ART AND ARTISTS.

MEMORANDA

OF

ART AND ARTISTS,

Anecdotal and Biographical.

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED

By JOSEPH SANDELL.

London:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co., Stationers’ Hall Court, E.C.
AND
FIELD & TUER, 50, Leadenhall Street, E.C.
1871.

[Copyright entered at Stationers’ Hall.]

AI 718
FIELD & TUER LEADENHALL ST
LONDON

PREFACE.

THE collection of the Anecdotes now offered to the public has been a work of some few years, but it has also been a pleasure. Loving Art, I have taken a deep interest in the light thrown by them on the character and career of the great artists whose works have done so much to elevate and refine mankind. These anecdotes have been culled from various sources; and though many of them have doubtless been several times related, yet some, it is believed, have never before been published in a collected form. Mr. Henry Ottley, in the Preface to his “Supplement to Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters,” remarks that many artists to whom he had applied for materials for biography, did not answer his letters, and that others declined from a feeling of diffidence to give him the required information. I have found a similar difficulty in obtaining anecdotes by applying to the artist friends with whom I have the honour of being acquainted. My work has, therefore, been to seek materials from other sources; to select, arrange, and, in some instances, abridge. Whenever it was possible to give the authority for a story, this has been done. The anecdotes are arranged in groups, according to the artist to whom they relate; and for convenience of reference, the names of artists are given alphabetically. It is hoped that this little volume, while serving to wile away a leisure hour, may at the same time do something to arouse the reader’s interest in the men who have devoted their lives to the service of Art, and so to the instruction and well-being of their fellow-men.

J. S.

Walham Green, London, 1871.

CONTENTS.

ART AND ARTISTS.

ALLSTON (WASHINGTON).

WASHINGTON ALLSTON was born at Charleston, in South Carolina, on the 5th November, 1779, of a family distinguished in the history of that State. He entered Harvard College in 1796, and graduated in 1800. While at college he developed in a marked manner a love of music, poetry, and painting. On leaving college, he returned to South Carolina, having determined to devote his life to the fine arts, and embarked for London in 1801. On his arrival, he became a student of the Royal Academy, and formed an intimacy with his countryman, Benjamin West, who was its president. After three years in London, he paid visits to Paris and Rome, and in 1809 returned to America. Two years afterwards, we find him again in England, where his reputation as an artist was now completely established. In 1818 he returned to America, making Boston his home.

Mrs. Jameson, in her “Memoirs and Essays, illustrative of Art,” says: “At Rome Allston first became distinguished as a mellow and harmonious colourist, and acquired among the native German painters the name of “the American Titian.”

When in London, Allston paid a professional visit to Fuseli, who asked him what branch of art he intended to pursue. He replied, “History.” “Then, sir,” answered the shrewd and intelligent professor of painting, “you have come a long way to starve.”

Allston was the author of several poems, which, with his lectures on art, are edited by R. H. Dana, jun., and published in New York. He died on the 9th of July, 1843.

HIS OPINION OF HIS OWN PAINTING.

Some years after Allston had acquired a considerable reputation as a painter, a friend showed him a miniature, and begged he would give his sincere opinion upon its merits, as the young man who drew it had some thoughts of becoming a painter by profession. After much pressing, Allston candidly told the gentleman he feared the lad would never do anything as a painter, and advised his following some more congenial pursuit. The friend thereupon convinced him that the miniature had been done by Allston himself, for this very gentleman, when the painter was very young.

BARTOLOZZI (FRANCESCO), R.A.

FRANCESCO BARTOLOZZI was born in Florence, in the year 1728, where his father kept a shop, and followed the business of a goldsmith, on the Ponto Vecchio. Young Bartolozzi was taught drawing by Feretti, a drawing-master in Florence, and instructed in engraving by one Corsi, a very indifferent artist. His earliest attempts in engraving were copying prints from Frey and Wagner, and engraving shop-cards, and saints for friars. His first work, considered of any consequence, was from a picture in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. When he was about eighteen, by the advice of Feretti, he sent a specimen of his abilities to Wagner, at Venice, which was satisfactorily received; and from that time he became his pupil and assistant, and remained with him ten years. While he was with Wagner, Bartolozzi married and went to Rome, where he remained a year and a half. Among other works, he engraved, while at Rome, several heads of painters for Bottari’s edition of Vasari.

In the year 1762, Mr. Dalton, the King’s agent for works of art, being at Venice, introduced himself to the artist, and took him to Bologna to make two drawings,—a Cupid, from Guido, and the Circumcision, from Guercino, which he afterwards engraved for him.

At Mr. Dalton’s invitation, Bartolozzi started for London in the year 1764, and, on arriving in the metropolis, he found his fame had, through the joint influence of his friend Cipriani and Mr. Dalton, brought many noted personages to his lodgings, desirous to make the artist’s personal acquaintance. For three years and a half he was wholly employed by Mr. Dalton, at a guinea a day. He was one of the twenty-seven artists who memorialized the King to establish a Royal Academy, and was nominated a Royal Academician on its establishment in 1768. After quitting Cipriani’s house, he lived in Broad Street, and in Bentinck Street, Soho; and at last settled in a house at North End, Fulham, where he took great delight in gardening, and where he remained to live till November, 1802, when he went to Portugal; after a residence in England of more than thirty-eight years.

Although Bartolozzi was greatly patronized by the public in this country, and in the receipt of a large income, and his works held in the highest estimation, yet, with a morbid sensibility, he always felt himself to be a foreigner, and never quite at home in England. At Lisbon he gave his attention to the superintendence of a school of engraving recently established, from which he received the sum of £200 yearly for his services.

The week before he left England, Lord Pelham sent his private secretary to inform him that he was authorized by His Majesty to make him an offer of £400 a year to remain in England, and more, if that was not sufficient; but this munificence Bartolozzi respectfully declined.

He died in the year 1815, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE III.

“I was shaving myself in the morning,” says Bartolozzi, “when a thundering rapping at the door announced the glad tidings, and I cut myself in my hurry to go to Buckingham House, where I was told His Majesty was waiting for me in the library. When I arrived, I found the King on his hands and knees on the floor, cleaning a large picture with a wet sponge, and Mr. Dalton, Mr. Barnard, the librarian, and another person standing by. The subject of the picture was the ‘Murder of the Innocents,’ said to be by Paul Veronese, and I was sent for to give my opinion of its originality. Mr. Dalton named me to the King as a proper judge, as I had so lately come from Venice; and I suppose he intended to give me some previous instructions; but when delay was proposed, the King said: ‘No; send for Mr. Bartolozzi now, and I will wait here till he comes.’ On my entering the room, the King asked me whether the picture was an undoubted original by Paul Veronese; to which I gave a gentle shrug, without saying a single word. The King seemed to understand the full force of the expression, and, without requiring any further comment, asked me how I liked England, and if I found the climate agree with me; and then walked out at the window which led into the garden, and left Mr. Dalton to roll up his picture; and here ended the consultation. The picture was an infamous copy, and offered to the King for the moderate price of one thousand guineas.”

BEECHEY (SIR WILLIAM), R.A.

WILLIAM BEECHEY was born at Burford, in Oxfordshire, in the year 1753. It is recorded of this painter that the circumstance of a portrait of a nobleman which he had painted being returned by the hanging committee of the Exhibition led to his rapid advancement in life. The picture found its way to Buckingham House, was much admired by the royal family; and so led to his receiving the patronage of His Majesty. In 1798 he was commissioned to paint George III. on horseback reviewing the troops. Beechey excelled in portrait-painting. Though neat and delicate in his colouring, his portraits want that dignity and grace so well shown in those of the great master, Reynolds. He died in the year 1839.

INTERVIEW WITH HOLCROFT.

In Holcroft’s diary occurs the following reference to this painter:—

“15 July, 1798.—Sir William Beechey, with his young son, called; he was lately knighted. Speaks best on painting, the subject on which we chiefly conversed. Said that a notion prevailed in Italy, that pictures having a brown tone had most the hue of Titian; and that the picture-dealers of Italy smeared them over with some substance which communicates this tone. Of this I doubt. Repeated a conversation at which he was present, when Burke endeavoured to persuade Sir Joshua Reynolds to alter his picture of ‘The Dying Cardinal,’ by taking away the devil, which Burke said was an absurd and ridiculous incident, and a disgrace to the artist. Sir Joshua replied, that if Mr. Burke thought proper, he could argue per contra; and Burke asked him if he supposed him so unprincipled as to speak from anything but conviction. ‘No,’ said Sir Joshua; ‘but had you happened to take the other side, you could have spoken with equal force.’... Beechey praised my portrait, painted by Opie, but said the colouring was too foxy; allowed Opie great merit, especially in his picture of ‘The Crowning of Henry VI. at Paris;’ agreed with me that he had a bold and determined mind, and that he nearest approached the fine colouring of Rembrandt.”

CHANTREY (SIR FRANCIS), R.A.

SIR FRANCIS was born on the 7th of April, 1782, at Norton, in Derbyshire. He was early apprenticed to a carver, with whom he served three years. In the year 1816, at the early age of eight-and-twenty, he became an Associate of the Royal Academy, and after two years’ close study he was elected an Academician. It has been justly said of this artist, that all his statues proclaim themselves at once the works of a deeply-thinking man. His most celebrated sepulchral monument, entitled “The Sleeping Children,” is known all over Europe by engravings. It was erected in memory of two children of the late William Robinson, Esq. Chantrey died at his house, in Pimlico, on the 25th of November, 1841.

CHANTREY’S PRICES.

In 1808 Chantrey received a commission to execute four colossal busts for Greenwich Hospital:—those of Duncan, Howe, St. Vincent, and Nelson; and from this time his prosperity began. During the eight previous years he declared he had not gained five pounds by his labours as a modeller; and until he executed the bust of Horne Tooke, in clay, in 1811, he was himself diffident of success. He was, however, entrusted with commissions to the amount of £12,000. His prices at this time were eighty or a hundred guineas for a bust, and he continued to work at this rate for three years, after which he raised his terms to a hundred and twenty, and a hundred and fifty guineas, and continued these prices until the year 1822, when he again raised the terms to two hundred guineas; and when he modelled the bust of George IV., the King wished him to increase the price, and insisted that the bust of himself should not return to the artist a less sum than three hundred guineas.

HORNE TOOKE.

Horne Tooke had rendered Chantrey many important services, for which the latter through life took every opportunity to show his gratitude. About a year previous to Horne Tooke’s death, he desired the artist to procure for him a large black marble slab to place over his grave, which he intended should be in his garden at Wimbledon. This commission Chantrey executed, and went with Mrs. Chantrey to dine with Tooke on the day that it was forwarded to the dwelling of the latter. On the sculptor’s arrival, his host merrily exclaimed, “Well, Chantrey, now that you have sent my tombstone, I shall be sure to live a year longer,” which was actually the case.

EQUESTRIAN FIGURES.

When George IV. was sitting to Chantrey, he required the sculptor to give him the idea of an equestrian statue to commemorate him, which Chantrey accomplished at a succeeding interview by placing in the sovereign’s hand a number of small equestrian figures, drawn carefully on thick paper, and resembling in number and material a pack of cards. These sketches pleased the King very much, who turned them over and over, expressing his surprise that such a variety could be produced; and after a thousand fluctuations of opinion, sometimes for a prancing steed, sometimes for a trotter, then for a neighing or starting charger, His Majesty at length resolved on a horse standing still, as the most dignified for a King. Chantrey probably led to this, as he was decidedly in favour of the four legs being on the ground; he had a quiet and reasonable manner of convincing persons of the propriety of that which from reflection he judged to be preferable.... When he had executed and erected the statue of the King on the staircase at Windsor, His Majesty good-naturedly patted the sculptor on the shoulder, and said, “Chantrey, I have reason to be obliged to you, for you have immortalized me.”

