Horace Walpole, in his _Anecdotes of Painting_, having deplored the low
ebb to which the arts had sunk in Britain during the time of George the
First, proceeds to consider the succeeding reign with greater
complacency: accounting it, indeed, as a new and shining era. Under
George the Second he found architecture revived 'in antique purity;'
sculpture redeemed from reproach; the art of gardening, or, as he
prefers to call it, 'the art of creating landscape,' pressed forward to
perfection; engraving much elevated; and painting, if less perceptibly
advanced, still (towards the close of the reign, at any rate) ransomed
from insipidity by the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king himself,
it was conceded, had 'little propensity to refined pleasure;' but his
consort, Queen Caroline, was credited with a lively anxiety to reward
merit and to encourage the exertions of the ingenious.
This glowing picture of the period in its relation to the fine arts,
contrasts somewhat violently with what we learn elsewhere concerning the
poverty of Richard Wilson, the ill-requited labours of William Hogarth,
the struggles and sufferings of James Barry, and generally, of the
depressed condition of native professors of art during the eighteenth
century. That the portrait-painter (the 'face-painter' as Hogarth
delighted contemptuously to designate him) found sufficient occupation
is likely enough; but, otherwise, the British artist had perforce to
limit the aspirations of his genius to the decoration of ceilings and
staircases, and to derive his chief emoluments from painting the
sign-boards of the British tradesman: if not a very dignified still a
remunerative employment; for in those days every London shop boasted its
distinct emblem.
Nevertheless it is certain that in George the Second's reign Fashion
began to take up with Taste. Dilettanteism became the vogue. Objects of
_virtù_ were now, for the first time, indispensable appendages of the
houses of the aristocratic and the rich. A rage for 'collecting'
possessed the town, and led to an expenditure as profuse as it was
injudicious. Of the vast sums disbursed, however, but a small share came
to the native artist. His works were passed over as beneath the notice
of the _cognoscenti_. The 'quality' gave their verdict against modern
art and in favour of the ancient masters. A race of old picture-brokers
and jobbers in antiquities sprang into existence to supply the
increasing demand for such chattels. The _London Magazine_ for 1737, in
an article attributed to William Hogarth, inveighs bitterly against
these speculators and their endeavours to depreciate every English work
in order to enhance the value of their imported shiploads of Dead
Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas: the sweepings of the continental
art-markets. Auction-rooms were opened in all parts of London for the
exhibition and sale of choice objects of every kind, and became the
resort and rendezvous of all pretending to wealth and fashion. Agents
were to be found at the chief foreign cities eagerly exhuming
antiquities for transmission to England: certain of immediate sale and
enormous profit there. The prevailing appetite seemed to grow by what it
fed on. And then, of course, unscrupulous people took to manufacturing
antiquities; and, so doing, drove a brisk and remarkably remunerative
trade.
The neglected British artist naturally made protests and wrote pamphlets
more or less angry in tone, according to the state of his purse and his
temper and the extent of his self-appreciation. The press of the period
raised its voice: a less portentous and sonorous organ than it has since
possessed. Even the players ventured to be satirical on the subject. It
was early in 1752 that Mr. Foote's comedy of _Taste_ was brought upon
the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, David Garrick both writing and
speaking the prologue. Probably the satire soared rather above the heads
of the audience. Foote admits as much in his preface to the published
play: 'I was always apprehensive that the subject of the following piece
was too abstracted and singular for the comprehension of a mixed
assembly. Juno, Lucina, Jupiter Tonans, Phidias, Praxiteles, with the
other gentlemen and ladies of antiquity, were, I daresay, utterly
unknown to my very good friends of the gallery; nor, to speak the truth,
do I believe they had many acquaintances in the other parts of the
house.' Accordingly _Taste_, on its first production, was only repeated
some four nights, and, though revived once or twice afterwards, never
took rank as a stock piece. Yet, as Mr. John Forster says of it, Foote's
play is legitimate satire, and also excellent comedy.
