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Gift of
JULES DAVID PROWN

THE MASTER PAINTERS
OF BRITAIN

Dajitfi G atrial Rossetti, pinz

¦^J/ie I ,'n<:.i.u'.-(i i J anipxci .

THE

MASTER PAINTERS

OF BRITAIN

EDITED BY
GLEESON WHITE
SOMETIME EDITOR OF 'THE STUDIO'
AUTHOR OF ' ENGLISH ILLUSTRATION : THE SIXTIES'

IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOL. II

EDINBURGH
T. C. AND E. C. JACK
CAUSE WAYSIDE
1898

Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

CONTENTS VOL. II.

INTRODUCTORY, .
PICTURE.
The Fight Interrupted,
Choosing the Wedding Gown,
Christ Crowned with Thorns,
Nymph and Satyrs, .
The Plains of Heaven,
Tending Sheep,
Battle of Trafalgar,
Christ Weeping over Jerusalem, .
My Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman,
autolycus, .....
A Village Choir,
The Sleeping Bloodhound,
The Drover's Departure,
The Dying Stag,
Lilium Auratum,
Sir Tristram,
The Covenanters' Preaching,
Anne Page inviting Slender to Dinner, .
St. Paul's from the River,
Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard,
Dredging off the Mersey,
Doctor Johnson in the Antechamber of
Lord Chesterfield,
The South-Sea Bubble,
La Loteria National,
Cardinal Wolsey's Procession to West
minster Hall, . . . .

ARTIST.
William Mulready, R.A. (1786-1863)
William Mulready, R.A.
William Hilton, R.A. (i 786-1839)
William Etty, R.A. (i 787-1849)
John Martin (1789-1854)
John Lin?iell {i-]()2-i?,?>2)
W. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (i 793-1867)
Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A. (1793-1865)
Charles R. Leslie, R.A. (1794-1859) .
Charles R. Leslie, R.A.
Thomas Webster, R.A. (1800-1886) .
Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. {1802-1873)
Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. .
Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A.
John F. Lewis (1805-1876)
William Dyce, R.A. (1806-1864)
Sir George Harvey, P.R.S.A. (1806-1876)
Thomas Duncan, R.A. (1807-1845)
Henry L>awson (iSii-iS-j?,) .
Daniel Madise, R.A. (1811-1870)
William J Muller {1812-1S4S)
Edward M. Ward, R.A. (1816-1879)
Edward M. Ward, R.A.
John Phillip, 7?. ^. ( 1 8 1 7- 1 867 )
Sir John Gilbert, R.A. (1817-1897) .

PAGE vii

NO. OF
PLATE.

I2
34 56 78 9
10 1 1
12 13 14151617 1819 20 2122 23
24 25

VI

CONTENTS

PICTURE.
Paolo and Francesca,
Love and Death,
The Evening Hymn,
The Railway Station,
The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania,
Work, ...
John Dalton collecting Marsh Gas,
The Messenger of Evil Tidings, .
"Valentine rescuing Sylvia,
The Finding of the Saviour in the
Temple, .
Dante's Dream,
The Blessed Damozel {Frontispiece),
Isabella, .....
Chill October,
The Blind Girl,
A Huguenot,

artist.
George F. Watts, R.A. (\Zii- ) .
George F. Watts, R.A.
George Mason, A.R.A. (1818-1872) .
William P. Frith, R.A. {181 g- ) .
Sir Mel Paton, R.S.A. (1821- ) .
Ford Madox-Brown {i82i-i8g^)
Ford Madox-Brown . . . .
Sir W. Fettes Douglas, P.R.S.A. (1822-1891)
W. Holman Hunt {\82'j- )
W. Holman Hunt
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A. (1829-1896)
Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A. .
Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A. .
Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A. .

NO. OF
PLATE. 26 2728
2930
31323334
3536
373839
40
41

INTRODUCTORY
'HE painters to whom the earlier part of this volume is devoted
include but few of the greatest names in British art. Nor did
the period of their activity witness any great revolt against tradi
tion, such as that inaugurated by John Constable. Yet, although
the period is one of transition, the new revolt which followed so
close upon its heels, a protest this time not against the classic
traditions of landscape alone but against well-nigh all the conventions of painting
since the time of Raphael, the so-called ' Pre-Raphaelite ' movement, comes into
this, our second volume. That the liberty Constable had promoted suffered the
inevitable law of reaction, which required a certain time before the forces he had let
loose could again gather together for a new movement, would be a tempting theory
and one obedient to the natural laws of evolution, yet it must not be insisted upon.
It would be unwise to believe that art is always progressing, still more that
its law of progress is inevitable ; indeed, to justify such a theory one must confine
the evidence mainly to technique, and even then the fallacy would soon be revealed.
Art, which is imagination shaped, would seem to be purely a matter of personality.
If a few great artists of equal power chance to be living at the same time, we call
their period splendid, forgetting that the average is not greatly raised by the
presence of masterly exceptions, or if it be, that however high, it still remains the
average. It is the exception which is remembered in art as in other things, and
the men whose works begin this volume show very few exceptionally gifted painters,
and perhaps no pictures that were distinctly new forces in art.
But even at the period in question, a certain scholarly technique commands
perfunctory respect. There is no doubt that where genius is not, academic know
ledge and profound regard for precedent are the next best qualities. But there
can never be a substitute for the individually new presentation of eternal verities
¦which men call genius. Yet the academic qualities — that is to say, all those things
which can be taught or acquired — were fully represented at this date. Experiment
that fails has little more chance of immortality than dull obedience to precedent
which succeeds. Each newly successful revolution appears to banish for ever the
traditions it attacked ; yet, as the history of art shows clearly, the old traditions
survive, purged it may be of some diseases contracted by age, but all the same
destined to re-attract disciples when the conquering style has become the fashion
of the hour and vulgarised by feeble imitation.

viii MASTER PAINTERS OF BRITAIN
Social factors were responsible for the course of painting at the beginning of
the nineteenth century. A German critic has proj"ected a very plausible theory
to account for the didactic efforts which from this date seem to have been almost
universally accepted by Britain, so that painters were expected to be ' public
counsellors and almost lay-preachers.' As he points out, and truly, before this
time the patronage of the arts had been almost entirely in the hands of the nobility,
who alone enjoyed the luxuries of prosperity, travel, reading and leisure. But a
rich middle-class was now coming into existence, which was also leisured and to
some extent travelled. These new patrons knew nothing and cared less for the
technique of painting, or for the picture as a picture. They were willing to accept
even genius, so long as it did not bore them ; they demanded of a picture that
it should amuse or instruct, and the more readily it pointed a moral or raised a
smile the more eagerly they welcomed it.
The view which was then accepted of the purpose of the arts, especially of
pictures, is still too generally prevalent. The moral lesson of a painting is far more
often discussed than its beauty as a scheme of colour, or its revelation of some
hitherto disregarded aspect of nature. Many people would have morality rampant
even in a landscape ; these show no little perverted ingenuity in evolving sermons
from stones and parables from scenery. A still larger class, while demanding the
moral, is yet far more concerned with the way it tells its story than with the
message it conveys. Chiefly attracted by the number of details, it believes the best
picture to be the one that reveals most imitative dexterity under close observation.
These art-lovers do not regard a painting as a scene in a play or a view from a
height, to be looked at from a given distance, but as a collection of specimens set
in a glass case, when each one, if you -wish, can be looked at with a microscope.
Of course such a comparison is purposely exaggerated, but it contains the elements
of the truth. The first class of pictures, whether by Velasquez or Constable, by
Titian or Corot, may be called ' impressions ' ; the latter, "whether by the early
Italians or later Dutchmen, by Maclise or Mr. Alma Tadema, may be called
'catalogues.' Yet these terms need not be taken as implying praise or censure.
Beauty in widely varied aspects may be revealed in the best of both schools.
Lest these words ' impression ' and ' catalogue ' fail to convey to a lay mind
the difference between the extremes of pictorial art, at the risk of restating the
obvious, a digression may be pardoned. In literature we find similar methods
adopted : for instance, on the one hand Richard Jefferies, who notes down, as in a
stenographic report, fact after fact, all, it may be, linked together by the poetic idea
in his mind ; and, on the other a poet who, by a happily chosen phrase, imparts
instantly the same effect that the author of A Pageant of Summer reveals only
after careful reading of many pages. In Jefferies' description of a pastoral scene
you are told of the doings of the early worm and the still earlier bird, of the
plants and flowers, the winds and the sky, the scents and sounds. As each

INTRODUCTORY ix
paragraph yields up its meaning, a new factor of the scene is impressed on the
reader's mind, but the long sequence must be retained in his memory before he
can project for himself the whole picture which has been gradually unfolded.
On the other hand, a poet can flash you the essentials of the scene in a line,
or, if his subject be more complex, in a stanza, and the picture he has dashed in
will rival the former in the truth of its impression.
For instance, is not a summer landscape depicted instantaneously in these four
lines by Mr. Andrew Lang ? —
' When clamour that doves in the lindens keep
Mingles vs'ith musical plash of the weir,
Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,
Then comes in the s-vveet of the year.'
The penultimate line alone is a complete picture. Mr. Andrew Lang's botany may
be accurate or not, it may be crowsfoot or the Canadian water-weed that one recalls
as being swayed in the clear stream, but to a casual reader the sum of a thousand
memories is reawakened, and the few words call up a perfect landscape, where
atmosphere, colour, sound and even odours all play their part.
Or take this, a still more definite picture — one that almost reveals the ' brush-
marks ' and the ' impasto ' of a painter : —
' The sun as he journeys
His rounds on the lower
Ascents of the blue,
Washes the roofs
And the hillsides with clarity,
Charms the dark pools
Till they break into pictures,
Scatters magnificent
Alms to the beggar-trees.
Touches the mist folk
That crowd to his escort
Into translucencies
Radiant and ravishing,
As with the visible
Spirit of Summer,
Gloriously vaporised,
"Visioned in gold.'
This extract, from Mr. W. E. Henley's Indian Summer, is in no way a catalogue,
but a picture rapidly painted in words which yield a singularly definite impression.
Only by some such parallel is it easy to make clear the difference between the
two great classes of pictures. It must not be forgotten that if most paintings are
not wholly of one class or the other, yet in few examples are the two methods
sufficiently balanced that you need hesitate as to which class the painting belongs.
Curiously enough, the older pictures — many even in the early nineteenth century
—recognised often the larger importance of being pictures first and nature-imitation
after. But this was chiefly due to their inspiration being mostly second-hand.
2 b

X MASTER PAINTERS OF BRITAIN
Their reverence for the classics still kept obedience to the letter ; they felt the
importance of making the painting a conventionally harmonious presentation of
selected facts, although in doing so they too often cramped their subject to a pre
arranged form. As when, to revert again to literature for a simile, they produced
catalogues in heroic couplets, or modified their own impression of nature according
to tradition of earlier masters' impressions, using certain stock phrases — 'sylvan
shades,' ' breezy morn,' and the like — instead of their own natural speech.
It was a state of transition and timidity. On the one hand painters hesitated
to employ the idiom understanded of the people; on the other they rebelled
against the stock phrases, which had lost so much of their pristine vigour by
too frequent repetition.
With Mulready, who begins this volume, we have a cultured academic painter,
who was by no means a dry-as-dust pedant. Mr. Ruskin, the champion of the
new-born pre-Raphaelites, could yet write of a dog Mulready has painted in his
'Choosing the Wedding Gown': 'It displays the most wonderful, because the
most dignified, finish in the expression of anatomy and covering of muscle and
hide, and assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and colour which the entire
range of ancient and modern art can exhibit' Thus we find that even the most
ardent disciple of the newer revolt did not refuse to discover the qualities he
admired in work conceived on wholly diverse lines to those he supported at the
time. It is true that he calls another painting by the artist 'perhaps the most
forcible illustration ever given of the frivolous application of great powers.'
Mulready appealed to the middle-class ideal, but he did so without loss of dignity,
so that his works should at least command our respect, however dull they may seem.
William Hunt, a fellow-student of Mulready, although unrepresented in our
selection, must not be forgotten. He was a painter of still- life and peasants ; of
whom Mr. Ruskin said, ' his drawings are illustrative of rural life in its veracity and
purity, without the slightest endeavour at idealisation, and still less with any wish
to caricature or deplore its imperfections,' and his first pieces ' absolutely right in
colour, in light and shade, and without any rivalship in past or present art.'
Hilton, next in order, is far more academic; for, while Mulready ventured to
depict common life, although he could not forget academic tradition entirely, Hilton
essayed the grander style, and revealed something short of mastery even in his
most successful efforts. With Etty we have a fine colourist, whose love for the
nude, never widely popular in Britain, was a hindrance possibly to his immediate
success, if ultimately he found favour and became an Academician. He had small
influence on the art of England ; his works were evidently inspired by foreign
schools, and have little in common with British taste. With Martin — a certain
exaggerated melodrama devoted to lofty subjects — we have a link between Fuseli
and Gustave Dore. Sir Charles Eastlake, sometime President, is less interesting ;
for his Biblical pictures, if irreproachably correct, are singularly uninspired, and

