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Fine Arts
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BRITISH
CONTEMPORARY
ARTISTS


HOPE
ENGRAVED BY FRANK FRENCH FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE
FREDERICK WATTS, R. A., IN THE POSSESSION OF WILLIAM
R. MOSS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY CAMERON & SMITH
BRITISH
CONTEMPORARY
ARTISTS
BY
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NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

MDCCCXCIX
COPYRIGH 7, 1899, BY
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i
INTRODUCTION
LTHOUGH less than six years has elapsed since the first
of these studies was begun, three of the seven artists of
whom they treat have departed from our midst. Leighton
and Millais died while the articles upon them were going
through the press for publication in Scribner's Magazine, and Burne-
Jones passed away in June of last year. Yet their art still lives, and
in this introduction I shall speak of them in the past tense as seldom
as possible.
The book makes no pretense to completeness and was constructed
on no carefully laid plan. Each study is a separate one, in which the
artist is treated as far as possible in relation to his own aims and
achievements, without comparison, odious or other, with his fellows. .
Nevertheless, I hope that it will be found sufficiently representative
and homogeneous to justify an independent existence. The artists
may all be said to belong to the elder generation of the latter half of
the present century and I have arranged the studies according to the
dates of their births. I have endeavoured to keep my own personal
preferences as far as possible in the background, but I cannot deem it
an unhappy accident that the principle of seniores priores has brought
the name of Mr. Watts to the head of the Table of Contents.
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vii
INTRODUCTION
These seven painters, though all of them belonged in their
{ %
younger day to what was the “new” or “advanced "school, may now
almost be regarded as “Conservatives.” They all follow more or less
the traditions of the British school (indeed of all schools) of figure-
painting. Subjects poetical, philosophic, romantic, and historical, as
well as portrait and genre, have encouraged these successors of
Haydon and Etty, of Reynolds and Gainsborough, of Hogarth and
Wilkie. None of them has been afraid of the modern bugbears of
“sentiment” and “the literary idea.” They have viewed the limits
of art as conterminous with those of human nature and at the same
time have preserved a high artistic level of execution. What is per-
haps a still more vital matter, each has expressed his own very distinct
personality and so created pleasures which none else could give. No
personalities, for instance, could be much more distinct than those
of Watts and Orchardson, or of Millais and Burne-Jones.
But though so different in many respects they are alike in one
—their subject is mankind, and their works are all more or less rich in
those human elements which are the very life of all great art, whether
it be music or poetry or painting. Whether we look at those spiritual
conceptions in which Watts has suggested the profoundest problems
of human life, or wander in that romantic wonderland where the deli.
cate fancy of Burne-Jones lived and revelled; whether we visit with
Alma-Tadema a Roman villa in the days of the Caesars, or, with
Orchardson, a Salon in Paris in those of Louis XVI; whether we
drink the classic air with Leighton or the very breath of daily life
with Millais, we are never far from our kind—its beauty or its char-
acter, its hopes or its fears, the sights of its eyes or the dreams of its
imagination.
The British school has always been distinguished by its strong
note of humanity. Not only our figure painters, but our landscape
painters have imbued their work with human feeling. They have
viii
INTRODUCTION
always (consciously or unconsciously) gone on the principle that art
was made for man and not man for art, and every description of sub-
ject which is of interest to men, as men, from the most poetical to the
most trivial, has been painted by them. This has been the source of
strength, but also of weakness, for it has sometimes led them to dis-
regard art for sentiment, and at others to attempt subjects far beyond
their powers. . It must, for instance, be admitted that the early at-
tempts at what was broadly called “historical” painting in the British
school were not attended with success. The pride which we feel (I
write as a Briton) in our . Reynolds and our Gainsborough, our
Hogarth and our Wilkie, our Constable and our Turner, does not
extend to our Barry or our West. Indeed, of all those British follow-
ers of “high art” who figured so largely in the eyes of their coun-
trymen during the first half of the present century, there is one, and
one only, who may be said to have held his ground to any appreciable
extent. This solitary exception is William Etty, and he holds it only
in virtue of his technical merit as a colourist and a flesh-painter. The
whole movement, whether considered in relation to its aim to raise the
fine art of England to the level of Raphael and Michael Angelo, or
its desire to inspire great feelings and teach noble thoughts, must be
regarded as a complete failure. When we consider also the many
lives wasted in the effort to rise to an ideal which was noble, if mis-
taken, and the terrible sufferings endured in the process by such men
as Barry and Haydon, the failure appears not only complete but
tragic. - - --
The reasons for their failure were many, but here we need only
mention two : the lack of individuality and the lack of skill. The
latter destroyed their artistic value, the former their human interest.
Their works are dead, if, indeed, they were ever alive. There is much
more vitality in the strenuous efforts made at the beginning of the
present half century to decorate the walls of the Houses of Parlia-
ix
INTRODUCTION
ment. Technical skill and power of design of no mean order were
required to execute the great wall paintings by Maclise of the “Death
of Nelson" and the “Meeting of Wellington and Blücher”; and
some of the smaller panels, like E. M. Ward’s “Last Sleep of Argyll,”
demand much more credit than is allowed to them to-day. But such
works, being generally conceived in the spirit of “historical genre,”
would never have satisfied the aspiration of the old devotees of
“high art.” It is, however, probable that many of the pictures we
reproduce would have done so; and if so, this is not the least no-
table fact in connection with the British art of the last half of the
nineteenth century. After more than a hundred years of strug-
gling, that sacred domain of “high art,” the road to which is strewn
with victims, has been reached. That it has been penetrated very
far I will not boast, but at least we can look at many poetical designs
of the present day without that sense of complete failure that we feel
before the works of West and Barry. s
It may seem to some a little surprising that this use of art for
the expression of the most exalted human sentiment should have oc-
curred simultaneously with other movements of an almost opposite
character; but the art of the latter half of the nineteenth century is
distinguished by diversity of all kinds. It has thrust forth feelers in
every direction and reached nearly all extremes. A hundred theories
as to the true functions and limits of art have been broached and fol-
lowed by a devoted band, until the sects of art are almost as many as
those of religion. So that after all it is only natural that while some
artists, like those who form the subject of this volume, are disting-
uished by the strength and fullness of the human note which vibrates
through their work, in that of another important section, comprising
many men of great skill, the human note has grown faint almost to
99 & 4
silence. Indeed the landscapes of extreme “realists,” “impression-
ists” and “iridescents” are almost inhuman (or at least unhuman) in
X
INTRODUCTION
their neglect of every aim beyond the imitation of phenomena. In
some of the figure-painting, even, the human note is very faint indeed,
and what sound there is, is often unpleasant and sometimes actually
repulsive. One of the most distinguished and original of modern
artists has done his best to show by practice and precept that art is
and should be independent of all things except itself—even of hu-
manity, except such as is contained in the purely artistic personality
of the artist himself. Fortunately, in his case, this artistic person-
ality is so unique, has such an affinity for so many delicate and de-
lightful effects, such a perception of what is rare and piquant in
appearance, such a true eye for tone and colour, and such a sense of
his tools and materials, that his best work has a charm inimitable.
The description of a work of art as “Un coin de la nature vu a trav-
ers un tempérament" could scarcely be more justly applied than to
a Whistler. This temperament of his is that of an artistic epicure.
He selects, he composes, he executes with fastidious care as though
he were preparing a dainty for the eyes. Some Frenchman is re-
ported to have described soup as a vehicle for conveying to the pal-
ate certain delicate vegetable flavours. Whistler's art may be sim-
ilarly described as a vehicle for conveying to the eyes certain delicate
arrangements of tone. Or, if this comparison with the culinary art
appear derogatory, let us take the analogy of music on which Whis-
tler himself is so fond of insisting. He arranges his passages of
tone, his notes of colour, so as to create delicate “symphonies,” and
“movements” which captivate the artistic sense. Not the least de-
lightful are his “nocturnes" producing chords of optical sensation, as
of waves heaving in the clear blue darkness of a summer night, or a
river with ships looming through the dusk, and its soft bosom
spangled with trembling gems. These and other gentle sensations
he has conveyed to the eyes more simply and purely than any other
painter. Stronger emotions he does not care to excite, and even in his
xi
INTRODUCTION
portraits the decorative feeling often seems stronger than the human.
They sometimes, indeed, suggest Velasquez, or rather perhaps the
ghost of that robust artist after a visit to Japan. But Whistler's art,
consummate as it is as far as it goes, in oil and water colour, with
pastel or etching-needle, or even in lithograph, and affording rare
delight to those whose artistic organization is very sensitive, has its
own natural deficiencies, and not the least of these is the faintness of
its human note.
I have dwelt more particularly upon Whistler's art, not only on
account of its special beauty, but because, of all masters of the more
“advanced" schools, he has had the greatest influence upon British
art. He belongs to what for want of a better term may be called the
“artistic” side of art, like Manet, Degas, and Claude Monet. To the
teaching and example of these and many others (mostly Frenchmen)
the British school of the present day owes much. They have furth-
ered greatly the emancipation of artists from the fetters of tradi-
tion, have helped them to see with their own eyes and speak with
their own voice. They cannot, however, strive they never so hard,
emancipate them from their common humanity. It is only natural
that the human and artistic elements in a man of artistic tempera-
ment should vary in relative strength, and there always have been
and always will be, two sections of artists, each of which leans more
to one side than to the other. This is good for art as one section
counteracts the extravagances of the other, and it is good for hu-
manity also, as it gives them both a Watts and a Whistler.
II
III
IV
VI
CONTENTS
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
BARON LEIGHTON, OF STRETTON
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A. .
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
I IQ
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VII
23 I
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A. .
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
George Frederick Watts, R.A. . º * > º tº e &
From life. Photographed by Cameron & Smith.
Miss Dorothy McCallan . © & º o * e
Photographed by F. Hollyer, from chalk drawing in the possession of the artist.
Orpheus and Eurydice . e º º º o & e
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by Cameron & Smith.
Miss Agathonikë Hélène Ionides (1893) . e & e
In the possession of Mr. Alexander Ionides. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
Death Crowning Innocence
Photographed by Cameron & Smith.
Paolo and Francesca . º * º º e tº e 2
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by Cameron & Smith.
Herr Joachim (1867). e o o o e º º se
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
G. F. Watts, R.A., By Himself. º º • e º e
In the possession of the Dowager Lady Bowman. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
John Lothrop Motley (1882) , º º e sp & *
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
Lord Tennyson . º e e º e º º
Photographed by F. Hollyer, after the unfinished study in oil in the possession of
the artist. The painting was finished May, 1890.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1865). º © e e º
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
Walter Crane (1893) e º e ©
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
* © º &
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XV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
From the Half-Length Portrait of Mary, Wife of Constantine
Ionides (1842) . Q e * tº * º º *
In the possession of Constantine Ionides, her grandson. Photographed by F.
Hollyer.
Iris . © te
e * > ge
The latest picture painted by Mr. Watts. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham . e * tº {º
In the possession of Hon. Percy Wyndham. Photographed by F. Hollyer.
The Rider on the White Horse (1881)
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer
The Throne of Death (Unfinished) .
In the possession of the artist. Photographed by F. Hollyer. -
Statue of Hugh Lupus at Eaton Hall, the Duke of Westmin-
ster's Country Seat near Chester & tº e
Photographed by F. Hollyer.
Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A. . e
From copyrighted photograph by Alfred Ellis.
The Vale of Rest . i.e. tº e sº e tº e * >
From photograph of drawing, loaned by Mr. H. Virtue Tebbs.
Etching—The Intercession of St. Agnes . g
By permission of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray.
Portrait of Lady Ripon (1853).
By permission of the Marquis of Ripon.
Pencil Studies of Heads for the Lorenzo and Isabella (1849)
By permission of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray.
Lorenzo and Isabella
Reproduced, by permission, from the original painting in the possession of the
Liverpool Corporation.
The Order of Release tº
(A portrait of Lady Millais.) Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Henry Graves
& Co.
Pencil Study for Head of Ophelia (1852). º g
By permission of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray. From photograph by Henry Dixon &
Sons.
Ophelia . o e o
By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves & Co.
Autumn Leaves © ſº º {{ ſº e C o ©
By permission of the Committee of the City Art Gallery, Manchester.
23
25
29
33
35
39
46
47
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53
54
55
59
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xvi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rosalind and Celia . º wº º º º º e e
Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Henry Graves & Co.
Souvenir of Velasquez . e e º e * e º
- By permission of the Royal Academy.
The Minuet © ſº e
Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Henry Graves & Co.
The Flood e * e
By permission of Arthur Lucas, Art Publisher, London, Proprietor and Copyrighter.
The Martyr of the Solway & º º º e º
Reproduced by permission, from the original painting in the possession of the
Liverpool Corporation.
“Stitch, Stitch, Stitch" (1876). e e •
By permission of Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., to whom the original was presented by
the artist. From photograph by Frederick Hollyer.
Portrait of Sir James Paget, F.R.S., Ex-President of the
Royal College of Surgeons, etc., etc., etc. (1872)
By permission of the Governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. From
photograph by Henry Dixon & Sons. -
Lord Leighton, Late President of the Royal Academy
From a copyrighted photograph made in 1895 by J Russell & Son.
The Summer Moon . © • * © Q ſº e gº
By permission of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi.
Study of a Girl . . e o o o - & º G
By permission of the artist.
Study for Fatidica . & º
By permission of the artist.
Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession through the
Streets of Florence . o tº Q o tº e
By permission of Her Majesty the Queen of England.
Memories . & e º o e e e Q e
By permission of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi.
“Hit l” º o &
By permission of the proprietors of the Art Journal, owners of the copyright.
The Music Lesson . w © e o tº º . .
By permission of the London Fine Art Society.
The Return of Persephone º * • © o º 5.
By permission of the London. Fine Art Society.
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75
77
79
86
87
88
92-93
95
98
99
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xvii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Bath of Pysche . e ſº g c Q e
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.
The Dying Message.
From the illustrations to “Romola.” By permission of George Smith, Esq. Re-
produced from the drawing on wood by the artist before the block was cut.
Athlete Strangling a Python . º © . {} ſº
Bronze statue. By permission of the artist.
Bianca © tº o o
By permission of the London Fine Art Society.
Leighton House—The Passage from the Vestibule to Arab
Hall . e wº -
From a copyrighted photograph by Bedford Lemere & Co.
Portrait of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart., after Watts's
Picture e o d wº tº tº ë te tº {}
Engraved by T. Johnson.
Study for the Masque of Cupid sº ©
Study of Figure for “Venus's Looking-Glass " .
Study for Head of the Virgin in “The Annunciation”
Study for “Pan,” in the Picture of “The Garden of Pan"
Portrait of a Nestorian Priest . g e e © *
Study of Drapery . e © o &
The God-Head Fires
Engraved by F. S. King. From a drawing for a picture in the Pygmalion Series.
The Depths of the Sea . * e
Photographed by Henry Dixon after the oil picture. By permission of the owner,
R. H. Benson, Esq.
The Doom Fulfilled . º g g * & tº dº e
From a cartoon for a picture in the Perseus Series. z
Study of a Head e & g Q o g e e
Study of a Head Sleeping º e e g *- gº
Flamma Vestalis te * &
From the oil picture. By permission of the owner, Lord Davey.
The Backgammon Players g e tº & º e
Engraved by E. H. Del'Orme. From a water-colour drawing. By permission of
Lord Battersea. - -
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I 25
I 27
I 28
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I 34
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xviii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Wheel of Fortune {e $º e tº º e
Photographed by Henry Dixon, from the oil picture. By permission of the owner,
R. H. Benson, Esq.
The Golden Stairs . e * º * o e tº *
Engraved by Frank French. From the oil picture. By permission of the owner,
Lord Battersea.
Memorial Tablet to Lady Lyttleton, in Coloured Glass . *
In the American Protestant Church at Rome.
The Annunciation
Engraved by F. S. King. From the oil picture. By permission of the owner, the
Earl of Carlisle -
Study of a Child e
Uriel. * e gº e e & © e i.e.
From a cartoon for a mosaic in the American Protestant Church at Rome.
Portrait of Burne-Jones . º g
Photographed from life, about 1885, by F. Hollyer.
Studies of Children
Portrait of William Quiller Orchardson, R.A. . g e ſº
In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Sketch for “The Salon of Madame Récamier”.
By permission of the artist.
Hilda, Daughter of W. Q. Orchardson, R.A.
By permission of the artist. .
Sketch for the Figure of Napoleon in Orchardson's Picture of
“Napoleon on Board H.M.S. Bellerophon, July 23, 1815 " .
By permission of the artist. -
Her First Dance
By permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell, L't'd, 160 New Bond Street,
London, owners of the copyright.
Her Mother's Voice . º tº e o tº
By permission of the artist and Mr. Henry Tate.
Sketch for “The Queen of Swords”. . . ſº © tº
By permission of Mr. Arthur Sanderson.
The Farmer's Daughter . e sº tº e
By permission of the Glasgow Gallery.
“Music, when Soft Voices Die, Vibrates in the Memory.”—
Shelley tº © tº © © • . tº g
By permission of Messrs. Hildesheimer & Co., L't'd.
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177
I 8 I
xix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. . . . & t o
By permission of Sir Walter Gilbey.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A. . e
From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.
Bacchus and Silenus . tº & e
Painted in 1875. This also decorated the ceiling of the Townshend House Studio,
but was destroyed by fire, and is here engraved for the first time.
A Nymphaeum . i.e. º tº o *
Painted in 1875—Now in Krum's Collection at Antwerp.
Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh's Granaries . g
- Painted in 1874.
Shy
Painted in 1883, and owned by Mr. Theodore Miller.
Dr. W. Epps, the Physician . ge tº & ©
Xanthe and Phaon—of Ebers’s “The Question " .
Water-colour, painted in 1883, in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.
The Earthly Paradise tº tº • e tº © º &
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.
The Entrance to the Temple . tº
R. A. diploma painting in 1882.
L. Lowenstam, the Etcher * > º • • e te .e
The Late Professor G. B. Amendola Making the Silver Statue
of Mrs. Tadema. © sº ſº e e tº tº e
Portrait of Mrs. C. W. Wyllie . tº e
Engraved by Henry Wolf. After a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.
Venus and Mars
Painted in 1872. This formerly decorated the ceiling of Mr. Tadema's studio at
Townshend House. It was destroyed by fire, and has never before been
engraved. -
The Sculptor's Model º © & tº e tº © (e
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.
Sir E. J. Poynter, P.R.A. . tº tº g *
By permission of the artist, after the portrait painted by himself. In the Uffizi
Gallery, Florence.
Knucklebones (1891) e ſº e ſº * •
By permission of Arthur Lucas, Esq.
I 92
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I95
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I99
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2 I 5
2 I 8
2 I 9
223
226
227
234
235
XX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure Study for “ Best Shot” Medal
Studies for the Ashanti War Medal .
“Best Shot.” Ashanti
Reproductions of two medals designed by Sir E. J. Poynter, P.R.A.
A Visit to AEsculapius (1880)
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.
Israel in Egypt . ſº º
By permission of I. C. Hawkshaw, Esq.
Study for Fresco at St. Stephen's, Dulwich
Studies of Heads for the Fresco at St. Stephen's, Dulwich
Study for Fresco at St. Stephen's, Dulwich
Pen-and-ink Study for Milanion in “Atalanta's Race” . *
Drawing for “Atalanta's Race,” differing from Completed
Picture - gº .
Two of the Studies for “The Queen of Sheba"
Undraped. Draped. -
Study for One of the Figures in “The Queen of Sheba".
Study for One of the Figures in “The Queen of Sheba".
A Corner of the Market-Place .
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.
The Ides of March (1883) * e *
By permission of the Art Gallery of the City of Manchester.
Outward Bound
By permission of H. Evans, Esq.
Studio of Sir E. J. Poynter, P.R.A. . .
By permission of Messrs. J. S. Virtue & Co.
Studies for Ewer with Story of Cupid and Psyche
237
238
239
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249
250
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254
255
257
258
259
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263
264
266
xxi
GEORGE
FREDERICK
WATTS
R. A.
GEORGE FREDERIck watts, R.A.,
FROM LIFE
PHOTOGRAPHED BY CAMERON & SMITH

PIIoTOGRAPHED BY F. Holly ER, FROM CHALK DRAWING IN THE Possession of THE ARTIST
MISS DOROTHY MC CALLAN
X/ HO was it who invented the phrase, “the
literary idea"? and did he quite understand
what he meant by it? Did it occur to him
that ideas are the property of the human mind
and not of any particular art; that though
some can be fully expressed by one art only,
and some better expressed by one art than an-
other, to deny the right of any art to express
or suggest what it can would be to impoverish
it very seriously? Literature would come off
better than painting, but how changed and
dull would it be if what may be called the “pic-
torial idea" were excluded from its territory.
Fortunately men of imagination who are also artists have always


5
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
refused to be strictly bound by pedantic theories, and the greatest of
them have ever been the first to break down any inconvenient barriers
between one art and another, which hampered the expression of their
thoughts. What has been will be, and even in the present day of
dominant “realism "we have several artists who endeavour to express
by paint such ideas as inspire them, without much regard as to whether
they are “literary” or not. With one of these, the late Sir E. Burne-
Jones, I have dealt in another of these studies, and this one is about
another, who has done as much as any artist of his generation to
maintain the claim of the art of painting not only to please and amuse,
but to elevate the mind by the expression of the noblest ideas. It has
been the strange fortune of Mr. Watts, who has never disguised the
didactic aim of his art, to have been more or less exempted from the
general condemnation which some modern critics have for many years
distributed impartially on all painters whose art is not entirely for
“art's sake.” He is still regarded by most of these as a true artist;
an artist as it were in spite of himself. And this he is even according
to his own account, for he has told me that he would have expressed
himself in words had that gift been vouchsafed to him. If one may
judge from his few published utterances, like his early criticism of
Benjamin Robert Haydon, his description of his own works, and his
delightful conversation, he underrates his own powers of effective
speech; but still it is not to be regretted that his dominant power of
expression has been graphic design, for this is a quality rarer even
than eloquence, and he possesses it in a degree of force and purity
which would have been exceptional at any time or in any country.
It was certainly by no ordinary strength of natural impulse that
Mr. Watts, like Sir E. Burne-Jones, was constrained to devote the
whole of his life to creating images of the unseen. The feeling of
“something not ourselves” permeates the whole of their subject art,
idealism invades their very portraits. The results are indeed differ.
6
º .* ORPHEUS AND EURY DICE-1N THE POSSESSION OF THE ARTIST

PHOTOGRAPHED BY CAMERON & smith
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
ent, for they spring from two different human beings, each of whom
has allowed his own genius to develop in harmony with his own sep-
arate individuality; neither has permitted any accident or fashion or
worldly consideration to mar or divert its normal growth.
Burne-Jones has the more romantic and more personal vision,
Watts the broader and simpler imagination, and so, though their lines
of thought often run near to each other, they can scarcely be ever
said to touch. So much at least may be said in comparison of these
two artists without approaching the “odious.” Nor is it any dispar-
agement to other living artists of imagination to say that Watts is
perhaps the most self-taught and self-directed of all. It must be re-
membered that he belongs to a generation before the Pre-Raphaelite
and later movements which have had so transforming an influence on
modern art. When he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, in the
year 1837, being then but twenty years old (he was born on the 23d
of February, 1817), the chief lights of poetical, or what was then
called “historical,” art were Etty, Eastlake, Hilton and Howard
among painters, and Baily and Gibson among sculptors. These were
all Academicians, and among the Associates there was not a man
from whom Watts's genius could draw much nutriment. Outside the
Academy was indeed Haydon, with his high aims and Titanic energy,
and inside was the great Turner, whose genius, though principally
shown in landscape, was all-embracing. Watts, no doubt, owed much
indirectly to both of these, but not in the way of training. They had
no influence on the schools of the Royal Academy, which he found
so useless to him that he withdrew from them after a few weeks' at-
tendance. He “haunted,” as he expresses it, the studio of William
Behnes, the portrait-sculptor, drawing from plaster casts, of which
Behnes had a good collection, but receiving no instruction from him.
Of professional education in the ordinary sense he had received none
when he exhibited “A Wounded Heron " and the portraits of two
Q
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
Miss AGATHoNikº HELENE 10NIDEs (1893)—IN THE Possession of
MR. ALEXANDER ION IDEs
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Hol-LYER
young ladies in
the Royal Acad-
emy in 1837.
He will tell you
that his real mas-
ters and stand-
ards of art were
the Elgin mar-
bles, and that
he derived from
them not only
his sense of form
and style, but
suggestions of
colour. In 1838
he sent another
portrait, in 1840
his first subject-
picture, “Isa-
bellae Lorenzo"
— in 1841 a
portrait of Miss
Brunton, and
the next year
a portrait of
Madame Ioni-
des and a scene
from “Cymbeline.” The portrait of this year is especially noteworthy,
as from that day to this Mr. Watts has painted a succession of por-
traits of the Ionides family—five generations in all.
The first of the
series were Constantine and Mary Ionides, painted about fifty years
--

IO
TH CROWNING INNOCENCE
DEA

PHOTOGRAPHED BY CAMERON & SMITH
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
ago; the last is their great-great-grandchild, Miss Agathonike Helène,
painted a few years ago, and surely one of the most charming of his
or any other artist's portraits of children. It is not given to many
artists to paint five generations of the same family, or to retain the
power at the age of seventy-six to present with such perfect freshness
and sympathy the grace and sweetness of a little girl.
From 1842 there occurs a break of six years in Mr. Watts's con-
tributions to the Royal Academy. At that time the art-world was
agitated by the proposal of the Fine Arts Commission to hold com-
petitive exhibitions of designs for the decoration of the Houses of
Parliament with scenes from the history of Great Britain. The first
exhibition was held in Westminster Hall in 1843. Artists young and
old threw their whole energies into their cartoons, from poor Haydon,
who had ever since 1812 been the consistent and loud-voiced insti-
gator of the scheme, to Watts and other young men, who had yet
their spurs to win. #
To Haydon the competition was a bitter disappointment, perhaps
the bitterest of his life, for he was unsuccessful; to Watts the result
was the reverse, for he obtained one of the first-class prizes with his
cartoon of “Caractacus led in Triumph through the Streets of
Rome.” “ The 4,300 which he received facilitated his desire to go
to Italy, the promised land of all young artists, and one day in the
year 1843 he presented himself at the Casa Ferroni, then occupied
by the British Legation at Florence, bearing a letter of introduction
to Lord Holland, the British Minister at the court of the Duke of
Tuscany. Here he not only received a welcome, but found a most
valuable and constant friend. He went to Florence for a short
stay; he remained for four years. On the walls of the Villa Careggi,
where Lord Holland lived, and where Lorenzo de' Medici died, still
* This was never carried out in fresco. Fragments of it are in the possession of Lord North-
bourne.
I3
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
remains a fresco by Watts of an incident relating to the death of
Lorenzo.” . - ; : - - -
But it is at Holland House that the happy effects of his intro-
duction to Lord Holland can be best seen. There, besides many
other portraits of the Holland family, are the sprightly portrait of
Lady Holland in a “Nice” hat, and the charming one of little Mary
Fox (afterward Princess Liechtenstein) with the big dog “Elia.” The
former was painted in Florence about 1843. To the Florence time
- belong also the portraits of the Countess Walewska and the Countess
Castiglione, and a series of sketches of Lord Holland's friends, includ-
ing many of the Italian nobility.
Time passed so pleasantly and quickly in Italy that, if it had not
been for a kind reminder from Lord Holland, Watts would probably
have missed the competition of oil paintings for the Houses of Parlia-
ment, which was held by the Fine Arts Commissioners in June, 1847.
He returned to England just in time to send in his picture of “King
Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Resist the Landing of the Danes,”
which duly obtained one of the first prizes, this time worth £500.
He also received a commission to execute in fresco the “St.
George and the Dragon,” which, begun in 1848, was completed in
1853, in the upper waiting-hall of the palace at Westminster. The
“King Alfred" is also in the “House,” having been purchased after
a time, for a small sum, by the Commissioners. -
He was now thoroughly possessed with the desire to stimulate
the love of noble art and the spirit of patriotism in England by the
adornment of the walls of public buildings with mighty frescoes of
great subjects, and he pursued this great aim with ardour for many
years after his return from Italy. If such a dream could be fulfilled
by the will of artists alone, every public building in England
* His fatal illness having aroused suspicions of poisoning, his friends seized his physician and cast
him down a well. A sketch in oil for the composition is in Mr. Watts's possession,
I4
- -
- - -
PAOLO AND FRANCESCA–IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ARTIST
PHOTOGRAPHED BY CAMERON & smith
would be covered with pictures; for, whatever else may be alleged
against British artists, it can never be said that they have been want-
ing in public and patriotic spirit, or have weighed their labour by the

I5
HERR JoAchim (1867)—IN THE Possession of THE ARTIST
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Hol-LYER
ounce, when it was to be turned to a noble use. Barry, half starved,
labouring at his huge pictures at the Society of Arts for the cost of his
materials, the Royal Academy as a body offering (in 1773) to deco-
rate St. Paul's at their own expense, are striking evidences in the


I6
|
|
º, -
G. F. WATTS, R.A., BY HIMSELF-IN THE POSSESSION OF THE DOWAGER LADY Bow MAN
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. HOLLYER
past; and of contemporaries, Leighton, Shields, Armitage, and others
have shown their willingness to work for public ends for nothing, or
for journeymen's wages. Not least of these is Watts, who executed
without fee the grand fresco of “Justice," 40 feet high by 45 feet long,

17
John Lothkop Motley (1882)—IN THE Possession of THE ARtist
PHOTOGRAPHED dy. F-HOLLYER
in the Hall of Lincoln's Inn, and offered to decorate the great hall at
Euston Railway Station with a series of mural paintings representing
the “Progress of Commerce,” for the bare cost of scaffolding and col-
ours. This was refused, and the regret which we must all feel at the
rejection of such a great offer is mitigated by the reflection that the
works, if executed, would probaby, ere this, have followed the fate of

18
LORD TENNY SON
PhotographED BY F. Hollyer, AFTER THE UNFINISHED study in oil 1N THE Possession of
THE ARTIsT. THE PAINTING was Finish Ed May, 1890
nearly all frescoes in England, and of most in other countries; while
we should have missed a number of smaller but equally noble pictures,
which, with proper care, will last for an indefinite time. The fresco
at Lincoln's Inn has already had to undergo extensive reparations in



I9
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1865)—IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ARTIST
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. HOLLYER
tempera. It is gratifying to record that the “Inn," in testimony of
their appreciation of this monumental work, presented to Mr. Watts
a cup and an honorarium of £500.*
*Among other mural paintings by the artist are a fresco in the Church of St. James the Less,
near Vauxhall Bridge, and “Achilles, Briseis, and Thetis,” at Bowood, the seat of Lord Landsdowne.

