That he was not well represented in this exhibition is hardly surprising. But he had at least one fine architectural drawing in his best manner—the ruins of the Lady Chapel of Fountains Abbey (57); The Road through the Village (2), and three specimens of his earlier work, Winchelsea Church (140), St. Augustine’s Priory, Canterbury (141), and Kenilworth ([Plate XXXI]). These early drawings were made soon after the termination of his apprenticeship to Edward Dayes, and they bear evident marks of Dayes’s influence. St. Augustine’s Priory was done from a sketch by a Mr. James Moore, an amateur who at one time employed Dayes to work up his sketches, but who afterwards engaged Girtin for the same purpose. Moore’s pencil drawing which provided the material for this water-colour is now in the Ashmolean Museum, to which it was generously presented by Mr. Thomas Girtin, the great-grandson of the artist.
The view of Lincoln ([Plate XXXII]), which is attributed to Girtin, bears very little resemblance to Girtin’s characteristic style of work. The composition is too crowded for Girtin, and the drawing and painting of the cathedral are quite unlike Girtin’s treatment of architecture. I cannot but feel that this attribution to Girtin was made without proper consideration. Yet the drawing is a fine one, and it is evidently the work of a gifted and accomplished artist. In my opinion it is much more probably the work of Peter De Wint than of Girtin. De Wint spent a good deal of time at Lincoln, at first as a visitor to William Hilton, his fellow-apprentice at J. R. Smith’s. Hilton’s sister afterwards became De Wint’s wife. The treatment of the architecture is exactly in his manner.
De Wint (1784-1849) was represented in the exhibition by about a dozen other drawings, amongst them the High Torr, Derbyshire (38) and Crowland Abbey (14). The most delightful was probably the early River Scene (12), a very peaceful and happy design, though slightly faded in colour. John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was born only seven years later than Girtin. He came to London in 1798, and a few years afterwards became a member of the sketching society which Girtin had founded. Two of his early drawings were in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition, and both of them show that he had learnt much from Girtin. The less successful of the two, the Bridge over River near a Town ([Plate XXXIII]), is dated 1803. As in others of Cotman’s early drawings the architecture is tortured into strange and fantastic shapes which destroy all ideas of probability. The bridge in this drawing looks as though a moderate breeze would blow it over; it is certainly unsafe for traffic. There can, I think, be no doubt that this is a representation of the old Welsh Bridge at Shrewsbury. The drawing is worked almost entirely in brown, though some dark blue has been introduced in parts. The general effect is muddy, and the washes have been rubbed and worried, as though the artist had often been in difficulties with his work. The other drawing, Gormire Lake, Yorkshire ([Plate XXXIV]), though it must have been painted about the same time, for it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, is more successful and already contains evidence of that distinctive manner of working with which Cotman’s name is connected. Like the Shrewsbury drawing, it is painted almost entirely in brown and blue, but the washes have not been worried. The richly blotted washes preserve all their freshness and lustre. Their beautiful quality gives a charm and dignity to the drawing which is worthily supported by the massive simplicity of the design. The placing of the cattle in the water, and the two figures at the side of the tarn, is worthy of Cotman’s impeccable sense of design. As the dignity and authority of such a drawing are the result of selection and the ruthless omission of irrelevancies, every detail which is admitted must possess significance and must contribute actively to the general effect. The two oars carried on the shoulder of the man in the foreground are good examples of the telling use Cotman could make of what, to other artists, might be insignificant details. The force and grandeur of the whole design may be said to depend entirely on the lines made by these oars, for without them the spell would be broken.
In A Lake Scene ([Plate XXXVI]) we see how sedulously Cotman developed the characteristic qualities of his style. Eschewing the charms of colour, he concentrates all his powers on the massive simplicity of design and the correct and happy placing of every detail. The Church in Normandy ([Plate XXXVII]), done in pencil with a few washes of sepia, is a good example of his intelligent and accomplished architectural work. His latest drawing, Rouen ([Plate XXXV]), belongs to the period when he was influenced by, and attempted to rival, Turner’s brilliance of colour. The design is firmly built up, but the absence of emphasis gives it rather an academic air. For once Cotman has abandoned his usual method of painting. The effect of light and brilliance is obtained by an extensive use of the knife or razor over all the sky and distance, and some of the foreground. I do not remember having seen any other drawing by Cotman in which the knife has been so freely used.