INTRODUCTORY xi
have as little chance of immortality as the printed theology of the same period.
With Webster we find a sturdy example of the painter who is satisfied to catalogue
incidents of childhood and peasant life. His works are masterpieces of their sort,
and may be documents for social historians of the future, even if they lose their
hold upon artists. C. R. Leslie, a painter of literary anecdote, plays little part in
the story of the development of native art. His manner is distinctly British, and
an excellent example of the illustrator who happens to devote his energy to easel-
pictures instead of books. Sir Edwin Landseer, next in date, is so enormously
popular even to-day that any confession of lack of sympathy with his work might
be construed as an attempt on the part of the critic to pose as a ' superior person.'
So lately as 1887 a fellow-academician, summing up fifty years of British art,
said : ' The fame of Edwin Landseer, like that of Schiller's brave man, rings
loud like organ tones or the clang of bells ' ; yet even so staunch a eulogist
added, 'What posterity will say of his claims is not for us to judge.' ^
Yet, recognising his admirable technique at times, and his power to awaken
honourable emotions from gentle and simple, a candid observer feels that silence
is the only refuge. No one is catholic enough to be entirely just in all his
judgments, and possibly the verdict of the future may reinstate Landseer's place
among great painters. If his idealised animals are wholly admirable for their
art or their fidelity to nature, one sins in good company in failing to recognise
the fact. The ' technical accuracy ' of John Lewis's paintings provoked Mr. Ruskin to
declare that they 'surpass in execution everything extant since Carpaccio.' Even
to-day, when the lack of certain qualities militates against unqualified approval,
their fine mosaic of brilliant pigment and their vivid representation of Eastern
light mark them as destined to maintain an honourable place in British art.
Thomas Sidney Cooper, Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., Richard Redgrave, R.A.,
Solomon Hart, R.A., J. R. Herbert, R.A., may be passed with mere mention. The
next in date, Paul Falconer Poole, R.A., although unrepresented in this selection,
should not be forgotten, for his works show imagination and fancy, and if his
achievements fell short of mastery, they aimed high and still maintain their
interest. W. E. Frost, R.A., C. W. Cope, R.A, Alfred Elmore, R.A., Richard
Ansdell, an animal painter of no little power, may also be dismissed with a
bare word.
In Maclise we encounter a master of his kind, and one eminently British. It
is interesting to compare his view of the ' Play Scene in Hamlet ' with that by Mr.
E. A. Abbey, exhibited half a century later. Both may be considered as ' up-to-
date ' illustrations of their time, yet, passing again and again from one to other,
and recognising that the qualities which each painter deemed most valuable are not
the same, the one conviction left upon the mind of the present writer is the utter
1 Fifty Years of British Art. By J. E. HODGSON, R.A. Heywood, 1887.

xii MASTER PAINTERS OF BRITAIN
folly of those who believe in the constant progression of art. The later painting
shows that science may indeed claim to be still growing, but also that the literary
picture of 1897 differs little in its essentials from that of 1842 ; it is better liked by
contemporaries, of course, but that it will delight more the cognoscenti of 1997 is
at least doubtful. The National Gallery catalogue — as a rule most reticent in
criticism — says that many of Maclise's works, although of the highest ability, are
not generally pleasing in their tone of colouring : this is an official hint that the
fame of the once ' great painter ' is rapidly diminishing. Nor need we linger over
the works of Augustus Egg, R.A., W. C. T. Dobson, R.A., J. C. Horsley, R.A.,
nor do more than mention the paintings of John Phillip, RA. (the Spanish Phillip),
who brought, perhaps, a new field oi genre into British art.
Many famous Scots painters, besides Harvey, Duncan, Fettes Douglas, and
others herein represented, played honourable parts in the story of Briti-sh art.
Yet to name even the most worthy of native artists is impossible within these
limits. With Sir John Gilbert, R.A., we encounter a distinctly English painter, who
is facile princeps as an illustrator, although possibly ' prince of facility ' would be a
better synonym than the literal translation of the Latin tag. For the exuberant
vitality of this artist is simply amazing. Yet, although his oil paintings appear to
have been as rapidly executed as his drawings on wood, they show fine technique
and a vivid sense of colour ; he of all Britons has more of the florid imagination of
Rubens and no little of his splendour, without lapsing into a riotous display of forms
and colours that only just escape vulgarity by the grand manner which controls
them. Sir John Gilbert has style, colour, and a strong dramatic sense, more shown
possibly in his composition than in the facial expression or pose of any single figure.
He is derived from no previous painter; he has left no follower. It is significant
to find that despite his fecundity and power he has escaped even Dr. Muther's
omnivorous appetite for modern painters, which would seem to indicate that he has
yet to be ' discovered ' by foreign critics. In England, long before his death he
had won hearty appreciation for his art from younger critics especially, even as his
earlier successes scored victories both popular and technical. His influence may
have been small, owing in part to the fact that to rival him would require no little
of his peculiar talent.
Mr. G. F- Watts, another veteran, is also alone, so far as Britons are concerned,
and with few followers. Except for the accident of his birth he might be the last
of the old masters — a belated Tiepolo — without the decadence which marks the last
of the old masters of Italy. If he has sometimes emphasised the counsellor, and
made didactic morality his chief aim, yet in doing so he has never forgotten the
painter. Despite a technique of his own, quite out of touch with modern virtuosity,
he convinces even his most unsympathetic critics, and has added at least half a
dozen veritable masterpieces to British art, and a series of portraits which are

INTRODUCTORY xiii
worthy the fame of their heroes. That he has given so large a number of his
works to the British nation, and declined titles and official honours must also be
recorded to his credit ; still more noteworthy is his staunch loyalty to poetic sub
jects. Throughout the days of triviality, realism, impression, and the triumph of
the aesthetic school he steadfastly maintained his early ideal. To remember that
he was working before the great pre-Raphaelite movement, and remained unaffected
by it, is indirect evidence of his strongly marked personality, that rose above the
mediocrity before the P.R.B., and yet was untouched by all that sprang from
that movement. George Mason, by actual date of birth, comes next in order, but as his work is
essentially of the school which came just after the pre-Raphaelite, at this place a
mere mention must suffice. Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., who follows, also supplies no
link in the chain, and may be considered later.
With Madox-Brown and Holman Hunt we arrive at the real beginners of the
movement which the actual pre-Raphaelites — Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Millais —
formulated. A popular fallacy, that the members and followers of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood (the P.R. B., as they call themselves) were bent on imitating the primitive
Italians in subject as well as treatment, needs to be contradicted before considering
their aims, which Mr. Ruskin has explained at length, and also in brief For the
passage which follows is as terse a summary of the main objects of the revolt as
could be phrased, and as it comes from the most ardent champion for the body, it
may be better to quote it than to transcribe Dante Gabriel Rossetti's programme in
full ; ' Pre-Raphaelite subjects must usually be of real persons in a solid world,
not of personifications in a vaporous one.' In other words, the new effort was
towards nature-imitation, to paint people, places, and things as like actuality as
possible, to substitute plain facts for idealised fancies—' a mere heartless reiteration
of the model,' which went so far as to provoke the absurd charge, that some of the
early pre-Raphaelite pictures were actual coloured photographs. In these days it
must not be forgotten that sharp accuracy was the supposed ideal of the camera ;
and that the recognition of the alteration in the appearance of things seen by
the normal vision, when contrasted with their supposed appearance, based on a
fore-knowledge of the objects, was in the programme of neither painter nor
photographer. But here the sources of the ideal of the pre-Raphaelites cannot
be discussed even briefly, still less can its tendencies be adequately recorded. A
whole mass of literature is available, in which the pros and cons of its argument
are debated at length. To the average person to-day the word pre-Raphaelite
suggests something ' eesthetic ' in the sense the word was employed during the
eighties. Coined to express a method with well-defined technical aims, it has been
distorted to include all ' conventionally decorative ' illustration, and nearly all
paintings, in whatever method, of poetic and imaginative subjects especially, the
somewhat archaic manner of the early Italians is more or less distinctly evident.

xiv MASTER PAINTERS OF BRITAIN
The pre-Raphaelite idea seems to have taken colour from, if it was not in
great part founded on, the Gothic Revival. The first germs of this newly
awakened interest in mediseval art may be traced to Horace Walpole's romance,
The Castle of Otranto, and his house at Strawberry Hill. Thence, with Beckford's
Fonthill Abbey, the Wa"verley Novels, the New Houses of Parliament, and the
Oxford Movement, we find the growing tendency that Englishmen should turn
away from the Greek classic, an exotic which in England followed the naturalisa
tion of the Renaissance and was never fully acclimatised, and study anew the
architecture and legend, the missal paintings, stained glass, wood carvings, and
other examples of the applied arts of their own forebears. Hence, possibly, the
strongly marked 'Gothic' tendency, which is characteristic of the pre-Raphaelites,
and is more evident in the work of their followers. The expression may have
come from Giotto and the Italian school that succeeded him, but the subjects are
more often drawn from Arthurian legend and Anglican history. It is this which
separates the pre-Raphaelite revival from the earlier Renaissance, which was
wholly classic in its source, although (so far as I am aware) it has never been
formulated as part of its creed.
Historically it begins with Ford Madox-Brown, whose Westminster frescoes had
made him the hero of Rossetti. The seven members who formed the actual brother
hood (which was practically dissolved before its rules were formulated), included,
besides Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William, John Everett Millais, W.
Holman Hunt, F. G. Stephens (the well-known writer upon art), Thomas Woolner
(the sculptor), and James Collinson. Its magazine, The Germ, which only reached
a fourth number, started a school of literature which was not only the earliest official
apologia for the pre-Raphaelite idea, but the first of a host of publications conceived
on not dissimilar lines, which range from The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,
1856, to The Century Guild Hobby Horse, The Dial, The Pageant, and even to
The Knight Errant of Boston, U.S., and certain esoteric and decadent periodicals
of France and Belgium in the late nineties.
This aspect of the movement has perhaps become more familiar to the public
than the veritable purpose of the much-talked-of brotherhood. Dozens of people
would never suspect that Mr. Holman Hunt's ' May Morning on Magdalen Tower,'
with its realistic detail and its vivid colour, is a legitimate example of the P. R. B.
ideal, while they would accept Sir Edward Burne-Jones's pictures, or even Mr.
Aubrey Beardsley's designs, as lineal descendants. All the same, the decorative
movement, which is so often confounded with the realistic intensity of the earlier
school, started into being from the hands of Ford Madox-Brown, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, and was continued by Burne-Jones and William Morris — of whom all
sorts of painters and designers avow themselves disciples to-day. Therefore it is
not surprising to find that the general public are apt to confuse the later aspect
of decorative painting with the sturdy, if still more impassioned, work of the true

INTRODUCTORY xv
P.R.B. In this volume we have not 'Christ at the Home of His Parents' by
Millais, nor an example of the earliest Rossetti's, but Millais's ' Lorenzo and
Isabella.' 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' by Mr. W. Holman Hunt, and Ford
Madox- Brown's 'Work' may be regarded as typical of the original ideals of the
brother-hood, while ' Dante's Dream ' and ' The Blessed Damozel ' foreshadow its
later phase, to be exemplified more fully by works of Sir Edward Burne-Jones
and many others in our succeeding volume.
Although the works of Mr. W. P. Frith won the admiration of the British
public to a sensational extent, so that policemen had to be placed in front of certain
of his pictures at the Royal Academy Exhibition to marshal the crowds surrounding
them, he cannot be said to have founded or developed any new schools of painting.
As a moralist he merely followed Hogarth, and gave the average citizen melo
dramatic or domestic groups, with real if commonplace interest presented simply ;
as a painter, technically considered, he has no surprises and no great failings, but
keeps to the mean average of excellence that is in itself depressing. Nor need
H. Le Jeune, F. R. Pickersgill, James Sant, Goodall, Faed, Erskine Nicol, and
many others, detain us. They all have an appointed place in the British art which
need not be under-estimated, even if at the moment their work fails to provoke
admiration or aversion, and appears merely average. Sir Noel Paton, by his
conquests of fairyland, has a more personal interest ; his sacred pictures, dear
as they are to many still living, will probably, with Overbeck and others, fail to
attract new audiences when these are dispersed. But here this running commen
tary must be suspended. With the pre-Raphaelite force let loose we have the
last purely British protest against convention. In the following volumes every
important new influence must be credited to a foreign source, although of these
not a few might possibly be traced still further back to John Constable or the
pre-Raphaelites. But as they came to England they bore a foreign accent. The
plein-air school and the Impressionists of France, the art of Japan, the per
sonality of Mr. Whistler, the fantastic conceptions of Boecklin, and the Seces
sionists of Munich — all these have played greater or lesser parts in the later
moods of British painting ; but all are too near to be clearly defined, so that
without ignoring certain native forces at work to-day, we may accept the letters
' P. R. B.' as the latest symbol for revolt not yet fully accomplished, even as the
letters ' R.A.' stand more or less accurately for obedience to accepted, and not
necessarily unworthy, tradition. A belief is growing that ' art ' is no close
secret of any corporation, but a still closer secret of the individual, which he
himself can never express except through the medium of his work. The often-
quoted definition of Zola: 'Art is nature seen through a temperament,' with
which the first volume of this work opened, may close the second. For the
only deduction that appears to be well founded is that the progress of art is a
pure matter of accident. To-day a real artist is born in England ; to-morrow

xvi MASTER PAINTERS OF BRITAIN
Spitzbergen or Ceylon may send us one. Hence the art of Britain only now
and again can be said to supply an integral part of the art of the world ; but
British painting may be allowed to score its modest and perhaps only local
triumphs whether a veritable genius chance to be amongst it to throw the rest
out of scale, or whether for a season great painters happen to be citizens of
other nationality. G. W.

