Exhibited: Society of Artists, 1760, ’63, ’65-’71; Free Society, 1761, ’62; Royal Academy, 1772, ’73, ’75, ’77-’79, ’81.Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute.Biographical and Critical Sources: Leslie’s “Handbook for Young Painters”; Redgrave’s “Dictionary”; “Reminiscences of Henry Angelo,” vol. i, 212-216; “D. N. B.”Reproductions:The Studio, Feb. 1917; Finberg’s “English Water-Colour Painters.”]
Exhibited: Society of Artists, 1760, ’63, ’65-’71; Free Society, 1761, ’62; Royal Academy, 1772, ’73, ’75, ’77-’79, ’81.
Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute.
Biographical and Critical Sources: Leslie’s “Handbook for Young Painters”; Redgrave’s “Dictionary”; “Reminiscences of Henry Angelo,” vol. i, 212-216; “D. N. B.”
Reproductions:The Studio, Feb. 1917; Finberg’s “English Water-Colour Painters.”]
The date when Alexander Cozens came to England is given above as 1746. This is what we find in all the reference books, and it is founded on a memorandum pasted in a book of drawings made by the artist in Italy which is now in the British Museum. This memorandum states that “Alexander Cozens, in London, author of these drawings, lost them, and many more, in Germany, by their dropping from his saddle, when he was riding on his way from Rome to England, in the year 1746. John Cozens, his son, being at Florence in the year 1776, purchased them. When he returned to London in the year 1779 he delivered the drawings to his father.” Now either the date in this note is wrong or, what seems a more probable explanation, Alexander Cozens’s journey to England in 1746 was not the occasion of his first visit to this country, for there is an engravedView of the Royal College of Eton, after a drawing made by Cozens, which was published in 1742. It was engraved by John Pine, whose daughter afterwards became Alexander Cozens’s wife. The existence of this engraving, which has been noticed by noneof the writers on Cozens’s life, seems to point to the probability that the artist came to England at least four years earlier than has been supposed. It also shows how little we know about Cozens’s early life, and it suggests a certain amount of scepticism about the constantly repeated statements on this subject which rest, apparently, either on dubious authority or on authority which has not or cannot be verified.
Alexander Cozens’s work attracted little attention in modern times until the late Mr. Herbert Home perceived its beauties. Public attention was first drawn to it by the “Historical Collection of British Water-Colours” organized by the Walpole Society in the Loan Exhibition held at the Grafton Galleries at the end of 1911, which included five beautiful drawings by Cozens. This was followed, in 1916, by an exhibition of Mr. Home’s collection of drawings with special reference to the works of Alexander Cozens, held by the Burlington Fine Arts Club. To the catalogue of this exhibition Mr. Laurence Binyon contributed a valuable article on “Alexander Cozens and his Influence on English Painting.” In this article Mr. Binyon does justice to Cozen’s originality of design and to the emotional power of his drawings. “In his freest vein he uses his brush with a loose impetuosity which reminds one curiously of Chinese monochrome sketches—the kind of work beloved by those Chinese artists who valued spontaneous freshness and personal expressiveness above all else in landscape.” “It was indeed,” Mr. Binyon adds, “the naked elements” (of landscape structure) “rather than the superficial aspects of a scene which appealed to his imagination; and in nature it was the solitary and the spacious rather than the agreeably picturesque which evoked his deepest feelings.”
Alexander Cozens used colour sparingly and seldom. His best drawings are either in bistre or in indian ink, and he was fond of working on stained, or perhaps oiled, paper (which was formerly used for tracing). Such paper has doubtless acquired a darker tone with age, and it adds to the “sombreness” of which contemporaries complained in his drawings.
[Son of Alexander Cozens, born 1752; made sketching tour in Switzerland and Italy, with R. Payne Knight, 1776-1779; again visited Switzerland and Italy, this time in company with William Beckford, 1782; became insane, 1794; died, it is said, 1799.
Exhibited: Society of Artists, 1767-’71; Royal Academy, 1776.Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Gallery of Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Oldham Art Gallery (Charles E. Lees’ Collection); Manchester Art Gallery (James Blair Bequest).Biographical and Critical Sources: Edwards’s “Anecdotes”; Leslie’s “Handbook”; Redgrave’s “Century” and “Dictionary”; “D. N. B.”Reproductions: Cosmo Monkhouse’s, Finberg’s, Hughes’s and Rich’s works, already cited;The Studio, Feb. 1917.]
Exhibited: Society of Artists, 1767-’71; Royal Academy, 1776.
Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Gallery of Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Oldham Art Gallery (Charles E. Lees’ Collection); Manchester Art Gallery (James Blair Bequest).
Biographical and Critical Sources: Edwards’s “Anecdotes”; Leslie’s “Handbook”; Redgrave’s “Century” and “Dictionary”; “D. N. B.”
Reproductions: Cosmo Monkhouse’s, Finberg’s, Hughes’s and Rich’s works, already cited;The Studio, Feb. 1917.]
It is really surprising that we know so little about this artist. During his lifetime his works were much sought after, and he must have been personally known to a number of distinguished people; both Payne Knight and the eccentric millionaire, William Beckford, the author of “Vathek,” and owner and rebuilder of Fonthill Abbey, with whom he travelled in Italy and Switzerland, and who both possessed a large number of his drawings, were voluminous writers, yet neither has deigned to tell us anything of interest about the character, personality, or even outward appearance of this very great artist. Both Beckford and Knight wrote accounts of their travels, but one searches them in vain for a single word that would prove that these highly intelligent men had the shadow of a notion that the quiet and unobtrusive young “draughtsman” in their employ was one of the greatest artists their country had produced.
