SAMUEL BUTLER
9. Oil Painting: Interior of Butler’s sitting-room, 15, Clifford’s Inn.
There is something written in pencil on the panelling in the left-hand bottom corner. I believe the words to be “Corner of my room, Augt. 1865, S.B.” Reproduced in the Memoir, ch. xv.
Here are shown Butler’s books, including Bradshaw’s Guide and Whitaker’s Almanack, of which he speaks somewhere as being indispensable. I admit that I cannot identify them, but he used to keep them among the books in these shelves. I do not think he ever possessed that equally indispensable book the Post Office Directory. But he had more books than those shown in this painting. Between his sitting-room and his painting-room was a short passage in which was a cupboard, and this contained the rest. I do not remember how many there were, but not enough to invalidate the statement he made to Robert Bridges (Memoir II. 320), “I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary.”
10. Water-colour: Dieppe, The Castle, 1866.
Butler was at Dieppe with Pauli in 1866. (Memoir, ch. viii.)
11. Small water-colour drawing: Dieppe, 1866.
This is in the portfolio of miscellaneous drawings, etc., by Butler, Gogin, and Sadler, no. 81.
12. Oil Painting: Two heads done as a study at Heatherley’s.
I showed this to Gaetano Meo, and he remembered that the man was Calorossi, a model, whose brother went to Paris and became known as the proprietor of a studio there. The woman, he said, was Maria, another model. The background is Dieppe. I suppose that Butler did this study in the autumn of 1866, using nos. 10 and 11, the water-colours of Dieppe, or some other sketch made on the spot, for the background. The idea was to make portraits of two heads with a landscape background in the manner of Giovanni Bellini.
13. Drawing of a cast of the Antinous as Hermes.
Inscribed “Samuel Butler for probationership, December 28th 1868.” Done, I suppose, at South Kensington.
14. Drawing of a hand and foot.
Probably also done at South Kensington.
15. Black and white drawing of a fir tree.
This, I suspect, was made while Butler was under the influence of Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing—say about 1870. He threw off that influence later.
16. Four water-colour notes in one frame.
One is inscribed “S.B.” and another “Kingston, near Lewes.” I suppose that they are all on the South Downs, and they are all early—say 1870.