What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands
of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid,
that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put
you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to
attend your _execution_; for you are going to be _be-headed_, and soon
will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your _head
taken off_: I will not go with you--it would spoil all. You are afraid to
trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some
characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you
flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being
made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes
this vagary?--well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you,
I should talk--perhaps maliciously--on purpose to see how your features
would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one
would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter
would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see
every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."
I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to
sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror
of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or
you will be like nothing human--and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on
the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise
than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw
contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or
crying Philosopher at pleasure--but sit as neither, for in either
character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very
plaster figures in it will set you off--to see yourself in such motley
company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his
marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face;
and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator.
This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but
if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You
may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene--but how will you be
able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body,"
from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all
looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for
many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their
connexion--and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you
will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a
controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti
nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody
will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more
besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament
scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of
your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of
general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have
daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for
comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that
it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he
will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter.
Eusebius in a _coma_! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the
play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit--that is the way, get
into a _coma_--that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or,
when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that
you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I
will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat
to him two days--the third the painter worked away very hard--looked at
the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been
all wrong--what can it be? Why, sir, your mouth is not at all like what it
was yesterday." "Ah! ah! I will tell you vat it ees," replied the French
dentist; "ah! good--my mouse is not de same--no indeed--yesterday I did
have my jaw in, but I did lend it out to a lady this day." Don't you think
of this now while you are sitting. You know the trick Garrick played the
painter, who, foiled in his attempt, started up, and said--"You must be
Garrick or the d----!" Then as to attitude, 'tis ten to one but you will
be put into one which will be quite uncomfortable to you. One, perhaps,
after a pattern. I should advise you to resist this--and sit easy--if you
can. Don't put your hand in your waistcoat, and one arm akimbo, like a
Captain Macheath, however he may entreat you; and don't be made looking up,
like a martyr, which some wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your
head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your
stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed.
Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt
look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust
out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking.
Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats,
they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut,
colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their
practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you
see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be
put up for you--a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far
the best piece of work, you may be sure your _own_ won't be taken for a
pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can
never change--it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished
whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the
old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear
now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look
as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered
dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini.
What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There
are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before
they begin, as they would a horse at the fair--ay, and look in your mouth
too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo
you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not
the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your
hand--that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger
on a book--that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine
what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter
leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This
will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do
with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say--too many do not
know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting,
I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will
be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the
painter's privilege--the foreground and background. If you have the common
fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If
your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade,
waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that
makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a
distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or
you will perhaps have your glove in your hand--a device adopted by some,
to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry.
And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a
marble table. This shows the sitter has the use of his legs, which
otherwise might be doubted, and is therefore judicious. If you are
supposed to be in the open air, you will not know at first sight that you
are so represented, until you have learned the painter's hieroglyphic for
trees. You will find them to be angular sorts of sticks, with red and
yellow flag-rags flapping about; and ten to one but you have a murky sky,
and no hat on your head; but as to such a country as you ever walked in,
or ever saw, don't expect to see such a one as a background to your
picture, and you will readily console yourself that you are turning your
back upon it. If you are painted in a library, books are cheap--so that
the artist can afford to throw you in a silver inkstand into the bargain,
and a pen--such a pen! the goose wouldn't know it that bred it--and
perhaps an open letter to answer, with your name on the cover. If you are
made answering the letter, that will never be like you--perhaps it would
be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter
yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you.
"_Non omnia possumus omnes_," is the regular rule of the profession; some
stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it--to
draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red
lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white
lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and
done, it will be a great deal more like a red lion." And I am sorry to say,
the faces too, are not unfrequently in this predicament, for they have a
wonderful family likeness, and these run much by counties. A painter has
often been known totally to fail, by quitting his beat. There is certainly
an advantage in this; for if any gentleman should be so unfortunate as to
have no ancestors, he may pick up at random, in any given county in
England, a number that will very well match, and all look like
blood-relations. There is an instance where this resemblance was greatly
improved, by the advice of an itinerant of the profession, who, at a very
moderate price, put wigs on all the Vandyks. And there you see some danger,
Eusebius, that--be represented how you may--you are not sure of keeping
your condition ten years; you may have, by that time, a hussar cap put
upon your unconscious head. But portraits fare far worse than that.