We do not know for certain where or when John Cozens was born nor when he died. Roget says he “appears to have been born abroad when his parent was giving lessons in Bath,” but he gives no authority for the statement, and so far as I know it has not been verified. The best evidence for the date of his birth seems to be Leslie’s statement that he once saw a small pen-drawing on which was written, “Done by J. Cozens, 1761, when nine years of age.” If the date is correct Cozens was only fifteen when he began to exhibit at the Society of Artists. Constable stated that Cozens died in 1796, but most of the authorities give the date as 1799.
That the artist was modest and unobtrusive, like his drawings, we may feel sure. As Leslie wrote, “So modest and unobtrusive are the beauties of his drawings that you might pass them without notice, for the painter himself never says ‘Look at this, or that,’ he trusts implicitly to your own taste and feeling; and his works are full of half-concealed beauties such as Nature herself shows but coyly, and these are often the most fleeting appearances of light. Not that his style is without emphasis, for then it would be insipid, which it never is, nor ever in the least commonplace.”
Constable was one of the first to realize Cozens’s true greatness. “Cozens,” he said, “is all poetry,” and on another occasion he rather shocked Leslie by asserting that Cozens was “the greatest genius that ever touched landscape.” Yet this assertion contains nothing but the plain truth. Genius is the only word we can use to describe the intense concentration of mind and feeling which inspires Cozens’s work. To the analytic eye his drawings are baffling and bewildering in the extreme; it is impossible to find a trace of cleverness or conscious artifice in them. They make you feel that you are looking at the work of a somnambulist or of one who has painted in a trance. They are, I believe, the most incorporeal paintings which have been produced in the Western world, for the paint and the execution seem to count for solittle and the personal inspiration for so much. The painter’s genius seems to speak to you direct, and to impress and overawe you without the help of any intermediary.
In this respect Cozens is quite different from Turner. Even when he trusted most implicitly to his genius Turner was always the great artist, the great colourist, the incomparable master of his technique whatever medium he was working in. Beyond the sheer beauty of his simple washes of transparent colour there is hardly a single technical or executive merit in Cozens’s drawings that one can single out for praise or even for notice. Their haunting beauty and incomparable power are spiritual, not material. And as we can think of a spirit too pure and fine to inhabit a gross body like our own, so Cozens seems to be a genius too spiritual for form and colour and the palpable artifices of representation. Certainly no English artist relied more serenely and confidently on his genius, and subdued his art more absolutely to spiritual purposes. And this is what I think Constable meant when he called Cozens “the greatest genius that ever touched landscape”; he did not say that he was the greatest artist.
As one of our illustrations we reproduce the drawingLake Albano and Castel Gandolfoby Cozens (Plate I) in the collection of Mr. C. Morland Agnew.
[Born in Southwark, 1775; apprenticed to Edward Dayes; first engravings after his drawings published in “Copper Plate Magazine,” 1793; sketching tours, in the Midlands (Lichfield, etc.), 1794, Kent and Sussex 1795, Yorkshire and Scotland 1796, Devonshire 1797, Wales 1798, Yorkshire and Scotland 1799; “Girtin’s Sketching Society” established, 1799; married, 1800; went to Paris, Nov. 1801, and returned to England, May 1802; hisEidometropolis, or Great Panorama of London, exhibited at Spring Gardens, August, 1802; died Nov. 9, 1802; engravings of his views of Paris published shortly after his death.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1794, ’95, ’97-1801.Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums; Oldham Art Gallery (Charles E. Lees’ Collection).Biographical and Critical Sources: Edwards’s “Anecdotes”; Dayes’ “Professional Sketches”; Redgrave’s “Century” and “Dictionary”; B.F.A. Club’s Catalogue, 1875; Roget’s “History”; Binyon’s “Life and Works,” 1900; Walpole Society’s Vols. II. and V.Reproductions: Binyon’s “Life”; Monkhouse’s, Finberg’s, Hughes’s, Lytton’s, and Rich’s works already cited;The Studio(Centenary of Thomas Girtin Number), Nov. 1902;The Studio, May 1916; Walpole Society’s Vols. II. and V.]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1794, ’95, ’97-1801.
Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums; Oldham Art Gallery (Charles E. Lees’ Collection).
Biographical and Critical Sources: Edwards’s “Anecdotes”; Dayes’ “Professional Sketches”; Redgrave’s “Century” and “Dictionary”; B.F.A. Club’s Catalogue, 1875; Roget’s “History”; Binyon’s “Life and Works,” 1900; Walpole Society’s Vols. II. and V.
Reproductions: Binyon’s “Life”; Monkhouse’s, Finberg’s, Hughes’s, Lytton’s, and Rich’s works already cited;The Studio(Centenary of Thomas Girtin Number), Nov. 1902;The Studio, May 1916; Walpole Society’s Vols. II. and V.]
Compared with John Cozens’s work Girtin’s appears often self-conscious and artificial. His drawings were admired by his contemporaries chiefly on account of their style; references to the “sword-play” of his pencil,the boldness and swiftness of his washes, constantly recur in their eulogies of his work. Girtin was nearly always a stylist, and often a mannerist. But his style, at its best, is so thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of his work that it is difficult to separate the two. His love of the sweeping lines of the open moorland and his passion for height and space appeal irresistibly to our imagination, while the broad simplicity of his vision, his restrained and truthful colour, and his frank, bold, decisive handling seem the only adequate means by which his inspiration could find clear and authoritative expression.
We must remember, too, that Girtin died at the age of twenty-seven. The knowledge of his early and untimely death intensifies our admiration for all he did; while the few supreme masterpieces of poetical landscape he has left us, like thePlinlimmon, show clearly what our national art lost by the tragedy of his early death.
