The Dawn of the XIXth Century in England: A social sketch of the times

by John Ashton

CHAPTER XLIII.

Painting—“The Royal Academy of Art”—The principal private Picture Galleries—Benjamin West—James Barry—Fuseli—Opie—Minor artists—Turner—Sir Thomas Laurence—Morland—Sale of his pictures—Sculptors—Engravers—Boydell—“The Exhibition of Paintings in Water Colours”—Its members-”The Associated Artists in Water Colours”—Literature—List of literary persons of the decade—Five-volume novels—Decyphering papyri—Major Ouseley’s Oriental Library—The Pope and the Lord’s Prayer—The Alfred Club.

PAINTING was not at its highest at this time, and yet there were many buyers, even for the pictures then painted. The Royal Academy of Art (founded in 1765, when it received its Charter, on the 26th of January, as the Incorporated Society of British Artists, a name afterwards changed in 1768) was then located at Somerset House, where life classes were held, and instruction given, as shown in the illustration on the next page.

But, as yet, there was no National Gallery of Paintings, that was reserved till a latter period, when Government bought the collection of John Julius Angerstein, Esq., in 1824. This formed the nucleus of our magnificent collection. His gallery, at his house in Pall Mall, had long held high rank among the private picture collectors, he having two Murillos, for which he paid 3,500 guineas. The Duke of Bridgewater’s, the Marquis of Lansdowne’s, the two, or rather three, Hopes’, Lord Radstock’s, the Duke of Northumberland’s, the Duke of Devonshire’s, and the Miniatures at Strawberry Hill, were all magnificent collections; whilst Mr. Charles Townley, at his residence in Park Lane, had the finest collection of antique statues and busts, &c., in the world. These are now in the British Museum.

DRAWING FROM LIFE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY—1808.

The principal painters of this decade, although numerous, do not represent a school likely to be perpetuated, although, as we read them, they are well known; many are respectable, two or three are famous. First must come Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, who then lived in Newman Street: and, indeed, if we look at the addresses of these old painters, we find them very humble compared with the palatial habitations of some of our modern painters. As a Master, West will never live, he was a respectable painter, but even in his own time, was not over belauded.

There was James Barry, who was once professor of painting to the Academy, but was deposed, en plein cours, because he could, or would, not confine his lectures to their proper subjects, besides being coarse and libellous. This made him hypochondriac, and he, besides, became poor—a position somewhat alleviated by an annuity which was subscribed for him. He died in 1806. His dwelling was in Castle Street, Oxford Street.

Henry Fuseli lived in Queen Anne Street, East. His pictures were noted for the extravagance of their conception, and their anatomy; he delighted in painting the horrible, and supernatural, and was, perhaps, seen at his best in his Milton Gallery, which was opened in 1798, and closed July 19, 1800.

John Opie made a name, which still lives among collectors, but he never will rank as an Art Master. He owed much of his celebrity to Dr. Wolcott (Peter Pindar), who, an artist himself, tried to bring his protégé into notoriety. He lived in Berner’s Street, Oxford Street, and died in 1807.

De Loutherbourg and his imitator, Sir Francis Bourgeois, are hardly worthy of a notice. The latter, certainly, left a collection of pictures to Dulwich Gallery, with £10,000 to keep them in preservation; £2,000 for the repair of the gallery, and a complimentary bequest of £1,000 to the Masters and Fellows of Dulwich College.

The genius of the age was, undoubtedly, Joseph Mallord William Turner, who ranks as one of our greatest landscape painters. Like all other artists, he had his periods of excellence; but, when at his best, he was unapproachable. Thoroughly appreciated in this decade, he died not so long ago, December 19, 1851.

From Turner to James Northcote is a long step, but they were on the same footing as Royal Academicians. He tried to be, as some of our modern R.A.’s do, an universal genius; but the verdict of posterity has not endorsed his pretensions. He lived then in Argyll Street, and did not die until July 13, 1831.

Another Academician, Thomas Stothard, deserves notice, and will be most remembered for his “Canterbury Pilgrims;” but his style was mannered, and did he paint now, he, probably, would not get a living.

Sir Thomas Lawrence did not then occupy the position he afterwards filled, of President of the Royal Academy; but he had the rare honour of being made a “Supplemental Associate;” a rank conferred, because his youth would not entitle him to ask for the ordinary Associateship. He was then living modestly in Greek Street, Soho, and did not charge much for his pictures. In 1802 he only got thirty guineas for a three-quarter size, and sixty guineas for a half-length portrait. In 1806, he obtained fifty guineas for three-quarter, and whole length, two hundred guineas. 1808 saw his prices still go higher, similar sizes eighty and three hundred guineas; and in 1810, he charged one hundred guineas for a head, and four hundred guineas for a full length. Handsome prices, yet poor pay compared to what our pet artists now get.

