BY THE SAME AUTHOR. A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, including, by special permis¬ sion, notes collected from the works of Mr. Ruskin. Compiled by Edward T. Cook, with preface by John Ruskin, LL.D., D.C.L. Fifth Edition, revised, re - arranged and enlarged. Crown 8vo. Half Morocco. 14s. Magazine of Art .—“Should be an inseparable companion of every visitor to the Gallery.” A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE TATE GALLERY ‘NATIONAL GALLERY OF BRITISH ART’ BY EDWARD T. COOK BEING A COMPANION VOLUME TO THE SAME AUTHOR’S ‘POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY’ 3Lanticn MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 All rights reserved Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts ;— the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art (Ruskin : Si. Mark's Rest). CONTENTS PAGE Preface . . . . . . . vii Plan of the Rooms ...... x Introduction, with some Account of the “ Tate Gallery”:— Origin of the Gallery i Sir H. Tate’s Gift ..... 2 Tile Building ...... 3 The Tate Collection ..... 4 The Chantrey Collection .... 4 The Watts Collection .... 7 Pictures from the National Gallery . . 7 Subsequent Accessions .... 7 The Numbering of the Pictures ... 8 A Tour of the Galleries .... 8 The Early Victorian Painters . . . . 9 The Pre-Raphaelite Revival ... 10 The Modern British “Schools” . . . . 11 VI CONTENTS PAGE Characteristics of the British School . . 13 Importance of Subject . . . 15 Intensity of Expression .... 16 Some Technical Points .... 16 Animal Painting ..... 17 Landscape and Seascape . . . .18 From Conventionalism to Naturalism . . 19 “Plein Air” and “Paysage Intime” . . 19 The Artist as Interpreter .... 20 Numerical Catalogue of Pictures, with Biographical and Descriptive Notes .... 22 Appendix I. Index List of Artists (with the Titles of their Pictures) ..... 283 Appendix II. Index List of Pictures and Sculpture 290 PREFACE The object of this handbook is to do for the Tate Gallery what my Handbook to the National Gallery has attempted to do in the case of that institution. It is intended to serve as a popular guide in the hands of visitors to the gallery itself. At the same time, it is hoped that the book may also be found useful for reference at home. For convenience in the gallery, and also to facili¬ tate reference, the catalogue of pictures is arranged according to the order of the numbers affixed to the frames, and observed in the official reports and cata¬ logues. A biographical notice of each painter is given under the first of his pictures. I have not bound myself by any hard-and-fast rules in deciding the scale of these notices. Sometimes the import¬ ance of the painter himself, at other times the number of his pictures included in the present collection, has been the determining factor. In the case of a few painters who are represented by some Vlll PREFACE works here, but by more important works at the National Gallery, I have contented myself with a briefer notice in this handbook. To the longer notices I have added a list of some of the principal authorities. As these are mostly to be found in periodical literature, the lists may perhaps be useful for purposes of reference. In the notes on the pictures I have not thought it necessary to give those detailed descriptions which, though desirable for purposes of identification in an official catalogue, would seem to be out of place in a book designed for popular use in the Gallery itself. Nor as a general rule have I included technical criticism. My object has rather been to describe the sentiment of the pictures, and to suggest such other matters of incidental interest as might be likely to appeal to the general reader. I have also quoted freely the critical remarks of esteemed judges, endeavouring in all cases to acknowledge the source of such quotations. If I have anywhere failed in this respect, I beg to apologise for the inadvertence. I may here thank my friend Mr. M. H. Spielmann for much assistance kindly given to me in compiling this Handbook. In an introductory chapter an account will be found of the origin and history of the Tate Gallery , together with some general remarks on the British School of Painting as now illustrated within its walls. For the convenience of visitors and readers desir- PREFACE lx ing to find the works of some particular painter, an Index List of all the artists is given, with the titles of their works (Appendix I.). Finally, in Appen¬ dix II. there is a numerical Index List of all the paintings, sculptures, and drawings. The immediate provenance of each picture is given ; together with the date of its acquisition, and the occasion of its first exhibition. In many cases I have added the price paid for the picture. E. T. C. July 1898. VI. Watts Collection, etc. VII. Chantrey Collection. INTRODUCTION WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE “TATE GALLERY” Origin of the Gallery. —The “ National Gallery of British Art,” opened to the use and enjoyment of the public in the “Diamond Jubilee” year of Queen Victoria, is character¬ istically national in this respect among others, that it owes little to the State and much to the munificence of private citizens. Officially the Gallery is known as “The National Gallery of British Art.” In popular parlance it is likely to be called “ The Tate Gallery.” Its origin may be traced back to the year 1842, when Sir Francis Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, bequeathed the reversion of his estate to the Royal Academy for the purchase of works of British Art. In doing so, Chantrey expressed “the confident expectation that whenever the collection shall become, or be considered, of sufficient importance, the Government or the country shall provide a suitable and proper building, or accommodation, for its preservation and exhibition, as the property of the nation, free of all charges to my estate.” Chantrey’s bequest came into effect in 1876, and the collection of works of British Art increased and multiplied year by year, but the Government made no sign of fulfilling the donor’s confident expectation. Some of the Chantrey pictures were hung temporarily in the South Kensington Museum ; others were sent on a tour of the provinces. The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, mean¬ while became more and more overcrowded; but the idea of B 2 INTRODUCTION a separate building for the exhibition of British works of art, though continually advocated in the public press, found no practical favour in the eyes of the Government. Sir H. Tate’s Gift. — It was in this state of things that private munificence intervened. In June 1890, Mr. (now Sir Henry) Tate, the well-known sugar refiner, wrote to the Chan¬ cellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) offering not less than fifty- seven of his pictures by British artists to form the nucleus of a National Gallery of British Art, but making it a condition of the gift that the collection should be kept intact and placed under a separate administration. Objection was made to this condition, and Sir H. Tate, on his side, objected to the Govern¬ ment’s proposal to house the collection in the very uninviting “East and West Galleries ” at the South Kensington Museum. A vigorous “ battle of the sites ” was then waged in the public press. In the midst of the discussion, an anonymous corre¬ spondent, who afterwards turned out to be Sir H. Tate himself, came forward with an offer of ,£80,000 to build a Gallery, if the Government would give a suitable site. The Government proposed in succession two sites at South Kensington. The first, opposite the Imperial Institute, was accepted by Sir H. Tate, but afterwards withdrawn by Government, which had forgotten that the ground in question had been already promised to the Science Department. The second site proposed by Government was in Exhibition Road, close to the Royal College of Music. This was rejected by Sir H. Tate as being too circumscribed, and the negotiations fell through. When a new Government came into office a year or two later, Mr. Goschen’s successor took up the matter afresh. This stage in the history may best be told in the words used by Sir William Harcourt on the occasion of the opening of the Gallery in 1897. “Some three or four years ago I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Tate. He was then in a rather unfortunate position. He was in the hands of a ‘ concert ’ of institutions—artistic, scientific, and official— all quarrelling as to where should be his site, what should be his building, and what should be its management. Well, that concert proceeded deliberately. We were not getting on, and I ventured to say to Mr. Tate, ‘ Do not you think that we had better have done with all the institutions, and that you and I should settle this matter in half an hour ? 1 Mr. Tate is not only a man of taste, but he is a man of business, and we met INTR OD UCTION 3 together and. we settled on the site of Millbank j we settled that Mr. Tate should build his own building, and that the management should be in the Trustees of the National Gallery. The result of that half-hour is the building and the collection which we see here to-day.” The foundations of the “Tate Gallery” were laid in September 1893. It was formally handed over to the Government, and declared open by the Prince of Wales, on 21st July 1897. The actual opening to the public took place a few weeks later. The Building. —The Gallery, which was designed by Mr. Sidney R. J. Smith, Fellow of the Institute of British Aichitects, is described by the architect as being in “a free classic style, with a Greek feeling in the mouldings and ornaments. The chief feature of the front elevation is the lofty central portion, with a portico of six Corinthian columns with pediment; this portion projects some distance beyond the main face of the building and has a flight of steps up to the entrances (which are between the columns), and at the extreme ends are two (octagon internally) pavilions. These pavilions have an order of Corinthian pilasters raised on pedestals and terminating in pediments ; between the pilasters aie deep niches with an Ionic order of columns and pilasters supporting entablatures with semi - circular arches over. Between the end pavilions and the central portion is a plain ashlar wall to give relief to the surrounding features ; in the centre of this plain part is another niche flanked with Ionic pilasters, with a small Doric order between them, with semi¬ circular arch over to form the niche.” A figure of Britannia surmounts the main pediment, with a lion and unicorn on either side. The cost of the building in its present state was .£105,000. The existing galleries are already nearly full, and Sir H. Tate announced on the occasion of the opening that he proposed to utilise the remainder of the land granted by the Government in building an extension, plans of which may be seen on the wall of one of the corridors. Upon the base of one of the columns of the central hall is an inscription record¬ ing Sir H. Tate’s gift:— “ This Gallery and sixty-five pictures were presented to the nation by Henry Tate, for the encouragement and development of British art, and as a thankofifering for a prosperous business career of sixty years.” Upon the other column facing the entrance is an inscription 4 INTRODUCTION recording the opening of the building by the Prince of Wales. The bronze bust of Sir Henry Tate, by Mr. Brock, R.A., exhibited at the Academy in 1898, is to be placed in the Tate Gallery immediately. It is the gift of a body of subscribers. The portrait by Mr. Herkomer,R.A., in the same exhibition, is the property of Lady Tate, and will, it is understood, ultimately find its place in this Gallery also. A baronetcy was conferred upon Mr. Tate on the Queen’s Birthday, 1898. The Tate Collection. —The works of art in the Gallery have come from four sources. The first is Sir H. Tate’s own collection. For several years Sir H. Tate had been forming in his house at Streatham a gallery of British pictures which he intended ultimately to present to the nation. That his collection had been judiciously chosen is shown by the very small amount of weeding out which the Trustees of the present Gallery found necessary. Sir H. Tate offered them the refusal of sixty-six of his pictures ; of these sixty-one were accepted, and Sir H. Tate subsequently added four more. He also pre¬ sented a few specimens of modern British sculpture. With two or three exceptions the Tate pictures are all by living, or recently deceased, British artists. Thirty-eight painters are included, and the collection is thus representative of many styles and schools. Sir H. Tate’s favourites, it would seem, are Millais, Hook, Briton Riviere, Orchardson, and Waterhouse ; the works of these five painters number one-third of the whole Tate Collection. But Sir H. Tate, in his discriminating generosity, took great pains to make his gift of pictures comprehensive. He paid very large sums in order to include among the works by Millais pictures representative of the painter’s different periods. He has recently added to the Collection another famous Millais—a favourite with the painter himself—namely, “The Order of Release ” (No. 1657). This small picture cost ^5 2 5 ° the auc ti° n rooms. In other cases Sir H. Tate gave commissions with a special view to the production of works for this gallery {s.g. 1 5 1 I 5 22 )- Particulars of the Tate pictures will be found in the Numerical Index, Appendix II. The Chantrey Collection.— Secondly, there have been deposited in this Gallery the pictures purchased by the Royal Academy under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest. A sketch of Sir Francis Chantrey’s career will be found in the notes on his portrait of himself (No. 15 9 1 )• b e< f ues t came into INTRODUCTION 5 operation on the death of his widow in 1876, and from 1877 to the present time the Council of the Academy has in each year added some works of art to the Chantrey Collection. The terms under which these purchases are made were as follows :—“ The estate shall be devoted to the encouragement of British Fine Art in Painting and Sculpture, and the Trustees shall pay over the interest, yearly, to the President and Trustees for the time being of the Royal Academy. . . . The monies shall be laid out by the President and Council . . . when and as they shall think it expedient, in the purchase of works of Fine Art, of the highest merit, in sculpture and painting, that can be obtained, either already executed, or which may here¬ after be executed by artists of any nation, provided such an artist shall have actually resided in Great Britain during the execution and completion of such work.” The price was “to be liberal” and “not to be paid for sympathy.” The testator went on to give instructions, “that the works of art so purchased as aforesaid shall be collected for the purpose of forming and establishing a public national collection of British fine art in painting and sculpture, executed within the shores of Great Britain, in the confident expectation that whensoever the collection shall become, or be considered, of sufficient importance, the Government of the country shall provide a suitable and proper building, or accommodation, for their preservation and exhibition, as the property of the nation free of all charges to my estate.” The Council are not obliged to spend the whole annual income of the estate (which amounted t0 £ 90 , 0 °°) in each year, but they must not let the income accumulate for more than five years. The collection which has been formed under this bequest is somewhat miscellaneous in character. With only two exceptions (1591 and 1629), all the works have been by artists living at the time of their purchase. In their selection of pictures for purchase under the Chantrey bequest, the Council of the Academy might have been actuated by many different considerations. They might have purchased the pictures of the highest merit obtainable, without any ulterior thoughts. Or they might have endeavoured to encourage British fine art by buying pictures of promising beginners, or pictures by older artists, which for one reason or another were unlikely to find ready purchasers elsewhere. The Council of the Academy seem at different times to have been actuated by all these considerations. The result is in one respect 6 INTRODUCTION fortunate. It has conduced to the representative character of the present collection. No fewer than sixty-two artists are represented in the Chantrey Collection of oil-pictures, and these works include characteristic specimens of nearly all the successive phases and different styles through which British art has passed in the last quarter of a century. The Chantrey Collection, up to the present time, has involved an expenditure of .£51,711 on eighty-four works of art—a sum considerably less than the nation spent on the acquisition of a single work by Raphael (the “Ansidei Madonna,” No. 1171 in the National Gallery). It may be interesting to add that the average cost of a “Chantrey” picture has been £615. The average cost of an “Old Master” for the National Gallery has been £965. The most notable omissions in the list of con¬ temporary artists patronised by the trustees of the Chantrey bequest are Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. Holman Hunt, and Mr. Whistler. Chantrey’s own conditions were, as we have seen, very wide and liberal. But a reference to the Numerical Index (Appendix II.), in which the place of exhibition is shown, will disclose the fact that in practice the Council of the Academy have very seldom looked beyond the walls of Burlington House. In the case of sculpture, a decision of Mr. Justice North (7th May 1888),—confirmed by the Court of Appeal, the Master of the Rolls dissenting—has seriously hampered the freedom of choice. Chantrey’s will limited the Council to works already executed, and added that “no commission or order for the execution of works to be afterwards purchased shall at any time be given.” Interpreting these terms with verbal literalness, the Courts decided that works in clay or wax are unfinished, and that the Council have no power to intimate that if such and such a work in plaster or wax were satisfactorily cast or carved it would be bought for the Chantrey Collection. By this decision the Council have been restricted to the purchase of such works as the sculptors may have cared to cast in bronze or carve in marble. From the point of view of art this decision of the law is to be regretted, for a piece of statuary is artistically finished when the clay or wax has left the artist’s hands. The subsequent casting is the least artistic part of the business, and is very costly. It is un¬ fortunate that Chantrey’s own profession, which in his will he expressly placed on an equal footing with that of painting, INTRODUCTION 7 should thus be prevented from sharing as fully as it otherwise might in the encouragement he hoped to give. The Council have, however, purchased several interesting pieces of sculpture, which give a fairly representative view of the w r ork of the modern English School. The first purchase made under the Chantrey bequest was of Leighton’s “ Athlete and Python ” (S. 15), a vigorous and learned group which gave a great and wholesome impulse to the art of sculpture in this country. The Watts Collection. —A third contribution to the art of the Victorian era displayed in this Gallery, consists of a collection of seventeen pictures by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., presented by him to the nation. These are important specimens of the allegorical work of the master. Particulars of Mr. Watts’s gift, as well as of the ideals which inspired it, will be found in the introduction to his pictures (1630-1647). Pictures from the National Gallery. — Fourthly, there have been transferred to this collection ninety pictures from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The general principle on which this selection has been carried out is to transfer to the Tate Gallery the works of all British artists who were born later than 1790. To this rule, however, some exceptions have been admitted. Thus, all the works of Sir Edwin Landseer (born 1802) have been retained at Trafalgar Square except two (Nos. 608 and 609); and Millais’s “Yeoman of the Guard” (No. 1494) is retained there also. Sir H. Tate’s gift has, however, included works by both these artists. On the other hand, several of the small pictures by Constable (born 1776) and a few by Wilkie (born 1785) have been removed to the Tate Gallery. Among the more important, or the more popular, of the National Gallery pictures now to be seen at Millbank may be mentioned Frith’s “Derby Day” ; the works of Maclise and E. M. Ward; the pre-Raphaelite pictures (D. G. Rossetti and Seddon), and the pictures, recently added to the national collection, by Mason and Walker. The “National Gallery pictures” transferred to this collection are specified in Appendix II. Subsequent Accessions. —Lastly, it remains to add that Sir H. Tate’s munificent gift of pictures has already inspired others to come and do likewise. Several pictures included in the present collection have been presented to the nation by private donors for exhibition here. We may hope that the 8 INTRODUCTION many gaps in the representation of British art in this National Gallery will subsequently be filled in similar manner. The Numbering of the Pictures. —The administration of the National Gallery of British Art is vested in the Trustees of the National Gallery. On the occasion of the transfer, Sir H. Tate was appointed a trustee. Officially, therefore, this Gallery is a branch of the National Gallery, just as the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is a branch of the British Museum. The Tate Gallery has a separate Keeper (Mr. Charles Holroyd), but the purchase and allocation of pictures between the two Galleries belong to the Trustees. The point of practical interest to visitors in this matter of administration refers to the numbering of the pictures and other works of art. The Tate Gallery is, as we have seen, a part and a continuation of the National Gallery. Hence, there is one set of numbers for the pictures in both collections. The pictures which have been transferred here from Trafalgar Square retain their old numbers. 1 The National Gallery Collection had, at the time of the opening of the Tate Gallery, reached the number 1497. Hence, the new Tate Gallery pictures begin with the number 1498. Gaps in the numbering in this Gallery are accounted for by the fact that the missing numbers belong to works exhibited at Trafalgar Square. Similar remarks apply to the collections of water-colours and of sculpture. A Tour of the Galleries.— With this introduction, we may now make a brief tour of the Gallery. On entering through the turnstile we find ourselves in the Sculpture Hall, with a fountain in the middle. Other works of sculpture stand in the adjoining corridors and in the alcove in front of us. The picture galleries open out of the Sculpture Hall, and are so arranged that there is no necessity to retrace our steps. Turning to the left we enter a gallery, in which a portion of the Chantrey Collection is hung; the other portion of it is in the corresponding gallery on the other side of the Sculpture Hall. Passing through the first portion of the Chantrey Collection (Room I. on the Plan) we find ourselves in a small terminal gallery (Room II.) where is the major part of the Watts Collection. Passing through this, we come to the 1 Readers who may happen to possess the fifth or any earlier edition of my Handbook to the National Gallery will find therein descriptions of National Gallery pictures which are now exhibited at the Tate Gallery. INTRODUCTION 9 largest gallery in the building (Room III.). Here is the Tate Collection. Leaving this room, we reach a vestibule behind the central Sculpture Gallery. Passing on we enter Room IV., where pictures from the National Gallery are hung. Other National Gallery pictures are in the small room (V.) opening out of Room IV. Continuing our tour, we find in Room VI. some more pictures by Mr. Watts and other miscellaneous works. Lastly, in Room VII. is a second instalment of the Chantrey Collection. Passing out of this room, we re-enter the central Sculpture Hall, having completed a tour of the ground floor. On the first floor there is one large gallery in the front of the building; the windows here command fine views of the river. In this gallery is hung the water-colour collection, together with a few small oil pictures. The arcades on this floor are unoccupied. All the galleries are well lighted, and there is, at present at least, an agreeable freedom from overcrowding on the walls. The Early Victorian Painters. —To visitors who desire to study the pictures in their chronological order, a few words of introduction may be acceptable before we pass to the notes on the several pictures and painters. In those notes an attempt is made to indicate the position or importance of different painters in the development of art in this country. But some general remarks in this place may be found useful. Our chronological study must begin in Room IV., where works by the early Victorian painters are hung. The old masters of the British School are to be seen, as already explained, at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. To them succeeded two different sets of painters—the one continuing in a fresh field the traditions of Hogarth ; the other endeavouring to carry forward those of Reynolds, (i) Of the former class, Wilkie (see No. 231) may be taken as the central example. When Sir George Beaumont, the famous connoisseur of his day, became possessed of Hogarth’s maul-stick, he resolved to retain it until he should find a new genius worthy of the gift. No sooner did he see Wilkie’s “Village Politician” than he hastened to transfer the maul-stick to that painter. Wilkie and the other genre painters of the day had not Hogarth’s spirit of satire ; but they shared in their several degrees his attention to contemporary life, his shrewdness of observation, his minute wealth of detail, his sense of humour. Of the principal artists 10 INTRODUCTION in this group, Mulready is not here represented, but Webster (427) is. In manner, these painters founded themselves on Dutch models. Wilkie resembles Ostade ; Mulready, Metsu. An imitator of the Dutch painters of fruit-pieces was Lance (442). The more important pictures by Wilkie himself are at Trafalgar Square, but a few are to be seen here. (2) One of these, the “John Knox” (894), will serve to illustrate the transition to a second group of works—those which aimed at being historical, not by recording the life of their own time, but by reproducing the history of former times. The works of Knight (1498) and E. M. Ward (430) fall within this category. (3) Other painters of the time were more ambitious. Reynolds had occasionally tried ideal painting, but had not conspicuously succeeded. Those who followed him were not more fortunate ; one of the best works of this school is Hilton’s “Nature blowing Bubbles” (1499). (4) The next group of painters consists of what we may call the anecdotic or illustrative school. Scenes and characters from English or foreign literature were the favourite subjects. Newton ( 353 )) C. R. Leslie (402), Maclise (422), and Egg ( 444 )) belong to this group. So also does Mr. Frith, to some extent, who, however, will best be remembered for his clever pictures of the life of his own time (e.g. “The Derby Day” (615)). The Pre-Raphaelite Revival. —The year 1850 may roughly be taken as the terminal date of the earlier Victorian art described above. At this period a new era in British art had opened. The International Exhibition of 1851 gave it a great impetus; and the pre-Raphaelite movement, a fresh direction. Some account of this important movement will be found in the notes on Madox Brown, the pioneer of it (1394), and on Millais and Rossetti, two of its founders (i 5°6 and 1210). Of Mr. Holman Hunt, the third of the famous trio, there is no picture in this Gallery. There are, however, interesting pictures by two of his disciples—Martineau (1500) and Seddon (563). Most of the distinctively pre-Raphaelite pictures are in Room V. Among the principal effects of the pre-Raphaelite movement were to impart into British art, which had been tending to the prosaic, an element of poetry ; to substitute freshness and sincerity for conventionality ; and bright colour for the prevailing brown tones of an earlier epoch. In the first of these directions, the most important influence was that of Rossetti. In this respect, Sir Edward INTRODUCTION ii Burne-Jones, the head of what has been called “The new pre-Raphaelite School,” is Rossetti’s direct successor. The art of Burne-Jones is unfortunately not represented in this Gallery, though there are pictures by two of his disciples (1624 and 1625). The other great poetic force in contemporary British art—that of Mr. Watts—is abundantly and splendidly before us in Rooms II. and VI. The art of Watts owes little to any external influences (see under 1630-1647). Of him it may be said that he “ voyages in strange seas of thought, alone.” In the other directions indicated above as characteristic of the pre-Raphaelite movement, sincerity and directness of aim, and brightness of colour, the influence of the school was more widespread and pervasive. It would be too much to say that in the pictures of the latter half of the century there is no cold or academic work, yet it must be admitted that there is a large proportion which shows sincerity of feeling, directness of aim, and freshness of treatment. The reaction which the pre-Raphaelites inaugurated from a low key of colour and predominance of bitumen has in some respects been less fortunate. “Impressed,” say M. Chesneau, “by the weary monotony of neutral tints, they wished to strike out a new line, and find some fresh method. In their justifiable horror of bitumen, therefore, they gave themselves up to a perfect glut of colouring. This new epidemic raged from 1850 to 1870. In the pictures of the English School there was then a blinding clash of colour, a strife of incongruous hues ; no softening tints, everywhere harsh tones set side by side with unexampled barbarity; blues and greens, violets and yellows, reds and pinks, placed in most cases quite by chance” (The English School of Painting, 1885, p. 108). The solution of the problem of harmonising colours in a high key has been the task of the best living English painters. The Modern British “ Schools.” —We have now passed in review the Early Victorian School (Room IV.), and the pre- Raphaelite School (Room V.), and have touched cursorily on the influence of the latter, and on the independent work of Mr. Watts (Rooms II. and VI). The remaining Rooms (I. III. and VII.) are occupied with the art of the last quarter of the century. During this period many influences have been at work; which of them are ephemeral and which permanent, it is perhaps too soon to attempt to say. Of the academic tradition and of the classical school in choice of subjects, the most 12 INTRODUCTION eminent representatives are Lord Leighton (i 511), Sir Edward Poynter (1586), and Mr. Alma Tadema (1523). Another popular painter of classical pictures, Mr. Waterhouse (1541), differs from the others in a broader style of painting, in a more dramatic choice of subjects, and in an added element of mysticism. Of the doctrine, sometimes much in vogue, of “art for art’s sake,” Albert Moore (1549), the painter of decorative harmonies, may be taken as the most accomplished British representative. In some ways allied to the decorative school is that of the Impressionists , of whom the most original, Mr. Whistler, is not represented in this ^Gallery. In Mr. Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” (1615), we have, however, a brilliant example of what has irreverently been called the “ spot and dab school.” Less daring in conception, and less careless of what in the art slang of the day is called “literary subject,” is the work of the Anglo-French Im¬ pressionists, such as Mr. La Thangue and Mr. Clausen (1605, 1612). The intention in this work seems to be to seize a central impression strongly, and to leave the remainder of the canvas rough and indefinite. In a pre-Raphaelite work like Millais’s “Ophelia,” you may treat the canvas as if it were an actual piece of the nature it represents—shifting the eye from point to point, and finding everywhere the same detail to examine. In the canvases of the Impressionists a single point of view is focussed ; a single impression is given ; the rest is blottesque and blurred. The term “Anglo-French” Im¬ pressionists has been used above, because the influence in question has largely come from French masters. It will be remarked in the biographical notices in the following catalogue that a very large number of the younger painters of the day have studied either entirely or largely in Paris. Some have afterwards become realistic ; others, impressionist; and a few, mystic. But all alike have derived from the study of French methods a broader method of handling than is characteristic of the native British School, and a greater regard for “ values.” The object of a French painter, says M. de la Sizeranne, is to establish gradations between different tints, to prepare the eye for passing from one to the other without strain. In the English School, he adds, there is “more of colours than of colour.” A local English school, which owes much to French influence, is that of Newlyn (see under 1544). The term is really geographical rather than characteristic ; but most of the INTRODUCTION 13 painters who have established themselves in that Cornish village show a realism in subject combined with a predominant affection for grey tones which makes their work easily distinguishable. It has been supposed by some writers that the work of one of the leading English painters, to whom we have not yet referred—namely, Mr. Orchardson—owes some¬ thing to foreign study. This, however, is not the case. Mr. Orchardson, the late Mr. Pettie, and some other painters contemporary with them, may be described as the Scottish School , formed by R. Scott Lauder (see under 1582), a school distinguished by breadth of effect, and by individuality of colour. Nobody who has once seen an Orchardson would fail to recognise another, even from afar. One other distinctive group, of native growth, remains to be noticed. This is the Walker School , as it has been called. Mason (1388) and Walker (1209) were artists of rare distinction, whose characteristics will be found described in the catalogue. Here we may group them together as painters of English idyls, who combined with a sentiment of humanity, and even a certain note of realism, a cultivation of natural grace and of classic form. Moreover, it is worthy of notice, as Mr. Quilter says, that “ the direction which painting has taken since their death—the direction, namely, of imitation of the French school—is manifestly opposite in tendency to the whole spirit of Walker, which was in its essentials of Italian (and pre- Raphaelite Italian) descent, and which above all things was founded upon colour instead of being founded upon values ” (Preferences in Art , p. 125). Mason died in 1872, Walker in 1875 ; the latter date may be taken as marking the dawn of the “French” epoch. Among other painters who are associated in one way or another with the Walker group may be mentioned Mr. North (1607), Mr. Macbeth ( 1 597 ), and Mr. Herkomer (1575). In other points of view the latter painter may rather be grouped with what we may call the Centre Party in the art of England, of which the supreme representative in our time has been Millais— naturalistic in aim, domestic in subject, and vigorous in colour. Characteristics of the British School. — Having now passed in rapid review the different schools within a school, we may endeavour in a few sentences to bring them all together instead of separating them ; to ask, not what distinguishes this British painter from that, but what is characteristic of them all. 14 INTRODUCTION It is curious to turn to two well-known French works on the English School. 1 “ Is there an English School of painting at all ? 35 asks Mr. Chesneau at the beginning of his treatise, and he replies, “ Strictly speaking, the word ‘ school 3 applies only in a very imperfect manner to the growth of painting in England. 33 “ There is an English School of painting, 33 says M. de la Sizeranne at the beginning of his book. “ It is this fact, 33 he continues, “ which strikes one the first moment that one visits an international exhibition of fine art. There are French, Hungarian, Belgian, Spanish, and Scandinavian painters ; but there is an English School of painting. 33 Paradoxical as it may sound, the fact is that both these distinguished critics are right. What M. Chesneau means by a school of painting in the strict sense of the term is a special collection of traditions and processes, a particular method, a peculiar style in design, and an equally peculiar taste in colouring—all contributing to the representation of a national ideal existing in the minds of the artists of the same country at the same time. In this sense, the term “ school 33 applies very imperfectly to English painting. If the visitor, after leaving the Tate Gallery, were to go to Trafalgar Square and study any one of the Italian Schools or the Dutch School, he could not fail to be struck by the absence of uniformity here and its presence there. Instead of one general type of picture, modified only by individual peculiarities, he will find in the National Gallery of British Art almost as many styles as there are painters. It would be a subject of some interest to determine why this is so, and to define the results of it. 2 Here, however, we may confine our¬ selves to the remark that even in the very individualism of British painters, we may note a reflection of the national temperament—in its fondness for self-help and distrust of academic formulas. And this brings us to what M. de la Sizeranne means when he declares so emphatically the existence of an English School. Not only do the separate manifesta¬ tions of English art form a considerable and noteworthy whole, but considered broadly, they reflect many aspects of the national mind. 1 The English School oj Painting , by Ernest Chesneau, 1885 ; and La Peinture Anglaise Contemporaine, par Robert de la Sizeranne, 1895. The latter work was “ crowned ” by the French Academy. 2 See further on this subject the chapter on “The British School” in my Handbook to the National Gallery. INTRODUCTION 15 Importance of Subject. —In the first place that seriousness of purpose, that predominance of the moral element, which has been said to distinguish the English character, is very conspicuous in English art. “ The only great painters in our schools of painting in England have,” says Mr. Ruskin, “been either of portrait — Reynolds and Gainsborough; of the philosophy of social life—Hogarth ; or of the facts of nature in landscape—Wilson and Turner. In all these cases . . . the success of the painter depended on his desire to convey a truth rather than to produce a merely beautiful picture ; that is to say, to get a likeness of a man, or of a place ; to get some moral principle rightly stated, or some historical character rightly described, rather than merely to give pleasure to the eyes. Compare the feeling with which a Moorish architect decorated an arch of the Alhambra, with that of Hogarth painting the ‘ Marriage k la Mode,’ . . . and you will at once feel the difference between art pursued for pleasure only, and for the sake of some useful principle or impression” (-Inaugural Address at the Cambridge School of Art, p. 23). This seriousness of purpose is not confined to the great men enumerated by Mr. Ruskin. English painting is always painting with a purpose. The subject is always as much a matter of importance as the treatment. In much of the current art criticism of the day a different note, it is true, is struck ; but it makes little impression either on the practice of the artists or the preferences of the public. The doctrine of “ art for art’s sake,” in the sense that subject is immaterial, has never taken root among us. The exquisitely meaningless art of Albert Moore stands almost alone, and even an artist so alive to decorative beauty as William Morris said of it that it “ so obtrusively proclaims contempt for all intellectual qualities, that in spite of the great talent of the artist, it is almost a nullity ” (“Notes on the Royal Academy,” in To-day, July 1884). The pictures of the early Victorian period are nearly all “ historical ” or literary. The pre-Raphaelite renascence was didactic and romantic. The art of Rossetti, even when most sensuous, was strongly intellectualised, and his greatest pictures are those which realise scenes in Christian story or passages in Dante. Mr. Watts, as we shall see, proclaims himself a teacher before all things else. The art of Leighton is grave, intellectual, and dignified. Mr. Alma Tadema’s is a classical dictionary in colours. Millais, it has been said, painted in his i6 INTRODUCTION youth for poets, and in his maturity for Philistines ; but in all his periods alike, he had both eyes fixed on Subject. Mr Orchardson, a master of technique, is sometimes a historian and at others a novelist. In the art of the younger men, even of those who have been most sensitive to foreign influences, the national characteristic is no less marked. Newlyn tells for us the simple annals of the poor, and from the New English Art Club, as represented in these galleries, we receive the old pathetic stories rendered by new methods. Intensity of Expression. —Further, not only is English painting marked by seriousness of subject, but the subject is nearly always intense. Either it is of a domestic character, or if not, the subject is approached on its most intimate, its most individual side. The grandiose conceptions, the vast historical groups, the allegorical compositions on the largest scale, which are much in favour with some foreign schools, seem alien to the genius of English painting. For one thing, art in this country is neither the handmaiden of the Church, nor is it favoured by the State. It is in the main intended for the home. Moreover, “an intense power of invention and ex¬ pression in domestic drama is,” as Mr. Ruskin points out, “characteristic of the English genius.”' What immediately strikes foreign critics in English pictures is their intensity of expression and individuality in gesture. M. de la Sizeranne notices this typical characteristic in Madox Brown’s “Christ washing St. Peter’s Feet” (1394) 5 observe how deeply bent is St. Peter’s head, how wrinkled the forehead, how his knees are drawn up under his chin, and his hands joined round his knee. In the “ Beata Beatrix” of Rossetti, (1279) again, the head is painfully thrown back, the neck stretches itself out like a fan, the eyelids are half dropped, the mouth is half open ; every limb and every feature are made to emphasise an attitude of languor and prostration. These pictures exhibit, in a strongly marked manner, a general characteristic of the British School. Some Technical Points. —On the technical side, the criticisms of foreign writers upon the English School are not very complimentary. English artists fail, they say, in com¬ position. They paint in detached pieces, rather than with an eye for the whole effect; and in manipulation, English work is for the most part “ tight,” to use the slang word; it is, says M. de la Sizeranne, “ heavy, niggling, laborious, dry,” as opposed INTRODUCTION 17 to the broader and more sweeping handling of some other schools. These defects, if such they be, are the price the English School pays for its hereditary and characteristic love of definition and detail. “ Let us admire the English painters,” exclaims M. de la Sizeranne, “but do not let us imitate them.” Millais, the typical English painter, returned the compliment. “There is among us,” he wrote, “a band of young men, who, though English, persist in painting with a broken French accent, all of them much alike, and seemingly content to lose their identity in their imitation of French masters, whom they are constitutionally, absolutely, and in the nature of things, unable to copy with justice either to themselves or to their models.” Animal Painting. —We have noted some of the character¬ istics of English art, and incidentally some of its limitations. To complete our survey, three or four other spheres must be mentioned, in which English art is especially active. The first is portraiture. The great masters of English portraiture Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner — must be studied at the National Gallery. Here there are only one or two examples, by accident as it were, of these old masters. Nor is modern portraiture represented. For this the visitor must go to the National Portrait Gallery, where, with a good deal that is only of historical interest, he will find also many portraits by the best modern painters. Secondly, “ in connection,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ with our simplicity and good humour, and partly from the very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own.” Landseer’s work—to be seen here, at the National Gallery, and at South Kensington—is in this field very characteristic. He was fond of animals and of sport, and his pictures were from one point of view studies in natural history ; but they were also, for the most part, made to point a moral and adorn a tale. The visitor will find it inteiesting to mark, as he goes through these galleries, the different ways in which different painters have treated the animal creation. Notes on this point will be found in the catalogue. Here we may remark, in passing, that Mr. Briton Riviere (1 5 1 5 )> while free from the somewhat exaggerated sentiment of Landseer, which was apt to warp the real nature of the animals, is fond of showing the dog in relation with humanity. In the pictures of Mr. Davis (1528), another c i8 INTRODUCTION excellent animal painter, sheep and horses take their place as picturesque elements in landscape. Landscape and Seascape. —Landscape and seascape, as treated by the English School, remain to be noticed. The love of landscape is a marked characteristic of English art, alike in painting and in literature, and the peculiarly English art of water-colour painting is especially strong in this direction. The water-colours in this Gallery are at present few in number. For this branch of the national art the visitor must go to the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum. The works of Turner, the greatest of English landscape painters, both in oil and in water-colour, are at Trafalgar Square. His genius was, however, so exceptional that he founded no school, and had few imitators. Alfred Hunt (W. C., 54) is, of the painters represented in this Gallery, the one who approaches most nearly to him in aerial effects. The influence of Constable (1235), a few of whose sketches are shown here, was considerable. What will strike every one who examines these sketches, and compares them with earlier work in landscape, is their freshness. Constable, says a French critic, was the man who first abandoned all the conventions, artifices, and imaginary descriptions of pretended Greek or Roman landscapes, and used his own eyes to see the grass, water, and trees in their striking natural beauty. How bold a departure this was from established convention may be seen from the rules by which Sir George Beaumont used to test all works of art. “This is all very well,” he once said on being shown a landscape, “but where is your brown tree ? ” It was the conventional search after brown tones that made Constable dread the influence of a collection of old masters. “ Should there be a National Gallery (which is talked of),” he wrote in 1822, “there will be an end of the art in poor old England, and she will become, in all that relates to painting, as much an unreality as every other country that has one. The reason is plain ; the manu¬ facturers of pictures are thus made the criterions of perfec¬ tion, instead of nature” (Leslie’s Life of Constable , p. 105). Against this danger Constable’s influence was directed, as in later times was that of the Pre-Raphaelites. Another painter who followed with Constable the path of natural landscape was Muller (379). But for the most part the landscape and marine painters of the Early Victorian period used a restricted INTRODUCTION 19 palette, in which greys, yellows, and earthy tones predominated. The painters of the present day endeavour on the other hand to vie with nature in her display of crimson and gold, purple, azure, and emerald green. For a single illustration, we may compare the grey seas of Clarkson Stanfield (404) with the biilliant hues of Henry Moore (1604). A painter who lived through the period of change, and whose works belong now to the one and now to the other style, is Linnell (438). From Conventionalism to Naturalism. — The influences which were at work to effect the change from conventionalism to naturalism in landscape were the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the independent, though allied, work of Mr. Ruskin in Modern Painters. By him it was that painters were led to study, and the public to appreciate, the world of subtle and infinite beauty which is to be found even in the simplest and lowliest aspects of nature, and to his influence, more than to that of any other man, English art owes its escape from conven¬ tion and generalisation in landscape to individual treatment and careful study of specific forms. Of Pre-Raphaelite landscape, in its earliest and strictest form, Millais’s “Ophelia” is a perfect example (1506). That picture was painted by Millais in company with Mr. Holman Hunt, who was engaged at the time on his “ Hireling Shepherd,” a work remarkable for the scientific accuracy of its animal, entomological, and botanical forms. We shall see how, during this phase of Pre-Raphaelite- ism, Millais was seen “ applying a magnifying glass to the branch of a tree he was painting, in order to study closely the veins of the leaves.” Another landscape painter of this school is Inchbold (1477), and in the case of his pictures, Mr. Ruskin used to advise visitors to the Academy to bring a small opera- glass to examine the structure of the birds and vegetation. I he reader will find some further notes on the subject in the account of another Pre-Raphaelite, Thomas Seddon (563); leference should also be made in this connection to the works of Dyce (1407), and to the notes on Mr. John Brett (1617) who used to exhibit in early days with the Pre-Raphaelites. “ Plein Air ” and “ Paysage Intime.” —This minuteness of workmanship, which characterised many of the Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, has not been generally adopted by modern painters. But in other respects, the influence of the movement was enduring. In the first place, it led, as we have seen, to the adoption of a richer palette. To cite examples of this would 20 INTRODUCTION be superfluous ; almost every modern landscape in this gallery is a case in point. Secondly, the Pre-Raphaelite principle of painting nature, not according to the conventions of the schools and the studios, but in the fresh air, has carried on the traditions of Constable and profoundly influenced all modern work. “ Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape,” said Mr. Ruskin, “ is painted in the open air from the thing itself,” an antici¬ pation of what is known as the “plem air” school, with its attempt to depict figures out of doors in true relation to their surroundings. Thirdly, modern landscape is not only “ fresh air landscape,” but it is also, to use another catch-woid, “ pay sage intime T The aim of the Pre-Raphaelites and of their prophet, Mr. Ruskin, was to cast aside commonplace formalities and authorised theories, in order to return to a sincere and passionate study of nature. One note of modern landscape is the study of Nature in her more intimate effects, and not merely the selection of “ picturesque bits ” ; another is the painting of effects according to the artist’s individual impressions, rather than in obedience to conventional views. The modern painter, it has been well said, “no longer aims at producing great works of art by merely devising more and more refined combinations of old impressions, but by opening new windows into reality.” 1 The Artist as Interpreter.— One of the most interesting points of view from which to examine such a collection of pictures as is here before us is the study of the different impressions that the same phenomena of sea, earth, and sky make on different painters. Some see in nature “ a magic stage, behind which, and around them, play scenic effects of light, colour, and form.” To others, the sublimity of creation is rather revealed in the delicacy of construction ( e.g . 1607), or the sweet and homely charm of wood and tree and flower. And among the painters of this latter school we may distinguish two classes. To one, nature appears only in subordinate relation to human interest (e.g. 1142, 1589). To the other, this relation is essential and intimate. By Henry Moore, for instance, the sea is painted for its own sake ; Mr. Hook s pictures, on the other hand, are idyls of English life, as well as 1 See a very suggestive little pamphlet issued by Professor. Patrick Geddes, on the occasion of the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition in 1887, under the title Every Alan his own Art Critic. Some further phrases from this pamphlet are quoted in the next section. INTRODUCTION 21 representations of sea and shore. Mr. W. L. Wyllie and Vicat Cole show the toil and glitter of the great river, which is an artery of English commerce. Mr. Hemy, Mr. Hunter, and Macallum put before us the labour of the fisher-folk or of those who plough the sands of the sea-shore. Thus we may roam at will “ along Hook’s breezy shores, bright with pebbles and sea¬ weed,” or gaze, in canvases inspired by Celtic melancholy, at the sad, heavy waves of northern shores. Macallum lets us look into “ the deep translucent green through which the Mediterranean coral-fishers dive (W. C. 61); through Mr. Brett’s vast win¬ dows we may look long over the lovely expanse of shimmering placid blue” ; while on the canvases of Henry.Moore we have spread before us what Mr. Swinburne calls “ the dark, divine, deep day-shine of the sea.” Landscape painting has been defined by Mr. Ruskin as “the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence ” ; and every good picture of land or sea represents, it may be asserted, some aspect of nature which has impressed itself on the artist’s imagination. In this sense, all great artists are impressionists, and no two pictures of a scene will ever be quite alike. A fellow-artist once complained to Turner that, after going to Domodossola, to find the site of a particular view which had struck him several years before, he had entirely failed in doing so : “ it looked different when he went back again.” “What,” replied Turner, “do you not know yet, at your age, that you ought to paint your impressions ? ” By studying a collection of pictures in the way here suggested, the spectator learns to discover more and more varied beauties than he realised before : For, don’t you mark, we’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see. NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES 231 . PORTRAIT OF THOMAS DANIELL, R.A. Sir David Wilkie, R.A. (1785-1841). Wilkie, the most celebrated of the older school of British genre painters, had two distinct manners. In his later manner he appears as what is called an “historical painter.” In this style, the “John Knox” in this gallery (No. 921) is one of his best-known works. But it is in his earlier style, when he set himself with minute fidelity to paint what he himself had seen, that he is in the only true sense an historical painter, and it is as such that he has the best claim to remembrance. Some of his best works in this earlier manner, which he modelled on the style of Teniers and Ostade, are to be seen at the National Gallery. In these pictures, Wilkie portrayed the common life of his own day with much shrewdness of observation. The two periods in Wilkie’s art correspond with two in his life, though the change from the former to the latter was occasioned by a desire to improve his health more than to improve his style. He was the son of a Scottish minister, and was born at Cults, on the banks of Eden Water. His talent for drawing was developed very early, and the direction it was to take was shown by the picture he painted at home when he was nineteen. It was of “A Country Fair at Pitlessie ”; “for which I have the advantage,” he wrote, < * of our herd boy and some children who live about the place as standers, and I now see how superior painting from nature is to anything that our imagination, assisted by memory, can conceive.” Wilkie introduced his father also, and the minister was much scanda¬ lised at being shown talking to a publican, until it was suggested that he was warning the man of the wickedness of drink. The young man sold this picture for £5, came up to London, and studied NO. 2JI 23 at the Academy schools. The story of his student days—industrious and thrifty, but happy and full of aspiration, and of his friendship with Haydon, is one of the pleasantest chapters in the history of British art. His “Village Politicians” was exhibited in 1806, and was very favourably noticed in the papers. “I was in the clouds,” says Haydon, “hurried over my breakfast, rushed away, met Jackson, who joined me, and we both bolted into Wilkie’s room. I roared out, ‘ Wilkie, my boy, your name’s in the paper ! ’ ‘ Is it rea-al-ly,’ said David. I read the puff—we huzzaed, and taking hands, all three danced round the table until we were tired.” Next day the friends went arm-in-arm to the gallery. There was no getting near the picture, “sideways or edgeways.” Wilkie, pale as death, kept saying : “ Dear, dear, it’s just wonderful.” From this time forward his success was assured and continuous, though it is worth noting that the prices he obtained for his pictures were very moderate; indeed, his modesty in this matter was proverbial. For his cele¬ brated “Rent Day” he asked ^50, but was paid ,£150; the picture subsequently sold for ^2000. Wilkie was elected A.R.A. in 1809, and R.A. in 1811 ; and was as much in request in social circles as in artistic. In 1823 Wilkie was appointed “Limner for the King in Scotland,” and this was the culminating point in his career, for next year misfortunes came thick upon him. Some of his dearest friends died, he suffered heavy losses from a commercial breakdown, and was afflicted with serious nervous debility. It was for the sake of his health that in 1825 he set out for three years’ travel on the continent. His ambition to succeed in the grand style was already formed, for he had begun his “John Knox ” in 1822 ; but it was his foreign tour and the admiration he thus conceived for the old masters, especially for Correggio, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, that caused him now to appear exclusively as an historical and portrait painter. In 1830, on the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Wilkie succeeded him as “ Painter in Ordinary to the King. ” He was also a candidate for the presidency of the Academy, but obtained only one vote, that of his friend Collins. But the royal favour did not desert him. He was knighted by George IV. in 1836, and next year, on the accession of Queen Victoria, was commanded to paint Her Majesty’s First Council (exhibited at the “Old Masters,” 1887). In 1840 he again set out in search of health — this time to the East. He went to Constantinople, the Holy Land, and Egypt. He complained of illness while at Alexandria, and on June 1, 1841, he died suddenly on board the Oriental steamer, off Gibraltar. The picture of his burial at sea (No. 528 at the National Gallery), which Turner exhibited at the Academy next year, was typical of the deep impression that his loss made upon the nation. A statue of Wilkie stands in the Sculpture Hall here. Thomas Daniell, born 1749, was the son of an innkeeper at Chertsey, and had been apprenticed to an heraldic painter. 