
 and how they may be alleviated, if they cannot be 
 wholly cured. 
 
 First, as to bad materials. The painter of the last 
 century took very little thought for the immortality of 
 his own progeny, and from its birth trusted its well-being 
 more to chance than to care. The old painters, as we 
 have already described, would seem always to have pre- 
 pared their own panels or canvases ; that is to say, their 
 preparation was carried on by pupils or apprentices under 
 the painter's eye, and according to recipes handed down 
 from age to age. The pupils carefully ground, washed, 
 and tempered the colours for use, the resins, oils, and 
 varnishes with which the colours were mixed, or which 
 were passed over the master's work when completed, to 
 give it proper lustre and to defend it from injury. They 
 often also laid in the work in dead colour preparatory 
 to the hand of the master, according to simple rules 
 which obtained in the various schools, and of which 
 experience had tested the value. Any new colour was 
 thoughtfully tested before it was added to the approved 
 stock ; and the traditions of the school to which the artist 
 belonged, and of the master under whom he received his 
 
590 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 instruction, were treasured up and transmitted to his 
 pupils and successors. 
 
 But when the old art died out in Lely and Kneller, 
 and a British school arose, it deserted the " traditions of 
 the elders," when it repudiated their works; and our great 
 painters began to seek new pigments, new vehicles, and 
 new methods of using them. Up to the time of Kneller, 
 the old practice had prevailed ; but when he came to this 
 country, he brought with him a servant whose employ- 
 ment was to prepare all the colours and materials for his 
 work. Northcote tells us this, and adds that Kneller 
 afterwards set him up in business as a colour maker for 
 artists, and that from this man's success — he being the 
 first that kept a colour-shop in London — arose the trade 
 of artists' colourman. Henceforward, the preparation of 
 panels and canvases, and the grounds that cover them, 
 the washing, grinding, and tempering of colours, — the 
 oils and varnishes to use as vehicles, or to protect the 
 surface of the finished work, — passed out of the hand of 
 the painter into that of the colourman, and the former 
 blindly used what the latter had prepared. This is a 
 state of things to be deplored for many reasons ; amongst 
 others, that the artist is now too often ignorant of the 
 commonest facts relating to the pigments and vehicles he 
 uses, and so long as they are brilliant in themselves, dry 
 rapidly, and mix well in tints with other pigments, 
 makes little inquiry into their durability or permanency, 
 and uses indifferently those which have received the 
 sanction of the past, with those yet untested, because 
 newly brought into use and notice. 
 
 Sir Joshua Beynolds was undesignedly the author of 
 much of this mischief; deeply interested, as we have 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE GROUND. 
 
 591 
 
 already seen, in ascertaining the methods of the great 
 masters of colouring, he was continually seeking new and 
 more brilliant pigments, to enable him to rival theirs ; 
 new vehicles to give his pigments increased body ; using 
 not only the various siccative oils and resinous var- 
 nishes, simple and compounded ; but the essential oils, 
 wax, and asphaltum, were also pressed into his service, 
 to give brilliancy, impasto, depth, or richness. Of course 
 many of his pictures at the time of their production 
 astonished his brother artists by their surpassing force 
 and beauty of colour, and of course the host of admirers 
 hastened to become imitators, and were prompt to follow 
 his practice. The artists' colourman was called on to 
 supply the demand for orpiment and carmine, for vege- 
 table yellows and pitchy browns ; and after a while these 
 fugitive pigments, included with others in his lists, 
 became accepted as of the same value as those sanc- 
 tioned by use for centuries. 
 
 The subject of grounds is of the greatest importance 
 to the future of the picture. Many of our finest works 
 are suffering from want of due care in their preparation. 
 If on canvas, it is essential that the ground, though firm 
 and hard, should have due toughness and flexibility ; to 
 which end it should be thin, and have sufficient oil iu its 
 composition, and, whether on canvas or panel, just such 
 an amount of absorbency as will admit of the proper 
 union of the picture with it. If too absorbent, it is 
 troublesome to the painter, and apt to make the picture 
 heavy in the darks, while it prevents, in a degree, the 
 use of the ground as a source of illumination to pigments 
 used over it transparently. If too hard and impervious, 
 the picture is apt to divide from it and blister off. This 
 
592 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 is often the case with Turner's pictures. " The Regatta 
 at Cowes," and the "Fishing Boats at Yarmouth," in 
 the Sheepshanks' collection, have both a strong tendency 
 to rise from the ground ; as have also many other of his 
 works, such as " Pope's Villa at Twickenham," the 
 "Mercury and Herse," "The Beach at Hastings," 
 besides many in the national collection, all which 
 require great care on this account. The fine landscape 
 by Callcott, " Southampton Water," the property of 
 Mr. Gibbs, has suffered largely, and is likely to suffer 
 from this cause ; indeed it is a source of evil to many 
 other English paintings of the period. Pictures thus 
 endangered should, if the size permits, be covered with 
 glass in front, and, at any rate, lined behind with 
 painted cloth, to render them impervious to the damp ; 
 and they should be kept away from the wall against 
 which they are hung by small blocks of cork at the 
 four corners. 
 
 Eeynolds's works are some of them liable to suffer 
 from this cause, more especially those most free from 
 the injurious use of asphaltum. Moreover, he was careless 
 in overloading his pictures, repeating his work over and 
 over again when dissatisfied with his previous labours, thus 
 losing the benefit of a pure ground. This is exemplified 
 by the answer he is said to have given to one who asked 
 how a certain head had been painted. " How can I 
 tell ? " replied Reynolds ; " there are at least six others 
 under that one." Again, we are told of his turning a 
 whole length, partly painted, upside down, and begin- 
 ning the face of another portrait between the legs. Such 
 stories, whether exactly true or not, will serve to illus- 
 trate his known carelessness in these matters. 
 
MISCHIEFS FROM BITUMINOUS COLOURS. 593 
 
 But the works of Eeynolds and of his followers, and 
 indeed almost all the pictures of the English school up 
 to the end of the first thirty-five years of the present 
 century, have suffered more from the use of improper 
 pigments than from bad grounds; amongst these the 
 worst is bitumen in all its varied forms of asphaltum, 
 mummy, bitumen, &c. These pitchy colours never 
 thoroughly harden ; they are readily affected by heat and 
 change of temperature, and as they remain soft beneath 
 the surface, any harder dryer imposed over them, either 
 as a vehicle for the last glazings of the picture, or as 
 a securing varnish, is certain to draw the work together, 
 and to result in deep separation of the parts. Eeynolds 
 used this pigment mostly in the darks, for which its 
 luminous richness so we]l adapts it : indeed its place can 
 hardly be supplied by any known brown ; from this cause 
 many of the pictures of our greatest portrait painter have 
 failed terribly in the darks, and every fresh varnishing 
 increases the evil. It is a misfortune to pictures 
 painted with preparations of bitumen, that the evil does 
 not always display itself at once : indeed, under favourable 
 circumstances, they will remain very many years without 
 disruption ; but a change in hanging, or in the tempera- 
 ture of the room or gallery, an exposure to the sun's 
 rays, and above all varnishing, will, though heretofore 
 free from harm, crack them in a few weeks. 
 
 The works of some of the contemporaries (as Wright 
 of Derby), as well as those of the pupils and followers of 
 Sir Joshua, have suffered from the like cause, and many 
 of the pictures of Northcote, Opie, and Fuseli have, as to 
 their finer qualities, perished from the use of asphaltum. 
 Opie, when asked what medium he had used in painting 
 vol. ii. 72 
 
594 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 a certain picture, sarcastically replied brains ; the retort 
 was cutting, no doubt, but ill-placed : he wished to rebuke 
 the littleness that thought of the means rather than the 
 end of art; but a little more attention on his part to these 
 means would have saved his works from early decay, and 
 have prevented his being an example of bad practice to 
 the rising school. 
 
 Notwithstanding that the evils arising from the use of 
 bituminous pigments must have already made great pro- 
 gress in destroying the works of Keynolds and his imme- 
 diate followers, the artists who succeeded them employed 
 these pigments still more unreservedly. Wilkie and Hilton 
 are notable examples, as their decaying works painfully 
 testify. Wilkie began with simple pigments and vehicles ; 
 his "Pitlassie Fair," painted perhaps with linseed oil, still 
 remains in sound condition, as do many others of his early 
 and careful works ; even before he went abroad, however, he 
 began to use asphaltum, but after his return from Spain 
 he attempted more tone and richness, and for this purpose 
 used asphaltum not only in his darks, but mixed even 
 with his solid lights. The manner of working with it was 
 this: — About equal quantities of boiled oil, mastic varnish, 
 and liquid asphaltum (asphaltum melted into the oil), 
 were mixed together, forming a magylp that solidified or 
 "stood up," as the painters called it, and this was the 
 vehicle used throughout the picture, of course mixed with 
 more asphaltum in the darks. He recommended that 
 the dead colour of flesh should be light and grey, and in 
 the second painting gave the low tone he required by 
 mixing asphaltum largely with the white to form flesh 
 tints, semi-transparent, and obtaining some share of their 
 luminousness from the under-ground. When visitor in 
 
DEFECTS FROM MANNER OF PAINTING. 595 
 
 the painting school, he asserted, and Hilton supported 
 his opinion, that Titian could only be so copied. A 
 careful study of the " Venus and Adonis," from the 
 Dulwich Gallery, was made by one of the most talented 
 students of the day, under their joint direction ; and 
 however beautiful at the time of its production, it now 
 shows only a network of dark seams and corrugations. 
 Wilkie's own picture of "The First Ear-ring," and "The 
 Peep of Day Boys," in the Vernon Collection, are other 
 fast decaying evidences of this dangerous practice. 
 
 Strange to say, Wilkie's pictures painted while in 
 Spain, are uninjured and in sound condition ; for which 
 there seem to be two or three reasons. It is probable 
 that the painter was out of the reach of the objectionable 
 pigment, and was obliged to use some other ; it would 
 seem bone brown. Moreover, the pictures are evidently 
 painted at once, many of them being little more than 
 sketches ; nor does it seem as if they had as yet been 
 varnished. Several of those which are the property of 
 her Majesty certainly have not, nor apparently that fine 
 work, "The Confessional." 
 
 We have already referred to this picture and the 
 manner in which it and others painted at Madrid have 
 been carried out. And it may be noted here, how much 
 better pictures stand which are painted with freshness 
 and facility and with little or no repetition, than those 
 in which the dissatisfied or fastidious artist repeats his 
 painting many times, over work perhaps already too 
 loaded and not sufficiently dry to receive the new layer of 
 colour. It is this facile execution that has preserved the 
 fine works of Gainsborough, when so many of those of his 
 great rival are far advanced on the road to destruction. 
 
 72—2 
 
596 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 " The Blue Boy," " The Cottage Girl," the portraits of 
 Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell, of Mrs. Siddons, of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Hallett, of Lady Ligonier, of Dr. Fisher, and a 
 host of others painted almost at once, have come down to 
 us nearly without injury. Of Gainsborough's facility and 
 rapidity these works give abundant evidence to the painter 
 who examines their execution ; but there is a curious 
 collateral proof in the seventeen beautiful portraits (head 
 and bust life-size) of the children of George III. now at 
 Windsor; these are all dated on the back as being painted 
 in one month, September, 1772, and have most of them 
 the appearance of little more than a single sitting. There 
 are also at Windsor two studies of the Duke and Duchess 
 of Cumberland, life-size, painted on half-length canvases, 
 but only the head completed, and these also seem the 
 work of one sitting each ; yet the colour is fresh and 
 clear, has not changed or darkened, and except a few 
 hair cracks the pictures are perfectly sound. Compare 
 these with some of the noble works of Keynolds, and the 
 latter are seen to be but a wreck of what they were ; 
 while the works in our National Gallery by Hilton (to 
 whom allusion has also been made as one of the great 
 authorities for the use of asphaltum) have had to be re- 
 moved from time to time, in order to reverse them, that 
 eyes aud limbs may float back again to the places from 
 which they had slipped whilst hanging on the walls ! 
 
 What is best to be done with pictures cracked and 
 flowing from the use of asphaltum? No doubt many 
 repairers will readily undertake to bring the parts together 
 with the pressure of a heavy iron over a strong glue, and 
 then with a little repainting, and not a little varnishing, the 
 picture for a short time will appear perfectly renovated ; 
 
INJURIES FROM BAD VEHICLES. 
 
 597 
 
 yet it is but a fallacious cure. New rents will soon open, 
 all the sooner for the strong varnishing ; and the little 
 repainting will be mixed up with the original, to be again 
 cured by the same process. Far better is it to abstain 
 from any attempt at repair, to cleanse the surface with 
 fastidious care by means of cotton wool, and then to pre- 
 serve the picture from dust (which sticks so readily to the 
 pitchy surface) by means of glass, and from damp and 
 change of atmosphere by covering up the canvas behind. 
 
 The use of improper vehicles is another cause of injury 
 to pictures, either from cracking the colours or darkening. 
 Most of the works of the early part of the century are 
 painted with a magylp composed of half mastic varnish 
 and half boiled oil ; a pleasant medium to paint with, 
 and one that stands well, when sparingly used, until the 
 picture is varnished ; but, it is to be feared, not longer. 
 With this Wilkie's " Village Festival " and " Blind Fid- 
 dler" are painted ; the latter was perfectly sound until var- 
 nished some ten years ago, when it immediately cracked 
 down to the white ground ; the same, it will be seen, has 
 taken place in the " Parish Beadle ; " and also in many 
 of Lawrence's portraits, as well as in other pictures of that 
 period. These cracks, however, are narrow, and look like 
 wholesome wounds as compared with asphaltum cracks, 
 and they may be stopped by a careful restorer ; the repaint- 
 ing, which should be with colour ground and used with 
 spirit varnish, being religiously confined to the white lines 
 of the stopping, and not spread over the adjoining parts 
 to hide the bungling clumsiness of a bad workman. But 
 there are pictures where this mastic magylp has been 
 used almost as freely as asphaltum was, and with some of 
 the same evils. As a rule, mediums should be sparingly 
 
598 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 used ; but Wilkie, admiring the beautiful amber tone of 
 the jelly-like vehicle, exclaimed, as if he had made a dis- 
 covery, "Magylp is a colour!" and used it as such. 
 This was the case with the picture of "John Knox 
 Preaching," in which what were beautiful luminous 
 golden lights when the work left the painter's easel, are 
 now brown horny dirty darks. Turner practised the 
 same folly at times ; and in the sky of the " Beach of 
 Hastings," the once brilliant lights on the edges of the 
 rolling cumuli have become darks ; and in other places 
 there are dirty brown spots instead of fleecy golden 
 cloudlets ; formed, no doubt, of luscious touches of 
 magylp, perhaps snatched, on the varnishing days, 
 from some neighbouring artist's palette, where it had 
 tempted the eye of the great landscape painter. 
 