There is little or no plot. Foote did not care for continuous story; he
could generally secure the favour of the audience by the wit of his
dialogue and a quick succession of lively incidents. In the first act
Lady Pentweazle sits for her portrait in a broadly humorous scene. Puff
is an impudent trader in sham antiquities and objects of _virtù_;
Carmine, an artist constrained by poverty to aid and abet him in his
nefarious proceedings; Brush is another confederate. In the second act a
sale by auction is represented. Carmine appears as Canto the auctioneer;
Puff figures as the Baron de Groningen, who is travelling to purchase
pictures for the Elector of Bavaria. Lord Dupe, Bubble, Squander, and
Novice, are fashionable patrons and collectors of art. The pictures to
be submitted for sale are inspected. One of them is particularly
admired; but is ultimately discovered to be 'a modern performance, the
master alive, and an Englishman.' 'Oh, then,' says Lord Dupe, changing
his tone, 'I would not give it house-room!' The antiquities are then
brought forward. 'The first lot,' announces the auctioneer, 'consists of
a hand without an arm, the first joint of the forefinger gone, supposed
to be a limb of the Apollo Delphos. The second, half a foot, with the
toes entire, of the Juno Lucina. The third, the Caduceus of the
Mercurius Infernalis. The fourth, the half of the leg of the Infant
Hercules. All indisputable antiques, and of the Memphian marble.' One
critic objects to a swelling on the foot of Juno as a defect in its
proportion; but the auctioneer informs him that the swelling is intended
to represent a _corn_, and the defect is thereupon pronounced an
absolute master-stroke. Presently the auctioneer proceeds: 'Bring
forward the head from Herculaneum.... Now, gentlemen, here is a
jewel.... The very mutilations of this piece are worth all the most
perfect performances of modern artists. Now, gentlemen, here is a
touchstone for your taste!' He is asked whether the head is intended to
represent a man or a woman. 'The connoisseurs differ,' he answers. 'Some
will have it to be the Jupiter Tonans of Phidias, and others the Venus
of Paphos from Praxiteles; but I don't think it fierce enough for the
first, nor handsome enough for the last.... Therefore I am inclined to
join with Signor Julio de Pampedillo, who, in a treatise dedicated to
the King of the Two Sicilies, calls it the Serapis of the Egyptians, and
supposes it to have been fabricated about eleven hundred and three years
before the Mosaic account of the creation.' A bystander inquires what
has become of the nose of the bust? 'The nose? What care I for the
nose?' cries an enthusiastic amateur. 'Why, sir, if it had a nose I
wouldn't give sixpence for it! How the devil should we distinguish the
works of the ancients if they were perfect? Why, I don't suppose but,
barring the nose, ROUBILIAC could cut as good a head every whit.... A
man must know d----d little of statuary that dislikes a bust for want of
a nose!'
It must be admitted that this is satire of a good trenchant sort. The
reader will find plenty more of it if he will only turn to the comedy
for himself. Our immediate purpose is with the sculptor for whose name
Mr. Foote has found a place in his play.
The rage for collecting antiquities was only equalled by the passion for
'restoring' them when collected. To disinter a torso _here_, and a head
_there_, and then to make a sort of forced marriage of the fragments; to
graft new feet upon old legs; to dovetail stray hands upon odd arms; to
reset broken limbs, and patch and piece mutilations and deficiencies,
constituted the delights and the triumphs of the amateurs. In
accomplishing these exploits the services of foreign workmen were
extensively employed; for, by a curious piece of reasoning, the foreign
sculptor, no matter how limited his capacity, was held to be far more
competent to restore antiquities than the English artist of whatever
reputation. It was, doubtless, in consequence of this demand for foreign
labour, and the liberal manner in which its exertions were recognised
and requited, that Louis Francis Roubiliac found his way to this
country.
In his account of the sculptor, Walpole is singularly brief; supplies
very meagre information; yet when he was compiling his Anecdotes the
fame of Roubiliac was at its highest; he was freshly remembered on all
sides, and the facts of his early life could have been collected, one
would imagine, without much difficulty. He was born, from all accounts,
at Lyons, about the close of the seventeenth century; was a pupil of
Balthazar of Dresden, sculptor to the Elector of Saxony, and came to
England in 1720. That he was without repute in his native land is
evidenced by the fact that no mention of him appears in D'Argenville's
_Lives of the most Eminent Sculptors of France_, published in 1787. Of
his parentage nothing is known. He had apparently received a fair
education; was found to possess a considerable acquaintance with the
literature of his native land; more especially was conversant with the
works of the best French poets, and himself produced original verse of
a respectable quality. Yet, notwithstanding his long residence in
England, he never mastered the English language so as to be able to use
it freely; and in all the anecdotes extant of him he is represented as
employing the broken dialect common to foreigners.
