"_Monsieur_ VARNISH _to_ BENJAMIN BISTER, _debtor_.
£ _s. d._
To painting the Woman caught in Adultery, upon a green
ground, by Hans Holbein 3 3 0
To Solomon's Wise Judgment, on pannel, by Michael
Angelo Buonorati 2 12 6
To painting and canvas, for a naked Mary Magdalen, in the
undoubted style of Paul Veronese 2 2 0
To brimstone, for smoking ditto 0 2 6
Paid Mrs. W---- for a live model to sit for Diana bathing,
by Tintoretto 0 16 8
Paid for the hire of a layman, to copy the robes of a
Cardinal, for a Vandyke 0 5 0
Portrait of a Nun doing Penance, by Albrecht Durer 2 2 0
Paid the female figure for sitting thirty minutes in a wet
sheet, that I might give the dry manner of that master[13] 0 10 6
The Tribute-money Rendered, with all the exactness of
Quintin Metsius, the famed blacksmith of Antwerp 2 12 6
To Ruth at the feet of Boaz, upon an oak board, by Titiano 3 3 0
St. Anthony Preaching to the Fishes, by Salvator Rosa 3 10 0
The Martyrdom of St. Winifred, with a view of Holywell
bath, by old Frank 1 11 6
To a large allegorical altar-piece, consisting of men and
angels, horses and river gods; 'tis thought most happily
hit off for a Rubens 5 5 0
To Susannah Bathing; the two Elders in the background,
by Castiglione 2 2 0
To the Devil and St. Dunstan, highly finished, by Teniers 2 2 0
To the Queen of Sheba falling down before Solomon, by
Morillio 2 12 6
To a Judith in the Tent of Holofernes, by Le Brun 1 16 0
To a Sisera in the Tent of Jael, its companion, by the same 1 16 0
Paid for admission into the House of Peers, to take a sketch
of a great character, for a picture of Moses breaking the
Tables of the Law, in the darkest manner of Rembrandt,
not yet finished 0 2 6
[13] Some of the ancient masters acquired a dry manner of painting
from studying after wet drapery.--_Webb on Painting._
[14] The annexed letter, which was published about this time, I have
been informed was written by Hogarth; add to this authority, of which
I have no doubt, I think it carries internal evidence of his mind. It
is printed in the London Magazine for 1737, and thus prefaced:
The following piece, published in the St. James's Evening Post
of June 7th, is by the first painter in England, perhaps in the
world, in his way:
"Every good-natured man and well-wisher to the Arts in England,
must feel a kind of resentment at a very indecent paragraph, in
the Daily Post of Thursday last, relating to the death of _M. de
Morine_, first painter to the French king, in which very unjust
as well as cruel reflections are cast on the noblest performance
(in its way) that England has to boast of,--I mean the work of
the late Sir James Thornhill, in Greenwich Hall. It has ever
been the business of narrow, little geniuses, who by a tedious
application to minute parts have (as they fancy) attained to a
great insight into the correct drawing of a figure, and have
acquired just knowledge enough in the art to tell accurately
when a toe is too short or a finger too thick, to endeavour, by
detracting from the merits of great men, to build themselves a
kind of reputation. These peddling demi-critics, on the painful
discovery of some little inaccuracy (which proceeds mostly from
the freedom of the pencil), without any regard to the more noble
parts of a performance (which they are totally ignorant of), with
great satisfaction condemn the whole as a bad and incorrect piece.
'The meanest artist in the Emelian square,
Can imitate in brass the nails or hair;
Expert at trifles, and a cunning fool,
Able to express the parts, but not the whole.'
"There is another set of gentry, more noxious to the art than
these, and those are your _picture-jobbers from abroad_, who
are always ready to raise a great cry in the prints, whenever
they think their craft is in danger; and indeed it is their
interest to depreciate every English work as hurtful to their
trade of continually importing ship-loads of _Dead Christs_,
_Holy Families_, _Madonnas_, and other dismal dark subjects,
neither entertaining nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the
terrible cramp names of some _Italian_ masters, and fix on us
poor Englishmen the character of _universal dupes_. If a man,
naturally a judge of painting, not bigoted to those empirics,
should cast his eye on one of their sham virtuoso pieces, he
would be very apt to say: Mr. Bubbleman, that grand _Venus_,
as you are pleased to call it, has not beauty enough for the
character of an English cook-maid. Upon which the quack answers,
with a confident air: 'Sir, I find that you are no _connoisseur_;
the picture, I assure you, is in Alesso Baldminetto's second
and best manner, boldly painted, and truly sublime: the contour
gracious: the air of the head in the high Greek taste; and a
most divine idea it is.--Then spitting in an obscure place, and
rubbing it with a dirty handkerchief, takes a skip to t'other
end of the room, and screams out in raptures, 'There's an
amazing touch! A man should have this picture a twelvemonth in
his collection before he can discover half its beauties!' The
gentleman (though naturally a judge of what is beautiful, yet
ashamed to be out of the fashion, by judging for himself) with
this cant is struck dumb; gives a vast sum for the picture, very
modestly confesses he is indeed quite ignorant of painting,
and bestows a frame worth fifty pounds on a frightful thing,
which, without the hard name, is not worth so many farthings.