I remember, when a boy, walking with an elderly gentleman, and passing a
broker's stall, there was the portrait of a fine florid gentleman in
regimentals; he stopped to look at it--he might have bought it for a few
shillings. After we had gone away,--"that," said he, "is the portrait of
my wife's great uncle--member for the county, and colonel of militia: you
see how he is degraded to these steps." "Why do you not rescue him?" said
I. "Because he left me nothing," was the reply. A relative of mine, an old
lady, hit upon a happy device; the example is worth following. Her husband
was the last of his race, for she had no children. She took all the family
portraits out of their frames, rolled up all the pictures, and put them in
the coffin with the deceased. No one was more honourably accompanied to
the grave--and so he slept with his fathers. It has not, to be sure,
Eusebius, much to do with your portrait, but thinking of these family
portraits, one is led on to think of their persons, &c.; so I must tell
you what struck me as a singular instance of the _'sic nos non nobis.'_ I
went with a cousin, upon a sort of pilgrimage at some distance, to visit
some family monuments. There was one large handsome marble one in the
chancel. You will never guess how it had been treated. A vicar's wife had
died, and the disconsolate widower had caused a square marble tablet, with
the inscription of his wife's virtues, to be actually inserted in the Very
centre of our family monument: and yet you, by sitting for your portrait,
hope to be handed down unmutilated to generations to come,--yes, they will
come, and you will be a mark for the boys to shoot peas at--that is, if
you remain at all in the family--you may be transferred to the wench's
garret, or the public-house, and have a pipe popped through the canvass
into your mouth, to make you look ridiculous. I really think you have a
chance of being purchased, to be hung up in the club parlour as pictorial
president of the Odd-Fellows. Why should you be exempt from what kings are
subject to? The "king's head" is a sign in many a highway, to countenance
ill-living. You too, will be bought at a broker's--have your name changed
without your consent--and be adopted into a family whereof you would
heartily despise the whole kith and kin. If pride has not a fall in the
portraits of the great and noble, where shall we find it?"
A painter once told me, that he assisted one of the meanest of low rich
men, to collect some family portraits; he recommended to him a fine
Velasquez. "Velasquez!--who's he?" said the head of his family. "It is a
superb picture, sir--a genuine portrait by the Spaniard, and doubtless, of
some Spanish nobleman. "Then," said he, "I won't have it; I'll have no
Spanish blood contaminate my family, sir." "Spanish blood," rejected by
the plebeian! I have known better men than you, Eusebius--excuse the
comparison--vamped up and engraved upon the spur of the moment, for
celebrated highwaymen or bloody murderers. But this digression won't help
you out in your sitting. Let me see what the learned say upon the
subject--what advice shall we get from the man of academies. Here we have
him, Gerrard Larresse; you may be sure that he treats of portrait-painting,
and with importance enough too. Here it is--"Of Portraiture." But that is
far too plan. We must have an emblem:--
"Emblem touching the handling of portraits."
"Nature with her many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a
little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side
stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down
to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at it. On the frame of this
glass, are seen a _gilt pallet and pencils. Truth has a book and palm
branch_ in her hand." What do you think of that, Eusebius, for a position?
But why Nature or Truth should be surprised at viewing herself down to the
middle, I cannot imagine. It evidently won't do to surprise you in that
manner. Poor Gerrard, I see, thinks it a great condescension in him to
speak of portrait-painting at all; he calls it, "departing from the
essence of art, and subjecting (the painter) to all the defects of nature."
Hear that, Eusebius! you are to sit to be a specimen of the _defects_ of
nature. He is indignant that "such great masters as Vandyke, Lely, Van Loo,
the old and young Bakker, and others," possessed of great talents,
postponed what is noble and beautiful to what is more ordinary. There you
are again, Eusebius, with your ordinary visage, unworthy such men as the
old and young Bakker, whoever they were. But since there must be portraits,
he could endure the method of the ancients, who, "used to cause those from
whom the commonwealth had received extraordinary benefits, either in war
or civil affairs, or for eminence in religion, to be represented in marble
or metal, or in a picture, that the sight of them, by those honours, might
be a spur to posterity to emulate the same virtues. This honour was first
begun with their deities; afterwards it was paid to heroes, and of
consequence to philosophers, orators, religious men, and others, not only
to perpetuate their virtues, but also to embalm their names and memories.
But now it goes further; a person of any condition whatsoever, have he but
as much money as the painter asks, must sit for his picture. This is a
great abuse, and sprung from as laudable a cause."
Are you not ashamed to sit after that? He is not, however, without his
indulgences. He will allow something to a lover and a husband.
"Has a citizen's wife but an only babe? he is drawn at half a year old; at
ten years old he sits again; and for the last time in his twenty-fifth
year, in order to show her tender folly: and then she stands wondering how
a man can so alter in that time. Is not this a weighty reason? a
reprovable custom, if painters did not gain by it. But again, portraits
are allowable, when a lover is absent from his mistress, that they may
send each other their pictures, to cherish and increase their loves; a man
and wife parted so may do the same." You undertake, you perceive, a matter
of some responsibility--you must account to your conscience for the act of
sitting for your picture. Then there is a chapter upon defects, which, as
I suppose he presumes people don't know themselves, he catalogues pretty
fully, till you are quite out of humour with poor human nature. The
defects are "natural ones--accidental ones--usual ones." Natural--"a wry
face, squint eyes, wry mouth, nose," &c. Accidental. "Loss of an eye, a
cut on the cheek, or other part of the face, pits of the small-pox and the
like." Usual. "Contraction of the eyes and mouth, or closing or gaping of
the latter, or drawing it in somewhat to this or that side, upwards or
downwards," &c. As for other bodily infirmities, how many have wry necks,
hunchbacks, bandy legs--withered or short arms, or one shorter than
another; dead or lame hands or fingers." Now, are you so sure of the
absence of all these defects, that you venture? You must think yourself an
Adonis, and not think that you are to be flattered, by having any very
considerable number of your defects hid. "The necessary ones ought to be
seen, because they _help the likeness_; such as a wry face, squint eyes,
low forehead, thinness, and fatness; a wry neck, too short or too long a
nose; wrinkles between the eyes; ruddiness or paleness of the cheeks, or
lips; pimples or warts about the mouth; and such like." After this, it is
right you should know that "Nature abhors deformity." Nay, that we always
endeavour to hide our own--and which do you mean to hide, or do you intend
to come out perfect? I daresay you can discover some little habits of your
own, Eusebius, free from vanity as you are, that tend to these little
concealments! Do you remember how a foolish man lost a considerable sum of
money once, by forgetting this human propensity? He had lost some money to
little K---- of Bath, the deformed gambler--and being netted at his loss,
thought to pique the winner. "I'll wager," said he, "£50, I'll point out
the worst leg in company."--"Done," said K---- to his astonishment. "The
man does not know himself," thought he, for there sat K---- crouched up
all shapes by the fireside. The wagerer, to win his bet, at once cried,
"Why, that," pointing to K----'s leg, which was extended towards the grate.
