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Document Title: Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Author: William Holman Hunt
Date of publication: 1914
Publisher: E. P. Dutton and Company
Printer: Richard Clay and Sons, Limited
Edition: Second

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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PRE-RAPHAELITISM

AND THE

PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD



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Portrait of William Holman-Hunt (1867), by Himself

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM HOLMAN-HUNT (1867), BY HIMSELF (Presented to the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, in 1907)

In acknowledging the reception of the portrait, the Director of the Galleries wrote: “It represents one of the chiefs of the glorious movement which exercised such a salutory influence on the artistic life of the nineteenth century.”





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Pre-Raphaelitism and

the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood



BY

W. Holman-Hunt, O.M., D.C.L.

SECOND EDITON

REVISED FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTES BY M. E. H.-H.



TWO VOLUMES



Vol. I

WITH 155 ILLUSTRATIONS







New York

E. P. Dutton & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE



1914

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Note: The call number, written in pencil, and a library stamp appear at the top of the page.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,

AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
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THIS SECOND EDITION IS DEDICATED

TO THE

MEMORY OF THE PAINTER

WHOSE LIFE WAS DEVOTED TO THE SERVICE OF

NATURE, ART, AND IMAGINATION

“Thou, Nature, art my Goddess;

To thy law my services are bound.”
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Facsimile of the Initials on Millais “Lorenzo and Isabella,” 1848

Facsimile of the Initials on Millais

“Lorenzo and Isabella,” 1848



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PREFATORY NOTE
I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to many friends for suggestions and assistance in the completion of this history. I omit the names of these lest they might be unfairly regarded as in any way responsible for the many deficiencies of the book. I have also to thank those who have generously allowed me the loan of their pictures for reproduction.

W.H.H.
The Editor of the Second Edition owes much to the kindness of the descendents of those who are treated of in this book, for their help in procuring contemporary portraits, as also to the publishers who have permitted her to make use of their illustrations.

M.E.H.-H.

1913.
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PREFACE

I am but a single voice.—Theocritus.

Art is generally regarded as a light and irresponsible pursuit, entailing for its misuse no penalty to the artist or to the nation of which he is a citizen. It is further assumed that a being endowed with original taste may, after some perfunctory essays, be happily inspired, and that he will then, with a few days of wrapt energy, be able to convert his thought into a masterpiece.
In my boyhood a brilliant novel was based on this idea. At the end of the eighteenth century a young hero of romance, in easy circumstances, wandering about Europe to gratify his love of ancient art, found himself in the classical cities of Italy. He was surrounded by sympathetic friends, who recognised that he had been born with fine tastes and talents, who listened to him appreciatively as he discoursed of Raphael, Guido, Salvator Rosa, and other favourite Masters. After some less important artistic experiments criticised by an academic friend as wanting in orthodox arrangement; although interrupted by an engrossing love affair and by efforts to discover the true elixer of life, the amateur artist shut himself up in a weird chamber, and on the white walls he elaborated a composition representing the “Judgment of the Dead by the Living.” It was a masterpiece, as such a noble subject merited it should be.
Pictures are not produced thus. Long years are needed to train the eye and hand before a man can represent on a flat surface any forms under the simplest conditions; the difficulty grows in compound ratio with intricate design of moving figures, and the immature artist's illustration of so sublime a theme would tax more than the extreme indulgence of the most partial friends.
For the sculptor to arrive at a high perfection not less severe study is needful; but the use of calipers may so far cover ignorance of proportion, that the essays of a pretender may not be so pitiable in the eyes of the undiscriminating as they would be for similar attempts in painting. Marble, smoothly polished, is a beautiful material, and its purity of surface compensates for defects which disenchant even the superficial in looking on the ignorantly smudged canvas; excellence in either branch of art can be won only by incessant labour, such as no one will bestow who is not endowed with that passion for art which made him draw in infancy, a passion which ever leaves him unhappy when not wrestling with some besetting sin discovered in his own practice.
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Burne-Jones, once conversing upon the shortness of human life for the attainment of maturity in art, impulsively said to me that at least 300 years were needed. This, though an unpremeditated explamation, was not a baseless guess. The Greeks, Romans, and Italians eked out their acquired wisdom to pupils, and so extended individual life, and thus more surely reached the goal of their ambition. I hope to convince my readers that every student of art in the past was loyal to his own nationality, and that in these days men of British blood, whether of insular birth, or of the homes beyond the seas, should not subject themselves to the influence of masters alien to the sentiments and principles of the great English thinkers and poets.
There was matter for caution even in the days when the sober high purposes of Continental masters ensured the cultivation of correctness and respect for questions of common-sense; but now that these qualities are ridiculed and put aside, there is the greater reason for regarding the foreign training as pernicious and to be shunned by students of the race to which Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and the great fathers of our own art belonged.
In the hope of eradicating many mischievous prejudices which are thoughtlessly handed on as unquestioned truths, I abandon reserve more than otherwise I should do.
Regarding the character of a nation's art as immeasurably more important than it is ordinarily thought to be, both for its own people and for the whole world, I may at times be led to speak with solemnity; but at the outset I disclaim all pretensions to those graces of style and deft mingling of exquisitely selected words into variegated tints of meaning, which should grace a history across whose stage will pass many of the masters of thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. I must rely simply upon the charm of my theme when treating of men who were searching out a new perfection in life and lovingly teaching it to others.
The manner in which our particular views were conceived, and the order in which our coadjutors came together, the qualifications and the character of each, our consultations and our resolves, will scarcely be intelligible until the conditions are understood in which young artists found themselves a few years before the middle of the nineteenth century, when the future members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement were boy students. The system of apprenticeship under which was produced all of the great art of past ages had died out in the early days of the century, perhaps as an inevitable sequence of the establishment of art academies. Serious penalties, not generally considered, followed the change. A student recieved indeed valuable advice from the visitors in the Schools as to the accuracy of the studies he made in prosaic imitation; but the constant paternal guidance of the master training the inventive faculties of a particular pupil ceased to exist, and the latter could no longer see
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the original work of the master in all its stages any more than the master could follow the student in his daily ambitious efforts. We, as students, no doubt lost much good resulting from the old tradition as it would have been carried out by an altogether wise master, but we escaped what would have been fatal evils had the director been wanting in wisdom. When Millais and I compared notes in after-life, we found that each of us had mainly depended for his painting practice upon the example and advice of fellow-students more advanced than himself. Our unguided position had compensating advantages; the necessity of proving any new suggestion established in us the habit of daring judgment, which we exercised on questions more important than those of technique alone, and our previous study of the great Masters prevented our inquiries from having the taint of ignorant presumption.
To the casual cognoscenti of our youth the annual exhibitions contained all that British Art was required to display. The Press, it will be seen, testified to this judgment, as did also, in all societies, many of the representative men of the day. The general enthusiastic approbation was further indicated by the avidity with which all well-to-do homes were furnished with engravings of the favourite current pictures, and also by that repugnance to reform which the detestation of our innocent works provoked.
I can aver that we also saw much to admire in the art of the day, but for my own part there was great need to distinguish between feelings of passing enjoyment in an exhibition and the more critical judgment called for to guard one's art conscience. After some hours spent in a modern gallery I felt pride at the sensibility and skill of many British artists, yet each season I increasingly recognised that there could be no full satisfaction in merely carrying on our elders' ambitions, which had become weakened in their dire struggle for existence in those straitened days, by the need to compromise with the prejudices of social taste. Artists had to work mainly on a sort of charitable sufferance from the rich, who were not always more than fashionably refined; our predecessors, therefore, deserved the less blame for their faults and the more praise for their excellences.
It was not till later days that I learned that one of our forerunners had been mourning the expiring condition of British art.
Let the gentle Leslie's despairing tone over Constable's prophecy 1 that British art would disappear about 1852, together with his interpretation of its fulfillment in the death of Turner, bear witness to the fear of this being inevitable. With Stothard, Constable, and Wilkie dead, Etty past account, and Turner's glorious career at an end, no effort of elders could effect the imminent prospect. We young men had no disposition to lay our spring-like lives at the feet of such fatality. If the open road ended in an impassable waste, we had to make a new way; it might be to push through the forest darkness, to root out
Transcribed Footnote (page xiii):

1 See heading to Chapter III.

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venomous undergrowth, to substitute wholesome stock, grafting these with shoots, to ripen hereafter for the refreshment of travellers overcome by their toilsome march. It is by seeking out the teaching of the secret-revealing years that the young can justify their usurpation of the seats of their fathers.
Our purpose was formed with deliberation, and we had such faith in our initial thought that we disdained caution in our plans. “Will you advance guardedly?” said General Morgan to his re-engaged Ironsides fighting to raise the siege of Dunkirk, “or will you go happy-go-lucky,” “Happy-go-lucky,” replied they. We were as reckless in the manner of our advance. Their impetuosity ensured the warriors immediate victory, but our victory was for many years threatened, and has, to say the least, been much retarded by our impulsive course.
The question, Who is truly an artist? is not a new one. Michael Angelo said that carrying a box of colours did not make a painter, and in our day to flaunt trivial fancies into a dainty form, cherished by idle patrons as the choicest example of taste, cannot be consistent with the high service which art is called upon to render. To lounge about from studio to studio and confer over the things that "go off" best, or to report the highest sum given in Paris for an approved piece of manipulation, executed to suit the whim of a star of the demi-monde, may be a step towards reaching vulgar favour and opulence, but the triumph is a miserable one. With no larger aspirations than this astir, how will a people be blessed as were those to whom the artist gave a national talisman for the conquest of ignorance and brutality? Art, as of old, should stamp a nation's individuality; it should be the witness of its life to future generations.
To whom but the artist is relegated the task of giving a tangible and worthy image of the national body and mind? who else may select and uphold the visible sign of that beauty in his Race which is most heroic physically and mentally? Who shall warn the people from the cramping distortions of the ephemeral tastes of the day? the fashion for such frivolity being the mark of corruption. In antique nations, it is true, deadly vanities, insidious as tares, were so cherished, supplanting the wheat and imperilling the viguour of the Race; tares spread by the hand of that Sower who never leaves those unvexed who are constant on a great perfection.
All development has its root in a desire. Man must have a revered image in his mind's eye. The leading races of antiquity authorised art to stamp the national insignia on all products. Happy is that nation that develops a true art of its own! Nations, when feeble-spirited as to design, incapable of reflecting their own soul, have bowed to classical supremacy, and by this tribute have escaped much lurking evil. Had China accepted the teachings of Greek art the nation would have been incapable of hideously laming its women; had late ages Europe cared for healthy art one hundredth part as much as they professed to do,
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the distortions of fashion would have been defied. Even in ancient times the artists who marched in the van of thought had more than imaginary foes to overcome. Xenophon, in the early days of Pheidias, tells of the wife of Ischomachus, who, till converted to wisdom by Socrates, made use of a poisonous white lead and vermillion to heighten the charm of her complexion in her husband's eyes. The idle vulgar, indeed, have ever affected vanities to distinguish them from their more humble brethren, to whom fortune gave nothing but some implement wherewith to take part in the labour of the world. The small hand is in truth the mark of decaying vigour, but it is valued by the idle as a sign of high descent. In foppish centuries, dandies, like silly women, squeezed their bodies with stays, and false artists flattered these follies. But as priests are bound to remove all veils from vice and preach that virtue alone is imperishable, so the true limner has to show the hideousness and deadliness of sham fascination by proving the everlasting dignity of the natural proportions of the human form. It is this perfection which enables man to overcome the brute, which gives him courage to guard his belongings from murder and rapine and to repress tyranny. It is no idle fancy of Keats that “to be first in Beauty is to be first in Might.” The office of the artist should be looked upon as a priest's service in the temple of Nature, where ampler graces are revealed to those that have eyes to see, just as ever gentler chords are announced to the fuller life to those that have ears to hear, while declared Law opens up wide regions unordered and anarchic, where selfish greed has yet to be tutored into wise rule. In the circle of the initiated, responsive beings recognise the elimination of immature design in creation to be a triumph of patient endeavor, and they join in the chorus of those who “sang together for joy” on the attainment of the ideal of Heaven's Artist, who in overflowing bounty endowed the colourless world with prismatic radiance, prophesying of Titians yet to be who should go forth and charm the scales from the eyes of the blind. 1
Transcribed Footnote (page xv):

1 “We may say roughly that the spectrum of white light consists of 100 colours; since the colours of all cold natural bodies are those they reflect to us when they can get it, if they can't get it they must be colourless (dark night). I supplied the flowers with one colour only, yellow, or rather orange light. This was a hard trial for the red roses and the green leaves, and, in short, they made a mess of it, as you remember so well.”— Sir Norman Lockyer, K.C.B., June 6, 1905.

This refers to a demonstration made by Sir Norman Lockyer several years since, to prove that bodies have no power of producing colour, but can only reflect a selection from amongst the colours of the light that falls upon them. The source of all colour is therefore light.

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CONTENTS
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  • CHAPTER I

    Story of my family—Infant instincts for Art—I make a paint-brush—Warehouse in Alder-

    manbury—My home life—Visits to the City, and to a painter's studio—My father takes

    me from school and places me in a City warehouse—I obtain a post in Mr. James's

    office— Visit to John Varley—His kindness—I take lessons from a portrait painter . 1

  • CHAPTER II

    Freedom for a few weeks—Study violin and singing—Visit to the National Gallery—

    Hogarth's pictures—Richard Cobden's office—Corn Law Reform agitation—My sister

    tells me of Millais—Harrison Ainsworth's St. Paul's—My work in the office —The litera-

    ture I read—Mr Roger's and landscape painting from nature—I visit the Royal

    Academy—The Duke of Wellington—Old Hannah, orange-seller—My father's

    continued opposition to my pursuit of Art as a profession—I leave the office—Student

    at the British Museum—Academy letters—Competitors' works—Entrance of Academi-

    cians—Millais receives the first antique medal—My non-success for probationership—

    My father warns me again against my course—Meeting with Millais . . . . 14

  • CHAPTER III

    Fellow-students—B. R. Haydon—British art in the late 'forties—Prominent Academicians

    and Associates—I decide on an independent course—Dulwich gallery—Rossetti as pro-

    bationer—Millais in the Antique school—Millais' parents—I go to see Millais' picture—

    I go through the Academy schools—Give increasing attention to orginal work—My parents

    give me a room for a studio—I continue debate with Millais . . . . . . 31

  • CHAPTER IV

    Description of Ewell—I attempt landscapes—Rev. George Glynn engages me to paint the old

    church—Ruskin's Modern Painters —Millais' engagement with Thomas, the dealer—

    Millais works for gold medal—Mr. George Jones as President—Millais visits my studio—

    “Christ and the Two Maries”—I work in Kew Gardens—James Key—Talk to Millais

    about Keats—Millais' studio—Candour with Millais about academic art—“Cymon and

    Iphigenia”—Art prospects and our needs—Sir Joshua Reynolds—His rules of art—

    Repudiation of academic ideals in treating nature—Millais' family parlour—Meeting

    with Etty—His system of painting—Appeal to Mulready about Varley . . . . 48

  • CHAPTER V

    1847-8

    The mysterious visitor—All night painting—Sir Charles Bell—Chartist procession and

    Fergus O'Connor—The Cyclographic Club—Watts Phillips—Tom Mulock and his

    sister Dinah—D. G. Rossetti visit my studio disheartened at his position—Leigh Hunt's

    advice to him—He asks me to take him as a pupil—I take to portrait painting again—

    Begin “Rienzi”—Sold “The Eve of St. Agnes”—I quit my father's house for a studio in

    Cleveland Street—Rossetti enters my studio—Description of Woolner—Visit Rochester

    Castle—Rossetti and Woolner at my studio—“The Girlhood of the Virgin”—Some

    comments on Brown's pictures—Baron Wappers—The School of Overbeck, etc.—Visit to

    Brown's Studio—Visit to Woolner—Bernard Smith—Proposal to extend our number—

    Consult with Millais on extension of numbers—Meeting at Millais' studio—Experi-

    mental brotherhood—Gothic revival . . . . . . . . . . 67

    • Sig. VOL. I b
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  • CHAPTER VI

    1848

    Pre-Raphaelitism not Pre-Raphaelism—Initiation of the Brotherhood—Refusal of the term

    of “Early Christian”—Completion of the designs for “Isabella”—Monthly meethings held at

    members' studios—D. G. Rossetti and his parentage—Teachings of Shakespeare—Pre-

    Raphaelitism not Realism—Art to extend beyond painting and sculpture—Dinner-talk

    at the home of Rossetti's parents . . . . . . . . . . .94

  • CHAPTER VII

    1848-1849

    Millais' “Isabella”—Repudiation of faith in Immortality—James Collinson—A night walk—

    Conversation with Rossetti—An old friend makes severe criticisms on my picture,

    “Rienzi”—My despair—Rossetti comes in and cheers me up—Brown's enthusiasm for

    Millais' “Lorenzo and Isabella”—I relinquish “Christ and the two Maries”—I take

    my studio—Millais goes to Oxford—Competition design for “Acts of Mercy” —Design

    “Christian and Druid” picture—“Early Christian” School —Criticism on “The Girlhood

    of the Virgin”—Millais' and my pictures hung pendant at the R.A.—“Lorenzo and

    Isabella” sold to three tailors— Athenæum reviews our paintings—Members of the R.A.

    introduce themselves to me—Mr. Nockalls Cottingham—My picture “Rienzi” returns

    unsold—Bulwer Lytton's letter—Augustus Egg visits me—Landlord distrains on me—

    Return to my father's house—Egg sells my picture to Mr. Gibbon—I pay my landlord

    and go to the Lea Marshes to paint landscape for “Christian and Druid” picture—

    Rosetti and I go to Paris and Belgium . . . . . . . . . 110

  • CHAPTER VIII

    1849-1850

    Rossetti and I in Paris—His verses—French art—Gericault—Paul Delaroche—Ary Scheffer—

    Horace Vernet—Delcroix—Flandrin—St. Germain des Pres—Ingres—The Louvre—

    Artist acquaintenaces in Paris—Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges—The Works of John and

    Hubert van Eyck—My lodgings near Chelsea church—Rossetti's studio in Newman

    Street— The Germ—Resume work on “Christan and Druid”—Woolner on politics

    and Society—Walter Deverell—Rossetti designs in my studio whilst I paint —Deverell's

    account of Miss Siddal—Miss Siddal sits to me—A newspaper publishes the secret of

    the initials P.R.B.—Finish and send off my picture—Charles Collins—Millais talks

    about his picture—We go together to the Exhibition—He speaks his mind to two derisive

    students— Athenæum, 1850—Charles Dickens in Household Words—Continual bitter

    criticism—Mr. Dyce, R A.—Turner at Chelsea—Rossetti's status as a painter when he

    left Brown's studio and mine—Contributors to The Germ—Go with designs to patron—

    His repudiation—August Egg's commission—I begin “Claudio and Isabella” . . 128

  • CHAPTER IX

    1849-1850

    Millais' father and mother on the critics—William Millais—Woolner competes for the monument

    to Wordsworth in Westminster Abbey—Decides to go to Australia—Madox Brown

    conceives his painting, “The Last of England”—His attitude toward us—Bernard

    Smith—Comparison to Brown's aims and ours—Mr. Dyce introduces me for work at

    Trinity House—F. G. Stephens—Rossetti brings Scott to my studio—Afternoon together

    on the river—Druid picture returns unsold—Millais and Charles Collins paint at

    Abingdon and stay with Mr. and Mrs. Combe at Oxford—Mr. Bennet—Purchase of

    my “Druid” picture by Mr. Combe—Paint at Knole Park—Rossetti joins me in

    Sevenoaks lodgings—James Lennox Hanney—X brings his friend Warwick—The pawn-

    broker's—“The sea, the sea, the open sea”—Warwick's visit—Moneylender in Chancery

    Lane—My father's advice—Brown's generous letter . . . . . . . 153

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  • CHAPTER X

    1851

    Inferior places for our pictures this year—Quotations from newspapers—Lord Macauley's and

    Charles Kingsley's scriptures—Collinson resigns the Brotherhood—Ruskin defends us in

    The Times—Millais visits the Ruskins—Millais and Rossetti visit Mr. Donovan, the

    phrenologist—Am driven to abandom plans for art—Dyce's offer—Mr. and Mrs. Millais'

    kindness—Millais and I go to Ewell—His background for “Ophelia”—Mine for

    “Hireling Shepherd”—Surbiton—White porcelain pallets—Millais on our rejection

    of Charles Collins—Deverell—A. Lewis—Charles Collins—Worcester Park Farm—

    C. R. Leslie—Richard Doyle—John Lewis . . . . . . . . . 176

  • CHAPTER XI

    1851

    Visit of the brothers Doyle—System of painting over wet white ground described—Millais'

    disclosure of our system to Brown—First conversazione of the Royal Academy—

    Liverpool Exhibition—Attack on us by an eloquent lecturer in Liverpool—Liverpool

    awards me the £50 prize for my “Valentine rescuing Sylvia”—Mr. M'Cracken buys

    my pictures “Ophelia,” “The Hireling Shepherd ”—Thames Ditton and Mrs. Drury—

    Coventry Patmore visits us—Pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism by Rev. E. Young—

    Ruskin's retort—Charles Collins and blackberry pudding—Millais' ridicule of Collins—

    My sketches for “Light of the World,” “The York and Lancaster Lovers,”and “The

    Return of the Crusaders”—Charles Collins at Oxford—Millais' father visits us—The

    mysterious night walker at Ewell—Meet Collins—Commence “The Light of the

    World”—Nocturnal Painting—The ghost of the avenue—Mr. and Mrs. Combe visit us—

    R. P. Martineau—Lemprière's visit—Wilkie Collins—My uncle and aunt—Brown's

    studio—His picture, “Christ washing Peter's Feet” . . . . . . . 197

  • CHAPTER XII

    1852

    Chelsea—Painting “The Light of the World,” and “The Hireling Shepherd”—

    R. Martineau—The Collins family—Visit Mr. and Mrs. Combe—The College breakfast—

    Justification of our principles—Non-appreciation of Tennyson—“Ophelia” and

    “Hugenot”—“The Hireling Shepherd” hung on the line—“Christ washing Peter's

    Feet”—Martineau's picture—Maclise's picture, “King Alfred in the Danish Camp”—

    Arthur Hughes—Mr. Charles Maude—Mr. Broderip—Professor Owen shows his bees

    —Second visit to Oxford—Stories of Ruskin—Oxford Architecture—The correction period

    —Pay my dept to Millais—Edward Lear—Clivevale Farm—Lear and Millais meet—

    Painting on the Fairlight Downs—A visitor's criticism of Millais and myself . . . 222

  • CHAPTER XIII

    1852-1854

    Mr. Charles Maude and “The Strayed Sheep”—We make a set of P.R.B. portraits to send

    to Woolner—Augustus Egg champions my “Claudio and Isabella” in the Academy—

    The Cosmopolitan Club—Thackeray—Austin Layard—Remarks on Chelsea philosopher—

    Sir Thomas Fairbairn commisions me to paint “The Awakened Conscience”—Lady

    Canning the Marchioness of Waterford come to my studio—Mr. Combe buys “Light

    of the World”—Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle visit me —Letter from Mrs. Carlyle—Carlyle's

    second visit to my studio to see “The Awakened Conscience” and “The Light of the

    World”—His harangue on “The Light of the World”— Deverell attacked by his old

    malady—Mr. Agnew makes a proposition—Visit to Oxford at Christmas—Millais returns

    from Ruskin's in Scotland—Thomas Seddon—I make a round of farewell calls—Millais

    sees me off to the East—Reflections on the P.R.B. . . . . . . 246

    • page: xx
  • CHAPTER XIV

    1854

    Paris and an old hotel—Journey to Malta—Talk with Indian officials—Arrive in Egypt—

    Nile boat—Seddon—Description of Cairo—Encamp near the Sphinx—A tent in stormy

    weather—Remove to vacated tomb—“Hippo” letter to Millais—Difficulty in getting

    models—Marriette's work—The pyramids—The Consul-General and Frederick Lockwood—

    Diabeyeh life—“The Finding of Christ in the Temple”—Temple at Beit-al-Hagar—

    Diametta—Drift among the rocks—Jaffa—First sight of Jerusalem . . . . 270

  • CHAPTER XV

    1854

    Casa Nuova—Beamont— Athenæum and Times on “The Light of the World”—Make

    researches in the city—Doctor takes me to visit Jewish families—Design for “Finding

    of Christ in the Temple”—Mosque As Sakrah—The synagogue—Explore the suburbs—

    Use of the art of self-defense—Men of Siloam—Mechanic's story—Letter to Times from

    Ruskin—Dr. Sim—Crimean War—Prussian reports . . . . . . . 293

  • CHAPTER XVI

    1854

    Journey to Hebron—Henry Wentworth Monk—My friends leave me—Sim and I tent under

    Abraham's Oak—Visit the Mosque covering the tombs of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and

    Jacob—Determine to paint the “Scapegoat”—Mr. Porter and Beamont arrive—Deter-

    mine to accompany me to Dead Sea—Issa and I go to Hebron—Return to Abraham's

    Oak—Storm—Food exhausted —Beamonts arrive with money, call on dervish—Abou

    Daouk's encampment—Oosdoom—Sebbieh—Masada—Engedi . . . . . 310

  • CHAPTER XVII

    1854

    I resume work on temple picture—Return alone to Oosdoom—The fellahin in open revolt—

    Mukary sulky and superstitions about effreets—Abou Daouk's encampment— My servant,

    Solieman—Choose place for painting “Scapegoat”—Solieman's impatience —Dance—

    Surprise—Regarded as a dervish—Perforation by fallen meteor—A salt-gatherer—

    Illness (arrack my only medicine)—Well again . . . . . . . . 323

  • CHAPTER XVIII

    1854

    Solieman warns me of approaching robbers—Deeshmen approach—They call for Solieman—

    I announce intention of departure—The goat dies—Taken prisoner—Confronted by

    sheik and followers—“I am an Englishman”—Discover I am among friends—Prussian

    doctor at quarantine—Sudden alarm—Join doctor for defence—My homeward journey—

    Marauding fellahin—Bedouin rejoin me at Jerusalem—Battle of Inkerman—Sim and I

    invent a new gun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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ERRATA

Vol. I.
  • p. 72, line 22, “Muloch” should read “Mulock.”
  • p. 336, line under illustration, “scapegoats” should read “scapegoat.”
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PRE-RAPHAELITISM

CHAPTER I

Sono io anche pittore.—Correggio.

I have begun my book with my progenitors and with childhood, partly because order gives all things view, partly because whatever we may assume, as we grow up, respecting the dignities of manhood, we all feel that childhood was a period of great importance to us.

Leigh Hunt's Autobiography.

Bacon says of dramatic poetry that by means of it the results of personal action may be made more conformable to human desires than they are found to be in simple nature. In accordance with this dictum previous historians of Pre-Raphaelitism have dramatically improved upon the facts they have undertaken to elucidate. My evidence is not derived from outside suggestions bent to suit a pretty theory, it is drawn from the records of my own memory, confirmed by the testimony left to us in the works of the active members of our circle, by documents of the time referred to, and by spontaneous admissions in the works published by the originators of the romances which I have to overturn.
I have read many volumes written upon the subject, and since I have undertaken the duties of a historian and feel myself responsible for the validity of the statements offered to the public, my narrative must conflict with most of those which have hitherto appeared on the purpose and progress of Pre-Raphaelitism.
I had long paused in writing these pages when the Life of Sir John Everett Millais 1 appeared. This book supplied the first accurate information about the relative positions of the first three active members of our Body. My memoranda had been put together only in the intervals of a much-taxed leisure, during which time many fresh writers had endorsed their predecessors' fables, and added to the credence in them, so that I lost heart, and had been more than once inclined to abandon my iconoclastic task. Sir Robert Walpole says that written history cannot by any possibility be true; the compilers of Pre-Raphaelite stories, so novel and astonishing, had for the time resigned me to agreement with the opinion of the experienced statesman; but the words of my old friend, my only companion in the beginning of the reform, as written and spoken by himself, and recorded by his son, have strengthened my original resolution to complete the unvarnished story.
Beyond the circle of Pre-Raphaelitism pure and simple it may be
Transcribed Footnote (page [1]):

1 Life of Sir J. E. Millais, by his son.

Sig. VOL. I. B
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noted that, notwithstanding the number of references to art and artists in modern books, there are few questions on which there is more need of information derived from personal experience than the practice and the actual life of men pursuing the profession of art in England.
Outside the reform struggle which made opposition the more acute, the experiences of the working members of our Body were very much those of other artists at the same period who were directing their energies to subject painting.
In view of this, I shall extend my observations of particular experiences to the more general facts of our profession.
What British artists have hitherto done has been dependent almost exclusively upon private patronage, and this often but of a very measured kind; yet the outcome is a glorious first-fruit of the exceptional artistic genius of the Race.
As chronicler of Pre-Raphaelitism, some personal element must have prominence; thus only can I unfold the circumstances which led me to the centre where those other youths were found who played their part in the Movement.
Having on my stage to present performers at first all inconspicuous, yet in fuller time made prominent enough by destiny to mingle with the distinguished of their age, it will be my privilege to add some little to the records of both. And this not as it were in Court attire, but in everyday dress; even kings and queens have sought distraction in putting aside the trappings of their royal state, and found ease in the garb of common subjects. As the records of such family life have been found pleasing by the world, so I trust that my story of the private life of these men of genius will glorify them not less than those more ceremonious histories, in which they appear as it were in stiff brocades and fine coats.
The history of my family claims a few words. Our earliest recorded ancestor had taken part against King Charles, and at the Restoration had sought service in the Protestant cause on the Continent. He returned with the army of William III., and busied himself in an attempt to recover the paternal property, which had fallen into alien hands. The law's delay drove him to engage in trade, and his children and grandchildren had to accept this as their only patrimony. My father had no admiration for those of the family “who continued hankering after the golden bird that had flown, and in doing so neglected the brood at home.” One of his uncles at the beginning of the French Revolution had, in a traditional view of freedom, made it his business to go to Paris, where he got entangled, and was eventually lost in the political maelstrom. This intensified my father's dread of vagabond courses, which, as will be seen, did not fail to affect his attitude towards my passion for art. Yet he had not forsworn his love of liberty; it was only the recognition of changed circumstances that actuated his course and made him declare, “It is better to have the worst tyranny of kings, priests, and nobles,
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than that of the hydra-headed mob.” Hence he was intent upon suppressing in the blood all flighty and unprofitable eccentricities; “Sober business alone,” he said, “was the road to recover prosperity,” and he held up to my admiration at all times steady business men who had so prospered.
Down to the middle of last century most merchants still lived above their places of business. My father, as manager of a warehouse, was living in Wood Street, Cheapside, and there I was born on the 2nd of

 

St. Giles, Cripplegate

Wm. Strudwick]

ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE



April 1827. I was christened at the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, in which Cromwell was married, and where the toil-worn body of Milton lies. My orderly way of life was not to be influenced by their ambitious courses, for I was from the first meant for a citizen of the most thorough business training, the more so because from babyhood I delighted in a dangerous taste for pencil markings. My father had evidently forgotten that when a child he himself was an artist, as was early proved to me by drawings preserved, duly framed and hung by his loving old aunt in her sitting-room, with the words “drawn by William Hunt, aged 9, 1809,” written on them. I can call them up before me now in their quaker-like black and gilt frames, and I can declare they showed unusual
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aptitude of eye and hand. Dear old Aunt Nancy, with the bluest of eyes, and with cheeks vermeil-veined by the pencilling of nature, and with impulses of the most imperious benevolence! Certainly she had a

 

William Hunt

by W. H. H.]