Such impudence as is now continually practised in the picture
trade must meet with its proper treatment, would gentlemen but
venture to see with their own eyes. Let but the comparison of
pictures with nature be their only guide, and let them judge as
freely of painting as they do of poetry, they would then take it
for granted, that when a piece gives pleasure to none but these
_connoisseurs_, or their adherents, if the purchase be a thousand
pounds, 'tis nine hundred and ninety-nine too dear; and were all
our grand collections stripped of such sort of trumpery, then,
and not till then, it would be worth an Englishman's while to try
the strength of his genius to supply their place, which now it
were next to madness to attempt, since there is nothing that has
not travelled a thousand miles, or has not been done a hundred
years, but is looked upon as mean and ungenteel furniture. What
Mr. Pope in his last work says of poems, may with much more
propriety be applied to pictures:
'Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.'
"Sir James Thornhill, in a too modest compliance with the
_connoisseurs_ of his time, called in the assistance of Mr.
Andre, a foreigner, famous for the fulness of his outline, to
paint the Royal Family at the upper end of Greenwich Hall, to
the beauties or faults of which I have nothing to say; but with
regard to the ceiling, which is entirely of his own hand, I am
certain all unprejudiced persons, with (or without) much insight
into the mechanic parts of painting, are at the first view struck
with the most agreeable harmony and play of colours that ever
delighted the eye of a spectator. The composition is _altogether_
extremely grand, the groups finely disposed, the light and shade
so contrived as to throw the eye with pleasure on the principal
figures, which are drawn with great fire and judgment; the
colouring of the flesh delicious, the drapery great and well
folded; and upon examination, the allegory is found clear, well
invented, and full of learning: in short, all that is necessary
to constitute a complete ceiling-piece is apparent in that
magnificent work. Thus much is in justice to that great English
artist.
"BRITOPHIL.
"N.B.--If the reputation of this work were destroyed, it would
put a stop to the receipt of daily sums of money from spectators,
which is applied to the use of sixty charity children."
[15] The book alluded to is, "_A Tracte containing the Artes of
curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Buildinge_, written first in Italian
by Jo. Paul Lomatius, Painter of Milan, and Englished by R. H.
(Richard Haydocke), Student in Physick." Published 1598.
From this visionary writer he could not borrow much, great part of
his book treating of the different important consequences which had
resulted from the study of the proportions of the human body. It is
dedicated to the Right Worshipful Thomas Bodley, Esquire, warmly
recommended by John Case, doctor of physic; and in the following
quaint lines, the translator apologizeth for thus employing himself:--
"TO THE INGENIOUS READER. R. H.
"How hard a matter it is to withstand any natural instinct, and
habitual inclination whatsoever, the storie of the Syracusane
Archimedes (besides divers others to this purpose) may sufficiently
persuade; who was so rapt with the sweetness of his mathematical
conclusions, that even then when the enemie had entered the gates of
the citie he was found drawing of lines upon the sand, when perchance
it had bin fitter for a philosopher to have bin advising in the
counsell-house.
"Not much unlike to whome I may peradventure seeme, who at this time
especially, when the unappeasable enimies of health, sicknesse,
and mortality have so mightily prevailed against us, am here found
drawing of _lines and lineaments, portraitures, and proportions_,
when (in regard of my place and profession) it might much better
have beseemed mee to have bin found in the colledge of physicians,
learning and counselling such remedies as might make for the common
health; or if I must needes be doing about _lines_, to have commented
upon this proposition, _mors ultima linea rerum_.
"Howbeit, as I find not him much taxed in the storie for this his
diligent carelessness, because he was busied about matters which
were not onlie an ornament of peace, but also of good use in warre,
so my hope is (ingenious reader), that my sedulous trifling shall
meete with thy friendliest interpretation; insomuch as the arte I
now deale in shall be proved not onlie a grace to health, but also a
contentment and recreation unto sickeness, and a kind of preservative
against death and mortality; by a perpetual preserving of _their_
shades, whose substances physicke could not prolong, no, not for a
season," _etc. etc._
In his treatise of colours, he makes the following addresse to his
faire countrie wommen:--
"Having intreated of so many and divers thinges, I could not but say
something of such matters as _woemen_ use ordinarilly in beautifying
and imbelishing their faces; a thing well worth the knowledge,
insomuch as many women are so possessed with a desire of helping
their complexions by some artificial meanes, that they will by
no meanes be diswaded from the same." He then enumerates ceruse,
plume alume, juice of lemons, oil of tartarie, camphire, and sundry
other cosmetics of the day, all which he takes many pages to prove
are _enemies to health, and hurtful to the complexion_, and thus
adviseth: "Wherefore if there bee no remedie, but women will be
meddling with this arte of _pollishing_, let them, instead of those
mineral stuffes, use the remedies following.
