THE 
 EARLIER ENGLISH 
 
 WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS 
 
 P25 gl OOK17 (0) MONKHOUSE 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
THE EARLIER ENGLISH 
 
 WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS 
 
 
 
 
 
Of this Edition on Large “Paper 100 Copies only are printed, 
 with Proofs of the Plates. 
 
 2 
 
 This Copy is NG. 28 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE 
 
 EARLIER ENGLISH 
 WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS 
 
 By 
 
 Cosmo Monkhouse 
 
 WITH FOURTEEN ENGRAVINGS ON COPPER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and many other Illustrations 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED 
 ESSEX STREET, STRAND 
 
 
 
 1890 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS: 
 
 I. THE SANDBYS 
 
 Ancient water-colour painting—Frescoes— Miniaturists— Dutch 
 and Flemish Water-colours—Water-colour painting in England 
 —Paul Sandby’s claim to be called the Father of the School— 
 His precursors: William Tavener, &c.—Thomas Sandby—Aqua- 
 tint—Architectural and topographical drawing—State of land- 
 scape painting in the eighteenth century — The ‘classical’ style 
 —The familiar style— Paul Sandby’s versatility and influence. 
 
 . JOHN ROBERT COZENS . 4 é 3 5 . 
 
 Paul Sandby’s contemporaries—Samuel Scott —George Barret 
 the elder and Wilson—De Loutherbourg and Gainsborough — 
 Gainsborough, founder of modern landscape; His elegant 
 rusticity—J. R. Cozens: his method and colouration; advances 
 ‘tinting’ in the direction of colour; his individuality—Alexander 
 Cozens: his curious method of teaching; his drawings at the 
 British Museum; his influence on his son—The latter’s draw- 
 ings in Italy—Their skill and poetry. 
 
 . HEARNE, ROOKER, MALTON 
 
 Poetry in landscape— Difference between the ‘Old Masters’ and 
 J. R. Cozens in their regard of nature—He adds a poetical 
 element to landscape—The topographic ‘draughtsmen;’ the 
 true Founders of the English School of water-colour—Their 
 employment at home and abroad—lIIlustrated works of travel, 
 archeology, and architecture — Devis, Alexander, Pars, &c.— Other 
 artists who used water-colours— Farington—P. Reinagle—The 
 Cleveleys, and other marine painters— The rise of ‘topography’ to 
 art— Pocock, Rooker, Payne—The Maltons—Thomas Hearne — 
 His originality and 1— The best of the ‘draughtsmen’— His 
 influence on Turner— Warwick’ Smith (note). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 b 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 is WO hance ti Nin) ial TO ys hi 
 
 smameehitintt 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Iv. TURNER AND GIRTIN 
 
 Historians of Water-colour painting —W. H. Pyne—His figures 
 for ‘the embellishment of landscape ;’ his writings—Dayes, the 
 master of Girtin—His drawings like ‘early Turners’—Girtin and 
 Turner at Dr. Monro’s and Mr. Henderson’s—Girtin’s practice ; 
 how ‘it differed from the old—Painting v. Tinting— Comparison 
 with Turner— Girtin’s ‘ Sketching Society ’— His genius developed 
 by a visit to the north—His poetic realism. 
 
 
 
 
 
 >, 
 
 v. TURNER AND GIRTIN 
 
 Girtin’s death—Turner’s early drawings classified—His technical 
 skill— His supremacy in architectural interiors— Contrast between 
 him and Girtin—His visit to the North (1797)—Growth of his 
 imagination—His unfaithfulness to local facts— His invention 
 illustrated by a copy of one of Cozens’ drawings. 
 
 VI. FRANCIA, BONINGTON, AND COTMAN 
 
 Turner’s great drawings of the North (1798-1802) — Norham Castle 
 —His debt to Girtin— Letter from Mr. Ruskin— The development 
 of water-colour painting by Turner and Girtin—The foundation of 
 the Water-colour Society— Francia, Bonington: his influence on 
 the French School— Cotman : his etchings of Gothic architecture ; 
 his colour and breadth of treatment. 
 
 Vil. FIGURE PAINTERS: STOTHARD, BLAKE, CATTERMOLE, &c. 
 
 Special qualities of water-colour—Of more value in landscape 
 than figure-painting — Exceptions — Book illustrators: the im- 
 portance of the English School of—Cipriani—Lady Di Beau- 
 clerk— Downman— Genre : Heaphy, Cristall, Wheatley— Bewick, 
 a painter in water-colour—Clennell—Stothard and Blake : their 
 use of colour compared—Cattermole: founder of historical and 
 romantic genre, 
 
 vill, THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY: BARRET, VARLEY, &c. 
 
 Holworthy and Wells, friends of Turner— Nicholson : his method 
 of securing high lights ; processes recommended by—Glover— 
 Havell—The Varleys—John Varley: his drawings classified ; 
 his life and art; his technical skill; his celebrated pupils— 
 Barret ; an ‘idealist ;? his fine colour and irradiation ; compared 
 with Turner— Hills. 
 
 
 
 
 
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 49 
 
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 gI 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ix. EDRIDGE AND PROUT 6 0 6 ; i 5 A 
 
 ‘Drawing,’ old and modern styles; their relation to aquatint, 
 etching, engraving, and lithography —Gothic architecture and the 
 broken line—Lead, pencil, and chalk—Edridge: a master of 
 pencil and the brush ; his miniatures and landscapes, and drawings 
 of picturesque architecture—Prout: popularity of his drawings of 
 Continental towns; his simplicity and dexterity—Mr. Ruskin’s 
 notes. 
 
 
 
 x. Hunt, DE WINT, AND COPLEY FIELDING . G a 
 
 Individuality of English artists— Hunt: his unique position ; his 
 flowers, fruit, and rustic figures; consummate mastery of his 
 materials—The Daniells and the Pugins—De Wint: his love 
 of flatness and tranquillity ; the painter of Lincolnshire ; his rich 
 and blooming colour ; his practice ; his oil pictures. 
 
 XI, COPLEY FIELDING, DAVID Cox, AND W. J. MULLER 
 
 Painters of ‘the country’—Copley Fielding: his drawings 
 classified; his pictures of the Sussex Downs—David Cox: 
 his luminous colour and purity of touch ; the human poetry of 
 his late works ; his life and oil-painting — Miiller’s influence on 
 him— Harding. 
 
 XU, TURNER AGAIN é 
 
 
 
 Turner’s ‘impressions’ and those of modern ‘impressionists’ 
 
 | compared— Miller: poetry at first sight; his Eastern sketches 
 
 | make a distinct mark in modern art; his wonderful skill in 
 execution— Holland: his rich.and tender colour; his pictures of 
 Venice —Westall— Robson — Lewis— Turner after 1802; his 
 divergence from his contemporaries ; comparisons disadvantageous 
 to both; some distinctions noted—Comparison of drawings of 
 Newcastle by Turner and Girtin—Conclusion. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 139 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i cl Na in ta eS si 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 ROUEN. Liéched by Frank Short, after R. P. Bonington 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 LANDSCAPE, Etched by C. O. Murray, after Paul age 
 Sandby 7 z 8 
 
 THE CASTLE OF GANDOLFO. From a Drawing ly J. R. 
 Cozens. 9 5 0 2 3 0 F 5 5 20 
 
 ELVET BRIDGE, DurHAM. Etched by C. O. Murray, after T. 
 Hearne a 
 BRIDGNORTH. Liched by Frank Short, after T. Girtin . 46 
 
 ST. Mary REDCLIFFE. Mezzotint by Frank Short, after J. 
 
 S. Cotman ‘ : : : P : : ‘ 70 
 A SCENE OF Monastic Lire. From a Drawing by G. 
 
 Cattermole 6 a & i é 0 ; . 4 88 
 EVENING. froma Drawing by G. Barret . 5 : - 100 
 PORCH OF RATISBON CATHEDRAL, From a Drawing by 
 
 Prout A 3 3 ° A 2 . 5 a Ane 
 A CORNFIELD, IVINGHOE. Léched by Frank Short, after De 
 
 Wint e 9 3 ; é 5 Bp HAR 
 From a Drawing by Copley Fielding - 126 
 WS-Y-COED. vom a Drawing by David Cox é een) 
 
 A SHIP IN DISTR 
 BET 
 A WInbDy Day, Etched by C. O. Murray, after G. Chambers 138 
 NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. Fyrom a Drawing by J]. M.W. Turner 146 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 saceminceiaints 
 itt Ni is NU, AO NOOR ts ei 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 DRAWING IN SEPIA. By Paul Sandby . 3 4 5 
 
 DAUGHTERS OF THE EARL OF WALDEGRAVE. By Paul 
 Sandby : a : 
 
 Stupy oF AN OAK. By Paul Sandby ; ; 2 
 
 Str FRANCIS BOURGEOIS AND Mr. DESENFANS. By Paul 
 Sandby : 3 
 
 STUDIO AND GARDEN OF a AUL SANDBY 
 
 MARKET WOMEN WITH CaTTLE. By Ff. ree 
 
 LANDSCAPE WITH RIVER AND MOUNTED FicuRES. Sy G. 
 Barret : 
 
 CATTLE IN A STREAM By r. Connon: 
 
 THE CHIGI PALACE, NEAR ALBANO. After J. R. Gans 
 
 VIEW ON THE GRAND CANAL, CHINA. By W. Alexander . 
 
 WALTHAM Cross. By 7. Malton . 
 
 PENCIL SketcH. By 7. Hearne 
 
 VIEW NEAR WiTHAM. By 7. Hearne 
 
 ELY CATHEDRAL. By £. Dayes 
 
 BuckinGHAM House. Sy £. Dayes 
 
 A VIEW ON THE WHARFE. Sy Thomas Can 
 
 KirKSTALL ABBEY. By Thomas Girtin 0 
 
 THE Mayor’s WALK, YorK. By Thomas Girtin 
 
 INTERIOR OF CELLAR. By J. M. W. Turner 
 
 MAtmespury AxpBey. By J. MZ. W. Turner . 
 
 KIRKSTALL Crypt. By J. M. W. Turner 
 
 THE REICHENBACH. By /. R. Cozens 
 
 THE REICHENBACH. Copy by Turner of oa by a R. 
 Cozens 
 
 COAST SCENE. ay FP z Tis brane 
 
 Group. Ly R. P. Bonington . c 5 5 
 
 MOoUSEHOLD HEATH, Norwicu. By Old Crome. 
 
 PLATE FROM COTMAN’S ‘ LIBER STUDIORUM’ 
 
 SHIPS RIDING IN A GALE. By F. L. T. Francia . ; 
 
 Stupies. By Joshua Cristal . 8 ° 3 a 2 a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a 
 | List of Minor Lllustrations. xi | 
 Page | 
 THE ANCIENT OF DAYS SETTING A COMPASS ON THE FACE | 
 OF THE EARTH. By W. Blake. 5 5 : 86 | 
 | LANDSCAPE. By George Cattermole : B ? 4 89 | | 
 VENICE. By George Cattermole  . 3 ; : : - go | | 
 | BRACKLIN FaLy. By John Glover ; : : c ; 93 | i 
 | SADLER’Ss WELLS, By W. Havell . ; P ‘ 2 5 94. | | 
 | LANpscaPE. By John Varley : : : ; ; room| | 
 SKETCH. By John Varley : ; : : : : ‘ 98 | 
 Composition. By G. Barret, jun. ; : F 5 SLO | 
 FLoops at Eton. By H. Edridge : ; ; : Sosa 
 PORTRAIT OF BARTOLOZZ1, By H. Edridge . . 3 oI) | 
 A Monk. By W. Hunt 5 2 ; : : , ee LIKS) | 
 DurHAM. Ly William Daniell . ; : 4 5 a les} | 
 St. Mary, Oxrorp. By A. Pugin 3 F 3 ° nS 
 PENCIL SKETCH. By Copley Fielding . ‘ : ; ee 2G | 
 COAST NEAR PEN MAEN Mawr. Sy David Cor. ; A ge | 
 LanpscaPE. By W. /. Miiller 3 : 5 a gee | | 
 | WATER CARRIER, XANTHUS. After W. 7. Miiller F 5 16. |] | 
 OBERLAND. By J. D. Harding . ; : Sime 
 18S fle HOMES GY | 
 
 VIEW OF ROME FROM MONTE MARIO. By J. M.W. Turner 142 | 
 SKETCH OF A PILOT Boat. By /. M. W. Turner . Gee 
 NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. By T. Girtin ; : : LAG 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a Na OST EM MET SME I 
 
 ae 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE 
 EARLIER ENGLISH 
 WATER-COLOUR PAINTERS. 
 
 I 
 DEES SNUB ES: 
 
 AUL SANDBY has often been called ‘The Father of the 
 Water-colour School,’ and the title is a good deal more ap- 
 propriate than such titles are apt to be. At the time he began to 
 paint there was certainly no such thing as a water-colour school, 
 and he cultivated the art with great assiduity, as he did everything 
 he undertook. Nevertheless, there were water-colour drawings in 
 England long before his day, and water-colour landscapes also. 
 In the use of transparent washes a high degree of skill had been 
 reached, especially by architectural and military draughtsmen; a 
 certain skill in drawing in sepia and neutral tints was a common 
 accomplishment of the educated classes. George III. had had his 
 lessons from Kirby, and the Prince of Wales from Alexander Cozens. 
 Moreover, though the latter painter did not settle in England 
 till 1746, he was then a trained artist in water-colours, as far as 
 the accomplishment of the day went, and therefore it is evident 
 that the method of landscape-painting in water-colours, which had 
 been practised by Dutch and Flemish artists in the seventeenth 
 century, was by no means confined to England in Sandby’s youth. 
 
 That a wide range of very pure and bright transparent colours was 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 2 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 attainable even in the reign of Charles II. is evident from the 
 brilliant and delicately executed flower-pieces of Verelst, and of 
 the masterly use of body colour by English portrait-painters ‘in 
 little’ from the days of Queen Elizabeth to those with which we 
 are now concerned, there is no doubt. If, indeed, it were a mere 
 question of the employment of water as the vehicle of pigments, 
 we should not stop even when we had got to the miniaturists of 
 
 the Middle Ages or the frescoes of ancient Rome, but should have 
 
 
 
 to go back to Egypt and the Pharaohs; but it is of the water- 
 colour school of England only that I propose to treat, and more 
 especially of that great development of water-colour landscape art 
 at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, which, 
 rightly considered, is the most original and national of all art move- 
 ments in England. I therefore begin with Paul Sandby. 
 
 Although, as was recently very plainly seen at the great Jubilee 
 Exhibition at Manchester, we may claim a very distinct individuality 
 
 in other branches of painting, especially in portrait and genre, in 
 
 
 
 landscape we may claim to have founded an entirely new school, 
 
 new in sentiment, new in colour, new in method, presenting the 
 
 
 
 appearance of nature far more fully and truly than any before. 
 It was by the early artists in water-colour that the foundation 
 of this school was mainly laid; and it may be remarked, in passing, 
 that some of the greatest of these water-colour painters, such as 
 Turner, Cox, and De Wint, were also among the greatest of our 
 landscape-painters in oil. As before said, there were water-colour 
 painters in England before the Sandbys, and no doubt in the 
 formation of Paul’s style and knowledge his precursors, like George 
 Lambert,* Samuel Scott, Brooking, Zuccarelli, and others, had their 
 part ; but perhaps the artist who could most justly challenge Paul 
 Sandby’s claim to the title of the father of the English school of 
 water-colours in the production of faithful landscape, is William 
 
 Tavener or Taverner (1703-1772), an amateur, not unknown to 
 
 * Scene painter at Covent Garden, and founder of the Beef Steak Club. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 3 
 
 The Sandbys. 
 
 Tit 
 enerally stated that his works were principally in body colours, 
 
 Dr. Smollett, who praises his drawings in ‘Humphrey Clinker,’ 
 
 iSme 
 Is gi 
 
 imitating the Italian Masters, and there is a drawing of this char- 
 acter in the South Kensington Museum, and others elsewhere ; but 
 
 in the late Dr. Percy’s collection is a view from Richmond Hill 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF THE 
 
 
 
 ARL OF WALDEGRAVE, WITH MISS KEPPEL AND THEIR COM- 
 PANION. AFTER A WATER: SION 
 
 
 
 “COLOUR DRAWING BY PAUL SANDBY. IN THE Poss 
 
 
 
 
 
 OF WILLIAM SANDBY, E 
 
 executed by this artist in transparent colours, an extensive and 
 beautiful landscape. In the same collection is also a view of a 
 sandpit at Woolwich by Tavener in body-colour. Both of these 
 once belonged to Paul Sandby, and the latter might easily be mis- 
 taken for his work. 
 
 At all events, Paul Sandby was not without models, and good 
 models of water-colour drawings in the old fashion, and both he 
 and his brother must have been well trained in the use of line and 
 
 wash. From whom they got their first instruction in drawing there 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 4 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 is no record, but the place where they got it was Nottingham, 
 where they were born,—Thomas in 1721 and Paul in 1725. 
 Thomas is said ‘to have been attracted to the pursuit of architec- 
 ture by the approbation bestowed upon a drawing of his native 
 town, made by him as a self-taught artist upon a system of per- 
 spective which he had discovered and carried to great perfection.’ 
 This drawing was an East Prospect of Nottingham, taken from 
 Sneinton Hill, afterwards engraved and published in Dering’s ‘ His- 
 tory of Nottingham,’ The date of it was 1741, when he was twenty 
 years old, and his brother Paul sixteen, and in this year they both 
 (by the help, it is said, of their borough member) entered the drawing- 
 school at the Tower. According to Redgrave’s Dictionary they had 
 previously kept a school at Nottingham, but this statement rests 
 on no sure authority, and is, considering their ages, not very pro- 
 bable, At all events their talents must have been soon appreciated, 
 for in 1743 Thomas was appointed draughtsman to the Chief 
 Engineer in Scotland, and in 1746-8 Paul was engaged with him 
 as draughtsman in the survey of the Highlands. It was the fortune 
 of Thomas to be the first to convey to the Government the intelli- 
 gence of the landing of the Pretender in 1745, and thereon to be 
 appointed private secretary and draughtsman to the Duke of Cum- 
 bi 
 
 erland. He was present at the battle of Culloden, and made 
 
 w 
 
 <etches of the field of battle and of the camp, which are now in 
 the possession of Her Majesty. He accompanied the Duke to the 
 Low Countries, and on his return in 1746 was made Deputy 
 Ranger of Windsor Great Park, an appointment which he held 
 
 till his death in 1798. The construction of Virginia Water was 
 
 
 
 the most noticeable achievement of his Deputy Rangership of fifty- 
 two years, and he did not fail to record its beauties in drawings 
 in water-colour, eight of which were engraved (some by his brother 
 Paul) and published in 1754. Both the brothers joined the Incor- 
 porated Society of Artists, and both were foundation members of 
 
 the Royal Academy, of which Thomas was also the first Professor 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
‘AMGNVS INVd AG ‘(YNOTOD AGOA) ‘NVO NV AO AGALS 
 
 os 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 The Sandbys. 
 
 
 
 of Architecture. His career as an architect scarcely concerns us 
 except for the beauty of his architectural drawings (of Old London 
 and from his own designs), which can be studied at the British 
 Museum and the Soane Museum. It has been asserted that 
 
 Thomas pos 
 
 
 
 sd more spirit and artistic feeling than his brother, 
 and though this will not be admitted by those who have studie 
 the range and variety of Paul’s work, there can be no doubt that 
 in architectural drawing, in precise draughtsmanship, and the 
 skill of laying even and finely gradated tints of colour, it would 
 
 be difficult for any artist to greatly excel Thomas. His figures 
 
 also were carefully drawn and well introduced, and in a view of 
 
 The Lodge, Windsor Great Park (engraved), some deer, ostriches, 
 
 and horses are drawn with great truth and spirit, and the trees 
 
 show careful study from nature. He also had no little skill in 
 
 
 
 rendering atmospheric effect. This is well seen in a little view o 
 Covent Garden, from the east corner of the Piazza, in which the 
 sunshine is warm and clear, the shadows transparent, and the 
 square with its church and houses melts away in the distance. 
 Mr. William Sandby has numerous sketches of waggons and guns 
 drawn by Thomas with great accuracy, and also a rowing boat, 
 which is a marvel of exactitude. He has also this drawing of the 
 Piazza, and some other architectural drawings, including a beautiful 
 interior of Freemasons’ Hall (since partly burnt down), which was 
 perhaps his most important work as an architect. 
 
 On the whole, however, these drawings show the draughtsman 
 rather than the pictorial artist ; or the draughtsman whose tenden- 
 cies to be a painter only show themselves as it were accidentally 
 here and there. With Paul, however, it was quite different. His 
 profession was not that of an architect, but a painter—a ‘draughts- 
 man’ who, from dry record of fact, proceeded to pure art, who 
 began by embellishing his drawings of architecture with effects of 
 light and air, and ended by turning topography into landscape. 
 Nor was he only a landscape-painter. Even during his early 
 Cc 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 employment as draughtsman to the Survey in the Highlands, he 
 made numerous sketches, not only of scenery, but figures, which 
 he drew in after-life with grace, freedom, character, and humour. 
 His portraits (always small) in chalk and watercolour, done for his 
 own pleasure only, have often the grace and simplicity of Gains- | 
 
 borough. Mr, W. Sandby has several of these portraits of Paul’s 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SIR FRANCIS BOURGEOIS AND MR. DESE AFTER A DRAWING 
 
 
 
 BY PAUL SANDBY. IN THE POS 
 
 
 
 ION OF W. SANDBY, ESQ. 
 
 family and friends; his wife, Mrs. Mercier and her son, Lady 
 Salisbury and Miss Evans, Lady Maynard, Lady Betty Harcourt 
 and her husband, Mrs. Cosway, and others. It was his custom to 
 introduce portrait groups into the foreground of his drawings 
 | where we may see the portly Capt. Grose on the terrace at 
 Windsor, the architect Gandon and his wife before Montagu house, 
 and (it is said by some and doubted by others) Dr. Johnson and 
 
 Mrs. Thrale in Hyde Park. He was greatly interested, also, in 
 
 
 
 technical experiments. He, like other artists of his day, had to 
 
 manufacture his own colours, both transparent and opaque, and 
 
 a 
 
 aioe 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 The Sandbys. 
 
 such works of his as have been well kept attest by their perfect 
 preservation and power (especially those in body-colour) his skill 
 and knowledge in this matter. In engraving, especially in aqua- 
 tint, he was an adept. He is said to have been the first to 
 introduce aquatint into England, and he certainly practised it with 
 remarkable skill. It was a process admirably adapted to reproduce 
 the water-colours of the period. The monochrome line and wash 
 it could imitate to perfection; and as this then formed the founda- 
 tion of all colour drawings, the aquatints had only to be coloured 
 by a skilful hand to appear as facs¢miles of the original. Many 
 
 hundreds, probably, of such tinted aquatints have been sold as 
 
 
 
 water-colour drawings, and in his method of teaching he laid even 
 
 
 
 a more dangerous trap for careless or ignorant collectors. 
 
 Except that he resided with his brother for some time at 
 Windsor, and that Sir Joseph Banks bought a large number of his 
 drawings of the Castle and town, and that he made several tours 
 in Wales with this patron and the Hon. Charles Greville, we know 
 little of his means of livelihood before the year 1768, when he was 
 appointed Chief Drawing Master of the Royal Military Academy 
 at Woolwich. Here, as probably with many former pupils, his 
 practice was to give the students an original drawing of his own 
 to copy, providing them with an etching in outline of the subject. 
 The trees, buildings, &c., were lined very finely, as with a very 
 sharp pen, just as they were in the drawing itself, and the copies, 
 when well executed (some were done by Sandby himself) are 
 much more difficult to detect than the coloured aquatints. Paul 
 Sandby was also the author of a few caricatures, but these can 
 only be mentioned here as one of the many manifestations of his 
 versatile talents. Enough has been said to show that his aims were 
 
 far more pictorial than those of his brother. 
 
 
 
 Though his business, apart from teaching, lay probably most in 
 the way of architectural and topographical drawing, his tendency 
 
 was always to make a picture, choosing the view which composed 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters, 
 
 
 
 most happily, embellishing it with accidents of light—venturing 
 even on a sunset now and then, and always enlivening the scene 
 with figures. These were the sort of drawings for which there was 
 perhaps most demand, and Paul Sandby was a man of such cheerful 
 temperament, and so well-balanced a mind, that it is probable he 
 enjoyed whatever kind of work he had in hand. Nevertheless, it 
 is evident that the bent of his talent was towards landscape- 
 painting, as a distinct fine art. 
 
 When Sandby was young there was really no national school 
 of landscape-painting anywhere. What landscape art there was in 
 the world was traditional, and founded on the schools of the seven- 
 
 teenth century, principally the Franco-Italian school of Claude and 
 
 
 
 the Poussins, with a dash of Salvator Rosa. The faithful school of 
 the Dutch had little hold on the fashion. It was the scenic school 
 which triumphed, if any can be said to have triumphed. The only 
 great landscape-painter of England was Richard Wilson, and both 
 he and his contemporary, George Smith, of Chichester, probably 
 owed what fame they had to their Italian style. Ideals ruled art 
 
 everywhere. In figure Michelangelo and the Caracci, in landscape 
 
 
 
 Claude and Poussin, shut out nature. Notwithstanding a strong 
 love of beauty in certain of its phases, and an enjoyment, genuine 
 and widespread amongst the cultivated classes, for ‘scenery, the 
 desire to express the local character of British landscape, and the 
 power to express it, seem to have been absolutely wanting. The 
 scenery of Scotland and Wales was probably greatly admired, 
 and many artists or draughtsmen were employed to make records 
 of it, but no one arose capable of presenting its special beauties 
 in artistic language; and for public and artists alike England had 
 to be translated into Italian (and base semi-poetical Italian) before 
 either one or the other was satisfied that the thing was a picture. 
 It is the truest claim of Paul Sandby to be the father not only 
 of English water-colour, but of English landscape, that he fre- 
 
 quently took off these Italian spectacles. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
—— Smee 
 
 areata cette sonst 
 eee eee 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 The Sandbys. 9 
 
 
 
 But there were two sides to him, even as there were to Turner. 
 Few artists like Girtin, Gainsborough, and Hogarth, can get rid at 
 once of the dominant artistic influence of their time, and in the 
 work which we may presume Paul Sandby did more especially for 
 his own pleasure—work which was farthest away from topo- 
 graphy—we generally find foreign and traditional influences 
 strongly at work. He had an ideal landscape, Italian and scenic, 
 with its stage trees in the foreground, its hill and town in the 
 middle distance, its sky flooding all with afternoon sunshine. But 
 he also had as strong, if not a stronger tendency, towards 
 naturalism, the faithful interpretation of the scenery of his own 
 country. He evidently recognised two distinct classes of land- 
 scape,—the classical landscape, founded on Italy and Claude and 
 the laws of composition, the home and human landscape founded 
 on the Dutchmen and personal observation. Somewhat in the 
 relation of poetry and prose the two styles may have appeared to 
 him, the one ideal, imaginative, aspiring to beauty, the other 
 faithful, imitative, and bred of loving familiarity. That the latter 
 style could ever become the more deeply poetical of the two he 
 probably never thought, but he was fond of it, cultivated it, and 
 made it grow for the first time in England. 
 
 But though we may roughly divide Sandby’s purely landscape 
 art into two such classes or styles, one of which, the classical, is 
 seen (notwithstanding its modern figures and cattle) in Mr. C. O. 
 Murray’s etching, and the other in that famous study of an oak, 
 which might almost have been done by Old Crome himself, it 
 would need a much more searching analysis to do justice to the 
 variety of his artistic talent and sympathy. Like Turner, though 
 
 of course not to so wonderful an extent, he showed himselt 
 
 
 
 sensitive to a number of influences from divers painters, and 
 capable of learning something from each, His Italian or Claudes- 
 que manner he adopted probably at second-hand, from Taverner, 
 
 Zuccarelli, George Barret the elder, Wilson, and others. Of direct 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 10 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 study from ‘Old Masters’ (French, Italian, or Dutch) there is 
 little trace in his work, but he entered into the aims of many 
 distinct individualities of his time. Wilson and he were friends, 
 and many a hint of the older man thrown out in a few touches, 
 Sandby would elaborate into a suggestion for a picture. Of his 
 fellow feeling with Gainsborough, a distinct record exists in a 
 number of sepia drawings in the possession of Mr. William 
 Sandby, one of which is reproduced here; and, not to multiply 
 instances, in his latest drawings it is evident that he was not 
 too old to learn something even from so young a genius as Girtin. 
 
 Altogether, Paul Sandby stands out as one of the most in- 
 teresting and important, if not as one of the greatest, artists 
 of the English school. There are few things that he could not 
 
 do in a manner above the average; nothing, perhaps, which he 
 
 
 
 did supremely well. He was thoroughly national, and very ac- 
 
 complished, with a range of artistic sympathy exceeded by few. 
 
 
 
 During his long and honourable life the influence which he 
 exerted must have been very great Through the latter half 
 of the last century, and for some years in this, his genial, accom- 
 plished, vigorous personality was in constant contact with men 
 in various classes of society, from the King down to his pupils, 
 from the nobility to his brother artist, Dominic Serres, who lived 
 next door to him. He knew William Hogarth and Richard 
 Wilson, he outlived John Robert Cozens and Thomas Girtin ; 
 most of the artists of whom these papers will treat were born 
 within his lifetime ; some of them were his pupils; none of them, 
 not excluding the greatest, but owed much to his labours and his 
 talents. Of his genial, prosperous, happy life the illustrations to 
 this chapter will afford a few glimpses. First we have a charming 
 one of the studio belonging to his house in London (still existing 
 as 23 Hyde Park Place), with its poplars carefully studied, and its 
 curious raised garden full of flowers and children; then we have 
 
 the humorous sketch of Sir Francis Bourgeois and Mr. Desenfans, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 BY PAUL SANDBY 
 
 
 
 EN OF PAUL SANL 
 
 e 
 
 STUDIO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 ZUCCARELLI, RA. 
 
 YF, 
 
 MARKET WOMEN WITH CATTL 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
The Sandbys. Il 
 
 the founders of the Dulwich Gallery, snoring on their passage 
 across the Channel, and we are reminded of the wit and humour 
 of the man, to hear whose latest story the King would (it is said) 
 break off more serious conversation with more distinguished indi- 
 viduals; and in that charming group of the daughters of Earl 
 Waldegrave, Miss Keppel, and their companion, we see his love of 
 children, and his delight in their simplicity and freshness.) We 
 are also reminded that these children, when of a larger growth, 
 furnished the subject of one of the masterpieces of Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 JOHN ROBERT COZENS. | 
 
 _ TF such a thing be ever attempted as a thoroughly exhaustive 
 I chronicle of the Water-colour Art of England and its in- 
 numerable professors, many names now hidden in obscurity will 
 have to be mentioned, and many artists of some reputation will 
 have to be treated at a length impossible in these papers. Then 
 the skill of Charles Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820), that able and 
 picturesque draughtsman of architecture and ruins, will have to be 
 praised, although he was a Frenchman, if it be only to compare 
 it with that of Robert Adam (1728-1792), the well-known Scotch 
 architect and designer of ornament, with whom he sometime 
 travelled and worked, Then more than a passing allusion will 
 have to be made to Samuel Scott (1710-1772), the friend of 
 Hogarth, the painter of London and its river, ‘the English Cana- 
 letti? by whom there are some water-colours extant of much 
 purity and delicacy of tint and tone. Then the clever Indian- 
 ink sketches of shipping by C. Brooking (1723-1759), who obtained 
 celebrity in his short life as a painter (in oils) of sea-pieces, and 
 the coloured water-colours (marine and landscape) of his pupil, 
 Dominic Serres, R.A. (1722-1793), marine painter to George III, 
 poor though they be, will undergo analysis.* Nor should a niche 
 in such a work be denied to the Rev. W. Gilpin, the author of 
 ‘Forest Scenery’ (1723-1804), who loved to draw his monochrome 
 landscapes on a paper warmly tinted with reddish yellow ; still 
 less to his brother, Sawrey Gilpin, R.A. (1733-1807), the pupil of | 
 
 
 
 * Dominic Serres was a Frenchman, and was master of a Spanish vessel, 
 when he was taken prisoner during the war of 1752 and brought to England. 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 ‘Wu SWAYAVA "D AM ‘sHAASIA GALNAOW GNV WHATY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 John Robert Cozens. 
 
 Samuel Scott, and famous as a painter of animals. These men 
 were all contemporaries of Sandby, and most of them about the 
 same age as he; but they did not seriously influence the process 
 of water-colour or the art of landscape, and must give room now 
 to more important men, 
 
 Among these was George Barret, R.A. (1728 or 1732-1784), 
 who, though his reputation has now dwindled to small dimen- 
 sions, was one of the most successful landscape-painters of his 
 day, and made his thousands while Wilson was starving. His 
 manner was effective and new, marked by its decisive drawing 
 and fresh if not very profound study of nature. He was the son 
 of a clothier of Dublin, was apprenticed to a staymaker, and 
 began his career as an artist by colouring prints, He, like Barry 
 owed much to the encouragement of Burke, who introduced him 
 to the Earl of Powerscourt, in whose beautiful park he used to 
 sketch. After gaining a premiuin of 80/. from the Dublin Society 
 for the best landscape he came to England in 1762, and carried 
 off the first premium of the Society of Arts two years later. 
 His success was extraordinary, and his pictures sold for prices 
 never given for landscapes before. Lord Dalkeith paid 1500/. 
 for three of them, and for Mr. Lock he decorated a whole room 
 at Norbury Park with landscapes. But his success was achieved 
 as a painter in oils, and his interest from the present point of 
 view consists mainly in the impulse he gave to the taste for 
 natural scenery, in his employment of water-colour for picturesque 
 views of ‘the country ;’ and, perhaps more than all, in the fact 
 that he was the father of George Barret, junior, one of the 
 greatest of English painters in water-colour. 
 