THE FIGHT INTERRUPTED
By William Mulready, r.a.
^AINTED in 1816, this is one of Mulready's largest pictures, and
characteristic of his manner. Possibly another half-century or so
will impart to it a certain picturesqueness which it seems to lack
somewhat at present. The costumes of the boys, notably that
of the urchin in a ' swallow-tail ' coat and trousers, who is seen
examining critically the eye of one of the combatants, appear to us
more grotesque than attractive. The spirit of the work suggests a very moral
Sunday-school pamphlet, and the didactic purpose of the picture unluckily is not
sufficiently remote from the illustration such a tract might bear on its front page
to be entirely acceptable as a painting. These trifling objections do not affect
many sterling qualities in the work itself, and they are only put down to explain
why a certain prim, old-fashioned manner seems to age Mulready's work without
adding grace to it thereby.
This same picture of 'the most distinguished of British genre painters,' has
been called ' most perfect in his most perfect manner — one of those works of fine
colour and consummate execution in which his art culminated.'
But Mulready must not be deprived of his rightful eminence because for the
moment his themes and manner are both out of touch with the prevailing mood.
Peasant-boys and village incidents are not popular to-day. His studies show him
to be a fine artist, and his illustrations to the Vicar of Wakefield (1843) are
distinctly notable, and a very important link in the chain that stretches down to
Millais and the men of ' the Sixties ' ; while his famous design for a postal envelope
makes his name a household word in regions quite unconnected with art. This
painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1816. Elected in 1815 A.R.A.,
before it was hung he had been made R.A., a procedure which is almost, if
not quite, unique. The painting is now in the Sheepshanks Collection at South
Kensington Museum.

CHOOSING THE WEDDING
GOWN
By William Mulready, r.a.
¦"T would be hard to find a more popular picture than this, if the
number of times it has been reproduced be a true test of wide
spread appreciation. The official catalogue of South Kensington
draws attention to its force and brilliancy and the remarkable
rendering of the texture of its draperies. It has been called
the painter's masterpiece, and not unjustly ; for to-day, when
Mulready's undoubted power is perhaps under-estimated, this picture rarely fails
to extort generous approval even from critics opposed to the academic ideal
which it represents.
For it is a delightfully rendered piece of genre — a simple domestic incident
recorded without undue sentimentality. If its grouping is artificial, and its com
position marked by pre-arranged negligence, the main purpose is not distracted
thereby. Its colour is rich, and its drawing masterly. In short, it is a very
worthy example of the British school at its best. It would be foolish to expect
to find in Mulready the qualities we expect from an artist of his calibre to-day.
But to condemn him for their absence were not less foolish.
He was a great draughtsman, and, compared with his fellows, a great
artist ; that he is not one of the great master-painters of Europe may be
conceded without depriving him of that lesser place in the roll of artists which
he fully deserves.
The painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1846, and is No. 145 of
the collection in South Kensington.

2. Choosing the Wedding Gown (Mulready)

CHRIST CROWNED WITH
THORNS
By William Hilton, r.a.
iHIS picture, bought by the directors of the British Institution,
placed for a while in St. Peter's Church, Pimlico, and the first
purchase, in 1877, of the Chantrey Bequest Committee, is a
typical example of a class which is far more rare in our native
art than might be expected. The comparative neglect of
Biblical themes by British painters is possibly due to the old
Puritan distaste for pictures in churches. Few private collectors would choose a
modern version of sacred story to hang in their dining-room, the one place
set aside by long tradition for serious oil-paintings. It is true that some years
ago certain English churches contained pictures over the altar ; but the fashion
did not last long, and as the history of this painting shows, the tendency in
recent times is to oust them from the building.
Hilton proved by this work, and by his ' The Angel delivering St. Peter
from Prison,' 'The Crucifixion,' and others, that he was able to treat such
themes with dignity and a certain stateliness, based, it is true, on the traditions
of the old masters, but nevertheless more than mere imitations of their methods.
The huge popular success of Gustave Dore's paintings, and of those by
Tissot, which followed them at the same Gallery, shows that ' the great heart of
the British public ' is still touched by representations of the life of Christ ; but
it is hard to discover any example by a British artist that has at once secured
a place among the masterpieces of the art, and become really popular with the
masses. Several have nearly pleased both parties, but scarce one has gained
a place in every devout household, and also in the list of European masterpieces.
This dramatic, and in many respects admirable, presentation of Christ is
scarcely known ; indeed, very few of Hilton's pictures have been engraved, a
silent but convincing proof that those best qualified to gauge the taste of the
public (despite its greed for sentimental figures clinging to crosses, and the
Christmas-card subject generally) distrust its appreciation of more scholarly efforts
to represent the chief incidents in its orthodox creed.
The painting is among the Chantrey Bequest purchases, which, after many
wanderings, have at length found a permanent home at Millbank.

3. Christ Crowned with Thorns (Hilton).

NYMPH AND SATYRS
By William Etty, r.a.
LTHOUGH classical subjects, painted chiefly to give opportunity
for a study of the nude, have rarely found favour among
exponents in England, yet no representative selection of British
work should omit an example of Etty, who, more often than any
previous British painter, chose themes of this order. The one
here reproduced is his diploma picture, which, in accordance with
the rules of the Royal Academy of Arts, must be deposited within six months
of the artist's election. The subject is so evidently merely an excuse for a
composition after the manner of the old masters that one need not attempt to
describe it ; nor can you regard this work as expressing fully Etty's aim in all
his important pictures, which was, to quote his own words, ' to paint some great
moral on the heart.'
The flesh tints of the sleeping nymph are contrasted with the warmer hues of
the satyrs ; the landscape is merely by way of filling the space, and the tambourine
in the foreground is obviously introduced to supply a harmonious line to break the
sweep of the drapery. Etty's most important work, ' The Combat,' in the National
Gallery of Scotland, which would have represented him more adequately, is in so
bad a state, owing to decay of the pigments employed, that no photograph could be
a success. Hence in place of the too familiar ' Youth at the Prow and Pleasure at
the Helm,' or the equally known ' Bather, by the doubtful breeze alarmed ' of the
National Gallery, it seemed best to choose a no less typical picture, that is also
accessible to those of the public sufficiently daring to discover the galleries devoted
to the Gibson statues and Diploma pictures. Although the doorway leading where
these collections are housed is under the portico of the Royal Academy itself, it is
probable that out of every thousand visitors to the latter, not ten are aware of the
very existence of the others ; and possibly of these ten scarce one has climbed the
stairs and studied the really interesting collection for himself

THE PLAINS OF HEAVEN
By John Martin
¦j^^^^O include in this collection an example of a once popular painter
whose very name is in danger of being forgotten is but common
justice. John Martin's 'The Destruction of Pompeii,' once in
the National Gallery, is ' temporarily removed ' — a fate that has
befallen many second-rate pictures ; but if as a painter he
cannot be placed in the front rank, yet he is more than a maker
of didactic pictures, who won the hearts of the middle classes by a sensational
treatment of Biblical subjects. He was to some extent the Gustave Dore of his
period, fertile in invention, with a distinct power of suggesting the glories of Para
dise or the terror of some melodramatic incident — such as ' Belshazzar's Feast,'
'The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,' or 'The Great Day of Wrath.'
Accepted as the foremost Biblical illustrator, his engravings were the pride —
if not an unalloyed joy also to the younger members of the family — of most
respectable Puritan households, and his conceptions of a future state were pro
bably responsible for moulding the belief of millions.
It is easy to sneer at Martin's imaginings, but in their way they succeeded
in impressing his audience, and certainly owed little to any predecessor. If his
dramatic effects seem theatrical to-day, and his glories of Paradise rather too near
the hagiology of a Christmas card, yet he gained the end he sought, and undoubtedly
influenced many illustrators who came after him, even if his paintings left no
followers to employ similar methods. But many of his large canvases were pre
pared chiefly with a view to engravings being made therefrom. Hence the lack
of certain qualities might be pardoned to some extent ; but the utmost charity
is unable to discover reasonable defence for his technique.
Indeed, these paintings have only historical interest owing to their wide
spread popularity ; and yet, perhaps, they rewakened slumbering imagination in
those Puritan households which still fought shy of painting — banished so long from
their churches. Martin certainly attempted to realise his scenes — not in statuesque
classic imitations of Michel Angelo, but in the idiom of his time. For this he
deserves such praise as we give Mr. George Tinworth for expressing the idiom
of the average church- or chapel-goer to-day in his terracotta bas-reliefs. In other
words, he satisfied a not very exigeant audience — theologically and artistically —
without sacrificing entirely certain qualities that pertain to higher forms of art.
The picture was shown lately at the Victorian Era Exhibition : the repro
duction here is from the engraving. 5

TENDING SHEEP
By John Linnell
'HIS painting, exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal
Academy, 1883 (when two galleries were devoted to the work of
John Linnell, who had died in the previous year), is typical of
those pastorals which won him so high a reputation among
collectors. Yet fertile though he was in subject-pictures,
portraits, and landscapes, it is doubtful whether his once great
fame will be maintained ; so far as the sale-rooms are evidence, it would seem
certainly that it will not be increased. While we see a painting by Constable or a
Gainsborough fetching as many thousands as they once fetched hundreds, those
by Linnell, as a rule, keep to the five hundred or six hundred guinea level which
they had reached a quarter of a century since. Nor does modern criticism concern
itself with them ; but this may be due in part to the popularity of the Dutch and
French romanticists, whose ideal is far removed from that of Linnell. Dr. Muther
thinks that he carried on the tradition of Constable and David Cox to the new
period : ' At first revelling in golden light, in sunsets and rosy clouds of dusk, and
at a later time, in the manner of the pre-Raphaelite, bent on precise execution of
bodily form,' but those who love Constable best would hardly be inclined to endorse
the statement. Indeed, Mr. Henley has gone so far as to say that, ' well as he
meant, and vigorous as was his temperament, the outcome of it all is in some sort
a negation of art.'
The painting, formerly in the collection of Sir John Pender, and now in the
City of Birmingham Art Gallery, is reproduced here from a photograph by
Mr. J. Caswall Smith.

6. Tending Sheet) (Linnell).

BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR
By W. Clarkson Stanfield, r.a.
^HAT Clarkson Stanfield displayed 'an exquisite and almost fairy
like delicacy of technique, which is in its way absolutely perfect ' ^
may be conceded, especially if the praise is bestowed on merely
the dexterity of craftsmanship exhibited in his water-colours.
'He is the leader of English Realists,' wrote Mr. Ruskin, 'and
perhaps among the most remarkable of his characteristics is the
look of common-sense and rationality which his composition will always bear
when exposed to any kind of affectation. . . . One work of Stanfield alone pre
sents us with as much concentrated knowledge of sea and sky as, diluted, would
have lasted any one of the old masters his life.'
In some respects 'The Castle of Ischia,' or ' The Abandoned,' would have
revealed the actual sea-painting of Stanfield more fully ; but ' The Battle of
Trafalgar' (a sketch for which hangs in the National Gallery) is interesting by
way of contrast with Turner's version of the same subject. In Stanfield's you
feel that realism is supreme — not mere imitation, such as a looking-glass might
have reflected at a chance moment, but a well- selected composition that is un
flinching in its respect for facts, and yet by no means lacking pictorially.
The scene represents ' the centre of the fleet at half-past two o'clock, almost
an hour and a half after Lord Nelson received his death-wound.' The Victory
is in the act of disengaging herself from the Redoutable, a French seventy-four,
at that time lashed alongside the Tdmdraire, a British ninety-eight, and at
that moment the Fougueaux, another French seventy-four, became the prize
of the latter. On the left is the Royal Sovereign with her prize the Santa Anna,
both unmanageable wrecks ; on the right are the Bucentaur, Admiral Villeneuve's
ship, an eighty, and the Santisima Trinidad, a Spanish four-decker.
The picture, painted about 1836 for the United Service Club, is still in the
club-house. 1 Harry Quilter, A Group of Ldyllists, 1895.

