NU 
 
 497 
 . G2 
 B86 
 
 «ir»T«T , .l:fi¥'.ri»:rfW^*:r; 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 ! 
 
 I 
 
 CONSTABLE 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R 
 
 JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 OF 
 
 The following volumes, each illustrated with from 14 to 20 Engravings, 
 are now ready, price 3 J". 6d. : — 
 
 ITALIAN, &c. 
 FRA ANGELICO. By Catherine Mary Phillimore. 
 FRA BARTOLOMMEO. By Leader Scott. 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Dr. J. Paul Richter. 
 MICHELANGELO. By Charles Clement. 
 RAPHAEL. From J. D. Passavant. By N. D'Anvers. 
 TITIAN. By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Oxford. 
 TINTORETTO. By W. Roscoe Osler. From researches at Venice. 
 VERNET and DELAROCHE. By J. Ruutz Rees. 
 
 TEUTONIC. 
 
 HOLBEIN. From Dr. A. Woltmann. By Joseph Cundall. 
 THE LITTLE MASTERS OF GERMANY. 1 By W. B. Scott. 
 REMBRANDT. From Charles Vosmaer. By J. W. Mollett, B.A. 
 RUBENS. By C. W. Kett, M.A., Oxford. 
 
 VAN DYCK and HALS. By Percy R. Head, Lincoln Coll., Oxford. 
 FIGURE PAINTERS of HOLLAND. By Lord Ronald Gower, F.S.A. 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 HOGARTH. By Austin Dobson. 
 REYNOLDS. By F. S. Pulling, M.A., Oxford. 
 GAINSBOROUGH. By G. M. Brock-Arnold, M.A., Oxford. 
 TURNER. By W. Cosmo Monkhouse. 
 
 WTLKIE. By J. W. Mollet, B.A., Brasenose College, Oxford. 
 LANDSEER. By Frederic G. Stephens. 
 
 The following volumes are in preparation : — 
 VELAZQUEZ. By Edwin Stowe, M.A., Oxford. 
 GIOTTO. By Harry Quilter, M.A., Trinity Coll., Cambridge. 
 ALBRECHT DURER. By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Oxford. 
 CORREGGIO. By M. Compton Heaton. 
 
 1 An Edition de luxe, containing 14 extra plates from rare engravings in the 
 British Museum, bound in Roxburgh style, may be had, price I or. 6d. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/gainsboroughandcOObroc 
 
I 
 
" The whole world without Art would be o?ie great wilderness. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 BY GEORGE M. JBROCK-ARNOLD, M.A., 
 
 HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON. 
 
 1881. 
 
{All rights reserved.) 
 
 LONDON I R, CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR 
 BREAD STREET HILL, £.C. 
 
 THE J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 TO a few lovers of English Landscape Art this little 
 volume will, I hope, be acceptable, notwithstanding its 
 obvious deficiencies. 
 
 The lives of these eminent painters of our rural scenery 
 present many striking points of resemblance, and some sad 
 points of contrast. Born amidst the same scenes, and 
 educated under like influences, they were alike in their 
 adoration of Nature, their allegiance to true Art, and 
 their unwearying life of toil ; but their professional careers 
 were very different. 
 
 Gainsborough started on his career with the warm 
 sympathy and approval of all whose opinion he valued ; 
 and although his merits as a landscape painter did not 
 obtain adequate recognition in his lifetime, his career as a 
 portrait painter was a history of successes almost from 
 the first. 
 
 Constable, at the outset, was dejected and enfeebled by 
 the opposition of his relatives, and, during his career as a 
 painter, had a few clear-sighted admirers, but many .severe 
 and misguided critics; and, save for the conviction which 
 always sustained him, that posterity would do him justice 
 by its verdict, he lived and died a disappointed man. 
 
 Both these painters were men of manly and independent 
 character. Dissatisfied to some extent with the style of 
 the great continental masters, thinking them not natural 
 enough, that they displayed too much art and design, unable 
 
 3oS 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to acquiesce in their tenets, they both went to Nature to 
 find where the improvement was required. 
 
 For the biographical information contained in the fol- 
 lowing pages 1 am almost entirely indebted to the works 
 of Messrs. Fulcher and C. R. Leslie. These books, though 
 admirable in many respects, are not very rich sources of 
 information. In Gainsborough's case this is not surprising. 
 In Ipswich, where he had lived for many years, Constable 
 was unable, in 1797, " to learn anything of consequence 
 respecting him," and, with the exception of Thicknesse's 
 contemptible pamphlet, no biographical notice of the artist 
 appeared until the year 1829. In that year Allan Cun- 
 ningham devoted twenty-eight pages of his " Lives of the 
 Painters " to Gainsborough. Fulcher's labours were inter- 
 rupted by death, and had to be completed by his son. 
 
 Probably, apart from his professional labours, his life 
 was somewhat uneventful, and from the year 1745 onwards 
 might well be summed up in the familiar phrase, " he 
 married and lived happily ever afterwards." The anecdotes 
 recorded in his biography seem to me for the most part 
 singularly uninteresting, and I have quoted two or three 
 only. 
 
 Leslie's life of Constable is a charming work, but is for 
 the most part made up of the artist's letters, as the title 
 states. It gives one a delightful insight into the inner 
 life of the artist ; but the reader who seeks to collect many 
 facts respecting the events of Constable's life will find that 
 it was not the author's chief aim to supply them. I have also 
 consulted with much pleasure and benefit Messrs. Pedgraves' 
 Century of Painters; Wornum's Epochs of Painting ; Dr. 
 Waagen's Art Treasures in Great Britain ; and an admirable 
 essay in the Quarterly Review, February, 1809. 
 
 G. M. B-A. 
 
 Brighton, October, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOBOUGH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER — THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 PAINTERS 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 biographical sketch — Born at Sudbury — Education — Sent to 
 London — Returns to Sudbury — Marries Margaret Burr — Meets 
 with Philip Thicknesse — Takes a house at Bath — Made a Royal 
 Academician — Returns to London — His fame — His Death . 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF GAINSBOROUGH 54 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF GAINSBOROUGH 76 
 
 JOHN CONSTABLE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 biographical sketch— Born at East Bergholt— Sent to School at 
 Lavenham, and afterwards at Dedham — Introduced to Sir 
 George Beaumont— Sent to London— Marries Maria Bicknell— 
 Made an Associate of the Royal Academy — Takes a house in 
 Well Walk, Hampstead— Death of his Wife— Made a Royal 
 Academician — The zenith of his career — His Death 79 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HIS PRODUCTIONS 
 
 PICTURES BY GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 PICTURES BY CONSTABLE 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF CON STAB f.K 
 
 INDEX 
 
 110 
 
 123 
 
 124 
 
 125 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 portrait of thomas Gainsborough, R. a Frontispiece 
 
 THE BROOK 25 
 
 YOUNG LAVINIA 32 
 
 THE BLUE BOY 42 
 
 THE HONOURABLE MRS. GRAHAM 50 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE 55 
 
 RUSTIC CHILDREN 64 
 
 THE COTTAGE DOOR 74 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF JOHN CONSTABLE, R. A Frontispiece 
 
 A LOCK ON THE STOUR 78 
 
 ON THE STOUR 83 
 
 YARMOUTH PIER 91 
 
 OSMINGTON, NEAR WEYMOUTH 99 
 
 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL, FROM THE MEADOWS 105 
 
 THE CORN-FIELD 109 
 
 THE VALLEY FARM 117 
 
GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF LANDSCAPE PAINTERS. 
 
 IT was in the last quarter of the last century that the British 
 School of Painters assumed a position so pronounced that 
 continental critics could no longer either ignore or deny its 
 claims. Until then they had looked down on this country with 
 sovereign disdain, considering it a land of mere unenlightened 
 "barbarians, wealthy in money but uncultivated in all matters 
 relating to the Fine Arts : n splendid market indeed for the sale 
 of their own artists' productions, but beyond a consideration as 
 to the price which our collectors, and those who fancied they 
 were connoisseurs, might be induced to pay for the paintings and 
 sculpture created by their own heaven-born genius, unworthy of 
 one serious thought. But at the epoch of which we are speaking 
 a school of native artists sprung up in this country, and its 
 distinctive characteristic was Landscape, the most modern branch 
 of the Art of Painting. 
 
 The present high fame and reputation of this English 
 School, which has during its comparatively brief existence 
 already produced so many painters of more than average 
 
 LP B 
 
GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 merit, and several worthy to be ranked with the most gifted 
 geniuses of Italy, Holland, and Flanders, is in no small 
 degree owing to the number of artists who have excelled in 
 depicting the scenery of Nature as she appears in all her pristine 
 glory. The English landscape painters as a body have distanced 
 all others in the excellence to which they have brought this 
 branch of their art, and by their skill therein they have raised 
 it to a more important position than it has ever before occupied 
 in the whole history of art. What the Quattrocento and 
 Cinquecento painters of Italy did for painting as a whole — what 
 Titian did, up to a certain point, for landscape when he- intro- 
 duced it into his pictures — that have the English done for the 
 art of representing nature, pure and simple, on their canvases. 
 That such should be the case is not surprising ; for the loveliness 
 of our native country, with its exquisite verdure prevailing 
 throughout the year, its sweet woodlands with their infinite 
 variety of foliage, its budding hedge-rows, fairylike forest-glades, 
 picturesque homesteads and hamlets, golden corn-fields and 
 emerald meadows, and above all the indescribable atmospheric 
 effects of our northern skies, the boundless wealth and glory of 
 godlike light and shade, those wondrous cloud pictures, unknown 
 to Italian painters — would alone supply subjects more than 
 sufficient to fill the canvases of every painter who has ever lived 
 or is yet to come, and convey to minds, even the most conventional 
 and unimpressionable, a vivid perception of the surpassing, all- 
 sufficient beauty of Nature. What is surprising, however, is 
 that an English School of painters should not have long before 
 sprung up, and by representing the scenes by which they were 
 on all sides surrounded, have won such deathless fame as did 
 the Cinquecento painters in other branches. 
 
 But the manifestation of the aesthetic genius of a nation is often 
 controlled by remote causes, and operated upon by circumstances 
 that escape the observation of any but the most inquiring and 
 persevering historian. The tardy uprising of the English 
 School of painting is a subject which opens out a field of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 speculation too wide for our present consideration. 1 It is 
 sufficient for our purpose that such a school did arise ; and it 
 is of the circumstances attendant upon the development of the 
 art of landscape-painting especially, in the last century, that we 
 now propose to take a retrospect. 
 
 uring the transient sunshine which in the early reign of 
 Charles I. had thrown its vivifying rays on art, some seeds 
 of true taste had been sown, which from time to time during 
 the succeeding century here and there cropped up, resulting at 
 last in a harvest of native artists whose genius and merits, 
 though for a time neglected and ignored in favour of the claims 
 of foreigners and their English imitators, finally triumphed in 
 the firm establishment of a healthy, flourishing, permanent, 
 genuinely English School. 
 
 But for the seventy years following the Eestoration, the tale of 
 Art in England is a sorry one. 
 
 Kneller had succeeded Lely in 1680, and succeeded, too, in 
 debasing art to the lowest possible pitch. This man, who in the 
 course of his career painted portraits of ten Sovereigns, of 
 everyone known to fame between the years 1674 and 1723, and 
 of many now buried in oblivion, did more to lower and vitiate 
 the public taste than did ever Commonwealth, neglect, indiffer- 
 ence, or any other adverse circumstance. The baneful influence 
 of his style was felt so late as 1752, when Joshua Eeynolds was 
 told that if he wished to succeed as a portrait painter, he must 
 imitate Kneller's style— " Shakespeare in poetry— Kneller in 
 painting— damme," was the coxcomb Ellis's insolent remark to 
 our great portrait painter. 
 
 It is to Kneller, however, that England is indebted for 
 the establishment of the first regular academy for instruction in 
 drawing in this country. This was in 1711 ; Kneller himself, 
 
 1 Dr. Waagen in his < Treasures of Art in Great Britain,' London, 1854, 
 gives a curious summary of this consideration on p. 7, vol. i. 
 
 b 2 
 
4 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 who certainly knew how to draw, was at its head. It was held 
 at a house in Co vent Garden, and amongst the pupils who 
 studied there was Vertue the engraver. 
 
 During all these seventy years the painter's art consisted of 
 portrait -taking, sign -painting, coach -painting, house -painting, 
 decorating, and the like. Truthful imitation of general character- 
 istics was permissible, but exact copying of minute details "was 
 far more esteemed. Poetry had nothing to do with painting. 
 Portraiture was the most profitable line a painter could 
 engage in ; mediocre and indifferent artists found plenty of 
 employment in furnishing shopkeepers with signs. In the 
 fashionable society journal of that day, ' The Tatler,' for 1710, 
 we read that the use of pictures is " to raise in our minds either 
 agreeable ideas of our absent friends, or high images of eminent 
 personages." 
 
 Even twenty years later Hogarth, the emancipator of English 
 art from the thraldom of Continental conventionalism, writing to 
 Lord Bute against the formation of an Art Academy in England, 
 says: " In Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion; in England, 
 vanity is united with it. Portrait painting, therefore, ever has 
 succeeded, and ever will succeed, better in this country than in 
 any other." 
 
 It seems that the practical, shrewd Hogarth at that time 
 doubted whether art, for its own sake, would ever be appreciated 
 here. In this opinion subsequent events prove him to have 
 been mistaken ; and, in fact, the departure from his extremely 
 successful and felicitous style of comic descriptive art for ill- 
 advised attempts at historical composition show that he recog- 
 nised at one time the possibility of a higher taste existing 
 among his fellow - countrymen. To Hogarth is due the 
 gratitude of every admirer of the highest form of landscape 
 painting, for his relentless attacks on the formulas and con- 
 ventionalism of an enervated and deteriorated foreign style, 
 which in his day choked every attempt to depict nature truth- 
 fully. Endowed with genius ; yet shrewd and practical, and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 at the same time sensible, in a far higher degree than is commonly 
 supposed, to poetical and emotional influences, his fearless 
 attacks on the purblind worshippers of the " black masters," 
 and the sledge-hammer force of his common sense arguments 
 (which so shocked and scandalised the elegant and sensitive 
 critics of the day), that the true art of a painter is to depict 
 objects as they really appear, and that to this end he should 
 make living nature rather than the canvases of dead masters 
 his prototype, marked the birth of a higher and purer taste. 
 
 From 1723, a year marked by the death of Kneller and the 
 birth of Joshua Reynolds and George Barret, we are enabled 
 to follow with more satisfaction the history of English painting, 
 and to mark many unmistakeable signs of the growth of a 
 high appreciation and recognition of the incomparable and 
 infinite beauties of nature, untrammelled by the formal restrictions 
 of a false art, und is figured by artificiality and gross allegory. 
 
 Here let us point out a few significant signs of the early 
 century that had heralded the downthrow of the dark era of 
 false art. 
 
 Early in the eighteenth century Eridgeman and Kent had 
 done much to popularise a love of nature unadorned, by intro- 
 ducing a form of landscape-gardening, in which they utterly 
 discarded the trim walks, the geometrical flower-beds, and the 
 fantastically-sculptured shrubs, clipped into the stiff resemblance 
 of almost all things in the air, or the earth, or in the sea, which 
 the French gardener, Le Notre, had first introduced. 1 Several 
 essays in the ' Spectator/ pointing out the superiority of Nature 
 over formality in questions of beauty, also appeared about this 
 time (1714). Pastoral poetry, also, began to take a truer form. 
 In 1714 Gay published his 'Shepherd's Week,' which in literature 
 recalled Englishmen to the beauty and simplicity of nature, and 
 consigned to the limbo of indifference the unnaturalistic, so-called 
 
 1 Among the works of Kent may he mentioned Kensington Gardens, 
 Claremont, Esher, Lord Burlington's at Chiswick, and the grounds at 
 Stovve. 
 
G 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 pastoral poetry of Ambrose Phillips and Pope. In the same year 
 Allan Ramsay, father of the portrait painter, published the first 
 portion of ' The Gentle Shepherd,' and the encouragement this 
 met with led him to continue the work in 1723. These events 
 show that the characteristic English love of nature was not 
 dead. The artistic and literary productions of any age will 
 hardly create such a love, but they may do much to foster it : 
 and we can always find that when contemporaneous popularity 
 attends on such productions, a deeply-rooted true taste is some- 
 where existent in the hearts of the people. The love of nature 
 was innate in the hearts of the English people. Their habits 
 and mode of living had brought them into the closest constant 
 communion with nature in all her phases — in the woods and 
 forests, at the covert side, in the meadows, on the moors, by the 
 brook ; hunting, fishing, husbandry, tending flocks and cattle- 
 all their pursuits, participated in more or less by the highest as 
 well as the lowest, were invincible enemies to conventional and 
 unnaturalistic art. Even under the chilling influence of so 
 entirely unsympathetic a monarch as George II. some hopeful 
 indications of better things might be discovered. But still it 
 was a period of darkness, and if the nation did not entirely go 
 with their monarch when with taste and accent alike bad he 
 pronounced his unlucky dictum — " I hate Boetry and Bainting " 
 — still there can be no doubt that the Royal mind to some 
 extent presented a reflex of the sentiments of society, for paint- 
 ing, and more especially landscape-painting, found but little 
 favour for some years after he ascended the throne. Xeverthe- 
 Jess Horace Walpole dilates upon the interest which was taken 
 • in the fine arts, accounting this reign a shining era in comparison 
 with the deplorable darkness of the preceding one. 
 
 The state of society was not favourable to the cultivation of 
 the peaceful arts. The rage was gambling. It was the vice of 
 nearly the whole of the eighteenth century. Basset, ombre, tic- 
 tac, crimp, were the most absorbing occupation of all classes of 
 society , the rattle of the dice-box was the music they loved, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and many a broad pasture-land changed hands over the green 
 cloth. The poverty of poor Wilson, the miserable remuneration 
 which Hogarth obtained for his pictures, and the depressed con- 
 dition of English painters generally, attest the difficulty of 
 obtaining fame and honour beneath the shadow of a Royal 
 frown. " Face painters," as Hogarth termed them, found toler- 
 able employment, but others, whose genius was undoubted, were 
 glad to earn a precarious livelihood, as we have said, by decorat- 
 ing ceilings and staircases, and painting signboards for trades- 
 men's shops. 
 
 But matters began to improve. " Fashion,'' says Mr. Dutton 
 Cook, " began to take up with taste. Dilettanteism became 
 the vogue. Objects of virtu were now for the first time 
 indispensable appendages of the houses of the aristocracy and 
 the rich." Unfortunately for the English artist the taste was 
 not for his works. Foreign artists and ancient masters were the 
 rage. Cracked canvas and broken marble commanded high 
 prices. The supply was fully equal to the demand. A race of 
 old picture jobbers and antiquity dealers soon sprang into exist- 
 ence from whom a little real and much spurious w-are was readily 
 obtained. The ' London Magazine' for 1737, in an article 
 attributed to Hogarth, inveighs bitterly against these speculators 
 and their endeavours to depreciate any English work in order to 
 enhance the value of their imported ship loads of Christs, Holy 
 Families, and Madonnas, the sweepings of the Continental 
 markets. In Foote's comedy, ' Taste,' which was played at 
 Drury Lane in 1752, the absurd folly of the day was the subject 
 of slashing satire. One of the scenes represents an auction-mart. 
 A picture is brought forward and pronounced an excellent one 
 until it is discovered to be by an Englishman yet living, when 
 it is immediately condemned as "not worth house room." 
 Fragments of statuary, trunks without limbs, a hand of the god- 
 dess Yenus, a leg of Juno, with a swelling on one of the toes, 
 (which the auctioneer explains is a corn), are lauded as master- 
 pieces of the sculptor's art, — and other objects equally and even 
 
8 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 more absurd are puffed up in like manner. The piece apparently 
 hit the public too hard, for after a very brief run it was with- 
 drawn. That it did not run far wide of the truth is evident from 
 the fact, that at the sale of the effects of the sculptor Roubiliac 
 (d. Jan. 1762), a picture by Joslma Eeynolds with seven others 
 were knocked down for the enormous sum of ten shillings. A 
 contemporary author who has given us the most readable sketch 
 of Hogarth and his time, speaking of a period a little later, draws 
 a dismal picture of this period, but furnishes us with an addi- 
 tional explanation of the coming revival in Art taste. " Al- 
 though it is difficult to imagine anything more confused, mis- 
 understood, and hampered with rags and tatters of ignorance 
 than was English art in 1727, Cimmerian darkness did not 
 wholly reign. There were men alive who had heard their 
 fathers tell of the glories of Charles I.'s gallery at "Whitehall; 
 there were some princely English nobles then as now, patrons 
 and collectors. There were treasures of Art in England, and 
 there were amateurs to appreciate them." 
 
 Perhaps the tide turned when Caroline of Anspach, George 
 II. 's queen, a witty, handsome, and accomplished woman, ex- 
 tended the encouragement her lord was slow to give. The 
 revival began, although timidly and with scarce any notice, and 
 Hogarth's victory over folly and bad taste was won. 
 
 The fathers of the English Landscape School practised for 
 the most part in oil. But there is another class of painters 
 whose influence is, perhaps, more marked, and who contributed 
 more largely, possibly, towards the unbounded success of this 
 school than did the followers of the older style. We refer to the 
 water-colour painters, whose practice, originating from a totally 
 different source, at first grew up side by side with, and gradually 
 merged in and became assimilated to, the more ancient method. 
 In one respect the water-colourists had a great advantage over 
 the oil painters in bringing the treatment of landscape to per- 
 fection. From the very first they found themselves face to 
 face with Nature herself : they had to found their style upon 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 0 
 
 her, not upon that of bygone masters. In the works of the 
 early topographic draftsmen, who were the precursors of the 
 water-colour artists, truth of representation was looked for and 
 demanded ; not a general effect, calculated to remind the 
 spectator of some particular master, whose name was a hall- 
 mark whereby the most superficial tyro in connoisseurship 
 might safely pretend to recognise genius and excellence in a 
 picture. Thus, truth, the foundation of excellence in painting, 
 was insisted upon. Beauty, from the very nature of the 
 topographer's employment, would be sure to assert herself. 
 It is true that the original employment of the topographers and 
 early water-colour painters — an outcome of the fashion for 
 antiquarian research and the topographical taste which sprang 
 up early in the last century — was principally confined to making 
 accurate representations of the objects they saw— to making 
 surveyor's elevations of buildings, and panoramic illustrations, 
 bird's-eye views of localities, — and did not aim at works of high 
 art ; it was no business of the draftsmen to introduce such 
 improvements as cloud and light effects into their work, or to 
 busy themselves with poetic conceptions ; they were to induce 
 in the spectator's mind a faithful conception of all the objects 
 they depicted ; but they had no occasion to strive to guide the 
 spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of contemplation, 
 or to express the thoughts and feelings with which the artist 
 regarded those objects. But the everlasting truth, that, to 
 all who are willing to study her, Nature is an open book, 
 that her inexhaustible treasure-gallery of beauty is open to all 
 mankind, was too assertive to permit of any barrier existing 
 between the artists and Nature, or to allow them to be con- 
 fined within any limits circumscribed by set rules or patrons' 
 instructions. 
 
 It is unnecessary here to point out how the old art of water- 
 colour painting with opaque pigments was altogether different 
 treatment from that now practiced ; or that the present art 
 is not even a development of the old one, or a continuation 
 
10 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 of that of the old miniaturists — among whom Cooper and Hill- 
 iard, Englishmen, figure so prominently — although these artists 
 did occasionally use transparent colours. Its origin is wholly 
 with the topographic artists of the last century ; who from 
 making pen and ink sketches of the scenes they were employed 
 to depict, gradually got to filling in the outlines with cold 
 neutral tints ; from that they proceeded to introduce the local 
 colours. 
 
 " By degrees they began to feel the charm with which a scene 
 may be impressed by passing clouds, sunshine, mists, and other 
 atmospheric effects, no less than by the varying beauties of local 
 colour as affected by the changes of season. The result of this 
 appreciation of the lovely effects of nature was that the cold, 
 spiritless, topographical drawings gradually gave way to the 
 beauties and signal excellence of the Water-colour School of 
 Painting in Great Britain." 1 
 
 Of course the earliest water-colour drawings — stained drawings 
 — topographical views — whatever you like to call them, were 
 not equal in merit to the oil paintings of the same time — for 
 the technicalities of oil painting had been carried to the utmost 
 pitch of perfection long before, and where the manipulative 
 processes in this branch of the art were faulty, it was because 
 the artists had forgotten some of the traditions and secrets of 
 their craft. Water-colour painting, on the contrary, was just 
 starting into life, and it is astonishing that in little more 
 than half a century from the time of the topographers' coloured 
 ink sketches to the time when Turner produced his magnificent 
 drawings, a new art should have been born and perfected. 
 That it had its influence on oil-painting, is evident from 
 the great bound with which the new-born British School 
 leapt up. Most of the oil painters practised in water-colours 
 occasionally, and vice versa. Gainsborough painted sometimes 
 in water-colours, and John Cozens, essentially a water-colourist, 
 
 1 Preface to the Catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibition of Water- 
 colour Drawings. 1861. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1 1 
 
 painted sometimes in oil. The two branches, happily for 
 English Art, in an incredibly short time became intertwined. 
 The water-colourists painted in the race of Nature and became 
 steeped in her influence. These were the men who could then 
 appreciate Wilson, because they had learnt to appreciate nature ; 
 appreciating, they would examine his work and compare it with 
 their own, and exert themselves to get greater power out of their 
 system. Then the oil painters, being in the majority of cases 
 water-colourists also, saw innumerable beauties and effects that a 
 close study of nature revealed to such inquirers as Girtin — to 
 such adorers as Cozens. But words, we think, are needless to 
 proclaim the close relationship that existed between the early 
 water-colour and oil painting — does not Turner live in his works 
 to this day 1 And whence did he spring % Such men burst 
 forth into the world like a meteor of blinding brilliancy — so it 
 appears to their successors. In reality Turner was the offspring 
 of the two branches of art, at first distinct, and afterwards united 
 in a bond of perfect sympathy. 
 
 This sketch would be incomplete without a mention of the 
 Marine Painters. At the time when Hogarth was coming into 
 fame, and beginning to know everybody, when his father-in-law 
 had forgiven him for running away with the fair Anne, in con- 
 sideration of his approved genius, his domestic ties did not prevent 
 him from merrymaking now and then at Yauxhall Gardens and 
 elsewhere with professional comrades, such as Frank Hayman ; 
 and in 1732 we are introduced to Samuel Scott, marine and 
 landscape painter, who made one of a party of five on a junket 
 to the Isle of Sheppey. Marine paintings, the only branch of 
 landscape art that had then received any appreciable patronage 
 in England, was followed by a few artists with fair success. 
 It might be supposed that this line of art would have been 
 peculiarly attractive to Englishmen, and that, considering their 
 traditional tastes and pursuits, and the stimulus afforded by the 
 remembrance of the nation's naval glory, a large number of 
 arti&GS excelling in the branch would have been produced. But 
 
12 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 such was not the case. The Dutch Yan de Veldes, father and 
 son, were never excelled or even equalled by our countrymen of 
 that age in depicting marine subjects ; and Monamy, Scott, 
 Brooking, and Serres only imitated them, aided more or Jess by 
 original observation. 
 
 Had our space permitted, it would have been convenient and 
 interesting to have traced the steps which led to the establish- 
 ment of the Eoyal Academy of Arts in 1768. But we must 
 be content with a bare mention of this most important 
 event in the history of English Art ; and also of that ingenious 
 device by which Hogarth and nineteen brother painters brought 
 it to the knowledge of the British public in general, and the 
 world of fashion in particular, that this country had native artists 
 possessed of merit of the highest order ; we allude to the 
 gratuitous decoration of the walls of the Foundling Hospital 
 with the productions of this combination of English painters. 
 The plan succeeded admirably. 
 
 Another valuable source of encouragement to art progress 
 at this period was the Society of Arts, established in 1754, a 
 society which during a period of twenty years expended nearly 
 £8000, besides gold and silver medals and palettes, in preixdums 
 and rewards for painting, sculpture, and architecture. 
 
 Sir Joshua Eeynolds, who had taken no part in the preliminaries, 
 was induced to accept the Presidency of the newly-established 
 Royal Academy, and amongst the original members were Wilson, 
 Hayman, Gainsborough, and other distinguished painters of the 
 day. In 1769 the first of a series of exhibitions, which have 
 been continued annually down to the present time, was held. 
 For a few years the Incorporated Society of Artists existed 
 contemporaneously with them ; the king, after the rapture which 
 led to the foundation of the Royal Academy, had publicly 
 assured this older body that they had his royal favour as well as 
 any other body of artists, an assurance which he made more 
 valuable by a donation of £100. But the Incorporated Society 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 13 
 
 faded in the brilliancy of the Royal Academy, and after 1791 
 was no more heard of. 
 
 The Free Society of Artists should also be mentioned. When 
 the Incorporated Society was established, some of the younger 
 artists, hankering after the premiums and rewards of the Society 
 of Arts, elected to remain under the patronage of that body and 
 to exhibit at their room in the Adelphi. In 1765-6 they 
 held exhibitions on their own account in Maiden Lane, Then 
 they changed to Mr. Christie's Auction Room in Pall Mall, 
 which they assisted him to build. The Free Society came to an 
 end in 1774. 
 
 Of the four splendid names in the annals of art, rendering 
 the eighteenth century so remarkable — Hogarth, Reynolds, 
 Wilson, and Gainsborough — the two latter shine out 
 brightly amongst the most famous of the world's landscape 
 painters. 
 
 Of Wilson, our first English landscape painter, the Messrs. 
 Redgrave say : " Certainly there is this praise due to our 
 countryman ; that our landscape art, which had hitherto been 
 derived from the meaner school of Holland, following his 
 great example, looked thenceforth to Italy for its inspiration ; 
 that he proved the power of native art to compete, on this 
 ground also, with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the 
 way for the coming men, who, embracing Nature as their 
 mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her." 1 Possibly 
 there are some who consider that to Gainsborough is most 
 properly due the title of the first English landscapist; for 
 Wilson was not always free from a tinge of conventionalism 
 in his treatment of landscape. Indeed it would surprise us, 
 when we consider his training, the influence of his Italian study, 
 the neglect with which those of his productions showing original 
 simplicity were received, and the absolute lack of any encourage- 
 ment accorded him by the British public, if he had courted 
 starvation more than he did in order to educate the public to 
 
 1 'A Century of Painters/ Loud. 1866, p. 98, vol. i. 
 
u 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 understand the true wealth of natural beaut} r . His career 
 resembled that of many another combater of ignorance — poverty, 
 neglect, heart-breaking indifference and apathy. Still as far as 
 possible he was loyal to the principles of true art. Mr. Wornum 
 says of his pictures with much truth and judgment : " They 
 generally display the beauties of Salvator Eosa, Euysdael, and 
 Claude combined." 1 The same writer says : " The landscape 
 painters of the last generation were more allied to those 
 of the present school in style than the historical painters are 
 to their successors of our time. The works of Wilson had 
 more influence upon his contemporaries than those of Gains- 
 borough ; he is the pioneer of the English School of landscape 
 painters." 
 
 Considering the painters of this period as a school, we are at 
 once struck with the vastly differing style and treatment 
 characterising its. leading masters : " In other countries artists 
 arranged themselves in the studios of great masters, and followed 
 their precepts, transmitting them as traditions from age to age ; 
 hence there was more than a national similarity in their works. 
 In the British School each artist followed the bent of his own 
 genius ; and if placed under a master in his early career he 
 soon broke loose from such teaching, and sought a way of his 
 own as soon as possible." 2 
 
 Wilson studied under the great masters of Eome — studied 
 examples by the greater masters of bygone days — was taken in 
 hand by Zuccarelli and Yernet, most fashionable authorities — 
 and left them all to seek a way of his own ; he found one, 
 floundered along it, lost heart, hope, position, everything but 
 the way — he never lost that; and others following after him 
 were guided by his tracks. Gainsborough, who received as little 
 human instruction as almost any painter, threw over the Dutch 
 masters who had been set up as an example for him to follow, 
 and sought a way of his own — a way that he knew led to nature 
 
 1 1 Epochs of Painting. ' London. 1864. 
 
