Chapter IX (1)

Haydon notes in his diary, under date 25th May 1832, 'I passed Lawrence's house (Russell Square). Nothing could be more melancholy or desolate. I knocked, and was shown in. The passages were dusty; the paper torn; the parlours dark; the painting-room, where so much beauty had once glittered, forlorn; and the whole appearance desolate and wretched--the very plate on the door green with mildew.

'I went into the parlour, which used to be instinct with life; "Poor Sir Thomas; always in trouble," said the woman who had the care of the house, "always something to worrit him." I saw his bed-room--small --only a little bed--the mark of it was against the wall. Close to his bed-room was an immense room (where was carried on his manufactory of draperies, etc.), divided, yet open over the partitions. It must have been five or six small rooms turned into one large workshop. Here his assistants worked. His painting-room was a large back drawing-room; his show-room a large front one. He occupied a parlour and a bed-room; all the rest of the house was turned to business. Any one would think that people of fashion would visit from remembrance the house where they had spent so many happy hours. Not they. They shun a disagreeable sensation. They have no feeling--no poetry. It is shocking. It is dirty!'

Bitter Mr. Haydon. Perhaps it was not that he loved Lawrence more, but that he loved his patrons less. For the people of fashion who were caring so little about the dead Lawrence, cared not at all for the living Haydon.

THE PUPIL OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.

In St. James's Street, London, on the 10th June 1787, was born George Henry Harlow. His father, an East India merchant for a time Resident at Canton, had been dead about four months. The widowed mother, only twenty-seven, and of remarkable personal attractions, was fortunately left with an ample dower. Mourning her husband, she devoted herself to her children--five very young girls and the new-born son. Perhaps it was not unnatural that to the youngest child, born under such circumstances--the only boy--the largest share of her maternal affection and solicitude should be given.

He was first placed at the classical school of Dr. Barrow in Soho Square, then under the tuition of Dr. Roy in Burlington Street; for some time he was at Westminster. In after-life, in boastful moments, he was pleased to speak grandly of his classical attainments; of these, however, he could never adduce any notable evidence. It is probable that he was at no time a very eager student; he had tastes and ambitions not compatible with school-learning, and an over-indulgent mother was little likely to rebuke his want of application, or to desire that her darling's attention should be fixed upon his books in too earnest a manner. Certainly before he was sixteen he had left school, and even then he had devoted much of his time to other than scholastic pursuits.

He was a smart, clever boy, with a lively taste for art, a constant visitor at the picture-galleries, already able to ply his pencil to some purpose; yet bent, perhaps, upon acquiring the manner and the trick of others rather than of arriving at a method of his own by a hard study of nature. He almost preferred a painted to a real human being--a picture landscape to a view from a hill-top. He was satisfied that things should come to him filtered through the canvases of his predecessors--content to see with their eyes. He was apt to think painting was little higher than legerdemain, was a conjurer's feat to be detected by constantly watching the performer, was a secret that he might be told by others or might discover for himself by examining their works: not a science open under certain conditions to all who will take the trouble to learn. These were not very noble nor very healthy opinions to entertain upon the subject; but at least at the foundation of them was a certain fondness for art, and there was without doubt promise in the performances of the young man. Of this Mrs. Harlow was speedily satisfied, and the friends she consulted confirmed her opinion. It was determined that he should enter the studio of a painter. Not much care was exercised in the selection of a preceptor. A Dutch artist, named Henry De Cort, had settled in London; he produced landscapes of a formal, artificial pattern--compositions in which Italian palaces and waterfalls and ruins appeared prominently, formal in colour, neat in finish, the animals and figures being added to the pictures by other Dutchmen. There was rather a rage at one time for Italian landscape seen through a Dutch medium: a fashion in favour of which there is little to be said. It was not a very good school in which to place George Henry Harlow. De Cort was pretentious and conceited--worse, he was dull. The student loved art, but he could not fancy such a professor as De Cort. He began to feel that he could learn nothing from such a master--that he was, indeed, wasting his time. He quitted De Cort, and entered the studio of Mr. Drummond, A.R.A. He applied himself assiduously, 'with an ardour from which even amusements could not seduce him,' says a biographer. For, alas! young Mr. Harlow was becoming as noted for his love of pleasure as for his love of his profession. He remained a year with Mr. Drummond, and then commenced to sigh for a change.

There is a story that the beautiful Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire interested herself in the studies of the young man, and that owing to her influence and interposition he was admitted into the studio of Sir Thomas Lawrence in Greek Street. Another account has it that Mr. Harlow and his mother visited the various painters with the view of selecting one with whom the student would be content to remain until his period of pupilage was at an end, and that he himself finally selected Sir Thomas Lawrence. A premium of one hundred guineas was paid. For this sum the student was to have free access to his master's house 'at nine o'clock in the morning, with leave to copy his pictures till four o'clock in the afternoon, but was to receive no instruction of any kind.' It was supposed, apparently, that the example of Sir Thomas was instruction enough. But it is possible that Lawrence, while, with his innumerable engagements, he was unable to bestow much time upon a pupil, was also, like Sir Joshua, unable to communicate art instruction. He knew very little of rules, he was little imbued with academic prescriptions, he painted rather from an instinctive love of beauty and from a purely natural quickness in observing expression. Harlow might have said of Lawrence as Northcote said of Reynolds: 'I learnt nothing from him while I was with him.' Though it seems hard to say that a student could be long in the studio of either master and benefit in no way.

