Art in England Part 9

SIR JOSHUA'S PUPIL.

A young apprentice with very little heart in the study of his craft, after the manner of young apprentices, toiling in a watch and clock-maker's shop in the town of Devonport, heard one day the fame of great Sir Joshua's achievements in London sounding through the county--became conscious that the good folks of the shire took pride in the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Master of Plympton Grammar School.

Why should not he, the apprentice, become as great, or nearly so, a credit to Devonport, his birthplace, as was Sir Joshua to Plympton, _his_ birthplace? Could one man only have art abilities and ambitions, and make for himself the opportunity to employ and gratify them? So the apprentice asked himself. And he must have been a clever fellow that apprentice! He soon convinced himself--that was easy: but he convinced his family; he convinced several of his townsmen--a more difficult task,--that the best thing they could do with him was to send him up to town to study under his countryman, Sir Joshua, and to become, like him, a great painter. He had his way at last. In his twenty-fifth year he was painting in the studio of Reynolds, living under his roof.

After all, his dearest wishes gratified, perhaps the pupil was little better off. If cleverness, like fever, were contagious, it had been all very well. But the master was but an indifferent master. He could not, or would not, instruct. He was himself somewhat deficient in education--had few rules--only a marvellous love and perception of the beautiful, and an instinctive talent for its reproduction on his canvas.

It was as certain as it was innate, but not to be expressed in words, or communicated or reasoned upon in any way. The deeds of genius are things done, as of course, for no why or wherefore, but simply because there is no help for it but to do them. So the pupils painted in the studio of their pseudo-preceptor for a certain number of years, copying his works; or, when sufficiently advanced, perhaps working at his backgrounds, brushing away at draperies, or such conventional fillings in of pictures, and then went their ways to do what they listed, and for the most part to be heard of no more in art chronicles. They had probably been of more use to the painter than he had been to them. Certainly our friend the clockmaker's apprentice was. For when there arose a cry of 'Who wrote Sir Joshua's discourses, if not Burke?' this pupil could give satisfactory evidence in reply. He had heard the great man, his master, walking up and down in the library, as in the intervals of writing, at one and two o'clock in the morning. A few hours later, and he had the results in his hands. He was employed to make a fair copy of the lecturer's rough ma.n.u.script for the reading to the public. He had noted Dr. Johnson's handwriting, for _he_ had revised the draft, sometimes altering to a wrong meaning, from his total ignorance of the subject and of art: but never a stroke of Burke's pen was there to be seen. The pupil, it must be said for him, never lost faith in his master. Vand.y.k.e, Reynolds, t.i.tian--he deemed these the great triumvirate of portraiture.

Comparing them, he would say, that Vand.y.k.e's portraits were like pictures, Sir Joshua's like the reflections in a looking-gla.s.s, and t.i.tian's like the real people. And he was useful to the great painter in another way, for he sat for one of the children in the Count Ugolino picture (the one in profile with the hand to the face). While posed for this, he was introduced as a pupil of Sir Joshua's to Mr. Edmund Burke, and turned to look at that statesman. 'He is not only an artist, but has a head that would do for t.i.tian to paint,' said Mr. Burke. He served, too, another celebrated man. With Ralph, Sir Joshua's servant, he went to the gallery of Covent Garden Theatre, to support Dr. Goldsmith's new comedy, _She Stoops to Conquer_, on the first night of its performance.

While his friends are trooping to the theatre, the poor author is found sick and shivering with nervousness, wandering up and down the Mall in St. James's Park. He can hardly be induced to witness the production of his own play. Johnson's l.u.s.ty laugh from the front row of a side box gives the signal to the worthy _claque_, who applaud to an almost dangerous extent, in their zeal for their friend, because there runs a rumour that c.u.mberland and Ossian Macpherson and Hugh Kelly are getting up a hiss in the pit.