CHRIST WEEPING OVER
JERUSALEM
By Sir Charles Eastlake, p.r.a,
T would be unfair to omit an example of the work of the President
of the Royal Academy from 1850 to 1855. Yet, despite its former
popularity, there seems to be no class of painting less in touch
with modern sympathy than the religious picture of the school of
Overbeck. In Biblical subjects painted to-day the costume and
accessories of the unchanging East bulk largely, and archaeological
accuracy seems to hold first place. In the days of this picture sentiment was
supreme. That it appears merely sentimental now is partly due to the accident
of time, with its inevitable change of taste. For the accomplishment which a
picture of this order betrays almost justifies its presence in the National Caller)-.
It may be needlessly outspoken to call it a fossil, yet to do so is not unduly
disrespectful. Fossils lived once ; when Raphael founded this school of Biblical
incident, and even when Overbeck rene"wed it, the schools they founded were vital
if not robust. But dressing up lay-figures in nondescript robes, and posing them
as heroes of Sacred Writ, finds little favour to-day. In this excellent composition
its very excellence wearies. In its effort to fill the space beautifully, human interest
has been overlooked; and a subject which should impress a spectator fails to awaken
a single emotion of awe or sympathy. The Christ has rarely been represented with
less of the attributes that move men to tears or to rapture. The Apostles are
neither unlettered fisher-folk, nor sages with the world's destinies in their hands.
With Michael Angelo an unreal grandeur lifts them above the sphere of daily life
to exalt them as demi-gods. With certain moderns the very insistence on their
lowly state adds unwonted dignity to their presence in scenes that have enthralled
a world. Here they are neither as gods nor as men, but abstract personages who
fail to interest in any way. As an example of academic painting — irreproachable
but lifeless — the picture may be praised with academic compliments. In itself it
provokes neither pleasure nor contempt : it is too remote from human foibles.
This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, and came to the
National Gallery as part of Mr. Vernon's Collection in 1847.

8. Christ Weeping over Jerusalem (Eastlake).

MY UNCLE TOBY AND THE
WIDOW WADMAN
By Charles R. Leslie, r.a.
PICTURE which enjoys the honour of being represented by two
versions in two important galleries (one in the National Gallery
and one in the South Kensington Museum) is past the stage of
criticism. The painting here reproduced is probably the original,
No. 403 in the National Gallery being a replica painted for Mr.
Vernon.
The subject, from Tristram Shandy, Illustrates a scene between ' my Uncle
Toby ' and the ' Widow Wadman ' in the sentry-box, an incident which occupies
chapters xxlv. and xxv. of the third volume : —
'" I am half distracted. Captain Shandy,'' said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her
cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my Uncle
Toby's sentry-box; " a mote, — or sand, — or something', — I know not what, has got
into this left eye of mine ; — do look into it : — It is not in the white." —
' In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my Uncle Toby,
and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an oppor
tunity of doing it without rising up. " Do look into it," she said.
' " I protest, madam," said my Uncle Toby, " I can see nothing whatever in
your eye."
'"It is not in the white,'' said Mrs. Wadman. — My Uncle Toby looked with
might and main into the pupil.'
The figure of Uncle Toby Is believed to be a portrait of Mr. Bannister the
comedian. In Leslie's works ' there Is such a strong dose of realism that his
pictures will always keep their value as historical documents — not for the year 1630,
but for the year 1830,' says Dr. Richard Muther. But although 1832 was the date
of its painting, it is difficult to regard the picture as a document of 1830. It is
a deliberate attempt to re-embody the costume and spirit of a period nearly a
century before. In common with all Leslie's pictures, it shows nice regard for
accuracy in costume, and escapes by the chance of its subject the fatal anachron
ism of many pieces of genre, where we are confronted by the coiffure of models
arranged according to the mode of the hour, while the characters themselves are
robed in the style of a hundred, or even a thousand, years earlier.
The painting is in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington Museum.

g. My Uncle Toby (Leslie).

AUTOLYCUS By Charles R. Leslie, r.a.
¦HIS is one of the most popular of Leslie's Shakespearian subjects.
It represents 'a scene in Bohemia, a road near a shepherd's
cottage. Autolycus — (of whom the servant has just said, ' O
master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would
never dance again after a tabor and pipe ; no, the bagpipe could
not move you : he sings several tunes faster than you '11
tell money ; he utters them as he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to
his tunes ') — enters with his song, ' Lawn as white as driven snow,' and, after
bantering the clown and maids, holds up one of his broadsheets and says : ' Here 's
another ballad, Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast, on Wednesday the
fourscore of April, forty thousand fathoms above water, and sung this ballad
against the hard hearts of maids ; it was thought she was a woman, and
was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that
loved her : the ballad is very pitiful, and as true.' ^
The ' snapper-up of unconsidered trifles ' is brought into a composition of very
formal design ; being in short the favourite ' pyramid ' which has fascinated formal
painters of all schools. But it is not a coldly academic version. ' Note the skilful
painting of the wares in the tray and the bright red of the cap of Autolycus, charac
teristic of so many of Leslie's pictures ' — says one appreciative critic. The colour,
however, is hardly ' fine,' using the word in a technical sense ; but as a Shake
speare incident done into picture it is a distinctly pleasant example of a painter
whose sprightly imagination and adequate technique may serve to secure him a
certain fame perhaps a little beyond his actual deserts. There are many sorts
of 'bests,' and of its particular class this painting may fairly claim to be a very
praiseworthy example.
It hangs now at South Kensington (No. 115) in the Sheepshanks Gallery I.
1 The Wintei's Tale, Act iv. Scene 3.

10

10. tAutolyens (Leslie).

A VILLAGE CHOIR
By Thomas Webster, r.a.
IHERE a picture tells its own story as plainly as this one tells it,
it seems folly to accompany it with a description — even of its
simple technique, of which the catalogue bids you ' note the variety
of character and attention to details, even to the painting of the
worn prayer-book and the carved oak panels.' Webster loved
to depict the English urchin — not the public-school species, but
the peasant-lad. Two of his best-known works, 'The Smile' and 'The Frown,'
depict the effect of the moods of a village pedagogue upon a form of urchins,
which Goldsmith immortalised in ' The Deserted Village.' The titles of others,
'A Dame's School,' 'The Truant,' 'ABC,' 'Going to School,' show how closely
Webster kept to his favourite theme. His rustics are all imaginative, law-fearing
adults and children, trained to do reverence to the squire and the parson, and
to abide content ' in that station of life ' to which the Catechism doomed them. As
a record of the days when the church musicians supplied the nucleus of a village
orchestra, this picture has a sentimental value to music-lovers, for with such raw
material progress had been possible. Now, as the madrigals and glees, for
which Britain was famous in Elizabethan times, are no longer Indigenous, so the
harmonium has killed the village chamber music. That its harmony was often to
seek, Webster suggests here ; but the machine-made music has banished the simpler
art, even as the camera has rung the death-knell of pictures of this class.
It is true that a recent German critic calls Webster's 'rustics, children, and
schoolmasters the citizens of an ideal planet ' ; but this is rather overstating
the case. A little 'prettified' they must needs be to satisfy the taste which ruled
between 1825 and 1876, the half-century that saw him a frequent exhibitor at
the Academy ; but they are genuine types of a sort now obsolete. ' Mr. Webster,'
says Lady Eastlake, ' was a childlike worshipper of the revelations above and
around him — whether seen through the telescope in his garden, or the microscope
in his window. It was with the same humorous feeling that gave a charm to
his art, that, coming to London once in full spring-time, he complained, with
a countenance beaming with health and content, that he had been positively
driven away from the country by the smell of the violets and the song of the
nightingales.' The picture here reproduced is No. 222 of the collection at South Kensington
Museum. II

s

THE
SLEEPING BLOODHOUND
By Sir Edwin Landseer, r.a.
^T seems almost needless to add printed comment to Landseer's
straightforward rendering in paint. But his fine brush-work
and capable technique must not be left without a word of appre
ciation, even if the somewhat exaggerated humanising of his
beasts makes It impossible to speak of them in the terms of
praise which have become stereotyped.
That Landseer won the heart of the public is a fact beyond dispute ; that
he did so most honourably and with fair technical equipment may also be granted.
But, all the same, the doubt will intrude whether It is really ennobling an animal
to give it apparent consciousness of those motions we believe to be peculiar to
humanity. In the official catalogue of the National Gallery we find this description : —
'"Countess," the hound here represented, sleeping on the top of a balustrade
at Wandsworth, one Sunday evening, overbalanced herself, fell a height of
twenty-three feet, and died on the same evening. On the next morning she
was carried to St. John's Wood, in the hope that Sir Edwin Landseer would
make a sketch of her as a reminiscence of an old favourite. "This is an oppor
tunity not to be lost," said the painter. " Go away : come on Thursday at two
o'clock." At the appointed time "The Sleeping Bloodhound" was a finished
picture.' The anecdote is not without pertinence; for if 'sleep' is painted from
' death,' that fidelity to nature which the untrained critic credits to Landseer is,
for once at all events, proved to be founded on slender basis.
It was exhibited at the British Institution in 1839, and bequeathed to the
National Gallery by Mr. Jacob Bell in 1859. The illustration here given is from
the reproduction published by the Autotype Company, London, W.C.

12

03

THE DROVER'S DEPARTURE
By Sir Edwin Landseer, r.a.
LTHOUGH Sir Edwin Landseer's fame was established by his
pictures of stags, horses, and dogs, and will probably depend on
them, yet he painted many others wherein animals play quite
secondary parts. Here is one of them, and such a story as this
picture has to tell is fully explained by Its title, and by the
artificial grouping of the figures, although these, forming the
favourite ' pyramid ' composition beloved of Academician painters of all schools,
are more concerned with helping the pattern of the picture than with realistic truth.
Seen under the influence of present taste, there is an air of sentimentality
throughout Landseer's works which is apt to blind a critic to their undoubted
merits. Their sentiment is noble enough ; but the ' goody-goody ' tone which
exhales from all his heroes, biped and quadruped, is apt to distort one's judgment.
But the enormous favour shown to Landseer In his life, and the honours
lavished upon him, will compensate for the injustice (if It be injustice) of the present.
It is too early to speculate on his final place In art ; possibly the really good
technique of his early and middle period may bring him through the ordeal, and
If so, what to us appears sentimentality may seem, once more, honest sentiment
to another generation. But at present, with every intention to be judicial. It
is impossible not to feel a certain dislike to the patronising treatment he awarded
to the whole animal kingdom In endowing It with polite manners. For it
must not be forgotten that docility and good behaviour towards mankind are
not the natural attributes of animals, but merely qualities evolved, after count
less generations, by domesticity which is often enough only slavery under a
less repellent name.
The picture is at South Kensington Museum.

THE DYI NG STAG
By Sir Edwin Landseer, r.a,
'ERHAPS at this moment it is more difficult to do justice to the
fine qualities of Landseer's work than it will be fifty years hence.
Their enormous popularity, not merely in England but through
out the Anglo-Saxon world, has naturally provoked a reaction,
which in its turn doubtless will also cease to distort criticism, and
leave the painter in his final place.
Landseer imparted to his animals sentimental emotions which belong more
fitly to human beings, and emphasised this perversion by his titles — ' Laying
Down the Law,' 'Alexander and Diogenes,' 'The Shepherd's Chief Mourner,'
and 'A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.' They are distinctly
fables with a moral. Yet, despite this tendency to pose his actors in little
dramas, he knew his subjects intimately, and as a sportsman, was able to avoid
the many pitfalls into which a studio painter Is apt to fall.
It was doubtless this knowledge of the habits of horses and stags and dogs
which won him the appreciation of a country of sportsmen. It Is also true that to
men accustomed to the open air, and out of touch with art, very obvious sentiment
appeals Irresistibly. Melodrama, which is often a rough and ready imitation of
nature, they appreciate far more than subtle analogies which demand from the spec
tator some kindred study. ' Inevitable death is forcibly depicted In the head of
the stag,' says the official catalogue. It is quite possible that the upturned eye of
this dying animal, with its human pathos. Is literally true to nature ; but, notwith
standing, it is of the school of melodrama. In which nature and humanity are in
accord, so that a tragedy takes place in a thunderstorm and a wedding In sunshine.
This is not set down in any carping spirit, but only to indicate some of the reasons
which prejudice many artists against work that gained a not undeserved popularity.
The paintings of our greatest living animal-painter, Mr. J. M. Swan, would seem
to us far more faithful records of real wild life ; but it may be doubted if they will
ever move the public so deeply as Landseer moved It. The love of sport on the
one hand, and the emotional sympathy, which finds expression in the various
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, both discern in Landseer some
thing that appeals to them peculiarly and deeply.
The picture (No. 412) In the National Gallery was exhibited in the Royal
Academy of 1883, and was purchased as part of the Vernon Collection in 1847.
The illustration here given is copied from the reproduction published by the
Autotype Company, London, W.C. 14

14. The Vying Stag (Landse,

r).

