It was pleasanter when, a day or two later, my wife and I were looking out upon the sea from Dieppe. She had never seen salt water before, and as it happened to be a fine day the vast expanse of the Channel was all a wonderful play of pale greens and blues, like turquoise and pale emerald. There were white clouds floating in the blue sky, and here and there a white sail upon the sea. My wife was enchanted with this, to her fresh young eyes, revelation of a novel and unimaginable beauty. It was a new world for her, and that hour was absolutely the only hour in her life during which she thoroughly enjoyed the sea; for she is the worst of sailors, and now cannot even endure the smell of salt water at a distance.
The first thing we did in London was to go and see the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. My wife, like her father, took a keen interest in art, and had been rather well acquainted with French painting for a girl of her age. When she got into an English Exhibition she looked round in bewildered amazement. It was, for her, like being transported into another planet. In 1858 the difference between French and English painting was far more striking than it is to-day. French color, without being generally good, was subdued; in fact, most of it was not color at all, but only gray and brown, with a little red or blue here and there to make people believe that there was color. The English, on the other hand, were trying hard for real color, but the younger men were in that crude stage which is the natural "ugly duckling" condition of the genuine colorist. The consequence was an astounding contrast between the painting of the two nations, and to eyes educated in France English art looked outrageous to a degree that we realize with the greatest difficulty now. At a later period my wife became initiated into the principles and tendencies of English painting, and then she began to enjoy it. I took her to see the Turner collection in 1858, and that seemed to her like the ravings of a madman put on canvas; but a few years later she became a perfectly sincere admirer of the noblest works of Turner. I may add that in 1858 my wife was already, in spite of her difficulty in understanding what to her were novelties, far more in sympathy with art generally than I was myself. She had lived in a great artistic centre, whilst I had lived with nature in the north, and cared, at that time, comparatively little about the art of the past, my hopes being concentrated on a kind of landscape-painting that was to come in the future, and to unite the effects I saw in nature with a minute accuracy in the drawing of natural forms. The kind of painting I was looking forward to was, in fact, afterwards realized by Mr. John Brett.
My wife's first impressions of London generally were scarcely more favorable than her impressions of English painting, but they were of a very different order. If the painting had appeared too bright, the town appeared too dingy. London is extremely dismal for all French people, whose affection for their own country leads them to the very mistaken belief that the skies, in France, are bright all the year round. My wife now prefers London to any place in the world except Paris; in fact, she has a strong affection for London, the consequence of the kindness she has received there, and also of the enlightened interest she takes in everything that is really worth attention.
We went straight from London to Glasgow, and thence to Loch Awe, which happened at that time to be enveloped in a dense fog that lasted two days, so that when I told my wife that there was a high mountain on the opposite side of the lake she could hardly believe it. In fact, nothing was visible but a still, gray, shoreless sea.
I was now, as it seemed, in a condition of great felicity, being in the place I loved best on earth with the person most dear to me. Unfortunately, the union of many different circumstances and conditions is necessary to perfect happiness, if happiness exists in the world. The element lacking in my case was success in work, or at least the inward assurance of progress. There was our beautiful island home, in itself as much a poem as a canto of "The Lady of the Lake," with its ancient oaks, its rocky shore, its green, undulating, park-like pasture; there was the lake for sailing and the mountain for climbing, and all around us a country of unlimited wealth of material for the sketcher. Amidst all this, with a too earnest and painful application, I set myself to do what had never been done,—to unite the color and effect of nature to the material accuracy of the photograph.
MEMOIR
OF
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
1858-1894