Girtin seems to have mastered his art as Robert Louis Stevenson mastered his, by “playing the sedulous ape” to the men he admired. There are now in the British Museum copies he made after Antonio Canal, Piranesi, Hearne, Marlow, and Morland. Of these masters Canal seems to have impressed and taught him most. The spaciousness and breadth of effect of all his topographical work are clearly the outcome of his admiration for Canal’s drawings and paintings. The calligraphic quality of his line work, what has been called the “sword-play” of his pencil, is also due to the same influence.
His earlier drawings, made about 1792 and 1793, were, however, modelled on the style of his master, Edward Dayes. The drawings he made after James Moore’s sketches—of which several have been recently acquired by the Ashmolean Museum—might easily be mistaken for Dayes’ work. They only differ in being more accomplished and workmanlike than those which his master made for the same patron, and in their deliberate avoidance of the dark “repoussoir” of which Dayes was so fond in his foregrounds—an avoidance which gives Girtin’s drawings a greater unity and a more decorative effect than those of Dayes.
By about 1795 Girtin’s real style began to assert itself, in drawings like those of Lichfield and Peterborough Cathedrals. From this time we find him pouring forth an abundance of superb topographical subjects instinct with style and ennobled with poetry and imagination—drawings likeRievaulx Abbey(1798), in the V. and A. Museum,Carnarvon Castle, andThe Old Ouse Bridge, York, both in the possession of his great-grandson, Mr. Thomas Girtin. The noble studies for his Panorama of London (made probably in 1801), hisLindisfarne(?1797) andBridgnorth(1802), are fortunately in the British Museum. The drawings he made on his return from Paris, during the last sad months of his fast-ebbing life—drawings like thePorte St. Denis—are amongst the most superb of his splendid productions.
I will close these brief and inadequate remarks by copying out two advertisements connected with Girtin’s “Panorama” which I believe have not been printed or referred to by any one of the writers on his life and work. The first appeared in “The Times” on August 27, 1802. It runs as follows: “Eidometropolis, or Great Panoramic Picture of London, Westminster, and Environs, now exhibiting at the Great Room, Spring Gardens, Admission 1s.T. Girtin returns his most grateful thanks to a generous Public for the encouragement given to his Exhibition, and as it has been conceived to be merely a Picture framed, he further begs leave to request of the Public to notice that it is Panoramic, and from its magnitude, which contains 1944 square feet, gives every object the appearance of being the size of nature. The situation is so chosen as to shew to the greatest advantage the Thames, Somerset House, the Temple Gardens, all the Churches, Bridges, principal Buildings, &c., with the surrounding country to the remotest distance, interspersed with a variety of objects characteristic of the great Metropolis. His views of Paris, etched by himself, are in great forwardness, and to be seen with the Picture as above.”
The second notice is as follows: “Thursday, 11 Nov., 1802. The Public are most respectfully informed that in consequence of the decease of Mr. Thomas Girtin, his Panorama of London exhibiting at Spring Gardens, will be shut till after his interment, when it will be re-opened for the benefit of his widow and children, under the management of his brother, Mr. John Girtin.”
As an example of Girtin’s work we reproduceThe Valley of the Aire with Kirkstall Abbey(Plate II), from Mr. Thomas Girtin’s collection.
[Born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, 23 April, 1775; worked in Life Academy, R.A. schools, 1792-1799; A.R.A., 1799, R.A. 1802; first tour on Continent, 1802; first part of “Liber Studiorum” issued, 1807; Professor of Perspective, R.A., 1807-1837;Crossing the Brookexhibited 1815; published “Southern Coast” series of engravings, 1814-1826, “Views in Sussex,” 1816-1820, Hakewill’s “Italy,” 1818-1820, “Richmondshire,” 1818-1823, “Provincial Antiquities of Scotland,” 1819-1826, “England and Wales,” 1827-1838, Rogers’s “Italy,” 1830, and “Poems,” 1834, “Rivers of France,” 1833-1835; exhibitedRain, Steam, and Speed, 1844; died Dec. 18, 1851.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1790-1804, ’06-’20, ’22, ’23, ’25-’47, ’49, ’50; British Institution, 1806, ’8, ’9, ’14, ’17, ’35-’41, ’46; Society of British Artists, 1833, ’34; Institution for Enc. of F.A., Edinburgh, 1824; Cooke’s Exhibitions, 1822-’24; Northern Academy of Arts, Newcastle, 1828; R. Birmingham S. of Artists, 1829, ’30, ’34, ’35, ’47; Liverpool Academy, 1831, ’45; R. Manchester Institution, 1834, ’35; Leeds Exhibition, 1839.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum; British Museum;National Galleries of Ireland and Scotland; Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Bury Art Gallery, etc. etc.Biographical and Critical Sources: Peter Cunningham’s Memoir, in John Burnet’s “Turner and his Works,” 1852; Alaric Watts’s Memoir, in “Liber Fluviorum,” 1853; Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” and “Preterita”; Thornbury’s “Life, etc.,” 2 vols., 1862; Hamerton’s “Life,” 1879; Monkhouse’s “Turner” (in “Great Artists Series”), 1882; C. F. Bell’s “Exhibited Works of Turner,” 1901; Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Turner,” 1902; Finberg’s “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings,” 1910; etc. etc.Reproductions: Armstrong’s “Turner”; Wedmore’s “Turner and Ruskin”; “The Genius of Turner” (The StudioSpecial Number, 1903); “Hidden Treasures at the National Gallery,” 1905; “The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner” (The StudioSpring Number, 1909); “Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall” (The StudioSpecial Number, 1912); Walpole Society’s Vols. I., III., and VI.]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1790-1804, ’06-’20, ’22, ’23, ’25-’47, ’49, ’50; British Institution, 1806, ’8, ’9, ’14, ’17, ’35-’41, ’46; Society of British Artists, 1833, ’34; Institution for Enc. of F.A., Edinburgh, 1824; Cooke’s Exhibitions, 1822-’24; Northern Academy of Arts, Newcastle, 1828; R. Birmingham S. of Artists, 1829, ’30, ’34, ’35, ’47; Liverpool Academy, 1831, ’45; R. Manchester Institution, 1834, ’35; Leeds Exhibition, 1839.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum; British Museum;National Galleries of Ireland and Scotland; Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Bury Art Gallery, etc. etc.
