follow in the footsteps of the Tuscan poet of old time unveil the dismal secrets of the "Tower of Hunger," — and portray Count Ugolino and his children in the agonies of their famishing despair. Far from being satisfied with his own success, Sir Joshua was ever aiming at improvement. Late in his career, and at considerable cost, he took the pains to discompose some valuable pictures of the old Venetian School, in order to trace and ascertain their process of colouring. It must be owned, however, that such experiments were made in some measure at the expense of his friends. Thus at Blenheim, which, during one phase of his art, he adorned with many admirable portraits, a spectator at the present day must observe with concern, that the colours have so far faded from each face of female loveliness as exactly to resemble the livid hues of death. The change can scarce have been greater in the originals themselves. From some such result or anticipation, Sir Joshua did not persevere for any long period in the new courses which he tried. Towards the close of his life, he had an opportunity to see again that portrait of Captain Hamilton which he had painted some forty years before. He was surprised to find it so good, and, comparing it with his later works, lamented that during so many years he should not have made a greater progress. * Of the other principal painters at this time, Hogarth had died four years before the Academy was constituted. The best judges have deemed him deficient in the art of colouring. But, as Horace Walpole happily expresses it, he should be considered rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil than as a painter. Allan Ramsay, son of the poet of that name, though far inferior to Reynolds, showed in his portraits both taste and skill. Like Reynolds he was a friend of Dr. Johnson, who speaks of him with warm regard, and survived him only a few months.** Ramsay was painter in ordinary to the *Life by Malone, p. viii. **"Poor Ramsay! .... I no sooner lost sight of dear Allan than I am King and Queen; in fact, it has been remarked, that their Majesties never gave Sir Joshua a commission for a single picture, and sat to him only once, when their portraits were required for the Royal Academy.* In 1766, however, Reynolds was selected to paint the portrait of the Queen of Denmark on her marriage. He was wont to complain of the difficulties of the task, since during the hours of sitting, that ill-assorted and unhappy Princess had been for the most part in tears. ** Romney was another painter of high reputation in his day. There are not many things in biography more striking than the tale how, at the age of twenty-seven, he forsook his young wife at Kendal, and went forth to seek his fortune in London how, after seven-and-thirty years of desertion, he returned to her, rich indeed and famous, but worn out in body and in mind and how, with patient forgiveness, she nursed him during his remaining span of decay, and at last of imbecility. When in full possession of his powers, he had been deemed a rival to Sir Joshua himself, and it is by no means to the credit of the President, that Romney never was elected even an associate of the Royal Academy. Indeed, whenever Reynolds had occasion to refer to him, he would call him only "the man in Cavendish Square.' In those days Lord Thurlow had said: "There are two "factions in Art, and for my part I am of the Romney "faction." But, as Mr. Southey observes, time has reversed the Chancellor's decision.*** The true rival of Reynolds, in our eyes at least, was Gainsborough. Born and bred in Suffolk, he had not the advantages of academic education or foreign travel; but from his earliest years he manifested an inborn passion for art. A beautiful wood near Sudbury is still shown, where Gainsborough, in his school-boy days, used to sit and told that I shall see him no more." (To Sir Joshua Reynolds, Aug. 19. 1784.) *Memoirs by Northcote, p. 259. fill his copy-books with pencillings of flowers and trees.* With Wilson he divides the honour of founding our school of landscape; with Reynolds the honour of restoring our school of portrait-painting. Below Sir Joshua in the taste and composition of his portraits, it may be questioned whether he does not excel him in a still more essential quality the true and life-like delineation of the countenance portrayed. At this time the name of British sculpture was worthily upheld by Bacon and Nollekens. To the former Westminster Abbey owes the great monument of Chatham; the latter was good in statues, but excellent in busts. In their literary attainments they differed greatly. Of Bacon we are told, that he showed some skill in composition, while Nollekens was wholly ignorant of grammar and spelling.