-5 3. I 20i:^ZE2COIOE3E330X3Q^ wssssmsusssEsssq ILLUSTRATED HAND-BOOKS ENGLISH AND I AMERICAN PAINTERSi WILMOT BUXTON & S.R.KOEHLER | ;fej mr^ r/\T ^-^T rT?r^T^r^"-T7rT?rTT- r*'=t--,'■ " |(i''"'""!'''°"-"'J'^''''i' „4'. , " ■' '"""P'"-:niiA'';i "—-'5- J CHAPTEE II. ENGLISH AET IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTDKIES. THE period of the Kenaissance found all eyes directed to Italy, and presently England welcomed a number of foreign artists who became the teachers, more or less worthy, of our countrymen. Henry VII. was fonder of money than of art, yet he invited several of these strangers to England ; but there are no grounds for supposing, though it is frfequently stated, that Mabuse was among the number. Among the foreign artists of this period who visited England, were Gbbeaed Lucas Hoeebout, or Hoenebolt, of Ghent (1475—1558), who was employed by Henry VIII., and probably by his prede- cessor ; and Susannah Horebout, daughter of Gerrard Lucas, a miniature painter, is said to have married an English sculptor named Whorstley. Diirer, in his journal, says of her, " it is a great wonder a woman should do so well." Henry VIII. was as lavish as his father had been careful of money; naturally fond of display, and jealous of the magnificence of Francis I. and Charles v., the King became a Uberal patron of artists. He is said to have invited Eaphael, Primaticcio, and Titian to visit England, but if so, the invitations were declined. Among lesser names, however, we find that of Antonio Toto, who came here in 1531, and was appointed Serjeant-Painter to the King. None of his 10 ENGLISH PAINTEBS works is now recognised. Gibolamo da Teeviso is sup- posed to have designed the historic painting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, formerly at Windsor, and now in the pos- session of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House. Henky, Phinge op Wales, [e. 1491. d. 1547.] Afterwards KiNQ Henry VIII. From a Miniature at Windsor Castle. Lucas Cobnelisz of Leyden (1493 — 1552), son of Cornelis Engelbrechtsen, came to England and entered the service of the King. It is said that he taught Holbein in some branches IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 11 of art, and, as he survived the great painter of Augsburg for nine years, it is possible that some of the works attributed to Holbein after 1543 were painted by him. Henry VHI. seems to have had two other Seqeant-Painters besides Antonio Toto, and previous to the coming of Holbein. These were Andrew Wright and John Brown, whose nardes proclaim them to be natives. These artists or craftsmen had positions of trust and honour, wore a special dress, and received a weekly wage. Jan van Eyck had a similar post as rarht de chamhre to Philippe le Bon. It was the age of pageants, and one great duty of the King's artists was to adorn these singular spectacles. Among the archives of the Church of St. Mary Eedcliffe, Bristol, is the following curious notice of a religious pageant held at a somewhat earlier date : — " Memorandum : That Master Cumings hath delivered, the 4th day of July, in the year of Our Lord 1470, to Mr. Nicholas Bettes, Vicar of Eadcliffe, Moses Couteryn, Philip Bartholomew, and John Brown, procu- rators of Eadcliffe, beforesaid, a new sepulchre, well gilt, and cover thereto ; an image of God rising out of the same sepulchre, with all the ordinance that longeth thereto : that is to say — Item, a lath, made of timber, and iron work thereto. Item, thereto longeth Heaven, made of timber and stained cloth. Item, HeU, made of timber and iron work, with devils in number thirteen. Item, Four knights, armed, keeping the sepulchre, with their weapons in their hands, that is to say, two axes, and two spears. Item, Three pair of angels' wings ; four angels, made of timber, and well painted. Item, the Father, the crown, and visage ; the ball, with a cross upon it, well gilt with fine gold. Item, the Holy Ghost coming out of heaven into the sepulchre. Item, Longeth to the angels four chevelers." It is not surprising that art made little progress whilst it was mainly directed to the painting and gildiag of timber angels and of solid devils for a hell of iron and wood-work. Things were not much better in the reign of Henry VIII. His love of ostentation made him fond of pageants, and the instructions which he left for his own monument are curious. " The King shall appear on horseback, of the stature of a goodly man HicoLAS Kbatzek : AsiBONOuER TO Henky YIII. By H^NS HoLBEiK. Dated 1528. In the Louvre. ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE SIXTEENTH OENTUBY. 13 while over him shall appear the image of G-od the Father hold- ing the King's soul in his left hand, and his right hand extended in the act of benediction." This work was to have been executed in bronze, but was never finished. Elizabeth stopped the necessary payments, and the uncompleted figure was sold by an unsentimental and Puritan Parliament for ;£600. The influence of the Reformation was decidedly antagonistic to art in England and elsewhere. In attempting to reform, the leaders tolerated destruction, and whilst pretending to purify the church they carried away not only the " idols," but much that was beautiful. They literally " broke down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers." Pictures and altar-pieces were ruthlessly destroyed. Fortunately a considerable number of old paintings still exist in our churches. A little work on "Wall Paintings in England," recently published by the Science and Art Department, mentions five hundred and sixty-eight churches and other public buildings in England in which wall paintings and other decorations have been found, all dating from an earlier period than the Reformation, and there are doubtless many not noticed. The branch of art which sufiered least from the iconoclastic Reformers was that of portrait-paint- ing, and this received a great impetus in England by the oppor- tune arrival of — Hans Holbein, the younger, of Augsburg (1497 — 1543), who came, in 1526, with a recommendation from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, by whom he was welcomed and enter- tained at Chelsea. Unlike Albrecht Diirer, the other great German painter of the Reformation epoch, Holbein was a literal painter of men, not a dreamer haunted by visions of saints and angels. His ideas of heaven were probably modelled far more on the plan of the Bristol pageant, than on that of the Italian masters. Such an artist came exactly at the right moment to England, where Protestantism was becoming popular. Holbein's wonderful power as a colourist and the 14 ENGLISH PAINTEES fidelity of his likenesses exercised a lasting effect on English art. He founded no school, however, though he had many imitators among the 'foreign artists whom Henry had invited;,* SIW!#^^M Edwaeb, Peihce of Wales, apterttards King Edwaed VI. JBy^ Holbein. From a Miniature in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. In 1532 Holbein was made Painter to the King, with a salary of £34 a year, in addition to the payment given for his works. » Many pictures executed during the ten years after his death, some even in the Windsor collection, have heen attrihuted to Holtein. IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 15 The otief pictures painted by Holbein in England are portraits ; and tradition says that Henry specially employed him to de- lineate the features of any fair lady on whom he had cast a favourable eye. Among the portraits we may mention those of Nicolas KraUer, Erastnus, Anne of Cleves, and Sir RicJiard Southwel (in the Louvre) ; Archbishop Warham (Lambeth Palace) ; Sir Heni-y Ouildford, a Merchant of the Steelyard, and Lady Rich (Windsor) ; Lady Vaux and John Reskimer (Hampton Court) ; Henry VIIL ; the Duchess of Milan * (Ai-undel Castle) ; Sir William and Lady Butts (Mr. W. H. Pole Carew) ; The Ambassadors, a most important work, and Erasmus (Lord Radnor, Longford Castle). There is at Windsor a series of eighty portraits of the English nobility, drawn by Holbein in black and red chalks, which are of infinite value as works of art ; and at Windsor likewise, and in other galleries, are many carefully painted miniatures ascribed to him, of the greatest artistic and historic value. Hans Holbein, like most artists of his age, could do more than paint portraits. At Basle are noble subject pictures by him. He was an architect, a modeller, and a carver. He was specially gifted in designing wood-blocks for illustrating books, and in the ornamentation of sword-hilts, plate, and the like. A book of designs for jewels, by Holbein, once the property of Sir Hans Sloane, is now in the British Museum. Holbein died of the plague, in London, between October 7th and Novem- ber 29th, 1543. Another painter in the service of King Henry VHI. at this time was the above-named Gikolamo Pennacohi, who was born at Treviso, in 1497. He was an imitator of Eaphael, and painted portraits — chiefly at Genoa, Faenza, Bologna, and Venice, and in 1542 came to England. He was killed by a * Now lent to the National Gallery. She was the youthful daughter of the King of Denmark, and widow of the Duke of Milan. Holbein was sent to Brussels to paint her portrait for his royal master. 16 ENGLISH PAINTERS cannon-ball while acting as a military engineer in the King's service near Boulogne, in 1544. There is an altar-piece by him, signed ieronimvs • teevisivs • p • (No. 623 in the National Gallery.) In the "Old Masters" Exhibition of 1880, was a portrait of Sir T. Gresham (No. 165), a fine whole-length, standing, life-size picture of the famous mer- chant, with a skull on the pavement at our left. This work is dated 1544, the year of Sir Thomas's marriage, in his twenty-sixth year, and, as we have seen above, of Treviso's death. It is the property of the Gresham Committee of London, and every expert has accepted it as a work of the Italian painter, engineer, and architect, who was important enough to be honoured with a separate biography by Vasari in his " Lives of the Painters." Girolamo's salary from the English King was 400 scudi per annum. Much likeness exists between the art of Gresham's portrait and that of the masterly life-size, whole-length picture of the Earl of Surrey, with his motto, Sat super est, which is one of the chief ornaments of Knole, and almost worthy of Velasquez himself. This picture (which is dated 1546) is attributed to the undermentioned GwiLLiM Stketes (or Street). It is much more like an Italian production than a Dutch one, and so fine that Da Treviso might have painted it at his best time. It is not like the beautiful por- traits of Edward VI. at Windsor and Petworth, which are exactly such as we attribute to a man in Stretes's position, and which, while differing from the productions of Holbein, are, tech- nically speaking, by no means unworthy of him. The charm- ing Windsor portrait of Edward VI. was No. 172 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866. In the same collection were more works of the same period, including the portrait of Henry. VIII., No. 124, lent by the Queen. The following are among the painters who flourished at this time of whom records exist and are more or less confused, yet . are so valuable that they deserve to be sifted in comparison with IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 17 the large numbers of pictures. The artiats' names are important because they prove how many of the owners were English- men. These persons were all employed by Henry VIII. They were John Bkown, who received a pension of £10 a year; Andrew Wright, died 1543; Vincent Volpe, who translated his name into "Fox" and died 1529. He, c. 1529, was paid at the rate of ^620 a year, a great sum in those days, when Holbein himself had but £30 a year. Antonio Toto succeeded Wright as Sergeant-Painter to the King, a dignity which afterwards fell to Sir James Thornhill and Hogarth successively. Gerhard Lucas Hoeebout, or Hornebolt (1475 — 1558), and Lucas Horebout (diedl544), his son, Flemings, were painters of distinction here and abroad, whose works have been added- to those of Holbein. Their wages were more than £30 per annum each. Susanna Horebout was a painter of minia- tures, much employed* by the King and his courtiers. A pic- ture of Henitj VIII. at Warwick Castle has for centuries borne the name of Lucas of this family. It is doubtless rightly named, and may some day furnish a key to the style of the distinguished owner himself. It was No. 99 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, and No. 471 of the Manchester Art Treasures of 1857. A somewhat similar picture is now in the National Portrait Gallery. We may, in future, recognise in some of the beautiful miniatures of this period, which are now ascribed to Holbein, the much-praised works of Susanna Hore- bout. Doubtless some of the works of Lucas have been be- stowed on Lucas de Heere, who is mentioned below. Bartho- lomew Penni, and ALice Carmillion succeeded in honour. Lavinia Terling (born Benich), " paintrix," as they called her, had for quarterly wages £10, and was mentioned by Vasari as of Bruges. In the reign of Edward VI. Gwillim Stbetes, was made Painter to the King. Strype records that he was paid fifty marks for two pictures of the King, and one of Henry Howard, Earl 18 ENGLISH PAINTEES of Surrey, who was beheaded in 1547. Kathebine Matnors and Gerbach Flick — evidently a Dutchman, one of whose Portrait op a Dutch Gentleman. Sy Sir Ahtonis More. drawings belonged to Kichardson and'^is dated 1547 — were here at this time ; Flick's likeness of Cranmer (signed Gerbaeus Flicius), painted in 1546, is now in the National Portrait IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTUnY. 19 Gallery. They continued the practice of art in this country. At Irnham is a fine full-length portrait of Lord Darcyof Chirke, dated 1551. Nicholas Lyzabdi was second painter to King Edward, and succeeded Toto, as Sergeant-Painter to Elizabeth. Johannes CoRVus painted the likeness oiFox, Bishop of Winchester, -wiLich belongs to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and which was at the National Portrait Exhibition, 1866, No. 46. Corvus has been identified by Mr. Scharf as the artist of a fine portrait, dated 1532, of Mary Tudor, wife of Louis XII., and the Duke of Suffolk. William Key, or Caius, as he called him- self, was born at Breda in 1520 and died 1568. Some of his pic- tures were, as Mr. Scharf has noticed, in the collections of Charles I., and the Duke of Buckingham. A carver, and probably painter, well known at this period in England, whose works are, how- ever, no longer to be identified, was Nicholas of Modena, who made pictures, possibly small coloured statues, of Henry YIII. and Francis I. It is worth while to mention that one P. OuDRT, apparently a Frenchman, was busily employed in this country about 1578, and painted various portraits oiMary, Queen of Scots, one of which is in the National Portrait Gallery, while others are at Cobham, Hard wick, Hatfield, and Welbeck. In the reign of Mary I. we find art represented by Sir Antonis Mor, Moeo, or More (1512 — 1576-78), a native ot Utrecht, who had painted and studied in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Philip II. was his especial patron, and gave him a gold chain for the portrait of his gloomy Queen. He came to England in 1553, was made painter to the Court, and received very large prices for his pictures. He remained till the Queen's death, in 1558, when he returned to Madrid. He afterwards established himself at Brussels, under the protection of the Duke of Alva, but in 1572 removed to Antwerp, where he died. His portraits of Jeanne d'Archel, in the National Gallery, and of Sir T. Gresham, in the National Portrait Gallery, are excellent examples of his skill. Joost van Cleep (1500 — . c 2 20 ENGLISH PAINTERS 1536 ?), a native of Antwerp, also painted portraits at this time with considerable success. From his overweening con- ceit, which led him into furious quarrels, he was called Zotte (foolish) Cleef. His portrait, by himself, is in the Althorp Gallery. It has been said of Elizabeth, that although she had not much taste for painting, she loved pictures of herself. Her court painter was a Fleming, Lucas de Heeee (1534 ? — 1584), who had also been employed by Queen Mary, whose portrait (dated 1554) by him belongs to the Society of Antiquaries, and wasat the " Old Masters," in 1880, No. 202. He painted, in 1570, the gallery of the Earl of Lincoln, describing the characteristics of different nations. With a sarcastic wit, which Elizabeth doubtless appreciated, he represented the typical Englishman as naked, with a pair of shears, and different kinds of clothes beside him, unable to decide on the best fashion. De Heeke painted Elizabeth in full state, as she loved to be depicted, attended by Juno, Minerva and Venus. This picture remains at Hampton Court (No. 635), and is dated 1569. Mr. Wynne Finch has a capital picture of small figures, representing • i?'»wiC(?.s Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband Adrian Stokes, dated 1559, by this able painter. Many other works by him exist in English seats. Other foreign artists of this reign were Coenelis Vkoom, who drew designs for tapestry, repre- senting the victory of Lord Howard over the famous " Armada" of the Spaniards (these tapestries were burnt with the Houses of Parliament in 1834) ; Fedebigo Zucoheeo (1643 — 1609), whose portrait of the Queen in a fantastic dress is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, and was No. 229 in the National Portrait Exhibition, 1866 ; and Maec Gheebaedts, or Gaeeaed (1561 — 1635), of Bruges. There are three portraits ascribed to Gheeraedts in the collection of the Marquis of Exeter, and others were exhibited in the first (1866) National Portrait Exhibition. The most important of all the works attributed to Gheeraedts is the group of eleven English and Spanish States- IN THE SEVENTiSENTH CENTUKY. 21 men assembled at Somerset House, which has been recently acquired for the National Portrait Gallery at the Hamilton Palace sale.* A very fine little example, signed " M. G.," is a Countess or Pembhoke. "Sidney's Sister, Pbmbkoke's Mothek." ^1/ Nicholas Hilliard (?). From a rare Engraving. fall-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth, standing, holding a branch of olive, -with a sword and a little shock dog at her feet. It belongs to the Duke of Portland, and was long lent to the * See The Athenaum, August 19th, 1882. 22 ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. South Kensington Museum. A head of Camden, in the Bodleian, is signed with the artist's name in Ml. A very fine full-length portrait is at Wohurn Abhey ; other signed specimens are at Barron Hill and Penshnrst. More interesting than these foreign artists is the name of Nicholas Hilliabd (1547 — 1619), an Englishman, and the first native artist of importance, whose fame remains to the present time. The " Old Masters " Exhibition of 1879 con- tained many likenesses said to have been painted by Hilliard ; among these was one of Queen Elizabeth. HUliard's skill was specially shown in his miniatures, of which that of Jane Sey- mour, at Windsor, is a crowning piece. The Duke of Bucoleueh has a noble series of Hilliard's and Oliver's paintings of this kind. Dr. Donne says of the former — " An hand or eye By Hilliard drawn is worth a historye By a worse painter made." The influence of Holbein is traceable in the works of Hilliard, and in those of his successor, and, probably, pupil, Isaac Oliver. One of the most able painters of this age was Sib Nathaniel Bacon, half-brother to the great Sir Francis Bacon , whose life-size portrait of himself, belonging to the Earl of Verulam, has been engraved in Walpole's "Anecdotes." SirN. Bacon died in 1615. The miniatures of Isaac Oijver (1556 — 1617) are considered by some critics to rival those of Holbein. Both Isaac and his son Peter Oliver (1601 — 1660) painted in the reign of James I., who, if not a great patron of Art, yet encouraged foreign portrait painters to work in England. Most famous among these were Daniel Mytens, Paul van Someb, and CoBNELis JoNSON. Van Somer, a Fleming, is specially noted for his fidelity, Mytens for the spirit and dignity of his like- nesses and his landscape backgrounds, and Jonson for the accuracy of his portraits. Jean Petitot (1607 — 1691), of Geneva, also came to England and painted portraits in enamel ^ ^'^v's^fe ' Wi' " Sm Phixip Sidney at Penshukst. Sy Isaac Oliyxr. From a Miniature in Windsor Castle. 24 ENGUSH PAINTERS for Charles I. But native art was not altogether unrepresented. Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, flourished ; and John Hoskins, who died in 1664, was celebrated as a miniature painter. The special art of miniature painting was at this time lucrative to its professors, as it was the fashion to wear pictures of friends, set in gold and precious stones. There were symptoms of a grow- ing taste for art in England, and men were learning that it was possible to paint a good picture without living on the Continent. PoKTKAiT OP King James I. By Hoskins, apteu Van Somer. From a Miniature in Windsor Castle. The first Englishman of higb degree who collected works of art in the manner to which we apply the phrase, was the Earl of Arundel, who was followed by Prince Henry, son of James I. The accession of Charles I. marks a new and bright period in the history of English painting. Walpole, in his " Anecdotes of Painting," speaking of Charles I., says, not very accurately, " The accession of this Prince was the first era of real taste in England. As his temper was not profuse, the money he ex- pended on his collections, and the rewards he bestowed on men IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. 25 of true genius, are proofs of his judgment. He knew how and where to bestow." The King was not only a patron of art, but an artist. We are told by Gilpin that Charles " had singular skill in limning, and was a good judge of pictures." Another authority states that he often amused himself by drawing and designing. Charles inherited pictures which had been collected by Henry VIII. and Prince Henry, all of which were scattered in the different royal palaces. To these works, one hundred and fifty in all, the King added a vast number of valuable examples. The manuscript catalogue, left incomplete by Vanderdoort, the keeper of the royal galleries, mentions 497 pictures at White- hall, including 28 by Titian, 9 by Eaphael, 11 by Correggio, 11 by Holbein, 16 by Giulio Eomano, 7 by Parmigiano, 7 by Rubens, 7 by Tintoretto, 3 by Eembrandt, 16 by Van Dyck, 4 by Paolo Veronese, and 2 by Leonardo da Vinci.* Charles bought, in 1627, the collection of paintings belonging to the Duke of Mantua for £18,280 12s. Bd, ; and many foreign courts made presents of rare and valuable pictures to the King of Eng- land. The good example of their master was followed by some of the nobility, and the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Somerset, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Arundel were liberal patrons of art. The last made a noble collection of statues and drawings ; some of the latter are in the British Museum ; many of the sculptures are at Oxford. Charles vainly invited Albani to visit England, but in 1629 Rubens arrived as a confidential diplomatic representative of the Archduchess Isabella, Infanta of Spain, and was induced to remain for about nine months. The King delighted to honour the great painter, and made him a knight. During his stay in England, Rubens, * This is Dallaway's summary, note to p. 26S of Walpole's " Anec- dotes," as above, 1849. Of course, all the pictures were not really by the artists whose names they bore. There must have been more than sixteen Van Dycks in the Eoyal collection. The above are Whitehall pictures only. The entire gatherings of King Charles were far more numerous. 26 ENGUSH PAINTEBS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. among other works, painted his allegoric picture of Peace and War (National Gallery) ; St. George (Buckingham Palace) ; the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, for the Earl of Arundel ; and the designs for the ceiling of Whitehall. The influence from this brief sojourn was very marked, and it was followed by that of — Anthony van Dyck (1599—1641), a native of Antwerp, after a brief and unsatisfactory visit to England, returned here and was created Court Painter in 1632. Charles I. knighted him in 1632. His influence afiiected the portrait painters who lived a century after him, and survived till the advent of Keynolds. The best of Van Dyck's pictures are in the possession of the Crown and private collectors in England. . There is one famous Portrait of Charles I. in the Louvre, and another in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. The Thi'ee Chil- dren of Charles I. is among his pictures in Windsor Castle. In the National Gallery the best specimen of Van Dyck's art is the Emperor Theodosius and St. Ambrose, No. 50. The Ge- vartius. No. 52, is probably by Rubens. There are magnificent portraits by Van Dyck in many private galleries. Gerard van Honthobst (1590 — 1656), a native of Utrecht, passed some years in England, painting portraits for Charles I. and his courtiers, and giving lessons to his daughter Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of Bohemia. William Dobson (1610 — 1646), a dwarf, was apprenticed to Sir Robert Peake, an obscure painter and picture dealer, and learnt to copy Van Dyck so accurately, that he attracted the notice of the great master, who introduced him to the King. He became, after his patron's death, Serjeant-Painter, and Groom of the Privy Chamber. His career, like himself, was brief. When the Civil War broke out, Dobson was a prisoner for debt, and he died three years before the execution of his royal master. His portraits are often mistaken for those of Van Dyck. At Hampton Court is a fine picture of the painter himself with R_^lsy;»^2|^'J r-f «^ i Jkrf" hi'. •A \- ,-c?' ^ISiSi^M.! M ^1 -«■ 74 V" "^J k % y Xhb Countess of Devonshike. J3i/ Van Dyck. JVom tte Ms/raving by P. Lomiart. 28 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. his wife. The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, -whiah. resembles a Honthorst, is at Wilton House ; and a portrait of Cleveland, the poet, is in the Ellesmere collection. Several of Dobson's portraits have been exhibited in the National Portrait Exhibi- tion, and in the collections of works by the " Old Masters " a^ Burlington House. George Jamesone (1586 — 1644), the son of an Aberdeen architect, is styled by Cunningham "the Scottish Van Dyck." He studied abroad under Eubens, in the company of Van Dyck, and in 1628 commenced a prosperous career in Scotland. He painted the portrait of Charles I., in 1633, when the King visited that country. Jamesone also painted historic pic- tures, landscapes, and subjects from the Bible. During the contest of the King with his Parliament, the arts could not but languish. Some of the great collectors fled to the Continent, where more than one of them existed by the sale of portable works of art, such as medals. The Parliament ordered the furniture of the royal palaces and the contents of the picture galleries to be sold by auction, and the proceeds to be applied to the expenses of the war in Ireland and the North. By an order of the House of Commons, 1645, all such pictures and statues at York House as bore the image of the Virgin Mary were to be forthwith destroyed as gendering superstition. Al- though art, as represented in England at this time, had been devoted to any but religious purposes — and many of its mani- festations were grossly indecent and infamous, or, at best, shock- ing to unaccustomed eyes — these orders were not obeyed univer- sally. Many pictures were bought by foreign princes, some by Cavaliers, others by the Puritans, among whom Colonel Hutchinson was an extensive purchaser. Cromwell, on becoming Protector, stopped all the sales of royal paintings and property. To him we owe the preservation of Eaphael's cartoons. They were valued by the Commissioners at £300 and ordered to be Qlivek Ceomweh. By Sib Peter Lely. In the P'Uti Palace, Florence. 30 ENGLISH PAINTEBS sold, but Cromwell stopped the sale. In the reign of Charles II., these cartoons would have been lost to England ; the King had offered to sell them to Barillon, minister of Louis XIV., and it was only by Lord Danby's means that the sale was prevented. Cromwell employed as his portrait painter — EoBBET Walkek, who died in 1658, The Protector in- sisted upon having the warts and pimples on his face faithfully portrayed, and gave strict^ injunctions both to Walker and Sir Peter Leiy not to flatter him. One of Walker's portraits of Cromwell is at Warwick Castle. Some capital examples of his skill are in the National Portrait Gallery. The Eestoration was not favourable to design. Charles II. had neither taste for art, nor money to encourage painters. The unbridled license of the Court defiled the studio as it did the stage ; and the most popu- kr pictures were the portraits of the rakes and wantons who clustered round the King. Sir Peter Lely (1618 — 1680), originally named Van der Faes, was the very accomplished painter of the Court, some of whose better works may be compared with Van Dyck's. He came to England in 1643, and profited by his art under •Charles I., the Protectorate, and Charles II. Walpole said of Lely's nymphs that they are " generally reposed on the turf, and are too wanton and too magnificent to be taken for any- thing but Maids of Honour." The well-known collection of Lely's portraits at Hampton Court includes, among others, those of the Duchess of Richmond; the Countess of Rochester ; Mrs. Middleton the celebrated beauty; the Countess of Northumberland; the Duchess of Cleveland, as Minerva; the Countess de Grammont, and Jane Kellaway, as Diana (misnamed Princess Mary). Mrs. Middleton, in the National Portrait Gallery, by Lely, is remarkably good. Lely fell dead before his easel, while painting a portrait of the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, November 30th, 1680. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 31 Several English astists practised in this reign. Henry Anderton (1680 — after 1665) was a portrait painter employed at Court. Isaac Fuller (1606 — 1672) painted por- traits and allegoric pieces. He is described as extravagant and burlesque in his tastes and manners, and his works bear the mark of this character. An epigram on a " Drunken Sot" is to this effect : — ' ' His head doth on his shoulder lean, His eyes are sunk, and hardly seen ; Who sees this sot in his own colour Is apt to say, "twas done by Fuller. ' " John Geeenhill (1649 — 1676) was the most celebrated of Lely's pupils. Robbet Steeater (1624 — 1680) was made Serjeant-Painter to Charles II., and painted landscapes and historic works. His work still survives in the Theatre at Oxford, but we cannot echo the praise accorded to it by a rhymester who says — " That future ages must confess they owe To Streater more than Michael Angelo." That most delightful of gossips, Samuel Pepys, has much to say about art, of which he was no mean critic. Writing on February 1st, 1688, Pepys said : "I was carried to Mr. Streater's, the famous history-painter, whom I have often heard of, but did never see him before ; and there I found him and Dr. Wren and several virtuosos, looking upon the paintings which he is making for the new Theatre at Oxford ; and. in- deed they look as if they would be very fine, and the rest think better than those of Rubens in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, but I do not fully think so. But they will certainly be very noble ; and I am mightily pleased to have the fortune to see this man and his work, which is very famous, and he is a very civil little man, and lame, but lives very handsomely." Samuel Cooper (1609 — 1672) was a miniature painter of a 32 ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. high order, whose art attested the influence of Van Dyok ; the Duke of Buccleuch has the two famous unfinished portraits of the Protector by him, and a galaxy of other works of this class. Pepys, speaking of a portrait-painter named John Hayls, of whom he thought highly, said : " He has also persuaded me to have Cooper draw my wife's picture, which though it cost over J£30, yet I will have it done." He called Cooper "a limner in little," and referred to him several times in his Diary. On the death of Sir Peter Lely, another foreigner became the popular painter of the Court. This was — Sir Godfrey KnelIiER (1648 — 1723), a native of Liibeck, who came to the Court of Charles II. in 1674, and maintaining his popularity during the reign of James II., William III., and Anne, lived to paint the portrait of George I. Kneller's works are chiefly portraits. Of these the famous Kit-Kat series of likenesses of distinguished men is invaluable. His portrait- of his fellow-countryman, Grinling Gihbons, is one of his best paintings. He was the fashionable painter of the age, and kings and fine ladies, wits and statesmen, are embodied in his art. Dryden was amongst his sitters, and the poet has left the following praises of the painter : — " Such are thj- pictures, Kneller ! s-jcli thy skill, That nature seems obedient to thy will; Comes out and meets thy pencil in the draught, Lives there, and wants but words to speak the thought." The popularity of allegoric painting did much to hinder the progress of English art. Nature gave place to naked gods and impossible shepherdesses, who were painted on walls and ceilings at go much a square foot. Charles II. had probably acquired a taste for such painting abroad, and it retained its popularity for a considerable period. Fuseli said : " Charles II., with the Cartoons in his possession and the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verrio to contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the Cymons and Grinlikg Gibbons, the Sctoptoh. By Godfrey Kneller. D 34 ENGLISH PAINTERS Iphigenias of his Court, while the manner of Kneller swept com- pletely away what might be left of taste among his successors. It was reserved for the German Lely and his successor Kneller to lay the foundation of a manner which, by pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction for nearly a century to both ; a mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in flowing wigs and dressed curls, rufiled Endymions, humble Junos, withered Hebes, surly Allegros, and smirking Pensierosos usurp the place of propriety and character." We can see the triumphs of allegory over nature fully illustrated in Hampton Court Palace. Chief among painters of this class of art was Antonio Vbeeio (1634 — 1707), who received from Charles II. jEIOjOOO for the decoration of Windsor Castle. Louis Lagubeke (1663 — 1721) was associated with Verrio, and carried on similar work after Verrio's death. His best works are at Blenheim. In his later years Laguerre found a coadjutor in Sib James Thoenhill (1676 — 1734), whose decorations are superior to those of Verrio or Laguerre. His chief productions are in the cupola of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Great Hall of Greenwich Hospital, an apartment at Hampton Court, and a saloon in Blenheim Palace. ThornhUl was knighted by George I., being the first English artist who receveid that honour, and he sat in Parliament for his native place, Melcombe Eegis. Perhaps the most enduring fact about him is that he was the father-in- law of Hogarth. Walpole said of the reign of George I. : — " No reign since the arts have been in any estimation produced fewer works that will deserve the attention of -posterity." It was not only in England that art slumbered. The Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish schools had passed from the brilliance of their seventeenth-century period. In Italy art had shrivelled with the last of the Bolognese school. France possessed some original painters, but not of the highest order. Before passing on to the period of Hogarth and the creation of the English school, we may mention a few names of painters IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. 35 in England. These were John Eiley (1646 — 1691) ; James Paementieb (1658—1730) ; William Aikman (1682—1731) ; Maey Beale (1632—1697) ; John Clostebmann (1656—1713) ; Michael Dahl (1656—1743) ; Gerabd von Soest (1637—1681) ; John Vandeebank (1694 ?— 1739) ; William Wissing (1656— 1687) ; Joseph Michael Weight (1625 ?— 1700 ?), a pupil of Jamesoue ; Jonathan Eiohaedson (1665 — 1745), a pupil of RUey; Chaeles Jeevas (1675 — 1739), a follower of Kneller, and the friend of Pope, who, with the fulsome flattery of the day, compared him to Zeuxis. Geoege Knapton (1698 — 1778) was famous for crayon portraits ; a large group, in oils, repre- senting the Princess of Wales and her family, by his hand, is at Hampton Court. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Thomas Hudson (1701 — 1779) became the fashionable portrait painter. His chief remaining claim to fame is that he was the first master of Joshua Reynolds. Feancis Hayman (1708 — 1776) lived long enough to write himself R.A. among the earliest members. His Finding of Moses may be seen at the Foundling Hospital ; and his own portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. He seems to have been highly esteemed, and, among other works, executed some for Vauxhall Gardens. His fame is now almost as extinct as the lamps of that once famous place of entertain- ment. u 2 CHAPTER in. ENGLISH ABT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY — WILLIAM HOGAKTH. HITHERTO we have seen painting in England confined to foreign artists, or to natives who more or less slavishly copied them. We have seen, likewise, that many of the English painters of the latter days of the seventeenth century were decorators rather than artists, who, forsaking all truth and nature, covered the walls and ceilings of houses with simpering shepherdesses and impossihle deities. The time of change came, however, and with it the man who was to be the first original painter of his country. It is to plain William Hogarth, the son of the Cumberland schoolmaster, the apprentice of the silver-plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, that we owe the origin of the English school of painting. The term "school of paintmg" is, however, hardly correct, as Hogarth founded no school, nor has there existed one in England till very recently. We should rather say that Hogarth was the first English artist who forsook exhausted conventionalities for large truthfulness and original thought, and thus paved the way to a new life in art. A man who laughed at the "black masters," as he called the painters ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 37 of the most popular works of the period ; and who declared that copying other men's pictures was like pouring wine from one vessel to another, a process which did not increase the quality, and allowed the flavour to evaporate, was naturally regarded as an innvoator of a monstrous order. Like all reformers, Hogarth had to defeat opposition and ridicule. But he dared to think for himself, and in that courage lay the secret of success. William Hogaeth was born in 1697 in Ship Court, Old Bailey, hard by Ludgate Hill, in a house which was pulled down in 1862. His father, who had received a good educa- tion at St. Bees, kept a school in Ship Court, and sought work from booksellers. But, like many another poor scholar, he could not make a living, and died disappointed. After spend- ing some time at school, William Hogarth, warned by the example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in pre- ference to literature, and was apprenticed, probably in 1711, to Ellis Gamble, a silversmith in Cranbourne AUey. Here, though his drawings and engravings were mostly confined to heraldic devices and the like, the young artist gained accuracy of touch, to which he added truthfulness of design, and prepared himself to delineate that London life which was to furnish him with models for his art. He tells us how he determined to enter a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of his ambition. The men and women who jostled him in London streets, or rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. Besides the keenest powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humour, he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled him to impress a face or form on his mind, and reproduce it at leisure. Occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb-nail, and thence transfer it. Hogarth tells us that " instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying 38 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY. dry or damaged pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge of my art." Thus, whether he was watching " society " on its way to court, or mingling in the midnight orgies of a tavern, Hogarth was storing portraits which were to appear, some in silks and satins, as in the Marriage a la Mode, others among the humours of Beer Street and the misery of Qin Lane. Hogarth's apprenticeship ended probably in 1718 ; we find him studying drawing from the life in the Academy in St. Martin's Lane. In 1721 he published An Emhleniatical Print on the South Sea {Scheme), which was sold at one shilling a copy, and though defective in the sardonic humour which marked his later works, shows promise of what was to come. In the same year Tlie Lottery was published. In 1724 he engraved Masque- rades and Operas, a satire, which represents " society " crowding to a masquerade, and led by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the Garter on his leg. This engraving delighted the public whom it satirised, and Hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. He was employed by the book- sellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces. In " Mottraye's Travels " (1723) there are eighteen illustrations by Hogarth, seven in the "Golden Ass of Apuleius " (1724), and five frontispieces in "Cassandra" (1725). Walpole says, somewhat too severely, that " no symptoms of genius dawned in those early plates." In 1726 was published, besides his twelve large prints, which are well known, an edition of "Hudibras," Ulustrated by Hogarth in seventeen smaller plates. Of this Walpole says, " This was among the first of his works that marked him as a man above the common ; yet in what made him then noticed it surprises me now to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents." The designs of Hogarth are not so witty as the verses of Butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men living and acting as they are described in the poem ; they were WlLI/IAM HOOAHTH AND HIS DoG TeUMP. By HoQAETH. In the National Gallery. 40 ENGLISH PAINTERS not like the men of whom he made his daily studies. At this period he who dared to be original, and to satirise his neigh- bours, had much trouble. The value set upon his work in those early days may be estimated when we read that J. Bowles, of the Black Horse, in Cornhill, patronised Hogarth to the extent of offering him half-a-crown a pound weight for a copperplate just executed. In 1727, we find a certain up- holsterer named Morris refusing to pay thirty pounds to the artist, because he had faUed, in Morris's opinion, to execute a representation of the Element of Earth, as a design for tapestry, "in a workmanlike manner." It is on record that the verdict was in favour of Hogarth, who was paid £20 for his work and £10 for materials. In 1730, Hogarth made a secret marriage at old Paddington Church, with Jane, only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant -Painter to the King. He had frequented Thornhill's studio, but whether the art of the court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we know not. There is no doubt that Hogarth's technique was studied from Thornhill's pictures, and not from those of Watteau or Chardin, as has been supposed. Hogarth was painting portraits years before 1730. Mr. Kedgrave, in his " Century of Painters," describes some wall pictures in the house No. 75, Dean Street, Soho, which is said to have been a residence of Sir James Thornhill. Some of the figures here are thoroughly of the Hogarth type, especially that of a black man in a turban, a familiar form in the Marriage a la Mode. For a time after his marriage Hogarth confined himself to painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid, although Walpole declares that this "was the most ill-suited employment to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery." Truthfulness, however, is more valuable in a por- trait than flattery, and we surely find it in Hogarth's portraits of himself, one in the National Gallery, and in that of Captain Coram, at the Foundling. In 1734, Hogarth published the IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 41 first of those wonderful unspoken sermons against vice and folly, A Harlot's Progress, which was followed immediately by A Rake's Progress, issued in 1735. A Harlot's Progress, in six plates, met with an enthusiastic reception ; it was a bold innovation on the cold stilted style of the day, and its terrible reality stirred the hearts of all beholders. A Rake's Progress, in eight plates, was scarcely so popular, and the professors of the kind of art which Hogarth had satirised found many faults with the reformer. Hogarth was now a person of consequence, and the once unknown and struggling artist was the talk of the town. The Sleeping Congregation is a satire on the heavy preachers and indifferent church-goers of that period. The Distressed Poet and A Midnight Modern Conversation soon followed. The latter, in which most of the figures are actual portraits, is considered in France and Germany the best of this master's single works. In due course appeared The Enraged Musician, of which a wit of the day observed that " it deafens one to look at it," and The Strolling Actresses, which AUan Cunningham describes as " one of the most imaginative and amusing of all the works of Hogarth."* One of the best of Hogarth's life stories is the Marriage a la Mode, the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery ; they appeared in prints in 1745. These well-known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless niarriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank the other for money. Mr. Kedgrave (" A Century of Painters ") tells us that " the novelty of Hogarth's work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole ; each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied * His painting of this subject, for which he received only twenty-six guineas, was destroyed by fiie in 1874, 42 ENGLISH PAINTERS passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end." Some of the most striking poinds in the satire of Hogarth's picture are brought out in the background, as in the first picture of Marriage a la Mode, where the works of " the black masters " are repre- sented ludicrously, and the ceiling of the room is adorned with an unnatural picture of the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. In 1750 appeared The March of the Guards to Finchley, which is " steeped in humour and strewn with absurdities." It was originally dedicated to George II., but, so the story goes, the King was ofiiended by a satire on his Guards, and he declared " I hate boetry and bainting ; neither one nor the other ever did any good." Certain it is that Hogarth was disappointed by the reception of his work, and dedicated it to the King of Prussia. The painting of The March to Finchley, on publication of the print, was disposed of by lottery, and won by the Foundling Hospital. We cannot do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued "to shoot Folly as she flies." Beer Street, and Gin Lane, illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin. The Cockpit represents a scene very common in those days, and contains many portraits. Tlie Election is a series of four scenes, published between 1755 and 1758, in which all the varied vices, humours, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented. The pictures of this series are in Sir John Soane's Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Hogarth's last years were embittered by quarrels, those with ChurchUl and Wilkes being the most memorable. The publi- cation in 1753 of his admirable book, called " The Analysis of Beauty," in .which Hogarth tried to prove that a winding line is the Line of Beauty, produced much adverse criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take quietly. He was further annoyed by the censures passed IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. on his picture of Sigismuvda, now in the National Gallery, which he had painted in 1759 for Sir Richard Grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. Two years previously Hogarth had been made Serjeant-Painter to the King. He did not live to hold this office long; on October 26th, 1764, the hand which had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such humour, had ceased to move. Hogarth died in his house at Leicester Fields ; he was buried in Chiswick Churchyard, where on his monument stands this epitaph by Garrick ; — 'Tarewel, great Painter of Mankind! Who reached the nohlest point of Art ; Whose picUired Morals charm the Mind, And through the Eye correct the Heart. If GeniuB fire thee, Reader, stay ; If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear ; If neither move thee, turn away. For Hogarth's houour'd dust lies here." And yet it is of this man that Walpole says, that "as a painter he has slender merit." Charles Lamb remarks wisely, in his fine essay on " The Genius and Character of Hogarth," that his chief design was by no means to raise a laugh." Of his prints, he says, " A set of severer satires (for they are not so much comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens." IPilililiMfiWWfil^^ CHAPTER IV. THE BOYAL ACADEMY AND ITS INFLUENCE. HOGARTH -was the first original painter of England, and he was too original either to copy or to be copied ; but he founded no school. What he did was to draw aside the curtain and show the light of nature to those who had been hitherto content to grope amid the extravagances of allegory, or the dreams of mythology. Two circumstances specially stood in the way of the progress of English art — the absence of a recog- nised academy, where a system of art-study could be pursued, and where rewards were offered for success ; and the want of a public exhibition where painters could display their works, or learn from one another. There were no masters, properly speak- ing, in England, and therefore no pupils. Instead of gathering around them students on the atelier system of the Continent, painters in England had apprentices, who were employed to grind their colours, clean their brushes, and prepare then* canvas. Such apprentices might become mechanical copyists of their employers. Nevertheless, such was the system under which all the pupils of all the great Italian Masters, some of whom became great masters in their turns, were trained. Several attempts to supply the want of a recognised system of art-teaching in London had been made from time to time. Sir THE ROYAL ACADEMY AND ITS INFLUENCE. 45 Balthasar Gerbier had a drawing sehool in Whitefriars so long ago as the days of Charles I.; Van Dyok promoted studies of this kind at his house in Blackfriars ; the Duke of Richmond in 1758 endeavoured to form a school at the Priory Garden, Westminster ; Sir Godfrey Kneller supported an academy for drawing and painting at his house in Great Queen Street, till his death in 1728; another society existed in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street, Strand, till 1738, when the members joined the St. Martin's Lane Academy. These, like the following, were drawing and painting schools, under recognised teachers, but neither honour-bestowing, benevolent, nor representative bodies. Each pupil paid for the use of the models and premises, except those which were supplied by the Duke of Eichmond to his guests. In 1724 Sir James Thornhill had opened an art academy at his house in James Street, Covent Garden ; it existed till his death in 1734 ; he suggested to the Prime Minister, Lord Halifax, the idea of a Eoyal Academy. Vander- bank for a time had a school with living models in a disused Presbyterian chapel. WiUiam Shipley maintained an art academy in St. Martin's Lane for thirty years, and we know that Hogarth studied there. But none of these schools had a prescribed system of teaching. The absence of a public exhi- bition was felt as a great misfortune by the artists of this period. Hogarth, however, who regarded the painters of his country from a gloomy point of view, had no belief in the regenerating power of academies or paid professors. Apart from the Exhibitions of the Society of Artists in 1760 and 1761, for which Hogarth designed the frontispiece and tailpiece to the catalogue, the first public exhibition of pictures was that of sign boards, promoted by Hogarth and B. Thornton in 1762. The impetus which Hogarth's success gave to native art, however, was soon visible ; and the Society of Arts and the Dilettanti Society encour- aged young painters by giving prizes, and by suggesting 46 ENGLISH PAINTEES. the formation of a guild or confraternity of artists. The first private exhibitions of pictures were held in the Foundling and St. Bartholomew's Hospitals, to which Hogarth and some of the leading painters of the day presented their works. This happened in 1746. In 1761 the Society of Artists was rent in two, and a new body, the Free Society, remained in the Adelphi. The Society of Artists removed to Spring Gardens, and in 1765 obtained a charter of incorporation : it was thenceforward called the Incorporated Society. Owing to the mismanagement and consequent dissensions in this body arose the Koyal Academy of Arts, established by George III. on December 10th, 1768, though without a royal charter of incor- poration. This institution, which was to exercise so marked an influence on the art of England, supplied two wants — a definite system of teaching, and an exhibition of meritorious works. Before noticing the three eminent painters who mark a new era in English painting, and who became members of the new Academy, we must speak of others who were not without their infiuence on the world of art. Allan Eamsay (1713 — 1784) was considered one of the best portrait painters of his time. He was the son of Allan Kamsay, the poet, and was born at Edin- burgh. After studying in Italy he came to London and esta- blished himself there, frequently visiting Edinburgh. Walpole specially praises his portraits of women, even preferring some of them to those of Eeynolds. In 1767 Eamsay was made painter to George III., and his portraits of the King and Queen Charlotte are still at Kensington. As a man of literary tastes and great accomplishments, Allan Eamsay received the praises of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Eeynolds. In the Exhibition of 1862 was exhibited a portrait of the Duke of Argyll, by Eamsay. Portrait painting was still the popular branch of art in England, and the influence of Hogarth had produced no advance towards the study of landscape. Among THE KOYAL ACADEMY AND ITS INFLUENCE. 47 those, however, who attempted it was Geoege Lambebt (1710 — 1765), a scene-painter, and founder of the " Beefsteak Club." This latter distinction makes him remembered, whilst his land- scapes, after the manner of Poussin, are forgotten. William Smith (1707—1764), George Smith (1714—1776), John Smith (1717 — 1764), usually known as the Smiths of Chichester, were very popular in their day. They painted landscapes from the scenery round Chichester, but gave it a foreign and unnatural air by copying Claude and Poussin. Though they exercised considerable influence on English landscape-painting, we cannot wonder at the popularity of these painters when we remember how utterly barren this branch of art still remained in England. Peter Monamy (1670? — 1749)wa3 a marine painter of the school of the Van de Veldes, whose pupil he may have been. A Sea piece by him at Hampton Court (No. 915) shows that he was an artist of a high order. Portraits of Monamy and his patron are in a picture by Hogarth at Knowsley. Samuel Scott (1710 ? — 1772) was a friend of Hogarth, and a marine painter after the mode of the Van de Veldes. Walpole considered him " the first painter of his age, one whose works will charm in any age." They have, however, ceased to do so in this. Another marine painter was Charles Brooking (1723—1759), one of whose productions is at Hampton Court. He occasionally worked in concert with DoMmic Serres (1722 — 1793), a Eoyal Academician (a native of Gascony), whose four large pictures of The Naval Review at Portsmouth, painted for George IH., are likewise at Hampton Court. The works of Dominic Serres have been confounded with those of his son, John Thomas Seeees (1759 — 1825), who was a far superior painter to his father. We pass on to speak of three celebrated painters, who when already famous became members of the .Royal Academy — Wilson, Eeynolds, and Gainsborough. The story of Richard Wilson (1713 — 1782) is the story of a disappointed man. Born at Pinegas, Montgomeryshire, the son of the parson 48 ENGLISH PAINTERS. of that place. Wilson's early taste for drawing attracted the attention of Sir George Wynne, by whom he was introduced to one Wright, a portrait painter in London. Following the popular branch of art in his day, Wilson in due course became a portrait painter, and although nothing remarkable is known of his portraits, he managed to make a living. In 1749 he visited Italy, and whilst waiting for an interview with the landscape painter Znccarelli he is said to have sketched the view through the open window. The Italian advised the Englishman to devote himself henceforth to landscapes, and Wilson followed his advice. After six years' stay in Italy, during which period he became imbued with the beauties of that country, Wilson returned to England in 1765, and found Zuocarelli worshipped, whilst he himself was neglected. His Niobe, one version of which is in the National Gallery, was exhibited with the Society of Artists' Collection, in Spring Gardens, 1760, and made a great impression, but, in general, his pictures, infinitely superior to the mere decorations of the Italian, were criticised, and compared unfavourably with those of Zuccarelli, and it was not till long after Wilson's death that he was thoroughly appreciated.' He was often compelled to sell his pictures to pawnbrokers, who, so it is said, could not sell them again. Poverty and neglect soured the painter's temper, and made him irritable and reckless. He had many enemies, and even Sir Joshua Eeynolds treated him with injustice. Wilson was one of the original thirty-six members of the Royal Academy, and in 1776 applied for and obtained the post of Librarian to that "body, the small salary helping the struggling man to live. The last years of his life were brightened by better fortune. A brother left him a legacy, and in 1780 Wilson retired to a pleasant home at Llanberis, Carnarvon, where he died two years later. Mr. Eedgrave says of him: "There is this praise due to our countryman — that our landscape art, which had heretofore been derived from MoBNINO. By KiGHAKD Wilson. E 50 ENGLISH PAINTERS. the meaner school of Holland, following his great example, looked thenceforth to Italy for its inspiration ; that he proved the power of native art to compete on this ground also with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the" way for the coming men, who, emhracing Nature as their mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her." Wilson frequently repeated his more successful pictures. The Ruins of the Villa of Mcecenas, at Tivoli (National Gallery), was painted five times by him. In the same Gallery are The Destruction -of Niobe's Children, A Landscape with Figures, three Views in Italy, Lake Avernus with the Bay of Naples in the distance, &c. In the Duke of Westmin- ster's collection are Apollo and the Seasons and The River Dee. Wilson, like many another man of genius, lived before his time, and was forced one day to ask Barry, the Royal Academician, if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape painter, and if so, whether he would recommend him. Singularly unlike Wilson in his fortunes was a painter of the same school, named George Baeeet (1728 ? — 1784), an Irishman, who began life by colouring prints for a Dublin pub- lisher, and became the popular landscape painter of the day, receiving vast sums for his pictures, whilst WilSon could hardly buy bread. Patronised by Burke, who gained him the appoint- ment of Master- Painter to Chelsea Hospital, and re.ceiving for his works JE2,000 a year, Barret died poor, and his pictures, once so prized, are neglected, whilst the works of Wilson are now valued as they deserve. Another artist who derived his inspiration from Wilson was Julius C^sae Ibbbtson (1759 — 1817), who painted landscapes with cattle and figures and rustic incidents with much success. Joshua Reynolds (1723 — 1792) was born at Plympton, Devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the gram- mar school. His father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that Joshua Reynolds should be a painter. He SIK JOSHUA EEYNOLDS. 