"_Of such helpes of Beauty as may safely be used without danger._
"There is nothing in the world which doth more beautifie and adorne
a woman than chearfulness, contentment, and good temper. For it is
not the red and white which giveth the gracious perfection of beauty,
but certaine sparkling notes and touches of amiable chearfulness
accompanying the same. The truth whereof may appear in a discontented
woman, otherwise exceeding faire, who atte that instant will seem yll
favoured and unloovely; as contrariwise, an hard-favoured and browne
woman, being merry, pleasaunte, and jocund, will seem sufficient
beautiful."
[16] Of this figure he thus writes in his chapter on _Compositions
with the Serpentine Line_:--
"We have had recourse to the works of the ancients, not because the
moderns have not produced some as excellent, but because the works
of the former are more generally known; nor would we have it thought
that either of them has ever yet come up to the utmost beauty of
nature. Who but a bigot to the _antiques_ will say, that he has not
seen faces and necks, hands and arms, in living women, that even the
Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate?"
[17] Hogarth might possibly have some oblique allusion to the
manner in which _Cæsar suffered_ in the capitol _of an English
theatre.--They might as well have hanged him_; or, _the actor
deserved hanging for so personating the character_,--which the reader
likes best.
In an early impression of the print I have seen written (I believe by
Hogarth) on the pedestal upon which this figure is placed, TU BRUTE.
That he greatly disliked Quin, is evident from the following epigram,
with the injustice or justice of which I have nothing to do, but to
the painter it is attributed:--
"Your servant, Sir," says surly Quin.--
"Sir, I am yours," replies Macklin.--
"Why, you're the very Jew you play,
Your face performs the task well."--
"And you are Sir John Brute, they say,
And an accomplished Maskwell."
Says Rich, who heard the sneering elves,
And knew their horrid hearts,
"Acting too much your very selves,
You overdo your parts."
[18] In the Analysis, he asserts that a completely new and harmonious
order of architecture might be produced by making choice of variety
of lines, and then again, by varying their situations with each
other; in a word, that the art of composing well is the art of
varying well. In the frontispiece to Brook Taylor's perspective, he
has given an example, by a broken sceptre, somewhat resembling the
Roman fasces, and girt round with the Prince of Wales' coronet, as
an astragal, through which the fasces rise, and swell into a crown
adorned with embroidered stars.
[19] Mr. Shee, in his _Rhymes on Art_, has very happily introduced a
similar character, accompanied by _congenial connoisseurs_:--
"No awkward heir that o'er Campania's plain,
Has scamper'd like a monkey in his chain;
No ambush'd ass, that, hid in learning's maze,
Kicks at desert, and crops wit's budding bays;
No baby grown, that still his coral keeps,
And sucks the thumb of science till he sleeps;
No mawkish son of sentiment who strains
Soft sonnet drops from barley-water brains;
No pointer of a paragraph, no peer,
That hangs a picture-pander at his ear;
No smatterer of the ciceroni crew,
No pauper of the parish of Virtú;
But starts an Aristarchus on the town,
To hunt full cry dejected merit down;
With sapient shrug assumes the critic's part,
And loud deplores the sad decline in art."
[20] "The dancing-room is also ornamented purposely with such statues
and pictures as may serve to a further illustration. Henry VIII.,
Number 72, makes a perfect X with his legs and arms; and the position
of Charles I., Number 51, is composed of less varied lines than the
statue of Edward VI., Number 73, and the medal over his head is in
the like kind of lines; but that over Queen Elizabeth, as well as her
figure, is in the contrary; so are also the two other wooden figures
at the end. Likewise the comical posture of astonishment (expressed
by following the direction of one plain curve) as the dotted line in
a French print of Sancho (where Don Quixote demolishes the puppet
show); Number 75 is a good contrast to the effect of the serpentine
lines, in the fine turn of the Samaritan woman; Number 74, taken from
one of the best pictures Annibal Carrache ever painted."--Hogarth's
_Analysis_, p. 137.
[21] A newspaper of 1781 has the following advertisement:--
"MINUET DE LA COUR, DEVONSHIRE, LE ROI, STATUTE, SURPRISE.
"A gentleman of merit, well educated and properly qualified by
seven of the best masters that ever trod on English ground, teaches
the above minuets to noblemen and real ladies only, for the sum
of five guineas, paid down, with all the excelled graces of the
head, body, arms, wrists, hands, fingers, toes, sinks, risings,
bounds, rebounds, twirls, twists, fourfold mercuries, coupees,
borees, flourishes, demi-corpus, curtseys _à-la-mode_, hat on,
off, giving hands and feet, in an advanced octagon adorned style,
and divided into one, two, three, or four steps exact to time or
bars; introducing at the same moment the _à-la-mode_ form, Chassa's
springs, five and nine orders of the graces, and annexed with the
rigadoon, Louvre, cotillion, and ancient and modern hornpipe steps
and elegant country-dance positions.--The said gentleman is no common
dancing-master, has some character to lose; _therefore_ ladies of a
common capacity may soon attain to dance equal to the best French or
Italian dancer in this kingdom, only for five guineas, on applying to
Number 79 in the Haymarket, between ten and eleven in the morning,
and four and six in the afternoon, and they will be seen by the
aforesaid _gentleman_ himself."