CHAPTER I.

EARLY ENGLISH ART.

The current English school of art is a creation of a comparatively modern date. It is a mistake, however, to assume that there were no native painters in England under the Plantagenets, and that we were entirely dependent on foreigners for such art as we possessed. The little care which has been taken of early English pictures and their destruction, sometimes accidental, sometimes wilful, have led many to imagine that ancient England had no art of her own. It has been customary to imagine that in Italy alone, in the thirteenth century, existed the Renaissance and growth of modern design. Later research has, however, shown that the Renaissance in painting was not the sudden creation of Giotto, nor that of sculpture the work of Niccola Pisano. The Renaissance in Italy was a gradual growth, and there was in England and in other countries a similar Renaissance, which was overlooked by those whose eyes were fixed on Italy. It has been shown that there were English artists, contemporaries of Giotto and Pisano, whose works were as good as any paintings or sculptures which the Italians produced in the thirteenth century. It is quite true that we know very little of these Englishmen. Some gave themselves to illumination, and produced delicate representations of human beings, as well as of animals, leaves, and flowers. In the British Museum there are several manuscripts of a very early date, which are ornamented with paintings undoubtedly by English artists. The Duke of Devonshire possesses a manuscript, the _Benedictional of St. Ethelwold_, written between A.D. 963 and 970, and illuminated, with thirty drawings, by a monk of Hyde Abbey, named GODEMAN, for Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It is a folio of 119 leaves of vellum, 11-1/2 inches in height by 8-1/2 in width. Other artists painted and gilded the images of wood or stone by their brother craftsmen, and were classed in the humble category of _Steyners_. They devoted much of their time to heraldic devices, and by degrees passed from the grotesque to the natural, and produced what were styled _portraits on board_. Painting on glass was a favourite art in this early period, and, although the artists had no more noble title than that of _Glaziers_, some of their works survive to prove their merits. Many of these craftsmen combined the arts of the painter, sculptor, or "marbler," and architect. Among these obscure pioneers of English art was WILLIAM TORELL, a goldsmith and citizen of London, supposed to be descended from an English family whose name occurs in Domesday Book. Torell modelled and cast the effigy of Henry III. for his tomb in Westminster Abbey, as well as three effigies of Eleanor of Castile, about A.D. 1291. These latter works were placed in Westminster Abbey, Blackfriars' Monastery, and Lincoln Cathedral. The figures in Westminster Abbey show the dignity and beauty of the human form, and are masterpieces of a noble style. The comparison between the effigy of Margaret of Richmond, executed for Henry VII.'s Chapel by the Florentine Torrigiano, and the figures by Torell, is decidedly in favour of the latter. No work in Italy of the thirteenth century excels in beauty these effigies by the English sculptor. At an earlier period than this, during the life of Henry III., some English artists, as well as foreigners, were employed to embellish the cathedrals and palaces of the King. These native craftsmen, who seem to have been at once artists, masons, carvers, upholsterers, or sometimes tailors,[A] are mostly forgotten, but we can trace the names of MASTER EDWARD of Westminster, or Edward Fitz Odo--probably the son of Odo, goldsmith to Henry III.--MASTER WALTER, who received twenty marks "for pictures in our Great Chamber at Westminster," and MASTER JOHN of Gloucester, who was plasterer to the King. The names of the "imaginators" of Queen Eleanor's Crosses are also well known. The early pictorial art of England has been so neglected or forgotten, that it is commonly said to have commenced with the portrait painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Ignorance, indifference, and bigotry have destroyed, or suffered to perish, the paintings which adorned the walls of almost every church, and the panels of nearly every rood-screen, hundreds of years before the date assigned to the English school. In Kempley Church, Gloucestershire, the walls appear to have been painted early in the twelfth century with large figure subjects. Those in the chancel are in a good state of preservation, and represent the vision in the Apocalypse, and Christ in majesty, attended by the twelve apostles and the saints, painted in life size. In Chaldon Church, Surrey, the chancel walls are ornamented with subjects illustrating the _Scala humanae Salvationis_, works apparently of the twelfth century, which, though necessarily rude, are as good as any Italian examples of the same period. In Westminster Abbey there is an important series of small paintings by an English artist contemporary with Cimabue. These pictures once formed the chief ornaments of a frontal, and belonged to the high altar.[B] The work in question consists of a rectangular piece of framed and richly panelled wood-work, about eleven feet long by three feet high. The general design consists of three central figures painted under canopies. On each side are four star-shaped panels filled with painted groups of figures; beyond these on each side is another single figure under a canopy. The wood is covered with fine stucco, or _gesso_, to the thickness of cardboard, as is always the case with old paintings on panels, and generally when on stone. The pictures still extant on the frontal comprise, in the centre, a figure of Christ in the act of benediction, holding an orb in His left hand. At the right hand is the Virgin Mary, bearing her emblem of the lily; on our left is St. John, with a book; on our right is St. Peter, with the keys. In the star-shaped panels we find the miracles of the raising of Jairus's daughter, the loaves and fishes, and the restoration of the blind man. These figures, though somewhat like those of the early Florentine school, possess a character of their own, and are undoubtedly English. The well-known portrait of _Richard II_. (died 1400), now in the Abbey at Westminster, is believed to have been painted by an English artist of the fourteenth century. The figure of the King is of large life size, seated in a coronation chair. He is in royal robes, with the globe in one hand and sceptre in the other. This picture for many years hung near the altar.

