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HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS

RAMBLES IN ROME.

FRONTISPIECE.

THE SHEPHERD EOY.
{Sir Joshua Rfynclds.)

I

HOMES, WORKS, AND SHRINES

ENGLISH ARTISTS

WITH SPECIMENS OF THEIR STYLES

TO WHICH is ADDED

RAMBLES IN ROME

By FREDERICK WILLIAM FAIRHOLT, F.S.A.
AUTHOR Of "HOMES, 'HAUNTS, AND WORKS OF RUBENS, VANDYKE, AND OTHERS;" "RAMBLES OF AN
ARCH^OLOGIST," ETC. ETC.

ILLUSTRATED WITH WOOD ENGRAVINGS

LONDON
VIRTUE & CO., 26, IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW
1873

ADVERTISEMENT.

HERE is a freshness in these sketches, — each written with
the vivid impression of the scene for its inspiration,
immediately after visiting the shrine of the artist to
whom it is dedicated, — that must always make them accept
able to the general reader, in preference to the more laboured
biographies of art-critics.
The late Mr. Fairholt's tastes and predilections peculiarly quaU
fied him for the labour of love which he had undertaken. Like
another " Old Mortality," he went wandering through suburban
graveyards, rubbing off the accumulating moss that all but
obscured the memorials of the illustrious dead ; or in the solemn
aisles of Westminster, or the crypt of St. Paul's, noting down on
his tablets the loving records placed above the shrines of the
departed. There was no fixed plan laid down for the pubUcation of these
sketches, which appeared from time to time in the Art-Journal,
with illustrations from Mr. Fairholt's accurate pencil. The
b

AD VERTISEMENT.

PubUshers are alone responsible for their reproduction in their
present form, and for the order in which they now appear.
To enhance the value of the volume, illustrations of several
of our great masters' works are given, which did not accom
pany the papers as originally published, viz. — ^The Shepherd
Boy, Count Ugolino, the Nativity, Mrs. Siddons, the Infant
Hercules, and the Holy Family, by Reynolds ; the Marriage
a la Mode, and the Rake's Progress, by Hogarth ; the Fall of
Carthage, and the Grand Canal at Venice, by Turner ; Rustic
Hospitality, Sunday Morning, Sale of the Pet Lamb, and the
Fisherman's Departure, by Collins ; Cupid in a Shell, and Ulysses
and the Syrens, by Etty ; Blake's Scene from Dante ; and
Flaxman's Charon's Boat, Descent of Beatrice, his sculptured
Guardian Angel, and Thy Will be Done. A few words in illus
tration of these subjects have been inserted in the text from the
Art-Journal. The Rambles in Rome appeared in that publication in 1857,
without illustrations ; the fifteen subjects, however, now intro
duced as such, will need no apology for their insertion.

CONTENTS.

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

PAGE

Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A  3
William Hogarth  39
Thomas Gainsborough, R.A  46
Richard Cosway, R.A  52
George Morland  58
Richard Wilson, R A  65
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A  71
William Collins, R.A  80
William Etty, R.A  ,  87
William Blake  '  94
John Flaxman, R.A  loi
Joseph Nollekens, R.A  112
Richard James Wyatt  119
Samuel Cooper  125
George Vertue, F.S A  132
William Woollett  138
Thomas Bewick  145

viii CONTENTS.
RAMBLES IN KO.VIE. PAGE
The Modern Road to Rome  153
First Impressions  156
The Forum and its Monuments  '  158
The Galleries of Ancient Art  162
Modern Art in Ro.me  172

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
Plympton, from the Castle Walls .... 3
Town Hall, Plympton  5
Plympton Church  6
Room in which Reynolds was boin .. 7
Plympton Grammar School  9
Cloisters of the Grammar School  11
The Infant Hercules  24
The Holy Family  30
Grammar School, and House in which
Reynolds was born  34
Reynolds's House, Leicester Square . . 35
Crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral  38
Hogarth's House, Chiswick  39
Scene from Marriage k la Mode  40
Scene from The Rake's Progress .... 41
Hogarth's House, Leicester Square .... 43
His Palette  44
His Tomb in Chiswick Churchyard .... 45
Schomberg House  46
Gainsborough's Grave, Kew  51
Cosway's House  52
His Monumental Tablet  5"
Morland's Emblematical Palette  58
His Burial-place  64
Colomondie House  65
The Tomb of Wilson  70

PAGE
Birthplace of Turner  71
His Residence  77
House in which Turner died  79
Residence of Collins  80
His Grave  86
Etty's House, York  87
His Tomb  92
Blake's House, Fountain Court  94
Spirit of a Flea  97
Scene from D.dute  too ,
Residence of Flaxman  loi
The Guardian Angel  106
Monument in Heston Church  107
Charon's Boat  108
The Descent of Beatrice  109
" Thy Will be Done "  no
Flaxman's Tomb  in
Birthplace of Nollekens  112
His Monument  118
The Protestant Cemetery, Rome  119
Grave of Shelley  123
Tomb of Keats  124
Old St. Pancras, 1740  125
Cooper's Monumental Tablet  131
George Vertue and his Wife  132
Tablet to the Meraory of G. Vertue . . 137

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FACE
WooUett's House  138
His Tomb  144
Bewick's House, Newcastle  145
His Grave, Ovingham  150

PAGE
The Coliseum  153
The Forum  157
Arch of Titus  159
The Bronze Wolf  165

FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS.

The Shepherd Boy  Frontispiece
Count Ugolino and his Sons Face page 27
The Nativity  28
Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse .... 32
The Fall of Carthage  73
Venice : the Grand Canal  79
Rustic Hospitality  80
Sunday Morning  82
The Sale of the Pet Lamb  84
The Fisherman's Departure  86
Cupid in a Shell  gi
Ulysses and the Syrens  93

St. Peter's, Rome  153
The Coliseum  1 54
The Aqueduct at the Pont du Gard .. [56
Rome  158
Arch of Septimus Severus  160
Column of Trajan  162
Arch of Trajan  164
The Laocoon  167
The Transfiguration  176
The Ponte Rotto and the Ponte St.
Angelo  178
Chair of St. Peter  180

HOMES, WORKS, AND SHRINES
OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

^^ "f**^-^ -i* W

yjl-ir-'

Plympton, from the Castle t falls.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.

¦^ HAT Art in England owes much to Sir
Joshua Reynolds is admitted on all
hands. He was ever consistent in en
forcing its claims to due distinction ;
and, when with earnest labour he had
won for it an honourably recognised
position, by his example he upheld the
character of the artist, and was himself,
at all times, in thought, word, and deed, a gentleman. He is the
father of our English school of painting, was the first President

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

of the Royal Academy, and consequently his name is pre-eminently
entitled to fill the place of honour in a work, like the present,
devoted to the memories of those who followed in his footsteps,
and whose genius has placed that school, which he founded, on an
equality with those of more ancient date — the schools of Italy,
Spain, Germany, and France.
It is nevertheless surprising that our English school is thus of
so comparatively modern an origin, when we recollect that some ot
the most honoured among the old painters had been in England,
and might have given an impulse to native genius, if any existed.
Holbein, More, Vandyke, and Rubens, besides Lely and Kneller,
men of inferior mark, it might naturally be supposed, would by
their exarr,ple have called up a race of painters, able in due time
to supersede the necessity of calling in foreign aid. Moreover,
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the works of many
of the most distinguished Italian and Flemish painters had been
brought hither. Henry VIII. had founded a small picture gallery,
to which Charles I. added largely and attractively, while the
nobility of the land expended considerable sums in the purchase
of paintings, the nucleus of not a few of those collections which
still adorn our land. Still none of these things operated to the
development of native talent ; almost another century rolled away,
reckoning from the time of the second Charles, before the pencils
of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Wilson showed that
the art of painting had taken root and was springing up in
English soil.
In a valley near the high-road from Exeter to Plymouth, and

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

about five miles from the latter place, stands the picturesque town
of Plympton. The town itself is but small, and though very
prettily situated, now has little to show that would interest the
lover of antiquities, except the ruined walls of the ancient keep,
or circular tower of its castle, once of considerable magnitude, and
erected upon a lofty, conical-shaped, artificial mound of earth.
Plympton contains about two hundred houses, some of which, in

TTie Town Hall, Plympton High Street.

the principal street, are built on arcades extending over the foot
way. The Town Hall bears the date 1696; it is a substantial
edifice, having a paved court in front, over which is the council-
chamber, supported by circular-headed arches, resting on granite
columns ; a quaint and picturesque character is, by these
architectural introductions, given to the street.

6 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
The parish Church of Plympton is not large, yet sufficiently
apportioned to the wants of the inhabitants. It does not seem to
be of very ancient date, but we learn from Mr. Cotton's MSS. that
it appears to have been originally a chantry-chapel to the Church

Plympton Church.
of Plympton St. Mary, and was first dedicated to St. Thomas a
Becket, and afterwards to St. Mauritius, "Knight and Martyr,"
as Leland designates him, commander ofthe Theban legion in the
time of the Emperor Maximilian, who suffered martyrdom, with

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

the whole of his men, who were Christians, at Agaunum, in Savoy
(now called St. Maurice), in the presence of the emperor, about the
year 296, because they refused to sacrifice to the heathen deities.
The bones of these martyrs were afterwards dug up, and sent into
various countries, where churches were erected to their honour.

« r». «-y-

The Room i?i ¦which Reynolds -was bom.
The church stands on the north side of the town, near the castle,
and has a square tower of rather imposing elevation, somewhat
less than one hundred feet in height.
Plympton, despite the picturesque beauty of the surrounding
scenery, would scarcely have induced a traveller to turn aside

from his path, and linger awhile amid its old-fashioned dwellings,
if there had not been born and reared among them one whose
name is the most prominently connected with the English School
of painting : Plympton will not be forgotten while the genius of
Reynolds survives to keep it in remembrance ; but though it may
fairly boast of his birth, it is London that has more reason to be
proud of his residence.
The date of Sir Joshua's birth is July 16, 1723, about two months
after the death of Sir Godfrey Kneller, who, for many years, had
monopolised the patronage of the great as a portrait-painter. The
father, grandfather, and two uncles of Reynolds were all in holy
orders, and the first-mentioned of these was master of the
Grammar School of Plympton, founded and endowed in 1658.
The building was erected in 1 664. The school-room is a spacious
apartment, with large perpendicular windows of five lights at the
east and west ends, three square-headed windows of three lights,
with granite mullions and transoms, in the south wall, and with
two similar windows in the north wall. The master's desk is
placed at the east end under the Avindow, and over the entrance
door, in the centre of the north wall, is a small gallery. The
ceiling of plain unornamented wood, and the bare whitewashed
walls, give a mean appearance to a room of fair and goodly pro
portions. Its nakedness is only relieved by a rude cornice of no
sculptural pretensions, and by two shields coarsely emblazoned
with the armorial bearings of the families of Hele and Maynard,
the original founders of the school ; the former being the real
benefactor, as bequeathing certain property for charitable purposes.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

the latter, a "serjeant learned in the law," was Hele's trustee.
Underneath the school-room is an open arcade, or cloister, with a
range of six granite columns, having square capitals, and sur
mounted by pointed arches, on the south side. In the centre of
the north wall is an ancient-looking doorway, with an oaken door

The School-rooiu .

leading to the staircase, on the wall of which, as you ascend, might
lately have been discovered, although it is now obliterated by
whitewash, some faint resemblance to the name of Reynolds. In
the school-room above, another artist, R. B. Haydon, who was
c

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.

also a pupil in this institution, has inscribed his name ; the signa
ture is much more legible than that of his predecessor.
A portrait of the Rev. S. Reynolds, painted by his son at an
early age, which was formerly in the possession of his great-
nephew, the late Dean of Cashel, is now in the Cottonian Library
at Plymouth : it is in profile, and represents a countenance placid
and benignant, fully bearing out the known character of this
excellent but simple-minded man.
Of eleven children, five of whom died in their infancy, claiming
the paternity of the worthy schoolmaster, Joshua was the seventh.
Most of his biographers have noted the mistake in the registry of
his baptism, where it is written Joseph.
It was while receiving the ordinary education of a boy in his
father's school that young Reynolds first evinced a taste for the
profession in which he became so distinguished. He had acquired
some little knowledge of the rudiments of art from copying the
drawings done by his sisters ; and his inclination received a strong
bias from meeting with the " Jesuit's Perspective," which chanced
to be in his father's possession, and which the child (he was then
only eight years old) eagerly perused, and attempted to apply its
rules in a drawing he made of the Cloisters. On showing it to
his father, the latter exclaimed, " How this exemplifies what the
author of the ' Perspective ' says in his preface ; that by observing
the rules laid down in this book, a man may do wonders, for this
is wonderful." This drawifig, together with another specimen of
the young artist's talents, is carefully preserved in the family of
the Rev. John Palmer, brother of the late Dean of Cashel. The

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

other drawing is the sketch of a bookcase, made at the back of a
Latin exercise ; at the bottom of it his father has written, " Done
by Joshua in school-time, out of pure idleness." Malone speaks
of this drawing being, or having been, in the possession of Lady
Inchiquin, afterwards Marchioness of Thomond, whose maiden
name was Palmer : she was niece to Sir Joshua. He soon began
to try his hand on sketching portraits of his friends. There is an
engraving by S. W. Reynolds (no relative of Sir Joshua) of a

The Cloisters of the Grammar School.
portrait ot the Rev. Thomas Smart, Vicar ot Maker, near Mount
Edgecumbe, who died in 1735 ; consequently it must have been
painted before the artist was twelve years of age ; in composition,
drawing, and expression, the work looks like that of the veriest
tyro, but we can somehow fancy it to be a faithful likeness. The
tradition in Mr. Smart's family is, that this portrait was painted
in a boat-house on Cremyll beach, under Mount Edgecumbe, on

12 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

canvas which was part of a boat-sail, and by the ordinary colour,
used by ship-painters. It is still in existence, and its present
appearance seems to corroborate these facts. Young Reynolds is
presumed to have been passing the holidays at Mount Edgecumbe,
with one of the sons of Richard Edgecumbe, Esq., who afterwards
became the first Lord Edgecumbe, the "Dick Edgecumbe"
mentioned in Walpole's Correspondence. Mr. Smart was the
tutor of Richard Edgecumbe, and it is said that the artist sketched
the portrait on his thumb-nail while in church, and afterwards
transferred it to the canvas in the boat-house. Mr. Edgecumbe
was the patron of the borough of Plympton, which accounts for
the intimacy that existed between the boys. The picture for many
years hung at Mount Edgecumbe, and was subsequently sent to
Plympton, and placed in one of the rooms of the corporation, of
which Mr. Smart was a member. At a later period it was returned
to its former locality, and was presented by its then owner to
Mr. Smart's descendant and representative, D. Boger, Esq., of
Wolsdon, Cornwall.
Jacob Catts' curious " Book of Emblems," a copy of which was
brought over to this country by Reynolds's paternal great-grand
mother, was another favourite book of study and reference with
him at this time ; but that which afforded him most pleasure, and
greatly influenced him in his desire to become a painter, was
Richardson's " Essay on the Theory of Painting " — a book full of
most interesting remarks and philosophical truths. The perusal
of this treatise fixed the destiny of the youthful artist.
He was now approaching a period of his life when it was

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. . 13

necessary to determine something with respect to the future. His
father appears to have hesitated for some time as to whether he
should practise the art of healing, or the art of painting. By the
advice of Mr. Cranch, a gentleman of Plympton, and a friend of
Reynolds's family, it was at last decided to gratify the youth's
inclination towards the latter profession, and to place him with
Hudson, who was then looked upon as the best painter of portraits
in England. Young Reynolds himself remarked, when the propo,-
sition was made to him respecting the choice of a profession, that
he " would rather be an apothecary than an ordinary painter ; but
if he could be bound to an eminent master, . he should choose the
latter." He had heard of Hudson's fame, and was perfectly
satisfied with the arrangement, and in October, 1740, he joined
his future master.
It was a piece of good fortune to Mr. Reynolds to have a son so
gifted — one, too, who had discernment and ambition enough to
determine to serve only under the best master that England could
then show. The youth, under any tutorage, would doubtless have
become a great painter ; but the consciousness that the eye of the
first artist in the country was over him must have greatly stimu
lated his exertions. The expectations of his family as to what
might be his future success in a pecuniary point were not large,
whjatever honour they expected him to derive from his profession.
Hudsori was, to receive, as we learn from a letter to Mr. Cutliffe,
the family attorney, the sum of .;^ 120 as a premium with his
pupil, of which one-half was to be paid by the father, and the
remainder, it is presumed from, the following extract, the youth

1 4 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
engaged to pay when he was in a position to earn money for
himself: —
" Joshua is very sensible of his happiness, as being under such
a master, in such a family, in such a city, and in such an employ
ment—and all by your means. As I have, in a manner, one-half
of the money ready provided, if it please God I live so long as to
the end of those four years, I have writ this post to my daughter,
to desire her to fiirnish Joshua with the other half, till he is alle to
repay her, and to write to you to that purpose, and I doubt not she
will do so, because it is in a manner her own proposal ; for she
said in a former letter to me, that she would much rather furnish
Joshua with £to than he should be put to a calling at which he
would get ^50 a year less than he might at another that was
better." The gratitude of Mr. Reynolds to his friend, Mr. Cutliffe, shows
itself in every letter he writes. In another he says : — " I ought
surely to have writ to you upon account of the character which
Mr. Hudson was pleased to give of my son, not to inform you of
.anything, but to tell you that your favours were beyond thanks,
and beyond expression  Mr. Warmel, the painter, was at
my house on Sunday last ; he looked upon two or three of Joshua's
drawings about the room ; he said not one of Mr. Treby's rooms
had furniture equal to this; that they all deserved frames and
glasses. You may see some of them at Molly's. .... I am
glad I am able in this manner to express my thanks to you for
what you have done for Joshua. You have done me a Javour Jit Jor
a man oJ a thousand a year" And again, on the 3rd of August,

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. I5
1742, he writes : — "As for Joshua, nobody, by his letters to me,
was ever better pleased in his employment, in his master, in
everything. ' While I am doing this I am the happiest creature
alive,' is his expression. How he goes on ('tis plain that he
thinks he goes on very well) you'll be better able to inform me. I
don't forget to whom I owe all this happiness, and I hope he won't
either." The arrangement with Hudson was that he should take his
pupil for four years, with the option of discharging him befoi'e the
expiration of the term, if he thought proper. Notwithstanding the
favourable prospects of mutual satisfaction which the connection at
first promised, and even for the first two years or so, it was not of
longer duration, for it is alleged that the progress which Reynolds
made rou.sed the jealousy of his master, who soon found an oppor
tunity of dismissing him. Hudson was so far from being dissatisfied
with his improvement, according to Beechy's " Memoir of Reynolds,"
that, on seeing the portrait of an elderly female servant of the
family, which his pupil had painted, he is said to have been jealous
of the rising talent, and to have predicted the future success of .
young Reynolds. This picture having been accidentally seen
among the portraits in Hudson's gallery, obtained so universal a
preference over them, that the jealousy which a first view of the
work had excited, was maiterially strengthened by this unfavourable
competition ; and the mortified painter, who had long been without
a rival, could not calmly contemplate the possibility of finding one
in the person of a juvenile proficient in the art, who had so lately
applied to him for instruction. When a man attempts to commit

1 6 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

an act of injustice, he very frequently sets about it in a disingenuous,
circumlocutory way, that greatly enhances the injury. Hudson
had no real ground of complaint to make of his pupil, and even
his alleged misconduct was no justification of the punishment, if
so it can be called, which followed ; it was a paltry subterfuge to
conceal the real motive for getting rid of his young rival. He
requested the latter to take apicture to Vanhaaken, an artist whom
Hudson employed to paint the draperies to his portraits, but the
evening being wet when the order was given, it was not executed
till early the next morning, yet in sufficient time for the purpose
required. When Hudson heard of the delay, he charged his pupil
with disobeying his commands, and ordered him to leave his
house at once. Young Reynolds entreated him to submit the case
to his father ere proceeding to this extremity ; but the master was
inexorable, so the youth departed, and took up a temporary abode
at the house of an uncle in the Temple, from which he wrote to his
father to acquaint him with the circumstances of his dismissal
The result of this quarrel was that Reynolds, now twenty years of
age, returned into Devonshire, and, jointly with his two unmarried
sisters, took a house at Plymouth Dock, as Devonport was then
called, where he at once embarked in his profession of portrait-
painting, and soon found abundance of sitters, and his father,
writing to Mr. Cutliffe, says, " Joshua is painting at the Dock.
He has drawn twenty already, and has ten more bespoke."
Northcote, when referring to this period of Reynolds's life, which
the latter told Malone he considered " as so much time thrown
away," observes : — " At that interval of supposed negligence, I

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 17
apprehend he was still making his observations on what he saw,
and forming his taste ; and although there were but few works 'of
art, as I have before noticed, within his reach in that county, still
there were the works of one artist, who, notwithstanding he was
never known beyond the boundary of the county in which he lived
and died, was yet a man of first-rate abilities ; and I have heard
Sir Joshua himself speak of this painter's portraits, which are to
be found only in Devonshire, with the highest respect : he not
only much admired his talents as an artist, but in all his early
practice evidently adopted his manner in regard to painting a
head, and retained it in some degree ever after. This painter
was William Gandy, of Exeter, whom I cannot but consider as
an early master of Reynolds." William Gandy was the son of
James Gandy, a pupil of Vandyck, whose copies have been
frequently confounded with the originals of his great master, and
sold as works of the latter. He went over to Ireland from Exeter,
where he was born in 1619, with the Duke of Ormond, and there
are in that country many family portraits painted by him, which
are very little inferior to those of Vandyck. His son William is
said even to have excelled his father ; but though Kneller wanted
him to join him in London, he preferred to remain where he was ;
and being addicted to habits of dissipation, he died in great dis
tress. His portraits, however, show the great talent he possessed.
The death of Reynolds's father, in 1746, was a severe trial to the
son. The good and estimable old man had always shown himself
a most indulgent and affectionate parent, ever solicitous for the
welfare of his children, but especially for that one concerning
D 

i8 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
whom he seemed to have a presentiment that he was destined to
give a name of distinction to his family.
Reynolds, like most other artists desirous of excelling, was very
anxious to visit Rome, and about three years after the decease of
his father an opportunity to do so, though by a somewhat cir
cuitous route, presented itself, which was too favourable to be
neglected. Among the acquaintances whom he made at Plymouth
Dock, through his intimacy with the Edgecumbe family, was that
of the Hon. Augustus Keppel, then a captain in the navy, and
afterwards Viscount Keppel. This officer having received an
appointment in the Mediterranean, offered the young artist a
passage in his ship, the Centurion, bound in the first instance
for Algiers. They sailed on the nth of May, 1749, touching first
at Lisbon, then at Gibraltar, and afterwards proceeding to Algiers.
Keppel's mission to the latter place was soon settled ; he then set
sail for Minorca, where his companion met with an accident by
falling, while on horseback, over a precipice, severely cutting his
lip ; the effect of this is seen in almost all existing portraits of
Reynolds. This circumstance delayed him some time at Port
Mahon, but he was not idle with his pencil : several persons sat to
him while recovering from, his fall. As soon as he was able to
prosecute his journey, he took leave of his kind friend. Commodore
Keppel, engaged a passage to Leghorn, and thence proceeded to
Rome. Speaking of Reynolds's visit to Rome, Allan Cunningham, in
his " Lives of British Painters," remarks that " he longed to see
with his own eyes the glories in art of which he had heard so

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 19
much ; he desired to pay his homage to the princes of the pro
fession, and profit, if possible, by studying their productions. A
visit to the Sistine Chapel confers on an artist that kind of dignity
which studying at a university bestows on a scholar; and one
would imagine, from the importance attached to such a pilgrimage,
that excellence in painting could be acquired like knowledge in
Greek ; but the power to remember is one thing, and the power to
create is another."
On this paragraph Mr. Beechy justly observes : — " It may here
be suggested that Rome is, in fact, something more to the student
in painting than an imaginary source of inspiration ; it is a
practical school for the study of art, and for those important
branches of it, in particular, which alone can give it the intellectual
value which constitutes its greatest attraction. Sir Joshua gained
more from the Sistine Chapel than the empty distinction of having
visited it ; and if others have returned from it with no larger views
of art than those with which they first may have entered it, the
fault must be attributed to the weakness or the carelessness of the
visitors, and not to the works which they contemplated."
Reynolds passed nearly three years in Italy, the far larger
portion of the time in Rome, but he also visited Genoa, Florence,
Venice, and Bologna. It is remarkable that he should have seen
in these latter cities so little to induce him to prolong his stay in
them, especially in Venice, the great school of colour, that quality
of painting on which so much of his own fame is based. Raffaelle
and Michael Angelo are names that undoubtedly sound greater
than those of Titian and Correggio ; but while Reynolds copied

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS-

and studied the former, his works show a stronger resemblance to
those of the latter ; so that it has been observed, " he admired one
style and painted another ; that with Raffaelle and Michael Angelo,
and the ' great masters,' and the ' grand style ' on his lips, he
dedicated his own pencil to works of a character into which little
of the lofty, and nothing of the divine, could well be introduced."
In his ninth "Discourse" he draws this distinction between
Raffaelle and Titian : they " seemed to have looked at nature for
different purposes ; they both had the power of extending their
view to the whole ; the one looked only for the general effect as
produced by form, the other as produced by colour." And in his
fourth " Discourse," speaking of the Venetian painter, he says,
"though his style is not so pure as that of many other of the
Italian schools, yet there is a sort of senatorial dignity about him,
which, however awkward in his imitators, seems to become him
exceedingly. His portraits alone, from the nobleness and
simplicity of character which he gave them, will entitle him to the
greatest respect, as he undoubtedly stands in the first rank in this
branch of art." And again in his ninth " Discourse," " it is to
Titian we most turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to
colour, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both
the first and the greatest master of this art."
The result of Reynolds's studies in the Italian schools, as applied
to his own style of painting, is thus commented upon by Hazlitt,
perhaps soraewhat too severely, but still with that acuteness and
judgment which distinguish his criticisms upon art. "Sir Joshua
Reynolds," he says, " owed his great superiority over his contem-

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

poraries to incessant practice and habitual attention to nature, to
quick organic sensibility, to considerable power of observation,
and still greater taste in perceiving and availing himself of those
excellences of others which lay within his own work of art. I
can by no means look upon Sir Joshua as having a claim to the
first rank of genius. He would hardly have been a great painter
if other great painters had not lived before him. He would not
have given a first impulse to the art, nor did he advance any part
of it beyond the point where he found it. He did not present any
new view of nature, nor is he to be placed in the same class with
those who did. Even in colour, his pallet was spread for him by
the old masters ; and his eye imbibed its full perception of depth
and harmony of tone from the Dutch and Venetian schools rather
than from nature. His early pictures are poor and flimsy. He
indeed learned to see the finer qualities of nature through the
works of art, which he, perhaps, never would have discovered in
nature itself. He became tich by the accumulation of borrowed
wealth, and his genius was the offspring of taste. He combined
and applied the materials of others to his own purpose with
admirable success ; he was an industrious compiler or skilful
translator, not an original inventor, in art. The art would remain,
in all its essential elements, just where it is if Sir Joshua had
never lived." " He was deficient," adds Allan Cunningham, " in
the lofty apprehension of a subject ; had little power in picturing
out vividly scenes from history or from poetry ; and through this
capital deficiency of imagination was compelled to place in reality
before him what others could bring by the force of fancy."