WILLIAM HUNT



fondness for all art, else when Edmund Kean came for the last time to the City to act, what made her declare that it would be shameful if the children did not see the great player? So she took a box for us, and he played Sir Giles Overreach before our bewildered eyes and my astonished intelligence. Whether the love of art went farther back in the family I know not. With my father it was early crushed, except for its indulgence in the collecting of prints and the literature of art, and in the seeking acquaintance with a few painters living in the City. From my earliest years a great enjoyment to me on Sunday nights was the inspection of my father's scrap-books, his dissertations on each picture making them the more enthralling. 1
When I was about four years old we moved into the suburbs. Shortly
Transcribed Footnote (page 4):

1 In a Lecture to students late in his life Holman-Hunt said, referring to his father's scrap-book, “I can aver that within its simple covers were all the enchantments a child's mind was capable of receiving. It was prepared by my father for the delectation of his children, and on Sunday evening, after some chapter in the New Testament had been read, this scrap-book was brought out. Then, with my father in the middle, all the little family thronged around, every one eager for the best place, and page after page was turned over, not without great reluctance in the company to part with each fading vision of beauty, and perhaps, still more hard to have come to an end, was the running commentary made by my father upon the different pictures, upon the characters represented, and upon the artists who had been the authors of the original works. The whole continent of Europe was illustrated, and the then recent history of the civilised world was pictured with its great military heroes, their triumphs, their glories, and their reverses; works of imagination also, and the faces of their authors were made familiar to us, lineaments of kings who wore crowns, and of those anointed ones who had never worn 'that hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king' were known to us as our dearest friends. I can safely say that thus I learned more in a few hours than in many months of schooling, and that all better feelings of sympathy for the miserable and admiration for the noble, were first awakened in me by those fascinating picture-stories.”

To this portrait of Holman-Hunt's father may fittingly be added the testimony borne by his commonplace book, scrupulously collected from his varied reading, and as carefully inscribed, together with the library (small in bulk though it was) of chosen volumes in days before cheap reprints from the Classics had been dreamed of. Plutarch's Lives, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca were among the number; illustrated volumes of travel and Chambers's Journal abound, and early the little son imbibed the father's taste, for on the fly-leaf of a Book of Voyages and Travels, presented to him at the age of thirteen, is this quaint inscription very carefully penned: “Presented by his aunt, for which he is very much obliged, thinking it a very useful and amusing book.”

Nor should his mother be omitted in the parental portrait, for she was a person never to be forgotten by those who had met her. Stately if somewhat imperious was she, punctilious both as to receiving and bestowing due attention, with a lingering unconscious instinct for the substantial family fortunes which had been ruined in the days of her grandfather of stalwart horse-loving yeoman class. Punctilious also she was as to order and propriety in her home and surroundings, a devoted wife and a queen amongst her children.

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afterwards fever came as an unwelcome guest, and my father stayed at home the better to protect the invalids. I escaped the infection; and when he could spare the time I prevailed upon him to colour some theatrical prints which had been bought for me. It was a passionate delight to me to watch him, and at last I begged a brush and some paints, with which to follow what seemed to me his supreme achievements.
How I idolised the implements when they were in my possession! The camel-hair pencil, with its translucent quill and rosy-coloured silk binding up its delicate hair at the base, all embedded together as in amber, was an equal joy with the gem-like cakes of paint. I carried them about with me in untiring love. A day or two of this joy had not exhausted it, when, alas! alas! the brush was lost. Search proved to be all in vain. I remember going around and over every track about the house and garden. Waking up from sorrowing sleep, in which my continuing pain had been finally relieved by a dream of the lost treasure lying ensconced in some quiet corner; I hurried to the spot, only to find it vacant. The loss was the greater trouble because it was my first terrible secret. That my father should ever forgive me for losing so beautiful an object was to my distracted mind impossible. What could be done? My hair was straight, fine, and of camel-hair hue. I cut off pieces to test its fitness for the office of paint brush, and as I held a little lock I found that it would spread the tints fairly well, but what to do for a handle? Quill pens were too big, and I could not see how they could be neatly shortened. A piece of firewood carefully cut promised to make a more manageable stock; with my utmost skill I shaped this, and with a little length of coloured cotton I bound a stubborn sprout of hair upon the splint, but I was disconcerted to find that it formed a hollow tube. It seemed perverse fate to ordain that just in the handle where it was needed to be hollow it should be solid, and that the hair which should be solid would form an open pipe. Attempts to drill the stick into a tube failed; but there was an expedient for making the tuft fuller. Cutting a cross cleft in the bottom of the wood, I inserted a straight length of hair, which I then rebound with its crimson thread, with gum I managed patiently to bind down loose ends and to give an improving gloss to the whole. My fears grew apace, since every hour there was a danger of inquiry for the lost pencil. Summoning up, therefore, an assumption of assurance, trusting that my father would see no difference between my brush and his, I went forward to him, holding the trophy very tenderly lest it should fall to pieces. He turned his eyes; they became bewildered; his usual loving look made a frown from him the more to be dreaded. I fortified my spirit, saying, “Thank you very much, father, for your brush.” He took it with, “What's this?” and turned it over. Breathless, I sobbed; he burst out laughing, and so brought a torrent of tears to my eyes. He exclaimed, “Oh, I see, it's my brush, is it?” caught me up and tossed me aloft several
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times, ending with a scrubbing on my cheek from his close-shaven chin. This was the reception of my first work of art.
I cannot remember when, after, as indeed before this, I did not draw. I was as fond of noisy fun as other children, but in the intervals of play I always found a pencil to copy stray pictures within reach, or to represent what was in my memory or in my mind's eye.
My father's warehouse was now shifted to Dyer's Court, Aldermanbury. Its back looked on to Guildhall. It was one of the houses which had been built immediately after the great Fire, roomy, handsome, and meant to last till Doomsday. The space behind the ground floor had been covered to enlarge the storeroom for goods kept in stock. Beneath this ground level was a ramification of cellars which extended also beneath other houses. On the first floor the packing and ticketing of small parcels went on, and on two higher floors the stranger came upon the cause of a constant droning heard lower down. It was the rattling of a multitude of hand machines winding “Brooks'” cotton and thread into balls and on reels. When I was ascending to the upper floor my difficulty was to run through these apartments from the spring door at the top of the lower flight stealthily and swiftly enough to escape the toll of kissing which the young women winders always exacted when I was caught. The object of my quest was Henry Pinchers, of the velvet-binding room, whose wit sparkled and danced and thundered; so that I laughed, sang, and trembled in turns, all with equal delight. When I asked why he had no whiskers, he very gravely said he bit them off inside. He complained that Robin Badfellow came in the night and undid his work, and what he had to tell of him was as endless as his girth of velvet lengths that encircled twin rollers. Once I thought I had tracked him into a corner in asking if as he had stated that in walking along the slippery pavements that morning he had slid back two steps for every one he had advanced, how had he got to the warehouse at all? “Don't you see, you silly boy, I turned round and walked backwards,” was his reply.
My visits to the City generally had some special purpose; sometimes it was to see the exercise of the Honourable Artillery Company, Bartholomew Fair (held for the last time in 1855), the Lord Mayor's Show, or the Company going to a banquet at Guildhall. Whatever the attraction, the hours I thus passed furnished a highly valued treat. I was often allowed to go out with a porter, who, with knot on head, went sweating along under a weight of goods such as is never seen now on men's shoulders. Thus I learned to know the great City of London, and to love it enough to make me believe that I shall not be blamed for essaying to chronicle some phases of its picturesqueness which have since passed away: the images on the unblurred surface of a child's mind are clear and ineffaceable. Thus conducted, I saw and wondered at fascinating traces of what men who had lived in the days that were gone had put into solid form as their legacy to after time.
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Wherever we turned there were new surprises, through narrow lanes and portalled walls. Here were plots of grassy land with garden beds, and trees swinging their green branches sweetly and happily, as though knowing that for them this oasis had been kept sacred from the builders' hands from the day when first it had been left by the narrowing Thames. There elms towered with swaying crowns above protected enclosures wherein rooks cawed with careless confidence as they built their nests, or brought food from afar for their young, perching awhile to scan the crowd below, as though with pride that they were the sign of the City's retention of rural memories.
Imprisoned below such a well-thronged rocketing canopy of foliage, there could still be seen at the corner of Wood Street a worthy successor of “The bird that sang loud,” who addressed his audience from his rostrum in a palace of wickerwork all the day long. My guide had no breath for answering questions by the way, so I restrained my curiosity until he made use of one of the then frequent porters' rests; when he had deposited his burden thereon, I fired off my inquiries about the objects of interest we had passed. But porters are not historians, and I learned but little from him. As with him, so with all in turn. Each left me with the conviction that much of my curiosity was only foolishness.
To be told that Temple Bar was thus called “because there was no other name,” that nobody knew whether St. Paul's Cathedral or the Tower of London was the older, and that the martyrs were burned at Smithfield “because they were martyrs,” was not satisfyingly instructive. Yet a tone of reproof could not be doubted, and it made me fear the exhausting of my mentor's patience, and value the more such facts as he could tell. Not only did I learn the streets, the public buildings, the churches, the open places, civic halls, and the tranquil oases of green courts, and look upon the last remaining buttresses of old London Bridge, but I entered the different warehouses with my guide, and so became familiar with the ins and outs on every floor of them, and I surmise it was in part to help me to acquire this knowledge that my father put me in charge of my stalwart companion.
One day a prize had come in my way in the form of lead pencils of different degrees of blackness. Securing from the “ticketing room” a print of Britannia seated, grasping in one hand her spear and in the other her shield, the British lion at her feet, I chose a suitable piece of cartridge paper and took possession of my favourite corner, one obscured from observation. The oaken counter made an excellent, although in parts over granulous, drawing-board. Delighted with the unprecedented beauty of my chiaroscuro work, I did not notice, until they were upon me, my father and a buyer who was being taken round to see what part of a large order could be executed without the delay of ten or twelve days' transit by canal from Manchester. The stranger asked, “And is this little boy part of your stock in hand, sir?” My father replied, “I cannot say, sir, that he has qualities conducive to business, but he
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has the great merit that when provided with paper and pencil we hear no more of him for hours.”
There was one moment of the day full of awe for me. It was when all the busy noise had ceased, when each whirring wheel was dumb, when each workman, woman, and clerk had left their posts, and the floors below and above were in ghostly darkness, my father, armed with a bull's-eye, descended into the cellars, traversing each winding to its remotest corner, and, ascending, proceeded stage by stage, going slowly with every sense intent to make sure that nothing anywhere boded ill for the safety of the place. Every room, so lately palpitating with energy, lively conference, and the bandying of quick retort and laughter, was now silent as the void after a thunder-clap, and to my senses seemed as threatening; so that when my father, examining some newly arranged pile, shot a stream of glaring light into the distant mystery, it was to my awed mind like the flash of a searching eye from another world. I have known many rejoice that they were born in the green country, away from the haunts of men; I see reason to acknowledge many compensating enjoyments for any losses I may have suffered in my childish lot as a citizen.
One mid-day in the winter of 1834 my father took me with him to call upon an artist who was painting for a modest commission a picture of Herne Bay for him, the money for which he had already advanced. While the elders talked I stood enraptured before two large canvases, the objects of the artist's highest devotion. One was of the burning of the Houses of Parliament, and this was gorgeous in its display of regal flame, for the glare was supreme over the dark, half-demolished buildings, the sky, the shining river, the black barges, and the people. When my father's talk was over, I begged to be left behind to watch the painter at work. It was a startling request, and could only be granted on condition that I stayed on the stairs and looked through a little window to be opened for me. I accepted the terms gratefully, and stood there until dark. In the meantime the conflagration grew in volume to such an extent that two or three times the palette was put down, and the painter set to work with the muller on the slab to grind a fresh supply of vermilion and chrome yellow, an incendiary proceeding which I hailed, when once understood, with special acclamation, for it was ever the prelude to a fresh outburst of flame. His wife the while astounded me by her indifference to the magic of her husband's work—going to the stove, tending the grate, filling the kettle, spreading the tea-table, cutting the bread and butter, and summoning the children as though there was nothing in the world to wonder at. Then the husband, with sleeves turned up, sat down in turn like an ordinary mortal, taking his meal as though he had no more been in dreamland than had his imperturbable spouse. I watched the favoured circle from above. It was the family life of a poor artist, which I have since recognised in Dutch pictures representing the painter's studio, and to my mind it seemed as
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enchanting as could be conceived. When daylight had gone a porter came for me and took me back to the warehouse. There I soon found two sheets of paper and a pencil, and, ensconced in my favourite corner, not without sighs over the inefficiency of my colourless lead, I taxed my memory for the features of the two compositions. The porter found me at work when the drawings were nearly completed, and held them up for general observation, pointing out the details as those which he had seen in the large pictures; and so I had part of the professional artist's glory reflected upon me.  

Watching the Painter from the Staircase

W. H. H.]

WATCHING THE PAINTER FROM THE STAIRCASE



From early years my father was explicit in his measured toleration of my passion for art. He told me the story of Morland, and recounted many tales to illustrate the unsatisfactory fortunes of the career when trusted to as a means of livelihood. A few artists he knew of had won great renown, but even these were generally deep in debt; and frequently, after a short period of favour from patrons, they ended their days in misery, hastened by dissipation and drink. In Roman Catholic countries there had been a steady use for painting and sculpture, he said, but here there was no settled demand for art. As a profession, therefore, it was out of the question, but as a diversion after business nothing could be more delightful. A man without a hobby was a poor
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creature. He did not, therefore, repress my disposition to draw; on the contrary, when I left home for a boarding-school he provided me with some large drawing-books and some lithographs to copy; and, when visiting me there, he looked over these, and could not resist making some sketches himself. But my persistence eventually began to make him serious. At twelve and a half he asked me what I wanted to be, and when I said I had determined to be a painter I knew by his ominous silence that I had pained him. Soon after, my mother told me that I was to be removed from school, because my father was convinced that a boy might easily enter upon a city life too late, but never too early, and that he was taking steps to place me in a warehouse forthwith. The position he sought for me I knew to be one in which there would be no opportunity to draw, and so I determined to forestall my father. My knowledge of city warehouses taught me that for two years the full hours of each day, from 9 till 8 at night, would be occupied in going about with invoices for goods; and when, two years later, promotion came, it would be to take my post in a desk elevated like a pulpit, to write out the orders for the new-comers to distribute.
About this time it happened that a boy three years or so older than myself, who lived near us, was leaving his post of copying clerk to an estate agent. I ascertained full particulars of the duties, and persuaded my friend to take me to see his master. I set out with him to the office betimes one morning. While awaiting the master's arrival, I saw a good stock of tempting old-fashioned books, and a large Dutch painting of a furious battle—a formidable warrior bestriding a white horse, luminous against blackening smoke and sky.
After an hour's waiting, the arbiter of my fate arrived, and, inquiring who I was, said good-naturedly, “And what do you want?”
“I hear that William D—— is leaving your office, sir.”
“And so he is!”
“Well, sir, I have thought that you might, if you please, take me instead. I know what he does, and indeed I could do it. I could copy letters and papers, and I am really far on in arithmetic.”
“So you know addition, subtraction, and division?”
“Oh yes, sir! I am long past simple division and all that. I understand vulgar fractions, decimals, and algebra; I am right through the cyphering book, and I'm always at the head of the mental arithmetic class.”
“And so you want to go out into the world to seek your fortune? Does your father know of this?”
“He doesn't know I've come here, but he has taken me away from school to put me in a warehouse.”
“Well, why don't you wait?”
“Please, sir, I'd rather come here.”
“Humph! What age are you?”
“I'm nearly twelve and a half, sir.”
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“Your name's William. Well, Willie Winkie, I'll tell you what I should do if I were you. I should go to the Life-guards' barracks; they want smart young fellows there. I should enrol myself in Her Majesty's service at once as a Grenadier. What do you say to that?”
Feeling my footing insecure, I replied, “I really should like your place better. Will you try me?”
“Well, show me how you can write.”
The result of trials in writing and arithmetic being satisfactory, I was set to read, and was then told that I might come on the following Monday, but only to fill the gap temporarily. My father was taken by surprise by my news, and went down to see my self-chosen master; liking him, it was agreed that affairs might take their course. After a trial of three weeks my principal fault was found to be in slowness of growth; and with a request that I would do my best to amend this, it was decided that I should stay with Mr. James.
In retrospect, it is remarkable that when circumstances outwardly seemed most unpromising, a special fate always kept open my artistic prospects. My employer, who on my introduction had made merry over my juvenility, later seemed to take more paternal interest in me on this very account. A shade had recently crossed his life which had made him kindly with his kind. Returning suddenly one day to the office, he saw me putting away a drawing in my desk. He asked about it, and examined my work approvingly. Fortunately, drawing turned out to be no crime in his eyes, and he pointed to a large cupboard, saying, “In there is a complete box of oil colours, brushes, palette, and everything necessary for painting, and some day we shall shut ourselves up and have a good day with them together, a thing I dearly love.” It was not long before we did so, and then Mr. James proved himself to be a landscapist of high poetic order, introducing on his canvas a range of mountains, a grand waterfall, an expansive lake, and, wherever trees would not hide the enchanting distance, scattered forestry in profusion. Eventually I had the box with its treasures made over to me. Some colours being wanted, my master explained how the crude pigments and oils could be bought and mixed. I soon ground these for myself, and put them in bladders; thus I was started as a painter in oil in true practical form.
Shortly afterwards I was allowed to attend a mechanics' institute in the evenings to practise drawing; and my father, having an introduction to John Varley, took me one Sunday to see this remarkable professor of water-colour landscape and “Zodiacal Physiognomy.” He lived in a neat, spotlessly curtained, six-roomed house in the Bayswater Road. He was not of grand stature, but somewhat obese; three or four very fat King Charles' spaniels were about him, which Mrs. Varley petted. It was difficult at first to get peace from the barking creatures, but spite of the noise, the artist's politeness and cordiality were admirable. In receiving me, he said he hoped that I should become as great an artist
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as his former pupil of my name, for he claimed William Hunt as of his training. Had my father been an aristocrat and I an amateur, bringing heavy purses, he could not have paid us more attention. He commented encouragingly on my drawings, and made independent sketches to explain his views; one favourite theory of his was that every object in nature was divided into triangles; and that the lines were at times curved, only veiled this fixed law.
He chatted about astrology, enthusiastically defending the science; adducing mythic histories, as explained by the rising and setting of heavenly bodies and their mutual influences. He mentioned particular animals born only at special seasons, and claimed that men appearing at the same junctures have similar characteristics. Abraham, he demonstrated, was born under Capricorn, and accordingly all Israelites had the features of this sign. Alexander the Great was born under Aries, and claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon, consequently he was represented by the ancients with a ram's horn. Thus our kind host talked himself out of breath. He showed us a copy of his book excellently illustrated by John Linnell and sent us away with drawings for me to copy, and with his pamphlet on the occult laws for both father and son to study, requesting my father for the exact moment of my nativity.
On our next visit, having studied the pamphlet, I recognised Mrs. Varley as the original of the profile, there given, of a native of the “House of Gemini.”
In showing Varley my copies from his originals, my father revealed that I took special interest in figure-drawing. Not a bit discouraged in well-doing, the old gentleman, born evidently with the sun in the ascendant, left his drawing of “The Dead March in Saul,” and led us upstairs to a back room, where he found some lithographic sketches of fisher boys and other rustic figures. He produced also a head in crayon, which he called a Rembrandt, and pressed me to take it home to copy. In the intervals he muttered aside to my father about my horoscope, emphasising certain dates pregnant with importance to me. I overheard that on arriving at seventeen, and again at twenty-seven, there were to be critical turning-points in my fortunes. I left him thus brimming over with goodness, never to see him any more, for he died soon after.
His cheerfulness was the more wonderful seeing that at that time he could not leave the house from fear of bailiffs except on Sundays. A friend met him one Sunday looking more than usually jolly, and on being challenged to explain, he said: “I never was in better trim in my life, for—what do you think?—I have now only three writs out against me that can actually take my person.” With a soul larger than his body, he was a man never to be forgotten.
The indulgence of these visits was only a step to the further leave granted me by my father to spend my salary on weekly lessons from a portrait painter, Henry Rogers, a pupil of Sharpe, who was himself a
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pupil of Beechy, who, in turn, had been a pupil of Reynolds. He had, if not the merits of his forerunner, at least some of his secrets of pigment and oil mediums, which had not then generally proved themselves to be of treacherous value, as since they have done. The lessons of boldness I received from him ingrained certain habits and practices which afterwards cost me pain to eradicate.
Good Mr. James, when retiring from business, sought my father, and without any prompting from me, kindly pleaded his utmost that I should be allowed to become a painter. The arguments he advanced, and the independent interest shown, had weight for three or four weeks.
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CHAPTER II

Learning taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the mind, and to accept of nothing but examined and tried.—Bacon

I had commenced the study of music, both violin and singing, but as I had no room of my own apart, the remonstrances of the family at my scraping seemed highly reasonable. It was most undesirable to increase the trials caused by my intractability, so I abandoned fiddling to earn more toleration for my special art. Before many days of my freedom had passed, I gratified my desire to visit the National Gallery, to see with my actual eyes the great Masters of whose glory I had read with longing fancy. When the mere description of their beauties had given such delight, how wonderful, I thought, would be the perfection of the works themselves when I stood before what every panegyrist declared to be beyond the power of words to express! I went on a very cold day; the warmth of the galleries acted as a welcome. I passed through the nearer rooms; the pictures seemed appropriate enough for introductory examples; there were several that I should return to, and so satisfy aroused curiosity, but I wanted to see the “real masterpieces.” I found myself at last in a gallery apparently without exit. Going back to its entrance, I found a small door to the left. I entered; it was empty, and had no room beyond. Coming out, a tall and handsome official asked me what I was seeking. “Oh,” said I, “you will be my guide. I am wanting to find the really grand paintings of the great Masters; will you direct me?” He looked suspiciously at me for a few seconds, and then said, “Here they are around you.” I knew the man afterwards. He was said to be a descendant of the Earl of Derwentwater, perhaps only because he would have graced any noble house by his look and bearing! At this moment he had slowly become convinced that I was quite serious. Yet he saw that I needed humiliation. “Why,” he said, with extended arm turned to one canvas after another, “that's the ‘Raising of Lazarus,’ by Sebastian del Piombo, with at least the principal figure designed by Michael Angelo. The French nation made an offer for it, with payment to be made in gold coin to cover the surface entirely. That tall picture is a Parmigiano, thought to be his finest work. There are two very choice Murillos;
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and that picture before you, sir, of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne,’ is one of the finest specimens existing of the greatest colourist in the world.” Here he stopped to understand my paralysed expression. “Can't you see its beauty?” “Not much, I must confess,” I slowly stammered; “it is as brown as my grandmother's painted tea-tray.” He stared hopelessly and then left me, only adding as a parting shot, “In the other rooms there are some wonderful Rubens, a consummate Guido, a miraculous head by Vandyke, and several supremely fine Rembrandts; they will at least equal your grandmother's tea-tray; perhaps you'll be able to see some beauty in them.”
I stood spellbound before the Titian, but not with sudden conversion of feeling. It was darker in tone than it is now. The dilettanti of the early century disliked bright pictures, and the dealers suited their taste with a liberal coating of tobacco decoction and other more damaging washes. About six years later the picture was cleaned, and every one was startled on seeing the difference, many declaring in the newspapers that the work, with others so treated, was absolutely ruined. I did not have to wait so long as this to know how great had been my boyish ignorance in judgment of the work of the Venetian master, for within this period I made a small study of it to discriminate the beauty of its tints and the principles of its coloration. The so-called head of Gevartius I wondered at and bowed before, and there were a few other heads that raised my interest and untrained admiration. “Venus attired by the Graces,” from the hand of Guido, a large picture which then challenged attention, offended me by its empty pretension, and this obtrusive painting prevented me from observing pictures which, years afterwards, I grew to love, when I wondered I had not admired them at first, despite the little measure of enlightenment I had on this my first visit. Vapid canvases in other rooms lowered my enthusiasm still more, till on further search I was attracted by some works which gave me calm pleasure. The “Dead Christ,” by Francia, kept me before it a long time. I never after derived so much enjoyment from it as on this first boyish visit, but it brought me a stage on the way to higher things. The “Marriage à la Mode” taxed another phase of the same feeling of pity. These pictures had then the appearance of having been only lately completed; every touch seemed everlasting and clear as if done in enamel, and they were still in this state some twenty years later when they were sent to the South Kensington Museum. There a monster named Reid, with an overbearing confidence in some system of ventilation, had his own way, and effectively baked the paintings, cracking one seriously. They were thus perfectly prepared for the restorer's hands, who, however, never brought back their pristine beauty of manipulation or sweet colour, as I saw them in the month of January 1841. When returned to the National Gallery, they were still in the exquisitely carved frames designed and executed by Hogarth himself.
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I confessed my opinion of the old Masters to my drawing and painting master, Mr. Rogers. Their merits (too deep in solemn dignity of magnificence to carry on their faces the showy dazzle I had expected) before long convinced me that perfect taste can only be earned by cultivation. The liberty which allowed me to visit the National Gallery at will was soon to come to an end, for after this freedom my father's idea that the pursuit of painting was a dangerous one revived. He told my mother than he would take immediate steps to find me a berth in a strict house of business; not a day, not a moment was to be lost; so I anticipated my father by again settling the matter myself. My engagement this time was at the London agency of Richard Cobden's Manchester business. It was in the days of the Corn Law agitation, and of Cobden's entrance into Parliament. I saw the great warrior in the days of his prime. I read with attention all his pamphlets, speeches, and the works of his friends on one side, and most of the leaders in the Times and elsewhere on the other, and feeling strongly the peril which the agitators ignored of leaving our country to depend upon the external supply of corn in the event of war, I wrote an anonymous letter to the papers in opposition to the views of my principal. The editors disdained to notice my patriotic effusion, but the rebuff did not discourage my ambition to do public service. Writing, indeed made me a more attentive reader, and my employer's example encouraged me to value the cultivation of a larger ambition than that of the mere making of a personal fortune, which my elders set before me.
About this time my sister told me that some friends of hers at Holloway had a young nephew who was a perfect wonder in his power of drawing; he was only about twelve, was already a student at the Royal Academy and four years before had won a medal at the Society of Arts. His name was Millais. The boy often came to his uncle's house and made drawings which all agreed were marvellous. What surprised me more than all else in this statement was that the boy's family were delighted at the prospect of his becoming an artist.
My faith in the future became at times very vague. It seemed as though I had done little good by acting for myself, but suddenly it turned out that even in my unpromising office I was not left without an unexpected aid to the forbidden pursuit. Before I had become thoroughly established at my post—having no previous announcement of the existence of such an habitué—a gentleman entered the back office, and after my vainly suggesting that he had better go to the front room, proceeded to take off his overcoat and hang it up. To my further question as to his business he replied in north-country accent that I should see. He then unlocked drawers in a table standing in the corner, and astonished me by revealing a drawing-board with strained white paper, a mahogany box of superfine water-colours, a porcelain slab with divided compartments, mathematical instruments, and a set of lead pencils, indiarubber, and vessels for water. “What does all this mean?”
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I asked. He answered as before, and putting the materials on the desk—my desk—by the window, he then, with the help of notes in his pocketbook, elaborated a design for a calico pattern. I immediately caught the infection, and for some weeks gave myself up with unrestrained devotion to the pursuit of ornamental design, which, it was evident to me, was one of the noblest branches of the art, and ought to be cultivated by every artist. When he left, I devoted myself to painting the panels of the room with oil, with the illustrations, on an enlarged scale, of Dickens's