"No," said K---- quietly unfolding the other from beneath the chair, and
showing it, "that's worse." By which you may learn the fact--that every
man puts his best leg foremost. But we must not quit our friend Gerard yet.
I like his grave conceit. I rejoice to find him giving the painters a rap
over their knuckles. He says, Eusebius, that they are fond of having
"smutty pictures" in their rooms; and roundly tells them, that though fine
pictures are necessary, there is no need of their having such subjects as
"Mars and Venus, and Joseph and Potiphar's Wife." Now, though I do not
think our moderns offend much in this respect--the hint is good--and some
exhibit studies from models about their rooms, that evidently sat without
their stays. Gerard was the man for contrivances--here is a capital one.
He does not quite approve of painting a wooden leg; but if it be to be
done, see with what skill even that in the hands of a Gerard may be
dignified--and the painter absolved, "lege solutus." "But if the hero
insist upon the introducing of such a leg, on a supposition that 'tis an
honour to have lost a limb in his country's service, the painter must then
comply with his desires; or _else contrive it lying on a table covered
with red velvet_." But capital as this is, it is not all. He quite revels
in contrivances; "if he desire it after the antique manner, it must be
contrived in a bas-relief, wherein the occasion of it may be represented;
or it may hang near him on a wall, with its buckles and straps, as is done
in hunting equipages; or else it may be placed among the ornaments of
architecture, to be more in view." You see he scorns to hide it--has
worked up his imagination to conceive all possible ways of showing it;
depend upon it he longed to paint a wooden leg, to which the face should
be the appendage, the leg the portrait. "Hoc ligno," not "hoc signo
vinces." But here Gerard bounces--giving an instance of a gentleman "who,
being drawn in little, and comparing the smallness of the eyes with his
own, asked the painter whether he had such? However, in complaisance, and
for his pleasure, he desired that one eye at least might be as big as his
own, the other to remain as it was." Fie, Gerard! you have spoiled your
emblem by taking the mirror out of truth's hand.
He is particular about postures and backgrounds. "It will not be improper
to treat also about easiness and sedateness in posture, opposed to stir
and bustle, and the contrary--namely, that the picture of a gentlewoman of
repute, who, in a grave and sedate manner, turns towards that of her
husband, hanging near it, gets a great decorum by _moving and stirring
hind-works_, whether by means of waving trees, or crossing architecture of
stone and wood, or any thing else that the master thinks will best
_contrast_, or oppose, the _sedate posture of his principal figure_." Here
you see Eusebius, how hind-works tend to keep up a _bustle_! "And because
these are things of consequence, and may not be plainly apprehended by
every one," he explains himself by ten figures in one plate--and such
figures! As a sitter, he would place you very much above the eye--that is,
technically speaking, adopt a low horizon; "because--the because is a
because--because it's certain that when we see any painted figure, or
object, in a place where the life can be expected, as standing on the
ground, leaning over a balcony or balustrade, or out at a window, &c., it
deceives the eye, and by being seen unawares, (though expected,) causes
sometimes a pleasing mistake; or it frightens and surprises others, when
they meet with it unexpectedly, at such places as aforesaid, and where
there is _any likelihood_ for it." Your artist will probably put you on an
inverted box, and sitting in a great chair, probably covered with red
morocco leather, in which you will not be at home, and in any manner
comfortable. We see this deal box sometimes converted into a marble step,
as a step to a throne, and such it is in one of the pictures of the Queen;
but it is so ill coloured, that it looks for all the world like a great
cheese; it should be sent to the farmers who made the Queen the cheese
present, to show the pride of England walking upon the "fat of the land."