22 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
Reynolds returned to England in October, 1752, and took the
large house behind No. 104 in St. Martin's Lane, which had
formerly been the residence of Sir James Thornhill, the father-in-
law of William Hogarth, where he at once commenced his career
as a portrait-painter. As might be expected, when he attempted
to put in practice the knowledge he had acquired in Italy, he
found much opposition from those artists who, having themselves
followed a beaten and formal path, could not understand why it
should not content others also ; they could understand neither
his principles nor his practice. His old master, Hudson, was one
of the first to cry out against the young innovator: — "Why,
Reynolds," he cried out, on looking at a picture of a boy which
the latter had recently completed, "you don't paint so well as
when you left England." Ellis, who had studied under Sir God
frey Kneller, and had been much employed as a portrait-painter,
expressed his opinion : — " Ah, Reynolds, this will never answer ;
why you don't paint in the least like Sir Godfrey." But Ellis
proved a false prophet ; Reynolds found that his new style did
answer; it soon attracted attention, and gained admirers; his
studio became the resort of beauty and fashion, to whom the
grace and elegance of his compositions were a novelty. Among
his earliest aristocratic sitters were the second Duke of Devon
shire, and his kind friend. Commodore Keppel. It was also not
long after his settlement in London that he became acquainted
with Dr. Johnson ; and though the two men differed as wide as
the poles in temperament and disposition, — Johnson, "rough and
saturnine," Reynolds, " soft, graceful, and flexible,"— their respect

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 23
and esteem for each other ripened into a friendship firm and
lasting. From St. Martin's Lane Reynolds removed to a larger house.
No. 5, Great Newport Street, where he resided till 1761. By this
time his practice had so increased his means that he was in a
condition to purchase a house for himself ; and finding a suitable
one on the west side of Leicester Square, he bought it, " furnished
it with much taste, added a splendid gallery for the exhibition of
his works, and an elegant dining-room ; and finally taxed his
invention and his purse in the production of a carriage, with
wheels carved and gilt, and bearing on its panels the four seasons „
of the year. Those who flocked to see his new gallery were some
times curious enough to desire a sight of this gay carriage ; and
the coachman, imitating the lacquey who showed the gallery,
earned a little money by opening the coach-house doors. His
sister complained that it was too showy. " What ! " said the
painter, " would you have one like an apothecary's carriage .? "
Round the hospitable and elegant table of the courtly painter
would now assemble many distinguished men of the day : Johnson
and Boswell, Goldsmith and Sterne, Burke, Garrick, Percy,
and others, were frequently his guests. With Burke, Reynolds
was on very intimate terms, and when he could spare time from
his professional engagements, accepted his repeated invitations to
Beaconsfield. It was on the occasion of one of these visits that
Reynolds found the model of his celebrated picture of the " Infant
Hercules strangling the Serpents," executed for the Empress
Catherine of Russia. The model was the child of a stalwart

24

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

Berkshire yeoman. This is undoubtedly the finest ideal work of
our great painter, and has perhaps never been surpassed by
any artist as to colour and general effect.
A list exists, in his own handwriting, of all the persons who sat
to him for their portraits, from 1755 to 1790, which was given by
Mr. Cotton to the public in 1S58, and of which the accompanying

The Iiifa?it Hercules strangling the Serpents.
cut gives a page \n Jac-similc. Mr. Cotton says that this list " may
lead to the authentication of some doubtful or neglected portraits
which still slumber in the housekeeper's room ; and, at all events,
it cannot fail to excite admiration and wonder at the astonishing
amount of work which Sir Joshua must have done each day, and

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 25
at the constant, persevering industry for which he was remarkable."
This catalogue contains nearly fourteen hundred names : what a
portrait-gallery would these pictures make, if all were collected

10
It

under the same roof ! When one recollects the host of celebrated
men and women connected with the public and private histories of
the period, whose names will be found in this list, it may be safely
E

26 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
affirmed that no other painter, ancient or modern, attracted to his
studio such an assemblage of illustrious sitters. In confirmation
of this. Sir Joshua's pocket-book for 1758 contains a list of nearly
eighty portraits : among them the Dukes of Cumberland, Devon
shire, and Lancaster ; the Duchesses of Richmond and Grafton ;
Lords Weymouth, Beauchamp, Sandwich, Morpeth, R. Spencer,
Portland, Portmore, and Strafford ; Ladies E. Keppel, St. Aubyn,
Harrison, B. Hamilton, L. Greville, C. Fox, Stanhope, Standish,
Raymond, Granby, and Coventry, &c., &c.
In 1768 the Royal Academy was founded : Reynolds, it is said,
was rather opposed to its establishment, from a conviction that it
would not answer its purpose, and that the King would withhold
his patronage from it ; but whatever scruples he entertained were
overcome, chiefly by the representations of Benjamin West ; and
when these two painters entered the room where were assembled
the body of artists, thirty in number, who were to form the first
academic association, they all rose up, and greeted Reynolds as
president. " He was affected by the compliment, but declined the
honour till he had talked with Johnson and Burke. He went,
consulted his friends, and having considered the consequences
carefully, then consented." Johnson was appointed Professor of
Ancient Literature, and Goldsmith of Ancient History, honorary
offices which have since been filled by some of our most dis
tinguished literary men.
It was frequently the fashion in those days for portrait-painters
to represent their subjects, or " sitters," allegorically ; especially
was it the case when these were ladies : the custom, which even

Count Ugolino and his Sons.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 27

now is not quite abrogated, is an absurd one, for truth is sacrificed
thereby to mere pictorial display, and the union, so to speak, of
Christian men and .women with heathen gods and goddesses is as
contrary to reason as it is, too often, offensive to good taste. The
first pictures exhibited at the Academy by its first president
were of this class : portraits of the Duchess of Manchester and her
son, as "Diana disarming Cupid;" of Lady Blake, as "Juno
receiving the Cestus irom Venus ; " and of Miss Morris, as " Hope
nursing Love." Like Reynolds's female portraits, almost without
exception, these were distinguished by elegance of design and
beauty of colour ; but the association of living women with fabulous
personages is an error unredeemable, in our opinion, by any
excellences of art, if we are to regard such works as portraits
only; if as compositions, a different verdict might be pronounced
on them. Johnson seems to have met this question but half way
when he wrote — "I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to
heroes and goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that
art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing
tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and con
tinuing the presence of the dead."
The picture of "Ugolino" is one of Reynolds's best known ideal
works. The date of this work is 1773, and it was purchased at the
price of 400 guineas by the Duke of Dorset, whose heirs have it
still in their possession. The subject, borrowed from Dante's
Divina Commedia, is said to have been suggested to the artist by
his friend Goldsmith, who certainly formed a wrong estimate of his
powers when he commended to his graceful and brilliant pencil a

2 8 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

subject so utterly opposed to it. The story of Ugolino requires a
mind differently constituted from that of Reynolds's to do- full
justice to the terrible conceptions of the poet. The painter has
certainly invested it with a horror so intense as to render the
picture truly painful to contemplate; but the principal figure is
wanting in that nobility of expression which Dante has given to
the unfortunate prisoner, and the whole composition has more the
air of melodrama than of real tragedy. Cunningham likens the
count to "a famished mendicant, deficient in any commanding
qualities of intellect, and regardless of his dying children, who
cluster around his knees." To us he seems like one whom utter,
hopeless despair has bereft of reason. The redeeming qualities of
the work are its colour and execution.
In its class, " The Nativity " is a superior work to it, and yet very
far from such as many of the old painters of religious art would
have exhibited. In truth, Reynolds's strength lies not in historical
works, whether secular or sacred, though he painted a considerable
number of such subjects ; he had not the vigour of conception, nor
the imaginative faculty, nor the depth and dignity of feeling
essential to the highest historical painting. The " Nativity," a com
position of thirteen figures, was designed for a stained glass win
dow, placed in the chapel of New College, Oxford. The picture itself
was purchased by the Duke of Rutland for 1,200 guineas, but was
unfortunately destroyed, with eighteen other works by Reynolds,
principally family portraits, by a fire which took place at Belvoir
Castle, the duke's mansion, in 1816. There is nothing grand in
the design of this picture ; the best part is borrowed, and the effect

The Nativity.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. iq
of the light proceeding from the infant Christ is evidently copied
from Correggio's " Night." The great fault, however, of the whole
composition is the prominence given to the angel, seated on clouds ;
it absorbs entirely the spectator's attention, besides dividing the
composition into two almost distinct parts, always an objectionable
practice. Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" was exhibited in 1784. It
is a noble portrait, and little else, for the two spirits of evil standing
by the throne, one armed with a poniard, the other bearing a cup
of poison, occupy mere subordinate places in the composition,
though they aid in the expression of the painter's idea. The
portrait is a striking likeness of the great actress when, " in the
fulness of her beauty and her genius, she awed and astonished her
audience, making Old Drury to show ' a slope of wet faces from
the pit to the roof.' " Face and attitude are alike dignified, and in
such a measure as almost to raise the picture to the position of the
highest historical character — certainly to that of the loftiest
histrionic representation. Reynolds was a true courtier, but not
in the lowest sense of the word ; he complimented Mrs. Siddons
by writing his name on the border ofthe robe. The lady conceiving
it to be only some ornamental work, examined it closely, and
smiled when she found what had been done. The artist, bowing,
remarked, " I could not lose this opportunity of sending my name
to posterity on the hem of your garment." This picture, originally
painted for Mr. W. Smith, of Norwich, is now in the possession of
the Marquis of Westminster.
The "Holy Family" is in the National Gallery : regarding it as

3°

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

an expression of religious Art, nothing could scarcely be more un
satisfactory, while it shows that the colouring of the old Venetian

The Hoi]' Familv.

painters was better understood and carried out by Reynolds than
the feeling and graces of Raffaelle, Da Vinci, or even Correggio.
The best figure in the group is that of the young St. John, which

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 31
is borrowed from the Cupid in Correggio's picture of " Mercury
Teaching Cupid," also in the National Gallery. Charles Lamb
has left on record some severe remarks on this " Holy Family."
He says : — " Here, for a Madonna, Sir Joshua has substituted a
sleepy, insensible, motherless girl ; one so little worthy to have
been selected as the mother of the Saviour, that she seems to have
neither heart nor feeling to become a mother at all. But, indeed,
the race of Virgin Mary painters seem to have been cut up root
and branch at the Reformation. Our artists are too good Pro
testants to give life to the admirable commixture of maternal
tenderness with reverential awe and wonder, approaching to
worship, with which the Virgin mothers of L. da Vinci ahd
Raffaelle (themselves, by their divine countenances, inviting men
to worship) contemplate the union of the two natures in the person
of their heaven-born infant." The colouring of this picture is, as
we have intimated, good — or rather it was, for it has in several
parts become impaired ; the execution, however, is not so careful
as we generally find Reynolds's to be.
The influence which the works of Reynolds have exercised upon
our school of painting, but more especially on portraiture, is
universally recognised. With a more comprehensive view of his
art than was shown by his master, Hudson, and his earlier con
temporary, Ramsay, — with more originality of taste, and with far
freer execution,— he showed how portraiture might be generalised,
so as to identify the individual with the dignity of his intellect,
while his fancy almost elevated it, as we have endeavoured to
show in the portrait of Mrs. Siddons, above the rank usually

32 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
assigned to it. In costume, he selected and adopted what was
most conformable to the character of his subject, without implicitly
following or offending the prejudices then prevalent. His female
portraits especially are designed with an exquisite feeling of taste
and elegance, while there are few among his most celebrated
predecessors who have displayed so great a variety in their com
positions. In endeavouring to make his " sitters " conform to his
notions of what was right, he frequently found much difficulty,
and at length gave it as his opinion — one which, even at this day
when good art is better understood than it was nearly a century
ago, is still incontrovertible — " that a relish for the higher excel
lences of painting is an acquired taste, which no man ever
possessed without long cultivation, and great labour and atten
tion." He laboured hard to reduce the science of his art, then but
little understood, to something like certainty, both in his pictures
and by his writings, proving, as John Burnet, one of his greatest
admirers and most able critics, remarks, "That every picture must
be conducted upon a winning and losing scheme, and that the
portions of most consequence preserve their superiority only by
sacrificing every other part to their advantage."
The rich and pure colouring of Sir Joshua's works has always
been the subject of admiration with those who knew them in their
primitive state : neither must the praise then bestowed be withheld
at this distance of time, though, unhappily, too many of his pictures
now come under the denomination of " faded beauties." Reynolds
was a great experimentalist, and, in the pursuit of excellence, was
not content with the ordinary routine of practice, but sought out

Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 3 3
methods not previously known, and worked accordingly— too
often, as it has subsequently been discovered, to the injury of his
fame. Even these " shadowy glories," however, have a value far
beyond that of many later works whose authors have risen up to
rank and reputation.
To estimate aright what Reynolds accomplished, we ought to
remember that, at the time of his appearance, the Arts were at a
very low ebb in this country ; and he had to lament, as a conse
quence, the want of a better education in his profession. The
basis of all superior art is ability in drawing the human figure,
and knowledge of its anatomy; the valuable days of Reynolds's
youth, the season when it is best, if not alone, acquired, passed
without his obtaining this, the most essential part of early study.
The want of the acquirement was felt throughout his life; for,
owing to this unavoidable neglect, he never atterapted the exe
cution of works which required great power of the hand over
the form, without an exposure of its deficiency. Even his studies
in the galleries of Italy availed not to supply what he lacked, for
his attention was more directed to the style and colouring of the
great masters, their expression and manner oitrea.tmg chiaroscuro,
than to the form and composition of their subjects. The schools
of Venice and Florence found more favour with him than those of
Rome or Bologna; he looked at and admired Michael Angelo,
Raffaelle, and Caracci, but his heart and his sympathies were with
other idols— Titian, Correggio, and even the Dutchman Rembrandt;
these were the art-divinities to whom he bowed down, and at
whose altars he offered up the sincerest wor.ship. The painter who
F

3+ HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
was the intimate friend and associate of Johnson, and whom Burke
eloquently eulogised after death, must have possessed no ordinary
genius. The history of our great painter shows, as usual, "that the child
is father to the man," and how little comprehension parents some
times have of their children's soul-struggles. His continuous
sketching and neglect of dull school-routine work were considered

1>-^ -i

The Grammar School, and House in which Reynolds r.wf born.

as waste time by his father, when he wrote on the back of one of
his drawings, " Done by Joshua, out of pure idleness." How
frequently such earnest training has been thus stigmatised by
parents who, not understanding the phrase, "As the twig is
bent the tree inclines," imagine that they are to bend it as
they will !

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

35

Foreign travel expanded Reynolds's mind, and his remarks on
the great continental galleries evince the judgment of a sound
critic, combined with that knowledge of the practical part of art
which few who write on art possess. He returned in October,
1752, and established himself in St. Martin's Lane, as already

Reynolds's House, Leicester Square.

stated. At this period the locality was a favourite one for artists,
and in a court at the lower part ofthe lane was the first " jomt-
stock" Academy supported by English artists for their own use,
and which led to the foundation of the Royal Academy on the

36 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

ioth of December, 1768, with Reynolds as its president, knighted
on the occasion.
At that time, however, he resided at No. 47, Leicester Square,
where his gallery, after his death, became the cutting-out room of
a celebrated German tailor, who resided in the house, which after
wards was used for the Western Literary Institution, and is now
an auction-room for literary property and works of art. In those
days the square was aristocratic — nay, pastoral, for it occasionally
rejoiced in the name of " Leicester Fields," and was as much in
the outskirts of London as Bayswater is in the present day. The
square itself was a pleasant garden, and our sketch of the house
was taken thirty years ago, when trees flourished there, and a
statue of George IL, in the centre, was opposite his windows, as
if to remind the President of the Royal Academy that art had
triumphed over a sovereign who hated poets and painters.
His studio is described by Cunningham as " octagonal, some
20 ft. long, 16 broad, and about 15 ft. high. The window was
small and square, and the sill 9 ft. from the floor. His sitters'
chair moved on castors, and stood above the floor a foot and a
half ; he held his palettes by a handle, and the sticks of his brushes
were eighteen inches long. He wrought standing, and with great
celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at nine, entered his study at
ten, examined designs, or touched unfinished portraits, till eleven
brought a sitter ; painted till four, then dressed, and gave the
evening to company." Then came " the rough abundance " of his
dinners, and the noisy hilarity of his guests ; " for," says North
cote, " as Sir Joshua's companions were chiefly men of genius, they

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 37
were often disputatious and vehement in argument." But age
came, and death thinned the numbers of the talented friends who
were once his frequent companions. Cunningham has a melancholy
story of his last days, when a little bird he had tamed, and talked
with as a friend, flew from an open window, and Reynolds roamed
for hours about Leicester Square in a vain search for the feathered
favourite, rendered doubly dear to the old man by his loneliness.
He died on the 23rd of February, 1792, and a long procession of
ninety-two carriages followed the hearse that conveyed his body
from the house he had so long inhabited to the crypt of St. Paul's.
There, among other great names in art, the last resting-place of
Reynolds may be noted. Our cut shows the grave-stones as they
lie thickly in this spot. What names are upon them to call up
pleasant memories of men who have made English art famous !
Lawrence, West, Dance, are on the upper stones ; Turner, Barry,
Reynolds, on the lower ; Fuseli, Dawe, and Opie, beside them. It
is sacred ground, and no other spot can show an equal number of
names, all noted in a great and ennobling profession, " at rest from
their labours." Reynolds's tomb is the third from the spectator's
left in the front row of slabs. There is a solemn influence over the
whole scene — the stronger, perhaps, for the solitude and gloom
which the visitor experiences immediately after the turmoil of the
busiest of London thoroughfares, which he has just left to descend
into these vaults.
We bid adieu to the grave of our great countryman, remember
ing the noble epitome of his character pronounced by his eloquent
friend, Edmund Burke — " In full influence of foreign and domestic

fame, admired by the expert in Art, and by the learned in Science,
courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and cele
brated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and
candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation ; nor
was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the
most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse."
A statue, by Flaxman, is placed in the corridor beneath the dome
of St. Paul's. It represents Re}'nolds in his robes as President,
with the volume of his Lectures in his hand. It is an honest statue
of an Englishman, by a true artist, who, poetic in the highest
sense, could also feel the beauty of simple truth where truth is
chiefly valuable.

Crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.

H.nrarth's House, Chisivick.

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

|0 artist ever deserved the name ofa "national painter"
more truthfully than William Hogarth. The queen in
whose reign he began his career had declared to one
of her earliest parliaments that " her heart was entirely English,"
and her saying was commemorated on a medal. Hogarth's
heart was equally English ; his works are his medals, and will be
as enduring as the medal of his sovereign. As time passes, and
criticism expands, he is valued the more as the honest exponent
of the manners of his own era, and as an artist who, less than
any other, was indebted to foreign influences. His style was

40

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

essentially his own, the fruit of his own observation ; his works
were the transcripts of what he saw around him. He is entirely
original ; and although his originality was both strongly defined
and popular, it was so singularly excellent that he left no imita
tors who deserve to be remembered. He "founded no school,"
so to speak, for none but he could be its master. Wilkie made

All/ flap c a la Modt

the nearest approach, but, like Hogarth, he was too much of an
original to be a copyist ; his works have touches of Hogarthian
humour, but they possess the different qualities of a different
mind. None but themselves can be their parallel.
The ability of Hogarth as a painter was questioned in his own
day : there is no question now raised as to his ability as designer.

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

4'

painter, or engraver. The series of the six pictures of the
" Marriage a la Mode " are in the National Gallery, and the other
best-known series are " The Rake's Progress," in the Soane
Museum, and " The Harlot's Progress." Of the first of these
three we furnish a reduced copy of one of the plates. It has been
said that the comico-satirical vein of Hogarth, no less than his

The Rake s Fi ogi ess.
tragico-satirical vein, are best e^^emplified in this series, and it
will well repay the trouble of making the entire series a study,
by a careful comparison of the pictures themselves with the
artist's own engravings from them. Hogarth has written rather
than painted with the brush. Look upon this reduced copy of
perhaps the most careful picture in the series of "The Rake's
Progress." His caricatures have always, more or less, a serious
G

42 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS-

purpose, and every part, no less than every object, is made sub
servient to the moral to be inculcated.
What strikes the careful observer of Hogarth's works is the
utter absence of anything like a borrowed incident in any one of
them. Story, character, and treatment are entirely his own. He
is as original in his treatment with the brush as De Foe is with the
pen. In both there is the same strongly-marked originality ; the
meaning is never obscure, and, in a satirist, this is no small merit.
This is particularly the case in the three series just referred to, as
in his "Enraged Musician," his "March to Finchley," in his
" Beer Lane " and his " Gin Lane ; " " Morning," " Noon," "Even
ing," and " Night," are no less full of true incident ; and, though
all are strictly caricatures, the laying bare of the vices and weak
nesses of mankind is done with so unsparing a hand that the
moral tone of the picture becomes its leading characteristic. As
in Juvenal, the occasional coarseness of the treatment is forgotten
in contemplating the truth of the satire.
Even in his engravings the originality of his powerful genius is
visible ; they are painter's engravings, not possessing the mere
accurate line of mechanical art, but abounding in vigour and effect.
His manly independence of thought accompanied him in all his
works ; and the nation generally was taught wisdom by his truth-
telling histories on canvas and on copper of the follies and vices
of the last century : —
"His pictured morals charm the mind.
And thro' the eye coirect the heart."
Toward the close of his career he had prospered sufficiently to

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

43

become the master of a town and country-house ; the latter a
bequest to his wife from her father. Sir James Thornhill, serjeant-
painter to the king, who, though originally objecting to his
daughter's clandestine marriage with Hogarth, ultimately learned
to value his great talent and unflinching integrity. Hogarth, for
a long period before his death, lived in a good house in Leicester
Square, then one of the best localities
in London, and inhabited by Frederick,
Prince of Wales, son of George II.
There exists a very curious print of the
square at that period, showing the
prince borne in his sedan towards St.
James's, attended by halberdiers and
his suite. In one corner of the view
Hogarth's house is distinguishable by
the sign of "the Golden Head" over
the door. We give thus much of the
print. The "head" was cut by Ho
garth himself in cork ; and all who are
familiar with his later engravings will
remember the imprint, "Published at
the Golden Head in Leicester Fields."
Mrs. Hogarth sold his works here
after his decease. The house was greatly altered since Hogarth's
days, and incorporated with the Sabloni^re Hotel, which occupied
the corner of Green Street adjoining.
The house at Chiswick was that in which Sir James Thornhill

Hogaiih's House, Leicester Square.

44 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

resided at the tirae of his daughter's elopement with Hogarth. It
is gloomy with high walls ; long walls of brick bound the way to
it from the main street of the village. In the days of Anne it was
far from the metropolis, but now it is as much a London suburb as
Islington was then. Large as the house appears, it is really some
what sraall, for it is all frontage, and only one room deep, without
any back windows. The garden is not larger than such a house
would require, and the sraall stable at its further extremity has
over it a roora Hogarth used as a studio. The palette of the
painter is still religiously preserved by
the Royal Academicians of London.
It is peculiar in its forra, and we en
grave it as a curious relic of the artist.
£[og iiette. Against the garden wall are two
narrow upright slabs of stone, commemorating the graves of his
dog and bird. The words upon the former— " Life to the last
enjoyed, here Pompey lies" — are a satirical paraphase on the
epitaph to Churchill, the satirist, in Dover church, with whom he
had passed some years of friendship, but who had bitterly attacked
Hogarth at the close of his career ; not, however, without provo
cation on the part of the latter.
Hogarth was in St. Bartholomew's parish in 1697, and he died
on the 26th of October, 1764. In Chiswick churchyard the painter
reposes, and he is not the only artist buried there. Loutherbourg
rests under a most heavy and arabitious monument ; a slab against
the wall near it records the name of Jaraes Fittler, the engraver ;
and WiUiara Sharpe, another of our best English engravers, was

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

45

buried, by his desire, near Hogarth. The tomb of the latter
artist is a not ungraceful structure, exhibiting on one side Garrick's
well-known rhyming epitaph: a siraple record on the east side
notes the death of Hogarth, in October, 1764, at the age of sixty-
seven, and his wife in November, 1789, at the age of eighty. His
sister's death is recorded on the south side, in August, 1771, at the
age of seventy ; and that of Mary Lewis, his niece, who acted as
saleswoman at his house in Leicester Square, and who died in
1808, at the age of eighty-eight. The other face ofthe monument
has an inscription to his mother-in-law, the widow of Sir Jaraes
Thornhill, who was first buried in this grave, in 1757. This
monument had fallen into much decay ; but it was admirably re
stored, at the cost of WiUiara Hogarth, of Aberdeen, in 1856.
All honour to his northern namesake's liberality and taste !

