CHAPTER XXVII.
PAINTERS AND ARCHITECTS.
Wollaston — Murray — Hugh Howard — Lewis Crosse — Luke Cradock — Charles Jervas — Richardson — Sir James Thornhill — Sir Godfrey Kneller — Closterman — Pelegrini — Sebastian Ricci — Vander Vaart — Laguerre — Dahl — Boit — Class of pictures in vogue — Water colours — Drawings — Engravings — Sculpture — Grinling Gibbons — Architects — Sir C. Wren — Vanbrugh.
The sister art of painting was not well represented in this reign—by native talent, at all events, except by Thornhill. There was Wollaston, a portrait painter, who could only command five guineas for a three-quarters canvas: he was one of Britton's amateurs, and played both violin and flute. He died at an old age in the Charter House. Thomas Murray was another portrait painter.
There was Hugh Howard, to whom Prior indited an ode commencing,
Dear Howard, from the soft assaults of love,
Poets and painters never are secure;
Can I untouch'd the fair one's passions move,
Or thou draw beauty, and not feel its power?
He was lucky, for through his acquaintances of high rank he obtained the situation of Keeper of the State Papers, and Paymaster of His Majesty's Palaces, when he still followed the pursuit of art, by collecting prints and medals.
Lewis Crosse was a painter in water colours, and executed miniatures. He also collected them, and his very valuable collection was sold in 1722, two years before his death. Luke Cradock, who was but a house painter, rose by his own exertions to be an excellent painter of birds, and, like H. S. Marks, Esq., R.A., his works were highly prized for house decorations. According to Vertue, his pictures, soon after his death, fetched three or four times the prices paid for them.
Charles Jervas, who lived in this reign, and had been a pupil of Kneller, was a very good painter. He taught Pope to draw and paint, and Pope wrote an 'Epistle to Mr. Jervas,' in which he belauded him, as did also Steele[487] when he called him 'the last great painter Italy has sent us, Mr. Jervas'—alluding to his return from studying in Italy. He married a widow worth 20,000l., and the praise he received with the affluence of his circumstances rendered him inordinately vain, as the two following anecdotes will show. He made a good copy of a Titian, and he thought he had actually outdone that master; for, looking from one to the other, he complacently observed, 'Poor little Tit! how he would stare!' The Duchess of Bridgewater sat to him for her portrait, that picture of which Pope says—
With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie
—and he remarked that she had not a handsome ear. Her ladyship asked him his opinion of what was a handsome ear, to which his answer was—showing her one of his own.