Robert Smirke, R.A., then living in Charlotte Street, was a painter of English genre pictures, and was very fond of painting scenes from Don Quixote. Sir David Wilkie, however, painted genre subjects inimitably, and stood pre-eminent in this branch of art, at the period of which I write.

Sir William Beechey was a respectable portrait painter, and filled that office to Her Majesty Queen Charlotte, but he was not a Sir Joshua. He then lived at Great George Street, Hanover Square; but he died at Hampstead, in 1839, at a good old age of over eighty. John Hoppner, R.A., was another portrait painter of the time, as was also Sir Martin Archer Shee, President R.A., then living in Cavendish Square.

Westall, as being an Academician, deserves a passing notice, and Reinagle, too; but neither have made a name that will live. One minor painter deserves to be mentioned, Henry Bone, the enamel painter, whose collection of his own works (valued at £10,000) was offered to the nation for £4,000, refused, and sold under the hammer for £2,000. John Singleton Copley was still alive, as was also Angelica Kauffman, nor must the name of Sir George Howland Beaumont be omitted; but he was more of an amateur than professional artist.

CONNOISSEURS EXAMINING A COLLECTION OF GEORGE MORLAND.

That erratic genius, George Morland, died in 1806, at the early age of forty-two. Fecund in producing pictures as he was, he never could have painted a tithe part of the genuine Morlands that have been before the public, and the secret of these forgeries probably lies in the fact, that his pictures, painted from such familiar models, as sheep and pigs, were so easily imitated. After his death a collection of his pictures was exhibited, and Gillray gave a very graphic sketch of it. The connoisseurs were well known. The old gentleman in the foreground looking through his reversed spectacles is Captain Baillie. Behind him, and using a spy glass, is Caleb Whiteford, a friend of Garrick. The tall stout man, nearest the wall, is said to be a Mr. Mitchell, a banker; but although I have carefully examined the ten years’ lists of bankers, I cannot find his name mentioned as a partner in any firm. And, I believe, the figure without a hat, is generally considered to be Christie the Auctioneer.

The foregoing is a tolerably correct list of the most eminent artists of the commencement of the century, many names of minor note, being of necessity, left out.

In sculptors, this decade was rich. The veteran Nollekens still worked, and continued to work, till his eighty-second year, and was then living in Mortimer Street. In Newman Street lived Thomas Banks, R.A., whose colossal statue of Achilles bewailing the loss of Briseis, is now in the hall of the British Institution. Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., was then a young, and rising, sculptor, as yet but little known. John Flaxman, R.A., was then in his zenith, being made professor of sculpture to the Royal Academy in 1810. His successor, Sir Richard Westmacott, was made A.R.A., in 1805; and these names alone form an era of glyptic art unparalleled in English history.

Engravers, too, furnish a list of well-known names, among whom, for delicacy of work, Francis Bartolozzi probably stands pre-eminent, his engravings challenging competition at the present day. There were also Thomas Holloway, and William Sharp; but, perhaps, the most popular names—none of whom will ever rank as first-class engravers—are Gillray, Rowlandson, and Isaac and George Cruikshank. Their names were on every lip, and their works the theme of every tongue. Nor must we forget John Boydell, who was Alderman and Lord Mayor of the City of London. Not only an engraver by profession, he encouraged art, by commissioning the first artists of the day to paint pictures, which he afterwards had engraved, notably his magnificent Shakespeare, than which there is no more sumptuous English edition. On this he spent no less than £350,000, and by this expenditure of capital, and bad trade, owing to the war with France, and the stoppage of commercial relations with the Continent, he fell into debt, and was obliged to get an Act of Parliament passed to enable him to get rid of the original pictures and plates, of his Shakespeare Gallery, by a lottery, which was drawn in 1804.

Besides the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and Alderman Boydell’s Gallery in Cheapside, there were several dealers’ collections—the chief of which was “The European Museum,” Charles Street, St. James’s Square. Here pictures, some of them good, were on sale on commission, and, to prevent its being merely a lounge, a shilling was charged for admission.

Not to be forgotten are the two Water Colour Societies—“The Exhibition of Paintings in Water Colours,” established in 1804, and located in 1808 in Bond Street. Reinagle was treasurer, and its members were Messrs. G. Barrett, J. J. Chalon, J. Christall, W. S. Gilpin, W. Havell, T. Heaphy, J. Holworthy, F. Nicholson, N. Pocock, W. H. Pyne, S. Rigaud, S. Shelley, J. Smith, J. Varley, C. Varley, and W. F. Wells. The associate members were Miss Byrne, and Messrs. J. A. Atkinson, W. Delamotte, P. S. Munn, A. Pugin, F. Stevens, and W. Turner.

