SAMUEL BUTLER
5. Water-colour: A view in Cambridge.
Probably done when Butler was an undergraduate, and given to St. John’s some years ago. I found it in the book wherein I found Blakiston’s drawing (no. 2).
6. Oil Painting: Family Prayers.
On the ceiling he wrote “I did this in 1864, and if I had gone on doing things out of my own head instead of making studies I should have been all right.” (Memoir, I. 115.) Reproduced in the Memoir, ch. xxiv., and referred to, ch. viii.
7. Oil Painting: His own head.
“He painted at home as well as at Heatherley’s, and by way of a cheap model hung up a looking-glass near the window of his painting room and made many studies of his own head. He gave some of them away and destroyed and painted over others, but after his death we found a number in his rooms—some of the earlier ones very curious” (Memoir, ch. viii.). This is one of the earlier ones. It is inscribed, “S.B., Feb. 18, 1865.” We found also a still more curious one which was given to Gogin, who was interested in it as being the work of an untaught student. See also no. 36.