Hogarth's Tomb, Chiswick.

Schomberg House., PaU-3faII : fhe Residence of Gainshorongh.

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A.

RITISH ART is well typified in the person of Gains
borough. His earliest studies were in his native Suffolk
fields ; his latest in the metropolis, where his talent
assuraed its highest position. About all his works there is a
striking earnestness, and the discrimination of true genius, which
casts no di.shonest reflex from courtly to cottage life. Gains
borough's peasants are true peasants, they are not the refined and
unnatural beings who seem but aristocrats in disguise, such as
occasionally eraanate from the ateliers of fashionable artists, and
which never existed but in their fertile brains. Gainsborough's

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 47

cottage children can be appreciated for their truth, by cottagers as
well as connoisseurs in art ; they bear the impress of nature — the
same nature that laughs in such abundance of beauty in his rich
landscapes. Gainsborough's boyish years were spent at Sudbury, in Suffolk,
where he was born, in 1727. His early bias was so strongly
towards art that he was allowed to follow it. His sketches were
of the most vigorous and truthful kind. At the early age of
fourteen he left his native place for London, that he might there
obtain the instruction he required to finish what nature had begun.
He studied under two artists, who are well known from the
drawings they contributed to the adornment of the editions of
popular authors, published in the earlier half of the last century.
One was Francis Hayraan, a friend and companion of Hogarth ;
the other was Henry Gravelot. They were industrious men, but
" the ingenious Mr. Hayman," as the booksellers often termed him,
and Gravelot, the designer of mythic groups for encyclopaedias,
were not the men to do much for the genius of Gainsborough,
except to teach him the mere manipulation of art — a valuable
thing in its way to a country lad, but not of sufficient importance
to affect his style. He returned to his father's house after four
years' residence in London, and went back to Nature as his
schoolraistress. Before he reached his majority he married; the
match was not so imprudent as it at first sight appears: the
young lady had an annuity of two hundred pounds, and the rent
of the house they first inhabited at Ipswich was but six pounds a
year. At Ipswich he remained for many years, but was induced

48 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
about the year 1758 to go to the then great seat of fashion — Bath.
He was now thirty-one years of age, his portraits procured him
much employ, his prices were gradually raised, and he became a
prosperous man. From this time his prosperity never ceased, and
the calm tenor of his way leaves nothing for the biographer to
record, except that he left Bath for London in 1774; coming to
one of the best houses in Pall Mall, and dividing some share of
the fashionable patronage bestowed on the president of the Royal
Academy. A prosperous man's career is soon told.
Gainsborough's personal appearance was striking ; he was a
noble, gentlemanly man. His relaxation was music, in which he
was a proficient; he would part with money or pictures for a
favourite violin ; and his house was always open to the musical
professions. The profoundest feelings of his nature could be
elated by " the concord of sweet sounds ; " and a tale is told of the
painter and Colonel Hamilton being once together, when the
colonel, who was a first-rate violinist, played so exquisitely, that
tears of pleasure rolled down the cheeks of the excited artist, who
rewarded hira by the gift of one of his best pictures, with which no
money could previously induce him to part.
His studio in Pall Mall was "a most admired disorder" of old
and new sketches, musical instruments, and all the odds and ends
of an artist's room ; after his death his widow arranged his works
therein, which consisted of one hundred and fifty drawings and
fifty pictures.
The house in which Gainsborough resided from 1777 to 1778,
when he died, is one of the most remarkable old houses in London

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. 49

for its connection with men of note. In the painter's time it wa?,
as at present, divided into three tenements ; but it was originally
one large mansion, and named after its first noble resident —
Schomberg House; for here lived King William III.'s favourite
general, Frederick, Duke of Schomberg, who was killed fighting
beside his sovereign at the battle ofthe Boyne, in 1690. His son,
the third and last duke, added various decorations to the house,
and employed an artist naraed Berchett to paint the grand
staircase with landscapes in lunettes. The house was afterwards
the town residence of William, Duke of Cumberland, the hero of
Culloden. He died in this house in 1760. John Astley the
painter succeeded him, and was known by a raore agreeable
cognoraen, " the Beau." He divided the house into three, retain
ing the central part as his own residence, and placed over the
doorway the bas-relief of Painting, which is still to be seen there.
Another " beau " artist succeeded hira in Richard Cosway. Astley
converted the upper story at the back of the house into a con
venient painting-roora of ample proportions, which coramapded a
view over the park, and to this and some other apartments he had
a private staircase ; he termed it his " country-house," and used to
enjoyed his rus in urhe by .shutting hiraself in them whenever he
felt disposed for retireraent and uninterrupted work. In another
part of the building once resided the faraous quack. Dr. Grahara ;
there he conducted his lectures and irapostures on the gullible
English public, who crowded to listen to the doctor's discourses on
the wonderful powers of his specifics, and the virtues of his mud-
baths ; and were received on stated occasions at the doors by
H

50 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
gigantic porters in magnificent liveries, to view the doctor
immersed in his favourite mud, with his wig in the first fashion,
full dressed, and powdered en grande tenue. Beside him, in a full
state of iramersion, ahd an equally magnificent coiffure, was
Eraraa Lyons — afterwards Lady Hamilton, and the "ruling
spirit" of Admiral Nelson. Grahara at this time advertised her as
the " rosy goddess of health," and hired her as a living illustration
to one of his lectures on " Health and Beauty." Here her loveli
ness attracted the notice of Romney the royal academician, and
other artists, who, as well as Hayley the poet, all delineated
or praised her beauty ; here she becarae acquainted with Mr.
Greville, the nephew of Sir WiUiara Hamilton, and ultimately
becarae the wife of the latter. This portion of Schoraberg House
was afterwards the residence of Mr. Thoraas Payne, the eminent
bookseller, and is now converted into the larger drapery esta
blishraent of Messrs. Harding & Co.
The eastern wing of this house was pulled down in 1852 ; the
western wing is still intact, and this was the portion tenanted by
Gainsborough, who died in a back roora on the second floor. His
last desire was to be at peace with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who
carae to his bedside in time to see his happy and very professional
end. His last words were, "We are all going to heaven, and
Vandyck is of the company."
The painter's grave is marked by a large flat slab in the isolated
churchyard of Kew. It is no unpleasant spot, for trees shadow it,
and a free air is around; it is a raore agreeable pilgriraage to
perforra than that to the place of greater honour, the crypt of

St. Paul's, where so many of his brethren lie. He desired to be
buried by his friend Kirby the artist, and author of a work on
perspective, whose gravestone is close to the church wall.
Reynolds and Sheridan saw him placed as he wished. He
desired that his name only should be cut upon the stone ; it
is therefore simply inscribed " Thoraas Gainsborough, Esq., died
August the 2nd, 1788, aged 61 years." His widow reposes with
him, and her death is thus recorded, "Margaret Gainsborough,
wife of the above Thoraas Gainsborough, died December the 17th,
1798, in the 72nd year of her age." The gravestone occupies the
centre of our sketch : it is a plain slab, without ornaraent or
decoration of any kind.

Gainsboroiig'h'' s Qj-ave.

i

m «L

¦.. f ['

'I

' r ; 1

( f

J

';""£.:

6oj7£'(3i'''j House.

RICHARD COSWAY, R.A.
|NCIENT art seems to have known no such persons
as " fashionable painters :" men followed Art then
because they felt their genius impel thera to the
course ; and they were rewarded by farae or fortune, as their
works corapelled patrons to reverence the talent they displayed.
Their genius made the laws which all others have followed : and
how powerful they were in their strength of mind, and pure
independence of action, our rauseuras and galleries of art can
show. " Fashionable artists," butterflies of an era, are of a

RICHARD COSWAY. 53
totally different genus ; called into practice by the sickly taste of
over-refinement, they trim nature as a Dutch gardener does his
trees, with a foolish notion of improving her ; yet although their
errors often are solely on the side of elegance, they are offensive
to educated tastes by an exaggeration of refinement and beauty,
and their works consequently do not possess ' the vigour and
vitality which can carry them beyond the patronage of their
own day.
Cosway, with much ability, and with a host of friends araong
the titled and wealthy— commanding the highest prices, and
living as luxuriously as a prince, is already more than half
forgotten. A refined draughtsraan, and a patient manipulator, his
works suited the boudoir of the beauty, or the cabinet of the
dilettanti ; but the people of this world are fashioned in a
rougher mould, and the " faultless monsters " of the pencil, with
their conventional prettiness, raust endure the fate of other
" Cynthias of the minute ;" they are to art what the rhyraes of a
" Rosa Matilda " are to poetry — insipidity is the most fatal
quality in either art; the errors of power are more readily for
given by the world than those of weakness. Between Barry and
Cosway how great is the distance ; yet the former starved over
his great works, while the latter lived nobly on his little ones.
They pass from the scene of their trials or their pleasures, and
an unbiassed justice reverses the doom under which they lived.
It must not, however, be imagined that Cosway's talent is here
denied— he had much ; but he had not that higher gift of genius
that will give enduring fame to an artist's work after his death,

54 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
though it obtain for him friends and fortune during his life.
These remarks more naturally arise when speaking of hira,
because his position was so eminently above other and greater
English artists. His career was a remarkable one, and might
have secured enduring farae had he been less self-satisfied, and
less under the influence of the false " refineraents " of a taste that
strove to " add a perfurae to the violet." Brought up in Devon
shire, he seems to have led the life of an ordinary country lad ;
neglecting the teaching of his father, a schoolmaster at Tiverton
(where Richard was born in 1 740), and taking to drawing at all
opportunities, by the tirae he had reached the age of thirteen he
had shown so much ability that he was placed under Hudson, the
master of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the expense being defrayed by a
rich uncle until he was enabled to obtain employment, which
soon came ; for his drawings were always possessed of that
refinement of chiaroscuro and minuteness of finish that chiefly
delight the half-educated patrons of art. He was employed to
make drawings of heads for shops, fancy miniatures, subjects for
snuff-boxes, for the jewellers ; " and," says J. T. Sraith, " from
the raoney he gained, and the gaiety of the company he kept, he
rose from one of the dirtiest of boys to one of the smartest of
men." Life was henceforth one long success to him. He studied no
more of art than would enable hira to please the tastes of his
patrons, and they carae in never-ceasing succession. Wealth
followed rapidly to the courtly artist, and he spent it lavishly on
his establishment, which soon rivalled that of a nobleman, tie

RICHARD COSWAY. 55

delighted in dress to an extent that made hira the subject of
caricature. The best of these were drawn by Dighton, engraved
in mezzotinto by Earlom, and published by Bowles and Carver,
then the most popular print-publishers. It is called " The
Macaroni Painter," and represents Cosway in the most fashion
able costume of the day, as worn by that class of fops then called
" Macaronis " (from a style of dress imported by a silly English
nobleman from Italy), eraployed on the portrait of another fop
even more extravagantly dressed. Smith has left us his remem
brance of Cosway, " full dressed, in his sword and bag, with a
small three-cornered hat on the top of his powdered toupee, and a
mulberry silk coat profusely embroidered with scarlet straw
berries." His marriage with a lady born in Italy, Maria Hadfield, whose
parents had been hotelkeepers, and had becorae wealthy,
increased his taste for display ; for she gave large parties, to
which the nobility and the heir-apparent came. On the death
of her father, her mother returned to England, and introduced her
daughter to Angelica Kaufraann, and thus she became known to
Cosway. She was herself an excellent artist, on a par with her
husband, and, like him, attached solely to the extreme refinements
of art. Their house is described as most luxuriously furnished,
overloaded with buhl and raarqueterie, carpeted and hung with
the best products from the looms of Persia and France ; sculpture,
bronzes, china, and choice articles of vertu crowded the tables and
cabinets. At this tirae he lived at the corner of Stratford Place,
Oxford Street. To give effect to the entrance to this stately group

56 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
of houses, the architect had placed figures of lions on each side of
the street ; this gave occasion to some wicked wit to draw an
unpleasant comparison between the painter inside, and the lion
outside his residence, in these rhymes : — -
" When a man to a fair for a show brings a lion,
'Tis usual a monkey the sign-post to tie on ;
But here the old custom reversed is seen.
For the lion's without, and the monkey's within.''
Cosway was not happy in all his splendour. He felt the sneers
of his brother artists, who, possessing rauch greater ability, never
secured a tithe of his patronage. As he grew older, he becarae
querulous, and his vanity increased so greatly that he reported
iraaginary conversations he fancied he held with the great of old
who came to compliraent his genius. He desired to be buried
with Rubens, at Antwerp, as the only artist in talent and princely
tastes worthy to be his fellow in the grave ; but fate ordered
otherwise, and he lies in the vaults of Marylebone Church. His
death occurred in 1821, while taking a drive in a carriage, in his
eightieth year. A monuraent was erected to his memory by his
widow, who soon afterwards left England for her native Italy, and
settled at Lodi, where she kept a school; but some time afterwards
she becarae the superior of a convent, near Lyons, in France.
Cosway was essentially a miniature painter, and the minute finish
of a miniature is to be found in all his larger works. He was
far from being an idle raan, even during the small leisure of the
intervals allowed by a very active profession ; for during those
intervals he finished a collection of original drawings, so

RICHARD COSWAY.

57

numerous as to excite the wonder of his contemporaries, and so
beautiful that they will bear coraparison with similar reraains of
the most celebrated Old Masters. The sculpture represents a
medallion of Cosway, surrounded by figures of genii, emblematic
of Art, Taste, and Genius, thus alluded to in the lines beneath : —
'- Art weeps, Taste mourns, and Genius drops the tear.
O'er him so long they loved, who slumbers here.
While colours last, and time allows to give
The all-resembling grace, his name shall live."

Cos7C'av\v Monutnental Tablet.

j\Iorland''s E mhleinatical Palette,

GEORGE MORLAND.
lOOKING at the pictures of George Morland, and through
them imagining the life of the painter, we should be
inclined to consider him country-born, and spending
his days chiefly in the farmyard, or rambling in siraple innocence
down green lanes, gossiping with gipsies or village folk. In the
pleasant pursuit of the subjects he delineated so truthfully, his
days might have glided on well and profitably, and a quiet
country torabstone have ultiraately recorded his talent, his
industry, his competence, and his last rest. All this might have
been Morland's career; it was in his grasp, it was the natural and
proper course of his genius ; but he chose the very reverse, and

GEORGE MORLAND. 59
lived among low associates, loaded with debts which he need not
have incurred, wearing out constitution and character, and sinking
to -an untimely grave.
Much of this was due to bad early training. He had a father
who knew enough of art and picture dealing to see and value his
son's talent, which began to show itself in his earliest years. But
he saw and valued it in a mercantile spirit only, and overtasked
his son in mind and body to make sketches he might sell. Until
he was sixteen years of age he was thus, kept in durance, a high-
spirited boy in a hopeless, uncongenial captivity. When twilight
closed his labours he made such friends as he could in the street,
and hid himself with them from his father in the nearest tap-room,
where he always found many glad to join him ; for he made
sketches for himself at stolen intervals, and commissioned some of
his companions to sell them, to pay the general score. This kind
of life, with ignorant parasites, put George in a higher position, by
reason of their debasement, than he could hope for elsewhere ;
his uneducated coarseness could only thus be tolerated, till, as he
grew up, no company was too debased for him. Ostlers and prize
fighters were his prime favourites, and he ended in entertaining
an implacable dislike to the society of educated men or respectable
women ; avoiding, even when in the house of Mr. Angerstein, to
mix with or notice the family, but joining the servants and stable-
boys in drinking and ribaldry. For this his father was again
responsible, for, finding the habits his son had contracted, and
fearing to lose him, he pandered to his depraved taste, allowed
him to drink and swear, dressed him in the silliest style of the

60 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
day, and gave hira unbridled license. But home had become so
repugnant to George that he left it, and rambled to Margate, thence
to London to his old bad associates, for, as one of his biographers
says, he had " a particular distaste for all others." When thirty-
six years old he visited Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and
here for a few months he led a life of greater regularity, the
solemn raajesty of Nature in the solitude around Freshwater
sobering down to peace and quiet, for the tirae, all desire for
riotous excess. He took up his quarters in the little hostelry,
" The Cabin," in Colwell Bay, devoting his day to sketching the
wild coast scenery and the fishermen around hira. He also
visited Derbyshire.
Morland copied Nature, and, having a correct eye for effect,
though deficient in iraagination and refinement, he rendered his
subjects interesting by a faithful, though coarse, expression of their
essential character and by picturesque arrangeraent. In portray
ing the broad and vulgar walks of life he has no rival ; his fields,
hedges, ponds, and clay banks are evidently minute copies of the
originals themselves ; and the correctness of his distances shows
how true and clear must have been his vision ; for the distances,
too, have all the appearance of having been sketched frora nature,
with the lights and shadows of the period of the day at which they
were taken falling as correctly on the canvas as in the open
air. These characteristics apply more particularly to his earlier
productions, in which the landscape, though only a concomi
tant to his figures, is always natural and correct. His field
labourers and his fishermen ; his old worn-out or clumsy farm-

GEORGE MORLAND. 6i
horses ; his asses, sheep, and pigs, are as true to nature as they
are inimitable.
After his return to London his days were spent in labour, to
pay for nightly debauchery with the worst of London's refuse. At
this time the suburbs of the city were sufficiently rural to supply
Morland with the siraple farm buildings, pigsties, and general
material for the backgrounds of his pictures ; at Soraers Town
was a yard where he kept pigs, rabbits, &c., to paint from. At
one time he resided at Kensall Green, the lanes between which
and Willesden still show some old farm-buildings, retaining a
look of secluded country life. The Plough, a public-house at
Kensall Green, was his favourite resort, and he was only weaned
from it for a short time by marriage with Ann Ward, the sister
of the late James Ward, R.A., painter. Soon after this he left
the neighbourhood, and lived with his brother-in-law — who
had married Morland's sister Maria — in High Street, Maryle
bone, but the reformation was short-lived, and his old propensities
prevailed. Many are the anecdotes of his degradation : one of the most
ludicrous is told by Hassall, in his life of the painter. He was
endeavouring, in company with friends of more respectability than
himself, to pass a turnpike on the road to Barnet, which was
blocked by a rickety cart, in which a sweep was disputing with
the toll-man, while a friend beside him held the horse, and aided
the quarrel. The latter proved to be a crony of Morland's, one
Hooper, a tinman and pugilist, who at once hailed hira in exube
rant terms, and introduced him to his friend the sweep, who, with

62 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.

a broad grin, shook hands with his " brother of the brush." The
late William Collins, R.A., has recorded, with a due sense of
disgust, his first sight of Morland, from whom he received some
instruction. He found hira sunk in the heavy sleep of intoxication
in his father's kitchen, in company with a prize-fighter of repulsive
appearance. It was Morland's habit to carry his wretched asso
ciates with him wherever he went, and he did not scruple to
introduce thera to gentlemen's houses, who, in their ignorance,
had invited the popular painter.
A few artists, not too particular, some engravers, who profited
by copying his works, and a knot of picture-dealers, who gave him
sraall prices and large supplies of drink, were the best of his
intiraates. With them he founded a club called " Knights of the
Palette," and he attached to the ceiling of the roora in which they
met the erableraatical palette, of which we give a cut ; under it
each new candidate drank to the founder's health when he was
adraitted a member. "This ill-fated artist," says Hassall,
" seemed to have possessed two minds— one the animated soul of
genius, by which he rose in his profession ; and the other, that
base and grovelling propensity which condemned him to the very
abyss of dissipation." In spite of all he was industrious : Cunning
ham says he painted " four thousand pictures, most of them of
great merit," but his extravagance and dissipation outran all
gains, and, after many escapes from bailiffs, he was at last lodged
in prison fot debt. Palsy attacked him at an early age ; he lost
the use of his left arra ; he worked on at drawing, only selling his
sketches for drink, till he was again carried for debt to a spunging-

GEORGE MORLAND.

house in Eyre-street-hill, Cold Bath Fields, where death struck
him in the fortieth year of his age.
Morland was buried in the cemetery of St. James's Chapel, in
the Hampstead Road, November, 1804. IiL.the sarae month ofthe
same year his unhappy wife -was laid beside hira. There is no
mark over the grave, but its position is noted in the life of the
painter Collins : " he was buried in the middle of the sraall square
plat, as you enter the gates on the left hand." The Rev. Henry
Stebbing (a name as honourably connected with literature as with
the Church) assisted me in clearly defining the spot. He told me
that the portion of ground nearest the chapel, and parted by a line
of bushes from the lower portion, is the most expensive part of the
ground, consequently Morland's friends desired to testify a respect
for his genius. The registers enabled us to define the spot. It
is shown in the engraving, where the figure introduced points
toward it. It is in an open space, a little in advance of the tomb
of the Corbould family (the third and highest to the spectator's
right) ; and not far from the spot is buried (also in an unmarked
grave) the once-celebrated Lord George Gordon, the instigator of
the "No-Popery'' riots of 1780, who died in Newgate, 1793. Of
other artists buried here some lie in unmarked repose ; but two
Royal Academicians, Charles Rossi, the sculptor, and John
Hoppner, the portrait painter, have inscribed torabs. The altar-
tomb of Rossi is lying in broken confusion ; he died only in 1839.
Thirty short years have brought an apparently enduring record to
ruin ! and who is to restore r Morland never had a raemorial ;
perhaps the spot should be marked by his name ; but is there not

64

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

a silent teaching in the obscure grave, an epitaph more eloquent
than any written one ? His farae is engraven on his works ; with
them let it remain. Save as an example to others, it is well not
to lay open the sad history of the painter's life, nor
"Draw his frailties from their dre.id abode."

Jlorland's l^uriahplace.

Colomondie House.

RICHARD WILSON, R.A.

I HE late President of the Royal Acaderay, Sir Martin
Archer Shee, has spoken of the career of Richard
Wilson as " a reproach to the age in which he lived.
With powers which ought to have raised him to the highest
fame, and recoraraended him to the most prosperous fortune,
Wilson was suffered to live embarrassed and to die poor ; " and
this was at a time when ^2,000 a year could be realised by
an inferior artist. Barret, although "Wilson's landscapes," to
use Barry's words, " afford the happiest illustration of whatever
K 

66 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
there is fascinating, rich, precious, and harmonious in the
Venetian colouring," — a testimony which nothing but genuine
merit could have extorted from such a critic. A more caustic
writer and artist, equally able to decide on true merit, Dr.
Wolcot, despite of the neglect of would-be cognoscenti, exclaimed,
in his " Peter Pindaric Odes to the Royal Academicians : " —
 " Old red-nosed Wilson's art
Will hold its empire o'er my heart,
By Britain left in poverty to pine.
But, honest Wilson, never mind.
Immortal praises thou shalt find.
And for a dinner have no cause to fear.
Thou start'st at ray prophetic rhymes !
Don't be impatient for these times —
Wait till thou hast been dead a hundred year ! "
The justness of Wolcot's judgment has been abundantly
testified since he wrote these lines ; the pictures that Wilson
could only sell for a few pounds each, and then only to charitable
pawnbrokers, have since fetched as raany hundreds. Indeed,
small pictures, which he used to place along the wash or
skirting boards of his studio, and which in these days will
bring frora one hundred to two hundred guineas each, were
bought from the artist by a well-known picture dealer (who
told rae the anecdote himself) for suras of one, two, and sorae
tiraes three guineas. At one tirae the " English Claude " was
so far reduced in circumstances as to be unable to execute a
sraall commission when he was in great want of it, because he
had not money enough to purchase canvas and colours.
This great landscape painter was born in one of the finest

RICHARD WILSON. 67

districts of Wales, that most picturesque haunt of landscape
painters. He was the third son of the Rev. John Wilson,
Rector of Penegoes, in Montgomeryshire, where he was born in
1 7 13. His mother was of the family of Wynne, of Leeswood,
near Mold, Flintshire. He received a good classical education,
and early showed a raarked predilection for drawing. He was
taken to London, at the age of fifteen, by his relative, Sir
George Wynne, and placed under Wright, a portrait painter.
He soon, however, comraenced on his own account, and painted,
araong other notables, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of
York. After some time he set off for Italy, where, unconscious
of the bent of his genius, he continued to paint portraits.
There he frequented good society, and was much respected.
Zuccherelli and Vernet, having seen his sketches, prevailed upon
him to relinquish portrait and apply himself to landscape
painting. Raphael Mengs painted his portrait in exchange
for a landscape. In 1755, after six_ years' residence in Italy,
he returned, and took up his abode in London. He con
tinued to paint fine pictures, but his art was too intellectual
for the public taste of his day. His style was too broad,
suggestive, and masterly; it savoured too much of mind and
artistic feeling to meet with a just echo in the breath of the
uninitiated. Still he persevered, without catering to the bad
taste that was, and always is, fashionable. The style of this
distinguished artist formed an epoch in English landscape
painting. His clairas to praise are — grandeur in the choice or
invention of his scenes, felicity in the distribution of his lights

68 HOMES AND SHRINES OE ENGLISH ARTISTS.
and shadows, freshness and harraony in his tints. Fuseli says
that, " Wilson's taste was so exquisite, and his eye so chaste,
that whatever came frora his easel bore the stamp of elegance
and truth. His subjects were the selections of taste ; and
whether of the siraple, the elegant, or the sublime, they were
treated with equal success. Indeed, he possessed that versatility
of power as to be one minute an eagle sweeping the heavens,
and the next a wren twittering a siraple note on the humble
thorn." The brilliancy and beauty of his skies and distances,
supported by rich masses of shade thrown over the woods, rocky
hills, and buildings which usually constituted his middle dis
tances, together with his well-handled, truthful, and admirably
arranged foregrounds, display this great painter to every advantage.
In the first exhibition of the Royal Acaderay, in 1760, Wilson
exhibited his celebrated picture of " Niobe," so well known by
Wollett's adrairable engraving of it. In 1765, he exhibited with
other pictures, the " View of Rorae frora the Villa Modena," now
in the collection of the Duke of Bedford. Sir Joshua Reynolds
had "A Storm, with the Story of Niobe," bequeathed to Sir
George Beaumont; Sir W. W. Wynne, "The Meeting of Cicero
with his Friends " at his Tusculum Villa, and two large views
in Wales, and other landscapes ; and Lord Thanet, " Mecasnas's
Villa at Tivoli," and several sraall Italian views. MecEenas's
villa, with slight variations, he painted five tiraes, one of which
is in the National Gallery, where is also his great picture of
Niobe. There are also five other speciraens of the master in our
national collection, four of which are part of the Vernon

RICHARD WILSON. 69

Gallery. A list of his pictures is given in Knight's English
Cyclopcedia, seven of which were engraved by WoUett.
Wilson was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and
his portrait appears in the interesting pictures of its early
raembers, by Zoffany ; the Academy was ultimately of pecuniary
use to hira when he was appointed its secretary — it was all he
then had to depend upon ; and he shifted his London residences
for the worse as he increased in matured ability, and declined
in public patronage. He at one tirae resided where so many
great painters had lived before him, in the north arcade of the
Piazza, Covent Garden ; then in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square ;
in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields; at the corner of
Foley Place, Great Portland Street; and lastly, in a wretched
lodging in Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road. Frora
thence he made a sudden flight to Wales, and a happy and cora
fortable home. The death of his brother put him into possession
of property in his native land, and a profitable lead mine was
found upon his estate. He resided at Colomondie, the seat of
his cousin. Miss Catherine Jones, to whose estates he would also
have succeeded had he survived her. It is in the village of Llan-
verris, Denbighshire, in the midst of scenery the artist loved, and
where he rambled daily with his faithful dog, who once returned
howling alone to the house, and dragged a servant by the clothes
to the spot where Wilson lay helplessly suffering the first stroke
of a mortal malady, of which he died soon afterwards.
His tomb, near the entrance to the parish Church of St. Mar}^,
at Mold, is a handsome and well-constructed sarcophagus, which

70

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

with the pretty bit of scenery it commands, forms the subject
of the accompanying woodcut, engraved from a sketch by Mr. W.
Linton. On it is engraved — "The remains of Richard Wilson,
Esq., Meraber of the Royal Acaderay of Artists. Interred
May 15, 1782, aged 69." And beneath this inscription is added
a tribute to his meraory in the Welsh language, which obtained
the prize at the Eisteddfod of 1852, of which the following version
is offered : — " From life's first dawn his genius shed its rays.
And Nature owned him in his earliest days
A willing suitor ; skill'd her lines t'impart,
AVith all the love and graces of his Art ;
His noble wotks are stOl admired, and claim
The just reward of an enduring fame."
A handsorae raonuraent to Wilson's memory was recently
erected, inside the church, hy subscription.

