eccentric, worthy Dr. Bidlake, who had an eye for the picturesque, and
delighted in taking out his young pupils, Prout and Benjamin Haydon,
on holidays for long walks into the country, and pointing out to them
scenes of beauty. Dr. Bidlake was, moreover, a bit of a poet, as poets
went in those days. He was a good and kindly man, and endeared himself
to his pupils.
Prout’s mother was a daughter of a Mr. Cater, an enterprising Plymouth
shipping venturer.
Samuel was a delicate boy. One hot autumn day he was out nutting when
he was discovered by a farmer lying moaning under a hedge, with his
hands to his head. He had been prostrated by sunstroke, and he was
carried home in a state of insensibility. From that day forward he was
subject to violent attacks of headache, returning at short intervals,
and preventing him from sticking to business. Indeed, a week seldom
passed without his being confined to his room for a day or two, unable
to raise his head from the pillow, and refusing all food. Speaking
in later years of his life-long infirmity, he says: “Up to this hour
I have to endure a great fight of afflictions; can I therefore be
sufficiently thankful for the merciful gift of a buoyant spirit?”
His father, finding him unsuited for any other profession, allowed him
to follow his artistic bent, but he was chiefly self-taught. He made
friends with young Opie, who painted his portrait. Another was Ambrose
Bowden Johns, born in Plymouth in 1776. He had been a bookseller, but
his passion was for landscape art, and he gave up his business to
become a painter. Johns had the advantage of age and experience, and he
was able to give Prout much good advice. Noticing that his young friend
loved chiefly to draw old houses and architectural scraps, he urged
him to devote himself especially to that line, and not to cultivate
landscape and figure drawing. Boats Samuel ever delighted in, and
sketched them excellently.
“Thenceforth,” to quote Ruskin, “Prout devoted himself to ivy-mantled
bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages.”
But he knew nothing of perspective, and his drawings were sadly
inaccurate in this respect. He himself wrote in after years, as the
result of his own experience: “Perspective is generally considered a
dry and distasteful study, and a prejudice exists with many against
everything like geometrical drawings; but without a knowledge of its
rules no object can be properly delineated, and their application alone
prevents absurdities and secures symmetry and truth.”
The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe took notice of the intelligent, sensitive
boy, and detected that there was talent in him. He invited him to
Mount Edgcumbe House to see and examine for himself the paintings and
pictures there; and the Earl became so interested in the young artist,
and would have him so frequently with him, that Samuel at last acquired
the nickname of “the Earl’s puppy dog.”
Samuel Prout was also passionately fond of music, and learned to play
on the organ, the piano, and the flute. In early days, when not out
sketching by himself or with Dr. Bidlake or Haydon, he would steal to
St. Andrew’s to play the organ, at that time the only organ in the town.
Meanwhile, on every sunny day, when the soft south wind breathed,
Samuel, pencil and sketch-book in hand, strayed about the villages
round Plymouth, and made his sketches, not of bold architectural
structures, but of cottages and little bits of street scenery. He
loved the old wall where the granite blocks were irregularly jointed,
and saxifrage, sedum, and wallflower had rooted themselves in the
interstices. He loved to stray by the seashore or to wander about
Sutton Pool and the Barbican and draw the ships and fishing smacks
he saw there. At the time when he was young, Plymouth abounded in
quaint old houses that had been inhabited by its great merchants, with
overhanging gables and mullioned windows. These are now almost all gone.
On returning from one of his wanderings, he called on Mr. Johns with
his portfolio in his hand. Johns asked him how many sketches he had
made and what success he had met with. Prout, bursting into tears and
wringing his hands with grief, replied: “Oh, Mr. Johns, I shall never
make a painter as long as I live.”
Johns then turned over his collection of sketches, and noticing
the power shown in the drawing of old cottages and mills, said,
“If you won’t make a landscape painter, you will make a painter of
architecture, and I recommend you to stick to that.” Encouraged by
this, he went away rejoicing that there was still a field open to him
in Art.
