72 ROYAL ACADEMY. [1760-1783. As soon as Somerset House, erected on the site of one of the royal palaces, was completed, the Royal Academy removed to a suite of rooms which the king had caused to be constructed in the new building expressly for their use, and there the annual exhibitions continued to be held till the Academy was removed to the National Gallery. The first exhibition in Somerset House was held in 1780, and the progress from the opening exhibition eleven years earlier is very marked. While the Academicians who exhibit remain in number the same, the non-academicians have increased to 183; the number of entries in the catalogue is 489, and the character of the works exhibited is evidently higher. Besides the names enumerated above, we now meet with some who are destined to sustain the reputation of the school in the succeeding generation: J. S. Copley, R.A. elect (the father of lord Lyndhurst); Fuseli; de Loutherbourg; Zoffany; Stothard; Wyatt the architect; and the sculptors Banks, Bacon and Flaxman. At this time there was no limit to the number of works sent in, and we find Gainsborough on this occasion contributing six large landscapes and ten portraits, whilst in the next year Reynolds sent no fewer than one-and-twenty pictures, including his Dido, and the famous portraits of the ladies Waldegrave for which Walpole (though not without grumbling) paid the artist a thousand guineas-being the largest sum up to that time ever paid to an English portrait painter. When the Royal Academy took possession of its apartments in Somerset House it stood alone as the visible exponent of British art. The Incorporated Society had persisted for some years in a vain struggle, but from the opening of the Royal Academy no new member joined its ranks; its exhibitions dwindled rapidly into insignificance; and it eventually succumbed before its too powerful rival. The humble Free Society which had clung like a parasite to the Society of Arts had also perished of inanition. The Academy, though often assailed from without, and not always at peace within, has continued in an unbroken career of prosperity down to the present hour -unchanged in its constitution, and without increase in its members, though everything around it has changed, and the number of professional artists has increased fifty-fold since its foundation.* Among the founders of the Royal Academy were indeed men of no common order; and the glory which they shed around it must have done much to ensure its firm establishment. Reynolds, with whom the early years of the Academy are most intimately associated, was a painter who at once raised English portraiture from sheer mindless mimicry to a level with that of the noblest days of art. Without attempting to rival the great masters in The Academy has had no historian: its origin and progress must be traced too often by the light of unfriendly pilots, amid all sorts of muddy banks and quicksands. The following are a few of the sources from which we have derived assistance: "Abstract of the Instrument of the Institution and Laws of the Royal Academy of Arts," 8vo. Lond. 1797; "Catalogues of the Royal Academy;" "The conduct of the Royal Academicians while members of the Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain, viz., from 1760 to their expulsion in 1769. With some part of their transactions since," 8vo. 1771, and Abstracts of Papers of Incorporated Society published in the "Literary Panorama," 1808; Galt's "Life of Benjamin West," vol. ii. chap. iv., where full particulars respecting the foundation of the Academy are given on the authority of West himself, who conducted the negociations with the king; the Lives of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by Malone, Northcote, and Cotton; Barry's Works; Pye on "Patronage of British Art;" Reports (with evidence) of Committees of House of Commons," 1834 and 1836; Hcgarth, Sir Robert Strange, Nicholls, Edwards, Cunningham, &c. 1760-1783.] REYNOLDS-GAINSBOROUGH. 73 the higher walks of painting, he strove to compete with the worthiest in his own peculiar line. He has been condemned for not attempting loftier themes, but we may in these days be well content that he employed his pencil in handing down the portraits of the statesmen, soldiers, and writers, and of the matrons, maids, and children among whom he lived and moved, rather than in fabricating from the recipes and models of the painting-room eighteenthcentury Phrynes, Venuses, and Epaminondases, or even Apostles and Madonnas. For not only was Reynolds the greatest colourist that England had ever seen, but her most intellectual portrait-painter, and she had men, women, and children well worthy the best pencil that could be found to hand down their features to posterity. But whilst Reynolds could do this, he wanted, for what are called the higher branches of art, alike sufficient technical training, power of studious application, historical insight, and poetic imagination. All that he aimed to do he did perfectly. His mastery over his materials is the more surprising the more his works are studied. His touch is always sure and firm, yet light as zephyr. His clearness of perception is almost perfect. To every part is given just the tone and touch. and surface which most befits it. Where his colours