The Tomb of Wilson.

Birthplace of Turner.

J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.

OET and painter were corabined in the raental organiza
tion of Joseph Mallord WiUiara Turner ; his works can
never be fully appreciated until they are taught to be
considered not merely as pictures (however high the class to
which they are assigned), but as poems ; for that they undoubtedly
are, and as much lifted above the ordinary world as the thought
and action of a fine poem must ever be. England has reason to
be proud of her landscape painters; they have outlasted all
rivalry, and have won a tardy acknowledgraent of superiority

72 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
frora the general world : but araong the worthiest we shall look in
vain for a power like Turner's, capable of elevating into the ideal
the most coraraonplace subjects, and turning, by the alchemy of
his genius, "the basest lead to solid gold."
The present generation raust not sit in judgment on his
works ; its ears have heard too much of the contradictory
evidence, so to speak, and the feelings have been too strongly
excited by one or other of the counsel who have argued the case,
to admit of a totally unbiassed opinion ; moreover, they are not to
be understood by a mere superficial inspection, but require close
study, united with a considerable knowledge of the true principles
of art : a bare acquiescence in, or denial of, the merits of any
picture, particularly of one by such an artist as Turner, without a
reason for or against, is the verdict of ignorance, and must stand
for nothing. And yet how many persons are there who judge the
artist upon no other evidence than their own " untutored minds,"
or vague and uncertain notions of what is truth ? Undoubtedly,
the question, " What is truth r " would naturally occur to many
individuals possessing a knowledge of art on looking at sorae of
Turner's pictures, and the reply would as naturally be dictated,
not by the established rules of art, but by each person's own
conception of it— by what he believes, because it is present with
hira, or, at least, is thought to be so ; for through the eye the
understanding becoraes enlightened, and belief is confirmed. Yet
what we look upon may be so transforraed from its original state,
so dressed up in the garb of adventitious ornament as to convey a
very iraperfect, and even erroneous, idea ofthe reality. Thus, if a

^

JOSEPH M. W. TURNER. 73

person stands upon some lofty eminence at eventide, and sees a
rich and luxuriant landscape stretched out before him, and the
distance closed in by the towers, and spires, and edifices of a
densely populated city, every portion of which is steeped in the
brightness of the setting sun, the picture would be brilliant to the
eye and pleasant to the imagination. But let him descend from
his elevated position, and minutely examine the scene which has
elicited his admiration, the illusion would vanish at the sight of
stagnant pools and marshy swamps, and uncultivated fields, and
wildest thickets, and the dwelling-places of want and misery, vice
and crime — there would be no charra in the reality, though rauch
in the aspect under which it is seen. Is there, then, a departure
from Truth in either case .' Certainly not ; for both are alike
portions of the same visible creation, their apparent difference
being the difference of circurastances under which they are
seen. With all Turner's apparent singularities and inconsistencies, his
pictures contain the best materials for a fine work of art, and
show their author in the light of a great poet-painter. The " Fall
of Carthage," and many others of his works are perfect epic poems,
wherein grandeur of conception, vivid fancy, and beauty of lan
guage, as spoken by the pencil, have not been surpassed by any
writer. But the meaning, as we have just observed, is not to be
got at in a momentary glance, any more than a canto of Spenser's,
or a drama by Shakspere, can be understood and appreciated by
one who runs as he reads ; for the imagination must be called into
exercise to fill up many seeming vacuities of subject-raatter, and
L

74 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
the mind must be irabued with a feeling in unison with that of the
painter. His pictures are often a study of profound, sometiraes
almost inexplicable, mysteries, but well repaying any araount of
time and thought which may be bestowed upon them : they are
allegories of Nature, wherein her loveliness and grandeur are over
laid with a gorgeous manifestation of art.
It is pleasant to forra an ideal picture of the man studious of
beauty, devoting a life to the most exquisite delineation of nature
in its raost beautiful moods. He lived, by choice, so much alone
that few knew hira, and it had been well if the reserve he
coveted had been never broken by so-called biographic notes, as
it is impossible to conceive a more anti^poetical person than
Turner himself. Such reminiscences of hira are unpleasant.
Altogether it is best to know hira only by his works, and keep an
ideal Turner for the mind to dwell upon. Many anecdotes of his
"ruling passion," or his parsimony, float about in artistic circles, it
is almost to be hoped no one will collect them for the press, though
sorae have been so gathered ; they only serve to lower the man,
and are but records of the evil which, more or less, weighs down
huraan nature. Let the "earthy part" of Turner rest in his parent
earth, and let us only know his sublirae mind — in the bequest he
has raade to the nation. Here, at least, he has behaved nobly ;
the sun broke through the clouds in setting, and even his extreme
parsimony, with such an end in view, may well be forgotten.
Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, was the home of a hair-dresser in
the latter half of the last century. It is a narrow way, through
which carriages cannot pass ; at that period this neighbourhood

JOSEPH M. W. TURNER. 75
was a dense labyrinth of courts and alleys from St. Martin's
Church to Covent Garden. Here was an abundant population ;
all the stories, or even rooms, of the houses held separate families ;
it was, therefore^ a fitting locality for a busy hair-dresser. His
name was Turner, and his parti-coloured pole hung beside the
archway leading into Hand Court ; the house is a small one, with
only one window in front; it is now added as a storehouse to
adjoining premises, but is unaltered in'its general features. Here
the painter was born, in the year 1775, and christened in the
adjoining church of St. Paul's Covent Garden, on the 14th of
March. His early days were spent in this crowded district, the
flowers he saw were among the rickety sheds of Old Covent
Garden market ; and the neglected grass-grown enclosure, which
then occupied the centre of St. James's Park, was his nearest
glimpse of country life. But his early aspirations towards art
were proudly talked of by his parent, — whose profession naturally
led to the coramunicative, — and got to the ears of Dr. Munro, an
art-amateur, who had gathered a large collection of drawings,
and added to his stores by engaging young artists to work in his
house of an evening at the rate of a shilling an hour. The Doctor
was useful in his time to many; the cash, though little, was
valuable, as the " overtirae " earnings of poor lads, and he liberally
lent his drawings by great raasters for their use by day. Girtin,
Varley, Edridge, and others began with the Doctor, and looked
back in after life, not unpleasantly, to the evenings spent in
working, chatting, and learning with him. At this tirae water-
colour drawing was restricted to a half-mechanical style of

76 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

washing in positive shadows by a series of raiddle-tints, which
brought out the body of the design ; it was heightened by simple
washes of warraer colour, or strengthened by brown shadows.
The early drawings of Turner, like those of Dayes, Hearne, and
Rooker, are all formed on this raodel. Turner resided with his
father, in Maiden Lane, until the year 1800, when he was elected
an Associate of the Royal Academy; two years after this he
added R.A. to his narae. 'He had entered as a student there in
1789, his first oil-picture was hung in the exhibition in 1793.
When he left Maiden Lane for the north of London (the artistic
quarter), his father went with him. Neither father nor son ever
lost a chance of securing or saving the sraallest trifle. The painter
has been known to take to a private purchaser a picture for which
a thousand pounds has been paid, and then ask for the fare of the
hackney-coach in addition.
Turner never allowed a visitor or a brother artist to see him at
work, or to enter his painting-room. Slowly he emerged frora his
early style, and the Avorks he executed at the beginning of the
present century are araong his best; they corabine fancy with
fact; ultiraately he let his poetry so far predorainate that "fact"
could scarcely be recognised in his works. The want of dis
criraination in the raass of the world, and the large reputation the
painter had earned, gave a soraeAvhat exorbitant value to all his
works; and his cold forraal early drawings noAV sell for high
prices, Avhile his later gorgeous drearas of colour, ill-defined, and
hardly to be coraprehended, are also bought at alraost fictitious
prices. Neither deserve to be placed beside such earnest and

JOSEPH M. W. TURNER.

11

truthful, poems as his " Carthage," in the National Gallery, or his
"Ulysses" in the "Turner Collection."
Turner's last residence Avas No. 47, Queen Anne Street, Caven
dish Square. It is a gloomy house, with dull blank walls, and
few windows ; it was known by its state of dirty neglect for many
years. Here were stowed aAvay the great mass of pictures,
sketches, and prints frora his works, which Turner amassed care-

Turner's Residence.

fully. A curious instance of the value he attached to the raerest
trifle from his own hand, and the dislike he had to any person
trading by chance with it, was related by an eminent printseller,
into whose shop he once walked, to purchase, if possible, an

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

engraving raade many years before from one of his pictures. His
description of the subject he aided by a few rude lines, scraAvled
with a pen on a loose piece of paper, which flew behind the
counter in turning over the portfolios to look for the print. Turner
ultiraately got his print, and, missing the scrap of paper, eagerly
demanded it of the unconscious printseller, whose confusion
redoubled the painter's anxiety, which was only appeased when
the scrap of paper Avas recovered from a dark corner, and carefully
wrapped with the engraving. In justice, however, to Turner, it
must be admitted, frora the facts Avhich have been revealed to the
public since his death, that he had a raotive— and a worthy one too
— in exercising this apparently avaricious and grasping disposi
tion : he knew Avell that everything from his pencil, however insig
nificant in character, would realize raoney when he was gone; and
he sought to accumulate it in every way for beneficent purposes.
The illness Avhich led to Turner's death required him to take a
change of air ; but he dreaded expense, though now a rich man,
and he found by chance a quiet lodging to let in a small house
fronting the Thames, near Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea. Retaining
his dislike ol visitors, he never gave his narae to the raistress of
the house, nor did she know it until after his death, which
happened here on the 19th of December, 1851. On a bright
winter's day, a very short tirae before, the painter was carried to
the first floor window to s^e the sun set with a calm gloAv over the
Thames. On the 30th of the sarae month he was buried in the
crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
Avhora he highly esteeraed, and by Avhora he desired to find a last

JOSEPH M. W. TURNER.

79

resting-place. The funeral was attended by the President of the
Royal Academy, very many of its members and associates, and a
large number of others, anxious to do honour to the meraory of
one, who did as much as oA'er artist did, to elevate the British
school honourably among the nations. To no painter was there
ever given so large a power of appreciating and portraying the
beautiful in nature; and there is no name in art more widely
and universally known and reverenced.
Sorae art-critics divide Turner's Avorks into two classes — his
"light manner," of which the "Grand Canal at Venice" may be
instanced as an example ; and his " dark manner," such as is seen
in the " Fall of Carthage."

House in uuhich Turner died.

('

-•' *

5^ r,1
1 ' '

Residence of Collins.

WILLIAM COLLINS, R.A.
LL Englishmen Avho feel honest pride in their oavu
beautiful country and its best class of peasantry, must
have a veneration for the painter Avho has delineated
both so Avell — its leafy lanes, filled Avith little merry rustics,
sometimes swinging on the gates, each one " Happy as a King,"
or just leaving the cottage door, Avith kindly welcome to the
Avearied wayfarer, to whora they bring a jug of refreshing drink
with true " Rustic Hospitality." The latter picture Avas painted for

Mr. Marshall of Leeds, and an engraving of the sarae subject
is given in Finden's "Gallery of Modern British Art." Such
pictures of cottage life, or those of the life of the sea-beach, with
its young " Shrimpers " and fisher-boys, with their thick-set forms
and ruddy faces— all delineate the best features of the great
Anglo-Saxon race, to which it is an honour to belong. Never
was the sea-side or the country-life of England better painted
than by William Collins ; it is a pleasure to look upon his
pictures in the foggy winter days of a London December, and
dream of visiting some such pleasant spot, and chat with its
villagers when June coraes round again, in crossing the fields
with them on " Sunday Morning " on our way to church.
It is a noble thing to have wealth to spare— but only so when
it is put to noble uses. The men who spend their superfluity on
fine pictures lay up a pleasure for all time— a refining "joy for
ever " to all who look on them. It has but one drawback— its
exclusiveness ; for fine works are soraetiraes little seen but by
their possessors, and often are buried in galleries all but unvisited.
But when men who love art, and buy wisely, make a free gift
of their tasteful gatherings for the good of their fellow-country
men, ennobling the humblest by teaching them to contemplate
works kings might covet, how great a debt of gratitude do we
owe to them ! All honour then to the names of Vernon and
Sheepshanks— names of those who must ever be regarded as
national benefactors ; they have aided in enlightening, through
the medium of the Arts, a large body of their countrymen, and
the good work will be continued long after their contemporaries

M

have passed away. If the British people haA'^e reasQa to be
grateful . for such gifts, the British artists owe a deeper debt of
gratitude, to these two gentleraen.
Some of CoUins's best cabinet pictures, through these noble
gifts, are now national property — pictures redolent of happy
country life, or of the breezy glowing sea-beach. Collins never
painted " storms in harvest," or " storms at sea,"- — his nature was
essentially happy. As you feel the calm sunny influence of his
pictures on the mind, you are impressed with the certainty of the
pleasure he must have felt in painting them. Had he been an
author instead of an artist, you feel he would never depict village
life after the fashion of Crabbe, but rather rival Miss Mitford.
There is a pleasant life of Collins, written by his gifted son, the
author of "The Dead Secret" and "The Woman in White," and
to that memoir we refer for fuller details of the artist's life. It is a
well-told narrative of an honourable career, a true picture of the
eariy struggles and ultiraate triumphs of an artist of whom
England may well be proud. It raust have been an agreeable task
for such a son to write of such a father.
CoUins was born in London, Septeraber iSth, 1787. It is
soraewhat reraarkable that our best delineators of country boys,
Collins and Hunt, were both born not far asunder, and in localities
not apparently propitious ; the first in Great Tichfield Street, the
second in Bolton Street (now called Endell Street), Long Acre.
Collins is an example of the mixed marriages which produce
"true-born Englishmen." His father was an Irishraan, a native
of Wicklow, his mother a Scottish lady from the vicinity of Edin-

¦nn

^ '"^ -r^*^"^ "^ ^'^ *& >*^ J

WH* <M— *"fct,.

hU

WILLIAM COILINS. 83

burgh. Collins senior laboured unceasingly as a raan of letters
and a picture- dealer; his best literary Avorks were "Meraoirs of a
Picture," in which he detailed the tricks of the trade in picture-
dealing and picture-stealing, and a "Life of Morland," with whora
he was intimate, and whose advice and assistance he sought for
the early instruction of young William, who in after life was of
opinion that he gained raore from his father's advice and guidance
than frora that of the dissolute, but raore highly gifted Morland.
Drawing was the boy's delight frora earliest youth, " whatever
natural object he perceived he endeavoured to iraitate upon paper;
even a group of old blacking-bottles, picturesquely arranged by
his friend of kindred taste and appreciation of our country life and
scenery, John Linnell, the great landscape-painter, supplied him
with a fund of material too precious to be disdained." By all the
means which a clever and earnest boy Avill make use of, he carried
on his studies. He sketched frora nature in the fields round
London. In 1807 he entered the Royal Acaderay as a student,
and the first views he contributed to the walls of their exhibition
were sketched at Millbank, then a Dutch-looking suburb of
London. His industry was untiring, and ultiraately led to atten
tion, — his works, when better known, had excellences which
riveted it. He succeeded in making a position for hiraself, but his
career was an arduous one; the poor son of a poor father, at
whose death he had only the bequest of his family's Avants. Yet
through all he kept a brave heart and a steady h.and, and years of
perseverance brought ultimate reward. In 1813 fie exhibited "The
Sale of the Pet Lamb," a picture which at once established his

name as a great painter, and which was purchased from the
gallery for the moderate sum of 140 guineas.
Late in life Collins Avent to Bayswater to reside ; the locality
had been recoraraended by his physician as the driest and
healthiest in London. He took the house No. 85, Oxford Terrace,
in 1840 ; but, finding it too sraall for his requirements, he removed,
in 1843, to another adjacent and larger abode at No. i, Devonport
Street. Of its external aspect our cut will furnish an idea ; it is
one of the thousand houses builders run up in the suburbs ; but to
the painter it had " the unusual attraction of containing a room
capable of being converted into a spacious and convenient
studio:" these are the Avords of his son, who adds — "It is not
one of the least curious passages in his life, that he had never
possessed a comfortable painting-room up to this period of his
career. In all his changes of abode he had been contented with
taking any apartment in the house that afforded a tolerable light,
resigning every other advantage of high roofs and fine skylights.
His first sea-coast scenes were painted in a garret of his house
in New Cavendish Street. The ' Fisherman's Departure,' painted
for Mr. Morrison, in 1826, for which he received 350 guineas, the
largest sum, with four exceptions, that he ever received for a
picture; Sir Robert Peel's 'Frost Scene,' and a long series of
other remarkable pictures, were produced in a little bedroom of
his first abode at Hampstead." His son records the pleasure he
felt in his studio. " Once established in the neAv locality of his
labours, with more of his sketches, his designs, his relics of art
about him than he had ever been able to range in any former

WILLIAM COLLINS. 85

studio — with his painting-table, that had belonged to Gains
borough, with his little model of an old woman, dressed by the
same great painter's hand, with the favourite palettes of Lawrence
and Wilkie, hung up before him ; with all the other curiosities,
experiments, and studies in art that he had collected, now for the
first tirae conveniently disposed around hira — his enjoyraent of his
new painting-roora was coraplete." But "like Wilkie, he laboured
only a brief space in the first painting-room that he had ever
completely prepared for his own occupation, before the hand of
death arrested his pencil for ever ! "
A long and wearying illness, denoting a break up of the system,
at last conquered his healthy nature ; and the artist died onthe
17th of February, 1847. He is buried in the cemetery of the
Church of St. Mary, Padd ington. The grave is marked by a
marble cross, on the base of which these words are inscribed : —
" In testimony of their affection for his memory, their remem
brance of his virtues, and their respect for his genius as the
painter of the coast scenery and cottage life of his native land, his
Avidow and his two sons have raised this monument on the site of
one which he erected to his raother and brother, with whom he is
now buried." The spot possesses more of the elements of the
picturesque than we find in suburban graveyards ; and the tomb
itself is characterised by its pure and simple taste. It is no
melancholy pilgrimage to the painter's grave : trees wave near it
in the green sumraer-tirae, and it speaks only of hopeful, happy
rest. In Mr. Wilkie CoUins's Life of his Father is a list of the pictures

86 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
painted by the latter, arranged chronologically from the earUest
exhibited work, bearing date, 1807, to the latest, 1846, with the
naraes of the purchasers and the prices paid for thera.

Tomb of Collins.

Jl/tv's Hotcse, York.

WILLIAM ETTY, R.A.
^HERE is an indefinable charra about true greatness that
associates itself eA^en with the inaniraate objects by
which it was surrounded in life. Hence we make
pilgrimages to the homes and haunts and torabs of those Avho
have gone before us, and have left enduring monuments of their
undying mental powers for our behoof, gratification, or iraproA'e-
ment. There is no more touching homage paid to genius than
this desire to recall its existence, as well as the iraagination can
do it when assisted by such raeraentoes. Many weary railes have
been travelled for this gratification ; and that it is a great one few

can doubt, who have visited in a loving spirit the birth-place or
grave of a Shakspere or a Raffaelle. But minor men share in a
minor degree this art-worship, and few Englishmen Avill fail to
take an interest in the memorials that the time-honoured city of
York afford of our English Titian — ^William Etty.
Etty published sorae years ago in the Art-Journal a charming
piece of autobiography, having all the simplicity and freshness that
such biography only retains. He notes there his great regard for
his native city. He says —
" Like ray favourite hero, Robinson Crusoe, I was born in the
city of York — so he says, so say I ; only he was born in 1632, I in
1787, March 10, of an honest and industrious family. Like Rera
brandt and Constable, my father also was a railler, and his mill
was standing, till this year, on the old York road to London,
about half a mile frora York. My first panels on Avhich I dreAV
were the boards of my father's shop-floor, my first crayon a
farthing's worth of white chalk."
This he wrote in the house depicted in our engraving. . During
all his wanderings his heart was in Yorkshire, and he went back
to live and die in the historic city he loved so well.
It truly deserves the name of an historic city, inasmuch as the
records of York carry us back to the earliest period of our authentic
history — the written history of the Roman Invasion. When Sue
tonius Paulinus had the command of the Britannic array of occupa
tion at the begining of the reign of Nero, the ninth legion of troops
Avas stationed at York. This legion, in accordance with the policy
of the Roman government, was composed of Spaniards, for it was

WILLIAM ETTY

considered wisest to have no native soldiers in the cohort placed
in a conquered province. It is most interesting to see in the York
Museum the siraple tombs, constructed of tiles, and laid over the
bodies of sorae of these soldiers by their corapanions. The ashes
of the deceased soldier had been placed in its urn, and over
them tiles were laid, edge to edge, like the sloping of a house, and
each tile has been stamped with the title of this cohort thus — leg.
IX. HISP. — for Legio nona Hispanica. The same Museum contains
the records of many Romans who died in the old city. Araong
them is the stone sarcophagus of Theodorianus, who died there at
the age of thirty, and who is stated, in the inscription upon it, to
have been a native of Nomentura, a sraall city of ancient Latium.
Agricola rested here with his victorious array, which had sub
jugated the whole of the rebellious tribes of Britain in one
summer's campaign. Severus again marched through the land,
and died at York, A.D. 210, worn out by anxiety, fatigue, and-
disease. At the early part of the succeeding century, Constautine
Chlorus fixed his residence at York, and also died there ; but the
greatest event enacted here in connection with the old masters of
the world, was the proclamation of Constautine the Great, as
Emperor, by the array at York, where he was at the time of his
father's death, A.D. 306, and where he is said by some to have
been born. He did not, however, as.sume the purple in Britain,
but at Treves, where the remains of his palace are still extant,
A.D. 308, having, nevertheless, been acknowledged as Caesar in
Britain by the Eraperor Maxirainus. Altogether, no city in Eng
land possesses more attraction for the scholar and the antiquary
X

go HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
than the ancient city of York, which is still surrounded by its
mediasval walls, with their gates and barbicans, indicative of a
state of warfare long gone by. Etty might well be proud of his
native city.
The visitor to York who would desire a ready clue through its
labyrinthine streets to the retired nook where the last home of
Etty still stands, should pass the ferry from the railway station,
and take the road opposite the gate of the Museum gardens ; it
leads direct to Coney Street: a short distance down this street
there stands, on the right hand, the Church of St. Martin, a
decorative piece of architecture, to which the attention is at once
directed by one of those projecting clocks, a reigning favourite
with our great-grandfathers. This is supported by massive iron
work, forraed into foliage and flowers, and possessing more claim
to attention on the score of artistic excellence than is usual in
such works. It is surmounted by a quaint figure of a naval
officer, in the costume of Queen Anne's era, using an astrolabe.
Turning into the small square which is beside this church, we see
in front a cottage residence, with heaAry carved door, solid window
frames, and a deeply-pitched roof. It may have been the par
sonage house at one period ; it seems fitted for the Dr. Primrose of
Goldsmith's iramortal story. It is, however, the house in which
Etty lived and died. Shortly before his death he had attended the
funeral of a friend in the churchyard of St. Olave, and he then
desired to be buried in that spot provided he died in York ; both
events happened, and we Avill retrace our steps to visit the last
resting-place of the painter : few lie in a more picturesque locality.

^^ ii^

¦5.