 Fortunately a change for the better has taken place 
 in art, and those who use the old magylp use it spar- 
 ingly and with care ; while the greater number of our 
 artists paint with a harder and firmer mixture, formed of 
 copal combined with mastic varnish : some use copal 
 alone ; and some content themselves — as did Leslie in 
 many of his finest works — with simple linseed oil. 
 
 Such are a few hints at the causes of the decay but 
 too visible in many of our English pictures : and it must 
 be remembered that pictures, so sickly from their birth, 
 require continuous nursing and careful attention to pre- 
 serve them in any sort of sound condition ; yet it too 
 often happens that when once arranged on the walls, 
 either very little further attention is paid to them, or 
 the care and superintendence are of the worst kind. 
 When the pictures were received for the Paris Inter- 
 national Exhibition of 1855, and our own of 1862, it 
 
DECAY FROM ABSENCE OP CARE. 
 
 599 
 
 was curious to note the condition of such valuable 
 property. Some works had evidently never had any 
 cleansing of their surface since the time they were 
 painted, although they had hung during the whole period 
 of their existence in the heart of this or other smoky 
 towns. The tops of the frames of some and the lower 
 interstices between the canvas and stretcher of others 
 were the harbourage of thick layers of dirt ; while the 
 curiosities in the shape of wedges, nails, screws and filth 
 of all kinds that were gathered between the stretcher and 
 the canvas would have served to furnish a little museum. 
 In many respects the loan of works formed a fortunate 
 epoch in their condition ; as while deposited in these 
 exhibitions they were most carefully looked after and 
 attended to, and the dust of years removed. Moreover, 
 as to some, the possessors on their return — for once while 
 in their possession — minutely looked them over ; and if 
 they laid the evils that had been progressing for so many 
 years to those who had had them temporarily in charge, 
 they were at least awakened to the sense of their decay, 
 and likely to take better measures to preserve them in 
 future. 
 
 Pictures belonging to the proprietors of several 
 mansions are very apt to suffer, since they should as 
 much as possible be kept in an equable temperature ; 
 but in the absence of the owner the house is closed, the 
 rooms in which the pictures are hung are left without 
 fires, and the pictures thus subjected to sudden changes 
 of atmosphere, alternately shrinking and swelling the 
 panels, causing them, if tight in the frames, to warp and 
 split. Windows are open on improper days, and shut 
 when they ought to be opened ; the direct rays of the 
 
600 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 sun are allowed to rest upon the pictures, or, what is 
 nearly as bad, no light at all is admitted to them. It is 
 not sufficiently known that oil pictures require abundant 
 light, and that they darken and get yellow in rooms with 
 shutters constantly closed and blinds drawn down. The 
 following is a case in point : — 
 
 Callcott sent home his picture of " The Mouth of the 
 Tyne " to Sir M. White Kidley, and the family leaving 
 town shortly after, the housekeeper covered it up wholly 
 with a coarse yellow canvas such as is used to cover the 
 frames of pictures against the flies. On the return of 
 the family, when the picture was uncovered, the sky was 
 found to be changed throughout to a golden yellow. 
 Callcott was sent for and was quite unable to account for 
 the change ; attributing it to bad oil or bad pigments. 
 He desired to have the picture home, and in despair of 
 any other mode of treating it, was preparing to scrape 
 out the sky and repaint it, when by accident the picture 
 was placed in the sun on the lawn at his house in the 
 Mall, where it remained some hours, at the end of which 
 time such a visible improvement had taken place that it 
 struck him to continue the treatment, and in three or 
 four days the picture had returned entirely to its pristine 
 freshness : the light had bleached it. . 
 
 Almost as much mischief arises from ignorant care as 
 from want of care. The mere dusting of pictures is a 
 work requiring some judgment ; it should be done with 
 the softest of feather brushes, and even these are dan- 
 gerous when the picture has a tendency to scale or blister. 
 Pictures are often carelessly wiped, many persons 
 believing that a silk handkerchief can do no harm ; but a 
 glance at any old collection, and even at some of our own 
 
AND BAD VENTILATION. 
 
 601 
 
 public ones, will show how this has been abused : in many 
 pictures, scales have been torn off, the canvases are 
 cracked all round the edges, the corner pieces and the bars 
 of the stretcher marked on the surface, by undue pres- 
 sure of the hand of the careless operator as he polishes 
 them ; at times rubbing even the paint away, but at least 
 rubbing in the dust rather than removing it. Perhaps 
 the best preservative for old pictures beyond dusting 
 them with the feather brush, is to have them ten- 
 derly wiped with cotton wool about once a year, by the 
 hands of some person qualified to do this with care and 
 judgment. The backs of all pictures, whether oil or 
 water colour, should be covered with painted cloth to 
 exclude air and dust. 
 
 Ill- ventilated rooms are another source of mischief 
 to works of art. Hundreds of fine pictures are hung in 
 close rooms lighted with numerous candles or with gas, 
 yet without the slightest means of ventilation. It was 
 shown in the careful report on this subject by Professors 
 Faraday, Hoffman, and Tyndal, that the proceeds from 
 the combustion of coal gas, unless wholly removed from 
 the apartment, are most deleterious to pictures ; but 
 that gas unburnt was almost innocuous, and its combus- 
 tion might be made most useful in promoting an active 
 ventilation sufficient to remove all the resulting evils ; 
 and with them, those almost equally deleterious excre- 
 tions arising in crowded rooms, from condensed breath, 
 and an unchanged atmosphere. 
 
 While there are those who leave their pictures from 
 year to year untouched and unnoticed, there are others 
 who are continually incrusting them with coats of 
 varnish. Under the dust or dirt of years, the picture 
 
602 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 may remain intact, and be brought, simply by careful 
 washing, to its first purity and freshness ; but those 
 who cover their pictures with numerous coats of var- 
 nish, either lock up numerous coats of dirt also, or, if 
 the varnish is continually removed for new applica- 
 tions, remove with it the last tender and most precious 
 finishings of the painter. And here let us again add 
 our warning, at least in respect to British pictures, 
 against the new invention of solving the coats of varnish 
 on a picture, and letting them subside into a new surface. 
 Mastic varnish enters so largely into the vehicle with 
 which such pictures are painted, that under this treat- 
 ment varnish and pigment may be found floating into 
 one common mass. 
 
 It only remains under this head to remark upon 
 a few of the avoidable dangers to which pictures are 
 liable on their occasional removal from place to place. 
 And first as to marking pictures. A practice, but too 
 common, has been to paste paper labels on the back 
 of the canvas or panel indifferently. In the latter 
 case, it is harmless ; in the former, the moisture of the 
 paste shrinks the spot of canvas to which it is applied, 
 and the result is a permanent lump on the surface. 
 Again, in passing through the hands of upholsterers or 
 packers, pictures are often numbered or marked with 
 chalk on the back of the canvas — a still more dangerous 
 practice — for in the hurry of so marking them, a little 
 extra pressure cracks the picture, which as it ages, 
 takes that singular form of crack so like a caterpillar 
 with many legs, becoming visible as dirt or varnish 
 gradually fills the lines. On one occasion we saw a 
 large number of works which had been just returned 
 
CAUTIONS FOR PACKING PICTURES. 603 
 
 to a London agent from a provincial Exhibition, all so 
 marked on the back of the canvas by the local authorities. 
 Again, blows or pressure from behind should be scru- 
 pulously guarded against : the projecting corners of 
 frames, for instance, dragged against the canvas, will 
 result in the crack above described ; and a thrust from 
 any bluntly pointed object — from the finger or the 
 shoulder in carrying — will produce the circular crack so 
 often seen in old pictures, and which, from its regular 
 web-like appearance, Turner used to express his belief 
 was occasioned by an insect. 
 
 Great care also should be taken not to over-drive 
 the wedges of the stretching frames, more especially 
 when the pictures are liable to any sudden alternations of 
 damp and dryness. Any one who has noted the great 
 shrinkage that takes place on damping the fibres of a 
 stretched string or cord, will be aware that some play 
 must be allowed for these alternations, or the canvas will 
 be torn from the stretcher, and the surface of the picture 
 be broken up into fine hair cracks. These variations 
 of temperature are much guarded against by lining 
 the back of the picture with painted cloth, as already 
 advocated. 
 
 Other injuries arise to pictures from careless or 
 improper packing. One of the commonest errors, and 
 certainly one of the most dangerous, is the practice of 
 screwing the picture to the top or bottom of the case ; 
 or, when two pictures are in the same case, screwing one 
 to the top, the other to the bottom : this should never be 
 done ; they should be slung on battens within the case. 
 Two battens, crossing the back of the picture, should be 
 carefully secured by screws to the most solid part of the 
 
604 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 back of each frame, the screws being of sufficient length 
 and depth of cut, to allow of the picture hanging beneath 
 the batten without fear of its weight drawing the screws. 
 The ends of these battens, projecting somewhat beyond 
 the frame or frames, should drop, and be carefully 
 secured, into notched racks or ledges, well fastened to 
 the sides of the case ; so that the picture should be slung 
 within it, free everywhere but at the end of the battens. 
 Pictures thus packed are partly on springs, and any 
 shock on the outer case is distributed and dispersed 
 without injury. If the case is large and deep enough, a 
 number of pictures may be packed within it in the same 
 manner, merely by placing the racks or notched ledges 
 at proper intervals to keep the pictures well apart. 
 
 Before placing the battens across the frames, the 
 wedges should be looked to and slightly tightened, and 
 what is of still more importance, the picture properly 
 nailed into its frame, otherwise the picture may get 
 loose, although the frame remains secure, and rub itself 
 to pieces with the motion in carriage. So carelessly 
 in this respect are pictures sent away by their owners 
 that valuable works are often received at public exhibi- 
 tions quite disengaged from their fastenings. Another 
 danger to which pictures are exposed in travelling 
 arises from the bad construction of the frames ; the flat 
 or inner portion being mostly a separate piece, merely 
 bradded in, or slightly secured by glued wood blocks. 
 Such a construction, although sufficiently strong while 
 the picture hangs on the wall, is most dangerous when 
 it travels horizontally, exposed to the jolting of the 
 railroad ; when even if the picture is carefully fastened 
 into the flat, the two break away from the other part of 
 
PICTUBE CLEANERS AND RESTORERS. 605 
 
 the frame ; or when the picture is very heavy — as for 
 instance a lined picture, or a picture on panel — the thin 
 rebate of the flat gives way, and the picture falls through, 
 with the splintered remnants to increase the mischief. 
 The best precaution is, in all such cases, to screw pieces 
 across the back angles of the frame, and to screw the 
 stretcher of the picture to them, which removes the 
 pressure entirely from the flat ; but this will not do when 
 the picture is on panel. 
 
 Thus a few of the most obvious sources of injury, and 
 of the causes which lead to the premature decay of pic- 
 tures have been slightly glanced at ; it only remains to 
 allude to the doings of those who undertake, qualified or 
 unqualified, to repair their injuries, to renovate their 
 fading glories, and even to restore them to their first 
 freshness and brightness. 
 
 Wrong, indeed, would it be to throw discredit on all 
 who practise the restorer's art. Some few there are who 
 are duly qualified ; but for our own part we would put up 
 with many blemishes ere we trusted a work we loved out 
 of our own hands. For as in the healing art there are 
 quacks and nostrum-mongers, and shallow or incom- 
 petent practitioners ; who are always the boldest in 
 their pretensions, and the most boastful of the univer- 
 sality and infallibility of their cures ; so it is with the 
 renovators of pictures ; and many a one whose qualifica- 
 tions consist only in the reckless impudence with which 
 he dares to use the spirit or the alkali to scour ofT dirt 
 and art together, places a half-washed portrait in the 
 window, and dubs himself a restorer. Some of these boast 
 that their very ignorance of drawing is one of their best 
 qualifications, since they must of necessity follow the 
 
606 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 leadings of the painter whose work is under their hands ; 
 which is about as logical as it would be to say that we are 
 more fully qualified to decipher a half obliterated inscrip- 
 tion by ignorance of the language in which it is written. 
 Too often such renovators use strong detergents, and wash 
 away all the last and delicate heightenings of the painter, 
 together with the dirt and varnish that had accumulated 
 over his works ; and then reduce the whole to a meaning- 
 less uniformity by a universal coat of stippling : perhaps 
 at the same time heightening the expression, in their idea, 
 by darkening the eyes, the eyelids, the corners of the 
 mouth, and the nostrils, to give the vigour their labours 
 had destroyed. In the case of injuries or blisters, a 
 common fault is, after stopping the holes, to paint over 
 the part with colour ground in oil. Then, in order to 
 hide the spot, the retouching is spread far and wide 
 round the original injury ; nay, it often happens, that, 
 led on by their conceit or their audacity, an entire face 
 or hand is repainted, much (in their eyes) to its improve- 
 ment, and the whole, highly varnished, comes back to 
 its possesor, reputed as in the finest state. Sad it is that 
 such evils perpetuate themselves, and the injuries of a 
 picture come to be considered its greatest merit. To 
 hide these wholesale restorations, a dark brown varnish is 
 resorted to, and what is hence called u the fine golden 
 tone" of a picture — a golden tone neither the work of the 
 original artist, nor of the gradual mellowing influence 
 of time, but really a false incrustation — becomes one of 
 the sources of its estimation. 
 
 It is true that, backed up by the folly of would-be 
 connoisseurs of the last age, " the golden tone " was so 
 coveted that it was added as a necessary flavour to all 
 
TONING DOWN PICTURES. 
 
 607 
 
 pictures. This perhaps arose in the first instance from 
 the importation of smoke-browned altar-pieces, and other 
 second rate pictures of the Bolognese school, the fashion- 
 able school at that time — works painted on a dark ground 
 which had greatly failed in the " darks," and thus the 
 solid whites and lights had to be toned down to bring 
 lights and darks together. Once accepted as the true 
 tone of a fine picture, all must be heightened or lowered 
 to the same standard of excellence. The late Mr. Uwins 
 used to tell of a visit he paid to De la Hante the dealer, 
 when the fine picture of St. Nicholas, by Paul Veronese, 
 was in his hands for sale. When he found who had come 
 to see the picture, he took Mr. Uwins into the gallery 
 where it was, and after they had looked at it awhile, said 
 — "Now I will show you what this picture really is," 
 and taking a sponge, he removed a dark coat from its 
 surface, leaving the picture in a beautifully pure, cool, 
 and fresh state ; a state they both could fully appreciate. 
 After they had admired it awhile, he remarked, " I may 
 show it thus to you, but it will not do for the world to 
 see it without the tone being renewed." Ere Uwins left, 
 a party of dilettanti were announced ; but De la Hante 
 would not let them see it until " the golden tone" was 
 restored. Here was a dealer, who well knew what a fine 
 picture should be, obliged to conform to the prevailing 
 dilettantism ; but to the host of vampers-up of brown 
 masters, this " golden tone " was a true god-send, and 
 far too valuable an agent in their mysteries, not to be 
 upheld with all their influence. 
 
 Goldsmith — the learned simpleton, as he was thought 
 by the clever but shallow wits of his own day — must have 
 been admitted behind the scenes, or he could not so well 
 
608 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 have described the audacity of these gentry. Speaking in 
 the person of the vicar's son, he says of one of these 
 oracles, " There was sometimes an occasion for a more 
 supported assurance. I remember to have seen him, 
 after giving his opinion that the colouring of a picture 
 was not mellow enough, very deliberately take a brush 
 with brown varnish, that was accidentally lying by, and 
 rub over the picture before all the company, and then 
 ask if he had not improved the tints." The application 
 of such a tone of course hid all the serubbings and 
 over-cleanings of the ignorant restorer ; and when the 
 repairs made in oil, which have been already described, 
 changed, as they must change, to dark spots or exten- 
 sive patches on the original tints, a still deeper shade 
 of this coveted tone hid all their blotchings, and like 
 charity, covered a multitude of sins. 
 
 Though the practice of toning pictures was mostly 
 resorted to to enhance the ^beauties of the old masters, 
 yet under the enthusiastic patronage of the dilettanti of 
 the day it was extended to more modern works, and the 
 ignorance of the painter as to what his picture should be, 
 was supplied by their care. Many Wilsons, Gains- 
 boroughs, and Reynolds, bear present testimony to 
 their superiority of judgment. There can be no doubt 
 that pictures were, and are, constantly over-toned as well 
 as over-cleaned, and that pictures in our national collec- 
 tions have, in past days, been so treated ; but, in view of 
 the terrors of that body of experts the House of Com- 
 mons, who would venture to bring them back to what 
 the painter thought they ought to be, or he himself 
 would have toned them ? To remove such additions 
 would raise up a storm of virtuous indignation that few 
 
ADVICE AS TO REPAIRS. 
 
 609 
 
 would be willing to face. This, it is true, is uot to be 
 wondered at, in face of the wholesale scrubbings that 
 have taken place abroad, as many even of the works in 
 the Louvre testify ; whilst at Dresden, the world-famous 
 Correggios, instead of the delicate, refined, yet luminous 
 glazings which characterize the master's works when in 
 a genuine state, have become solid, dry, and insipid 
 under the hands of the restorer, who has gained fame 
 and reputation at the expense of the poor painter ; born, 
 it would seem, only that Palmaroli might be glorified in 
 him. At Kotterdam also the true Dutch spirit of clean- 
 liness has reduced some of the pictures in the public col- 
 lection to the mere panel. 
 
 As individuals, however, will require medical and 
 surgical aid, so occasionally must pictures, whether from 
 accident or premature decay; it may be difficult in an 
 age of quacks to choose a skilled physician, and it is an 
 equally anxious affair to have to make choice of a good 
 restorer. Enough has been said to induce us not to 
 resort to him on slight occasions. On more grave ones, 
 seek out the man of the highest reputation ; him, more- 
 over, who promises the least, who has a wholesome dread 
 of doing too much, and the strongest objection to doing 
 anything at all. If the canvas want lining, or the 
 panel parqueting, have it done in the best manner and 
 by the best craftsman ; but do not allow the work to be 
 varnished, so that you can see your face in it as in a 
 looking-glass. 
 
 Thus much as to pictures in oil ; but something 
 must be said as to works in water colour, in order 
 to complete this section of our labours. In oil or 
 water alike, many of the radical defects arise from the 
 vol. ii. 73 
 
610 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 materials used. This is especially the case with the 
 drawings of our first water-colour painters ; whose art 
 stimulated the manufacture and improvement of papers 
 suitable for its use, till great excellence has been 
 attained. Originally the paper was deficient in its 
 dimensions and surface ; but it concealed more dangerous 
 defects. Sometimes made in mills whose water-supply 
 was impregnated with iron, ferruginous spots of foxy tint 
 develop themselves over the surface of the drawing. 
 Sometimes unequally or imperfectly sized, the whole 
 surface is covered with spots of a darker tint than 
 the colour used ; or the drawing has a sunk-in woolly 
 appearance, destructive of all sharpness and brilliancy. 
 Again, the colours used by the early water-colour 
 painter were no less immature. Suited only to the 
 mere tinter, they were quite unfitted for the artist 
 who would contend with the brilliancy and power of 
 the oil painter. Earths (ochre, umber, and sienna), 
 have been now supplemented by brilliant mineral or 
 chemical products ; and Prussian blue and reds of a 
 fleeting weak character, have given way not only to 
 better colours, but to better modes of preparation. 
 
 When, therefore, we would judge of the durability of 
 a water-colour drawing, we must not bring the works of 
 our early artists into comparison with the perfected 
 excellencies attained in the present day, and ascribe 
 their weak washed-out appearance, their want of bril- 
 liancy and sharpness, to decay alone, but rather to 
 their original and inherent defects ; among which may 
 be classed the practice of passing a uniform tint, or 
 wash of warm colour, often of much power, over the 
 whole surface. Some of the early drawings, however, 
 
DURABILITY OF WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS. 611 
 
 exhibit great freshness and colour, undimmed by eighty 
 years of exposure. We see this most in the water-colour 
 works of men who practised chiefly in oil, — Ibbetson 
 and Hamilton, for instance — whose drawings may be 
 cited as proof of the durability of the art. Of the great 
 works of Turner, in the two mediums, it may be safely 
 said that up to this time his water-colour pictures, 
 delicately beautiful as they are, have, under average 
 treatment, suffered less than his oil paintings. We are 
 told that on the establishment of the British Institution 
 in 1805, the reason for the exclusion of water-colour 
 drawings, was their want of permanence ; a mere pre- 
 sumption, if the reason given is true, as time had not 
 then been given to test the new art. 
 
 The two great enemies of water-colour art are 
 exposure to sun, or the glare of strong reflected light, 
 or to damp. Nothing so surely destroys as the sun : 
 the colour is burnt off the paper ; even the forms dis- 
 appear, and every quality which gave pleasure is hope- 
 lessly destroyed. Damp is likewise destructive ; but 
 while generally affecting brilliancy, its effects are chiefly 
 evidenced by spottiness, dark spots in the light parts, 
 and light on the dark parts : this is often increased 
 by bad paste used in the mounting, which gives rise 
 to a fungous growth highly destructive to such works. 
 In addition to these special ills, drawings are of course 
 subject to all the mischiefs common to their fragile 
 nature. 
 
 There is not any mystery in the due care of water- 
 colour drawings. They require only security from sun, 
 and damp and dirt. When kept in a portfolio, or in 
 closed drawers, they will, if such receptacles are con- 
 
 73—2 
 
612 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 structed properly, be safe from these united evils ; but 
 whatever may be the temperature in which they are 
 maintained, it will be found necessary that they should 
 from time to time be subjected to light, and warmth with 
 its ventilating influence. When exhibited in frames 
 their charge is no less simple. They are then always 
 defended by glass, which should be gummed or pasted 
 to the frame, so that the drawing may from the front be 
 impervious to the subtle permeations of a London atmo- 
 sphere. They should also be exhibited in sunk mounts 
 to keep them from touching the glass, and should not 
 only be pasted into the frame at the back, but additional 
 security from damp walls, against which they may be 
 hung, should be obtained by the use of the patent 
 painted cloth. In moving drawings from place to 
 place, when in folios or boxes, care must be used that 
 they do not rub one another. 
 
 It may be proper to add a few rules as to the hang- 
 ing of pictures in rooms or galleries. A small frontage 
 to the street is one of the necessary conditions in 
 planning London houses, and houses in most of our 
 large towns ; hence the rooms are deep in proportion to 
 their width, and the light from narrow windows is often in- 
 sufficient, they being mostly too near the side-walls, which 
 are always dark at the end furthest from the front. This 
 darkness is increased on one side by the usual projection 
 of the chimney breast, and on both by the curtains and 
 furniture, which fashion and the necessities of our climate 
 cluster round our windows ; while projecting frames to 
 the pictures too often add to the obscurity. The wall 
 opposite the windows, even if not too far removed from 
 the light; is unsuitable for pictures, because the glass 
 
PICTURE GALLERIES. 
 
 613 
 
 over water-colour paintings, or the varnished surface of 
 works in oil so placed, must always mirror the windows 
 opposite, and the glitter and reflection of their light 
 hinder any pleasure in viewing them. Hence, where 
 any available space can be found for the purpose, most 
 of those who love art, and collect pictures, build top- 
 lighted galleries for their reception. It is only in such 
 galleries that pictures can be seen to the best advantage. 
 
 The conditions for such galleries are simple and 
 are as follows : — First, abundance of light perfectly 
 under control, so that by blinds or shutters it can be 
 readily increased or diminished at pleasure. Second. 
 The skylight of the gallery should be so placed that 
 when the spectator is in the best position to view the 
 pictures, they shall not glitter with the reflection of the 
 window or skylight : a condition determinable by fixed 
 laws of optics ; so that no gallery need be ill-con- 
 structed in this respect. 
 
 As a general rule, an oblong parallelogram on plan is 
 more suitable than a square room ; and in such cases it 
 will be found that the height of the skylight should be 
 equal to the width of the room. Thus, twenty feet wide 
 by thirty or forty feet long, and twenty feet high, will, 
 light well, if the skylight be properly arranged. The 
 proper amount of light will be admitted through an 
 opening about equal to half the superficial area of the 
 floor, and should be as little as possible interrupted by 
 ceiling joists, rafters, or beams. If light is too high 
 above the pictures, as it diminishes rapidly in proportion 
 to its distance from the source of admission, the pictures 
 will be in half- shadow, as if in a well. If the light is 
 too low down, glitter from the surface of the picture 
 
614 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 is unavoidable. If the pictures are to be lighted at 
 night, the artificial light should be so placed as to corre- 
 spond in the angle of its rays with those of the natural 
 light. 
 
 Air for ventilation should be admitted near the floor, 
 and have abundant exit at the roof : this rule, desirable 
 even where artificial light is not used, is an absolute 
 necessity where it is used, if pictures are to be pre- 
 served from injury. It is most desirable, for all these 
 reasons, that beneath the skylight, glass sashes or a 
 glass ceiling should be introduced. 
 
 It must be repeated, however, that as the laws which 
 regulate the proper proportion and angle of light can 
 be laid down with absolute certainty, no gallery should 
 be constructed without the lines having been determined 
 by those who have studied them, and are competent to 
 advise on the proportions adapted to a gallery of the 
 size to be erected. 
 
( 615 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PRESENT STATE OF THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. 
 
 Painters of the Past and Present Generation — Their Independence — Saved 
 them from Imitation — Outbreak of Realism — In the German and 
 French Schools— Pre-Raphaelism in England — Its Principles and 
 Aims — Truth before Beauty — Nature before Grace — Not without some 
 good Results — Errors of Non-selection — And the Imitation of Details 
 instead of general Truths— Realistic Landscape — Its attempted minute 
 Truth — Does not convey the Truth — Comparison with Turner's Art — 
 Tends however to Improvement — Is opposed to showy Facility — Art- 
 Unions — Dangers of Prosperity — Increased Prices of Art — Picture- 
 dealers — Spread of Art — Now common to all Classes — Proposed 
 Changes in the Royal Academy — Future of the English School. 
 
 We would conclude our sketch of British art during 
 the century which has witnessed its birth and seen its 
 advance to manhood, with a short review of its present 
 state and future prospects. Our plan has precluded any 
 comments on the veteran artists who are yet spared to 
 us, or on those whose rising talent is to fill their places. 
 But the question will arise, has art reached its maturity, 
 or passed its prime ? Is it yet progressing ? does it halt 
 or retrograde ? It is of our nature, as we advance in 
 life, to look back on the celebrities of our early days as 
 hopelessly beyond the reach of the present. The poets, 
 the actors, the orators, the painters who then charmed 
 us are such as their degenerate successors cannot rival. 
 This we have to guard against in forming our estimate 
 of contemporary art. Thus our predecessors, looking 
 
616 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 back to Keynolds and Gainsborough, might have well 
 exclaimed, " Where are their successors?" Yet, if 
 those great portrait painters found but inferior repre- 
 sentatives in Lawrence and Hoppner, that same gene- 
 ration included such artists as Morland, Wilkie, Leslie 
 and Mulready, who advanced the art in the branch they 
 followed far beyond that of the age preceding them. 
 Turner, Callcott, Constable, Crome and Collins also, if 
 with a difference, were worthy successors of Wilson ; 
 Etty and Hilton ably sustained the credit of our school 
 in history, and Ward in animal painting. Of the 
 veterans who link these past worthies with the talent of 
 the day, it is not for us, to speak ; yet both landscape, 
 animal, and figure painters have, in or out of the 
 Academy, representatives who sustain the credit of the 
 school. 
 
 In all schools, individuals from time to time arise 
 who carry some phase of art to a high degree of per- 
 fection, and the danger is that their contemporaries and 
 successors neglect to study Nature for themselves, and 
 become followers and copyists of the manner or art of 
 these master spirits. When this occurs, the decadence 
 of the school is rapid. The nature of English habits, and 
 the independence of the English character, are in this 
 respect favourable to art progress, since each man loves 
 to think for himself. Had the landscape painters of 
 the past generation been content to follow the manner of 
 Wilson or Gainsborough, we should not have seen the 
 noble works of Turner and Constable. Novelty in aim 
 or treatment seems necessary to art progress. Wilkie, 
 Leslie, and Mulready, with characteristic differences in 
 their art held its great principles in common ; their 
 
PRE-RAPHAELITE ART. 
 
 617 
 
 reputation and the beauty of their works gathered 
 around them imitators, while their living influence was 
 in the schools ; but, as the half-century in which they 
 had produced their best pictures drew towards its com- 
 pletion, the painters of the rising school abandoned the 
 rules of art which had guided these great landscape and 
 figure painters, and adopted principles apparently the 
 very opposite of theirs. 
 
 The poets of the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 had rebelled against the conventionalisms of their pre- 
 decessors both as to metre and manner, but more par- 
 ticularly as to their choice of subjects. They had re- 
 verted to a degree of realism which was then stigmatized 
 as sheer puerility, and severe was the criticism that 
 Wordsworth and his followers had to endure at the 
 hands of critics and reviewers. Yet the rebellion against 
 old forms of thought was on the whole healthy, and when 
 the first reaction had somewhat subsided, it introduced 
 new beauties, with fresher views of life and springs of 
 thought. Music also had its rebels against authority ; 
 and art, although with us at a later period, was to ex- 
 perience a movement of the like nature, and to have its 
 outbreak of realism as had poetry. First the young 
 Germans studying their art at Rome, disgusted, no 
 doubt, with the tame proprieties of the modern Romans— 
 Cammuccini and his followers, whose art was built upon 
 rules and precedents with little reference to nature and 
 t ru th— broke loose from the fetters of the schools. 
 
