Chapter II: Part 2

The distinctive peculiarity of the workmanship of this, as indeed of all Cotman’s drawings, is his reliance on the clear stain or rich blotting of the colour on paper preserved in all its freshness. The aims of representation are forced so much into the background that the artist seems to be mainly intent on the discovery and display of “the beauty native and congenial” to his materials. Mr. Binyon has drawn attention to the unconscious similarity of Cotman’s methods and aims to those of the great schools of China and Japan of more than a thousand years ago.

Among the better-known of Cotman’s drawings of this period we may mention the _Twickenham_ (1807), _Trentham Church_ (about 1809), _Draining Mill, Lincolnshire_ (1810), and _Mousehold Heath_ (1810); these are all reproduced in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903), in which Mr. Binyon’s illuminating essay was published. The beautiful drawing of _Kirkham Abbey, Yorkshire_, here reproduced (Plate III) by the courtesy of Messrs. J. Palser & Sons, is an admirable example of Cotman’s wonderful mastery in the use of decided washes of pure colour.

In 1817 Cotman made his first visit to Normandy, and after this date his colour becomes warmer, brighter, and more arbitrary. After about 1825 he indulges himself freely in the use of the strong primary colours, influenced probably by Turner’s daring chromatic experiments.

DAVID COX

[Born at Deritend, Birmingham, April 29, 1783; scene-painter in London, 1804; President of the “Associated Artists,” 1810; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813; drawing-master at Hereford, 1814-1826; published “Treatise on Landscape Painting,” 1814, “Lessons in Landscape,” 1816, “Young Artists’ Companion,” 1825, etc.; took lessons in oil painting from W. J. Müller, 1839; removed to neighbourhood of Birmingham, 1841, visiting Bettws-y-Coed yearly, 1844-1856; died June 7, 1859.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1805-’08; ’27-’29, ’43, ’44; Associated
Artists, 1809-’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813-’16,
’18-’59; British Institution, 1814, ’28, ’43; Society of British
Artists, 1841, ’42.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum
(Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and
Ireland; Birmingham Art Gallery; Manchester Whitworth Institute;
Glasgow, Manchester, Bury, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Memoir of the Life of David
Cox,” by N. Neal Solly, 1875; Wedmore’s “Studies in English Art,”
2nd series.

REPRODUCTIONS: Solly’s “Memoir”; Masters of English Landscape
Painting (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903); “Drawings of David Cox”
(Newnes’s “Modern Master Draughtsmen” Series).]

It was not till about 1840, when he was fifty-seven years of age, that Cox managed to break free from the drudgery of teaching. This drudgery during the greater part of his life undoubtedly exercised a mischievous effect upon his art. Besides wasting so much of his time, and thus preventing him from attempting works which required sustained efforts, it forced him to develop a mechanical and facile dexterity of style. He got into the habit of “slithering” over the individual forms of objects, making his rocks and trees as rounded and shapeless as his clouds, in a way that irritates any one who has learned to use his eyes. There is some truth in John Brett’s remark that “the daubs and blots of that famous sketcher (David Cox) were just definite enough to suggest ... the most superficial aspects of things,” though it may have been prompted by envy and exasperation.

Cox’s reputation nowadays rests to a large extent on the drawings he made after 1840. _Hayfield with Figures_, _The Young Anglers_ (1847), the _Welsh Funeral_ (1850), _The Challenge_ (1853), and _Snowden from Capel Curig_ (1858) were among the fine things produced by the grand old artist during the last years of his life. Such moving and powerful works are stamped with the sincerity, simplicity, and rugged dignity of David Cox’s own character.

SAMUEL PROUT

[Born at Plymouth, Sep. 17, 1783; settled in London, 1811; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1819; published “Rudiments of Landscape,” etc., 1813, “A New Drawing Book for the Use of Beginners,” 1821, and other drawing books; published lithographs of his Continental drawings, The Rhine, 1824, Flanders and Germany, 1833, France, Switzerland, and Italy, about 1839; died at Denmark Hill, Feb. 1852.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1803-’05, ’08-’10, ’12-’14, ’17, ’26,
’27; British Institution, 1809-’11, ’16-’18; Associated Artists,
1811, ’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1815-’51.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum
(Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and
Ireland; Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums; Manchester Whitworth
Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Bury Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Ruskin, in “Art Journal,” 1849,
“Modern Painters,” and “Notes on S. Prout and W. Hunt”; Roget’s
“History of the Old Water-Colour Society,” 1891; “D. N. B.,”
“Sketches by Samuel Prout” (THE STUDIO Winter Number, 1914-’15),
with text by E. G. Halton.

REPRODUCTIONS: Ruskin’s “Notes,” etc., 1879-’80; “Sketches by
Samuel Prout” (THE STUDIO Winter Number, 1914-’15).]

Up to 1819 Prout’s work was confined to the making of English topographical drawings and marine subjects. They show Girtin’s influence mainly, and they are stolid, heavy-handed, and rather dull.

In 1819 Prout went to France, and in 1821 to Belgium and the Rhine provinces. The drawings made from his sketches appeared in the exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and attracted a great deal of interest and admiration, partly on account of their novel subject-matter--for the public was beginning to weary of the numberless views of Tintern Abbey, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon Castles, and other English subjects, with which it had been surfeited during the preceding twenty years--and partly on account of Prout’s boldness of manner and marked feeling for the picturesque. Having struck this successful vein of subject-matter Prout continued to work it till the end of his life, producing a great quantity of water-colours of Continental buildings, all executed on the same general principles, and several series of admirable lithographs from his sketches and drawings.

Ruskin liked Prout and admired his work inordinately. In “Modern Painters” he calls him “a very great man”--which is absurd--and says that his rendering of the character of old buildings is “as perfect and as heartfelt as I can conceive possible.” Some people may prefer the buildings in Turner’s early drawings, in Cotman’s, Girtin’s, and Bonington’s works. But Prout’s work is uniformly successful within its own limitations; it is bold, workmanlike, and picturesque, and its subject-matter is full of inexhaustible interest and delight.

