XVI

PLATE--PORTRAIT OF MRS. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

This picture is now in the collection of Lord Rothschild, London. Mrs. Sheridan was the loveliest lady of her time. She was the daughter of Thomas Linley, and a singer.

She came from a home which was called "a nest of nightingales," because all in it were musicians. The father had a large family and made up his mind to become the best musician of his time in his locality in order to support them. He was successful, and in turn most of his children became musicians. His lovely daughter, Eliza (Mrs. Sheridan), he bound to himself as an apprentice and taught her till she was twenty-one, insisting that she "serve out her time" to him, that she might become a perfect singer. The story of this beautiful lady seems to belong to the story of Gainsborough's portrait and shall be told here.

When she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in Bath to selltickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from her. When she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a Mr. Long, sixty years old. She did not seem to mind what arrangements her father made for her, but continued to sing and attend to her business, till after the wedding gowns were all made and everything ready for the marriage, when she happened to meet the brilliant Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose plays were so fashionable, and she fell deeply in love with him. She told Mr. Long she would not marry him, and without much objection he gave her up, but her father was very angry and he threatened to sue Mr. Long for letting his daughter go. Then the beautiful lady ran away to Calais and married Mr. Sheridan without her father's permission; but she came home again and said nothing of what she had done, kept on singing and helping her father earn money for his family. One day, Mr. Sheridan was wounded in a duel which he had fought with one of his wife's admirers, and when she heard the news she screamed, "my husband, my husband," so that everybody knew she was married to the fascinating playwright. Sheridan for some reason did not at once come and get her, nor arrange for them to have a home together. For a good while she continued to sing; and once hearing her in oratorio, Sheridan fell in love with his wife all over again. He took her from her home and would never let her sing again in public. They remarried publicly and went tolive in London. He was not at all a rich and famous man at that time--only a poor law-student--but he would not let his wife make the fortune she might easily have made, by singing.

This must have made his beautiful wife very sad, but she made no complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. She worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was saying a great deal. When he became a great writer of plays his wife took charge of all the accounts of his Drury Lane Theatre, and when he was in the House of Commons she acted as his secretary. Sheridan died in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune. Gainsborough painted the portraits of Sheridan's father-in-law, and of Samuel Linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in forty-eight minutes. Among his other portraits are: eight of George III., Sir John Skynner, Admiral Hood, Colonel St. Leger, and "The Blue Boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius.

(Pronounced Zhahn Lay'on Zhay-rome)French, Semi-classical School1824-1904Pupil of Delaroche

One cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may only say that Gérôme was one of the most brilliant of modern French painters. He was born at Vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. Thus he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his work. The prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had means enough to give his son good opportunities.

Gérôme, like Millet, studied under Delaroche, but became no such characteristic painter as he. While studying with Delaroche he also was taking the course in l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

His first exhibited picture was "The Cock Fight," and he won a third class medal by it.

Almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or classic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted with much care, the details of his work arevery finely done and their vivid colour is fascinating.

PLATE--THE SWORD DANCE

This painting may be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The scene is full of action and interest, but perhaps the details of dress, mosaic decoration upon the walls, patterns of the rugs, the coloured and jewelled lamps and windows are the most splendidly painted of all.

The central figure is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and face. Other Oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a half indolent expression, while their Oriental masters and their friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the girl. The expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich clothing, the grace of the dancer--all make a fascinating picture of a genre type. Other Gérômes are "Daphnis and Chloe," "Leda," and "The Duel after the Masked Ball."

(Pronounced Geer-lan-da'yo)Florentine School1449-1494Pupil of Fra Bartolommeo

It is a good deal of a name--Domenico di Tommaso di Currado Bigordi--and it would appear that the child who bore it was under obligation to become a good deal of a something before he died.

Italian and Spanish painters generally had large names to live up to, and the one known as Ghirlandajo did nobly.

His father was a goldsmith and a popular part of his work was the making of golden garlands for the hair of rich Italian ladies. His work was so beautiful that it gained for him the name of Ghirlandajo, meaning the garland-twiner, a name that lived after him, in the great art of his son. Domenico began as a worker in mosaic, a maker of pictures or designs with many coloured pieces of glass or stone.

Ghirlandajo's art was no improvement on that of his teacher, but he in turn became the teacher of Michael Angelo.

The Florentine school of painting, to which Ghirlandajo belonged, was not so famous forcolour as the Venetian school, but it had many other elements to commend it. One cannot expect Ghirlandajo to rank with Titian, Rubens, or other "colourists" of his own and later periods, but he did the very best work of his day and school. He attained to fame through his choice of types of faces for his models, and by his excellent grouping of figures.

Until his day, the faces introduced into paintings were likely to be unattractive, but he chose pleasing ones, and he painted the folds of garments beautifully. He was not entirely original in his ideas, but he carried out those which others had thus far failed to make interesting.

Often, in his wish to paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing and therefore his figures were repulsive, but Fra Bartolommeo's pupil gave promise of what Michael Angelo was to fulfill.

