THE ENGLISH SCHOOL—THE THREE FOUNDERS
“O England! model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural.”
The English school differs from every other school in the individualism
of its members. Each painter of note stands by himself, isolated from
his brother artists. It is therefore difficult to write of the art of
England according to its school. Sir Peter Lely was not an Englishman;
he came from Westphalia. Godfrey Kneller, who succeeded Sir Peter Lely
in the royal favour, came from Lübeck. Neither could lay claim to being
a member of the English school. England, for the first time, entered
into the march of art towards the eighteenth century. The painters who
came before that time were of foreign extraction, or greatly influenced
by foreign schools. There were the admirable miniaturists—the Olivers,
the Hilliards, the greatest of all, Samuel Cooper, called the Van Dyck
of miniature painting; but there are no miniatures in the National
Gallery.
Three famous English masters are at the head of the English school; they
were contemporaries—Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Gainsborough.
Hogarth, with his merciless sarcasm, was a moralist painter—moralist
first and painter after. Sir Joshua Reynolds was an accomplished student
of the classics, a traveller in many countries, a man who knew the
galleries of Spain and Italy, who understood the methods of the old
masters, and who possessed besides an insight and a genius rare among
painters. Gainsborough was a student of nature; he never went abroad; he
learnt in the woods of Suffolk how to paint; he was a poet and a wizard
of the brush. These three men are the leaders of the English school.
Hogarth was born in London, in the parish of St. Bartholomew, towards
the end of 1697. He died 1764. His father had been a village
schoolmaster in Westmoreland, who, fired by ambition, came to London to
follow a literary career. He failed miserably and became a literary hack
to a publisher. His son, William Hogarth, discouraged by his father’s
fate, resolved to learn a trade, and he learnt engraving. He made very
little money by his engravings, and so he took to painting portraits and
strange sarcastic pictures, founded upon his observation of the
ridicules and the weaknesses of the time. He was resolved to win; he
studied faces, expressions, attitudes. Everything that gave him a clue
to the understanding of character he mastered. He was always sketching:
wherever he went, his notebook went with him. His portrait, with that of
his dog Trump by his side, will help you to understand him (112). Trump
and his master, I think, are very like each other. You will admit, as
you look at them, that neither the one nor the other was likely to be
beaten at anything he undertook to do. They have the same determined
expression, the same challenging look. Hogarth said, “I have always
found that nature herself is the best and safest course that we can
follow in order to acquire the knowledge of our art.” He was not a great
colourist, but he was a marvellous observer. We seem to know all the
originals of his portraits. Miss Fenton as Polly Peacham (1161); a group
of his servants (1374), each one curiously individualised; the “Shrimp
Girl” (1162), a vigorous sketch of a jolly fishwife crying out her
wares—all these and many others are likenesses that live.
Then we have his sardonic and terrible pictures—a series (113–118)
called the “Marriage à la Mode”—very painful to look at. Let us rather
look at the “Calais Gate” or the “Roast Beef of Old England” (1464). It
is a scene that an Englishman alone could have painted, I am quite sure.
Trump must have very much approved of it. A man dressed according to the
fashion of cooks in France, wearing a white cap and a large white apron,
is carrying a big sirloin of beef. A fat monk, with an approving
gesture, is feeling the joint. Behind him is a ragged, half-starved
French soldier, also admiring the sirloin. There are Scotchmen and
shabbily dressed Irishmen—mercenaries in the pay of France—looking with
watering mouths towards the savoury dish. All Hogarth’s pictures are
chronicles of the time. We can see in them the bygone days, and they are
often a sad spectacle to behold.
[Illustration:
“HEADS OF ANGELS” (186)
BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.
page 179
]
Sir Joshua Reynolds was born in 1723 and died in 1792. Monsieur
Chesneau, in his history of the English school, speaks of Sir Joshua
Reynolds’ works “as a magnificent victory of the will.” His originality
triumphed over all his studies. We know how impossible it is to mistake
a picture by Reynolds in any collection. “I know no man,” says Dr.
Johnson, “who has passed through life with more observation than Sir
Joshua.” It was this quality that made him the king of portrait
painters. He was an extraordinarily gentle and courteous man. “His grace
has almost passed into a proverb,” says Burke. It was but the expression
of his charming mind, his delightful nature, his affectionate heart.
“Heads of Angels” (182) is a token of his sympathetic soul. It was
painted for Lady William Gordon, who was broken-hearted at the death of
her little daughter. Sir Joshua Reynolds could not speak of her grief;
he felt for her, so he painted the child singing in the glory of heaven.