 So earnest were these young artists in following the 
 religious art of the early Italians, which they considered 
 defiled by the Paganism of the Renaissance and de- 
 spoiled of all fervour by Protestantism, that, headed by 
 
618 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 Cornelius and Overbeck they went over in a body to the 
 Church of Rome, and henceforth devoted themselves to 
 the restoration of religious art on the basis of its pre- 
 Raphaelite practice. Later the movement spread to 
 France, but under a different phase ; Courbet and his 
 followers adopted realism, repudiating beauty and selec- 
 tion, and copying nature as she is found, rather in her 
 meanest than under her noblest aspects. 
 
 About the year 1850, a number of young English 
 artists just completing their studies, banded together 
 under the name of the pre-Raphaelite Brethren ; a term 
 which they adopted to signify that henceforth they would 
 take their stand on the art of the painters prior to 
 Raphael, as opposed to the conventional art, as they 
 termed it, of his school and followers. They began by 
 publishing a weekly magazine called The Germ, intended 
 to set forth their peculiar views in art and poetry. 
 Though it is difficult to find any clear statement of 
 what these views were, originality and truth seemed to 
 be pointed at in the verse which accompanied the first 
 number, and, as a motto, was printed in black letter 
 upon the wrapper ; it is as follows : — 
 
 " When whoso merely hath a little thought 
 Will merely think the thought which is in him— 
 Not imaging another's bright or dim. 
 Not mingling with new words what others taught. 
 When whoso speaks, from having either sought 
 Or only found, will speak, not just to skim 
 A shallow surface with words made and trim, 
 But in the very speech the matter brought ; 
 Be not too keen to cry, ' So this is all ! — 
 A thing I might myself have thought as well 
 But would not say it, for it was not worth ! ' 
 Ask, ' Is this truth ? ' For is it still to tell 
 That, be the theme a point, or the whole earth, 
 Truth is a circle, perfect, great or small !" 
 
ITS VIEWS AND PRINCIPLES. 
 
 619 
 
 If the publication had contained nothing more intel- 
 ligible, nothing more worthy of attention than the verse 
 which heralded it into the world, there had been need of 
 little wonder that its career was ended after the fourth 
 number. This, however, was not the case, since some of 
 the contributors gave promise which their pens have since 
 fully redeemed. Still it is to their own statements at the 
 time, and to the works they produced in the first fervour 
 of their brotherhood, that we must look for the principles 
 of the school ; unless so far as we may accept them from 
 the pen of one who has ever been their eloquent, if at times, 
 their injudicious champion. Their first great principle 
 was truth rather than beauty ; and, therefore, non-selec- 
 tion in treating their subjects. Thus it was said by their 
 able expositor, in his lectures on architecture and painting- 
 delivered at Edinburgh, 1853, that " pre-Raphaelitism 
 has but one principle, that of absolute uncompromising 
 truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, 
 down to the most minute detail, from Nature, and from 
 Nature only. Every pre-Raphaelite landscape back- 
 ground is painted to the last touch in the open air, from 
 the thing itself. Every pre-Raphaelite figure, however 
 studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living 
 person. Every minute accessory is painted in the same 
 manner." Further that the pre-Raphaelite disciples 
 rejected " that spurious beauty whose attractiveness has 
 tempted men to forget or to despise the more noble 
 quality of sincerity ;" and also with the further uncompli- 
 mentary addition, that, " in order to put them beyond 
 the power of temptation, they are , as a body, charac- 
 terized by a total absence of sensibility to the ordinary 
 and popular forms of artistic gracefulness." 
 
620 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 It would appear that the protest of these young pain- 
 ters — and it was so far a right protest — was against worn- 
 out conventionalisms, stale repetitions of other men's 
 modes of thought and modes of treatment ; although 
 at that time such art was not particularly characteristic 
 of our school. In the spirit of youth and enthusiasm 
 this protest was, in some of them, accompanied by an 
 indiscreet self-assertion, and an amusing despisal of all 
 art since the end of the fifteenth century, calculated to 
 call forth some bitterness in contemporary criticism. But 
 on the whole it has had a good result, and art has bene- 
 fited by their earnestness, and by the works they have 
 produced; even if these have been achieved rather by 
 overlooking their own early dogmas, than by rigidly 
 enforcing them. The three principles which have been 
 enunciated in the above quotations, and which are found 
 in the first works of the brotherhood are : — The rejection 
 of beauty, or non - selection ; imitative finish of the 
 details from Nature ; equal completion of all parts of the 
 picture. We are told that their first object is truth. 
 "What is truth?" was mournfully asked by one who 
 did not clearly see his way between two conflicting 
 courses ; and we may still say, what is truth ? Each may 
 decide, as he believes sincerely, but his decision will be 
 warped by his education and his prejudices. We are also 
 told that in pre-Kaphaelite pictures each figure is a true 
 portrait of some living person. Now as to this being one 
 of the pre-Kaphaelite efforts after truth, are not all artists 
 accustomed to work from models ? When the great 
 Leonardo wished to paint into the "Last Supper" the 
 head of Our Lord, he was for months seeking a model 
 whose head might suggest to him features that he could 
 
ONLY PARTIALLY TRUE. 
 
 621 
 
 clothe, alas ! he knew how faintly, with the deep impres- 
 sion of Him who sat at meat. Surely this was a right 
 step on the part of the painter in his search after truth. 
 Far more so than was his, who, painting the husband of 
 the blessed Virgin, chose a mechanic with corny hands 
 and sun-stained arms as a true representative, because 
 like the holy man of old, he was a carpenter; rather than 
 sought out one, whatever his rank of life, whose features 
 might somewhat realize the noble and trustful nature 
 of him who was to shield and shelter from the distrust 
 and scandal which were likely to be her lot, the mother 
 of Our Lord. 
 
 Then as to backgrounds. Surely in looking at the 
 touching and earnest expression the painter has given to 
 one who seeks to save her lover from danger and death, we 
 do not wish to be called upon to examine how minutely 
 he has rendered, brick by brick, the wall behind her, with 
 its rotten mortar and crumbling surface. We are not 
 to be provoked into admiration, even though assured that 
 it "is painted to the last touch in the open air," from the 
 wall itself. We rest our eyes on the earnest action, the 
 sweet pleading expression of the woman, and feel that 
 attention to the wall would indicate about the same 
 amount of obtuseness on our part, as on his who, invited 
 to see a picture, should turn aside to praise the frame. 
 
 Or let us look to the landscape painters of this school, 
 carrying out the "one and only principle of absolute 
 and uncompromising truth obtained by working every- 
 thing, down to the minutest detail, from nature and from 
 nature only." From such a principle, what is the 
 result ? certainly not art, but merely topographic truth. 
 As well might the poet, from some hill-top, catalogue the 
 
622 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 meadows and cornfields, the hedgerows, the villages, 
 mansions, and churches he sees before him, and call it 
 poetry. 
 
 When a great living artist was asked by a lady who 
 was admiring one of his landscapes, where the scene was, 
 he replied, " Madam, I am a landscape painter and not 
 a topographer ; " and this defines the difference between 
 the art of landscape painting, as practised by the great 
 masters, and as practised by the realistic school which 
 arose out of what is called pre-Eaphaelism. Rather 
 than criticise the works of the living, let us take the 
 picture of " Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat," 
 by Seddon, (National Gallery, No. 565), as a type of the 
 class. It is painted by one who travelled far and 
 endured much to produce it, and is worthy of our 
 admiration for its fidelity, if we cannot render it for the 
 art it displays. The " Jerusalem " is highly interesting ; 
 but merely for its topographic truth. It is a photograph 
 with colour, containing every even the minutest detail 
 of the scene : the walls of Jerusalem seem piled up stone 
 by stone ; outside are the few scant houses of the village 
 suburb with their narrow openings to shut out the 
 eastern sun ; square in form and with flat roofs, they 
 look like blocks of stone which have rolled down from 
 the arid hills behind, so similar are they in colour to the 
 rocks themselves. There, feeding on the scant herbage 
 of thistle and teazle painted as if from a hortus- siccus, 
 are the sheep and the goats together; the shepherd, 
 meanwhile, his long gun beside him, lying under a 
 flowering pomegranate. The little patches of soil on 
 the sides of the valley kept up by walls of stone ; 
 the olive and fig trees, each given by number so 
 
MISSES THE POETRY OF ART. 
 
 623 
 
 that the owner of each might recognize his own tree, 
 his own patch of arid earth. The deep blue heaven of 
 unclouded noon is above, the all-penetrating glare below. 
 Jerusalem is before you — Jerusalem as it is — as it may 
 be registered, mapped, and catalogued ; but the poetry 
 of Jerusalem is not there : it must come, if at all, from 
 our own hearts and not from the picture. The sheep 
 and the goats feeding together may suggest the great 
 day when the angel of the Lord shall come and divide, 
 setting the one on His right hand, the other on His left ; 
 the flat house-tops in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, His 
 command .that on that day they who are on the house- 
 tops shall not go down to find their clothes : but all these 
 suggestions are from within. This is, and is not, the 
 Jerusalem that He wept over : this is, and is not, the 
 valley of decision, wherein the multitudes shall be 
 gathered on that day : it suggests nothing to us but 
 a barren valley, a hill fortress, a place of stones. 
 
 It is true we are told of the pre-Eaphaelites that " as 
 landscape painters, the principal of that division of them 
 who do not trust to imagination, must, in great part, con- 
 fine themselves to mere foreground-work; they have been 
 born with comparatively little enjoyment of those evanes- 
 cent effects and distant sublimities which nothing but the 
 memory can arrest, and nothing but a daring conven- 
 tionalism portray." Kather disparaging admissions if 
 true. But it is also said " for this work they are not 
 needed ; Turner, the first and greatest of the pre- 
 Raphaelites, has done it already." Turner a pre- 
 Raphaelite ! Turner, who passed his life in studying 
 nature under her varied aspects that his memory of her 
 might be sure ; who left us thousands of his studies, yet 
 
624 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 repudiated the practice of painting his pictures at all out 
 of doors, and would have laughed at the " one principle, 
 the uncompromising truth of working everything from 
 nature and from nature only, painting to the last touch 
 in the open air from the thing itself." Turner a pre- 
 Eaphaelite ! he who repudiated topographic imitation 
 when it had served his purpose, and made selection of 
 the beautiful and characteristic in Nature his principle ; 
 idealizing the commonplace of every-day Nature, which 
 the laborious idler, painting from " the thing itself," 
 can never do ; and adding to it, from the ample stores of 
 his well-filled memory, every evanescent beauty arising 
 from sun and shade, and the thousand changes with 
 which they glorify the common aspect of things ! 
 
 Let them study Nature as he studied it. Let us 
 see them, like him, multiply sketches of her ever-varying 
 face, and then they will not need the tedious labour of 
 rendering her leaf by leaf and blade by blade. But if 
 Turner had been a pre-Kaphaelite, let us imagine how 
 he would have painted Jerusalem, " the city of the Great 
 King," had he undertaken to realize it on canvas. Let 
 us notice his treatment of Venice, as an instauce in point. 
 We many of us know the actual prose aspect of that city 
 of waters ; most of us may have seen the aspect realized, 
 the buildings ruled out with precision, the canals with 
 their regular wavelets as painted by Canaletti ; but 
 Turner, despising this matter-of-fact view of the city of 
 the sea, realizes to us rather what the poet saw. 
 
 " The fair city of the heart, 
 Rising like water-columns from the sea, 
 Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart." 
 
 He lighted up her palaces and towers into jewelled rich- 
 
BUT NOT TO BE DEPRECIATED. 
 
 625 
 
 ness with the bright rays of an Italian sun, filled her 
 courts with pageants, her canals with rich argosies, her 
 wharves with gondolas draped with broideries of pearl 
 and gold. Had he treated Jerusalem, would he not by 
 his art have clothed her with some of the glories pro- 
 mised to her by the sacred poet ? "I will lay thy stones 
 with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires, 
 and I will make thy windows with agates and thy gates 
 of carbuncles, and all thy borders with precious stones " 
 — some such glorious city has he made of Venice. And 
 such, but far more glorious, we long to picture Jerusalem. 
 
 Let us pause, however ; lest, in objecting to the 
 principles they propounded, or which were propounded 
 for them, we are thought to depreciate the men who 
 held them. Be this far from us. Some of the followers 
 of this school have attained, and are universally allowed 
 to have attained, the first rank in art ; and have painted 
 pictures which all true lovers of art must admire. Some 
 have avowedly repudiated the early principles of the 
 brotherhood ; and all who have gained eminence have 
 more or less ignored them. We are also willing to 
 admit that the principles themselves have a value, if not 
 observed to the exclusion of others, in enforcing con- 
 stant reference to Nature and greater imitative truth. 
 
 At present, the rigid carrying out of the " one prin- 
 ciple," obtains more among the landscape, than the 
 figure painters. We have still those who affect to paint 
 cities house by house, window by window, chimney by 
 chimney, and who sit whole summers idly photographing 
 Alpine valleys field by field, and tree by tree. Men who 
 have even the modesty to assure us that all the land- 
 scapes painted prior to their own advent — not even 
 vol. ii. 74 
 
626 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 excluding the works of Turner — if preserved at all, will 
 only be so as curious specimens of what in ignorance was 
 aforetime called art, and in order to compare them with 
 the wonderful works of the painters of the future. We 
 may well be amused with such conceit, as we are well con- 
 vinced that painting landscapes ' ' to the last touch direct 
 from Nature," will not produce noble but rather mean art; 
 and that, however useful at the beginning of an artist's 
 career this mode of studying Nature may be, it will be 
 dropped by the true artist as soon as he arrives at greater 
 power, and realizes to himself that true art is the poetic 
 representation of common Nature. 
 
 On the whole, we feel that the future prospects of 
 art will be improved rather than injured by the outbreak 
 of what has been idly called " the new heresy." The 
 careful painting which it enforces, and the zeal and 
 earnestness of its followers, serve to counterbalance 
 another and more pressing evil which threatens the 
 future progress of good art. This arises from the large 
 demand for showy pictures of a low class, and at a low 
 price, which has arisen from the formation of Art-unions, 
 now in operation throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land : pictures that are painted with no desire of 
 improvement — no end but to sell — which embody all the 
 meretricious qualities, all the showy artifices, that pre- 
 Eaphaelitism protested against : pictures that are manu- 
 factured almost by recipe, and which, as shown in our 
 review of the British Institution, fill our exhibitions to 
 the exclusion of less successful efforts after better things. 
 To show the quantities in which such works are pro- 
 duced, we were assured, by one who counted them, that 
 a single family of landscape painters, who exhibit under 
 
PROSPECTS OF THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. 627 
 
 various names, had in the several metropolitan exhibi- 
 tions of a single season, more than 140 pictures ; all 
 painted up to an average showy standard, yet good 
 enough to prove that, if guided by better aims, the pain- 
 ters had sufficient talent to produce works of true art, 
 rather than remain mere manufacturers of pictures. This 
 effect of art-unions is attributable to their very nature. 
 The best interests of such societies consist in pleasing 
 the largest number of their members, in distributing 
 many small prizes rather than one or two good pictures : 
 in fact, fostering mediocrity rather than excellence. 
 Such being necessarily the case, we cannot look upon 
 art-unions as contributing to art progress. 
 