The other society was started in 1808 or 1809, under the title of “The Associated Artists in Water Colours,” and their first exhibition was held at 20, Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where a picture gallery already existed.

It is a thankless task to attempt to give a list of names of literary note, of this epoch, because, as in the case of foregoing lists, it is impossible to avoid giving some critic occasion to slay—an omitted name, being a heinous sin, outweighing all the patient hard work of research and reading, necessary for the writing of a book like this. Still an attempt thereat is bound to be made:

Austen, Jane.	Keats, John.
Baillie, Joanna.	Lewis, M. G. (Monk).
Barbauld, Mrs.	Lingard, John.
Beckford, Peter.	Lamb, Charles.
Beckford, William.	Landor, W. S.
Bentham, Jeremy.	London, John.
Bloomfield, Robert.	Lysons, Daniel.
Brougham, Henry.	Maturin, Charles Robert.
Byron, Lord.	Montgomery, James.
Campbell, Thomas.	Malthus, Rev. T. R.
Canning, George.	Mill, James.
Chapone, Mrs.	Moore, Thomas.
Coleridge, S. T.	More, Hannah.
Crabbe, George.	Morgan, Lady.
Cobbett, William.	Opie, Mrs.
Cumberland, Richard.	Porter Miss A. M.
Cunningham, Allan.	Porter, Miss Jane.
D’Israeli, Isaac.	Rogers, Samuel.
De Quincey, Thomas.	Roscoe, W.
Dibdin, T. F., D.D.	Shelley, P. B.
Edgeworth, Miss.	Scott, Sir W.
Godwin, William.	Southey, Robert.
Hazlitt, William.	Smith, Sydney.
Heber, Bishop.	Tooke, John Horne.
Hemans, Mrs.	Trimmer, Mrs.
Hogg, James.	Turner, Sharon.
Hook, Theodore.	Wilberforce, W.
Holcroft, Thomas.	Wollstonecroft, Mary.
Inchbald, Mrs.	Wordsworth, W.

This was an age of dear books, and not of literature for the million. We are apt to think that three volumes for a novel is rather too much—when it can be, and is, afterwards, published comfortably in one; but, in those days, novels ran to four or five volumes, as may be seen by only taking one advertisement. Morning Post, July 18, 1805: “Family Annals; a Domestic Tale, in 5 Vols. 25s. by Mrs. Hunter of Norwich. The Demon of Sicily; a Romance. 4 Vols., 20s. Friar Hildargo; a Romance. 5 Vols., 25s.”

Mudie’s Library was not, but Hookham’s, and Colburn’s were in existence, and Ebers’ started in 1809.

It was a great age for the collection of first editions, unique copies, and large paper books; and, thanks to the industry, and good taste of this era, priceless treasures have been preserved to us, which might otherwise have been lost. It was a peculiarly classical age, the excavations at Pompeii, and Herculaneum, and the systematic spoliation of Etruscan tombs then going on, whetted men’s appetites, and even the Prince of Wales helped to contribute towards the stock of classical lore: “The business of unrolling the Herculaneum MSS. at Portici, under the direction of M. Hayter, and at the expense of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, proceeds with success and rapidity. One hundred and thirty MSS. have already been opened, or are unfolding, and M. Hayter hopes to be able to decypher the six hundred, which still remains in the museum. Eleven young persons are constantly employed in unrolling the MSS., and two more, in copying or drawing them. M. Hayter expects to find a Menander entire, an Ennius, and a Polybius,” &c. I give this extract merely to show the classical taste of the time.

Attention was also being aroused to Oriental literature, and the two Ouseley’s gave a great impetus to its study. Major Ouseley brought over from Bengal, in 1805, 15,000 volumes of Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit MSS., besides a vast museum of Oriental curiosities. The Major had peculiar facilities, and opportunities, for forming his collection, as he was for some time aide de camp to the Nawab of Oude. His brother, Sir William, also possessed a choice library of some 800 Arabic, Persian, and Turkish MSS.

Not only here, but on the Continent, philology was looking up, for we find that the Pope, whilst in Paris, at the Coronation of Napoleon, visited the National Printing Office, and, as he passed along the galleries, 150 presses furnished him with a sheet each, upon which was printed the Lord’s Prayer in a different language or dialect. Asia furnished 46; Europe, 75; Africa, 12; America, 17.

In fact, literature was beginning to be aggressive, and, actually, to ask for a club of its own; and in 1808 the Alfred Club took premises in Albemarle Street, and continued its existence till 1855, when it was merged in the Oriental. It was extremely dull, and was christened by the wicked wits, the Half read; and Lord Alvanley was a member until the seventeenth Bishop saw proposed, and then he gave up.