Biographical and Critical Sources: Peter Cunningham’s Memoir, in John Burnet’s “Turner and his Works,” 1852; Alaric Watts’s Memoir, in “Liber Fluviorum,” 1853; Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” and “Preterita”; Thornbury’s “Life, etc.,” 2 vols., 1862; Hamerton’s “Life,” 1879; Monkhouse’s “Turner” (in “Great Artists Series”), 1882; C. F. Bell’s “Exhibited Works of Turner,” 1901; Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Turner,” 1902; Finberg’s “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings,” 1910; etc. etc.
Reproductions: Armstrong’s “Turner”; Wedmore’s “Turner and Ruskin”; “The Genius of Turner” (The StudioSpecial Number, 1903); “Hidden Treasures at the National Gallery,” 1905; “The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner” (The StudioSpring Number, 1909); “Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall” (The StudioSpecial Number, 1912); Walpole Society’s Vols. I., III., and VI.]
Turner’s first exhibited water-colour, aView of the Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth(1790), is a poor imitation of Malton’s least inspired topographical drawings. But he learned quickly. HisInside of Tintern Abbey, (1794) shows that before he was twenty he could draw and paint Gothic architecture better than any of the older topographical artists. His pre-eminence as a topographical draughtsman was firmly established by 1797, when he had painted such works as theLincoln Cathedral(1795),Llandaff Cathedral(1796),Westminster Abbey: St. Erasmus and Bishop Islip’s Chapel(1796), andWolverhampton(1796).
From 1796 to 1804 Turner’s style changed, chiefly under the influence of Richard Wilson’s works, which he studied and copied diligently. These years saw the production ofNorham Castle(1798),Warkworth Castle(1799),Edinburgh, from Calton Hill(1804),The Great Fall of the Reichenbach(done in 1804, but not exhibited till 1815), and the wonderful sketches in the Alps,Blair’s Hut,St. Gothard, etc. (1802). In these energetic and powerful drawings he aims at getting depth and richness of tone and colour.
From 1804 to 1815 his energies were mainly directed to the production of his great sea-paintings,The Shipwreck,Spithead, etc., his lovely English landscapes likeAbingdon,Windsor,The Frosty Morning, andCrossing the Brook, and to making the designs in sepia for his “Liber Studiorum” and helping to engrave the plates. His water-colours during these years were not numerous, but they includeScarborough Town and Castle(1811),The Strid(about 1811),Bolton Abbey from the South(about 1812), all three at Farnley Hall, Mr. Morland Agnew’sScarborough(1810),Scene on the River Tavey(1813)—called by Mr. RuskinPigs in Sunshine, now in the Ruskin School at Oxford, and theMalham Cove(about 1815), now in the British Museum (Salting Bequest). In these drawings the capacities of water-colour are not forced so much into rivalry with the depth and power of oil painting as in those of the 1797-1804 period.
About 1812 or 1813 Turner began making the drawings which were engraved and published in Cooke’s “Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England.” Between 1815 and 1840 nearly all his work in
PLATE IV.(In the possession of J. F. Schwann, Esq.)“LAUNCESTON.”BYJ. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
PLATE IV.(In the possession of J. F. Schwann, Esq.)“LAUNCESTON.”BYJ. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
PLATE IV.
(In the possession of J. F. Schwann, Esq.)
“LAUNCESTON.”BYJ. M. W. TURNER, R.A.
water-colour was done to be engraved and published in similar undertakings. Turner’s fame as a water-colour painter rested during his lifetime chiefly on these drawings. Among them are many of the most beautiful works which have ever been produced in this medium. It is a pity, therefore, that they are not more adequately represented in our public galleries. This remark applies particularly to the drawings in transparent colour (like theLaunceston, for instance, which is here reproduced, Plate IV), for those in body-colour—the “Rivers of France”—are nearly all either in the National Gallery, Ashmolean or Fitzwilliam Museums. But with the exception ofHornby Castle(V. & A. Museum) and most of the originals of the “Rivers” and “Ports of England” series (in the National Gallery), nearly all Turner’s drawings made for the engravers are in private collections. We may perhaps allow ourselves to hope that some time in the future a separate gallery may be founded to do justice to British water-colours, in which such drawings would have to be properly represented.
After about 1840 Turner only worked in water-colours for his own pleasure and for that of a small circle of friends and admirers. The drawings made for his own pleasure are now nearly all in the National Gallery, where they have never been properly exhibited and where most of them cannot be seen by the public. These formed part of the Turners which the Trustees wanted to sell about a year ago. The drawings made for his friends and admirers include theConstance,Lucerne, and others of what have been called “The Epilogue” drawings. The public is able to catch glimpses of these occasionally at loan exhibitions and in auction rooms.