The friends of the late Mr. Harlow were greatly distressed that his son should follow the unprofitable business of the Fine Arts. They hastened to rescue him from ruin, as they believed. They offered him a writership in India. He declined their assistance. 'I care not for riches,' he said; 'give me fame and glory!' They could not comprehend an ambition so absurd; they thought the young man out of his senses, and left him accordingly. They were even angry with their friend's son that he would not permit them to tear him from the profession of his choice.

Harlow was excitable, impulsive, enthusiastic. He was well acquainted with his own ability; indeed he was inclined to set almost too high a value upon it. He could bear no restraint. If Lawrence had attempted to impart instruction to him, he would probably have resisted it with all his might; he was ill at ease under even the semblance of pupilage; he declined to recognise his own inferiority; he was angry with the position he occupied in the studio of Sir Thomas. It would seem to have been difficult to quarrel with one who was always so courtier-like in manner, so gentle and _suave_ and forbearing as was Lawrence. But it is possible these very characteristics were matters of offence to Harlow. He could not give credit for ability to a man who was so calm and elegant and placid amidst all the entrancements of his profession. He thought a great painter should gesticulate more, should sacrifice the gentlemanly to the eccentric as _he_ did, should be feverish and frothy and unconventional and absurd as _he_ was. And then he possessed a quick mimetic talent. He had soon acquired great part of Lawrence's manner. People are always prone to think themselves equal to those they can imitate, and he was far ahead of all the other young gentlemen who entered the studio; indeed it may be said that no one has ever approached more closely to the peculiar style and character of Lawrence's art than his pupil Harlow. The master admitted this himself--if not in words, at least in conduct. He employed Harlow upon his portraits, to paint replicas, and even to prepare in dead colours the originals. Of course the painting of backgrounds and accessories was the customary occupation of the pupils.

For eighteen months Harlow remained in the studio of Sir Thomas. A portrait had been painted of Mrs. Angerstein. In this Lawrence had introduced a Newfoundland dog, so skilfully represented as to excite the warmest admiration. Harlow, perhaps, had had a share in the painting of this dog, and he loudly claimed credit for it. He is said even to have intruded himself upon the Angerstein family, and to have represented to them how greatly the success of the picture was due to his exertions. Of course this conduct on the part of a pupil amounted to flat mutiny. Sir Thomas informed of it, sought out his pupil, and said to him: 'You must leave my house immediately. The animal you claim is among the best things _I_ ever painted. Of course you have no need of further instruction from me.' Harlow withdrew abruptly. In a day or two afterwards he was heard of, living magnificently, at the Queen's Head, a small roadside inn on the left hand as you leave Epsom for Ashstead. When the host approached with the reckoning, it was found that the painter was without the means of liquidating it. It was agreed that the account should be paid by his executing a new sign-board. He painted both sides: on one a full-face view of Queen Charlotte, a dashing caricature of Sir Thomas's manner; on the other a back view of the Queen's head, as though she were looking into the sign-board, while underneath was inscribed 'T.L., Greek Street, Soho.' Sir Thomas, informed of this eccentric proceeding, said to Harlow:--

'I have seen your additional act of perfidy at Epsom, and if you were not a scoundrel I would kick you from one end of the street to the other.'

'There is some privilege in being a scoundrel, then,' answers the pupil, 'for the street is very long.'

So we read of the quarrel of Lawrence and Harlow, one of those stories so easy to relate and so difficult to disprove. But there are incoherencies about it. The portrait of Mrs. Angerstein was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the year 1800, some years before Harlow had become a pupil of Lawrence's. The speech about the kicking is a very unlikely one to have proceeded from Lawrence, while it is still more unlikely that Harlow would have received it so quietly. Had such language passed between them it is hardly possible they could have been on the footing of anything like friendship afterwards, yet we find Lawrence assisting Harlow in his picture of the Kemble family in quite an intimate way. Certainly there was a quarrel, and Harlow quitted Sir Thomas. A living writer says, in reference to the sign-board story:--

'I remember to have seen it as early as 1815. Some twenty years
after, missing this peculiar sign from the suspensory iron (where a
written board had been substituted), I made inquiry at the inn as
to the fate of Harlow's Queen's Head, but could not learn anything
of its whereabouts.'

It is not probable that Lawrence was disposed to condemn this more severely, than as one of those artistic freaks which clever caricaturing students are every day indulging in.