 2 ' A Century of Painters,' p. 174, vol. i. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 15 
 
 for it was to nature that he looked to guide him. He, too, at- 
 tained a place with Wilson on the summit of excellence ; like 
 him he reached it by an independent path — by a way of his own 
 seeking. Barret, disdaining human assistance and instruction, 
 sought a way of his own, knowing that nature's light would 
 illumine it for him. It is a matter for regret that this painter 
 did not condescend to learn more of the technicalities of his art 
 — that he did not, so to speak, learn to walk surely and strongly 
 before he ventured abroad in search of the way ; but a road he 
 made for all that. Wright of Derby sought a way for himself, 
 but it did not lead to such an eminence as some others. Cozens, 
 Girtin, and Payne were not content to follow the beaten track 
 which the topographers and Sandby had beaten out. The 
 results of this independence and unrestraint of the founders of 
 the British School of landscape must be looked for in the next 
 generation — in the names and works of Turner, of Constable, of 
 David Cox, and many others whom it would be invidious to 
 particularise. We have a British School of landscape — not a 
 school of Wilson, of Gainsborough, of Wright, or of Cozens. 
 
 Of the technical merits of the school of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury we may be justly proud, considering the drawback of the 
 impatience of our artists at instruction of every description, 
 and the low state to which the mechanical or technical methods 
 of painting had, all over Europe, at that time declined, pari 
 passu with the style and ideal of art. Sir Charles Eastlake was 
 of opinion, in 1828, that all the excellencies of painting are 
 to be found in the Flemish schools, " to whose level we have 
 never risen, for Eeynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Hogarth, aud 
 a few others cannot match the hosts of Flanders and Holland." 
 But this opinion seems scarcely sound. In the works of our 
 own artists are to be found as great and as many excellencies of 
 painting as in the works of the artists of any one country. Of 
 course it would be easy to pick out points of excellence in the 
 paintings of several foreign artists, and declare that such an 
 aggregate of perfection is not exhibited by any one painter of 
 
16 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 our school. But where can such an aggregate of perfection as 
 is contained in the works of the four artists ahove mentioned be 
 seen in any work of any foreign painter % 
 
 We will conclude this sketch with a quotation from M. 
 Eouquet's interesting little work * L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre,' 
 a passage, the truth of which is as pertinent to-day as it was in 
 1755, and which is the keynote to which all observations on 
 English landscape art must resolve. 
 
 "Si les peintres s'attachent toujours a 1'etude de la nature 
 comme il paroit raisonnable de le supposer, ceux qui font le 
 paysage en Angleterre doivent excelier. Eien n'est si riant que 
 les campagnes cle ce pays la, plus d'un peintre y fait usage 
 heureux des aspects charmants qui s'y presentent de toutes parts : 
 les tableaux de paysage y sont fort a la mode, ce genre y est 
 cultive avec autant de succes qu'aucun autre. II y a peu de 
 maitres dans ce talent qui ayent ete beaucoup superieurs aux 
 peintres de paysage qui jouissent aujourd'hui en Angleterre de 
 la premiere reputation." 1 
 
 1 'L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre/ par M. Rouquet, p. 92. 
 
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 TEAYELLEES by the line between Haverhill and Sudbury 
 pass through some of the sweetest rural scenery in England. 
 The valley of the Stour is alike remarkable for its beauty and its 
 fertility. In the latter respect it may be compared with the rich 
 luxuriance of the valleys of the Mle. The heaviest wheat and 
 the brightest barley that the world can produce is grown in this 
 district. The Stour is a sluggish stream but it is a favourite 
 with anglers. The " greedy pike " basks in its shallows and lies 
 secure in its de^p holes, covered overhead with the rich foliage 
 of the yellow and the white water-lily. The perch grows fat on 
 the minnows which swarm in the throat of each little tributary 
 that loses itself in the lazy river. The roach in shoals roam up 
 and down its reaches and lurk in the reedy fringe of its banks 
 or among the thick bulrushes. The wary tench is found there 
 and an abundance of eels. At short intervals the stifled roar of 
 the "undershot" water-mill tells the angler of lively water in 
 the mill- pool, and tyro indeed must he be in the " gentle art " 
 if he cannot fill his creel before the moorhen pipes her shrill 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 croak for her evening meal. It was on the banks of this river, 
 at the little town of Sudbury, that Thomas Gainsborough was 
 born in the year 1727, which would be three years after the 
 birth of Eichard Wilson, the father of English landscape 
 painting. 
 
 The exact day of his birth is not known, but it must have been 
 some time in the spring, for he was baptized in the Independent 
 Meeting House at Sudbury on the 14th of May. His father, 
 Mr. John Gainsborough, seems to have been a man whom many 
 loved and all may admire. He must have changed his trade 
 more than once, being described in 1722 as a " milliner," in 
 1725 as a "clothier," and in 1735 as a " crape maker." He 
 maintained and educated with credit and comfort a family of 
 five sons and four daughters. He had a good and well estab- 
 lished connection, and seems to have been a man of enterprise 
 and resource, for he introduced into Sudbury the shroud trade, 
 in which Coventry had formerly enjoyed a monopoly. He was 
 a fine old man, very particular about the parting of his hair, and 
 remarkable for the regularity and whiteness of his teeth. His 
 demeanour was grave, and the simple country folk used to regard 
 him with awe, hinting that concealed beneath his cloak he 
 always carried some deadly weapons. He was a skilled fencer, 
 and possessed the knack of using his weapon in either hand. 
 He might, perhaps, have become wealthy, but his great kindness 
 of heart rendered him unwilling to press a defaulting debtor and 
 sadly adverse to setting in motion the myrmidons of the law. 
 This amiable weakness becoming notorious, bad debts multiplied 
 and profits diminished. To his honour it should be recorded that 
 he steadily refused to receive " toll," an iniquitous black mail 
 then generally levied in the trade, and amounting to nearly one- 
 third of the spinners' earnings. In religion he was an Inde- 
 pendent, and if he sometimes did a little traffic in contraband 
 goods — for which his occasional trips to Holland on legitimate 
 business gave him many facilities — we must remember that in 
 those days smuggling, so far from being considered morally 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 culpable, was almost regarded as a meritorious act. Fulcher has 
 an amusing story to tell of the manner in which Mr. Gainsborough 
 once routed an extremely weak-minded Revenue Officer. That 
 zealous official stopped the old gentleman's cart one night at a 
 short distance from Sudbury, and not unreasonably suspecting 
 him of carrying some brandy and other contraband articles, stoutly 
 demanded to see what he had in his cart. "I'll show you/' 
 was the ready answer, and catching up a shroud he enveloped 
 his tall figure in the ghostly dress, to the astonishment and 
 speedy departure of his weak-nerved visitor. 
 
 Mr. Gainsborough died in 1748 at the age of sixty-five. 
 
 Mrs. Gainsborough, the artist's mother, was a woman of much 
 refinement and cultivation. She excelled in the graceful art of 
 flower-painting, and it was doubtless she who with tender 
 affection guided Tom's baby hand to trace his first outline. In 
 one respect she was more fortunate than her husband, for she 
 lived to see the public recognition of that artistic genius which 
 both husband and wife had been quick to perceive and prompt 
 to encourage. She was a kind and indulgent mother, proud of 
 her children and of her family, which was " of old standing, well 
 to live and of unblemished reputation." Her sons were all 
 distinguished above their companions by their talents. Her 
 maiden name was Burroughs, and she was the sister of the Rev. 
 Humphrey Burroughs, curate of St. Gregory's, Sudbury, and 
 Head Master of the Grammar School. She died in 1769, when 
 her son was in high repute at Bath, and she is buried in the 
 Independent Cemetery at Sudbury. 
 
 John Gainsborough, the eldest son, familiarly and somewhat 
 disrespectfully known in the neighbourhood of Sudbury as 
 " Scheming Jack," was an eccentric genius, much given to theories 
 and experiments and the construction of models, an occupation 
 which absorbed all his time and most of the money he contrived 
 to get hold of. He was never successful at anything, for what- 
 ever he did — whether he tried to discover the philosopher's stone, 
 — ur to invent wings which should enable men to fly in the air, or 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 to construct a time-piece which would correct the longitude, or a 
 self-working cradle, or a wheel that turned in a still bucket of 
 water — nothing was ever completed so as to become profitable to 
 the inventor. " Curse it," w r as the schemer's way of putting it, 
 " some little thing was wrong ; if I had but gone on with it I 
 am sure I should have succeeded, but a new scheme came across 
 me." After his death a stupendous collection of brass and tin 
 models of every size and form was discovered in his house at 
 Sudbury, but most of them were in an unfinished state. 
 
 Humphrey, the second brother, became an Independent 
 minister, and settled at Henley-on-Thames. He also possessed 
 great mechanical skill and taste. Indeed, it is stated with some 
 good authority that he was the real inventor of that form of the 
 steam-engine for which Watts obtained a patent in 1769. His 
 favourite scientific pursuits do not appear to have hindered the 
 faithful discharge of his duties, and the zeal and efficiency which 
 he displayed elicited an offer, from some influential personage in 
 the neighbourhood, of Church preferment, if lie would consent to 
 take Holy Orders. But he declined the offer. The circum- 
 stances of his death from heart disease were very tragic. He 
 had an engagement to dine with a friend, who finding that he 
 had not arrived at the appointed time, went out to meet him and 
 found his dead body by the road-side. The artist was much 
 attached to this excellent and accomplished man, and has left us 
 a portrait of him which is worthy of his genius and reputation. 
 
 Of the painter's remaining brothers there is little to be said. 
 Matthias died in boyhood from an accident. Eobert migrated 
 to Lancashire, and nothing of the smallest interest is recorded of 
 him. Gainsborough's four sisters were all married — Mary to 
 Mr. Gibbon, a dissenting minister at Bath ; Susannah to Mr. 
 Gardiner of the same city; Sarali to Mr. Dupont of Sudbury; and 
 Elizabeth to Mr. Bird, also a Sudbury worthy. 
 
 As appears to have been the case with all truly great artists, 
 Thomas Gainsborough's art w r as born in him. From the time 
 he was able to toddle about he commenced to observe nature and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 21 
 
 to love her ; and in after years he was wont to say that " there 
 was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of 
 any beauty, nor hedge-row, stem or post " for miles around his 
 home that was not perfectly imprinted on his boyhood's mind, 
 so that had he possessed the necessary executive power he could 
 have reproduced them with his pencil at any moment. 
 
 Round about Sudbury, the country (at that time more thickly 
 wooded than now) is eminently calculated to stimulate a love 
 for landscape. The scenery of the Stour valley, with its gently- 
 rising banks, its emerald pastures, its lovely woodlands, and 
 all the surroundings of rustic felicity, could never fail to charm a 
 mind formed by nature to feed on the beautiful. Like Constable 
 he used gratefully to acknowledge, in after years, that these 
 scenes made him a painter. He has affectionately portrayed 
 these loved haunts of his boyhood in several pictures, as in 
 A view of Henny Church; a Woody Scene (Cornard, near 
 Sudbury) ; and A view near Sudbury. 
 
 The town of Sudbury is of respectable antiquity and full of 
 interest. At that day it consisted of unpaved streets, and con- 
 tained many quaint, ancient, and frequently dilapidated build- 
 ings, with overlapping stories which overshadowed the thorough- 
 fare. It was in these houses that the Flemish weavers brought 
 over by Edward III. had lived and taught their art to the 
 former natives of Sudbury, which, by the way, was not called 
 Sudbury in those days, but Southburgh, by way of contrast with 
 Norwich, the Northburgh. Not the least picturesque of 
 these houses was that in which Gainsborough was born, which 
 had formerly been an inn, known by the sign of The Black 
 Horse. Here and there in the town, heavy picturesque porches, 
 projecting far out from the main buildings to which they were 
 adjuncts, were ornamented with "antediluvian monsters and 
 zoology-defying griffins," all manner of cunningly carved im- 
 possibilities. In a niche in the chancel wall of St. Gregory, a 
 grim stone head of Simon Sudbury, erstwhile Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, had for generations looked down upon all passers 
 
22 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 by ; and hard by stood the ruins of the unfortunate prelate's 
 palace 1 (then used as a poor-house), presenting, with its old Gothic 
 arches and the crumbling tracery of its ruined windows festooned 
 with delicate ivy tendrils, an appearance of picturesque decay. 
 Amid such objects were Gainsborough's early years spent, and 
 it is likely that not only his attention but his pencil also was 
 engaged upon them from a very tender age. Like many other 
 great artists, he began his art education very early in life — early 
 enough indeed, if, as Allan Cunningham says, " At ten years 
 old he had made some progress in sketching, and at twelve was 
 a confirmed painter." Before he was yet ten years old he was 
 placed at his uncle's Grammar School, where, instead of employ- 
 ing his time in toilsome effort to acquire the learning of the 
 schools, he employed himself in making sketches of persons and 
 places on the covers of his books and the backs of his exercises ; 
 much to the delight of his schoolfellows, who worked out his 
 sums and wrote out his exercises for him. 
 
 Little Tom did not make any very great progress with his 
 book learning, as might be expected under the circumstances. 
 Like Constable, however, he showed great proficiency in hand- 
 writing, and this skill he once utilized for his own advantage 
 in the following way. Master Tom much preferred freedom 
 and fresh air to the confinement of the school-room, and he 
 would occasionally coax his parents to give him a holiday, 
 which he would spend in rambling about the neighbourhood 
 filling his sketch-book. Having one day unsuccessfully begged 
 his father to give him this treat, Tom thought perhaps he could 
 arrange the matter diplomatically; so he wrote out the usual 
 form of note, " Please give Tom a holiday," and imitated his 
 fathers handwriting so cleverly that Mr. Burroughs was com- 
 pletely deceived, and the juvenile forger started off for a glorious 
 afternoon, returning in the evening probably with all sorts of 
 sketches of woodland scenery, 
 
 1 Simon Sudbury was beheaded by Wat Tyler's rabble. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 23 
 
 " Clumps of trees and winding glades, 
 SunDy nooks and running water." 
 
 But, such is the malignity of fate, during the day his father desir- 
 ing his presence had sent to the school for him, and so the forgery 
 was detected. It was thus probably old Gainsborough, after a 
 somewhat rude fashion, first learnt that he had a son who was a 
 genius. When the irate parent was shown the cleverly forged 
 letter he exclaimed, " Tom will one day be hanged," but when 
 the gentle mother dexterously substituted the little truant's 
 marvellously clear sketches, paternal pride and affection overcame 
 his anger, and he declared that Tom would one day be a genius. 
 
 Very convinced, indeed, must his parents and schoolmates 
 have been that little Tom possessed native genius of no ordinary 
 calibre, for after many solemn family consultations, to which 
 Uncle Burroughs and his wife (wdio, by the way, was a daughter 
 of the celebrated Dr. Busby) were doubtless invited, it was 
 decided to send him to London, he being then in his fifteenth 
 year. We say that they were doubtless deeply impressed with 
 his powers, because Art was considered, and was, a very hazardous 
 profession to undertake in those days. So in 1741 he was sent 
 to the great city, and placed under the care of a worthy silver- 
 smith, through wdiose influence and kindness he obtained an 
 introduction to Gravelot an engraver, and teacher of drawing, 
 who at once recognized the abilities of the youthful aspirant, 
 and obtained for him admission to the St. Martin's Lane Academy. 
 Under Gravelot he obtained some valuable instruction, par- 
 ticularly in etching. Most of Gainsborough's biographers say 
 that he only etohed three prints, viz. " one for his friend 
 Kirby's work on Perspective; the second, An oak tree with gipsies; 
 and the third, A man ploughing on the side of a rising ground.'" 
 Fulcher, however, points out that this is an erroneous statement, 
 and says that he inspected " drawings from fifteen prints, 
 designed and engraved by Gainsborough, and representing other 
 subjects than those enumerated." 
 
24 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 Tor three years he drudged away at the St. Martin's Lane 
 Academy assisted by roystering Frank Hayman, the historical 
 painter, for he had now attached himself to his studio in order 
 to learn the mysteries and practices of his art. Hayman was a 
 man of great reputation, but on the whole his pupil must have 
 profited little by the connection, acquiring from him, as Fulcher 
 says, "little of painting and less of morality." He was more 
 addicted to dissipation, wine, and pugilism than to Art. Still he 
 was clever in the mechanical processes and manipulative tricks. 
 It does not matter so very much, after all, who happens to have 
 been the instructor of any great artist. In the case of Wilson 
 and some of his pupils we have an instance of the impossibility 
 of manufacturing an artist, even when a truly great master 
 takes the matter in hand. In Gainsborough the fire of genius 
 was already existent, and it would be as reasonable to say that 
 the preceptor who taught Alfred Tennyson prosody and grammar 
 gave the world ' In Memoriam 7 as that Hayman taught Gains- 
 borough how to paint The Cottage Girl or The Woodman in the 
 Storm. 
 
 Whilst studying at the St. Martin's Lane Academy he fell 
 slightly under the influence of the Flemish masters. During 
 these years he was exposed to many temptations, and it was the 
 most malleable period of his life. He must have seen far more 
 of the dissipation and excesses into which Hayman and his boon 
 companions plunged than was good and safe for a lad of his age. 
 But he worked hard and earnestly, never flinching before seem- 
 ingly insurmountable difficulties, until at last he began to feel 
 strong enough to walk alone. Then he hired three rooms in 
 Hatton Garden, where, whilst waiting for customers to come and 
 have their portraits painted, he did a little modelling, and pro- 
 duced a few small landscapes. The latter he sold to the dealers 
 for whatever he could get ; for his portraits, which were of a 
 small size, he charged from three to five guineas. But, as yet, 
 there was no patronage to spare for him ; sitters were few and 
 far between ; the picture-dealers ground him down till he would 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 25 
 
 bear with them no longer ; and after a year's experience of 
 Hatton Garden and public apathy, he packed up his belongings 
 and wended his way back to Sudbury. He had now extracted 
 all the goodness obtainable from the dried husks of insipid 
 conventionalities which passed current in those days for the 
 grammar of Art. 
 
 On his return to Sudbury in 1745 lie set up there as a por- 
 trait painter, occasionally also painting a small landscape for the 
 dealers. It is worthy of remark that these landscapes exhibit 
 in a marked degree the influence of Gainsborough's London 
 training. They are all in the style of the Dutch landscapists, 
 and it was not until he had unlearnt the instruction he had been 
 saturated with, and had become strong enough to paint Nature 
 as she is, as he saw her, and knew her, and loved her, that he 
 painted the pictures that entitle him to rank with Wilson and 
 other masters. 
 
 At this period he seems to have been undaunted by his want 
 of success in London ; he had plighted his troth to Art, and to 
 her he meant to devote his life. But as a provincial painter ho 
 thought he had a better chance of making a good start in life, 
 than by remaining amongst the firmly-established "stars" of 
 the London artistic world, and struggling with a crowd of hungry 
 aspirants for fame. Above all he would be able to paint now 
 face to face with Nature — not the false Nature of the Haymans 
 and the studios. So he did wisely in relinquishing the bare possi- 
 bility of being caught up by Fortune's wheel, and the probability 
 of exciting some hostility and then being left to starve in a 
 garret, the ordinary fate of those who are in any way " deadly 
 true." And more than this, in learning the grammar and mech- 
 anism of his art he had, as we have said, imbibed a touch of 
 conventionalism which he could now shake off. So he did wisely 
 and well in returning to his rural home in the sweet valley of 
 the Stour. He was now in his eighteenth year. During his stay 
 in London he had acquired a manner that to the inhabitants of 
 Sudbury represented the highest possible degree of polish and 
 
26 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 elegance. Bright, witty, vivacious in his conversation, elegant 
 in his bearing, and, with all his advantages, modest in the ex- 
 treme, no wonder that his society was eagerly courted. But he 
 did not give himself up to social enjoyment, for he knew that 
 as yet he had only learnt how to study; he was constantly 
 employed in sketching and painting in the open air. 
 
 " The Suffolk ploughmen often saw him in the early morning, 
 sketchbook in hand, 
 
 ' brushing with hasty steps the dew away/ 
 and lingering in the golden light of evening taking lessons from 
 the sunset clouds floating, in changeful beauty as if an angel's 
 hand had traced the scene. " 1 
 
 On one occasion, when painting a lovely scene that might have 
 been taken from fairy land, looking up after a few moments' 
 abstraction from his easel, he beheld a most lovely damsel 
 emerging from behind some trees on whose branches wood-doves 
 were perched and beneath the shade of which some sheep were 
 reposing. He at once fell a victim to the lady's beauty and 
 sweetness ; and she, who happened to be a princess in disguise, 
 was conquered by his devotion and elegance, and forthwith sur- 
 rendered her heart and her fortune into his keeping. They were 
 married, and lived happily together for ever after. This charm- 
 ing idyl, for long taken as an accurate account of the painter's 
 wooing and marriage, is, unfortunately for the lovers of romance, 
 a somewhat highly-coloured narrative. The princess in disguise, 
 one year Gainsborough's junior, was a young lady named Margaret 
 Burr, concerning whose parentage there is much mystery. Some 
 say that she was the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes, 
 but in the ' Diary of a Lover of Literature' 2 she is spoken of as a 
 natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford. Her fortune took the 
 shape of an annuity of £200 a year, whence emanating none 
 could say apparently, but it was regularly paid to her account at 
 a London bank. Her brother was a traveller in old Mr. Gains- 
 
 1 Fulcher, ' Life of Thomas Gainsborough/ p. 32. London, 1856. 
 
 2 Thomas Green. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 27 
 
 borough's employ, and it is therefore probable that she and 
 Tom had been friends and playmates for years. It was not 
 whilst he was sketching that Miss Burr's great beauty first struck 
 him, but during the many sittings which she gave him for her 
 portrait. But, however it came about, the love was there, and 
 in 1745 the boy-husband led his girl-bride to the altar, and a 
 sweet, faithful, and prudent wife she proved. After a brief 
 residence in Friar Street, Sudbury, they removed to Ipswich, 
 and settled down to love in a cottage, for which the rent was 
 £6 a year. 
 
 Ipswich did not much affect the fine arts in 1745. If she do 
 so now, the change must have been comparatively recent. In 
 Gainsborough's early days the Ipswichians were essentially prac- 
 tical and business-like people. To their minds the finest scenery 
 in the neighbourhood was to be found amongst the blocks of 
 warehouses on their wharves ; they admired the masts of the 
 vessels that glided with their merchandise on the bosom of the 
 stately Orwell far beyond any woodland trees ; and the leaves of 
 their broad ledgers were to them far dearer than any leaves in 
 the forest. From such people Gainsborough was not likely to 
 receive much patronage, and when at last a wealthy squire did 
 send for him our painter found to his unutterable disgust, on 
 calling to receive his instructions, that a painter and glazier was 
 wanted to paint the outside of a house and repair some broken 
 windows and hothouse frames. But he did not put his hands 
 in his pockets and remain content to wait and hope only ; he 
 kept on working — for ever sketching, studying, and painting 
 Nature in the open air. Every single part of her he made a 
 study of; he knew her in all her changeful moods. Of some 
 water-colour drawings of this period two are studies simply illus- 
 trative of the effect of sunbeams piercing through clouds. It was 
 whilst sketching near Freston Tower, on the banks of the Orwell, 
 that a sober-looking gentleman casually introduced himself to 
 Gainsborough as Joshua Kirby. The acquaintance thus formed 
 ripened into a warm friendship, and at Kirby's death, in 1771, 
 
28 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 Gainsborough deeply mourned bis loss, and expressed bis desire 
 to be buried, when his time should come, by the side of his old 
 friend. 
 
 In 1754 it was that Gainsborough met Philip Thicknesse, who 
 had recently been appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Landguard 
 Fort, near Harwich. Thicknesse was walking in a friend's garden 
 when he saw a melancholy-faced man with his arms locked to- 
 gether, looking over the boundary wall. The friend, whose 
 attention Thicknesse directed to the object, said that the figure 
 bad been there all day, and that the man was probably mad or 
 else miserable. Thicknesse then went up to the figure, when he 
 found that what he had taken to be a man was a shaped and 
 painted panel. On hearing that the artist (Gainsborough) lived 
 in the town, Thicknesse lost no time in calling, and being 
 introduced into his painting-room, upbraided him for imposing 
 upon people a shadow for a substance. At this interview, Thick- 
 nesse mentions having seen several portraits, including one of 
 Admiral Vernon, " truly drawn, perfectly like, but stiffly painted, 
 and worse coloured." 
 
 His little landscapes, however, are described as charming 
 works of fancy, affording to beholders infinite delight. For 
 these landscapes, we may observe parenthetically, Gainsborough 
 charged from three to five guineas each. Soon after the com- 
 mencement of their acquaintanceship, Thicknesse commissioned 
 Gainsborough to paint a landscape of the Yachts passing the 
 garrison under the salute of the guns. This work, for which 
 Gainsborough received fifteen guineas, was soon afterwards taken 
 to London by its purchaser and engraved by Major. The 
 engraving represents a S.E. view of Landguard Fort, which 
 being a most unpicturesque structure is wisely made to occupy 
 but a very small portion of the landscape. The foreground is 
 relieved by various groups of figures and cattle, remarkable for 
 their ease and grace. The original picture perished long before 
 the painter's death, sea-water having been used for the mortar of 
 the wall on which it was hung. The engraving helped much to 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 20 
 
 spread the artist's reputation far beyond the limited circle in 
 which he had hitherto been known. 
 
 Thicknesse, who from 1754 to 1774 devoted himself with 
 untiring assiduity to Gainsborough's affairs, was a man on whom 
 nearly every sketcher of the painter's life has heaped so much 
 abuse and contempt that we will only say he appears to have 
 been a fussy, ostenfcitious, irrepressible busybody without the 
 faintest conception of modesty, and seems, also, to have entertained 
 some notion that he had a sort of heaven-born right to patronize 
 Gainsborough. On the other hand, he describes himself as a 
 " very innocent and unoffending man except to rogues and 
 rascals." 
 
 During the early period of their acquaintance the two men 
 seem to have got on very well together. Thicknesse lent 
 Gainsborough a violin, which the latter soon learnt to play 
 better than the owner. And though we smile at the Governor's 
 modest assertion that he " was the first man who perceived 
 through clouds of bad colouring, what an accurate eye he (Gains- 
 borough) possessed, and the truth of his drawings, and who 
 dragged him from the obscurity of a country town at a time that 
 all his neighbours were as ignorant of his great talent as he was 
 himself," it is probable that Thicknesse was kindly influential in 
 obtaining some commissions ; and in a small place like Ipswich 
 an acquaintance more or less would make a great difference in a 
 man's social circle. During his career in Suffolk Gainsborough 
 was chiefly employed in painting portraits of the wives and 
 daughters of the people living round Ipsw r ich ; and at Colchester 
 he had some patrons, one of whom, Mr. Edgar, a lawyer, it seems, 
 gave him a sitting before the painter knew much about him ; for 
 in a letter from Gainsborough, dated 13th March, 1758, to this 
 gentleman, is the following passage : 
 
 " I little thought you were a lawyer when I said that not one 
 in ten was worth hanging. I told Clubb of that, and he seemed 
 to think that I was lucky that I did not say one in a hundred. 
 It's too late to ask your pardon now, but really, Sir, I never saw 
 
30 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 one of your profession look so honest in my life, and that/s the 
 reason I concluded you were in the wool trade." 
 
 At this time he sometimes sketched the parks and mansions 
 of the neighbouring gentry, but there was then very little demand 
 for landscape paintings — at least not for English landscapes. 
 On the whole, however, he made a very comfortable living ; his 
 society was eagerly sought, and he was hospitably received at 
 many houses in the neighbourhood, amongst others at that of 
 the Kev. Mr. Hingeston of South wold, with whom he was a 
 great favourite. His affable and agreeable manners endeared 
 him to all with whom he came in contact, alike at the cottage 
 and the castle. Long after he had left that part of the country, 
 at mention of his name the countenances of the aged peasants 
 would brighten up with a grateful recollection of his many acts 
 of benevolence and kindness. He delighted in presenting friends 
 with memorials of his skill, and the panels of several of the 
 rooms in Mr. Hingeston's house were adorned with the productions 
 of his genius. One of these especially, a landscape in Gains- 
 borough's most felicitous style, in which the artist's two daughters 
 Margaret and Mary are introduced chasing a butterfly, is a most 
 charming description of one of the happiest aspects of nature. 
 
 As a diversion from painting he cultivated music ; and 
 occasionally gave concerts at his own house. One of his pictures 
 represents himself and several of the members of a musical club 
 in Ipswich to which he belonged. In the foreground stand 
 Gainsborough and his friend Captain Clarke, their heads turned 
 towards a violin player who is accompanied by another player on 
 the violoncello — in the centre of the room is a table at which a 
 fifth figure is sleeping — probably intended for a sarcastic hint as 
 to the quality of the music. It is a candlelight scene \ Gains- 
 borough has a glass in his hand ; two other figures are on the 
 table, and the third has rolled upon the floor temporarily in the 
 condition of the gentleman described in one of Bret Harte's 
 poems, of whom it is recorded that " the subsequent proceedings 
 interested him no more." From this picture, and from the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 31 
 
 fact that an ancient Ipswichian once told somebody that 
 Gainsborough and his companions were "pretty boys in their 
 day," it has been suggested that the artist's habits were somewhat 
 too convivial. We have purposely mentioned this that we may 
 state our total disagreement with any such conclusion ; our 
 imagination is not sufficiently fertile to enable us to picture the 
 gentle, refined Gainsborough as a roysterer, and we never saw 
 any evidence of his being more than a thoroughly sociable man, 
 able and willing to enjoy the good things of the world in a 
 legitimate and decorous way. 
 
 Undoubtedly Gainsborough would have been well content to 
 end his days at Ipswich, where he was now comfortably settled, 
 and had spent fifteen years in his cottage of content, years of 
 such pure happiness as fall to the lot of few of us. He was well 
 known through all the country round, and had some pupils — 
 certainly two, of whom one was the son of his friend Joshua 
 Kirby. But in the eternal fitness of things it was not meet 
 that so great a genius should remain unknown to a larger world. 
 
 Thicknesse had a house and good social standing at Bath, 
 than which, except London, no city then offered greater advan- 
 tages for a portrait painter. To have their portraits taken has 
 been a peculiar temptation to idle people with money in their 
 pockets ever since the art of portrait painting became known, 
 and there were many idle and frivolous, but wealthy people at 
 Bath. Beau Nash, who had in his halcyon days rendered the fair 
 " Queen of the West " the resort of all the fashionable world, was 
 there spending his old age in such glory as the office of Master 
 of the Ceremonies afforded, and he still gathered around him 
 all the wit and wealth and fashion of the day. 
 
 Hither Thicknesse advised and prevailed upon Gainsborough 
 to move. Of course the painter could not live amongst the 
 butterflies of fashion in the same humble style in which he had 
 been so happy in Ipswich, so he took apartments in the newly- 
 erected Circus at a rental of <£50 a year — much to his prudent 
 wife's alarm, who asked him if he were going to throw himself 
 
32 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 into a gaol; but Thicknesse, who, — when not patronizing, — 
 played the part of a family fidus Achates, explained that the 
 only alternative to this arrangement would be to take a house 
 at .£150 a year, and he even offered to pay the rent of such a 
 house if Gainsborough were unable to do so, so confident was he 
 of the artist's success. There was little cause for anxiety, however, 
 for from the very first business came in so fast that Gainsborough 
 had no leisure to finish a head of Thicknesse commenced and 
 intended to have been used as an advertisement or decoy duck 
 to allure the visitors to have their portraits taken. The " painter 
 in the Circus ,; was spoken of in the public rooms as a " clever 
 fellow who could paint a head as well as Air. Hoare ; " 1 he was 
 obliged, in order to keep his patrons within manageable numbers, 
 to raise his charge from five to eight guineas for a head ; and 
 finally he settled them at forty guineas for a half-length and one 
 hundred guineas for a full-length portrait, and so prosperously 
 did he thrive that his house was christened Gain's Borough. 
 
 Since Gainsborough had left London public interest in modern 
 works of art had shown symptoms of awakening, and one of 
 the good results had been the foundation of the Society of 
 Artists in 1764, and the establishment of the Koyal Academy 
 in 1768, the former body being the immediate outcome of the 
 exhibition of pictures held under the auspices of the Koyal 
 Society of Arts, the first of which was in 1760. To this Gains- 
 borough did not contribute ; but the following year he sent to 
 London a full-length Portrait of Mr. Nugent ; and at the sub- 
 sequent exhibitions till 1768 inclusive, fifteen portraits and two 
 landscapes from his brush were hung. Among these may be 
 mentioned Portraits of General Honywood, Quin, Garrick, 
 Lady Grosvenor, Duke of Argyll, and Mr. Poyntz ; a Large 
 Landscape (1763) ; and a Large Landscape with Figures 
 
 1 William Hoare, one of the original R.A.s, was also a Suffolk man, 
 having been horn at Eye in 1706. After a very complete art education in 
 this country and on the continent he settled at Bath as a portrait painter. 
 His productions are now forgotten. 
 
