Miscellaneous Anecdotes, etc.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY, BURLINGTON HOUSE.
THE new rooms of the Royal Academy were erected from the designs, and under the superintendence, of Mr. Sydney Smirke, R.A., and consist of a large oblong block, parallel with Burlington House, and separated from it only by a few feet, but extending on both sides considerably beyond its frontage. The exhibition-rooms are approached by a noble staircase, with paintings by Ricci, which formed part of Burlington House. The galleries are divided into three lines or rows; five each in the north and south rows, and four in the middle. The central room is a domed octagonal sculpture saloon. Occupying the whole space westward of this is the “Great Room,” where the annual dinner takes place. Eastward of the central saloon is a lecture-hall; the remaining space eastward affords a room for water-colour drawings, and the gallery south of that for architectural drawings. All the exhibition-rooms communicate with each other. The dimensions of the apartments are as follows:—
The height of the walls in the Great Room to the top of the cornice is 27 ft., the cove occupies 11 ft., making the height to the underside of lantern 38 ft. In the lesser rooms, the height to the top of the cornice is 22 ft., and the cove occupies 9 ft. The lighting is by means of a large central skylight in each gallery, excepting the Sculpture Room, where there is a side light. The walls of the Picture Galleries are of a deep subdued red, down to a dado of black wood and walnut. The choice rested between this and “pheasant egg colour.” The fine art critic of theTimes, in his article of the 1st of May, 1869, makes the following appropriate remarks on this grand and useful suite of rooms, in which it is to be hoped that the Hanging Committee will for the future be able to display the pictures to the satisfaction of the artists and the public:—“The fears, if they were genuine fears, expressed by some of the Academicians as to the result of removal from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly can hardly have survived the private view of the Exhibition yesterday. The verdict of the select crowd which filled the stately apartments provided by the architects of the new Academy building for its annual Exhibition was unanimous. No European capital can now boast a more commodious and noble suite of rooms for its yearly display of painting and sculpture than London now possesses.”
THE FONTHILL COLLECTION.
William Beckford, Esq., one of the most remarkable men of modern times, was the son of the patriotic Alderman Beckford, who was Lord Mayor in the years 1762 and 1769, and whose noble and courageous remonstrance with George III. is engraved under the monument erected to hismemory in Guildhall. Inheriting property amounting to £100,000 per annum, Mr. Beckford was enabled to indulge in the expensive amusement of building. Fonthill Abbey arose like a magic palace at his command, one tower alone employing 460 men, both by day and night, through an entire winter; the torches used by the nocturnal workmen being visible to the astonished traveller at miles distant. This celebrated mansion in a few years cost Mr. Beckford the sum of £273,000. Owing to the rapidity of the work the mortar had not time to consolidate, and a heavy gale of wind brought the great tower to the ground. Merely remarking that he should have been glad to witness the sublime fall of such a mass of materials, he gave orders for the erection of another tower, 276 feet in height; this also fell to the earth in the year 1825. Mr. Beckford was an excellent scholar, and possessed a fine taste in almost every branch of art. He collected, in the fantastic but costly Abbey, one of the finest and most extensive libraries in England; and his galleries of pictures and antiquities were almost unequalled. A Chancery suit,—that blessing to lawyers,—fattened upon his riches for some years, and it ended in the loss of a large West India property; this, added to his other expenses, rendered it necessary to sell the Abbey, with almost all its costly contents. In the year 1822, after Fonthill Abbey had been on view, and catalogues issued by Messrs. Christie and Manson, the day often fixed and as often postponed, it was at length announced as being sold by private contract to Mr. Farquhar, a gentleman who had amassed considerable property in India, for the sum of £340,000, Mr. Beckford only retaining his family pictures and a few books. After the sale, Mr. Beckford resided for some years in Portugal. Not merely a patron of art, he was also an author, and onesingularly original in style. His wild and extraordinary tale, entitled “Vathek,” soon formed a portion of our classical literature. This extraordinary man died on the 25th of May, 1844, at the advanced age of 84. In the year 1823, we find the collection again in the market, its new proprietor considering the furniture, etc., wholly unsuited to so splendid a structure; the auctioneer on this occasion being Mr. Phillips, of New Bond Street, who apprised the distinguished company assembled on the first day, that the sale was one of the most important that had ever been offered to the British public. It occupied thirty-seven days, and the amount realized was rather over £80,000.
THE STRAWBERRY HILL COLLECTION.
