s T.j; -■ J-'' Ktam3. WWf /7'^'^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032182978 Cornell University Library arY848 The British school of sculpture, olin,anx 3 1924 032 182 978 '''jiTfe m-i'^. I^ *»"«] 3N 5r§^ ""**'i*-i4>,l,;_ THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE Illustratcli bij TWENTY ENGRAVINGS FRO:]I THE FIXE ST WORKS OF DECEASED MASTERS OF THE ART, AND FIFTY WOODCUTS. With a Preliminary Essay and Notices of the Artists, By WILLIAM B:' SCOTT, AUTHOR OF THE "LIFE AND WORKS (IF ALEFRT DURER," ETC. • A Faithful evidence of mj' vocation, BEAUTY, was given me at my birth." Michelangelo, Mad, vii. LONDON AND NEW YORK: GEORGE R O U T L E D G E AND SONS. 1872. Y ©fie JllmorB OF JOHN FLAXA-IAN, THE AUTHOR OF MANY PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIVE WORKS OF EUROPEAN CELEBRITY, THIS BOOK, RHLATING TO IHE DECEASED SCULPTORS OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL, IS BY THE PUBLISHERS. Funereal Angels {Flax?nan). PREFACE. .LTHOUGH late in entering the field, our School of Sculpture has already overtaken the other European competitors in the race, and has to some extent acquired a reputation of its own ; so that the Publishers may be justified in thinking the time come when a book of this kind — a book of illustrations that have ah-eady received the approbation of some portion of the public interested in the Arts — may meet with popular approbation. Our volume is limited to the past ; it deals with British Sculpture of the earlier time to some extent in the literary portion, and the Engi^avings represent the works of our deceased Artists, those deceased within the present centmy. These compre- hend twenty elaborate Steel Engraviugs, done in the manner called chalk engraving, except two, which are done from relievo by the process originally called CoUas' process, exceedingly well adapted for exj)ressing cameo surfaces. These are sup- plemented by numerous Woodcuts, principally of the works of Elaxman. As to the literary portion of the book, a learned treatise is not wanted in a table-book on our own school ; but the misty fine- writing which the subject of Sculpture seems fated to evoke— a kind of writing, like sitting on a badly-inflated air-cushion or water-bed, thi-owing the patient into an uneasy and impatient drowsiness as long as the ai:»plication is continued — the Author hopes is not to be b VI PREFACE. found in it. The reason for tliis vagueness may bo found in the difficulty of stopping as occasion requires into a new and somewhat abstracted mental field; and to the busy critic whose interests and whose labours mainly lie in things characteristic of the present day, the subject of Sculpture is "Pinnacled dim in tlic intense inane." In the following notices of our Sculptors lately deceased, some names are necessarily omitted. Memorials of one in particular, very well known to the writer in former times, he tried in vain to find, although so lately doad, and so much seen in Loudon artistic society twenty-five years ago — a man of most interesting personality, with the figure of a young athlete. Ills name, at least — the name of Patric Pakk — we may here record. Success in all intellectual matters has an element of mystery in it, but especially so in Sculptiu'e. Bellevue House, Chelsea, November, 1871. K > Jill- GinK-Jinn Jiiiivi {F/axman}. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTOEY ESSAY .........■■•• 1 C. G. GIBBER TO JOHN BACON ........... 28 JOHN FLAXMAN, including NOLLEKENS and Othees ....... 33 SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A. 61 E. J. WYATT 67 WILLIAM WYON, R.A. ............. 78 JOHN THOMAS 77 SAMUEL JOSEPH ..,....•....•• 77 SIR RICHARD WESTMACOTT, R.A. . 88 M. L. WATSON ,..,......-.••• 89 WILLIAM BEHNES , 99 PATRICK MACDOWELL, R.A. 103 .JOHN GIBSON, R.A. . 109 E. H. BAILY, R.A. .............. 123 B. E. SPENCE 129 ALEXANDER MUNRO 13S ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL. THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE NAECISSITS MIOILIEL AKD SATAN THE TWO CHILDEEN PENELOPE SCIENCE TRIMS TLIE LAMP OF LIFE BOADICEA MONUMENT TO WILCERFORCE EUPHROSYNE SAEPEDON CARRIED BY SLEEP AND DEATH THE FRIENDS GIRL READING VENUS HYLAS CUPID AND PSYCHE THE GRACES MATERNAL AFFECTION THE ANGEL'S WHISPER INFANT MOSES AND PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER SISTER AND BROTHER Kj\me of artist. Patrick Macdowell John Bac(in JoHX Flaxman Sii; Francis Chantrey R. J. Wyatt William Wyon John Thomas Samuel Joseth R Richard Westmaoott M. L. Watson . William Behnes Patrick Macdowell John Gibson E. H. Baily B. E. Spence Alexander Munro ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. Phaeton DBrfiNQ the Chariot of the Sun Funereal Angels The Guardian Angel . The Good Samaritan . Monument to Mrs. Jane Smith Monument to Willlvm Collins " Ik.struct the ignorant" . Monument to the Rev. T. Ball Cupid and Psyche (Flaxman) Cupid and Psyche (Gibson) f iupiD mounted on a Panther Cupid and Psyche Medallion Portrait op Flaxman Medallions of Mr. IIeeschel and Dr. Buchan Medallion Portiiait of JIrs. Flaxman Flaxman's Tomr . bionument to miss lnsiiinoton Portrait of Chantrey Love pursuing the Soul The English Cemetery, Rome Portrait of E. J. Wyatt . Adoration of the Magi Monument to Mr. tiuAXToCK " Deliyeii us PROM evil " Portrait of John Thomas . page Vignette Tl 1 5 12 17 2i5 32 33 3.5 47 48 60 01 63 CG C7 CO 73 75 77 79 Ariel directing the Storm Charity .... The Angel appearing to Peteu Zephyrus and Aurora " Thy kingdom come " Monument in Leeds Church Monument to Mrs. Knight Phaeton .... MONI'MENT TO LaDY ClARKE Monument to Mrs. Hoare Cupid Portrait of Patrick MACDO^VELL Fighting Gladiators "He shall give his angels THEE " . Portrait of John Giuson . P.SY'CHE PORNE PY' ZePHYRUS Monument in Heston Church The Consol.ation of Religion Cupid driving F.awns Monument to Mrs. Udney "Thy WILL BE DONE " Monument to Dr. Warton The Sound of the Shell . P.AOLO AND FuANCESCA PAGE 80 82 S3 8,5 88 89 91 97 99 101 105 lOo 108 109 111 121 123 125 128 129 131 133 13,5 138 The Good Samaritcui [Fla.xman). THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. ^OW wonderful it is, at first sight, tliat tlic greatest works of tlie liighcst Wy j^ of all tlie Arts were done two thousand years ago ! before the advent of Cliristianity, Avith its clearer and fuller development of the Moral ; before the multiform and active intellect of modern Europe increased the facilities of all manual operations, and gave us in all things a scientific basis. Since that da)- archi- tecture, both constructive and decorative, has been enriched by many inventions, and painting has acquired infinitely greater power by improved materials, by perspective, and so forth ; but Sciilpture remains as of old, because it can rise no higher. It would appear that all the progress we have made has been a progress of materialism, affording us many luxuries and endless knowledge, but leaving the vital part of us, or, as we may properly say, the divine part of us, untouched, "the same as on creation's day;" the cunning hand is no more cunning, and the form of humanity, made after the image of God, is no more perfect. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. But the reason of tlie early perfection of the sculptor's art is not far to seek. His is the most direct and simple imitative process, and its limitations are the most severe. It deals with form alone, with solid bodies only, and thus it has no j^art in the difficult controversy between the real and the apparent, the conditioned and the absolute, but at once assumes the purple, ascends the steps of the temple, and associates itself with the gods. It takes no note of landscape about us, or indeed of the earth we inhabit, except as representing stream and mountain and wood in symbols of beauty, that beauty being its invariable aim, and the human body itself Vicing elevated into perfection. It re-creates the archetype, the antetypal idea, to use a modern Platonism, that must have existed in the Divine mind before the first vertebrate creature came into existence, as the ultimate completion and tendency of the forms of all the inferior animals. The ideal of the scrdptor is indeed " A revelation of the perfect man As at the first he was, and at the last He may be ; as he must be in the spirit." And thus it has been in all ages of the world that the molten or carven image has been superstitiously reverenced, and by the law given on Mount Sinai the chosen people were wholly prohibited indulging their artistic tastes in this direction. In this they were cut off from the rest of the world, and a line dravra dividing them from neigh- bouring nations, whose image-making they held in continual derision. " He heweth down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak ; and they shall be for a man to burn : for he will take thereof, and warm himself ; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bi'ead ; with part thereof he eateth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and saith. Aha, I am Avarm, I have seen the lire : and the residue thereof he maketli a god, even his graven image : he fallcth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, D«>livcr nic ; for thou art my God !" There is certainly no process of art which gives one so vivid a sense of creation THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. as that of moclelliug ; while the amorphous lump of potter's clay gradually assumes shape under the hand, and theu expression, we seem to feel, with a sort of mysterious surprise, that the third step may follow, and the image become the thing itself. So the fables of Prometheus, Vulcan, and Pygmalion have come into existence. There is a bas-relief in the Museo Pio-Clementino, at Eome, representing the making of man. One image lies on the ground finished, at the feet of the sculptor who is inscribed "Promethes," now busy with another, holding it by the arm with one hand and fashioning its head by a modelling tool with the other. This action shows he is working in a soft material, and as this second image is inscribed "Mulier," we may infer the one already made is the Adam to this Eve. Advancing to this group is " Mercurius,'' leading forward a small draped vii'ginal figure. Psyche-winged — the " Anima" to be bestowed on the sculptor's work; and following closely that fair and timid soul, come the inevitable Fates, the three mighty genii in whose hands are all the threads of life.* A more tender and human interest belongs to the Pygmalion story, "the man of Cyprus who made an image of a Woman, fairer than any that had yet been seen, and in the end came to love his own handiwork as if it had been alive : wherefore, praying to Venus for help, he obtained his end, for she made the Image alive indeed, and a Woman, and Pygmalion wedded her;" so that one poet after another has essayed the history, till Morris has succeeded in clothing it in fitting verse. How beautiful is this description of the finished b\it as yet unvitalised marble ! — " Wilt thou not speak one little word to me ?" he asks in vain. " Then from the image did he draw aback, To gaze on it through tears : and you had said, Eegarding it, that little did it lack To be a living and most lovely maid ; * This is of course a late work, expressing a Roman commentary on the Greek fable. Curiously enough, the figures of an ass and an ox, inscribed "Taurus" and " Asinus," are looking on above Prometheus, as they invariably do in all representations of the birth of Christ. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Naked it was, its unbound locks were laid Over the lovely shoulders ; with one hand Beached out as to a lover, did it stand. ' The other held a fair rose over-blown : No smile was on the parted lips, the eyes Seemed as if even now great love had shown Unto them something of its sweet surprise, Yet saddened them with half-seen mysteries ; And still midst passion, maiden-like, she seemed As though of love unchanged for aye she dreamed. This -^orsliip and adoration of tlie work of our own hands aj^pears a far way behind in the world's history to the modern mind, and yet we find something like it in the enthusiasm of the critic, in whom learning and the love of art unite with an imaginative temperament. The Apollo Belvedere, Apollo the slayer of Python, a statue which some treat as a work of the beginning of the decadence when the sculptor left the generalisation of natiu-e for the generalisation of philosophy, has not only excited to madness the Gii-1 of Provence, celebrated in the days of other years by Barry Cornwall, but the grave Winkelmann, given mainly to the examina- tion of cameos tlu'ough a microscope and to disquisitions on Greek names. " The god is represented," he says, " in a movement of indignation against the serpent which has just killed, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist placed the anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, was its seat, and the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the upper lip, which causes a corresponding movement in the chin. Penetrated with a conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond his victory. Disdain sits on his lips and ascends into liis eyebrows ; but an ruichangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. The forehead is the forehead THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. of Jupiter, the eyebro"^^s aunoiince tlie supreme will, the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods orbed with dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, breathing Toluptuousness." After this description his fervour rises. "At the sight of this marvel of art my mind takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it ■with dignity. From admiration I pass to ecstasy : I feel my breast dilating and rising, like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy. I am transported to Delos, and the sacred groves of Lycia, places Apollo honoured with his presence ; the statue seems to be animated with the beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pj-gmalion. Hoay can I describe thee, inimitable masterpiece ? For this it would be necessary that thou thyself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have sketched I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads." Monument to Mrs. Jane Smith i^FIaxman), THE BRITISH SCHOOI OF SCULPTURE. II. This book is a book of English Sculpture, illustrations of our dead artists, but still modern and near our own time, and so it is unnecessary, happily, to deal in these preliminary pages with any of the abstruse matters the bare mention of Greek art suggests. The reader may be sure he will not be required to listen again to the accoimt by Herodotus of its invention by the Egyptians ; nor to Mr. Bromley in his " History of the Fine Arts," trying to prove that the Scythians did all the original inventing, begiiming so early as thi-ec hundred years after the deluge. The history of the art in this country, however, is not a thing of yesterda)', but belongs to the middle ages, and we must divide English sculpture into two distinct periods and schools : the one during the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and in the service of architecture and the Chm'ch ; the other a revival, under foreign influence aud classic inspiration, belonging to the latter half of last century. Later than the other leading nations of Europe, later even than our national school of painting, was this revival of sculpture. The existence of two or three great artists, however, and especially of one, John Flaxmau, has already placed us among the advanced nations in this art, which, indeed, the evidence of our early school shows to have been, in a measiu'e, natural to us. The thirteenth century, or more exactly the century beginning about 1220, is the active and flourishing period in the history of Pointed Architecture, both in France and in this country. In France, the cathecb'als of Chartres (where sculpture of the most impressive and noble cliaracter appears), Notre Dame of Paris and the Saint Chapelle there, Eouen, Amiens, Beauvais, Eheims, and many other great buildings, were rising at the same time. In England, Salisbury Cathedral, parts of York Minster, Westminster Abbey, Ely, Lichfield, Winchester, aud Exeter cathedrals, THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. all belong to this age of prodigious architectural activity. Besides these, the cathedral of Wells was nearly entirely built during the reign of Bishop Jocelin Trotemau, and its immense amount of sculptm-ed histories and figures completed. Of this work Flaxman says, in his Lectures, that he finds it to be the first specimen of magnificent and varied sculpture united in a series of sacred history to be found in Western Eirrope. "It is therefore probable," he goes on to say, "that the general idea of the work might have been brought from the East by some of the Crusaders," a singularly futile conjecture on the part of our great artist. Such a conjecture, indeed, seems to have been inspii-ed by the pestilent old insular habit of finding everything foreign preferable to everything English — a habit which has stood in the way of our improving in all the arts, since the practice of the East from the time of the Iconoclasts, long before the Crusades, down to the present, has been to place sculpture under a ban, and to employ painting almost exclusively on single figures. At the same time, he says there are two arguments strongly in favour of the work being English — the native name of the bishop, and the style, which is wholly different from that of the tombs of Edward the Confessor and Henry III., both wrought by Italian artists. In the architectiiral parts of these most probably we have foreign refinements in the inlaid enrichments of porphyry, but the recumbent monumental effigy of Henry lying on the tomb is now certainly known to have been made by Master William Torel ; that of Eleanor also, queen of Edward I. ; and these are the earliest metal statuary in this country, the yellow metal called lattcn, a little softer than bron/e, usually overlaid with gilding. The Eleanor is of great beauty and simplicity oi expression, the liair combed from the centre of the forehead down cither side of the face to the shoulders, the right hand holding the sceptre and the left touching gracefully the band or chain suspended round the neck. On the dress of this figure are many small rivet-holes, showing that decorations either of precious stones or of gold have been added round the neck, cufts, and similar places. THE BRITISH SCHOOT OF SCUIPTURE. William Torel appears, we are glad to see, along with William of Wykeham, — bishop of Winchester and architect of the cathedi-al there, and in some measui'e of the castle of Windsor, — as one of the representatives of early English art in the series of painted monumental figures of great artists of all times and countries in the South Court of the Museum at South Kensington, now the most compilete museum in the world of art-works of a decorative description. He died in 1300, and his loss seems to have been the loss of his art in England for the moment, as the next monumental figure we find in Westminster, 1304, that of Yalence, Earl of Pembroke, is formed of oak cased with copper, the work of one of the enamellers of Limoges, "Magister Johahnes de Limogia." Jnst at this time rose those lovely monuments called, for want of another name, C'rosses, memorials of Queen Eleanor's fimeral procession towards her final resting- place. These were full of niched figures, and those that remain are singularly excellent. Eegarding the sculptors of these, however, Flaxman speaks with hesi- tation. " They partake," he says, " of the character and grace particularly cultivated in the school of Pisano," and he consequently supposes may have been done " by some of the numerous travelling scholars fi-om Pisano's school," of whose existence we are otherwise ignorant. Besides the cathetbal of Wells, which is notable for its amplitude and early date, there is much architectiu-al sculpture on om- great churches of high excellence and interesting character. That on Lincoln Cathedral is perhaps next in interest and Westmacott, in his " Handbook of Sculpture," considers the improvement from the earlier work at Wells very ' decided. All those works are so deteriorated however, by accident and weather, that detailed critieisni is of little use. In this country it is only where the stone, marble, or metal have been protected from the climate as well as from cupidity or carelessness, that we find the art preserved in any degree of perfection, and happily three such monuments are mentioned with extraordinary praise by Flaxman. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. 1st. Tlae sculp tm*e of the door of All Souls College, iu the High Street, Oxford : Eling Henry YI. on one side, Archbishop Chicheley on the other, with a bas-relief of the Eesurrection between them. 2nd. In Westminster Abbey, the deep arch which passes from the back of Henry V.'s tomb over the steps of Henry VII. 's chapel. Here are iipwards of fifty statues, with a centre group representing the coronation of Henry V., and on the south face the king riding with his companions. " The style is bold, the equestrian group furious and warlike, and the standing figures have a simple grandeur of drapery such as we admii-e in the paintings of Eaphael and Massaccio." 3rd. The monument to Earl Warwick, in the Beauchamp chapel, St. Mary's Church, Warwick. Here " the figures are so natural and graceful that they are not excelled by any sculpture in Italy of the same kind at this time, although DonateUo and Ghiberti were living when this tomb was executed in the year 1439."