Whilst still quite a lad, accident made him acquainted with John
Britton, who was passing through Plymouth on his way into Cornwall,
collecting materials for his _Beauties of England and Wales_, begun in
1801, and carried on to 1818. Immediately after Prout’s death, Britton
published an account of his first acquaintance with him in the _Art
Journal_ for 1852. He says that he first saw Samuel Prout, “a pretty,
timid boy,” at Dr. Bidlake’s school, and that Prout occasionally
accompanied his drawing master, S. Williams, to Bickleigh Vale, and
made sketches of the rude cottages and bits of rock scenery he found
there.
These Britton saw and liked, and proposed to Prout to take him with
himself into Cornwall, paying all his expenses, that the lad might make
for him the drawings he required. Samuel gladly consented, and the two
started for St. Germans through a heavy fall of snow, and put up at a
wretched inn there. “The object of visiting the place,” says Britton,
“was to draw and describe the old parish church, which is within the
grounds of the seat of Port Eliot, belonging to Lord Eliot. Prout’s
first task was to make a sketch of the west end of this building,
which is of early Norman architecture, with two towers, one of which
is square, the other octagonal. Between these is a large semicircular
doorway, with several receding arches, but there is very little of
other detail. My young artist was, however, sadly embarrassed, not
knowing where to begin, how to settle the perspective or determine the
relative proportions of the heights and widths of parts. He continued
before the building for four or five hours, and at last his sketch
was so inaccurate in proportion and detail that it was unfit for
engraving.” In fact, Britton had set the poor lad a task for which he
was wholly incompetent. Next morning Prout began another sketch, and
persevered in it in spite of the cold and discouragement nearly all the
day, but the result was again a failure.
Then Britton travelled on with him to Probus, and set him to draw
the wonderful sculptured tower of that church, the richest piece of
work of the kind in the west of England. It is built of elvan and is
not merely sculptured throughout, but has pinnacled buttresses with
crockets and finials. Prout worked hard at this all day, and though
Britton accepted the drawing, it was bad. “The poor fellow cried, and
was really distressed, and I felt as acutely as he possibly could,
for I had calculated on having a pleasing companion upon a dreary
journey, and also to obtain some correct and satisfactory sketches.
On proceeding further, we had occasion to visit certain druidical
monuments, vast rocks, monastic wells, and stone crosses on the moors
north of Liskeard. Some of these objects my young friend delineated
with smartness and tolerable accuracy. We proceeded on to St. Austell,
and thence to Ruan-Lanyhorne, where we found comfortable quarters in
the house of the Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, and
author of several other literary works. Prout, during his stay at
Ruan, made five or six pleasing and truly picturesque sketches, one of
which included the church, the parsonage, some cottages mixing with
trees, the water of the river Fal, the moors in the distance, and a
fisherman’s ragged cot in the foreground, raised against and mixing
with a mass of rocks; also a broken boat, with net, sails, etc., in the
foreground.” The next halting place was Truro, and there Prout made a
sketch of the church and the houses about it. But here again he was
embarrassed with the mullioned windows and the general perspective, and
was particularly troubled with the iron railings that surrounded the
church. Here they parted; Britton went forward on his way to Penzance
and the Land’s End, and Prout was sent back, a poor disheartened lad,
who felt that he had missed his vocation, by coach to Plymouth. But the
disappointment did Samuel good. He had learned in what his weakness
lay, and he resolved to labour hard to acquire the rudiments of
perspective.
In May, 1802, he sent Britton several sketches of Launceston,
Tavistock, Okehampton Castle, and other places, showing a considerable
advance in his powers, and some of these were engraved. Britton saw
enough to convince himself that Prout had exceptional genius for
catching the spirit of architectural work, and that all he required was
technical training, and he sent for him to London, kindly undertaking
to give him a room and food in his house in Wilderness Row, Camberwell,
whilst prosecuting his studies in Town. Here he remained for about two
years, and was introduced to Northcote and Benjamin West, the latter
of whom gave him valuable hints on the management of chiaroscuro,
and Prout often recurred to his meeting with West and to the utility
his advice had been to him. In 1803 and 1804 Britton sent Prout into
Cambridge, Essex, and Wiltshire to make sketches and studies of
buildings. Some of these were engraved in his _Beauties_, and others in
_Architectural Antiquities_, 1835.