[Born at Norwich, May 16, 1782; went to London, 1798; gained prize for a drawing from the Society of Arts, 1800; returned to Norwich, 1806, and opened a school for drawing and design; married, 1809; published a series of etchings, 1811, and became president of the Norwich Society of Artists; published “Norman and Gothic Architecture,” 1817, and “Architectural Antiquities of Normandy,” 1822; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825; appointed Professor of Drawing at King’s College, London, 1834, mainly through Turner’s influence; published his “Liber Studiorum,” 1838; died July 24, 1842.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1800-’06; Associated Artists, 1810, ’11; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825, ’26, ’28-’39; Society of British Artists, 1838; Norwich Society of Artists, 1807-’12, ’15, ’18, ’20, ’21, ’23, ’24; Norfolk and Suffolk Institution, 1828-’33.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery (an oil-painting); V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Norwich Castle Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute, etc.Biographical and Critical Sources: Memoir in catalogue of Norwich Art Circle’s exhibition of Cotman’s works, July 1888; Laurence Binyon’s “Crome and Cotman” (Portfolio Monograph), 1897, and “Cotman” in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (The StudioSummer Number, 1903).Reproductions: The three works cited above, and histories of British water-colour painting by Monkhouse, Finberg, etc., already cited.]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1800-’06; Associated Artists, 1810, ’11; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825, ’26, ’28-’39; Society of British Artists, 1838; Norwich Society of Artists, 1807-’12, ’15, ’18, ’20, ’21, ’23, ’24; Norfolk and Suffolk Institution, 1828-’33.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery (an oil-painting); V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Norwich Castle Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute, etc.
Biographical and Critical Sources: Memoir in catalogue of Norwich Art Circle’s exhibition of Cotman’s works, July 1888; Laurence Binyon’s “Crome and Cotman” (Portfolio Monograph), 1897, and “Cotman” in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (The StudioSummer Number, 1903).
Reproductions: The three works cited above, and histories of British water-colour painting by Monkhouse, Finberg, etc., already cited.]
Cotman is the greatest of all the English water-colour painters born after Turner. He is the only one of them whose works can be put beside Turner’s and judged on a footing of equality. When we compare Prout, Cox, De Wint, and even Bonington, with Turner we feel that they must be judged by some less exacting standard than that which we apply to Turner. This is not the case with Cotman. He had not the width and range, the abundance and all-conquering power of Turner, but within his own limits he is every whit as unapproachable.
Cotman was a member of Girtin’s sketching club, and it is evident that Girtin’s influence counted for much in his early work. From Girtin he learned to rely first and foremost upon full-bodied washes of colour placed exactly where they were wanted and left to dry just as they had flowed from the brush. Cotman’s quite early works can easily be mistaken for poor drawings by Girtin or Francia. But in the drawings produced between 1803 and 1817, we find that he was not satisfied to paint, like the older men, in his studio upon an arbitrarily chosen formula of colouring. In a letter written to Dawson Turner on Nov. 30, 1805, he speaks of his summer sketching tour to York and Durham, and adds, “My chief study has been colouring from Nature, many of which are close copies of that full Dame.” We see one of the results of these studies in what is perhaps his earliest masterpiece, theGreta Bridge, Yorkshire(1806), now in the British Museum. Its colour-scheme is as original as it is beautiful. The colouring is “natural,” but it is Nature simplified to a system of harmoniously coloured spaces, in which light and shade and modelling are suggested rather than rendered.
The distinctive peculiarity of the workmanship of this, as indeed of all Cotman’s drawings, is his reliance on the clear stain or rich blotting of the colour on paper preserved in all its freshness. The aims of representation are forced so much into the background that the artist seems to be mainly intent on the discovery and display of “the beauty native and congenial” to his materials. Mr. Binyon has drawn attention to the unconscious similarity of Cotman’s methods and aims to those of the great schools of China and Japan of more than a thousand years ago.
Among the better-known of Cotman’s drawings of this period we may mention theTwickenham(1807),Trentham Church(about 1809),Draining Mill, Lincolnshire(1810), andMousehold Heath(1810); these are all reproduced in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (The StudioSummer Number, 1903), in which Mr. Binyon’s illuminating essay was published. The beautiful drawing ofKirkham Abbey, Yorkshire, here reproduced (Plate III) by the courtesy of Messrs. J. Palser & Sons, isan admirable example of Cotman’s wonderful mastery in the use of decided washes of pure colour.
In 1817 Cotman made his first visit to Normandy, and after this date his colour becomes warmer, brighter, and more arbitrary. After about 1825 he indulges himself freely in the use of the strong primary colours, influenced probably by Turner’s daring chromatic experiments.
[Born at Deritend, Birmingham, April 29, 1783; scene-painter in London, 1804; President of the “Associated Artists,” 1810; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813; drawing-master at Hereford, 1814-1826; published “Treatise on Landscape Painting,” 1814, “Lessons in Landscape,” 1816, “Young Artists’ Companion,” 1825, etc.; took lessons in oil painting from W. J. Müller, 1839; removed to neighbourhood of Birmingham, 1841, visiting Bettws-y-Coed yearly, 1844-1856; died June 7, 1859.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1805-’08; ’27-’29, ’43, ’44; Associated Artists, 1809-’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813-’16, ’18-’59; British Institution, 1814, ’28, ’43; Society of British Artists, 1841, ’42.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Birmingham Art Gallery; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Glasgow, Manchester, Bury, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.Biographical and Critical Sources: “Memoir of the Life of David Cox,” by N. Neal Solly, 1875; Wedmore’s “Studies in English Art,” 2nd series.Reproductions: Solly’s “Memoir”; Masters of English Landscape Painting (The StudioSummer Number, 1903); “Drawings of David Cox” (Newnes’s “Modern Master Draughtsmen” Series).]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1805-’08; ’27-’29, ’43, ’44; Associated Artists, 1809-’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813-’16, ’18-’59; British Institution, 1814, ’28, ’43; Society of British Artists, 1841, ’42.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Birmingham Art Gallery; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Glasgow, Manchester, Bury, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.
Biographical and Critical Sources: “Memoir of the Life of David Cox,” by N. Neal Solly, 1875; Wedmore’s “Studies in English Art,” 2nd series.
Reproductions: Solly’s “Memoir”; Masters of English Landscape Painting (The StudioSummer Number, 1903); “Drawings of David Cox” (Newnes’s “Modern Master Draughtsmen” Series).]
