STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS: ENGLISH PAINTERS.
By Clara Erskine Clement.
When Henry VIII. came to the throne of England, he was a magnificent prince. He loved pleasure and pomp and invited many foreign artists to his court. After a time, however, he became indifferent to art, and it is difficult to say whether he lessened or added to the art-treasures of England.
The long reign of Queen Elizabeth—forty-seven years—afforded great opportunity for the encouragement of art. But most of the painters whom she employed were foreigners.
King Charles I. was a true lover of art. Rubens and Vandyck were his principal painters, and Inigo Jones his architect; the choice of such artists proves the excellence of his artistic taste and judgment. He employed many other foreign artists, of whom it need only be said that the English artists profited much by their intercourse with them, as well as by the study of foreign pictures which the King purchased.
In fact, before the time of William Hogarth, portraits had been the only pictures of any importance which were painted by English artists, and no one painter had become very eminent. No native master had originated a manner of painting which he could claim as his own.
Hogarth was born near Ludgate Hill, London, in 1697.
In 1734, he produced some works which immediately made him famous. He had originated a manner of his own; he had neither attempted to illustrate the stories of Greek Mythology, nor to invent allegories, as so many painters had done before him; he simply gave form to the nature that was all about him, and painted just what he could see in London every day. His pictures of this sort came to be almost numberless, and no rank in society, no phase of life, escaped the truthful representation of his brush.
He was a teacher as well as an artist, for his pictures dealt with familiar scenes and subjects and presented the lessons of the follies of his day with more effect upon the mass of the people than any writer could produce with his pen, or any preacher by his sermons.
Hogarth died at his house in Leicester Fields, on October 26, 1764.