51 preferred to read Kichardson's " Treatise on Painting " to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to London to study with Hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. Before this time, however, the young Eeynolds had studied " The Jesuit's Perspective " with such success that he astonished his father by drawing Plympton school. There is at Plymouth a portrait of the Rev. Thomas Smait, tutor in Lord Edgcumbe's household, which is said to have been painted by Reynolds when twelve years old. It was in 1741 that Joshua Reynolds began his studies with Hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. On' leaving Hudson's studio Reynolds re- turned to Devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year 1746, when bis father died, and the painter was established at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, and was paint- ing portraits. Many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which tteir author had probably learnt from Hudson. Having visited London, and stayed for a time in St. Martin's Lane, the artists' quarter, Reynolds was enabled, in 1749, to realise his great wish, and go abroad. His friend Com- modore Keppel carried him to Italy, and Reynolds, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, studied the treasures of Italy, chiefly in Rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the Italian school. Michelangelo was the object of his chief adoration, and his name was the most frequently on his lips, and the last in his addresses to the Royal Academy. A love of colour was the characteristic of Reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that " he came off with flying colours." Doubtless the wish to rival the colouring of the Venetians led Reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures. It e2 52 ENGLISH PAINTEKS. has been said of him that "he loved his colours as other men love their children." In 1752 Eeynolds returned to England, and settled in London, first in St. Martin's Lane, then in Newport Street, and finally in a grand house in Leicester Fields. His course was one of brilliant success. At his house, wit and wisdom met together, and the ponderous learning of Dr. Johnson, the eloquence of Burke, and the fancy of Goldsmith, combined to do honour to the courteous, gentle painter, whom all men loved, and of whom Goldsmith wrote : — " His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand ; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland. Still, born to improv3 us in every part — His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.'' Most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who " read souls in faces." In 1768 Joshua Keynolds was chosen first President of the Eoyal Academy, and was knighted by George III. He succeeded, on the death of Kamsay, to the office of Court Painter. His '' Dis- courses on Painting," delivered at the Eoyal Academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. It was supposed by some that Johnson and Burke had assisted Eeynolds in the composition of these lectures, but the Doctor indignantly disclaimed such aid, declaring that " Sir Joshua Eeynolds would as soon get me to paint for him as to write for him." A lesser honour, though one. which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on Eeynolds in 1773, when he was elected Mayor of his native Plympton. In the same year he exhibited his famous Strawberry Girl, of which he said that it was " one of the half dozen original things " which no man ever exceeded in his life's work. In 1789 the failure of his sight warned Sir Joshua that "the night cometh when no man can work." He died, full of years and honours, on February 23rd, 1792, and was buried near Sir Christopher "VVren in St. Paul's Cathedral. Mrs. Bkadyll. % Eetnolds. In the possession of Sir Sichard Wallace, Bart. 54 ENGLISH PAINTEES. Eeynolds was a most untiring worker. He exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the Eoyal Academy, on an average eleven every year. In the National Gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. Amongst them are The Holy Family (No. 78), The Graces decorating a Terminal Figure of Hymen (79), The Infant Samuel (162), The Snake in the Grass (885), Robinetta (892), and portraits of himself,, of Admiral Eeppel, Br. Johnson, Boswell, Lord Heathfield, and George IV. as Prince of Wales. Mr. Ruskin deems Reynolds "one of the seven colourists of the world," and places him with Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Turner. He likewise says, " considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper."* It is as " the prince of portrait painters " that Sir Joshua will be remembered, although he produced more than one hundred and thirty historic or poetic pieces. Messrs. Redgrave, speaking of his powers as an historic painter, declare that " notwithstanding the greatness of Reynolds as a portrait painter, and the beauty of his fancy subjects, he wholly fails as a painter of history. Allowing all that arises from ' colour harmony,' we must assert that, both as to form and character, the characters introduced into these solemn dramas are wholly unworthy to represent the persons of the actors therein." They argue that the UgoLino fails to represent the fierce Count shut up in the Tower of Famine, on the banks of the Arno, and that the children of the Holy Family " for all there is of character and holiness, might change places with the Cupid who fixes his * Northcote, " Conversations," 1830, p. 32, said, "Sir Joshua un- doubtedly got his first idea of the art from Gandy." James Gandy (1619 — 1689), who painted in Ireland and Devonshire, was the last represen- tative of the art of Van Dyck, whose pupU lie was. GAINSBOEOUGH. 55 arrow to transfix his nymph." The child who represents The Infant Samuel, delightful as it is, in common with all Sir Joshua Reynolds's children, has nothing to distinguish it as set apart to high and holy offices. We may mention as among the best known of the historic and poetic subjects of this master: — Macbeth and the Witches, Cardinal Beaufort, Hercules strangling the Serpents, painted for the Empress of Russia, and The Death of Dido. Famous, too, as portraits, are Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse (Duke of Westminster's and Dulwieh Gallery), Garnch bettceen Tragedy and Comedy, The Strawberry Girl, The Shepherd Boy, The Little Girl in.aMob Cap (Penelope Boothby), The Little Duke, and The Little Marchioness ; many others which are scattered in the galleries and chambers of the English nobility and gentry, and which are now frequently seen on the walls of Burlington House as each " Old Masters " Exhibition passes by. Thomas Gainsbobough (1727 — 1788), the son of a clothier, was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk. He early showed taste for art, and would linger among the woods and streams round Sudbury to sketch. Nature was his model, and to this fact we owe the pictures which make him and Wilson the founders of our school of landscape painting. The details of this master's life are few and uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching Gains- borough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman in the St. Martin's Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town, and presently married Margaret Burr, who had crossed his line of sight when he was sketching a wood. The lady's figure was added to the picture, and in due course became the wife of the artist. For a 56 ENGLISH PAINTEES. man so careless as Gainsborough, an early marriage was good, and we owe the preservation of many of his works to the thought- fulness of his wife. Settling in Ipswich, he began to make a name. Philip Thicknesse, Governor of Landguard Fort, opposite Harwich, became his earliest patron, and officiously maintained a friendship which was often trying to the painter. Gainsborough, at his suggestion, painted a view of Landguard Fort (the picture has perished), which attracted considerable attention. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favourable field for portrait-painting, though landscape, was not neglected. Fourteen years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded as the rival of Eeynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape. Once, when Eeynolds at an Academy Dinner proposed the health of his rival as " the greatest landscape painter of the day," Wilson, who was present, exclaimed, " Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too." One of the original members of the Eoyal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783, because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick-tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with Eeynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough's Blue Boy is commonly said to have been painted in spite against Eeynolds, in order to disprove the President's statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favourite Van Dyck in displaying " a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh." It is pleasant to think of the kindly minded painter enjoying music with his friends ; and, rewarding some of them more lavishly than wisely, he is said to have given The Boy at the Stile to Colonel Hamilton, in return for his performance on the violin. It is pleasant, too, to know that whatever soreness Mhs. Siddons. By Gainsborough, a.b. 1784. In the National Gallery, 58 ENGLISH PAINTERS. of feeling existed between him and Sir Joshua, passed away before he died. When the President of the Eoyal Academy came to his dying bed, Gainsborough declared his reconciliation, and said, "We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company." This was in 1788. Gainsborough was buried at Kew. The EngHshness of bis landscapes makes Gainsborough popular. Wilson had improved on the Dutch type by visiting Italy, but Gainsborough sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. Nature speaks in his portraits or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of Eeynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. Mr. Euskin says of Gainsborough, "His power of colour (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Eubens ; he is the purest colourist — Sir Joshua himself not excepted — of the whole English school ; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. I hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting. Turner is a child to Gainsborough." Among the most popular pictures by this great master are The Blue Boy, The Shepherd Boy in the Shower, The Cottage Boor, The Cottage Girl icith Dog and Pitcher, The Shepherd Boys with their Dogs fighting. The Woodman and his Dog in the Storm (burnt at Eaton Park, engraved by Simon, and copied in needlework by Miss Linwood). There are thirteen pictures by Gainsborough in the National Gallery, including The Market Cart, The Watering Place, Musidora, Portraits of Mrs. Siddons, and Orpin, the Parish Clerk of Prad- ford-on-Avon. In the Eoyal Collection at Windsor are seven- teen life-size heads of the sons and daughters of George III., of which, say the Messrs. Eedgrave, " it is hardly possible to speak too highly." HUGH ROBINSON. 59 We may here fittingly mention a contemporary of Gains- borough, Hugh Robinson (about 1760 — 1790), who only gained a tardy though well-merited right to rank among England's portrait painters by the exhibition at the " Old Masters,'' in 1881, of his Portrait of Thomas TecsdaU, which was followed in the next exhibition by the Piping Boy. The remainder of the works of this talented young Yorkshireman — who exhibited but three pictures at the Eoyal Academy (in 1780 and 1782), and who died on his waj- home from Italy, whither he had gone to study art— are chiefly family portraits. The two mentioned above best display his happy blending of landscape and portrai- ture, and, though somewhat recalling the manner of Gains- borough, are full of natural talent. CHAPTEE V. THE PEOGEESS OF ENGLISH ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTDKY. IT will here be convenient to notice briefly some foreign painters who worked in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. Giovanni Battista CiPEiANi, E.A. (1727 — 1785), aFlorentine, came to London in 1755 and remained here, gaining a great reputation as an historic painter at a time when foreign artists were specially popular. He was one of the original members of the Eoyal Academy, and designed the diploma of that body. To Cipriani the English school owes some refinement tempering the rough originality of Hogarth, but his art, " the worn-out and effete art of modern Italy," left few permanent traces on that of England. Angelica Kauffman, E.A. (1740 — 1807), a native of Schwartzenberg, in Austria, came to London in 1765, and, aided by fashion and the patronage of Queen Charlotte, became prominent in the art world. Her romantic and sad fortunes added to her popularity. "Her works were gay and pleas- ing in colour, yet weak and faulty in drawing, her male figures particularly wanting in bone and individuality." - {Redgrave.) Her pictures were often engraved in her own days, but they are now thought little of. A specimen of PROGRESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Gl Angelica Kauffman's work may be seen in the ceiling of the Council Chamber of the Royal Academy, of -which she was a member ; another is in the National Gallery. JoHAXN ZoFFANY, R.A. (1738 — 1810) , was bom at Frankfort, and on his first arrival in England met with little success. He was, however, one of the original Eoyal Academicians, and was patronised by George III., whose portrait he painted, together with those of many members of the Royal famUy. As a portrait painter Zoffany was truthful, natural, and unaffected, and his influence for good was not lost on the art of his adopted country. In 1783 he went to India, where he remained fifteen years, painting pictures of incident, of which The Indian Tiijcr Hunt is an example ; works produced after his return to England are less interesting than these. Francesco Zuccarelli, R.A. (1702 — 1788), bom in Tuscanj-, has already been mentioned as advising Wilson to cultivate landscape-painting. After becoming famous abroad, he came to London in 1752, and secured a fortune, whilst Wilson, his superior, was too poor to buy a canvas to paint on. Zucca- reUi's landscapes and rural villages are of the stage rather than nature. He was the last of that artificial school of painters who tried to paint a beautiful world without looking out of doors. PmuppE James De Lodtheeboueg, R.A. (1740 — 1812), a native of Strasburg, studied in Paris, under Casanova, the battle-painter. He acquired fame by delineating landscapes, battles, and marine subjects, and was already a member of the French Academy when he came to England in 1771. For a time De Loutherbourg was employed as a scene-painter at Drury Lane, receiving a salary of £500 a year from Garrick. His scenery was extremely meritorious, effective, and popular, but he too frequently obtruded scenic characteristics into his other pictures. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1780, and a full member in the following year. 62 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Becoming somewhat deranged in his latter days, he assumed the gift of prophecy, and pretended to cure diseases. He was buried at Chiswick, near Hogarth. De Loutherbourg was a clever draughtsman, but neglected nature. Peter Pindar laughed at his "brass skies, and golden hills," and his "marbk bullocks in glass pastures grazing." Nevertheless Turner owned great obligations to him, and he succeeded in varying the aims of landscape painters, and gave what may be called animation and dramatic expression to their art. His best-known works are. Lord Howes Victory on the \st of June, The Fire of London, The Siege of Valenciennes, A Lake Scene in Cumberland (National Gallery), Warley Common (Windsor Castle). The Eidophusicon was a moving diorama in Spring Gardens, painted by De Loutherbourg, which " all the world went to see." Heney Fusbli, or more correctly, Fuessu (1741 — 1825), born at Zurich, exercised very considerable influence on English art by his pictures and lectures. He was a scholar as well as a painter, and had been educated for the church. On first coming to England Fuseli turned his attention to literature, but was advised by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, who had seen his sketches, to cultivate art. When nearly thirty years old he went to Italy, where, like Eeynolds, his chief devotions were paid to the shrine of Michelangelo. Keturning to England after eight years' absence, Fuseli made his first decided mark by The Nightmare, painted three years after his return. It is said that fully to realise the horrors of this subject the enthusiastic Swiss supped on raw pork ! In 1786, Alderman Boydell, a successful engraver and art publisher, proposed a Shakespeare Gallery, with the view of proving that England contained really good painters of history. Fuseli executed nine out of the eighty-six examples in this gallery. His studies of the works of Michelangelo fitted him for the just treatment of the subjects, including Hamlet and the Ghost, and Lear and Cordelia. It has been objected that his men 64 ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. are all of one race, whether in reality classic, mediseval, or Scandinavian, and that Shakespeare's women are, in his pictures, all alike, too masculine and coarse. Shakespeare is thoroughly English in taste and character, and his men and women, even if represented in Verona, or Prospero's Isle, are still English in heart. Fuseli was scarcely able [to enter into this characteristic of our greatest poet. He was more at home with the majestic creations of Milton, to which he next turned his thoughts. He projected a Milton Gallery of forty- seven large pictures, which, however, was not a financial success, therefore in 1780 Fuseli complained that the public would feed him with honour, but leave him to starve. He became a Koyal Academician, and Professor of Painting, a post which he held till his death. In proceeding to speak of artists of the English school, we must remember that we have not to deal with men gathered round a great master, as is the case with many foreign painters. Each English artist has origina.lity, and stands by himself. It will be most convenient therefore to treat them according to the special branch of art which they severally followed, i.e. Historic, Portrait, Landscape, or Animal painting. Histoeical Painting had hitherto found little favour in England, nor were the pictures produced in that line worthy of much regard. Reynolds attempted it in Ugolino and the Infant Hercules, but it is not by means of such pictures he will be remembered. There were others who devoted themselves to what they styled high art, with earnestness worthy of greater success than they achieved. Benjamin West (1738 — 1820) was born at Springfield, Penn- sylvania, and of Quaker parents who descended from a Bucking- hamshire family of the same persuasion. He early showed signs of artistic genius, and strange stories have been told of the precocity of the child. West received his first colours from Indians, and made his first paint-brush from a cat's tail. A box 66 ENGLISH PAINTEES of colours, given by a merchant when he was nine years old, encouraged him to persevere ; and we know that the donor of the box introduced him to a painter named Williams, of Phila- delphia, from whom he derived instruction. West started in life at eighteen as a portrait painter ; first at Philadelphia, then at New York. In 1760, he visited Italy, and, after remaining there three years, proceeded to England. He had intended to return to America, but became so successful that he settled in London. In Kome the young American created' a sensation, and the blind Cardinal Albani, whose acquaintance with Americans must have been limited, asked if he was black or white. In London West was greatly sought after, and in 1766, three years' after his arrival, he finished Orestes and Pijlades (National Gallery) ; his house was besieged by the fashionable world, eager for a glimpse of the picture. West now found many patrons, among them the Bishops of Bristol and Worcester, and Drummond, Archbishop of York. The Archbishop was so charmed by Agrippa with the Ashes of Germanicus, that he introduced West to George III., who became a warm and faithful supporter of the artist. From 1767 to 1802 West was almost exclusively employed by the King, and received large sums of money. He was one of the original members of the Eoyal Academy, and on the death of Eeynolds, became President. His inaugural address, which, like all he did, was highly praised, had two subjects — the excellence of British art and the gracious benevolence of his Majesty. The illness of George III. put an end to West's attendance at Court, and he proceeded into a wider field of art, choosing that of religion. Here he was more successful than in many of his former pictures, as in Christ healing the Sick (National Gallery), Christ rejected, and Death on the Pale Horse. He died on the 11th of March, 1820, aged eighty-two. West, so popular in the days of George III., is utterly neglected now. If he aimed at being great, he succeeded only in the size of his pictures. A cold, passionless mediocrity IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 67 ■was the highest point to which he attained, and of his pictures we may say as the old Scotsman said of Rob Roy, that they are " too bad for blessing, and too good for banning." Redgrave says: "His compositions were more studied than natural, the action often conventional and dramatic ; the draperies, although learned, heavy and without truth. His colour often wants freshness and variety of tint, and is hot and foxy.'' We owe to West, however, the example of courage in attempting great religious subjects, and in departing from the absurd custom of representing the warriors of all nations clad like ancient Romans. In his Death of Wolfe, West insisted, contrary to the advice of Reynolds, in painting his soldiers in their proper dress. John Singleton Coi'ley, R.A. (1737 — 1815), was born at Boston, America, then one of our colonies, his father being English and his mother Irish. Boston in those days could offer no facilities for art-education, but Copley went to Nature — the best of teachers. He commenced with portraits and domestic life, and between 1760 and 1767 sent pictures to London, where they excited considerable interest. In 1774, he visited the Old World, first England, then Italy, and finally settled in London in 1775. In the following year he exhibited a " conversation " piece at the Royal Academy, and was elected an Associate in 1777. In 1778, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, whilst speaking in the House of Lords against the practice of taxing our colonists without their consent, was seized with a fatal illness. This incident, specially interesting to an American, suggested The Death of the Earl of Chatham (National Gallery), which at once raised the painter to a high place in the ranks of British artists. The popularity of Copley was greatly owing to his choice of subjects. Instead of dealing with ancient history or classic fables, with which the general public was but imperfectly acquainted, he selected events of the day, or of modern times, and contrived to combine portraiture, ever popular in England, f2 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 69 with the dramatic incidents of his pictures. Copley was made a full member of the Royal Academy in 1779, and maintained his popularity by The Death of Major Peirson (National Gallery) — which represents an attack of the French on St. Helier's, Jersey, in 1781, and the fall of young Major Peirson in the moment of his victory. Following the path thus wisely selected, Copley produced Charles I. ordering the Arrest of the Five Members, The Repulse of the Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar by Lord Heathfield (painted for the City of London, now in the Guildhall), The Assassination of Buckingham, The Battle of the Boyne, &c. He exhibited only forty-two works in the Eoyal Academy, all of which were portraits except The Offer of the Crown to Lady Jane Grey, and The liesurrection. In sacred subjects, Copley was far less successful than in the particular style of art to which he mainly adhered. His son became famous as Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. James Barry, R.A. (1741 — 1806), who was a contemporary of Benjamin West, and, like him, aimed at high art, formed a marked contrast to the favourite painter of George III. Whilst West was well fed and well clothed, rich, easy-tempered, and happy, Barry was often ragged, sometimes starving, always poor, and seldom out of a passion. He was born at Cork, the son of a small coasting trader who kept a tavern. From such un- congenial surroundings Barry made his way to Dublin, and exhibited The Baptism, of the King of Cashel by St. Patrick. This work attracted considerable notice, and secured for the artist the patronage of Burke, who sent him to Italy. This was in 1765, but previously to this date Barry had already visited London, and lived by copying in oil the drawings of "Athenian Stuart," the Serjeant-Painter who succeeded Ho- garth. Barry's studies in Italy confirmed his ambitious design to become a painter of high art subjects. With characteristic boldness he entered the field against the greatest masters, and whilst at Rome painted Adam and Eve, which he thought 70 ENGLISH PAINTEBS superior to Eaphael's masterpiece of the same siibject. Ee- turning to England in 1770, Barry exhibited this picture, and began Venus rising from the Sea, which was exhibited in 1772 ; he was elected a E.A. in the following year. His undisciplined Mekcdry intenting the Lybe. J3ij Baeby. temper ensured him many enemies, and estranged his few friends ; he even quarrelled with- Burke. His pride and courage were in- domitable, and he worked on through good and ill reports, never IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 71 swerving from the course he had marked out, and contemptuously dismissing any chance sitter for a portrait to " the- fellow in Leicester Square," as he styled Sir Joshua lleynolds. In 1777, Barry undertook to paint in the Great Room of the Society of Arts at the Adelphi a series of pictures illustrating Human Culture. Ho had previously offered to decorate the interior of St. Paul's. He began to work at the Adelphi with sixteen shillings in his pocket, and toiled there during seven years, being often in absolute want. The Society provided him with models and materials only, and Barry was to receive the pro- ceeds of exhibiting his work in return for his unpaid labours. The hope of fame enabled "the little ordinary man with the dirty shirt " to support himself through the long years of want and semi-starvation, whilst he was working for the glory which never came. Barry finished the pictures at the Adelphi in 1783, and called them severally The Sto7-ij of Orpheus; A Thanksgiving to Ceres and Bacchus; The Victors of Olympia; Navigation, or tlie Triumph of the Thames ; Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts; and Elysium, or the State of Final Retribution. The luckless artist had been appointed Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy in 1772, but outbursts of passion and furious attacks on his brethren led to his removal from the post, and, in 1779, to his expulsion from the Academy. He died miserably, in 1806, at the wretched house he called a home, . and the honours which had never blossomed for the living man were bestowed on the corpse, which lay in state at the Adelphi, surrounded by the work of his hands. He was buried in St. Paul's. "There he rests side by side with the great ones of his profession. Posterity had reversed the positions of West and his competitor, the first is last, and the last first ; but it was hardly to be expected that the young would be anxious to follow Barry in a line of art in which neither ability nor perse- verance seemed to succeed, or to start in a career for which not even princely patronage could obtain public sympathy, nor 72 ENGLISH PAINTEKS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ■ innate genius, with life-long devotion, win present fame, hardly indeed a bare subsistence." (Redgrave.) Eeturning for a moment to Portrait Painters, we find two of that class who were contemporary with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of whom the first nearly equalled the president in popularity. Geoege Romney (1734 — 1802) was born near Dalton-in-Fur- ness, North Lancashire, and for some years followed his father's craft of cabinet-making. The story of his life is one of marked success and singular selfishness. He first studied art with Edward Steele, of Kendal, a portrait painter of some skill and reputation, who had painted Sterne. Whilst assisting his master to elope with his future wife, Romney fell ill, and was nursed by young Mary Abbot. He rewarded the devotion of his nurse by marrying her, and when she was the mother of two children, by leaving her at home poor and alone, whilst he was rich and famous in London. During a long and successful career Romney only visited his family twice, to find on the second occasion his daughter dead, and his son grown up and in Holy Orders. The painter's strange, selfish life ended in imbecility, and the patient wife who had nursed the youth of twenty-three, soothed the last hours of the man of seventy, whose fame she had never shared. Romney was as eccentric in life as in his genius. Shunning the society of his fellow artists, he complained of their neglect, and refused to enter the Royal Academy. It was said of Sterne that " he would shed tears over a dead donkey whilst he left a living mother to starve." In like manner Romney wrote gushing words of sympathy for the widow of another man, whilst his own wife had been practically widowed for more than thirty years. Of the intercourse of Romney with the fair and frail Emma Lyon, who, as Lady Hamilton, exercised an influence for evil over him and over Nelson, it is not our province to speak. The fitful temper of the painter led him to begin numerous pictures he never finished, cart-loads of which were removed from his Mabquis op Stappokd. By Komney. In the possession of the Suhe of Sutherland. 