Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), the son of a clothier, was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk. The details of this master’s life are few and uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching Gainsborough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman, in the St. Martin’s Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favorable field for portrait painting, though landscape was not neglected. Fourteen years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded as the rival of Reynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape. Once, when Reynolds at an Academy dinner proposed the health of his rival as “the greatest landscape painter of the day,” Wilson, who was present, exclaimed, “Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too.” One of the original members of the Royal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783, because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with Reynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” is commonly said to have been painted in spite against Reynolds, in order to disprove the President’s statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favorite Van Dyck in displaying “a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh.” It is pleasant to know that whatever soreness of feeling existed between him and Sir Joshua passed away before he died. This was in 1788. Gainsborough was buried at Kew. The Englishness of his landscapes makes him popular. Wilson had improved on the Dutch type by visiting Italy, but Gainsborough sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. Nature speaks in his portraits, or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of Reynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. Mr. Ruskin says of Gainsborough: “His power of color (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colorist—Sir Joshua himself not excepted—of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. I hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough.”
JOSEPH TURNER.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) stands at the head of English landscape painters. It has been said that though others may have equaled or surpassed him in some respects, “none has yet appeared with such versatility of talent.” Turner owed nothing to the beauty or poetic surroundings of his birthplace, which was the house of his father, a barber in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. But as Lord Byron is said to have conjured up his loveliest scenes of Greece whilst walking in Albemarle Street, so the associations of Maiden Lane did not prevent Turner from delineating storm-swept landscapes, and innumerable splendors of nature. The barber was justly proud of his child, who very early displayed his genius, and the first drawings of Turner are said to have been exhibited in his father’s shaving room. In time the boy was coloring prints and washing in the backgrounds of architects’ drawings. Dr. Monro, the art patron, extended a helping hand to the young genius of Maiden Lane. “Girtin and I,” says Turner, “often walked to Bushey and back, to make drawings for good Dr. Munro at half a crown a piece, and the money for our supper when we got home.” He did not, of course, start from London.
In 1789 Turner became a student in the Academy, and exhibited a picture in the next year at Somerset House, “View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth.” He was then only fifteen. From that time he worked with unceasing energy at his profession. Indeed, the pursuit of art was the one ruling principle of his life. He frequently went on excursions, the first being to Ramsgate and Margate, and was storing his memory with effects of storm, mist, and tempest, which he reproduced. In 1799, when made A.R.A., Turner had already exhibited works which ranged over twenty-six counties of England and Wales. In 1802 he was made full Academician, and presented, as his diploma picture, “Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales.” In this year he visited the Continent, and saw France and Switzerland. Five years later Turner was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy. We are told his lectures were delivered in so strange a style, that they were scarcely instructive. Of his water-color paintings and of the “Liber Studiorum” it is impossible to speak too highly; he created the modern school of water-color painting, and his works in oil have influenced the art of the nineteenth century. He visited Italy for the first time in 1819; again ten years later, and for the last time in 1840. His eccentricity, both in manner and in art, increased with age. Though wealthy, and possessing a good house in Queen Anne Street, he died in an obscure lodging by the Thames, at Chelsea, a few days before Christmas, 1851.
Turner bequeathed his property to found a charity for male decayed artists, but the alleged obscurity of his will defeated this object. It was decided that his pictures and drawings should be presented to the National Gallery, that one thousand pounds should be spent on a monument to the painter in St. Paul’s, twenty thousand pounds should be given to the Royal Academy, and the remainder to the next of kin and heir at law. The National Gallery contains more than one hundred of his pictures, beside a large number of water-color drawings and sketches.
EASTLAKE.
Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865), son of the Solicitor to the Admiralty in that town, was born at Plymouth, and educated first in Plympton Grammar School, where Reynolds had studied, and afterward at the Charterhouse, London. Choosing the profession of a painter, he was encouraged, doubtless, by his fellow townsman, Haydon, who had just exhibited “Dentatus.” Eastlake became the pupil of that erratic master, and attended the Academy schools. In 1813 he exhibited at the British Institution a large and ambitious picture, “Christ raising the Daughter of the Ruler.” In the following year the young painter was sent by Mr. Harmon to Paris, to copy some of the famous works collected by Napoleon in the Louvre. The emperor’s escape from Elba, and the consequent excitement in Europe, caused Eastlake to quit Paris, and he returned to Plymouth, where he practiced successfully as a portrait painter. In 1819 Eastlake visited Greece and Italy, and spent fourteen years abroad, chiefly at Ferrara and Rome. The picturesque dress of the Italian and Greek peasantry so fascinated him that for a long period he forsook history for small genre works, of which brigands and peasants were the chief subjects. A large historical painting, “Mercury bringing the Golden Apple to Paris,” appeared in 1820, and seven years later, “The Spartan Isidas.” In 1828 Eastlake produced “Italian Scene in the Anno Santo, Pilgrims arriving in sight of St. Peters,” which he twice repeated. In 1829 “Lord Byron’s Dream,” a poetic landscape (National Gallery), was exhibited, and Eastlake becoming an Academician, returned to England. To his labors as a painter Eastlake added the duties of several important offices, and much valuable literary work. He was Secretary to the Royal Commission for Decorating the New Palace of Westminster, Librarian of the Royal Academy, and Keeper, and afterward Director of the National Gallery. In 1850 he succeeded Sir Martin Shee as President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted. From that time till his death, at Pisa, in 1865, he was chiefly engaged in selecting pictures to be purchased by the British Government. He was editor of Kugler’s “Handbook of the Italian Schools of painting,” and author of “Materials for a History of Oil Painting.”
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.
Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) was eminent among English animal painters. No artist has done more to teach us how to love animals and to enforce the truth that
“He prayeth best who loveth best