Ghirlandajo and Michael Angelo were a good deal alike in their emotional natures. Both sought great spaces in which to paint, and both chose to paint great frescoes. Indeed Ghirlandajo had the extraordinary ambition to put frescoes on all the fortification walls about Florence. It certainly would have made the city a great picture gallery to have had its walls forever hung with the pictures of one master. Had he painted them, inside and out, when such an enemy as Napoleon came along, with his love of art, and his fashion of taking all that he saw to Paris, he would likely enough have campedoutside the walls while he decided what part of the gallery he would transfer to the Louvre.

One of the reasons that Ghirlandajo is famous is that he often chose well known personages for his models, and as he painted just what he saw, did not idealise his subject, he gave to the world amazing portraits, as well as fine paintings. The same thing was done by painters of a far different school, at another period. The Dutch and Flemish painters were in the habit of using their neighbours as models.

Ghirlandajo is classed among religious painters, but let us compare some of his "religious" paintings with those of Raphael or Murillo, and see the result.

He painted seven frescos on the walls of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, all scenes of Biblical history, as Ghirlandajo imagined them. They show him to have been a fine artist, but to have had not much idea of history, and to have had little sense of fitness.

Ghirlandajo's seven subjects are taken from legends of the Virgin, and the greatest represents Mary's visit to Elizabeth; it is called "The Visitation," and it is a fresco about eighteen feet long painted on the choir wall.

Let us imagine the possible scene. The Virgin Mary came from Cana, a little town in Galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from Nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly pastoral people livingin the open air, needing and wanting very little, simple in their habits. Elizabeth, Mary's old cousin, lived in Judea, and St. Luke writes thus: "Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea; and entered into the house of Zacharias" (Elizabeth's husband) "and saluted Elizabeth."

This record had been made at least eleven hundred years before Ghirlandajo painted in the Santa Maria Novella, and from it one cannot imagine that Mary made any preparation for her journey, nor does it suggest that Elizabeth had any chance to arrange a reception for her. Even had she done so, it must have been of the simplest description, at that time among those people. One can imagine a lowly home; an aged woman coming out to meet her young relative either at her door or in the high road.

There may have been surroundings of fruit and flowers, a stretch of highroad or a hospitable doorway; but the wildest imagination could not picture what Ghirlandajo did.

He paints Elizabeth flanked with handmaidens, as if she were some royal personage, instead of a priest's wife in fairly comfortable circumstances where comfort was easily obtained. Mary appears to be escorted by ladies-in-waiting, hardly a likely circumstance since she was affianced to no richer or more important person than a carpenter of Galilee. Possibly the three ladies that stand behindMary in, the picture are merely lookers-on, but in that case the visit of Mary would seem to have been of public importance, especially as there are youths near by who are also much interested in one woman's hasty visit to another. The rich brocades worn by Elizabeth's waiting ladies are splendid indeed and the landscape is fine--a rich Italian landscape with architecture of the most up-to-date sort--showing, in short, that the artist lacked historical imagination. He found some models, made a purely decorative painting with an Italian setting and called it "The Visitation." The doorway on the right is distinctly renaissance.

Such a painting as this is not "religious," nor is it historic, nor does it suggest a subject; it is merely a fine picture better coloured than most of those of the Florentine school. There is another painting of this same subject by Ghirlandajo in the Louvre, but it is no nearer truth than the one in the Santa Maria.

Ghirlandajo painted other than religious subjects, and one of them, at least, is quite repulsive. It is the picture of an old man, with a beautiful little child embracing him. The old man may have tenderness and love in his face, but his heavy features, his warty nose, do not make one think of pleasant things and one does not care to imagine the dear little child kissing the grotesque old fellow.

It was before Ghirlandajo's time that another painter had discovered the use of oil in mixingpaints. Previously colours had been mixed in water with some gelatinous substance, such as the white and yolk of an egg, to give the paint a proper texture or consistency. This preparation was called "distemper," and frescoes were made by using this upon plaster while it was still wet. Plaster and colours dried together, and the painting became a part of the wall, not to be removed except by taking the plaster with it.

The different gluey substances used had often the effect of making the colours lose their tone and they presented a glazed surface when used upon wood, a favourite material with artists.

There are numberless anecdotes written of this artist and his brother, and one of these shows he had a temper. The brothers were engaged in a monastery at Passignano painting a picture of the "Last Supper." While at work upon it, they lived in the house. The coarse fare did not suit Ghirlandajo, and one night he could endure it no longer. Springing from his seat in the refectory he flung the soup all over the monk who had served it, and taking a great loaf of bread he beat him with it so hard that the poor monk was carried to his cell, nearly dead. The abbot had gone to bed, but hearing the rumpus he thought it was nothing less than the roof falling in, and he hurried to the room where he found the brothers still raging over their dinner. David shouted out to him, when the abbot triedto reprove the artist, that his brother was worth more than any "pig of an abbot who ever lived!"

