WEST’S DEATH OF WOLFE.

A change was now to be effected in the character of British art. Hitherto, historical painting had appeared in a masking habit; the actions of Englishmen, says Cunningham, had all been performed, if costume were to be believed, by Greeks and Romans. West dismissed at once this pedantry, and restored nature and propriety in his noble work of “the Death of Wolfe.” The multitude acknowledged its excellence at once, on its being exhibited at the Royal Academy; but the lovers of old art, or of the compositions called classical, complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering rams. Lord Grosvenor was so pleased with the picture, that, disregarding the frowns of amateurs, and the cold approbation of the Academy, he purchased it. Galt says that the king questioned West concerning this picture, and put him on his defense of this new heresy in art. “When it was understood,” said the artist, “that I intended to paint the characters as they had actually appeared on the scene, the Archbishop of York called on Reynolds, and asked his opinion; they both came to my house to dissuade me from running so great a risk. Reynolds began a very ingenious and elegant dissertation on the state of the public taste in this country, and the danger which every innovator incurred of contempt and ridicule, and concluded by urging me earnestly to adopt the costume of antiquity, as more becoming the greatness of my subject than the modern garb of European warriors. I answered that the event to be commemorated happened in the year 1758, in a region of the world unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period of time when no warriors who wore such costume existed. The subject I have to represent is a great battle fought and won, and the same truth which gives law to the historian, should rule the painter. If instead of the facts of the action, I introduce fiction, how shall I be understood by posterity? The classic dress is certainly picturesque, but by using it, I shall lose in sentiment what I gain in external grace. I want to mark the place, the time, and the people, and to do this, I must abide by truth. They went away, and returned again when I had finished the painting. Reynolds seated himself before the picture, 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 the king, ‘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 for me.’”