Sir Godfrey Kneller, although he lived well into the eighteenth century, must be looked upon as a seventeenth-century painter, all his best work having been done when he was comparatively young. He is another of those predecessors of Reynolds whom it has been the fashion to villify and decry. I have seen portraits by Kneller which were infinitely better than much of the highly-praised portraiture of the last century; but unfortunately this clever though intensely vain artist regarded painting more as a lucrative trade than as a liberal profession. No one can wish that Kneller had devoted his talents to the stupid allegorical style then in fashion, instead of sticking to portraits; but what may be wished is that he had been more conscientious, and less greedy for money, in the particular branch of art to which he devoted himself.
In speaking of court patronage I noticed that the painters encouraged by the Stuarts were all foreigners, but this does not seem to have been done from systematic neglect of native talent, but simply because no painters worthy of the name were born in England. The only real Englishman of the century who rose above mediocrity was William Dobson, and he had no reason to complain of want of royal patronage, for King Charles appointed him at a very early age to be court painter on the death of Vandyke, and used to call him the English Tintoretto.
From what I have seen of Dobson’s I don’t think I should have compared him to Tintoretto. Nevertheless I consider him as a genuine artist, and had he not died at the age of thirty-six he would probably have achieved much greater fame.
I ought not to omit mentioning John Riley, whose work was often taken for Lely’s. Walpole describes him as having been humble and modest, and adds that with a quarter of Kneller’s vanity he might have persuaded the world that he was as great a master. I think the anecdote told of him greatly in his favor, that Charles II, after sitting to him, exclaimed, on seeing the picture, “Is this like me? then, oddsfish! I am an ugly fellow.” In such an age of flattery and falsehood it is quite refreshing to meet with an honest painter.
To give you an idea of the deplorable state of the art of painting toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, I will quote from Horace Walpole, who, although by no means a good art-critic, was a man of great taste and shrewdness. Speaking of the accession of the House of Hanover, he says:—“We are now arrived at the period in which the arts were sunk to the lowest ebb in Britain. From the stiffness introduced by Holbein and the Flemish masters we were fallen into a loose and (if I may use the word) dissolute kind of painting. Sir Godfrey Kneller still lived, but only in name, which he prostituted by suffering the most wretched daubings of hired substitutes to pass for his works, while at most he gave himself the trouble of painting the face of the person who sat to him. His successors thought they had caught his free manner when they neglected drawing and finishing.”
Walpole goes on to deplore the frightful fashions of the period, and remarks that Dahl, D’Agar, Richardson, Jervas, and others, “rebuffed by such barbarous forms, and not possessing genius enough to deviate from what they saw, clothed all their personages with a loose drapery and airy mantles, which not only were not but could not be the dress of any age or nation. All these casual and loose wrappings were imitated from nothing; they seldom have any folds or chiaroscuro, drawing and color being equally forgotten.”
There are hundreds of these portraits still in existence, but they are generally relegated to attics and dark corridors of old country-seats, and no one ever thinks of looking at them. The owner does not like to make a bonfire of the effigies of his ancestors, but he stows them away where they will not be seen. Setting aside all questions of art, these insipid productions are valueless as likenesses. We feel that not only the dresses, but the faces themselves could not be of any age or nation.
Walpole, like most men of his time, cared but little about historical or decorative painting, and his remarks on the decadence of art relate solely to portraiture, but there is no doubt that figure-painting had deteriorated just as much.
George I, was totally devoid of taste, and the second George (as is well known) hated “boetry and bainting.” The only employers of artists (I cannot call them patrons) were country gentlemen and a few noblemen who wanted their portraits painted. The wonder to me is, not that the portraits of Richardson and Jervas are so bad, but that they are not worse.
As the century proceeded, portrait-painting in England did not improve. We find that, between 1730 and 1750, Thomas Hudson was at the head of the profession, and no words can express better than this fact how deep the art had sunk. The only representative of large historical painting at the beginning of the century was Sir James Thornhill. I do not feel for this artist the same antipathy that I do for his predecessors, Verrio and Laguerre.