2O
wALTER CRANE (1893)—IN THE Possession of THE ARtist
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Hollyer
Mr. Watts has been but a fitful exhibitor, and you cannot in his
case, as in that of most English artists of distinction, trace his pro-
gress and career from the catalogues of the Royal Academy. Yet
the pictures which he sent to Trafalgar Square in 1848 and 1849
have some historic significance.
º
-
-


2I
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTs
In the first of these years he sent two portraits, “Lady Hol-
land" and “M. Guizot," and in the second, a large and elaborate oil
picture called “Life's Illusions." and a drawing for a fresco, the sub-
ject of which was taken from Isaiah.
These works intimated the aims to which he was hereafter to
devote his life almost exclusively. The portrait of M. Guizot was
one of the first of that great series in which, more than any other
artist of his time, he has reflected the best intellects and imaginations
of the nineteenth century. From the Guizot of 1848 to the Gerald
Balfour of yesterday, a period of more than half a century, he has pur-
sued a consistent aim in painting a gallery of great men, not for the
most part for money or for other people, but for himself * and for
the nation. In “Life's Illusions” and the drawing from Isaiah there
is a distinct departure from merely historic illustrative art, their in-
tention being to “body forth the forms of things unknown,” to give
to the “airy nothings” of a poet's vision “a local habitation and a
name.” -
Henceforth he is to be a painter of ideas, of the properties and
attributes of the human race, of the forces which surround and mould
the lives of men, of the dreams and aspirations of the world—a
painter of spiritual motive power. “Whatever stirs this mortal
frame,” whether passions high and low, beauty or intellect, religion
or philosophy, these were then, and are now, the true subjects of his
art. H
-*m-sºme
* He has already presented to the National Portrait Gallery portraits of Matthew Arnold, Rob-
ert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Andrew Clark, Gladstone, Sir John Peter Grant, Sir Charles
Halle, Lord Lawrence, Sir Austen Henry Layard, Lord Leighton, Lord Lyndhurst, Cardinal Manning,
John Stuart Mill, William Morris, Panizzi, Earl Russell, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Sherbrooke,
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Sir Henry Taylor, Tennyson, Thomas Wright, the prison philanthropist,
and Lord Lyons. His portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti is also in this gallery.
+ In painting such pictures he has been actuated by the same national feeling as in the case of
his portraits, and has presented to the National Gallery (Tate Collection) the following pictures:
“Mammon"; “Conscience, the Dweller in the Innermost "; “‘For he had great possessions’ ”; “The
22
FRoM THE HALF-LENGTH PoRTRAIt of MARY, wife of constant INE Ion IDEs (1842)
—IN THE POSSESSION OF CONSTANTINE IONIDEs, HER GRANDson
PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Holly ER
It is only at first sight that there seems to be anything radically
divergent in these two aims—the life-like imitation of an individual
and the pure creation of ideal images. It is not the subject but the
artist that divides art into what is usually the “real" and the
“ideal.” A portrait by a Denner is, indeed, mundane enough, but so
is an allegory by a Bronzino, and when a man like Rembrandt or
Watts paints either a portrait or a vision, he removes it to a sphere
beyond the reach of mere physical sensation.
Dray-horses, Noon-day Rest”; “Minotaur”; “Death Crowning Innocence”; “Jonah”; “The
Spirit of Christianity, dedicated to all the Churches”; “Sic Transit”; “Faith”; “Hope”; “Love
and Life”; “Eve Tempted”; “‘She shall be called Woman’”; “Eve Repentant”; “Love and
Death"; “The Messenger" and “Chaos.”

23
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
Whether he paints portrait or history, takes his theme from a
book or his own invention, Watts's aim is always ideal. When a man
embodies an idea we call it imagination, when he paints a material
object in such a way as to express its essential beauty we call it in-
sight, but the faculties are closely akin though employed, one in crea-
tion and the other in revelation. But though akin they are distinct,
like two hands, and some artists seem to be able to use one and not
the other. Mr. Watts, however, is, so to speak, ambidextrous, and
can make us feel either the presence of Death or the genius of Ten-
nyson. In both cases he impresses our minds with a new image of
the immaterial. - -
The secret of Mr. Watts's strange power of drawing into the
faces of his sitters suggestions of their inner being lies, no doubt, es-
sentially in his wide and sensitive sympathy with his kind.
In the presence of his sitters he surrenders his own individuality.
He has no wish to produce a fine picture sealed with his own artistic
cachet, whereby everyone who looks may say, “This is a Watts.” Of
course, you can generally tell a “Watts” portrait at once by its tone
and colour and handling, and more certainly, perhaps, by a certain
sense of the presence of a real person alone with his thoughts, Se-
cluded in a veil as of a special intellectual atmosphere. But such
marks of identification are the unconscious results of the artist's own
self-suppression.
In all his works he regards his art as only a means to an end, and
the end of a portrait to him is a truthful resemblance of the sitter,
truthful not only to the body but the mind. In the Pa// Ma// Ga-
zette, Extra No. 22, p. 13, will be found an interesting account of his
way of painting portraits, given in his own words. In the course of
it he observes : '• -
“In my imaginative work I consider myself perfectly free as to
detail so long as I do not violate any law; but not so, of course, in
24
IRIS-THE LATEST PICTURE PAINTED BY MR, WATTS

PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Holly ER.
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
portrait-painting, when, while giving my mental faculties full play so
as to seize my sitter's intellectual characteristics, I observe equally the
physical minutiae. To assist myself, I converse with him, note his
turn of thought, his disposition, and I try to find out, by inquiry or
otherwise (if he is not a public man, or is otherwise unknown to me),
his character and so forth ; and having made myself master of these
details, I set myself to place them on the canvas, and so reproduce
not only his face, but his character and nature."
There can be little doubt that this was the way of some of the
greatest portrait-painters of old —Titian, for example, and Bellini, Lotto
and Rembrandt, Moroni and Raphael—but none the less has Watts
made a new departure in modern art. The power which was a natural
gift grew with exercise, and it has not decreased to the present day, as
his admirable portrait of Walter Crane is alone sufficient to testify.
Physically the portrait is neither flattering nor the reverse; it is the
very image of the man, and the sincerity and energy of its character
are equally true to life. A great advance is to be noted between the
Guizot of 1848 and the Gladstone of 1865, a portrait which I have
elsewhere said is not only a history but a prophecy. Since then his
hand has grown freer while his insight has remained as keen, and the
level he reached in such portraits as those of John Stuart Mill (1874) .
and Cardinal Manning (1882), if it has not been exceeded is still main-
tained. In confirmation of this we may point not only to the Walter
Crane, but among other works to two noble studies made by him of
his old friend Lord Tennyson in his latter years, and I can imagine
no better index of Watts's manner as a portrait-painter at different
periods of his life than his pictures of this great poet. It has always
been Watts's ambition to raise the pictorial art of his country to the
level of its literature, and none has succeeded so nearly. In his pic-
tures he, like Tennyson, has aimed at the highest standard of pure
and noble thought, and the intellectual sympathy between them has
27
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
no doubt helped to make his portraits of the poet of exceptional
value. The earliest (1859) is in the possession of Lady Henry Som-
erset; another very fine one belongs to the Dowager Lady Bowman ;
another, in red robes, is at Trinity College, Cambridge, but has never
been exhibited; another, in peer's robes, is in the possession of the
artist.
It is impossible within the limits of this study to go through the
whole catalogue of poets and painters, of men of science and thought,
of soldiers and statesmen, of noble men and beautiful women, whom
Watts has painted; and I may perhaps be permitted to quote a few
lines which I have written elsewhere about these portraits. “A past
of anxious search through metaphysic mazes for the truths most de-
sired of mankind, is written in the thought-worn face of Dr. Marti-
neau; a future of passionate unrest in the eager, subtle, self-conscious
features of Gladstone in his prime. In Arthur Stanley we see the
sensitive lip almost trembling with its message of good-will toward
men ; in Lord Lawrence, the man of thought as well as of action, the
devoted and able servant of his country, the soldier and statesman in
one. Here, the distinctive nobleness of each preserved, is the quiet
definite Mill opposed to the thundering indefinite Carlyle. These
few words may give some notion of the breadth of Mr. Watts's sym-
pathy, and of the unerring certainty of his insight. To detect his
finer discriminativeness some special and peculiar class of portraits
should be studied. No class will serve this purpose better than that
of poets; for the mental characteristics of the sitters are widely
known, their number is small, and all the greatest of them are here.
Of Tennyson there are two portraits: one taken in 1859, the other
recently. In both there is a touch of mystery which is wanting in
the presentments of the sitter's brethren; in both there is a some-
thing of the seer and the philosopher—a something, too, of the fas-
tidious workman who is long in seeking out the best. The powerful
28 … *
-- *s. PERCY WYNDHAM—IN THE POSSESSION OF HON. PERCY WYNDHAM

PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Hol-L-E.R.
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
head is a laboratory where thoughts volatilize in passion, and passion
is absorbed in thought. The fire of genius that one rather feels than
sees, smoulders long sometimes before it bursts into flame; but to
look at Mr. Watts's portraits is to be as sensible of its presence as of
its safe control. The later work in nowise contradicts the earlier, it
is rather the proof and fulfilment of it; passion, imagination, and re-
flection are the chords of both. On the others I have not space to
enlarge. I shall only note that in each particular face the painter has
shadowed forth some special and peculiar characteristic: in Brown-
ing's, speculation; in Swinburne's, ardour; in Taylor's, reason; in
Arnold's, criticism ; in Morris's, taste.”
When we come to consider Watts's works of imaginative art, we
shall find that they are most easily arranged by dividing them into the
classes of ideas which they embody. In the first place, abstract ideas
of Time, Life, Death, Love, Justice, as in the Lincoln's Inn fresco
and in his pictures of “Time, Death, and Judgment,” of “Love and
Death,” of “Love and Life,” and of “Hope"—perhaps the most
nobly pathetic of all his works. Secondly, ideas of human life, of
which the images are not less the creation of the artist though they
are suggested by the myths of classical legend. Such are the “Or-
pheus and Eurydice,” the “Daphne,” the “Psyche,” and the “Three
Goddesses,” or, as the artist prefers to call it, “Olympus on Ida.”
Perhaps the latter more properly belongs to the class in which the
artist has given himself up more completely to the overpowering charm
of the dreams of classical poetry—dreams of Arcadia and Olympus.
Under this head may be mentioned the lovely “Bacchanal” and
the “Ganymede.” More hard to class are the “Genius of Greek
Poetry,” that fine design which reminds one equally of Phidias and
Michael Angelo, and the playful pictures of Cupids in various
delightful occupations, like “Good Luck to your Fishing,” works of
his old age, but full of the very sportfulness of youth. Fourthly,
3 I
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
come a few biblical subjects, which, like the classical ones, are not
“illustrations” so much as embodiments of ideas suggested by the
Bible. Such are “Cain,” the typical presentment of the wrath of
Heaven against murder, and the “Rider on the White Horse,” the
majestic image of the power that conquers. If we add the series of
evil forces of human life in the hideous forms of “Minotaur,” “Mam-
mon,” etc., a few pictures of the misery of London, like “Drowned,”
and a few more trivial subjects, like “A Rainy Day,” we shall have
pretty well indicated the range which Mr. Watts has allowed to his
imagination—and a wide range it is, as wide almost as life itself.
The forms in which Mr. Watts has clothed his abstract ideas are
of great force and dignity, and many of his conceptions are often
striking in their originality, clinging in no way to old traditions ex-
cept when those are in accordance with his own sense of essential
truth. Time the destroyer, imaged from time immemorial as an old
man, appears to him to be ever young and strong, marching through
all the ages with unfaltering step, a destroyer maybe, but also the
leader of life. So he has drawn him in his impressive design of
“Time, Death, and Judgment.” Death appears to him no more as
the grinning skeleton of the Danse Macabre, but either a sad irresis-
tible force, stronger even than love (human love) as in perhaps the
grandest of all his pictures, the “Love and Death,” “ or as the end-
lessly pitying angel who consoles all mortals for their troubles, as in
the “Angel of Death,” and the “Throne of Death,” that monumental
picture which still unfinished hangs in his studio at “Limners Lease,”
his country house near Guildford. Love, sometimes as the ideal of
human beauty, as in the “Wife of Pygmalion,” or of celestial beauty,
y
as in the Venus in the “Three Goddesses; ” sometimes as a beautiful
winged figure, as in “Love and Death,” again as the guide of Life
helping her feeble footsteps to reach the rocky summit of earthly
* Presented by the artist to the Whitworth Institute at Manchester.
32
THE RIDER on the white Horse (1881)—IN THE possession of THE ARtist
PhotographED BY F. Hol-LYER
pilgrimage, as in “Love and Life." All these loves are beneficent,
but the influence of maleficent passion he has made the subject of
two or three pictures on which he has lavished a more than usual
wealth of invention and an unwonted luxury of colour. These are
his two visions of the “Fata Morgana” from Boiardo's poems, and


33
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
“Mischief,” in which a figure representing Physical Manhood is
snared in the briers by Passion in the form of Love. In such sub-
jects, and those based upon classical legend, the ideas are naturally
conveyed in forms which suggest perfect physical beauty; but Watts
paints what is called “the nude" with a grandeur of style and a re-
serve in imitation which so purifies them that they never appeal
directly to the senses. We see all his figures as in a mirror, sur-
rounded and softened, but not blurred, by a charmed atmosphere.
Some of these pictures are of his finest, nor do I know any artist who
has rendered so powerfully the awful moment when Eurydice falls
back, dead, slain again by the look of her lover. The “Daphne" is
certainly one of the most beautiful single figures in all art, and despite
its fully developed contours one of the purest, the ideal of virgin
beauty shrinking before the advent of the Sun-God. A worthy com-
panion is the girlish figure of Psyche, conscious of the ruin of her
happiness by the indulgence of her curiosity. Both of these figures,
like so much of Watts's work, show how strongly he combines the
temperaments of the painter and the sculptor. It was the remark of
one of the most celebrated sculptors of the present day, on looking
round the Gallery at Little Holland House,” that he had left little
for sculptors to do. He referred not to Watts's sculpture, but his
paintings, in which he has expressed the most fundamental ideas of
philosophy and religion, the most abstract types of human passion, in
the language of form and gesture. It is still one of the doubts in Mr.
Watts's own mind whether his natural talent was not stronger in the
direction of sculpture than painting. Yet he has never for a moment
forgotten the limits which technically divide the domain of the one
art from the other. If the ideas are those which might have been
well expressed in sculpture, he has always seen them, felt them, and
expressed them as an artist whose medium is paint and not marble, as
* Full of his life-work, and opened free to the public on Saturdays and Sundays.
34
º
tº THE THRONE OF DEATH (UNFINISHED)—IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ARTIST

PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. Holly ER
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
one who had to produce on a flat surface the illusion of relief, and as
one to whom colour should always form an essential constituent of
conception. His pictures can never be open to the charge against
David and his school, of being bas-reliefs painted. They are thought
as well as wrought in paint, and paint only.
No illustration of this can be much better than his beautiful pic-
ture of the “Judgment of Paris,” or the “Three Goddesses,” a subject
which demands ideal treatment whether at the hand of a sculptor or
a painter. It may be compared with the “Three Graces” in that fine
antique group now preserved in the library of Siena Cathedral, with
the picture made from it by Raphael (once in the Dudley Gallery and
now in the collection of the Duc d'Aumale), and again with the Three
Goddesses in Rubens's picture in the National Gallery. In the first
work we have sculpture pure, in the second sculpture painted, while in
the third we have pure painting in which the ideal is missed. Ru-
bens's Three Goddesses may represent his so-called “ideal” of female
beauty, but they are only Flemish women of fine physique painted as
nearly like nature as possible. Watts's Three Goddesses are dis-
tinctly ideal dreams of abstract beauty, but they are not sculpture,
they are not even translations of sculpture into painting; they are
conceived with a painter's sense and executed with a painter's hand.
But Watts is a sculptor also. His exquisite bust of “Clytie" is
so large in style and noble in movement, that it lives in the memory
with the antique. Mr. Gosse in a recent paper has claimed for it a
notable place in the history of modern sculpture, as marking that new
departure from the old conventions which has revivified the art in the
present generation. Richly picturesque in its design and full of vig-
orous life is the colossal equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus, the hunts-
man, the Grosveneur, which adorns the grounds of Eaton Hall, the
seat in Cheshire of the Duke of Westminster, the head of the house
of Grosvenor. Finely realized is the action of Lupus as he reins in his
37
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
steed to watch under his uplifted hand the flight of his hawk. Of
nobler suggestion, and of equal grandeur, is another equestrian
statue, in which the rider is no mediaeval'sportsman but the spirit of
Physical Energy itself. This still awaits completion. Nor, in the
record of his plastic work, must I omit to mention the fine recumbent
figure of Bishop Lonsdale in Lichfield Cathedral.
The landscapes of Mr. Watts have been few and far between,
but they are as characteristic as any of his work, and perhaps more
unique. His “Return of the Dove to the Ark,” with its wild waste
of waters and relentless sky, struck, as he has so often done, a new
note of elemental poetry, and his more realistic but still (in the intel-
lectual sense) “impressionist” records of Naples and its vicinity, one
of which, “Vesuvius,” has recently been admirably engraved by Mr.
Frank Short, are nearer perhaps to Turner in feeling than any of the
works of that artist's imitators. The same may be said of two small
views of misty sea, gray but palpitating with iridescent colour, which
formed a striking feature of the Exhibition at the New Gallery a
year or two ago. - -
In his “Morning after the Deluge,” with its sun rising in a
huge envelope of Orange mist, he tends to the transcendental, as in-
deed he does in his strange vision of the Conscience—the “Dweller
in the Innermost,” as he calls it—a description of which is impossible.
As I look through what I have written I am sadly struck with
the numbers of things which I have wished to say and have left un-
said.” His portraits of women, many of which are of great beauty,
and some of his finest pictures, like “Endymion” and “Paolo and
Francesca,” have been left almost unnoticed. The latter is unique
among Watts's work, for it is the only picture in which he has set
himself to express the idea of another's mind. It is also one of his
* On his technique and other matters I have already written, in the article before referred to,
in the Magazine of Art (1882). *
38
STATUE OF HUGH LUPUs AT EATON HALL, THE DUKE OF west MINSTER’s country
SEAT NEAR CHESTER
(PhotoGRAPHED BY F. Hollyer)
most successful pictures, and by far the finest rendering of Dante's
immortal episode that has been made by any artist.
I have said nothing either of his trilogy of the history of “Eve,”
which will hereafter count among the noblest of his works. That I
have said little about the artist and his life I care little, for such reti-
cence would be in accordance with his wishes. He lives, as he has

39
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
. always lived, a life quiet and retired, but not without the society of a
large and choice circle of friends, surrounded, whether in town at
Little Holland House (the second), or in the country at Limners
Lease, by his works in various states of completion, touching now one
and now another, as his impulse comes. He has sold comparatively
few of his pictures, not from want of buyers, but from choice, in order
to keep them by him to perfect, and with the view of devoting his life's
work, as far as possible, to the nation. So he has kept himself COIIl-
paratively, but only comparatively, poor, with enough to enable him
to work in peace, without display. He has twice refused the honour of
al baronetcy, as, among other reasons, unsuited to his quiet tastes and
moderate means. Not late in his career and with steps of unusual
rapidity he attained the highest honours of his profession, and since
then his position has remained unassailed.* Never robust in health,
he has lived to a good old age. With eyesight almost unimpaired,
and hand almost as sure as ever, he still works on, not only perfecting
his earlier work, but actually developing new interests and power.
He is one of those men who, like his forerunners, Bellini and Titian,
never seem to grow old in spirit, remaining keenly alive to all the
movements of the day in his art and out of it. One of the most
striking signs of the vitality of his mind is the new departure in colour,
of which many of his later works are the witness. He has never
looked upon colour, as most painters do, as an aim in itself apart from
his subject. Colour, form, and subject have to him been always insep-
arable parts of his conception, and this is the reason why his colour is
somewhat unequal as a pleasure-giving quality, and why some fail to
understand how a man who has shown such a sense of rich colour in
such pictures as “Mischief" or “The Birth of Eve,” should forego its
* Of the many evidences of appreciation, not only in his own country, one of the most notable
was the request to add his portrait to the great portrait gallery of artists in the Uffizi at Florence,
{ {
where it now hangs side by side with those of the “old masters.”
4O
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.
attractions when treating subjects to which it is less appropriate.”
But of late years—perhaps the “Uldra" (water-nymph) of 1882 was
the first sign of it—he has shown new interest in the vibration of light
and colour, and many of his later pictures, like “Hope" and “Love”
and “Death,” shimmer with a tender iridescence. This lovely effect
is very palpable in his vision of “Iris," with her drapery fluttering be-
hind a rainbow (see illustration), one of the most beautiful of all his
creations.
On the gentle influence which has blessed his later years I
scarcely dare to touch; but it will be good for all lovers of art and all
admirers of his noble life to know that, with Mrs. Watts by his side,
the peaceful progress of the one and the happy prolongation of the
other are as well assured as anything can be in a changing world.
* It is generally when the artist's imagination has not been strongly engaged that his colour is
least pleasing ; as a rule, the nobler the subject the finer the colour.
. 4I
SIR
JOHN
EVE RETT
MILLAIS,
BART.
SIR JOHN E. MILLAIS, P.R.A.
FROM copyRIGHTED PHOTOGRAPH. By ALFRED ELLIs

--------------------
- - - - - - - -
THE WALE OF REST
FROM PHOTOGRAPH of DRAWING, LOANED BY MR. H. VIRTUE TEBBS
HATEVER may be the shortcomings of the British
school of painting, it can scarcely be denied that the
roll of its artists contains many names distinguished
not only among the artists of their own country, but
among the artists of the world. To take only three of the greatest
—Hogarth, the satirical reflector of society; Reynolds, the portrait
painter; Turner, the master of landscape—in what other modern
school shall we find their parallels? It would be rash to prophesy.
that the name of Millais will rank in the estimation of posterity as
the peer of these his great precursors, but it may at least be said that
he is as thoroughly national and original as any of them, and that in
simplicity, sincerity and power, he will hold his own with the best.
All great artists have some dominant quality. The spiritual
idealism of Watts, the romantic imagination of Burne-Jones, the de-
º

47
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
votion of Leighton to Beauty, the exquisite execution and refined
comedy of Alma-Tadema are noted elsewhere in these pages.
Each of these artists may justly urge other claims to our admiration,
and if I assert, as the chief characteristic of Millais, his power of fix-
ing the immediate aspect of the present, I by no means intend to ex-
haust the secret of his peculiar appeal. Without the keenest eye for
what is lovely, without a tender sensibility to human feeling, without
a lively perception of character, without an invention ever ready to
kindle, he would never have sustained the attention of his contem-
poraries for nearly half a century. Nevertheless, it is his gift of re-
flecting like a mirror the very life of his surroundings that constitutes
his essential distinction among artists of his time.
To the present generation, or at least to the younger members
of it, the late President of the Royal Academy is principally known
as a painter of portrait, of landscape, and of the charms of childhood.
They know his magnificent portraits of Mr. Gladstone and of Lord
Tennyson, and perhaps those of the Duchess of Wellington and Mrs.
Bischoffsheim also ; they have fallen in love with “Cherry Ripe,” with
“Dorothy Thorpe,” and “Little Miss Muffett,” and (the ladies at
least) have worshipped his pretty grandchild blowing “ Bubbles." He
is to them the great painter of the life with which they are surrounded,
the masterly craftsman, who can do more with one stroke of the brush
than most others with a dozen, the accurate and forcible colourist, the
man who has the most distinct gift for making what appeals to him
appeal also to others. But when he first came before the public, and
for some years afterward, he was not in touch with his generation, but
was a young rebel in league with Dante Rossetti and Holman Hunt
and backed up by Ruskin in running counter to the prevalent theory
and practice of art. -
The style of the Millais of the fifties differs so widely from that
of the Millais of the nineties that at first sight it is hard to believe
48
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
that they both belong to the same man, or even to the same century.
In an excellent study of the artist, in one of the supplements of the
Art /ournal, Sir Walter Armstrong describes Millais's progress from
the “Isabella,” of 1849, to the “Lady Betty Primrose,” of 1885, as
“the growth of four centuries writ small on a single brow.” It will
be the aim of the following pages to trace as fully as their space
allows the different stages of this “ strange, eventful history.”
Sir John Everett Millais was born at Southampton, on June 8,
1829, and like Lawrence, Landseer, and other distinguished artists,
showed his artistic bent at a very early age. His father, who was a
Jerseyman, went to Dinan in 1835, and, while there, the boy made
sketches of the military officers, which astonished everybody, includ-
ing the officers themselves, and when the Millais family came to Lon-
don in 1838, it was for the purpose of properly cultivating his talents.
The then President of the Royal Academy (Sir Martin Archer Shee)
did not hesitate to express his opinion that “the parents of a child so
gifted should do all in their power to help the cultivation of his facul-
ties and to speed him on the career for which nature has evidently
intended him.” So, at the age of eight years, his profession was de-
cided, and in the winter of 1838–39 he was sent to the celebrated
school of Mr. Sass. In the same year he was awarded a silver medal
by the Society of Arts, and afterwards won the silver and gold medals
of the Royal Academy, where he became a student in 1840. He
began to paint in 1845, and in 1846 exhibited his first picture, “Pizarro
Seizing the Inca of Peru." It was favourably noticed by a French
critic, and was followed in 1847 by “Elgiva Seized by the Soldiers of
Odo.” So far his progress was similar to that of any other student,
except that it was more rapid and distinguished; but in 1848 an event
happened which gave a special direction to his energies. This was
his acquaintance with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. To this great and
unique genius belonged the enthusiasm, the imagination, and colour of
49
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Mr. Ruskin, in his pamphlet called
“Pre-Raphaelitism” (1851), has pointed out that the principles which
instigated the brotherhood were contained in the advice given in his
first volume of “Modern Painters,” published in 1843, and there is
little doubt that the eloquent teaching of Mr. Ruskin hastened, if it
did not create, that revolt against the Outworn conventions of art, in
which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood took the lead. Such revolts
are periodical in the history of art. Such was the movement of the
realists of Florence in the fifteenth century, of the “Nazarenes” of
Germany, of the “Men of 1830,” in France, of the impressionists of
to-day, and one and all were inspired by the desire to return to sin.
cerity, and to nature as the source of it. With the three Pre-Raphael-
ites already mentioned were associated four others, one only of whom
attained distinction as an artist. This was the late Thomas W oolner,
R.A., sculptor and poet. The others were William Michael Rossetti,
the brother of Dante, and a well-known critic, F. G. Stephens, also
well-known as an art critic, and James Collinson, a painter little known
to fame. Associated with them as contributors to their short-lived
magazine The Germ, or more or less in sympathy with their endea-
vours, were Ford Madox Brown, W. H. Deverell, Coventry Patmore,
Christina Rossetti, James Orchard, and W. B. Scott (all contributors
to 7%e Germ), Arthur Hughes, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, and
later Burne-Jones and Swinburne.
So far as painting was concerned, the three leaders were Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, men of
extremely different temperaments. They were alike only in one thing,
their devotion to nature. Rossetti was romantic, Holman Hunt di-
dactic, Millais realistic. The two former would go neither to right
nor left for anyone, living in worlds of their own, the one of po-
etic fantasy, the other of semi-religious enthusiasm ; both were abnor-
mal, self-centred, and unchangeable, following forever their solitary
50
Etched by Millais for the fifth NuMBER of “THE GERM,” Never published (1850-51). It is believed that this
Etching was iNtENDED To illustrate A story by DANTE GABRIEl RossETTI, CALLED “ THE INTERCEssion
of st. Agnes."
By Permission of MR. C. FAIRFAx MURRAY
paths away from the world. Millais, on the contrary, was the most
normal of beings, with more of the painter's temperament than either
of the others; but simple-minded, given neither to mysteries nor didac-
ticism, thinking himself neither a poet nor a prophet, but nevertheless
a strong personality, who with a keen delight in the joys of ordinary
life, was very sensitive to the poetic suggestions of other minds.
The three friends were all “intense" in their different ways:
Rossetti in passion, Hunt in purpose, and Millais in observation.
With extreme “flexibility of adaptation,” he could so match the fidel-
ity of Hunt and catch fire at the fancy of Rossetti, that he was easily
the rival of both. At the time they first worked together Rossetti
was a mere tyro in art, while Millais and Hunt were already trained
artists; but Rossetti was the master mind, and exercised on Millais,
as on all with whom he came in contact, an almost magical fascina-
tion. He infected Millais with his romantic glamour, with his