74 ENGLISH PAINTEES house at Hampstead. Romney's want of steadfastness often compelled him to abandon works of which the conception was greater than the power to carry it out. There was a want of thoroughness about him, and even the pictures which he finished seemed incomplete to those who did not understand them. Noteworthy among these are Ophelia, The Infant Shakespeare, and The Shipwreck, from " The Tempest.'' His portraits, how- ever, form the greater class of his productions. In the National Gallery are Study of Lachj Hamilton as a Bacchante, and The Parson's Daughter. " We may sum up all that is to be said of Romney in this : that whatever he did Reynolds had done much better ; that his art did not advance the taste of the age, or the reputation of the school, and that it is quite clear, however fashion or faction may have upheld him in his own day, the succeeding race of painters owed little or nothing to his teach- ing." (Redgrave.) A harsh and unsympathizing judgment. Truer is it that he never offended the finest taste in art, that he was a very fair draughtsman, a sound and accom- plished painter, who delineated ladies with the taste of a Greek, and children with exemplary sweetness. Joseph WEiaHi (1734 — 1797) is, from his birth-place, commonly known as Weight of Debby. Quitting his native town, where his father was an attorney, he reached London in 1751 and became a pupil of Hudson, the portrait painter. Wright aimed at historical painting, but his works are chiefly single portraits, and conversation pieces. After revisiting Derby, he returned to Hudson's studio for a while, and then settled in his native town, where he practised his art with success. He often represented candle-light and fire-light effects, as may be seen in The Orrery, The Iron 'Forge, and The Experi- ment with the Air-Pv.nip (National Gallery). Marrying in 1773, Wright went with his wife to Italy and remained there two years. He witnessed an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and painted that event with success, as well as the display of fire- IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 75 works at the Castle of St. Angelo, at Rome, which is known as the Qirandola. Returning to England, Wright painted at first at Bath ; but being unsuccessful, he returned to Derby, where he died in 1797. He contributed a few works to the Royal Academy after quitting Italy ; Vesuvius, and the Girandola were exhibited there in 1778. Wright was elected an Associate in 1782, but removed his name from the Academy books two years later. This step was taken either because Edmund Garvey, a landscape painter, was elected a R.A. before him, or because Wright had refused to comply with one of the Academy rules, and present works to the society before receiving his diploma. He was said to be a shy, irritable man, always ill, or fancying himself so, and ready to take offence easily. Such are the unconfirmed statements of the advocates of the Academy. He painted landscapes in his latter days. The Head of UUeswater was his laSt picture. Best known among his works are The dead Soldier, Belshazzar's Feast, Hero and Leander, The Storm (from "Winter's Tale"), and Cicero's Villa. Wright's most remarkable fire-light eifects are The Hermit, The Gladiator, The Indian Widow, The Orrery, and, already mentioned, the Air-Pump. Like Hogarth and Copley, he painted in that solid old English method which insured the preservation of his works. " On the whole it cannot be said that Wright's pictures have added much to the reputation of the British school. As a portrait painter he is hardly in the second rank." His portraits have a heavy look ; of his landscapes it has been averred that " they are large and simple in manner, but heavy and empty.'' THE SUCCESSORS OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Portrait-painting, always popular in England, continued to flourish after the deaths of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Although the magic touches of these masters cannot be found in the art of their immediate followers, their influence pro- 76 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. duced several original and independent artists, who, though successors, were not imitators. Nathaniel Dance (1734—1811) studied art under Frank Hayman, E.A., and visited Italy with Angelica Kauffman. Eeturning to England he achieved success as a painter, both of portraits and historic pieces. He was one of the original members of the Royal Academy, from which he retired in 1790, on marrying a wealthy widow : he took the name of Holland and was made a baronet ten years later. His best- known works are the Death of Virginia, Garrick as Richard III., Timon of Athens (Royal Collection) and Captain Cook (Green- wich Hospital). James Noethcote (1746 — 1831), the son of a watchmaker of Plymouth, spent seven years as an apprentice to his father's craft, all the while longing to be a painter. He was a man of indefatigable industry, who, in spite of a defective education and few opportunities for improvement, made his mark both as an artist and a writer on art. He was the favourite pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his first biographer. Leaving Reynolds in 1775, Northcote returned to Devonshire, and for two years successfully painted portraits. From 1777 to 1780 he was in Italy studying the old masters, especially Titian. He settled in London on returning home, and maintained himself by portrait-painting. He was, however, ambitious to succeed with historic pictures, though compelled to confine himself to more saleable subjects, such as A Visit to Grandmamma, and similar domestic scenes. Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery gave North- cote a new opening in the line he yearned to practise. Among nine pictures produced for this series, that of the Murder of the Young Princes in the Tower, painted in 1786, brought the artist prominently into notice. The Death of Wat Tyler, now in Guildhall, London, is one of his best works. His Diligent and Dissipated Sen-ants, a series suggested by Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices, falls very far below the standard of Chahity. By Nobthcote. a.d. 1783. 78 ENGLISH PAINTEKS the original series. Noteworthy facts in Northcote's historic pictures are the incongruity of the dresses, and frequent gross anachronisms. Thus we have Sisera lying on a feather bed and attired like a trooper of Cromwell's Ironsides, and Jael dressed like a modern maid-of-all-work. In the Shakespearian pictures Hubert of the thirteenth century, and Eichard III. of the fifteenth century, alike wear the dress of Elizabeth's day. Wat Tyler and the murderers in the Tower wear the same armour, which belongs to the Stuart period. Such mistakes, however, were common among all painters of his time. John Opie (1761 — 1807), the rival and friend of Northcote, was like him a AVest countryman, and like him rose from the ranks. Born at St. Agnes, near Truro, the son of a carpenter, Opie early showed intelligence and quickness in acquiring knowledge which marked him out for a higher sphere than a carpenter's shop. After evincing taste for art, and disgusting his father by decorating a saw-pit with chalk, he found patrons in Lord Bateman and Dr. Wolcot, the famous Peter Pindar. Some biographers have described Opie as becoming the doctor's footboy, but this is a mistake. Walcot brought the young painter to London and introduced him to Sir Joshua Reynolds, but the selfish patronage of the doctor soon came to an end. Opie was at first vigorously advertised in London as " the Cornish Wonder " — " the Cornish boy, in tin-mines hred, Whose native genius, like his diamonds, shone In secret, till chance gave him to the sun." Eeynolds told Northcote that Opie was "like Caravaggio and Velasquez in one." In 1782 the painter married his first wife, from whom he was subsequently divorced owing to her mis- conduct. Although Opie was no longer the wonder of the hour in fickle London, he was achieving more enduring fame. His defective education, both in literature and art, left much to be learned, and he set himself to supply his defects with a laborious IN THE EIGHTEENTH OENTDKY. 79 zeal ■which finally affected his brain and prematurely ended bis life. His earliest works in London were studies of heads and portraits. In 178G, he produced tbe Assassination of James I. of Scotland, a Sleepiiii) Nipnph, and Cupid stealing a Kiss. Next year saw his Murder of David Eizzio. He was elected an Associate of the Eoyal Academy in 1787, and a full member within a year. In the next seven years he exhibited twenty pictures, all portraits. Opie was engaged to paint for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and contributed five pictures, which improved as they progressed. Portrait-painting continued to be, however, the most lucrative pursuit, and having been introduced to some patrons at Norwich, Opie saw and married Amelia Alderson, who afterwards wrote Memoirs of her husband, and described the hard struggles which he had at times to encounter. His love for art and untiring industry remained to the last. Even when dying, and at times delirious, he gave advice about the finishing of pictures which he wished to send to the Academy. It was said of him, that "whilst other artists painted to live, he lived to paint." He was buried in St. Paul's. Opie wrote several works on art, and was Professor of Painting in the Eoyal Academy. His answer to a troublesome inquirer truly expresses the character of his work. " What do I mix my colours with ? Why, with brains." Two of Opie's pictures are in the National Gallery — a Portrait of William Siddons, and Troilus, Cressida, and]Pandarus. Of his art generally it maybe said that he possessed considerable powerand breadth of treat- ment. His handling was often coarse, and his colouring crude, especially in female portraits ; in fact, coarseness was the leading characteristic of works which were never tame or spiritless. Snt William Beechey (1753 — 1839) was a portrait painter who received a considerable share of Court favour. He is variously stated to have begun life as a house-painter, or as a solicitor's clerk. He devoted himself to the study of art at the Royal Academy. He lived for a time at Norwich, produced 80 ENGLISH PAINTERS conversation pieces in the" style of Hogarth, but finally settled in London as a portrait painter, and practised -with considerable success. In 1793 Beecbey was elected A.R.A., and executed a portrait of Queen Charlotte, -who was so well pleased with it that she appointed him her Majesty's portrait painter. Thus introduced to Court, Beechey trod "the primrose path" of success, and in 1798 painted an equestrian portrait of George III., with likenesses of the Prince of Wales and Duke of York at a review in Hyde Park. The painter was knighted, and elected a Royal Academician. The picture of George III. Reviewing the Qrd and 10th Dragoons is at Hampton Court. His Portrait of Nollekens, the sculptor, is in the National Gallery. Beechey' s chief merit is accuracy of likeness. John Hoppneb (1759 — 1810) was another portrait painter who prospered at Court. At first a chorister in the Chapel Eoyal, he studied art at the Academy schools, became an Associate in 1793, and was elected full member in 1795. He enjoyed vast popularity as a portrait painter, finding a rival only in Lawrence. Many of Hoppner's best works are at St. James's Palace. Three of them are in the National Gallery — William Pitt, " Gentleman " Smith, the actor, and the Countess of Oxford. Three of bis works are at Hampton Court ; among them is Mrs. Jordan as the Comic Muse. Examples of the work of nearly all the above-mentioned portrait painters may be consulted in the National Portrait Gallery at South Kensington. ANIMAL PAINTERS. The first animal painters in England were willing to win money, if not fame, by taking the portraits of favourite race- horses and prize oxen for the country squires, who loved to decorate their walls with pictures of their ancestors, and their studs. The first to make a name in this branch of art was John WooTTON, a pupil of John Wyck. He became famous in the IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUBY. 81 sporting circles of Newmarket for his likenesses of race-horses, and received large sums for pictures of dogs and horses. Later, he attempted landscapes, chiefly hunting scenes. His works are in country mansions, especially at Blenheim, Longleat, and Dytchley. Wootton died in 1765. James Seymour (1702 — 1752) was famous also as a painter of race-horses and hunting-pieces ; he is best known by the engravings after his works. Geobge Stubbs (1724 — 1806) was the son of a Liverpool surgeon, from whom he probably inherited his love for anatomy. He worked at painting and conducted anatomic studies with equal zeal throughout his life, and is said to have carried, on one occasion, a dead horse oh his back to his dissecting-room. This story is more than doubtful, though Stubbs was a man of great physical strength. He was the first to give the poetry of life and motion to pictures of animals, and to go beyond the mere portrait of a Newmarket favourite or an over-fed ox. The Koyal Academy elected him an Associate in 1780, but as he declined to present one of his works, he was never made a full member. Among his works are a Lion killing a Horse, a Tiger lying in his Den, a noble life-size portrait of the famous racing- horse Whistle-jacket, which is at Wentworth Woodhouse, and The Fall of Phaeton. The last picture he repeated four times. He published The Anatomy of the Horse, with etchings from his own dissections. Saweey Gilpin (1733 — 1807) attained considerable success as an animal painter. HewasbornatCarlisle,andwas sent to London as a clerk. Like many others he preferred the studio to the office, and having obtained the favour of the Duke of Cumberland at Newmarket, Gilpin was provided with a set of rooms, and soon became known as a painter of horses. In 1770 he ex- hibited at Spring Gardens Darius obtaining the Persian Empire hy the Neighing of his Horse, and next year Gulliver taking Leave of the Houyhnhnms. Gilpin was elected a K.A. in 1797. 82 ENGLISH PAINTEES Geoege Moeland (1763—1804), though not exclusively an animal painter, is best known in that branch of art. His life's story describes wasted opportunities, reckless extravagance, and misused talents. Brought up with unwise strictness by his father, Heney Eobeet Moeland (died 1797), a portrait painter The "Waiering Place. • By Moeland. of note, George Morland no sooner escaped from home discir pline than he began that course of riotous living which ended in a dishonoured grave, for which he prepared the epitaph : — " Here lies a drunken dog." It is a mistake to suppose that Morland was a self-taught genius, since, although his father IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 83 objected to his entering the Academy schools, he himself was his teacher, and so assiduously kept the boy at his studies that he learned to hate the name of work. As early as 1779 young Morland was an honorary exhibitor of sketches at the Academy. At nineteen he had thrown off home ties, and was living a reckless life of debauchery. Lifee most prodigals who think themselves free, Morland became a slave. His task-master was a picture dealer, who made money by the gehius of the youth whose ruin he promoted. Leaving him, the artist went to Margate, and painted miniatures for a time, going thence to France. He would settle to no regular work, although his necessities compelled him at times to' labour lest he should starve. The next scene in Morland's life is his sojourn with his friend William Ward, the mezzotint-engraver, where an honourable attachment to Nancy Ward for a time induced him to work. The pictures he painted at this time were suggested by Hogarth's works, and had subjects with which Morland was only too well acquainted. The Idle and Industrious Mechanic, The Idle Laundress and Industrious Cottager, Letitia, or Seduction (a series), were studied from the life. In 1786 Morland married Miss Ward, but there was no improvement in his manner of life. Sometimes he was surrounded by eager purchasers, and using his popularity as a means for greater extravagance. At one time we see him keeping ten or twelve horses, and cheated right and left by profligates who combined horse-racing, betting, and picture dealing. The luckless Morland was the ready victim of these associates. His pictures were copied as he painted them, during his temporary absence from the studio. In 1790 Morland was at his best. The Gipsies being painted two years later. His last days were dark indeed. Loaded with debt, and dreading arrest, he laboured like a slave, seldom leaving his studio, where his pot-companions alternately rioted and acted as his models, and dogs, pigs, and birds shared the disorderly room. In 1799, he was arrested, and g2 84 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH OENTUKY. lived within the Eules of the Fleet, amid all the debaucheries of that evil place and time. Freed by the Insolvent Act in 1802, the painter, broken in health and ruined in character, was once again arrested for a tavern score, and ended his life in a sponging-house on October 29th, 1804. His wife died of grief three days later, and was interred with her husband in the burial-ground of St. James's Chapel, Hampstead Eoad. Morland chiefly painted country scenes, the memories of happier days, and introduced animals, such as pigs and asses, to his works. Produced for existence, and in a fitful, uncer- tain manner, his pictures were hastily conceived, and painted with little thought or study. He did much to bring the simple beauty of English scenes before the eyes of the public, and to teach Englishmen that they need not go to Italy in search of subjects for their art. Morland loved low company, even in his pictures, and was at home in a ruined stable, with a ragged jackass, and "dirty Brookes," the cobbler. In the National Gallery are : The Inside of a Stable, said to be the White Lion at Paddington, and A Quarry with Peasants, by him. In the South Kensington Museum is an excellent example of his art, called The Reckoning ; and in the National Portrait Gallery is his own portrait, painted by himself at an early age. CHAPTER VI. BOOK ILLUSTRATORS. THE earliest book illustrations in England were illuminations and repetitions of them on wood. Frontispieces followed, in which a portrait was surrounded by an allegory. Of this branch of art William Faithoenb (1616 — 1691) and David LoGGAN (about 1630 — 1693) were practitioners. Topographical views, subjects from natural history, and botany followed. Hogarth's designs for "Hudibras" were among the earlier illustrations of a story. Francis Hayman (1708 — 1776), his friend, illustrated Congreve's plays, Milton, Hanmer's Shake- speare, and other works. He was followed by Samuel Wale (died 1786), and Joseph Highmoeb (1692—1780), who illus- trated "Pamela." Towards the close of the eighteenth century, book illustrations had become a recognised class of art-works. Bell's " British Poets," commenced in 1778, the British Theatre, and Shakespeare, opened a wide field for artists of this order. Cipriani, Angelica Kauffman, William Hamilton, and Francis Wheatley, all members of the Royal Academy, were employed to illustrate Bell's publications. Famous among book illus- trators was — William Blake (1757 — 1827). — Though born in no higher grade than that of trade, and in no. more romantic spot than Broad Street, Golden Square, William Blake, a hosier's son, was a poet, a painter, an engraver, and even a printer. His 86 ENGLISH PAINTERS. genius was of an original, eccentric kind, and there were many who believed him crazed. During his long life he was "a dreamer of dreams " and a poetic visionary. Now he was meeting " the grey, luminous, majestic, colossal shadows " of Moses and Dante ; now believing that Lot occupied the vacant chair in his painting-room. Anon he fancied that his dead brother had revealed to him a new process of drawing on copper, which he practised with great success. Neglected Trom: Dante's Inpekno. By Blake. and misunderstood, Blake was always busy, always poor, and always happy. He lived beyond the cares of every-day life, in a dream-world of his own, occasionally " seeing fairies' funerals, or drawing the demon of a flea." In spite of poverty and neglect, the poet-painter was contented. Kescued from the hosier's business, for which he was intended, Blake at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to the younger Basire, an engraver. Throughout his life he worked not for money but for art. BOOK ILLUSTKATOES. 87 declaring that his business was " not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes, expressing godlike sentiments." Hard work with the graver gave him bread, and when the day's toil was over he could illustrate teeming fancies in pictures and in verses. He worked at first chiefly at book illustrations. Marrying in his twenty-fifth year, his wife, named Katharine Boucher, proved a faithful and useful helpmeet, one who con- sidered her husband's excursions to be dictated by superior knowledge. Blake's courtship was brief and characteristic. As he was telling his future wife of his troubles, caused by the levity of another damsel, she said, "I pity you.'' "Do you pity me?" answered the painter; "then I love you for it!" And they were married. It is not wonderful that Blake's con temporaries thought him mad, as he often did strange things. In 1791 Blake designed and engraved six plates to illustrate " Tales for Children " by Mary WoUstonecraft, and later, his "Book of Job," Dante's "Inferno," Young's "Night's Thoughts," Blair's " Grave," and other series. Many of his designs show majestic and beautiful thoughts, a bizarre, but frequently soaring and stupendous invention, great beauty of colour, energy, sweetness, and even beauty of form ; they were rarely otherwise than poetic. Some are natural and simple, with occasional flashes, such as belonged to all Blake's produc- tions. The process of drawing on, or rather excavating copper, which he declared had been revealed to him by his brother's ghost, ftimished a raised surface, from which Blake was able to print both the design and the verses he composed. By this process he produced his own "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," sixty-eight lyrics, of which it has been said that " they might have been written by an inspired child, and are unapproached save by Wordsworth for exquisite tenderness or for fervour." Then followed " America, a Prophecy," and " Europe, a Pro- phecy," irregularly versified, imaginative, and almost unin- telligible productions. He was illustrating Dante when he 88 ENGLISH PAINTERS. died, and, happy to the last, passed away singing extempora- neous songs. Thomas Stothakd (1755 — 1834) began life as a designer for brocaded sUks, but, on finding the true bent of his genius, he made designs for the " Town and Country Magazine," and the The Dkeam. By Stothakd. "Novelist's Magazine," " Ossian," and Bell's "Poets." His works deal with the gentler and sweeter side of human nature, and we can trace the quiet, simple character of the man in them. His eleven illustrations of " Peregrine Pickle " appeared in 1781, and are excellent examples of his truthfulness and grace. He was essentially a quietist, and scenes of passion and tumult BOOK ILLUSTEATOES. 89 were foreign to his genius. Trunnion and Pipes became living men under his pencil, and " Clarissa" and others of Eiohardson's romances gained from him an immortality which they would never have acquired by their own merits. In 1788 Stothard produced illustrations of the "Pilgrim's Progress," which, though possessing sweetness and beauty, deal with subjects beyond his grasp. His designs for " Robinson Crusoe " are among his best works. Stothard was made 'an A.R.A. in 1791, and a full member of the Koyal Academy in 1794. His best known painting is Intemperance, on the staircase of Burghley House, in Northamptonshire. There are eight works by him in the National Gallery, including the original sketch of Intemperance. One of his most popular, though not the best of his pictures, is the Procession of the Canterbury Pilyrims. A collection of Stothard's designs is in the British Museum. John Hamilton Mortimer (1741 — 1779), a native of East- bourne, came to London, and made a promising beginning in the world of art. He gained the Society of Arts's premium of a hundred guineas with St. Paul converting the Britons, and painted other large historic pictures. Mortimer, however, fell into extravagant habits, and neglected art. His oil paintings are "heavy and disagreeable in colour;" his drawings are better. He drew designs for Bell's " Poets," "Shakespeare," and other works, choosing scenes in which bandits and monsters play conspicuous parts. Thomas Kjek (died 1797), a pupil of Cosway, was an artist of much promise. His best works were designs for Cooke's "Poets." Richard Westall (1765 — 1836) was a designer for books as well as a water-colour painter. He made designs for Bibles and Prayer-books, which were very popular. His best-known works are illustrations of the " Arabian Nights." His brother William Westall (1781 — 1850), was a designer of consider- able note, especially of landscapes. 