[4] Boydell and Macklin maintained so close a rivalry that they contended not only as publishers but by means of picture exhibitions, the former as promoter of the “Shakespeare Gallery,” the latter as proprietor of the “Gallery of the British Poets.” These exhibitions contained originals of the engravings which both “patrons” published.
[5] A relation, probably, of the distinguished surgeon, one of whose benevolent labours was that of trying to revive the hanged Dr. Dodd. See Wraxall’s “Posthumous Memoirs,” 1836, ii. 28.
[6] This picture is now in the possession, says Mr. Tom Taylor in “Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” of Mr. Gosling, of Portland Place.
[7] Queen Anne Street East was the thoroughfare now called Langham Street and Foley Street, and distinct from Queen Anne Street West, where Turner lived, which retains its name. When Portland Place was extended to Oxford Street, and the new thoroughfare became part of the freshly made Regent Street, Foley House, which till then closed the southern end of Portland Place, was removed. The gardens of this house had separated Queen Anne Street West from Queen Anne Street East; the latter extended to Cleveland Street, and when the changes in question were complete, received the name of Foley Street, which it now bears with the addition of Langham Street. The numbers have been altered. At the back of the present 33, Langham Street is a fine large room with a north light, used as a studio by Mr. Eyre Crowe, A.R.A. In regard to Landseer’s birthplace see a note to Chapter II., below.
[8] This defect was the more remarkable because the French Academy, on which the English one relied for some of its rules, as well as the Academies of Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome, admitted engravers to the highest grades. The effect of British narrowness was to drive Woollett, Sharp, and Strange from the ranks of the Royal Academy, and to evoke from the last of these noteworthy artists an important criminatory tract called “An Inquiry into the Rise,” &c., “of the Royal Academy of Arts,” 1775.
[9] “Diary,” &c., of H. C. Robinson, 1869, i. 505-6.
[10] Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Arts, &c., 1836. Question and Reply, No. 2046.
[11] “The Literary Gazette,” No. 1834.
[12] For this locality, see above. The number, 83 for 33, may or may not be a misprint. On this point the testimony of Mrs. Mackenzie is all-important, as conveyed thus to the author:—“The house in which my brothers were born stands in the bend of Foley Street, not far from Portland Street; and at the time my father lived in it there was a long garden where the dog was kept. Among some old letters of my mother’s I found the enclosed little note, showing that before my father’s marriage he lived in Queen Ann Street, altered to Foley Street afterwards, but not the same house, but a smaller one nearer Cleveland Street, which house, when my father left, was occupied by Mr. F. Lewis, father of John Lewis, who was born there.—Yours truly, Emma Mackenzie.”
[13] Mrs. Mackenzie (born Emma Landseer) has a capital drawing, made in these fields, of a hollow oak, with horses gathered about it, and standing gaunt and branchless in a field, which was doubtless executed at the time in question, and from this tree, which still remains (1880).