Thenceforth Harlow determined to set up as a painter on his own account. He would be a student no longer. He refused to avail himself of the advantages offered by the Academy--he would not draw there--would not enrol himself as a student. He would toil no more in the studios of others--he was now a full-blown artist himself. So he argued. 'Naturally vain.' writes J.T. Smith, one of his biographers, 'he became ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion was often the laughing-stock of his brother artists, particularly when he wished to pass for a man of high rank, whose costume he mimicked; and that folly he would often venture upon without an income sufficient to pay one of his many tailors' bills.' He seemed bent upon exaggerating even the extravagances of fashion. There is a story of his having been seen with such enormously long spurs that he was obliged to walk down stairs backwards to save himself from falling headlong. He had a craving for notoriety. If the public would not notice his works, at least they should notice _him_. Somehow he would be singled out from the crowd. People should ask who he was, no matter whether censure or applause was to follow the inquiry. So he dressed with wild magnificence and swaggered along the streets and laughed loudly and talked with an audacious freedom that was often the cause of his expulsion from respectable company. A glass or two of wine seemed quite to turn his brain; he was alert then for any frivolity, and he was not always content with so restricted a libation, when the consequences were even more to be deplored.

He now offered himself as a candidate for Academic honours. He was not a likely man to succeed, yet he did all he could to conciliate the more influential Academicians, and certainly he had merits that entitled him fairly to look for the distinction. He painted a portrait of Northcote, said to be the best that had ever been taken of the veteran artist, and the number of portraits of him was very great. He also painted Stothard and Nollekens, and the well-known and admirable portrait of Fuseli. With this he took extraordinary pains, had numerous sittings, and was two whole days engaged upon the right hand only--a long time according to the art-opinion of his day, when it was the fashion to finish a portrait in a very dashing style of execution, after one sitting, and in a few hours' time. Mr. Leslie allowed Harlow's portrait of Fuseli to be the best. 'But,' he said, 'it would have required a Reynolds to do justice to the fine intelligence of his head. His keen eye of the most transparent blue I shall never forget.' But the Academy would not think favourably of Harlow. In later days Northcote sturdily declaimed: 'The Academy is not an institution for the suppression of Vice but for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The dragging morality into everything in season and out of season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue into a byword for impertinence.' There was only one Academician who could be found to give a vote for Harlow. This was, of course, Fuseli. He was accused of it, and vindicated himself--'I voted for the talent, not for the man!' He was seeking to estimate the fitness of the claimant for art-honours, by means of perhaps the fairest criterion. The Academy tested on a different plan. It was hard to say that Harlow's moral character rendered him unfit to associate with the painters of his day; yet such was the effect of the decision of the Academy.

Of course he was cruelly mortified, deeply incensed; of course he swore in his wrath that he would wreak a terrible vengeance upon his enemies. But what could he do? He could privately abuse the academicians corporately and severally wherever he went; and publicly he would paint them down. He would demonstrate their imbecility and his own greatness by his works. He took to large historical paintings--'Bolingbroke's Entry into London' and 'The Quarrel between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex.' Unfortunately the merits of these achievements were not sufficient to carry dismay into the hearts of his oppressors. And what was even worse, no purchaser came for these ambitious works. He was driven to portrait painting again. He was dexterous in delineating character, was rapid in execution, had a respectable appreciation of colour. His first exhibited portrait was one of his mother; she lived to see him, in a great measure, successful, and died when he was twenty-two years old. A deep affection seems to have subsisted between the mother and the son. He was greatly moved at her death, and always mentioned her name with tenderness. He had soon no lack of sitters. He was recognised as being, in a certain style of portraiture, second to Lawrence only. And he next achieved a considerable success in a higher order of art. His 'Arthur and Hubert' was highly applauded by the public. It was painted for Mr. Leader, at the price of one hundred guineas. The patron, however, was less pleased with the vigour and glow of colour of the work than were the critics, and was not sorry to exchange the picture for portraits of his children. This was sufficiently galling to the painter's pride, but he was not rich enough to resent such conduct. He could not afford to close all dealing with his patron, as he would greatly have preferred to do.

The next picture--and the one by which of all his works he is the most popularly known--was that combination of historical art and portraiture known as the 'Trial of Queen Katherine.' The work was commissioned by Mr. Welsh the professor of music. It was commenced during the progress of the artist's portrait of Fuseli, who, examining the first drawing of the picture, said:--'I do not disapprove of the general arrangement of your work, and I see you will give it a powerful effect of light and shade. But you have here a composition of more than twenty figures, or, I should rather say, parts of figures, because you have not shown one leg or foot, which makes it very defective. If you do not know how to draw feet and legs, I will show you.' And with a crayon he made drawings on the wainscot of the room.

However inclined Harlow may have been to neglect counsel, given in rather an imperious tone, he did not hesitate to profit by Fuseli's comments, and accordingly he re-arranged the grouping in the foreground of his picture. On a subsequent visit Fuseli remarked the change: 'So far you have done well,' he said, 'but now you have not introduced a back-figure to throw the eye of the spectator into the picture.' And he then proceeded to point out by what means this might be managed. Accordingly, we learn, Harlow introduced the two boys who are taking up the cushion; the one with his back turned is altogether due to Fuseli, and is, no doubt, the best drawn figure in the whole picture.

Fuseli was afterwards desirous that the drawing of the arms of the principal object--Queen Katherine--should be amended, but this it seems was not accomplished. 'After having witnessed many ineffectual attempts of the painter to accomplish this, I remarked, "It is a pity that you never attended the antique academy."' It was only Fuseli who would have presumed to address such an observation to Harlow; while it was only from Fuseli that it would have been received with even the commonest patience.