 Two other artists deserve mention for their influence on land- 
 scape art generally, rather than as water-colour painters. These 
 are Thomas Gainsborough and Philip James De Loutherbourg, 
 both Royal Academicians. The latter (1740-1812), the son of a 
 
 Pole and born at Strasburg, was elected a member of the 
 
 
 
 1g 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 French Academy at the age of twenty-two—thirty being the pre- 
 scribed age—and some years after came to England, and was 
 engaged by Garrick as his scene-painter. Though not a great 
 colourist, nor a great genius, he was a sound painter, and there 
 was a vigour in his storms and battle-pieces, and a boldness of 
 composition in his landscapes and seascapes, that made his indi- 
 viduality felt in spite of the conventions on which his art was 
 based. Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), on the other hand, 
 introduced an original element into landscape art. Though the 
 Dutchmen were his first models, he soon broke away to nature in 
 a style and with a sentiment entirely personal. He may be said 
 to have been the first to paint English country in its relation to 
 English country life—the first Englishman to express the beauty 
 of familiar scenes, and to be inspired by the homely love of 
 
 locality, His was the beginning in England of that modern art 
 
 
 
 of landscape which differs from that of former times, in that it 
 regards earth as the scene of man’s existence rather than the 
 stage of his imagination, and treats the phenomena of nature, 
 
 sweet or awful, with reference to their effect on the fortunes 
 
 
 
 and passions of the individual, rather than on the destinies of 
 the human race. His own art was not highly charged with 
 
 emotion, but what there was was personal. He painted what he 
 
 
 
 saw as it was reflected in his mind, which transformed all things 
 to elegance, and imbued them with a pure and tender sentiment. 
 
 Gainsborough’s water-colours were mainly confined to bold 
 sketches in monochrome, and those of more varied tint are but 
 pale things, but his effect was great upon landscape art in Eng- 
 land, whether in oil or water. We have seen how Sandby essayed 
 his style, we can trace it in the drawings of Girtin and Turner. 
 But it was not only in landscape that his potency was felt. He 
 was the inventor of the elegant rustic; he created a picturesque 
 peasant and his family, admirably adapted to live in his pic- 
 
 turesque cottage in his picturesque lanes, the first of a race which, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 BRIDGE 
 
 A STREAM 3; 
 
 IN 
 
 
 
 CATTLE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 Sohn Robert Cozens. 
 
 sentimentalized by Wheatley and vulgarised by Morland, were 
 long to inhabit the Arcadia of the English artist. 
 
 Altogether, by the time that John Robert Cozens (1752-1799) 
 appeared upon the scene, there were plenty of styles for a young 
 English artist to follow. All the styles of all the foreign Schools 
 had been more or less transplanted to England, but he—partly 
 
 by the accidents of life, partly from the genius which was in him 
 
 
 
 —struck into a new path; and while he added a fresh senti- 
 ment to landscape art, developed at the same time the scope and 
 practice of painting in water-colours. He developed its scope by 
 proving its capacity to render subtle atmospheric effects not 
 hitherto attempted, its practice by the dexterity with which he 
 used his materials. His drawings are usually classed among 
 drawings in tint not drawings in colour; but this distinction 
 depends on what is meant by colour, and is often hard to draw. 
 His earlier drawings have a ground of Indian ink, and the slight 
 washes of colour afterwards added were very low in scale, only 
 here and there exceeding what may be called a grey: grey, warm 
 and cold; grey, blueish or greenish ; grey, brownish or yellowish ; 
 —but he used all these tints with such dexterity, he blended 
 and interlaced them with such variegation and in such sympathy 
 with the full tones and tints of nature, that the eye, if not dis- 
 turbed by a comparison with more highly-coloured works, wants 
 little more to realise the natural appearance of the scene, Be- 
 tween the slightest tint and the fullest colour the gradations are 
 infinite, and the progress of English water-colour was from mono- 
 chrome through neutral tint to full colour. Cozens lived when the 
 practice of first laying in the general light and shade of a drawing 
 in neutral tint was in full force. This groundwork was sometimes 
 in monochrome, but was often composed of three tints: a brownish 
 tint for the foreground, a blueish or greenish tint for middle dis- 
 tance, and a paler tint of the same for the distance. The tints 
 
 varied with different artists. Cozens preferred a tint of medium 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 16 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 | warmth for the foreground, and greenish tints for the distances. 
 Over this ground were laid light washes of brighter or stronger 
 tints for local colour, sunlight, &c. Such a method as this in 
 water-colour can never more than suggest Nature’s true colours; 
 and it may be said of Cozens that he expressed as much of 
 Nature's appearance as was possible with the means, The new 
 system introduced by Girtin and Turner of putting in objects at 
 once in their true local colour did not come before the older 
 system had been brought to perfection, and could go no farther. 
 It may be even contended that truth of tone can never be at- 
 tained so perfectly by the later system, and that in this, and 
 perhaps some other respects, the drawings of Cozens have never 
 
 been excelled. In our own time one of the most distinguished 
 
 
 
 of modern landscape-painters (Corot) deliberately sacrificed colour 
 in order to render more completely those atmospheric effects in 
 which he delighted, contenting himself with a restricted scope in 
 order to obtain greater perfection within it. Moreover, in many 
 of Cozens’ later drawings there is, except in the foreground, no- 
 thing which can be called a ground-tint, and almost the whole of 
 them, as, for instance, in two beautiful views of the coast of Sicily 
 in the British Museum, is occupied by sky, sunlit slopes, and 
 water, which have been put in at once upon the white paper in 
 colour which, if not brilliant, is at least lively. If these are 
 ‘tinted’ drawings it must be allowed that in Cozens’ art tinting 
 was brought to the very doors of colour, and if it is incorrect to 
 describe him as a colourist, he showed at least the capacity to 
 become one, 
 
 If we look for the master of John Robert Cozens it will be 
 hard to find any one who answers that description. He cannot 
 be said to have based his art on the Dutchmen or the French- 
 men, nor, though his fame rests on drawings of Italian scenery, 
 the Italians. Neither shall we find in his countrymen, in Wilson 
 
 or Gainsborough, Taverner or Paul Sandby, any one who gave 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
John Robert Cozens. 
 
 him the key to his interpretation of nature. The nearest affinity 
 to his work to be discovered in that of his precursors is, perhaps, 
 presented by the drawings of his father, Alexander Cozens, and 
 here the likeness is in method and subject rather than in skill 
 and sentiment. 
 
 _ Alexander Cozens, who died in 1786 at an unknown age, was 
 one of two sons born to Peter the Great by an Englishwoman, 
 whom he took back with him from Deptford to Russia. Of his 
 early life we know nothing until he was sent by his father to 
 study painting in Italy, whence he came to England in 1746. 
 The forty years he spent in England were apparently prosperous. 
 He soon obtained a position in both art and society, was drawing- 
 master at Eton College, gave lessons to the Prince of Wales, and 
 numbered amongst his friends, patrons, and acquaintances, a large 
 number of titled, wealthy, and otherwise illustrious persons. No 
 less does he appear to have been held in esteem by artists and 
 connoisseurs, He had taught Sir George Beaumont at Eton, and 
 in the list of subscribers to his ‘Principles of Beauty relative to 
 the Human Head,’ we find the names of Burke, Garrick, Flaxman, 
 and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He married a sister of Robert Edge 
 Pine, an artist of some fame as a painter of history and portrait, 
 and left one son, John Robert, the principal subject of this chapter. 
 
 If it had not been for this son he would scarcely have claimed 
 more than a slight reference in connexion with the English water- 
 colour school. Such drawings as I have seen of his of a date 
 subsequent to his arrival in England are of no great merit; and 
 a little sketch-book of skies, shown to me as once belonging to 
 him, proved that if he studied skies it was without much valu- 
 able result. His recorded method of teaching was peculiar. In 
 the ‘Reminiscences of Henry Angelo’ (who was one of his pupils 
 at Eton), it is thus described :— 
 
 ‘Cozens dashed out upon several pieces of paper a series of accidental 
 
 
 
 
 
 smudges and blots in black, brown, and grey, which, being floated on, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 he impressed again upon other paper; and by the exercise of his fertile 
 
 imagination, and a certain degree of ingenious coaxing, converted into 
 
 
 
 romantic rocks, woods, towers, steeples, cottages, rivers, fields, and water- 
 
 falls. Blue and grey blots formed the mountains, clouds, and skies.’ 
 
 An improvement on this plan was to splash the paint first 
 
 upon the bottoms of earthenware plates instead of paper, and to 
 
 
 
 stamp impressions therefrom on sheets of damp paper. This 
 method of instruction he described in a pamphlet called ‘A New 
 Method of assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Loose 
 Positions in Landscape.’ That accident may help invention was 
 
 no new theory, (Lionardo da Vinci recommends the stains on a 
 
 plaster wall as aids to landscape design,) and it would, of course, 
 be unjust to Alexander Cozens to regard this as the sum and 
 substance of his teaching. That he studied nature and taught his 
 pupils to do so, may be divined from another work of his, called 
 The Shape, Skeleton, and Foliage of Thirty-two Species of Trees’ 
 (1771, reprinted 1786). The ambition to distinguish one tree from 
 
 another, to say nothing of thirty-two varieties, was not common to 
 
 © 
 
 1 artists in those days. 
 
 Luckily we have better means of judging of Alexander Cozens’ 
 
 
 
 skill as an artist, and capacity as a teacher, than the recollections 
 of an Angelo or an Edwards.* The British Museum contains fifty- 
 four early drawings by him which have a curious history. They 
 were lost by the artist in Germany, on his way from Rome to 
 
 England, in 1746, and were recovered in Florence thirty years 
 
 
 
 afterwards by his son. I may, perhaps, quote a short description 
 of them which I have given elsewhere. 
 
 ‘They show him as a highly skilled draughtsman in the style 
 of the time, with much sense of scenic elegance in composition. 
 Some are wholly in pen and ink in the manner of line- 
 
 engravings. Others show ex 
 
 
 
 sive landscapes, elaborately drawn 
 
 * See account of Alexander Cozens in ‘Anecdotes of Painters, by Edward 
 Edwards. 
 
 
 

 
 John Robert Cozens. 
 
 
 
 in pencil, and partly finished in ink. Others are washed in mono- 
 chrome, and some in colour of a timid kind. One, a view of Port 
 Longano, in the Isle of Elba, is very prettily tinted. In most 
 there is no sky to speak of, but in one he has attempted a bold 
 effect of sunlight streaming through cloud, and brightly illumi- 
 nating several distinct spots in the lJandscape.* Several broad 
 pencil drawings on greenish paper, heightened with white, are 
 very effective. Altogether, these show that Cozens, before his 
 arrival in England, was a well-trained artist who observed nature 
 for himself, and was not without poetical feeling,’ 
 
 All things considered, we need not go much further than 
 Alexander Cozens to look for an explanation of his son John 
 Robert. The father had imagination, ingenuity, trained skill, and 
 these, with that something else which is undefinable, were suf- 
 
 ficient to make that other undefinable quality 
 
 
 
 genius, If the 
 capacity for hard work (as Turner thought) was the requisite, 
 Cozens the younger must have had it. Leslie mentions ‘a very 
 small pen-drawing of three figures, on which is written, “Done by 
 J. Cozens, 1761, when nine years old.”’ In 1767 he began to 
 exhibit at the Incorporated Society of British Artists. He was 
 then only fifteen years old, and at the age of twenty-four we find 
 him sufficiently advanced in skill to be taken by Mr. Robert 
 Payne Knight, the archaeologist and art-collector, to Switzerland, 
 to make sketches of the scenery. The result, or part of the result, 
 of this his first visit to the Continent, is comprised in fifty - four 
 drawings, once in the Townley Collection. This collection, which 
 at the date when this was written was in the possession of the 
 late Hon. R, Allanson-Winn, is specially interesting in connexion 
 
 with Turner, as the drawings cover much the same ground as 
 
 
 
 those of Turner’s first visit to Switzerland, and there is good 
 
 reason to suppose that Turner saw these drawings of Cozens’, 
 
 * An effort afterwards attempted with greater success by his son. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 and copied at least one of them.* Moreover, it was in Cozens’ 
 first-year of absence (1776) that he sent from Italy his solitary 
 contribution to the exhibition of the Royal Academy, called A 
 Landscape, with Hannibal, in his March over the Alps, showing 
 his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy. Where is this drawing (or 
 picture) now? It must have been in existence many years after 
 it was painted, for Turner (born 1775) saw it and spoke of it as 
 a work from which he learned more than from anything he had 
 seen before, and in 1812 he also exhibited a picture of Hannibal 
 and his Army crossing the Alps. 
 
 These drawings of 1776 are remarkable in the history not only 
 of English water-colour painting and English art, but in the his- 
 tory of landscape- painting of all time. They are the first successful 
 attempt to give a true impression of Alpine scenery. From the 
 first Cozens seems to have found his way to render its character, 
 to convey the grandeur of its snow-crowned peaks, the depth of 
 its valleys, the solitude of its lakes, the appearance of its slopes, 
 ‘fledged,’ as Shelley sang, ‘with pines, the sun striking through 
 the gorges on high-perched cot or village, the chill of the shaded 
 hollows filled with mist, the cloaks of cloud about the shoulders 
 of the hills,—and all this not in a pretty conventional or a grand 
 conventional manner, but with a style that was Nature’s own. 
 His drawings show no sense of effort, his powers seem to have 
 risen spontaneously to each occasion ; the prime difficulty of scale 
 and proportion in dealing with enormous altitudes and vast masses, 
 of which but a small portion is seen, does not seem to have troubled 
 him. His mountains look their height, and suggest their bulk and 
 weight. 
 
 Cozens is said to have visited Italy twice, and we may, perhaps, 
 Conclude that the first visit was in 1776, with Payne Knight, and 
 
 that he returned to England in 1779, as that year is given as the 
 
 * See page 60. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 SN a a ecm ete si 
 
 rd aca RN 
 
 
 
 = = = 
 
 ee a no arin ere a 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 John Robert Cozens. 25 
 
 
 
 date of his return in a memorandum accompanying the drawings by 
 his father in the British Museum. We next meet with him in Italy 
 in company with Mr. William Beckford, for whom he executed a 
 large number of water-colour drawings. Probably this was his second 
 visit, from which he returned in 1783. Most of these (nearly a 
 
 hundred) were sold at Christie’s in 1805. They, and other drawings, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE CHIGI PALACE NEAR ALBANO. AFTER COZENS, 
 
 show that his travels in Italy were extensive—Padua, Pzestum, 
 Verona, Venice, Rome, Naples, Sicily, Elba, were among the places 
 visited. Some of his grandest drawings are of Rome and its neigh- 
 bourhood, and the neighbourhood of Naples. It is on his Italian 
 drawings that his fame chiefly rests. Some of them are of large 
 size, like the original of the opposite photogravure, which is a good 
 example of his more grandiose subjects, and his treatment of com- 
 plicated effects of light and shade. Its subject is Castle Gandolfo 
 on Lake Albano, and it is one of three drawings of the same lake 
 
 from different points of view, which are in the possession of Mr. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 22 The Earlier English Water-Colour Paznters. 
 
 
 
 | George W. H. Girtin. It is rather a dark drawing, most of it 
 
 being in shade and half shade, and much of the hills being clothed 
 with trees; but no part of it is impervious to light, the deepest 
 shade is illuminated, and the gradation of tones and tints in a 
 scale of browns and greens and purples, from the comparatively cold 
 dark of the bosky foreground to the chill half shade of the cliff on 
 the opposite side of the lake, and through the warm semi-illuminated 
 hollow to the sunlit village on the top of it, is subtle and exquisite, 
 The other drawing by Cozens which is reproduced in the text is one 
 
 of six in the South Kensington Museum, and is remarkable for its 
 
 
 
 poetical effect of light. It was engraved for Leslie’s ‘Handbook.’ 
 
 
 
 The late Mr. Henderson left a fine collection of Cozens’ drawings 
 to the British Museum, so that there is no difficulty in studying 
 an artist of whom Constable said that ‘he was the greatest genius 
 that ever touched landscape.’ Constable also said that he was ‘all 
 poetry, and Leslie wrote of him with scarcely less enthusiasm. 
 In what his ‘poetry’ consisted, and how it differed from that of 
 previous artists, still remains for consideration, Sad to say, the 
 career of this singularly endowed artist was cut short by insanity. 
 From 1794 to his death he was under the charge of Dr. Monro, 
 whose name will often appear in these papers as the great 
 encourager of young water-colour artists at the end of the last 
 century. He had another friend also, Sir George Beaumont, the 
 
 pupil of his father, who supported him in these years of darkness, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Ill 
 HEARNE, ROOKER, MALTON, 
 
 
 
 ONSTABLE’S opinion of Cozens, as repeated by Leslie, is 
 
 perhaps open to the charge of hyperbole, but there is no 
 
 doubt that, if not ‘all poetry,’ the quality termed ‘poetry’ was 
 
 the distinguishing characteristic of his drawings, and separates 
 them from those of any other ‘draughtsman’ of his time. 
 
 The term ‘ poetry’ is always difficult to define, and never more 
 so than when used in connexion with landscape. It will I think 
 be sufficient to think of it as a quality which in some way induces 
 feeling in the beholder. The landscapes of Titian, of Claude, the 
 Poussins and Salvator Rosa, are poetical; they impress the 
 
 beholder with a distinct emotion. The landscapes of the artists 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were not intended to do 
 
 so as a tule. They were mere backgrounds not disturbing the 
 
 
 
 
 
 sentiment of the figures, at most illustrating the story, unless the 
 
 
 
 scene depicted required some landscape help, as Sz. Jerome in the 
 Wilderness, which demanded ‘horrid’ rocks, or the Adoration of 
 the Magi, which required a distant view showing the retainers of 
 the Eastern magnates defiling through passes or winding through 
 streets. In such cases landscapes were accessories to the senti- 
 ment of the figures, This accessory quality gradually became more 
 sympathetic and dramatic, and reached its highest pitch as such 
 in the landscapes of Titian. Landscape then gradually increased 
 its power over the figures until these became quite subordinate in 
 the art of Claude. So the old landscape grew and became a thing 
 of poetry, but of poetry which was manufactured out of landscape 
 to suit a literary sentiment. 
 
 Cozens’ poetry differed completely from this. It was not the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 24 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 emotion that dictated the scene, but the scene actually beheld that 
 dictated the emotion. It was a personal subjective emotion, the 
 direct impression of Nature upon the artist. As Pope was to 
 Wordsworth, so was Claude to Cozens. Therefore Cozens was 
 not only an initiator in the matter of dechnique, finding in the 
 slender resources of a few poor water-colours means to express 
 many effects of nature hitherto unattempted, but he also con- 
 tributed a new poetical element to landscape art. 
 
 Between Cozens and Girtin no one of the first rank in the 
 history of English school of water-colour can be named, but Cozens 
 was not the only founder of the school, and his ‘poetry’ was not 
 the most potent force in its formation. It grew from humbler seed. 
 As with Paul Sandby, so with the whole school, the growth was 
 from ‘topography’ to art. The topographer, the producer of the 
 ‘tinted’ drawings, the precursor of Turner—Turner himself in his 
 earlier years—was not called an artist, or a painter, but a draughts- 
 man, and the draughtsman held much the same position and existed 
 for much the same purpose as the photographer of the present 
 day. He was not expected to produce a work of art, but a more 
 or less faithful record of places, and buildings, and ‘Views.’ He 
 was not greatly considered, perhaps, nor paid very highly, but he 
 was in much requisition, There was a constant sale for engrav- 
 ings of ‘Views’ The great Alderman Boydell had laid the 
 foundation of his fortune by ‘Views’ in England and Wales, 
 drawn by himself with little skill, and engraved by himself with 
 little more. Views of castles and abbeys, of watering-places, and 
 the scenery of Wales and the North, were popular in those days. 
 They were days of the revival of classical taste in architecture, of 
 large mansions in town and country, built by noblemen and gentry, 
 of landscape-gardening with artificial lakes and Grecian temples ; 
 and the skill of the architect, the pride of the proprietor and the 
 curiosity of the public, found employment for the draughtsman or 
 
 pictorial recorder of such notable works. They were the days, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Llearne, Rooker, Malton. 25 
 moreover, of ‘antiquities’ and local histories, of researches by the 
 Groses and the Whitakers at home, of the diggings of the Athenian 
 Stuarts and Gavin Hamiltons abroad. Altogether there were many 
 directions in which the draughtsman might hope for employment, 
 If he were of a roving turn, with a taste for adventure, he might 
 
 accompany a voyage of discovery—like A. W. Devis (1763-1822), 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 == A 
 MS Merve 
 
 VIEW ON THE GRAND CANAL, CHINA, BY W. ALEXANDER. 
 
 
 
 who as draughtsman in the employ of the East India Company 
 was wrecked in the Pellew Islands; or like John Webber, R.A., 
 (1752-1792), who accompanied Captain Cook on his last voyage 
 and drew the scene of his death, of which he was an eye-witness ; 
 or like William Alexander (1767-1816), who accompanied Lord 
 Macartney’s embassy to China in 1792, and made a number of 
 delightful drawings of China and the Chinese, full of vivacious and 
 well-drawn figures, which are now deservedly prized by connois- 
 seurs. At home, or on the Continent, the architects and the 
 antiquarians, the patrons of art and the d/ettanti, furnished a good 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 26 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 deal of employment. We have seen Cozens travelling with William 
 Beckford and Payne Knight in Switzerland and Italy; so William 
 Pars, A.R.A. (1742-1782), accompanied Dr. Chandler to Greece 
 and Lord Palmerston to Switzerland and Rome, and John Smith 
 (1749-1831) earned his soubriquet of ‘Warwick Smith’ from his 
 travels with Lord Warwick in Italy ; and many other instances 
 might be mentioned of ‘draughtsmen’ similarly engaged abroad. 
 But it was principally in England, especially in the last quarter of 
 the eighteenth century, that these topographical artists, going from 
 place to place drawing Roman remains and Gothic brasses, churches 
 and cathedrals, castles and abbeys, gentlemen’s ‘seats’ and famous 
 ‘views,’ acquired the skill and the knowledge of nature which 
 formed the basis of the earlier English school of water-colour 
 painting. 
 
 Sometimes they went, like Moses Griffith (born 1749, living 
 1809), in the service of an antiquary like Pennant; sometimes 
 like the Swiss, Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1734-1794), on the 
 commission of a gentleman of taste like Sir R. Kaye; sometimes 
 engaged by or in partnership with the publishers of illustrated 
 works on architecture, topography, and archaeology, like Thomas 
 Hearne (1744-1817), and many others, including Turner and Girtin; 
 but the training and the result of it was the same in all cases. 
 It was prosework—at least in intention—this work of the draughts- 
 man, and its main subject was architecture. And it is because 
 the art of Cozens was from its peculiarly poetical character raised 
 above the ordinary channel of progress, that I have treated him 
 somewhat out of chronological order. This ordinary channel was 
 one rather of business than pleasure—a canal rather than a river 
 —and the vast majority of ‘draughtsmen’ had little poetry or 
 genius, and would have had little scope for the exercise of either 
 as long as they merely performed the work that was required of 
 them. Architects and architects’ assistants swell the ranks of these 
 
 early water-colourists; and it was not of pictorial beauty that such 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
i 
 iil) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 ahi 
 y 
 
 ea 
 Wty an 
 Wey 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Flearne, Rooker, Malton. 
 
 
 
 men as Clérisseau, William Reveley, Robert Adam, or Nicholas 
 Revett, thought when they were sketching in China, Greece, 
 or Italy, for themselves or each other, or for the Dilettanti 
 Society. 
 
 It is true that the use of water-colour was not confined to 
 ‘draughtsmen, it was used, of course, by the miniature-painters 
 and some few figure-painters, and also by landscape-painters at 
 the head of their profession, There was Joseph Farington, R.A, 
 for instance (1747-1821), the pupil of Wilson, a great man at the 
 Royal Academy, who drew landscapes in water-colour as well as 
 painted them in oil. There were also painters of sporting subjects, 
 like Philip Reinagle, also a Royal Academician (1749-1833), and 
 the fashionable teacher John Alexander Gresse (1741-1794), son of 
 a Genevese, the pupil of Zuccarelli and the drawing-master of the 
 daughters of George III. None of these would have liked to have 
 been called a ‘draughtsman.’ Then there were also a few marine- 
 painters, among whom should be mentioned the Cleveleys, John 
 and Robert; John (1745-1786), pupil of Paul Sandby, who held 
 an appointment in Deptford Dockyard, and Robert (d. 1809), 
 marine-painter to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Clarence. 
 There was William Anderson also (1757-1837), originally a 
 shipwright, whose works, according to the catalogue of the 
 South Kensington Museum, ‘show a practical nautical knowledge, 
 Perhaps the marine water-colour painters of this period, even 
 including the best of them, Nicholas Pocock (died 1821, aged 
 
 
 
 eighty), were not very .great artists; and though they drew sea 
 and shipping and sometimes great naval engagements with long 
 lines of three-deckers and plenty of smoke, differed little from 
 architectural draughtsmen, except that their architecture was naval, 
 and water took the place of land. Their works can be studied at 
 South Kensington and the British Museum, but neither they nor 
 
 the Faringtons, nor the Gresses, count for very much in the history 
 
 
 
 of English water-colour. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 28 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 But Pocock has a separate claim to mention as a landscape- 
 painter. He did not draw very well, his trees and mountains 
 and clouds are conventional and poor in form; but he had 
 a sense of composition, and some of his drawings, with their 
 tender blue distances and warm foregrounds, are pretty, and 
 show enough artistic taste to entitle him to a place among the 
 more modest precursors of Girtin and Turner, It is, however, 
 among the architectural draughtsmen that most of these will be 
 found. 
 
 One of them was Michael Angelo Rooker, A.R.A. (1743-1801), 
 
 the son of the engraver, and himself one till his sight became 
 
 
 
 impaired. He is another of the artists who gained instruction from 
 Paul Sandby, but he also studied at the St. Martin’s Lane 
 Academy and the Royal Academy. After he gave up engraving, 
 he became principal scene-painter to the Haymarket Theatre ; and 
 it was not till about 1788 that he began those pedestrian tours 
 through England to which we owe the majority of his water- 
 colour drawings. They have a charm of their own, delicate 
 indeed, not to be ‘tasted’ perhaps by all, because the limits 
 of his art as he knew it have been since so far overstepped 
 by later men; but real enough for those who can make allow- 
 ance for his disadvantages, He could draw architecture beauti- 
 fully, and if he could not place the sun in the heavens, he 
 could surround his buildings with an envelope of faint sunlit 
 air. He drew figures also well, and knew how to introduce them ; 
 and his drawings are always delightful in taste and tone, If 
 he was never strong, he was always a refined, picturesque, and 
 unaffected artist. 
 
 The method of these early men was so much alike, the scope 
 of their art so much the same, and the advance that they indi- 
 vidually made in the art of water-colour so comparatively slight, 
 that it is not easy to apportion to them their exact share in the 
 progress. Every artist of any individuality adds perhaps some- 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Fearne, Rooker, Malton. 29 
 
 thing to the resources of art; but it is hardly necessary here to 
 attempt to distinguish between the characteristics of such men as 
 William Marlow (1740-1813) and William Pars (1742-1782), though 
 both were of some note in their day, and the latter was much 
 employed by the Dilettanti Society in Greece and Rome, and had 
 his share with Revett in illustrating Dr. Chandler’s ‘Travels’ Of 
 William Payne (of whose birth and death the dates are unre- 
 corded, but who exhibited from 1776 to 1830) something more 
 may be said. Although he was a mannerist, his manner was his 
 own; and he became the most fashionable teacher of his day. He 
 was one of the many artists (Haydon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Prout, 
 and Eastlake among them) who were born at or near Plymouth, 
 and is said to have been self-taught. His style is thus described 
 by Redgrave :—He had great dexterity of hand, working with the 
 brush, almost excluding outline. His colour was brilliant; his 
 
 style marked by vivid effects of sunshine and light and shade, 
 
 
 
 produced by the opposition of warm colours and grey aerial tints.’ 
 This was his distinction, and he may claim to have advanced 
 water-colour art in the direction of colour, and the expression of 
 sunshine and atmosphere; but he was a poor draughtsman, and 
 his foliage is of the most conventional kind. He is also noted for 
 the invention of a grey or ‘aerial tint? composed of indigo, raw 
 sienna, and lake, which was, and is still, sold in cakes as ‘Payne’s 
 Grey.’ 
 
 In all these artists, intermediate in skill between Cozens and 
 Girtin, though in fact the contemporaries of both, and of Paul 
 Sandby also, we see the craft of line and wash employed with 
 various skill in representing scenery and buildings as faithfully as 
 the means allowed, trusting to convention or traditional formule 
 
 mainly for their tr and skies, and only here and there aiming 
 
 
 
 after a distinct pictorial idea, but gradually approaching nearer to 
 the true representation of air, distance, and sunshine, and the 
 establishment of a native landscape art based not upon the ‘old 
 I 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
30 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 } masters’ in oil, whether Dutch, French, or Italian, but upon obser- 
 vation of nature. It is all honest, modest work, done without 
 ambition of fame or prospect of large gain, but ever interesting 
 and worthy of praise for its frankness and sincerity. It may seem 
 to some to have its pathetic side also, this art so skilful and 
 laborious and yet failing any great artistic result from the inade- 
 quacy of its means and insufficiency of accomplishment. The 
 results seem smaller to us, perhaps, than they did to the artists, for 
 we can and must compare them with the works of men who could 
 not only draw architecture as well, but could draw trees, and 
 mountains, and water, and skies much better ; who could, in place 
 of two or three faint tints, command all the colours of the rainbow 
 and find means of expressing the most striking and the most subtle 
 of atmospherical effects. But they could draw architecture, and in 
 this respect at least might regard their work with something like 
 complete satisfaction. 
 
 And having drawn their architecture, whether castle or cottage, 
 well and faithfully, they had done almost all that was demanded 
 of them; for, broadly speaking, to draw architecture was the razson 
 @étre of the draughtsman,—the one thing he was expected to do 
 perfectly. Some, like the Thomas Maltons, scarcely attempted to 
 do anything else. The elder (1726-1801) is best known by his 
 ‘Treatise on Perspective on the Principles of Dr. Taylor’ (1775) ; 
 the younger (1748-1804) has a special interest as one of Turner's 
 masters. How much he taught Turner is a question. Turner is 
 reputed to have said that his ‘real master’ was ‘Tom Malton, of 
 Long Acre’ But there is another story which tells that Malton 
 could do nothing with him, and sent him back to his father as 
 
 | ‘impenetrably dull’ At all events, Malton was quite competent 
 
 to teach the young genius a great deal. Most of his drawings 
 
 
 
 that I have seen—street scenes in London, some of them of large 
 size—are ably executed, the architecture drawn with great ac- 
 
 curacy with a hard and precise outline, the figures well introduced 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 WALTHAM CROSS, BY T, MALTON 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 Flearne, Rooker, Malton. 31 
 
 
 
 and various, but rather tall and stiff, in brightly coloured costumes 
 of the day. As records of the appearance of London at the time, 
 they are valuable, but they have not much pictorial beauty. Some 
 of Turner’s early drawings are of precisely this character. But 
 there are other of Malton’s drawings which show something more 
 than a draughtsman’s ability in line and wash, have much tender- 
 ness in the drawing, and a painter’s feeling for arrangement and 
 quality of colour. Such a drawing has lately been added to the 
 other Maltons at South Kensington Museum, It looks as if it 
 were by quite a different hand. The authorities there seem to be 
 in some doubt as to which of the Maltons the different drawings 
 there should be attributed. Some of the frames are plainly 
 labelled ‘Thomas Malton, Junior, but in the Catalogue they are 
 all ascribed to Thomas Malton, Senior. They are probably all 
 by the son. 
 
 The little drawing reproduced here, to which I wish specially 
 
 
 
 to call attention is of a Queen Eleanor’s Cross, elaborately deco- 
 rated and carved, with houses to left and right, and a tree. The 
 cross is beautifully drawn, not in hard regular lines as of a 
 drawing pen but with soft and broken strokes of a lead-pencil, 
 still observable under the light and delicate washes of water- 
 colour. It shines gently in the sun, it gleams gently in the shade, 
 and it throws a transparent shadow on the brick house to the left. 
 Nowhere will you find brick-work much more beautifully painted 
 than in this house, in shade or out of shade, It is the quality of 
 the colour, its preservation of broad general tone, with infinite 
 variety and play of colour within it that is perhaps the most 
 
 remarkable thing in the drawing, but it is throughout not only 
 
 
 
 good but choice in colour, and altogether a masterly little picture 
 
 
 
 worthy to rank with the best of Van der Heyden’s Dutch streets. 
 
 
 
 It is to be wished—it is often to be wished with regard to these 
 
 early water-colours—that it were dated. Did. Turner learn this 
 
 
 
 quality of colour from Malton, or did Malton learn it from him? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 32 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 Such questions are always arising in examining these early draw- 
 
 
 
 ings, for the progress was so rapid towards the end of the last 
 century that the pupil of to-day might almost (if he were a Girtin, 
 or a Turner, or a Francia) become the master of to-morrow, and 
 Malton lived till 1804 and went on exhibiting till 1803, or one 
 year after Girtin’s death. 
 
 For this reason date of birth is but an insecure guide in tracing 
 the history of water-colour art, especially as some artists began 
 late in life. But yet it is some guide, and it will be seen that all, 
 or nearly all, the artists specially mentioned in this chapter were 
 born in the forties of last century and had formed their style long 
 before Turner or Girtin appeared on the scene. To these artists 
 another must be added, the most important perhaps of all, as he 
 was the most accomplished and complete. This was Thomas 
 Hearne (1744-1817). 
 
