From that time on, there is little to relate of his life, except that he was always busy and each year sent eight fine works to the Academy Exhibition. His friends and patrons showed him much consideration, and various honors were added to his list, already long. He was always worried in regard to money matters, and he grieved much over the illness of his favorite sister, but there was no striking event to change the even current of his life.
On January 7, 1830, he expired suddenly, exclaiming, "This is dying,"—almost the same words used by George IV., a few months later.
Sir Thomas Lawrence was a man of fine personal qualities; his generosity may be called his greatest fault, for his impulses led him to give more than he had—a quality which causes us to admire a man while at the same moment it makes him guilty of grave faults.
He was always generous to unfortunate artists and, in that way, he spent large sums. He was also true to his ideas of right and wrong, even at the expense of his own advantage.
As an artist, Lawrence can not be given a very high rank, in spite of the immense successes of his life. As in every case, there are opposite opinions concerning him. He has hearty admirers, but he is also accused of mannerisms and weakness. His early works are the most satisfactory, because most natural; they are good in design, and rich in color.
Joseph Mallord William Turner
was an artist of great genius, and has exercised a powerful influence on the art of the nineteenth century. He was the son of a barber, and was born in Maiden Lane, London (a squalid alley in the parish of Covent Garden), on April 23, 1775. When the boy was five years old, he was taken by his father to the house of a customer of the barber's, and while the shaving and combing went on, the child studied the figure of a rampant lion engraved upon a piece of silver. After his return home, he drew a copy of the lion so excellent that it decided his career, for then and there the father determined that his son should be an artist. As a child and youth, he was always sketching, and while he was fond of nature in all her features, he yet had a preference for water views with boats and cliffs and shining waves.
In 1789, when fourteen years old, he entered the classes of the Royal Academy, where he worked hard in drawing from Greek models. He had the good fortune to be employed by Dr. Munro to do some copying and other works, and by this stroke of luck he revelled in the fine pictures and valuable drawings with which the house of his patron was filled. Toward the end of Sir Joshua Reynolds's life, Turner was a frequent visitor at his studio.
In 1790, he sent his first contribution to the Academy Exhibition; it was a view of Lambeth Palace, in water-colors. During the next ten years, he exhibited more than sixty works, embracing a great variety of subjects. The pictures included views from more than twenty-six counties of England and Wales.
In 1802, he was made a full member of the Academy and he also visited the continent for the first time, traveling through France and Switzerland only. He visited Italy in 1819, in 1829, and again in 1840.