Lord Orford, more familiarly known as Horace Walpole, the very finest gentleman of the last century, and the founder of the Strawberry Hill Collection, was the youngest son of the eminent minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and was born October 5th, 1717. After studying at Eton and Cambridge, he travelled; and it was while in Italy that he fostered the love of Art, and taste for elegant and antiquarian literature, which took such complete possession of him as to engross the principal part of his long life. Walpole has by some critics been designated an elegant trifler; yet if we consider that he was one of the first to turn public attention to a taste for the Arts, that he fostered the engravers in this country who became eminent in their branch of Art, that he brought from obscurity various historical memoirs of deep interest, we shall hesitate to consider him a trifler. Among English writers, Walpole is admitted to be one of the best models for lively epistolary correspondence. In aletter to Sir Horace Mann, he writes: “You know my passion for the writings of the younger Crébillon; you shall hear how I have been mortified by the discovery of the greatest meanness in him; and you will judge how one must be humbled to have one’s favourite author convicted of mere mortal mercenariness! I have desired Lady Mary to lay out thirty guineas for me with Liotard, and wished if I could to have the portraits of Crébillon and Marivaux for my cabinet. Mr. Churchill wrote me word that Liotard’s price was sixteen guineas; that Marivaux was intimate with him and would certainly sit, and that he believed he could get Crébillon to sit too. The latter, who is retired into the provinces with an English wife, was just then at Paris for a month; Mr. Churchill went to him, and told him that a gentleman in England who was making a collection of portraits of famous people, would be happy to have his, etc. Crébillon was humble, ‘unworthy,’ obliged, and sat. The picture was just finished, when, behold! he sent Mr. Churchill word that he expected to have a copy of the picture given him,—neither more nor less than asking sixteen guineas for sitting! Mr. Churchill answered that he could not tell what he should do, were it his own case; but that it was a limited commission, and he could not possibly lay out double; and was now so near his return that he could not have time to write to England and have an answer. Crébillon said, then he would keep the picture himself—it was excessively like. I am stillsentimentalenough to flatter myself, that a man who could beg sixteen guineas, will not give them, and so I may still have the picture.”
Walpole died on the 2nd of March, 1797. By command of the Earl of Waldegrave, the contents of Strawberry Hill were sold by auction on the 25th of April, 1842, and theproceeds of the sale, which lasted twenty-four days, amounted to £33,450 11s.9d.
Mr. Tiffin, in his interesting little book, “Gossip about Portraits,” writes mournfully of the dispersion of thisrecherchécollection: “What a melancholy time to the amateur was that at Strawberry Hill, in 1842, when these treasures were dispersed. In recalling that time when I wandered through these rooms looking listlessly at many objects that to the connoisseur (not only of art but of history) ‘spoke volumes.’ I began faintly to understand the worth of such collections.”
THE SALTMARSHE COLLECTION.
On the 4th, 5th, and 6th of June, 1847, was sold by auction, by Messrs. Christie and Manson, the collection of pictures, the property of Mr. Higginson, of Saltmarshe, Herefordshire. The total amount realized by the three days’ sale, reached the enormous sum of £46,695 3s.At the close of the sale it was remarked that the proceeds of the last day, £35,789 9s.was the greatest sum realized in one day on record. Though the collection was, on the whole, more remarkable for numbers than quality, it contained some good and important works. Mr. Higginson was a gentleman possessed of considerable wealth, and was in his day a rapacious accumulator of pictures. Five of them alone brought upwards of £10,000. On the first day’s sale, a fine example of Constable’s fetched 360 guineas; a Nasmyth, 44 guineas; and “A Country Ale-house,” the old hackneyed subject of George Morland, 95 guineas. On the second day, a sum of 405 guineas was obtained for a Gerhard Dow. On the third, and most important day ofthe sale, the late Marquis of Hertford gave the grand sum of 1000 guineas for a small female head by Greuze, one of the most distinguished artists of the modern French school. A truly important work of Claude’s fell to the same nobleman for 1400 guineas. A landscape, the joint production of P. De Koning and Lingelbach, was purchased by the late Sir Robert Peel, and we believe has just been sold to the Government by his son, the present Sir Robert. “The Holy Family, with Elizabeth and Saint John,” by Peter Paul Rubens, which was formerly in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, and afterwards in the possession of M. Delahante, who gave 3000 guineas for it, upwards of thirty years previous to the sale, was knocked down by the auctioneer to the late Marquis of Hertford for the reduced sum of 2360 guineas.
THE STOWE COLLECTION.
