ART AND ARTISTS.

CURIOUS FACTS AND CHARACTERISTIC SKETCHES.

TITIAN AND CHARLES V.

In 1547, at the invitation of Charles V., Titian joined the imperial court. The Emperor, then advanced in years, sat to him for the third time. During the sitting, Titian happened to drop one of his pencils; the Emperor took it up; and on the artist expressing how unworthy he was of such an honour, Charles replied that Titian was “worthy of being waited upon by Cæsar.”—(See the Frontispiece.)—After the resignation of Charles V., Titian found as great a patron in his son, Philip II.; and when, in 1554, the painter complained to Philip of the irregularity with which a pension of 400 crowns granted to him by the Emperor was paid to him, the King wrote an order for the payment to the governor of Milan, concluding with the following words:—“You know how I am interested in this order, as it affects Titian; comply with it, therefore, in such a manner as to give me no occasion to repeat it.”

The Duke of Ferrara was so attached to Titian, that he frequently invited him to accompany him, in his barge, from Venice to Ferrara. At the latter place, he became acquainted with Ariosto. But, to reckon up the protectors and friends of Titian, would be to name nearly all the persons of the age, to whom rank, talent, and exalted character appertained.

CHILDHOOD OF BENJAMIN WEST.

Benjamin West, the son of John West and Sarah Pearson, was born in Springfield, in the state of Pennsylvania, October 10, 1733. His mother, it seems, had gone to hear one Edward Peckover preach about the sinfulness of the Old World and the spotlessness of the New: terrified and overcome by the earnest eloquence of the enthusiast, she shrieked aloud, was carried home, and, in the midst of agitation and terror, was safely delivered of the future president of the Royal Academy. When the preacher was told of this, he rejoiced, “Note that child,” said he, “for he has come into the world in a remarkable way, and will assuredly prove a wonderful man.” The child prospered, and when seven years’ old began to fulfil the prediction of the preacher.

Little West was one day set to rock the cradle of his sister’s child, and was so struck with the beauty of the slumbering babe, that he drew its features in red and black ink. “I declare,” cried his astonished sister, “he has made a likeness of little baby!” He was next noticed by a party of wild Indians, who, pleased with the sketches which Benjamin had made of birds and flowers, taught him how to prepare the red and yellow colours with which they stained their weapons; to these, his mother added indigo, and thus he obtained the three primary colours. It is also related, that West’s artistic career was commenced through the present of a box of colours, which was made to him, when about nine years old, by a Pennsylvanian merchant, whose attention was attracted by some of the boy’s pen-and-ink sketches.

GUIDO’S TIME.

Guido, when in embarrassment from his habit of gaming and extravagance, is related by Malvasia, his well-informed biographer, to have sold his time at a stipulated sum per hour, to certain dealers, one of whom tasked the painter so rigidly, as to stand by him, with watch in hand, while he worked. Thus were produced numbers of heads and half figures, which, though executed with the facility of a master, had little else to recommend them. Malvasia relates, that such works were sometimes begun and finished in three hours, and even less time.

CHARACTER OF GAINSBOROUGH.

Shortly after Gainsborough’s death, Sir Joshua Reynolds, then President of the Royal Academy, delivered a discourse to the students, of which “the character of Gainsborough” was the subject. In this he alludes to Gainsborough’s method of handling—his habit of scratching. “All these odd scratches and marks,” he observes, “which, on a close examination, are so observable in Gainsborough’s pictures, and which, even to experienced painters, appear rather the effect of accident than design—this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance—by a kind of magic, at a certain distance, assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chaste and hasty negligence.”

BENEFIT OF RIVALRY.

Giorgione is, in some of his portraits, still unsurpassed. Du Fresnoy observes of him, that he dressed his figures wonderfully well; and it may truly be said, that, but for him, Titian would never have attained that perfection, which was the consequence of the rivalship and jealousy which prevailed between them.

BACKHUYSEN.

Backhuysen’s favourite subjects were wrecks and stormy seas, which he frequently sketched from nature in an open boat, at the great peril of himself and the boatmen. He made many constructive drawings of ships for the Czar Peter the Great, who took lessons of the painter, and frequently visited his painting-room. Among his other avocations, Backhuysen also gave lessons in writing, in which he introduced a new and approved method. He was a man of cheerful eccentricity. Within a few days of his death, he ordered a number of bottles of choice wine, on each of which he set his seal. A certain number of his friends were then invited to his funeral, to each of whom he bequeathed a gold coin, requesting them to spend it merrily, and to drink the wine with as much cordiality as he had in consigning it to them.

GEORGE MORLAND.

George Morland, the famous painter of rustic and low life—a great but dissolute genius—when he left the paternal roof, had for master an Irishman in Drury-lane, who kept him constantly at his easel by never leaving his elbow. His meals were brought him by the shop-boy; his dinner consisting usually of sixpennyworth of beef from a cookshop, and a pint of beer. If he asked for five shillings, his taskmaster would growl, “D’ye think I’m made of money?” and give him half-a-crown. Morland painted pictures for this man enough to fill a room for admittance to which half-a-crown was charged. From this bondage he was freed by an invitation to Margate, by a lady of fortune, to paint portraits in the season; he stole away from his garret, and entered on profitable labour. In winter he returned to London. He had so risen in repute, that prints from his pictures had a marvellous sale. Soon, such was the demand for anything from his hand, that, though often ill-paid, he could earn from seventy to a hundred guineas a-week. But no man could be more heedless of money; and he hardly ever knew what it was to be out of want. He was constantly granting bills, and when they fell due, he seldom had cash to meet them. To get a note of £20 renewed for a fortnight, he has been known to give a picture that at once sold in his presence for £10. His easel was always surrounded by associates of the lowest cast—horse-dealers, jockeys, cobblers, &c. He had a wooden barrier placed across his room, with a bar that lifted up, to allow the passage of those with whom he had business, or who enjoyed his special favour. He might have been said to be in an academy in the midst of models. He would get one to stand for a hand, another for a head, an attitude, or a figure, according as their countenance or character suited him. Thus he painted some of his best pictures, while his low companions were regaling on gin and red herrings around him.

Morland, indeed, neither in nor beyond the studio let slip an opportunity which he could turn to professional advantage. Nature was the grand source from which he drew all his images. He dreaded becoming a mannerist. With other artists he never held any intercourse, nor had he prints of any kind in his possession; and he often declared that he would not step across the street to see the finest assemblage of paintings that ever was exhibited. Once, indeed, he was induced to go to see Lord Bute’s collection; but, having passed through one room, he refused to see more, declaring that he did not wish to contemplate the works of any other man, lest he should become an imitator.

At the death of his father, Morland was advised to claim the dormant title of Baronet, which had been conferred on one of his lineal ancestors by Charles II. Finding, however, that there was no emolument attached to the title, he renounced the distinction; saying that “plain George Morland could always sell his pictures, and there was more honour in being a fine painter than a titled gentleman; that he would have borne the vanity of a title had there been any income to accompany it; but as matters stood, he would wear none of the fooleries of his ancestors.” He died in 1804, while in confinement in consequence of intemperance.

DISINTERESTEDNESS OF ENGLISH PAINTERS.

There are no examples in the history of painting, of such noble disinterestedness as has ever been shown by the English Historical Painters. Hogarth and others adorned the Foundling for nothing; Reynolds and West offered to adorn St. Paul’s for nothing, and yet were refused! Barry painted the Adelphi without remuneration; but, as Burke beautifully says, “the temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.”—Haydon’s Lectures.

THE DOUBLE CHIN.

One of the finest examples of preserving beauty, even in maturity, is given in Niobe, the mother.

“In early life, at a rout, (says Haydon,) I admired and followed, during the evening, a mother and her daughters, distinguished for their beauty. The mother did not look old, and yet looked the mother. On scrutinizing and comparing mother and daughters, I found there was a little double chin in the mother, which marked her, without diminishing her beauty. I went at once, on my return to my studio, to the Niobe mother, and found this very mark in the Niobe mother, which I had never observed before, under her chin.”

SYMPATHY AND CALCULATION.

When Sir Richard Phillips, in his Morning’s Walk from London to Kew, visited the Church on Kew-green, he halted beside the tomb of Gainsborough, and said to the sexton’s assistant, “Ah, friend, this is a hallowed spot—here lies one of Britain’s favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth.”—“Perhaps it was so,” said the man; “but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I’ll tell you how much is due.”—“Yes, truly, friend,” said Sir Richard, “I am one of the great family, bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken.”—“Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the will; therefore, are not obligated.” Sir Richard could not avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, gave him a trifle, and so got rid of him.

RUSKIN’S “MODERN PAINTERS.”

In a note-book of 1848, we read of Ruskin’s first work:—One of the most extraordinary and delightful books of the day, is Modern Painters, by a “Graduate of Oxford;” in which the author admits and vindicates his direct opposition to the general opinion, in placing Turner and other modern landscape painters above those of the seventeenth century—Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Canaletto, Hobbima, &c.

Yet, this remarkable book has been strangely treated by what is called the literary world. The larger reviews have taken little or no notice of it; and those periodicals which are considered to represent the literature of the fine arts, and to watch over their progress and interests, almost without an exception, have treated it with the most marked injustice, and the most shameful derision. Yet, in spite of all this neglect and maltreatment, the work has found its way into the minds and hearts of men. This is better shown by the first volume having reached a third edition, than by any of the most elaborate patronage from the press.