For some years after his arrival in England his occupation would appear
to have been little better than that of a journeyman sculptor, employed
under various masters in botching antiquities. Mr. John Thomas Smith, in
his _Life of Nollekens_, informs us that when Mr. Roubiliac had to mend
an antique, he 'would mix Gloucester cheese with his plaster, adding the
grounds of porter, and the yolk of an egg: which mixture when dry forms
a very hard cement.' Walpole states that the artist had little business
until Sir Edward Walpole (Sir Robert's second son: Horace was the third)
recommended him to execute half the busts in Trinity College, Dublin;
but the date of this act of patronage is not supplied. A story
attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and set forth in his Life by
Northcote, relates that Roubiliac first secured the patronage of Sir
Edward Walpole by picking up and restoring a pocket-book he had dropped
at Vauxhall, containing bank-notes and other papers of value. The artist
declined to receive any reward for this service, although ultimately he
was persuaded to accept the annual present of a fat buck, as a testimony
of gratitude and regard; further, he became the object of Sir Edward's
constant patronage. Horace Walpole says nothing of this story; but the
brothers, it was well known, were not friends, seldom if ever met, and
probably were not closely informed of each other's proceedings. In a
letter written in 1745 to his friend George Montagu, Horace Walpole
gives an amusing description of the patron of Roubiliac, and,
incidentally, reveals the not very brotherly terms subsisting between
himself and the knight: 'You propose making a visit to Englefield Green'
[where Sir Edward lived], 'and ask me if I think it right? Extremely so.
I have heard it is a very pretty place. You love a jaunt--have a pretty
chaise, I believe, and I dare swear, very easy; in all probability you
will have a fine evening; and added to all this, the gentleman' [Sir
E.W.] 'you would go to see is very agreeable and good-humoured,... plays
extremely well on the bass-viol, and has generally other people with
him.... He is perfectly master of all the quarrels that have been
fashionably on foot about Handel, and can give you a very perfect
account of all the modern rival painters.... In short, I can think of no
reason in the world against your going there but one: _do you know his
youngest brother?_? If you happen to be so unlucky, I can't flatter you
so far as to advise you to make him a visit: for there is nothing in the
world the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his
brother!'
It was probably some years before this that Roubiliac had obtained
employment from Mr. Jonathan Tyers, who in 1732 had become the
proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens. The 'New Spring Gardens at Fox Hall' had
in the previous century been a resort of Mr. Samuel Pepys, who has left
on record his approval of the place. 'It is very pleasant and cheap
going thither,' he writes in 1667, 'for a man may go to spend what he
will or nothing, as all one. But to hear the nightingale and the birds,
and here fiddles and there a harp, and here a Jew's-trump and here
laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising.' Since
the Pepys period, however, the gardens had fallen into disrepute; had
indeed been closed during many seasons. Mr. Tyers took the place in
hand, bent upon restoring its fame and fashion. He erected an orchestra,
with an organ, engaged the best singers and musicians of the day, built
alcoves for the company, and secured paintings by Messrs. Hayman and
Hogarth for the further embellishment of the gardens. Then he discussed
with his friend, Mr. Cheere, as to adding works of statuary. Mr. Cheere
dealt largely in painted leaden figures, then much employed in 'the art
of creating landscape.' He was 'the man at Hyde Park Corner' of whom
Lord Ogleby in the comedy[4] makes mention when he says: 'Great
improvements, indeed, Mr. Sterling! Wonderful improvements! The four
Seasons in lead, the flying Mercury, and the basin with Neptune in the
middle, are in the very extreme of fine taste. You have as many rich
figures as the man at Hyde Park Corner!' Mr. Cheere advised Mr. Tyers to
set up a statue of Handel. There was some difficulty about the expense.
But Mr. Cheere introduced a clever artist, a Frenchman, content to work
upon very moderate terms. This was, of course, Louis Francis Roubiliac;
who accordingly produced his statue of Handel: greatly to the admiration
of the _habitués_ of Vauxhall. It stood, in 1744, on the south side of
the gardens, under an enclosed lofty arch, surmounted by a figure
playing on the violoncello, attended by two boys; it was then screened
from the weather by a curtain, which was drawn up when the visitors
arrived. Mr. Tyers's plans were crowned with success. Fashion was
enthusiastic on the subject of Vauxhall. Royalty patronized; the
nobility protected and promoted; and the general public crowded Mr.
