III.—ENGLISH PAINTERS AND PAINTINGS.
Abridged from “English and American Painters,” by Wilmot Buxton and S. R. Köhler.
WILLIAM HOGARTH,
Who was the first original painter of England, was born in 1697. His father, who had received a good education at St. Bees, kept a school in Ship Court, and sought work from booksellers. But, like many another poor scholar, he could not make a living, and died disappointed.
After spending some time at school, William Hogarth, warned by the example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in preference to literature, and was apprenticed, probably in 1711, to Ellis Gamble, a silversmith in Cranbourne Alley. He tells us how he determined to enter a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of his ambition. The men and women who jostled him in London streets or rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. Beside the keenest powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humor, he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled him to impress a face or form on his mind, and to reproduce it at leisure. Occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb nail, and thence transfer it. Hogarth tells us that “instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge of my art.” In 1724 he engraved “Masquerades and Operas,” a satire, which represents “society” crowding to a masquerade, and led by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the garter on his leg. This engraving delighted the public whom it satirized, and Hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. He was employed by the booksellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces. In 1726 was published, beside his twelve large prints, which are well known, an edition of “Hudibras,” illustrated by Hogarth, in seventeen smaller plates. The designs of Hogarth are not so witty as the verses of Butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men living and acting as they are described in the poem; they were not like the men of whom he made his daily studies. At this period he who dared to be original, and to satirize his neighbors, had much trouble. In 1730 Hogarth made a secret marriage at old Paddington Church, with Jane, only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant-Painter to the King. He had frequented Thornhill’s studio, but whether the art of the court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we know not. There is no doubt that Hogarth’s technique was studied from Thornhill’s pictures, and not from those of Watteau or Chardin, as has been supposed. For a time after his marriage Hogarth confined himself to painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid, although Walpole declares that this “was the most ill-suited employment to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery.” Truthfulness, however, is more valuable in a portrait than flattery, and we surely find it in Hogarth’s portraits of himself, one in the National Gallery, and in that of “Captain Coram,” at the Foundling.
One of the best of Hogarth’s life stories is the “Marriage à la Mode,” the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery; they appeared in prints in 1745. These well known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank, the other for money. Mr. Redgrave (“A Century of Painters”) tells us that “the novelty of Hogarth’s work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole, each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end.” We can not do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued “to shoot Folly as she flies.” “Beer Street,” and “Gin Lane,” illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin. “The Cockpit” represents a scene very common in those days, and contains many portraits. “The Election” is a series of four scenes, published between 1755 and 1758, in which all the varied vices, humors, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented.
Hogarth’s last years were embittered by quarrels, those with Churchill and Wilkes being the most memorable. The publication in 1753 of his admirable book, called “The Analysis of Beauty,” in which he tried to prove that a winding line is the line of beauty, produced much adverse criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take quietly. He was further annoyed by the censures passed on his picture of “Sigismunda,” now in the National Gallery, which he had painted in 1759 for Sir Richard Grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. Two years previously Hogarth had been made Serjeant-Painter to the King. He did not live to hold his office long; on October 26th, 1764, the hand which had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such humor, had ceased to move.
RICHARD WILSON.
The story of Richard Wilson (1713-1782) is the story of a disappointed man. Born at Pinegas, Montgomeryshire, the son of the parson of that place, Wilson’s early taste for drawing attracted the attention of Sir George Wynne, by whom he was introduced to one Wright, a portrait painter in London. In 1749 he visited Italy, and whilst waiting for an interview with the landscape painter Zuccarelli he is said to have sketched the view through the open window. The Italian advised the Englishman to devote himself henceforth to landscapes, and Wilson followed his advice. After six years’ stay in Italy, during which period he became imbued with the beauties of that country, Wilson returned to England in 1755, and found Zuccarelli worshiped, whilst he himself was neglected. His “Niobe,” one version of which is in the National Gallery, was exhibited with the Society of Artists’ Collection, in Spring Gardens, 1760, and made a great impression, but, in general, his pictures, infinitely superior to the mere decorations of the Italian, were criticised, and compared unfavorably with those of Zuccarelli, and it was not till long after Wilson’s death that he was thoroughly appreciated. He was often compelled to sell his pictures to pawnbrokers, who, so it is said, could not sell them again. Wilson was one of the original thirty-six members of the Royal Academy, and in 1776 applied for and obtained the post of Librarian to that body, the small salary helping the struggling man to live. The last years of his life were brightened by better fortune. A brother left him a legacy, and in 1780 Wilson retired to a pleasant home at Llanberis, Carnarvon, where he died two years later. Mr. Redgrave says of him: “There is this praise due to our countryman—that our landscape art, which had heretofore been derived from the meaner school of Holland, following his great example, looked thenceforth to Italy for its inspiration; that he proved the power of native art to compete on this ground also with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the way for the coming men, who, embracing Nature as their mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her.” Wilson frequently repeated his more successful pictures. “The Ruins of the Villa of Mæcenas, at Tivoli” (National Gallery), was painted five times by him. In the same gallery are “The Destruction of Niobe’s Children,” “A Landscape with Figures,” three “Views in Italy,” “Lake Avernus with the Bay of Naples in the Distance,” etc. In the Duke of Westminster’s collection are “Apollo and the Seasons” and “The river Dee.” Wilson, like many another man of genius, lived before his time, and was forced one day to ask Barry, the Royal Academician, if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape painter, and if so, whether he would recommend him.
JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was born at Plympton, Devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the grammar school. His father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that Joshua Reynolds should be a painter. He preferred to read Richardson’s “Treatise on Painting” to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to London to study with Hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. It was in 1741 that Joshua Reynolds began his studies with Hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. On leaving Hudson’s studio Reynolds returned to Devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year 1746, when his father died, and the painter was established at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, and was painting portraits. Many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which their author had probably learned from Hudson. Having visited London, and stayed for a time in St. Martin’s Lane, the artists’ quarter, Reynolds was enabled, in 1749, to realize his great wish, and go abroad, where, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, he studied the treasures of Italy, chiefly in Rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the Italian school. A love of color was the characteristic of Reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that “he came off with flying colors.” Doubtless the wish to rival the coloring of the Venetians led Reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures.
Most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who “read souls in faces.” In 1768 Joshua Reynolds was chosen first President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by George III. He succeeded, on the death of Ramsey, to the office of Court Painter. His “Discourses on Painting,” delivered at the Royal Academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. A lesser honor, though one which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on Reynolds in 1773, when he was elected Mayor of his native Plympton. In the same year he exhibited his famous “Strawberry Girl,” of which he said that it was “one of the half dozen original things” which no man ever exceeded in his life’s work. In 1789 the failure of his sight warned Sir Joshua that “the night cometh when no man can work.” He died, full of years and honors, on February 23rd, 1792, and was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Reynolds was a most untiring worker. He exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the Royal Academy, on an average eleven every year. In the National Gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. Mr. Ruskin deems Reynolds “one of the seven colorists of the world,” and places him with Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Turner. He likewise says: “Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters.” Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH.
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), the son of a clothier, was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk. The details of this master’s life are few and uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching Gainsborough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman, in the St. Martin’s Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favorable field for portrait painting, though landscape was not neglected. Fourteen years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded as the rival of Reynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape. Once, when Reynolds at an Academy dinner proposed the health of his rival as “the greatest landscape painter of the day,” Wilson, who was present, exclaimed, “Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too.” One of the original members of the Royal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783, because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with Reynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” is commonly said to have been painted in spite against Reynolds, in order to disprove the President’s statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favorite Van Dyck in displaying “a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh.” It is pleasant to know that whatever soreness of feeling existed between him and Sir Joshua passed away before he died. This was in 1788. Gainsborough was buried at Kew. The Englishness of his landscapes makes him popular. Wilson had improved on the Dutch type by visiting Italy, but Gainsborough sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. Nature speaks in his portraits, or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of Reynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. Mr. Ruskin says of Gainsborough: “His power of color (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colorist—Sir Joshua himself not excepted—of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. I hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough.”
JOSEPH TURNER.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) stands at the head of English landscape painters. It has been said that though others may have equaled or surpassed him in some respects, “none has yet appeared with such versatility of talent.” Turner owed nothing to the beauty or poetic surroundings of his birthplace, which was the house of his father, a barber in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. But as Lord Byron is said to have conjured up his loveliest scenes of Greece whilst walking in Albemarle Street, so the associations of Maiden Lane did not prevent Turner from delineating storm-swept landscapes, and innumerable splendors of nature. The barber was justly proud of his child, who very early displayed his genius, and the first drawings of Turner are said to have been exhibited in his father’s shaving room. In time the boy was coloring prints and washing in the backgrounds of architects’ drawings. Dr. Monro, the art patron, extended a helping hand to the young genius of Maiden Lane. “Girtin and I,” says Turner, “often walked to Bushey and back, to make drawings for good Dr. Munro at half a crown a piece, and the money for our supper when we got home.” He did not, of course, start from London.
In 1789 Turner became a student in the Academy, and exhibited a picture in the next year at Somerset House, “View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth.” He was then only fifteen. From that time he worked with unceasing energy at his profession. Indeed, the pursuit of art was the one ruling principle of his life. He frequently went on excursions, the first being to Ramsgate and Margate, and was storing his memory with effects of storm, mist, and tempest, which he reproduced. In 1799, when made A.R.A., Turner had already exhibited works which ranged over twenty-six counties of England and Wales. In 1802 he was made full Academician, and presented, as his diploma picture, “Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales.” In this year he visited the Continent, and saw France and Switzerland. Five years later Turner was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy. We are told his lectures were delivered in so strange a style, that they were scarcely instructive. Of his water-color paintings and of the “Liber Studiorum” it is impossible to speak too highly; he created the modern school of water-color painting, and his works in oil have influenced the art of the nineteenth century. He visited Italy for the first time in 1819; again ten years later, and for the last time in 1840. His eccentricity, both in manner and in art, increased with age. Though wealthy, and possessing a good house in Queen Anne Street, he died in an obscure lodging by the Thames, at Chelsea, a few days before Christmas, 1851.