A writer in the North British Review, waxing eloquently wroth at this reception of a work of unquestionably high genius by the critics, observed:—“The national treatment is in this case a good index to the national mind and feeling; so that it is not to be wondered at, that such productions as Charles Lamb’s Essays on the Genius of Hogarth, and on the Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the productions of Modern Art—Hazlitt’s Works on Art—those of Sir Charles Bell and his brother John,—should rarely occur, and be not much regarded, and little understood, when they do, in a country where Hogarth was looked upon by the majority as a caricaturist fully as coarse as clever,—where Wilkie’s ‘Distraining for Rent’ could get no purchaser, because it was an unpleasant subject,—where to this day Turner is better known as being unintelligible and untrue, than as being more truthful, more thoughtful, than any painter of inanimate nature, ancient or modern,—where Maclise is accounted worthy to illustrate Shakspeare, and embody Macbeth and Hamlet, as having a kindred genius,—and where it was reserved to a few young, self-relying, unknown Scottish artists, (students of the Royal Scottish Academy,) to purchase Etty’s three pictures of Judith, the Combat, and the Lion-like Men of Moab, at a price which, though perilous to themselves, was equally disgraceful to the public who had disregarded them, and inadequate to the deserving of their gifted producer.”

RUBENS’S “CHAPEAU DE PAILLE.”

This exquisite picture was the gem of Sir Robert Peel’s fine collection. Its transparency and brilliancy are unrivalled: it is all but life itself. It was bought by Sir R. Peel for 3500 guineas.

The name of “Chapeau de Paille,” as applied to this picture, appears to be a misnomer. The portrait is in what is strangely termed a Spanish hat. Why it has become the fashion in this country to designate every slouched hat with a feather a Spanish hat, it is hard to say; since at the period that such hats were worn, (about the reign of Charles I. in England,) they were not more peculiar to Spain than to other European countries. Rubens himself wore a hat of this description; and it is related that his mistress, having placed his hat upon her own head, he borrowed from this circumstance the celebrated picture in question. With respect to the misnomer, it has been conjectured that Span’sh hut being somewhat similar in sound to Span hut, Flemish for straw hat, first led to the incongruous title “Chapeau de Paille.” Now, Span hut, the Flemish name of this work, does not mean a straw hat, but a wide-brimmed hat; and further, whoever has had the good fortune to see the picture, must be aware that the woman is there represented not in a straw (paille) hat, but a black hat. The French title, “Chapeau de Paille,” is, therefore, and we think with reason supposed to be but a corruption of Chapeau de Poil (nap, or beaver,) its real designation.

A PROMPT REMEDY.

Opie was painting an old beau of fashion. Whenever he thought the painter was touching the mouth, he screwed it up in a most ridiculous manner. Opie, who was a blunt man, said very quietly, “Sir, if you want the mouth left out, I will do it with pleasure.”

WILKIE’S SIMPLICITY.

Never, relates Haydon, was anything more extraordinary than the modesty and simplicity of Wilkie, at the period of his production of “The Village Politicians.” Jackson told me he had the greatest difficulty to persuade him to send this celebrated picture to the Exhibition; and I remember his (Wilkie’s) bewildered astonishment at the prodigious enthusiasm of the people at the Exhibition when it went, May, 1806. On the Sunday after the private day and dinner, the News said:—“A young Scotchman, by name Wilkie, has a wonderful work.” I immediately sallied forth, took up Jackson, and away we rushed to Wilkie. I found him in his parlour, in Norton-street, at breakfast. “Wilkie,” said I, “your name is in the paper.” “Is it, really?” said he, staring with delight. I then read the puff, ore rotundo; and Jackson, I, and he, in an ecstacy, joined hands, and danced round the table.

THE GRAVE OF LAWRENCE.

Sir Thomas Lawrence, when attending the funeral of Mr. Dawe, R.A., in the vault of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was observed to look wistfully about him, as if contemplating the place as that to which he himself would some day be borne; and, when the service was concluded, it was remarked that he stopped to look at the inscription upon the stone which covers the body of his predecessor, West. Within three months from the date of this incident, the vaults were re-opened to receive Lawrence’s remains.

“IT WILL NEVER DO.”

“Oh, how I hate this expression!” said poor Haydon, in his famous Lectures. “When Wellington said he would break the charm of Napoleon’s invincibility, what was the reply? It will never do! When Columbus asserted there was another hemisphere, what was the reply? It will never do! And when Galileo offered to prove the earth went round the sun, the Holy Inquisition said, It shall never do! It will never do has been always the favourite watch-cry of those, in all ages and countries, who ever look on all schemes for the advancement of mankind as indirect reflections on the narrowness of their own petty comprehensions.”

LOST CHANCE OF A NATIONAL GALLERY.

George the Fourth (when Regent) proposed to connect Carlton House, in Pall-Mall, with Marlborough House, and St. James’s Palace, by a gallery of portraits of the sovereigns and other historic personages of England; but, unfortunately Mr. Nash’s speculation of burying Carlton House and Gardens, and overlaying St. James’s Park with terraces, prevailed; and this magnificent design of an historical gallery was abandoned; although the crown of England possesses materials for an historical collection which would be infinitely superior to that of Versailles.

REYNOLDS’S PORTRAIT OF LORD HEATHFIELD.

“Of all conceptions, as well as executions of portraits,” says Dr. Dibdin, “that of Lord Heathfield, by Reynolds, is doubtless amongst the very finest and most characteristic. The veteran has a key, gently raised, in his right hand, which he is about to place in his left. It is the key of the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar; and he seems to say, ‘Wrest it from me at your peril!’ Kneller, and even Vandyke, would have converted this key into a truncheon. What a bluff spirit of unbending intrepidity and integrity was the illustrious Elliott! His country knows no braver warrior of his class than he!”

THE ELGIN MARBLES

“What are these marbles remarkable for?” said a respectable gentleman at the British Museum to one of the attendants, after looking attentively round the Elgin Saloon. “Why, sir,” said the man, with propriety, “because they are so like life.” “Like life!” repeated the gentleman, with the greatest contempt; “why, what of that?” and walked away.

HENRY HOWARD, R.A.

Mr. Howard, the well-known Secretary and Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, died October 5, 1847, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was born in 1770; and was at Rome in 1794, when, in his twenty-fourth year, he forwarded his first work, “The Death of Cain,” to the Royal Academy Exhibition. In 1807, he painted “The Infant Bacchus brought by Mercury to the Nymphs of Nysa;” and in the autumn of the same year, he was elected a Royal Academician. Of his fellow academicians, in 1848, only two out of forty survived—Sir Martin Archer Shee, and Mr. J. M. W. Turner. Others, however, elected after him, had died before him—Callcott, and William Daniell, for instance; Wilkie, Dawe, Raeburn, Hilton, Collins, Jackson, Chantrey, Constable, and Newton. His diploma picture on his election was “The Four Angels, loosed from the River Euphrates.” For fifty-three years, from 1794 to 1847, Mr. Howard never missed sending to a Royal Academy Exhibition. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find another example of such assiduity; yet, where his pictures went—for he had few or no patrons, so called—it is hard to say. Banks and Flaxman, the two great sculptors, took notice of Howard’s early efforts, gave him friendly encouragement in all he did, and suggested, it is said, new subjects for his pencil. Yet, his pictures were very popular; they are classically cold; his place, therefore, in the history of Art is not likely to be high or lasting.

ORIGINALS OF HOGARTH’S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.

In 1841, Messrs. Smith, the eminent printsellers, of Lisle-street, had the good fortune to discover in the country a duplicate set of the pictures of “The Marriage à-la-Mode,” by Hogarth; which appear to have escaped the researches of all the writers on his works. They are evidently the finished sketches, from which he afterwards painted the pictures now in the National Gallery, which are more highly wrought. The backgrounds of these pictures are very much subdued, which gives a greater importance to the figures. They became the property of H. R. Willett, Esq., of Merly House, Dorsetshire, who added them to his already rich collection of Hogarth’s works.

These pictures of “The Marriage-à-la-Mode” are painted in an exceedingly free and sketchy manner and are considered to have been most probably painted at the same time as the four pictures of the Election, now in the Soanean Museum, the execution of which they very much resemble. There is a considerable number of variations between these and the National Gallery pictures; and such differences throw much light upon the painter’s technical execution, which is somewhat disputed. “Although in some respects rather sketchily handled,” says a critic, “they are not painted feebly; and if they cannot be called highly finished, these productions are worthy to rank as cabinet pictures. To be fairly understood, (to use Charles Lamb’s happy expression,) ‘Hogarth’s pictures must be read, as well as looked at.’ ”

HOMAGE TO ART.

The first great painter in encaustic, of whose works lengthened descriptions have been handed down, was Polygnotus. He painted his celebrated “Triumph of Miltiades and the Victors of Marathon,” by public desire; and such was the admiration in which it was held, that the Athenians offered to reward the artist with whatever he might desire. Polygnotus nobly declined asking anything; upon which the Amphictionic Council proclaimed that he should be maintained at the public expense wherever he went. Such was the homage of a whole nation! What, then, shall we say to the sentiments of the narrow-minded prelate, who declared that a pin-maker was a more valuable member of society than Raphael!

“COLUMBUS AND THE EGG” ANTICIPATED.