CANDID OPINION.

Mr. Leslie relates the following anecdote:—

“Chantrey told me that on one of his visits to Oxford, Professor Buckland said to him ‘If you will come to me, you shall hear yourself well abused.’ He had borrowed a picture of Bishop Heber, from the Hall of New College, to make a statue from; and having kept it longer than he had promised, the woman who showed the Hall was very bitter against him. ‘There is no dependence,’ she said, ‘to be placed on that Chantrey. He is as bad as Sir Thomas Lawrence, who has served me just the same; there is not a pin to choose between them.’ She pointed to the empty frame, and said, ‘It is many a shilling out of my pocket, the picture not being there; they make a great fuss about that statue of——’ (mentioning one by Chantrey, that had lately been sent to one of the colleges), ‘but we have one by Bacon, which, in my opinion, is twice as good. When Chantrey’s statue came, I had ours washed; I used a dozen pails of water, and I am sure I made it look a great deal better than his.’ He took out a five-shilling piece, and putting it into her hand, but without letting it go, said, ‘Look at me, and tell me whether I look like a very bad man.’ ‘Lord, no, sir.’ ‘Well, then, I am that Chantrey you are so angry with.’ She seemed somewhat disconcerted; but quickly recovering herself, replied, ‘And if you are, sir, I have said nothing but what is true,’ and he resigned the money into her hand.”

FASHION.

On one occasion, at a dinner party, he was placed nearly opposite his wife at table, at the time when very large and full sleeves were worn, of which Lady C. had a very fashionable complement; and the sculptor perceived that a gentleman sitting next to her was constrained to confine his arms, and shrink into the smallest dimensions, lest he should derange the superfluous attire. Chantrey, observing this, addressed him thus: “Pray, sir, do not inconvenience yourself from the fear of spoiling those sleeves, for that lady is my wife; those sleeves are mine, and as I have paid for them, you are at perfect liberty to risk any injury your personal comfort may cause to those prodigies of fashion!” Also, noticing a lady with sleeves curiously cut, he affected to think the slashed openings were from economical motives, and said, “What a pity the dressmaker should have spoiled your sleeves! It was hardly worth while to save such a little bit of stuff.”

CONSTABLE (JOHN), R.A.

JOHN CONSTABLE, born in Suffolk, in the year 1776, passed his infancy in a beautifully rural country, the scenery of which he was in love with to the day of his death. His predilection for the art was developed before he reached the age of sixteen. Mrs. Constable procured for her son an introduction to Sir George Beaumont. Sir George had expressed himself much pleased with the youth’s pen-and-ink copies. He was sent to pursue his studies in London; and in 1799, writing to a friend, he says:—

“I paint by all the daylight we have, and there is little enough. I sometimes see the sky; but imagine to yourself how a pearl must look through a burnt glass. I employ my evenings in making drawings and in reading, and I hope by the former to clear my rent. If I can, I shall be very happy. Our friend Smith has offered to take any of my pictures into his shop for sale. He is pleased to find I am reasonable in my prices.”

Again, in Leslie’s memoirs of the artist we have the following memorandum of Constable:—

“For these few weeks past I have thought more seriously of my profession than at any other time of my life; of that which is the surest way to excellence. I am just returned from a visit to Sir George Beaumont’s pictures, with a deep conviction of the truth of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ observation, that ‘there is no easy way of becoming a good painter.’ For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second-hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men. I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to commonplace people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing in the Exhibition worth looking up to. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura,—an attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had, and will have, its day; but truth in all things only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity. I have reaped considerable benefit from exhibiting; it shows me where I am, and in fact tells me what nothing else could.”

Constable kept up a wide correspondence among his friends, from which correspondence one of his most intimate friends, C. R. Leslie, compiled and published, with much taste and discretion, Memoirs of his Life.

Constable died in the year 1837.

ARCHDEACON FISHER.

After preaching one Sunday, the archdeacon asked the artist how he liked his sermon: he replied—“Very much indeed, Fisher; I always did like that sermon.”

CONSTABLES PLEASANTRY.

A picture of a murder sent to the Academy for exhibition while Constable was on the council, was refused admittance on account of a disgusting display of blood and brains in it; but Constable objected still more to the wretchedness of the work, and said: “I see no brains in the picture.”

This recalls another which is related of Opie, who, when a young artist asked him what he mixed his colours with, replied, “Brains.”

It being complained to him by his servant that the milk supplied was very poor and weak in quality, he said one morning to the milkman: “In future, we shall feel obliged if you will send us the milk and the water in separate cans.”

COLLINS (WILLIAM), R.A.

WILLIAM COLLINS was born in London, in September, 1788. At an early age his father noticed his son’s talent, and sent him to the Royal Academy to pursue his studies. His skill in a short time was such that he became a valuable assistant to his father in his business of cleansing and restoring pictures; and when he rose to paint pictures for himself, his father was at a loss what to do without him.

“The first intimation I gave,” says his father, “of my incapacity to restore, or even line, the pictures without the aid of my son William, was on last Wednesday. There was a beautiful large landscape by Ostade—the figures by A. Teniers. I pointed out the necessary repairs in the sky which were wanted to make the picture complete; and, of course, mentioned Bill as superior to every other artist in that department. The squire listened very attentively until I had done, and then inquired what the expense of such repairs might be. I answered, about two or three guineas. “Oh, d——n the sky! clean it and stick it up without any repairs then!”

In 1807, Collins became for the first time exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and fifteen years later a Royal Academician, He married in 1822. He passed the years 1837 and 1838 studying his art in Italy. He says in his journal: “A painter should choose those subjects with which people associate pleasant circumstances: it is not sufficient that a scene pleases him.” And this advice it is plain he acted upon himself to the end of his career. While living, he had the satisfaction (very rare to the most successful) of seeing his pictures fetch high prices. For instance—for his “Frost Scene” Sir Robert Peel paid him 500 guineas, Mr. Young gave him for his “Skittle Players” 400 guineas; and the same sum was paid him by Sir Thomas Baring for his “Mussel Gatherers.”

The life of Collins was a success from the first year he entered as a student at the Royal Academy; and though his life has been called uneventful, the English artist will ever cherish his name.

He died in 1847, aged fifty-nine. His Life, with selections from his correspondence, is plainly and affectionately told by the artist’s son, Mr. Wilkie Collins, published in two vols., 1848.

COMPLAINT AGAINST THE HANGING COMMITTEE.

The following are given by Wilkie Collins in his Memoirs.

“To H. Howard, Esq., R.A.
Great Portland Street, 1st May, 1811.

“Sir,—Finding one of my pictures put upon the hearth in the ‘Great Room,’ where it must inevitably meet with some accident from the people who are continually looking at Mr. Bird’s picture; I take the liberty of requesting you will allow me to order a sort of case to be put round the bottom part of the frame, to protect it (as well as the picture) from the kicks of the crowd. Even the degrading situation in which the picture is placed would not have induced me to trouble you about it had it been my property; but, as it was painted on commission, I shall be obliged to make good any damage it may sustain.

I remain, sir, your obedient, humble servant,
W. Collins, Jun.”

“To Mr. Collins, Jun.
Royal Academy, May 1, 1811.

“Sir,—I conceive there will be no objection to your having a narrow wooden border put round the picture you speak of, if you think such a precaution necessary, provided it be done any morning before the opening of the Exhibition; and you may show this to the porter as an authority for bringing in a workman for that purpose. I cannot help expressing some surprise that you should consider the situation of your picture degrading, knowing as I do that the Committee of Arrangement thought it complimentary, and that, as low as it is, many members of the Academy would have been content to have it.

I am, sir, your obedient servant, H. Howard, Secretary.”

“THE BIRD CATCHERS.”

Mr. Stark, the landscape painter, supplied the following interesting notice of this famous picture:—

“In order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the process of bird-catching, he (Collins) went into the fields (now the Regent’s Park) before sunrise, and paid a man to instruct him in the whole mystery; and I believe if the arrangement of the nets, cages, and decoy birds, with the disposition of the figures, lines connected with the nets, and birds attached to the sticks, were to be examined by a Whitechapel bird-catcher, he would pronounce them to be perfectly correct. He was unable to proceed with the picture for some days, fancying that he wanted the assistance of Nature in a piece of broken foreground; and whilst this impression remained, he said he should be unable to do more. I went with him to Hampstead Heath; and although he was not successful in meeting with anything that suited his purpose, he felt that he could then finish the picture; but while the impression was on his mind that anything could be procured likely to lead to the perfection of the work, he must satisfy himself by making the effort—even if it proved fruitless. I have perhaps said more on this picture than you may deem necessary; but it was the first work of this description that I had been acquainted with, and the only picture, excepting those of my late master, Crome, that I had ever seen in progress. Moreover, I believe it to have been the first picture of its particular class ever produced in this country; and this, both in subject and treatment, in a style so peculiarly your late father’s, and one which has gained for him so much fame.”

The painter himself has left the following memoranda on this picture:—

“Two days since, Constable compared a picture to a sum; for it is wrong if you can take away or add a figure to it. In my picture of ‘Bird-Catchers,’ to avoid red, blue, and yellow—-to recollect that Callcott advised me to paint some parts of my picture thinly (leaving the ground)—and that he gave credit to the man who never reminded you of the palette.”

HAYDON’S “JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.”

“Went to Spring Gardens,” says Collins, “to see Haydon’s picture of ‘The Judgment of Solomon.’ In this most extraordinary production there is everything for which the Venetian school is so justly celebrated; with this difference only, that Haydon has considered other qualities equally necessary. Most men who have arrived at such excellence in colour, have seemed to think they have done enough; but with Haydon it was evidently the signal of his desire to have every greatness of every other school. Hence, he lays siege to the drawing and expression of Nature, which, in this picture, he has certainly carried from, and in the very face of, all his competitors. Of the higher qualities of Art are certainly the tone of the whole picture; the delicate variety of colour; the exquisite sentiment in the mother bearing off her children; and the consciousness of Solomon in the efficacy of his demonstration of the real mother. In short, Haydon deserves the praise of every real artist for having proved that it is possible (which, by the way, I never doubted) to add all the beauties of colour and tone to the grandeur of the most sublime subject, without diminishing the effect upon the heart. Haydon has done all this; and produced, upon the whole, the most perfect modern picture I ever saw; and that at the age of seven-and-twenty!”

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.

Among the correspondence of Collins occurs the following characteristic letter to him from this celebrated writer.

“To W. Collins, Esq., A.R.A.
Highgate, December, 1818.