 Another source of danger to art arises out of its very 
 prosperity. We have glanced at this in relating the high 
 prices realized by Turner's works ; and it is confirmed by 
 the action of the Government in largely increasing the 
 payments to those artists who were commissioned to 
 paint on the walls of the Senate House ; grounding their 
 decision on the largely increased sums other artists are 
 paid for their works since the time those commissions 
 were first given. Rumours are also abroad from time to 
 time — perhaps exaggerated, yet with a large amount of 
 truth — of the sums paid to living artists for commissioned 
 pictures; besides the high prices, doubled within the 
 last fifteen years, that pictures of merit realize at 
 Christie's and other public sales. There is, no doubt, a 
 great increase of the material wealth of the nation. 
 War has for a time ceased from our borders ; and 
 science, aided by improved machinery, and supported 
 by abundant capital, has enormously enriched our manu- 
 facturers; who — unlike our nobles with large estates, 
 
 74—2 
 
628 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 family encumbrances and numerous dependents — have 
 but to spend or re -invest their gains. Art affords both 
 these opportunities ; it gives pleasure and delight in pos- 
 session, and rising prices show that the best art is a safe 
 investment. But how obtain the best art ? Want 
 of knowledge on the part of the purchasers has raised 
 up a class of middlemen and dealers ; these again add 
 largely to prices for their necessary profits. It would be 
 wrong to say that many of this new class of purchasers 
 were not genuine lovers of art, nor that those who began 
 with small knowledge or appreciation, have not learnt by 
 possession of fine works to love art for its own sake. 
 
 Still, with the many, art is no more than a source of 
 self-glorification in possession, and a safe and improving 
 investment for the future. Meanwhile, it is to be feared 
 lest this very prosperity, these increasing prices, this 
 eagerness for the works of painters whose pictures are 
 in demand, should beget in the artists themselves the 
 spirit of covetousness. It is right that artists should be 
 paid at least as well as other professors who require no 
 higher endowments, no longer previous study nor harder 
 probation ere reputation is achieved, than those who, if 
 they are true artists, must also be favoured with natural 
 gifts. But art must be practised for the love of it, and 
 not for gain, if art is to make true progress. The 
 artist should love his labour, and no work should leave 
 his easel that is not the best he can make it. This is 
 hard, with dealers and purchasers waiting, money in 
 hand, hungry for possession, and caring little for subject 
 or for excellence, so that they get an undoubted work of 
 a favourite painter : hard for him to resist the temptation 
 of ready profit, though perhaps indifferently satisfied with 
 
INCREASED SPREAD OF ART. 
 
 629 
 
 the success of his own labours ; and thus the very pros- 
 perity of artists is a source of clanger to true art progress. 
 There are other causes that may affect the future of art, 
 either for its prosperity or decay. We have shown its 
 progress, during a century, from small beginnings until 
 it is almost co- extensive with society. Some knowledge 
 of it has spread among all educated classes, the Govern- 
 ment taking in hand, as we have shown, to instruct the 
 artisans, and even their children, in its rudiments. 
 
 At the beginning of our history, one exhibition of 
 modern works was a novelty ; now, all classes have 
 opportunity of seeing not only modern pictures, but the 
 noblest works of art. The National Gallery opens its 
 treasures, not to the rich alone, but freely to the poor ; 
 Hampton Court is the resort of the poor man on his 
 holidays; South Kensington in his leisure hours. In 
 the great International Exhibition, means were afforded 
 for the multitude to see and enjoy the best modern art 
 of all countries. Illustrated works teem from the press, 
 at prices within the reach of all ; and it is a proof that 
 the workman has learnt to love art, since it has been 
 thought a good speculation to surround the walls of 
 Canterbury Hall with pictures of merit, which the work- 
 man can enjoy as he takes his refreshment with his 
 fellows at this resort for fellowship and amusement. 
 During the latter part of our century, hopes have been 
 realized which were the life-long dreams of our prede- 
 cessors. Our early academicians offered to devote to 
 them their unpaid labours. Barry struggled through life 
 in an endeavour to realize them. Haydon saw these 
 hopes at the point of realization, and died. Under the 
 wise control of our great Prince Consort, and with all 
 
630 
 
 A CENTURY OF PAINTERS. 
 
 the support, all the encouragement his countenance 
 could give, the Government of the country has endea- 
 voured to promote monumental art in the decoration of 
 our public buildings. Our churches even have opened 
 their doors to the painter, and works have been produced 
 that may well vie with anything that has been done in 
 modern times in other lands. But, alas ! we have lost 
 the presiding spirit ; and it is doubtful whether the 
 country has appreciated what has been done, or is in- 
 clined to promote its continuance. Even while we write 
 art has sustained another loss, and in the death of Sir 
 Charles Eastlake, this great art-movement another able 
 supporter. His art-knowledge smoothed away many 
 early difficulties ; he ably seconded his princely master ; 
 and by his temper, tact, and judgment reconciled many 
 differences. It remains to be seen whether this step in 
 art-progress will be continued. 
 
 As our Century of Painters draws to its close, the 
 Royal Academy also approaches its hundredth anniversary. 
 The changes that have taken place in the general aspect 
 of art, many of them the result of its influence and 
 teaching, have necessarily had their re -action. The 
 walls of the Academy have become far too limited for the 
 demands upon its exhibiting space : its honours are 
 thought to be confined to too few. Not undesirous of 
 adapting itself to the altered circumstances of the time, 
 its members were prepared, and have themselves proposed, 
 extension of space and liberal changes in their constitu- 
 tion. Yet such changes must be accompanied with 
 misgivings : doubts whether they will be wholly beneficial 
 for art. Extending the exhibiting space may lead to 
 increasing the mediocrity rather than the excellence of 
 
FAITH IN THE FUTUKE. 
 
 631 
 
 the annual collections ; to causing works of the greatest 
 ability to be withheld lest they should be smothered 
 in a mass of merely respectable art. Besides this, to 
 extend the honours of the Academy is in reality to render 
 them less honourable, less to be coveted ; while giving 
 the elections a wider constituency may result in the end 
 in less purity of choice. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Academy has notice that the rooms 
 it has long held, as an equivalent to those originally 
 allotted in the palace of the Sovereign, are wanted for 
 other more purely national purposes. With a new 
 President, in new rooms, and with an amended consti- 
 tution, we may expect that the new century of the 
 Academy's existence will be in harmony with the best 
 interests of art ; we have only to hope that, whatever 
 changes may be made, the members will maintain their full 
 and complete independence, while they make every effort 
 to remove just causes of complaint, and to take their 
 true place as guardians of the interests of art and artists. 
 We have enumerated these cautions and fears as to the 
 future, but our faith is yet strong in the progress of 
 art ; we know that the English School has much to 
 achieve, and we do not believe in our brethren nagging 
 in the race. The talent rising up to succeed that which 
 is passing away is abundant ; and, if with a difference, is 
 it not desirable that it should be so ? All originality 
 consists in a difference, and as the self-reliance of the 
 young is tempered with the wisdom of years, British 
 artists will continue to produce works worthy of record 
 in a future century of painters of the English School. 
 
INDEX TO VOLS. I. AND II. 
 
 Academies, their true value in Art, i. 
 276 
 
 Academy, attempts to establish an, i. 71 
 
 Academy, the Royal, its foundation and 
 constitution, 75; House of Commons 
 Committee upon, 81; Royal Commis- 
 sion of Inquiry, 83 ; opinion upon the 
 Commissioners' Report, ib. ; Reynolds 
 the first president, 150 
 
 Academicians, The Royal, a farce by 
 Antony Pasquin, i. 539. 
 
 Alexander, William, water-colour drafts- 
 man, i. 372 
 
 Ancestors, pictorial collections of, 
 vamped up, i. 15 
 
 Anderton, Henry, portrait painter, time 
 Charles II., i. 31 
 
 Animal painters of the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, i. 343; character of their art, ib.; 
 and the art of the present time, 345 
 
 Annuals, the, their popularity and sud- 
 den decline, i. 461 
 
 Art, its intimate relation with manu- 
 facture, i. 7; no record of the early 
 practice or progress of, in England, 9 
 
 Art materials, inadequate to represent 
 Nature, ii. 393 
 
 Art study, systems of, i. 62 
 
 Art-Unions, do not promote good art, 
 ii. 626 
 
 Artists, little known of those who early 
 practised in England, i. 24; foreign, 
 who were invited to our Court, 25; 
 account of the Incorporated Society 
 of, 71; alleged jealousy of, 73; pained 
 by harsh criticism, ii. 436 
 
 Baillie, Captain, converts a fine Land- 
 scape by Cuyp into two pictures, i. 15 
 Barret, George, R.A., his success as a 
 
 landscape painter, i. 105 ; opinion 
 upon his merits, 106 
 
 Barret, George, water colour painter, i. 
 489 ; his early difficulties and perse- 
 verance, 490; favourite subjects, 491 
 
 Barry, James, R.A., his Art education, 
 i. 187 ; compared with West's and 
 Copley's, 188; his visit to Italy, 189; 
 his feeling for colour, 190; and his 
 drawing criticised, 191; befriended 
 by Burke, 201; his mode of study 
 in Italy, 203; commences his career 
 in London, 205 ; his paintings in the 
 Adelphi, 207; description and opinion 
 upon these works, 209; influence of 
 his art, 217; melancholy death, 218 
 
 Bartolozzi, Erancesco, R.A., engraved 
 after Cipriani, i. 176 
 
 Beaumont, Sir George, his opinion of 
 what constitutes a good picture, i. 1 1 
 
 Beech ey, Sir William, R.A., bred to the 
 Law, turns to Art, i. 337 ; commences 
 portrait painting at Norwich, ib. ; 
 gains the notice of George III., 338; 
 paints the Royal Family, and large 
 Equestrian Group, ib. ; Bees-wing 
 Sharpe, his pupil, 339 ; opinion upon 
 his portraits, 341 ; his character and 
 death, ib. 
 
 Bewick, Thomas, wood engraver, i. 457 ; 
 
 revives and improves the art, 458; 
 
 his British birds, ib. 
 Bituminous colours, evils arising from 
 
 their use, ii. 593 
 Blake, William, engraver and designer, 
 
 L 440; his book - illustrations, 441; 
 
 his strange eccentricity, 442; process 
 
 of printing his designs, 443; " Songs 
 
 of Innocence," and other poems, 444; 
 
 Book of Job, 446; his irritability and 
 
 quarrels, 447 
 Blakey, Nicholas, book illustrator, i. 438 
 
634 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Boit, Charles, enameller, attempts large- 
 sized plates, i. 416 
 
 Bone, Henry, R.A., distinguished ena- 
 meller, i. 425 
 
 Bonington, E. Parkes, early life, ii. 
 462 ; studies in Paris, and distin- 
 guished there, 463 ; estimate of his 
 art, 464 
 
 Book Illustrators and Designers, i. 430 
 Boy dell, Alderman, his Shakspeare 
 
 Gallery, i. 268; failure and appeal 
 
 to Parliament, 270 
 Briggs, H. Peyronnet, R.A., portrait 
 
 painter, ii. 78 ; his historical pictures, 
 
 79; his art, ib. 
 British Art, not represented in any 
 
 public collection, ii. 570 
 British Artists, Society of, founded, ii. 
 
 575; some account of its proceedings, 
 
 576 
 
 British Institution, its foundation and 
 objects, ii. 138; purely lay manage- 
 ment, 139 ; first exhibitions, 140 ; 
 vaunted success, 141 ; novel schemes, 
 143; premiums and their adjudica- 
 tions, 144; true value of such awards, 
 147; "Allegory of Waterloo," 149; 
 capricious rewards to artists, 151; 
 works purchased, 154; Wilkie's "Dis- 
 training for Rent," ib. ; successful 
 exhibitions of early painters, 157; 
 of the modem painters, 159; then- 
 low class of Art, 161; decline of the 
 Institution, 163 
 
 British School, progress of Art in, i. 526 
 
 Brompton, Richard, a picture-cleaner 
 of bad repute, i. 12 
 
 Brooking, Alexander, reputed for his 
 marine subjects, i. 91 
 
 Browne, Alexander, miniature painter, 
 i. 415 
 
 Burnett, John, his " Greenwich Hospital 
 and Naval Heroes," ii. 274; his en- 
 gravings after Wilkie, 282 
 
 Callcott, Sir Augustus Wall, RA., 
 his first training, ii. 399; pupil of 
 Hoppner, 400 ; turns landscape painter, 
 ib.; his careful study, 401; marriage, 
 and visit to Italy, 402; " Raphael 
 and the Fornarina," 403 ; " Lady Call- 
 cott," ib.; personal recollections, 404; 
 "Milton and his Daughters," 405; 
 his landscape art, 407; and figure 
 subjects, 409 
 
 Chalon, Alfred Edward, R.A., his 
 family, i. 428; he tries Art, 429; his 
 portraits, ib.; and paintings, 430; 
 his character, 431 
 
 Chalon, John James. R.A., his first 
 works, ii. 469; Member of the Water- 
 
 Colour Society, ib.; Member of the 
 Sketching Club, 470; his pictures at 
 South Kensington, 471; his art de- 
 scribed, 472 
 
 Charles I., his knowledge and love of 
 Art, i. 27; extensive purchaser of 
 pictures, i. 28 
 
 Cipriani, Giovanni, R.A., character and 
 influence of his art, i. 176; his designs 
 for books, 439 
 
 Clennell, Luke, pupil of Rewick, i. 459; 
 his great ability, ib. 
 
 Cole, Henry, C.B., his success in forming 
 the South Kensington Museum, ii. 562 
 
 Collins, William, R.A., commences Art, 
 ii. 410; enters the Academy schools, 
 411; early trials and success, 412; 
 "Sale of the Pet Lamb," 414; coast 
 scenes, 415; "Happy as a King," 
 416; tour in Italy, 417; not benefi- 
 cial to his reputation, ib.; manner 
 of painting, 418; and materials, 419; 
 " Rustic Civility," 421; opinion upon 
 his art, ib. 
 