Brunelleschi was the discoverer of the mode of erecting cupolas, which had been lost since the time of the Romans. Vasari relates a similar anecdote of him to that recorded of Columbus; though this has unquestionably the merit of being the first, since it occurred before the birth of Columbus. Brunelleschi died in 1446; Columbus was born in 1442.

A council of the most learned men of the day, from various parts of the world, was summoned to consult and show plans for the erection of a cupola, like that of the Pantheon at Rome. Brunelleschi refused to show his model, it being upon the most simple principles, but proposed that the man who could make an egg stand upright on a marble base should be the architect. The foreigners and artists agreeing to this, but failing in their attempts, desired Brunelleschi to do it himself; upon which he took the egg, and with a gentle tap broke the end, and placed it on the slab. The learned men unanimously protested that any one else could do the same; to which the architect replied, with a smile, that had they seen his model, they could as easily have known how to build a cupola.

The work then devolved upon him, but a want of confidence existing among the operatives and citizens, they pronounced the undertaking to be too great for one man; and arranged that Lorenzo Ghiberti, an artist of great repute at that time, should be co-architect with him. Brunelleschi’s anger and mortification were so great on hearing this decision, that he destroyed, in the space of half an hour, models and designs that had cost him years of labour, and would have quitted Florence but for the persuasions of Donatello. It is almost unnecessary to add, that the cupola was completed with perfect success by Brunelleschi; since St. Peter’s, at Rome, and our own St. Paul’s, were formed upon the model of his dome at Florence.

By the way, some of the wise men of the day proposed that a centre column should support the dome; others, that a huge mound of earth (with quatrini scattered among it) should be raised in the form of a cupola, the brick or stone wall built upon it. When finished, an order was to be issued, allowing the people to possess themselves of what money they might find in the rubbish; the mound would thus be easily removed, and the cupola be left clear!

THE RIVAL OF RAPHAEL.

When Raphael enjoyed at Rome the reputation of being the mightiest living master of the graphic art, the Bolognese preferred their countryman, Francisco Francia, who had long dwelt among them, and was of eminent talent. The two artists had never met, nor had one seen the works of the other. But a friendly correspondence existed between them. The desire of Francia to see some of the works of Raphael, of whom he ever heard more and more in praise, was extreme; but advanced years deterred him from encountering the fatigues and dangers of a journey to Rome. A circumstance at last occurred that gave him, without this trouble, the opportunity of seeing what he had so long desired. Raphael having painted a picture of St. Cecilia, to be placed in a chapel at Bologna, he wrote to Francia, requesting him to see it put up, and even to correct any defects he might perceive in it. As soon as Francia took the picture from its case, and put it in a proper light for viewing it, he was struck with admiration and wonder, and felt painfully how much he was Raphael’s inferior. The picture was indeed one of the finest that ever came from Raphael’s pencil; but it was only so much the more a source of grief to the unhappy Francia. He assisted, as desired, in placing it in the situation for which it was intended; but never afterwards had he a happy hour. In one moment he had seen all that he had ever done, all that had been once so much admired, thrown quite into the shade. He was too old to entertain any hope, by renewed efforts, of coming up with the excellence of Raphael, or even approaching it. Struck to the heart with grief and despair, he took to his bed, from which he never rose again. He was insensible to all consolation, and in a few days, the victim of a sublime melancholy, he died, in his sixty-eighth year.

TURNER’S MASTERPIECE.

“I think,” says the “Graduate of Oxford”—Ruskin—in his Modern Painters, “the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high nor local, but a low broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by a deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light,—the intense and lurid splendour which burns like gold, and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is recklessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together, in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers, are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight; and cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.”

INTENSE EFFECT.

When Fuseli went with Haydon to the Elgin marbles, on recognising the flatness of the belly of the Theseus, in consequence of the bowels having naturally fallen in, he exclaimed, “By Gode, the Turks have sawed off his belly!” His eye was completely ruined.

REYNOLDS AND HAYDN.

During the residence of Haydn, the celebrated composer, in England, one of the royal princes commissioned Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint his portrait. Haydn went to the residence of the painter, and gave him a sitting; but he soon grew tired. Sir Joshua, with his usual care for his reputation, would not paint a man of so distinguished genius with a stupid countenance, and in consequence he adjourned the sitting to another day. The same weariness and want of expression occurring at the next attempt, Sir Joshua went and communicated the circumstance to the commissioning prince, who contrived the following stratagem. He sent to the painter’s house a pretty German girl who was in the service of the Queen. Haydn took his seat for the third time, and as soon as the conversation began to flag, a curtain rose, and the fair German addressed him in his native tongue, with a most elegant compliment. Haydn, delighted, overwhelmed the enchantress with questions, his countenance recovered its animation, and Sir Joshua rapidly and successfully seized its traits.

HAYDON’S FIRST SIGHT OF THE ELGIN MARBLES.

At my entrance among these divine things, (says Haydon,) for the first time with Wilkie, 1808, in Park-lane, the first thing I saw was the wrist of the right hand and arm of one of the Fates, leaning on the thigh; it is the Fate on the right side of the other, which, mutilated and destroyed as it was, proved that the great sculptor had kept the shape of the radius and ulna, as always seen in fine nature, male and female.

I felt at once, before I turned my eyes, that there was the nature and ideal beauty joined, which I had gone about the art longing for, but never finding! I saw at once I was amongst productions such as I had never before witnessed in the art; and that the great author merited the enthusiasm of antiquity, of Socrates, of Plato, of Aristotle, of Juvenal, of Cicero, of Valerius Maximus, and of Plutarch and Martial.

If such were my convictions on seeing this dilapidated but immortal wrist, what do you think they were on turning round to the Theseus, the horse’s head, and the fighting metope, the frieze, and the Jupiter’s breast?

Oh, may I retain such sensations beyond the grave! I foresaw at once a mighty revolution in the art of the world for ever! I saw that union of nature and ideal perfected in high art, and before this period pronounced by the ablest critics as impossible! I thanked God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my being, that I was ready to comprehend them from dissection. I bowed to the Immortal Spirit, which still hovered near them. I predicted at once their vast effect on the art of the world, and was smiled at for my boyish enthusiasm!

What I asserted in their future influence and enormous superiority, Canova, eight years after, confirmed. On my introduction by Hamilton, (author of Egyptiaca,) I asked Canova what he thought of them? and he instantly replied, with a glistening Italian fire, “Ils renverseront le systême des autres antiques.” Mr. Hamilton replied, “I have always said so, but who believed me? and what was the result of the principles I laid down? Why, many a squeeze of the hand to support me under my infirmities, and many a smile in my face in mercy at my delusion. ‘You are a young man,’ was often said; ‘and your enthusiasm is all very proper.’ ”

“After seeing them myself,” says Haydon, “I took Fuseli to see them; and, being a man of quick sensibility, he was taken entirely by surprise. Never shall I forget his uncompromising enthusiasm; he strode about, thundering out—‘The Greeks were gods!—the Greeks were gods!’ When he got home he wanted to modify his enthusiasm; but I always reminded him of his first impressions, and never let him escape.”

PAINTERS IN SOCIETY.

James Smith says:—“I don’t fancy Painters. General Phipps used to have them much at his table. He once asked me if I liked to meet them. I answered, ‘No; I know nothing in their way, and they know nothing out of it.’ ”

ANACHRONISMS IN PAINTING.

These are to be found in works of all ages. Thus we have Verrio’s Periwigged Spectators of Christ Healing the Sick; Abraham about to shoot Isaac with a pistol; Rubens’ Queen-mother, Cardinals, and Mercury; Velvet Brussels; Ethiopian King in a surplice, boots, and spurs; Belin’s Virgin and Child listening to a Violin; the Marriage of Christ with St. Catherine of Siena, with King David playing the Harp; Albert Durer’s flounced-petticoated Angel driving Adam and Eve from Paradise; Cigoli’s Simeon at the Circumcision, with “spectacles on nose;” the Virgin Mary helping herself to a cup of coffee from a chased coffee-pot; N. Poussin’s Rebecca at the Well, with Grecian architecture in the back-ground; Paul Veronese’s Benedictine Father and Swiss Soldiers; the red Lobsters in the Sea listening to the Preaching of St. Anthony of Padua; St. Jerome, with a clock by his side; and Poussin’s Deluge, with boats. In our time, West, the President of the Royal Academy, has represented Paris in a Roman instead of a Phrygian dress; and Wilkie has painted Oysters in the Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo—in June!

MOVING EARS.

Not one in ten thousand, perhaps, Mr. John Bell says, can move his ears. The celebrated Mr. Mery used, when lecturing, to amuse his pupils by saying that in one thing he surely belonged to the long-eared tribe; upon which he moved his ears very rapidly backwards and forwards. And Albinus, the celebrated anatomist, had the same power, which is performed by little muscles, not seen. Mr. Haydon tried it once in painting, with great effect. In his picture of Macbeth, painted for Sir George Beaumont, when the Thane was listening in horror before committing the murder, the painter ventured to press the ears forward, like an animal in fright, to give an idea of trying to catch the nearest sound. It was very effective, and increased amazingly the terror of the scene, without the spectators being aware of the reason.

RUSSELL, THE CRAYON PAINTER.