 

W. Holman-Hunt (Aged 14

By Himself]

W. Holman-Hunt (AGED 14)



Barnaby Rudge, and of Kenny Meadows's designs to Shakespeare, which were then being issued. I also executed some original designs on millboard.
At this date Harrison Ainsworth's Old Saint Paul's was coming out in the Sunday Times. It dealt with the beloved city, and treated of all the streets and by-ways that I knew so well. Solomon Eagle was the very figure of tragic romance for a boy, and I came to the end of each instalment of the thrilling story with nervous reluctance. I could not wait a whole week for the progress of the plot, so I set to work to write down what I deemed ought to follow. When the full
Sig. VOL. I. C
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complement of matter for the next week was finished, it occurred to me that if the author were ill, or in some way hindered from supplying his quantum of excitement to the expectant public, the loss would be one that the world could never bear, and to save it from such a possible calamity I forwarded my own understudy. When the master's chapters appeared I felt obliged to bow to them as above competition in all but the startling character of the situations, in which it seemed to me I more than rivalled him.
In the front office for callers, I could not write other than business papers, nor could I draw on any scale that would be noticed; but often I could read, and took advantage of the opportunity, bringing a book from home. I thus read and re-read Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures, his Notes on De Fresnoy, and Percy's Anecdotes of Artists, all of which helped to make the painters of old days familiar to me. Two volumes of the Library of Fine Arts, published ten years before, made me well acquainted with British artists, and from articles by travelled architects and artists I grew familiar with the appearance of the buildings of Italy, and with many of the great pictures to be found there in churches and public galleries. I also extended my knowledge in the varieties of style of the great Masters, and their relations to different schools, which, with what I already knew—not a little of this from the admirable Penny Magazine—put me into a position to follow up clues when larger opportunities presented themselves. My weekly evenings at the portrait painter's still went on. In the summer my only opportunity of painting landscape from nature was on Sundays. I walked along roads adorned with blossoming trees showing their loveliness to the rising sun, and turned into secret lanes, to emerge at the descent into the wide leas with the rushy river in sight. Walking along its banks I spied out the shy fish, and rejoiced with the happy birds quadrilling around the sentinel trees; finally, with a walk along the canal towing-path I arrived, paint-box in hand, at old Chingford Church, and in the shade of the yew-tree unpacked my tools and summoned courage for my novice hand to interpret the rapturous charms of the place. The year before I had gone every Sunday to church, but the combination of three services into one with the reiteration of prayers palled upon me, while the stories that I had met with in Fox's Book of Martyrs, 1 of the persecution of dissenters by ecclesiastical authority in the Merry Monarch's days made me listen to the praises of a wonderful Nonconformist preacher, whose chapel then became my temple. The minister was so eloquent that it seemed desirable to record his flowing words. I rapidly took down the sermon, but though I could not always get to the end of his successive phrases, I soon found that these concluding sentences were stereotyped, and gradually I learnt from the opening of a new passage of eloquence what the end would be. I represented these by varied forms and dashes, and was thus soon brought to the conviction that I had reached the
Transcribed Footnote (page 18):

1 Published 1684 by John Daye, "with addition of persecutions up to date."

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bottom of the preacher's mine of wisdom, and that I was listening only to a learned parrot. My weekly holiday was not given to me to be used thus, and I had no further misgivings in hearkening to the birds' call and the clang of the bells of Chingford Church rather than to the tinkling of the Lady Huntingdon's Chapel.
Painting from outdoor nature without any preconception of treatment is not done without self-conflict. I had endeavoured to make my transcript true, but I was not proud of the result, so that it was not without hesitation that I showed it to Mr. Rogers. “Oh, dear no, certainly not,” he exclaimed. “You haven't any idea of the key in which nature has to be treated; you must not paint foliage green like

 

Chingford Church

CHINGFORD CHURCH



a cabbage; that'll never do. You say that the ivy on the tower, and still more the grass below, was very bright green, but no one with a true eye for colour sees them so. Constable, who is just lately dead, tried to paint landscape green, but he only proved his wrong-headedness; in fact, he had no eye for colour. I'll show you a small picture I did when last in the country; there now, you see all the trees and grass, which an ignorant person would paint green, I've mellowed into soft yellows and rich browns.” It was so, and it looked most masterly and exemplary. I could not say that nature ever put on that aspect towards me, but he said encouragingly that if I worked in the right way, an eye for nature might come at last.
While still in the City, I fulfilled all the duties required of me without stint or complaint. In those days there were no Bank holidays, and no
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Saturday afternoon releases, and during the whole period of my engagement only once did I obtain leave of absence. It was settled the week before that a whole afternoon in June should be mine for going to the Royal Academy Exhibition. When the momentous hour to leave arrived, my master asked me to wait until he returned from a hasty call; but it was past five o'clock before I was free. Soon after, my father and I were among the pictures. There I was superabundantly gratified, for after we had made an enthusiastic general survey of them, and were returning for a reinspection, there proved to be some unwonted interest in the central room. All the public had pressed themselves into one half of the space, leaving the remainder to an elderly gentleman and much younger lady, who stood rapt in delight before a painting by Landseer representing in a marvellous manner two very sleek and shiny dogs, and a still more glossy hat. The gentleman talked with undisturbed attention to his graceful companion. He was dressed in a blue coat and white trousers. I stared at all the company in turn. When I appealed to my father he made me guess who the honoured stranger was. I had never before seen any national hero; each that I knew of by engravings I had outlined in turn. It gave to common life a sublime exaltation to have before us the Duke of Wellington dressed so simply, for slowly it dawned upon me that it was he.
I had completed nearly four years of servitude when an incident occurred which in the end severed my connection with the City. In the autumn my master had been out of town for some days, and I had merely to attend in the office at discretion. An old Jewess who perambulated the warehouse offices selling oranges called and asked me to buy of her, if only for a handsel to break her ill-luck of the morning. “I can't buy your oranges, Hannah, but if you like to come into the back office I will paint your portrait,” I said. She was delighted, and consented on condition that I should give her a duplicate for herself. I set to work on a sheet of sized paper, representing her as she walked about, with basket on head and oranges in hand. The opportunities were broken and brief, but in a few days the portrait was advanced enough to be recognisable. It was pinned up to dry one day when my master suddenly returned. After I had explained the ordinary business to him, he pursued me into the back office with questions, where old Hannah hung confronting him in all the beauty of new paint. The surprise made him forget the matter in hand. He broke into loud laughter, and went out for a few minutes, returning with friends from the nearest warehouse, who shared his merriment in their recognition of old Hannah. They appealed to me to lend them the portrait for their friends to see, and overruled my objection, taking with them my injunction not to let my father see it. In the evening he told me of an extraordinary likeness of old Hannah of which he had heard; he had not yet learned who the artist was, but he thought that I ought to see it. When he discovered the author my father went to my employer complaining
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that I had not enough to do, and said that if nothing more could be found to occupy me he must get me another berth. All this disturbance prevented the completion of old Hannah's portrait. He then talked to me seriously, adducing all the difficulties of Haydon, 1 and repeated gossip concerning Landseer 2 and others, the most elevated in the profession, which proved that even they were in incessant monetary difficulties. He referred to a former proposal of his that I should take to ornamental design, an idea suggested by the history of Sir Walter

 

Old Hannah

W. H. H.]

OLD HANNAH



Scott, who being consulted by a young artist named Hayes as to his future, had advised him to turn to house decoration as a business instead of the career of picture painting. This advice the young man had submissively taken, prospering in Edinburgh very greatly, and becoming known as the author of a book (which my father had given me to read)
Transcribed Footnote (page 21):

1 It may here be interesting to add, as showing that art had its patrons among City warehousemen sixty years ago, that some of Haydon's pictures were hanging in the counting-house of Messrs. Bennoch and Twentyman, a firm long extinct. Mr. Bennoch was a patron of the arts, a poet of no mean order, and was wont to relate many stories of the unfortunate Haydon.

Transcribed Footnote (page 21):

2 It was only some years later that by the friendly business-like help of Mr. Jacob Bell, Landseer became prosperous in his profession.

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on Harmony of Colour. “Now,” he said, “even this prospect is disappearing, for it is the fashion to give such work to foreigners.” This had just been done at the Royal Exchange, where Herr Sangg and his assistants had come to paint the interior decoration, leaving behind them a sample of the approved taste of the time.
 

W. Holman-Hunt (Aged 16)

By Himself]

W. HOLMAN-HUNT (AGED 16)



The contest with my father was a protracted one, and in the meantime my master put in practice the severer discipline recommended; this I bore for a while with resolve growing in my soul the stronger, until at last I said that I would wait only until somebody had been found to fill my place. I refused increased salary and prospects, and I countermined my father's caution to him not to receive my notice by saying firmly that I would enlist for a soldier rather than stay. To
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my father himself I said, “When I was twelve and a half I feel you would have been wrong, thinking as you did, to allow me to drift into a pursuit you thought objectionable. I am now sixteen and a half; if you kept me at business until I were twenty-one I should then become an artist with but a poor chance of accomplishing anything. I will not put the responsibility upon you now; I know the profession is a hard one, but I have made up my mind to trust myself to it. I have promises of work to start with, and what I gain from this will be enough to help me in my studentship.” I determined in no way to tax the family funds, as I wished to avoid interfering with a plan he had committed himself to, of adding his savings to a small inheritance from his good aunt, that it might grow into a due provision for old age.
I was resolved, however, to convince them that henceforth they must look upon me as acting, rightly or wrongly, by my own deliberate will, and regard themselves as being without responsibility for the course I took. Considering the condition of affairs at the time, I did not think my father wrong in using all just authority to restrain me. My mother had, I know, wished to take my side, but she too was sure that I was rash, and that the outlook which I faced was a bad one.
In my father's day the view taken of the profession by well-informed people may be contrasted with the equally extreme notion of this day, that success, and even fortune, must attend the pursuit of the arts, a conviction whose consequences too often involve the adventurer in disaster.
My release seemed very long in coming, but at last I bade my sympathetic master, whose portrait I first painted, farewell. My father gave me a letter to Mr. E. Hawkins of the Sculpture Department of the British Museum, asking permission for me to draw there. In accordance with my declaration of self-reliance, a suitable room in the City was found to paint the portraits impulsively ordered from me by the admirers of the picture of old Hannah. Alas! the commissions nearly all proved to be empty words. Some of my promised patrons said that as I was now studying seriously for the profession, they would prefer to wait until I had made some advance. One betrothed gentleman had miniatures painted in oil of himself and his intended bride, but his only mark of true appreciation was in taking them away, leaving me unpaid. I modernised the costume of two portraits painted twenty years before, and corrected the too jovial expression of a likeness taken a decade back for another patron, who thought he had a right to look sober. For a third, I renovated the Sea of Galilee—which certainly was unduly bituminous—in a Dutch panel of Jesus stilling the waves, and for that I gained ten shillings. While waiting for other patronage I made oil copies of prints after Teniers, the dullest of a school which had noble members in its ranks. For disciples of Isaac Walton I did copies of “The Enthusiast Fishing in a Tub,” and, in fact, anything that offered. Two or three portraits I painted for steadfast admirers,
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but these brought not enough to pay the expenses of my studio, and so it was abandoned. I was nigh to being bankrupt more than once, on one occasion only escaping by the loan of the contents of her money-box from a good sister; but I went on steadily at the Museum three days a week, and later I worked two days at the National Gallery, and sometimes at the British Institution.
I had by no means forgotten the wonderful young draughtsman of whom my sister had spoken. There was no need of inquiry, for of all the students at the Royal Academy who were looked up to as having already achieved distinction, at least amongst their discriminating fellows, no name was so often mentioned as that of Millais. I was soon

 

Maclise, Taken from Memory, June 18, 1852

W. H. H.]

MACLISE, TAKEN FROM MEMORY,

JUNE 18, 1852



to see his work, for Sir Richard Westmacott (from an introduction secured by my father) had, in 1843, supplied me with a card of admission to the lectures, which I attended assiduously. When the competitors' works were hung in the Schools there was an earnest dispute as to whether young Millais would get the second or the first medal. The lecture room was furnished above the dais with a copy of Leonardo's “Last Supper”; Rubens's “Descent from the Cross,” copied by Northcott, was on the left, and some copies of Raphael's cartoons occupied the other walls. Attention to the masterpieces was but transient, for no eyes were long withdrawn from the door, where, by the curtain, stood the gorgeous porter dressed in scarlet. After a protracted time he put aside his saucy assumption of indifference, threw open the doors, and the procession entered, led by the stately Keeper, Mr. Jones (the President at the time being an invalid), while at his left hand walked a stunted gentleman, unimposing in form, inelegantly dressed, and shambling in gait. Part of his ungracefulness was attributable to a big head, with somewhat large features, which, although not handsome, bespoke the right to be at home in any presence. Behind came some few men of dignified appearance and bearing, Cockerell strikingly so, with white hair and black eyebrows; Leslie, Howard, and Ross following—all courtly-looking gentlemen. Next came Stanfield, Roberts, Webster, Mulready, who was then of perfect build and beautiful face, and Maclise, who was singularly handsome, of the same type as Byron, but more forceful, as an old gentleman who had known both in later days told me. Etty, with a great brow and modest deportment, though
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short and stout, looked distinguished. I turned again, with curiosity as to his personality, to the inelegant but honoured member in front, who had then stopped with the Keeper just in face of the rostrum. Mr. Jones could be seen bowing (he could not be heard by reason of the ovation), and with extended hands gracefully inviting the unknown one on his left to ascend and take the duties of the evening. He, however, merely shook himself like an unwilling child; being pressed further in the most courteous manner by the Deputy-president, he betrayed some irritation in his further gesticulations, his coat tails swept from side to side, and he brought the matter to a close by hurrying to a seat placed with its back to the audience. This was J. M. W. Turner. Mr. Jones waited to catch his eye, then bowed, ascended to the chair, and commended his address. Then the distribution of medals followed, a function which seemed of eternal moment to the students. When it came to the turn of the antique school, attention was breathless as the preliminary words were uttered slowly, and the name of John Everett Millais was given as the winner of the first prize. A moment's pause, and out of the press a slim lad with curly hair and white collar arose eagerly, and was handed from seat to seat till he descended into the arena, where, remembering his manners, he bowed, and approached the desk. As he returned, the applause was boisterous, occasioning some reluctance to advance in the less favoured competitor.
I had not until now seen either the boy of whom I had heard so much, or his drawings; I had formed so exalted an idea of both, that it would have been a pain to me had either fallen short of my standard. In the conception of a yet unknown living hero the image cherished becomes so dear that too often the reality is a disenchantment. It was not so in this case; the boy Millais was exactly what I had pictured him, and his work just as accomplished as I had thought it to be.
About this date I sent in a drawing to gain admission as a probationer to the Royal Academy. When the names of the successful candidates were published, I searched through the odd twenty, and mine was not among them. This failure sadly humiliated me, but I found a means of lessening the bitterness of the defeat to my family by explaining that I had but half-time to work at simple drawing. In the schools there were fashions in drawing, as there are in all human affairs, and I had scarcely taken pains to consider the methods in vogue; my apology was not without reason. Sasse's school in particular was recommended by Academicians, and the drawings that issued from it, with their mechanical precision, were favoured by the examiners. Many students who worked there, shaded their drawings with the most regular cross hatching, putting a dot into every empty space; thus the figure was blocked out into flat angular surfaces, which ultimately blended by half-tints, produced the required modelling; for all such systems I had neither time nor inclination.
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Among my fellow-students I had recognised that some were in advance of myself in power of drawing, and of these a few were not so old as I was. I tried hard to judge the question of my relative position impartially before I decided that others were behind me. Some of the students, by natural defect, could not by any chance ever become artists, and each fresh effort they made was a failure to all but themselves; but they were supremely content. Was it possible, I questioned, that unwittingly I was as blind as they? After six months of close work, which, however, was still in a great part on canvas with the brush, I tried again, without doubting that success would follow, but when I stood before the new list of probationers I had the bitterness of finding that my name was again absent. My father now spoke, with good right, very seriously. I was wasting my time and energy; he added that I could paint well enough to win admiration from friends, but to compete with genius, fostered by the best instruction and opportunities, was a very different matter. “Are you not yourself convinced?” he said in conclusion, and indeed his argument affected me strongly, for to be an artist only on sufferance was not my ambition; a student can scarcely judge his own position, and I had no one to tell me the truth. Ought I to conclude that want of success proved my want of ability? In less doleful mood I accounted for my failure by the fact that I had not developed the habit of methodical neatness.
It had appeared to me to be a waste of effort for an artist to rival the precision of engine-turning on a watch, and to spend days on the background of a study made to teach him beautiful form; but when I looked again on my rejected drawing, I could see that, although it might be free from slavish method, it was marked by slovenliness, and even an affectation of indifference to neatness and care, which might justly offend the eye of judges sitting on the works of candidates. It was on the strength of my determined reformation in handling, which should strike pitilessly at the root of an off-hand style, that I relied when I asked my father to delay for another six months the decision he asked from me to return to business life of some kind. If on the next competition at Trafalgar Square the verdict were against me, I promised to submit to his wish as final.
Henceforth I drew, not, indeed, on the geometric system, but with great care and delicacy. It being late in the summer, my fellow-students were holiday-making. One day, when absorbed in my work in the Sculpture Gallery, a boy who was going through the gallery darted aside and stood for a few minutes attentively behind me. After close scrutiny he went off as suddenly; observing that he had a black velvet tunic, a belt, and shining bright brown hair curling over a white turned-down collar, I recognised that he was the boy Millais whom I had seen receive the Academy antique medal. Later in the day I went into the Elgin Room with the intention of glancing in passing over the student's shoulder; he was drawing the Ilissus. As I approached he suddenly
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turned with, “I say, are you not the fellow doing that good drawing in No. XIII. room? You ought to be at the Academy.”
“That is exactly my opinion,” I returned. “But unfortunately the Council have twice decided the other way.” “ You just send the drawing you are doing now, and you'll be in like a shot. You take my word for it; I ought to know; I've been there as a student, you know, five years. I got the first medal last year in the Antique, and it's not the first given me, I can tell you.” I asked him about the method of drawing most in fashion, explaining that I must not neglect any means of increasing my chance of acceptance. “Oh, the blocking-out system serves to make beginners understand the solidity of figures given by light and shade, modified by reflections and half-tints, and to get over muddling about with dirty chalk; you know all that. Very few fellows stick to it for long. I do sometimes use gray paper with white, but I like white paper just now. You see I sketch the lines in with charcoal, and when I go over with chalk I rub in the whole with wash leather, take out the lights with bread, and work up the shadows till it's finished; but I do sometimes work altogether with the point, and if either is done well it makes little or no difference to the Council. Don't you be afraid; you're all right. I say, tell me whether you have begun to paint? What? I'm never to tell; it is your deadly secret? Ah! ah! ah! that's a good joke. You'll be drawn and quartered without ever being respectably hung by the Council of ‘Forty’ if you are known to have painted before completing your full course in the Antique. Why, I'm as bad as you, for I've painted a long while. I say, do you ever sell what you do? So do I. I've often got ten pounds, and even double. Do you paint portraits?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I'm terribly behind you.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Well, I'm seventeen,” I replied.
“I'm only fifteen just struck, but don't you be afraid. Why, there are students of the Academy just fifty and more. There's old Pickering; he once got a picture into the Exhibition, and he quite counts upon making a sensation when he has finished his course, but he is very reluctant to force on his genius. Will you be here to-morrow?”
“No,” I whispered, “it's my portrait day, but don't betray me. Good-bye.”
“Don't you be down in the mouth,” he laughed out, as I walked away more light-hearted than I had been for many months, my unexpected conference with the prize student in whose personality I had so long passively felt interest having cheered me up. It was long ere I saw him again.
I gained a probationership at the next trial, and in due order a student's place. It will be seen that I used to envy those who could work unremittingly only at drawing, since this was prescribed as the proper course; but eventually, although my time at the Antique and the Life
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was curtailed by continual practice with colour, I saw reason to change my favourable opinion of the approved routine. Many students who made excellent specimen drawings did them without profit for the end of study, and later they had all the difficulty of painting to encounter, as quite a strange and complicated mystery.
In the National Gallery I contrived to combine discipline with the need of providing means to purchase materials, for often I sold the copies I made, and sometimes I acted as journeyman for others, who, from want of a place on the oil list, or from the discovery of the difficulty of the task, could not do the commissions they had received. Once a shrewd fellow-student asked me to do for him a copy of all the figures in Rembrandt's “Woman taken in Adultery.” As we could not tell how much I could finish, it was agreed that the question of pay should be left till the conclusion of the work. In thirteen days I painted the whole group of figures and the immediate background, and considering the opportunity, I did it nearly as well as I could ever have done. I stated the time I had spent, and left the question of payment to him. He said he thought fifteen shillings would be fair. Astonished, I represented that a full palette would cost a shilling each day, but he turned the tables, saying, “But I observed that you were very wasteful, often having madders and expensive colours when the day's work could have been done with none but cheap ones.” This was unanswerable. I bowed to him as to a superior, and took his price. In painting the background and daubing his glazings over my work he effected its debasement. (I heard later that, by screwing in all transactions and leaving art altogether, he became a rich man.) Thus exercised, I gained a practical knowledge of the ancient Masters then represented in London; and this was fast becoming of importance in my eyes, helping me for my own guidance to look more independently upon the state of art as developed by living men. I had gained much by my humiliation before being accepted as a student, the principal good lying in the discovery that an artist must himself ever sit in judgment upon his art, and throw away the “worser part.” I was never successful in working for medals, many dunces made more presentable drawings than mine; but except that I should have been glad to cheer up my parents, I fretted little at my failures in competition. Feeling that I had many defects to eradicate, I strove with each new study until, discovering faults in the outline, I scored it to pieces with corrections rather than adorn it with fine work as an example of my latest power. Without self-satisfaction one's work is too joyless to please others, yet the satisfaction in undisturbed contentment is but ephemeral.
The British Museum, where I had commenced the special study of the human figure, was in many respects not the best drawing school for a tyro. The Pheidian marbles realise the type of perfect human form, but the mutilations they have suffered make few of them of complete educational value for the practice of a novice who has not a
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connected knowledge of human proportion. The time spent by beginners in slavish reproduction of the injured surfaces of the Theseus, 1 would be more wisely devoted to drawing from a figure whose proportions are less damaged, even though these bear less Attic dignity of design. Many of the better preserved and good figures which were in my youth placed in dark corners are now brought out into a good light convenient to the student.
Notwithstanding all the disadvantages suffered at the Museum, it provided the opportunity essential to every student of art to trace the growth of Sculpture from Egypt and Assyria, Greece and Rome, with their national characteristics.
The Print Room supplied those links in the history of painting which the picture galleries gave only in broken chain. There, could be traced the pious uprising of a meek spirit of Christian faith in Italy, in loving reliance upon the Poetry of the Story, and pride of championship, beginning with Giotto's childlike earnestness at Assisi and Padua, and developing into church magnificence and pomp, tending steadily to ecclesiastical arrogance, and finally into the corruption of the tomb. By Italy's side we studied German art, bearing on her visage the stamp of struggle and suffering, as the part she had to bear of the message of Christianity. Such absence of peace and joy in beauty stifled Art, although Albert Dürer made pity for, and sympathy with, human woe a part of his message. With him followed Holbein who, with lavishness such as the brothers Van Eyck of the prosperous Netherlands had displayed, soon cast off sadness, and gave to England a superb gallery of portraits.
From these great Masters descended the Flemish School, which in homely and convincing individuality atones for a want of that ideal grandeur which, indeed, it nearly attained in the hands of the peerless, consummate Vandyck. Side by side of this pattern of courtly grace were painters of boorish rudeness, some of whom, together with a never surpassed power of representing homely life, had profound perception of the dignity and pathos of the human face as seen in the works of the home-staying Rembrandt.
Related to these last, although of Latin parentage, rose Spanish art, as perfect in external observation as that of the Low Countries, but without evidence of the barest breath of design, for which reason it fell like a tower of cards when the hand of Velasquez, its arch-builder, was withdrawn.
Further, we had the opportunity of comparing with earlier men and with one another the compositions of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Flaxman, and other English workers, and summing up these observations we were led to ponder on the lesson of transmutation from stage to stage in all art of the past. It declared that, where men in humility strove against their worst nature and diligently wrestled to express
Transcribed Footnote (page 29):

1 In referring to the pedimental figures I use the names in use in my student days.

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the higher truth, their work bore the character of a message from heaven; but when their successors, provided with the skill gained by this hourly sacrifice, were inflated with vanity, the whole current of wisdom was turned aside, and it became ever after impossible to regain the path leading to national art life.
Seeing thus before one's eyes manifold proofs of rise, decline, and death, but never of the renovation of art except with the infusion of new blood, I felt that the need soon arose of deciding in what respect I could accept the verdict of the world about the old Masters, and what was the position of the British School which had been in its course so highly endowed with genius in individuals, but which had proved itself unable to hand on its teaching, and from the first had been impatient of submitting to that course of strict and childlike training which in earlier history had always preceded the greatest art. Day by day I tried to settle these questions, I carried them about with me, and weighed them in the galleries of modern art, that I might decide among the living whether there was any master to set up as a model, and, if so, with what reservation.
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CHAPTER III

In the year 1822 Constable wrote, “The Art will go out, there will be no genuine painting in England in thirty years.” And it is remarkable that within a few months of the date thus specified Turner should have died, almost literally fulfilling, as some of his admirers may think, Constable's prophecy.— Autobiography of Charles Robert Leslie, R.A.

Since virtuous superstructions have commonly generous foundations, dive into thy intentions and early discover what nature bids thee be, or tells thee what thou mayst be.

Sir Thomas Browne.

