Holloway, who so successfully copied in black chalks the cartoons of Raphael in Hampton Court Palace, was an eccentric genius, deeply read in Scripture, which he expounded in the most nasal tone; but it was very interesting to listen to his observations on the beauties and merits of these master-pieces of art. A Madame Bouiller, a French emigrée, was also occupied on the same subjects. She was patronised by West, who gave her permission to study in the palace; and said that he had never seen such masterly artistical touches of the crayon as hers.
One morning Holloway was found foaming with rage in the Cartoon Gallery. Some person had written against the cartoons, denominating them “wretched daubs;” and sorely did it wound the feelings of the enthusiastic artist, who worshipped with religious fervour these works of Raphael. Yet it was a grotesque scene to behold Madame Bouiller pacing after Holloway, up and down the gallery, with all the grimace and intensity of a Frenchwoman, and re-echoing his furious lamentations.
TITIAN’S PAINTING.
Sir Abraham Hume, the accomplished annotator of The Life and Works of Titian, observes: “It appears to be generally understood that Titian had, in the different periods of life, three distinct manners of painting: the first hard and dry, resembling his master, Giovanni Bellino; the second, acquired from studying the works of Giorgione, was more bold, round, rich in colour, and exquisitely wrought up; the third was the result of his matured taste and judgment, and, properly speaking, may be termed his own—in which he introduced more cool tints into the shadows and flesh, approaching nearer to nature than the universal glow of Giorgione.”
After stating what little is known of the mechanical means employed by Titian in the colouring of his pictures, Sir Abraham remarks: “Titian’s grand secret of all appears to have consisted in the unremitting exercise of application, patience, and perseverance, joined to an enthusiastic attachment to his art: his custom was to employ considerable time in finishing his pictures, working on them repeatedly, till he brought them to perfection; and his maxim was, that whatever was done in a hurry, could not be well done.” In manner and character, as well as talent, Titian may not inappropriately be associated with the most eminent painter this country ever produced, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
CATLIN’S PICTURES.
Catlin, the traveller, was born in Wyoming, on the Susquehannah: he was bred to the law, but after he had practised two or three years, he sold his law library, and with the proceeds commenced as painter in Philadelphia, without either teacher or adviser. Within a few years, a delegation of Indians arrived from wilds of the far west in Philadelphia, “arrayed and equipped in all their classical beauty—with shield and helmet—with tunic and manteau, tinted and tasselled off exactly for the painter’s palette. In silent and stoic dignity, these lords of the forest strutted about the city for a few days wrapped in their pictured robes, with their brows plumed with the quills of the war-eagle,” and then quitted for Washington city, leaving Catlin to regret their departure. This, however, led him to consider the preservation by pictorial illustrations of the history and customs of these people, as a theme worthy the life of one man; and he therefore resolved that nothing short of the loss of life should prevent him from visiting their country, and becoming their historian. He could find no advocate or abettor of his views; still, he broke from all connexions of family and home, and thus, firmly fixed, armed, equipped, and supplied, he started, in the year 1832, and penetrated the vast and pathless wilds of the Great Far West—devoted to the production of habitual and graphic portraiture of the manners, customs, and character of an interesting race of people who were rapidly passing away from the earth.
Catlin spent about eight years in the Indian country, and, in 1841, brought home portraits of the principal personages from each tribe, views of their villages, pastimes, and religious ceremonies; and a collection of their costumes, manufactures, and weapons. He was undoubtedly the first artist who ever started upon such a labour, designing to carry his canvass to the Rocky Mountains. He visited forty-eight different tribes, containing 400,000 souls, and mostly speaking different languages. He brought home 310 portraits in oil, all painted in their native dress, and in their own wigwams; besides 200 paintings of their villages, wigwams, games, and religious ceremonies, dances, ball-plays, buffalo-hunts, &c.; containing 3000 full-length figures; together with landscapes, and a collection of costumes and other artificial produce, from the size of a huge wigwam to that of a rattle. It was for a time expected that the collection would have been purchased by the British Government, and added to the British Museum, but the opportunity was let slip; and thus did we lose these records of a race of our fellow-creatures, whom we shall very shortly have swept from the face of the globe.