* This high praise from so great an authority warrants our description of the Warwick monument, had we space at command. A learned German the other day asked the writer to give him the name of one English media3val painter answering in this country to William of Cologne or Stephen, in Ehineland. Wc were under the necessity of acknowledging there was no English mediijeval painter, but we had a great scidptor of the later middle ages, William Austen, the artist of the Beauchamp chapel tomb. He is styled "citizen of London and founder," as at that time his craft or guild included the artist and his art as the greater includes the less. Additional interest attaches to this work from the fact of all tlic documents relating to it being extant, and from these we learn that he was to receive in sterling: * Flaxman is slightly wrong in the date of this work, which was in hand for twenty-one years, and finished about 1464. Have these small statues ever been moulded by the authorities of South Kensington Museum or others ? THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. money cxxv.li. for making the metal table and "hearze" with appliances, that is, the plane on which the figure was to lie with its ornaments and canopy or catafalque, inchiding ten enamelled scutcheons of arms, &c. ; for the " xiv Images embossed of Lords and Ladyes in divers vestiu'es called Weepers, to stand in housings," xiii.s. iv.d. each ; for " the xviii less Images of Angells to stand in other housings," y.s. ; and for the recumbent statue of the Earl, " the Image of a man armed and garnished with ornaments " fully described, xl.li. After these specifications follow various elaborate covenants with Bartholomew Lambespring, Dutchman and gold- smith, regarding the polishing, gilding, and burnishing of the same, the remuneration being nearly equal to that assigned to the artist. It would thus aj)pear that the patronage of the native sculptor was not then very generous, and we find the editor of Knight's Pictorial History remarking — •" In Italy Austen Avould have founded a school, and his name would have become co-extensive with the history of the art. In England his name is preserved from oblivion only by the existence of the contract which secures the performance of his work, and the record of the payment of \^s. id. each for these beautiful statues." The single motif of the sculptor, we have already indicated, is the embodiment of Beauty, and that in a perfect or in a symbolic relationship to natiu-e. That is to say, the sculptor as he existed in the authoritative Greek practice, and as he now aspires to be as an artist among us. But the sculpture we have been describing, and that of all Eiu'ope before the Eenaissance — more especially the greatest works, such as the gigantic statues on the porches at Cihartrcs, or the lovely Wise and Foolish Virgins surrounding the "Bride's door" of St. Scbald's, Niirnberg, the porch wherein marriages Averc celebrated at an early date, which, by the way, are slightly touched by the beginning of the new lights in art— had a different moiif and ^vas employed for a different purpose. At that time the various arts were not determinately separated from each other. The picture represented a statue, and the statue was illuminated and gilt ; the THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. relievo emulated the painting by giving many degrees of distance, a characteristic that the early and greatest works of the Eenaissance, the gates of the baptistery of San Giovanni by Ghiberti, reconcile ns with, the pictures in relievo thus visible being still the most lovely relievos in the world, although expressing the sun and the moon, the distant hills and the human actors receding on various planes. And we still see on many fine pictures in Italy real crowns, sceptres, ornaments of all kinds fixed on to the painted surface. Had we any pictures of that date remaining in England, doubtless we should find this practice much extended, and elevated or depressed surfaces employed on pictures. When the great struggle made by the Eastern Church against painted and sculptured images, as a cause of superstition, resulted in the total suppression of everything sculptm-ed, a new subterfuge was invented to supply its place ; the flat table of the paintiag was depressed in the principal parts, so that the face and hands appeared mysteriously to look thi-ough from below. This practice still continues, and the reader may remember seeing many such brought from the Crimea after the war there. And besides this confusion in the form of the art, the application of it to architecture and the Church exckisively impressed it with quite other character and sentiment, and Beauty was only admit- table as the symbol of Goodness. Angels were necessarily represented beautiful, and the saints also ; but to the ascetic theory then grinding the faces of the pious, purity and nakedness were incompatible, and so it was the human body, the crown and glory of creation, was for centuries never once represented with a view to the expression of its beauty, but rather associated with wickedness, and therefore with ugliness. This, in a measure, puts the sculptors of the middle ages out of court as sculptors in the highest field, but they re-enter it with the chant of sacred song, all draped in a multitude of white folds, signifying, beyond all words, unity of character, simplicity, purity, dignity ; and, in a lower walk, di-amatic individuality and human passion. Drapery becomes, in their hands, informed by the nature of the character represented, and a quite new and unclassic artistic instinct throws it THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. into long lines and large volumes irrespective of the body it liides, or rather replaces, filled with sentiment and loveliness. The time came, u-respective of the Keformation, because Pointed architecture ran into the Perpendicular, and then into the Tudor formula, and writing and illumi- nation gave way to printing and engraving, when all the arts were to stand or fall by their own inherent tendencies; and in this country their emancipation, and declension for a time, were accelerated and emphasised by the change in religion. Our medifeval School of Sculpture ceased. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillililiiiliiilliiiiiiiiiiiiiM Monument to Itilliam Collins (Flaxiiuvi). THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. 13 III. BetweejsT this time, say the time of Hem-y VIII., and the rise of our present School— employing itself, like the plastic art of all the rest of Europe, mostly on monumental themes, and under the authority of Greek and Eoman remains collected into museums and placed in our academies for education — there is a vacuum of fully two centuries ; and the difference between the earlier and the later is so complete that we may here, with advantage, say a few words regarding the antique, the cause of the change. This is the more desirable, however short the space to which we must confine our remarks, since it is exactly this classic spirit and the re-embodying of the gods of Greece and the Eoman pantheon, the fables of Ovid and the Homeric myths, that restrict the influence of the art in modern times, and limit the sculptor's audience compared with that of the painter. Whether or not there is inherent ia the art something that divides it from all other developments of mind, that are continually changing according to the spirit of the ages, and keeps it revolving round its original themes, it is quite certain that it has done so in a great measure of late years. The study of the ancient poets had a large eff'ect on the modern bard, who ceased to relate in short metres his ballad histories and romances, and became for a time the ''votary of the Mne," imploring their aid in beginning his work, whatever it might be, in Dryden's "heroic" measure. This was, with us, rather an importation of the French taste than a direct imitation of the Latin poets, our neighbours having adopted classicism of the coldest description, both on the stage and in the library. But this quickly disappeared, and now we indidge but little in references to the tuneful quire, or the green slopes of Parnassus. Painting, "the Christian art," as it has been called, in distinction from sculpture, E ,4 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. the Pagan or Pantheistic, succumbed for a time also ; and, in the days when the Bolognese school was triumphant, filled the world in an incredibly short time with allegories and gods on cloudy Olympus. ISTor do we think that sculpture has given way to the same influences to a greater extent than we might expect, considering the perfection of the antiques with which it had to contend for the mastery. Consider for a moment the assthetic splendour and eternal significance of the resuscitated ideas, and we shall not wonder that they have so largely dominated in the atelier of the modern artist. Church and cloister, the fields for Byzantine art, repudiated all sensuous or poetic enjoyment, and, even while employing the arts, subjugated them, and would have boimd them in Egyptian bondage had they possessed the power. Take, for instance, the tomb of the great dead or the beloved relative. Self-abnegation denied the living the pleasure of praising or commemorating the departed, and for centuries only one attitude appears, that used in prayer by the Eoman Catholic Church.* It became stereotyped, an art-mummy, and there existed no monumental means of keeping before the eyes of the living the great patriot or poet who had left them their inheritance ; nor during all these centuries did any single artist venture to try to express any form of love except that of self-sacrifice, nor to enrich in any way the life he led. Whatever was worth having was to be found not in this world, but in the next. The reaction has not yet ceased. We must remember that Sculpture is Ideal in spirit, biit thoroiighly Material in form, and the symbolic significance of Athena and Artemis and Aphi'odite, fits these goddesses to be for ever the embodiment of wisdom, of maidenhood, or of love. Nor was it all at once that the antique asserted its authority. Mantegna and * " The action of the palms pressed together is undoubtedly rather that of submission than prayer. The vassal knelt before his liege lord, placed his two palms together, and presented his hands thus joined to his Superior. The ancients expressed supplication by the arms extended ; that the early Christians did the same is shown by the figures painted in the Catacombs called 'Orantes.' The English Church also adopts the early form ; only the extremely ritualistic ignorantly imitate the middle-ago attitude."— " Half-hour Lectures on the History and Practice of the Fine Arts," by W. B. Scott, p. 115. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. 15 Donatello were among the first artists to advocate the collecting of tlie great works then being rapidly exhumed m Eome and Tuscany, but neither of them abdicated in favour of the antique, and Michelangelo, who studied diligently in the garden and museum of Cosmo de Medici, retained his own mighty style unaltered. There is an anecdote of him preserved, showiag that he visited the Laocoon while that group, so allied to his own art, was being dug out of the earth, without any record of emotion or enthusiasm having been drawn from him by the sight. Giulio Eomano, Sir Charles Eastlake remarks, was the first complete specimen of a painter who united high excellence in art with an exclusive passion for classic subjects, and he may be considered the great head of the classic school, influencing even the works of his master, Eaphael, who confided so much to his hand. Eastlake, indeed, traces the example of Giulio, through Primaticcio, his subordinate associate at Mantua, into Prance, and from the palace of Fontainebleau, which Primaticcio decorated with subjects from the Odyssey, into the very life-blood of French art, in which classi- calities and Olympic platitudes have remained ever since. The passion for the ancient marbles was rather a learned than an artistic movement, "paganism" was plentiful enough, and would not stand in the way, but the time was not come for true sympathy with elevated antiqiie art, although, as Eoscoe says, "the production of a genuine specimen of antiquity secui-ed to the fortunate possessor, in the time of Leo X., a competency for life, and the acquisition of a fine statue was almost equivalent to that of a bishoprick." The reader may remember, in Eobert Browning's dramatic lyric, the dying bishop of that day orders his children assembled round his bod to make his tomb sumptuous, " Black— 'Twas ever antique-black I meaut ! How else Shall yc contrast my frieze to come beneath ? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, 1 6 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. St. Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables — but I know Ye mark me not !■" au admirable expression of the licerLtious love of splendour tlien prevalent, a state not at all condncive to the understanding of the antique. And how rich and full of thought and of poetry it is ! Aphrodite, for example, in how many thousand ways is she the embodiment of the Feminine celebrated by statue and gem, approaching Urania on one side, and the sensuous on the other ; Ycnus Genitrix, and Yenns Yictrix, sea-born Aphrodite, held up by Thalassa, upborne by Tritons, on a sea-horse di'aped with Eros, surrounded by Nereids, sitting in an opening shell, as a fisher with Cupid watching ! This wealth of symbolic meaning it is that keeps the ancient fable and ancient art young for ever, and the repetition of the old motives in modern varieties adds to their interest. The opposite view is expressed in the Handbook to the International Exhibition of 1S62, by Mr. F. T. Palgrave. " Serious as the subject claims to be, I confess it is difficult to think of ISToUeken's Venu%^ Canova's Venus., Thorwaldsen's Ycnus, Gibson's Venus., everybody's Yenus, with due decorum — one fancies one healthy modern laugh would clear the air of these idle images^one agrees with the honest old woman in the play, (?) who ' preferred a roast duck to all the birds in the Heathen Mytho- logy.' " From the honest old woman's and from the play's point of view, no doubt she was right; if they were called " Love," or " Maidenhood," would they be better? We are reminded of an anecdote of the studios a foAV years back, when a dealer managed to sell a " Yenus " by a well-known painter, who had found it entirely unsaleable himself, and who, on expressing surprise, was answered, "Yes, it is sold; it is gone to Liverpool. You called it ' Yenus,' but I called it ' Innocence ' ! " Still more varied, if possible, is the treatment of the boy Cupid himself, although not by any means so important, indeed of no importance at all until the later ages THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. '7 of the liistory of ancient civilisation, when we find him winged and without wings, bendiag his bow and sharpening his arrows, sleeping and watching, breaking in pieces the insignia of all the gods, riding on the lion and the panther, or ro"S'ing among sea-monsters. Always unharmed, he is the master of all things, golden-haired with Anteros the black-haired, or grown older with Psyche the soul. Who can wonder that for a little space — and it has only been for a little space as yet — the English sculptor should be carried away by these old ideas ? Perhaps the reader remembers Mr. F. T. Palgrave's violent attack on the mythological in liis descriptive handbook to the Great Exhibition of 1862, well merited in his point of view, but which the world at large thought rather severe. The wonder is that this spii'it should have reached us so late in the day, seeing we were not very long- behind the rest of Europe (Italy excepted) in collecting the ancient marbles. {^J-'/a.\jiiaii.) ,S TUE BRITISH SCHCOI OF SCULPTURE. IV Neaely the only use of sculpture in England from the end of the Tudors to the middle of the reign of George III., was its employment against the inner walls of our churches, especialljr in the chancels, to commemorate the dead. A few public statues were erected, but these were generally imported from Holland, and often made of lead, like that dilapidated exainple in Leicester Scj^uare. Sir Christopher Wren superintended some productions of this kind, at least one we hear of, by an artist named Sarson, of James II., erected at ]SJ"ewcastle-on-Tyne, not existing now. The Charles I., now standing at Charing Cross, is considered to have been the first equestrian monument erected in this country, and it was cast by a Fr(mchmau in 1633, seven years after the coronation of that unfortunate king, just at the time when there tvciH an able artist in England, one who would have risen to greatness in more favourable times, the only sculptor we can now point to with pleasm-e in all that di-eary period. This is Kicolas Stone, who was appointed ''master mason and architect,'' with a ro3^al salary, and several of whose principal A\'orks can still be pointed to in West- minster Abbey, alth R,",<. T. Ball (Flaxm.ii,\ Cupid and Psyche [Fla.xman). JOHN BACON. NARCISSUS. .1! ^ Cupid and Psyche (Gibson). JOHN BACON (and his predecessors). ^^liSiHE first sculptor, an illustration of whose art we projwse giving, is Bacon; %^ ^X ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^® necessary, previous to noting some particulars regarding himself and his works, to bring down our short account of the art of sculpture in England itself, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when there may be said to have been a total cessation of the art in this country. When Nicolas Stone was finishing the monuments, abeady mentioned, erected by him in Westminster Abbey, a young man made his appearance in London and began to be employed by him. This was Gains Gabriel Gibber or Gibert, a native of Holstein, who had been already noticed by the King of Denmark and sent to Eome through his means, where he had imbibed to some extent the unquiet and H 26 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. coarse manner then in vogue in the great city, becoming at tliat time, what it has been ever since, the head-quarters of the professors of the art. Having enjoyed his given time there, he followed the example of the numerous foreign painters and others, who constantly flocked over, and found in this country a ready harvest, either for a year or a life time ; and once here never left England again, but died deservedly rich and in great regard, leaving his son CoUey, the author of the " Careless Husband " and many other works, growing into fame. At that time freestone, not marble, was the material employed, and the prin- cipal work of the sculptor was ornamental. He was a master mason and landscape gardener ; and after the death of Nicolas, who employed a host of workmen and had made Gibber his foreman, he soon became as extensively engaged on the same kind of work. The line of kings for the Eoyal Exchange he carried down to King Charles (whether fii-st or second does not appear), and became associated with St. Paul's, then nearly built, by Sir Christopher Wren getting him to carve a Phoenix over the southern door, at the charge of a hundred pounds, and which measures eighteen feet by nine. Gibber's aspii-ations were for classical things, or rather, without drawing dis- tinctions too fine, let us say quasi-classical, employed for the most part in imitation of the Boboli, Albano, and similar gardens in Italy, as indeed the Luxembourg and others in France were also emulating. The third Delia Eobbia had been employed at Fontainebleau, and Palissy's extinct kiln was lately dug up near the Lonvi'e, the flivourite decoration of that age and the preceding being to fill long vistas with great vases on pedestals, terminals, and altars ; and Gibber went down to Chatsworth, to Hardwicke Hall, and other places, to carve on the spot, not only these purely decorative adjuncts, but many statues of fauns and nymphs, gods and goddesses. Neptune and his Tritons appeared on a rock in the middle of the pond, Diana in the grove, and Yenus herself in some favourite shady arbour. We are far from thinking this taste bad or wrong, nor is it fliir to ridicule it because JOHN BACON. 27 we cannot have summer all the year round : such enrichments are productive of the most lovely results. Nor was it exactly new, the previous custom having been to import leaden figures from Holland, now almost entirely gone, melted down for the value of the metal, small as that is. Freestone can be applied to no other use, and one would say the only possible treatment is to let it stand, and yet the most of Gibber's work has disappeared as completely as the leaden figures in trunk hose, or farthingales, and high-heeled shoes, that preceded his statues. At this very time Grinling Gibbons, Dutchman or Englishman by birthplace we cannot now tell, was carving the elaborate friezes, festoons, chimney-pieces, and door cases, in the same houses where Gibber was employed. These of course were in wood, and to this day " excite the wonder and delight of all beholders," as country guide-books say. At Chatsworth in particular are many of his most elaborate things, particularly in the chapel; and "in the great ante-chamber," Walpole points out, " are several dead fowls over the chimney finely executed, and over a closet door a pen not distinguishable from a real feather; and when Gibbons had finished his works in that palace, he presented the duke with a point cravat, a woodcock, and a medal with his own hand, all preserved in a glass case in the gallery." " There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and aiiy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions of the elements with a freer disorder natural to each species." Allan Cunningham, whose biographies of artists provide us with these details, rushes into ecstasies over these works : " All the wood-carving in England fades away before that of Gibbons at Ghatsworth." (If he means ancient tracery, curious misereres, &c., he is comparing uncomparable things ; if only similar point lace, birds' feathers, &c., there are no others.) "The birds seem to live, the foliage to shoot, and the flowers to expand before the eye. The most marvellous work of all is a net of game ; you imagine at first sight that the gamekeeper has hung up his day's sport on the wall, and that some of the birds are still in the THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. death-flutter." The freestone has crumbled and gone, the wood remains, its delicacy has saved it. To retm-n to Gibber, from the memoranda of accounts still existing it does not appear his prices were very large, yet the facility with which a skilful stone- carver works, with or without a drawing, but without a model, because at that time copying a model exactly was a difficult matter, is truly wonderful to the uninitiated. For two pedimental figiu-es, each of them foiu- tons of stone, he receives £140 ; for a roimd statue with a boy on his shoulder, £60 ; and for twelve Csesar's heads, £5 a piece. Of all these decorative productions we know nothing ; but that Gibber was really a true and powerful artist, is put entirely beyond a doubt by the two terrible figures of ''Madness" and "Melancholy," formerly over the entrance at Moorfields, and now under shelter at the New Asylum in St. George's Fields. These are not beautiful indeed, nor have they the elevated mystery of the Day and K"ight on the tomb of the Duke Giuliano de Medici, and besides one may admit that the significance of them in connection with a hospital for the insane was too real and painful ; but there can be no question that they are indeed works of genius, original and vital, a problem as appearing in that age, a problem also proceeding from a man engaged ia cutting conventional gods and ornamental Italian adjrmcts to sumptuous and ostentatious architectiu-e. I feel quite inclined to subscribe to the verdict that they were the earliest indications in modern sculpture of a distinct and natiu-al life, and that "they stand fii'st in conception and only second in execution among all the productions of the island." There are some names that appear both in French and EngKsh histories of the arts and biographical dictionaries. Loutherbourg, for instance, is ia the French part of Gharles Blanc's excellent "Histonc des Peiatres," as well as in Guunino'ham's " Lives." Another of these is Eoubiliac, a man of very peculiar ability, of whom it is usual now to speak mirthfully, but whose weak points themselves are intcrestiti" and whose invention and executive power are both immense. lie was the monimicntal JOHN BACON. 