PETER DE WINT

[Born at Stone, Staffordshire, Jan. 21, 1784; apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, 1802; student R. A. Schools, 1809; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810, member, 1811, and 1825; died at 40 Upper Gower Street, June 30, 1849.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1807, ’11, ’13-’15, ’19, ’20, ’28;
British Institution, 1808, ’13-’17, ’21, ’24; Associated Artists,
1808, ’09; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810-’15, ’25-’49.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: V. and A. Museum (Oil and
Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and
Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester,
Glasgow, Bury, Norwich, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Peter De
Wint,” 1888; Roget’s “History,” etc.; “D. N. B.”

REPRODUCTIONS: Armstrong’s “De Wint”; “Masters of English Landscape
Painting” (THE STUDIO Special Summer Number, 1903).]

De Wint’s work may be described as a cross between that of Girtin and Cotman. Girtin was his first source of inspiration. From him he learned the value of breadth of effect and simplicity of design. From Cotman he learned to distil his colour harmonies from Nature. As a draughtsman he was less of a mannerist than Girtin, and he had not Cotman’s marvellous feeling for the beauties of abstract design.

De Wint had Dutch blood in his veins, and he had a good deal of the Dutchman’s solidity of character and stolid realism. His drawings always look like bits of real life. They are nearer to the common experience of Nature than either Turner’s, Cozens’, Girtin’s, or Cotman’s works. But his homely realism is always restrained by his respect for the medium he worked in and by his innate sense of style.

His work is well represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum by drawings like _Bray on the Thames, from the Towing Path_, _Hayfield_, _Yorkshire_, and _Westmoreland Hills, bordering the Ken_, all lent to that Museum from the National Gallery; and of his famous works in private collections we may mention _Cookham-on-Thames_, recently in the Beecham Collection, _The Thames from Greenwich Hill_, once in the collection of James Orrock, and _Near Lowther Castle_.

For all his “objectivity,” his steadiness of poise, his calm strength of character, De Wint’s work is intensely personal and original. The number of admirers of his manly and felicitous work has steadily increased since his death, and can only go on increasing as the public gets more opportunities of seeing his noble works with their superb mosaic of rich, deep, and harmonious colour.

RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON

[Born at Arnold, near Nottingham, October 25, 1802; received some instruction from Francia at Calais, 1817; studied at the Louvre and Institute, and under Baron Gros, at Paris; first exhibited at the Salon, 1822; made lithographs for Baron Taylor’s “Voyages Pittoresques dans l’ancienne France,” “Vues Pittoresques de l’Ecosse” (1826) and other works; visited England with Delacroix, 1825; died during a visit to England, 1828.

EXHIBITED: Salon (Paris), 1822 (Water-Colours), ’24
(Water-Colours), ’27 (Oils and Water-Colours); Royal Academy, 1827,
’28; British Institution, 1826-’29.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: Louvre; National Gallery; National
Portrait Gallery (a small drawing of himself); V. and A. Museum
(Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; Wallace Collection;
Manchester Whitworth Institute; Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester,
and Glasgow Art Galleries; National Gallery of Ireland.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Annual Register” and
“Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1828; Cunningham’s “Lives,” etc.;
Redgrave’s “Dictionary”; THE STUDIO, Nov. 1904; Catalogue of
Bonington’s Lithographs, by Aglaüs Bonvenne (Paris), 1873;
“Influence de Bonington et de l’Ecole Anglaise sur la Peinture de
Paysage en France,” by A. Dubuisson (Walpole Society’s Vol. II.).

REPRODUCTIONS: “Series of Subjects from Bonington’s Works,”
lithographed by J. D. Harding (twenty-one plates), 1828;
Monkhouse’s and Hughes’s works cited above.]

Bonington was the most brilliant of the later school of topographical artists--those who used the full resources of water-colour for the production of pictorial effects. The drawings he produced during his short life--for he died at twenty-six, may be divided into purely topographical subjects, like the _Street in Verona_ (V. and A. Museum); river and coast scenes, like the _Rouen_ (Wallace Collection); and figure subjects, in which historical costume played the chief part, like the _Meditation_ and several other drawings in the Wallace Collection.

His drawings are amazingly dexterous, firm and large in handling, finely composed, and wonderfully rich in tone and colour. His influence on English artists was considerable, particularly on W. J. Müller, T. Shotter Boys, and William Callow.

As he worked mostly in Paris his best paintings and drawings are generally to be found in the French private collections. That is probably why he is better known and more warmly appreciated in France than in England. An authoritative book on Bonington’s life and work is much needed. Just before the war broke out it was rumoured that a work of this kind, the joint production of Monsieur A. Dubuisson and Mr. C. E. Hughes, was about to be published by Mr. John Lane. Such a work will be doubly welcome, for it will help us to realize the amazing quantity of work Bonington managed to produce in his short life, and its wonderful quality; and it should benefit Bonington’s reputation by drawing attention to the large number of drawings and paintings to which, in our public and private collections, his name is wrongly and ignorantly given.

MYLES BIRKET FOSTER

[Born at North Shields, February 4, 1825, of an old Quaker Family; educated at the Quaker Academy at Hitchin, Herts, where he had lessons from Charles Parry, the drawing master; apprenticed to Ebenezer Landells, the wood-engraver, 1841-1846; engaged chiefly on book-illustration till 1858, after that time devoted mostly to painting; Associate “Old” Water-Colour Society, 1860, member, 1862; painted in oils 1869-1877, after which he abandoned it in favour of water-colours; died at Weybridge, March 27, 1899.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1859, ’69-’77, ’81; Society of Painters
in Water-Colours, 1860-’99; Society of British Artists, 1876; Royal
Scottish Academy, 1871, ’75.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum
(Water-Colours); Birmingham, Manchester, and Bury Art Galleries.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Art Annual,” 1890; “Athenæum,”
April 1, 1899; “D. N. B.” (Supplement); “Birket Foster,” by H. M.
Cundall, 1906.