Samuel Prout (1783-1852) was actually a year younger than Cotman, yet he seems to have belonged to an earlier generation of artists. We somehow feel towards Cotman as to a contemporary. The things he cared most about, perfection of workmanship and design, are disengaged from the accidents of time. That is what we mean, I suppose, when we class him among the immortals. Compared with Cotman, Prout is mortal, and bound rather heavily with the shackles of time and circumstance. His work was always in the mode of his day, and as fashions change his work appears old-fashioned. This large drawing of Folkestone ([Plate XXXIX]) certainly looks to me old-fashioned; I am almost tempted to say frumpish. But as I happen to be fond of old-fashioned things, I like it very much. There is a clumsiness, a heavy-handedness, about the workmanship which harmonizes very happily with the subject-matter. The composition is wanting in fineness of feeling and perception. There is a certain awkwardness in the way the church on the cliff projects over the roof of the wooden hut in the foreground, which might easily have been avoided with a little tact and cunning. But the whole drawing is so vigorous, so solid and strong, that it seems to express the blunt, downright habits of thought and feeling of the typical Englishmen of the early part of the nineteenth century. As our rude forefathers spoke, so Prout painted. His Coast Scene (79) has much of the bluntness and directness of the Folkestone, but not the same fullness and authority of statement. A Road through a Village (162) comes nearer the Folkestone in these respects, but the choice of subject-matter is not so fortunate. These are all comparatively early drawings of Prout, done before he turned foreign tourist and became a fashionable drawing-master. His later manner is exemplified by two pleasing drawings of architectural “bits” in Normandy (113 and 119). The touch is still clumsy, but it has become systematized, and something of the old sincerity seems to have gone.
John Varley (1778-1842) is an attractive figure in the history of English water-colour painting, but his work rarely seems quite worthy of his obvious powers. Perhaps he did too much. In 1808 he sent fifty-two drawings to the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and between 1805 and 1812 his exhibits actually amounted to three hundred and forty-four. No wonder so many of his drawings are uninspired and commonplace. Yet he had great technical ability and the right sort of feeling, as drawings like Bala Lake (65) and A Welsh River (71) prove. All he wanted was something of Cotman’s concentration and scrupulousness. As it is, his best works are often his unpretentious sketches done direct from nature, of which the view of Leyton, Essex ([Plate XXXVIII]) is a very good example; it is brisk, alert, genial and convincing.
William Turner (1789-1862) was one of the many pupils of John Varley. After leaving Varley he settled in Oxford, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is generally called William Turner of Oxford, to distinguish him from the other Turner. This view of Kingley Vale, Chichester ([Plate XL]), bears little resemblance to Varley’s broad and dashing style. This was painted towards the end of the artist’s life, as it was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1851, when it figured in the catalogue as View from the side of Bow Hill, on the South Downes, near Chichester, looking over the Groves of Yew Trees, and Stoke Park, toward the Sea. This is a full and accurate description of the subject, as Kingley Valley is at the foot of Bow Hill. To the modern eye, which is perhaps over-fond of broad and slap-dash work, there is rather too much insistence on details and small forms in this drawing; but in an unambitious drawing, aiming at nothing more than topographical interest, this is not necessarily a fault. There is a certain naïveté and truthfulness about the record which gives it great charm. The subject, too, is well chosen, the effect of sunlight is successfully rendered, and the stretch of blue distance is restful to the eye and agreeable to the imagination.
George Fennell Robson (1788-1833) painted little but Scottish lake and mountain scenery. He was fond of dramatic effects of storm and cloud, and his work is powerful, accomplished and well sustained. Ben Venue, from Lanrick ([Plate XLI]) is as good an example of his masculine style as one could find. It is probably the drawing which was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1851, under the title Ben Venue, from the head of Loch Achray. The meadow on the left is Lanrick Mead, which was the gathering-place of the Clan Alpine.
The two largest drawings in the exhibition were Copley Fielding’s (1787-1855) two sea-pieces, The Pilot Boat ([Plate XLII]) and Seaford, from Newhaven Pier (76). I have confessed on other occasions that I cannot share the general enthusiasm for Copley Fielding’s work. It is, I acknowledge, nearly always pleasing in effect; but it strikes me as superficial, and it lacks the “bite,” the tremendous energy of mind and inexhaustible knowledge of Turner’s work. But these two large drawings are very favourable specimens of Fielding’s style. They are cheerful in colour, breezy in effect, and full of movement. The Pilot Boat is probably the better of the two; but I wish there was more sense of weight and the power of resistance in the waves. The date on the Seaford drawing is indistinct. When it was exhibited at the Old Masters at Burlington House in 1908, the compiler of the catalogue read the date as “1858,” which must surely be a mistake, as Fielding died in 1855. I think I am right in reading the date as “1830,” but it is difficult to identify this particular drawing among the list of Fielding’s exhibited works, as there are several titles which might fit it. I think it is probably the Pier at Newhaven, Sussex, No. 85, in the Water-Colour Painters’ exhibition of 1830; but it might also be the Scene at Entrance of Newhaven Harbour, No. 161, which was exhibited the following year, or No. 205, Scene at Newhaven in the same exhibition.
After Cotman and Turner I think David Roberts (1796-1864) was the most skilful draughtsman of architecture of his time. He was not perhaps a great artist; the oil paintings with which he delighted the public of his own time leave us now unmoved, in spite of their eminently respectable qualities. They are too sedate to have a strong effect on the imagination. But his work with the point—pencil, chalk or etching-needle—is delightfully easy, graceful and accomplished. A Ruined Abbey (109) is certainly a view of Melrose Abbey. It was probably drawn in 1836, about the same time as the view of Durham (121), which happens to be dated, “Sep. 14, 1836.” I believe an artist can only draw and paint well the scenes of his native country; but Roberts’s public was bored with English and Scottish views, and very much preferred his Spanish and Eastern subjects. Roberts was at Granada in February 1833, when the picturesque street scene here reproduced ([Plate XLIII]) must have been drawn.