 Commission for decorating the Houses of 
 Parliament— its constitution, ii. 518 ; 
 adopts fresco, 521 ; invites competition, 
 523; commissions to painters, 529; 
 reports scheme of decoration, 532 ; 
 exhibition at Westminster Hall, 535 ; 
 disappointment of the artists, 537; 
 adverse vote of House of Commons, 
 539 ; the Tudor portraits, 542 ; apolo- 
 getic report, 543; abandonment of 
 fresco, 545 ; and termination of the 
 commission, 546; causes of failure, 
 547; results of State patronage, 549 
 
 Constable, John, R.A., his birthplace 
 and family, ii. 382; early devotion to 
 Art, 383 ; peculiarity of his treatment 
 of nature, 385 ; his character and 
 maxims, 387 ; English pasture scenery, 
 388; his manner of execution, 389; 
 and originality, 391; teaching in the 
 life-school, 396; his influence on Art, 
 398 ; his art unappreciated, ib. 
 
 Cooper, Samuel, his great excellence as 
 a miniature painter, i. 33; opinion 
 upon his works, 414 
 
 Copley, John Singleton, R.A., his iso- 
 lated beginnings in Art, i. 187; like 
 West's and Barry's, 188; commenced 
 practice as a portrait painter, 191; 
 to which his historical works are 
 allied, 192; comes to Europe, and 
 settles in London, 219; his "Death of 
 Chatham," 21 9 ; and of Major Pierson, 
 223; "Defeat of the Spanish Floating 
 Batteries," 226; death, 228; character 
 of his art, 229 — 232 
 Copies and duplicates of pictures multi- 
 plied without end, i. 14 
 
INDEX. 
 
 635 
 
 Copying, its value and abuse as a means 
 
 of study, i. 157 
 Copyists have largely assisted in frauds, 
 
 i. 19 
 
 Costume, anomalous and incorrect, i. 
 289—307 
 
 Cosway, Maria, her parentage, i. 423; 
 extravagant opinions of her art, ib. ; 
 and character, 424 
 
 Cosway, Richard, R. A., miniature pain- 
 ter, i. 421 ; his beginnings in Art, 422 ; 
 and success, 422; his vanity, 423; 
 and strange eccentricities, 424 
 
 Cotes, Francis, R.A., portrait painter, 
 i. 42 
 
 Cotman, John Sell, begins Art as por- 
 trait painter, ii. 376 ; teaches drawing, 
 377; his publications, ib.; his water- 
 colour art, 378 
 
 Cox, David,water-colour painter, ii. 479 ; 
 his early teaching, 480; tries scene 
 painting, 480 ; his " Treatise on Land- 
 scape Painting," 482: his peculiar Art- 
 treatment, 484; "Welsh Funeral," 
 485 
 
 Cozens, John, his water-colour drawings, 
 i. 377 ; full of genius and poetry, 379 ; 
 his method and great success, 380 
 
 Cristall, Joshua, water-colour painter, 
 i. 508; his introduction to Art, 509; 
 his success, 510; marriage, 511; and 
 death, 512; his art and manner of 
 painting, 513 
 
 Criticisms on Art, i. 535; popular judg- 
 ments, ib.; hostility of critics, 537; 
 Peter Pindar, 538; Antony Pasquin, 
 i. 539; Literary Gazette commences 
 a better style, 542 
 
 Crome, John, early life, ii. 362; com- 
 mences Art, 363; his progress, 365; 
 founds " The Norwich Society," 367 ; 
 his practise in painting, ib.; and 
 habits, 368; his subjects, 369; "Coast 
 Scene near Yarmouth," and " Slate 
 Quarries," 370; his etchings, 371 
 
 Danby, Francis, A.R.A., parentage, ii. 
 437; Art student in Dublin, pupil of 
 O'Connor, ib; comes to London, 438; 
 his first pictures, ib.; " Upas Tree," 
 439; "Disappointed Love," 441; his 
 rupture with the Academy, 443 ; long 
 residence abroad, 445 ; rank as a land- 
 scape painter, 447 
 
 Dance, Nathaniel, R.A., portrait pain- 
 ter, i. 292 
 
 Dayes, Edward, A.R.A., his method of 
 water-colour painting, i. 375; anec- 
 dote of him, 397 
 
 Deacon, James, miniature painter, i. 41 7 
 
 DeWint, Peter, family history, ii. 493; 
 early teaching, 494; friendship with 
 Hilton, R. A., whose sister he marries, 
 495; joins the Water-Colour Society, 
 ib.; character of his art, 496 
 
 Dilettante Society propose to aid the 
 foundation of an Art academy, i. 528 
 
 Dobson, William, rises to celebrity as a 
 portrait painter, i. 29 
 
 Drawings, fraudulent imitations of, i. 16 
 
 Dufiield, William, painter of still life, 
 ii. 586 
 
 Dyce, William, R.A., commission for 
 "the decoration of the Houses of Par- 
 liament, ii. 529; his birthplace and 
 education, 551 ; studies Art in Italy, 
 553; his first works, ib.; "The Descent 
 of Venus," 554; appointed to the 
 School of Design, 555; fresco of the 
 " Baptism of St. Ethelbert," and of 
 " Neptune giving the Empire of the 
 Sea to Britannia," 556; devotes him- 
 self to fresco, 557 ; personal character, 
 559 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Chas., P.R.A., Secre- 
 tary to Commission for decorating 
 Houses of Parliament, ii. 518; his 
 death, 630 
 
 Edridge, Henry, A.R. A., miniature 
 painter, i. 424; his landscapes, 427 
 
 Edwards, Edward, A.R. A., his Anec- 
 dotes of Painting quoted, i. 66 
 
 Egg, Augustus Leopold, R.A.,his early 
 studies, and first pictures, ii. 358; his 
 choice of subjects, 359; and his art, 
 360 
 
 Enamellers, the early, i. 413 
 
 English School, subjects chosen by 
 artists of, 215 
 
 Engravers, eminent in the 18th Cen- 
 tury, i. 463 
 
 Engraving, not encouraged, i. 464 
 
 Etching Club, constitution and publi- 
 cations, i. 460; the Junior Etching 
 Club, 463 
 
 Etty, William, R.A., his studies manu- 
 factured into pictures, i. 18; his birth 
 and beginnings in Art, ii. 198; comes 
 to London, and enters the Academy 
 Schools, ib.; his patient study, 199; 
 and manner of working, 200; his 
 subjects, 201 ; his colour and flesh 
 painting, 202; commences his great 
 works, 203; " The Combat," ib.; 
 "Judith and Holofernes," 204; criti- 
 cally described, 205 ; " Benaiah," 207 ; 
 his cabinet pictures, 209 ; his works 
 voluptuous, 210 ; landscape back- 
 grounds, 211; death, personal de- 
 scription, 212 
 
636 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Exhibitions, causes which led to their 
 foundation, i. 69 ; their value in Art- 
 teaching, 184 
 
 Faithobne, William, his book illus- 
 trations, i. 437 
 
 Fielding, Theodore Nathan, painted at 
 Halifax, ii. 509 
 
 Fielding, Copley Vandyke, his water- 
 colour art, ii. 510; visitor at Dr. 
 Munro's, ib.; his teaching, and its 
 effects on his art, 511; qualities of 
 his paintings, 512; influence of his 
 art, 513 
 
 Flatman, Thomas, his excellence as a 
 miniaturist, i. 415 
 
 Foreign Artists, their influence on Eng- 
 lish Art, i. 174 
 
 French Artists, their opinion upon 
 English Art, i. 2 
 
 Fresco Painting, adopted for the deco- 
 ration of the Palace at Westminster, 
 ii. 516; its failure and abandonment, 
 545 
 
 Fuller, Isaac, painter, time Charles II., 
 i. 31 
 
 Fuseli, Henry, K.A., born at Zurich, 
 i. 270; educated for the Church, 271 ; 
 takes orders, his first sermon, 272; 
 comes to London, 273 ; Reynolds 
 encourages his wish to try Art, 274; 
 his want of academic training, 276; 
 true uses of academies, ib. ; his studies 
 in Italy, 277; returns and settles in 
 London, marries, 280 ; projects his 
 Milton Gallery, 281 ; causes of its 
 failure, 282 ; keeper of the Royal 
 Academy, 284; his Art-powers, 285; 
 but conventional manner, 287; and 
 neglect of costume, 289 
 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, R.A., his 
 early teaching, i. 154 ; had not the 
 advantages of travelled study, 158; 
 formed his own manner, 159; Rey- 
 nolds's opinion upon his execution, 
 160; compared with Reynolds, 162; 
 permanence of his painting, 163; his 
 manner of painting, 164; simple im- 
 pulsive character, 166; his treat- 
 ment of nature, 167; truthful, with- 
 out mere imitation, 169; death-bed, 
 172 
 
 Gandy, William, portrait painter at 
 
 Exeter, i. 114 
 Generalization, its true value in Art, 
 
 i. 99 
 
 Genre-Painters — Wilkie, Mulready, and 
 Leslie compared, ii. 237; their dif- 
 ferent modes of study, 238 
 
 Gilbert, Stuart Newton, R .A ., his birth 
 and parents, ii. 347 ; journey to 
 Europe, 348; settles in London and 
 studies Art, 349 ; his first pictures, ib. ; 
 Vicar of Wikefield, 351 ; Spanish 
 subjects, 352; "Portia and Bassanio," 
 353; his marriage, and early death, 
 354; opinion upon his works and art, 
 355; his companionship, 356; great 
 vanity, 357 
 
 Gilpin, Sawrey, animal painter, worked 
 with Barret, i. 108; character of his 
 art, 350 
 
 Gilpin, William S., first president of the 
 Water-Colour Society, i. 469. 
 
 Girtin, Thomas, water-colour drafts- 
 man, i. 387; his birth and Art train- 
 ing, 388; associated with the young 
 artists at Dr. Munro's, 389 ; his 
 places of study, 390; originality of 
 his water-colour manner, 391 ; the 
 peculiarities of his art, 392; estimate 
 of his place as an artist, 395; alleged 
 intemperance, 398; death, 400; com- 
 pared with Turner, 401 
 
 Glover, John, water-colour painter, 
 i. 514; commences Art, 515; emi- 
 grates to Australia, 516; his manner, 
 517 
 
 Gordon, Sir J. Watson, R A., his family 
 connections, ii. 76; educated for the 
 army, turns to Art, 77 ; portrait 
 painter, the celebrities of Edinburgh 
 sit to him, ib.; opinion upon his art, 
 78 
 
 Graham, John, master of Trustees' 
 
 School, Edinburgh, ii. 76 
 Gravelot, Henri, designer and engraver, 
 
 i. 438 
 
 Greese, John, fashionable drawing 
 
 master, i. 505 
 Guhl, Dr. Ernst, a German Art-critic, 
 
 ignores the English school, i. 4 
 
 Hamilton, William, R.A., his water- 
 colour drawings, i. 408 ; and book 
 designs, 439 
 
 Hamilton, Lady, her strange history, 
 i. 219 
 
 Harlow, George Henry, early bent of 
 his genius, ii. 70 ; pupilage and 
 quarrel with Lawrence, 7 1 ; character, 
 ib. ; encouragement as a portrait 
 painter, 72; " Trial of Queen Katha- 
 rine," 74; visited by Fubeli, 75; his 
 art over-rated, 76 
 
INDEX. 
 
 637 
 
 Havell, William, water-colour painter, 
 i. 518; commences Art, 519; accom- 
 panies the embassy to China, 520; 
 and visits India, ib.; studies in Italy, 
 521; his- troubles, 522; character of 
 his works, 523 
 
 Haydon, Benjamin Robert, born at 
 Plymouth, ii. 172; comes to London 
 and commences Art, 173 ; his first 
 picture, 174; and " Dentatus," 176; 
 his vain expectations and disappoint- 
 ment, 177; enmity to the Academy, 
 178; " Lady Macbeth," 179; "Judg- 
 ment of Solomon," 180 ; " Christ's 
 Entry into Jerusalem," 182; claims 
 public assistance, 183 ; distress and 
 trials, £6.5 " Lazarus," 185; this work 
 described, 186; increased difficulties, 
 189; Reform Banquet, 190; Lec- 
 tures on Art, 191 ; Fresco competi- 
 tions, 192; painting for bread, 193; 
 his last struggles and death, 194; 
 opinion of his art, 195 
 
 Hayley, the poet, his flattery of Romney, 
 
 i. 241 
 
 Hayman, Francis, RA., historical 
 painter, i. 42 ; and book illustrator, 438 
 
 Hazlitt, William, his connection with 
 Northcote, i. 316 
 
 Heaphy, Thomas, water-colour painter, 
 
 ii. 473; early pictures, 475; "Hastings 
 Fish Market," 475; follows the army 
 through the Peninsula, 476 ; paints 
 " The Duke of Wellington and his 
 Staff," ib. ; unfriendly to the Aca- 
 demy, 477 ; agitates to found the 
 Suffolk Street Society and the New 
 Water-Colour Society, ib. ; his art, 478 
 
 Herbert, John R., R.A., his works in 
 the Houses of Parliament, ii. 543 
 
 Highmore, Joseph, illustrates Pamela, 
 i. 439 
 
 Hilliard, Nicholas, his early distinction 
 
 as a miniature painter, i. 26 ; character 
 
 of his art, 414 
 Hills, Robert, water - colour painter, 
 
 i. 505; his studies of animals, 506; 
 
 opinion of his art, 507 
 Hilton, William, R.A., ii. 167 ; his 
 
 pupilage, 168; first subjects, 169; his 
 
 "Christ Crowned with Thorns," ib.; 
 
 marriage, 170; his unsold works, ib.; 
 
 their decay, 171; " The Crucifixion " 
 
 described, ib. 
 History Painters, the first of the English 
 
 school, i. 186; progress of their art, 
 
 533 
 
 Hofland, Thomas C, his career and 
 art, ii. 575 
 
 Hogarth, William, his opinion upon the 
 unfitness of his countrymen to excel 
 in Art, i. 5; describes the arts of the 
 
 dealers in old masters, 13; spurious 
 manufacture of his drawings, 16; the 
 founder of the English school, 44; his 
 personal description, 46 ; the origi- 
 nality of his art, 48; his "Marriage 
 a la Mode " described and criticised. 
 49; his clever accessories and back- 
 grounds, 53; Art qualities and cha- 
 racteristic drawing, 57; discovery of 
 a wall painting in his manner, 59; his 
 portraits, 89; his early book illustra- 
 tions, 438; Walpole's opinion upon 
 his art, 529 
 
 Holland, Sir Nathaniel, by change of 
 name, i. 292 
 
 Hone, Nathaniel, R.A., enamel and por- 
 trait painter, i. 419 
 
 Hoppner, John, R.A., account of his 
 birth, ii. 47 ; and questions of his 
 parentage, ib.; chorister in the Chapel 
 Royal, then tries Art, 48 ; his first 
 portraits, 49 ; Court influence, ib.; 
 rivalry with Lawrence, 50 ; character 
 of his portraits, 52; death, 53 
 
 Hoskins, John, early miniature painter, 
 
 i. 27 
 
 Howard, Henry, R.A., his education, 
 
 ii. 165 ; early success, and visit 
 to Italy, ib.; his first pictures, 166; 
 subjects from the poets, 167; opinion 
 upon his art, ib. 
 