REPRODUCTIONS: “Art Annual,” 1890; Cundall’s “Birket Foster.”]

In his choice of subjects Birket Foster confined himself generally to roadside and woodland scenes, and in these he sought prettiness rather than the deeper and more profoundly poetical emotions. His work is neat and extraordinarily accomplished, but his style being always the same made its many merits seem mechanical and unfeeling. Unlike the older men he avoided the use of broad washes of transparent colour, used body-colour freely, and finished his work with elaborate stipplings.

His standard of excessive finish, his general methods of work and choice of subject-matter, were violently opposed to those of the younger men who came after him. For this reason, and also because of the great popularity he enjoyed, Birket Foster’s work has excited the animosity of “superior persons” and æsthetes. But their cheap and easy sneers merely mark the inevitable reaction which follows a period of indiscriminating praise. Doubtless Birket Foster was not the great artist his contemporaries thought him to be. But his work must figure in any well-balanced history of British landscape painting, if only because it expresses so fully and abundantly, and with so much technical success, the artistic ideals of a large part of the nineteenth century. But it also deserves consideration for other reasons. Birket Foster’s grace and prettiness were the results of his sincere and unaffected love of the orderliness and real beauty of the life of the English countryside. He had a genuine affection for the themes he painted, and he painted them in the way he thought best. Fashions in technical matters change, slowly perhaps but inevitably, and I shall be very much surprised if the future will not be readier than we are to-day to give Birket Foster’s work its due meed of affectionate admiration.

ALFRED WILLIAM HUNT

[Born in Bold Street, Liverpool, Nov. 15, 1830; educated at Liverpool Collegiate School and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he entered with a scholarship, 1848; a fellow of Corpus, 1853-1861; Associate of Liverpool Academy, 1854, member, 1856; Associate Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1862, member, 1864; died May 3, 1896.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1854, ’56, ’57, ’59-’62, ’70-’75, ’77,
’79-’83, ’85-’88; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’93;
Society of British Artists, 1846, ’59, ’60, ’70, ’73, ’74;
Grosvenor Gallery, 1882, ’87; New Gallery, 1888, ’90; Portland
Gallery, 1854-’56, ’60; Dudley Gallery (Oil), 1872.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum
(Water-Colours); Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham Art Galleries.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Athenæum,” May 9, 1896;
Catalogue B. F. A. Club’s Exhibition, 1897; “D. N. B.”
(Supplement); “One Way of Art,” by Violet Hunt, “St. George’s
Review,” June 1908.

REPRODUCTIONS: One in “The Old Water-Colour Society” (THE STUDIO
Spring Number, 1905).]

Of all the artists influenced by Ruskin’s propaganda in favour of Naturalism Alfred William Hunt was probably the most sensitive and the most poetical. He was as ardent a student of “natural facts” as John Brett, Holman Hunt, or any other of Ruskin’s protégés, but his work was never, like so much of theirs, merely literal and tedious. His works prove to demonstration how little artistic theories count in determining the value of a work of art. We know Ruskin’s theories of realism were all wrong, but the sensitiveness of Alfred Hunt’s nerves, the intensity and rightness of his emotions, redeemed his work and gave it an inevitable stamp of greatness.

In the absorbingly interesting account of her father’s methods of work contributed by Miss Violet Hunt to “St. George’s Review” (1908) the demands made by his art on the nerves and character of the artist are vividly described. His daughter tells us that she has seen “delicately stained pieces of Whatman’s Imperial subjected to the most murderous ‘processes,’ and yet come out alive in the end.” Hunt “scrupled not to ‘work on the feelings of the paper,’ as his friend George Boughton used to tell him, “He severely sponged it into submission; he savagely scraped it into rawness and a fresh state of smarting receptivity. Yet some of the drawings that have suffered _peine forte et dure_ are among the most cherished assets of certain private collectors, such as Mr. Newall and the late Mr. Humphrey Roberts.”

The “subtle finish and watchfulness of nature” which Ruskin praised in Hunt’s work was only the raw material of his art. It was the fervour and energy with which he subdued his facts to a genuinely poetic unity of feeling and expression that make Hunt’s drawings so significant and beautiful. To-day Hunt seems to be forgotten by all but a small number of admirers, but works like his _Durham Misty with Colliery Smoke_, _Bamborough from the Sands_, _Cloud March at Twilight_, and many others as poignant and as beautiful, are sufficient guarantees that he will not always be neglected.

JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER

[Born at Lowell, Massachusetts, July 10, 1834; lived in Russia, 1843-’49; studied at the Military Academy, West Point, 1851-1854; engaged on United States coast and geodetic survey for about a year; went to Paris, 1855, and studied in Gleyre’s studio; published set of thirteen etchings--“The French Set”--1858; settled in London, 1860; published “The Thames” set of etchings, 1871; libel action against Ruskin, 1878; bankrupt, 1879; “Ten-o’clock” lecture, 1884; portrait of Carlyle bought for Glasgow, 1891; “Grand Prix” for painting, and another for engraving, at Paris exhibition, 1900; died at 74 Cheyne Walk, July 17, 1903.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1859-’65, ’67, ’70, ’72, ’79; Society of
British Artists, 1884-’87; Grosvenor Gallery, 1877-’79, ’81-’84;
Dudley Gallery (Oil), 1871-’73, ’75; Dudley Gallery (Black and
White), 1872, ’79, ’80; Society of Portrait Painters, 1891-’93;
Royal Scottish Academy, 1899, 1901-’04.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; Glasgow Art Gallery.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “The Art of Whistler,” by T. R.
Way and G. R. Dennis, 1903; “Life of Whistler,” by E. R. and J.
Pennell, 2 vols., 1908; “Memoirs of Whistler,” by T. R. Way, 1912;
Wedmore’s “Whistler’s Etchings”; “D. N. B.” (Supplement).

REPRODUCTIONS: The “Whistler Portfolio” (THE STUDIO Special
Publication, 1904); the monthly issues of THE STUDIO; in Way’s and
Pennells’ works cited above, etc.]

