Part 16

Reynolds was not one of the originators of the Royal Academy; but in 1768, when it was instituted, he was waited on by West, and requested to give his aid in promoting the objects which the undertaking was intended to serve. He was rather doubtful whether the scheme was likely to be favored by Fortune; and he was one of those who had no relish for engaging in an enterprise,

“Save when her humorous ladyship was by To teach him safety.”

It was, therefore, after considerable hesitation, and a conference of two hours, that he was persuaded to accompany the American artist. Then ordering his carriage, he drove to the place where the promoters were assembled. On entering the room he was saluted by all present as “President;” but being still convinced that the scheme would prove a delusion, he declined to accept the honor thus voted to him by acclamation, till he had consulted Burke and Johnson, who advised him to consent. The king, whose aid had at first been regarded as doubtful, came forward to offer the Academy his royal patronage; and that it might have the semblance of greater dignity, its president was forthwith invested with the rank of knighthood. The latter was, by no means, backward in fulfilling the functions with which he had been so cautious in burdening himself. Of his own accord he undertook the duty of preparing and reading discourses on the principles and practice of art, for the instruction and guidance of the students. Of these he wrote fifteen; the delivery of which extended over several years. They were pronounced by Sir Thomas Lawrence to be “golden precepts, which are now acknowledged as canons of universal taste.”

In 1773 Reynolds paid visits to Paris and Oxford. At the latter place he received, amidst much applause, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, in company with Dr. Beattie, of whom he produced a celebrated picture on returning to London. About the same date he went to his native district, and was elected mayor of Plympton. This mark of esteem from his townsmen seems to have given him particular pleasure. Accidentally meeting with the king shortly after, at Hampton Court, he stated that it had afforded him more satisfaction than any distinction he had met with: “Always,” he added, with the skill of a courtier, “excepting that which your majesty graciously conferred on me――the honor of knighthood.”

Sir Joshua was chosen a member of the Academy of Florence, and, in accordance with its rules, required to furnish a portrait of himself. This he accomplished with his wonted success; and it was added with pride to their interesting collection.

In 1780 he commenced a series of allegorical figures for the window of the New College chapel at Oxford. These were followed by the “Nativity,” which being sold to the Duke of Rutland, perished in a fire at Belvoir Castle. About this time he made a tour to inspect the Continental galleries. On returning, he sustained a paralytic attack, which much alarmed his friends, but his recovery was speedy; and he quickly proved that his powers had suffered no decay, by the production of his “Fortune-teller,” his portrait of Miss Kemble, and that of Mrs. Siddons, in the full might of her beauty and power, as the Tragic Muse. While engaged with the latter, he wrote his name on the border of her robe; and on the great actress looking at the words, and smiling, he remarked, with one of his most courtly bows, that he could not lose such an opportunity of sending his name down to posterity on the hem of her garment. When at work, he is said to have been in the habit of using enormous quantities of snuff. Thus, while occupied with the large picture of the Marlborough family at Blenheim, a servant was ordered by the duchess to sweep up the snuff that he had let fall on the carpet. However, when the man entered with a broom, Sir Joshua quietly requested him to let it remain till he had finished; observing, that the dust would do more harm to his painting, than the snuff could possibly do to the carpet.

On the death of Allan Ramsay, the king’s painter, Reynolds was, at the request of his majesty, induced to accept the vacant office. He soon after produced “Love unloosing the Zone of Beauty,” and a portrait of the notorious Duke of Orleans. Then he gave his time and attention to painting the “Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents,” for the Empress of Russia; who acknowledged his attention by a note of thanks from her own imperial hand, a gold snuff-box, on which was her likeness, and a purse of fifteen hundred guineas.

Sir Joshua had now reached his sixty-sixth year; his fame was high; his influence on the taste and refinement of the country was not disputed; and his artistic powers remained unimpaired. His career had indeed been characterized by the strictness and temperance essential to the possession of “a healthy body and a vigorous mind;” he had realized a fortune; he had associated with the noble and beautiful of the land; and his wealth, his heavy purse, and hospitable table, gave him dignity in the eyes not only of many who were incapable of appreciating his merits, but of others to whom his fine abilities were no mystery. But his days were numbered. In the month of July, 1789, while finishing a portrait of Lady Hertford, he was aware of a sudden loss of sight in his left eye; and, laying down his pencil for the last time, he sat for a while in sad and pensive reflection. Goldsmith had already been laid at rest in the Temple Church; the eyes of Burke had overflowed with tears, and his voice faltered by the death-bed of Johnson; and the immortal painter was ere long to follow. He in a short time altogether lost the sight of his left eye, and determined to paint no more; yet under this affliction he strove to appear happy, cheerful, and resigned. His illness was borne with much fortitude, and whatever he had to suffer was endured without complaint or irritability. He amused and diverted himself in his drawing-room by changing the position of his pictures, and exhibiting them to his friends. Besides, like some imprisoned knight of old, he took a fanciful liking for a little bird, which became so tame and docile that it perched on his hand, while he fed and talked to it almost as he would have done to a human being. At length, one bright summer morning, the feathered warbler made its escape by an open window; and Sir Joshua was so inconsolable for the loss, that he roamed for hours about Leicester Square in the hope of seeing and recovering so harmless and cheerful a companion.