24 NOS. 328 , jj /, 353 In 1784 he set out with his nephew William for India, where he stayed for ten years, and acquired a competence as a land¬ scape painter. There is an Indian landscape by him in the National Gallery, No. 899. On his return to London he set to work on the publication of six large volumes of Oriental Scenery , the plates being executed by himself and his nephew. He published many other illustrated works of architecture and travel, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as R.A. He died at Kensington at the age of ninety-one. 328 . THE FIRST EARRINGS. Sir D. Wilkie, R.A. (1785-1841). See 231. II faut souffrir pour etre belle. The difference between Wilkie’s later and earlier manner will be perceptible in a moment by comparing this picture, exhibited at the Academy in 1835, with No. 921, which is dated 1811. 331 . NEWSMONGERS. Sir D. Wilkie , R.A. (1785-1841). See 231. “ Wilkie is one of those happy natures, neither gloomy nor dreamy nor enthusiastic, who have the good sense to think that everything is arranged for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Public calamity does not affect him; he lives in the midst of a little group of persons who do not suffer by the fall of empires, and who often hear nothing about national catastrophes until everything is once more in order. The newspaper may be read in those parts, but it is that of last year, and one cannot get very sad or cry long over ancient history ” (Chesneau : The English School , p. 89). This picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1821. 353 . YORICK AND THE GRISETTE. G. S. Newton , R.A. (1794-1835). Gilbert Stuart Newton was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, whither his parents had fled from Boston when the British were expelled by Washington. He came to England in 1818 and entered the Academy Schools. He was first known as a portrait painter, but afterwards took to genre subjects. He was a great favourite in society, and his friend Leslie complained that their intercourse was NOS. 354, 374 25 too often interrupted by Newton’s social engagements. He was elected A.R.A. in 1828, and R.A. in 1832. He became insane and died three years later in an asylum at Chelsea. He was especially noted for his colouring. “Newton,” said Leslie, “is blessed with an exquisite eye for colour ” ; and Washington Irving, who, while in England was the friend of them both, wrote in 1834 : “Newton has for some years past been one of the most popular painters in England in that branch of historical painting peculiarly devoted to scenes in familiar life. His colouring is almost unrivalled, and he has a liveliness of fancy and quickness of conception, and a facility and grace of execution, that spread a magic charm over his compositions.” From Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. — Mr. Yorick, the king’s jester, has entered an open shop to ask the way to the Opera Comique : would the lady tell him ? “ ‘ Most will¬ ingly,’ said she, laying her work down upon a chair next her. ... I will not suppose it was the woman’s beauty, not¬ withstanding she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy.” So sensible was he of it that he came back to ask the way again. The shop-boy was going in that direction with a parcel of gloves ; he should show the way. “ ‘ Apropos, said I, 1 1 want a couple of pairs myself.’ The beautiful grisette rose up when I said this, and, going behind the counter, reached down a parcel, and untied it: I advanced to the side over against her: they were all too large. The beautiful grisette measured them one by one across my hand. It would not alter the dimensions.” Notice the quiet humour in the pug beside the chair: he has a scent, it would seem, for the sentiment of gloves. 354 . “THE WINDOW,” called also “A DUTCH GIRL.” G. S. Newton, R.A. (1794-1835). See 353. A small half-length of a girl, putting aside a curtain and looking down from an open window. 374 . VENICE: THE PILLARS OF THE PIAZZETTA. R. P. Bonington (1801-1828). “ I have never known in my own time,” wrote Sir Thomas Law¬ rence, “an early death of talent so promising, and so rapidly and obviously improving.” Richard Parkes Bonington, of whom this was said, died of consumption when his fame in England was only begin- 26 NO. 379 ning. In France, however, he already enjoyed a high reputation, having obtained a gold medal for his picture in the Salon of 1824— the year in which Constable won a like honour. Bonington had indeed received his artistic education in Paris, where he had resided since he was fifteen. It was in 1824 that he travelled in Italy, and stayed for some time in Venice, making sketches for this and other pictures which he afterwards exhibited at the British Institution. When the first of them appeared there, Allan Cunningham relates how a critic and connoisseur came up to him in a sort of ecstasy and said, “Come this way, sir, and I will show you such a thing—a grand Canaletti sort of picture, sir, as beautiful as sunshine and as real as Whitehall.” To the right is the Dogana (or custom-house) ; between the pillars are seen the domes of the church of Sta. Maria della Salute ; and to the left is the corner of the library. The Piazzetta, the open space on which the pillars stand, is so called to distinguish it from the Piazza—the larger open space in front of the church of St. Mark. Of the two granite pillars, the one is surmounted by the bronze lion of St. Mark, the other by the statue of St. Theodore, the protector of the Republic. The pillars were brought by the Doge Domenico Michael as spoils from his victories in the East, early in the twelfth century, and were erected in their present position in 1180. The statue of St. Theodore was placed on the column in 1329; the lion of St. Mark, a work of later date, was carried to Paris in 1797, but restored to its original position in 1816. 379 . LANDSCAPE WITH LYCIAN PEASANTS. W. J. Muller (British : 1812-1845). Muller, whose father, a German, was Curator of the Bristol Museum, and the author of some books on natural history, was apprenticed at fifteen to J. B. Pyne, the landscape painter (see 1545), and from that time to his early death never departed from the habit of studying nature closely. “ I paint in oil on the spot,” he wrote from Wales in 1842 (the year before the first volume of Modern Painters was published); “indeed, I am more than ever convinced of the actual necessity of looking at nature with a much more observant eye than the most of young artists do, and in particular at skies; these are generally neglected.” His earliest pictures were of the country around Bristol. In 1833 he first exhibited at the Academy, but neither then, nor at any period of his career, were his pictures well hung there. In 1834 he travelled in Switzerland and Italy; in 1838 in Greece and Egypt, settling on his return in London. After various other excursions NO. 397 27 he set out in 1843 for Lycia with the expedition undertaken by Sir Charles Fellowes for the Dilettanti Society; the collection of sketches and drawings which he made on this expedition is now in the British Museum. After two detentions in quarantine on the return journey, he writes : “I want to paint —it’s oozing out of my fingers. I covered the walls of the lazaretto at Smyrna; and at Malta they would not let me.” To the Academy of 1845 he sent five pictures. Most of these were badly hung, and this treatment caused the artist great prostration and prolonged dejection. “ His passion for art consumed him before his time. . . . His strength gave way ; the heart was affected, and while his brother, who nursed him tenderly, was setting his palette for him, he fell back and died at the age of thirty-three. He had worked until the very last. When he could no longer go out to sketch, he brushed a fresco on the walls of his room, and was painting from the flowers and fruit his friends sent him when he died.” Miiller always painted with his left hand, although he used his right hand in writing. His facility of handling was so great, and his execution so rapid, that he was able to do a vast amount of work in a short time. He was short-sighted, and used an eyeglass. One eye was brown, the other grey, and he used to say jokingly that with one eye he saw colour, with the other form. His feeling for colour in¬ creased after he visited the East, and all his works after his travels in Egypt and Lycia are rich with the hues of the Orient. (Solly’s Memoir of the Life of W. f. Miiller; F. Sitwell, in English Art in the Public Galleries; and Catalogue of a Loan Collection at Birmingham, 1896). A view taken no doubt on one of the artist’s eastern journeys. In the distance is Mount Massicytus. Painted in 1839. 397 . CHRIST LAMENTING OVER JERUSALEM. Sir C. L. Eastlake, P.R.A. (1793-1866). Sir Charles Lock Eastlake was President of the Royal Academy (elected 1850), and Director of the National Gallery. On the death of Mr. Seguier, the original Keeper of the Gallery, in 1843, Eastlake was appointed to succeed him. This office he resigned in 1847, partly in consequence of an outcry raised in the newspapers against the management of the Gallery. The history of the dispute may be read in the fullest detail in the Report of the Select Committee of 1853, an impartial study of which shows that whatever blunders may have been committed were principally due to the system of divided responsibility. In 1855 the management of the Gallery was entirely reorganised, and Sir Charles Eastlake (who was already, in virtue of his being P.R.A., an ex-officio trustee) was appointed Director at a salary of ^1000, an office which he held, being re¬ elected every five years, till his death. The chief feature of the new 28 NO. 398 scheme was the grant of an annual sum, to be expended at the discre¬ tion of the Director in the purchase of pictures. In his purchases for the Gallery Sir Charles Eastlake was assisted by his wide knowledge of the history of painting. His Materials for a History of Oil Painting is still the standard work on the subject, and he also edited a translation of Kugler’s Italian Schools of Painting. His literary and official work interfered with his professional practice as an artist, and the total number of pictures exhibited by him was only ninety- six. These were chiefly either historical, or of subjects suggested by his early residence for many years in Italy. He was a native of Plymouth, and was educated (like Sir Joshua Reynolds) at the Plympton Grammar School. He was then for a short time at the Charterhouse, and after studying under Haydon became a pupil at the Academy Schools. In 1817 he went to Greece and Italy. In 1827 he was elected A.R.A., in 1830 R.A. In this latter year he returned from Italy to London, residing first in Upper Fitzroy Street and afterwards in Fitzroy Square. He is described as “ a man of unassuming and rather courtier-like bearing,” and he discharged his official duties with much dignity and tact. The “refined feeling and deep thoughtfulness” which characterise Sir C. Eastlake’s works, rather than any other merits, are conspicuous in this carefully thought-out picture. Christ is seated upon the Mount of Olives, and the disciples have “come unto him, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be?” He laments over Jerusalem: “ How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not !” (Matthew xxiii. 37, 38 ; xxiv. 3). Near the hen is a woman leading a child, and carrying a vessel of water on her head ; and in the middle ground is a shepherd with his flock; for it was to be when they should say “ Peace and safety,” that sudden destruction should come upon them (1 Thessalonians v. 3). The woodman’s axe, one sees, has been already struck into the root of the tree. A repetition of a picture exhibited at the Academy in 1841. 398 . HAID^E: A GREEK GIRL. Sir C. L. Eastlake , P.R.A. (1793-1866). See 397. This picture (exhibited at the Academy in 1831) is a trans¬ lation to canvas of Byron’s Haidee, “ the greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles” (see Don Juan , Canto ii.)— Her brow was overhung with coins of gold That sparkled o’er the auburn of her hair . . . nos. 399, 400 29 Her dress was many colour’d, finely spun ; Her locks curl’d negligently round her face, But through them gold and gems profusely shone ; Her girdle sparkled, and the richest lace Flow’d in her veil, and many a precious stone Flashed on her little hand . . . She wore two jellicks—one was of pale yellow. Of azure, pink, and white, was her chemise— ’Neath which her breast heaved like a little billow ; With buttons form’d of pearls as large as peas, All gold and crimson shone her jellick’s fellow ; And the striped white gauze baracan that bound her, Like fleecy clouds about the moon, flow’d round her. 399 . THE ESCAPE OF THE CARRARA FAMILY. Sir C. L. Eastlake, P.R.A. (1793-1866). See 397. An episode from the history of the Italian Republics. Francesco Novello di Carrara, last Lord of Padua, having been forced to yield to Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, was for some time detained by the latter at Milan. He was then sent to Cortazon, near Asti, where he lived as a plain country gentleman with his wife and family. But the Duke of Milan stationed men in ambush to kill him—which when Francesco heard, he determined to fly for his life. Accordingly, in the month of March 1389, he left suddenly, with his wife and a few servants, and arrived after many dangers at Monaco, whence he afterwards set out for Florence. Here we see him “toiling along steep mountain paths, sup¬ porting his wife at the edges of precipices,” whilst the followers of the Duke of Milan are in sight in the valley below (from Sismondi’s Histoire des Republiques Italiemies du Moyen Age, vii. 285, 288). From the technical point of view one is struck by the conflict of reds and pinks in the colouring, characteristic of the “glut of colouring” in which English painters at this period indulged (see Chesneau : The English School, p. 108). Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. 400 . THE CATHEDRAL AT BURGOS. D. Roberts, R.A. (1796-1864). David Roberts was the chief architectural painter of his day. “ The fidelity of intention and honesty of system of Roberts,” says Mr. Ruskin, “have always been meritorious; his drawing of archi- 3° NO. 400 tecture is dependent on no unintelligible lines or blots, or substituted types; the main lines of the real design are always there, and its hollowness and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling ; his sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell with great delight on the roundings of edges and angles; his execution is dexterous and delicate ” (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 35). Of his skill in this respect, the present picture, painted in 1835, is a good example, for “he had a great gift of expressing the ins and outs of Spanish balconies and roofs, and the hollow work of complex tracery. . . . His old painting of the spires of Burgos Cathedral—of its turretted chapter-house, the tombs of Ferdi¬ nand and Isabella, etc., involved points of interest and displays of skill which his later subjects seldom contained or admitted” {Academy Notes, 1859, p. 18). Roberts was the son of a shoemaker (born at Stockbridge, near Edinburgh), and showed early taste for art, but his father wanted him to stick to the cobbler’s last. As a kind of compromise, we may suppose, he was apprenticed for seven years to a house-painter and decorator. He devoted his evenings to artistic painting, and for some years divided his time between house decorating and scene painting—appearing also sometimes as an actor in pantomime. In 1820 he made Clarkson Stanfield’s acquaintance, and at his advice began exhibiting as an artist. In 1822 he moved to London, and obtained appointments with Stanfield as a scene painter. In 1826 he went to Normandy, and a picture of Rouen Cathedral that he exhibited in that year at the Academy laid the foundation of his fame as an artist. In 1832-33 he visited Spain; in 1838 the East. The sketches made on these, as on other foreign tours, were afterwards engraved in Landscape Annuals and other illustrated volumes. In 1831 he was elected President of the Society of British Artists, in 1839 A.R.A., in 1841 R.A. ; and in 1858 he was presented with the freedom of the city of Edinburgh. In 1863 several of his pictures were sold at the dispersal of the Bicknell Collection, and fetched five, and sometimes even ten, times the prices he had been paid for them twenty years earlier. He was painting a view of St. Paul’s when he was stricken with apoplexy, and died the same day. The Gothic Cathedral of Burgos, the capital of old Castile, was commenced early in the thirteenth century, but was not completed till some centuries later. The staircase in the north transept, which forms the chief feature in this picture, communicates with the upper tower; for Burgos stands on the declivity of a hill, the summit of which was originally crowned by a castle, built at the command of Alphonso III. When in process of time the Moors receded gradually to the south of the city, the higher parts were abandoned for a lower position NOS. 401 , 402 towards the plain, so that the street which is now the highest was formerly the lowest in the place; and the Cathedral is thus so situated that the whole of the north flank of the edifice, more particularly the transept itself, is partially buried by the declivity of the hill, while that to the south is clear and overlooks the whole city. Painted in 1835. 401 . THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, ANTWERP. D. Roberts , R.A. (1796-1864). See 400. “The church, as it at present exists, is a work of the seventeenth century. The original church, which was attached to a Dominican convent, was destroyed in 1547. The marble altar is by Pieter Verbrugghen, the younger; the altar-piece, by Cornelis Cels, was painted in Rome in 1807” (Official Catalogue). Painted in 1848. 402 . A SCENE FROM “DON QUIXOTE.” C. R. Leslie , R.A. (1794-1859). Charles Robert Leslie (father of Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A.) is one of the best English artists in that class of genre painting which concerns itself, not like Wilkie’s with contemporary life, but with literary illustration. He had much sympathetic imagination, enabling him to enter into the spirit of the authors he illustrated ; an unerring refinement, which kept him from offending good taste ; and, above all, great skill in giving subtleties of expression. “There has perhaps never been a greater master than Leslie,” says Mr. Ruskin, “of the phases of such delicate expression on the human face as may be excited by the slight passions and humours of the drawing-room or boudoir. . . . His subtleties of expression are endlessly delightful. . . . The more I learn of art, the more respect I feel for Mr. Leslie’s painting, as such ; and for the way it brings out the expressional result he requires. Given a certain quantity of oil-colour, 1 to be laid with one touch of pencil, so as to produce at once the subtlest and largest expressional result possible, and there is no man living who seems to me to come at all near to Mr. Leslie, his work being, in places, equal to Hogarth for decision, and here and there a little lighter and more graceful, Hogarth always laying his colour somewhat in daubs and spots” {Academy Notes, 1855, p. 30; 1857, p. 22; 1859, p. 19). These qualities he acquired, as James Smetham pointed out, by unremitting cultivation of his taste. “ Leslie was the 1 Of oil-colour as a means of conveying expression, that is ; not as itself conveying a pleasurable sensation. In the colour gift, in this latter sense, Leslie was deficient. “It is, of course, not well coloured,” says Mr. Ruskin of one of his best works ; it is “ meagre and cold.” 32 NO. 402 type of a painter, pure and simple. What did it cost him ? It cost him all his time. He did not profess to be a scholar. He read Shakespeare, Smollett, etc., Goldsmith, Cervantes, Addison, the Bible. All his subjects were got out of these. His first picture was exhibited when he was twenty-three, ‘ Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church.’ His last of any vigour was ‘ Sir Roger de Coverley in Church,’ and all the interval was a placid seclusion among those few authors, expressing out of them by constant reading a few, very few, subjects from each ; and on this foundation all his labours were built. . . . The time was not bestowed on mere finish; it was absorbed in the action of consummate taste and judgment ” ( Letters of James Smetkam, 1891, p. 126; in the same place will be found an appreciation of Leslie’s domestic life and character). Besides his skill as a painter, Leslie made claim to distinction as an author. For three years (1848- 1851) he was Professor of Painting at the Academy, and he afterwards (1855) published his lectures under the title of A Handbook for Young Painters. He also wrote a well-known Life of Constable (1845), with whom he had a long and warm friendship, and an interesting volume of Autobiographical Recollections (edited by Tom Taylor, i860). It is an interesting coincidence that Leslie, a great painter of literary illustration, began life as a bookseller’s apprentice. He was born in Clerkenwell, of American parents, who returned when he was five to Philadelphia. The circumstances of his call to the career of art are not unlike those of Maclise’s (see No. 422). The town of Philadelphia had gone mad over the arrival of the celebrated actor, G. G. Cooke. By the good offices of a friendly scene painter, Leslie saw the great man in Macbeth , and made a likeness of him. Brad¬ ford, Leslie’s employer, was so much struck by it that he raised a subscription for sending the young man to study art in Europe. In 1811 Leslie arrived in London, and entered the Academy Schools. He came with plenty of introductions, and soon found himself among friends, chief amongst whom were Washington Irving, and Newton the artist. “Nothing could be more agreeable,” he says, “than my daily intercourse at this period. We visited in the same families, chiefly Americans resident in London, and generally dined together at the York Chop House, in Wardour Street. Delightful were our excursions to Richmond or Greenwich, or to some suburban fair, on the top of a coach.” In 1821 Leslie was elected A.R.A., in 1826 R.A. In 1825 he had married, and in 1833 the prospect of a settled income induced him to accept an appointment as Professor of Drawing at the Military Academy of West Point, New York. After five months, however, he returned to London, and continued to contribute regularly to the Academy exhibitions. He lived on friendly terms with all the artists and connoisseurs of the day—such as Wilkie, Constable, Stothard, Turner, Sidney Smith, and Rogers; whilst his chief patron was Lord Egremont. T. here are pleasant anecdotes of his visits to Lord Egremont at Petworth, both in his own Auto¬ biography and in Mr. Ruskin’s Dilecta (contributed by his elder son, NO. 402 33 R. C. Leslie). Very pleasant, too, are the glimpses of Leslie’s home life, of his quiet little house in St. John’s Wood, of his affection for his children, and his love of flowers. “ He had a very pretty habit,” says his son, G. D. Leslie, “of going into the garden before breakfast and picking either a honeysuckle or a rose—his favourite flowers— and putting them in a glass on the mantel-shelf in his painting-room. I hardly ever saw his room in the summer without these flowers.” * This picture, exhibited in 1844, is a repetition (for Mr. Vernon), with some slight alterations, of a picture painted for Lord Egremont, and exhibited in 1824, when the following quotation was affixed— “First and foremost I must tell you I look on my master, Don Quixote, to be no better than a downright madman, though some¬ times he will stumble upon a parcel of sayings so quaint and so lightly put together, that the devil himself could not mend them; but in the main, I cannot beat it out of my noddle but that he is as mad as a March hare. Now because I am pretty confident of knowing his blind side, whatever crotchets come into my crown, though without either head or tail, yet can I make them pass on him for gospel. Such was the answer to his letter and another sham that I put upon him the other day, and is not in print yet, touching my lady Dulcinea’s enchantment; for you must know, between you and I, she is no more enchanted than the man in the moon ” (Don Quixote, vol. iii. ch. xxxiii., Shelton’s translation). “ In the expressions of the actors,” says Tom Taylor, “ the painter has caught the very spirit of the scene. Sancho, half- shrewd, half-obtuse, takes the duchess into his confidence, with a finger laid along his nose ; his way of sitting shows that he is on a style of seat he is unused to. Chantrey (the sculptor) sat to Leslie for the expression of the Sancho, and his hearty sense of humour qualified him to embody the character well. The duchess’s enjoyment breaks through the habitual restraint of her high breeding and the grave courtesy of her Spanish manners in the sweetest half-smile—a triumph of subtle expression. The sour and literal Doha Rodriguez is evidently not forgetful how Sancho, on his arrival, had desired her to have a care of Dapple. The mirth of the whispering waiting-maid culminates in the broad sunshiny grin of the mulatto - woman. All the accessories are painted with the nicest sense of propriety. Petworth was a treasure house to Leslie of old-world wealth in furniture, jewellery, china, and toilet ornaments ; and during his visits there he made careful and numerous studies of such objects.” D 34 NOS. 403 , 404 403 . UNCLE TOBY AND WIDOW WADMAN. C. R. Leslie , R.A. (1794-1859). See 402. A scene from Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Behind hangs a plan of Dunkirk ; but widow Wadrnan has also a plan of campaign—for capturing Uncle Toby in his sentry box— “ ‘ I am half distracted, Captain Shandy,’ said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric-handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the door of my Uncle Toby’s sentry-box ; ‘a mote, or sand, or some¬ thing, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine ; do look into it: it is not in the white.’ ... I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it,—looking, and looking,—then rubbing his eyes and looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun. . . . ‘ I protest, madam,’ said my Uncle Toby, ‘ I can see nothing whatever in your eye.’—‘It is not in the white,’ said Mrs. Wadman. My Uncle Toby looked with might and main into the pupil.” “ Inimitable Jack Bannister,” says Tom Taylor, “one of the pleasantest of actors, most genial of companions and kindest of men, and a genuine lover of art into the bargain, sat for the Uncle Toby ; and it would be hard to find a better model for him. This picture is perhaps the best illustration of Leslie’s perfect taste. In his hands the widow becomes so lovable a person that we overlook the fierceness of the amorous siege she is laying to Uncle Toby’s heart; while Uncle Toby himself is so thoroughly the gentleman—so unmistakably innocent and unsuspecting and single - hearted — that the humour of the situation seems filtered of all its grossness.” Exhibited at the Academy in 1831. 404 . ENTRANCE TO THE ZUYDER ZEE. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (1793-1867). William Clarkson Stanfield is remarkable as amongst the first of our painters to introduce that faithful painting of ships and shipping which has ever since distinguished the English School. He differs from the painters of earlier schools in his thorough knowledge both of the sea itself and of ships ; whilst he differs from Turner in missing somewhat of the majesty and mystery of the sea, 1 and from later 1 “He is,” says Mr. Ruskin, “a definer, as opposed to Copley Field¬ ing, because, though like all other moderns, he paints cloud and storm, he will generally paint all the masts and yards of a ship, rather than merely her black bows glooming through the foam ; and all the rocks on a hillside, rather than the blue outline of the hill through the mist [Modern Painters , vol. iv. pt. v. ch. iv. §2 n.) NO. 404 35 painters, like Henry Moore, in missing somewhat of the sea-colour. lie is, says Mr. Ruskin, “the leader of the English Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his characteristics is the look of common sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear, when opposed to any kind of affectation. He appears to think of no other artist. What he has learned, has been from his own acquaintance with, and affection for, the steep hills and deep sea ; and his modes of treatment are alike removed from sketchiness or incom¬ pletion, and fiom exaggeration or effort” {Modem Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 36). He is thus taken by Mr. Ruskin as the typical instance of a “modern painter” of marine subjects, as con¬ trasted with the ignorance of sea form amongst the old masters. “ The works of Stanfield, evidently and at all times, proceed from the hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, and thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art. . . . The local colour of Stanfield’s sea is singularly true and powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. . . . His surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hair’s-breadth in every curve ; and he is entirely independent of dark skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want of form, or atoning for it. He fears no difficulty, desires no assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and paints the element in its pure colour and complete forms.” And thus “one work of Stanfield alone presents us with as much concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted any of the old masters his life.” But, on the other hand, Stanfield’s pictures, though correct, are wanting in charm. His architecture, for instance, is “admirably drawn but commonly wanting in colour.” His sky is “apt to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather; they having neither the joyfulness of rest nor the majesty of storm. Their colour is apt also to verge on a morbid purple,” and generally, he is “want¬ ing in impressiveness ” (Modern Painters , vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iii. § 27, sec. v. ch. ii. §§ 10, 11). The correctness of Stanfield’s painting of the sea was based on personal knowledge. He was born of Irish parents at Sunderland, and commenced life as a sailor. When he was still quite young he met with an accident which disabled him from active service ; and, forming at the same time an acquaintance with Douglas Jerrold, he was employed to paint the scenes for Jerrold’s theatrical entertainments. In 1818 he was appointed scene painter at the old “Royalty,” a sailor s theatre. Subsequently he held similar appointments with David Roberts (see 400) at the “Coburg” in Lambeth, and finally at Drury Lane, where his drop scenes were much admired. He soon, however, began to exhibit pictures, and brought back sketches from journeys to Italy and Holland, which he alternated with purely marine pictures. He was elected A.R.A. in 1832, and R.A. in 1835 ; and from the latter year to his death was a regular exhibitor at the 3 6 NOS. 405, 406 Academy. He was in request too for annuals and similar publications which were then in vogue, whilst his friendship with Jerrold and Dickens threw him so much into literary and artistic circles that he came, it has been said, to take the position as a painter of the sea that Landseer took, about the same time, as a painter of animals. A good specimen of Stanfield’s “true salt, serviceable, un¬ sentimental sea.” Exhibited at the Academy in 1844* 405 . THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. (Oct. 21, 1805). Clarkson Stanfield', R.A. (1793-1867). See 404. A sketch for the large picture which the artist was com¬ missioned to paint for the Senior United Service Club. “ The picture represents the centre of the combined fleet, at half-past two o’clock, about an hour and a half after Lord Nelson received his death-wound. The Victory , the ship which bore his Lordship’s flag, after sustaining a heavy fire from four of the enemy’s ships, is in the act of disengaging herself from the Redoubtable , a French 74, at that time lashed alongside the Temeraire , a British 98, and at the moment the Fougueux, another French 74, became the prize of the latter. On the left of the spectator is Vice-Admiral Collingwood, in the Royal Sovereign , with her prize, the Santa Anna, totally dismasted, and the other ships of the lee division. On the right of the Victory is the Bucentaur, a French 80, Admiral Villeneuve’s, with her main and mizen masts shot away, and the Santissima Trinidad , a Spanish four-decker, both ships unmanageable wrecks” (Royal Academy Catalogue , 1836). 406 . THE LAKE OF COMO. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (1793-1867). See 404. This picture, like the same painter’s Venice, is deficient in the charm of colouring which is the glory of Como (contrast in this respect No. 1205). The scene is that described in Rogers’s Italy — . . . and now the purple mists Rise like a curtain ; now the sun looks out, Filling, o’erflowing with his glorious light This noble amphitheatre of hills ; And now appear as on a phosphor sea Numberless barks, from Milan, from Pavia ; Some sailing up, some down, and some at rest; NOS. 407, 422 37 Lading, unlading, at that small port-town Under the promontory—its tall tower And long flat roofs, just such as Caspar drew, Caught by a sun-beam starting through a cloud, A quay-like scene, glittering and full of life, And doubled by reflection. 407 . VENICE: THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECCA. Clarkson Stanfield , R.A. (1793-1867). See 404. The canal is that separating the main city of Venice from the Giudecca, a crescent-shaped island said to derive its name from the number of Jews who lived upon it, and now inhabited chiefly by the poorer citizens. The quay on the Venice side of the canal is the “Fondamenta delle Zattere”; the church is that of “ Sta. Maria del Rosario.” 1 This part of Venice is largely given up to shipping, the canal being that in which most of the large trading vessels lie at anchor. In the back¬ ground, away to the west, is a distant view of the Alps ; but Stanfield’s picture, though in other respects very accurate in its detail, its uncharacteristic in colour, and gives neither the opalescent hues of Venetian atmosphere nor the deep blues and reds of Venetian distances. The visitor will find it in¬ structive to compare this picture with Turner’s in the National Gallery, No. 534. Painted in 1836. 422 . THE PLAY SCENE IN “ HAMLET.” Daniel Maclise, R.A. (1806-1870). “ Maclise,” says Mr. Hodgson, “was the ‘great artist’ of his age, and covered acres of canvas. He executed frescoes on public build¬ ings, huge historical compositions, cartoons, easel pictures, great and small, portraits, water-colour drawings, and illustrations ” (Fifty Years of British Art , p. 16). His studio was the resort of persons of dis¬ tinction and influence, and it was at the special request of the Prince Consort that in 1859 he devoted himself exclusively to the work of executing a series of pictures in the Royal Palace at Westminster. During eight years Maclise worked away unceasingly in that “gloomy hall,” but owing to a subsequent alteration of the plans only two of his designs were executed. Maclise was on intimate terms, too, with 1 In some descriptions called the “Church of the Jesuits.” This is a mistake. The Church of the Jesuits ( Gesuiti ) is in a different part of Venice altogether—on the Fondamenta Nuova. This church on the canal of the Giudecca stands on the site of a church built in 1493 by the Gesuati , a distinct religious society which was suppressed in 1668. 38 NO. 422 many of the literary men of his time, especially Forster and Dickens, the latter of whom, speaking at the Academy Dinner a few days after Maclise’s death, pronounced this eulogy upon his talents and character : “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 frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers.” Of Maclise’s influence upon young artists of his time, Mr. Frith tell us in his Atitobiography (vol. i. ch. xi.), “My admiration for Maclise,” he says, “ scarcely stopped short of worship ” ; whilst he recalls another young artist-friend’s saying : “ Maclise is out and away the greatest artist that ever lived. There isn’t an old master fit to hold a candle to him ; and if I could only get some of his worse qualities into my pictures I should be satisfied.” What these bad qualities were Mr. Frith goes on to explain : “ Under happier circumstances I have always believed, and still believe, that Maclise would have been one of the greatest artists that ever lived, if his birth had been put back two or three centuries, and he had been coerced, as the great masters were, and subjected to a seven years’ apprentice¬ ship to one of the old Venetians. Instead of such mediaeval training, after a perfunctory education at the Royal Academy, the bright young fellow was left to his own unaided efforts. His great natural powers betrayed him ; he painted huge compositions of figures without using models. His sense of colour, never very strong, was destroyed by his constant indulgence in the baleful practice of painting without nature before him. His eyes, as he told me himself, saw the minutest details at distances impossible to ordinary vision. 1 He was evidently proud of his eyes, and he indulged them to the utter destruction of ‘ breadth ’ in his pictures. As to colour, he gave it up altogether; and when any reference was made to the old masters or the National Gallery, Maclise expressed his contempt in much the same words as those of another mistaken clever R.A., who would ‘like to burn them all from Moscow to Madrid.’” The absence of truth and nature in Maclise’s colouring of flesh will be obvious to any spectator as soon as it is pointed out. Another defect on which Mr. Ruskin lays stress is Maclise’s painting of hair (a defect conspicuous both in Ophelia here and in the Countess in the next picture): “ If Mr. Maclise looks fairly, and 1 “ I have heard it said,” wrote Mr. Ruskin ( Academy Notes, 1857, p. 11), “ that Mr. Maclise is singularly far-sighted, and draws more decisively than other painters, in the belief that he sees more clearly. But though his sight had the range of the eagle’s, and clearness of the lynx’s ; though it were as manifold as a dragon-fly's and as manageable as a chameleon’s,—there is a limit to his sight, as to all our sights. . . . And, as far as in his pictures I am able to compare his power of sight with that of other people, he appears to see, not more, but a great deal less, than the world in general. . . . All natural objects are confused to us, however near, however distant, because all are infinite.” NO. 422 39 without any previous prejudice, at a girl’s hair, however close to him, and however carefully curled, he will find that it verily does not look like a piece of wood carved into scrolls, and French-polished after¬ wards. ... It is not often that I plead for any imitation of the work of bygone days, but, very seriously, I think no pupil should be allowed to pass the examination ordeal of our school of painting until he had copied, in a satisfactory manner, a lock of hair by Correggio. Once let him do that with any tolerable success, and he would know to the end of his life both what the word ‘ painting ’ meant, and with what flowing light and golden honour the Maker of the human form has crowned its power, and veiled its tenderness” (Academy Notes, 1857, pp. 12, 13). To Maclise’s absence of truth must be added a certain lack of distinction and a stageyness which make his Shakespearean pictures unpleasant to those familiar with the poet. 1 There is much truth in some advice which Sir George Beaumont once gave to Haydon. “For my part,” he said, “I have always doubted the prudence of painting from poets. This is particularly applicable to painting from Shakespeare, when you not only have the powerful productions of his mind’s pencil to contend with, but also the perverted representations of the theatres.” The “perverted representations” in this case are hardly those of the stage ; it is the impression left on the mind by such actresses as Miss Ellen Terry that makes Maclise’s wooden figures additionally unsatisfying. Mr. Frith attributes Maclise’s defects, we have seen, to his too scanty training and too quick success. He was, indeed, no more than nineteen 2 when he made a happy hit with a drawing of Sir Walter Scott, then on a visit to Cork, which attracted the poet’s attention and induced Maclise to open a studio. He was the son of a respectable tradesman at Cork, and had a respectable education in that town, being particularly distinguished for proficiency in English literature and history. He was then sent to a bank, but found time to learn some anatomy at a surgeon’s. By 1827 he had saved enough money to go over to London and join the Academy Schools. Next year he made another hit with a sketch of Charles Kean (the younger), taken at a Drury Lane “first night.” At the Academy Schools he carried everything before him, and in 1829 the first picture he exhibited—a “ Malvolio ” (of which 423 is a replica)—brought him at once into fashion. From that year onwards he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, often sending six or seven pictures in one year. He was elected A.R.A. in 1834, and R.A. in 1840. His labours in West- 1 “Nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in Shakespeare than their universal admiration of Maclise’s Hamlet ” (Modern Painters , vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. i. §2 n.) 2 Or, according to his own account, fourteen. Maclise used to say he was born in 1811 ; but the register of the old Presbyterian Church at Cork fixes 1806 as the date. 40 NO. 422 minster Hall had a bad effect on his health, and the death of his sister, who kept his house, in 1865, further shattered him. He declined the Presidency of the Academy in that year, and five years later died of acute pneumonia at his house in Cheyne Walk. Exhibited at the Academy in 1842 :— The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king. The play being enacted in the background shows the act of murder by pouring poison into the ear—“’tis a knavish piece of work,” Hamlet had explained to the king, his uncle, “but what of that ? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.” And the galled jade does wince; very palpably, as Hamlet lying in front and intently observing sees full well; behind Ophelia, who is seated on the left, is Horatio, watching the king also, as Hamlet had bidden him— Hamlet to Horatio. There is a play to-night before the king; One scene of it comes near the circumstance Which I have told thee of my father’s death : I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe my uncle . . . .Give him heedful note ; For I mine eyes will rivet to his face. Macready, the actor, who took a great interest in this picture of the scene by his friend Maclise, passed a curious criticism upon it. “To Maclise”; he writes in his Diary (April 5, 1842), “and was very much pleased to see his grand picture of Hamlet, which was splendid in colour and general effect. With some of the details (!) I did not quite agree, particularly the two personages, Hamlet and Ophelia.” This is praising a picture of Hamlet “ with Hamlet left out.” But indeed the figure of Hamlet here is entirely without any suggestion of that subtle mixture of jesting madness with grim earnest, of sickly irresolution with righteous anger, which is the point of the character ; whilst in Maclise’s Ophelia there is nothing, surely, either of the charm which makes her weakness the more pitiable, or the passion which makes her subsequent madness explicable. NOS. 423 , 424 41 423 . MALVOLIO AND THE COUNTESS. Daniel Maclise, R.A. (1806-1870). See 422. From Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , Act iii. Sc. 4. Olivia—whose “ red and white ” the painter has hardly fol¬ lowed “Nature’s cunning hand” in “laying on”—is seated in her garden, thinking sadly of her unrequited love for Viola. Her maid Maria stands behind her, chuckling over the trick she has played upon Malvolio, Olivia’s steward, by bidding him, in a letter pretending to be from her mistress, come with a smiling face, and “remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee cross-gartered.” “Yond gull Malvolio does obey every point of the letter that Maria dropped to betray him : he does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies ”— Olivia. How now, Malvolio ! Malvolio. Sweet lady, ho, ho. Olivia. Why, how dost thou, man ? what is the matter with thee ? Afalvolio. Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. Olivia. God comfort thee ! Why dost thou smile so and kiss thy hand so oft ? Exhibited at the Academy in 1840. 424 . IN A JEWISH SYNAGOGUE. Solomon A. Hart , R.A. (1806-1881). Hart, a native of Plymouth and a Jew by race, was the son of a goldsmith, and began his professional career as a miniature painter. The present picture, painted in 1830, was one of his earliest subject pictures. He was elected A.R.A. in 1836, and R.A. in 1840. “ His acquaintance with the history and technical practice of his art was very considerable, and from 1854 to 1863 he succeeded Leslie as Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy. In 1865 he was elected Librarian to the same institution, an office which he held until the close of his life, discharging its duties with zeal and ability. Indeed it is not too much to say that to his untiring energy in the acquisition and arrange¬ ment of publications, whether English or foreign, bearing on the subject, the Royal Academy owes the excellence and usefulness of its present library. For some years he was Curator of the pictures in Greenwich Hospital, and one of the Art Examiners to the Science and Art Department at South Kensington.” (Official Catalogue.) 42 NOS. 426, 42y “ The five books of Moses, here called the Law, contained fifty-three sections, so that by reading one on each Sabbath, and two in one day, they read through the whole in the course of a year; finishing at the Feast of Tabernacles (in October), which they called the Rejoicing of the Law. The Jewish doctors, to show their reverence for the Scriptures, always stood when they read them, but when they taught the people they sat down ” (Burder’s Orietital Customs'). Painted in 1830. 426 . THE TRUANT. Thomas Webster , R.A. (1800-1886). Webster was born in Pimlico and brought up at Windsor, his father holding an appointment in the household of George III. Having shown an early taste for music, he was placed in the choir of the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, a few years after Callcott. He determined, however, to become a painter, and in 1825 entered the Academy Schools. He soon made a hit with his village scenes, the style of genre to which he remained faithful throughout his long life. He was elected A.R.A. in 1840, and R.A. in 1846. “Men of my genera¬ tion,” says Mr. J. E. Hodgson, “have long been familiar with the kindly face, the long snow-white hair, of a veteran artist who, from time to time, would emerge from his retreat at Cranbrook in Kent, and make his appearance at the Royal Academy amongst men who might have been his children. . . . There was a beautiful soul in the old man, a spirit of extreme purity and kindliness, of sincere love for the humble virtues and simple joys which he depicted. . . . His art has a neatness and precision, a limpid translucent quality of colour which is in strict keeping with the nature of the conception ” [Fifty years of British Art , p. 18). This picture, exhibited at the Academy in 1836, depicts . . . the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.— As you Like It, Act ii. Sc. 7. 427 . A DAME’S SCHOOL. T. Webster , R.A. (1800-1886). In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees and hardly known to fame, There dwells in lowly shed and mean attire A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame : NOS. 429, 430 43 They, grieven sore, in piteous durance pent, Awed by the power of this relentless dame, And ofttimes on vagaries idly bent, For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent. Shenstone. Exhibited at the Academy in 1845. 429 . THE PATHWAY TO THE VILLAGE CHURCH. Thomas Creswick, R.A. (1811-1869). Creswick—a native of Sheffield, who settled in London and had a career of uniform success as a landscape painter, broken only by some years of heart disease at the end—is entitled to particular mention as having in his early practice set an example, then much needed, of diligent sketching out of doors. To this practice must be attributed his success in rendering such sunny aspects of woodland England as we see in this picture. Mr. Ruskin instances Creswick as a typical ‘ ‘ modern painter ” not of the first class, in the faithfulness of his study from nature, in contrast to the conventional untruthfulness in old masters such as Poussin. Creswick’s is “the work of a man who has sought earnestly for truth : and who, with one thought or memory of nature in his heart, could look at the two landscapes, and receive Poussin’s with ordinary patience ? . . . Creswick has sweet feeling, and tries for the real green too, but, from want of science in his shadows, ends in green paint instead of green light ” ( Modern Painters , vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 20, 34). A young girl pauses at the stile— The “ why” is plain as way to parish church. Painted in 1839. 430 . DOCTOR JOHNSON IN LORD CHESTER¬ FIELD’S ANTE-ROOM. 1 E. M. Ward, R.A . (1816-1879). Edward Matthew Ward, a nephew, on his mother’s side, of Horace and James Smith (the authors of Rejected Addresses), was born in 1 This picture attracted much attention at the time of its first exhibition. It is interesting to note that it was a Johnson picture, which was also one of Mr. Frith’s great successes. This was the “Before Dinner at Boswell’s Lodgings,” which was exhibited in 1868 and sold in 1875 for ^4567, the largest price ever paid at that time for a picture by a living artist. “ There was a period in English history,” says Mr. Hodgson (Fifty Years of English Art , p. 22), “when the great lexicographer held the same position with artists that trumps do with whist players ; the rule was, when in doubt about a subject, play Dr. Johnson.” 44 NO. 430 Pimlico, and entered the Academy Schools in 1835. In 1836 he went to Rome, where he remained nearly three years, afterwards study¬ ing fresco painting under Cornelius at Munich. This study served him in good stead when, in 1852, he was commissioned to paint eight historical frescoes for the corridor of the House of Commons. The present picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1845, and secured him his election as A.R.A. in the following year. In 1855 he was elected R.A. Ward was a friend of Mr. Frith, who says of him that he was “a well-read man, an admirable talker, and a wonderful mimic.” For some years, however, before his death he was subject to intense depression of spirits, which culminated in insanity. “He did not lack talent, but, unfortunately, from the point of view of technique, his painting exhibits all the defects commonly seen in the pictures of the epoch ; it is heavy, without solidity, while its colour is depressingly sombre” (Chesneau ; The English School, p. 104 n.). An incident founded on Lord Chesterfield’s neglect of John¬ son during the progress of his Dictionary, the first prospectus of which he had dedicated to his lordship. “ The world has been for many years amused,” wrote Boswell in his Life of fohnson , “ with a story confidently told, and as confidently re¬ peated with additional circumstances, that a sudden disgust was taken by Johnson upon occasion of his being one day kept long in waiting in his lordship’s ante-chamber, for which the reason assigned was that he had company with him ■ and that at last, when the door opened, out walked Colley Cibber ; and that Johnson was so violently provoked when he found for whom he had been so long excluded, that he went away in a passion, and never would return.” Johnson’s own reference to the incident is contained in the letter which he wrote, on the completion of the Dictionary, to Lord Chesterfield : “ Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your out¬ ward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to a verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.” Notice the various devices by which the painter embodies Johnson’s sense of disgust. The waiting is tedious : one of Johnson’s com¬ panions in misfortune is yawning, another winding up his watch. Yet the indignity is greater for Johnson than for any other of my lord’s petitioners ; he is the cynosure of all eyes ; whilst those who have been preferred to him regard him with NO. 431 45 the insolent curiosity of coxcombs. Exhibited at the Academy in 1845. 