SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, P.R.A.
SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, long known in art and letters, and for some years the oldest member as well as the President of the Royal Society, died at Brighton, on the 13th of August, in the eighty-first year of his age. He was descended lineally from one of the Kings of Munster, in the third century, and his family in more recent times has been honorably distinguished. He was born in Dublin, on the 23d of December, 1770. He evinced extraordinary precocity in his art, and when but twelve years old obtained of the Irish Academy medals for figures, landscapes and flowers. The author of "Wine and Walnuts," as quoted in the London Athenaeum, gives the following account of his first appearance in the Great Metropolis:
"I well remember this gentleman on his first arrival from Ireland to the British metropolis; he was introduced to the notice of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and to some other distinguished persons by his illustrious Friend and countryman Mr. Edmund Burke. I was at that time making a drawing in the Plaster Academy in Somerset House, and perfectly recollect the first evening Mr. Shee joining the students there. He selected the figure of the Discobolus for his probationary exercises to procure a permanent student's ticket. I need not say that he obtained it,—for it was acknowledged to be one of the best copies that had yet been seen of that fine figure. I further remarked that Mr. Wilton, the then keeper of the Royal Academy, was so pleased with the performance that he expressed a wish to retain it, after Mr. Shee had received his ticket; and Mr. Shee, with that politeness which marked his early career, presented it to the worthy old gentleman."
Mr. Shee became an exhibitor at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1789. He abstained from exhibiting in the following year, wisely husbanding his strength—worked hard at his art—gave his nights and days to Sir Joshua; and in 1791 took handsome apartments, and sent four portraits to the Exhibition. In 1792 he removed to yet better rooms, and sent in all seven works to the Exhibition. In the same year he walked as one of the students of the Royal Academy at the funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1793 he reached what is now the full Academical number of eight portraits. The Exhibition of the following year contained his as yet most ambitious efforts:—a portrait of a young lady as Miranda in "The Tempest," and "Jephtha's Daughter" from the Book of Judges. In 1795 he exhibited a portrait of himself,—and a portrait of Mr. Addington, afterward Lord Sidmouth. In 1797 he exhibited in all ten works; including portraits of Pope and Fawcett the actors. He continued equally industrious for many successive years; and was in such favor with his fellow artists that he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1798, immediately after the election of Flaxman into the same honorary rank. The same year, on Romney's withdrawal from London, he removed to the house which that artist had built for himself in Cavendish Square; and in this he continued as Romney's successor to reside until age and growing infirmities compelled him to withdraw to Brighton, and abandon his pencil. In 1800, he was elected a full Royal Academician:—and of his thirty-nine brethren by whom he was chosen he was the last survivor.
Mr. Shee continued to produce for years with amazing readiness of hand and fertility in posture. People of all ranks in life went to Cavendish Square, and for a time Shee was in greater request than either Beechey or Hoppner, though not so much so as Lawrence, or even as Owen or Phillips somewhat later. Lord Spencer was the first nobleman who sat to him; and his example was followed by the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Leinster, the Marquis of Exeter, and others. The ladies flocked less readily around him; for Lawrence had then, as he continued to have, the entire artist monopoly of the beauty of Great Britain.
Much to the surprise of his friends, and to the infinite wonder of some of his brethren in the Academy, Mr. Shee made his appearance as a poet by the publication, in 1805, of his "Rhymes on Art, or the Remonstrance of a Painter; in two parts, with Notes and a Preface, including Strictures on the State of the Arts, Criticism, Patronage, and Public Taste": and the wonder had not ceased with Nollekins and Northcote, when, in 1809, he published a second poem, in six cantos, entitled "Elements of Art." It is to these poems that Byron alludes in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers":
"And here let Shee and Genius find a place,
Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace;
To guide whose hand the sister-arts combine,
And trace the poet's or painter's line;
Whose magic touch can bid the canvas glow,
Or pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow;
While honors, doubly merited, attend
The poet's rival, but the painter's friend."
The Quarterly was complimentary, but less kind to the painter than the noble lord.
Mr. Shee appears to have always evinced taste for the theater; and when his gravity of years and his position as a popular portrait-painter forbade his any longer entertaining a wish to appear there, he began to woo the dramatic Muse, and commenced a tragedy called "Alasco," of which the scene was laid in Poland. The play was accepted at Covent Garden, but excluded, it was said, from the stage by Colman, who was then licenser. This is not strictly true. Colman objected to about eighty-five lines, which Shee refused to alter. Colman was equally obstinate; and Shee in 1824 printed his play, and appealed to the public against the licenser in a lengthy and angry preface. "Alasco," notwithstanding, is still on the list of the unacted drama.
On the death of Lawrence in 1830, Shee was elected President of the Royal Academy, and immediately knighted. His election was by a large majority, though Wilkie was a candidate; the members being governed in their votes rather, it is said, by the necessities of their annual dinner than by their sense of the merits of Shee as a painter. He excelled in short, well-timed and well-delivered speeches. He was seldom at a loss; and so highly was his eloquence appreciated within the walls of the Academy, that it had been common with more than one Royal Academician to remark whenever a great speaker was mentioned—"Did you ever hear the President—you should hear the President,"—as if Canning and Stanley had been united in Sir Martin Archer Shee.
He has but little claim to be remembered as a poet. His verse wants vigor, and his examples are deficient in novelty of illustration. The notes to both his poems are, however, valuable, and his poetry is perhaps more frequently read for its prose illustrations than for the beauty of its versification or the value of the truths which it seeks to inculcate. As a portrait-painter he was eclipsed by several or his contemporaries,—by Lawrence and by Hoppner,—by Phillips, Jackson, and Raeburn. He had a fine eye for color; while his leading want was, proportion, more especially in his heads. Compare his head of Chantrey with the portraits of Chantrey by Jackson and Raeburn, and the defect is at once obvious; or compare his head of Mr. Hallam with the head of Mr. Hallam by Phillips, or with the living head—since happily Mr. Hallam is still among us. How, then, it will be asked, is Sir Martin to be remembered: by his poems or by his portraits?—by his speeches or by his annual addresses to the students? The question is not difficult of solution. His pictures in the Vernon Gallery will not preserve his name, nor will his portraits viewed as works of Art. His name will scend in the History of Painting as a clever artist with greater accomplishments than have commonly fallen to the class to which he belongs,—and as the painter who has preserved to us the faces and figures of Sir Thomas Munro, Sir Thomas Picton, Sir Eyre Coote, Sir James Scarlett, and Sir Henry Halford. There was merit, we may add, in his portrait of the poet Moore. Principally, however, he will be remembered as one of the Presidents of the Royal Academy.
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