“My dear Sir,—I at once comply with, and thank you for, your request to have some prospectuses. God knows I have so few friends, that it would be unpardonable in me not to feel proportionably grateful towards those few who think the time not wasted in which they interest themselves in my behalf. There is an old Latin adage: ‘Vis videri pauper, et pauper es.’ Poor you profess yourself to be, and poor therefore you are, and will remain. The prosperous feel only with the prosperous; and if you subtract from the whole sum of their feeling for all the gratifications of vanity and all their calculations of lending to the Lord, both of which are best answered by conferring the superfluity of their superfluities on advertised and advertisable distress—or on such as are known to be in all respects their inferiors—you will have, I fear, but a scanty remainder. All this is too true; but then, what is that man to do whom no distress can bribe to swindle or deceive? who cannot reply as Theophilus Cibber did to his father, Colley Cibber, who, seeing him in a rich suit of clothes, whispered to him as he passed, ‘The.! The.! I pity thee!’ ‘Pity me! pity my tailor!’ Spite of the decided approbation which my plan of delivering lectures has received from several judicious and highly respectable individuals, it is too histrionic, too much like a retail dealer in instruction and pastime, not to be depressing. If the duty of living were not far more awful to my conscience than life itself is agreeable to my feelings, I should sink under it. But, getting nothing by my publications, which I have not the power of making estimable by the public without loss of self-estimation, what can I do? The few who have won the present age, while they have secured the praise of posterity, as Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Southey, Lord Byron, etc., have been in happier circumstances. And lecturing is the only means by which I can enable myself to go on at all with the great philosophical work to which the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years of my life have been devoted. Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-oblivion, presents an asylum. Yet sometimes, spite of myself, I cannot help bursting out into the affecting exclamation of our Spenser (his ‘wine’ and ‘ivy garland’ interpreted as competence and joyous circumstances),—

“Thou kenn’st not, Percy, how the rhyme should rage!

Oh if my temples were bedewed with wine,

And girt with garlands of wild ivy-twine,

How I could rear the Muse on stately stage!

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,

With queen’d Bellona in her equipage—

But, ah, my courage cools ere it be warm!”

But God’s will be done. To feel the full force of the Christian religion, it is perhaps necessary, for many tempers, that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert’s ‘Temple,’ which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness—in short, only to laugh at—than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read ‘Herbert,’ I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled ‘The Flower,’ is especially affecting; and, to me, such a phrase as ‘relish versing,’ expresses a sincerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified, ‘and once more love the Muse,’ etc. And so, with many other of Herbert’s homely phrases. We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent transatlantic friend [Mr. Allston]. I need not repeat that your company, with or without our friend Leslie, will gratify your sincere,

“S. T. Coleridge.”

THE PAINTER’S SYMPATHISERS.

Collins was much amused on one occasion by the remark of some fishermen. Having made a careful study of some boats and other objects on the beach, which occupied him the greater part of the day, towards evening, when he was preparing to leave, the sun burst out low in the horizon, producing a very beautiful, although totally different, effect on the same objects; and with his usual enthusiasm, he immediately set to work again, and had sufficient light to preserve the effect. The fishermen seemed deeply to sympathize with him at this unexpected and additional labour as they called it; and endeavoured to console him by saying, “Well, never mind, sir; every business has its troubles.”

COPLEY (JOHN SINGLETON), R.A.

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY was born at Boston in America, 3rd July, 1737. His father was of English descent, and having resided a long time in Ireland, many claimed the painter, when he became eminent, as a native of the sister Isle. When eight or nine years old, he would remain in an old lumber room for several hours at a time, drawing, in charcoal, figures on the wall. At that time Boston had neither academy nor private instructors in the art; and the young artist had therefore to educate himself. In the year 1760 he sent his first painting anonymously to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, which raised high expectations among the academicians. Seven years after, his name was well known to admirers of Art, both in America and England. So proud were the Bostonians of him, that they provided as many commissions as he could execute. He visited London in 1774; but after a short stay he left it for Italy. He thus writes to an acquaintance from Rome,—“Having seen the Roman school, and the wonderful efforts of genius exhibited by Grecian artists, I now wish to see the Venetian and Flemish schools. There is a kind of luxury in seeing, as well as there is in eating and drinking; the more we indulge, the less are we to be restrained; and indulgence in Art I think innocent and laudable.... The only considerable stay which I intend to make will be at Parma, to copy the fine Correggio. Art is in its utmost perfection here; a mind susceptible of the fine feelings which Art is calculated to excite will find abundance of pleasure in this country. The Apollo, the Laocoön, etc., leave nothing for the human mind to wish for; more cannot be effected by the genius of man than what is happily combined in those miracles of the chisel.” Copley returned to London, and being introduced by West to the Academy, the King, in 1783, sanctioned his election as an R.A. His name being established, year after year witnessed works of high and enduring merit from his brush. He was never idle. The merit of his paintings was the more surprising when it was considered with what rapidity they were executed. Perhaps among his best works are the following, “King Charles ordering the arrest of the five Members of Parliament,” “The Death of Chatham,” and “The Death of Major Pierson,” a young officer who fell in the defence of St. Helier’s against the French. This picture was painted for Boydell; and when, long afterwards, his gallery was dispersed, was purchased back by the artist, and was subsequently in the possession of his son, the late Lord Lyndhurst, who, to his credit, was at the time of his death the owner of several of the best works of his distinguished parent. Copley died 9th September, 1815.

PORTRAIT PAINTING.

A portrait painter in large practice might write a pretty book on the vanity and singularity of his sitters. A certain man came to Copley, and had himself, and wife, and seven children all included in a family piece. “It wants but one thing,” said he, “and that is the portrait of my first wife—for this one is my second.” “But,” said the artist, “she is dead you know, sir: what can I do? she is only to be admitted as an angel.” “Oh, no! not at all,” answered the other; “she must come in as a woman—no angels for me.” The portrait was added, but some time elapsed before the person came back; when he returned, he had a stranger lady on his arm. “I must have another cast of your hand, Copley,” he said: “an accident befel my second wife; this lady is my third; and she is come to have her likeness included in the family picture.” The painter complied—the likeness was introduced—and the husband looked with a glance of satisfaction on his three spouses. Not so the lady; she remonstrated; never was such a thing heard of! out her predecessors must go. The artist painted them out accordingly, and had to bring an action at law to obtain payment for the portraits he had obliterated.—Life of Copley: Family Library.

DAVID (JACQUES LOUIS).

JACQUES LOUIS DAVID, the celebrated French painter, was born in Paris in the year 1748, and studied under Vienne. It is said of him, that while endeavouring to give an air of antique character to his works, he was too often cold and inexpressive, resembling coloured statuary more than nature. By many admirers he is looked up to as the head and restorer of the French school. The following may be reckoned as his most celebrated pictures:—“The Rape of the Sabines,” “The Coronation of Napoleon,” “The Oath taken in the Tennis Court,” “Brutus,” “Belisarius,” “The Funeral of Patroclus,” and “The Death of Socrates.” He died in December, 1825.

DAVID’S MARRIAGE.

Jacques Louis David was very successful with his pupils. At each distribution of prizes at the Academy of Rome, one of his pupils generally bore away the palm. The King of France, who acknowledged the royalty of the arts, ordered apartments to be prepared for David in the Louvre.

Till then, David had never dreamed of marrying; he only thought of the productions of his genius. Before taking possession of his apartments in the Louvre, it was necessary for him to come to some arrangement with Pécoul, the King’s architect. David had known his son at Rome. They had often talked together of their country and absent families. Pécoul’s son had said to David, “I have some handsome sisters; you must choose one, and we shall then be brothers.” On the painter’s departure for Paris, he had given him a letter to his father, principally as an introduction to his sisters. More than two years had passed by, and the letter still remained in a portfolio of drawings. One day, as David turned it over, he said—“Who knows but destiny may have traced this?” And so it remained for another six months.

At last he called on Pécoul.

“Ah!” said the architect, “you are David, and you want apartments in the Louvre?”

“Yes, sir, the King has had the kindness to allow me to reside there.”

David had the letter in his pocket; he blushed, drew it out, and gave it, with much emotion, to the architect.

“Egad!” said Pécoul, “this letter will still keep a little longer; come and dine with me, and we will read it at the dessert.” Saying this, Pécoul, in his turn, put the letter into his pocket.

David went to dinner. There was a great display of luxury and coquetry. It was Pécoul’s ardent wish that the glory and fortune of David should spring from his own house.

At the dessert, Pécoul took out his son’s letter and read it aloud. This was like a piece of theatrical clap-trap. The profoundest silence ensued; the young girls held down their heads while eyeing David. David interrogated the sphinx. Pécoul, as he read the letter, tried also to read the thoughts of David in his eyes. The mother alone thought of him who had written the letter, for her son was still at Rome.

The letter ran as follows:—“The bearer of this, dear father, is my best friend; do your utmost that he may become my brother. This will be easy enough; he is twenty-five, and you have some marriageable daughters; he has genius, and you have money.”

Monsieur Pécoul finished reading; but his auditors were still listening.

“You see, mesdemoiselles,” at last said David, taken unexpectedly, “how your brother settles matters. I am quite confused at his good opinion of me; but he does not seem to know that neither daughter nor sister ought to be forced, where marriage is concerned. As for me, who am alone in the world, I should be too happy to people my solitude with beauty and virtue.”

After an awkward pause, the architect broke silence by telling David that he would religiously follow his son’s advice, especially as the celebrated painter of “Belisarius” had no natural aversion to matrimony. The conversation resumed its liveliness, and every one spoke much and gaily; but when David rose to leave, he did not yet know which of the two young girls he should marry. Of the two beauties he married the Roman type.

DAVID’S CRUELTY.

It is related of David, that during the reign of terror, when the executions were most numerous and indiscriminate, he would give vent to his ferocious nature by exclaiming with a chuckle, “C’est ça, il faut encore broyer du rouge.”

HIS EXCESSIVE VANITY.

His cruelty was only equalled by his vanity and sycophancy. Boasting of being like Robespierre—incorruptible, one who knew him remarked, “I know what would bribe you!” “What?” he indignantly exclaimed. “An apotheosis in the Pantheon during your lifetime,” was the answer.

On his death-bed, at the direction of his physicians, an engraving of one of his works was shown him to test the state of his faculties; he cast on it his glassy eyes, and muttered, “Il n’y a que moi qui pouvait concevoir la tête de Léonidas.”

DANTON’S FEATURES.

David, who regarded as a demi-god Danton, the organizer of the massacre of the prisons during the reign of terror, attempted several times to delineate the horrid countenance of this remarkable man; at last, giving up the attempt as impossible, David exclaimed, “Il serait plus facile de peindre l’éruption d’un volcan, que les traits de ce grand homme.”

DAVID AND NAPOLEON.

In his celebrated picture of the distribution of the eagles to Napoleon’s legions, David had represented Victory soaring over them, holding forth crowns of laurel. “What do you mean, sir, by this foolish allegory?” exclaimed the Emperor, “it was perfectly unnecessary. Without borrowing such absurd fictions, the world must know that all my soldiers are conquerors.” On returning some days after this ebullition of temper, the Emperor was delighted at finding David had painted three scrolls, bearing the names of Buonaparte, Hannibal, and Charlemagne.

DAVID AND THE EMPEROR’S PORTRAIT.

Before painting the Emperor’s portrait, he asked him how he would be represented. “On the field of victory, sire, sword in hand?” “Bah!” replied the Emperor. “Victories are not gained by the sword. Represent me, sir, dashing forward on a fiery steed.”

Again, when requested to sit a little more steadily, to obtain a good resemblance, Napoleon replied: “Pshaw, sir! who cares for a resemblance? What are mere features, sir? The genius of the artist is shown by his success in representing the fire—the inspiration of the face. Think you, sir, Alexander ever sat to Apelles?”

DENON (DOMINIQUE VIVANT).