51
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
“Anglo-Catholic" feeling in art, with something even of his wizardry.
He stimulated Millais's invention to the creation of designs as strange
and powerful as his own, and far more perfect in execution. Yet
Rossetti's influence was never strong enough to subdue the native im-
pulse of Millais, which was, above all things, to hold the mirror up to
nature, with only such selection as was prompted by personal liking.
In that strange mixture of symbolism and naturalism which forms the
peculiar fascination of Pre-Raphaelite art, it was the naturalism which
was most congenial to Millais. But Millais had already been diverted
from the simple expression of himself by his academical art training.
He had aimed at what was then regarded as the highest form of art
—historical composition. He had probably no wish to descend to
what was thought the lower level of landscape, portrait, and genre.
But he, like his associates, was dissatisfied with the popular ideal. It
was false, it was second-hand, it left unrealized the beauty of the world
as he saw it. The new creed which cancelled tradition and went
straight to nature for inspiration without departing from the path of
“high art” formed overwhelming attractions to a youth with the
nature and training of Millais. The art, indeed, which these young
reformers proposed to themselves was in purpose “higher" than ever.
It was to represent all the old scenes from Holy Writ, all the great
themes of History, all the dreams of the poets from Homer to Keats,
and all the thought and passion of modern life, with a truth and force
which had never been achieved before. :
They called themselves Pre-Raphaelites, not because they knew
a great deal about the real ones or intended to imitate their style.
The movement was not so much from admiration of the Pre-Raphael-
ites as from dislike of the Post-Raphaelites. They would unlearn all
that the centuries since the fifteenth had taught and begin again at
nature and themselves—as they thought the real Pre-Raphaelites had
done,
52
Mººl lº
- -
º
º Nº. -
º !" | Tºm
ſº
poRTRAIt of LAny Ripon (1853)
By per Mission of THE MARQUIs of Ripon
One practice to which they attached great importance was a
minute imitation of Nature's detail. Far from the idea that painting
should only imitate the general impression of the sight, they even set
themselves against “generalization." Every leaf, every pebble, must
be painted. So far was their theory carried that a microscopic accu-
racy was held to be a noble quality, and painting was thought to
have reached superexcellence if all the facts which it represented could

53
PENcil studies of HEADs for the Lorenzo AND is ABELLA (1849)
BY PERMISSION OF MIR. C. Fairfax MuRRAY
not be discovered without the aid of a microscope. To excel in such
work as this, Millais, with his wonderful sight and sure hand, was
peculiarly qualified, and his first Pre-Raphaelite picture, the “Isa-
bella," is a marvel of minute and complete painting, such as had not
been seen since the days of Van Eyck. And it was true finish also,
broad in general effect in spite of its labour, without either niggle or
stipple.
* This picture, the first Pre-Raphaelite painting by Millais, is from a scene in Keats's poem,
“Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,” founded on Boccaccio's story descriptive of the feelings of two brothers
on discovering the mutual love of Isabella and Lorenzo. Nearly all the figures are portraits of friends.
At the right, Lorenzo (partly studied from William Rossetti) holds a plate on which he offers
half a cut blood orange to Isabella (Mrs. Henry Hodgkinson) who is caressing a hound.
At the left, one of the brothers (Mr. John Harris), enraged at her reception of Lorenzo's cour-
tesy, viciously kicks the hound. A guest (William Bell Scott) wipes his lips with a napkin ; another
(W. Hugh Fenn) pares an apple; a third (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) is emptying his glass at the right
end of the table; a serving man (Mr. Wright), with a white napkin over his arm, stands behind Isabella
and Lorenzo.


54
º
LoRENzo AND is ABELLA *
REPRODUCED, by PERMission, From the origiNAL PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE LIVERPool corporation


SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
This wonderful exhibition of skill by a youth of nineteen, em-
bodied all the Pre-Raphaelite doctrines. It was absolutely unconven-
tional in composition ; every figure was studied from life—most, if
not all, were portraits of his friends with their features unidealized.
In this work the association with Rossetti is very apparent. His
next picture, “Christ in the House of His Parents,” reminds one
more of Holman Hunt. Here we have an imaginary incident in the
life of our Lord conceived in nearly the same spirit as Hunt's much
later “Shadow of the Cross.” “The Carpenter's Shop” was its other
title, and both are needed to explain it fully. Unless we know who
the characters are it might well pass for a simple incident in daily
life. An Eastern carpenter (who except for his costume looks very
like an English gentleman) is examining with parental sympathy a
cut in the palm of his little son's hand. The mother is greatly con-
cerned, the grandmother removes the offending implement, the ap-
prentice goes on with his work, and a little friend brings a bowl of
water to wash the wound. Outside the window is a view of the
country with sheep huddling against the house. Such are the ordi-
nary facts of a simple domestic “accident,” told with the greatest
simplicity and naturalness. But there is much more intended than
this, as is shown by the other title, “Christ in the House of His Pa-
rents.” The facts are all symbolical. The sufferer is Christ; the
mother is the Virgin ; the father, Joseph ; the grandmother, St.
Anne; the little boy with the water is St. John, while the sheep out-
side symbolize the faithful. We need to be told all this to appreciate
the strange mixture of plain fact and deep symbolism. No wonder it
shocked people who could not penetrate the inner reverence of its in-
tention, who only saw sacred personages treated like Ordinary individ-
uals, and sacred art reduced to genre. The St. John, one of the most
charming of all Millais's designs, carefully treading as he balances the
brimming bowl, was regarded as simply awkward; St. Anne was
57
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
likened to an old woman putting a screw of tobacco across a counter,
and the Virgin, middle aged and plain, was equally an offence.
There were no halos, no flowing robes of red and white and blue; it
was profane as an illustration of sacred history, and was ugly and un-
dignified as art. It raised indignation and ridicule. Both were nat-
ural and undeserved. Equal and more deserved derision was poured
upon “Ferdinand and Ariel,” another picture of the same year.
An illustration of Tennyson’s “Mariana in the Moated Grange,”
a scene from Scripture, “The Return of the Dove to the Ark,” and
an illustration of Coventry Patmore's poem of “The Woodman's
Daughter,” were his contributions to the Academy in 1852 and testi-
fied to the activity and variety of his invention, and “The Hugue.
not" and the “Ophelia" of the next year established a reputation
which has never declined again. They were, of course, criticised and
ridiculed freely in many quarters. “The Huguenot had only one
leg,” “his arm could never have got so far round his mistress's neck,"
“Ophelia could never have floated so comfortably," and so on ; but
in spite of all, the painter's mark was made. The secret of their suc-
cess is not difficult to discover. The subjects were generally known
and interesting to the public. The beauty of the types was indubit-
able, and corresponded with the popular ideal, and both pictures told
their own story unmistakably. Probably the most potent factor in
the success was the expression of the lovers in “The Huguenot"—
the tenderness of the woman, sweet and intense, but not overstrained
or affected, the struggle between duty and affection in the man, as
though he said,
“I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Iloved I not honour more.”
And besides, there was the appeal to Protestant feeling. The pict-
ure touched the dearest sentiments of the English, it appealed to their
sense of beauty, to their affections, to their love of moral courage, and
58 - - -
|
THE ORDER OF RELEASE
(A portrait of LADY MILLAIs)
REPRODUCED BY PERMIssion of MEssrs. HENRY GRAVEs & co.
to their religious convictions. If Millais had thought it all out be-
forehand (and he probably did nothing of the kind) he could not
have chosen a subject more attractive to the visitors of the Royal
Academy. But there was the art of it also, the simplicity of arrange-



59
PENCIL STUDY FoR HEAD of ophelia (1852)
BY PERMISSION OF MR. C. FAIRFAx MURRAY. FROM PHOTOGRAPH. BY HENRY Dixon & Sons
ment, the perfect gesture, the execution and bright colour. Most of
the public do not regard these things at all unless the subject is to
their liking, but that point achieved, they are ready to admire any
other merits that may be brought to their notice. And this picture
of Millais's contained qualities of execution which they could easily
appreciate—fidelity to known facts, like a red-brick wall and ferns,
and elaborate detail involving great labour and exactness of manipu-
lation. The “Ophelia," a portrait of Miss Siddall (Mrs. D. G. Ros-
setti), was equally to their mind; the fragile, beautiful girl crazed for
love, singing her death-song as she floated down the stream through
a faery land of spring, touched all with its pathos and loneliness. It
was also very faithful to the exquisite description of Shakespeare.
The next year he completed what may be called his trilogy of


60
|
|
|
|
i

SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
historic love-scenes by adding to “The Huguenot” the “Proscribed
Royalist" and the “Order for Release." With these works may be
said to end his first period of development. He had long felt the
restrictions of the Pre-Raphaelite precepts. He said to William Bell
Scott (about 1850) that extremely minute execution was “all non-
sense,” and that “one could not live doing that.” The three pictures
were a partial return to self-expression. They were wholly his. They
contained no symbolism. They were illustrations of no poems. They
were original in every sense of the word as applied to art. The
“Order for Release” may claim to be his most perfect picture of in-
cident, perhaps the finest of all his pictures.
In 1854 (the year of his marriage) Millais did not contribute to
the Royal Academy. In 1855 he sent a picture which had nothing
{ {
to do with the past; it was in no sense an “illustration,” except of
his own mind and experience. It was called “The Rescue,” and
represented a scene at a fire in a modern house, with a most modern
mother seizing her rescued child from the arms of a modern fireman,
The almost hysterical rapture of the mother reached the highest
pitch of expression which the artist ever dared, and the flare of the
conflagration was realized with as near an approach to truth as was
possible in paint. Here was a picture such as no one had ever at-
tempted before, and the like of which he never attempted again.
Among the five works exhibited at the Royal Academy next year
was the “Blind Girl,” now at Birmingham, an idyl of modern life,
very realistic, with a carefully executed landscape and rainbow—but
in which he for the
y
the picture of the year was “Autumn Leaves,'
first (and again it may be said for the last) time produced a unique
effect by new means. I mean unique at the time, for it has been the
father of a thousand pictures. Its freshness at the moment consisted
in its absolute absence of “subject" in what would now be called a
“literary” sense. It was a painted “song without words.” The sub-
63
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
ject (in the painter's sense) was simple enough. A few girls, their
heads relieved against an evening sky, their figures enveloped in twi-
light air, are heaping up dead leaves to be burnt. The healthy, but
half-sad faces of the girls, the rhythm of their movement, the solem,
nity of the still, warm evening, the richness of the colour (too rich per
haps for absolute truth), produced a vague emotion like that aroused
by a low chant heard in the distance. It was suggested by no poem,
but it might well suggest not one but many. It puzzled the critics,
but it remains a joy forever. In 1857 he reverted to mediaevalism in
“The Knight Crossing a Ford,” or “Sir Isumbras”—a picture which
met with ridicule, not altogether undeserved, in spite of its extraor-
dinary force, the originality of its design, and the beauty of its parts.
It was a bizarre mixture of ancient and modern. A grizzled old war-
rior in golden armour bestrides a very modern steed with very mod-
ern harness. Perched on the horse before him sits a charming maiden,
who too evidently belongs to the nineteenth century, and behind him
a little boy. This is another very transitional picture, in which he
shows himself on with the new love before he is off with the old. It
was the occasion of a very clever parody by F. Sandys—a large wood-
cut called “Nightmare,” in which the horse was changed to a donkey
(Ruskin), the knight into Millais, the girl into Rossetti, and the boy
into Holman Hunt. The picture, which now belongs to Mr. R. H.
Benson, has been recently painted upon by the artist, who has trans-
formed the horse into a substantial charger and arrayed it in rich
mediaeval trappings. -
Next year came two pictures which may be said to close the tran-
sitional period between his Pre-Raphaelite and later manner or man-
ners. These were “The Vale of Rest” and “Spring.” The former
is another unique picture, presenting a scene from modern life which
yet preserved the sentiment of the past, a subject that he could treat
with absolute fidelity to nature, and yet touch a profound depth of
64 -
º
AUTUMN LEAVES


By PERMISSION OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE CITY ART GALLERY, MANCHESTER
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
spiritual feeling. In its union of art and poetry it fulfilled the
spirit of 7%e Germ. This picture of nuns in the convent gar-
den, one employed in digging her grave and the other in solemn med-
itation; this scene in the gloaming where tall poplars rise against the
sky, barred by a purple coffin-shaped cloud, and still rich with the sub-
dued glory of the sunset, produced a profound impression, only
marred to some minds by the plain features of the nuns, one of whom
was repainted by the artist. “Spring,” with its band of light-hearted
girls sporting under apple-trees in full blossom, was painted with won-
derful freedom and force, and may be regarded as the “L’Allegro” to
the “Il Penseroso" of “Autumn Leaves.” In this picture the true
nature of the artist bursts out. However much his invention might
be stimulated by association with more visionary minds, and however
great his sympathy with the poetry of romance, or the dreams of by-
gone days, his heart was with the present. After this there was no
more symbolism, real or attempted, in his painted work.
The change that had come over the spirit of his dream was shown
plainly by the picture of “The Black Brunswicker” (1860) which at
once challenged comparison with “The Huguenot,” and in spite of
the mature mastery and boldness of its execution was a disappoint-
ment to those who looked to Millais for pleasures of a “higher strain.”
Despite the beauty of the lady (studied from Miss Kate Dickens,
afterwards Mrs. Perugini) the figures were comparatively uninterest-
ing, and their expression commonplace. The old Millais was dead,
the new Millais was scarcely born.
Another picture about this time (1863), which showed his ten-
dency to express his impression of past events without much attempt
to reconstruct the age in which they happened, was the “St. Agnes's
Eve.” The subject was taken from Keats's poem, and on the walls in
the same exhibition hung another treatment of the subject, by Arthur
Hughes, a triptych, as remarkable for its mediaeval, as Millais's for its
67
ROSAL IND AND CELIA
cELIA: "I pray you BEAR witH ME, I cannot Go No further.”—as wou like it, Act 11., scene iv.
REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF MESSRS, HENRY GRAVES & Co.
modern, treatment. Hughes, unlike Millais, followed the poet in his
error of making the moon transmit the daylight colours of the painted
glass which, according to the poem, “threw warm gules on Madeline's
fair breast." The only antique thing in Millais's picture (and that
surely not antique enough) was the large, many-windowed room at
Knole House, where the scene is set. The lady might have been one
of the guests at Knole in 1863, but the moonlight flooding the room,
blanching the maiden, and glistering in her jewels—such moonlight
has seldom been painted before or since.
During the decade from 1861 (in which year he did not exhibit)
to 1871 his choice of subject was more varied than ever. Besides pic-
tures of child life and portraits he painted subjects from poetry, history
and the Bible. Among them were “The Romans leaving Britain,”

68
SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ
By PERMission of the Royal Academy
“Esther,” and “Jephthah,” “Stella” and “Vanessa,” “The Gambler's
Wife,” and “The Widow's Mite,” “Rosalind and Celia,” and “The
Knight Errant,” “The Boyhood of Raleigh,” and “Victory, O Lord!"
“Chill October,” and “Flowing to the Sea"—his two first-exhibited
landscapes. These pictures and “Pilgrims to St. Paul's" may be said
to include the whole range of his inventive power, and manipulative
skill. The latter was sometimes employed in undisguised emulation
of Velasquez, as in “Vanessa” and the “Souvenir of Velasquez,” with

69
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
their force of colour and sweeping brushwork. Space will not allow
me to describe these pictures, but most of them have been engraved,
and the lively spirit of the “White Cockade” and “Charlie is My
Darling." the pathos and beauty of “The Gambler's Wife,” and the
idyllic charm of “Rosalind and Celia" are widely known. Of all, the
most ambitious were “The Knight Errant" and “Victory, O Lord!"
The former was remarkable for the nude figure of the distressed lady,
a masterpiece of realistic flesh-painting; the latter as the only picture
in which, since the days of his academical training, he had treated a
heroic subject demanding a strenuous effort of the imagination. The
subject is the watching of Joshua's fight with Amalek; Moses seated
at the top of the hill, his hands upheld by Aaron and Hur. The con-
ception is impressive and all the heads are fine, but the figure of Hur,
standing like a watch-tower against the sky, and the light glancing on
his eagle eye, diverted attention from the others by its exceeding force.
More successful than either of these must be rated “The Boyhood of
Raleigh." Two young and beautiful boys (Millais's own sons, one, alas,
since dead) are listening with intense interest to the glowing descrip-
tion of a mariner, who, in his bronze limbs, wild aspect and picturesque
costume, brings with him much of the glamour of the New World, from
which he had just returned. A few flashing feathers of tropical birds
effectively introduced add greatly to the romantic feeling and fine
colour of the picture. This was almost the last picture permeated
throughout with dramatic feeling, as “Victory, O Lord!" was his last
attempt at what was once termed “high art.” Besides “The Boy-
hood of Raleigh" many others of the artist's most popular pictures of
children belong to this period, during which he became the father of a
family. These pictures were, to a certain extent, a new departure, for
though his designs always showed a great love for children and delight
in their beauty, he now promoted them, as it were, to a level with
their elders, and devoted whole canvases to studies of their charms.
70
THE MINUET
reproduced by permission of Messrs. Henry GRAVES & Co.
So we have the “Sleeping" and “Waking,” “The First Sermon,"
“The Second Sermon," and “The Minuet” (all portraits of his own
children), and many others, including “The Flood,” a record of a real
incident at Sheffield in 1864. The subject is a baby, cast adrift in a


71
.
º
THE FLOOD
By PERMISSIox of ARTHUR LUCAS, ART PUBLISHER, LoNDoN, PROPRIEToR AND copyRIGHTER
very seaworthy cradle of wood, floating unconcernedly down the
swollen tide with her little black kitten “swearing” on the poop. This
picture is not so well known as many of inferior charm, but it is now
the property of Mr. Arthur Lucas, the print publisher, who, in accord-
ance with the artist's own wish, employed Mr. McCulloch to engrave
it on a large scale.
No doubt his works from 1861 showed a freer exercise of power,
an impulse more singly derived from nature and experience, even
when their subjects were not modern. Combined with these qualities
was a less restrained delight in painting for its own sake. He had
long passed his apprenticeship, and his knowledge and command of
his materials enabled him to produce the desired pictorial result with
far less labour and a more telling effect of general truth. Though less
laborious, he was equally industrious, but his newer method enabled
him, by increased productiveness, to take more advantage of his fer-


72
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
tility of invention. The stages of his development are not shown
more clearly in his pictures than in his book illustrations. To his
early Pre-Raphaelite period belongs a rare etching designed in
illustration of a story by Rossetti for that fifth number of The
Germ, which never appeared. Here we see a painter standing by his
easel and intently gazing at a girl who is seated straight in a chair
attended by two others. The meaning of the design is unknown to
me, but it would be explained by the theory that the girl was very ill
and that her lover was attempting to paint her portrait before she
died. To a later stage belong his illustrations to the famous edition
of Tennyson, issued by Moxon in 1858, which included the exquisite
figure of St. Agnes sitting by her window, while “Deep on the con-
vent roof the snows are sparkling to the moon,” and the illustrations
to “Dora.” In these lovely drawings the final form and expression
is dictated by a poetical sympathy with his subject. To these suc-
ceeded a large number of charming illustrations to Once a Week,
Good Words, and (in the Cormhz// Magazzne) to Trollope's novels,
“Orley Farm,” “Framley Parsonage,” “The Small House at Alling-
ton,” and “Phineas Finn.” In the later ones he adopted a less careful,
though still a masterly, style, and paid less regard to individuality of
character, though sometimes, as in “Was It Not a Lie?” (“Framley
Parsonage”), he very forcibly realized a situation. In some of these
he seems to attempt to produce the maximum of effect with the mini-
mum of means. A few apparently careless lines are sufficient to pro-
duce a vivid impression of a figure, or two set in a landscape or room,
the main features of which are indicated with a few expressive lines
betraying great power of observation and knowledge of effect.
These were the days of a new style of engraving on wood, in
which the engraver sought to produce as faithfully as possible the
very lines of the designer, who drew them himself upon the wood.
Among the engravers most noted for their skill in this method of
73
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
reproduction were Messrs. Dalziel, and among the artists whose draw-
& ings they fac-similed there was none so skilful as Millais. Unfortu-
nately the process involved the loss of the drawing, which under
even the most skilful cutting lost much of its original beauty. Two
at least of his fine illustrations to the parables of Our Lord, “The
Woman Seeking for a Piece of Money” and “The Enemy Sowing
Tares,” also formed the subject of pictures, but the former of these
has perished. His latest and perhaps his best illustrations of all
are those to “Barry Lyndon" in the edition de Zuare of Thackeray's
works. . -
To return to his pictures. After 1871 he did not altogether
cease to treat historical or romantic subjects. In 1877 he painted
y
two illustrations of Scott for Messrs. Agnew—“Effie Deans” and
“The Master of Ravenswood”—the first of which excels in the
direct and simple telling of a story, and the pathos of the girl
with her “snood" in her hand. He painted also the well-known
“Princes in the Tower,” and the “Princess Elizabeth,” charming
pictures of children, but more domestic than historical in feeling.
It may be said generally that from this time forth he devoted
himself simply to recording his daily impressions of the world
around him, without taxing his already well-proved powers of in-
vention, or seeking suggestions for his imagination from history
or fable. Shakespeare and the Bible were left alone, and instead
we had “Cherry Ripe,” and “Mr. Gladstone.” Whether this di-
version of his genius is to be regretted or not is a question upon
which opinions are divided. To some it seemed a desertion of
higher spiritual and intellectual aims, to others the free assertion
of his own personality, the recognition of his right function of an
artist. It is also a question whether he could or should have en-
deavoured to blend more of the old Millais with the new, and em-
ployed his perfectly matured skill in realizing the conceptions of
74
THE MARTYR OF THE SOLWAY
REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION, FROM THE ORIGINAL PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE LIVERPOOL CORPORATION
his finer fancy. Millais's course cannot be altered now. It was
probably inevitable, a normal growth affected only by some extran-
eous conditions at its outset, not unlike that of a tree on whose ro-
bust stem some rare variety has been grafted to flourish only for awhile.

