Early British Women Painters
EVERYBODY knows that it has fallen to England's lot to gem the remote seas with shining repetitions of herself. But everybody does not remember that she has done this quite at haphazard, just as the winds carry seeds from a garden to a waste ground. In herself, with fitful moments of purposeful energy, England has been self-critical and self-distrustful, disinclined to value her own doings or to take precautions when in the midst of dangers. But for the individual enterprise of her children, which she has often disowned and punished, her colonies would have been the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight. And it is singular to note also that the history of England's genius in art has followed the traditional character of her devious makeshifts in commerce and in war. Despite all inherent weaknesses, she has achieved at random a recognised greatness in art, and is so surprised at it that she hesitates always to encourage the gifts of her own craftsmen, preferring rather to have confidence in the work which she can buy from men of genius in other countries. From the time of Henry VIII. to the coming of the school of Reynolds, she allowed her own painters to starve in order that she might employ strangers; and to-day, as in the past, she butterflies from foreign school to foreign school and treats her own native arts to side-glances and half-friendly nods.
Now, as this has ever been England's disposition, it is not surprising to find that Englishwomen, as well as Englishmen, long hesitated to follow the arts professionally. At a time when Italy and France had scores of women painters, England had scarcely one. Perhaps the earliest of any note, if we except Susannah Penelope Gibson, a miniature painter, was Mrs. Mary Beale, daughter of a Suffolk clergyman named Cradock. She lived between the years 1632 and 1697. After modelling her style on that of Lely, she worked with great courage, showing much real talent, particularly in quiet portraiture. She painted broadly and well, drew with force and discrimination, and although she told the truth plainly at a time when other painters flattered and fawned, she yet achieved success, and was encouraged by the highest in the land, from King Charles the Second to Archbishop Tillotson. Time has robbed her colour of its first freshness, but the character remains, and the portraits on page [81] represent Mary Beale in a characteristic manner.
The next English women painters in order of merit were Lady Diana Beauclerk, an amateur with much untutored talent, and Catharine Read, a distinguished professional artist of the Reynolds period. That she was appreciated in her day is proved by the fact that her portraits were engraved, side by side with those of Reynolds and Gainsborough. To-day she is forgotten, and very little can be learnt about her life or about the present owners of her pictures. Catharine Read lived near St. James's and sent frequently to the exhibitions. In 1770 she went to the East Indies, but in a few years returned to London, where she died in or about the year 1786.
Angelica Kauffman, R.A., though born at Coire, the capital of the Grisons, belongs to the British school, and holds in the early history of that school a position similar to that which has been assigned in France to Madame Vigée Le Brun. The art of the two ladies differs widely to be sure, that of Angelica Kauffman having less mirth, less wit, less sprightliness and homeful sincerity; it is quite artificial in spirit, with a strong bias towards the sentimental; but it has for all that considerable charm and ability, qualities, let us remember, that won the admiration of Reynolds and of Goethe. Turner, also, possessed two of her drawings, as I am told by his descendant, Mr Charles Mallord W. Turner. But in recent times Angelica Kauffman has been remembered for the romance of her personal life and treated with cool contempt in all that appertains to her work. Critics have searched in her pictures for manly qualities, and finding there the temperament of a sentimental woman, their judgment has failed them. The very men who would be astonished beyond measure if a prima donna sang to them in a voice like the leading tenor's, do not hesitate to complain when the voice in a woman's painting is one filled with womanhood.
In England, at the close of the 18th century, quite a number of ladies came to the front in art, like Caroline Watson, the admirable stipple engraver (page [89]), or like Catherine Maria Fanshawe, a painter-etcher who could put a body into a peasant's smock and could show in a rustic figure the mingled influences of Morland and Gainsborough, while keeping a tender sympathy of her own (page [89]). Amelia Hotham, too, in the native art of water-colour, attained to a broad and vigorous style in landscape, while taking far too many hints from the scenic pomp that Francis Nicholson made popular in outdoor scenes (page [88]). Nevertheless, Amelia Hotham's work has interest in the history of British water-colour, like that of three other ladies who followed her, the Viscountess Templetown (page [94]), Matilda Heming and Mrs. John Herford, the grandmother of Mrs. Allingham. Matilda Heming's picture on page [95], "Backwater, Weymouth, Dorset," is weak in the drawing of the hills, but the rest of the design is quite admirable, the boats particularly being very well drawn. We see, then, that during the last decades of the 18th century, and at the beginning of the nineteenth, a little band of Englishwomen studied landscape painting seriously; and this fact is worth remembering, as women have seldom been drawn in art to nature in the woods and fields. The gentler sex, as a rule, has not appreciated landscapes.
On the other hand, they have shown in art a great love for the beauty of flowers, the colour and the forms of insects, and the "other-naturalness" of many kinds of animals. Maria Sibylla Merian, Rachel Ruysch, Rosa Bonheur, Fidelia Bridges, Mrs. Coleman Angell, Madame Ronner, Mlle. E. Hilda, Miss Lucy Kemp-Welch—these ladies will not be forgotten, let us hope, as long as there are students who take delight in plants, flowers, birds and animals.