DOMINIQUE VIVANT DENON was born in a small town of Burgundy, of a noble family, in the year 1747. He was appointed by the King, at an early age, gentleman-in-ordinary. Soon after, he was made secretary of embassy, and accompanied Baron Talleyrand to Naples. It was in this capacity, during the absence of Talleyrand, that Denon charmed all he had acquaintance with by his rare superiority of talent and depth of conception, which, lying concealed under an inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, was not even suspected to exist till the wit and courtier vanished to make room for the diplomatist. While in Italy, he devoted his mornings to the study of the Fine Arts, of which he was passionately fond. He was selected by Buonaparte to accompany him to Egypt, in which celebrated campaign Denon by turns wielded the sword and handled the pencil. It was remarked by all that his stock of gaiety never deserted him, even when under the severest privations. Many instances are recorded of his humanity and feeling on crossing the desert. His terrific picture of the Arab dying in the desert of hunger and thirst was taken from nature; and such and even worse scenes were daily met with by the artist during this memorable undertaking of the great general. Denon returned with Buonaparte to France, and prepared his immortal travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the Egyptian campaigns. This work, which has obtained the highest suffrages, and been translated into almost all European languages, was much admired by Buonaparte himself. One day, on looking over the work, Napoleon said, “If I lost Egypt, Denon has conquered it.” As a mark of appreciation of Denon’s talent and attachment, he was appointed by Napoleon director and administrator-general of the museums and medal-mint. This office was just in accordance with Denon’s taste and talents. No medals were allowed to be struck of which the designs and execution had not received the approbation of Denon; and to this cause, say the connoisseurs, is to be attributed the uniform superiority of the Napoleon medals in beauty of execution over every other collection in the world. Denon was specially appointed to superintend the erection of the column in the Place Vendôme in honour of the battle of Austerlitz. The model was to be the column of Trajan at Rome; but, it is generally agreed, Denon greatly surpassed his model. After the fall of Napoleon, Denon lived in retirement, occupying himself with his collection of medals, etc. His cabinet was open several days in the week, and was resorted to by strangers from all parts of the world. For the last seven years before his death, which took place in the year 1825, he employed his spare moments in the composition of a work on the “History of Art,” with about 300 to 400 plates from his own cabinet. The subscription was soon closed after his intention was known. Many of the first French artists, it is said, owe their advancement in life to his interest and influence. He died at the age of seventy-eight.

NAIVETÉ OF TALLEYRAND’S WIFE.

“Talleyrand invited Denon to dinner. When he went home to his wife, he said, ‘My dear, I have invited Denon to dine. He is a great traveller, and you must say something handsome to him about his travels, as he may be useful to us with the Emperor.’ His wife being extremely ignorant, and probably never having read any other books of travels than that of Robinson Crusoe, concluded that Denon could be nobody else than Robinson. Wishing to be very civil to him, she, before a large company, asked him divers questions about his man Friday! Denon, astonished, did not know what to think at first; but at length discovered by her questions that she really imagined him to be Robinson Crusoe. His astonishment and that of the company cannot be described, nor the peals of laughter which it excited in Paris, as the story flew like wildfire through the city; and even Talleyrand himself was ashamed of it.”—Gentleman’s Magazine.

DENON’S CURIOSITIES.

The following are a few of the many curiosities sold by auction in Paris in 1846. Various instruments which belonged to the tribunal of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The ring of John-without-Fear, Duke of Burgundy, who was assassinated on the bridge of Monterau; the ring being found in his grave in 1792. Plaster casts of the heads of Cromwell, Charles XII., and Robespierre. Fragments of bones found in the burial place of the Cid and Ximena at Burgos. Bones from the grave of Abelard and Heloise at Paraclete. Hair of Agnes Sorel, who was burned at Loches, and of Ines de Castro, at Alkaboga. Part of the moustaches of Henry IV., found in excellent preservation when the royal tombs at St. Denis were emptied in 1793. A piece of Turenne’s shroud. Bones of Molière and La Fontaine. Some hair of General Desaix. A tooth of Voltaire. A piece of the shirt stained with blood worn by Napoleon at the time of his death. A lock of his hair, and a leaf of the weeping willow which overshadows his grave at St. Helena.

FLAXMAN (JOHN), R.A.

FLAXMAN held the distinguished position of Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy. He was an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, and his mind seems to have been early imbued with that classic feeling and taste which it is essential for an historical sculptor to possess, and which laid the foundation of his future celebrity. He was admitted a Student of the Royal Academy, in 1770. In 1787, Mr. Flaxman went to Italy, where he pursued his studies for seven years. While resident at Rome, he made about eighty designs from the Iliad and Odyssey. These were so highly approved that he was afterwards engaged to illustrate, in the same manner, the works of Dante for Mr. Thomas Hope, and Æschylus for the late Countess Spencer. All these designs were made at Rome, and engraved there by Thomas Piroli. The Homer was published in quarto, in 1793, and again, with additional plates, in 1805; the Æschylus, in 1795; the Dante, in 1807. His illustrations of Hesiod were made after his return to England; they were engraved by W. Blake, and published in 1816. Mr. Flaxman returned from Rome in 1794, and was elected on his way a Member of the Academies of Florence and Carrara. His first work after his arrival in England, and for which he received the commission before he left Rome, was the monument to Lord Mansfield, in Westminster Abbey. He designed and executed many other sepulchral monuments, the most notable being those of Earl Howe, Lord Nelson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in St. Paul’s cathedral; while Westminster Abbey, and various other cathedrals and churches, are enriched with exquisite productions of his genius. Flaxman died, 3rd December, 1826, at the age of seventy-one.

HIS OBLIGING DISPOSITION.

The following letter curiously illustrates the kind and obliging nature of the celebrated sculptor. It is addressed to John Bischoff, Esq., Leeds:—

“Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square,
“19th of Aug. 1814.

“Dear Sir,—Your first respected letter was duly received, concerning the drawing for Dr. Whitaker’s new edition of ‘The History of Leeds;’ the answer to which has been delayed so long because I wished to send by it such information respecting the manner of engraving the monument of Captains Walker and Beckett, with the expense, as might enable Dr. Whitaker and yourself to determine what kind of print will be most likely to answer the purpose of publication—which will consequently determine the kind of drawing from which the copper-plate must be engraved. This information I have just obtained. A highly-finished shadowed engraving, of the proper size for a quarto book, will cost twenty guineas, or more; and in this department of Art there are two engravers of distinguished excellence, Mr. Bromley and Mr. Englehart. For such an engraving a drawing should be made by Mr. Stothard, who is used to draw for engravers; which is an absolute requisite, as this is a distinct branch of Art. A drawing of this kind costs about five or six guineas. If the Rev. Doctor would be satisfied with an outline of the monument—such as those published of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, as well as some in Cowper’s translations of Milton’s Latin poems, which is now a favourite style of decoration in books—I can make the outline myself, and will request the Editor’s acceptance of it. The engraving, including the copper-plate, will cost six guineas if done by Mr. Blake, the best engraver of outlines. When you favour me with Dr. Whitaker’s intentions on this subject, pray send in the letter the size of the intended book. I hope you will excuse the trouble I have occasioned you; and accept my particular thanks for your kindness and attention.

“I have the honour to remain, etc.,
“John Flaxman.”

FUSELI (HENRY), R.A.

HENRY FUSELI was a native of Zurich, and came to England at an early age, being undecided whether to make Literature or Art his study. He happened to take some of his drawings to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and requested the great painter to give his candid opinion upon their execution. The President was so struck with the power of conception displayed in them, that after attentively viewing them, he said, “Young man, were I the author of these drawings, and offered ten thousand a year not to practise as an artist, I would reject it with contempt.” This opinion, so flattering, decided him. In 1798, on the opening of his Milton Gallery, he fully satisfied all who might previously have had misgivings, by a rare display of lofty imagination, blended with extensive intellectual acquirements. All were agreed upon his marvellous genius as displayed in that exhibition. Among his masterly works in the Shakspeare Gallery, his “Ghost of Hamlet’s Father” was, perhaps, the grandest. Mr. Fuseli enjoyed the friendship of the most distinguished literati of the age. His townsman, Lavater, entertained a very high opinion of him before ever he discovered his genius by his after career. On leaving his native town to begin life, Lavater put into his hand a small piece of paper, beautifully framed, on which was written, “Do but the tenth part of what you can do.” “Hang that up in your bed-room,” said Lavater, “and I know what will be the result.” Mr. Fuseli enjoyed excellent health, no doubt the result of his habitual temperance; whether in town or country, summer or winter, he was seldom in bed after five o’clock. He died in the year 1825, at the ripe old age of 84, and his remains were interred in St. Paul’s cathedral.

HIS CAT.

It is related of the famous Fuseli, that he had a very imperfect sympathy for the harmless domestic cat. One day he was heard roaring at the top of his voice, “Same, Same, why the devil don’t you come?” The affectionate Mrs. F., who was in an adjoining room, rushed out, and catching sight of her husband’s agonized features, asked in dismay, “What do you want of Sam, my dear Henry?” The only reply to which was, “Oh! d—— your dear Henry; send up Same.” On hastening to his assistance, the professor was found sprawling on his back, and pointing to the great doors of his painting room. It was found that he had a few minutes before gone there to take out a large picture to paint upon, when a couple of cats that had crawled through the roof rushed out and confronted him, thus causing all the disturbance. The man for whom he had called so vigorously by the name of “Same,” was Samuel Stronger, his model, who found his patron as white as a ghost.

HIS GAITERS.

It was not unusual for Fuseli to walk into the students’ room, with his gaiters in his hand. He would put them on just before the Academy closed for the night. One night, in his hurry to begin, he forgot the gaiters, or rather mislaid them. A long-continued grumbling announced to the students present that something was wrong. One of the students, less careful than the others, began to titter; this caught the professor’s ears, who bounced out of the room, exclaiming, “Oh! you are all a set of teeves; you have stolen my gaiters!” The merriment had not subsided, when, reappearing with the missing articles in his hand, and assuming as bland a smile as he could command, he apologetically added, “Oh, no! I was the teef myself. It was I who stole the gaiters!”

THE DRAMA.

Fuseli was a profound scholar in the works of Shakspeare, so much so that he had the various passages of the plays at his fingers’ ends. As an illustration, the following incident occurred at a dinner table, at which many were present. Sitting beside Fuseli was a very garrulous, shallow young man, who several times misquoted the great dramatist. After receiving blunder upon blunder with an audible growl, he addressed the young gentleman with, “Where’s that to be found?”

“In Titus Andronicus, where the black, as you recollect, says—”

“No, saar, I do not recollect; I do not think it is in Taitus Andronicus at all.”

“Macbeth, perhaps,” ventured the quoter.

“No, no; it is not in Maac-beath.”

“In Hamlet.”

“No, nor in Haamlet, saar.”

“Well, then, I do not recollect where it is,” admitted the speaker. To which Fuseli added, “Perhaps you do not know, but it is in Otello, saar,” much to the diversion of the assembled guests.

NOISY STUDENTS.

Hearing a violent noise in the studio, and inquiring the cause, he was answered by one of the porters, “It’s only those fellows, the students, sir.” “Fellows!” exclaimed Fuseli; “I would have you to know, sir, those fellows may one day become Academicians.” The noise increasing, he opened the door with, “You are a den of wild beasts.” Munro, who was one of the students, bowed, and said, “And Fuseli is our keeper.”

THE YORKSHIREMAN.

Discoursing one day upon the merits of Phocion, the Athenian, a gentleman gravely put the question, “Pray, sir, who was Mr. Phocion?” Fuseli as gravely answered, “From your dialect, sir, I presume you are from Yorkshire; and, if so, I wonder you do not recollect Mr. Phocion’s name, as he was Member for your county in the Long Parliament!”

RICHARDSON’S NOVELS.

A gentleman speaking one day in the presence of Fuseli, of books, remarked, “No one now reads the works of Richardson.” “Do they not?” said the painter, “then by G— they ought. If people are tired of old novels, I should be glad to know your criterion of books. If Richardson is old, Homer is obsolete. Clarissa to me is pathetic; I never read it without crying like a child.”

CLASSICAL ATTAINMENTS.