This ingenious R.A. was a native of Guildford, and the eldest son of Mr. John Russell, bookseller, of that town. In early youth he evinced a strong predilection for drawing, and was placed under the tuition of Mr. Francis Coates, an academician of great talent, after whose decease “he enjoyed the reputation of being the first artist in crayon painting, in which he particularly excelled in the delineation of female beauty.” In 1789, Russell was chosen a member of the Royal Academy; and soon after appointed crayon-painter to the King, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York. Notwithstanding this constant succession of professional employment, he devoted considerable attention to astronomical pursuits; and his Selenographia, or Model of the Moon, which occupied the whole of his leisure from the year 1785 until 1797, affords a remarkable instance of his ingenuity and perseverance. At the time of his decease he had finished two other drawings, which completed his plan, and exhibit an elaborate view of the moon in a full state of illumination. Mr. Russell died at Hull in 1806.

WILKIE’S MISTAKEN ANALOGY.

On the birth of the son of a friend (afterwards a popular novelist), Sir David Wilkie was requested to become one of the sponsors for the child. Sir David, whose studies of human nature extended to everything but infant human nature, had evidently been refreshing his boyish recollections of kittens and puppies; for, after looking intently into the child’s eyes, as it was held up for his inspection, he exclaimed to the father, with serious astonishment and satisfaction, “He sees!”

DEATH OF GAINSBOROUGH.

When assured that the progress of his fatal malady (cancer) precluded all hopes of life, Gainsborough desired to be buried in Kew churchyard, and that his name only should be cut on his gravestone. He sent for Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was reconciled to him: then exclaiming, “We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the company,” he immediately expired, in the sixty-first year of his age. Sheridan and Sir Joshua followed him to his grave.

FANATICISM THE DESTROYER OF ART.

It is curious to reflect, that mistaken views of religion have in all times been the prime cause of the ruin of art. It was not Alaric or Theodoric, but an edict from Honorius, that ordered the early Christians to destroy such images, if any remained.

Flaxman says: “The commands for destroying sacred paintings and sculpture prevented the artist from suffering his mind to rise to the contemplation or execution of any sublime effort, as he dreaded a prison or a stake, and reduced him to the lowest drudgery in his profession. This extraordinary check to our national art occurred at a time which offered the most essential and extraordinary assistance to its progress.” Flaxman proceeds to remark, that “the civil wars completed what fanaticism had begun; and English art was so completely extinguished that foreign artists were always employed for public or private undertakings.”

In the reign of Elizabeth it became a fashionable taste to sally forth and knock pictures to pieces; and in the “State Trials” is a curious trial of Henry Sherfield, Esq., Recorder of Salisbury, who concealed himself in the church, and with a long pike knocked a window to pieces: as he was doing this, he was watched through the door, and seen to slip down, headlong, where he lay groaning for a long time, and a horse was sent for to carry him home: he was fined 500l., and imprisoned in the Fleet; and the Attorney-general for the Crown, 1632, said there were people, he verily believed, who would have knocked off the cherubim from the ark. By the witnesses examined, it was evidently a matter of religious conscience in Sherfield, who complained that his pew was opposite the window, and that the representation of God by a human figure disturbed him at prayer.

Queen Elizabeth was the bitterest persecutor: she ordered all walls to be whitewashed, and all candlesticks and pictures to be utterly destroyed, so that no memorial remain of the same.

In Charles the First’s time, on the Journals of the House is found, 1645, July 23: “Ordered, that all pictures having the second person in the Trinity shall be burnt.” Walpole relates, that one Blessie was hired at half-a-crown a day to break the painted glass window at Croydon Church. There is extant the journal of a parliamentary visitor, appropriately enough named Dowsing, appointed for demolishing superstitious pictures and ornaments of churches, &c.; and by calculation, he and his agents are found to have destroyed about 4660 pictures, from June 9, 1643, to October 4, 1644, evidently not all glass, because when they were glass he specifies them.

The result of this continued persecution, says Hayden, was the ruin of “high art;” for the people had not taste enough to feel any sympathy for it independently of religion, and every man who has pursued it since, who had no private fortune, and was not supported by a pension like West, became infallibly ruined.

Historical painters left without employment began to complain. In the time of Edward VI. and Elizabeth we find them petitioning for bread! They revived a little with Charles I. and II. Thornhill got employed in the early part of the last century; then came the Society in St. Martin’s Lane, 1760; and in 1768 was established the Royal Academy, to help high art; but there being still no employment for it, the power in art fell into the hands of portrait-painters, who too long continued to wield it, with individual exceptions, to the further decay and destruction of this eminent style.

THE THORNHILL MIRACLE.

Every one remembers the marvellous story of Sir James Thornhill stepping back to see the effect of his work, while painting Greenwich Hospital; and being prevented falling from the ceiling to the floor, by a person intentionally defacing the picture, and causing the painter to rush forward, and thus save himself. This may have occurred; but we rather suspect the anecdote to be of legendary origin, and to come from no less distance than the Tyrol; in short, to be a paraphrase of a catholic miracle, unless the Tyrolese are quizzing the English story, which is not very probable. At Innspruck, you are gravely told that when Daniel Asam was painting the inside of the cupola of one of the churches, and had just finished the hand of St. James, he stepped back on the scaffold to ascertain the effect: there was no friend at hand gifted with the happy thought of defacing the work, and thus saving the artist, as in Sir James Thornhill’s case, and therefore Daniel Asam fell backward; but, to the astonishment of the awe-struck beholders, who were looking up from beneath, the hand and arm of the saint, which the artist had just finished, were seen to extend themselves from the fresco, and grasping the fortunate Asam by the arm, accompany him in his descent of 200 feet, and bear him up so gently, that he reached the ground without the slightest shock. What became of the “awe-struck beholders,” and why the saint and painter did not fall on their heads, or why they did not serve as an easel in bringing the pair miraculously to the ground, we are not told.

The Painted Hall at Greenwich, contains 53,678 square feet of Sir James Thornhill’s work, and cost 6,685l., being at the rate of 8l. per yard for the ceiling, and 1l. per yard for the sides. The whole is admirably described in Steele’s play of The Lovers.

THE PICTURES AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

The pictures which now constitute the private gallery of her Majesty at Buckingham Palace, were principally collected by George the Fourth, whose exclusive predilection for pictures of the Dutch and Flemish schools is well known. To those which he brought together here, and which formerly hung in Carlton House, her present Majesty has made, since her accession, many valuable additions—some purchased, and others selected from the royal collections at Windsor and Hampton Court; others have been added by Prince Albert, from the collection of the late Professor d’Alton, of Bonn. * * * George IV. began to form his collection about the year 1802, and was chiefly guided by the advice and judgment of Sir Charles Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough, an accomplished man, whose taste for art, and intimacy with the king, then Prince of Wales, rendered him a very fit person to carry the royal wishes into execution. The importation of the Orleans gallery had diffused a feeling—or, it may be, a fashion—for the higher specimens of the Italian schools, but under the auspices of George IV. the tide set in an opposite direction. In the year 1812, the very select gallery of Flemish and Dutch pictures collected by Sir Francis Baring was transferred by purchase to the Prince Regent. Sir Francis Baring had purchased the best pictures from the collections of M. Geldermeester of Amsterdam, (sold in 1800,) and that of the Countess of Holderness, (sold in 1802,) and, except the Hope Gallery, there was nothing at that time to compare with it in England. Mr. Seguier valued this collection at eighty thousand pounds; but the exact sum paid for it was certainly much less.

The specimens of Rubens and Van Dyck are excellent, but do not present sufficient variety to afford an adequate idea of the wide range or power of the first of these great painters, nor of the particular talent of the last. On the other hand, the works and style of Gerard Douw, Teniers, Jan Steen, Adrian and Wilhelm Vandevelde, Wouvermans, and Burghem, may be very advantageously studied in this gallery, each of their specimens being many in number, various in subject, and good in their kind. Of Mieris and Metzes, there are finer specimens at Mr. Hope’s and Sir Robert Peel’s; and the Hobbimas and Cuyps must yield to those of Lord Ashburton and Lord Francis Egerton. But, on the whole, it is certainly the finest gallery of this class of works in England. The collection derives additional interest from the presence of some pictures of the modern British artists—Reynolds, Wilkie, Allan, Newton, Gainsborough. It is, however, only just to these painters to add, that not one of their pictures here ought to be considered as a first-rate example of their power.—Mrs. Jameson.

FOUNDATION OF THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF PAINTING IN ENGLAND.

To West must be given the record of achieving this honour; and what he has thus done in restoring historical painting to the purity of its original channel, can only be appreciated by those who have contemplated the debauched taste introduced into this country by Verrio, Laguerre, and other painters, who revived the ridiculous fooleries patronized in the reign of James the First; but which had, by the countenance of the nobility, and people of fashion, taken strong hold of most men’s minds. “A change,” says Cunningham, “was now to be effected in the character of British art: hitherto historical painting had appeared in a masquing habit; the actions of Englishmen seemed all as having been performed, if costume were to be believed, by Greeks or by Romans. West at once dismissed this pedantry, and restored nature and propriety in his noble work of ‘the Death of Wolfe.’ The multitude acknowledged its excellence at once; the lovers of old art, the manufacturers of compositions, called by courtesy classical, complained of the barbarism of boots and buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering rams. Lord Grosvenor, disregarding the frowns of the amateurs, and the, at best, cold approbation of the Royal Academy, purchased this work, which, in spite of laced coats and cocked hats, is one of the best of our historical pictures. The Indian warrior watching the dying hero to see if he equalled in fortitude the children of the desert, is a fine stroke of nature and poetry.”