LILIUM AURATUM
By John Frederick Lewis
I HIS brilliant and minutely finished picture is always a favourite
when it appears (as through the courtesy of Its owner it frequently
does) in various loan exhibitions. On looking up its history,
the date of its production, 187 1, would seem at least twenty
years too late, both for its sentiment and the type of beauty
it records. But when you remember that the artist, who had
lived in Cairo from 1843 until 185 1, was sixty years old when he painted it, the
curiously old-fashioned atmosphere which pervades it is explained. The following
description is taken from the official 'Guildhall' catalogue, 1890: 'This beautiful
Oriental scene shows an Odalisque and her attendant in the garden of the harem.
The Odalisque is dressed In a dark green jacket, richly embroidered with gold ;
folds of pink, lined with crimson and edged with gold, hang from her waist and
trail upon the ground. Crimson drapery is round her figure and drops In a broad
fold at her side. A dark crimson and green turban is gathered round her black
hair. She holds a richly coloured Tchnak vase with red and white roses In it.
Following her Is an attendant, a young girl, evidently amused at something. Her
blue turban suits her dusky complexion. Her skirt Is a rich mauve embroidered
with gold ; over it is a light coloured garment. She, too, carries flowers. The
two have come through a wilderness of lilies, poppies, pansles, and fuschla, to a
doorway over which is a climbing rose with numberless blooms, beyond which
tiger lilies are seen. In the background is the rest of the garden, enclosed
by a low wall, with a row of orange-trees, and beyond are the blue waters of the
Bosphorus. It is a gorgeous production, yet a lovely quietude pervades the
scene. The minute execution is quite equal to that of the painter's smaller
pictures.' The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1873, and is now in the
collection of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, M.P., by whose courtesy it is here reproduced.

^5

f^ffr'K:

15. Lilium Auratum (l.e-oeis).

SIR TRISTRAM
By William Dyce, r.a,
|HE full title of this painting in fresco on the wall of the Queen's
Robing- Room of the Palace of Westminster runs, 'Admission of
Sir Tristram to the fellowship of the Table Round.'
The scene depicted is In the great hall of Camelot, King
Arthur's palace, which is filled with knights of the Round Table
and various other characters familiar to students of Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte d' Arthur. In other panels of the same room are three more
scenes from the Arthurian legend, also painted by Dyce, who received his commis
sion to execute them after entering into the State competition for the decoration of
the new Houses of Parliament. The National Gallery contains one of his small
landscapes, ' Pegwell Bay,' and also a 'St. John leading the Virgin from the
Tomb.' The Scottish National Gallery has an 'Infant Hercules 'and ' Francesa
di Rimini,' and ' The Judgment of Solomon,' a cartoon for tapestry ; but it is by
his frescoes in the House of Lords, the Queen's Robing- Room, Buckingham Palace,
Osborne House, and All Saints', Margaret Street, that he will be best remembered.
Dyce was a pioneer in the revival of mural decoration — a well-intentioned
artist who, if he did not rise notably above the school of his friend Overbeck and the
German Nazarenes, is far more worthy than many whose reputation is world-wide.
To all interested in that English movement which the Arts and Crafts Society
represents, Dyce stands for more than a mere reflection of German influence,
for he set the fashion which still controls much mural decoration. These frescoes
have their lineal descendants in Mr. E. A. Abbey's sumptuous decorations for
the Boston Library ; especially is this evident if your compare, through the
medium of photographic reproduction, the compositions of Dyce in the ' forties '
with those of Abbey in the ' nineties.' The differences are great, it is true ; but
the essentials are not so very far distant. That we admire Mr. Abbey's work,
and are nearly unmoved by that of Dyce, may also be true ; yet (although the
first are by way of being genuine frescoes, and the latter paintings on canvas
intended to serve as substitutes) one fancies future historians will take both as
representing successive stages in the art of mural decoration, which has never
become indigenous in English-speaking communities.

i6

THE COVENANTERS'
PREACHING
By Sir George Harvey, p.r.s.a.
,HE official catalogue of the National Gallery of Scotland contains
a note upon the series of Covenanter pictures by Sir George
Harvey, wherein we find ' their popularity was great, and
engravings from them carried his reputation far and wide. It
could not be doubted that in them he touched a chord which
vibrated thrillingly in the breasts of his countrymen, and was
peculiarly felt in many a home — otherwise devoid of art — in Canada, the Cape, and
wherever a Scottish man wandered and worked.' Pictures of the class to which
these belong, especially In the form of engravings, do indeed enter ' many a
home otherwise devoid of art ' ; hence their attributes in other respects need
not be subjected to severe analysis. For their purpose is to preach and to
record certain facts which may be outside all questions of art. That they are
occasionally in every sense great pictures at the same time does not suffice to
raise the whole class to which they belong to a foremost rank.
While pure genre may be so arranged as to yield certain arrangements in
lighting, colour, or other technical aspects which belong to the higher order of
paintings, in these didactic compositions many things must be included, not to
help the picture as a picture, but to enforce the lesson it teaches. That it has
been done so well by Harvey and others should suffice to remove the prejudice
which some critics display, not without cause, towards the ' subject ' picture.
Nor need we limit the functions of the Fine Arts to any particular class. To
appreciate technical mastery needs some technical understanding ; to enjoy such
work as this, for its own good qualities, augurs more real sympathy than to re
serve one's sympathy for the limited number of real masterpieces.
This painting, presented by Mr. John Fleming of London, is in the
Galleries of the Corporation of Glasgow, by whose permission it is here re
produced.

17

oK

ANNE PAGE INVITING
SLENDER TO DINNER
By Thomas Duncan, r.s.a. and r.a.
HE subject of this picture Is taken from the Merry Wives of
Windsor (Act I. Scene i), when Anne Page is vainly endeavour
ing to induce the bashful Slender to join the others at dinner.
Through the open window of a house in the streets of Windsor
you see Sir John Falstafifand Justice Shallow : —
' Anne Page. Will 't please your worship to come in, sir ?
Slender. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily ; I am very well.
Anne. I pray you, sir, walk in.
Slender. I had rather walk here, I thank you ; I bruised my shin the other
day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence, three veneys for a
dish of stewed prunes ; and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat
since. Why do your dogs bark so ? Be there bears i' the town ? '
As It depicts a scene from a comedy It would be unfair to inquire too minutely
into the details of the composition, which certainly follow the traditions of stage
architecture rather than actual buildings. But, artificial though it be, the whole
arrangement is effective. It has been said Duncan's early death at thirty-eight cut
short a career that would have achieved great things, and that as a colourist he had
few superiors. Bearing in mind the period of Its production, in the 'forties,' it
is certainly very far above the average of its contemporaries, and one of the few
illustrations of Shakespeare which go near to realise the spirit of the text. The
painting is No. 273 in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

19

1 8. Anne Page and Slender ( T. Duncan)

ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER
By Henry Dawson
^HE Port of London, despite its superb material, has attracted
fewer painters than mdght have been expected. Nor has St.
Paul's, which is In its way as imposingly placed as any building
in the world, been chosen as often as it deserves. In this
excellent work by Dawson we find a sober and accurate tran
script of the facts the scene offers made into a picture, which is
full of glamour, by reason of the atmospheric effects of sunrise the painter has
conveyed so happily. It is a dream city, but also a real workaday London in the
magic light of early morning — the time that inspired Wordsworth to his famous
sonnet, ' Earth has not anything to show more fair.' But although the spirit of
that wonderful poem may be suggested here : —
' The river glideth at his own sweet will ;
Dear God, the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still.'
There are too many signs of life and activity on the shipping to convey the great
silence that is felt throughout Wordsworth's stately lines.
Although conceived somewhat under the influence of Turner, both the
grandiosity and the grandeur of Turner are absent. Yet, for some moods, this
more sober aspect of the spot which is the very heart of the British Empire
appeals no less sympathetically.
As a painting it satisfies. To treat everyday facts, without any poetic licence,
so that they become poetry, is given but to few ; and if Dawson be not in every
sense a great painter, and has not added to the limited number of the world's
masterpieces, yet he has left faithful and excellent pieces of work that are most
certainly destined to receive even fuller appreciation than has been awarded
hitherto. The painting is in the Art Gallery of Birmingham, whence it has been repro
duced by permission of the Corporation of that city.

20

^!^!.^(|^*^^«»r«W^'»W'^

19. St. Paul's from the River (Dawson).

PETER THE GREAT
AT DEPTFORD DOCKYARD
By Daniel A/Taclise, r.a.
•HIS painting by Maclise is an extremely representative example
of the artificially composed groups which attracted him. Less
w^ell-known than the 'Play Scene In Hamlet' or the 'Banquet
Scene in Macbeth,' it is not less typical of a style that bears
about the same relation to nature as did the triumphs of the
rustic landscape-gardeners a century ago.
Of its order, academic and anecdotal, it shows at its best the class of picture
which at its worst brought contempt on the British school. Here is fine drawing,
good study of character, and a most elaborately told story. Not an atom of Its
picturesque confusion but helps to support the central theme. Every adjunct and
every attitude take part in enforcing the point; and yet to-day, taught actuality by
photographs, so formal a method of depicting a really striking incident seems more
akin to stage-grouping than to the real historical fact. That a Czar of Muscovy
should work as a labourer in an English dockyard is in Itself sufficiently striking
to be impressive If pictured in a far simpler manner.
It was during the winter of 1697-98 that William iii., with Lord Caermarthen
(President of Council) and Lord Shrewsbury (Foreign Secretary), visited the
Russian Czar, who, beside his companions Menzlkoff, Golownin, Galatzin, and
Prince Sikerski, was often accompanied by a dwarf, a negro boy, a monkey, and a
young actress from Drury Lane, all duly seen in the picture.
The painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857, was purchased at
Mr. Henry Wood's sale in 1883 for ^388, ids. It is now at the Royal
Holloway College, Egham, whence it is here reproduced by kind permission of
the Governors.

21

u

o"

DREDGING OFF THE
MERSEY
By William J. Muller
'HIS painting, which was added to the National Gallery so lately
as 1896, is an excellent example of Muller's more direct manner
in rapid transcripts from nature. ' He was one of the most
dexterous among the dexterous ; beside Turner, the greatest
adept of English painting ' — says a German critic ; yet the name
of Muller can be hardly called a household word in British art.
His Southern and Eastern pictures are perhaps the most typical of the man,
although in some of these there is trace of an artificial grandiose manner, which
gives them a slightly old-fashioned air. But when he paints without any suspicion
of melodrama, he is undeniably great.
Among the most important of his landscapes are ' Tivoli,' ' The Avenue
of Sphinxes at Luxor,' 'The River Lledr, North Wales,' 'A Norfolk Dyke in
Winter,' and ' Caernarvon Castle, Early Morning.' Of figure subjects his
' Chess Players ' Is the most celebrated. This was originally purchased for
_;^2 5, and was sold the last time for ^4000 — a fact which shows the rapid
advance of Muller's work in the estimation of collectors. Yet, although he
was without Academic honours, and at times scurvily treated by the Hanging
Committee at Burlington House, he cannot be said to have been unappreciated
during his life.
In the ' Money Changers,' ' Prayers in the Desert,' ' A Street Scene in Cairo,'
and other Eastern subjects, we have evidence of his accurate observation and keen
appreciation of the aspects of light and colour In the Orient no less than in his
native land. ' The climate is much against one, the sunshine intense, the
shadow cold. One gets black in the former, in the latter ague. How much
one artist goes through to acquire what people at a conversazione go through
in five minutes ! Did It ever strike you in that light ? ' is a passage from one
of his letters, that betrays the attitude of Muller to his art and to the public.
A special exhibition of his work, gathered together at Birmingham in 1896,
revealed the painter in all his moods, and showed him besides in the less familiar
aspect of a draughtsman, whose pencil sketches in themselves were sufficient to
have established a reputation.
The illustration is from the reproduction published by the Autotype
Company. The picture was moved in August 1897 to the new Tate Gallery
at Millbank. 22

DOCTOR JOHNSON
AWAITING AN AUDIENCE IN THE ANTE
CHAMBER OF LORD CHESTERFIELD
By Edward M. Ward, r.a.
'HE incident which is here depicted will be found in the Life of
Dr. Johnson (section dated 1754), and Boswell's own words may
be quoted to explain it : —
' . . . The world has been for many years amused
with a story confidently told, and as confidently repeated with
additional circumstances, that a sudden disgust was taken by
Johnson upon occasion of his having been one day kept long In waiting in his
Lordship's antechamber, for which the reason assigned was, that he had company
with him ; and that at last, when the door opened, out walked Collie Cibber ; and
that Johnson was so violently provoked when he found for whom he had been
so long excluded, that he went away in a passion, and never would return. I
remember having mentioned this to George, Lord Lyttelton, who told me he
was very intimate with Lord Chesterfield ; and holding it as a well-known truth,
defended Lord Chesterfield by saying that " Cibber, who had been Introduced
familiarly by the backstairs, had probably not been there above ten minutes."
It may seem strange even to entertain a doubt concerning a story so long and so
widely current, and thus implicitly adopted, if not sanctioned by the authority which
I have mentioned ; but Johnson himself assured me that there was not the least
foundation for it.
In face of the above statement, it might seem curious to find that that incident
has been made into a picture ; but another passage from ^o^^N^'i, Johnson, quoted
in the National Gallery catalogue — ' Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since
I waited in your outward rooms ' — gives colour to the fact, even if the story of
Dr. Johnson being violently provoked thereby is not well founded.
The dramatic possibilities were just those which suited the painter's manner,
and, as an example of the illustrated anecdote, it occupies a worthy place in
British art.
The original is now in the new Tate Gallery at Millbank, and formed part
of the Vernon Collection, bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1847.