431 . THE DISGRACE OF LORD CLARENDON. E. M. Ward, R.A. (1816-1879). See 430. A sketch for the picture in Lord Northwick’s Collection, which was exhibited at the Academy in 1846. The scene is the departure of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor under Charles II., after his last interview with the king at Whitehall Palace, 1667. Clarendon was at the time the best hated man in the country. The king hated him for his stubborn opposition to the royal usurpations ; the Commons hated him for his equally stubborn opposition to any extension of their prerogatives ; whilst the court hated him for the austerity of his morals. “ He missed no opportunity of show¬ ing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace, and the admonitions which he addressed to the king himself were very sharp, and, what Charles dis¬ liked still more, very long.” Hence it was that the king de¬ termined to dismiss him, and the Commons to impeach him. He has now been in to plead his cause in vain with the king, and is descending the garden steps, on his way to fly the country. The retiring figure in the middle distance, of which the back only is seen, represents the king. Various courtiers, among whom is conspicuous the king’s mistress, Lady Castle- maine, are in the balcony, exulting in the disgrace of the fallen minister. “This day,” writes Pepys {Diary, August 27, 1667), “Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, was with me, and tells me how this business of my Lord Chancellor’s was certainly de¬ signed in my Lady Castlemaine’s chamber, and fhat when he went from the king on Monday morning she was in bed (though about twelve o’clock), and ran out in her smock into her aviary looking into White Hall garden, and thither her woman brought her her nightgown, and stood blessing herself at the old man’s going away, and several of the gallants of White Hall (of which there were many staying to see the chan¬ cellor’s return) did talk to her in her bird-cage, among others, Blancford, telling her she was the bird of passage.” 46 NOS. 432, 437 432 . THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. E. M. Ward, R.A. (1816-1879). See 430. The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath ; And these are of them. A scene in Change Alley in 1720—“when the South Sea Company were voting dividends of fifty per cent, when a hundred pounds of their stock were selling for ,£1100, when Threadneedle Street was daily crowded with the coaches of dukes and prelates, when divines and philosophers turned gamblers, when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence,—the periwig-company, and the Spanish-jackass company, and the quicksilver-fixation-company” (Macaulay’s Essays). “ The crowds were so great indoors,” adds Lord Mahon (History of England), “that tables with clerks were set in the streets. In this motley throng were blended all ranks, all professions, and all parties, churchmen and dissenters, whigs and tories, country gentlemen and brokers. An eager strife of tongues prevailed in this second Babel; new reports, new subscriptions, new transfers flew from mouth to mouth ; and the voices of ladies (for even many ladies had turned gamblers) rose loud and incessant above the general throng.” Our greatest ladies hither come And ply in chariots daily, Or pawn their jewels for a sum, To venture it in Alley .—Ballad of the Time. Exhibited at the Academy in 1847. 437 . THE FISHERMAN’S HOME. Francis Danby, A.R.A. (1793-1861). This painter, chiefly distinguished for his sunset scenes, though it was on the strength of an historical composition that he was in 1825 elected A. R.A., was born and educated in Ireland, and was for some time a drawing master at Bristol. He afterwards came up to London, had one of his pictures bought by Sir T. Lawrence, and thus attracted public attention. He resided for several years in Switzerland, and afterwards at Lewisham, and finally near Exmouth. “The works of Danby, as I remember them forty years ago,” says Madox Brown {Magazine of Art, February 1888), “enjoyed an immense reputation, and were credited with all sorts of qualities, while many people admired them in preference to Turner’s pictures.” Many of the “ solemn and beautiful works ” mentioned by NOS. 438, 439 47 Madox Brown are, however, now in a ruined condition; and the present picture (exhibited in 1846) can only be seen on exceptionally bright days. 438 . WOODCUTTERS. John Linnell (1792-1882). Linnell was the son of a carver and gilder in London, and was thus early thrown among artists. His first instructors were West and Varley, and he afterwards entered the Academy Schools. In 1813, when he was toiling at portraits, miniatures, and engravings, he was introduced to Blake, whom he asked to help him. He remained to the end the chief friend and stay of Blake’s declining years ; it was he who commissioned Blake to do both the Job and the Dante series, and he did many other services to Blake and his wife. Another intimate friend of Linnell’s was Mulready, with whom he lived for a time. Linnell is now best known for his landscapes, generally of some quiet English scene made impressive by sunrise or sunset effects or storm, but fifty years ago he was more famous for his portraits,—of Peel and Carlyle amongst others,—several of which he afterwards engraved. He also published other illustrated “ Galleries,” as well as several works on Biblical criticism, to which he devoted much of his leisure. “This,” he used to say of his Biblical studies, “this is the serious labour of my life.” Then pointing to a landscape on the easel, he added : “ That is but my recreation.” Linnell also wrote a good deal of verse, of no great technical merit, but full of a very reverent love of nature. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Academy, but was never elected to its membership, and late in life he is said to have refused the offer of Associateship. Mr. Ruskin, writing of a picture by Linnell, referred to the close study pursued by him “ through many laborious years, characterised by an observance of nature scrupulously and minutely patient, directed by the deepest sensibility, and aided by a power of drawing almost too refined for landscape subjects, and only to be understood by reference to his engravings after Michael Angelo : ” Modern Painters , vol. ii., Addenda. (Linnell’s “Life” forms the subject of two interesting volumes by Mr. A. T. Story, 1892.) An open space in the outskirts of Windsor Forest, such as Pope has described—- There, interspers’d in lawns and opening glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other’s shades. 439 . THE WINDMILL. John Linnell (1792-1882). See 438. Exhibited at the Academy in 1847. A beautiful little com¬ position, with a fresh, breezy sky. Mr. Vernon bought this picture for 50 guineas. 48 NOS. 442-444 442 . RED CAP. George Lance (1802-1864). Lance is the most distinguished still-life painter amongst the English old masters. He was born near Dunmow in Essex, and was the son of an officer in the yeomanry. After an unsuccessful attempt to tie him down to a manufactory, he came up as a lad to London and wandered one day into the British Museum. There he saw three young men sketching from the Elgin marbles, each of whom, he observed, signed himself “ Pupil of Haydon.” He asked one of them (it was Charles Landseer) for Haydon’s address, and went next morn¬ ing early to inquire his terms. “ Show me what you can do, my boy,” said Haydon, “and if there is talent in you, I will take you for noth¬ ing.” This was the beginning of seven years’ study under Haydon. His first picture, exhibited in 1822, was bought by Sir George Beau¬ mont, and his still-life pieces were afterwards very popular. Haydon allowed his pupil to follow his bent, but Lance occasionally painted historical pictures. (For a curious story of Lance’s retouching of Velazquez’s “ Boar Hunt,” see my National Gallery Handbook , No. 197 )- A monkey with a red cap on his head ; wild duck and vegetables. Exhibited 1847. 443 . A FRUIT PIECE. George Latice (1802-1864). See 442. Pine-apple, grapes, melon, etc. Exhibited 1848. 444 . “THE DEVIL TO PAY.” Augustus L. Egg, R.A. (1816-1863). Egg was the son of a gunmaker in Piccadilly. He learnt drawing first at the private academy of Mr. Sass, in Charlotte Street, Blooms¬ bury, and afterwards as a student at the Academy. Pie first exhibited there in 1838, entering at once upon the line of the higher genre> in which he afterwards became distinguished. He was elected A.R.A. in 1848, and R.A. in i860. He was a great friend of Mr. Frith, with whom he made more than one continental trip. He lived at Ivy Cottage, at the corner of the Queen’s Road, and was famous for his dinner parties, at which such men as Dickens, Leech, Mark Lemon, and Mulready used to assemble. He was fond of acting and appeared in Dickens’s private theatricals. His pictures are clever in seizing the desired expression. “ Pie was,” says Mr. Holman Hunt (to whom in his early days Egg gave encouragement and assistance), “ a pictorial dramatist of true power ; a keen reader and Tenderer of human ex¬ pression to the very realm of poetic inspiration, if not of imaginative interpretation.” NO. 446 49 A scene from Le Sage’s Le Diable Boiteux. Patricio, a dis¬ solute young Spaniard, has met two ladies of the town, and taken them off to breakfast at a tavern. “ Sir,” says the host, “what would you please to eat? I have crammed chickens, partridges of Leon, pigeons of Old Castile, and more than half a ham of Estremadura.” The ladies fell greedily upon the meat, while Patricio feasted on the beauties of his friends. One of the ladies lays her claws upon the partridges that re¬ mained in the dish, and crams them into a linen pocket under her petticoat. The game is continued until the larder is cleared, and at last Patricio calls for the reckoning, which amounted to fifty reals. He puts his hand into his pocket, and finding but thirty reals there, he is forced to pawn his rosary, adorned with silver medals, to meet the account (from The Devil on two Sticks , 1778, ch. viii). Exhibited at the Academy in 1844. 446 . THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE. J. C. Horsley , R.A. (born 1817). Mr. John Callcott Horsley—son of the well-known musician, and grand-nephew of Callcott, the artist—first appeared as an exhibitor at the Academy in 1839 with the present picture. He was elected A.R.A, in 1855, and R.A. in 1864. He has also been identified with the cause periodically advocated in the Times newspaper by the “British Matron.” He was Treasurer and Trustee of the Academy, and took an active part in promoting the annual exhibitions of the “Old Masters.” He is now on the Retired list. The fresco of “Religion” in the House of Lords was executed by him in 1845. “ There is always a sweet feeling in Mr. Horsley’s pictures,” says Mr. Ruskin (Academy Notes, 1856, p. 25) ; and this, like the one of which he then spoke, “is an old story, but prettily told.” “ She never even mentioned her lover’s name, but would lay her head on her mother’s bosom and weep in silence. In this way she was seated between her parents one Sunday after¬ noon ; the lattice was thrown open, and the soft air that stole in brought with it the fragrance of the clustering honeysuckle which her own hands had trained round the window. A tear trembled in her soft blue eye. Was she thinking of her faith¬ less lover ? or were her thoughts wandering to that distant churchyard into whose bosom she might soon be gathered ? ” (Washington Irving’s Sketch Book). Exhibited at the Academy in 1839. E 5 ° NOS. 447 > 448, 45 ° 447 . DUTCH BOATS IN A CALM. E. W. Cooke , R.A. (1811-1880). One of the very numerous sea-pieces of the same kind which Edward W. Cooke, who was of Dutch descent and who visited Holland fifteen times, was constantly producing. His father was well known as an engraver of Turner’s pictures, and he himself was at first largely em¬ ployed in similar work. He also studied botany, geology, and archi¬ tecture, and became a fellow of several learned societies. He was elected A.R.A. in 1851, and R.A. in 1864. His pictures are very numerous. 448 . THE BOATHOUSE. E. TV. Cooke , R.A. (1811-1880). 450 . A VILLAGE HOLIDAY OF THE OLDEN TIME. E. Goo dal /, R.A. (born 1822). Mr. Frederick Goodall is a son of Edward Goodall, the eminent line-engraver, who died in 1870, leaving behind him a family of artists, three of his sons being well-known painters, and one of his daughters having exhibited several pictures at the Academy. Mr. F. Goodall himself had two sons, whose artistic promise was unhappily cut short by early death. E. Goodall was commissioned by Turner to engrave from his pictures as many plates as he could, and Mr. F. Goodall, who was originally educated for his father’s profession, was brought up, as he himself puts it, on Turner, whom he reverenced as the greatest of artists. We can only paint our impressions, says Mr. Goodall, but they must be impressions resulting from the study of nature, as in Turner’s case, who painted effects which lasted only a few seconds, but which he stored up in his memory. Mr. Goodall first exhibited at the Academy in 1839, when he was only seventeen. No. 451 was exhibited three years later, and purchased by Mr. Vernon, whose collection of pictures was bequeathed to the nation. The present picture (also bought by Mr. Vernon) was exhibited in 1847, and greatly extended the artist’s reputation. He was elected A.R.A. in 1853, R.A. in 1863, and has been a constant exhibitor at the Academy for sixty years. His works have been of many different kinds; but he is best known for his religious subjects in the Eastern backgrounds. He has been much in Egypt, and has realised on many a canvas the pictorial elements of Eastern landscape. (See No. 1562.) Exhibited at the Academy in 1847 :— When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound, To many a youth and many a maid, Dancing in the chequered shade ; NOS. 45 F 452, 563 5i And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday. Milton’s L'Allegro. 451 . THE TIRED SOLDIER. F. Goodall, R.A. (born 1822). See 450. Exhibited at the Academy in 1842 :— ’Tis a little thing To give a cup of water; yet its draught Of cool refreshment, drained by feverish lips May give a thrill of pleasure to the frame More exquisite than when nectarian juice Renews the life of joy in happiest hours. Talfourd. 452 . THE FRUGAL MEAL. John F. Herring (1795-1865). A study of three horses’ heads by a painter who knew them well, for Herring, who was a self-taught artist, was originally a stage-coachman, and for four years drove the “York and London Highflyer.” Mr. Frith, by the way, acknowledges in his Autobiography great assistance in the high-mettled racer (in the “Derby Day,” See No. 615), from Herring, “one of the best painters of the racehorse I have ever known.” He was animal painter to H.R.H. the Duchess of Kent, and the Queen possesses several portraits of horses by him. Three horses feeding ; two pigeons are also partaking of the meal. Painted in 1847. 563 . JERUSALEM AND THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. Thomas Seddon (1821-1857) Seddon, born in the parish of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, was the son of the eminent cabinet-maker, and was brought up to his father’s business, devoting himself more particularly to the designing of furni¬ ture. He subsequently adopted painting as his profession, and was a devotee of the strictest sect of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1849, when he went on his first sketching tour to Bettws-y-Coed, we see the spirit in which he approached his art. He was in the company of several artists, and was much surprised at their thinking a day enough for a sketch, for which to him weeks seemed all too few. He applauded too, says his biographer, “ the heroic resolution of an amateur who de¬ clared he would give himself three weeks’ hard labour to endeavour to draw one single branch of a tree properly, and would only go on drawing if he found he succeeded in that attempt.” In 1853 he 52 NO. 563 accompanied Mr. Holman Hunt to the East, whence he returned in 1854 with two finished pictures, the “Pyramids of Ghizeh,” and this one of Jerusalem, which was painted on the spot, and took five month’s continuous work in its execution. “After visiting every part of the city,” he wrote from Jerusalem, “and surrounding country to determine what I would do; I have encamped upon the hill to the south, looking up the valley of Jehoshaphat; I have sketched the view which I see from the opening of my tent. I am painting from one hundred yards higher up, where I see more of the valley, with the Tombs of the Kings and Gethsemane. I get up before five, breakfast, and begin soon after six. I come in at twelve and dine, and sleep for an hour; and then, about two, paint till sunset.” During all this time Seddon camped out — sleeping in a deserted tomb in the Field of Aceldama, on the Hill of Evil Counsel. On his return to London, Seddon opened an exhibition of his Eastern sketches at 14 Berners Street (March-June 1855). “Mr. Ruskin came,” he writes, “and stayed a long time. He was much pleased with everything and especially ‘Jerusalem,’ which he praised wonderfully; and in good truth it is something for a man who has studied pictures so much to say, ‘ Well, Mr. S., before I saw these, I never thought it possible to attain such an effect of tone and light without sacrificing truth of colour.’ ” Shortly afterwards Seddon, who resided at 27 Grove Terrace, Kentish Town, married. In 1856 he had another exhibition of his works, this time at Conduit Street. In the autumn of that year he set out for a second journey to the East, but was seized with dysentery and died at Cairo, where he is buried. A committee was formed in London — consisting of Mr. Ruskin, Ford Madox Brown, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, and others—to arrange an exhibition of his works and promote a memorial, which was to consist of the purchase of this picture from his widow for 400 guineas and its presentation to the National Gallery. Mr. Ruskin, speaking at a conversazione at the Society of Arts on behalf of the fund, said “ that the position which Mr. Seddon occupied as an artist appears to deserve some public recognition quite other than could be generally granted to genius, however great, which had been occupied only in previously beaten paths. Mr. Seddon’s works are the first which represent a truly historic landscape art; that is to say, they are the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy ; being directed, with stern self-restraint, to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy know¬ ledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them. Whatever degrees of truth may have been attained or attempted by previous artists have been more or less subordinate to pictorial or dramatic effect. In Mr. Seddon’s works, the primal object is to place the spectator, as far as art can do, in the scene represented, and to give him the perfect sensation of its reality, wholly unmodified by the artist’s execution.” The question before them, he added, was “whether they would further the noble cause of truth in art, while NO. 563 53 they gave honour to a good and a great man, and consolation to those who loved him ; or whether they would add one more to the victories of oblivion, and suffer this picture, wrought in the stony desert of Aceldama, which was the last of his labours, to be also the type of his reward ; whether they would suffer the thorn and the thistle to choke the seed that he had sown, and the sand of the desert to sweep over his forgotten grave.” In response to this appeal a sum of ^600 was raised ; the picture was duly presented to the National Gallery, and the balance of the money was given to Mrs. Seddon as a further tribute of respect to her husband’s memory {Memoirs and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist. By his Brother. 1858). The foreground from which the view of Jerusalem is taken is the southern summit of the Olivet mountains which “ stand round about Jerusalem,” known as the Hill of Evil Counsel, whereon the chief priests “ bought the potter’s field to bury strangers in” with Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. The sleep¬ ing figure under the pomegranate tree represents the painter’s Syrian servant, resting during the heat of the day. Facing the spectator on the left are seen the modern walls of Jeru¬ salem, and the mosque of El-Aska on Mount Moriah, supposed to be on the site of the ancient Temple. “As now the dome of the mosque El-Aska, so then must have risen the Temple- tower ; as now the vast enclosure of the Mussulman sanctuary, so then must have spread the Temple-courts ; as now the gray town on its broken hills, so then the magnificent city, with its background — long since vanished away — of gardens and suburbs on the western plateau behind. Immediately below was the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depths as it joins the valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem seen only on its eastern side—its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss.” 1 Below the walls of the city are the terraces of Mount Zion and the village of Siloarn. Running north and south is the valley of the Kedron, identified with the valley of Jehoshaphat or of the Divine judgment, long regarded by Christian and Mussul¬ man pilgrims as the destined scene of the judgment of the 1 Dean Stanley (Sinai a?id Palestine, 1873, p. 193). But the same peculiarity sometimes strikes the spectator as he looks at the city in this view of it from the south. I was once standing before this picture when two French visitors came up to it. They missed the inscription, and gave the picture only a momentary glance. “ What can it be?” asked one of them. “Why, it must be a recollection of Monaco, of course,” replied his friend. 54 NO. 563 world. On the east of the valley is the ridge of the Mount of Olives, with the garden of Gethsemane sloping down to the valley, and nearer to the spectator the “ Mount of Offence,” so called from Solomon’s idol-worship. “ I am told,” wrote the artist (June 10, 1854) in describing the view represented in his picture, “ that, a month ago, the Mount of Olives was covered with beautiful flowers ; now they are all over, and, as most of the corn is cut, it is rather bare. It is dotted over with scattered olive trees which, in our Saviour’s time, were probably thick groves, giving a good shelter from the heat of the sun. Its present look is peculiar; the rock is a light gray limestone, showing itself in narrow ledges all up the side ; the soil is whitish, and the grass, now burned to a yellowish colour on the ledges in narrow strips, forms altogether a most delicate and beautiful colour, on which the gray-green olives stand out in dark relief. The evening sun makes it at first golden-hued, and afterwards literally, as Tennyson writes, ‘the purple brows of Olivet.’ ” The topographical accuracy of the picture has been noticed in Mr. Ruskin’s words above. Anything short of it would have seemed sacrilege to the painter. The spirit in which he set himself to depict the Holy City comes out very clearly in the same letter from which we have just quoted. “ Besides the beauty of this land,” he writes, “ one cannot help feeling that one is treading upon holy ground ; and it is impossible to tread the same soil which our Lord trod, and wander over His favourite walks with the apostles, and follow the very road that He went from Gethsemane to the Cross, without seriously feel¬ ing that it is a solemn reality, and no dream.” It was one of the dearest wishes of his heart that this picture should find its way to the National Gallery. He had offered it to a gentle¬ man who expressed a wish to purchase it, for a lower sum than he would otherwise have taken, on the condition that he would promise to leave it to the nation on his decease; and he left behind him a memorandum of plans for a larger version of the same subject to be placed in some public gallery, so as to give the public a “ correct representation of the very places which were so often trod by our Redeemer during His sojourn on earth.” One cannot have a more instructive lesson in Pre- Raphaelitism than by comparing this picture—painted in such a spirit and depicting a scene as it really looks—with Sir Charles Eastlake’s representation (No. 397), of the scene as NO. 608 55 he supposed it might gracefully and prettily have looked. The latter version will often attract more than Seddon’s, the clear blue sky and complete absence of atmosphere here being in particular a block of offence to those unacquainted with the East. But the very unattractiveness of the true scene is not without significance. “ The first view of Olivet impresses us chiefly by its bare matter-of-fact appearance; the first approach to the hills of Judaea reminds the English traveller not of the most, but of the least, striking portions of the mountains of his own country. Yet all this renders the Holy Land the fitting cradle of a religion which expressed itself not through the voices of rustling forests, or the clefts of mysterious precipices, but through the souls and hearts of men ; which was destined to have no home on earth, least of all in its own birthplace ; which has attained its full dimensions only in proportion as it has travelled further from its original source, to the daily life and homes of nations as far removed from Palestine in thought and feeling as they are in climate and latitude ; which, alone of all religions, claims to be founded not on fancy or feeling, but on Fact and Truth” (Stanley: Sinai and Palestine , p. 156). 608 . ALEXANDER AND DIOGENES. Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873). Sir Edwin Henry Landseer—the chief modern painter of the dog— is a typical representative of the English School. The “sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own ” is indeed so strong in him that the chief weakness of his pictures consists in the animals being made too human. “ In our modern treatment of the dog, of which the prevailing tendency is marked by Landseer, the in¬ terest taken in him is disproportionate to that taken in man, and leads to a somewhat trivial mingling of sentiment, or warping by caricature, giving up the true nature of the animal for the sake of a pretty thought or pleasant jest. Neither Titian nor Velazquez ever jest ; and though Veronese jests gracefully and tenderly, he never for an instant over¬ steps the absolute facts of nature. But the English painter looks for sentiment or jest primarily, and reaches both by a feebly romantic taint of fallacy, except in one or two simple and touching pictures, such as the ‘ Shepherd’s Chief Mourner ’ ” (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. §20). In fact Landseer is “much more a natural historian than a painter ; and the power of his works depends more on his knowledge and love of animals, on his understanding of their minds and ways, on his unerring notice and memory of their gestures and ex- 56 NO. 608 pressions, than on artistical or technical excellence. He never aims at colour ; 1 his composition is always weak, and sometimes unskilful; and his execution, though partially dexterous, and admirably adapted to the imitation of certain textures and surfaces, is far from being that of a great Painter attained by the mastery of every various difficulty, and changefully adapted to the treatment of every object ” {Modern Painters , vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. iv. § 11 n.) It is in virtue of his fidelity to nature that Mr. Ruskin claims Landseer as a “ Pre- Raphaelite” (see p. 683). “I need not point out,” he says, “to any one acquainted with his earlier works, the labour, or watchfulness of nature which they involve, nor need I do more than allude to the peculiar faculties of his mind. It will at once be granted that the highest merits of his pictures are throughout found in those parts of them which are least like what had before been accomplished ; and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained his eminent success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers ” {Pre-Raphaelitism, in 0 . 0 . P., i. 272). * But to “ the healthy love of Scotch terriers” must be added heredi¬ tary taste for art. Landseer belonged to a family of artists. His father was John Landseer, the engraver, and author (amongst other art-books) of a Catalogue to the National Gallery. Henry Landseer, a brother of John, was also an artist. Of John Landseer’s sons, Thomas, the eldest, was the celebrated engraver, to whose skill Edwin’s work owes much of its popularity. Charles, the second son, was an R. A. ; whilst three daughters were all of them artists of ability also. What distinguished Edwin amongst this artistic family was his extra¬ ordinary precocity : able drawings of his are in existence (some of them at the South Kensington Museum) done when he was nine and even five years old. He began to exhibit at the Academy when he was thirteen : two pictures, of a mule and some dogs respectively, appear¬ ing in the 1815 catalogue as by “Master E. Landseer, Honorary Ex¬ hibitor.” It was soon after this that he entered the Academy Schools : “Where is my little dog boy?” Fuseli, the Keeper, used to say. As soon as he was twenty-four he was elected A. R.A., and four years later R.A. But long before he received the former honour he was a celebrated and popular painter. He had had a work purchased by Sir George Beaumont—which in those days constituted a sort of hall-mark for a painter—as early as 1818, when he was only sixteen ; and a year or two before he was elected A. R.A., Sir Walter Scott had invited him to Abbotsford, “where,” said his friend Leslie, relat¬ ing the circumstance, “he will make himself very popular, both with the master and mistress of the house, by sketching their doggies for 1 So M. Chesneau {English School, p. 98) says : “There are some of his works of which one must see the engravings and avoid the pictures, for fear of being hopelessly disenchanted ; they vanish away under a sort of veil of grey dust spread, as if purposely, on the surface of the picture, which does away with all effect, all relief, and every appearance of life." NO. 60S 57 them,” see No. 1532. In connection with Landseer’s precocity, one should mention the extraordinary facility of his powers when they reached his prime (see N.G., No. 409). He was, however, no exception to Reynolds’s rule that “ labour is the only price of solid fame, and there is no easy method of becoming a great painter. ” His father did indeed give the boy his bent, but he trained it carefully from the first. He directed his son’s practice, says Mr. Wornum, to nature, so that “as soon as he could hold a pencil with some steadiness, the boy was sent or accompanied into the fields to draw from sheep, goats, and donkeys.” Some allusion will be found to young Landseer’s early sketching, under a picture of Hampstead Heath (No. 1237), the spot which was his first school of art. He had another master in Haydon. He and his brothers Charles and Thomas had the run of Haydon’s studio, but though he made copies of dissections by Haydon he was not a regular pupil in the way that his brothers were. Early as was his fame, it was not till he was twenty-two that Landseer left his father’s roof: up to that time his father even managed his commissions and fixed his prices for him. In 1825 he moved to 18 St. John’s Wood Road, the house in which he lived for the rest of his life, and which, since his death, has been occupied by another cattle painter, Mr. Davis, R.A. Besides his fame as a painter, Land¬ seer was in great request socially. “ From his early youth,” says his friend, Mr. Frith, “he had been admitted to the highest society, and no wonder, for in addition to his genius, which was exercised again and again for the ‘ great,’ either in ornamenting their scrap-books or in the more important form of pictures—for which they paid him very in¬ adequately— he was the most delightful story-teller and the most charming companion in the world. He also sang delightfully. In speaking, he had caught a little of the drawl affected in high life, and he practised it till it became a second nature.” He was in high favour at court, and the Queen and the Prince Consort used to make etchings from his designs. He was the friend of Sydney Smith and Dickens and most of the celebrities of his day. The prices he obtained for his pictures were large (Mr. Vernon gave ^"1500 for “ Peace ” and “ War,” in the National Gallery), and those for the copyright—with a view to engraving—were larger still. In 1850 he was knighted, in 1867 the Lions, which were commissioned from Landseer in 1859, were placed in Trafalgar Square. Upon Sir C. Eastlake’s death in 1867 Landseer declined to be proposed as President of the Academy. He was awarded medals of distinction at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, and at Vienna in 1873. In the last few years of his life he suffered from nervous weakness and failing mental powers. He was given the honour of a public funeral in St. Paul’s. The celebrated Greek cynic is said to have shown his contempt for riches by taking up his abode in a large tub. Plutarch relates that Alexander visited him when in his tub at Corinth, and said to him, “I am Alexander the Great.” “And 58 NO. 608 I am Diogenes the Cynic,” replied the philosopher. “ What can I do for you?” said the king. “Stand out of the sun¬ shine,” said the cynic. Alexander, struck with the remark, to reprove those of his courtiers who were ridiculing the uncouth rudeness of the Greek philosopher, said, “ If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.” Landseer “ personi¬ fies Diogenes by a dingy, meditative little beast in inferior condition of health and of poor belongings. He appears to be a farrier’s tyke, to judge by the box of nails, with its thumb- hole, and the hammer, which lie before the tub ; and he is undoubtedly of abstemious habits, if we may judge by the * rope ’ of onions and the herbs suspended at the side of his place of shelter, and the potatoes which lie on the flagstones. Alexander, the big white bull-dog, with his military collar, stands before the tub, and regarding its cynical occupant askant, knits his brows—not a dog’s action, by the bye—at once inquiringly and with hauteur. The courtiers are common¬ place ; two are whining, with hypocritical mouths turned down, the one has upcast eyes, the other is self-absorbed in medita¬ tion, and with his eyes dreamily half-closed, occupies part of the background. A greyhound of the gentler sex, whose collar is decorated with a hawk’s bell, and who is herself a courtier, is courted by the sneaking little spaniel, with his set smile on his lips, and adulatory eyes as lustrous as globes of glass. A contumelious spaniel of another breed is near, and, with nose upturned and scornful, looks at the more scornful and not less insincere cynic, who, with greater pride, tramples on the pride of Alexander” ( Stephens , pp. 91, 92.) “ Politicians,” says Mr. Bell, by whom the picture was bequeathed to the National Gallery, “and persons having a lively imagination may see in Alexander the type of a successful bully, who has fought his way in the world by physical force , and has a sovereign contempt for moral influence. His motto is ‘ vi et armisj in support of which propensity he has obtained a few scars. Nevertheless he is quite ready at any moment To fight his battles o’er again, And thrice to slay the slain. Among his followers may be traced the portraits of a numerous class of persons who are always to be found in the wake of lucky adventurers, looking out for any share of the spoil which chance or flattery may bring within their grasp” (Descriptive NOS. 609, 615 59 Catalogue of Pictures, etc., exhibited at the Marylebone Institu¬ tion, etc., 1859). This picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1848. 609 . “THE MAID AND THE MAGPIE.” Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873). See 608. From the popular tale so called, founded on a trial in the French Causes Celebres, which Rossini adopted in his opera, La Gazza Ladra. “ A pretty Belgian girl, with a gay red cap on her head, has come a-milking ; the cow is willing, and turns with affectionate docility to her friend ; but the girl, whose expression is happy, is ardently listening to her lover, who, leaning against a post, sighing and longing, speaks to her. Thus far she neglects her immediate duties. She is supposed to get into further trouble because, having placed a silver spoon in one of the wooden shoes at her side, she did not observe how a malicious magpie pilfered the treasure ” {Stephens, pp. 97, 98). Exhibited at the Academy in 1858. 615 . THE DERBY DAY. W. P. Frith , R.A. (born 1819). Mr. William Powell Frith, the most widely popular painter of his day, was bom at Aldfield in Yorkshire, his father being a dependant at Studley Royal, and afterwards landlord of the Dragon Inn at Harro¬ gate. His family were from the first anxious to make an artist of him, his own inclination, however, being to the trade of auctioneer. Pie was educated at a private school near Dover, and in 1835 entered Mr. Sass’s drawing school at 6 Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury—a school which has the honour of turning out many of our best painters, Sir John Millais amongst the number. Plere Mr. Frith for two years drew from the antique, afterwards passing into the Academy Schools. He obtained some little occupation as a portrait painter in country houses, and his first picture subjects were from Scott',and Shakespeare—one of these, a “ Malvolio,” was hung at the Academy in 1840, the same year in which Maclise’s “Malvolio” (423) was exhibited. It was Maclise whom Mr. Frith set himself at this period to imitate, his great difficulty, as he tells us, being to think of subjects. A picture of “ Dolly Varden” secured him the friendship of Dickens, and in 1844 he was elected A.R.A. In 1852 he was elected R.A. in succession to Turner. It was in this year that he first attempted a subject in modern life, to which he had always felt impelled, but from which the difficulty of dealing with modern costume had long deterred him. His first great success in this line was with “Ramsgate Sands” in 1854. This was followed by “The Derby Day,” “The Railway 6o NO. 615 Station,” “The Marriage of the Prince of Wales,” “The Road to Ruin,” “The Race for Wealth,” “For Better or for Worse,” and “The Private View.” Of late years, Mr. Frith has returned to literary and historical subjects, but it is on his pictorial mirrors of modern life that he justly bases his claim to fame. The limits of that fame were thus defined by Mr. Ruskin in criticising the present picture, which is admittedly the painter’s masterpiece : “I am not sure how much power is involved in the production of sucK a picture as this ; great ability there is assuredly—long and careful study—con¬ siderable humour—untiring industry—all of them qualities entitled to high praise, which I doubt not they will receive from the delighted public. It is also quite proper and desirable that this English carnival should be painted ; and of the entirely popular manner of painting, which, however, we must remember, is necessarily, because popular, stooping and restricted, I have never seen an abler example. The drawing of the distant figures seems to me especially dexterous and admirable ; but it is very difficult to characterise the picture in accurate general terms. It is a kind of cross between John Leech and Wilkie, with a dash of daguerreotype here and there, and some pretty seasoning with Dickens’s sentiment” ( Academy Notes, 1858, p. 20). A scene on the racecourse at Epsom in May 1857—Blink Bonny’s year, in days when gambling-tents and thimble¬ rigging, prick-in-the-garter and the three-card trick, had not been stopped by the police. “ The picture shows us,” says a fellow-academician, “as Hogarth did, what the life of our great metropolis is like. The races on Epsom Downs, the great saturnalia of British sport, bring to the surface all that is most characteristic of London life. In this picture we can discern its elements, its luxury, its wealth, its beauty and refinement, its respectability and its boredom, its hopeless, unspeakable misery. All its sad tales are told, from that of the jaded Traviata seated in her carriage to the thimble- rigger’s accomplice, luring a silly countryman to lose his money ; and the hungry young acrobat, who forgets all about his somersault in the cravings of his poor empty little stomach. Though Mr. Frith does not intentionally pose as a moralist in this picture, its truth and its wealth of incident answer the same purpose. We are surrounded by evils, many of them past cure, and not of our own making. It must needs be that offences come, and not only woe but utter discomfort and ennui must come to those by whom they come; so it is written, and so it fares with this mad world—and here is the sign of it!” (J. E. Hodgson : Fifty Years of British Art, p. 23). Of the origin, production, and reception of the picture, Mr. NO. 615 61 Frith gives a very interesting account in his Autobiography. He came back from Epsom in 1857, convinced that the scene offered “ abundant material for the line of art to which I felt obliged, in the absence of higher gifts, to devote myself; and the more I considered the kaleidoscopic aspect of the crowd on Epsom Downs, the more firm became my resolve to attempt to reproduce it.” Mr. Frith began to transfer his mental notes to canvas, and after making numbers of studies from models for all the principal figures, prepared a small sketch of the whole composition. Mr. Jacob Bell saw it, and at once com¬ missioned the artist to paint a large picture from it. The price was to be ^1500; while for the copyright for the engraving Mr. Frith obtained another ,£1500. The sum was large ; but the picture involved an immense amount of labour, and a very large number of models. For the main incident, that of the acrobat and his hungry little boy, the artist found what was wanted in the Drury Lane pantomime; but the young gentleman’s idea of sitting being to throw somersaults, Mr. Frith acquired their dresses and put them on professional models. His friends and children were also put largely under contribution. The lady in a riding-habit in the left-hand corner is “ that witty, charming creature, Miss Gilbert,” who also figures in Landseer’s “ Pretty Horse Breaker.” With regard to the racing element, “ my determination to keep the horses as much in the background as possible did not arise,” says Mr. Frith, “from the fact of my not being able to paint them properly, so much as from my desire that the human being should be paramount; still it was impossible to avoid the steeds and their riders altogether. There I found my friend Tattersall of great service. He procured an excellent type of the jockey class—a delightful little fellow, who rode a wooden horse in my studio, and surprised me by his endurance of a painful attitude, that of raising himself in his stirrups and leaning forward in the manner of his tribe.” When at last, “ after fifteen months’ incessant labour,” the picture w T as ready for the Academy of 1858, Mr. Frith tells us how Maclise spoke of the “gem-like bits of the beautiful mosaic you have so skilfully put together,” and how, when the exhibition was opened (then in Trafalgar Square), the Queen, “ instead of, as she invariably did, looking at the pictures in their order accord¬ ing to the Catalogue, went at once to mine; and after a little while sent for me and complimented me in the kindest manner. 62 no . 616 . . . It was on this occasion that, the Prince Consort surprised me exceedingly by his intimate knowledge of what I may call the conduct of a picture. He told me why I had done certain things, and how, if a certain change had been made, my object would have been assisted. I put many of the Prince’s suggestions to the proof after the close of the exhibition, and I improved my picture in every instance.” The verdict of the Queen was endorsed by her people. So great was the crowd round “ The Derby Day ” that a rail had to be fixed up to protect it—an attention that had been paid to no picture since Wilkie’s “Chelsea Pensioners” in 1822. “People three or four deep before the picture,” reported the owner to the artist, “those in front with their faces within three or four inches of the canvas. The nature of the picture requires a close inspec¬ tion to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it; and from what I have seen, I think it not unlikely that some of the readers will leave their mark upon it, unless means be taken to keep them at a respectful 'distance.” The critics and some of the painter’s academic brethren were not equally enthusi¬ astic. “ There is no hope for art in this country,” said one of them, “ when the people are so besotted as to crowd round such a thing as that.” “That thing of yours,” said another, “ is very popular; but I intend next year to exhibit Monday Morning at Newgate,—the hanging morning, you know. I shall have a man hanging, and the crowd about him ; great variety of character, you know. I wonder you never thought of it.” 616 . JAMES II. RECEIVING THE NEWS OF THE LANDING OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE. E. M. Ward , R.A. (1816-1879). See 430. The king is in his palace at Whitehall, where a messenger has just arrived (his departing form is seen in the left-hand corner) with the news of the Prince of Orange having at last landed at Torbay, November 5, 1688. “The king turned pale, and remained motionless ; the letter dropped from his hand ; his past errors, his future dangers, rushed at once upon his thoughts ; he strove to conceal his perturbation, but, in doing so, betrayed it ; and his courtiers, in affecting not to observe him, betrayed that they did” (Sir John Dalrymple’s NO. 620 63 Memoirs). In the left-hand corner of the room is the Earl of Feversham, the incompetent commander-in-chief of James’s forces. With him are the notorious Judge Jeffreys; Father Petre, the intriguing Jesuit; and opposite to him, the Papal Nuncio. Beside the king is Churchill (afterwards Duke of Marlborough), who was soon to desert him. The Lord Justices, etc., whom James had summoned to his council, are grouped in the corner to the right. The queen is at the king’s side, and in front is the baby prince, whose birth— as foreshadowing a Catholic succession — had hastened the coming of the Prince of Orange. To the left, listening round the corner, is a courtier, preparing, one may expect, to desert the setting for the rising star—less faithful than the hound whom the painter has introduced to give contrast to this part of the composition. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. 620 . A RIVER SCENE. F. R. Lee, R.A. (1799-1879). One of the results of an artistic partnership which began about 1848, and continued for many years ; the present picture was exhibited in 1855* The cattle are by T. Sidney Cooper, R.A., whose works are still familiar to visitors at the Academy ; the landscape by Frederick Richard Lee. He was originally a soldier, but left the service owing to delicate health, and entered as an Academy student in 1818. He became a regular exhibitor at the Academy from 1827 onwards, being elected A.R.A. in 1834, and R.A/in 1838. Flis pictures were chiefly landscapes, but in later years he exhibited some successful sea-pieces— such as “Plymouth Breakwater” in 1856 (see for Mr. Ruskin’s estimate of the painter Academy Notes, 1856, p. 22; and Modern Painters, vol. i., Preface to second edition, p. xix. n.). Exhibited at the Academy, 1855 :—A broad river at evening, with cattle added by Mr. Cooper— . . . The dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow ; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Quit the stalks of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow. Jean Ingelow : High Tide. 6 4 nos . 759, 894 759 . THE REMORSE OF JUDAS. E. Armilage, R.A. (1817-1896). Edward Armitage was the eldest of seven brothers, the sons of James Armitage, of Farnley near Leeds. He was a rich man, and during a professional career of 5° years was able to pursue un¬ remittingly those lofty aims which are associated with historical painting. He showed an early disposition to art, and his father sent him to study in Paris. There in 1837 he entered the school of Paul Delaroche; he became that master’s most promising pupil, and was allowed to assist him in the decoration of the hemicycle at the School of Fine Arts. From Paris, Armitage sent to the Westminster Hall Competition a cartoon which obtained a first prize, and attracted so much praise that Delaroche was supposed to have assisted his pupil in its execution — a supposition which that master entirely refuted. In 1845 and 1847 Armitage gained further prizes, and he was employed to execute two frescoes in the Upper Waiting Hall of the Palace of Westminster. In 1848 he visited Rome, where he remained for a year. During the Crimean war he visited the scene of operations, and painted two battle-pieces. But his preference was for decorative painting of Biblical subjects. He executed gratuitously six wall-paintings for Marylebone Parish Church ; among other similar works may be mentioned wall-paintings at University Hall, London, and at the Roman Catholic Church of St. John, Islington. He was elected A.R.A. in 1867, and R.A. in 1872. In 1875 he was appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy, in which post he was succeeded by Mr. J. E. Flodgson. This picture was presented by the painter to the National Gallery. Exhibited at the Academy in 1866 :— “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that” (Matthew xxvii. 3 > 4 )- 894 . THE PREACHING OF JOHN KNOX. (June 10, 1559.) Sir D. Wilkie , R.A. (1785-1841). See 231. The scene represented took place in the parish church of St. Andrews when the great Reformer had returned to Scotland after thirteen years of exile, and joined the Congregation, as the Protestants were called—the lay leaders of the party, mostly noblemen, being known as the Lords of the Congregation. Undismayed by the threats of the archbishop, Knox preached NO. 894 65 before them, and “ such was the influence of his doctrine, that the provost, bailies, and inhabitants harmoniously agreed to set up the Reformed Worship in the town.” Close to the pulpit (which is a drawing of the one in which Knox actually preached, Wilkie having discovered it in a cellar), on the right of Knox, are Richard Ballenden, his amanuensis, and Christopher Goodman, his colleague ; and in black the Knight Templar, Sir James Sandilands, in whose house the first Protestant Sacrament was received. Beyond, in red cap and gown, is that famous scholar of St. Andrews, the Admirable Crichton. Under the pulpit is the precentor, with his hour-glass. The schoolboy below is John Napier, the inventor of logarithms. On the other side of the picture are Lord James Stuart, after¬ wards Regent Murray ; and the Earls of Glencairne, Morton, and Argyll, whose countess, the half-sister of Queen Mary, and the lady in attendance upon her, form the chief light of the picture. Above this group are the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Bishop of Glasgow, and Quinten Kennedy, who maintained a public disputation with Knox; Kennedy is whispering to the archbishop, while a “jackman,” a retainer of the Cathedral, stands ready with the harquebuss, waiting the signal of the archbishop to fire upon the preacher. The Admirable Crichton, however, has his eye upon the jackman, and his hand on his sword, though his mind seems with Knox. In the gallery are the provost, the bailies, and some professors. At the back of it is a crucifix, attracting the regard of Catholic penitents, and in the obscurity above is an escutcheon to the memory of Cardinal Beaton. The picture, though only completed (for Sir Robert Peel, who gave 1200 guineas for it) in 1832, was commenced (for Lord Liverpool) ten years before. It was indeed in its concep¬ tion Wilkie’s first important attempt in his second manner. The minute Teniers-like execution of his earlier pictures is exchanged for a broader handling; and instead of being historical, in the sense of painting the actual events of his own time, Wilkie joins the army of “ historical painters,” who are so called from painting their ideas of the events of former times. Carlyle refers to this picture as a typical instance of the worthlessness of historical painting in this latter sense. “ There is not the least veracity ,” he says, “ even of intention, in such things; and, for most part, there is an ignorance altogether abject. Wilkie’s ‘John Knox,’ for F 66 NO. 8p8 example : no picture that I ever saw by a man of genius can well be, in regard to all earnest purposes, a more perfect failure ! Can anything, in fact, be more entirely useless for earnest purposes, more zz/zlike what ever could have been the reality, than that gross Energumen, more like a boxing butcher, whom he has sent into a pulpit surrounded by draperies, with fat-shouldered women, and play-actor men in mail, and labelled ‘ Knox 5 ? 55 (Project of a National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits , in Miscellanies , people’s ed., vii. 134). Carlyle’s criticism upon the “boxing butcher” is the more interesting from the fact, probably unknown to him, that his old friend Edward Irving was the model from whom Wilkie drew his conception of Knox. Wilkie went to hear Irving preach in London; and the preacher, “ tall, athletic, and sallow, arrayed in the scanty robe of the Scotch divines, displaying a profusion of jet-black glossy hair reaching to his ample shoulders,” unconsciously sat to the painter for the study of John Knox. Some of Carlyle’s blame may therefore be shifted to the model, whose “performances did not inspire me with any complete or pleasant feeling; there was a want of spontaneity and simplicity, a something of strained and aggravated, of elaborately intentional, which kept jarring on the mind” (Carlyle’s Reminiscences, Norton’s ed., ii. 135) Visitors who cannot endorse Carlyle’s condemnation of the picture may comfort themselves with Scott’s praise, not indeed of the picture in its final state (which he probably never saw), but of the first sketch for it. “ I recollect,” writes Collins, “ Wilkie taking a cumbrous sketch in oil, for the picture of John Knox, all the way to Edinburgh, for Sir Walter Scott’s opinion. I was present when he showed it to him; Sir Walter was much struck with it, as a work of vast and rare power.” 898 . LORD BYRON’S DREAM. Sir C. L. Eastlake , P.R.A. (1793-1866). See 397. This picture (exhibited at the Academy in 1829) was painted at Rome in 1827 in illustration of the poem, “The Dream,” in which Byron had embalmed the story of his first love— There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay NOS. 921, 1029 67 Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couch’d among fallen columns in the shade Of ruin’d walls that had survived the names Of those who rear’d them ; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fasten’d near a fountain ; and a man, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumber’d around. 921 . BLIND MAN’S BUFF. Sir D. Wilkie , R.A. (1785-1841). See 231. This is the original sketch (exhibited at the Academy in 1812) for the large picture of the same subject which was painted for the Prince Regent, and exhibited in the following year. The sketch was bought by one of Wilkie’s earliest patrons, the Earl of Mulgrave. 1029 . THE TEMPLES OF PzESTUM. William Linton (1791-1876). “ Linton was born at Liverpool, and was at first placed in a mer¬ chant’s office there, to draw him from his fancy of painting, but to little purpose; he persisted in his choice, and in 1817, having got three landscapes into the Royal Academy exhibition, he was sufficiently encouraged. He made tours in Wales and in the Highlands of Scot¬ land, painting many views. He eventually made several continental excursions, and produced some pictures of the most remarkable places, as this view of ‘ The Temples of Paestum.’ He died in London. Pie was a member of the Society of British Artists ” (Official Catalogue). Poseidonia (the original Greek name of the place) “ was founded in the sixth century before Christ, by colonists from Sybaris. Three centuries later the Hellenic element in this settlement was submerged by a deluge of recurrent barbarism. Under the Roman rule it changed its name to Paestum, and was prosperous. The Saracens destroyed it in the ninth cen¬ tury of our era ; and Robert Guiscard carried some of the materials of its buildings to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since then the ancient site has been abandoned to malaria and solitude. The very existence of Paestum was unknown, except to wandering herdsmen and fishers coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these revolutions, and in the midst of this total desolation, the only relics of the antique city are three Greek 68 NOS. 1040 , IO()I temples, those very temples where the Hellenes, barbarised by their Lucanian neighbours, met to mourn for their lost liberty. . . . Beneath the pediment of Paestum’s noblest ruin, I could not refrain from thinking that if the spirits of those captive Hellenes were to revisit their old habitations, they would change their note of wailing into a thin ghostly pecan when they found that Romans and Lucanians had passed away, that Christians and Saracens had left alike no trace behind, while the houses of their own avTiyAioi Oeot —dawn-facing deities—were still abiding in the pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether buffalo-driver or bandit may not ere now have seen processions of these Poseidonian phantoms, bearing laurels and chanting hymns, on the spot where once they fell each on the other’s neck to weep” (J. A. Symonds : Sketches and Studies in Italy). This picture was bequeathed to the nation by the painter. 