Kent lives also in one of Hogarth’s satirical prints, that called “The Man of Taste, Burlington Gate,” which does not strike me as either very funny or very cruel. Our taste in satire has changed since Hogarth’s time. This same Burlington Gate or colonnade, which once stood outside Burlington House in Piccadilly, may now, I believe, be found somewhere in the wilds of Battersea Park.
Let us try to draw a little nearer to Kent. The queer thing is that this man who dominated his world does not seem to have been great in any of his activities.
As a painter, Hogarth said of him: “Neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber.” Horace Walpole remarked that his painted ceilings were as “void of merit as his portraits.” Walpole also said that “Kent was not only consulted for furniture, frames of pictures, glass, tables, chairs, &c., but for plate, for a barge, and for a cradle, and so impetuous was fashion that two great ladies prevailed on him to make designs for their birthday gowns.”
Did the ladies like their birthday gowns? The petticoat of one was decorated with the columns of the five orders, the other was copper-coloured satin with ornaments of gold. I have never seen the altar-piece Kent painted for the Church of St. Clement Danes in the Strand, but I seldom pass St. Clement’s without thinking of that “contemptible performance,” as Hogarth called it.
It seems to have offended many others besides Hogarth, who satirised the altar-piece in the engraving that puzzled the boy mentioned in the preceding chapter. Walpole called it a parody, a burlesque on Kent’s altar-piece. Hogarth maintained that it was neither; that it was but a “fair and honest representation of a contemptible performance.” Terrible man, Hogarth, when he was on the war-path!
Where is that altar-piece now? Mr. Wheatly says in his “Hogarth’s London” that it was “occasionally taken to the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand for exhibition at the music meetings of the churchwardens of the parish.”
They had strange enjoyments in the worst-mannered period in our history.
Poor Kent! I try to plead for him. But it is difficult to be enthusiastic.
He was chosen to supply (delightful word that, supply!) the statue of Shakespeare for the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. There it remains. It is no better than the marble effigies in the mason’s gardens in the Euston Road.