Haydon, in his lectures on painting, observes: “In general literature, what is called polite literature, Fuseli was highly accomplished. He perhaps knew as much of Homer as any man; but he was not a deep classic; he could puzzle Dr. Burney by a question, but he was more puzzled if Dr. Burney questioned him. Porson spoke lightly of his knowledge of Greek, but in comparison with Porson, a man might know little and yet know a great deal; a friend once asked him to construe a difficult passage in the chorus in the Agamemnon of Æschylus—he cursed all choruses, and said he never read them! But his power of acquiring, idiomatically, a living language was certainly extraordinary; six weeks, he said, was enough for him to speak any language; yet though his tendency to literature gave him in society the power of being very amusing, I think it my duty to caution the young men present; he, for an artist, allowed literature to take too predominant a part in his practice, and sunk too much the painter in the critic.”

GAINSBOROUGH (THOMAS), R.A.

THIS eminent landscape painter was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk, in 1727. His father was a clothier by trade, and of very peculiar habits. It was to his mother, an accomplished woman, that he owed so much affectionate encouragement during his boyhood. He often absented himself from school, and spent the time sketching the picturesque dwellings with overhanging storeys in his neighbourhood. It has been said of him, “Nature was his teacher, and the woods of Suffolk were his Academy.” His affection for his birthplace was very great throughout his career, and there was not a tree of any beauty there that was not treasured in his memory. At the age of fifteen he left for London, and returned disappointed to Sudbury after four years’ absence. On his return to his native town he devoted himself to the study of landscape, and soon after married the handsome Margaret Burr, who brought an annuity of £200. Still he studied hard, and his fame extended. It was in 1774, after thirty-three years, he returned to the metropolis, his fame having long preceded him. With a splendid income, he occupied Schomberg House, Pall Mall, at a rental of £300 a year. Here there was much demand upon his industry by royalty, peers, and commoners. He died in August, 1788, in the sixty-second year of his age.

THE CONCEITED ALDERMAN.

Gainsborough was one day painting the portrait of a rich citizen, who told the painter that he had come in his new five-guinea wig. His manner and his attempts to look pretty had such an effect upon the artist, it was with the greatest difficulty he was prevented laughing in his face. At length, when the worthy alderman begged he would not overlook the dimple in his chin, his manner was so simpering that no power of his face could withstand it; Gainsborough burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, threw his pencils on the floor, and d—ning the dimple, declared he could not paint that or the alderman either, and never touched the picture more.

THE ARTIST’S INDEPENDENCE.

A gentleman being disappointed at not receiving his picture, called upon the painter, and inquired of the porter in a loud voice, “Has that fellow, Gainsborough, finished my portrait?” He was shown into the studio, where he beheld his portrait, and was much pleased with it. After ordering the artist to send it home forthwith, he added, “I may as well give you a cheque for the other fifty guineas.” “Stay a minute,” said Gainsborough, “it just wants a finishing stroke;” and snatching up a background brush, he dashed it across the smiling features, indignantly exclaiming, “Sir, where is my fellow now?”

HIS LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD.

“My Lord Duke,—A most worthy, honest man, and one of the greatest geniuses for musical compositions England ever produced, is now in London, and has got two or three members of parliament along with him out of Devonshire, to make application for one of the receivers of the land-tax of that county, now resigned by a very old man, one Mr. Haddy. His name is William Jackson; lives at Exeter; and for his plainness, truth, and ingenuity, at the same time, is beloved as no man ever was. Your grace has doubtless heard his compositions; but he is no fiddler, your grace may take my word for it. He is extremely clever and good, is a married man with a young family, and is qualified over and over for the place; has got friends of fortune who will be bound for him in any sum; and they are all making application to His Grace the Duke of Grafton to get him the place. But, my Lord Duke, I told him they could not do it without me; that I must write to your grace about it. He is at Mr. Arnold’s, in Norfolk Street, in the Strand; and if your grace would be pleased to think of it, I should be ever bound to pray for your grace. Your grace knows that I am an original, and therefore, I hope, will be the more ready to pardon this monstrous freedom from your grace’s, etc.,

Thomas Gainsborough.”

MRS. SIDDONS’S NOSE.

Mrs. Siddons sat for her portrait to Mr. Scott, of North Britain, who observed, the nose gave him great trouble. “Ah!” said the great actress, “Gainsborough was a good deal troubled the same way. He had altered and varied the shape a long while, when at last he threw down the pencil, exclaiming, ‘D—n the nose! there is no end to it.’” The pun was applicable, as that lady had a long nose.

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE.

A neighbour, having his garden robbed on several occasions, could never hit upon the thief. It happened one morning early, the painter, then a mere boy, walked in the garden sketching, when he observed a man pop his head over the garden wall. Being unobserved, the young artist had sufficient time to sketch the robber’s head, and from its accuracy, on showing it to a neighbour, the fellow was immediately recognised as living in the neighbourhood, and was accordingly apprehended.

THE GERMAN PROFESSOR.

The painter gave all the hours of intermission in his profession to fiddles and rebecs. His musical taste was very great; and he himself thought he was not intended by nature for a painter, but for a musician. Happening to see a theorbo in a picture of Vandyke’s, he concluded it must be a fine instrument. He recollected to have heard of a German professor; and, ascending to his garret, found him dining on roasted apples, and smoking his pipe, with his theorbo beside him. “I am come to buy your lute—name your price, and here’s your money.” “I cannot sell my lute.” “No, not for a guinea or two;—but you must sell it, I tell you.” “My lute is worth much money—it is worth ten guineas.” “Aye, that it is!—see, here’s the money.” So saying, he took up the instrument, laid down the price, went half-way downstairs, and returned. “I have done but half my errand; what is your lute worth if I have not your book?” “What book, Master Gainsborough?” “Why, the book of airs you have composed for the lute.” “Ah, sir, I can never part with my book!” “Pooh! you can make another at any time—this is the book I mean—there’s ten guineas for it; so, once more, good day.” He went down a few steps, and returned again. “What use is your book to me if I don’t understand it?—and your lute—you may take it again if you won’t teach me to play on it. Come home with me, and give me the first lesson.” “I will come to-morrow.” “You must come now.” “I must dress myself.” “For what? You are the best figure I have seen to-day.” “I must shave, sir.” “I honour your beard.” “I must, however, put on my wig.” “D—n your wig! Your cap and beard become you! Do you think if Vandyke was to paint you, he’d let you be shaved?”

THE ARTIST’S RETORT TO THE LAWYER.

Having to attend as a witness in an action brought by Desenfans against Vandergucht, both devotees to art, the painter was asked by the cross-examining counsel whether he did not think there was something necessary besides the eye to regulate an artist’s opinion respecting a picture? “I believe,” replied Gainsborough, “the veracity and integrity of a painter’s eye is at least equal to a pleader’s tongue.”

GORDON (SIR JOHN WATSON), R.A.

SIR J. W. GORDON was born in Edinburgh in 1788. He was intended by his father, Captain Watson, for the Engineers, but pending arrangements for his entering that service he was allowed to attend the Trustees’ Academy, under Graham, where he showed so much promise, that it was decided he should try his skill as an artist. In 1808 he sent a picture of a subject from “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” to the first public exhibition of paintings in Edinburgh, which was opened in that year; and contributed to most of the exhibitions held since. Never having studied or been abroad, he received his education in the art from the celebrated Graham, master of Wilkie, Allan, and others. In 1826, he assumed the name of Gordon for the purpose, it is said, of distinguishing his paintings from the other Watsons, who contributed at that time to the Edinburgh Exhibition. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1827, and was elected Associate in 1841. In 1850, he was unanimously chosen President of the Royal Scottish Academy, appointed Limner to Her Majesty, and received the honour of knighthood. The next year he was elected a Royal Academician. His industry at his art was continued till within a few weeks of his death, on 1st June, 1864, aged seventy-six years.

LORD PALMERSTON AND THE ARTIST.

“It was before I had a name,” said Mr. Gordon, looking round the room in true story-teller style. “I had exhibited for several years, but without any particular success. One year, however—the year before I painted ‘The Corsicans’—Lord Palmerston took a sudden fancy to my picture, called ‘Summer in the Lowlands,’ and bought it at a high figure. His lordship at the same time made inquiries after the artist, and invited me to call upon him. I waited upon his lordship accordingly: he complimented me upon the picture; but there was one thing about it he could not understand. ‘What is that, my lord?’ I asked. ‘That there should be such long grass in a field where there are so many sheep,’ said his lordship promptly, and with a merry twinkle of the eye. It was a decided hit this; and having bought the picture and paid for it, he was entitled to his joke. ‘How do you account for it?’ he went on, smiling, and looking first at the picture and then at me. ‘Those sheep, my lord,’ I replied, ‘were only turned into that field the night before I finished the picture.’ His lordship laughed heartily, and said, ‘Bravo!’ at my reply, and gave me a commission for two more pictures; and I have cashed since then some very notable cheques of his—dear old boy!”—Belgravia Magazine.

HARLOWE (GEORGE HENRY).

HARLOWE, the painter, was born in the parish of St. James’s, Westminster, in 1787. He was a posthumous child, but his mother took great care of his education, and allowed him to follow the bent of his inclination for the arts, which he studied, first under Drummond, and next under Sir Thomas Lawrence. He was dismissed by Sir Thomas in consequence of claiming as his own a picture Sir Thomas employed him to dead colour. He revenged himself by painting a caricature of Lawrence’s style on a signboard at Epsom, and signed it, “T. L., Greek St., Soho.” On leaving Sir Thomas’s employ, Harlowe made arrangements and started for Italy. Previous, however, to his going abroad, he painted some historical pictures of great merit, particularly one of Henry VIII., Queen Catherine, and Cardinal Wolsey. During his residence at Rome in 1818, he made a copy of Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” and executed a composition of his own, which was exhibited by Canova, and afterwards at the academy of St. Luke’s. He died soon after his return to England, January 28, 1819.

TAKING A LIKENESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

Harlowe was very eccentric, and not a little affected. He used to go to dinner parties in the dress of a field-officer, and he was always ambitious of being taken for a military man. John Kemble disliked the man and his affectations so much, that he refused, even at the request of Sir Thomas Lawrence, to sit to Harlowe, giving as his only reason—“I do not like that man.” Harlowe was engaged at this time on his celebrated picture of Queen Catherine, and finding the grave actor persisted in his refusal to sit, he went to the theatre when Kemble played Wolsey, and seating himself in front of the stage-box, made sketches of his face in every change of its expression, and from them composed the likeness in the picture, which, it is needless to say, is the best portrait of Kemble ever painted. Harlowe used afterwards to say, in speaking of this, “By G—, I painted that portrait so well out of revenge.”

HAYDON (BENJAMIN ROBERT).

BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON was born on the 25th January, 1786. In common with most true artists, young Haydon early displayed an overpowering love for art. One of his most favourite studies is said to have been drawing the guillotine, with Louis taking leave of the people. At the age of thirteen he was taken to the grammar school at Plympton—the same at which Sir Joshua Reynolds was educated. From thence he was sent to Exeter, to study book-keeping, and at the end of six months was bound to his father for seven years. Within a short time of his signing his indentures, it was evident to both his father and his friends that young Haydon would never do as a tradesman. After much dissuasion, and against all remonstrance, Haydon collected his books and colours, packed up his things, and started for London, in May, 1804. He took lodgings at 342, Strand, and for nine months he saw nothing but his books, his casts, and his drawings. He was introduced by Prince Hoare to Northcote, Opie, and Fuseli; and it was the latter who got the young artist into the Academy. While studying at the Academy he became acquainted with Sachom and Wilkie. In 1807, Haydon’s first picture of “Joseph and Mary resting on the road to Egypt,” appeared. About this time his devotion to his art was very close. He rose as soon as he woke—be it three, four, or five,—when he would draw at anatomy until eight; in chalk from nine till one, and from half-past one till five; then walked, dined, and to anatomy again from seven to ten and eleven. Wilkie had obtained for the young artist a commission from Lord Mulgrave for “Dentatus.” Having delayed the painting some months, Haydon in 1808 removed his lodgings to 41, Great Marlborough Street, when he began the noble lord’s commission in earnest. In this year he first saw the Elgin marbles, and he thus expresses his admiration of them: “I felt the future; I foretold that they would prove themselves the finest things on earth—that they would overturn the false beau ideal, where nature was nothing, and would establish the true beau ideal, of which nature alone is the basis. I felt as if a divine truth had blazed inwardly upon my mind, and I knew they would at last rouse the art of Europe from its slumber in the darkness.” His “Dentatus” brought him a prize of one hundred guineas from the British Institution. His next picture, “Macbeth,” he was not so successful with, and did not get the prize that the painter had expected: to make things worse, he relieved himself by quarrelling with the Academy and painting “Solomon.” He then began that system of getting into debt, which was the curse of his whole after-life. His usual companions were Hazlitt, the Hunts, Barnes (of the Times), Jackson, Charles Lamb, and John Scott. His “Solomon” was so far a success, that it was sold for six hundred guineas. Also the British Institution voted one hundred guineas to him as a mark of their admiration of this picture. In 1820 he finished his celebrated picture “Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.” By exhibiting this picture in town, Haydon made a clear profit of £1298. He then set to work to finish his picture “Christ in the Garden,” and to sketch his “Lazarus:” the latter he determined should be his grandest and largest work. Having recently married, he wrote on the last day of 1821 as follows: “I don’t know how it is, but I get less reflective as I get older. I seem to take things as they come, without much care. In early life everything, being new, excites thought. As nothing is new when a man is thirty-five, one thinks less. Or, perhaps, being married to my dearest Mary, and having no longer anything to hope in love, I get more contented with my lot, which, God knows, is rapturous beyond imagination. Here I sit sketching, with the loveliest face before me, smiling and laughing, and solitude is not. Marriage has increased my happiness beyond expression. In the intervals of study, a few minutes’ conversation with a creature one loves is the greatest of all reliefs. God bless us both! My pecuniary difficulties are still great; but my love is intense, my ambition intense, and my hope in God’s protection cheering.” But the remainder of the painter’s life—25 years—was one dark cloud, here and there relieved by momentary rays of sunshine. Always in debt; always in danger; always pestered by lawyers and arrests. It has been with truth observed, that upon one half of Haydon’s income, many a better man than he had lived. In 1835 we find him lecturing at Mechanics’ Institutions in the provinces, which for a time was a pecuniary success. But he was too deeply involved in the expensive fashions and gaieties of May Fair; and again we find him in the King’s Bench. Three more years of fearful struggle brought him to the fearful tragedy which shocked the country on the 22nd of June, 1846. Having returned from an early walk, Haydon entered his painting-room, and wrote in his diary:

“God forgive me! Amen.
Finis
of
B. R. Haydon.

‘Stretch me no longer on the rough world.’—Lear.

End of twenty-sixth volume.”

“Before eleven,” says Tom Taylor, “the hand that wrote it was stiff and cold in self-inflicted death.”

INTRODUCTION TO FUSELI.

“Calling at Fuseli’s house,” says Haydon, “the door was opened by the maid. I followed her into a gallery or show-room, enough to frighten anybody at twilight. Galvanized devils; malicious witches, brewing their incantations; Satan bridging Chaos, and springing upwards, like a pyramid of fire; Lady Macbeth, Carlo and Francisco, Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly—humour, pathos, terror, blood and murder, met one at every look. I expected the floor to give way: I fancied Fuseli himself to be a giant. I heard his footsteps, and saw a little bony hand slide round the edge of the door, followed by a little white-headed, lean-faced man, in an old flannel dressing-gown, tied round the waist with a piece of rope, and upon his head the bottom of Mrs. Fuseli’s work-basket. ‘Well, well,’ thought I, ‘I am a match for you at any rate, if bewitching is tried;’ but all apprehension vanished, on his saying in the mildest and kindest way, ‘Well, Mr. Haydon, I have heard a great deal of you from Mr. Hoare. Where are your drawings?’ In a fright, I gave him the wrong book, with a sketch of some men pushing a cask into a grocer’s shop. Fuseli smiled, and said, ‘Well, de fellow does his business at least with energy!’ I was gratified at his being pleased in spite of my mistake.... He (Fuseli) was about five feet five inches in height, had a compact little form, stood firmly at his easel, painted with his left hand, never held his palette upon his thumb, but kept it upon his stone, and being very near-sighted, and too vain to wear glasses, used to dab his beastly brush into the oil, and sweeping round the palette in the dark, take up a great lump of white, red, or blue, as it might be, and plaster it over a shoulder or a face. Sometimes in his blindness he would make a hideous smear of Prussian blue on his flesh, and then perhaps, discovering his mistake, take a bit of red to darken it; and then, prying close in, turn round and say, ‘Ah, dat is a fine purple! It is really like Correggio;’ and then, all of a sudden, he would burst out with a quotation from Homer, Tasso, Dante, Ovid, Virgil, or perhaps the Niebelungen Lied, and thunder round with ‘Paint dat!’... I found him,” continues Haydon, “the most grotesque mixture of literature, art, scepticism, indelicacy, profanity and kindness: he put me in mind of Archiman, in Spenser. Weak minds he destroyed. They mistook his wit for reason, his indelicacy for breeding, his swearing for manliness, and his infidelity for strength of mind; but he was accomplished in elegant literature, and had the art of inspiring young minds with high and grand views.”

LONDON SMOKE.

Haydon observed to Fuseli: “So far from the smoke of London being offensive to me, it has always been to my imagination the sublime canopy that shrouds the city of the world. Drifted by the wind, or hanging in gloomy grandeur over the vastness of our Babylon, the sight of it always filled my mind with feelings of energy, such as no other spectacle could inspire.” “Be Gode,” added Fuseli, “it’s like the smoke of the Israelites making bricks.” “It is grander,” rejoined the other; “for it is the smoke of a people who would have made the Egyptians make bricks for them.”

HAYDON’S DESCRIPTION OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL
OF PAINTERS.

“Never were four men so essentially different as West, Fuseli, Flaxman, and Stothard. Fuseli’s was undoubtedly the mind of the largest range; West was an eminent macchinista of the second rank; Flaxman and Stothard were purer designers than either. Barry and Reynolds were before my time; but Johnson said, in Barry’s ‘Adelphi’ ‘there was a grasp of mind you found nowhere else,’ which was true. Though Fuseli had more imagination and conception than Reynolds, though West put things together quicker than either, though Flaxman and Stothard did what Reynolds could not do, and Hogarth invented a style never thought of before in the world, yet, as a great and practical artist, in which all the others were greatly defective, producing occasional fancy pictures of great beauty, and occasional desperate struggles in high art, with great faults, Reynolds is unquestionably the greatest artist of the British School, and the greatest artist in Europe since Rembrandt and Velasquez.”

HAYMAN (FRANCIS), R.A.

FRANCIS HAYMAN was born in Exeter in the year 1708. He studied under Mr. Robert Brown, portrait painter. He has been described as meriting the honour of being placed at the head of the English School of Historical Painters. By his agreeable manners he became intimate with the bon vivants of the age in which he lived. Being introduced to Fleetwood, the then manager of Drury Lane, he painted his scenes, and after the manager’s death married his widow. In Pasquin’s “Royal Academicians,” we have the following remarks upon this painter, “In the great point of professional taste, Hayman could not be arranged as exemplary. Yet I have many doubts if taste is in any instance wholly intuitive; and am inclined to think that we acquire taste by the progressive movements of early perception, which, by frequent subtle inroads upon the mind, make, in the issue, an establishment, and give a system and a hue to thought. We may discover original genius in a savage, but never any symptom of that correct association of idea and action which constitute that practical excellence which we denominate taste.” Hayman died February 2nd, 1776.

GLUTTONY.

Hayman was noted for his eating. When an apprentice, he and his fellow apprentices (some of whose appetites were but little inferior) used to dine at a public-house in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House. Instead of declining to treat with them, the shrewd landlord used to observe, “I should be absolutely ruined by those young painters, but for one circumstance, which is, that their extraordinary appetites have become objects of great celebrity and curiosity in this quarter of the City, where we are such judges of those things: the consequence of which is that every day we have a gormandizing exhibition, and my house is full of spectators to see the Great Eaters: the company then retire to my other rooms to talk the matter over; conversation produces thirst; and therefore I make up by the sale of my liquor for my loss by the devastation of my edibles. Long life to the painters, I say! May their appetites increase with the diminution of what they feed on!”

MARQUIS OF GRANBY AND THE NOBLE ART.

Being of a lively temper and attached to boxing, the painter frequently recommended the “noble art” to his sitters, in order to give a vivacity to the features. While painting the picture of the celebrated Marquis of Granby, also an admirer of the stimulating exercise with the gloves, the invitation was given and accepted for a few rounds, and at it they went. The contest soon grew warm, and the uproar soon attracted all the inmates of the house, who, much alarmed, rushed into the room, and beheld the pugilistic peer and painter rolling about and mauling each other like enraged bears. Pictures, palettes, the easel, and the other furniture of an artist’s room, were scattered in dire confusion. A few minutes sufficed to smooth their ruffled feathers, and replace the furniture; after which the marquis took his place in high spirits, and Hayman gave the finishing touch to the picture.

THE PAINTER’S FRIENDSHIP FOR QUIN.

In 1755, Hayman etched a small quarto plate of Quin, the actor, in the character of Falstaff, seated on a drum in a swaggering attitude, with his right elbow resting upon the hilt of his sword, by the side of the body of Hotspur. Quin and Hayman were inseparable friends, and so convivial that they seldom parted till daylight. One night, after “beating the rounds,” and making themselves gloriously drunk, they attempted, arm in arm, to cross a kennel, into which they both fell. When they had remained there a minute or two, Hayman, sprawling out his shambling legs, kicked Quin. “Holloa! what are you at now?” stuttered Quin. “At? why, endeavouring to get up, to be sure,” replied the painter; “for this don’t suit my palate.” “Pooh!” replied Quin, “remain where you are; the watchman will come by shortly, and he will take us both up.”

HOGARTH (WILLIAM).