It is recorded in the documents found in the Confraternity of St. Paul that:

Domenico de Ghurrado Bighordi, painter, called del Grillandaio, died on Saturday morning, on the 11th day of January, 1493 (o.s.), of a pestilential fever, and the overseers allowed no one to see the dead man, and would not have him buried by day. So he was buried, in Santa Maria Novella, on Saturday night after sunset, and may God forgive him! This was a very great loss for he was highly esteemed for his many qualities, and is universally lamented.

The artist left nine children behind him.

Ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Dresden, Munich, and London galleries. Most children will find it hard to see their beauty.

Great men are likely to come in groups, and with Ghirlandajo there are associated Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi.

PLATE--PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZI

This lovely lady was the wife of one of the painter's patrons, Giovanni Tornabuoni, through whom he received the commission for a series of frescoes in the choir of the Santa Maria Novella, Florence. The subjects chosen were sacred, but since Ghirlandajo, no more than his neighbours, knew what the Virgin or her contemporaries looked like, he saw no reason why he should notcompliment some of the great ones of his own city and his own time by painting them in to represent the different characters of Holy Writ. So, as one of the ladies attendant upon Elizabeth when Mary comes to visit her, we have this signora of the fifteenth century. The artist made another picture of her, the one here shown, but in the same dress and posed the same as she had been for the church fresco. This accounts for its dignity and simplicity. It would seem like a bas-relief cut out of marble were it not for its wonderful colouring. It is in the Rudolf Kann Collection, Paris. This artist's other pictures are "Adoration of the Shepherds," "Adoration of the Magi," "Madonna and Child with Saints," "Three Saints and God the Father," "Coronation of the Virgin," and "Portrait of Old Man and Boy."

(Pronounced Jot-to)Florentine School1276-1337Pupil of Cimabue

Giotto painted upon wood, and in "distemper"--the mixture of colour with egg or some other jelly-like substance. We know nothing of his childhood except that he was a shepherd, as we learn from a story told of him and his teacher, Cimabue.

The story runs that one day while Giotto was watching his sheep, high up on a mountain, Cimabue was walking abroad to study nature, and he ran across a shepherd boy who was drawing the figure of a sheep, with a piece of slate upon a stone. In those days we can imagine how rare it was to find one who could draw anything, ever so rudely. Immediately Cimabue saw a chance to make an artist and he asked the little shepherd if he would like to be taught art in his studio. Giotto was overjoyed at the opportunity, and at once he left the mountains for the town, the shepherd's crook for the brush.

In those days the studio of one like Cimabue was really a workshop. Artists had to grind their own colours, prepare their own panels uponwhich to paint, and do a hundred other things of a workman rather than an artist kind in connection with their painting. Such a studio was crowded with apprentices--boys who did these jobs while learning from the master. Their teaching consisted in watching the artist and now and then receiving advice from him.

It was into such a shop as this, in Florence, that Giotto went, and soon he was to become greater than his master. Even so, we cannot think him great, excepting for his time, because his pictures, compared with later art, are crude, stiff, and strange.

No pupil was permitted to use a brush till he had learned all the craft of colour grinding and the like, and this was supposed to take about six years. These workshops were likely to be dull, gloomy places, and only a strong desire to do such things as they saw their master doing, would induce a boy to persevere through the first drudgery of the work. Giotto persevered, and not only became an original painter, at a time when even Cimabue hardly made figures appear human in outline, but he designed the great Campanile in Florence, and he saw it partly finished before he died. The Campanile is a wonder of architecture, but Giotto's Madonnas had to be improved upon, as certainly as he had improved upon those of Cimabue.

There are many amusing stories of Giotto, mainly telling of his good nature, and his ugly appearance, which everyone forgot in appreciationof his truly kind heart. Once a visit was made to his studio by the King of Naples, after the artist had become famous. Giotto was painting busily, though the day was very hot. The King entered, and bade Giotto not to be disturbed but to continue his work, adding: "Still, if I were you, I should not paint in such hot weather." Giotto looked up with a laugh in his eye: "Neither would I--if I were you, Sire!" he answered.

There is a famous saying: "As round as Giotto's "O," and this is how it came about. The pope wanted the best of the Florentine artists to do some work in Rome for him and he sent out to them for examples of their work. When the pope's messenger came to Giotto the artist was very busy. When asked for some of his work to show the pope, he paused, snatched a piece of paper and with the brush he had been using, which was full of red paint, he hurriedly drew a circle and gave it to the messenger who stared at him.

"But--is thisall?" he asked.

"All--yes--and too much. Put it with the others." This perfect circle and the account the messenger gave of his visit so delighted the pope that Giotto was chosen from all the Florentine artists to decorate the Roman buildings.

Thus Giotto worked till he was fifty-seven or eight years old when he put aside his brush and turned to sculpture and architecture. Meantime he had far outstripped his master inart. The arrangement of the groups is about the same, but the figures look human and the draperies are more natural, while he gives the appearance of length, breadth, and thickness to his thrones and enclosures. We shall not choose a Madonna for illustration, but another of Giotto's masterpieces, remembering that good as he was in his time, he seems amazingly bad compared with those who came after him.

PLATE--THE MEETING OF ST. JOHN AND ST. ANNA AT JERUSALEM.