West, however, was plagued with misgivings as to his new doctrine; and the dampers came forth in numbers with their unvarying, “It will never do.” When it was understood that West actually intended to paint the characters as they appeared on the scene, the Archbishop of York called on Reynolds, and asked his opinion; they both called upon West to dissuade him from running so great a risk. Reynolds warned him of the danger which every innovation incurred of contempt and ridicule; and concluded by urging him to adopt the costume of antiquity as more becoming the greatness of the subject than the garb of modern warriors. West replied that the event to be commemorated happened in the year 1758, in a region of the world unknown to Greeks and Romans, and at a period when no warriors wearing such costumes existed. The subject to be represented was a great battle, fought and won; and the same truth which gives laws to the historian should rule the painter; that he wanted to mark the place, the time, the people, and to do this he must abide by the truth.

The objectors went away, and returned when West had finished the picture. Reynolds seated himself before it, and examined it with deep and minute attention for half an hour; then rising, said to Drummond, “West has conquered—he has treated his subject as it ought to be treated. I retract my objections: I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art,” “I wish,” said king George the Third, to whom West related the conversation, “that I had known all this before, for the objection has been the means of Lord Grosvenor’s getting the picture; but you shall make a copy of it for me.” This anecdote, though it operates against the foresight of Reynolds, carries truth on the face of it.

The king not only gave West a pension of 1000l. a year, but when the artist hinted that the noble purpose of historical painting was best shown in depicting the excellencies of revealed religion, the monarch threw open St. George’s Chapel to be decorated with sacred subjects; and on his Majesty’s restoration to health, finding that the work had been suppressed, and the money withheld, he instantly ordered him to be paid, and the works proceeded with. The heads of the church, however, acted otherwise; for when the Academy proposed to decorate St. Paul’s with works of art, and Reynolds, West, Barry, Dance, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffman offered pictures free of expense, the Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Newton, at that time Dean of St. Paul’s, warmly took up the idea; but the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London refused their consent. The Bishop of London said: “My good Lord Bishop of Bristol, I have already been distantly and imperfectly informed of such an affair having been in contemplation; but as the sole power at last remains with myself, I therefore inform your lordship that whilst I live and have the power, I will never suffer the doors of the metropolitan church to be opened for the introduction of popery into it.”

Notwithstanding this heavy blow to the cause of art, the example of the king was the cause of many altarpieces being painted by West and others; one of the best of which is the very appropriate one in the chapel of Greenwich Hospital.[11]

THE CAT RAPHAEL.

Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the Cat Raphael, from the excellence with which he painted that animal. This peculiar talent was discovered and awakened by chance. At the time when Frendenberger painted his picture of the Peasant cleaving wood before his Cottage, with his wife sitting by and feeding her child with pap out of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast a broad stare on the sketch of this last figure, and said, in his rugged, laconic way, “That is no cat!” Frendenberger asked, with a smile, whether he thought he could do it better? Mind offered to try; went into a corner, and drew the cat, which Frendenberger liked so much that he made his new pupil finish it out, and the master copied the scholar’s work—for it is Mind’s cat that is engraved in Frendenberger’s plate. Prints of Mind’s cats are now very common.

SMALL CONVERSATION.

Fuseli had a great dislike to common-place observations. After sitting perfectly silent for a long time in his own room, during “the bald disjointed chat” of some idle callers in, who were gabbling with one another about the weather, and other topics of as interesting a nature, he suddenly exclaimed, “We had pork for dinner to-day!” “Dear! Mr. Fuseli, what an odd remark!” “Why, it is as good as anything you have been saying for the last hour.”

CHANGING HATS.

Barry, the painter, was with Nollekens at Rome in 1760, and they were extremely intimate. Barry took the liberty one night, when they were about to leave the English Coffee-house, to exchange hats with him; Barry’s being edged with lace, and Nollekens’s a very shabby, plain one. Upon his returning the hat next morning, he was requested by Nollekens to let him know why he left him his gold-laced hat. “Why, to tell you the truth, my dear Joey,” answered Barry, “I fully expected assassination last night, and I was to have been known by my laced hat.” Nollekens often used to relate the story, adding: “It’s what the Old Bailey people would call a true bill against Jem.”

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S BOYHOOD.

When Lawrence was but ten years old, his name had flown over the kingdom; he had read scenes from Shakspeare in a way that called forth the praise of Garrick, and drawn faces and figures with such skill as to obtain the approbation of Prince Hoare; his father, desirous of making the most of his talents, carried him to Oxford, where he was patronized by heads of colleges, and noblemen of taste, and produced a number of portraits, wonderful in one so young and uninstructed. Money now came in; he went to Bath, hired a house—raised his price from one guinea to two; his Mrs. Siddons, as Zara, was engraved—Sir Henry Harpur desired to adopt him as his son—Prince Hoare saw something so angelic in his face, that he proposed to paint him in the character of Christ, and the artists of London heard with wonder of a boy who was rivalling their best efforts with the pencil, and realizing, as was imagined, a fortune.

The Hon. Daines Barrington has the following record of Lawrence’s precocious talent in his Miscellanies: “This boy is now, (viz. February, 1780,) nearly ten years and a half old; but, at the age of nine, without the most distant instruction from any one, he was capable of copying historical pictures in a masterly style, and also succeeded amazingly in compositions of his own, particularly that of Peter denying Christ. In about seven minutes he scarcely ever failed of drawing a strong likeness of any person present, which had generally much freedom and grace, if the subject permitted.”

HARLOW’S TRIAL OF QUEEN KATHERINE.

This celebrated picture, (known also as “The Kemble Family,” from its introducing their portraits,) was the last and most esteemed work of J. H. Harlow, whom Sir Thomas Lawrence generously characterizes as “the most promising of all our painters.” The painting was commenced and finished in 1817; immediately after its exhibition at the Royal Academy, it was finely copied in mezzotint, by G. Clint; and the print in its time probably enjoyed more popularity than any production of its class. A proof impression has been known to realize upwards of twenty guineas.

The picture is on mahogany panel, stated to have cost the artist 15l.; it is one and a half inch in thickness, and in size about seven feet by five feet. It originated with Mr. T. Welsh, the professor of music, who, in the first instance, commissioned Harlow to paint for him a kit-cat size portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in the character of Queen Katherine, in Shakspeare’s play of Henry VIII., introducing a few scenic accessories in the distance. For this portrait Harlow was to receive twenty-five guineas; but the idea of representing the whole scene occurred to the artist, who, with Mr. Welsh, prevailed upon most of the actors to sit for their portraits; in addition to these are portraits of the friends of both parties, including the artist himself. The sum ultimately paid by Mr. Welsh for the picture was one hundred guineas; and a like amount was paid by Mr. Cribb for Harlow’s permission to engrave the well-known print, to which we have already adverted.

Harlow owed many obligations to Fuseli for his critical remarks on this picture: when he first saw it, chiefly in dead-colouring, he said: “I do not disapprove of the general arrangement of your work, and I see you will give it a powerful effect of light and shadow; but you have here a composition of more than twenty figures, or, I should rather say, parts of figures, because you have not shown one leg or foot, which makes it very defective. Now, if you do not know how to draw legs and feet, I will show you,” and taking up a crayon, he drew two on the wainscot of the room. Harlow profited by these instructions, and the next time Fuseli saw the picture, the whole arrangement in the foreground was changed. He then said to Harlow, “So far you have done well; but now you have not introduced a back figure, to throw the eye of the spectator into the picture;” and then pointed out by what means he might improve it in this particular. Accordingly, Harlow introduced the two boys who are taking up the cushion.

It has been stated that the majority of the actors in the scene sat for their portraits in this picture. John Kemble, however, refused when asked to do so by Mr. Welsh, strengthening his refusal with emphasis profane. Harlow was not, however, to be defeated; and he actually drew Kemble’s portrait in one of the stage-boxes of Covent Garden Theatre, while the great actor was playing his part. The vexation such a ruse must have occasioned to a man of Kemble’s temperament may be imagined. Egerton, Pope, and Stephen Kemble were successively painted for Henry VIII., the artist retaining the latter. The head or Charles Kemble was likewise twice painted; the first, which cost him many sittings, was considered by himself and others to be very successful. The artist thought otherwise; and, contrary to Mr. Kemble’s wish and remonstrance, he one morning painted out the approved head: in a day or two, however, entirely from memory, Harlow repainted the portrait with increased fidelity. It is stated that but one sitting was required of Mrs. Siddons: the fact is, the great actress held her uplifted arm frequently till she could hold it raised no longer, and the majestic limb was finished from another original.

DEATH OF CORREGGIO.

Towards the close of Correggio’s days, it is said that the canons of one of the churches which he was employed to embellish, were so disappointed with the work, that, to insult him, they paid him the price in copper; that he had this unworthy burthen to carry eight miles in a burning sun; the length of the way, the weight of the load, and depression of spirits, brought on a fever which carried him in three days to his grave.

Among the many legends respecting this illustrious artist, it is said that, when young, he looked long and earnestly on one of the pictures of Raphael—his brow coloured, his eye brightened, and he exclaimed, “I also am a painter.” Titian, when he first saw his works, exclaimed, “Were I not Titian, I would wish to be Correggio.”

A LUCKY PURCHASE.