If you look at the picture you will see the five faces are one face,
bathed in God’s transfigurating light. The picture brought consolation
to the bereaved mother.
It is very difficult to decide which is the best of Sir Joshua Reynolds’
portraits in the National Gallery—which is the most charming of these
lovely ladies who smile down so serenely upon us, and who are so full of
elegance, refinement, and grace. Is it the portraits of the daughters of
Sir William Montgomery as “The Graces Decorating a Statue of Hymen”
(79)—fair girls whose likenesses seem blown upon the canvas; or is it
that of “Mrs. Hartley and Child” (1924), sometimes called “A Nymph with
the Infant Bacchus”? In her hair is a rose, round her waist a scarlet
sash; she holds her child, who is crowned with ivy on her shoulder.
Which is the most delightful of the children? Is it “Samuel” (162),
kneeling as he hears the mysterious voice calling to him, or is it the
enchanting little girl sitting under a big tree called “The Age of
Innocence” (307), or is it Robinetta (892) with her sweet and
mischievous face? Which is the most heroic of the men? Is it Lord
Heathfield (111), standing undaunted with superb obstinacy before the
port of Gibraltar, holding the key of the fortress in his hand, the
smoke of the artillery behind him; or is it Dr. Johnson (887), in all
his ugliness and all his greatness, all his wonderful sweetness and all
the irritability of his nature speaking to us?
Gainsborough’s art (1727–1788) is intrinsically different from that of
Sir Joshua Reynolds, while it bears to it a superficial likeness. He is
the poet of the brush, nurtured by the influences of the sun and the
wind. Born at Sudbury, near Ipswich, he came to London when he was
fourteen years old to learn the rudiments of art, but he was depressed
by the teaching he got in schools and academies. Four years later he
returned to his beloved woods of Suffolk. Fame found him out, but he
still continued to study and to dream of nature. While Reynolds applied
all the subleties of the varied methods he had mastered, Gainsborough
loved the simple truth. In 1774 he returned to London, and all society
flocked to his studio. Great ladies wished to be painted by him, and
Gainsborough represented all that was noblest and sweetest in them. In
this lies the great difference between the art of Gainsborough and that
of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Gainsborough’s portraits are the result of his
single attitude of mind before the truth. Reynolds is swayed and led by
a thousand reminiscences and influences. Both results are beautiful, but
both are the outcome of different principles. Gainsborough’s masterpiece
is “The Blue Boy,” in the Duke of Westminster’s gallery. It was painted
as a protest against the dictum Sir Joshua laid down in one of his
lectures, that blue cannot be made the dominant colour in a picture.
Gainsborough took up his palette and painted that marvellous boy in his
dazzling royal blue costume. All the portraits he has painted pass like
a dream before me—a dream of fair women and brave men, with noble souls.
There is Mrs. Siddons (683) in her blue and white dress, her heavy black
feathered hat, dignified, beautiful, and melancholy. There is “The
Village Clerk” (760), the story of a simple and kindly life written in
wrinkles upon the old face. The limpid eyes are turned towards the
light. Every countenance that Gainsborough painted bears the stamp of
truth. If we look at his landscapes we shall acknowledge that he
deserves the title of “The Father of English landscape.” All nature in
her simplicity, her infinite variety, is in these landscapes. There is a
lane near the river Orwell, close to Ipswich, in which I have often
stood. It is called Gainsborough’s lane. Tradition says that here he
painted one of his most famous landscapes. I have felt there how nature
loved her poet-painter and revealed to him all her delicate delights.
Look at “The Market Cart” (80), the golden picture of a loaded waggon;
the horse has just passed from the shaded pool on to the high road
beyond. Look at “The Watering Place” (109). Do we not feel that it is a
hot summer day, that the trees are enchanted by the sunlight, that the
cattle are weary and glad to step into the cool water? Oh Gainsborough,
wizard who make us feel what you felt under the spell of nature! Then
there are Gainsborough’s animals. How dear they are! Was ever an old
horse painted with more loving understanding than this faithful and
laborious animal (1484), tied by the halter to the ancient tree that is
the symbol of his waning years.
“We are going to Heaven and Van Dyck will be of the company,” whispered
Gainsborough, as he lay dying, to Sir Joshua Reynolds. A
misunderstanding had parted the two great artists, but they met again in
the reconciling presence of death, and these were the last words that
Gainsborough spoke.