WILLIAM ETTY. 91

The churchyard of St. Olave adjoins the beautifuL grounds of
the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, where one of the most
interesting local museums in the kingdom is situated, as well as
fragments of ancient buildings, including a portion of the Roman
wall of the city of York; the noble multangular tower, one of
its defences, and the elegant ruins of the Benedictine Abbey of
St. Mary. The original foundation of this oiice large and opulent
religious house was prior to the Norraan Conquest ; the ruins we
now look upon are the remains of the work of the Abbot Simon de
Warwick, completed in the latter half of the thirteenth century,
the Augustan age of Gothic architecture in England, when it
exhibited the chastest proportion and the most elegant concep
tion, combined with an amount of decorative enrichment con
trolled by the truest taste. These walls, beautiful in decay, bound
the churchyard of St. Olave, the church being partly constructed
of its stones ; a series of arcades occupy the lower portion of the
walls, and about their centre is a pointed arch, once acting as the
northem entrance to the choir. This arch was closed, but
was opened that the tomb of Etty raight be seen frora the
grounds. This tomb stands exactly opposite the arch, and is
slightly ornamented with Gothic panels and quatrefoils, forming
a frame to the siraple inscription —
"WILLIAM ETTY, ROYAL ACADEMICIAN."
Trees wave over it and peep beneath the arch; no fitter "frarae
work" could have been desired for a painter's torab ; few have one
in a more picturesque locality, fewer stiU have been thus publicly

\

92

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

honoured by their fellow-townsmen as Etty has been by the raen
of York. They are "honoured in honouring him," and it is
pleasant that this true aphorism is now raore generally felt in

Etty's Tomb, York.
England than it used to be. WiUiara Etty died on the 13th of
Noveraber, 1849.
As a perfect specimen of the bold and briUiant style of Etty,
and of his consummate skill in the management of vivid colour,
his " Cupid in a Shell " avUI bear the keenest inspection and most
searching criticism ; of his raore elaborate productions, " Ulysses

¦¦¦Li- J* 11 ' J 1 *

. 'Xff^

'.M'i: i.

WILLIAM ETTY. 93

and the Syrens " is one of the most highly appreciated. This Avould
be no place to criticise the art of WiUiara Etty, its merits or its
defects — suffice it to say, it achieved its OAvn peculiar position
in the English school, and rivalled the glories of that of Venice.
It possessed graces of conception and beauty of composition in
an eminent degree ; and we have no other painter, except Mul
ready, who so perfectly understood the management of vivid
colour. This was Etty's great Jorte— he was the Turner of figure
painters. Etty had that wisdom which few men possess, the wisdom of a
contented mind. He loved his quiet home, in his own provincial
birthplace, better than the bustle of London, or the notoriety he
might obtain by a residence there. His character and his talent
would ensure him attention and deference anywhere, but he pre
ferred his own nook by the old church in York. He probably felt
with the old poet, that

• The wind is strongest on the highest hills,
The quiet life is in the vale below.''

Blake''s House., Fountain Court.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

EW persons could look upon the portrait prefixed to
Blake's illustrations of Blair's " Grave," without wish
ing to knoAv soraething of the artist there pictured ; that
solid, well-forraed face, that expansive forehead, that firm mouth,
dreamy eye, and thoughtful eyebrow, could belong to no common
raan. The knoAvledge Avill reAvard the inquirer, for probably the
Avorld of art can scarcely yield a parallel to William Blake. Life
Avith him was a long struggle Avith spiritualisra, which at last

WILLIAM BLAKE. 95

completely mastered him, and the records of his last years are
entirely composed of his supposed supernatural experiences.
Blake was born in London, in 1757. His father was a hosier—
an unpoetic trade for a son who, at the earliest age, began to
draw, and to compose verses, so he was apprenticed to Basire the
engraver. He worked hard as if at a trade, but all his spare
hours were devoted to aUowing his imagination full scope in
making drawings, and elucidating them by verse, to be hung in
his mother's room, for she it was who first fostered his love of art.
He soon afterwards made acquaintance with Flaxman and Stothard,
both men of gentle and poetic minds, and they introduced him to
many useful friends. It was at the expense of Flaxman and his
early friend, the Rev. Mr. Mathew, that Blake's first work, " The
Songs of Innocence," was published. But such works are "caviare
to the million," and Blake toiled on with his graver for bread,
employed daily in uncongenial drudgery, but enjoying all his
extra hours in noting down his thoughts in sketches or verse.
" My business is not to gather gold," he would say ; " but to make
glorious shapes, expressing godlike sentiments." He had married
at the age of twenty-six, and a happier match was never made, for
his wife seemed specially created for him ; she idolised his genius,
she was uncomplaining over the poverty of their lot, she believed
in his spiritualisms, and her thoughts and actions were all
devoted to his happiness. Few, indeed, are the instances of such
conjugal affection as Blake enjoyed ; that, and his day-dreaming,
made up a life of great happiness to him, and it was all that either
cared for. As an engraver he was but little employed, but a

96 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

guinea a week was considered ample by him for subsistence, and
he preferred that some leisure should be taken for his own ideal
pictures. In all these works there is great originality of concep
tion, and much poetic design, and they are productions of un
doubted genius.
Blake's happiest days were passed in the employ of Hayley the
poet ; while living near him in a cottage at Felpham, in Sussex,
he engraved the plates for his edition of Cowper, as well as his
original designs for Hayley's " Ballads founded on Anecdotes
relating to Animals." In Mr. Park's copy of the latter work, that
bibliographer writes : — " These ballads were written to shoAV off
the erratic genius of Blake, Avho tries to out-Fuselize Fuseli.
Mr. Hayley is an enthusiastic patron of Blake." The plates to
this book are the best examples of Blake's ability, as they possess
good general effect and careful engraving. It was Flaxman who
had introduced him to Hayley, finding he had been paid so
miserably by Edwards, the bookseller, for his marginal illustra
tions to Young's "Night Thoughts." In the note of his arrival,
written to Flaxman, he says, — " Felpham is a sweet place for
study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens
here on all sides her golden gates ; her windows are not obstructed
by vapours ; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly
heard, and their forms raore distinctly seen." This mysticism
assumes a more decided tone, as he continues, — " I am more
famed in heaven for my Avorks than I could well conceive ; " and
then adds, — " In my brain are studies and chambers filled with
books and pictures of old, Avhich I wrote and painted in ages of

WILLIAM BLAKE. 97

eternity, before my mortal life ; and those works are the delight
and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about
the riches or farae of mortality.?" He believed that the spirits
of the great departed held converse with him, and he actually
sketched their forms as they appeared before him. It was the
spirit of his beloved brother Robert that directed hira, so he said,
to engrave the plates to his poems in their original method of
execution and colour. But one of his raost bizarre visions Avas the

spirit of a Flea.
ghost or spiritualization of a flea, which he depicted in a scaly
• arraour of green and gold, with a cup to hold blood in one hand, a
dry, eager eye, and a forraidable mouth, thirstily opening, and
displaying a sharp tongue quivering in anxiety for its sanguinary
meal. This extraordinary fancy, after he had sketched it, passed
into the hands of the late John Variey, a feUow-artist and friend,
and our cut is copied from the head of this portentous monster.
After residing three years at Felpham, he returned to London,

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

and lodged at 17, South Molton Street, where he soon afterwards
published his "Jerusalem." The designs are one hundred in
number, and for them, when tinted, he charged 25 guineas. The
public did not seem to care for such dreams, and he would have
been unable to coraplete another series of twenty-one plates, to
illustrate the " Book of Job," but for the kind aid of his brother-
artist and loving friend, John Linnell, the landscape-painter,
who possesses the original plates both of that series and the
Dante. In 1 809 he opened an exhibition of his works, of which he
printed a catalogue as wild in its words as they were in ideas.
The public were naturally mystified over such pictures as " The
Spiritual forra of Pitt guiding Beheraoth ; " particularly when they
were told " the artist had been taken in a vision to the ancient
republics of Asia, and had seen those wonderful originals called in
sacred Scriptures the Cherubim," and that he " endeavoured to
emulate the grandeur of those seen in his vision, and to apply it to
modern times on a smaller scale."
Blake's last residence, when an old man, was at No. 3, Fountain
Court, Strand ; he expired in the back roora of the first floor, on
August 12, 1827, at the advanced age of sixty-nine. On his death
bed he persevered in his art, and, propped up by pillows, con
tinued his designs to Dante, affectionately attended by his wife ;
one tirae he suddenly ceased sketching his favourite angels to
delineate her features, "for you have ever been an angel to me,"
said the dying man. It was his last work; he lay dreaming on,
and the moment of his death was not perceived. Fie was buried
in Bunhill-fields Cemeterv.

WILLI A. M BLAKE.

99

For the illustrations to Dante he had completed nearly one
hundred drawings, and had engraved seven plates. His en
thusiasra for the author was so great that, at the age of sixty-
three, he learned the Italian language more fully to enjoy his
works. How he could interpret the great poet's vision our cut
must show. It Ulustrates the thirty-second canto of the " Inferno,"
descriptive of the "frozen circle," where the spirits of the con
demned are — " Blue pinch'd and shrined in ice.'
The earthly visitant is told to take^ — ¦
"Good heed thy soles do tread not on the heads
Of thy poor brethren."
The icy sea freezes into oblivion many of " the great of old ; " the
rocks are coraposed of petrified huraanity, and the lurid sky
sweeps like a pall over Lethe : you feel the drear nature of the
poet's scene more fully as you study Blake's pictured realization.
These seven plates were never published, only a few proofs
were taken off for Blake's own use. All of them are in an
unfinished state ; in some instances the figures are slightly
scratched on the copper with a dry point, and the burr remains
on the lines. With much that is grand and poetic, there is mixed
in these designs many horrible imaginings. They are unfinished,
and raust therefore be judged for their conception only; all are
marked by that strong originality which characterised their author,
and made him unlike any other artist. His works are now rare,
the illustrated books of poetry particularly so ; but there is so

IOO HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
much beauty, fancy, and simplicity in thera, that they deserve to
*
be better known. Of the " Songs of Innocence," an elegant edition
was published in 1839, to which, byway of preface, are prefixed
some excellent reraarks upon Blake's character.
Blake's " Illustrations for the Book of Job " are deservedly
prized as a fine, though carefully literal, erabodiraent of that
sublirae narrative. These were published in 1825.

Scene from Dante.

'^'i

The Residence of Flaxntaii in Biickinghmn Street.

JOHN FLAXMAN, R.A.
F the world of Art be ennobled by men of high genius,
whose walk through life is directed by high-mindedness,
how much raore is " that sraaller world " which clairas
to be their birthplace raised among the nations when she may say,
" these are my sons ! " England has few greater raen to boast of
than John Flaxraan ; and among all her artists there is not one
to whora other nations will raore willingly accord the place of

102 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
honour. It may, indeed, be doubted whether Flaxman is not more
honoured and better understood abroad than at home.
If there ever Avas an honest man who, by earnest application
and devoted study, achieved glory — and who, by simplicity of life
and purity of thought and action, left us a lesson how that glory
should be borne, it was he. Fuseli, in one of his satiric moods,
called hira " the Reverend John Flaxraan." Let us accept the
term (born of a sedateness which Fuseli disliked) — he was
reverend ; if all that claims reverence can win it. For seventy-two
years had he lived on earth — as a sickly boy, a poor struggling
student, a young man battling against poverty, a husband with no
independence but the wealth of his own and his young wife's love.
He emerges frora the thraldom of early fate ; he is employed and
honoured ; he has more than enough for his own hands' labour ;
he is the prosperous ruler of other and hurabler art-labourers;- —
is he changed ? have " bettered " circurastances raade him worse —
the contradiction we too often see ? No ; he is still the sarae
simple man, with the sarae plain habits ; and " never too old to
grow wise and good," as he once declared. His life was passed in
the study of art and "goodness;" his workmen loved hira; he
was to thera as a father, and in sickness or sorrow his heart was
ever open to counsel, and his purse to aid, thera. If such a life is
not reverend, there is no sense in using the terra.
Allan Cunningham — a raan of an honest and poetic mind — has
written a memoir of Flaxman which does the heart good to read.
It is like a grand strain of rausic, tinged with only enough of
sadness to make it the raore solemn ; it rolls on over slight

JOHN FLAXMAN. ,03

discordances by the force of its own power; and glorious and
beautiful are the closing notes of the therae. "His life was
siraple and blaraeless; he was mild and gentle; and a raore
perfect exeraplar of the good raan was to be found in his conduct
than in all the theories of the learned." Since the pubUcation of
Cunningham's Memoir, Mr. WiUiara B. Scott has published " The
British School of Sculpture," dedicated to the raemory of Flaxman,
with remarks on his works, a book to be coveted by every lover of
art ; no less for its artistic criticisras than for its just estiraation
ofthe man.
He was born at York, on the 6th of July, 1755 ; but, before he
was six months old, his father reraoved to London, and opened a
shop in New Street, Covent Garden. Our first record of the quiet
little sickly boy, who afterwards became the great academician, is
very touching. Propped on his crutches, in a chair behind the
counter of his father (a moulder of figures), the child studied and
read, and a sickly cough was the only announceraent of his
presence, when one who was destined to be an important friend 
the Rev. Mr. Mathew — discovered him trying to raaster a Latin
book. In a few years he becarae stronger, studied harder, and
was adraitted as a pupil to the Royal Acaderay at the age of
fifteen. He still lived Avith his father at his house in the Strand,
opposite Durham Yard, and so continued till 1782 : he was then
twenty-seven years of age, when he hired a small house in
Wardour Street, and married Ann Denman. The remark raade
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that this last proceeding had "ruined
him for an artist," really stimulated him to higher exertion and

104 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS-
greater aspiration. He had been for many years connected with
the WedgAvoods, and had furnished thera with innumerable
designs. They were all at low rates ; yet his continuous exertion,
and sraall requireraents, made thera sufficiently reraunerative to
content Flaxman ; and the careful savings of five years enabled
himself and wife to visit Rorae. Mr. Jewitt, in his adrairable
life of Josiah Wedgwood, has printed several of these bills, in
Avhich raany sraall items of ten or fifteen shillings each for
raodelling, go tOAvards swelling a long bill for only a few pounds ;
and I have rayself seen a Ust of what he required as an outfit for
Rome, and it almost rivals in siraplicity the late General Napier's
notion of all that was " necessary " for a field-officer. In Rorae
he had to work as well as study, and here he composed his noble
designs to Horaer, ^schylus, and Dante. For seven years he
stayed in Italy, and a better apprenticeship no raan served to art
in her chosen land. He returned to England experienced and
faraed. The statue of the Earl of Mansfield, for Avhich he had
received a coramission in Rorae, Avas the first work corapleted on
his return.
He fixed his residence at No. 7, Buckingham Street, Fitzroy
Square, and he never left it during the rest of his Ufe. Cunning-
hara calls it "a raodest house; " it is unpretending enough, as the
reader may see frora our vignette ; it is of the raonotonous cast
that London builders rejoice in erecting by the thousand, until the
great capital has becorae a tiresome heap of inanity. To it he
added a sraall studio, and larger workshops for his assistants.
Cunningham speaks of his visit, in 1825, to his little studio filled

IOHN FLAXMAN. 105

with models and sketches. "There was but one chair," he says,
" and a small barrel, which held coals, Avith a board laid over it :
on the forraer he seated rae, and occupied the latter himself, after
having removed a favourite black cat, Avho seeraed to consider the
act ungracious." The studio has been enlarged of late, and the
premises behind rebuilt ; the front of the house has been altered
also, and a gateway built beside it, on which is painted " Trinity
District Schools." The pure and childlike genius of Flaxman
would perhaps approve the change that converted his deserted
studio to a horae of instruction for the children of the poor ; but
the horaes of our great men should be spared when other houses
can be secured for such purposes. In this house died Mrs. Flax
man, on February 7, 1820, in the sixtieth year of her age; her
husband died here also, on the 7th of Deceraber, 1826: he had
prepared her grave in the burial-ground belonging to the Parish
of St. Giles's in the Fields, adjoining the Old Church of
St. Pancras, and he was afterwards laid in the sarae resting-
place. Flaxman's tomb is a solid simple monuraent — no unfit type of
the man himself; it stands in the midst of the graveyard, but is
not easy to find, inasmuch as it has no distinctive raark ; it is as if
the great man had desired this unpretending quietude, which
enveloped hira in life, to be with him in his last rest. So little is
the spot known or asked after, that the grave-digger himself could
not point it out, and when it was found, passed away with no
other comment than " he supposed I had come to see after it a
little," as the moss had grown thick in the hoUoAvs of the letters.
p

io6 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
The inscription is a long one, the first narrates the burial of his
wife ; then follow the words — " under the same stone is interred
her husband, John Flaxraan, R.A.P.S., whose mortal life was a
constant preparation for a blessed iramortality; his angelic spirit
returned to the Divine Giver on the 7th of Deceraber, 1826, in the

The Guai-dian Anzel.

seventy-second year of his age." This is foUoAved by another to
the raemory of his sister, who died, 1833, in the sixty-fifth year of
her age. Length of days, and honour, had fallen on all, in
accordance with the great promise.
We have said that the sculptor's Avorks are best known on the

JOHN FIAXMAN.

107

Continent, and raost highly valued there. This is because the

Monument in Heston Church.

higher aspirations of art are raore familiarly studied there than

:o8 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

araong ourselves. To a large nuraber of Englishraen, Flaxman's
outlines are as a sealed book : the art we chiefly value is that
Avhich presents siraple transcripts of nature. It needs mental
training fully to coraprehend his wondrous designs, and their ex
traordinary embodiraent of grandeur, poetry, and siraplicity. The
higher we educate ourselves in art, the more we shall understand

Charon's Boat.
and appreciate them : and not only them, but all else in art that
is Avorthy of regard.'" Flaxraan's admirers araong his OAvn
countryraen are "fit, though feAA^." His Avorks appeal 'to the
highest feelings of the refined art-student; but corabined there-
* Since this was written, Mr. Teniswood has contributed a series of papers to the Art-
Journal on Flaxman, in which these celebrated outlines are fully described.

JOHN FLAXMAN.

109

with we also find the simplicity of true greatness, which is the
marked characteristic of the speciraens selected. It is irapossible
to contemplate any of these specimens without paying the fullest
tribute to the genius of the sculptor, which has simplified and
idealized each monuraent with a freshness to the truth of huraan
feeling, sure to strike a kindred chord in the breast of the

The Descent of Beatrice.
beholder. Who can stand beside the monuraent in Heston
Church (figured at page 107) Avithout sharing the sorroAV of the
mourners .'
For the first outlines, Avhich he executed during his residence at
Rorae, of which thirty-nine subjects were .taken from the Iliad
and thirty-four frora the Odyssey, Flaxman received but a very

IIO HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
small sum ; but these remarkable compositions at once stamped
his reputation, and brought hira noble patronage, amongst others
the Countess Spencer, for whora he composed the series of illus
trations of ^schylus, and Mr. Thomas Hope, for whom he pro-

772;' Will be Done.
duced that sublirae series of poetic compositions, the outlines to
Dante, of Avhich thirty-eight are from, the " Inferno," an equal
number frora the " Purgatorio," and thirty-three from the " Para-

JOHN FLAXMAN.

diso," from which tAvo specimens are given on pages 108, 109, the
whole series being the most lasting monument of his unequalled
originality of mind and intellectual vigour, which placed him on
a level with Michael Angelo, not previously approached in a
field of art hitherto supposed to be his own.
We have only space for one other specimen, given on the
opposite page, a sweet version of that tale of AVoe, which, sooner
or later, coraes to all,— a holy resignation to the will of Provi
dence, trustful of the reunion beyond the grave, where there shall
be no raore sorrow and no raore separation.

Flaxman's I'omb in the Graveya/d of St. Giles's in the Fields.

Birthplace of Nollekens.

JOSEPH NOLLEKENS, R.A.

^EW visitors to our national collection of pictures can fail
to be interested wilh a Avell-executed portrait by Sir
WiUiara Beechey of an artist, modelling-tool in hand,
Avho looks forth at the spectator, Avith a somewhat melancholy
face, and an eye worn Avith labour : the structure of the face is
not English, but there is an expression about it Avhich Avould
cause inquiry as to the career of the person thus represented. It

JOSEPH NOLLEKENS. 1 1 3
is the portrait of Joseph Nollekens, a sculptor of great repute in
his day, who, successfully practising the raost profitable part of
his art, bust-raaking, made much money, but only a teraporary
fame. That no characters are so good or so bad as biographers make
them, is a trite reraark frequently enforced by experience. History
as well as biography takes much of its tone from the mind of the
writer. Had Nollekens left his biographer and pupil, J. T. Sraith,
the legacy he so confidently expected, the two voluraes of small-
minded narrative he gave the world as a history of "Nollekens
and his Tiraes " might have been laudatory of the genius of the
sculptor, instead of wearisome with petty details of his household
arrangements, with which the public have nothing to do, and
would never have knoAvn but from one Avho was trustfully
adraitted into his household, and who should have reflected how
far his conduct, and that of others Uke him, raade and confirraed
the parsimony of Nollekens, — by submitting to and encouraging
meanness for the sake of reaping the ultiraate gain of a great
legacy. There is certainly poetic justice done when Volpone
disappoints his parasites.
Smith coramences his volumes with the bold announcement in
his preface, " I am convinced that England has not produced such
a character since the death of Elwes ; " yet he cannot help relating
his charitable liberality to Richardson, and raany traits that show
Nollekens only wanted the bias of his raind directed towards good,
instead of fostered towards evil, by persons Avho would subrait to
anything for future gain, though listening to and recording the
 Q

n4 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

scandal of the lowest servants of his house, and when the man
was laid in his grave printing trashy conversations not worth the
reading. The best amongst us could scarcely stand so severe a
test as being Boswellized by a disappointed legacy-hunter.
Joseph Nollekens was descended frora foreign parents : his
father Avas born at Antwerp; his mother was a Frenchwoman.
Their son, the sculptor, was born on the nth of August, 1737, at
28, Dean Street, Soho, in the house shown in our engraving, and
in which his father died. At that period Soho Square and the
neighbourhood was still a fashionable quarter with the gentr}^,
and in the outskirts of London. Nollekens used to speak of his
early reminiscences of that neighbourhood, when four ambassadors
lived in the square, and Avhen a windmill and a pond of water
occupied the ground Avhere Percy Chapel, in Charlotte Street, near
Rathbone Place, now stands, and it Avas a country Avalk to
Marylebone Gardens. When Nollekens was thirteen years of age,
he was apprenticed to Scheemakers, at that time in the height
of fame, and some of whose best works are amongst the monu
ments of Westminster Abbey. He Avas a successful student, and
was awarded several useful money prizes by the Society of Arts.
With these and other savings he went to Rorae in 1760, where he
AVorked for sorae years, and made raoney, returning to Mortimer
Street, Cavendish Square, and marrying the daughter of Mr.
Welch, the magistrate, a lady who appears to have been more
parsimonious than her husband. It was probably this concatena
tion of circumstances that confirraed his character ; but he never
appears to have been other than a cheerful, kind-hearted man.

JOSEPH NOLLEKENS. 1 1 5
and in advanced age, after the death of his wife, relaxed greatly in
his narrow habits.
To understand NoUekens's character properly, it is necessary to
take a more philosophical review of his peculiar position in early
life. He came of a family of artists, persecuted people of another
faith, necessitated to live poorly, to struggle hard for what they
might obtain, and live araong strangers without much syrapathy ;
and in sorae instances to incur the dangers of strong religious
prejudice. Left fatherless in early life, his raother married again
and retired to Wales, leaving Nollekens Avithout the aid of raoney,
advice, or education. It was a hard Ufe for an orphan boy, to be
left thus friendless in the great Avorld of London ; all the harder
from the knowledge that a mother's love — the richest of prizes to
a boy — ^he could never enjoy, not from any fault of his own, but
from the desertion of her who should have given it. In his poverty
he never did a dishonourable act ; he clung to society as best he
could by little acts of polite service, and received some friendship
in return. Was he to blame if the world taught him it respected
not talent, or gave it a free stage to labour on, unbacked by sorae
independence of pocket ? Consequently, when he was in Rorae,
he found he could more readily put some few pounds into his
badly stocked purse by dealing in antiquities than by sculpture.
He purchased from the labourers who had discovered them, the
terra-cottas they obtained in the Via Latina, and he sold them to
Mr. Townley; they are now in our British Museura, with many
other ancient relics, some of which have the work of Nollekens
upon them, in the way of additions and restorations. The young

ii6 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.

raan, by his prudence, made himself a respectable position ; it
was the raisfortune of his early poverty, and the inherited
parsimony of two generations, as well as a wife still more
niggardly, that ended in making Nollekens what he was. But
the worst that can be honestly said of him is, that he was close-
handed for what he considered unnecessary extravagances ; but
he was unusually liberal to cases of real want or to charity ; and
to all about hira he gave good wages, and occasional gratuities.
It is quite as easy to prove him a justly Uberal man, as it is to
prove him a raiser. Allan Cunningham has dealt most honourably
by hira in the memoir he constructed out of most unpleasant mate
rial ; his strong common sense and love of justice led him to this.
He relates how cheerfully Nollekens helped Chantrey, then
young and unfriended, to a proper position in the Royal Academy
Exhibition, when he sent his bust of Home Tooke there ; " having
satisfied himself of its excellence, he turned round to those who
were arranging the works for exhibition, and said, 'There's a fine,
a very fine work ; let the raan who made it be knoAvn ; remove one
of ray busts, and put this one in its place, for well it deserves it.' "
An unvarying success in his profession leaves no incident to
narrate in the calra course of the sculptor's career. His busts were
popular, and he had the advantage of the best sitters. Life with
with hira was the prosecution of art, and the equally quiet
accumulation of money. Aided by his stUl more frugal spouse, he
araassed a large fortune. He died in 1823, and was buried in
Paddlngton Church, but it was not until fifteen years afterwards
that any record of the fact appeared within its waUs. At that

JOSEPH NOLLEKENS. 1 1 7
tirae the Rev. Mr. Kerrich, the librarian of the public library of
the Cambridge University, an old friend of the sculptor, and who
AA'as a large legatee under his will, commissioned Behnes to
execute the one now placed there. The basso-relievo on it repre
sents Nollekens in his studio at work upon the group which he
designed and executed for the monument of Mrs. Hoaird; a work
which aided greatly in securing his professional fame. The
inscription above is very brief: — "M. S. Joseph Nollekens, R.A.,
ob. non. Kal. Mali., 1823, eet. 85. Requiescat in pace." It is
among a group of monuraents on the south side of the coramunion-
table, quite in the corner, and above the monument to General
Charles Crosby. The crowded tablets give this part of the church
alraost the effect of the show-room of a monumental sculptor.
Few of our suburban churches — ^for Paddlngton was "in the
country" not many years ago — contain memorials of artists .-in
such number as this one does. Of many of them the resting-place
is unmarked ; but here was buried Bushnell, the sculptor (of the
figures on Teraple Bar), and his more famous brother in the art,
Thomas Banks, R.A. Three engravers — Francis Vivares (cele
brated for his landscapes), John HaU, and Lewis Schiavonetti
(best known by his engraving from Stothard's "Canterbury
Pilgrims") — are also buried in the churchyard; where lie two
painters — George Barrett, and WiUiara CoUins, R.A. There are
other art-connections in the history of the older church, which
stood in the burial-ground to the north of the present one. There
William Hogarth was married to the daughter of Sir James
Thomhill in 1729; and here lies Michael Bryan, author of the

1 8 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.

