Curiosities of Impecuniosity

by H. G. Somerville

When the painter of those world-famous productions was no more, and his body lay in state in the very room which contained them, Wilkie was anxious to be present at the funeral, but alas! he had not a black coat, and could not afford to buy one. However Haydon had two, and was quite willing to lend one, and did so; but unfortunately he was short and slight, and Wilkie was tall and big-boned. The effect of the former’s coat upon the latter’s figure was consequently intensely ludicrous; the sleeves terminated far above his wrists, his broad shoulders stretched the seams to the very verge of cracking, and the waist buttons had “gone aloft” half-way up his back. When Haydon met him thus oddly attired, not even the solemnity of the occasion could quite suppress his merriment, and the piteous entreaty of the young Scotchman’s looks, and significantly upheld finger, increased rather than decreased the tendency, so that the English painter afterwards said he once thought the desperate effort he made to suppress his laughter would have killed him.

When Wilkie was hawking his pictures from one shop to another, and returning home heart-sick, weary, and hungry, evening after evening, he received in nearly every case but one reply, “We don’t purchase modern pictures.” Happily this is altered now to some extent, though the reception awarded a novice in the present day is not very encouraging if all aspirants are treated in a like manner to an extremely clever young friend of mine, who, I doubt not, will be heard of some day. When he presented his canvas, or sketch, he was told, “We don’t buy the paintings of unknown men.” One of Wilkie’s pictures thus rejected was a little one of a subject afterwards re-painted on a larger scale, “The Blind Fiddler.”

Haydon tells how he first saw a notice of Wilkie in a newspaper, and hurried to him with huge delight. “Wilkie,” he says, “was breakfasting. ‘Wilkie,’ said I, ‘here’s your name in the paper.’ ‘Where, where?’ said Wilkie, ceasing to drink his tea. I then read it aloud to him. Wilkie stood up and huzzaed, in which we joined. We then took hands, and danced round the table, and sallying forth, spent the day in wandering about in a sort of ecstasy in the fields. We supped with Wilkie on red herrings, and he took down his little kit, and played us Scotch airs till the dreary hour of separation—these were delightful feelings! The novelty of a thing first felt, the freshness of youth, all contributed to render them intense and exciting.”

It was said by some one that Wilkie never painted better than when he used to take his penny roll and moisten it at the pump. But this statement was indignantly contradicted by his friend Haydon in his lectures, and he certainly was an authority on the difficulty of painting under difficulties.

Another illustration of success preceded by disappointment is to be found in the case of Sontagg, who, according to Mr. Robert Kemp, before he found his true vocation in landscape painting, aspired to the glory of historical and high art. Environed by the bitter poverty of an art student, he painted his ideal. It was a Madonna, and as he afterwards said, “one of the worst ever painted.” When it was finished, he pawned his only decent coat to raise $7.50 for a frame in which it was sent to an art mart. “Then he spent the day walking around, and calculating what he would do with the thousand the great work would bring him in. Then he called at the auction room to collect. ‘Had the picture been sold?’ ‘It had,’ said the clerk. ‘How much?’ ‘Five dollars and a half.’” Sontagg dined on a “free lunch,” and went to bed in the dark. I may remark for the benefit of those uninitiated in Colonial and American drinking customs, the “free lunch” here spoken of means a meal which is provided gratis by many tavern-keepers in America, Australia, and elsewhere. It consists of bread and meat, or bread and cheese, placed on the counter, and to which all patronising the establishment are welcome. It is said that years after this occurrence, when Sontagg became famous, he found this painting over the chimney-piece of a little wayside inn in the Wabash County where it was a standing jest, and valued as a source of the laughter which kept a quarrelsome man and wife from desperate extremes. When their violence was at its worst a glance at Sontagg’s Madonna was sure to provoke such merriment that after it they invariably became friendly.

The early life of John Philip, whose glorious pictures of Spanish life won him such wide-spread fame, presents an instance of greatness won despite extreme poverty, with its attendant drawbacks, and the friendlessness of utter obscurity. He began his career as a painter when a mere boy; though not upon canvas, millboard nor panel, but upon watering-cans. When seventeen years of age he worked his passage from Scotland to London on board a coasting-vessel, for the purpose of seeing the exhibition of the Royal Academy, and on his return, with a mind richly stored by close investigation of the pictures he saw there and in the National Galleries—of which those by Wilkie were the most fascinating and instructive—he painted a picture which attracted the attention of Lord Panmure, who generously sent him to study in London, and supplied him with the means of support while so engaged. Philip died, as so many sadly remember, on Feb. 27th, 1867. One of his earliest attempts was long visible outside an old tavern, in the village of Dyce, near his native town Aberdeen, where he was born in 1817. At Dyce he was employed as herd-boy, and a story is told of his having at that time but two shirts, and when one of these was stolen, Johnny said cheerfully to his relative, Mrs. Allardyce, “Never min, ye can mak a shift, wash the ane I hae on, and I’ll gang to my bed till it’s dry. My puir mither hae often to do that.” Inconvenient as such circumstances must have been, John Philip in the days of his prosperity often spoke of the happy days he knew when he was a poor little herd-laddie in the pretty little village of Dyce.

Somewhat similar in its start was the life of Henry Dawson, who died in 1878. Born at Hull in 1811, he commenced the world as a factory-lad at Nottingham, in which position he began to paint pictures, which he sold at prices ranging from two to twenty shillings; but it was long before he achieved the grand success the latter price implied, not indeed before 1835, and the munificent patron to whose liberality he owed the advance was a hairdresser, who for many years remained his best customer. So slowly came the fame and prosperity he sought so laboriously and patiently, and at last so honourably won, that when he was in his fortieth year he actually contemplated opening a small-ware shop to aid him in bringing up and educating his family. Indeed had it not been for John Ruskin, to whom he applied for advice as to whether he should reluctantly abandon his beloved art or persevere in its practice, the profession would have lost one of the most powerful of our modern masters in landscape.

He was for many years known only to dealers, who made a glorious harvest by reaping where he sowed amidst the cares, anxieties, and inconveniences of impecuniosity.

A further proof of what genius and industry can accomplish, be the difficulties never so great, is shown by the ultimate success of G. M. Kemp, the architect who designed the Scott monument at Edinburgh. He was originally a journeyman millwright, and while working at his trade contrived, not only to teach himself to draw, but to visit and make studies from all the principal ecclesiastical edifices in Scotland, and afterwards in England. His plan was to find work in the different places he desired to visit; and by this means he acquired such a knowledge of architecture that when a prize was offered in open competition for the Scott monument, his design was the one unanimously selected, notwithstanding the fact that amongst his rivals were many of the leading professional architects.

Success unfortunately does not always attend those who work hard and deserve substantial recognition; for when some one congratulated William Behnes, the sculptor, on his triumphs, and the prosperity that was presumed to have followed in their wake, he replied, “When I die, be that event when it may, there will not be two penny pieces left to close my eyes.” He died in the Middlesex Hospital, in January, 1864, realising his prediction to the very letter, so few were his sitters, so small the sums they paid.