19 and portrait sculptor wliile Cibber was the ornameiLtal and Gibbons the carver; and it must be owned the trio, who had now to contend with native ability, are all respectable. The sculptor of the statues of Handel, Shakespeare, Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge, and many others, is one of the most important figures in our art-history, and as long as poetic allegory is admitted iato sculpture — which must be for ever — the Nightengale monument we all know in "Westminster Abbey must be held in great respect. Nearly all through last century, if there were few sculptors and small demand for marbles of any description, there was a large trade iii plaster ornament. The ceilings of rooms, especially in all large houses, were covered by thin and delicate tracery, in the taste of the age, the principal member being the festoon tied with fluttering ribbon. The architects were all more or less accoimtable, not only for these details, but they most frequently held the commission for all works wherein stone, plaster, or marble were required, including monuments, so that many of the immense but abortive attempts in design in "Westminster and elsewhere — the architectural portion below being itself very ignorantly planned — must be accredited to the architects. The first rebel sculptor who stood out for being his own master was the son of a maker of these plaster ornaments, who had inherited a large fortune therefrom. This was "Wilton; but, sad to say, the new-found liberty brought only more immense and more abortive masses into existence, such as that commemorating the Earl and Countess of Montrath, where marble clouds supporting seraphs and cherubs float half way up the wall of the nave. These unhappily are the early examples of modern native sculpture we have to show ; but a very few years later an artist of a very difi'erent stamp appeared, in the person of Thomas Banks, in whose few works, mostly done in advanced life near the end of the century, we see the result of diligent study of the antique, with refined and fastidious natui'al taste — that character of poetic sculpture indeed which has continued to us with enlarged excellence through Flaxman and later men. "We 30 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE, may say, indeed, that Banks is the first true sculptor in oiu- modern school, and in respect to mastery of execution and completeness, nothing has yet gone beyond his finest works. In saying this, the writer ought, however, to acknowledge that he does so on the authority of Flaxman and others, having scarcely seen any work by Banks ; * the authority mentioned, however, the reader may think preferable to our own ! The bas-relief, " Thetis rising from the Sea to console Achilles," in the ISTational Gallery, quite sustains his high character in that department of the art. And now at last we may arrive at John Bacon, a hard-workiag and hard-thinking man without refinement, who began life at a porcelaia manufactory in London, never went to Rome, but was ui a great degree self-taught, always considered the moral aspect of everythiag, and succeeded in all his undertakiags. A remarkable man, pious and zealously attached to the Methodism then passing like electric fii-e from place to place under Wesley and Whitefield, yet knowing in the ways of the world, courtly with priuces, joyous with the joyful, calculating with the sordid, and eager among stockbrokers. Born at Southwark in 17-10, most of his early years were passed in earning his own living, and suddenly at middle life he emerged into great repute and practice, dying a few months before the end of the century. The changes in critical taste in relation to sculpture have been greater and more dangerous to the future estimate of works done in any prevailing manner than in any other art, even architecture. At the present day commemorative statues of great men are treated as portrait-statues. "In his habit as he lived" is the form invariably adopted to laand down to posterity the likeness of the kiug, soldier, or hero of letters, arts, or sciences. The king has been lately treated in unkingly * The large group of Sbakespeare, with female genii, removed two years ago from the British Institution buOding, Pall Mall, was done by Banks, for Boydell ; but, it is said, did not exhibit his art at its best. What has now become of this group ? Or, to extend the question, what has become of the pictures and funds belonging to the extinct British Institution ? JOHN BACON. plainness of costume — if equestrian, the soldier being the only character having now an invariable distinction of dress. And there is no doubt, a century or two hence, this is the treatment that will most interest future observers, even as we iind impersonations of the chiefs of past ages so treated appeal to all our sympathies at present. The first and second bronze monuments erected in modern Europe, and perhaps the noblest, the equestrian statues of Gattamelato, by Donatello, at Padua, and that of CoUeoni, by Veroccio, in the little campo in front of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, show us every bit of armour and all the belongings of these warriors exactly as they bore them, and that itself is now immensely interesting. But to contemporaries there would be no interest of the same kind, and at the present day the ungainly and inexpressive disguise of our ordinary civilian dress is not only not interesting, but absolutely repulsive in bronze or marble. The ancients adopted a large license of nakedness, and our sculptors of the latter half of last century followed their- example, without reflecting on the differences between drapery and tailoring — between the climate of the south and north. The first statue of Napoleon placed on the column in the Place Yendome was nude ; this was replaced by that lately destroyed in the habit of the chasseurs. We all remember the Dr. Johnson and John Howard on the right and left of the entrance to the chancel of St. Paul's. These give a high idea of Bacon's power as a monumental sculptor. There is great dignity and even characteristic expression— the troubled but benevolent moroseness of Johnson that we recognise in all his portraits, and the readiness of action of Howard, " unwearied in well-doing," are equally fine ; yet the semi-nakedness makes them so uncertain of identification, that a "distinguished foreigner," misled by the key in the hand of Howard, might be pardoned for mistaking them for Peter and Paul — an insular reading without the beards ! The group at Somerset House is another familiar example, and this is in bronze. Large metal castings at that time were surrounded with expensive 32 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. difficulties, and Bacon kept his foundry door locked from all inquirers, though it does not appear he had any new lights on the subject ; his mechanical powers, however, were shown in important improvements in the machine employed in copying the model into marble. His poetic works are very few, as we may expect; indeed, he was too full of commissions of a different kind, and being so, he coveted more, and made a proposition to the Government offensive to his professional bretkren. At a time when many public works were in agitation, he offered to do all national monuments at a reduced price, a proposition quite singular in art history, except perhaps in the reputed greediness of Tintoret, who, it is said, wished no one to have any public work but himself. This, it may be in part, that gave the bias against him reported by Flaxman and others, who will not allow him to have had any of the higher qualities of the sculptor. One of these few poetic subjects is "Narcissus," which, although not an invention of any transcendent genius, has a true expression of the moment when the vain youth first falls in love with himself. z->'> \^. jas^.-v -,'^. i&^$k^EEAT as are the vicissitudes of works of art, those of the fame of the artists are greater ; success for the day aud success for all time, Avhich is justice, are so different. The father of a lately deceased judge, to whom fell all the prizes in his profession, substantial aud tangible prizes, used to sa}- in the days when phrenology was in fashion, that " his son had the bump of getting-on-itivencss ; " and in the profession of art during the first half of life this quite supplementary bump on the human cranium is more important than any other. But when the externals of piosition and, for a time, ample commissions reward the man of tact, even if he attain the highest honours, he may outlive 35 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. his reputation unless it be based ou bis works ; and tbere is a bidden instinct in tlie minds of all perceptive men tbat tells tbem, in spite of tbe demoralisation of any exclusive privileges, tbat tbey bave bad tbeir reward, and tbat tbe inevitable balance will some day and some bour be struck against tbem. Tbey feel wbat Dr. Watts tbinlis we all sbould feel, — " The numbered hour is on the wing That lays us with the dead." -. Wlien NoUekens in bis old age witb bis vast wealtb was receiving attentions from legacy - bunters, one bringing "tbe Frencb Giant" in a coacb to amuse bim, anotber cbeesecakes, and a tliird pig-tail tobacco cut into quids sucb as an epicure in tbat abomination would like, anotber calling for bim to take bim in bis carriage to sec tbe first almond tree in tbe spring, anotber bringing sbowy plants to stand on tbe table, so tbat be migbt see tbem from bis bed, — be doubtless felt, not merely tbat tbe day of bis life, but tbe day of bis art and its reputation was waning. Bacon's group of Sbakespeare is removed from tbe old Boydell Grallery in Pall Mall, and no one asks wbere it bas gone. A few years ago, Mrs. Damer's statue (tbe Hon. Miss Conway) decorated, alone of its kind, tbe vestibule of tbe Britisb Museum, but now "its place knows it no more." Wbo was Jobu Flaxman wben tbese tkree sculptors were attracting all tbe attention of tbe dllef/kinti ? I must relate tbe life of Flaxman in a great measure from Allan Ciuiningbam, be being tbe central figure in tbe company of departed sculpt(n's, and in our present volume, it is desirable to give some detailed account of bim. Besides tbe cbaracter itself is so toucbing and interesting, so innocent and so clearly cut in tbe unity of its moral and intellectual life, tbat tbe closer we study it tbe more cbarming it becomes. Not tbat Flaxman was by any means a noble or attractive man, or even a Christian knight, or indeed in his personality bad JOHN FLAX MAN. 37 lie never made liis designs for Homer, Hesiod, and tlie Greek dramatists, "^^as there anything to draw tlie love of other men to him ; yet we recognise at once a balanced, sincere, thonghtful, and just artistic nature. His father is always described as " a moulder of figures," and as he had a shop, this seems to mean a manufacturer of casts in plaster of Paris ; a trade, generally speaking, all over Europe, carried on by Italians. We are told that he made professional pilgrimages to the country, and that in the course of one of these journeys, in which his wife accompanied him, the child John ^Avas bom at York, in 1755. When that field was exhausted, the family returned to London, father, mother, and two boys. The father must have been a worthy man, as his chilcben ascribed their well-being to him ; diligent and careful, he went about to sculptors, assisting them Avhcn the clay model was finished to get the more permanent cast, and had a small shop in New Street, Covent Garden, and afterwards in the Strand, in the window of which we may safely figure to ourselves the small reductions of the fighting and dying gladiators, the Antinous, and all the other stock pieces so much valued long ago, — a shop like the shops of all formatori, very white and powdery, but removed entirely from all sordid or vulgar elements. This shop was the unvarying scene of the boy's life, who was so weak from his birth that the greatest care only brought him tlrrough "that long disease, his infancy," and then only as a puny body, in some measure deformed, and always fond of retirement and studious quiet. Unable to go among other boys, he sought amusement among the "images" and materials about him ; he sat for months and years in a little stuffed chair, raised so high that he could just see over the counter, trying to teach himself reading, both English and other languages, with such books as he could get, relieving one solitary occupation by another, the black chalk and paper being suppKed him by his mother when his father was from home. The customers of such a shop are generally people of cultivation and taste, and the grave, L 38 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. tliiu, little face looking at the erratic world out of its invalid chaii- made an impression on every one, more especially as it was found the child of six or seven years of age was already trying, in a tentative way of course, since drawing did not come, as music did to Mozart and others, without labour. The father seems to have shown some of the child's efforts to Eoubiliac, a few years before he died, and very likely the aged sculptor was right in treating them as nothing. Striking genius was not Flaxman's greatness at any time, but rather the perfectness of fine feeling and thoroughly accomplished art. The first who noticed the boy, his earliest friend, and a very important one at that time, was a clergyman, a Mr. Mathew, who has recorded their first interview. "I went," he says, "to the shop of old Flaxman to have a figure repaired, and whilst I was standing there I heard a child cough behind the counter. I looked over, and there I saw a little boy seated on a small chair, with a large chair before him, on which lay a book he was reading. His fine eyes and beautiful forehead interested me, and I said, * What book is that ? ' He raised himself on his crutches, bowed, and said, 'It is a Latin book, and I am trying to learn it.' ' Ay, indeed,' I answered, ' you are a fine boy, but that is not the proper book ; I'll bring you a right one to-morrow.' I did as I promised, and the acquaintance thus casually begun ripened into one of the best friendships of my life." The picture of the lame child rising and bowing, is highly curious, and has a touch of prcmatiu-e age and formal manners, such as we are often surprised by in the diminutive and the deformed. " This child," says Cunningham, who knew Flaxmau to some extent before he died, " is the mental as well as bodily image of the man. All those who had the honour of knowing Flaxman will join with me in sayiuLi; that his extreme courtesy and submissive deference to others were natural and not assumed; as he was in his first interview with Mathew, so was he to mankind, when his name, like that of the hero of old romance, ' had A^'axcil JOHN FLAXMAN. 39" Wide.' " The solitary child labom-ed at his books and sketches incessantly, making small models in plaster of Paris, wax, and clay, and he must also have drawn diligently, which very few sculptors do, modelling being so much easier and more fascinating, otherwise in his later years we should not have had the greatest work of his manhood and mature powers, the series of illus- trations from the Greek poets. Such was the narrow routine of life up to the age of ten, when he was well and at the best; at other times he was entkely laid aside with feebleness and ill health, and always up to that age he could only move by the use of crutches. Now, however, the evils that beset him tied, a flush of health came upon him at once ; he grew strong, lively, and active ; the crutches were thrown aside never to be resumed ; and full of a new energy, and under the new experiences of walking out in the streets and green fields he longed to do something extraordinary and meet some wonderful adventm-e. And here there is a long story of his emulating Don Quixote, after having read that enchanting book. Armed with a little French sword he set out for adventures, but as this is not related in his own words it has none of the colour that makes such childish aspirations worth repeating, nor did he ever in after life show any similar disposition, but all through his long term of years kept an uneventful routine. jSTow, however, he went to school, and there does occur an incident related by himself to his confidential assistant for twenty years, Mr. Hinchliflf, and preserved by Mr. Teniswood. The school he went to was conducted by a tyrant of the old class, who treated him severely. " I was put to school under a master, of the peculiarities of whose disposition my parents were ignorant. The period, though short, Avas to me a most unhappy one, for he treated his scholars with cruel severity. I made no complaint at home, but bore his unmerited punishment without mui-muring. Having in no way deserved such treatment, his barbarity induced in me a resolution that, when older and stronger, I would punish him 40 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. for the pain tie liad caused to others. Some few years after, one day when in my father's shop in the Strand, I recognised my former tyrant looking at some casts in the window. In an instant the recollection of his cruelties flashed across my mind, and in great agitation I rxished into the street to confront my enemy; the nearer sight of whom instantly disarmed me. The poor fellow was paralysed. Pity in place of any other feeling took possession of me, and turning back, it was some time before I recovered from the shock caused by the sight of his altered condition. This recollection is one that frequently recui's to me, but never with- out a sense of thankfulness at being spared the horrible reflection that must ever have haunted me, had I, not seeing his pitiable state, attempted to punish him as he so well deserved." Thus the single vigorous impulse of passion in his life, perhaps, ended in a lesson of forgiveness ! It is worthy of remark too that the earliest commission he had, and that a very juvenile one, was for drawings in chalk, prophetic of his future excellence in design. This came through Mr. Mathew, at whose home a friend saw Flaxman drawing Homeric sketches while Mrs. Mathew read the poet aloud, and gave him six subjects, exactly such as he afterwards would have selected for himself. These were, " The Blind ffidipus conducted by his Daughter, Antigone, to the Temple of the Fui'ies ; " " Diomede and Ulysses seizing Dolon as a Spy;" "The Lamentation of the Trojans over the Body of Hector;" "Alexander taking the Cup from Philip, his Physician;" "Alccstis taking leave of her Children, when about to die to preserve the Life of their Father;" and "Hercules releasing Alcestis from the Infernal Ecgions, and restoring her to her Husband." This took place before Flaxman had fixed his determination on following sculpture, which he did when his health was quite restored, and his school days over, and long after his mother was dead and a step-mother sitting in her place. His visits to Mr. Mathew's circle still continued, and this circle included some of the celebrities of the daj^, among the ladies at least, Mrs. Moutacue JOHN FLAXMAN. 41 Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Barbauld. At this house he was for many years a welcome visitor, and here he was encouraged ia studying the dead languages, " so necessary to him in his profession," says one of his biographers. " That he ever attained eminent scholarship no one has yet pretended ; that he knew something of the Greek bards in the origiaal is, however, certain ; and it is probable that he helped his deficiencies out, as Pope is said to have done, by the common translations. His education was desultory, he attended no college, but mastered what he wanted by some of those ready methods which form part of the iaspirations of genius." Such is the first period of the career of our hero, and the second is more like that of others, attending the Eoyal Academy, gaining the prizes, such as they are at the Society of Arts, and forming congenial friendshi];)s, among whom there were two that must have been of the greatest importance to him ; these were Blake and Stothard, both modest and peculiar men. Blake was indeed such an intolerant, or at least settled, mystic that any one living on friendly terms must have harmonised with him to some extent, and imited with him, at all events, ia his pious view of life and resolute poverty. Stothard, on the other hand, was much nearer Flaxman in his art, and also in his personal character; yet we are told that it was with Blake in particular he loved to dream and sketch, and give form and sometimes colour to the fancies in which they both sympathised. However that may be, Blake was not a painter in the same sense that Stothard was, his eff*orts were very desultory, and only in a few cases successful, whereas Stothard was then, and became still more afterwards, an able colourist. Flaxman's painting must have been much more accomplished than we are prepared to expect, since it appears a picture of his, " (Edipus and Antigone," turned up in an auction-room many years after, and was sold for a Belisarius by Domenichino ! Painters have frequently a wide range of practice, and very many of them model, but few indeed arc the sculptors who can tiu^n to the brush or even the crayon. 42 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. When Wilkie was in Eome, he took it into Lis head that he saw reason to think the ancient sculptors had also been painters ; but such it seems to us was a mere conjecture to account for the perfectness he saw in their work. " It seems to mc," he says, in a letter quoted in the "Lives of British Painters," &c., "as if the artists of old first began to learn to paint and then to work in marble. There is such an artist-like freedom in the working of the material, that it reminds me of what we call surface in a picture, and such a perfect knowledge of the effect of light and shadow on that surface, that the hard stone is made to indicate sharpness and softness with as much ease as we see it done in a picture by Correggio. Sculpture and painting seem much less allied now than in the time of the Greeks, when statues and bas-reliefs are painted, or in party-coloured marble, and when pictui'es were coloured sculptures in everything but the flat surface." This is well observed, and we may have something to say of coloured sculpture when wc come to Gibson, but it would rather seem to us that the perfect finish in the modelling of the surface which produces the exact texture of flesh would suppose that no supplementary paint would be either necessary or allowable. Since the lives of both Flaxman and Blake have been wi-itten, and their friendship recorded pleasantly by their biographers, certain satirical couplets and biting epigrams have been discovered, wherein the painter criticises the sculptor in no pleasant terms. His quarrel with Stothard had a distinct reason, that painter having taken his subject of the " Canterbury Pilgrims," and made a great success, while Blake's wild and rude treatment prevented his engraving of the Pilgrims being so. But we caimot conjecture in what Flaxman had oftendcd. If our sculptor began early, especially to draw, he does not appear at an early jjcriod of life as practising his profession in a lucrative way, or, indeed, to have made any money at all except in his father's service, till wc approach his twenty- eighth year, when the mnch-talked-of connection with Wedgwood bca;an. The JOHN FLAXMAN. 