For over a year the British Museum had been my main school for drawing, and in the Academy vacation it was so still. In the old days of apprenticeship there was ever the watchful master at hand to save the boy from the penalty of rash judgment, and to give him the results of a wisdom which nothing but a lifetime of experience can furnish. In retrospect, the substitution for it of the self-guided system shows much to deplore; and I certainly did not escape evils from misdirected impulse. Together with other students I organised a designing club, which at least put our original faculties to the test. Sometimes one of the older generation appeared at the Museum, Mr. Henning, with specimens of his reproductions of the frieze of the Parthenon, or Mr. Corbould with plates from drawings of the pediment, and these old artists talked to their friends loudly enough for the student to profit by the information passing between them. Two models of the Parthenon were being made, one as it was when in perfect condition, another as it is now. However unequal these were to the exactness of modern elucidations, they were highly explanatory to the uninitiated. Occasionally the officials entered with visitors of State. H.R.H. Prince Albert was once the august and honoured guest; on another day Samuel Rogers was making an inspection of some new acquisitions, or again Sir Charles Fellowes was the attended stranger; on every such occasion there was matter of importance communicated, more or less audible to us students.
At the time I speak of, no gallery in the Museum on public days could be seen with less than thirty or forty visitors interested in the collection. In these days I note greatly diminished attendance and less interest in the visitors both here and at South Kensington Museum. “The better education of the masses” in this respect is disappointing. Sixty years ago working men read the Penny Magazine and the Saturday Magazine, and other journals issued for the diffusion of useful knowledge. What do they read now?
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When I was copying one day, Thomas Phillips, the portrait painter, who had looked on the faces of Blake, Napoleon, Byron and Sir Walter Scott, examined my drawing, making encouraging observations. (His son, Henry Phillips, was my good friend, ten years later, and I was proud to tell him of the attention which his father had given me.) The father of one of the students had as a painter stored up useful knowledge of the preparations of grounds and the methods of Gainsborough which he had derived from this great master himself, and the son showed us examples of his own done in obedience to the tradition. They were studies on a tempera ground commenced and carried far in water-colours, and finished in oil. An old gentleman who came to delight his heart with his youthful studies whenever the occupation of portrait painting allowed him, took me much into his confidence, telling me that he made a living going from village inn to town and city hostel with specimens of his skill in his paint-box, which he exhibited and so obtained employment. He let me into the secret of finding panels well-seasoned at old coach brokers, and taught me much that proved of great value to me. I cite these facts to show how the want of a master could be made up in some sort to a youth studying in public galleries, when the traditions of preparatory work had not been altogether lost.
Amongst the students, examples of early failure were frequent, as in the case of a senior who came one morning and offered his drawing-board for sale at a very reduced price, declaring that he had found out too late the miserable chances of the profession, and was determined to waste no more precious time upon it. He was not by any means the only one who repented of his devotion to art. Many turned their steps towards photography and business connected therewith, and thus found a much more tranquil career and ofttimes ampler fortune. One day, I chanced to run against a dandy fellow-student whom I had not seen for several months; when I asked what had kept him away from his accustomed haunts so long, he announced that he had finally given up painting; he could endure it no longer, “because carrying a paint-box revealed to all the world that you were only a poor devil of an artist.” Others, electing between dandyism and art in favour of the latter, were not, alas! acknowledged by her. Their rejection did not always result from glaring indolence, but they were not sufficiently passionate seekers after their chosen mistress.
In every assembly of art students the self-satisfied devotee is always liberally represented; he is generally distinguishable by a more artistic mien and dress than his fellows display, and he makes a loud profession of familiarity with the abstruse questions of his art. For the passing day such beings may be amusing enough, but the young artist will be wise to recognise that his idling compeer is not an artist by nature, and will never understand more than the slang and cant of the pursuit, being only destined to be one of the many parasites who
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in ever-increasing proportion cling about Art and rob her of her vitality.
Many of the best painters had had a hard struggle to keep their art and themselves alive during the days of poverty that followed the Napoleonic wars. Of these the bravest and yet the most unfortunate was Haydon, who, beginning without a master, and with paternal aid continuing only for a few seasons, devoted himself to the “grand style.” It was not long before he was crippled by heavy debts, by the seizure of his works, and by all the harassing consequences of unsubmissive poverty, so that opportunity for leisurely consideration of his primal deficiencies never came to him. The grandeur which he aimed at needed the breath of grace and beauty to sanctify its force; the sensuousness which impels Nature's interpreters to combine the stray riches of her hues into concord and sweetness was never his, to control the manly and ambitious designs he executed. With small and ill-lit studios, and without means to pay models, he could never do justice to his intellectual conceptions. It was probably because he felt the loss consequent upon having no master himself that he gathered about him a School. He was a profound anatomist, with advanced theories of comparison of lower and higher forms of life, and in all respects must have been a fascinating teacher; he bore his troubles with abounding spirit until he imagined there could be no hope while he lived, either for his art or his family. He committed suicide in 1846, soon after I had embarked as an artist, and the gloom of his failure increased the anxiety of all the friends of young painters. This artist was the last who tried to revive the old Masters' system of apprenticeship, yet those who had become famous under his instruction did so in ways as different from his own as could well be conceived. It is to his courageous pen that England owes the retention in our country of the once-despised Elgin marbles, which Payne Knight, the authoritative critic who led the fashionable amateurs of his day, denounced as the work of a provincial Greek mason or of a Roman copyist.
It was owing to Haydon's energetic pleading that the Government of the day invited British artists to compete for employment in the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. It was he who originated the idea of the establishment of Schools of Design to improve the deteriorated taste of our manufactures; yet he received no sort of recompense, although rewards were given to his adversaries. His first literary biographer, Tom Taylor, summarises the artist's character in these words: “Haydon was self-willed to obstinacy. He rarely asked advice, and never took it unless it approved itself to him, without reference to the sagacity of information of the adviser. He was indefatigable in labour during his periods of application, but he was often diverted from his art by professional polemics , by fits of reading, and by moods of discomfort and disgust.” With his wasted blood, let all such bitter condemnation be lost in mother-earth, and let us do honour to
Sig. VOL. I. D
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his perennial worth. Tom Taylor was too narrow-sided to take in the large proportions of Haydon's full stature, which can be seen only in the diary of the painter, edited by his son. 1
It behoves us now to consider the general state of British Art at this time. Landscape till quite recently had been almost the only branch of painting, in addition to portraiture, which had obtained patronage in England, and the pursuit of open-air nature had forced artists to depart from the conventional system which allowed only a small proportion of light to have place on the general surface of what otherwise was only partially modified darkness.
The example which these landscapists then set, gradually encouraged in a few of the boldest figure painters the desire for more daylight effect in their paintings. It was thus, perhaps, that the English School was led to differentiate itself timidly, but yet recognisably, from the Schools which had not been attracted by Nature's teaching. Still, cases of daylight effect in subject paintings, not sophisticated by Academic rule, were rare. I was still searching for a perfect guide. Although I looked upon many artists with unbounded wonder and admiration, and never dared to measure myself prospectively with the least of them, yet I could see no one who stirred my complete sympathy in a manner that led me to covet his tutelage. The greater number were trite and affected; their most frequent offence in my eyes was the substitution of inane prettiness for beauty, and the want of vigorous health in the type of it. Pictured waxworks playing the part of human beings provoked me, and hackneyed conventionality often turned me from masters whose powers I otherwise valued. What I sought was the power of undying appeal to the hearts of living men.
I was one of the public in admiration of Landseer's facility, but as an aspiring artist my feeling towards him was very reserved. He ofttimes did works of real point and poetry. His picture of “Peace” must never be forgotten; but in his pictures generally the glossy coats of his animals do not atone for their want of action, nor for the absence of firm structure. His delight in the creatures of the field, which made him so popular with the sporting world, was seldom animated by the daring and wild adventure of the chase; it was oftener that of the stealthy lier in wait to slay.
Etty, after twenty years of failure and irrepressible effort, had in his full prime become the rage. His “Syrens,” “Holofernes,” and the diploma picture will always justify his reputation; but in my youth he had lost the robustness he once had, and at last he composed classic subjects with the tawdry taste of a paper-hanger. He retained a
Transcribed Footnote (page 34):

1 His son, on reading my remarks in the Contemporary Review , wrote assuring me that Haydon used the living model to the last. I could not doubt Haydon's use of all available means to give truth to his work. I saw him come to the British Museum to draw from the bust of Nero, and later I examined the pictures in the room where he died, and I could see that the same firm spirit which actuated him at first had to the last stirred him to study his forms from Nature. Yet in that little front room, with heroic canvases in hand, how confined in every way had been the great soul!

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consummate mastery over brush and paint, with a richness of tints and tones that ranked him among the famed colourists of the world; but the paintings of his advanced age cloyed the taste by their sweetness, and his forms bore evidence of being copied with little fastidiousness from town models, distorted by the modiste's art. It was natural at first to look to Mulready as a master who would be a safe example, for to the last he was painstaking and student-like. He was ever striving to reach finer perfection, as for example in his “Bathers,” but his drawing was without any large line; he was cramped by a taste for Dresden-china prettiness, and the uncourageous desire—then well-nigh universal—to win applause for beauty by avoidance in his drawing of that fulness of form which with perfect balance justifies itself. It was the equality of empty scales. Maclise was a facile draughtsman, and a genius with a sterling power of invention; but a milesian instinct for glamour and melodramatic parade seldom allowed him

 

William Dyce, R.A.



freedom to appear at his best, as he did later so triumphantly in his picture of “Waterloo.”
Leslie, in the front rank of subject painters, was to me the most thoroughly inspired by the breath of Nature. His sweet simplicity, the taste for restrained colour, and the power of unaffected expression, placed him on the level of the great; but he had developed out of amateur training, and was a painter only, not an all-round artist; he saw things only from one side, not as though he could model them. The insufficiency of his early teaching was evident in a flatness of detail which would not have sufficed for large work: the two scales of work need independent apprenticeship. William Collins at the last did some admirable pictures, with rustic, Crabbe-like realism; but he had become a figure painter gradually rather than by primal intent, his men and women having been originally but accessories in landscape, and life sufficed not for his fuller aims. William Dyce was the most profoundly trained and cultured of all the painters of the time. He had for several years been driven from the profession altogether by the critics, and had to be searched for at the advice of the painter Cornelius, who had known him in Rome, the German master giving testimony to the Englishman's powers when—to the lasting honour of his nation—he declined to accept the proposed commission to paint the Houses of Parliament—which, with true British prejudice, he alone was thought worthy to execute—saying, “You have an artist in England equal to any known to me.” Dyce, when too late to find a fair field for his genius, had thus recommenced his career. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy so suddenly that the outside world said it was “by command.” Had he had a better chance, he might have influenced the English School more than he did, for although
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he saw Nature mainly through the eyes of the quattrocentists, he was not, as many modern painters have been, a mere plagiarist of their postures and expressions: in his works could always be seen some sweet trait from the freshness of the passing day over and above the

 

Madonna and Child

William Dyce]

MADONNA AND CHILD



culture of the great Masters whose living representative he made himself.
Turner was rapidly sinking like a glorious sun in clouds of night that could not yet obscure his brightness, but rather increased his magnificence. The works of his meridian day were shut up in their possessors'
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galleries, unknown to us younger men. George Richmond was then producing only excellent chalk and water-colour drawings, and I cannot think of any others who could have been regarded as possible leaders for the student. Many of the Royal Academy Associates of the time have now fallen into unmerited disregard, although their ingenuity in invention will not fail to be observed and appreciated when some of the travesties of art at present in vogue have been condemned as wearisome folly. Ward's picture of “Dr. Johnson waiting in Lord Chesterfield's Ante-room” is marked by these qualities of good common-sense. The fault that we found in this younger School was that every scene was planned as for the stage, with second-rate actors to play the parts, striving to look less like sober live men than pageant statues of waxwork, knights were frowning and staring as none but hired supernumeraries could stare, the pious had vitreous tears on their reverential cheeks, innkeepers were ever round and red-faced peasants had complexions of dainty pink, shepherdesses were facsimiled from Dresden-china toys, homely couples were always reading a Family Bible to a circle of most exemplary children; all alike from king to plebeian were arrayed in clothes fresh from the bandbox. With this artificiality, the drawing was often of a pattern that left anatomy and the science of perspective but poorly demonstrated.
Augustus Egg, although of this school, was of robuster mind, in being more frankly historic than the rank and file of the younger generation. He had sterling invention and remarkable power of dignified colour; the individuality he imported to his heads was not usual then, if indeed it is now. Frith—another of the band—had already made his mark.
The majority of my compeers and immediate elders were worshippers of Etty, and inquired not at all of the beginning of his greatness, nor indeed of its noonday, but strove to emulate the looser design and execution which he cultivated at the end of his career. Some followed other masters, but it amused me to observe that all alike adduced Pheidias and Raphael as the prophets to sanctify their course, and all revolted at any suggestion that the solid ground beneath their feet was the foundation on which sincere workers must stand. There was then no suspicion among artists, or the public, that Guido, Giulio Romano, Baroccio, Guercino, Murillo, Le Brun, and others of the same flock were birds of a different feather to Jove's bird, so the name of the princely Urbinite was made to cover all conventional art. We knew less of Michael Angelo in England then than now, when we have the Sixtine Chapel and the Medici tombs photographed, while Tintoretto in his might was not known at all. Della Robbia, Donatello, Luini, and Angelico were mere names in books or, at the most, to be seen in the Print Room. In their places the decadents were honoured in all the painting schools, and sober discussion seemed unprofitable. When I put down my brush, which was not often, and was assailed for my
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opinions as monstrous, I preferred to joke, and to accept the railing accusation of “flat blasphemy,” until my outspoken irreverence towards the reigning gods became a byword; though some students had no great faith in my seriousness when I said that Murillo's admired “Holy Family” in the National Gallery was vapid, and that in copying Guido's “Magdalen” one must in some degree mend the false drawing.
Altogether it was evident that I had to be my own master, getting dumb direction from the great of other ages, and correction of defects in my daily work from intelligent elder fellow-students and the paternal-minded Keeper of the Academy, Mr. George Jones, who was always eager to give extra attention to persevering students.
These confessions give my estimate of art instruction in England at the date when I was a student at the Academy, the National Gallery, the British Museum, and British Institution. The first surprising illumination which I received, and one, moreover, which in some ways determined a great change in the course of my artistic life, came about in this wise. While engaged in copying “The Blind Fiddler,” a visitor looking over me said that Wilkie painted it without any dead colouring, finishing each bit thoroughly in the day. The speaker was Claude Lorraine Nursey, some years afterwards master of the School of Design at Norwich; he had been Wilkie's pupil, and had been taught this then singular practice, which he exemplified later by showing me his own work. I tried the method, and I now looked at all paintings with the question whether they had been so executed. I began to trace the purity of work in the quattrocentists to the drilling of undeviating manipulation with which fresco-painting had furnished them. I laid aside the habitual practice of painting in three layers, together with the loose handling which it encouraged, and adopted a plan of work which excused no false touch. I was not able to succeed completely in all parts of my work, but the taste for clear forms and tints, and for clean handling, grew in me; while at the same time I guarded myself against a slavish imitation of the quattrocentists, which was then becoming a seductive snare to certain English painters. Notwithstanding that I was out of sympathy with the fashion then raging in England for making facsimiles of ancient Gothic architecture, yet the unaffected work which I saw in Francia, Ludovico Mazzolini, and their Schools, also the newly acquired Van Eyck—then in its dignified ebony frame—became dear to me, as examples of painting most profitable for youthful emulation. In the effort to express my own conceptions, I attempted humble subject pictures, and sent them to the Exhibitions, where at times they gained admittance. They were honest, though bungling, examples of my advancing aims. Frequently these were better before receiving the final toning glazes, the adding of which it took long to abjure, the authority for thus finishing a painting being universal with all my immediate elders. While in the mood for battling with myself, careful observation and the reading of Lanzi were convincing me that
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all the great Italian artists, including the cinquecentists, had grown in a training of patient self-restraint, imposed by masters who had never indulged their hands in uncertainty and dash, and that the wise and enthusiastic pupils had delighted in the devotion of humility till far on in their maturity. The dandelion clock in the “St. Catherine” by Raphael, and the flowers—notably the purple flags—in the “Bacchus and Ariadne” of Titian, were edifying examples of this spirit in the great Masters, wilfully overlooked by modern students.
For better understanding of the principles upon which the Venetians arranged their scheme of colour, I made abbozzi of a few of their greatest works—Titian's “Bacchus and Ariadne,” his “Sacred and Profane Love” from the copy in the Royal Academy, a whole length figure by Giorgione in the same place, and Veronese's “Consecration of St. Nicholas.” I also religiously copied Vandyck's amazingly subtle portrait of Gevartius, and that of Gerard Dow by himself, and Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the “ Tragic Muse,” amongst many others, and I made elaborate drawings of entire designs by Raphael and other hallowed authors. It is only by thus coming into close quarters with examples by great Masters that a student can understand their full glories and arrive at a decision as to what were their limitations.
Dulwich Gallery was one of my haunts. There I observed that an early portrait of his mother by Rubens had surprisingly the characteristics of care and humility; and a portrait of a man with a stubbly white beard by Holbein fascinated me with its delicate painting. It is now over half a century since I first saw these, but more notable examples of early practice have confirmed the conclusions they forced upon me, that in Art, as in other pursuits, it is a loss in the end both for Schools and for individuals to begin as masters.
It was incumbent upon me now to find out a path for my own feet. By nature, and the encouragement of my early painting-master, slovenliness was my besetting sin, through too great impatience to reach the result. To root out off-handedness is not to be done at a stroke. Once having decided what was my danger, I had continuing proofs of the need of self-restraint. What might even be profitable as a course for other students, I forbad myself; I sought in every direction for further guidance, and left others to follow their own light. This was the state of my mind in the full height of my studentship days, when I had somehow or other to support myself by my brush in the intervals of regular study.
D. G. Rossetti had entered the Academy as a probationer about the same time as myself, but I did not know of him till later. As he went abroad for a time, he did not complete his three probationary drawings in the term allowed. He gained special permission to continue the task in the next season, and with this further term the finished drawings were approved.
Millais, after some interval, came again to the Antique School to
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make his drawings for the Life. He was now nearly sixteen, and although impulsive in character, was by no means inclined to disregard the dignity of his full estate. The Antique School had no seneschal to suppress students' playful practical jokes, which were unbridled except for the half-hour when the Keeper made his rounds. Millais was still about the youngest in the school, although the first in honours. He frequently made hurried but very clever sketches of jockeys, farmers, and animals

 

J. E. Millais

W. H. H]

J. E. MILLAIS



of all kinds, of incidents yet vivid in his mind of the country place where he had been staying. To this exuberant performance with the pencil he added all the chatter and clatter of the various creatures of the stables, the farmyard, and the racing paddock. The sketches were waited for by a surrounding appreciative throng, and carried off by the most persistent. Being a newcomer, schoolboy etiquette forbade my claiming his acquaintance, but when he met me he exclaimed, “I told you so. I knew you'd soon be in,” and so we came to be on saluting terms. After this, he encountered me one day in the schools,
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and pointing with his finger in child-like suddenness, he cried out, “You've had your hair cut.” The fact was obvious enough, but I had wished it to escape remark. My laughing rejoinder was that I had not lost so much hair as some students had; for all his handsome curls had been cut away, and he appeared then and thenceforth with what he called a cockatoo crop. At this time he had just finished the “Baptism of Guthrun,” which was still on his easel. I was about to send a picture of “Nell and her Grandfather” to the British Institution, and I undertook to show it to him, in a lobby at the Royal Academy, he was full of generous recognition of my picture, pressing me to come and see his present painting in my turn. Steadily interested in and proud of his work, he was always more eager to hear in what he could go beyond the mark reached than to be content with his present achievement, and he showed ambition for something higher than mere school reputation. Millais' parents lived in Gower Street, then numbered 83. The front door opened into a passage which went through direct to the studio, leaving the sitting-rooms on the right.
A small window at the end looked on to grim walls and tiles, but Millais had painted its panes with Gothic figures and patterns in imitation of stained glass, and signs of taste and order were seen inside the painting-room. With his picture of “Pizarro” on hand, it was necessary to have a large platform placed at an angle to serve for the palanquin on which the doomed Inca was being carried; notwithstanding this disturbance of symmetry, all the rest of the room was in prim order. It was in accordance with what was afterwards designated “Millais' luck” that Mr. E. Goodall had lately returned from a visit to South America, bringing with him an artistic selection of native ornaments and garments which he had lent for the use of his young fellow-artist. All of these—feathers, beads, etc.—not in actual use on the platform were arranged about the walls as an extra decoration to the small pieces of armour and the swords, which had probably seen their last active service on the fields of Dunbar or Worcester. Over the mantelshelf was a framed portrait of his half-brother Clement; on the shelf below stood the cast of a delicately modelled cow and calf, and at either end were casts of greyhounds. These were covered by glass domes.
On the occasion of my first visit to Millais, his mother, whose usual place in the studio was indicated by the presence of a lady's work-table, was in earnest conversation with her son Clement and his young wife, but with a friendly salutation they considerately walked out to continue the talk elsewhere. Millais told me that his brother had resolved to go to Australia, that the debate was about the necessary arrangements; further, that his mother and father were also saddened over the marriage and departure of their only daughter, a handsome girl of about twenty. While we chatted he said, “I find you know some friends of my uncle;
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they give some nice dances, why don't you go?” I explained that for the present I left dancing to my sisters. 1
The picture he was now employed upon was in every respect remarkable for a young painter, looking more like the work of an artist in his prime; indeed, had he been judged by this production alone, its maturity of style might have seemed discouraging to the hope of development. Through life a happy characteristic of Millais in all his different modes of work was, that there were no disorderly scrapings and blotches about the surface such as often cause untidy painters to leave their works in unpresentable guise; parts were obviously unfinished, and others only in a stage of preparation; but all, like his room, was in perfect readiness to be shown to the chance visitor. Millais was unaffectedly eager to hear my appreciation, and led me on to the points with which he was himself best content; yet he invariably challenged candour, and ended with, “You'll see I'll make my next much better!” Tea was sent into the room, and before it was over the mother returned. I was referred to as the “student who drew so well,” and “Johnnie” emphasised his compliment by asking her whether he had not spoken thus of me to her before. She was dressed in black, and was of slight build for a matron; she had quick eyes, with a shrewd but happy expression; these features were surmounted by a brow of vertical build, the nose being slightly arched at the bridge. The hair was brought forward in curls kept in form by small combs at the side, as was usual at the time. She entered at once with great zest into the merits of Johnnie's picture. It was impossible for me not to regard as truly enviable the hearty pride with which Millais' work was looked upon by all the members of his family.
Between my portrait painting and copying at the National Gallery and the British Institution, I had managed to find time to go through the course at the Royal Academy to get into the Life School. With this achieved, I discontinued my day attendance at the Antique, only satisfying my school ambition by working each evening from the living model. One night after this change I encountered my new student-friend in the hall; he, with that fascinating mixture of child-like impulsiveness and the highest manly purpose, said—
“Look here, you know I'm painting a picture as big as Raphael's cartoons, nine feet one way by sixteen feet the other. That's no end of a job, I can tell you. Twenty figures and more, all the size of life;” and coming close, he added confidingly, “ It's ‘The Widow's Mite’— it's a splendid subject, isn't it? You know there are the old frowning Pharisees, the reverential disciples, and the poor woman, giving all she's got, and of course there's the Saviour. Doesn't it afford grand opportunities? It was turned against the wall when you came last.
Transcribed Footnote (page 42):

1 As time went on Holman-Hunt became a singularly enthusiastic and proficient dancer. He used to be amused to find some of his admirers a little shocked at this in one whose mission they thought to be solely that of a painter of sacred pictures.

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I'm busy on it now, and am going to send it to Westminster Hall. I may get a prize; only think, the highest is £300. Are you doing anything for it? Now, you come and see me on Wednesday afternoon, mind you don't forget, Wednesday next.”
At the appointed time I went. The father and mother were both present; the son came forward to receive me warmly, and turned to the elders repeating his previous compliments, and referring to my picture at the British Institution. The mother was busy with crochet work, which did not absorb all her thoughts, for she at once began telling me of “important visitors” who had come to see Johnnie's picture, and who had said it was “truly wonderful.” She pointed out what had been most admired. The father I scarcely had known before. He excused himself for walking about the room putting things that had been disarranged back into their places—by which one saw how it was that things were never allowed to remain in confusion.
He was perhaps a little above five feet ten in height, and slightly inclined to burliness. The son had inherited some lineaments from him, but his spirited expression came from his mother. The fresh colour and blue eyes, with an apparently unguarded manner, were all his father's; the latter's full forehead appeared rounder from an inclination to baldness already showing itself. His thorough-hearted interest in the passing moment dissipated all my feelings of shyness which his presence might have aroused. To make the introduction more complete, the son put one hand on his father's shoulder and the other on his mother's chair, and said—
“They both help me, I can tell you. He's really capital, and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a little alteration in each, and putting on different kinds of beards, he does splendidly. Couldn't be better, could he? And he sits for hands and draperies too. And as for mamma, she reads to me and finds me subjects. She gets me all I want in the way of dresses, and makes them up for me, and searches out difficult questions for me at the British Museum—in the library, you know. She's very clever, I can tell you.” He stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the “old daddy,” as he called him, on the back. The father was then only about forty-seven.
In the meantime the tea-tray was brought in, and while the mother prepared the meal, I was invited to look more closely at the painting. It was undoubtedly a most masterly performance for such a boy. I unreservedly expressed my admiration. The youthful painter pointed out what had taxed him most, and what he still felt were tough knots to undo; but he had a most serviceable sanguine temperament, which was never overcome and but seldom overclouded, and which would not admit a doubt of his being able to master all difficulties.
“The head of the Christ,” the mother said, “every one admires.
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Mr. Dennis—the great connoisseur—called it admirable. You've heard of him; people call him Lorenzo de Medici, because he is so like the portrait.”
Here the father joined in: “He has a broad-brimmed hat, wears his hair long, and steps in such a stately manner that he seems as though he had walked out of an old frame;” he added in laughing mood, as if in apology, “but he's a perfect gentleman.”
“I was going to tell Hunt,” the mother added, “that Johnnie is still tempted to work on the Saviour's head.”
“I shall make it much better, you see, now,” said the boy painter.
“Well, Johnnie was passing a door in Bedford Square when a gentleman was being let out. The servant was behind, and he struck Johnnie as being the very model for the head, for he is singularly handsome and superior-looking. We've seen his master and he's quite pleased; he has been to see the picture,—he asked to be allowed to come,—and the man is to sit the day after to-morrow,” said the mother.
“Yes,” added the boy, “it is really a lucky find. No trouble is too great to try and improve upon the Saviour's head.”
Noticing my interest in a youthful head belonging to the principal group, he went on, “That's my brother Bill, you don't know him; he just suits, doesn't he? It's for St. John, the beloved disciple, and he's always made young.” After further talk, he unexpectedly turned to his father and mother in pleading tone, saying, “I've been working very hard now for a long while, and I really feel thoroughly fagged; I am sure it would do me good to have a holiday, indeed it would.” Then in a playfully lachrymose tone he proceeded, “You know they'll be sure to be playing cricket on Saturday at Holloway, and I should like to have a good day at it.” Then he turned to me, inquiring, “Do you play cricket?” Meanwhile, his father and mother vied with one another in applauding his plan, and it was arranged that he should take the last day of the week for recreation.
When we left the house, Millais wanted me to talk about his parents. “They are dear old creatures—aren't they?”
I returned, honestly, “They are particularly delightful, all the more so because I had rather expected from your name to find that your father would be a foreigner, but he's a thorough Englishman.”
“Oh yes,” he replied, “we belong to Jersey, where all regard themselves as more English than Englishmen are, because they are Normans pure and simple, who kept to their earlier home. My great-grandfather lost his property because at the beginning of the French Revolution he got infatuated with the principles of the Republicans and was thought to be compromised in the French attempt on the island, but the name is preserved as attached to old castles and buildings that once belonged to the family.” Variable still as a child, he burst out: “Now, I say, do you think I'm growing? I want to be tall. Daddy is a good height,
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isn't he? I hope I shall be as much, or more than he is.” And with many assurances from me that he had plenty of time to attain full height, we parted.
He did not now attend at the Life School at all, and, except for curiosity, he never came to the painting school. Neither did I attend this last school for practice, for I had done quite as much copying as I felt to be desirable, except for the secrets of composition which I executed on a series of rapid sketches on a white ground. Millais never spent any time in copying old Masters, yet in furnishing pictures from memory for a doll's house National Gallery, which he and his brother formed in their early teens, he had made himself practically acquainted with the characteristics of all the great painters. Seeing that I had altogether burnt my boats for retreat, my family had, with kind consideration for me, removed to Holborn, where, in the upper part of a large house, I could have a room for a studio. Here I could not paint pictures of ambitious character, but I chose a subject from Woodstock, because it belonged to the class of pictures most popular, and so offered a fair chance of sale, as well as due exercise in serious inventiveness. When I was bringing this to an end, my father, who had not failed to realise how much at the best I was checked for want of ampler opportunities, when we were one night returning home together, referred to the matter, and explained that he had been hampered in means for the last six years by having to pay off a mortgage on some house property, which the surplus of a legacy from his aunt would not entirely purchase. He had now, however, just redeemed the debt, and should be more at ease in the future. He mentioned the fact that I might consider in what respect he could now be most helpful to me.
This generous determination served only to accentuate his benevolent disposition. Soon afterwards one morning at breakfast I saw him open a letter, which he read and re-read, turned over and over, and with studied reserve put carefully into his pocket. It transpired that before he had purchased the houses, the head clerk of a solictor's firm, who had examined the title and prepared the deeds for the transfer of the property, had accepted the vendor's statement that his son—to whom, when under age, the property had been left—was dead. This son proved to be living, and now claimed not only the houses, but all the back rents. When the son was reminded that his father would be heavily punished and disgraced as a consequence of the threatened litigation, the aggrieved heir—who, it was proved, had known of the fraud and received great part of the proceeds—declared that he hoped his father would be transported. After advice from many quarters, and much consultation, with frequent veering round on my father's part from one point to another, he resolved to avoid the uncertainty of the law by making a compromise which compelled him to raise a further heavy mortgage, the burden of which he had to bear for the rest of his
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days. This was his death-stroke, although he lived for another ten years.
A prospect of room for me in the exhibition world now seemed to dawn; even though the painting of portraits might have somewhat reduced the strain on the family purse. I painted only those which came uninvited. In going on with pictures I may have appeared perverse, for so far they had been only an expense to me, without the sign of a purchaser.
On a visit to Millais' house when he was away, the father talked about the Academy school, and the treatment Johnnie had formerly experienced there. “Being so young,” he said, “ Johnnie became the sport of some of the rough, elder students, and he came home at times complaining and bearing marks of their coarse behaviour. They lifted him up above their heads and twirled him about, affecting to be acrobats. One brutal fellow, H—— (you must know him), carried the child up a ladder that happened to be in the school, encouraged the more by the poor little fellow's cries; and once he held him up by the ankles and marched with him head downwards around the school, his hair sweeping the ground. What could I do? It would not have done to make a scandal of it, but I told Johnnie to invite this burly fellow here to give advice on some design in hand. When he came I received him in friendly manner, and soon spoke of Johnnie's fragile form, saying that some rough students in the Academy were thoughtless about the delicacy of the young boy, that I felt sure he was a good, sensible fellow, but that some young men were without reflection and needed to be opposed, and that I would trust him always to protect Johnnie and save him from such horseplay. After that Johnnie was left unmolested, and we had every reason to rejoice in the effect of my appeal to H——'s better feelings.” This restraint, however, was but of transient or partial value, for the man had at bottom a cruel nature. Millais with true instinct, although not at the time admitting to himself the reason, painted him in his “Isabella” picture as the brother cracking the nut, and at the same time kicking the dog.
When I went again to Gower Street, Millais was painting “Elgiva.” It was a distinct advance in refinement upon his last picture, perhaps, because the subject afforded him the opportunity of painting women under conditions in which discriminating observation and delicate rendering of form could be exercised.
There were at that time so many varied objects I had to keep in mind, and Millais was so intent upon his work, that I saw little of him till the next season, when he asked me to come and see his new picture of “The Tribe of Benjamin seizing the Daughters of Shiloh,” undertaken in competition for the gold medal.
Our increasing intimacy induced confidential talk whenever we met; we discussed many theories of art and practice as seen both in old and modern painters, and I found him by no means bound to dogmas
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that gained general acceptance, but quite ready to re-examine settled views, even though they seemed to him at first above question.
At the conclusion of one of my visits to Gower Street, I explained, as a reason for deferring his coming to see my new work, that I was going to spend a month in the country. “Where are you going?” his mother inquired. “To Ewell,” I said. “Why, that's where Johnnie's going in the autumn,” said she, and we had a talk about Captain Lemprière, Sir John Reid, Sir George Glynn, and all the notables of the place, and of the country's sweetness and charm.
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CHAPTER IV
  • Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear
  • The mill dam rushing down with noise
  • And see the minnows everywhere
  • In crystal eddies glance and poise....
  • I loved the brimming wave that swam
  • Through quiet meadows round the mill,
  • The sleepy pool above the dam,
  • The pool beneath it never still,
  • The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor,
  • 10The dark round of the dripping wheel,
  • The very air about the door
  • Made misty with the floating meal.
Miller's Daughter, Tennyson.

