“Let us follow our artist in one of his wanderings. He strolls from
the time-honoured walls of Antwerp, towards a village situated on the
Scheldt, and enters the ale-house, which has already furnished him with
so many original sketches, and is not likely to fail on the present
occasion. Four guests, attended by the toothless old servant of the
house, are seated at a table of rough oak; but their discourse is of
such a deeply interesting character that they take no notice whatever
of either host, hostess, or guests.
“On the right of the table sits an old Scheldt fisherman with a
dilapidated high crowned hat on his head, a decided countenance, which
is shaded by an ample beard; his well used pipe of brown clay together
with its accompanying bag of tobacco are stuck in his girdle like
weapons of war. This man is called by the others Jan van Bierlich.
On the other side of the table sits the son of the old boatman, a
powerful looking fellow about thirty years old, with an open cast of
countenance. He wears the old Flemish jacket without arms, and an
old-fashioned head dress: this man’s name is Willen.
“In vain has the son importuned the father to permit him to marry the
prettiest, but poorest, maiden of the village. The father of the bride,
Mynheer Taaks, has taken his place opposite to the boatman; he is a
mild looking man, with long brown hair. The fourth guest is Izak, a
bearded son of Israel, and the negociator of the present affair.
“He has promised the bride Katerina to advance the necessary dowry,
on condition the bridegroom will take the debt on himself. All three
have consequently combined to persuade the boatman to take their view
of the case. ‘I will give my Katerina two thousand golden florins!’
cries Taaks. ‘But I have not said Ja,’ replies the boatman. ‘Have you
anything to say against the maiden?’ ‘Nothing at all,’ replies the
boatman; ‘I like her very well if she has got money. But I object to
you, Mynheer Taaks, because you are not able to drink a proper quantity
of beer: do you think I am going to have a relation that will annoy me
all the days of my life instead of being a comfort to me?’ Izak winked
at Taaks. ‘As for that,’ said Taaks, ‘I believe I can drink more than
you, Mynheer!’
“‘I should like to see you do that,’ said the boatman, drily. ‘But I
will only drink on a proper understanding,--Is my daughter to marry
your son, if I prove to be a good toper?’ ‘How can I tell what you call
a good toper?’ cried Jan, ‘but I am willing to have one bout with you;
and if you can drink a single glass more than I, I shall say you are a
good fellow, and you may bring your daughter to my house to-morrow.’
He, however, whispered to Izak--‘Taaks will soon be under the table,
and that alone will be well worth a hundred florins.’ The landlord
brought beer and chalk; the topers emptied the glasses in good earnest,
and scored each glass on the table beside them. At length the old
boatman beckoned to Taaks, who was laughing heartily, but had for some
time left off drinking, and was regarding him with an air that showed
he was confident of victory. ‘The battle is over!’ cried Jan, ‘I can
drink no more; we will not count the glasses.’ ‘Oh! Mynheer,’ cried
Taaks, ‘I have got the most scores!’ Jan sprang on his feet, bent over
the table, and compared his score carefully with that of his opponent.
‘What witchcraft is this?’ roared the boatman, clenching his fists,
‘you have not scored too much, because I have watched you the whole
time, and I have as surely not scored too little, and yet you have
drunk two more glasses than I? I who was never beaten at beer-drinking
before!’ Willen, his son, reckoned the score after him, while the
old servant, who saw the joke, glanced slily over his shoulder at the
scene, while old Izak observed the comical fury of the old boatman with
a very knowing look. The fact was, that Izak had secretly contrived to
rub out part of old Jan’s score as soon as he had marked it down.
“Jan called the host as a witness; the host took the chalk, went to the
doorpost, and began to reckon; but the rogue had been drawn into the
plot, and he completed the joke, by making his reckoning agree with
that of the others. Jan van Bierlich was compelled, as a man of his
word, to strike his colours. Five minutes afterwards, Willen and the
pretty Katerina were betrothed, and a few moments later David Teniers,
the younger, returned to Antwerp, carrying in his pocket the sketch of
this charming picture.”