He presents us with many methods of showing the different characters of
persons to be painted, some of which will be novel to you. For instance,
you would not expect directions to represent a secretary of state with the
accompaniments of a goose. "With a secretary the statue of Harpocrates,
and in tapestry or bas-relief, the story of Alexander shutting
Hephæstion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a
goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of
the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened
accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a
scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and
thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals
about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to
head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a
trident in her hand, and her clothing a long mantle; a landskip behind her
of an Indian prospect, with palm and cocoa trees, some figures of _blacks_,
and elephant's teeth. This figure also suits an admiral, or commander at
sea, when a sea-fight is introduced instead of a landskip." Such a figure
may, indeed, be more at home at sea, and such a one may have been that
famous lady, whose captain so "very much applauded her," and
"Made her the first lieutenant
Of the gallant Thunder Bomb."
Not a painter of the present day, it seems, knows how to paint the clergy.
Mr Pickersgill has done quite common things, and simply shown the cloth
and the band--that is poor device. See how Gerard would have it done.
Every clergyman should be a Dr Beattie. "With a divine agrees the statue
of truth, represented in a Christian-like manner, or else this same emblem
in one of his hands, and his other on his breast, besides tapestries,
bas-reliefs, or paintings, and some Christian emblems of the true faith;
and representation of the Old and New Testament--in the offskip a temple."
All the portraits of the great duke are defective, inasmuch as none of
them have "Mars in a niche," or Victory sitting on a trophy, or a statue
of Hercules. You probably have no idea what a great personage is a
"sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a
sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the
figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the
cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be
absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names
underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such,
this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle
the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard
admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather
condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than
have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen.
"As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the
lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions,
and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'"
By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made
up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed
about the emblems--modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't
throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should
sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous
self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified
to find his own image thrown into the bargain.
Besides your own defects, you have to encounter the painter's. His
unsteady, uncertain hand, may add an inch to your nose before you are
aware of it. It is quite notorious that few painters paint both eyes of
the same size; and after your utmost efforts to look straight in his face,
he may make you squint for ever, and not see that he has done so. Unless
he be himself a sensible man, he will be sure to make you look like a fool.
Then, what is like to-day will be unlike to-morrow. His megillups will
change, so that in six months you may look like a copper Indian; or the
colours may fade, and leave you the ghost of what you were. Again, he may
paint you lamentably like, odiously like, yet give you a sinister
expression, or at least an unpleasant one. Then, if you remonstrate, he is
offended; if you refuse to take it, he writes you word that if not paid
for and removed by next Tuesday, he will add a tail to it, and dispose of
it to Mr Polito. Did not Hogarth do something of this kind? If he please
himself he may not satisfy you, and if you are satisfied, none of your
friends are, who take an opportunity of the portrait to say sarcastic
things of you. For in that respect you may be most like your picture, or
it most like you, for every body will have some fault to find with it. Why,
don't you remember but last year some _friends_ poked out the eye from a
portrait, even after it had been on the exhibition walls. Then, what with
the cleaning and varnishing, you have to go through as many disorders as
when you were a child. You will have the picture-cleaner's measles. It was
not long ago, I saw a picture in a most extraordinary state; and, on
enquiry, I found that the cook of the house had rubbed it over with fat of
bacon to make it bear out, and that she had learned it at a great house,
where there is a fine collection, which are thus bacon'd twice every year.
You are sure not to keep even your present good looks, but will become
smoked and dirty. Then must you be cleaned, and there is an even chance
that in doing it they put out at least one of your eyes, (I saw both eyes
taken out of a Correggio,) and the new one to be put in will never match
the other. The ills that flesh is heir to, are nothing to the ills its
representative is heir to. At best, the very change of fashion in dress
will make you look quizzical in a few years. For you are going to sit when
dress is most unbecoming, and it is only by custom that the eye is
reconciled to it, so that all the painted present generation must look
ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. Don't have your name put on the
canvass; then you may console yourself that, in all these mortal chances
and changes, whatever happens to it, you will not be known. I have one
before me now with the name and all particulars in large gilt letters.
Happily this ostentation is out; you may therefore hope, when the evil day
comes, _fallere_, to escape notice. I hope the painter will give you that
bold audacious look which may stare the beholder in the face, and deny
your own identity; no small advantage, for doubtless the "[Greek: sêmata
lugra]" of Bellerophon was but his portrait, which, by a hang-look
expression, intimatd death. Your painter may be ignorant of phrenology,
and, without knowing it, may give you some detestable bumps; and your
picture may be borrowed to lecture upon, at inns and institutions, and
anecdotes rummaged up or forged, to match the painter's doing--the bumps
he has given you.
You must not, however, on this account, think too ill of the poor painter.
He is subject to human infirmities--so are you--and his hand and eye are
not always in tune. He has, too, to deal with all sorts of people--many
difficult enough to please. You know the fable of the painter who would
please everybody, and pleased nobody. You sitters are a whimsical set,
and most provokingly shift your features and position, and always expect
miracles, at a moment, too; you are here to-day, and must be off to-morrow.