'How did you like the play?' asked Goldsmith of the young painter, who had been clapping his hands until they ached, in the gallery by the side of good Mr. Ralph.

'I wouldn't presume to be a judge in such a matter,' the art-student answered.

'But did it make you laugh?'

'Oh, exceedingly.'

'That's all I require,' said Goldsmith, and sent him box tickets for the author's benefit night, that he might go and laugh again.

Sir Joshua's pupil was James Northcote, a long-lived man, born at Devonport in 1746, and dying at his London house, in Argyll Place, Regent Street, in 1831. If he had a t.i.tianesque look in his youth, he possessed it still more in his age. Brilliant eyes, deeply set; grand projecting nose; thin, compressed lips; a shrewd, cat-like, penetrating look; fine, high, bald forehead, yellow and polished, though he often hid this with a fantastic green velvet painting cap, and straggling bunches of quite white hair behind his ears. A little, meagre man, not more than five feet high, in a shabby, patched dressing-gown, almost as old as himself, leading a quiet, cold, penurious life. He never married.

He had never even been in love. He had never had the time, or he had never had the pa.s.sion necessary for such pursuits, or he was too deeply devoted to his profession. He was always, brush in hand, perched up on a temporary stage, painting earnestly, fiercely, 'with the inveterate diligence of a little devil stuccoing a mud wall!' cried flaming Mr.

Fuseli.

Haydon, with a letter of introduction from Prince h.o.a.re, called upon Northcote. He was shown first into a dirty gallery, then up-stairs into a dirtier painting-room, and then, under a high window, with the light falling full on his bald grey head, stood a diminutive wizened figure in an old blue striped dressing-gown, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. Looking keenly with his little shining eyes at his visitor, he opened the letter, read it, and with the broadest Devon dialect, said--

'Zo you mayne tu bee a peinter, doo 'ee? What zort of peinter?'

'Historical painter, sir.'

'Heestoricaul peinter! Why, ye'll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head.'

Presently he read the note again.

'Mr. h.o.a.re zays you're studying anatomy; that's no use--Sir Joshua didn't know it. Why should you want to know what he didn't?'

'But Michael Angelo did, sir.'

'Michael Angelo! what's he tu du here? You must peint portraits here!'

Haydon was roused to opposition.

'But I won't!'

'_Won't_,' screamed the little man, 'but you _must_! Your vather isn't a moneyed man, is he?'

'No, sir, but he has a good income, and will maintain me for three years.'

'Will hee? Hee'd better make 'ee mentein yeerzelf.'

'Do you think, sir, that I ought to be a pupil to anybody?'

'No,' said Northcote. 'Who's to teach 'ee here? It'll be throwing your vather's money away.'

'Mr. Opie, sir, says I ought to be.'

'Hee zays zo, does hee? ha, ha, ha, ha! he wants your vather's money.'

He received many visitors in his studio. He was constantly at home, and liked to talk over his work, for he never paused on account of the callers. He never let go his palette even. He went to the door with a 'Gude G.o.d!' his favourite exclamation in his west country dialect, 'what, is it _you_? Come in:' and then climbed his way back to his canvas, asking and answering in his cool, self-possessed way, all about the news of the day. Yet he was violent and angry, and outspoken sometimes, was Sir Joshua's loyal pupil.

'Look at the feeling of Raphael!' said some one to him.

'Bah!' cried the little man. 'Look at Reynolds; he was all feeling! The ancients were _baysts_ in feeling, compared to him.' And again: 'I tell 'ee the King and Queen could not bear the presence of _he_. Do you think he was overawed by _they_? Gude G.o.d! He was poison to their sight. They felt ill at ease before such a being--they shrunk into themselves, overawed by his intellectual superiority. They inwardly prayed to G.o.d that a trap-door might open under the feet of the throne, by which they might escape--his presence was too terrible!'

Certainly he was possessed by no extravagant notions of the divinity of blood-royal.