 This artist, whose position in the history of English water- 
 colour art has scarcely been sufficiently recognised, was a typical 
 example of the ‘draughtsman.’ Like Rooker, he commenced life 
 as an engraver; serving an apprenticeship of six years (beginning 
 in 1765) to William Woollett. In 1771 he accompanied Lord 
 Lavington, the newly appointed Governor, to the Leeward Islands ; 
 and remained there (according to Redgrave’s ‘Dictionary’) three 
 years and a half, ‘making drawings of the harbours, forts, and 
 other characteristic features of the islands, and for nearly two 
 years after his return was engaged in the completion of the work, 
 This employment turned the direction of his art from engraving 
 to drawing in water-colours; and in 1777 he, in conjunction with 
 William Byrne, the engraver, commenced the most important 
 undertaking of his life, ‘The Antiquities of Great Britain, for 
 which he executed all the drawings, fifty-two in number, a task 
 which employed him till 1781. The extensive tours throughout 
 Great Britain required for this work brought him daily in con- 
 
 tact with nature; and while in search of antiquities he discovered 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ao 
 
 Flearne, Rooker, Malton. 35 } 
 
 new truths, or, at least, how to paint old ones. He certainly ad- 
 vanced water-colour art considerably. In the use of his materials | 
 he was perfectly accomplished; he drew architecture beautifully, | | 
 and in the drawing of trees and skies he excelled nearly all his | 
 predecessors. In the matter of foliage, indeed, he was in his earlier 
 drawings conventional, and even in his latest somewhat mannered ; 
 
 but he always took great pains in the drawing of the trunk and | 
 
 
 
 
 
 the boughs 
 
 
 
 | 
 and it will be evident from the pencil drawing of | 
 | 
 
 | which a facsimile is given, how close and fresh was his observa- 
 
 | tion of nature, and what a sure, bright touch he had. His effects 
 
 were generally, if not always, of calm sunshine, his skies simple 
 
 rather thin and ragged white cloud; the perspective of his 
 drawings was always excellent, their design effective, and they | 
 
 are clear and pure as few of his contemporaries’ were. His | | 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 H 
 
 | f 
 but original and effective, the blue appearing through rifts of | 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 
 
 | i| | 
 | distances in his best drawings are sometimes admirable stretches | 
 of distant country, with spire and cottage and river and meadow | | 
 | sparkling in the sunlight, to the verge of a far horizon. In | | 1} 
 atmospheric perspective, in truth of sunlight, and in colour also, | | 
 he advanced his art beyond the Pococks and the Rookers; and 
 though Turner soon surpassed him in certain qualities, especially 
 
 in warmth and gradation of sunlight, he was long before he could 
 
 produce anything so perfect, as a whole, as one of Hearne’s best 
 
 
 
 drawings. 
 
 There are some good ones at South Kensington; the Village | | 
 Alehouse, painted 1796, the Monastery Gate, St. Albans (1795), and 
 two almost monochrome but delightfully silvery views of water | i| 
 | and shipping, excelling, I think, in artistic quality any contem- | 
 | porary efforts in this direction in water-colour. But none of these 
 drawings equal some left by Mr. Henderson to the British Mu- 
 seum ; where also his skill in portrait and lead-pencil may be seen | j 
 in a pretty little portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, and another of 
 
 his master, Woollett, the engraver. There also is the pencil sketch 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 36 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 here reproduced; and the original of Mr. Murray’s etching of 
 
 
 
 Elvet Bridge, Durham, showing the curious old bridge with houses 
 on it, still much as they were in Hearne’s time. Perhaps the finest 
 drawings at the British Museum for distance and delicate colour 
 
 are those of Hitchin Priory, Herts, and Near Ashstead, Surrey 
 
 
 
 
 
 VIEW NEAR WITHAM, BY T. HEARNE, 
 
 (1859, 5, 28, 211, 210). For elegance of composition (not al- 
 together uninfluenced by Gainsborough perhaps) is the View 
 Near Witham, with its well-drawn and elegantly introduced cart 
 and horses, and its moving water disturbed by the runnel which 
 drops into it in the foreground; very good and original also is 
 the rifted sky. This is probably an earlier d rawing, and does not 
 show quite the accomplishment of the Hitchin, nor of two beau- 
 tiful drawings of Chepstow and Monmouth, which were executed 
 
 in 1794. For elegance of composition the latter is the most 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 flearne, Rooker, Malton. 
 
 charming of all, and its aerial perspective is perfect. Save in 
 
 the suggestion of Gainsborough’s feeling in the scene Near 
 
 Witham all these drawings appear to be quite original and fresh, 
 except for some conventions for foliage, which were then common 
 to all artists, It is not of his predecessors that he reminds one, 
 but of his successor, Turner, A good opportunity of comparing 
 their work (Hearne’s later and Turner’s early work) was afforded 
 a few years ago by the exhibition of early architectural drawings 
 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. In the treatment of simple 
 subjects, as of a church, or a ruined arch smitten with sunlight, 
 it was not easy to give the palm to either. Turner’s sunlight was 
 brighter, Hearne’s tone was more perfect, A comparison of the 
 earlier Turners and the later Hearnes at the British Museum con- 
 firms the view that Turner was more indebted to Hearne than any 
 other of the elder water-colourists, (with the exception of Cozens) 
 and the reason why he was so seems also clear—he was the best 
 artist of them all,* 
 
 I have said that Hearne was a typical draughtsman, and he 
 
 
 
 was so whether we view him in his life or his work, or the result 
 of both. He passed through all the experience of which a 
 ‘draughtsman’ was capable. His birth was humble (he was born 
 at Brinkworth near Malmesbury, and was intended for a trade) ; 
 
 he was apprenticed to an engraver as some other draughtsmen 
 
 
 
 were; he gained a premium at the Society of Arts’a few years 
 after its foundation; he had his voyage abroad, and his spell of 
 pure draughtsman’s work in a distant country; he took his pedes- 
 trian tours through the length and breadth of Great Britain; he 
 
 was associated in the production of a great illustrated work on 
 
 * This, perhaps, does injustice to ‘Warwick’ Smith, mentioned on page 26. 
 His charming drawings of Italy and Switzerland, 1786 to 1795, several of which 
 were given by Sir Walter Trevelyan to South Kensington Museum, show that he 
 distinctly advanced the art of water-colour, and deserves more attention than can 
 now be given to him in this book. 
 
 L 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ro) 
 
 38 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 Antiquities ; he exhibited his drawings constantly at all the 
 hibitions (Society of Artists, Free Society, and Royal Academy) 
 
 from 1765 to 1806; he was a frequent guest of that Maecenas of 
 
 draughtsmen, Dr. Monro of the Adelphi, and also probably of that 
 
 other Maecenas, Mr. John Henderson; he did as much as any 
 draughtsman to advance his art from topography to landscape, 
 and from tinting to colour; and, finally, he was one of those, and 
 not the least of them, to contribute towards the education of the 
 
 great genius of Turner. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 IV 
 TURNER AND GIRTIN. 
 
 he first historian of the school of water-colour painting 
 | in England (indeed, if we except the Redgraves, the only 
 one), was W. H. Pyne (1769-1843)—a writer, who had excep- 
 tional qualifications for the task, as he himself practised the art 
 with much skill, and had seen it rise from its dawn to its zenith. 
 fe was also in a position and of a disposition to acquire special 
 knowledge of its followers, as he was sociable and popular in the 
 circle of water-colour painters of his time, was a visitor at Dr. 
 | Monro’s, of whose house and the meetings there he has left a short 
 but lively record.* There are a few of his landscapes at South 
 Kensington, and at the British Museum, of much dexterity in 
 
 execution and refined in feeling, but he devoted himself more es- 
 
 
 
 pecially to the composition of small and neatly-executed groups of 
 figures ‘for the embellishment of landscape, over a thousand of 
 which were included in his principal work of this kind, called ‘The 
 Microcosm, or a picture delineation of the Arts, Agriculture, 
 
 Manufactures, &c., of Great Britain, 2 vols. folio, 1806. His 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘History of the Royal Residences, with numerous richly-coloured 
 plates, was another work of importance in its day, but it is more 
 in connexion with his literary work—papers contributed to the 
 ‘Literary Gazette, and afterwards published under the well-known 
 
 title of ‘Wine and Walnuts? and his employment as editor of and 
 
 
 
 contributor to the short-lived ‘Somerset House Gazette’ (1823-4), 
 that he calls for any extended notice here. In the papers so 
 published we find the first record by a contemporary of the foun- 
 
 dation of the water-colour school, and of the early practice of 
 
 * See page 43. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 40 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 Turner and Girtin, who between them liberated water-colour from 
 the bonds of. archaeological and topographical illustration, and 
 made it rank as a fine art. 
 
 But before we arrive at the point from which we can best 
 survey this practice something should be said of another artist who 
 had no little influence on both these remarkable youths. This was 
 Edward Dayes (1763-1804), the master of Girtin, who is held by 
 some to have had more influence on Turner than Turner’s own 
 master, Thomas Malton. Thomas Malton is, on the other hand, 
 considered by the same authorities to have had more influence 
 on Girtin than on Turner. Such questions are hard to decide, 
 especially in the case of Turner and Girtin, for Turner may be 
 said to have formed himself upon everybody and Girtin to have 
 formed himself upon none, or, in other words, even the early work of 
 Girtin shows the preponderating influence of his own individuality, 
 while Turner’s early work shows the well-defined influence of now 
 one and now another artist (including Girtin), till long after ‘poor 
 Tom’ had shaken off every trace of his studentship. 
 
 There is this, however, to be said in favour of the theory just 
 
 mentioned, there are many drawings by Dayes of scenery in 
 
 
 
 England—tinted drawings washed with gradations of bluey grey 
 for distance and sky, and with foreground deepened and strength- 
 ened with Indian ink—that might well pass, and have often 
 probably been sold for early ‘blue drawings’ by Turner. An 
 interesting sketch-book, full of such drawings, perfect in manipula- 
 tive skill within their limits, is now in the possession of Mr. 
 Crawford Pocock, of Brighton. On the other hand, the port- 
 folios of drawings bequeathed by Mr. John Henderson to the 
 
 British Museum contained several careful copies by Girtin, of 
 
 
 
 Malton’s drawings of London buildings. No doubt both the 
 younger men profited in divers ways from the examples of both 
 the elders, and there was not any one (with the exception, per- 
 
 haps, of Paul Sandby) from whom they could pick up such varied 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Turner and Girtin. 
 
 knowledge as from Dayes, For he was a man of much accom- 
 plishment in different directions, a good draughtsman not only of 
 architecture, but of the figure, an original observer of nature, with 
 much feeling for the poetry of effect, and was possessed of an 
 imagination that did not confine itself to mundane subjects. His 
 
 art ranged from topographical drawings, ‘neatly laid in Indian 
 
 
 
 ink and tinted? to The Fall of the Angels, and The Triumph 
 of Beauty. 1 have never seen any of the scriptural and classic 
 
 
 
 drawings which he produced in the later years of his short life, 
 
 but the fine view of Ely Cathedral in the South Kensington 
 Museum, and the views of Windermere and Keswick Lake which 
 
 hang beside it, are quite enough to prove that in the practical 
 treatment of natural fact, and in his knowledge of atmospheric 
 Of the 
 
 and ability with which he drew groups of figures the Museum 
 
 effect, he went beyond most of his predecessors, grace 
 also contains a good example in. Buckingham FTouse, St. James’ 
 Park, 1780, and his Trial of Warren Hlastings in Westminster 
 Abbey, and two scenes of the Royal Procession to St. Paul’s on 
 the Thanksgiving for the King’s Recovery in 1789, are works of 
 the same order, well known by engravings. He was an engraver, 
 
 a miniature-painter, and also a writer of 
 
 
 
 some papers on Art, 
 including one giving Instructions for Drawing and Colouring 
 Landscapes, which is interesting as a guide to the practice of 
 water colour before the evolution effected by his pupil Girtin. 
 He gives but two methods, one the laving in of the shades with 
 Prussian blue and Indian ink, and the other the laying in of light, 
 shade, and all, with a dead colouring as in oil painting, but he 
 specially warns the student against introducing the colour of an 
 object in its shade, and the notion of commencing with local colour 
 does not appear to have entered his head notwithstanding the 
 example of his pupil. Indeed, he seems to have had a very in- 
 
 adequate appreciation of Girtin’s talent. They had quarrelled 
 during Girtin’s apprenticeship, and the slight note which Dayes 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 eft about Girtin is chiefly condemnatory of his moral conduct 
 (which both he and Edwards, not to mention later writers, have 
 most unjustly aspersed), and ends by thus damning his art with 
 aint praise. 
 
 ‘Though his drawings are generally too slight, yet they 
 must ever be admired as the offspring of a strong imagination. 
 Jad he not trifled away a vigorous constitution, he might 
 
 e of excellence as a landscape- 
 
 
 
 have arrived at a very high de; 
 
 
 
 painter.’ 
 
 Dayes, who does not seem to have had a very genial or 
 
 amiable disposition, died by his own hand in 1804. 
 
 There has been a great deal of dispute with regard to the 
 years in which Turner and Girtin were born, but, though no 
 . record of Girtin’s birth has been discovered, it is now generally 
 | admitted that they were both born in the same year (1775). 
 Turner on the 23rd of April, and Girtin on the 18th of February 
 —a difference of two months instead of two years. The records 
 of their early lives are so bound together that it will be as difficult 
 as undesirable to dissociate them, but I propose as far as possible 
 | to treat of the elder first. 
 
 Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), according to Mr. Thomas Miller’s 
 ‘Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views Sixty Years Since, pub- 
 lished in 1854, was the son of a ropemaker, who died when he 
 was eight years old. His mother was married again to a pattern- 
 draughtsman named Vaughan, and Girtin lived with her at 2 St. 
 Martin’s-le-Grand till the year 1796. Except that he began to | 
 
 raw early, we know nothing of him before his meeting with 
 
 
 
 Turner, and their studies together at Dr. onro’s, and in the 
 
 open air. Perhaps they first met at the Doctor’s—perhaps at John 
 
 | Raphael Smith’s, the engraver’s (as Alaric Watts has it), for whom 
 they both used to colour prints. John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), 
 
 now best known for his celebrated mezzotint engravings after 
 
 
 
 Reynolds and others, was also a good painter in oils and water- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
‘SAV “4 AG 'MUVd SsaWvl ‘Ls ‘aSaOH WVHONINONG 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Turner and Girtin. 
 
 colours, and the master of De Wint and Hilton. He was, in ad- 
 dition, a publisher and dealer in prints, and it is therefore very 
 probable that the two often met at his shop. At Dr. Monro’s 
 house they certainly did, and at Mr. Henderson’s, who lived 
 next door to the Doctor in Adelphi Terrace. Dr. Thomas 
 Monro, of Bushey and Adelphi Terrace, Physician of Bridewell 
 and Bethlehem Hospitals, was a great lover of art and a special 
 encourager of the water-colour artists. He had portfolios full 
 of drawings by old and modern masters, by Vandevelde and 
 Canaletti and Titian, by Cozens and Gainsborough, Barret and 
 Hearne; and at his conversaziones in the evening, artists, both 
 young and old, would congregate, His portfolios were open for 
 the young to copy, and Turner and Girtin were free to come 
 and draw at his house in the evening, receiving their supper 
 and half-a-crown for the evening’s work. Mr, Miller tells us 
 that ‘Old Pine’ (W. H. Pyne), of ‘Wine and Walnuts’ celebrity, 
 used to say, ‘What a glorious coterie there was when Wilson, 
 Marlow, Gainsborough, Paul and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, 
 and Cozins (Cozens), used to meet; and you, old Jack,’ turning 
 to Varley, ‘were a boy in a pinafore, with Turner and Géirtin 
 and Edridge as big-wigs on whom you used to look as something 
 beyond the usual amount of clay.* They drew also at Mr. 
 Henderson’s. Turner’s preference was for Cozens and Hearne, 
 Girtin’s for Malton, Canaletti, and Piranesi. Girtin’s drawings for 
 Mr. Henderson are at the British Museum now, and are remark- 
 able for the freedom and skill of their execution, grasping, as it 
 were, the whole subject and rendering it in a faithful but still 
 personal manner. The strength and accuracy of his draughts- 
 
 manship with the pen are specially noticeable in his copies of 
 
 This spirited passage has often been quoted, but Pyne must have drawn 
 somewhat on his fancy when he uttered it, as Wilson died in 1782, when 
 Turner and Girtin were but seven years old, and Varley only four. Gains- 
 borough died in 1788, when Varley was ten. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 Piranesi’s prints. There is no fumbling or work of a tentative 
 kind; every touch decisive and to the purpose. He copied 
 also some of Mr. Henderson’s own drawings, and his copy 
 of Morland’s Dogs hesitating about the Pluck is in a singularly 
 free and bold manner, showing how soon he began to master 
 his materials, and to paint in water-colours as no one had 
 done before. This, in one word, was the distinction of his 
 method, and is well described by W. H. Pyne, who was probably 
 the first to put in print what has since been often repeated by 
 others, 
 
 ‘This artist (Girtin) prepared his drawings on the same principle which 
 had hitherto been confined to painting in oil, namely, laying in the object 
 upon his paper with the local colour, and shadowing the same with the 
 individual tint of its own shadow. Previous to the practice of Turner 
 and Girtin, drawings were shadowed first entirely through, whatever their 
 component parts—houses, cattle, trees, mountains, foregrounds, middle- 
 grounds, and distances, all with black or grey, and these objects were 
 afterwards stained or tinted, enriched and finished, as is now the custom 
 to colour prints. It was this new practice, introduced by these dis- 
 
 
 
 tinguished artists, that acquired for designs in water-colours upon paper 
 the title of paintings, a designation which many works of the existing 
 school decidedly merit, as we lately beheld in the Exhibition of the 
 Painters in Water Colours, where pictures of this class were displayed in 
 gorgeous frames, bearing out in effect against the mass of glittering gold as 
 powerfully as pictures in oil.’* 
 
 This and subsequent descriptions, though true in the main, must 
 
 be accepted with some reservation. Girtin was not the first prob- 
 ably to dispense with the ground colour for shades, si Reremismc 
 
 drawing by Willey Reveley in the late Dr. Percy’s collection, a 
 large view in Greece or Turkey, probably, with a mountain and a 
 figure, the whole of which is put in in colours (and bright colours) 
 at once. Reveley died in 1799, and this was probably drawn some 
 
 years before. Moreover, Girtin himself used, even in late draw- 
 
 * This was written in 1824. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 HHL NO MAIA ¥ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 Turner and Girtin. 
 
 
 
 ings, a preliminary light grey for some of his shadows, though he 
 did not lay in the whole composition in neutral tint. His true 
 originality in this particular consisted in regarding objects not as 
 monochromes tinged with colour, but as coloured things modified 
 by shade. No one could draw more correctly or cleverly than he 
 did, but he soon regarded his outlines as mere indications to be 
 obliterated, not filled in, with colour. They, and what ground 
 colour he used for shade, were swamped with full washes and blots 
 of colour or strong strokes with the red pen, by which colour, 
 light, and form were broadly realised and fused together. In 
 previous drawings the three stages—the outline, the shade, and 
 the colour, were all distinctly preserved in the completed drawing, 
 Those who wish to see what a master he was with the point 
 should examine his pencil-sketches of Paris, executed in the last 
 years of his life, and now in the British Museum. 
 
 | Girtin’s genius was one which ripened with extraordinary quick- 
 ness. While Turner was still plodding on in his endless study, 
 Girtin had already completed his education, The grand style of 
 Piranesi, the large manner of Canaletti, taught him all he needed 
 in the way of art. He soon saw his way to express what he 
 wished to express, He had an extraordinary gift of hand, a 
 | wonderful comprehension of any subject he chose to draw. At 
 once he seems to have fixed in his mind an idea of what he 
 wanted to represent—composition, colour, feeling, and all—and 
 he went straight to work and realised it without doubt or difficulty, 
 | Few artists can be said to have known so clearly what they wanted 
 | to do and been able to do it with so little check. 
 
 | In this, indeed, he was eminently blessed, not for ever like 
 Sisyphus (or an art critic) attempting the impossible. But it must 
 nevertheless not be supposed that his finest drawings, such as 
 that magnificent one of Bridgenorth (see the etching by Mr.. I. 
 Short) were completed without thought or labour, only that he 
 
 began them with a clear conception to which he adhered, A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 46 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 writer in the Library of the Fine Arts (probably, W. H. Pyne) 
 
 may be accepted as an authority on this point :— 
 
 ‘It might be supposed by the bold and broad execution which char- 
 acterises the works of Girtin, that they were mostly off-hand productions. 
 The contrary, however, is the fact. It is true that he could sketch, and 
 did occasionally dash in his effects with rapidity; but his finely coloured 
 compositions, though apparently like the pictures by Wilson, the result of 
 little labour, were wrought with much careful study and proportionate 
 manual exertion. In certain of his productions I have frequently watched 
 his progress, which, like Wilson’s, was careful, notwithstanding his bold 
 execution, even to fastidiousness. It is true he did not hesitate, nor undo 
 what he once laid down, for he worked upon principle; but he reiterated 
 his tints to produce splendour and richness, and repeated his depths to 
 
 secure transparency of tone, with a perseverance that would surprise 
 
 
 
 those who were not intimately acquainted with the difficult process of 
 water-colour painting, to produce works that merit the designation of 
 pictures.’ 
 
 The training of Turner and Girtin seems to have been as nearly 
 as possible identical. They both coloured prints for Raphael Smith ; 
 both washed in skies and foregrounds for architects; both ‘im- 
 proved’ the sketches of amateurs; both copied drawings at Dr. 
 Monro’s and Mr. Henderson’s ; both sketched in and about London, 
 especially on the shores of the Thames between the Savoy and 
 Lambeth, But two more different beings were never associated 
 together, their characters and artistic tendencies were essentially 
 distinct, and of the amount of affection that subsisted between 
 them we have no sure knowledge. Being ‘boys together, it ought 
 to have been warm and intimate, but Turner was so reserved and 
 unsociable, Girtin so open and warm-hearted, that it is probable 
 that they were companions rather than comrades, even in their 
 
 boyhood ; afterwards they went on more extended sketching tours 
 
 but they went each by himself, and when Girtin formed a litt 
 
 ® 
 
 
 
 social coterie of sketchers a few years before his early death 
 
 Turner was not of the party. This, the earliest London ‘Sketch- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 Turner and Girten. 
 
 ing Society, was composed of ten members, some of whom became 
 amous. Their names were: Robert Ker Porter, Augustus Callcott 
 (both afterwards knighted), T. R. Underwood, G. Samuel, P. S. 
 Murray, John Sell Cotman, L. Francia, W. H. Worthington, 
 J. C. Denham, and T. Girtin. They met by turn at each other’s 
 rooms, and each made a sketch from the same passage of an 
 English poet. The host of the evening provided the materials 
 and refreshments and kept the sketches. Some of these sketches 
 
 are still preserved, and lately a little book once belonging to Sir 
 
 
 
 R. K. Porter and containing probably a number of them as well 
 as some others, was sold at Christie’s for 120/. 
 
 Like Turner, also, Girtin went on his travels, sketching for 
 J. Walker, the publisher of the ‘Copperplate Magazine’ and 
 ‘Itinerant’ Turner began in 1794; Girtin a year or two later. 
 The most notable of the drawings executed by Girtin for Walker 
 were perhaps, the Bamborough Castle and Christchurch Abbey, Hamp- 
 shire, the former of which is specially to be admired for the grandeur 
 of its’ design. 
 
 Like Turner, again, Girtin’s genius was greatly developed by a 
 visit to the north of England. This was probably about 1796, to 
 judge from the subjects of the drawings he sent to the Royal 
 Academy. He began to exhibit there in 1794 with a drawing of 
 Ely Cathedral, and in the following year he exhibited views of 
 Warwick Castle and Peterborough and Lichfield Cathedrals, but 
 in 1797 we find among his ten drawings Jedburgh Abbey, two of 
 St. Cuthbert’s, Holy Island, four views of York and one of Ouse 
 Bridge in the same city—that picturesque old bridge, with the 
 gate-house, of which he perhaps left more drawings than of any 
 other subject. In the north he made many sketches of pure land- 
 scape, recording the grand effects of | 
 
 ight and shade upon the 
 
 
 
 swelling moors and rolling downs, with a breadth and simplicity 
 
 
 
 and a large regard to truth never equalled before. t is a pity 
 
 
 
 that his ‘business’ confined his art so much to the architectural— 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 48 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 to the abbeys and cathedrals and the bridges of England. It -is 
 true that he treated them with a sympathy, a sense of their own 
 being and beauty, in a word, with a poetic realism which not even 
 Turner (who was always thinking how he could improve them) 
 could compass, but it is to be wished that he had left us more 
 
 of the impressions of Nature received by him when alone with her 
 
 
 
 ‘over the hills and far away.’ 
 
 
 

 
 V 
 
 TURNER AND GIRTIN. 
 
 Woe Girtin’s death may be said to have ended the older 
 school of water-colour. He had changed its method, 
 altered its spirit, and inaugurated a new school of colour, but it 
 still, especially in the modest tints of its colouring, bore traces of 
 its parentage. He had released it from the land of bondage, but 
 the brilliant domain on which it was entering—where light was 
 more liquid and colour more pure than in any other region of 
 art—was still a promised land—or rather, perhaps, an untrodden 
 and unknown land, not even promised. Thomas Girtin went, but 
 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) remained, and the 
 latter therefore belongs not only to the older school and the 
 
 transitional period, which was about at its crisis in 1802, but also 
 
 
 
 to the later—even the latest, for there have been no discoveries 
 of technique, no extensions of the range of landscape of very 
 great importance, since his day. It will, therefore, be convenient 
 to consider his earlier drawings first, down to the date of Girtin’s 
 death, and to treat the rest separately hereafter, 
 
 Little need be said of the facts of Turner’s life in these early 
 years; they have been recorded with variations by different 
 biographers, and I have attempted to summarise and reconcile the 
 different accounts in the volume on Turner in the ‘Great Artist’ 
 series. In addition to what has already been said in the previous 
 chapter, and to what will appear subsequently in connexion with 
 his drawings, it will be sufficient here to note the following facts. 
 With the exception of a short period at school at Brentford and 
 visits to Margate, Bristol, and other places, he spent his childhood 
 
 oO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 50 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 and youth in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, where his father kept 
 a barber’s shop. His mother became insane about the year 1800. 
 Among the elements of his training must not be forgotten the 
 time in the office of Mr. Hardwick, the architect, where he gained 
 a knowledge of architecture and obtained a power of delicate and 
 precise draughtsmanship with the pencil. He entered the schools 
 of the Royal Academy in 1789, and first exhibited there in 1791. 
 In 1792 he obtained (from Mr. J. Walker) his first commissions 
 for drawings to be engraved, and made his first tour in Wales. 
 The first engraving from these drawings appeared in ‘Walker's 
 Magazine’ for November, 1794, and subsequent engravings in this 
 and other publications show extensive travelling in the south and 
 midland counties of England. These were performed by him on 
 foot, ‘twenty to twenty-five miles a-day, with his little modicum 
 of baggage at the end of a stick.’ In 1797 he made his first tour 
 in the north of England, in 1799 he was elected A.R.A., in 1800 
 he went to Scotland for the first time, and in this or next year to 
 the Continent. In 1802 he became a Royal Academician. 
 
 Turner’s early, that is, very early work, before he began to draw 
 for the engravers, is so varied that it bears division into classes, 
 which may be thus described:—1. The drawings (mostly copies 
 of prints coloured) which were put up for sale in the window of 
 his father’s shop in Maiden Lane. 2. Sketches made in London, 
 principally on the shores of the Thames. 3. Drawings at Bristol 
 and Margate, when he went on visits to his relations and friends. 
 4. Copies of drawings (principally of Cozens, but also of Hearne, 
 Paul Sandby, Girtin, and others), which he made for Dr. Monro 
 and Mr. Henderson. 
 
 Specimens of most of these may be studied in the National 
 
 
 
 Gallery with the aid of Mr. Ruskin’s admirable notes, and frequent 
 opportunity for examination of other examples has been afforded 
 in recent years by the Exhibitions of the Burlington Fine Arts 
 
 Club and the Royal Academy. Their interest is mainly bio- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘NILNIS SVNOHL AP “MYOA SHIVA SNOAVW AHI 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 Turner and Girtin. 51 
 
 
 
 graphical; they show no strong and striking genius, but yet we find 
 here and there distinct efforts at representing sunlight more warmly 
 than had been done by previous artists in water-colour,* an instinct 
 of composition, a daring choice of subject, and especially in some 
 of the earliest of all a distinct sense of colour. Some of the class 3, 
 though almost monochrome, especially the copies of mountain 
 scenery by Cozens, are drawn with such delicacy, show such mas- 
 tery in the use of washes of colour, and so fine a sense of light 
 and space and air, that they seem to belong to a later period than 
 1792, and at least prove how strongly his imagination was stimu- 
 lated in sympathy with Cozens. 
 
 After his pupilage, which may be said to have ended about 
 1792, or when he went on his first tour in Wales, and until his 
 
 election as a Royal Academician in 1802, his work may again be 
 
 
 
 divided into, (1), His topographical and architectural work done 
 for engravings principally in ‘Walker’s Itinerant’ (1794-1798), and 
 ‘Whitaker’s Parish of Whalley, published in 1800; (2), His draw- 
 ings for exhibition at the Royal Academy (1792-1797), principally 
 architectural, and specially distinguished above other men’s work 
 for the beauty of interiors of Gothic Churches and Cathedrals; (3), 
 His drawings and paintings in oil, exhibited 1798 and after, of the 
 romantic scenery of the North of England, Yorkshire, Cumberland, 
 Northumberland, Lancashire, &c., in which he first showed his 
 genius as a landscape-painter, as a master of effect, a passionate 
 lover and deep observer of nature, and a pictorial poet ; (4), Certain 
 pictures, principally in oil, of sea and shipping, and (5), A few 
 efforts of imagination, such as The Battle of the Nile, The Fifth 
 Plague of Egypt, and The Army of the Medes destroyed in the Desert 
 by a Whirlwind. 
 
 His work for the ‘Itinerant,’ and the ‘Parish of Whalley,’ was 
 able, careful, and dexterous—the work, in fact, of a first - rate 
 
 * Except by William Payne, to whose drawings some of these early ones 
 of Turner bear a strong resemblance. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 se gett eae ae 
 
 Y 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 ‘Draughtsman ;’ but these and other outdoor scenes of the period 
 wére distinguishable from the work of his fellows, not by any 
 great grasp of his subject, poetical feeling, beauty of colour, or 
 power of design, like Girtin’s, but rather for their delicate and 
 careful draughtsmanship of form, truth of illumination, observation 
 of local tone and texture, especially of stone, brick, and plaster, in 
 shade and sunlight. Of his beautiful pencil work at this time two 
 examples are given here, both of which have also unusual merit of 
 
 design. One is of the exterior of Malmesbury Abbey, the other 
 
 
 
 of Kirkstall Crypt, the original sketch for the plate in the Lzber 
 Studiorum, The drawings he now made of interiors were unmis- 
 takably superior to those of any of his contemporaries, if they 
 have indeed ever been equalled by any artist in certain qualities of 
 One of them, Jnterior of Ely 
 
 Cathedral (1797), has recently been called ‘divine’ by Mr. Raw- 
 
 light and exquisite draughtsmanship. 
 
 linson, in his ‘Notes on the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 
 the Winter of 1887.’ 
 
 are in the South Kensington Museum. 
 
 Two of them, of Salisbury Cathedral (1799), 
 Unfortunately no worthy 
 translation into. black and white of these masterpieces can be 
 given here. Our example of his interiors (in colour) is of a 
 humbler order, but it has a special interest, as it is supposed to 
 represent the underground cellar or kitchen of his father’s old 
 house in Maiden Lane, and the figure crooning by the copper is 
 probably none other than his mother. It shows great dexterity in 
 handling, especially in producing an effect of exceedingly minute 
 and precise drawing, without any niggling or tightness, and pos- 
 sesses that quality called ‘infinity, or endless variation of tone and 
 surface, so that every atom (as in the stained plasterwork of the 
 If Turner had 
 
 died in 1796, his special triumphs as an artist would have been 
 
 copper), seems to differ from the rest, as in Nature. 
 
 as a painter of interiors, and of light confined and reflected —a 
 water-colour Steenwick of a higher grade. 
 
 It was not till his visit to the North, in 1797, that he began to 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Turner and Girtin. BR | 
 
 
 
 show the poetry that was in him, or began apparently to be spirit- | 
 | ually and effectively inspired by intercourse with Nature; not till | 
 
 then did he become the serious rival of Girtin. Then all the long 
 
 
 
 and severe training which he had undergone, all the years of quiet 
 observation of Nature in all her moods which he had stored up, 
 bore blossom and fruit. In these great drawings he united many 
 | of the characteristics of Girtin with a poetic feeling and an inven- 
 tion more peculiarly his own. | 
 
 The great characteristics of Girtin’s art were simplicity and 
 
 breadth, the elements of grandeur. He rejected from his art 
 
 | everything that was petty or superfluous, concentrating his mind 
 
 on the larger truths of nature, and employing all his force on 
 
 
 
 noble generalisation. He was the poet at once of sunshine and 
 
 of gloom, choosing of preference those effects of light which were 
 | soft and diffused, not sparkling and divided, but barred and | 
 | crossed by broad waves of shadow, separating the subject into large 
 masses of contrasted colour and tone. His temper was always 
 calm and restful, careless for the most part as to choice of subject, 
 but accepting it, whatever it was, as a thing whose nature and 
 
 beauty were to be revealed, not like Turner, as a thing to be 
 
 treated and altered and twisted till it assumed a beauty in accord- 
 
 ance with his taste,and a shape which conveyed an extrinsic idea, 
 
 
 
 He always surrendered himself to his subject, whether it was a ] 
 landscape or a building. The quality of his poetry was expressive, | 7 
 not creative—he left creation to nature, and assumed the more | 4] 
 humble rée of interpreter. His imagination was nevertheless very | | 
 sensitive to fine impressions, and this is seen not only in the | 
 effects of light and cloud in which he dressed the earth, but in 
 
 the seizure of the grandest or most interesting aspects of his archi- a 
 
 
 
 tectural subjects, whether cathedral or simple street. | i| 
 | If Girtin’s imagination was, on the one hand, passive, receptive, 
 
 | expressive, Turner’s was, on the other, active, restless, creative, | | 
 
 
 
 
 
 E : 1| 
 playing all round and about his subject, which often became at \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 56 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 last, if not lost in its adornments, at least transformed beyond re- 
 cognition. Girtin had turned topography into art, but his art was 
 only Nature at her best; whereas Turner’s was a different thing 
 from Nature altogether, not only prose turned to poetry, but trans- 
 lated into another language. By its reflection in Girtin’s mind, 
 
 nature became simplified, shorn of disturbing accident, aggrandised 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 
 
 but Turner was never content with it as it was—it always sug- 
 
 | 
 
 | | | by omission of the trivial, but unaltered in its essential features ; 
 | 
 
 ] . 
 
 | gested something else, something more beautiful or grand, better 
 | 
 
 
 
 ordered, a vision not to be realised by suppression only, but by 
 | | alterations, exaggeration, and reconstruction. The two may be 
 taken as typical instances of the two classes into which all 
 poetical landscape-painters may be divided—Girtin of those who 
 use themselves to express Nature, Turner of those who use Nature 
 
 to express themselv 
 
 
 
 Not that Girtin, in expressing Nature, did not express himself 
 
 | | too. Indeed, he may be said to have done so more fully and 
 completely than Turner did with all his thought and labour, but 
 
 his was a more automatic and less conscious process, more sponta- 
 
 
 
 | neous, and less intellectual, of a range narrower, but more certain 
 within its limits, and, lastly, more perfect, but composed of fewer 
 | | elements. In the growth of their genius Girtin and Turner are 
 | | again typical of two classes of poetical artists—those whose in- 
 | dividuality takes root at once, producing something new and dis- 
 tinctive, like some wild but unknown seed dropped by nature into 
 soil prepared for it, others whose flower is some exquisite and 
 | complex variety only to be produced by years of assiduous cul- 
 | tivation. To the one class belongs Masaccio, who suddenly did 
 | on the walls of the Brancacci chapel those wonderful frescoes by 
 | which, at one unexpected stroke, the claims both of nature and 
 
 art were satisfied for the first time in the history of modern art. 
 