The contents of Stowe, the house of the Buckingham and Chandos family, were brought to the hammer on Tuesday, the 15th of August, 1848. For full particulars of the genealogy of this old and noble family, we must, with pleasure, refer our readers to the annotated catalogue of the choicest objects of art and vertu contained in its princely mansion. The editor, Mr. Henry Rumsay Forster, evidently bestowed considerable pains on the work he took in hand; and in his “Historical Notice of Stowe,” after enumerating the visits to it of almost all the crowned heads of civilized Europe, gives some lines written by Mr. Disraeli, M.P., while a guest at Stowe in the year 1840. They are in allusion to a beautiful statuette by Cotterell, of the Duke of Wellington, which His Grace of Buckinghamhad purchased, and up to the time of the sale had preserved in the library.
“Not only that thy puissant arm could bindThe tyrant of a world, and, conquering Fate,Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great;But that in all thy actions I do findExact propriety: no gusts of mind,Fitful but wild, but that continuous stateOf ordered impulse mariners awaitIn some benignant and enriching wind,—The breath ordained of nature. Thy calm mienRecalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed;Duty thine only idol, and sereneWhen all are troubled: in the utmost needPrescient; thy country’s servant ever seen,Yet sovereign of thyself whate’er may speed.”
“Not only that thy puissant arm could bindThe tyrant of a world, and, conquering Fate,Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great;But that in all thy actions I do findExact propriety: no gusts of mind,Fitful but wild, but that continuous stateOf ordered impulse mariners awaitIn some benignant and enriching wind,—The breath ordained of nature. Thy calm mienRecalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed;Duty thine only idol, and sereneWhen all are troubled: in the utmost needPrescient; thy country’s servant ever seen,Yet sovereign of thyself whate’er may speed.”
“Not only that thy puissant arm could bindThe tyrant of a world, and, conquering Fate,Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great;But that in all thy actions I do findExact propriety: no gusts of mind,Fitful but wild, but that continuous stateOf ordered impulse mariners awaitIn some benignant and enriching wind,—The breath ordained of nature. Thy calm mienRecalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed;Duty thine only idol, and sereneWhen all are troubled: in the utmost needPrescient; thy country’s servant ever seen,Yet sovereign of thyself whate’er may speed.”
“Not only that thy puissant arm could bind
The tyrant of a world, and, conquering Fate,
Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great;
But that in all thy actions I do find
Exact propriety: no gusts of mind,
Fitful but wild, but that continuous state
Of ordered impulse mariners await
In some benignant and enriching wind,—
The breath ordained of nature. Thy calm mien
Recalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed;
Duty thine only idol, and serene
When all are troubled: in the utmost need
Prescient; thy country’s servant ever seen,
Yet sovereign of thyself whate’er may speed.”
The mansion was opened for private view on the 3rd of August, 1848. The sale, ever to be remembered amongst collectors, commenced on the 15th of the same month, and terminated on the 7th October following. A sale of forty days! realizing the extraordinary sum of £75,562 4s.6d.The sale of the library followed, and extended over twenty-four days, and produced £10,355 7s.6d.
THE BERNAL COLLECTION.
In March and April, 1855, was dispersed by auction the valuable collection made by Mr. Ralph Bernal of articles of rare excellence, and of an age extremely rich in ornamental art, extending from the Byzantine period to that of Louis Seize. The high prices which the several articles brought are to be attributed rather to their artistic character than to their extrinsic value as historic relics. They consisted of Oriental, German, Dresden, Sèvres, Capo di Monte, andChelsea china; portraits remarkable for their costumes; miniatures; mediæval metal-work and ecclesiastical silver; Limoges, Dresden, and Oriental enamels; carvings in ivory; Faenza and Palissy ware; armour, arms, and stained glass; Venetian and German glass, watches, clocks, and compasses, etc.
Several of the articles brought extraordinary prices. Among the most costly items were: A Sèvres cabinet, £465; a pair of Dresden candelabra, £231; a pair of vases, paintedà la Watteau, 95 guineas; King Lothaire’s magic crystal, bought by Mr. Bernal for 10 guineas, and once sold in Paris for 12f., brought 225 guineas; Sir Thomas More’s candlesticks, bought by Mr. Bernal for 12 guineas, were sold for 220 guineas; the celebrated reliquaire of the King’s, 63 guineas; a metal-gilt Moresque dish, £57 15s.; a curious steel lock for a shrine, £32; St. Thomas à Becket’s reliquaire, 27½ guineas; a Limoges enamel portrait of Catherine di Medicis, 400 guineas; a Faenza plate, bought at Stowe for £4, brought £120; a circular Bernard Palissy dish, £162. Among the armour, steel gauntlets, 50 guineas a pair; a warder’s horn, £56; and a Spanish breastplate of russet steel, £155. The first three days the porcelain produced upwards of £6,000; and about 400 lots of Majolica ware, which cost Mr. Bernal 1,000 guineas, in this sale realized upwards of £7,000,—a proof of the skill of Mr. Bernal as a collector; and showing that the purchase of articles ofvertu, guided by correct taste and judgment, may prove a very profitable means of investment.
