"Dear Sir,—When your messenger came yesterday I was unable to write and thank you and your brother, as I do now, for the very handsome present you have made me, of the extent of which I own I had not the slightest notion when I accepted it with so much alacrity the other day. I have looked through the volume with great interest, and am much struck with the great talent displayed in very many of the designs—some, I think, quite excellent—and with the great spirit and brilliancy of your rendering of them.
"Once more my best thanks.
"Yours ever faithfully,
"Fred. Leighton."
Birket Foster was a constant visitor at our office in High Street, Camden Town, generally bringing a parcel of drawings with him. On one of these occasions the conversation turned upon water colour painting and the great demand there was for that class of art, when, having seen some of his slight sketches in colour, we expressed a little surprise that he did not "go in" for it. He replied that his wife had suggested the same thing, but—and he shrugged his broad shoulders, saying, "Um—I don't know—but we shall see—we shall see." He did "see," and all the art loving world knows with what result.
Foster's success as a water colour painter was quite phenomenal. There was a mad rush for his work by collectors, and the prices went up as a natural consequence. Down at Witley in Surrey, where he subsequently built a most charming residence, he said to us, "When I sit down in that chair after breakfast it means at least twenty guineas before I get up again."
It was about this time that two celebrated picture dealers met at the Charing Cross Railway Station: they had taken tickets for Witley, and both knowing they had the same object in view, travelled down together. On arriving at their destination they found only one fly at the station. A. made a rush for it, when B. stopped him, saying, "No, sir; this is my fly. I telegraphed for it from London, but I will be most happy to give you a lift to Fosters; only remember I am first." And he was "first," for he cleared out every scrap Foster had to dispose of, and A. had to go away empty handed.
On Fosters first visit to the Galleries after he had been elected a member of the "Old Water Colour," as it was then called, he was received in a most patronising manner by J. D. Harding, the then President of the Society, who complimented him, and dilated on the great advantage it would be to him being a member of the Society. He also begged him to appreciate this by a close study of nature, adding:
"If you do as I suggest, I have no doubt you will one day take a good place amongst the best of us."
It was Foster's invariable custom to make small water colour sketches for his more important black and white work; sometimes they were partly pencil, or pen and ink tinted. Some little time before he seriously took to water colour painting, a West End publisher frequently asked him for some of these sketches; so he gave his friend a "bundle" of original drawings, for which the publisher thanked him, saying that one day, when he could afford to do so, he would have them bound in a nice book. It was after Foster won distinction as a painter that he said to us, "Those drawings would now represent a money value of some hundreds of pounds." His mother, a dear old Quaker Lady, who was present, said, "Thee mustn't mind that, Birket. Thee gave him the drawings and they are his, no matter what the value of them may be now."