Give me quickly the cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.— Orphic Tablets, Gilbert Murray

.
Ewell—Ye well—in Surrey, at the time I speak of, had a true claim to be a home of repose. The fount in its slab-formed cradle at the entrance of the village was, in fact, only the public appearance of the newly-born stream, the true fons being hidden by a garden wall. When the pedestrian, a-dust, athirst, and sun-dazed, stepped within the surrounding rails of the crystal well, his eyes rested on the bubbling waters ere he raised them to his parched lips. The wide earth's thank-offering of a spring of water outpouring in its sparkling purity is ever a delight to man. The village itself had no sense of modern bustling or hurry; all was arranged spaciously, all work executed with deliberation, and with such unostentation that externally there was but little to distinguish the chemist's shop from the baker's, or any other tradesman's house from that of his neighbour. On the outskirts of the trading centre there were gentlemen's homes and farmsteads; and Nonsuch Park, of Elizabethan fame, still gave a stately grace farther afield, although the quaint palace had long since gone from sight. Banstead and Epsom Downs formed the horizon to the south. The water from the spring bore itself away in an opposite direction, first carolling along a pebble-strewed channel into a shallow pool crossed by a flat bridge, whence by the quiet searcher might be seen red-spotted trout poised in mid-water, and casting their sleeping sun-shadows on to the mossy gravel below, steady as though painted there. In the region beyond, the stream expanded bordered by well-tended lawns, and patterned with gaily flowered garden beds; between these widened borders lay an islet with weeping willows kissing the surface of the water.
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Peering down between the reflected boughs into the varnished shadows of the forest of weeds, the loiterer, lightly tiptoeing forward, might see

 

The Pool, Ewell

THE POOL, EWELL



the suspicious fish flitting lightning-like into unsearchable caverns. A stone's-throw off, the pulsing wheel drew one's attention, and enticed

 

Ewell Spring

A. Hughes]

EWELL SPRING



one's steps along a road to the face of the mill, where whitened men bearing sacks of flour descended and ascended inclined planks between upper doorways and vans. A further mill was so walled-up as to conceal the water in its channel. In the meadows below, the young current
Sig. VOL. I. E
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revelled in freedom, ofttimes taking a double course around mounds of earth well furnished with flourishing growth, then joining again and channelling itself through ditch-divided banks, under a forest of willows, with but occasional signs of any master's control. An opening in the wooded hollow led to a track of cart-ruts, winding round into the river, where it broadened out into a shallow ford; the wheel-marks led the way and tempted reckless feet to ford the transparent glaze of shining water, leading to a road bordered by blossoming trees and an ancient orchard, the herald of a farmhouse telling of past centuries. Beyond the house was a nave of noble elms extending in perspective to the sky-line. Stopping at the entrance to the avenue, any lover of nature's shy creatures would be drawn towards a lonely tarn, well-nigh

 

The Lonely Tarn

THE LONELY TARN



carpeted with duckweed and white blossom wherever the reeds and flags had not pierced through the surface, or where far, or near, the wild-fowl, or farm ducks and geese, had not cleared a domain for themselves. The wild-fowl met their domestic cousins on the common plain, although not with trust and unreserve, unless indeed the cackling recognition of the inquisitive intruder was intended to be, as it certainly was, the signal for the uprising of an inconceivably large flock of shy birds from the further extremity of the lakelet, the brood fleeing away beyond pursuit of sight.
Our little river below had to narrow itself to pass under the span of a brick-built arch made for neat-booted lasses and swains; it then deepened and passed between banks, husbanding the current's force for man's further will; it rippled along, circling in dimples as it was driven under sheltering willows, its banks strewn with long-disused mill-stones, discarded roller-beams, and ruined timber cog-wheels. Soon
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the flood was imprisoned by sluice gates; close at hand were abandoned huts, shuttered, overgrown, and choked with rank weeds. Here the kingfisher arrowed his way, the wild pigeon chattered and cooed, and the distant cuckoo voice noted the season. Between all could now be heard the plash and cranking of a near water-wheel. Now cut off from confiding trust, not even the lonely angler ventured thus far; the region was out of the ordinary world; being thus beyond the limits of common experience when, in the remoter solitude, a being, black as a creature of dark Avernus, passed by, he seemed fitly to haunt the scene. He was, however, only one who, for extra pay and much idleness,

 

Rectory Farm, Ewell

RECTORY FARM, EWELL



passed the day and night in turn with another man visiting at intervals a neighbouring gunpowder mill, shovelling up the deadly mixture always being ground by a revolving crusher on a circular platform. The water served two neighbouring mills, and then for a mile or so it revelled in wanton freedom, cutting deep down into hollow meadows, nearly covered by border tangle. It emerged again between well-trimmed banks for further mill service before it got finally free in wide meadow-land.
All this lucious and lonely charm of dell and meadow had very early a fascination for me, and it was natural that I should attempt to register some of its mystery by my art. Accordingly, I began a painting of the pool above one of the first mills, with the sun glistening down and penetrating through every nook of the landscape. The
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difference between the scene as it was presented to my untutored sight, and any single landscape by the great painters that I knew, suggested the doubt, when I had begun the subject, whether it was not one which a practical painter should avoid. This doubt was not removed when it grew increasingly evident that, spite of perseverance, the time remaining for the completion of my view would in no way suffice for its accomplishment.
A dear uncle and aunt who then lived at the Rectory Farm were my hosts in this pleasant place of retreat. Sometimes a cousin who was also a visitor, had a riding cob kept in the stables, and with this we made excursions, travelling ride and tie. Sometimes, with an extra mount for myself, we scampered over Banstead Downs to Epsom racecourse and to Ashted Park, and so I saw every variety of the country within miles of the weeping “eyne” of the valley.
It will easily be understood how the delights of this region afterwards became a frequent theme of enthusiastic appreciation beween Millais and myself.
The old church was condemned to demolition, and the Rev. Sir George Glynn, the Rector, engaged me to make a painting of it. While I was doing this, an Art Union prizewinner wrote offering me for my “Woodstock” picture the twenty pounds he had gained, and although I had asked double the amount, my uncle wisely persuaded me that a stranger's recognition of a first picture was worth the twenty missing pounds.
The picture had been well placed at the Academy, although under the line. While touching it on varnishing day, it was not left unnoticed by established artists; one, still young even to boyish eyes, stayed before it for several minutes, and I was afterwards told it was Frith who that year had an interesting illustration from The Spectator of Sir Roger de Coverley regarding the sign-board of the Saracen's Head, in which the painter, doing reverence to the Lord of the Manor, had painted him as an appropriate model for the ferocious Turk. When the exhibition opened many gracious words were said to me by my fellow-artists.
The money I received for this picture I determined to apply to the painting of a work nearer in spirit to my personal ambition; all previous subjects had of necessity been chosen from consideration of their small expenditure on models and accessories and their saleability in the end.
But while I was deciding on a subject, an event of the greatest importance occurred to me. One student—Telfer—with whom, wherever he wanders, be everlasting peace!—spoke to me of Ruskin's Modern Painters, and when he recognised my eagerness to learn of its teachings, all he could tell me, he gained permission from Cardinal Wiseman, to whom it belonged, to lend it to me for twenty-four hours.
Up to that day I had been compelled to think that the sober modern world tolerated art only as a sort of vagabondish cleverness, that in
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England it was a disgrace, charitably modified in very exceptional cases, and that if toleration of it lingered at all, it would not be in intellectual and elevated circles. The avowal reveals ignorance of the existence of the few dilettanti still remaining of the band which, at George III.'s initiative, had proclaimed a cult for Art, and of those younger men like Lord Egremont, who with unaffected enthusiasm cherished that instinct which in the survey of even prehistoric eras distinguishes man from the brute. To get through the book I sat up most of the night, and I had to return it ere I made acquaintance with a quota of the good there was in it. But of all its readers none could have felt more strongly than myself that it was written expressly for

 

The Conjurer (1844)

J. E. Millais]

THE CONJURER (1844)



him. When it had gone, the echo of its words stayed with me, and they gained a further value and meaning whenever my more solemn feelings were touched.
Shortly before this time Millais contracted a standing engagement with Ralph Thomas, the Chartist barrister, who lived in Stratford Place, and had turned picture-dealer, to paint for him, at a remuneration of one guinea per diem, every day or two a picture being finished for the employer. The young painter stayed to dinner, and during the meal the patron and his wife discussed the subject to be treated on the morrow. This was essentially of simple character, a mountebank showing his tricks, girls gathering fruit in an orchard, a shepherd driving sheep, a tired tramp having water given to him by children at a cottage door, and such-like. The preliminary business was to decide what models and objects would be needed in the morning, and these
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the employer undertook to procure. The enterprise bore good fruit to the painter in cultivating aptness and ready wit, in manipulation, and in the production of some remarkably clever pictures which brought ample profit to the dealer. Seeing this last essential advantage, Thomas's desire was to make the bargain a standing one. When Millais' attendance had been regular for some months, his parents began to question the prudence of its continuance, and urged the increasing importance of discontinuing these hurried pictures, which could not serve for exhibition, and would not extend their son's reputation. Millais at first defended his course on account of its lucrativeness, but finding this argument not accepted for long, he blurted out that he had signed a contract with Thomas to work at the rate arranged for a year or more, and that therefore he must go on with the engagement. The father laughed derisively, saying that Thomas was not such a bad lawyer as not to know that an engagement with a boy under age was not worth the paper it covered; and so the work ended.
One evening Millais, accompanying me to my studio, started talk at once with: “You know I always want you to speak to me candidly; well, I'll do the same with you. I've no fear, I can tell you. I know what you can do.”
I had grown dissatisfied with the principal figure in my picture of “Christ and the Two Maries” as it was painted at first; the canvas had had to be enlarged, and when it came back from the colourman's I found, now that the new design for this figure was ready, still more space was needed; so that, having spent all my money, and not seeing myself within reach of the picture's completion, I was disposed to be down-hearted. Whether to give it up for the time and begin another subject for the next exhibition was a question; but Millais gave me such hearty encouragement as to the character of the work that I was saved from the impatient conclusion tempting me that whatever I did was sure to fail. Relieved in mind on this point, I explained to him the system of painting without dead colouring, which I had more than ever before been following in the progress of this work. I maintained that at least for my particular aims it seemed the most suitable practice, and that soon I hoped to be able to trust to it without any retouching. While the autumn still ingered it was important to make studies of palm-trees to be introduced into this picture. Early one morning I went to Kew Gardens and worked industriously; seeing my enthusiasm, the curator in the evening considerately offered me a branch of about twelve feet in length lopped from the tree. My good fellow-student, James Key, was with me, and cheerfully made light of any difficulty in carrying it by undertaking to walk behind holding the tip while I carried the stem over my shoulder. We walked thus to Turnham Green in the increasing dusk, when suddenly my friend stopped, declaring that some mysteriously disagreeable object had fallen inside the collar of his coat; it was as large as a hand, and seemed to crawl
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cold and dry. Exmaining into the mystery with care, I eventually fished out a dead bat which had been carried unnoticed thus far in the swaying branches.
After talking to Millais of Keats, I one day took occasion to show him my deisgn for “ The Eve of St. Agnes,” representing the escape

 

Christ and the Two Maries (1847)

W. H. H.]

CHRIST AND THE TWO MARIES (1847) ( Unfinished. The figure of

Christ was completed towards the end of the nineteenth century .)



of Porphyro and Madeleine, and he confirmed me in the intention of painting this subject.
After this visit to my studio we became unreserved friends, and the father and mother treated me with great cordiality in my frequent visits to their house. He was now a tall youth; his bronze-coloured locks stood up, twisting and curling so thickly that the parting itself was lost; he dressed with exact conventionality so as to avoid in any
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degree courting attention as a genius. Gentle and affectionate as he was to his parents, he showed an increasing independence of judgement, so that I dismissed the thought of considering their prejudices when talking to the son on matters of vital interest to our art. 1
My first attempt to communicate to Millais my enthusiasm for Keats was for the moment a ludicrous failure. Going to his studio, I took the volume of Isabella from my pocket, and asking him to sit down and listen, read some favourite stanzas. Either from the solemnity of the verses, or perhaps because I had unknowingly contracted a droning delivery, after half-a-dozen verses he burst out with, “It's like a parson!”
Although perhaps a little nettled, I laughed. “I'll lend you the volumes, and you'll find the poems will bear a wonderful deal of spoiling. The Eve of St. Agnes is brimful of beauties that will soon enchant you, although The Pot of Basil is stronger, and I fancy written later. The subject that I have begun to paint is from the last stanza.”
He had now undertaken his picture of “Cymon and Iphigenia,” and during its early stage he made a change in the treatment of his family, which required persistent strength of will to carry through.
When on one of my visits to Gower Street as soon as the street door was opened to me, there was no time to make an inquiry before the parlour door suddenly opened and revealed the mother, who was full of fire, and eagerly conjured me to listen.
“Johnnie is behaving abominably,” she said. “I want you, Hunt, to hear; you would not believe it; he shuts us out of the studio altogether; he is there now all alone. For twelve days now neither his father nor I have been allowed to enter the room. I appeal to you; is that the way to treat parents? He cannot expect to prosper; can he, now? I hope you will tell him so. It is quite unnatural. Isn't it disgraceful?”
Before the dear lady had got thus far I saw the studio door at the end of the passage open, and Johnnie inquired whether it was not Hunt. Recognising me, he cut short the argument by calling out, “Don't mind what they say, but come here.”
And so, making the best assurance I could that they would find that there was some important reason for the suddenly adopted course, I joined the provoker of this discontent.
As he shut the door he said, “I'm sorry for my dear old mother, but the time has come when I can't have my studio made into the general sitting-room, and there's no way of making the change gradually. It must be done abruptly and firmly. Now how are you getting
Transcribed Footnote (page 56):

1 With regard to conversations with Millais, I cannot pretend to have recorded every exact word. But the illustrations and criticisms used, and the names of the works of art cited, are as fresh in my memory as if they had been spoken only yesterday, and therefore a revival of the conversatonal form of the interview seems to me the best way in which to convey an idea of what passed, and in our boyish talk I am sure we were characteristically profuse.

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on? You're not giving up the ‘Christ and the Two Maries,’ are you?”
“Not, I hope, finally,” I said; “but you see I'm obliged to paint portraits to get money. I shall spend less on ‘ The Eve of St. Agnes ’; I can do much of it by lamplight, and I think it is more likely to sell. We are now in the middle of February, I began it on the 6th, and I could not hope to do both. I must finish ‘The Resurrection Meeting’ another year.”
We then talked about his own work. He had committed himself to a great undertaking, but he had already drawn in the whole composition and had painted in a few of the heads very much as they were finally left. They had been painted almost or entirely at once, and to my eager eyes they seemed to have gained an immaculate freshness and precision and a nervous vitality which put them on a higher footing than his previous work. Suddenly he again reverted to the picture of mine he had last seen, inquiring what it was that prevented me from going on with it. If doubtful about the treatment of our Lord, why not look, for example, at some of the old Masters to be found in the Print Room?
I replied: “My dear fellow, my difficulties arise from whims in my own mind, which may be debatable, as to the whole treatment of the Saviour's figure, for when one phase of the question seems settled, another as formidable presents itself. My four years in the City deprived me of many opportunities for art, but I had time for reading and reflecting, through which notions have grown in my head which I find it not easy to resolve. Some of my cogitations may lead me to see lions in the path which are only phantoms, but until I have faced them I can't be satisfied; I have investigated current theories both within art and outside it, and have found many of them altogether unacceptable. What, you ask, are my scruples? Well, they are nothing less than irreverent, heretical, and revolutionary”—my two years' seniority gave me courage to reveal what was at the bottom of my heart at the time. “When art has arrived at facile proficiency of execution, a spirit of easy satisfaction takes possession of its masters, encouraging them to regard it with the paralysing content of the lotus-eaters; it has in their eyes become perfect, and they live in its realm of settled law; under this miasma no young man has the faintest chance of developing his art into living power, unless he investigates the dogmas of his elders with critical mind, and dares to face the idea of revolt from their authority. The question arises whether we are not in such a position now? Of course, we have got some deucedly gifted masters, and I love many of the old boys, and know they could teach me much; but I think they suffer from the fact that the English School began the last century without the discipline of exact manipulation. Sir Joshua Reynolds thought it expedient to take the Italian School at its proudest climax as a starting-point for English art; he
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himself had already gone through patient training which had made him a passionate lover of human nature; he had gathered on the way an inexhaustible store of riches, and was so impatient to make use of his treasures that the parts of a picture which gave him no scope for generous expenditure were of little interest to him. Under his reign came into vogue drooping branches of brown trees over a night-like sky, or a column with a curtain unnaturally arranged, as a background to a day-lit portrait; his feeble followers imitate this arrangement, so that there are few rooms in an exhibition in which we can't count twenty or thirty of the kind. Is it then premature to demand that the backgrounds of pictures should be representative of nature as well as their more important portions? Consider how disregard of this requirement affected Sir Joshua's ambitious compositions. Look at his ‘Holy Family,’ for example: the child is but a reminiscence of Coreggio's Cupid in ‘Venus and Mercury.’ His ‘Infant Hercules’ is equally dreary. The rules of art which he loved so much to lay down were no fetters to him when he had a subject like ‘The Three Graces’ to deal with, and when his unbounded love of human nature was appealed to, then his affection for Ludovico Caracci and the Bolognese School became light in the balance; his approval of togas 1 went for nothing when a general stood before him in red coat with gold facings; and the playful fancies of children suggested to him vivacious fascination such as no painter ever before had noted. His lectures were admirably adapted to encourage students to make a complete and reverential survey of what art had done in the past, for there was a danger that English painters would follow the course which Morland soon after took, of treating common subjects with only an indirect knowledge of the perfection which art had reached in the hands of the old Masters. Probably Wilkie owed his more refined course to Sir Joshua's teaching, but Reynolds was not then in sight of the opposite danger of conventionalism which has since affected the healthy study of nature; the last fifty years, however, have proved that his teaching was interpreted as encouragement to unoriginality of treatment, and neglect of that delicate rendering of nature, which had led previous Schools to greatness. The English School began on the top of the wave, and consequently ever since it has been sinking into the hollow. The independent genius of the first President could not be transmitted, but his binding rules have been handed on. I feel sure it is important to question fashion and dogma: every School that reached exalted heights in art began with humility and precision. The British School skipped the training that led to the making of Michael Angelo. Children should begin as children, and wait for years to bring them to maturity.”
“I quite agree with what you say; for as to Reynolds,” replied Millais, “he would think nothing of making the stem of a rose as big
Transcribed Footnote (page 58):

1 Reynolds urged Benjamin West, when painting “The Death of General Wolfe,” to represent him in a toga as appropriate.

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as the butt-end of a fishing-rod. 1 You'll see I intend to turn over a new leaf; I have finished these heads more than any I ever did. Last year it was the rage to talk about ‘Collinson's finish’ in his ‘Charity Boy’: I'll show 'em that that wasn't finish at all.”
I added: “With form so lacking in nervousness as his, finish of detail is wasted labour. But about the question of precedent. I would say that the course of previous generations of artists which led to excellence cannot be too studiously followed by us, but their treatment of subjects, perfect as they were for their time, should not be repeated. If we do only what they did so perfectly, I don't see much good in our work. The language they used was then a living one, now it is dead: though their work has in it humanly and artistically such marvellous perfection that for us to repeat their treatment of sacred or historic subjects is mere affectation. In my picture of the risen Christ, for instance, the old painters would have placed a flag in His hand to represent His victory over Death; their public had been taught that this symbol was a part of the alphabet of their faith; they accepted it, as they received all the legends painted at the order of the Church. Many of these were poetic and affecting; but with the New Testament in our hands we have new suggestions to make. If I were to put a flag with a cross on it in Christ's hand, the art-galvanising revivalists might be pleased, but unaffected people would regard the work as lacking living interest for them. I have been trying for some treatment that might make them see this Christ with something of the surprise that the Maries themselves felt on meeting Him as One who has come out of the grave, but I must for every reason put it by for the present. In the meanwhile, the story in Keats' Eve of St. Agnes illustrates the sacredness of honest repsonsible love and the weakness of proud intemperance, and I may practise my new principles to some degree on that subject.”
I blundered through this argument, not without many ejaculations from my companion; but here, laughing, I turned upon him with— “You see what a dangerous rebel I am, but you are every bit as bad as myself! Here are you painting a poetic subject in which you know all authorities would insist upon conventional treatment, and you cannot pretend that this work of yours is academic. If Howard or Frost undertook the subject, you know perfectly well that while they would certainly have made some of the nymphs fair, and some dark to give contrast, every care would be taken that the nymphs should rather be waxen effigies than living creatures. It would be in their several manners the same with Mulready, Eastlake, Maclise; such conventionalism is surely the sign of a declining Art, yet all the cognoscenti say, ‘How classically refined, how entirely this conception
Transcribed Footnote (page 59):

1 I never knew what particular picture he had in his mind; certainly in later years he dwelt enthusiastically upon the excellences of the great portrait painter; the self-sufficiency of youth must be remembered in the case of us both.

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belongs to the world of imagination and perfection.’ You've made living persons, not tinted effigies. Oh, that'll never do! it is too revolutionary.”
“I know,” he said, half apologetically; “but the more attentively I look at Nature the more I detect in it unexpected delights: it's so infinitely better than anything I could compose, that I can't help following it whatever the consequences may be.”
“Well, neither of us is sophisticated enough to appreciate the system in vogue, and not to feel that it ends in an insufferable mannerism and sameness of feature that soon pall upon the senses beyond toleration. All great artists have founded their beauty upon selection, and not upon the falsifying of Nature,” said I. “What gave the charm

 

The “Blind Fiddler”

David Wilkie]

THE “BLIND FIDDLER”



to Wilson's works was his departure from the examples of the classical painters whose general manner he affected. Wilkie, in his ‘Blind Man's Buff,’ found no type of its sweet humour and grace in the Dutch masters; and Turner's excellence had no type of its enchantment in Claude or any other builder-up of pictorial scenery. Flaxman and Stothard are always most able in those works in which their own direct reading of Nature overpowers their obedience to previous example, and so it is with the best painters of our day. For young artists to remain ignorant of the course of their predecessors would be boorish folly, or knowing it, to despise the examples set by great men would be presumption, courting defeat, but you and I by practical study know much of the great works of antiquity and of the principles represented in them. Let us go on a bold track; some one must do this soon, why should not we do it together? We will go carefully and not without the teaching
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of our fathers: it is simply fuller Nature we want. Revivalism, whether it be of classicalism or of mediævalism, is a seeking after dry bones. Read, my dear fellow, the address of Oceanus in Keats' Hyperion, and you will see how the course of life on creation's lines is inevitably progressive, and only under debasing influence retrogressive. Nothing but fatal deterioration can come from servilely emulating the past, no matter how admirable the original. We have, as an example of trammels, the law that all figures in a picture should have their places on a ground-line describing a letter S—the authorities for convention finding this law in Raphael's works. I recognise it in many of his compositions but not in all. 1 The best that can be said for the edict is, that it varies the two sides of a composition, one being hollow and in most cases rich in shadow, while on the opposite side of the picture the objects form a protruding mass open to the light. Experiments with this canon are quite legitimate—you have used it in your ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ and I in my new picture—but I am convinced that the universal use of it is paralysing, why should the several parts of the composition be always apexed in pyramids? Why should the highest light be always on the principal figure? Why make one corner of the picture always in shade? For what reason is the sky in a daylight picture made as black as night? And then about colour, why should the gradation go from the principal white, through yellow to pink and red, and so on to stronger colours? With all this subserviency to early examples, when the turn of violet comes, why does the courage of the modern imitator fail? If you notice, a clean purple is scarcely ever given in these days, and pure green is as much ignored. But while our leaders profess submission to ancient authority, they don't dare to emulate the courageous independence of the old Masters, as in Raphael's audacity in the ‘Beautiful Gate,’ where he cuts the composition into three equal parts.”
Millais continued his rattling commentary as I went on, often endorsing the convictions I hazarded, and so encouraging me to be bolder, and many works ancient and modern were summoned to justify our argument.
In the midst of our earnest talk a timid knock came at the door. “Who's there?” asked my companion.
“I have brought you the tea myself,” said the mother. I was hurrying forward, when Millais stopped me with his hand, and a silent shake of the head.
“I really can't let you in, mamma,” he returned; “please put the tray down at the door, and I'll take it in myself.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 61):

1 Wilkie's “Blind Fiddler” is chosen as an excellent example of the principles enforced by academic rules; it will enable the attentive reader to trace the serpentine line as the ground plan of the arrangement of figures and salient accessories, and also the pyramidal forms of groups in the composition. As to the first and secondary lights and their relation to the tertiary lights and deepest darks, and also the cutting off of a corner by shadow, it is also edifying.

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I spoke then. “We are debating matters, Mrs. Millais, that would really be very dull to all but artists up to their necks in paint, and our talk is the deepest treason against our betters.”
She knocked again. “I call on you, Hunt, as a witness of this bad behaviour to his mother.”
Millais' only apology was, “You'll see in time how right I am;” and when his mother left he waited a minute ere he went for our tea.
We resumed our talk, reverting to the difference between vigorous and moribund art. I continued: “I had great delight in skimming over a book, Modern Painters, by a writer calling himself an Oxford Graduate; it was lent to me only for a few hours, but, by Jove! passages in it made my heart thrill. He feels the power and responsibility of Art more than any author I have ever read. He describes pictures of the Venetian School in such a manner that you see them with your inner sight, and you feel that the men who did them had been appointed by God, like old prophets, to bear a sacred message, and that they delivered themselves like Elijah of old. They seemed mighty enough to overthrow any vanity of the day. He glories most in Tintoretto, and some of a series he describes, treating of the life of the Virgin, and others illustrating the history of the Saviour, make one see the painter a sublime Hogarth. The Crucifixion is given with redoubled dramatic penetration, and he dwells upon the accumulated notes of meaning in the design, till you shudder at the darkness around you. I wish I could quote the passage. I'll tell you more of the book some day. The ‘Oxford Graduate’ reverses the judgment of Sir Joshua, for he places the Venetian in the highest rank, and disdains the Caracci and the entire Bolognese School, which until he spoke had never been quesitoned for its superiority. Life is not long enough to drivel through a bad fashion and begin again. The determination to save ourselves and Art must be made now we are young. I feel that is the only hope, at least for me. One's thoughts must stir before the hands can do. With my picture from The Eve of St. Agnes I am limited to night effect, but I purpose after this to paint an out-of-door picture, with a foreground and background, abjuring altogether brown foliage, smoky clouds, and dark corners, painting the whole out of doors, direct on the canvas itself, with every detail, and with the sunlight brightness of the day itself. Should the system in any point prove to be wrong, well! I shall know I have made a mistake and shall alter my course.”
In the midst of my talk Millais continually expressed eagerness to get away altogether from the conventions we denounced, and adduced examples of what he agreed were absurdities, declaring that often he had wondered whether something very interesting could not be done in definance of them. “You shall see in my next picture if I don't paint something much better than ‘Cymon and Iphigenia’; it is too late now to treat this more naturally; indeed I have misgivings whether there is time to finish it even as it is begun.”
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We had had our talk out for the night. He was putting things away, and collecting his brushes and otherwise making signs of departure. I held out my hand to say “Good-bye. ”
“Oh no! ” he said, “you must come in and see the old people,” which brought to my mind the prospect of a terrible quarter of an hour.
The parlour comes to my sight now. Over the fireplace was the oval portrait of Johnnie, painted when he was thirteen by Phillip—it had been done in return for sittings given for the head of Bruce in a picture representing that hero—below this portrait on either side were the small likenesses of the father and mother by their son; above the entrance door was Millais' admirable chalk-drawing of the Apollo's head. The mother sat in an armchair near the window and the father on the other side of the fire.
Johnnie burst into the sitting-room; I followed. “Now we've come to have a nice time with you, mamma and papa.”
“We don't wish, ” said the mother, “to tax your precious time at all; we have our own occupations to divert us and engage our attention,” and the crochet needles were most intently plied.
“Hoity-toity, what's all this? Put down your worsted work at once. I'm going to play backgammon with you directly;” and he straightway fetched the board from its corner and laid in on the table.
“You know, Hunt, how shamefully he has been behaving, and I appeal to you to say whether it is not barefacedness to come in and treat us as though nothing had occurred,” appealed the mother.
The us was chosen because at the time Johnnie had gone to his father with the guitar, placing it in his hand, and remarking, as he put his arms round the paternal shoulders: “Now, as we are too busy in the day to see one another, it's more jolly that we should do so after work, so just you be a dear old papa, and now prove to Hunt what a splendid musician you are. Hunt used to practise the violin once, but his family didn't like it, and he could not be annoying them in music and painting too, so he gave up his fiddling, but he's very fond of music. You play that exquisite air out of Rigoletto.” And then turning to me he added, “There's no one in England has such an exact touch as he has;” while to him he railingly said, “You want pressing like a shy young lady.”
His father was, however, already tuning the strings, when the son went over to the still irreconcilable mother, took her needles away, kissed her, and wheeled her in the chair round to the table where the opened chess-board was arranged awaiting her. The father had already commenced the air, which at my solicitation he repeated, and afterwards played “The Harmonious Blacksmith.“ The radiant faces of both parents gradually witnessed to their content, and while the son beat time to the music, he paid no less attention to the game with the mother.
After an hour of this renewed good understanding I left, without
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fear that the course my friend was taking would diminish the mutual affection of the father, mother, and son.
Since I had become a student in the Life School, which was held only in the evening, I had felt justified in giving more of my daylight to original work at home, but at the appointed hour I hurried away to the little “pepper-box” at the top of the building in Trafalgar Square.
It was here that the gods were seen in actual flesh. One evening in the past summer, running up the spiral staircase three steps at a time to secure my place before the model posed, I was brought to sudden sobriety of pace by overtaking Etty, that veteran master of colour in his generation, who was labouring to reach the top. It was with a

 

Etty in the Life School

W. H. H.]

ETTY IN THE LIFE SCHOOL



feeling of shame that I found I had disturbed his toilsome climbing. I was too late to retreat, for he turned and saw me. I made my gentlest salutation to the bearer of the burden of life, the more reverently, seeing that his infirmity did not quench his ardent habitual effort. He could scarcely speak, but stood aside and made signs for me to pass. I apologised, with assurance that I would follow. Beckoning me close to him he said, as he put his hand upon my shoulder: “Go. I insist! Your time is more precious than mine.” I felt sure that he wished me to take him at his word, accordingly I obeyed his directions.
He painted on a sized but unprimed mill-board; he made the outline hastily with charcoal, dusted this out slightly, then took out his prepared palette and fastened it to the left-hand end of his board. His colours were set in order from white through reds, browns, blues, and greens to black. He began using them by rubbing in the darks with
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umber and rich browns, and then painted on the general lights in masses with accentuated prominences of pure white, tempering this gradually from patches of blanched reds and lakes kept in squares of different strengths on his prepared palette. At this stage, he made the half tints by leaving the ground more or less to show through the scumblings. After each touch his weighty head overbalanced itself to right and left, while he drew himself back for a more distant glance. At every fresh sally he recommenced by englarging the swoop of his brush on the palette. The next evening he began to clear away the excess of dried and undried paint with cuttle-fish, and circled away again with colours differing only by the inclusion of yellows and the more delicate lakes. In his after layers he never seemed to give an entire equivalent for the enchantments of his first indications of effect.
His choice of paints was not beneficial as an example to the young, for while at first he seemed to have brought certain vivid pigments for the background only, they all came gradually into the vortex of his sweeping hand, and before he had painted half-an-hour, emerald green and Prussian blue often were made to do service in flesh. He was intoxicated with the delight of painting, and when, after a careful reloading of his brush, he drove the tool upwards in frequent bouts before his half-closed eyes, I don't think that, had he been asked suddenly, he could have told his name.
We did not always have as instructors the members whose deserved renown made them coveted teachers, but in midsummer on one occasion—regarded as a fortunate one by all the students—Mr. Mulready was the visitor. It seemed he treated me with more than average favour, and perhaps it was reliance upon this apparent partiality that led me one evening, when the class had broken up, to follow him down the steps. Hearing me, he halted and turned round. I apologised for my intrusion by explaining that I sought information which would enable me to acquit myself of a duty delayed for some years. I then referred to Mr. Varley's loan of a crayon drawing, which he called a Rembrandt. While I spoke I could not but observe the visitor's features darkly clouding over, but I perservered, suspecting no evil. Suddenly he compelled a pause, and burst out with, “And how dare you, sir, assume that this affects me in any way?”
“May I explain, sir,” I went on, “that Mr. Varley once spoke of being in some manner a connection of yours; remembering this, I thought you might direct me how to find his son, to whom I might return the drawing.” Here the annoyance to which I was unconsciously subjecting Mr. Mulready was beyond toleration.
“I am astounded at your temerity, sir, in addressing me on such a matter!” he exclaimed. “He had no right to make the statement you speak of, and you, sir, have no excuse for taxing my attention with it.”
I stammered out, “I fear, sir, that I have made some great mistake, but pray believe me that I had no idea I should vex you.”
Sig. VOL. I. F
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“You have, sir, made a great mistake, a very great mistake indeed, one that I cannot at all understand.” And so he turned and went down the steps, still storming as he went, while I stood dumbfoundered. The next night, when he came his round, I stood up, bowing respectfully as I offered him my place at the drawing, but he only glared at me with his face set like a mask, saying, as he went round me, “Oh, it's you, is it?” I had most innocently made him my declared enemy. Yet I heard that he always inquired as to what I was doing at home, adding, “Ah! you'll see, he will do something one day.”
Some years later I heard what accounted for his ill-humour. He had married at seventeen a sister of John Varley of the same age; it proved to be a most unhappy union, and before the prime of life they had separated for ever, each thinking the other to blame, so that intimates refrained from mentioning the relationship. He probably assumed that I ought to have known of this.
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CHAPTER V

1847-8
  • Persist if thou wouldst teach thine ends,
  • For failures oft are but advising friends.
  • Every failure is a step advanced
  • To him who will consider how it chanced.
George Meredith.

Whenever you have to do a favour, do not, as some are tempted to do, dwell upon the greatness of the sacrifice you make; but on receiving a kindness do not omit to recognise your benefactor's generosity.—Hints on Etiquette by a Lady of Quality (1840).

At twenty, one may not only be happy in a garret, but all the opportunities of life come more richly and the hours for effort last longer than in later days. Backward as I was with my intended contribution to the academy of “ The Eve of St. Agnes ,” I saw no reason at first to give up my attendance at the evening Life School. Coming home at nine, I worked on my canvas by the light of a lamp.
I was still pinched both for want of time and money, and I had to sacrifice some days in each week to paint portraits.
A visitor was brought occasionally to my studio by a friend; who sat by the fire without giving any sign that he cared for my work. His discourse was of country places, of old churches, of brasses, monuments, and other antiquarian matters of real interest to me. Yet it seemed unaccountable that he should find pleasure in coming to warm and air his memory at my glow-worm of a hearth; but blind as his choice seemed, it was impelled by kind Fate, as the sequel in time showed. The date for sending in works came alarmingly near. Millais had progressed more bravely than I, but he had yet more to do, and we agreed that neither of us could finish without working through the last nights. For company's sake, he invited me to bring my picture to his studio; his parents also urged this, and so we worked, encouraging one another hour by hour. Becoming fatigued, he suddenly, with boyish whim, conceived a prejudice against the task of painting some drapery about the figures which had still to be done, and entreated me to relieve him. “Do, like a dear fellow, work out this drapery for me; you shan't lose time, for I'll do one of the heads of your revellers for you.” His father was called in as his model, and I can to this day distinguish the part he did for me, adapting his handling to my manipulation by precise touch, while I did a part of the drapery of the Iphigenia for him.
When all were sleeping we were steadily working. Occasionally
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we refreshed ourselves with coffee; it was this, perhaps, which gave us extra energy for talk of the ideals we were raising up for ourselves, and about coeval art.
There was, perhaps, much boyish folly in our verdicts upon the old art, and in our aspirations for the new, but we wrought out the reason for each question, intending that it should be tried in the fire. We revealed all our innermost thoughts to each other, and used our conclusions to form ardent resolves for the future. It is on quiet and confidential occasions such as this that burning convictions are tested and refined, and ours at this time were beaten upon the anvil of what experience we had already had.
Our pictures were forwarded to the Academy, literally at the eleventh hour of the night, and very glad each of us was to go to his long-neglected bed.
Often when standing before them we had talked over Raphael's cartoons; at this period we again reviewed our judgment of these noble designs. We did so fearlessly, but even when most daring we never forgot their claim to be honoured. We condemned “The Transfiguration” for its grandiose disregard of the simplicity of truth, the pompous posturing of the Apostles, and the unspiritual attitudinising of the Saviour. Treating of the strained and meaningless action of the epileptic, I quoted the arguments of Sir Charles Bell, saying, “You must read them for yourself.” 1 In our final estimation this picture was a signal step in
Transcribed Footnote (page 68):

1 “Two of our greatest painters, Raphael and Domenichino, have painted demoniacal boys. In the convent of Grotto Ferraba, in the neighbourhood of Rome, Domenichino has represented St. Nilus in the act of relieving a lad possessed. The Saint, an old man, is on his knees in prayer; the lad is raised and held up by an aged man, the mother with a child is waiting the consummation of the miracle. Convulsions have seized the lad; he is rigidly bent back, the lower limbs spasmodically extended so that only his toes rest on the ground; the eyes are distorted; the pupils turned up under the eyelids. This would be the position of Opisthotonos, were not the hands spread abroad, the palms and fingers open, and the jaw fallen. Had the representation been perfectly true to nature, the jaws would have been clenched and the teeth grinding. But then the miracle could not have been represented, for one, under the direction of the Saint, has the finger of his left hand in the boy's mouth, and the other holds a vessel of oil with which the tongue is to be touched, and the grandeur of the old man makes this one of the most admired paintings in Italy.

“I have here given a sketch of the true Opisthotonos, where it is seen that all the muscles are rigidly contracted, the more powerful flexors prevailing over the extensors. Were the painter to represent every circumstance faithfully, the effect might be too painful, and something must be left to the taste and imagination. The original sketch is in the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. I took it from soldiers wounded in the head at the battle of Corunna. Three men were similarly hurt, and in short successive intervals similarly affected, so that the character could not be mistaken.

“In the same painter's great picture of ‘The Transfiguration’ in the Vatican there is a lad possessed, and in convulsions. I hope I am not insensible to the beauties of that picture, nor presumptuous in saying that the figure is not natural. A physician would conclude that this youth was feigning. He is, I presume, convulsed; he is stiffened with contractions and his eyes are turned in their sockets. But no child was ever so affected. In real convulsions the extensor muscles yield to the more powerful contractions of the flexor muscles; whereas, in the picture, the lad extends his arms, and the fingers of the left hand are stretched unnaturally backwards. Nor do the lower extremities correspond with truth; he stands firm; the eyes are not natural; they should have been turned more inwards, as looking into the head, and partially buried under the forehead. The mouth, too, is open, which is quite at variance with the general condition, and without the apology which Domenichino had. The muscles of the arms are exaggerated to a degree which Michael Angelo never attempted; and still it is the extensors and supinators, and not the flexors, which are thus prominent.”—Bell's Anatomy of Expression.

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the decadence of Italian art. When we had advanced this opinion to other students, they as a reductio ad absurdum had said, “Then you are Pre-Raphaelite.” Referring to this as we worked side by side, Millais and I laughingly agreed that the designation must be accepted.
The first use which Millais and I made of our release from the pressure of work, was on a succeeding morning to accompany the Chartist procession; it marched from Russell Square across Blackfriars Bridge to Kennington Common; we did not venture onto the grass with the agitators, but, standing up on the cross rails outside the enclosure, we could see the gesticulations of the orators as they came forward on the van drawn up in the centre of the green. When the address was  

Drawing for Cyclographic Club

W. H. H.]

DRAWING FOR THE CYCLOGRAPHIC CLUB

  • And still these two were postured motionless
  • Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern.
  • The while in tears
  • She touched her fair large forehead to the ground,
  • Just where her falling hair might be outspread
  • The soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.— Hyperion.



beginning to evoke tumultuous cheers, a solitary policeman, square and tall, appeared from the northern corner, walked through the dense artisan crowd to the foremost stand, and beckoned to Fergus O'Connor to return with him to the Superintendent of Police, under assurance of non-detention. I felt respect for both men and for the crowd as the speaker quietly descended, and a lane was made by the thousands present, while the two walked over the common as staidly as though they alone were on the ground. The Chartist champion was detained only a few minutes. He came back by himself, knowing that the roofs of the neighbouring houses were manned with riflemen and that concealed measures had been taken to quell any outbreak of disturbance.
On re-ascending the van, he advised the law-abiding people to disperse, which they did without delay. We essayed to return by the
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road we had come, but at Blackfriars Bridge a cordon of police barred further passage. We turned towards Bankside. Here at the entrance a set of stalwart roughs armed with bludgeons were determined to have their fight, and we heard, as we were about to pass, the sound of bloody strife. Who that has heard such even in its mildest form can forget the hurtle? We felt the temptation to see the issue, and Millais could scarcely resist pressing forward, but I knew how in a moment all present might be involved in a fatal penalty. I had promised to keep him out of wanton danger, but it was not without urgent persuasion that I could get him away. We went along, accompanied by but few of the crowd, till we reached London Bridge; passing this we arrived at the Bank of England and the Mansion House, crested with sand-bags to mask the  

“Ruth and the Reapers”

W. H. H.]

“RUTH AND THE REAPERS”

“And she sat among the reapers, and he reached her parched corn so she did not eat.”



soldiery. We succeeded on our round in gaining a thorough knowledge of the state of affairs. Returning by way of Holborn, the sombre sky opened its silent artillery on us with spots of rain as large as grape shot, and cleared the streets of agitators, mischief-makers, and idlers alike. With the last we scampered home as swiftly as any of the crowd.
Neither of us lost time. Millais, with his ready power of drawing, was impatient to produce some new composition. We were each of us members of the Cyclographic Club; according to the rules, a design had to be furnished about once every month, together with a criticism upon the drawings of other members; this criticism was taken out by the artist with his drawing when the portfolio came back for a further contribution. For some reason I never went to any meetings.
William Rossetti, however, speaks of a meeting which he attended with his brother. I know that at about this date, when the portfolio
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was opened at Millais' house, some designs of D. G. Rossetti's attracted our regard as an exception to the general level of the contributions, which could not be considered high in character; indeed, the Club was already in danger of splitting up, owing to the glaring incompetence of about three-quarters of its members, and the unrestrained ridicule of the remainder.
Millais had now become as ardent an admirer of Keats as myself, and we soon resolved to begin a series of illustrations in slightly shaded outline; we worked these with a fine brush in line in preference to a pen for the sake of greater freedom. The drawings were to be preparations  

The Pilgrim's Return

W. H. H.]

THE PILGRIM's RETURN



for copperplate etchings in illustration of the magnificent poem of Isabella. Before I could attend to such work, I had to replenish my empty purse by portrait painting of the dullest kind; and the design for Rienzi, which I had determined upon as the subject of my next picture being more urgent than the etching designs, I devoted the first hours I could steal, to its composition and to making an independent sketch in oil of its colour scheme. While I had made thus but scant progress with my Keats outline, Millais had completed his. We could not apply ourselves to finishing the whole Keats series until we could hope to tempt a publisher to co-operate with us.
Living near the British Museum, I went there whenever I could; I was now advanced enough to make a riper use of it than when I
page: 72
began to draw there; the rooms were then thronged with a band of youths so warmly intimate, that they seemed destined to be companions for life; but already their haunts knew them no more, and their places were taken by staring strangers.
When, after the lapse of fifty years, I walk again among the unchangeable masterpieces of antiquity, the old familiar faces of my fellow-students are close around me. I see them still with their imagined futures unopened; and then a second scroll unrolls with those of them whom I have known in later days, in which the circumstances of each life appear, and the younger and the older man seem strangers to one another.
One fellow-pupil in Rogers' studio was a youth, a year or two my senior; he had large prominent eyes, full features, swarthy complexion, and was of Semitic type. He talked proudly of his privileges behind the scenes of theatres with a somewhat precocious manliness. His name has since become known as the author of The Dead Heart. I met him later, and found him then ambitious of literary as well as artistic fame; yet I did not at that time see signs of that publicity which Watts Phillips, as a playwright, was to achieve after his death. At the Museum there was one tall, handsome youth, with full yellow hair and clear blue eyes who could never be forgotten; he drew with great earnestness, capacity, and modesty. His name was Tom Muloch; and frequently his sister Dinah, the authoress of John Halifax, would sit by his side. He died quite young.
When the Academy Hanging Committee had completed their work I was surprised and distresed to learn that Millais' painting of “Cymon and Iphigenia” had not been placed. He was exceedingly brave about the disappointment, and—as was characteristic with him throughout life on encountering any check to success—he was reticent on the subject, and now he hid the picture away; my “ Eve of St. Agnes,” being not nearly so large as Millais' picture, had more easily met with better fortune. It was hung in a good light, as was proved on the touching-up morning by the amount of attention which fellow-exhibitors bestowed upon it.
On the opening day of the Royal Academy Rossetti came up to me, repeating his praise, and declaring that my picture of “ The Eve of St. Agnes” was the best in the collection. Probably the fact that the subject was taken from Keats made him the more unrestrained, for I think no one had ever before painted a subject from this little-known poet. 1 I had found my mill-board volumes of Keats, on a bookseller's stall labelled, “this lot 4 d.” 2
Rossetti proposed to come and see me; before this I had been only on nodding terms with him in the schools, to which he came but rarely
Transcribed Footnote (page 72):

1 G. F. Watts had quoted some lines of Keats to his exquisite figure of “Echo.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 72):

2 In the Contemporary Review I mentioned that the volume had been lost by lending. A hitherto unknown friend, on reading this statement, most generously made me the possessor of a daintily bound volume in place of my original copy.

page: 73
 

Illustration to “Lorenzo and Isabella

  • “HE KNEW WHOSE GENTLE HAND WAS AT THE LATCH
  • BEFORE THE DOOR HAD GIVEN HER TO HIS EYES”
— KEATS.



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and irregularly. He had always attracted there a following of clamorous students, who, like Millais' throng, were rewarded with original sketches. Rossetti's subjects were of a different class from Millais', of knights rescuing ladies, of lovers in mediæval dress, illustrating stirring incidents of romantic poets; 1 in manner they resembled Gilbert's book designs. His flock of impatient petitioners had always barred me from approaching him. Once indeed I had found him alone, perched on some steps stretched across my path, drawing in his sketch-book a single figure from the gates of Ghiberti. I had recently been attentively drawing some of the groups for study of their expression and arrangement, and I told Rossetti then how eloquent the Keeper had been in his comments on seeing me at work from the group of “The Finding of the Cup in Benjamin's Sack,” saying that Ghiberti's principles of composition were in advance of his time in their variety of groupings, and that his great successors had all profoundly profited by these examples. As an instance he had pointed out how Raphael, in the cartoon of “The Charge to St. Peter,” had put a little quirk of drapery projecting on the right to break the vertical line of the figure, just as Ghiberti had here introduced the ass with projecting pannier for the same purpose. The Keeper for such reasons regretted that the gates were not more often studied by young painters. Thus chatting and dilating on these quattrocento epochal masterpieces and their fascinating merits gave us subject for a few minutes' talk; but it was our common enthusiasm for Keats which brought us into intimate relation.
A few days more, and Rossetti was in my studio. I showed him all my pictures and studies, even those I had put aside for the nonce, which, at the stage I had entered upon of advance by leaps and bounds, often involved final abandonment; for in youth a month, and even a day in some cases, is an age in which, for all inventive purposes, the past acts as a sepulchre to its idea. My last designs and experiments I rejoiced to display before a man of his poetic instinct; and it was pleasant to hear him repeat my propositions and theories in his own richer phrase. I showed him my new picture of “ Rienzi,” in which I was putting aside all regard for conventional dogma, and striving by fresh search after Nature to get new life into each feature of my design.
I justified the doing of this thoroughly as the only sure means of eradicating the stereotyped tricks of decadent Schools, and of any conventions not recommended by experienced personal judgment.
While engaged on the question of the practice of painting, he confessed to me that he was disheartened about his position.
He then told me the circumstance connected with his asking Brown, by letter, to take him as a pupil, and of the amusing belligerent spirit in which Brown responded by coming to his house with a big stick! This ended with a happy life friendship for both of them, and honourable
Transcribed Footnote (page 74):

1 A later recurrence to this manner of drawing may be found on page 81.

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to the master, who had no idea that the indication of his suspicion at their first meeting had been noted by Rossetti, until I told the story in my address at the unveiling of the fountain erected in memory of Gabriel at Chelsea, when the only survivor of the friendship was present, who admitted the truth of my story with no small amusement.
Shortly before Brown's visit to Rossetti, the former met Overbeck  

Study of Bottles, by D. G. Rossetti Under F. M. Brown, with Figure Added Years Afterwards

STUDY OF BOTTLES, BY D. G. ROSSETTI UNDER F. M. BROWN, WITH FIGURE ADDED

YEARS AFTERWARDS .



in Rome, and he at once undertook two subjects in the German's manner, one “Cherubs watching the Crown of Thorns” 1 (which he set Gabriel to copy), the other an elaborate design eventually entitled “Our Lady of Good Children” but at first “ Our Lady of Saturday Night.”
It was from a kindred source that Rossetti derived his “Early Christian” manner in design. The copy he finished not without some avowed impatience.
Transcribed Footnote (page 75):

1 Page 149.

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In accordance with all sound precedent, the master had set him to make a study of still life from a group of bottles and other objects which happened to be lying about in the studio. This discipline Rossetti had found so abhorrent that it had tormented his soul beyond power of endurance. 1 Thus disheartened, he had given up painting for the time and had turned for counsel to Leigh Hunt, asking him to read his small collection of poems, and to tell him whether he might not hope to rely upon poetry for his bread. My namesake had replied about the verses in the most appreciative manner, but implored him, if he had any prospect whatever as a painter, on no account to give it up, since the fortunes of an unfriended poet in modern days were too pitiable to be risked. “The heart knoweth its own bitterness.” Rossetti had thus been again driven to painting. In subsequent visits I learnt that he had not returned to Brown, but had been working alone at the studio of Hancock, a sculptor fellow-student, and there he had broken down again. “Was it necessary,” he asked me plaintively, “to go again to still life?” I assured him of my great deference to the judgment of his late master, adding that although, in ordinary cases, I should prescribe the same course to any pupil, for him I should try whether the object might not be gained by leaving him to choose one of his recent designs (seen and admired by Millais and myself as they had come round in the folio of the Cyclographic Club) 2 and that with the composition put upon canvas, the painting should be begun with the still life. I believed that invested with vital interest as links in an idea to be welded together, he would find each day's labour interesting and instructive until he had acquired sufficient proficiency to paint the figures in the picture. This suggestion he accepted with unbounded delight, and wanted at once to put it in practice, asking whether he might come and be directed in my studio.
For many reasons it was then impossible to agree to this proposal, one being that I had already a professed painting pupil, whose family had urged me to help him, and it would have been too hampering to do my work with two pupils together. But I offered to come to him, and explain all from time to time as he progressed.
My studio was now in a house, the lower part of which was an upholsterer's show-room. The furniture and hangings there displayed could not but challenge observation as wanting in artistic taste to a degree greater than could be found in any previous age or country whatever. With my youthful experience in designing patterns, I regarded decorative design as part of an artist's ambition, and I declared that furniture and costume would remain as bad as for the last fifty years they had been if we continued to leave the designing of them to tradesmen. The
Transcribed Footnote (page 76):

1 “Brown had a system of education which he would gladly apply to me. He set me to fag at some still life—drawing and painting both; but I could not stand that kind of thing, and after a time or two gave it up.”— Letter from D. G. Rossetti to W. B. Geoff .

Transcribed Footnote (page 76):

2 William Rossetti wrote: “I think it was more especially Holman who after a while considered that the Society was of little use, being weighted with too many ‘muffs’; he, Millais and Gabriel dropped it, and I fancy it survived not for long.”

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The Eve of St. Agnes

W. H. H.]

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES



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employment of Flaxman and Stothard was the last example of artistic devotion to decorative design; since then painters and sculptors had given their attention exclusively to imitative Art.
In the intervals of chat upon questions of our profession Rossetti produced a manuscript copy of his own poems, amongst others The Blessed Damozel , My Sister's Sleep , and Jenny . They were not so complete as in their later form, the first poem being shorter.
He urged that I should give him my frank opinion of them and drew from me the confession that I wrote verses, which indeed I did only to record impressions of Nature, in simple couplets, or at the most in the Spenserian stanza. These would not here be mentioned except as prelude to the confession that his proficiency effectually discouraged any further indulgence by me in verse of any form whatever.
To provide funds, I had again to apply myself to portrait painting, but when the list of Art Union prize-holders was published, I saw that my fireside visitor during the progress of “ The Eve of St. Agnes,” had obtained a prize of £70 with which to purchase a picture from the current exhibitions. The amount being the exact price I had instructed the Secretary to put on my picture, I wrote to say that it would make me very happy if he did me the honour of selecting my work. His reply was, curtly, that he should look at all the pictures, that if any other were better than mine he should select that; otherwise he might take my picture, but in the end he bought it.
My uncle having generously refused to accept repayment of the money he had provided for the frame of the Keats picture, I now had funds with which to make a start in life.
I had already painted part of my new picture of “ Rienzi ”; the foreground with dandelion puffs and blossoms over which a bumble-bee hovered was afterwards held up by the orthodox as a mark of the prettiness of our aims, and by less impatient critics it was asked whether it did not stand for the last letter in our mystic monogram P.R.B. Being determined that the new picture should go further in obedience to my advancing aims, instead of the meaningless spread of whitey brown which usually served for the near ground, I represented gravelly variations as found in Nature. While the fine weather still lasted, I also gained the opportunity to paint a row of willow saplings on a sloping hillside of grass spangled with blossoms and flowers run to seed. The landscape was done directly and frankly from Nature not merely for the charm of minute finish, but as a means of studying her principles of design the more deeply.
I had now determined to quit my father's house, so as to feel freer for my work. Immediately Rossetti heard of my resolution he again broached the project of working under me for my hourly superintendence and instruction in painting. He had, so far, made no way in the new plan of work. This he accounted for by his want of confidence in himself; he did not believe that my proposed daily visits to his house
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alone would serve. He proposed now that he should pay half the rent of the studio and so reduce my expenses; but I had provided myself with a turn-down couch in my studio, and I wished to adhere to my plan without further explanation to any one. However, at a later interview I gave way to his insistence, and arranged to make the required additional space for him in my studio by taking a bedroom in the upper storey of the house, he paying a portion of the studio rent.
 

