I used at one time to hear a good deal about various artists and their work from my dear governess, Miss Redgrave, whose family (one of which, Mr. Samuel Redgrave, wrote the invaluable Dictionary of Artists of the English School) was well known in artistic circles.
A great friend of the Redgraves was Webster, whose pictures were at one time very popular on account of their genial humour and gaiety. Many, indeed, were engraved. Among his best-known works were “The Smile and the Frown,” illustrating the two different moods of the schoolmaster in Goldsmith’s Deserted Village—“The Boy with many Friends”—“The Village Choir”—“The Dame School”—“Coming out of School,” and others depicting subjects of a similar kind. Mr. Webster was very lively and full of fun, and devoted to children, like many people who have none of their own. He would describe how, as a boy, he had once, by mistake, been locked into the village stocks by his brother, and kept there for some time, owing to the key having been mislaid. He would laugh very much over the recollection of the gibes levelled at him by the village boys whilst he was awaiting his release, adding, however, that the actual experience was anything but pleasant. Another great joke of his was that when he wanted to join the Civil Service Stores, at the time when they were first started, he was informed that only persons connected with the Civil Service could be admitted as members, but triumphantly obtained his ticket as the orphan of a Civil Servant, being then over seventy years of age. Up to about the year 1856 Mr. Webster resided in Kensington, but the rest of his life was spent at a charming old house at Cranbrook, in Kent. During a severe attack of gout, he went one winter’s day, wrapped up in blankets in a bath-chair, to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, in order to note some ice and snow effects for his picture of “Boys at a Slide,” his reason being that he feared a thaw might set in and lose him the opportunity for observation. In his later years he suffered terribly from the same affection, and would constantly declare that it was only with the greatest difficulty he could put an eye to a small figure or a curl of hair in its proper place, as his poor fingers and trembling hands caused him to paint details, and even features, in quite wrong positions.
“RENT DAY”
The Redgrave family had also known Sir David Wilkie, whose picture “Rent Day” created such a sensation. By a veritable tour de force the painter contrived in this work to represent a man coughing. The figure in question is in the very centre of this picture. As a rule, attempts to depict people coughing, yawning, or the like, are far from successful.
There was, for instance, a picture I remember which was called “A Pinch of Snuff,” in which the artist had made an effort to represent a sneeze, and the result was not very satisfactory. Morland, however, in his “Connoisseur and Tired Boy,” has shown the latter gaping in a very realistic manner.
“The Long Sermon” (a picture by Hunt) also contained a study of gaping—a young man being depicted as being quite unable to repress this somewhat curious natural effect of being bored.
William Hunt, who died in 1864, was a fine painter of still life, and a sturdy and genial humorist in art as well as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) English flower painters in water-colours who ever lived. A loving painter of rustic life, he cared little for professional models, preferring to paint the real villagers whom he knew and understood. “The Blessing,” a countryman returning thanks for his humble meal, is probably Hunt’s masterpiece. Of this Ruskin said, “It is more than a sermon; it is a poem.”
Hunt being a cripple, he was, as his family said, “good for nothing,” so they made him an artist. In early life he assisted in the redecoration of the rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre, and painted part of a drop-scene. Curiously enough, a great many artists who have achieved success originally began their careers as scene-painters. Amongst them may be mentioned De Loutherbourg, the contemporary of Rowlandson, who was a scene-painter at Drury Lane Theatre; Stanfield and Roberts, as well as David Cox, who, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was assistant painter at the Birmingham Theatre. The late Mr. Thomas Sidney Cooper also, I believe, once did a little in this line. George Chambers, marine painter to William IV., was scene-painter at the Pavilion Theatre.
Amongst architects, Inigo Jones must not be forgotten as having practically been a scene-painter, for his genius largely contributed to the success of the masques which were so popular in his day.
A relative of Inigo Jones, who was also his pupil, attained some celebrity as a designer of the scenery and accessories used in these entertainments. This was John Webb, some of whose sketches and designs are still, I believe, in the Duke of Devonshire’s library.