In 1303 a certain Enrico Scrovegno had a private chapel built in the Arena at Padua and he sent for Giotto to come there and adorn the whole of its walls and ceiling with frescoes. These remain, though the chapel is now emptied of all else, and they suffice to bring scores of art-lovers to Padua. The picture here reproduced represents the meeting and reconciliation between the father and mother of the Virgin before her birth. The peculiarly shaped eyes and eyebrows that Giotto gives to all his characters are specially noteworthy here as in every one of the thirty-eight frescoes. There are three rows of pictures, one above the other and in them are portrayed the principal scenes in the lives of Christ and the Virgin. The painter here reached his high-water mark, showed the very best he could produce in sincere, restrained art.

Dutch School1580-04-1666Pupil of Karel Van Mander

Franz Hals belonged to a family which for two hundred years had been highly respected in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The father of the painter left that town for political reasons in 1579, and it was at Antwerp that Franz was born sometime between that date and 1585. His parents took him back to Haarlem as an infant, and that is the town with which his name and fame are most closely associated.

Little is known of his early life except that he began his studies with Karel Van Mander and Cornelis Cornelissen. What we know of his family life is not to his credit. In the parish register of 1611 is recorded the birth of a son to Franz Hals and five years later he is on the public records for abusing his wife, who died shortly afterward. He married again within a year and the second wife bore him many children and survived him ten years. Five of his seven sons became painters.

Franz Hals drank too much and mixed too freely with the kind of disreputable people heloved to paint, but he never became so degraded that his hand lost its cunning, or his eye its keen vision for that which he wished to portray. In 1644, he was made a director of the Guild of St. Lucas, an institution for the protection of arts and crafts in Haarlem, but from that time onward he sank in popular esteem, deservedly. He fell into debt, then into pauperism, and when he died, about the age of eighty-six, he was buried at public expense in the choir of St. Bavon Church in Haarlem.

It was in the year 1616 that Hals first became known as a master of his art by the painting of the St. Jovis Shooting Company, one of the clubs composed of volunteers banded together for the defence of the town should occasion arise. Such guilds were common throughout Holland, and they became a favourite subject with Hals, as with other painters of the time, who vied with one another in portraiture of the different members. These groups were hung upon the walls of the chambers where meetings were held for social purposes in times of peace. The men of highest rank are always given the most conspicuous places in the pictures. The flag is generally the one bit of gorgeous colour in the scene; but Franz Hals seized the opportunity to show his wonderful skill in detail while painting the cuffs and ruffs worn by these grandees. In all his work there is an impression of strength rather than of beauty; it is the charm of expressiveness he is aiming at, rather than the charmof grace and colour to which the Italian school was devoted. He differed from that school, also, in his choice of subjects, for he was distinctly and almost entirely a portrait painter, and within his own limited range he is unsurpassed. A wonderful collection of his works is to be seen in the Haarlem Town Hall.

PLATE--THE NURSE AND THE CHILD

Considering the woeful life that Franz Hals led, it is amazing to think that he of all artists is the best painter of good humour. He puts a smile on the face of nearly every one of his "leading characters," whether it be a modest young girl, a hideous old woman, a strolling musician, or a riotous soldier, and in every case the laugh suits the subject. It may have been his own easygoing shiftlessness, his way of casting care aside with a jest that enabled him to live so long and to accomplish so much in spite of his poverty and other misfortunes.

The roguish look upon the face of this baby of the house of Ilpenstein makes it appear older than the pleasant faced nurse. The dress of the child is such as Hals delighted to spend his talents upon. The picture is in the Berlin Gallery.

Among his best known paintings are "The Laughing Cavalier," "The Fool," "The Man with the Sword," and "Hille Bobbe. the Witch of Haarlem."

Dutch School1637-1709Pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael

When a man becomes famous many people claim his acquaintance, and often many places his birthplace. In Hobbema's case it has never been decided whether he was born in the little town of Koeverdam, or in the city of Haarlem or in Amsterdam. Nor is it quite certain when he was born; but what he did afterward, we are all acquainted with.

No one knows much about the life of this artist, but his master was doubtless his uncle, van Ruisdael. Hobbema was dead a hundred years before the world acknowledged his genius, thus he reaped no reward for hard work and ambition. He, like Rembrandt, died in great poverty, and with nearly the same surroundings. Rembrandt died forsaken in Roosegraft Street, Amsterdam, and Hobbema died in the same locality. We must speak chiefly about his work, since we know little of his personality or affairs.

If Böcklin's pictures seem to be composed of vertical lines, Hobbema's are as startling in their positive vertical and horizontal linescombined. We are not likely to find elevations or gentle, gradual depressions in his landscapes, but straight horizons, long trunked, straight limbed trees; and the landscape seems to be punctured here and there by an upright house or a spire. It is startlingly beautiful, and so characteristic that after seeing one or two of Hobbema's pictures we are likely to know his work again wherever we may find it.

Hobbema got at the soul of a landscape. It was as if one painted a face that was dear to one, and not only made it a good likeness but also painted the person as one felt him to be--all the tenderness, or maybe all the sternness.

