It must not be forgotten that the name of Frederick Walker was at this time in every one’s mouth, that is, every one who could be deemed to be included in the small Art world of those days. The painter visitors to the Academy schools sang his praises to the students, and he himself fascinated and charmed them with his boyish and graceful presence. As Mrs. Allingham says, everybody in the schools “adored” him and his work, and on the opening of the Academy doors on the first Monday in May the students rushed to his picture first of all.
To contradict a dictum of Walker’s in those days was the rankest heresy in a student. Mrs. Allingham remembers an occasion when a painter was holding forth on the right methods of water-colour work, asserting that the paper should be put flat down on a table, as was the custom with the old men, and the colour should be laid on in washes and left to dry with edges, and if Walker taught any other method he was wrong. Mrs. Allingham and her fellow-students were furious at their hero being possibly in fault, and asked for the opinion of an Academician. His reply was: “And who is Mr. ——, and how does he paint that he should lay down the law? If Walker is all wrong with his methods, he paints like an angel.”
Mrs. Allingham’s confession of faith is this: “I was influenced, doubtless, by his work. I adored it, but I never consciously copied it. It revealed to me certain beauties and aspects of Nature, as du Maurier’s had done, and as North’s and others have since done, and then I saw like things for myself in Nature, and painted them, I truly think, in my own way—not the best way, I dare say, but in the only way I could.”
Those, therefore, who discover not the reflection but the inspiration of Walker in the idyllic grace of Mrs. Allingham’s figures, and in her treatment of flowers, place her in a company which she readily accepts, and is proud of.
But it is with Birket Foster that our artist’s name has been more intimately linked by the critics, some even going to the length of asserting that without him there would have been no Mrs. Allingham.
Having had the pleasure of an intimacy with Birket Foster, which extended to writing his biography (Birket Foster: His Life and Work, Virtue and Co., 1890), I can emphatically assert that he never held that opinion, but stated that she had struck out a line which was entirely her own, and, as he generously added, “with much more modernity in it than mine.”
There are, however, so many similarities between their artistic careers that I may be excused for dwelling on some of them, for they no doubt unconsciously influenced not only the method of their work but the subject of it.
Drawing in black and white on wood in each case formed the groundwork of their education, and was only followed by colour at a subsequent stage.
Both, having determined to support themselves, were fain to seek out the engravers and obtain from them a livelihood. Birket Foster at sixteen was fortunate enough to meet in Landells one who at once recognised his capabilities, whilst Mrs. Allingham found a similar friend in Joseph Swain. Again, book illustration was as much in vogue in 1870 as it was in 1842; and by another coincidence both years witnessed the birth of an illustrated weekly, for Birket Foster, in 1842, was employed upon the infant Illustrated London News, while Mrs. Allingham was the only lady to whom Mr. Thomas allotted some of the early work on the Graphic. Differences there were in their opportunities, and these were not always in the lady’s favour. Birket Foster found in Landells a man who looked after his youngster’s education, and, convinced that Nature was his best mistress, sent him to her with these instructions: “Now that work is slack in these summer months, spend them in the fields; take your colours and copy every detail of the scene as carefully as possible, especially trees and foreground plants, and come up to me once a month and show me what you have done.” A splendid memory aided Foster in his studies all too well, for he learnt to draw with such absolute fidelity every detail that he required, that he never again required to go to Nature. That he did so we know from his repeated visits to every part of Europe—visits resulting in delightful work; but what the world saw was entirely studio work, and this tended to a repetition which oftentimes marred the entire satisfaction that one otherwise derived from his drawings. Mrs. Allingham herself, although living close to and engaged on the same subjects, never came across him painting out of doors, and only once saw him note-book in hand.
Chance influenced the two careers also in another way, which might have made any similarity between them altogether out of question. The first commission to illustrate a book which Miss Paterson obtained was a prose work, in which figures and household scenes entirely predominated,—in fact, all her black-and-white work was of this homely nature,—and for some years she had no call for the delineation of landscape. With Foster it was not very different. It is true that his first commission was The Boys Spring and Summer Book, in which he had to draw the seasons, and to draw them afield. But this might not have attracted him to landscape work, for his patron’s next commission was quite in another direction. I may be excused for referring to it at length, for the little-known incident is of some interest now that the actors in it have each achieved such world-wide reputations. Certain of the young pre-Raphaelites, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Millais, had been entrusted with the illustration of Evangeline. The result was a perfect staggerer to the publisher Bogue, who was altogether unable to appreciate their revolutionary methods. “What shall I do with them?” he was asked by the engraver to whom he showed the blocks on which most elaborate designs had been most lovingly drawn. “This,” said Bogue, and wetting one of them he erased the drawing with the sleeve of his coat, serving each in turn in the same way.