75
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
At all events, during the last twenty-four years of his life, Mil-
lais was himself and nothing but himself. If he dropped some
threads in 1872, he set up at least one new one—for the famous
“Chill October,” the first and finest of all his landscapes, was
exhibited in that year. It has a unity in design, a prevalent sen-
timent, that his others, if equally fine in execution, usually lack.
In dexterity and truth, Millais's landscape work is pre-eminent, but
his impressions of nature returned from his mind to the canvas
little altered in material aspect, little tinged with subjective feeling.
In this he is truly Pre-Raphaelite, omitting nothing, adding noth-
ing, almost, one might say, selecting nothing ; but this would be
going too far, for his personality is strongly reflected in his land-
scapes, and their authorship is unmistakable. One would think he
was so overpowered by the beauty of nature that he saw no fault in
her. Each aspect took him with delight, and he was contented to
reflect that delight without any sophistication of personal mood or
imported sentiment. His is not, perhaps, the highest kind of
landscape, it surprises and pleases, but does not greatly move; but
of its kind it is unsurpassable in truth and variety. When we re-
member the evening skies of “The Vale of Rest” and “Autumn
Leaves,” the orchard of “Spring,” the village and the rainbow be-
hind the “Blind Girl,” the river of the “Flood,” and then think
of the later series of pure landscapes—“Chill October,” “Flowing
to the Sea,” “Flowing to the River,” “Scotch Firs,” “Winter Fuel,”
“The Fringe of the Moor,” “Over the Hills and Far Away,”
and “The Sound of Many Waters" (to mention no others), it is
difficult to recall the names of many other landscape painters who
have realized so many phases of nature with greater force and skill.
If his landscapes seem less impregnated with sentiment than his
figure pictures, that is probably because inanimate nature has no
sentiment of her own. His regard of human nature reſhained
76
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
really much the same during at least the last twenty-five years of
his life. He was, as a rule, content with all things as he found
them—men and women, costume, furniture, ornaments, without
even exercising greatly his personal taste, trusting to make a pleas-
“stirch, stitch, stitch" (1876)
By PERMission of MR. G. F. watts, R.A., TO whom THE ORIGINAL was PRESENTED BY THE ARTIST.
GRAPH Bºy FREDERICK HOLLYER
From Photo-

77
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
ant whole by the truth and beauty of his colour and the imitative
force of his execution. He gives us the sense and pleasure of
the presence of individuals, the living touch of the present. It does
not matter much whether they are called portraits or have fancy
titles, for nearly every figure he drew was a portrait, done in the
spirit of portraiture, with more or less delight in the character or
the beauty of the face.
Generally these later pictures of his were of single figures only
and made themselves as it were. “Stitch, Stitch, Stitch," for in-
stance, is but the portrait of a girl sewing, rather shabbily dressed
and a little weary in expression ; but sometimes a little more was needed
than the fresh study freshly planted on the canvas, and accessories
were introduced, not always quite successfully, to “make up.” He
painted his daughters in charming pictures, such as “New Laid
Eggs” and “Forbidden Fruit,” much as Sir Joshua Reynolds painted
his niece “Offy." He painted Trelawney in the “North-West Pas-
sage,” one of the largest and most celebrated of his works, the head
of the grand old vagabond forming not only the focus of the pic
ture but its entire interest, for the auditor in this case, unlike young
Raleigh and his friend, is not interesting in herself nor in her costume,
though both she and all the rest of the picture, with its furniture,
maps and other litter, the glass of grog, and the river view out of
the window, are painted with masterly suggestiveness. As a piece
of craftsmanship and professional knowledge it is no doubt a chef.
d'oeuvre, but as a painted drama it cannot compare with such a pic-
ture as “The Boyhood of Raleigh,” where the charm of inven-
tion warms the whole canvas. Still more dependent for its effect
on sheer power of painting is “The Yeoman of the Guard;" and
the “Idyl of 1745" may be mentioned as an example of a large
composition of several figures in which there is little to admire
except this wonderful power of paint. The subjects of which he
78 -
-
Pok'r RAIT of siR JAMES PAGET, F.R.S., Ex-PRESIDENT of THE ROYAL college of
surgeons, etc., Etc., Etc. (1872)
By PERMission of the Governors of st. BARTHolomew's HOSPITAL, LONDON. FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY
HENRY Dixon & sons
was most fond during his later years were portraits and pictures of
girls and children. In some of the latter he took hints from Sir
Joshua Reynolds, but not more perhaps than Sir Joshua Reynolds
took from others. Many of these, like “Cherry Ripe,” “Little Miss
Muffett,” “Pomona," and “Bubbles,” have been represented so freely
by engraving and chromo-lithography that it is scarcely necessary to

7Q
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
refer to them. Suffice it to say that from the beginning to the end
of his career, from St. John the Baptist in “Christ in the House of
His Parents" to the portrait of the little Hon. John Nevile Manners,
of 1896, his love of children has been constantly shown in his work.
Of his portraits of men several are in a true sense historical.
Watts may have given us more of the inner workings of a man's soul
and intellect, but no one has grasped more forcibly the whole out-
ward appearance of an individual at a given moment. The leonine
presence of Mr. Gladstone, the fire of his glance, the keenness of the
intellectual gladiator, watchful and ready for a spring—what he really
looked like in his finest moments—has been given by nobody like
Millais in the portraits of 1879 and 1885. Equally fine and perhaps
more difficult in subject is his portrait of John Bright. Among many
others of national value are those of Sir James Paget and Sir Henry
Thompson, the great surgeons; Thomas Carlyle, Lord Tennyson,
Lord Beaconsfield, the Marquis of Salisbury, Henry Irving, Cardinal
Newman, and the artist's friend and brother painter, J. C. Hook, R.A.
For a period of nearly fifty years Millais was before the public
as an artist, and for the greater part of that time he sustained his
reputation as the greatest painter of his day. He painted history,
romance, poetry, landscape, portrait, and made his mark in each. No
one else has attempted a wider ranger of subject, few have shown a
greater variety of invention, or approached him in his command over
tools and materials. It was only within the last few years that he
showed any decline of power, and it was only a few weeks before his
death that Mr. Watts, his great colleague, observed to me of one of
his pictures in the exhibition of the Royal Academy (1896), that as
painting it was “as good as ever.” His art is in no sense ideal; his
imagination cannot body forth things unknown, or rise to any great
heroic height; he has never attempted to represent rapid or violent
action, but inside these lines his powers are splendid and exuberant.
8O
SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, BART.
An almost matchless draughtsman, a colourist of great truth and
force, a painter of extraordinary imitative power, with a handling, not
always pleasant perhaps, but of the utmost sureness and freedom, he
has left a body of work which both for quantity and quality has
scarcely been equalled in modern art. Indeed, the whole of his work
has been so sincere and full of fresh life, it reflects so forcibly his own
personality and the living spirit of his day, that it is difficult to be.
lieve that it can ever become uninteresting to posterity.
His life was uneventful, but prosperous and fully enjoyed.
Though when he was young he, it is said, was discouraged by want
of success, he had not long to wait for it. An associate at five-
and-twenty, an Academician at thirty-four, and ever afterwards the
most popular of British artists, he had little to complain of pro-
fessionally. He was created a baronet in 1885, held honorary de-
grees at the Universities of Oxford and Durham, was a member of
the Institute of France, and an officer of the Legion of Honor, the
Order of Leopold, the Order of St. Maurice, and the Prussian Order
“Pour le Mérite." He was also a member of many Academies.
He succeeded Lord Leighton as President of the Royal Academy
in January, 1896. Of vigorous constitution, fond of all sports, espe-
cially of hunting and fishing, he enjoyed his play as much as his work.
He, no doubt, had his sorrows, his mortifications, and his trials like
the rest of us, but it cannot be said of him that his life was a dull or
a sad one. He was dearly loved by nearly all who ever heard his
cheery voice or looked upon his handsome and honest face. He was
popular, not least among students, to whom he always gave kind en-
couragement and valuable help. Mr. G. H. Boughton, R. A., tells
me that he helped not as others would, with a word of advice only,
but would seize a piece of paper and rapidly draw a hand or foot in
rapid but perfect lines, and leave it with the student, saying only,
“That's what you want." It need scarcely be added that his mind
8I
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
and character were truly reflected in his heart. He was neither a pro-
found thinker nor a learned scholar, but his mind was singularly sym-
pathetic, observant and apprehensive. He was perhaps a man of
action rather than words, but had more than an ordinary share of just
judgment and common sense. A strong Conservative, he had a great
hatred of all innovation, but at least in his view of art he was very
tolerant and comprehensive-–as indeed a man should be who had
learned, as he did, something from nearly every great artist from Van
Eyck to Reynolds. He died on Thursday, August 13th, 1896, of a
disease of the larynx, and on the Thursday following was buried
with due honours in St. Paul's Cathedral, where he lies with
Reynolds and Turner, with Leighton and Wren.
BARON
LEIGHTON
OF
STRETTON
LORD LEIGHTON
LATE PRESIDENT of THE Roy AL AcADEMY
FROM A COPYRIGHTED PHOTOGRAPH MADE
IN 1895 By J. Russell & Sox

THE SUMMER. Mººn
BY PERMISSION OF MEssRs. P. & D. Col. NAGH1
HE enemy, then, is this indifference in the presence of the
ugly; it is only by the victory over this apathy that you
can rise to better things; it is only by the rooting out and
extermination of what is ugly that you can bring about
conditions in which beauty shall be a power among you.” These
words are taken from the Presidential Address by Lord (then Sir
Frederick) Leighton, at the Art Congress of Liverpool in 1888, and
they embody, in a few words, the artistic creed of the speaker. From
the beginning to the end of his career the aim of his art was to culti-
vate the spirit of pure, unalloyed beauty. He was not content to
make a beautiful whole out of imperfect or unlovely elements, but,

S7
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
like the ancient Greeks, he deter-
mined that every item of his com-
positions, to the very smallest de-
tail, should be beautiful of its kind
and wrought with the utmost care.
If the millennium is to be brought
about by the “extermination of
what is ugly,” he did his best by
precept and practice to hasten its
advent.
It may perhaps be stated as the
distinction of Leighton among his
peers, that he worshipped beauty,
and especially the beauty of form,
more exclusively than they. There
STUDY OF A GIRL
is little or nothing of the mystic
BY PERMIssion of THE ARTIST
or the didactic in his art, which ex-
ists to create beautiful images. Often beauty is their sole motive,
sometimes they clothe a beautiful idea, sometimes they present a
fine dramatic scene; but in all cases the treatment is essentially
aesthetic, whether the subject be the face of a woman, or some tre-
mendous theme like “Hercules Wrestling with Death,” or “Rizpah
Defending the Dead Bodies of her Children.” No violence is suf-
ficient to make his draperies fall in ungraceful folds; no passion will
disturb his features to disfigurement; with the pathos of deformity his
art has no concern, and it has little toleration even for strength with-
out refinement. In these respects he followed the traditions of the
finest artists of Greece; and in others also, for he went to nature for
his models, and his ideal was no fantastic offspring of his own im-
agination, but the perfect development of a normal body. It was not
confined to one type of beauty, and perhaps, therefore, I should have

88
BARON LEIGHT ON OF STRETTON
said his “ideals," for there have been few other artists so devoted to
beauty in the abstract, who had also so wide a feeling for its differ-
ent manifestations. If we could gather together all his female heads,
STUDY FOR FATIDICA
By PERMission of THE ARTIst
we should find Greek and English, Turkish and Italian, French and
Spanish, blonde and brunette, severe and lively, robust and deli-
cate—a very gallery of different types, but each beautiful after its
kind, with a beauty of pure form, independent of accident or expres-
sion. These heads are studies from nature, but they are ideal also, for

89
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
they are all moulded with an elegance, draped with a refinement, and
coloured with a charm which are personal to the artist.
After saying this it may seem, at first sight, to be somewhat of a
contradiction to affirm that another distinction of Leighton's art is its
impersonality; but, except that it betrays his love of beauty in all its
phases, his elevated feeling, his wide culture, and a "taste refined
almost to fastidiousness, we learn little from it about its author.
It would be difficult, without other aid, to divine the school or
schools in which he was trained, or even the nationality to which
he belongs; while of his personal experiences of life, his convictions,
predilections, or opinions, his artistic work shows no signs. He
elected to keep his art apart from all current influences, from fashion-
able sentiment, and even from the attractions of association. On
the other hand, he never attempted to dissociate himself from his
country or his century by the adoption of a foreign or an antique
style. The movements of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Mediaevalists
affected him as little as those of the more modern Gallicists and Im-
pressionists. He was himself, without affectation, neither aping old
masters nor imitating new ones, but he searched for beauty every-
where, and rendered it in accordance with the order of his own mind.
He always followed “art for art's sake" in more than one sense of
that much abused phrase. He followed it perhaps too completely as
an end in itself, but he followed it also in the finest sense of all, for he
endeavoured, “for art's sake,” to sustain its ancient dignity, as an in-
spirer of noble emotion and a giver of pure delight.
It was once said by one of Leighton's most distinguished col-
leagues, that he was “born President of the Royal Academy,” and
birth has perhaps more to do with it than is apparent at first sight.
At all events he was, as the phrase has it, a “born artist" of cultured
parents, and was brought up under conditions favourable to the devel-
opment of those qualities of mind, character, and manners, which can
QO
BARON LEIGHT ON OF STRETTON
alone enable a man to fulfil all the duties of a President of the Royal
Academy with becoming ease and dignity.
Although an Englishman, Leighton was brought up abroad, and
this is no doubt a sufficient reason why his works seem to stand apart
from those of his contemporaries of the English School. Born at
Scarborough on the 3d of December, 1830, the son of a doctor, he
was taken abroad at a very early age, on account of his mother's deli-
cate health. He did not return to England except for short visits
till he was thirty years old. He soon showed such a distinct predi-
lection for art, that though his father did not wish him to follow it
professionally, he gave him every opportunity of cultivating his taste,
while not neglecting other studies. In 1840 the Leightons went to
Rome, where he learnt drawing regularly under Signor Meli. They
then moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended classes at the
Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfort, and in the
winter of the following year accompanied his family to Florence. It
was here that his future career was finally settled. His father con-
sulted Hiram Powers, the celebrated American sculptor, who in an-
swer to the question, “Shall I make him an artist P” replied, “Sir,
you have no choice in the matter; nature has done it for you.”
He now attended anatomy classes under Zanetti, and was sent
to the Accademia delle Belle Arti, but soon returned to his studies at
Frankfort, and received no further direct instruction in art for five
years. He went to Brussels in 1848, where he met Wiertz and Gal-
lait, and painted some pictures, including “Cimabue finding Giotto,”
“Othello and Desdemona,” and a portrait of himself. In 1849 he
spent a few months in Paris, studying from the nude and copying
Titian in the Louvre. He then returned to Frankfort, where he
settled down to really serious work under Edward Steinle.
Steinle belonged to the Christian or Gothic movement in Ger-
man art, a revolt against classicism in style and Paganism in feeling,
9I
cimabue's MADoNNA cARRIED IN PRocession
By PERMission of HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN of ENGLAND. It was THE FIRst Picture ExHIBITED BY THE ARTIst,
AND WAS PURCHASED BY THE QUEEN FROM THE WALLs of THE Royal AcADEMY
corresponding in some degree to the “Romantic" movement in
France, but actuated by an intensely religious feeling. It was started
by a devoted band of young men from various parts of Germany,
among whom were Overbeck and Cornelius, Schadow and Veit,
Schnor and Führich, who for some years lived in Rome, leading an
ascetic life and imitating Raphael and his precursors as the classicists
imitated Greek art. Steinle left Rome in 1833 and had been settled
at Frankfort for some eleven years before Leighton became his pupil.
There was probably no other German artist who could have been
more useful to Leighton at this period. Though he belonged to the

92
THROUGH THE STREETS OF FLORENCE
In Front of THE MADoNNA walks civiABue crowned witH LAUREls: By His side Is His PUPIL. Giotto; Behind
THE MADoNNA ARE ARNOLFO DI LAPO, GADDO GADDI, ANDREA TAFI, NICOLA, PISANO, BUFALMAcco, AND
simon E MEMMI, witH DANTE IN THE corner
“Nazarenes,” which was the nickname of his school, he had a strong
romantic vein and a refined feeling for colour, which the others for the
most part lacked. On the other hand, no one was more qualified to
instil the high principles of his fellows, their desire to sustain art at
the noblest level, to exclude all that was ugly, base or trivial, to cul-
tivate severe design, and an execution conscientious, unhurried and
complete. Whether or not we regard the “Nazarenes" as mistaken
in their aim, there is no doubt they followed in the footsteps of the
greatest Italian artists, in sparing no efforts for the complete organi-
zation of their works, in building up dignified compositions by the

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BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
adjustment of component parts beautiful in themselves, and so con-
structing a whole—unified, well-balanced and coherent. While it
must be left for some future historian to examine minutely the effect
of Leighton's German masters on his art, it is plain that their ex-
ample as regards these qualities was not lost, and that the personal
genius of Steinle, as shown in such pictures as the “Violin Player”
and “Loreley," was not without its influence on his pupil. Yet,
though Leighton spent so many years at Frankfort, and there re-
ceived the greater part of his artistic training, his heart, if we may
judge from the subjects of his early pictures, always remained at
Florence. At Paris, as has been stated, he painted “Cimabue find-
ing Giotto” and “Othello and Desdemona,” and among the works
executed under Steinle we hear of a picture of “Tybalt and Romeo"
and a cartoon of the “Plague at Florence,” a sketch for which was in
the possession of the artist at his death. Though the instruction of
Meli at Rome and of Bezzuoli and Segnolini at Florence had been
superseded, not even Steinle could make him see beauty through
German spectacles. Indeed, though still a youth when he was placed
under this master, his taste had been cultivated by sojourn in many
countries, and if not completely formed, it was probably strong
enough to resist undue pressure from his immediate surroundings.
The love not only of Italian art, but of Italy itself, is very plain in
the first picture by which he became known to the British public.
This was “Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the
Streets of Florence.” It had no title in the catalogue, but instead
there was a description which ran thus: -
“Cimabue's celebrated Madonna is carried in procession through the streets of Florence; in
front of the Madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue himself with his pupil, Giotto; be-
hind it, Arnolfo di Lapo, Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Nicola Pisano, Bufalmacco and Simone Memmi ;
in the corner, Dante.”
The exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1855 was a very mem-
orable one, for it contained the most celebrated of all Holman Hunt's
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BY PERMISSION OF MESSRS. P. & D. COLNAGHL

BARON LEIGHTON OF STRETTON
pictures—and perhaps one may venture to say, one of the most cele-
brated pictures of the century—“The Light of the World.” There
was also Hunt's “Awakened Conscience,” which excited almost as
much attention, and “The Rescue” by Millais, who had already at-
tained his Associateship by “The Huguenot" and other of his fa-
mous early pictures. The public mind was so absorbed with the
works of the Pre-Raphaelites that, to divert their attention to a pic-
ture in a new but different style was no easy feat; yet Leighton's
“Procession " did more than this, it created a sensation of its own.
Its size alone compelled attention ; it occupied nearly the whole side
of one of the rooms, and it was hung on the line, an honour to a young
and quite unknown artist which could not be ignored; and it was
unlike anything which the British public had ever seen. And when
it was examined surprise gave way to admiration at its stately arrange-
ment of beautiful forms and its strange, rich beauty of colour. Even
Ruskin praised it, and many of those who demanded a deeper moral
significance, a stronger subjective expression in a work of art, and
who sneered at it as a “mere pageant” and “only decorative,” were
impressed; while others went home possessed with a new and inex.
plicable joy. Of the latter, I, then a schoolboy, was one, and wrote
as perhaps others wrote, lines about it in which the future eminence
of the artist was prophesied with a confidence only equalled by the
poorness of the verses.
Though this was the first of Leighton's works exhibited in Eng-
land, some tidings of his promise had already arrived there. He had
visited England in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition, and he had
spent two years and more in Rome since he left Frankfort in 1852.
His agreeable manners, his many accomplishments, and his familiarity
with continental languages made him welcome and at ease in the
distinguished and cultivated society which gathered in the Rome of
those days. It was there he first made the acquaintance of Thack-
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BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
eray, who told Millais that he had just met in Rome a “versatile
young dog who will run you hard for the presidentship one day.”
It is somewhat remarkable that the success of “The Procession
of Cimabue's Madonna" did not induce Leighton to make another
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“HIT "
by PERMission of THE PRoPRIETors of the ART Journal, owners of the copyRIGHT
effort in the same direction. It still remains almost unique among his
pictures. He has given us other processions, but scarcely any other
vision of mediaeval Italy. This was certainly not from any lack of
personal interest, as may be seen by his fine “Italian Crossbow Man”
of 1863, the noble “Dante in Exile” of 1864, his “Condottiere" of


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THE MUSIC LEsson
By PERMIssion OF THE LONDON FINE ART society
1872, his mural painting in the South Kensington Museum of the
“Arts of War," and not least, his admirable illustrations to George
Eliot's “Romola." In the latter we see his sympathy with Florence
and the Florentines, with the picturesqueness of its architecture and of
its costumes in the fifteenth century. They show us also a side of
his nature which he has generally carefully excluded from his pic-
tures, his sense of character, his perception of humour. Taken as a
whole, the Romola series is more representative of the artist's indi-
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99
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BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
viduality, and the range of his human sympathies, than all his other
works put together. It is a little world in itself. It touches notes in
almost every octave of human nature, from brightest joy to deepest
tragedy, from the finest pathos to the gayest of frolic. It introduces
us to all sorts and conditions of men and women, from the austere
ecclesiastic to the grinning street boy, and all of these are delineated
with a power and veracity which speak of a wide interest in humanity
and a rare keenness of observation. As we turn the pages on which
the strange, momentous history of Romola and Tessa, of Tito and
Baldassare, is so powerfully depicted, and the old surging life of
Florence is brought before our eyes with such vividness and vi-
vacity, it is impossible not to regret that the genius of Leighton
should not have returned more frequently to an atmosphere in which
it breathed so freely, and scenes amid which it seemed so completely
at home. - -
But a rarer air invited him. The serene and elevated beauty of
Athens prevailed as a rival against the more picturesque charms of
Florence. The claims of abstract beauty were preferred to the rich-
ness and variety of character, and Leighton's artistic imagination
sought an ideal which seemed to it more perfect and more pure. A
strong indication of the path which it was in future to follow most
devotedly, was given by his second contribution to the Royal Acad-
emy. This was in 1856, when he sent a large picture called “The
Triumph of Music; ” Orpheus, by the power of his art, redeems his
wife from Hades. It was a failure. Leighton had boldly represented
Orpheus as playing on a fiddle. If my recollection serves me, it was
life-size, and perhaps more than life-size. The fiddle, which Leighton,
chose instead of the lyre on account of its inimitable range of expres-
sion, is doubtless accountable for much, but not all, of the coolness
with which it was received. It is memorable chiefly as showing that
Leighton, even when engaged on classical themes, determined to
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By PERMIssion OF THE LONDON FINE ART society

BARON LEIGHT ON OF STRETTON
work out his own conceptions without too much regard either to tra-
dition or public opinion.
The conception of his first Orpheus was Romantic; and it was
not till 1864, when his second appeared, that the Hellenic spirit be-
gan to predominate in his work. During much of the “Romantic.”
period he lived a great deal abroad. The years 1855–58 were partly
spent in Paris, where he painted his first Orpheus. In 1858 he vis-
ited London and made the acquaintance of the leading Pre-Raphael-
ites—Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt, and the spring of 1859 was
passed at Capri, where he was much impressed by the fine type of
the inhabitants. Part of the year was spent in Rome, and it was not
till 1860 that he had a settled residence in England. In this year he
took up his quarters at No. 2 Orme Square, Bayswater, where
he stayed till he removed in 1866 to his home in Holland Park
Road, Kensington. It was a ballad of Goethe which suggested a
pretty little picture of “The Fisherman and the Syren” in 1858, and
the “Lieder ohne Worte,” in 1861, was German at least in title.
“The Star of Bethlehem " in 1862, and “Jezebel and Ahab taking
Possession of Naboth's Vineyard,” were his first biblical pictures, and
both in conception and execution were far finer than any other works
on the walls. To this period belong a few subjects from Italian his-
tory and poetry, like the “Paolo e Francesca” (1861), and “Michael
Angelo, Nursing his Dying Servant” (1862), but the rest were princi-
pally actuated by a pure joy of life and beauty, like “A Girl Feeding
Peacocks” (1863), and the “Odalisque” (1862), compositions marked
by the rhythm of line and luxury of colour which are among the most
constant attributes of his art. The “Odalisque,” the motive of which
was the sympathy between the elegant lines of a beautiful woman
and a swan, may be regarded as his first dream of oriental beauty,
with which he afterwards showed so great a sympathy.
In 1864 he exhibited three remarkable works, “Dante in Exile,”
IO3
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
the most powerful of his Italian pictures, “Orpheus and Eurydice”
(signalizing his return to classical subject), and “Golden Hours,” one
of the most perfect of his simple dreams of beauty. In its reliance
for effect upon the beautiful arrangement of form and colour, it
reminds us of the work of Albert Moore, an artist of as exquisite, if
more limited, taste. Before the next year's exhibition he had been
elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. After that the main
effort of his life was to realize dreams of beauty suggested by classic
myth and history. If we add to pictures of this kind a few of which
the subject is Scripture, a few more of which the suggestion came
from the Orient, one or two of a tenderer sentiment, like the beauti-
ful “Wedded Bliss" (one of the most popular of his pictures), a num-
ber of studies of various types of female beauty, Teresina, Biondina,
Amarilla, etc., and an occasional portrait, we shall pretty nearly ex-
haust the classes into which this painter's work can be divided.
The Academy of 1865 contained “David"—one of the most
beautiful of his scriptural pictures. The psalmist is musing on his
palace top at night and longing for the “wings of a dove" that he
might “fly away and be at rest.” It is remarkable for the quiet sol-
emnity of its sentiment, a mood of spiritual yearning which Leigh-
ton has seldom indulged. Nearest to it in biblical feeling is per-
haps the “Elisha” of 1881, where the pathetic figure of the venerable
prophet crouched over the outstretched body of the widow's son, forms
a composition of grave beauty. In his other pictures of this class,
especially his illustrations to Dalziel's Bible, the text seems to have
excited his imagination to conceptions more objective and violent.
The Samson pinning the young lion against a rock, and the desper-
ate “Rizpah " of 1893 are instances of this. In the “Rizpah,” which
is one of the most original and carefully studied of his compositions,
he has allowed the horror of the situation to overpower the deeper
elements of its tragedy. Like also in unwonted audacity of design
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BARON LEIGHT ON OF STRETTON
is the “St. Jerome” of 1868 (his diploma picture), in which the
strange and almost grotesque silhouette of the faithful lion sitting
upright against the sky attracts the attention too forcibly. Both this
and the “Elijah in the Wilderness” (1879) are impressive in concep-
tion and full of fine qualities of drawing and colour. But perhaps the
greatest of all his designs from sacred history is that of Cain and
Abel in Dalziel's Bible. The scene is the rocky bed of a watercourse
high in the mountains. Above, across the stones, the fair young body
of Abel lies in the sun, while in the foreground, his face hidden in his
own shade, the first murderer, dizzy with dread, and feeling his way
with his hands, creeps crouching round a huge bowlder. No greater
contrast could be found than that between these noble but agitated
conceptions, and the calm atmosphere of luxurious enjoyment which
surrounds his few exquisite pictures of the Orient, painted after seeing
the East with his own eyes in 1867, 1868, and 1873. In 1868 he went
up the Nile with M. de Lesseps, and in 1873 he reached Damascus.
Impressions, also oriental in character, were received during a visit to
Spain in 1866. Wherever he went he made little vivid sketches
which used to cover much of his studio walls and were eagerly com-
peted for at the sale of its contents after his death. His extreme de-
light in Mohammedan architecture, and decorative art is perhaps
most plainly shown in his house, with his famous Arab hall walled
with the soft splendour of Damascus tiles, and dimly lit with light
transmitted through rich Oriental glass, and cooled with a silvery jet
of water rising from a basin of black marble. Was it Leighton, or
Mr. Aitchison, his architect, who stole Aladdin's lamp 2 In his studio
and elsewhere in his house beautiful bits of the pottery of Persia, Asia
Minor, and Rhodes, and rare products of Eastern looms attested the
Same taSte.
Not indeed the most elevated in thought, but perhaps the most
perfect of his pictures, is “The Music Lesson,” in which a lovely little
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THE DYING MESSAGE
From the Illustrations to “Romola.” by PERMission of George SMITH, Esq. REPRODUCED FROM THE
DRAWING ON WOOD BY THE ARTIST BEFORE THE BLOCK was CUT
girl is seated on her lovely young mother's lap, learning to play the
lute. It is a dream of the purest and tenderest affection, a collection
of dainty and exquisite things, arranged with inimitable grace, and
executed with a skill which leaves little to desire. A great contrast
to this in the strangeness of its aim and the austerity of the subject,
is “The Eastern Slinger," a nearly nude figure standing on a platform
in a level sea of corn, scaring the birds with a sling. His spare form,
illumined by the sun's rays, glows golden against the plain blue sky.
It is a daring and most original picture, but whether it is quite a suc-
cess, I doubt if anyone has fully determined.
The first of his classical pictures after the second Orpheus, was
“Helen of Troy,” exhibited in 1865. In the figure of Helen he dared
greatly, but without complete success. It is monumental in height
and rigidity, the limbs are cast in a heroic mould, and the general
effect of it is impressive and well-contrasted with the less dignified