1040 . A RIVER SCENE. William J. Miiller (1812-1845). See 379. A scene, apparently in Scotland, “ land of the mountain and the flood,” very typical of the modern interest in wild and solitary landscape, such as the mediseval painters avoided altogether, or only introduced as scenes of terror or penance, and not as itself beautiful or conducive to such gently serious thought as the poet finds in— The dashing waters when the air is still, From many a torrent rill That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell, Track’d by the blue mist well : Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart, For Thought to do her part. Keble : Christian Year. 1091 . THE VISION OF EZEKIEL. P. F. Poole , R.A. (1810-1879). Paul Falconer Poole was born at Bristol, and was strictly self- taught. “A self-taught painter,” said Constable, “is one taught by a very ignorant person ” ; and to this cause must be attributed the faultiness in the execution of Poole’s pictures—his claim to distinction resting rather on the ambitious flights of his fancy. He passed through many hardships in early life, but ultimately attained much success. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1830, was elected A.R.A. in 1846, and R.A. in i860. NOS. 1112, 1142 69 “And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber . . . came the likeness of four living creatures” (Ezekiel i. 4, 5). Of this picture, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875 at the same time as one by Mr. G. F. Watts, called “Dedicated to all the Churches” (see 1637 in this Gallery), Mr. Ruskin said: “ Here at least are pictures meant to teach. . . . Though this design cannot for a moment be compared with the one just noticed (Mr. Watts’s) in depth of feeling, there is yet, as there has been always in Mr. Poole’s work, some acknowledgment of a supernatural influence in physical phenomena, which gives a nobler character to his storm¬ painting than can belong to any mere literal study of the elements. But the piece is chiefly interesting for its parallelism with that “ Dedicated to all the Churches ” in effacing the fearless realities of the elder creed among the confused speculations of our modern one. . . . The beasts in Raphael’s vision of Ezekiel are as solid as the cattle in Smithfield; while here, if traceable at all in the drift of the storm-cloud (which it is implied was all that the prophet really saw), their animal character can only be accepted in polite compliance with the prophetic impression, as the weasel by Polonius. r And my most Polonian courtesy fails in deciphering the second of the four—not living—creatures” {Academy Notes, 1875, pp. 10-12). The picture was selected for the National Gallery from a bequest made by the artist. 1112 . MRS. ANN HAWKINS. John Linsiell (1792-1882.) See 438. 1142 . THE AUGUST MOON. Cecil G. Lawson (1851-1882). Cecil Lawson was one of the most promising of the artists who have been affected by the recent movement in English art towards landscape for the sake of landscape, rather than landscape as the frame for some definite human interest (see Chesneau’s English School, p. 256). He was the youngest son of Mr. William Lawson, of Edinburgh, a por¬ trait painter; and “having shown an early taste for art, he studied its technicalities under his father’s guidance, and while still a boy devoted himself to landscape.” He first drew in black and white for magazines. Afterwards he exhibited at the Academy in 1870 a view of Cheyne 70 NO. 1182 Walk, Chelsea (where he resided). He continued to exhibit at the Academy for some years, but when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened, exhibited there—this picture was at the Grosvenor in 1880. His early London pictures met with much success, but he was a member of none of the art societies, and his later pictures of pure landscape did not meet with equal acceptance : this one was presented to the National Gallery by his widow in fulfilment of his wish. He had married in 1879. A few years later his health declined. He went to the South of France, but returned no stronger, and died at Brighton at the early age of thirty-one. A wide stretch of plashy countiy painted at Blackdown, near Haslemere, in Surrey, where the painter lived for some time after his marriage— ... a glimmering land Lit with a low large moon. Tennyson : Palace of Art. Mr. Heseltine Owen, who was with Lawson at the time this picture was being projected, says: “We drove over together to see the moon rise over Blackdown—close to the Laureate’s place —the point his picture was chiefly studied from. By the time we reached Blackdown, close on midnight, the moon was high in the heavens. I remember Lawson enlarging on the colour there was always in a landscape in such moonlight. He said that no great painter had yet fully grasped this truth, but that he intended to attempt to show it. Before the picture was exhibited in the Grosvenor, he had painted, perched on a branch in the foreground, an owl, life-size, with glistening eyes. The critics came down, however, and disapproved of the weird bird, and so Cecil painted it out, to my sorrow, and, I believe, not a little to his own” (.Magazine of Art , 1894, p. 70). 1182 . A SCENE FROM MILTON’S “ COMUS.” C. R. Leslie, R.A. (1794-1859). See 402. Comus, son of Circe and Bacchus, was master of all the arts of sorcery and all the excesses of wanton revel. And he enchanted all travellers who passed through the wood wherein he dwelt, with his mother’s and his father’s wiles. One day it chanced that a lady was travelling in the wood with her two brothers, and while they stepped aside to fetch berries for her, Comus in the guise of a shepherd offered her shelter in his cottage, and conducted her to his palace of sorcery. Here we see her seated in the Enchanted Chair, while Comus—holding NOS. 1184 , 1187 , 1204 7 1 his magic wand and garlanded “ with rosy twine ”—offers her wine in a crystal glass, which will turn those who drink of it into monsters :— Cotnus. Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand, Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, And you a statue, or, as Daphne was, Root-bound, that fled Apollo. Lady. Fool, do not boast; Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind With all thy charms, although this corporal rind Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good. The picture is a study for (or from) Leslie’s fresco in the Buckingham Palace summer-house, for which Landseer did another scene from Conms (see National Gallery, No. 605). “I have been very busy,” writes Leslie in July 1843, “paint¬ ing a fresco, a first attempt, in a little pavilion in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. I was asked to do this by the Prince, and there are seven other artists engaged in the same way— Maclise, Landseer, Sir Charles Ross, Stanfield, Uwins, Etty, and Eastlake. Two or three of us are generally there together, and the Queen and Prince visit us daily, and sometimes twice a day, and take a great interest in what is going on. The subjects are all from Comus, and mine is Comus offering the cup to the lady." 1184 . A FRUIT-PIECE. G. Lance (1802-1864). See 442. Grapes, peaches, nectarines, filberts, etc., grouped on matting. 1187 . A SKETCH OF RUSTIC FIGURES. Sir D. Wilkie , R.A. (1785-1841). See 231. A study (in pen and ink) for (or from) a group in the picture of the “Village Festival ” (National Gallery, No. 122). Underneath is a scrap of paper on which is written : “ Sent by D. Wilkie, 15 Aug. 1811.” 1204 . THE VALLEY OF THE YARE. James Stark (1794-1859). Stark, one of the group of painters known as the Norwich School, was the son of a master dyer in that city, and was articled to “ Old 72 NO. 1205 Crome,” under whom he remained for three years. In 1817 he entered the Academy Schools, and soon after exhibited successfully at the British Institution ; but was obliged, owing to bad health, to return to Norwich and refrain for some years from work. In 1830 he returned to London, removing in 1840 to Windsor, where the adjoining wood¬ land and river scenery furnished the subjects for many of his later pictures. These, however, were less excellent than those of the Norwich period, when he was under the immediate influence of Crome. The present picture is an admirable specimen of Stark’s earlier style. What were the qualities aimed at by the leader of the Norwich School is shown in a quaint letter which Crome wrote to Stark in 1816. “I cannot let your sky go by,” says Crome, “without some observation. I think the character of your clouds too affected, that is, too much of the character of some of our modern painters, who mistake some of our great masters : because they sometimes put in some of those round characters, they must do the same ; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition, or make some figure in the picture, nay, sometimes play the first fiddle. I have seen this in Wouwerman’s and many others I could mention. Breath (breadth) must be attended to if you paint. . . . Trifles in nature must be over¬ looked that we may have our feelings raised by seeing the whole picture of a glance, not knowing how or why we are so charmed. I have written you a long rigmarole story about giving dignity to what¬ ever you paint—I fear so long that I should be scarcely able to under¬ stand what I mean myself: you will, I hope, take the word for the deed, and at the same time forgive all faults in diction, grammar, spelling, etc.” A scene near Thorpe, Norwich, showing— ... a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain, The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, With shadow-streaks of rain. ... the reapers at their sultry toil. In front they bound the sheaves. Tennyson : Palace of Art. 1205 . LAKE COMO: VARENNA. Frederick Lee Bridell (1831-1863). This talented painter, who died of consumption, was a native of Southampton, and at first self-taught. His genius was detected by a local picture dealer, who gave him commissions which enabled him to go abroad for purposes of study. He exhibited at the Academy in 1859, and went to the Italian lakes—a visit which resulted (besides other pictures) in this one. In 1858 Bridell married at Rome the daughter of W. J. Fox, then M.P. for Oldham, a lady who herself had adopted art as a profession. Bridell enjoined his wife to offer this NO. 1209 73 picture to the National Gallery, “ in the hope that this, his last work, upon which he had exercised all his skill, might eventually be considered worthy of a place in the national collection.” The scene is the slope, with woods of sweet chestnut, above Varenna—“ a tangled mass of woods, of light and shade.” Below is “ the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth.” To the left, in the extreme distance, is the crest of Monte Rosa, “ flushed and phantom-fair.” It was from an opposite spot on the lake that Longfellow, looking over to Varenna, wrote the lines— I ask myself is this a dream ? Will it all vanish into air ? Is there a land of such supreme And perfect beauty anywhere ? 1209 . THE VAGRANTS. Frederick Walker , A.R.A. (1840-1875J. This highly-gifted artist was born in London, his father being a designer of artistic jewellery, and was educated at the North London School. “ At the age of sixteen we find him copying from the antique sculptures in the British Museum. This, we may suppose, was his first step in art education, and it is in a way significant of certain qualities in his design that he was always very careful to cultivate and to preserve. Throughout the whole of his career the influence of Greek art was a real and permanent force in the direction of his talent, and it doubtless served, even in the treatment of domestic themes, to save him from the dangers which beset so many painters of genre ” (J. Comyns Carr : Frederick Walker, p. 15). Walker next entered an architect’s office; but in 1858 joined the Academy Schools, and soon got employment as a draughtsman for wood engraving. Thackeray noticed his skill, and commissioned him to illustrate Philip. Some interesting records of Walker’s association with the novelist will be found in the essay by Mr. Comyns Carr from which we have just quoted. In 1863 Walker exhibited for the first time at the Academy. This picture was exhibited in 1868. In 1873 the state of his health compelled him to winter in Algeria, where he stayed with his friend Mr. North (see 1607). He returned to a cold English spring, and gradually becoming weaker, died of consumption in Scotland a few years after his election as A.R.A. “ In Walker,” says Mr. Hodgson, who knew him intimately, “ I was often struck by a strange petulance and irritability out of all proportion with its exciting cause. The trifles which he knew so well how to dignify and make important in his art were allowed to have too much influence upon his life. Con¬ scious, probably, of the taint of hereditary disease, he took a gloomier view of life.” “Nervous and sensitive to the degree of morbidness,” Sweet vision ! Do not fade away; Linger until my heart shall take Into itself the summer day, And all the beauty of the lake. 74 NO. 1209 says Mr. Herkomer, “he perhaps would never have completed any picture if dire necessity had not compelled him to work for money. Long sometimes would he sit and watch the model, snapping his finger-nails together in nervous anxiety before he was sure of what he intended to do. Then he worked rapidly. Only to a few trusted friends did he show his unfinished work. Not even the carpenter who packed his pictures ever managed to see them, so nervous was Walker of imperfect criticism. He used to keep a man to take his work to the spot where his subject lay. But it was not infrequent that his mood for work did not come upon him, even after tootling on the flute, until the man had got tired of waiting and left; and then with the sudden fit of work upon him Walker would take up his six-foot canvas on his head and carefully tilt it on one side to prevent the passer-by from seeing his work ” ( Magazine of Art, 1893, p. 343). We have seen that Walker’s mood was stern ; and we have seen his devotion to the antique. His originality in English art consists in the way in which he interpreted (as Millet has done in France) the grave beauty of rustic labour, showing its stern reality, and yet endowing it (as in the figure of the tall gipsy woman here) with something of the grace of antique sculpture. “In Walker,” says Mr. Herkomer, “we have the creator of the English Renaissance, for it was he who saw the possibility of combining the grace of the antique with the realism of our everyday life in England. His navvies are Greek gods, and yet not a bit the less true to nature. True poet that he was, he felt all nature should be represented by a poem. The dirty nails of a peasant, such as I have seen painted by a modern realist, were invisible to him. Nor did he leave out the faces of the peasants in order to produce grandeur as the French realist did.” To this it may be added of Walker’s pictures that “ their harmonies of amber-colour and purple are full of exquisite beauty in their chosen key ; their composition always graceful, often admirable, and the sympathy they express with all conditions of human life most kind and true ; not without power of rendering character which would have been more recognised in an inferior artist, because it would have been less restrained by the love of beauty.” [Walker is the subject of many books and scattered remini¬ scences. Among the principal are a Life and Letters of Frederick Walker , by J. G. Marks; a Portfolio monograph, by Mr. Claude Phillips; and recollections by Mr. Hodgson in the Magazine of Art, 1889. Mr Ruskin’s appreciation of Walker’s art is in Arrows of the Chace, i. 174 ]- This picture was purchased in 1886 from the Graham Collection, which also included the “ Bathers ” by the same artist. There was some discussion with regard to the selection of the “Vagrants” for acquisition by the National Gallery. It may be interesting to cite Mr. Swinburne’s opinion on the sub¬ ject. Writing of the “ Vagrants,” which was exhibited at the NO. 1210 75 Royal Academy in 1868, Mr. Swinburne said : “ Mr. Walker’s picture of Vagrants has more of actual beauty than his Bathers of last year ; more of brilliant skill and swift sharp talent it can hardly have. The low marsh, with its cold lights of gray glittering waters here and there, the stunted brushwood, the late and pale sky, the figures gathering about the kindling fire, sad and wild and worn and untamable ; the one stately shape of a girl standing erect, her passionate beautiful face seen across the smoke of the scant fuel; all these are wrought with such appearance of ease and security and speed of touch, that the whole seems almost a feat of mere skill rather than a grave sample of work; but in effect it is no such slight thing ” (Essays and Studies , p. 366). 1210 . “ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI.” D. G. Rossetti (1828-1882). Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (commonly called Dante Gabriel, but by his family and intimates, Gabriel) was the head of the romantic move¬ ment in modern English poetry, and of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in English painting. “ His name,” says Mr. Ruskin, “should be placed first on the list of men who have raised and changed the spirit of modern art: raised in absolute attainment; changed in direction of temper. Rossetti added to the before accepted systems of colour in painting, one based on the principles of manuscript illumination, which permits his design to rival the most beautiful qualities of painted glass, without losing either the mystery or the dignity of light and shade. And he was, as I believe it is now generally admitted, the chief intellectual force in the establishment of the modern romantic school in England.” Rossetti’s influence may be traced alike in the work which was derived from his inspiration, and in the personal impression which he made on all who came in contact with him. He was born in London, the son of Gabriel Rossetti,—an Italian patriot, and commentator upon Dante,—who was at the time Professor of Italian at King’s College. His mother, Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, was half English and half Italian. Like all the members of his family, young Rossetti had innate taste and interest in art, but in the direction which his art took—Gothic instead of Classic —he was the outcome of English influences. Though more than half an Italian by birth, and Italian also in character, it is interesting to know that he never went to Italy, and indeed was very seldom out of England at all. From eight to fifteen he was at King’s College School. Here he had a distinguished artist for drawing master, J. S. Cotman (see National Gallery mi); but neither there nor afterwards at the Academy did he make any great progress. “ The fact appears to have been,” says Dr. Garnett, “that in his impatience for great results he neglected the slow and tiresome but necessary subservient processes.” 76 NO. 1210 In poetry his early achievements were more remarkable. He was well read both in English and in Italian poetry, and as a boy he wrote ballads and dramas. His exquisite translations from Dante were begun when he was seventeen, and “The Blessed Damozel ” was written when he was nineteen. After leaving school, Rossetti studied art successively at Cary’s in Bloomsbury, at the Academy Schools, and in the studio of Ford Madox Brown. The story of his introduction to that painter is related under No. 1394. Rossetti had hoped to find some royal road to artistic mastery, and was not too well pleased at being set down to paint pickle-jars. Shortly afterwards he made the acquaintance of Mr. Holman Hunt at the Academy, where they were fellow-students. A warm friendship followed, and they shared a studio together. “I gained many advantages,” says Mr. Hunt, “by our partnership. Rossetti had then, perhaps, a greater acquaintance with the poetical literature of Europe than any living man. His store¬ house of treasures seemed inexhaustible. If he read twice or thrice a long poem, it was literally at his tongue’s end ; and he had a voice rarely equalled for simple recitations. Another gain was in the oc¬ casional visits of F. M. Brown, who kindly gave me advice when he had ended his counsel to Rossetti, and always explained his judgment by careful reasoning and anecdote.” Mr. Hunt was already acquainted with Millais, and one evening the three young men met at the house of Millais’s parents in Gower Street. There they found a book of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. It was the finding of this book at this special time, says Mr. Hunt, that caused the establishment of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. “Millais, Rossetti, and myself, were all seeking for some sure ground, some starting-point for our art which would be secure, if it were ever so humble. As we searched through this book of engravings, we found in them, or thought we found, that freedom from corruption, pride, and disease, for which we sought. Plere there was at least no trace of decline, no conventionality, no arrogance. Whatever the imperfection, the whole spirit of art was simple and sincere—was, as Ruskin after¬ wards said ‘ eternally and unalterably true.’” This was the occasion of the foundation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 1 The date was the autumn of 1848. Of the subsequent fortunes of the movement, some account is given in the notice of Millais, No. 1506. Rossetti, though he seldom exhibited his pictures, had little difficulty in finding buyers. Mr. Ruskin helped him very generously, and Rossetti himself was keen at a bargain. Rossetti, says Mr. Plunt, “with his spirit alike subtle and fiery, was essentially a proselytiser, sometimes to an almost absurd degree, but possessed, alike in his poetry and painting, with an appreciation of beauty of the most intense quality.” Ide enlisted 1 The Pre-Raphaelites started a sketching club. Millais, the only one who had any money, provided a nice green portfolio with a lock, in which to keep the drawings. The portfolio came to Rossetti, with whom it stuck for ever. NO. 1210 77 recruits ; he started an organ for the Brotherhood, The Germ ; but he was not himself distinguished for application. “The last time Rossetti and I worked together,” says Mr. Hunt, “was at Sevenoaks. He set himself to paint a boscage for a background. I found him nearly always as if engaged in a mortal quarrel with some leaf which had perversely shaken itself off its branch just as he had begun to paint it, until he would have no more of such conduct and would go back to his lodgings to write.” The best of his Pre-Raphaelite works, in the strictest Ruskinian sense, is the present picture, painted in 1849. Rossetti was, however, the poet of the group; and his passionately emotional genius exercised a strong influence on all with whom he came in contact. “ We may picture Rossetti,” says Mr. Quilter, “as an impetuous, generous, enthusiastic man, richly en¬ dowed with genius and almost irresistibly attractive to his friends ; we see, too, a glimpse of the reverse side of the medal, of his feverish energy, his impatience of restraint, his easy discouragement, his fits of depression, his uncontrollable temper. Such is the stuff of which in every age of the world the Seer has long been made ; he who, at once less and greater than those among whom he lives, demands alike their faith and their toleration, their admiration and their pity, their obedience and their help.” A few years later Rossetti was brought into touch with another group of remarkable men. In 1856 Burne-Jones, then at Oxford, came up to London with the express desire of meeting and knowing Rossetti. Another acquaintance made about the same period was with William Morris. In 1857, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Morris, and others joined together to paint the walls and ceiling of the Debating Hall of the Oxford Union Society. These frescoes were speedily obliterated, but the co-operation of Rossetti had an enduring effect in his influence on Burne-Jones and Morris. At Oxford, also, Mr. Swinburne, then an undergraduate, made Rossetti’s acquaintance. In 1857 Rossetti was one of the artists employed in the celebrated illustrations to Tennyson. He was an original partner in the firm of Morris and Company, founded about the same time to promote a revival in Decorative Art. The year i860 may conveniently be taken as terminating the first period in Rossetti’s art. To this period belong his most inspired works in painting and poetry. In i860 he married Miss Elizabeth Siddal, to whom he had been engaged since 1851. We see her face in Millais’s “Ophelia” (1506) and in Rossetti’s “ Beata Beatrix” (1279). In 1862 she died from an overdose of chloral, and Rossetti buried in her coffin the manuscript of his poems. There they remained till 1869, when he was persuaded to exhume them, and in 1870 his collected poems were published. On the death of his wife, Rossetti removed from Chatham Place, Blackfriars (now pulled down), to Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, which remained his home till the end of his life, and where his brother, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. George Meredith lived for a time with him. In Rossetti’s second period (1860-70), he devoted himself principally to single figure subjects, for many of which Mrs. Morris was his model (see 78 NO. 1210 p. 262). The “ Beata Beatrix ” also belongs to this period. Much of the last period of his life may be summed up, says Dr. Garnett, in the phrase : “ chloral, and its consequences ; ” but his poetical faculty was rekindled, and his volume of “ Ballads and Sonnets,” published in 1881, was fully equal in merit to the “Poems” of 1870. The closing scenes and many earlier incidents of his life were painful. He suffered from insomnia; he was afflicted with paralysis; at one time he attempted suicide, and he suffered from paroxysms of suspicious delusions. “ He was,” says Mr. Ruskin, “agreat Italian tormented in the Inferno of London, doing the best he could, and teaching the best he could; but the ‘ could ’ shortened by the strength of his animal passions without any trained control or guiding faith.” He died at Birchington-on-Sea at the age of fifty-four. Many of his later designs are distinguished by mannerisms and peculiarities which have been attributed to his impaired health. It should also be remembered that in his later years he had assistants working in his studio, and that many works turned out thence were largely not his own handiwork. We have seen how deep and widespread was Rossetti’s influence, and have traced in outline the course of his career. It may be well, in conclusion, to seek some more definite characterisation of his work with special reference to the pictures in this Gallery. It may be said generally that in drawing he was often imperfect; but that for wealth of colour, for originality of conception, and expression of romantic passion, his best pictures have never been surpassed. His works may be divided according to their subject into four principal groups : — (1) Religious works, in which he set himself to realise in an unconventional way scenes in sacred history. The picture now before us is among his masterpieces in this kind. (2) A second group of Rossetti’s pictures is composed of his designs from Dante : of this kind, too, we have a masterpiece — the “Beata Beatrix” (1279). Akin to the Dante pictures and drawings, are those of which the motive was taken from other mediaeval legends and old English ballad literature. (3) Occasionally he diverged from such themes to modern romance : of this kind, his picture “Found,” corresponding to “Jenny” in his poems, is the best known. (4) The fourth group is made up of single figures, in which, under various titles, he immortalised a special type of beauty. The portrait of “Mrs. Morris” (p. 262) may be placed in this group, as being a likeness of the lady whose face served the painter for many of his poetical subjects. What, it may next be asked, are the characteristics of the painter’s work ? The characteristics of his Pre- Raphaelite work, so far as it was an endeavour, by force of imagination, to realise conventional subjects in an unconventional manner, are sufficiently indicated below in the notes on the “Annunciation.” Of another trait, commonly associated with Pre - Raphaelitism, namely, minuteness of detail, Rossetti’s work bears little trace. On the contrary, as M. de la Sizeranne well says, if we compare the “Beata Beatrix ” with the ordinary academical works of the same period, it is NO. 1210 79 precisely the absence of details in the “Pre-Raphaelite” work and their abundance in the others that strike us. But in intensity of realisation, which is more essentially a Pre-Raphaelite characteristic, all Rossetti’s best work is remarkable. The impression he conveys is always distinct, forcible, individual. Again, his pictures are full at once of thought and of passion. His power lay, says Dr. Garnett, in spiritual emotion, and the more spiritual he became, the higher he rose. His work was intensely passionate, and “ of imagination all compact. Many of his works in painting and poetry alike are sensuous. But the quality of intellectual refinement is never absent. As Mr. Quilter well says : “ The reproduction of the sensuous part of his subject is interfered with by the strange half-refining, half-abstract quality of his intellect. This is especially evident in his treatment of the foim of the human body, in which he has two methods, both adapted to the same end, or rather, perhaps, both unconsciously tending to the same end. One is to leave out as much as possible all detailed drawing, to suffuse the whole body in a mist of colour, in which no modelling of flesh or structure of bone is clearly visible. The other method is to accentuate those portions of the body, or the features, which best help to express emotion, and so to use and arrange them as to produce a definite emotional idea. The long neck in which so many of his female figures rejoice, the slender hands with fingers turning round one another, the heavy curved lips, and the other physical peculiarities to be traced in his works, are all due to the passionately sensuous, but equally passionately intellectual, nature of Rossetti.” The original type of beauty which he thus evolved is associated further with a wealth of poetic colour, in which no modern painter has surpassed him. As a piece of decorative colour, the portrait of Mrs. Morris recalls the gieat Venetian painters. In connection with Rossetti’s colour, some remarks by his friend, William Morris, may be quoted : “No picture is complete,” says Morris, “unless it is something more than a re¬ presentation of nature and the teller of a tale. It ought also to have a definite, harmonious, conscious beauty. It ought to be ornamental. It ought to be possible for it to be part of a beautiful whole, in a room or church or hall. Of the original Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti was the man who mostly felt that side of the art of painting : all his pictures have a decorative quality as an essential and not as a mere accident.” [A voluminous literature has grown up around Rossetti, which it would be out of place to enumerate here. Among the authorities referred to above are Mr. Holman Hunt’s chapters on “The Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood,” in the Contemporary Review for 1886 ; Mr. Idarry Quilter s chapters on Rossetti, including reminiscences by F. M. Brown, in his Prefe?-ences in Art ; Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s Memoir and Letters , 1895 5 and Dr. Garnett’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography .] This picture is admirably illustrative—in its sincerity and simplicity—of the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite School, whilst at 8 o NO. 1210 the same time it is wholly free from the affectations peculiar to Rossetti which characterise his later works. Mr. Ruskin, who was the earliest literary advocate of the Pre-Raphaelites, 1 defined their leading principle as the resolve “to paint things as they probably did look and happen, and not, as by rules of art developed under Raphael (hence the name ‘ pre, or before Raphaelite ’), they might be supposed gracefully, deliciously, or sublimely to have happened.” To understand the meaning of the change, compare, for instance, the Virgin in this picture waking from her sleep on a pallet bed, in a plain room, startled by sudden words and ghostly presence which she does not comprehend, and casting in her mind what manner of saluta¬ tion this should be, with the Madonnas of the old masters “ dressed in scrupulously folded and exquisitely falling robes of blue, with edges embroidered in gold (N.G. 666), kneel¬ ing under arcades of exquisite architecture, and receiving the angel’s message with their hands folded on their breasts in the most graceful positions, and the missals they had been pre¬ viously studying laid open on their knees” (N.G. 739 )- The angel Gabriel is appearing to the Virgin to announce unto her the birth of a son, Jesus. The Virgin rises to meet him— “ Ecce Ancilla Domini,” “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according to thy word.” “ Rossetti’s ‘ Annuncia¬ tion ’ differs,” says Mr. Ruskin, “from every previous con¬ ception of the scene known to me, 2 in representing the angel 1 In a preface to an Annotated Catalogue of the Millais exhibition (by Mr. A. Gordon Crawford), Mr. Ruskin wrote (January 22, 1886) as follows: “I must in the outset broadly efface any impression that may be given by it of my criticisms having been of any service to the Pre- Raphaelite School, except in protecting it against vulgar outcry. The painters themselves rightly resented the idea of misjudging friends that I was either their precursor or their guide : they were entirely original in their thoughts, and independent in their practice. Rossetti, I fear, even exaggerated his colour because I told him it was too violent; and, to this very day, my love of Turner dims Mr. Burne-Jones’s pleasure in my praise.” 2 Upon the originality of thought displayed in this picture Mr. Hol¬ man Hunt has expressed himself as follows: “We will not presume in concert to lay down the law about his merits, but I think there is no reason why I should not state my own view about one of his paintings which I saw at the National Gallery a few weeks since. It was a copying day. I had gone in mainly to see the new Raphael, and I had seen it, and had enjoyed the contemplation of many more of our precious possessions, those naturally which were new most arresting my attention. In turning about to see that I was in nobody's way, the picture of The Annunciation, by NO. 1210 81 as waking the Virgin from sleep to give her his message. The Messenger himself also differs from angels as they are commonly represented, in not depending, for recognition of his supernatural character, on the insertion of bird’s wings at his shoulders. If we are to know him for an angel at all, it must be by his face, which is that simply of youthful, but grave, manhood. He is neither transparent in body, luminous in presence, nor auriferous in apparel; — wears a plain, long, white robe ;—casts a natural and undiminished shadow,—and although there are flames beneath his feet, which upbear him, so that he does not touch the earth, these are unseen by the Virgin. She herself is an English, not a Jewish girl, of about sixteen or seventeen, of such pale and thoughtful beauty as Rossetti could best imagine for her. She has risen half up, not started up, in being awakened ; and is not looking at the angel, but only thinking, with eyes cast down, as if supposing herself in a strange dream. The morning light fills the room, and shows at the foot of her little pallet-bed, her embroidery work, left off the evening before,—an upright lily. Upright, and very actually upright, as also the edges of the piece of cloth in its frame,—as also the gliding form of the angel,—as also, in severe foreshortening, that of the Virgin herself. It has been studied, so far as it has been studied at all, from a very thin model; and the disturbed coverlet is thrown into con¬ fused angular folds, which admit no suggestion whatever of ordinary girlish grace. So that, to any spectator little inclined towards the praise of barren ‘uprightness,’ and accustomed on the contrary to expect radiance in archangels, and grace in Madonnas, the first effect of the design must be extremely displeasing. . . . But the reader will, if careful in reflection, Rossetti, seemed to speak to me long-forgotten words. I approached ; it was being copied by two ladies, and I felt at once that they had made a wise selection. The living merit of the work made it stand out as among the most genuine creations in the gallery, and I distinctly concluded that there was no painting there, done by hands so young as Rossetti’s were when he did that, which could be compared to it. He was twenty-one at the time. Raphael was twenty-four when he painted the Ansidei Madonna. Raphael’s picture, although of course more complex, and having special value as containing evidence of the steps by which he reached his final excellence, is not to be compared to it for the difficulty of the attempt, or for the artistic discrimination of form, and there is no hint of the power of expression which Rossetti’s work gives.” (Address on the occasion of the unveiling of the Rossetti Memorial Fountain, printed in the Pall Mall Budget, July 21, 1887.) G 82 NO. 1210 discover in all the Pre-Raphaelite pictures, however distinct otherwise in aim and execution, an effort to represent things as they are, or were, or may be, instead of, according to the practice of their instructors and the wishes of their public, things as they are not , never were, and never can be : this effort being founded deeply on a conviction that it is at first better, and finally more pleasing, for human minds to con¬ template things as they are than as they are not. Thus, Mr. Rossetti, in this and subsequent works of the kind, thought it better for himself and his public to make some effort towards a real notion of what actually did happen in the carpenter’s cottage at Nazareth, giving rise to the subsequent traditions delivered in the Gospels, than merely to produce a variety in the pattern of Virgin, pattern of Virgin’s gown, and pattern of Virgin’s house, which had been set by the jewellers of the fifteenth century ” (The Three Colours of Pre-Rafhaelitisrn , in O. O. R., i. 312-318 ; see also The Art of England, Lecture i.). The face of Mary in the picture is a likeness, with hardly any alteration, of the painter’s younger sister Christina—the famous poetess—who sat for it. The face of Gabriel was mostly founded on that of the late Thomas Woolner, R.A., though the painter’s brother William seems also to have sat for it. The picture was painted 1849-50 ; retouched in 1853, and again in 1873. The lily in the angel’s hands was one of the alterations—or rather an addition. In a familiar letter, dated 1853, the painter dubbed the picture in banter “the blessed white eye-sore,” and in another “the blessed white daub.” He proceeds : “ Yesterday, after giving up the angel’s head as a bad job (owing to William’s malevolent expression), I took to working it up out. of my own intelligence, and got it better by a great deal than it has yet been. I have put a gilt saucer behind his head—which crowns the China-ese char¬ acter of the picture.” In 1874, in more serious strain, he wrote of it as “about the best thing I did at that time.” (W. M. Rossetti’s D. G. Rossetti , pp. 1 3, 20, 84, 97.) When first exhibited, the picture was priced at ^50; but not selling it, Rossetti told a friend he would take ^40. It was bought for the nation, thirty-six years afterwards, for ,£800. For a long time the picture was without a purchaser, and Rossetti in disgust thought of accepting a post in the Telegraph Department of the London and North-Western Railway. It is curious that the very same picture which first NOS. 1225, 1235 83 represented him in the National Gallery had gone nigh to ousting him from the profession (W. M. R., i. 168). 1225 . THE ARTIST’S FATHER AND MOTHER. Thomas Webster, R.A. (1800-1886). See 426. Painted to commemorate their golden wedding. “ The unity of earthly creatures is their power and their peace ; not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains ; but the living peace of trust, and the living power of support; of hands that hold each other and are still ” (.Modern Pamters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. 6, § 2). Bequeathed by the painter to the nation. 1235 . THE HOUSE IN WHICH THE ARTIST WAS BORN. J. Constable, R.A. (1776-1837). Constable, who was a boy of nine when Gainsborough died, and, like him, a native of Suffolk, carried on Gainsborough’s work of portraying the commoner aspects of English scenery. “There is a place among our painters,” says his friend and biographer, C. R. Leslie, R.A., “which Turner left unoccupied, and which neither Wilson, Gains¬ borough, Cozens, nor Girtin so completely filled as John Constable. He was the most genuine painter of English cultivated scenery, leaving untouched its mountains and lakes.” One sees in Constable’s pictures exactly what the poets have sung as characteristic of lowland England —of Tennyson’s “English homes,” with “ dewy pastures, dewy trees.” He was born at East Bergholt, on the Stour—the son of a miller who had two windmills and two water-mills, and it was in Suffolk villages that he learned first to love, and then to paint, what he saw around him. Constable has himself described the scenes of his boyhood, which he was fond of saying made him a painter : “gentle declivities, luxuriant meadow-flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, well-cultivated uplands, with numerous scattered villages and churches, with farms and picturesque cottages.” “ I love every stile,” he says in another letter, ‘ ‘ and stump, and lane in the village; as long as I am able to hold a brush, I shall never cease to paint them.” It was the spectacle in Constable’s work of homely scenes painted in a simple way that caused his pictures to make so much sensation in France, where the “ideal” style of landscape, as practised by Claude and Poussin, had been until then in vogue. Of Constable’s life, the most interesting thing to note is its remark¬ able fidelity to his art. His early years were a long struggle to realise his ideals. At school he excelled in nothing but penmanship. “ Come out of your painting-room,” the master used to say when the lad’s 8 4 NO. 1236 attention wandered from his books. But his true painting-room was in the fields, where he used to sketch with a village plumber named Dunthorne. His father designed him for the Church, but afterwards put him in charge of one of his mills—an apprenticeship which was of great value to Constable, as leading him to study the sky. In a letter written many years later, Constable, in describing his sky studies, significantly remarks on the importance of the sky even in everyday life for practical purposes. From the mill he passed in 1796 to the Academy Schools, but though dissatisfied with his progress, he never lost hope. “I feel more than ever convinced,” he wrote in 1803, “ that one day or other I shall paint well; and that even if it does not turn to my advantage during my lifetime, my pictures will be handed down to posterity.” In 1815 he married a girl whom—faithful in love as in art—he had loved since he was a boy. In 1819 he was elected A.R.A., but not till 1829 full R.A. In 1826 he removed from Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, to Well Walk, Hampstead, the better to study his favourite skies. He died suddenly in London, when coming away from his “dear old Somerset House,” where the Academy was then housed. (For a fuller notice of Constable see my Ha.7idbook to the National Gallery , in which collection many of his large masterpieces are to be found.) How much Constable loved his home we have just seen ; and one sees further, in looking at this rough but effective sketch, from the very simplicity of his favourite scenes, how sincere was his affection. It is further interesting to compare this and the other small Constables here with his larger pictures in the National Gallery; these here, though not free from the “blottesque,” are painted more broadly, and without that spottiness of touch which led the critics to talk of “ Con¬ stable’s snow.” 1236 . HAMPSTEAD HEATH: “THE SALT-BOX.” J. Constable , R.A. (1776-1837). See 1235. A view taken from “The Judges’ Walk,” or farther on, in the same direction, looking towards Hendon, with Harrow-on- the-Hill in the distance. “ I remember being greatly struck,” said C. R. Leslie of this work, “ by a small picture, a view from Hampstead Heath. I have before noticed that what are commonly called warm colours are not necessary to produce the impression of warmth in landscape ; and this picture affords to me the strongest possible proof of the truth of this. The sky is of the blue of an English summer day, with large but not threatening clouds of a silvery whiteness. The NOS. 1237, 1244, 1245 85 distance is of a deep blue, and the near trees and grass of the freshest green; for Constable could never consent to parch up the verdure of nature to obtain warmth. These tints are balanced by a very little warm colour on a road and gravel pit in the foreground, a single house in the middle distance, and the scarlet jacket of a labourer. Yet I know no picture in which the midday heat of Midsummer is so admirably ex¬ pressed ; and were not the eye refreshed by the shade thrown over a great part of the foreground by some young trees that border the road, and the cool blue of water near it, one would wish, in looking at it, for a parasol, as Fuseli wished for an umbrella when standing before one of Constable’s showers ” {Life of Constable, ed. 1845, P- 79 ). 1237 . VIEW ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH. f. Constable , R.A. (1776-1837). See 1235. Particularly interesting from the cattle which the artist has introduced peacefully grazing. The scene is curiously similar to that of which we are told as having been Landseer’s first studio. That painter used to be taken, when a mere child, to Hampstead Heath, where, thirty years ago, “ the creatures grazed or stood as nearly in a state of nature as civilisation permits to any of their kind in England.” This is one of the very numerous studies of Hampstead Heath which Constable made. Indeed Hampstead was his “second love,” and he passed many years of his life there. “ I am as much here as possible,” he writes to his friend Fisher, from Lower Terrace, Hampstead, in 1821, “with my family. I have got a room at a glazier’s, and at this little place I have many small works going on.” In 1826 he moved with his family into a house in Well Walk, Hampstead, and described the view as “unsur¬ passed in Europe.” 1244 . BRIDGE AT GILLINGHAM, SUFFOLK. J. Constable , R.A. (1776-1837). See 1235. 1245 . CHURCH PORCH, BERGHOLT, SUFFOLK. f. Constable , R.A. (1776-1837). See 1235. “The stillness of a summer afternoon,” says Leslie, “is broken only by the voice of an old man to whom a woman and girl sitting on one of the tombs are listening. As in many of 86 NO. 1250 the finest Dutch pictures, the fewness of the parts constitute a charm in this little work ; such is its extreme simplicity, that it has nothing to arrest attention, but when once noticed, few pictures would longer detain a mind of any sensibility. I have heard the word sentiment ridiculed when applied to representa¬ tions of inanimate objects. But no other word can express that from which the impression of this picture results, inde¬ pendently of the figures.” The picture was exhibited at the British Gallery in i8ii,but remained in Constable’s posses¬ sion till his death. “ I once asked Constable,” says Leslie, “ to allow my sister to copy the small picture of ‘ The Porch of Bergholt Church,’ and it came to us with the following note : ‘January 1830. My dear Leslie—I send the “Churchyard,” which my friends in Portman Place are welcome to use for any purpose but to go into it. . . . The motto on the dial is, Ut umbra , sic vita (Leslie’s Life of Constable, ed. 1845, PP- 23, 198). 1250 . CHARLES DICKENS. D. Maclise, R.A. (1806-1870). See 422. (Engraved as a vignette for the frontispiece to Nicholas Nickleby, 1839—“the only really successful portrait of Charles Dickens which was ever painted,” says his son in the preface to Messrs. Macmillan’s new edition of Nicholas Nickleby , 1892. 1 ) The great novelist, seated at his writing table, turns round in his chair as if to greet a friend. The portrait shows him, not in the likeness which photography has made familiar to the present generation, but rather in his prime, as described by Forster (1837)— A look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostrils, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it were extremely spirited. The hair, so scant and grizzled in later days, was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker ; but there 1 An exception should be made in favour of the exquisite pencil sketch by Millais, showing the head of Dickens after death (No. 193 in the Millais Exhibition of 1897-98). NOS. 1253, 1236 87 was that in the face as I first recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, ener¬ getic outlook on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business in the world (Life of Dickens, ed. 1876, p. 31). [This picture is at present deposited on loan in the National Portrait Gallery.] 1253 . A VIEW OF HYDE PARK CORNER. James Holland (1800-1870). Holland was born at Burslem, in Staffordshire, where his grand¬ father had started the manufacture of a highly-glazed black pottery. It was from studies of flowers painted on this ware that Holland derived his first taste for art, and it was as a flower-painter that he began his professional career. In 1819 he came to London, and after a few years he turned his attention to landscape-painting. He travelled much on the Continent, visiting in pursuit of his art Italy, Portugal, Normandy, Switzerland, and the Tyrol. He was a member of the Royal Water-Colour Society, and a large number of his drawings in that medium may be seen at South Kensington. A picture of some topographical interest as showing the aspect of Hyde Park Corner as designed in 1825 by Mr. Decimus Burton, the architect, for whom this view was painted and by whose niece it was presented to the Gallery. The date of the picture is about 1830, when Burton’s gateway into Hyde Park had just been completed, together with the front of Apsley House as we now see it. The buildings are repre¬ sented as scarcely finished, and stones still lie about in the foreground. But notice that the sculptured podium and the chariot surmounting the gateway, which formed part of the architect’s design but have never been executed, are introduced in the picture. The view is looking east; and on the (spec¬ tator’s) right is the triumphal arch, which then and for many years faced Apsley House, but which was removed farther back and placed at an oblique angle by Mr. Shaw Lefevre in 1885. 1276 . HARWICH. J. Constable , R.A. (1776-1837). See 1235. Interesting as the only sea-piece by Constable in the Gallery. The old-fashioned lighthouse is curious. NO. 1279 1279 . «BEATA BEATRIX.” D. G. Rossetti (1828-1882). See 1210. This picture—perhaps the noblest, says Mr. Swinburne (Essays a?id Studies , p. 377), of Mr. Rossetti’s many studies after Dante—is intended to illustrate symbolically the death of Beatrice as treated by Dante in his Vita Ntiova. On the frame is the date of Beatrice’s death (June 9, 1290), with the words “ quomodo sedet sola civitas ! ” (how doth the city sit solitary !), the first words of Jeremiah’s Lamentation, quoted by Dante to show the grief of Florence at Beatrice’s death. Beatrice herself is seated on a balcony overlooking Florence. The city and the bridged river are seen as from far, dim and veiled with misty lights as though already “ sitting alone, made as a widow.” In front of Beatrice is a sun-dial, which points to the hour of her departure ; whilst a crimson bird drops be¬ tween her hands a white poppy, symbol of sleep and painless death. Her beautiful head lies back, sad and sweet, with fast- shut eyes in a deathlike trance that is not death. Rather does she seem, through closed lids, to be conscious of a New World; for she is “ that blessed Beatrice who now gazeth on His countenance Who is blessed throughout all ages.” Dante and the Angel of Love are depicted watching in the back¬ ground. Dante watches sadly the departure of the angel, but the lamp is alight; the light of her love will still shine and guide him to the unseen. Her hair, too, forms a halo around her head ; for her death had glorified her to Dante, who determined “ to write of her that which had never been written of a woman.” Her face is full of spiritual oeauty, and there plays on it something of the smile described by the poet Blake, the smile which is smiled and there’s an end to all misery. The wealth of symbolic meaning, to which the above description will give some clue, extends to every part of the picture. The bird, the messenger of death, is the Spirit of God, and thus has a halo. It is red, because red is the colour of love, and death comes to Beatrice as a blessing : “ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.” She wears a green robe : green, the colour of spring and of hope, over a purple ground ; purple, the colour of suffering. But though full of detailed symbolism, the picture is remarkable also for that unity of impression which belongs NO. 1322 89 to great works of art. “ No amount of description,” says Mr. Quilter, “ could convey any hint of the intense and beautiful peace which marks this painting. It is like that of summer woods at early dawn, before the first bird has begun to sing, and the last star faded. Not only are the face and expression perfect; the whole picture tells a story with an emphasis only the more clear because of the intense quietude. Like the whisper of a great actress, we hear and feel the weight of every syllable. And this is fine technically, as well as emotionally, for in this, probably his finest picture, Rossetti shows little or none of that artfulness so frequently present in his works. The drawing, if not very markedly good, is unobtrusive and unobjectionable; the disposition of the drapery (always a strong point with this artist) is simplicity and dignity itself; the position, full both of grace and suggestion, is at the same time markedly original, and repre¬ sented with the utmost ease ; while of the colouring no one can speak in terms of too high praise. The picture is suffused with a misty sunshine, and all the hues therein are somewhat low in tone ; but into their transparent depths the eye looks down and down, as through the still waters of a lake; and the effect of the whole is that of some very marvellous piece of quiet music, played at a great distance” ( Prefereiices hi Art , p. 86). The picture, which was painted in 1863, is invested with additional interest from the fact that Beatrice is a portrait of the painter’s wife done after death. “The picture was painted,” says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, “ some while after the death of my brother’s wife, probably beginning in 1863, with portraiture so faithfully reminiscent that one might almost say she sat, in spirit and to the mind’s eye, for the face.” The picture was bought by the late Lord Mount-Temple in 1866, and is the original of which Rossetti subsequently painted two replicas. It was presented to the National Gallery in 1889 by Lady Mount-Temple in memory of her husband. 1322 . THE EVE OF THE DELUGE. W. B. Scott ( 1811-1890). William Bell Scott—celebrated in Mr. Swinburne’s memorial verses as “Poet and Painter and Friend”—was the son of a well-known Scottish engraver. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh. From his father and elder brother, David, who was also a painter, he received elementary instruction in art, which he followed up as a student 90 NO. 1322 at the Trustees’ Academy. At the age of twenty he came up to London, and supported himself by doing engraving work for the publishers. He also exhibited pictures with more or less success. In 1842 he entered the memorable competition organised by the Govern¬ ment for the encouragement of Design in Historical Painting. He did not gain a prize, but in 1845 he was appointed to the mastership of the Government School of Art at Newcastle-on-Tyne. This appointment he held for many years, and in later years he was employed in other work of various kinds in connection with the Science and Art Depart¬ ment. His most important artistic productions were several paintings executed for his friends Lady Trevelyan and Miss Alice Boyd, at Wallington Hall and Penkhill Castle, respectively. Among his poems, the “ Rosabell ” attracted the enthusiastic praise of D. G. Rossetti. He was also a voluminous writer on artistic subjects. Of his poetry and painting, Mr. Swinburne says :— Scarce in song could his soul find scope, Scarce the strength of his hand might ope Art’s inmost gate of her sovereign shrine, To cope with heaven as a man may cope. None that can read or divine aright The Scripture writ of the soul may slight, The strife of a strenuous soul to show More than the craft of the hand may write. W. B. Scott’s friendship included most of the artistic and literary celebrities for two generations. Of these he has left records—dis¬ tinguished by a candour sometimes verging on brutality—in his “ Autobiographical Notes ” : especially interesting are his reminiscences of D. G. Rossetti and Mr. Holman Hunt. In his friendship with Miss Boyd (who presented this picture to the nation), “the poet’s dreams of ideal friendship were realised,” says the editor of his auto¬ biography, “as such friendships seldom are.” He died at Miss Boyd’s house, Penkhill Castle, on November 22, 1890. “ On the terrace or upper story of an antediluvian palace overlooking a plain, an eastern prince sits caressed by his wife, and surrounded by his retinue, on a raised platform bordered with flowering plants. At his feet tiger-cubs gambol. The empty goblet in his hand, and a rudely fashioned harp held by a female slave on the left of the picture, suggest a recent bancpret. Two of the male attendants, bending over the balcony, on which a jar of incense is burning, watch with expressions of amusement and curiosity the family of Noah, who are entering the Ark, which lies below in the middle distance. From the horizon a dark and ominous cloud is seen rising into the sky” (Official Catalogue). NOS. 1367 , 1368, 1370 9 i 1367 . PORTRAIT OF SIR JAMES COCKBURN. Andrew Morton (1802-1845). Morton was born in 1802 at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He came to London and entered the schools of the Royal Academy, where in due course he obtained a prize. Having followed the practice of a portrait- painter, he attracted the notice of the Royal Family, from whom he received several commissions, and William IV. sat to him for a portrait, which is now in Greenwich Hospital. This picture and the two next following in the catalogue belong to a collection of family portraits bequeathed to the nation by Lady Hamilton (see 1370). The rest of the collec¬ tion, including Sir Joshua Reynolds’s famous “Lady Cockburn and her Children,” is at Trafalgar Square. The National Gallery had to accept these portraits along with that splendid Reynolds. Lady Hamilton was the daughter of the Sir James Cockburn here portrayed; her mother’s portrait is No. 1368. Sir James Cockburn was a major-general in the army. Here he wears the full-dress military uniform of a general officer in Her present Majesty’s service, and is decorated with the Star of the Guelphic, and Badge of the Nova Scotia, Order. 1368 . THE HON. MARIANNA DEVEREUX, LADY COCKBURN. Andrew Morton (1802-1845). See 1367. This lady was the wife of Sir James Cockburn, the 7th Baronet (1367). She was daughter of George, 18th Viscount Hereford, and Marianna, only daughter and heiress of George Devereux, Esq., of Tregoyd, Co. Brecon. The costume is interesting from its quaintness and elaborate detail, and there is much sweetness of expression in the elderly face. She died in 1847. 1370 . MARIANNA AUGUSTA, LADY HAMILTON. Andrew Morton { 1802-1845). See 1367. See under 1367. The style of hair and of dress here are those familiar to us in portraits of Queen Victoria at about the time of her accession. 92 NOS. 1379, 1383 , 1388 1379 . THE RAT-CATCHER. T. Woodward (1801-1852). Thomas Woodward, animal painter, was a native of Worcester¬ shire, and a pupil of Abraham Cooper, R.A. He began to exhibit at the age of fifteen, and was a constant exhibitor at the Academy from 1822 onwards. 1385 . ESMOND KNIGHTED BY BEATRIX. A. L. Egg, R.A. (1816-1863). See 444. A scene from Thackeray’s Esmojid (Book ii. ch. 15), not in all respects closely followed by the painter :— “ The tables of the dining-room were laid out for a great entertain¬ ment ; and the ladies were in gala dresses—my Lady of Chelsey in her highest tour, my Lady Viscountess out of black, and looking fair and happy a ravir ; and the Maid of Honour attired with that splendour which naturally distinguished her, and wearing on her beautiful breast the French officer’s star, which Frank had sent home after Ramillies. ‘ You see, ’tis a gala day with us,’ says she, glancing down to the star complacently, ‘ and we have our orders on. Does not mamma look charming? ’Twas I dressed her !’ Indeed, Esmond’s dear mistress, blushing as he looked at her, with her beautiful fair hair, and an elegant dress, according to the mode , appeared to have the shape and complexion of a girl of twenty. On the table was a fine sword, with a red velvet scabbard, and a beautiful chased-silver handle, with a blue riband for a sword-knot. ‘ What is this ? ’ says the captain, going up to look at this pretty piece. Mrs. Beatrix advanced towards it. ‘Kneel down,’ says she ; ‘we dub you our knight with this,’ and she waved the sword over his head. ‘ My Lady Dowager hath given the sword; and I give the riband, and mamma hath sewn on the fringe.’ ” 1388 . THE CAST SHOE. G. H. Mason, A.R.A. (1818-1872). George Heming Mason, one of the most distinctive and charming of British painters, had a chequered career, and his work was much hampered by ill-health. He was born at Wetley in Staffordshire, the son of a master-potter and country gentleman, and was educated for the medical profession. As a youth he was fond of out-door sports and athletics. He walked the hospitals at Birmingham and gained a medal for attending cholera patients. At the age of twenty-seven he went to Italy with his brother for a pleasure trip, in the midst of which he heard that his father was ruined. He set to work in earnest at NO. rj88 93 painting in Rome, and in spite of great privations never lost heart. When the Italian war broke out, he helped to tend the wounded. During the siege of Rome he was arrested as a spy and narrowly escaped death. Of his struggle against hunger many stories are told. He bound himself to dealers and provided animal pieces by the dozen for the smallest sums. He had no bed to sleep on. He lived for a fortnight on polenta and salt. When he was invited to a banquet, he went without food for three days afterwards. He haunted the Pincio to pick up scraps. These privations left their mark on him in the shape of rheumatism and inflammation of the lungs. One day a dealer, who had given him a commission, drove him out to L’Ariccia. There he happened to meet an old Stafford¬ shire acquaintance, who bought some pictures from him, and from this time forward the tide turned. In 1853 Leighton met him in Rome and showed him much kindness. At this period Mason’s pictures were of Roman subjects. In 1855 Mr. Aitchison, who had been with him in his dark days at Rome, met him at the Paris Exhibition. “ If I live, said Mason, “ I will astonish them all.” In the following year Mason returned to England to marry, and settled in the ruined manor- house of his family, Wetley Abbey. His first picture at the Academy was “ Ploughing in the Campagna,” 1857 ; but the subjects of his later pictures were all taken from the neighbourhood of his Staffordshire home. It was Leighton who gave him the inspiration. Mason lived at Wetley, says Signor Costa, “almost in misery, hidden from the world, in a feverish state, burdened with children, without hope or light. ^ But the light came to him from Leighton, who went to him in his ^solitude, took him with him and showed him the exquisite beauties of the country, making, in a little sketch-book, drawings of schemes for future pictures. It was as if he re-opened his eyes and inspired him with new life. At the same time and with the greatest delicacy he supplied him with money in advance on the pictures which he commissioned from him for himself and for his friends.” In 1865 Mason moved to London, and in 1868 was elected A.R.A. Four years later he died of heart disease. Throughout his manhood he suffered from weak health, “and this almost seems as if it had evoked in his work a singular sentiment for a quiet kind of poetic beauty, which a painter in rude health could perhaps not have produced.” “If he could only put what he knew into a healthy body with young eyes, he would paint ”—(so he said a few months before his death)— “the best pictures ever seen!” “The trivial may minister to the sublime,” was a saying of the French painter Millet, and it is eminently applicable to the works both of Mason and of his contemporary, Walker (see 1209). Mason’s works, “while they have a truthfulness of feeling, characteristic of the life of rural England in its most straightforward simplicity, combine with it an idealism which renders them, while perfectly true, yet perfectly idyllic. Painting the commons, fields, and country roads of our native country, with their primitive peasant groups, he is yet able to appeal to the most poetical feeling of 94 nos. 1389 > I 39 I the mind. His art has exquisite qualities of pastoral rest and beauty ; his subjects have a pathetic tenderness, a sense of sweetness and sadness, quite peculiar and original to himself.” [The best accounts of Mason are those in the Dictionary of National Biography, by Mr. Aitchison, R.A., and in the Art Journal for 1883 by Mrs. Meynell. Signor Costa’s recollections are in the Cornhill for March 1897. See also Wedmore’s Studies in English Art.] The qualities of Mason’s art noticed above are well repre¬ sented in this simple, yet pathetic picture of “ the gray horse, tired and old, stumbling patiently up the ridge of the common.” It is an evening scene at Wetley that the artist depicted ; he had in his mind the lines from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner :— Like one, that on a lonesome road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head ; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. 1389 . CHELSTON LANE, TORQUAY. George B. Willcock (1811 — 1852). This painter exhibited at the Academy from 1846 to 1851. His work somewhat resembles Constable, and pictures by him sometimes pass under that name. He was the son of a coachbuilder at Exeter, and for some years he was employed in painting armorial bearings on carriages constructed by a brother in the same line of business. “ This humble branch of pictorial art did not, however, content young Willcock who in 1842 turned his attention to landscape painting, and by the advice of his friend, James Stark, he studied constantly from nature, generally completing his work on the spot. The scrupulous observance of this practice was unfortunately destined to shorten his life, for he contracted a severe cold whilst painting in the open air near Frome, and never recovered from an illness which ensued.” Official Catalogue. 1391 . THE HARBOUR OF REFUGE. 1 Frederick Walker, A.R.A. (1840-1875). See 1209. This celebrated picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1872, and was bought by Sir W. Agnew, by whom it was in 1 Walker was very particular and hard to satisfy as to the titles of his pictures. This admirable title he owed to a friend. He signalised his satisfaction with it by dancing round the studio. (See J. G. Marks s Life and Letters of Frederick Walker.) NO. Ijpi 95 1893 presented to the nation. In “The Vagrants” the artist shows us the poetry of labour; here the subject is Repose. “ The pathos is the simple pathos of age rightly rendered and contrasted with the energy and grace of youth. Nothing from the design lives longer in the memory than the expanse of daisied lawn, where each separate flower seems to have had, in the vision of the painter, its distinct youth, and where the vivid green of the grass overpowers the sunlight with its bright¬ ness. There is no story to tell, and yet the scene has so possessed the painter that the picture is almost passionate in its utterance. He has so dwelt upon the image of contrasted youth and age that every simple fact seems to keep and mark its pathos. It is expressed with an impartial hand in the full spring blossoms and the waning light, no less than in the two figures, a young girl and a tottering woman, who descend the old stone steps ; and it is marked again in the flowers on the lawn not yet overtaken by the scythe of the mower, and in the groups of aged people who dream beneath the trees ” (Comyns Carr : Essay on Walker). The poetic conception of the picture is so deep that its pathos grows upon the spectator the more he studies it, and it is not surprising that other critics have seen a yet more tragic spirit in “ The Harbour of Refuge.” “ It is difficult,” writes Mr. J. E. Hodgson, R.A., “to fathom its meaning com¬ pletely ; it has a grim, fantastic weirdness which has something sardonic about it. The old pensioners are sitting on a seat in the centre; near them a stone statue cuts out clear against the golden sky, as though to contrast its endurance with the paltry tenure of life ; a mower—a wild, almost unearthly figure, like his prototype whose name is Death 1 —is swinging a scythe at arm’s length, and in the foreground a young girl is leading an old woman who is bent down as though by a weight on her shoulders—a weight which Walker, no doubt, intended to be a spiritual one. The young girl’s face is the riddle of the picture. Why he has given her that strange, uncanny face, with great eyes staring into vacancy, is not by any means easy to understand.” A sombre clue is suggested by another critic. “ The old courtyard is the world, with its order statue-fixed ; 1 Mr. Ruskin objects to Walker’s peasants as “got up for the stage,” and refers to this figure as “the ridiculous mower, galvanised-Elgin in his attitude, and the sweep of the scythe utterly out of drawing by the way.” (H. S. Marks’s Pen and Pencil Sketches, i. 104.) 96 NO. 1392 its types of unlovely and ignoble age alone seem to survive ; the young must live in solitude and perish in suffering ; for now the painter’s self looks from the drooping face of the fair girl who will so soon meet the ominous grim mower.” The picture was exhibited in 1872. Three years later the painter died of consumption. “The little man in black,” says Mr. J. W. North, A.R.A. “with his hands on his knees, pleased the painter much ; he had a whimsical notion that he might him¬ self become just such a little figure in old age. There is a curious appearance of failure to carry through the intention of the young woman’s face. It is impossible for me to believe that this arises from want of power of drawing—rather, I think, from an ideal in the painter’s heart beyond his power com¬ pletely to express. Strange as it is, I fancy that an actually better drawn and painted face of more ordinary character is difficult to imagine in its place without the poetry of the picture suffering” (Magazine of Art, November, 1893). So much for the sentiment of the picture. The actual scene depicted is the Jesus Hospital, or almshouse, at Bray, near Maidenhead. Walker “took some liberties with the garden,” Mr. Leslie tells us, “ making it a lawn in order to introduce the poetic picture of the mower; he also made a raised terrace round the sides of the square. In reality the centre is merely four sunk beds of flowers and kitchen plants, with a sheltered seat and pump in the middle, where Walker introduced a sculptured figure. The row of poplars behind the quadrangle he left out, as it would have cut up the light of the evening sky too much. All the rest of the scene is most truthfully rendered from nature” (Our River, p. 62). 1392 . CARDINAL BOURCHIER AND THE WIDOW OF EDWARD IV. John Zephaniah Bell (1794-1883). This painter, the son of a tanner at Dundee, was for some years director of the School of Design in Manchester. He had studied art at the Royal Academy and in Paris, and was largely employed in the decoration of private and public buildings both in this country and abroad. He was a prize-winner in the great competition for the cartoons in Westminster Hall. The scene depicted is an incident in the usurpation of Richard III. On the death of Edward IV. Richard of NO. 1394 97 Gloucester seized the young King, his nephew, Edward V., and subsequently seized also the King’s brother, Richard, the two Princes being afterwards murdered in the Tower. The Queen, their mother, had taken sanctuary with the young Richard at Westminster ; and in this picture we see Cardinal Bourchier (the Archbishop of Canterbury), in an appealing attitude, persuading her to give up the Prince, who, clad in black, clings to his mother. The Cardinal pledged his own honour so strongly for the young Duke’s security that the Queen at last consented. Within three weeks of the time that he thus pledged himself for the good faith of the Protector he was called on to officiate at the coronation of Richard III. On the right, through the open door, are the halberds of a troop of soldiers on guard. 1394 . CHRIST WASHING PETER’S FEET. Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Among the historical painters of the British School, Ford Madox Brown is one of the most remarkable. He is also entitled to a distinguished place in any history of the School, for his was an original and creative force ; in many respects he anticipated the Pre- Raphaelites, and may, therefore, be described as the pioneer in the artistic revival of the second half of the century. He was the son of a naval officer, but was born at Calais, and lived for many years in Belgium, where he received his first training in art. At the academy in that city, under Baron Wappers, he derived much valuable instruction in the technique of art. “I had a mixed impression,” he says of the other influences to which he was at the time susceptible, “but Rembrandt towered over all.” Subsequently he went to Paris, and also to Italy, where he studied the old masters with deep admira¬ tion. “No spirit,” he afterwards wrote, “that has once drunk of those pure founts can remain long in bondage to any other influence ” ; and though throughout his artistic life he maintained an independent course, there can be no doubt that the Italian masters influenced him profoundly—showing itself, in one aspect, in a sense for the grand style, and, in another, in a certain archaism. Before he returned to England, he had already laid in his own mind the foundation of a new school. In his head, says M. de la Sizeranne, he carried the idea that art was perishing from a systematic generalisation of forms, and that it could only be saved by a minute study of individual traits. In his heart he had a confused but ardent desire to see art play a great social part—to become, as it were, the bread of life, instead of being merely a sugar-plum reserved for the tables of the rich. “ In Paris,” said the artist himself, “ I first formed my idea of making my pictures real, H 98 NO. 1394 because no French artist at that time did so.” Brown contributed to the competition for the frescoes in the Houses of Parliament, and this chanced to bring him into contact with the Pre-Raphaelites. For Rossetti (see 1210), being deeply impressed with the originality and power of Brown’s designs, wrote to the artist, begging permission to enter his studio as a pupil. “ Very amusing,” says Mr. Quilter, “ is Brown’s account of the way in which his lessons used to be received by Rossetti, and the matter-of-fact way in which his master treated him— setting him down to still-life groups, in which an old tobacco canister figured as one of the chief objects.” Rossetti, said Brown, was most impatient. “ He used to clean his palette on sheets of notepaper, and leave them lying about the floor, and they would very often stick to my boots when I came in in the dark.” But though Brown was in sympathy with the “Brotherhood,” and contributed to their organ, The Germ, he remained independent of them. “ Strictly speaking,” said the painter himself, “ I was not one of them; I was somewhat older than they at the time, and I disavowed certain of their tenets. Before meeting them I had already in Paris resolved on a system of individualised and truer light and shade—daylight, morning, afternoon, indoor and outdoor light, and so forth. About this time also I had an attraction towards Holbein, after being once slightly swayed by Rembrandt. This resulted in my sending to the Academy a portrait of a city merchant entitled ‘ A Modern Holbein,’ which was not hung. That was in 1846. Later on the frescoes in the Branacci Chapel at Florence confirmed me in my archaism. On my meeting the Pre- Raphaelites in 1848 I shared their feeling for intense and brilliant colour.” He exhibited for some years at the Academy; but being dissatisfied with the treatment he received he left off exhibiting after 1852, and relied for the remainder of his life on private patrons. His series of historical pictures for the Manchester Town Hall are among his best-known works. But he was master of many styles. “He never restricted himself,” says a French critic, “ to any formula. His style changes with the greatest facility, according to the subject under treatment” (Chesneau : The English School of Painting, p. 232). His ideal, as we have said, was “historical art”; but by that term he explained that what he meant was “the old-fashioned meaning of elevation or dignity of style, not alone the practice of treating subjects from actual history or facts.” This feeling for style—far removed, as M. Chesneau says, from the commonplace familiarities of everyday life—is one general characteristic of the artist’s works. Another is their intense concentration. At times they become almost fierce in their energy and exaggerated in their intensity. But “ it is a great intellectual gratification to see one single thought, or one moment, made the subject of a picture, and brought home to our consciousness with such startling evidence of reality” (J. E. Hodgson : Fifty Years of British Art, p. 41). Madox Brown was much beloved and respected by all who knew him. “The beauty of his mind,” says Mr. M. D. Conway, “the meekness of his heart, the truth and NO. 1394 99 largeness and tenderness of his whole nature, were such that he inspired a deep and lasting love.” His sympathies were wide, and his political opinions “advanced.” He was very fond of music, and he occasionally wrote poetry. But he was not of a nature to seek popularity, and he never attained the recognition that was due to him. Rossetti’s story of his first encounter with Brown, referred to above, is characteristic. Rossetti had written an enthusiastic letter to the painter. “A few days after,” he said, “I was told a gentleman wanted to see me. The gentleman would not come in nor give his name; he would stand in the passage ; and when I ran downstairs there stood Brown, a great stick in one hand and my note in the other ! His salutation was : ‘ Is your name Rossetti, and is this your writing ? ’ I said it was, but I began to shake in my shoes. ‘ What do you mean by it ? ’ was his next question ; and when I replied that I meant what I had written, meaning to be a painter, and knowing nothing of how to go about it, the fact dawned upon the Brownonian intellect that the letter was not a hoax, but an honest compliment; he suddenly changed from a deadly antagonist to the sweetest of friends.” (Parti¬ culars of Ford Madox Brown will be found in Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s Letters and Memoirs of D. G. Rossetti, in W. B. Scott’s Auto¬ biographical Notes, and in Mr. Harry Quilter’s Preferences in Art. I have also quoted from an interesting article, written by the artist himself, in the Magazine of Art for 1893.) Of this picture, presented to the nation by a body of sub¬ scribers, the artist himself wrote the following description :— “St. John tells us that Jesus, rising from supper, ‘laid aside His garments,’ perhaps to give more impression to the lesson of humility, ‘and took a towel and girded himself,’ poured water into a basin (in the East usually of copper or brass), ‘ and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded. ’ Then Peter said, ‘ Lord, dost thou wash my feet ? ’ The purposely assumed humility of Jesus at this moment, and the intense veneration implied in the words of Peter, I have endeavoured to render in this composition. The very simple traditional costume of Jesus and Plis disciples, which seems, moreover, warranted by modern research, as also the traditional youthfulness of John, curly gray hair of Peter, and red hair of Judas, which I should be loth to disturb without having more than my own notion to give in lieu, I have retained—combined with such truth of surround¬ ings and accessories as I thought most conducive to general truth, always intending, however, in this picture, the documentary and historic to be subordinate to the supernatural and Christianic,—wherefore I have retained the nimbus. This, however, every one who has considered the subject must understand, appeals out from the picture to the beholder, not to the other characters in the picture. Judas Iscariot is represented lacing up his sandals, after his feet have been washed. This picture was painted in 1851-52. It was subsequently worked 100 NO. 1394- over and in certain respects altered in 1856, 1 in which year the ^50 prize of the Liverpool Academy was awarded for it” (Catalogue to the exhibition of Mr. Ford Madox Brown’s works, held in Piccadilly in 1865). The picture had previously been exhibited at the Academy in 1852, and it was the bad placing of it (as the artist thought) that caused him to cease sending pictures there. 2 “A splendid piece of colouring,” says Dean Farrar [“quite capable,” says another writer, “ of holding its own in any gallery of Venetian masterpieces”] “and in all respects a great picture. Jesus, whose face is worn and pathetic, yet full of divine beauty, is bending over the feet of St. Peter, whose figure is quite ideal in its strength and dignity.” [“ His conception of Christ,” writes the artist’s daughter, “ is not of the effeminate, servile class, but of the manly, dignified order—one who does not feel that work for his fellow-creatures is degrading.”— Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 294.] “A bad, mean Judas is stooping to untie the strings of his sandals preparatory to the washing of his feet, and the expression on his face is an indescribable mixture of shame, surprise, and cunning” ( Christ in Art , p. 343). A feeling of intense wonder rests on all the faces as the meaning of that great lesson in Christian brotherhood dawns upon them—“ Who¬ soever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among, let him be your servant.” Additional interest attaches to the picture from the fact that the heads were painted from the artist’s friends. Mr. F. G. Stephens, one of the original members of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, and a distinguished art critic, sat for 1 The person of Christ was originally represented nude, in conformity with the text, “ Rising from supper, He laid aside His garments” ; but the painter subsequently clothed the figure. 2 Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in his Notes to Rossetti's Letters to William Allingham , says : “In the Royal Academy it had been hung near the ceiling. When Grant, the future President, came to offer his congratula¬ tions, Brown, whose eye had only just fallen on it, turned his back in speechless indignation and walked out of the building.” A different story is told by Mr. F. G. Stephens : “ It is right to say ourselves that our knowledge of the circumstances leads us to think that Brown was in this matter less than just to others when he took offence. ‘ Christ and Peter ’ was on the line, or just above it, and was really in a position where its merits could be recognised " ( Athenceum , Oct. 14, 1893). However this may be, the insult, if such there had been, was posthumously avenged. Before its removal here, the picture hung for some years on the line at Trafalgar Square, where in 1852 the Royal Academy Exhibition was held. nos. 1395 > *39*’ T 4°5 icn the head of Christ. That of St. John (leaning forward at the spectator’s extreme right) was painted from Walter Howell Deverell, another member of the Brotherhood. The light¬ haired disciple towards the centre of the table is Mr. Holman Hunt, and next to him (more to the spectator’s right) is D. G. Rossetti. The head on the other side of Mr. Holman Hunt is that of Mr. Hunt’s father. Next to him is Charles Bagot Cayley, the translator of Dante and Petrarch. The bald- headed disciple, with remains of dark hair, whose face is poised on his arms, is Mr. William Michael Rossetti. 1395 . MRS. C. H. BELLENDEN KER. Sir C. L. Eastlake , P.R.A. (1793-1865). See 367. A portrait, in fancy dress as an Italian peasant girl, of the wife of a barrister, well-known in his day as a legal reformer and an ardent advocate of education. He was also much interested in art, and was an original member of the Arundel Society (see Lady Eastlake’s Memoirs ). 1398 . IPPOLITA TORELLI. Sir C. L. Eastlake , P.R.A. (1793-1865). See 367. The wife of Baldassare Castiglione—soldier, statesman, and poet (1478-1529). Left in Mantua two years after her marriage, she is said to have written to her husband (then at the Court of Leo X.), in Latin verse, complaining that in his absence her jewels gave her no pleasure. Note the string of pearls which she holds listlessly in her left hand. 1405 . EDFOU : UPPER EGYPT. J. F. Lewis, R.A. (1805-1876). John Frederick Lewis was claimed by Mr. Ruskin as one of the leaders of Pre-Raphaelitism, in that he painted truth instead of formalism or idealism, and finished every detail with minute precision, to which justice can only be done by the spectator—as in the case of Van Eyck,— with the aid of a magnifying glass. His complete rendering of details is, said Mr. Ruskin, “ exquisitely and ineffably right. No words are strong enough to express the admirable skill and tenderness of pencilling and perception. But marvellous as this quantity of detail is, the quantity is not the chief wonder, but the breadth. It is amazing that there should be so Much, but far more amazing that this Much should all be right.” But though Lewis’s work was Pre-Raphaelite in char¬ acter, it was, adds Mr. Ruskin, entirely independent in development. “ He worked with the sternest precision twenty years before Pre- 102 NO. 1405 Raphaelitism had ever been heard of; pursued calmly the same principles, developed by himself, for himself, through years of lonely labour in Syria” ( Arrows of the Chace , i. 95, 195 ; Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 31 ; Political Economy of Art, p. 144 n. ; Notes on the Academy, i. 13; ii. 17, 39; iii. 9, 48; iv. 18; v. 15). Lewis was the son of an engraver, and was intended for his father’s profession. He was a contemporary of Landseer, and in company with him used as a young man to sketch and dissect animals, and it was as an animal painter that he first made a name. He next took to water-colours. He was elected an associate of the Water Colour Society in 1828. In 1835 he went to Spain and Italy for two years ; and in 1843 to Cairo, remaining in Egypt eight years. It is interesting to distinguish the different impressions which that wonderful country has made on different painters. Mr. Hodgson says on this point: “ Muller (see 1463) saw the splendour of the colouring, and Gerome the mingling of nations. Lewis saw the quaintness and picturesqueness, the bric-^-brac and the embroidery, and also the searching, the all-pervading light. He is not a physiognomist or a physiologist; he is a painter of accessories, and as such he has no equal. What there is in the East of wonderful, in the way of detail and ornament, of rich colour and blending light, he has expressed as no one else has ever done.” Soon after his return to England he resumed oil painting; he was elected A.R.A. in 1859, and R.A. in 1865. “I believe John Lewis,” says Mr. Ruskin, “to have done more entire justice to all his powers (and they are magnificent ones) than any other man amongst us.” Love for his art was an intense passion with him. No money would tempt him to part with a picture which he considered incomplete. Again and again he would take it up and put it aside, adding elaboration to elaboration. If he thought of an alteration or an improvement to a picture he would get up in the middle of the night and go down to his studio to set about it. He worked hard throughout the day, and would be in his painting room by eight every morning, rigidly excluding every one except his wife ; and during his latter years his devotion to his art was so great that he rarely passed a night away from home, always preferring, if he dined out, to drive many miles, however late in the evening, to his home at Walton-on-Thames, in order to be ready for his painting at his regular hour next morning (Redgrave : A Century of Painters, p. 378). On the right of the foreground two camels lie on the ground laden with pack-saddles, etc. Behind them is seen a tent of white canvas pitched between the walls of Edfou and its temple —one of the finest in Egypt, built in the reign of Ptolemy Philopator (B.c. 222), and richly adorned with sculptures. The propylon and colonnade of the temple form conspicuous objects in the middle distance. Beyond is a plain dotted with palm trees, which rise between the village and the Nile, the opposite NO. 1407 103 banks of which are bounded by hills. Above the latter, cloud cumuli hover over the horizon or rise into a summer sky. On the left of the foreground an Arab chief reclines on the ground. 1407 . PEGWELL BAY, 1858. William Dyce , R.A. (1806-1864). Dyce, one of the most distinguished of Scottish painters, was born and educated at Aberdeen, his father being a doctor in that city. After preliminary study in the schools of the Scottish and English Academies, he went, while still a very young man, to Italy, where he studied the old masters and laid the foundation for the subsequent interest in fresco-painting. He returned to Edinburgh in 1830, but found no encouragement in the higher branches of art which he longed to follow, and passed many of his best years as a portrait painter. Later on his opportunities came, but he was then sick at heart with hope deferred. “Dyce,” says Mr. Holman Hunt, “was the most profoundly trained and cultured of all the painters, but his reward had been to be driven from the profession altogether for several years, and then he had to be searched for by the advice of the German painter Cornelius, given when he himself declined the honour to paint the Houses of Parliament. I ventured to express my thought of the joy it must be to him to have the opportunity of exercising his powers in the national building where he was employed, and on so large a scale, and I shall ever remember the sadness with which he said, ‘ But I begin with my hair already grey.’” He was elected A.R.A. in 1844, and R.A. in 1848, and was a frequent exhibitor at the Academy. Pie executed a series of frescoes, illustrating the life of King Arthur, in the Queen’s Robing-room in the Houses of Parliament, and was also com¬ missioned to execute several paintings at Osborne, Buckingham Palace, and All Saints Church, Margaret Street. In addition to these labours, Dyce was also appointed at the head of the administration of the Government Schools of Design, first established in 1838. The execu¬ tion of the frescoes at Westminster proved a source of great worry. He had undertaken to finish them in eight years. There were disputes over the delays which occurred and the rate of remuneration. All this increased a wasting illness which had seized him, and he rapidly declined. “Dyce,” says Mr. Hodgson, R.A., “must be ranked with the Pre-Raphaelites, although his work was probably intended as a protest against their heresies. Although there is no documentary evidence of the fact, it seems evident that he intended to show that minute finish and careful imitation of nature might be obtained without turning all the theories of art topsy-turvy” (.Fifty Years of British Art , p. 50). In this connection it is interesting to know that Dyce was one of the first to recognise the talent of Mr. Holman Hunt, to whom, during the days of early struggles and disappointment, he showed much encouragement and kindness. In one respect Dyce s work differs, Mr. 104 NO. 1426 Ruskin points out, from other Pre-Raphaelite works of the same period. His Academy picture of 1857 was “ the first picture yet produced by the school, in which the work has been at all affected by a sculpturesque sense of grace in form. Hitherto every master who has ranked himself on this side has been a colourist, and his subject has been chosen and treated with chief reference to colour, not intentionally but because a colourist can do no otherwise ; seeing in all that he has to show effects of light and hue first, and form secondarily. . . . Art always loses something, or else we should not know it from reality, and it is inter¬ esting to see, for the first time in the annals of the rising school, this inevitable loss taking place in colour instead of form, and the landscape painted with a sculptor’s precision, and a sculptor’s love of grace.” But Dyce’s work shows also “an amount of toil only endurable by the boundless love and patience which are the first among the Pre- Raphaelite characteristics.” Of the picture before Mr. Ruskin at the time, he added, “ It will take about an hour to see properly ” (Academy Notes , 1857, pp. 13-16). The minute finish and careful imitation of nature, noticed above as characteristic of Dyce’s work, are very conspicuous in this picture of Pegwell Bay, between Ramsgate and Sand¬ wich, the traditional scene of two famous landings, that of Hengist and Horsa, and that of St. Augustine. Chronological interest is given to the picture by the introduction, dimly visible in the sunlit sky, of Donati’s comet, the monstrous portent which “ fired the length of Ophiuchus huge,” in the year 1858. It was exhibited at the Academy in i860 as “ Pegwell Bay: a recollection of October 5th, 1858.” The figures in the foreground remind us also that this was a prominent period in the fashion of crinolines. 1426 . ST. JOHN LEADING THE VIRGIN MARY FROM THE TOMB. William Dyce, R.A. (1806-1864). See 1407. “ Its smooth and equable touch, learned draughtsmanship, profoundly sympathetic expressions, and dignity of movement, and the severe taste pervading the whole of the work, render it,” says a writer in the Athenceum (Sept. 1, 1894), “a most desirable addition to the National Gallery. The work of so conscientious and learned a painter is, we need not say, in excellent condition, and likely to remain so.” The Virgin “rests her right hand in that of St. John, and holds in her left the crown of thorns removed from our Saviour’s head. In the middle distance, on the left of the picture, is a garden nos. 1428 , 1463 , 105 enclosing the Holy Sepulchre, at the entrance to which two of the holy women kneel mourning, while two male figures (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea ?) are seen leaving the garden” (Official Catalogue). 1428 . A VIEW OF SOUTHAMPTON. R. H. Lancaster (died 1850). R. Hume Lancaster was a member of the Society of British Artists, and a frequent exhibitor at the Academy from 1836 to 1849. Taken from the shore and looking towards the harbour. A portion of the old quay forms the foreground. Beyond, to the right, is a group of buildings (now destroyed or restored), among which the Maison Dieu—an ancient almshouse, dating from the end of the twelfth century—and the “ South Gate ” are conspicuous. Painted in 1817. 1463 . A STREET IN CAIRO. W. J. Muller (1812-1845). See 379. Presented to the nation by Lady Weston, from a collection of Muller’s works formed by the late Sir J. Weston, M.P. for Bristol. The picture, which is bright in colour, shows the characteristic out-door scenes of the East; some of the figures are conversing with an Arab chief, a negro servant is offering coffee, a native merchant is sitting cross-legged on his stall. 1474 . DREDGING ON THE MEDWAY. W. J. Miiller (1812-1845). See 379. A dredger is anchored in mid-stream. Alongside of the machine a sailing barge, laden with silt, is preparing to get under weigh, while from the left of the river a shore-boat, manned by two sailors, makes for the vessel through rough water. This picture “ shows the gray water in which Muller so excelled, with its strong cadence of rich tones in the splashing waves. The heavy dark mass of the dredger, with a brown- sailed lugger alongside, casts a shadow to the right that the artist has seized upon as a valuable point in the composition, while the cockle shell of a boat, pulling towards it from the left, holds the only touch of bright colour in the picture—in the red cap and blue jacket of the boatman.” (Temple : Art in the Reign of Queen Victoria , p. 36.) 1477 . THE MOORLAND (“THE DEWERSTONE ”). J. IV. Inchbold (1830-1888). John William Inchbold, who has been described as one of the “cleverest minor poets in art,” was the son of a journalist at Leeds, where he was educated. He afterwards came to London to be trained as a draughtsman in lithography. He was a pupil of Louis Haghe, the water-colour artist, and also a student of the Royal Academy, where he first exhibited in 1851. Four years later, a picture of his, “ The Moorland ” (to illustrate Tennyson’s lines), was highly praised in Mr. Rusk in’s Academy Notes —a panegyric which had a marked effect on the rest of his life, henceforth spent in the close study of nature at home and abroad. In front of the present picture, it is interesting to note that Ruskin especially praised the painter’s “exquisite finish of lichenous rock painting.” He continued to ex¬ hibit till 1885. He was of a singularly retiring and unworldly dis¬ position, and never achieved any general popularity. But many of the most distinguished literary men of the time were among his patrons and friends. Mr. Swinburne has published a memorial poem upon him, as “ a man beloved ” and a lover of nature :— To thee the sun spake, and the morning sang Notes deep and clear as life or heaven : the sea That sounds for them but wild waste music, sang Notes that were lost not when they rang for thee. The mountains clothed with light and night and change, The lakes alive with wind and cloud and sun, Made answer, by constraint sublime and strange, To the ardent hand that bade thy will be done. Inchbold himself published in 1876 a volume of sonnets (Annus Amoris) dedicated To that unconscious Beauty that has wrought In me, through many years in many lands, By stream and wood and plain and barren strands. Inchbold died suddenly of heart disease. It may be hoped that some of his Swiss pictures will in time find their way to the National collection, for he specially excelled in the representation of distant snow mountains bathed in cold, aerial light, and of the glassy, iridescent surface of calm lakes at evening. The present picture was bequeathed by Sir Russell Reynolds, the eminent doctor, who was an old friend of the painter’s, and had a large collection of his works. The spot depicted is the Dewerstone on Dartmoor — “ the favourite resort of the poet Carrington,” as Inchbold de¬ scribed it in the catalogue. In the introduction to this NO. 1492 107 Devonshire poet’s “Dartmoor” visitors are recommended to climb to the summit of the Dewerstone—a cliff of most symmetrical proportions and beautiful tints, seamed in the manner peculiar to granite, and apparently bound together by bands of ivy. What would Inchbold and Carrington say if they could know that a quarry had now been cut in the base of this romantic rock ! 1492 . CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. G. Richmond , R.A. (1809-1896). George Richmond, the son of one artist and the father of another (Sir William Blake Richmond, R.A.), was chiefly known as a portrait painter, first in chalk or water-colour, and afterwards in oils. At the age of fifteen he entered the Academy schools. In 1828 he went to Paris to study art and anatomy. At Calais on the way he met and exchanged pinches of snuff with Beau Brummel. In 1831 he made a runaway match with a daughter of Mr. Charles Tatham, an architect of repute. They were married at Gretna Green, to the great annoy¬ ance of Tatham. Linnell, the painter, consoled him, telling him that on the contrary he had every reason to congratulate himself, as young Richmond would certainly make a name in the world. This pre¬ diction was abundantly fulfilled. In 1837 he visited Rome, where he remained for some time, and made many friends. Among these were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Ruskin, and John Sterling. “ No habitue of the brightest circles of London society will doubt,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ the privilege we had in better and better knowing George Richmond.” Returning to England in 1840, Richmond speedily found a great vogue as a portrait painter. There were, indeed, few men of eminence in the middle of the century who did not sit to him ; several of his portraits may be seen in the National Portrait Gallery. In 1846 he was nominated by Mr. Gladstone to succeed Sir A. W. Calcott on the Council of the Government Schools of Design, a post which he held for three years. In 1856 he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the National Gallery ; and in 1874 he was offered, but refused, the Directorship of the Gallery. He was elected A.R.A. in 1857, and R.A. in 1866. In 1867 he was made a D.C. L. of Oxford, and in 1890 LL.D. of Cambridge. A memorial tablet to him has been placed in the crypt at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The bronze medallion was designed by Sir W. B. Richmond. Though best known, as we have said, for his portraits, his bent originally, as also occasionally in later life, was towards religious and classical art. The most notable influence during his early years was that of the poet, painter, and mystic, William Blake, whose acquaintance he made in 1825—an acquaintance commemorated in the Christian names of his son, the present Royal Academician. “ It was as if he were walking io8 NO. 1498 with the prophet Isaiah,” said Richmond of his first encounter with the seer, In view of the present picture, marked by so much earnest¬ ness of feeling, we may recall another reminiscence by Richmond. “Once the young artist, finding his invention flag for a whole fort¬ night, went to Blake, as was his wont, for advice and comfort. He found him sitting at tea with his wife. He related his distress; how he felt deserted by the power of invention. To his astonishment, Blake turned to his wife suddenly and said : ‘ It is just so with us, is it not, for weeks together, when the visions forsake us ? What do we do then, Kate ? ’ ‘ We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake ’ ” (Gilchrist’s Life of Blake, i. 343). This picture, presented by the artist’s family, was painted when Richmond was eighteen —in the year, therefore, of Blake’s death. 1498 . SACKING OF A CHURCH IN THE TIME OF JOHN KNOX. J. Prescott Knight, R.A. (1803-1881). John Prescott Knight, a native of Stafford, was the son of Edward Knight, the comedian, who placed him in a merchant’s office. The firm failed, and Knight was allowed to follow his own inclinations. He studied art under G. Clint, A. R.A., and in Sass’s school, and afterwards entered the Royal Academy schools. In the following year, 1824, he exhibited his first work, a subject-picture. In 1836 he was elected A.R.A. ; in 1844, R.A. He was also Professor of Perspective, and from 1848-73, Secretary. He was a very energetic officer. He was once credited with more power than his office entitled him to, and he was knocked down in one of the exhibition rooms of the Academy by an offended artist, whose picture had been turned out. Knight was a small man, very lively and witty, and gifted with a delightful tenor voice, with which he would charm his brother members at certain Council dinners. Knight devoted himself for many years to subject-pictures, such as the one before us, but his chief reputation rests on his portraits and on his “Waterloo Banquet,” in the possession of the Duke of Wellington (Redgrave’s Century of Painters). The preaching of Knox was followed in several towns by a tumult which resulted in the altar, images, and other ornaments of the churches being torn down. Some of the rioters are here preparing to make away with the valuables ; others are clamber¬ ing on to the altar, to destroy the crucifix and other images. The priests are appealing for mercy to the Reformer, who is unable to quell the riot:— NO. 1499 109 John Knox endeavouring to restrain the violence of the people, who, excited by his eloquence against the Church of Rome, destroyed the altar, missals, images of saints, etc., at Perth, 1559. The day after the memorable meeting at Stirling, Knox preached in Perth, with his usual vehemence, against the mass, idolatrous worship, and adoration of saints and images, when a priest, proceeding to celebrate mass, and anxious to counteract the effect of the discourse, drew the attention of the bystanders to the altar. This excited some expressions of ridicule from a boy, for which the priest imprudently struck him. The boy retaliated by throwing a stone, and damaged the picture above the altar, which aroused the iconoclastic fury of the people, who had taken part with the boy, and they destroyed the pictures, images, missals, and all the symbols of the Romish worship. Their zeal was so furious that Knox, although assisted by the civil authorities, in vain exerted himself to stop the ravages of what he termed the rascal multitude {Royal Academy Catalogue , 1843). For a picture of Knox in the pulpit, see 894. 1499 . NATURE BLOWING BUBBLES FOR HER CHILDREN. W. Hilton , R.A. (1786-1839). William Hilton was a contemporary of B. R. Haydon, and, like him, devoted to historical and religious works in the grand style. Like Haydon also, he met with many disappointments. He had real poetic feeling; many of his subjects were chosen from Milton and Spenser, his favourite authors. He had also a refined taste in design, and he was distinguished in his life-time for a harmonious and rich style of colouring. But in the search for this soft harmony, he was led into the excessive use of asphaltum, and most of his pictures are now hope¬ lessly decayed. Already, in 1853, his pictures in the National Gallery were reported as “beyond the reach of the restorer’s art.” It was against this besetting sin of the old school that the Pre-Raphaelites revolted, and it is interesting to find that Millais’s early works are still, after fifty years, in perfect condition (see, further, under 1506). Hilton was the son of a portrait painter at Lincoln. He was intended for a commercial career, but the artistic bent was too strong to be denied. His first drawing-master was his father, but at the age of fourteen he was sent to London as a pupil of John Raphael Smith, the crayon draughtsman and mezzotint engraver. Here he found a kindred spirit in his fellow-pupil, Peter de Wint. The two youths found their life so uncomfortable with Smith (he was a boon companion of George Morland), that at one time they ran away, but afterwards returned for a while. After leaving Smith’s, they continued to live together, even after De Wint’s marriage to Hilton’s sister. The joint household only ceased when Hilton himself married in 1825. In 1806 Hilton no NO. 14Q9 entered the Academy schools, devoting himself especially to the study of anatomy. He was elected A.R.A. in 1813, R.A. in 1819, and Keeper in 1827. His pictures, from their large size and seriousness of subject, found few private purchasers. But the British Institution afforded him some encouragement. “ Hilton, my fellow-student,” says Haydon in his diary, “ had been successful in selling his ‘ Mary anoint¬ ing the Feet of Jesus,’ in the British Gallery for 500 guineas, which saved him from ruin. I told him he was a lucky fellow, for I was just on the brink of ruin. ‘ How?’ said he. I explained my circum¬ stances, and he immediately offered me a large sum to assist me. I accepted only ^34, but his noble offer endeared him to me for the rest of his life. A more amiable creature never lived, nor a kinder heart.” The picture referred to was presented in 1820 to the church of St. Michael Paternoster Royal, on College Hill, where it may still be seen. Another picture in this collection has a similar history (see 1629). In 1825 Hilton travelled for six months in Italy with his friend T. Phillips, R.A. He was of a retiring disposition. The death of his wife in 1835 was a severe affliction to him, and, combined with his artistic disappointments, aggravated the physical ailment from which he suffered. Naturally silent and pensive, he gave way to depression, and never altogether rallied. He died at the De Wints’ house (40 Gower Street), and was buried in the churchyard of the Savoy, where his sister raised a font to his memory. Many of his principal pictures remained unsold at the time of his death. He was much beloved by the Academy students, who subscribed to purchase his “ Serena and the Red Cross Knight ” for presentation to the National Gallery. Other of his pictures formed part of the Vernon collection, but these are sadly decayed and are no longer exhibited to the public. (The best account of Hilton is to be found in Mr. G. Redgrave’s life of his brother-in-law, Peter de Wint. The friendship between the two painters is one of the most faithful and touching in artistic annals.) One of the best preserved and most successful of Hilton’s works. A work somewhat in the style of Rubens, allegorical of human life. A woman of bounteous beauty, personifying nature, is recumbent on the earth. One child is at her breast; others are clambering about her and try to catch the bubbles which Nature blows. On the left is another group of children; these are a little older, but their pursuit is still the same. For our “ life is a bubble, and in length a span.” Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun, And call them worlds ! and bid the greatest show More radiant colours in their worlds below : Then, as they break, the slaves of care reprove, And tell them, such are all the toys they love. The Library, by Crabbe. NO. 1500 III 1500 . THE LAST DAY IN THE OLD HOME. R. B. Martineau (1826-1869). Robert Braithwaite Martineau, pupil of Mr. Holman Hunt, was studying for the law, when, at the age of twenty, he became a student of the Royal Academy. Two years later he went to Mr. Holman Hunt and asked to be received as a pupil. “ Before making any arrangement,” says Mr. Hunt, “ I tested him by saying that up to the present time, although I had lived more self-denyingly than any lawyer’s clerk or shopman would have done, I had not succeeded in paying my way; that I was heavily in debt; and that, from other experiences within my own knowledge, I could scarcely regard paint¬ ing as a profession at all; and that I hoped, if he could reconcile himself to any other pursuit, that he would still abandon the idea of becoming an artist. But to him the lucrativeness of the pursuit was not a vital question, and he removed the scruples I had against encouraging any one in this country to become a painter need¬ ing to live by it. Accordingly he was accepted as my pupil, and remained my close and much valued friend until his death, nearly twenty years later” ( Contemporary Review , May 1886). Martineau’s work shows the same sincerity and conscientious elaboration of detail as that of his master. He was very short-sighted ; and so great was his desire for perfection, that he is said to have devoted ten years to painting this picture. “ He never became a facile executant,” says Mr. Holman Hunt, “but from the first he produced admirable pictures. His greatest work was ‘ The Last Day in the Old Home.’ ” W. B. Scott relates that the picture first attracted attention at the semi-private exhibitions of the Hogarth Club, founded by some of the Pre-Raphaelites. “The two most popular,” he adds, “of all the thousands of works afterwards shown in the International Exhibition of 1862 were it and Madox Brown’s ‘ Last of England.’ ” Martineau’s first picture, exhibited in 1852, was “Nell and Kit” (to illustrate a scene in The Old Curiosity Shop). His output was very small, owing to the great pains and length of time he bestowed on each work. He was engaged on another picture, which was being painted with the same care and precision that marked his former works, when he died suddenly of heart disease. “ He was undoubtedly,” says M. Chesneau, “ a fine artist, possessing deep feeling for beauty, and a sense of dramatic expression in the highest degree.” A picture full, as we have seen, of laborious detail, and one which may be examined almost with a microscope. An old county family has been reduced to poverty by the extrava¬ gance of its present representative—the young man who is raising his glass ; the country seat is to be sold, and the family is spending its “ last day in the old home.” On the floor, in the right-hand corner, is the “Catalogue of the Valuable 112 NO. 1500 Contents of Hardham Court in the County of Cheshire, the seat of Sir Charles Pulleyne, Bart.,” which are to be sold by Christie and Manson, the auctioneers, on October 22, 1850. The antique carvings, the Old Masters, and the curios are all made to suggest how old the family is. Thus, observe that there is a portrait of a former Lady Pulleyne by Jansen (a painter much in favour in England in the time of James I.), and that the carved cabinet is dated 1648 and bears the initials of the Charles Pulleyne of that day. These old posses¬ sions are already labelled by the auctioneers in “lots.” On the stairs, in the right-hand corner, a workman with an apron is handing down other properties to the auctioneer’s agent. The present head of the house, after having squandered the family fortune, raises his glass in a fit of bravado, and drinks a last health, like Charles Surface, to the ancestral portraits. Notice that in his left hand he holds his betting book; his hope is still in luck : note the charms of coral and a golden fish on his watch chain ; elsewhere, there is a portrait of a race¬ horse. The young man has his little boy with him, whom he is bringing up in the way he should not go, and who imitates his father’s laugh and tastes: a dice-box is placed among the boy’s possessions in his toy cart and horse. At the other end of the room is the old mother. She has a bank-note and some money, and is paying off the family butler—a faithful retainer who shares in the grief of his mistress, and seems reluctant to accept from her straitened purse even what is his due. He is handing over his keys and accounts. In the centre of the composition is the spendthrift’s wife, weary with anxiety, and their other child ; the little girl makes large eyes ; she does not understand exactly what the crisis is, but has sympathy enough to share in the grief of her mother and grandmother. The contrast between the little boy and the little girl is cleverly brought out. On the table is a paper of advertisements of “ furnished apartments,” to which the family must now move. Through the window we catch a glimpse of the park. We see that it is autumn, the season of decay. A French critic makes two objections to this picture. The first is that the subject is “ too problematic and literary,” and in support of his thesis he mentions that he himself for some¬ time misinterpreted the picture ; he thought that the young man was one of the new proprietors who were noisily taking possession of their new domain, and to whom the old lady is NO. 1501 Ii3 delivering up the key of the house. But this misinterpretation must have been due to imperfect recollection of the picture. Granting that the story was an appropriate one for pictorial treatment, we can hardly deny that it is told clearly enough for all who will take the trouble to read. In a second objec¬ tion there seems more force. “ English artists,” says M. Chesneau, “ too often ignore one of the most important rules of artistic decorum ; they constantly portray scenes and ex¬ pressions of violent agitation which are in their nature essen¬ tially fugitive. Fancy if one were forced to spend any length of time opposite this picture continually, gazing at that grinning face ! The strongest brain would be unhinged before a week was ended” (The English School of Painting, p. 278). 1501 . FEMMES EN PRI&RE. Alphonse Legros (born 1837). M. Legros, a Frenchman naturalised in England, was for many years Slade Professor at University College. His work is impressed, says Mr. Monkhouse, with a profound sense of the solemnity of human existence. Careless of the vogue of the day, he chose a stern and solitary path, marked by gravity deepening into austerity. In Millet’s work the gravity of his peasants is sweet; in that of Legros it is grim and almost terrible. He seeks not beauty-—he forbids himself even the use of bright colours—but distinction ; strength of character rather than charm or grace. But if his faces never smile, his lines never stray, and in draughtmanship he is a great and acknowledged master. “ Legros at work is a sight worth seeing. As he draws and paints before his classes, the vigour with which he seizes not only the outline and salient features of the model, but the whole solid structure, is very remarkable. A swift dash of the brush to mark the line of the brows, two more for nose and mouth, a sharp succession of sweeps for boundaries of hair and flesh, a little quick work to block out the depressions and prominences, and the head, roughly but truly modelled, is created.” The gravity of the painter was inborn, for art had been to him, in his biographer’s words, “not a kind mother, but a very grave angel.” He was born at Dijon, of humble parents, whose poverty was by no means picturesque, and was apprenticed to a house- painter. His earliest artistic work consisted in colouring religious prints for hawkers, at the rate of a sou per print. He raised himself by great labour and patience, and in 1851 came to Paris. Here he was for some time employed in scene painting, in which he showed extraordinary aptitude and taste. In 1857 he began to etch, and in the same year he exhibited a portrait at the Salon, which won for him the friendship of Baudelaire and Gambetta. But he still had a hard struggle for existence, and in 1863 he settled in England. In 1876 I NOS. 1502 , IS03 114 he was appointed Slade Professor at University College, London, having been previously Professor of Etching at South Kensington. M. Legros is perhaps best known for his mastery of the latter art. His medals and other forms of sculpture are also excellent (see M. Arsene Alexandre in the Art Journal, 1897 ; and Mr. Cosmo Monk- house in the Magazine of Art, 1882). A group of Burgundian peasant-women at prayer—a study of harmony in diversity. The picture is all in one grave and subdued key, but at the same time the artist has well brought out the different notes in prayer: there are as many prayers, we may say, as there are women praying. In their faces we may distinguish ecstacy, awe, anguish, doubt, weariness, formality. 1502 . THE CROFTER’S TEAM. H. Hamilton Macallum (1841-1896). Mr. Macallum was born in Argyllshire, the son of a manufacturer. He came up to London in 1865, and entered the Academy schools. From 1870 onwards he was a constant exhibitor in London. He was best known for his sunny pictures of the sea—his favourite haunts being Amalfi, Scilly, the Scotch coast, and the coast of Devonshire. This picture, painted in 1896, was one of his last works. There are some charming water-colours by him in this gallery (Nos. 65 and 66 in the water-colour collection). The crofter’s little boy and girl are harnessed to the plough ; his dog walks in front—an effective picture of the toil and poverty of the crofter’s lot. The team is engaged, almost literally, in “ ploughing the sands.” 1503 . NELL GWYNNE. Sir E. Landseer and Sir J. E. Millais. See 608 and 1506. One of a few works, in the production of which Landseer and Millais were associated. “ The actress is represented as passing through an archway on a white palfrey. Landseer made this design in pen and ink many years ago, and then began the work as a portrait of the Queen issuing from Windsor Castle. He painted and exhibited a smaller version, but dwelt on the fact that for the portrait Her Majesty did not sit. Upon his leaving this great canvas unfinished, Millais took it up; upon the horse he painted Nell Gwynne (for which the artist’s daughter sat), as well as the page and NO. 1504 US dog, retouching here and there ” (Spielmann : Millais and his Works). Finished in 1882, this picture (which had never before been publicly exhibited) was presented by an anony¬ mous donor, through Sir William Agnew, to the Tate Gallery. Another of the joint works of Landseer and Millais is well- known—“ Digging out the Otter in the Valley of the Tay,” which was sold at Christie’s in 1881 for ^3097 :10s. Landseer, recognising his desperate condition at the time he began it, said to Millais who was with him : “ I’ll never live to finish it, Millais; you’ll have to finish it for me.” A third picture “Found” was also, at Landseer’s dying request, finished by Millais. In connection with the association of these two popular painters, it may be interesting to recall a note which Mr. Ruskin wrote on the Millais Exhibition of 1886. “ Looking back now,” he said, “ on the painter’s career, crowned as it has lately been by some of the best pieces of freehand painting in the world, I am more disposed to regret his never having given expression to his power of animal painting, wholly unrivalled in its kind, than any of the short¬ comings in his actual work.” 1504 . NEAR HINGHAM, NORFOLK. John Crome (1769-1821). John, called “Old” Crome to distinguish him from his eldest son T. B. Crome, who was also a landscape painter of repute, was the son of a Norwich weaver, and was for a time a doctor’s errand boy. Afterwards he was apprenticed to a coach and sign painter, and coming across a collection of Dutch and Flemish pictures in the neighbourhood, attained so much proficiency that he was able to establish himself as a drawing-master. An idea of his large practice may be obtained from the fact that he required to keep two horses to go his rounds. He seldom exhibited in London ; but occasionally went up there on visits—staying, when he did so, with Sir W. Beechey, who had befriended him from the first. Crome had married young, and had a large family ; and could spare only the leisure from his work as a drawing-master to paint pictures. In 1803 he founded the Society of Norwich Artists ; but even then was not above the humblest of odd jobs. There is a receipt of his in existence, dated May 27, 1803, for ,£1 : is. for “Painting Ye Lame Dog,” and 5s. for “ Writing and Gilding Ye Maid’s Head.” Only once did Crome give himself the luxury of a foreign journey. This was in 1814, when he went to Paris, and his letters thence to his wife show a simple and homely disposition. “I shall make this journey pay,” he says; “I shall be very cautious how I lay out my money. I have seen some 116 NO. ISOS shops. They ask treble what they will take ; so you may suppose what a set they are.” Crome’s affection for his art is well illustrated by the record of his dying words. “When evidently wandering,” relates Mr. Wodderspoon (J. Crome and his Works , 1876), “he put his hands out of bed and made motions as if painting, and said, ‘ There—there —there’s a touch—that will do—now another,—that’s it—beautiful ! ’ and the very day of his death he earnestly charged his eldest son, who was sitting by his bed, never to forget the dignity of art. ‘John, my boy,’ he said, ‘paint, but paint for fame; and if your subject is only a pig-sty—dignify it.’” Smetham well describes “his serious, sunny, all simple, all rich and happy views of the grandeur of the nooks of nature; the solemn, quiet corners where gray palings become impressive because of their weather marks and boundary marking and other subtle associations with nature and humanity ” ( Letters of James Smetham , 1891, p. 306). Four other works by Crome are to be seen at the National Gallery. An excellent specimen of the master whose genius lay in finding poetry in the simplest elements. “ Crome here paints nothing but a pool of water, a few oaks, an old paling, and an afternoon sky; and he paints them in a fashion confessedly borrowed from Dutchmen of two centuries ago; and yet his design is so good, his colour so full of warmth and harmony, and every detail of his execution so profoundly consistent with his dominant idea, that we are constrained to allow him genius. In a picture like this he rises to the level of Ruysdael at his best” (Mr. Walter Armstrong, in the Art Journal , 1893). Crome’s fame was in his lifetime mainly local, and most of his pictures have to this day remained as cherished possessions in Norfolk homes. The present picture, bought by Mr. Tate for this Gallery, had never before been exhibited. It was painted in 1813, and was formerly in the Gillott and Bischoffsheim collections. 1505 . PORTRAIT OF A LADY. John Hoppner , R.A. (1759-1810). Hoppner was the greatest of all the followers of Reynolds. Like another painter, Callcott, he was originally a choir-boy; but he had court connections (his mother was a German lady-in-waiting), and on the strength of a pension from the king he entered the Academy Schools. In 1782 he won the gold medal; in 1783 he was elected A. R.A., and two years later R.A. Patronised by the Prince of Wales, he soon became a fashionable portrait painter, the Whig ladies making a point of sitting to him, just as the Tory ladies sat to Lawrence. “ You will be sorry to hear,” wrote the latter painter to a friend, when NO. 1306 117 Hoppner was dying, “ that my most powerful competitor, he whom only to my friends I have acknowledged as my rival, is, I fear, sinking into the grave. ... You will believe that I sincerely feel the loss of a brother artist, from whose works I have often gained instruction, and who has gone by my side in the race these eighteen years.” Hoppner, who resided in Charles Street, at the gates of Carlton House, was a man of wide culture and information, and was something also of a poet, having published in 1805 a volume of verse translations from Eastern Tales. Another portrait of a lady by Hoppner may be seen at the National Gallery. Several of his men’s portraits are at the National Portrait Gallery. It may be interesting, before this characteristic specimen of Hoppner’s work, to recall what was the artist’s own ideal for his portraits of beautiful women. “ The ladies of Lawrence,” said he, “ show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral, as well as professional chastity.” For his own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of style :— “ This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through all coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it ; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow lascivious looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality about St. James’s and Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of the young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute, and the music of ladies’ feet in the dance, should, to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments, give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the quakerlike sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who ‘ trespassed on moral as well as on professional chastity ’ ” (Allan Cunningham, v. 247). 1506 . OPHELIA. 1 Sir J. E. Millais , P.R.A. (1829-1896). Sir John Everett Millais, the most popular British artist of our time, was born at Southampton. His father was a native of Jersey, an officer in the local militia, and an amateur musician of some talent. 1 A good story is told of this title. E. M. Ward and Millais were friends, who disliked each other’s technique, and made no secret of their opinions. When the picture was first exhibited, Ward came up to Millais and asked him what he called his work. Said Millais, “ I call it Ophelia. ” Said Ward, “ I call it Oh Failure” (Daily News, September 8, 1897). n8 NO. 1506 His mother—a widow (Mrs. Hodgkinson) at the time of her marriage to Mr. Millais—was English. The boy showed the most extraordinary precocity in drawing, and from a very early age was remarkable for the cheery self-confidence which distinguished him throughout his life. When he was six his parents were settled at Dinan, and it is related that a French officer stationed there lost a wager by refusing to believe, without ocular demonstration, that certain sketches of the soldiers were by a child of that age. Before he was nine, his parents brought him to London to be introduced to Shee, then President of the Royal Academy. “Madam,” said the President, “you had better bring him up to be a chimney-sweeper.” The child’s portfolio was then produced for inspection. “Madam,” said the great man, “it is your duty to bring the boy up to art.” The Millais family settled thereupon in London, and the boy entered the drawing school of Mr. Sass (de¬ scribed in Mr. Frith’s reminiscences and caricatured as Gandish’s in The Newcomes). Millais’s remarkable talents enabled him to enter the Academy Schools almost immediately—the youngest pupil ever admitted there. “I can well remember the amusement of the students,” says Frith, “some of whom were then, as now, almost middle-aged men, when a little handsome boy, dressed in a long blue coat confined at the waist by a black leather band, walked into the Antique School, and gravely took his place among us.” In after years Millais used to relate that, as the youngest student, he was told off daily to get their luncheons for the others. “ He had an eye for business even in those days, for he got a commission upon the transaction from the baker. He always got a bun for himself thrown in gratis.” At the Academy, he won all the medals and carried off all the prizes—even when he was so small that he had to be put upon a stool to receive them. On one occasion, a Royal Duke was distributing prizes, and asked the little boy whether there was any special favour he would like to receive in ■addition. Having all his wits about him, and remembering that the Duke was Ranger of the Royal Parks, the young art-student said, “ Well, sir, if there is a thing I should like to ask, it is that I may have permission to fish in the Serpentine.” The child was father of the man, for Millais was always fond of outdoor sports and especially of fishing. Once, many years later, he landed the biggest fish of the season, at his fishing on the Tay. He thought more of the feat, his friends said, than of any of his Academy triumphs. Not long ago Millais was walking with a friend by the Round Pond. “It is strange,” he said, “ to think that once I was catching little fish in that pond, and that now I find myself in the same place a great man, and a baronet, with a fine house, 1 plenty of money, and all 1 W. B. Scott tells a characteristic story of Carlyle in connection with Millais’s palatial residence. Carlyle was leaving after a sitting, and turn¬ ing round inquired, “ Has paint done all this, Mr. Millais?” On being answered with a laugh in the affirmative, Carlyle continued, “Ah, well, it shows what a number of fools there are in the world.” NO. 1506 119 that my heart can desire.” But Millais had his full share of early struggles. The family means were straitened, and the rising genius began to earn money, while still a child, by illustrating books and book-covers, making designs for china and silver plate—any work, in fact, which would bring in a little money. He was a devoted son, working with untiring energy for a father who not only expected great things, but also demanded, one might almost say exacted, great labour from his son. Mr. Holman Hunt, one of his student friends, has given a charming account of the Millais manage at this time in Gower Street. When Mr. Hunt called, he found the young painter with one hand on his father’s shoulder, and the other on his mother’s chair. “They both help me, I can tell you,” said the boy. “He’s capital, and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the old Doctor from him. By making a little alteration and putting a beard on him he does splendidly, and he sits for hands and draperies too ; and as for mamma, she finds me all I want in the way of dresses, and makes them up for me. She reads to me too, and finds out what I want to know at the British Museum Library. She’s very clever, I can tell you,” and he stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the old daddy, as he called him, on the back. “ I think the world may thus be led,” says Mr. Hunt in giving his reminiscences, “to see that they do honour not to a man skilful with brush alone, and with mere technical excellence, but to a being eminently loving and lovable, be¬ cause he had a heart clear like crystal, and capable, like a bright mirror, of receiving and reflecting to others the direct glory of God’s heaven and of man’s beauty, his joys, troubles, fears, and aspirations ; that while it was of metal of such mixture that he showed large self- confidence, he was also self-denying; that the alloy was mixed in proportion, so that he was remarkable for fulness of personal character, yet he was essentially true, humble-minded in pursuit of excellence, and in the power to see it in others ” {Daily Chronicle , August 20, 1896). Mr. Hunt and Millais had first met at the British Museum, and Millais, out of his own scanty resources, had assisted Mr. Hunt, at a time when an artistic career might otherwise have been closed to him for ever. In 1846, when Millais was seventeen, his first exhibited picture was at the Academy, and in the following year he competed with distinction in the competition for the new Houses of Parliament. Millais’s friendship with Mr. Holman Hunt led to his connection with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was established in the autumn of 1848 (see under 1210). Hunt had been reading the first two volumes of Modern Painters , published in 1843 and 1846. respectively, and found his watchword in the famous passage which bade young artists “go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having, no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction ; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth.” A few years later, Mr. 120 NO. 1506 Ruskin defined the practice of the new school as follows:—“ Pre- Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the most minute details, from Nature and from Nature only. Every Pre- Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch in the open air from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person. Every minute accessory is painted in the same manner. ” It was in this spirit that the young Pre-Raphaelite Brethren set to work, and that Millais produced his earlier pictures such as “Isabella” (1849), “Christ in the House of His Parents” and “Ferdinand lured by Ariel” (1850), “Mariana” and the “Woodman’s Daughter” (1851), and the “Ophelia” (1852), now before us. In the “Ferdinand,” the back¬ ground was painted near Oxford, and a lady who saw the young artist at work upon the subject “ distinctly recalls his application of a magnifying glass to the branch of a tree he was painting, in order to study closely the series of the leaves.” These Pre-Raphaelite pictures by Millais were at first received by the critics, in common with other works of the schools, with the most virulent abuse, the Times in par¬ ticular characterising their minuteness as “loathsome and disgusting.” 1 Dickens also joined the hue and cry, and wrote of “ Christ in the House of His Parents ” as touching “ the lowest depth of what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting.” But the young painter found an ardent and influential champion in Mr. Ruskin—then unknown personally to Millais or any of his companions—who in letters to the Ti?nes, and in a pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, extolled the knowledge of nature shown by Millais as comparable to that of Turner, and his “exhaust¬ less invention” as unsurpassed by “even the greatest men of old times.” In 1852 Millais exhibited the picture now before us, and also the “Huguenot,” and with this latter work the tide began to turn. The “Order of Release (1657),” exhibited in the following year, won some popularity, and at the end of 1853 he changed the letters P.R.B. for A.R. A. — “So now,” wrote Rossetti, when chronicling the event to his sister, “the whole Round Table is dissolved.” Millais was twenty-four when he was elected an Associate—attaining the honour at an earlier age than any painter except Lawrence. He was twenty-three when first elected A.R.A., but as he was under the regulation age his election was quashed until the following year. In 1855 Millais married. The faces both of his wife and of their many children have figured in many of his best-known pictures. His picture of that year “The Rescue,” was praised by Mr. Ruskin, as 1 The following extract will serve to show the animosity which the Pre-Raphaelite work of Millais encountered at the time :—“ There must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty, while it studies every petal of the darnel and anemone floating on the eddy, and pricks out a robin on the pollard from which Ophelia fell” [Times, May 1, 1852). NO. 7506 121 “very great and full of immortal element.” Over the pictures of the next year—“Peace Concluded” and “Autumn Leaves,” Mr. Ruskin was yet more enthusiastic. “Titian himself,” he said, “could hardly beat him now, and I see no limit to what the painter may hope in future to achieve.” The year 1857, however, witnessed, according to Mr. Ruskin, “ not merely Fall but Catastrophe,” and other critics also have marked off a transitional stage, in which the artist “ seemed in imminent danger of falling into the follies of the old historical school.” In 1859 “The Vale of Rest” was exhibited, and Mr. Ruskin, as we shall see (No. 1507)? found much to admire in it. But, he added, “the crude painting is here in a kind of harmony with the expression of discord which was needed. But it is crude, not in momentary com¬ pliance with the mood which prompted this wild design, but in apparent consistency of decline from the artist’s earlier ways of labour.” At this period Millais was also doing a great deal of black-and-white work. From 1859-64 Once a Week contained his illustrations. He also illustrated several novels, Tennyson’s Poems, and the Parables of of our Lord. “ I am fond of Orley Farm ,” says Anthony Trollope in his Autobiography, “ and I am especially fond of its illustrations by Millais, which are the best I have seen in any novel in the language.” In 1864 Millais was elected R.A., and at about this period his work may be said to have entered into its culminating stage, of which the splendid and varied fruits—alike in landscape, in portraiture, and in genre —are known to all picture-lovers of the time. The course of his later life may be traced in pictures well-known to all. His first work in pure landscape—“Chill October”—was exhibited in 1871. At about the same time he became in great demand as a portrait-painter; some of his many portraits of famous men may be seen at the National Portrait Gallery. His portrait of Gladstone (in 1879), one of his best works, is at the National Gallery. Fie was invited—in common with Watts, Leighton, and a few other English artists—to paint his own likeness for the Uflizi at Florence, and was the recipient of numerous honours abroad. As a Royal Academician, he was one of the most zealous visitors in the Life School, and on the death of Lord Leighton he was elected President. But he had already been attacked by a mortal illness, which he bore with great fortitude, and he died on August 13, 1896. He was buried at St. Paul’s, where he lies close to Turner and Leighton. The visitor to the Tate Gallery is fortunate in having before him pictures representative of all periods in Millais’s art, and a study of these enables us to trace the development of his style. In comparing the “Ophelia” (1852) and the “Order of Release” (1853) with the “Disciple” or “St. Stephen” (1895), or even with the “Knight Errant” (1870), or the “North-West Passage” (1874), the visitor will at once notice a great change in workmanship—a change, as it is generally called, from minuteness to breadth. The premonition of Mr. Ruskin, made in 1857 and referred to above, was to that extent justified. The stringency of the Pre-Raphaelite School was soon re- 122 NO. 1506 laxed in the case of Millais into a broader style, in which subjective truth and impression asserted their rights as against mere hard-and-fast loyalty to external fact. But this statement of the case is at once more and less than the whole truth. It is important to remember that Mr. Ruskin’s counsels, cited above, were expressly addressed to young artists. They inculcated a method of study, a means of mastery, rather than a general principle. The passage from Modern Painters , referred to above, is often quoted as if it stopped with “rejecting nothing and selecting nothing.” But it does not. It continues thus: “Then, when their memories are stored and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us what their heads are made of. We will follow them wherever they choose to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit to be so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we will listen to their words in all faith and humility ; but not unless they themselves have bowed, in the same sub¬ mission, to a higher Authority and Master.” Millais’s apprenticeship to the most minute and rigid school of the Pre-Raphaelites did not last very long. We have seen him in 1850 using the magnifying glass to the leaves which he was painting; but a year or two later, W. B. Scott (see 1322) tells a different tale. Scott was examining an engraving in which every detail of leaf and dress-pattern was most minutely rendered. “ Ha ! ” said Millais, “ you’ve observed that, have you; that’s P.R.B. enough, is it not? We haven’t come up to that yet. But,” he went on, “I for one won’t try ; it’s all nonsense; of course nature’s nature, and art’s art, isn’t it ? One could not live doing that ! ” “ Gradually,” as Mr. Armstrong puts it, “the painter’s aim became truth of impression. This he set himself to win by absolute fidelity to the shape, place, and colour of every detail, and to its relative importance in the impression left. In 1850 he treated details impartially. If he had then painted the ‘ North-West Passage ’ every texture of every accessory would have been realised as fully as if it alone had been the picture. As it is we recognise the head of the man as the centre to which all the rest is incidental.” On the technical side, therefore, Millais’s gradual abandonment of “ Pre- Raphaelitism ” was not so much change as development. A real change, however, occurred in subject and motive. In his later periods Millais chose subjects from real, everyday life, instead of romantic and poetical themes. Perhaps it was the influence of Rossetti that made him in his earlier years a poet. Later still, Millais’s choice of subjects seemed to show less effort of the imagina¬ tion ; the least incident that gave a chance to make a picture of a pretty woman or a child was enough for him. These remarks are, however, only broadly true. Some of his later works showed a con¬ centrated power of imagination that was remarkable. Mr. Ruskin himself hailed “The North-West Passage” as glorious; and of “The Ruling Passion” (1885) he said, “ I have never seen any work of modern art with more delight and admiration than this.” But broadly NO. 1506 123 speaking it may be said that in his early period Millais painted for poets ; in his later for Philistines. The painter himself in the old days said, “ People had better buy my pictures now, when I am working for fame, than a few years later, when I shall be married and working for a wife and children.” It was in these later years that old Linnell (see 438) exclaimed to him, “ Ah, Mr. Millais, you have left your first love—you have left your first love.” It is remarkable, however, that in the last years of all Millais returned to the more serious and poetical subjects which had occupied his first youth. In two respects he had remained faithful throughout to the Pre-Raphaelite ideas of his early days. One of these was the substitution, for the systematic generalisation of forms, of minute research into individual traits and distinctness of expression. This is a strong characteristic of all Millais’s work. It is always, as a fellow R.A. has said, “a man we have before us, and not a painted simulacrum ; and the carelessness, the hasty execution of which he has at times been accused, may find their explanation in his intense pre-occupation with the heart of the matter; the vital point once seized, what need to trouble about the rest ? ” Secondly, Millais was faithful throughout to the principle of fresh, vivid colour laid on direct to the canvas. “ The great colourists of the past,” says Mr. Plodgson, “bathed their pictures in golden or silvery tones, like unto cornelian, amber, or sapphire, making them precious as those gems, without troubling themselves much about the true colour of individual objects in nature. This the Pre-Raphaelites opposed as a heresy. The true colours of nature, in their full intensity, was the motto they inscribed upon their palettes. Sir J. Millais has been consistently true to this theory. His flesh is' orange, his skies are blue, and his trees are green 1 ; there is no mistake about the matter. In the vermilion of lips and the carmine of cheeks he seems to employ all the resources of his palette without resulting harshness or violence. The individual colours of the different objects are brought out with the utmost vividness, and yet blended so as to produce complete harmony.” With increased experience Millais overcame the difficulty of harmonis¬ ing colours in a high key. His “ Yeoman of the Guard ” at the National Gallery (No. 1494) is a brilliant example of a study in scarlet. Lastly, whatever else may be thought of Millais’s work, his 1 In this connection the reader may be amused by the following rules for telling a painter’s form at a glance, translated from the French a few years ago in the Boston Transcript :— “If he paints the sky gray and grass brown, he belongs to the Old School. “If he paints the sky blue and the grass green, he belongs to the Realistic School. “If he paints the sky green and the grass blue, he belongs to the Impressionist School. “ If he paints the sky yellow and the grass purple, he is a Colourist. “If he paints the sky black and the grass red, he is an artist of great Decorative talent—great enough to make posters.” 124 NO. 1506 mastery of his medium is unquestioned. Millais, says Mr. Ruskin (The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism, 1878), “is our best practical painter. No question has ever been of that. Since Van Eyck and Diirer there has nothing been seen so well done in laying of clear oil- colour within definite line.” Millais did not live to deliver any presidential addresses, but he once or twice contributed views on his art to the periodicals. It may be interesting to summarise these articles here ; they cover most of the points noticed above, and give us his own view of them. With regard to minuteness and finish, Millais says: ‘ ‘ The commonest error into which a critic can fall is the remark we so often hear that such-and-such an artist’s work is ‘ careless,’ and would be better had more labour been spent upon it.’ I remember Thackeray saying to me, concerning a certain chapter in one of his books, that the critics agreed in accusing him of carelessness. ‘ Careless ? If I’ve written that chapter once I’ve written it a dozen times, and each time worse than the last! ’ a proof that labour did not assist in his case. For my own part, I have often been laboured, but whatever I am, I am never careless ! I may honestly say that I never consciously placed an idle touch upon canvas, and that I have always been earnest and hard-working; yet the worst pictures I ever painted in my life are those into which I threw most trouble and labour, and I confess I should not grieve were half my works to go to the bottom of the Atlantic, if I might choose the half to go. It will be remembered that Rembrandt, in his first period, was very careful and minute in detail; but when he grew older, and in the fulness of his power, all appearance of such manipulation and minuteness vanished in the breadth and facility of his brush, though the advantage of his early manner remained.” On the subject of vivid colour, the artist said : “ Time and Varnish are two of the greatest old masters, and their merits are too often attributed by critics to the painters of pictures they have toned and mellowed. The great artists all painted in bright colours, such as it is the fashion nowadays for men to decry as crude and vulgar, never suspecting that what they applaud in those works is merely the result of what they condemn in their contemporaries. Take a case in point—the ‘ Bacchus and Ariadne ’ in the National Gallery (No. 35), with its splendid red robe and its rich brown grass. You may rest assured that the painter of that bright red robe never painted the grass brown. He saw the colour as it was, and painted it as it was—distinctly green ; only it has faded with time to its present beautiful mellow colour. Yet many men, nowadays, will not have a picture with green in it; there are even buyers, who, when giving a commission to an artist, will stipulate that the canvas shall contain none of it. But God Almighty has given us green, and you may depend upon it, it’s a fine colour.” Millais, like most other great artists, had wide sympathies. “It is all nonsense,” he said, “to pin your faith to any one school ! There is as much room for the old Dutch microscopic painter as for the modern impressionist. Art should comprehend all. NO. 1506 125 The fact is what constitutes the finest art is indescribable. The question is—how hard a man hits, not how beautifully he uses the gloves.” “It is very difficult to understand where the mind of the painter comes in. His work has to be painted, and the highest intelligence is useless unless the man can produce with his fingers what his eye sees, and which, with certain distillation, should be at the end of his brush. Drawing and painting have their grammar, which can be taught and acquired to a certain extent like the grammar of speech or of music ; but beyond this, there is little to be done for a painter, everything by him. It is when the student has assimilated the know¬ ledge of others, and acquired the power of using his brush freely, that he has a chance of throwing all this aside and becoming a genuine painter. The strength to make this bound over the limits of teaching is not given to all, but it is this which defines the painter’s work as original.” Asked why historical and large genre pictures are now uncommon, Millais answered, “The painter might laugh at his own work. There is still an interest in works of a devotional kind. It is the difficulty of giving agreeable reality to sacred subjects which daunts the modern artist, living in a critical age and sensitive to criticism. I should like very much to paint a large devotional picture, having for its subject ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ I should feel the greatest delight in painting it; but the first question which occurs to me is, What children do we care about ? Why, our own fair English children, of course—not the brown, bead-eyed children of Syria. And with what sense of fitness could I paint the Saviour bareheaded under the sun of Palestine, surrounded by dusky, gipsy¬ like children, or, on the other hand, translate the whole scene to England ? The public is too critical to bear this kind of thing now, and I should be weighed down by the sense of unreality in treating a divinely beautiful subject.” [The best statements of Millais’s views on art, summarised above, are to be found in an interview published in the Daily News of December 13, 1884, and in a paper in the Magazine of Art for 1887. The latter has been reprinted in Mr. Spielmann’s excellent handbook to Millais and his Works. Among many other monographs the best is that by Mr. Armstrong in the Art Annual for 1885. The annotated catalogue to the Millais Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1886 is also of great value; it was written by the P.R.B., Mr. F. G. Stephens. Scattered references to Millais’s P.R.B. days are to be found in many of the memoirs of Rossetti : see references cited under 1210. Mr. Ruskin’s references to Millais are very numerous. I have quoted above from Modern Painters , vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. iii.; Stones of Venice , vol. iii. ch. iv.; Lectures on Architecture and Painting; Academy Notes; and the Three Colours of Pre- Raphaelitism,\ This picture, which remains in absolutely perfect condition, was painted in 1851 and exhibited next year at the Academy, 126 NO. 1506 Millais, it has been pointed out, always chooses “ to leave the drama unfinished. Neither in the ‘ Isabella,’ the £ Huguenot,’ nor of course the ‘Ophelia,’ is the real moment of tragedy touched upon. The actors are presented to us while still under the shadow of a great danger. By this their passion is dignified.” Here the moment chosen is the instant before death ; the face of Ophelia shows her singing her last song, while her hands take their part in the action of the moment. Every line of Shakespeare is carefully followed :— Laertes. Drown’d ! O, where ? Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples . . . There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide ; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up : Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element : but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. Hamlet , Act iv. Scene 7. “ Her dark auburn hair spreads like threads of gold upon the water, and below it. Beautiful in form and expression is the face, of which the lifted eyebrows, levelled eye-lids, and parted lips are as exhaustively as they are finely and solidly modelled. Flecks and larger spaces of light dash the water, and here and there search its depths, revealing in one place the colour of the princess’s richly-brocaded gown, in the other her shoulder; elsewhere in the flood we may discover the hazy pearliness which water vegetation receives when seen through its own element, with a variety of weeds and tangled verdure of many sorts trembling with the motion of the stream. The bank of the pool, with its overhanging willows, rushes, wild flowers, roots of shrubs and saplings, is vividly coloured and searchingly drawn” (Stephens). For the face of Ophelia, Miss Siddal, afterwards Mrs. D. G. NO. 1506 127 Rossetti (see 1210), sat as model. “Wonderfully like her,” says Mr. Arthur Hughes ; “ she was tall and slender, with red, coppery hair and bright consumptive complexion.” “ She had an unworldly simplicity,” says another friend, “ and purity of aspect. Millais has given this look in the ‘ Ophelia.’ ” The background—“the loveliest English landscape, haunted by sorrow,” Mr. Ruskin calls it—was painted on the Ewell, near Kingston, where Millais and Mr. Holman Hunt had settled, the latter being busy at the time on the landscape of his “ Hireling Shepherd.” Mr. Ruskin, in a passage dealing with the place of “finish” in art, has noticed in this picture the combination of minute realisation with imaginative appeal: “The calls upon the imagination are multiplied as a great painter finishes ; and from larger incidents he may proceed into the most minute particulars, and lead the companion imagination to the veins in the leaves and the mosses on the trunk, and the shadows of the dead leaves upon the grass, but always multiplying thoughts, or subjects of thought. . . . Millais’s willow-tree, with the robin in the background of his ‘ Ophelia,’ carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so multiplied and minute, that the work nearly reaches realisa¬ tion. But it does not matter how near realisation the work may approach in its fulness, or how far off it may remain in its slightness, so long as realisation is not the end proposed, but the informing our spirit of the thoughts of another. And, in this greatness and simplicity of purpose, all noble art is alike, however slight its means, or however perfect, from the rudest mosaics of St. Mark’s at Venice to the most tender finishing of the Huguenot or the Ophelia” (Stones of Venice , vol. iii. ch. iv.). What is equally remarkable is that the minute finish of the background does not interfere with its general effect. The picture was one of three by the artist exhibited at Paris in 1855. “ Among those who saw them,” writes M. Chesneau, “none will forget the mingled sensations of aversion and fascination which they exercised on our minds by the peculiarity of their conception and their extraordinary execution. The wonderful thing was that, although the artist represents with faithful accuracy every minutest detail, this does not take away in the remotest degree from the marvellously life-like appearance.” The picture was bought in 1862 by Messrs. Graves for £y 98. From them it passed to Mr. Fuller-Maitland, who sold it to Sir Henry Tate for ^3000. 128 NO. 1507 1507 . THE VALE OF REST. Sir J. E. Millais , P.R.A. (1829-1896). See 1506. One of the best known and most discussed of the painter’s earlier works, exhibited at the Academy in 1859—with the quotation, “ where the weary find repose ”—seven years later than the “ Ophelia” and fifteen years earlier than the “ North- West Passage.” There is not the same minuteness of work as in the “ Ophelia,” but it is full of force and poetic sentiment. The picture turns, says Mr. Stephens, on the old Scottish superstition that when a coffin-shaped cloud is seen in the sky, it is a symbol of approaching death. The scene is the interior of a convent garden, at sunset, and the whole picture is cast in a sunset-key. “ The rigid poplars, each like ‘ Death’s lifted forefinger,’ make bars against the red, orange, and crimson of the west. The rough sward is broken here and there by low hillocks of graves and encumbered by the headstones that stand grim and sad in the waning light. One of the women— a novice, or lay-sister—is up to her knees in a grave, busily and vigorously throwing out large spadefuls of earth ; the coif is thrown back from her face, which is dark red with stress of labour. Upon the prostrate headstone, taken from the new- made grave, sits an elder nun holding a rosary, and with the long black of her robes sweeping the dark, coarse grass ; her head is towards us, and by its expression we discover that she has seen the coffin-shaped cloud which hangs over the setting sun, and stretches a long heavy bar of purple across a large part of the sky behind.” This elder nun, who has seen the sign in the sky, thinks of the day when she too will be laid in the ground, like the dead sister whose grave is now being dug. The picture, at the time of its first exhibition, was violently assailed by the critics. “ Staring, coarse, black, and unpleas¬ ing,” was the description of it in the Athe 7 iceum (April 30, 1859). “Year Mr. Millais gave forth those terrible nuns in the graveyard”—thus did Punch characterise 1859. Mr. Ruskin, in his Academy Notes , replied to this kind of criticism, and wrote some eloquent reflections on the picture, which may or may not have occurred to the painter himself:— “ We are offended by it. Granted. Perhaps the painter did not mean us to be pleased. It may be that he supposed we should have been offended if we had seen the real nun digging her real grave ; that NO. 1508 129 she and it might have appeared to us not altogether pathetic, romantic, or sublime, but only strange or horrible ; and that he chooses to fasten this sensation upon us rather than any other. . . . Why so frightful ? Is it not because it is so nearly beautiful ?—Because the dark green field, and windless trees, and purple sky, might be so lovely to persons unconcerned about their graves? Or is it that the faces are so ugly? 1 You would have liked them better to be fair faces, such as would grace a drawing-room, and the grave to be dug in prettier ground—under a rose-bush or a willow, and in turf set with violets— nothing like a bone visible as one threw the mould out. So, it would have been a sweet piece of convent sentiment. I am afraid it is a good deal more like real convent sentiment as it is. Death, confessed for king before his time, asserts, so far as I have seen, some authority over such places; either unperceived, and then the worst, in drowsy unquickening of the soul; or felt and terrible, pouring out his white ashes upon the heart—ashes that burn with cold” ( Academy Notes, 1859, pp. 8-10.) The picture was bought by Mr. Tate at the Graham sale for ,£3150. It was the work which Mr. Tate treasured most in his collection at Streatham Hill, and it was also (Mr. Spielmann tells us) the artist’s favourite picture—that by which he said he set most store. The subject was suggested to him by a somewhat similar scene, which he witnessed when travelling through France; but the broad facts of the scene were painted from the old churchyard at Kinnoull, close to his wife’s home in Perthshire. 1508 . THE KNIGHT ERRANT. Sir J. E. Millais , P.R.A. (1829-1896). See 1506. Exhibited at the Academy in 1870, when the subject was explained by the following sentence in the catalogue The order of knights was instituted to protect widows and orphans, and to succour maidens in distress. The lady—clothed only in her golden hair—has been robbed and stripped by brigands and bound to a tree. The pale crescent of the new moon lights the picture, and between the tree-trunks we catch a glimpse of figures flying in fear. Another of the brigands lies dead upon the stones, slain by the knight, who is now releasing the captive. This picture is the only example by the artist of a full- 1 It should be noted that the artist subsequently repainted the faces of the “ terrible nuns," or at any rate the face of the*principal one. K 130 NO. I 5°9 length, life-size, nude female figure. Mr. Stephens calls attention to “ that inner golden hue which has been discover¬ able in all finely-painted flesh since Titian’s time, and gives a delicate brilliancy, which here seems to gleam, and is perhaps best appreciated when matched with examples that are defective in this respect, as the flesh of academical painters—such, to wit, as Ary Scheffer. The painting of the knight’s armour is worthy of Giorgione” (see National Gallery, No. 269). The picture is said to have been painted in six weeks, and an interesting story is told about it. “ At first the face of the girl was painted looking towards the spectator; but the artist felt that there was something radically wrong. He was satisfied with his background ; he was satisfied with his arrangement of the knight, whom, for delicacy’s sake, he placed standing behind the lady as he cut her cords ; he was satisfied with his flesh-painting, its brilliancy, and its carnations, which are about as good as anything that has been produced in England in modern times ; but he was so extremely dissatisfied with the girl’s pose that he had serious intentions of destroying the canvas altogether. Fortunately the happy thought occurred to him to try ‘ whether by repainting the head, turning it away from the beholder, the unpleasant effect would be removed.’ The experiment was successful, and this excellent work remains to us” (Magazine of Art, 1893, p. 193). The head of the lady which was rejected was afterwards converted into “The Martyr of the Solway.” This picture was sold at the Grant sale in 1877 for ^1522. 1509 . THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. Sir J. E. Millais , P.R.A. (1829-1896). See 1506. The idea of this picture is told at once in the superbly- painted head of the old seaman which dominates the canvas. The girl is reading to him a page of travel, perhaps from Hakluyt’s collection of voyages, describing .the adventurous Discovery of the North-West Passage. As the old man listens he looks outward with wistful eyes. There is in them an expression of almost fierce regretfulness, as if he were brooding over what he himself might have done in the days of his vigour, or what might yet be done in other regions of adventure by his countrymen. The picture was painted in 18 74 ) when the Arctic expedition uhder Sir George Nares was in preparation. NO. 1509 131 This explains the motto which appeared at the time in the Academy catalogue :— It might be done, and England should do it. The discovery of the North-West Passage itself, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was of course an old story. The details in the picture, though subordinated to the prin¬ cipal figure, all help to tell the tale. On the table, at which the old man sits, are unrolled charts. Through the open window one catches a glimpse of a quiet sea, with a yacht lazily drifting through the water—a vision of “ rest after stormy seas.” Opposite the veteran a tall Japanese screen is draped, as if by way of display, with a large Union Jack; on the wall hang a portrait of an admiral and a sea picture. The flag mingles its blight hues as a glowing reminder of deeds of bravery, when death has been nobly met and foes vanquished. On the floor lie some old log-books with discoloured bindings, some of them spotted with mildew. The features of the girl, who sits on a stool at the old man’s feet, express strong sympathy with the sufferings and perils of the Arctic explorer, whose fate she desciibes. Her right hand clasps that of her companion. His left hand is resolutely clenched, and lies heavily upon the table. He is dressed in complete navy blue, and his rough jacket is closely buttoned to his chest and throat, as if he felt the tenible cold of the Arctic winter. The old sailor’s face was painted from Trelawny, the companion of Byron and Shelley and Odysseus, the Greek chieftain, and himself the hero of many romantic adventuies by sea and land. It is an excellent like¬ ness, though the expression is somewhat softer and more tender than that suggested by Trelawny’s photographs (see fiontispiece to the reprint of his Yldventu res of a Younger Son , 1890). Trelawny died at the age of eighty-eight, seven years after this picture was painted. “ He only cared to know me,” said Millais, “ because I was a great friend of the man (John Leech) he admired so much.” The model for the girl sat also for the artist’s picture, “ Stitch ! Stitch.” This picture, as already mentioned, was painted in 1874, and (as noticed above under 1506) shows an interesting con¬ trast, in its breadth of handling, with the earlier Ophelia. “ In the matter of rendermgf says Mr. Armstrong, “ of imitating without allowing imitation to become labour, nothing in Millais’s work could be put before some parts of this ; the 132 NOS. 1510 , 1511 bunting, for instance, the glass of rum with its slice of lemon, and the diaphanous complexion of the girl.” The picture, formerly in the collection of Mr. Bolckow, was bought at his sale in 1888 for ,£4200. 1510 . “ MERCY.” Sir J. E. Millais , P.R.A. (1829-1896). See 1506. This picture, exhibited in 1887, was a continuation after many years of the painter’s Huguenot series. It is St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572 ; and a Catholic noble¬ man, armed cap-h-pie, is preparing to play his part in the Huguenot massacre. He has the white handkerchief on his arm, according to the general order : “ When the clock of the Palais de Justice shall sound upon the great bell, at day¬ break, then each good Catholic must bind a strip of white linen round his arm, and place a fair white cioss in his cap. A nun has thrown herself across the man’s path, and clasps his knees as if to stay his purpose ; but behind her at the door stands a monk who with uplifted finger beckons him to issue forth. The knight’s face is set firm in all the resolution of a fanatic ; the monk wears the inward smile that tells of a conscience satisfied by bigotry. There is a ciucifix in the murderer’s hat. It is only those who thus kill in the cause of Christ, and trample mercy underfoot amidst the emblems of the Merciful One who feel no pangs of pity and are deaf to all cries of love. It is the line of Lucretius, tantane religio potait suadere malorum , that is here put on canvas befoie us. But the modern painter adds a thought which was missing from the ancient poet. The nun is a devotee no less than the monk and the knight ; but a woman’s charity sees with purer, truer eye than theirs. That Millais desired to convey a love romance as well as a sterner story is shown by the witheied spray of passion flower. Lady Granby gave sittings for the nun. Millais took four months over this picture. He used to say that this and “ The Knight Errant” (1508) gave him more trouble than any picture he ever painted. 1511 . “AND THE SEA GAVE UP ITS DEAD.” Lord Leighton, P.R.A. (1830-1896). Leighton, for seventeen years President of the Royal Academy and one of the great personages of the Victorian era, was, says an acute NO. 1511 133 French critic, “ officially the representative of English painting on the Continent, but really the representative of continental painting in England. He appears at first sight in his important works a second Overbeck, and in his cabinet pictures a better Bouguereau.” His sumptuous house in Holland Park Road was a temple of eclecticism, and the artist in some ways resembled his abode. He had visited all countries, he learnt in all the schools, he talked every language, he reproduced every style, and attempted almost every art. But on a closer inspection of his work, it reveals a distinct individuality, and easily recognisable characteristics. 