Rarely has the dispersion of any assemblage of works of art realized such high prices as the first portion of Mr. Bernal’s Collection. In neither of the sales of Mr. Beckford at Fonthill, at the Strawberry Hill sale (in 1842), or at thatof Stowe (in 1848), were there assembled so many choice articles as in the Bernal Collection. Fonthill, Strawberry Hill, and Stowe included many treasures of historic repute, more valuable for having been possessed by celebrated personages than for their perfection as works of art. Mr. Bernal’s Collection, however, presented higher claims; inasmuch as his judgment was acknowledged over Europe. The entire sale realized £62,680 6s.5d.
Mr. J. R. Planché, who by request wrote a few introductory lines to the catalogue, thus speaks of his departed friend, with whom he had been associated for thirty years: “Distinguished among English antiquaries by the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge, the difficulty of imposing upon him was increased by the necessity of the fabrication being fine enough in form, colour, or workmanship to rival the masterpiece it simulated; to be, in fact, itself a gem of art, which it would not pay to produce as a relic of antiquity.” Mr. Bernal was for many years a member of parliament, having sat successively for Lincoln, Rochester, and Weymouth, and held the post of Chairman of Committees. In politics he was a supporter of the Grey and Melbourne ministries. He died at his house in Eaton Square, on the 25th of August, 1854.
SALE OF DANIEL O’CONNELLS LIBRARY, PRINTS,PICTURES, ETC., IN MAY, 1849.
The last day’s sale is thus described by theFreeman’s Journal:—“The auction on Monday concluded the sale of the standard works, and at its close all were disposed of save some few insignificant lots for which no bidderscould be found. A large number of miscellaneous works of small value were sold in lots at very trifling prices. One lot, including a number of loose pamphlets and tracts, many of them bearing O’Connell’s autograph and notes, sold for £2. The sales of the preceding day were varied. A number of the Irish and Scottish Art Union prints sold at prices varying from 2s.to 3s.each. A fine proof copy of the well-known print, ‘Cross Purposes,’ brought a guinea. A copy of the now scarce print of ‘Henry Grattan’ fetched (after some spirited bidding) one guinea, Landseer’s ‘Angler’s Daughter’ (engraving), 10s.6d.‘The Volunteers in College Green’ was then put up. This engraving, now scarce, was keenly competed for; it brought £1 10s.A paltry landscape painting in oil, ‘The Meeting of the Waters,’ brought 7s.An engraving of Carlo Dolce’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ fetched 6s.A little portrait of that little man, Lord John Russell, was then put up for competition; but, amongst a sale-room full of gentry and citizens, not a solitary bidder was found willing to hazard the risk of even by chance becoming the possessor of this work of art. The accomplished salesman displayed the portrait in every possible light, and solicited an initiatory movement towards setting Lord John a-going, by infinitesimal beginnings in specie; butnon eundum erat. It was no use; in vain was the noble lord’seidolonturned towards each group of by-standers,—in vain did Mr. Jones insinuate ‘Any advance?’ ‘Sixpence for it?’ ‘Eightpence did you say, sir?’ said the indefatigable Mr. Jones (to an old gentleman with a white hat). ‘No, sir, I didn’t; nor fourpence,’ replied the gentleman, angrily. ‘Oh, I beg pardon; well then, fourpence. Any advance?’ Alas! no; not a solitary bidder. Even the Liffey Street picture-brokers looked angrily at this useless and protracted inquiry as to whether therewas any advance with regard to Lord John. Finally, the lot was withdrawn. The next lot was a small and handsomely framed portrait in oils of O’Connell. It seemed a tolerably clever copy of the well-known medium size engraving of the original. This picture was put up at a low figure, but was warmly competed for, and was knocked down at £1 10s.A large oil painting of the ‘Madonna and Child,’ not of very high merit, sold for £1. Two engravings, large size,—one, ‘The Trial of Charles I.,’ the other, ‘The Trial of Lord Strafford’—sold at 30s.each. Several other pictures, engravings, and statuettes were sold at very low prices. A splendid Norman steel cross-bow, with appurtenances complete, sold for £1 8s.The sales closed with some miscellaneous articles, none of which brought beyond average prices. The library, altogether, was certainly not such, either in the number of the volumes or their description, as might be supposed to form the collection of O’Connell; and as to the prices obtained, they were, as we have before remarked, not beyond the intrinsic value of each lot, apart from all associations connected with them.”