'What do you know,' he was asked, 'of the Prince of Wales, that he so often speaks of you?'

'Oh, he knows nothing of me, nor I of him--it's only his _bragging_!'

the painter grandly replied.

He could comprehend the idea of distinction of ranks little more than old Mr. Nollekens, who would persist in treating the royal princes quite as common acquaintances, taking them by the b.u.t.ton-hole, forgetful altogether of the feuds of the king's family, and asking them _how their father did_? with an exclamation to the heir-apparent of, 'Ah! we shall never get such another when he's gone!' Though there was little enough veneration for the king in this, as Nollekens proved, when he measured the old monarch, sitting for his bust, from the lip to the forehead, as though he had been measuring a block of marble, and at last fairly stuck the compa.s.ses into his Majesty's nose. Even the king, who was not very quick at a joke, could not fail to see the humour of the situation, and laughed immensely.

Modern taste prefers Northcote's portraits to his more pretentious works. The glories of Mr. Alderman Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery have pretty well pa.s.sed away. However, Northcote's pictures were among the best of the collection. His 'Arthur and Hubert,' and the 'Murder of the Princes in the Tower,' and 'The Interment of the Bodies by torchlight,'

were very forcible and dramatic works of art, and possessed more natural attractions than the pictures of many of his compet.i.tors. His pupilage with Sir Joshua prevented his falling into the washed leather and warm drab errors of tone that then distinguished the English school of historical painting. In the picture of the Burial of the Princes, Fuseli criticised--

'You shouldn't have made that fellow holding up his hands to receive the bodies. You should have made him digging a hole for them. How awfully grand; with a pickaxe, digging, dump, dump, dump!'

'Yes,' Northcote answered; 'but how am I to paint the sound of dump, dump, dump?'

The Boydell pictures were for a long time very popular, and the engravings of them enjoyed a large sale.

Of course, Northcote despised Hogarth. Abuse of that painter seemed to be one of the duties of the British historical artist of that day. Yet he paid him homage; he painted a series of pictures, Hogarthian in subject, and proved to the satisfaction of everybody, one would think, the absolute superiority of Hogarth. Mr. Northcote's moral subjects, ill.u.s.trative of vice and virtue, in the progress of two young women, are not to be mentioned in the same breath with the 'Mariage a la Mode.' Not merely were they deficient in expression--they were not equal in point of art-execution, though of course the more modern painter had planned to excel in both these qualities. But Northcote's portraits are really admirable--broad and vigorous--with much of Sir Joshua's charm of colour, if not his charm of manner exactly.

For fifty years he lived in Argyll Place, pa.s.sing the greatest part of that time in his studio--a small room not more than nine feet by twelve, crowded with the conventional articles of _vertu_ that were then considered to be the indispensable properties of a painter. His maiden sister--'Northcote in petticoats,' she was often called, she was so like him in face, figure, and manner--superintended his frugal household. Its economy was simple enough. The brother and sister were of one opinion.

'Half the world died of over-feeding,' they said. They went into an opposite extreme, and nearly starved themselves. When there was a cry in the land about scarcity of food, they did not heed the panic; they were accustomed to a minimum of sustenance, they could hardly be deprived of that. Fuseli, who sowed his satire broadcast, exclaimed one day: 'What!

does Northcote keep a dog? What does he live upon? Why, he must eat his own fleas!' But the painter did not attempt to force his opinions upon others, so the kennel and the kitchen fared better than the parlour. The servants were indulgently treated, permitted to eat as they pleased, and die in their own fashion--of repletion or apoplexy, if it seemed good to them.