In the year 1805, Prout returned to Plymouth mainly on account of
his health and his headaches, which unfitted him for prosecuting his
studies with ease and energy.
He had in the previous year sent his first picture to the Royal
Academy, and he was for the next ten years an occasional exhibitor, his
subjects being mainly views in Devonshire and coast scenes. His simple
drawings, says Mr. Ruskin, were made for the middle classes, even for
the second order of the middle classes.
“The great people always bought Canaletti, not Prout. There was no
quality in the bright little water-colours which could look other than
pert in ghostly corridors and petty in halls of state; but they gave an
unquestionable tone of liberal-mindedness to a suburban villa, and were
the cheerfullest possible decoration for a moderate-sized breakfast
parlour opening on a nicely-mown lawn. Their liveliness even rose,
on occasion, to the charity of beautifying the narrow chambers of
those whom business or fixed habit retained in the obscurity of London
itself.”
After about six years of earnest work in Devon, he returned to London
and took up his abode in Brixton, and three years after he married
(1810) Elizabeth Gillespie. There were pleasant meetings in town
with his fellow Plymothians. Haydon was there full of enthusiasm and
enormous self-confidence, and Eastlake, who had already made his
mark and was rapidly rising into fame; an occasional visit was made
to the surly Northcote, but from him little encouragement was to be
obtained. To maintain himself, Prout gave lessons in drawing, and
sent pictures to the Watercolour Society, and succeeded in selling
them. In 1816, Ackermann published his _Studies_ in parts, executed
in the then new art of lithography. This was followed by _Progressive
Fragments_, _Rudiments of Landscape_, and other collections of
instructive drawings. How perfectly Prout mastered the technicalities
of lithography may be seen by some of his late works on tinted paper,
with introduction of white, as, for instance, his _Hints on Light and
Shade_, etc., published in 1838. In the introduction to that he tells
his own experience.
“Want of talent and want of taste are common lamentations and common
excuses, but wonders will be achieved by the lowest ability if assisted
by unremitted diligence. _Nothing is denied to well-directed labour;
nothing is to be obtained without it._ There must be an assiduous,
ardent devotedness, with a firmness of purpose, absorbing the whole
mind; never rambling, but pursuing one determined object. It is the
persevering who leave their competitors behind; and those who work the
hardest always gain the most.”
Prout’s love was for marine subjects--this can be noticed in all his
publications--but the influence of Britton and the advice of Johns
prevailed to make him cleave to architecture; and indeed from the first
this had ever attracted him, though not so much the great achievements
of the art, as its humbler yet lovely creations, the labourer’s
cottage, built of moor-stone, and thatched with reed or heather.
His health, always bad at the best of times, grew worse; he became
so feeble that a trip to the Continent was recommended to him. “The
route by Havre and Rouen,” writes Ruskin, “was chosen, and Prout found
himself for the first time in the grotesque labyrinths of the Norman
streets. There are few minds so apathetic as to receive no impulse of
new delight from their first acquaintance with continental scenery
and architecture; and Rouen _was_, of all the cities of France,
the richest in those objects with which the painter’s mind had the
profoundest sympathy.” Now all is changed. The great churches stand
up by themselves in the midst of modern houses destitute of beauty,
islands of loveliness in a sea of vulgarity. Great streets have been
driven through the town, picturesque houses have been swept away; that
which is old has been barbarously renovated. The cathedral has been
furnished with a ridiculous spire. Then “all was at unity with itself,
and the city lay under its guarding hills one labyrinth of delight--its
grey and fretted towers, misty in their magnificence of height, letting
the sky like blue enamel through the foiled spaces of their crowns
of open work; the walls and gates of its countless churches wardered
by saintly groups of solemn statuary, clasped about by wandering
stems of sculptured leafage, and crowned by fretted niche and fairy
pediment, meshed, like gossamer, with inextricable tracery, many a
quaint monument of past times standing to tell its far-off tale in the
place from which it has since perished--in the midst of the throng and
murmur of those shadowy streets--all grim with jutting props of ebon
woodwork, lightened only here and there by a sunbeam glancing down from
the scaly backs and points of pyramids of the Norman roofs, or carried
out of its narrow range by the gay progress of some snowy cap or
scarlet camisole. The painter’s vocation was fixed from that hour; the
first effect upon his mind was irrepressible enthusiasm, with a strong
feeling of new-born attachment to art, in a new world of exceeding
interest.”