THE YOUNG LAMM A. 
 By Gainsborough. 
 Painted far Mac kiln's "British Pod*. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 33 
 
 (17GG). Quin was extremely unwilling to allow his portrait to 
 be painted, and it was only at Gainsborough's appeal, " If you 
 will let me take your likeness, I shall live for ever," that he 
 consented. Garrick at first played <*uch pranks with his coun- 
 tenance that the poor artist was puzzled how to make any 
 likeness at all, for at one moment the actor had a horrible squint, 
 the next he appeared " as handsome as Lord Townshend ; " now 
 the distracted painter saw in his sitter an old man with a 
 bloated face, and in a moment the figure changed, and presented 
 " the pinched aspect and withered features of Sir John Hawkins." 
 In all probability, however, Garrick merely desired to gratify 
 his vanity by a display of his marvellous gift of mimicry, and 
 wished perhaps to relieve the tediousness of a lengthy sitting. 
 Certainly the portrait proved a great success, and Mrs. Garrick 
 pronounced it to be " the best portrait ever painted of her Davy." 
 Garrick sufficiently approved of it to present it to the Corporation 
 of Stratford-upon-Avon. But by far the most important of these 
 portraits was that of General Hon y wood. This is one of Gains- 
 borough's finest pictures : " Through a richly wooded scene, where 
 the sturdy oak and silvery-barked beech are conspicuous, the 
 soldier, mounted on a bay horse, appears to be passing. His 
 scarlet dress contrasts finely with the mass of surrounding foliage. 
 Nothing can be easier than his attitude, as with one hand he 
 curbs in his charger, and with the other holds his sword, which 
 seems to flash in the sunbeams." 
 
 When George III. saw this picture, he admired it so much that 
 he wished to become the possessor, and Horace Walpole marked 
 it in his catalogue as one of the features of the Exhibition. 
 
 In 1767 and the following year Gainsborough sent five 
 paintings to the Artists' Exhibition. They were Portraits of 
 Lady Grosvenor ; John, Duke of Argyle ; Mr. Vernon; Captain 
 Needham ; and Captain Augustus Hervey. By no means the 
 least appreciative of our painter's Bath admirers was Mr. Wilt- 
 shire, the carrier between that city and London, whose homage 
 to Gainsborough's genius took the form of refusing to take any 
 
 LP D 
 
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 payment for the transport of the Academy pictures to and from 
 London. The two were great friends, and Gainsborough pre- 
 sented Wiltshire with several paintings, which have been 
 religiously preserved in the carrier's family as heirlooms. 
 
 Wiltshire, in return, gave Gainsborough a horse which the 
 latter had greatly admired, and which served as a model for 
 many pictures. Amongst others, it figures in The Return from 
 Harvest, a present to Mr. Wiltshire. A little peasant girl seated 
 in a waggon, the driver of which is stopping his team in order 
 to allow another little lass to mount ; the children are portraits 
 of the painter's daughters. 
 
 Gainsborough's passion for music grew with his years, and at 
 times it seemed as if painting were his diversion and music the 
 business of his life. Once he heard Giardini play the violin, 
 and became so enamoured of the music that he insisted upon 
 buying the identical instrument from which he had heard the 
 enchanting tones produced. 
 
 Then Abel came to Bath with his viol-di-gamba, and Gains- 
 borough must needs buy it. Then he heard Fischer play the 
 hautboy, and he swore by wind instruments. Then Crosdill 
 played the violoncello at a concert where Gainsborough was, and 
 the painter could talk of nothing else for a month. One clay he 
 was shown a picture by his favourite Van Dyck, in which a lute 
 was introduced, and a lute he must have. He heard that such 
 an instrument was owned by a German professor, to whose 
 residence he immediately repaired, and found the professor in a 
 garret, smoking his pipe after a dinner of roasted apples. The 
 following conversation then took place. It is thoroughly charac- 
 teristic of the impetuous and boyish nature of Gainsborough. 
 
 " I have come to buy your lute ; name your price and I will 
 pay it." 
 
 " I cannot sell my lute." 
 
 " Hot for a guinea or two, perhaps, but you must sell at some 
 price and so I tell you.''' 
 
 " My lute is worth much money — ten guineas." 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 35 
 
 "Indeed it is — quite that ; see, here's your money. Good 
 day." Then taking up the instrument and placing the ten 
 guineas on the table Gainsborough left the room ; but before he 
 had got half-way down the stairs, he returned, and said — 
 
 " I have forgotten something. What is your lute to me if I 
 have not your book of airs ? " 
 
 " Ah, Master Gainsborough, I cannot part with my book.' 5 
 
 " Nonsense ; you can make another at any time. See, here's 
 the book I want — and here's another ten guineas for it." 
 
 Once more did the impetuous painter-musician withdraw, but 
 only for a few seconds, when back he came. 
 
 " Dear me, what is the use of your book to me if I don't 
 understand it, or of your lute if I cannot play on it ! Come 
 home with me at once and give me the first lesson." 
 
 " I will go to-morrow." 
 
 " Come now." 
 
 " I must dress." 
 
 " You are admirably dressed." 
 
 " I must shave." 
 
 " I honour your beard." 
 
 " I must, however, put on my wig." 
 
 " D — n your wig, your cap and beard become you well 
 enough. Do you think if Yan Dyck wanted to paint you he'd 
 let you be shaved 1 Come on at once." 
 
 Gainsborough's connection with the Eoyal Academy is some- 
 what obscure. His residence at Bath and the difference between 
 the means of communication then and now might have occasioned 
 the omission of his name from the directorate of the pioneer 
 Incorporated Society, though his works at the previous exhibi- 
 tions ought to have marked him as a giant among painters. Of 
 this Society, too, his old master, Frank Hayman, was vice- 
 president, and Francis Cotes, who must have met Gainsborough 
 at Bath, was a director. It is curious, too, that Gainsborough's 
 name was not included in either of the two lists of original 
 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 members submitted for George III.'s approval; though E.A. is 
 appended to his name in the first catalogue. " It is evident," 
 says Mr. Tom Taylor, " that there was a determination to secure 
 him for the new Academy ; and that he let himself be secured, 
 but he seems never to have taken any part whatever in the work 
 of the Academy, and his membership is hardly traceable in the 
 Academy records, except by a quarrel, occasionally, about the 
 hanging of his pictures." 1 It was the law of the Royal Academy 
 that every member should signalize his election by presenting to 
 the Institution one of his paintings. Gainsborough, who was 
 one of the original thirty-six, contributed A Romantic Landscape 
 with Sheep) at a Fountain. 
 
 Between 1769 and 1773 Gainsborough sent, altogether, thirty- 
 three works to the annual exhibitions, including whole length 
 painting of Isabella, Lady Molynenx ; portrait of George Pitt, 
 eldest son of Lord Rivers ; A Large Landscape ; A Boys 
 Head ; three-quarters length of Gar rick ; Portrait of a Gentle- 
 man ; Lady Sussex and Child; Lord Ligonier, with a Horse; 
 Lady Ligonier, in a Fancy Dress; Captain Wade, M.C. cd 
 Bath. It is well known that he sometimes painted his subjects 
 to be viewed at a certain light and at a particular distance ; in 
 1773 and the three following years he did not exhibit at all, 
 being dissatisfied with the action of the authorities — probably 
 his expressed wishes on the subject had been ignored by the 
 Hanging Committee in 1772. 
 
 In 1775 the R.A. Council moved that Mr. Gainsborough's 
 name be omitted from their lists, " he having declined to accept 
 any office in the Academy, and never attending ; " the motion 
 was, however, rescinded at the next General Meeting. In 1777 
 Gainsborough again figures in the catalogue, and his name con- 
 tinues to appear as a large contributor down to 1783 inclusive. 
 On April 24th, 1784, the following paragraph appeared in a 
 London journal in explanation of a previous notification on the 
 same subject : u Mr. Gainsborough's picture which the Royal 
 1 Leslie's 'Life of Reynolds/ note on p. 297, vol. i. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 37 
 
 Academy Inquisition lias refused to hang agreeably to his wishes, 
 contains the portraits of the Princess Royal, Princess Augusta, 
 and Princess Elizabeth, at full length. It was painted for the 
 Prince of Wales's state-room in Carlton Palace for a height 
 already ascertained, as the frame which is to receive it is formed 
 in the panels. The requisition the artist made, to hang it at 
 the panel height in the Exhibition Eoom, ought surely to have 
 been attended to in so particular an instance, particularly when 
 it is remembered that the colouring is tender and delicate ; so 
 that the effect must be destroyed by an injudicious elevation." 
 Gainsborough withdrew the whole of his pictures, and never 
 again sent any contribution to the Exhibitions. It is well known 
 that from the very first the Hanging Committee of the Academy 
 were governed by certain inexorable rules, unchangeable as the 
 laws of the Medes and Persians, one of which was that all full- 
 length portraits must be hung in what is known as the " full- 
 length line ; " and though the relaxation of the rule in such a 
 case as Gainsborough's need not, per se, have been attended with 
 any detrimental result either to the other exhibitors or to the 
 dignity of the Academy as a body, it is easy to see what reasons 
 influenced the " Inquisition" in their decision. Intrigue, parti- 
 sanship, jealousy, and favouritism were as rampant in artistic 
 and all other circles in the eighteenth century as they are in the 
 nineteenth and will be in the 190th century, and in order to 
 maintain anything like authority over the many cliques and 
 parties into which artists were divided, the Royal Academicians 
 knew it was absolutely necessary to act with unswerving 
 partiality. They felt their position should be like that of 
 Caesar's wife — above suspicion — and they therefore treated 
 Gainsborough with exactly the same justice — harsh justice it 
 may now appear — as they would have dealt out to any other 
 painter. Eeynolds in Gainsborough's place would have accepted 
 the decision as a matter of business, have taken a pinch of 
 snuff, and have painted a better portrait for the next Exhibi- 
 tion, intended to be viewed from the full-length line. But 
 
38 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 Gainsborough was not a man of the world. Pettiness, jealousy, 
 envy, and intrigue were things he had heard of but could not com- 
 prehend; and judging mankind by the standard of his own simple, 
 innocent, kindly nature, he knew not the necessity for grappling 
 with these noxious moral weeds, nor could he understand the 
 means taken by the Academy to keep their own ground as clear 
 as possible from such encumbrances. He could only put down 
 the non-observance of his wishes w T ith regard to the hanging of 
 his pictures to inconsiderate obliviousness, or to non-appreciation 
 of his genius. But if he misunderstood the Somerset House 
 arbiters, we think that his biographers have misunderstood his 
 action in this matter. In no case did he quarrel with his judges. 
 Wrangling and dispute were so utterly foreign to his peaceable 
 disposition that he retired altogether from the ground where he 
 might have been drawn into angry discussion ; and who shall 
 say he was not wise to wish rather to enjoy the unruffled calm 
 of domestic life with his lute and viol-de-gamba than to engage 
 in angry recrimination in the avenging of an imaginary slight. 
 
 Whilst at Bath Gainsborough was not unmindful of his 
 relations. His eldest sister with his approval was happily 
 married to a Mr. Gibbon of Bath. He also took upon himself 
 the rearing of a nephew, Gainsborough Dupont. 1 Eichardson 
 the novelist, Sterne, Chatterton (it is said), Cramer the metal- 
 lurgist, and Lord Camden, besides Garrick and Quin, were 
 amongst the many eminent personages whose portraits Gains- 
 borough painted during his career at Bath. Here, too, he was a 
 universal favourite in society, in which he freely mixed, and 
 would often amuse his friends by modelling their faces in any 
 material ready to his hand, the wax from the candles serving 
 when nothing else could be had. In his profession he had been 
 successful beyond his expectations, and it is probable he would 
 
 1 Afterwards a portrait painter of considerable merit and much promise, 
 during Gainsborough's ^life-time his assistant ; and who, before his death 
 at the age of thirty (in 1797), painted a picture containing the portraits of 
 the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, which was deservedly praised. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 39 
 
 have remained at Bath for the rest of his life but for the irre- 
 pressible Thicknesse, who either from kindly motives or from 
 inveterate offlciousness, still continued a system of interference 
 which began to be unendurable and amounted almost to perse- 
 cution. But, as in the case of the removal from Ipswich, 
 the change of residence to London proved to have been a wise 
 step. In 1774 a wretched squabble took place between the 
 Thicknesses and the Gainsboroughs. The painter had presented 
 Mrs. Thicknesse with a portrait of herself, and she was desirous 
 of possessing a companion one of her husband. Thicknesse, 
 knowing the professional charge to be 100 guineas, and unwilling 
 to accept so valuable a work without making some adequate 
 return, made the painter a present, through his wife, of a very 
 choice old viol-di-gamba (worth at least 100 guineas) which 
 Gainsborough greatly coveted. The artist was delighted and 
 gratefully promised Mrs. Thicknesse a portrait of her husband. 
 One sitting was given, but for some cause or other the picture 
 was then abandoned. Mrs. Thicknesse was mortally offended, 
 and expressed herself to Gainsborough in uncompromisingly 
 uncomplimentary terms ; the painter returned the viol-di-gamba 
 and sent the unfinished picture to Thicknesse, who returned it, 
 however, requesting the painter to " blot it out, and then blot 
 out from his heart the truest friend he had ever possessed." 
 Without entering into any further details we may safely say 
 that there seem to have been faults of temper and judgment on 
 both sides. Certainly the explanation which the Gainsboroughs 
 gave, that the artist not only undertook to paint the portrait, but 
 also privately sent Mrs. Thicknesse a cheque for a hundred 
 guineas as the price of the instrument, knowing that money 
 would be acceptable at the time, does make Thicknesse's 
 impatience and f ussiness about the painting appear unreasonable, 
 and would justify the artist's subsequent conduct. But Thick- 
 nesse in his angry pamphlet gave a contradictory account. 
 
 This squabble is said to have been the immediate cause 
 of Gainsborough's leaving Bath, but independently of any one 
 
40 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 particular episode, he was naturally glad of any excuse for running 
 away from the fussy interference and patronage of such an 
 arch-bore as Sir Philip Thicknesse. 
 
 So, in 1774, for a second time, Gainsborough set up in practice 
 in London. But since he had relinquished the Hatton Garden 
 studio, where sitters would not come in sufficient numbers to 
 warrant his keeping it on, his position had vastly changed. In 
 his Ipswich cottage he had made a sure living ; in the compara- 
 tively pretentious Bath apartments he had more than prospered ; 
 and now, in the possession of a large income and a splendid name, 
 he felt no hesitation in renting for £300 a-year from Astley (the 
 portrait painter, who in former days had lined his waistcoat 
 with " a waterfall " cut from one of his unhonoured landscapes, 
 but had now made a short cut to fortune by marriage with a rich 
 widow), part of Schomberg House, a noble mansion in Pall Mall. 
 Thicknesse (to show that he nurtured no malice) wrote requesting 
 Lord Bateman to give Gainsborough countenance and to malte 
 him known, a scarcely necessary proceeding, seeing that Gains- 
 borough's pictures in the different Exhibitions since 1761 had 
 attracted great attention and caused much interest to be taken 
 in the painter of works which displayed such high merit. 
 Reynolds, the President of the Academy, was one of the first 
 to call upon him, but most unfortunately, Gainsborough had 
 not been able to understand the real cause of the Hanging 
 Committee's decision in 1772, and laid himself open to the 
 charge of churlishness by neglecting to return the visit. 
 George III. had noticed the beauty of Gainsborough's works, 
 and sent for him to the palace ; before long the king and 
 queen sat for their portraits ; nearly all the aristocracy followed 
 the royal example ; commissions fell in so fast that, rapid as 
 was Gainsborough's execution, he was unable to keep pace 
 with the demand upon his services. In December, 1774, he 
 was elected on the Council of the Royal Academy, and actually 
 received a vote for the Presidency — the Popedom of British 
 Art. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 -11 
 
 In his ever-increasing prosperity he never forgot bis poorer 
 relations. Scheming Jack was not only supplied with money 
 for expenses at Sudbury, but there were always warm welcome 
 and comfortable quarters for him at Schomberg House. To his 
 sister at Bath Gainsborough wrote affectionately, and was 
 solicitous about her position and welfare ; and it was in rambles 
 with his brother Humphrey, amidst the Thames valley scenery, 
 that he spent many of the few hours he was able to steal from 
 his numerous engagements. 
 
 In 1777 Gainsborough reappeared at the Academy with the 
 portraits of his friend Abel, the Duke and Duchess of Cumber- 
 land ; Lord Gage ; Two Young Gentlemen ; and A Large Land- 
 scape, which Lord Orford said, was " in the style of Rubens, 
 and by far the finest landscape ever painted in England, and 
 equal to the great masters.' , 
 
 The following year Horace Walpole said of Gainsborough's 
 Duchess of Devonshire, that it was " very hard and washy ; " but 
 then Lady Di Beauclerc had just before painted a portrait of her 
 Grace, which had been engraved by Bartolozzi ; and the dictator 
 of Strawberry Hill, true to his orders, had resolved that Lady 
 Di's Duchess should be the one of the season. 
 
 In this year Gainsborough was represented on the Academy 
 walls with unusual profusion, as he contributed no less than 
 eight portraits and two landscapes. Among the portraits was 
 one of Christie the auctioneer, a present from the artist. 
 
 In 1779 Gainsborough was at the zenith of his fame. In that 
 year he wrote : " My present position with regard to encourage- 
 ment, etc., is all that heart can desire, and I live at a full thou- 
 sand pounds a-year expense." The most eminent men in every 
 walk of life sat to him ; and those critics who had any discern- 
 ment thought his landscapes were superior to his portraits. The 
 favourite painter of the king and royal family, he was frequently 
 at the palace, and amongst other commissions he was requested 
 to make a portrait of one of the little princes who had just 
 died. 
 
42 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 It was about this time that the portrait of Master Buttall, 
 known as The Blue Boy, was painted, as a practical refutation 
 (it is said) of Reynolds' dictum, that in the masses of light in a 
 picture, the cool colours should be subordinate to the azure tints. 
 In several of Gainsborough's happiest portraits, however, he has 
 shown that the cool colours may, with the most pleasing effect, 
 predominate. This year Gainsborough exhibited Portraits of 
 the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duchess of Cumberland, 
 with half-lengths of Two Ladies, and Judge Perrin. He also 
 contributed^ most impressive picture of the Duke of Argyll. 
 
 To the 1780 Exhibition, as we learn from a contemporary 
 pamphlet entitled ' A Candid Eeview of the Exhibition,' Gains- 
 borough sent six landscapes and nine or ten portraits, including 
 paintings of General Conway, Governor of Jersey ; Henderson 
 the Actor studying a tragedy part ; and Mr. George Coyte. The 
 latter painting was so life-like that it became known as " Coyte 
 alive." Among the portraits was one of Mr. Bate, who was then 
 Editor of the c Morning Post,' and afterwards became Sir Bate 
 Dudley, Bart. A political opponent of Dudley speaking of a 
 second portrait of him by the same artist, representing him 
 standing in a garden with his dog, wittily but spitefully said that 
 "the man wanted execution, and the dog wanted hanging." 
 
 It is strange that, whilst living, Gainsborough's popularity was 
 almost entirely owing to his skill as a portrait painter. In 
 eighteen years he had only sent half-a-dozen landscapes to the 
 Exhibitions ; the walls of the passage from his hall to his painting- 
 room were covered with landscapes, which his visitors for the 
 most part scarcely deigned to look at, and never thought of 
 inquiring the price of. Even that splendid outcome of his 
 genius, The Woodman in the Storm, painted in 1787, when 
 powerful critics had dragged the public attention to his landscape 
 art, was only admired. J$o purchaser could be found willing to 
 pay a hundred guineas for it whilst the painter was alive ; but 
 directly he died it was snapped up by Lord Gainsborough at live 
 times that price. But Gainsborough knew well his own land-' 
 
See V:i'^e 4". 
 
 THE BLUE BOY. 
 By Gainsborough 
 
 In the possession of the I hike of Westminster* 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 43 
 
 scape power, and in the next four years exhibited thirteen land- 
 scapes. 
 
 In 1781 appeared the Portrait of Queen Charlotte, of which a 
 writer said : " I do believe that Opie would have made a calf's 
 head look sensible, as Gainsborough made our old Queen 
 Charlotte look picturesque ; " also Three Landscapes, of two of 
 which Walpole said : " Gainsborough has two pieces with land 
 and sea, so free and natural that one steps back for fear of being 
 splashed." 
 
 In 1782 he exhibited his Girl and Pigs, of which Northcote 
 remarks, that " the expression and truth of nature it displays 
 were never surpassed," and with which even the fastidious Sir 
 Joshua could find no fault, merely expressing the very character- 
 istic opinion that the artist should have made the girl a beauty. 
 A very striking criticism of this painting is said to have 
 emanated from a countryman, who remarked: " They be deadly 
 like pigs, but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what 
 one on 'em had a foot in the trough." It attracted the notice of 
 Peter Pindar, who in his ' Ode to the Royal Academicians' devotes 
 three stanzas to Gainsborough ; in the last he counsels him to 
 pursue his charming forte, and to have the " modest grace " to 
 devote his attention to landscapes ; and again he says — 
 
 " 0 Gainsborough ! Nature plaineth sore 
 That thou hast kicked her out of door ; 
 * ****** 
 Lo ! all thy efforts without her are vain, 
 Go, find her, kiss her, and be friends again. " 
 
 Gainsborough sent to the Academy in 1783, A Landscape; 
 Two Shepherd Boys with Fighting Dogs ; A Sea-piece, a Calm; 
 and numerous portraits, including those of Mrs. Sheridan, Lord 
 Cornwallis, Duchess of Devonshire, and Sir H arbor d Harbord. 
 This was the year in which he exhibited Portraits of the 
 Royal Family, fifteen in number, but heads only. Peter Pindar 
 made merry over this picture, describing it as "a nest of royal 
 heads." 
 
44 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 The portraits of Colonel St. Leger, painted in 1782, and Sir 
 Harbord Harbord, contributed to the Academy in the following 
 year, are among the finest of Gainsborough's paintings, the former 
 being equal to the celebrated picture of General Honywood, and 
 resembling it in many respects. 
 
 About 1784 Gainsborough painted the Mushroom Girl. The 
 subject is fanciful — a rustic girl, wearied of her occupation of 
 gathering mushrooms, is sleeping beneath an elm tree with her 
 head resting upon her arms. A peasant is gazing at the sleeping 
 beauty with evident admiration, whilst a little terrier looks 
 indignantly at the intruder, but fears to bark lest he should 
 wake his mistress. Gainsborough once offered his nephew, Mr. 
 Dupont, the choice of any of his pictures, and he selected this 
 unfinished one. 
 
 The View in the Mall of St. James's Park is a charming 
 picture, painted in the year 1786. Amongst some twenty figures 
 which it contains is a portrait of the artist himself. Eulcher 
 describes it as " brilliant in colouring, charming in composition, 
 and more than usually careful in execution." 
 
 The Cottage Girl with her Dog and Pitcher, which Leslie so 
 much admires, was painted from the same young lady depicted in 
 the Girl and Pigs. 
 
 Whether the verses of the burly satirist Wolcot hit their mark, 
 or whether from other causes, after the close of this Exhibition 
 Gainsborough resolved to rest for a while from the fatigues of 
 portrait painting, and to refresh his mind and body by an excur- 
 sion to the Lake district. In this tour, however, he did not 
 intend to let his brush grow stiff, for he wrote to a friend that 
 on his return he meant showing that all the delineators of 
 our Lake scenery had, as hitherto, been but " tawdry fan 
 painters." 
 
 " I purpose," said he, " to mount all the Lakes at the next 
 Exhibition in the great style — and if the people don't like them, 
 it is only jumping into one of the deepest from off a wooded 
 island, and my reputation will be fixed for ever." 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 45 
 
 But at the next Exhibition the public saw neither the Lake 
 scenes nor anything else from the great artist's easel. In con- 
 sequence of the disagreement about the hanging of the Princesses 
 to which we have referred, Gainsborough withdrew all his 
 pictures, and till his death he was afterwards only remembered 
 at the Spring gatherings by his absence. 
 
 Fischer, the hautboy player and friend of Gainsborough, had 
 secretly wooed the painter's youngest daughter. When, in 1780, 
 Gainsborough's consent 'to their union was asked, he said that it 
 was then too late to alter anything without causing total unhappi- 
 ness on both sides, though he had serious misgivings, on account 
 of Fischer's oddities and temper, as to the desirability of the 
 match. The marriage did not turn out a happy one, for before 
 long Mrs. Fischer's mental aberrations rendered a separation 
 necessary. In spite of Fischer's " oddities and temper," Gains- 
 borough found in him a congenial companion ; and these two 
 would often leave their wives to their own resources for a whole 
 evening, while, the one with his flageolet and the other with 
 his viol-di-gamba, they would become so engrossed and wrapped 
 up in their music that for aught they knew the house might have 
 been broken into and cleared. Music enthralled Gainsborough 
 more than ever ; once when Colonel Hamilton, considered one of 
 the finest violinists of the day, was playing to him, ^sfollekens 
 entered the studio. Gainsborough put up his hand as a sign not 
 to interrupt, and as soon as the air was finished he said, " Now, 
 my dear Colonel, if you will but go on I will give you that 
 picture of the Boy at the Stile you have so wished to purchase 
 of me," at the same time telling Nollekens to select two drawings 
 for himself from a portfolio. For nearly half an hour Gains- 
 borough's attention, was ri vetted to the music, and then the 
 Colonel drove off in a hackney-coach with his easily earned 
 prize. 
 
 The musical accessories in Gainsborough pictures are always 
 painted with a loving care ; take the portrait of Fischer, for 
 example, in whose face we can see the music breathing, 
 
43 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 painted at Bath ; the violin is perfect ; the polish on the 
 Cremona denotes how lovingly the instrument has been pre- 
 served ; whilst the maker's name even is not forgotten on the 
 piano. 
 
 Gainsborough's impulsive ways sometimes give rise to embar- 
 rassing results. On first seeing Velasquez' picture of the young 
 Duke of Asturias, he said to a servant of Mr. Agar, the possessor, 
 " Go and tell your master I'll give a thousand pounds for that 
 picture." The servant did as he was told. But by that time 
 Gainsborough's enthusiasm had become tempered with common 
 sense, and he was forced to admit he could not afford to pay 
 such a fancy price. 
 
 His favourite suburban retreat for the summer months was 
 Richmond, where he had a cottage. There were few poor people 
 in the neighbourhood strangers to his generosity and benevolence; 
 and when in his rambles he met any particularly picturesque- 
 looking peasant children, he would send them off at once to his 
 painting-room, and the remuneration he lavished on children and 
 parents on such occasions was bountiful. He was so taken with 
 the appearance of one lad, John Hill, 1 that he actually adopted 
 him; and though the boy, after a short experience, elected to 
 run away and enjoy the freedom of his native lanes and fields 
 rather than conform to the unaccustomed refinements of the 
 painter's household, he was, after the latter's death in 1788, pro- 
 vided for by Mrs. Gainsborough with an admission into Christ's 
 Hospital. 
 
 In the early months of 1787, Sir George Beaumont, Sheridan, 
 and Gainsborough dined together ; the latter excelled himself in 
 sparkling wit, brilliant conversation, and conspicuous cheerful- 
 ness. So delightful was the party, that another such meeting 
 was arranged for an early date. But when the day came and the 
 three friends were met, a strange change was seen in Gains- 
 borough. He was utterly different from the Gainsborough of their 
 
 1 The painter has painted this handsome lad in the pictures, Jack Hill, 
 in a Cottage ; J ack Hill, with his Cat, in a Wood 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 47 
 
 recent merry meeting. He was despondent and gloomy, and sat 
 in silence, with a look of fixed melancholy which neither witti- 
 cisms nor raillery could dissipate. At last he took Sheridan apart 
 and led him out of the room. Outside the door he said : " Now, 
 don't laugh, but listen. I shall die soon ; I know it — I feel it. I 
 have less time to live than my looks infer — but for this I care 
 not. What oppresses my mind is this. I have many acquaint- 
 ances and few friends ; and as I wish to have one worthy man to 
 accompany me to the grave, I am desirous of bespeaking you — 
 will you come — aye or no 1 " 
 
 Sheridan, who was shocked by the solemnity of the request, 
 gave the desired promise, and the two returned to the table. 
 Then, as if by magic, Gainsborough's gloom disappeared, his 
 brilliancy returned more strikingly sparkling than ever ; his wit 
 and humour flowed forth faster and faster ; and the remainder of 
 the evening was spent in unchequered merriment and enjoyment. 
 His gloomy forebodings of course resulted from the effect of an 
 over-worked body on a highly sensitive brain, but they were 
 very soon realized. 
 
 In 1788 the trial of Warren Hastings commenced, and to it 
 flocked all the beauty, wit, learning, and fashion of the kingdom. 
 Infected with the prevalent fever, Gainsborough joined the crowd 
 which thronged Westminster Hall. Sitting thus, with his back 
 to an open window, he suddenly felt an icy cold touch, as he 
 described it, at the back of his neck. Mentioning this to his 
 wife when he got home, she looked, and found a mark about the 
 size of a shilling, harder to the touch than the surrounding skin, 
 and this he said still felt cold. A doctor who was sent for 
 declared that it was nothing more than a swelling of the glands 
 which the warm weather would dissipate. Eemoving to Eich- 
 mond for change of air, Gainsborough's symptoms became worse, 
 so he returned to Schomberg House. The doctors now declared 
 the protuberance to be a cancer, on which Gainsborough said, 
 " If this be a cancer, I am a dead man ; " and with the utmost 
 composure he began to settle his earthly affairs, and to put his 
 
4S 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 house in order. In July he became rapidly worse, and he knew 
 that his end was very near. If any regret tinged the gentle 
 painter's contemplation of the approaching change, it was only 
 on account of his Art — he had hoped to do so much more for her 
 — he had meant in future works to remedy defects, supply defici- 
 encies, and achieve greater things than he had yet accomplished ; 
 he had meant to make his Art perfect. But as this was not to be, 
 as the inexorable decree had gone forth, he waited with resigna- 
 tion the coming of that sleep which follows life's fitful fever, 
 and as this approached he remembered there was one towards 
 whom his feelings had not always been of the kindliest. He 
 would not die then doubting the fact that he was at peace with 
 all men ; so Eeynolds was sent for and came and stood by his 
 brother-painter's death-bed, and bending over the dying man 
 caught those last faintly-whispered words — " We are all going to 
 heaven, and Van Dyck is of the party." 
 
 According to his own desire he was buried in Kew church- 
 yard, near the grave of his friend Joshua Kirby. The President 
 of the Eoyal Academy was one of the pall-bearers. A large con- 
 course of England's most honoured and most gifted sons paid 
 their last sad tribute to the departed genius, and reverently fol- 
 lowed his body to the grave ; and amongst the throng there was 
 one who remembered sorrowfully how but eighteen months before 
 he had solemnly promised the musician-painter that one true 
 friend should follow him to the grave. 
 
 Gainsborough was a tall, fair man, handsome and well propor- 
 tioned. His features were regular, a forehead broad and strongly 
 marked, a Eoman nose, and eyes and mouth indicating humour 
 and refinement. His personal bearing was as elegant as his moral 
 nature was attractive, and his skill as a painter was only excelled 
 by his kindness as a man. 
 
 After his rupture with the Academy in 1784 he revisited 
 Sudbury, where he created quite a sensation in his rich suit of 
 drab, with laced ruffles and cocked hat. His wants were easily 
 satisfied, and his " thousand pounds a year expense " amply sup- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 49 
 
 plied everything he desired. He was too natural and too true to 
 imagine pleasure in ostentation and display — hence some have 
 brought against him the charge of parsimony, but nothing could 
 be wider of the truth. Gainsborough was, as a matter of fact, 
 generous to a fault, and gave away the productions of his studio 
 as freely as he dispensed the hospitalities of his table. He pre- 
 sented Colonel Hamilton with his Boy at the Stile, a picture 
 which he had long desired, in return for a solo on the violin ; 
 his friends were almost free to choose for themselves presents 
 from his sketches, and one lady had so many that she papered 
 the walls of her dressing-room with them. He had a ready sense 
 of humour. When Fischer was on one occasion thrown, whilst 
 riding to Salisbury, his mare taking flight at a heavily-laden 
 waggon, Gainsborough to whom he had mentioned the incident 
 sent him a rough sketch, which exhibited considerable power in 
 caricature. Fischer is represented lying prostrate, whilst the 
 waggoner grins at the disaster, and the mare shows a clean pair 
 of heels in the distance. Beneath the picture was written the 
 following doggrel — 
 
 " A runaway horse you here may see, 
 A warning sent, my friend, to thee ; 
 Better it is to shun the wheel, 
 Than ride a blood to look genteel." 
 