Study of Millais for Rienzi Picture

W. H. H.]

STUDY OF MILLAIS FOR RIENZI PICTURE



While we were giving orders for the prepartion of the room, Rossetti, whose enthusiasm for our principles grew with greater familiarity, talked much of Woolner as one of whom he had explained the resolution of Millais and myself to turn more devotedly to Nature as the one means of purifying modern art. He said that Woolner had declared the system to be the only one that could reform sculpture, and that therefore he wished to be enrolled with us. Woolner occupied the next studio to that of Hancock, the young sculptor who had allowed Rossetti to paint in
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his workroom, and there we visited him. Woolner was somewhat beyond me in age, about five feet eight in height, and of robust build; he had thick blond hair inclining to brown, and with his dark eyes he was a handsome youth.
He was then carving in marble for a fashionable bust-maker; he divided the studio with another sculptor, Bernard Smith, whose massive size formed a great contrast to the small bas-reliefs he was designing. Woolner, on the other hand, had erected a giant figure ten feet high  

Thomas Woolner

D. G. Rossetti ]

THOMAS WOOLNER



swathed in its damp cloth and for the nonce abandoned, for a model of Puck, which he showed us with paternal fondness. When darkness came on we talked about varieties of poetry, and travestied by joint composition the most blatant and vapid of its kind.
My new quarters had to be put in order. The whitewashing not being completed by the expected date, Gabriel and I spent one day in a visit to Rochester Castle, and on the morrow we went down the Thames to Greenwich (reading Monckton Milne's Life and Letters of Keats on the way), and thence to Blackheath to sketch. But Rossetti soon turned to writing poetry.
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While waiting on the barge pier for the returning steamboat Gabriel, full of poetic fire and murmurings, seeing a gaping boy staring at him, turned upon the puzzled lad, who retreated step by step before the advancing poet as he exclaimed interrogatively with solemn gesture, “Do you believe that—
  • The tyrants will reign for ever
  • Or the priests of the bloody Faith,
  • Or that they roll on the tide of a mighty river,
  • Whose waters are quenched in death.”
The boy by this time had backed to the edge of the barge and was in danger of falling into the river when an old boatman broke out,  

Sketch by D. G. Rossetti (1848)

SKETCH BY D. G. ROSSETTI (1848)



“What's the use of asking the boy those silly questions? Why, you don't know yourself!”
Then the steamboat came to the rescue of the question and answer.
After this holiday I resumed work in the renovated studio at the end of August 1848, with Rossetti as my painting pupil and companion.
The subject for my new picture was suggested by Bulwer's romance, which gives, with but little garnishing, the facts of Rienzi's early life. Like most young men, I was stirred by the spirit of freedom of the passing revolutionary time, the appeal to Heaven against the tyranny exercised over the poor and helpless appealed to me. “How long, O Lord!” many bleeding souls were crying at that time. The composition of the picture necessitated patient working out of parts in separate studies. The costumes and armour needed research, and this made the task longer and more costly than many that might have been undertaken. My good friend who had lent me bloodhounds for my last picture, now
Sig. VOL. I. G
page: 82
 

Blackheath Park

W. H. H. ]

BLACKHEATH PARK



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supplied me with models for the horses. For shields and spears I went with my canvas to the Tower.
Before Rossetti had well got to work in my studio, I once returned from the Academy class at dusk and found him with Thomas Woolner in possession.
Woolner, who had lately returned from a brief visit to Paris, produced a case of brown wood bound with bright brass, containing an elegant clay pipe, stamped on the bowl 46, a number held sacred by student smokers in the French capital. Of Caparal tobacco he had still a precious remnant; he took out the prized calument with a dainty care such as a lady displays in handling a fragile jewel; his flexible fingers and thumbs were affected by habit of delicate manipulation as a sculptor. To the Westminster Hall competition, when quite a youngster, he had sent a small model of Queen Eleanor sucking the poison from the king's arm, and this had given him an opportunity of making acquaintance with some distinguished men, who were of great interest to young artists like ourselves. From the first there could be no doubt of Wooner's gifts as a raconteur, he told stories which brought these stars into our atmosphere, but his telescopic powers reached even further, and the illumination he shed on the heroes more remote from our ken equally delighted us. Of his master Behnes he expressed the highest appreciation as an artist, an opinion which he justified by reference to early work, such as the bust of the Queen as a child. While Woolner was still a boy in Behnes' studio, Haydon was leaving after a visit, and the pupil reverently hastened to hold the door open to him as an honoured guest; the painter, not satisfied at simply acknowledging this courtesy, turned and examined the boy's cranium, with words of encouragement as to his future possibilities. Beyond doubt our new friend was an entertaining reporter of the professional opinions of the time, while the unswerving faith he expressed in his own intended purpose did not fail to impress us with confidence in his future.
Rossetti had chosen his subject for painting from three prepared designs: “ Margaret in Church ” from Goethe's Faust, “ The Girlhood of the Virgin,” and Coleridge's “ Genevieve ”; and had preferred the second. The first step for him was to make studies from the nude for all the figures. To induce him to put the perspective right was, from this stage through, a business needing constant argument, and had it been left according to his choice it would indeed have distressed the spirit of Paolo Ucello!
In general terms he denounced the science, and objected strongly to each result of its application, declaring that what is proved to be wrong was obviously better. He brought weighty tomes from home on which the vase with its lily stood.
The aureoled dove representing the Holy Ghost, and the seven cypresses typifying the “seven sorrowful mysteries,” are all of arbitrary authority. Where I could I induced him while my pupil to take natural
page: 84
 

The Girlhood of the Virgin

D. G. Rossetti]

THE GIRLHOOD OF THE VIRGIN



page: 85
objects as his models for these symbols, the little Gothic screen, the embroidery and draperies of the Holy Virgin were done as far as possible from nature.
When a little advance was made, I advised him, ere the season grew too late, to paint the vine, and for this part of his work he was absent about a week. He brought the painting back with foliage too crudely emerald green, but it was resolved that this should stand unmodified for a time, and so far the plan of work promised all that we had hoped.
To Rossetti's occasional expressions of unbounded enthusiasm for Brown's past works I could not always give unmodified approval. I had not time to visit exhibitions to follow up his works, but somewhere I saw his earlier large painting of “ The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots .”
The surface had what, at the time, marked the Baron Wappers School—an unpleasant sheen rather than the  

Ford Madox Brown

FORD MADOX BROWN



crystalline lustre of varnish, and the theme had to be accepted as a Continental aspiration, inspired by the fashion for such subjects as the executions of monarchs, which had already reached England.
In the British institution, where I also exhibited, I next saw Brown's picture of “ Parisina .” It had been painted (as was then usual on the Continent, for lamplight effects) with the subject lit up in an inner chamber, the canvas being outside in daylight, a condition which forced the artist to give a hot glare on the group much in excess of that observable in lamplight itself. The painting throughout was accomplished and facile; the drawing defied criticism as to correctness. The surface was less unctuous in its sheen than was the earlier picture; the style was a combinaiton of that of Rembrandt and Rubens as interpreted by the then leaders of the Belgian School
From his Flemish manner he turned to that then flourishing in Munich, and lastly, to the opposite of his Antwerpian mode, to the Overbeck School called Nazarene, which set itself to affect the childlike immaturities and limitations of the German and Italian quattrocentists.
Brown, however, added quaintnesses which marked his strong vitality, but sometimes without calm judgment, which left many of his true appreciators to wonder if he were not mocking them; it was certainly not notable at that time, that he had become a seeker after fresh paths in Art.
It will thus be seen that I had to form an estimate of his work from much more meagre data than that which connaisseurs have at hand in our day. Rossetti's outbursts of enthusiasm, tempered as they were
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by frequent merriment and volleys of laughter at his late master's eccentricities, were received by me with due reserve. However, the nervous force of his first works had so impressed me that I felt there was under all his vagaries a strong manly independence, and I was glad when Gabriel suggested that we should go over and see him in his studio in Clipstone Street. Being a widower, he lived alone in lodgings close at hand, while his infant daughter Lucy 1 was nursed in the country by relatives. He had a small annuity which provided him with means to meet the expenses of his profession. Gabriel's tone in speaking of Brown's present work was not so actively eulogistic as that adopted towards his earlier productions. His enthusiasm for certain of Brown's designs, in his Overbeck manner, which illustrated Shakespeare's King Lear, was expressed in fullest measure.
The studio was down a mews, and had originally been a carpenter's workshop. The painting in hand was “ Chaucer reading his Poems to the Court of Edward the Third .” The canvas occupied one angle of the studio from the floor to the ceiling; against the wall were two large wings to the central composition, the canvases were divided into Gothic arches to enshrine figures of poets of classic fame treated statuesquely; below were quatrefoil recesses, in which the names of other celebrities were displayed on medallions.
Brown's deliberate manner of speech and the reserve of his demeanour at this first interview suggested to me that he was offended at the manner of my intrusion between him and his former pupil. He had spoken generously to Rossetti of exhibited works of mine, so that I knew he had no former prejudice against me. I was too bashful to attempt to explain how unsought for on my part was my position as teacher of one whose pupilage under him had proved to be of but short duration, but Brown's growing cordiality soon made it clear that no unfriendliness was intended.
That I systematically examined the pretensions of my elders may appear presumptuous. That I should dare at first introduciton to sit in judgment on an artist who had made such profitable use of his advantages may indeed savour of irreverence. I am obliged, therefore, to repeat that the first principal of Pre-Raphaelitism was to eschew all that was conventional in contemporary art, and this compelled me to scrutinise every artist's productions critically. Impressed as I felt by his work as the product of individual genius, I found but little indicative of a childlike reversion from existing schools to Nature herself.
The striking characteristic of Madox Brown's design in his large painting is, to use his own word, its architectonic construction. Had the composition he was then employed upon been for a wall divided into a triptych with spandrils on the side panels, the device for filling the spaces might have been approved, and would have defended him from the charge of artificiality of treatment; and the resemblance in the
Transcribed Footnote (page 86):

1 Mrs. W. M. Rossetti.

page: 87
 

Chaucer Reading His Poems at the Court of Edward III

Ford Madox Brown ]

CHAUCER READING HIS POEMS AT THE COURT OF EDWARD III

Note: The picture here illustrated is not the large oil painting Brown executed after 1845, but rather the original study for the work, titled The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry (1843).



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central design to a builder's elevation would not have seemed so uncalled for. In Germany, subject painters had conceived a passion, encouraged by mural practice, for groups built one upon the other and contoured against the background, as if cut out of cardboard. In the composition before us, with figures in the wings, attired conventionally, each part was so studiously balanced by an opposite quantity that the method of construction forced itself laboriously upon the attention, and thus oppressed the mind by the means employed to gain the effect, not at all recognising that only the veiling of the means to this end, liberated the spectator's mind for the enjoyment of the idea treated. He ignored the admirable dictum, “Ars est celare artem.” Thus this “ Chaucer ” stood before me as a recent mark of academic ingenuity which Pre-Raphaelitism in its larger power of enfranchisement was framed to overthrow.
In Brown's last cabinet picture the same prevalent symmetrical fashion was adopted, as was conspicuous in engravings of Bendemann's “Jeremiah weeping over Jerusalem,” and Ary Scheffer's “Christ Consolateur,” and in many more designs seen in printseller's windows at the time.
While I was silently revolving this judgment, Rossetti began a sweeping tirade, against Brown's choice of poets in the side designs; growing quite warm, he declared that Shelley and Keats should have been whole-length figures instead of Pope and Burns, and the introduction of Kirke White's name, he said, was ridiculous. Brown combated the criticism as unreasonable and new-fangled, but Gabriel urged his point with great power until we took our leave. On our departure the young poet justified himself, saying that he knew “Bruno” would respect his opinion, because shortly before, when he had read his own poem of “ My Sister's Sleep,” the listener had been greatly moved.
By Brown's early return visit to my studio I was glad to find that my new acquaintance was not in any way offended with either of us. When he had finished his criticism on his old pupil, I was careful to ask him to give me the advantage of his impressions on my work. Frankly and kindly he made his comments; and as he enlarged upon the theme, he cited certain artists as unappreciated whom he championed earnestly and humorously in turns, meanwhile indulging in playful irony upon what he termed my “microscopic detail.” He was the sincerest knight-errant that ever braved adventure in the search after rectification of vulgar opinion. As a critic he always gave weighty counsel, urged by careful reasoning and naïve anecdote.
As Woolner was a proposed new member of our Brotherhood (the story of the foundation of which has yet to be told), I went with the two Rossettis on a visit to his studio in Stanhope Street, where Bernard Smith remained of the party. Woolner with his work certainly filled more than his equal share of the chamber, which by night looked vast and boundless; he guided us through the labyrinth of modelling-stools, pails of clay, plaster moulds, and casts on our way to the stove. On
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every side were signs of his industry and energy. The colossal figure, never illumined by candle-light much above the knees, stood in mid-space. At this date Woolner was still working as a marble carver for others, so that the large clay model (the object of his highest ambition) received attention only morning and night, when the wet cloths were changed and reapplied with the tenderness of a surgeon dressing a wound. It was an illustration to the text, “Lo, one generation passeth away, and another cometh”; the past generation was represented by a figure prostrate on the base, while the advancing epoch was striding over him somewhat disdainfully; the modelling had occupied many months of active study.
The many indications of Woolner's energy and his burning ambition to do work of excelling truthfulness and strong poetic spirit expressed in his energetic talk were enough to persuade me that Rossetti's suggestion that he should be made one of our number was a fully reasonable one; in due course, therefore, Millais having known him at the Academy, he was approved as a member.
The talk at my studio was often on the further extension of our number. In Gabriel's Life School he was joined by his brother William, who applied himself at night in a steady manner to the pursuit of drawing, and regularly executed conscientious, although rigid, transcripts of the nude. Gabriel was soon persuaded that, in spite of William's lateness in taking up Art, he would shortly become proficient enough to be justified in throwing up his appointment at the Inland Revenue Office and taking to painting, and with this prospect he proposed that we should make room for him in our Body. In addition to this proposal, I agreed to consider with Millais the question of the acceptance of James Collinson, who had already distinguished himself by paintings of the genre kind, but was now writing poetry in the High Church spirit. He promised now to paint in the severe style, declaring himself a convert to our views. The idea of extending our numbers so trustfully was thus originated by Gabriel. Youth is sanguine, and I offered no opposition to the experiment; and when the enthusiastic desire of these fellow-students was declared to be a sure earnest of future zeal and power, I introduced to my friends F. G. Stephens, who had not yet achieved anything as an artist. I urged that he also, with the whirl of enthusiasm in operation and under seal of promise to us, might become an active artist. 1
When on Millais' return to town I went to his studio, he shouted out, “Where is your flock? I expected to see them behind you. Tell me all about it. I can't understand so far what you are after. Are you getting up a regiment to take the Academy by storm? I can quite see why Gabriel Rossetti, if he can paint, should join us, but I didn't know his brother was a painter. Tell me. And then there's Woolner. Collinson 'll certainly make a stalwart leader of a forlorn hope, won't
Transcribed Footnote (page 89):

1 Mr. William Rossetti informs me that he did not understand that “any such assumption amounted to a condition.”

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he? And Stephens, too! Does he paint? Is the notion really to be put in practice?”
“Well,” I replied, “in order I'll tell you. Gabriel urged me to let him share my studio that I might teach him to paint, and he's such an eager fellow that my only doubt as to his success is that he may be ever beginning and never finishing. He is now working in my studio on a little picture of ‘ The Virgin and St. Ann,’ the most mediæval of his last three designs. You saw the drawing of it. It seems that lately he has seen a great deal of Woolner, and talked to him of our plan of going direct to Nature for all things, and so he expressed a desire to join us. I didn't know him, but now I think he might help to spread our principles in his branch. Probably you know his powers better than I do. Now comes the forlorn-hoper; it appears that the Rossettis are much attached to him, and Gabriel, having taken possession of him, declares he can attain a higher kind of work than he has yet accomplished, and Collinson himself has been pressing me to get him accepted. I like the meek little chap. All I can say is that there was an initial good idea in his ‘Charity Boy,’ and that the manipulation was conscientious, so that with higher inspiration he might do something good. I must not forget William Rossetti. Well, Gabriel proposes that he too shall become an artist and join us. It is very late in life; he is as old as you, without having drawn at all yet, but his brother declares that he will soon make up for lost time. Now these are proposed by Rossetti. The numbers grew so fast, and his confidence in our power was so extensive, that I determined to put a limit on the number of probationary members, which I did by adding my painting pupil Stephens; so far the novice's indispensable passion is not awakened in him, but being treated as a real artist may do it.”
Millais' rejoinder was, “Yes; but all this is a heavy undertaking.”
“It looks serious, certainly,” I said, “but then there is this to be considered. If they fail, I don't see how they can interfere with us; and if they make truly good artists, our Body will become the stronger, and we may the more perfectly revolutionise taste. Remember, however, that the whole question now rests with us, and I have said I can agree to nothing finally till your return to town.”
The conference was ended by Millais proposing to ask them all to his studio one evening that he might see how things look, for he, no more than I, foresaw harm in the plan proposed.
At the meeting at Millais' we had much to entertain us. First, there was a set of outlines of Führich in the Retzsch manner, but of much larger style. The misfortune of Germans as artists had been that, from the days of Winckelmann, writers had theorised and made systems, as orders, to be carried out by future practitioners in ambitious painting. The result was an art sublimely intellectual in intention, but devoid of personal instinct and often bloodless and dead; but many book illustrators had in varying degrees dared to follow their own fancies, and
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had escaped the crippling yoke. In the illustrations by Führich we found quite remarkable merits. In addition to these modern designs, Millais had a book of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa which had been lent to him. Few of us had before seen the complete set of these famous compositions.
The innocent spirit which had directed the invention of the painter was traced point after point with emulation by each of us who were the workers, with the determination that a kindred simplicity should regulate our own ambition, and we insisted that the naïve traits of frank expression and unaffected grace were what had made Italian art so essentially vigorous and progressive, until the showy successors of Michael Angelo had grafted their Dead Sea fruit onto the vital tree just when it was bearing its choicest autumnal ripeness.
Every circle of students has its fringe of members who are the most earnest of the whole body in all but actual work, and in lieu of this they offer such liberal substitute in assurances, that it is only in the light of later experience that the thought of their being practical allies is abandoned. Together with these are some who exhibit an enchanting gift which may be likened to “la beauté de la jeunesse,” inasmuch as it comes as a distinct gift of youth. It enables the endowed to surprise their friends with what seems to be the product of real genius. Later seasons dispel the precocious estimate, and prompt the doubt whether the first fruits were indeed products, or only gleanings picked up from the profusion of earlier workers. Our principles required that our adherents should seek inspiration from Nature herself. With the knowledge of the world attained at only twenty and odd years, we were making a random venture.
Putting aside the question of the thorough purgation of Rossetti from his adopted Revivalism, Woolner had as yet given little power beyond that of subtlety in his worksmanship as a modeller and a carver of marble. In design we trusted most to his enthusiastic anticipations of sublime conceptions yet to be elaborated. Collinson had done work which proved capacity in painting; but this stopped short of severity of either invention or treatment. After him in preparedness came Stephens, who had been through the first drawing school of the R.A., but so far had done no practical painting or designing. William Rossetti as yet had not designed at all. For all decificiencies, however, we accepted hopes for the future, and persuaded ourselves that our colleagues would represent our aims with enthusiasm and diligence. Millais would not ratify the initial acceptance of the four candidates without check on their understanding of our purpose, for he feared the distortion of our original doctrine of childlike submission to Nature. The danger we feared at the time arose from the vigour of the fashionable revival of Gothic art rather than from any similar tendency towards imitation of classicalism the power of which was fast waning. For the last thirty or forty years architecture had become mainly mediæval in character,
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and altogether slavish. At the introduction of the Renaissance in Italy new life and growth had been imparted to Greek types, the English manner of adopting Gothic examples had not been so wisely guided.
This modern Gothic spirit had at first declared itself in Architecture in an incongruous and clumsy copying of the most obvious characteristics, gathered together from examples of differing ages and styles, but the more advanced architects had gradually become more discriminating, and had led connaisseurs to accept Early English as the “perfect style” before or after which nothing was worthy of attention. Indeed, Gothic revivalism was so popular throughout England at this time, that graduates of the Universities, whether clergy or squires, fostered it eagerly, demolishing old and putting up with new churches in the “correct style” with mechanically-reproduced stained-glass designs in startling colours caricaturing the harmonious splendours of Gothic traceries.
The design of the Palace at Westminster had been adopted under the inspiration of the first revivalists, while faults of proportion in human form were regarded as merits to be imitated unreasoningly. Moreover, German revivalism was adopted in the interior-painted decorations.
Had all the artists here employed been mere resurrectionists they could have misled only the whimsical, but in fact some of the masters employed at St. Stephen's were men of such elevated capacity that they gave more than a passing charm to their Mediæval imitations, by unwonted brilliance of effect and by touches of individual genius, and this made their example a greater snare to the young and timid, who always need the support of precedent.
As we turned over the prints of the Campo Santo designs in Millais' studio we remarked Benozzo Gozzoli's attentive observation of inexhaustible Nature, and dwelt on all his quaint charm of invention. We appraised as Chaucerian the sweet humour which appeared wherever the pathos of the story might by such aid claim greater sympathy, and this English spirit we acclaimed as the standard under which we were to make our advance.
Yet we did not curb our amusement at the immature perspective, the undeveloped power of drawing, the feebleness of light and shade, the ignorance of any but mere black and white differences in the types of men, the stinted varieties of flora, and their geometrical forms in the landscape; these simplicities, already out of date in the painter's day, we noted as belonging altogether to the past and to the dead revivalists, with whom we had determined to have neither part nor lot. That Millais was in accord with this conviction was clear from his latest designs and from every utterance that came from him with unmistakable heartiness as to his future purpose, and may be understood now from all his after-work.
Rossetti's concurrence in these views was witnessed to, not by his painting in hand (which was from a design made earlier, when he was
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professedly under the fascination of F. M. Brown's Early Christian dogma), but by his daily words put into permanent form in the short prospectus for The Germ, issued a year or so later, in which Nature was insisted upon as the one element wanting in contemporary art. 1 The work which was already done, including all the landscape on my “ Rienzi ” picture, and my past steps leading to the new course pursued, spoke for me, and thus was justified the assumption that all our Circle knew that deeper devotion to Nature's teaching was the real point at which we were aiming. It will be seen that some commentators have ever since declared that our real ambition was to be revivalists and not adventurers into new regions. Why and how this misunderstanding arose it now devolves upon me to trace out.
Transcribed Footnote (page 93):

1 The endeavor held in view throughout the writings on art will be to encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity of Nature, and also to direct attention, as an auxiliary medium, to the comparatively few works which art has yet produced in this spirit. It need scarcely be added that the chief object of the etched designs will be to illustrate this aim practically, as far as the method of execution will permit, in which purpose they will be produced with the utmost care and completeness.—Preface to Germ

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CHAPTER VI

1848

Un pittore non deve mai imitare la maniera d'un altro, perche sarà detto nipote e non figlio della Natura; perche essendo le cose naturali in tanto larga abbondanza, piu tosto si deve rècorrere ad essa Natura, che alli maestri che da quella hanno imparato.— Trattato della Pittura, cap. xxiv. L. da Vinci

I believe it is no wrong observation that persons of genius, and those who are capable of art, are always most fond of Nature, as such are chiefly sensible that art consists in the imitation and study of Nature. On the contrary, people of the common level of understanding are principally delighted with the niceties and fantastic operations of art, and constantly think that finest which is least natural.—Pope

Not alone was the work that we were bent on producing to be persistently derived from Nature, not simply were our productions to establish a frank study of Creation as their initial intention, but the name adopted by us negatived the suspicion of any servile antiquarianism. Pre-Raphaelitism is not Pre-Raphaelism. Raphael in his prime was an artist of the most independent and daring course as to convention. He had adopted his principle, it is true, from the store of wisdom gained by the long years of toil, experiment, renunciation of used-up thoughts, and repeated efforts of artists, his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. What had cost Perugino, Fra Bartolomeo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo more years to develop than Raphael lived, he seized in a day—nay, in one single inspection of his precursors' achievements. His rapacity was atoned for by his never-stinted acknowledgments of his indebtedness, and by the reverent and philosophical use in his work of the prizes that he seized. He inherited the booty like a prince, and, like Prince Hal, he retained it against all disputants; his plagiarism was the wielding of power in order to be royally free. Secrets and tricks were not what he made his own; he accepted the lessons that either predecessors or contemporaries had to teach, and they suffered no hardship at his hands. What he gained beyond personal enfranchisement, was his master's use of enfranchisement, the power to prove that the human figure is of nobler proportion, and has grander capabilities of action than is seen by the casual eye, and that for large work, expression must mainly depend upon movement of the body rather than upon marks of facial emotion. He tacitly demonstrated that there is no fast rule of composition to trammel the arrangement dictated to the artist's will. Yet, indeed, it may be questioned whether,
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before the twelve glorious years had come to an end after his sight of the Sixtine chapel ceiling, he did not stumble and fall like a high-mettled steed tethered in a fat pasture who knows not that his freedom is measured. The musing reader of history, however ordinarily sceptical, may (on the revelation of a catastrophe altogether masqued till the fulness of time) involuntarily recognise the finger of God pointing behind to some forgotten trespass committed in haste to gain the coveted end. There is no need here to trace any failure in Raphael's career; but the prodigality of his productiveness, and his training of many assistants, compelled him to lay down rules and manners of work; and his followers, even before they were left alone, accentuated his poses into postures.
They caricatured the turns of his heads and the lines of his limbs, designed their figures in patterns; and they built up their groups into formal pyramids. The master himself, at the last, in the “Transfiguration,” was not exempt from such deadly artificialities and conventions. The artists who thus servilely travestied the failings of this prince of painters were Raphaelites, and although certain rare geniuses since then have dared to burst the fetters forged in Raphael's decline, I now repeat, what we said in the days of our youth, that the traditions that went on through the Bolognese Academy (which were introduced at the foundation of all later Schools and enforced by Le Brun, Du Fresnoy, Raphael Mengs, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, to our own time) were lethal in their influence, tending to stifle the breath of design. The name Pre-Raphaelite excludes the influence of such corrupters of perfection, even though Raphael, by reason of certain of his works, be in the list.
It is needless to trace in other Schools the fall which followed pride; the Roman case is typical. At the present day it is sometimes remarked that with such simple aims we ought to have used no other designation than that of art naturalists. I see no reason, however, to regret our choice of a name. Every art adventurer, however immature he may be in art lore, or however tortuous his theory, declares that Nature is the inspirer of his principles. All who call themselves self-taught are either barbarians, or else are ignoring indirect teaching. Life is not long enough for any one who starts in Art from the beginning, to arrive beyond the wide outposts. Wise students accept the mastership of the great of earlier ages. True judgment directed us to choose an educational outflow from a channel where the stream had no trace of the pollution of egoism, and was innocent of pandering to corrupt thoughts and passions. We drew from this fountain source, and strove to add strength to its further meanderings by the inflow of new streams from Nature and scientific knowledge. Our work was condemned by established artists for its daring innovation. Now, unobservant critics, seeing that certain afterworks of our elders possess the characteristics which these elders originally cavilled at, call them our teachers. At
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the time of our boyish combination we had no thought that such pretensions could ever be made; we were too strongly engrossed with the desire to supply a defect in modern training to think of personal kudos.
In the ages intervening between the great Italian triumvirate of Art and our own there had been many attempts—some with noble results—to get down again, Antæus-like, to the solid earth; but the profit had not extended beyond their individual efforts. The marriage between Gothic and the Renaissance occurred while Art was still of one household; there had been emulations in each family, but these were as the rivalries of brethren; what each gained in strength and riches was added to the parental store. This happy unity was gradually dissolved, and never since in any nation has there existed a perfect system of handing on to the young the wisdom of the elder.
Millais and I had thought at first of husbanding only our own fields, but the outspoken zeal of our companions raised the prospect of winning waste lands and of gaining for English Art a new realm from the wilds, such as should be worthy of the Race; for, manly and poetic as individual painters had been, the means had been lacking of handing on their lifelong experience to their successors. The system of apprenticeship became doomed by Academy teaching, which superseded the private “Maestro,” so each young artist had begun his struggle without the guidance of affectionate initiation, and therefore without an advanced starting-point.
To those who look upon Art as a pretty toy, the earnestness of the notes which I recall as passing through the minds of some of us may seem out of place even as sacred music at a ball. Such objection reveals that idle regard for art which is a natural outcome of the fitful and unnational ambition of our disunited forerunners. Our impetuous hope was to replace this mere egotistical whim for art by a patriotic enthusiasm, and by accumulated effort to counteract the curse of the national tendency to extol every other country's art above its own.
Millais was the best trained of all of us; he had a precocious capacity for both drawing and colouring, and his parents had not allowed an hour of his life to be lost to his purpose of being a painter. The need of groping after systems by philosophic research and deductions was superseded in him by a quick instinct which enabled him to pounce as an eagle upon the prize he searched for. Favoured and young as he was, he had passed through an early tempering which left him firmer in will than many men ever become. This steadfastness was softened by generous enthusiasm, a sweet reasonableness, and a strong sense of the ridiculous. It was strange how from behind his practical qualities an inspiration to convey a poetic meaning would take possession of him, which was not less mystic genius because he could give no logical reason for it, or because no type of it could be found in earlier art.
He felt the fire of his message; it seemed to make his face glow, and Rossetti, justifying an expression of his in “ Hand and Soul ,” said that
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when he looked at Millais' full-face, it was as that of an angel. The expression marks Rossetti's exaltation of mind when in his more dreamy moods, he possessed, as was already proved in his black and white designs, a true novice's devotion to poetic mysticism and beauty, and a power of invention the exercise of which is meat and drink to the real artist. In this day there would seem to have been no foresight in our early confidence in his artistic future; he is judged now by what he did later, but then it needed the bold gift of prophecy to be confident  

Monkeyana

E. Landseer]

MONKEYANA



that he would ever discipline himself enough to become a trained painter. Since he had re-committed himself to the pursuit, he ceased to express fear of defeat. It will be seen he entertained equal confidence for others, for he was with all his heart a proselytiser, and for those who had gone even less far on the painter's road than himself, he made light of difficulties. But Millais and I, it must be confessed, often doubted whether, spite of our friendly probation of the unproved candidates, Gabriel did not unduly overlook an argument against their success, in the evidence that their indifference so far to art showed the want of natural instinct for it, but his unfaltering certainty in their future shamed our scepticism. No one, however, could be more sudden
Sig. VOL. I. H
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or wholesale in correction of a too favourable estimate of his impulsively recommended protégés, whether they were those we had adopted, or outsiders over whom he at times went into paroxysms of wild laudation, until the disillusion came, he was then as trenchant in his condemnation as he had been in his too ardent praise.
In my own studio soon after the initiation of the Brotherhood, when I was talking with Rossetti about our ideal intention, I noticed that he still retained the habit he had contracted with Ford Madox Brown of speaking of our aspirations as “Early Christian.” I objected to the term as attached to a School called by the Germans “Nazarene,” and as far from vitality as was modern classicalism, and I insisted that the designation “Pre-Raphaelite” was more radically exact, and best expressed what we had agreed should be our principle. The second question, what our corporation itself should be called, was raised by the increase of our company. Gabriel improved upon previous suggestion with the word Brotherhood, overruling the objection that it savoured of clericalism. When we agreed to use the letters P.R.B. as our insignia, we made each member solemnly promise to keep its meaning strictly secret, foreseeing the danger of offending the reigning powers of the time. The name of our Body was meant to keep in our minds our determination ever to do battle against the volatile art of the day, which had for its ambition “Monkeyana,” frivolities, “Books of Beauty,” Chorister Boys, whose forms were those of melted wax with drapery of no tangible texture; and the illustrations to Holy Writ feeble enough to incline a sensible public to revulsion of sentiment.
Equally shallow were the approved imitations of the Greeks, and paintings which would ape Michael Angelo and Titian, together with designs (the latest innovation from Germany) that affected without sincerity the naïveté of Perugino and the early Flemings.
The designs for Keats' Isabella to be etched by Millais and myself, were chosen from the first stanza explaining the position of the lover in the house of the two brothers. In spare hours I made progress with my black and white design of Lorenzo at his desk in the warehouse. In this, my business experiences were of some help, as Gabriel pointed out soothingly—when I was blaming my fate for having taken me away from school so early, and having placed me in the City—he argued that the knowledge of men and human ways which it gave me was not the only example of what I had obtained as equivalent to the loss of early acquirements gained from teachers, labelled by him at the moment as “of very little use in life.”
I had already painted the face of Rienzi in my picture from a fellow-student with a fine head, but soon I became convinced that the racial character would be more satisfying if Gabriel would serve as my model. This he good-naturedly did, and accordingly I cleaned the canvas and made the new head a portrait of him, as far as the character of the strong man of action I had to represent would warrant.
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Note: A library stamp appears in the bottom right corner of this page.
 