In Turner’s and Alfred Hunt’s works the multitudinous objects of Nature are subdued to poetical and decorative purposes chiefly by the influence of the atmosphere. But though subdued in the final result the facts were always vividly present to the minds of these artists. With Whistler and all those who like him were influenced by the theories of Impressionism, such facts were less considered. They began with the study of values and tones, and relied almost entirely on the justness with which these were rendered, being content with a merely slight and grudging suggestion of the objects which were veiled in their envelopment of atmosphere. The difference, I admit, is only one of degree. But it accounts, I think, for the difference between a drawing like Whistler’s water-colour of _London Bridge_ (reproduced in Mr. Way’s “The Art of James McNeill Whistler,” p. 96) and, say, Alfred Hunt’s _Coast Scene near Whitby_ (1878).

The advantage of Whistler’s method of approach is that it throws greater emphasis on the decorative quality of the picture, the tones being capable of treatment as a unity of colour harmonies--an advantage which Whistler clearly realized and diligently exploited.

It was not till about 1880 that Whistler took up water-colour painting. The _London Bridge_ referred to above was done soon after his return from Venice. He then used this medium for some fine drawings made in the Channel Islands, and from time to time in various places in England and abroad, chiefly at St. Ives and Southend. It is almost unnecessary to say that he used water-colour with the same unerring mastery he displayed in his etchings and pastels. But the curious will notice the use he made in nearly all his water-colours of the grey underpainting which played such an important part in the drawings of the early topographers. He did not, however, use this grey underpainting, as they did, merely to establish the broad division of light and shade. In his bold and skilful hands it did more than this; it formed the unifying element--the ground tone or harmony--which knit together the lovely tones and colours which made his works so charming and delightful to the eye.

The influence of Whistler’s methods and ideals is clearly marked in the works of men like J. Buxton Knight and C. E. Holloway, two artists who produced a greater volume of fine work in water-colour than Whistler. We might have chosen them on this account to take his place in our small gallery of representative water-colour painters, but the quality of Whistler’s work seemed to us of more consequence than their quantity. And though both these men--especially Buxton Knight--urgently demand fuller recognition than they have yet received, we are bound to admit that Whistler was a greater genius than either; and that seems to settle the matter.

(5) THE WORK OF TO-DAY

We have now traced the development in the past of subject-matter and technique in British landscape painting in water-colour, and we have surveyed as well as our poor memories would enable us to do so--for the Museums have long been closed and most private collections are inaccessible, and it is therefore impossible either to verify or renew our earlier impressions--the differing aims and diverse achievements of a few of those who have made our national art so glorious and so memorable. We have done this because the careful and attentive study of the history of an art provides the best, and, indeed, the only, means by which we can educate ourselves to value and appreciate it. Historical studies enable us to enlarge our sympathies and discipline our tastes, so that the man who knows best what has been done in the past will be the first to appreciate the good work which is being done by living artists. He will also be the most indulgent critic of a young artist’s shortcomings, and the readiest to help and encourage him in his difficult struggle toward self-expression and mastery over his intractable material.

It is not, however, our business on the present occasion to praise the works with which this volume is enriched. In the first place, to do so is quite unnecessary, because the works are here to speak for themselves, or rather such excellent colour-reproductions of them that almost all their charm and beauty have been preserved; and, in the second place, to do so would be impertinent, because the fact that these drawings have been selected by the Editor of THE STUDIO for publication in this way is a sufficient guarantee of their merit and importance. I shall, therefore, confine my remarks rather to the general character of their subject-matter and treatment than to their individual excellences. In this way the following observations may be taken as an attempt to continue to the present day the survey of the past which occupied us in a previous chapter.

In tracing the development of subject-matter in the works of the artists of the nineteenth century we have seen that they generally gave prominence to the place represented, with all its historical and literary associations. Whistler was the chief exception to this tendency, as in his work the decorative and emotional elements of the picture itself were most prominent. Whistler’s example has been followed by many of the living artists. Men like Clausen and Mark Fisher are shy of any suggestion of what has been called “literary subject” or “guide-book” interest. But though the works of such artists, from their absence of topographical interest, seem to claim classification as poetical landscapes, yet, if we compare them with the earlier poetical landscapes of men like Lambert, Zuccarelli, George Smith of Chichester, and the elder Barret, we find they have undergone a very thorough change of character. The older work owed more to the study and imitation of the Old Masters than to the study and representation of Nature. In the place of formulas and motives borrowed from Claude and Poussin the modern men give us their own interpretations of what they have seen and felt in the presence of Nature. So that if we take a drawing like Mark Fisher’s _Landscape_, reproduced in the present volume (Plate VI), we find that it is, or at any rate that it looks as though it is, the representation of an actual place, though the place is unnamed and therefore devoid of any historical or literary interest to the spectator. Such a drawing may therefore very well be classed as topographical, though the topographical matter is used in the service of other than strictly topographical purposes.

However, in the works of other distinguished living artists, like Matthew Hale, Albert Goodwin--whose _Lincoln_ is here reproduced (Plate VIII), Hughes-Stanton, Lamorna Birch, Wilson Steer, Rich, Gere, etc., we often find a similar use of topographical matter for the purposes of poetical expression, but at the same time they show a marked preference for the choice of subject-matter enriched by historical and literary associations.

The majority of drawings here reproduced are the outcome of their painters’ loving and tireless effort to render the appearances of Nature in their exact tones and colours. There is little of conscious artifice or preoccupation with abstract design of form or colour in drawings like C. M. Gere’s vivid presentment of light--_The Round House_ (Plate VII), Eyre Walker’s _Pool in the Woods_ (Plate XIII), R. W. Allan’s _Maple in Autumn_ (Plate XV), George Houston’s _Iona_ (Plate XX), or in Mark Fisher’s _Landscape_. But though their aims, broadly speaking, are the same, viz. the truthful rendering of particular effects of light and particular scenes, yet each work is different from each, and each is personal and individual, because the artist has painted only what he liked and knew best.