This was the first of many excursions made through France, Germany, the
Netherlands, and Italy. How he enjoyed these trips is beyond power of
words to describe. He drank in the beauties as he would nectar; they
inspired new life into him; it filled his happy soul with delights
that made him forget his bodily infirmities. His books of studies
sold well--they did more than anything else to form the taste of the
public. The fashion set in for sketches of ruins, of old buildings, of
cottages. He had many imitators, but no equals. For his water-colour
paintings he asked but modest prices, six guineas each.
How Gothic architecture was viewed only seventeen years before Samuel
Prout was born may be judged by Matthew Bramble’s account of York
Minster in _Humphrey Clinker_. He writes: “As for the minster, I know
not how to distinguish it, except by its great size and the height of
its spire, from those other ancient churches in different parts of the
kingdom which used to be called monuments of Gothic architecture; but
it is now agreed that the style is Saracen--and I suppose it was first
imported into England from Spain, greater part of which was under the
domination of the Moors. Those British architects who adopted this
style don’t seem to have considered the propriety of their adoption.
Nothing could be more preposterous than to imitate such a mode of
architecture in a country like England, where the climate is cold and
the air eternally loaded with vapours. For my part, I never entered
the abbey church at Bath but once, and the moment I stepped over the
threshold I found myself chilled to the very marrow of my bones. I
should be glad to know what offence it would give to tender consciences
if the House of God were made more comfortable; and whether it would
not be an encouragement to piety, as well as the salvation of many
lives, if the place of worship were well floored, wainscotted, warmed,
and ventilated.
“_The external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be displeasing
to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety and proportion_,
even though he may be ignorant of architecture as a science. There
is nothing of the Arabic architecture in the Assembly Rooms, which
seems to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be
converted into an elegant place of worship.”
In little more than a generation popular taste was completely changed.
Augustus Pugin and Le Keux published their _Specimens of Architectural
Antiquities in Normandy_ in 1827; Parker his _Glossary of Architecture_
in 1836, which rapidly went through several editions. A. Welby Pugin
poured forth the vials of scorn on the taste of his day in his
_Contrasts_, 1841; Ruskin’s _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ laid down
first principles in 1849; Rickman, the Quaker, had issued his _Attempt
to Distinguish the Styles of English Architecture_ as early as 1817,
and this also rapidly passed through several editions. But it was not
enough to instruct the public: its heart must be touched, its eyes
unsealed to the beauties of the so-called Gothic style; and this is
what Prout did with his exquisite drawings. There was no technical
skill obtruded, no attempt made to distinguish styles: he simply with
his pencil brought its charms before the public eye in an engaging
form. And the public saw and believed.
Mr. S. C. Hall, writing of Prout’s personal qualities, says: “No member
of the profession has ever lived to be more thoroughly respected, we
may add beloved, by his fellow artists; no man has ever given more
unquestionable evidence of a gentle and generous spirit, or more
truly deserved the esteem in which he is so universally held. His
always delicate health, instead of souring the temper, made him more
thoughtful of the trials of others. Ever ready to assist the young by
the counsels of experience, he is a fine example of perseverance and
industry combined with suavity of manner and those endearing attributes
which invariably blend with admiration of the artist, affection for
the man. During the last six or seven years we have sometimes found
our way into his quiet studio, where, like a delicate exotic requiring
the most careful treatment to retain life within it, he could keep
himself warm and snug, as he expressed it. There he might be seen at
his easel, throwing his rich and beautiful colouring over a sketch
of some old palace in Venice or time-worn cathedral of Flanders; and
though suffering much from pain and weakness, ever cheerful, ever
thankful that he had still strength enough to carry on his work. He
rose late, and could seldom begin his labours before the middle of the
day, when, if tolerably free from pain, he would paint till the night
was advanced. No man ever bore suffering more meekly. Essentially
religious, he submitted with patience and resignation to the Divine
will. All the home affections were warm and strong in him. He was of a
tender, loving, and truly upright nature.”