 This was a hit at poor Fischer, who was a man of rather a vain 
 disposition and fond of making a display. 
 
 Gainsborough was not willing to put up with anything like 
 insolence or patronage. On one occasion when commissions were 
 flowing into Schomberg House more rapidly than even his facile 
 brush could execute them, and he was compelled to disappoint 
 many impatient sitters, one gentleman completely lost his 
 temper, and the painter overheard him asking the porter, " Has 
 that fellow Gainsborough finished my portrait % " Being shown 
 into the studio he beheld his picture, and was delighted with the 
 artist's work. As profuse now in his approbation as he had been 
 
 LP E 
 
50 
 
 THOMAS GAIXSBOROUGH. 
 
 discourteous in his impatience, he smilingly remarked, " I may 
 as well give you a cheque for the other fifty guineas." 
 
 " Stay a minute," said the offended painter, " it just wants the 
 finishing stroke ; " and snatching up a background brush, he 
 ruthlessly dashed it across the smiling features, indignantly 
 exclaiming, " Sir, where is my fellow now % 99 
 
 Amongst Gainsborough's sitters there came a gentleman whom 
 Thicknesse calls an alderman, and Allan Cunningham a lord, but 
 whose importance, whether derived from a corporation or a peer- 
 age, was very apparent in his erect mien, his richly laced coat, and 
 well powdered wig. Placing himself in an advantageous situa- 
 tion as to light, he began to arrange his dress and dictate his 
 attitude in a manner so ludicrously elaborate, that Gainsborough 
 muttered — "This will never do." His Excellency having at 
 length satisfactorily adjusted his person exclaimed, " ~Now, sir, 
 I desire you not to overlook the dimple in my chin." 
 
 " Confound the dimple in your chin/' said Gainsborough ; " I 
 shall neither paint the one or the other." And he refused to 
 proceed with the picture. 1 
 
 He was extremely capricious at times, and in illustration of 
 this trait of his character, Fulcher mentions how when Sir Joshua 
 had sat to him for his portrait at Gainsborough's special request, 
 but had suddenly discontinued the sittings, being obliged by ill 
 health to quit London, the variable artist, although courteously 
 informed by the President of his convalescence, merely sent a 
 message that he was " glad to hear Sir Joshua had recovered," but 
 never again touched the picture. Yet these two rival geniuses 
 paid each other graceful compliments occasionally. Gainsborough 
 once said of Eeynolds that his pictures " in their most decayed 
 state were better than those of any other artist when in their best." 
 And on one occasion when at the Academy Exhibition, noticing 
 the unusual number of pictures sent by the President, he 
 remarked in his bluff way to Sir George Beaumont as he glanced 
 with evident approbation, "D — n him, how various he is." 
 
 1 Fulcher's ' Life of Gainsborough/ p. 62, 2nd ed. 
 
I j \ F HOMO! RAH LE M rs GR \ M a \i 
 
 By Gainsborough. 
 In the National Gallery, Edinburgh. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 51 
 
 Reynolds once said to Xorthcote, when speaking of Gainsborough, 
 " I cannot make out how he produces his effects," and after all 
 rivalry had been trampled out by his rival's death, Sir Joshua 
 paid an eloquent and generous tribute to his genius. 
 
 Gainsborough had infirmities of temper, but his anger was 
 generally easily appeased. Fulcher tells us that " whenever he 
 spoke crossly to his wife, a remarkably sweet-tempered woman, he 
 would write a note of repentance, sign it with the name of his 
 favourite dog " Fox," and address it to his Margaret's pet 
 spaniel Tristram." Fox would take the note in his mouth and 
 duly deliver it to Tristram. Margaret would then answer — 
 
 ; - My own dear Fox, 
 
 " You are always loving and good, and I am 
 a naughty little female ever to worry you as I often do, so we 
 will kiss and say no more about it. 
 
 " Your own affectionate 
 
 " Tris." 
 
 Xorthcote says of him, " He was a natural gentleman, and 
 with all his simplicity he had wit too." Allan Cunningham 
 gives us a charming sketch of his ordinary daily life. " He 
 generally rose early, commenced painting between nine and ten 
 o'clock, wrought for four or five hours, and then gave up the 
 rest of the day to visits, to music, and to domestic enjoyment. 
 He loved to sit by the side of his wife during the evenings, and 
 make sketches of whatever occurred to his fancy, all of which he 
 threw below the table save such as were more than commonly 
 happy, and these were preserved and either finished as sketches 
 or expanded into paintings. In summer he had lodgings at 
 Hampstead for the sake of the green fields and the luxury of the 
 pure air ; and in winter he was often seen refreshing his eyes 
 with light at the window when fatigued with close employment." 
 The same writer speaking of his love of music remarks, that " he 
 seems to have been kept under a spell by all kinds of melodious 
 sounds." On the occasion of his presenting Colonel Hamilton 
 
52 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 with the Boy at the Stile we are told that Gainsborough stood 
 spellbound by the exquisite strains, and that there were " tears 
 of rapture on his cheeks." Dr. Wolcot once paid him a very 
 high compliment. He was in an adjoining room, and hearing 
 Gainsborough playing he exclaimed, " That must be Abel." 
 Poor Hayman has been made accountable for a certain freedom, 
 bordering sometimes on coarseness, which characterized Gains- 
 borough's conversation, and often renders his letters somewhat 
 unpleasing. He certainly did not beat about the bush when he 
 wished to give advice. Writing to his friend Henderson the 
 actor in 1773, he advises him to imitate Garrick, whom he 
 describes as " the greatest creature living ; " but he follows up 
 this excellent counsel with these remarks : u Look upon him, 
 Henderson, with your imitative eyes, for when he drops you'll 
 have nothing but poor old Nature's book to look in. You'll be 
 left to grope about alone, scratching your pate in the dark, or by 
 a farthing candle. Now is your time, my lively fellow ! And, 
 do ye hear, don't eat so devilishly ; you'll get too fat when you 
 rest from playing." Writing to the same person he again attacks 
 him on this last point. " If one may judge by your last spirited 
 epistle you are in good keeping ; no one eats with more grateful 
 countenance, or swallows with more good nature than yourself. 
 . . . . Xow any one who sees you eat pig and plum- 
 sauce immediately feels that pleasure which a plump morsel, 
 smoothly gliding through a narrow, glib passage into the regions 
 of bliss, and moistened with the dews of imagination, naturally 
 creates. Some iron-faced dogs, you know, seem to chew dry in- 
 gratitude and swallow discontent. Let such be kept to under parts 
 and never trusted to support a character. In all but eating 
 stick to Garrick ; in that let him stick to you, for I'll be curst if 
 you are not his master." He concludes by saying that the inten- 
 tion of Xature " must not be crossed. If it is she will tip the 
 wink to Madam Fortune, and you'll be kicked down-stairs." 
 
 Probably if poor Gainsborough could ever have anticipated 
 the insertion of these letters in his biography he w T ould have 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 53 
 
 paid more attention to style. He evidently did not write letters 
 intended for the public. Such things as these are the little 
 blemishes, the faults and eccentricities, which bring genius down 
 to the ordinary human level. We owe a debt of gratitude to 
 Gainsborough, and as Englishmen we should be proud of him. 
 His genius was essentially of native production. He never 
 went abroad to study, and there never was an artist who was 
 freer from foreign influences in his art ; and from first to last his 
 highest ambition was to be a faithful painter of English scenery. 
 His life resembled, in its calm serenity, one of the peaceful land- 
 scapes he loved so well to paint, and if a cloud occasionally 
 darkened the scene, as for instance when the fussy patronage of 
 Thicknesse was too predominant, or when fancy seemed to hint 
 that the Hanging Committee of the Eoyal Academy slighted him, 
 the shadow would speedily pass away, leaving the simple, soft- 
 hearted, emotional painter-musician happy and content in large- 
 minded devotion to his art. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GEXIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 " Art with no common gifts her Gainsborough graced, 
 Two different pencils in his hand she placed ; 
 ' This shall command,' she said, ' with certain aim, 
 A perfect semblance of the human frame ; 
 This, lightly sporting on the village green, 
 Paint the wild beauties of the rural scene.' " 
 
 A Pindaric Ode on Painting. London, 1763. 
 
 " TF ever this nation should produce a genius sufficient to 
 JL acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English 
 School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, 
 in this history of the art, among the very first of that rising 
 name." This was the opinion expressed by the President of the 
 Royal Academy within a few months of the death of his great 
 brother-artist \ and now, nearly a century later, the splendid 
 genius which marked Gainsborough as a worthy compeer of 
 Hogarth, Wilson, and Reynolds — a genius which not even Turner 
 with his " golden dreams" and visions in tinted vapour could 
 eclipse — is still pointed at with pride by those who believe in the 
 existence of Native art. Incomplete as must be the result within 
 our prescribed limits, it may not be altogether unprofitable to 
 review some of the causes which led to Gainsborough's high 
 
THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, 
 By Gainsborough. 
 
 In the possession of Viscountess Clifden* 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 55 
 
 degree of excellence as an artist and stamped his productions as 
 those of an undoubted master-painter. Whether we consider 
 him as a portrait painter, a landscape painter, or a delineator 
 of humble peasant life and scene, it is the powerful impression 
 of nature exhibited in all his works that calls forth our 
 admiration, and rivets our attention. The striking general 
 truth in all his productions which convinces us, when we see a 
 picture of his, that we are looking on a representation of something 
 that is, could only have been fixed on his canvases by one in 
 whom an intense love for his art was combined with an intense 
 and all-absorbing love of nature. The story of his life shows 
 that this was the case with him. Nothing but his best was good 
 enough ; when the Duchess of Devonshire, " then in the bloom 
 of youth, at once the loveliest of the lovely and the gayest of the 
 gay," sat to him for her portrait, his work did not satisfy him, 
 so, saying only, " Her Grace is too hard for me," he drew his 
 wet brush across a mouth, " which all who saw thought most 
 exquisitely lovely." And yet, within the last few years, upwards 
 of .£10,000 was given for this painter's portrait of the same lovely 
 woman. Nor was he less particular and painstaking in the other 
 branches of his art; only there he was enabled to study longer 
 and more minutely from the original objects. During his rambles 
 he would carefully notice every aspect of nature, and point out 
 to the companions of his walks every combination and effect that 
 struck him as being in any way picturesque. Did he see a 
 graceful bough, a tree-stump of more than ordinary beauty, or a 
 fantastic stone, he would not only note their salient features in 
 his mind, but would frequently carry home with him the objects 
 which had excited his admiration ; the tree cuttings he acquired 
 in this way would, it is said, have made a goodly sized wood- 
 stack; when animals were introduced into his pictures, it 
 was no unusual thing to see the living models posed in his 
 painting-room. Did he meet abroad a, labourer of picturesque 
 appearance, a peasant girl whose cheeks were beautified with 
 the bloom of health, or a beggar child whose simplicity and 
 
56 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 beauty interested him, he would straightway accost them and 
 strive to induce them to attend at his studio that he might add 
 to his store of reflected nature. Naturally, his great love for his 
 art led him to an enthusiastic determination to attain excellence, 
 and this determination he triumphantly carried through by the 
 only means by which real excellence can ever be attained — by 
 dint of unflagging perseverance, much hard work, and never- 
 ceasing endeavours to improve upon his latest productions. From 
 the time when, as a student at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, 
 finding there was nothing to be learnt from the works of his 
 contemporaries, he set resolutely to work to find out how the 
 great Flemish masters produced their wealth of colour, mastering 
 their secrets one by one until at last he could make copies of 
 Eubens, and Teniers, and Van Dyck, which " it would be no 
 disgrace for the most accurate connoisseur to mistake at first sight 
 for the work of these masters," until his death, he kept untiringly 
 pressing forward towards that goal which we know no mortal 
 can in any walk of life quite reach — perfection. On his death- 
 bed " his regret at losing life was principally the regret of losing 
 Ids art ; and more especially as he now began, he said, to see 
 what his deficiencies were, which he thought in his last w T orks 
 were in some measure supplied." 1 
 
 The study of the Flemish masters, by which Gainsborough 
 undoubtedly learnt much that was valuable and true in the 
 language of his art — harmony of colouring, the management and 
 disposition of light and shadow, and other means wdiich its 
 masters practise to ornament and give chiaroscuro to their works 
 — was not unattended with some danger, and in the case of a less 
 true or a less enthusiastic artist than Gainsborough, might have 
 been the means of destroying that originality which is a com- 
 ponent part of genius. In his early landscapes he did indeed 
 show traces of the influence of the Flemish School; but, by great 
 study, he soon discarded everything of mannerism that he had 
 "acquired ; and what he had learned that was the common property 
 1 Sir J. Reynolds, 14th Discourse. 
 
Till: GEXIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 57 
 
 of any painter, lie applied to the originals of nature which he 
 saw with his own eyes; and imitated these, not in the manner 
 of bygone masters, but in his own. It is true that " there may 
 be traced a lingering likeness in his landscapes to those of 
 Eubens ; but this arose more from his generalization of details, 
 his sinking the parts in the whole, than to any imitation of the 
 great Fleming. It is like the recollection of some sweet melody 
 which the musician weaves into his theme, all unconscious that 
 it is a memory and not a child of his own creation." 1 
 
 Much difference of opinion exists as to the advantages to be 
 derived from copying works of acknowledged masters as a part 
 of art education. As the art of painting does not depend for its 
 excellence upon the mere skill shown in the mechanical laying 
 on of colour over a mathematically accurate outline — as a picture 
 should have a soul — and as a painter should be a poet, it seems 
 to us that the mechanism of copying, in the art of painting, is 
 analogous to the art of translating in literature. One man can 
 produce a translation of the 6 Iliad,' a grammatically accurate but 
 lifeless one, and therefore valueless except as a translation ; 
 another, through a score lines will breathe the soul and reveal the 
 inspiration of Homer ; this is better, and his few lines are worth 
 all the pages of the lifeless translation. But half a dozen lines of 
 the original ' Iliad 1 are worth more than all the other two put 
 together. But still we would not say that either translator had 
 wasted time or power in his work ; for even the wooden one 
 (if we may call him so) must in his task have acquired facility 
 in the use of language — the tools of his art — and may in 
 consequence become a better writer of English than if he had 
 never looked for an idea or a thought beyond a Blue Book or 
 a Parliamentary Report, whilst anyone possessed of the smallest 
 spark of genius could not make the acquaintance of the greatest 
 poet's masterpiece without having that spark kindled by the 
 fire of genius therein. And so with painters \ by close study 
 and analysis of the masterpieces of the great ones of their art, 
 1 Redgrave's ' Century of Painters.' 
 
58 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 they learn to discover wherein genius truly lies, and to distinguish 
 between it and mannerism, conventionalism, affectation, and false- 
 hood. Eeynolds could not discover genius in Michael Angelo 
 or Rafaelle until he had long and carefully studied their works, 
 and Gainsborough profited by judicious copying of the methods 
 of the Flemings. As it is undenied that great poets may without 
 degrading their art translate the verses of their brethren who 
 have sung in other tongues, so it is no disgrace that our greatest 
 colour-poets have reproduced the works of their brethren of the 
 brush. In both cases the exercise is most excellent practice, and 
 especially in the case of beginners in the arts. In both cases the 
 excellence of the performance lies in the retention of the spirit 
 breathed into the original by its creator ; — and in neither case is 
 the reproduction of equal worth with the original. 1 
 
 1 u It is a question worth considering, how far the arts have been 
 advanced by the greatly increased facilities afforded during the last half- 
 century for studying and copying the works of others — not only of the old 
 masters, but also of contemporary painters, extending to many of the 
 permanent and even some of the annual exhibitions. We cannot, at the 
 present day, realize the position of a youth entering upon the pursuit of 
 art wholly deprived of the means of studying past or contemporary works, 
 and thus obliged to commence from the beginning, and achieve for himself 
 every new step in the road to excellence. But of course all limitation in 
 the means of access to other pictures, and of obtaining art information, 
 must have a tendency to place him in this isolated position. Yet for 
 healthy stimulus to action and for showing by what has been done what 
 may be done, for shortening the path in matters which are only means to 
 the end sought and not the end itself ; for preventing conceit by the sight 
 of excellence, and even by showing what to avoid, the opportunities 
 afforded for seeing past and contemporary art must be highly valuable. 
 
 " On the contrary, it may be said that studying the works of others induces 
 dependence, and tends to destroy individuality, originality, freshness of 
 feeling, and even of execution. Moreover, while art properly studied 
 enables the student to arrive readily at the rules and principles which have 
 guided his predecessors in their treatment of subjects, in composition, 
 arrangement of form, of colour, of light and dark, &c. , it tends no doubt to 
 fix him in dependence on like rules and to render his art somewhat con- 
 ventional. However this may be, the balance of advantage is very largely 
 in favour of such study ; it will help an original mind rapidly to reach the 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 59 
 
 Perhaps Gainsborough's highest gift was that of colour, and 
 there can be little doubt that this was intensified and made well 
 nigh perfect by his early study of the Flemish works. In this 
 respect he is entitled to rank with Eubens himself, and as Mr. 
 Euskin says, " in management and quality of single and par- 
 ticular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a 
 child to Gainsborough." The same critic then gives splendid 
 testimony to Gainsborough's hand, "light as the sweep of a 
 cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam ; " to his masses " broad 
 as the first division in heaven of light from darkness," to his 
 grand, simple, and ideal forms ; to the fact that he never loses 
 sight of his pictures as a whole, and to his immortality as a 
 painter. 
 
 Much as study of the practice of other masters may have had 
 to do with the development of Gainsborough's power of colour, 
 it is probable that his habit of painting after daylight disclosed 
 many secrets to him in this respect. Reynolds, speaking of this 
 custom, after pointing out that it was an additional proof of 
 Gainsborough's great love for his art, since he could find no such 
 agreeable means of amusing himself in the evening, says : "By 
 candlelight, not only objects appear more beautiful, but from 
 their being in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as 
 having a greater breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears 
 in a higher style ; and even the flesh seems to take a richer and 
 higher colour;" 1 and in support of his statement he gives it as 
 his opinion that the two great colourists, Titian and Correggio, 
 
 point at which to rest on its own resources, and where only average talent 
 is possessed will smooth the way past many difficulties. These remarks, 
 however, do not refer to the now general practice of copying, which degrades 
 art to a trade, and is the resort of mere mediocrity and feebleness. Copying 
 pictures will never be resorted to by the true artist, except as a means to 
 acquire execution or handling, or to arrive at the technical process by 
 which any peculiar quality of art that has pleased him may be achieved."* 
 1 Reynolds, 14th Discourse. 
 
 * " A Century of Painters," pp. 157-8, vol. i. 
 
60 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 formed their high ideas of colouring from the effect of objects 
 seen in an artificial light. One of the means Gainsborough 
 employed in order to obtain the effect of the red shadows of 
 Rubens was a lamp, the sides painted with vermilion, so that 
 when it was used to illuminate the objects, he could paint the 
 shadows as he saw them, and make them like what Jackson calls 
 "the splendid impositions of Rubens." In illustration of a 
 class of artificial light subjects not generally associated with 
 Gainsborough's style, we give the following extract from the 
 'Somerset House Gazette' of April 10th, 1824. " Exhibition 
 of drawings, Soho Square. . . The Cottage (Gainsborough) repre- 
 senting a most powerful effect of firelight in the interior. The 
 artist has given considerable interest to this subject by introducing 
 the cottager opening the door : the contrast between the light of 
 the cottage and that of the moon excites the most pleasing 
 association in the mind." Another (outdoor) Moonlight Scene 
 was on view at the same exhibition ; a few sheep scattered in the 
 foreground, and a rippling stream iu which the moon, just risen 
 above some hills in the background, is brilliantly reflected. 
 
 Whilst speaking of Gainsborough's magic power of colour, it 
 will be convenient to refer to the examples he has left, which 
 show with what impunity a great master may break through a 
 rule set up by another master whose reputation is as great, and 
 who ranks higher as an authority in questions of practice. Rey- 
 nolds, who found it difficult to determine whether Gainsborough 
 most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures, had laid 
 down the dogma that the cool colours (blue, grey, or green), 
 should not enter into the masses of light in a picture, which 
 should be composed of warm mellow colours (yellow, red, or a 
 yellowish white). In one of Gainsborough's best known pictures, 
 The Blue Boy (a portrait of Master Buttall), the figure is clad in 
 a dress of cerulean blue. Concerning this picture and Sir Joshua's 
 dictum, that eminent critic Dr. Waagen has thus written : " In 
 spite of the blue dress, Gainsborough has succeeded in producing 
 a harmonious and pleasing effect ; nor can it be doubted that in 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 61 
 
 the cool scale of colours, in which blue acts the chief part, there 
 are very tender and pleasing harmonies which Sir Joshua, with 
 his way of seeing, could not well appreciate. On the whole, too, 
 he may be so far right, that painters would do well to avoid as 
 much as possible the use of pure unbroken blue in large masses. 
 The Blue Boy is tender, remarkable for animation and spirit, and 
 careful solid painting." Of other portraits by this master, in 
 which a similar treatment has been adopted, we may mention the 
 portrait of Mr, and Mrs. Hallett and that of Mrs. Siddons. As 
 a matter of fact, Gainsborough could do anything he liked with 
 colour ; but a similar affection for the cool tints may be observed 
 in some of the portraits of Van Dyck. 
 
 It is impossible to think of Gainsborough as a landscape 
 painter without thinking of his unhappy and neglected contem- 
 porary, whose genius is now the triumphant boast of English art. 
 Richard Wilson, never excelled and rarely equalled in his power 
 of uniting originality of conception and treatment with truth 
 and grandeur of expression, was a true poet, and equally so was 
 Gainsborough. But the poetry of these two men was vastly 
 different. Wilson's genius was nurtured amidst the rich and 
 glowing scenery round Eome. The love of nature and the 
 beautiful that Eome begets is strong but reverent ; not a familiar 
 love, but one somewhat tinctured with awe ; tender, but very 
 solemn. 
 
 " In Eome, Art and Nature strain together in perpetual con- 
 flict for supremacy ; a struggle of a Titan with a God that holds 
 on-lookers breathless. . .. . Who with any power of vision or soul 
 of artist in them can live a day blind to the vast and sublime 
 beauties of the capital of the world 1 — who can fail to grow at 
 once the humbler and the greater by dwelling on that sacred 
 soil?" 1 
 
 That Wilson's art was permanently influenced by his residence 
 in that country where the Campagna, studded with the ruins of 
 temples and ancient buildings, calls up, in our contemplation of 
 1 Preface to ' Pascarel/ by Ouida. 
 
62 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 the living beauty of the scene, recollections of by-gone glory and 
 vanished splendour, is evident in the spirit of nearly all his land- 
 scape works ; and in his Lake Avernus it is particularly evident. 
 The poetry of his nature was that of ' The Bard/ and his restless 
 and yearning soul sought for comfort in the contemplation of 
 some 
 
 " rock whose haughty brow 
 
 Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood." 1 
 Or in listening 
 
 " How each giant oak and desert cave, 
 Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath. " 2 
 
 Gainsborough, on the other hand, who never quitted England, 
 spent his infancy and matured his art education in a country 
 teeming with homely rural associations ; and amidst such unam- 
 bitious scenery he found congenial food for his mind and subject 
 for his pencil. 
 
 " His uplands are the abode of ruddy health and labour ; the 
 by-paths, the deep-intrenched roads, the team, and the clownish 
 waggoner all lead us to the pleasing contemplation of rustic 
 scenery and domesticate us with the objects he has so faithfully 
 delineated." 3 
 
 Such subjects are very different from Wilson's classical concep- 
 tions, but in them is embodied no less true poetry — such poetry 
 as Burns sang, and such as is contained in the 6 Elegy in a 
 Country Churchyard.' Gainsborough knew and loved the " low- 
 ing herd," the "ivy-mantled tower;" he rested often " beneath 
 the rugged elm and yew trees's shade," and he loved well to sketch 
 some nodding beech that " wreathed its old fantastic forms " by 
 a brook that ran babbling by. 4 
 
 1 Gray's < Bard.' 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 ' Quarterly Review,' Feb. 1809. 
 
 4 A writer in 'Blackwood' (Oct. 1833), thus describes one of Gainsborough's 
 landscapes : — " An evening sky with a far-off perspective — a river stealing 
 through a valley skirted with wood — in the foreground are two oaks, with 
 the lichens strongly marked on their trunks ; these connect themselves with 
 the second distance of wood, winch retires in the course of the stream 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 63 
 
 Reynolds, on the whole just in his estimation of Gainsborough, 
 made the following somewhat paradoxical statement : " If Gains- 
 borough did not look at Nature with a poet's eye, it must be 
 acknowledged that he saw her with the eye of a painter ; and 
 gave a faithful, if not a poetical, representation of what he had 
 before him." ]S T ow it must be remembered that these words 
 formed part of a Discourse to the Academy Students, throughout 
 which the necessity that children in art should submit themselves 
 to their elders for instruction and advice, and the advantage of 
 conforming to recognized methods and studying the works of the 
 old masters, is dwelt upon. 
 
 t .wards a village only indicated by a church spire ; beyond that is a distant 
 wood on rising ground, but still low in the picture, towards which the water 
 is lost. The composition is extremely simple. There is the ' sere and yellow 
 leaf,' the sombre brown partaking much of the red, and very solemn dull 
 green, scarcely bearing that name, interspersed in trees and on the ground. 
 The river among the trees is scarcely perceptible, so near the hue of all 
 about them, but in the distance it is marked by a strong yet somewhat 
 broken line of light. It is long ere you see some cattle very indistinctly 
 indicated in repose in the meadows. The clouds are broken into parts, 
 and all perspectively going off to their rest-grey, amid a faint yellowish 
 evening light— and in perfect concord with them are rooks returning for 
 the night. It is just before that time when- 
 
 " Fades the glimmering landscape on the sight." 
 
 You could easily imagine the poetic sounds, from the distant church, 
 where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." You might hear the 
 curfew that " tolls the knell of parting day," and the cawing of the rooks 
 in their homeward passage. Gainsborough had put in a figure— apparently 
 a countryman, leaning over some broken hurdles that separate the bank of 
 foreground from the wood behind, but has judiciously painted over it ; you 
 can just see it has been there, but that discovery is only made when the 
 picture is well known. It is not seen nor thought of when you look at it 
 The whole melancholy of "parting day" is thus preserved. A figure 
 would have been an intrusion. The spectator is the figure, the subject will 
 bear no other. He feels at once that even the rooks will soon lie still in 
 their nests — 
 
 " And leave the world to darkness and to me." 
 
64 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 Reynolds argued that as Gainsborough's particular line of art 
 (as regards his landscapes and fancy pictures) required that his 
 studies should be directed to the living world principally, he 
 did not, nor was it necessary that he should, pay a general atten- 
 tion to the works of the various masters. It would never do 
 that the pupils at the Academy of which Sir Joshua was Presi- 
 dent should be too independent ; and as Gainsborough's excel- 
 lence in his own line of art could not be denied, Reynolds 
 discovered that that line was not poetical. In another place the 
 President, speaking of Gainsborough's fancy pictures, talks of 
 " the mean and vulgar form of a woodcutter." Those who are 
 acquainted with Gainsborough's figure pieces will surely agree 
 with us that his woodcutters and ploughmen are not mean and 
 vulgar ; humble and homely would perhaps describe them accur- 
 ately. Gainsborough might have found both woodcutters and 
 royal personages, doubtless, to whom these adjectives would apply ; 
 but he did not select his models so badly as to introduce such 
 into his pictures ; wherever and whenever he met a face or form 
 that struck his artist's eye as being elegant, or graceful, or pictur- 
 esque, he endeavoured to secure it for his canvas. Some of his 
 pictures are brimming over with humour. Take The Race, for 
 example. The expression of the donkey's faces is exquisite. 
 The foremost one, galloping along with head almost on the 
 ground, is casting out of the corner of its eye a look of keen 
 enjoyment of the fun ; whilst its companion in the rear is smiling 
 (literally), though evidently anxious about the lost ground to be 
 made up. The riders, too, bareheaded and coatless, bestriding 
 their bare-backed steeds which they urge on to redoubled effort, 
 are only donkey boys ; yet there is nothing unpleasing about 
 them, but rather much picturesqueness. And what of the face 
 of The Woodman in the Storm, painted as it is said from a small 
 model which Gainsborough made of the man who stood for the 
 picture] "What of the Shepherd Boy in the Shoiver, of which 
 Haylett thus speaks : " I remember being once driven by a 
 shower of rain for shelter into a picture-dealer's shop in Oxford 
 
RUSTIC CHILDREN 
 
 B-v Gainsborough. 
 //; the National Gal lei v 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 65 
 
 Street, where there stood on the floor a copy of Gainsborough's 
 Shepherd Boy with the thunder-storm coming on. What a truth 
 and beauty was there ! He stands with his hands clasped, look- 
 ing up with a mixture of timidity and resignation, eyeing a 
 magpie chattering over his head, while the wind is rustling in 
 the branches. It was like a vision breathed on the canvas." 
 
 Some modern painters and those critics who follow them have 
 a poor opinion of Gainsborough's art. They say that his drawing 
 is faulty, and that his landscapes have not sufficient detail to rank 
 as finished pictures. There is, of course, some reasons for their 
 censure, and we do not attempt to deny that Gainsborough's 
 style is sketchy. But if, as we believe, it is the aim of a land- 
 scape painter to bring before the spectator the representation of 
 some scene as a whole, Gainsborough certainly succeeded better 
 than any of the later painters who crowd into their canvases as 
 many minutely painted details of natural features as they possi- 
 bly can, and then label the collection a Landscape. If it were 
 possible to paint every detail of a scene exactly and equally 
 finished— every tree, shrub, blossom, petal, blade of grass, tiny 
 stone, &c, there would not be much objection to so doing, pro- 
 vided always that the artist never lost sight of the fact that a 
 mere agglomeration of details is valueless unless the general 
 spirit of the scene bind thern together. But when one or two 
 features are, to any marked extent, detailed beyond the others, 
 then the picture is no longer a landscape, but becomes in fact 
 the portrait of a cow, or a plough, or a tree, or what not, relieved 
 by a more or less pleasing background in landscape style. If 
 one places before a casual observer a landscape photograph (that 
 has not been touched up or toned down by an artist's hand) it is 
 ten chances to one that the first observation will be, " How well 
 that figure in the foreground, or that hut in the middle distance, 
 or that oak, or that cluster of marsh-mallows comes out ! " Then 
 the eye wanders to other parts of the view, but ever returns 
 after a brief survey to the one prominent spot that stands out 
 with such fatal distinctness. From the very nature of the lens 
 
66 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 by which the image was reproduced it was impossible that more 
 than one point could have been in exact focus ; all others must 
 have been, in degree, less distinctly shadowed on the sensitive 
 plate. Yet what painter would attempt to draw every detail of 
 a landscape with equal fidelity and minuteness to that obtainable 
 in a photograph ? Gainsborough felt that the true charm of a 
 landscape lay not in its details but in its spirit, and he attempted 
 to make his pictures convey a similar general impression to the 
 spectator to that which would be derived from a contemplation 
 of the original scene. 
 