WILLIAM HOGARTH, who has been called “The Painting Moralist,” was born in London, in 1697. His father was a fine scholar, and his chief dependence was from the produce of his pen; and the son testifies to “the cruel treatment his father met with from booksellers and printers.” In his anecdotes of himself, he says: “Besides the natural turn I had for drawing, rather than learning languages, I had before my eyes the precarious situation of men of classical education.... It was, therefore, conformable to my own wishes that I was taken from school, and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver.” It was during his apprenticeship, about the year 1717, he executed a small oval illustration of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, which was much praised, and brought the young artist many admirers. The following year, his apprenticeship having expired, he entered the Academy in St. Martin’s Lane, and studied drawing from the life. He supported himself by engraving for the booksellers, and by all accounts a very hard time he had of it. In 1721, his father died “of an illness,” the son says, “occasioned partly by the treatment he received from this sort of people (booksellers), and partly by disappointment from great men’s promises.” And in another place he complains, “But here, again, I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and obstructive to the ingenious; for the first plate I published, called the Taste of the Town, in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price; and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops.” And thus, until nearly thirty years of age, this great genius earned hardly enough to maintain himself. It was in the year 1723 that the artist first turned his attention to the stage, and discovered his real genius in his satirical talents. After one or two caricatures his genius was quickly recognised, and his adverse circumstances were at an end. In 1726 he invented and engraved the set of twelve large prints for Hudibras. He married, in 1729, the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the painter, though without Sir James’s consent; but, after two years, seeing the rising reputation of the young painter, and at the earnest entreaties of others, the offended parent forgave the couple. Being reconciled with Sir James, Hogarth took up his brush and began portrait painting. About this time he says of himself: “I married and commenced painter of small conversation-pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches high. This, having novelty, succeeded for a few years. But though it gave somewhat more scope for the fancy, it was still but a less kind of drudgery; and as I could not bring myself to act like some of my brethren, and make it a sort of manufactory, to be carried on by the help of backgrounds and drapery painters, it was not sufficiently profitable to pay the expenses my family required. I therefore turned my thoughts to a still more novel mode—to painting and engraving modern moral subjects—a field not broken up in any country or any age.” His first painting is said to have been a representation of Wanstead Assembly, painted for Lord Castlemaine; which, meeting with much favourable notice, led him to painting portraits. This part of the profession was not at all suited to the artist’s peculiar genius; though Nichols says of Hogarth’s attempts: “He was not, however, lucky in all his resemblances, and has sometimes failed where a crowd of other artists have succeeded.” After surprising the country with the production of his great genius as an artist for many years, in 1753 he appeared in the character of author, and published a quarto volume entitled, “The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste.” Wherein he shows, by a variety of examples, that a curve is the line of beauty, and round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye. Walpole, commenting upon this production from the pen of the artist, observes: “It has many sensible hints and observations; but it did not carry the conviction, nor meet the universal acquiescence he expected. As he treated his contemporaries with scorn, they triumphed over this publication, and irritated him to expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In the ball, had he confined himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his affection; but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady, that are strikingly stiff and affected. They are a Bath beau and a country beauty.” It should be added that neither as artist nor author did Hogarth ever receive flattery from the pen of the courtly Walpole. Hogarth died on the 25th October, 1764.

WILKES AND CHURCHILL.

In Mr. Thomas Wright’s work, “England under the House of Hanover,” that writer thus describes the caricature drawn upon the artist by his quarrel with Wilkes and Churchill:—

“They hold him up now as the pensioned dauber of the unpopular Lord Bute, and the calumniator of the friends of liberty. In one entitled, ‘The Beautifyer: a Touch upon the Times,’ Hogarth is represented upon a huge platform, daubing an immense boot (the constant emblem of the obnoxious minister), while, in his awkwardness he bespatters Pitt and Temple, who happen to be below. This is a parody on Hogarth’s own satire on Pope. Beneath the scaffold is a tub full of Auditors, Monitors, etc., labelled ‘The Charm: Beautifying Wash.’ A print entitled ‘The Bruiser Triumphant,’ represents Hogarth as an ass, painting the Bruiser, while Wilkes comes behind, and places horns on his head,—an allusion to some scandalous intimations in the North Briton. Churchill, in the garb of a parson, is writing Hogarth’s life. A number of other attributes and allusions fill the picture.

“A caricature entitled ‘Tit for Tat’ represents Hogarth painting Wilkes, with the unfortunate picture of Sigismunda in the distance. Another, ‘Tit for Tat, Invt. et del. by G. O’Garth,—according to act or order is not material,’ represents the painter partly clad in Scotch garb, with the line of beauty on his palette, glorifying a boot surmounted by a thistle. The painter is saying to himself, ‘Anything for money: I’ll gild this Scotch sign, and make it look glorious; and I’ll daub the other sign, and efface its beauty, and make it as black as a Jack Boot.’ On another easel is a portrait of Wilkes, ‘Defaced by order of O’Garth, and in the foreground ‘a smutch-pot to sully the best and most exalted characters.’ In another print, ‘Pug, the snarling cur,’ is being severely chastised by Wilkes and Churchill. In another he is baited by the bear and dog; and in the background is a large panel, with the inscription, ‘Panel-painting.’ In one print, Hogarth is represented going for his pension of £300 a year, and carrying as his vouchers the prints of ‘The Times,’ and Wilkes, ‘I can paint an angel black, and the devil white, just as it suits me.’ ‘An answer to the print of John Wilkes, Esq.,’ represents Hogarth with his colour-pot, inscribed ‘Colour to blacken fair characters;’ he is treading on the cap of liberty with his cloven foot; and an inscription says, ‘£300 per annum for distorting features.’

“Several other prints equally bitter against him, besides a number of caricatures against the Government, under the fictitious names of O’Garth, Hoggart, Hog-ass, etc., must have assisted in irritating the persecuted painter.”

GARRICK’S GENEROSITY.

The following anecdote of the mode by which the great actor became possessed of some of Hogarth’s celebrated pictures has been vouched as genuine: the pictures consisted of The Entertainment, The Canvass, The Poll, and The Chairing. “When Hogarth had finished them, he went to Garrick, with whom he was on very intimate terms, and told him he had completed them; adding, ‘It does not appear likely that I shall find a purchaser, as I value them at two hundred guineas; I therefore intend to dispose of them by a raffle among my friends, and I hope you will put down your name.’ Garrick told him he would consider of it, and call on him the next day. He accordingly did so, and having conversed with Hogarth for some time, put down his name for five or ten guineas, and took his leave. He had scarcely got into the street, when (as Mrs. Garrick, from whom the story is derived, stated) he began a soliloquy to the following effect: ‘What have I been doing? I have just put down my name for a few guineas at Mr. Hogarth’s request, and as his friend; but now he must still go to another friend, and then to another: to how many must he still apply before he gets a sufficient number? This is mere begging; and should such a man as Hogarth be suffered to beg? Am I not his friend?’ The result was, that he instantly turned back, and purchased those fine pictures at the price of 200 guineas, which the artist himself had fixed.” Hogarth’s principal object in painting them, like his other great works, was for the purpose of copying them by engravings. They were published by subscription at two guineas the set. For the first plate of The Entertainment he had 461 subscribers at 10s. 6d.; and for the three others only 165 subscribers; so that there were 296 names to the first who did not subscribe to the other three.

CARICATURE.

On a lady expressing a wish to Hogarth to learn the secret of caricature, he replied, with much earnestness, “Alas! young lady, it is not a faculty to be envied. Take my advice and never draw caricature: by the long practice of it I have lost the enjoyment of beauty. I never see a face but distorted; I never have the satisfaction to behold the human face divine.”

WILKES.

Writing to his friend Churchill, Wilkes says: “I take it for granted you have seen Hogarth’s print against me. Was ever anything so contemptible? I think he is fairly felo de se. I think not to let him off in that manner, although I might safely leave him to your notes. He has broken into my pale of private life, and set that example of illiberality which I wished—of that kind of attack which is ungenerous in the first instance, but justice in the return.”

HOGARTH’S CONCEIT.

At a dinner party Hogarth was told that Mr. John Freke had asserted that Dr. Maurice Greene was as eminent in musical composition as Handel. “That fellow Freke,” said Hogarth, “is always shooting his bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel kind of composer.” “Aye,” rejoined the other, “but at the same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait painter as Vandyke.” “There he was right,” replied the artist; “and so, by G—, I am,—give me my time, and let me choose my subject.”

AN UGLY SITTER.

It happened, in the early part of Hogarth’s life, that a nobleman, who was uncommonly ugly and deformed, came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed with a skill that did honour to the artist’s abilities; but the likeness was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of his dear self, never once thought of paying for a reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money; but afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient, which he knew must alarm the nobleman’s pride, and by that means answer his purpose. He sent him the following card:—

“Mr. Hogarth’s dutiful respects to Lord ——; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. H.’s necessity for the money; if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man; Mr. H. having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it for an exhibition picture, on his lordship’s refusal.”

This intimation had the desired effect. It was sent home and committed to the flames.

HOPPNER (JOHN), R.A.

JOHN HOPPNER was born in London, in the year 1759. In the earlier part of his life, it was his good fortune to associate with some of the most brilliant characters of the age. He applied himself closely to the study of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was, in many points, successful in imitating that celebrated portrait-painter’s beauties. On his first using the brush, he is described as possessing much confidence, with little ability.

Edward Dayes, in his “Modern Artists,” in estimating the works of Hoppner, says:—

“This artist is the best of all the imitators of Sir Joshua, and would deserve great praise, were his pictures his own; but so far is that from being the case, that they are composed from the prints of Reynolds; and the attitudes of the sitters made to answer as well as circumstances will permit. It is truly astonishing that any one can lose sight of the charms of that great mistress of the art, Nature, and tread servilely in the footsteps of any man, however exalted his rank. The loss of ambition is a sure sign of the decline of the arts; as, where every one is content to follow, no one will get before. When a great man appears, weak minds are apt to seek for the rules of art in his works, instead of applying to Nature: this is precisely the case of this artist; he has not a wish, or an inquiry to make, that does not end in Reynolds,—forgetting the old proverb, that when two men ride on a horse, one must be behind. His colouring is clear and bright, his handling free; his small pictures are by far the best.”

Hoppner died in Charles Street, St. James’s Square, on the 23rd January, 1810.

AN ECCENTRIC CUSTOMER.

The following humorous anecdote is given in the Literary Gazette, 1826, as related by Hoppner, to his friend Coombe: A loyal banker dropped in upon the painter, to negociate for a family picture. It happened in the memorable epoch of “life and property men,” when London was to be thatched with silver, and paved with gold. “Well, sir, your most obedient, Mister Painter,” said the squire banker, looking around, “Sir, yours,” returned the painter, bowing low. The banker was a fine, portly, pompous-looking citizen, a good subject to his Majesty, and no bad subject as a sitter, though it happened that he sat not. “Well, Mister Painter, sir, you have some fine pieces here, sir. Pray sir, a—what may be the value of that?” pointing to a whole length of an admiral. “My price for that is two hundred guineas.” “So!” ejaculated the banker; “a fine, noble-looking fellow, ’pon my word—very heroical indeed! Ah! Mister Painter, they are our great wooden walls, our prime bull-works. This is the land for such seamen—old England, hey, sir! and those who don’t like it, why let ’em leave it: that’s my toast, sir. But to the point, sir: my business is to negociate, look you, for a large family piece,—myself, my wife, and my boys and girls; a fine family, as you shall see, sir,—the same number as his Majesty’s, God bless him! Now, what is your charge for such a collection?—group, I think you painters call it.” “I cannot exactly answer that, within five hundred pounds or so,” replied the painter. “Wheugh-h-h!” whistled the banker. “What, sir, five hundred pounds?” “Such a subject requires study, sir, great studying—as how——” “Pooh! pooh! study, Mister Painter? true, sir, but you have not studied Cocker, sir, hey? ha, ha, ha!” “Why, sir, such a work requires consideration. I should like first to be allowed to see your family, sir—and then—how to dispose of so many persons—how to employ them, and—and—” “Oh, my good sir, I’ll save you that trouble; that is already settled, my good sir:—we are to be painted on our lawn, with a harpsichord, and all singing God save the King.”

THE ALDERMAN’S LADY.

From a volume of the Literary Gazette, 1826, we extract the following: “There are faces,” Hoppner observed, “without features, and features without faces.” An alderman’s lady says, “La! Mr. Hoppner, Sir John looks too grave.” “Why, madam, ’tis the only way to make a sitter escape looking like a fool.” “But why not make Sir John smile?” “A smile in painting is a grin, and a grin is a growl, and a growl is a bite—and I’ll not alter it,” said the half-mad, irritable painter; “and if ever I paint another subject, short of a Lord Mayor, I’ll be d—d!”

