FOUNDATION OF THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF PAINTING IN ENGLAND.
To West must be given the record of achieving this honour; and what he has thus done in restoring historical painting to the purity of its original channel, can only be appreciated by those who have contemplated the debauched taste introduced into this country by Verrio, Laguerre, and other painters, who revived the ridiculous fooleries patronized in the reign of James the First; but which had, by the countenance of the nobility, and people of fashion, taken strong hold of most men’s minds. “A change,” says Cunningham, “was now to be effected in the character of British art: hitherto historical painting had appeared in a masquing habit; the actions of Englishmen seemed all as having been performed, if costume were to be believed, by Greeks or by Romans. West at once dismissed this pedantry, and restored nature and propriety in his noble work of ‘the Death of Wolfe.’ The multitude acknowledged its excellence at once; the lovers of old art, the manufacturers of compositions, called by courtesy classical, complained of the barbarism of boots and buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering rams. Lord Grosvenor, disregarding the frowns of the amateurs, and the, at best, cold approbation of the Royal Academy, purchased this work, which, in spite of laced coats and cocked hats, is one of the best of our historical pictures. The Indian warrior watching the dying hero to see if he equalled in fortitude the children of the desert, is a fine stroke of nature and poetry.”
West, however, was plagued with misgivings as to his new doctrine; and the dampers came forth in numbers with their unvarying, “It will never do.” When it was understood that West actually intended to paint the characters as they appeared on the scene, the Archbishop of York called on Reynolds, and asked his opinion; they both called upon West to dissuade him from running so great a risk. Reynolds warned him of the danger which every innovation incurred of contempt and ridicule; and concluded by urging him to adopt the costume of antiquity as more becoming the greatness of the subject than the garb of modern warriors. West replied that the event to be commemorated happened in the year 1758, in a region of the world unknown to Greeks and Romans, and at a period when no warriors wearing such costumes existed. The subject to be represented was a great battle, fought and won; and the same truth which gives laws to the historian should rule the painter; that he wanted to mark the place, the time, the people, and to do this he must abide by the truth.
The objectors went away, and returned when West had finished the picture. Reynolds seated himself before it, and examined it with deep and minute attention for half an hour; then rising, said to Drummond, “West has conquered—he has treated his subject as it ought to be treated. I retract my objections: I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art,” “I wish,” said king George the Third, to whom West related the conversation, “that I had known all this before, for the objection has been the means of Lord Grosvenor’s getting the picture; but you shall make a copy of it for me.” This anecdote, though it operates against the foresight of Reynolds, carries truth on the face of it.
The king not only gave West a pension of 1000l. a year, but when the artist hinted that the noble purpose of historical painting was best shown in depicting the excellencies of revealed religion, the monarch threw open St. George’s Chapel to be decorated with sacred subjects; and on his Majesty’s restoration to health, finding that the work had been suppressed, and the money withheld, he instantly ordered him to be paid, and the works proceeded with. The heads of the church, however, acted otherwise; for when the Academy proposed to decorate St. Paul’s with works of art, and Reynolds, West, Barry, Dance, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffman offered pictures free of expense, the Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Newton, at that time Dean of St. Paul’s, warmly took up the idea; but the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London refused their consent. The Bishop of London said: “My good Lord Bishop of Bristol, I have already been distantly and imperfectly informed of such an affair having been in contemplation; but as the sole power at last remains with myself, I therefore inform your lordship that whilst I live and have the power, I will never suffer the doors of the metropolitan church to be opened for the introduction of popery into it.”
Notwithstanding this heavy blow to the cause of art, the example of the king was the cause of many altarpieces being painted by West and others; one of the best of which is the very appropriate one in the chapel of Greenwich Hospital.[11]
THE CAT RAPHAEL.
Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the Cat Raphael, from the excellence with which he painted that animal. This peculiar talent was discovered and awakened by chance. At the time when Frendenberger painted his picture of the Peasant cleaving wood before his Cottage, with his wife sitting by and feeding her child with pap out of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast a broad stare on the sketch of this last figure, and said, in his rugged, laconic way, “That is no cat!” Frendenberger asked, with a smile, whether he thought he could do it better? Mind offered to try; went into a corner, and drew the cat, which Frendenberger liked so much that he made his new pupil finish it out, and the master copied the scholar’s work—for it is Mind’s cat that is engraved in Frendenberger’s plate. Prints of Mind’s cats are now very common.