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ATHLETE STRANGLING A PYTHON





BRONZE STATUE. By PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST
BARON LEIGHTON OF STRETTON
attitude and more agitated drapery of her attendants, but her tread is
heavy, her drapery encumbers her, both hands are occupied in holding
it, and his desire to complete the perfect oval of her face has made
him almost denude her head of the glory of her hair.
In 1866 he exhibited his second great processional picture, the
“Syracusan Bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of
Diana,” and ever afterwards his imagination was constantly em-
ployed on classic themes. They range from the “Venus disrobing
for the Bath” of 1867 to the “Clytie,” which was on his easel at his
death. The list is too long to be treated exhaustively, but a few of
the most memorable works must be mentioned. Among these were
the magnificent figure of “Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon"
(1869), the grand struggle between “Hercules and Death" (1871),
the “Clytemnestra” (1874), the gentle but noble conception of
“Nausicaa" (1878), the vision of calm Arcadian loveliness called
“An Idyll” (1881), two lovers underneath a spreading oak listening
to the piping of a shepherd, and gazing on the rich plain below ; the
“Phryne” of 1882, a figure of ideal loveliness, her flesh transmuted
into gold by the rays of the sun; the “Cymon and Iphigenia" (1884),
remarkable for the elaborate drapery which overflows from Iphige-
nia's sylvan couch warmly illuminated by the afterglow ; the “Captive
Andromeda” of 1888, the classical counterpart of his “Dante in
Exile,” in some respects his masterpiece, but tame in comparison
with the original sketch.
Of all these works, and of some of his later ones, as the “Garden
of Hesperides" and the “Perseus and Andromeda,” it may be said
that they treat great themes in an elevated style, sometimes with a
success attained by few modern artists, and always with an elegance
which is peculiarly the artist's own. Like all whose constant aim
was so high, he failed here and there, more or less, to hit the mark,
and now and then he suggested comparisons not to his advantage
III
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
with the works of other men, ancient and modern, but there is at
least one of these paintings which is incomparable, and that is the
great processional picture of the Theban festival of the “Daphne-
phoria.” In this picture all his most special qualities, his dainty
colour, his grace, his feeling for music, his delight in the innocent
and refined happiness of humanity, find full exercise. Few visions
are more lovely than that band of fair women and children moving in
rhythmical order, their sweet mouths quivering with song. In com-
position also it is singularly successful, its coherence being maintained
from beginning to end of the long line without strain or obvious art,
while the slenderness and motion of the figures are finely contrasted
with the solemn dignity of the cypress groves. If any testimony to
the unusual beauty of this picture is to be trusted, it is that of Mr.
Holman Hunt, who has written its eulogy in words which are evi-
dently as sincere as they are enthusiastic.
Leighton painted but few portraits, but among them are two at
least which are masterpieces. One of these is of Sir Richard Bur-
ton, the famous traveller and oriental scholar, and the other of him-
self, painted for the Gallery of the Uffizi. As a colourist Leighton
was original and effective, and his palette was select and varied.
He was as fastidious in the beauty of his individual tints as in the
selection of his forms. He had a lovely gamut of red, plum, crimson,
olive, cinnamon, chocolate, saffron, Orange, amber, pink and other
nameless broken tints, and closed it with a very fine and pure purple
of which he was very fond. With this affluent and luxurious scale,
which may be compared to that of a box of preserved fruits, he con-
structed many harmonies grave and gay, dainty and luscious, which
often give much pleasure and are always highly ornamental; but
the general effect is somewhat artificial, and misses the quietude, the
fulness and the depth of the greatest colour-poets. -
As a draughtsman he was learned and thorough, correct and ele-
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BIANCA.
By PERMIssion of THE LONDON FINE art society

BARON LEIGHTON OF STRETTON
gant, with a fine sense of the rhythm of line; and his modelling was
fine as well as subtle. He was truly a master of form, as is seen not
only in his pictures, but in the too few pieces of sculpture which he
executed, of which the “Athlete Strangling a Python " is the best
known. This and the “Sluggard,” a life-size figure of equal merit,
and perhaps more originality, and a charming statuette called “Need-
less Alarm,” once the property of Sir John Millais, rank amongst the
best and most refined work of the modern school. In the movement
which of late years has rescued sculpture from the bonds of conven-
tion, and inspired new life into the art, Leighton may be regarded as
a leader. The finer characteristics of the new school, the recurrence
to nature, the discovery of fresh motives, the subtler observation of
the play of light upon surface, the more tender, thorough and inti-
mate modelling, all resulting in a more life-like rendering of form and
substance, are seen distinctly in these beautiful figures; but at the
same time the artist always drew the line at too great realism, and a
freedom that would admit the ugly or the base.
It is needless to describe at length his more purely decorative
work; the well-known mural paintings at Kensington, the fine fresco
in Lyndhurst Church of the “Wise and Foolish Virgins,” a frieze and -
some other figures for private houses, the designs for the decoration of
St. Paul's Cathedral, or the large picture with which he filled one of the
wall spaces in the Court of the Royal Exchange. They have much
the same merits and defects as his other works. The last, which is
a gift to the Exchange, attests that patriotic desire to promote the
art of his country, by the decoration of public buildings, which, de-
spite its little encouragement, has always animated our nobler artists.
It would be strange indeed if such a feeling were unknown to Lord
Leighton, whom no one could accuse of indifference to the highest
interests of his country's art. He never shrunk from his respon-
sibilities as the leader of art in England, but always promptly inter-
II5
LEIGHT ON HOUSE-THE PASSAGE FROM THE WESTIBULE TO ARAH HALL
FROM. A copyRIGHTED PHOTOGRAPH. By Bedford LEMERE & Co.
vened wherever his example could be of value, whether to preside
over an Art Congress, or to procure the removal to its proper site of
Alfred Stevens's monument to Wellington in St. Paul's Cathedral.
It is not only in the ornamental functions of high position that he
showed his worthiness to hold it.
Of his courteous manners and his fine oratory there is no occa-
sion here to speak, nor perhaps of the admirable lectures which he
delivered on subjects always chosen with a view to extend the artistic
interest of students to matters beyond the narrow curriculum of the
Academy. But his punctilious and cheerful discharge of his more
arduous duties, his generous encouragement of young artists, the
sympathy which never failed to detect merit in any work, however

II6
BARON LEIGHT ON OF ST RETTON
opposed to his own theories of art, need a warm note of acknowledg-
ment. Nor should the influence which he exercised on the Council
of the Academy, in support of wise and liberal reforms, be lost sight
of, nor the improvement which took place in the methods of instruc-
tion in the Academy schools, nor yet the wisdom which, in the main,
governed the election of Associates during his presidency.
Honourable and honoured, Lord Leighton worked on to the end
in spite of ill-health which would have daunted a lesser man, striving
still to reach some higher peak of art, though conscious, like his own
“Spirit of the Summit,” that when the loftiest of all is reached, the
heaven of his ideal is as unattainable as ever.
Lord Leighton died January 25, 1896, a few days after a peerage
was conferred upon him. He is the only artist who has been raised
to that dignity, and he died before he could take his seat in the House
of Lords.
He was knighted in 1878, and created a baronet in 1886. He
held Honorary Degrees at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge,
Dublin, Edinburgh and Durham, was an Associate of the Institute of
France, a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and of the Order of
Leopold, a Knight of the Prussian Order “Pour le mérite,” and a
member of eight foreign Academies. He was buried in St. Paul's
Cathedral.
SIR
EDWARD
BURNE-JONES
BART.
|
For TRAIT OF SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
AFTER watts's PICTURE
ENGRAVED BY T. Johnson

-
STUDY FOR THE MASQUE OF CUPID
“I mean by a ficture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never wil/
be—in a Wight better than any fight that ever shone—in a ſand no one can de/ºne or remember, only
desire—and the forms divine/y beautifuz-and then I wake up, with the waking of Brynhild.”—
ExtRAct from A LETTER written by the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
I
HE questions “What is art?” and “What is poetry?” will
still probably employ the intellects of mankind for a good
many years to come, but meanwhile it is safe to affirm that
the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones was both an artist and a
poet. Perhaps the gentleman who is credited with the saying, that
Rembrandt might have been a great artist if he had not been cursed
with an imagination, would set little store by such highly imaginative
designs as those of Burne-Jones; but fortunately one extreme produces
another, and the latest (or a few days ago the latest) of art-aphorisms
is (or was), that Velasquez was “the commencement of photography.”
Extremes are said to meet, and if they do not meet, they help to level
the ground to a platform of common sense, and when this is accom-
plished there will probably be found room among the artists for Rem-
brandt and Velasquez, and Burne-Jones also.


I23
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
Yet there are some even of his admirers who regarded him as an
anachronism, because he worked in the spirit and style of the “Old
Masters." But these forgot that he lived in an age which is as fond
of retrospect as of progress, of pleasure as of business, and takes a
study of FIGURE For “venus's Looking-GLAss” ”
romance to read in an express train. The greater the crush, the
greater the need for some cool and quiet anteroom ; the ruder the
pressure of mundane realities, the stronger the desire to escape to the
land of dreams, where there is no time, or care, or worldly strife. It
is true that some prefer the novel to the romance, and the men who
*The pictures in this study, where not otherwise described, were reproduced by the kind permis-
sion of the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and (in all cases where the contrary is not stated) through
photographs made and copyrighted by Mr. F. Hollyer, who has kindly added his consent to their use.

124
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NCIATION
U
study For HEAD OF THE VIRGIN IN “THE ANN




SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
enjoy pictures may be divided into two classes: those who seek them
for the pleasure of repeating familiar sights, and those who desire to
behold what they can never see with their mortal eyes. Constable
and Millais delight the former, Turner and Burne-Jones the latter.
Is this world of imagination more beautiful than that of nature ?
Who shall say? It is not all who have the entrée there. But those
at least who have, think that it is so, or they would not visit it so
often or stay there so long.
It is the fashion to be surprised at nothing, but the sense of won-
der is still with us. No poet of words or paint ever appeals to it in
vain, and no one has appealed to it with greater success than Burne-
Jones. King Cophetua tranced at the beauty of the Beggar Maid—
the Beggar Maid wondering at
the love of King Cophetua; the
Virgin Mary trembling with rev-
erent awe in the presence of the
Announcing Angel; the two pri-
meval lovers, seated closely side
by side in the green woodland,
their souls entranced by the weird,
wild figure of Pan, and the shrill,
sweet sounds of his pipe; Pyg-
malion scarcely believing that his º,
impossible prayer has been an- “THE GARDEN of PAN."
swered, and that his own marble
statue is filled with life and yielding itself warm and loving to
his arms; the “Merciful Knight” at the foot of the Crucifix
from which the huge wooden image bends to bless him; it does
not matter whether the theme be Christian or pagan, it is the
wonder of it that takes the artist's imagination, and gives real life
to the beauty of his design. So special a quality is this feeling of

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BRITISH2CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
wonder (reverential wonder
or awe) in Burne-Jones's
work, that it may be stated
as perhaps his greatest claim
to distinction among all art-
ists past or present. The
germ was innate, but it was
nursed and developed by the
great mystic—Dante Gab-
riel Rossetti, the leader of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- - -
hood. It is unnecessary PortRA it of A NestoriaN PRIEST *
here to inquire very min-
utely into the exact tenets of the brotherhood. . Sincerity was
their real watchword, and their motto may be roughly phrased as
“Take care of the facts and the beauty will take care of itself." To
reject nothing, to select nothing, to scorn nothing, in nature, was the
duty set before them by Mr. Ruskin; and with regard to historical
pictures they were to represent events as they did happen, and not as
they might be picturesquely supposed to have happened.
The dictum as to selection was difficult enough in the most real-
istic art, but what about art which was not realistic at all 2 What about
landscapes that were never seen, and events which never did happen?
How to treat those visions of the poets which, as long as man exists,
will demand some attempt of the poetic artist to realize in form 2
Millais could buy his strawberries in Covent Garden Market, but even
* This is a portrait of a Priest of a Nestorian Monastery in Babylonia, which was burnt down a
few years ago. The priest, who could not speak a word of any European language, set out to travel
the world, in order to obtain subscriptions to rebuild his monastery, and found his way to the house of
Mr. Burne-Jones, who took his portrait. Scarcely less remarkable than his grand face was his jet-
black hair, so close and wiry that it looked as though it were carved out of black basalt.

I28
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART,
in that emporium of the fruit of the world, where could he find an
apple from the gardens of Eden, or the Hesperides 2 Rossetti might
find in Wardour Street furniture and armour of any century he chose,
but where could he get the helmet of Perseus or the greaves of
Mars? Where does the great principle of sincerity come in here 2
The answer is comparatively easy—be sincere to your imagination,
realize as far as possible the vision of your mind, careful that your
design is the expression of your true self, not an imitation of what
someone else has done, or what you think he would have done in
your place. In imaginative art such sincerity as this is the only way
to Salvation, and Burne-Jones found it.
II
EDWARD BURNE-JONES was educated at King Edward's School,
in Birmingham, where he was born August 28, 1833. He was
intended for the Church, and had among his school-fellows two boys
who were hereafter to be greatly distinguished in that profession.
One of these was the late Bishop Lightfoot; the other, the present
Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1852 he gained a school exhibition and
proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford, and it was at this chosen seat of
learning, of all places in the world, that he was diverted from letters to
art, from the preaching of sermons to the painting of pictures. It was
at Mr. Combe's, of the Clarendon Press, that he first saw works of the
Pre-Raphaelites, Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World” among them;
but he was even more attracted by Rossetti's drawing of “Dante Pre-
paring to Paint Beatrice,” and a little woodcut after the same artist,
called “Elfinmere,” which illustrated a volume of William Allingham's
poems. The romance, the mysticism, and unearthly beauty of Ros-
setti's creation exercised an immediate fascination over him, and, as
if to complete the spell, it was at college that he met William Morris,
I29
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
the future decorative poet and poetical decorator, with whom he
was to enter into a lifelong partnership of the imagination.
When Burne-Jones came up to London, in 1856, with a burning
desire to meet Rossetti, he was already three and twenty and had at-
tained no inconsiderable skill
as a designer and draughtsman
in pen and ink as is proved by
the elaborate drawing of “The
Waxen Image," which was exe-
cuted in that year and now
belongs to Mr. A. E. Street.
For once the hero of the im-
agination answered to the ideal
and as the attraction was mu-
tual, it was not long before the
two assumed intimate relations
as guide and follower. He left
the University without taking
his degree, and the year 1857
saw him established at 17 Red
Lion Square, with Rossetti as
his master and William Morris
as his friend and fellow-lodger.
It is interesting, if idle, to
STUDY OF DRAPERY
speculate whether the advice
and influence of Rossetti were the best he could have had. Rossetti
ran a great risk in bidding him forego all academic training. He had
never had the patience to go through a thorough discipline himself, and
his want of craftsmanship is painfully visible in much of his work. It
seems something like the advice of the fox who had cut off his tail,
but there is no question of Rossetti's sincerity. He feared that the

13o
NGRAVED BY F. s. KING
E.
-HEAD FIRE's
THE GOD

FROM A DRAWING FOR A PICTURE IN THE PYGMALION SERIES
SIR EDWARD BURNE–JONES, BART.
enforced drudgery of copying from the antique would blunt, if not
destroy, the fine sensitive imagination of his young friend ; and he
himself was fitted, as no other man was, to stimulate and direct that
teeming fancy, that fine sense of decorative beauty which Burne-
Jones possessed. By strenuous efforts Burne-Jones made up for the
deficiencies of his early training and became one of the most subtle
and sensitive of draughtsmen, and if some imperfections remained to
the last they were not of a kind to impair either the expression of his
feeling or the beauty of his conceptions.
In 1858 he went to Oxford to aid in the decoration of the Ox-
ford “Union,” a literary and debating club of the undergraduates.
Alas! all these designs by the enthusiastic band of young artists
under the leadership of Rossetti have blackened or peeled from the
walls. Burne-Jones's subject was “Merlin and Nimue” (Vivien),
which he afterward chose for one of his most celebrated pictures.
With him were Arthur Hughes and Val Prinsep, and not least, Wil-
liam Morris, who, about this time, published his first volume of
poems, “The Defence of Guenevere,” to be followed (though not
till 1865) by the “Life and Death of Jason.” Never were poetry
and painting more closely allied than in the works of William Morris
and Burne-Jones. Morris seems to have been made to furnish sub-
jects for Burne-Jones's pencil, and he himself depicted them in words
which have almost the effect of paint. They both lived in the same
honeyed world of romance. Many others had reached it before,
among whom Chaucer in the past and Tennyson in the then present
must not be forgotten; but of the younger living men these two
penetrated alone into its sweeter and more silent places, sheltered
from the fiercer gusts of passion in which Swinburne revelled.
No doubt one of their greatest ties was the remarkable feeling
for decorative beauty which both possessed. Burne-Jones soon be-
gan to make a great many designs for stained glass, some of which
I33
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
-
-ºrº
-
º
º
.
THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA
-
PHOTOGRAPHED BY HENRY Dixon AFTER THE OIL PICTURE. BY
PERMISSION OF THE OWNER, R. H. BENSON, ESQ.
were carried out by Messrs.
Powell, the celebrated glass-
makers in Whitefriars, Lon-
don; but after a few years
all his windows were exe-
cuted by the well-known firm
of which Morris was the head.
To these days belong those
early water-colours some of
which, exhibited at the “old”
(now Royal) Water-Colour
Society, first drew public at-
tention to his strange im-
agination. The designs of
this period were mainly
romantic, but mixed with such
themes as the legends of Sir
Degrevant and Sir Galahad,
of Morgan Le Fay and Childe
Rolande, were others drawn
from the Bible, as the “An-
nunciation" and the “Nativ-
ity,” and from the semi-legend-
ary history of Italy and Prov-
ence, like “King René's
Honeymoon" and “The
Wedding of Buondelmonte.”
Many were from Chaucer,
two from the wonderful mod-
ern romance of “Sidonia
the Sorceress,” and a few

134
THE DOOM FULFILLED
FROM A CARTOON FOR A PICTURE IN THE PERSEUs serIES
from classical lore, like “Theseus and Ariadne,” “The Wine of
Circe,” and “Cupid and Psyche"; others again were pictures of his
own fancy, as “Laus Veneris” and “The Backgammon Players”
(often called the chess players). Whatever his subject, it was nearly
always one of mystery and wonder, and was always treated in the
same visionary manner. None of his drawings at the Water-Colour

135
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
STUDY OF A HEAD
Society, of which he was elected
an associate in 1863, produced a
greater impression than that of
“The Merciful Knight” (1863), al-
ready mentioned. It is said that
the figure of the knight was drawn
from a woman, and the work is in
many ways immature, but nothing
interferes with the profound sense
of the supernatural with which the
whole composition is suffused.
The spectator feels that he is the
witness of a miracle.
He had now (1865) followed
the profession of an artist for
nearly ten years, and had achieved
a certain and distinct position as a painter in water-colours and a
designer for stained glass.
He had been to Italy with Mr. Ruskin,
who had helped him in many ways, and his genius had been fed with
the spiritual beauty of the real Pre-Raphaelites, and the germs of some
of his most famous pictures—the “Laus Veneris," the “Beguiling
of Merlin,” “The Annunciation,"
the “Wine of Circe,” the “Chant
For
another twelve years the same
d'Amour"—had taken root.
steady progress, the same unrest-
ing labour was to continue, before
he can be said to have become
really famous. For part of these
years the public had little oppor-
tunity of watching his develop-
STUDY OF A
HEAD SLEEPING



136
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
ment, for in 1870 an unfor-
tunate dispute ended for eigh-
teen years his connection with
the Water-Colour Society, and
except at the Dudley Gallery
(Egyptian Hall), in 1873, he
seldom if ever exhibited in
London. The public were,
therefore, scarcely prepared
for the wonderful apparition
which was in store for them
when the Grosvenor Gallery
opened its doors for the first
time in 1877. The imagina-
tive feeling of the strange
pictures which met their view
was indeed akin to that of the
poems of Rossetti, Morris and
Swinburne, but the presenta-
tion of it in pictorial form was
comparatively new; for it must
be remembered that Rossetti,
as a painter, was known to
them only by rumour. The
revelation of Burne-Jones's
genius was almost as complete
as it was sudden. “ The Six
Days of Creation,” in lofty
allegory; “The Beguiling of
Merlin,” in its weird glamour;
the “Mirror of Venus," in its
FLAMMA WESTALIS
FROM THE OIL PICTURE, BY PERMISSION OF THE OWNER,
LORD DAWEY

137
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
child-like beauty, have scarcely been surpassed by any later work.
They showed also the main sources of his inspiration—the Bible,
romantic legend and classical poetry, those three chief districts of
the world of wonder in which he lived. One thing to be noted, of
these as of all other pictures by Burne-Jones, is that the persons
pictured have no concern with you; they are all wrapt in the trance
of their own thoughts. The angels of Creation look through you;
sight is suspended in the eyes of Merlin; the maidens look at them-
selves. You look at them all as you might peer into Doctor Dee's
shewstone, or into one of those wondrous crystal globes which the
angels of the Creation hold in their hand, each reflecting a vision
of the day's divine handiwork. Criticism might have much to say
about the stature of Vivien, and the solidity of the reflections in the
“Mirror,” and other matters, but Burne-Jones, as the French say,
“had arrived.” No criticism nor ridicule (and there was naturally
plenty of the latter) could disguise the fact that there was a strong
and original art-personality suddenly revealed, whose shortcomings
were but a featherweight in comparison with the subtlety of imagina-
tion, the fertility of design, the exquisite and intricate beauty of
colour, which, to all who were open to their influences, made these
pictures like the birth of a new joy into the world.
Next year came the wonderful “Laus Veneris,” which had been
begun seventeen years before. On the right a pale queen, weary of
loveless sovereignty, sits languidly with her crown on her knees, her
rich orange dress relieved against a greenish tapestry on which are
depicted scenes of romantic love; to the left are seated four beautiful
maidens in costumes of bright colours, solacing their mistress by recit-
ing the praises of love; while through the window are seen knights
in armour keenly seeking glimpses of the beauty within. Some shook
their heads at this picture, they could not understand it, they saw no
“moral" in it, the title of it frightened them, and there was a feeling
: ;
138
º
º
º,

º
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
that there must be some
mysterious wickedness
at the bottom of it all.
As a matter of fact,
nothing could be more
innocently lovely. The
picture still remains al-
most unique among
Burne-Jones's works;
he has never tried to
grival its brilliant patch-
work of colour In the
“Angels of Creation"
the colours shift and
play into one another,
now like the feathers on
a dove's neck, and now
like the reflections in a
stream. In the “Chant
d'Amour" and “King
Cophetua" the colours
are more richly blended
and diffused, in the
manner of the Vene-
tians, but in this picture
the strong, pure spaces
of colour in dress and
cap stand detached as
instained glass, orinthe º
earlier pictures of the THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
- - PHoToGRAPHED BY HENRY Dixon, FROM THE OLL PICTURE, BY PERMISSION
Italian school, which of THE owner, R. H. BENSON, ESQ.

I4I
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
inherited their system of colours from mosaics and frescoes. This,
1878, was also the year of “Le Chant d'Amour” and “Pan and
Psyche;” of panels of “Day” and “Night,” and the four “Seasons,”
and a curious decorative panel of “Perseus and the Graiae"—an
experiment in wood and metal, which was much criticised and was
not repeated. In 1879 appeared the celebrated “Annunciation ;”
in 1880, the “Golden Stairs,” in which a decorative motive was
elaborated into a picture almost as sweet and delicate in its colour
as a white lily. The “Wheel of Fortune,” the finest of his allegorical
conceptions, marks the year 1883. The “Cophetua,” at the Grosvenor
of 1884, the “Depths of the Sea,” at the Royal Academy, in 1886;
(his first and last contribution to Burlington House); the “Garden
of Pan,” at the Grosvenor in 1887, were the most important works
exhibited in these years. .
The opening of the new gallery in 1888 was made memorable by
the contributions of Burne-Jones, which comprised three large and
very characteristic pictures. One represented “Danaë" watching the
building of the brazen tower in which she is to be immured, and two
were part of the series from the Perseus legend. In the latter, the
figure of Andromeda is seen full-length back and front, and it is
probably the most perfect example of the author's draughtsmanship
of the nude. A drawing in the gallery from the far robuster
model, showed at once the artist's mastery of drawing, and
the process through which nature had to go in its translation to
the Burne-Jones ideal. In the “Rock of Doom" we see Perseus
in his flashing armour, arrested, as he flies by on his sandals of
swiftness, by the sight of the doomed maid chained to the rock;
in the “Doom Fulfilled "we see the combat itself, the monster
ineffectually endeavouring to entrap Perseus in its.huge scaleless
coils, while he seizes the opportunity to plunge his sword into
some vital part. In these pictures one is perhaps more struck

I42
ENGRAVEL BY FRANK FRENCH
THE GOLDEN STAIRS

FROM THE OLL PICTURE.
BY PERMISSION OF THE OWNER, LORD BATTERSEA
SIR EDWARD BURNE JONES, BART.
than usual by the deliberately
decorative character of the
work, and the stillness of a vis-
ionary world in which the fier-
cest conflicts happen, as it were,
to slow music.
We cannot follow Burne-
Jones step by step through later
years. It must suffice to notice
his grand series of pictures on
the legend of “The Briar
Rose,” or “Sleeping Beauty,"
the masterpiece of his lighter
fancy. The subject had always
been a favourite with him. It
had formed the theme of a
series of tiles for Mr. Birket
Foster's house at Whitby, of a
set of small oil pictures in 1871,
of a larger set in 1873–74, and
in 1890 the four still larger pic-
tures were exhibited at Messrs.
Agnew's Galleries, and have
drawn there and elsewhere their
thousands of admirers. This
subject seems to be one pecul-
- - - MEMORIAL TABLET TO LADY LYTTLETON, IN
iarly congenial to the genius of COLOURED GLASS
IN THE AMERICAN PROTESTANT CHURCH AT ROME
the artist. The trance-like sus-
pense which characterizes all his conceptions here becomes the posi-
tive subject. In this mysterious wood all animate things sleep, as
though their motion had been arrested by a flood of honeyed amber.