If he was cold and callous and cynical to the rest of the world, he was ever good and kind to the pinched elderly lady his sister. By his will he gave directions that everything in his house should remain undisturbed, that there should be no sale of his property in her lifetime. He was counselled by considerate friends to have all his pictures sold immediately after his funeral while his name was fresh in the memory of the public; it was urged that his estate would benefit very much by the adoption of such a course. 'Gude G.o.d, no!' the old man would cry; 'I haven't patience with ye! Puir thing! d'ye think she'll not be sufficiently sad when my coffin be borne away, and she be left desolate! Tearing my pictures from the walls, and ransacking every nook and corner, and packing up and carting away what's dearer to her than household G.o.ds, and all for filthy lucre's sake! No; let her enjoy the few years that will be spared to her; when she walks about the house let her feel it all her own, such as it be, and nothing missing but her brother. I'd rather my bones were torn from my grave, and scattered to help repair the roads, than that a single thing should be displaced here to give her pain. Ye'll drive me mad!'

One day there was a great crowd in Argyll Place. Not to see the painter, not even to see a royal carriage that had just drawn up at his door, nor a popular prince of the blood who occupied the carriage, but to catch a glimpse of one about whom the town was then quite mad--raving mad: a small good-looking schoolboy, a theatrical homunculus, the Infant Roscius, Master William Henry Betty. Of course rages and panics and manias seem to be very foolish things, contemplated by the cool grey light of the morning after. It seems rather incredible now, that crowds should have a.s.sembled round the theatre at one o'clock to see Master Betty play Barbarossa in the evening; that he should have played for twenty-eight nights at Drury Lane, and drawn 17,000 into the treasury of the theatre. He was simply a handsome boy of thirteen with a fine voice, deep for his age, and powerful but monotonous. Surely he was not very intellectual, though he did witch the town so marvellously. 'If they admire me so much, what would they say of Mr. Harley?' quoth the boy, simply. Mr. Harley being the head tragedian of the same strolling company--a large-calved, leather-lunged player, doubtless, who had awed provincial groundlings for many a long year. Yet the boy's performance of Douglas charmed John Home, the author of the tragedy. 'The first time I ever saw the part of Douglas played according to my ideas of the character!' he exclaimed, as he stood in the wings; but he was then seventy years of age. 'The little Apollo off the pedestal!' cried Humphreys, the artist. 'A beautiful effusion of natural sensibility,'

said cold Northcote; 'and then that graceful play of the limbs in youth--what an advantage over every one else!' As the child grew, the charm vanished; the crowds that had applauded the boy fled from the man.

Byron denounced him warmly. 'His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory says (in the farce of _All the World's a Stage_), "I defy him to extort that d----d m.u.f.fin face of his into madness!"' Happy Master Betty! Hapless _Mister_ Betty!

Opie had painted the Infant as the shepherd so well known to nursery prodigies watching on the Grampian Hills the flocks of his father, 'a frugal swain, whose constant care,' etc. etc. His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, who was a patron of the stage--or the people on it, or some of them--brought the boy to Northcote, to be represented in a 'Vand.y.k.e costume retiring from the altar of Shakespeare,'--rather an unmeaning ceremonial. But the picture was a great success, and the engraving of it published and dedicated to the duke. He was then about forty--a hearty, bluff gentleman, supposed to be free and breezy in his manliness from his service at sea,--kindly and unaffected in manner, had not the slightest knowledge of art, but regarded Northcote as 'an honest, independent, little, old fellow,' seasoning that remark with an oath, after the quarter-deck manner of naval gentlemen of the period.

The prince sat in the studio while the artist drew the Infant. Northcote was not a man to wear a better coat upon his back for all that his back was going to be turned upon royalty. He still wore the ragged, patched dressing-gown he always worked in. The painting of Master Betty was amusing at first, but it seemed, in the end, to be but a prolonged and tedious business to the not artistic looker-on. He must divert himself somehow. Certainly Northcote's appearance was comical. Suddenly the painter felt a twitching at his collar. He turned, frowned angrily, but said nothing. The prince persevered. Presently he touched lightly the painter's rough white locks.

'Mr. Northcote, pray how long do you devote to the duties of the toilet?'