In the spring of 1837, Mr. Atherstone bought for a few guineas a Magdalen, by Correggio, at the Auction Mart, where he saw it among a heap of spoiled canvass, that an amateur (no connoisseur) of pictures had sent to be sold. This gentleman had bought it in Italy for 100l., admiring its beauty, but ignorant of its value. It was in perfect preservation; in the grandest style of Correggio: and in colouring surpassing in brilliancy and depth of tone even the famous specimens in the National Gallery.

COPLEY’S “DEATH OF LORD CHATHAM”

Washington, on seeing this picture, remarked, “this work, highly valuable in itself, is rendered more estimable in my eye when I remember that America gave birth to the celebrated artist that produced it.” The picture is ten feet long, and seven feet six inches high. The painter refused fifteen hundred guineas for it; it was purchased, we know not at what price, by the Earl of Liverpool, who used to say that such a work ought not to be in his possession, but in that of the public. These words were not heard in vain by the son of the Earl, who munificently presented it to the National Gallery.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S CORREGGIO.

Allan Cunningham warms into rapture in speaking of this wondrous picture, captured by Wellington at Vittoria. “The size is small, some fifteen inches square, or so; but true genius can work miracles in little compass. The central light of the picture is altogether heavenly; we never saw anything so insufferably brilliant; it haunted us round the room at Apsley House, and fairly extinguished the light of its companion-pictures. Joseph Bonaparte, not only a good king, but a good judge of painting, had this exquisite picture in his carriage when the tide of battle turned against him: it was transferred to the collection of the conqueror.”

GIOTTO AND THE PIGS.

One day, when Giotto, the painter, was taking his Sunday walk, in his best attire, with a party of friends, at Florence, and was in the midst of a long story, some pigs passed suddenly by; and one of them, running between the painter’s legs, threw him down. When he got on his legs again, instead of swearing a terrible oath at the pig, on the Lord’s-day, as a graver man might have done, he observed, laughing, “People say these beasts are stupid, but they seem to me to have some sense of justice; for I have earned several thousands of crowns with their bristles, but I never gave one of them even a ladleful of soup in my life.”

HOW WILKIE BECAME A PAINTER.

Sir John Sinclair, happening once to dine in company with Wilkie, asked, in the course of conversation, if any particular circumstance had led him to adopt his profession. Sir John inquired, “Had your father, mother, or any of your relations a turn for painting? or what led you to follow that art?” To which Wilkie replied, “The truth is, Sir John, that you made me a painter.”—“How, I?” exclaimed the Baronet; “I never had the pleasure of meeting you before.” Wilkie then gave the following explanation:—“When you were drawing up the Statistical Account of Scotland, my father, who was a clergyman in Fife, had much correspondence with you respecting his parish, in the course of which you sent him a coloured drawing of a soldier, in the uniform of your Highland Fencible Regiment. I was so delighted with the sight, that I was constantly drawing copies of it; and thus, insensibly, I was transformed into a painter.”

CIMABUE AND GIOTTO.

In the year 1300, Giovani Cimabue and Giotto, both of Florence, were the first to assert the natural dignity and originality of art; and the story of these illustrious friends is instructive and romantic. The former was a gentleman by birth and scholarship, and brought to his art a knowledge of the poetry and sculpture of Greece and Rome. The latter was a shepherd; when the inspiration of art fell upon him, he was watching his flocks among the hills; and his first attempts in art were to draw his sheep and goats upon rocks and stones. It happened that Cimabue, who was then high in fame, observed the sketches of the gifted shepherd; entered into conversation with him; heard from his own lips his natural notions of the dignity of art; and was so much charmed by his compositions and conversation, that he carried him to Florence, and became his close and intimate friend and associate. They found Italian painting rude in form, without spirit, and without sentiment. They let out their own hearts fully in their compositions, and to this day their works are highly esteemed for grave dignity of character, and for originality of conception. Of these great Florentines, Giotto, the shepherd, is confessedly the more eminent: in him we see the dawn, or rather the sunrise, of the fuller light of Raphael.

MICHAEL ANGELO IN BOYHOOD AND OLD AGE.

This great man showed from his infancy a strong inclination for drawing, and made so early a proficiency in it that, at the age of fourteen, he is said to have corrected the drawings of his master, Domenico Ghirlandaio. When Michael Angelo was an old man, one of these drawings being shown to him, he said, “In my youth I was a better artist than I am now.”

HOGARTH’S “MARCH TO FINCHLEY.”

This celebrated picture was disposed of by the painter by lottery. There were 1843 chances subscribed for; Hogarth gave the remaining 167 tickets to the Foundling Hospital, and the same night delivered the picture to the Governors. The fortunate number is generally stated to have been among the tickets which the painter handed to the Hospital; but, it is related in the Gentleman’s Magazine, though anonymously, that a lady was the possessor of the fortunate number, and intended to present it to the Foundling Hospital; but that some person having suggested what a door would be opened to scandal, were any of her sex to make such a present, it was given to Hogarth, on the express condition that it should be presented in his own name.

STORY OF A MINIATURE.

Mr. Gordon relates:—“M. Averani, a young French artist at Florence, had extraordinary talent for copying miniatures, giving them all the force of oil. I had frequently seen him at work in the gallery, and I purchased of him a clever copy of the Fornarina of Raphael, and one of the Venus Vestita of Titian, in the Pitti Palace, said to be the only miniature painted by this great man. It had a good deal of the character of Queen Mary Stuart, was painted on a gold ground, had great force, and was highly finished. I gave the artist his price, six sequins, and brought it to England. When I disposed of my vertu, in Sloane-street, previous to my settling in Scotland, this miniature made a flaming appearance in the catalogue. The gem was bought by a gentleman for fifty-five guineas. I thought I had done very well by this transaction, until I saw it advertised in the Morning Chronicle, stating that “an original portrait of Mary, Queen of Scotland, the undoubted work of Titian, value one thousand guineas, was to be seen at No. 14, Pall-mall; price of admission, 2s. 6d.” The bait took; the owner put three or four hundred pounds into his pocket by the exhibition, and sold the portrait for seven or eight hundred pounds. Here was I an innocent accessory to the greatest imposition that was ever practised on the public. As a work of art, it was worth all I got for it; and I was offered nearly that sum by a friend who knew its whole history. I understand that a nobleman was the purchaser of this beautiful miniature.”

SITTING FOR A HUSBAND.

John Astley, the painter, was born at Wem, in Shropshire. He was a pupil of Hudson, and was at Rome about the same time with Sir Joshua Reynolds. After his return to England, he went to Dublin, practised there as a painter for three years, and in that time earned 3000l. As he was painting his way back to London, in his own postchaise, with an outrider, he loitered in his neighbourhood, and, visiting Nutsford Assembly, he there saw Lady Daniel, a widow, who was so captivated by him, that she contrived to sit to him for her portrait, and then offered him her hand, which he at once accepted. Poor Astley, in the decline of life, was disturbed by reflections upon the dissipation of his early days, and was haunted with apprehensions of indigence and want. He died at his house, Duckenfield Lodge, Cheshire, Nov. 14, 1787, and was buried at the church of that village.

ARTISTIC TEXT.

Wills, the portrait-painter, was not very successful in his profession, and so quitted it, and, having received a liberal education, took orders. He was for several years curate of Canons, in Middlesex, and at the death of the incumbent he obtained the living. In the year 1768, he was appointed chaplain to the chartered Society of Artists; and he preached a sermon at Covent-garden Church, on St. Luke’s Day, in the same year; the text being taken from Job, chap. xxxvii. verse 14—“Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God.” This discourse was afterwards printed at the request of the Society; but Wills did not long enjoy his appointment, in consequence of the disputes which broke out among the members.

GENEROSITY OF CANOVA.

The celebrated Italian sculptor Canova, when rich and titled, remained the same simple, unostentatious man as in his unknown and humble youth. He cared nothing for personal luxuries. Not only the pension of 3000 crowns granted him by the Pope with the title of Marquis, but a great part of the wealth acquired by his labours, were bestowed in acts of charity, and upon unfortunate artists. One year, the harvest failing, he fed the poor of his native Venetian village all winter at his own expense. The manner in which he bestowed his favours reflected additional honour on him. A poor, proud, bad painter, was in danger of starving, with all his family. Canova knew the man would refuse a gift; and, out of respect to his feelings, he sacrificed his own taste. He requested him to paint a picture, leaving the subject and size to his own choice, and saying he had set aside 400 scudi (not less than £100) for this purpose, half of which he handed him at present, the other half should be sent when the work was finished; adding, that the sooner he received it, he should be the better pleased.

HOGARTH’S VANITY.

Hogarth displayed no little vanity regarding his pretensions as a portrait-painter. One day, when dining at Dr. Cheselden’s, he was told that John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, had asserted in Dick’s coffee-house, that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. “That fellow, Freke,” cried 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.” “Ay, but,” said the other, “Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyke.” “There he was in the right,” quoth Hogarth; “and so I am, give me but my time, and let me choose my subject.”

Writing of himself, Hogarth says:—“The portrait which I painted with most pleasure, and in which I particularly wished to excel, was that of Captain Coram, for the Foundling Hospital;” and he adds, in allusion to his detraction as a portrait-painter, “If I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first I painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years’ competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it.”

THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AND THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

That Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands does not appear a whit more strange than that in the Foundling Hospital originated the Royal Academy of Arts. Yet, such was the case. The Hospital was incorporated in 1739, and in a few years the present building was erected; but, as the income of the charity could not, with propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists of that day generously gave pictures for several of the apartments of the hospital. These were permitted to be shown to the public upon proper application; and hence became one of the sights of the metropolis. The pictures proved very attractive; and this success suggested the annual Exhibition of the united artists, which institution was the precursor of the Royal Academy, in the Adelphi, in the year 1760. Thus, within the walls of the Foundling, the curious may see the state of British art previously to the epoch when King George the Third first countenanced the historical talent of West.

Among the earliest “governors and guardians” of the Hospital we find William Hogarth, who liberally subscribed his money, and gave his time and talent, towards carrying out the designs of his friend, the venerable Captain Coram, through whose zeal and humanity the Hospital was established. Hogarth’s first artistical aid was the engraving of a head-piece to a power-of-attorney, drawn for the collection of subscriptions towards the Charity; Hogarth next presented to the Hospital an engraved plate of Coram.

Among the early artistic patrons of the Charity, we find Rysbrach, the sculptor; Hayman, the embellisher of Vauxhall Gardens; Highmore, Hudson, and Allan Ramsay; and Richard Wilson, the prince of English landscape-painters. They met often at the hospital, and thus advanced charity and the arts together; for the exhibition of their donations in paintings &c. drew a daily crowd of visitors in splendid carriages; and a visit to the Foundling became the most fashionable morning lounge of the reign of George the Second. The grounds in front of the Hospital were the promenade; and brocaded silks, gold-headed canes, and laced three-cornered (Egham, Staines, and Windsor) hats, formed a gay bevy in Lambs’ Conduit Fields.

A very interesting series of biographettes of “the artists of the Foundling,” with a catalogue raisonnée of the pictures presented by them, will be found in Mr. Brownlow’s “Memoranda; or, Chronicles” of the Hospital. Among the pictures by Hogarth, are--“Moses brought to Pharaoh’s Daughter,” the “March to Finchley,” and a “Portrait of Captain Coram.” Here are, also, “The Charterhouse,” by Gainsborough; “St. George’s and the Foundling Hospitals,” by Wilson; “Portrait of Handel,” by Kneller; “The Earl of Dartmouth,” by Reynolds; The Cartoon of “The Murder of the Innocents,” by Raphael; the altarpiece of the chapel, “Christ presenting a Little Child,” by West; Portrait of the “Earl of Macclesfield,” by Wilson; “Dr. Mead,” by Allan Ramsay; “George the Second,” by Shackleton; “the Offering of the Wise Men,” by Casali; crayon portrait of “Taylor White,” by Cotes; “A Landscape,” by Lambert; “A Sea-piece,” by Brooking, &c.

M‘ARDELL’S PRINTS.

M‘Ardell, (says Smith, in his Life of Nollekens), resided at the Golden Ball, Henrietta-street, Covent Garden. Of the numerous and splendid productions of this excellent engraver of pictures by Sir Joshua, nothing can be said after the declaration of Reynolds himself, that “M‘Ardell’s prints would immortalize him;” however, I will venture to indulge in one remark more, namely, that that engraver has conferred immortality also upon himself in his wonderful print from Hogarth’s picture of ‘Captain Coram,’ the founder of the Foundling Hospital. A brilliant proof of this head in its finest possible state of condition, in my humble opinion, surpasses anything in mezzotinto now extant.

UNFORTUNATE ACCURACY.

Liotard, a Swiss artist, who came to this country in the reign of George II., and stayed two years, is best known by his works in crayons. His likenesses were as exact as possible, and too like to please those who sat to him: thus he had great business the first year, and very little the second. Devoid of imagination, and one would think of memory also, he could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes. Freckles, marks of the smallpock, everything, found its place; not so much from fidelity, as because he could not conceive the absence of anything that appeared to him. Truth prevailed in all his works; grace in very few or none. Nor was there any ease in his outline; but the stiffness of a bust in all his portraits. Liotard’s lack of employment may, therefore, easily be accounted for.

IMMORTALITY OF PAINTING.

It is painful to think how soon the paintings of Raphael, and Titian, and Correggio, and other illustrious men, will perish and pass away. “How long,” said Napoleon to David, “will a picture last?” “About four or five hundred years—a fine immortality!” The poet multiplies his works by means of a cheap material; and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble, and expects to survive the wreck of nations, or the wrongs of time; but the painter commits to perishable cloth or wood, the visions of his fancy, and dies in the certain assurance that the life of his works will be but short in the land they adorn.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S “PUCK.”

This merry imp is the portrait of a child, which was painted without any particular aim as to character. When Alderman Boydell saw it, he said: “Sir Joshua, if you will make this pretty thing into a Puck, for my Shakspeare Gallery, I will give you a hundred guineas for it.” The President smiled and said little, as was his custom: a few hours’ happy labour made the picture what we see it.

RAPHAEL’S CARTOON OF THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS.

This cartoon came into the possession of the Foundling Hospital by the conditional bequest of Prince Hoare, Esq. Haydon describes it as “one of the finest instances in the world of variety of expression and beauty of composition, as a work of ‘high art.’ ” It is the centre part of one of the best cartoons which belonged to the set executed by Raphael, at the order of Leo X., and sent afterwards to Flanders, to be copied in tapestry, for exhibition at the Vatican.

The original number of the cartoons was thirteen; but in consequence of the Flemish weavers cutting them into strips for their working machinery, after the tapestry was executed and sent to Rome, the original cartoons were left mingled together in boxes.

When Rubens was in England, he told Charles I. the condition they were in; and the king, who had the finest taste, desired him to procure them. Seven perfect ones were purchased, all, it may be inferred, which remained, and sent to his majesty; what became or had become of the remainder, nobody knows; but here and there, all over Europe, fragments have appeared. At Oxford there are two or three heads; and we believe the Duke of Hamilton or Buccleuch, has others. After Charles’s misfortunes, the cartoons now at Hampton Court were sold, with the rest of his Majesty’s fine collection; but by Cromwell’s express orders they were bought in for three hundred pounds. During the reign of Charles II. they were offered to France for fourteen thousand francs, but Charles was dissuaded from selling them.

The above portion of the “Murder of the Innocents,” was sold at Westminster many years ago, as disputed property. Prince Hoare’s father, before the sale, explained to an opulent friend the great treasure about to be disposed of, and persuaded him to advance the money requisite, on condition of sharing the property. To his great surprise he bought it for twenty-six pounds; and his friend, having no taste, told Mr. Hoare if he would paint him and his family, he would relinquish his right.

These particulars Mr. Haydon had from Prince Hoare, the son; they are related in a letter from the painter to Mr. Lievesley, at the Foundling Hospital, dated October 3, 1837, wherein Haydon suggests the better exhibition of the work as a model of study; and soon after the Governors of the Hospital sent the cartoon by way of loan, to the National Gallery, where it may now be seen and studied.[12]

JARVIS SPENCER.

Spencer was a miniature-painter of much celebrity, contemporaneous with Hogarth. He was originally a gentleman’s servant, but having a natural turn for art, he amused himself with drawing. It happened that one of the family with whom he lived sat for a portrait to a miniature-painter, and when the work was completed, it was shown to Spencer, who said he thought he could copy it. He was allowed to make the attempt, when his success was so great, that the family he lived with at once patronised him, and by their interest he became a fashionable painter of the day.

A DRAPERY PAINTER.

Peter Jones, a pupil of Hudson, may be considered a portrait-painter, though his chief excellence was in painting draperies. In this branch of the art, so useful to a fashionable face-painter, he was much employed by Reynolds, Cotes, and West. Many of Sir Joshua’s best whole-lengths are those to which Jones painted the draperies: among them was the portrait of Lady Elizabeth Keppell, in the dress she wore as bridesmaid to the queen: for this Jones was paid twelve guineas; but Sir Joshua was not remarkably liberal on such occasions, of which Jones did not neglect to complain. When the Royal Academy was founded, he was chosen one of its members.

“STRANGE” ADVENTURE.

The following anecdote of Sir Robert Strange, (says Smith,) was related to me by the late Richard Cooper, who instructed Queen Charlotte in drawing, and was for some time drawing-master to Eton School. “Robert Strange, (says Cooper,) was a countryman of mine, a North Briton, who served his time to my father as an engraver, and was a soldier in the rebel army of 1745. It so happened when Duke William put them to flight, that Strange, finding a door open, made his way into the house, ascended to the first-floor, and entered a room where a young lady was seated at needlework, and singing. Young Strange implored her protection. The lady, without rising, or being in the least disconcerted, desired him to get under her hoop. He immediately stooped, and the amiable woman covered him up. Shortly after this, the house was searched; the lady continued at her work, singing as before; the soldiers upon entering the room, considering Miss Lunsdale alone, respectfully retired. Robert, as soon as the search was over, being released from his concealment, kissed the hand of his protectress, at which moment, for the first time, he found himself in love. He married the lady; and no persons, beset as they were with early difficulties, lived more happily.”

Strange afterwards became a loyal man, though for a long time he sighed to be pardoned by his king who, however, was graciously pleased to be reconciled to him, and afterwards knighted him. Sir Robert was a conscientious publisher in delivering subscription impressions of prints; he never took off more proofs than were really bespoken, and every name was put upon the print as it came out of the press, unless it were faulty, and then it was destroyed; not laid aside for future sale, as has been the practice with some of our late publishers.

ORIGIN OF THE BEEF-STEAK CLUB.