 
 
 
 
 | How the power was acquired, how the thought and the skill were 
 
 matured, we are equally ignorant. He came and he went, having 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 NIAVUG a *LdAUO TIVISMAIM 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 Turner and Girtin. 59 
 
 spent just about the same time on earth as Girtin. As Girtin to 
 
 Masaccio so Turner to Raphael 
 
 
 
 a genius many-sided, and of an 
 extraordinary gift to assimilate from every source of Nature and 
 art all that was needed to nourish his genius. We can see how 
 Raphael learnt sweetness from Perugino, mystery from Leonardo, 
 and strength from Masaccio and Michelangelo, and made them 
 all harmonious and his own by virtue of ‘a certain idea’ which 
 governed his hand, and created even as it copied. 
 
 Turner’s models were of a different kind—Wilson and Hearne 
 Sandby and Cozens, Claude and Vandevelde, Titian and Girtin, 
 in art; and, instead of beautiful men and women of Umbria and 
 
 Rome, sunsets at Margate and sunrises on the Yorkshire wolds: 
 
 
 
 but it is not the present purpose to draw comparison between 
 Turner and Raphael except in so far as it illustrates the contrast 
 etween Turner and Girtin. 
 
 One point of contrast already mentioned was in the quality of 
 invention or imagination. Girtin, as I have said, surrendered himself 
 to his subject, Turner did not; one simplified while the other embel- 
 ished, one revealed while the other created. The ‘need of creating’ 
 
 was indeed strong upon Turner, even from the first. Through all 
 
 
 
 but the last few years of the period we are now considering, his 
 
 invention was kept down by the a 
 
 
 
 ppetite for study and the quan- 
 tity of set work which it was his business to get through, but it 
 is nearly always traceable. How soon he threw off all topographi- 
 cal restraint, so that his drawings were widely, even recklessly 
 unfaithful to the actual appearance of the places they were sup- 
 posed to represent, has been very plainly shown by Mr, Hamerton 
 in his ‘Life of Turner. It was in 1801 probably that he made 
 the study of Kz/churn Castle, from which he composed the picture 
 
 sent to the Academy in 1802, but though the impression was so 
 
 
 
 
 
 recent, and he had his sketch (no doubt fairly faithful) to guide 
 
 him, we find that he has not only completely changed the charac- 
 
 
 
 ter of the country (river, mountain, foreground, background, and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 60 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 all), but built out of his own imagination a ‘castle quite different 
 from the real one.’ ‘It is a Turner, and nothing but a Turner, 
 says Mr. Hamerton. The moral aspect of the matter need not 
 concern us here. It has been treated by Mr. Ruskin, Mr. 
 Hamerton, and others elsewhere. Here the instance of Kilchurn 
 may be taken to prove, not how far he had in 1802 become callous 
 to local fidelity, but that even at that time his imagination could 
 and did, when he chose, completely transform the facts of his 
 subject. It had not attained such dominant strength without many 
 and constant endeavours, nor is it easy to determine when the 
 struggle began. I am not sure that it might not be found if we 
 
 were to compare some of his boy’s ‘shilling’ dra xs with the 
 I y § 
 
 
 
 originals. It is certain that the possession and exercis an 
 extraordinary faculty of invention is plainly perceptible in those 
 engravings in ‘Boswell’s Antiquities of England and Wales, which 
 ‘he coloured while at school at Brentwood about 1786. They dis- 
 play bold effects of light and colour, which not only embellish, but 
 in some sense transform, the poor, lifeless, line-engravings of 
 Noble. That in a very literal sense he ‘created even as he copied’ 
 we are able to prove by two illustrations to this chapter, one of 
 which represents an original drawing by John Robert Cozens of 
 The Reichenbach, and the other a copy of it by Turner. The 
 Cozens belonged to the late Hon. R. Allanson-Winn, the Turner 
 belongs to Mr. Frank Dillon, and it is owing to their kindness that 
 I am able to illustrate so forcibly Turner’s early habit of improv- 
 ing upon his subjects. The original was drawn in 1776, and the 
 copy probably some twelve or fifteen years later. It will be seen 
 that Turner has not been satisfied with this plain, and no doubt 
 faithful, transcript from nature. The sides of the cliff have been 
 too monotonous for him, the fall of the water too tame, the whole 
 drawing too empty of light. While adhering nearly literally to 
 the main lines, and not disturbing the place or shape of the 
 
 bunches of vegetation and groups of stones, he has broken off a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“SNAZOO ‘A *f Ad ONIMVUC * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9209 “AM ‘{ AT ONIMVUA AO YVANYAL AM AdOD ‘HOVANAHOIAN AHL 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
Turner and Girtin. 
 
 61 
 
 piece of the fall at the top, letting in a bright burst of sunshine 
 through the gap, has increased the meagre fall to a torrent, and 
 filled up the uninteresting hollow with clouds of spray. 
 
 What Turner did with Cozens’ drawings he did afterwards with 
 Nature, but I must leave for the present any further consideration 
 of the fine drawings of 1798-1802, only adding that, though they 
 were the heralds of a greater genius than Girtin’s, it is doubtful 
 (if both had died in 1802) whether the palm in the history of 
 English water-colour art would have been awarded to the painter 
 of Norham Castle or the painter of Bridgenorth: certainly the 
 
 former picture would never have been painted but for the example 
 of Girtin. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VI 
 FRANCIA, BONINGTON, AND COTMAN. 
 
 ee choice of the year 1802 as the close of a period in 
 Turner's art is useful not only because it was also the year 
 of Girtin’s death, In this year also Turner was elected a Royal 
 Academician ; and he afterwards exhibited comparatively few water- 
 colour drawings, for he never belonged to either of the Water- 
 Colour Societies. As far as the public were concerned, he was 
 hereafter principally known as a painter in oil, his water-colours 
 reaching them only in translation by engraving. Moreover, the 
 year 1802 marks another important fact in his life. The subjects 
 of his exhibited works were still exclusively English ; but in 1803 
 six out of his seven contributions to the walls of the Academy 
 were scenes from the Continent. Among them were two large oil 
 pictures, The Vintage at Macon, \ent by the Earl of Yarborough 
 in the winter of 1887-8 to the Grosvenor Gallery, and Calais 
 Pier, the well-known picture in the National Gallery. The other 
 picture was a Holy Family. So far had Turner got away from 
 mere topography and England; so far also from Girtin. 
 
 Besides all this, the popular knowledge of Turner may be said 
 to begin with the painting of Calais Pier, for the best of his 
 previous work has, till within the last few years, been compara- 
 tively lost sight of. A few interesting but unimportant drawings 
 
 and water-colours in the vaults of the National Gallery, and a few 
 
 
 
 
 
 dark oil pictures upstairs, attracted but little attention in the 
 presence of his more brilliant later masterpieces; and even the 
 Ellison and the William Smith gifts at the South Kensington 
 Muscum contained only one important example of the period—the 
 
 Warkworth Castle of 1799. But latterly nearly all the great draw- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ings of his Girtinesque period and the best of his early oil 
 pictures—the works, in fact, which made his first fame, and 
 raised him to the rank of Academician—have appeared here and 
 there in sale-rooms, and at exhibitions of deceased masters. The 
 Winter Exhibition of 1887 at Burlington House contained some 
 of the finest of the drawings. There was the Norham Castle of 
 1798, the Bridge over the Usk and The Abbey Pool of 1799, the 
 Fonthill of 1800, and the Edinburgh and Kilchurn Castle of 1802. 
 Of these none is nobler, nor now in better condition, than The 
 Abbey Pool. The Fonthill has become ‘foxy;’ but all of them 
 have a breadth and simplicity which is seldom found in his later 
 work. The Kvlchurn is, as Mr. Hamerton says, in regard to the 
 liberties it takes with nature, ‘a Turner, and nothing but a Turner;’ 
 but it is a Turner modified in feeling and style by the example of 
 Girtin. 
 
 The Norham Castle is the most celebrated. It was repeated 
 in the ‘Liber Studiorum’ and the ‘Rivers of England ;’ and it was 
 to this drawing that Turner referred many years after, when, 
 while making sketches for ‘Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque 
 Scenery of Scotland, with Descriptive Illustrations by Sir Walter 
 
 Scott, 1826, he one day took off his hat to Norham Castle, and 
 
 
 
 Cadell, the publisher, who was with him, expressed surprise. ‘Oh!’ 
 
 
 
 said Turner, ‘I made a drawing or painting of Norham several 
 years since, It took; and from that day to this I have had as 
 much to do as my hands could execute.’ Probably the effect of 
 the sun behind the solemn bulk of mound and ruin, their outlines 
 blurred with light, grand and indistinct against the morning sky, 
 and the watery foreground rich with varied reflections, gave the 
 drawing the charm of novelty as well as beauty. Yet this class 
 of effect appears to have been first attempted, not by Turner, but 
 
 by Girtin ; for it is reported of the latter that one day he had— 
 
 ‘Sketched a picturesque t of an ancient town. He drew the outline 
 
 
 
 at broad day, and had purposed to colour the scene as it then appeared ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 but in passing near the spot at the going down of the sun, and perceiving 
 
 the buildings under the influence of twilight had assumed so unexpected | 
 a mass of shadow in the fading light of the sky, and that the reflections | 
 in the water still increased the vastness of the mass; moreover, that the | 
 arches of a bridge opposed their distinct forms, dark also, to a bright | 
 | gleam on the horizon; he was so poss ssed with the solemn grandeur of 
 
 | the composition, which had gained so much in sentiment by the change of 
 ight, that he determined to make an attempt at imitation, and by ardent 
 
 » 
 
 pplication accomplished the object.’ 
 
 | This anecdote belongs to the earlier part of Girtin’s career, for 
 
 the writer adds: ‘This piece was wrought with bold and masterly 
 
 
 
 | | execution, and led to that daring style of effect which he subse- 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 uently practised with so much success.’ 
 So far then, and no farther at present, can we trace Turner's | 
 | career, leaving him still the disciple of Girtin, but yet, as it were, 
 passing even Girtin by, as he passed so many others, to a greater | 
 | | future of his own. Much must be left unsaid of Girtin, of his 
 | influence on Turner, and his great part in the development of water- | 
 | colour painting in both ¢echnigue and feeling. If in comparing the | 
 | two artists it may seem to some that I have weighted the balance 
 in favour of Girtin, I may plead at least that Turner can afford it, 
 | for if the whole of his work down to 1803 were abolished, and the 
 | memory of it destroyed, his fame would scarcely be prejudiced | 
 
 | one tittle; but all I have written is but a feather’s weight in 
 
 
 
 | comparison with the following few lines from Mr. Ruskin, which, 
 
 
 
 | by the kindness of Mr. Francis Pierrepoint Barnard, I am allowed | 
 | to print :— 
 | ‘Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, | 
 | ©16¢h June, 1887. | 
 | ‘DEAR SIR,— | 
 ‘I have the deepest and the fondest regard for your great-grand- | 
 
 / father’s work, holding it to be entirely authoritative and faultless as a type, 
 istic feeling and 
 
 
 
 not only of pure water-colour execution, but of pure ar 
 insight into what is noblest and capable of enduring dignity in familiar | 
 
 
 
 * © Somerset House Gazette,’ i. 81. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Francia, Bonington, and Cotman. 
 
 subjects. He is often as impressive to me as Nature herself; nor do I 
 doubt that Turner owed more to his teaching and companionship than to 
 his own genius in the first years of his life. 
 ‘ Believe me, 
 ‘Your faithful Servant, 
 ‘Joun RusKIN.’ 
 
 It has been possible hitherto to trace with more or less accuracy 
 the successive stages by which water-colour painting was raised to 
 a distinct branch of art, but after this result had once been finally 
 attained by the united efforts of Girtin and Turner the road is no 
 longer single and straight. ‘Power, brilliancy, and truth, were so 
 evidently the result of the new manner, wrote the late Richard 
 Redgrave, ‘that it soon superseded the old one,’ Everyone now 
 ‘had the seed, and the result was, that nearly all the band of clever 
 and enthusiastic young artists who gathered at Dr. Monro’s, and 
 many others also, began to find a means to express their individuality 
 and to interpret nature in their own way. It is astonishing how 
 much alike the early work of many of these artists is, and how soon 
 after the change in method was accomplished each began to assert 
 his personality. They soon formed a real and original school of 
 
 landscape, and also to feel their strength as a body. The result 
 
 
 
 was the foundation of ‘The Society of Painters in Water-colours’ 
 which held its first Exhibition in April, 1805, at rooms in Lower 
 Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. The original members of this (now 
 Royal) Society were :—G. Barret, J. Christall, W. S. Gilpin, J. Glover, 
 W. Havell, R. Hills, J. Holworthy, J. C. Nattes, F. Nicholson, N. Pocock, 
 W. H. Pyne, S. Rigaud, S. Shelley, J. Varley, C. Varley, W. F. Wells, 
 It is evident that in treating a large body of men all engaged in deve- 
 loping the resources of the same art, all starting at about the same 
 point at about the same time, though of different ages, it is impossible 
 
 to observe anything like a strict chronological order. 
 
 ‘The growth of the art,’ wrote the late Mr. Richard Redgrave, ‘after the 
 
 foundation of the new Society and the opening of their separate exhibition, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 66 The Earher English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 dy, 
 
 new mode of treatment once adopted, many minor excellence 
 
 was rapid and steady, and improvements in execution were continuous. The 
 
 
 
 peedily followed. 
 
 
 
 It is asserted on competent authority that some of the principal of these were 
 due to the genius of Turner. The mode of taking out lights, for instance, 
 from the masses of local colour by means of bread is undoubtedly due to him, 
 and is said to have had a startling effect on his contemporaries when works so 
 treated were first exhibited. Washing, in order to obtain a granulated surface, 
 
 
 
 practised so largely by Robson and others; stippling, carried to excess by the 
 
 cattle-painter, Hills, but of great value when applied with discretion and not 
 
 
 
 in excess, and many other varied executive processes, were introduced within 
 
 a few years after the foundation of the new Society, and if not all due to Turner 
 
 
 
 were certainly incorporated most suc: 
 — Catalogue of Water-colour Paintings in the National Gallery. 
 
 ssfully into his bold and liberal practice.’ 
 
 
 
 The order in which we now take the more celebrated of the 
 water-colour artists who flourished in the first. quarter of the present 
 century is of comparatively little importance, but the name of 
 Frangois Louis Thomas Francia (1772-1839) will at least afford a 
 link between the old and new, for he was a member of that early 
 Sketching Society formed by Girtin, of which mention has already 
 been made, and he was afterwards a member of the Water-colour 
 Society. The share he had in the development of the school is 
 difficult to estimate, but it seems probable that it was larger than 
 is generally supposed. He was certainly an artist of great’ natural 
 gifts, and he was either the same age or the senior of Girtin, He 
 was a Frenchman by birth, and was born at Calais, December 
 21st, 1772, but early in life he settled in London and began to 
 exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1795. In that year and the 
 following twenty-six he exhibited eighty-five pictures, or drawings, 
 at Somerset House. For some time he was Secretary of the Water- 
 colour Society, and was painter in water-colours to the Duchess of 
 York. In 1816 he was an unsuccessful candidate for an Associate- 
 ship of the Royal Academy, and in the following year he returned 
 to Calais, where he died in 1839, This is nearly all that is 
 
 recorded of Francia, His drawings are not often to be met with, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 "ANOS .LSVOO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Lrrancia, Bonington, and Cotman. 67 
 
 and he was either a small producer or his works have been sold for 
 those of other artists. Some of them bear a strong resemblance to 
 those of Girtin. His subjects were mostly of coast scenes with 
 shipping, of which he was an admirable draughtsman. There are 
 several in the South Kensington Museum, ranging from 1799 to 
 1827, all worthy of study, and some remarkable for their fine colour 
 and poetical feeling. In the British Museum, also, he is represented 
 by some very interesting drawings once belonging to Mr. Henderson. 
 
 Two are masterly sketches in monochrome on grey paper, heightened 
 
 
 
 with white; others are small and very refined studies of tone in 
 pencil. Another in full but delicate colour, more like a Turner 
 
 than a Girtin, is a shore scene at Calais on a breezy day, the sun 
 
 
 
 shining in fitful gleams through a light sky upon the pearly, dancing 
 waves, If it cannot be said of Francia that he was a great genius, 
 he was certainly an artist of rare taste, refinement, and skill, and a 
 true student of nature, who deserves a very honourable place 
 among the masters of his school. 
 
 It is probable that Francia had no little share in the development 
 of Richard Parkes Bonington (1801-1828), to whom at least the name 
 of genius should not be denied. He spent most of his life in France 
 and the greatness of his merit has not till recently been fully under- 
 stood in England. It was ignorance rather than want of taste that 
 has made England (in the words of M. Chesneau) ‘too lightly 
 yield to France the glory of this young genius.’ It is true that 
 Mr. Ruskin, in a note to this passage has said that ‘if the young 
 genius had learned the first rules of perspective, and never seen 
 either Paris or Venice, it had been extremely better for him ;’ but 
 
 this is a hard saying, and difficult of proof, which need not interfere 
 
 
 
 with our appreciation of those beautiful drawings of French archi- 
 tecture and exquisite pictures of Italian light and colour which he 
 managed _to execute during the few years of his life. 
 
 It is one of the most remarkable facts about Bonington that, 
 
 though he received his art-education in France, there is little that 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 68 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 is French about his art. This would be still more remarkable if we 
 accepted without qualification the statement of M. Chesneau that 
 he studied in the French Schools from the age of fifteen. He is 
 known to have studied at the Louvre at this time, but that is not 
 quite the same thing, especially as he was then copying pictures 
 in water-colours with a skill which surprised Delacroix. This water- 
 colour art he could not have learnt in the French Schools. He 
 learnt it from Francia, who learnt it in England ; so that the base 
 of his art-education must have been English. He afterwards 
 became a pupil at the Institute, and drew for a while in the atelier 
 of Baron Gros; but his art was never Gallicised, but remained both 
 in colour and sentiment entirely English. Though he was but a 
 youth, it was not the French School which influenced him, but he 
 that influenced the French School. His works have no affinity 
 with those of any French artist who could have been his master ; 
 but they have a very strong affinity with those of many English 
 artists——with Girtin’s, and Francia’s, and Turner's, and Copley 
 
 Fielding’s, and Collins’. When you see a fine drawing or picture 
 
 
 
 which reminds you of one of these artists, but ‘with a difference, 
 it is very likely to be a Bonington; but a drawing by Bonington 
 will never be mistaken for that of any artist of the French School; 
 and when in 1826 he exhibited for the first time in England, his 
 pictures (they were of the French coast and exhibited at the British 
 Institution) were said to be the work of Collins, one of the most 
 distinctly British of all painters. He seems to me to belong not 
 only to the English School, but to the specially English section of it 
 —the water-colour section; for though he painted in oils, he did not 
 do so till 1824 or 1825 (three or four years before his death), and his 
 oil pictures aim at the pure colour and luminous qualities of water- 
 colour. Yet historically he is more important in relation to France 
 than England, He may be regarded as an offset of the English 
 
 school planted in France, whose life was spent in developing, not 
 
 
 
 the art of his native country, but that of the land in which he 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BONINGTON, 
 
 Re 
 
 BY R, 
 
 GROUP. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 francia, Bonington, and Cotman. 69 
 
 
 
 | 
 | 
 _—_————— arene = = 
 
 resided. Constable was no doubt the most potent foreign force in 
 the foundation of the modern French school of landscape; but 
 Bonington may be said to have led the way to the triumph of 
 English landscape art at the Salon of 1824, when Constable, Copley 
 Fielding, and he were all awarded medals. It should be remembered 
 that some years before this Bonington had won a reputation in 
 Paris. He had sketched on the Seine, as Turner had sketched on the 
 Thames; and the novelty and beauty of his water-colour drawings 
 had from the first procured them a ready sale, In 1822 he had 
 exhibited at the Salon, and obtained a premium from the Société des 
 
 Amis des Arts. Moreover, in France, as in England, there was topo- 
 
 
 
 graphical drawing to do, and no one did it so picturesquely as 
 
 
 
 Bonington. His finest work of this kind is to be found among the 
 ithographs of Baron Taylor's ‘Voyage Pittoresque dans l’ancienne 
 France,’ 
 It was probably about 1825 that Bonington went to Italy, where 
 he made a number of sketches in Venice, Bologna, and elsewhere, 
 remarkable for their pure bright colour and masterly execution. 
 
 Between this visit and his death in 1828, he painted his greatest 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ictures in oil. Among his contributions to the Salon of 1827 
 
 
 
 
 
 were two grand. views of Venice and two celebrated scenes 
 from French history—francis I. and the Queen of Navarre, and 
 Flenry IT. receiving the Spanish Ambassador, the last of which was 
 bought by the late Lord Hertford at Lord Seymour's sale in Paris 
 for 49,000 francs; and if only to show that the high merit of his 
 pictures is now recognised in his native country, it may be mentioned 
 that at the ‘Novar’ sale at Christie's, in 1878, The Fish Market, 
 Boulogne, and The Grand Canal, Venice, brought 3500/. apiece. The 
 latter and the Henry I//. were at the Royal Academy in 1828, but 
 he died in the same year, and what effect they produced soon passed 
 away. Since then it may be urged that there have been few oppor- 
 tunities for the British public to become acquainted with the rare 
 
 quality of his work. He is poorly represented in all our national 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ize: The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 | collections, though there is a very interesting sketch-book and some 
 
 | brilliant, but slight, drawings by him in the British Museum. If 
 his early death and the circumstances of his life have prevented 
 | him from taking any very eminent place in our art-history, his rank 
 is among the best, whether he be considered as a painter in water- 
 | colour or a painter in oils. Such rank must, however grudgingly, 
 be at last awarded him, if we mean by ‘best’ choiceness of gift 
 
 rather than quantity of achievement. 
 
 If Bonington was the pupil of Francia, John Sell Cotman (1782- 
 1842) was his fellow-student and a fellow-member of Girtin’s 
 Sketching Society. He was born at Norwich, and lived there and 
 at Yarmouth for many years of his life, and is regarded genera ly 
 | as one of the so-called ‘Norwich School.’ Nevertheless, in his 
 education and practice he belongs rather to London, and his true 
 masters were Turner and Girtin rather than John Crome (1769- 
 1821). The name of the latter artist should not, however, be 
 forgotten in connexion with Cotman, nor yet in connexion with 
 water-colour art, for Crome practised the latter with much skill as a 
 
 sketcher, using it mainly for studies from nature. In this, as in the 
 
 
 
 practice of etching for the same purpose, he seems to have been self- 
 directed, and though his water-colours are slight and weak in colour 
 they are distinguished by a breadth of treatment and a painter’s 
 feeling, which, in his case, can scarcely be traced to the example ot 
 any then living artist. Cotman, however, came to London when about 
 sixteen or seventeen, and made the acquaintance of Turner, Girtin, 
 De Wint, and others of the group of artists who met at Dr. Monro’s. 
 The engraving, after his drawing of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe 
 at Bristol (see Mr. F. Short’s Mezzotint) shows a feeling in the 
 treatment of his subject not unlike that of Girtin as displayed in 
 the latter artist’s drawing of Bridgnorth; but in Cotman’s case 
 perhaps more than that of others the influence of Turner and Girtin 
 is equally balanced, both contributing to the formation of his own 
 
 marked individuality as an artist. He had specially that love of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 ‘HOIMYON ‘HLVIH CIOHY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Francia, Bonington, and Cotman. 73 
 
 largeness and breadth which was one of the characteristics of Girtin, 
 but his colour is often very like that of Turner; and his feeling for 
 
 elegance of form and for classic and romantic sentiment in compo- 
 
 
 
 sition, shows that his imagination was affected, as Turner’s was, by 
 poetic ideals of landscape art. This appears most plainly, perhaps, 
 in some of the plates of his ‘Liber Studiorum,’ a small book of 
 soft etchings, varied in style and feeling, which he published in 
 
 1838; but the plate from his ‘Liber’ which has been selected for 
 
 
 
 reproduction in these pages is rather an example of his picturesque 
 interpretation of familiar scenes, and of that breadth of treatment 
 already mentioned. 
 
 He had not indeed much time in his busy life to cultivate the 
 more imaginative side of his genius. In 1807 he returned to 
 Norwich, and set up as a drawing-master and artist, painting portraits 
 as well as landscapes. He married early, and his increasing family 
 made great calls upon his industry. Those were not days when a 
 water-colour artist could command high prices; and his drawing 
 lessons were his principal source of income, notwithstanding that his 
 production of original work was enormous. In 1808 the Norwich 
 Exhibition contained no less than sixty-seven of his works. Another 
 source of income was found, after a few years, in the publication by 
 subscription of etchings of architecture. It is probable that work 
 of this kind was more congenial to him than to most artists of 
 imagination ; for he had a distinct taste for ‘antiquities, and a feeling 
 for the picturesque qualities of Gothic architecture, His first volume 
 was published in 1811, and consisted of twenty-four plates of 
 ancient buildings in various parts of England. Then came ‘ Speci- 
 mens of Norman and Gothic Architecture in the County of 
 Norfolk’ (1817), ‘A Series of Etchings illustrative of the Archi- 
 tectural Antiquities of Norfolk’ (1818), and ‘Engravings of the 
 most remarkable of the Sepulchral Brasses of Norfolk’ (1819), In 
 1822 was published ‘Architectural Antiquities of Normandy,’ with 
 
 letterpress by his friend and patron Dawson Turner. A large 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 portion of his working life for many years must have been devoted 
 to these etchings, which are executed in a free and masterly 
 manner, somewhat in the style of Piranesi, whom he took for a 
 model. 
 
 In 1825 Cotman was elected an Associate of the Water-colour 
 
 Society, and from this year till 1839 he was a constant contributor 
 
 FROM COTMAN’S ‘ LIBER STUDIORUM.’ (SOFT GROUND ETCHING.) 
 
 
 
 to their exhibitions, sending views of France and Norfolk, land- 
 scapes and sketches of figures; and in 1834 he obtained, greatly 
 through the persistent championship of Turner, the post of 
 drawing-master to King’s College, London. 
 
 Of the art of Cotman and his influence on the water-colour 
 school, it is difficult even yet to say the last word, and scarcely 
 the first would have been spoken if it were not for Mr. Wedmore 
 in one of the most careful of his ‘Studies in English Art’ To 
 
 me he seems to have never completely expressed himself as a 
 
 landscape-painter, being hindered by the quantity of his archi- 
 
 
 
 tectural works, his duties as a teacher, and, lastly, the very variety 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Francia, Bonington, and Cotman. 
 
 75 
 
 of his sympathy both for nature and art. It can certainly be said 
 of him that he was a first-rate draughtsman of architecture and 
 shipping, and a fine and original colourist. Mr. Wedmore notices 
 the Norman journeys as a ‘marked changing time for Cotman, 
 when ‘he became possessed with the wish to have more of com- 
 position in his work;’ he notes, from 1808 to 1818, a change from 
 sober browns to ‘goodly yellows, not violent but golden, and then 
 ‘to the golden yellows that are of his own and Norfolk, Cotman 
 adds,’ as in a drawing of a castle in Normandy, ‘blues that are 
 
 pure and exquisite, liquid and intense. And he weds them so 
 
 
 
 SHIPS RIDING IN A GALE, FRANCIA, (PENCIL.) 
 
 in this Norman landscape of towering castle and sleeping water 
 —they are such full chords, making such profound harmonies 
 that one thinks he must have been to Venice in his dreams 
 and seen Giorgione. His colour is, however, often unpleasantly 
 hot. 
 
 Lastly, it may be said that though his drawings and pictures 
 (and he executed several fine pictures in oil) differ greatly in 
 style and feeling, and also in merit, they are nearly always re- 
 markable for largeness of design and breadth of light and colour. 
 His great fear seems to have been to render his subject poor and 
 undignified by too numerous divisions and overwork. It was his 
 principle to ‘leave out, but add nothing, and he ‘left out’ with 
 great daring, sometimes carrying simplicity almost to baldness, 
 
 especially in his clouds and wall spaces, which have often only 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 76 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 sufficient detail to suggest substance and form. He sought for 
 the same merit in his colour, preserving pure and unbroken the 
 
 prevalent hue of his masses. In this characteristic he may be 
 
 regarded with Francia and Bonington as an artistic descendant of 
 
 Girtin, 
 
 
 

 
 VII 
 
 FIGURE PAINTERS: 
 STOTHARD, BLAKE, CATTERMOLE, &c. 
 
 ce. practice of water - colour painting has had so much 
 
 greater influence upon landscape than upon figure-painting, 
 that I have hitherto said little about the latter. The peculiar 
 qualities of water-colour upon paper—the ground that permeates 
 the colour like light, the absorbent character of paper which 
 favours infinite gradation and perfect fusion of tint, the surface 
 which can be altered in texture by skilful manipulation—all these 
 are favourable for the rendering of atmospheric effects, so subtle 
 and complicated that oil can only approach them with difficulty, 
 and with a sacrifice of its special qualities. In figure-painting 
 these properties of water-colour are not of the same relative value. 
 Force, solidity, and precision, are of the first importance in figure- 
 painting (or, at least, were so regarded at the time of which I write), 
 and these could be attained with greater facility in oil, In execut- 
 ing works of large size oil has also manifest advantages ; and though 
 latterly M. Meissonier, Professor Herkomer, and other artists of 
 
 distinction, have produced large figure pictures in water-colour, the 
 
 
 
 attempts have been rare, and their success, from lack of richness 
 and depth of tone, has been necessarily but comparative. 
 
 Yet there are figure subjects of a certain class and size in 
 which the peculiar properties of water-colour tell, In miniature 
 portraits, for instance, where the extreme refinements of clear and 
 pearly complexion, or the inner light of the brightest eye, are to 
 be represented ‘in small.” It would have taxed the power of Van 
 
 Eyck himself to have produced the effect as of a fine Cosway. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 In small genre subjects, where refinements of clear light are 
 
 essential to beauty, water at least will hold its own with oil; and 
 
 
 
 
 
 not to speak of its value for sketching purposes, its brightness and 
 purity will always favour its employment for small designs of a 
 decorative or symbolical character. 
 
 The water-colour genre painting is, however, a comparatively 
 recent development; and the earlier English water-colourists who 
 attempted figure subjects did not, as a rule, get beyond what may 
 more properly be called coloured drawings than pictures. The 
 roll of these, as compared to that of the landscape-painters, is a 
 small one; but since the days of Paul Sandby, to go no farther 
 back, it has never been empty. During the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, semi-classical compositions in the elegant 
 manner of Cipriani were fashionable among amateurs as well as 
 professionals; and scenes of more or less fancy genre in the 
 manner of Gainsborough, Watteau, and more affected artists, were 
 produced in numbers. The works of English lyric and idyllic 
 poets—especially Thomson, Blair, and Beattie—supplied the senti- 
 ment and often the subject of many others. Nor were more 
 dramatic and severer subjects neglected. Shakespeare, Chaucer, 
 Spenser, and even the Bible, inspired these designers; and it may 
 be said that there was no side of English art from the ‘High Art’ 
 of Barry and Fuseli to the pastorals of Morland that was not 
 reflected in small by artists who used water-colours to shade and 
 tint their designs. Viewed in relation to the progress of water- 
 colour painting these works were for the most part like the 
 drawings of the landscape ‘draughtsman ’—they were monochromes 
 or monochromes tinted—and it would be impossible here even to 
 mention all of the artists who at this (as at all other periods) 
 used water-colour to tint or shade their designs and studies of 
 figures. The line and the wash are not of less use in one kind 
 
 of design than another, and have been employed not only by 
 
 
 
 painters, but by sculptors and engravers. No one, perhaps, ever 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, &c. 
 
 
 
 used them with more dexterity than Flaxman; but this is not the 
 place to treat his genius. For much the same reason no due 
 review of the merits of the book-illustrators as such can be given 
 here, though most, perhaps all of them, used water-colour in pre- 
 paring their designs for the engraver; nor yet of the caricaturists, 
 though at least one of them, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), 
 used the brush with much skill. 
 