43 first recorded impression made by the sculptor on the potter, or rather on his partner, may now be seen in Miss Meteyard's book, and savours intensely of a manufacturer's impertinence ; and in all accounts of their intercourse and connection we are conscious of a false and offensive position held by the manufacturer and improver of earthenware towards a man he was scarcely entitled to associate with. This absurd tone is maintained by writers who have but lately employed themselves in the celebration of Wedgwood — a tone that seems ludicrous when we feel all the time that Flaxman would never have had a penny of the potter's money if it had not been for the potter's manifest advantage. Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, in his "Life of Josiah Wedgwood," says : — " Somewhat before this period, 1779 — but I cannot speak with certainty of the year — Wedgwood and Bentley engaged the services of John Flaxman, then a young and unknown man; and to their fostering care — to no inconsiderable extent — did the great sculptor owe his name and his imperishable fame. It was the employment he received from Wedgwood which for years 'kept the wolf from the door,' and enabled him to live while he worked his way up in art. It was this employment which enabled him to earn money to take a home for himself, and to plant in it that blessing and joy of his life, his wife, Ann Denman ; and which also helped him on to lay by money to visit Eome, and study the works of the great masters. It would be highly interesting to compile a list of all the groups and medallions and bas-reliefs of one kind or other which Flaxman produced for Wedgwood. A complete list of this kind, however, there is little hope of getting together. So far as may be done I purpose doing at a futui-e time. For the present I shall content myself with the pleasure of giving my readers copies of some of Flaxman's original bills for models and draw- ing's which will be of no inconsiderable service to collectors of Wedgwood ware." The present writer is far from undervaluing the services of Wedgwood in improving the important art and industry of earthenware manufacture, on the contrary, he has done what he could to celebrate the same pictorially ; but at the 4+ THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. same time he must protest against this consequential MI-bottom-Avig aii- of patronage applied to one of the most modest and most gifted of our artists, nor can he discover any "fostering care," nor see how Flaxman owes his name and fame to his modelling at small pay for the Staffordshire fui-naces. The proposition is altogether absurd ; all the world understands he honoured the manufacturer and his wares by touching them. Here is some evidence Mr. Jewitt would say of the disinterested "fostering care." The artist has to meet the trader on his own grounds, and so writes out his invoice. Mr. Wedgwood to J. Flaxman. 1782. & s. d. April 28. Moulding a Turin 18 1783. Moulding a bust of Mr. and Mrs. Siddons . . . . 1 11 6 Sept. 6. A cast of a fragment of Phidias 10 6 8 Received in full by John Flaxman. This insignificant assistance is not much. Mr. Jewitt certainly gives another bill of greater importance, comprehending indeed a statement of account from July loth, 1781, the year after his marriage, down to August 10th, 1787, the time when he and his wife set off to Eome to studj^ the antique originals, and to prove to Eeynolds, who had said that his marriage would ruin him as an artist, that he was but beginning a career as eminent as his own. The sum of the entire bill, no doubt nearly the whole of the money he ever received from WedgAvood, is £188 \s. 2(/., paid by instalments and £6 lis. 9rf. in goods, dishes no doubt, when he was fiu-nishing at his marriao'c. The improvement of ware is one thing, and the art applied to it another • the ability on Wedgwood's part iu this transaction was to find out the sculptor and to get him to model these things, it does him honour. Mr. Jewitt goes on to analvse the bill and its statements, and to congratulate " the frugal couple " on "'ottin!;' JOHN FLAXMAN. 4S so much money. The frugal couple, be it remembered, were about to break up their establishment and to travel together across Europe, for a residence of two years in Rome. But he does not observe that a great part of the bill was for two marble chimney-pieces, with masonry and so forth, expenditure evidently on Flaxman's part without gain, or with a mere per centage, things imdertaken apparently out of good nature, without any possible pleasure, except obliging his country correspondent. Imagine, too, "Wedgwood, or any other man, employing Flaxmau to grind the edges of snuff-boxes ! Having made the strictures on Mr. Jewitt's way of putting the matter of the eomiection between our hero and his employer, which after all is only, most probably, an author making the most of his subject, forgetting that the world at large thinks the " obscure " sculptor who afterwards designed the Hesiod and modelled the Acts of Mercy, and the petitions of the Lord's Praj^cr, was the one conferring the honour, we must quote from his admirable and valuable "Life of Wedgwood" the entire bill referred to. Doing so will show how hard it must have been to live on such payments, and even to ventvu'e on marriage, and to save money to travel with besides. 1783. .July 11. Oct. 12. ,, 30. Dec. 13. „ 18. 1784. Jan. 24. Feb. 3. Mr. Wedgwood to -J. Flaxman, Jun. Two drawings of Crests, an owl and a griffin's head A portrait of Mr. Hersohel .... ,, Dr. Buclian .... ,, an Officer from a print, for a ring . A drawing of a Crest, cap of liberty, and a fiame A figure of a Fool for chess .... A drawing of the Shield, crest, and arms of Sir N. Nugent Grinding the edges of six snuff-boxes for the Spanish Ambassador ...... A model in wax of Captain Cook ,, ,, Dr. Johnson A print of the Doctor for assistance in the model £ s. (}. 3 2 2 2 2 2 12 6 1 1 .5 ugent. 2 6 1.5 2 2 2 2 2 G Jf 46 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. 1784. Mar. 21. Deo. 31. „ 12. Jan. 14. Mar. 8. April 29. July 23. Aue. 8. Nov. 28. Dec. Dec. 18. A bas-relief of Boys in wax .... A portrait of C. Jenkinson, Esq. Two drawings for the Manufacturers' Arms A third for the Manufacturers' Arms Three days employed in drawing bas-relief Vases, Chess- men, &c. ....... A bas-relief in wax of Veturia and Volumnia entreating Coriolanus ...... A portrait of Governor Hastings A drawing of Chessmen ..... An outline for a Lamp and Stand Cutting the curved sides of two ornamental friezes parallel, three days and a half .... A drawing of a Chimney-piece .... A ditto from that in Mr. Wedgwood's show-room, and several mouldings drawn at large A mason's time taking down a Chimney-piece . A labourer at ditto ...... A drawing of an Arm and Olive Branch A model of the King of Sweden Mr. and Mrs. Meerman's portraits . Four patterns for steel frogs . . .- . £ s. d. 11 6 2 2 15 5 3 3 9 9 3 3 6 6 10 6 9 7- 10 6 1 1 2 1 3 2 2 2 5 5 10 1787. Jan. 10. A model of Peace preventing Mars from bursting the door of Janus's Temple . . . . . . . 15 15 A packing-case . . . . . . . .010 Drawing of an Oak Branch for the border of a plate . .030 Mar. 26. A model of Mercury uniting the hands of England and France 13 13 A packing-case . . . . . . . .016 June 1. A model of the Queen of Portugal . . . . .830 June 11. A marble Chimney-piece containing 5 ft. 11 ins. at &1 18.S. per foot . . . . . . .114 Masonry and polishing . . . . . .18 Carving GOO JOHN FLAXMAN. 1787. June 11. A marble CHmney-piece containing .5 ft. 3 ins. Masonry and polishing . Twenty-four tinned cramps . Seven packing-cases, 7s. M., Is. lid. 5s. 6d., 7s. 6d., 8s. Id. . Nails ..... Packing three days . Cart to the Inn Toll, porter, and booking . Taking down a Chimney-piece . Cutting Tiles .... Cases for the Chimney-piece Aug. 10. A bas-relief of Hercules in the Hesperian Garden Creditor £ s. d. ins. 9 19 6 21 4 12 7s. 2(i. 6s. 9d. 2 8 5 2 10 10 6 6 1 9 5 3 5 19 6i arden 23 Eeceived on account of this Bill :- 1785. March 22 . August 10 1787. July 10 . August 10 By amount of goods £188 4 2 116 11 9 £71 14 5 £ s. d. . 25 . 25 . 50 . 10 . 6 11 9 £116 11 9 Herschel {inentioned above). Dr. Bt4chan [mentioned above). 48 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Tlicse medallions are of extraordinary finish, requiring the greatest care and no small expenditure of time; and the prices, considering the difference of the value of money from the date of the erection of the Beanchamp monument at Warwick, particularly mentioned already, when William Austen, " Citizen and founder of London," receiyed IS.. 4J. each for his bronze statuettes, the metal Mrs. Flaxiiiivi. being separately paid for, it must be owned were quite as small— perhaps reasonably so, Wedgwood's object being necessarily to make money by the hand (if Flaxman. No doul)t marriage to a young artist Avithout any other dependence than siu'li as this is a dangerous step. Sir Jusluia Reynolds was pretty nearly riglit in a o'cneral way, but the lady Flaxman married was his great prize in life — an amiable. JOHN FLAXMAN. 49 patient, happy -hearted, silent, and intelligent wife till nearly the close of his long and laborions life. When he parted from Eeynolds he went home, sat down by his wife, took her hand, and said with a smile, " I am ruined for an artist." — "John," said she, "how has this happened, and who has done it?"— "It happened," replied he, " in the church, and Ann Denman has done it. I met Sir Joshua Eejiiolds now, and he said marriage has ruined me in my profession. And, Ann," added he, " I have long thought that I could rise to distinction in art without studying in Italy, but these words of Eejniokls's have determined me. I shall go to Eome as soon as my affairs are fit to be left, and to show him that wedlock is for a man's good rather than for his harm, you shall accompany me. If I remain here I shall be accused of ignorance concerning those noble works of art which are to the sight of a sculptor what learning is to a man of letters, and you will lie under the charge of detaining me;" and in this determination Mrs. Plaxman heartily concurred. One lucky circumstance that helped to defeat Eeynolds's prophecy was that Ann had no childi-en. A woman of her nature devotes herself to her little ones ; the nest and the callow brood are her world, and the thatching of that nest and sitting in it, or fluttering about it with food, is her only care ; but without children the husband is all in all. From that day they began to prepare secretly for their journey, but five years elapsed before he had, by constant application and diligence in taking up any remunerative labour, accumulated the necessary means for the journey to Eome, very different then from what it is now, when one railway after another carries the tourist in a few days across kingdoms and thi'ough the Alps.* At the time of his marriage, in 1782, he was twenty-seven ; when he left for Eome, thirty -two ; and when he returned — and one may say began life here as one of our London artists — he was very close on forty. * I may say, once for all, the facts of this notice of Plaxman and some of the inferences are adopted from Cunningham's short "Life." They are all, however, in various other books. 50 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. This step of leaving home, and making himself acquainted with all the Itahan galleries of the antique, was a very judicious one. The exact result on his art it is difficult to calculate, but one good work could never have been accomplished otherwise, and that was his lectureship to the students at the Academy, wliich has resulted in a book taking its place worthily beside the lectures of Ee}Tiolds and Fuseli, both of whom were specially endowed, the one with learning and force of character, the other with experience, penetration, and knowledge. But before following him there, we must quote an anonymous writer's description of his home after marriage. " I remember him well, so do I his wife, and also liis little home in Wardour Street (27 was the number, if any of our readers would like to look up at the windows in that street of imitation carved furniture). All was neat — nay, elegant ; the figures from which he studied were the finest antiques (casts, of course) ; the natm-e which he copied was the faii-est that could be had, and all his studio was propriety and order. But what struck me most was the air of devout quiet which reigned everywhere. The models which he made, and the designs which he drew, were not more serene than he was liimself; and his Avife had that meek composure of manner which he so much loved in art. Yet better than all was the devout feeling of this singular man : there was no ostentatious display of piety ; nay, he Avas in some sort a lover of mirth and sociality ; but he was a reader of the Bible and a worshipper of sincerity ; and if ever Purity visited the earth, she resided with John Flaxman." One of the few monumental sculptures confided to him before he gave up his Wardour Street home Avas that to Collins, the poet, engraved in the " Preliminary ]^]s.say " in this book (p. 12). It represents Collins in a Avay congenial to Flaxman — reading the Bible — Avhicli Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets," reports Collins told him was his only book. His lyre and manuscripts lie as throAvn aside for \\w, absorbing study of the sacred volume. The narroAV pediment aboAC is filled with a group which has been called " Cupid and Psyche," but in Flaxman's JOHN FLAXMAN. 51 mind may have been an angel consoling the soul. This is very beantiful, ami has been engraved in this volume at the beginning of the article headed " Bacon." Once in Eome, he found himself, as so many have done, at an endless feast. In the Capitol and the Vatican at that period the marbles were very much the same as now, the great harvest for the explorer having degenerated into outlying gleanings before then, and the Museo Pio- Clementine, which our Scottish artist, Gavin Hamilton, so largely contributed to form, was complete.* But the most classic and most pure of all our sculptors, strange to say, seemed to have been struck more by the modern Italian works. It may have been he was less prepared for these ; all the principal antiques being known to him in the miniatm-e figures in his father's shop and elsewhere — although at that time the British Museum did not exist as it does now, showing so many stages of the history of Greek art, and the highest masterpieces of the age of perfection. From Niccolo Pisano down to Bernini there is in Italy a continual movement and development, and the works exemplifying the changes can only be known through the originals. He has given us many of his impressions in his lectures, and must have been much impressed by the greatness of the monumental art, and by the bronze relievos in Florence and Pisa, and also by the earthenware of Delia Robbia, rather juore remarkable than the plates and dishes of Staffordshire, even though commissioned by the Empress of Eussia, and painted with landscapes of Petersburg and the "VYinter-Palace. The relievos decorating the sarcophagi were more than all productive of interest and improvement to him. These, he says, present " endless compositions from the great poets of antiquity — Homer, Hesiod, iEschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles — the systems of ancient philosophy, with the mysteries, * It must be acknowledged that the Popes do not hide their lights under bushels, as far as ostentatious inscriptions on every object found or reared in their dift'erent reigns go. It seems as if every fragment of the antique placed in a museum, as well as everything built, altered, or added to, in Rome, was a free gift condescendingly bestowed on a piablic without any claims. 5 2 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. initiations, and mytliology. By carefully studying these, the young sculptor will accustom himself to a noble habit of thinliing, and consequently choose whatever is beautiful, elegant, and grand ; rejecting all that is mean and vulgar : by thus imbibing an electric spark of the poetic fire, he will attain the power of employing the beauty and grace of ancient poetry and genius in the service of the establishments and morals of our OAvn time and country." Happily for the world he received at that very time commissions from three different persons, which gave him opportunities of showing how fur the study of these works had amalgamated with his own powers, and how far the repro- duction of the essential qualities of Greek art in the form of modern poetic simplicity, and in a systematic series of illustrative designs, could be attained by him. Any man with gifts equal to his could be in no danger of imitating, much less of adapting particular figures or designs, nor do we remember a single one of his designs from Homer or Hesiod having been suggested by early works; those from ^Eschylus are still further from antique authority, and the Dante designs have a singular sentiment of mysticism united to the sculpturesque form he could not be without. The Iliad contains thirty - nine illustrations, the Odyssey thirty-four, Hesiod's Works and Days thirty-seven, ^Eschylus not so many, but the three parts of Dante together a hundred and nine. Each of these designs, paid at a guinea, was an evening's work, and no doubt the old menage was re-established in Eome, and after museum study in the day, Flaxman and his wife found the stove and the lamp in the Piazza di Spagna, and afterwards in the Via Felice, where he was greatly resorted to, very much the same as in Wardour Street. For, after all, how little are the surroundings compared to the subjective reality, ourselves and our view outwards ! Emerson has said something to this effect Avonderfully well: — "When I came to Pv-omc I foimd that genius pierced directly to the simple and true ; that it was familiar and sincere, that it was the old eternal fact I had met already in so many forms JOHN FLAXMAN. 53 unto which I lived ; that it was the plain you and me I knew so well — had left at home in so many conversations. I had the same experience already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothing was changed with me, but the place, and said to myself— ' Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over four- thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect to thee there at home?' — that fact I saw agaia in the Academia at Naples, in the chambers of seulptiu-e, and yet again when I came to Eome, and the paintings of Eaphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. ' What ! old mole, workest thou in the earth so fast ? ' It had travelled by my side : that which I fancied I had left at Boston was here in the Yatican, and again at Milan, and at Paris." Of all these illustrative sets of designs, those for Hesiod appear to us the finest : they have an early character, dealing with the ideas of the ages of archaic sculpture, and this, requiring exceeding simplicity and order iu the manner and action of the figures, suited Flaxman admirably. It must be always kept in mind that his genius was for beauty exclusively, he had little call to the heroic, and he did no violence to himself in endeavouring after it, nor was his di'awing so vigorous as to deal successfully with the nude male figure in violent action. In this series also are consecutive sets which lend value to each other, that relating to Pandora especially is absolutely perfect, and the plates of the Hesiod drawings having had the good fortune to be engraved (one or two excepted) by Blake ; the English edition is more complete in the rendering than any other. "Pandora gifted by Minerva and Hermes," "Attired by Persuasion and the Graces;" " Shown to the Gods;" "Brought to Earth;" " Presented to Einmetheus;" and lastly " Opening the Vase," are all exquisitely fine. The repute and estimation of these works is much greater abroad than at home, where we believe their publication was not a great success. But in France, from the time of theii- first appearance to the present, they have been familiar to every student, and we remember seeing in the Luxemboui'g many years ago a life-size picture repeated P 54 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. from the "Pandora brought to Earth," which had been honourably placed there, although the design was but a copy. In the last of these designs, " Pandora opening the Vase," nothing can surpass the beauty of the nymph as an embody- ment of innocence and uufrightened wonder. Of the Dante di-awings a greater difference of opinion must always exist, and yet for comprehensive understanding of the poet, and sculpturesque treatment of subjects that will not bear formalising by any art, they are very complete. Blake began a series, which, apart from his limited power of drawing and his conventional typical way of representing old sages or young men or maids, promised to be the most truly imaginative and adequate to the subject. Dore's, we all know, are fi'om the romantic point of view, and can scarcely be compared to any other. At the same time these were in progress, Flaxman, who seemed to have an impatience with fragments, even those of the Elgin marbles, set himself a task which was siu-e to disappoint himself and every one. This was the completion of the famous torso of Hercules, called l)y 'the contemporaries of the author's student years, 2^ar excellence, " The Torso," and carefully drawn by them, all mutilated as it is. This mere fragment has excited an adniii-ation beyond any other fragment, but for that very reason its restoration is the more hopeless, and as the peculiarity of it is muscular strength, prodigious though easy, it was not the best fitted for Flaxman's powers. He not only completed the Hercules, but he added an Omphalc to form a group. This female adjunct he thought fit to contrast with the demi-god, and, according to all accounts, made her like a plaything in comparison, and when the idlers and the connoisseurs went to see the finished restoration there was no contentment expressed. This huge mass he brought home, however, and it was only shortly before his death that he came to the resolution — wise or not who can say? — of causing it to be destroyed. JOHN FLAXMAN. 