 To accomplish this, his practice was to paint the whole of his 
 picture at once, not building it up by parts, but working at fore- 
 ground, middle distances, background, trees, figures, sky, and 
 every part indiscriminately ; the result was invariably a har- 
 monious whole. And that he might the more readily conjure 
 up the whole scene in his mind's eye without delay or stopping 
 in his work, he would arrange on his table a rough plan ot 
 his landscape, using broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of 
 looking-glass. He made little laymen for human figures, he 
 modelled his horses and cows, and knobs of coal sat for rocks. 
 The value of such a system will be readily understood by any 
 one who has ever recalled every feature of some almost forgot- 
 ten but once familiar scene by merely glancing at a bird's-eye 
 view of the place. These vieics are not really representations of 
 anything at all, but they are admirable aids to memory. Thus 
 Gainsborough's principal aim in landscape — we are speaking of 
 his best style, after he had eschewed the tenets of the Flemish 
 and Dutch Schools — was to grasp the whole, knowing that if lie 
 did that well the part must be right. And to our mind he 
 succeeded admirably. Mr. Euskin thus praises and at the same 
 time finds fault with the landscape presented by Gainsborough 
 to the Eoyal Academy: 1 'Nothing can be more attractively 
 luminous or aerial than the distance of the Gainsborough, 
 nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of its crags, and 
 1 ( Modern Painters/ vol. i. p. 91. 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 G7 
 
 the diffusion of the broad distant light upon them, where a vul- 
 gar artist would have thrown them into dark contrast. But it 
 will be found that the light of the distance is brought out by a 
 violent exaggeration of the gloom in the valley ; that the forms 
 of the green trees which bear the chief light are careless and in- 
 effective ; that the markings of the crags are equally hasty ; and 
 that no object has realization enough to enable the eye to rest 
 upon it." 1 
 
 With regard to the first objection, if " nothing can be more 
 attractively luminous or aerial than the distance," why take 
 exception to the only means by which that effect could be pro- 
 duced 1 ? As there is no pigment known that can equal the light 
 of heaven in purity or intensity of tint, and as it was the 
 painter's endeavour to keep the same relation between the gloom 
 and the light in the picture as was observable in nature ; as, 
 moreover, the light of nature is absolutely inimitable, it was 
 necessary to deepen the gloom in order to keep the relation. 
 The other objections may be summed up in the modern critic's 
 cry — want of detail and insufficient realization. We have 
 already mentioned that Gainsborough painted landscapes in the 
 whole and not in part, but for all that he knew well enough that 
 
 ] It should be mentioned that in the same section from which we have 
 quoted, Mr. Ruskin has said of Gainsborough : "A great name his, whether 
 of the English or any other school, the greatest colourist since Rubens, 
 and the last, I think, of legitimate colourists ; that is to say, of those who 
 were fully acquainted with the use of their material ; pure in his English 
 feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his gaiety, there are never- 
 theless certain deductions to be made from his worthiness which I dread 
 to make because my knowledge of his landscape works is not extensive 
 enough to justify me in speaking of them decisively ; but this is to be 
 noted of all that I know, that they are rather motives of feeling and colour 
 than earnest studies ; that their execution is in some degree mannered, 
 and always hasty ; that they are altogether wanting in affectionate detail ; 
 and that their colour is in some degree dependent on a bituminous brown 
 and conventional green, which have more of science than of truth in them." 
 He then proceeds to say that this fault may be noticed in the picture we 
 have referred to. 
 
 F 2 
 
03 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 the effect of the whole would be hopelessly marred, or even 
 destroyed, by one false detail. We have mentioned how his 
 painting-room was filled with bits of trees, stones, mosses, &c. ; 
 and he studied how to represent these faithfully and unobtru- 
 sively — for they could not be represented unobtrusively if not 
 faithfully. His early works were remarkable for portrait-like 
 adherence to local scenery and minute and detailed finish, and 
 Fulcher mentions one of his numerous studies of trees — a young 
 oak, " painted leaf for leaf, whilst ferns and grapes are portrayed 
 with microscopic fidelity." In his portrait of Fischer, as we 
 before mentioned, he gives us a fine example of the care he could 
 bestow upon details if he chose, or thought it desirable to do so. 
 Redgrave remarks upon his power of detail as displayed in this 
 picture : " The fiddle in the chair is a notable example — a connois- 
 seur in the instrument would at once name the builder ; a 
 Dutchman would spend three months of labour and produce 
 nothing like its reality." 
 
 In his sea pieces, too, though he never pretended to minute 
 correctness of rigging, his general effects o f sea, sea _ coast, and 
 vessels are described as truly masterly. Gainsborough only 
 painted about four sea pieces, although he generally introduced 
 the sea and a ship by way of background to his portraits of 
 sailors. Towards the close of his career he painted his best 
 picture of this class, described in Carey's ' Catalogue of the 
 Leicester Gallery 1 as A Sea-shore with Boats and Figures. 1 But 
 perhaps the complaints of his want of detail and finish are made 
 by those who examine a picture with the finger and nose, feeling 
 and smelling it instead of regarding it with their eyes. How 
 little Gainsborougli himself cared for this class of criticism is 
 evident from his letter to Mr. Edgar, whose portrait had been 
 sent home and criticized : — 
 
 " You please me much by saying that no other fault is found 
 in your picture than the roughness of the surface, for that part 
 being of use in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, 
 1 See Fulcher's ' Life of Gainsborough/ 2nd ed., p. 144. 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 69 
 
 and what a judge of painting knows an original from a copy by ; 
 I am mncli better pleased that they should spy out things of 
 that kind than to see an eye half an inch out of its place, or a 
 nose out of drawing when viewed at a proper distance. I don't 
 think it would be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose 
 close to the canvas and say the colours smell offensive than to 
 say how rough the paint lies." Sir Godfrey Kneller used to 
 tell them " that pictures were not made to smell of." Beynolds 
 also speaks of " all those odd scratches and marks, which, on a 
 close examination, are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, 
 and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect 
 of accident than design : this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless 
 appearance, by a kind of magic at a certain distance assumes 
 form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places, so 
 that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of 
 diligence under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence." 
 Beading between the lines of Sir Joshua's ' Discourse' we fancy 
 we see throughout the whole pamphlet : " This man undoubtedly 
 produced splendid results, but his practice was not in strict 
 conformity with our recognized academic rules, therefore some- 
 thing ought to be wrong." And some later critics say : 
 " Gainsborough's practice was unorthodox — we will not, there- 
 fore, under any circumstances allow his productions to rank 
 with those of the great masters." 
 
 Smith tells us that it was Gainsborough's practice in portrait 
 painting to sometimes use brushes with handles six feet long, so 
 that he, his easel, and his sitter forming the apices of an 
 equilateral triangle, he could touch the features in his canvas 
 from the same distance as that at which he viewed his sitter. 
 This may account for some of the " odd scratches and marks " 
 which appear on close examination, and for the " reedy " execu- 
 tion in the portraits of the Countess of Lincoln and the Countess 
 of Ligouier ; and for the " tree touch " on the eyebrow of Lord 
 Chesterfield — all of which portraits viewed at a proper distance 
 are perfect. 
 
70 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 As a portrait painter Gainsborough may rank with Reynolds 
 as of equal excellence though in a different direction. Many 
 would, of course, contest this statement. Those who have the 
 opportunity and the capacity of judging from the works of the 
 two painters may easily satisfy themselves on this point. Those 
 who prefer to take up their position beneath the shelter of 
 professional art critics we refer to one of the earliest disbelievers 
 in Gainsborough as a portrait painter, who, in the ' Quarterly 
 Review 7 for February, 1809, states that Reynolds formally 
 denied Gainsborough's power of giving a just resemblance. Sir 
 Joshua's own words on this point are : 
 
 "It is difficult to determine whether his portraits were most 
 admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for 
 portrait-like representation of Nature." 
 
 Mr. Tom Taylor says with great truth that in the gradation 
 of light, shade, and colour, Gainsborough is superior to Reynolds 
 That he was also superior to him in the technical use of materials 
 time has proved, for his pigments have certainly lasted better 
 than Sir Joshua's. 
 
 One very noticeable feature in Gainsborough's portraits is the 
 brilliant freshness of his flesh tints which, even now, " stand 
 out like enamel." Gainsborough always made a careful and 
 intelligent study of his subjects, and knew instinctively when a 
 careful reproduction of the features and when a conscientious intro- 
 duction of all the details of a sumptuous toilette would be most 
 esteemed. The Duchess of Beaufort is an example of Gains- 
 borough's skill in painting decorative drapery. But if he some- 
 times stooped towards the level of the Japanese artist, who cares 
 nothing usually for the countenance of the sitter and everything 
 for his attire, still he kept the best efforts of his genius for sub- 
 jects of intellectual pre-eminence. As illustrations we may 
 instance the portraits of William Pitt, ''calm, passionless, states- 
 manlike ; " Mrs. Siddons at the age of twenty -five, " in the prime 
 of her glorious beauty ; " Garrick, the man " worth studying in 
 every action," the peerless actor, the "gracious and sincere friend ; " 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 71 
 
 Abel, the musician; Dr. Schomberg ; and above all Benjamin 
 Franklin. As we have said, Mrs. Garrick pronounced Gains- 
 borough's to be the best portrait of " her Davy," and he has 
 certainly produced a more pleasing and gentlemanly figure than 
 Sir Joshua, who painted a front view of the same actor. Apart 
 from the playful vagaries by which Foote and Garrick provoked 
 from the painter the expression of comic despair, " Eot them for 
 a couple of rogues, they have everybody's faces but their own," 
 Garrick's face seems to have been a difficult subject to treat. 
 Abel, the musician, is very carefully painted, and the picture was 
 a favourite one of the artist's. The left hand is especially notice- 
 able for its careful execution. The musician is represented 
 in the act of performing, and his face suggests rapt attention to 
 the sounds he is producing. The portrait of Dr. Schomberg is 
 considered one of the finest in the world, and the landscape 
 background is worthy of the painter. Never was Gainsborough 
 more successful than in portraying Franklin, " the good, great 
 man of noble bearing." 
 
 The figures of Gainsborough are deliciously natural and simple, 
 and in this respect as well as in the permanent brilliancy of 
 colour they contrast favourably with Sir Joshua's paintings. 
 "The children of Sir Joshua are indeed beautiful creations," 
 says Allan Cunningham; "free, artless, and lovely; but they 
 seem all to have been nursed in velvet laps and fed with golden 
 spoons. There is a rustic grace, an untamed wildness about 
 the children of the other (Gainsborough) which speaks of the 
 country and of neglected toilets. They are the offspring of 
 Nature, running free amongst woods as wild as themselves. 
 They are not afraid of disordering their satins and wetting their 
 kid shoes. They roll on the green sward, burrow like rabbits, 
 and dabble in the running streams daily." 
 
 Gainsborough has painted many beautiful women, and his 
 female portraits are all characterized by purity of expression. 
 He paints women alike able to inspire admiration and worthy 
 of retaining pure and reverential love. What can surpass the 
 
72 
 
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 grace and artistic treatment exhibited in such portraits as The 
 Duchess of Cumberland; the Countess of Lincoln; and Lady 
 Ligonier ? The delicacy of conception and harmony of execution 
 are beyond all praise. The pure delicate features are delineated 
 with exquisite tenderness, the " lovingly liquid " eyes look out 
 from the canvas as though from a living person ; there is a 
 marvellous purity of colour in the cheeks ; a sweet womanly grace 
 in the pose of the figure ; a careless grace in the drapery, which 
 stamp these delicious paintings as the loving productions of a 
 master's hand. And where shall we find a more attractive 
 portrait than that of the Honourable Mrs. Graham, wife of 
 General Graham 1 Never was Gainsborough's marvellous power 
 in controlling and contrasting colour more strikingly displayed 
 than in this picture. The clear cool tones of the dress are con- 
 trasted with the warm crimson colouring of the lower part of 
 the figure with wondrous skill. The grace of the full-length 
 figure is perfect; the features are delicate and highly characteristic, 
 in what Dr Waagen happily calls their " expression of youthful 
 disdain." The modelling of the face and the careful painting of 
 the beautiful hands is marvellously accurate. The beautiful 
 original of this picture was cut off by a premature death, and 
 thus a sad interest attaches to a work which upon its artistic 
 merits may rank as one of Gainsborough's masterpieces. 
 
 There is a graceful fitness in the fact that the artist never 
 exercised his genius more lovingly or successfully than in the 
 portrait of his sweet, faithful Margaret. Mrs. Gainsborough's 
 charms glow as freshly on the canvas to-day as on that happy 
 morn when the painter led his youthful bride to the altar. As 
 Allan Cunningham says very prettily, these paintings " are like 
 himself, they glow with animation, and there is a magic touch 
 which none can describe." His works show that he was capable 
 of minute execution and the most delicate handling, but these 
 he looked upon only as the means whereby an end might be 
 attained. He never mistook them for the end itself. In some 
 cases, however, he undoubtedly did not pay sufficient attention 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 73 
 
 to detail, relying too much on the colouring and motive, and not 
 making his pictures sufficiently finished studies to permit of 
 our classing them as perfect. The impatience of his nature, and 
 the rapidity with which he worked, has in many cases resulted 
 in imperfect execution. "We do not know," says Fulcher, 
 " that, like Eeynolds on quitting the studio of Hudson, Gains- 
 borough ever painted a sitter with one hat on his head and 
 another under his arm — but mistakes no less ludicrous appear 
 in some of his landscapes. In one picture an owl is perched on 
 a tree in broad daylight ; in another cattle are introduced lying 
 so close to the sea that the next wave must certainly cover 
 them." In the Shepherd Boy in the Shoiver, the boy is placed 
 on the wrong side of the hedge, so that the rain is blowing full 
 upon him. 
 
 The same fault is visible in many of his best portraits. But 
 Sir Joshua has pointed out that the slightness which we see in 
 so many of his best works, is not so much a fault of negligent 
 execution as a manner of the artist's. Such a genius as 
 Gainsborough's might be permitted to deal sportively with some 
 details; but occasionally he carries this airy indifference to too 
 great a length. His numerous drawings were for the most part 
 masterty, and equal in point of character to his most finished 
 productions. His friend Jackson says that he has seen fully a 
 thousand of these, and that " they have all great length and 
 singular freedom of handling." Many of these were copied and 
 published by the painter's nephew, Eichard Lane, to whom 
 Allan Cunningham paid the high compliment of saying that 
 " most of the artist's spirit survived in him." 
 
 Our National Collection contains a few fine specimens of 
 Gainsborough's Art. Those numbered from 308 to 311, are — 
 308. Musidora bathing her Feet; 309. The Watering Place; 
 310. Woody Landscape, Sunset ; 311. Rustic Children. 
 
 The Watering Place is one of those pictures in which Gains- 
 borough specially delighted and which most of all are indicative 
 of his character. It is one of his strong delineations of simple 
 
74: THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH 
 
 rustic life. In the foreground is a placid pool of water 
 with three cows drinking, the cowherd in slouched hat of the 
 genuine Suffolk labourer's type, standing lazily on the brink. 
 The green banks are shaded by noble trees, and away in the 
 distance rises a fine old Norman castle, which very closely 
 resembles Hedingham Castle, a few miles from Sudbury, for 
 which it was probably intended ; but if so the hill behind it 
 was borrowed for the occasion from Cumberland, as there is not 
 one of the size within the boundaries of Essex and Suffolk. It 
 is an enchanting picture, full of delicious quiet and repose. 
 Gainsborough disposed of his landscapes very slowly, and after 
 his death his widow held an exhibition of his works at Pall 
 Mall, consisting of fifty-six paintings and one hundred and 
 forty-eight engravings. The object was to sell the pictures, and 
 many of them were sold at the time. The Blue Boy, and The 
 Cottage Door, after some vicissitudes, found a permanent home 
 in the Grosvenor Collection. 
 
 The latter picture is greatly admired, and is thus described by 
 Cunningham : "It represents a cottage matron with an infant 
 in her arms and several older children around her enjoying 
 themselves at the door of a little rustic cabin. This lodge in the 
 wilderness is deeply shut up in a close wooded nook ; through 
 the shafts of the trees glimpses of knolls and streams are obtained 
 There is uncommon breadth and mass about it, with a richness 
 of colouring, a sort of brown and glossy goldenness, which is 
 common in the works of the artist. The matron herself is the 
 perfect beau-ideal of a youthful cottage dame — rustic loveliness 
 exalted by natural gentility of expression." 
 
 Upwards of three hundred paintings, besides over a thousand 
 drawings, make up the record of Gainsborough's life-work. Of 
 his paintings, over two hundred and twenty are portraits. 
 George III. was painted by him no less than eight times ; Pitt 
 was painted seven times ; Garrick five. Amongst his portraits of 
 lawyers are those of Lord Chancellor Camden and Sir William 
 Elackstone; Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Eichardson, Clive, Burke, 
 
THE COTTAGE DOOR. BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 In the possession of the Duke of Westminster. 
 
THE GENIUS OF THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 75 
 
 Sheridan, Windham, Franklin, and Canning ; — Mrs. Graham, 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Vernon, and Lady Maynard ; 
 — the Bishops of Worcester and Ferns; — Quinand Mrs. Siddons, 
 are a few of the names which are associated with Gainsborough's 
 art as a portrait painter. And though his skill in this department 
 was so great that, had he no other merit, it would have entitled 
 him to a foremost place in British Art, it is as a painter of the 
 country that we love to think of him — for every time we see 
 one of his landscapes we realize how soothing, tender, and 
 affecting is the artist's skill. " The stillness of noon, the depths 
 of twilight, and the dews and pearls of the morning," says Con- 
 stable, u are all to be found on the canvases of this most benevo- 
 lent and kindhearted man. On looking at them we find tears 
 in our eyes and know not what brings them. The lonely haunts 
 of the solitary shepherd — the return of the rustic with his bill 
 and bundle of wood — the darksome lane or dell — .the sweet 
 little cottage-girl at the spring with her pitcher — were the things 
 he delighted to paint, and which he painted with exquisite 
 refinement, yet not a refinement beyond nature." 
 
 " Gainsborough is an immortal painter" is the conclusion of 
 one not lavish of his praise. This high eulogium must not blind 
 us to his shortcomings. His vegetation, his rocks, his water, 
 all the properties, — the hooks as it were on which he hangs out 
 [Nature — should have to the lover and knower of Nature more 
 characteristic forms than Gainsborough gives them. His imitation 
 of the forms of Nature is not sufficiently finished. But the 
 golden wealth of sunlight, the freshness of the sweeping wind, 
 the vastness of the infinite ether — these are properties which no 
 technical details or mechanical skill will suffice to conjure up on 
 the artist's canvas — these are beauties which cannot be described, 
 can only be seen or felt. These are seen and felt in Gains- 
 borough's pictures, and in the calm contentment which attends 
 the contemplation of such rare beauty, censorious criticisms were 
 fitly hushed. 
 
CHEONOLOGY. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 1727 Birth. May? 
 
 1741 Goes to Study in London. 
 
 1745 Marriage and Settlement at Ipswich. 
 
 1754 Meets Thicknesse. 
 
 1760 Removes to Bath. 
 
 176S Becomes a Royal Academician. 
 
 1774 Settles in London at Schomberg House. 
 
 1784 Rupture with the Royal Academy. 
 
 1788 Death. August 2. 
 
PORTRAIT OF JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
 
A LOCK ON THE STOUR. BY C0£> STABLE. 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 HE life of a painter is one of almost constant toil, but whilst 
 
 X all who determine to devote their lives to Art will find 
 that the ascent to anything worthy of the name of excellence 
 is toilsome and difficult, there is a fulness of satisfaction to be 
 derived from the attempt which is not dependent upon success 
 in the ordinary sense of the term. Disappointments and successes, 
 indeed, are not blended equally in a painter's life according to an 
 inexorable law of cause and effect. At any rate they were not 
 so blended in the case of John Constable, who to the end of his 
 days was an unappreciated painter, spite of the tardy honours 
 which the Royal Academy were at length wise enough to bestow. 
 Still, in his simple devotion to his art, and in the consciousness 
 of power, he was content to struggle on to the end, so that he 
 almost died with his brush in his hand. He had set himself a 
 difficult task. By constant and intelligent study of nature, and 
 patient acquisition of the technical details of his art, he sought to 
 attain excellence, and one by one the obstacles in his path were 
 
80 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 broken down, and the day came, at last, when he knew that he 
 might claim a place on the eminence where stand those bright 
 spirits who in a like heroic struggle have won the same deathless 
 fame. But he had set himself a still more difficult task than 
 that. He would conquer British apathy, and purify bad taste 
 in matters relating to Art, and in this effort he could scarcely 
 expect entirely to succeed. Yet he did not turn in querulous 
 disdain from those who refused the meed of praise so fairly 
 earned. " He yearned for the appreciation he so truly merited." 
 When his house was full of pictures which he could not sell he 
 used every means of bringing his art before his countrymen, and 
 even advertised that his collection might be seen gratis daily on 
 application at his residence. The British public availed itself 
 very sparingly of the privilege, and suffered the due recognition 
 of this truly great and pure painter of our national scenery to 
 come from France and posterity. 
 
 John Constable was born at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, June 
 11, 1776, two years after Gainsborough settled in his comfortable 
 quarters in Pall Mall. East Bergholt is a pretty village happily 
 situated on an eminence overlooking the valley of the Stour, 
 which on the south is the boundary between Suffolk and Essex. 
 It is about fourteen miles distant from Sudbury, the birthplace 
 of our other landscape painter and Suffolk worthy, Thomas 
 Gainsborough. 
 
 The ' Suffolk Traveller ' thus describes the place : " This is a 
 large village consolidated to Brant-ham. The cloth manufacture 
 formerly nourished here. It is supposed to have been a market- 
 town : but the market is disused and the town is greatly 
 reduced, many houses having lately been pulled down." 
 
 In a work entitled ' The Beauties of England and Wales " 
 (London, 1801), we find this prosaic description : "The church 
 is a good structure . . . and many parts of it are of very elegant 
 workmanship. Southward of the church is a neat mansion built 
 
 by Thomas Chaplin, Esq The residences of the rector, the 
 
 Rev. Dr. Ehudde, Peter Godfrey, Esq., Mrs. Eoberts, and Golding 
 
EAST BERGIIOLT. 
 
 81 
 
 Constable, Esq. give this place an appearance far superior to that 
 of most villages." 
 
 The Gokling Constable here referred to was a wealthy miller, 
 grandson of a Yorkshire farmer, who years before had come south 
 and settled at Bures, a village on the Essex border, some eight 
 or nine miles west of East Eergholt. He prospered well, and 
 his grandson Golding, beside inheriting the FJatford water-mill 
 and considerable wealth, purchased two wind-mills in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Bergholt, and another water-mill at Dedham, a very 
 pretty village on the Essex side of the river, and also one at 
 Flatworth. He built the house honoured with mention in 
 ' The Beauties of England and Wales/ and married a wealthy ami 
 amiable young lady, Miss Ann Watts. At the time of our 
 painter's appearance on the scene of action they had only one 
 other child, whom biographers of the artist have not thought tit 
 to immortalize. The world at large did not trouble itself about 
 the event which had disturbed the serenity of the worthy 
 miller's household on that 1 1th June, any more than it did with 
 any other of the thousands of similar daily occurrences, but 
 to Golding Constable and his family it was fraught with the 
 deepest interest. For the new life that day launched on the tide 
 of existence was very nearly lost. Very frail was the tiny 
 human craft that came to gladden the hearts of the worthy 
 couple, and was destined to confer such benefits on mankind, 
 and the anxious parents were prepared in sadness to part with 
 the son they had scarce yet set eyes upon. But happily the 
 fears for his welfare were ill-founded, and baby Constable 
 conquered in the struggle for existence, and grew up to be the 
 strong, healthy, handsome young miller of Bergholt, and, what 
 most concerns us, to add another immortal name to the roll < f 
 English landscape painters whose productions have exalted our 
 country to the foremost rank of modem art. 
 
 Kembrandt, Etty, and Constable were the sons of millers, but 
 we do not press the resemblance closer, for unlike Kembrandt, 
 Constable was distinguished by the care and finish of his 
 
82 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 productions, and Etty, although he at first thought to paint 
 landscape, "inclined to heroic subjects, and then to devote him- 
 self, as he said, to God's most glorious work, woman." Moreover, 
 it is not recorded of Mrs. Constable as of Mrs. Etty, that she 
 supplemented her husband's efforts as a miller by embarking in 
 the gingerbread trade. We may assume that the artist's boyhood 
 did not differ very much from that of ordinary country lads in 
 his station of life. At the age of seven be was placed at a 
 boarding-school some fifteen miles from his home, and from 
 thence he was removed to a school at Lavenham, celebrated 
 beyond the county for its church and peal of ten bells. Here 
 he spent some time unprofitably and unhappily. The master 
 was at that date in the habit of absenting himself from his 
 school on certain love-making expeditions, and the usher used 
 the boys pretty much as he liked, his liking taking the form of 
 flogging them unmercifully all round. Young Constable for 
 some time cherished most warlike and vindictive feelings towards 
 this flogging usher, but as there is no record of any subsequent 
 hostile encounter between them, it is probable that the artist's 
 love of peace and order induced him to abandon his resentment. 
 After leaving the Lavenham school John was sent to the 
 Grammar School at Dedham, built by dame Elizabeth Clarke, 
 and endowed in 1571 by William Littlebury. He did not 
 display any fondness for scholarship, and although we are told 
 that he learnt some Latin, the only branch of education in which 
 he showed any marked proficiency was penmanship, and this is 
 also recorded as the only noticeable excellence which Gainsborough 
 attained to in his school days. As a boy he was fond of drawing 
 and painting, but this is by no means an unusual amusement 
 with youths who in after life never so much as execute a pencil 
 sketch. He was also fond of reading poetry and enthusiastic 
 about music, and could play a little on several instruments. 
 At this period of his life he would often become very abstracted 
 during his school work, and the master would say to him, " Oh! 
 I see, you are in your painting-room again." He was fortunate 
 
DEDHAM SCHOOL. 
 
 83 
 
 in being under a master who had the perception to see that his 
 pupil was a genius, and that the bent of his mind lay outside the 
 sphere of grammar school education. 
 
 From his earliest days he manifested a native gift for appre- 
 ciating the beautiful in nature. Under some circumstances he 
 might have been known to us now as a poet ; or he might 
 have lived and died a simple, mute adorer of nature, a silent 
 worshipper of God's universe, content with the knowledge of 
 how very good it is to live, happy in being permitted to breathe 
 amid the wealth of creation. But, as it happened, just outside 
 the gates of his father's house lived one John Dunthornb, 
 plumber, glazier, and enthusiast, who also had the rare faculty 
 of perceiving how beautiful is nature. Dunthorne's trade brought 
 to him the knowledge that, within certain limits, it was possible 
 to reproduce and fix some of the scenery which impressed him 
 so deeply. With him, Constable, though many years younger, 
 had formed an acquaintance, and the two became inseparable 
 companions, spending all their leisure time in sketching and 
 painting landscape from nature. From this humble tutor 
 Constable received his first lessons in the practice of painting, 
 generally in the open air, sometimes at Dunthorne's cottage, and 
 occasionally at a little room that they hired in the village. 
 Golding Constable offered no opposition to the companionship 
 his son chose, but was, as might naturally be expected in those 
 times, decidedly adverse to his becoming a professional painter. 
 Such a profession was then considered somewhat questionable, 
 a popular prejudice obtaining that the majority of artists led sad 
 lives, and that their habits were as a rule too nearly resembling 
 those of rollicking George Morland and company to be adopted 
 by any respectable persons. 
 
 Had Constable been inclined to devote himself to the requisite 
 course of study, his father would have educated him for Holy 
 Orders. But, as has been observed, the young artist was not 
 particularly fond of book-learning, so it came about that he was 
 destined for the trade of a miller; and for about a year he worked 
 
 g 2 
 
84 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 carefully and well in one of his father's mills — the one represented 
 in an engraving called Spring, published in 1831, in a work 
 entitled ' English Landscape,' which we shall notice more 
 particularly further on. This engraving is from one of his own 
 sketches, and the cloudscape is a prominent feature of it. The 
 study and observation of every change of the sky is no unim- 
 portant part of a wind-miller's business, and these had their effect 
 upon the future artist, and made an impression upon him which 
 throughout his whole career led him to search unceasingly after 
 those wondrous sky effects which are apparent in nearly all his 
 productions. 
 
 At Dedham, close to East Bergholt but on the opposite side 
 of the Stour, and, like that and many of the villages in that part 
 of the country, a decayed market town, formerly famous for its 
 flourishing clothing trade carried on by Flemish weavers, from 
 the time of Edward III., there lived at this date the dowag«r 
 Lady Beaumont, from whom Mrs. Constable obtained for her son 
 John an introduction to Sir George Beaumont. Sir George 
 was the fashionable authority of the day on all matters relating 
 to taste and the fine arts, and though we now laugh at his vapid 
 utterances and conventional style of criticism — above all, at his 
 inquiry, " Where do you put your brown tree V 1 in a landscape, 
 and at his dictum that " A good picture should be the colour of 
 a good fiddle, brown " — still his influence was then paramount. 
 Moreover, with all his pretension and shallowness, he did a 
 thorough and lasting service to art in so zealously promoting the 
 establishment of our National Gallery. When young Constable 
 showed Sir George some pen and ink copies he had made of 
 certain of Baphael's cartoons, the aristocratic patron was graci- 
 ously pleased to express his thorough satisfaction, showed him 
 Claude's painting of the Annunciation 1 (with which, of course, 
 Constable immediately and permanently fell in love) and lent 
 him some thirty water-colour drawings by Tom Girtin, advising 
 
 1 Xow in the National Gallery. 
 
VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 85 
 
 him to study these as examples of breadth and truth. The 
 influence of these water-colour drawings may be observed in 
 Constable's treatment throughout his career. The most important 
 result of Sir George's notice of the young artist, however, was 
 that Golding Constable now consented to his son visiting London 
 for the purpose of ascertaining what chance he had of succeeding 
 in life as a painter. 
 
 There was at this time (1795) practising in London, a certain 
 landscape painter, one Joseph Farrington, R.A. ; considered to 
 be one of Wilson's best pupils. Of his works we now know 
 nothing; he seems to have been possessed of no genius whatever, 
 but to have been a man of good discernment, and gifted with a 
 good store of sound common sense. To this one Constable bore 
 a letter of introduction, and before long Farrington recognized 
 and proclaimed that the young painter had real genius. He 
 predicted that one day his landscapes would " form a distinct 
 feature in art." Though Constable was never a regular pupil of 
 Farrington's, it is probable that he picked up from him valuable 
 crumbs of instruction. In London Constable also made the 
 acquaintance of John Thomas Smith, or (as he was usually 
 called) "Antiquity" Smith, the engraver, afterwards author of 
 ' Nollekens and his Times,' and from 1816 Keeper of the Prints 
 in the British Museum. This friendship wedded him still more 
 closely to art. But the paternal opposition to his adoption of 
 painting as a profession was not yet overcome, for in October 
 1796 young Constable had returned to his home, whence h« 
 wrote to Smith that he was spending his evenings in reading art 
 books and studying anatomy; and in January 1797 that he had 
 been etching, and he makes some inquiries on practical points 
 relating to that pursuit from Smith ; and again in March 1797 
 he thus writes to his friend : "I must now attend to my father's 
 business, as we are likely soon to lose an old servant (our clerk) 
 who has been with us 18 years ; and I now see plainly that it 
 will be my lot to walk through life in a path contrary to that in 
 which my inclination would lead me." 
 
86 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 In October of the same year Mrs. Constable wrote to Smith 
 expressing the great pleasure which she had derived in receiving 
 from him a letter warm in its commendation of John, whom she 
 was expecting to return to East Bergholt in a few days, when 
 she hoped he would attend to business — milling — by doing 
 which he would please his father and " ensure his own respecta- 
 bility and comfort ; " from which it appears that even the in- 
 dulgent mother had her doubts as to whether it were possible 
 for a painter, as such, to be either 66 respectable " or "com- 
 fortable." 
 
 At the age of twenty John Constable was tall, well-formed, 
 clean -featured, of a fresh complexion, had fine dark eyes, a face 
 smooth save for slight whisker tufts, and his hair not abundant 
 was slightly wavy ; his expression was decidedly intellectual, 
 and altogether he well deserved the sobriquet by which he was 
 known, "the handsome young miller." We have no information 
 as to the particular events which induced Constable pere to 
 sanction his son finally adopting the profession which he 
 honoured and adorned ; but it is quite certain that dutiful John 
 would never have taken such a grave step in defiance of his 
 parent's wishes. As a son, as a husband, and as a father, his 
 conduct was ever irreproachable; the man's earnest, affectionate, 
 noble, deeply sensitive and emotional nature is unostentatiously 
 exhibited in nearly every one of his many letters of which the 
 6 Memoirs ' 1 of his life mainly consists. We may therefore 
 suppose that time and observation convinced Golding Constable 
 that his son was born to be an artist, and that it was useless 
 attempting to combat what was preordained. At all events, on 
 the 2nd April, 1799, John Constable wrote from London to his 
 early friend and preceptor Dunthorne : "I am this morning 
 admitted as student at the Royal Academy • the figure which I 
 drew for admittance was the Torso. I am most comfortably 
 settled in Cecil Street, Strand, !No. 23 " 
 
 1 6 Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq., R.A., composed 
 chiefly of his Letters.' By C. R. Leslie, R.A. London, 1843. 
 