It was not till about 1840, when he was fifty-seven years of age, that Cox managed to break free from the drudgery of teaching. This drudgery during the greater part of his life undoubtedly exercised a mischievous effect upon his art. Besides wasting so much of his time, and thus preventing him from attempting works which required sustained efforts, it forced him to develop a mechanical and facile dexterity of style. He got into the habit of “slithering” over the individual forms of objects, making his rocks and trees as rounded and shapeless as his clouds, in a way that irritates any one who has learned to use his eyes. There is some truth in John Brett’s remark that “the daubs and blots of that famous sketcher (David Cox) were just definite enough to suggest ... the most superficial aspects of things,” though it may have been prompted by envy and exasperation.
Cox’s reputation nowadays rests to a large extent on the drawings he made after 1840.Hayfield with Figures,The Young Anglers(1847), theWelsh Funeral(1850),The Challenge(1853), andSnowden from Capel Curig(1858) were among the fine things produced by the grand old artist during the last years of his life. Such moving and powerful worksare stamped with the sincerity, simplicity, and rugged dignity of David Cox’s own character.
[Born at Plymouth, Sep. 17, 1783; settled in London, 1811; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1819; published “Rudiments of Landscape,” etc., 1813, “A New Drawing Book for the Use of Beginners,” 1821, and other drawing books; published lithographs of his Continental drawings, The Rhine, 1824, Flanders and Germany, 1833, France, Switzerland, and Italy, about 1839; died at Denmark Hill, Feb. 1852.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1803-’05, ’08-’10, ’12-’14, ’17, ’26, ’27; British Institution, 1809-’11, ’16-’18; Associated Artists, 1811, ’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1815-’51.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Bury Art Galleries, etc.Biographical and Critical Sources: Ruskin, in “Art Journal,” 1849, “Modern Painters,” and “Notes on S. Prout and W. Hunt”; Roget’s “History of the Old Water-Colour Society,” 1891; “D. N. B.,” “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (The StudioWinter Number, 1914-’15), with text by E. G. Halton.Reproductions: Ruskin’s “Notes,” etc., 1879-’80; “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (The StudioWinter Number, 1914-’15).]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1803-’05, ’08-’10, ’12-’14, ’17, ’26, ’27; British Institution, 1809-’11, ’16-’18; Associated Artists, 1811, ’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1815-’51.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Bury Art Galleries, etc.
Biographical and Critical Sources: Ruskin, in “Art Journal,” 1849, “Modern Painters,” and “Notes on S. Prout and W. Hunt”; Roget’s “History of the Old Water-Colour Society,” 1891; “D. N. B.,” “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (The StudioWinter Number, 1914-’15), with text by E. G. Halton.
Reproductions: Ruskin’s “Notes,” etc., 1879-’80; “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (The StudioWinter Number, 1914-’15).]
Up to 1819 Prout’s work was confined to the making of English topographical drawings and marine subjects. They show Girtin’s influence mainly, and they are stolid, heavy-handed, and rather dull.
In 1819 Prout went to France, and in 1821 to Belgium and the Rhine provinces. The drawings made from his sketches appeared in the exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and attracted a great deal of interest and admiration, partly on account of their novel subject-matter—for the public was beginning to weary of the numberless views of Tintern Abbey, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon Castles, and other English subjects, with which it had been surfeited during the preceding twenty years—and partly on account of Prout’s boldness of manner and marked feeling for the picturesque. Having struck this successful vein of subject-matter Prout continued to work it till the end of his life, producing a great quantity of water-colours of Continental buildings, all executed on the same general principles, and several series of admirable lithographs from his sketches and drawings.
Ruskin liked Prout and admired his work inordinately. In “Modern Painters” he calls him “a very great man”—which is absurd—and says that his rendering of the character of old buildings is “as perfect and as heartfelt as I can conceive possible.” Some people may prefer the buildings in Turner’s early drawings, in Cotman’s, Girtin’s, and Bonington’s works. But Prout’s work is uniformly successful within its own limitations; it is bold, workmanlike, and picturesque, and its subject-matter is full of inexhaustible interest and delight.
[Born at Stone, Staffordshire, Jan. 21, 1784; apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, 1802; student R. A. Schools, 1809; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810, member, 1811, and 1825; died at 40 Upper Gower Street, June 30, 1849.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1807, ’11, ’13-’15, ’19, ’20, ’28; British Institution, 1808, ’13-’17, ’21, ’24; Associated Artists, 1808, ’09; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810-’15, ’25-’49.Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bury, Norwich, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.Biographical and Critical Sources: Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Peter De Wint,” 1888; Roget’s “History,” etc.; “D. N. B.”Reproductions: Armstrong’s “De Wint”; “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (The StudioSpecial Summer Number, 1903).]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1807, ’11, ’13-’15, ’19, ’20, ’28; British Institution, 1808, ’13-’17, ’21, ’24; Associated Artists, 1808, ’09; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810-’15, ’25-’49.
Works in Public Galleries: V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bury, Norwich, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.
Biographical and Critical Sources: Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Peter De Wint,” 1888; Roget’s “History,” etc.; “D. N. B.”
Reproductions: Armstrong’s “De Wint”; “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (The StudioSpecial Summer Number, 1903).]
De Wint’s work may be described as a cross between that of Girtin and Cotman. Girtin was his first source of inspiration. From him he learned the value of breadth of effect and simplicity of design. From Cotman he learned to distil his colour harmonies from Nature. As a draughtsman he was less of a mannerist than Girtin, and he had not Cotman’s marvellous feeling for the beauties of abstract design.
De Wint had Dutch blood in his veins, and he had a good deal of the Dutchman’s solidity of character and stolid realism. His drawings always look like bits of real life. They are nearer to the common experience of Nature than either Turner’s, Cozens’, Girtin’s, or Cotman’s works. But his homely realism is always restrained by his respect for the medium he worked in and by his innate sense of style.