1 As in the case of Sir Edward Poynter (1586), it is interesting to refer to Leighton’s Addresses for an explanation of his ideals in art. “ On one end of the scale,” he says, “there will be men vividly impressed with and moved by all the facts of life, and a powerful vitality will lend charm and light to their works ; on the other hand, we may expect to find men who are more strongly affected by those qualities in which art is most akin to music, and in their works the poetry of form and colour will be thrown as a lovely garment over abstract ideas or fabled events.” Leighton belonged exclusively to his second category. It was the ideal, not the actual, that he sought to portray. His treatment of the human body, accurate and learned though it was in the anatomy, had a garment of somewhat conventional treatment in the texture, and a certain waxiness in the flesh is not the least marked of his characteristics. But though he was an essentially decorative artist, he ever attached the highest importance to “the incalculable accretion of strength and scope which art derives through the association of ideas and the action of the imagination.” He disclaimed indeed all didactic functions. Pie sought not to preach moral truths, but “ to reveal the inmost springs of beauty in the created world.” “ Art is,” he said, “ in its own nature wholly independent of morality, and whilst the loftiest moral purport can add no jot or tittle to the merits of a work of art as such, yet there is nevertheless no error deeper or more deadly—and I use the words in no rhetorical sense, but in their plain and sober meaning—than to deny that the moral complexion, the ethos of the artist does in truth tinge every work of his hand, and fashion, in silence, but with the certainty of fate, the course and current of his whole career . . . Believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of strength, we have within us will dignify and will make strong the labour of our hands ; what¬ ever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down. Whatever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work ; what¬ ever purity is ours will chasten and exalt it.” Among the deadening faults against which he specially warned the students were “ the greed for gain, the vulgar thirst for noisy success, and indulgence in a narrow 1 “ Leighton," said Millais, “ though his grace, dignity, and beauty of flowing line are plainly inspired by the ideal Greek sculpture, works, if I may so express it, his own bicycle ; everything he does is his and his alone.” 134 NO. 1511 and unsympathising spirit.” In his own devotion to high aims and in the width of his sympathies, the President practised what he preached. We have seen in our notice of Mason (1388) how much Leighton did for that painter; and what he did for Mason he did for many others. His old friend and companion Signor Costa says : ‘ ‘ When a struggling artist of talent and feeling received help from an unknown hand, it was probably Leighton’s.” “Leighton has painted many noble pictures,” Mr. Watts once remarked, “but his life is more noble than them all.” Leighton’s own “ ethos ” appear in his work, first in “ the selection and intention of his subjects—always noble or beautiful as these are, always worthy of a great and grave art; a thing how inexpressibly laudable and admirable (said Mr. Swinburne twenty years ago) in a time given over to the school of slashed breeches and the school of blowsy babyhood ! ” Some information given below with regard to the choice of subject in the present picture is of in¬ terest in this connection. The French critic above quoted has finely referred to a picture exhibited in 1894—a figure of a woman seated on an Alpine rock by night, surrounded by snowy peaks, clothed in a robe which seems itself part of the eternal snow accumulated on the summits of the earth and ascending again towards the heaven from which they come,—“ he calls this figure the Spirit of the Summit; he might have called it the Spirit of my Painting. For in all his work, though you may find many different inspirations and a number of diverse subjects, you will find not one idea which is unworthy or merely sensual, not one appeal to the appetites, not one trifl¬ ing with the pencil. Nor will you find, moreover, a single figure which has been done at hazard, without careful thought in the pose and without careful definition of gesture.” “You will find,” says Leighton himself, “ that through the Association of Ideas, lines and forms and combinations of lines and forms, colours and combina¬ tions of colours, have acquired a distinct expressional significance, and, so to speak, an ethos of their own, and will convey, in the one province, notions of strength, of repose, of solidity, of flowing motion, and of life ; in the other, sensations of joy or of sadness, of heat or of cold, of languor or of health.” Another characteristic of Leighton, his minute folds of drapery, M. de la Sizeranne attributes to the artist’s study of the Greek antique. “ In the Uffizi at Florence, in the room of Artists’ Portraits painted by themselves, the superb head of the President of the Royal Academy, fair and curled, dominating a sumptuous scarlet robe and gold chain, seems to be a piece broken off from the bas- reliefs of the Parthenon. This portrait is a symbol. At the bottom of all the academic painting of England, as at the bottom of the portrait of the President, one is vaguely conscious of the procession of the Knights of Phidias.” To the characteristics of Leighton’s art already touched upon—its loftiness of aim, its careful intention in pose and gesture, its Greek sense of style, we may add another—namely, its grace and charm. Mr. Ruskin, in his last lecture at Oxford, after referring to Leighton’s “acutely observant and enthusiastic study of NO. 1511 135 the organism of the human body,” continued : “I am enabled to show you with what integrity of application it has been gained, by his kindness in lending me for the Ruskin School two perfect early drawings, one of a lemon-tree, and another of the same date, of a Byzantine well, which determine for you, without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters, Sir Frederick Leighton delights most in softly blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio’s time. But you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained and excelled the gift of beautiful vaghezza.” In nothing is Leighton’s grace more con¬ spicuous than in his pictures of children, unfortunately not represented as yet in this collection. “ It is with extreme gratitude,” says Mr. Ruskin, “and unqualified admiration that I find Sir Frederick con¬ descending from the majesties of Olympus to the worship of these unappalling powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as brightly Anglo- Saxon as Hellenic; and painting for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of childhood.” The eclecticism of Leighton, noticed above as in some sort character¬ istic of him, and his careful scholarship, were the result of his remarkable education. He was born at Scarborough, where his father practised as a doctor. His grandfather—Sir James Leighton—had also been a doctor, and was the friend and physician of two successive Czars. Young Leighton’s artistic bent, for which there seems to have been no direct hereditary cause, declared itself very early in life. His father had consulted Hiram Powers, an American sculptor of repute, as to the future career of the boy. “Sir,” said Powers, “you have no choice in the matter'; Nature has done it for you.” “And is he likely,” asked Dr. Leighton, “to succeed in the profession of his desire?” “Sir,” replied the oracle, “he may become as eminent as he pleases.” The subject of these prophecies was enabled to fulfil them by the opportunities of varied culture put in his way and by his own unfailing industry. His father, who was a man of very catholic tastes, a great reader and an accomplished linguist, communicated these gifts to his son. He taught the boy Latin and Greek, and also initiated him thoroughly into the study of anatomy. It is recorded of the artist that at a very early age he could draw the human or animal skeleton from memory without the least hesitation or mistake,—an accomplishment which he cultivated in after years, and which is con¬ spicuous in his pictures and still more in his sculpture (see S. 13 and 15). As a small child, he had been taken abroad for his mother’s health, and he did not return to England till he was thirty. At the age of ten he was learning drawing in Rome, and he afterwards studied at Dresden, at the Berlin Academy, at Florence (where he attended anatomy classes also), at Frankfort, at Brussels, and at Paris. By the time he was twelve, he could speak French, German, and Italian, and to these linguistic accomplishments he afterwards added a good knowledge of Spanish. Fie was also a great traveller. “ He visited 136 NO. 1511 the ruins of the Colosseum with Robert Browning, the banks of the Nile with M. de Lesseps, the old castles of Germany with Steinle, the salons of Paris with Decamps and Ary Scheffer.” Wherever he went he worked hard and absorbed the spirit of the place—“the sun at Damascus, the mists of Frankfort, the desolate seas of Ireland, the rocks in the valley of Jehoshaphat, the orange groves of Andalusia, the olives of Italy.” In 1852 he had settled at Rome, and there he remained for some years,—his genial manner and varied accomplish¬ ments making him hosts of friends. Among these was Thackeray, whose remark to Millais in 1854 is historical. “I have just met a versatile young dog at Rome,” he said, “ who will run you hard for the Presidentship one day.” For two years Leighton was at work on his great picture of “ Cimabue’s Madonna carried through Florence.” This was exhibited at the Academy in 1855, and at once established the young artist’s reputation. Mr. Ruskin, who had started his Academy Notes in that year, dealt with it at length as “a very important and very beautiful picture. It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian Art. It seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has greatness in him.” Another contemporary criticism by a high authority has recently been published. “ There is a big picture of Cimabue ,” wrote D. G. Rossetti in a familiar letter to William Allingham,—“one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named Leighton—a huge thing, which the Queen has bought, which every one talks of. The R.A’s have been gasping for years for some one to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have him ; a fact which makes some people do the picture injustice in return. It was very uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement— a quality which, when really existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man—at any rate English—ranks among the great qualities. But I am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which I suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint; owing, I fancy, to too much continental study. . . But he is said to be only twenty-four years old. There is something very French in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this, I daresay, would leave him if he came to England.” For the time, however, Leighton went not to England but to Paris, where he settled for a few years. In 1859 he was at Capri, drawing the famous “ Lemon Tree ” referred to above. In i860 he permanently settled in London, making, each autumn, tours on the continent or in the East. In his later years he was specially fond of Perugia, where he composed all his Presidential Addresses. In 1864 he was elected A.R.A., in 1868 R.A., and in 1879 President, in succession to Sir F. Grant. He devoted himself heart and soul to the interests of the Academy. “ They will never again get a man to devote so much time and energy to the business of the Academy,” said one of his most distinguished colleagues, “never again.” The testimony of another President will NO. IS 11 137 be found cited under No. 1586. To the public at large, his noble presence, charming courtesy, and remarkable gift of ornate eloquence, made him a distinguished figure. His official duties may have interfered somewhat with his work as a painter, but he was methodical, and knew the art of making the most of his time. “ Sir Frederick,” said one of his friends, “knows exactly how long it will take to do a certain thing and he apportions his time accordingly.” Signor Costa, the companion of Leighton on his autumnal wanderings, says that the itinerary of the journal was always planned by Leighton in detail, each half hour being allotted, and he insisted on its being followed exactly. In all that he undertook he showed an infinite capacity for taking pains, and his friend Mr. Pepys Cockerell records a remark of Leighton’s that nothing was ever easy to him. “Ah, it’s just like those Germans,” a young friend once remarked to him, “they seem able to pick up every language!” “Yes,” was the rejoinder, “because they take the trouble to learn them.” Since 1855 he completed about 120 works,—no slight achievement, considering the laboriousness of his method (explained under 1574). In addition to his oil pictures he did much exquisite black and white work, and executed the important frescoes of “ The Arts of War and Peace” at the South Kensington Museum, and of the “Wise and Foolish Virgins” at St. Michael’s Church, Lyndhurst. Of his works in sculpture, there are important specimens in this collection (S. 13 and 15). For seven years (1876-1883), he commanded the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers, retiring with the rank of Hon.-Colonel. It was characteristic of him that before taking the command he mastered every detail connected with the work. He was created a Baronet in 1886, and was the recipient of innumerable honours and dignities from learned and artistic societies all over the world. He died some¬ what suddenly from an affection of the heart, on January 25, 1896— a few days after he had been raised to the peerage under the style of Lord Leighton of Stretton. He was buried in St. Paul’s, close to the grave of Reynolds. In closing this notice of the most distinguished of Sir Joshua’s successors, we cannot do better than recall the words with which Leighton concluded his first Presidential Address :— Study with deep and reverent admiration—and that admiration cannot be too deep or too reverent—the works of the great men who have gone before you ; brace and fortify yourselves in the contemplation of their strength ; catch what you may of the fire that was in them ; walk in their light, enrich and enlarge your powers by the knowledge and understanding of the means by which they move us ; but never forget that the common greatness of them all is their sincerity, and that it is only through sincerity that you can hope to emulate them even from afar ; be assured that your work, in order that it may live, must be the direct and truthful reproduction of your own individual emotions, not the echo of the emotions of others. Without sincerity of emotions no gift, however facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of men, for, as Goethe has truly said, 138 NO. I511 The chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone, Must first be tuned and vibrate in your own. [Lord Leighton has been the subject of several monographs. The most complete are in The Art Annual, 1884, by Mrs. Andrew Lang, and in The Review of Reviews, vol. vii. The author of the latter was for some years Lord Leighton’s private secretary, and it contains some details which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere. M. de la Sizeranne’s appreciation of Leighton is in ch. iii. of his Peinttire Anglaise Contemporaine. Mr. Ruskin’s references to him will be found in Academy Notes, 1855 and 1875, and The Art of England, ch. iii. Many readers will recall the characterisation of his friend with which Robert Browning prefaces a description of the painter’s “Death of Alcestis” in Balaustion’s Adventure :— I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong As Herakles, though rosy with a robe Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength. ] An attempt to realise upon canvas a portion of the tremendous picture of the Last Judgment drawn in “The Revelation ” (ch. xx.) :— And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books werq opened ; and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they were judged every man according to their works. The man in the centre of the composition, the only living being of the group, supports with his right arm his wife, while his left clasps his child, a boy who clings with filial affection to his side. The three are being slowly drawn upwards by some unseen mysterious, all-compelling force from the depths of an inky and turbulent sea. The man’s eye is fixed upon the heavens, which are strangely troubled and filled with an unnatural light. Occupied with thoughts of his earthly career, —in fear tempered with hope, he gazes with awe upon the great white throne. His wife still sleeps the sleep of death ; but a certain warmth of colour in the limb of the half-naked boy indicates his approaching return to existence. At the foot of this central group is a half-risen corpse, whose arms are folded across the breast, and who is still clad in the garments in which he was committed to the deep. In the NO. 1512 139 background, kings and men of all estate—“the dead, small and great ”—are rising to stand before God. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, and has a history which renders it of special interest in this Gallery. The design was prepared several years before, and was originally intended for the decoration, in mosaic, of the dome of St. Paul’s. Eight large circles were contemplated, the subjects being chosen by the Dean and Chapter. The scheme fell through at the time, and the design was put on one side. When Sir Henry Tate approached Lord Leighton with the object of purchasing a picture to represent him in the “ British Luxembourg,” the artist at once thought of this design. He was already represented, in the Chantrey collection, by the graceful and classic “Bath of Psyche” (1574) and by a bronze Athlete (S. 15), and he therefore desired to paint for Sir Henry Tate a work of a different kind. Lord Leighton regarded the present picture as the best thing in its kind that he had ever done, and as that by which he wished to be represented to, and judged by, posterity. 1512 . HOME WITH THE TIDE. J. C. Hook , R.A. (born 1819). “ Plookscapes,” as they have been called, have for forty years or more been one of the leading attractions of the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. Mr. Hook is the painter of the pastoral and the sea life of the British people. His pictures are full of sunlight, and redolent, now of the freshness of the country, and now of the scent of the sea. But sea and country alike are always viewed in relation to human life. “Are there not hosts of townsmen,” writes Mr. Hook’s biographer, “jaded of eye, of heart, and of spirit, who have stood before his pictures and seemed to hear the far-off sea grow louder day by day, or walked with him by the sunlit brooks and in the lanes of Surrey?” “There have always been truth and depth of pastoral feeling in the works of great poets and novelists,” says Mr. Ruskin, “but never, I think, in painting, until lately. The designs of J. C. Hook are, perhaps, the only works of the kind in existence which deserve to be mentioned in connection with the pastorals of Wordsworth and Tennyson.” “The whole heart of rural England is in one,” said Mr. Ruskin of two pictures exhibited in 1857, “ as of sailor England in the other.” But though to the present generation Hook is best, or only, known as a pastoral and sea-painter, his first essays in art were in a different direction. James Clarke Hook was the son of a West African merchant, who also served for some time as Judge-Arbitrator in Sierra Leone. 140 NO. 1512 His mother was a daughter of Dr. Adam Clarke, the well-known Wesleyan and commentator on the Bible. The artist himself has been throughout his life an earnest member of the Wesleyan body. His father’s mother lived in Northumberland, and the boy’s love of the sea was first cultivated during voyages north in sailing smacks. He was born in London and educated at the North Islington Pro¬ prietary School, where his artistic bent disclosed itself, and was encouraged by his father. John Jackson, R.A., an ardent Wesleyan, also encouraged the boy, and introduced him to Constable, who used to look at young Hook’s sketches and give him friendly advice. But his chief education at this time was pursued in the British Museum. “Finding,” says his biographer, “his best models in the Elgin marbles, he studied them diligently and heartily, and from them gained not a little of that sense of style, love for simplicity, largeness, and breadth of design, and that reliance on thoroughness, which characterise the best art of all kinds, and have always distinguished his pictures.” * 1 At the age of seventeen, Mr. Hook entered the Academy Schools, then in charge of Hilton, R.A., as Keeper (see 1499). After three years there, Mr. Hook went to Ireland bent on maintaining himself as a portrait painter. His spare time he devoted to sketching from nature. His love of outdoor life also found scope. “ He did not confine himself to painting, but rode to hounds and greatly enjoyed snipe and rabbit shooting, boating in salt and fresh water.” In all this the youth was father of the man. Describing his later manner of life, his biographer tells us that “he is sometimes to be seen at work as a woodman ; then as a farmer, learned in the growth of crops ; anon he will appear as a delver in the fields, or as a gardener, hard at work with mattock, scythe, or spade. Here, in the heart of Surrey, he can 1 In this connection the following passage from Mr. Ruskin’s note on Hook’s “Luff, boy!” exhibited in 1859, is interestingA glorious picture—most glorious—‘ Hempen bridle, and horse of tree.’ Nay, rather, backs of blue horses, foam-fetlocked, rearing beside us as we ride, tossing their tameless crests, with deep-drawn thunder in their overtaking tread. I wonder if Mr. Hook when he drew that boy thought of the Elgin marbles ; the helmetless, unsworded, unarmoured men of Marathon. I think not : the likeness is too lovely to be conscious : it is all the more touching. They also, the men of Marathon, horsemen riding upon horses given them of the Sea God. The earth struck by the trident takes such shape—a white wave, with its foaming mane and its crested head, made living for them.” Readers of the biographical notes in this handbook will be struck by the number of English painters who have derived inspiration from the Elgin marbles. M. de la Sizeranne says on this point: “Publicists like Mr. Frederic Harrison, who would restore the Elgin marbles to Greece and who delight in describing all that Europe loses in not acquiring them, forget to mention all that their compatriots have gained by the possession of them. Many artists copy them, a large number draw inspiration from them, and one finds reproductions of them in all the studios. It is before these marbles that most of the great artists of to-day formed their style.” NO. 1512 141 hold down the handles of a plough, or wield a flail, or work with a sickle, as effectively as when, by the Cornish, Scotch, or Breton coast, he has been found, heedless of wet jackets and slippery rocks, heedless of the rolling sea, able to haul on to a rope, shoot a net, pull at an oar, or stand at a tiller and control a suit of sails. Woodman, builder, swimmer, sailor, farmer, fisherman, the renowned Royal Academician has led a life of immeasurable activity, and found health and happiness in it. Being a Liberal, or rather an advanced Radical, in politics, he has endeavoured to educate his humbler neighbours in knowledge of what he thinks they ought to know, meeting them for the purpose on regular occasions in a neighbouring building, where the humane letters are not forgotten, and many a gem of English is read aloud.” Mr. Hook’s earlier pictures were all of figure-subjects, and were strongly marked by romantic sentiment. In 1845 he won the Academy’s Gold Medal with a picture of “ The Finding of the Body of Harold.” Next year with “ Rizpah Watching the Dead Sons of Saul,” he won the travelling studentship. This enabled him to marry, his wife being herself an artist. The young couple went abroad, visited France, Rome, and Venice, and worked hard in the galleries. Mr. Hook was especially charmed with the pictures of Carpaccio (“discovered” by Mr. Ruskin thirty years later), which appealed to the Englishman’s peculiar love of sunlight and bright colour. The revolutionary movement was at this time in full swing, and Mr. Hook was one of those who helped to pull down the Austrian eagle from the church of St. Mark. In June 1848 the travellers (after some exciting adventures) returned to England and settled in London ; Mr. Hook in the next year or two exhibited Venetian figure-subjects. In 1851 he was elected A.R.A. and soon afterwards he moved from London to Surrey, and began to paint pastoral pictures. In 1854 he visited Clovelly and there may be said to have discovered the sea. From this time forward, he alternated between pastoral landscapes and idyls of the sea. He gave up the house he had built for himselt on Campden Hill (Tor Villa, subsequently inhabited by Mr. Holman Hunt and Mr. Alfred Hunt) and built a new house, Pine Wood, on Witley Hill in Surrey. In that county he has ever since had his home, moving a few years later to another house which he built for himself—Silverbeck, near Farnham. But his studies have taken him far afield, to Norway, Scotland, Holland, France, Wales, Sark, Shetland, and a score of places in Great Britain, from Orkney and Shetland to the Land’s End. In i860 Mr. Hook was elected R.A. The hand, to which we already owe some 200 paintings, besides etchings and a few water - colour drawings, has still lost none of its cunning; and every year at the Academy one scents the salt spray before Mr. Hook’s canvases. Two sons of the artist—Mr. Allan and Mr. Bryan Hook—are also frequent exhibitors. [Mr. Hook has been the subject of several monographs, “Shan’t I be like a cat with nine lives ? ” he once asked in this connection. The best is by Mr. F. G. Stephens in the Art Annual for 1888.] 142 NOS. 1513-1515 Exhibited at the-Academy in 1880 ; a characteristic example of the painter’s breezy sea-pieces, and the life of the fisher- folk. The hills of Caithness are on the horizon. 1513 . YOUNG DREAMS. J. C. Hook, R.A. (born 1819). See 1512. Exhibited at the Academy in 1887. A boy and a girl, too young for serious passion but old enough for dreams of love, are sitting on the edge of a cliff-path. The boy, in sentimental mood, has a flower in his hand and gazes at his companion. The girl, not too young for a little coquetry, fixes her eyes on another flower. The innumerable tinges of azure in the sea below are dashed with the gray, white, and silver of the clouds, and marked here and there with lines of foam creeping land¬ wards. 1514 . THE SEAWEED RAKER. J. C. Hook , R.A. (born 1819). See 1512. Exhibited at the Academy in 1889. 1515 . THE HERD OF SWINE. Briton Riviere , R.A. (born 1840). Animal painting, says Mr Ruskin, is one of the directions in which a British School ought specially to excel. “In connection with our simplicity and good humour, and partly from that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own ; and which, though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works of Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with the aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in association with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give to the future in¬ habitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of being ex¬ tinguished” (Oxford Lectures on Art , § 17). Among the painters of to-day whose work lies in this direction, Mr. Riviere is the most con¬ spicuous. His sympathy with animals is great, and his studies of them, both alive and dead, have been thorough. Horses, dogs, and geese may often be seen in his studio, while his knowledge of lions and other wild animals has been gained from long experience at the “Zoo.” The Directors of the Gardens have, too, for many years sent him the bodies of any fine animals that have chanced to die in the Gardens. For his dog-models, Mr. Riviere used to depend on a dealer, named Ravenscroft, of whom the artist’s biographer relates an amusing story. NO. 1515 143 The man had been sitting in a brown study in the studio of an artist, who may be nameless, when suddenly he came out with,'“They do tell me, sir, as how Mr. Riviere gets as much as two hundred pounds for paintin’ one dawg; is that true ? ” “No doubt,” answered Mr. W_ “ Well,” said Ravenscroft, after a pause, “ / don’t blame ’im, if people are sich fools, I don’t see why a sharp feller shouldn’t take advantage of ’em.” Mr. Riviere is numerously represented in the Tate Gallery, and it will be interesting, in studying his works, to mark out what seems to be his distinctive notes in the treatment of animals. With some painters, animals are treated with an absence of sentiment, and apart altogether from human interests or human sympathies. James Ward, whose pictures of animals are often marked by an over-insistence on their anatomy, may be cited as a case in point (see Handbook to the National Gallery , under 688). Landseer, at the other extreme, made his dogs too human, and often “ gave up the true nature of the animal for the sake of a pretty thought or pleasant jest ” (see under 608). Mr. Swan treats his animals sympathetically, but seldom introduces any human interest at all. Mr. Riviere’s position seems to be an inter¬ mediate one. “His sympathy with dogs,” says Mr. Armstrong, “is too thorough to permit of their degradation into half-taught actors. He paints them for what they are, a symbol of what man was once, the rough material of civilisation with virtues and vices yet unblemished by convention; embodiments of the crude elemental passions, con¬ trolled only by the habit of respect for such a substitute for Providence as man can offer and canine nature understand ; and he paints other animals in the same spirit as dogs, seeking not only the great tragic possibilities within their skins, but understanding that even the more dangerous brutes are for the most part domestic—happy in a shallow sort of way, and by no means so full of hostility to other ferae naturae as their looks suggest. Nearly alone among animal painters does Mr. Riviere withstand the temptation to dress a lion in conscious dignity, a tiger in conscious ferocity, a dog in conscious intelligence. His animals give their minds to the business in hand. They never pose or think of themselves.” But, on the other hand, like Landseer and unlike Mr. Swan, Mr. Riviere generally paints animals at moments when they stand in relation with man. In his-choice of subjects he is fond of situations which either call forth a display of sentiment (see 1566) or point to some striking antithesis. His pictures exhibit sometimes a lively sense of humour (1518), and at others a fine vein of poetry. In this connection it is interesting to know that Mr. Riviere is a great reader, and also, like many painters, a great listener to reading. A vein of poetry, which has inspired some of his best pictures, is to moralise over the ruins of human greatness, as when “ The lion and the lizard keep The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.” Often too he has gone to classical legend for his subjects. But these are branches of his work which do not happen to be represented here. Mr. Riviere is one of the not very numerous painters who have received a public school and university education, though in his case 144 NO. 1515 scholastic teaching went on simultaneously with artistic training. His family is of Huguenot descent, but has been English since 1685, and four generations have been on the books of the Academy. His grand¬ father and father were students there; he himself (though never a student) is an academician, and his eldest son has been a student also. His uncle, H. P. Riviere, was, moreover, a well-known water-colour painter. Mr. Riviere’s father was drawing-master at Cheltenham College, and afterwards master of a drawing-school at Oxford. Mr. Riviere him¬ self was educated at Cheltenham and St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford. He began drawing at the Zoo by the time he was seven, and before he was twelve had exhibited at the British Institution. At Oxford he lived at home with his father and pursued the study of painting, while at the same time coaching for his degree. Among his friends and con¬ temporaries at the University were the present Master of Balliol and Professor Goldwin Smith. The latter used, we are told, to carry books of poetry to Riviere’s studio, and read aloud passages suggestive of likely subjects for pictures. Mr. Riviere graduated B.A. in 1868, proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1873, and in 1891 received the distinction of an honorary degree of D.C.L. At the age of seventeen, Mr. Riviere had three pictures hung at the Academy. Shortly after¬ wards he was strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, and his pictures of poetical subjects were for a few years doomed to rejection. In 1865 he was introduced to Pettie and Orchardson, and the practice of the Scottish School to which these painters belonged greatly influenced his technical methods. In the same year he painted a “Sleeping Deerhound,” and in that picture broke for the first time the ground he has since cultivated. In earlier years Mr. Riviere drew, chiefly initials, for Punch. He also illustrated several books for his friend Mrs. Craik (Miss Muloch), near whom he resided for some time in Kent. This illustrating work Mr. Riviere used to do at night, after his day’s work at painting, by artificial light; and to this his biographer traces the weakness of the eyes which now compels him to great self-denial in the studio. (Mr. Riviere’s life and work have been described by Mr. Walter Armstrong in the Art Annual for 1891.) A very spirited illustration of the miracle of the Gadarene swine :— And, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. And they that kept them fled. The animals, possessed with fear and horror, run headlong over one another’s backs. Some have rushed already over the edge, while others slide on the steep cliff-top and hesitate until their own weight and the terror of the multitude behind will urge them also over the precipice. One of those that kept them has been trampled on ; another, with a terrified dog, fly in the NOS. 1516, IS 17 145 foreground. Mr. Armstrong points out that in this picture (exhibited in 1883) “The idea which governed the treatment of the pigs in ‘Circe* (exhibited 1871) was reversed. In the bewitched followers of Ulysses, Mr. Riviere wanted as much individuality as he could get. He wished to show the separate character of each man, and to hint at the effect upon him of the woman’s beauty. In the later picture his aim was directly opposed to this. It was to show a mass of living things possessed by one spirit, driven to their own destruction by one mad possession. For this purpose black swine were far better than white. They could be welded into a far closer unity, and sent down the slope like a single missile.” 1516 . GIANTS AT PLAY. Briton Riviere, R.A. (born 1840). See 1515. In this picture (exhibited in 1883) the artist’s aim was to portray the statuesque appearance of the British navvy. The impression of size is emphasised by the abrupt contrast between the hulking navvies and the little puppy with whom they are playing (“it is excellent To have a giant’s strength ; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant ”). It is an historical picture in the sense that it will show to generations yet unborn what manner of man was the British navvy of to-day, just as in another picture here (1633), Mr. Watts preserves the heroic bearing and proportions of a brewer’s drayman. Mr. Hodgson has noted as characteristic of some of Mr. Riviere’s works “a faint sub-acid flavour, an almost imperceptible tinge of irony and humour.” We may perhaps find something of this here. It is presumably Sunday morning, and the companion of the chief actor was, we are afraid, drinking last night. 1517 . COMPANIONS IN MISFORTUNE. Briton Riviere, R.A. (born 1840). See 1515. “ The poacher, though asleep, is not at rest; his face has an anxious look and his hand is on his gun. His fellows are his enemies ; the angry sky and the dark shade seem to condemn him ; the dog, caressing and watching, is a sign that, however much a man may be hunted down by his fellows, there is yet love for him somewhere.” (From the catalogue of the White¬ chapel Exhibition, 1887.) Dated 1883. L 146 NOS. 1518, 1519 1518 . RUNNING THE BLOCKADE. Briton Riviere, R.A. (born 1840). See 1 S 1 5 • Painted in 1888. An amusing study of dogs and a cat. 1519 . HER FIRST DANCE. W. Q. Orchardson, R.A. (born 1835). William Quiller Orchardson—one of the principal genre painters of the modern British school—was born in Edinburgh, of Highland descent. His father, who was in business, sent him, when he was fifteen years of age, to the Trustees’ Academy in that city, then undei the mastership of Robert Scott Lauder (see under 1582). Lauder was a man of marked individuality, and a certain affinity is stamped on most of his pupils, among whom were also John Pettie, Mr. Peter Graham and Mr. MacWhirter. Mr. Orchardson showed from the first great facility in drawing. Feats which only became possible to his fellow-students after months of labour he mastered in weeks. “Ah! Orchardson!” said one of his most gifted friends, “he has two heads on his shoulders.” In 1862 he came to London, and lived for some time with Pettie at 37 Fitzroy Square, in the house which was afterwards the home of Madox Brown. In 1863 he first exhibited at the Academy, and has been continuously represented there ever since. He did not, however, immediately win general recognition. He was not elected A.R.A. till 1868, nor R.A. till 1878, or four years later than Pettie. For some time he had confined himself to very simple subjects; his work, as Mr. Armstrong puts it, was “reticent, self-contained, and as it were painted for himself.” Subsequently, he embodied in it more of that broad, dramatic effective¬ ness to which he owes his popularity. In 1870 Mr. Orchardson went to Venice, and in later years he has occasionally paid short visits to the Continent; the idea to be found in some criticisms upon him that he has deeply studied French or German art is not correct. In 1873 Mr. Orchardson married Miss Ellen Moxon. Her portrait may be seen in his well-known picture “ Master Baby.” “ Conditional Neutrality ” is a portrait of his son, now an accomplished painter ; his portrait of his father at the Academy Exhibition of 1898 was one of the best portraits there. In 1877 Mr. Orchardson exhibited “The Queen of Swords,” which went to the Paris Exhibition in the following year and attracted much attention there. But it was not till 1880 that Mr. Orchardson established his reputation among the general public by his picture of “Napoleon on the Bellerophon” (No. 1601 in this collection). Pie now became one of the most popular of what have been called “literary painters.” He chose subjects drawn either from striking historical scenes or from contemporary life. He showed great skill in seizing on dramatic situations or psychological moments, but at the same time NO. 1519 147 he tieated them with that reticence which leaves something to the imagination. While the story in Mr. Orchardson’s pictures is told veiy effectively, they are conspicuous also for delicacy of drawing and harmony of colouring. In the title of his picture “ A Tender Chord,” the painter conveyed a double entente which is characteristic; for it may be taken as referring either to the sounds produced by the fingers straying pensively over the keys, or to the chord of delicate pinkish tones in which most of the work is done. In his choice of colour schemes Mr. Orchardson is one of the most distinctive of painters, lie is conspicuous, in the words of a French critic, “by his accuracy, expression, and dexterous execution. The attitudes are true and of great precision in drawing ; the expression of the faces is ingenious and earned out with refinement. Lastly, in spite of a certain poorness of touch and meagreness of execution, the general effect is splendid in colouring, and as harmonious as the wrong side of an old tapestry ” (Chesneau : The English School of Painting, p. 282). “His pictures have always been remarkable, says Mr, Hodgson, “for a peculiar flaxen and delicate key of colour; they show a most extraordinary appreciation of semi-tones, of delicate gradations of light, which in no other hands but his would be sufficient to produce relief, but which he contrives to combine by some magic, all his own, into the most start- ling effects. The effect is produced by the opposition of light against light, the darks necessary as foils being introduced in small masses and at raie intervals. A hair-breadth of deviation from the proper position of a dark touch, the slightest uncertainty in the value of a tone, a moment’s forgetfulness, and the impression of relief is gone ” (Fifty Years of bnttsh Art, p. 73)- In his historical pictures Mr. Orchardson usually borrows his subjects from the French Directoire period, which, in its faintness of colour, is most favourable to his peculiar method of painting. When he paints modern life, he simi¬ larly places his figures in elegant salons, with brown polished floors and stiff and ceremonious Empire furniture. In the men’s figures in these pictures Mr. Orchardson for the first time, it has been said, made supreme pictures with men’s evening dress. Another department of art in which Mr. Orchardson excels is portraiture, but of his work in this sort there is no specimen in this collection. [The best account of this painter is “The Art of W. Q. Orchardson,” a Portfolio mono¬ graph, by Mr. Walter Armstrong.] “A young girl standing up to open a ball with a young buck, whose self-satisfaction is fanned by the too evident timidity of his partner. The room has not filled yet, and in its empty spaces the girl looks like a veritable Iphigenia wait¬ ing for the knife. The picture reads,” says Mr. Armstrong, “ like a page from Miss Austen, whose delicate literary work¬ manship is represented by the delightful colour and airy, silvery tone of Orchardson’s painting.” 148 NOS. 1520, 1521 1520 . THE FIRST CLOUD. W. Q. Orchardson, R.A. (born 1835)- See 15 1 9 - A replica of the picture (now in the Public Gallery of Melbourne) which was exhibited at the Academy in 1887, with the following lines from Tennyson in the catalogue :— It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute. A second act, perhaps, in the manage de convenance. The husband’s hands are clasped behind him ; his chin is ominously thrust forward, and a grim resolution marks his face. He is at once angry and sorry, but sorry rather because a delusion has been dissipated, than on account of his wife. Pale and scornful she sweeps out of the room. 1521 . HER MOTHER’S VOICE. W. Q. Orchardson , R.A. (born 1835). See 1519. Exhibited at the Academy in 1888, when to the title from Longfellow the following lines were appended in the catalogue Upon his widowed heart it falls, Echoing a hallowed time. Another clever piece of dramatisation. The accessories, wonderfully painted as they are, are yet duly subordinate to the incident; the figures are not swamped, as they so often are in real life, for that matter, as well as on canvas, by their furniture. In the choice of the incident itself the artist touches a pathetic note. The father is in deep reverie while his daughter sings—to her lover perhaps—in the corner. Nothing can be finer than the expression and attitude of the widower. Isolated he sits, and alone. His paper interests him no more, as the daughter’s voice vibrates in his memory, and echoes a hallowed time. Yet he is a man of the world, one is made to see, as well; and there is a subtle struggle in his countenance between the instinct of grief and the intention to fight against it. With regard to the accessories, Mr. Armstrong has given us a personal note which is of interest. The picture was one of the first things undertaken by the artist after his move into Portland Place, and the room, with its wall of glass and hints NO. 1522 149 of palm and fern, is his own back drawing-room. Mr. Orchardson is a great lover of the Empire style in furniture, as well as in other things. His house is filled with it, and more than once the genesis of a picture is to be traced to the purchase of a piano, or a sofa, or a set of chairs. 1522 . THE DOCTOR. Luke Fildes, R.A. (born 1844). Mr. Luke Fildes (christened Samuel Luke) was born at Liverpool. He is of Puritan ancestry, and there is no record of artistic talent among his forbears. His bent showed itself very early in life, and by the time he was thirteen he was attending art classes. After studying first at Chester, and afterwards at Warrington, he came up to London with a South Kensington scholarship in 1863, and in 1866 entered the Academy schools. He made the acquaintance about this time of Mr. W. L. Thomas, then at the head of a wood-engraver’s business, and by this means the young artist obtained a good deal of illustrating work. In 1869 Mr. Thomas founded the Graphic. Mr. Fildes contributed to the first number a sketch of “Casuals.” This was the origin of his famous picture of that name, exhibited in 1874 at the Academy. The drawing in the Graphic was also the means of introducing Mr. Fildes (through the good offices of Millais) to Charles Dickens, who employed him to illustrate Edwin Brood. Upon Dickens’s death in the following year, Mr. Fildes set himself (again with friendly assistance from Millais) to painter’s work. In 1872 he had a picture on the line at the Academy. In 1874 his “Casuals” was so popular that it had to be protected by a policeman and a railing. In 1879 he was elected A.R.A., and in 1887 R.A. Mr. Fildes’s pictures of Venice, which he first visited in 1874, may be considered as an episode in his artistic careei\ He is married, it may here be mentioned, to the sister of Mr. Henry Woods, R.A. (see 153 1 )• R was in 1887 that Mr. Fildes first exhibited as a portrait- painter, in which branch of the profession he has since been much employed. But it was as a painter of pathetic subjects from the common life of his day that he first made his reputation ; and to this kind he reverted in the present picture (exhibited at the Academy in 1891), which was painted as a commission for the Tate Gallery. “ Among English artists of the present day,” said Mr. Plamerton, “Mr. Pildes is one of those who have found their way most directly to the human heart.” The artist’s preference, he tells us himself, is “ to paint pictures dealing with my own times, and to treat subjects with which most of us are quite familiar. There must be an ad¬ vantage to the artist in this. It must enable you better to get at the truth, at the very heart of the subject. Even the conventional black coat and the humblest surroundings need not frighten one into the idea that one’s work will therefore be wholly unpicturesque.” [The NO. 1522 150 life and work of Mr. Fildes will be found fully treated by Mr. D. C. Thomson in the Art Annual for 1895. See also an interview with the artist in the Temple Magazine for December 1897.] A picture at once of intense realism and yet of high imagination. From the latter point of view, it has been well described as “ a symbol of the struggle between Science and Death.” It is a representation of the nobility of the doctor’s calling. “ My idea certainly was,” says the artist himself, “to put on record the status of the doctor of our own time.” “ No more noble figure than the doctor could be imagined—the grave anxiety, supported by calm assurance in his own knowledge and skill, not put forward in any self-sufficient way, but with dignity and patience, following out the course his experience tells him is correct; the implicit faith of the parents, who, although deeply moved and almost overcome with terrible dread, stand in the background trusting the doctor even while their hearts fail. At the cottage window the dawn begins to steal in—the dawn that is the critical time of all deadly illnesses,—and with it the parents again take hope into their hearts, the mother hiding her face to escape giving vent to her emotion, the father laying his hand on the shoulder of his wife in encouragement of the first glimmerings of the joy which is to follow.” This picture, it is interesting to know, was a long time in preparation, and for several months the artist’s studio in Melbury Road was witness to the project. “ Mr. Fildes had the interior of a cottage erected inside his own studio. This was carefully planned and properly built, with rafters and walls and window—all as afterwards expressed in the finished picture. One side of the studio was occupied with this cottage, and it was from thence that the light and shade of the picture was composed. Mr. Fildes made very few studies for this picture, although he sketched many cottages, both English and Scottish, before he decided the interior” (Art Annual , 1895, pp. 12, 13). The doctor is not, as has sometimes been supposed, a particular portrait. “Any resemblance that people find between myself and the doctor,” says Mr. Fildes, “ is quite unintentional. As a matter of fact, the model who sat for it was a clean-shaven man, and had not the slightest idea of what I was painting. I had my ideal quite clear in my mind, and I selected a model as far NO. 1523 ISI away from it as possible, for the main reason that I did not want my idea interfered with by suggestion. Then, when I had got the right pose, I called in the assistance of friends, who were good enough to sit for me. Mr. Val Prinsep was one of them, and so the thing grew to be what it is.” 1523 . A SILENT GREETING. L. Alma Tadema , R.A. (born 1836). “ To form to himself an idea of what this artist is like,” says Mr. Hodgson, “ the reader must first imagine a man who has finally dis¬ posed of all technical difficulties ; who knows exactly how to imitate natural objects, how to draw and colour them, who has all the laws of perspective at his finger’s end, whose mind, in fact, is a sort of encyclopaedia of means wherein are recorded the solutions of all art problems, and the devices and artifices by which at any time pictorial difficulties have been overcome or avoided. Then he must suppose this man to possess an extraordinary analytical power of reasoning out natural phenomena to their ultimate logical effects, and equally wonderful constructive ingenuity and invention. Having equipped his man after this fashion, let him set him to the study of archaeology, and let him keep him at it until he knows everything that is to be learnt: all the orders of architecture down to their minutest details, to the leaden gutters and water-spouts; the forms of all dresses and utensils in use amongst the ancients, what they used and when they used them, what was peculiar to this or that festival, what was consecrated to this or that deity; and then let him imagine that man trying to revive on canvas the aspect of ancient Greece or Rome. Having got thus far, he will have built up a conception of just about one-half of the actual visible phenomenon which is to be seen walking about the streets of London. The other half is made up of qualities which cannot be defined, of spiritual tendernesses and susceptibilities, of a vibratory nervous temperament, sensitive in an extraordinary degree to the influence of lines, tones, and colours ” (Fifty Years of British Art , pp. 65-66). Mr. Laurens Alma Tadema, the subject of this panegyric by a brother artist, is a Dutchman, and many of the characteristics of his art recall the genre painter of the old Dutch schools. This is the case alike with many of its greatest merits, and with some of the defects of his qualities, which critics have noted in Mr. Tadema’s work. His art is thoroughly Dutch in its clever re¬ presentation of still life and its exquisite finish and detail. His light-reflecting surfaces, his marbles and bronzes, are as famous as Terburg’s silk gowns. “Every year,” wrote Mr. Ruskin, “he displays more varied and complex power of minute draughtsmanship, more especially in architectural detail, wherein, somewhat priding myself as a speciality, I nevertheless receive continual lessons from him; except only in this one point—that with me the translucency and 152 NO. 1523 glow of marble is the principal character of its substance, while with Mr. Tadema it is chiefly the superficial lustre and veining which seem to attract him ; and these, also, seen not in the strength of Southern sun, but in the cool twilight of luxurious chambers.” The painter’s preference as a rule (though there are many exceptions) for interiors and courtyards was also characteristic of the old Dutch masters of genre. “ Whether of Greek or of Roman life, Mr. Alma Tadema’s pictures are always in twilight—interiors, tv av/j./uyei aKiq.. In the collection of them at the Grosvenor (1882), with that universal twilight there was also universal crouching or lolling posture, either in fear or laziness.” Again, Mr. Tadema’s artistic skill, said Mr. Ruskin of one of the painter’s best-known pictures—“ The Sculpture Gallery”—has “succeeded with all its objects in the degree of their unimportance. The piece of silver plate is painted best; the griffin bas-relief it* stands on, second best; the statue of the empress worse than the griffins, and the living personages worse than the statue.” “Everything seemed so perfect,” says Mr. Tadema’s bio¬ grapher, in describing the Grosvenor collection of his works, “and yet it left a sense of incompleteness. It seemed as if most of the men and women were beautiful truly, often very beautful, but only physically so, and that they were frequently devoid of spiritual life. We find fresh¬ ness, grace, infinite charm of colour, gaiety, strength, but little tenderness or pathos or dramatic intensity.” “ That he has not done everything,” says Mr. Hodgson, “is certain ; that he has not made his puppets individually and psychologically interesting as specimens of humanity is also probable.” There are, however, some among the master’s works to which such criticisms as these do not apply. What he has undeniably done—and this is his chief originality as a classical painter—is to revivify the dry bones of classical archaeology. “It is no longer,” says M. de la Sizeranne, “the Rome of David or of Poussin that Mr. Tadema puts before us; rather is it Rome intime , the Rome that one sees in the letter of Cicero to Atticus, the life of antiquity as one finds it in Terence and Plautus. Mr. Tadema lets us see how they loved when the world was young, how they played, how they talked beneath the olives. Instead of superhuman patriots and heroic com¬ batants Mr. Tadema shows us beings like ourselves.” “ He invests antiquity,” says another French critic, “with the familiar gait, gestures, movements, and attitudes, I might almost say with the words, sentiments, and thoughts of to-day as a protest against the false dignity and commonplace stiffness which the impotent pedantry of academies has introduced into their formal dramas and heroic poems. Alma Tadema has, in a manner, put the antique world into slipper and dressing-gown. He represents his heroes as walking, sitting, rising, drinking, eating, and talking, not as the characters walked, sat, rose, drank, ate, and talked in the theatre of Talma and the tragedies of Lebrun, but as we ourselves walk, sit, rise, drink, eat, and talk. The consequence of this is, as far as Mr. Alma Tadema is concerned, that he endeavours with untiring patience to represent his figures NO. IS23 iS3 as they really were in life, and to plan them amid surroundings which really belong to them. His whole work is, indeed, an accurate illustration of Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, and ought to delight the minds of archaeologists. What he has not seen he infers with wonderful ingenuity” (Chesneau’s English School of Painting, pp. 263-264). The artistic skill and classical learning which are so conspicuous in Mr. Tadema’s work are founded on untiring industry. “With a nature,” says his biographer, “as sunny and genial as his art, there is but one thing he hates, and that is perfunctory work.” “ I love my art,” he says, “ too much to like to see people scamp it; it makes me furious to'see half work, and to see the public taken in by it and unable to understand the difference.” The artistic bent was born with him, but he has cultivated it from his earliest years with unflagging energy. He was born at the little Frisian village of Dronryp, near Leeuwarden. His father, a notary, died when the boy was only four years of age. His mother, left a widow with a large family, was a woman of rare energy. Laurens was at first educated for a lawyer, but he showed a strong artistic bent. His mother, it is recorded, used to wake him early in the morning by a string tied to his toe, in order that he might draw before the day’s lessons began. His intense application brought on a severe illness, and after this he was allowed to abandon the law and devote himself entirely to art. The change to congenial occupation brought him health and strength. He went first as an art-student to the Antwerp Academy, under Wappers, and then entered the studio of Baron Leys, the famous historical painter. In 1863 he married a French lady. In 1865 he moved to Brussels, where he stayed till the death of his wife, in 1869, when he established him¬ self in London. His earliest pictures dealt with subjects from Merovingian history, but by the time he came to England he was better known for- his Egyptian and Roman pictures. In 1871 Mr. Tadema married an English wife—Laura Theresa Epps, whose beauty we have admired on so many of his canvases, and who is herself an accomplished painter. In 1873 Mr. Tadema became naturalised as an English subject. In 1876 he was elected A.R.A., and in 1879 R.A. He has also been the recipient of honours of all kinds from various foreign academies and learned societies. Mr. Tadema’s houses —first, Townshend House, North Gate, Regent’s Park, and now in the Grove End Road—have often been described, and with their rich marbles, Pompeian halls, and sumptuous hangings, recall his own pictures. In the case of Mr. Alma Tadema everything is homogeneous. “The secret of my success in art,” he once said, “is that I have always been true to my own ideas, that I have worked according to my own head and have not imitated other artists. To succeed in anything in life one must first of all be true to one’s self, and I may say that I have been this.” On the door of his studio the painter has inscribed his favourite motto : “As the sun colours flowers, so art colours life.” [Mr. Tadema’s life and work form the subject of several mono- iS4 NO , 1524 graphs and magazine articles ; those by Miss Helen Zimmern in the Art Annual for 1886, and Mr. Monkhouse in Scribner's Magazine for December 1895, are among the best. Chapter iv. in M. de la Sizeranne’s book is devoted to Mr. Tadema. Mr. Ruskin’s references to him will be found in his Academy Notes for 1875, and in Lecture iii. of The Art of England, 1884.] A small but characteristic specimen of the artist’s work, exhibited at the New Gallery in 1892. A slave is discreetly holding back the curtain ; her mistress sleeps so soundly on the soft cushions of her marble pleasaunce that she does not perceive “the silent greeting” of the rose-buds which her soldier-lover places on her lap. Inside, all is fresh and cool; the glimpse of the hot sunlight outside adds a subtle touch to the general sense of idle luxury. On the top of the marble shelf the painter’s signature and the inscription “ Op. ccxcix.” will be observed. “ This artist follows the laudable practice of musicians, and numbers each work, so that there can never arise, with regard to his paintings, any doubt as to their chronological order.” The subject of this picture was suggested to the painter by Goethe’s poem entitled “ The Visit ” :— While at work had slumber stolen o’er her ; For her knitting and her needle found I Resting in her folded hands so tender ; And I placed myself beside her softly, And held council, whether I should wake her. She had so delighted me while slumbering, That I could not venture to awake her. Then I on the little table near her Softly placed two oranges, two roses ; Gently, gently stole I from her chamber. When her eyes the darling one shall open, She will straightway spy these colour’d presents, And the friendly gift will view with wonder, For the door will still remain unopen’d. If perchance I see to-night the angel, How will she rejoice,—reward me doubly For this sacrifice of fond affection ! ” (Bowring’s translation.) 