 Hudson, Thomas, portrait painter, i. 
 
 41 ; master of Reynolds, 112 
 Humphrey, Ozias, R.A., miniature 
 
 painter, i. 420 
 Hunt, William, his birthplace, ii. 502; 
 
 inducements to Art, 503 ; apprenticed 
 
 to Varley, 504; character of his art, 
 
 507; his best works, 508 
 
 Ibbetson, Julius Caesar, i. 109 
 Institute of Painters in Water Colours, 
 i. 483 
 
 Jackson, John, R.A., his birthplace 
 and friends, ii. 66 ; comes to Lon- 
 don^; travels on the Continent, ib.; 
 his success as a portrait painter, 68; 
 personal character, 69 
 
 James, William, an imitator of Cana- 
 letti, i. 92 
 
 Jamesone, George, greatly distinguished 
 in Scotland by his portraits, i. 80 
 
 Jenkins, Mr., collecting materials for a 
 work on Water-Colour Art, i. 485 
 
 Jervas, Charles, portrait painter, i. 41 
 
 Johnson, Robert, pupil of Bewick, his 
 great talent and early death, i. 459 
 
638 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Kauffman, Angelica, R.A., her talents 
 and charms, i. 176; deceived by an 
 adventurer, 177; opinion upon her 
 paintings, 178; her designs for books, 
 439 
 
 Kirk, Thomas, designer and miniature 
 painter, i. 454 
 
 Kit-cat Club, portraits of, i. 233 
 
 Knapton, Francis, distinguished as a 
 crayon painter, i. 41 
 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, his arrival and 
 employment in England, i. 34; his 
 historical portrait painting, 38 eques- 
 trian portrait of William III. criti- 
 cised, 40 
 
 Kiigler, Franz, English Art little noticed 
 in his Handbook of Painting, i. 4 
 
 Lambert, George, scene painter, i. 89 
 Lance, George, painter of still life, ii. 
 585 
 
 Landscape painting, state of, i. 533 
 Landseer, Sir Edwin, K. A., commission 
 
 for the Houses of Parliament, ii. 537, 
 
 539 
 
 Langford, his well-known picture auc- 
 tions, i. 13 
 
 Laniere, Hieronymus, his picture- 
 cleaning tricks, i. 11 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, P.R.A., a pre- 
 cocious boy, ii. 2 ; his early schooling 
 and training, 4; paints portraits at 
 Bath, 5 ; comes to London, 7 ; intro- 
 duction to Reynolds, ib. ; described 
 by Shee, 9; rapid advancement, 10; 
 and fashionable sitters, 1 1 ; character- 
 istics of his art, 13; his "Prospero and 
 Miranda," 14; and " Satan," 15; his 
 art not historic, 17; his rivals, 20; the 
 Princess of Wales, 21 ; visits Paris, 
 ib. ; patronized by the Regent, and 
 knighted, 22 ; commission to paint 
 the Allied Sovereigns, 23; travels to 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, 24 ; and on to Rome, 
 25; his reception there, 26; President 
 of the Academy, ib.; the Waterloo 
 Gallery, 27; his best portraits, 28; 
 sudden illness and death, 30; personal 
 character, 31 ; his pecuniary difficul- 
 ties, 32; collection of drawings, ib.; 
 fashion and costume, 33 ; composition 
 of his pictures, 34 ; opinions of his 
 contemporaries, 35 ; his art and 
 manner of painting, 37 ; loses his 
 early facility, 38; his influence on 
 Art, 39 
 
 Le Blanc, the Abbe, state of portrait 
 
 painting in England, i. 67 
 Lely, Sir Peter, an esteemed portrait 
 
 painter, i. 30 
 
 Leslie Charles Robert, R.A., born in 
 London, ii. 230; taken to America, 
 231; his education, 232; and appren- 
 ticeship, 233; early love of Art, ib. ; 
 comes to England to study, 234; ad- 
 mitted to the Academy schools, 235; 
 his classic attempts, 237 ; manner of 
 commencing his picture, 241 ; his 
 class of subject, 244; " SanchoPanza," 
 245 ; his colouring, influence of New- 
 ton, and of Constable, 250; visits the 
 Continent, 327; " Slender and Anne 
 Page," ib.; "Sir Roger deCoverley," 
 329 ; introduction to Lord Egremont, 
 330 ; " Sancho Panza and the 
 Duchess," 331 ; friendship with 
 Washington Irving, 333; the "Din- 
 ner at Page's House," ib.; this pic- 
 ture described, 335 ; Journey to 
 America and return, 337; advocates 
 admission of Engravers to the Aca- 
 demy, 339; family influences on his 
 art, 341; his charming delineation of 
 female beauty, 343; his art, and per- 
 sonal character, 345 
 Lens, Bernard, miniature painter, i. 416 
 Limoge, enamellers, their portrait art, 
 i. 413 
 
 Literary Club founded, i. 149 
 
 Locke, thinks drawing should form part 
 of a general education, i. 8 
 
 Loggan, David, his portrait frontis- 
 pieces, i. 437 
 
 London Corporation, state of their 
 pictures in the Guildhall, i. 342 
 
 Loutherbourg, Philip de, R.A., em- 
 ployed as a scene painter, i. 182; 
 merit of his landscape art, 183; his 
 " Eidophusicon," ib. ; his mad peculi- 
 arities, 184 
 
 Lyric odes to the Royal Academicians, 
 i. 538 
 
 Maclise, Daniel, R A., his works in 
 
 the Houses of Parliament, ii. 543 
 Macklin's Bible and Poets, i. 281 
 Manner, part of an artist's idiosyncrasy, 
 ii. 484 
 
 Mantua, the Duke of, Charles I. pur- 
 chases his pictures, i. 11 
 
 Manufacture intimately connected with 
 Art, i. 7 
 
 Martin, David, portrait painter in 
 Edinburgh, ii. 42 
 
 Martin, John, purchases Etty's "Com- 
 bat," ii. 208 ; his birthplace and 
 teaching, 424; " Sadak in Search of 
 the Waters of Oblivion," 426 ; his 
 " Clytie " and " Joshua," " Belshaz- 
 zar's Feast," 428 ; illustrations to 
 
INDEX. 
 
 639 
 
 Paradise Lost, 430; his ingenious 
 projects, 431 ; peculiarity of his art, 
 and criticism upon it, 434; differ- 
 ences with the Academy, 429, 434 
 
 Meyer, Jeremiah, R. A., miniature 
 painter, i. 419 
 
 Milton Gallery, undertaken by Fuseli, 
 i. 281 
 
 Miniature painters, excellence of the 
 early, i. 26; their processes, 367; de- 
 scribed by Henry Peacham, 370; 
 definition of the art, 413; supplanted 
 by photography, 434 
 
 Monamy, Peter, clever marine painter, 
 i. 91 
 
 Morland, George, trained to Art by his 
 father, i. 351 ; his precocity, ib.; early 
 career and dissipated habits, 354; 
 debts and difficulties, 356; melancholy 
 death, 358; causes of his popularity, 
 359; makes use of his low associates, 
 360; "The Deserter," 361 ; fraudu- 
 lent multiplication of his pictures, 
 362; his rank as an artist, 363 
 
 Morland, Henry, father of George Mor- 
 land, i. 351 
 
 Mortimer, John Hamilton, A.R.A., his 
 early promise, i. 453 ; merits of his 
 drawings, and premature death, 454 
 
 Moser, Michael, R.A., ornamentist and 
 teacher, i. 418 
 
 Moser, Marv, R A., flower painter, i. 
 418 
 
 " Mousehold Heath," a landscape by old 
 Crome, cut in two and again re- 
 joined, i. 16 
 
 Miiller, William J., early attachment to 
 Art, ii. 464; first works, 465; visits 
 the East, ib. ; opinion of his genius, 
 466 
 
 Mulready, William, RA., early love of 
 Art, ii. 224; his schooling, 225; early 
 Art studies, 227; marriage, 228; his 
 first attempts in Classic Art, 229; 
 invented the incident he painted, 241 ; 
 his subjects from Goldsmith, 242; 
 Landscape Art, 299; "The Rattle," 
 300; competes for premium of the 
 British Institution, 301 ; his " Car- 
 penter's Shop," ib. ; described, 302; 
 rivalry with Wilkie, 304; " The Bar- 
 ber's shop," 305; a study of charac- 
 ter, ib. ; his efforts to live, 306 ; 
 Landscape Art, 307 ; " The Fight In- 
 terrupted," 309; described and cri- 
 ticised, 311; "Convalescent from 
 Waterloo," ib. ; alters his manner of 
 painting, 313; "Interior of an Eng- 
 glish Cottage," 315: culmination of 
 his art, 316 ; " The Seven Ages," 
 317; "Choosing the Wedding Gown," 
 318; and "Train up a Child," 319; 
 
 his vehicles and methods, 320; his 
 elaborate drawings, 321 ; earnest 
 study from the life, 322; domestic 
 habits, 323; sudden death, 324 
 Munro, Dr., his help to young artists, 
 i. 389, ii. 510 
 
 Nasmyth, Patrick, his education in 
 Edinburgh, ii. 459; and Landscape 
 Art, 460 
 
 National Gallery, formation of, ii. 570; 
 . does not represent the British school, 
 571 
 
 Nattes, John Claude, expelled from 
 Water-Colour Society, i. 471 ; his 
 publications, ib. 
 
 Nicholson, Francis, his practice in 
 water colours, i. 524 
 
 Nixon, James, miniature painter, i. 420 
 
 Northcote, James, RA., serves his ap- 
 prenticeship to his father, a watch- 
 maker, i. 293; becomes a pupil of Sir 
 J. Reynolds, 294; visits Italy, ib.; 
 returns and settles in London, 295; 
 paints portraits and homely domestic 
 scenes, 296 ; paints for the Shaks- 
 peare Gallery, 297 ; his " Wat Tyler," 
 299; Rivalry with Opie, 301; criti- 
 cism on his Shakespeare subjects, 
 303; "The Burial of the Young 
 Princes," 305 ; his incongruous cos- 
 tume, 307 ; and non-observance of 
 the unity of time and place, 309 ; 
 " The Diligent and Dissipated Ser- 
 vant," 311 ; success as an animal 
 painter, 313 ; his writings on Art, 
 315; personal character, 317 
 
 Norwich Society, The, its scheme and 
 objects, ii. 366 ; a division in the 
 society, 371; the society unsupported, 
 ceases to exist, 379 
 
 O'Connor, James, landscape painter, 
 ii. 437 
 
 Oliver, Isaac, his excellence as a minia- 
 ture painter, i. 26 
 
 Oliver, Peter, continues the succession 
 of miniature artists, i. 27 
 
 Opie, James, R.A., his early career, 
 i. 321; connection with Dr. Walcot, 
 322; arrival in London, 323; alleged 
 jealousy of Northcote, ib.; quits Dr. 
 Walcot, 324; his first marriage and 
 divorce, 325 ; his works and rapid 
 advance in Art, 327; opinion upon 
 them, 328; his "David Rizzio," 329; 
 his personal appearance and intellect, 
 330 ; contributions to the Shaks- 
 
640 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 peare Gallery, 331; his portrait art, 
 333; marries Amelia Alderson, ib.; 
 his incessant application, 335 ; ap- 
 proaching prosperity, failure of health, 
 and death, 335; his last work, ib.; 
 his art and writings, 336 
 
 Pasquin, Antony, his Royal Academi- 
 cians, a Farce, i. 539 
 
 Paton, Richard, landscape painter, i. 92 
 
 Patronage of Art, illusory, ii. 136; see 
 " British Institution," 138; " Fresco 
 Painting," 514 
 
 Paye, Richard Morton, his connection 
 with Dr. Walcot, i. 325 
 
 Payne, William, water colour drafts- 
 man, i. 382 
 
 Pepys, notices of contemporary painters 
 in his diary, i. 32 
 
 Peter Pindar, (Dr. Walcot,) his criti- 
 cism on Art, i. 538 ; his assumed 
 patronage of Opie, 322; and of Paye, 
 325 
 
 Petitot, Jean, excellence of his enamel 
 miniatures, i. 413 
 
 Phillips, Thomas, R.A., apprenticed to 
 a glass painter, ii. 64; comes to Lon- 
 don and employed by West, P.R.A., 
 64; tries Historic Art, 65; but finds 
 his place as portrait painter; opinion 
 upon his portraits, ib. 
 
 Photographic Portraiture, its defects, 
 i. 435 
 
 Pictures, few of an early date now exist 
 in England, i. 10 ; their rubbed, 
 cleaned, and damaged condition, ib. ; 
 alteration and transformation of, 15; 
 destruction of, 20; and hints for their 
 preservation, ii. 558; little care taken 
 of, 599 ; suggestions for proper pack- 
 ing, 603; advice on repairs, 609 
 
 Picture- cleaners and restorers, ii. 605 
 
 Pitt, Mr., regrets his want of know- 
 ledge of the fine arts, i. 8 
 
 Portraits, neglect and destruction of, 
 i. 21; Kit-cat Club portraits, i. 233 
 
 Portrait painting, its high estimation, 
 
 i. 412; progress of the art, 531 
 Practical Art Department, its forma- 
 tion, ii. 562; and teaching, 563 
 
 Pre-Raphaelite Art, opinions upon, i. 
 
 95; its general merits criticised, ii. 
 