A COOL SITTER.

Hoppner was commissioned to paint a certain pompous personage, one of the cabinet of the king. The great man could not condescend to attend any painter; so it was to be taken at the great man’s house. It was to be a whole length. “Well, sir,” quoth the Right Honourable, as Mr. H. made his bow, “I have no time, sar, to give to your art, a—unless you can take a scheme of me at my breakfast.” The repast was already laid,—a steaming urn, coffee-pot, toast, rolls, muffins, chickens, and ham. The limner spread his arcana, and commenced to paint, as the great man commenced his déjeûné by supplying his appetite with half a muffin, and a cut from the wing of a pullet, together with a slice of ham. This accomplished, and sipping his tea, without condescending to notice the artist, he seized the newspaper, took his reading-glass from his bosom, began dictating to his private secretary, gave orders to his cook for dinner, dictated again, sipped his tea; and with the cup hiding his chin, and the newspaper his cheek, pompously exclaimed, “I desire, Master Hoppner, that you proceed.” “I am going,” replied the indignant artist, who, stalking out of the room, left the great man all astounded at the haughty demeanour of a portrait painter.

IBBETSON (JULIUS CÆSAR).

JULIUS CÆSAR IBBETSON was born at Scarborough, in Yorkshire, in 1759; was apprenticed to a ship painter at Hull, and at an early age came to London, and practised his art. He painted landscapes, cattle, and some historical pieces. Benjamin West appropriately called him the Berghem of England; yet, like many other men of great ability, his genius was no match for poverty. Mr. Redgrave, in “A Century of Painters of the English School,” says: “He was one of the jolly companions of George Morland: like him he lived from hand to mouth; was employed by an inferior class of picture dealers, and made them his pot companions.” He published a whimsical book entitled “Humbugalogia,” in which he fully exposed the ignorance and tricks of professed picture dealers. Among other rather coarse, but very forcible, illustrations which it contained, was one to the following effect: “These people say they have a great love for the fine arts. Yes; just such a love as a butcher has for a fat ox.” After quitting London, this clever artist resided for some years in the lake districts of Westmoreland, which he left to settle at Masham. In 1817, whilst engaged in painting a favourite hunter of Lady Milbank’s, he took cold, which settled on his lungs, and terminated his existence on the 13th October, 1817.

THE TOPER’S REPLY.

According to “Notes and Queries” (vol. viii. N.S., p. 96), there is a local tradition that whilst Ibbetson was residing at Ambleside, he used often to ramble as far as the picturesque valley of Troutbeck, which is about four miles from Ambleside, to indulge in the double enjoyment of the sweet scenery around, and the “home brewed” within the humble ale-house there; and that, in commendation of the latter, he painted a sign with two faces, each “looking the character” admirably: the one being that of a stout, jolly-faced toper with rubicund nose, and the other that of a thin, white-faced, lantern-jawed teetotaler; and with labels from their mouths thus inscribed:—

“Thou mortal man, who liv’st by bread,

What is it makes thy nose so red?”

And,

“Thou silly oaf, with nose so pale,

It is with drinking Birket’s ale.”

The painting has been supplanted by its title in plain letters, “The Mortal Man,” but the old people say they still remember the sign, and that it is now preserved in Carlisle.

THE RECOGNITION.

Ibbetson’s abilities attracted the notice of M. de Loutherbourg, who introduced him to Mons. Desenfans, of pictorial memory. An invitation to breakfast placed Ibbetson and Loutherbourg in Mons. Desenfans’ parlour, the walls of which were covered with chefs d’œuvre of art; and the judgment of the young painter was tried on the merits of the several masters. When coming to one which seemed to attract Ibbetson’s particular regard, Mons. Desenfans observed: “That, Mr. Ibbetson, is a very beautiful example of David Teniers.” There was a pause, Mons. Desenfans requested Ibbetson’s opinion; whose answer, after another pause, was: “That picture, sir?—that picture I painted!” Here was confusion worse confounded. The collector had been taken in: his judgment had been committed. The murder, however, was out; marks and circumstances proved the fact beyond doubt. The good-natured Loutherbourg endeavoured to “take up his mangled matter at the best:”—“He had frequently been deceived.” Nay, he went further, and told how, in his younger days, he had himself manufactured a few old masters. Whether or not this apology mended the business, we know not; but certain it is that poor Ibbetson was never again asked to breakfast with Mons. Desenfans.

INMAN (HENRY).

HENRY INMAN was born at Utica, New York, 20th October, 1801. His parents were English. His father removed to the city of New York, in 1812, at which early date Inman’s taste for drawing was manifested, and cultivated to a certain extent at the day-school he attended. The arrival of Wertmuller’s picture of Danæ, about the year 1814, first suggested the art to him as a profession. It was exhibited at Mr. Jarvis’s rooms, in Murray Street, and Inman gives the following account of his second visit to it:—

“On a second visit, when I went alone, I saw Mr. Jarvis himself, who came up from his painting room into the apartment in which the Danæ, with other works of art, were placed. On observing his entrance, with maulstick in his hand, and palette on his arm, I removed my hat and bowed, presuming that he was the master of the establishment. At that time I regarded an artist with peculiar reverence. Without noticing my salutation, he walked rapidly towards me, and, with his singular look of scrutiny, peered into my face. Suddenly he exclaimed, ‘By heavens, the very head for a painter!’ He then put some questions to me; invited me below stairs, and permitted me to examine his portfolios. He shortly after called upon my father, and proposed to take me as a pupil. I was at this time preparing for my entrance to the West Point Institution, as a cadet, for which I had already obtained a warrant. My father left the matter to myself, and I gladly accepted Mr. Jarvis’s proposal. I accordingly entered upon a seven years’ apprenticeship. Notwithstanding his phrenological observations upon my cranium, a circumstance connected with my first effort in oil colours would seem to contradict his favourable inference. Another of his students and myself were set down before a small tinted landscape, with instructions to copy it. Palettes and brushes were put into our hands, and to work we went. After much anxious looking and laborious daubing, Mr. Jarvis came up to see what progress we had made. After regarding our work for some moments in silence, he astounded us with these words: ‘Get up! get up! These are the most infernal attempts I ever saw. Here, Philip! [turning to a mulatto boy, who was grinding paints in another part of the room], take the brushes, and finish what these gentlemen have begun so bravely!’ All this took place in the presence of several strangers, who had come to look at the gallery. You can imagine what a shock our self-love received. Such mortifications are the most enduring of all remembrances. Notwithstanding this rebuff, I managed to make other and more successful efforts.”

At the expiration of his apprenticeship, he married Miss O’Brien, and began business for himself as a portrait and miniature painter. It is stated that in this latter branch he was very successful, although he afterwards entirely abandoned it. On his removal to Philadelphia he painted a portrait of Mr. Rawle for the members of the bar of that city. At this gentleman’s house he saw a copy of Stuart’s celebrated portrait of Washington, of which he mentions the following anecdote:—

“Mr. R. informed me, while we were looking at the head of Washington, that on one occasion, when that great man dined at his house, he sat immediately beneath the picture, and that position gave Mr. R. ample opportunity to satisfy himself of the correctness of the resemblance. I was much pleased with this testimony in favour of its truth, as of late years an attempt has been made to impeach the justice of Stuart’s representation of Washington.”

In the midst of his success, Inman appears to have been discontented with city life; and throughout the journal which he kept, “intended,” as he says, “for the reception of miscellaneous notes on passing events,” we find interspersed, longings for the green fields. In a letter to a friend, he says: “I have always panted to live in the country, where I can be surrounded by something pleasanter to look upon than the everlasting brick walls of a city; ... and moreover, I shall then be better enabled to withdraw myself gradually from mere face-making: to practise in the more congenial departments of art—namely, landscape and historical painting.”

He suffered much from attacks of asthma, which visited him in the summer or autumn of every year, until his death. In 1841 he was attacked with more violence than he ever experienced before, and he describes his suffering with characteristic cheerfulness. He speaks of the grinding agony he endured as his “bosom fiend,” and compares it with the “vulture gnawing into the vitals of Prometheus.”

In February, 1842, we find him one of the guests at a dinner given to Mr. Chas. Dickens, at the Astor House; on which occasion Mr. Inman made a speech, from which it will be seen, though so great and so recent a sufferer from his complaint, he still retained his cheerful social qualities. The following is a part of the speech referred to:—

“I would invite your attention, sir, in the first place, to the great value which the arts of design must attach to the peculiar literature of the author we delight to honour in the person of our cherished guest; insomuch as it affords so many admirable themes for pictorial illustration. The great schools of art, of painting in particular, are divided into the classical, the romantic, and the picturesque, the last of which is by far the most popular and most cultivated in this department of taste. The two first appeal for their sources of interest to associations connected with the history of the remote past; but the latter addresses itself to every feeling that links us to ‘the world we live in,’ with all its thrilling contrasts of happiness and misery, of vice and virtue.

“Mr. President, I will venture to claim for the writings of Mr. Dickens, in especial manner, this attribute of the picturesque. He has sought and found, in the humble walks of life, those unequalled scenes of pathos, of humour, and of sentiment, which so eminently characterize his productions. Passing by the abodes of wealth, luxury, and rank, where the passions are all concealed beneath the mask of cold convention, he has flashed the light of his genius upon the gloomy haunts of squalid poverty and suffering virtue, the dark dens of reckless guilt and crime, until every salient point of interest is revealed in a thousand glowing objects of contemplation to the student of morals, of human nature, and of art.

“Another quality which enhances the analogy which I have attempted to establish, is to be found in the graphic force of his delineations. For all the purposes of fame, his fictitious personages have already become intense realities. For instance: who does not firmly believe that those charming people, Messrs. Winkle, Tupman, Snodgrass & Co., are at this moment ‘Pickwicking’ it about London in veritable flesh and blood? Let me ask who that wears a heart does not weep over the memory of poor Nell, as over one we have known and loved in actual life?

“In conclusion, this picturesqueness, this artistic power, will, perhaps, sanction the parallel I have introduced in the toast I now beg leave to offer. I will give you, sir, the ‘Boz’ gallery of written pictures—may Charles Dickens long live to add new master-pieces to the imperishable collection!”

On New Year’s Day, 1843, the following singular medley of mirth and melancholy is entered in his diary: “Stayed home all day. The zest and cream of life are gone. Two hundred thousand dollars and travelling would revive me—nothing else; ditto fishing.” On the 3rd January, he writes: “Fine prospect of starving to death this year. Not a soul comes near me for pictures. Ambition in art is gone. Give me a fortune, and I would fish and shoot for the rest of my life, without touching a brush again.”

In 1844 he came to England, when he was engaged to paint the portraits, among others, of Dr. Chalmers and Wordsworth. With respect to his visit to the latter, Inman, in a letter to a friend, says: “Mary and I had a very pleasant time in Westmoreland, I can assure you; fine weather, glorious scenery, and a very kind reception from the great poet. Mr. Wordsworth, who is now a hale old man of 75 years, accompanied me on one or two of my sketching excursions, for which I feel highly honoured, as he is not only a good poet, but a most intelligent and long-headed man in conversation.... I heard from Mr. Carey, of Philadelphia, who wishes me to paint for him the portrait of the celebrated writer, the Rt. Hon. Thos. B. Macaulay, M.P., instead of the fancy piece originally ordered, I have heard from the great man, and he, in a very complimentary note, has consented to sit in about five weeks. I shall then come up to London again for this purpose.”

Having finished the portrait of Macaulay, he thus writes to a friend:—