It is nothing, to you that paint won't dry for you, so even that must be
forced, and you are rather varnished in than painted, and no wonder if
your faces go to pieces, and you become mealy almost as soon as you have
had the life's blood in you, and that with the best carmine. And often you
take upon yourselves to tell the painter what to do, as if you knew
yourselves better than he, though he has been staring at nothing but you
for an hour or two at a time, perhaps. You ask him, too, perpetually what
feature he is now doing, that you may call up a look. You screw up your
mouths, and try to put all the shine you can into your eyes, till, from
continual effort, they look like those of a shotten herring; and yet you
expect all to be like what you are in your ordinary way. After he has
begun to paint your hair, you throw it about with your hands in all
directions but the right, and all his work is to begin over again. You
have no notion how ignorant of yourselves you are. I happened to call,
some time since, upon a painter with whom I am on intimate terms. I found
him in a roar of laughter, and quite alone. "What is the matter?" said I.
"Matter!" replied he; "why, here has Mr B. been sitting to me these four
days following, and at last, about half an hour ago, he, sitting in that
chair, puts up his hand to me, thus, with 'Stop a moment, Mr Painter; I
don't know whether you have noticed it or not, but it is right that I
should tell you that _I have a slight_ cast in my eye.' You know Mr B., a
worthy good man, but he has the very worst gimlet eye I ever beheld." Yes,
and only _slightly_ knew it, Eusebius. And I have to say, he thought his
defect wondrously exaggerated, when, for the first time, he saw it on
canvas; and perhaps all his family noticed it there, whom custom had
reconciled into but little observation of it, and the painter was
considered no friend of the family. For the poor artist is expected to
please all down to the youngest child, and perhaps that one most, for she
often rules the rest. And people do not too much consider the _feelings_
of painters. I knew an artist, a great humorist, who spent much time at
the court at Lisbon. He had to paint a child, I believe the Prince of the
Brazils. I remember, as if I saw him act the scene but yesterday, and it
is many years ago. Well, the maid of honour, or whatever was her title,
brought the child into the room, and remained some time, but at length
left him alone with the painter. When he found himself only in this
company, his pride took the alarm. He put on great airs, frowned, pouted,
looked disdainful, superbly swelling, and got off the chair, retreating
slowly, scornfully. The artist, who was a great mimic, imitated his every
gesture, and, with some extravagance, frowned as he frowned, swelled as he
swelled, blew out his breath as the child did, advanced as he retreated,
till the child at length found himself pinned in the corner, at which the
artist put on such a ridiculous expression, that risible nature could
stand it no longer; pride was conquered by humour, and from that hour they
were on the most familiar terms. It was not an ill-done thing of our Henry
VIII. when he made one of his noble courtiers apologize to Holbein for
some slight, bidding him, at the same time, to know that he could make a
hundred such as he, but it was past his power to make a Holbein. And you
know how a great monarch picked up Titian's pencil which had fallen. How
greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to
paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in
love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to
put slights upon these men--and it is more, it is ungenerous; they may
revenge themselves upon you whenever they please, and give you a black eye
too, that will never get right again. They can in effigy, put every limb
out of joint; and you being no anatomist, may only see that you look ill,
and know not where you went wrong. All you sitters expect to be flattered,
and very little flattery do you bestow. Perversely, you won't even see
your own likenesses. Take, for instance, the following scene, which I had
from a miniature painter:--A man upwards of forty years of age, had been
sitting to him--one of as little pretensions as you can well imagine; you
would have thought it impossible that he could have had an homoeopathic
proportion of vanity--of personal vanity at least; but it turned out
otherwise. He was described as a greasy bilious man, with a peculiarly
conventicle aspect--that is, one that affects a union of gravity and love.
"Well, sir," said the painter, "that will do--I think I have been very
fortunate in your likeness." The man looks at it, and says nothing, puts
on an expression of disappointment. "What! don't you think it like, sir?"
says the artist. "Why--ye-ee-s, it is li-i-ke--but----" "But what sir?--I
think it exactly like. I wish you would tell me where it is not like?"
"Why, I'd rather you should find it out yourself. Have the goodness to
look at me."--And here my friend the painter declared, that he put on a
most detestably affected grin of amiability.--"Well, sir, upon my word, I
don't see any fault at all; it seems to me as like as it can be; I wish
you'd be so good as to tell me what you mean." "Oh, sir, I'd rather
not--I'd rather you should find it out yourself--look again." "I can't see
any difference, sir; so if you don't tell me, it can't be altered." "Well
then, with reluctance, if I must tell you, I don't think you have given my
_sweet expression about the eyes_." Oh, Eusebius, Eusebius, what a mock
you would have made of that man; you would have flouted his vanity about
his ears for him gloriously; I would have given a crown to have had him
sit to you, and you should have let me be by, to attend your colours. How
we would have bedaubed the fellow before he had left the room, with his
sweet eyes! But there, your patient painter must endure all that, and not
give a hint that he disagrees in the opinion: or if he speak his mind on
the occasion, he may as well quit the town, for under the influence of
those sweet eyes, nor man, woman, nor child, will come to sit to him. And
consider, Eusebius, their misery in having such sitters at all. They are
not Apollos, and Venuses, nor Adonises, that knock at painters' doors. Not
one in a hundred has even a tolerably pleasant face. I certainly once knew
a rough-dealing artist, who told a gentleman very plainly--"Sir, I do not
paint remarkably ugly people." But he came to no good. Not but that a
clever fellow might do something of this kind with management, with good
effect; get the reputation of being a painter of "beauties," with a little
skill, make beauties of every body, and stoutly maintain that he never
will have any others sit to him. I am not quite certain, that something of
this kind has been practised, or I do not think I should have the art to
invent it. All those who sit during a courtship, to present their
portraits as lovers, I look upon it come as professed cheats, and mean to
be most egregiously flattered; and if the thing succeeds through the
painter's skill, within six months after the marriage, he, the painter, is
called the cheat, and the portrait not in the least like. So easy is it to
get out of repute, by doing your best to please them with a little
flattery. You will never get into a book of beauty, Eusebius. Hitherto,
the list runs in the female line. The male will soon come in, depend upon
it.