 Yet it is impossible without regret to pass over so lightly 
 those hundreds of designs which during the last quarter of the 
 
 eighteenth century and the first quarter of this illustrated nearly 
 
 
 
 every British poet and novelist, and many a foreign and classic 
 author besides. If the history of design in England be ever 
 written, the book-illustrator will assume a more prominent place 
 than is usually assigned to him. A great deal of what is strongest, 
 most living, and most national, in English art lies between the 
 covers of books. In the history of modern painting our portrait- 
 painters and our landscape- painters more than hold their own 
 against those of other nations, but the same can scarcely be said of 
 our classical and historical painters. It is not in our galleries, but 
 in our books, that we must seek for this kind of strength. Can 
 any nation produce anything to excel, or even to parallel, Flax- 
 man’s designs to Homer, Stothard’s to the ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress, or 
 Blake’s to ‘Job?’ Nay, if we take the illustrators of novels, 
 from Stothard to Cruikshank, are there many painters who can 
 compare with them in beauty and force of design, in fertility of 
 invention, in expression, in passion; in a word, in the most 
 
 intellectual and spiritual qualities of art ? 
 
 
 
 But water-colour painting is the present theme, and I can only 
 
 
 
 take account of a few of those designers who illustrate the progress 
 of the art. It commenced, as has been indicated, in the colouring 
 of designs generally drawn in pencil, and the most popular sub- 
 jects were those which are so well known from the engravings of 
 
 Bartolozzi and his school, graceful semi-classical allegories of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Paznters 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 | Cupids and Nymphs, Gods and Goddesses, Fauns and Satyrs, or 
 
 elegant pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe, Strephon and Urania. It 
 
 was a fashion in the service of which all artists—amateur and 
 
 professional, painters in oil as well as painters in water-colour— | 
 were engaged; but the introducer of it, or, at least, the greatest 
 stimulator of it, in England, was Giovanni Battista Cipriani, R.A. 
 (1727-1785), an Italian, who came to England with Sir William 
 Chambers and Wilton, the sculptor, in 1755, and ‘remained there, | 
 | producing numberless drawings full of elegance and graceful in- 
 | vention, until his death. Cipriani, his friend Bartolozzi (an elegant | 
 designer as well as a fine engraver), and Angelica Kauffmann, the 
 leaders of this school, were all foreigners; but one of the best of 
 this class of designer was an Englishwoman, an amateur of birth 
 and distinction—Lady Diana, or as she was usually called, Lady 
 Di Beauclerk (1734-1808). She was the eldest daughter of 
 
 | Charles Spencer, second Duke of Marlborough, was married first 
 
 
 
 in 1757 to Frederick St. John, second Viscount Bolingbroke, from 
 
 whom she was divorced in 1768; and secondly, two days after 
 
 
 
 her divorce, to Topham Beauclerk. Her most important work was 
 the illustration of Dryden’s ‘Fables, published by Bensley in 1797, 
 but she also illustrated the Hon. W. R. Spencer’s translation of 
 Biirger’s ‘Leonora, and produced many charming designs of 
 amorini, &c., which were engraved by Bartolozzi. A saying of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds is reported that ‘many of her ladyship’s draw- 
 ings might be studied as models;’ and the estimation in which 
 her grace, fancy, and skill, were held in her day, though exag- 
 gerated perhaps, was not without justification, as is sufficiently | 
 proved by Bartolozzi’s engravings, and a large and elegant 
 
 | drawing—Group of Gipsies and Female Rustics—now in the South 
 
 
 
 Kensington Museum. Horace Walpole speaks of her designs in 
 
 terms of unbounded admiration. Her first attempt in the art 
 
 G 
 
 of illustration consisted of seven designs ‘in sut-water’ for his 
 
 
 
 | 
 | | ‘Mysterious Mother” To these he devoted a closet at Strawberry | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, &c. 81 
 
 Hill, christened ‘The Beauclerk Closet,’ where they hung on 
 Indian blue damask. He wrote, ‘Salvator Rosa and Guido could 
 not surpass their expression and beauty.’ This was from Horace 
 Walpole perhaps the highest measure of praise, and he calls 
 them in other passages ‘incomparable’ and ‘sublime,’ 
 
 Another large coloured drawing at South Kensington, which 
 is a good illustration of the style and poetical sentiment of the 
 time, is The Sybarite, by John Downman, A.R.A., dated 1805, an 
 illustration of a poem by Isaac D’Israeli, It shows a great deal 
 of skill in the use of water-colour in tinting on a large scale. 
 Downman’s designs of this character are not strong, but they have 
 the pleasing elegance which was in vogue in his time; and he was 
 reckoned of sufficient importance by Boydell to receive a com- 
 mission to paint Rosalind giving the Chain to Orlando, for the 
 Shakespeare Gallery. His chief excellence lay, however, in his 
 portraits, mostly profiles in pencil tinted. Downman died in 1824, 
 
 but the date of his birth is not recorded. He belongs to a large 
 
 
 
 class of artists whose mainstay was portrait, but who from time to 
 time, with more or less success, essayed domestic subjects and 
 illustrations of the poets. One of these was Thomas Heaphy 
 (1775-1835), a man of much talent, whose small portraits in 
 water-colours were beautifully executed and sometimes set in 
 highly finished landscapes, He appears to have been of a restless 
 disposition. The son of a dyer, he commenced life as an engraver. 
 He then took to portrait-painting and joined the Water-Colour 
 Society in 1807, but he left it after a few years, He visited the 
 3ritish camp in the Peninsula and painted portraits of the officers; 
 and on his return founded the Society of British Artists, of which 
 he was the first President. Then he went to Italy, and when 
 he came back formed a new Water-Colour Society, which appears 
 to have had but a short life. His works are seldom mentioned, 
 but those which I have seen are very sl 
 
 
 
 kilful, highly finished, and 
 rich in colour. There are two drawings by him in the South 
 
 y 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 Kensington Museum, one of which is a clever genre compos 
 called The Wounded Leg, or The Village Doctress. Wis most cele- 
 brated work was a drawing of Hastings Fish Market, which was 
 exhibited in 1809 and sold for 500/, a sum then unprecedented in 
 the history of water-colours. Heaphy was portrait-painter to the 
 Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. 
 
 No such distinction befell Joshua Cristall (1767-1847), one of 
 the earliest of our water-colour artists who depicted genre subjects, 
 perhaps the first to do so in a purely simple and natural manner. 
 He was also, perhaps, the first who can be said to have ‘painted’ 
 such subjects in water-colour. In the South Kensington Museum 
 are several of his works, including a large composition wrought 
 
 throughout in colour, full of figures well drawn, and evidently the 
 
 
 
 result of careful study from life. The subject is the same as that 
 of Heaphy’s masterpiece, viz., the Fish Market at Hastings. 
 Cristall was the son of a Cornish sailor, the master of a small 
 trading vessel, and began life as a china-painter under Turner, at 
 Burslem. His earlier works are classical in subject. He was one 
 of the foundation members of the Water-Colour Society in 1805, 
 and its first President after its reconstitution in 1821. In the 
 British Museum are a few drawings by this manly, original, and 
 unaffected artist, who may be regarded as the founder of the 
 English School of Water-Colour genre. He was not so great a 
 colourist as Cattermole, but he laid on his colour boldly and 
 
 freely like a painter, not as a mere aus 
 
 
 
 ary to his outline. 
 Nothing can be more direct or simple than his method, as 
 exemplified in the studies reproduced. 
 
 Cristall’s execution was more solid, his sense of light and air 
 more realised, and his colour fuller, than Wheatley’s. He was 
 
 also much more unaffected; but Wheatley had a slight prettines 
 
 
 
 and a true, if somewhat insipid, grace of his own, which made his 
 little rustic scenes and domestic dramas popular in his day, and 
 
 preserve them from being wholly uninteresting now. Francis 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "TIVISIND WOAHSOL Ad ‘saldaLs 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, 
 
 
 
 Wheatley (1747-1801) was, however, chiefly a painter in oils, and 
 these remarks apply mainly to his water-colours, the subjects of 
 which, to quote Mr. Wedmore’s happy words, were the ‘Ophelias 
 and Mirandas of a beatified peasantry” ‘They are mostly drawn 
 with the pen, the shadows washed with Indian ink, and the whole 
 slightly tinted,’ but it is often very difficult to draw the line where 
 tinting ends and painting begins, and sometimes in drawings which 
 were intended only for the engraver there are more traces of a 
 painter’s feeling than in more ambitious performances intended 
 for exhibition as pictures. If this is the case with some of 
 Wheatley’s drawings, it is still more so with those of an artist who 
 was only known as an engraver, and only used colour in tiny 
 studies and drawings made for translation by himself into black 
 and white. This was Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), the celebrated 
 wood-engraver and designer, one of the most thoroughly original 
 and English of British artists. As far as the public is concerned, 
 his skill in the use of water-colours is a comparatively recent dis- 
 covery, dating from an exhibition at the Fine Art Society in 1881 ; 
 but the gift by Miss Isabella Bewick, in 1882, to the British Museum 
 
 of a number of his original drawings has put it into the power of 
 
 every one to study it. The gift comprises many beautiful drawings 
 of feathers—studies of colour, form, and texture, not only very 
 faithful, but showing wonderful skill and resource in the use of his 
 materials. Of the first excellence are the studies of the plumage 
 of the bustard, and the completed drawings of the robin, the 
 blackbird, and the thrush. The most precious of these little gems 
 
 are, however, the designs for many of the well-known tail-pieces 
 
 
 
 in monochrome some, others tinted. They often contain beautiful 
 
 
 
 little landscape backgrounds, full of light and air, and truly sug- 
 gestive and harmonious, if not complete in colour. One of the 
 
 finest in execution is the fisherman with bent rod, relieved against 
 
 
 
 background of rock and foliage, and all lovers of Bewick’s cuts 
 dhe 
 
 
 
 find some of their favourites here increased in charm. 
 
 
 
 will 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 84. The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 man holding on to the cow’s tail in the river, the skating scene, the 
 monkey turning the spit, the gulls sitting on the rising wave, the 
 man and the packhorse, the old woman and the swarm, the boys 
 riding on tombstones, the man hanging on a tree—these, and many 
 more as good, are to be seen in the Print-room of the British 
 Museum, and quite entitle Bewick to a place among the earlier 
 English painters in water-colour. 
 
 One at least of Bewick’s pupils is also worthy of mention in 
 connexion with water-colour. Poor Luke Clennell (1781-1849), 
 the admirable wood-engraver and spirited illustrator of Fielding 
 and Smollett, whose drawings for ‘The British Novelists’ are in 
 the Art Library of South Kensington, was a very gifted artist, 
 who used water-colour with great skill, In the British Museum is 
 a portrait of Sir Wm. Domville, Bart. in pencil, the flesh-tints 
 excellently touched in colour, and at South Kensington is a very 
 clever drawing of a saw-pit. His most important work was a 
 sketch of the Charge of the Lifeguards at Waterloo, which gained 
 the premium of 150 guineas offered by the British Institution. A 
 few years afterwards (1817) his mind gave way just when full 
 employment and fame seemed to be assured to him. 
 
 Of other ‘ book-illustrators’ the only ones who can be mentioned 
 here are the greatest of all, Stothard and Blake. Though, perhaps, 
 neither of them had any great influence on the more modern school 
 of water-colour painting, they were not only fine designers, but fine 
 colourists, and both used water-colours with singular skill and a 
 clear sense of the peculiar qualities of their materials. Thomas 
 
 Stothard, R.A. (1755-1834), began life as apprentice to a draughts- 
 
 
 
 man of patterns for brocaded silks, and thus became early practised 
 in the decorative arrangement of colour and the use of a water- 
 colourist’s materials. He employed his leisure in making designs 
 
 in illustration of the poets, and some of them having attracted the 
 
 
 
 attention of Mr. Harrison, the proprietor of the ‘ Novelists’ Maga- 
 
 zine, he was encouraged to pursue this line of art, although he 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, &c. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 does not appear to have been regularly employed on the Magazine 
 till July 1780. He entered the schools of the Royal Academy in 
 1777, and began to exhibit there in 1778 with a Holy Family, but 
 after that his contributions were chiefly illustrations of the poets 
 and novelists. It is probable that most of these were in oil, but 
 some at least were in water-colour, and, in 1781 and 1782, consisted 
 of his designs for the Poetical and Novelists’ Magazines. 
 
 It is unnecessary here to enumerate these and the hundreds of 
 other ‘book-illustrations’ which he produced in his long life. Who 
 does not know the grace and spirit of them, their beautiful com- 
 position, their gentle humour, their unfailing taste? Who among 
 those who care for the art of their country do not at least possess 
 a few of them, from ‘Peregrine Pickle’ or ‘Clarissa Harlowe ;’ from 
 ‘Tristram Shandy’ or ‘Sir Charles Grandison ;’ from the ‘ Pilgrim’s 
 
 Progress’ or the ‘Spectator ;’ from Spenser or Boccaccio? In 
 designing for the engraver Stothard habitually used water-colours ; 
 sometimes the drawings were in Indian ink, but often they were 
 coloured with singular sweetness and richness, in hues bright and 
 pure as his own spirit, and in sympathy with the gay and tender 
 subjects in which he most delighted. In the British Museum 
 there is a drawing of his (probably from Boccaccio) in which fair 
 ladies in gay dresses are plucking flowers in a garden—a perfect 
 bouquet itself of sweet forms and colours. 
 
 If Stothard’s use of colour was decorative and symbolical, still 
 more was that of William Blake (1757-1827), who received his 
 first training as an artist from the formal hand of James Basire, the 
 engraver, and employed the first years of his professional life chiefly 
 in interpreting the designs of others. Between 1779 and 1783 he 
 engraved many book-illustrations, chiefly after Stothard, whose sweet 
 and flowing pencil was a strange contrast to his own. But he 
 engraved his own too, including one as early as 1773, which bore the 
 mystic title of Jose¢h of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion. 
 
 It was in 1788 that he completed the ‘Songs of Innocence,’ the first 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 86 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 of those celebrated books of his in which text and decoration and 
 design were all combined on one plate, bitten with acid, so that the 
 lines and letters stood out in relief. The process was revealed to 
 him, he said, by his deceased brother. When the impressions had 
 been taken from the plates they were coloured by the hand of himself 
 and his wife. Poetry, design, and colour have, perhaps, never been 
 so harmoniously combined. It is hard to speak of one without the 
 others, but there is not much left to be said of Blake either as a 
 poet, an engraver, or a colourist. Though neglected in his life, 
 except by a few devoted friends like Flaxman and Linnell, full 
 justice has been done to him of recent years, and his works are 
 treasured by all who care for what is spiritual in design. Nearly all 
 
 have been reproduced in facsimile. In a note to Gilchrist’s life of 
 
 
 
 the artist the late Dante Rossetti thus speaks of his designs and 
 
 their colour :— 
 
 ‘Given without the colour they cannot be said to embody Blake’s 
 intention in producing them. Much which may here seem unaccountably 
 tugged and incomplete is softened by the sweet liquid rainbow tints of the 
 coloured copies into a mysterious brilliancy, which could never have been 
 obtained over a first printing of a neater or more exact kind, body colour as 
 well as transparent colour being used in the finishing.’ 
 
 These ‘sweet liquid rainbow tints, ‘prismatic and ethereal, as 
 
 
 
 some one else has called them ; this ‘mysterious brilliancy, used with 
 great decorative skill, and in perfect spiritual sympathy with the 
 elementary ideas of terror, purity, hope, despair, love, and triumph, 
 which inspired the designs separate Blake’s ‘colour from that of 
 ordinary men, as much as his life and genius were so separated. 
 How completely colour was a language to him is shown in all his 
 works in which it is employed, from the early and universally 
 attractive ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ to the ‘ Book of 
 Thel’ (1789), the ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ (1790), and the 
 late cryptic Prophetic Books, such as ‘ Jerusalem’ and ‘ Milton.’ As 
 
 a masterpiece of imaginative colour nothing can be finer than the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE FACE 
 
 TING A COMPASS ON 
 
 DAYS 
 
 THE ANCIENT OF 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, &c. 
 
 
 
 Leviathan in the ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell)? which has been 
 well reproduced in Mr. Swinburne’s ‘William Blake, a Critical 
 Essay.’ 
 
 Blake also painted in tempera, and in what he called fresco, 
 ‘water-colour on a plaster ground of glue and whiting laid on to 
 
 canvas or board ;’ 
 
 and so far as the decorative and symbolical use 
 of water-colour is concerned he may be said to have surpassed all 
 others. One of his simplest and grandest designs is repeated here, 
 The Ancient of Days setting a Compass on the face of the Earth 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the sweetness and purity of Stothard’s 
 colouring, and the decorative splendour and spiritual suggestiveness 
 of Blake’s, their coloured works come rather within the definition 
 of ‘coloured drawings’ than paintings, and it was reserved for 
 Bonington and Cattermole to surpass the efforts of such men as 
 
 Wheatley and Cristall, and to show the power of water-colour to 
 
 
 
 depict scenes from human life with a richness of colour and a truth 
 of illumination that had not been attained by it before. Of 
 Bonington so much has already been said that it only remains to be 
 noticed that he used water-colours as well as oils for his gemlike 
 little figure subjects, of which one is reproduced here from a charming 
 sketch in the British Museum. Fine as his work was, he had nothing 
 like the same influence on British art as George Cattermole (1800- 
 1868), who was born about the same time, and lived for forty years 
 after him. Before his time it may be said generally in relation to 
 historical painting that the water-colour painters reflected the move- 
 ments of what was to them the world above—the Academy, with 
 its ranks of oil painters ; but in this instance it was water-colour, in 
 the person of Cattermole, which took a fresh departure, as it had 
 done in landscape. He founded a genre—historical and romantic 
 genre—which endeavours to restore to us the life of former days. 
 He was born at Diss, in Norfolk, the youngest son of a father of 
 independent means, and was placed, at the age of fourteen, with John 
 
 Britton, the architectural draughtsman and antiquary, for whose 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 88 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 grand work on the ‘Cathedral Antiquities of England’ he made 
 some drawings. He commenced in 1819 to exhibit at the Royal 
 Academy, and in 1826 he sent a drawing or picture of King Henry 
 discovering the Relics of King Arthur in Glastonbury Abbey, and 
 next year another of Zhe Trial of Queen Catherine. Whether 
 these were in oil- or water-colour does not appear, but after this 
 he ceased to exhibit at the Royal Academy. In 1822 he had 
 joined the Water-Colour Society as an Associate Exhibitor, of 
 which he became a full member in 1833; and from 1827 to his with- 
 drawal from the Society in 1850, he devoted himself almost exclu- 
 sively to painting in water-colours. The drawing of which a photo- 
 gravure is given, is a characteristic specimen of his style and choice of 
 subjects, a scene from old monastic life which gave him scope for the 
 indulgence of his unusual power of composition, colour, and chiaro- 
 scuro, and of his love for the picturesque in architecture and costume. 
 This drawing, as well as those from which the other illustrations of 
 Cattermole’s art are taken, form part of the bequest of Mr. Henderson 
 to the National Gallery, and are all remarkable for their powerful 
 handling and Venetian depth and richness of colour. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin wrote of Cattermole, in the first volume of ‘Modern 
 Painters:’ ‘There are signs in George Cattermole’s works of very 
 peculiar gifts, and perhaps, also, of powerful genius. . . . The 
 antiquarian feeling of Cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural, and 
 I think his imagination originally vigorous; certainly his fancy, 
 his grasp of momentary passion, considerable; his sense of action 
 in the human body, vivid and ready. A careful study of Catter- 
 mole’s works will confirm every word of this praise, and I see no 
 
 reason to alter the opinions which I have expressed elsewhere in 
 
 
 
 the following passage :— 
 
 ‘Commencing as an architectural draughtsman, but with a mind well 
 stored with history and archaeological detail, his imagination soon began to 
 fill with their ancient life the buildings which he drew, and his art was 
 naturally inspired with that romantic spirit which, long felt in literature, had 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 rr 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Stothard, Blake, Cattermole, Se. 89 
 
 
 
 
 
 culminated in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The great romantic move- 
 ment among the artists of France was simultaneous with the appearance of 
 Cattermole, who may be considered as the ally of Delacroix and Bonington, 
 and as the greatest representative, if not the founder, in England, of the art 
 that sought its motives in the restoration of bygone times, with their 
 manners and customs, their architecture and costumes, their chivalrous and 
 religious sentiment, complete. To perform this part he brought a spirit 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LANDS! 
 
 
 
 "E. BY GEORGE CATTERMOLE. 
 
 naturally ardent, controlled by a fine and somewhat severe artistic taste, 
 which, without destroying the energy and freedom of his design, permitted 
 neither extravagance nor affectation. 
 
 ‘He had a gift of colour, a felicity and directness of touch, and a 
 command of his materials, which have never been excelled in his line of 
 
 
 
 art, He treated landscape and architecture with almost equal skill, and 
 though his figures were on a small scale, and often shared but even 
 honours with the scenes in which they were placed, they were always 
 
 designed with spirit, living in gesture, and right in expression.’ 
 
 
 
 Among the more important of the drawings exhibited at the 
 Water-Colour Society were: After the Sortie, 1834; Sir Wealtei 
 AA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 90 The Earher English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 Raleigh witnessing the Execution of the Earl of Essex in the Tower, 
 1839; Wanderers Entertained, 1839 (engraved by Egan under the 
 title of Old English Hospitality); The Castle Chapel, 1840; Hamilton 
 of Bothwellhaugh preparing to shoot the Regent Murray in 1570, 1843 ; 
 After the Second Battle of Newberry, 1843; Benvenuto Cellini 
 defending the Castle of St. Angelo, 1845; The Unzwelcome Return, 
 1846. Some of these are at the South Kensington Museum, which 
 is rich in the works of Cattermole, though some of them, especially 
 the large engraved drawing of The Diet of Spiers, are not so well 
 
 preserved as those in the National Gallery. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 HIONWALLVS 394 “ADINDA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 | 
 | | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY: 
 BARRET, VARLEY, &c. 
 
 F three of the foundation members of the Water-colour 
 O Society—Nicolas Pocock, W. H. Pyne, and Joshua Cristall 
 —something has already been said, and it will be convenient 
 to treat of the rest of them in this paper. Their first exhibition 
 was held in 1805, but the Society had been formed the year 
 before at a meeting which was held at the house of Samuel 
 Shelley. Although Girtin was dead, and Turner was a Royal 
 Academician, and the Society had therefore to start without the 
 aid of the two greatest founders of the school of water-colour, 
 there were many good artists on their first roll. Fame is, indeed, 
 somewhat silent as to the merits of Stephen Francis Rigaud 
 (1797— after 1851), painter of portrait and history, sacred and pro- 
 fane, and Samuel Shelley (17502-1808), though he was a pretty 
 and popular miniaturist and a graceful painter of small fanciful 
 subjects, was neither very original in design nor perfect in his 
 drawing. It must, indeed, be admitted that the Society were weak 
 in their figure-painters, Cristall being by far the best, but in land- 
 scape they were strong, for there were Barret and Havell, Glover 
 and Varley, beside several other artists of considerable merit, 
 
 It is not, perhaps, possible to say much in praise of the art 
 of William Sawrey Gilpin (dates of birth and death unrecorded), 
 the son of Sawrey Gilpin, R.A., the animal-painter, although he 
 was elected the first President of the Society, and was appointed 
 drawing-master at the Royal Military College of Great Marlow ; 
 and John Claude Nattes (born about 1765, exhibited as late as 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 92 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1814), was weak in character as well as in art, for he had to 
 e expelled in 1807 for exhibiting in his own name drawings 
 not by his own hand, in order to increase his share of the profits 
 of the exhibition. But the rest were all accomplished artists, and 
 most of them could lay claim to individuality. Two of them 
 have additional interest as being among the few really intimate 
 friends of Turner. These were James Holworthy (died 1841), 
 and William Frederick Wells (1762-1836). They were both 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 probably among the elders of the Society, though Holworthy’s 
 
 
 
 birth-date is not recorded. He was an able and elegant artist, 
 
 
 
 very skilful in the use of Indian ink, but not venturing far in 
 the new colour process. He married a niece of Wright of 
 Derby. Both he and Wells sketched much in Wales, but the 
 latter visited the Continent, and extended his sketching area to 
 Norway and Sweden, an unusual enterprise in those days. He 
 was President of the Water-colour Society in 1806, and for many 
 years a professor of drawing at Addiscombe College. His 
 daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, has presented a good example of his art 
 
 to the South Kensington Museum—a drawing of a ruined castle 
 
 
 
 above a river, called The Dawn. It is to her pen that we owe 
 the most tender account of Turner, to whom in his youth her 
 father’s house was a ‘second home, a haven of rest from many 
 
 domestic trials too sacred to touch upon.’ She adds :— 
 
 ‘He was a firm, affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings 
 were seldom on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. No one 
 would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold exterior, how 
 very strong were the affections which lay hidden beneath. I have more 
 than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly at the death of my own 
 dear father, which took him by surprise, for he was blind to the coming 
 event, which he dreaded. He came immediately to my house in an 
 agony of tears. Sobbing like a child he said, “Oh, Clara! Clara! these 
 are iron tears! I have lost the best friend I ever had in my life!”’ 
 
 It was at Wells’ house that the idea of the ‘Liber Studiorum’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Barret, Varley, 
 
 was started, and it is said to have originated with Wells, who sug- 
 gested its divisions into ‘Pastoral,’ ‘Elegant Pastoral,’ ‘Marine, &c, 
 Another man, not of the first rank as an artist, but yet of con- 
 
 siderable ability and ingenuity, was Francis Nicholson (1753-1844), 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BRACKLIN FALL, NEAR CALLANDER. BY JOHN GLOVER. 
 
 who in the course of his unusually long life must have exer- 
 
 
 
 cised considerable influence as a teacher. ‘His subjects were 
 
 
 
 chiefly rushing streams, waterfalls, and shipwrecks,’ says the cata- 
 logue of the South Kensington Museum, where a good many of 
 his drawings are preserved. He was an ingenious person, much 
 given to experiments in fechnigue. He made over 800 drawings 
 on the stone, and is said to have had much influence on the 
 
 B38 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 94 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 advancement of the art of lithography. He also invented a 
 method of securing the high lights of his water-colours by a 
 composition of wax and turpentine insoluble in water, but 
 easily removed by the application of turpentine. An account 
 of this method will be found in the ‘Transactions of the 
 Society of Arts’ in 1799. It is also explained in Nicholson’s 
 ‘Practice of Drawing and Painting Landscape from Nature in 
 Water-colours, a work which is interesting for the information it 
 gives as to the processes of colouring recommended by an artist 
 of some standing in the year 1820. He gives three processes, 
 in all of which the whole subject is first laid in in grey, and a 
 fourth in which you are to begin with the local colours; from 
 which it may be gathered that the reforms of Girtin and Turner 
 were a long time in making their way to anything like universal 
 adoption. It is plain that Nicholson himself but half likes this 
 fourth method; for though he allows that it will give great 
 clearness and brilliancy, he adds that ‘without considerable practice 
 the work will frequently be deficient in harmony, breadth, and, — 
 above all, in repose.’ 
 
 The name of John Glover (1767-1849) was suddenly brought 
 before the public at the famous Hamilton sale, in 1822, by the 
 unexpected price given by Mr. Arnot, an American gentleman, for 
 a water-colour drawing of A View in Borrowdale (Lot 1105). 
 This pretty but not very wonderful example of water-colour art 
 sold for 2107, If sold again it would probably not fetch one-tenth 
 of that sum, for his work is not very highly esteemed among 
 connoisseurs. Yet he was a clever artist of some individuality 
 and a good deal of dexterity; his sunlight was transparent and 
 his colour pleasant. Jn his day, also, he was prized, and one of 
 his pictures, Durham Cathedral, sold for as much as 500 guineas. 
 He was also a fashionable teacher. The great defect of his art 
 is that it is mannered and constrained; the forms, especially in 
 
 the foreground, conventional and stiff: he was accomplished but 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
oe, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Barret, V ‘arley, &e. 95 
 
 
 
 petty. Messrs. Redgrave, in their Dictionary, say that his exe- 
 cution was ‘rude and blotted ;’ but, though such a description is 
 true of many drawings of his where he tried to be free and 
 sketchy, he produced many others in which elaboration and 
 minuteness of touch is carried to excess. In the drawing, for 
 instance, which we reproduce, the execution is ‘niggling,’ especially 
 in the distance ; and it is only by holding it slightly in the shade, 
 or at a little distance, that one can separate the attention from 
 the laboured handling and judge of the general effect of light and 
 atmosphere which it is intended to render. Thus viewed it must 
 be allowed to be pretty and dexterous, but the work of it and 
 the style are ‘small’ Glover—like, indeed, most of the water- 
 colourists—worked in oil as well as in water-colour, and he left 
 the Water-colour Society in 1818 in order to try for admission 
 into the Royal Academy, but he did not succeed ; and in 1824 
 
 ne was one of the founders of the Society of British Artists, to 
 
 
 
 which he belonged till his death. In 1831, being then sixty-four 
 years of age, he went out to Australia, and sent home several 
 pictures of colonial scenery. He died in Tasmania. There is a 
 
 good example of his oil-painting in the Nationa Gallery. 
 
 
 
 A better artist than Glover, both in water-colours and oils, was 
 William Havell (1782-1857), the son of a drawing-master at 
 
 Reading. His earlier drawings in Wales and Westmoreland ate 
 
 
 
 broad and masterly in treatment, and, like all his work, show 
 careful study of nature. Several of them are at the South 
 Kensington Museum, where is also qa beautiful view of Windsor 
 by him. He was a true artist, and deserves to be mentioned 
 
 among the real promoters of the art of water-colour in England, 
 
 
 
 Ie seceded from the Water-colour Society on its reconstitution 
 in 1813, but joined it again in 1827. Meanwhile he had been 
 to China as draughtsman to Lord Amherst’s embassy, had re- 
 signed his position after an unfortunate quarrel, and had spent 
 
 several years in India, where he practised his art with success, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 96 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters, 
 
 
 
 On his return it is said that he found his position as an artist 
 had been taken by younger men, and he began to paint in oil, 
 and was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He does 
 not, however, appear to have been very successful, and his diffi- 
 culties were increased by the failure of a bank in which some of 
 his Indian savings were invested. These later pictures of his 
 deserved to have been better received, for they were bright and 
 pure in colour and very luminous. Their subjects were chiefly 
 taken from Italy, which he visited in 1827. But of all the 
 sixteen foundation members of the Water-colour Society the most 
 important were G. Barret and John Varley. The latter (1778- 
 1842), and his brother Cornelius (1781-1873), were both founda- 
 tion members, and a yet younger brother, William Fleetwood, 
 also practised the art. The predilection of the family for art, 
 which remains to this day, seems to have begun with John, and 
 to have been followed without encouragement from his father, 
 who is said to have been a man of varied scientific attainments, 
 
 and tutor of Lord Stanhope’s son. At the age of about thirteen 
 
 
 
 John Varley was placed with a silversmith, but he was never 
 apprenticed, and on his father’s death he freed himself from the 
 engagement. He then procured” employment with a_portrait- 
 painter, and at the age of sixteen with a drawing-master named 
 Barrow, in whose academy Francia also was an assistant. About 
 1797 Barrow took his pupil with him to Peterborough, and in 
 1798 Varley exhibited a view of Peterborough Cathedral at the 
 Royal Academy. In the next year he went to Wales, which 
 he revisited in 1800 and 1802, and after that he made a tour in 
 the northern counties of England, following the usual career of 
 those ‘draughtsmen’ who founded the water-colour school. He was 
 also one of the frequent visitors at Dr. Monro’s in the Adelphi. 
 
 After the formation of the Water-colour Society Varley left off 
 exhibiting at the Royal Academy for twenty years, during which 
 
 time he was the most prolific contributor to the exhibitions of the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Barret, Varley, &c. 97 
 Society. To the first exhibition, in 1805, he sent forty-one draw- 
 ings; in 1809 as many as fifty-nine; and he never ceased to 
 contribute largely till his death, The year before this event 
 (1842), as I have been informed by one who knew him well, he 
 forgot all about the exhibition till six weeks before it opened. 
 On being reminded he set to work, and completed within the six 
 
 weeks forty-one drawings, ranging in value from 10/. to 1507, 
 
 
 
 According to the same informant, John Varley’s work may 
 be broadly divided into three classes:— (1) Early drawings, 
 formal, thinly coloured according to the water-colour style of the 
 
 period, and full of carefully wrought detail. (2) Welsh drawings, 
 
 
 
 showing fresh study of nature and effect. (3) Later drawings, 
 
 generally compositions for which he drew upon the stores of his 
 
 
 
 memory laid up during his middle period. These are marked by 
 
 great power and richness of colouring. 
 
 ‘His latter drawings’ (adds this gentleman) ‘were bold in conception 
 and so rich in colouring that, when the first of them were exhibited at 
 the Water-colour Society, they caused quite a sensation amongst the 
 art-loving public—as also amongst other exhibitors, whose pictures suffered 
 so much by proximity with those of Varley as to need considerable 
 strengthening and touching up. In that year all J. Varley’s drawings 
 could be distinguished at once, as they hung on the walls of the exhibi- 
 tion, by their powerful colouring. These drawings originated from an 
 experiment he tried with common thin whitey-brown paper, whose texture 
 and tone promised, as he thought, good results, It was a material 
 difficult to manipulate, and had to be carefully mounted on stronger 
 paper, but under the certain touch of this veteran artist it became the 
 groundwork for effects and richness of colour which had seldom been 
 
 
 
 surpassed,’ 
 
 The South Kensington Museum is rich in the drawings of 
 John Varley. The collection ranges from the beginning of the 
 century to his death, and includes numerous specimens of the 
 two later classes of his work—the drawings fresh from nature and 
 
 the rich later compositions—forming together an epitome of the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 98 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 progress of water-colour art during the first half of the century. 
 Nobody understood his craft better: in the laying of washes and 
 in the clear, pure touch, he was equally a master; his colour is 
 
 always good, and has that indefinable property called ‘quality.’ The 
 
 
 
 
 
 FROM A SKETCH BY JOHN VARLEY. 
 
 sky in the drawing reproduced on the opposite page in delicacy of 
 gradation, in purity of colour, and in luminousness, could scarcely 
 
 be excelled. It may be to a certain extent ‘conventional, but 
 
 
 
 it is perfect in its skill. So great a producer as Varley cannot 
 always keep up to the same level, but at his best it is difficult 
 for any one to beat him, and in variety and range there are few 
 | who can equal him except Turner. Nevertheless, with all his 
 
 elegance and almost incomparable skill, we think of him as next 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Barret, Varley, &e. 99 
 
 to all the great men rather than as one of them, as a perfect 
 craftsman rather than an original genius. 
 