In other cases, generally in the choice of subject-matter, one is often reminded of the works of the older men, only to realize as the result of the comparisons thus provoked the important differences which distinguish the new treatment and justify the repetition of the same motives. Sir Ernest Waterlow’s _In Crowhurst Park_ (Plate XIV), for instance, calls up memories of David Cox, of E. M. Wimperis, Tom Collier and many others who have delighted in such wide surveys of rolling down and moving cloud. But Sir Ernest’s work holds its own against all our historical reminiscences; it is so vivid, so evidently the outcome of the artist’s experiences, so freely and confidently set up. Robert Little’s _Tidal Basin_, _Montrose_ (Plate X), Lamorna Birch’s _Environs of Camborne_ (Plate V), and Murray Smith’s _On the Way to the South Downs_ (Plate XXII), justify themselves in the same way. How easily, too, can we imagine Girtin or Cozens painting the scene which Russell Flint has portrayed so vividly in his _April Evening, Rydal Water_ (Plate XIX). Yet how differently they would have painted it!

In all this one sees the Naturalistic movement begun in the nineteenth century still at work, with its inevitable tendency towards Pantheism--its exaltation of Nature at the expense of man and the individual. Moralists have dwelt upon its dangers in the deadening effect it is supposed to produce upon the sense of individual responsibility and freedom of will. But with results like these before our eyes we are more inclined to dwell upon its advantages, its enlargement of our sympathies and knowledge.

But the tendency is not altogether in the direction of Pantheism. There is a group of artists, among whom I will only mention D. Y. Cameron, A. W. Rich, Albert Goodwin, and C. J. Holmes, which manfully upholds the supremacy of the artist over Nature. The influence of the art of the past has counted for more in works like Cameron’s _Autumn in Strath Tay_ (Plate XVIII), Rich’s _Swaledale_ (Plate XI), Goodwin’s _Lincoln_, and Holmes’s _Near Aisgill_ (Plate IX), than Nature herself. In these drawings the free-will of the individual triumphantly asserts itself. They are what they are because their makers loved art and particular forms of art first of all, and wanted to imitate them. Their inspiration came from within (from human nature) and not from without (from physical nature). But this is not to say that they are mere copies of other men’s works, for obviously they are nothing of the kind. They are at least as original and individual as any of the other drawings of which we have spoken. And these artists, too, study Nature just as keenly and as indefatigably as the realists, only their methods of study are different. With works like those illustrated in this volume--so different in aim and method, yet each so virile, sincere and personal--it is evident that water-colour painting is still a distinctly living art in this country. The British water-colour painters of to-day are “keeping their end up” as well as our soldiers, sailors and workers in other spheres, and, like them, they have earned the right to face the future with hearts full of confidence and hope.

“ENVIRONS OF CAMBORNE.” BY S. J. LAMORNA BIRCH, R.W.S.

(_In the possession of the Fine Art Society._)]

(_In the possession of Messrs. Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester Galleries._)

LANDSCAPE. BY MARK FISHER, A.R.A.]

“THE ROUND HOUSE.” BY CHARLES M. GERE.]

(_In the possession of E. Weber, Esq._)

“LINCOLN.” BY ALBERT GOODWIN, R.W.S.]

“NEAR AISGILL.” BY C. J. HOLMES.

(_In the possession of D. M. Carnegie, Esq._)]

“TIDAL BASIN, MONTROSE.” BY ROBERT LITTLE, R.W.S., R.S.W.]

“SWALEDALE.” BY ALFRED W. RICH.]

“CAUGHT IN THE FROZEN PALMS OF SPRING.” BY LIONEL SMYTHE, R.A., R.W.S.

(_In the possession of W. Lawrence Smith, Esq._)]

“A POOL IN THE WOODS.” BY W. EYRE WALKER, R.W.S.]

“IN CROWHURST PARK, SUSSEX.” BY SIR E. A. WATERLOW, R.A., R.W.S., H.R.S.W.]

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN WATER-COLOURS: SCOTTISH PAINTERS. BY E. A. TAYLOR

To lift the veil enshrouding the past and, though but dimly, recall its artists’ lives and works may appeal to a few only. The secrets of the great are already known; their deeds, as modern times desire, will be more rapidly found tabulated in any biographical dictionary; those whom chance and fate have less favoured will serve no other purpose than that of a poor remembrance. Nevertheless to separate those who followed the ways of art in other than water-colour landscape painting, I must recall some at least whose influence of mind and work aided to attain in Scotland the important position it commands to-day. Amongst the first connected with landscape painting the names of John and Robert Norie cannot fairly be omitted. Carrying on a business in Edinburgh at the beginning of the eighteenth century as house painters and decorators, it was in their decorative schemes that landscape played the most significant part, a form of decoration of considerable fashion in the Scottish capital at that time, and applied in various ways to doors, panels, mantelpieces, etc., of private houses; and apart from their business, both father and sons painted some landscapes of no mean order. It was in their workshops, too, that some afterwards notable artists, in their early life, served as apprentices, famous amongst them being Alexander Runciman (1736-1785), John Wilson (1774-1855), and James Howe (1780-1836).