Tyers's handsome pleasure-grounds. The ladies promenaded in their hoops,
sacques, and caps, as they appeared in their own drawing-rooms: the
beaux of the period were in attendance, with swords and powdered
bag-wigs, their three-cornered hats under their arms. Read Walpole's
account (in another letter to George Montagu) of his visit in 1750. He
accompanied Lady Caroline Petersham and little Miss Ashe--or 'the
Pollard Ashe,' as it pleases him to describe her. The ladies had just
put on their last layer of rouge, 'and looked as handsome as crimson
could make them.' They proceed in a barge, a boat of French horns
attending, and little Miss Ashe singing. Parading some time up the
river they at last debark at Vauxhall, and there pick up Lord Granby,
'arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim'--a tavern at Chelsea frequented
by his lordship and other gentlemen of fashion. Assembled in their
supper-box, Lady Caroline, 'looking gloriously jolly and handsome,'
minces seven chickens in a china dish (Lord Orford, Horace's brother,
assisting), and stews them over a lamp, with three pats of butter and a
flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing: the company
expecting the dish to fly about their ears every minute. Then Betty, the
famous fruit-woman from St. James's Street, is in attendance with
hampers of strawberries and cherries, waits upon the guests, and
afterwards sits down to her own supper at a side table. The company
become, by-and-by, a little boisterous in their merriment, and attract
the attention of the other visitors; there is soon quite a concourse
round Lady Caroline's box, till Harry Vane fills a bumper and toasts the
bystanders, and is proceeding to treat them with still greater freedom.
'It was three o'clock before we got home,' concludes Walpole. Such was a
fashionable frolic at Vauxhall under Mr. Tyers's management: when
Roubiliac's statue of Handel stood in the midst.
[4] 'The Clandestine Marriage.'
Vauxhall vanished some ten or a dozen years since. Its latter days were
dreary, down-at-heel, and disreputable enough. The statue had departed
long previously. 'It was conveyed to the house of Mr. Barrett, at
Stockwell,' records Mr. J.T. Smith in 1829, 'and thence to the
entrance-hall of the residence of his son, the Rev. Jonathan Tyers
Barrett, D.D., of No. 14 Duke Street, Westminster.' Mr. Henry Phillips,
in his _Musical and Personal Recollections_ (1864), regrets that when
Roubiliac's Handel 'was brought to the hammer, and sold by Mr. Squibb on
the 16th March 1832, for two hundred and five guineas, the Sacred
Harmonic Society did not purchase it in place of its being bought by Mr.
Brown, of University Street.' Nollekens used to value the statue at one
thousand guineas. The plaster model became the property of Hudson, the
preceptor of Reynolds, who possessed a collection of models at his house
at Twickenham. Upon the death of Hudson and the sale of his collection,
the model was bought for five pounds by the father of Mr. J.T. Smith, a
pupil of Roubiliac's, and it then passed into the possession of
Nollekens. When Nollekens's effects were sold, the plaster Handel was
knocked down by Mr. Christie to Hamlet, the famous silversmith. Its
further history has not been traced.
The statue of Handel, the first original work that can, with any
certainty, be ascribed to Roubiliac, may be regarded as a fair specimen
of the artist's manner. He was of the school of Bernini. He followed the
sculptors who infinitely prefer _unrest_ to _repose_ in art. He dearly
enjoyed a _tour de force_ in stone. He liked to deal with marble as
though it were the most plastic of materials: to twist it this way and
that, and rumple and flutter it as though it were merely muslin. To
have carved a wig in a gale of wind would have been a task particularly
agreeable to this class of artists; they would have done their best to
represent each particular hair standing on end. They adored minutiæ: a
shoulder-knot of ribbons, the embroidery of a sword-belt, the stitches
of a seam, the lace of a cravat, were achievements to be gloried in. And
yet, with all this realism in detail, their works are unreal and
artificial in general effect; as a glance at any statue by Roubiliac
will sufficiently demonstrate.