55 During ttiose h.appy years, Eomc, far away as it seemed from the vortex of things, began to feel uneasily that the great Eevolution uncoiling itself in Paris was not to leave it long in peace. He had been seven years there, and was preparing to leave. " A night or two before my departure from Eome," he afterwards told, " the ambassador of the French proudly showed us at an evening party a medal of Bonaparte. ' There,' said he, ' is the hero who is to shake the monarchies of the earth, and raise the glory of the republic' I looked at the head and said at once, ' This Bonaparte of yoiurs is the very image of Augustus Caesar.' ' Image of a tyi'ant ! ' exclaimed the Frenchman, ' no, indeed, I tell you he is another sort of a man ; he is a young enthusiastic hero, and dreams of nothing but liberty and equality ! ' " This dislike to Napoleon continued with Flaxman, and extended to all the movers in the Eevolution and the Empire. At the time of the peace of Amiens he went to Paris, but refused the honours of an introduction to the lover of liberty and equality, now developing into the Caesar. At the time when Flaxman returned to England and settled for the rest of his life at 7, Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, Banks was at his best, and he remains as the best artist of the period, a man with earnest poetic aspirations, but moderate ability. A true artist, however, we ought to own him, and one who was an exception to all the others then living, and we had almost said to sculptors in general, having generous feelings to his brethren, and no jealousy. Flaxman carried home a commission to execute the important monument to the Earl of Mansfield, most probably indeed returned homo to do it. Wisdom is on one side. Justice on the other, and the judge sits aloft in the centre calm, simple, severe, and solitary. On seeing this brought to a conclusion Banks said honestly, " This little man cuts us all out ! " and ever after there was the most friendly feeling existing between them, till Banks's death about nine years later. Bacon was near his end. With him we have squared accounts in the previous THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. pages, and perhaps tlie reader does not care to revive the acquaintance with that vigorous but restricted intellect. Nollekens has scarcely yet been mentioned : a notable figure in his way, and one of the men fui-nishing, at the time of his death, 1823, nearly ninety years of age, one of the largest crops of anecdotes, set afloat principally by disappointed fortune-hunters. What the old Bernini school, still practised in London, was like, the statue of Joshua Ward, by Carlini, in the stau'case of the Society of Arts Adelphi, will show. NoUekens stood between the time when the foreigner held the field in derision of native talent, an Antwerpcr by parentage. Englishman by being born in Dean Street, Soho, and apprenticed to Scheemakers, whom we may hesitate to call an artist, and the day when Flaxman and Chantrey had put all such adventurers down, and Westmacott, Gibson, and others were putting up green leaves. In his early time this Society of Arts appears as an efiicient patron of sculpture, and in case of ISToUekens a very efficient one indeed, giving him, a quite friendless youth as it seems, his father dead and his mother gone to Wales with a new husband, fifteen, thirtj^, ten, and fifty guineas in premiums. There is something touching in the poverty, ungainliness, and timidity, described as characterising NoUekens's youth, subjecting him to insults and practical jokes, contrasting curiously with the flattery, servility, and watchfulness of the next generation round his invalid chair and his death-bed. With all his knowledge of the world he must have held mankind in contempt ; womankind he seems not to have found much better. Ilis marriage, indeed, was a success, as his wife harmonised with him in many ways, although worse in temper, quite as penurious, and nearly as ignorant as himself; but his wife's sister used to note down all his faults, and insisted on teaching him at least to spell correctly Avords of one syllable. One of these friendly expectants, who was left with only a huntb-ed poimds as an executor after having been led to expect fifty thousand, revenged liimself by writing his life, and this life of Nollekens by Thomas Smith is an JOHN FLAX Jf AN. S7 amusing book indeed, tlie sculptor did so much and saw so many people, the narrative being seasoned by the animus of the narrator. Throughout his long life, beginning with the manufacture or piecing-up of antiques on his first arrival in Eome, whither he went at an early age, he was careful, long-suffering, and money-making, to effect which he constructed his statues and groups of many pieces, so cunningly joined together that they passed as monoliths ; the very large masses of perfect marble being very expensive. This art he had learned in Eome in his early days, when a trade in antiques, sometimes newly made and sometimes pieced together, employed the needy and unprincipled. He was also blunt and satirical, occasionally the latter without knowing it, as when he asked the "lady of rank" to lower her handkerchief, the piece of dress at that time covering the throat and breast. This he did iu such a way as to induce her to answer, " I am sure. Sir, you must know the human form too well to make such examination necessary;" when he muttered loudly to himself, "True, true, it matters little, most likely; no woman's bosom is very much worth looking at after eighteen." Yet this artist became the leading sculptor, partly from the extraordinary vigour and peculiar faithfulness of his busts,- partly from his cunniug and inoffensiveness iu the serious business of life. His works are almost numberless. Garrick, Sterne, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Burney, Mr. Townlcy, George III., and the Prince of Wales, and scores of the nobility, artists, soldiers, and others, sat to him. Pitt he modelled from the posthumous mask, Pox from life, and made both in hundreds for their partizans ; party -feeling running then so high we have now no parallel to it. He also did the monu- mental statue of Pitt. His statues and groups are about twenty in number, his monuments nearly seventy, and among them the monument to Mrs. Howard, of Corby, near Carlisle, may be pointed out as one of the most beautiful and touching of the semi-emble- matic vstylc of design. " Yeuus anointing herself" was his favourite work, although Q 58 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. he did foiu' other figures of the fascinating goddess, some of them better in the ojiiuion of the rest of the world; these were "Venus chiding Cupid," "Yenus sitting," with her hands round her knees, as if thinking; "Venus taking off her Shoe," and another called the " Eockingham Venus." When the Elgin marbles came to be otfered to the nation, NoUekens gave one of the highest testimonies to their supreme excellence, and even before his death, while theix purchase was in suspense, spoke of giving the entire money for that piu'pose; but this was supposed mere boasting. This little sketch of NoUekens was necessary in any notice of oiu- deceased sculptors, although, as in the cases of Eoubiliac and others, we cannot produce an illustration of his works. Besides these tkree important men, when Flaxman returned to London, there were many other sculptors working, men who have gone out and left no trace, particularly Tiumerelli, a native of Belfast, the lion of a day, when George III. took him into favour, and whose portrait, in engravings, may still be seen with a half-life-size bust of the king in his hand, inscribed below, " P. Turnerelli, Esq., Sculptor to their Majesties and all the Eoyal Family." To retiu-n to Elaxman. The Mansfield monument was the forerunner of many others, and now began the period of successful annual accomplishment which has adorned many of our churches with commemorative sculptm-e, possessing a truly ennobling and tran- quillising character in harmony with the place and the Chi'istiau services. The important work in memory of the family of Sii- Francis Baring, in Micheldean (Ihurch, Hants, is nearly the most perfect in these respects; the sculptor used to say he found " the Christian religion to present personages and subjects no less favourable to painting and sculpture than the ancient classics," and the bas-reliefs on this monument go far to prove it. These embody various petitions in the Lord's Prayer— "Thy will be done," "Thy kingdom come," "Deliver us from evil;" wood-engravings of which will be found in this volume (pages 77, 88 100 JOHN FLAXMAN. S9 131). This assertion of Flaxman ouglit, no doubt, to receive the greatest respect, but it is not accurate enough in its expression. We in these days ought to sympathise with Bible history and Chiistian motifs much more than with a defunct mythology; but whenever art leaves poetry for morality, and fancy for faith, the artist ceases to be a magician ; he is dominated by the Church or the ideas themselves, and even in the hands of Plaxman there is a weak and lifeless character in the divapery that clothes the bodies of the blessed and allegorical personages, and in the haii- that covers their heads and shoulders. Perfect artistic freedom in the embodiment has never been attained. Not so fiaie as these was the bas-relief to Mary Lushington, Lewisham, Kent, but still very admirable, embodying one of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, " Blessed are they who mourn ; " and the groups, " Come thou blessed," and " Lead us not into temptation," and also the " Faith " and " Charity," on the memorial to the Countess Spencer, have the same sincerity and earnestness. His historical monuments have been among his least admired works ; nor does it seem possible to raise by any executive excellences such formal and hackneyed materials as he fell into the habit of using. Moreover, these were larger than the measiu^e of all his best works, and he was in the habit of modelling them half the size, and enlarging them in the marble, which magniiies defects ; and it is said he worked for months on the Earl Howe, after the figure was placed, getting it into better proportion. These works bring us down to the time of his "Michael and Satan," the group engraved in this book, certainly one of his leading works and greatest achievements. Also to the " Shield of Achilles," where he retm-ns to Homer and ancient art and life. The greatness of design, the richness of invention, prompted by the poetry of his original, — " An endless fountain of immortal drink Pouiing unto us from the heavens' brink," — 5o THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. and tlie j^urity of tlie art in the drawing and modelling, make this one of the tiium2)hs of modern art. Qnartremere de Quincy and others have also embodied the poet's description of Vulcan's work, but Flaxman has made it his own. These labours were in progress when his wife died, and six years after his own time came. One day a stranger called with a book in his hand, a votive offering in its way from an Italian writer, who, impressed with the idea that the designer from Homer and Hesiod was deceased, had dedicated his book " Al Ombra di Flaxman;" but who, learniag his mistake after the publication, sent an apology with a copy of the work. Flaxman smiled at finding himself prematurely among the shades, but the mistake was not great as to time. This Avas on Saturday, the 2nd December, 1826, and five days after, on the 7th, he passed away without a struggle. Always modest, gentle, happy within a narrow circle, some one said of him, " I wish he would not bow so low to the lowly ; his civility oppresses." Every one who cares for the art of sculpture should go and study it in the Flaxman Gallery in the University College, Gower Street. F/a.xmaii's Tomb, in St. (JiUs-in-thc-FielJs. Monument to Miss Lushiiigfon, Lewisliam [Flaxnian'). SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY. THE TWO CHILDREN. SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY, HE name of Chantrey brings us down to a much later time tliau any other sculptor yet mentioned. True, his contemporaries are almost all gone, and the many illustrious men and women who sat to him have left their places to be filled by their sons ; but there is an unmistakable modern air about all his works that makes us feel as if they were done but yesterday, A great artist entirely without imagination, a sculptor without the pretension even to poetic feeling is a phenomenon ; and yet Sir Francis was a great artist, in his walk, although he was singularly deficient in the qualities that go to produce the highest embodiments of sculpture, which we take to be Avhat is called ideal. That aspiration after the perfect, which underlies religion, finds its bodily expression in sculpture; hence it is that the poetic in marble must be removed from direct imitation. Illustrations of Burns or Byron, for example, by figures of Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny, such as an ignorant section of the public ran after twenty years ago, or even " Hi"-hland Mary " or " Haidee," as we have seen them more ably embodied since. 64 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. arc uuwortliy of the art, and only allo^^^ablc as ornaments. Cliantrey was too discriminating to attempt any snch realities when advanced in life, and even in his youth never had the impulse to try any invention whatever. Whether this entire absence of the most distinguishing attribute of the artist may exist with such perceptive and critical faculties as will enable theii" possessor to inform a portrait or bust with all that the face can show, say the face of Goethe or Coleridge, is a question which the works of Chantrcy would go far to settle in the ailrmative. It would seem tliat he could express in clay or marble what- ever bone and muscle can show of the mind within, and beino; himself nes-ative and without spjeculution, like the lens of the photographer, though an able master of modelling-tool and chisel, the result was a perfect representation without any foreign or superadded expression whatever. With all his limitations, the sculptor of the splendid monument of -Tames Watt, in Glasgow and in Westminster Abbey, must always be recognised as great. Francis Chantrey was born at Norton in Derbyshire, not far fi'om Sheffield, in 1782, where his father lived by farming a very small patrimony. The life of our present subject does not present any incidents or adventures whatever after the period of boyhood. It is like that of Alicia's sister, "A blank, my lord," only he did not " Pine in thought And, with a green and yellow melancholj-, Sit still like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief," but went on from one success to another, full of commissions paid at the highest price hitherto attained, till his figure became portly, and his face rubicvmd ; indeed, there is an anecdote of some one making a portrait of him by sticldng a great red wafer on the paper, and penning the human features upon it. It might be thought that no one would make a hero of this muscular sculptor, this healthy plain possessor of an inestimable talent, but so entirely Avithout SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY. "ideas" that lie did not know what they were; and yet Mr. G. Jones, who speaks of himself in his own book as "Mr. Jones, E.A.," and his friend, Mr. Thompson, for example, whom we never before heard of, as " Mr. Thompson the Academician," has written and published a book with that especial intention. True, Mr. Jones, E.A., is himself a similar man intellectiially, and is capable of saying, " It is probable that general effect in a work of art is so necessary that its absence cannot be satisfactory " ! so that he is C[uite happy in reporting that " it was not easj' to get Chantrey to speak of the collection of antiques in the Vatican, for, excepting general approbation of the ' Laocoon ' and the Apollo, little could be gained from him." However, at the Capitol, the sculptor opens his critical mind a little by saying, " The busts are numerous, and most of them very bad." Of Sir Francis' character, Mr. G. Jones considers the noblest features were " imdeviating sagacity " and " conduct ia life;" and of his works this writer reports, "His view of his own art was of so pure a character that it was of necessity very limited " ! It is only necessary to mention some of Chantrey's principal works to claim for him an imperishable place in our art-historj^ These were executed from 1812 — when Mr. Johns, of Hafod, engaged him, at Stothard's recommendation, to execute the monument to his daughter — down to 1841, when he died suddenly on the 25th November. His George III. in the Council Chamber in Guildhall followed ; but the leading examples of his art in London are the George lY. in Trafalgar Square, and the Duke of Wellington in front of the Eoyal Exchange : on the great stair- case, Windsor, is also a George IV., and another in Edinburgh, where there is a better statue of Pitt, and another of a Lord Melville, acknowledged by Mr. Jones to be rather heavy in. character. The James Watt has been mentioned ; at Liver- pool, Eoscoe, and Canning on the staircase of the Town Hall there, are successful works ; Dalton at Manchester also. Besides these, Bishop Heber, Dean Jackson, Sir J. Banks, Mr. Coutts, Grattan, Sir E. Peel, jSI'orthcote the painter, ought all to be mentioned. s 66 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Perhaps the reader, turning to the "Two Chiklren " engraved in this book, so lovely and tender in sentiment, may naturally feel indignant at our strictures on Chantrey's artistic character. But he will not remain so when he looks into Mrs. Bray's " Life of Stothard," and iinds the original sketch engraved as her father's design. Chantrey did not invent the grouj), but he certainly improved it in elegance, at the loss of much juvenile simplicity in the action. There is a well- designed monumental figure of Piesignation by him, and a very engaging statue of a child embracing a dove, and other similar works of value ; but when we speak with admiration of Chantrey, we think of his numerous busts. When George lY. sat to our sculptor his price was two liuncbed pounds, the munificent prince ordered him to charge three hundred. Lin\' pursiiiiv^ iht' Soul <^Gibson). TJie Englis]/ Cemetery^ Ro R. J. WYATT. PENELOPE. ■■•w J PENELOPE. R, J, WYATT, ^^I^^HE cemetery at Eome, so often described, and sketched, — containing as it fes^ ^^ does the tomb of Keats, commemorated by an upright headstone with a lyre, and the sad epitaph; and that of Shelley, a great flat stone, imder which lie the cofl^ered ashes from the pp'e that consumed his body on the bay of Spezia, — is the last resting-place of "Wyatt. Its natural beauty — overlooked by the pyramid of Cains Cestius, the Eomans in the age of Augustus being eclectic, like us in the nineteenth century, and so adopting any architectural monument they fancied — has a grace in itself, and its associations make it dear to all Englishmen. Besides the two poets, we remember only one other man of mark there buried with whom the arts had much sympathy — Bell the anatomist, . and author of the "Anatomy of Expression," lying near Eeats. Artists we do not remember to have observed recorded there ; they come as students, and return home to die, except when suddenly cut off like "Wyatt, or unwilling to leave the dearly loved city. "It is a quiet and sheltered nook," says Samuel Eogers, T 70 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. " covered in the winter with violets ; and the pyramid that overshadows it gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest, a sympathy you were not prepared for. Tou are yourself in a foreign land, and they are, for the most part, your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother-tongue — in English — in words unknown to a native, known only to yourselves : and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them — it is itself a stranger among strangers ; it has stood there till the language round about it has changed, and the shepherd, bom at its foot, can read its inscrip- tion no longer." Our school is by no means weak in Poetic Sculpture, that is to say, the men who with us embrace the art as a profession, do so enthusiastically and with lofty aims, and nearly all of them try for the highest honom-s. The only man of all we shall have to separately mention who had no poetry of any description, and ignored it, we have just spoken of. He, indeed, attained the highest honom^s ; we like the character that has no pretension, about whose person and works there is no affectation, and if he does well what he undertakes we forgive him beiag • common-place, and living for the main chance : it is what the most of us do. But whatever place a sculptor of that limitation may take while living, by force of character, affectionate remembrance — except fi-om such a singular person as Mr. G. Jones, E.A. — is not his due. Wyatt, on the other hand, unobtrusive, retiring, and studious, the private friend of Canova (Canova comes into our narrative again and again, the reader will observe, but never the stronger northern Thorwaldsen), and of his fellow-pupil in that master's studio, Gibson, is still spoken of with love and regret. Wyatt was a Londoner, born in " stony-hearted " Oxford Street, in 1795, and Eossi — who was for a time largely employed in national monumental works voted by Parliament, receiving such valuable honom-s as oui* Koyal Academy has to give — was his first master in the art. After this pupilage he executed several R. J. WYATT. 