The Kemble family are represented in this picture; and it is probable that the painter was more anxious for the correctness of their portraits, and an accurate representation of the scene, as it was enacted at Covent Garden Theatre, than for any of the higher characteristics of historical art. Mrs. Siddons is the _Katherine_; John Kemble is _Wolsey_; Charles Kemble, _Cromwell_; while Stephen Kemble, who was reputed to be fat enough to appear as _Falstaff_, 'without stuffing,' here represents the _King_. These are all admirable portraits of a strikingly handsome family, firmly and grandly painted, and full of expression. Perhaps the best of all is Mrs. Siddons', and the next Charles Kemble's. The whole picture is a highly commendable work of art, and enjoyed during many years an extraordinary popularity.

It was with John Kemble, however, that the artist had his greatest difficulty, and it was here that Sir Thomas Lawrence rendered assistance to Harlow. Kemble steadily refused to sit, and great was the distress of the painter. At last Sir Thomas advised his pupil to go to the front row of the pit of the theatre (there were no stalls in those days, it should be remembered), four or five times successively, and sketch the great actor's countenance, and thus make out such a likeness as he could introduce into the painting. This expedient was adopted, and not only was a very good likeness secured, but the artist was successful in obtaining the expression of the _Cardinal_ at the exact point of his surprise and anger at the defiance of the _Queen_. Had Mr. Kemble sat for his portrait, Harlow would probably have experienced the difficulty Northcote complained of:--

'When Kemble sat to me for _Richard III_., meeting the children, he lent me no assistance whatever in the expression I wished to give, but remained quite immoveable, as if he were sitting for an ordinary portrait. As Boaden said, this was his way. He never put himself to any exertion except in his professional character. If any one wanted to know his idea of a part, or of a particular passage, his reply always was, "You must come and see me do it."'

Harlow had much of that talent for painting eyes which was so lauded in the case of his master Lawrence. A critic has described the eyes in certain of Lawrence's portraits as 'starting from their spheres.' The opinion is rather more extravagant than complimentary, or true. There is a winning sparkle about them which may occasionally be carried to excess, but, as a rule, they are singularly life-like.

Sir Joshua had laid it down as a fixed principle that, to create the beautiful, the eyes ought always to be in mezzotint. To this rule Sir Thomas did not adhere very rigorously, and indeed, by a departure from it, frequently arrived at the effect he contemplated.

Ambitious at one time of exhibiting his learning, Harlow thought proper to express surprise at a scholar like Fuseli permitting the engravers to place translations under his classical subjects.

'Educated at Westminster school,' he said, rather affectedly, 'I should prefer to see the quotations given in the original language;' and he was rash enough to instance the print from the death of OEdipus, as a case in point. The unfortunate part of this was, that, on the plate in question, the passage was really engraved in Greek characters under the mezzotint. Fuseli heard of this criticism: 'I will soon bring his knowledge to the test,' he said.

On the next occasion of his sitting to Harlow he wrote with chalk in large letters, on the wainscot, a passage from Sophocles: 'Read that,' he said to Harlow. It soon became evident that Mr. Harlow was quite unable to do this. Fuseli thought the occasion a worthy one for administering a rebuke. 'That is the Greek quotation inscribed under the OEdipus, which you believed to be absent from the plate, and a word of which you are unable to read. You are a good portrait-painter; in some ways you stand unrivalled. Don't then pretend to be what you are not, and, probably, from your avocations, never can be,--a scholar.'

Mr. Fuseli was inclined to be censorious, but possibly his severity was, in a great measure, deserved in the case of poor, vain, pretentious Harlow.

In June 1818, in his thirty-first year, Harlow set out for Italy, bent on study and self-improvement. An interesting and characteristic account of his life in Rome is contained in his letter dated the 23d November, addressed to Mr. Tomkisson, the pianoforte-maker of Dean Street, Soho, who was in several ways connected with artists, and interested in art.

