He just contrived to make both ends meet by copy and portrait work three days out of the six. He learnt more from fellow-students than from masters. The first real instruction came from a pupil of Wilkie’s, who told him, as he sat copying “The Blind Fiddler,” that Wilkie painted without dead colour underneath, and finished each bit in turn like a fresco-painter. After this he found out for himself that quattrocentist work was very beautiful, and that the beauty of it was due to the early training of the artists in fresco. He was by nature hasty and impatient, and the city portrait-painter had encouraged rather than checked a tendency to handle his tools with loose bravura. He set himself to unlearn these lessons, to work with accurate and humble patience.
The hardest part of the endeavour had yet to come. Twice over he failed to find his name upon the list of those accepted as probationers for the Academy. Another precious year gone! His father appealed to him to give it up. “You are wasting time and energy. You can paint well enough to make friends admire you; but you cannot compete with others, who have genius to begin with, who have received an excellent education. Are you not yourself convinced?” The sense of discouragement was bitter. Six months more he asked for one other trial; if, for the third time, he failed, he would go back to business.
One day, as he stood at work in the Museum, a boy dressed in a velvet tunic, and belt, his bright brown hair curling over a turned-down white collar, darted aside as he went by, gazed attentively at the drawing for a minute or two, and was off again. He knew the boy, for he had seen him take the Gold Medal at the Academy over the head of all the older students. He returned the visit on his way through the Elgin room, where young Millais was at work on the Ulysses. Quickly the younger artist turned round.
“I say, are not you the fellow doing that good drawing in No. XIII. room? You ought to be at the Academy.”
“That is exactly my opinion. But, unfortunately, the Council have twice decided the other way.”
“You just send the drawing you are doing now, and you’ll be in like a shot. You take my word for it; I ought to know; I’ve been there as a student, you know, five years. I got the first medal last year in the antique, and it’s not the first given me, I can tell you.… I say, tell me whether you have begun to paint? What? I’m never to tell; it is your deadly secret. Ah! ah! ah! that’s a good joke! You’ll be drawn and quartered without even being respectably hung by the Council of ‘Forty’ if you are known to have painted before completing your full course in the antique. Why, I’m as bad as you, for I’ve painted a long while. I say, do you ever sell what you do? So do I. I’ve often got ten pounds, and even double. Do you paint portraits?”
“Yes,” I said; “but I’m terribly behind you.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Well, I’m seventeen,” I replied.
“I’m only fifteen just struck; but don’t you be afraid. Why, there are students of the Academy just fifty and more. There’s old Pickering; he once got a picture into the Exhibition, and he quite counts upon making a sensation when he has finished his course; but he is very reluctant to force on his genius. Will you be here to-morrow?”