"Dictionary of Painters and Engravers." A great artist in
another walk of art reposes here also — Reynolds's "Tragic Muse"
(Mrs. Siddons), whose grand delineation of the noblest characters
gave life and boldness to the designs of raany artists, and whose
fine figure and expressive face have been delineated by some of
the greatest araong them.

/

Tomb of Nollekens.

The Protestant Ce7netery, Rome.

RICHARD JAMES WYATT.

|UR forefathers had a loving designation for their grave
yards, — they termed them " God's acre : " indicating
the small spot sacred to heaven, and holding all they
loved on earth. The Germans still retain that name for their
burial-grounds. It is not gloomy in this affectionate people to
contemplate the last resting-place of friends, where they desire to
rest also, and where they plant shrubs and fresh flowers to record
a love that death has no power to extinguish. With somewhat
similar feeling of relationship with the dead an Englishraan treads

120 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.
the burial-ground sacred to Protestants at Rome. The departed
were your own people, — men who thought and pondered as you
now do in this " Niobe of Nations," — men whose poetic inspirations
may have warmed your heart in your English home, and induced
your visit to this classic ground, — men whose art-works will also
Uve and vindicate the somewhat despised taste of the northern
races frora the full condemnation of their southern brethren.
Many and varied will be the feelings with which these grave
stones will be read, and much soleran and holy thought be eUcited
in a lonely walk among thera.
There is a native grandeur in this locality that cannot fail to
irapress its poetry on every visitor blest with an appreciation of
the solemnly beautiful. The thoughts that arise here are ably
expressed by Rogers : — "When I ara incUned to be serious, I loA^e
to wander up and down before the torab of Caius Cestius. The
Protestant burial-ground is there ; and most of the little monu
ments are erected to the young : young men of proraise, cut off
Avhen on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyraent ; brides
in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children
borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by
his felloAv-travellers, young as himself, Avho will return to the
house of his parents Avithout hira ; that, by a husband or a father,
now in his native country— his heart is buried in that grave."
" It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the Avinter Avith
violets ; and the pyramid that overshadows it gives it a classical
and singularly soleran air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy
you Avcre not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land.

RICHARD JAMES WYATT.

and they are for the most part your countrymen. They caU upon
you in your mother tongue— in English— in words unknown to a
native, known only to yourselves : and the tomb of Cestius, that old
majestic pile, has this also in comraon with thera,— it is itself a
stranger among strangers; it has stood there tiU the language
spoken round about it has changed ; and the shepherd, born at fts
foot, can read its inscription no longer."
The pyramidal sepulchre of Caius Cestius is the only monuraent
of that form in Rorae. It is believed to be of the age of Augustus,
and may commemorate the person naraed by Cicero in his oration
for Flaccus. We know frora the inscription cut upon its face that
he was a Tribune, and one of the seven Epulones — an office of
high sacerdotal dignity.
The old cemetery, represented in our vignette, had become too
small for its uses some years since, and an additional piece of
ground has been added to it. It is in this new cemetery that
Wyatt lies. He was born in Oxford Street, on the 3rd of May,
1795, and died at Rorae, in May, 1850, at the age of fifty-five —
suddenly, in the raidst of his art-labours, with no note of illness,
for he was apparently well until his servant found him struggling
with death when she entered his bedroom in the morning. Thus
was snatched from araid his fellow-artists one Avho was an
ornament to his profession, and a man of whora his country might
be proud, for he was a gentleman, in every sense of the word, and
his devotion to art was earnest and high-rainded. It is pleasant
to record the love his fellows bore towards hira, and to see that the
simple and graceful stone which raarks his last resting-place was
R

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.

erected there by his countryraan, friend, and fellow-sculptor in
Rorae— the late John Gibson. Surely there is a mystic bond of
brotherhood in all great rainds, and art should hallow and
strengthen it.
Wyatt's career was more than usually retired : he laboured in
cessantly on his Avorks, and allowed nothing to interfere with his
continuous devotion to art, for Avhich alone he seemed to live.
Rorae was the horae of his adoption ; the Italian sculptor Rossi
was his instructor ; Canova was the artist who first invited him to
"the Eternal City," giving the young sculptor the offer of a place
in his studio, together Avith the benefit of his advice arid assist
ance. Thither Wyatt travelled in 182 1, and never revisited
England except for a few months in 1841 ; for thirty years did he
assiduously labour in Rorae, rising before day had dawned, and
working after larap-Ught. He Avas an unraarried raan, and his
devotion to art Avas coraplete : in fact, he appears to have felt no
other pleasure than in the eraployraent Avhich has made his name
and raeraory faraous.
Let us not depart from this sraall and sacred enclosure Avithout
a visit to tAvo other graves of great and well-beloved Englishmen.
Records connected with two great poetic names may be seen close
to the old Roraan defences of the city. On the sloping bank is a
plain heavy slab ; the simple inscription upon it was placed there
by Byron ; all that reraains of Shelley lies beneath. His body was
burnt in the Gulf of Spezzia, near Avhich he Avas drowned: the
burning was conducted after the manner of the ancients ; the body
Avas consumed, but the heart Avas found entire, and with the ashes

RICHARD JAMES WYATT.

123

was placed beneath this stone. Tavo words only record the fact, —
Cor cordium — "The heart of hearts" — follows the simple name of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, with the dates of his birth and death, and
Shakspere's fine lines : —
"Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange."

Tomb of Shelley.
It is in front of the tree in our cut ; that on the other side of
the tree coraraemorates the grave of his daughter. In the old
cemetery is a still more melancholy memorial of genius "done to
death by slanderous tongues ; " it is the gravestone of John Keats,
thus inscribed:— "This grave contains all that was raortal of a

1 24 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
young English poet, who, on his death-bed, in the bitterness of
his heart at the raalicious power of his eneraies, desired these
words to be engraved on his torabstone — 'Here lies one whose
narae was writ in water.' " The harsh and inhuraan character of
the coraments on this unfortunate son of the Muses undoubtedly
hastened his death, and can only be excused by minds as coarsely
unfeeling ; for no rightly constituted judgment can reflect with
anything but sorrow and sharae at the brutality which squeezed
the bitterest gall of criticism in the dying cup of sorrow fate
proffered to this unfortunate young man.

Tomb of Keats.

Old St. Pancras Church, as it was in 1740.

SAMUEL COOPER.

ETROPOLITAN changes, since the comraenceraent of
the present century, are araong the most marvellous
in their extent and variety of any that have occurred
since the days of Elizabeth. Take any map of London published
about 1810, and there we find "fresh fields and pastures" where
now are densely populated streets. Quiet localities that, by some
strange chance, were allowed to sleep on unraolested by the
march of bricks and mortar, have suddenly becorae the centres of

126 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTLSTS.
streets, and bid an eternal adieu to rurality. Such a district is
St. Pancras, in which terrainus after terrainus is being added of
railways frora the north, and of underground metropolitan lines.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth its village church was, even then
out of the beaten track of the good citizens of London, Avho Avere
Avont to ruralize in the country round about the city, at " Merrie
Islington," and in the hunting-fields of Bayswater and Shepherd's
Bush. In 1593 Norden thus describes it: — "Pancras Church
standeth all alone, utterly forsaken, old and Aveather-beaten,
which, for the antiquity thereof, is thought not to yield to Paul's in
London. About this church have been many buildings, noAV
decayed, leaA'ing poor Pancras Avithout corapany or comfort, yet
it is now and then A'isited with Kentish-tOAvn and Highgate, AA'hich
are raerabers thereof ; but they seldom corae there, for they haA-e
chapels of ease Avithin theraseh'es ; but, Avhen there is a corpse to
be interred, they are forced to leaA'e the sarae within this forsaken
church or churchyard, AA'here, no doubt, it resteth as secure against
the day of resurrection, as if it lay in stately St. Paul's."
The readers of Ben Jonson Avill not fail to remember his quaint
"Tale of a Tub," that curious picture of "country life" in the
iramediate A'icinity of the London of his day, in which "Sir
Hugh," the Vicar of Pancras, helps to plot for his own benefit Avith
Justice Brarable, of " Maribone," and the High Constable of
Kentish-town ; and the denizens of Kilburn and Islington talk a
sort of Somersetshire dialect, which seems to breathe of a pure
pastoral style ; aided by such scenic directions as " the country
near Maribone," or " the country near Kentish-tOAvn." Where is

SAMUEL COOPER. 127

the country now ? At that time St. Pancras had a little village
church, a long way off in the fields, with lonely, but pleasant
lanes, leading to the high land of Hampstead and Highgate — far
away localities, to be seen from St. Paul's steeple, but rarely
visited by Londoners, Avho raust have thought of a journey there
as we now think of one to Yorkshire. Pancras retained its lonely
character longer than any other London vicinity. Norden, in the
tirae of Ben Jonson, speaks of it as "forsaken of all; and true men
seldom frequent the same, but upon divine occasions ; yet it is
visited by thieves, who assemble not there to pray, but to wait for
prey ; and many fall into their hands clothed, that are glad when
they are escaped naked : walk not there too late." Venturous
citizens who neglected this warning ran great dangers in getting
frora thence towards Gray's Inn Lane ; and in Walker's " Lives
of the Highwaymen," published in the time of Queen Anne,
is a characteristic picture of a highway robbery coramitted
at some distance on the London side of " St. Pancras in the
Fields." Even so recently as thirty years ago, this little church
retained its lonely look. Paved streets, rows of houses, and
neat squares, ¦ now cover the fields then used for grazing the
cows of " Rhodes's Dairy ; " and just opposite the cemetery
gates were the remains of intrenchments, which the learned
Dr. Stukeley dreamed over as the veritable camp of Caesar hira
self, and which were principally coraposed of a square raound
surrounded by a ditch filled by the waters of the Fleet River, then
an open streara, meandering from the high land north of London

128 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGUSH ARTISTS.
toward the " sweet south " of Bagnigge Wells and Fleet Street.
There is a vieAV of St. Pancras Church, frora a drawing by
J. P. Neale, dated as recently as July, 1815, representing a group
of young men bathing here. The Fleet River is now one vast
covered sewer.
Our view of the church is copied from a print by Chatelain,
drawn about 1740. At that time there were wells near the church
celebrated for their sanitary virtue ; and people walked out there
to test their curative virtue, as they did to Sadler's Wells, the
Cold Bath, or Islington — a Aveaker kind of Tunbridge water, that
served as an iraaginary remedy for minor illnesses. There is
still a "St. Chad's Well" in Gray's-Inn Lane; and there were
" Bagnigge Wells " and many more on this side of London.
St. Pancras in the Fields, originally a humble village fane, has
been from tirae to time enlarged ; but its most recent enlargement
has still left it a sraall building, converting it into a kind of toy
gothic edifice, and destroying its modest old features. The four
teenth century is conjectured to have been the era of the erection
of the old church, which siraply consisted of a nave and chancel.
It contained many monuraents : none more interesting than that
of Sarauel Cooper, Avho has been appropriately designated the
Vandyck of rainiature-painters. It is a modest monument, sur
mounted by the painter's palette ; beneath is a coat-of-arms — not
those of the painter, but of Sir .E. Turner, the Speaker of the
House of Comraons in the reign of Charles II. , Avho placed the
monument here, and took this extraordinary mode of recording
the good action.

SAMUEL COOPER. 129

Cooper died on the 5th of May, 1672, at the ripe age of sixty-
three. Walpole says, " the anecdotes of Cooper's life are few ; nor
does it signify — his works are his history." The brevity and the
justice of these few words will bear an amplification of reflection.
His works are his best history, and have a charm in their truth
and beauty still. To his pencil we owe the best and truest
portrait of a great Englishraan — Oliver Cromwell ; in it we seera
to see the mind of the man. This is the true greatness of Cooper's
works ; and in Mr. Stanley's edition of Bryan's " Dictionary of
Painters and Engravers," he mentions a portrait, by Cooper, of
Milton, as "recently discovered, and in the possession of the
Duke of Buccleugh. That formerly in Sir Joshua Reynolds's
possession, and engraved by Caroline Watson, with his sanction,
is not the portrait of the poet, but of one of his great contem
poraries." Walpole has compared them with those of the earlier
miniature painter, Oliver, whose works were diminutively con
ceived, as well as minutely painted ; but, he adds, " If a glass
could expand Cooper's pictures to the size of Vandyck' s, they
would appear to have been painted for that proportion. If his
portrait of Cromwell could be so enlarged, I don't know but
Vandyck would appear less great by comparison." Cooper Avas
busily employed during his life, and at high prices. Pepys says
that he gave hira ;^30 for his wife's miniature. He tells us "he is
a most admirable workraan, and good corapany." It is elsewhere
recorded that he had great skill in music, and played well on the
lute. He was a favourite at home and abroad; he Uved many
years in Holland, and at the French Court — from the latter his
s

1 30 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
widow received a pension. His portrait, and these few records of
his manners, seem to combine in presenting us with the agreeable
picture of a quiet, prosperous, industrious, and genial man, one of
unostentatious talent and cheerful manners, happy in a calm
course of life — a life few but artists are privileged to lead : they
should be happy and grateful men, for raany of the noble and rich
envy thera.
Before we leave the graveyard, let us note the many celebrated
naraes that appear on the crowded torabs in it, where for several
centuries the dead have congregated. Of artists, Ravenet and
Woollett; of authors, he who is supposed to have written "The
Avhole Duty of Man ; " Theobald, the editor of Shakspere, and the
original hero of Pope's " Dunciad ; '' Collier, who wrote against the
stage ; " Pronouncing Dictionary " Walker ; WiUiara Godwin, and
his equaUy faraed Avife ; all rest here. One of the most extra
ordinary persons here interred was the Chevalier d'Eon, who for
raany years lived as a woraan in England, after rauch diplomatic
continental eraploy. Another politician, Pascal de Paoli, the
friend of Boswell, is also buried here ; he was chief of the
Corsicans in their struggles with the French. The churchyard has
always been a favourite resting-place with Roraan Catholics. The
reasons given are that it was the last church in England where
raass Avas performed after the Reforraation, and that masses were
said for the souls of such as were buried here in a church
dedicated to the same saint in the south of France. The Earl
of Moira erected a monuraent here to the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, a
raan of most liberal mind, Avhose catholicity Avas universal. The

SAMUEL COOPER.

i3>

cross, and " requiescat in pace," or the initials of these words,
occur on many monuraents here : would that the peace of the old
churchyard could be paralleled araong the Uving sects, that they
raight "rest in their faith araong their fellow raen," as they do
" after life's fitful fever " here ! A quiet walk back to London in
the old days raust have produced wholesome thoughts after a
pilgrimage to Pancras ; now the turmoil of noisy London is thick
around it, and our reflections raust be made at horae; but the
thoughts are good everywhere that result from visits like these.
It is well to turn aside — and not unfrequently, too — from the
active and busy scenes of life, to hold converse with ourselves, as
Avell as Avith those who have gone from us.

Cooper's Monument.

George Vei-tue and his Wife, in their Marriage Costume.

GEORGE VERTUE, F.S.A.

HAT Vasari was to the artists of Italy, Vertue has been
to the artists of England. But for his painstaking
researches throughout a long life, we should be without
that inestimable record of British Art, popularly known as "Wal
pole's Anecdotes of Painting in England." The cynic of Straw
berry Hill was incorapetent to the task of collecting raaterials for
such a work; Vertue Avas untiring in this labour, travelling far
and wide — in days when travelling was difficult and expensive —
gathering facts about art and artists ; and, note-book in hand,
visiting galleries and analysing their contents. Incessantly did

GEORGE VERTUE. 133

he work in this way, a toil which he incurred purely for love of his
subject; and though " Tlie labour we delight in physics pain,''
there is due to George Vertue the respectful gratitude of all
Englishmen, and English artists particularly, for his earnest
investigation. At his death the large mass of material he had
gathered passed into the hands of Horace Walpole, who " digested
and published " the whole ; an easy task in comparison with that of
Vertue, but a task that probably could not have fallen into better
hands, for though occasionally cynicisras and biassed criticisms
appear, which are due to Walpole's pen, the notes of Vertue
would have been but dry reading if they had been consigned to
the arrangement of any of the hack bookmakers of that day. Wal
pole had a sincere estimation for the siraple honesty of Vertue's
character, and enough experience of literary research to value
fully the arduous industry of Vertue in collecting facts. He has
never failed to record his sense of both in the memoir he has
appended to the book from the memoranda Vertue left behind
him. The industry of Vertue's art-life is attested in the long and
varied list of engravings appended to this memoir. Never was
labour more continuous, never was relaxation from it more toil
some than this collecting of notes for a history of art in England.
It was fortunate that Vertue lived at a tirae when reraerabrances
were afloat of that peculiar era in English art so full of confusion
in any other pages than his own. Thus at York he conversed Avith

134 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
the old engraver Francis Place, who had been intiraate with
Hollar, and who furnished hira Avith valuable anecdotes of that
araiable, industrious, and ill-rewarded man. A sirailar value
attaches to all his notes. They are unique facts, which would
have been lost but for him.
Vertue was born in the year 1684, in the parish of St. Martin's-
in-the-Fields, and was apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, to an
engraver, who was eraployed by the silversraiths to place arms
and ornaments on their raanufactures. His master failing in
business, he corapleted his knowledge of engraving under Michael
Vander Gucht, a native of Antwerp, who had settled in England,
and was rauch eraployed in book illustration.
As soon as Vertue had completed his apprenticeship, and
started on his own account, his father's death left a widow and
several children unprovided for. "I was eldest," says Vertue,
" and the only one who could help thera." This he did Avith a
manful self-sacrifice, which he cheerfully accepted; and his only
reraark on the subject is, that this "added circuraspection in my
affairs then, as well as industry to the end of my life." His merit
and his character always brought hira friends; his tastes ultiraately
associated hira with noble patrons, and he becarae a meraber of
the Society of Antiquaries, their acknowledged draughtsman and
engraver, and to his burin we owe sorae of our most valued
historic prints. So great was his conscientiousness that he
absolutely refused to engrave for the booksellers unauthentic
portraits, after the manner of Houbraken ; and the " Medallic
History" and the forty-two "Heads and Monuments" engraved

GEORGE VERTUE. 13S

by him to illustrate Rapin and Tindal's " History of England," are
as authentic as they are beautiful.
In the pursuit of his art as antiquarian draughtsman, he
travelled rauch over England, always collecting for his "Anecdotes
of Painting." He was much patronized by the noble and the
wealthy, but his own unselfish nature and scrupulous honesty
never allowed him to profit largely thereby. He rated himself
only as a diligent labourer; he treated his noble eraployers as
friends, and he would have given his labour to them could he have
afforded it.
His nature was essentially kindly ; there are traces of it in all
he did. He laments with the ardent siraplicity of honesty the
deaths of his patrons. In the curious drawing he made of hiraself
and his wife, " in the very habits they were raarried in, Feb. 1 7,
1720," he has introduced his pet dog and that of his wife. They
were affectionate dependants, who kept alive the healthy syra-
pathies of his heart, which was always large enough to reciprocate
love for kindness wherever he found it.
As he grew older his chief regrets were frora the loss of friends
with whora he had been associated in the study of art and
antiquities; his greatest loss was in Edward Harley, Earl of
Oxford, the founder of the Harleian Library, now preserved in the
British Museum. Vertue records his sense of the loss in words of
striking siraplicity. He says — "Death put an end to that Ufe
that was the support, cherisher, and corafort of many others who
are left to lament — but none more heartily than Vertue." Walpole
adds a few words to this, which forcibly paints the deep-seated

136 HOMES AND SHRINES OE ENGLISH ARTISTS.
feeling of Harley's artist-friend : — " So struck was the poor raan
with this signal raisfortune, that for two years there is an hiatus in
his story — he had not spirit even to be minute." Like many quiet
natures, he felt as an enduring regret, what more impulsive men
raight lament louder, and forget speedily. " He lost his friends,"
says Walpole, "but his piety, mildness, and ingenuity never
forsook hira ; he laboured almost to the last to leave a moderate
competence to a wife with whom he had lived in tender harmony,"
and who survived him twenty years. He had no children, and
died at the ripe age of seventy-two, on the 24th of July, 1756.
On the west wall of the cloister of Westminster Abbey is placed
a raeraorial to the historian of English Art. It simply records the
date of his birth and death, beneath which is the following verse ;
it has all the prevalent faults of epitaph writing : —
" With manners gentle and a grateful heart.
And all the genius of the graphic art,
His fame shall each succeeding artist own.
Longer by far than monuments of stone."
To this inscription Avas afterwards added, that "Margaret, his
faithful wife, lies buried in the same grave. She died at the age
of seventy-six, March 7, 1776."
In the soleran cloister of Westminster many notable people lie ;
there is little to recall the modem world and its associations to
any Avho may wander here : it is sacred to past ages, and the men
who then lived. On quiet moonlight nights the deep solemnity of
the place is as striking and irapressive as if it was as far remo\-ed
frora, instead of being in the centre of, "the mighty heart" of

GEORGE VERTUE.

137

England. Dean Stanley, with that true love Avhich this holy fane
inspires, is seeking to restore these cloisters to their pristine
beauty. It is well that we have preserved to us some few such
wholesome thinking-places.

Tablet to the Memory of G. Vertue.

¦— *¦ /¦^

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Pi F iE£

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%'T, P R

sMM

WooUett's House.