It may be that Hobbema's failure to get money and honours, or at the very least, kind recognition as a great artist, while he lived, influenced his painting, and made him see mostly the sad side of beauty, nor it is certain that his landscapes give one a strange feeling of sadness and desolation, even when he paints a scene of plenty and fulness.

The French have made a phrase for his kind of work,paysage intime--meaning the beloved country--the one best known. It is a fine phrase, and it was first used to describe Rousseau's and Corot's work; but it especially applies to Hobbema's.

While this artist was not yet recognised, his uncle van Ruisdael was known as a great artist. The family must have been rich in spirit that gave so much genius to the world.Hobbema certainly loved his art above all things, for he had no return during his lifetime, save what was given by the joy of work. There are those who complain that Hobbema was a poor colourist. True, he used little besides grays and a peculiar green, which seemed especially to please him; but since that colouring belonged to the subjects he chose, one cannot complain on the ground that what he did was unsatisfying. For lack of knowledge about him we can think of him as a man of moods, sad, desolate ones at that; because his work is too extreme and uniform in its character for us to believe his method was affected.

PLATE--THE AVENUE, MIDDELHARNIS, HOLLAND

This perhaps is one of the most characteristic of Hobbema's pictures. Note a strange hopelessness in the scene, as well as beauty. The tall and solemn trees, the high light upon the road, suggesting to us all sorts of joys struggling through the cheerlessness of life. What other artist would have chosen such a corner of nature for a subject to paint? To quote a fine description:

"He loved the country-side, studied it as a lover, and has depicted it with such intimacy of truth that the road to Middelharnis seems as real to-day as it did over a hundred years ago to the artist. We see the poplars, withtheir lopped stems, lifting their bushy tops against that wide, high sky which floats over a flat country, full of billowy clouds as the sky near the North Sea is apt to be. Deep ditches skirt the road, which drain and collect the water for purposes of irrigation, and later on will join some deeper, wider canal, for purposes of navigation. We get a glimpse on the right, of patient perfection of gardening, where a man is pruning his grafted fruit trees; farther on a group of substantial farm buildings. On the opposite side of the road stretches a long, flat meadow, or "polder," up to the little village which nestles so snugly around its tall church tower; the latter fulfilling also the purpose of a beacon, lit by night, to guide the wayfarer on sea and land; scene of tireless industry, comfortable prosperity, and smiling peace. ... Pride and love of country breathe through the whole scene. To many of us the picture smiles less than it thrills with sadness. Perhaps it speaks thus only to those who find a kind of hurt in the revival of the spring, which promises so much and may fulfill so little."

Hobbema's "Watermill" is very well-known and so are his "Wooded Landscape," and "Haarlem's Little Forest."

School of Hogarth (English)1697-1764

William Hogarth, like Watteau, originated his own school; in short there never was anybody like him. He was an editorial writer in charcoal and paint, or in other words he had a story to tell every time he made a picture, and there was an argument in it, a right and a wrong, and he presented his point of view by making pictures.

English artists in literature and in painting have done some great reformatory work. Charles Dickens overthrew some dreadful abuses by writing certain novels. The one which has most interest for children is the awful story of Dotheboys' Hall, which exposed the ill treatment of pupils in a certain class of English schools. What Dickens and Charles Reade did in literature, Hogarth undertook to do in painting. He described social shams; painted things as they were, thus making many people ashamed and possibly better.

Italians had always painted saints and Madonnas, but Hogarth pretended to despise that sort of work, and painted only human beings. He did not really despise Raphael,Titian, and their brother artists, but he was so disgusted with the use that had been made of them and their schools of art, to the entire exclusion of more familiar subjects, that he turned satirist and ridiculed everything.

First of all, Hogarth was an engraver. He was born in London on the 10th December, 1697, and eighteen days later was baptised in the church of St. Bartholemew the Great. His father was a school teacher and a "literary hack," which means that in literature he did whatever he could find to do, reporting, editing, and so on.

Hogarth must early have known something of vagabond life, for his father's life during his own youth must have brought him into association with all sorts of people. He knew how madhouses were run, how kings dined, how beggars slept in goods boxes, and many other useful items.

Hogarth said of himself: "Shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me.... My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercises themselves." He became an engraver or silver-plater, being apprenticed to Mr. Ellis Gamble, at the sign of the "Golden Angel," Cranbourne Alley, Leicester Fields.

Engraving on silver plate was all well enough, but Hogarth aspired to become an engraver on copper, and he has said that this was about thehighest ambition he had while he was in Cranbourne Alley.

The shop-card which he engraved for Mr. Ellis Gamble may have been the first significant piece of work he undertook. The card is still among the Hogarth relics. He set up as an engraver on his own account, though he did study a little in Sir James Thornhill's art school; but whatever he learned he turned to characteristic account.

He continued to make shop-cards, shop-bills, and book-plates. Finally, in 1727, a maker of tapestry engaged Hogarth to sketch him a design end he set to work ambitiously He worked throughout that year upon the design, but when he took it to the man it was refused. The truth was that the man who had commissioned the work had heard that Hogarth was "an engraver and no painter," and he had so little intelligence that he did not intend to accept his design, however much it might have pleased him. Hogarth sued the man for his refusal and he won the suit. He next began to make what he called "conversation pieces," little paintings about a foot high of groups of people, the figures being all portraits. These were very fashionable for a time and made some money for the artist. Both he and Watteau were fond of the stage, and both painted scenes from operas and plays.