Landscape painting, however, apart from such as was utilized in decorative schemes, had little or no public appreciators. Portraits and deeds of tragedy and valour seemed to occupy the artists’ minds; yet, like the curlew’s haunting note on loch and mountain side, there was an influence astir towards more peaceful scenes, a call that knew no limited geography, no definite law. In Ayrshire, Robert Burns (1759-1796) was weaving his nature songs; while Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840), in Midlothian, was preparing his palette to capture similar themes in paint. But perhaps the greatest impetus given to a wider public appreciation of the scenery of his own country was the publication in 1810 of Sir Walter Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” followed in 1814 by his more distinguished “Waverley Novels.” Yet previous to that universal awakening, in 1793 Alexander Nasmyth resigned his portrait and figure work for that of landscape, and it is from that period that this branch of painting in oils most vigorously commenced; while apart from the use of water-colour by topographical artists, perhaps the first few landscapes of importance were of a slightly earlier date, by the renowned architect Robert Adam (1728-1792). Not, however, until the time of Hugh William Williams (1773-1829) did the art become more pictorially practised. As Nasmyth has been credited with being the father of Scottish landscape painting in oils, Hugh William Williams might be more universally noted as, if not the father, at least one of the principal pioneers of landscape painting in water-colours. Taking a short extract from a criticism of an exhibition of his work in that medium opened in Edinburgh in 1822, the writer states: “There is room for more unqualified praise than in the works of any single artist in landscape painting to which this country has yet given birth.” Williams, however, was of Welsh parentage and born on board his father’s ship when at sea, his early upbringing being entrusted to an Italian grandfather in Edinburgh, where his name as an exhibitor and water-colour painter became prominent in 1810. His successes at that time enabled him to undertake a long sojourn in Italy and Greece, of which he published an account in 1820 illustrated with engravings and some of his own drawings, following it up with his exhibition in 1822 almost entirely composed of work done during his continental travels. Artistically his paintings are distinctly personal, and technically they are treated with broad simple washes over delicately outlined compositions. Another artist of the period remembered for his water-colour work was Andrew Wilson, born in Edinburgh (1780-1848), who, after a varied art life in Italy and England, occupied the post of master in the Trustees Academy of his native city in 1818. It was during this year that the remarkable David Roberts, who is said to have had a week’s tuition under Wilson, started to exhibit his famed architectural subjects; while a few years later Andrew Donaldson, whose work in the style of Prout, and little known beyond Glasgow, contributed in no slight degree to the advancement of water-colour painting in that city.

It was not, however, until 1832 that the water-colour landscapes of William Leighton Leitch began to make their public appearance, and biographical records place this artist and Williams as the two most prominent water-colour painters in Scotland in those days. From a Glasgow weaver to house-painter and scene-painter, ultimately instructing the Queen and other members of the Royal Household, Leitch’s life was certainly inspiring to young enthusiasts, and his work being of rather the “pretty” order was undoubtedly popular. But England claimed the later and more important days of his life.

To revive more distinctly local Scottish memories one must turn to the name of Thomas Fairbairn (1821-1885). Originally a shop-lad with a firm of dyers in Glasgow, Fairbairn had no rose-paved road to travel to attain his desires, and it is by his sketches of old houses and localities around Glasgow that he at first became known, and latterly by his literal paintings of forest scenery. Attracted by the wealth of subject at Cadzow, in Hamilton, it was there that in 1852 he met Sam Bough, who greatly influenced his further artistic outlook, as the English borderer did that of many other painters, and who twenty-three years later was lauded as being one of the most important figures in Scottish art.

Another prominent artist at the time was J. Crawford Wintour (1825-1882) who, though chiefly concerned with oil painting, showed his rarest artistic achievements in water-colour landscapes. To him and Bough the credit is due for creating a greater interest in that medium and branch of art than it had hitherto enjoyed. Nevertheless the various exhibitions gave but scanty appreciation to the water-colour painters. In their organizers’ minds the medium employed seemed to be rated higher than a work of art, despite water-colour being the one almost entirely employed by the supreme artists of China and Japan. Works in it were exhibitionally a little less than ignored, with the result that in Glasgow on December 21, 1877, ten enthusiasts held the first preliminary meeting of the now important Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water-Colours. The only member of that faithful gathering now living is the Society’s present Vice-President, A. K. Brown, R.S.A. It was not, however, until two months later that the Society was definitely formed, due to the proposition of Sir Francis Powell and seconded by William McTaggart, Powell being elected its first president and the virile Sam Bough vice-president on March 4, 1878. In November of the same year the new Society held its first exhibition in which 172 pictures were shown; and in February 1888, as the only representative art body of its kind in Scotland, it was empowered to use the prefix “Royal.” Its present membership numbers seventy-nine, of which eight are honorary, under the presidency of E. A. Walton, R.S.A. That the Society has been the means of promoting a wider public interest in water-colour painting in Scotland has been clearly evinced, and of recent years its exhibitions (now and again not entirely confined to the work of its members) have unquestionably stimulated a general interest in the art. Yet the day seems still far off when a more united appreciation will be based on a picture as a work of art, regardless of the value placed upon the medium in which it is produced.

In comparison with the old water-colourists’ slightly tinted drawings, p the chief elements most markedly notable in the modern development are the more extensively varied methods employed, aided considerably by the scientifically discovered greater range and assured permanency of pigments and materials. Technically, I think, the art of painting is closely allied to the art of acting; the actor utilizes voice and make-up according to the emotions and character he wishes to express, in the same way that the painter’s subject and thought to be fully indicated call for a process and technique affinitive with them. Within recent years it became the fashion amongst water-colour artists to strain the medium beyond its limited powers, the result being heavily framed works competing in a feeble way with oils, and subjects that would certainly have been better rendered artistically had this medium been employed.

With the exception of the work of De Wint and Cox, the greatest influence recognizable in the work of many of the Scottish water-colourists is of Dutch origin and easily traced to such masters as Anton Mauve, Josef Israëls, Bosboom and the Maris brothers; so much so in fact that with certain artists it has been difficult to discern the difference between many of their own paintings and those of the men by whom they were so obviously inspired. The method employed was as follows: after the drawing had been roughly suggested, the paper was submitted to a tubbing and scrubbing, so that the colour ate its way in until finally more direct and stronger touches were applied, desired lighter portions being wiped out while wet, or slicked up with a little body-colour. The method, though losing much that is inherently beautiful in water-colour, is nevertheless one which most aptly suggests certain phases of landscape dealing with poetic sentiment and mystery.

The one perfect artist in Scotland who most originally adopted the process was Arthur Melville (1855-1904). What good there was in it he certainly extracted; Melville, too, seldom resorted to the aid of body-colour. I have known him, if unsatisfied with any portion of his painting, to deliberately cut it out and dexterously insert a fresh piece of paper, and much trouble and experience went to bring about the apparent ease with which his work appears to have been done.