His work is well represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum by drawings likeBray on the Thames, from the Towing Path,Hayfield,Yorkshire, andWestmoreland Hills, bordering the Ken, all lent to that Museum from the National Gallery; and of his famous works in private collections we may mentionCookham-on-Thames, recently in the Beecham Collection,The Thames from Greenwich Hill, once in the collection of James Orrock, andNear Lowther Castle.
For all his “objectivity,” his steadiness of poise, his calm strength of character, De Wint’s work is intensely personal and original. The number of admirers of his manly and felicitous work has steadily increased since his death, and can only go on increasing as the public gets more opportunities of seeing his noble works with their superb mosaic of rich, deep, and harmonious colour.
[Born at Arnold, near Nottingham, October 25, 1802; received some instruction from Francia at Calais, 1817; studied at the Louvre and Institute, and under Baron Gros, at Paris; first exhibited at the Salon,1822; made lithographs for Baron Taylor’s “Voyages Pittoresques dans l’ancienne France,” “Vues Pittoresques de l’Ecosse” (1826) and other works; visited England with Delacroix, 1825; died during a visit to England, 1828.
Exhibited: Salon (Paris), 1822 (Water-Colours), ’24 (Water-Colours), ’27 (Oils and Water-Colours); Royal Academy, 1827, ’28; British Institution, 1826-’29.Works in Public Galleries: Louvre; National Gallery; National Portrait Gallery (a small drawing of himself); V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; Wallace Collection; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow Art Galleries; National Gallery of Ireland.Biographical and Critical Sources: “Annual Register” and “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1828; Cunningham’s “Lives,” etc.; Redgrave’s “Dictionary”;The Studio, Nov. 1904; Catalogue of Bonington’s Lithographs, by Aglaüs Bonvenne (Paris), 1873; “Influence de Bonington et de l’Ecole Anglaise sur la Peinture de Paysage en France,” by A. Dubuisson (Walpole Society’s Vol. II.).Reproductions: “Series of Subjects from Bonington’s Works,” lithographed by J. D. Harding (twenty-one plates), 1828; Monkhouse’s and Hughes’s works cited above.]
Exhibited: Salon (Paris), 1822 (Water-Colours), ’24 (Water-Colours), ’27 (Oils and Water-Colours); Royal Academy, 1827, ’28; British Institution, 1826-’29.
Works in Public Galleries: Louvre; National Gallery; National Portrait Gallery (a small drawing of himself); V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; Wallace Collection; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow Art Galleries; National Gallery of Ireland.
Biographical and Critical Sources: “Annual Register” and “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1828; Cunningham’s “Lives,” etc.; Redgrave’s “Dictionary”;The Studio, Nov. 1904; Catalogue of Bonington’s Lithographs, by Aglaüs Bonvenne (Paris), 1873; “Influence de Bonington et de l’Ecole Anglaise sur la Peinture de Paysage en France,” by A. Dubuisson (Walpole Society’s Vol. II.).
Reproductions: “Series of Subjects from Bonington’s Works,” lithographed by J. D. Harding (twenty-one plates), 1828; Monkhouse’s and Hughes’s works cited above.]
Bonington was the most brilliant of the later school of topographical artists—those who used the full resources of water-colour for the production of pictorial effects. The drawings he produced during his short life—for he died at twenty-six, may be divided into purely topographical subjects, like theStreet in Verona(V. and A. Museum); river and coast scenes, like theRouen(Wallace Collection); and figure subjects, in which historical costume played the chief part, like theMeditationand several other drawings in the Wallace Collection.
His drawings are amazingly dexterous, firm and large in handling, finely composed, and wonderfully rich in tone and colour. His influence on English artists was considerable, particularly on W. J. Müller, T. Shotter Boys, and William Callow.
As he worked mostly in Paris his best paintings and drawings are generally to be found in the French private collections. That is probably why he is better known and more warmly appreciated in France than in England. An authoritative book on Bonington’s life and work is much needed. Just before the war broke out it was rumoured that a work of this kind, the joint production of Monsieur A. Dubuisson and Mr. C. E. Hughes, was about to be published by Mr. John Lane. Such a work will be doubly welcome, for it will help us to realize the amazing quantity of work Bonington managed to produce in his short life, and its wonderful quality; and it should benefit Bonington’s reputation by drawing attention to the large number of drawings and paintings to which, in our public and private collections, his name is wrongly and ignorantly given.
[Born at North Shields, February 4, 1825, of an old Quaker Family; educated at the Quaker Academy at Hitchin, Herts, where he hadlessons from Charles Parry, the drawing master; apprenticed to Ebenezer Landells, the wood-engraver, 1841-1846; engaged chiefly on book-illustration till 1858, after that time devoted mostly to painting; Associate “Old” Water-Colour Society, 1860, member, 1862; painted in oils 1869-1877, after which he abandoned it in favour of water-colours; died at Weybridge, March 27, 1899.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1859, ’69-’77, ’81; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’99; Society of British Artists, 1876; Royal Scottish Academy, 1871, ’75.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); Birmingham, Manchester, and Bury Art Galleries.Biographical and Critical Sources: “Art Annual,” 1890; “Athenæum,” April 1, 1899; “D. N. B.” (Supplement); “Birket Foster,” by H. M. Cundall, 1906.Reproductions: “Art Annual,” 1890; Cundall’s “Birket Foster.”]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1859, ’69-’77, ’81; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’99; Society of British Artists, 1876; Royal Scottish Academy, 1871, ’75.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); Birmingham, Manchester, and Bury Art Galleries.
Biographical and Critical Sources: “Art Annual,” 1890; “Athenæum,” April 1, 1899; “D. N. B.” (Supplement); “Birket Foster,” by H. M. Cundall, 1906.