'The major part of my labours are now at an end, having since my arrival made an entire copy of the Transfiguration; the next was a composition of my own, of fifteen figures which created no small sensation here. Canova requested to have the picture at his house for a few days, which was accordingly sent, and, on the 10th November, upwards of five hundred persons saw it; it was then removed to the academy of St. Luke's, and publicly exhibited. They unanimously elected me an Academician, and I have received the diploma. There are many things which have made this election very honourable to me, of which you shall hear in England. You must understand that there are two degrees in our academy--one of merit, the other of honour; mine is of merit, being one of the body of the academy. The same night of my election the King of Naples received his honorary degree (being then in Rome on a visit to the Pope) in common with all the other sovereigns of Europe, and I am happy to find the Duke of Wellington is one also. West, Fuseli, Lawrence, Flaxman, and myself, are the _only_ British artists belonging to St. Luke's as academicians. This institution is upwards of three hundred years standing. Raffaelle, the Caracci, Poussin, Guido, Titian, and every great master that we esteem, were members. I had the high gratification to see my name enrolled in the list of these illustrious characters. Now, my dear friend, as this fortunate affair has taken place, I should wish it added to the print of Katherine's Trial: you will perhaps have the kindness to call on Mr. Cribb, the publisher, in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, and have it worded thus: _Member of the Academy of St. Luke's at Rome_.' (This, of course, was by way of reproach to the Royal Academy of Great Britain.) 'I mention this as it is a grand plate, and indeed ought to be added. I expect to be in England by Christmas-Day or near it. I shall have an immensity to talk over. I was much pleased with Naples; stayed ten days; went over to Portici; Herculaneum and Pompeii, and ascended Mount Vesuvius: this was a spectacle--the most awful and grand that I had ever witnessed--the fire bursting every two minutes, and the noise with it like thunder: red-hot ashes came tumbling down continually where I stood sketching, many of which I brought away, and different pieces of the old lava which I hope to show you. The eruption took place a week or two after I left. But Pompeii exhibits now the most extraordinary remains of antiquity in the world; a whole city laid open to view; the habitations are unroofed, but, in other respects, are quite perfect. The house of Sallust, the Roman historian, was particularly gratifying to me, unaltered in every respect, except the furniture (which I believe is now in Portici), the same as it was eighteen hundred and fifty years ago when inhabited by him. There are many shops; in one the amphoræ which held the wine are curious, and marks of the cups they used upon the slabs are distinctly seen: a milkshop with the sign of a goat is perfectly preserved with the vessels, and also several other shops in the same perfect state. Rome has been a scene of the utmost gaiety lately, during the stay of the King of Naples. I was at three splendid balls given at the different palaces. We were obliged to appear in court-dresses, and the cardinals added very much to the richness and grandeur of the party. The ladies looked peculiarly striking, but they did not wear hoops as in the English court. We had French and English dances, etc., and the fireworks surpassed all my expectations. Upon the whole, the entertainments were very novel and very delightful. I am to be presented to the Pope either on the 2d or 3d of next month. Cardinal Gonsalvi will let me know when the day is fixed, and I leave Rome directly after; perhaps the next day--a day that I most sincerely dread--for I have become so attached to the place and the people that I expect a great struggle with myself. I should be the most ungrateful of human beings if I did not acknowledge the endless favours they have bestowed on me. It is the place of all others for an artist, as he is sure to be highly appreciated if he has any talent; and I shall speak of the country to the end of my days with the most fervent admiration. The Transfiguration, I think, will make a stare in England!'

It was of this same copy of the Transfiguration that Canova had spoken so applaudingly: 'This, sir, seems rather the work of eighteen weeks than of eighteen days.'

He gave a picture of 'The Presentation of the Cardinal's Hat to Wolsey in Westminster Abbey' to the Academy of St. Luke's at Rome, and his own portrait to the Academy of Florence, in acknowledgment of having been elected a member. He embarked for England in January 1819. Lord Burghersh, the English ambassador at Florence, had paid him marked attentions. Lord Liverpool gave instructions that the painter's packages should be passed at the Custom House. He established himself in a house, No. 83 Dean Street, Soho. Everything seemed to promise to him a happy and prosperous future, when suddenly he sickened with the disease, known popularly as the mumps. He died on the 4th February 1819, and was buried under the altar of St. James's Church, Piccadilly. In the churchyard had been buried, a year or two previously, an artist of less merit,--James Gillray, the caricaturist.

It is not possible to lay great stress upon the early failings of Harlow; errors, after all, rather of manners than of morals. Had he lived, it is likely that a successful career would have almost effaced the recollection of these, while it would certainly have contradicted them as evidences of character. As Lawrence said of his dead pupil, generously yet truthfully, 'he was the most promising of all our painters.' There was the material for a great artist in Harlow. He died too young for his fame, and for his art. A proof engraving of one of his best works (a portrait of Northcote) was brought to Lawrence to touch upon:--

'Harlow had faults,' he said, 'but we must not remember the faults of one who so greatly improved himself in his art. It shall never be said that the finest work from so great a man went into the world without such assistance as I can give.'

TURNER AND RUSKIN.

The difficulty the vulgar have experienced in comprehending that kings and queens, and generally persons high in authority, are simply men and women after all--their ordinary appearance, dress, manners, and habits not greatly different from those of the rest of mankind--has been a frequent subject of remark and ridicule. Years back, at the American theatres, spectators in the pit were often gravely asking each other, whether the sovereign of England was really accustomed to appear in the London streets, wearing a similar wonderful costume to that in which Mr. Lucius Junius Booth was then strutting and ranting as Richard the Third; the fact of the Drury Lane copies of the dresses worn at the coronation of George IV. having been taken to the other side of the Atlantic, and _The Coronation_ performed at most of the chief cities, supplying, perhaps, an apology for the reasoning which prompted the inquiry. But the popular notion, that a monarch habitually walks about carrying on his head a jewelled crown of enormous value and weight, finds a reflection in higher stages of culture and intelligence. An analogous delusion is traceable amongst people occupying very reputable rounds upon the social ladder. A state of confusion between a man and his office, or his works, is by no means confined to those whom it is the fashion to designate as 'the masses.' Are we not continually meeting ladies and gentlemen, of otherwise commendable intellectual endowments, bent upon bewildering themselves with the notion, that the sentimental novelist is necessarily a creature of sentiment--that the comic actor, out of his part and off his stage, is still laughable and amusing--that the writer of poetry, as a consequence, lives poetry, and the career of the painter is inevitably picturesque?