Another method extremely popular with some artists, though perhaps practised more on the Continent, was the almost entire use of body-colour on a tinted ground, a method which brings water-colour painting into a closer relation to that of oils. In other than capable hands it has a tendency to lack freshness, giving an opaque and chalky quality to the work. But when used by a few artists in this country who have fully realized its possibilities and limitations, some excellent results have been achieved, pre-eminent amongst them being those by the Newcastle artist, Joseph Crawhall, by whom his many Scottish associates were inspired to a remarkable degree. His paintings, principally of birds and animal life, in the various exhibitions were always outstanding, and to-day there is little if any work of this character being done that can surpass it.

Water-colour, however, used direct without the assistance of scrubbing, scraping and body-colour shows without question the medium at its best. As a process used in what is termed the purist’s method, there certainly is no other that can compete with it for affinitive landscapes, and what has been done even experimentally in it, by other than water-colour artists, represents, perhaps, the finest examples of genuine art they have left us. With the exception of the short-lived George Manson (1850-1876), Tom Scott, R.S.A., R. B. Nisbet, R.S.A., and Ewen Geddes, R.S.W., one might safely say that all the Scottish water-colourists are equally conversant with oils, though in recent years Nisbet has been devoting much of his time to the latter medium.

Perhaps the first artist in Scotland to realize the brilliancy of Nature in water-colour was the late William McTaggart (1835-1910); his landscapes are all veritably untricked effects of the land’s and sea’s sunlit and wind-swept moods in which his spontaneous and untrammelled method aided to a considerable extent his ability to maintain the high artistic quality of his pictures in oils.

A less vivid outlook attracts the essentially water-colour artist, R. B. Nisbet, his landscapes being almost exclusively low-toned aspects of Nature, and technically similar to the works of the previously mentioned Dutch masters. Universally his work has been vastly appreciated and probably he can claim more official honours than any other Scottish water-colour painter. Not a few of the younger men owe some of the rarer qualities in their work to his sympathetic influence.

In companionship with Nisbet, Tom Scott is probably now, with the exception of Ewen Geddes, the only entirely water-colour painter in Scotland. His _motifs_, however, being chiefly inspired by the glamour surrounding the Borderland, are more of a figured historical nature, but not the least emotional pleasure is derived from their distinctive landscape settings.

Incidentally humble crofts and lowland scenery attract the artist in Ewen Geddes, and as a painter of snow landscapes, I doubt if there is another water-colourist who as sensitively portrays the spirit of the wintry day. But to pick and choose from amongst the many artists whose work entitles them to be more than briefly mentioned, regardless of individual precedence, one may not omit W. Y. MacGregor, A.R.S.A., whose inspiring enthusiasm as father of the famed Glasgow School of Painters is historically honoured, and whose latter-day charcoal and water-colour landscapes are not the least distinctive expressions of genuine art; while amongst younger men, prominently known, are the distinguished exponent C. H. Mackie, R.S.A., R.S.W., whose work and ideas declared in various mediums are extremely invigorating, and J. Hamilton Mackenzie, R.S.W., A.R.E., who, as well as a painter in oils, pastellist and etcher, is an admirable water-colourist. To further enumerate one must include the names of such personal landscape artists as J. Whitelaw Hamilton, A.R.S.A., R.S.W., Archibald Kay, A.R.S.A., R.S.W., T.M. Hay, R.S.W., Alexander MacBride, R.I., R.S.W., Stanley Cursiter, R.S.W., James Herald, and Stewart Orr.

But to deal more minutely with the artists who are here represented, A. K. Brown (Plate XVI) must take precedence for his untiring services rendered to the promotion of the delightful art of water-colour painting in Scotland. Though born in Edinburgh in 1849, it has been in Glasgow that the greater part of his life has been lived, and with the art affairs of that city he has been most directly connected. His early years were spent there as a calico-print designer, the artistic relationship of which soon led him to the higher ideal of landscape painting, the hills and glens as seen from a moorland road or mountain burn being the themes that most intimately allured him; yet not that aspect of the rugged inhumanity of the hills, but where man has trod, and where the shepherd’s whistle may be familiarly heard. It is, too, that sensation of friendliness felt amongst the hills that pervades his works. Treated with a methodical tenderness, they never exhibitionally assert themselves, but must be seen singly to convey their full attractiveness.

In early association next to A. K. Brown would be R. W. Allan, born in Glasgow in 1852 (Plate XV). In his young days, inspired by his father who was a well-known lithographer in the city, he certainly had not the usual students’ struggles to contend with, and was soon one of the few Scottish painters in water-colour who fully realized the beauty of the unsullied quality the medium possessed, by his broad decisive handling in comparison with the prevalent minute finish indulged in. It is now, however, about thirty-five years since he left his native city for London, where he has not only become a distinguished painter in oils, but also a prominent member of the “Old” Water-Colour Society.

Two years later than R. W. Allan, James Paterson (Plate XXI) was born in Glasgow, and is noted there as one of the first artists energetically active, with W. Y. MacGregor, in forming a bolder style of painting than had been previously fashionable, and who, with the grouping of a few other enthusiasts later, became known to the art world as the Glasgow School of Painters. Their revolutionary aims and ideals influenced to a remarkable extent artists and painting in general throughout Scotland. Though equally well known as a painter of the figure and occasional portraits, it is as a landscapist that Paterson’s reputation has been most uniquely established, his present Dumfriesshire home providing him extensively with subjects in harmony with his earlier technically broad sympathies.

Not so closely connected with the Glasgow School movement as James Paterson, James Cadenhead, born in Aberdeen in 1858 (Plate XVII), became somewhat imbued with its views. Like the majority of now celebrated water-colourists, oil painting claimed his first attention. Less realistic in outlook than his brother artists, his work assumed a more conceptionally decorative tendency and displayed a flat treatment, technically similar to that which one associates with the landscape artists of Japan. It was by such individual features that attention was drawn to his work, and in 1893 he was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and nine years later an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, where, in both exhibitions, his work shares with that of other leading artists a distinctive admiration.

