By G. J. Pinwell, R.W.S.
By permission of Mr. John Hogg.
When Pinwell was a little boy a lady asked his mother what she intended bringing him up to. She said she did not know, but that he was so fond of drawing she thought he would like to be an artist. "Oh," said the lady, "do not let him be that, for none but the best ever make any money." "But," said Mrs. Pinwell, "why may not my George be one of the best?" The dear old lady, of whom Pinwell always spoke with reverent affection, did not live to see that he was "one of the best"—aye, of the very best—of that wonderful group of young men with whom he was associated; for he possessed some of the finest and highest qualities in a supreme degree; his sense of beauty, his fine colour, his grace of design, his poetic art, being equalled only by his force of character. In much of his work there is a tinge of sadness; but as a rule, and in his water colours particularly, beauty dominates everything.
Outside our close connection with him as an illustrator, our interest in him as a painter was constant from the commencement up to the day of his death—owning his first finished picture and his last, on which he worked the day before he died. His first he called "The Sisters"; his second, a very highly finished picture, was "The Rats," from "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." While this was on the easel we commissioned him for two others from the same poem, "The Children," and "The Piper Bargaining with the Burghers in the Market Place." The latter was never done. "The Children" we lent to the Paris Art Exhibition, where it was hung under a glass roof and "baked" until the colour was all taken out of it, to the extent that he said he would repaint it; but after he had gone so far with the replica he found it so hard a task that he set to work on the first picture, the modelling all being perfect, and restored the colour to its original beauty.
"'Say it again,' cried little Jim; and when,
To please his heart, I said the song again,
In through the smoky glass the setting sun
Gleamed sickly; and the day was nearly done."
"The Ballad Maker."—Robert Buchanan.
By G. J. Pinwell, R.W.S.