This arises possibly from the artist's fondness for attitude. He seems
to have regarded posture-making as a peculiar attribute of genius. His
figures are always in a constrained and over-studied pose: twisting
about in the throes of giving birth to a great idea: filled with the
divine _afflatus_, even to the bursting of their buttonholes and the
snapping of their braces. His Handel is in a state of exceeding
perturbation: his clothes in staring disorder, his hair floating in the
breeze. The intention was to represent the composer in the act of
raptured meditation upon music; but, as Allan Cunningham remarks, he
looks much more like a man alarmed at an apparition. But then this
exaggeration of demeanour was very much the artist's own manner in
actual life. The Frenchman has always a sort of innate histrionic
faculty: he is for ever, perhaps unconsciously, playing a part. So
Roubiliac was himself incessantly acting and attitudinizing, much after
the fashion of his statues. He seemed to hold that it was expedient, for
the better preventing of mistakes about the matter, that genius should
always in such way advertise itself; there was danger lest it should not
be believed in if it left off making grimaces and striking attitudes.
Perhaps from his own point of view, and in his own time, the artist was
right. It was necessary then to do something to arrest the attention of
a public apathetic on the subject of art-talent, unless, as Peter Pindar
sang, the artist 'had been dead a hundred years.' Possibly, the only way
for a man in those days to gain credit as a genius was by affecting
eccentricity and unconventionality: taking heed that all his proceedings
were as unlike other people's as possible. Thereupon the world argued:
geniuses are not as we are; this person is not as we are; therefore he
must be a genius. Q.E.D.
Consequently, we find Roubiliac--a thin, olive-skinned Frenchman, with
strongly-marked, arching eyebrows, mobile features, and small, sharp,
dark eyes--liable at all times to fits of abstraction, attacks of
inspiration. He will drop his knife and fork while at dinner, sink back
in his chair, assume an ecstatic expression: the fit is on him; he must
abandon his meal and hurry away at once to lock himself in his studio,
and place upon record the superb idea which has so inconveniently
visited him. His companions make allowances for him: men of genius are
often thus. At other times he is absorbed in meditation upon his art:
address him, and he makes no reply, fails to hear. While engaged upon
his statue of Handel, he decides that the great musician must have
possessed an ear of exceeding symmetry, and searches everywhere for a
model. He scrutinizes the ears of all his acquaintances. Suddenly he
pounces upon Miss Rich, the daughter of the Covent Garden manager. 'Miss
Rich,' he cries, 'I must have your ear for my Handel!' In Westminster
Abbey he permits himself to be 'discovered'--to use an appropriate
theatrical term--lost in contemplation of the kneeling figure at the
north-west corner of Sir Francis Vere's monument. His servant, having
thrice delivered a message, without receiving a word in reply, finds his
arm suddenly seized, and his master whispering mysteriously in his ear,
while he points to the statue: 'Hush! hush! he vill speak presently!' At
another time he invites a friend to occupy a spare bed at his house,
gives him his candle, and bids him good-night. Presently the friend is
heard crying aloud in great excitement and alarm; the bed is already
occupied: the dead body of a negress is laid out upon it. 'I beg your
pardon,' says the artist, 'I quite forgot poor Mary vas dere. Poor Mary!
she die yesterday vid de small-pox. She was my housemaid for five, six
years. Come along; I vill find you a bed somevhere else.' All this was
but acting up to the idea Mr. Roubiliac had formed of the abstractedness
and eccentricity of genius.
Serene, sedate Flaxman, who adored the antique, who held that sculpture
should be nothing if not calm and classical, was little likely to
sympathize with Roubiliac, or to comprehend his close following of
Bernini, or indeed to care at all for his productions. 'His thoughts are
conceits; his compositions epigrams,' says Flaxman. And then he is
astounded that Roubiliac, who, at the ripe age of fifty, accompanied by
Hudson the painter, also arrived at a period of life somewhat advanced
for study, visited Italy, should presume to return unmoved and
unenlightened by what he had seen. 'He was absent from home three
months, going and returning,' relates Flaxman, with an air of
indignation; 'stayed three days in Rome, and laughed at the sublime
remains of ancient sculpture!' Positively laughed! To Flaxman, who was
certainly a bigot in regard to the beauties of the antique, if Roubiliac
was something of a scoffer in that respect, this seemed flat blasphemy.