[Illustration]
_WEST (BENJAMIN), P.R.A._
Benjamin West was born in America, in the year 1738. It is said that
his grandfather was one of those who accompanied the celebrated Penn
to the young country. Like most of those who make their way in the art
of painting, he very early displayed a strong inclination for drawing.
After considerable difficulty in pecuniary matters, he was enabled,
chiefly through his own industry, to visit Italy. He suffered several
severe attacks of illness while in Italy, notwithstanding which his
progress in the art was very rapid. He visited London in 1763. His
pictures exhibited in Spring Gardens meeting with much favour, he
resolved to fix his residence here in the country of his ancestors.
The amount of professional work--chiefly historical--produced by this
great artist is beyond all precedent. Of his many compositions the
best are generally admitted to be those taken from Sacred History. And
generally as an historical painter, it would be difficult to name his
superior in the amount of his productions and artistic merit. He died
in 1820, at the age of 82.
_LEIGH HUNT._
Among the large circle of the friends of Mr. West was the late Leigh
Hunt, who thus expresses his warm attachment on the sale of the
celebrated artist’s pictures:--
“It is a villainous thing to those who have known a man for years,
and been intimate with the quiet inside of his house, privileged from
intrusion, to see a sale of his goods going on upon the premises. It
is often not to be helped, and what he himself wishes and enjoins;
but still it is a villainous necessity,--a hard cut to some of one’s
oldest and tenderest recollections. There is a sale of this kind now
going on in the house we spoke of last week. We spoke of it then
under an impulse not easy to be restrained, and not difficult to be
allowed us; and we speak of it now under another. We were returning
the day before yesterday from a house where we had been entertained
with lively accounts of foreign countries and the present features of
the time, when we saw the door in Newman Street standing wide open,
and disclosing to every passenger a part of the gallery at the end of
the hall. All our boyhood came over us, with the recollection of those
who had accompanied us into that house. We hesitated whether we should
go in, and see an auction taking place of the old quiet abstraction;
but we do not easily suffer an unpleasant and vulgar association to
overcome a greater one; and besides, how could we pass? Having passed
the threshold, without the ceremony of the smiling old porter, we
found a worthy person sitting at the door of the gallery, who, on
hearing our name, seemed to have old times come upon him as much as
ourselves, and was very warm in his services. We entered the gallery,
which we had entered hundreds of times in childhood, by the side of
a mother, who used to speak of the great persons and transactions in
the pictures on each side of her with a hushing reverence, as if they
were really present. But the pictures were not there--neither Cupid
with his doves, nor Agrippina with the ashes of Germanicus, nor the
Angel slaying the army of Sennacherib, nor Death on the Pale Horse,
nor Jesus healing the Sick, nor the Deluge, nor Moses on the Mount,
nor King Richard pardoning his brother John, nor the installation of
the old Knights of the Garter, nor Greek and Italian stories, nor the
landscapes of Windsor Forest, nor Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded,
giving up the water to the dying Soldier. They used to cover the wall;
but now there were only a few engravings. The busts and statues also
were gone. But there was the graceful little piece of garden as usual,
with its grass-plat and its clumps of lilac. They could not move
the grass plat, even to sell it. Turning to the left, there was the
privileged study which we used to enter between the Venus de Medicis
and the Apollo of the Vatican. They were gone, like their mythology.
Beauty and intellect were no longer waiting on each side of the door.
Turning again, we found the longer part of the gallery like the other;
and in the vista through another room, the auction was going on.
We saw a throng of faces of business with their hats on, and heard
the hard-hearted knocks of the hammer, in a room which used to hold
the mild and solitary artist at his work, and which had never been
entered but with quiet steps and a face of consideration. We did not
stop a minute. In the room between this and the gallery, huddled up
in a corner, were the busts and statues which had given us a hundred
thoughts. Since the days when we first saw them, we have seen numbers
like them, and many of more valuable materials; for though good of
their kind, and of old standing, they are but common plaster. But the
thoughts and the recollections belonged to no others, and it appeared
sacrilege to see them in that state.