How mistaken is this kind of opinion we have hardly need to point out. How prosaic may be a poet's life our readers will probably not care to question. And if any doubt haloed the artist with an unreal interest and charm, the biography of the late Mr. Turner[23] will pretty well disperse anything of the kind. A statement of the plain facts of the matter clears away all mirage of fancy and romance, and,--as in cruelly restored pictures, the beautiful glazing well scoured off,--we come then to the mere raw paint, and coarse canvas, unattractiveness, even ugliness.

[23] In 1861 was published _The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A._, founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and Fellow Academicians; by Walter Thornbury. In a more recent work, _Haunted London_ (1865), Mr. Thornbury has himself passed judgment upon his _Life of Turner_, pronouncing it to be 'a careless book, but still containing much curious, authentic, and original anecdote.'

In truth, the sunshine pictures of Turner were evolved from a life as dingy and uncomely as could well be. It is difficult to conceive any correspondence, any _rapport_ between workmanship so exquisite, and a workman in every way so unattractive, so little estimable. But just as from the small dusky insect in the hedges at night proceeds a phosphorescent flame of great power and beauty--just as from a miserable-looking, coarse, common flint are emitted sparks of superb brilliance,--so from the hands of this strange, sordid, shambling man came art-achievements almost without precedent in the history of painting.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born on the 23d April (St. George's day) 1775, in a house (recently pulled down and reconstructed) opposite what used to be called the Cider Cellars in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. Through a narrow arched passage, closed by an iron gate, was formerly obtained, by a narrow door on the left-hand side, access to the small but respectable shop of William Turner, barber, the father of the painter. The trade could hardly have been an unprosperous one in those days of perukes and powder and pomatumed edifices of hair, and when, moreover, 'the Garden' was a not unfashionable locality. The new-born was baptized on the 14th May following, in the parish church of St. Paul's, where also, it may be said, his father had been married (by license) to Mary Marshall, also of the same parish, on the 29th August 1773. The registers recording these important events are still extant.

The barber's position was plebeian, though there are no indications of its having been one of poverty. He came originally from Devonshire. Inquiry as to the descent of the artist's mother is balked by the widely differing stories that present themselves. From one account we learn that she was a native of Islington; from another that she came of a good Nottinghamshire family living at Shelford Manor-house, while yet we learn in another direction that her brother was a butcher at Brentford. We are involved in doubt at last as to whether, after all, her name was not _Mallord_ rather than Marshall, and hence the second Christian name of her son, which else there seems no way of accounting for. All this is obscure enough. Certainly, in the latter part of her life, the poor woman was insane and in confinement. Turner was uncommunicative upon most subjects; but in regard to his mother and her family he preserved a reticence of unusual severity.

Mr. Ruskin has amused himself with a fanciful contrast between the boyhood of Giorgione at Venice, and of Turner in Covent Garden. There is no reason to believe that any disadvantage accrued to Turner from his somewhat uncheerful birthplace. It is hardly the Venetians who are the most alive to the beauties of Venice. But Mr. Ruskin is fond of mounting a richly-caparisoned charger of the imagination, and caracoling round a crotchety circus; and his feats in this respect are so elegantly and admirably fantastic, that we almost forbear to smile, out of deference to so perfect a non-perception of humour, when we find him tracing the painter back to _Covent Garden Market_ in all his paintings. Mr. Ruskin detects in the corners of Turner's foregrounds 'always a succulent cluster or two of green-grocery!' The artist's _Hesperides_ gleam with Covent Garden oranges; in his _Shipwrecks_ chests of them are flung upon the waters; and in his _St. Gothard_ a litter of stones reflects Covent Garden wreck after the market! What wonder Mr. Turner was tempted to exclaim now and then about his arch-critic--'He knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do. He puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended.'

A silver salver, engraved with heraldic devices, seen at the house of Mr. Tomkisson, the famous piano-forte-maker, is said to have first inspired the boy Turner with a love for art. He commenced to imitate the drawing of a certain rampant lion that especially took his fancy. Very soon after this the father announced that his son William was going to be a painter. The reader will note that the early ambitions of the boy were at once humoured. There would seem to have been no attempt usual with poor parents anxious for the commercial success of a child, to thrust the boy into a trade or employment which, though distasteful, would have been profitable to him. Old Mr. Turner probably knew little enough of art, and could have had but a poor opinion, in a pecuniary sense, of the profession to which his son was desirous of attaching himself. But no obstacles were thrown in his path; he was soon placed with Mr. Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Longacre, and was the son of the author of a practical book on _Geometry and Perspective_. Certainly his poverty and low birth in no way hindered the painter; had he been born to rank and wealth, he could only have had his will: and he had it without these.

The little education he ever received was obtained at a school at Brentford; but he could never write or spell correctly. It is probable that his passion for art absorbed his every thought. Not that he succeeded with his perspective studies, however, for Mr. Malton brought the boy back to his father as a pupil quite beyond all hope. Yet the real talent of the young painter was already developing itself. Some of his drawings exhibited in the Maiden Lane shop found purchasers among his father's customers. An engraver employed him to colour prints. Two or three architects engaged him to fill in skies and backgrounds to their plans. Soon he had entered the office of Mr. Hardwick, the architect, who regularly employed him.