Yet it was hardly to be expected that Roubiliac, at the height of a
successful career, would admit his whole system of art to have been
founded on error--would consent humbly to recommence his profession, and
forthwith prostrate himself at the feet of ancient sculpture. His
admiration for Bernini--whom of course Flaxman cordially detested--was
genuine enough. The Italian's florid manner chimed in with his own
French, gesticulating, mercurial notions of art. If excess of
self-satisfaction prevented him from rendering due homage to the relics
of the past--and possibly his early toils as a 'restorer' further
tended to blind him to their value--he was careful to pay tribute to the
merits of the artist he had selected for his prototype. Hazlitt
mentions, on the authority of Northcote, that when Roubiliac, returned
from Rome, went to look at his own works in Westminster Abbey, he cried
out in his usual vehement way, 'By God! they look like tobacco-pipes
compared to Bernini!' And he was not without honest admiration for the
production of other artists more nearly of his own time. Whenever he
visited the city he was careful to go round by the gates of Bethlehem
Hospital, in Moorfields, over which stood Caius Gabriel Cibber's figures
of Raving and Melancholy Madness: Colley Cibber's '_brazen_, brainless
brothers,' as Pope called them, ignorant, possibly from their having
become so begrimed with London smoke, that they were really carved in
stone. Roubiliac highly esteemed these statues. Though in idea evidently
borrowed from Michael Angelo, they were yet strictly realistic in
treatment, and were reputed to be modelled from Oliver Cromwell's giant
porter, at one time a patient in the Hospital. When Bethlehem was
removed to St. George's Fields the surface of these figures was
renovated by Bacon, the sculptor. They are now deposited in the South
Kensington Museum.
Indeed, what Flaxman intended as a reproach, may sound in modern ears
much more like approval. 'He copied vulgar nature with zeal, and some of
his figures seem alive.' Roubiliac constantly had recourse to the
living forms about him; Flaxman preferred instead to turn to the
antique. We hear of Roubiliac's fondness for modelling the arms of
Thames watermen and the legs of chair-porters: in each case the
particular employment inducing great muscular development of the limbs
to be moulded. And this desire for independent study was really
creditable to the artist. He sought to arrive at the correctness of the
ancients by a pathway of his own: to check, by a distinct reckoning, an
individual reference to nature, and, if need was, fearlessly to depart
from, what they had registered as the result of their investigations. A
more legitimate charge against him was that he was negligent in his
choice of forms for imitation; undervalued refinement of idea; took
altogether a somewhat mean view of nature, or adulterated it with too
large an infusion of the dancing-master. Certainly he was fonder of
_fritter_ than of breadth; and his draperies are often meagre in effect
from the multiplicity of their folds, and his attempt at rendering
_texture_ in marble. This may be noticed in his statue of Sir Isaac
Newton, at Cambridge, where an excess of labour, seems expended on the
silk mantle of the figure--all the small creases and plaitings of the
light material being represented, and the surface highly polished, still
further to increase the resemblance.
This statue, however, was highly admired by Chantrey,[5] and to it, in
his _Prelude_, Wordsworth has dedicated laudatory lines.
[5] 'Chantrey esteemed highly the works of Roubiliac; he admired his
busts; and thought the statue of Newton at Cambridge of the best
character of portrait sculpture. The simplicity of the figure, united
with the apparent intelligence and thought in the countenance, he
considered as quite satisfactory; and although he generally disliked the
imitation of any particular material in drapery, he was reconciled to
the college dress of the philosopher. From its perfect arrangement, the
imitation is so complete that the person who shows the statue at
Cambridge always informs the visitor that it only requires to be black
to render it a deception. He was inclined to tolerate anything that
displayed ingenuity without violating possibility, yet he could never
endure such extraneous and uninteresting matter as the shot, the barrel
of powder, and the bent chamber of a piece of artillery in the monument
to Lord Shannon, in Walton Church, which, with much to commend in the
two figures, has a profusion of objects, and a grey marble background,
representing a tent, altogether unnecessary and derogatory to the purity
of sculpture. Still Roubiliac was rich in thought and reason, for, in
his monument in Westminster Abbey, where he has represented Death as a
skeleton, he felt that the thin and meagre bones would be as offensive
as impracticable; therefore judiciously involved the greater part of the
emblem in a shroud or drapery, adding thereby to his allegory and aiding
his art. However hostile this style may be to the simplicity of
sculpture, the ability of the artist in the conception and execution
deserves high praise. The beadle of Worcester Cathedral informed a
friend of Chantrey's, that when the sculptor was in that city he always
went to see the monument to Bishop Hurd by Roubiliac, and remained a
long time in intent observation of the work, for he thought the artist's
power over the material surprising, though he disliked polishing the
marble.'-_Recollections of Chantrey_, by George Jones, R.A.