In time he moved into lodgings at the "Golden Head," in Leicester Fields, and there he made his home. He had already begun the great paintingswhich were to make him famous among artists. These were a series of pictures, telling stories of fashionable and other life. His own story of how he came to think of the picture series was that he had always wished to present dramatic stories--present them in scenes as he saw them on the stage.

He had married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, and had never been thought of kindly by his father-in-law till he made so much stir with his first series. Then Sir James approved of him, and Hogarth found life more pleasing.

There are very few anecdotes to tell of the artist's life, and the story of his pictures is much more amusing. One of his first satires was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Gibber, and another person made it into an opera. Many pamphlets and poems were written about it, and finally china was painted with its scenes and figures. There was as much to cry as to laugh over in Hogarth's pieces and that is what made them so truly great. One of his great picture series was called the "Rake's Progress" and it was a warning to all young men against leading too gay a life. It showed the "Rake" at the beginning of his misfortunes, gambling, and in the last reaping the reward of his follies in a debtor's prison and the madhouse. There are eight pictures in that set.

In this series, especially in the fifth picture, there are extraordinary proofs of Hogarth's completeness of ideas. Upon the wall in theroom wherein the "Rake" marries an old woman for her money, the Ten Commandments are hung, all cracked, and the Creed also is cracked and nearly smudged out; while the poor-box is covered with cobwebs. The eight pictures brought to Hogarth only seventy guineas.

One of his pictures was suggested to him by an incident which greatly angered him. He had started for France on some errand of his own, and was in the very act of sketching the old gate at Calais, when he was arrested as a spy. Now Hogarth was a hard-headed Englishman, and when he was hustled back to England without being given time for argument, he was so enraged that he made his picture as grotesque as possible, to the lasting chagrin of France. He painted the French soldiers as the most absurd, thin little fellows imaginable, and that picture has largely influenced people's idea of the French soldier all over the English-speaking world.

As Hogarth grew old he grew also a little bitter and revengeful toward his enemies, often taking his revenge in the ordinary way of belittling the people he disliked, in his paintings.

Hogarth came before Reynolds or Gainsborough; in short, was the first great English artist, and his chief power lay in being able instantly to catch a fleeting expression, and to interpret it. An incident of Hogarth's youth illustrates this. He had got into a row in apot-house with one of the hangers-on, and when someone struck the brawler over the head with a pewter pot, there, in the midst of excitement and rioting, Hogarth whipped out his pencil and hastily sketched the expression of the chap who had been hit.

Hogarth was friends with most of the theatre managers, and one of his souvenirs was a gold pass given him by Tyers, the director of Vauxhall Gardens, which entitled Hogarth and his family to entrance during their lives. This was in return for some "passes," which Hogarth had engraved for Tyer.

Upon one occasion Hogarth set off with some companions for a trip to the Isle of Sheppey. Incidentally Forest wrote a sketch of their journey and Hogarth illustrated it. That work is to be found, carefully preserved, in the British Museum. The repeated copying and reproduction for sale of his pictures brought about the first effort to protect his works of art by copyright. But it was not till he had done the "Rake's Progress" that he was able to protect himself at all, and even then not completely.

Just before his death he was staying at Chiswick, but the day before he died he was removed to his house in Leicester Fields. He was buried in the Chiswick churchyard; and in that suburb of London may still be seen his old house and a mulberry tree where heoften sat amusing children for whom he cared very much. Garrick wrote the following epitaph for his tomb:

Farewell, great Painter of Mankind!Who reached the noblest point of art,Whose pictured Morals charm the MindAnd through the Eye correct the Heart.If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;If neither move thee, turn away,For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here.

If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;If neither move thee, turn away,For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here.

PLATE--THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

The picture used in illustration here is part of probably the very greatest art-sermon ever painted, called "Marriage à la Mode." The story of it is worth telling:

"The first act is laid in the drawing-room of the Viscount Squanderfield"--is not that a fine name for the character? "On the left, his lordship is seated, pointing with complacent pride to his family tree, which has its roots in William the Conqueror. But his rent roll had been squandered, the gouty foot suggesting whither some of it has gone; and to restore his fortunes he is about to marry his heir to the daughter of a rich alderman. The latter is seated awkwardly at the table, holding the marriage contract duly sealed, signed and delivered; the price paid for it, being shown by the pile of money on the table and the bunchof cancelled mortgages which the lawyer is presenting to the nobleman, who refuses to soil his elegant fingers with them. Over on the left is his weakling son, helping himself at this critical turn of his affairs, to a pinch of snuff while he gazes admiringly at his own figure in the mirror. The lady is equally indifferent; she has strung the ring on to her finger and is toying with it, while she listens to the compliments being paid to her by Counsellor Silver-tongue. Through an open window another lawyer is comparing his lordship's new house, that is in the course of building, with the plan in his hand. A marriage so begun could only end in misery." This is the first act, and the pictures that follow show all the steps of unhappiness which the couple take. There are five more acts to that painted drama, which is in the National Gallery, London.