90 ENGUSH PAINTEES. EoBEET Smirke (1752—1845), a native of Wigton, in Cumber- land, is chiefly known by his illastrations of Shakespeare and Cervantes. He came early to London, and, as an apprentice to an heraldic painter, decorated coach panels. He studied The Portrait. By Smibke. at the Academy, and in 1786 exhibited Sahrina, from "Comus," and Narcissus'. When chosen a full member of the Academy Smirke's diploma picture was Don Quixote and Saneho. In the National Gallery are twelve illustrations of " Don BOOK ILLUSTHATOES, 91 Quixote," three representing scenes of the same story, and a scene from the " Hypocrite," in which Maiuworm, Dr. Cant- well, and Lady Lambert appear. Thomas Uwins (1782 — 1857) began life as an apprentice to an engraver, entered the Royal Academy schools, and became known as a designer for books, as well as a portrait painter. His book designs were chiefly frontispieces, vignettes, and title- page adornments. Uwins for a time Tjelonged to the Society of "Water-colour Painters— from 1809 to 1818. In 1824 he visited Italy, and, after seven years' sojourn, returned to win fame and honour by oil paintings. He was elected an A.R.A. in 1833 ; a Royal Academician in 1839, and subsequently held the offices of Librarian to the Academy, Surveyor of her Majesty's Pictures, and Keeper of the National Gallery. Among his best pictures are Le Chapeau de Brigand, and the Vintage in the Claret Vineyards (National Gallery) ; The Italian Mother teaching her Child the Tarantella, and a Neapolitan Boy decorating the Head of his Innamorata (South Kensington Museum). Before quitting this branch of art mention must be made of one who, though an engraver and not a painter, occupies an important place among book illustrators : — Thomas Bewick (1753 — 1828), born at Cherryburn, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, adopted a fine mode of wood-engraving. Hitherto many illustrations of books had been engraved on copper, and were necessarily separate from the letterpress. Bewick's process allowed the cut and the words it illustrated to be printed at the same time. In this way he adorned " Gay's Fables," a " General History of Quadrupeds," and his most famous work, "The History of British Birds" (1797), in which he showed the knowledge of a naturalist combined with the skill of an artist. His last work was the illustrations of JEsop's Fables, upon which he was engaged six years. He 92 ENGLISH PAINTERS. was assisted by his brother John Bewick, who founded a school of wood-engravers, and by some of John's pupils, among whom were Robert Johnson and Luke Clennell. We have already seen that modem English art began with portraiture, which always has been, and always will be, popular. We have noticed some miniature painters, or "limners in little," who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when miniature painting had among its greatest masters Samuel Cooper, who has never been surpassed. The Woodcock. I'rom " Biatory of British Birds," by Thomas Bewick. Thomas Flatman (1633 — 1688), an Oxford man and a bar- rister, who deserted the Bar and became a painter, obtained great success in miniature. Alexander Browne, his contemporary, painted portraits of Charles II. and other members of the Court. He was also an engraver and published, in 1699, a work entitled "Ars Pictoria," with thirty-one etchings. MINIATUKE PAINTERS. 93 Lewis Ceosse (died 1724) was the chief miniature painter of Queen Anne's reign. Charles Boit, a Swede by birth, practised at this period as a miniature painter. Failing in his business as a jeweller, he left London in order to teach drawing in the country. Here he is said to have induced a pupil, daughter of an officer, to promise him marriage, and the intrigue having been discovered, the expectant bridegroom was thrown into prison for two years, where he employed himself in acquiring the art of enamel-painting. Miniature painting is of two kinds — portraits in water colour on ivory and in enamel on copper, Tailpiece hy Bewick. the latter being the more complicated mode. Boit on his release practised miniature-painting in London, and gained high prices for his works, although his colouring is by no means pleasant. He was in favour at Court, but, while attempting to prepare a plate larger than ordinary to contain portraits of the Eoyal family and chief courtiers, Queen Anne died, and Boit, having borrowed money for the plate, was left without hope of being able to pay his creditors. Escaping to France, he again succeeded in his art, and died at Paris in 1726. 94 ENGLISH PAINTERS. Christian Frederick Zincke (1684 — 1767), though a native of Dresden, identified himself with art in England. He was a pupil of Boit, but soon outshone his master. His enamel painting was simple yet refined, his drawing graceful, his colour pleasing. George II. was among his numerous patrons. Several of Zinoke's enamels are in the Royal Collection. James Deacon succeeded Zincke as a tenant of his house in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, and bid fair to succeed to his place as a miniature painter, when he caught gaol fever at a trial at the Old Bailey, and died in 1750. Jarvis Spencer, who had been a domestic servant, gained by his talent and perseverance a high place among minia- ture painters of this period. Indeed, after the death of Deacon, he was the fashionable painter of his class. He died in 1763. Other artists combined the skill of a jeweller and goldsmith with that of an enameller. It was the fashion to decorate watches, brooches, snuff-boxes, and other trinkets with portraits of friends and lovers of the owner, and thus the work of the goldsmith and the miniature painter were allied. George Michael Moser, E.A. (1704 — 1783), the son of a sculptor at St. Gall, in Switzerland, came to England in his early days, and first gained notice as a chaser of brass-work, the favourite decoration of the furniture of that period. As an enamel painter he was justly celebrated, and employed to decorate the watch of George III. with portraits of the two elder Princes. He designed the Great Seal. Moser was a member of the St. Martin's Lane Academy, and in 1766 joined the Incorporated Society of Artists. He was a founder of the Royal Academy, and its first Keeper. Nathaniel Hone (1718 — 1784) stands next to Zincke as a miniature paints, although there is a wide gulf between them. He was self-taught, and on quitting his native Dublin, spent some time in the provinces practising as a portrait MINIATURE PAINTEKS. 95 painter, and afterwards achieved great success in London. He was one of the foundation members of the Eoyal Academy, but brought himself into disgrace with that body by lampooning the President in a picture which he sent for exhibition. Jeremiah Meyer (1735 — 1789) is said to have been a pupil of Zincke, but this is probably an error. Passing from the St. Martin's Lane Academy, Meyer, a native of Wiirtemberg, became Enamel Painter to George III., and Miniature Painter to the Queen. Careful study of Keynolds is apparent in his works. He was one of the original members of the Eoyal Academy. EicHABD Collins (1755 — 1831), a pupil of Meyer, held the post of Miniature Painter to George III., and his works formed important elements in the Academy exhibitions. Samuel Shelley, though born in Whitechapel, surely an inartistic locality, and having little art education, became a fashionable miniature painter. He studied Eeynolds with ad- vantage, and treated historic incidents in miniature. He was one of the founders of the Water-Colour Society, and died in 1808. James Nkon, A.E.A. (about 1741 — 1812), was Limner to the Prince Eegent, and a clever designer of book illustrations. OziAS Humphrey (1742 — 1810) commenced miniature- , painting at Bath, after being a pupil in the Academy in St. Martin's Lane. He returned to London at the invitation of Eeynolds. A miniature exhibited by him in 1766 attracted universal notice, and gained for him patronage from the King. Compelled by ill health to go abroad in 1772, Humphrey studied Italian art, and came back in five years fired with a desire to attempt historical painting. Heye he failed, and neither by historic subjects nor portraits in oil could he gain the success attending his miniatures. Disappointed, he went to India in 1785, and painted illustrious natives of that country. Three years later Humphrey was re-established as a miniature painter in 96 ENGLISH PAINTERS. London, where lie was elected a Eoyal Academician in 1791. Six years later his eyesight entirely failed. It is said of his miniatures that they are the nearest to the pictures of Eeynolds. Humphrey was also successful in crayons. Geobge Engleheart, who exhibited miniature portraits at the Eoyal Academy as early as 1773, was, in 1790, appointed Miniature Painter to the King. He painted on both enamel and ivory. He exhibited until 1812. BicHAKD CoswAT (1740 — 1821) was famous for skill in minia- ture-painting, in which no one of his day could approach him, and for vanity, extravagance, and eccentricity. A specialite of his was the composition of small whole-lengths, the bodies of which were executed in pencil, the faces in colour. No beauty of the day was happy unless her charms had been delineated by Cosway; the fair companions of the Prince Eegent were among his warmest patrons, and the Prince was a frequent visitor to the artist. Cosway's wife, Maria, was a clever miniature painter, and worked for BoydelUs , Shake- speare and Macklin's " Poets.'' Of the scandals concerning her and her husband we need not speak. In his latter years Cosway professed to believe in Swedenborg, and in animal magnetism, pretended to be conversing with people abroad, claimed to have the power of raising the dead, and declared that the Virgin Mary frequently sat to him for her portrait. He was elected Associate of the Eoyal Academy in 1770, and full member in 1771. Heney Bone (1755 — 1834) commenced life as an apprentice to a porcelain manufacturer at Plymouth, where he painted flowers and landscapes on china, and secured success as an enameller. Passing from the manufactory, Bone began work in London by enamelling small trinkets. He first came into general notice in 1781, by means of a^ portrait of his own wife. Bone's success was rapid. He was made an Academician in 1811, and was Enamel Painter to George III., George IV., and MINIATURE PAINTERS. 97 "William IV. His most famous works were miniatures after Beynolds, Titian, Murillo and Baphael. Bemarkable also are his portraits of the Kussell family from Henry VH.'s reign, the famous royalists of the civil war, and eighty-five likenesses of Elizabethan worthies. Henry Edridgb (1769 — 1821) was another miniature painter, who owed some of his success to careful following of Keynolds. He painted miniatures on ivory, and for a time on paper, using the lead pencil over Indian ink washes. He was also highly successful as a landscape painter in water colours. Andrew BoBERTSON (1777 — 1845), the son of a cabinet-maker at Aberdeen, came to London on foot in 1801, and gained the patronage of Benjamin West, the President, whose portrait he painted. Robertson became, in due course, a very successful miniature painter, and practised his art for more than thirty years. His likenesses are truthful, but do not stand in the first rank of miniature-painting. Alfred Edward Chalon (1781 — 1860), born in Geneva, and of French extraction, holds a high place in the history of English art as a portrait painter in water colours ; his miniatures on ivory are full of life, vigour, and originality. He was elected B.A. in 1816. As a painter in oils, Alfred Chalon achieved a high degree of success. Hunt the Slipper, Samson and Delilah (exhibited for the second time at the International Exhibition in 1862), and Sophia Western deserve notice among his oil paintings. Chalon could not only paint with originality, but could catch the manner of the old masters with such accuracy, that some of his works were attributed even by the skilful to Bubens, Watteau, and others. His elder brother, John James Chalon (1778 — 1854), obtained celebrity as a landscape painter. William Essex (1784 — 1869) painted in enamel, and exhibited a portrait of the Empress Josephine, after Isabey, at the Boyal Academy in 1824. In 1839 he was appointed X' ' IViVf-' 1 •IS-I * 5 • - •.'-"■ ®&. 5V ■»*. M m ^fcs=. MoBNiNG Walk. £;/ Alfred E. Chalon. ENGLISH MINIATUEE PAINTERS. 99 painter in enamels to the Queen, and in 1841 to the Prince Consort. He was one of the last of the painters in enamel. William Derby (1786 — 1847) was celebrated for his careful copies in miniature of celebrated portraits. He was largely employed on Lodge's " Portraits of Illustrious Persons." With Sm William Charles Ross (1794—1860) ends the school of deceased miniature painters. Ross was an artist even in the nursery. He became an assistant to Andrew Robertson, and although his forte was miniature-painting, he longed for the higher flight of historic art. His Judgment of BrutHS, Christ casting out Devils (exhibited in 1825), and Tlie Angel Raphael discoursing with Adam and Eve (to which an additional premium of £100 was awarded at the Cartoon Exhibition in 1843), are specimens of his power in this branch of art, at different periods. It is as a miniature painter that he will live in the history of art. He was elected to the full rank of R.A. in 1839, and was knighted in the same year. The Court smUed upon him. He painted miniatures of the Queen and Royal Family, the Saxe-Grotha Family, and the King and Queen of Portugal, The late Emperor of the French, when Prince Louis Napoleon, was among his numerous sitters. h2 CHAPTEE Vn. PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS. (1750—1875.) WATEE-COLOUE painting is in one sense the most ancient mode of pictorial art. We find examples of it in the tombs of the Egyptians, in the Eoman catacombs, and in the houses of Pompeii. Oil painting is, in comparison, a modern process, though the statement that it was only discovered by the Van Eycks in the beginning of the fifteenth century, is now known to be a mistake. The earliest pictures were produced with colours soluble in water and mixed with certain ingredients necessary to fix them. In this way wall paintings were executed in tempera, a process familiar to us as painting in distemper. Eaphael's cartoons are specimens of tempera-painting on paper, and Mantegna's Triumph of Casar (Hampton Court) furnish examples of the like process on canvas. The art of water-colour painting was practised by the early Italian and German artists, and by those of the Flemish and Dutch schools. In most of the illuminations of missals, in this and other countries, water colours were used, mixed extensively with body white. Such was the case with the early miniature painters of England, who began by using opaque colours, and gradually advanced to transparent pigments. Notwithstanding the antiquity of painting in water colours, the creation of a School of Water-Colour Art, in the sense in which that term is now understood, belongs to this ENGLISH PAINTERS IN WATEB COLOURS, 101 country. It was not to the tempera painter, nor to the illumi- nator of missals, nor to the early miniaturist that we owe this modern school. We must look for its germ in the practice of the topographer, who drew ruins, buildings, and landscapes for the antiquary. The earliest of such works were executed in outline with a reed pen. Examples are to be seen in some small pictures by Albrecht Diirer, in the British Museum. The pigments used were transparent, and applied on paper. The earliest of these pictures are in monochrome, black or grey ; next, colour was added here and there, and the whole effect was something like that of a coloured print. Such were "the tinted," or " steyned " drawings in which our modem water- colour paintings originated. The early method prevailed for a long time, as may be seen in the historic collection of water- colour paintings at South Kensington, but gradually the art developed, better pigments were used, and, as early as 1790, a marked improvement accrued, which led to the triumphs of Girtin and Turner, and the more brilliant examples of later days. One great advantage belongs to the modern school of water colours — it started from nature, untrammelled by conventional rules or traditions. The early topographers were brought face to face with nature; some of them, like Webber and Alexander, extended their observations to foreign lands ; others, finding out the beauties of their own country, were content to copy nature. "It remained to our artists towards the end of the last, and early in the present century, to give a new and higher character to water-colour art, which from obscure beginnings has risen to be a purely national and original school. Practised by a succession cf men of great genius, a distinct branch of art has been created, taking rank with works in oil. More luminous, and hardly less powerful than pictures in that medium, it has lent itself, in skilled hands, to the fullest expression of nature, and perfect rendering of the ideal. 102 ENGLISII PAINTERS Paul Sakdby (1725—1809) has been called " the father of water-colour art ; " but as he never advanced beyond the tinted mode, and to the last used Indian ink for shadows, and the pen for outlines, the title is unmerited. Sandby was a native of Nottingham, and having served in the Drawing Office in the Tower, he settled at Windsor in 1752, and became instructor in drawing to the children of George III. He was one of the original members of the Eoyal Academy in 1768, and at the same time was made drawing master in the Military School at Woolwich. He painted many scenes in the neighbourhood of Windsor, and for Sir Watkin W. Wynn and Sir Joseph Banks landscapes in Wales. Specimens of his art in body- colour and tinting are in the South Kensington collection, including An Ancient Beech Tree, which is painted in body- colour ; The Round Temple is in Indian ink, slightly tinted ; Landscape with Dog and figures, is in the fully tinted manner. Thomas Heakne (1744 — 1817) came early from Wiltshire to London, and was intended for trade. He was, however, appren- ticed to WooUett, the engraver. In 1771, he went to the Lee- ward Isles as draughtsman to the Governor, and this new occupation induced him to abandon engraving for topography. He tinted landscapes, with local colour largely used. His Village Alehouse, View of Richmond, two shipping scenes after Yan de Velde, and Caistor Castle are at South Kensington. William Payne, who at one time held a civil appointment in Plymouth dockyard, came to London in 1790. He had pre- viously exhibited tinted pictures of Devonshire scenery, which attracted the notice of Keynolds. He is best known as the introducer of a neutral colour, styled Payne's Grey. Alexander Cozens (died 1786), a natural son of Peter the Great, was born in Bussia. After studying art in Italy he came to England in 1746, and practised as a teacher of drawing. Gifted with a fine poetic feeling, and having a noble sense of IN WATER COLOURS. 103 breadth, this artist made a deep impression on those who followed him. John Webber (1752—1793) travelled in Italy, France, and Switzerland, and made numerous drawings. He was draughts- man to Captain Cook in his last voyage, and a witness of his death. JohnEobeet Cozens (1752 — 1799), son of Alexander Cozens, was one of the earliest who practised water-colour painting in the modern sense of the term. His works in the tinted manner are fuU of poetic beauty, and exhibit a marked improvement on those of his predecessors. At South Kensington may be seen his Chigi Palace near Albano. Constable, who was much im- pressed by Cozen's art, said that he was " the greatest genius who ever touched landscape." He was the first to go beyond topography, and to impart pathos to his pictures. Although he worked mainly in the received method of tinting, there are signs in his pictures of a noble progress, which was soon to become more marked. John Smith (1749—1831), called " Warwick Smith," pro- bably because he travelled in Italy with the Earl of Warwick, or on his behalf. Six of his Italian sketches are at South Kensington. Gainsborough said " he was the first water- colour painter who carried his intention through." In 1816 he was President of the Society of Painters in Water Colours. We must here briefly mention Thomas Eowlandson (1756 — 1827), who is best known by caricatures, including illustrations to "Doctor Syntax," "The Dance of Death," and " Dance of Life." William Alexander (1767 — 1816) accompanied Lord Macartney to China, in 1792, as draughtsman to the Mission. He was afterwards made Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. He illustrated many books of travel. Joshua Cbistall (1 767 — 1 847) , one of the foundation members of the Water-Colour Society, of which he was more than once President. He usually painted classic figures with landscape 104 ENGLISH PAINTEES backgrounds, and genre subjects. His Young Fisher Boy and Fish Market on Hastings Beach are at Sontb Kensington. Henky Edkidge, who made excellent drawings in Paris and in Normandy, we have already mentioned among the miniature painters. BoBEET Hills (1769 — 1844) represented animal painting in water colours, and may ]be styled the father of this branch of art. He frequently worked in conjunction with other artists ; as in Deei- in a Landscape (South Kensington), where the deer are painted by Hills, and the landscape is by Barret. Michael Angelo Booker (1743 — 1801) originally practised as an engraver, but, having been instructed in painting by Paul Sandby, forsook the graver, and worked as a student at the Eoyal Academy. Subsequently, he became principal scene- painter at the Haymarket Theatre. He used much local colour in tinted drawings, as may be seen in St. Botolph's Priory, and Boxgrove Priory Church (South Kensington Collection). Conspicuous among those artists who showed that the power and richness which were supposed to belong to oil painting only, could be produced in water colours, was — Thomas Gietin (1773 — 1802), who entirely revolutionised the technical practice of his forerunners, by laying in a whole picture with the local colours of its parts. Girtin found a friend and helper in Dr. Monro, who possessed many fine drawings, and allowed the young painters of the day free access to them. In the riverside scenery visible from the Doctor's house at the Adelphi, Girtin found congenial subjects for his art, as well as amid the old-world spots about Chelsea and Wandsworth. Later, he extended his travels, choosing cathedral cities in England, and visiting the Lake district, Scotland, and Wales. Girtin loved to depict scenes of gloom and grandeur, such as the melancholy Cumberland hills, and the sterner scenery of Scotland, whilst Turner, his friend and fellow-worker at Dr. Monro's house, depicted light, even when treating similar IN WATER C0L0UK3. 105 subjects to those which his friend affected. Girtin spent a great deal of valuable time in painting a panorama of London, which was much admired. He died at the age of twenty -nine, but he had lived long enough to make a great advance in water-colour painting, and to add power of effect, of colour, and of execution to the poetry with which Cozens had invested it. Favourable specimens of Girtin's art may be seen in a View on the Wharfe and Rievaulx Abbey (South Kensington). Geokge Babbet the younger (1774 — 1842) was one of the foundation members of the Water-Colour Society, He especially delighted in sunset effects. William De la Motte (1780 — 1863) was originally a pupil of President West, but abandoned oil for water colours. He painted landscapes in the style of Girtin, but more chiefly architecture and marine pieces. Of Joseph Malloed William Tdknee (1775 — 1851), we shall speak hereafter as a painter in oils ; here we must describe his influence in water-colour art, which was greater even than that of Girtin. " Many date the perfect development of water-colour painting from Gu-tin, but it is far more due to Turner, who, while he could paint in that medium with the power and strength of Girtin, added to that strength, delicacy and quality " [Redgrave). Turner is famous as a painter both in water colour and in oil, and as the artist of " Southern Coast Scenery," " England and Wales," " Eivers of France," Eoger's "Italy" and "Poems." His Liber Studioriim is a collection of valuable studies in monochrome, now in the National Gallery. His etchings from them are very celebrated. Mr. Eedgrave says of him, '■' If ever writer dipt his pen in poetry, surely Turner did his facile pencil, and was indeed one of nature's truest poets." His water-colour drawings are well represented in the National Gallery. In spite of the' marked progress of water-colour painting, there was as yet no adequate accommodation for the exhibition of 106 ENGLISH FAINIKBS drawings produced in that mode. The room assigned to works in water colour at the Eoyal Academy exhibitions was described as " a condemned cell." The general public still believed in the superiority of oil painting, and worshipped a big, indifferent Evening. — "Datur hora quieti." From a Drawing iy Ttiener. picture in that mode, whilst they allowed gems of art to hang unnoticed in the water-colour room. To remedy this the Water-Colour Society was founded on November 30th, 1804, the originators being Hills, Pyne, Shelley, Wills, Glover and IN WATER COLOURS. 107 Varley. William Sawrey Gilpin was the first President. This society gave new and increased vigour to water-colour art, and a second body, the Associated Artists in Water Colours, was formed in 1808. The older society exhibited the works of members only, the new association was less exclusive : the career of the latter was brief. The Water-Colour Society also lost popularity after a while, and in 1813 the members determined to dissolve it. Twelve of their number, however, were averse to this course, and maintained the annual exhibition during a few years, with small success. Meanwhile, the other members, in 1814, opened an exhibition in New Bond Street, and invited contributions from British water-colour artists who belonged to no other society. This effort failed. The original body styled itself " The Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours,'' for a time admitted oil paintings, and made other alterations in its rules, but in 1821 returned to its original constitution. In 1823 it was established in its present premises in Pall Mali East, since which date it has flourished. In 1881 it became The Eoyal Society of Painters in Water Colours. In 1881 The New Water-Colour Society was formed, a body which two years later changed its title to that of The New Society of Painters in Water Colours. In 1863 it became the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, a title it still retains. The great increase in the numbers of artists of this class rendered the formation of the second society necessary. A third exhibition of water colours was formed in the Dudley Gallery, which has recently undergone a reorganization in its Committee of Management. John Vaeley (1778 — 1842) was at first the assistant of a silversmith, then of a portrait painter, and subsequently of an architectural draughtsman. After a time he found his true vocation iu landscape-painting with water colours. He was as we have seen, one of the founders of the Water-Colour 108 ENGLISH PAINTEES IN WATER COLOUES. Society. His works are noteworthy for simplicity and pathos, but his later productions, owing to the necessity of working against time, are very slight. Varley chiefly painted "Welsh scenes, many of which are at South Kensington, e.g. Beddgel- lert Bridge and Harlech Castle. William Havell (1782 — 1857), another of the foundation members of the Water-Colour Society, was a constant exhibitor till 1817, when he visited India. On his return he chiefly con- tributed oil paintings to the Eoyal Academy. Havell was one of those who aided to carry water-colour painting beyond mere topography, and in later works he adopted the " sunny method " of Turner. Samuel Pkout (1783 — 1852) is best known by his sketches of continental scenery, e.g. Wurzburg, the Arch of Constantine at Eome, and the Porch of Eatisbon Cathedral (South Kensing- ton). He excelled as a painter of cottages and ancient ruins, hut rarely succeeded with foliage. He published drawing-books, containing studies from nature. David Cox (1783 — 1859), the son of a blacksmith, was born at Birmingham. He was a weakly child, and amused himself with drawing instead of the rougher sports of his companions. Instructed by a local artist, he found employment in painting lockets, and as a scene-painter at the theatre at Birmingham and at Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth. Devoting himself to landscape, and assisted by John Varley, Cox soon became one of the most eminent artists of his school, remarkable for the truthfulness of his colouring, the purity and brilliancy of the light in his pictures. He was elected a member of the Water- Colour Society in 1813. His style may be studied at South Kensington. His works are now highly prized. Thomas Miles Richardson (1784^1848), a native of New- castle-on-Tyne, is said to have been seized with a desire to become a painter on seeing a landscape bj!^ Cox. He began as apprentice to a cabinet-maker. Exchanging this vocation for The Tomb op the Soaliqers at Verona. By Proxjt. 110 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS. that of a schoolmaster, he finally accepted art as his calling, and became a distinguished landscape painter. Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787 — 1855) proved worthy of the names he bore. He was a pupil of Varley, and contributed his first picture to the Water-Colour exhibition of 1810. From that time his success was assured. Durin his life his works commanded very high prices. He was elected President of the Water-Colour Society in 1831, and held that office till his death. Fielding executed some excellent oil paint- ings. " He delights in distances, extensive flats, and rolling downs. It is true that while space is often obtained, the result is emptiness." An example of this is The South Downs, Devon, at South Kensington. Marine pieces are among Fielding's best works, but even these are mannered. Peter de Wint (1784 — 1849) was born in Staffordshire, and of Dutch origin. A constant contributor to the Water- Colour Society, painting scenes direct from nature, he, chose the northern and eastern counties of England. Corn-fields and hay-harvests are among his favourite subjects.. He is very largely represented in the South Kensington collection. George Fennel Eobson (1790 — 1833), after leaving his native Durham, exhibited many pictures at the Eoyal Academy, but his best works appeared at the exhibitions of the Water- Colour Society. He illustrated many books, and painted in conjunction with Hills, who contributed animals. Three of his works are at South Kensington. Thomas Heaphy (1775 — 1885) was born in London, and having been, like many other artists, apprenticed to an uncon- genial craft, left it to pursue the art of an engraver. This however, gave place to painting, and ho commenced with por- traiture. He exhibited at the Eoyal Academy for the first time in 1800, and was admitted an Associate Exhibitor of the Water-Colour Society in 1807, and a member in 1808. For a time he accompanied the English army in the Peninsula, and a 112 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN WATEE COLOUBS. found patrons among the officers. At South Kensington are two of his figure subjects, Coast Scene, with figures, and The wounded Leg. William Henry Hunt (1790 — 1864) was one of the most original as well as the most versatile of the water-colour school. Starting as a landscape painter, he, ia later years, excelled in rustic figure subjects, whilst as a painter of fruits and flowers he was without a rival. Hunt was a pupil of Varley, and had the advantage of Dr. Monro's friendship. The varied character of his art may be seen at South Kensington, in Boy and Goats, and a Brown Study (a negro boy puzzling over an addition sum), which illustrate his figure subjects, whilst Hawthorn Blossoms and Bird's Nest, Primroses and Birds' Nests, and Plums, are examples of another side of Hunt's genius. His humorous pictures The Attack, The Defeat, The Puzzled Politician, and The Barber's Shoji a.re well known. James Dupfield Habding (1798 — 1863), the son of an artist, was intended for a lawyer, but chose to become a painter. At the age of fifteen he was a pupil of Samuel Prout, aiid at first his works owed much to that artist. Like his master he did not succeed in foliage. Harding gained the silver medal of the Society of Arts for a water-colour di'awing, and became very popular as a drawing-master. He published many lesson books, in which he called in lithography to his aid. His visit to France and Italy resulted in numerous studies, which are embodied in The Landscape Annual. He is represented at South Kensington by A Landscape with Hovels. Harding is described as the first water-colour artist who used, to any extent, body-colour mixed with transparent tints. His example was almost always injurious. George Cattermole (1800 — 1868) was a native of Dickie- burgh, Norfolk. He started in life as a topographical draughts- man, and studied architectural antiquities. This fitted him for the medieval and romantic subjects in which he delighted , B 114 ENGLISH PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS. Brigands, robbers, and knights figure largely in bis works. His travels in Scotland bore fruit in illustrations to the Waverley novels. His pictures were due to his memory, rather than to new inspirations, and as he advanced in years they became tame. Among Cattermole's principal works are Sir Walter Raleigh ivit7iessing the execution of Essex in the Tower, Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh preparing to shoot the jRegent Murray, The Armourer's Tale, Cellini and the Robbers, Pirates at Cards, which are all at South Kensington. James Holland (1800 — 1870) began as a flower painter and teacher of that branch of art. He found a wider sphere, and is known as a painter of landscapes and sea subjects. In his works high colouring is remarkable. His Nyinwegen, in Holland, is at South Kensington, where there is also a series of sixteen! of his drawings made in Portugal. Samuel Palmer (1805 — 1881) first exhibited, at the British Institution, in 1819. In 1843 he was elected an Associate of the Water Colour Society, and became a full member in 1855 ; and it was at the exhibitions of that society that his works were most often seen. His paintings are chiefly pastoral scenes, treated in an ideal manner, and display imaginative and poetic genius of a high order. He drew inspirations for his paintings from the writings of Milton and Virgil, with which he was very familiar. He was influenced in his art by the work of William Blake, and to some extent by that of his father-in-law, John Linnell. Samuel Palmer executed a few highly-prized etchings. Edward Henry Wehnert (1813 — 1868), Francis William ToPHAM (1808—1877), Aaron Edwin Penlby (1806 — 1870), Edward Duncan (1803 — 1882), George Shalders (1826 — 1873), George Haydock Dodgson (1811—1880), were all members of one or other of the Water-Colour Soeieties, and attained fame in their various walks of art. CHAPTEE VIII. ENGLISH ART IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY. SIB THOMAS LAWEENCE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. IN tracing the progress of British painting, we have seen that early in the eighteenth century the English public thought most of foreign artists. There was no belief in the power of Englishmen to create original works, and therefore no encouragement was given against the " slavery of the black masters." No one dared to hang a modern English painting which aimed at being original. If a portrait was desired the artist considered it necessary to imitate Kneller. If a land- scape were needed, it was thought right to seek it in Italy. If a painter desired to prosper, he was forced to be more of a house-decorator than an artist. We have seen also how this spell was broken, first by Hogarth, who had the courage to abide by his originality, although but one purchaser appeared at a sale of his pictures ; next by Reynolds, who painted portraits like living persons, and not mere dolls. We have seen Wilson and Gainsborough create a school of English land- scape-painting, and show the hitherto neglected beauties of our own land. We have marked historic painters bravely strug- gling against neglect, like Barry uncared for, believing in his art ; and like Copley, who treated history with freshness and ENGLISH PAINTERS IN THE NINETEENTH OENTUKY. 117 truth. To West we owe an attempt to depict scenes from Scripture, and a bold stand against the ridiculous fashion which represented any warrior, even a Ked Indian, attired as a soldier of ancient Eome. And we must not forget the poetic fancies of Romney, the dramatic force of Opie, the grace of Stothard, the great inspiration of Blake, and the wild nightmare illustra- tions of Fuseli. We have seen art too long wedded to litera- ture, and yet making great advances under the treatment of those who turned their attention to book illustration and minia- ture-painting, rising to a high pitch of popularity. We have observed how the Eoyal Academy improved the social position of English painters, who had previously been regarded as representing a better kind of house-decorators, and how the establishment of the Water-Colour Societies promoted a branch of art which, starting from the topographer's sketch, has attained high excellence and beauty. Among the foremost men of the beginning of the nineteenth century was — Thomas Lawrence, who was born, in 1769, at Bristol ; his father, trained as a lawyer, being at that time landlord of an inn. At an early age the future painter was removed with the rest of the family to the ^' Black Bear" at Devizes, whither the fortunes of the elder Lawrence led him. The inn was a weU-known posting-house on the way to Bath, and young Thomas had abundant opportunities for displaying bis pre- cocious talents to the guests who stopped there. His father had given him desultory lessons in reading and recitation. Nature furnished him with a wonderful gift of art ; and when only five years old the beautiful child, with long flow- ing hair, was introduced to all customers, and would recite Milton and Collins, or take their portraits, according to their several tastes. We are told of his drawing a remarkably truth- ful likeness of Lady Kenyon at this early age. Of regular Master Lambton. By La\^iience. a.d. 1825. In the possession of the Sari of Durham. ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY. 119 education Lawrence had little or none beyond two years' schooling at Bristol, but he learnt much from the conversation of distinguished patrons and friends in early life. In 1779 the Lawrence family moved from Devizes to Oxford, where the boy drew many portraits. Leaving Oxford and settling at Bath, Lawrence contributed to the wants of the family by drawing portraits in crayons for a guinea and a guinea and a half each. His fame rapidly spread. Mrs. Siddons sat to him, so did the Duchess of Devonshire, and, in 1785, the Society of Arts awarded him their silver pallet, " gilded all over," for a crayon copy of the Transfiguration by Eaphael, executed when Lawrence was only thirteen. London was the fittest place for the development of such talents as his, and accordingly the elder Lawrence went thither with his son in 1787, and the latter was entered as a student in the Eoyal Academy. He contributed seven works to the exhibition of the same year, was introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds and kindly treated; the great painter encouraged the youthful genius, and advised him to study nature instead of the old masters. Lawrence took this advice, and avoided the temptation to try processes of colouring, which proved fatal to many of Sir Joshua's works. The course of the youth was one of unvarying success. The King and Queen were interested in him. In 1791, he was elected an Associate of the Academy, and a year after was appointed Principal Painter-in-Ordinary to the King, a post rendered vacant by the death of Reynolds. The Dilettanti Society broke its rules to make Lawrence a member, and painter to the society ; in 1794, when nearly twenty-five years old, the artist was elected a Royal Academician. Never, perhaps, did painter rise so rapidly and from such slight foundations, and never was studio more crowded by sitters than that of Lawrence. Messrs. Redgrave, in criticising his portraits, say, " After Reynolds and Gainsborough, Lawrence looks pretty and painty ; there is none of that power of uniting 320 ENGLISH PAINTEBS the figure with the ground — that melting of the flesh into the surrounding light which is seen in the pictures of the first Pre- sident. Lawrence's work seems more on the surface — indeed, only surface — while his flesh tints have none of the natural purity of those hy his two predecessors ; we think them pretty in Lawrence, but we forget paint and painting in looking at a face by Eeynolds or Gainsborough." The same critics remark of Lawrence's portraits of children that Sir Joshua was greatly his superior in this branch of art, and that the former "had no apparent admission into the inner heart of childhood." On the other hand, Fuseli, his contemporary, considered Lawrence's portraits as good or better than Van Dyck's, and recom- mended painters to abandon hope of approaching him. In 1797, Lawrence exhibited his Satan calling his Legions, now the property of the Royal Academy. Various and conflicting are the criticisms on this picture, a fair specimen of the painter's powers in history. A contemporary critic says of it, " The figure of Satan is colossal, and drawn with excellent skill and judgment." Fuseli, on the other hand, characterizes the principal figure briefly and strongly as " a d — d thing, certainly, but not the devil." Lawrence himself rightly thought Satan his best work. On the death of West, in 1820, Lawrence was unanimously chosen President of the Royal Academy. Five years earlier the Prince Regent had knighted him. Foreign Academies loaded him with honours. He made a foreign tour at the request of the Government to paint portraits of the various illustrious persons who had engaged in the contest vpith Napoleon I. Ten years after his accession to the President's chair Lawrence died. The best critics declare that no high place among painters may be accorded to him. Much of his popularity was due to the fact that he flattered his sitters, and led the artificial style of the day. He lost in later years the fresh vigour of his prime. It must be allowed, however, that he was no copyist of Reynolds, nor of any one, but treated his IN THE NINETEENTH OENTUBY. 121 subjects in a style of liis own. He is accused of introducing " a prevailing chalkiness '' into his pictures, derived from his early studies in crayon. When he died there was no one to take his place. The Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle contains the pictures of Pius VII., the Emperor Francis, and Cardinn! Oonsalvi. Famous among his portraits of chil- dren are Master Lambtoii, Lady Peel and Daiir/hters, and Lady Goner and Child; for the last he received 1,500 guineas. In the National Gallery are nine of his works, including Hamlet with Yorick's Skidl, and portraits of Benjamin West and Mrs. Siddons. The contemporaries of Sir Thomas who practised portraiture were all indebted to Reynolds. Geoege Henry Haelow (1787 — 1819) emerged from a childhood, in which he was petted and spoilt, to a brief man- hood which the society of actors and actresses did not improve. He was, for a time, a pupil of Lawrence, and it is supposed that if he had lived Harlow would, as a portrait painter, have been his successful rival. After a foreign tour, he, like many of his brethren, longed to succeed in historic painting. His Qtieen Catheiine's Trial, in which Mrs. Siddons appears as the Queen, does not prove that he would have succeeded in this branch of art. It was at the " Old Masters " Exhibition, 1882. William Owen (1769 — 1825), the son of a bookseller at Ludlow, came to London in 1786, after receiving a good educa- tion at the Ludlow Grammar School. He became a pupil of Charles Catton, landscape and animal painter, and of the Academy. In 1792 he exhibited a Portrait of a Gentleman, and a View of Ludford Bridge. He is chiefly known as a portrait painter, and found that branch of art remunerative, but his real tastes appeared in Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, The Fortune Teller, The Village Schoolmistress, and other simple stories of country life. A picture of two sisters gained him one of the two as a wife ; and portraits of Pitt, Lord Grenville, the Duke of Buccleuch, and other ENGLISH PAINTEKS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY. 123 noteworthy persons brought him into fashion. Owen was elected full member of the Academy in 1806, and appointed portrait painter to the Prince of Wales in 1810. He was an unwearied worker, and his subject-pictures commanded an interest which does not continue. In the National Gallery is The Dead Robin. His William Croher and Lord Loiujli- borotu/h are in the National Portrait Gallery. Maktin Aechek Shee (1770 — 1850), a native of Dublin, commenced art studies in the Dublin Academy. In Dublin he became known as a portrait painter. He came to London in 1788, where he was introduced to Burke, and by him to Keynolds, who advised the young painter to study at the Eoyal Academy, advice which he somewhat unwillingly followed. Gradually winning his way, he became a success- ful portrait painter of men. In 1800, he was made a E.A. Though devoting himself to portraiture Martin Shee turned ever and again to subject-pictures, of which Belisarius, Lavinia, and a Peasant Girl are specimens. A more ambitious work was Prospero and Miranda, exhibited in 1806. Shee owed his elec- tion to the Academy to his position as a portrait painter, and he justified the choice by his defence of the institution against those who attacked its privileges. In 1830, he was- elected President, and knighted. Three of his works are in the National Gallery, The Infant Bacchus, and portraits of Morton the comedian, and Lewis as the Marquis in the ' Midnight Hour.' The first illustrates Shee's later style ; the picture of Lewis, painted in 1791, his early method. Besides paintings, Shee was the author of several literary productions, including a tragedy, a novel, " Ehymes on Art," and art criticisms. Henky Howard (1769 — 1847), though not intended originally for an artist, early showed a talent for drawing, became a pupil of Philip Eeinagle and the Academy, where, two years later, he gained the silver medal of the Life School, and the gold medal in the Painting School for Caractacus recognisimj Swiss Peasant Giel. By Howakd. ENGLISH PAINTEES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 125 tlie dead Body of his Son, which Eeynolds, then President, warmly praised. From 1791 to 1794 Howard travelled in Italy, and painted The Death of Abel for the travelling student- ship of the Academy, which he did not obtain. The promise of his youth was not fulfilled. " His works are graceful and pretty, marked by propriety, and pleasing in composition ; his faces and expressions are good, his drawing is correct, but his style cold and feeble." (Redgrave.) Most of Howard's works are small : he selected classic and poetic subjects, such as The Birth of Venus, The Solar System, Pandora, and The Pleiades, and occasionally he painted portraits. He was Secretary and Professor of Painting to the Eoyal Academy. In the National Gallery is The Flower Girl, a portrait of his own daughter. James Ward (1769 — 1859) began life as an engraver, and was thirty-five years old before he devoted himself to painting. He selected animal portraiture, and bulls and horses were his favourite subjects. His most famous, but not his best picture is A Landscape, with Cattle (National Gallery), produced at the suggestion of West to rival Paul Potter's Young Bull, at the Hague, which Ward had never seen. Ward's cattle were all painted from life. Morland was a brother-in-law of Ward, and his influence is obvious in the latter's pictures. The life- size cattle in the before mentioned picture are an Alderney bull, cow, and calf in the centre, another cow, sheep, and goat in the foreground. In the National Gallery, too, is his large landscape of Gordale Scar, Yorkshire. Thomas Phillips (1770 — 1845) was a native of Dudley, and began as a glass painter at Birmingham. Coming to London, he was assisted by West, then President of the Academy, and in 1792 exhibited a View of Windsor Castle, and next year The Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Chatillon. Phillips was more successful as a portrait painter : his hkenesses are faithful, his pictures free from faults, 126 ENGLISH PAINTERS. and possess a pleasant tone, though as a colourist he does not occupy a high place. He was Professor of Painting in 1829. In the National Grallery are a portrait of Sir David WilJeie, and a Wood Nymph. The latter looks more like a young lady fresh from a drawing-room. Henhy Thomson (1773—1843), the son of a purser in the Navy, was born at Portsea, or, as some say, in London. His works consist of historic and fancy subjects, and portraits. His first picture exhibited at the Academy was Dce.dahis fasten- inrj winys on to his Sonlcarus. Thomson was, in 1825, appointed Keeper of the Academy in succession to Fuseli. He exhibited, from 1800 to 1825, seventy-six pictures, chiefly portraits. The Dead Eobin is in the National Gallery. John Jackson (1778 — 1831) rose from the simple home of the tailor, his father, to a high place in the world of art. He was freed from the craft of his father by Lord Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont. The latter encouraged him to visit London, and allowed him £50 a year and a room in his house while he studied in the Academy. The young painter soon obtained success as a portrait painter, and in 1817 was elected a full member of the Academy. In 1819, he visited Eome with Sir F. Chantrey, and painted for him a portrait of Canova. A portrait of Flaxmam, painted for Lord Dover, is considered Jackson's masterpiece. Leslie, speaking of the subdued rich- ness of his colouring, said that Lawrence, never approached him; and Lawrence himself declared that the portrait of Flaxman was " a great achievement of the English school, one of which Van Dyck might have felt proud to own himself the author." Three portraits by Jackson are in the National Gallery — the Rev. W. H. Carr, Sir John Soane, and Miss Stephens, afterwards the late Countess of Essex. Jackson's own portrait, by him- self, is in the National Portrait Gallerj'. g^^- 'M^^jJ(;P^M< ^TlWf >f^> ^'^^^p'g l3j^ ^^ i s jj,, W". iti^iifl *?s*^-':;%s; t"*' SVift "m^m^ .lw-"**^~ i/''!r: n**. ■,*«>?* i»lf I » The Pleasant Way Home. JBi/ Ckeswiok. Exhibited in 1846. ENGLISH LANDSCAPE PAINTERS. 147 good taste prevailing in all his works, and conspicuously so in his charming contributions to the works of the Etching Club, of which he was a valued member, and also in his many designs on wood." [Redgrave.) John Linnell (1792 — 1882) the son of a carver and gilder in Bloomsbury, was at first brought up to his father's trade, and had many opportunities of studying pictures. At eight years of age he copied Morland so well that his versions were often taken for originals. Soon afterwards he became a pupil of John Varley, and in his studio met Mulready and W. H. Hunt, %vith whom he frequently went on sketching tours. In 1807, when only fifteen years of age, Linnell sent his i5.rst pictures, A Study from Nature, and A View near Reading, to the Eoyal Academy Exhibition, to which for more than seventy years he was a regular contributor. He frequently painted portraits, and was particularly successful in landscapes with many trees. Mr. Euskin says, "The forest studies of John Linnell are particularly elaborate, and in many points most skilful." For many years towards the close of his life he lived at Eedhill, with his two sons and his son-in-law, Samuel Palmer, all landscape painters, near him. During his long life he painted many hundred pictures, which are now for the most part scattered in private galleries in England. Two of his works are in the National Gallery, Wood Cutters, and The Windmill ; and three at South Kensingtoh, Wild Flower Gatherers, Milking Time, and Driving Cattle. Edwabd William Cooke (1811 — 1880), the son of an en- graver, was intended for his father's profession ; but he pre- ferred the brush to the graver. In 1851 he was made an associate and in 1864 a full member of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibitions he was a most constant contributor : he also exhibited at the British Institution. His works are, for the most part, coast and river scenes, generally in England, and fre- quently on the Thames or Medway. Paintings by him are in the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum. l2 CHAPTER X. HISTOEIC PAINTERS. MANY of our painters who aspired to high art in the field of history were forced to abandon these ambi- tious designs, and confine themselves to the more lucrative branches of their calling. It was not so with William Hilton (1786 — 1839), who, although chilled and saddened by neglect, and generally unable to sell his pictures, maintained his position as a history painter, and suffered neither poverty nor the coldness of the public to turn him aside. Few de- tails are known of his life ; he was a gentle, silent, and retiring man, who knew much sorrow and shunned publicity. Rescued from a trade to which he was destined, Hilton was allowed to learn drawing, and became a pupil of J. Raphael Smith, the mezzotint engraver. He entered the Academy schools, and paid special attention to the anatomy of the figure. His earliest known productions were a series of designs in oil to illustrate " The Mirror," and "The Citizen of the^World." Hilton's early exhi- bited works had classic subjects, such as Cephalus and Procris, Venvs carrying the wounded Achilles, and Ulysses and Calypso. In 1810, he produced a large historic painting, called Citizens of Calais delivering the Keys to Edward III., for which the British Institution awarded ]him a premium of fifty guineas. 150 ENGLISH PAINTERS. For the Entombment of Christ he received a second premium, and for Edith discovering the Dead Body of Harold a third of one hundred guineas. Nevertheless, the public did not appre- ciate his works, and they were unsold. The Directors of the British Institution, who had already marked their sense of this painter's ability, purchased two of his sacred pieces, Mary anointing the Feet of Jesus, which was presented to the Church of St. Michael, in the City, and Christ crowned with Thorns, which was given to that of St. Peter's, Eaton Square, but which has since been sold. In 1819 Hilton became a full member of the Academy, and was appointed Keeper in 1827, a position for which he was specially fitted, and where he gained the affection of the students. In the next year he married. The death of his wife, in 1835, crushed his energy and hope. He saw himself painting for a public which did not value his art. In addition to the above examples, we may mention Hilton's Serena rescued by the Red Cross Knight, Sir Calepine, and The Meeting of Abraham's Servant with Rebekah (National Gallery), and a triptych of The Crucifixion, which is at Liver- pool. Most of Hilton's works are falling to decay through the use of asphaltum. Benjamin Eobekt Haydon (1786 — 1846) was the son of a bookseller at Plymouth, and his " fitful life " — marked by "restless and importunate vanity "^ — ^was ended by his own act. Haydon refused to follow bis father's business, and insisted on becoming a painter. Of his thoughts, hopes, and dreams, we have been well informed. He was in the habit of writing in an elaborate diary all that concerned himself. He came to London in 1804 with £20 in his pocket, entered the Academy schools, and worked there with vigour and self- reliance. Northcote did not encourage his enthusiastic country- man when he told him that as an historic painter "he would starve with a bundle of straw under his head." We admire HISTORIC PAINTERS. 151 the courage of Haydon in holding fast to the branch of art he had embraced, but his egotism fulfilled the prophecy of North- cote. When twenty-one, Haydon ordered a canvas for Josej)h and Mary resting on the Road to Egypt, and he prayed over the blank canvas that God would bless his career, and enable him to create a new era in art. Lord Mulgrave became his patron, and this may have added to the painter's hopes. He painted Dentatus, and, intoxicated by flattery, believed the production of this his second work would mark "an epoch in English art." Dentatus, however, was hung in the ante-room of the Eoyal Academy, and coldly received. In 1810, he began Lady Macbeth for Sir George Beaumont ; quarrelling with his patron, he lost the commission, but worked on at the picture. Although deeply in debt, he quarrelled with those who would have been his friends. His Judgment of Solomon, a very fine picture, was painted under great difiiculties and privations. West, the President, whom the painter accused of hostility to him, is said to have shed tears of admiration at the sight of this work, and sent Haydon a gift of £15. Solomon was sold for 600 guineas, and the British Institution awarded another hundred guineas as a premium to its author. In 1820 Haydon produced Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and during its progress he, as he recorded, " held intercourse only with his art and his Creator.'' This picture was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, and brought a large sum of money to the painter. Unsold in England, the work of which Haydon had expected much was purchased for £240, and sent to America. He established an Art school, where several able painters were trained, but the master was constantly in great pecuniary difficulties. In 1823, he exhibited the The Raising of Lazarus, containing twenty figures, each nine feet high, which is now in the National Gallery. Of this work Mr. Eedgrave says: "The first im- pression of the picture is imposing ; the general effect powerful, and well suited to the subject ; the incidents and grouping well 152 ENGLISH PAINTERS. conceived ; the colouring good, and in parts brilliant. The Christ is weak, probably the weakest, though the chief figure in the picture." Misfortune still dogged the painter. He was thrown into prison for (3ebt ; released, he worked in poverty, afraid of his "wicked-eyed, wrinkled, waddling, gin-drinking, dirty-ruffled landlady." The closing scenes of his life grew darker and darker. In 1826, he painted Venios and Anchises, on commission, began Alexander taming Bucephalus, and Euclus, and was once more in prison. An appeal in the newspapers produced money enough to set him again at liberty. Then appeared the Mock Election, and Chairing the Member, the former being purchased by the King. No success, however, seemed to stem the tide of Haydon's misfortunes. He lectured on Art with great ability in 1840, continued painting for bread, and finally, disgusted by the cold reception of Aristides, and Nei'o watching the Burning of Borne, the over-wrought mind of the unfortunate man gave way, and he committed suicide, leaving this brief entry in his journal — " God forgive me ! Amen. Finis. B. R. Haydon. ' Stretch me no longer on the rack of this sad world.' — Lear." A sad finish to his ambitious hopes ! Of Haydon's art generally Mr. Redgrave says: "He was a good anatomist and draughtsman, his colour was efi'ective, the treatment of his subject and conception were original and powerful ; but his works have a hurried and in- complete look, his finish is coarse, sometimes woolly, and not free from vulgarity." William Etty (1787 — 1849), the son of a miller at York, had few advantages to help him on the road to fame. His edu- cation was slight, and his early years were spent as a printer's apprentice in Hull. But he had determined to be a painter ; and his motto was, as he tells us, " Perseverance." In 1806, he visited an uncle, in Lombard Street, and became a student at the Academy, though his earliest art-school was a plaster- cast shop in Cock Lane. Through his uncle's generosity, he HISTOEIO PAINTERS. 