 617; its principles described, 619; 
 
 aims at exact rather than poetic truth, 
 
 623; not without merit, 625 
 Prout Samuel, his introduction to Art, 
 
 ii. 487 ; connection with Mr. Britton, 
 488; first exhibited drawings, 489; 
 Art publications, 490 ; picturesque 
 architecture his forte, 491 ; his works 
 described, 492 
 
 Pyne, William Henry, water-colour 
 painter, i. 503; his Art writiDgs and 
 publications, 504 
 
 Raeburn, Sir Henry, R.A., appren- 
 ticed in Edinburgh, ii. 42; tries 
 miniature, ib.; then portraits in oil, 
 43 ; his success, 44 ; and honours con- 
 ferred on him, ib. ; opinion upon his 
 Art-merits, 46 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, character of his por- 
 traits, i. 43; his portrait of the Duke 
 of Argyll, 88 
 
 Redgrave, Richard, R.A., success of his 
 plans for teaching design, ii. 565; 
 testimony borne by foreigners, 567 
 
 Replicas, extent to which pictures have 
 been reproduced and sold, i. 1 9 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, P.R.A., birth and 
 education, i. 110; absence of acade- 
 mical teaching, 113; visits Italy, 114; 
 influence of Italian Art, 116; happy 
 in seizing the promptings of nature, 
 120; his experiments in colour, 121; 
 and power as a flesh painter, 122; 
 commences practise in London, 123; 
 paints portraits of the King and 
 Queen, 124; but is not employed at 
 Court, 125; alleged rivalry with 
 Ramsay, ib.; historical subjects, 127; 
 manner of painting, 131; fugitive 
 colours, 132; vehicles and pigments, 
 133; mineral and bituminous, 139; 
 literary talents and friendships, 143 ; 
 his writings and discourses, 144; 
 value of his teaching, 145; his scale 
 of prices, 151; illness and death, 153 
 
 Richardson, Jonathan, portrait painter, 
 i. 41 
 
 Riley, John, distinguished portrait 
 painter, time James II., i. 33 
 
 Roberts, David, R. A., education and ap- 
 prenticeship, ii. 451 ; early Art career, 
 452; joins the Suffolk Street Society, 
 ib.; visits Egypt and Syria, 453; and 
 Italy, 454; his choice of subject, 455; 
 and published works, ib.; his art and 
 treatment of subject, 456; "Views 
 on the Thames," 457 
 
 Robertson, Andrew, miniature portrait 
 painter, i. 427 
 
 Robson, George Eennel, early love of 
 Art, ii. 497; comes to London, 498; 
 and tries water-colour painting, ib.; 
 his Highland studies, 499; untimely 
 death. 501 
 
 Romney, George, his birth and training, 
 i. 235; placed under Steel, a portrait 
 painter, marries and abandons his 
 wife, 236; ccmes to London and tries 
 
INDEX. 641 
 
 history, 237; visits Italy, 238; re- 
 turns and settles to portrait painting, 
 239; his success, 241; and rivalry 
 with Eeynolds, 242 ; Hayley's poetic 
 flattery, 243 ; does not seek academic 
 honours, ib.; his historic subjects, 
 245; melancholy temperament, 247; 
 Lady Hamilton, 248; rejoins his 
 family, 251; his character, 252; and 
 art, 253 
 
 Ross, Sir William Charles, E.A., his 
 first Art attempts, i. 432 ; his historic 
 pictures, 432; success as a minia- 
 turist, his distinguished sitters, 433 ; 
 death, 434 
 
 Rouquet, Mons., on institutions for 
 teaching Art in England, i. 65; 
 describes the employment of Van- 
 haken by portrait painters, 67; the 
 school of animal painters, 344 
 
 Rubens, repairs of his ceiling in the 
 Banqueting House, Whitehall, i. 12 
 
 Saint Martin's Lane Academy, i. 70; 
 
 taught only the stale traditions of 
 
 Art, 112, 155 
 Saint Paul's Cathedral, offer of the 
 
 artists to decorate, i. 266 
 Sandby, Paul, R. A., one of the founders 
 
 of water-colour Art, i. 381 
 Scott, Samuel, marine painter, i. 91 
 Serres, Dominic, RA., character of his 
 
 art, i. 93 
 
 Serrcs, John Thomas, clever marine 
 
 painter, i. 93 
 Seymour, James, horse painter, i. 346. 
 Shakspeare Gallery, its origin, i. 268; 
 
 works for by Northeote, 297; by 
 
 Opic, 331 
 
 Sharpe, Michael, known as " Becs-wing 
 Sharpe," i. 339 
 
 Shcc, Sir Martin Archer, P.R.A., his 
 birth and teaching, ii. 56; comes to 
 London, 57; his portraits, ib. ; and 
 historic attempts, 58 ; " Rhymes on 
 Art," and other writings, 59; elected 
 President, 60; evidence before House 
 of Commons' Committee, ib. ; opinion 
 upon his portraits, 63; Haydon's 
 attacks, 'ib.; death, 64; on the em- 
 ployment of fresco, 517; on compe- 
 titions in Art, 523 
 
 Sheepshanks, Mr., gives his collection 
 of pictures to the nation, ii. 441; 
 anecdote of, ib. 
 
 Shelley, Samuel, miniature painter, 
 i. 420 
 
 Sheriff, Charles, miniature painter, 
 i. 420 
 
 Ske-ching Society, account of, i. 485 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Smirke, Robert, R.A., painter and 
 
 designer, i. 455 
 Smiths of Chichester, exaggerated 
 
 opinions of their works, i. 90 
 Smith, John, known as " Warwick 
 
 Smith," i. 385; his water-colour art 
 
 described, 386 
 Society of Arts, Barry's decorations of 
 
 Great Room, i. 207 
 Somerset House Gazette, an Art 
 
 periodical, i. 504 
 Spencer, Jarvis, miniature painter, i. 
 
 417 
 
 Stark, James, pupil of old Crome, ii. 
 372; his "Rivers of Norfolk," 373; 
 settles in London, ib.; nature of his 
 art, 374 
 
 Steel, called " Count Steel," a Cumber- 
 land artist, i. 235 
 
 Stevens, Prancis, one of the originators 
 of the Sketching Society, i. 485 
 
 Stothard, Thomas, R.A., his appren- 
 ticeship, i. 448; early designs, 449; 
 their originality and beauty, 450; 
 marriage, ib.; scope of his art, 451; 
 his great industry, 453 
 
 Streater, Robert, sergeant painter to 
 Charles II., his art, i. 31 
 
 Stubbs, George, A.R.A., fashionable 
 horse painter, i. 347; publishes The 
 Anatomy of the Horse, 347; his 
 popularity, 348 
 
 Sykes, Godfrey, his genius as an orna- 
 mental designer, ii. 568 
 
 Tableaux de Genre, description of 
 this art, ii. 213 
 
 Thornhill, Sir James, his decorative 
 paintings, i. 41 
 
 Topographical Draftsmen, their practice 
 and aims, i. 371 
 
 Turner, John Mallord W., R.A., as 
 water-colour painter, i. 401 ; was the 
 first to develop the art, 402 ; his pro- 
 cesses, 403 ; means he employed, 405 ; 
 avoided opaque colours, 406; his 
 birth and surroundings, ii. 80; not 
 calculated to incite to art, 81; first 
 works, 82 ; his topographical draw- 
 ings, 84; his numerous sketches, 86; 
 their truth and value, 87; academy 
 study, 89 ; sound condition of his early 
 pictures, 90; varnishing days, 91; 
 state of his studio and paintings, 92; 
 his teaching, 93; anecdote of him, 
 94; his lectures, 95; ideal effects, 96; 
 characteristics of his art, 97; con- 
 temporary opinions, 99; principles of 
 his art, 101; his imitations of the 
 great painters, 103; charge of unfair 
 
 75 
 
• 
 
 642 INDEX. 
 
 rivalry, 105; proved unfounded, 107; 
 his water-colour labours, 109; the 
 value of this practice, 111; principles 
 of his later art, 112; description of 
 his "Phryne," 114; and of his "Poly- 
 phemus," 115; and " Shipwreck," 
 117; his rivalry with Claude, 118; 
 their works compared, 119; his person 
 and character, 120; the varnishing 
 days, their value to artists, and anec- 
 dote, 121; Turner's water-colour art, 
 his love of the effects of nature, 125; 
 comparison with Barret, 126; "The 
 Tivoli," and "The Chryses," 126; 
 he repudiated mere imitation, 129; 
 aimed at general truth, 131; his will, 
 133; death at Chelsea, 134; increas- 
 ing value of his works, 135 
 
 Uwins, Thomas, R.A., engraver and 
 designer, i. 455 ; his water-colour 
 drawings, 456; studies in Italy and 
 paints in oil, 457 ; elected into the 
 Academy, ib. ; his opinions upon the 
 management of the British Institu- 
 tion, ii. 252 
 
 Vandekbanck, John, designs for 
 books, i. 438 
 
 Vanhaken, the drapery painter, i. 42, 67. 
 
 Varley, John, water-colour painter, i. 
 492; first efforts, 493; choice of sub- 
 jects, 495; works exhibited, 496; ill- 
 ness and death, 497; his character, 
 499; recollections of him, 500; astro- 
 logical predictions, 501 
 
 Varnishing days — their value to artists, 
 ii. 121 
 
 Vehicles, mischiefs arising from the use 
 of improper, ii. 597 
 
 Vincent, George, pupil of old Crome, 
 ii. 374 ; rapid progress in Art, ib. ; 
 his "Greenwich Hospital," 375; diffi- 
 culties and death, 376 
 
 Wale, Samuel, R.A., book illustrator, 
 i. 438 
 
 "Walpole, Horace, his anecdotes on paint- 
 ing, i. 2 
 
 Walker, Robert, Cromwell's portrait 
 
 painter, i. 30 
 Walton, Parry, keeper of pictures to 
 
 James II., i. 2 
 Ward, James, R.A., his allegory of the 
 
 " Battle of Waterloo," ii. 147 ; his 
 
 talents as an artist and an animal 
 
 painter, 150 
 Water- Colour Art, its origin, i. 365 ; 
 
 and early processes, 367; led to the 
 
 study of Nature, 373 ; and the improve- 
 ment of landscape painting, 375 
 
 Water -Colour drawings, a collection 
 commenced at the South Kensington 
 Museum, i. 380 
 
 Water -Colour Society, foundation of, 
 i. 465; original members, 468; early 
 success, 469 ; regulations, 471 ; re- 
 movals of the exhibitions, ib. ; a rival 
 society formed, 472; reverse of for- 
 tune, 473; secession of members, 474; 
 altered constitution, ib. ; reverts to 
 original plans, 475; does not assist 
 young painters, 476; advantages of 
 exclusiveness, 477; regulations affect- 
 ing the Art, ib. ; the founders of the 
 society, 488 
 
 Water Colours, the Associated Artists 
 in, i. 472; their short existence, 479 
 
 Water Colours, the Associated Painters 
 in, i. 481 ; their original constitution 
 and reconstruction, 482 ; change of 
 name, 483 
 
 Water Colours, the General Exhibition 
 of, i. 484 
 
 Webber, John, R.A., his water-colour 
 Art, i. 372 
 
 West, Benjamin, P.R.A., his introduc- 
 tion to Art, i. 187; compared with 
 that of Barry and Copley, 188; cha- 
 racter of West's art, 189; his insipid 
 facility, 190; his birth and early devo- 
 tion to Art, 193; visits Italy and settles 
 in England, 194; patronized by the 
 King, 195; his works criticised, 197; 
 contemporary opinions, 198; abandon- 
 ment of classic costume in modern 
 subjects due to him, 199; his portrait 
 art, 232 
 
 West, Robert L., Master of the Dublin 
 
 Royal Society School, ii. 56 
 Westall, Richard, R.A., his effective 
 
 drawings, i. 408; and book designs, 
 
 454 
 
 Westall, William, A.R. A., his landscape 
 designs, i. 455 
 
 Wheatley, Francis, R.A., his landscape 
 art and book designs, i. 440 
 
 White, Robert, engraver ad vivum,i. 437. 
 
 Wilson, Richard, R.A., and his contem- 
 poraries, i. 87; commences Art as a 
 portrait painter, 93 ; principles of his 
 art, 96; his palette, and manner of 
 painting, 101; state of his pictures, 
 102; his great merits unappreciated 
 in his day, 103 
 
 Wilkie, David, R.A., parentage and 
 teaching, ii. 217; student in Trustees' 
 Academy, Edinburgh, 219; " Pitlassie 
 Fair," 221; comes to London, 222; 
 invents his subject, 244; little sense 
 of beauty, 248 ; his colour and manner 
 
INDEX. 
 
 643 
 
 of painting, 251 ; the " Parish Beadle," 
 253, 275; "Alfred," and " RentDay," 
 259 ; "Village Festival," 261 ; vehicles 
 and varnishing, 262; serious illness, 
 263; exhibits his own works, 265; 
 imputed Academy jealousies, 266 ; 
 hanging committees, 267; visits the 
 Continent, 268; "The Reading a 
 Will," 269; "Gazette of the Battle 
 of Waterloo," 271; picture described, 
 272; the characters and locality, 273; 
 appointed King's limner, 276; family 
 afflictions, 277; ill-health and Italian 
 travel, 279; visits Spain, 281 ; Spanish 
 Art, 283; opinion upon his changed 
 manner, 285 ; his weak drawing, 286 ; 
 "King's Entry into Holyrood," 287; 
 " John Knox," 288; his portrait art, 
 289; voyage to the East, 291; induce- 
 ments to the journey, 292; illness and 
 sudden death, 293; probable effects 
 of his Eastern study, 294 ; personal 
 appearance and character, 295; his 
 nationality, 296; influence of his art, 
 ib. ; on the use of fresco, 522 
 
 Wilson, Charles Heath, report on fresco 
 painting, ii. 530 ; letter on instruction 
 in design, 544 
 
 Wilson, John, landscape and marine 
 painter, ii. 581 
 
 Wine and walnuts, papers by Pyne, i. 
 504 
 
 Wolcot, Dr., his assumed patronage of 
 Opie, i. 322; and of Paye, 325; his 
 licence and personalities, 538 
 
 Wootton, John, animal painter, i. 344 
 
 Wright, Joseph (of Derby), birth and 
 pupilage under Hudson, i. 256; patro- 
 nized in his native county, 256 ; paints 
 landscape under artificial lights, 257; 
 marries and visits Italy, 257; returns, 
 resides a time at Bath, death, 258; 
 character of his paintings, ib. ; his 
 treatment by the Academy, 260 ; ailing- 
 health and hypochondriac habits, 262 ; 
 his " Experiment with the Air-pump " 
 criticised, 264 
 
 Wright, Michael John, clever portrait 
 painter towards end of 1 7th century, 
 i. 34 
 
 Wright, Mrs., modeller in wax, ii. 48. 
 
 Zoffany, Johann, R.A., his arrival in 
 England and distress, i. 178; followed 
 by success in his art, 179; tries his 
 fortune in India, ib. ; influence on our 
 school, 180 
 
 Zincke, Christian F., enamel painter, i. 
 416 
 
 Zuccarelli, Francesco, R.A., opinions 
 upon his Art, i, 95, 180; his numerous 
 works in our collections, 181 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : Printed by Smith, Elder and Co., Old Bailey, E.C. 
 
PREPARING FOR THE PRESS. 
 
 A DICTIONARY OF ARTISTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ENGLISH SCHOOL, 
 PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, ARCHITECTS, AND ENGRAVERS, 
 
 WITH 
 
 NOTICES OF THEIR LIVES AND WORKS. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL REDGRAVE. 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 
 3 3125 00889 1893