(Pronounced Hahntz Hol'bine)German School1497-1543Pupil of Holbein, the Elder

There were three generations of painters in the Holbein family, and the Hans of whom we speak was of the third. His grandfather was called "old Holbein," and when more painters of the same name and family came along it became necessary to distinguish them from each other thus: "old Holbein," the "elder Holbein," and "young Holbein." The first one was not much of an artist; still, in a locality where at best there was not much art he was good enough to be remembered.

"Young Holbein" was born in Augsburg, which is in Swabia, in southern Germany; "elder Holbein" and his father, Michael, "old Holbein," had moved there from Schonenfeld, a neighbouring village, about forty three years before little Hans was born, the old Michael bringing his family to the larger town where it was easier to make a living.

The "elder Holbein" was a really good artist and well thought of in Augsburg, and when little Hans's turn came he had no teacher but hisfather, unless indeed we were to call him also a pupil of his elder brother, Ambrosius. His uncle Sigismund, too, taught him something of art, for the whole Holbein family seem to have been artists. Young Holbein was never regularly apprenticed to any outsider.

Art was not then taught as it is now. The work of a beginner was often to paint for his master certain details which it was thought that he might handle properly, while the master occupied himself with what he thought to be some more important part of the picture. It is said that Hans often painted the draperies of his father's figures when his father was engaged upon the altar pieces so fashionable at the time. The Holbeins one and all must have been bad managers or improvident; at any rate, Hans did not turn out well as a man and we read that his father was always in debt and difficulty although he received much money for his work and was not handicapped, like Dürer's father, by a family of eighteen children.

The story of the Holbeins is quite unlike that of the Dürers, and not nearly so attractive.

Some time before Hans was twenty years of age, the entire family had packed up and gone to live in Lucerne, while Hans and his brother, Ambrosius, went travelling together, as most young Germans went at that time before they settled down to the serious work of life. The last we hear of Ambrosius he had joined the painters' guild in Basel, and probably he died not longafterward, or at any rate while he was still young. There was in Basel a certain Hans Bar, for whose wedding occasion Hans Holbein designed a table, on which he pictured an allegory of "St. Nobody." This was very likely such work as our cartoonists do to-day, but being the work of Holbein, it had great artistic value. Besides that, he painted a schoolmaster's sign to be hung outside the door.

As an illustrator, Holbein made the acquaintance of several authors about that time and started on the high road to fame. He was a man of very little conscience or fine feeling, and there could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the clean sweet life of Dürer and the brawling, unfeeling one that Hans Holbein led.

Dürer married, had no children, but tenderly loved and cared for his wife, taking her with him upon his journeys and making her happy.

Holbein married and beat his wife; had several children and took care of none of them. His wife grew to look old and worn while he remained a gay looking sport, quite tired of one whom he had had on his hands for ten years. He wandered everywhere and left his family to shift for itself. One writer in speaking of the two men says:

"Dürer would never have deserted his wife whom he took with him even on his journey to the Netherlands; and he was bound by the same tenderness to his native town. However much he rejoiced to receive a visit from Belliniat Venice, or when at Antwerp, the artists instituted, a torch-light procession in his honour, nothing could have moved him to leave Nuremberg." Dürer loved his home; Holbein hated his.

Holbein had a cold, light-blue eye; Dürer a soft and tender glance. While Dürer lived he was the mainstay of his family--father and brothers. Holbein's father died in misery and his brother's life was disastrous, Hans doing nothing to serve them and looking on at their sufferings indifferently.

There is a court document in existence which tells the particulars of Hans Holbein's arrest for getting into a brawl with a lot of goldsmiths' apprentices during a night of carousal. The court warned him that he would be more severely punished if he did not cease his lawless life and he was made to promise not to "jostle, pinch, nor beat his lawful spouse." When he died he made no provision in his will for his family. There is a picture of his wife, Elizabeth Schmidt, to be seen in his "Madonna" at Solothurn Holbein used her for the model. She then was young and blooming and the model for the child was his own baby; at that time he found them useful.

His life of folly can hardly be excused by impulsiveness or emotion, for his pictures show little of either. He was best at portrait painting. At that time guilds and town councils wanted the portraits of their members preserved in some way, and it was the habit ofpainters like Holbein to form picturesque groups and give to such dramatic groupings the features of townsmen. Rembrandt did this much later than Holbein, when he painted the "Night Watch," or as it is more properly called, "The Sortie."

Probably Holbein's first important work was to make title pages for the second edition of Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament. This MS. was made about the time that Holbein's work began to be of interest to the public, and so the commission was given to him.