 He had precisely those qualities which are most valuable in a 
 teacher, and perhaps none of the earlier water-colour painters 
 1ad a longer or more distinguished list of pupils. Among them 
 may be mentioned William Hunt, John Linnell, David Cox, and 
 Tulready, so that what with precept and example it is difficult 
 to over-estimate the influence he exerted on the school. He also 
 published ‘Observations on Colouring and Sketching from Nature’ 
 (1820), and a ‘Practical Treatise on Perspective.’ 
 
 Thoroughly sound and healthy in his art, Varley had his weak 
 
 
 
 points. One of these was a devotion to astrology, and he would 
 not only give his pupils lessons in drawing, but also cast their 
 nativities. Another was for mechanical inventions. One dark 
 
 night a strange-looking vehicle with six wheels drew up to his 
 
 
 
 nouse in Bayswater Terrace. This was his invention for the 
 
 comfort of invalids. He and two friends tried it; but though the 
 
 
 
 jolting is said to have been diminished by the extra wheels, the 
 chief result of the experiment was loss of money, which he could 
 1 afford. 
 
 If Varley was the most influential of the foundation members of 
 
 the Water-colour Society, George Barret, junior (died 1842), was 
 the greatest genius. As a colorist and a painter of sunlight and 
 atmosphere he had no rival in the Society, and scarcely out of it; 
 indeed, of all the painters who ever ‘placed the sun in the heavens’ 
 there have been few who could excel George Barret, junior. His 
 
 work, for the most part, is what is called ‘conventional’ He 
 
 
 
 
 
 delighted in ‘compositions;’ he followed the ‘tradition’ of Claude; 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 his aim was to be ‘ sceni In other words, he had an ‘ideal.’ Art 
 for him was nature—the most beautiful in form and colour seen 
 under its most beautiful aspect, heightened by the most beautiful 
 
 architecture, and graced by the most beautiful figures. Not that 
 
 
 
 he confined himself entirely to classical compositions, for some of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 100 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 his finest drawings, notably one belonging to Mr. James Orrock, 
 
 of a country scene with a waggon and horses breaking up the 
 
 
 
 light in the foreground, are English in subject, but he nearly 
 always ‘composed, and his favourite compositions were of wide- 
 spreading country with an infinite distance spanned with a bridge 
 in the middle distance, with slopes crowned with pine and cypress, 
 temple and tower, and the naked sun burning in a blue and amber 
 sky. From such a drawing (also belonging to Mr. Orrock) the oppo- 
 site plate is taken. Sometimes he chose a cool morning effect, 
 sometimes a warm afternoon, but the light is always clear and 
 transparent, the scene always one of beauty and joy—a dream of 
 paradise, suggestive often of England, but generally of Italy, as 
 represented by Claude and Wilson. 
 
 He may possibly have been to Italy himself and there gained 
 a feeling for a sunnier clime than his own, and scenery more 
 imposing and stately, but there is no record of his life from which 
 we can gather so much for certain, and the pictures he might 
 have seen in England would have been sufficient to account for 
 his imaginative conceptions of natural beauty. His drawings strive 
 only after what was then the popular ideal—the ‘high art’ of 
 landscape—the ideal of Sandby and Wilson and of Turner. The 
 nearest things in art to his ethereal compositions are the well- 
 known large oil paintings of Turner—the Bay of Baie, the Childe 
 Harold's Pilgrimage, The Carthages, the Phryne going to the Bath, 
 and other works of this class. Turner executed few water-colour 
 drawings of such subjects, and, therefore, among water-colour 
 artists Barret stands almost alone, if not in aim, at least in success. 
 Turner himself could not excel him on this ground, and, indeed, 
 it may be doubted if this greater artist ever achieved such perfect 
 irradiation, such limpidity of sunlight, or could obtain at once such 
 elaboration and such purity as Barret in his finest drawings. 
 
 Like Turner, Barret was so bent first and foremost and beyond 
 
 all on obtaining his effects of light and colour that he was apt to 
 
 
 
 
 
SS 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Larret, Varley, Se. 
 
 be comparatively careless of his figures, though, when he chase, he 
 
 could draw them well enough. His trees also are often conven- 
 
 tional in form and spotty in the foliage. But he never failed in 
 
 
 
 
 
 COMPOSITION, 
 
 BY G. BARRET, JUNIOR. 
 
 his chief aim. Though his pictures were generally small and his 
 
 usual medium water-colour, he sometimes painted in oil, and 
 
 executed at least one very large oil painting, which has been pre- 
 
 sented to the nation by Mr. Orrock, and is now in the South 
 
 Kensington Museum, a rich composition with a luminous sky 
 reflected in a lake. 
 It is strange how little is known of this fine artist. He was 
 
 the son of George Barret, RA., already mentioned in this book, 
 DD 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 102 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 who died in pecuniary difficulties and left his family pensioners of | 
 the Royal Academy. What this family consisted of, and when | 
 
 George Barret, junior, was born, are not known apparently, but he | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 had one brother and a sister who both painted in water - colours. 
 The latter was a pupil of George Romney, according to Grave's 
 Dictionary, and of Mrs. Mee, according to Redgrave’s, Both 
 appear to have been older than George, who was born about 1774, 
 and first appears in history as an exhibitor at the Royal Academy 
 
 in 1800. He continued to exhibit there occasionally till 1843, 
 but it was to the Water-colour Society that he was the most con- | 
 stant and large contributor. Notwithstanding a life of constant | 
 labour, he, ‘striving rather for excellence than gain, only earned 
 enough to meet the daily wants of his family.’ So he, like his 
 father before him, though apparently with much more excuse, left 
 his family in poverty. He died in 1842 after a long illness. In 
 1840 he published a series of letters on the ‘Theory and Practice 
 of Water-colour Painting,’ 
 
 The only ‘foundation member’ who remains to be noticed is 
 Robert Hills (1769-1844), justly celebrated as a painter and 
 etcher of animals. He painted in water-colours only, and his 
 usual subjects are picturesque bits of park or lane with cattle and 
 deer. He was a very industrious artist, never tired of studying 
 animals and sketching them faithfully from nature. He published 
 
 a large number of etchings, of which there is a particularly fine 
 
 
 
 
 
 collection in the British Museum, numbering about 1240. Un- 
 
 fortunately most of his drawings have not lasted well, but his 
 
 
 
 
 
 composition was pleasing, and his colour rich, His chief fault as 
 a painter was over-elaboration. He frequently introduced animals 
 into the drawings of other artists, especially those of George 
 
 Barret, junior, and Robson. 
 

 
 
 
 EDRIDGE AND PROUT. 
 
 HE early water-colour art was, as has been said over and 
 a over again, based upon line and monochrome wash; and 
 its tendency under the new method, introduced mainly by Girtin, 
 was through tinting to full colour, and the obliteration of outline. 
 To get rid of outline, as non-existent in nature and an inter- 
 ruption of colour—indeed, to get rid of line altogether—has been 
 one of the aims of modern painters. The term drawing, as applied 
 to painting, has in fact changed its meaning in the memory of 
 most of us. By drawing used to be understood drawing by line, 
 but now it means rendering the true form of objects by that or 
 any other kind of touch; often, indeed, by the most irregular spots 
 and patches, form being analyzed, not by the boundaries of con- 
 tours and lines of construction, but by all the innumerable and 
 indefinite spaces of all sizes and shapes, differing in tone and 
 colour, which go to make up the appearance of a solid body. 
 This is the language of the brush as distinguished from the 
 language of the point. But modern practice has gone even beyond 
 this, and drawing with the point now. apes drawing with the brush, 
 and we see a piece of drapery which would formerly have had its 
 folds and flowings, its puffings-out and sinkings-in, expressed by 
 lines of varied curve, each of which took exact notice of the form 
 to be shown, now drawn with a number of little scratches, the 
 direction of which is not at all determined by the forms of the 
 drapery, is not indeed material at all, the object being to secure 
 the right tone at the particular place where they are applied. 
 
 But at the beginning of the century drawing still meant draw- 
 
 ing by line, and the ‘draughtsman’ was essentially a drawer and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 104 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters 
 
 
 
 
 
 | ‘draughtsmen’ and that employed by the engraver 
 | duced their works, The earliest men, like Alexander 
 based their style of drawing—fine penworl 
 
 line-engraver on copper ; in Sandby 
 | its firm outline and spaces of flat tint, 
 imitator rather than the example. 
 of reproducing the drawing in line and 
 fected for that purpose; and 
 
 another, and 
 
 which would render tt 
 
 Specially adapted to be cut in relief. Those were all 
 
 copper and steel, afterwards produced 
 
 Goodall, Wa lis, Willmore, Brandard, Finden, 
 
 formed that most brilliant and original 
 
 
 
 landscape called into existence mainly by the 
 
 These were engravers of paintings— 
 
 —both in oil and water-colour, 
 
 | how half-forgotten language of line. 
 
 | speak 
 
 at the beginning of the century beg: 
 
 drawing. It was adapted especially for 
 less blunt point, for 
 pen, as distinct from drawings with 
 further 
 
 shader of a precise outline. It was before 
 and Mr. Abbey, and Mr. Joseph Pennell. 
 
 close and natural affinity between the method of 
 
 no doubt drawings continued to be made in 
 
 mechanical processes compared with the el 
 
 It is not of line-engraving, however, that it 
 
 here, but of a very different art—that of lith 
 
 the days of Fortuny, 
 There was always a 
 drawing by these 
 who repro- 
 Cozens, 
 k—on the style of the 
 
 and his school, aquatint, with 
 » appears to have been the 
 
 If not invented for the purpose 
 
 wash, aquatint was per- 
 
 this close relation having been 
 established between the two arts, they 
 
 mutually supported one 
 
 a way 
 
 heir reproduction by aquatint easy, just as 
 the designer for wood-engraving would d 
 
 raw his design in lines 
 simple and 
 aborate engravings on 
 by such engravers as 
 Pye, and others, who 
 school of engravers of 
 
 genius of Turner, 
 
 as distinguished from drawings 
 
 great artists in the translation of 
 | colour into tone, masters of effect, but alway: 
 
 S speaking in the 
 
 is essential to 
 
 ography, which 
 
 an to take the place of aqua- 
 tint and etching as a means for the po 
 
 pular reproduction of 
 
 drawings with a more or 
 drawings in pencil and chalk and the 
 
 reed 
 
 a fine pen. It had the 
 advantage that the drawing could be done b 
 
 y the artist 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Edridge and Prout. 105 
 
 
 
 himself upon the stone and his work exactly reproduced without 
 the intermediation of a second interpreting artist. The crumbling 
 touch of chalk, the broad, loose line of the reed pen, the infinite 
 gradation and sharp accent of the blacklead pencil, reappeared on 
 this printed lithograph with little or no loss of expression. Its only 
 rival in these respects was the soft-ground etching, a process more 
 difficult and- uncertain, with other disadvantages in the way of size, 
 expense, &c., which need not be examined in this place. Litho- 
 graphy, which is said to have been invented in 1796 by Alois 
 Sennefelder, a German, was introduced into England about the 
 beginning of the century, and soon flourished there as well as in 
 Germany and France. It has been used with great effect for the 
 reproduction of many kinds of pictorial art, from oil-paintings by 
 ancient masters (as in the admirable series from the Dresden 
 Gallery) to the sketches and drawings of the modern, like Boning- 
 ton, Harding, Cattermole, Prout, J. F. Lewis, and David Roberts; 
 but for the reasons given above it is for sketches in chalk and 
 
 pencil that it is most peculiarly adapted, and especially for those 
 
 
 
 in which the touch of the artist is an essential element of beauty. 
 It seems, indeed, to have been specially invented for such artists 
 as Edridge and Bonington and Prout. 
 
 Of all of these, and of all other artists whose works have 
 been reproduced by lithography, the typical instance of exact 
 affinity between the artist and the process is Prout; and of all the 
 elements of his art which this process is most valuable in reproducing 
 the most distinctive is his broken touch, Further, we may also pick 
 out the subject on which his touch was most appropriately and 
 picturesquely employed, and this was old Gothic architecture—worn, 
 mutilated, chipped, and broken, presenting every variety of outline, 
 except the unbroken and precise, and every variety of surface except 
 the smooth and shadowless. The history of water-colour painting is 
 
 very intimately connected with the taste for Gothic architecture, 
 
 
 
 especially in its picturesque aspects. This taste may be said to 
 EE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 106 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 have been founded and fostered by the ‘draughtsman, who mainly 
 in the interests of topography and archaeology went all over 
 England drawing all the cathedrals and other remains of ancient 
 national architecture, and taught the English public their value as 
 pictorial material. The means of expression hitherto used for 
 architectural drawing was found to be inadequate to present the 
 picturesqueness of these new objects of pictorial art. Before this the 
 ideal architecture of the landscape-painter was classical, and such 
 
 artists, principally architects and their assistants, who went abroad 
 
 
 
 to draw architecture and ruins, drew classical architecture and ruins 
 exclusively. To do this the sharp, thin, clear, unbroken line—the 
 
 line reminiscent of the drawing pen, interrupted but unvaried in 
 
 
 
 stress—was sufficient for their purpose. It was the damage done, 
 rather than the beauty resulting from the damage, that they wishec 
 to show. If they put any feeling into their work, it was the 
 pathos of mutilation that they wished to express, rather than the 
 decorative loveliness with which Time embroiders confusion anc 
 decay. Think how perfect it was, how marred is the original design, 
 they said, when they said anything. At all events, whether they had 
 need of it or not, they did not find or use the indefinite picturesque 
 
 broken line, which was invented (or at least first fully appreciated) 
 
 
 
 by Girtin, was brought to perfection by Bonington and Edridge, and 
 carried to mannerism, if not to excess, by Prout, in their deline- 
 ation of Gothic architecture in England and the Continent. 
 
 The language of the blunt, irregular line—broken not only in 
 length but width—the line which does not only mark the shape or 
 construction of an object but expresses also something’ of its 
 character, substance, and surface, and the effect of light and air 
 upon it, did not, of course, begin with our water-colourists and 
 the drawing of Gothic architecture, but it may be said to have then 
 taken up a new parable. 
 
 In responsiveness to the hand and in power of rapid indication 
 
 
 
 no drawing instrument equals the blacklead pencil. Most of the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Ldridge and Prout. 
 
 
 
 
 
 water-colourists at the beginning of the century were masters in its 
 use. No one of these was a greater master than Turner, but he 
 employed it chiefly in rapid memoranda and slight sketches. If 
 we want to see how much could be expressed by such simple 
 means we must go to the drawings of men like Edridge and Prout 
 and the lithographs from their works, 
 
 If we want to see the comparative merits of the hard ink line 
 and the soft touch of pencil or chalk in rendering the picturesque 
 appearance of Gothic architecture, we may study the etchings of 
 Cotman and the lithographs of or after Bonington and Prout, all of 
 
 which are excellent of their kind; but it must not be forgotten that 
 
 
 
 Cotman was more concerned with the architectural and archaeo- 
 
 logical interest of his buildings than that pictorial attractiveness 
 
 
 
 which the ‘broken line’ of Prout was so specially designed to render. 
 Prout was certainly a master of it, but he cannot be credited, as he 
 sometimes is, with inventing it. Edridge, at least, was before him. 
 Henry Edridge, A.R.A. (1769-1821), was certainly one of the 
 greatest masters of pencil. Taking it all in all, there is perhaps 
 no existing drawing which shows the range of its picturesque 
 expressiveness in architecture and figures more completely than 
 his drawing of the Tour de la Grosse Horloge, at Evreux, which is in 
 the British Museum.* It may be compared, and not to its disadvan- 
 tage, with Bonington’s drawing of the Rue de la Grosse-Horloge, at 
 
 Rouen, lithographed in Baron Taylor's 
 
 
 
 
 
 oyages Pittoresques dans 
 PAncienne France—Normandie, 1825 ;’ and Edridge’s drawing was 
 probably made several years earlier, during one of his visits to 
 France, in 1817 or 1819. Two other drawings in pencil by Edridge, 
 equally fine, are of The Chéteau de Guillaume, at Falaise, and a large 
 view of The Floods at Eton seen from Windsor Castle. The latter (see 
 next page) is on grey paper heightened with white, and is notable 
 for the beauty and elegance of the composition and its masterly 
 
 treatment of a wide expanse of country. The graceful group of 
 
 * Reproduced in THE PORTFOLIO for December 1880. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 108 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 trees in the middle distance point to another accomplishment which 
 he possessed in advance of most of his fellows. Some drawings by 
 him at South Kensington are remarkable for their truth in the 
 drawing of trees, and show that he studied their characters carefully 
 and had a true feeling for the beauty of their growth. As examples 
 
 alike of pure English country and pure English water-colour it 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FLOODS AT ETON. H. EDRIDGE. 
 
 would not be easy to excel two large drawings by Edridge in the 
 
 
 
 3ritish Museum representing Great Bookham and Aldenham Churches. 
 In short, Edridge was a master both of the point and the brush ; his 
 touch was not only lively and picturesque, but sensitive, well 
 accented, and refined; his handling of the brush was free, but 
 accurate and expressive; and his colour was harmonious and full 
 of ‘quality’ When it is added that the delineation of architecture 
 and landscape was only one side, and that not the most professional 
 side of his art, it must be acknowledged that he was an artist of 
 rare and varied gifts and worthy of more respect and reputation 
 than he has yet received. 
 
 The branch of the profession which Edridge adopted more 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ldridge and Prout. 
 
 especially was that of a miniature artist, and the British Museum 
 possesses quite a gallery of his little portraits beautifully finished. 
 Most of them are in pencil only, but some have the flesh-tints added 
 in colour, and one of them (a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of 
 
 Woollett the engraver) is in very full colour. Of special valu 
 
 @ 
 
 in connexion with water-colour painting, are a slight but lively sketch 
 of Girtin and finished portraits of Thomas Hearne, Stothard, and 
 Edridge himself. There are also an excellent portrait of Nollekens 
 
 the sculptor and two of Bartolozzi, one of which is reproduced on 
 
 
 
 
 
 the next page. It is interesting to remember in connexion with 
 these"portraits that both Hearne and Edridge began life as engravers, 
 that Woollett was Hearne’s master, and that Edridge is said to have 
 acquired his taste for landscape from a study of Hearne’s drawings. 
 Edridge was the pupil of William Pether, the mezzotint engraver, 
 son of ‘Moonlight’ Pether, and himself a painter of landscapes. 
 Edridge also studied for a while in the studio of Sir Joshua 
 
 Reynolds, as Turner did, and he was one of the friends of Dr. 
 
 
 
 Monro. The senior of Turner and Girtin by about six years, he 
 
 
 
 should perhaps have had his notice earlier in these papers, but he 
 
 egan life as an engraver and portraitist, and cannot be reckoned 
 
 
 
 among the earlier ‘draughtsmen.’ He did not belong to the Water- 
 
 
 
 colour Society, and it is not till 1814 that we find him exhibiting 
 
 
 
 andscapes at the Royal Academy. He then exhibited four English 
 scenes, and with the exception of about a dozen views on the 
 Continent, exhibited 1819, 1820, 1821, he does not appear to have 
 come again before the public except as a portrait-painter. He was 
 elected an Associate in 1820 and died the year after. 
 
 Samuel Prout (1783-1852) was born at Plymouth, and had a 
 sunstroke when a child, which left him always weakly. He began 
 life as a ‘draughtsman’ under John Britton, but for many years made 
 little progress. Between 1803 and 1827 he exhibited occasionally at 
 the Royal Academy, his earlier works being chiefly views and coast 
 scenes in Devonshire. Though some of these landscapes have been 
 
 FF 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
110 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 highly praised, they do not count for much in his art history, which 
 practically commenced with his first visit to the Continent in 1818 
 
 —a visit said to have been dictated by ill-health rather than for 
 
 
 
 
 
 PORTRAIT OF BARTOLOZZI. H. EDRIDGE, 
 
 purposes of study or in search of picturesque material. It was 
 most fortunate for him, for it opened out to him a field of pictorial 
 interest which was most congenial to his taste, and was hitherto 
 practically unworked. Some had indeed been before him, like 
 Edridge, but he was the first to take possession, and the public 
 
 were thoroughly prepared to accept and enjoy his pictorial records 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Edridge and Prout. 
 
 
 
 of places of which they had for many years heard so much and 
 seen so little. 
 
 It was not till after the surrender of Napoleon in 1815 that the 
 Continent was, after a long interval, again open to foreign tourists ; 
 and from this time may be dated the interest shown by artists 
 and the public in the picturesque appearance of old towns in 
 France and Germany, with their Gothic cathedrals, their old 
 houses of wood and stone, their narrow streets and broad market- 
 places, and the crowds of picturesque figures in strange and gay 
 costume, which added so much to their variety and colour. 
 ‘Added’—alas! for they are rapidly disappearing, and with them 
 also have disappeared so many of the houses also, that in many 
 towns the ecclesiastical buildings are almost all that is left of that 
 quaint old-world feeling and picturesque charm in which our 
 fathers delighted. 
 
 If for no other reason than this we ought to be grateful to 
 Samuel Prout, who spent so much of his life in showing us what 
 Continental towns were like in his day. It was just this which 
 he did more persistently, if not better, than other masters. The 
 great popularity of his work when it was produced and since is 
 
 only to be accounted for on this ground, for he was not a very 
 
 
 
 good colourist nor a very fine draughtsman. His merits as an 
 
 artist consisted principally in a true sense of proportion, in the 
 
 
 
 breadth and simplicity of his treatment, and the dexterity with 
 which he managed, by lines rude, summary, but well chosen, to 
 
 give a prettily rugged and picturesque style to his compositions. 
 
 
 
 This style was especially effective in dealing with old weather-worn 
 Gothic buildings in the towns of France and Germany, full of chinks 
 and chipped edges, and every variety of picturesque shapelessness. 
 But it failed him in interiors, even of Gothic buildings, where the 
 
 
 
 sculpture was unbroken and the traceries complete ; failed him most 
 of all in Italy, where the faces of buildings were of smooth marble, 
 
 and the ornament too subtle for his hand; failed him even in the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 Xx 
 
 
 
 HUNT, DE WINT, AND COPLEY FIELDING. 
 
 | HERE are few things more remarkable, or indeed more 
 
 admirable, in the history of English art, than the distinct- . 
 
 ness of individuality which characterises the works of the artists, 
 not only of the first but the second rank. Men like Hogarth and 
 Turner stand out beyond any classification, but the same is almost 
 as true of artists like Stothard and Prout, De Wint and William 
 Hunt. All of these—and the list might be very largely increased 
 —have some cachet peculiar to themselves, some excellence in which 
 they are superlative, which separates them as distinct units in the 
 general history of their country’s art, and preserves them an im- 
 mortality as sure, if not as splendid, as that of their more 
 illustrious fellows. It is one of the loving anxieties of Mr. Ruskin, 
 in his notes on Prout and Hunt, to emphasise with his certain 
 touch these superlative qualities in these favourite masters of his, 
 He insists on Prout’s power to represent the exact aspect of 
 places, on his skill in selection of line, on his sense of true magni- 
 tude, on his special feeling for the Gothic spire; and he holds up 
 Hunt to our admiration as a faultless painter of fruit and flowers, 
 and points out how finely he has seized, and how beautifully he 
 has rendered, what is sweet and noble in the honest and unsophis- 
 ticated English peasantry. But he has chosen him for praise chiefly 
 on account of his consummate skill as a painter in water-colour. 
 
 This (at all events in connexion with these papers) is his supreme 
 
 
 
 and superlative quality. He used his materials—his water-colours 
 —with a knowledge and skill which have never been equalled, iz, 
 
 in the representation of his class of subjects, especially fruit and 
 
 
 
 flowers. He began life as a landscape-painter; but though his work 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Edridge and Prout. 
 
 English common sense. In contrast with our Midland locks and barges, his 
 
 On the Grand Canal, Venice, was an Arabian enchantment ; among the 
 mildly elegiac country churchyards at Llangollen or Stoke Pogis, his 
 Sepulchral Monuments at Verona were Shakespearian tragedy, and to us who 
 had just come into the room out of Finsbury or Mincing Lane, his Séree¢ 
 in Nuremburg was a German fairy tale.’ 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earher English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 occasional dead bird or rustic figure. He spent much of his time 
 
 at Hastings, and died un 
 
 married in Stanhope Street, London, on 
 
 February 1oth, 1864. This is nearly all that is recorded of the 
 
 life of William Hunt. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has poin 
 
 ted out how the spirit in which Hunt 
 
 painted his flowers and fruit differed from that of Van Huysum 
 
 and the rest of the old painters of still life. He did not paint 
 
 them to show their decorative value in ornamenting the sumptuous 
 
 tables of the rich, nor to show his own skill in imitation; he painted 
 
 them out of pure love fo 
 their beauty of form, and 
 
 of their prime. He did n 
 
 ¢ the things themselves, for the love of 
 colour, and texture, in all the freshness 
 
 ot make his flowers up into bouquets, or 
 
 mass his fruit in luxurious heaps, but painted them singly as | 
 
 they lay fresh-plucked, disposed as it were accidentally, but really | 
 
 
 
 with an art which conceal 
 
 imagination on his luscious plums and pears, but to admire their 
 loveliness ; not to admire a masterpiece of painting, but one of 
 
 nature. He painted them tenderly—we may say reverently. 
 
 ed itself. He invited us, not to feast in 
 
 
 
 Though they were plucked he would not divorce them entirely | 
 
 from nature; he did not 
 
 set them off with Turkey carpets and | 
 
 silver salvers, but preferred to rest them on some mossy bank, 
 
 
 
 warm in the sun which had given them their beauty. Such per- 
 
 fection of modelling, such close imitation of colour and texture, | 
 
 such almost atomic truth of finish, have seldom or never been 
 
 truth. His finish was tru 
 
 | 
 combined with such breadth in effect, such preservation of general | 
 | 
 
 pleteness, not concealing the want of it. It may not be thought 
 
 e finish, each touch adding to the com: 
 
 
 
 very high art, this careful imitation of still objects, however 
 
 beautifully arranged, however pure and lovely the result, To 
 
 devote a life to the rend 
 
 ering of the most exquisite qualities of | 
 
 a dove’s breast, or a spray of hawthorn, may seem but a poor 
 
 enterprise. But it is for the painter as well as the poet to ‘shine 
 
 
 
 in his p 
 
 
 
 ace and be content, and few have 
 
 shone 
 
 
 
 more con- 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Hunt, De Wint, ana Copley Fielding. 115 
 
 
 
 of this class is of no little merit, it is probable that for many reasons, 
 of which his health was one, he would never have attained to a 
 very prominent place among landscape-painters. Leaving this 
 field to others, he chose a little plot of his own and cultivated it 
 to perfection. Therefore, though modest in his aim and of no great 
 strength, poetical or intellectual, he holds his particular place, and 
 is as difficult to class as the greatest—at least among the earlier 
 English painters in water-colours. Among these, indeed, there is 
 none with whom to compare him; and even amongst those that 
 have followed him, though there have been many refined and skilful 
 painters of similar subjects, he has no equal. Standing, therefore, 
 
 so alone, there is no place into which he naturally falls in a sequen- 
 
 
 
 tial history of English water-colours, and the fact that Mr. Rusk 
 
 has placed him by the side of Prout is, in default of a better, a 
 
 n 
 
 sufficient excuse for mentioning him here. 
 
 William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) was the son of a tinplate- 
 worker in Bolton Street, Long Acre, where he was born on March 
 28th, 1790. Like Prout he was a sickly child and always delicate 
 throughout his life—more delicate than Prout, who was at least able 
 to undertake long journeys and endure much fatigue in the exercise 
 of his profession, whereas Hunt was from physical necessity obliged 
 to choose subjects which were within easy reach, and could be 
 studied quietly and at leisure. He was apprenticed to John 
 Varley, and was a visitor at Dr. Monro’s, staying with him for a 
 month at a time and receiving seven and sixpence a-day for the 
 drawings he produced. He became a student of the Royal 
 Academy in 1808, and exhibited there occasionally (‘Landscapes ’ 
 and ‘Sketches from Nature’) for some years. His first contribu- 
 tions are said to have been in oil, but he commenced to exhibit 
 at the Water-colour Society in 1814, and henceforth devoted himself 
 to it. He was elected an Associate in 1824, and in 1827 a full 
 member, after which he became a large and constant contributor, 
 
 his subjects being principally confined to fruit and flowers, with an 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 118 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 a man of some distinction in his day as a painter, a traveller, and 
 an antiquarian, At the age of fourteen the nephew accompanied 
 his uncle to India, where they made sketches for an important work, 
 afterwards published under the title of ‘Oriental Scenery.’ For 
 many years his subjects were principally drawn from his Indian 
 sketches, but in 1802 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy 
 drawings of scenes in the north of England. The drawing of 
 Durham Cathedral, is dated 1805, and is a masterly production, the 
 point of view finely selected, the execution broad and powerful, and 
 much in the manner of Girtin both in colour and handling. He 
 engraved as well as painted, and published several illustrated books, 
 The most extensive of these was his ‘Voyage round Great Britain’ 
 which was entirely executed by himself. His work deserves more 
 attention than can be paid to it here, and the same may be said 
 f that of Augustus Pugin (1782-1832), a Frenchman, and father 
 
 f the well-known architect, Augustus Welby Pugin. The father 
 
 ° 
 
 vas specially interested in architecture, and it may be gathered 
 
 th 
 
 rom the example given (a view of St. Mary, Oxford), that, though 
 
 he was an adept in the use of water-colours, his drawings are 
 
 istinguished more for the truth and care with which the uild- 
 
 a 
 
 ings are drawn than for their picturesque qualities. It is as one of 
 
 
 
 the first to study Gothic architecture with attention, and draw it 
 with accuracy and knowledge, that he is most to be remembered. 
 He was for twenty years an assistant of John Nash, the architect 
 of Waterloo Place and Regent Street, with whose professional taste 
 
 he could have had little sympathy. But it was yet to be a long 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 time before the true beauty of Gothic architecture was again to 
 
 appeal to our countrymen, and the elder Pugin had to be content 
 
 
 
 with laying the foundations for its revival. For the public it was 
 interesting as an antiquated curiosity, and its picturesqueness (in a 
 drawing) was becoming daily more acknowledged through the 
 labours of those draughtsmen who had turned topography into 
 
 art. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Flunt, De Wint, and Copley Fielding. 
 
 tentedly or brightly than William Hunt. What he did he did 
 well, almost perfectly, and to those who love art one of his plums 
 outweighs in true value many efforts of unsuccessful ambition. 
 Moreover his pictures of country life must not be forgotten. He 
 painted his rustic figures in much the same spirit as his flowers— 
 their faces ruddy with the sun; their frank, honest eyes, and 
 strong bodies, their rough smocks and hobnailed shoes, just as 
 they were. He gave as, perhaps, no other artist has quite given, 
 
 the shy sweetness of the girls, the awkwardness of the hoydens, 
 
 
 
 the unrefined appetites of the boys, the patriarchal nobleness of 
 the old men. The drawings of the Shy Sitter and The Blessing 
 
 are, perhaps, the best known of the nobler figure-pictures of Hunt. 
 
 
 
 They were photographed for the illustratec edition of Mr. Ruskin’s 
 ‘Notes on Hunt and Prout, and The Blessing has been etched by 
 
 Waltner. But there are others of the same class, and much the 
 
 
 
 same quality. One of these, though called 4 Monk (see opposite 
 
 
 
 page), in the fine and simple seriousness of its expression is allied 
 
 to Zhe Blessing. In the technical history of the art of water-colours, 
 
 Hunt holds also a place almost as unique. His mastery of his 
 
 
 
 materials was consummate. He showed the whole power of its 
 colour—in perfect imitation of that of nature, in brilliancy, in 
 strength, in subtlety, and in richness, and he attained its limit 
 
 of brilliancy by using transparent washes and touches over a 
 
 
 
 ground of flake white. In manipulation, a so, in variety and cer- 
 tainty of touch, in the rendering of texture, in the use of body- 
 colour, in perfect union with transparent colour—in all these ways, 
 and many more, he may claim to have extended the resources of 
 his art almost as far as they would go. 
 
 To return to our landscape-painters. Two of the illustrations 
 
 
 
 to this chapter are by artists who, if they do not hold any recog- 
 nised position of importance in the history of English water-colour, 
 were both men of interest and good artists. One of these was 
 William Daniell, R.A. (1769-1837), nephew of Thomas Daniell, R.A,, 
 
 HH 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“TIGINVG WVITUM Aad 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
2 ANE SIS SPT I OT 
 west eves 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 120 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 to its prime; nearly all of them had a conspicuous share in its 
 development. Though they started as it were from the same 
 point, so that there is a great similarity in their earliest drawings, 
 each gradually drew away into a path of his own, found new 
 subjects suited to his own individuality, found also a method of 
 expression to a great extent personal to himself. They do not 
 stand on quite the same level as Turner and Constable; they had 
 not the all-embracing genius of the former, the immense initiatory 
 force of the latter, but they were all distinct powers, pioneers in 
 untrodden lands of art, revealers of beauty unrealised before by 
 
 painter's pencil, adding each his modest but perceptible quota not 
 
 
 
 
 
 only to the domain of art but also to its resources of expression. 
 
 Indeed, they did so much in perfecting the technique of water- 
 colour and in increasing its range of subject, and did it in so 
 sincere and thorough a manner, that their work is, and must ever 
 remain, in a sense, classic. 
 