HELMING II AM PARE.. 
 
 87 
 
 lie goes on to say he is about to copy a Euysdael, several of 
 whose pictures had impressed him ; that he expected his time 
 would at first be more taken up in seeing than in painting ; and 
 that he hoped by the time the leaves were on the trees he would 
 be better qualified to attack them than he was the previous 
 summer. C. E. Leslie mentions having seen at the Academy a 
 large number of Constable's chalk drawings and oil paintings of 
 the period, from the living model, some defective in outline, 
 though all having great breadth of light and shade. As a student 
 Constable was indefatigable in his industry and perseverance. 
 Though it is reasonable to suppose his father's means were 
 amply sufficient to have allowed the son to pursue his studies 
 for the first year or so independently of any question of money 
 getting, we read in a letter to Dunthorne, written in the autumn 
 of 1799, that he employed his evenings in drawing and reading, 
 hoping by the former to clear his rent, adding that he would be 
 " very happy" if he could do so. His time was not wholly 
 passed in London, where he " sometimes " saw the sky (" but 
 fancy to yourself," he says, " how a pearl must look through a 
 burnt glass ") ; during his first summer there he visited Ipswich, 
 and fancied that he saw " Gainsborough in every hedge and 
 hollow tree." When in London he " fagged at copying," to use 
 his own expression, in order to acquire facility of execution, 
 without which, he affirmed, he would be continually embarrassed, 
 and his art would be a burden to him. The next year he made 
 Helmingham Park, in Suffolk, the scene of his summer excursion, 
 where he sketched all day, " alone among the oaks and solitude, 
 sleeping by night at the untenanted parsonage, and repairing 
 only to a farmhouse for his meals." In 1801 he selected Derby- 
 shire, in which picturesque county he made many fine sketches. 
 On his return he had become so convinced of the worth of 
 Nature's truth that he tells us he had learnt to despise the "cold 
 trumpery stuff " of his old acquaintances in the art. In this year 
 he changed his lodgings in Cecil Street for three rooms in a very 
 comfortable house, !S T o. 80, Eathbone Place. 
 
6 3 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 The letters written by Constable to his friends, which have 
 been published, are so replete with individuality that their 
 perusal gives indescribable pleasure, and charms us into the belief 
 that we have known the writer and have been on terms of 
 the most intimate friendship with him. His thought, his most 
 inmost heart, is as well known to us, we imagine, as they were 
 to that closest of friends of his, John Fisher, of whom more 
 anon. We can give no clearer idea of his character and disposi- 
 tion than by quoting extracts from his own writings. This is 
 how he writes of a visit he made in 1799 to his second sister, 
 Mrs. \Yhalley : " The regularity and good example in all things 
 which I had an opportunity of seeing practised, not talked of 
 only, during my stay with that dear family, will I trust be of 
 service to me as long as I live. I find my mind much more 
 decided, and since I have been this time in town I have acquired 
 considerably what I have so long ardently desired — patience in 
 the pursuit of my profession." 
 
 Two years later, writing to Dunthorne of his attendance at the 
 anatomical lectures, to which Dr. Brookes the lecturer gave the 
 Royal Academy students free admission, he said that with the 
 exception of astronomy, of which he knew very little, he believed 
 no study was so sublime, or so calculated to carry the mind to the 
 Divine Architect, as anatomy. 
 
 " Indeed," he proceeded, " the whole machine which it has 
 pleased God to form for the accommodation of the real man, the 
 mind, during its probation in this vale of tears, is as wonderful 
 as the contemplation of it is affecting. I see, however, many 
 instances of the truth, and a melancholy truth it is, that a know- 
 ledge of things created does not always lead to a revelation of 
 the Creator. Many of the young men in this theatre 1 are 
 reprobates." 
 
 The first time that Constable's name appears as a contributor 
 in the catalogues of the Royal Academy Exhibitions is in 180:3, 
 when he contributed A Landscape. 
 
 1 Dr. Brookes;' Anatomical Theatre, where the Lectures were delivered. 
 
FLATFORD MILL. 
 
 89 
 
 From this time until 1837, the year of his death, he was 
 (excepting in 1804) annually represented on the walls, one 
 hundred and four of his productions having been hung during 
 these thirty-five years. The more important of these paintings 
 we shall mention in their place. 
 
 In the spring of 1802, Dr. Fisher, Rector of Langham, who 
 afterwards became Bishop of Salisbury, and who through life was 
 a friend and patron to Constable, obtained for him the offer of 
 a situation as a drawing-master in a school. Constable knew 
 that if he accepted this post his professional prospects would be 
 utterly ruined* and yet how to decline it without offending his 
 influential patron puzzled him sorely. Fortunately he made 
 a confidant of B. West, the President of the Royal Academy, 
 who not only dissuaded him from relinquishing his chances of 
 professional distinction but also kindly offered to act as inter- 
 mediary between him and Dr. Fisher, and as his position helped 
 him in the delicate business, he settled everything to everybody's 
 satisfaction. One can hardly realize Constable ever seriously 
 contemplating such a step, but he would be deeply averse to 
 wounding the feelings of so generous a friend as Fisher. West 
 was a very kind-hearted man, always ready to encourage and 
 assist a young or doubting artist. On one occasion when Con- 
 stable called upon him, gloomy at the rejection by the Hanging 
 Committee of a picture of Flatford Mill which he had sent in, 
 West cheered him up with these words : 
 
 " Don't be disheartened, young man, we shall hear of you 
 again ; you must have loved nature very much before you could 
 have painted a picture like this," at the same time practically 
 showing him, by means of a piece of chalk, how the chiaroscuro 
 might be improved. It was in May 1802 that Constable wrote 
 Dunthorne a letter which is of some importance. He says : 
 " For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and 
 seeking the truth at second-hand. I have not endeavoured to 
 represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I 
 set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like 
 
90 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 the work of other men. I am come to a determination to make 
 no idle visits this summer. ... I shall return to Bergholt, 
 where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of 
 representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or 
 nothing in the Exhibition worth looking up to. There is room 
 for a natural painter. 1 ' 
 
 In spite of Constable's own words we are by no means satisfied 
 that, even for so short a period, he ever lost sight of the grand 
 end to be attained, or that he was for one instant unfaithful to 
 the mistress he had devoted his life to — Xature. It is true that 
 he copied pictures by other masters, " fagged away at copying," 
 but that was in order to acquire execution ; " the more facility 
 of practice I get," he explained, " the more pleasure I shall find 
 in my art." It was natural that as he acquired manipulative 
 dexterity and mastered the mechanical part of his art his pro- 
 ductions would more or less resemble those of Gainsborough, of 
 Claude, or of any other master who had employed the same 
 means as he used to carry out original ideas, just as a page from 
 a popular novel resembles a page of Carlyle's ' Hero Worship ' in 
 so far as they are both printed from the same type ; but the 
 resemblance goes no further, the genius and style are different. 
 Moreover, he had himself already said that he despised " the cold 
 trumpery stuff" of his early acquaintances in art, so it is im- 
 probable that he ever tried to imitate his contemporary painters. 
 It is most likely that the letter was written iu a moment when 
 he was suffering from those attacks of morbid dejection to which 
 he was always subject ; he had found the means by which he was 
 slowly getting nearer to his unattainable ideal of excellence 
 resembled the means which former masters had employed, and 
 he trembled lest he should lose his way in the fog in which so 
 many followers of his art had been lost — should mistake some 
 point of excellence already reached by earlier masters for the 
 real end of art, and thus degenerate into a mere copyist, or at 
 best an imitator. But there was in Constable's case little cause 
 to fear such a catastrophe, and we doubt whether any painter 
 
ALTAR-PIECE FOR NAY LAND CHURCH. 
 
 91 
 
 has ever steered a truer course between the conventionalism of 
 the "brown fiddle, brown picture" school, and the "original 
 execution" painters such as he who held his brush between 
 his toes instead of his hand in order to be thought original. 
 
 In 1804: Constable did not exhibit at the Academy, but this 
 year he painted an altar-piece for Bentham Church, Christ 
 blessing Little Children. All the figures, which are life-size, are 
 standing, except an infant in our Saviour's arms. The picture 
 is devoid of merit beyond a creditable arrangement of the masses, 
 and his only other attempt in this branch of art was in 1809, 
 when he painted a single half-length figure of Christ blessing 
 the Bread and Wine, 1 as an altar-piece for Nay land Church. The 
 colouring of this second attempt shows some agreeable originality, 
 and the general effect is pleasing; it is an advance on his first 
 attempt at Scriptural composition, but the execution is very 
 slight, and, altogether, the work does not justify the idea that 
 the painter would ever have shone in subjects of this class. 
 
 In 1803 Constable had made a coasting trip in the East India- 
 man " Coutts " between London and Deal, and during the month 
 he was on board he made a large number of sketches, includ- 
 ing one of the " Victory," from which he afterwards painted 
 his large picture, H. M.S. Victory in the Battle of Trafalgar 
 between Two French Ships of the, Line, exhibited at the Academy 
 in 1806. His pictures at the Exhibitions of 1807-8-9 consisted 
 principally of the results of a two months' tour he made in 1806 
 in the Westmoreland and Cumberland lake district, during which 
 he accumulated a large number of sketches, but none of the 
 pictures he painted from these are considerable. He used to say 
 that the solitude of the mountains oppressed his spirits ; and 
 though he could appreciate the scenery painted by others, such 
 as Cozens or Girt in, his own nature led him to the enjoyment 
 of a far different kind of landscape, with cornfields, windmill-;, 
 villages, wagons, navigable rivers, and other objects suggestive of 
 human industry, on which account Mr. Ruskin thus writes of him: 
 
 1 This painting, which had suffered rapid deterioration from damp, was 
 sent to London, to be restored, in 1880. 
 
92 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 " His early education and associations were also against him ; they 
 induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low class." 1 
 As a parallel example of the abiding influence of early impressions 
 we may instance the poet Cowper, whose love of the country had 
 first been awakened by the sluggish streams and the willows of 
 Olney, and who was oppressed and almost overcome by the grand 
 scenery of the South Downs when Hayley tempted him to visit 
 Easthani. A somewhat similar observation is recorded of Crabbe. 
 About this time (1807) he was employed by the Earl of Dysart 
 to copy a number of pictures, principally works by Reynolds. 
 He maintained an irreproachable reputation ; his uncle wrote 
 expressing warm approval of his character and conduct. 
 
 About the year 1800 John Constable had made the acquaint- 
 ance of a little girl, Maria Bicknell (daughter of the solicitor to 
 the Admiralty), who was in the habit of going down to East 
 Eergholt to visit her grandfather, Dr. Rhudde, rector of Bran- 
 tliam and Bergholt. The acquaintance had ripened with years 
 into a tenderer feeling, and we gather from certain letters that in 
 1811 the young people entertained some ideas of marriage. Miss 
 Bicknell, however, seems to have been just as dutiful a daughter 
 as Constable was a son, and her parents, but more particularly 
 her grandfather, forbidding any engagement between the lovers, 
 she wrote in a strain which may be recommended as a model of 
 propriety for all young ladies similarly situated. In the first 
 letter we are favoured with (dated Nov. 1811), she addresses 
 her lover as " My dear sir." She has consulted papa — vows to be 
 entirely guided by him — and concludes, " with the most ardent 
 wishes for your health, believe me, my dear sir, your obliged 
 friend, Maria E. Bickxell." Altogether a most discreet letter. 
 Her father was, however, hardhearted, or at any rate indisposed 
 to give his consent to a union which might be the cause of his 
 daughter being cut out of Dr. Rhudde's will. The objections 
 of Miss Bicknell's friends to the engagement with the painter seems 
 to have been entirely based upon pecuniary considerations, for 
 1 'Modern Painters/ 3rd edition, vol. i. p. 92. 
 
MARIAN BICKNELIj. 
 
 9.°> 
 
 Jolm Constable was only a second son. Accordingly two days 
 after the date of the letter just quoted we find Maria writing to 
 say that she had received her father's answer, and that his only 
 objection was on the score of " that necessary evil, money." 80 
 as she does not think that papa will relent she had better not 
 write to Mr. John Constable any more, not at least until she 
 " can coin." Of course the enamoured youth would not accept 
 such a mild repulse as this, nor was his affection diminished even 
 when his own father wrote, reminding him that his prospects 
 and position were extremely critical ; that he feared his chosen 
 profession would not do more for him than cover the cost of 
 living single; and advised him to apply himself diligently to his 
 profession, and to " such parts that pay best." Advice given 
 to people in such cases is generally physic thrown to dogs. In 
 spite of Miss Bicknell's repeated determinations not to write any 
 more, there are several other letters from her in which we catch 
 allusions to stolen interviews in the parks and at picture galleries. 
 The young lady's letters, however, throughout exhibit her in the 
 character of an extremely matter-of-fact, prudent — some might 
 B'iy worldly-minded — young lady. On one occasion she wrote : 
 " Indeed, my dear John, people cannot now live upon £400 a- 
 year. It is a bad subject, so don't allude to it and on another 
 she won't hear of his living as a recluse, as " popularity, which 
 represents money, is only to be gained by mixing in the world." 
 
 During the course of this engagement, which did not run very 
 smoothly — but then the course of true love never does — Con- 
 stable constantly wrote to Miss Bicknell sensible, newsy letters, 
 from one of which we learn that he had just paid a visit of 
 ceremony to the obstructive Dr. Rhudde, which shows they were 
 not on terms of the deadliest hatred. In another he gives an 
 account of a fire at his lodgings where the people were burnt out. 
 On this occasion he assisted in saving the goods, and when it was 
 difficult and dangerous to pass up and down stairs on account of 
 the great heat and smoke, he rushed up to a garret to save a poor 
 female-servant's pockets which contained all her little wealth. 
 
94 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 But he did not neglect his profession during this time. He 
 worked very hard and diligently, exhibiting Flatford Mill in 
 1812, probably the picture which elicited the opinion from Mr. 
 West, that the painter of it had already attained true excellence. 
 Still, many of his friends even then urged him to relinquish " a 
 profession so unpropitious." He painted two portraits of Dr. 
 Fisher and his wife, which were much admired ; and then his 
 mother urged him, that, as he so greatly excelled in portraiture 
 and Fortune seemed within his grasp, he should pursue that 
 path most likely to bring him fame "and wealth." Miss 
 Bicknell's letters constantly reminded him to look sharply after 
 the main chance, and she plainly told him to " make money 
 before he made love." His charge for a head, in 1813, was 
 fifteen guineas, and his reputation as a portrait painter was on 
 the increase. On May 3rd of that year he wrote in high spirits : 
 "I am now leaving London for the first time with my pockets 
 full of money. I am entirely free from debt, and I have 
 . required no assistance from my fathei." 
 
 In 1814 Constable sold the two pictures he exhibited in the 
 British Gallery, a small one to Mr. Allnutt, and a large one of A 
 Loci', to a perfect stranger, Mr. James Carpenter, who bought it 
 merely because he liked it ; thinking, however, that the sky 
 might be improved, the jmrchaser employed another painter to 
 put in a new one, the result being an inharmonious whole. 
 Some years afterwards, Mr. Carpenter got a friend of his to ask 
 Constable if he would restore the original sky, and at the same 
 time cut down the picture, in order that it might form a 
 companion to one of Calleott's. Constable consented to do this. 
 When Mr. Carpenter called to see the work completed, he 
 found that Constable had painted an entirely new picture for 
 him, of the same size as the Callcott, which he offered in 
 exchange, and that he would make no charge whatever for his 
 work, explaining that Mr. Carpenter had been the means of 
 making a painter of him, by buying the first picture he had ever 
 sold to a stranger. Without for a moment wishing to question 
 
HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 95 
 
 Constable's gratitude in this transaction, Ave might point out 
 that perhaps lie was also influenced by another motive. Tt is 
 well known that Constable was fond of getting back into his 
 possession the pictures which marked the epochs in his career 
 — and undoubtedly A Lock would be one of those that he 
 would desire to have back. Again, he was of opinion that to 
 cut down or alter a picture could seldom be done without 
 in jury to it ; and for the sake of his reputation — especially when 
 his painting was to hang as a companion to one of Callcott's 
 — he preferred giving a new picture altogether to mutilating an 
 old one. 
 
 In 1815 Constable received permission to again see Miss 
 Eicknell at her father's, as an occasional visitor. In this year 
 each of the young couple received a heavy blow — both Mrs. 
 Constable and Mrs. Bicknell died ; and the mutual need of 
 sympathy and consolation knitted their hearts together more 
 firmly than ever. The following year Constable lost his father; 
 and after that event the two lovers made up their minds to 
 delay no longer a union which they each felt must sooner or 
 later be effected. So, in spite of opposition on the part of Miss 
 Bicknell's friends, they were married in October at St. Martin's 
 Church by the Rev. John Fisher. Mr. Bicknell did not long 
 retain his resentment ; and after a brief honeymoon at Osming- 
 ton, the young couple settled down in Keppel Street, Eussell 
 Square. 
 
 Constable's life-friend was this Rev. John Fisher (afterwards 
 Archdeacon Fisher), son of the Master of the Charterhouse, 
 and a nephew of, and chaplain to, the Bishop of Salisbury. 
 Constable was essentially a sociable man, besides which his 
 nature required some sympathetic soul to which he could 
 unburden himself, and pour out unreservedly all his grievances 
 and troubles. Of course his wife occupied the first place in his 
 affection, and Dunthorne and J. T. Smith were, to a certain 
 extent, his confidants ; Leslie, especially during the latter part 
 of the painter's career, was a very near friend. But the friend 
 
9G 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 of friends — his oxen particular friend — was Fisher, who during 
 his whole life acted the part of Constable's patron, adviser, 
 admirer, and consoler. Fisher was, himself, no contemptible 
 critic, and as an amateur he practised the art of painting a 
 little. 
 
 The least mental annoyance or trouble reacted upon Constable's 
 physical nature to a most lamentable extent, and the opposition 
 he had met with in his suit had frequently caused him to suffer 
 much ill-health during its progress. His close application to 
 his profession also acted injuriously on his system. In June 
 1812, when he had marked out a path for himself very distinctly, 
 and was desirous of pursuing it uninterruptedly, he steadfastly 
 remained at his toilsome post in London, copying and repainting 
 for Lady Heathcote, and looking forward to the time when he 
 would be enabled to utilize his art to grander ends. His health 
 was then sadly failing, and Fisher, anxious lest he should 
 permanently injure his constitution by over-application, sent 
 him this invitation : " We will try and coax you here, dear 
 Constable, by an account of the life you will lead. We will 
 rise with the sun, breakfast, and then sit out for the rest of the 
 day. If we tire of drawing we can read, or bathe, and then 
 home to a short dinner. We will drink tea at the Bensons', or 
 walk the great aisle of the cathedral, or, if the maggot so bites, 
 puzzle out a passage or two in ' Horace.' I think this life of 
 Arcadian or Utopian felicity must tempt you." On another 
 occasion Fisher wrote: "I was the other day fishing in the 
 New Forest, in a fine, deep, broad river ; with mills, roaring 
 black water, withy beds, &e. I thought often of you during 
 the day. I caught two pike, was up to my middle in watery 
 meadows, ate my dinner under a willow, and was as happy as 
 when I was a careless boy." From these extracts we can form 
 a very clear notion of the sort of life Constable led in the 
 country; and of his tastes and proclivities. Not only did 
 Fisher constantly keep up Constable's spirits with most charming, 
 invigorating letters, full of sympathy in adversity, congratula- 
 
STRATFORD MILL. 
 
 07 
 
 tions in success, and frequent kind advice, carefully hinted at 
 rather than given ; but he was also a substantial patron, pur- 
 chasing the first two large landscapes that Constable executed — 
 The White Horse, and Stratford Mill 
 
 The White Horse was exhibited at the Academy in 1819, 
 being then called, A Scene on the River Stour, and received the 
 name by which we now know it from a white horse in a barge 
 near the foreground. It is one of the artist's best works, and 
 he himself spoke of it as one of his " happiest efforts on a large 
 scale, being a placid representation of a serene grey morning in 
 summer." 
 
 Stratford Mill was Constable's large picture in the 1820 
 Academy Exhibition. In the foreground are some children 
 fishing, the largest boy " undergoing the agony of a bite," as Sir 
 George Beaumont has expressed it. On the extreme left of the 
 spectator the wheel and part of a water-mill are seen. To the 
 right and in the middle distance a barge lies with extreme 
 elegance of perspective in the smooth river, light clouds throw 
 their rising shadows over a rising distance of great beauty, and 
 a group of tall trees forms the centre of the composition." 
 
 There are some men so constituted that they can in the 
 "durance vile" of a debtor's prison compose with a collected 
 brain a brilliant article which will, the next morning, charm the 
 world by the refinement of its imagery and the felicity of 
 its expression ; there are those who can leisurely give the last, 
 dainty, finishing touches to a picture which has been painted to 
 pay out the sheriff's officer who waits in a corner of the studio. 
 Johnson, as a publisher's hack at £4 a month , could pour forth 
 his giant soul from a garret ; Morland was happy in a sponging- 
 house. Such a one was Constable, and although there is nothing 
 to show that he was ever actually in need of pecuniary assist- 
 ance (save on one occasion of probably temporary embarrassment 
 when he borrowed £20 or .£30 of Fisher), yet he seems to have 
 been rendered constantly uneasy on the score of money matters. 
 But as Dr. Ehudde (who died in 1819) left his granddaughter 
 LP H 
 
CONSTABLE. 
 
 (^Irs. Constable) a legacy of £4000, and as in the same year 
 Constable received a like amount as his share of his father's pro- 
 perty, it does not appear that there was much cause for anxiety 
 on this point, especially as Constable, unlike Wilson in that 
 respect, did occasionally find purchasers for his landscapes, and 
 his prices, though undoubtedly below the real value of the 
 paintings, were an advance upon Wilson's pot of beer and the 
 remains of a Stilton cheese for Ceyx and Alcyone. 
 
 For each of the six-foot landscapes, The White Horse and 
 Stratford Mill, Constable received one hundred guineas. In 
 1824 he sold two large Landscapes and a smaller one to a 
 Frenchman for exhibition in Paris for £250, and the same year 
 he sold A Boat passing a - Lock for £157 10s. on the first day 
 of its exhibition, and he seems always to have had plenty of 
 small commissions. In 1825 he complained of the irksomeness 
 of having to paint a family group, the three grandchildren of an 
 old friend, to send to their parents in India, which necessitated 
 his neglecting a large landscape just then commenced ; so that 
 though Constable did not, perhaps, earn his money in the way 
 most congenial to his inclinations, yet he was better off than 
 many other unappreciated painters have been. Of course when 
 Ave speak of him as an " unappreciated painter " we use the ex- 
 pression in a restricted sense ; there was always a certain num- 
 ber of discriminating judges ready and able to understand his 
 art ; but for the English public, during his lifetime, his works 
 had little or no interest, and his treatment being something 
 novel and unfamiliar to his critics w T as condemned by them as 
 eccentric and mannered. 
 
 In 1819 Constable was elected an Associate of the Eoyal 
 Academy. Up to this period the most important pictures he 
 had produced were Dedham Vale and A Church Porch (1811) ; 
 Flatford Mill (1812); Boat Building (1815); Cottage in a 
 Cornfield (1817). This is the period of Constable's most perfect 
 art. and it is doubtful whether in his latter years he quite kept 
 up to the standard of The White Horse and Stratford Mill and 
 
MADE A.R.A. 
 
 99 
 
 Hay Wain years. The Church Porch is that of Bergholt. It 
 is really an extremely simple composition ; a woman and a girl, 
 sitting on a tomb, are listening in the summer afternoon to the 
 words of an old man. There is nothing in it to attract one's 
 attention; it has very few parts, but when once noticed it 
 engages the mind of the spectator in a strange degree. In 
 fJedham Vale, through a haze of snn-pierced mist an extensive 
 range of country is seen ; in the foreground is a slight tree of 
 incomparable delicacy and taste ; but these pictures were too 
 unobtrusive to catch the attention or suit the taste of the public. 
 
 Constable's whole life was one of incessant, earnest hard work. 
 He never, even for a moment, save when prostrated with illness, 
 ceased striving after the highest attainable excellence. At the 
 same time, the duty of providing for his family for ever presented 
 itself to him, and to fulfil this appears to have been as important 
 an object with him as the attainment of his ideal in art. Thus, 
 he did not abandon portrait painting, which brought in a fair 
 income. Amongst his portraits, in addition to those we have 
 already mentioned, are those of General and Mrs. Bebow, and 
 of a gentleman " who was " a dissenter, but without knowing 
 why, " only that his wife would not let him go to church. " 
 That his pictures were really good, and that their sterling value 
 would some time or other be appreciated by the public, Constable 
 never doubted ; but that their recognition might be delayed 
 until after his death was a contingency which, he looked boldly 
 in the face. In 1821 he had become convinced of his fate, and 
 he thus wrote to his friend : " I now fear (for my family's sake) 
 that I shall never make a popular artist, a gentlemen and ladies 
 painter ; " and on another occasion : " The Londoners, with all 
 their ingenuity as artists, know nothing of the feelings of a 
 country life, the essence of landscape." 
 
 It was in this year, when his early dream of distinction as a 
 living artist had been dispelled, that he exhibited the third 
 picture he had painted on a six-foot canvas, Landscape — Noon. 
 This picture, which was afterwards known as The Hay Wain, 
 
 h 2 
 
100 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 is one of his important productions, and was one of those which 
 he sold to a Frenchman in 1824. It was greatly admired in 
 Paris \ in fact, Constable's art seems to have always been more 
 appreciated in that capital than it was in England. He was 
 assured that, if he would consent to visit Paris, the artists of that 
 city would receive him with great eclat, and he was commissioned 
 to paint seven smaller landscapes, and to have twelve of his draw- 
 ings engraved in London for publication in Paris. In 1825 the 
 French King awarded liim a gold medal for his large Landscapes 
 which were exhibited at the Louvre, 1 and he was afterwards 
 applied to for the loan of «a picture for an Exhibition at Lisle. 
 It happened that just at this time he had in his possession The 
 White Horse (Archdeacon Fisher's property), and this he sent to 
 France. This picture was as much admired as The Hay Wain 
 had been, and he was awarded a gold medal for it. Of course 
 in Paris, as in London, the professional critics would not admit 
 that his art was true, for in his pictures they could only see 
 nature ; and they naturally expected in a good painting, in one 
 that they could rely npon as being correct in style, to see Claude, 
 or Cuyp, or some other master whom it was the recognized thing 
 to worship. Still the professional critics were not everybody, 
 and they found it a difficult matter to answer such observations 
 as : " Look at these landscapes by the Englishman — the ground 
 appears to be covered with dew." 
 
 Constable was in the habit of spending a good deal of his 
 time at Hampstead, which has always justly been a favourite 
 resort of artists. It was from here that he wrote in the autumn 
 of 1821 : " I have done a good deal of skying, for I am deter- 
 mined to conquer all difficulties, and that among the rest;" and 
 in 1822 he made fifty studies of sky effects. Out of twenty of 
 these which were in Leslie's possession in 1845, there is only 
 one in which the least vestige of landscape is introduced. They 
 are painted in oil, on large sheets of thick paper, all dated, with 
 
 1 On this occasion Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose pictures had also been 
 exhibited at the Louvre, was created a Knight of the Legion of Honour. 
 
WELL WALK 7 HAMPSTEAD. 
 
 101 
 
 the time of the day and other memoranda at the back, as, for 
 example: " 5th September, 1822, 10 o'clock, morning, looking 
 south-east, brisk wind at west. Very bright and fresh grey 
 clouds running fast over a yellow bed about half-way in the sky. 
 Very appropriate to the coast at Osmington." 
 
 Several of Constable's happiest productions are views in the 
 neighbourhood of Hampstead, the Heath there being a favourite 
 subject which he painted several times. In 1827 he took a 
 house in Well Walk, Hampstead, and this was his " country 
 residence" for the rest of his life. He had previously removed 
 from Keppel Street — Euysdael House, as Fisher christened it — 
 to 35, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, where, after taking the 
 Well Walk house, he retained for professional purposes two 
 parlours, large front attic, painting-room, gallery, &c. ; this 
 continued to be used as his studio till the time of his death. 
 
 Occasionally seeking change of scene, if not relaxation of 
 study, in visits to his old home in Suffolk which he loved so 
 well, or to Fisher at Gillingham, or to Sir George and Lady 
 Beaumont at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, or with his wife and children 
 to Brighton, perhaps no painter has ever worked harder than 
 did Constable, altering, adding, taking out, retouching his sub- 
 jects, with which he was never satisfied so long as any improve- 
 ment could be suggested. He was never above taking a hint, 
 even from those most unqualified to tender advice. On one 
 occasion, however, in 1830, after he had been elected an E.A., 
 he gave a well-deserved snub. He was finishing a picture called 
 A Dell at Helmingham Parh, and had adopted some alteration 
 that an onlooker suggested, after which he made a stand, saying, 
 " Very true, but don't you see I might go on and make the 
 picture so good that it would be good for nothing." 
 
 Constable was always extremely anxious about his children, 
 and their least ailment caused him a great deal of uneasiness ; on 
 one occasion one of them had the whooping-cough, which alarmed 
 him very much, as he said it was a disorder Avhich the medical 
 men knew nothing about. His el lest son too, was ill in 1825 
 
 o 1 
 
102 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 the effect of which was to almost prostrate the father. In the 
 autumn of that year Fisher had been expecting him to pay a 
 visit to Osmington, and had sent him a gentle reminder that 
 time was flying, in the shape of a pen and ink sketch of an hour- 
 glass with wings, and twelve clays later he followed this with a 
 letter in which he says : " It struck me after I had despatched 
 my blank memorandum that the illness of yourself or some of 
 the family was the cause of your non-appearance here." Then 
 Avith much of the most kindly-expressed sympathy and condol- 
 ence, the large-hearted Archdeacon places his Salisbury House 
 at Constable's disposal as a sanatorium for his sick child, and 
 says : " As for money matters, do not make yourself uneasy. 
 Write for anything you want, and send me any picture in pledge 
 you think proper. . . . Whatever you do, Constable, get rid of 
 anxiety. It hurts the stomach more than arsenic. ... You 
 want a staff just at present. Lean upon me, hard." 
 
 In 1825 Constable exhibited at the Academy a picture known 
 as The Jumping Horse. The chief object in its foreground is a 
 horse mounted by a boy, leaping one of the barriers which cross 
 the towing-path along the Stour to prevent the cattle straying out 
 of their pasture grounds. As these bars have no gates, the barge 
 horses are all taught to leap ; their harness, ornamented over the 
 collar with crimson fringe, lends a very picturesque appearance, 
 and Constable, availing himself of this advantage to relieve 
 the dark chestnut-coloured horse, produced a very imposing 
 effect. The same year he had two Landscapes in the Exhibition, 
 one of which was described in a newspaper at the time as "a 
 scene without any prominent features of the grand or beautiful, 
 hut with a rich, broken foreground, sweetly pencilled, and a 
 very pleasing and natural tone of colour throughout the green 
 distance." Nevertheless the public would not take the trouble 
 to understand the art of the painter. 
 
 1828 was a most eventful year to Constable. In January 
 liis seventh child, a son, was born. Then a large copyright 
 Landscape of his was favourably noticed in the 'John Bull ' 
 
ROYAL ACADEMICIAN. 
 
 103 
 
 newspaper, which spoke of it as " a redeemer ; " and a smaller 
 one was purchased by Chantry ; in this year, also, Mr. Bicknell 
 died, by which event a large fortune, some £20,000, came to him. 
 " This," he wrote, " I will settle on my wife and children, and I 
 shall then be able to stand before a six-foot canvas with a mind at 
 ease, thank God." Towards the close of the year he suffered an 
 irreparable loss by the death of his wife, who had always been 
 consumptive, and the bereaved husband was thus left with the 
 care of seven children, the youngest an infant not yet a year old, 
 and the memory of one of the most amiable and devoted wives 
 man was ever blessed with. As might be expected Constable 
 was sadly depressed by this melancholy occurrence, and he wrote 
 that his only chance of being carried away from his own thoughts 
 was to get afloat on a six-foot canvas. 
 