On the occasion of the gold medals being bestowed on the students of the Academy in 1790, Sir Joshua went thither for the last time, with all due pomp and circumstance, to deliver an address. With unabated admiration, he recalled to their memory the triumphs achieved by the genius of his great idol, and concluded by earnestly desiring that the last words he should pronounce from the presidential chair might be the name of Michael Angelo. The crowd being unusually large, a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash. All rushed to the door, stumbling over each other, except the venerable president, who remained silent, composed, and dignified. Fortunately no damage was done, and the proceedings were resumed.

Sir Joshua offered to the Royal Academy his collection of paintings by the great masters at a low price. But, much to his mortification and amazement, his proposal was declined; and he exhibited them publicly in the Haymarket for the benefit of his servant Ralph. This transaction gave rise to the suspicion that Reynolds shared in the profits; and two lines of Butler――

“A squire he had whose name was Ralph, Who in the adventure went one-half,”――

were applied with audacious and merciless malevolence. He was soon beyond the reach of such assailants and their weapons of offense. After a visit to Beaconsfield, the residence of his mighty friend Burke, his health and spirits sunk with the rapidity which frequently heralds a speedy dissolution; and on the 23d of February, 1792, he expired, with little apparent pain, in the sixty-ninth year of his prosperous life. His body was laid in St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the side of Sir Christopher Wren; and a monument, graven by Flaxman, has since been erected to his memory.

SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY.

The artistic genius of England, however potent and exuberant it may be, has never been so freely or prominently displayed in sculpture as in poetry or painting; nor has it had equal encouragement. The creations of the sculptor’s fancy and the emanations of his skill, unquestionable as may be their merits and real their beauties, have never ranked very high in the favor of the multitude. Many, whose sympathy might otherwise be followed by more substantial tokens, understand full well that a portrait costs less, and is more readily appreciated by their neighbors, than a marble bust; and even with those few who pride themselves in rivaling the Medici in their patronage of art, and lay the flattering unction to their souls that they know something about it, the popularity of sculpture is by no means excessive. But the name of Chantrey is one which his countrymen have reason to regard with patriotic pride and satisfaction. He formed his style on the beauty and manliness of his native land; he was thoroughly her own. His taste in this respect was created when the inhabitant――while a boy――of a quiet and secluded village; and it was adhered to with splendid results when he was depicting statesmen, warriors, orators, and poets――our Pitts, Wellingtons, Grattans, and Scotts. Instead of struggling in vain to recall cold shapes and uncongenial visions from remote antiquity and distant realms, he embodied in simple but fascinating works, for the instruction and gratification of native talent and taste, the life, manners, and costume which came around him in his daily existence. Thus his works are not only more popular than those of the sculptors who had preceded him, but they are fitted to excite no small portion of that sympathy which one feels when gazing on the canvas, whereon the features of some distinguished man or beautiful woman have been gloriously portrayed by the pencil of Reynolds or Raeburn. His success in this line first secured him general notice; and they are not inferior to any that ever were produced; while his statues executed for public places, with those singularly plain and unadorned pedestals, wisely calculated not to detract from the effect of the more important part of the composition, exhibit surpassing grace and vigor of outline. The story of a great sculptor’s life can, with rare exceptions, be soon told; his existence being unmarked except by the works which he sends into the busy world from his solitary, secluded, and laborious studio.

Francis Chantrey was born on the 7th of April, 1782, at Norton, a little village in the county of Derby. His father, a stout and sagacious yeoman, cultivated with frugal industry the small estate he was fortunate enough to possess; and the future sculptor doubtless delighted, when a sportive child, to lend a helping hand in the operations of the season. The worthy farmer died when his son was in boyhood, little anticipating that the latter was destined to touch the hearts of men by a process and after a fashion which were hardly dreamt of in the philosophy of the tillers of Derbyshire soil. Indeed, hardly any thing could have been more improbable; for unless it were the statues in the quaint, curious, and terraced old garden of some “large-acred” aristocrat, he had no opportunity of gazing on any specimens of art likely to excite his imagination or guide his aspirations. Nevertheless, at an almost infantine period of existence he gave indications of his natural bent; and ere long, in communion with nature and all its beauties, he was inspired by the fine feelings and ambitious desires which afterward animated his spirit to splendid efforts, and nerved his hand to resolute toil in completing the conceptions of his ardent brain. The contemplation of natural objects in all their simplicity filled his young heart and memory with lovely and charming images, which in other days contributed to his success, established his reputation, and laid the foundation of his lasting fame.