 Of these men many have already been treated in these pages. 
 Of those that remain the greatest are De Wint, Fielding, and 
 Cox, and their special distinction is that they were more ex- 
 clusively than the rest painters of English country, not so much of 
 its castles and cathedrals, but of its fields and mountains and 
 local characteristics. They all of them painted in various parts 
 of England, but of this vast book each had a chapter to which 
 he devoted himself more particularly, As Suffolk to Gains- 
 borough, as Norfolk to Crome, and as Essex to Constable, so 
 were Lincolnshire to De Wint, Sussex to Copley Fielding, and 
 Wales to David Cox. Wherever they drew, these men were ac- 
 complished artists, but each found some neighbourhood specially 
 congenial to his disposition, where his study was more prolonged 
 and fruitful, calling forth his best both of sympathy and invention. 
 All these men were obliged to earn their livelihood by teaching 
 as well as painting, and counted their pupils by the score. 
 
 Their influence is not dead yet. Despite the dominance of new 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Lunt, De Wint, and Copley Fielding. ee | 
 
 
 
 Ass the position of the water-colour school becomes established 
 we find the spirit of the artist gradually overcoming that of the 
 topographer until, even in pictures of which architecture forms the 
 main subject, the attitude of the painter is rather that of one who 
 paints what he likes than the executor of an order for a portrait of 
 a famous building, whereas the number of painters who concern 
 themselves principally with the beauty and character of English 
 
 country gradually increases. Thus surely and not very slowly a 
 schoo 
 
 
 
 ° 
 
 f pure landscape was formed among the water-colourists, 
 
 
 
 and a number of men arose who as landscape-painters deserved to 
 hold the highest rank among the artists of the period. Their great 
 merit, as we see it now, was that they studied English scenery as 
 
 it had never been studied before—its hills and its trees, its rivers, 
 
 
 
 and, above all, its skies; studied all with simple love and unam- 
 bitious earnestness, finding out day by day some new means of 
 rendering some effect of light, and colour, and atmosphere familiar 
 enough to all, but unattempted and unconquered by previous 
 painters. Content to live a humble life without the hope of any 
 great gains, accepting even professionally a subordinate rank as 
 
 artists, these water-colourists laboured on quietly and accomplished 
 
 
 
 
 
 a work of which they scarcely appreciated the importance or the 
 magnitude. Of these interpreters of the beauty of their country 
 three were specially gifted—De Wint, Copley Fielding, and David 
 Cox. 
 
 Mr, Walter Armstrong, in his recent memoir of De Wint, has 
 pointed out that most of the English branch of the modern land- 
 scape school were born between 1780 and 1790. This, of course, 
 excludes the greatest names of all—those of Gainsborough, Turner, 
 Girtin, Constable, and Crome, but it includes Cotman, Cox, Collins, 
 John Varley, Prout, De Wint, Havell, Copley Fielding, and pro- 
 bably G. Barret, junior. All of these were, therefore, young men 
 together. This band of youths began the practice of water-colour 
 
 painting when it was yet in its infancy and lived to see it develop 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 122 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 luminous and true, sometimes clear and blue, sometimes hazy 
 with sunny mist, sometimes obscured by drifting rain-clouds. He 
 was a careful student of trees, and in his sketches their exact 
 character was often caught and put in at once with a felicitous 
 blot—as, for instance, the pines in a rapid sketch of Greenwich 
 Park in the British Museum—and he was masterly in his gene- 
 ralisation of masses of foliage; but for all this his nearer trees are 
 often so mannered in touch that they alone would be sufficient to 
 authenticate a drawing. Few have excelled him in painting the 
 earth, in the solid modelling of the ground, and in representing 
 
 the different textures of its soil: few have painted mellow sun- 
 
 ight more strongly and transparently than he. The general 
 
 
 
 sentiment of his work is tranquillity, the true country feeling 
 
 ar from the madding crowd,’ where reapers rest in the cornfield 
 in the shade of fresh-cut sheaves, where barges float slowly on 
 smooth rivers, and cows pasture in fat meadows beside some 
 eepy town. As Mr. Armstrong says, ‘His place in English 
 
 art is with Constable and David Cox, though he had none of 
 
 w 
 
 Constable’s desire to make ‘the restlessness of nature shine through 
 
 
 
 the repose of art. He was also like and unlike Constable as a 
 
 colourist; like him in aiming at Nature’s exact scale, but seeking 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 | her richer and more complete harmonies. His supreme quality 
 
 | was, indeed, his colour; his chord was richer and deeper, perhaps, 
 than that of any other landscape-painter. He drew and finished 
 
 | in colour only—drew in complete and full colour at once —so 
 
 that his merest sketches have all the force, sometimes more than 
 the force, of his finished drawings. But of his practice we have an 
 authentic account in Mr. Armstrong’s memoirs, which perhaps he 
 
 | | will forgive me for quoting here :— 
 
 | ‘When painting on his own account he worked almost invariably on 
 
 | “old Creswick paper,” which was manufactured in delicate ivory tints. 
 This was always more or less granular in texture, which thoroughly suited 
 his style, for it enabled him to strike his rich transparent tones well into 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 LfLunt, De Wint, and Copley Fielding. nan 
 
 
 
 | ideas, the search for new subjects, you cannot visit an exhibi- 
 | tion of water-colour drawings in which half at least of the land- 
 scapes do not show distinctly the influence of Cox, or De Wint, 
 or Copley Fielding. 
 
 The father of Peter De Wint (1784-1849) was a physician, 
 descended from a Dutch family which had settled in America. 
 Peter was apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, who has been 
 already mentioned in connexion with Turner and Girtin, De 
 Wint was bound to him for the purpose of learning the arts of 
 engraving and portrait-painting, but he seems to have had a pre- 
 
 ference for sketching from nature, and Smith, though he sent him 
 
 
 
 to prison once for refusing to betray the secrets of his fellow- 
 apprentice who had run away, seems to have had the wisdom and 
 kindness to encourage his natural gift. His fellow - apprentice 
 | was William Hilton, the historical painter, with whom De Wint 
 formed a friendship which lasted till Hilton’s death, They lived 
 together as bachelors, they spent their holi ays together at 
 | Hilton’s home at Lincoln, and there De Wint met and won for 
 his wife the sister of his friend. At Lincoln, 
 neighbourhood, he found subjects for endless pictures, W. herever 
 he went, whether to the hilly country of Yorks hire, Cumberland, 
 
 or Wales, or the flats of Lincolnshire or Essex (and scarcely 
 
 also, and in its 
 
 
 
 Turner himself had in England a wider sketching-ground), he pre- 
 
 ferred a long, low stretch of country, and to paint it on a long, 
 
 
 
 ow slip of paper. It would seem as though he had inherited a 
 
 
 
 ove of flatness from his Dutch progenitors. In the foreground a 
 
 
 
 
 
 river or a cornfield, or both, a village or town in middle dis- 
 tance, a hill beyond rising to no great height—of such simple 
 elements his finest works are composed, And these works were 
 truly fine though inspired with no exalted poetry, and confined 
 to the representation of ordinary phenomena. Simplicity, direct- 
 ness, and force, were the essential qualities of his art. His distri- 
 
 bution of light and dark was broad and effective, his skies 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
ee ES 
 
 
 
 be snot et bia greta 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 124 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 recognised till long after his death. He never left off painting 
 in oil, but his pictures were either rejected or skied at the 
 Academy, and always remained on his hands unsold. ‘ Fifty 
 
 years ago, as Mr. Armstrong tells us, ‘that august body (the 
 
 Royal Academy) was not kind to water-colour men who dabbled 
 
 in oil. It either wished to hold them to their lasts, or, failing to 
 understand their works, took for granted they were bad.” More 
 extraordinary is what follows :—‘In the first instance Mrs. Tatlock 
 made her offer to the National Gallery. At that time the late 
 Sir William Boxall was director. He, perhaps, had never heard of 
 De Wint as a painter in oil. In any case, he was so little attracted 
 by the lady’s proposal that he never even tried to see the pictures, 
 and so Constable’s Cornfield, and Hay-wain, and Valley Farm, are 
 left without two of the best companions they could find in 
 
 Europe.’ 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 fTunt, De Wint, and Copley Fielding. 123 
 
 while it was 
 wet mosaicing it, as it were, with rich, harmonious colours, some cool, 
 some warm and glowing. His aim was always to succeed by the first 
 intention. The bloom of his colour was never disturbed in the shadows, 
 “lifted” tints being confined to the halftones and used only in his large 
 works, His 
 
 the body of the paper. This he did by saturating it, and 
 
 
 
 sketches and small drawings were carried out entirely in 
 undisturbed colour.’ 
 
 There is a fine instance of this ‘mosaicing’ in a singularly rich 
 sketch of Gloucester, in the British Museum, and in this and 
 other unfinished works there, notably a grand 4éauche of a forest 
 scene, his method of commencing his work may be profitably 
 studied, especially his wonderful skill in utilising the grain of the 
 paper to produce variety of texture and innumerable lights. 
 
 Fortunately the nation is rich in fine examples of De Wint. 
 At the British Museum there are only a few sketches, but the 
 South Kensington Museum contains twenty-eight of his drawings, 
 including the famous Cricketers (now, alas! with a perished sky) 
 and fine pictures of Wottingham and Walton-on- Thames, all three 
 of which are part of the Ellison Gift; and at the National 
 Gallery are twenty-three drawings bequeathed by Mr. Hender- 
 son, all finely preserved, and including some of his finest works, 
 such as Lincoln Cathedral, Bray on the Thames, Ruins of 
 Lincoln Castle, and Harvest Time, Lancashire. The etching of a 
 Cornfield, Tvinghoe, Buck 
 
 lection. But at South Kensington there are, besides the water- 
 
 
 
 s, is taken from a drawing in this col- 
 
 colours, four of his pictures in oil - colour, including his two 
 masterpieces in this medium, the Cornfield and the Woody Lana- 
 Scape, two of the finest pictures of the English school. They 
 were presented by the late Mrs. Tatlock, the daughter of the 
 painter, about fifteen years ago. Like Cox and other water- 
 colourists, he was as great as a painter in oils as in water-colours, 
 and it is one of the most extraordinary instances of prejudice on 
 
 the part of both artists and the public that this fact was not 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 fae 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 126 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 colour was pretty rather than rich or full. But on the Sussex Downs 
 he was, as Mr. Ruskin says, insuperable. He loved all that was 
 sweet and delicate in nature, and these softly-moulded hills, half-filled 
 with the white mists of morning, or flooded with the gentle gold of a 
 
 summer afternoon, with their long, smooth curves undulating to the 
 distant white cliff set in tender contrast against a pale blue sky 
 
 or sandy sea; such things as these pleased him to paint, and were 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PENCIL SKETCH BY COPLEY FIELDING. 
 
 specially suited to his method of execution. The key in which these 
 Down drawings are executed is so light, and their beauty is so difficult 
 to represent by black-and-white lines, that they do not lend them- 
 selves to reproduction by photography or etching, and one of his 
 fine drawings of a storm at sea has, therefore, been chosen 
 for to represent him in this book. Drawings of this class were 
 scarcely less a specialty of Fielding than his scenes on the Downs, 
 and both have provoked numberless imitations. For such pictures 
 the scale of colour of which he had the completest command was 
 adequate. The murky sky of all imaginable gradations of warm and 
 
 , the waves with slaty hollows and sandy lights, the dark 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 XI 
 COPLEY FIELDING, DAVID Cox, 
 W. J. MULLER. 
 
 (* the three artists referred to in the last paper as more 
 exclusively than the rest of the earlier English water- 
 colourists, painters of ‘the country,’ Antony Vandyke Copley 
 Fielding (1787-1855) was at once the most elegant and the weakest, 
 the most charming draughtsman and the least potent colourist. His 
 drawings fell generally under one of three classes: (1) lake and 
 mountain scenery in the North of England, Wales, and Scotland, 
 (2) sea and shore scenes, and (3) pictures of the Sussex Downs, He 
 was particularly skilful in obtaining most delicate gradations of tone 
 and effects of mist by repeated layers of colour and washings down, 
 and may be said to have been the chief master of this method as 
 distinguished from that of the pure, bright touches in gemlike mosaic, 
 and the artful wedging and interlacing of washes of full strength laid 
 on once and for all, in which both Cox and De Wint excelled, Of 
 Fielding, Mr. Ruskin said in one of his lectures at Oxford :— 
 
 The depth of fa 
 
 
 
 distant brightness, freshness, and mystery of morning 
 air with which Copley Fielding used to invest the ridges of the South Downs, 
 as they rose out of the blue Sussex champaign, remains, and I believe must 
 
 
 
 remain, insuperable, while his sense of beauty in the cloud-forms associated 
 with the higher mountains enabled him to invest the compa 
 
 
 
 atively modest 
 scenery of our own island—out of which he never travelled—with a charm 
 seldom attained by the most ambitious painters of Alp or Apennine.’ 
 
 The charm of his pictures of lake scenery is doubtless great; he 
 drew the forms of hill and mountain with singular grace, he shrouded 
 them in the most subtle and impalpable veils of mist; but it was their 
 picturesque beauty rather than their majesty that he felt, and his 
 
 KK 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ish Water-Colour Patuters. 
 
 128 The Earlier E; 
 
 ‘dirty’ night. But it is not to his technical skill—splendid though it 
 
 
 
 was, and in so marked a degree peculiar to himself—that he owes 
 his special eminence in the history of English art, but to that 
 power of poetical expression which was more strongly developed 
 of the kind that I 
 
 
 
 in his later life. The spirit of his poetry we 
 have already described as separating modern from ancient land- 
 scape, as modern from ancient verse, and consists in imaginative 
 sympathy between human and inanimate nature generally, and 
 more especially between those who win their bread by the sweat 
 of their brows and the places where they live and die. The 
 individual may be a peasant and his place a fen, or he may be a 
 sailor and his place the shore and the sea, but in either case the 
 man is bound to the place, and its soil and its plants, its heights 
 or its plains, its dryness or its wetness, its stillness or its storms, 
 its prevalent sunshine or prevalent mist, mould his fortunes and 
 
 his ideas, and even his physical form. These ideas are not fanciful, 
 
 
 
 but most literally true, and yet they present for the imagination of 
 a landscape-painter a field as wide and deep and noble, and perhaps 
 more fit than the fall of empires and the destinies of the human 
 
 race. 
 
 
 
 David Cox (1783-1859), like so many of our greatest artists, 
 was of humble origin. His father was a blacksmith and a white- 
 smith, his mother, the daughter of a farmer and miller, was of 
 better education than her husband, and a woman of superior intel- 
 ligence and force of character. David was born in Heath Mill 
 Lane at Deritend, a suburb of Birmingham, on the 29th of April, 
 1783. What education he received was at a day-school and after- 
 wards at the Free School at Birmingham for a short time, but 
 he was soon set to work in his father’s smithy. He showed very 
 early a disposition towards art, and as he was not deemed strong 
 
 enough for smith’s work, he was sent to the drawing-school of 
 
 
 
 Joseph Barber, for the purpose of qualifying him for apprenticeship 
 
 to one of the ‘toy’ trades,’ then flourishing at Birmingham: the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller. he7 
 
 hulls of the ships with their white or brown sails, he repeated with 
 variations again and again. The drawing engraved is a fine 
 example of his swinging seas and advancing clouds; it has lost 
 in colour, but this does not much affect our engraving. Fielding, 
 like Hunt, was a pupil of John Varley and a visitor at Dr. Monro’s. 
 Of his life there is little recorded beyond his connexion with the 
 Water-colour Society. This commenced in 1810 and terminated only 
 with his death in 1835. During that period he was a prolific contri- 
 butor to its exhibitions, sending an average of between forty and 
 fifty drawings for many years in succession, and he filled the offices 
 of Treasurer, Secretary, and finally of President of the Society. 
 The last and greatest of the trio was David Cox, not greatest in 
 
 all respects, for Copley Fielding had a finer sense of the beauty of 
 
 
 
 ine and form, and De Wint excelled him in composition and 
 drawing and in depth and bloom of colour; but if Cox’s chord of 
 colour was not so deep as that of De Wint (Fielding cannot compare 
 
 with cither as a colourist), it was equally fine in quality, as true in 
 
 
 
 harmony, and more radiant. Indeed, as a ‘luminarist,’ to take a 
 word from the French, there is perhaps no modern painter who is 
 quite his equal. His best pictures, whether in oil or water, make ‘a 
 
 hole in the wall, as the saying is. Every part of them is alive with 
 
 
 
 ight,—light radiating from the sky, sparkling in the middle distance, 
 and scintillating even in the shadows of the foreground. And he 
 combined this transparency with remarkable force and solidity of 
 effect, so that his works are as strong as they are bright. Using 
 full brush, he laid on his colours with swift strokes, interlacing and 
 interweaving them without disturbance, so that (especially on the 
 
 coarse-grained paper that he loved) they have at once a purity and a 
 
 
 
 
 
 play which is perhaps unrivalled, for they are never muddled or 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘smoky,’ and, despite their constant variety and interchange, maintain 
 
 
 
 
 
 unbroken the prevailing tint of their broadly divided masses. He 
 
 
 
 was also great in rendering every variety of ‘weather, from a bright 
 
 summer morn with a ‘mackerel 
 
 
 
 * to a drizzling afternoon and a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 130 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 for a large coloured drawing. That he could not sell all he 
 painted is clear from the following story. Cox belonged to the 
 short-lived Association of Artists in Water - colours, which was 
 started in 1808 and came to an end a year or two afterwards, the 
 works of the Association being seized by the owners of the Exhi- 
 bition Gallery. One of them, a drawing of Windsor Castle by 
 Cox, was purchased by Mr. J. Allnut, and when his collection was 
 being prepared for sale in 1861 two other drawings were found 
 underneath it attached to the sketching-board. The fine drawing 
 of the Cricketers by De Wint was discovered in much the same 
 way by Mr. Vokins. 
 
 In 1813 Cox for a short time taught drawing at the Military 
 Academy at Farnham, but his new duties obliged him to break 
 up his home, and were otherwise uncongenial, and in the following 
 year he took up his residence at Hereford, where he remained till 
 1827, teaching in different schools and private families and taking 
 pupil-boarders. By dint of hard work and economy he had 
 managed by 1817 to build a house on land of his own, which he 
 called Ashtree House, and when he came to London he was able 
 to dispose of it for about rooo/ In 1813 he joined the Water- 
 colour Society, and during his stay in Hereford he (except in 1815 
 and 1817) contributed regularly to its exhibitions, sometimes 
 sending over twenty, and once over thirty, drawings. Every year 
 he paid a visit to London and took a sketching holiday. In 1819 
 he went to North Devon and Bath, in 1826 to Holland and 
 
 Belgium, but he usually then and afterwards went to North Wales 
 
 
 
 In this Hereford time he also published several educational works, 
 illustrated by soft ground etchings of his own and coloured aqua- 
 tints, In 1814 the first appeared called ‘A Treatise on Landscape 
 Painting and Effect on Water-colours, from the first rudi- 
 ments to the finished picture;’ in 1816, ‘Progressive Lessons in 
 Landscape for young beginners’ — twenty-four etchings without 
 
 letterpress; and in 1825 his ‘Young Artists’ Companion, or 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller. 129 
 
 
 
 
 
 toys consisting of buttons, buckles, snuffboxes, lockets, &c., mounted 
 
 
 
 in metal-work and painted. At the age of fifteen he was appren- 
 ticed to a locket and miniature painter, but his master, whose 
 name was Fielder, committing suicide about eighteen months after, 
 that way of life was closed to him, and he found another in 
 grinding colours for the scene-painter at the Birmingham Theatre, | 
 of which Macready (the father of the great tragedian) was then 
 essee and manager. He soon rose to the position of scene- | 
 painter, but after two or three years he quarrelled with Mac- 
 ready and went to London, on the proposal of Mr. Astley, and | 
 settled in lodgings near Astley’s Circus, which was kept by a 
 widow named Ragg, whose daughter Mary he afterwards married. 
 Ie never, however, seems to have painted for Astley’s, but he 
 
 painted scenes for the Surrey and other theatres. Some scenes | 
 
 
 
 painted for the theatre at Wolverhampton are his latest recorded 
 connexion with stage-art. He had always kept up his habit of 
 sketching from nature whenever he could, and by this time his | 
 
 career as a painter of landscape in water-colours may be said to 
 
 
 
 
 
 have well commenced. Two of his friends from Birmingham, 
 Charles Barker and Richard Evans, had come up to town to 
 sketch with him, and he disposed of his drawings to a dealer 
 named Simpson, of Greek Street, for the large sum of two guineas 
 
 a dozen. He began to take pupils, and also lessons; and in 1805 
 
 
 
 and 1806 he had made sketching tours in North Wales. John 
 
 Varley was his master, and to his credit be it recorded that when 
 
 
 
 he found that Cox was a poor and struggling artist he refused to 
 
 accept further payments from him. In 1808 he married Mary 
 
 
 
 Ragg, who was some twelve years older than he, and removed 
 to a cottage at the corner of Dulwich Common, where their only 
 child, David, who afterwards became a well-known member of the 
 Water-colour Society, was born the year after. For many years 
 
 his life was one of struggles; the prices for his drawings (1811- | 
 
 
 
 
 
 1814) ranging from seven shillings for a small sketch to six pounds 
 LL 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
pee AE pent ny ate, 1 aiid mice TEE 
 
 XOO GIAVG Ad “YMVW NAVW Nad uva 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 132 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 portfolios full of vigorous and masterly sketches, and Cox went to 
 see him paint. 
 
 This young genius was William John Miiller, the son of a 
 German minister, born at Bristol, where his father was Curator of 
 the Museum. Well educated, endowed with various tastes, and 
 intended for an engineer, he threw over everything for art. ie 
 received his first instruction from his fellow-townsman, James 
 3aker Pyne (1800-1870), the well-known landscape-painter and 
 imitator of Turner, but soon struck out a bold new line for 
 himself, studying direct from nature and painting in the open air. 
 
 He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1833, and had 
 
 
 
 visited Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, besides Greece and 
 Egypt, before one morning Mr. George Fripp, now himself a dis- 
 
 tinguished veteran of the water-colour school, took Cox to see 
 
 
 
 him paint. One of the pictures which he painted in Cox’s 
 
 
 
 presence was the famous Ammunition Wagon, which he completed 
 in two sittings of a few hours each, although he made a very 
 serious change in the composition while the picture was in pro- 
 gress. Cox looked on with wonder at the dexterity and power of 
 the young genius, and with the eager apprehension of a young 
 student. On the conclusion of one of the sittings, or lessons, he 
 is reported to have said, in all humility, ‘You see, Mr. Miiller, 
 
 I can't paint; or words to that effect. But if he never painted 
 
 
 
 before he painted afterwards, basing his practice in oils upon 
 Miiller’s, and exhibiting a freedom and power in his water-colours 
 
 greater than before. 
 
 
 
 Cox must, therefore, be said to have learnt much from Miiller, 
 of whose splendid audacity as a sketcher two examples are here 
 given, reduced in size and denuded of colour, but still illustrative 
 of some of his best qualities as a draughtsman and chiaroscurist. 
 To him it will be necessary to recur again, if briefly, for though 
 he can scarcely be called one of the earlier water-colourists, he, 
 
 like Bonington, did not live to belong to the later ones, and his 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller. 3 
 Drawing-book of Studies, &c.’ He also published in 1820 some 
 views of Bath. 
 
 From 1827 to 1841 Cox lived at 9 Foxley Road, Kennington 
 Common, and during these years took several short trips to 
 France, and sketching excursions in Derbyshire, Lancashire, York- 
 shire, Somersetshire, and Wales. In 1836 and 1837 he made the 
 sketches for his illustrations to Roscoe’s ‘Wanderings and Ex- 
 cursions’ in North and South Wales. Living a simple painter’s 
 life without incident, steadily but slowly improving in his art and 
 in public favour, steadily saving a little money year by year, still 
 producing hundreds of drawings which sold but for small prices, 
 and in truth did not deserve very large ones, 
 
 In 1839 Cox was fifty: 
 
 
 
 six years old, a good honest painter in 
 
 
 
 water-colours, an accurate observer of nature, an excellent teacher, 
 but yet not generally recognised as the possessor of any special 
 gift or remarkable poetry of feeling. But he was still an indus- 
 trious and humble man, not tired of his work nor satisfied with 
 his accomplishments, but conscious of his shortcomings and bent 
 on overcoming them if it were possible. At this time he conceived 
 a strong desire to paint in oils, and not even his habitual caution 
 or the advice of most of his friends could dissuade him from the 
 attempt. He had long ago sketched from nature in oils with 
 Havell, but he had not painted any oil picture of importance. 
 He had, at least, one encourager in his new departure, a friend 
 and fellow-sketcher, Mr. William Roberts; and he persevered, 
 with the result of not only mastering the difficulties of the oil- 
 painting, but also thereby greatly developing his genius as 
 a painter in water-colours, This development was greatly 
 aided by the influence of a much younger man, whose rapidity 
 and skill in the management of his materials were pheno- 
 menal. In 1839 this young painter (but twenty-seven years old, 
 and equally skilful in oil and water-colours) had just returned 
 
 from his journeys in Greece and Egypt, bringing with him his 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 “dd VOSUNVT 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 urlier English Wate Colour Pai: 
 
 
 
 34 The E 
 
 nters. 
 
 
 
 life. And of all places in Wales, it is Bettws-y-Coed that he 
 selected especially as the field for the exercise of his art. It was 
 there that he sketched the church, the mill, the ‘big’ meadow, and 
 saw the touching scene which he afterwards wrought into his noble 
 drawing of The Welsh Funeral; and it was in its neighbourhood 
 that he watched the peasants gathering peat, or returning home 
 laden with fragrant heather, both subjects of famous drawings ; 
 and it was there probably that he saw the old man in our etching 
 
 returning at eve with the bundle of faggots on his back. It was 
 
 
 
 there, in fact, that all his greatest works were conceived — oil- 
 
 pictures and water-colours— whose names are now ‘historical’ in 
 
 
 
 sale-rooms for the large prices they have fetched since his death ; 
 especially at the Quilter sale in 1875, when the great Hayfield 
 
 sold for 29507, the largest price ever paid for a water-colour 
 
 
 
 drawing, not even excepting Turner's. 
 
 But even when he had reached the zenith of his power, as the 
 
 
 
 story just related of the picture of Peace and War will indicate, 
 his prices were still low, his genius only recognised by a few. 
 One of his oil-pictures was actually rejected by the British Institu- 
 tion in 1844; and he had to complain of the small respect that 
 was paid by the hangers to the drawings he sent to the Water- 
 colour Society in 1845. The public and his brother artists saw 
 only in his broad style a ‘want of finish.” In 1853, when his 
 power was at his highest, when his grasp of the greater truths 
 of Nature was most strong, when his colour was most deep and 
 brilliant and pure, and his works were inspired by a large spirit 
 of humanity and a solemn deep feeling which may almost be called 
 biblical, the Committee of the Water-colour Society thought his 
 drawings ‘too rough!’ ‘They forget, wrote Cox, with a self- 
 assertion rare to his humble nature, ‘that they are the work of 
 the mind, which I consider very far before portraits of places.’ 
 This (1853) was the year of The Challenge—a drawing of a bull 
 
 roaring, a wild swamp with a blurred sky behind it—and the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller. 133 
 
 talents were too sterling and his influence too great for him to be 
 dismissed as an incident in the life of David Cox, At the same 
 time it would be easy to over-estimate his influence on Cox. Cox 
 was Cox even in 1838; all that he had of knowledge, of nature, 
 of poetical feeling was stored up in the man, and ripe. In the 
 higher qualities of Cox, especially his human sympathy, Miiller, 
 with all his strength, was deficient; what Cox owed to him was 
 not feeling but a method of expressing it. How quickly he 
 
 profited by his study of oil-painting may be gathered from the 
 
 
 
 act that one of his oil-pictures, Washing Day, painted in 1843, 
 sold at Christie’s in 1872 for 9432, and many of his later oil 
 
 pictures have sold for prices between two and three thousand 
 
 
 
 pounds; and one, quite a small picture, Peace and War, for 36017. 
 
 10s., a price quite unexampled for any landscape of the same size. 
 
 
 
 t is only 184 inches by 24 inches. It was painted in 1846 and 
 given by Cox to a friend. This friend being in need of money, 
 Cox bought his own picture of him for 20/7, and afterwards sold 
 it for the same sum. 
 
 The desire to perfect himself in oil-painting was one of the 
 
 reasons for his leaving London in 1841, when he retired to the 
 
 
 
 bourhood of his native place. It was at Greenfield House, 
 
 neigh 
 Greenfield Lane, Harborne, near Birmingham, that he lived from 
 that year till his death in 1859. It is to this period that all his 
 great oil-pictures, and the noblest and most poetical of his water- 
 colour drawings belong ; including probably the not very large but 
 fine example in the British Museum which has been engraved for 
 this book. The inspiration for most of these was drawn mainly 
 from North Wales, especially from Bettws-y-Coed and its neigh- 
 bourhood, to which he paid a yearly visit from 1844 to 1856. Of 
 
 all the parts of this island which he visited and painted, it was 
 
 
 
 Wales that he loved and understood best, it was Wales that drew 
 from him his deeper notes of poetry, his noblest sympathy with 
 his kind. He is the greatest interpreter of her scenery and her 
 
 MM 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller 
 
 Summit of a Mountain, two of the finest of his later works. The 
 
 former was, however, hung 
 
 
 
 in the place of honour; and the latter 
 found admirers at Harborne, for Cox wrote to his son, ‘Perhaps 
 I am made vain by some here who think my Summit of a 
 Mountain worth—I am almost afraid to say—t1oo/; and if I could 
 paint it in oil I shall some day, with D.V., get that sum,’ 
 There is no record that he ever did get ‘that sum’ for any one 
 of his works; but if he did it was probably his ‘top price’? A 
 
 good deal of pity has been expressed for him (as for other artis 
 
 
 
 ) 
 on account of the enormous contrast between the sums paid for 
 
 their works after their death as compared with the prices they 
 obtained in their lives ; and there is perhaps nothing more pathetic 
 than the case of artists like J. F. Millet and Méryon, who were 
 barely able to support themselves in the humblest fashion even to 
 the last. But this was not the case with Cox, though he had his 
 period of struggle; and it was well said by Mr. Edward Radcliffe, 
 in a speech delivered at a dinner given by the Liverpool Art Club 
 
 in 1875 to commemorate an exhibition of Cox’s worl 
 
 
 
 ‘I would not like his life to have been changed one bit. ....No 
 man more thoroughly enjoyed his life. His habits and ta 
 
 
 
 S were of the 
 most simple kind. He saved what to him was a large competency. His 
 house with all its surroundings was a model of English comfort. Suppose 
 he had been besieged by patrons and dealers, he might have launched 
 out ... kept his carriage, taken his ’40 port, and died twenty years 
 before he did; and instead of being remembered by troops of friends as a 
 dear simple friend, only thought of as a great ‘ Mogul.”’ 
 
 It would be well, perhaps, for the art of England, and for many 
 fashionable artists of the present day, if they were compelled by 
 comparative neglect to live in such comparative poverty as David 
 Cox. Fortunately he was never tempted to flood the market with 
 inferior replicas of the Vale of Clwyd and the Skylark, but put 
 new effort and thought into every sketch till the end, 
 
 In 1844 Cox had a bad chest attack, and in the same year he 
 
 
 
 peemmate tater 
 
 ¥ 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 { 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 136 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 lost his wife, after a union of thirty-seven years, and felt her loss | 
 severely. She was a very intelligent woman, had helped greatly 
 
 in the strict economy of the household, and had taken an unusual 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 WATER CARRIER, XANTH AFTER MU 
 
 
 
 interest in her husband’s work. She sat with him while he painted, | 
 and was an admirable and severe critic. Cox’s deep religious | 
 convictions aided him in recovering from this blow. ‘In December 
 
 he wrote to his son and daughter-in-law: “I certainly was very | 
 
 much out of spirits when I wrote on Thursday, but I am much 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 ‘ONIGUVH ‘a ‘4 *aNVT 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 better now; and I believe I have no real cause to be otherwise 
 
 2 
 
 for all things, I feel, are ordained for the very best for my good. 
 
 I have been at my work with more calmness, and shall, I have no 
 
 doubt, do better and be better in all ways, with God’s grace and 
 
 assistance. Your letter was of a most encouraging kind, too, with 
 
 regard to my work, and yesterday I took your advice and imme- 
 
 diately took up a canvas to begin an “oil” for the Institution? 
 
 This 
 and 
 
 picture was called Wind, Rain, and Sunshine (or Sun, Wind, 
 
 Rain), a title suggested by Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed, 
 
 exhibited the previous year (1844). Work once begun again, his 
 
 
 
 industry never failed. He worked not only by day, but in the 
 
 even. 
 
 ing also, and his testimony as to the value of painting by 
 
 
 
 lamplight is interesting. He wrote to his son in 1849: ‘In an 
 
 even. 
 
 ing I go to oil-painting (small pictures), I wish I could finish 
 
 them by lamplight as well as I can make a beginning ; for I find 
 
 when I paint in oil and water colours by lamplight, my picture 
 
 is a 
 and 
 I 
 
 ways broader in effect and more brilliant, and often better 
 more pure, in the colour of the tints, 
 
 n 1853 Cox had a seizure which, if not paralytic, had much 
 
 the same effect. His eyesight was affected and one lid drooped ; 
 
 but 
 
 than 
 was 
 
 agair 
 Har 
 I 
 part 
 
 he went on painting, and his drawings of 1857, though rougher 
 ever, made a great impression on the public. In June he 
 taken ill, and though he recovered sufficiently to enjoy painting 
 n, and exhibited drawings in 1858 and 1859, he did not leave 
 orne any more, and died there on the 7th of June, 1859. 
 
 have entered more fully than usual into the life of this artist, 
 
 y because he was one of the greatest of his school and partly 
 
 because it is rare to find such a good record of a water-colour 
 
 artist’s life as is contained in the biographies of Cox by his friend 
 
 
 
 Hal 
 
 scrip 
 
 and by Solly, the latter of which was based on the manu- 
 
 t of the former, but was the earlier in point of publication. 
 
