Mr. Leslie’s vivid sketch of Walker, and his just appreciation of his character, corresponds closely enough with the man as I knew him in the later days of his life. He seemed to me to be always to the last degree fastidious in his own judgment upon his work, and so exacting in his demands upon himself that I think it was from this source there sprang up the disinclination which he always showed to submitting his pictures to the criticism of others.
The struggle he went through with himself in endeavouring to carry to a successful issue the thought that had formed in his brain was so severe that it left him, when the task was complete, with no courage to face an opinion which might, as he feared, be even less favourable than his own.
But although he shunned any discussion upon pictures painted by himself, he was, as I recall him now, always eager and enthusiastic in his talk of the wider and more general ideals of Art, enthusiastic also in his occasional references to those among his contemporaries whom he specially admired. Looking back upon his achievement now, it is easy to perceive, and it would be folly not to acknowledge, that some of that higher beauty which he sought to find in those rustic subjects that were dear to him was occasionally imposed upon reality by a conscious and wilful reference to the beauty of the antique.
But even if this criticism be admittedly just, his claims as a painter remain undisturbed. The added grace that he bestowed upon reality was resident in nature itself, and there is reason to think that if time had allowed his powers to be fully developed he would have achieved what he sought without direct dependence upon classic example. The two separate elements of his art—his direct
LUCY GRAY, or SOLITUDE
To-night will be a stormy night,
You to the town must go,
And take the lantern, child, to light
Your mother through the snow.
William Wordsworth.
By Sir John Gilbert, R.A., P.R.W.S.
Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.
(Reproduced from their Fifty Years’ Work.)
By permission of
Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.