153 became a pupil of Lawrence, who had little time to attend to him. Though overwhelmed with difficulties Etty persevered bravely. He laboured diligently in the " Life School," tried in vain for all the medals, sent his pictures to the Academy only to see them rejected ; unlike Haydon, he never lost heart. Li 1820 The Coral Finders was exhibited at the Academy, and in the following year Cleopatra. His patience and diligence were rewarded ; henceforth his career was one of success. In The Dangerous PLAyjiATB. Jiy Etty. a.d. 1833. In the National Gallery. 1822, he vigited Italy, and in 1828 became a full member of the Academy. His art was very unequal. He chiefly devoted himself, however, to painting women, as being the embodi- ments of beauty. As a colourist few English painters have rivalled him, and as a painter of flesh he stands high. As showing the different forms of his many-sided art, we may mention Judith and Halo/ernes, Benaiah, The Eve of the 154 ENGLISH HISTOEIO PAINTEES. Deluge, Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the Helm, The Imprudence of Candaules, The dangerous Playmate, and The Magdalen (all in the National Gallery). Etty died unmarried, and the possessor of a considerable fortune. Heney Pekeonet Beiggs (1792 — 1844), distinguished as an historic and portrait painter, began his art studies at the Academy in 1811, and was made a full member of that body in 1832. His best-known works are Othello relating his Adventures, The first Conference between the Spaniards and Peruvians, and Juliet and her Nurse ; the two latter are in the National Gallery. This master in his later years forsook historical painting for portraiture. Chaeles Look Eastlake (1793 — 1865), son of the Solicitor to the Admiralty in that town, was born at Plymouth, and educated first in Plympton Grammar School, where Reynolds had studied, and afterwards at the Charterhouse, London. Choosing the profession of a painter, he was encouraged, doubtless, by his fellow-townsman, Haydon, who had just exhibited Dentatus. Eastlake became the pupil of that erratic master, and attended the Academy schools. In 1813, he ex- hibited at the British Institution a large and ambitious picture, Christ raising the Daughter of the Ruler. In the following year the young painter was sent by Mr. Harman to Paris, to copy some of the famous works collected by Napoleon in the Louvre. The Emperor's escape from Elba, and the consequent excite- ment in Europe, caused Eastlake to quit Paris, and he returned to Plymouth, where he practised successfully as a portrait painter. A portrait of Napoleon, which Eastlake enlarged from his sketch of the Emperor on board the Bellerophon when bound for St. Helena, appeared in 1815. This picture now belongs to Lord Clinton. In the same year he exhibited Brutus exhorting the Romans to avenge the Death of Lucretia. In 1819 Eastlake visited Greece and Italy, and spent fourteen years abroad, chiefly at Ferrara and Rome. The picturesque 156 ENGLISH HISTOKIC PAINTERS. dress of the Italian and Greek peasantry so fascinated Hm that for a long period he forsook history for small genre works, of which brigands and peasants were the chief sub- jects. A large historical painting, Mercury bringing the Golden Apple to Paris, appeared in 1820. Seven years later, The Spartan Isidas, now in the possession of the Duke of Devon- shire, was exhibited at the Academy, and procured for the painter the Associateship. It illustrates the story told by Plutarch, in his "Life of Agesilaus," of the young warrior called suddenly in his bath to oppose the Thebans. Rushing forth naked with his sword and spear, he drove back the Thebans and escaped unhurt. In 1828, Eastlake produced Italian Scene in the Anno Santo, Pilgrims arriving in sight of St. Peter's, which he twice repeated. In 1829 Lord Byron's Dream, a poetic landscape (National Gallery), was exhibited, and Eastlake becoming an Academician, returned to England. Then followed Greek Fugitives, Escape of the Carrara Family from the Duke of Milan (a repetition is in the National Gallery), Haidee (National Gallery), Gaston de Foix before the Battle of Ravenna, Christ blessing Little Chil- dren, Christ weeping over Jerusalem (a repetition is in the National Gallery), and Hagar and Ishmael. To his labours as a painter Eastlake added the duties of several important offices, and much valuable literary work. He was Secretary to the Royal Commission for Decorating the New Palace of Westminster, Librarian of the Royal Academy, and Keeper, and afterwards Director of the National Gallery. In 1850, he succeeded Sir Martin Shee as President of the Royal Aca- demy, and was knighted. Trom that time till his death, at Pisa, in 1865, he was chiefly engaged in selecting pictures to be purchased by the British Government. He was editor of Kugler's " Handbook of the Italian Schools of Painting," and author of " Materials for a History of Oil Painting." William Dyce (1806 — 1864), a native of Aberdeen, com- ■i U R 158 ENGLISH HISTOKIC PAINTERS. menced Ms art studies at the Eoyal Scottish Aeademy. Visiting Italy he studied the old masters, and their influence had a lasting effect upon his style. In 1827 Dyce exhibited at the Koyal Academy Bacchus nursed by the Nymphs. In 1830, he settled in Edinburgh, and achieved marked success. The Descent of Venus appeared at the Academy in 1836. Hav- ing removed to London, Dyce exhibited, in 1844, Joash shooting the Arrows of Deliverance, and was elected an Associate. In 1847, he produced the sketch of a fresco executed at Osborne House, Neptune assigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea. Dyce was chosen, in 1848, to decorate the Queen's Eobing-Koom in the Houses of Parliament, and commenced, but did not quite finish, a large series of frescoes illustrating The Legend of King Arthur. He produced other historic works, chiefly of Biblical subjects, and of great merit. George Harvey (1805 — 1876) was born at St. Ninian's, Fifeshire, and apprenticed to a bookseller at Stirling. He quitted this craft at the. age of eighteen, and commenced his art career at Edinburgh. In Scotland he gained a wide popularity. He took an active part in the establishment of the Eoyal Scottish Academy, and was knighted in 1867. His favourite subjects were Puritan episodes, such as Cove- nanters' Communion, Bunyan imagining his Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford Gaol, and The Battle of Drumclog. Thomas Duncan (1807 — 1845), a native of Perthshire, first attracted notice by his pictures of a Milkmaid, and Sir John Falstaff. In 1840, he exhibited at the Eoyal Academy his historical painting, Entrance of Prince Charlie into Edinburgh after Preston Pans, and next year produced Waefu' Heart, from the ballad of " Auld Eobin Gray,'' which is now at South Kensington. Daniel Maclibe (1811 — 1870) was horn at Cork, and was intended for the unromantic calling of a banker's clerk. Fortu- nately for the world he soon left the bank stool for the 160 ENGLISH PAINTERS. studio of the Cork Society of Arts. In 1828, he transferred his attention to the Academy schools in London, and soon ohtained the gold medal for the best historic composition, representing The Choice of Hercules. He had previously ex- hibited Malvolio affecting the Count. In due course appeared, at the British Institution, Mokanna unveiling his features to Zelica, and Snap-Apple Night, which found a place at the Koyal Academy. Maclise became a full Academician in 1840. His latter years were chiefly occupied with the famous water- glass pictures in the Houses of Parliament, The Interview of Wellington and Blucher after Waterloo, and The Death of Nelson at Trafalgar. The noble cartoon (bought by subscriptions of artists, who likewise presented the designer with a gold port- crayon) of the former is now the property of the Royal Academy. Maclise executed many book illustrations, includ- ing those for "Moore's Melodies," and "The Pilgrims of the Rhine." He executed a noble series of designs delineating The Story of the Norman Conquest. A collection of his drawings has been bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum by Mr. John Forster. Maclise painted a few portraits, among them that of Charles Dickens, who spoke thus of the dead painter, " Of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest, and most modest of men ; the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants ; and the frank- est and largest-hearted as to his peers. No artist ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more free from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the goddess whom he worshipped." The most remarkable works of Maclise axe Macbeth and the Witches ; Olivia and Sophia fitting out Moses for the Fair ; Tlie Banquet Scene in Macbeth ; Ordeal by Touch ; Robin Hood and Cceur de Lion; The Flay Scene in Hamlet (National Gallery); Malvolio and the Countess (National Gallery). HISTOEIC PAINTERS. 161 Charles Landseer (1799 — 1879), the elder brother of the more famous Su- Edwin Landseer, was a pupil of Haydon and the Eoyal Academy Schools. In 1836 appeared his Sacking of Basing House (now in the National Gallery). He was elected an A.R.A. in the following year, became a full member in 1845, and Keeper in 1851. Amongst other good works by him are Clarissa Harloice in the Spunging House (National Gallery), Charles II. escaping in disguise from Colonel Lane's House, and The Eve of the Battle of Edgehill. Charles Lucy (1814 — 1873) began life as a chemist's apprentice in his native town of Hereford. He soon forsook the counter, and went to Paris to study painting. Coming to London, he exhibited Caractacus and his Family before the Emperor Claudius, a work which formed the introduction to a long series of historic pictures, noteworthy among which are The Parting of Charles I. luith his Children, The Parting of Lord and Lady Russell, and Buonaparte in dis- cussion with the Savants, all of which were exhibited at the Academy. Lucy established a great reputation in Europe and America. John Phillip {1817 — 1867) was one of the best colonrists of the English school. He was a native of Aberdeen, began life as an errand boy to what the Scotch call a " tin smith," and after- wards became an apprentice to a painter and glazier, and seems to have had instruction in his early pursuit of art from a portrait painter of his native town, named Forbes, who was very generous to him. A picture by Phillip secured him the patronage of Lord Panmure, who sent him to London. In 1837 the young painter entered the Academy Schools. He exhibited two portraits in'1838, and two years later returned to Aberdeen, exhibiting in the Royal Academy Tasso in Disguise relating his Persecu- tions to his Sister. Once more returning to London, Phillip ex- hibited The Catechism, and several pictures of Scottish life, as The Baptism, The Spae Wife, The Free Kirk. Illness com- 162 ENGLISH HISTORIC PAINTERS. pelled Mm to visit Spain in 1851, and here he produced many excellent pictures of Spanish life, which greatly added to his reputation, and gained for him the sobriquet of " Don Phillip of Spain." A Visit to Gipsy Quarters, The Letter-writer of Seville, and El Paseo are examples of his Spanish pictures. In 1857 Phillip was elected Associate of the Royal Academy, and exhibited the Prison Window in Seville. Elected a full member in 1859, he painted next year The Marriage of the Princess Royal, by command of the Queen. La Gloria, one of his most celebrated works, appeared in 1864. His pictures combine correctness of drawing with boldness, if not refinement, of colouring — ^which is seldom met with in the works of our best painters. Alfred Elmore (1815 — 1881), an Irishman by birth, won for himself fame as a painter of historic scenes and genre subjects. Among his works are Bienziin the Forum ; The Li- vention of the Stocking Loom and The Invention of the Combing Machine ; Marie Antoinette in the Tuileries ; Marie Antoinette in the Temple ; Ophelia ; and Mary Queen of Scots and Darnley. He was elected a R.A. in 1857. CHAPTEE XI. SUBJECT PAINTERS. DOMESTIC subject, or genre, painting in England may be said to have originated with Hogarth, but it made slow progress after his death till the commencement of the nine- teenth century. Historic pictures of a large size were neither popular nor profitable. Corporate bodies. did not care to spend money on the adornment of their guild halls, and ordinary householders had no room for large pictures. Englishmen are essentially domestic, and pictures small enough to hang in small houses, and illustrative of home life, suit their necessities, and appeal to their feelings far more strongly than vast canvases representing battles or sacred histories. In genre painting the Dutch school has ever been prominent ; to it we doubtless owe much of the popularity of this branch of art in England, where our painters have chosen familiar subjects, without de- scending to the coarse or sensual incidents in which some old Dutch artists delighted. The genre painters of this country have mainly drawn their subjects from our national poets and prose writers and the every-day life of Englishmen, sometimes verging on the side of triviality, but on the whole including pleasing works, which, as it has been well said, " bear the same relation to historic art as the tale or novel does to history." M 2 164 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTEBS. David Wilkib (1785—1841) was born in his father's manse at Cults, Fifeshire. It was fully intended that Wilkie should follow in his father's steps, and become a minister of the Scottish Kirk, but it was not to be so. He was placed, at his own earnest desire, in the Trustees' Academy, at Edin- burgh, and there in 1803 justified the wisdom of this choice by gaining the ten-guinea premium for the best painting of the time, the subject being Callisto in the Baths of Diana. Next year young Wilkie visited his home, and painted Piltassie Fair, which he sold for d£25. He painted portraits, and with the money thus acquired went to London in 1805. Having entered himself as a student at the Academy, Wilkie soon attracted attention by the Village Politicians, which was exhibited at the Eoyal Academy in 1806. One hundred of his paintings appeared from time to time on the Academy walls ; each suc- ceeding early work added to its author's fame. All his earlier works were genre pictures. His favourite subjects are shown in The Blind Fiddler, Card-Playtrs, The Rent Day, The Jew's Harp, The Cut Finger, The Village Festival, Blindman's Buff', The Letter of Introduction, 'Quncan Gray, The Penny Wedding, Reading the Will, The Parish Beadle, and The Chelsea Pensioners, the last painted for the Duke of Wellington. Wilkie was elected A.B.A. in 1809, and a full member in 1811. He went abroad in 1814, and again in 1825, when he visited Germany, Italy, and Spain. The study of the old masters, especially Correggio, Eembrandt, and Velazquez, had a marked effect on Wilkie, who changed both his style and subjects. He forsook genre for history and portraiture, and substituted a light effective style of handling for the careful execution of his earlier works. John Knox Preaching (National Gallery) is a good specimen of this second period of Wilkie's art. He succeeded Sir Thomas Law- rence in 1830 as Painter in Ordinary to the King, and was knighted six years later. In 1840 Wilkie visited the East, and painted the portrait of the Sultan Abdul Medjid. Next year, 166 ENGLISH PAINTEBS. whilst far from home, on board a steamer off Gibraltar, he died, and found a grave in the sea. There are eleven of his pictures in the National Gallery. Her Majesty possesses most of the pictures painted by Wilkie in Spain, such as The Guerilla Council of War, and The Maid of Saragassa. Another Spanish picture, painted in England, is Two Spanish Monies in the Cathedral of Toledo, belonging to the Marquis of Lans- downe. In it we notice the painting of the hands, which are full of life and action, a characteristic in which Wilkie ex- celled. " His early art certainly made a great impression on the English school, showing how Dutch art might be nationalized, and story and sentiment added to scenes of common life treated with truth and individuality. As to his middle time, such pictures as the John Knox also had their influence on the school, and the new mode of execution as sup- ported by Wilkie's authority, a very evil influence, bringing discredit upon English pictures as entirely wanting in perma- nency. His methods and the pigments he used were soon dis- carded in England, but at the time they influenced, and have continued to influence, his countrymen long after his death." {Redgrave.) William Feederick Witherington (1785 — 1865) combined landscape and subject painting in his art. He exhibited his first picture, Tintern Abbey, in 1811, and his succeeding works were principally landscapes and figure subjects in combination. Witherington was elected A.R.A. in 1830, and became a full member ten years later. Favourable specimens of his thoroughly English and pleasing pictures are The Stepping Stones and The Hop Garland in the National Gallery, and The Hop Garden in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington. Abraham Cooper (1787 — 1868), the son of an inn-keeper, was born in London, and early showed singular skill with his pencil. The inn stables furnished his first and favoured sub- jects, and the portrait of a favourite horse belonging to Sir SUBJECT PAINTEKS. 167 Henry Meux gained him his first patron. In 1814 Cooper exhibited at the British Institution Tarn o' Shanter, which was purchased by the Duke of Marlborough. In 1817 The Battle of Marston Moor secured his election as an Associate of the Academy : he became a K.A. in 1820. There is little variety in the subjects of this painter's works. The beat known ai-e The Pride of the Desert, Hawking in the Olden Time, The Dead Trooper, Bichard I. and Saladin at the Battle of Ascalon, and BothiceU's Seizure of Mary, Queen of Scots, William Mulkeady (1786 — 1863), the ablest genre painter in England except Wilkie, was born at Ennis, in the County Clare. Although his works are familiar to most of us as household words, few details of his life are known. We know that his father was a maker of leather-breeches, and that he came to London with his son when the latter was about five years old. The child is said to have shown very early the artistic power which was in him. He sat as a model for Solomon to John Graham, who was illustrating Macklin's Bible and probably the surroundings of the studio stimulated young Mulready's artistic instincts. By the recommendation of Banks, the sculptor, he gained entrance to the Academy Schools ; at the age of fifteen he required no further pecuniary aid from his parents. Mulready worked in the Academy Schools, as he worked through life, with all his heart and soul. He declared he always painted as though for a prize, and that when he had begun his career in the world he tried his hand at every- thing, "from a caricature to a panorama." He was a teacher all his life, and this accounts, perhaps, for the careful complete- ness of his pictures. Mulready married when very young, and did not secure happiness. He began by painting landscapes, but in 1807 produced Old Kasper, from Southey's poem of " The Battle of Blenheim," his first subject picture. The Battle appeared a year later, and marked advance. Both pictures bear evidence that their author had studied the Dutch 1 I "J 1, >^ 'y^^^r^, ■i _ -^ ,./■'•'-. i„'— *« si ^ I ^ 2 o ,a W N O 170 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTERS. masters. In 1815 Mulready was chosen A.K.A., but before bis name could appear in the catalogue he had attained to the rank of a full member. This was in 1816, when he exhibited The Fight interrupted (Sheepshanks Collection). From this time he was a popular favourite, and his pictures, of which he exhibited on an average scarcely two a year, were eagerly looked for. We may specify Tlie Wolf and the Lamb, The Last in, Fair Time, Crossing the Ford, The Young Brother, The Butt, Giving a Bite, Choosing the Wedding Goion, and The Toyseller (all in the National Gallery or in the South Kensing- ton Museum). " With the exception perhaps of some slight deterioration in his colouring, which of late years was obtrusively purple, he was in the enjoyment of the full powers of his great abilities for upwards of half a century. * ■■' * He was distin- guished by the excellence ■ of his life studies, three of which in red and black chalks, presented by the Society of Arts, are in the Gallery." {National Gallery Catalogue.) Alexandee Feaser (1786 — 1865), a native of Edinburgh, exhibited his first picture. The Green Stall, in 1810. Having settled in London, he became an assistant to his country- man Wilkie, and for twenty years painted the still-life de- tails of Wilkie's pictures. The influence of his master's art is visible in Fraser's pictures, which are usually founded upon incidents and scenes in Scotland, as, for example, Interior of a Highland Cottage (National Gallery) and Sir Walter Scott dining ivith one of the Blue-gown Beggars of Edinburgh. Other examples are The Cobbler at Lunch, The Blackbird and his Tutor, and The Village Sign-painter. Chakles Eobeet Leslie (1794 — 1859) was born in London, probably in Clerkenwell, of American parents. His father was a clookmaker from Philadelphia, who I'etui-ned with his family to America when the future painter was five years old. The boy was apprenticed to a bookseller, but his true vocation was decided by a portrait which he made of Cooke, the English ctJ 172 ENGLISH PAINTERS. tragedian, who was performing in Philadelphia. This work attracted so much notice among Leslie's friends that a sub- scription was raised to send him to England, the bookseller, his master, liberally contributing. In 1811, Leslie became a student of the Koyal Academy, and received instruction from his countrymen Washington AUston and Benjamin West. Leslie, however, considered teaching of little value. He said that, if materials were provided, a man was his own best teacher, and he speaks of " Fuseli's wise neglect" of the Academy students. Influenced, probably, by the example of AUston and West, Leslie began by aiming at classic art. He mentions that he was reading " Telemachus," with a view to a subject, and among his early works was Saul and the Witch of Endor. Even when he commenced to draw sub- jects from Shakespeare, he turned first to the historic plays, and painted The Death of Rutland and The Murder Scene from " Macbeth." Unlike WUkie and Mulready, Leslie did not strive to create subjects for his pictures. He preferred to ramble through literature, and to select a scene or episode for his canvas. Wilkie invented scenes illustrating the festivities of the lower classes, Mulready chose similar incidents ; it was left to Leslie to adopt " genteel comedy." Like his countryman and adviser, Washington Irving, he had visited, doubtless, many scenes of quiet English country life, and one of these is reproduced in his well-known picture of Sir Hoger de CoverJeij (joinrj to Church, which was exhibited in 1819. He had previously shown his power in humorous subjects by painting Ann Par/e and Slender. Leslie had dis- covered his true vocation, and continued to work in the de- partment of the higher genre with unabated success. The patron- age of Lord Egremont, for whom he painted, in 1823, Sancho Panza in the Apartment of the Duchess, was the means of pro- curing him many commissions. The picture in the National Gallery, of which we give an illustration, is a replica with slight SUBJECT PAINTERS. 173 alterations, executed many years later. He married in 1825, and became a full member of the Academy a year later. In 1831 he exhibited The Dinner at Pacjc's House, from " The Merry Wives of Windsor" — one of his finest works. No painter has made us so well acquainted with the delightful old reprobate, Falstaff, with Bardolph, and the merry company who drank sack at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap. There is a repetition of The Dinner at Page's House in the Sheepshanks Collection, slightly varied from the first, and bearing traces of Constable's influence. In 1833, Leslie was appointed teacher of drawing at the American Academy at West Point, and with his family he removed thither. It was a mistake, and the painter returned to England within a year. He illustrated Shakespeare, Cer- vantes, Goldsmith, and Sterne, the latter furnishing him with the subject of Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman. In 1838, Leslie, by request of the Queen, painted Her Majesty's Coro- nation — which is very unlike the usual pictures of a state ceremonial. In 1841 he was commissioned to paint The Christening of the Princess Royal. The domestic life of Leslie was peaceful and prosperous, till the death of a daughter gave a shock from which he never recovered. He died May 5, 1859. Mr. Redgrave says of his art, "Leslie entered into the true spirit of the writer he illustrated. His characters appear the very in- dividuals who have filled our mind. Beauty, elegance, and refinement, varied, and full of character, or sparkling with sweet humour, were charmingly depicted by his pencil ; while the broader characters of another class, from his fine appreciation of humour, are no less truthfully rendered, and that with an entire absence of any approach to vulgarity. The treatment of his subject is so simple that we lose the sense of a picture, and feel that we are looking upon a scene as it must have happened. He drew correctlj' and with an innate sense of grace. His colouring is pleasing, his costume simple and appropriate." GiLBEKT Stuaet Newton (1794 — 1835), connected with s "5? -4 % ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTEKS. 175 Leslie by friendship and similarity of taste, was a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1817, when travelling in Europe, Newton met with Leslie at Paris, and returned with him to London. He was a student of the Academy, and soon attracted attention by The Forsaken, Lovers' Quarrels, and The Importunate Author, which were exhibited at the British Institution. Newton began to exhibit at the Academy in 1828, and delighted the world with Don Quixote in his Study, and Captain Macheath upbraided by Polly and Lucy. In 1828 he surpassed these works with The Vicar of Wake- field reconcilinri his Wife to Olivia, and was elected an A.R.A. Yorick and the Orisette, Cordelia and the Physician, Portia and Bassanio, and similar works followed. In 1832 Newton became a full member of the Academy, and visiting America, married, and returned with his wife to England. The brief remaining period of his life was clouded with a great sorrow ; his mind gave way, and having exhibited his last picture, Abelard in his Study, he became altogether insane. Augustus Leopold Egg (1816 — 1863) was born in Picca- dilly, and on becoming a painter chose similar subjects to those of Leslie and Newton. He had not the humour of Leslie ; indeed, most of Egg's subjects are melancholy. His first works were Italian views, and illustrations of Scott's novels, which attracted little notice. The Victim promised better. Egg showed pictures in the Suffolk Street Gallery, and, in 1838, The Spanish Oirl appeared at the Royal Academy. Failing health compelled him to winter abroad, and on the 23rd of March, 1863, he died at Algiers, and was buried on a lonely hill. Three years before his death Egg had become a full member of the Academy. He is described as having a greater sense of colour than Leslie, but inferior to Newton in this respect. In execution he far surpassed the flimsy mannerism of the latter. His females have not the sweet beauty and gentleness of Leslie's. In the National Gallery is A Scene from " Le Liable 176 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTEBS. Boitmix," in whicli the dexterity of Egg's execution is visible. He partially concurred with the pre-Kaphaelites in his later years, and their influence may be traced in Pepys' Introduction to Nell Gwynne, and in a scene from Thackeray's "Esmond." Other noteworthy pictures are The Life and Death of BucJcing- ham; Peter the Great sees Catherine, his future Empress, for the First Time; The Night before Naseby; and Catherine and Petruchio. Edwin Henby Landseee (1802 — 1873) was eminent among English animal painters. No artist has done more to teach us how to love animals and to enforce the truth that — " He prayetttest who loveth best All things both great and small." Not only did Landseer rival some of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century in painting fur and feathers, but he depicted animals with sympathy, as if he believed that "the dumb, driven cattle " possess souls. His dogs and other animals are so human as to look as if they were able to speak. The painter was the son of John Landseer, the engraver, and was born in London. He received art lessons from his father, and, when little more than a baby, would sketch donkeys, horses, and cows at Hampstead Heath. Some of these sketches, made when Landseer was five, seven, and ten years old, are at Kensington. He was only fourteen when he exhibited the heads of A Pointer Bitch and Puppy. When between sixteen and seventeen he produced Dogs fighting, which was engraved by the painter's father. Still more popular was The Dogs of St. Gothard rescuing a Distressed Traveller, which appeared when its author was eighteen. Landseer was not a pupU of Haydon, but he had occasional counsel from him. He dissected a lion. As soon as he reached the age of twenty-four he was elected an A.E.A., and exhibited at the Academy Tlie Hunting of Chevy Chase. This was in 1826, and in 1831 he became a full member of the 178 ENGLISH PAINTERS. Academy. Landseer had visited Scotland in 1826, and from that date we trace a change in his style, which thenceforth was far less solid, true and searching, and became more free and bold. The introduction of deer into his pictures, as in The Children of the Mist, Seeking' Sanctuary, and Tlie Stag at Bay, marked the influence of Scotch associations. Landseer was knighted in 1850, and at the French Exhibition of 1855 was awarded the only large gold medal given to an English artist. Prosperous, popular, and the guest of the highest personages of the realm, he was visited about 1852 by an illness which com- pelled him to retire from society. From this he recovered, but the effects of a railway accident in 1868 brought on a relapse. He died in 1873, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. On the death of Sir Charles Eastlake, in 1865, he was offered the Presidentship of the Eoyal Academy, but this honour he declined. In the National Gallery are Spaniels of King Charhs's Breed, how Life and High Life, Highland Music (a highland piper disturbing a group of five hungry dogs, at their meal, with a blast on the pipes), The Hunted Stag, Peace (of which we give a representation) , TFar (dying and dead horses, and their riders lying amidst the burning ruins of a cottage). Dignity and Impudence, Alexander and Diogenes, The Defeat of Comus, a sketch painted for a fresco in the Queen's summer house, Buckingham Palace. Sixteen of Landseer's works are in the Sheepshanks Collection, including the touching Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, of which Mr. Euskin said that . "it stamps its author not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind." William Boxall (1800 — 1879), after study in the Eoyal Academy Schools and in Italy, exhibited at the Eoyal Academy in 1829 his first picture — Milton's Reconciliation with his Wife — and continued to contribute to its exhibitions till 1866. Though his first works were historic and allegoric, he finally became famous as a portrait painter, and reckoned among his SUBJEOT PAINTERS. 