HOLBEIN.
Holbein, the painter, once engaged with his landlord to paint the outside of his house. The landlord found that the painter left his work very frequently to amuse himself elsewhere, and determined to keep a constant eye upon him. Holbein, anxious to get rid of his suspicious taskmaster, ingeniously contrived to absent himself at the very time when the landlord fancied he was quietly seated on the scaffold, by painting two legs apparently descendingfrom his seat; and which so completely deceived the man, that he never thought of ascertaining whether the rest of the body was in its place.
PALLADIO (ANDREW).
Andrew Palladio, the celebrated architect, was born in 1518, at Vicenza, in Lombardy. He learnt the principles of his art from Trissino; after which he studied at Rome, and on his return to Lombardy constructed a number of noble edifices. He was employed in various parts of Italy, particularly at Venice, where he built the palace Foscari. His treatise on Architecture was printed at Venice in 1570, folio; and again at London in 1715, in 3 vols. folio. In 1730, Lord Burlington published some of this architect’s designs, in one volume folio. Palladio used to relate an anecdote of an artist who dedicated the different apartments in a gentleman’s house to several moral virtues, as Chastity, Temperance, and Honesty; so that each guest might be appointed to the room sacred to his favourite virtue. The rich and young widow would be lodged in “Chastity,” the alderman in “Temperance,” and the prime minister in “Honesty,” etc. Palladio died in the year 1580. A monument was erected to his memory at Vicenza, in 1845, the Count G. Velo having bequeathed 100,000 livres for that purpose. It is thus described inThe Builderin 1846:—
“The statue of Palladio stands on a pedestal, two storeys in height, with a genius by his side in the act of crowning him. Seated on the first story of the pedestal, against the angles of the upper portion, which is less in size than the lower, are two allegorical figures, one representing Vicenza with a wreath in her left hand, and looking up with pride atthe artist; the other Architecture, depicting the history of the art on a scroll, by a representation of a primitive hut, and the Pantheon. Between these two figures on the upper part of the pedestal, is sculptured in bas-relief the baths of Caracalla, to express that it was by the study of the antique monuments that Palladio formed himself.
“At the foot of the whole is a sarcophagus, in imitation of that of Agrippa, containing the remains of the artist.
“The monument stands within an octagon chapel in the new public cemetery of the city, and is the work of M. Fabris, a sculptor of Vicenza. The material is Carrara marble.”
JACQUES CALLOT’S ETCHINGS.
“Etching is the writing by which the artist conveys his thoughts. With etching he can allow himself every liberty of touch and fantasy. Etching does not freeze his inspiration by its slow progress: it has all the qualities of a steed at full gallop. Callot, who was so varied, so original, so capricious, so fertile, and so ready, is the greatest master of the art of etching.
“The works of Callot consist of nearly sixteen hundred plates, including those of Israel. We must pass with the rapidity of a bird upon the wing almost all his small religious subjects. Callot, without fantasy, is not himself; it is plain that he grows tired with works where patience is required. The subjects in which he revels in all the luxury, in all the splendour, in all the originality, of his talent, are ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony,’ ‘The Fair della Madonna Imprunetta,’ ‘The Tortures,’ ‘The Massacre of the Innocents,’ ‘The Misfortunes and Horrors of War,’and tatterdemalions of every form and every kind, from the hectoring bully to the beggar enveloped in his rags.
“He etched with marvellous facility, having finished on more than one occasion a plate in a single day. His magic hand, and his imagination so rich and so quick, often accomplished a feat of this description in playing, as it were. It often happened,—as, for instance, in his ‘Livre des Caprices’ (Book of Caprices), and in his fantastic and grotesque works,—to let his hand follow its own course. While chatting with his friends, he would give utterance to some joke at the same time that he made a stroke, and was himself lost in wonder at having produced a figure. His graver, too, was so fertile in resources, that in all his numerous creations he never repeated himself. He was, however, an artist who treated his art seriously, and who studied incessantly, full of his task, and fond of the glimmer of the midnight lamp. He had the passion of creating tatterdemalions, bullies, and mountebanks, as other men have the passion of play. Whenever he sat up to work, he used to tell his friends that he was going to pass the night in the bosom of his family.”
Jacques Callot was born 1593, and died March, 1635.—Philosophers and Actresses.
THE FEMALE FACE.