Rienzi Vowing Vengeance for the Death of his Brother

W. H. H.]

RIENZI VOWING VENGEANCE FOR THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER



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One enduring pleasure and advantage I enjoyed at this time was in the crystallising of my friendship with William Rossetti, a man of highest integrity of character, and ever ready to serve us while spending his spare time in our studio. He sat to me for the “youth” with hand on his breast in my picture “Rienzi.”
Monthly meetings held in turn at the studios of the members were our means of considering the progress of affairs and the manner of extending our operations. In my notebook of the time I come upon a scribble of the six other members when they happened to have arranged themselves in a form that seemed worth impressing upon the memory.
To no one at this period did Gabriel reveal himself with less reserve than to me. It is with his art career that I am concerned to deal, and if I am ever led outside the margin of this interest, with him as with other  

W. M. Rossetti

W. M. Rossetti



friends, it is because previous writers have already passed the sacred barrier of reticence, and have given false impressions of our Movement which I alone am left to correct. The pictures and the poems that Rossetti published will ever render him a person of vital interest, and worthy of keenest study. He is before my mind's eye now, as daily communion with him at the most impressionable period of life made him appear. Imagine then, a young man of decidedly Southern breed and aspect, about five feet seven in height, with long brown hair touching his shoulders, not caring to walk erect, but rolling carelessly as he slouched along, pouting with parted lips, searching with dreaming eyes; the openings large and oval; grey eyes, looking directly only when arrested by external interest, otherwise gazing listlessly about, the iris not reaching the lower lid, the ball of the eye somewhat prominent by its fulness; the lids above and below tawny coloured. His nose was aquiline and delicate, with a depression from the frontal sinus shaping the bridge; the nostrils full, the brow rounded and prominent, and the line of the jaw angular and marked. His shoulders were not square, and only just masculine in shape. His singularity of gait depended upon his width of hip. Altogether, he was a lightly built man, with delicate hands and feet; although neither weak nor fragile in constitution, he was altogether unaffected by athletic exercise. He was careless in his dress, which was, as then not very unusual with professional men, black and of evening cut. So indifferent was he to the accepted requirements of society, that he would allow spots of mud to remain dry on his clothes for several days. He wore a brown overcoat, and, with his pushing stride and careless exclamations, a special scrutiny would have
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been needed to discern the refinement and tenderness that dwelt in the breast of the defiant youth; but any one who approached and addressed him was struck with surprise to find all critical impressions dissipated in a moment, for the language of the painter was wealthy and polished, and he proved to be courteous, gentle, and winsome, generous in compliment, rich in interest in the pursuits of others, while he talked much about his own, and in every respect, as far as could be shown by outward manner, a cultured gentleman. He delighted most in those poems for which the world then had shown but little appreciation. Sordello and Paracelsus he would give from memory by twenty pages at a time, and in turn came the shorter inventions of Browning, which were more within the compass of attention suddenly appealed to. Then would  

The Pre-Raphaelite Meeting, 1848, by Arthur Hughes, From Sketch by W. H. H.

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MEETING, 1848, BY ARTHUR HUGHES, FROM SKETCH BY W. H. H.

Figure: Standing, from left to right: D.G. Rossetti, F.G. Stephens, W.M. Rossetti.

Sitting, from left to right: Millais, Woolner, Collinson.



follow the grand rhetoric from Taylor's Philip van Artevelde, in the scene between the herald and the Court at Ghent, a scene very much to my taste, with my picture standing on the easel designed to show the sword of Justice, inevitable in the fulness of time, on all such as being strong scourge the weak, and being rich rob the poor, and “change the sweat of nature's brow to blood.” To this would follow the pathetic strains of W. B. Scott's Rosabel (which latter I have always been inclined to think originated Rossetti's interest in the area of reflection to which belonged the subject called “Found”). 1Patmore's Woodman's Daughter was a novel interest to all of us eager to find new poems. Tennyson's
  • You might have won the Poet's crown,
  • If such be worth the winning now,
came out at this time, and nowhere was its scorn more profoundly echoed than round our hearth. Poe's Raven, his Ulalume, and other of the
Transcribed Footnote (page 101):

1 Life of W. B. Scott, edited by W. Minto, vol. i. p. 289.

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woeful singer's polished strains succeeded, with countless varied examples of melodious pathos; all showed a wide field of interest as to poetic models, nearly all of sad or tragic tenor.
Gabriel told me the story of his parentage, which, as far as I can remember, ran thus. His father, Gabriele Rossetti, was born in the Abruzzi about the time of the first French Republic; in his early years he went to Naples when one of the many revolts under the Bourbon kings broke out. He had come as a young poet, writing songs for the people of inflammatory discontent and roseate promise in reform.  

D. G. Rossetti, 1853

W. H. H.]

D. G. ROSSETTI, 1853 1



The king's government recognised that Gabriele's strains encouraged the rebellious to prolonged resistance, and when the army gained the mastery the police were directed to apprehend the writer. He was in hiding, and an English admiral who was cruising in the Bay received information of his plight and his place of retreat. A company of sailors was landed, and marched through the city as if to see the sights; in anticipation a suit of sailor's clothes had been sent to the place of refuge, and the concealed offender had arrayed himself as a British tar. As the
Transcribed Footnote (page 102):

1 This portrait of D. G. Rossetti, attributed to his pen by F. G. Stephens in his memoir of Rossetti in the Portfolio, was a hasty scribble made by Holman-Hunt in his Cleveland Street Studio, and the unconsidered trifle was given by Rossetti to A. Munro, who gave it to Arthur Hughes, who gave it to W. H. H.

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real seamen were marking time, as if retarded in their progress, in front of the house, Rossetti slipped into their ranks; imitating his new comrades, he marched down to the quay, where all descended into the gig which was waiting, and the fugitive was soon on board the English flagship. Shortly after, a summons was received from the Government to deliver up the proscribed poet. The answer was that he was now under the English flag; soon the sails bore him to England, where he quickly found friends. The post of Italian professor was given him at King's College, London, and he prospered as a private teacher. The Polidori  

The Deposition

Rossetti of Volterra]

THE DEPOSITION



family was already established here, and the escaped revolutionist proved the innate love of peace in his breast by winning one of the daughters, who became the mother of Maria, Gabriel, William, and Christina.
The father had written a commentary on the Vita Nuova , in which he interpreted the story as altogether allegorical. He naturally possessed a large store of trecento poems; thus Gabriel and the other children had grown up familiar with the imagination of the earliest Italian poets, and a strong although vague inclination towards early art. It may be doubtful whether the Rossettis knew that an accomplished painter of their name flourished in the cinquecento. His picture of “The Deposition” is a masterly work; to be seen at Volterra.
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Native disposition had not led Gabriel to profess respect for natural science; never would he evince any regard for the remote stages of creative development or the early steps of human progress. He regarded questions on such points as altogether foreign to poetry. The language used in early times to describe the appearances of Nature he accepted as the sanctified and ever-sufficient formulæ. Modern scientific discoveries had no charm for him; neither had the changed conditions of the people who were to be touched by Art any claim for special consideration; for when men were different from the cultured of mediæval days they were not poetic in his eyes.
I have no intention of criticising this philosophy. It was inherent in him; the character of the literature he had most dwelt upon had fostered it, and Brown's recent indulgence in quaint mediævalism had confirmed the predilection. It was impossible then to decide whether the determination he expressed was altogether final, for at the same time he agreed that the radical want in modern art was a stricter study of Nature. Our estimate of the genius he already showed and our confidence in the leading of the new inspiration had removed any doubt of his fitness for combination with us.
We often trenched on scientific and historic grounds, for my previous reading and cogitations, without making me profound, had led me to love these interests and to regard them as of the greatest poetic and pictorial importance; I argued that the appeal we made could be strengthened by adopting the knowledge which human penetration had acquired.
In my boyhood, when first opening the volume of Shakespeare with misgiving of my ability to understand the reasonings of the master, I was astonished at the condescension of his mind, and it gave me infinite encouragement to find that many of his fancies had passed through my own young brain, and had so moved me that I had feebly attempted to express them to my intimates with but scant encouragement. I realised that he was no dramatic teacher to despise the groundlings; indeed I concluded that the large measure of welcome awarded to this kingly genius was but a just response to his own great-hearted sympathy with his fellows of every class; he catered for the unlearned not less than for the profoundest philosopher. In Hamlet the plot is made so clear that it enthrals the mind of the child who yet for many years cannot understand its reflections on the mysterious problems of life, problems which no other teacher conceives so healthily or expresses so richly. The charity of his example had led me to rate lightly that kind of art devised only for the initiated, and to suspect all philosophies which assume that the vulgar are to be left for ever unredeemed.
While Rossetti often agreed with me in this view, Dantesque shapes of imagery became his habitual alphabet, and in his designs, as in his poems, his mind expressed itself in a form independent of new life and joy in Nature. This partiality had never been counterbalanced by
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rough experience of the battle of life, and he shunned new fields of interest for the work of either poet or painter. It surprised me that Rossetti, of Italian blood, had no longing to satisfy his eyes with the sight of native soil sanctified by great memories, just as did also his indifference to the subject of a poetic image; it was the finished phraseology, the mode of delineation, that dominated him.
We yearn most for what seems denied to us. Long and bitter to me had been the days when, turning eyes from book visions of the renowned cities of Greece, of Italy, and of Egypt, I saw only blank walls, unchangeable summer and winter, and the threat thereon written large, that my fate was to know only through others of the sky-piercing mountains, of the sea calm and wild by turns, and of adventures by flood and field. The trial had been borne sadly; my father had endured it before me, and still retained delight in the wonders of the world; neither then nor since have I met many men keener than he was on such matters, they had a real fascination for him. A prison many a time has become a study and a workshop; in my old office I had found some geometrical and mathematical books, and my master had helped me with the problems; he had also set me to do geological and astronomical diagrams, and these studies seemed to me full of poetic suggestion. But Rossetti despised such inquiries; what could it matter, he said, whether the earth moved round the sun or the sun circled about the earth, and in the question of the origin and antiquity of man he refused to be interested.
This was coupled with the view which he maintained that attention to chronological costume, to the types of different races of men, to climatic features and influences, were of no value in painter's work, and that therefore oriental properties in the treatment of scriptural subjects were calculated to destroy the poetic nature of a design. He instanced Horace Vernet's Bible pictures treated orientally, “Rebecca giving Eleazar to Drink,” and some others, to justify his opinion. I insisted that Vernet, although a remarkably skilful composer and executant, being destitute of poetic fire, could not under any conditions or systems enchant any but the dull. It was the question of the value of my plan, carried out five years later, of going to Syria to paint sacred subjects which brought this discussion to a head. My contention was that more exact truth was distinctly called for by the additional knowledge and longings of the modern mind, and that it was not outside the lines of the noblest art.
Despite differences, we both agreed that a man's work must be the reflex of a living image in his own mind, and not the icy double of the facts themselves, for we were never “ Realists.” I think Art would have ceased to have the slightest interest for either of us had the object been only to make a representation, elaborate or unelaborate, of a fact in nature. Independently of the conviction that such a system would put out of operation the faculty most Godlike in man, it was apparent
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that a mere imitator gradually comes to see nature claylike and finite, as it seems when illness brings a cloud before the eyes. Art dominated by such a spirit makes us esteem the world as without design or finish, unbalanced, unfitting, and unlovely. It is needless to give modern examples; alas! they have multiplied of late. I can instance Polembourg as one of the old landscapists who made God's sky look hideous, although his handling and surface were careful; we once all agreed that a bright March sky was too crude, and too much like this man's work to be painted.
It is now high time to correct one important misapprehension. In agreeing to use the utmost elaboration in painting our first pictures, we never meant more than to insist that the practice was essential for training the eye and hand of the young artist; we should not have admitted that the relinquishment of this habit of work by a matured painter would make him an apostate Pre-Raphaelite. I am the freer to say this as I have retained later than did either of my companions, the restrained handling of a student.
My original account of Rossetti, published soon after his death, was dictated by a desire to treat the memory of my early friend with liberal appreciation, but this has not been met by equivalent recognition of what was due to Rossetti's fellows. My tributes to his honour have been too often interpreted as an acknowledgment of a “leadership” in him, though this was far from my intention. With no limitation of my tribute I now add other facts essential to the correct balance of the story; this would be but of trivial importance if the issue were merely a personal one, to determine whether Millais, Rossetti, or I most had the responsibility of Pre-Raphaelitism, but it involves the question as to the exact purpose of the Movement, and this is so vital in my eyes that if it were decided to mean what the Brown-Rossetti circle and critics, native and foreign, quoting them, continually ascribe to it, Pre-Raphaelitism should certainly not engage my unprofessional pen.
My criticisms upon the base and vulgar forms and incoherent curves in contemporary furniture, to which I drew Rossetti's attention on his first visit to me, encouraged visions of reform in these particulars, and we speculated on improvement in all household objects, furniture, and fabrics. Nor did we pause till Rossetti enlarged upon the devising of ladies' dresses and the improvement of man's costume, determining to follow the example of early artists not in one branch of taste only, but in all.
For sculpture Gabriel expressed little passion; he professed admiration of many men engaged in plastic work, but he could not understand their devotion to what in those days rarely rose to the height of human interest. The reason of this baldness lay in neglect of drawing and painting, by exercise in which the great sculptors of old made themselves subtle designers and masters of form, light, shade, and colour. We agreed that architecture also came within the proper work of a
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painter who, learning the principles of construction from Nature herself, could apply them by shaping and decorating the material he had to deal with. Music at that time Rossetti regarded as positively offensive; for him it was nothing but a noisy nuisance. In our scheme, when we obtained recognition, each of us was to have a set of studios attached to his house, some for working in diverse branches of art, some for showing our production to admirers, who would be attended to by our pupils when we were too busy to be disturbed. We were also by such means to introduce worthy students, and to make art take its due place in life.
All these castles in the air were pleasing visions; only when Rossetti in bandying hopes extended the grandeur of the dream of our fortunes, I expressed some curiosity to know how due appreciation could be counted on from a people so committed to the idea of subdivision of labour, and so self-complacent in their tastes as were our contemporaries, who had none of that far-seeing spirit which made Locke profess his ignorance in order to learn more. Rossetti dismissed such fears to the winds, asking me if I could not understand that there were hundreds of young aristocrats and millionaires growing up who would be only too glad to get due direction how to make the country as glorious as Greece and Italy had been. I was fain to hope that this view was the correct one, as with his father's experience as a professor among persons of high degree I assumed they had met more than one modern Mæcenas; I was glad to encourage in myself the belief that the rich would in time know how to use their influence and to spend their money worthily.
There remain now but a few more personal particulars of the interests of that time to be recorded. Our combination had much of happiness in it. Gabriel had progressed greatly with his picture, and had painted St. Joachim and the draperies of the principal figures.
There were frequent days when he would leave his appointed task to engage himself with some other invention in form or in words that had taken possession of his fancy. When he had once sat down, and was engaged in the effort to chase his errant thoughts into an orderly road, and the spectral fancies had all to be kept in his mind's eye, his tongue was hushed, he remained fixed and inattentive to all that went on about him, he rocked himself to and fro, and at times he moaned lowly, or hummed for a brief minute, as though telling off some idea. All this while he peered intently before him, looking hungry and eager, and passing by in his regard any who came before him, as if not seen at all. Then he would often get up and walk out of the room without saying a word. Years afterwards, when he became stout, and people, with some faint reason, found a resemblance in him to the bust of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon, and, later still, when he had outgrown this resemblance, it seemed to me that it was in his early days mostly that the soul within had been truly seen in his face. In those days he worthily rejoiced in the poetic atmosphere of sacred and spiritual
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dreams that then dwelt within him in embryo, though undoubtedly some of his noisy demonstrations hindered many persons from recognising this inspiration at once.
Soon after Gabriel came to my studio, I was invited by the Rossettis to dine with them, when the old gentleman was then relinquishing the use of English. He was beginning to be an invalid whose sight needed protection by a projecting shade. Gabriel has left an excellent drawing of him at a slightly later date. The mother was the gentle and presiding matron we see Saint Ann to be in “ The Girlhood of the Virgin.” The elder sister was overflowing with attention to all, expressing interest in each individually, and Miss Christina was exactly the pure and docile-hearted damsel that her brother portrayed God's Virgin pre-elect to be.
The father arose from a group of foreigners around the fire to receive me. All were escaped revolutionists from the Continent, and some bore names made glorious in history. He addressed me in English in a few words of welcome as “Mr. Madox Brown,” a slip on which his eldest daughter rated him pleasantly. He was so engrossed in a warm discussion going on that some minutes afterwards he again made the same mistake. The conversation was in Italian, but occasionally merged into French, with the obvious purpose of taking into the heat of the conference refugees unfamiliar with the former language. The tragic passions of the group around the fire did not in the slightest degree involve either the mother, the daughters, or the sons, except when the latter explained that the objects of the severest denunciations were Bomba, Pio Nono, and Metternich, or, in turn, Count Rosso and his memory; with these execrated names were uttered in different tones those of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Louis Napoleon, who as a refugee had once been their visitor. The hearth guests took it in turn to discourse, and no one had delivered many phrases ere the excitement of speaking made him rise from his chair, advance to the centre of the group, and there gesticulate as I had never seen people do except upon the stage. What I knew then of French was only by reading, and I was surprised to discover that it helped me scarcely at all to follow it when spoken excitedly and quickly. Each orator evidently found difficulty in expressing his full anger, but when passion had done its measure in work and gesture, so that I as a stranger felt pained at not being able to join in practical sympathy, the declaimer went back to his chair, and while another was taking up the words of mourning and appeal to the too tardy heavens, the predecessor kept up the refrain of sighs and groans. When it was impossible for me to ignore the distress of the alien company, Gabriel and William shrugged their shoulders, the latter with a languid sign of commiseration, saying it was generally so. As the dinner was being put on the table some of the strangers persisted, despite invitation, in going; some still stayed round the fire declaring solemnly that they had dined. At the conclusion of the meal the
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brothers and I saw the remainder of the company established at dominoes and chess before the arrival of the other members for the P.R.B. meeting upstairs.
We de facto members were anxious to see what the probationary ones were preparing for future work to justify our expectation of them. William Rossetti could not yet give up his Inland Revenue clerkship, but he showed us some of his extremely painstaking outlines from the life, and these were a proof that he kept in mind our understanding of his obligation as a P.R.B. to become an artist. Other probationers from whom we expected work, appeared with neither work nor apology, an omission which we tried to construe into evidence that extensive designs were being prepared as a surprise in store.
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CHAPTER VII

1848-1849
  • Attempt the end and never stand in doubt,
  • Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.
—Herrick.

Let her hang me. He that is well hanged in this world need fear no colours.— Twelfth Night.

As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”— Proverbs.

At the beginning of the autumn of 1848 Millais had still some panels of the series of decorative designs in monochrome for Leeds to bring to completion, and these occupied him so late in the season that there seemed a danger that the first essay in our new manner would suffer. Once free of his contract he painted a small portrait of Mr. Fenn, so strong in form and finish, and so rich in well-justified colour, that it resembled a perfect Van Eyck or Holbein, and yet its excellence was in no way mere truth at second-hand. This was the earnest of what his picture would be, but in that he would have to ride not a single horse but to drive a team. It was towards the end of October 1848 that his new canvas was installed on the easel. Any fresh design must have been undertaken with the disadvantage of not having been re-judged after the heat and prejudice of the original drawing had died away; he therefore settled upon the composition made for our intended series of etchings for Keats' Isabella. It certainly seemed to be a great undertaking for the time available before the date of sending in, but a very few days' work on the picture, each part being completely finished at a sitting, was convincing that the artist's estimate of his own range of power in the character and in the extent of work he had to do was perfectly justified; so exact was the pitch of tone and colour of each fresh venture, and so unerring and rich in unexpected graces was the performance in all respects, that it was easy to see how much strength it would give to the status of our Movement. Every visitor to his studio brought away a higher report than the last. Gabriel, who sat for one of the figures in the picture, became perfectly unbounded in his admiration, and William, who had also acted as a model, turning his head aside, raising his eyebrows, and extending his hands, intoned in separated notes, “It certainly is distinctly marvellous,” and so the reputation of the picture grew with its own growth.
Once in a studio conclave, some of us drew up a declaration that there was no immortality for humanity except in reputation gained by man's own genius or heroism. We had not yet balanced our belief in
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Voltaire, Gibbon, Byron, and Shelley, and we could leave no corners or spaces in our minds unsearched or unswept. Our determination to respect no authority that stood in the way of fresh research in art seemed to compel us to try what the result would be in questions metaphysical, denying all that could not be proved. We reflected that there were different degrees of glory in great men, and that these grades should be denoted by one, two, or three stars. Ordinary children of men fulfilled their work by providing food, clothing, and tools for their fellows; some, who did not engage in such labour, had allowed their minds to work without the ballast of common-sense, but the few far-seeing ones revealed vast visions of beauty to mankind.
Where these dreams were too profound for us to fathom, our new iconoclasm dictated at least a suspended judgment, if not distrust; for of spiritual powers we for the moment felt we knew nothing, and we saw no profit in relying upon visions, however beautiful they might be.
Arguing thus, Gabriel wrote out the following manifesto of our absence of faith in immortality, save in that perennial influence exercised by great thinkers and workers—
We, the undersigned, declare that the following list of Immortals constitutes the whole of our Creed, and that there exists no other Immortality than what is centred in their names and in the names of their contemporaries, in whom this list is reflected—
Note: This list is printed in two columns.
  • Jesus Christ****
  • The Author of Job***
  • Isaiah
  • Homer**
  • Pheidias
  • Early Gothic Architects
  • Cavalier Pugliesi
  • Dante**
  • Boccaccio*
  • Rienzi
  • Ghiberti
  • Chaucer**
  • Fra Angelico*
  • Leonardo da Vinci**
  • Spenser
  • Hogarth
  • Flaxman
  • Hilton
  • Goethe**
  • Kosciusko
  • Byron
  • Wordsworth
  • Keats**
  • Shelley**
  • Haydon
  • Cervantes
  • Joan of Arc
  • Mrs. Browning*
  • Patmore*


    • Column Break


  • Raphael*
  • Michael Angelo
  • Early English Balladists
  • Giovanni Bellini
  • Giorgioni
  • Titian
  • Tintoretto
  • Poussin
  • Alfred**
  • Shakespeare***
  • Milton
  • Cromwell
  • Hampden
  • Bacon
  • Newton
  • Landor**
  • Thackeray**
  • Poe
  • Hood
  • Longfellow*
  • Emerson
  • Washington**
  • Leigh Hunt
  • Author of Stories after Nature*
  • Wilkie
  • Columbus
  • Browning**
  • Tennyson*
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William Rossetti quotes from Canon Dixon and W. B. Scott expressions of Gabriel's astonishment made in his last years that men should assume that he denied an after life, seeing that what he had painted and written ought to convince them of his belief in immortality, and not many weeks after the signing of this document I was designing my “ Christians and Druids” picture honouring the obedience to Christ's command that His doctrine should be preached to all the world at the expense of life itself. Our non-belief in the immortality of the soul, therefore, was not long retained. The treatment we accorded in our document to painters and poets illustrates the character of our tastes and aims at this time. Beginning with an agreement that three stars should be given only to the greatest, it will be seen that the author of Job, and Shakespeare alone gained that distinction, but there was another Captain of men who could not but be regarded as paramount among heroes; one who had not only sung persuasively of the way conducting to peace, but had trodden the thorny way Himself; Commander and at the same time foremost of His army.
He must, we said, be above all, and on this account we extended our purpose, and placed four stars after the name of Jesus Christ, that He might stand supreme above all others.
Some twenty years ago I came upon my copy of this document in an old desk, and tore it up when making a clearance, from no horror of the practical atheism it professed; a man should come face to face with himself on all momentous questions. The list included further names than those in the present copy, amongst them many contemporaries now utterly forgotten. Sic transit gloria mundi. My good father had copied the first draft carefully, and it is from this copy of his that I have printed the list.
James Collinson had been an amiable fellow-student, painstaking in all his drawings, and accurate in a sense, but in his own person tame and sleepy, and so were all the figures he drew. “The Apollo Belvedere,” “The Laocoon,” “The Wrestlers,” “The Dancing Faun,” and the drunken gentleman of that race, all seemed to belong to one somnolent family. No one, a year later, could have trusted his memory to say whether our quiet friend had or had not been in the Schools at any given time, so successfully had he avoided disturbing any one in any way. It was a surprise to all when, in the year 1848, he appeared in the Exhibition with “The Charity Boy's Début.” To represent the bashfulness of a poor boy appearing before his family in the uniform of his parish was an honest idea, and although the invention did not go far beyond the initial conception, the pencilling was phenomenally painstaking throughout. It transpired that he had roused himself up of late and entered the Roman Church, and had summoned effort to paint this picture. All the students blamed themselves for having ignored Collinson, but Rossetti went further, and declared that “Collinson was a born stunner,” and at once struck up an intimate friendship with him,
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deciding that Collinson only wanted our enthusiasm to make him a great force in the battle. Accordingly he was elected, with right to put the secret initials on his works, to attend our monthly meetings, and to receive us in his turn.
Whether we were at Collinson's in the Polygon, where a dragoness of a landlady, six feet in height, provided quite a conventional entertainment—for he still had a liberal allowance from home—or at our Bohemian repasts in Cleveland Street, he invariably fell asleep at the beginning, and had to be waked up at the conclusion of the noisy evening to receive our salutations. He could but rarely see the fun of anything, although he sometimes laughed in a lachrymose manner, and I fear our attempts to enliven him were but futile. Once, concluding a meeting at my studio, on going to the door with him near midnight, we discovered that it was a magnificent moonlight night, and we resolved that, instead of going to bed, we would take a long walk in the country. He pleaded that he must go home to bed, and when we pointed out that for a real change, which might be of great permanent benefit to him, he should consider that he had had enough sleeping, he insisted that he must really go back to change his boots; and eventually we let him depart with the promise that he would be ready for us when we should call in half an hour. We arrived punctually, but knocked for a time in vain. In ten minutes a voice from the second-floor window thundered out to ask why we went on knocking when we knew Mr. Collinson had long since been in bed. It was the conclusion that he was asleep which had made us knock so loudly, we said, and we hoped the landlady would take no further notice while we continued the same measures to wake him; on which she invited the aid of a passing policeman, who, however, was persuaded that we were strictly within the law in insisting upon seeing the gentleman himself. Collinson came to his window sleepily entreating to be left alone; but when we explained that we had chosen a northerly course solely on his account, and that he must not now disappoint us, he gave in, and came with us on our walk.
The long night stands out in my memory ever clear, precious, and surprising, although many midnight skies have since in distant lands revolved above my wandering steps. Passing through streets which were fast emptying, some of them echoing to our ears the footsteps of Keats, we climbed the hill that shut us off from the true country. Above and beyond lay moonlight and moon-shaded heath and common land, decked with drowsy trees against the unchanging and unclouded heavens. Walking down the vale we saw a settlement of haze, level as water sleeping in the hollow, broad as the ancient river must have been which scored it out, and this vapour gradually immersed the trees on the descending slope from roots to topmost branches. As we reached its margin we played with the phantom water and descended step by step, until, breast deep, we reached out our arms feigning to swim; lower and lower we went under chill thick mist; arriving at the little bridge
Sig. VOL. I. I
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over the dwindled stream, as we looked up we saw the haloed moon casting spoke-like shadows from the branches of the trees round about us. From the depth of this rayed region we ascended to the farther margin of the mist lake into the crystal air. Continuing our journey, we arrived at a village, where, surrounded by a semicircle of cottages, we seated ourselves on the pedestal of the village pump. Our conversation at first was exclusively for our own benefit, but in the end we set up a lusty shout with a view to waking Collinson for the homeward journey. It was a great hurrah; at the same instant we saw a candle lighted in the first-floor window of each cottage of the little hamlet, and twenty or thirty nightcapped heads were thrust out simultaneously at the surrounding casements.
On our return journey, moonlight was slowly exchanged for ever-increasing dawn and sunrise, with London, seen from Hampstead Heath, offering its first incense to the waking day. Frequently our poor Collinson dozed on the way, leaning on one or other of us, and we aided him with gentle support, but I must confess that no treatment adopted thoughtfully for his good either on this journey or elsewhere seemed permanently to relieve his prevailing tendency to sleep. When Gabriel had got fairly entangled in a new design he would refuse the attraction of home, meals, out-of-door engagements, or bed, and sit through the night, sleeping where he sat for an hour at a time, recommencing his work when he woke. He ate whatever was at hand when hunger suggested, and when time came for bed on the second night he would ask me to leave him; in the morning I would find him still at his engrossing task. “ The Girlhood of the Virgin ” had a special trial in store not to be lightly passed by, for when he advanced to the painting of the child angel, for whom he had four or more models in succession—an untried one ever promising to be more manageable than the last—he increasingly lost patience. The unsteadiness of one mild little girl so overtried him that he revealed his irritation beyond bounds, storming wildly, overthrowing his tools and stamping about, until the poor child sobbed and screamed with fright, clinging to her conductress, much too alarmed to listen to any comfort he repentantly offered her. After this scene, which had raised clouds of dust and destroyed my tranquillity of mind, further work that day was out of the question. This was one of sundry experiences which caused me to doubt whether his enthusiasm for the painter's art would survive the needful pressure of self-denying labour; I therefore invited him to go out walking with me, and in the shining wintry sun, on the broad walk of Regent's Park, I asked him to consider the certain consequences of action such as his as fatal to his prospects of becoming a painter, he had an undoubted right to give up his own work I said, but he must not destroy my chance of getting my picture done, since its completion was a vital matter to me. I added that my power of work was affected more than he imagined, and that unless he could observe a calmer demeanour we must separate, whereas I could