‘Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine:
* * * *
And each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.’
“Into the parlour, which opens out of the hall and into the garden, we
did not look. We scarcely know why; but we did not. In that parlour,
we used to hear of our maternal ancestors, stout yet kind-hearted
Englishmen, who set up their tents with Penn in the wilderness. And
there we learnt to unite the love of freedom with that of the graces
of life; for our host, though born a Quaker, and appointed a royal
painter, and not so warm in his feelings as those about him, had all
the natural amenity belonging to those graces, and never truly lost
sight of that love of freedom. There we grew up acquainted with the
divine humanities of Raphael. There we remember a large coloured print
of the old Lion-Hunt of Rubens, in which the boldness of the action and
the glow of colouring overcome the horror of the struggle. And there,
long before we knew anything of Ariosto, we were as familiar as young
playmates with the beautiful Angelica and Medoro, who helped to fill
our life with love.
“May a blessing be upon that house, and upon all who know how to value
the genius of it!”
_JOHN CONSTABLE._
Constable used to relate:--“Under some disappointment, I think it was
the rejection at the Academy of a view of Flatford Mill, I carried a
picture to Mr. West, who said: ‘Don’t be disheartened, young man, we
shall hear of you again; you must have loved nature very much before
you could have painted this.’ He then took a piece of chalk and showed
me how I might improve the chiaroscuro by some additional touches of
light between the stems and branches of the trees, saying; ‘Always
remember, sir, that light and shadow _never stand still_,”--and
added: ‘Whatever object you are painting, keep in mind its accidental
appearance (unless in the subject there is some peculiar reason for
the latter), and never be content until you have transferred that
to canvas. In your skies, for instance, always aim at _brightness_,
although there are states of the atmosphere in which the sky itself is
not bright. I do not mean that you are not to paint solemn or lowering
skies, but even in the darkest effects there should be brightness. Your
darks should look like the darks of silver, not of lead or of slate.’”
_WILLIAM WOOLLET._
The following amusing anecdote is told of the engraver’s unexpected
alterations in a plate. On bringing to Mr. West what he conceived
to be a finished impression of one of his prints from an historical
picture by the great painter, he inquired, with his usual mild
deference, “If Mr. West thought that there was anything more to be
done to the plate?” The painter, with a tone of affability and a smile
of pleasure, while he surveyed the print, exclaimed: “More! Anything
more, Mr. Woollet! No, sir, nothing,--nothing. It is excellent!
admirable! only just suppose we take down these shadows, in the middle
distance; a nothing,--a mere nothing!”--at the same time touching
upon that part of the print with grey chalk, to lower it to the
requisite tint;--“Nothing, Mr. Woollet! nothing at all! It is fine,
very fine!--but perhaps we may throw a little more force into these
near figures,”--heightening the shadows with black chalk,--“then, I
think, all will be done!--Yes, all! nothing will remain; _only_, if we
can contrive to keep those parts together:”--adding a faint wash of
India ink. “There--there, now take it: Mr. Woollet take it; it would
be overdoing it to hazard a single touch more! But stop!--stay! this
reflection in the water;--a few touches, just to keep it quiet;--and
the edges of these clouds a little more,--that is, I mean, a little
less edgy,--more kept down. Good, very good!--There, now, Mr. Woollet,
you shall not persuade me to give it another touch; you can make these
few little alterations, any time at your leisure.” Woollet, who justly
looked up to West as the father of the British School of Historical
Painting, heard and saw all with thankful good humour, while West spoke
and worked, and worked and spoke upon the proof; although the engraver
was conscious that the suggested alterations would occupy a long time,
and they actually delayed the publication some months, though with
great advantage to the effect of the engraving.