WILLIAM WOOLLETT.

fNGLISH landscape has ever shone pre-erainent in art.
Some portion of the success may be due to our insular
situation, and even our proverbially "foggy clime"
may aid in the aerial perspectiA-e so charraingly rendered by our
native artists. The golden hues and ethereal distances of Cuyp
are our only rivals ; and this may be legitiraately understood when
we reraeraber how like the cliraate of Holland is to our own. But

engravers of landscape may claim unrivalled honour in their
branch of art; by no other than those of the EngUsh school
have landscapes been so truthfully and gracefully rendered ; nor
can a more successful plate be shown than that noble example
of British Art, the "Niobe" of Richard Wilson, engraved by
WiUiara Woollett.
The history of this plate, the first great work of the kind
executed by an English artist, may be best told in the words of
Boydell, who was WooUett's employer. The venerable alderraan
related the tale to J. T. Smith, who published it in the Appendix
to his Life of Nollekens. Boydell was in the habit of trading for
prints to France, the French printsellers obliging hira to pay in
cash, and taking none of the prints he published in return. " In
the course of one year," says he, " I imported nuraerous impres
sions of Vernet's celebrated ' Storra,' so adrairably engraved by
Lerpiniere : upon Mr. WooUett's expressing hiraself highly
delighted with it, I was induced, knowing his ability as an
engraver, to ask hira if he thought he could produce a print of
the same size, which I could send over, so that in future I could
avoid payment in money, and prove to the French nation that
an Englishman could produce a print of equal merit : upon which
he immediately declared that he should like much to try. At
this time the principal conversation among artists was upon
Mr. Wilson's grand picture of 'Niobe,' which had just arrived
from Rome. I therefore iraraediately applied to his Royal High
ness the Duke of Gloucester, and procured perraission for
Woollett to engrave it." At this time Boydell was anything but

.40 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
rich, and hired but half a shop for the sale of prints ; he therefore
had to deal prudently, and on inquiring frora the engraver the
probable cost of the plate, after some consideration he said he
thought he could engrave it for lOO guineas. " This sura," says
Boydell, " sraall as it may noAV appear, was to me an unheard-of
price, being considerably raore than I had given for any copper
plate." But on reflection he bade hira set to work, and advanced
hira sums of raoney, ^ — for at this time the great engraver was in
serious difficulties, struggling for a living with a wife and faraily in
an upper room in a sraall court in Castle Street, Leicester Fields.
Nearly the whole sum contracted for was draAvn and spent before
the plate was half finished, and BoydeU advanced another;^ 25.
He saw the engraver's ability, his earnest labour, his poor horae ;
but he was also a struggling printseller, and he felt they were
both getting beyond their depth. He therefore carae to an under
standing with Woollett for another final ;^25 ; the plate was
finished, and the print published for five shillings. "It suc
ceeded," Boydell said, " so rauch beyond my expectations, that I
immediately eraployed Mr. Woollett upon another engraving from
another picture by Wilson ; and I am now thoroughly convinced
that had I continued publishing subjects of this description, my
fortune would have increased tenfold."
WooUett's fame was now Avell established, and so was the
fortune of Boydell, AV'ho ultiraately becarae Lord Mayor of
London. The inscription on his tomb records — " As a printseller
he caused such productions to become a source of commercial
benefit to his country, and of such profit to himself as to enable

WILLIAM WOOLLETT. 141
him to afford unexampled encouragement to the English school
of historic painting." Woollett afterwards engraved Wilson's
"Phaeton," "Celadon and Amelia," " Ceyx and Alcyone," and
other fine works, which justify Smith's encomium, who says, —
" The palm for landscape engraving raust be gi\'en to Woollett,
whose birth was hurable and his life most honourably enviable."
And he elsewhere adds : — " Our three raost eminent engravers
have never been equalled in any part of the globe, though William
WooUett's master, Tinney, was so insignificant an artist, that
Strutt, in his Biographical Dictionary, has not thought proper to
give the least account of him ; Sir Robert Strange's tutor was
Cooper, an obscure engraver in Scotland ; and William Sharp
was originally an engraver of the letters upon pewter pots, dog-
collars, door-plates, visiting cards, &c. ; and he assured me that
the only difference he ever had with WiUiara Byrne, the land
scape engraver was respecting the quantity of door-plates they
had engraved — Sharp insisting upon his claim to the greatest
nuraber by some hundreds." What would a modern engraver say
to this ?
Woollett resided for many years in the house No. 11, Green
Street, Leicester Square. It is the first house from the corner one
in Castle Street. Both have undergone alterations since our
sketch was taken, and WooUett's house is now a curiosity shop.
It is traditionally said that he was in the habit of firing a cannon
from the roof of this house whenever he corapleted an important
engraving. The last engraving he worked upon was "The
Landing of King Charles the Second," after the picture by Ben-

142 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.
jamin West, P.R.A. His death prevented the completion of the
plate, but his equally eminent successor, William Sharp, finished
the work as we now see it. Woollett is described by Smith as
"a little man ;" he died at the somewhat early age of fifty. He
was buried in the churchyard at Old St. Pancras, where a plain
torabstone raarks the spot, upon which is sculptured the following
inscription : — " William Woollett, Engraver to His Majesty, was
born at Maidstone, in Kent, upon the i6th of August, 1735. He
died on the 23rd, and was interred in this place on the 28th day
of May, 1785. Elizabeth Woollett, widow of the above, died
Deceraber 15, 18 19. Aged 73 years." In this croAvded place of
sepulture the torab is not easy to find, Avithout due direction. It
stands beside the chancel, on the north side. The graveyard is
thick with monuments, and has always been a favourite place of
interment with Catholics, frora the fact of its being one of the
oldest religious foundations in Middlesex. Woollett is not the
only narae connected with the Arts in this place. Ravenet, the
engraver, Scheemakers, the sculptor, and Sarauel Cooper, the
celebrated miniature painter, as already stated, are all buried here.
Sorae adrairers of the eminent engraver, Avishing to see a more
important memorial to his raeraory than this at St. Pancras, sub
scribed for, a pubUc monuraent, and placed it rather strangely in
the west cloisters of Westrainster Abbey. It was executed by
Banks, the Royal Acaderaician, and is inscribed simply with
the date of WooUett's birth and death, and the epithet " Incisor
Excellentissiraus " beneath the bust. A more arabitious labour
is below : it is an aUegory, representing the genius of Engraving

WILLIAM WOOLLETT. 143
handing down to posterity the AVorks of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture, whilst Fame is distributing them to the four quarters
of the globe. Woollett is at work engraving frora a picture
before hira, but he is surrounded with so many nudities on all
sides, that he is lost in the crowd of " allegoricals." The sculptor
appears to have had his raisgivings as to its being understood
by the ordinary spectator, and has luckily left a key to the whole
in our vernacular; the Latin term, which tells of his ability,
would do as well for an eminent surgeon. The whole thing is a
mistake. WooUett's earnest and laborious life passed quietly in his own
workroora. Engravers have less of " incident " in their career
than any other class of artists. Few persons know the continuous
labour, soraetimes of a most wearisorae and monotonous kind,
that must be unsparingly given for months together to a large
copper-plate in its prelirainary stages. Human patience, in its
supreme perfection, is necessary for the task. The araateur who
glories over the exquisite prints in his portfolio, scarcely thinks
of the wearisorae application of years necessary to coraplete his
valued gems. Less healthy than prison labour, the engraver
prosecutes his art, "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," in his studio, and
pores over his plate until health, and sometimes eyesight, is a
total wreck. His crown is often one of martyrdom. The Arts
exact their victiras as well as other professions. Woollett lost
one-third of the life allotted to man. If the connoisseur thought
of the artist as well as of the artist's work, and gave one glance
at the events of his career, he would discover the sunshine that

144

HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLLSH ARTISTS.

delights him in the picture was often produced araid the clouds
and darkness of a chequered life.
The two plates by Woollett Avhich have received the highest
coramendation of foreign amateurs, are " The Death of General
Wolfe," and " The Battle of La Hogue," from the pictures by
Benjarain West : these works have never been surpassed by any
engraver. His best portraits are those of George IIL, after
Ramsay, and of Rubens, after Vandyck.

Woollctt's Tomb.

Bewick'' s House. Newcastle.

THOMAS BEWICK.

|ATURE is a grateful mistress to her votaries, and
there is no instance of the artist who has studied her
^ beauties, and honestly depicted them, being unre
warded by Fame. Bewick is a prominent exaraple ; he studiously
and perseveringly devoted himself to this study, and the celebrity
he won in his life has increased since his death ; all modern
u

146 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
refinements in the art of wood engraving cannot eclipse or rival
the simple truth and vigour of his woodcuts —
"And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne."
Thoraas Bewick was born in 1753, at Cherry-burn, about
twelve miles west of Newcastle, and received his earliest educa
tion at Ovinghara, on the opposite bank of the river Tyne,
Northuraberland. His father rented a landsale colliery at
Mickley-bank, in the same township, and he assisted him in his
labour, having consequently that privation of education Avhich a
poor man's son has always to contend against. The lad never
lost a chance of iraprovement, and in good weather or bad walked
to his school whenever he could be spared, and noted those bits
of nature in his lonely journeys that won hira farae in after-life.
Bewick's taste for drawing developed itself very early, and
determined his father to apprentice hira to an engraver of Ncav-
castle, Mr. R. Beilby, who appears to have taken all classes of
engravers' work, frora inftials on tea-spoons, and names on door-
plates, up to copper-plates for books ; but his abiUty was but
rarely in deraand for the latter. In this employ Bewick did not
labour long, for in 1768, one year after his apprenticeship,
Dr. Flutton wishing to illustrate his "Treatise on Mensuration"
with woodcuts, such as he had seen executed in London, appUed
to Beilby for thera; and young BeAvick, having made some attempts
in the art, was encouraged to persevere, and to him Avas entmsted
the Avork : he entered upon it with enthusiasra, and succeeded,
although he had difficufties of aU kinds to contend against, no

THOMAS BEWICK. 147

one to help hira over them, and was necessitated to invent his
own tools.
Bewick by this means formed a style of his own, and though
it would be unfair to state that wood-engraving was a lost art,
which he resuscitated, it is perfectly true that it was his superior
genius that drew public attention toward it, established it on its
present firm basis, and thus " wedded art unto the press."
He returned to Cherry-bum when his apprenticeship was com
pleted : it was his custom to pay weekly visits there, and shout
his inquiries across the river, when it was too sAvoUen to ford.
His heart was in his early home, and when writing in after-
years to a friend, he says — " I would rather be herding sheep on
Mickle-bank top than remain in London, although for so doing
I was to be made Premier of England." London was not to his
taste; he visited it in 1776 for a short time, and was eraployed
by Hodgson, the best wood-engraver of that day, — probably in
consequence of having received, the year before, the award of
a medal from the Society of Arts, for a cut illustrative of the
fable of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound." In 1777 he
returned to Newcastle, entered into partnership with his forraer
master, and thenceforward devoted his chief attention to
engraving on wood. His first work was an illustrated edition
of "Gay's Fables," pubUshed by Saint, of Newcastle, in 1779,
whose trade chiefly consisted in children's books, raany of which
Bewick Ulustrated in conjunction with his younger brother John.
In 1784 they engaged in publishing an illustrated edition of
" Select Fables ; " but ft was in the cuts for the " History of

148 HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
Quadrupeds," published in 1790, that his great genius fully
made itself felt. The truth and vigour with Avhich the animals
were delineated, and the adrairable treatment of the accessories,
— the characteristic tail-pieces, where his profound study of
nature told to such great advantage, — rapidly made hira a great
farae. He had thus struck out a path for hiraself in Avhich he
is still alone : he was no slavish cutter of lines laid down for
his guidance, as the more modern Avood-engraver too frequently
is; but he cut with his graver out of the wood raany an object
no draughtsraan could place there — such as the rainute figures
in a farm scene, the birds that flit in his vignettes, and the rich
foliage that clothes the trees, all of which are expressed by his
graver with the ready knowledge of a dextrous hand, guided
by a mind corapletely familiar with the object he depicts.
Elaborate labour is now bestowed on wood engravings, and
Avonder may be excited at the Aveary toil they exhibit ; but the
vigour and truth of Bewick's bolder works elevate thera far
above mere manual dexterity — nor will better engraving rival
his well-earned farae, until drawing is raore definitely expressed
Avith it, as it is in all his Avoodcuts.
An illustrated " History of Birds " next engaged his attention,
and here his power of deUneation strongly appeared : the minutiee
of pluraage is always wonderfully rendered, and the tail-pieces
with which he decorated his pages are redolent of original genius.
In 1797 Bewick dissolved his partnership, and thenceforward
worked with his pupils regularly and raethodically at Newcastle,
in the house delineated in our cut. It is sftuated in St. Nicholas

THOMAS BEWICK. 149

churchyard, and the double-windowed room in the roof was the
one he constantly inhabited. Here all his best cuts were
executed, and here he acquired both fame and competence. His
simple habits never left hira, nor did he ever indulge in expensive
pleasures, or sigh for more than the healthy enjoyments of
nature. Bewick died in 1828, at the age of seventy-five, and is buried
at the west end of Ovingham Church, beside his brother John,
who died in 1796, at the early age of thirty-five. John had left
his northern home for London, where he practised his art for
many years : a pulmonary complaint affected him, and he re
tumed to die at Ovinghara. The sraall tablet on the church
wall records his death, and that " his ingenuity as an artist was
excelled only by his conduct as a man." His works have not
the artistic excellence displayed in those of his brother, whose
tomb siraply records the . death of hiraself and his wife IsabeUa,
whora he outlived two years. He laboured steadily at his art
while life lasted; and "The Old Horse waiting for Death " was
his last work, left unfinished at his decease.
There is a useful lesson in such a life as Bewick's, teaching
as it does this great fact— that farae and competence raay await
the patient exercise of native talent, directed by the bias of its
own strength. Bewick struck out his own course, wisely adhered
to it, and was content with what it brought him. His moderate
wants were more than suppUed, and a happy old age was his
reward. More arabitious men have failed to obtain the renown
he has secured by his unpretentious art- labour, and he will be

ISO HOMES AND SHRINES OF ENGLISH ARTISTS.
remembered when many who mistake notoriety for fame, and
the fashion of a day for the homage of all time, are forgotten.
Wordsworth gave a tribute to his genius, and Professor Wilson
exclaims of hira, — " Happy old man ! the delight of childhood,
manhood, decaying age ! A moral in every tail-piece, a sermon
in every vignette."

'H'>yy,y':-y^'- . ¦¦¦
t4^'yJ*.-\>yC.y.

BeiDick's Grave, Ovingham.

RAMBLES IN ROME.
THE FORUM AND ITS MONUMENTS — GALLERIES OF ANCIENT ART-
MODERN ART IN ROME.
PW much of truth, as well as poetry, is conveyed in the
phrase by which we generally designate Rome — " the
Eternal City ! " Its interest is indeed immortal ; the
very earth upon which its palaces once stood is eloquent with
history, and has inspired poets with their richest imaginings;
X

154 RAMBLES IN ROME.

while the relics of "the masters of the world" draw from all
lands pilgrims as devoted as those who travelled in the past
ages to Jerusalera. The student of history finds here the very
monuraents which raake part of its records ; the antiquary studies
here the fragraents which aid him in reconstructing its ruined
temples and its past life, by which we may the better understand
the historian's pages. The artist in his youth yearns towards the
great old city — it is the hope and earnest struggle of his life to
visit it, and in maturer age the raeraory of the sojourn there is
ever present araong his happiest experiences. The poet dreams
araid its ruins, or rather, sounds his rhyme Uke a trurapet-call
to the civilised world, gathering other devotees :^
"With silent worship of the great of old ! —
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."
But yet let us not, while worshipping the past, forget the great
ness of the present age, nor do it the injustice of not feeling
its OAvn peculiar power. It is not our necessity to construct a
Coliseum, but our great coramercial works are often as noble, and
aid the march of civilisation in a manner unknown to any
previous era. Thanks to " the iron road " and the power of
steam, tirae, wind and tide are partially subdued, and their
rule, once absolute, rendered more amenable to our necessities
or pleasures. " Distance " has resolved itself into " time," and
thus Rome, even to the mere excursionist, is very rauch nearer
now than it ever was before.

rT^. I

RAMBLES IN ROME. 155
If the traveller be fond of classical antiquities — and it is not
very likely that he would guide his steps to Rome without being
so— he will find rauch to interest him on his way thither. The
artist, also, who may have the Eternal City in view for its art-
treasures only, cannot fail to be interested by those en route;
which will, in fact, prepare him for the grander ones he has to see.
Less striking in quantity, the old Provencal cities contain sorae
few antiquities equal to those in Rorae— nay, the Maison Carrie,
at Nisraes, is the most perfect Corinthian temple existing, and the
Aqueduct at the Pont du Gard one of the most interesting remains
of ancient engineering and architecture in the world. If he be
a lover of landscape, the banks of the Rhone are as grand as
those of the Rhine ; while the view frora Orange across the
fertile olive gardens of Provence toward Mont Ventoux has been
corapared to the scenery of Greece by travellers of taste and
discrimination. To those for whom the raediaeval era has charras,
and the pages of Froissart delight, we would suggest a stay at
Monteliraart, Rocheraaure, or Tarascon, where Rene of Anjou
kept court in the old troubadour taste. All travellers of mind,
be they artist or araateur, author or student, must own the
influence of such scenes ; and, whUe flying through them by
the express train, regret that the passing glance should not
rather be the leisurely survey. We whirl through life so rapidly
in the present day that youth and old age are the only resting-
places of " the fitful fever " we have made out of its great raiddle
course. Let the traveUer arrange for a due knoAvledge of the
country through which his journey lies— it wiU well repay him.

is6 RAMBLES IN ROME.
Avignon may detain the poet. Here Petrarch lived, and here
first raet his Laura ; his classic home at Vaucluse is but a few
hours distant, and is reached by travelling over a country of truly
poetic beauty. Where the poet leads, the artist may safely
follow, and if he be not detained by the grandeur of the old
city of the popes, or the castle-crowned rock of Villeneuve oppo
site, the magnificence of the scenery around hira, and the beauty
of the horae of Petrarch, cannot fail to charra. Its climate has
been happily described in the proverbial words : — " Avetiio
ventosa, sine vento vcncnosa, cum vento Jastidiosa."
But now let us iraagine the dangers and difficulties of the
journey over, and the traveller safely within the walls of Rorae.
It would be difficult, if not irapossible, to describe the con
flicting feelings Avhich croAvd the traveller's mind on a first visit
to Rorae. The raost indifferent experience this, the most enthu
siastic are bewildered in expressing thera. Conflicting they
necessarily are— feelings of satisfaction or disappointraent con
tinually chase each other through the raind. Some celebrated
things do not corae up to a preconceived idea of thera, others
surpass expectation. Rome, as a city, is not striking, particularly
on approachiug it over the desolate Campagna. A wearisome
plain stretches frora the sea, a few elevations occasionally break
the monotony, but they are of no significance, nor do they present
picturesque features. High Avails shut in the city, above which
is seen the dome of St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo ;
but the view is disappointing, the scene has little to interest the
stranger, or give hira a reaUsation of preconceived ideas of

The Aqueduct at the Pont du Gard.

RAMBLES IN ROME.

157

imperial Rome. The historic localities, the ruins which are part
of the world's history, lie some distance on the other side of the
Tiber, and away frora the raodern, or fashionable localities, where
the richer classes reside. The city lies northward of the city of
the classic Roraans, and the column of Antonine marks the
boundary of interest to the archaeologist.

The Forum.

Upon the Capitoline Hill is a square of palaces, sacred to Art
and Science. Here the ancient sculptures are enshrined, and
raodern savants hold their meetings. The noblest equestrian
statue in the world occupies the pedestal in its centre : it is the
bronze of Marcus Aurelius, which Michael Angelo worshipped

158 RAMBLES IN ROME.
Avith an artist's enthusiasm. Let us ascend the grand staircase,
whose easy gradient Avas forraed for the convenience of Charles V.
of Spain, and passing the statue, raount the steps of the central
palace beyond, known as the Palace of the Senator, which is
built on the oldest structure in Rorae, the " Tabularium," believed
to have been formed in the days of its Republic. High above
this building rises a toAver, Avhich, Avhen ascended, furnishes the
best panoraraic view of Rome. Iraraediately beneath us Ues the
Forura, "the heart" of the ancient city, but now really the
southern boundary of the raodern one. You still look upon the
irregular masses of stone which paved the road, winding from
the Arch of Septiraus Severus between the temples of Saturn and
Vespasian, to the surarait of the Capitol. The ruts of the Roman
chariot wheels deeply irapress these stones, and invest thera with
an alraost sacred interest Avhen we recall the history of past ages,
and the scenes of triuraph and glory enacted by the masters of
the Old World in the classic ground beneath us. The rows of
trees across the Carapo Vacchino lead in a direct line to the Arch
of Titus, faraous for its bassi-rilievi coraraemorating the conquest
of Judea. To the left, close to the Capitol, and below the Church
of Ara Cceli (where Gibbon first conceived the idea of his iramortal
work) is the little Church of St. Pietro in Carcere. It is built over
the famed Mamertine prisons, corapleted by Servius TuUius 578
years before the Christian era. Opposite this stands the Church
of St. Luke, where the far-famed Acaderay meet, and in Avhich
is the noble figure of the Saviour by Thorwaldsen ; and this is
separated by a small street frora another church, the brick front

\l ^

RAMBLES IN ROME.

159

of which belonged to the Teraple of Hadrian. A short line of
plain modem houses leads to the centre of the Forum, and here
Ave perceive the Teraple of Antoninus and Faustina, partially

Arch of Titus.
converted into the Church of St. Lorenzo. It was consecrated to
their memories as deities by the adulation of the Roraan Senate,
and the inscription recording the act is still upon the frieze.
Opposite is the walled garden of the Villa Farnese, bounding the

i6o RAMBLES IN ROME.
Palatine Hill, and enclosing the ruins of the Palace of the
Caesars. In front of this stand the three solitary columns of a
temple, which has already received as many naraes as learned men
have contended it should do. The deep excavations recently made
beside them reveal the marble floors of raany noble buildings
Avhich once crowded the Forura, and so bring us back to the
soUtary coluran of Phocus, in the foreground of our view. If we
carry our eye beyond the Arch of Titus, we shall see the vast
circle of the Coliseum, and the gigantic arches of the Basilica of
Constantine, rising far above the puny buildings around them ;
Avhile gardens, churches, and houses cover the rest of old Rome.
Turning the other way, modern Rome, with its crowded houses,
spreads to the foot of the Pincian Hill ; the colurans of Trajan
and Antonine, the dorae of the Pantheon, and the Castle of
St. Angelo, being the only striking reraains of ancient labour Ave
detect in the midst of raodern work.
Let us descend and walk to the Arch of Titus, which bounds
the vieAV in the raodern Forura. Hoav noble are the fragraents
(alas, that they are fragraents !) which the artist of his day sculp
tured to coraraeraorate the fall of Jerusalera. Little did the vain
glory of old Rorae consider that the representation of the half-
despised spoils of the Teraple should give one chief point of
interest to their city when the hated Christianity should flourish
on the ruins of classic heathenism. The Coliseura could only be
effectually preserved by consecrating it to the early Christian
martyrs. How powerful are the lessons which history teaches !
But let us not leave these daraaged bassi-rilievi without an

RAMBLES IN ROME. i6i

acknowledgment of their artistic beauty; it is an acknowledg
ment that we do not remember to have hitherto seen rendered to
them — their great historic interest has absorbed all attention :—
yet note the glorious beauty of these horses' heads, as they
bear along the triumphant Caesar ; their eyes glow and nostrils
dilate as if conscious of their charge. They are as fine as the
Elgin raarbles ; nor wiU the chaste beauty of the heads of the
attendants who crowd the scene suffer by a coraparison with
these glorious works.
We will pursue our way down the inclined plane of the Via
Sacra, which Horace relates he used to raake his favourite walk ;
and then let us study the older parts of the Arch of Constantine.
These older parts are portions of the Arch of Trajan, which the
unscrupulous Constantine "appropriated" to his own glory.
They all represent events in the life of Trajan, with that fidelity
of detail, that perfect vraisernblance so conspicuous in the finer
works of antiquity, and which never injures the grandeur of their
conception, or the breadth of their treatraent. They are true
pictures, and noble works of art at the sarae time. Criticism has
not yet done justice to the admirable figures of Dacian captives
that surmount its columns. They look upon you in dignified
silence, erect and kingly, though bound by their conquerors ;
it is as if the Roman sculptor felt obliged to respect and express
the innate nobility of the despised barbarian, and raagnanimously
accorded to their stony representatives the expression which was
their due. They seem now rather placed to claira respect and
pity, than to swell the glory of a conqueror.
Y

1 62 RAMBLES IN ROME.
Time has dealt leniently with these ancient works : to a
northern eye, the cleanness and perfection of monuments which
have been exposed to the weather during so many centuries,
are most surprising. Age has merely tinged thera with a warm
rich glow; but has "written" no "strange defeatures on their
brow." It is the barbarism of man alone which has done mis
chief ; and the deep indents we perceive so constantly between
the stones are the works of the old Goths, who chipped down to
the clamps which held them together to get at the metal. Since
their period, the popes and nobles used the monuments as stone
quarries, and constructed from them palaces so enormous, that
they have become a trouble to keep up. But the Roraan people,
however poor and debased, have never destroyed their monu
ments. We see nOAA'' the finest Avorks of ancient and modern art
fully exposed and unscathed. The old Roraan Janus Quadrifrons,
which gives the name to the Ponte Quattro Capi, is unprotected ;
so is the beautiful raodern sculpture on the road up the Pincian
Hill. Hundreds of other exaraples raight be given of the most
valuable Avorks freely exposed night and day. The people are
famUiarised with them, and respect them as public property ; they
are the treasures ofthe poor in Rorae, who jealously guard thera,
as the noble raay his own works in his oAvn palazzo.
It requires the revolution of raany centuries, and the decay of
the greatest nations, to form a museum like the Vatican. In it
Ave study the soul of past ages, we trace the aspirations towards
the grand and the beautiful— from the first archaic forms of
Greece, scarcely freed from the mannerisms of ancient Egypt,

/ ' kt.l:.

The Column of Trajan.

through the youth up to the manhood of art, and are lost in
contemplation of the superhuman efforts which gave to the world
sculptures like the Apollo : —
" All that ideal beauty ever bless'd
The mind with, in its most unearthly mood."
Ideality and truth are here so exquisitely blended, that, while the
anatomist may detect the latter quality, the poet may recognise
another phase of his own art, which makes the stone " a breathing
statue." After wandering over the countless chambers of this
marvellous museum, the student leaves thera with a nobler idea
of huraan nature ; he feels that man was really made from a
god-like mould, and that the mind with which he is endowed is
indeed iramortal. The fire of Greek and Roman genius still bums
unabated here ; it reasserted its prerogative after ages of neglect ;
it stimulated and evolved the latent genius of the middle ages ;
it received the acknowledgment and worship of the greatest men
in art — Raffaelle and Michael Angelo — it guided their taste;
Flaxman and Gibson, Canova and Thorwaldsen, foUoAved in their
wake ; and, as years roll on, the admiration of all true connois
seurs increases towards those noblest works of human genius.
An old traveller of the last century has correctly characterised
Rome as an inexhaustible treasure-house — " An exact survey of
Rome would ask a man's whole life. After a dozen visits to every
church, palace, or ancient ruin, something still Avill remain un
observed and worthy attention." All other collections sink in
importance after this ofthe Vatican. It contains enough to make

1 64 RAMBLES IN ROME.

the reputation of fifty rauseuras, as we see them in the capitals of
Europe. Statuary of the most wonderful kind is here so crowded
and abundant, that the mind is bewUdered with its quantity
alone ; and it is only by reflecting on the rarity of such works
elsewhere, that we fully appreciate the rich storehouses in which
we stand.
It is to the sculptor that Rorae offers its greatest lessons in art.
Other cities may rival it in painting, but in sculpture it is still
" mistress of the world." A personal visit is absolutely necessary
fully to appreciate the beauty of these works. Farailiar as we are
Avith the Apollo, the Laocoon, and other world-renowned figures,
we shall fail in corapletely appreciating their beauty by the aid
even of a cast ; there is a delicacy of texture, a mellowness of tone
in the marble which is lost in any copy : the latter is like having a
peach without the bloom upon it. Worse still are the photographs
with which Roraan shops abound — they are hideous caricatures
of noble works ; some fault may result frora bad manipulators,
and worse lenses, but the yelloAv stains of age upon the marble
producing heavy tints of brown over the surface of the photograph,
is a difficulty which has yet to be surraounted, and is fatal to the
beauty of such representations.
There are sorae few works in the Roman coUections which
deraand attention for their antique forraation, or historic interest ;
and of these, perhaps, the most reraarkable is in the Museum of
the Conservator!, on the Capitoline Hill. It is the famous Bronze
Wolf, " the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome," so nobly described
in Byron's " Childe Harold." Indeed, the English poet has

.