71 monumental commissions. But Ms ti'ue beginning was not then, but later, when Sir Thomas Lawrence introduced him to Canova, on that master visiting London. The great Italian found much iaterest m Wyatt's doings, and offered him the entree into his studio in Eome. He accordingly proceeded thither in 1821, spent some time under Bozio in Paris, and on arriving in Eome began the friendly connection with the master which lasted tiU his death. The industry of "Wyatt was prodigious. In summer, long before five in the morniag, — the Eomans are preposterously early people, — he was to be seen at the Cafe Greco taking his coffee, and breakfasting on the little hard rolls ; and in winter, long before daylight, he was to be seen at the same place, reading his Galignani by the light of a taper which he always carried with him for that purpose. At daylight he was in his studio, and not only thus early, but he also remained at work sometimes until midnight. I find one biographer say, " It was only by such exertion that he could have possibly produced such a number of exquisite works, many of which are equal to those of antiquity." He was strong and never felt fatigue, but a few years before he died he broke one of his legs in a quite accidental way, whicli made a difference in his powers of endurance, as well as made him move with awkwardness. In 1841 he visited London, when the Queen commissioned him for the "Penelope," here engraved — a noble work of high feeling and poetic accomplish- ment. Another of his best works, " The Huntress," or more properly, " A Nymph of Diana taking a Thorn from the Foot of her Hound," is also in the possession of the Queen. His " luo and Infant Bacchus " is another evidence of his power. His " Glycera," with which the writer is unacquainted, has been said to be a very perfect creation. To a man of his nature and habits the convulsions of the revolutionary year were simply a nuisance. // Pcqm Re might foster the Jesuits and reign any way he could, provided he did not interfere with him. Only the enthusiastic Wyatt was 72 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. not consulted, and tlie Pope had to leave the city to the demonstrative Triumvirate, to be brought back by the ill-fated French soldiers imder Louis ISTapoleon. During these operations, -ff-hile the French were besieging Eome, he had a narrow escape: — "I was awakened," he writes, "an hour after midnight by the roar of cannon, explosion of sheUs, and crashing of windows and tiles. I expected there would probably be an attack at the Popolo, as the French, after gaining possession of Ponte MoUe, had taken up a position on the high ground beyond the arco scuro. I had put all my marbles in places where they would be least exposed, and had prepared myself, in the event of a night attack, to remain at the base of the stone spiral staircase leading down from my apartment to the studio ; but, on entering the second studio for a chair, a shell burst in the wall, Avhich is more than two feet thick, and had I been one step in advance, I must have been struck. As it was I escaped with contusions ; the lamp in my hand was broken, but the hand uninjured. I picked up nine pieces of the shell ; several casts were smashed, but happily none of my marble works were touched." It was difficult to determine the cause of Wyatt's decease. The woman who paid a daily visit to attend to his rooms, entering by her own key at six in the morning of the 28th of May, 1850, found him lying insensible on the floor of his bedchamber. She ran for Mr. Freeborn, the consol, and he, with Dr. Pantaleone and his brother - sculptor, Spence, were soon there ; but he never spoke again, and at ten o'clock he ceased to breathe. He was still strong, and in excellent health ; but it has never been thought that his death was occasioned by himself. It was said he had no cares whatever, but it was foiuid he had received notice to leave his studio, which was to be taken down ; and this passing trouble to a man of his temperament had afflicted him greatly. Adoration of the Magi [Fia.xina?i). WILLIAM WYON. SCIENCE TRIMS THE LAMP OF LIFE. f/:g Monument to Mr. Quantocli, Chichester [Flax7nan]. WILLIAM WYON. ^^HE artist of this and other works of a similar nature stands alone in our book, being a medallist, not a sculptor in marble. His work is "with the die for metal-stamjoing, but the powers of design and modelling required are not less, nor the abilities different from those of the more important sculptor of life-size works. The name of Wyon, for the same reason, stands alone also on the list of members of the Eoyal Academy, although, at its first establishment, that body had to complete its number of forty members by receiving heraldry- painters, seal-engravers, and others. Wben that nationally important institution was established, it was intended to contain all the artists of any standing or accomplishment in the country — not merely to afford a certain number a privilege of exhibition, and the distinction belonging to a limited body. However, at that time there were men whose exclusion was clearly 76 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. necessary for the peace and well-being of tlie body, wliicli operated to draw round it a self-protective and exclusive character ; and now, when the number of educated gentlemen and able men following the professions included in the plan of the insti- tution has multiplied twenty-fold, this character still continues. Its operation in other respects has drawn down upon it the animadversions of many. Engraving — not Wyon's kind, but copper engraving, the art of Albert Diii-er and Marc' Antonio — it shut its doors against, it is said from dislike to Sir Eobert Strange, a patrician and a Jacobite, the majority of the first members being possibly plebeians by origin. Whatever the cause, from Strange to John Burnet, the only engraver admitted was Eartolozzi, who was received by a trick ; and now that the great and beautiful art of pictm'e-engraving is nearly extinct in England, the Eoyal Academy has revoked its anathema, and honours engravers when there are none to honour. Wyon's family were Germans. His grandfather had engraved the silver cup embossed with the ominous subject of the "Assassination of Julius Ctesar," presented l')y the City of London to Wilkes. He was born at Bii-mingham, where his father had settled, in 1795, and came to London in 1816 to be second engi'aver to the ]\Iint, his cousin Thomas being at the head of it. When this cousin died, Pistrucci got the appointment, when a quarrel arose that made much noise at the time, and produced an extraordinary partisan feeling, under the influence of which Wyon was elected by the Eoyal Academy. The medal we engrave is an enlargement from the Brodie Testimonial, and is certainly an exquisite work of its kind. Wyon executed a medal of St. George fVn- Prince Albert ; the medals for the Peninsular victories, Trafalgar, and others. Also civic medals for the Geological and Geogi-aphical Societies, the Eoyal Academy, and Art-Union. Our coinage, from the later years of George IV. to Victoria of the year of his death (1851), is from his hand. A beautiful die made by him for a coin of the value of £5 of Victoria, with a figure of Una on the reverse, has never been used. '•Deliver us from evil" (Flaxman). JOHN THOMAS. BOADICEA. SAMUEL JOSEPH. MONUiAlENT TO WILBERFORCE. X JOHN THOMAS. iT seems uow a long time ago siucc tlie old Houses of Parliament, with their plain exterior and time-honoured tapestries of the Spanish Armada, went down in a sea of fire, and the new building rose up year after 3'ear, while the astonishing spectacle of Westminster Ilall filled with competition Cartoons, Paintings, and Sculptures, in successiye years, spread a new interest in the arts all over the country. It was then the immense line of workshops were constructed for the skilled masons and carvers employed in the almost endless labour of oruamentation, and Thomas — distinguished by his surencss of hand, celerity of execution, and command- ing intelligence— placed oyer them. Barry, as we all know, had Pugiu to assist him in the multitudinous details ; but without Thomas, then a little over thirty (having been born in 1813), that assistance woidd have been very difficult to apjily. And certainly the vista of men working in the long atdicr was an interesting sight. 8o THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Sketches and working drawings, models in clay and plaster, stringcourses of stone, Lrackets, and niclies, with their figures of kings and queens, were visible one after another, with their respective sculptors \dgorously using the mallet and chisel. Perliaps there was no other man in England, or, we might say, in the world, no Ari,:I dinrtin^- tlu- Storm [Bronze by J. 27iomas). one i)ossessing the complete practical training, with the versatile and inventive ability, displayed by Thomas, under whom the whole could have proceeded so regularly and easily. This occupation necessarily prevented him completing many independent works ; SAMUEL JOSEPH. 8i this large group in marble of " Tlie Queen of the Eastern Britons rousing her Subjects to Kevenge " being one of the few completed by him. It was transferred to marble by desire of Sir M. Peto, whose property it now is. Thomas died at the early age of forty-nine, nearly ten years ago — in 1862. SAMUEL JOSEPH. |IS great work in this world nearly accomplished, Wilberforce retired from Parliament and from active life in 1825, and died in 1833. It was immediately after determined to erect a memorial to the philanthropist in "Westminster Abbey, and the very striking and characteristic portrait-statue we have engraved was placed on its pedestal there in 1840. As a life-like representation of a great and good man it commands universal attention, showing the peculiar nervous action of the origiaal. Of the sculptor of this remarkable figure, however, we are imable to give an account, and unable also to point out other works of his, except the statue of Wilkie, in the vestibule of the National Gallery ; haviag looked in vain through the literary and artistic journals from that time downwards in hopes of finding at least an obituary notice. But neither in them nor in Knight's "British Cyclo- psedia," the Biographical division of which has an Appendix added, nor in the later books of a similar kind, can his name be found. The statue of Sir Da\'id Wilkie has been severely criticised as wanting in truth to the personal characteristics of the original — a question best spoken to by those who knew the eminent Scottish artist ; but, as a work of art, we look upon it as Y 82 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. very able. Certainly, no one can find the Wilberforce statue wanting in indi- viduality ! In the absence of all other information regarding Joseph, the writer may mention an early recollection of him coming to Edinburgh, and establishing himself there for a time. This might be about 1830, or a few years earlier; but the writer was too young to be actually acquainted with the sculptor or his works, in such a way as to give any account of them now. Charity (y. Thomas). Tlie Angel appearing to Peter [Flaxnian). SIR RICHARD WESTMACOTT. EUPHROSYNE. Zcphyriis and Aurora [Flaxman). SIR RICHARD WESTMACOTT, I IE EICHAED WESTMACOTT, who died at fifty-seven, the age of middle life to many artists, in 1856, leaving behind him a talent which has become hereditary in the family, was one of the most productive of all our sculptors. Poetic inventions ia the manner of the ancients, and in the emblematic spu'it of modern times ; portrait sculpture with a certain beauty of treatment and elegance, but with also a degree of conventional hardness referable to his Eoman education ;• and monumental designs, worked out with great mechanical finish, were all produced by him in considerable numbers. Eichard Westmacott was born in the last year of the eighteenth century, and while still very young had the good fortune to be received in a manner into the studio of Canova (as Gibson was nearly at the same time), then advanced in years and covered with honours. This fact decided the character of his works, and the young man, possessed of much fancy, extraordinary facility, and determined ambition, was powerfully impressed by the refinement and distinguished elegance of the Italian master, who was at the head of his art ia Europe. To make any remarks in this place derogatory to the works and position of z THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Aiitonio Canova would be superficial, the space requisite to define with any completeness the peculiarities of these and the conditions under which they were done, being wanting. The style of his art, its refinements and affectations, responded to the sympathies of the age, and it must be certain the works that held Europe fascinated for so long a time must have qualities to be treated with respect. "Hebe;" "The Graces;" the group from the Tomb of the Archduchess Christina, one of the daughters of Marie Theresa, which has been called "Beneficence;" the figure dancing, absurdly called "the Dancing Girl reposing;" and many others, have indeed lost some of their widespread admiration of former years, but still thej' represent a thoroughly accompKshed art, exercised on lovely subjects with perfect taste, according to the notions of the day. The influence on Westmacott was, however, of a mixed and doubtful kind ; removed by time and place, the hard and sharp modelling in the extremities and features and the manner of expressing the hair, which one instantly recognises as derived from Canova, lost the charm it had in the hand of the master. In many of Westmacott' s works, however, the originality of the motif has carried him away from any touch of his master's manner, and there is no doubt his best works have an English sentiment and some charm of simplicity all his own. The work that confirmed the favourable anticipations of the friends of the yormg artist, was "The Wanderer," a houseless nursing mother sitting sadly with her child gone to sleep in her arms. This pathetic figure, well known to all of us, was to be applied to the commemoration of a charitable lady, Mrs. Warren, widow of the Bishop of Bangor, but being previously exhibited in' the Academy in 1822, when the young sculptor was in his twenty-third year, it produced an extraordinary sensation, and was carried off by the Marquis of Lansdowne to his scat at Bowood. A replica had to be done for the monument, which was erected in Westminster Abbey, and still a third for Mrs. Ferguson of Eaith, at Beal in Scotland. To contrast with this, he then designed the " Happy Mother," exhibited in SIR RICHARD WESTMACOTT. 87 1825, a group exceedingly fine in arrangement and divapery, but like the last only to be seen from one side, and this limitation is to be found in other works by Westmacott. From that time he was one of the most active and prolific of artists in om school, having many commissions, and yet finding time to work out his poetic inventions in marble. Many of these have been exceedingly popular. The "Cupid" in the possession of the Duke of Bedford, and the " Euphi'osjme " we now engrave, are among the most original and beautiful. "Cupid" in Westmacott's hands is not a child, but a youth with filleted hau', and a bow of dangerous proportions, over which he leans watchfully. The Euphrosyne, the marble of which was exhibited in 1837, and went into the possession of the Duke of Newcastle, is presumably suggested by "L' Allegro" of MUton, who addresses the loveliest of the three Graces, " Come, thou goddess fair and free, In heaven y'clep'd Euphrosyne, Come and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe." The habit of modelling statues with an exclusive attention to one point of view disposes of many difficulties, but we would not venture to say an artist with so much energy and productiveness considered this. It might rather result from employment on monumental groups, which are to be placed generally against the waU. Also ' from a disposition to work in relievo, and as an example of our artist's manner in sculpture in that form, we may mention his " Charity," an emblematic figure recalling in sentiment the Christian inventions of Flaxman. Westmacott was one of the sculptors who gave evidence on the transcendent excellences of the Elgin marbles, when they were off'ered to the nation. An impression, from the time of Keat's sonnets addressed to the painter downwards exists in the public mind, that Haydon stood alone in critical acumen on that 88 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. occasion. This impression was made by his own assertion to tliat effect ; but a perusal of the Parliamentary book of evidence dispels that illusion. Haydon certainly gave his opinion loudly and unasked, a mode of giving advice that some- times results in the best counsel being declined. In the case of the Elgin marbles happily this did not happen. The unprofessional gentlemen called in to give judgment, Mr. Payne Knight and others, made sad mistakes ; but the sculptors, although by no means agreed, gave, as a whole, a verdict entirely favourable. 'J'/iy Kingdom ro///,' " [/'7axmaii] JJojti/uwnt ill Leeds Church [Flaxman). L. WATSON. SARPEDON CARRIED BY SLEEP AND DEATH. A A X \l ^ Monument to Mrs. Knight, Cambridge [Fiaxman). M, L, WATSON, jgHE name of Watson, Musgrave Lewthwaite Watson, will be almost unknown to many of onr readers, and yet on mature consideration, and fully aware of the danger of saying so wrongly, we must pronounce him the truest sculptor and best artistic intellect, after Flaxman and Banks perhaps, of all we have had to mention. Like many others, both critics and artists, the present writer was prepared to pass him by with a short notice, — acquainted only with his " Sarpedon carried by Death and Sleep," which has a suspicious likeness to Flaxman, with his monument to Allan Cunningham, which is certainly one of his weakest works, and disliking the very names of Eldon and Stowell (a prejudice, we must acknowledge),— had we not been warned by one of the leading artists of the day to study Watson's works, and form a more deliberate judgment. The result has been one to which we would willingly bring our readers also, if our space would permit, — a conviction that Watson was ■ by nature endowed for the highest 92 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. things, and that, he was a man of the noblest order, on whom success shouhl have waited, and whose perceptions and judgment were equal to his endowments. On the other hand, like Flaxman, his bodily forces betrayed him ; one of the smallest ot men, and weakest of constitutions, and his impatience of mean motives and mean actions made him alternately the victim and the enemy of those who occupied the field. Between the one and the other, want of strength and want of friends, his fame depends on fewer works than that of other men, and part of these are left in destructible materials, but these few, from their variety and from the typical, central character, give him the high place we have claimed for him. Besides, he died at forty-three, when, generally speaking, men who follow professions requiring public confidence before important commissions can be expected, are only beginning their career. In one respect, and only one, Watson has been lucky, he has had a worthy biographer, whose book is almost the only one relating to the art or its professors in our language worth reading, except the Lectures of Flaxman. Dr. Lonsdale's life is very interesting, and is illustrated by photographs of the principal works of his hero. In the vale of the C'auda, which runs in an impetuous stream for nearly twenty miles, at last falling into the Eden, close to Carlisle, near a ford where the road from the south passes the stream, is an ancient house now falling into ruin, called "The Bogg," or "Bogg Ilall." Over the doorway is carved in stone "T. W. and F. W. 1091." This is the seat of the ancestors of our hero, and these initials are nearly the only record of a family who lived from one generation to another in this wild and unfrequented region, sending out its younger branches to make theii' fortimes as they might. The little estate belonging to this house was the patrimony of Watson, and his early history was the history of an unending deadly struggle with the ignorance and prejudice of his relatives, especially with his mother and her sister, who were of humble origin, and determined he should be a lawyer. i M. L. WATSON. 93 These lawyer days in Carlisle ended on the death of his father at the end of 1823, when Mnsgrave was not yet twenty, so that perhaps he lost nothing by them, especially as he had abeady been hard at work drawing and modelling, and formed one of a little coterie of self-tanght artists ; Dunbar the sculptor, and others, who after twenty years retained a vivid remembrance of his intelligence and vivacity, " although in iignre he is described as all head and no body, you could have put him into a big coat pocket." A year more and he was twenty-one, and his own master ; he went the round of all his friends and bade them adieu, he was bound for Eonie. His last call was on a publican, whose pretty daughter Helen he was much in love with ; but what was to be done ? imperious necessity called him, and he said good-bye to her in her father's house. A little of a Bohemian all thi'ough his career, Watson was a peculiar one, a gentleman-Bohemian, as the true artist or poet has a natural tendency to be. It was a dark rainy February morning when our hero moimted to the top of the London Mail at the Bush Hotel, Carlisle, among well-mufEed felloAV-passengers, no one could recognise. By-and-by the sun rose and the coach stopped for breakfast, when the attention of all was drawn to a young female who seemed afraid to approach the fire and unable to breakfast. Watson's heart very likely recognised her, for he prevailed on her to allow him to divest her of her mantle to chy it, when his well-beloved Helen revealed herself. Eeturn she would not, she would go with him to the ends of the earth, and so she did, to the eiid of her life at least. It was a marriage of love, and they were true to each other. Long after returning from Borne, but before he had yet become sufficiently known to receive important com- missions, while still in fact, the luckier but less able men, Chantrey more especially, were trying to use him for their own behoof, a drawing is the only record of hor death. This drawing was a mystery to his biographer ; it represented a female head invested in a thin cap, which exposed the sweet still face to the parting of the hair, " the perfection of repose, stillness, or inanimation, if you will, reigning throughout B I! 94. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE, the exquisitely cMselled features, recalling Byron's lines on Greece, ' So coldly sweet, so deadly fair.' " Under tliis drawing was written, "Be it Death or Sleep — lying in loveliness." They had a son who grew up to manhood and showed some abilities, but the sea offered greater excitement. Watson's abode in Eome has its anecdote too. His family had never heard from him, and thought him dead ; but Dunbar, his old associate, found also his way to the central capital, and, with a commission to search for him, at last succeeded by accident, finding him in a German community, living cheaply and ignoring the English ; his was then, we are told, " the kind of uncombed exterior that characterises the genus artist congregated about the Piazza di Spagna." The genus artist, it ought to be added, without any commissions or the hope of any. Home again it was much the same. He did indeed try to find an interest in certain quarters, but the "pati'onage" he met with was of so contemptible a character, we are astonished to read the incidents recorded. Then he sought work in other studios ; Chantrey engaged him to model from drawings, and after a day or two, coming roiuid to see what had- been done, found it so excellent, he took Watson to his own department, showed him the design for the monument to Mrs. Digby, and asked his opinion of it. " Watson very calmly pointed out several faults, showing that the work as it then stood had not caught the sentiment of the subject. Chantrey more and more pleased, asked him to leave that he was engaged on, and take up the Digby Monument, and this he continued to do till it was completed." Westmacott then induced him to give his aid to some work going on under his name ; and it has been repeatedly said Watson worked eight hoiu's daily for each of them at the same period, but this must have been only for one or two days under pressing cii'cumstances. At all events, his connection with Chantrey soon ceased, that gentleman had all the richest commissions, and would have taken double what he could attend to himself, but would not pay Watson Avhat om- hero thought he M. L. WATSON. 95 deserved. The result was a grand quarrel, tlie little creature giving the rubicund person "a bit of his mind," and telling Cunningham, who afterwards proved his best friend, that "none but a Scotchman would work for such a parsimonious fellow ! " We fear Watson had a considerably vigorous use of the vernacular in such cases, and must have wounded Chantrey, since we afterwards find that most successful of men, when the Committee, about to appoint Watson to do the Frieze iu the Hall of Commerce in Threadneedle Street, asked Chantrey's opinion of him, reply he did not know any such person ! He afterwards was asked by Behnes to come into his studio, and his doing so attracted attention. At fli'st all went well, he remodelled the figm-e of Dr. Babington, retaining only Behnes' head, and this monumental statue has always passed as the work of that erratic sculptor. He then made the design of the " C-rii-l and Lizard," which stood in plaster till Watson's death, and was then done in marble and exhibited by Behnes as his own. When the " Hall of Commerce " Frieze, already mentioned, was in debate, the competition designs selected were two, those by Watson and Behnes ; this was long after the connection of the two had ceased ; but Watson had been asked by a third party to make him a di-awing of a Frieze, and this was the drawmg sent in to the competition by Behnes ! All these things are painful to record, but we do so under the knowledge that much of this falsity and scheming still exists, as we have been assm-ed by one of the leading sculptors of the day, who has himself struggled thi-ough and now stands in the front. Oiu" proper business is with Watson's acknowledged works. It may have been concluded by the reader that oiu' artist had many sides to his character, humoiu' not being excluded. Dm-ing these years of drudgery, when it was of no use to think of marble, he modelled in clay. One of these models is " The Crutched Friars," two broad-built and too jolly bretlu-en, clinging together in the most charming state of vinous happiness. The sculptor had no dislike to celibates or mendicants, had no 96 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. bias in religion, he was a pious man wlio tliouglit little of dogmas or peculiarities, so that the satire is really levelled as much at the ecclesiastical " fleshliness " of the dignitaries in the English Chiu'ch, as at the monks of the middle ages, but the old habit and character were more to his liking. Such a group as this, of course, entirely takes rank according to its art, and it is impossible to convey to the reader any taste of the richness of modelling, and fulness of enjoyment, visible in the artist's work. About the same time he modelled statuettes of Chaucer, Spenser, and Ben Jonson. We can only speak here of the Chaucer. It is one of the most simple, ' noble, and beautiful portrait-statues ever done. These were baked, and a certain number sold in terra-cotta. Of another work left in the clay we can only speak as we feel, and that is with complete and xmmixed praise. He called it the " Outcasts," a mother and her children exposed to the storm ; one of the most pathetic, and with the least alloy of merely popular sentiment, ever done in sculptui'e. The " Sarpedou carried by Sleep and Death," from the Iliad, we are able to give in engraving. How tine is the dead 'lero's head, supported by the shoulder of Sleep, and the head of Sleep loaning on the breast of the hero ! The ancients never "embodied Death, nor does Eiu-ipides give a definitive form to the figui-e, although he makes Hercules wrestle with him. Watson's embodiment is in the spirit of classic sculpture, but seems to reciuire explanation. The grandson of Lord Eldon had commissioned Chantrcy to commemorate in marble the two brothers Eldon and StowcU, Avho had reached so high a place in the world's esteem, just before the death of that successful sculptor.* Lord Eldon then requested Allan Cimniugham to carry on the work, and that gentleman called m * This notice of Watson is the last of all the uotiocs wc ha^■e to write. In the few pages about CLantrey we had occasion to refer to Mr. G. Jones, K.A. We now learn that the only commencement made by Chantrey for the great Eldon and Stowell monument was in the shape of a few suggestixe sketches in pen and ink by Jones ! M. L. WATSON. 97 Watson. Cunningham clied shortly after, and Watson found the commission entirely in his own hands. This group, or rather these two judicial statues, sitting side by side, form perhaps the most impressive commemoration by portrait sculpture in England. This duplex work is in the Library of University College, Oxford, and cost, one way and another, before it was finally settled where it now is, about £14,000. Watson's next work was a bas-relief in Caen stone, to the memory of Dr. Archibald Cameron, who lost his head seven years after the rebellion of 1745, for having beer> .Charles Stuart's army surgeon. This was destroyed by the fire that consumed the Savoy chapel in 1864. The last work we care to mention may be seen any day on the staii"case of the Flaxman Gallery, iii the London University. It is the sitting statue of that first of English sculptors, one of the noblest pieces of modern art. Watson died on the 28th October, 1847, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. §«©. c c Hhmnincnt to Lady Clarke^ T'eivkcsh^uy i^Flaxman). WILLIAM BEHNES. THE FRIENDS. Monument to Mrs. Hoare, Beckenham (Flax?nan). WILLIAM BEHNES, ;E do not know whether to characterise William Behnes as the most lucky or the most iinlucky of men. There seemed to be an erratic force in his blood that made him endeavour to do his best, and a sense of excellence that sustained him to labour out their completion, but his good things were mixed with bad, and his sense of excellence gave way to the exigencies of the moment. As far as we know his history, he was his own master in the art. His father, a Hanoverian by birth, the son of a physician, had been brought up to a trade, lucrative for a short time, that of piano-maker ; came to London, married, and had three sons. He then changed to Dublin, and William, who was in this early time D D THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. his father's assistant, ^'hen they all retiu-ned to Loudon, was generally spoken of as an Irishman. How or when he began sculpture is unrecorded; but it is certain that he had no long years of disappointment or waiting for success after he did so, but was at once received and rewarded with such large practice in bust-sculpture, as kept him busy for a great part of his life. His brother Henry also pursued a similar career, and to avoid the confusion of two of the same name, he changed his to Barlowe, went to Eonie, and died a martyr to his benevolence, attending his friends and others dm-ing the fil^st severe visitation of cholera. William remained in London, aud his busts being really of the highest excellence, spread his fame year by year. Among others that of Clarksou has been called (me of the most excellent done in England, also that of Lord L}Tidhm-st. Mr. Disraeli in his younger days, the Bishop of Loudon, ]\Ir. Grote, the Duke of York, Mr. Macread}', and the notable King of Hanover, are the names of some of his sitters. This practice induced that of monumental statuary, and in that walk he executed the statue of Dr. Babington in St. Paul's, mentioned in the notice of Watson; Sir- E. Peel in the City, repeated elsewhere; George lA^. in Dublin, and Baron Joy there also. The last of his large portrait-statues was that of Havelock in Trafalgar Square, not one of his best, but reproduced for Sunderland. jIU this success and fortune seemed to fall from him without leaving either wealth or self-respect. He was irreparably wounded and iujured by his creditors dispersing his studi(» collections in ISGl, and in the beginning of 1SG4, little more tlian two years after. In- died in ^Middlesex Hospital. On this startling intelligence l)eing made jiublic, a mei'ting Avas held to erect some memorial to a man so gifted and so unfortunate. Dr. Babington was in the chair, but the amount of subscription, as far as known to us, did n(.)t warrant the undertaking lieiug carried out. Behnes' statues of cliildren were among his greatest successes; the "Boy and Babbit," "Boy a]id Eagle," aud the "Girl and Dog," called also "The Friends," now engraved in tlie pi-eseut vohuue, are all deservedly admired. Cupid {Alacdo'dielT). PATRICK MACDOWELL. READING GIRL THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE. PATRICK MACDOWELL XCEPT Turner elli we liave not yet even mentioned an Irishman or a Scotchman on the roll of names in the art of which we are treating. We are all the tetter pleased to write the name of Macdowell, feeling that he is strong enough in his siagle person to vindicate the sister island from the charge of barrenness. Within a certain limit, Macdowell may be considered to stand beside Gibson in the elaboration of his work, and, in some instances, in the purity of his form. He is not so uniform nor so coldly classic ; his designs of a poetic kind are few comparatively, but such a charming realisation as that of the "Keadirig Gild," and some other purely modern ideas, may stand in the place of many reiterated classicisms. As in the cases of Westmacott and Gibson, Macdowell had the fortune to receive a decided influence from Canova, and all these, it must be acknowledged, E E 'o6 THE -BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. have had a considerable result ou English sculpture in the age just passed. Whether that influence is still vital, is another question. It would rather appear that it did not strike a deep enough root, but remained exotic ; and Macdowell especially had quite as much turn for natural and monumental themes as for the class of subjects characteristic of the school of the Italian sculptor. To estimate Cauova, we must consider what kind of art it was he supplanted ; his authority in leading back to the antique in the feeling for grace and elegance was a great service to art. A certain addition of meretricious refinement, however, it is to be feared, gave Canova his celebrity, and brought his pupils from all parts of the world ; and where the pupil was too weak to resist this fatal charm, the likeness to the master was easily caught. This cannot, however, be said to have been the result on Macdowell. It is a pity, as we have said before, no Englishman matriculated in the studio of Thorwaldsen. The " Triumph of Love," which we have made our Frontispiece, is one of the most charming compositions of modern times. The idea is fully expressed, and the impression conveyed has a unity A'ery remarkable. The figures are life- size, and the whole group is hewn out of one piece of marble ; and this, where so many parts are freed and the composition so complex, deserves to be mentioned, although it has little to do with the art. The only criticism we feel inclined to venture is that the period of life represented is a little beyond that when Love dominates with the greatest power : we indeed suspect that the first thought was to embody married love iinited by the child, which has been turned into the god by the addition of wings. This makes it more like Canova, but less original. The marble was commissioned by Mr. T. W. Beaumont, of Northumberland, and executed in 18.31. The sculptor was then thirty-two years of age, having been born in Belfast, August 12, 1799, where his father, becoming too slowly rich by his trade, whatever that was (his sou, who is our authority, docs not say), became a partner in an PATRICK MACDOWELL. 107 extensive speculation which eyentiially proved ruiaous. He lost by this means all liis property, consisting of some houses in the town, and died. Patrick was sent at a tender age to board at a kind of school, the master of the house being an engraver. Here be became a favourite, and had the privilege of examining books of prints — so great a luxury to the young. At twelve his mother brought him to England ; at fourteen, the trade of a coach-builder was selected for bim ; and for four years and a half, when his master fortunately became bankrupt and gave up business, he followed that craft. Macdowell at that critical moment went to lodge in the house of a poor French sculptor, which brought him again into contact, however slight, with the seductions of art, and he became their slave. This Frenchman, Cheuse by name, even bought one of his di-awings; and his other early steps were of the same accidental nature. Becoming aware by adver- tisement of designs being invited for a monument to Major Cartwright, he tried his hand; and, although the work never was done, this was his opening to other things, and people began to notice him. Macdowell wrote a short narrative for the Art-Journal^ in which he related these circumstances and others, but his powers of expression in words are not sufficient. Yet we see that with him, as with so many of us, the early time of struggle, the bright early horu'S of the day of life— days of blindness and faith— had stamped themselves into his nature deeper than the impressions of the successes that followed. The " Gild Eeading " was in the great Exhibition of 1862, and was one of few works in sculpture that met with no adverse criticism from any party. Another, and more ordinary in its treatment, but very refined in sentiment, was the "Day- dream." To this he appended, in the Exhibition of the Academy in 1853, some lines of poetry, perhaps his oa^ti : — " A sudden thought, all sweetness in its depths, And yet perplexed by some vague doubt that came Like to a shadow playing in the sun — io8 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Entranced her as sbe stood with poised foot And downward eye — a dream of past and future, With music in it from afar, now low And pensive, now with songs and cymbals gay ! What was that thought ? " "Early Sorrow," a girl with a dead bird, also done in marble for Mr. Beaumont, bad a touch of the sentimental ; and the son of that gentleman added the large marble group of " Virginius " to those his father had acquired. Macdowell died in 1864. '■^ lie shall give his A}2gels charge Loiiceriiii'ig thee''^ (Oibso/i). JOHN GIBSON. THE VENUS. HYLAS. CUPID AND PSYCHE. F P Wji>, W'' '''M)u)»^1m^tmimwimmimullAm^mv^timmIiimtiitiM^Mia^il^>'■ JOHN GIBSON. ^^^^^Oli a long period of time, for half a century only short of twelve months, M \^^M John Gibson Avas a well-known figm-o in the art-world of Eome, at fii'st as the stndent and the quiet aspirant, afterwards as the successfu Ijut modest man of genius, and at last as the authority and still quiet chief. One set after another came and went, leaving a lucky brother noAV and then settled like himself in the eternal city. Now it was Wyatt, Scoular, Pcury Williams, Thecd, Eothwell, who might be seen at the breakfast hour all sitting in the time- honoured dirt of the Cafe Greco ; and then it was a Scotch set, Lawrence Mac- donald, Patric Park, David Scott, and E. S. Lauder, amidst confusion of tongues and clouds of smoke : in the open air, of course, if possible, but even in Eome tliere is T»\iiiter, when a retirement into the interior den is desirable. Happy those THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. who could remain in that blessed warren of antiques and paradise of do-nothing, and not return to assist in filling the annual Eoyal Academy exhibitions, struggle for endless but never sufficient thousands of income, and pursue the flying interests of the day. The sculptor only, however, really had it in his power to remain with advantage in Eome, and after Canova and Thorwaldsen were gone, at least after liis short visit to England in 18-14, the first time he had left Eome in twenty-eight years, Gibson took his place as the leading i epresentative of the art. Gibson's early life was somewhat like that of Macdowell. Born in a country place, Conway in Wales, and in a family not very prosperous, he was similarly apprenticed, but not so lucky in the release from his engagements, he twice Ijccame a rebel. The trade he had first been articled to learn was that of a cabinet-maker, the second a carver, and for two years he cut in mahogany scrolls and other ornaments for furniture. Not wholly foreign to his future art, one may say, yet it was only a visit to a marble-mason's works that impressed him with the superiority of the sculptor over the carver. He refused to go on at his trade, and afterwards in later life declared of himself, " I was, as I think now, very ungrateful, but I could not help it, there was something working in me too strong for me to control." They threatened to put him in jail, but the result of the matter was, the proprietors of the marble-works bought him up, and for the third time he changed his trade, and for the fourth time a few years later, his last change beginning with the accpianitance with Eoscoe, then equally wealthy and authori- tative. At this juvenihi period he drew and modelled in such a way that Avhec he saw these early cfibrts twenty-eight years after, as it has fi-equently happened, under similar circumstances, ho was surprised by the energy and power displayed in his early productions. " He felt," to quote liis own words, " depressed and mortified, and asked himself whether he c(nild do better now?" "There is scarcely an artist of (miinence," adds the writ(!r wlio preserves this anecdote, "who, on looking back JOHN GIBSON. 113 to Ms early attempts, has not experienced the same disappointment, and felt incliiied to ask himself the same question ; perhaps, because the progress after- wards made is less in power than in the art of using power. We have seen two little casts from models executed by Gibson for the centres of chimney-pieces, when he was yet in the workshop of the Messrs. Francis ; one represents a little Cupid in bas-relief, the other a recumbent Psyche. So early had this lovely Greek fable seized on his imagination ! And when he set aside Michelangelo as a model, and tm-ned, as his friend Eoscoe had advised, to the divine tranquillity of Greek art, Cupid and Psyche came back to haunt him, and appear to have haunted him ever since." Gibson and Michelangelo in the same breath has, we must say, something absurd in it. It is next to impossible he can ever have had any intelligent endeavour' or even sympathy ia that direction, but at that early period he may have thought so. He arrived in Eome with several letters to Canova, and these and his drawings together made the chief press him to let him be his banker. This Gibson refused, at which Canova smiled, and said, " Well, as you please, work hard, and I will introduce you to some of your own countrymen," and kept his word. The writer I have quoted above, whom I presume to be Mrs. Jameson, says : — " On leaving Canova's studio he set up for himself in the Via della Fontanella. Here the writer found him in 1821 working on the beautiful group of 'Psyche borne by the Zephyrs,' " (by a zephyr — the design we give in. a small wood engraving, p. 121). "In the self-same studio he was found twenty-six years afterwards, model- ling the exquisite bas-relief of the ' Hours leading forth the Horses of the Sun.' There was something inexpressibly touching and elevating too, in this sense of progress without change ; all appeared the same in that modest quiet little room, but around it extended lofty and ample ateliers, crowded with models of works ah-eady executed or in progress; and with workmen, assistants, students, visitors. G G 114 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. The sctilptor himself perhaps a little sobered by years, but imspoiled by praise or prosperity ; pleased with success and still aspiring ; with no alloy of mean aims or personal vanity mingled with the intense appreciation of fame ; appeared and was the same benign, simple-minded and simple-hearted enthusiast in his art as when he stood before Eoscoe an tmknown youth, ' And felt that he was greater than he knew ! ' " From time to time with a fatal persistence the attempt to reproduce the alleged painted sculpture of the ancients has been tried, and will be tried again till some result follows. That such solid and coarse painting as that exemplified on a portion of the panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon in the Sydenham Crystal Palace, could ever have overlaid the marvellous fiaish of the modelling of the marble seems impossible. That marble should have ever been employed, or that the lovely tones of inflexion ia the forms should have been carried out if these works were to be painted, present so many difiiculties that the world refused to believe that the ancients did paint their sculptures. This question is one of such interest that much learning and much time have been expended on the investi- gation, and even commissions have been appointed to inquire into it. Long ago it was necessarily acknowledged that the Egyptians painted their architecture and their statues of porphyry or wood, as the oriental nations manifestly do now and must have done in ancient times, but the votary of ancient sculpture, like Winckel- mann, either ignored the fact of the Greeks doing so, or denied it altogether. When those coloured casts we have alhided to at Sydenham were prepared for public exhibition, it was found necessary to produce authority for what had been done, and Mr. G. H. Lewes and Mr. W. Watkiss Lloyd were consulted on the subject by the managing authorities. Some of the "historical evidence" prepared principally by Mr. Lewes is so distinct and interesting we may quote from it shortly here. JOHN GIBSON. ■ ■ ns - " The idea of the Greeks having painted their statues is so repugnant to all our modern prejudgments, that the mind is slow in familiarising itself with the fact, even when indisputable evidence is brought forward. They were artists of such exquisite taste, and of principles so severe, that to accuse them of having painted statues is to accuse them of committing what in our day is regarded as pure ' barbarism.' The Greeks did not aim at reality, but at ideality, and the painting of statues is thought to be only an attempt to imitate reality. " Nevertheless, however startling, the fact remains that the Greeks did paint their statues. In the first place, the reader must get out of all sculpture galleries, ei'ase from his mind all preconceptions derived from antique remains and modern practices. Having done so, let him reflect on the historical develop- ment of sculpture, and he will see this idea of painted figures falling into its true place. " Sculpture, of course, began in Greece, as elsewhere, with idols. It is the custom of all barbarous nations to colour their idols. The Egyptians, as we know beyond a doubt, not only coloured, but dressed theii's, so did the Greeks. It may be a question whether the Greeks borrowed their art from the Egyj^tians, improving it, as they did everything else. Let scholars decide that question. This, however, is certain, that in either case the Egyptian practice would obtain : — « "1st. If the Greeks borrowed from the Egyptians, they would borrow the painting and dressing. " 2nd. If they did not borrow— if their art was indigenous— then it would come under the universal law of barbarian art ; and painting would, at any rate in the earlier epochs, have been employed. We know that both painting and dressing were employed in all epochs. " This being so, and the custom being universal, unless the change from painted to unpainted statues had been very gradual, insensibly so, the man who first ii6 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. produced a marble statue without any addition would have been celebrated as an innovator. No such celebrity is known." (Here we may say this presumptive argument is worth very little. No one doubts that in the archaic times the D^dalean wooden figures, whether small or great, were painted, but as no paint was found on the Elgiu marbles, although certainly the pedimental background was sure to be blue, on the Laoeoon or Apollo Belvidere, Venus of Milo, or a hundred other statues of the great periods, while we do find it still on the little wooden figures in question, we must not suppose that the practice was universal and continuous. The hair of the Venus de Medicis showed traces of gilding, the ears were bored as for ornaments to be suspended therefrom, but there is no sign of the fiesh having been painted. At present we find where the Virgin Mary is worshipped,— that is to say, where people are seen on their knees addressing the image, or presenting it with votive offerings, as in Belgium or Bavaria, — the image is painted and clothed, but even in another part of the same chiu-ch you see an ivory crucifix or a white marble statue.) "Ancient literature abounds with references to the practices of painting and dressing statues. '■'■Dressing statues. — Pausanias describes a nympheum, where the women assembled to worship, containing figures of Bacchiis, Ceres, and Proserpine, the heads of which alone were visible, the rest of the bodies being hidden by di-aperies. And this explains a passage in TertuUian, where he compares the goddesses to rich ladies having theu- attendants specially devoted to dress them — suas hahehant ornatrices. Hence Homer alludes to ofi'erings of garments ; Hector tells Hecuba to choose the most splendid peplos to ofi'er to Minerva. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, stripped the Jupiter of his golden cloak, mockingly declaring that it was too heavy for summer and too cold for winter." Mr. W. W. Lloyd steps in here, and says that the cloak of the Sicilian Jupiter JOHN GIBSON. 117 does not illustrate the subject, as it was probably not drapery, but solid metal like tbe golden JEgis of tbe Miaerva of Phidias, whicli could be removed and replaced. " Coloured statues. — If we had no other evidence than is afforded by the great variety of materials employed — ivory, gold, ebony, silver, brass, bronze, lead, iron, cedar, pear-tree, &c. — it would suffice to indicate that the prejudice in favour of the ' purity of marble ' is a prejudice. The Greeks made statues of ivory and gold combined. They also combined various metals with a view of producing the effect of coloiur. Pliny tells us, that the sculptor of the statue of Athanias, wishing to represent the blush of shame succeeduig the murder of his son, made the head of a metal composed of copper and ii'on, the dissolution of the ferruginous material giving the surface a red glow. Twenty analogous examples might be cited." (These diverse materials would seem to supersede the necessity of painting. In modern times vagaries are not imknown. In an important monument in Venice, we remember negro caryatides made of black marble in the flesh, and white or coloured marble in the dresses, which were rent at the knees, showing the dark skin at the torn places.) "Let it be remembered that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, and that Plato lived in Athens, acquainted with the great sculptors and their works ; then read this passage, whcrehi Socrates employs, by way of simile, the practice of painting statues. 'Just as if when pamting statues, a person should blame us for not putting the most beautiful colours on the most beautiful parts of the figure— inasmuch as the eyes, the most beautiful parts, were not painted purple but black— we should answer him by saying, " Clever fellow, do not suppose we are to paint eyes so beautifully that they should not appear to be eyes." ' " Mr. W. W. Lloyd agam breaks ia— "This passage is decisive as far as it goes, but it does not touch the question of colouring the flesh. It proves that as late as Plato's time it was usual to apply coloiu- to the eyes of statues, and H H ii8 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. assuming what is not stated, that marble statues are in question, we are brought to the same point as bj^ the iEginetan marbles, of which the eyes, lips, portions of the armour and di'aperies, were only found coloured. I forget whether the hair was so." " Here is a passage which not only establishes the sense of the one in Plato, but while unequivocally declaring that the ancients painted their statues, gives th(^ reason why the paint is so seldom discoverable on the remains. It is from Plutarch : ' It is necessary to be very careful of statues, otherwise the vermilion with which the ancient statues were coloured will quickly disappear.' " Mr. W. W. Lloyd again : — " This passage refers to archaic sacred figm-es, and at Pome, not in Greece. The first duty of certain Poman officials on taking office (after attending to the sacred geese and ganders) was to furbish the agahna^ or statue, which was necessary on account of the quicJc fading of the vermilion with tvhich they used to tinge tJie cercliaie statues. This is an acciu'ate translation and a literal — implying a difference between the arclmic and the more modern in respect of colotir. though not necessarily excluding all coloiu' froiii the latter." ' ' There are abundant notices extant of the uses of vermilion. The celebrated marble statue of a 'Pacchante,' by Scopas, is described as holding, in lieu of the Thyrsus, a dead roebuck, which is cut open, and the marble represents living ■flesh. Vii'gil in an epigram, not only offers Venus a imrlle statue of Amor, the wings of which shall be many-coloured and the quiver painted, but he intimates that this shall be so because it is customary. ' Marmoreusqne tibi, Dea, versicoloribus alis In morem pictu stabit Amor pharetra.' And in the seventh Eclogue, Virgil, speaking of the statue of Diana, describes it as of marble, with scarlet sandals bound round the leg as high as the calf." (Surely these two passages imply that the coloiu-ed parts weri^ exceptional, JOHN GIBSON. iiQ and that the statue itself, the Amor and the Diana themselves, were not painted.) " And there is a passage in Pliny which is decisive as soon as we understand the allusion. Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv., cap. ii.), he says that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, ' Those that Nicias has had under his hands ' — so much, adds Pliny, did he pri^e the finishing of Mcias, tcmtum circumlitioni ejus trihuehat. "The meaning of this passage hangs on the word circumlitio. Wiuckelmann follows the mass of commentators ia understanding this as referring to some mode of polishing the marble ; but Quatremere de Quincy, in his magnificent work, ' Le Jupiter Olympien,' shows this to be out of the question. Nicias was an encaustic painter^ and hence it seems clear that his circumlitio, his mode of finishing the statues, must have been the application of encaustic painting." After some further illustrations, Mr. Lewes concludes that the Greek artists did coloiu- the flesh of their statues, and he considers we have abundant evidence on the marble remains themselves to prove they did so. Mr. "W". W. Lloyd, on the other hand, is far from convinced ; indeed, he sums up thus : — " The argument for colour on marble flesh of the best age from existing remains, so far as I am aware, is equal to zero. But the passage respecting Wicias and Praxiteles, is of very great force. There is no escape from its aiDplication to marble statues, nor from the great skill that there was occasion and scope for in the circumlitio. Whatever this tinging or colouring may have been, we may be sure it was so employed as to heighten the purest effects. The edge and sharpness, and smoothness and brilliancy of the material cannot have been destroyed by it ; ■ rather sobered it may have been, but still enhanced. If a verdict were to be given on evidence as it stands, I am much disposed to think that it must be in favour of a tinge of vermilion, protected by a brilliant variush, having been applied to the nude portions of (? some) marble statues in such a manner that THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. both colour and varnisli assisted the fine surface and brilliant effect of the lucent marble." Gibson had long thought over this vexed question, and in the maturity of his judgment and of his powers came to the determination to try some work in emulation of "the finishing of jS^icias." This could only be done, so as to give the trial the best chance of success, on an important work ; and fii'st he went only a step, decorating the statue of the Queen with a coloiu'ed border on the ch-apery, an innovation, small as it was, caUiug out adverse criticism. Prince Albert, on the other hand, was much pleased with the novelty, so far as it went. After that venture, we heard rumours of his f'avotuite figure, the " Yenus," having undergone a transformation, and in the Great Exhibition it was visible to all eyes. His mode of painting was exactly that indicated by Mr. W. W. Lloyd ; the hair and eyes were decidedly coloured, but the whole of the body had only the most deUcate rose-tint produced upon it. In the ears were small di'ops, and on the arm a bracelet of gold. The apple in the hand was bright, and the niche in which she stood was a pale-blue purple. jSTothing will reconcile the modern mind with this innovation, however ; and, great as was the success and beautiful as was the result, we imagine it will not again be tried on the same scale of importance. Xow and again eftorts in that direction will iadeed be made — in the great International just closed (1ST 1) there was one, a French bust tinted in a similar manner — but we have critically settled the question, closed the controversy, affirmed the abstraction of sculptui-e, and Gibson's "Yenus" will only stand as the "modern instance" confirmatory of the verdict. Whatever sculpture may have been to the ancients, influenced by religion and tradition, to us it is the art dealing only with form, having its ultimate perfection in the ideal. Except the short visit to England ah-eady mentioned, Gibson lived all his active life at Eome. It would not be instructive to enumerate his leading tj JOHN GIBSON. Avorks — which are many — because their names are but the names of the Olympians and the genii of mythology, the works themselves taking their place purely by their treatment and their transcendent excellence. He was wedded to his ai-t, so he remained celibate, and died in 1866. Psyche borne by Zephynis [Gibson). I I Monument in Ileston Cliiirch [Flaxmnn]. EDWARD HODGES BAILY. THE GRACES. MATERNAL AFFECTION. \^^ The Consolation of Religion. Monument to Mrs. North, Winchester {Flaxtnan). EDWARD HODGES DAILY, jJNE of the most immediate successes ever made by a work in sculpture was that of "Eve at the Fountain," by Baily. He had previously to this exhibited an important and noteworthy statue, which will always be considered one of the select productions of our school of sculptui-e, "Apollo afflicting the Greeks," shootiag with his golden and deadly bow, from the opening of the Iliad ; and this had at once given him a favoiu^able position — made him indeed, an associate of the Eoyal Academy. This was in 1817 ; but when his "Eve at the Fountain" followed next year, it produced such a sensation that even now it remains a favourite with the public, in spite of all that has been since done. Even on the Continent it is known to a considerable degree, and, in the ignorance e; k ^ ,26 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. of other English, works, is occasionally mentioned as the chef-cV oeuvre of our school. Such good fortime as this is exceedingly difficult to account for, ready as we are to acknowledge the novelty of the motif in sculi^ttire, the tenderness of the action, the innocence of the pleasure in seeing for the first time her own beauty, in the first created woman in the Garden of Eden. " As I bent down to look, just opposite A shape within the wat'ry gleam appeared, Bending to look on me." At this time the sculptor was thirty years of age ; and his native city (Bristol) took this early opportunity to do him all the honours in its power, commissioning him, at the price of six hundi'ed poimds, to produce it in marble, to be placed in the Literary Institution in that city, where it now remains. Born in 1788, Baily was the son of a man of considerable talent in the scarcely inferior art of wood-carving — an art, however, which has little field, and in practice degenerates into a badly-remunerated trade. In a seaport, the elder Baily was, of course, mainly employed in the ornamentation of ships, no ship at that time going to sea without its decorative sculptiu'c on the bows, an adornment that steam-vessels seem to have contributed to do away with. Dissatisfied with his own position, the elder tried to make his son take to the desk. This Avas before the day of Wilber- force, and Bristol was making itself rich with the slave-trade, which it was supposed the new world could not do without. But the bias had already been given, and Baily resigned his prospects of commercial wealth in two years, and tried to support himself by modelling small busts in wax, the beginning of a practice ho founc valuable afterwards. The monument to Mrs. Draper, Sterne's "Eliza," by the elder Bacon (whose memoir we have given abeady), was at this time placed in the Cathedral, and made a great impression on him. Flaxman's designs for Homer and Hesiod were still more important, in an educational point of view ; and, indeed, their effect on him seems to have determined his life, as he sought and foimd an EDWARD HODGES BAILY. 127 introduction to the master liimself. Flaxman -^-as favourably impressed, sent for him, and received him kindly. For seven years and a half he remained diligently working in Flaxman' s studio, during which time he gained the gold medal and fifty guineas from the Academy for the model of "Hercules restoring Alcestis to her husband Admetus." On leaving Flaxman his early practice of modelling in wax came again into exercise. He produced for Eoskell and Bridge, diu'ing a number of years, the best groups and " cups" they had to make. He was thus employed when his "Apollo" and his "Eve at the Fountain" appeared. Nor did he quite relinquish that miniature work till he was commissioned to execute the sculptiu-es for the Central and South pediments of Buckingham Palace. The side of the " Marble Arch," facing the Palace as it then stood, the bassi-relievi in the Throne-room, which, however, were designed by Stothard, and the decorative statues surmounting the pediments, all followed. This considerable labour and large amount of design, like all architectural sculpture in this country, receives but little attention. We pass and repass, with a vague sense of these enrichments, as if they were too far away and too abstruse in subject and meaning to arrest observation. Nevertheless they woidd be found to be true art ; and if we had them in small, either in models or as sketches on paper, we shoidd be sui-prised by then- many beauties. Other works by Baily in public sight have been also unlucky, particularly the Nelson on the top of the column in Trafalgar-square, which, as far as we can tell, is a colossal figui'e of little value. Lord Holland in Westminster Abbey is not one of his best. Nor do any other of his portrait-statues make a very great impression. The principal of these are Earl Grey, in Grey-street, Newcastle, almost as high as Nelson, and Sh E. Peel in Manchester : also Telford, Sir Astley Cooper, Dr. Wood, the Master of St. John's, Cambridge, and Stephenson, the inventor of Eailways. Later in life he modelled a companion to the " Eve at the Fountain," which he called " Eve listening to the Yoice," recalling too obviously the earlier success. 128 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. The "Graces" and "Maternal Love," engraved in this book, are admirable works. In the latter the child climbing uji the back of his mother, who turns round to meet the embrace and assist his movement, is charmingly thought. Mr. Joseph Neeld, M.P., commissioned him to execute this group in marble, as he had previously done the "Apollo afflicting the Greeks," and "Hercules casting Lycus into the Sea." Successful sculptors, as a rule, become prodigiously rich. Chantrey left a very large sum of money to the care of the Eoyal Academy, which will ultimately form a fund for the formation of an immense gallery of English art ; and Gibson also made that body his legatee, coupled with some conditions regarding his own models to be collected and preserved. These and similar conditions become every year more difficult. Baily did not become wealthy. In 18G2 he retired from active life, received the advantages of "Honorary membership" from the Academy, and died nearly eighty years of age in 1867. Till II I II I III r"~iTf , Monument to Mis. Udney, Chichester (Flaxman) BENJAMIN E. SPENCE. THE ANGEL'S WHISPER. INFANT MOSES AND PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER. L L •«*o»aaMf.,&i„^fc»,,jj,j;,ji„_^j,S^/,^,4,^^,,^^ ,uu»j,«u«j«j«.«.'i'i»i»fcwi*™ij.=-""Ui»-*»-"-"«^»^^*-*''^"*^ " Thy will be done" {Flaxman'). BENJAMIN E, SPENCE iNOTHEE of our artists wlio found their way to Eome and remaintid there was Benjamin Spence, well known for nearly twenty years to English visitors, having left this country when about the age of twenty- two, and entered the studio of Wyatt. This was not a great many years before the death of that excellent artist, in 1850, after which sudden and melancholy catastrophe, Spence, along with Gibson, undertook to see the works left unfinished carried prosperously to a close. Gibson was too busy to do much in the matter, and it devolved on Spence, who faithfully fulfilled the trust. He it was, however, who had the greatest interest in the deceased, as ever since his arrival in Eome he had been connected with the studio of Wyatt, and had possibly assisted in some of the larger works still in progress. J 32 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE. Spence's birthplace was Liverpool. His father had been a fellow-pupil (we suppose we must saj;-) with Gibson in the monumental sculptor's yard there, and had attained to some repute. The old friends kept up an affectionate correspondence,, and so it came that the junior Spence left his native place for Italy, where his father's early associate was ready to direct him. Before this, however, he had followed the same steps as Gibson, having got acquainted with Eoscoe, the only man in the great manufacturing city at that time interested in such things ; and the best bust of that writer, who was not averse to sitting for his portrait, was modelled by young Spence. Once in Eome, he also made up his mind to remain ; but he continued year after year to send home his works for exhibition. He died at the early age of forty -three, at Leghorn. These works have a distinctive character. He departed from the classic in subject, and having that kind of inventive fancy that more frequently belongs to the painter than to the sculptor, he endeavoured to produce groups and single figures of a new and popular character. The "Pharaoh's Daughter" and the "Angel's Whisper " partake of this character ; l)ut others of his works go much further. Among these we may mention " Highland Mary,'' '' The Lady of the Lake," and " Lavinia." This originality of Spence in opening a new field for his art recom- mends itself to us at once, but we cannot help feeling immediately also the great difficulty with respect to costume; "Lavinia," fu' example, is a semi-classic figure, exposing one side of the bosom, answering but hvmiorously to Thomson's lines, — " Ho saw hor channiug, but ho saw uot half Tho cliarms her downcast modesty concealed." Surely the honest and most pleasing treatment would have been to put her in the laced bodice of the time, as in tlu^ little old engravings by Wheatley and tlu' elder Corbould, a costume capable of excellent effect. Monmnent to Dr. IVarton, Winchester [Flaxman). ALEXANDER MUNRO. SISTER AND BROTHER. M M 7771? Soi/ud of the Shell (A. J/iiinv). ALEXANDER MUNRO. HE name of Alexander Munro is the last name 'in ourliuok; the illustra- tion of Ms art, the last in our gallery of deceased British Seul[)tors. The a;roup was exhibited in the Eoyal Academy in 185G, and the two children are Miss Agnes and Herbert Gladstone, son and daughter of the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The artist died only on the lOth of January, 1871, at the early age of forty-four. Much sympathised with by a large circle of friends, who had looked forward for years to the early death of Munro as inevitable, he left London several wint(3rs before his end, taking refuge first at Mentone, and afterwards at Cannes, retaining 136 THE BRITISH SlUIOOL OF SCULPTURE. his studio iu riuiliro, at first full of works in progress that had to be carried (Hit l)y assistants. Afterwards, a year before his death, ho gave it up, sold all his possessions, and ha^'iug built a home he called La Tourelle, in the neigh- liourhood of Cannes, there prepared himself to meet the hour too evidently ai)proaching. Alexander Munro was born in Sutherland in the far north, and came to London by the encouragement of the ducal family of that name, and very soon became fully engaged with all kinds of work, having an endless power of application and extraordinary energy. He did many busts : Dr. Aclaud of Oxford ; Sir William Armstrong, for the Literary Society, Newcastle; William Hunt, the Avater-colour painter, were among the best; and medallions, both small and life-size. These indeed, especially of ladies, were executed with surprising celerity, and while possessing the character of a portrait, striking at the first moment, had an elegance and sweetness, united with high breeding, that made tliem much prized. His men were scarcely so good, we felt that all that was in the flic(> was not given. Among his best we may mention Sir Walter Trevelyaa and lady, Lady Constance Gower, Mrs. Butler, J. E. Millais, and David Scott,