After a time this artist went to England with letters of introduction to Sir Thomas More, Chancellor to King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas treated him very kindly and set him to work making portraits of his own family. During the time he was living at More's home in Chelsea, the King himself, used frequently to visit there, and on one occasion he saw the brilliant portraits of the More family and inquired about the artist. Sir Thomas offered the King any of the pictures he liked, but Henry VIII. asked to see the artist. When brought before him, Holbein's fortune seemed to be made for the King asked him to go to court and paint for him, remarking that "now he had the artist he did not care about the pictures."

Holbein seems to have been a favourite with Henry and many anecdotes are told of hislife at Whitehall, where he went to live. Once while Holbein was engaged upon a portrait, a nobleman insisted upon entering his studio, after the artist had told him that he was painting the portrait of a lady, by order of the King. The nobleman insisted upon seeing it, but Holbein seized him and threw him down the Stairs; then he rushed to the King and told what had happened. He had no sooner finished than the nobleman appeared and told his story. The King blamed the nobleman for his rudeness.

"You have not to do with Holbein," he said, "but with me. I tell you, of seven peasants I can make seven lords, but of seven lords I cannot make one Holbein. Begone! and remember that if you ever attempt to avenge yourself, I shall look upon any injury offered to the painter as done to myself."

It was Holbein who, visiting a brother artist and finding a picture on the easel, painted a fly upon it. When the artist returned he tried to brush the fly off, then set about looking for the one who had deceived him.

His portrait painting was so superb that he received many commissions.

Meantime, Sir Thomas More had fallen into disfavour with the King and was to lose his head, but it is written that the artist's portraits "betray nothing of this tragedy." He was as ready to climb to fame by the favour ofhis generous patron's enemies as he had been to accept the offices of Sir Thomas More. He painted the portraits of several of the wives of Henry VIII., and it may be said that there was a good deal of that monarch's temperament to be found in Holbein himself. Take him all in all, Hans was as detestable as a man as he was excellent as a painter.

In his adopted home in Lucerne, Holbein had painted frescoes, both on the inside and the outside of a citizen's house, and this house stood until 1824, when it was torn down to make way for street improvements, but several artists hastily copied the frescoes so that they are not entirely lost.

Before he left Germany for England, Holbein had been commissioned to decorate the town hall in Basel, and a certain amount of money was voted for the work, but after he had finished three walls, he decided that the money was only enough to pay him for what he had already done. The councillors agreed with him, but as money was a little "close" in Basel at that time, they felt unable to give him more, and so voted to "let the back wall alone, till further notice."

He painted one Madonna whom he surrounded with the entire family of Burgomaster Meyer, including even the burgomaster's first wife, who was dead. This work is called the "Meyer Madonna."

It is said that after Holbein's return toBasel he, with others, was persecuted for his "religious principles," but if this were true, his persecutors went to considerable pains for nothing, because Holbein was never known to have any sort of principles, religious or otherwise. He was neither a Protestant, nor a Catholic but a painter, a man without convictions and without thought. He did not care for family, country, friends, politics, religion, nor for anything else, so far as any one knows.

When he was asked why he had not partaken of the Sacrament, he answered that he wanted to understand the matter better before he did so. Thus he escaped punishment, and when matters were explained to him, he did whatever seemed safest and most convenient under the circumstances.

On his return to England, he settled among the colony of German and Netherland merchants, who were in the habit of meeting at a place called "The Steelyard," as their home and warehouses were grouped in that locality, with a guild hall and a wineshop they alone patronised.

While associated with his compatriots Holbein made portraits of many of them, and these are magnificent works of art. He painted them separately or in groups; in their offices and in their guild hall, as the case might be. The men whom he thus painted were: Gorg Gisze, Hans of Antwerp, Derich Berck, Geryck Tybis, Ambrose Fallen, and many others. He designedthe arch which the guild erected upon the occasion of Anne Boleyn's coronation, and he painted Henry's next Queen, Jane Seymour.

Holbein painted many portraits of Henry VIII. and probably all those dated after 1537 were either copies or founded upon the portrait which Holbein made and which was destroyed with Whitehall.

While he painted for Henry, Holbein received a sort of retainer's fee of thirty pounds a year, but he may have received sums for outside commissions which he undertook. On one occasion, when he took a journey to Upper Burgundy to paint a portrait of the Duchess whom Henry contemplated making his next wife, the King gave him ten pounds out of his own purse. We have no record of vast sums such as Raphael received.

Henry did not succeed in making the Duchess his wife, so Holbein was sent to paint another--Anne of Cleves--that Henry might see what he thought of her before he undertook to make her his queen. Holbein did a disastrous deed, for he made Anne a very acceptable looking woman, (the portrait hangs in the Louvre) and Henry negotiated for her on the strength of that portrait. Later, when he saw her, he was utterly disgusted and disappointed.

Holbein, notwithstanding this trick, was employed to paint the next wife of Henry, and doubtless he also made the miniature of Catherine Howard which is in Windsor Castle.Holbein finally died of the plague and no one knows where he was buried. His wife died later, and it was left for his son, Philip, who was said to be "a good well-behaved lad," to bring honours to the family. He was apprenticed in Paris, and, settling later in Augsburg, he founded a branch of the Holbein family on which the Emperor Matthias conferred a patent of nobility, making them the Holbeins of Holbeinsberg.

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