23

THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE
A SCENE IN CHANGE ALLEY IN 1720
By Edward M. Ward, r.a,
ITERATURE in the flat — is the happy epigram which a notable
wit coined to denote a certain class of ' paintings with a purpose '
— not confined to England, it is true, but at one time monopolising
nearly all the attention the British public expended upon art.
In this painter's version of a famous national craze, the
pleasure the canvas affords a spectator almost entirely depends on
his knowledge of the scene depicted : otherwise the tables in the open air, where
business Is being transacted, and the evident excitement which prevails among all
the actors, would convey nothing.
Without a title, no human being, unless possibly he were a writer of analytical
musical programmes, could provide an interpretation. But if the story of the great
Stock Exchange speculation is tolerably familiar, then as you hunt over the picture
and comprehend bit by bit its medley of incidents, you can understand what it all
means, and at the same time admit that the pictorial annotation of the text — for It is
little more — has been achieved with considerable dexterity. In the official catalogue
three separate extracts in prose and rhyme accompany its title. Should a picture
need not merely a long label but a string of quotations to elucidate its meaning ?
This is a question that need not be answered here. But in a popular record of
British art the reason for the half-contemptuous attitude of many critics towards
work of this order — not, however, specially to this picture — is best indicated.
To recognise such a prejudice is not to attack the ' South-Sea Bubble,' which
is an exceedingly good example of its school, nor to attack even the school. Many
people many tastes. Thousands who feel no thrill of pleasure before a painter's
masterpiece can enjoy honestly the pictured incident which embodies the anecdote
that arouses their interest. Only, the two classes should not be confused. It is true
that the line between them is not sharply drawn, any more than between verse and
poetry, true literature or journalistic effort ; but the extremes of each are wide
apart assuredly, and without debasing the one to exalt the other, it is well to
recognise that they are not sufficiently inspired by the same intention to be set in
competition. The painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1847, formed part of the
Vernon Collection bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1874. It is now in the
Tate Gallery at Millbank. 24

23. The Soutb-Sea Bubble ( Ward).

LA LOTERIA NATIONAL
By John Phillip, r.a.
ROM the year 1851, when John Phillip paid his first visit to Seville,
his devotion to Iberian subjects won him the nickname of ' Philip
of Spain.' The picture here reproduced, painted in 1862, is an
excellent example of his second manner. The theme is obviously
taken from some incident he had witnessed In a crowd waiting
eagerly for the declaration of winning numbers in a State lottery.
It shows his success in the delineation of character, his admirable way of telling
a story, and his rich colour ; yet It is not quite easy to discover in his work
' something of the strength of Velasquez united to a more Venetian splendour of
colour,' which, according to a recent critic, reveals him as 'a painter in the full
sense of the word with whom the future will have to reckon.'
But if such eulogy be a trifle overstrained, yet the man who, after an
academic period marked by success, was able to cast aside the petty traditions of
British genre in the fifties, and to set about rivalling the great Spanish masters in
their own chosen field, commands more than perfunctory respect.
He certainly did not catch the spirit of Velasquez so nearly as certain living
painters have caught it, but, on the other hand, he escaped the production of
merely clever travesties of Velasquez with which others have made us familiar.
Throughout he remains true to his sturdy Scots temperament in spite of yielding
to the fascination of the sunny south. If his place in art is slightly lower by reason
of this reservation, yet he occupies an honourable and assured position among
British master painters.
The ' Loteria Nagional,' at one time in the Manley Hall Gallery, was (as one
of the items of Baron Grant's collection) sold at Christie's in 1877 for three
thousand guineas. It belongs now to Mr. Holbrook Gaskell, by whose kind
permission it is here reproduced.

25

CARDINAL WOLSEY'S
PROCESSION By Sir John Gilbert, r.a.
^^^^^^^^^HIS work, even in monochrome reproduction, suggests the
splendour of its colour — especially its scheme of brilliant reds
— as seen here in the robes of the Cardinal and the cassocks
of the acolytes. The historical subjects which chiefly attracted
Gilbert are singularly unlike the rigidly pedantic studies of posed
models, faultlessly accurate in costume, and mildly dramatic in
their grouping, which form the bulk of our British efforts in this class of paintings.
So that the veteran's work appears to be a rapidly transcribed impression of the
scene as he pictured it in his mind. Facial expression and elaborately minute
detail were set aside for a broader truth, and if his paintings are not among the
consummate masterpieces of art, they are worthy a very near place. For they
are full of life and of colour ; they suggest mural decorations on a large scale
— a shade rococo, and not wholly unrelated to Rubens. That he was a great
colourist, in the sense artists understand the phrase, is perhaps more than a
candid admirer would claim. But his very faults are almost virtues in disguise ;
for he never lost the breadth of his composition by niggling detail. Thus he was
unconcerned with the subtleties of texture, or of nuances of ' tone ' and ' value ' ;
nor did he trouble himself with atmospheric effects. At times he lacked restraint,
and narrowly escaped vulgarity, and yet the splendid vigour of his fertile
imagination — whether studied in the thousands of designs for wood-engravings
or In the large number of canvases he painted — rarely flags, and never wholly
fails to satisfy. Among giants he Is no dwarf, and among the average timid
work of many contemporaries his stands out virile, a proof of courageous effort
that feared no theme, however complex. He is modelled on no predecessor and
leaves no followers. It may be that he was essentially an illustrator, and that
his paintings are In a sense only coloured drawings ; but even if this be so, he
bulks largely in nineteenth-century art as a prodigious worker whose imagina
tion was rarely at fault, if at times his technique appears hasty.
The picture (in water-colour, 36x40 Ins.) belongs to the Corporation of
London, by whose permission it is here reproduced.

25. Cardinal Wolsey's Procession (Gilbert).

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA
By George F, Watts, r.a.
' H E tragic history of the two ill-fated lovers was, as we know, not
invented by Dante, but embodies a real incident that happened
during his lifetime. Twice he alludes to it in the Divine Comedy,
and Mr. Watts has doubtless chosen the subject which he has
treated so nobly from Canto v. of the Inferno — the passage that
in Gary's translation begins, ' One day for our delight we read
of Lancelot,' — but the sestet of the sonnet by John Keats was doubtless also in
the painter's mind —
' . . . To that second circle of sad hell
Where, 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw.
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with about that melancholy storm.'
Lest the story as Dante tells it, as Keats recalls it in the above sonnet, or as
Leigh Hunt amplified it in The Story of Rimini, be unfamiliar to any, it may
be well to repeat it baldly. Francesca was the wife of the deformed Lanciotto,
son of the Duke of Rimini, who, lighting upon her in guilty converse with his
brother Paolo, slew both. Dante and Virgil encountered them in the second circle
of hell, where carnal sinners are swept along by furious winds in utter darkness.
For a moment they appear, and Dante swoons with the horror of the story as
Francesca tells it him. It is said that he wrote this Canto of the Inferno, to which
reference has been made, in the very house wherein Francesca had been born.
The picture (here reproduced from a photograph by Mr. J. Caswall Smith),
painted by Mr. Watts in 1879, is not among those now at the Tate Gallery,
given by the artist to the nation.

29

26. Vaolo and Francesca ( Watts ) .

LOVE AND DEATH
By George F. Watts, r.a.
^F one were forced to select a single picture only as the typical
Victorian painting, this might well be chosen. As Tennyson's
In Memoriam embodies the sober thought of its period, so
this embodies the sober sentiment. The principal forces which
govern humanity are typified simply — Love, in the old form
of a boy-Cupid ; Death, in the less familiar aspect of the great
mother. It is impossible to overlook the singular analogy between this and the
Elegiac Ode of Walt Whitman —
' Come, lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death,
Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet.'
But the parallel must not be pushed too far. Mr. Watts's theme is the
impotence of Love to stay the entry of the 'dark mother.' The beloved within
the house may be at one with Whitman in welcoming her arrival ; but to Love
it Is the old enemy who approaches — the all-powerful destroyer of the closest
human ties. Even from this aspect Death is not figured as a grisly skeleton, a
semi-grotesque King of Terrors, but as a veiled, silent figure, slow-pacing and
irresistible, whom Love in vain strives to arrest. The rose petals fall from the
branches, Love's hand is wounded with their thorns, and yet a sense of peace
rather than of destruction is conveyed.
Pictures that preach openly have fallen into contempt, chiefly because the
morals they strive to enforce could often be put into words with a far more
powerful effect. Here is one of the few modern instances of a great idea ex
pressed as simply as it might be in a verse of the Psalms. No theological doctrines
are championed or opposed ; Love Is not the pagan deity, but the human
passion typified ; Death Is neither the angel-messenger nor the jailer who leads
the criminal to his doom, but the mother ready to take the tired mortal to her
heart. Stripped of all supernatural accessories, the arrival of Death is no less
abnormal than was Birth. The 'watch and a vision between a sleep and a
sleep' is over; and Love cannot work a miracle to ward off the inevitable. It
sounds trite enough put in words ; but, as Mr. Watts has pictured it, it offers to
a thousand people new aspects of its central truth so clearly that not one of the
thousand could mistake its lesson.
One version of the picture (here reproduced from a photograph by Mr. F.
Hollyer) is in the Tate Gallery, Millbank.
30

27 Love and Death ( Watts )

THE EVENING HYMN
By George Mason, a.r.a.
^HE greater popularity of Fred Walker seems to have overshadowed
that of Mason. Both sought to Inspire transcripts of pastoral
English life with the qualities of Greek art. Both were content
to lose some of the realisation of the British peasant, in an effort
to inspire his pose with the subtle grace of a Southerner. Both
had qualities distinctly great. But Mason is not a mere echo of
Walker. Without invidious comparison one may believe that he possessed a far
more complete mastery of composition, although he rarely chose ' subjects ' such as
this, and was satisfied with one or two figures well placed out of doors, but not
representing any definite incident of pathos or humour.
His figures accord marvellously with the landscape, and owe nothing to any
country outside England. It has been well said that the classical grace he imparted
to their movement is ' little more than the movement which springs from a healthy
body.' Any one who studies 'navvies' at work, or of peasant lads and lasses at
play, must be struck constantly with the marvellously ' classic ' attitudes they adopt.
It is the conventions of society which Impart a certain stiffness, and the peasant
who is clumsy in a town seems full of natural grace when engaged in his normal
pastoral occupations.
Mason's colour is rich and satisfying ; he beautifies — perhaps a shade more
than critical taste at present is willing to endorse — all he touches. But he does
so with no affectation, and imparts a sense of childish innocence and adult vigour
to his figures, which Is at once wholesome and graceful, and at most only an
exaggeration of truth.
'The Evening Hymn' Is owned by the Hon. Percy Wyndham, by whose
courtesy this reproduction appears. It has been taken from the engraving of
the picture published by Messrs. Colnaghi and Co., Pall Mall, London.