 In the beginning of 1829 he received a commission to paint a 
 Mermaid for a sign for an inn in Warwickshire. No doubt the 
 person who gave the order had heard Constable spoken of as a 
 good landscape painter, and remembering that many of his pre- 
 decessors, such as Wilson, Monamy, Morland, Clark son, and 
 Cotton had not disdained to paint signs, thought the artist would 
 be glad of the commission. Constable himself thus wrote of 
 this order : " This is encouraging, and affords no small solace 
 after my previous labour in landscape for twenty years. How- 
 ever, I shall not quarrel with the lady now, she may help to 
 educate my children." He made a very pretty and finished 
 sketch of the Mermaid, and gave it to Mr. Evans, his medical 
 attendant and a friend of Archdeacon Fisher and himself, but 
 the matter went no further. Soon after this he was elected a 
 Koyal Academician. This was an honour he had long coveted ; 
 and how keenly he felt in the matter of its tardy bestowal we 
 can understand from his complaint that, " it has been delayed 
 until I am solitary and cannot impart it." At this time he was 
 engaged in the preparation of his ' English Landscape,' a work 
 which he published, to quote from the prospectus, "with the 
 desire to increase the interest for, and promote the study of, the 
 
104 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 rural scenery of England, with all its endearing associations and 
 even in its most simple localities." In the preface to this book 
 we see that Constable was fully aware of the obstacles which 
 prevented him — as they had prevented Wilson — from being 
 justly appreciated. " In art," he wrote, " there are two modes 
 by which we aim at distinction. In the one by a careful appli- 
 cation to what others have accomplished, the artist imitates 
 their works or selects and combines their various beauties ; in 
 the other he seeks excellence at its primitive source — Nature. In 
 the first, he forms a style upon the study of pictures, and pro- 
 duces imitative or selective art ; in the second, by a close observ- 
 ation of Xature he discovers qualities existing in her which have 
 never been portrayed before, and thus forms a style which is 
 original. The results of the one mode, as they repeat that with 
 which the eye is already familiar, are soon recognised and esti- 
 mated, whilst the advances of the artist in a new path must 
 necessarily be slow, for few are qualified to judge of that which 
 deviates from the usual course, or are qualified to appreciate 
 original studies." The original edition of this work as published 
 by Constable contained twelve mezzotint engravings by Lucas 
 from the painter's sketches. The frontispiece is a representation 
 of the house at East Bergholt where he was born, under which 
 are the lines : 
 
 " Hie locus aetatis nostrae primordia novit 
 Annos felices, laetitiaeque dies, 
 Hie locus ingenuis pueriles imbuit annos 
 Artibus, et nostrae laudis origo fuit. 
 
 From the time of his election as R.A. until his death, Con- 
 stable was little, if any, better appreciated by the public, but he 
 went on working hard and bravely, sometimes with a light heart 
 even, attending carefully to his duties as a member of the Com- 
 mittee of Management, and as a visitor at the Life School, doing 
 his utmost to elevate and refine the art he loved so well. 
 
 In 1830 his pictures at the Academy were — A Dell at 
 Hdminqham Park;. A Landscape ; and A Heath, Hanipstead. 
 
CHARLES ROBERT LESLIE. 
 
 105 
 
 In this year died Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was succeeded 
 in the Presidency of the Eoyal Academy by Sir M. Shea. 
 
 In 1831 Constable's Academy pictures were his large Salis- 
 bury Cathedral from the Meadows, and Yarmouth Pier. The 
 former of these, which was engraved by Lucas, is one of his 
 chief works, of great truth of detail and general effect, and is a 
 picture displaying extraordinary power. The artist, indeed, 
 thought that it would eventually be considered his chef d'oeuvre, 
 as, though others might be more finished, this conveys the f ullest 
 impression of the compass of his work. It must be remarked 
 that it is difficult to fix the date when many pictures painted by 
 this artist may be said to have been finished, for he was always 
 anxious to improve his work, and many of his best known 
 pictures received their finishing-touches long after the year of 
 their exhibition. The picture in question and his large 
 Waterloo Bridge are notable examples of this. 
 
 Parley, the well-known drawing-master and astrologist, one 
 day called upon Constable to show him a sketch, and chatted 
 away for some time, unreservedly pointing out what he con- 
 sidered the defects in the artist's works. Constable, wishing to 
 possess the sketch, asked Parley its price. " A guinea and a 
 half to a gentleman, but a guinea only to an artist," was the 
 reply. <; I gave him the extra half-guinea," said Constable, 
 relating this some time afterwards, " for he had conclusively 
 proved that I was no artist." 
 
 In this year Constable was in terrible anxiety owing to the 
 Eeform Bill agitation, doubting the security of the Funds, and 
 fearful that he would lose all his invested money. Ill-health 
 had much to do with this, and in the spring of 1832 he had a 
 very serious illness. Whilst he was barely convalescent and 
 was still in a very low bodily state from the attack, the illness 
 of his eldest daughter so filled him with trouble and anxiety 
 that he fell into a most grievous state of dejection, and used to 
 take a gloomy view of everything, giving vent to such utterances 
 as these : " I do not contemplate a happy old age, even if I should 
 
10G 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 attain it." The loss of two of his friends also still further 
 depressed him. In September died at Boulogne, Archdeacon 
 Fisher ; and a little later, at Bergholt, John Dunthorne, son of 
 Constable's first preceptor in art, who had long acted as his 
 assistant, succumbed to consumption. But Constable had by 
 this time many friends, so the voids thus occasioned were less 
 perceptible. There was C. R. Leslie, who was the great friend 
 of his later days, and there was George Constable (no relation of 
 the painter) ; and Mr. Pur ton of Hampstead, who in his leisure 
 hours painted landscape, and who formed his opinions of Con- 
 stable's style solely from a comparison with Mature, being deaf 
 to the cant of the art criticism then prevailing. Of the eight 
 works Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832, his 
 large painting of Waterloo Bridge is by far the most important. 
 Constable had had this work in progress since 1819, and during 
 the years between then and its exhibition he had often taken it 
 np, and as often put it aside, with alternating emotions of hope 
 and fear. He was always very nervous about its success, and 
 the absence from it of all rural associations made it somewhat 
 distasteful to him, but the expanse of sky and water invariably 
 tempted him to go on with it. It possesses great breadth, and 
 when it first appeared it was described as being remarkable for 
 its brightness of colour, Leslie saying that it looked as though 
 painted with liquid gold and silver, yet " in little more than a 
 year after his death its silvery brightness was doomed to be 
 covered over with a coat of blacking, laid on by the hand of a 
 picture-dealer ; 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 greatly im- 
 proved by the process. The blacking was laid in with water 
 and secured by a coat of mastic varnish." 
 
 In 1833 he exhibited a view of a Heath — showery — noon, 
 which is one of his best works ; a Cottage in a Cornfield, engraved 
 afterwards by Lucas ; and two others. In June of this year he 
 delivered a lecture at Hampstead on the history of landscape 
 
THE VALLEY FARM. 
 
 107 
 
 painting, the success of which induced him to repeat it in the 
 following year, and he subsequently developed it into four 
 lectures which he delivered at the British Institution ; the notes 
 that have been preserved of these addresses are unfortunately 
 very scant. The extreme sensitiveness of his disposition was as 
 marked as ever. When his two eldest sons were about to leave 
 him to go to a school at Folkestone, he wrote : " To part with my 
 dear John is breaking my heart, but I am told it is for his good." 
 
 In the spring of 1834 Constable had another very painful 
 illness, an attack of acute rheumatic fever, confining him to his 
 room in February, and lasting for two months. He was con- 
 sequently prevented from completing any important work for 
 the Academy Exhibition, where he was only represented by 
 three water-colour drawings. In the autumn of this year he, in 
 company with Leslie, visited Lord Egremont at Petworth. At 
 this time he would rise early, and would often make some 
 beautiful sketch in the park before breakfast. Leslie going into 
 his room one morning found him setting one of his sketches with 
 isinglass. His dressing-table was covered with flowers, feathers 
 of birds, and pieces of brick with lichens and mosses adhering to 
 them, which he had brought home for the sake of their beautiful 
 tints. Mr. George Constable used to relate how, whilst the 
 painter was on a visit to him, he brought home from a common 
 in the neighbourhood at least a dozen different specimens of sand 
 and earth, of colours from pale to deep yellow, and of light 
 reddish hues to tints almost crimson. The richness of these 
 colours, contrasted with the deep greens of the furze and other 
 vegetation on that picturesque heath, delighted him exceedingly, 
 and he carried these earths home, carefully preserved in bottles, 
 and also many fragments of variously-coloured stone. Once, 
 when in the company of Mr. George Constable, as they were 
 passing some slimy posts near an old mill, he said, " I wish 
 you could cut off those tops and send them to me." 
 
 In 1834 he exhibited The Valley Farm, which is a view of a 
 farm-house on the banks of the Stour, near Flatford Mill, known 
 
108 
 
 COX STABLE. 
 
 as " Willy Lott's House/' from the name of its eccentric occupier, 
 who, it is said, during eighty years was never away from it for 
 four whole days. It was a favourite subject of Constable's, and 
 figures in several of his works. This picture (now in the National 
 Gallery) was purchased by Mr. Vernon after he had seen it for 
 the first time in the studio, and it received an enormous amount 
 of attention from Constable ; from October to the end of the 
 year he was constantly hard at work upon it (after it had been 
 exhibited at the Eoyal Academy), and he said that " oiling out, 
 marking out, polishing, etc., seemed to agree with it wonderfully. 
 The sleet and snow 1 have disappeared, leaving in their place 
 silver, ivory, and a little gold." It was again publicly exhibited 
 in the British Gallery, in 1836, in which year Constable was 
 only represented at the Academy by a view of the Cenotaph 
 erected by Sir George Beaumont to the memory of Sh Joshua 
 Reynolds, and by a water-colour of Stonehenge. He had con- 
 templated sending in a large picture of Arundel Mill, but this 
 was not in a sufficiently advanced state to be admitted even as a 
 sketch. 
 
 Constable's death was extremely sudden. On the evening 
 of 30th March, 1837, he attended a meeting at the Eoyal 
 Academy, and walked home, accompanied part of the way by C. 
 E. Leslie, being then apparently in good health. His kindness 
 of heart showed itself on that occasion in his comforting a little 
 girl who had slipped down in Oxford Street, and healing her 
 hurts by the gift of a shilling. The following day he worked 
 until evening at his large picture for the forthcoming Academy 
 Exhibition, and then went out on a charitable errand in 
 connection with the " Artists' Benevolent Association," of which 
 body he was President. On his return he ate a hearty supper, 
 
 1 The peculiar effect of bedewed leaves glistening in sunlight, which 
 Constable loved to introduce into his pictures, puzzled the critics of his day 
 sadly, for they were but very imperfectly acquainted with the real appear- 
 ances of nature, and they invented the phrase, " Constable snows," to 
 indicate what they could not understand. 
 
THE CORNFIELD. 
 
 109 
 
 and retired to rest between ten and eleven o'clock. In the night 
 he was taken ill, and before the next dawn he expired. The 
 cause of his death could, at a post-mortem examination, only 
 be traced to indigestion, as there were no other indications of 
 disease sufficient to have produced death. Constable's close 
 application and sedentary habits undoubtedly helped to under- 
 mine a constitution which might otherwise have enabled him to 
 live to a ripe old age. 
 
 After his death, a few of his friends subscribed together and 
 bought from his executors his picture of the The Cornfield, ex- 
 hibited in the Eoyal Academy Exhibition in 1826, and at the 
 British Gallery in 1827, and presented it to the nation. A field 
 of ripe corn, the principal feature of this landscape, is seen in the 
 middle ground, between two groups of trees occupying the sides 
 of the picture. In the extreme distance is seen a village church 
 towering above the humble dwellings in its vicinity. 
 
 The only other example of this artist's work in the National 
 Gallery is The Valley Farm, already noticed as having been 
 purchased from the easel by Mr. Vernon. In the Sheepshanks 
 Gallery are six of his works. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOHN CONSTABLE'S PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 IN" considering the genius of any painter as exhibited in his 
 productions, it is difficult altogether to avoid reference to the 
 works of other artists, and sometimes to speak of them in terms 
 calculated to cause pain ; or, on the other hand, to withdraw from 
 the subject of our consideration his full meed of praise. 
 
 In considering the works of John Constable, his style and his 
 genius, the temptation to compare his pictures with those of 
 Turner and others is very great, but our endeavour should rather 
 be to consider them as works of art by themselves^and on their 
 own merits. Earnestly as we may desire to awaken or strengthen 
 the appreciation of Constable's undoubtedly great genius, we 
 should be nnwilling to crown him with garlands stripped 
 from the tombstones of some of our noblest painters, garlands 
 placed there as tributes of affection by loving and reverent 
 hands, And yet more than one even highly gifted and culti- 
 vated critic has fallen into this error. In order to avoid it then 
 in our few remarks on John Constable's productions we shall 
 endeavour to keep in mind an important truth which that painter 
 expressed in these words : 
 
 " Every truly original picture is a separate study, and is 
 governed by laws of its own ; so that what is right in one would 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE'S PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 he entirely wrong transferred to another." This is of course 
 applicable to the details of art ; the grand principles which are in- 
 variably associated and co-existent with true genius — uprightness, 
 earnestness, generosity, sensibility, imagination, and taste — Ave 
 may be as certain of finding in the nature of Constable as in that 
 of Turner, even as they were to be seen in the natures of Wilson, 
 of Milton, of Dante, and of every other man of genius that the 
 world has ever produced. These qualities, so far as they are 
 present in the productions of such men, may best be considered 
 and judged by their individual intrinsic worth. When we com- 
 mence to compare men of genius one with another, we may very 
 easily lose that nice sense of discrimination necessary for the 
 proper appreciation of different degrees and sorts of merit, for 
 though all have some things in common, the productions of each 
 one must be judged separately, and each production considered 
 as a complete whole. 
 
 For this reason, it is false criticism to compare the parts of 
 Constable's pictures with the parts of Turner's or Canaletto's ; 
 or even to compare the pictures themselves except by reference 
 to the principles of all true art of whatever kind soever ; for 
 every true work of art has its own excellence, and " what is right 
 in one would often be entirely wrong if transferred to another." 
 
 The author of ' Modern Painters ' in his summing up of Con- 
 stable's art speaks of the necessity as well as the dignity of an 
 earnest, faithful, loving study of Nature as she is, rejecting all that 
 man has done to alter and modify her. He also points out that it 
 is those artists who receive the word of God from clouds, and 
 leaves, and waves, and keep it, endeavouring to render to the 
 world purity of impression, who are fit objects of the cdtic's 
 praise. But he adds in a footnote : " The feelings of Constable 
 with respect to his art might be almost a model for the young 
 student were it not that they err a little on the other side, and 
 are perhaps in need of chastening and guiding from the work of 
 his fellow-men. We should use pictures, not as authorities, but 
 as comments on nature, just as we use divines, not as authorities, 
 
112 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 but as comments on the Bible. Constable, in bis dread of saint- 
 Worship, excommunicates himself from all benefit of the Church, 
 and deprives himself of much instruction from the Scripture to 
 which he holds because he will not accept aid in the reading of 
 it from the learning of other men." Now, as a matter of fact, 
 Constable is remarkable as one of the first — perhaps the first — of 
 English Landscape Painters with genius of a very high order 
 who was from first to last wholly and entirely independent of 
 any of the conventionalism of the Foreign Schools, or even of 
 anything borrowed from the English School. This is the sum 
 total of his offending. So great was his love of nature, so great 
 his horror of conventionalism, that he almost feared to learn the 
 mechanical and technical methods of the art which were known 
 to his predecessors and contemporaries. We say " almost " 
 feared to learn, because that he did with much patient labour 
 learn these modes there is ample proof in the admirable mani- 
 pulation of many of his works, some of which show finish and 
 detail equal to that of any master of the later, literal school. 
 A View of Hampstead Heath, ~No. 36 in the Sheepshanks 
 Collection at South Kensington, is a minute and careful study, 
 perfect in its handling • and in the glimpses of his practice that 
 we get from his biographer, we gather that Constable's dread was 
 not so much that of saint- worship as of being overpowered and 
 mannerized by false teachers and commentators, and becoming 
 ingulfed in the swamp of conventionalism. Constable did 
 study such pictures as he could rely upon as being authentic 
 imprints of genius. His earliest studies were pen and ink copies 
 of Eafaelle's cartoons, and afterwards he copied etchings of Euys- 
 dael ; throughout life, but especially in his student days, he 
 made careful copies of paintings by Claude, Eubens, Eeynolds, 
 Euysdael, Tenders, and Wilson ; and we are told that some of 
 these copies might well pass for originals. Then again, at the 
 commencement of his career, he had Girtin's drawings, made 
 direct from nature, to examine and study, and to read from them 
 how to reproduce certain effects of nature. The copying that 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE'S PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 113 
 
 he did, except that done for payment in the regular course of 
 his professional experience, was performed in order that he might 
 acquire facility of execution (so he tells us himself) ; and after 
 lie had learnt by careful examination and experiment how cer- 
 tain effects in the works of the masters which he copied had 
 been produced, he could then learn by inference how to pro- 
 duce other effects. He knew that if two genuine artists painted 
 the same scene, the result would be two totally distinct pictures, 
 not, as in the case of two photographs from the same negative, 
 the one a duplicate of the other. He observed on one occasion : 
 " The world, is wide ; no two days are alike, nor even two hours, 
 neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the 
 creation of the world ; and the genuine productions of art, like 
 those of nature, are all distinct from each other." 
 
 Going more into details, we find Mr. Euskin speaking of 
 Constable's genius and art in the following terms: " Unteach- 
 ableness seems to have been a main feature of his character, 
 and there is a corresponding want of veneration in the way he 
 approaches Nature herself. His early education and associations 
 were also against him ; they induced in him a morbid preference 
 of subjects of a low order. I have never seen any work of his in 
 which there were signs of his being able to draw, and hence the 
 most necessary details are painted by him insufficiently. His 
 works are also eminently wanting both in rest and refinement ; 
 and Fuseli's jesting compliment is too true ; for the showery 
 weather in which the artist delights misses alike the majesty of 
 storm and loveliness of calm weather • it is great-coat weather 
 and nothing more. There is a strange want of depth in the mind 
 which has no pleasure in sunbeams but when piercing painfully 
 through clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor 
 in light itself but when flickering, glistening restless and feeble. 
 Yet with all these deductions, his works are to be deeply respected 
 as thoroughly original, thoroughly honest, free from affectation, 
 manly in manner, frequently successful in cool colour, and 
 especially realizing certain motives of English scenery, with 
 
1U 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 perhaps as much affection as such, scenery, unless when regarded 
 through media of feeling derived from higher sources, is calcu- 
 lated to inspire." 
 
 The place which Constable filled in art is one which has 
 hitherto been unoccupied either by Wilson, or Gainsborough, or 
 Cozens, or Girtin, or even by Turner. He was a genuine 
 painter of English cultivated scenery, of cornfields and of farm- 
 steads, and of the haunts of rustic humanity. His scenes teem 
 with human associations ; he paints canals, barges, windmills, 
 locks. This is perhaps what is meant by the charge that he had 
 " a morbid preference for subjects of a low order." But surely 
 these subjects as he treated them should scarcely be so classed. 
 If he painted a barge, he also painted God's leaves, and waves, 
 and clouds ; painted them in a style that leaves little doubt as 
 to the veneration with which he approached JSature. His early 
 education and associations can scarcely be said to have been 
 against him, for these were in the midst of that pastoral land- 
 scape he loved so well. He has told how he loved the sound 
 of water escaping from mill-dams ; willows ; old moss-covered 
 planks and brickwork ; slimy posts — how with him painting 
 was but another word for feeling — how he associated his careless 
 boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour, " the scenes 
 which had made him a painter" and how he had often thought 
 of pictures of them before he ever touched a pencil. Surely, 
 unless it were better that he had lived only to grind corn, 
 and unless it were better for the world that such pictures as 
 The Valley Farm, The Cornfield, and The White Horse, had 
 never been produced, it is no matter for regret that John 
 Constable's boyhood was passed in the midst of such scenery as 
 lies round East Eergholt, with " its gentle declivities, its 
 luxuriant meadow-flats, sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well- 
 cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered 
 villages and churches, farms, and picturesque cottages." Such 
 was the nature that Constable began by loving ; from loving it 
 he proceeded to study it, and then to paint it. He never 
 
jonx constable's productions. 115 
 
 swerved from his affection for this class of scenery, though that 
 lie could and did appreciate fully other classes of landscape is 
 evident from his extravagant praises of Cozens, whom he called 
 "the greatest genius that ever touched landscape;" and of 
 Turner, than whose landscapes it were difficult to imagine any- 
 thing lovelier except the actual scene he portrayed. But he did 
 not aspire to he a universal painter ; he frequently expressed 
 himself to the effect that he would rather paint one thing well 
 than all things moderately ; he considered that to bring the 
 whole of nature within the domain of his art was too great a 
 task for any one painter ; and as he commenced so he continued, 
 regardless whether he might not, by changing his subjects, have 
 been able to tickle the public fancy. "Change of weather and 
 effects," he observed, " will always afford variety." What if 
 Yan de Yelde had quitted his sea-pieces and Euysdael his water- 
 falls, and Hobbema his native woods ! — the world would have lost 
 so many features in art." He was not to be tempted from the 
 path he had rigidly marked out. After observing that a par- 
 ticular novel effect might gain him some new admirers but it 
 would be sure to lose him many old ones, he on one occasion 
 said : " I imagine myself to be driving a nail. I have driven it 
 some way, and by persevering I may drive it home ; by quitting 
 it to attack others, though I may amuse myself I do not 
 advance beyond the first whilst the particular nail stands 
 still." 
 
 The most complete answer to the absurd accusation that 
 Constable was unable to draw is to point to his works. It may 
 be mentioned that Constable was in the habit of making a sketch 
 of every large picture he painted ; in these sketches he laid in 
 the subjects with the palette-knife, in a grand and large manner, 
 with great breadth. Describing two of these, i. e. The Hay 
 Wain and The Jumping Horse, Eedgrave says : " Various 
 glazings have been passed over the parts (thus laid in with the 
 knife) to bring together and enrich them (even the skies are 
 glazed) ; and then the whole has had enhancing points of colour 
 
 i 2 
 
11G 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 added, and brightness and daylight obtained by further dragging^ 
 and knife-touches. With the exception of the glazings it would 
 seem as if the brush had not been nsed upon them • hence there 
 is a complete absence of any sort of detail. In The Jumping 
 Horse 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, with his red-waistcoated driver, 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 the colour beautifully felt, 
 and the freshness and daylight are startling." 
 
 It has been suggested that Mr. Buskin's criticism would apply 
 to the impression likely to be received from some of these 
 sketches, for as they are complete in effect though not in detail 
 they are sometimes mistaken for the pictures. In this case not 
 only the ignorance of drawing, but also the want of reverence in 
 approaching nature, with wdiich Constable was charged, are 
 explained away. 
 
 It was not only in his sketches, but also in his finished 
 pictures, that Constable used the palette-knife instead of a 
 brush for laying in the colour. This plan he adopted in 
 order to get chiaroscuro, which he was determined his pictures 
 should have if they had nothing else. In pursuit of that, 
 and of the brightness of nature, the reproduction of which 
 baffles all the ordinary processes of painting, he, in his painting 
 of Waterloo Bridge, indulged in this mode of execution (which 
 of course precludes great detail) to such an extent that the 
 critics were much offended with what they called the un- 
 finished state of the work, though the effect wished for, that 
 of noontide splendour, was complete. Still, lest this means 
 should degenerate with him into a manner, he stated after 
 the exhibition of that picture that he had laid down the 
 palette-knife, but not until after he had "cut his own throat 
 with it." 
 
joiin constable's productions. 
 
 117 
 
 Supposing it were true that Constable painted " great-coat 
 weather and nothing more ; " supposing lie had not depicted the 
 most glorious golden warmth and sunshine of English, summer 
 in such pictures as Waterloo Bridge and Boat Building ; sup- 
 posing that one did not feel the summer in the White Horse, 
 in Stratford Mill, and in The Hay Wain, with which pictures 
 it appears Mr. Ruskin is unacquainted, but in some of which it 
 lias been truly observed that the tremulous vibration of the 
 heated air near the ground may be seen ; what does this 
 criticism amount to but that Constable was not a universal 
 genius, and did not attempt more than he was able to perform ? 
 But it is difficult to read the reflection on the strange want of 
 depth in the mind which takes no delight in sunbeams, nor 
 foliage, nor light, except at certain times, and under certain 
 conditions in which the artist happens to be peculiarly successful 
 in painting them, without concluding that the writer had not 
 sufficiently studied the artist's works, and knew little or nothing 
 of his character or tastes. 
 
 Apart from the question whether showery weather, breeze- 
 shaken foliage, and sun-pierced clouds (we do not know the 
 circumstances under which sunbeams are considered to pierce 
 painfully through clouds) are or are not subjects of too low an 
 order to be worthy of any but the morbid preference of such an 
 artist as John Constable, it must be pointed out that the artist 
 has, in works we have already mentioned, shown that he could 
 take keen delight in scenery such as all critics admit to be 
 worthy of admiration, and was capable of regarding such 
 " through media of feeling derived from higher sources." 
 
 Indeed, that Constable loved all nature very much is as 
 plainly evident to the most casual observer of his pictures as 
 it was to the President of the Royal Academy, when the disap- 
 pointed painter took him the rejected picture of Flat ford Mill 
 in order to be taught how to improve in his art, and in all 
 humility learn from his fellow-artists. But to the careful 
 and sympathetic reader of his pictures there is a yet deeper love 
 
118 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 revealed, a love which amounts to veneration. And yet, if 
 Constable had never painted a picture in his life, his writings 
 abound with passages showing in what reverence he held 
 Nature in all her phases. One passage alone will suffice to 
 illustrate this : " The landscape painter must walk in the field 
 with an humble mind. .No arrogant man was ever permitted to 
 see Nature in all her beauty. If I may be allowed to use a very 
 solemn quotation, I would say most emphatically to the student, 
 ' Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.' " 
 
 Much of the querulous opposition to Constable was undoubt- 
 edly owing to the fact that he was essentially a new man, 
 claiming to choose for himself not only the subjects he should 
 paint but the style in which they were to be represented, and 
 the treatment to be employed in order to gain the end he had 
 in view. He cared nought for what had been done, simply 
 because it was a style or treatment that had hitherto been 
 recognized ; but whilst taking advantage to the utmost of those 
 means which school-painters held to be alone legitimate, he 
 hesitated not to avail himself of any means whatever that he 
 could think of in order to produce a desired effect. Tor this 
 reason it was he employed his palette-knife so largely, and of 
 course in so doing avoiding all littleness of execution ; paying 
 no attention to mere details as long as he could gain a greater 
 advantage by treating the general truths of nature as to colour 
 and chiaroscuro largely and simply. In this mode of execution 
 Constable from the first regarded his picture as a whole, pro- 
 ducing the general effect, and afterwards working in sufficient 
 details to satisfy truth of form without detracting from the 
 generalization he aimed at. This is an exactly contrary method 
 to that adopted by the New School — for School it is in the 
 ordinary sense of the word — of English Landscape Painters, 
 which is founded on pre-Raphaelism, and in which, by careful 
 and laborious execution of every detail and part, it is endeavoured 
 at last to produce a general effect — a whole. Without entering 
 into a technical discussion as to which of these modes is nuue 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE'S PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 119 
 
 likely to produce the desired end — a faithful representation of 
 the appearance of nature — we may observe that we have not 
 hitherto seen any landscapes of the Hew School equal in power 
 and general truth to those of Constable, Wilson, and some others. 
 
 Perhaps the part of inanimate nature to which Constable paid 
 the greatest attention was the sky. How closely he studied 
 this may be gathered from his remarks in the letter-press 
 accompanying the engraving called Spring, in the 1 English 
 Landscape.' 
 
 " The natural history, if the expression may be used, of the 
 skies, which are so particularly marked in hailstorms at this 
 time of the year, is this : — The clouds accumulate in very large 
 masses, and from their loftiness seem to move but slowly : 
 immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous opaque 
 patches, which are only small clouds passing before them, and 
 consisting of isolated portions, detached probably from the 
 larger clouds. These, floating much nearer the earth, may 
 perhaps fall in with a stronger current of wind, which, as w-ell 
 as their comparative lightness, causes them to move with greater 
 rapidity; hence they are called by wind-millers and sailors, 
 messengers, and always portend bad weather. They float mid- 
 way in what may be termed the lanes of the clouds ; and from 
 being so situated are almost uniformly in shadow, receiving a 
 reflected light only from the clear blue sky immediately above 
 them. In passing over the bright parts of the large clouds they 
 appear as darks, but in passing the shadowed parts they assume 
 a grey, a pale, or a lurid hue." 
 
 On another occasion he wrote : " That landscape painter who 
 does not make his skies a very material part of his composition 
 neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, speaking of the landscapes of Titian, of Salvator, and 
 of Claude, says: 'Even their skies seem to sympathize with their 
 subject.' I have often been advised to consider my sky as a 
 white sheet thrown behind the objects. Certainly, if the sky is 
 obtrusive, as mine is, it is bad : but if it is evaded, as mine are 
 
120 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 not, it is worse ; it must and always shall with me make an 
 effective part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a 
 class of landscape in which the sky is not the key-note. . . . 
 The sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything. 
 
 . . . My skies have not been neglected though they have 
 often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about 
 them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance which Xature 
 has in all her movements." 
 
 In most of Constable's skies are masses of soft, warm, grey 
 colour, the edges appearing to be touched with liquid silver ; and 
 through these, far beyond, one catches an occasional glimpse of 
 the blue empyrean. He could not understand the "white sheet" 
 theory when his beloved clouds offered such indescribable con- 
 trasts of glowing sunbeam and cool shadow. Some of Constable's 
 sky effects are admirably illustrated in engravings from his 
 works, amongst which we may mention particularly Spring, 
 Yarmouth, Summer Afternoon after a SI tower, Hadleigh Castle, 
 Summer Evening, and A Summer-land. 
 
 Another feature of his art is the dewy freshness of his grass 
 and his emerald foliage. He was essentially a summer painter, 
 and revelled in depicting the special characteristics of our lovely 
 land in the heyday of its beauty. "When Sir George Beaumont 
 asked him if he did not rind it sometimes difficult to know where 
 to place his " brown tree " in a landscape, he replied, " No, for 
 I never paint one." He saw that the foliage in summer was 
 green — and painted it so ; he saw that the summer shower and 
 the morning dew gave the verdure additional beauty — and painted 
 what he saw ; he saw that in the summer sun the green leaves 
 sparkle, and glisten, and glitter — and thus he painted them ; and 
 so he was told that his dazzling white light looked like sleet and 
 snow; and then "Constable's snow" became a rare joke with 
 the connoisseurs, who avoided brightness and light as they would 
 a plague-stricken thing, and who had hob-nobbed with Sir George 
 Beaumont, convinced that the " brown fiddle, brown picture " 
 theory was the correct one. And after poor Constable's death, some 
 
JOHN CONSTABLE'S PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 121 
 
 barbarian hand robbed The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, the 
 picture that had cost him over thirteen years' anxiety and appli- 
 cation before he could give it the wealth of noontide brightness 
 it at last possessed ; some barbarian hand robbed that picture of 
 its very soul, clouded out its sun with a coat of filthy blacking 
 and mastic varnish, to tone it and make it to the taste of "several 
 noblemen." 
 
 We have referred to the phrase " Constable's snow," and it 
 may be well to say a few words on his practice of painting land- 
 scapes when the sun was high in the heavens, out of the picture, 
 and well in front of his easel. Till his time landscape painters 
 had usually painted sunlit landscapes when the sun was behind 
 them, and either on the right or on the left, and they had looked 
 on the subject from the same quarter as the sun ; some had 
 painted the sun in the picture, and Claude's and Cuyp's lovely 
 sunsets, where the glow from the orb sinking below the horizon 
 Hoods over the earth in a glorious golden mist, are, perhaps, as 
 fine specimens of this effect as any in the art. But our summer 
 painter loved well the noontide splendour; and nature, seen right 
 under the sun, reveals many beauties which are not otherwise 
 to be seen ; under the sun the shadows are broad, and their 
 colours full and rich; the white light, too, is transmitted through 
 the thinner foliage of the trees, and, unneutralized by the reflected 
 blue or grey of the heavens, is seen in vivid contrast with the 
 full shadows ; and he also saw that all leaves, to a greater or a 
 lesser extent, were fitted to reflect light, and glittered and sparkled 
 in the glad sunshine like jewels reflecting rays of pure white 
 light — this he painted. The result was that critics who knew 
 everything about painting and nothing about nature could not 
 understand his truth. The great faithfulness with which he 
 produced the effects of summer light, and painted heat even, was 
 due to a departure from the recognized school-methods of execu- 
 tion. It had been the custom, and even Turner had followed it, 
 to use the warm colours (red, orange, and yellow), to convey the 
 idea of warmth. 
 