Felibien, an eminent French writer of the early part of the 17th century, thus describes hisbeau idealof the female ace:—
“The head should be well rounded, and look rather inclining to small than large. The forehead white, smooth, and open: not with the hair growing down too deep upon it,neither flat nor prominent, but like the head, well rounded, and rather small in proportion than large. The hair either bright, black, or brown; not thin, but full and waving, and if it falls in moderate curls the better; the black is particularly useful for setting off the whiteness of the neck and skin. The eyes black, chestnut, or blue, clear, bright, and lively, and rather large in proportion than small. The eyebrows well divided, rather full than thin; semicircular, and broader in the middle than at the ends, of a neat turn, but not formal. The cheeks should not be wide; they should have a degree of plumpness, with the red and white finely blended together, and should look firm and soft. The ear should be rather small than large, well-folded, and with an agreeable tinge of red. The nose should be placed so as to divide the face into two equal parts, of a moderate size, straight, and well squared; though sometimes a little rising in the nose, which is but just perceivable, may give it a very graceful look. The mouth should be small, and the lips not of equal thickness; they should be well turned, small rather than gross, soft even to the eye, and with a living red in them. A truly pretty mouth is like a red rose-bud that is beginning to blow. The teeth should be middle-sized, white, well-ranged, and even. The chin of a moderate size, white, soft, and agreeably rounded. The skin in general should be white, properly tinged with red, with an apparent softness, and a look of thriving health in it.”
LONDON IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Sir William Davenant gives a true though ludicrous picture of the habitations of London in his day:—
“Sure,” says the angry critic, “your ancestors contrivedyour narrow streets in the days of wheelbarrows, before the greater engines, carts, were invented. Is your climate so hot that as you walk you need umbrellas of tiles to intercept the sun? Or are your shambles so empty that you are afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs? Oh, the goodly landscape of Old Fish Street, which, had it not the ill-luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to be your founder’s perspective; and where the garrets (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity) are so made that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home. Is unanimity of inhabitants in wise cities better expressed than by their coherence and uniformity of buildings, where the street begins, continues, and ends in a like stature and shape? But yours, as if they were raised in a general insurrection, where every man hath a separate design, and differ in all things that can make distinction. There stands one that aims to be a palace, and next another that professes to be a hovel; here a giant, there a dwarf; here slender, there broad; and all most especially different in their faces, size, and bulk. I was about to defy any Londoner who dares pretend there is so much ingenious correspondence in this city, as that he can show me one house like another. Yet your old houses seem to be reverend and formal, being compared to the fantastical works of the moderns, which have more ovals, niches, and angles than are in your custards; and inclosed in pasteboard walls like those of malicious Turks, who, because themselves are not immortal, and cannot for ever dwell where they build, therefore will not be at the charge to provide such lastingness as may entertain their children out of the rain; so slight, so prettily gaudy, that if they could move they would pass for pageants. It is your custom, where men vary after the mode of their habits, toturn the nation fantastical; but where streets continually change fashion you should make haste to chain up the city, for it is certainly mad.”
TARDIF, THE FRENCH CONNOISSEUR.
Among the connoisseurs of pictures who were celebrated in France towards the end of the seventeenth century, we must place in the first rank Tardif, formerly an engineer, but subsequently secretary to the Marshal de Boufflers. He was the friend of Largillière, Watteau, Audran, and, above all, of Gillot. He was renowned for the justness of his criticisms. When a picture was finished, no one dared to deliver his opinion openly on it, until it had undergone Tardif’s inspection; his opinion was, so to say, the last touch of the artist’s brush. Watteau himself, who used to laugh at criticism, once said on laying down his brush before afête galante, still wet, “That picture is a perfect wonder! If Tardif were here, I would sign it.” Tardif possessed, in the Rue Gît-le-Cœur, one of the first cabinets of pictures in Paris. The Marshal de Boufflers, who knew his secretary’s passion, used every year to make him a present of the work of some celebrated painter as a new year’s gift. Tardif, too, had managed to raise sufficient from his patrimonial fortune to buy pictures from his friends, the living artists, and of his friends the dead ones. His cabinet was so celebrated that the Duke of Orleans went one day to see it with Nocé: this completely turned Tardif’s head. However, if he had only been subject to this noble kind of madness, which is a proof of a sublime aspiration towards the poetry of the beautiful, the worthy creature might have lived comfortably till his death. But he, too, was afflicted withthe melancholy madness of money for money; he allowed himself to be fleeced under Law’s system: in other terms, he lost in that great revolution of French fortunes all he possessed, save his pictures.