The history of art in England during the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. is a blank; probably men were too busy with swords and bucklers to turn to the gentle arts of painting and sculpture. The reign of Edward III. shows a revival in art and letters, and the patron of Chaucer adorned the Chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster, with the best works of native artists. The fire of 1834, which destroyed the old Houses of Parliament, almost obliterated these interesting relics. The walls of the chapel were painted in oil colours with scriptural and historic episodes on the prepared surface of the stonework. There seems to have been at this period a method, peculiar to London, of producing a blue colour, which is mentioned in a German MS. of the fourteenth century as "the London practice." It is noticeable that a blue colour can still be traced in the relics saved from St. Stephen's. The Society of Antiquaries has published coloured copies of the paintings which adorned the chapel. When we recall the state of England at the period which succeeded the death of Edward III., the turbulence of the feudal barons, the constant lawlessness and blood-shedding, and the ignorance which prevailed even among the upper classes, we cannot wonder that art made little progress. Some advance doubtless took place, but we look in vain for originality among the artists who were alternately employed to decorate a baron's pageant, or adorn an altar.

There is a good portrait of _Henry IV._, removed from Hampton Court, Herefordshire, and now at Cassiobury.

To the reign of Henry V., or at latest to the early days of Henry VI., belongs the earliest authentic specimen of historical portraiture in England. It represents _Henry V. and his Relations_, painted on wood, less than life size, and was at one time the altar-piece of Shene Church. The portraits which were attempted in the troublous period of the Wars of the Roses, though unlovely and ghastly to look upon, show that art was gradually emerging from the fetters of monastic teaching, where bad pupils copied bad masters, and reproduced saints and angels, whose want of form and symmetry was atoned for by a liberal allowance of gilding. A fairly expressive portrait of _Richard III._, which must have been painted about this time by a very capable artist, is among the treasures of Knowsley. In the well-known tapestry in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry, there is a representation of King Henry VI. kneeling before the altar, attended by Cardinal Beaufort, the Duke of Gloucester, and many courtiers, in which the drawing will bear comparison with similar work executed in Italy or Flanders at the same time. This tapestry was probably made at Arras, from English designs.

_From a Miniature at Windsor Castle_.]

The gradual spread of knowledge at this period induced the English nobility to promote the adornment of manuscripts, chiefly Missals and Romances of Chivalry. These pictures comprise the best specimens of English later mediaeval art, and in richness and delicacy of colour they closely approach oil paintings. With the discovery of printing came a check to the art of illuminating manuscripts, and the wild fanaticism of the first Reformers led them to burn at once the religious manuals of Rome, and the wit and wisdom of poet or philosopher. To these ruthless iconoclasts we owe the obscurity in which early English pictorial art remains. It must have been during the later years of the reign of Henry VII. that two miniatures, now at Windsor Castle, were painted, probably for the King. One represents _Arthur, Prince of Wales_, who, at the age of fifteen, married Catherine of Aragon; the other is his brother, who became Henry VIII. (_See Engravings_.)

In the reign of Henry VI. there was an artist of note, undoubtedly an Englishman, who may not be passed in silence. This was William Austen, sculptor, to whom we owe the monument ("in fine latten," _i.e._ brass) of Richard, Earl of Warwick, in the Church of St. Mary, Warwick, a work which Flaxman somewhat courageously considered equal to the productions of Austen's Italian contemporaries, Ghiberti and Donatello.