Part 2
“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.”
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_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.”
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_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._
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_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.