27

^f ^^'

V \ i7 ( >}>

'J"

28. Tbe Evening Hymn (Mason).

THE RAILWAY STATION
By William P. Frith, r.a.
|ITH a painting that tells its story so elaborately as this, it
seems scarcely needful to repeat it in words. The scene is
the Paddlngton Terminus of the Great Western Railway
just as a train is starting. A father packing his boys off to
school, detectives seizing an absconding criminal, a newly
married couple off for their honeymoon, a soldier wishing his
sweetheart good-bye, and a dozen other domestic and social incidents, are
depicted in a panorama full of independent groups of figures handled with no
little dexterity of its sort. When Mr. Frith painted this, it was considered a
bold thing to choose so unpoetic a background as a railway station. Fortun
ately, that attitude has long since been abandoned by critics. Yet it must not
be inferred that the ' Railway Station ' conforms to modern ideas of a picture.
It holds somewhat the same position to serious painting as a sensational play at
Drury Lane holds to Shakespearian drama. That all possible incidents of a rail
way station should be happening simultaneously within a painter's vision (even if
his vision be panoramic, as in this case) lands us in the domain of melodrama.
Melodrama is viewed with suspicion to-day : we prefer to accept Ibsen's
theory that ' things don't happen so in real life.' Yet any newspaper shows that
almost every incident on which melodrama Is founded may confront any one
of us, at any moment. This 'Railway Station' has not a single Impossible
incident in its crowd ; but the sum-total of the whole probably never took
place at the same time, certainly not with just the required proportion of
onlookers — no more, no less, that sufficed to point each moral. It is this
which would place the canvas in a secondary rank, even if its actual painting
and general handling were greater than they are. But, all the same, the
school it represents hardly deserves the scorn which has been lavished upon it.
Homely moralising in paint has a right to exist, but to set it in competition
with real masterpieces would be merely absurd ; for it is clearly not in any
way related to the problems which are solved by a great painter. It belongs
to a class which recorded a period, as a critic has said, ' when people were
mostly good and innocent and happy, had no income-taxes and no vices and
worries, and all went to heaven and felt in good spirits' — in other words, of
a time that never was or will be.
The picture is in the Royal Holloway College at Egham, and is here
reproduced by permission of Mr. Henry Graves, Pall Mall, East.
31

21). The Railway Station (Frith).

THE RECONCILIATION
OF OBERON AND TITANIA
By Sir Noel Paton, r.s.a., ll.d.
¦HE work of Sir Noel Paton, Her Majesty's Limner for Scotland,
separates itself into two distinct classes. The best known of these
is devoted to sacred subjects treated with great reverence, but
also with a certain sentimentality, showing that Raphael and
Overbeck have in turn influenced the artist. In another domain,
the land of fairies, he is himself — the Mendelssohn of painting —
and, like the composer of the overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream, has
found in Shakespeare's play the source of his most delightful inspirations.
The passage illustrated occurs in the first scene of the fourth act : —
' Titania. My Oberon ! what visions have I seen !
Methought I was enamoured of an ass.
Oberon. There lies your love.
Titania. How came these things to pass ?
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now !
Oberon. Silence a while. — Robin, take off this head —
Titania, music call ; and strike more dead
Than common sleep, of all these five the sense.
Titania. Music, ho ! music ; such as charmeth sleep.
Puck. When thou wak'st, with thine own fool's eyes peep.'
It Is not essential to estimate the value of work of this order, which expends
itself on attempts to materialise dreams already painted by the sister art of poetry :
but of its kind, Sir Noel Raton's fairy studies may rank with the most successful
efforts of illustration. For such pictures, no matter how well painted, are essen
tially illustrations to the printed text — inspired by it, and limited to a certain extent
by the author's imagination. Certainly no creator of the good little people has
managed to preserve their dainty attributes more gracefully than Sir Noel Paton :
whether they are the fairies of Shakespeare or the fairies of folklore is another
matter. To many of us they seem true enough.
The ' Quarrel of Oberon and Titania ' is the subject of a large canvas in
the National Gallery of Scotland, where is also this, its companion, which obtained
one of the Government premiums at the Westminster Hall competition of 1847,
and was painted in 1846.

18

30.

Tbe Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania (Noel Paton).

WORK
By Ford Madox-Brown

^S the painter's own description of this picture is extant, it would
be impertinent to offer another ; but, as his analysis would fill
twelve of these pages, only the salient points can be included
in a digest therefrom.
The picture was begun in 1852 at Hampstead, and repre
sents the main street of that suburb not far from the Heath.
The various aspects of useful work undertaken by those who have been taught
early are shown In the typical figures of the ' navvy ' and of the brain-workers,
Thomas Carlyle and Frederick Denison Maurice, who are seen standing to the
right of the picture. Contrasted with these is the pariah who has never been
taught to work, and the rich who have no need to labour, accompanied by the
pastrycook's tray — a symbol of superfluity, — behind which are two ladies distribut
ing tracts. At the back are other typical examples of both workers and non-
workers. The ' gentleman on horseback ' is the artist Martineau ; the ' beauteous
tripping dame with bell -hke skirts' is Mrs. Madox-Brown; the 'philosophical
baby' Arthur Gabriel Brown. The effect of hot July light was chosen because
'it seemed peculiarly fitted to display work In all its severity.'
The colour of the picture is peculiarly vivid. ' Not colourlst's colour — at
least, as I understand the words' (writes Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, the grandson
and the biographer of the painter) ; ' it is wanting in harmoniousness — disturbing,
and what not. One might almost say that both pictures — "Work" and "The
Last of England" — had been painted with the newly discovered aniline dyes.' . . .
In its own way 'Work' is a masterpiece as an exposition of a sort of Carlylean
energy and exuberance. And so, perhaps. It Is the very nature of the work
to be wanting in repose — rather voyant and disagreeable.
The painting (begun in 1852, recommenced in 1856, and finished in 1868)
belongs to the Corporation of Manchester, by whose kind permission it is
reproduced.

32

JOHN DALTON
COLLECTING MARSH GAS
By Ford Madox-Brown
5HIS painting is the twelfth and last of the interesting series in
fresco which adorns the Manchester Town Hall, and as it conquers
the problem of using comparatively modern costume decoratively
in a way that shall harmonise with the whole of the rest, chosen
from all sorts of periods, it is of peculiar artistic interest.
The incident shows John Dalton, the inventor of the Atomic
Theory, collecting marsh gas by stirring up the mud of a stagnant pond, while
a boy catches the rising bubbles in a wide-mouthed bottle. The clever arrange
ment of this picture, and its daring composition, are apparent even in black and
white. Considered solely as the realisation of an anecdote told pictorially, it is
also remarkably successful. One has but to remember how exceedingly difficult
it must have been to suggest in a picture, however vaguely, 'John Dalton dis
covering the Atomic Theory,' to own that Madox-Brown, by selecting a typical
incident In Dalton's investigations of certain remarkable phases of matter, has
well-nigh accomplished the impossible.
Although it is not possible here to describe the series of fresco paintings which
occupied so large a part of the artist's life, yet a bare list of the titles may show
how large a field they attempted to cover. The Manchester Town Hall contains
' The Baptism of Edwin,' ' The Romans building Manchester,' ' Expulsion of
the Danes from Manchester,' ' Philippa visiting her Flemish Weavers,' ' Crabtree
watching the Transit of Venus,' 'The Proclamation regarding Weights and
Measures,' 'Chetham's Life Dream,' 'First Blood of the Civil War,' ' Bridgewater
Canal,' 'John Kay saved from the Rioters,' ' Wickllffe on his Trial,' and 'John
Dalton.' That the artist lived long enough to complete his task is for our
gain ; but one could have wished that the pre-Raphaelite before pre-Raphaelites,
the first artist to design furniture, and one who attempted to start an ' Arts and
Crafts ' half a century ago, had received in his lifetime fuller recognition.
The illustration here given is from the reproduction by the Autotype
Company, London, W.C.

33

THE MESSENGER OF EVIL
TIDINGS

^:^v^lei

By Sir William Fettes Douglas, p.r.s.a.
HIS painting is a most excellent example of its class. It does
not appear to be intended to represent any particular historical
incident ; but that the story it has to tell is clearly explained,
even in the absence of a title, is evident from a glance at the
reproduction here given.
That the messenger has brought extremely unpleasant
news is plain enough, and from the excited attitude of the men at the open
door one may imagine that It involves a call to arms. Yet if the matter
in question proved to be only one for fighting In law-courts, and not involving
ordeal by battle, it would scarcely affect the interest of the scene presented.
The arrested movement of the figures reflects admirably the suspense which is
the central motive of the picture. As a decorative composition, the comparative
simplicity of the accessories Imparts dignity to the whole work. The dramatic
moment gains in intensity by a glimpse, through a long passage, of a distant
group of people as yet apparently unaware of the evil news which has been
brought. The picture is No. 91 in the National Gallery of Scotland.

26

p "I

VALENTINE RESCUING
SYLVIA
{TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA)
By W. Holman Hunt
.HEREVER this painting may be hung, amid other contemporary
works, its amazing freshness is the first and the last impression
it produces. Many of the latest problems of the French vibriste
manner are here faced and conquered. Despite certain details,
notably in the fashion of the hair of its men and women, marking
the date of production, the treatment does not suggest 185 1 any
more than 1901. At the time it was first shown, Mr. Ruskin, one of the few
critics who praised it at first, wrote : ' There Is not a single study of drapery
in the whole Academy, be it in large or small works, which, for perfect truth,
power, and finish, could be compared with the black sleeve of Julia and the
velvet on the breast, and the chain mail of Valentine.' Elsewhere, again
referring to it, he says : ' Examination of this picture has even raised the
estimate I had previously formed of its marvellous truth in detail and splendour
in colour.' Heedless of the storm of ridicule and abuse the picture had provoked
in London, it is pleasant to find that the Academy of Liverpool awarded it a
prize of ^50.
The incident depicted is from the third scene of the fifth act of the Two
Gentlemen of Verona ; the moment when Valentine rescues Sylvia from Proteus.
Valentine and Sylvia (painted from Miss Siddall, afterwards the wife of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti) are In the centre, Proteus to the right, and Julia to the left,
while at the back you see the outlaws, with the Duke of Milan (father to
Sylvia) and Thurio (a foolish rival to Valentine).
Its colour scheme is extremely vivid, so that, although by general consent it
ranks among the masterpieces of British painting, it has not been, and possibly never
will be, a favourite with many critics. It deserves to be studied as a genuine
example of the original pre-Raphaelite ideal, which, It must never be forgotten,
was not a matter of choice of subject, but of realistic fidelity to nature. Not fidelity
in the larger and perhaps truer sense of a picture regarded as a whole, but to a series
of facts minutely observed and accurately catalogued, which need long inspection
to do them justice, and provoke the eye to examine the work as if it were a
problem to solve, rather than as a scene to be gazed at from a fixed distance, with
a sense of pleasure in a complete realisation of an incident where nature and
humanity have been cunningly detained on canvas for the delight of centuries.
The picture belongs to the Corporation of Birmingham, by whose permission
it is here reproduced. 34

34- Valentine rescuing Sylvia (Holman Hunt)

THE FINDING OF THE
SAVIOUR IN THE TEMPLE
By W. Holman Hunt
|HIS painting, begun at Jerusalem in 1854, was not completed
until i860. Its colour, like that of the 'Light of the World,'
is brilliant to a degree that is actually offensive to many people.
Dean Farrar considers that ' No mediaeval painter, not even
Da Vinci or Luini, or Botticelli, or Raphael, ever painted so
fine a representation of the boy Christ, or produced any
rendering of this favourite subject at all so thorough and so perfect as this.'
Of it the author of John Halifax wrote a eulogistic poem, ' Then this is
Thou I ..." in which the following lines occur: —
' 0 infinitely human, yet Divine,
Half cHnging, childlike, to the mother found,
Yet half repelling, as the soft eyes say —
How is it that ye sought Me?'
That Mr. Holman Hunt has attracted a huge, and perhaps not always
discriminative, audience of admirers, by the sentiment he has wrought into his
work, must not blind one to the fact that other qualities it possesses stamp him
as a master ; even the colouring, which is obnoxious to a certain school of
painters, seems a triumph of technique to others no less well-informed. He
is the consistent exponent of the pre-Raphaelite ideal, as first expounded.
He seems not to care whether he charms or repels, but to be intent on carrying
out his self-set ideal at any cost of time or thought.
No painter of his eminence is more Hkely to be dealt with unjustly.
Adulation and censure, both far beyond their right proportions, have been showered
upon him. One fact, however, is certain — that 'The Hireling Shepherd,' 'The
Scape-Goat,' 'The Wandering Sheep,' 'The Awakening Conscience,' 'The
Triumph of the Innocents,' and the picture already mentioned, must needs remain
as typical monuments of mid-Victorian art. Strongly personal, and with an almost
brutal force that insists on its own standpoint — even if you fail to love them, you
must needs respect them and the painter who has so consistently maintained an
ideal out of touch with the majority of taste, lay or professional, to-day.
The picture is reproduced from a photograph by Mr. J. Caswall Smith,
and was lent by Messrs. Agnew and Sons to the Guildhall Exhibition, 1894.
35