Chantrey was about eight years old when he lost his father, and was thus early deprived of the paternal influence and direction. His mother soon after yielded herself, and such charms as she could boast of, for a second time, into matrimonial bonds; and though she reared her fanciful boy with great care and tenderness, and survived to witness his artistic achievements, perhaps his exhibitions of talent and inclination were less attended to than they might otherwise have been. However, he was educated with the ordinary solicitude, though to what precise extent does not appear.

On leaving school, he was occupied with agricultural operations. Like the Scottish poet, Burns, he could hold the plow to some purpose, as in after life he used to relate. Besides, he accomplished feats in mowing; in the barn wielded his flail with signal prowess, and, doubtless, found favor in the eyes of those laughing rustic beauties, who look so enchanting and leap joyously at hay-makings and harvest-homes. But whether his friends and acquaintances regarded him as one _gaudentem patrios findere sarculo agros_, or the reverse, he had long since began to develop a turn for art, by making various models in clay for amusement, though without any idea that it would ever create for him a splendid reputation, and conduct him to a position of dignity and honor. At this period, no doubt, he caught among those steep Derby Hills, celebrated in verse, that love of field-sports which ever actuated him. He liked the exercise and delighted in the recreation. He became a keen fisher, an excellent shot, and had a fancy for dogs. In after life, and on fitting occasions, he was almost as indefatigable in rural sports as in his professional exertions; and in the indulgence of his humor in this respect he was not daunted or deterred by unpropitious weather.

When Chantrey had arrived in his seventeenth year, his relations deemed it proper to take his prospects into their serious consideration; and they came to the conclusion of placing him in an attorney’s office at Sheffield. Thither, therefore, he was conducted with that object; and had it been realized, his artistic predilections might speedily have altogether vanished; but

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them as we may.”

The intention of Chantrey’s guardians and his apparent destination were changed by an accident, which, though seemingly trifling in itself, was of the utmost importance in his career. He was passing along the street, and staring about with all the wonder of a youthful peasant, when suddenly some figures in the window of a shop arrested his eye, and filled his heart with an irrepressible longing to be a carver of wood. This wish he repeated with so much ardor and earnestness, that his friends saw reason to accede to a desire, which was evidently the result of no mere ephemeral sentiment. They had, of course, as little idea of sculpture as they had of the moon, or the north pole, or the Chinese empire. A picture, indeed, they could have admired. A lady shining on the painter’s canvas, in all the pride of gems and rich attire, would have raised their wonder: but the severity of marble catches not the popular fancy; and had the boy’s tendency been explained, they would still have been in the dark as to what he would be at. Luckily, common sense taught them that it would be downright stupidity to place at the dreary desk a lad whose heart was set upon a very different occupation from that of copying deeds. They, therefore, consented to his being apprenticed to a wood-carver in the town; and he entered on that course which led him on, from small beginnings, to affluence and celebrity. It happened that at his new master’s house he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a distinguished draughtsman in crayon, and immediately exhibited a lively interest in that individual’s occupations. He took infinite pleasure in seeing him paint, and was careful to make himself as useful and agreeable as was in his power. In this way he soon felt ambitious of following art as a profession, in some higher field than that to which his labors were then confined. He had already made all the progress in carving which, under the circumstances, could be achieved by skill, perseverance, and enthusiasm. During the intervals of business he did not waste or dissipate an hour of his precious time, but was constantly at study; and even at the midnight hour he might have been found in his lodgings, with a light burning, engaged with groups and figures, and working with the utmost spirit and the rarest diligence.

This system did not exactly quadrate with the views of his employer, who, naturally enough, wished his pupil to be a workman and not an artist. Moreover, Chantrey, finding his tastes in this respect perpetually thwarted, and his desire becoming uncontrollable, grew much too enthusiastic in his aspirations to be longer limited or restrained by ordinary circumstances. Therefore, though only six months of his term of servitude remained unexpired, with the impatience of genius he gave his master all the wealth he possessed to cancel the indentures, gained a little money by taking portraits, repaired to London, and, thus thrown into the mighty vortex, determined to triumph. But with the hereditary caution and common sense, which were finely exhibited by him throughout life, he made “the hardest circumstance a helper and a slave,” and at first sought employment as assistant to a wood-carver, that he might live by the craft he had resolved to leave, while pursuing those studies that were so nobly rewarded, rather than make any premature attempt to win that fame which he instinctively felt must one day be his in no small measure.