George Lambert was for many years principal scene-painter to Covent Garden Theatre; and being a person of great respectability in character and profession, he was often visited, while at work, by persons of consideration. As it frequently happened that he was too much pressed by business to leave the theatre for dinner, he contented himself with a beef-steak, broiled upon the fire in the painting-room. In this humble meal he was sometimes joined by his visitors: the conviviality of the accidental meeting inspired the party with a resolution to establish a club, which was accordingly done, under the title of “The Beef-Steak Club;” and the party assembled periodically in the painting-room.[13] The members were afterwards accommodated with a private apartment in the theatre, where the meeting was held for many years; but, after Covent Garden was last rebuilt, the place of meeting was changed to the Shakspeare Tavern. It was then removed to the Lyceum Theatre, in the Strand, on the destruction of which, by fire, in 1830, the place of meeting was transferred to the Bedford Coffeehouse, in Covent Garden. The regime of the club is a course of beef-steaks, followed by stewed cheese in silver dishes. The number of members is only twenty-four; and the days of meeting are every Saturday, from November until the end of June.

WILKIE’S EARLY LIFE.

John Burnet was educated with Wilkie in the first four years of his studies in the Trustees’ Academy of Edinburgh; and, after arriving in London, in 1806, witnessed the progress of nearly every picture of familiar life which he painted. Burnet relates, that Wilkie was always first on the stairs leading up to the Academy, (which was then held in St. James’s-square,) anxious not to lose a moment of the hours of drawing; and this love of art, paramount to all other gratifications, continued with him to the last, even when his success had put the means in his power of indulging relaxation and procuring amusement. When in the Academy, his intenseness attracted the notice of the more volatile students, who used to pelt him with small pills of soft bread. As he was one of the first to be present, so he was one of the last to depart. After Academy hours, which were from ten to twelve in the forenoon, (the best time of the day for application,) those who were apprentices returned to their several professions; but Wilkie invariably returned to his lodgings, there to follow out what was begun in the Academy, by copying from his own hands and face in a mirror: thus, as it were, engrafting the great principles of the antique on the basis of nature.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DINNERS.

Sir Joshua appears to have been but an irregular manager in his conviviality. “Often was the dinner board prepared for seven or eight, required to accommodate itself to fifteen or sixteen; for often, on the very eve of dinner, would Sir Joshua tempt afternoon visitors with intimation that Johnson, or Garrick, or Goldsmith was to dine there. Nor was the want of seats the only difficulty. A want of knives and forks, of plates and glasses, as often succeeded. In something of the same style, too, was the attendance; the kitchen had to keep pace with the visitors; and it was easy to know the guests best acquainted with the house by their never failing to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might get them before the first course was over, and the worst confusion began. Once was Sir Joshua prevailed upon to furnish his table with dinner-glasses and decanters; and some saving of time they proved; yet, as they were demolished in the course of service, he could never be persuaded to replace them. “But these trifling embarrassments,” says Mr. Courtenay, describing them to Sir James Macintosh, “only served to enhance the hilarity and the singular pleasure of the entertainment.” It was not the wine, dishes, and cookery, not the fish and venison, that were talked of or recommended: those social hours, that irregular convivial talk, had matter of higher relish, and far more eagerly enjoyed. And amid all the animated bustle of his guests, the host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was ate or drank, and leaving every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself.”—Forster’s Life of Goldsmith.

FINDING A PAINTER.

Brooking, a ship-painter of rare merit, about the middle of the last century, like many of the artists of the time, worked for the shops. Mr. Taylor White, Treasurer of the Foundling Hospital, one day saw some of the sea-pieces of this artist in a shop-window in Castle-street, Leicester-square. He inquired his name, but was answered equivocally by the dealer, who told Mr. White that if he pleased he could procure other pictures by the same painter. Brooking was accustomed to write his name upon his pictures, which mark was as often obliterated by the shopkeeper before he placed them in his window. It, however, happened that the artist carried home a piece on which his name was inscribed; and the master being from home, his wife, who received it, placed it in the window without effacing the signature. Luckily, Mr. White saw the picture before it was removed, and thus discovered the name of the painter whose works he so much admired. He instantly advertised for the artist to meet him at a certain wholesale linen-draper’s in the city. To this invitation, Brooking, at first, paid no regard; but, seeing it repeated, with assurance of benefit to the person to whom it was addressed, he prudently attended to it, and had an interview with Mr. White, who, from that time, became his friend and patron. One of Brooking’s sea-pieces hangs in the Foundling Hospital: it was painted in eighteen days, and is, altogether, a first-class picture.—Brownlow’s Memoranda of the Foundling Hospital.

REYNOLDS’S AND LAWRENCE’S PORTRAITS.

Sir D. Wilkie, in his remarks on Portrait Painting, says:—No representations of female character have equalled in sweetness and beauty the female portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds; yet, a contemporary has remarked, that this was accomplished greatly at the expense of likeness. Hoppner, who was himself distinguished for the beauty with which he endowed the female form, remarked, that even to him it was a matter of surprise that Reynolds could send home portraits with so little resemblance to the originals. This, indeed, in his day, occasioned portraits to be left on his hands, or turned to the wall, which, since the means of comparing resemblances have ceased, have blazed forth in all the splendour of grace and elegance, which the originals would have been envied for had they ever possessed them. I may add to this what is remarked of Sir Thomas Lawrence: his likenesses were celebrated as the most successful of his time; yet, no likenesses exalted so much or refined more upon the originals. He wished to seize the expression, rather than copy the features. His attainment of likeness was most laborious: one distinguished person, who favoured him with forty sittings for his head alone, declared he was the slowest painter he had ever sat to, and he had sat to many.

This distinguished person, (says Burnet, in his Practical Essays,) I believe, was Sir Walter Scott. The picture was painted for his Majesty, and Lawrence was most anxious to make the picture the best of any painted from so celebrated a character. At other times, however, Sir Thomas was as dexterous with his pencil as any artist. I remember him mentioning that he painted the portrait of Curran, the celebrated Irish barrister, in one day; he came in the morning, remained to dinner, and left at dusk; or, as Lawrence expressed it, quoting his favourite author,

ZOFFANI’S GRATITUDE.

Zoffani was a native of Frankfort, and came to England as a painter of small portraits, when he was about thirty years of age. He was employed by George the Third, and painted portraits of the royal family. He was celebrated for small whole-lengths, and painted several pieces of Garrick, and his contemporaries in dramatic scenes. He was engaged by the queen to paint a view of the tribune of Florence; and while there he was noticed by the Emperor of Germany, who inquired his name; and on hearing it, asked what countryman he was. Zoffani replied, “An Englishman.” “Why,” said the Emperor, “your name is German!” “True,” replied the painter, “I was born in Germany; that was accidental: I call that my country where I have been protected.”

Zoffani was admitted a member of the Royal Academy in 1783. He went afterwards to the East Indies, where he became a favourite of the Nabob of Oude, and amassed a handsome fortune, with which he returned to England, and settled at Strand-on-the-Green. Whilst there, he presented a large and well-executed painting of the Last Supper, as an altarpiece, to St. George’s Chapel, then lately built, where it still remains. Every head in the picture, (excepting that of Christ) is a likeness. Here is a portrait of Zoffani himself; the others were likenesses of persons then living at Strand-on-the-Green and Old Brentford. Zoffani had in his establishment a nursemaid who possessed fine hands, which he ever and anon painted in his pictures.

PATRONAGE OF ART.

To suffer from the want of discernment on the part of the nobility and the people, appears to be the fate of artists in this country. It was not a whit better formerly than it is in our own time. Hogarth had to sell his pictures by raffle, and Wilson was obliged to retire into Wales, from its affording cheaper living. The committee of the British Institution purchased a picture by Gainsborough, for eleven hundred guineas, and presented it to the National Gallery, as an example of excellence; yet this very picture hung for years in the artist’s painting-room without a purchaser; the price was only fifty pounds. In our own times, says John Burnet, “let us take the case of Sir David Wilkie as an example; a painter who has founded a school of art unknown before in this or in any other country—a combination of the invention of Hogarth with the pictorial excellences of Ostade and Teniers; yet this artist’s works, on his coming to London in 1804, were exposed in a shop window at Charing Cross for a few pounds; and a work for which he could only receive fifteen guineas, was sold the other day for eight hundred. Do transactions such as these show the taste or discernment of the public? Lord Mansfield thought thirty pounds a large sum for ‘the Village Politicians;’ and Sir George Beaumont, as a kind of patronage, gave Wilkie a commission to paint the picture of ‘the Blind Fiddler,’ and paid him fifty guineas for what would now bring a thousand at a public sale.[14] It seems, therefore, a fair inference that a discerning public, or a patronising nobility, are only shown when an artist’s reputation makes it safe to encourage him.”—Practical Essays.

DANGEROUS RETORT.

Antonio More was a favourite of Philip of Spain, whose familiarity with him placed the painter’s life in danger; for he one day ventured to return a slap on the shoulder, which the king in a playful moment gave him, by rubbing some carmine on his Majesty’s hand. This behaviour was accepted by the monarch as a jest; but it was hinted to More that the holy tribunal might regard it as sacrilege; and he fled, to save himself, into Flanders, where he was employed by the Duke of Alva.

THE VENETIAN SCHOOL.

The late Sir Walter Scott used to say that when he told a story, he generally contrived to put a laced coat and a cocked hat upon it: this is a good illustration of the Venetian painters—their stories look like the spectacles of a melodrama.—Burnet’s Essays.