RAMBLES IN ROME.

i6s

re-invested most of Rome's monuments with a new interest by his
magical inspirations ; it is as if he had been irabued with the
feeling which governed the ancient artists who conceived them,
and he is the only fitting exponent of the thoughts they should
convey. Antiquaries have quarrelled over this figure as warraly as they
have quarrelled over every antique site in the old city. There is
scarcely a temple or ruin which has not been honoured by treatises

The Bronze Wolf.
to show what it once was, or was not ; and the best of these
labours frequently leave the student raore bewildered, after much
weary reading, than he was at the outset of his inquiry. This
ancient bronze carries upon it marks of the early age in which it
was executed : the whole contour is in the severe style of Etruscan
work — the hair on the mane and back is expressed by short, com
pressed curls, chased by the tool and arranged in close order ; the

head is equally archaic in treatment ; but the twins, who are
sucking the teats, are evidently of much more recent workman
ship. It is beUeved to be the group mentioned by Cicero, as
standing in the Capitol, a relic of sacred interest in his day.
Consternation once seized the people when lightning struck it,
as it was an oraen of fearful import ; the left hind leg of the
animal still shows the effect of the blow, which has fractured and
partially melted the metal. A prosaic antiquary recently de
ceased (with that love for writing more on a subject already
exhausted which characterises some few of the fraternity) pro
mulgated a doubt on this very fracture, and asserted it to be a
flaw in casting. To look on the figure is to see the folly of this.
It is only noted here to record the love the doubters have for
doubting. In the sarae spirit, the grand statue of Porapey in
the Spada Palace has been questioned as that at the base of
which Ceesar fell ; but, after centuries of quarrelling, the old
faith has triuraphed, all reasonable doubts have been set at rest,
and the spectator may apostrophise it in the words of Byron as —
" Thou who beheldest, 'midst the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie.''
This stern and striking figure is the only one of note in the
elegant little palace of the old Spada faraily. It was found in
1553, and ran risk of destruction at the raoraent of its discovery,
inasrauch as one portion of it was buried under one house, and
the other beneath the adjoining one; each proprietor quarrelled
violently over his share, and, like the mothers before Soloraon,

The Laocoon.

RAMBLES IN ROME. 167
determined to divide it between them ; but the Pope, as wise as
the Jewish monarch, quieted the combatants, and secured the
figure for five hundred crowns in gold. To have appealed to their
pity or love would have been useless ; the Pope more effectually
appealed to their pockets. When the French, under Napoleon,
played Voltaire's " Brutus " in the Coliseum, they carried thither
this statue, and for their convenience lopped off the right arra.
It is now restored, but the correctness of its position raay be
doubted. The statue is at present placed in a bad situation,
between windows, which distract the spectator with cross Ughts.
It is not always that a statue has the honour awarded to the
Venus of Milo at the Louvre ; the goddess there occupies an
entire saloon, and the most ordinary visitor is irapressed with the
due feeling of respect and attention so great a work of art should
receive. In the Vatican this honour is awarded to three works
only — they are the ApoUo, the Antinous, and the Laocoon ; had
the same been granted to many others deserving honour, Rorae
itself would be too small to contain teraples to hold its statues.
The decay of old farailies has deprived Rorae of raany art-
treasures once within its walls ; but the private palaces still con
tain many gems of price. A short walk without the walls to the
Villa Borghese will exhibit a sample of the riches which once
filled the houses of the Roraan nobles. The entire ground-floor
of this palace is devoted to ancient art. Its floors are inlaid with
mosaics, possessing the greatest interest, and its collection of
statuary is admirable. There are, however, two instances here of
bad antique work, which may be useful in teaching us to check

RAMBLES IN ROME.

mere bUnd adrairation for aU that is old. There is a group of
Antiope corabating Hercules and Theseus, in which the figure of
Antiope is out of all proper proportion ; and the same may be said
of a Cupid seated in the lap of Venus in an adjoining room. A
very unsightly effect is soraetiraes produced by the props left in the
marble. The Gladiator Avith the Strigil, in the Vatican, is a
remarkable instance : here a prop stretches frora the thigh to the
extended arra of the figure : it is a solid bar of marble, destroying
the floAv of line which is the charra of statuary.
On the other hand, let us do justice to the greatness of ancient
art, even when contrasted with the greatest names of modem days.
The enthusiasm of Michael Angelo for the AVorks of the ancients
is part of his history, and the Avorld-renowned "Torso" of the
Vatican still exists to prove the soundness of his admiration. Yet
this great man, Avith all his love and reA'erence for the labours of
the great sculptors of old, failed when he ingrafted his work on
theirs ; and he did it in all respect and adrairation. He restored
the right arra and toes of both feet on the statue of the Dying
Gladiator ; but the restorations are stone, not flesh, as the rest of
the marble appears to be, by the superhuman genius of its mani
pulation. The foldings of the skin at the knuckles are indents,
not anatomy. The group of the Uon attacking a horse, noAv
placed in the court of the palace of the Conservatori, has the
horse's head, neck, and legs added from the same studio ; but they
are not classic, and forra lines and angles uncharacteristic of the
high art of ancient times.
In a city abounding with gaUeries public and private, the visitor

RAMBLES IN ROME. i69
is continually meeting with unlooked for treasures; thus the
Corsini Palace in the TrasteA'ere has in its picture-gallery two
antique marbles of rare beauty. One is a Greek chair, enriched
with sculpture of the raost delicate kind ; a work of the greatest
refineraent. The other is a sraall figure, not more than six inches
high ; it represents a young man carrying a dead boar. We
could learn nothing of its history, nor are Ave familiar with it in
engravings or casts; yet it is one of the finest Greek works,
attractive in its treatraent, and would be eminently popular if
reproduced in modem "Parian." Such sraall figures, so ex
quisitely rendered, must have been " cabinet articles " even in
ancient Greece.
New and enlarged vieAvs of ancient art must force themselves
upon the minds of all visitors to the Roraan galleries. In the
Capitol we are astonished by the colossal reraains of the statues
of emperors which once decorated the city ; they rival the works
of ancient Egypt, and we see nothing of this kind elsewhere. The
enormous bath, cut frora one mass of porphyry, and raeasuring
forty-three feet in circuraference, in the circular hall of the Vatican,
testifies to the luxury as well as the grandeur of the old Roraans.
In the mosaics of their pavements we detect the graceful and
cultivated tastes which the poets of antiquity inculcated, and call
to raind the Lyrics of Anacreon, or the Odes of Horace. Though
at no time equal to Greece in the acrae of elegance, Ave are con
tinually reminded of the refinements of old Rorae in the thousands
of graceful decorations which raeet us here on every side^ — not a
vase or candelabrura that is not redolent of beauty. All they
z

170 RAMBLES IN ROME.
touched they consecrated, and the altar of a past faith is precious
to us as an art-treasure. It is only in so great and varied a
coUection as this that one fully feels the vast variety of power they
possessed in the discursive flights of art over all Nature ; thus the
HaU of Animals, in the sarae building, is astonishing for the
variety of creatures there sculptured, with a truth and power which
a Snyders or a Landseer raight enAry. Pliny notes the excellence
of Greek sculptors in this particular branch of art, but we rarely
encounter specimens of their proficiency ; it is only here that we
can fully appreciate their powers; in this hall, filled with birds
and beasts of all kinds, a veritable " menagerie of art," we feel
hoAv entirely they studied " each phase of raany-coloured life," and
triumphed as much in the delineation of the doves of Venus as
they did in the statue of the goddess herself.
This oranipotence of antique sculpture is a striking feature in
Rome. It leaves nought unrepresented, and all its achievements
are triuraphs. They stand all tests ; and the glorious beauty of
the Antinous of the Capitol has had the testiraony of John Bell,
one of our best anatoraists, to its perfection in that particular.
He says decidedly, " The anatomist would look in vain to detect
even the slightest mistake or raisconception ; yet such is the
simplicity of the whole composition, so fine and undulating the
forras, that a trifling error would appear as a gross fault." The
admirable way in which this knowledge is displayed he notes in
.the "Gladiator :" — "no affectation of anatoray here ; not a muscle
to be distinguished, yet the general forms perfect as if they were
expressed."

RAMBLES IN ROME.

There is a charming bust of a Bacchante in the same gaUery
(marked No. 43) ; it alraost seeras to breathe ; the lips are fuU and
soft, the eyes beaming with gentleness ; you gaze on it untU you
cease to think it marble, and expect those quivering Ups to utter
the "Io, Bacche!" Wonderful, indeed, is this power of raind
over matter !
But the triuraph of ancient art Ues not so much in its own
imperishable beauty, as in its unconquerable vitality; the bar
barian may be master of old Rome, and hold his orgies in its
ruined fanes — unable to appreciate, he raay rudely injure the great
works of nobler raen ; but while a lirabless torso reraains to be ex-
huraed, the vivid lessons of ancient art survive. A Michael Angelo
will come to worship and resuscitate its principles. He forras his
mind, and gives his living hand the true direction pointed out by
the great of former days ; thus do they indeed " rule us in their
urns," for all must bow to the lessons based on the iramutable
laws of truth and beauty; and where do we see thera raore
gracefully or more vigorously pronounced than in the immortal
works which crowd the galleries of old Rorae ?
It is not only in the greatest productions we trace this iraportant
element ; it meets the eye and appeals to the mind in every variety
of artistic decoration so abundantly adopted in the habitations of
the ancient Romans. The floral omaraent upon a vase, the
cluster of fruit upon an altar, or the raore fanciful combinations
of foliage, aniraal and human forras in an arabesque, are all basel
on the deep study of Nature. They founded the style of Raffaelle,
as adopted for the walls of his Loggie in the Vatican, and are

172 RAMBLES IN ROME.
farailiar to us all through the nuraberless adaptations we still use
for the decorations of our own homes. The originals have, how
ever, a freshness and vigour which copies never possess ; you trace
in them the immediate influence of Nature, and not the taraer copy
of a copy. In the exquisite Villa Borghese, the modern arabesques
on its Avails appeal less poAverfuUy to the raind than the antique
raosaics on its floors. There you have gladiatorial corabats, so
evidently the transcripts of what the workman had seen, that you
at once feel his principal study must have been the Coliseum, and
his work the reproduction of what he had seen there. The
gladiators, with their abundance of aniraal power and small
raental conforraation, are as true as the dying gasps of the tigers
and other aniraals we see transfixed in other parts of the subject.
This is the great secret of the enduring vitality of the classic
school of art, which survives all changes of tirae or taste, and is
always acknowledged as the greatest and truest teacher. Be
proud, then, of Art, all ye who profess it ; to you is given a
victory over tirae, greater than the conqueror's over kingdoras.
The neglected artist of one age may be the ruling spirit of
another, provided he be the ardent worshipper of Nature and of
truth, and the faithful expounder of their graces ; for the laws are
immutable by which they rule.
The pontificates of JuUus II. and Leo X. included the Augustan
age of modern art in Rome. To grandeur of conception, and a
boundless liberality, they added an enthusiasra which ever urged
onward the great raen by whom they were surrounded. Irapatient
of delay, or even of rest, the fiery Pope JuUus quarrelled chiefly

RAMBLES IN ROME. 173
with the pace which could not keep up with the velocity of his
wishes. Michael Angelo seeras to have been best fitted by nature
to cope with this pontiff ; but the gentle Raffaelle died under the
impetuosity of Leo. The artist, fearing this want of patience,
ran from his palazzo upon a sudden sumraons, in the full heat of
the sun, and died immediately afterwards. His pupils carried
out his great designs, but we miss the master-raind after his death.
The galaxy of talent which shed a glory over the pontificates of
these popes makes their rule an iraportant era in the history of
art. The faded glories of the Vatican still shadow forth the
grandeur of design and beauty of execution, which rendered it the
greatest art-palace of the age of the Renaissance,
We say these walls "shadow forth faded glories," and we say
so advisedly. Perhaps no feeling can be more distressing to the
artist, or lover of art — who has made his pilgriraage to Rome for
the first time — than the mortifying state of decay in which he finds
some of the most celebrated works by these raaster-rainds. The
gloomy charabers, whose walls exhibit this crowd of faded figures,
are the famous " Caraera " of Raffaelle ; the open galleries around
the courtyard of the Vatican, partially decayed by Aveather, is his
" Loggie." The dira grey picture on the wall of the Sistine
Chapel, whose general features are now only barely distinguishable,
is "The Last Judgraent" of Michael Angelo. "After all your
high-raised expectations, you will walk through a set of cold,
square, glooray, unfurnished rooms, with sorae old, obscure, faded
figures painted on the walls — your disappointment will have no
bounds. But have patience — suspend your judgment — learn to

174 RAMBLES LN ROME.

look on them, and every fresh examination will reward you with
the perception of new beauties, and a higher sense of their
excellence." *
The ruin brought upon these noble works is the result of the
most wanton neglect and injury. In 1528, when Rorae was taken
by assault and cruelly pillaged by the Constable Bourbon, the
brutal soldiers did more raischief than the Goths in their earlier
ravages. They lighted their fires in these glorious rooms, blacken
ing Raffaelle's frescoes, then fresh in their beauty, and wantonly
destroyed raany of the finest heads he had painted. The popes
afterwards endeavoured to repair the injury; but the charmed
hand was wanting, and Lanzi reads a severe remark made by
Titian on this " restoration " when he first saw it. t Every inch of

* "Rome in the Nineteenth Century," 1820. This opinion of an amateur is still more
strikingly enforced by the written experience of one of our greatest painters — Sir Joshua
Reynolds — who visited these works with longing enthusiasm. He records his first im
pression thus: — "I remember very well my own disappointraent when I first visited the
Vatican ; but, on confessing my feelings to a brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had
a high opinion, he acknowledged that the works of Raffaelle had the same effect on him ;
or rather, that they did not produce the effect which he expected." He adds how much he
felt mortified at not finding himself enraptured witli the works of this great master, and
declares " it was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me."
He naturally solves the enigma in the course of due study ; and finds that if Raffaelle's
works "had really been. what I expected, they would have contained beauties superficial
and alluring, but by no means such as would have entitled them to the great reputation
which they have so long and so justly obtained. The excellence of his style is not on the
surface, but lies deep, and at the first view is seen but mistily. It is the florid style which
strikes at once, and captivates the eye for a time, without ever satisfying the judgment."
t It was Sebastian del Piombo who had been employed thus, and Titian purposely asked
him who had presumptuously and ignorantly bedaubed them. Lanzi, in his Storia Pittorica,
thus records his words : — " Che fosse quel presumtuoso ed ignorante, che area embrattati
que' volti ? ' '

RAMBLES IN ROME. 175
walls and roof of these chambers was once refulgent with the
glories of art. So was the Loggie ; Lanzi says, " They who saw
it after it was finished — when the lustre of the gilding, the bril
liancy of the colours, and the freshness of the marbles made it
resplendent with beauty on every side — must have been struck
with amazement as at a vision of Paradise." The open gallery in
which they are painted overlooks the district of the Trastevere
and the whole of Rorae beyond, the view being bounded by the
Sabine Hills ; it is the noblest prospect to be seen of the city,
Avith the grand colonnade of St. Peter's at your feet. Well raight
the old popes delight to Unger in this lovely gaUery, and inhale
the pure breezes as they floated over the Eternal City ; but Lanzi
sorrowfully notes that "the exposure of the gallery to the in-
cleraency of the weather had almost reduced it to the squalid
appearance of the ancient grotesques" in that comparatively
short period. Now the frescoes have, in some places, faded
altogether, many great pieces of stucco have fallen frora the walls,
and the whole has a dirty and ruined look. Pio IX. has glazed
the whole of the arcades ; but this is Uke another reaUsation of
the old proverb — " Shutting the stable after the steed is stolen."
He has also restored the topraost story, which is certainly a most
brilliant reproduction ; but, of course, it ceases to be of the same
interest as the original work, and it is much to be regretted that
a loving care was not earlier bestowed on this renowned work.
The " Last Judgment " of Michael Angelo is a still greater wreck.
It also has suffered frora its position. It occupies the entire wall
of the Sistine Chapel, against which the altar is placed, and this

176 RAMBLES IN ROME.

obscures a great part of the picture. To make it still AVorse, a
baldachin, or canopy, rises high above it, and altogether hides
the central part of the lower half of the design. The smoke of the
incense, and the chills and daraps, as well as the general neglect
of more than three centuries, have ruined it as a picture, and you
can now only dimly discern the general design ; the figures come
forth, as you study it, like ghosts through the foggy haze of a super
natural vision. It is like experiencing a dream to look upon it.
It is in the divine pictures by Raffaelle that we must now seek
his master-raind. "The Transfiguration," the noblest of human
works, StiU exists in purity. We need not descant on that which
is so well known, but speak rather of his other works in Rorae.
In the Borghese Gallery is his own portrait at the age of thirteen,
remarkable for its purity and truth, and full of the rich proraise of
his after-life. In close proxiraity is placed his first historical
picture, painted when he was tAventy-four years of age. It is full
of action, powerful in composition and colour, and as perfect in
preservation as could be wished. On looking at such pictures,
astonishment rises in the mind stronger than ever, that men
should exist to "write down" so divine a spirit; and, cloyed with
the beauties of pure and true art, defend and Avorship the hideous
conventionalities of pre-Raffaelitisra : thus preferring the darkness
of the middle ages to the " light frora heaven."
In the bright light and clear air of Italy, pictures certainly
"tell" more powerfully than in our dingy galleries. They
evidently accord better with a sunny land than a foggy one.
Their artists, too, seemed to have dipped their pencils in brighter

The Transfiguration.

RAMBLES IN ROME. i-j-j

tints, and had generaUy a gayer fancy than the northmen. No
artist shows to more advantage here than Titian ; his glorious
allegory of " Sacred and profane Love," in the Palazzo Borghese,
is a work on which the eye and raind may rest without satiety.
There is a half-length of a noble female slave, richly dressed,
among the smaU coUection of pictures in the Barberini Palace,
finer than the Raffaelle Fornarina (a coarse picture of a coarse
woraan), or the over-praised " Beatrice Cenci," which SheUey has
invested with a poetry not its own. Then for Titian's power as a
portrait-painter, look upon the children of Charles V. in the Corsini
Gallery ; you leave thera as if you were leaving living people, and
you remember thera afterwards as vividly as you do the persons
to whora you may have been introduced at Rome. For such
undying records of fleeting life can any artist be paid too highly ?
It is but a purchase of immortality !
In visiting the Roman palaces, the stranger will be first asto
nished by their enormous size ; then by the lavish splendour of
their decoration ; and lastly by their desolate air. Generally
constructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the
nobles were very wealthy, and anxious to outstrip each other in
display, they are now scarcely properly tenanted. Many are let
in suites of lodgings, or for the season to wealthy travellers.
The Barberini Palace has the look of a deserted barrack, and the
remains of the picture-gallery are huddled in three small rooms
down a back stair ; while acres of apartments show closed shutters,
broken windows, or servants' rags out to dry. More melancholy
pictures of fallen magnificence than some of these palaces exhibit,
A A

178 RAMBLES IN ROME.
cannot Avell be conceived. It is in the Palazzo Pamphile-Doria
only that we see a noble building nobly kept up, and absolutely
lit with gas.
The older palaces, the Borghese, Spada, &c., are very striking
in their interior arrangeraents. The fountains in the saloons of
the former are pleasant novelties to a stranger ; but the sculpture,
painting, and gilding which cover walls and ceiling are quite
oppressive by their lavish design. It reminds one of the fuU-
bloAvn glories of the court of Versailles. But it is all splendour
and no comfort ; you clatter along on stone or stucco floors, and
the rooms are totally unprovided with fireplaces. A brazen or an
ugly open pan of charcoal is introduced when Avarmth is required ;
generaUy the inhabitants content theraselves Avith a small earthen
pot of charcoal, Avhich is placed in the lap, and the hands held
over it in cold weather. The alternations of climate are sometiraes
very severe in Rome; generally the change of temperature
between day and night is violent. From the contiguity of the
Pontine Marshes, fevers are generated, and there are feAv cities
more unhealthily situated.
In wandering through the half-deserted streets between Ponte
Rotto and the Ponte St. Angelo, many fine old houses will be
noticed, once the residence of important signers, now inhabited
by colonies of poor famiUes. Traces of misery and want peep
forth frora the dirty doors and broken windows of these noble old
mansions ; but the walls tell tales of better days. Many fine
fragments of ancient sculpture decorate their fa9ades, and you
occasionally meet with pleasing designs upon the fountains with

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RAMBLES IN ROME. 179
which Rome is provided abundantly. The classic Romans first
gave the inhabitants this supply of pure water ; and though it is
now more Umited, it is still a noble one for all purposes. Many
of the large palaces have a small fountain at an exterior corner,
always running, for public use ; and there is one at the Simonetti
Palace very indicative of the sixteenth century ; it represents the
half-length figure of a raan in a gown and cap, holding a barrel in
both hands, and pouring the water through the spigot-hole. With
grander designs for fountains Rome abounds — from the vast heap
of sculpture at the back of the Conti Palace, known as the Fontana
di Trevi, to the simple and graceful Triton who blows the water
through his shell in the Piazza Barberini. The first is in very
questionable taste — a huge assemblage of rocks, sea-gods, horses,
and shells ; but the latter is an elegant design by Bernini.
Rome possesses speciraens of the art of Bernini in all its phases,
and exhibits his gradual detorioration in style as he grew older
and more mannered. Thus, the group of ApoUo and Daphne in
the Villa Borghese, executed when the sculptor was only eighteen
years of age, is a really fine work : so also is the ^neas and the
David ; it is, indeed, in this one room, " the Caraera di Bernini,"
we see hoAV great the sculptor was when young. If we would see
what he was in the zenith of his farae, when he unfortunately
exercised a fatal influence on the arts, we raust go to St. Peter's ;
and there, in the place of honour, see his gigantic absurdity, the
group of fathers of the Church supporting the bronze case for the
chair of St. Peter. Here you have his vulgar figures, his con-
cefted attitudes, his meaningless draperies, in perfection, and sigh

RAMBLES IN ROME.

to think of the mischief his want of taste did in his own day, and
long after it, by means of the false school he founded.
Canova has honours in Rome second only to the ancients. To
him one of the four pavUions in the " CortUe di Belvidere " of the
Vatican has been assigned. It contains the Perseus, and the
boxers Creugas and Daraoxenus. A work more characteristic
of the peculiar style of this artist, is the recUning Venus of the
Borghese collection, modelled by hira frora the sister of Napoleon ;
its delicacy is alraost carried to excess— it is the " stippling " of
sculpture, and, like his " Graces," rerainds us of the opera ballet
rather than of Nature. How great and pure he could be, let his
raonuraent to Pope Clement XIII. in St. Peter's testify ! Nothing
can be finer in conception, or purer in execution, than one figure
here — the Genius of Daath. It is a graceful figure seated with
torch reversed, the face tinged with raelancholy ; but it is the
raelancholy of reflection, rather than of sorroAV ; the pondering
over raankind's inevitable doora ; a melancholy seductive, rather
than repulsive ; no hideous, hopeless sorrow here, like the weeping
children and broken-doAvn mourners over urns on ordinary torabs.
Death is here not frightful, but hopeful. He is the angel of God
eraployed in his iramutable decrees, — the harbinger of a better
Avorld, whose placid, holy face bespeaks the quiet and happiness
that he brings to all who walk faithfully on earth. This one
figure is worth a journey to Rorae, and few minds have produced
so high and holy an erabodiraent of pure thought and right feeling.
The studios of raodern Roraan sculptors — including as they do
raany Avho are only Roraans by residence — are among the most

The Chair of St. Peter.

delightful visiting places within the whole city walls. You need
no ceremonious introductions here. You merely knock and enter.
Around you are the workmen and their labours, — the living artists
who cut from the shapeless marble block works destined to last
ages after the frail huraan hand that fashioned them has mouldered
into its native clay. Happy men seem they all! — for all true
lovers of art must be happy. The consciousness of the appre
ciation of beauty is a joy to every mind ; how much raore must
be the pleasure of giving that consciousness a tangible form — an
enduring existence ; rewarding him who made it, gratifying him
who possesses it, and hundreds yet unborn who may gaze on it ?
Master-minds in various grades of life there are many ; but the
poet and the artist has the most powerful mastery in the witchery
of his works through all ages of change.
To the honour of art and its professors in Rome, let us close
our notes with a testimony to the brotherhood they form. From
all quarters of the world students flock to Rorae; and here they
literally live as " a band of brothers." The nature of their studies
breaks down all barriers which nationalities or customs might
impose elsewhere, and all raeet on coraraon ground, whatever
their native country may be. An amicable cordiality seems to
reign in men who might, in all else but art, feel and act very
oppositely to their compeers ; but art is the cement of friendship
and peace : may it always produce " goodwill among men ! "
We have no statistics of the numbers of native and foreign
artists who reside in Rome. Very many are foreigners, who,
like Penry WilUams and the late John Gibson, Uve there entirely :

others are students — birds of passage — who carry home the ex
perience of months for the guidance of home-life in after years.
They have their known resorts, and one famed one is the Cafe
Greca, in, the Via Condotti, where coffee, ices, tobacco, and general
conversation employ their evenings, and where breakfasts of a
siraple kind are generally eaten. An artist's day is passed in
his studio ; and if his dinner be not sent from a trattoria, he goes
there. It would not be easily possible to raention an existence
raore replete with the elements of happiness than that of a true
votary of art. Removed frora the turraoil of Ufe, he exists only
for the study of the beautiful ; and if his course be chequered by
the crosses which are the lot of all, he may console himself by
knowing they are fewer than those that beset the more adven
turous in the battle of life ; while his mental organizations open
a field of pleasure closed to raere worldly men. If Rome offered
no other lesson, this, that teaches the amenities art always offers
to its devotees, whether professional or amateur, is worthy of all
consideration. " Ye nobler Arts ! as life's last lustre given.
Gilding earth's grossness with the gloss of heaven,
'Tis yours to crown complete the social plan,
And harmonize the elements of man."

THE END.

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