It is curious to learn that, later in life, Turner, pointing admiringly to a green mezzotinto of a Vandevelde--a large vessel bearing up against the waves--would exclaim, '_That_ made me a painter!' Yet he stood before the work of one of those 'Van-somethings and Back-somethings,' who, Mr. Ruskin tells us, have 'more especially and malignantly libelled the sea.' 'I feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because I do not know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature.' It seems that Turner was more catholic in his tastes than his panegyrist.

In 1789, following the advice of Mr. Hardwick, Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. In the same year Reynolds ceased to paint, owing to the failure of his sight. That Turner, who had been admitted to the President's studio to copy portraits, was present when the great painter laid aside his brush with the solemn words, 'I know all things on earth must come to an end, and now I am come to mine,' is one of those suppositions in which biographers are prone to indulge, but which few readers will be found to credit. In these days Turner's drawing was in advance of his colour: an order of things which was afterwards reversed.

In 1790 he first exhibited at Somerset House: the picture being 'Lambeth Palace.' From that time, down to 1850 inclusive, hardly a season being missed, Turner's name appears in the catalogues of the Academy. In all, two hundred and fifty-seven pictures by Turner were hung on the walls of the Academy exhibitions, while nearly twenty more were to be seen at the British Institution. He relinquished all idea of becoming a portrait-painter about the time of the death of Reynolds. His own portrait in the National Gallery was painted when he was seventeen. It is executed with skill, although without any charm of colour. It represents a young man of large heavy features, but of a not unattractive appearance altogether.

Upon a story of a love affair in the painter's early life, we are inclined to lay no great stress. There is no evidence that it affected his after-life, or that any excuse can be found in it for the faults of his character. Speaking of his own love of money, he would sometimes say apologetically, 'Dad never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny.' A disappointment in love is more likely to make a man a profligate than a miser; if it affects him at all seriously, it will more likely produce a reckless waste than a sordid passion for money-making. The painter was prospering. He taught in schools, first charging five shillings a lesson, then raising his terms to ten shillings, next charging a guinea. What system of painting did he teach, this suspicious jealous man, who always worked with locked doors--who would never permit another even to see him draw--who seemed to hold (but it was a then prevalent belief with his profession) that art was producible by some occult process--was a mystery and a secret, like a conjurer's trick? He founded his style very much on that of his friend and contemporary Girtin, the water-colour painter. Both delighted in a golden yellowness of tone which it is probable Girtin had originated. Turner's regard and reverence for him and his works seem to have been very great. He always spoke kindly of him as 'poor Tom!' Of one of his drawings in the British Museum, Turner said, 'I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.' At another time he said, 'If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved!' Girtin died in 1802; in the same year Turner was made a Royal Academician; he had been two years before admitted to the honours of Associateship. The influence of Girtin upon English art has hardly been sufficiently recognised. Mr. Ruskin has had too little to say on behalf of one to whom it is evident that Turner owed very much.

Turner's rapid advance in his profession may be traced in his frequent change of residence. In 1796 he had quitted his father's house in Hand Court, to occupy rooms at No. 26 Maiden Lane. In 1800 he was at No. 64 Harley Street. The following year he had moved to No. 75 Norton Street. In 1804 he was back again in Harley Street. In 1808 he was Professor of Perspective, of Harley Street, and of West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith. He moved to Queen Anne Street in 1812, and that continued to be his address in the Academy catalogues up to the time of his death. But from the year 1814 to 1826 he was also the tenant of a house at Twickenham, which he first called 'Solus,' and afterwards 'Sandycombe' Lodge. He died in December 1851, at a small house near Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea. This he first tenanted probably about the year 1845.

A few continental visits, and tours in England, Scotland, and Wales, all undertaken apparently with professional objects,--incessant squabblings with his engravers, the most wearisome haggling with picture-dealers, genuine hard work, and the production of very perfect specimens of landscape art, and the outlines of Turner's life seem to be fairly sketched. His passion for his profession was intense, yet with it was the keenest love of its emoluments. His industry was beyond all praise, his energy indefatigable; he seemed to live perpetually before his easel, or with his sketch-book in his hands, and yet he had a broker's view as to the worth of everything he did; he appraised his every pencil-stroke, with the full determination of having his price for it. There is hardly a story of his ever giving away a drawing. A lady, in whose house he was residing, playfully asked him to make a sketch of her favourite spaniel. 'My dear madam,' said the painter, astounded and indignant, 'you don't know what you ask!' He once gave three sketches to aid an amateur artist, and most intimate friend and patron, who had brought his painting into an embarrassed condition; the sketches showed him the way out of his difficulty. Undoubtedly this action was very kind; but in the end the miser prevailed over the gentleman. Turner growlingly asked for his sketches back again!