have not lost their original hue, they glow with a sombre splendour, which, though borrowed neither from Flanders nor Venice, reminds the spectator of the greatest masters of both those countries. Then what fascination in his female forms and features, how charming his children, how manly his men! Reynolds lived always in easy intercourse with the most distinguished of his time, and something of the genial grace of such companionship is visible in his works. He did not copy a face with camera-like particularity, but he always gave what was most essential: his likenesses are not perhaps always the most faithful rendering of the man in his ordinary daily life, but they bring out his most intellectual and characteristic aspect. Burke was mistaken when he said that Reynolds was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. But if he was not that, we cannot but regard him, when we reflect on the influence which he exerted alike by his pencil, his writings, and his character, as the true founder of the English school of painting. Gainsborough had far less technical power than Reynolds, and in portraiture far less variety. But if he could not attain the elevation of Reynolds's Mrs. Siddons, or Cornelia, he could more than equal Reynolds in depicting the lighter phases of female beauty. Those who saw Gainsborough's portraits in the wonderful collection brought together last year in the British Institution, or the exquisite specimens of his pencil in the great Manchester Exhibition, will be little likely to gainsay his powers as a painter of female portraits. But it is after all as a landscape painter, and the painter of those delightful "Cottage Doors," and similar homely rustic subjects which he painted with such unrivalled skill, that he ranks supreme. He was the first painter of the poetry of homely English scenery-the first who showed how the shallow ford, the village green, the leafy woodside, or shady river's bank might on canvas delight the eye and stir the memory and stimulate the fancy—and in his own way he has found no compeer and no successor. By those whose tastes lead them to prefer what is called classic landscape, Wilson has always been placed above Gainsborough as a painter. But 74 WILSON-WEST. [1760-1783. Wilson was less original and less native in style. Italian scenes with Phaetons or Apollos in the clouds, and Niobes on the earth, will never come home to the common understanding. Wilson was neglected whilst alive; he has been perhaps over-praised since his death. Like Gainsborough, he was altogether a painter. But there was less spontaneousness in his constitution. Even his English scenes are painted on an Italian model. If he looked abroad on nature it was to consider how the scenery would "compose" into a picture. The men and women who walked about were to him but "figures." He was a great painter, but his greatness was conventional. Yet few landscape-painters of any country have had a finer eye for grandeur of form and largeness of effect, and if it be to Gainsborough that we can trace the love of simple unsophisticated English scenery, truth and freshness of colour, and directness of imitation, which have ever since characterised English landscape-painting-the truest and noblest school of landscape that has yet been seen-it is to Wilson that we are indebted for its preservation in its early stages from vulgarity and commonplace. Reynolds, Wilson, and Gainsborough were born within a few years of each other. The other painter, whose name is most closely associated with them in these early days of English art, who succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy, and who must, we fear, be regarded as the founder of English historical painting, Benjamin West, was some years their junior. A native of Pennsylvania, then an English colony, he came to London at the age of five-and-twenty, and was introduced by Drummond, archbishop of York, to George III., who, pleased with the simplicity of his quaker manners, and the grave religious character of his pictures and sketches, at once took the young American into his favour. West had spent three years in Italy in West. the study of the old masters, and he had acquired a fatal facility of composition and execution. His pictures, when scriptural, were always illustrative of passages which stirred the sympathies of every person of religious feelings, and they were so painted that all could at once understand them; and his historical and classical subjects were hardly more recondite and were equally clear. The king saw in them pictures he could feel and comprehend. West received an unlimited commission, and as long as the king retained his 1760-1783.] WEST. 75 faculties, West was duly paid his salary of 1000l. a year. The royal patronage would alone have insured the painter success, but the same qualities which delighted the king delighted a large section of his subjects also; and it was the popular belief that England possessed in West another Raffaelle. That belief has long passed away, and the reaction has been severe. West never rose above mediocrity, and mediocrity is as fatal to the painter as the poet. But worse painters have had a more enduring celebrity, and some pictures of West's ought to save him from oblivion. One of these is his celebrated "Death of General Wolfe," in which, in spite of the warnings of his friends, and it is said the united and semi-official protest of the president of the Royal Academy and the archbishop of York, West, instead of clothing the hero and his associates in the costumes of Greece or Rome, or that conventional "drapery" which painters were accustomed to substitute for the dress of any particular age or country, ventured on the daring innovation of making the actors wear the actual coats and cocked hats in which they fought. The picture was painted with unusual care, referred to an event which stirred every heart, and was treated in a manner which men of all conditions could appreciate. It had an immense success. The king was delighted; Reynolds was converted; but the painter's brother artists-bardest of all to satisfywere not convinced. Barry undertook to show how the event should have been treated in the classic style. He painted the scene, and people were amazed at beholding Wolfe and his grenadiers braving the climate of Canada as well as the bayonets of Montcalm in a state of nudity. But if Barry outraged all "the proprieties," West, some thought, had not wholly resisted temptation. He had painted the dying general in the midst of his officers, who were grouped about him, not as they must have been under such circumstances, but plainly with a view to scenic effect, and he had brought into the foreground a naked Indian, though no such person was actually there. Penny, then professor of painting at the academy, undertook to depict the hero's death as it really occurred-almost alone and in the rear of the fight. But he too got entangled in conventionalisms, and was, moreover, incompetent to grapple with the theme, and West's triumph was complete. "The Death of Wolfe," we may say now, went but a little way towards settling the still unsettled question of the extent of licence allowable to the painter of a familiar historical scene; but it at least put an end to the more outrageous anomalies previously tolerated, and the historical painter was thenceforth in this country understood to be to some extent amenable to the laws which govern the historical writer. It had now become a favourite project to adorn our churches and public buildings with paintings, after the fashion of those of the continent. It was decided to make the experiment on St. Paul's. The leading painters, with West and Reynolds at their head, offered at their own cost to cover the bare walls of the metropolitan cathedral with paintings of the leading events of Old and New Testament history, and the king and the archbishop of Canterbury gave their cordial adhesion to the proposal. But the bishop of London, whose veto was decisive, sternly refused his sanction, and the whole scheme fell to the ground, thereby, said the enthusiastic professors, throwing back historical * See Galt's "Life of West." 76 BARRY. [1760-1783. painting in England for a century. That such willing service might not be lost, however, the Society of Arts (taking into account the profits derived by the exhibition of the pictures painted for the Foundling Hospital) invited the six painters, designated by the Royal Academy to execute the paintings in St. Paul's, with four others, to paint around their great room ten large pictures from English History; for which they were to be remunerated by the proceeds of an exhibition of them when finished. The painters declined; but Barry, who had been burning to remove from English art the reproach cast upon it by Winckelmann and Du Bos, proffered to cover the entire room himself with a series of large allegorical paintings illustrative of Human Culture. The Society accepted his offer, and though he had but sixteen shillings in his pocket, he commenced his mighty task, working at odd jobs for the booksellers by night to procure the sustenance necessary to carry on the work of the day. After labouring almost without intermission for nearly seven years, he brought his undertaking to a close. A work like this was almost heroic and out of respect for the man who thus braved neglect and poverty that he might carry out worthily his patriotic enterprise, we would fain persuade ourselves that the work was not a failure. Happily for his own peace of mind, Barry himself never suspected that he missed his aim. In his celebrated letter to the Dilettanti Society, he speaks without stint of its "public interest, and ethical utility of subject; castigated purity of Grecian design, beauty, grace, vigorous effect, and execution." We read those words and turn with amazement from the pictures. But we look again and see ample evidence of genius, though of the genius that is near allied to madness. Few more efforts were made to achieve success in mural painting. It was reserved for our own day, and with another material, to show what English artists could effect in that branch of art. The frescoes of the New Houses of Parliament, and perhaps even more that in the great hall of Lincoln's Inn, have proved that if fitting opportunity offers, the skill will not be wanting to produce works worthy of the nation. But seeing what was in the 18th century regarded as the ideal of historical painting-looking at the cold mediocrity of West and his followers on the one hand, and the unchecked |