122 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 In firelight effects this would be all very well, hut Constable 
 hardly used these colours at all when he painted his summer 
 heat, because he could not see them in nature. His predominant 
 masses were blues, greens, and greys. Eed, orange, and yellow 
 are only seen in the sky in the coolest hours of the day — night 
 and morning — and sunlight only intensifies its natural glories ; 
 white seeming a more intense white, and blue remaining a per- 
 fect blue un tinged with green, because the light of the sun is 
 the purest, whitest light imaginable. This, and his nearly 
 universal choice of summer as the time in his subjects, also 
 accounts for his greenness, for it is only in spring, autumn, and 
 winter that brown tints prevail in the foliage of England \ in 
 summer our country is essentially and characteristically green. 
 A celebrated German critic thus expresses his opinion of Con- 
 stable's style and genius : " This painter gives us everything 
 that can be possibly desired in a landscape artist of realistic 
 tendency ; his lively feeling for the picturesque as seen in the 
 simplest forms of nature, perfect truthfulness in every part, 
 transparent and powerful colouring, and free yet careful execu- 
 tion, enable him to place the rural scenes of England before us 
 in the most unpretending and attractive form." 
 
PICTURES BY GAINSBOROUGH IN PUBLIC 
 GALLERIES IN ENGLAND. 
 
 London. National Gallery, 
 
 The Market-Cart. 
 The "Watering- Place. 
 Musidora Bathing her Feet. 
 The Watering- Place. 
 Woody Landscape, Sunset. 
 Rustic Children. 
 
 Study for a Portrait {Mr. Abel Moysey). 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Siddons. • Painted in 1784. Half-length. 
 
 Portrait of Ralph Schomberg, Esq., M.D. 
 
 Portrait of Orpin, Parish Clerk of Bradford, Wiltshire. 
 
 Portraits of Mr. J. Baillie, of Ealing Grove, his Wife and four Children. 
 
 Landscape (" Gainsborough's Forest "). 
 
 Dulwich Gallery. 
 Portraits of Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell. 
 Portrait of P. J. de Loutherbourg, Esq., R.A". 
 Portrait of Thomas Linley, Esq. Born in ] 730. 
 
 Portrait of Samuel Linley, Esq., R.N, (" There is a tradition that this head 
 
 was painted in forty -eight minutes.") 
 Portrait of Thomas Linley, Esq. Born in 1756. 
 Portrait of Mrs. Moodey and her Children. 
 
124 PICTURES BY GAINSBOROUGH AND CONSTABLE. 
 
 London. South Kensington Museum. 
 
 Group of the Princesses Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Augusta Sophia, and 
 
 Elizabeth, elder daughters of King George III. 
 Sketch for a whole-length portrait of a Female {pencil and wash). 
 Carrying Lambs {chalk). 
 
 Sketch for the Portrait of Master Buttall, known as "The Blue Boy" 
 
 {pencil and water-colour). 
 View of a Mansion {chalk and India ink). 
 Landscape with Buildings {chalk and India ink). 
 
 National Portrait Gallery. 
 Portrait of Jeffery, first Lord Amherst. 
 Portrait of Charles, first Marquis Cornwallis. 
 Portrait of George Colman> 
 
 Hampton Court. 
 Portrait of Fischer, the Musician. 
 Portrait of Colonel St. Leger. 
 
 Edinburgh. National Gallery. 
 
 The Honourable Mrs. Graham, "Wife of General Lord Lynedoch. {A first 
 study made by the painter for the head of the full-length, lent by Mr. 
 Maxton Graham of Cultoquhey, is also in the Gallery. ) 
 
 Dublin. National Gallery. 
 
 Portrait of Hugh, Duke of Northumberland, K.G. Born in 1712. 
 
 PICTURES BY CONSTABLE IN PUBLIC 
 GALLERIES IN ENGLAND. 
 
 London. National Gallery. 
 
 The Corn Field (or Country Lane). Painted in 1826. 
 
 The Valley Farm (Willy Lott's House). Exhibited at the Royal Academy 
 
 in 1835. 
 A Cornfield with Figures. 
 Barnes Common. 
 
CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 125 
 
 London. South Kensington Museum. 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral. Signed and dated 1823. 
 Dedham Mill. Signed and dated 1820. 
 
 Hampstead Heath. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830. Signed on 
 the back. 
 
 Hampstead Heath. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1827. 
 Boat-Building, near Flatford Mill. 
 Water Meadows, near Salisbury. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 CONSTABLE. 
 
 1776 Birth. June 17. 
 
 1795 Introduced to Farrington. 
 
 1799 Becomes Student of the Royal Academy. 
 
 1803 Takes Coasting Trip in the " Coutts." 
 
 1812 Exhibits Flatford Mill. 
 
 1815 Marriage. Death of Mother. 
 
 1819 Exhibits White Horse. Elected A. R. A. 
 
 1825 Receives Gold Medal from the French King. 
 
 1827 Takes house at Hampstead. 
 
 1828 Death of Mrs. Constable. 
 
 1829 Elected R.A. 
 1837 Death. March 30. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Altar pieces, Constable's, 91. 
 
 " Antiquity," Smith, 85, 95. 
 
 Art education, copying as a branch 
 
 of, 57. 
 Arundel Mill, 108. 
 
 Barret, George, 5, 15. 
 
 Bate, Mr., portrait of, 42. 
 
 Beauclerc, Lady Di, 41. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir G., 46, 49, 84, 108, 121. 
 
 Blue Boy, The, 42, 60, 74. 
 
 Boat Building, 117. 
 
 Boat passing a Lock, 98. 
 
 Boy at the Stile, 45. 
 
 Bridgeman and Kent, 5. 
 
 Brookes, Dr., 88. 
 
 Burroughs, Humphrey, 19. 
 
 Bute, Lord, 4. 
 
 Caroline of Anspach, Queen, 8. 
 Ceyx and Alcyone, 98. 
 Charles I., 3, 8. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, portrait of, 69. 
 Christie the auctioneer, 13, 41. 
 Claude, 14, 121. 
 
 Cloud studies, Constable's, 100, 120. 
 Cloud studies, Gainsborough's, 27 
 Colcurist, Gainsborough as a, 59, 70. 
 
 Constable's courtship, 92. 
 
 „ French critics. 100. 
 
 „ George, 107. 
 " Constable's snow," 121. 
 Cooper, the miniaturist, 10. 
 Correggio, 59. 
 Cornfield, The, 109, 115. 
 Cottage in a Cornfield, 106. 
 Cottage Door, The, 74. 
 Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher 
 Cotes, Francis, 35. 
 " Coyte Alive," 42. 
 Cozens, John, 10, 15, 91, 114. 
 Cunningham's Lives of Painter.-, 
 Cuyp, 121. 
 
 Dedham Vale, 99. 
 Dell at Helmingham Park, 101. 
 Duchess of Devonshire, 41, 55. 
 Dunthorne, John, 83, 95, 106. 
 Dupont, Gainsborough, 38. 
 Dutch Landscapists, The, 13. 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Charles, 15. 
 Edgar, Mr., 29, 68. 
 Egremont, Lord, 107. 
 " English Landscape," 103, 119. 
 Etty, 81. 
 
IXDKX. 
 
 127 
 
 Farrir.gton, Joseph, 85. 
 
 Female portraits, Gainsborough's, 72. 
 
 Fischer, the musician, 45, 49. 
 
 Fisher, Archdeacon, 88, 95, 102. 
 
 Fisher, Dr., 89. 
 
 Flat ford Mill, 89, 94, 118. 
 
 Flemish Masters, The, 56. 
 
 Foote's " Taste," 7. 
 
 Free Society of Artists, 13. 
 
 Gainsborough, Humphrey, 20. 
 
 „ John, senior, 18. 
 
 „ Jack, 19, 41. 
 
 Mrs., 19. 
 
 „ Mrs. Thomas, 26 et seq. 
 
 Gainsborough's sisters, 20. 
 Garrick, David, 33. 
 Girl and Pigs, 43. 
 Girtin, T., 91, 114. 
 Gravelot, the engraver, 23. 
 
 Ballet, Mr. and Mrs., portrait of, 61. 
 
 Hamilton, Colonel, 45. 
 
 Hayman, Francis, 11 et seq., 24, 35. 
 
 Hay Wain, The, 116. 
 
 Helmingham Park, 87. 
 
 Henderson, the actor, 52. 
 
 Hilliard, the miniaturist, 10. 
 
 Hingeston, Mr., South wold, 48 et seq. 
 
 Hobbema, 115. 
 
 Hogarth, 4 et seq., 7 et seq., 11 et seq. 
 Honywood, General, portrait of, 33, 44. 
 
 Incorporated Society of Artists, 12. 
 Ipswich, Gainsborough at, 27 et seq. 
 Jpsicich Musical Club, The, 30 
 
 Jack Hill, 46. 
 
 Jumping Horse, The, 102, 116. 
 
 Kirby, Joshua, 27, 48. 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 3. 
 
 " Lake Avernus," "Wilson's, 62. 
 Landguard Fort, View of, 28. 
 Le Notre, the gardener, 5. 
 Leslie, C. R., 85, 95, 106. 
 Ligonier, Countess of, portrait of, 69. 
 Lincoln, Countess of, portrait of, 69. 
 London Magazine, 7. 
 Lock, A., 94. 
 
 Marine Painters, The, 11. 
 
 National Gallery, The, 84 
 Nayland altar-piece, 91. 
 
 Payne, W., 15. 
 Peter Pindar, 43 et seq. 
 Philips, Ambrose, 6. 
 Portraits, Constable's, 99. 
 Purton, Mr., 106. 
 
 Queen Charlotte, portrait of, 43. 
 Quin, the actor, portrait of, 33. 
 
 Pace, The, 64. 
 Raphael, 84. 
 Ramsay, Allan, 6. 
 
 Redgrave, Messrs., " A Century of 
 
 Painters," by, 13, 59. 
 Rembrandt, 81. 
 Petum from Harvest, The, 34. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 3, 5, 3, 12 et 
 
 seq., 37, 48, 50 et seq., 58 et seq., 63, 
 
 69. 
 
 Rhudde, Dr., 92. 
 
 Pomantic Landscape, icith Sheep at a 
 
 Fountain, 36. 
 Roubiliac, the sculptor, 8. 
 Rouquet, M., 16. 
 
 Royal Academy, The, 12, 32, 35 et 
 
 seq., 79. 
 Royal Institution, 114. 
 Rubens, 56. 
 Ruysdael, 14, 115. 
 
 Ruskin's " Modern Painters," 66 et 
 seq., 92, 111, 113, 116. 
 
128 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 St. Leger, Colonel, portrait of, 44. 
 St. Martin's Lane Academy, 24. 
 Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 
 105. 
 
 Salvator Eosa, 14. 
 Schomberg House, 40. 
 Scott, Samuel, 11. 
 
 Sea Shore tcith Boats and Figures, 63. 
 Shepherd Boy in the Shower, 64, 73. 
 Sheridan, E. B., 46. 
 Society of Arts, The, 12, 32. 
 Spring, 84, 119. 
 Stour Valley, The, 17, 80, 115. 
 Stratford Mill, 97 et seq., 117. 
 Sudbury, the town of, 21. 
 
 " Taste," Foote's, 4. 
 " Tatler," The, 4. 
 Teniers, 56. 
 
 Thicknesse, Philip, 28, 31, 39. 
 Titian, 2, 59. 
 
 Turner, J. W. M* 10, 54, 59. 
 
 Valley Farm, Tlie, 107. 
 Van de Velde, 12, 107, 115. 
 Van Dyck, 34, 56, 61. 
 Velasquez, 46. 
 Vernet, Horace, 14. 
 
 Vertue, the engraver, 4. 
 View of Hampstead Heath, 112. 
 View in Mall, St. James's Park, 44. 
 Victory, HM.S., Constable's picture 
 of, 91. 
 
 Waagen, Dr., 3 (note), 60. 
 Walpole, Horace, 6. 
 Warren Hastings, trial of, 47. 
 Water colourists, The, 8 et seq. 
 Watering Place, The, 73. 
 Waterloo Bndge, 105 et seq., 117, 120. 
 "Watts, the engineer, 20. 
 West, Benjamin, 89. 
 Whalley, Mrs., 88. 
 White Horse, The, 97, 98, 100, 115. 
 " Willy Lott's House," 108. 
 Wilson, E., 7, 11 et seq., 18, 61, 114, 
 119. 
 
 Wiltshire, the carrier, 33. 
 Woodman in the Storm, The, 42, 64. 
 Wornum's " Epochs of Painting," 14. 
 Wright, of Derby, 15. 
 
 Yarmouth Pier, 105. 
 
 Zuccarelli, 14. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLoF, PR1NTEK3. 
 
ILLUSTRATED TEXT-BOOKS OF 
 ART-EDUCATION. 
 
 EDITED BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R- A. 
 
 DIRECTOR FOR ART : SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM MR. POYNTER'S PREFACE TO THE SERIIS. 
 
 "\ 1 7TTHIN the last few years an interest in art — not unfrequently genuine 
 . V V enough — has sprung up, which is very widespread, and which is 
 increasing far beyond the circle of the few highly cultivated persons who at 
 one time constituted the amateur classes. But if this interest is to be more 
 than a fashion, a definite and systematic knowledge of art must be its 
 foundation. 
 
 The object of this series of Text-books is to provide that such a knowledge 
 should form part of general education ; and it would seem hardly necessary to 
 point out the advantages to be gained from their use in this direction, did we 
 not know of the strange belief, that the appreciation of good or ad in art is a. 
 mere matter of taste. 
 
 This belief does not extend to literature, the rudiments of which, far in 
 excess of what is required for reading, writing, and grammar, are taught in al 
 our higher schools. It is supposed, for instance, that the intention in teaching 
 Greek and Latin in our public schools goes beyond the mere benefit to be 
 derived from subjects requiring regular application ; the knowledge thus 
 conferred forms at the same time a basis of the etymology of an important 
 section of modern languages. Something of the history of classic literature is 
 also supposed to be acquired. Most boys, on leaving school, know at lea-t 
 who Homer, ^Eschylus, Virgil, and Horace were, and what they did. They 
 have probably learnt also how Virgil's Epic is founded on Homer's;. how 
 /Eschylus led the way to Sophocles and Euripides ; they have learnt from 
 Horace the various forms of versification which he used, and whence they 
 were derived, and much more of the same kind ; in fact, unless more than the 
 
2 
 
 Extracts fro?n Mr. Poy liter's Preface. 
 
 u^ual amount of time has been devoted to athletics, they come away with a 
 sufficient general acquaintance with fine literature to form their taste and tc 
 help them to pursue the subject in after-life if so inclined. 
 
 But it is doubtful whether the large majority of boys would not be puzzled 
 by an allusion to the names of Phidias or Michelangelo. They may have 
 heard of Raphael, because his cartoons for the Vatican tapestries are in this 
 country, and they may have seen prints of Da Vinci's Last Supper, but there 
 are very few who would come well out of an examination as to any other 
 works of these great artists. As regards the rise, progress, culmination, and 
 hardly contested decline of the various schools of art — Greek, Roman, 
 Italian, Spamsh, German, Flemish, French, English — for aught that 
 the well-educated schoolboy knows of their history, it may be said that the 
 great men who were the instruments of change and improvement might have 
 exited in the Eocene period, or in the planet Mars, rather than in our own 
 globe, and in times with whose history he is otherwise familiar. 
 
 When the English public begins to understand that a knowledge of art 
 requires just such a foundation of definite instruction as is given to literature, 
 they will wonder that the subject is still as foreign to the curriculum of the 
 English schoolboy as if the Greeks of old had been as destitute of art as the 
 barbarous nations of the north whose languages he rarely deigns to study. 
 
 PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENT. 
 
 THERE is no branch of popular education that has hitherto received less 
 attention in this country than the History of Art. Architecture, 
 Sculpture, and Painting have seldom been included in the curriculum of any 
 public school, and are known rather as subjects of study for special purposes 
 than as a part of general education. The history of their origin and progress 
 is to be found only in expensive books, and has seldom been treated of in any 
 popular form. 
 
 Now that Professors of Art have taken a high stand in the country, and, 
 through the munificence and good judgment of one private gentleman, have 
 been appointed to lecture to the students of three of our foremost Universities, 
 and now that Art Museums are being formed in some of our highest public 
 schools, it is thought that a series of well-considered and well-illustrated Text- 
 books, treating on the several branches of art, will be welcomed by those who 
 feel an interest in the further development of Art-Education. In France and 
 Germany there are many such books in use both in schools and families, and 
 the history of art is taught as regularly as geography. It is hoped that the 
 projected volumes will meet with like favour, and be found to supply a want 
 that is undoubtedly felt in England. 
 
The First Scries ^Illustrated Text- Books of Art-Education 
 will be issued in the following divisions : — 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 "CLASSIC AND ITALIAN. By Edward J. Poynter, R.A. ; ami 
 
 Pkkcy R. Head, Lincoln College, Oxford. With more than 80 full-page and other 
 
 Illustrations. Bound in extra cloth, 5J. 
 %* This Volume c mtains an Introductory Preface on Art-Education by Mr. Poynter, who 
 also contributes a Chapter on Egyptian Art, and succinct notices of the various Italian 
 Schools, &c. 
 
 ♦GERMAN, FLEMISH, AND DUTCH. By II. Wii.mot Buxton, 
 
 M.A. ; and E. J. Poyntkr. R.A. Illustrated with 80 Engravings of many of the m ;St 
 important Works of the Masters. Crown 8vo., strongly b^und in cloth, price 5*, 
 
 FRENCH AND SPANISH. By Gerard Smith, Exeter College, 
 
 Oxford. Illustrated with numerous Engravings. 
 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN. By II. Wilmot Buxton, M.A., 
 
 Brasenose College. Illustrated with numerous Engravings. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CLASSIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN, By T. Roger Smith, 
 F.R.I.B.A. 
 
 *GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE. By T. Roger Smith, F.R.I.B.A. 
 
 Illustrated with 120 Engravings of the most important examples ol Architecture in 
 Europe. Clown 8vo., s.rongly bound in cloth, price $s. 
 
 %* This Volume treats of the history of Architecture fr. m the rise of the Gothic style to 
 the general depression which overtook the Renaissance style at the close of the tighieenih 
 century. 
 
 SCULPTURE. 
 
 'ANTIQUE— EGYPTIAN AND GREEK. Including an account of 
 
 the recent discoveries in Greece and A>ia Miliar. By Geokgk Kedfokd, E.K.C.S. 
 Illustrated with mor« than 150 Engravings or" the principal Sta.ues, Bas-reher's, and 
 engraved Ge..is. From the best authorities. Crown 8vo., strongly bound in cl^th, price 5s. 
 
 RENAISSANCE AND MODERN. By George Redford, F.R.C.S. 
 
 With many Illustrations. 
 Each Volume contains from 80 to 150 Illustrations, large crown octavo, and is strongly bound 
 for the use of students. Price 5*. * These volumes are now ready. 
 
 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 I. From The Graphic July 17, 1880. 
 
 " Mr. Poynter's name is warrant e ^ough for the value of the Art text-books 
 which he has undertaken to edit. Those already published, Classic and 
 Italian Painting, and Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance (Sampson Low 
 and Co.), the former by Mr. Poynter and Mr. Percy Head, the latter by Mr. 
 Roger Smith, are admirably done. * Painting ' begins with Egypt, and 
 passes on to the Greek masters, of some of whose works we perhaps have copies 
 on the so-called Etruscan vases, and on the walls at Pompeii, and in those 
 ruins near the Baths of Titus, where have been found the finest existing relics 
 of ancient painting. On early Christian Art, with its Pagan symbolism (Christ 
 
4 
 
 Illustrated Text-Books of Art-Education. 
 
 being Orpheus), and on Byzantine work there are some interesting remarks ; 
 and then begins the history of the Art-revival in which Pisa with Giunta, 
 Siena with the earlier Guido and Duccio, and Florence with Cimabue and 
 Giotto, all claim a share. Then early in the fifteenth century comes Fra 
 Angelico of Fiesole ; and from him down to the late Venetians, Canaletto and 
 Tiepolo, every painter of note is duly characterised according to the school to 
 which he belonged. 
 
 "Part of Mr. Smith's volume was delivered in the form of lectures to 
 ihe young military engine© s at Chatham. He writes not so much for pro- 
 fe.vsional architects as for those * who pursue the fine arts as a necessary part 
 of a complete liberal education.' Starting at once with the pointed arch, with 
 a too meagre reference to the different forms of Roman which in different pans 
 of Kurope preceded it, he follows the changes in architecture, first in England, 
 then in France, then in Central, and lastly in Southern Europe. We wish he 
 had given some hint of the origin of that style which spread so rapidly from 
 Portugal to the Danube as he does of the origin of the Renaissance, which 
 was, in architecture as in all else, a going back to classical models. Both 
 volumes are on the whole well illustrated. We specially note the Alcazar at 
 Toledo, the cathedral at Orvieto (ugly, as Italian Gothic always is), and the 
 engravings after Michael Angelo in the volume on Painting. Mr. Poynter's 
 preface is a valuable introduction to the series, of which we do not hesitate to 
 say that there is none more promising of the many sets of manuals now in 
 course of publication. Art needs an education just as much as Science ; and 
 to give this education conscientiously is Mr. Poynter's aim." 
 
 2. From The Architect, July 3, 1880. 
 
 " Publishers are considered to be among the shrewdest men in business, and 
 when so many of them in England are ready to undertake the risk of pro- 
 ducing books on art, it is but reasonable to conclude that they are assured that 
 the interest in art among us is sufficiently real to bring them profit. Messrs. 
 Low and Co. nre now concerned in a series of Art text-books, which seems 
 certain to be a fortunate venture. They are to be the work of experts, and in. 
 appearance they leave nothing to be desired. It is the inten'ion of the pro- 
 jector-; that the volumes should supply as much knowledge of Art as rightly 
 should be included in a general education. * When the English public begins 
 to understand,' Fays Mr. Poynter, ' that a knowledge of art requires just ^ch 
 a foundation of definite instruction a^ is given to literature, they will wonder 
 that the subject is still as foreign to the curriculum of the English schoolboy 
 as if the Greeks of old had been as destitute of art as the barbarous nations of 
 the North whose languages he rarely deigns to study.' It is with the intention 
 of supplying this need that the series is now in course of preparation. The:e 
 
Notices of the Press. 
 
 5 
 
 are scientific series to be had which are adapted to students of all ranks ; but 
 cheap, useful, and suggestive books on painting, sculpture, and architecture, 
 fit for general reading, have hitherto been unknown in England." 
 
 3. From a Criticism by Mr. Wyke Bayliss. 
 
 " After a preliminary chapter by Mr. Poynter on Egyptian painting, Mr. 
 Head takes up the subject of Greek Art, its origin and development, its zeni'h 
 and decline. From this he passes to the Roman period, and gives an inter- 
 esting account of Etruscan Art, the mural paintings of Pompeii, the works «>f 
 the early Christians in mosaic and fresco, the miniature painting on manu- 
 scripts, and the growth of the Byzantine school. Then he brings us to the 
 Renaissance, and marshals before us, school by school, man by man, always 
 in chronological order, the great army of painters whose names are familiar to 
 us, from Cimabue to Canaletto The sequence is maintained with much 
 literary skill ; the accessories of time and place are wrought in with a light 
 yet careful and firm hand ; and each painter stands out in more or less relief 
 according to his relative importance, but always * masterly done,' whether 
 indicated by a few delicate touches or delineated as a finely-drawn portrait. 
 Of course such a work partakes of the na'ure of compilation as well as that 
 of authorship, and a frank acknowledgment is given of indebtedness to various 
 sources, especially to the works of Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle. But this 
 does not detract from the credit due to Mr. Head for the admirable use he has 
 made of his material. It is as though in building a temple to Art he had 
 enriched its walls with a frieze like that of a Parthenon. In this frieze he has 
 given us two or three hundred figures. Each figure may be the work of a 
 different sculptor, but the design is the architect's. And Mr. Head has so 
 arranged it that, without losing the individuality of any figure, we yet see it 
 as one of a group ; without breaking the continuity of the procosion, we yet 
 see the separation of the schools ; without confounding the periods in which 
 Art has flourished, we yet see the unity of Art even in its ow n diversity. In 
 this little hand-book we have at once a readable history and a biographical 
 dictionary. Its style is succinct and graceful; its formation full, accurate, 
 and well arranged. 
 
 " We have to add that the book is copiously illustrated with engravings on 
 wood from characteristic examples of the different schools. They include 
 some of the most interesting of the Egyptian m iral decorations, Greek vases, 
 paintings attributed to Greek artists, Roman and Byzantine mosaics, and a 
 still larger selection of the works of the Italian painters from the thirteenth 
 to the sixteenth century. These illustrations add a charm to the book, and 
 are valuable for the purpose of reference." 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 r THHE intention of the projectors of this Series has been to produce, in an 
 JL easily accessible form and at a price within reach of every one, the 
 results of the recent investigations which have been made by many well-known 
 Engli-h critics, as well as those of Germany and the Netherlands. 
 
 Each volume is very fully illustrated, but as cheapness of price has been 
 especially aimed at, engravings have been sought in many instances from the 
 most important art-publications in PVance and Germany. 
 
 The folloiuing Biographies are now ready: — 
 ITALIAN PAINTERS, &c. 
 
 FRA ANGELICO and the EARLY PAINTERS of FLORENCE. 
 
 By Catherine Phillimore. With 16 Illustrations. 
 FRA BARTOLOMMEO and ANDREA DEL SARTO. By Leader 
 
 Scott, Author of M A Nook in the Apennines." With 1 6 Illustrations. 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Dr. J. Paul Richter, Author of "Die 
 
 Mosaiken von Ravenna." With 16 Illustrations. From recent researches. , 
 MICHELANGELO. By Charles Clement, Author of "Michel- 
 
 Ange, Leonard et Raphael." With many large Engravings. 
 RAPHAEL. From the text of J. D. Passavant. By N. D'Anvers, 
 
 Author of " An Elementary History of Art." With 20 Engravings. 
 TITIAN. From the most recent researches. By Richard Ford Heath, 
 
 M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. 
 TINTORETTO. From investigations at Venice. By W. Roscoe Osler, 
 
 Author of occasional Essays on Art. With many Engravings. 
 VERNET &DELAROCHE. From Charles Blanc. By J. Ruutz Rees, 
 
 Author of various Essays on Art. With 16 Engravings. 
 
 TEUTONIC. 
 
 HOLBEIN. From the text of Dr. A. Woltmann. By Joseph Cundall, 
 
 Author of 44 Life and Genius of Rembrandt." With 20 Engravings. 
 THE LITTLE MASTERS OF GERMANY. By \\\ B. Scott, 
 Author of " Lectures on Fine Arts." With 16 Engravings. 
 * # * An Edition de luxe, with 14 extra plates from rare engravings in the 
 British Museum, and bound in Roxburgh style, price \os, 6d. 
 
Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists. 
 
 7 
 
 TEUTONIC {continued). 
 
 REMBRANDT. From the text of C. Vosmaer. By J. W. Mollett, B.A., 
 
 Officier de l'lnstruction Publique (France). With 16 Engravings. 
 RUBENS. From recent authorities. By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford 
 
 College, Oxford. With 1 6 Engravings. 
 VAN DYCK and HALS. Frcm recent authorities. By Percy R. Head, 
 
 Lincoln College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. 
 FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. By Lord Ronald Gower, 
 
 Trustee of National Portrait Gallery. With 18 Engravings. 
 
 ENGLISH PAINTERS. 
 
 HOGARTH. From recent researches. By -Austin Dobson, Author of 
 
 " Vignettes in Rhyme." With 16 Illustrations. 
 REYNOLDS. From themost recent authorities. By F. S. Pulling, M. A., 
 
 Exeter College, Oxford. With 16 Illustrations. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH and CONSTABLE. ByG. Brock-Arnold, M.A., 
 Hertford College, Oxford. With many Illustrations. 
 
 TURNER. From recent investigations. By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author 
 of " Studies of Sir E. Landseer." With 20 Engravings. 
 
 WILKIE— A Memoir, by J. W. Mollett, B.A., Officier de l'lnstruction 
 
 Publique (France). With many Illustrations. 
 LANDSEER— A Memoir, by Frederick G. Stephens, Author of 
 "Flemish Relics," &c. With many Illustrations. 
 * # * An Edition de luxe, containing 16 photographs from the best engravings, 
 in crown 4to., handsomely bound, price 21s. 
 
 The Volumes preparing for Early Publication are: — 
 
 ALBRECHT DURER. From recent authorities. By R. F. Heath, M.A. 
 
 Hertford College, Oxford. W r ith many Illustrations. 
 GIOTTO. By Harry Quilter, M. A., Trinity Coll., Cambridge. From recent 
 
 investigations at Padua, Florence, and Assisi. With many Illustrations. 
 CORREGGIO and PAOLO VERONESE. By M. Compton Heaton. 
 
 With many Illustrations. 
 VELAZQUEZ. By Edwin Stowe, M.A., Brasenose College, Oxford. 
 
 With many Illustrations. 
 CORNELIUS and OVERBECK. By J. Beavington Atkinson, 
 
 Author of " The Schools of Modern Art in Germany." 
 MANTEGNA and FRANCIA. By Julia Cartwright. With many 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 I. From a Review in the Spectator, July 5, 1879. 
 
 4 It is high time that some thorough and general acquaintance with the 
 works of these mighty painters should be spread abroad, and it is also curious 
 to think how long their names have occupied sacred niches in the world's 
 
3 
 
 Notices of the Press. 
 
 heart, without the presence of much popular knowledge about the collective 
 work of their lives. ... If the present series of biographies, which seems to 
 be most thoroughly and tastefully edited, succeeds in responding to the wants 
 of modest, if ardent, ait-knowledge, its aim will be accomplished." 
 
 2. Reprinted from the Times, January 22, 1880. 
 
 " Few things in the way of small books upon great subjects, avowedly cheap 
 and necessarily brief, have been hitherto so well done as these biographies of 
 the Great Masters in painting. They afford just what a very large proportion 
 of readers in these hurrying times wish to be provided with— a sort of con- 
 centrated food for the mind. « The Liebigs of literature, however, especially 
 in that of the fine arts, need no small amount of critical acumen, much experi- 
 ence in the art of system, and something of the -bee-like instinct that guesses 
 rightly where the honey lies. The writers of these biographies have, on the 
 whole, succeeded in giving an excellent aper<;u of the painters and their 
 works, and better where they have adhered to the lives written by acknow- 
 ledged specialists—such as M. Vosmaer for Rembrandt, Passavant for Raphael, 
 and Dr. Woltmann for Holbein. The life of Holbein is by the editor, with 
 whom the idea of such a series originated, and to whose great experience is to 
 be attributed the very valuable copies of all the important pictures contained 
 in the different biographies. These have been selected with great taste and 
 judgment, and being taken generally from less well-known works by the 
 masters, they enhance the interest and add much to the practical utility of the 
 books. The chronologkal lists of the works of the masters are also very 
 useful additions." 
 
 3. From La Chronique des Arts, March 20, 1880. 
 
 " A un prix d'extreme bon marche, 4 francs environ, en petits volumes 
 joliment cartonnes, et ornes de quinze a vingt planches, la maison Sampson 
 Low, Mar>ton et Cie., a Londres, a entrepris de publier une serie de bio- 
 graphies des grands artistes, resumees d'apres les travaux les plus recents et les 
 plus estimes. Une bibliographie, une liste des gravures executees par ou 
 d'apres l'artiste, une liste de ses ceuvres ou de leurs prix ; enfin, un index accom- 
 pagnant ces resumes confies a des ecrivains distingues verses dins Thistoire 
 de l'art. Ont paru ou sont en preparation dans cette serie de notices : Titien, 
 Rembrandt, Raphael, Van Dyck et Hals, Holbein, Tintoret, Turner, Rubens, 
 Michel- Ange, Leonard, Giotto, Gainsborough, Velazquez, Perugin, Reynolds, 
 Landseer, Delaroche et Vernet, les Petit Maitres, les Peintres de figure en 
 Hollande." — Duranty. 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, 
 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.