1524 . A RAINY DAY. Peter Graham , R.A. (born 1836). Mr. Graham, the painter of surf-beaten shores and mist-enveloped landscapes, was born in Edinburgh, the son of an accountant. At the NO. 1525 iS 5 age of fourteen he entered the School of Design in that city under R. S. Lauder (for whom see under the notice of Pettie, 1582), and in i860 was elected as an Associate of the Scottish Academy. At first he devoted himself to figure subjects, and it was while painting backgrounds to these out of doors that he began to think of devoting himself to landscape. In 1866 he moved to London. He was elected A.R.A. in 1877, and R.A. in 1881. Exhibited at the Academy in 1871. A study in wetness. Note the long straggling street of the village, the soddened thatch of the roofs, the dripping eaves, the foliage heavy with moisture, the splash of pitiless downpour in puddles and gutters, the effect of the wet on the colour of the backs of the horses about to be tied up. 1525 . THE SILKEN GOWN. T. Faed, R.A. (born 1826). Mr. Thomas Faed has long enjoyed a great popularity for his well- told and pathetic stories drawn from the humble annals of the poor. “There is,” says Mr. Hodgson, “a genuine kindness and tenderness in his manner of treating these subjects, and hearty sympathy with the humble and the industrious, over whose hard lot no poet stoops to weep, the romance of whose lives (if there is any) is hidden away from public sight. He is no conventional sentimentalist; his shep¬ herds and shepherdesses have no affinity with Dresden crockery ; he even avoids the hackneyed subject of love-making, the lads and the lasses beneath the milk-white thorn, and all such matters ; the emigrant leaving home, the man sitting up all night to nurse his sick child, or the widower who is father and mother and a’ things to his children, touch upon real troubles.” His spirit is that of Burns’s lines: “To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife, That’s the true pathos and sublime Of human life.” In thus chronicling the simple annals of the Scottish peasant, Mr. Faed has been portraying on canvas the life of which, in his early days, he had personal experience. He came of an old Border family, and was the son of a millwright—a man of inventive faculty and a dreamer. The father died while Mr. Thomas Faed was a youth, and he followed his elder brother John, also an artist of distinction, to Edinburgh, where he studied in the Art School of the Board of Trustees. At the early age of twenty-three he was elected A. R. S.A. In 1852 he moved to London, and five years later his “Motherless Bairn” at the Academy attracted much attention. He was elected A.R.A. in 1859 and R.A. in 1864. He was a con¬ stant exhibitor until 1893, when'a partial failure of his sight necessi¬ tated his retirement. An illustration of the lines of Burns :— NOS. 1526-1528 156 And ye shall walk in silk attire And siller hae to spare, Gin ye’ll consent to be his bride Nor think of Donald mair. Ah, wha wad buy a silken gown Wi’ a poor broken heart ? Or what’s t’ me a siller crown, Gin frae my love I part ? The mother spreads the wooer’s offering, a flowered silk, to tempt her daughter. The wooer himself sits in the parlour behind. A little sister plays on the left, and a terrier surveys the scene, puzzled. 1526 . FAULTS ON BOTH SIDES. T. Faed , R.A. (born 1826). See 1525. A young married couple in a tiff. The man is a portrait of the artist himself. 1527 . THE HIGHLAND MOTHER. T. Faed, R.A. (born 1826). See 1525. 1528 . MOTHER AND SON. H. IV. B. Davis , R.A. (born 1833). Mr. Henry William Banks Davis is one of the best cattle-painters of the British school, and a lover of Naturepn her serener moods. He was the son of a barrister, who was also an enthusiastic angler. His father, we are told, used to take his son with him on his angling rambles, and it is to his influence in pointing out the beauties of nature that the painter attributes his subsequent bent. It was, how¬ ever, towards sculpture that he first inclined. He entered the Academy Schools in 1852, won various medals and exhibited busts. His first landscapes were exhibited in 1855, but he continued occasionally to practise the sculptor’s art, and has sometimes shown animals in bronze, which he modelled for use in his pictures. Mr. Davis kept a few terms at Oxford, and afterwards took a house near Boulogne, where he has since occasionally resided, and where he has found the scenery for many of his pictures. In i860 he began to exhibit pictures of cattle. He was elected A.R.A. in 1873 and R.A. in 1877. A pleasing picture of a mare and colt on the downs, with sea in the background. NOS. 1529-1531 157 1529 . A MUSICAL STORY BY CHOPIN. A. C. Gow, R.A. (born 1848). Mr. Andrew Carrick Gow, one of the best of our modern masters of historical genre, is the son of a lithographic artist, and was first trained to follow his father’s calling. He studied at Heatherley’s School of Art in Newman Street. He has been a constant exhibitor at the Academy since 1869. He was elected A. R.A. in 1881 and R.A. in 1891. Mr. Gow’s pictures,, says Mr. Ruskin, are “extremely fine of their class, highly skilful throughout, keenly seen, well painted without any forced sentiment or vulgar accent.” The father of the great musician was a schoolmaster who kept a “ select academy ” at Warsaw, where a few boys were brought up with-his own son. The young genius, mounted on a high stool and cushion, is picking out the notes of a story which he is improvising on the piano. He is represented_ with doubtful historical accuracy—as a pale and sickly youth. The artist well brings out the effect of the music on the other lads. The brighter children are under its spell ; one, with a racket in his hand, and his companion, listen more stolidly. The father looks up from his book admiringly. 1530 . THE LOST CAUSE: FLIGHT OF JAMES II. A. C. Gow, R.A. (born 1848). See 1529. The flight of James II. after the battle of the Boyne. He took boat at Kinsale, went on board a French frigate, and sailed for France. Exhibited at the Academy in 1888. 1531 . CUPID’S SPELL. Henry Woods, R.A. (born 1847). Mr. Woods is the most accomplished member of what has been called the Anglo-Venetian School. “He is an apostle,” says Mr. Hodgson, “of the daylight school. He is a fine draughtsman, with a great appreciation of character, a harmonious colourist, and a marvel¬ lous painter. His sharp, clear, incisive touch, the way he paints an edge, the skill with which he renders Nature, are beyond all praise.” His pictures of Venice have little of the mystery and visionary charm with which Turner invested the sun-girt city. Rather does he paint Venice seen at leisure by a man who has explored all its nooks and corners, who is familiar with the aspect of all the fishermen, fruit- sellers, and gondoliers, and renders everything with definiteness and precision.” Mr. Woods was born at Warrington, and entered the NO. 153 2 158 local school of art at the age of nine. Having won a National Scholar¬ ship, he entered the South Kensington Schools in 1864, and worked there for three years. He was an original member of the staff of the Graphic. His first pictures were of Thames subjects. In 1876 he went to Venice on the advice of his brother-in-law, Mr. Luke Fildes, R.A. He went, saw, and was conquered, and he still resides there. The little glass house which he built for himself in 1879 became the model of all the glass studios now frequent in Venice. In 1878 he sent home his first Venetian picture. In 1882 he was elected A.R.A. and in 1893 R.A. A characteristic example of the Venetian subjects described above. The foreground group is perhaps a little too obviously “ made up.” At the foot of an obliging stone Cupid, a young lady, in smart clothes, is waiting to hold her lover’s nets. The summer atmosphere and the view of the city in the back¬ ground are delightful. Exhibited at the Academy in 1885. 1532 . SCENE AT ABBOTSFORD. Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873). See 608. Exhibited in 1827, a year or two after Landseer had been invited to visit Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, where, said C. R. Leslie, in recording the circumstance, “he will make himself very popular both with the master and mistress of the house by sketching their doggies for them.” A characteristic corner in the house which a visitor in 1829 described as full of “ an endless variety of cuirasses, helmets, stirrups, spurs, stags’ horns, and bulls’ horns.” The picture was engraved and published in “The Keepsake” for 1829, with a description by Scott himself, in which the following passages occur :— The general idea of this spirited representation of animals and ancient armour is taken from a small apartment at Abbotsford, which, from the peculiar tastes of the owner, as an admirer of animals and a collector of antiquities, often exhibits similar scenes. The large dog, which forms the principal figure in the group, is the portrait of a very fine animal, of the rare species called the deer, or sometimes the wolf greyhound. Maida was the name of the dog in question, his sire being a dog from the Pyrenees of the largest size, and his dam a very fine Highland greyhound. While in his prime he was perhaps as perfect a beauty of his kind as ever was seen, and from his size, aspect, and symmetry of form, recalled to mind the noble dogs which Snyders has represented in close conflict with the bear or wolf. In his habits Maida was attached and faithful, much under his master’s command, but an excellent watch-dog, and very dangerous to suspected persons NO. 1533 i59 at suspicious hours; on all other occasions he was gentle both to men and animals, until he became aged, when his temper was more capricious. The picture was done when he was in the last stage of canine old age, which probably was the sooner brought on by hard work and fatigue, for it was his delight to go out with the ordinary greyhounds of the low country, and, notwithstanding his size and weight, he could turn and sometimes take a hare. He was as sagacious as. he was high-spirited and beautiful, and had some odd habits peculiar to himself, one of the most whimsical was a peculiar aversion to artists of every description. His noble appearance had occasioned his being repeatedly drawn or painted, until, not liking the constraint which attended this operation, he never could endure to see a. paper or pencil produced without making an effort to escape, and giving marked signs of displeasure if attempts were made to compel him to remain. When Mr. Landseer saw Maida, he was in the last stage of \v eariness and debility, as the artist has admirably expressed in his fading eye and extenuated limbs. He died about six weeks afterwards. The armour and military weapons are characteristic of the anti¬ quarian humour of the owner of the mansion, who, as Burns describes a similar collection, “ Has a fouth of auld nick-nackets, Rusty airn caps and jingling jackets, Would haud the Lothians three in tackets, A twal’month good. And parritch-pots and auld saut-backets Before the flood.” The hawks are the gratuitous donation of Mr. Landseer, whose imagination conferred them on a scene where he judged they would be appropriate, as that of the artist liberally added a flock of sheep to attend the shepherdess in the Vicar of Wakefield’s family picture. The other dog represented in the picture is a deerhound, the property of the artist, and given to him by the Duke of Atholl. The painting as a piece of art has attracted much and deserved praise. In the piincipal figure especially, it would be difficult to point out a finer exemplification of age and its consequences acting upon an animal of such beauty and strength. It would afford excellent hints for a painting of Argus at the gate of Ulysses, which was probably an animal of the same appearance and habits. 1533 . UNCLE TOM AND HIS WIFE FOR SALE. Sir E. Landseer , R.A. (1802-1873). See 60S. Exhibited at the Academy in 1857* The reference in the title is, of course, to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s well-known slave story. “ Uncle Tom is a dog of humble i6o NO. 1534 breeding and sturdy constitution ; he has been brought to the market for sale, and is chained to his wife, for whom a similar fate is purposed. The best part of the picture is the tearful look of the wife at the dog of her heart. This was a masterpiece wherein Sir Edwin often triumphed—the humanising of animal expression, or rather the animalisation of human expression ” (F. G. Stephens: Sir Edwin Landseer, p. 97). 1534 . THE PROMENADE. John Phillip , R.A. (1817-1867). Phillip, a native of Aberdeen, is an instance of late maturity in art. He did indeed begin exhibiting at the age of twenty-three, but it was not until he went to Spain, eleven years later, that he found his mitier and began to exhibit the powerful and dexterous painting on which his fame rests. John Phillip, says a German critic, was not the first of the British painters to tread the Museo del Prado. But “ he alone gained something of the verve of Velazquez, a broad virile technique which distinguishes him from other British painters of the time. The im¬ pression received from his pictures is one of opulence, depth, and weight; they unite something of the strength of Velazquez to a more Venetian splendour of colour. They give no scope to anecdote, but they always reveal a fragment of reality from which radiate a world of impressions and an opulence of artistic activity. As painter pat excellence John Phillip stands in opposition to older English genre painters. Whilst they were, in the first place, at pains to tell a story intelligibly, Phillip was a colourist, a maitre peintre, whose figures were developed from the colours. Even in England, the country of literary and narrative painting, art was no longer an instrument for expressing ideas it had become an end in itself, and had discovered colour as its prime and most essential medium of expression.” (Muther : Modern Painting , ii. 607). Phillip’s career was a remarkable one. Plis parents were of humble origin, and he was apprenticed as a lad to a house painter. From his youngest days he showed a strong inclination for art, and at the age of seventeen he came to London as a stowaway on a coasting vessel. lie was kept hard at work, but managed to visit the exhibition of the Royal Academy. He attracted the notice of a Major Gordon, who re¬ commended him to Lord Panmure, by whose generosity he was placed as a pupil in an artist’s studio. In 1837 he entered the Academy Schools, and a few years later his pictures of Scottish life began to attract attention. From 1840 to 1846 he was in Aberdeen, being principally employed in portrait painting. In the latter year he returned to London. In 1851 he went for the benefit of his health to Spain, where he continued to reside, paying annual visits to. London and Aberdeen. He was elected A.R.A. in 1857 and R.A. in 1859. His work had for some years attracted the favour of the Court, and NOS. 1535 , 153 6 161 he painted several portraits and ceremonial pictures by command, but it is on his Spanish subjects that his fame depends. He died in London, at the age of fifty, of paralysis. “John Phillip,” writes one who knew him, “was quite an unique personality; he painted by fits when the humour was on him. At such times he covered canvas with almost magical rapidity. The thought was hardly swifter than the execution ; the brush darted over the picture, and the scene rose up as by enchantment. At other times he would sit moodily in his chair, the most listless and melancholy of men, or else he would go round to see his friends and make them miserable by contagion with his languor and dejection. His health was unsound, and his sad life closed suddenly when in the very height of his powers ” (Hodgson : Fifty Years of Art , p. 26). A characteristic specimen of the painter’s subjects of gipsy¬ looking women with sparkling eyes and jet-black hair. These figures by Phillip, it has been well said, scintillate with energy, brilliancy, and vivacity. They are painted with unmistakable joyousness and love for the theme, and are full of bright memories of sunny days in Seville. 1535 . HUSH ! 1536 . HUSHED. Frank Floll, R.A. (1845-1888). Frank Holl, one of the great portrait painters of the Victorian era, was the son of the eminent engraver, Francis Holl, A.R.A. He was born in London, and educated at University College School. At the age of fifteen he entered the schools of the Royal Academy, where he was among the most successful students of his year. It may be said that his distinguishing features were straightforward vigour, consistency of purpose, and determination to carry his object through. But he once confessed to a friend that he joined the Graphic staff when a young man in order to cultivate punctuality, confidence, and self-restraint in painting; for with all his earnestness he was constantly betrayed into committing immature ideas to canvas, and so, becoming dissatisfied with them, as often giving them up, till at length he feared that indecision would take possession of him. After three years he left the Graphic and painted “ The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,” with which picture he gained in 1869 the two years’ travelling student¬ ship of the Academy. The Queen desired to possess this touching work, but as the owner refused to give it up, Holl painted for Fler Majesty an equally sad and powerful work, “ A Message from the Sea.” After a year’s work abroad, Holl resigned his studentship, preferring to cultivate his own unconventional treatment of English subjects to the routine picturesque of foreign inspiration. During all the earlier part of his career Holl remained faithful to English subject-pictures, chiefly M 162 NO. IS36 of a domestic nature, and generally of a pathetic and melancholy cast— such as the two little works before us. Mr. Holl was once running over to a friend the list of these early works, all of them inspired by the sorrows of the poor and the woes and failings of humanity, and said laughingly, “ When I think over them they are indeed an awful lot— starvations, coffins, and the dock.” This choice of subject was not due to any morbid taint in the artist. He was, on the contrary, a very com¬ panionable man, and had hosts of friends. His desire was, as he said himself, to bring home to the heart and mind of Mayfair “ the crime of poverty and the temptations to which the poor are for ever subject.” “The nearest approach I ever made to cheerfulness in paint was,” he once said, “in the picture, ‘Did You ever Kill Anybody, Father?’—a little girl seated on a general officer’s cloak, half drawing a sword from its scabbard, and looking up. This was in reality a portrait of my little daughter, who had found her way into my studio at the time I was painting Lord Wolseley, and whom I had caught in the attitude I painted. Well, even there, you see, was the hint—the suspicion of murder.” The pictures before us were painted in 1877- The following year was the turning-point in the artist’s life. He was elected A.R.A., and almost by accident found himself launched on his career of a popular portait-painter. He found that his first portrait—that of an old friend of the family, Samuel Cousins, R.A.—attracted universal attention and praise, while his great subject-picture—“Newgate: Committed for Trial”—was, comparatively speaking, unnoticed. “I was awfully dis¬ gusted,” he said, “ but the subject was balm in Gilead after all, for it procured my election into the Academy. The Academicians on whom I called, according to custom, all praised my portrait and ignored ‘New¬ gate ’-—perhaps that was a distasteful subject to some ; and even my father said, ‘ Stick to heads.’ So to heads I have stuck.” From this time onward Holl was in enormous demand as a portrait-painter. He w 7 as a glutton for work, and sometimes received as many as five sitters a day ; but even so, he always had more commissions than he could overtake. The concentration of mind necessary to pass successfully from one type of character to another requires intense application. Frank Holl said once that unless he felt he had dipped his soul into the sitter’s character and painted with that, the conviction always came upon him that he had failed. In 1884 he was elected R.A. Most of the famous men of the day were among his sitters. In all he painted 80 subject-pictures and 181 portraits (all of which were painted between the years 1878 and 1888). Of the nervous tension entailed by the earnestness and conscientiousness which Holl threw into his work some idea may be found from an account given by the artist himself of his visit to Hawarden to paint Mr. Gladstone. “ Into the Gladstone,” he said, “ I put all I knew and threw my whole self, and really exhausted my strength. I became very excited while going to Hawarden, for I felt like a man about to walk the slack wire before the world, and I feared a failure. But nothing could have given me confidence like my reception. I had expected to see nothing at NO. 1537 163 Hawarden but collars and tree stumps. Of stumps there were hardly any to be seen, while my first sight of Mr. Gladstone’s collar was a tremendous shock of disappointment. My subject gave me the best light at the castle, his library, and sat in a manner that would set an example to any model. For five consecutive days he sat, or rather stood, to me, in the attitude he accidentally adopted himself, the hours lasting fiom eleven to half-past one each day, with five minutes’ rest in between. I had worked myself up into a state of semi-exaltation, for I had determined to paint the picture in a do-or-die fashion, feeling that if I hesitated I was lost. I doubt if I slept more than two hours a night at Hawarden. During even that time I dreamed of my work, and more than once I got out of bed and pulled the picture out to look at it. The strain involved in so much work at high pressure was too severe for a constitution which had been from childhood far from robust. I loll had a weak heart, and the hard work in getting his pictuie ready for the Exhibition of 1888 brought on a serious illness, lie was at the time full of plans for future work. He was hoping to immortalise some beautiful women (all his portraits had been of men), and he had, moreover, made up his mind to break off portrait-painting for a while and devote himself to a big historical group of Her Majesty’s judges. Meanwhile he was advised to knock off work and take a holiday in Spain. “It will do your work a lot of good, my boy,” said Millais to him, “ but Velazquez won’t knock you down ”— as high a compliment as one artist could pay another. After a fortnight IIoll returned. He had a seizure of the heart, and Sir William Jenner forbade him to undertake more than one sitter a day. This moderate amount of work seemed not too much for him, but he had a second seizure, and on 31st July died of heart disease in his forty-fourth year a victim to success. [Many of the above particulars are taken from a notice of Hell in the Pall Mall Gazette for 1st August 1888.] This and No. 1536 are companion pictures, painted in 1 8 7 7 - A pathetic little story in two chapters. In the first, the mother is watching by the cradle of the sick child, and the other child stands quietly beside. In the second, the mother leans over and looks at the terrible vacancy in the cradle. 1537 . A HOLY WELL. E. Nicol , A.R.A. (born 1825). Among the British physiognomist-painters—that is to say, the painters who interest themselves mainly in portraying the varied play of the human countenance—M. Chesneau ranks Mr. Erskine Nicol among the very highest. “He throws a singular vividness of fancy into his pictures, of which the scenes are usually laid in unhappy Ireland. In spite of some harshness of tone, he is a true artist and skilful in colouring. Fie was born at Leith, and was apprenticed 164 NOS. 1538, 1539 to a house-painter. At the age of thirteen he was admitted to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh. Subsequently he spent some years in Dublin, and laid up much material for future pictures. In 1857 he returned to Edinburgh, and became a member of the Scottish Academy. He moved to London in 1863, and his pictures rapidly attracted attention for their racy fun, gentle sarcasm, and quiet humour. He was elected A.R.A. in 1866. A picture ol wayside prayer by an ancient churchyard in Ireland. Exhibited at the Academy in 1852 :— God dwelleth not in temples made by hands. 1538 . THE EMIGRANTS. E. Nicol, A.R.A. (born 1825). See 1 537 - Mr. Nicol has been called the “painter in ordinary to the Irish peasants.” Here he shows us one of the daily scenes in their life. The emigrants are taking their tickets at Ballinasloe Station, en route for Galway and the West. Notice the ad¬ vertisements of “ Thorley’s Food for Cattle ” and “ Findlateds ” food for men. 1539 . WEEDING THE PAVEMENT. G. H. Boughton, R.A. (born 1834). Mr. George H. Boughton was taken by his parents to America when he was three, and his earlier education was received in that country. When he was nineteen he sold a picture to the American Art Union, and with the proceeds he visited Europe. He returned to America for two years, and then went to Paris and worked in a studio there. In 1861 he settled in London, where he has since resided. From .1863 onwards he was a constant exhibitor at the Academy both of figure paintings and landscapes. In both kinds it is the quality of quaintness that seems chiefly to attract the artist. “He is,” says a Geiman critic, “one of the most graceful and refined of Walker’s followers. There is something in him both of the delicacy of Gainsborough and of the poetry of Memlinc. Pie delights in the murmur of brooks and the rustle of leaves, in fresh children and pretty young women, in aesthetic¬ ally fantastic costume ; he loves everything delicate, quiet, and fragrant. Moreover, a feeling for the articulation of lines, for a balance of composition, unforced, and yet giving a character of distinc¬ tion, is peculiar to him in a high degree” (Muther : History of Modern Painting , iii. 156). In 1886 Mr. Boughton published a pleasant volume of “ Sketching Rambles in Holland,” illustrated by himself and Mr. E. A. Abbey. He was elected A.R.A. in 1879 and R.A. in 1896. NOS. 1540 , 1541 165 A characteristic example of what has been called the “ cool, quiet, and remote” work of this artist. The picture is delightful in its cool colour, its quaint costumes, its sympathetic appreciation of Dutch types, and its little bit of background, with the quaint gabled houses and the clustered willows :— At the quiet old town of Hoorn, on the Zuyder-Zee, the few inhabitants sometimes turn out and weed the pavement to keep it from looking neglected, for there is not enough traffic on the old quay to wear away the grass, all trade having departed to the more favoured port seen over the sea. The silting up of the sand in the harbour has converted the once flourishing town into a “Dead City.” The old harbour master has nothing to do but smoke his long pipe and watch the seven young girls in white caps weeding the pavement. His dog barks at the unusual sound of the splash of oars caused by two men rowing near. (Official Catalogue.) 1540 . THE VALLEY OF THE LLUGWY. B. IV. Leader , R.A. (born 1831). Mr. Benjamin Williams Leader—perhaps the most popular land¬ scape painter of the day—is a brother of Sir E. Leader Williams, the engineer of the Manchester Ship Canal. He was born in 1831 at Worcester, and was educated at the School of Design in that city. In 1854 he entered the Academy Schools, and in the same year exhibited his first picture. In 1856 he visited Scotland ; Wales and Switzerland were also favourite sketching-grounds. But more recently he has been best known for his pictures of flooded country in late November, with the dark land and leafless trees defined against a golden sky. He was elected A.R.A. in 1883, and was the recipient of a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. He was elected R.A. in 1898. A characteristic example of the painter—remarkable for accuracy in drawing and precision of detail everywhere, from the foreground to the distance ; but obtaining this sharpness at some expense of tone. 1541 . CONSULTING THE ORACLE. J. IV. Waterhouse , R.A. (born 1849). Mr. John William Waterhouse, the son of a painter, was born at Rome, and it is recorded of his childhood that a fragment of Pompeian fresco was his most cherished treasure. Pie was destined in after life to build up on canvas many fragments of antiquity. His work, how¬ ever, is very different from that of other “classical” painters. He stands mid-way, says a French critic, between Burne-Jones and Leighton ; he aims at being suggestive, and he avoids being mannered. He seeks in classical themes not so much antiquarian reconstruction as opportunities for dramatic situations. At the age of five he was brought to England, and on leaving school he worked in his father’s studio, painting in backgrounds to portraits. He also attended the evening classes at the Royal Academy, but for some time his choice of a profession was not definitely made, and he thought of becoming an engineer. At the age of twenty he began to devote himself seriously to art. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1874. In 1877 he revisited Italy. He was elected A.R.A. in 1885 and R.A. in 1895. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884, when the following explanatory note was given in the catalogue :— The Oracle, or Teraph, was a human head, cured with spices, which was fixed against the wall, and lamps being lit before it and other rites performed, the imagination of diviners was so excited that they supposed that they heard a low voice speaking future events. The priestess, with all the wild excitement of a fanatic portrayed in her countenance, places her ear to the mummified head. Horror, despair, pity, weariness, fall on the faces of the listeners, as they variously read their own thoughts into the supposed utterance of the oracle. 1542 . ST. EULALIA. J. W. Waterhouse , R.A. (born 1849). See 1541. A clever study in foreshortening, and a dramatic presenta¬ tion of a striking scene (exhibited at the Academy in 1884). The story is that of the Spanish martyr, St. Eulalia (a.d. 313, December 10), as related in one of the hymns of Prudentius :— Eulalia was a native of Merida, in Estremadura, where she was born twelve years before the issue of that edict of Diocletian, by which it was ordered that all Roman subjects, no matter what their age, sex, or profession, should sacrifice to the Imperial gods. Eulalia, young as she was, took the publication of this order for the signal of battle, but her mother, observing her impatient of martyrdom, carried her into the country. She escaped from her mother’s house, and con¬ fronted the Prefect, who was sitting in judgment on Christians, and reproached him with his cruelty and impiety. The governor, astonished at her audacity, commanded her to be seized, and placed on one side of her the instruments of torture prepared for the disobedient, and on the other the salt and frankincense which they were about to offer to their idol. Eulalia immediately flung down the idol, and trampled the offering under her feet, and spat in the face of the judge,—an action, says Butler, “which could only be excused by her extreme NOS . 1543 > 1544 167 youth.” She was immediately put to death in the midst of tortures. Prudentius tells us that at the moment the holy martyr expired, a white dove issued from her mouth (the usual allegory of the soul or spirit), and winged its way upward to heaven—at which prodigy the execu¬ tioners were so terrified that they fled and left the body. A great snow that fell, covered it and the whole forum where it lay. At the foot of the cross, the body of Eulalia is extended in the snow, which clings about her like pure robes of her new earned saintship. Two Roman soldiers guard the spot, and restrain the few mourners, women and children, who are attracted to the place. Beyond them the buildings of the Forum loom in the gray, snowy air, while a number of pigeons flutter about. The whole force of the conception is centred in the realistic dignity of the outstretched figure, beautiful in its helplessness and serenity. 1543 . THE LADY OF SHALOTT. J. W. Waterhouse , R.A. (born 1849). See 1541. Exhibited at the Academy in 1888; an illustration of Tennyson’s poem, showing the “glassy countenance” of the lady as she drifted down to Camelot:— Down she came and found a boat, Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote, The Lady of Shalott. And down the river’s dim expanse, Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance— With a glassy countenance, Did she look to Camelot. 1544 . THE HEALTH OF THE BRIDE. Stanhope A. Forbes , A.R.A. (born 1857). Mr. Stanhope Forbes is one of the members of what is known as the “ Newlyn School”—the colony of artists who have established themselves at the little Cornish fishing village near Penzance. The members of this “school” are for the most part realists in spirit, and students of French methods in technique. Other members of the colony, represented in this collection, are Messrs. Bramley, Gotch, Stokes and Tuke. The Newlyn painters believe in “open air” methods of \york, and it is the possibility of painting out of doors all the year round that has brought Cornwall into favour with so many of NO. 1544 168 the younger painters. The equable gray climate, which allows the study of the model in diffused daylight, is another thing which has recommended it to them. When the Newlyners paint an interior, their object is to render it lighted as its own window lights it. Mr. Forbes comes of a railway family. He was born in Dublin, his father being then manager of the Great Western of Ireland Railway. His mother is French. His uncle is Mr. J. S. Forbes, well-known both as the Chairman of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, and as a collector of pictures. Mr. Stanhope Forbes was educated at Dulwich and the Lambeth School of Art. In 1874, he entered the Academy Schools, and after a few years he went to Paris, where he worked in the studio of M. Bonnat. He went for sketching tours in France, some results of which were seen in the Academy Exhibitions 1882-84. In the spring of 1884, Mr. Forbes went to Newlyn, where several painters were already established, and his talent helped to make the colony talked about in London. The present picture, which brought him prominently into public favour, was exhibited in 1889. He was elected A.R.A. in 1892. His wife (nee Elizabeth Armstrong) is her¬ self a distinguished member of the Newlyn group. This is one of the most successful works of the Newlyn school, remarkable alike for its effective story-telling and for its technical merits. It shows us the wedding feast of a young sailor and his bride as it might happen in a Cornish fishing-town. “ The room and its modest furniture, the people bidden to the feast, with their characteristic gradations in humble comfort, the solemn awkwardness of the young couple themselves, the knowledgeable indifference of the old, and the innocent unconcern of the very young— all these are managed with frankness and skill. Many little touches help the fable, and remind us of Zola’s picture of a similar function, such as the woman in the background pouring drink from one vessel into another, the young man with his hot hand on his own particular and most un¬ attractive bridesmaid, and the absorbed look of the adolescent boy who faces the married couple and prepares to drink to their health.” No less conspicuous are the technical merits of the picture. Mr. Forbes gets unity by focussing the attention of all his characters on the married couple. Even those who are not looking their way are so employed that they are brought within the universal preoccupation. “ I don’t know any modern picture in which conflicting lights are managed with greater success than here. The room in which the feast goes on has two windows, one opposite, the other out of the picture on our right. By this contrivance, inconvenient shadows and NOS . 1545 , 1546 169 a disturbing abruptness in the chiaroscuro are avoided, while, by a stroke almost of genius, all conflict between two sources of illumination is evaded. The second window, which, being the nearer to us, would have to be the strongest in value, is kept out of sight; while to satisfy the eye, which demands some kind of explanation for the strong lights on the figures to our right, the lowered reflection of the first window is allowed to show in the glass doors of the bookcase. By such means the whole scene is at once concentrated and distributed with the best effect on its vivacity and solidity as a whole ” (W. Arm¬ strong in the Art Journal for 1893). 1545 . ALUM BAY. J. B. Pyne (1800-1870). James Barker Pyne, a native of Bristol, was educated for the law, but from early years he had a strong bent towards art. In this he was self-taught, but he quickly attained a considerable local reputation. In 1835 he moved to London, and exhibited at the Academy from that year until 1839. Afterwards he exhibited at the Society of British Artists, of which he was for many years Vice-President. Muller of Bristol (see 379) was his pupil. 1546 . NOONDAY REST. John Linnell (1792-1882). See 438. A cornfield under bright sunlight; in the foreground three men are lying asleep in the shade of some sheaves of corn ; a dog stands on the left; other figures beyond are harvesting; over some trees at the edge of the field a wide expanse of level country is seen ; low hills on the horizon. The idea of shim¬ mering sunlight and heat is well conveyed. This subject, originally painted in 1862, belongs to a period in the artist’s work considerably later than the “Woodcutters” (No. 438) and the “Windmill” (No. 439). During the period in question Linnell resided in a house he had built for himself near Redhill. “ Situated as his house was,” says his bio¬ grapher, “on the slope of the hill, he had on the one hand a charming bit of woodland; on the other, a wide-stretching vale, with the blue hills in the distance. Upon these and the sunset he looked from his library window; and it was his delight, when the weather permitted it, to sit in the open, facing the west, and watch the magnificent panorama that gradually unfolded itself to his eye, as the sun, coming down 170 * 547-1549 from his noontide elevation, sloped through the lingering afternoon, shedding gold upon the fields and woods, and finally disappearing with deepening and ever-varied splendour.” 1547 . CONTEMPLATION. John Linnell (1792-1882). See 438. Painted in 1872. A shepherd reading. (See under last picture.) Called also “The Edge of the Wood.” 1548 . PANGBOURNE. Keeley Halswelle (1832-1891). Keeley Halswelle shared with Vicat Cole (see 1599) the honour of being the most popular painter of the Thames. He was born at Richmond, and when a boy stole all the time he could from lessons for sketching rambles by the banks of the river. Forty years later he built himself a house-boat, the Kelpie ., familiar to most boating men in those days, and used to spend many months in each year afloat on his favourite stream. In 1884 he held a “one-man show” : “ Six Years in a House-boat.” But his river pictures were in his second manner. He was placed, when a lad, in an architect’s office, and afterwards studied the antique at the British Museum, supporting himself the while by black and white work for The Illustrated London News and other periodicals. In 1854 he migrated to Edinburgh, where he remained for ten years. Chambers and Nelson, the publishers, gave him illustrating work, and he studied at the Scottish Academy. In 1866 he was elected A.R.S.A. In 1868 he went to Rome, and his “Roba di Roma” at the Academy in the following year attracted attention. He continued to paint figure subjects, mostly with Italian setting, until about 1879 when he took to the life on the Thames above mentioned, and from that time forward his pictures were mostly of the quiet beauties of clouds, woods, and streams, on the river which he knew so well. Fie died suddenly at Paris. A picture of the Thames below Pangbourne : painted in 1882. 1549 . BLOSSOMS. Albert Moore (1841-1893). Albert Moore occupies a distinctive and a distinguished place among modern British painters. He combines in a capricious union of his own the influences of Greece and of Japan. From the Greeks he learnt the combination of noble lines, the charm of dignity and quietude, while the Japanese gave him the feeling for harmonies of colour, for soft, delicate, blended tones. The world which he called into being has affinities with the marbles of the Parthenon ; but it was full also of NO. 1549 171 white birds, soft colours, and rosy blossoms from Kioto. Moore was one of those painters, comparatively rare in the British school, who make formal beauty the sole aim of their art. His work was essentially decorative. “ He never swerved,” says Mr. Sidney Colvin, “from his habit of making the decorative aspect of his canvas, regarded as an arrangement of beautiful lines and refreshing colours, the one im¬ portant matter in his work. The subject is merely a mechanism for getting beautiful people into beautiful situations.” His biographer points out that originally he painted biblical and other pictures with some kind of subject, and that again towards the end of his life he in¬ troduced some kind of incident, but that in the middle and culminating period of his art he abandoned subject altogether and preferred reposeful attitudes. Subject he considered was dangerous to technical excellence, as serving to cover a multitude of technical sins. Decoration—unadul¬ terated and undramatic—was his object. A purchaser, after admiring a picture, once asked, “And what do you call it ? ” “ You can call it,” replied Moore, “ what you like.” “ Mr. Albert Moore’s painting is to artists,” says Mr. Swinburne, “ what the verse of Theophile Gautier is to poets ; the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful. That contents them ; they leave to others the labours and the joys of thought or passion. . . . The melody of colour, the symphony of form, is complete ; one more beautiful thing is achieved, one more delight is born into the world ; and its meaning is beauty ; and its reason for being is to be.” The beauty which Moore sought is of a peculiarly restful kind. He was a painter, it has been said, of beautiful dreams, and the land of dreams to which he intro¬ duces us is “a land of languorous delights and soft airs, where no jarring note is ever struck and the shadow of death is quite unknown.” The women with whom he peopled it are, however, of a noble type, and show careful study of Greek art. Moore made use of selected models, but “ the faces are those of women he never saw—low-browed, broad- templed, sweetly gentle, and tenderly grave faces that the nameless sculptor knew and loved and handed down to us through the Aphrodite of Milo.” In his scheme of colour the painter avoided what is ex- aggerated or gorgeous, and, like the Japanese, aimed rather at thin and delicate harmonies. “His work,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ is consummately artistic and scientific, and both for composition and colour deserves close and patient examination.” The mastery thus obtained by the artist was the result of strenuous devotion to his art and of minute study of nature. The strangely beautiful drapery in which he perpetuated the flowing lines of the Greek model, he obtained from robes of Chinese silk, never touching a fold with his hands but making his model move again and again till he caught the desired effects, tie made elaborate studies both for the figure and for the drapery. For his well-known pictures of “ Battledore and Shuttlecock ” he set his models to play for some hours, watching them and sketching each attitude that struck him as presenting pictorial possibilities. A whole series of these drawings exists. For “Seagulls” and “Shells” he used a special 172 NO. IS49 machine, a revolving fan, which, working at high velocity, produced a very strong air current, so as to enable him to give to draperies the effect of being blown about by a brisk breeze. Founding all his work on nature, he always kept about him objects naturally beautiful. Bowls for brightly coloured flowers were constantly in his studio. It is related of him that one morning he happened to find these unfilled. He made an effort to work, but the inspiration failed until he threw down his brushes, went out of doors, and returned from the florist with his arms full of flowers. The artistic feeling and talent which Moore cultivated so carefully came to him as his birthright. His father was a painter, and four of his brothers followed the same profession (see under Henry Moore, No. 1604). Albert Joseph Moore was the fourteenth child and thirteenth son of William Moore. He could draw before he could read or write, and friends still living remember him at three years of age drawing from recollection flowers that had caught his baby fancy. A lady visitor once admired a drawing by him of a Christmas rose. “ I will do a better next time,” said the boy. He was educated at St. Peter’s College, York, and afterwards at the Kensington Grammar School. He entered the Academy Schools in 1858, but did not remain there long. He first exhibited at the Academy exhibiton when he was sixteen. Soon afterwards he made the acquaintance of W. Eden Nesfield, the architect, and by him was largely employed for several years in designing ceilings and wall-paintings. Among his work of this class, the east end of St. Alban’s Church, Rochdale, and the proscenium for the defunct Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre may be mentioned. In 1862 he visited Rome, and there he painted his “Elijah’s Sacrifice.” The remainder of his life was devoted to the series of decorative pictures by which he is best known. In 1883 he had a serious illness, from which he never altogether recovered. In 1890 he was attacked by a painful malady, and the cool courage with which he met the disease shows the strength of his character. The doctors gave him a respite of eight or nine months, and these he occupied by working at his art with renewed energy. At Christmas 1890, he gave a farewell dinner to his friends and relatives, saying that he was going for a holiday. In fact he went into a private hospital to be operated upon. The operation was successful, but the malady recurred and he died three years later. lie went on painting till a week before his death. In 1884 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours. From the Academy he never received any recognition, and he always refused to apply for it, but his pictures were well hung at the exhibitions. “ He lived his own life,” says a friend, “but to those with whom he chose to be intimate, he was a most delightful and social companion, looking at the world and its ways with his own eyes, forming his own judgments, and expressing them in a very happy and original manner.” He also occasionally wrote verses. [The principal work on Albert Moore is Mr. A. L. Baldly’s sumptuous monograph. See also Mr. Harold NO. 1550 173 Frederic’s “A Painter of Beautiful Dreams” in Scribner's Magazine for 1891, p. 712; Swinburne’s “Notes on the Academy,” 1868; and “Mr. Connal’s collection of works by Albert Moore,” in the Magazine of Art, 1894.] This picture, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, is described by the artist’s biographer as “ one of the most serenely beautiful of all the paintings of his middle period, a study of scrupulous refinement, an expression of almost classical simplicity. The long large folds of the girl’s rose-coloured robe fall in simple lines from her neck to her feet. Her head is thrown back, so that the face is a good deal foreshortened, and she wears a black head-dress. Behind her is a dark ashy-gray wall, half hidden by a lace-like network of white cherry blossom, which makes, as it were, a screen of flowers ; and a low seat covered with white drapery stands on the black and gray floor. At her feet is a red rug, and above her head are two small crimson curtains which fill the upper corners of the panel. The masterly painting of the delicate rose-pink drapery, with its warm shadows and glowing reflections; the admirable composition of the long gentle curves; the happy suggestion and dainty handling of the diapering of flowers across the background—all combine to make this production one of the conspicuous successes of Albert Moore’s life. With it he attained almost his highest technical level, and displayed his appreciation of colour, and of the finest qualities of line decoration, in a manner which in after years he only oc¬ casionally surpassed. Among his pictures of single figures it may almost be pronounced the masterpiece, and a work which will in years to come be reckoned among the art classics of this century” (Baldry’s Albert Moore, pp. 51, 52). 1550 . SHIPWRECK: SINBAD THE SAILOR STORING HIS RAFT. Albert Goodwin (exhibited since i860). Mr. Goodwin is best known as an accomplished and imaginative water-colour painter. “ For pure artistic delight,” said Mr. Ruskin, on the occasion of a “ one-man show ” of the artist’s drawings in 1886, “an untouched sketch of Albert Goodwin’s on the spot is better than any finished drawing.” Mr. Goodwin was elected an Associate of the Royal Water-Colour Society in 1871, and a member in 1881, This picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1887. 174 NO. 155 1 One of a series of illustrations of the story of Sinbad painted by this artist—the elements of reality and unreality mixed as in a dream :— I was of the number of those who landed upon that mountain, and, lo ! within it was a large island, and upon it were numerous goods, on the shore of the sea, of the things thrown up by the sea from the ships that had been wrecked, and the passengers of which had been drowned. Upon it was an abundance that confounded the reason and mind, of commodities and wealth that the sea cast upon its shores. . . . . . . Then I arose and went and collected pieces of wood that were upon that island, of Sanfee and Kamaree aloes-wood, and bound them upon the shore of the sea with some of the ropes of the ships that had been wrecked ; and I brought some straight planks of the planks of the ships, and placed them upon those pieces of wood. I made the raft to suit the width of the river, less wide than the latter, and bound it well and firmly; and having taken with me some of those minerals and jewels and goods, and of the large pearls that were like gravel, as well as other things that were upon the island, and some of the crude, pure, excellent ambergris, I put them upon that raft, with all that I had collected upon the island, and took with me what remained of the provisions. I then launched the raft upon the river, made for it two pieces of wood like oars, and acted in accordance with the following saying of one of the poets :— Depart from a place wherein is oppression. (Sixth Voyage of Sinbad, Lane’s Arabian Nights.) 1551 . SUCCESS. S. E. Waller (born 1850). Samuel Edmund Waller, a popular painter of genre pictures, in which animals, and especially horses, are introduced, is the son of an architect and was born at Gloucester. He was first educated for the army at Cheltenham College, but showed a strong inclination to an artistic career and afterwards studied at the Gloucester School of Art. As a youth he entered his father’s office and went through a course of architectural studies. This was afterwards of good service to him, for many of his pictures have important architectural backgrounds. His father also had a farm, and here the lad had many opportunities of studying animals. At the age of eighteen he entered the Academy Schools, and two years later (1870) he exhibited his first animal pictures. In 1872 he went to Ireland and published with Messrs. Macmillan an illustrated account of his travels, entitled Six Weeks in the Saddle. He subsequently did much other black-and-white work for the same publishers, and he also joined the staff of the Graphic. In 1877 the Council of the Academy desired to purchase a picture called “Home ” NO. 1552 175 for the Chantrey Collection, but it was already sold. The picture before us was exhibited in 1881, and for many years Mr. Waller has been a regular exhibitor. His pictures tell their story effectively and dramatically, and his horses are always excellent. The artist has recounted many interesting experiences in the course of his travels for appropriate backgrounds, and in his dealings with jockeys and others for the best equine models. He has often followed the deer, he says, for miles and miles, for days together, in order to obtain “sittings,” and many have been his adventures with thoroughbreds. In the case of the horse, Mr. Waller confesses to a certain amount of what he calls “artistic fraud.” He draws the horse at a distance, as with so large an animal he finds it absolutely necessary to be at a distance sufficient for the eye to grasp the whole mass at once ; but when he paints it, he comes nearer, in order the better to copy the veins, muscles and glossy texture of the coat. Mr. Waller’s experience is that of so many other artists : he always strives to take the same pains, but he does not always command the same success. “Whenever things look black with a picture,” he says, “ I think of what Fred Archer said to me one morning after riding Lonely in her trial. ‘ I think I have ridden the winner of the Oaks this morning, Mr. Waller. Can’t be certain, but I shall be there or thereabouts.’” (See articles contributed by Mr. Waller to the Art Journal for 1893 and 1896.) A duelling scene, showing the moment of peril after “success.” The victim lies on the grass, attended by his supporters. The victor—stripped to his shirt and breeches, smiling in the first flush of conquest and yet anxious—is urged by his second to make his escape in the travelling chariot which is waiting at the gateway of the park. The young man has thrown away his sword, and a servant is putting a cloak over his shoulders. 1552 . SWEETHEARTS AND WIVES. S’. E. Waller (born 1850). See 1551. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882, when the follow¬ ing explanatory note was published in the catalogue :— On the first rumour of impending difficulties between th