I45
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
The spell seems even to smite the young knight, as in the first picture
he enters the wood strewn with the bodies of his ill-fated predecessors.
In the next picture we are shown the aged king, his white beard flow-
ing to the ground, surrounded by his sleeping counsellors; in the next,
the Garden Court, where the serving maidens in various positions of
elegance sleep their long sleep; and last, the bower of the princess
herself who is just awakening to the kiss of her brave lover; from be.
ginning to end it is not only a dream, but a dream of dreams. Could
any subject be more suited to the arch-dreamer of the nineteenth
century P
III
As we have already seen, the more realistic tenets of the modern
Pre-Raphaelites are incompatible with the art of Burne-Jones. The
doctrines of non-selection and contempt of composition were both
utterly contrary to his artistic nature, for there never was a more
fastidious selector in this world, and all his designs show the utmost
care, and often great ingenuity, in composition. On the other hand,
no artist has been more impressed with the work of the real precur-
sors of Raphael; with their naiveté of conception, their directness of
suggestion, their spiritual feeling, and their refined sense of decora-
tive beauty. There is a fascination and a romance about the work of
such artists as Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo, Piero della Francesca
and Matteo da Siena, in spite of, and perhaps partly in consequence
of, the imperfection of their ideals, and the tentative nature of their
efforts—a fascination which is altogether lost in the triumphant mas-, .
tery of Raphael and Michael Angelo.
But Burne-Jones studied not only one period of art nor the art
of only one country. If his draperies sometimes swell like those of
Botticelli, they are at others rigid as the Byzantines; he makes them
I46 * ... a
- -
-* ENGRAVED BY F. S. KING
º THE ANNUNCIATION


FROM THE oil PICTURE. By PERMISSION OF THE own ER, THE EARL OF CARLISLE
SIR EDWARD BURNE–JONES, BART.
as broad as Giotto's or as crinkly as Mantegna's, whichever style may
be most suited to the idea of his design. The rich reflections of
many-coloured garments in brimming water which we see in the
“Baptism of Christ” in Piero della Francesca's picture in the Na-
tional Gallery, may have suggested the very different picture of the
“Mirror of Venus.” Piero di Cosimo's pathetic “Cephalus and Pro-
cris,” in the same gallery, is a relation, but a very distant One, to his
“Pan and Daphne.” But his debts do not end with the Pre-Raphael-
ites: “Le Chant d'Amour” speaks of the gorgeous palette of Titian,
and the spirit of Giorgione seems to hover round the lovers in the
“Garden of Pan.” Luini and Leonardo rise to one's mind as one
looks at the “Depths of the Sea,” and the “Wheel of Fortune” can-
not be passed without a thought of Michael Angelo. Everywhere he
found something akin to himself; some music of colour, or rhythm of
line; some fall of robe or lift of foot; which helped him to realize
the conceptions of his own imagination and express the desire of his
own soul.
This is not plagiarism, it is not even imitation, except in the
sense that all great artists are imitators. As Raphael absorbed in
his own developed personality all the virtue his genius could assimi-
late of Giotto and Perugino, of Leonardo and Andrea del Sarto, of
Masaccio and Michael Angelo; as Turner absorbed Claude and Van-
develde, Cozens and Girtin; so Burne-Jones drank from all the
sources which could feed his artistic nature, from the mosaics of Ra-
venna to the designs of Rossetti; and now his work is
over he stands out as distinct in his personality, if not
as great, as any of his precursors.
There is indeed an eclecticism which kills. This
kind, unconfined and uncontrolled by any strong per-
sonal passion, seeks to fabricate beauty by piecing
together fragments of the dead ideals of other minds.
I49
:
:
:
:
:
Ç
*
:
:
:
STUDY OF A CHILD

BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
But there is also an eclecticism which nourishes, and this is the
eclecticism of . Burne-Jones, who, from his first sketch to the great
picture of “Avalon,” which at his death still remained unfinished on
his easel, was absorbed by the desire to present in perfect form the
children of his own imagination, and to clothe them with the most
lovely raiment he could devise. For this he had to wait and watch
and work, * for this he ransacked not only nature but art, and the
result is that he created a new world with the breath of his own
genius, a world wondrously beautiful and beautifully wondrous.
Like the lives of all artists devoted to their work, that of Burne-
Jones is marked by few, stirring incidents. He was not without
honour in his own or other countries, though it was slow, fitful, and
inadequate. One of the earliest and most grateful recognitions of
his genius was from the college which he had left to answer the call
of Art. His fellowship at Exeter was followed in 1881 by the hon-
orary degree of D.C.L. “The Beguiling of Merlin" had been sent
to the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and his reputation was so great in
France in 1882, that he was asked by the French Government to
represent Great Britain at the International Exhibition of Contempo-
rary Art, Lord (then Sir Frederick) Leighton, President of the
Royal Academy, as his sole colleague. This honour he was unable to
accept. In 1889 he was awarded a first-class medal at the Paris In-
ternational Exhibition, and in 1890 was decorated with the Legion of
Honour. He was created a Baronet in 1894. In America he is
perhaps more appreciated than any other living English artist.
Some of his finest stained-glass windows are those at Boston, Long-
* “Laus Veneris” was about seventeen years (1861–1878) in progress, i. e., between the first
design and the finished picture; the “Briar Rose" series twenty-two (1873–1895); the “Pilgrim of
Love” twenty (1877–1897), or even longer ; and the “Prioress' Tale” twenty-nine or thirty (1869–1898).
The subject of the “Prioress' Tale" was painted on a cabinet for William Morris in 1858. The de-
signs on the cabinet differ from the picture, but they show that the artist's fancy played about the same
theme during the whole of his working life.
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
wood, Mass., and New-
port, and the grand de-
signs for the mosaics in
the apse of the American
Protestant Church at
Rome must rank among
his most remarkable a-
chievements. In Eng-
land he is widely known
and greatly honoured,
and the exhibition of his
works at the New Gal-
lery in 1893 was a tri-
umph such as is allowed
to few artists in their
lifetime. A low, per-
haps, but sound, test of
his appreciation by his
countrymen is the large
prices which his works
fetch whenever they
appear in a public
auction-room. At the
Leyland and Graham
sales the large “Mirror
of Venus,” the “Beguil-
ing of Merlin," and “Le
Iſr IEL
FROM A CARTOON FOR A Mosaic IN THE AMERICAN PROTESTANT
CHURCH AT ROME
Chant d'Amour" were sold at sums ranging between three and four
thousand pounds; and the “Laus Veneris” would not be parted with
by its present owner for a much larger sum, if for any. It is a general
theme for regret that Burne-Jones never received the highest hon-

I51
PORTRAIT OF BURNE-JONES
PHOTOGRAPHED FROM LIFE, About 1885, by F. Holly ER
ours of the Royal Academy. He accepted the offer of an Associate-
ship in 1885, but only once exhibited at Burlington House, and
soon resigned his associateship. We need not inquire here where
the fault, if any, lay, but it is certain that the loss was to the Academy
rather than to the artist.
For many years Burne-Jones lived in an old-fashioned house in
North End Road, once inhabited by Samuel Richardson, the novelist.
It lies between Old Kensington and Hammersmith, a district till re-
cently occupied by few houses and many gardens. A large, flat,
green tract it was, where the dweller in the metropolis could take a
walk and think that he was in something like the country. Now the
whole aspect of the neighbourhood is changed, and the creation of


152
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
the populous suburb of West Kensington grad-
ually hemmed in Richardson's old house, until the
late occupant, instead of fair open space of field and
sky, had only his own and the garden of his neigh-
bour as a barrier between him and the endless rows
of “jerry-built” houses. If he had any pleasure in
the view from his own windows, it was chiefly one
of good-humoured malice as he thought of the baf-
fled contractors who coveted the space occupied
by his green garden. But the alteration in its sur-
roundings did not affect the work that went on
within, or dull the imagination of the dreamer who
dwelt there; and day by day, almost hour by hour,
STUDIES OF CHILDREN
until the very last, he added something to his life's achievement,
something to the poetic endowment of the world.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones died in this house June 17, 1898, and
was buried at Rottingdean, Sussex, where he had a country house.
Shortly after his death a large collection of his pictures was exhibited
at the New Gallery, and another of his drawings and sketches at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club. Not the least interesting of the latter
were the humourous drawings showing a side of his character not
before disclosed to the public. These have been described by an old
friend of the artist as “the innumerable nonsense-drawings he de-
gs n
lighted in, drawn for the children he loved and knew, private fun sent
in letters to intimate friends, passing records of that ethereal humour

which made him the most perfect playfellow in the world.”
WILLIAM
QUILLER
ORCHARDSON
R.A.
Por TRAIT of will.I.A.M. QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A. --
1N THE UFFIzi GALLERY, FLORENCE


-
- - -
- .
º
º
- -
-
-
sketch for “The salon of MADAME RecAMier"
By PERMission of THE ARTist
R. ORCHARDSON holds a very distinct position among
modern painters of the British School. He is not only
a born artist but he possesses all, or nearly all, the special
faculties of a painter. The list of them I shall not here
attempt to exhaust, but he certainly has the gift of colour in a re-
markable degree, and what is even rarer, a power of inward vision
which presents to his mind pictures so clear and strong, almost to their
details, that he can transfer them to his canvas with little hesitation
or trial. This is a faculty denied to many artists—to Mr. Watts, for
instance, whose designs have to be worked out by degrees, and with
labour; it was possessed by Sir E. Burne-Jones, who informed me that
even when he began to draw he saw his design on the paper, and
practically “traced" it with his pencil; Mr. Alma-Tadema has, no
doubt, a fertile pictorial imagination, but a great deal of thought and
-

159
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
tentative effort go to the construction of his pictures, the last aspect
of which is often very different from the first. No one could see
more distinctly what was present to his eyes than Sir John Millais,
but it is doubtful whether he often, or even ever, saw his whole
picture clearly before he began. Of artists generally it may be said
that their compositions are literally “puttings together," and prob-
ably there have not been many at any time whose conceptions were so
complete as Mr. Orchardson's-—sentiment, colour, action, all fused to-
gether in one impulse of creation. It is no doubt to this rare faculty
that is to be attributed the unity of his designs, and the force and
directness of their appeal; for the centre of interest is never doubtful,
and the focus of the mind is always identical with that of the eye.
There is, perhaps, no living painter whose claims to be considered as
a true artist will meet with less opposition than Mr. Orchardson's.
As a colourist his light and delicate schemes may not suit all tastes,
but few will dispute that he is one of the few men who possess a fine
and original gift of colour, or that he employs it to produce harmo-
nies which are exquisite and subtle. Nor will it be easy, even for the
captious, to find much fault with his draughtsmanship, which is at once
careful and free, essentially true, and thoroughly vital, extremely deli-
cate, and yet full of emphasis. His arrangements of form, and bal-
ance of light and shade while anything but conventional, satisfy the
sense of symmetry, while their art is so concealed as to appear un-
forced and even accidental. Technically he may be said to form a
link between the older and more modern art, holding out a hand
to each, which neither will refuse to take ; and it is the same with
his subjects and his treatment of them. He has not, indeed,
that carelessness of subject which marks the most “advanced”
of modern painters, but his choice of it is regulated by a purely
artistic instinct. He does not give the cold shoulder to sentiment,
or exclude what it termed the “literary idea,” but if he tells a story
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DAUGHTER OF W. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A.
By PERMIssion OF THE ARTIST



WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDson, R.A.
or touches our feelings, it is always by the
eloquence of form and colour.
Mr. Orchardson's work is so personal
throughout that it is difficult to select its most
distinctive qualities, but high among them must
be placed his taste, a quality which is growing
somewhat old-fashioned. Although he seeks
rather for character than for beauty of type, he
has a limit of elegance and refinement which he
never oversteps. He is, I think, since Stothard,
our best painter of what would once have been
called “genteel comedy,” but he observes a cer-
tain measure in expression and a certain reti-
cence in gesture, which give repose and dignity
to his figures, of whatever rank or however em-
ployed. This reserve is a sign not of weak- sºcº ros. The rigºne of
NAPOLEON IN ORCHARDson's
ness but of strength, suggesting more than Picture of “Napoleon on
BoARD H.M.S. BELLERoPHoN,
July 23, 1815.”
could be expressed with greater violence. His By PERMission of THE ARTIST
dramatic tact is of the finest; he never over-
crowds his scenes, and he is a master of gesture or “pantomime.”
He will make two figures fill a space which would look empty under
another's treatment, an effect due not only to the wonderful (some-
times almost magical) painting of accessories, but also to the large
style of the figures themselves, which seem to demand space in
which to feel and breathe and think ; and he will put more expression
into a turn of the wrist than many another into a whole body. Some-
one once remarked to me of Millais that the very clothes of his figures
were alive, and this remark might be extended in the case of Orchard-
son to his chairs and his tables, his floors and his walls, in which
respect, as in others, he reminds one of his great forerunner, Hogarth.
With all his elegance he is always manly, and his refinement never

I63
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
degenerates into weakness. If he paints a “Farmer's Daughter"
petting her beautiful pigeons, or Madame Récamier as the queen
of a brilliant society, you will find both equally healthy, and, in
their different ways, equally attractive. If he cannot be vulgar,
neither can he be affected; his taste forbids the one, his nature
the other. He will paint you affected people certainly, but most
unaffectedly, like the magnificent buck who is displaying his fine
figure in “Her First Dance.” He will give the humours of Poins
and Falstaff, but without any stage trick of expression or gait. His
dramatz's personae are not actors but real men and women. For him
art is a selection from Nature, concentrated and emphasized to pro-
duce a particular impression, in isolation and completeness, and few
artists have such a just sense of the various compromises of which all
fine art is composed. Fewer still have such command of all the ele-
ments of a picture that their creative faculty can employ all at once
to produce a complex design which has the effect of an impromptu.
Orchardson was twenty-seven years old when he came to Lon-
don, in 1862. He had already won for himself a reputation in Edin-
burgh as one of the most brilliant of the pupils of Robert Scott
Lauder, the master of the Trustees' Academy, who, since his ap-
pointment in 1856 (which was also the year when Orchardson entered
this Academy), had infused new life and vigour into Scottish paint-
ing. Among Orchardson's most intimate associates were the late
John Pettie, R.A., and C. E. Johnson, the landscape painter, and all
three of these came up to London about the same time, and after a
little while took up their residence tºgether for a few years at 37
Fitzroy Square, a house afterward inhabited by the late Ford Madox
Brown. No one of the three was long in making his way, and
though Mr. Johnson, unlike his more fortunate comrades, failed to
gain the honours of the Academy, he achieved, and still maintains, a
considerable reputation as a landscape painter. The other two may
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HER FIRST DANCE
BY PERMISSION OF MESSRs. Dowdeswell & Dowd Eswell, l't'ry, 16o New Bond street, LoNDoN, own ERs of THE COPYRIGHT

WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
almost be said to have taken the Academy by storm. Their free
and painter-like handling, their original and effective colour, “made
holes,” as the phrase has it, in the Academy walls, and compelled at-
tention, soon followed by admiration. Pettie, by the greater robust-
ness of his style, the greater richness of his colour, the more power-
ful chiaroscuro, and the more vigourous animation of his figures, at
first attracted most notice. These two friends painted so much in
the same way, and their colouration was (in comparison with that of
other painters) so similar, that it was impossible to avoid a certain
rivalry. They appeared to the public like brothers, of which Or-
chardson was the weaker. Nor were the public altogether wrong,
for Pettie, despite his age (he was some years younger than Orchard-
son), was the more mature artist of the two. There was an appar-
ently careless sketchiness which gave a thin and flimsy character to
Orchardson's work at this time. The lightness and luminous quality
of his paint was there, the love of delicate gradations also, and
those subtle harmonies of faint tints which we recognize now as his
distinction as a colourist; but he had not yet got sufficient mastery
over them to make his light backgrounds recede quite so far as they
should, or to unite the more positive local colours of his foreground
with the paleness of the grays behind them. But in considering the
reasons which made not only the public but the Academy of the day
set a higher value on the work of the younger man, we must remem-
ber three things. 1. That Pettie had exhibited at the Royal Acad-
emy three years before Orchardson began to do so. 2. That his
election as Associate preceded that of Orchardson by one year only.
3. That neither had long to wait for this important event in an artist's
career. It is indeed rather astonishing that Orchardson made his
way so quickly as he did, as we were not accustomed to work of
this style at all. The conservative portion of the public liked good
clear outlines, as if cut by the knife; rich brown shadows, and
167
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
plenty of them; cheeks like waxwork, with vermilion lips and nos-
trils, and everything neatly rounded and tangible. The more ad-
vanced spirits clove still to the Pre-Raphaelite style of workmanship,
with any quantity (the more the better) of elaborate detail, and the
brightest of bright colours peppered all over the canvas. Pictures
like Orchardson's, in which there was no brown deeper than a light
toast, figures in light dresses, scarcely relieved against walls almost
as white, or a little whiter, and all things represented by a series of
streaks and dabs in a happy-go-lucky sort of way, were daring nov-
elties indeed. But the note of the new colourist was heard, and his
grace and dexterity won their way by their own merit, and his
pictures were welcomed everywhere—at the Royal Academy, where
his charming “Hamlet and Ophelia " made an impression in 1865;
at the old British Institution, where he sent “Peggy” (from Allan
Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd”) in 1864, and at Mr. Wallis's French
Gallery in Piccadilly, where his spirited “Challenge” (a Cavalier
presenting a note to a Roundhead on the tip of his sword) carried
off the prize of 4 100. The refinement of his humour was again
displayed in his pictures of “Christopher Sly" at the French Gallery
in 1866, and his second subject from Shakespeare, “Talbot and the
Countess of Auvergne,” at the Royal Academy in 1867, probably
assured his election as Associate in the winter of that year. At the
Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 he was awarded a medal for the
“Challenge” and the “Christopher Sly,” and his later pictures—
“The Queen of the Swords,” “The Ante-Chamber" and “Hard Hit.”
Another excellent scene from Shakespeare (now belonging to the
artist's mother-in-law, Mrs. Moxon) made its appearance in 1868.
There we are introduced to a room in the Palace, one side of which is
hung with tapestry, the delicate faded colours of which form a de-
lightful relief for the merry figures of Prince Henry and Poins. The
latter has just asked Falstaff to leave them alone that he may persuade
I68
HER Mother's voice
By PERMission of THE ARTIST AND MR. HENRY TATE

WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
the Prince to take part in the famous adventure at Gadshill. Sir
John's back is turned to us, but it is almost as eloquent as the ani-
mated faces of the others. In 1870 the sources of Mr. Orchardson's
inspirations were enlarged by a visit to Venice. Hitherto they had
been, to a great extent, literary, his most telling pictures being sug-
gested by Shakespeare or Sir Walter Scott. Good as works of art,
y
they were also excellent “illustrations," showing remarkable Sympa-
thy with the imagination of the writers, and thorough realization of
character. In this matter he again shows a balance of qualities sel-
dom possessed by painters in such just proportions. An illustrator
generally sacrifices himself to the author, or the author to himself,
producing designs which are either deficient in artistic quality, or fail
to assist in realizing the text. But Orchardson always steered be.
tween this Scylla and Charybdis. -
In Venice he was in a world of pictorial suggestiveness, a treasure-
house of both art and nature, which has stimulated painters in the
present no less than in the past. It is here that were bred and nur-
tured the mighty powers of Giorgione and Titian ; here where Turner's
genius found its fullest satisfaction and ultimate home, and in our own
days it has become the happy hunting-ground of the genre painter,
from Orchardson and Van Haanen to a hundred others. There is
scarcely any kind of art that has not at one time or another budded
and blossomed there. Although Mr. Orchardson did but little work
at Venice, making only a few sketches, his pictures for the next four
years showed that it had made a great impression on him.
In 1870, among other works, he exhibited at the Academy: “The
Market Girl from the Lido,” and in 1871, “On the Grand Canal,
Venice,” and “In St. Mark's, Venice.” After this he reverted to his
old class of subject for two years, which produced “Casus Belli,”
“The Protector,” “Oscar and Brin" (two dogs), and “Cinderella;”
but in 1874 came “A Venetian Fruit-Seller,” together with two scenes
I71
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
from “Hamlet” and another picture of dogs called “Escaped," now
belonging to Mr. Humphrey Roberts, in which we see two blood-
hounds stopping with their scent checked by a stream on which the
cap of their quarry is sailing. In 1875 appeared two more Venetian
subjects, “Too Good to be True” (in which a fruit-seller is offering
some of his dainties to two shy children), and “Moonlight on the
Lagoons.”
- In 1876 he sent “Flotsam and Jetsam,” “The Bill of Sale,” “The
Old Soldier,” and “A Portrait.” The next year he exhibited a
picture which marks a new departure and the end of the Venetian
wave. This, though suggested by a scene from a novel, may be re-
garded as the first bold exercise of his personality. In the “Queen
of Swords” he “let himself go.” The subject was taken from the
dance-scene in “The Pirate,” where Minna Troil, “whom Halcro had
long since entitled ‘The Queen of Swords,' . . . moved amidst the
swordsmen with an air which seemed to hold all the drawn blades as
the proper accompaniments of her person and the implements of her
pleasure.” But Scott was only the fire from which the artist lit his
own candle.*
It is, in the true sense of the word, a picture—a spectacle created
for delight by a pictorial imagination—complete in its organization
and self-sufficient. The oblong of the canvas is broken by a waving,
broad band of light, of elegant shape, composed of sweeping, sympa-
thetic curves. In this band, and striking diagonally across the pic-
ture, stand two ranks of gallant beaux, full of grace, style, and
movement, who, with swords crossed above their heads, form an
arcade through which the ladies of the dance are passing in single
file. . One (Minna Troil), the Queen of Swords, in a maize-col-
-º-
* The original picture is in the possession of Mr. James Keiller, but an admirable sketch of it
belongs to Mr. Arthur Sanderson, of Glasgow.
I72

WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
oured dress, is just emerging, with much grace and dignity, from the
human avenue. Behind are musicians and groups of “sitters (or,
rather, “standers”) out,” watching and talking. The whole is
wrought in a light key, and the costumes are arranged to present
delicate alternations of warm and cool colour.
A picture of the same year, “Jessica,” from the “Merchant of
Venice,” was, I think, his last scene from Shakespeare, and with it
ended his career as an Associate. He was elected to the full honours
of the Academy in December, 1877. From this time may be said to
date his period of full maturity, which was accompanied by a change
in the choice of his subjects. Henceforth no more Scott, or Shakes-
peare, or Venice; instead, scenes of his own imagination from more
or less modern society, dramas mostly of the drawing-room, and a few
(the most highly wrought and elaborately designed) from the France
of the later Louis and Napoleon the Great. Not exactly to be
placed in either of these categories, and perhaps the most dramatic of
all his works, was the celebrated “Hard Hit" of 1879, now in posses-
sion of Mr. Humphrey Roberts. A handsome youth, gayly dressed
in Mr. Orchardson's favourite costume of the end of the last century,
with natural hair en gueue, Swallow-tail coat, ruffles, and knee-
breeches, is leaving the room where he has just been plucked by
three hard-faced scoundrels. These “hawks" are eying their “pig-
eon,” as he goes, with half-concealed contempt and cynical politeness.
He has overturned a chair in his anger, and the floor is strewn with
innumerable cards. * The different characters of the “hawks” are
finely distinguished. The oldest scoundrel shuffles the cards and
looks at his victim out of the corners of his eyes, one of the others
leans back in his chair with impudent nonchalance, and the other
* “For this part of the picture Orchardson used fifty packs of cards, throwing them down succes-
sively at each corner of the table, so that the actual pattern we see represents two hundred packs.”—
The Portfolio, February, 1895 (Walter Armstrong). - -
I75
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
stands and stares with brazen indifference. To some modern critics
all these dramatic qualities will seem inconsiderable in comparison
with others of a more technical kind, but these are there also—tone,
illumination, atmosphere, the painter's touch, personality, and tem-
perament, and all of a sufficiently high order to conciliate, if not to
satisfy, the most exacting pedant. sº
The first important picture of the French series was “N apoleon
on Board the Bellerophon,” which appeared at the Royal Academy
in 1880. Its remarkable merit was recognized at once, and it was
purchased by the Royal Academy as trustees of the Chantrey be-
quest. The Emperor, in long gray coat and cocked hat, is standing
in the right foreground of the picture, his small form firmly planted
on his parted feet, as he takes his last long look at France. The fig-
ure is the embodiment of energy, imprisoned but indomitable. Be-
hind, at some little distance, stand his personal suite and the officers
of the ship, chatting and watching the solitary figure which seems
already in exile. The only person unconcerned (and this is a true
touch of Nature) is the young Las Cases, who, with his back turned
to the rest, looks over the poop-rail on to the quarter-deck. The
largest and most elaborate of all Mr. Orchardson's compositions is
the scene in the “Salon of Madame Récamier," which he painted on
commission from Mr. John Aird. It appeared at the Royal Academy
in 1885. The arrangement is a sort of converse of that of the “Na-
poleon." All lines equally tend to the principal character which is
the focus of the composition, but this social Empress is in the back-
ground. Nevertheless she dominates the canvas. Her elegant sofa
is a throne on which she sits alone, and, although she is the centre
of a most brilliant circle, she is isolated (pictorially) almost as com-
pletely as the captive on the Bellerophon. The picture is a master-
piece of design, the figures (about thirty) are massed without crowd-
ing, and the large light spaces of wall and carpet (treated with the
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THE FARMER's DAUGHTER


By PERMISSION OF THE GLASGOW. GALLERY
WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
artist's singular dexterity) give a sense of amplitude and freedom,
besides aiding greatly in the brilliant illumination. Among the com-
pany there is scarcely one that is not well known. Fouché talks to
Madame from a respectful distance, and near them are Delille, Cu-
vier, Metternich. At the other side of the room are Madame de
Staël, Talleyrand, Lucien Bonaparte, Brillat-Savarin, Talma, 'Berna.
dotte, and others. Yet, notwithstanding the abundance and variety
of fact, there is no sense of difficulty in arranging and controlling it.
Each figure is placed on the canvas with as much ease and vitality as
if he had been painted from the life. The artist's power of fusing
heterogeneous material into one living spectacle has never been
shown more triumphantly than in this picture.
Two other French pictures of great elaboration and skill are the
“Voltaire” of 1883, and the “Young Duke" of 1889. Both are
alike in rendering a convivial scene under the “old Régime,” both
are rich in accessories of costume and furniture, and bathed in the
mellow glow of many candles. Both are splendid with the sheen of
napery, the glitter of plate, and the variegated colours of flowers.
But all this magnificent display of material is still accessory to the life
and animation, the spirit and character of the human actors. In one
we see Voltaire nettled beyond description, making his futile com-
plaint to the Duke of Sully of the drubbing he has received at the
hands of the Chevalier de Rohan's footmen. Cold comfort he gets
from his host and his boon companions. In the other we have what
appears to be a grand banquet to celebrate the coming of age of a
young nobleman. Very select and aristocratic and dissipated is this
assembly of young nobles in wigs and laced coats pledging their host.
Here there is no particular history, no complicated passion, no moral
intended or suggested, unless, indeed, the picture may be taken to
symbolize the reckless self-indulgence of the French aristocracy
which preceded the Revolution.
I79
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
In his pictures of social life of the present day, or of nearly the
present day, Mr. Orchardson strikes a note quite as personal, while
appealing more directly to the feeling of his generation. He some-
times approaches tragedy, as in the two scenes of “Mariage de Con-
venºnce;" sometimes he is pathetic, as in “Her Mother's Voice;”
sometimes gently humourous, as in “Her First Dance;” at others, as
in the “Farmer's Daughter,” or the “Young Housewife,” he is content
with a charming vision, appealing simply to our sense of beauty, with
just sufficient sentiment to set some gentle chord of human sympathy
vibrating. He never leaves us alone with a bare transcript of fact.
In the least emotional of his pictures, as “The Tender Chord,” or
“Music, when Soft Voices Die, Vibrates in the Memory” (both in
the possession of Mr. Humphrey Roberts), there is scarcely need for
any attraction beyond those of exquisite design and perfect painting.
In the “Tender Chord” the delicate shimmer of the girl's dress re-
lieved as by magic against the wall, which is of almost the same tone,
the marvellous painting of the piano, with its rich wood suggested in
colour of the finest “quality," are technical triumphs which the artist
y
has never excelled; in the “Music, etc.,' while the manipulation is
nearly, if not quite, as fine, the motive is even more exclusively pic-
torial. The lines of the curious harp-shaped piano are reflected in
the form and gown of the performer, and all together complete a shape
of beauty which is a picture in itself. The remarkable instruments
which have had so much to do with the creation of these charming
pictures are both in the possession of the artist. The lightness and
elasticity with which Mr. Orchardson touches every subject is one of
his most peculiar characteristics, especially on this side of the Chan-
nel, where we are apt to be a little heavy and over anxious, even when
engaged upon the slightest themes. His elegance, his daintiness his
esprit, have seldom been approached by anyºBnglish artist, and even
when his imagination is engaged on such serious matters as the
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WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
“Napoleon,” or the “Mariage de Convenance” he is never ponderous.
At such times he reminds us of Hogarth, though “with a difference.”
In the “Mariage de Convenance," as in Hogarth’s “Marriage a
la Mode,” the artist is concerned with an old story, which it is to be
feared will go on repeating itself till love and money cease to be. It
was Hogarth's business in the first place to lash the follies and vices
of his own age. With these Orchardson has no particular concern.
He is, in the first place, a painter, not a satirist. But he is not only a
painter, but a man of good sense and right feeling, and he has sedu-
lously kept his great gifts to give pleasure of a pure kind, while such
moral influence as his pictures have is always on the right side. A
recorder rather than a censor, it is the tragedy rather than the turpi-
tude of mercenary alliances that he places before our eyes. He tells
the essence of the story in the tersest manner. He cuts his tales
“down to the bone.” Two scenes of three persons suffice for him,
instead of Hogarth's six comparatively crowded stages. In one we
see the middle-aged Croesus and his young wife at opposite ends of a
long, luxurious dinner-table, which acts as a symbol of the spiritual
distance between them. The old butler, who pours out his wine, is
nearer to him in person and in sympathy. In the second scene he is
in the same room brooding alone before the fire. In both pictures
the space is large, the figures few ; but there is no “room to let" in
the compositions, for the emptiness is full of meaning, and is made
pictorially interesting by its masterly treatment. Another admirable
scene of the same order is “The First Cloud.” Here the husband is
younger, and stands choking with anger on the hearth-rug, while the
wife is slowly sailing from the room with contemptuous dignity in
every line of her lithe and graceful figure. Seldom so much dramatic
effect has been achieved by such slight means as in these pictures.
They would furnish the germ of a three-volume novel, for such pic-
tures as these breed literature, as a fine story will suggest pictures.
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BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
So closely does the literary entwine with the pictorial, that any work
of imagination in one kind suggests an echo in the other.
When Mr. Orchardson touches a purer pathos, as in “Her
Mother's Voice,” or “Trouble” (the last of all his completed works),
he strikes his note no less surely and simply. Other painters may
shoot at higher marks (for he does not attempt the grand or the ideal),
but within his own domain of light comedy he is supreme. In this
respect, as in others, he has much affinity with Mr. Austin Dobson
among poets. They both love the modes of the eighteenth century
in England and in France, they both study style and elegance, they
both see life through the eyes of the artist. Moreover, each of them
chooses with unfailing taste those themes which are specially suitable
to their means of expression; and, finally, both, with all their art, are
thoroughly human, touching the lighter emotions with incomparable
verve and vivacity, and approaching those that are graver with more
caution, indeed, but with equal truth and taste.
It remains to say a word about his portraits, which are as fine
and characteristic as any of his work. No one has a greater power
of transferring to his canvas the very life and character of his sitter,
and it is doubtful whether any painter of the present day, so prolific
and distinguished in this branch of art, can equal the spirit and re-
finement of his portraits of gentlewomen. Among these may be
mentioned those of Mrs. Keiller, Mrs. Joseph, Mrs. Winchester
Clowes and Mrs. Ralli. Nor is he less successful with his own sex,
as is testified by his portraits of Sir Walter Gilbey, Professor Dewar,
Sir Andrew Walker, and Sir David Stewart, late Lord Provost of
Aberdeen. In the present exhibition of the Royal Academy are very
fine portraits of Lord Kelvin and Lord Crawford. And the artist is
engaged on a portrait group of the Queen with other members of the
Royal Family.
Respecting Mr. Orchardson's career, there is little to add. Since
I84
HART.
BY PERMIssion OF SIR WALTER GILBEY
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PORTRAIT OF SIR WALTER GILB

WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, R.A.
his election as a Royal Academician, as before, he has lived a pain-
ter's life, and has won a wide reputation at home and abroad. Among
the higher honours that have fallen to his share should be mentioned
the invitation to paint his portrait for the famous gallery of the Uffizi,
and his election as a Member of the Institute of France. All his
painting, with the exception of a few sketches at Venice, has been
done in England, and save an occasional holiday on the Continent
and elsewhere, his life has been spent in his English home and studio.
He is one of those who are either hard at work or hard at play, and
is as devoted to his family as to his art. He was a keen huntsman
before his marriage, and an ardent player at tennis for long after.
By his old house at Westgate-on-Sea, where he lived for seventeen
years, he built a private tennis-court (the only open one in England);
but now the saddle has given place to the fishing-rod, and tennis to
golf. His changes of residence in London have been numerous, but
for the last nine years he has lived at No. 13 Portland Place. There
he has built himself a noble studio of large and fine proportions,
specially proportioned to suit several grand pieces of Spanish and
Flemish tapestry with which the walls are hung. He has lately taken
a country house near Dartford, but he does not intend to give up his
London studio. That he should ever do so is the fear of his large
circle of friends, who rightly appreciate his society no less than his art.
There is indeed a wonderful likeness between them, for of him
it may be said that the style is truly the man; good sense, good taste,
good feeling, combined with unusual humour, spirit and sincerity, are
as distinctive of his conversation as of his work.
SIR
LAWRENCE
ALMA–TADEMA
R.A.
Front
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
A PHOTOGRAPH. B.Y. The London stEREoscopic AND PHOTOGRAPHIC company



º, nº-
BACCH US AND SILENUS
PAINTED IN 1875. THIS Also DEcoRATED THE CELLING OF THE Townshend House studio, BUT WAS DESTROYED
BY FIRE, AND IS HERE ENGRAVED FOR THE FIRST TIME
OWEVER high or low Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema may
be ranked by posterity there can be no doubt that he is a
Master. His knowledge of effect, his control over his ma-
terials, his manipulative skill, are scarcely equalled by any
modern artist. He knows what he wants to do, and what he can do,
and he rarely oversteps the boundaries of his knowledge or capacity.
Unusual talent and unusual judgment in its exercise combine to
make him a Master in the true sense. His works all speak of the
confident exercise of assured skill as a draughtsman, and a colourist,
and a composer of pictures. But it is not only as an executant that
he has won his well-deserved fame. Even his extraordinary imitative
skill in the representation of light-reflecting surfaces and textures,
even his marbles, his bronzes, and his brocades, though they have
become as famous as Terborch's satin gowns, would not have earned
him his present popularity. It is not his “still life” alone, superex-


I93
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
cellent as that is, which has raised him to a unique place in the esti-
mation of his contemporaries, but also the real, may I say the living,
life which animates his canvases. Alma-Tadema is not an idealist, he
does not seek after more than mortal beauty, his fancy does not wan-
der beyond this lower world of human life, nor does it try to give
form to the abstractions of the mind ; neither is he a realist in the
usual sense—one whose only aim is to reproduce carefully the sights
of the present day; he is the painter of human incident in all ages
and places. If he does not raise you to Olympus or give you pho-
tographs of the Strand, he takes you to the palace of Pharaoh, and
fills the streets of ancient Rome with fresh-drawn life.
Alma-Tadema's pedigree as an artist is a very long one, but he es-
sentially belongs to his time. The choice of subjects from the ancient
history of a foreign land was compulsory on the earliest Christian
artists, and as time went on we find them treating with more and
more familiarity those scenes from the Bible and the legends of the
Church which formed the staple of their employment. What is now
called historical genre is no new invention; the works of Ghirlandajo,
of Benozzo Gozzoli, and Carpaccio, to mention no other artists of
the fifteenth century, are full of it; and another common practice
of Tadema, the introduction among his figures of portraits of his
friends, is equally time-honoured. Even the effort to reproduce scenes
from the life of ancient Rome, with every possible regard to accuracy
of costume and character, was made more than four hundred years
ago, as we may see in Mantegna's “Triumph of Scipio,” in the Na-
tional Gallery in London, and his “Triumph of Julius Caesar" at
Hampton Court Palace. Nevertheless the interest in other ages and
all places for their own sakes, the historical curiosity which is not only
scientific and artistic but also human, is a distinct characteristic of the
present century, from Sir Walter Scott to Alma-Tadema. In the
spirit of his work the latter may be regarded as an heir of that so-
I94
A NYMPHAEUM


PAINTED IN 1875–Now IN KRUM's collection AT ANtwerp
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Joseph, overseeR of PHARAoH’s GRANARIES
PAINTED IN 1874
called “romantic movement" which broke down the old conventions
of David in France and Belgium, and of West in England. The
artists of the old classical school did indeed paint Greeks and Ro-
mans, but they were almost as far removed from ordinary humanity as
the gods of Olympus. In the works of Tadema we are made to feel
that they were composed of the same flesh and blood as ourselves.
While, however, he belongs intellectually to the general move-
ment of his time and to no particular nation, his purely artistic im-
pulses and technical proclivities are clearly derived from his own
Dutch ancestors. That decided preference for interiors and court-
yards, with their subtle and complicated effects of reflected light; that
wonderful skill in the representation of all kinds of substance and tex-

197
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
ture, that delight in beautiful colour modified and graduated infinitely
by different intensities of illumination, that love of finish and detail;
in all these predilections Alma-Tadema shows his nationality. Instead
of Holland he gives you Italy, instead of bricked alleys, marble courts,
but in his blood is the spirit of Terborch and Metzu and De Hoogh.
The biographies of celebrated artists so often commence with
tales of extraordinary precocity and of an obstinate bent in the direc-
tion of art which no worldly consideration will ever overcome, that
one would have been really disappointed to find that the little Laurens
Alma-Tadema was an exception to the rule—he was not. Born at
Dronryp, a Friesian village near Leeuwarden, on January 8, 1836, he
corrected an error of a drawing-master in 1841, and painted his sister's
portrait ten years afterward. He was sent to the public school at
Leeuwarden, but of course spent every spare moment in drawing and
made little progress in Greek or Latin. His mother (mothers always
favour their sons' artistic proclivities) used to wake him by pulling a
string tied to his toe so that he might rise early to sketch. Unfor-
tunately, his father, Pieter Tadema, a notary, had died when he was
four years old, and his mother (his father's second wife), a lady of
great spirit and character, but weak health, was left with a large
family, two only of which were her own children. It was therefore
all the more desirable that Laurens should follow his father's profes-
sion, or at least one less precarious than that of a painter. But in
these cases where art and nature are, so to speak, on the same side,
nothing will withstand them in the long run. After a long struggle
between duty and inclination the youth's health broke down, and the
course of his true love (for art) was allowed to run smooth The
result was a quick and thorough restoration to health. In order to
secure for him a better course of training than his native country then
afforded, he was sent to Antwerp, where in 1852 he entered the
Academy, under Gustave Wappers, the painter of “Episode de
I98
SHY

PAINTED IN 1883, AND owned by Mr. Theodore Miller
SIR LAW RENCE ALMA–TADEMA, R.A.
la Révolution Belge,” the leader of that “romantic" and “national"
movement in Belgian art which was fast obliterating the old classical
school of David. From the Academy, Tadema passed to the atelier
of Henri (soon after to become Baron) Leys, then in the flush of the
success of his new manner of painting mediaeval scenes. To him,
beyond all others of his generation, belongs the merit of infusing into
his pictures the spirit of the age which he sought to restore. Not
only was he careful about correctness in architecture, in costume, and
type, but he gave to his figures an old-world air, a quaintness of de-
meanour, a spirit, and a sentiment, in character with their surround.
ings. When it is added that his execution was thorough and mas-
terly and his colour beautiful, it is easy to understand how powerful
an effect he had upon the development of his young pupil. Tadema
worked very hard, and painted several pictures which he afterward
destroyed. We are told that the subjects were for the most part se-
lected from half-historic times, and that the first of the larger ones
was from Goethe’s “Faust,” which reminds us of “La Promenade de
Faust” by his master, which is now in the Museum of Brussels.
In 1859 Tadema assisted Leys in his frescoes on the wall of the
great hall of the Hôtel de Ville at Antwerp, and about this time he
was joined by his mother and sister. He was now but three and
twenty, and was still in the student stage. In the exhibition of his
collected works at the Grosvenor Gallery in the winter of 1882–83
there were two pictures which may be said to mark the beginning
and end of this first period of every artist's career. These were the
portrait of himself, dated 1852, and “A Bargain,” painted in 1860.
His mother died about four years after she came to Antwerp, but not
before he had achieved a great success by his picture of “The Educa-
tion of the Children of Clovis” (1861), exhibited at Antwerp, and had
received his first gold medal at Amsterdam in 1862.
One of the most remarkable features of Tadema's pictures, even
2OI
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
at this time, was the accuracy of their architectural and decorative
details. From his childhood he appears to have had a strong interest
in antiquities, and to have studied those of Greece and Rome, when he
was comparatively careless about acquiring a knowledge of Greek and
Latin. What first turned his attention more particularly to the Mer-
Ovingians, were the works of Augustin Thierry and the teaching of
Louis de Taey, Professor in Archaeology in the Academy of Antwerp.
The “Education of the Children of Clovis” was not his first attempt
to illustrate a striking and picturesque incident in the terrible family
history of that great warrior who founded France. To 1858 belongs
the remarkable picture of “Clotilde at the Tomb of her Grand-
children.” Both pictures were to be seen side by side at the Gros-
venor Gallery in 1882, the former lent by the King of the Belgians,
and the latter by M. Jules Verspreerewen. †
In the “Education of the Children of Clovis,” we see the three
young children of Clovis and Clotilde practising the art of hurling
the axe in a court of Roman architecture. The most interested of
their spectators is their widowed mother, who is training them to
avenge the murder of her own parents. A fine little fellow, the eld-
est son, is taking his aim with vigourous gesture, the second is watch-
ing and waiting his turn, the youngest is standing by his mother's
knee. In the second picture Clotilde is mourning the orphan
children of her first-born, who have been murdered by their uncles.
It is characteristic that, even in these early works, the artist
avoids the great high-road of historic art, and takes, as it were, a by-
path ; choosing, not great public events, but domestic incidents con-
nected therewith ; not the tragedies themselves, but their preparation
and result.
“The Children of Clovis” was the first picture painted by Tad-
ema under the guidance of Leys, and, no doubt, partly on this ac-
count, shows an advance beyond the earlier “Clotilde at the Tomb,”
2O2
EPPS, THE PHYSICIAN

SIR LAW RENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
but they both testify to the originality of the young artist who thus
early had marked out a fresh path for himself, well suited to his
special talent and disposition. They are the first of a series of
pictures, of which the best-known and the finest is the “Frede-
gonda” of 1878 (exhibited 1880), where the rejected wife or mistress
is watching from behind her curtained window the marriage of Chil-
peric I. with Galeswintha. But this picture was a return to an old
love, whom he had left some years, for perhaps still more congenial
society. The principal pictures of Alma-Tadema may be divided into
four classes : I, Portrait ; 2, Frankish ; 3, Egyptian ; 4, Greek and
Roman. Tadema's first Roman picture, “Catullus at Lesbia’s ” (now
in the Walters Gallery at Baltimore), was painted in 1865, but a
Roman feeling may be said to permeate all his works, except the pure
Egyptian, and those few pictures of mediaeval Flemish interiors,
which tell of his studentship at Antwerp, and should perhaps be
noted as a fifth group. If we except one of his Egyptian pictures,
“The Death of the First-Born,” and one or two of the Roman pic-
tures like “A Roman Emperor,” it is in this Frankish or Merovin-
gian series that we find the painter moved by the deepest feeling and
the liveliest spirit of romance.
Perhaps the most strongly dramatic and passionate of all his de-
signs is that of “Fredegonda at the Death-bed of Praetextatus,”
where the Bishop, who has been stabbed by order of the Queen, is
cursing her from his dying bed. There is a good woodcut of this
somewhat stiff but powerful picture in the Art Annual for 1886,
which is devoted to the career of Alma-Tadema.
The first note I have of a picture by Alma-Tadema, which
attempts to reproduce for us the life of ancient Egypt, relates to
“Egyptians Three Thousand Years Ago,” which was lent by Mr. J.
Dewhurst to the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882, and was painted in 1863.
It has been followed by many notable scenes of Egypt before and
2O5
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
wº
after the Roman period, faithful in their architectural and ornamental
details and careful in their human types. Those concerned with the
time of Pharaoh are reserved in colour and severe in sentiment and
style, as though the statues and painted reliefs which adorn the tem-
ples and palaces of the Nile had come to life and repeopled their sol-
itary streets and halls. Here both the pictorial and the plastic sense
of the artist, which are combined in him to an unusual degree, are
called strongly into action. His Egyptian figures want neither life
nor individuality, but they are constrained by some of that stern for-
mality which characterizes Egyptian art. Yet among the series of
his Egyptian pictures there is one which reaches a profounder depth
of human pathos than he has elsewhere sounded. This is the “Death
of the First-Born," painted in 1893 and still in the possession of the
artist. The scene is the interior of an Egyptian temple on a clear
warm night, with the moonlight seen through a distant doorway, and
the gloom within fitfully illumined with lamps. Upright and monu-
mental, Pharaoh, crowned, and glittering with jewels, sits on a low
stool with the slender figure of his first-born lying dead across his
knees. He seems as passionless and immovable as a statue, and yet
the artist has made you feel that his stoicism is more apparent than
real, and is maintained only by severe control. On one side sits the
mother, overcome with anguish, on the other the physician, and all
around on the dim, lamp-lit floor are priests and players of strange
instruments, suggesting a weird din of wild prayers and shrill music.
Among his other Egyptian pictures are “An Egyptian at his Door-
way” (1865), “The Mummy” (Roman period, 1867), “A Widow"
(1873), “The Chamberlain of Sesostris" (1869), and “Joseph, Over-
seer of Pharaoh's Granaries" (1874). The last is one of the most
strange and characteristic. It is a small but long picture, showing an
Egyptian hall or apartment, the wall of which, carved and painted
with Egyptian reliefs, occupies the whole of the background. On the
2O6
!
- ******** * TiPQTAPX or
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XANTHE AND PHAoN–of EBERs's “THE QUEstion " SA- ~.
—Taº-
water-colour, PAINTED IN 1883, IN THE walters ART GALLERY, * -º




BALTIMORE
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
narrow strip of floor between this and the spectator are two figures.
On the left is Joseph, sitting stiff and stately on a throne-like chair.
His left hand is extended, and holds a tall staff of office surmounted
by a lotus flower. On either side of his neck his hair descends in
rope-like plaits, a bead necklace of many rows hangs across his chest,
and his feet are bare. On the right the storekeeper sits on the
ground reading from a papyrus roll, his pen stuck through his bushy
hair. In the scanty foreground are spilled samples of strange-looking
grain.
On these scenes from Frankish and Egyptian life Alma-Tadema
spent great energy and research, and exercised his best imagination;
but through all his life his strongest and most consistent art-impulse
has been toward the presentation of the life of ancient Greece and
Rome. Now he treats it historically, as in “Tarquinius Superbus,”
“Ave Caesar,” and “Heliogabalus;" now socially, as in a hundred
pictures, such as “The Wine Shop,” the Audience at Agrippa's,"
and “The Entrance to a Roman Theatre." As might be expected
of a man of scholarship and culture, he does not forget either the
literary or the artistic past; he paints “Sappho" listening to the lyre
of Alcaeus ; he shows us “Tibullus at Delia's " and “Catullus at
Lesbia's ; ” he introduces us to Phidias showing the frieze of the
Parthenon to Pericles, Alcibiades, and Aspasia; and invites us to the
studio of Antistius Labeo ; he takes us with Hadrian to the pottery
of a Roman Minton in England, and to a reading of Homer on the
shores of the Greek Archipelago; with a wave of his paint-brush he
brings before us the dance and music of the “Vintage Festival,” the
pomp of their religious processions, and the mighty movement of the
“Pyrrhic Dance,” and he gives us the entrée even to the ladies' baths,
to the “Apodyterium,” the “Tepidarium,” and “The Bath” itself;
he reveals to us the mysteries of the toilette and the innocent merri-
ment of the girls as they splash and play in the water, Squeeze their
2O9
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
skins with strigils, or submit themselves to the douche which spirts
from the mouths of bronze or marble sphinxes. He has many things
to tell us (or to paint us) of their homes and domestic affections.
We see the mother kissing her child before her “Departure” to the
amphitheatre, or bargaining by “The Bridge ” for a row on the river
with her daughter, or reading to a “convalescent,” who is “down on
the sofa,” for the first time, just able to listen to the “last novel,” and
to enjoy the ancient Roman equivalent of beef tea. Last, but not
least, of his gifts to us are the scenes of love and flirtation, now
treated sportively with ever so delicate a humour, as in “Who Is It?”
or “Shy,” or “A Love Missile,” or more seriously and idyllically, as
in the “First Whisper,” or “The Question,” one of the smallest and
most charming of the painter's works. Of this a beautiful variant in
water-colour (“Xanthe and Phaon”) is in the Walters collection at
Baltimore. Nor have I yet exhausted the many ways in which Alma-
Tadema has depicted the lives of the old Greeks and Romans, so as
to bring them (as Miss H. Zimmern remarks) “within the scope of
our sympathies.”
There is so high a general level of accomplishment in all these
pictures, and so great a variety of conception, that it is difficult to
select favourites, but for various reasons I will choose a few which
were painted before he took up his residence in England some five
and twenty years ago. The “Tarquinius Superbus" of 1867, the
“Phidias and the Elgin Marbles" of 1868, and the “Pyrrhic Dance"
and “The Wine Shop” of 1869. The scene of the “Tarquinius” is
a garden, but as in most of his earlier pictures, whether interiors or
in the open air, there is no sky visible; the distance is blocked by a
wall highly decorated with classical figures. The face of Tarquinius
is of unusual beauty, his bearing of unusual elegance, as he stands in
an attitude of haughty ease to receive the huge keys which the en-
voys of Gabia bring him on a salver. A remarkable feature in the
2IO
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
by PERMission
of THE BERLIN PHotographic company

SIR LAWRENCE ALMA–TADEMA, R.A.
picture is the thick bed of tall poppies, some of which are in the
tyrant's hands, apparently just cropped with his sceptre. No other
artist has ever made so much use of flowers to beautify his pictures
as Alma-Tadema. They frequently aid him in his difficulties of
colour and composition. A picture which will not come right is often
settled by a mass of splendid bloom from his garden or conservatory.
In this respect he has allowed himself some liberty of anachronism
(especially perhaps in later years), introducing the latest variety of
purple clematis or rose azalea into the gardens and palaces of ancient
Rome. The “Phidias and the Elgin Marbles” is the first of those
glimpses of the art-world of classical life of which “Hadrian in Eng-
land,” “The Sculpture Gallery,” and the “Picture Gallery" are later
samples. Here the subject is as Greek as it can be, and the types
and costumes of the figures have been studied with the greatest re-
gard to time and race; but even here he is not so convincing as in
his pictures of Rome and the Romans. This work is an early exam-
ple of what may be called his fragmentary style of composition, his
complex lighting and daring effect of perspective. It is made up of
sections of roof, of frieze, and of scaffold, and it is only through the
planks of the last that you get peeps of a world below.
The “Pyrrhic Dance,” though one of the simplest of his compo-
sitions, stands out distinctly from them all by reason of its striking
silhouette and impressive attitudes of the soldiers engaged in this
famous war-dance. Two only of the warriors are wholly visible as they
advance with lifted shield and lowered lance with long, slow stride
round the arena. The action of the men, studied no doubt carefully
from some ancient relief or vase painting, is admirably rendered. It
is stealthy, alert, and formidable. Behind, on marble benches, sit a
noble company watching the robust and picturesque game with inter-
est, but these two warriors, so heavily armed and yet so light upon
their feet, make the “picture” which remains upon the memory. In
2I3
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
the “Wine Shop” the humour of the artist, never far below the sur-
face, appears more prominently than usual. The muscular young
wine-seller, with a face like a satyr's and sparkling with merriment, is
retailing the last good story to an audience of his customers, who are
sipping their wine and listening with various degrees of interest. One
on the left is absorbed in a critical examination of the merits of the
vintage. The characters of all are well seized and well distinguished
from each other, and the whole scene is presented with a force which
the artist has seldom excelled.
During the five or six years after the death of his mother, within
which period these four pictures (and so many more) were painted,
Alma-Tadema's private life had passed through much joy and suffer-
ing. In 1863 he had married a French lady, and had removed from
Antwerp to Brussels, where he remained till 1869, when his wife died
and left him a widower with two little girls. Soon after this he de-
termined to change his residence from Brussels to London, where he
was to find friends, fame, prosperity, and new domestic happiness.
With regard to fame it must, however, be remembered that when he
made this resolve he was already one of the most celebrated of the
younger artists of Europe. He was only three and thirty, but be-
sides the distinctions which he had gained in Holland and Belgium,
he had been awarded a medal at the Paris Salon of 1864, and a medal
of the second class at the Exposition Universelle of 1867. It is diffi-
cult to say how far his reputation had spread in England. He had
been too young to share in the honours paid to the Belgian artists at
the London Exhibition of 1862, especially to Louis Gallait (the
painter of “The Last Moments of Count Egmont” and “The Last
Honours paid to Counts Egmont and Horn,” that powerful but ghostly
picture known by the name of “Les Tetes coupées") and to Baron
Leys, who was represented by his young “Luther Singing the Canti-
cles in the Streets of Eisenach.” But he was known to many artists
2I4
THE ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE

R. A. Diploma PAINTING IN 1882
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA–TADEMA, R.A.
and connoisseurs, and a few of his pictures, too remarkable for their
unusual style, their finished execution, and fine colour to pass unob-
served, had been seen at Wallis's French Gallery in Pall Mall, and
perhaps elsewhere in London. When he came to England he came
to stay, and as if to announce his intention, he sent to the Royal
Academy of 1869, from “51 Rue des Palais, Bruxelles,” two pictures,
“Un Amateur romain " and “Une Danse pyrrhique” (the picture al-
ready described), his first contributions to the Exhibitions of this
Academy. Next year the catalogue contains the same address, and
his pictures were “Un Intérieur romain, "“Un Jongleur,” and “Un
Amateur romain (empire).” Next year's catalogue chronicles two
changes: his address is English–4 Camden Square, N. W.-and his
name is indexed under A instead of T. By joining his second name,
Alma, to his surname Tadema, he had become the Alma-Tadema we
know. His godfather was Laurens Alma, and from a boy he had
been accustomed to sign himself L. Alma-Tadema.
His pictures of this year were “Grand Chamberlain to his Maj-
esty King Sesostris the Great,” and “A Roman Emperor A. D. 41,”
one of his most celebrated compositions, which was partly a repeti-
tion of his “Claudius" of 1867, and was again to be reproduced with
variations in the exquisite little picture called “Ave Caesar, Io Sat-
urnalia,” which was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881.
But the year 1871 was in other ways more important still in the history
of the painter's life, for it was then that he married his second wife,
Miss Laura Epps, and took up his residence at Townshend House,
North Gate, Regent's Park,which soon became one of the most inter.
esting and attractive houses in London.
It is not necessary to add much with regard to the pictures
which Alma-Tadema has painted during his long residence in Eng-
land. Most of the more important ones have already been men-
tioned, with more or less comment, and have been made well-known
217
L. Low ENSTAM, THE ETCHER
by means of engravings. It needs but a mention of the name to re-
call such works as “The Vintage Festival” (1870), “The Picture
Gallery,” “The Sculpture Gallery" (1875), “The Audience at Agrip-
pa's" (1876), “The Seasons” (1877), “Sappho" (1881), “Hadrian in
Britain” (1884), and the “Apodyterium" of 1886.
Since then, however, he has painted two pictures of high im-
portance which may be less known. These are “The Women of
Amphissa" (1887); and the “Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888). They
are both among his most daring attempts, the former especially in
form, the latter in colour. The former shows us a wandering troupe
of Bacchantes lying in every attitude of exhausted nature in the
market-place of Amphissa, the latter the guests of Heliogabalus be-


218
TADEMA
THE LATE PROFESSOR: G. B. AMENDOLA MAKING THE SILVER STATUE OF MRS.


SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
ing smothered in an avalanche of rose-leaves. In both these pictures
we see that, however accurate they may be in historical detail, the
artist has become the master of the archaeologist, and this perhaps in
a few words is the history of Alma-Tadema in England.
His real progress has been in freedom of draughtsmanship, in
perception of beauty, in subtlety and exquisiteness of colour, in
directness of pictorial intention, in gayety of spirit. He teaches less,
but he pleases more. May I add in a whisper that he gets more
modern as well as more human, using art only as a drapery for
nature, and the past as a cloak for the present.
Alma-Tadema is not a professional portrait-painter, but he
paints, and no one more powerfully and sympathetically, the portraits
of his friends In 1871, he painted the portrait of Miss Laura Epps,
soon to become his wife, and thereafter to grace not only his life but
his art. Her type of beauty, if not her exact likeness, animated
many of his best pictures. He has painted his daughters also, when
quite young, and afterwards. One of these (Miss Anna), like her
mother, is an accomplished artist. Always painting a friend, now
and then, he has painted them more frequently of later years.
Among others may be mentioned Ludwig Barnay, the actor, Count
von Bylands, Signor Amendola (the late sculptor), Herr Lowenstam,
the etcher of many of his pictures, Dr. Epps, his brother-in-law, Herr
Henschel, Dr. Joachim, Herr Richter, the musician, and Mr. Alfred
Waterhouse, R.A. His female portraits are fewer, but there are two
at least of great charm, Mrs. F. D. Millet, the wife of an American
artist, and Mrs. Charles W. Wyllie, the wife of an English one. As
to the portraits of friends introduced into his pictures they are too
numerous to mention. In his last large picture, “Spring,” Mr. and
Mrs. Henschel, clad as ancient Romans, are looking down from an
upper story upon the brilliant spectacle.
He has introduced himself also into at least one of his pictures,
22 I
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
“The Departure,” which is quite a family group, for the mother is
his wife, the child his daughter, and he himself is on the wall in the
form of a bust. Nor could anyone pass more easily for an ancient
Roman, and anyone who had seen him, crowned with a massive
wreath of blue-bells, mixing in the brilliant assembly at a Fancy Ball
given some years ago by the Institute of Painters in Water-colours,
might have well suspected that he had in his veins some drops of the
blood of the Roman Emperor he was personating. Perhaps he has ;
it would account for much in his character and work. But I am
afraid that, however he may be descended, there is no ground for
supposing that he is an Englishman, except in the sense of nationali-
zation. But we are proud of him, nevertheless, not only on account
of the lustre he has shed on Our Academy of Arts, but also because
he has nearly all the qualities which we fondly regard as characteris-
tic of Englishmen. All the world knows that he is one of the most
original, skillful, versatile, and ingenious of modern artists, and those
among whom he lives are able to add that he is healthy, strong,
good-natured, honourable, manly, and, if somewhat quick-tempered
and imperious, without a touch of the mean or the morbid throughout
his character or his art.
I hope he will pardon this little panegyric, but his personality is
so strong that it is difficult to write of him without being personal.
There is no artist whose character so permeates not only his pictures,
but everything connected with him. His house is not only his castle
but his shell. To say that it was built from his designs gives but a
poor notion of the intimate relation between it and its occupant.
The late Lord Leighton's is a wonderful house, and has a unique
feature in its oriental hall, with its divans, its marble fountains, its
walls and recesses of Damascus tiles, but it is not as a whole so char.
acteristic as Alma-Tadema's ; in one you see the late owner's taste, in
the other the man himself. As you walk along the Grove End Road,
222
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Engravel» BY HENRY WOLF
PORTRAIT OF MRS. C. W. WYLLIE

AFTER A PHOTOGRAPH. By Franz HANFSTAENGL.
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
with its villas on each side, like any other road in the locality of St.
John's Wood, the ordinary dull brick garden-wall is interrupted by a
neat semi-classical doorway of terra-cotta, with a pediment atop and
pilasters at the sides, on the capitals of which are moulded the
monogram of the artist.
Farther on, the ilexes and lilacs interrupt the view of the house,
but glimpses are caught of the roof of a large conservatory, of a wall
glittering with a broad band of gay-coloured tiles, red and yellow and
white, and of the huge window of the artist's principal studio. You
can see that the house is built of red brick with yellow terra-cotta
dressings, and surmounted with bold architectural chimney-cases,
broad and tall and arched at the top. As you pass along, the great
apse of the studio, like a semidome, comes into view, and then a flat
brick wall, of which the red and yellow bricks are so arranged that it
resembles the front of a classic temple. Beyond all this are the ordi-
nary dwelling-rooms, but of these little can be seen except the roofs
and the chimney-cases and the weather-cock in the shape of a palette
and paint brushes. The rest is hid in trees. The whole effect is
somewhat puzzling, heterogeneous, and bizarre, but impressive withal
from its boldness and eccentricity. And if you enter the door, what
do you see ? Everything that is new and old, strange and beautiful,
Dutch or Roman, Japanese or Italian, English or French, dominated
and harmonized by one man's triumphant taste. Everywhere you
look you are met by some sign of the owner's genius for decorative
design and arrangement.
The hall leads to a staircase carpeted with brass, which goes up
to the big studio, or, if you turn to the left, to another hall or room
shut in only by the glass sliding doors of the conservatory. It is
adorned with all kinds of ornaments, movable and immovable, but its
most remarkable feature is the wall panelled with tall slim pictures,
each of them by a different hand. Leighton, Boughton, Sargent,
225
VENUS ANI). MARS
PAINTED IN 1872. This ForMERLY DEcoRATED THE CELLING of MR. TADEMA's studio AT Townshend house.
IT WAS DESTROYED BY FIRE, AND HAs NEVER BEFORE BEEN ENGRAVED
Calderon, Van Haanen, and some score more of the artist's friends
have thus contributed to its embellishment. Upstairs is the studio,
with its huge, round, apse-like recess, draped with magnificent em-
broidery of Venetian velvet and furnished with seats fit for a Roman
emperor, with its domed aluminium roof, its singing gallery, and,
raised on a platform in the midst, its famous piano of oak and mam-
moth ivory, on the tablets of which (inside the lid) are inscribed, by
their own hands, the names of the most celebrated singers and musi-
cians in Europe.
If I were only to attempt to exhaust all that this studio and the
hall possess of beauty and interest I should need more space than has
already been filled by this study, and so I must leave to the imagina-
tion of the reader the charming studio of Mrs. Alma-Tadema and all
the other rooms and passages of the house, though they are filled
with objects of beauty and curiosity, which somehow seem to have
been made for the places they occupy. May they long remain as
they are, under the same ordering will, the same masterful, master-


226
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
ing, and masterly spirit, for the house can never have another real
possessor. Its future occupant, whatever his merit or ability, will be
nothing but a hermit-crab. Sir Alma-Tadema was knighted on the
occasion of the Queen's eightieth birthday (1899).