It was necessary for him to live, however. Any one else would have got rid of hischefs-d’œuvre: Tardif only got rid of his servants. “Go, my friends,” said he; “the world is before you. Go where my money is gone. At present, I can only keep those who do not want to eat; my pictures will keep me company.” Tardif was already old, the passions of life had no more influence upon his heart; all that he needed was a little sunshine in his cabinet for him to live contented. He died in Paris, May, 1728.—Philosophers and Actresses.
PAUL POTTER’S STUDIES OF NATURE.
When Fergusson, the author of the famous treatise on perspective, was asked what copies he had followed in forming his style, he answered, “The examples of great nature;” and added, “I always found natureso powerful, that to copy her was easy.” All who have attained greatness in the practice of art have followed the same course of study, but none more successfully than our own Edwin Landseer, who first learned to draw animals in the fields around Primrose Hill; and Paul Potter, his great prototype, who acquired his first knowledge of art in the bright green meadows of the Low Countries. Of the value set by the latter painter on this mode of study, we have a striking proof in the picture in which he represents himself making his first sketch. This great painter was born in 1625, at Enkhuysen, in the province of Holland. His works, whichhave become equally rare and valuable, are peculiarly distinguished by the effects of his sun rays upon his landscapes and cattle, in producing which he has distanced all competitors. His paintings are deemed very valuable. For one small picture in the collection of the late Marquis of Westminster, that nobleman gave 9000 guineas. Potter died in 1654.
FIDELITY IN PORTRAIT PAINTING.
It is not always well to paint the whole truth; and although sincerity is extremely praiseworthy, we can scarcely approve the somewhat brutal frankness of an old French artist, who, while taking the portrait of a lady whose face was slightly broken out, took considerable trouble to reproduce all the pimples that he saw before him. “My dear sir,” said the lady, “you are not aware what you are about; you are painting my pimples; they are merely accidental; they make no part of my face.” “Bon, bon, madame,” replied he, “if you hadn’t these you would have others.”
CLAYTON MORDAUNT CRACHERODE.
Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode was born in 1729, took his degree at Oxford in 1753, and though he entered into orders, he never would accept Church preferment, but continued to follow his peculiar taste for antiquities, which an easy competence enabled him to do. His collection of coins and prints was most various and extensive. The whole he bequeathed to the British Museum, of which institution he was a trustee. He is thus described by one intimately acquainted with him:—“Well do I remember his mild, benevolent countenance, his sleek black suit, andhis snow-white wig! He was a perfect woman-hater; retraced his steps when, in coming down stairs, he met one of the housemaids, and walked out of the room when a female entered. He was a man of the most regular habits, and of a sedentary disposition. He possessed a fine estate in Hertfordshire, and had never ventured to go so far as to look at it. He often observed that the extent of his journeys had been to Clapham and Richmond. For forty years of his life, when not prevented by indisposition, he daily went to his bookseller and printseller, Elmsley and Paine, and every Saturday he repaired to Mudge’s, to regulate his watch.” He died in 1799.
BARRY’S CONTEMPT FOR PORTRAIT PAINTING.
“Folks,” complained Barry, “come with asessararaat the knocker of my street door and disturb my repose to ask my price as alimner. ‘I’m not a limb of that fraternity of flatterers,’ I answer; ‘go, get ye gone to the man in Leicester Fields’ [meaning Sir Joshua Reynolds]. Pshaw! the vain coxcombs! what could I see in their vacant countenances worthy of my art? The spalpeens! Such blockhead visages to be transmitted to future generations! O keep me, ye gods, clear from that offence! To be sure, and you’ll not seduce James Barry to prostitute his pencil, palette, and pigments, to such vile purposes!”
BARRY’S ECCENTRICITY.
The eccentricity of Barry is thus spoken of in Daye’s “Essays on Painting:”—“He carries his ideas of independence to such an extravagant length as always to pay forhis dinner at whatever table he sits down. A year or two ago he dined with Paul Sandby, and laid down eighteenpence for his dinner, but, on recollection, paid another sixpence, for his additional quantity of grog. This instance is by no means singular. His character may be further illustrated. One evening, at Somerset Place, Peters said, on coming in, ‘How do you do, Mr. Barry? I hope you are well.’ On which he grumbled out, ‘Oh! I don’t believe a word of it.’ With all his oddities, he is, unquestionably, a man of uncommon intellect; every one must be benefited by his conversation, for, as Dr. Wolcot has justly observed, ‘Go where he will, he always leaves a pearl behind him.’”—Barry was born in 1741, and died in 1806.
THE ROYAL PRISONER.