 I have also quoted very freely from the account of Cox’s life 
 
 which I contributed to the ‘Dictionary of National Biography” 
 
 
 
 
 
 Copley Fielding, David Cox, W. J. Miller. 137 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 138 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 Of the other illustrations to this chapter, one is from a charming 
 little drawing in the South Kensington Museum by James Duffield 
 Harding (1798-1863), an artist of much grace and skill, a cele- 
 brated teacher in his day, and principally remarkable for his skill 
 in the use of the lead-pencil and his works of instruction on the 
 subject, especially on the drawing of foliage of various kinds of 
 
 | trees; 
 
 The other is from a water-colour drawing by George Chambers, 
 
 
 
 who in the course of his short life of thirty-seven years (1803-1840) 
 was by turns sailor, house-painter, panorama-painter, scene-painter, 
 
 and finally painter of battle-pieces and marine subjects. He is not 
 
 
 
 perhaps as well known as he should be, but has yet attained a 
 secure and honourable place among English painters, for the truth, 
 the vigour, and the fine colour of his works. Two of his most 
 important pictures, Te Bombardment of Algiers in 1816 and The 
 Capture of Portobello, are in the collection of marine pictures at 
 | Greenwich. The drawing here engraved is at the South Kensington 
 Museum, and is an excellent example of his skill in water-colours 
 and fresh observation of nature. The scene is evidently Dutch, 
 possibly on the Zuider Zee, and is full of the movement of air 
 
 and water and the light from a broken sky. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 ee advice was to paint your ‘impressions 
 
 XII 
 TURNER AGAIN. 
 
 » but he 
 
 
 
 meant by impressions something very different from the 
 
 impre: 
 
 
 
 ssions of the modern impre 
 
 
 
 He did not paint his 
 impressions at once, but reserved them sometimes for years; they 
 
 dwelt and germinated in his mind until they had developed into 
 
 
 
 a pictured fancy, which expressed the effect upon his mind of a 
 
 particular scene, or series of scenes—the pictorial sum total of 
 
 
 
 many ‘impressions,’ sensual and mental. His painted impressions 
 were, therefore, highly organized poems, of which the material 
 was indeed supplied by nature, but was so altered and rearranged 
 in the process of composition, that the results were creations of 
 which he was as much the author as Shelley of his Ode to 
 
 the Skylark, or Beethoven of the Pastoral Sonata. Miiller, on 
 
 
 
 ions in a manner much more 
 
 
 
 the contrary, painted his impres 
 like the artists of the school of Manet and Degas, The im- 
 pressions he painted were the impressions of the eye and of the 
 moment, and he painted them at once in a sketch, and when 
 he made a picture of the sketch, strove to preserve its freshness 
 unimpaired, either by elaboration or added sentiment. This apart 
 from all extremes of impressionism is one of the characteristics of 
 modern art—of the art of men who have lived since Miiller. It 
 was not quite such a characteristic of the art of his time, and 
 therefore Miiller may be said to have been in a measure an inno- 
 vator, an introducer of a new spirit among painters, or at least 
 among water-colourists; and it is for this reason partly that I 
 
 have said more about him than about some earlier men. Another 
 
 
 
 reason is that he was one of the first of English artists to visit 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 140 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 the East in a purely painter-like spirit, and to bring back 
 
 ‘impressions’ of it which were perfectly fresh and natural records 
 
 of what 
 
 he saw and had pleasure in seeing. His sketches in 
 
 Egypt and Asia Minor are still as unequalled in force and bril- 
 
 liancy o 
 they are 
 of Mr. 
 
 British \V 
 and whi 
 
 flashing 
 
 record and in the purity of their Eastern character, as 
 in sheer sketching strength. Fortunately the bequest 
 Henderson’s fine collection enables the visitor to the 
 fuseum to study many of his finest sketches of this kind ; 
 
 e he turns over the pages of masterly drawing and 
 
 
 
 colour he will be reminded of no English artist who 
 
 lived before him. But at the same time, though he acknow- 
 
 ledges t 
 
 especially 
 
 heir confident skill and their splendid colouring which, 
 
 in some interiors with figures, will remind him of 
 
 Titian or Rembrandt and sometimes both together, he may miss 
 
 some ind 
 of a wor 
 
 interest 
 
 efinable quality which is necessary to his full appreciation 
 
 rk of art, though it be only a sketch, a want of human 
 
 perhaps, a sentiment, or more vaguely ‘poetry.’ 
 
 
 
 Of t 
 
 hat kind, or those kinds, of poetry which we find in 
 
 other English landscape work, the balanced serenity of Cozens, the 
 
 scenic loveliness of Barrett, the solemn humanity of David Cox 
 
 (to mention no more), we shall find indeed little. Such poetry 
 
 is scarcely to be expected in the sketches of a young man, 
 
 especially in a strange country; but you will find little of it even 
 
 in his more finished pictures either abroad or at home. But of 
 
 the mys 
 
 tery and romance of dead homes of ancient civilisations, 
 
 
 
 and of another kind of poetry, the poetry of first sight— of the 
 
 moment—the keen appeal of a new vision, keenly responded to 
 
 
 
 —of these kinds of poetry there is plenty in these sketches. 
 
 On the 
 
 subject of Miiller’s ‘poetry’ it will, however, be best to 
 
 let his biographer speak, in a passage which tells us something of 
 
 his practice also :— 
 
 *Miiller knew well that a sketch ought not to be a finished work, 
 
 but a viv 
 
 id, true, but generalised impression of the scene; a sort of com- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Turner. 
 
 promise, in fact, wherein the soul or spirit of the scene was caught and 
 rapidly made his own; in his later sketches of English country scenes, 
 especially those of the scenery near Bristol, which he loved so well, this 
 poetical rendering of the subject is very striking. When about to make a 
 sketch from nature, Miiller took a careful survey of all that was around 
 as well as before him. He then made his selection ; but his art-knowledge 
 and his imagination enabled him to see mentally how the subject would 
 appear if treated by one of the grand old masters, and to that ideal he 
 often worked in his finest sketches. How the subject would compose was 
 always one of the first points which he considered ; and in carrying this 
 out he never seems to have lost sight of the leading lines, nor to have 
 neglected the assistance accorded by a very broad and happy arrangement 
 of light and shade. 
 
 ‘Miiller looked on the mere imitative process—however important— 
 as the least essential of the rarer artistic qualifications that are necessary to 
 produce a truly fine sketch. And yet the cultivation of the imitative 
 faculty never had been, and never was, neglected by him... . In his 
 last journey to Lycia he kept up the good practice of careful pencil- 
 sketching. 
 
 ‘As Miiller’s career advanced he evidently felt more deeply the poetry 
 which is hidden in nature, and for which he sought an expression, just as 
 he had leatned to seize on the salient points of every subject selected by 
 him during the latter years of his life—those points I mean which were 
 best calculated to express its character, sentiment, and feeling. It was 
 
 
 
 thus with broad washes and sweeps of his brush, supplemented by rapid 
 markings and hatchings, that he combined what appeared to him best in 
 every scene, feeling instinctively, in copying from nature, what objects it 
 was desirable to sacrifice and discard, and what to retain and bring 
 prominently forward. Sometimes—I should, perhaps, say almost always 
 —he had to supply from his imagination what was wanting to carry to 
 completeness the picture which he had already idealised in his mind. 
 
 Miiller died in 1845 at the early age of thirty - two, cut off, 
 like Girtin and Bonington, before his genius had reached its full 
 development, but not without making his distinct mark in modern 
 art, or attaining a mastery which has been rarely equalled. Like 
 David Cox and De Wint, and many another English landscape 
 artist, his works have risen enormously in estimation since his 
 death, but this has been the case even perhaps in a more marked 
 
 oo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 142 
 
 
 
 sree with those of James Holland (1800-1879), for Holland 
 
 ¢ 
 attained a much more modest celebrity in his life. Of this rich 
 and tender colourist (great both in oil and water-colour), whose 
 radiant pictures of Venice are among the master-works of the 
 British 
 South Kensington, and with this bare mention of him I must 
 
 As 
 
 I do so, many names rise up to reproach me: of figure - painters 
 
 school, a small illustration is given from a drawing at 
 close the list of the earlier English painters in water-colour. 
 
 several, especially Richard Westall; of the landscape-painters many 
 more, especially Robson; of painters generally, John Frederick 
 Lewis, whose shade may well complain of the space allotted to 
 
 Miiller. 
 to exhaust its subject, and it will be fitly concluded by a few 
 
 But this book is after all but an essay, without a claim 
 
 more words about Turner. 
 
 We left him in 1802, the year he was elected Academician, 
 the year of Girtin’s death, the year probably of his first visit to 
 the Continent; it may also be said to have been the year of his 
 emancipation as an artist. The magnificent series of large draw- 
 ings from the North, belonging to the period of 1798-1802, the 
 Norham, Warkworth, and Kuilchurn Castles, the Edinburgh, and a 
 score of others, ‘and many a fine but dark oil-picture besides, 
 were a sudden revelation of the original power and poetry of the 
 artist; but they still, the water-colours at least, bore the traces 
 of Girtin’s influence in their breadth and simplicity, while their 
 grave, contemplative, and restful spirit, reminds one now of Girtin 
 and now of Cozens. It was of the latter no doubt he thought 
 most, when he gained his first, glimpse of that Alpine mountain- 
 land of which no one else yet except Cozens had truly drawn 
 the form or caught the spirit; and made that wonderful series of 
 sketches about Bonneville, St. Gothard, and the Grand Chartreuse, 
 which, though they are only in chalk on toned paper touched here 
 and there in a few cases with a splash of colour, are yet re- 
 
 markable amongst all his sketches for their vigour and truth 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘(XN0T09 ANY ‘TIONTd) ‘OINVIN AINOW Wowd ao 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Turner. 
 
 
 
 Reproduced here isa view of Rome from Monte Mario, a pencil- 
 sketch, with washes of colour, and a rapid study of a pilot-boat, 
 both of them as masterly as they can well be. Of the last, Mr. | 
 Ruskin wrote in his Catalogue of the Drawings by Turner, 
 exhibited at Marlborough House in 1858, that it was unrivalled: | | 
 ‘The figure of the old sailor throwing the coil of cable is, without | 
 exception, the most wonderful piece of energetic action I have 
 ever seen rendered by means so simple, even Tintoret’s work not | | 
 excepted. This illustration (the: view of Rome must be some | 
 years later), if it does not deserve such extravagant praise and 
 
 if it serves no other purpose, will, at least, show how fully | 
 
 equipped as a draughtsman, how full of varied energy and | 
 
 
 
 power, he was when he left England for the Continent in 1802. 
 
 After this, the divergence of Turner from the road followed by 
 all his contemporaries (who were not his imitators) becomes 
 
 | decided and unmistakable. Whether we regard the drawings for | 
 
 he ‘Southern Coast, or the ‘Liber Studiorum, or ‘Whitaker’s 
 
 
 
 Ht 
 
 listory of Richmondshire,’ or the ‘England and Wales,’ or his 
 
 
 
 innumerable vignettes, or the ‘Rivers of France, or his later 
 drawings of Venice, he stands alone. Of the band of young 
 
 rtists who met together at Dr. Monro’s, there is no one who 
 
 ro) 
 
 can follow his steps any more. In 1802 he had beaten all his | 
 
 predecessors on their own ground, and was passing on to dare 
 
 
 
 things unattempted yet in oil or water-colour. | | 
 And yet in saying that he had beaten them all on their | 
 
 
 
 own ground, some reservation should be made, for there is a 
 personality, a distinct, if limited perfection, in the works of 
 | Cozens and Girtin, and even of Hearne, which defies in some 
 measure the rivalry of any other artist, no matter with how 
 
 superior a genius he may be endowed. Turner surpassed, but 
 
 
 
 did not extinguish, his predecessors. Their work may look 
 | dwarfed and humble compared with his, as that of Goldsmith, 
 
 or Collins, or Gray, beside that of greater poets, but it still 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 144 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 stands, touched with the special grace of its origin, and safe to 
 find admiration and sympathy from kindred spirits. Turner’s 
 genius was vaster, mightier, broader, fed from a hundred affluents, 
 but theirs was of a purer, simpler jet. 
 
 And what is true of his predecessors and the colleagues of 
 his youth as compared with Turner, is true also of those who 
 lived and worked beside him long after ‘Poor Tom’ was dead ; 
 true of David Cox and De Wint, of Callcott and Stanfield, of 
 Constable and Collins, of Miiller and Holland. In other words, 
 no comparison is possible, or, at least, useful; for they did not, 
 
 and could not, aim at the same goal. So far as they were 
 
 
 
 unconscious, they were driven by quite different forces ; so far as 
 they were conscious, they had almost opposite conceptions of their 
 missions as artists. How shall we describe the distinction between 
 Turner and nearly all modern Jandscape-painters? A few years 
 ago it would have been done easily enough; it would have been 
 thought sufficient to say that Turner was an idealist and the rest 
 realists. But many faults have been found with these distinctions, 
 many confusions have arisen from their use. The claim of all 
 artists with any poetical feeling to be called idealists can scarcely 
 be denied; and no idealist whose work is based on nature, 
 and whose endeavour is to be true, but is a realist also. The 
 difference is more subtle and hard to grasp; it is in the 
 
 character of the ideas which the artists aimed to express, the 
 
 
 
 , 
 kind of truth that they sought to realise. Turner's ideas were 
 more comprehensive, his truths less obvious, than those of any 
 
 other landscape artist. Another distinction may be found in the 
 
 
 
 endeavour of the modern school of English landscape to be faith- 
 
 ful to local facts, whereas Turner’s genius often accepted them 
 
 
 
 only as material for composition. Other artists strove to make their 
 pictures as like what they saw as possible in form and colour ; 
 Turner altered and rearranged forms to suit his fancy, and habitu- 
 
 ally used a personal and artificial scheme of colour In their ren- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 es pr 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BY J. M. W. TURNER, 
 
 (SEPIA). 
 
 OF A PILOL BOAT. 
 
 SKETCH 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Turner. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 dering of light other artists gave the natural proportion of shade, : 
 
 and in opposing earth to sky gave the former its balance of solidity. 
 
 Turner, on the contrary (and more and more as he grew older), 
 
 deprived Nature of her darkness and Earth of her weight; so that 
 
 | sky and land became almost equally imponderable and luminous. 
 
 Other artists endeavoured to simplify Nature as much as possible, | 
 
 so as to gain in breadth and unity; Turner endeavoured, on the | 
 other hand, to express as much of her intricacy as he could, | | 
 
 filling every space with suggestions of infinite detail. Turner, 
 
 
 
 almost from the first, was, more than other artists, the painter of 
 
 the sun, the sky, and the air; and in the end represented all phe- | 
 
 
 
 | 
 nomena as a web woven of sunbeams and mists. His chord of 
 colour may be said to have been taken from the sky; and it is in 
 his skies that he comes nearer to positive, as opposed to relative, 
 truth of colour. He pitched his key by the sunlit sky also more 
 and more, so that it became lighter and lighter—a harmony of | 
 yellow and red and blue, mixed with white and the lightest of greys. 
 He chose the higher end of the colour gamut, and sacrificed every- 
 thing to keep in tune; and in this he followed not only his taste 
 and feeling but his genius, for he was never so successful when 
 
 composing in deeper and fuller notes. He could not get the lower 
 
 harmonies with the richness and vibration of other artists, like 
 
 Cox, De Wint, or Miiller. He may be called an alto amongst 
 
 
 
 It might be thought that an artist who began life as 
 
 
 
 colouri 
 a draughtsman with other draughtsmen, and went on till late in ° 
 
 life drawing the same scenes in his native country which he and 
 
 
 
 they had drawn in their youth, would at least in such drawings 
 | show strong affinity with his colleagues in the school which he 
 | helped with them to found; but it was not so. His work, on the | 
 
 contrary, retained a stronger affinity with that of artists like 
 
 Cozens, Barret, and Bonington, whose subjects were least English ; 
 
 and the contrast between it and that of men like Girtin, Cox, 
 
 
 
 | and De Wint, was most strongly marked in the ‘England and 
 BP. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 | 146 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 
 
 Wales’ series, which, with the exception of one or two compara- 
 
 tively early drawings which were engraved for it, had no community 
 | with any previous work by any other artist. Trusting to early 
 sketches for his facts, and to his memories for his ‘impressions,’ 
 his imagination composed beautiful visions of the different places 
 in England and Wales the names of which the engravings were to 
 bear, They were drawings of the greatest béauty and full of 
 noetry; they often expressed numerous and noble ideas in just 
 association with the place depicted ; they were based on the most 
 srofound and intimate knowledge of nature that any artist ever 
 possessed ; but both in the character of the ideas expressed, and in 
 
 the truths they sought to realise, they were as far asunder as possible 
 
 
 
 from the work of the other artists to whom these papers have been 
 
 | devoted. A comparison between Turner and his contemporaries after 
 1802 is disadvantageous to both; for it can scarcely be accomplished 
 
 | without bringing the peculiar defects of one side and the peculiar 
 merits of the other into the strongest possible contrast. 
 
 The Newcastle-on-Tyne, by Turner, in the series of the ‘Rivers 
 of England? will show this as well as any other of Turner's 
 drawings—especially if we compare it with Girtin’s drawing of the 
 same place, engraved for Walker’s ‘Itinerant’ in the latter years of 
 the eighteenth century, and republished in Miller's ‘Turner and 
 Girtin’s Picturesque Views, sixty years since, in 1854. The Girtin 
 drawing was executed probably between 1790 and 1800, and 
 
 | Turner's within a year or two before 1824. The chief aim of 
 
 
 
 Girtin’s drawing has evidently been fidelity; he gives us the full 
 
 width of the river with boats and shipping, its sloping banks of 
 | no great height, its bridge, and prominent towers and spires, in 
 | their proper places and of their right elevation, and the hills rising 
 gently in the far distance. He gives-us also the warehouses and 
 quay on the right bank, all somewhat commonplace and uninter- 
 esting as pictorial material, and a bit of the crest of the common- 
 
 place cliff in the foreground, with a commonplace figure on it; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 LAG ‘ANAL NOdQ aTLSvOMAaN 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 Turner. 
 
 the wind is from the south, blowing soft masse: 
 
 147 
 
 Ss of rain -cloud 
 
 along the sky, and carrying the smoke of the factories over the town. 
 
 At the time it was taken Newcastle was a much | 
 
 ess active and a 
 
 cleaner place than when Turner made his drawing, and he has made 
 
 his Newcastle much more busy and crowded, and fu 
 
 smoke, 
 
 
 
 Perhaps never before was the artis 
 thoroughly felt. 
 
 ller of fumes and 
 
 c value of smoke so 
 
 It rises from a thousand chimneys, blends with 
 
 the sky, and shrouds half the town in veils of every variety of tint 
 
 and opacity. 
 and as a picture is far finer than Girtin’s, 
 
 Not that this is of much importance’ in the 
 
 Turner’s drawing has an infernal majesty of its own, 
 
 comparison, for 
 
 Girtin could make fine pictures out of smo Ky towns, as we saw 
 
 in the Bridgenorth, and had perhaps taught Turner how to do so; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and if he had lived on as Turner did, instead of dying in 1802, he 
 
 might have produced a still more noble picture of Newcastle than 
 
 this of Turner’s, 
 
 obtained the same kind of beauty in the same way. 
 
 Turner do it? By altering nearly every part. 
 
 of Girtin’s drawing as a means of comparison is 
 
 
 
 taken from the same, or as nearly as possible th 
 
 view as Turner's. 
 
 D 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 into the middle, and has replaced the figure by two, besides intro- 
 
 ducing others in other places; he has rais 
 
 
 
 the town together sitting side by side on the same knoll: 
 
 hore, with sails and shipping; he has ‘pulled the foreground more 
 
 But it may be safely said that he would not have 
 
 How did 
 
 One special value 
 
 this—that it is 
 
 € same, point of 
 
 Perhaps the two artists, when youths, drew 
 
 perhaps—and I think this is more likely—Turner used Girtin’s 
 ketch, or the engraving for it, as the basis of his drawing. Turner 
 
 as filled up a good deal of the river, and hidden part of the 
 
 1 the land on both 
 
 
 
 sides of the river to an imposing height; he has raised all the 
 
 towers and spires enormously, and made a specia 
 
 
 
 exaggeration of 
 
 the shot-tower; he has wiped out the distant hills altogether, and 
 
 
 
 so increased the space for his sky, which is entirely his own, But 
 
 if we examine the two bit by bit, we shall find 
 
 Girtin’s drawing 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 148 The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. 
 
 constantly, as it were, cropping up beneath Turner's, the smoke 
 following the same direction in the same curves, the same lights 
 and the same forms recurring in the same places throughout, 
 
 although not representing always the same thin If these 
 
 
 
 coincidences occurred only in the buildings there would be more 
 room for doubt, but they occur in the boats and the figures. 
 However this may be, whether he worked from his own sketch or 
 Girtin’s, or both, at least one thing is clear, that Turner’s aim was 
 to make as impressive a picture of the place as he could, careless 
 as to the amount of local truth he sacrificed, provided he retained 
 a few prominent features; while the aim of Girtin and his fellows 
 
 was to preserve as intact as possible the local truth, importing no 
 
 
 
 beauty except of atmospheric effect. 
 
 To attempt anything like a complete review of Turnet’s genius is 
 quite beyond the scope of the present work. He must be studied by 
 himself, and there is already ample means of doing so with the aid of 
 
 the collection of the National Gallery and the writings of Mr. Ruskin, 
 
 
 
 Mr. Hamerton, and a hundred other writers. But in a book dealing 
 with the earlier English water-colourists it has been impossible to 
 ignore the greatest of them all. I have therefore endeavoured to 
 restrict my remarks about Turner to those points in his career and 
 achievement in which he is most closely related to those other earlier 
 English water-colourists who were his contemporaries in youth, and 
 who shared with him in the foundation and development of the water- 
 colour art of England. Most of these artists pursued each a separate 
 course, but still one parallel to that of the others. Turner soon began 
 
 to diverge, and went off at a wide angle to his own special glory. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 Adam, R., 12, 27 
 
 Alexander, W., 25 
 Allanson-Winn, Hon. R., 19, 60 
 Allnut, 130 
 
 Amherst, Lord, 95 
 Anderson, W. 27 
 Angelo, H., 17 
 Armstrong, Walter, 119, 
 Arnot, 94 
 
 Astley, 129 
 
 122, 
 
 124 
 
 
 
 
 
 Sr, 129 
 Barnard, 64 
 Barret, G. (the elder), 9, 13 
 
 Barrow, 96 
 Barry, 13, 78 
 Bartolozzi, 80 
 Basire, 85 
 Beattie, 78 
 Beauclerk, Lady Di, 80 
 
 x Topham, 80 
 Beaumont, Sir G., 17, 22 
 Beckford, 10, 26 
 
 3 W., 20 
 Beethoven, 139 
 Bensley, 80 
 Bewick, Isabella, 83 
 
 »  T., 83, 84 
 
 Blair, Dr., 78 
 Blake, 79, 84, 85, 86, 87 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bolingbroke, Viscount, 80 
 
 Bonington, 67, 68, 69, 70, 76, 87, 89, 
 105, 106, 107, 132, 141, 146 
 
 Bourgeois, Sir F., 10 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Boxall, 124 
 Boydell, Alderman, 24, 81 | 
 Brandard, 104 
 
 Britton, 87, 109 
 
 Brooking, 2, r2 
 
 Biirger, 80 
 
 Burke, 13, 17 
 
 Byrne, 32 | 
 
 CADELL, 63 
 
 Calcott, 47, 144 | 
 Canaletti, 12, 43, 45 | 
 acci, 8 
 ermole, G., 82, 87, 88, 89, 90, 105, | 
 
 DLZ 
 
 
 
 
 Cz 
 
 
 
 | Chambers, G., 138 
 » (the younger), 13, 43, 65, 91, | 
 96, 99, 100, Io1, 102, 119, 140, 146 | 
 
 Chandler, Dr., 26 
 Charles I., 112 
 ce Ue 
 Chaucer, 78 
 Chesneau, 67, 68 
 Christie, 20, 47, 65, 69, 133 
 Cipriani, 78, 80 
 Clarence, Duke of, 2 
 Claude, 8, 23, 59, 99, 100 | 
 Clennell, 84 | 
 Clérisseau, 12, 2 
 Cleveley, J., 27 | 
 eR ay 
 Collins, 68, r19, 143, 144 
 Constable, 22,69, 119,120, 
 Cook, Captain, 25 
 Corot, 16 
 Cosway, 6, 77 | 
 Cotman, 47, 70, 74, 75, 107, 119 | 
 Cox, David, 99, 112, 119, 120, 122, | 
 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, | 
 132, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 144, 
 145, 146 
 
 He, 
 
 124,144 
 
 
 
 QQ 
 
 ) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cozens, A., 1, 17, 18, 104 
 »  J-R,, 10, 15, 20, 23, 24, 26, 37, 
 43) 50 51, 59, 60, 61, 140, 142, 143, 
 146 
 
 Sristall, 82, 87, g1, 112 
 
 Crome, 9, 70, 119, 120 
 
 Cruikshank, George, 79 
 
 | Cumberland, Duke of, 4 
 
 
 
 DatxeitH, Lord, 13 
 Daniell, William, 117 
 5) Thomas, 117 
 Dayes, 40, 41, 42 
 | Delacroix, 68, 89 
 | De Loutherbourg, 13 
 Denham, 47 
 Desenfans, 10 
 Devis, 25 
 De Wint, 2, 43, 70, 112, 114, 119, 120, 
 121, 123, 125, 127, 130, 141, 144, 
 | | 145, 146 
 | Dillon, Frank, 60 
 | D’Israeli, I., $x 
 Domville, Sir W., 84 
 Downman, 81 
 
 | EpRIDGE, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, I10 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 2 
 
 Ellison, 62, 123 
 
 Eyans, 129 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 Farincton, Joseph, 27 
 Fielding, Copley, 68, 69, 112, 119, 120, 
 £25,627 | 
 Fielding, Henry, 84 
 Fielder, 129 
 Finden, 104 
 Flaxman, 17, 79, 86 
 Fortuny, 104 
 Francia, 32, 47, 66, 67, 68, 70, 76, 96 | 
 Fripp, George, 132 
 Fuseli, 78 | 
 
 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 36, | 
 43, 78, 119, 120 
 Gandon, 6 | 
 
 Index. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Garrick, 14, 17 
 
 George III., 1, 12, 27 
 ay SHO oe 
 
 Gilchrist, 86 
 
 Gilpin, Sawrey, 12, 65, 91 
 fy AWE} 
 
 Giorgione, 75 
 
 Girtin, Thomas, 9, 10, 14, 16, 24, 31, 
 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 49, 5% 52) 55, 
 56, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 
 68, 70, 73, 76, 91, 94, 103, 106, 
 109, 118, 119, I2I, 141, 142, 143, 
 146, 147, 148 
 
 Girtin, G. W. H., 21 
 
 Glover, 65, 91, 94, 95 
 
 Goldsmith, 143 
 
 Goodall, E., 104 
 
 Gray, 143 
 
 Gresse, 27 
 
 Greville, Hon. C., 7 
 
 Griffith, 26 . 
 
 Grimm, 26 
 
 Gros, Baron, 68 
 
 Guido, 81 
 
 
 
 Hatt, 137 
 
 Hamerton, 60, 63, 148 
 
 Harcourt, Lady Betty, 6 
 
 Harding, J. D., 105, 138 
 
 Hardwick, 50 
 
 Harrison, 84 
 
 Havell, 65, 91, 95, 119, 131 
 
 Heaphy, 81, 82 
 
 Hearne, 35, 36, 43, 50, 59, 109,143 | 
 Henderson, 22, 35, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46 | 
 50, 67, 88, 123, 140 
 
 Herkomer, 77 | 
 Hertford, Lord, 69 | 
 Heyden, Van der, 31 
 
 Hills, 65, 66, 102 
 
 Hilton, 43, 121 
 
 
 
 
 | Hogarth, 9, 10, 12, 114, 142 
 
 Holland, 144 
 
 Holworthy, 65, 92 
 
 Horner, 79 | 
 Hunt, 99, 112, 114, 115 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Joz, 79 
 Johnson, Dr., 6 
 
 KaurrMan, 80 
 
 Kaye, Sir R., 26 
 Keppel, Miss, 11 
 Kirby, Joshua, x 
 Knight, Payne, 19, 26 
 
 | Lampert, George, 2 
 
 | Lavington, Lord, 32 
 
 | Leslie, C. R., 19, 22 
 Lewis, J. F., 105, 142 
 Linnell, John, 86, 99 
 Lionardo, 18, 89 
 
 | Lock, 13 
 
 Macartney, Lord, 25 
 
 Macready, 129 
 
 Malton, Thomas, sen. } 30, 31, 32) 40 
 
 » 3 jun. 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 80 
 
 Marlow, 29, 43 
 
 Masaccio, 56, 59 
 
 Mee, Mrs., 102 
 
 Meissonier, 77 
 
 Mercier, 61 
 
 Méryon, 135 
 
 Michelangelo, 8, 59 
 
 Miller, 42, 43, 146 
 
 Millet, J. F., 135 
 
 Milton, 86 
 
 Monro, Dr., 22, 37, 39, 42, 43, 46, 50, 
 65, 79 96, 115, 127, 143 
 
 | Morland, 15, 44, 78 
 
 | Miiller, 132, 139, 140, 144, 145 
 
 | Mulready, 99 
 
 Murray, 9, 36 
 
 
 
 
 
 NAPOLEON, IIT 
 | Nash, John, 118 
 Nattes, 65, 91 
 Nicholson, 65, 93, 94 
 Noble, 60 
 Nollekens, 109 
 
 Index. 
 
 
 
 ORROCK, I00, ror 
 
 
 
 PALMERSTON, Lord, 26 
 Pars, 26, 29 
 Pennant, 26 
 Pennell, 104 
 Percy, Dr., 3, 44 
 Perugino, 57 
 Peter the Great, 17 
 Pether, 109 
 Pine, R. E., 17 
 Piranesi, 43, 74 
 Pocock, Crawford, 40 
 - Nicholas, 27, 65, 91 | 
 Porter, 47 
 Poussins, 8, 23 
 Powerscourt, 13 
 Pretender, The, 4 
 Prout, Samuel, 105, 106, 107, 109, 111, 
 I12, 114, 115, 119 
 Pugin, A., 118 
 By | at Aili tea 
 Pye, 104 
 Pyne, J. B., 132 
 » W. HL, 39, 43, 46, 65, 1 
 
 
 
 | Rapcuirre, 135 | 
 
 Ragg, 129 
 
 Rawlinson, 52 
 Redgrave, 4, 39, 65, 95 
 Reinagle, P., 2 
 
 | Rembrandt, 140 
 
 Rey 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 Revett, 27, 29 
 
 Reynolds, Sir J., 11, 17, 80, 109 
 
 Rigaud, 65, 91 
 
 Roberts, David, 105 
 H Why Sie 
 
 Robson, 66, 102, 112, 142 
 
 Romney, 102 
 
 Rooker, 28, 43 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 86 
 
 Rowlandson, 79 
 
 Ruskin, 50, 60, 64,°67, 88, 112, 114, 
 116, 125, 143, 148 | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 Satispury, Lady, 6 
 
 ator Rosa, 8, 23, 88 
 
 Samuel, 47 | 
 Sandby, Paul, 1, 2, 3, 4 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 
 T4, 16, 27, 39) 4% 5 78, 100; 
 
 
 
 
 
 13, 
 104 
 
 Sandby, T., 2, 4, 6, 43 
 |) W., to 
 
 Scott, Samuel, 2, 
 
 W., 89 
 
 er, 105 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 ” 
 Sennefeld 
 Se 
 Shakes 
 Shelley, 20, 139 
 po R05 ;9L 
 
 Short, 45, 7° 
 Simpson, 129 
 Smith, G., 8 
 J. R,, 26, 37, 42, 46, 121 
 
 , W., 62 
 Smollett, 3, 84 
 Solly, 137 
 Spencer, Hon. W. R., 80 
 78, 85 
 Stanfield, 144 
 Stanhope, Lord, 96 
 Steenwick, 52 
 Stothard, 79, 84, 87, 109, 114 
 Stuart, Gilbert, ro9 
 Swinburne, 87 
 
 
 
 eS, 10, 12 
 sare, 78 
 
 
 
 
 
 ” 
 
 
 
 TATLOCK, 123, 124 
 Mt ner, 2, 3, 9, 16 
 jlor, Baron, 69 
 Thomson, 78 
 Thrale, Mrs., 6 
 Tintoret, 143 
 
 Titian, 23, 43, 140 
 Trevelyan, Sir W., 37 
 
 
 
 
 
 Index. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., 2, 9, 14, 16, 19 
 351 39) 49 42, 46, 48, 49, 50: 
 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 79, 
 73) 74, 82; 91, 92, 94, 98, 100, 104, 
 107, 109, 114, 119, 120, 121, 132, 134, 
 137) 139) 143) 144, 146, 147, 148 
 
 
 
 UNDERWOOD, 47 
 
 VANDEVELDE, 43 
 
 Vandyke, 125 
 
 Van Eyck, 77 
 
 Van Huysum, 116 
 
 Varley, C., 65, 96 
 
 J. 65, 91, 96, 97, 98, 
 129 
 
 
 
 99; 
 
 
 
 T15) LIQ, L275 
 Varley, W. F., 96 
 Verelst, 
 Vokins, 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 WALDEGRAVE, Earl, 15 
 
 Walker, 47, 50, 146 
 
 Wallis, 104 | 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 80, 8r 
 
 Waltner, 117 
 
 | Warw ord, 26 
 
 Watteau, 
 
 Webber, 
 
 Wedmore, 74, 75, 83 
 
 Westall, R., 142 
 
 | Wells, 65, 92 
 
 Wheatley, 15, 82, 83, 87 
 
 Willmore, 104 | 
 
 | Wilson, Richard, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 27, | 
 43, 46, 59, Too | 
 
 Woollett, 32, 36, 109 
 
 Worthington, 47 
 
 Wright of Derby, 92 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 YarBoroucH, Lord, 62 
 
 
 
 Turner, Dawson, 73 
 
 ZUCCARELLI, 2, 9, 27 
 
 
 
 London: Printed by Srranceways & § 
 
 
 
 Tower Street, Cambridge