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SIR
EDWARD J.
POYNTER
P.R.A.
SIR EDwARD J. Poynter, P.R.A.
By PERMission of THE ARTIST, AFTER THE
PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF. IN THE
UFFIzi GALLERY, Florence

KNUCKLEBones. (1891)
By PERMission of ARTHUR Lucas, Esq.
T says not a little for that often abused body, the English Royal
Academy of Arts, that after losing in rapid succession two such
distinguished presidents as Lord Leighton and Sir John Mil-
lais, it should be able to select another from its ranks so able to
sustain its prestige as the painter of “Israel in Egypt,” “Atalanta's
Race,” and “A Visit to AEsculapius.” But it is not only from his
easel pictures, nor even from his other pictorial and decorative works,
that he derives all his qualifications for the high office which he
holds. As a creative artist he has done much, but it is doubtful
whether he has ever quite done himself justice. Almost from the
beginning of his career his keen mind has been employed in many
directions for the good of his country and his country's art. As the
first Slade Professor at University College, London, and as Director
*** All of the sketches and studies reproduced in this study were published for the first time by
special permission of the artist, when it appeared in Scribner's Magazine.

235
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
of the National Art Training Schools at South Kensington, to men.
tion no other ways in which his knowledge and intelligence have
been employed for national ends, he has been occupied with import.
ant duties which must have seriously trenched upon the time at his
disposal for original composition ; moreover the thought and care
and judgment which he has so continuously exercised as a teacher
and a counsellor, have doubtless influenced the creations of his own
mind. They are by no means deficient in variety, in originality, or
force, but they are the work of an imagination always under critical
control. If there is one element predominant in all his work, it is the
intellectual. Clear, serene, well ordered, the art of Sir Edward
Poynter stands out with some distinction amongst the less considered
and less complete workmanship with which it is so often surrounded.
Although he himself has been among the reformers of his day, the
later movements in the direction of personal impressionism have not
affected either his method or ideal. The new school to which he
belonged in his youth, which may be broadly described as the “neo-
classical,” has almost become an “old” school now, but he has seen
no reason to swerve from the aims and principles which inspired and
guided his earliest efforts, and he finds it impossible to believe that
any new fashion or indeed any new discovery can alter certain funda-
mental truths, which inform all the greatest art works of the past, in-
cluding those of Phidias and Michael Angelo. To him, as to them, art
means the exercise not only of feeling and skill, but of thought and
knowledge. He seeks beauty, especially of form, as seen in the most
beautiful and expressive of all forms—the human. He loves not only
its superficial charm, but the excellent order of its construction, the
inimitable science of its organization. And this beauty, this order,
this organic perfection, should, to his mind, regulate the making of a
work of art, a creation complete in itself, with every part correctly
proportioned and adjusted to achieve a designed result. Art so in-
236
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
tellectual in its genesis, so definite in its appeal, requires great
patience and exactitude in execution and preparation, and Sir Ed-
ward's work never fails in these respects, for it is always thoroughly
FIGURE study for “Best shot." MEDAL
thought out and wrought out. It does not seem at all improbable
that the desire for order and proportion which marks the work of the
present president of the Royal Academy may have descended to him
from his father, the late Ambrose Poynter, architect, who, before his



237
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STUDIES FOR THE Ash ANT1 WAR MEDAL -
career was cut short by blindness, had, amongst other works, designed
the National Provincial Bank at Manchester, St. Katharine's Hos-
pital, Regent's Park, and Christ Church, Westminster. At all events
his early surroundings must have soon drawn his attention to archi-
tecture and also probably to architectural decoration. Those who
believe in heredity will also not fail to observe that his mother,
Emma Forster by birth, was the granddaughter of Thomas Banks,
R.A., a sculptor of real genius, whose works were the admiration of
Sir Joshua Reynolds and Flaxman, and have been too much neg-
lected by the rest of his countrymen. Such tendencies as he may
have inherited toward the more intellectual forms of art were at least
not discouraged by his early association with Leighton and his study
in the atelier of Gleyre at Paris. Owing to his delicate health, Sir
Edward's regular education was much interrupted. Shortly after his
birth at Paris (March 20, 1836), he was brought to England, and he
spent his childhood in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey,
first in a house at Poet's Corner, now demolished, and afterward in



238
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
one at Queen Anne's Gate, which is still in his possession. After a
short time at Westminster School he was sent to Brighton College in
1849, and to Ipswich Grammar School in 1850, but the winter of
1852–53 was spent in Madeira, by the doctor's orders. Here he con-
tinued his studies under a tutor, and spent much of his time in sketch-
ing the scenery in the neighbourhood of Funchal, having obtained
from a Mr. Thomas Boys some instruction in the use of water-colours.
The next year was spent in Rome, where he made the acquaintance
of the young Frederick Leighton, then engaged in his celebrated
picture of “Cimabue's Madonna Carried Through Florence.” It was
this meeting that determined the direction of the present president's
career. It commenced an association, friendly and artistic, which was
to last till the elder's death. When the two youths (or young men)
met, for Leighton was but twenty-three and Poynter seventeen, little
did either of them think that they should both occupy the presiden-
tial chair of the Royal Academy.
Six years only between these two artists; but at their time of life
six years is a very considerable period. Leighton was already an
accomplished artist, after a long and severe training at Florence, at
Paris, and more especially at Frankfort, under Steinle; Poynter was
a mere tyro who had no training at all, and had not even made up
"Best shot. " - As HANTI
REPRoductions OF Two MEDALs DESIGNED BY SIR. E. J. POYNTER, P.R.A.

239
BRITISH CONTEMPO RARY ARTISTS
his mind what sort of training he desired. This important step,
however, was decided at Rome as he worked in Leighton's studio and
watched the progress of the great picture. He would be a painter,
and not a painter of landscape, but of the figure. His father con-
senting, he went to Leigh's well-known school in Newman Street, and
shortly afterward received some instruction from Mr. W. C. T. Dob.
son, R.A., and entered the schools of the Royal Academy. His dis.
satisfaction with the English training and the result of it was started
or accentuated by a visit to Paris in 1855, at the time of the great
Exhibition, where he was greatly struck by the works of the modern
continental schools, and especially with a series of designs by De-
camps. His strong desire to transfer his studies from London to
Paris was soon gratified, and on the recommendation of his uncle, the
Baron de Triqueti, the sculptor (some of whose marble inlays may be
seen at the Mausoleum at Frogmore), he entered the atelier of Gleyre
(the staunch upholder of the traditions of the school of Ingres, but
also the painter of “Illusions Perdues"), where he worked for three
years (1856–59), in company with, amongst others, Mr. James Mc-
Neill Whistler, Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A., and the late George du Mau-
rier. On leaving Gleyre's studio, he and his friends, Du Maurier,
Lamont, and Thomas Armstrong, set up one for themselves in the
Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which is the very studio immortalized
by Du Maurier in “Trilby.” The character of The Laird is taken
from Lamont, and, according to Sir Edward, the picture of their stu-
dent life in Paris is very faithful except that there was no Trilby.
Poynter returned to England in 1860 a well-trained artist, an
excellent draughtsman of the figure, and with his sense of composi-
tion and decoration well developed. In 1861 a pen-and-ink drawing
of a girl, called “Alla Veneziana," was exhibited at the Royal Acad-
emy, and the next year two pictures, “Heaven's Messenger" and “A
Bunch of Blue Ribbons” were hung upon its walls—the former of
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SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
these, a scene from Dante, having been previously rejected. But his
artistic energies were already engaged in more decorative work.
While still at Paris he had executed some designs for stained glass
for Messrs. Powell, of Whitefriars, and he subsequently was much em-
ployed in such work, fine examples of which are to be seen at St.
Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, and the Maison Dieu at Dover.”
But the immediate occasion of his return to England was to assist
that ingenious architect and ultra-mediaevalist, the late W. Burges, in
the decoration of Waltham Abbey, then in process of restoration
under his superintendence. For Burges he made the whole of the
figure designs for the decoration of the ceiling of the abbey. They
included the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, the Four Seasons, and the
Four Elements, and are remarkable for their decorative ingenuity.
Amongst other work which he executed for Burges may be men-
tioned the decoration of furniture, an interesting example of which
(a sideboard painted with a “Contest Between the Wines and the
Beers”) is at the Bethnal Green Museum, having been purchased by
the Department of Science and Art at the International Exhibition
of 1862. His long and intimate association with that Department
commenced about this time, when he received a commission to exe-
cute the fine figures of Apelles and Phidias for the frieze of one of
the galleries at the South Kensington Museum. There they stand
in company with Leighton's Cimabue and Niccolo Pisano—four noble
figures worthy of each other's society.
Among other works of his early manhood which deserve notice
(besides the etchings in Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake's “History
of Our Lord”), are some powerful illustrations to poems, etc., in
Once a Week, his first commissions for original work, and some still
more notable illustrations of the Bible for Messrs. Dalziel, the wood-
* For some illustrations of Sir Edward's work of this kind, see Mr. F. Hamilton Jackson's arti-
cle in the Architectural A'eview for June, 1897.
243
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
engravers. His contributions to the latter included some scenes from
the history of Joseph and Pharaoh, one or more of which would have
made fine pictures, and may make them yet if the artist can find
leisure. His imagination was much engaged at this time on themes
of Bible history and in realizing the life and manners of the Hebrews
and the Egyptians of the Old Testament. Subjects of this class ap-
pear frequently in his pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy and
the Dudley Gallery, till about 1870, when they give way to more clas-
sical compositions. It was by the former that he made his reputa-
tion, and though he has since painted a great many more beautiful
pictures, it is doubtful whether there is any so universally associated
with his name as the “Israel in Egypt," which was exhibited in 1867.
This celebrated picture may be regarded as the natural fruit of
an imagination that had dwelt much upon the history of the Jews;
but its conception was almost accidental. It was at the Langham
Sketching Club, a society still in existence, that the design occurred
to him. At one of their meetings the subject of the “Sketch" for
the evening was “Work,” and Poynter's sketch was so much admired
that he determined to elaborate it into a picture. He had already
attracted attention at the Royal Academy by “On Guard in the Time
of the Pharaohs" (1864) and “Faithful unto Death" (1865), a picture
of the Roman soldier who is supposed to have sacrificed his life to his
duty by remaining at his post at Pompeii till he was engulfed by a
stream of lava, but “Israel in Egypt" made a still more decided mark,
and with, perhaps, some assistance from the “Catapult” of the follow-
ing year, secured his election as an Associate in the winter of 1868.
These two pictures may be regarded as typical of Sir Edward's
first period, and are specially remarkable for the interest shown in
primitive mechanics and engineering, and in the vigourous action of
the figures. In the former we see the colossal statue of a lion dragged
across a flat, sandy level by a quivering mass of humanity, straining
244
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SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
every muscle at the bidding of their taskmasters, two of whom are
riding on the wagon, flicking at the backs of their human cattle with
their long-thonged whips. Behind is seen the great Egyptian temple
with its gaily painted sunk-reliefs shining in the sun. It is no wonder
that such a picture should have attracted the attention of the cele-
brated engineer, the late Sir John Hawkshaw, who purchased it from
the walls of the Academy. “The Catapult” is intended to represent
an incident in the siege of Carthage, and is very original and effec-
tive in design. We are at the rear of the great cumbrous engine, the
Woolwich Infant of the time, whose bulk, composed of huge beams,
occupies nearly the whole of the canvas. The great power of the
machine is shown by the strenuous efforts of four strong men, who,
with the help of a windlass, are pulling down an enormous lever. On
the right a Roman captain on horseback is directing operations, and
on the left some soldiers, crouching under cover of the catapult, are
exchanging shots with the enemy.
Industrious and successful as Poynter had been during the first
period of his career, he now entered upon another, still fuller of ener-
getic and fruitful production. During the next twelve years, omitting
all minor work, he executed the mosaic of St. George, supported by
Purity and Fortitude, for the lobby of the Houses of Parliament; the
fresco at the Church of St. Stephen's, Dulwich, perhaps the noblest
and least known of his greater works; the series of four large poeti-
cal pictures for the decoration of Lord Wharncliffe's billiard-room at
Wortley Hall (“Perseus and Andromeda,” “Fight between More of
More Hall and the Dragon of Wantley,” “Atalanta's Race," and
“Nausicaa and Her Maidens Playing at Ball”); and “A Visit to
AEsculapius,” which is now in the National Collection (Chantrey
Bequest), and is almost universally regarded as his masterpiece. If
we add to these a number of portraits and other pictures (of various
sizes, but all designed and executed with the greatest care, like the
247
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
noble “Zenobia Captive" of 1878) and a considerable amount of
decorative work, like the grill room at the South Kensington Museum,
which is all panelled with tiles of his design, of great variety and
charm, and if we remember that for the greater part of this time he
was discharging the functions of Slade Professor of Painting at Uni-
versity College, London, an office which he was the first to hold, or of
Director of the National Art Training Schools, some notion may be
gained of the artistic and intellectual activity of this period. But no
estimate of the kind would be fair or complete without taking into
account the care and labour which Sir Edward devotes to the execu-
tion of the least of his designs.
It may almost be said that it is impossible to appreciate the fin-
ished work of this artist without some knowledge of the contents of
those portfolios which contain his drawings. It at all events increases
our respect for the man and his art to know how much thought and
labour and thorough craftsmanship have gone to the making of his
more important compositions. For the figure of St. George, for
instance, which we see clothed in a complete suit of Maximilian
armour, gleaming through the dusk of the lobby of “the House,” he
thought it necessary to draw the figure nude, and not only nude but
ecorché, and it was not unusual for him about this time to make a
study even of the skeleton in the attitude required for a figure. Such
a drawing I have before me now—a drawing for one of the men, who
is stooping to pick up a stone to hurl at St. Stephen—on one side,
the figure nude, but fully fleshed; on the other, trunk and legs and
arms “in the bones.” Contrasted with such studies there are others
of great completeness and finish, but still preparations—one, for ex-
ample, of the same St. George, but fully armed, with his attendant
figures of Purity and Fortitude fully draped, and underneath the
shield of the United Kingdom, with naked children on either side
holding a festoon. The work is bordered with a band of roses conven-
248
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
tionally treated and executed in water-colours with the utmost care,
yet so broadly that when photographed it looks like a fresco. This
little drawing, almost as beautiful in colour as in design, was experi-
mental only; the shield and the children were replaced by a more
formal design for the mosaic.
I am inclined to regard the series for the fresco at St. Stephen's
Dulwich, as the finest of all, and certainly as the most interesting
study For FREsco. At st. STEPHEN's, DULwich
from a human point of view, as they are studies not only of form and
action, but also of character and expression. In the latter qualities
the finished composition stands almost alone amongst his works. It
stands alone also in the class of its subject, being, so far as I know,
the only completed work of any importance in which he has attempted
to express pathetic religious feeling, and it is so great a success that
one cannot help regretting that he has so seldom exerted his powers
in this direction. It fills the tympanum of a blind pointed arch, and
contains two compositions. The upper represents Stephen before



249
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
the Sanhedrim, the lower the Saint being led out to his martyrdom.
The former is grandiose in design, the scene being laid in a temple of
rich Renaissance architecture, with marble columns and elaborate
studies oF HEADs Fok THE FREsco AT st. stEPHEN's, DULwich
throne, much in the style of Mantegna and other artists of North
Italy. In this imposing chamber there is no figure which is not fine
in physique and strong in character, and the grandest of all is the
º


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SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
High Priest. But yet none of them can divert attention from the
figure of the Saint himself—a singular combination of sweetness and
dignity, who stands before them with upraised hands and his face
turned to the heavenly beams which slant from above. His face is
rapt with the vision of “the heavens open and the Son of Man stand-
ing at the right hand of God,” but the expression is simple, and un-
affected. The long low picture at the base, with smaller figures, like
a predella, is quite worthy of the main composition, and as many of
the figures are scantily draped, displays with greater effect the artist's
knowledge of the figure and skill in draughtsmanship. The saint is
being led forth between two soldiers, who are endeavouring to protect
their prisoner from the fury of the crowd, which is represented by
about half a dozen fierce men picking up and hurling stones. Again
the figure and expression of the saint are beautiful, and the varied
attitudes and gestures of his enemies fine and full of character.
Another very fine series of drawings is that made for “Atalanta's
Race,” which is on the whole the most successful of the four decora-
tions of Lord Wharncliffe's billiard-room at Wortley Hall. The run-
ning figure of Milanion casting a glance over his shoulder was the
subject of many of his finest studies in charcoal and pen and ink, but
more interesting perhaps are those in which he endeavours to solve
the very difficult problem of drawing the arrested action of Atalanta
as she turns to swoop upon the golden ball. For the whole composi-
tion there are at least two careful sketches differing in details.
After the completion of “A Visit to AEsculapius” in 188o Sir
Edward was much engaged in his designs for the decoration of the
dome of St. Paul's in which he was associated with his friend Leigh-
ton, whose design of the sea giving up its dead is now in the Tate
collection at the new National Gallery. They followed in general
architectural arrangement a design left by the great sculptor Alfred
Stevens, but except one or two of the larger spaces left for Leighton,
253
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
the very numerous and beautiful designs themselves were entirely his
own. Unfortunately this scheme, upon which all his knowledge and
skill was brought to bear, had to be ultimately abandoned. Nor is
this the only disappointment of the kind which, from no fault or in-
competency of his own, Sir Edward has had to bear, involving the
PEN-AND-INK study For Milanion IN “ATALANTA's RACE"
waste of months of thought and labour. From this and other causes
he was unable to complete any very important picture till 1890, when
“The Queen of Sheba's Visit to King Solomon" was exhibited at
Mr. McLean's in the Haymarket for a short time previous to its dis-
patch to the art gallery of Sydney, New South Wales. The finished
study for it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891. It is the
last as it is the most gorgeous and elaborate of his larger pictures,



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SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
On no work did he spend greater care in preparation. The studies
nude and draped for its fifty figures are almost legion; every detail
of architecture and armour, costume and ornament, every accessory
in the shape of vessels and musical instruments, “apes and peacocks,"
was the object of conscientious care, and for the golden lions which
line the steps he had models made from his own design. Solomon is
represented in the prime of life. He wears a jeweled cap (like a
glorified “fez ") and carries a sceptre in his left hand. He extends
the right to greet the Queen of Sheba as she ascends the throne with
downcast eyes and gently undulating motion. She is nude to the
waist, with the exception of her tiara and the rich coils of jewels
which fall over breast and arms.
The rest of her body is robed in
rich purple drapery spangled
with gold. It need scarcely be
added that Sir Edward made
UNDRAPED Draped
Two of the studies for “the Queen of sheba"


257
study For on E of THE FIGUREs IN “THE QUEEN of she BA” *
numerous studies for these two principal figures both draped and
undraped.
Though space only enables me to dwell upon the more import-
ant of the president's pictures, it must not be supposed that between
“A Visit to AEsculapius” (1880) and “The Queen of Sheba" (1890) he
did not produce many beautiful things. Indeed he may be said during
these ten years to have made a separate reputation for cabinet pictures
of which the creation of beauty was the sole aim. They are gener-
ally classical in subject, gem-like in colour, and exquisitely finished,
and not from want of individuality, but from similarity of subject,
challenge comparison with Leighton on the one hand and Alma-
Tadema on the other—interiors, mostly of Roman or Greek temples,
houses, and baths, or scenes on marble terraces and steps with spark-
ling glimpses of sea or landscape in the distance, and slightly draped
figures of women and children engaged in some simple or playful oc-

258
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
cupation, like teasing a beetle or feeding pigeons. The human figure
and architecture—human flesh and marble—may be said to be the
primary motives of nearly all these dainty works, and none of them are
º
º
study for one of THE FIGURES IN “THE QUEEN of sheba"
more charming in feeling and colour or more irreproachable in tech-
miyue than Mrs. Renton’s “Corner of the Villa” and “Corner of the
Market-place.” But among the pictures of this period there are a
few which call for a special word, and one of these is certainly “The

259
Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
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A CORNER OF THE MARKET-PLACE
By PERMISSION OF THE BERLIN PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY
Ides of March” (1883). Generally Sir Edward has avoided strong
effects of light, preferring, in common with the greater masters of
Italy, a light so diffused as to enable every object to show its definite -
shape unconfused by atmospheric accident; generally also he has
kept clear of feeling which approaches the tragic and anything like
magic or mystery. But in this picture, in which Caesar and Calpur-
nia are gazing at the portentous comet which strikes like the blade of
a dagger across the cloudy sky, he has combined tragedy, chiaroscuro,

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THE IDEs of MARCH. (1883)
By PERMIssion of THE ART GALLERY OF THE CITY OF MANCHESTER

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BY PERMISSION OF H. Evans, Esq.
and the supernatural in one work, as if to show for once and for all
how powerfully he could treat them if he were so minded. Another
picture which is almost unitſue amongst the president's work is “Out-
ward Bound"—two children on the shelf of a rock watching the
fortune of a tiny toy boat that is slowly sailing out to sea. Never has
Sir Edward drawn children more natural or unconscious than these
little girls, or painted a bit of natural scenery with greater skill.
Lastly, perhaps not quite so unusual but yet remarkable even amongst
Sir Edward's works for the grace of its figures and the beautiful bal-
ance of its composition, is Mr. Evans's picture of “ Knucklebones'
(1891), a subject which the artist has repeated more than once—under

263
studio of E. J. Poynt FR, P.R.A.
By PERMission of MESSRS. J. S. VIRTUE & co.
the title of “When the World was Young"—with the figures draped.
Whether the drapery was a concession to Mrs. Grundy or not, I do
not know, but the nude has never been treated with more purity than
in the undraped version of this charming design. It will be seen from
our illustrations that Sir Edward's art is strongly imbued with the
love of architecture and sculpture, and the ugh I am not aware of any
building built from his plans, he designed that portion of the frieze of
the Albert Hall which represents the Four Quarters of the Globe
bringing offerings to Britain, and has frequently shown his talent and
skill as a modeller and medallist. His prize medal for the “Best
Shot” in the rifle competition of the Volunteers is certainly one of the
finest of modern works of the kind, and the army medal for the
Ashanti war if not so simple and dignified in design deals with much
greater difficulties. It is nothing less than a picture of an incident in

264
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
modern warfare with savages at close quarters, and is treated with
excellent skill. He has also modelled some very good portrait
medallions, including those of Sir Joseph Whitworth, Mrs. Langtry,
and Lady Windsor, and the reverses of the last mint of the shilling
and the florin of the British coinage are from his designs. In deco-
rative sculpture of many kinds he has tried his hand, and amongst his
drawings are a number of designs for a salver and two beakers deco-
rated with figures illustrative of the story of Cupid and Psyche. It
is one of the many proofs of his own busy life that he has never
found time to carry this very beautiful scheme into execution.
Sir Edward Poynter's life has been one of hard work marked by
few incidents outside his home and his profession. He married in
1866 at Wolverhampton the present Lady Poynter, whose maiden
name was Agnes MacDonald. One of her sisters is Lady Burne-
Jones, and another Mrs. Kipling, the mother of Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
For many years he has resided at 28 Albert Gate (not far from his
studio in the Avenue, Brompton Road), in one of those charming old
houses that back on to Hyde Park, a situation as distinguished and
modest as his own character. Of his personal appearance there is no
better presentation than that painted by his own hand for the Gallery of
the Uffizi at Florence, where it hangs by the side of those of his great
predecessors Leighton and Millais. There he looks out upon the
constant streams of visitors with eyes full of that keen intelligence
which has done so much in many ways for his country's art. I have
no intention of writing his panegyric, but it may be safely said that
in this respect he has few rivals amongst his predecessors, certainly
few as a writer on art. The lectures he delivered at the Slade School
and other places, a new edition of which has just been published, are
lucid in statement of principle and practical in their application, and
form no small part of his credentials for his present high position as
President of the Royal Academy. Among the manv honours which
265
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
have come to him, not the least was the sad one of being chosen to
design the border of the Queen's letter to the nation on the death of
the Duke of Clarence. He is a member of the Royal Society of
STUDIES FOR EWER WITH STORY OF CUPID AND PSYCHE
Painters in Water-Colours, where he occasionally sends those charm-
ing little landscapes, which ever since his first essays in the island of
Madeira have been the amusement of his rare holidays. He is a
-


266
SIR EDWARD J. POYNTER, P.R.A.
member of the Royal Society of Etchers, though he seldom uses the
needle, and he is an honourary member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Lastly, he is not only the President of the Royal Academy, but
the Director of the National Gallery, the duties of which have been
lately increased by the New National Gallery of British Art (Mr.
Tate's munificent gift) and the Wallace Gallery.
MERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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