Turner bequeathed his property to found a charity for male decayed artists, but the alleged obscurity of his will defeated this object. It was decided that his pictures and drawings should be presented to the National Gallery, that one thousand pounds should be spent on a monument to the painter in St. Paul’s, twenty thousand pounds should be given to the Royal Academy, and the remainder to the next of kin and heir at law. The National Gallery contains more than one hundred of his pictures, beside a large number of water-color drawings and sketches.
EASTLAKE.
Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865), son of the Solicitor to the Admiralty in that town, was born at Plymouth, and educated first in Plympton Grammar School, where Reynolds had studied, and afterward at the Charterhouse, London. Choosing the profession of a painter, he was encouraged, doubtless, by his fellow townsman, Haydon, who had just exhibited “Dentatus.” Eastlake became the pupil of that erratic master, and attended the Academy schools. In 1813 he exhibited at the British Institution a large and ambitious picture, “Christ raising the Daughter of the Ruler.” In the following year the young painter was sent by Mr. Harmon to Paris, to copy some of the famous works collected by Napoleon in the Louvre. The emperor’s escape from Elba, and the consequent excitement in Europe, caused Eastlake to quit Paris, and he returned to Plymouth, where he practiced successfully as a portrait painter. In 1819 Eastlake visited Greece and Italy, and spent fourteen years abroad, chiefly at Ferrara and Rome. The picturesque dress of the Italian and Greek peasantry so fascinated him that for a long period he forsook history for small genre works, of which brigands and peasants were the chief subjects. A large historical painting, “Mercury bringing the Golden Apple to Paris,” appeared in 1820, and seven years later, “The Spartan Isidas.” In 1828 Eastlake produced “Italian Scene in the Anno Santo, Pilgrims arriving in sight of St. Peters,” which he twice repeated. In 1829 “Lord Byron’s Dream,” a poetic landscape (National Gallery), was exhibited, and Eastlake becoming an Academician, returned to England. To his labors as a painter Eastlake added the duties of several important offices, and much valuable literary work. He was Secretary to the Royal Commission for Decorating the New Palace of Westminster, Librarian of the Royal Academy, and Keeper, and afterward Director of the National Gallery. In 1850 he succeeded Sir Martin Shee as President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted. From that time till his death, at Pisa, in 1865, he was chiefly engaged in selecting pictures to be purchased by the British Government. He was editor of Kugler’s “Handbook of the Italian Schools of painting,” and author of “Materials for a History of Oil Painting.”
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.
Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) was eminent among English animal painters. No artist has done more to teach us how to love animals and to enforce the truth that
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.”
Not only did Landseer rival some of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century in painting fur and feathers, but he depicted animals with sympathy, as if he believed that “the dumb, driven cattle” possess souls. His dogs and other animals are so human as to look as if they were able to speak. The painter was the son of John Landseer, the engraver, and was born in London. He received art lessons from his father, and, when little more than a baby, would sketch donkeys, horses, and cows at Hampstead Heath. Some of these sketches, made when Landseer was five, seven, and ten years old, are at Kensington. He was only fourteen when he exhibited the heads of “A Pointer Bitch and Puppy.” When between sixteen and seventeen he produced “Dogs Fighting,” which was engraved by the painter’s father. Still more popular was “The Dogs of St. Gothard rescuing a Distressed Traveler,” which appeared when its author was eighteen. Landseer was not a pupil of Haydon, but he had occasional counsel from him. He dissected a lion. As soon as he reached the age of twenty-four he was elected A.R.A., and exhibited at the Academy “The Hunting of Chevy Chase.” This was in 1826, and in 1831 he became a full member of the Academy. Landseer had visited Scotland in 1826, and from that date we trace a change in his style, which thenceforth was far less solid, true and searching, and became more free and bold. The introduction of deer into his pictures, as in “The Children of the Mist,” “Seeking Sanctuary,” and “The Stag at Bay,” marked the influence of Scotch associations. Landseer was knighted in 1850, and at the French exhibition of 1855 was awarded the only large gold medal given to an English artist. Prosperous, popular, and the guest of the highest personages of the realm, he was visited about 1852 by an illness which compelled him to retire from society. From this he recovered, but the effects of a railway accident in 1868 brought on a relapse. He died in 1873, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. On the death of Sir Charles Eastlake, in 1865, he was offered the Presidentship of the Royal Academy, but this honor he declined. In the National Gallery are “Spaniels of King Charles’s Breed,” “Low Life and High Life,” “Highland Music” (a highland piper disturbing a group of five hungry dogs, at their meal, with a blast on the pipes), “The Hunted Stag,” “Peace,” “War” (dying and dead horses, and their riders lying amidst the burning ruins of a cottage), “Dignity and Impudence,” “Alexander and Diogenes,” “The Defeat of Comus,” a sketch painted for a fresco in the Queen’s summer house, Buckingham Palace. Sixteen of Landseer’s works are in the Sheepshanks Collection, including the touching “Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” of which Mr. Ruskin said that “it stamps its author not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind.”