K

DANTE'S DREAM
By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
'HIS subject, taken from the 'Vita Nuova,' shows Dante guided by
the Pilgrim Love into a poppy-strewn alcove, where on her bier
lies the dead Beatrice. Love is stooping to kiss her ; angel-
figures hold a sort of baldachin above her prostrate form ; in the
background are glimpses of Florence.
This painting, of which — like many other of Rossetti's works
— two separate versions exist. Is one of the most typical of his later manner.
Painted in 1870, it differs in many respects from his water-colour of 1855. In Mr.
William Sharp's monograph upon the artist he quotes a passage from a letter by
Sir Noel Paton : —
' I was so dumfoundered by the beauty of this great picture of Rossetti's
called " Dante's Dream," that I was unable to give any expression to the emotions
it excited, emotions such as I do not think any other picture, except the " Madonna
di San Sisto " [Raphael] at Dresden ever stirred within me. The meaning of such
a picture is like the memory of sublime and perfect music ; it makes any one who
fully feels it silent. Forty years hence it will be named among the half-dozen
supreme pictures of the world.'
The extract may be a hasty and ultra-enthusiastic comment ; but even from an
impartial standpoint we can appreciate the fine qualities of the work which provoked
the generous eulogy, if compelled to admit, at the same time, that technically it
lacks at least some of the qualities which go to secure immortality.
Yet, with all deductions, it is a noble work of its class — perhaps the most
capable that the peculiarly English School which Rossetti founded has yet pro
duced. For it is undeniable that the Briton is curiously moved by a poetic senti
ment, both Biblical and secular, and whether in Bunyan, Blake, Rossetti, or a
score of others, is willing to accept superb intention, devoted to a parable or a
legend, more readily than magnificent fulfilment achieved with subjects that owe
nothing to literary association. The absolute masterpiece of ordered simplicity
requires ripe knowledge to appreciate it ; whereas the noble effort that is based
on literary sentiment, if it be halting, is sure of loyal sympathy both from those
who appreciate only a thousandth part of its meaning, and those who are able to
supply all the painter failed to embody.
Another version, on a smaller scale, with a predella (painted in 1880), fetched
1000 guineas at the sale of the Graham Collection in 1886.
The version reproduced is in the Walker Gallery, Liverpool.
36

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
{Frontispiece)
I HIS picture, although inspired by the poem Rossetti wrote at the
age of twenty-one, and published in the second number of the
now famous magazine, The Germ (February 1856), appears not to
have struck its author as a suitable theme for a painting until long
afterwards. It was ' in his mind to paint "The Blessed Damozel '"
in 1873, we are told ; but not until Mr. Graham suggested it and
promised to buy the picture does he appear to have considered the idea seriously.
'The Blessed Damozel' here reproduced is not the one commissioned by Mr. Graham
and finished about 1876, but another undertaken in 1879 for Mr. Leyland. The
first version is most prized by staunch admirers of Rossetti ; but the second has
found greater favour in the eyes of the public. This latter was altered In many
respects, especially in the omission of pairs of lovers clad in deep blue, who in
the first version are seen embracing each other in the alleys of a yew-clipped garden
behind the central figure.
To re-tell its story In a curt summary would be sacrilegious ; even at the risk
of repeating lines familiar as household words, a few quotations from the poem will
serve our purpose far better : —

The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven ;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of water stilled at even ;
She had three lUies in her hand.
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn ;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers ;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers ;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on ;
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun ;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm ;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
' I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,' she" said.
' Have I not prayed in Heaven ? — on earth.
Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd ?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength ?
And shall I feel afraid ? '

Both versions have also a predella (a small picture inserted in the same frame
below), showing the lover prostrate upon the grass.
The picture here illustrated was sold, as part of the Leyland Collection, at
Christie's, on May 28, 1892, for 980 guineas. 31

ISABELLA By Sir John E. Millais, p.r.a.
^HIS picture, painted in 1849, when Millais was barely twenty,
occupies a unique position in British art. For it is the first
important picture signed with the initials of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood (P. R. B.) which was shown In the Royal Academy.
Critics with almost one accord attacked the Pre-Raphaelites and
their works, including, of course, ' Isabella.' With the exception
of Mr. Ruskin, scarce one voice of importance was raised in defence. Keats's
poem, as we know, supplied the theme which Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and
Holman Hunt, three of the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, each decided to
paint. Millais's version we see here, Rossetti's was abandoned, and Holman Hunt's
was not finished until 1867. Millais, following his own bent of mind, chose a
scene which foreshadows the impending tragedy in place of one of the more
dramatic moments which the story offers. The two lines,
' They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by,'
must be read with the whole poem before a spectator unfamiliar with the legend
could interpret rightly the subject. Every one knows the tale of the cruel brothers
— who secretly murdered Lorenzo, their clerk and also their sister's lover, and how
she, with the help of her old nurse, exhumed his body and cut off the head and
bore it away, hiding it in a pot of basil, until that in turn was taken from her.
Or if it be unfamiliar to any one, it is needless to recapitulate it In detail,
remembering that the poem itself is so readily accessible.
The opportunity for depicting Italian costumes of a fine period, and of planning
a group with no reference to the hitherto accepted canons of pictorial composition,
gave Millais his chance to produce the work which Mr. Holman Hunt has called
' the most wonderful picture that any youth under twenty years of age ever did
in the world.' Most of the characters therein are portraits. Lorenzo was painted
from Mr. W. M. Rossetti ; the man drinking, from Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; and the
man with a napkin, from W. Bell Scott. The prominent incident of the foreground,
one of the brothers kicking a hound, is not in Keats's poem, nor is it to be found in
the fifth novel of the Fourth Day of The Decameron of Boccaccio, whence the
original story is taken.
It was sold in 1849 for ;^ioo, and bought in 1883 by the Corporation of
Liverpool for ^1120, a sum which in no way represents its probable market value
to-day. The picture (sometimes called ' Lorenzo and Isabella ') is at present hung
in the Walker Art Gallery.
38

CHILL OCTOBER
By Sir John E. Millais, p.r.a.
N 187 1, when Sir John Millais showed his first great landscape,
'Chill October,' it was received not merely with an outburst
of popular appreciation, but with amazement. That a figure-
painter should attempt pure landscape would have been held
unseemly at that period, had not his instantaneous success justi
fied the new departure. For in 1871 the Idea was maintained
very strongly that a man should be a specialist, and not try to express himself in
different branches of art. ' If it is different, people say that he had better have
kept to his old style, for there is a profound belief in common minds, as Sir Walter
Scott has observed, that no man can do two different kinds of things equally well.' '
In 1 87 1 the public imagined that pictures of people and paintings of landscape
each required their specialist, but now all sane folks believe that a painter has
no limit imposed on his choice of subject, save that of his own will. Perhaps the
influence of ' Chill October ' did no little to alter popular opinion In this matter.
The scene is on the Tay, near Perth ; and in face of the peculiarly successful
reproduction which is here given (by permission of its owner, Lord Armstrong), it
would be folly to describe the composition. Like all Millais's landscapes, it is
painted with the minute attention to detail that he learned in his pre-Raphaelite
days. But In this landscape the breadth does not suffer by over-elaboration of each
item of the foreground ; of some other later works by the same artist so much
could not be said truthfully. What can be urged against Millais's landscapes the
curious may discover in Mr. Ruskln's Notes to the R.A., 1875, where occurs the
fiercest passage — even in the storm-laden air of art criticism — provoked by ' The
Deserted Garden.' Except that the title 'Chill October' has a poetic ring sug
gesting remotely the autumn of life, the picture is free from any taint of that senti
mentality which so often vulgarises subjects entitled, ' At eventide there shall be
light.' Millais — a giant in black and white, and a great master In portraits and in
genre — proves that he was once, at least, a capable landscape-painter — one who felt
the exquisite beauty of his subject. Here the handling is free, and the work
enjoyable as a whole ; yet one has but to recall the texture of a Constable or the
colour of some of the Barbizon painters to feel that even this could hardly be called
' a painter's picture,' great though it be of its kind.
1 Sir Arthur Helps, Brevia ; Short Essays and Aphorisms (Bell, 1871).

39

39- Chill October (Millais).

THE BLIND GIRL
By Sir John E. Millais, p.r.a.
jHIS important example of Millais's pre-Raphaelite manner was
painted in 1856, and gained a prize at the Liverpool Academy.
Mr. Ruskln's description, which is quoted in the Birmingham
catalogue, Is so complete that no paraphrase should be
substituted : —
' The background is an open English common [Icklesham,
near Winchelsea], skirted by the tidy houses of a well-to-do village in the cockney
rural districts. I have no doubt the scene is a real one within some twenty
miles from London, and painted mostly on the spot. A pretty little church has
Its window traceries freshly whitewashed by order of the careful warden. The
common is a fairly spacious bit of ragged pasture, and at the side of the public
road passing over it the blind girl has sat down to rest awhile. She Is a simple
beggar, not a poetical or vicious one ; a girl of eighteen or twenty, extremely
plain-featured, but healthy, and just now resting, not because she Is much tired,
but because the sun has but this moment come out after a shower, and the
smell of the grass is pleasant. The shower has been heavy, and is so still in
the distance, where an intensely bright double rainbow is relieved against the
departing thunder-cloud. The freshly wet grass is all radiant through and
through with the new sunshine ; the weeds at the girl's side as bright as a
Byzantine enamel, and inlaid with blue veronica ; her upturned face all aglow
with the light that seeks its way through her wet eyelashes. Very quiet she is
— so quiet that a radiant butterfly has settled on her shoulder, and basks there
in the warm sun. Against her knee, on which her poor Instrument of beggary
rests, leans another child, half her age — her guide ; indifferent this one to sun
or rain, only a little tired of waiting.'
'The Blind Girl' was sold at Christie's in 1858 for ^300, and again at the
Graham sale in 1886 for ;^87i, los. It was presented by Mr. W. Kendwick,
M.P., to the City Art Gallery at Birmingham, and Is here given by permission
of the Committee.

40

40. The 'Blind Girl (Millais)

A HUGUENOT
By Sir John E. Millais, p.r.a.
' When the clock of the Palais de Justice shall sound upon the great bell at daybreak, then each
good Catholic must bind a slip of white linen round his arm and place a fair white cross in his cap.' —
Vide The Order of the Due de Guise.
J HIS superb work, exhibited in the Royal Academy when its
painter was but twenty-three, achieved immediately a sensational
reception. To-day it still preserves its unique charm, and, despite
the thousands of reproductions which have been issued for many
years past, the actual painting itself has lost none of its influence
nor appears vulgarised by its amazing popularity — a rare test
which only great works survive. Of its school it is still deservedly first ; its colour
is vivid and its detail highly wrought ; it may be out of touch with the theories of
technique that are accepted to-day, yet it has a power to disarm criticism.
The dramatic incident of the Roman Catholic lady, who, to save her lover's life,
entreats him to wear the badge which means safety, was painted from a Miss Ryan ;
the Huguenot himself from General Lempriere. Her dress is black, slashed with
yellow at the shoulders ; he wears a vivid purple tunic, with black hose and shoes ;
and the nasturtiums add a brilliant touch of orange red to a scheme which is
not brought into melodramatic accord with the impending tragedy. Here are no
lowering clouds or lurid background, but a sunny August day, within a walled
garden, that suggests nothing but comfort and serenity.
This picture Is one of those instanced by Mr. Ruskin that are not so much
concerned with the outward verities of passing events — battles, councils, and the
like — as with scenes of less outward importance (which may be even Invented by
the painter), and offer ' noble grounds for noble emotions.'
Even its full title, 'A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, refusing to shield
himself from danger by wearing the Roman Catholic badge,' would barely suffice
to explain the pictured Incident to an intelligent Oriental ignorant of Western
history. It is absolutely dependent upon a literary interest outside itself, and so
belongs to the field of illustration rather than of self-contained pictures. In other
of Millais' pre-Raphaelite work, the drowned 'Ophelia' (perhaps his masterpiece),
' Christ in the Carpenter's Shop,' or ' Ferdinand lured by Ariel,' interpretation of
the picture is perhaps less dependent upon previous knowledge of the theme ; but
here one feels that another title might arouse new train of thoughts, and lead the
spectator to believe it was a lady bidding her knight wear her favour at a joust.
This is urged, not as any criticism upon a well-nigh perfect picture, but only to
reiterate the vital difference between ' illustration ' and self-contained pictures.
'A Huguenot' belongs to Mr. Miller of Preston, who has hitherto declined to
allow it to be photographed ; hence the reproduction here is taken, unavoidably, from
the well-known engraving by T. O. Barlow, first issued in 1856 by Messrs. Brooks.
41

41. A Huguenot (Millais)

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