The cast taken by Roubiliac from the face of Newton is in the Hunterian
Museum, Glasgow.
There is no necessity for running through a list of Roubiliac's works.
But his statue of Shakespeare is deserving of a passing notice. It of
course fails to satisfy the students of the bard, who delight to pay
equal homage to his philosophy as to his poetry. There is nothing of the
sage about the work: it is wholly of the _stage_ indeed. It is replete
with Roubiliac's established ecstatic super-elegant manner; with a
strong tinge of theatricalism, possibly added by Garrick, for whose
temple at Hampton the statue was undertaken; who attitudinized in aid,
as he imagined, of the sculptor's labours, with a cry of 'Behold the
swan of Avon!' and who, it must be said, at all times entertained a very
'footlight' view of the poet. The price paid for the work was three
hundred guineas only. Roubiliac was to supply the best marble he could
for the money. Unfortunately the block turned out to be much spotted and
streaked; the head was especially disfigured with blue stains. 'What!'
cried Garrick, 'was Shakespeare marked with mulberries?' It became
necessary to sever the head from the shoulders and replace it with one
of purer marble. The statue was completed in 1758. Under the terms of
Garrick's will, it became, on the death of his widow, the property of
the nation, and it now stands in the entrance-hall of the British
Museum. After the purists and the exacting have said their worst against
the statue, it will yet be found--from the spirit of its execution, its
cleverness, and 'go,' to resort to a vulgarism--charming a very large
class of uncritical examiners.
As Lord Chesterfield said of Roubiliac, 'he was the only statuary of his
day; all other artists were mere stone-cutters.' It is very desirable,
in estimating his merits, to bear in mind that he stood alone; his
rivals, Rysbrach and Scheemakers, he had completely outstripped; and,
apart from his following of Bernini, he was clearly an artist of an
original and creative kind. What is hard to forgive in him, however, and
what indeed has much detracted from his reputation, is the fact that a
long list of allegorical monstrosities was in some sort the result of
his example. Charmed with certain of his works, and possessed just then
by particular memories it deemed deserving of monumental celebration,
the nation rushed recklessly to its stone-cutters. The terrible works
which blemish and blister the walls of our cathedrals and churches were
the consequences. Verrio and Laguerre had long set the fashion of
disfiguring ceilings and staircases with their incomprehensible
compositions. Roubiliac carved similar parabolic productions in marble
and set them up in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere. In these, heathen
divinities jostle Christian emblems; Paganism is seen abreast of true
religion. In the aisle of a Gothic abbey, John, Duke of Argyle and
Greenwich, warrior and orator, expires at the foot of a pyramid, on
which History, weeping, writes his deeds, while Minerva (or Britannia)
mourns at the side, and Eloquence above, tossing white arms in the air,
deplores the loss she has sustained. Here we find Hercules placing the
bust of Sir Peter Warren upon a pedestal, while Navigation prepares to
crown it with a laurel wreath; a British flag forming the background and
a horn of plenty emptying its contents beside an anchor and a cannon. In
the monument to Marshal Wade, Time is endeavouring to destroy a pillar
adorned with military trophies, which fame as zealously protects. The
famous Nightingale memorial represents a husband shielding a dying wife
from the attack of Death: a grinning skeleton levelling a javelin as he
issues from the opening iron door of a tomb. The admirable execution of
these works cannot blind the critic to the utter unfitness and folly of
their conception.
But Roubiliac's successors far outbid him in absurdity. To a number of
people a precedent is always a point of departure--an example to be
imitated with violent exaggeration. After our sculptor came a deluge of
imbecility. We are then among stone-cutters who shrink from nothing; we
are treated then to clouds that look like muffins--to waves that
resemble pancakes. Apotheosis becomes preposterous; allegory goes fairly
mad. Glancing at certain post-Roubiliac achievements, we long for an
earthquake. Nicholas Read, the least competent of his pupils, upon the
sculptor's death occupied his studio, advertised himself as successor to
Mr. Roubiliac, and, strange to say, was largely employed: the execution
of the monuments to Admiral Tyrrell and the Duchess of Northumberland,
in Westminster Abbey, being intrusted to him. During his master's life
the apprentice had boasted of the great deeds he would do when he had
served his time. Roubiliac cried scornfully, in his broken English: 'Ven
you do de monument, den de vorld vill see vot von d----d ting you vill
make of it!' His words were justified by Read's monument to Admiral
Tyrrell: possibly the most execrable work in stone in existence; which
is saying a good deal. As Nollekens would often remark of it: 'Read's
admiral going to heaven looks for all the world as though he were
hanging from a gallows with a rope round his neck.'