The details of his life are not agreeable, and not of much more interest than the outlines. Mr. Ruskin fixes the following as the main characteristics of Turner--_uprightness, generosity, tenderness of heart_ (extreme), _sensuality, obstinacy_ (extreme), _irritability, infidelity_.' By the light of all these 'Seven Lamps,' few people will have seen Turner besides Mr. Ruskin. Of the last four characteristics the painter will be generally found guilty; the first three remain as yet, at best, not proven. We are not tempted, just now, to account highly the uprightness of a man who could, and did, defraud the public by the sale of 'sham proofs' of the engravings of his pictures--of the generosity which made provision for his own memorial in stone in St. Paul's, yet left without bread his surviving 'housekeepers' and natural children--of the tenderness of heart which permitted that his father, moved from the shop, should play a servant's part in the gallery in Queen Anne Street, straining canvases, varnishing pictures, and showing in visitors, with a suspicion that he cooked the dinner even if he did not take the shillings at the door. 'Look'ee here,' said the poor old man, who, it is right to state, saw no humiliation in acting lackey to his prosperous son, 'I have found out a way at last of coming up cheap from Twickenham, to open my son's gallery. I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses; I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables!' As a set-off to all this, we have now and then a spasmodic act of kindness: he rebukes Wilkie for talking about the fine effect of the snow falling while poor Lawrence's coffin was being lowered into the grave in the crypt of St. Paul's: he drives away the boys who injure his blackbirds: he sometimes gives half-a-crown when others would only offer a penny: and there is a story (very vague indeed) of his once lending £20,000 without security. But these are but the halfpennyworth of bread compared to the vast quantity of sack. The matter seems fairly summed up in the story of the man who said, 'Turner is not ungenerous; _he once paid the toll over Waterloo Bridge for me_!'

Mr. Ruskin charges Turner's faults upon his contemporaries and the public who failed to appreciate his genius. But is this for a moment sustainable? _Was_ he unappreciated? His rise could hardly have been more rapid. He was a Royal Academician when he was twenty-seven. His merits were recognised almost immediately upon his becoming an exhibitor. Anthony Pasquin (Williams), who did not speak well of every one, loudly commends Turner's genius, and judgment, and originality, in 1797.[24] He was quite early a favourite with the public and the critics. His prices were always high. Mr. Ruskin has declared in his _Economy of Art_, that more than one hundred pounds should never be given for a water-colour drawing, nor more than five hundred for an oil-painting. But the sums Turner received were greatly in excess of these limits. For the 'Rise and Fall of Carthage' he was offered £5000. There is no evidence of his complaining of want of recognition by the public. He was dissatisfied, it is true, at the time of Shee's death, that he had not been made President; but this, as he well knew, was a matter that rested entirely with the Academy. 'What has the Academy done for me?' he would ask petulantly; 'they knighted Calcott, why don't they knight me?' This involved no charge against his critics. He was passed over for the same reason that Paley was neglected; because, as the courtly phrase went, he was not a 'producible man.' In fine, though he began with nothing, a barber's son in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, he died worth £140,000, and was buried in St. Paul's! This hardly looks like want of appreciation.

[24] It may be noted, however, that in 'The Georgian Era' (1834) occurs the following passage:--'Some have gone the length of saying that in marine views Turner has wrested the palm from all competitors; but with this, few, surely, will agree who have seen the sea pieces of Powell, an artist who, though but recently deceased, has had no biographer to commemorate his poverty or his genius.' The works of Powell, however admirable, are not likely now to be preferred to Turner's. 'The Georgian Era' is not a work of much repute.

It has been the fashion to talk as though Mr. Ruskin had _discovered_ Turner. Nothing can be further from the fact. Turner had been an exhibitor for more than fifty years when Mr. Ruskin commenced to write about his pictures. He had reached the _Rock Limpet_ stage of his career. He could then produce little beyond frantic whirls of colour, and there was a not unnatural tendency to smile at these achievements in the galleries, and the Hanging Committee were often puzzled to know whether they had or not hung the pictures upside down. All that Mr. Ruskin could do, and he did it superbly, was to bring people to think less of what Turner then was, and more of what he had been. It is all very well to denounce severely those who smiled at, or the critics who said they could not comprehend, the later Turners. It is presumable that pictures are sent to exhibitions to be applauded or condemned, as the world may judge. Mr. Thackeray may be rated for his confession, in a magazine article of the day, that he did not understand the _Rock Limpet_, though he added a kindly longing 'for the old day, before Mr. Turner had lighted on the "Fallacies," and could see like other people.'[25] But was Mr. Ruskin in any better plight? Was _he_ any nearer the painter's meaning? Hear his own story:--

'He (Turner) tried hard one day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of "Napoleon" before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way. But I could not guess, and he wouldn't tell me!' It is hard after this to censure so amiable a jester as the late Mr. a'Beckett, for burlesquing the strange picture called 'Hurrah for the whaler _Erebus_--another fish!' in the words proposed to be substituted--'Hallo, there--the oil and vinegar--another lobster salad!'[26]

[25] 'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the _Rock Limpet_." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote--

"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like
The soldier's nightly bivouac, alone
Amidst a sea of blood.......
......_but you can join your comrades!_"

FALLACIES OF HOPE.

'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular--

"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,
And _merit's corse_ was yielded to the tide."

(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)