** Of both it is pleasing to find, that their profession brought them wealth as well as fame. Bacon at his death left 60,000l., and Nollekens, whose career was much longer, no less than 200,000l. An Academy comprising men like these, men of every variety of birth, of education, of character, and of creed, (thus, for example, Bacon was a Methodist, Nollekens a Roman Catholic, and Flaxman a follower of Swedenborg,) was often discordant and disturbed. Some complaints from those whom it excludes, some quarrels among those whom it admits, are, perhaps, in any such institution unavoidable. Certainly they have not been avoided. Even at the present day the war, at least from without, is waging. But there is one day in the year, when, by common consent, all strife is hushed, all rivalry suspended, when on the first Saturday in May the Exhibition Rooms, rich with the well-wrought toils of the preceding year, are opened by the President and his brother Academicians to a chosen company of guests. There all ranks, all professions, and all parties intellectual pleasure being for that day a sufficient bond between * Cunningham's Lives of the Painters, vol. iii. p. 320. them - are assembled to commune with artists and do homage to Art. There the Ministers of the Crown, forgetting the Parliamentary battles of the night before, exchange a cordial greeting with the Ministers who were, or the Ministers who will be, as in emulous admiration they throng around some stag or sheltie of Landseer, or a sunlit lake by Stanfield. There the poet may behold the visions of his fancy bodied forth in living hues. There the historian may acknowledge his own descriptions far exceeded. * There as the banquet ceases, and the shades of evening close in, the gaslights that were kept ready burst into a sudden radiance, and illume the pictured walls at the very moment when the health of the Sovereign is proposed, and the name of VICTORIA is pronounced. Nor will any former guest forget how in the speeches, throughout that evening, the common interchange of compliments was graced, and, as it were, exalted, by the skill and taste and diction such as on no similar occasion have I heard surpassed, of Sir Martin Shee. The contemporaries of the first Academicians speak with little respect of the taste for art which then prevailed. Goldsmith, in his Vicar of Wakefield, observes that there are two infallible rules by which any one may acquire the name of connoisseur among the English; the one always to assert that the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino. Foote, in one of his plays, aims many a bitter jest at the ignorant enthusiasm so readily imposed upon by new-made antiquities of Herculaneum, or spurious works of Guido and Raphael. He goes on to a complaint of the admiration for these great old Masters, as though it must involve some injustice to the living**—a complaint, however, May I be allowed to express my warm appreciation of the genius and success with which one passage of this History ("A Scene in Change "Alley in 1720," vol. ii. p. 11.) has been illustrated by Mr. E. M. Ward. (No. 291. in the Exhibition of 1847.) ** In his play of "Taste," a picture of Pharaoh's Daughter and Moses being much commended: 66 which any real artist, or real friend to Art, will be slow to make. By experience the very reverse is shown. As with the artist himself a growing admiration of the painter "sires of Italy" becomes a sure test of his own progress, so with the patron of Art that admiration, if heart-felt and unfeigned, leads to no slight or disparagement of the present school, but rather to a more thoughtful and indulgent appreciation of its labours - not requiring from it that it should approach the unapproachable, but only that its principles should be tried, and its path the true one. It is not arrogance or harshness, but, on the contrary, a gentle and a reverent spirit, a sense of our own brief span and fleeting pleasures, that are fostered by a frequent contemplation of the works of the departed great. Once, as Sir David Wilkie (Mr. Washington Irving and myself being then his fellow - travellers in Spain) was gazing on one of Titian's master-pieces the famous picture of the Last Supper in the Refectory of the Escurial an old Monk of the Order of St. Jerome came up to him, and said, "I have sate daily in "sight of that picture for now nearly threescore years. "During that time my companions have dropped off one "after another - all who were my seniors, all who were of "my own age, and many or most of those who were younger "than myself nothing has been unchanged around me ex"cept those figures, large as life, in yonder painting - and I "look at them till I sometimes think that they are the reali"ties and we the shadows!" Far, therefore, from joining in the shallow sarcasms of Foote, we shall see reason to lament and wonder that a public collection of the works of the great old Masters was for so many years delayed amongst us. More than half a century elapsed between the establishment of the Royal Academy and the establishment of the National Gallery. Even now the latter collection has by no means attained the Brush. Lack a day, 'tis but a modern performance; the Master is alive, and an Englishman. Lord Dupe. Oh! then I would not give it house-room! |