Turning to the illustration _Suffolk Pastures_, by E. A. Walton (Plate XXIV), one finds the work of an artist whose ability as a painter is unanimously respected amongst his fellows. Born in Renfrewshire in 1860, he is also one who has been historically associated with the revolutionary Glasgow School; originally a landscape artist, he is nevertheless one of the leading Scottish portrait painters. But to confine my appreciation to his landscape work, it is with a lingering doubt whether it be his examples in oils or water-colours which are the more enticing if a choice were demanded. It is probably to his work in the gentler medium I would assign the talent of the man and the artist as being most completely revealed, especially favouring those drawings executed on a grey-brown millboard, or some other similarly tinted paper, with which his skilful use of body-colour mingles and expresses his prenurtured vision of design and colour harmonies for which he is so greatly esteemed.

Five years later than E. A. Walton, D. Y. Cameron was born in Glasgow (Plate XVIII). With the exception of Muirhead Bone, there is no other Scottish artist whose pre-eminence as an etcher is as universally admitted. Within recent years his reputation as a painter has been rapidly becoming as widely acknowledged. In his early etchings, oils, and water-colours, though previous masters’ influences were easily detected, his gift of selection and fitness placed his results on a higher artistic plane than those by whom he had been evidently inspired, and to-day his work is always amongst the most dignified and refined in any exhibition. Technically he resorts to no fumbled trickery, nor does he strain any of the means he uses beyond their own inherent powers. Before his landscapes one feels the mood of time and place charmingly interpreted, such moods of Nature, when the trivialities of the day have passed, or only those remain which fittingly appeal, with their silent ponderings.

In 1869, at Dalry, Ayrshire, George Houston was born (Plate XX), and it is as a painter of that part of Scotland that his name became most in evidence before the Scottish art world in 1904 by a large-scaled canvas, _An Ayrshire Landscape_, shown at the exhibition of the Glasgow Fine Arts Institute. No little praise was bestowed upon it by artists and public alike, resulting in its being purchased for the City’s permanent collection. But memories recall other earlier and smaller works creatively quite as important. To place Houston amongst the Scottish artists is to do so individually, as his work is extremely personal, both technically and compositionally. Late winter and early spring landscapes attract him most, the time, too, when the earth is just dappled with snow, and the atmosphere and undergrowth alive in all their gentle colour-harmony. A keen lover of Nature, little escapes his observation, and it is those qualities of his mind and outlook, so carefully expressed in his oil paintings, that arrest admiring attention in his water-colours of similar themes.

By age, W. Russell Flint and D. Murray Smith belong to the group of younger Scottish painters, and otherwise, similarly, both artists have been resident in England for a considerable time. It is only within recent years that their work has appeared, as it were, anew in the Scottish exhibitions. W. Russell Flint (Plate XIX) was born in Edinburgh in 1880; originally studying in the art school there, he made his home in London in 1900, where, after a short course at Heatherley’s Academy, his name and work came rapidly into prominence. In 1913 he was awarded the silver medal for his water-colours in the Salon des Artistes Français. The following year he was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and a full member in 1917. As an artist both figure and landscape equally reveal his versatile ability. As an illustrator, too, he can claim no less distinctive recognition by his charming imagery expressed in that phase of his talent in the publications of the Riccardi Press. Thoroughly acquainted with the medium of water-colour, he applies it with no special mannerism other than the choice his vision dictates and the subjects of his mind most emotionally demand.

Though less varied paths tempt the outlook of D. Murray Smith (Plate XXII), his spacious conceptions of landscapes are uncommonly interesting. The admirable characteristics of largeness and freedom, which earlier prophesied a coming artist in the Scottish capital where he was born, have altered little. As an etcher of illustrative landscapes in those days he gained no meagre reputation, which he has vastly enhanced in England, where he settled some twenty-four years ago. In all his works there pervades a strong affection for flat expanses of Nature, unhampered in the composition by the human element, save for friendly wayside cottages or distant villages. It is, however, those examples where even such features are the least prominent, like his unpeopled roads, that have a most abiding charm, manifesting at times a vision and technical qualities akin to the rare landscapes by the old Dutch and early English masters, and to the French in their Corotesque and lyrical love of trees. And it is, perhaps, to the lyrical aspects of Nature that water-colour is most closely allied, and in such of her voiceless poems most expressively lives the spirit of the medium.

“THE MAPLE IN AUTUMN.” BY ROBERT W. ALLAN, R.W.S., R.S.W.]

“BEN MORE.” BY A. K. BROWN, R.S.A., R.S.W.

(_In the possession of J. Whitelaw Hamilton, Esq., A.R.S.A._)]

“A MOORLAND.” BY JAMES CADENHEAD, A.R.S.A., R.S.W.]

“AUTUMN IN STRATH TAY.” BY D. Y. CAMERON, A.R.A., R.S.A., R.W.S., R.S.W.

(_In the possession of R. Skinner, Esq._)]

“APRIL EVENING, RYDAL WATER.” BY W. RUSSELL FLINT, R.W.S., R.S.W.

(_In the possession of Messrs. Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester Galleries._)]

“IONA.” BY GEORGE HOUSTON, A.R.S.A., R.S.W.]

“FRENCHLAND TO QUEENSBERRY, MOFFAT DALE.” BY JAMES PATERSON, R.S.A., R.W.S., R.S.W.]

“ON THE WAY TO THE SOUTH DOWNS.” BY D. MURRAY SMITH, A.R.W.S.]

“A BIT OF HIGH CORRIE.” BY E. A. TAYLOR.

(_In the possession of Charles Holme, Esq._)]

“SUFFOLK PASTURES.” BY E. A. WALTON, R.S.A., P. R.S.W.

(_In the possession of John Tattersall, Esq._)]