As Roubiliac's first work was a statue of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens,
so his last was a statue of the same great composer for Westminster
Abbey. He died on the 11th January 1762, and was buried in St. Martin's
Churchyard, 'under the window of the Bell Bagnio.' His funeral was
attended by the leading members of the Society of Artists, then meeting
at the Academy in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane: the room they
occupied, it may be noted, having been Roubiliac's first workshop. The
artists following the funeral were:--Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua)
Reynolds, Moser, Hogarth, Tyler, Sandby, Hayman, Wilton, Bartolozzi,
Cipriani, Payne, Chambers (afterwards Sir William), Serres, Ravenet,
the elder Grignon, Meyer, and Hudson; and the dead master's three
pupils, John Adkins, Nicholas Read, and Nathaniel Smith.
Roubiliac died poor; indeed, seriously in debt. Yet he had married well,
it would seem. An old newspaper, under date January 1752, records:
'Married Mr. Roubiliac, the statuary in St. Martin's Lane, to Miss
Crossley of Deptford, worth £10,000.' No particulars of his married life
have come down to us, however. It is probable that his wife predeceased
him. The money was spent in any case. Perhaps she never possessed so
much as the world gave her credit for. The sale of his effects, after
payment of his funeral expenses, left only about one-and-sixpence in the
pound to his creditors. Though constantly employed, the prices he
received were small; and a thoroughly conscientious artist, he never
spared time or labour upon the commissions he had undertaken. He was
not, it is stated, extravagant in his habits; did not waste his means in
the support of a pretentious establishment. On the contrary, his method
of life was very modest: his tastes were simple enough. Society was not
yet prepared to admit the professions to her _salons_; her somewhat
costly caresses were reserved for the ingenious of a succeeding
generation. Roubiliac was content to live that easy pleasant tavern life
favoured by the men of letters and artists of the eighteenth century,
and with which Johnson and Boswell have made us so intimately
acquainted. A bottle of claret and a game of whist solaced his leisure
hours; and these were not numerous: he was constantly to be found in his
studio, late at night, hard at work long after his assistants had
retired: a vivacious, honest, warm-hearted man, much and justly esteemed
by his friends and contemporaries.
He was a familiar acquaintance of Goldsmith, who in his Chinese letters
speaks of him kindly as 'the little sculptor.' He was fond of music, and
Goldsmith would play the flute to him. As Sir John Hawkins records, the
sculptor once tricked the poet by pretending to set down the notes on
paper as Goldsmith played them. Goldsmith looked over the paper
afterwards with seeming great attention, said it was quite correct, and
that if he had not seen him do it he never could have believed his
friend capable of writing music after him. Roubiliac had jotted down
notes at random. Neither had any real knowledge of music, and Goldsmith
played entirely by ear.
His intimate and fellow-sculptor--a painter also--Adrien Charpentier,
executed a characteristic portrait of Roubiliac. He is represented at
work upon a small-size model of his Shakespeare. He is touching the eye
of the figure with his modelling tool, and the task, one of some
delicacy and difficulty, adds to the animation of the operator. His
head, where it is not covered by the fanciful loose head-dress affected
by poets and artists of the period, is bald: possibly shaven, for the
convenience of wig-wearing, after the custom of the time. His dress is
disordered, his bosom bare, his wristbands loose. Had Roubiliac carved
his own statue in stone, it would probably, in treatment, have closely
followed Charpentier's picture.
A portrait of Roubiliac, painted by himself, was sold for
three-and-sixpence only at the sale of his effects. The prices, indeed,
at this sale seem to have been desperately low. There were no
antiquities or objects of _virtù_ brought to the hammer: and Mr. Canto
was not the auctioneer! A copy by Reynolds of the Chandos portrait of
Shakespeare, with seven other pictures, was knocked down for ten
shillings only, the father of John Flaxman being the purchaser. Reynolds
had painted the picture as a present to his friend, Mr. Roubiliac. It
afterwards became the property of Mr. Edmond Malone.