He reached the metropolis in his twenty-second year, and shortly after his arrival was induced to pay a visit to Ireland, with the intention of making a tour through that country; but while in Dublin he suffered so severely from a fever, that his life was for some time despaired of. Fortunately, he was restored to health, and returned to London, having during the illness lost his hair, which he never recovered. His appearance was fine and prepossessing; his mouth was beautifully formed; and he was complimented on bearing a remarkable resemblance to the greatest of English dramatists. In disposition he was frank, fearless, and communicative; and his affability and familiarity in company were acknowledged: but, at the same time, he was a man of the world, and would never, for a momentary triumph, commit himself by a conversational indiscretion.

On returning from the “Green Isle,” and having about the same period made an excursion to the Continent, he devoted himself with zeal, anxiety, and earnestness, to his professional studies and pursuits. He still continued the occupation of a certain portion of his time as a carver, and executed several figures in wood, which are still in existence as interesting memorials of the great sculptor’s earlier career. Doubtless he had his struggles, and did not forget them when better times came. On the contrary, he was ever prompt to encourage rising artists; he excused their shortcomings, and recommended their works; and when unable otherwise to serve them, though not in any respect negligent of his pecuniary concerns, he was not slow to use his purse for that purpose. Neglecting no means which might aid him in ascending the steep and slippery pathways of fame, he turned his attention to portrait-painting, and obtained some notice on account of the success of his efforts. But, like Pope, he found an insuperable barrier to excellence in the defectiveness of his sight.

Meantime he had continued his exertions and improved his powers in that department of art with which his name is now associated, by modeling the human form in clay, and arraying it with pieces of drapery, studying attentively the best and most picturesque attitudes in which it could be represented. One of his first works was a bust of Mr. Raphael Smith the artist, whose paintings had exercised so much influence on his early career; but it was that of the celebrated Horne Took which gained him fame in the metropolis. Then appeared his colossal head of Satan, which, by its gaze of dark and malignant despair, attracted notice; and the artist had reason to look to the future with hope.

When Flaxman ventured on marrying a very accomplished woman, Sir Joshua Reynolds shook his head at the perpetration of such a piece of eccentricity, and frankly told the struggling sculptor that he had thereby ruined himself for life. The spirit of prophecy did not, however, rest on Leicester Square, for to the inspiration of his wife Flaxman attributed his subsequent successes. Example is more powerful than precept; and Chantrey profiting, perhaps, by that so spiritedly set by his more classical contemporary, resolved on taking a similar step.

In 1811 he married his cousin, who brought him so considerable a fortune, that he was enabled to pursue the success he had achieved with a feeling of greater security; and he was soon intrusted by the city of London to execute the statue of George the Third, to be placed in the council-chamber at Guildhall, as well as with many private commissions, which added to his reputation.

He now undertook a professional tour in Scotland, and executed, besides other works, statues of the famous Lord Melville and Lord President Blair, as also an admirable bust of Professor Playfair, for Edinburgh; and on returning, he was commissioned by Government to execute some monuments for St. Paul’s Cathedral.

About this date, Chantrey had the penetration to perceive and the fortune to secure in Allan Cunningham, the popular biographer of British artists, an assistant who united literary capacity and a fertile pen to the shrewdness and indefatigability usually supposed to appertain to the natives of North Britain. That Scottish adventurer, the son of a gardener to the person from whom Burns rented his farm, after having been apprenticed to a builder, composed a volume of songs, and came to push his fortune in London. He was now engaged by Chantrey, who had a sharp eye to his own interest, as clerk in his studio, and superintendent of his works.

At the conclusion of the war, Chantrey made a journey to Paris, which he had previously visited at the peace of Amiens, and inspected the various artistic works in the Louvre with much interest. From this point his progress in public esteem was steady and gratifying. On returning from the Continent he commenced the monument of the Two Sisters for Lichfield Cathedral; and when this exquisite specimen of his skillful fancy was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1817, it was regarded as marvelous for its grace, pathos, and beauty. The press to see it was unprecedented; mothers wept over the representation; children lovingly kissed the figures; and the effect it produced on the minds of beholders was deep, impressive, and enduring. Soon after he produced the statue of Lady Louisa Russell, daughter of the Duke of Bedford, fondling a dove in her bosom. She stands on tiptoe; and the attitude of the figure is said to be so singularly natural, that a little child of three years old coming into the sculptor’s studio held up its little hands to the figure, and addressed it under the impression that the form was a living one.