Have a little pity upon the poor artist, who would, but cannot,
flatter--who is conscious of his inability to put in those blandishments
that shall give a grace to ugliness--from whose hand unmitigated ugliness
becomes uglier--who, at length, driven from towns, where people begin to
see this, as a dauber, takes refuge among the farm houses; at first paints
the farmers and their wives, their ugly faces stretching to the very edge
of the frames, and is at last reduced to paint the favourite cow, or the
fat ox--the prodigal (alas! no; the simply miserable, in mistaking his
profession) feeding the swine, and with them, and they not over-proud of
his doings. Then there is another poor, self-deluded character among the
tribe. I have the man in my eye at this moment. It is not long since I
paid him a visit to see a great historical composition, which I had been
requested to look at. It was the most miserable of all miserable daubs;
yet so conspicuously set off with colours and hardness, that the eye could
not escape it. It was a most determined eye-sore. The quiet, the modest
demeanour of the young man at first deceived me; I ventured to find some
trifling fault. The artist was up--still his manner was quiet--somewhat,
in truth, contemptuously so; but, as for modesty, I doubt not he was
modest in every other matter relating to himself; but, in art, he as
calmly talked of himself, Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle, as a trio--that
two had obtained immortality of fame, and that he sought the same, and, he
trusted, by the same means, and believed with similar powers: as calmly
did he speak in this manner, as if it were a thing long settled in his own
mind and in fate--and in the manner of an indulgent communication. He
lamented the lack of taste and knowledge in the world; that so little was
real art appreciated, that he was obliged to submit to the drudgery of
portrait. _Submit!_--and such portraits. Poor fellow! how long will he get
sitters to _submit_? I have recently heard the fate of one of his great
compositions. He had persuaded the vicar and church-wardens of a parish to
accept a picture. He attended the putting it up. It was a fine old church.
With the quietest conceit, he had a fine east window blocked up to receive
the picture--had the tables of Commandments mutilated, and thrust up in a
corner--damaged the wall to give effect to the picture--and really
believed that he was conferring an honour and benefit upon the
parishioners and the county. Soon, however, men of better taste and sense
began to cry out. The incumbent died. His successor related to me the
shocking occurrence of the picture. He had it removed, and the damage done
to the edifice repaired. And what became of the grand historical? The
church-warden alone, who, in the pride of his heart and ignorance, had
paid the poor artist for the colours, gladly took the picture. His account
of it was, that it was so powerful in his small room, as to affect several
ladies to tears--and that he had covered it with a thin gauze, to keep
down _the fierceness of the sentiment_; for it was too affecting. Now,
here is a man, who, if you should happen to sit to him, will think it the
greatest condescension to take your picture, and will paint you such as
you never would wish to be seen or known. There is a predilection now for
schools of design; and the world will teem with these poor creatures.
Many there are, however, who, having considerable ability, have much to
struggle against--who love the profession of art, and with that
unaccountable giving themselves up to it, are quite unfit for any other
occupation in life, yet, from adverse circumstances--ill health, strange
temperaments--do not succeed. Many years ago, I knew a very interesting
young man, and a very industrious one, too, of very considerable ability
as a painter, but not, at that time, of portraits. While hard at work,
getting just enough to live by, he was seized with an illness that
threatened rapid consumption. The kind physician who gratuitously visited
him, told him one day--"You cannot live here. I do not say that you have a
year of safety in this climate, or a month of safety, but you have not
weeks. You must instantly go to a warmer climate." Ill, and without means,
beyond the few pounds he could gather from his hasty breaking-up, he had
courage to look on the cheerful side of things, and went off in the first
vessel to the West Indies. I saw him afterwards. He gave me a history of
his adventures. He went from island to island--became portrait-painter--a
painter of scenes--of any thing that might offer; by good conduct,
urbanity, gentleness, and industry, was respected, liked, and patronized;
lived, and sent home a thousand pounds or two--came to England to see his
friends for a few months. I saw him on his way to them. He was then in
health and spirits--told me the many events of the few years--and in six
weeks the climate killed him. But the anecdote of his turning
portrait-painter is what I have to tell. On the passage, they touched at
one of the islands, and he found but very little money in his pocket; and,
while others went off to hotels, or estates of friends, he went his way
quietly to seek out cheap lodgings. He found such, which the good woman
told him he could have in three hours. He afterwards learned that she
waited that time for the then tenant _to die in the bed which he was to
occupy_. Walking away to pass the time, he met some of his fellow
passengers, who asked him if he had been to see the governor. He had not.
They told him it was necessary he should go. So thither he went. Now, the
governor asked him, "What brought him out to the West Indies?" He replied,
that he came as an artist. "An artist!" said the governor. "That is a
novelty indeed. Have you any specimens? I should like to see them." Now,
among his things, he had a miniature of himself, painted by a man who
attained eminence in the profession, and whom I knew well. Here, with an
ingenuousness characteristic of the man, he acknowledged to me how,
starvation staring him in the face, _he_ stared in the governor's; and the
governor being rather a hard-featured man, whose likeness, though he had
never taken a portrait, he thought he could hit; when the governor admired
the miniature, and asked him, "If it was his?" he did not resist the
temptation, and said, "Yes." Upon which the governor sat to him. Then
others sat to him; and so he left the island, with a replenished purse,
and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been
the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over,
and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the
governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring.
And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had no conceit.
But you, Eusebius, need not trust or give your countenance, in the way of
the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing
you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply
portraits for "Saracen's Heads."
Foolish artists themselves, who affect to talk of the great style, and set
themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as
degrading--as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this
common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation
indeed!--as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the
art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to
vanity--view it in another light, and it is feeding affection.
I knew a painter, who honourably refused to paint a lady's picture, when
he waited upon her on purpose, sent by some injudicious friends to take
her portrait in her last days. She had been a woman of great
celebrity--she received the painter--but, with a weakness, pointed first
to one side of the room where were portraits of earls and bishops, saying,
"these are or were all my particular friends"--and then to the other side
of the room, to a well filled library--"and these are all my works." "Now,"
said the painter to me, "I did not think it fair to her reputation to take
her portrait--and she had had many taken at better times." Here was one
who would not pander to vanity. After all, it is astonishing how few
flattering painters there have been. Even he who made Venus, Minerva, and
Juno, starting with astonishment at the presence of Queen Elizabeth,
certainly made her by far the ugliest of the quartette. You may see the
picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she
insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be
the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For
modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or
sentimentality.
Do you believe in the story of the origin of portrait--the Grecian maid
and her lover? I cannot--for I have often tried my hand, and such frights
were the result, that it would have been a cure for love.
For lack of the art of portrait-painting, we have really no idea what
mankind were like before the time of our Eighth Harry. What we see could
not possibly be likenesses, because they are not humanity. But in
Holbein's heads, such as the royal collection, published by Chamberlaine,
we begin to see what men and women were. What our early Henrys and Edwards
were: what the court or the people were, we cannot know; they are buried
in the night of art, like the brave who lived before the time of Agamemnon.
Perhaps it is quite as well--"_omne ignotum pro mirifico_"--and who would
lose the pleasure of wonder and conjecture, with all its imaginary
phantasmagoria? We might have a mesmeric _coma_ that might put us in
possession of the past, if it can of the future--and gratify curiosity
wofully at the expense of what is more valuable than that kind of truth. A
mesmeric painter may take the portrait of Helen of Troy, and you may knock
at your twenty neighbours' doors, and find perhaps a greater beauty,
especially if chronology be trusted as to her age at the Trojan war. Would
you like to see a veritable portrait of Angelica--or of your Orlando in
his madness?
The great portrait-painter--the sun, in his diurnal course all over the
world, may be, for aught we know, photographing mankind, and registering
us, too; and, if we are to judge from the specimens we do see, the
collection cannot be very flattering. Who dares call the sun a flatterer?
"... Solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat?"
At the very moment that you are sitting to your man, to be set off with
smirk and smile and the graces of art, you are perhaps making a most
formidable impression elsewhere. You would not like to
"Look upon this picture, _and_ on this."
Some poor country people have an unaccountable dislike to having their
portraits taken. Savages think them second selves, and that may be
bewitched and punished; possibly something of this feeling may be at the
bottom of the dislike. I was once sketching in a country village, and an
old woman went by, and I put her into the picture. Some, looking over me,
called out to her that her likeness was taken. She cried, because she had
not her best cap and gown on. I was once positively driven from a cottage
door, because a woman thought I was "taking her off." I know not but that
it was a commendable wish in the old woman to appear decent before the
world, and so might have been the fine lady's wish--
"Betty, put on a little red,
One surely need not look a fright when dead."
We choose to be satirical, and call it vanity; but put both anecdotes
into tolerably good grave Latin, and name them Portia and Lucretia, and
we should have as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero
endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and
that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you,
Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady,
too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote
vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to
me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate
family or friends for whose gratification they are painted. I much like
the idea of burying them at last. I will show you how estimable these
things sometimes are. You remember a portrait I have--a gentleman in a
dress of blue and gold--in crayon. Did I ever tell you the anecdote
respecting him? If not, you shall have it, as I had from my father. If
you recollect the picture, you must recollect that it is of a very
handsome man. His horses took fright, the carriage was overturned, and he
was killed upon the spot. The property came to my father. One day an
unknown lady, in a handsome equipage, stopped at his door, and, in an
interview with him, requested a portrait of this very person, not the one
you have seen, but another in oil-colour, and of that the head only. My
father cut it out, and gave it to her. Many, many years afterwards it was
returned to him by an unknown hand, with an account of the accident that
caused the death, pasted on the back; and it is now in my possession. The
lady was never known. No, Eusebius, we must not deny portrait-painters,
nor portrait painting. It is the line in which we excel--and that we have
above all others patronized, and had great men too arise from our
encouragement--Who are so rich in Vandyks as we are? And some we have had
better than the world allowed them to be--Sir Peter Lely was occasionally
an admirable painter--though Sir Joshua did say, "We must go beyond him
now." There was Sir Joshua himself, and Gainsborough--would that either
were alive to take you, Eusebius, though I were to pay for the sitting. I
think too, that I should have given the preference to Gainsborough--it
would have been so true. Did you ever see his portrait of Foote?--so
unaffected--it must be like. I won't be invidious by naming any, where we
have so many able portrait-painters--but if you have not fixed upon your
man, come to me, and I will tell half-a-dozen, and we will go to them,
and you shall judge for yourself--and if you like miniature, there are
those who will make what is small great. What wonderful power Cooper had
in this way. I recently had in my hands a wondrous and marvellous
portrait of Andrew Marvell by him. The sturdy honest Andrew. This man
Cooper, had such wonderful largeness of style, of execution too, even in
his highest finished small oil pictures--such as in this of Andrew
Marvell. We had an age, certainly, of very bad taste, and it was not
extinct in the days of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; nay, sometimes under
both of these, I am sorry to say, it was even made worse. The age of
shepherds and shepherdesses--in the case of Gainsborough, brought down to
downright rustics. This, of making the sitters affect to be what they
were not, was bad enough--and it was any thing but poetical. But it was
infinitely worse in the itinerants of the day--and is very well ridiculed
by Goldsmith, who lived much among painters, in his Vicar of Wakefield
and family sitting for the family picture. We have happily quite got out
of that folly. But we are getting into one of most unpoetical
pageantry--portrait likenesses. We have not seen yet a good portrait of
Wellington, and the Queen, or the Prince; and if they must send their
portraits to foreign courts, let them be advised to learn, if they know
not yet how, and we are told they do, to paint them themselves. Montaigne
tells us, that he was present one day at Bar-le-duc, when King Francis
the Second, for a memorial of Réné, King of Sicily, was presented with a
picture the king had drawn of himself. Some how or other, kings and
queens are apt to have too many trappings about them; and the man is
often chosen to paint, who paints velvets and satins best, and faces the
worst. That is the reason we have them so ill done; and even if the faces
are well painted, they are overpowered by the ostentation of the dress.
Now, the Venetian portrait-painters contrived to keep down the glare of
all this ornament, to make it even more rich, but not obtruding. I
remember seeing a portrait of our queen, where, in a large bonnet, her
face looked like a small pip in the midst of an orange. It would be a
good thing, too, if you could contrive to spend a week or so in company
with your painter before you sit, that he may know you. Many a
characteristic may he lose, for want of knowing that it is a
characteristic; and may give you that in expression which does not belong
to you, while he may miss "your sweet expression about your eyes." He may
purse up your large and generous mouth, because you may screw it for a
moment to keep some ill-timed conceit from bolting out, and, besides
missing that noble feature, may give you an expression of a caution that
is not yours. A painter the other day, as I am assured, in a country
town, made a great mistake in a characteristic, and it was discovered by
a country farmer. It was the portrait of a lawyer--an attorney, who, from
humble pretensions, had made a good deal of money, and enlarged thereby
his pretensions, but somehow or other not very much enlarged his
respectability. To his pretensions was added that of having his portrait
put up in the parlour, as large as life. There it is, very flashy and
very true--one hand in his breast, the other in his small-clothes'
pocket. It is market-day--the country clients are called in--opinions are
passed--the family present, and all complimentary--such as, "Never saw
such a likeness in the course of all my born days. As like 'un as he can
stare." "Well, sure enough, there he is." But at last--there is one
dissentient! "'Tain't like--not very--no, 'tain't," said a heavy
middle-aged farmer, with rather a dry look, too, about his mouth, and a
moist one at the corner of his eye, and who knew the attorney well. All
were upon him. "Not like!--How not like? Say where is it not like?" "Why,
don't you see," said the man, "he's got his hand in his breeches' pocket.
It would be as like again if he had his hand in any other body's pocket."
The family portrait was removed, especially as, after this, many came on
purpose to see it; and so the attorney was lowered a peg, and the farmer
obtained the reputation of a connoisseur.
But it is high time, Eusebius, that I should dismiss you and
portrait-painting, or you will think your thus sitting to me worse than
sitting for your picture; which picture, if it be of my Eusebius as I know
him and love him, will ever be a living speaking likeness, but if it be
one but of outward feature and resemblance, it will soon pass off to make
up the accumulation of dead lumber--while do you, Eusebius, as you are,
_vive valeque_.
* * * * *