179 sitters some of the most eminent men of the time — poets, - painters, writers on art, and others, e.g. Copley Fielding, David Cox, Coleridge, Wordsworth. In 1852 Boxall became an associate, and in 1864 a full member of the Eoyal Academy; he was Director of the National Gallery from 1865 to 1874 ; and received the honour of knighthood in 1871, in recognition of the valuable services which he rendered to art. Paul Falconer Poole (1810 — 1879), a. painter of high class of genre pictures as well as of history, exhibited his first picture at the Academy in 1830, The Well, a Scene at Naples. In 1838 he produced The Emigrant's Departure. Other pictures are May Queen preparing for the Dance, The Escape of Glaucus and lone, The Seventh Day of the Decameron. Among the historic works of this artist are The Vision of Ezekiel (National Gallery) and others. Poole became a full member of the Academy in 1860. Geoege Hemming Mason (1818 — 1872), a native of Witley, Staffordshire, found art to be surrounded by difficulties. His father insisted on his following the profession of medicine, and placed him with Dr. Watts, of Birmingham. A portrait painter having visited the doctor's house, young Mason borrowed his colour-box, and, unaided, produced a picture of such promise that the artist advised him to follow art. Mason left the doctor's house, made his way to Italy, and, without any teacher, developed an original style which is marked by simplicity of design, refinement of colour, delicacy of chiaros- curo, and pathos of expression. He was elected A.R.A. in 1868, but died of heart-disease before becoming a full mem- ber. Mason's best-known works are Campagna di Roma, The Gander, The Return from Ploughing, The Cast Shoe, The Evening Hymn, and The Harvest Moon, unfinished. EoBEET Bbaithwaite Mabtineau (1826 — 1869), son of one of the Masters in Chancery, nephew of Miss Martineau, com- menced life as an articled clerk to a solicitor. After four years' study of the law he forsook it for the brighter sphere of art, n2 180 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTEES. and entered the Academy Schools. In 1852 Martineau ex- hibited at the Academy Kit's Writing Lesson, from " The Old Curiosity Shop," which indicated the class of subjects which he delighted in. His Last Day in the Old House, and The Last Chapter, by their originality of conception, and exquisite painting, won the artist a renown which he did not long live to enjoy. He died of heart-disease. John Fkedeeick Lewis (1805 — 1876), the son of an eminent London engraver, began his career in art by painting studies of animals, and in 1828 was elected a Member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He afterwards travelled in Spain and Italy, painting many subjects, such as a Spanish Bull- fight, Monks preaching at Seville, &c., and thence went to the East, where he stayed some years. He returned to England in 1851, and four years afterwards was made President of the Water-colour Society. In 1856 he exhibited A Frank En- campment in the Desen of Mount Sinai, which Mr. Euskin called " the climax of water-colour drawing." In the same year he began to paint in oil colours, and frequently exhibited pictures of Eastern life, such as The Meeting in the Desert, A Turkish School, A GafS in Cairo, &e. In 1859 he was made an Asso- ciate of the Royal Academy, and in 1866 a full member. In the South Kensington Museum there are two of Lewis's water- colour drawings, The Halt in the Desert and Peasants of the Black Forest, and a few of his studies from nature. Edwabd Matthew Wabd (1816 — 1879) became a student at the Academy by the advice of Wilkie, who had seen his first picture, a portrait of Mr. 0. Smith as Don Quixote. In 1836 Ward was a student in Eome. Thence he proceeded to Munich, and studied fresco-painting with Cornelius. In 1839 he returned to England, and exhibited Cimabue and Giotto. Joining in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, he produced Boadicea, which was commended, but did not obtain a premium. Dr. Johmon ^m'^'i 182 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTEES. reacUnri the MS. of Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wakefield," first brought him to notice. It was followed by Dr. Johnson in Lord Chesterfield's Ante-Boom, and the painter was elected an A.E.A. This work as well as The Disgrace of Lord Clarendon, The South-Sea Bubble, and James II. receiving the news of the landing of William of Orange, are in the National Gallery. In 1852 and later Ward executed eight historic pictures in the corridor of the House of Commons. He was elected a Eoyal Academician in 1855. His pictures are too well known to need description ; most popular among them are Charlotte Corday led to Execution, The Execution of Montrose, The Last Sleep of Argyll, Marie Antoinette parting with the Dauphin, The Last Moments of Charles II., The Night of Bizzio's Murder, The Earl of Leicester and Amy Bohsart, Judge Jeffreys and Bichard Baxter. Frederick Walker (1840 — 1875) died just as he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. After spending a short time in the office of an architect and surveyor, he left this uncongenial region to practise art. He occasionally studied in the Academy Schools, and began his artistic career by illustrating Thackeray's " Philip " in the " Cornhill Magazine," thus winning much praise. He became a member of the Old Water- Colour Society, and an A.R.A. A career full of promise was cut short by death at St. Fillan's, Perthshire, in 1875 : the young painter was buried at his favourite Cookham, on the Thames. His chief works are The Lost Path, The Bathers, The Vagrants, The Old Gate, The Plough, The Harbour of Befuge, and The Bight of Way. Mr. Red- grave said, " His genius was thoroughly and strikingly original. His works are marked by a method of their own ; the drawing, colour, and execution, alike peculiar to himself. They are at once refined and pathetic in sentiment, and novel in their conception of nature and her effects. His figures have the true feeling of rustic life, with the grace of line of the antique." 184 ENGLISH SUBJECT PAINTERS. Gabeiel Chaeles Dante Kossetti (1828 — 1882), poet, and painter of sacred subjects and scenes inspired by tbe writings of Dante, was the son of an Italian patriot, a political refugee, who became Professor of Italian in King's College, London. He exhibited at the Portland Gallery his first picture. The Girlhood of the Virgin, in 1849, and became the founder of the pre-Raphaelite school, which included Millais, Holman Hunt, and other artists now celebrated. Rossetti's best-known pic- tures are Dante's Dream (now at Liverpool), The Damosel of the Sancte Graal, The Last Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere, The Beloved (an illustration of the Song of Solomon), and Proser- pina. He seldom exhibited his paintings in public, but they were seen by art-critics, one of whom wrote (in 1873) — "Ex- uberance in power, exuberance in poetry of a rich order, noble technical gifts, vigour of conception, and a marvellously extensive range of thought and invention appear in nearly every- thing Mr. Rossetti produces." He was equally celebrated as a writer of sonnets and a trans- lator of Italian poetry. It is not within the province of this work to include notice of living artists. To give an account of all the celebrated painters would require another volume. During the past decade Art has advanced with steady progress, and we can confidently say that at no time have the ranks of the Royal Academicians and the two Water- Colour Societies been filled more worthily than at the present day. The last quarter of the nineteenth century is likely to be a golden era in the history of British Art. PAINTING IN AMERICA. By S. R. KOEHLER. PAINTING IN AMERICA. INTRODUCTION. The history of art in America is in reality the record only of the dying away of the last echoes of movements which had their origin in Europe. Although the western continent has given birth to new political ideas and new forms of government, not one of its States, not even the greatest of them all, the United States of North America, to which this chapter will be confined, has thus far brought forth a national art, or has exercised any perceptible influence, except in a single instance, on the shaping of the art of the world. Nor is this to be wondered at. The newness of the country, the mixture of races from the beginning, and the ever-continuing influx of foreigners, together with the lack of educational facili- ties, and the consequent necessity of seeking instruction in Europe, are causes sufficient to explain the apparent anomaly. Even those of the native painters of the United States who kept away from the Old World altogether, or visited it too late in life to be powerfully influenced, show but few traces of decided originality in either conception or execution. They 188 AMERICAN PAINTERS also were under the spell, despite the fact that it could not work upon them directly. The attempt has been made to explain this state of things by assuming an incapacity for art on the part of the people of the country, and an atmosphere hostile to its growth, resulting from surrounding circumstances. These conclusions, however, are false. So far as technical skill goes, Americans — native as well as adopted — have always shown a remarkable facility of acquisition, and the rapidity with which carpenters, coach-painters, and sign-painters, especially in the earlier period of the country's history, developed into respectable portrait-painters, almost without instruction, will always remain cause for astonishment. Of those who went abroad at that time, England readopted four men who became famous (West, Copley, Newton, Leslie), and she still points to them with satisfaction as among the more conspicuous on her roll of artists. Nor has this quality been lost with the advance of time. It has, on the contrary, been aided by dihgent application ; and the successes which have been achieved by American students are recorded in the annals of the French Salon. There is one curious trait, however, which will become more and more apparent as we trace the history of art in America, and that is the absence of a national element in the subjects treated. If we except a short flickering of patriotic spirit in the art of what may be called the Eevolutionary Period, and the decided preference given to American scenes by the landscape painters of about the middle of the present century, it may be said that the artists of the country, as a rule, have imported with the technical processes also the subjects of the Old World ; that they have preferred the mountains of Italy and the quiet hamlets of France to the hills of New England and the Eocky Mountains of the West, the Arab to the Indian, and the history of the Old World to the records of their own ancestors. Even the struggle for the destruction of the last vestiges of slavery which was the great work entrusted to this generation, has called forth so few IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 180 manifestations in art (and these few falling without the limits of the present chapter), that it would not be very far from wrong to speak of it as having left behind it no trace whatever. All this, however, is not the fault of the artists, except in so far as they are themselves part of the nation. The blame attaches to the people as a whole, whose innermost thoughts and highest aspirations the artists will always be called upon to embody in visible form. There is no doubt, from the evidence already given by the painters of America, that they will be equal to the task, should they ever be called upon to exert their skill in the execution of works of monumental art. The history of painting in America may be divided into four periods : — 1. The Colonial Period, up to the time of the Revo- lution ; 2. The Revolutionary Period, comprising the painters who were eye-witnesses of and participators in the War of Inde- pendence ; 3. The Period of Inner Development, from about the beginning of the century to the civil war ; 4. The Period of the Present. It will be seen that the designations of these divisions are taken from the political rather than the artistic history of the country. And, indeed, it would be difficult to find other distinguishing marks which would allow of a concise nomencla- ture. As to the influences at work in the several periods, it may be said that the Colonial and Revolutionary were entirely under the domination of England. In the earlier pa,rt of the third period the influence of England continued, but was supple- mented by that of Italy. Later on a number of American artists studied in Paris, without, however, coming under the influence of the Romantic school, and towards the middle of the century many of them were attracted by Diisseldorf. A slight influence was exercised also by the English pre-Raphaelites, but it found expression in a literary way ' rather than in actual artistic performance. In the fourth or present period, finally, the leadership has passed to the Colouristic schools of Paris and 190 AMEEICAN PAINTERS Munich, to which nearly all the younger artists have sworn allegiance. FIRST, OE COLONIAL PERIOD. The paintings which have come down to the present day from the Colonial Period, so far as they relate to America, are almost without exception portraits. Many of these were, as a matter of course, brought over from England and Holland ; but that there were resident painters in the Colonies as early as 1667, is shown by a passage in Cotton Mather's " Magnalia," cited by Tucker- man. It is very natural that these " limners," to use a favourite designation then applied to artists, were not of the best. The masters of repute did not feel a call to dwell in the wilderness, and hence the works belonging to the beginning of this period are for the most part rude and stiff. Several of these early portraits may be seen in the Memorial Hall of Harvard Univer- sity, at Cambridge, Mass. The first painters whose names have been preserved to us were not born to the soil. The honour of standing at the head of the roll belongs to John Watson (1685 — 1768), a Scotchman, who established himself at Perth .Amboy, N.J., in 1715. Of his portraits none are at present known, but at the Chrono- logical Exhibition of American Art, held in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1872, there was shown an India ink drawing by him, Venus and Cupid, executed on vellum. A better fate was vouchsafed to the works of John Smybekt, another Scotchman, who came to Rhode Island in 1728 with Dean, afterwards Bishop, Berkeley, in whose proposed college he was to be an instructor — probably the first movement towards art education made in the Colonies. Smybert settled and married in Boston, where he died in 1751 or 1752. He was not an artist of note, although his most impor- tant work, The Family of Bishop Berkeley, a large group, in which he has introduced his own likeness, now in the possession of Yale College, at New Haven, Conn., shows him to have been coura- IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUBY. 191 geous and not -without talent. Not all the pictures, however, which are attributed to him, come up to this standard. A very bad example to which his name is attached may be seen in the porti-ait of John Lovell, in the Memorial Hall of Harvard Uni- versity. The influence exercised by Smybert on the develop- ment of art in America is due to an accident rather than to actual teaching. He brought with him a copy of the head of Cardinal Bentivoglio, by Van Dyck, which he had made in Italy, and which is still preserved in the Hall just named. It was this copy which first inspired Trumbull and AUston with a love of art, and gave them an idea of colour. Of the other foreigners who visited the Colonies during this period, the more prominent are Blackburn, an Englishman, who was Smybert's contemporary or immediate successor, and is by some held to have been Copley's teacher ; Williams, another Englishman, who painted about the same time in Philadelphia, and from whose intercourse young West is said to have derived consider- able benefit ; and Cosmo Alexandeb, a Scotchman, who came to America in 1770, and was Stuart's first instructor. The earliest native painter who has left any lasting record is Egbert Feke, whose life is enveloped by the mystery of romance. Sprung from Quaker stock, and separated from his people by difference of religious opinion, he left home, and wa& in some way taken a prisoner to Spain, where he is said to have executed rude paintings, with the proceeds of which he managed to return home. Feke painted in Philadelphia and elsewhere about the middle of the last century, and his portraits, according to Tuckerman, are considered the best colonial family portraits next to West's. Specimens of his work may be seen in the collections of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me. ; the Eedwood Athenaeum, Newport, E.I. ; and the K. I. Historical Society, Providence, B.I. Nearest to Feke in date — although his later contempo- raries, West and Copley, were earlier known as artists, and 192 AMERICAN PAINTEE9 the first named even became his teacher in England — is Matthew Pratt (1734 — 1805), -who started in life as a sign- painter in Philadelphia. Pratt's work is often spoken of slightingly, and does not generally receive the commendation it deserves. His full-length portrait of Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader Golden, painted for the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1772, and still to be seen at its rooms, shows him to have been quite a respectable artist, with a feeling for colour in advance of that exhibited by Copley in his earlier work. Still another native artist of this period, Henby Bem- BRiDGE, is chiefly of interest from the fact that he is said to have studied with Mengs and Battoni, which would make him one of the first American painters who visited Italy. He seems to have painted chiefly in Charleston, S.C., and his portraits are de- scribed as of singularly formal aspect. The most celebrated painters of this period, however, and the only ones whose fame is more than local, are John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West. But as both of them left their country at an early age, never to return, they belong to England rather than to America. Copley (1737 — 1815) was a native of Boston, and did not go to Europe until 1774, when his reputation was already esta- blished. In 1760 he gave his income in Boston at three hundred guineas. He first went to Italy and thence to London, where he settled. Some speculation has been indulged in as to Copley's possible teachers. He must have received some aid from his stepfather, Peter Pelham, a schoolmaster and very inferior mezzotint engraver ; and it has also been supposed that he may have had the benefit of Blackburn's instruction. This does not seem likely, however, judging either from the facts oi from tradition. Copley was undoubtedly essentially self-taught, and the models upon which he probably formed his style are still to be seen. Several of them are included in the collection in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University. One of these IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY. 193 ' portraits, that of Thomas HolUs, a benefactor of tte university, who died when Copley was only six years of age, is so like the latter's work, not only in conception but even in the pale- ness of the flesh tints and the cold grey of the shadows, as to be readily taken for one of his earlier productions. In England Copley became the painter of the aristocracy, and executed a considerable number of large historic pictures, mostly of modern incidents. He is elegant rather than powerful, and quite successful in the rendering of stuffs. His colour, at first cold and rather inharmonious, improved with experience, although he has been pronounced deficient in this respect even in later years. Copley's most celebrated picture is The Death of the Earl of Chatham. Many specimens of his skill as a portrait- painter can be seen in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, the latter collection including the fine portrait of Mrs. Thomas Boylston. The Public Library of Boston owns one of his large historic paintings, Charles I. demanding the Five Members from Parlia- ment. Benjamin West (1738 — 1820) was born of Quaker parentage at Springfield, Pa., and was successfully engaged, at the age of eighteen, as a portrait-painter in Philadelphia. In 1760 he went to Rome, and it is believed that he was the first American artist who ever appeared there. Three years later he removed to London, where he became the leading historic painter, the favourite of the King, and President of the Eoyal Academy. His great scriptural and historic compositions, of which com- paratively few are to be seen in his native country {King Lear, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston ; Death on the Pale Horse and Christ Rejected, at the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia), show him in the light of an ambitipus and calculating rather than inspired painter, with a decided feeling for colour. His influence on art in general made itself felt in the refusal to paint the actors in his Death of Wolfe in classic costume, according H ,3 ^ 1 ^.."^ Ki s; s H ■§ to CS g^ W 8 e* S i 5 ^ Ph s> "^ ec B 1 t< Bh •g o S ^ IS :< t^ *1 AMERICAN PAINTERS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 195 to usage. By clothing them in their actual dress, he led art forward a step in the realistic direction, the only instance to be noted of a directing motive imparted to art by an American, but one which is quite in accordance with the spirit of the New World. West's influence upon the art of his own country was henceforth limited to the warm interest he took in the many students of the succeeding generation who flocked to England to study under his guidance. SECOND, OK REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. The Revolutionary Period is, in many respects, the most interesting division, not only in the political, but also in the artistic history of the United States. It is so, not merely because it has left us the pictorial records of the men and the events of a most important epoch in the development of man- kind, but also because it brought forth two painters who, while they were thoroughly American in their aspirations, were at the same time endowed with artistic qualities of a very high order. Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull, the two painters alluded to, have a right to be considered the best of the American painters of the past, and will always continue to hold a prominent place in the history of their art, even if it were possible to forget the stirring scenes with which they were connected. Gilbert Stuart was born in Narragansett, E.I., in 1755, and died in Boston in 1828. He was of Scotch descent, and it has already been mentioned that Cosmo Alexander, a Scotchman, was his first teacher. After several visits to Europe, during the second of which he studied under West, Stuart finally returned in 1793, and began the painting of the series of national por- traits which will for ever endear him to the patriotic American. Among these his several renderings of Washington, of which there are many copies by his own hand, are the most celebrated. The greatest popularity is perhaps enjoyed by the so-called 2 Generaii Knox. By Gilbert Stuart. ^Copyright, 1879, iy Sarper and Brothers.'] AMEEICAN PAINTERS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 197 AthencBum head, whioh, with its pendant, the portrait of Mrs. Washington, is the property of the Athenseum of Boston, and by that institution has been deposited in the Museum of Fine Arts of the same city. The claim to superiority is, however, con- tested by the Gibhs Washington, at present also to be seen in the museum alluded to. It was painted before the other, and gives the impression of more realistic truthfulness, while the AtheniBum head seems to be somewhat idealized. Stuart's work is quite unequal, as he was not a strict economist, and often painted for money only. But in his best productions there is a truly admirable purity and wealth of colour, added to a power of characterization, which lifts portraiture into the highest sphere of art. It must be said, however, that he con- centrated his attention almost entirely upon the head, often slighting the arms and hands, especially of his female sitters, to an unpleasant degree. Many excellent specimens of his work, besides the Washington portraits, are to be found in the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston and in the collection of the New York Historical Society, the latter including the fine portrait of Egbert Benson, painted in 1 807. His chef-d'oeuvre is the portrait of Judge Stephen Jones, owned by Mr. F. G. Richards, of Boston, a remarkably vigorous head of an old man, warm and glowing ia colour, which, -it is said, the artist painted for his own satis- faction. Stuart's most celebrated work in England is Mr. Grant skating. When this portrait was exhibited as a work by Gainsborough, at the " Old Masters," in 1878, its pedigree having been forgotten, it was in turn attributed to all the great English portrait-painters, until it was finally restored to its true author. Still more national importance attaches to John Trumbull (1756 — 1843), since he was an historic as well as a portrait- painter, took part in person as an officer in the American army in many of the events of the Eevolution, and was intimately acquainted with most of the heroes of his battle scenes. Ame- H ^