Joseph Goupy, an ingenious artist, was born at Nevers, in France, and painted landscapes much in the style of Salvator Rosa. He was in great favour with Frederic, Prince of Wales, and frequently attended at Leicester House to draw such designs as his Royal Highness chose to dictate. One morning, on his arrival, the prince said, “Come, Goupy, sit down and paint me a picture on such a subject.” But Goupy, perceiving Prince George, afterwards George III., standing as a prisoner behind a chair, took the liberty humbly to represent to his royal patron how impossible it was for him to sit down to execute his commands with spirit, while the Prince was standing, and under his royal displeasure. “Come out then, George,” said the good-natured prince; “Goupy has released you.” When Goupy was eighty-four, and very poor, he had a mad woman to nurse and maintain, who had been the object ofhis delight when young; he therefore put himself in the King’s way at Kensington, where he lived. One morning the King saw him, and stopped the coach, saying, “How do you do, Goupy?” asking him also if he had sufficient to live upon. “Little enough, indeed,” answered Goupy; “and as I once took your Majesty out of prison, I hope you will not let me go into one.” His Majesty was graciously pleased to order him a guinea a week for the remainder of his life, which, however, was very brief. He died in 1763.
ATHENIAN STUART.
Goupy, the subject of the above anecdote, was in his time considered the most eminent of fan painters. So fashionable was fan painting at that time, that the family of Athenian Stuart placed him as a pupil with that artist, conceiving that by doing so they had made his fortune. Stuart’s genius, however, in a short time soared to the pinnacle of fame by flying to Athens for those inestimable treasures which will immortalize his name, notwithstanding Hogarth’s satire upon the publication of his first volume; for, indeed, we have not now a student who speaks of Stuart without the honourable prefix of “Athenian” to his name.
PRUDHON AND CANOVA.
While residing at Rome, Prudhon found a friend in Canova, his friendship with whom was the most beautiful, the most noble, the most holy event in his life; in it was included everything, even to self-sacrifice. It consoled Prudhon for his misfortunes in love. “There are three men here,” said Canova to him one day, “of whom I amjealous.” “I know and love you alone,” replied Prudhon. “But me alone?” answered Canova; “do you not also love Raffaelle, and Leonardo da Vinci, and Correggio? You pass all your time with them, you listen to them, you confide to them your dreams, you go from one to the other, and you are never tired of admiring what they produce.” And this was true, for Prudhon was indefatigable in his study of these three masters, whom he sometimes called the Graces. But Correggio was the master whom he loved most. If Prudhon had listened to Canova, he would have spent his life at Rome; but in spite of all his friend’s entreaties, he left, though with a promise soon to return. They never beheld each other again, but they were faithful in their friendship: faithful to such a point that they both died at the same time, as if to meet above. Peter Paul Prudhon (named after Rubens) was born in 1758, and died in 1823.
REVOLUTION AN ENEMY TO ART.
On Prudhon’s return to France his mother was dead, and his wife, as usual, was not very conjugal. France had ceased to be a kingdom, and had not yet become a country. It was the year 1789, and the first rumours of the Revolution swept over the land like some wind foretelling the coming storm. It was the hour of exit for the Arts. Prudhon, who was always resigned, showed his resignation in this instance as well. After embracing his wife and children he set out for Paris, believing that at every epoch, even during a revolution, Paris was the best place for a man to succeed. He reached that city with scanty means, and took up his quarters in an hotel which we will dignify by calling it furnished. He intended to lodge there until he could take a studio; but hegot nothing to do, and consequently nothing to eat. He could not continue this mode of life very long, and therefore, although proud and very misanthropical, he determined on applying to the celebrated painters of that period. These may almost be summed up as consisting of Greuze, David, and Girodet. He waited upon Greuze, who was from the same province as himself. “Do you possess talent?” said Greuze to him. “Yes,” replied Prudhon naïvely. “All the worse,” continued Greuze. “A family and talent! that is more than you need to die in want. What the deuce have you to do with talent at a period when we no longer have a heaven, nor a devil, nor a king, nor a court, nor poor, nor rich? I, who address you, am, as you know, as good a painter as most men; and yet just look at my ruffles!” On saying this, Greuze, who was a perfect dandy, and excessively fantastic in his dress, showed Prudhon a pair of ragged ruffles. “If you did not possess talent,” he continued, “the evil would not be so great,—you might daub in portraits for the first comer.” “Did I not say that I had a family?” interrupted Prudhon. “I will paint sign-boards if it is necessary. I will turn mechanic as long as it pleases Heaven I shall be one.” True to his word, Prudhon set up a shop. He painted miniatures; he designed headings for letters, for concert tickets, and for bills. He ornamented visiting cards and sweatmeat boxes. “I undertake,” said he with a melancholy smile, “all that appertains to my business.”