_JAMES NORTHCOTE, R.A._
“I remember once being at the Academy, when Sir Joshua wished to
propose a monument to Dr. Johnson in St. Paul’s, and West got up and
said that the King, he knew, was averse to anything of the kind, for he
had been proposing a similar monument in Westminster Abbey for a man of
the greatest genius and celebrity,--one whose works were in all the
cabinets of the curious throughout Europe,--one whose name they would
all hear with the greatest respect; and then it came out, after a long
preamble, that he meant Woollet, who had engraved his ‘Death of Wolfe.’
I was provoked, and could not help exclaiming: ‘My God! What! do you
put him upon a footing with such a man as Dr. Johnson,--one of the
greatest philosophers and moralists that ever lived? We have thousands
of engravers at any time!’ And there was such a burst of laughter at
this,--Dance, who was a grave gentleman, laughed till the tears ran
down his cheeks; and Farrington, the painter, used afterwards to say to
me, ‘Why don’t you speak in the Academy, and begin with “My God!” as
you do sometimes?’”
_YOUTHFUL AMBITION._
West entertained very grand notions of Art and of its professors. He
was about to ride with a school-fellow to a neighbouring plantation.
“Here is the horse,” said the boy, “bridled and saddled, so come, get
up behind me.” “Behind you!” said West; “I will ride behind nobody!”
“Oh, very well,” said the other, “I will ride behind you; so mount.”
He mounted, and away they rode. “This is the last ride I shall have
for some time,” said the boy; “for I am, to-morrow, to be apprenticed
to a tailor.” “A tailor!” exclaimed West; “you will surely never be
a tailor!” “Indeed, but I shall,” returned the other; “it is a good
trade. What do you intend to be, Ben?” “A painter!” “A painter!--Why,
what sort of a trade is painter? I have never heard o’ it before.” “A
painter,” said West, grandly, “is the companion of kings and emperors.”
“You are surely mad,” said the other; “Why, they don’t have kings nor
emperors in ’Merriky!” “Ah! but there are plenty in other parts of the
world. But do you really mean to be a tailor?” “Indeed I do; there’s
nothing more certain.” “Then you may ride alone,” said West, leaping
down; “I will not ride with one who would be a tailor.”
_PERSEVERANCE IN ART._
Being subject to the gout, it attacked his right hand while he was
painting his great picture of “Death on the Pale Horse;” but this did
not check his ardour, for he proceeded with his left hand, and the
whole was finished by himself without any assistance.
[Illustration]
_WILKIE (SIR DAVID), R.A._
David Wilkie, the son of a Scotch minister, was born in 1785. His
genius for the art in which he was destined to become so famous, was
displayed even in his infancy, and led to his being sent to study in
the Edinburgh Academy, where he had for his fellow-students Sir William
Allen and John Burnet. At the age of nineteen his performances had
attracted so much notice that he was confirmed in his professional
career. He started for London, studied at the Academy, became an
exhibitor, and so paved the way for his bright success of after-years.
Among his intimate companions was Haydon,--another equally celebrated
painter, though not equally successful, who relates the following:--
“When the Academy opened, Wilkie, who had gained admission as a
probationer by means of a drawing from the Niobe, took his seat with
his class. Something of his Edinburgh fame had preceded him: Jackson,
at that time a student, seems to have seen as well as heard of him,
for he wrote to me, then young and ardent, to hasten from Devonshire,
for that a tall, pale, thin Scotsman had just come to study at the
Academy, who had done something from Macbeth, of which report spoke
highly. Touched with this, I came at once to London and went to the
Academy. Wilkie, the most punctual of mankind, was there before me. We
sat and drew in silence for some time; at length Wilkie rose, came and
looked over my shoulder, said nothing, and resumed his seat. I rose,
went and looked over his shoulder, said nothing, and resumed my seat.
We saw enough to satisfy us of each other’s skill, and when the class
broke up we went and dined together.”
The acquaintance thus begun ripened into a warm friendship,
notwithstanding occasional disputes arising from a dissimilarity in
taste of the two artists.