Reproductions: “Art Annual,” 1890; Cundall’s “Birket Foster.”]
In his choice of subjects Birket Foster confined himself generally to roadside and woodland scenes, and in these he sought prettiness rather than the deeper and more profoundly poetical emotions. His work is neat and extraordinarily accomplished, but his style being always the same made its many merits seem mechanical and unfeeling. Unlike the older men he avoided the use of broad washes of transparent colour, used body-colour freely, and finished his work with elaborate stipplings.
His standard of excessive finish, his general methods of work and choice of subject-matter, were violently opposed to those of the younger men who came after him. For this reason, and also because of the great popularity he enjoyed, Birket Foster’s work has excited the animosity of “superior persons” and æsthetes. But their cheap and easy sneers merely mark the inevitable reaction which follows a period of indiscriminating praise. Doubtless Birket Foster was not the great artist his contemporaries thought him to be. But his work must figure in any well-balanced history of British landscape painting, if only because it expresses so fully and abundantly, and with so much technical success, the artistic ideals of a large part of the nineteenth century. But it also deserves consideration for other reasons. Birket Foster’s grace and prettiness were the results of his sincere and unaffected love of the orderliness and real beauty of the life of the English countryside. He had a genuine affection for the themes he painted, and he painted them in the way he thought best. Fashions in technical matters change, slowly perhaps but inevitably, and I shall be very much surprised if the future will not be readier than we are to-day to give Birket Foster’s work its due meed of affectionate admiration.
[Born in Bold Street, Liverpool, Nov. 15, 1830; educated at Liverpool Collegiate School and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he entered with a scholarship, 1848; a fellow of Corpus, 1853-1861; Associate of Liverpool Academy, 1854, member, 1856; Associate Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1862, member, 1864; died May 3, 1896.
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1854, ’56, ’57, ’59-’62, ’70-’75, ’77, ’79-’83, ’85-’88; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’93; Society of British Artists, 1846, ’59, ’60, ’70, ’73, ’74; Grosvenor Gallery, 1882, ’87; New Gallery, 1888, ’90; Portland Gallery, 1854-’56, ’60; Dudley Gallery (Oil), 1872.Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham Art Galleries.Biographical and Critical Sources: “Athenæum,” May 9, 1896; Catalogue B. F. A. Club’s Exhibition, 1897; “D. N. B.” (Supplement); “One Way of Art,” by Violet Hunt, “St. George’s Review,” June 1908.Reproductions: One in “The Old Water-Colour Society” (The StudioSpring Number, 1905).]
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1854, ’56, ’57, ’59-’62, ’70-’75, ’77, ’79-’83, ’85-’88; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’93; Society of British Artists, 1846, ’59, ’60, ’70, ’73, ’74; Grosvenor Gallery, 1882, ’87; New Gallery, 1888, ’90; Portland Gallery, 1854-’56, ’60; Dudley Gallery (Oil), 1872.
Works in Public Galleries: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham Art Galleries.
Biographical and Critical Sources: “Athenæum,” May 9, 1896; Catalogue B. F. A. Club’s Exhibition, 1897; “D. N. B.” (Supplement); “One Way of Art,” by Violet Hunt, “St. George’s Review,” June 1908.
Reproductions: One in “The Old Water-Colour Society” (The StudioSpring Number, 1905).]
Of all the artists influenced by Ruskin’s propaganda in favour of Naturalism Alfred William Hunt was probably the most sensitive and the most poetical. He was as ardent a student of “natural facts” as John Brett, Holman Hunt, or any other of Ruskin’s protégés, but his work was never, like so much of theirs, merely literal and tedious. His works prove to demonstration how little artistic theories count in determining the value of a work of art. We know Ruskin’s theories of realism were all wrong, but the sensitiveness of Alfred Hunt’s nerves, the intensity and rightness of his emotions, redeemed his work and gave it an inevitable stamp of greatness.
In the absorbingly interesting account of her father’s methods of work contributed by Miss Violet Hunt to “St. George’s Review” (1908) the demands made by his art on the nerves and character of the artist are vividly described. His daughter tells us that she has seen “delicately stained pieces of Whatman’s Imperial subjected to the most murderous ‘processes,’ and yet come out alive in the end.” Hunt “scrupled not to ‘work on the feelings of the paper,’ as his friend George Boughton used to tell him, “He severely sponged it into submission; he savagely scraped it into rawness and a fresh state of smarting receptivity. Yet some of the drawings that have sufferedpeine forte et dureare among the most cherished assets of certain private collectors, such as Mr. Newall and the late Mr. Humphrey Roberts.”
The “subtle finish and watchfulness of nature” which Ruskin praised in Hunt’s work was only the raw material of his art. It was the fervour and energy with which he subdued his facts to a genuinely poetic unity of feeling and expression that make Hunt’s drawings so significant and beautiful. To-day Hunt seems to be forgotten by all but a small number of admirers, but works like hisDurham Misty with Colliery Smoke,Bamborough from the Sands,Cloud March at Twilight, and many others as poignant and as beautiful, are sufficient guarantees that he will not always be neglected.
[Born at Lowell, Massachusetts, July 10, 1834; lived in Russia, 1843-’49; studied at the Military Academy, West Point, 1851-1854; engagedon United States coast and geodetic survey for about a year; went to Paris, 1855, and studied in Gleyre’s studio; published set of thirteen etchings—“The French Set”—1858; settled in London, 1860; published “The Thames” set of etchings, 1871; libel action against Ruskin, 1878; bankrupt, 1879; “Ten-o’clock” lecture, 1884; portrait of Carlyle bought for Glasgow, 1891; “Grand Prix” for painting, and another for engraving, at Paris exhibition, 1900; died at 74 Cheyne Walk, July 17, 1903.