After spending some time at school, William Hogarth, warned by the example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in preference to literature, and was apprenticed, probably in 1711, to Ellis Gamble, a silversmith in Cranbourne Alley. He tells us how he determined to enter a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of his ambition. The men and women who jostled him in London streets or rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. Beside the keenest powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humor, he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled him to impress a face or form on his mind, and to reproduce it at leisure. Occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb nail, and thence transfer it. Hogarth tells us that “instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge of my art.” In 1724 he engraved “Masquerades and Operas,” a satire, which represents “society” crowding to a masquerade, and led by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the garter on his leg. This engraving delighted the public whom it satirized, and Hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. He was employed by the booksellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces. In 1726 was published, beside his twelve large prints, which are well known, an edition of “Hudibras,” illustrated by Hogarth, in seventeen smaller plates. The designs of Hogarth are not so witty as the verses of Butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men living and acting as they are described in the poem; they were not like the men of whom he made his daily studies. At this period he who dared to be original, and to satirize his neighbors, had much trouble. In 1730 Hogarth made a secret marriage at old Paddington Church, with Jane, only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant-Painter to the King. He had frequented Thornhill’s studio, but whether the art of the court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we know not. There is no doubt that Hogarth’s technique was studied from Thornhill’s pictures, and not from those of Watteau or Chardin, as has been supposed. For a time after his marriage Hogarth confined himself to painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid, although Walpole declares that this “was the most ill-suited employment to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery.” Truthfulness, however, is more valuable in a portrait than flattery, and we surely find it in Hogarth’s portraits of himself, one in the National Gallery, and in that of “Captain Coram,” at the Foundling.
One of the best of Hogarth’s life stories is the “Marriage à la Mode,” the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery; they appeared in prints in 1745. These well known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank, the other for money. Mr. Redgrave (“A Century of Painters”) tells us that “the novelty of Hogarth’s work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole, each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end.” We can not do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued “to shoot Folly as she flies.” “Beer Street,” and “Gin Lane,” illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin. “The Cockpit” represents a scene very common in those days, and contains many portraits. “The Election” is a series of four scenes, published between 1755 and 1758, in which all the varied vices, humors, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented.
Hogarth’s last years were embittered by quarrels, those with Churchill and Wilkes being the most memorable. The publication in 1753 of his admirable book, called “The Analysis of Beauty,” in which he tried to prove that a winding line is the line of beauty, produced much adverse criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take quietly. He was further annoyed by the censures passed on his picture of “Sigismunda,” now in the National Gallery, which he had painted in 1759 for Sir Richard Grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. Two years previously Hogarth had been made Serjeant-Painter to the King. He did not live to hold his office long; on October 26th, 1764, the hand which had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such humor, had ceased to move.
RICHARD WILSON.
The story of Richard Wilson (1713-1782) is the story of a disappointed man. Born at Pinegas, Montgomeryshire, the son of the parson of that place, Wilson’s early taste for drawing attracted the attention of Sir George Wynne, by whom he was introduced to one Wright, a portrait painter in London. In 1749 he visited Italy, and whilst waiting for an interview with the landscape painter Zuccarelli he is said to have sketched the view through the open window. The Italian advised the Englishman to devote himself henceforth to landscapes, and Wilson followed his advice. After six years’ stay in Italy, during which period he became imbued with the beauties of that country, Wilson returned to England in 1755, and found Zuccarelli worshiped, whilst he himself was neglected. His “Niobe,” one version of which is in the National Gallery, was exhibited with the Society of Artists’ Collection, in Spring Gardens, 1760, and made a great impression, but, in general, his pictures, infinitely superior to the mere decorations of the Italian, were criticised, and compared unfavorably with those of Zuccarelli, and it was not till long after Wilson’s death that he was thoroughly appreciated. He was often compelled to sell his pictures to pawnbrokers, who, so it is said, could not sell them again. Wilson was one of the original thirty-six members of the Royal Academy, and in 1776 applied for and obtained the post of Librarian to that body, the small salary helping the struggling man to live. The last years of his life were brightened by better fortune. A brother left him a legacy, and in 1780 Wilson retired to a pleasant home at Llanberis, Carnarvon, where he died two years later. Mr. Redgrave says of him: “There is this praise due to our countryman—that our landscape art, which had heretofore been derived from the meaner school of Holland, following his great example, looked thenceforth to Italy for its inspiration; that he proved the power of native art to compete on this ground also with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the way for the coming men, who, embracing Nature as their mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her.” Wilson frequently repeated his more successful pictures. “The Ruins of the Villa of Mæcenas, at Tivoli” (National Gallery), was painted five times by him. In the same gallery are “The Destruction of Niobe’s Children,” “A Landscape with Figures,” three “Views in Italy,” “Lake Avernus with the Bay of Naples in the Distance,” etc. In the Duke of Westminster’s collection are “Apollo and the Seasons” and “The river Dee.” Wilson, like many another man of genius, lived before his time, and was forced one day to ask Barry, the Royal Academician, if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape painter, and if so, whether he would recommend him.
JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was born at Plympton, Devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the grammar school. His father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that Joshua Reynolds should be a painter. He preferred to read Richardson’s “Treatise on Painting” to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to London to study with Hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. It was in 1741 that Joshua Reynolds began his studies with Hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. On leaving Hudson’s studio Reynolds returned to Devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year 1746, when his father died, and the painter was established at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, and was painting portraits. Many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which their author had probably learned from Hudson. Having visited London, and stayed for a time in St. Martin’s Lane, the artists’ quarter, Reynolds was enabled, in 1749, to realize his great wish, and go abroad, where, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, he studied the treasures of Italy, chiefly in Rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the Italian school. A love of color was the characteristic of Reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that “he came off with flying colors.” Doubtless the wish to rival the coloring of the Venetians led Reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures.
Most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who “read souls in faces.” In 1768 Joshua Reynolds was chosen first President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by George III. He succeeded, on the death of Ramsey, to the office of Court Painter. His “Discourses on Painting,” delivered at the Royal Academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. A lesser honor, though one which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on Reynolds in 1773, when he was elected Mayor of his native Plympton. In the same year he exhibited his famous “Strawberry Girl,” of which he said that it was “one of the half dozen original things” which no man ever exceeded in his life’s work. In 1789 the failure of his sight warned Sir Joshua that “the night cometh when no man can work.” He died, full of years and honors, on February 23rd, 1792, and was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Reynolds was a most untiring worker. He exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the Royal Academy, on an average eleven every year. In the National Gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. Mr. Ruskin deems Reynolds “one of the seven colorists of the world,” and places him with Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Turner. He likewise says: “Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters.” Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper.