EVERY Artist, be he writer, painter, musician, or actor, must bear his
private sorrows as he best can, and must separate them from the exercise
of his public pursuit. But it sometimes happens, in compensation, that
his private loss of a dear friend represents a loss on the part of the
whole community. Then he may, without obtrusion of his individuality,
step forth to lay his little wreath upon that dear friend’s grave.
On Saturday, the eighteenth of this present month, Clarkson Stanfield
died. On the afternoon of that day, England lost the great marine
painter of whom she will be boastful ages hence; the National Historian
of her speciality, the Sea; the man famous in all countries for his
marvellous rendering of the waves that break upon her shores, of her
ships and seamen, of her coasts and skies, of her storms and sunshine, of
the many marvels of the deep. He who holds the oceans in the hollow of
His hand had given, associated with them, wonderful gifts into his
keeping; he had used them well through threescore and fourteen years;
and, on the afternoon of that spring day, relinquished them for ever.
It is superfluous to record that the painter of “The Battle of
Trafalgar”, of the “_Victory_ being towed into Gibraltar with the body of
Nelson on Board”, of “The Morning after the Wreck”, of “The Abandoned”,
of fifty more such works, died in his seventy-fourth year, “Mr.”
Stanfield.—He was an Englishman.
Those grand pictures will proclaim his powers while paint and canvas
last. But the writer of these words had been his friend for thirty
years; and when, a short week or two before his death, he laid that once
so skilful hand upon the writer’s breast and told him they would meet
again, “but not here”, the thoughts of the latter turned, for the time,
so little to his noble genius, and so much to his noble nature!
He was the soul of frankness, generosity, and simplicity. The most
genial, the most affectionate, the most loving, and the most lovable of
men. Success had never for an instant spoiled him. His interest in the
Theatre as an Institution—the best picturesqueness of which may be said
to be wholly due to him—was faithful to the last. His belief in a Play,
his delight in one, the ease with which it moved him to tears or to
laughter, were most remarkable evidences of the heart he must have put
into his old theatrical work, and of the thorough purpose and sincerity
with which it must have been done. The writer was very intimately
associated with him in some amateur plays; and day after day, and night
after night, there were the same unquenchable freshness, enthusiasm, and
impressibility in him, though broken in health, even then.
No Artist can ever have stood by his art with a quieter dignity than he
always did. Nothing would have induced him to lay it at the feet of any
human creature. To fawn, or to toady, or to do undeserved homage to any
one, was an absolute impossibility with him. And yet his character was
so nicely balanced that he was the last man in the world to be suspected
of self-assertion, and his modesty was one of his most special qualities.
He was a charitable, religious, gentle, truly good man. A genuine man,
incapable of pretence or of concealment. He had been a sailor once; and
all the best characteristics that are popularly attributed to sailors,
being his, and being in him refined by the influences of his Art, formed
a whole not likely to be often seen. There is no smile that the writer
can recall, like his; no manner so naturally confiding and so cheerfully
engaging. When the writer saw him for the last time on earth, the smile
and the manner shone out once through the weakness, still: the bright
unchanging Soul within the altered face and form.
No man was ever held in higher respect by his friends, and yet his
intimate friends invariably addressed him and spoke of him by a pet name.
It may need, perhaps, the writer’s memory and associations to find in
this a touching expression of his winning character, his playful smile,
and pleasant ways. “You know Mrs. Inchbald’s story, Nature and Art?”
wrote Thomas Hood, once, in a letter: “What a fine Edition of Nature and
Art is Stanfield!”
Gone! And many and many a dear old day gone with him! But their
memories remain. And his memory will not soon fade out, for he has set
his mark upon the restless waters, and his fame will long be sounded in
the roar of the sea.