He spent some time at Hastings for his health, and when there his
parish church was S. Mary’s. He attended this church regularly, and
the vicar, the Rev. Mr. Vines, used to say: “I always wait for Prout
to come and light up my church.” Indeed, his temper was always sunny,
and he was eminently devout. What touched him profoundly was the piety
he noticed among the peasantry abroad--how they uncovered for a brief
prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and how they made of their churches
a veritable home, where they could pour out their hearts in prayer in
all sorrows, and in thanksgiving in all joys. But abroad or at home, in
his hotel or his studio, his constant companions were his English Bible
and Book of Common Prayer, and with them he said that he was satisfied.
As Mr. Hine says beautifully in his _Memoirs of Prout_: “All the
subjects of his pictures point upwards, the lovely street scenes
terminating in the tall tower or the divine spire. The doves hover
about the highest ridges of his roofs and the loftiest pinnacles of
his towers. He had the most implicit faith in the final article of the
Nicene Creed--‘I believe in the life of the world to come’--and his own
pictures are the faint but beautiful symbols of that celestial city
which he saw as through a glass, darkly.”
He had been invited with many literary and artistic celebrities to
dine with Mr. Ruskin, the elder, on Tuesday, 9 February, 1852, to keep
the birthday of John Ruskin, and hear a letter from Venice, from the
younger Ruskin, who was then in that city.
Samuel Prout had not been well of late, but he went to the dinner, and
returned between ten and eleven, and said to his wife, “I’ve had such a
happy evening! The Venice letter was capital.” Then he retired to his
studio. Shortly after a tapping sound, often made by him as a summons,
was heard. One of his daughters running upstairs found her father lying
on the hearthrug in a fit of apoplexy. His open Bible, in which he had
been reading one of the Psalms, lay on the table. He was carried to
bed, but never spoke again. He died in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
“There will never be any more Prout drawings,” said Ruskin sorrowfully.
In the north aisle of St. Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, is a marble tablet
to his memory.
“There is one point,” says Ruskin, “in which Turner, Bewick, Hunt, and
Prout, all four agree--that they can draw the poor, but not the rich.
They acknowledge with affection, whether for principal or accessory
subjects of their art, the British farmer, the British sailor, the
British market-woman, and the British workman. They agree unanimously
in ignoring the British gentleman. Let the British gentleman lay it to
heart, and ask himself why.
“The general answer is long and manifold. But, with respect to the
separate work of Prout, there is a very precious piece of instruction
in it respecting national prosperity and policy, which may be gathered
in a few glances.
“You see how all his best pictures depend on figures either crowded in
market-places or pausing (lounging, it may be) in quiet streets. You
will not find, in the entire series of subjects from his hand, a single
figure in a hurry. He ignores not only the British gentleman, but every
necessary condition, nowadays, of British business.
“Look again and see if you can find a single figure exerting all its
strength. A couple of men rolling a single cask perhaps; here and
there a woman with a rather large bundle on her head--any more athletic
display than these you seek in vain. His figures are all as quiet as
the Cathedral of Chartres. Some of them you can scarcely think are
standing still, but they all move quietly. The real reason is that _he_
understood, and _we_ do not, the meaning of the word ‘quiet.’
“He understood it, personally, and for himself; practically, and for
others. Take this one fact--of his quiet dealings with men--and think
it over.
“The modern fashionable interest in what we suppose to be art had just
begun to show itself a few years before Prout’s death, and he was
frequently advised to raise his prices. But he never raised them a
shilling to his old customers, nor greatly to his new ones. They were
supplied with all the drawings they wanted at six guineas each--to the
end. A very peaceful method of dealing, and under the true ancient laws
ordained by Athena of the Agora, and St. James of the Rialto.