Part 15

[4] In Mr. Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iv. p. 161, we are told that "_his apprenticeship was no sooner expired, than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's Lane, and studied drawing from the life_." In this circumstance, which is in itself trifling, I think the Right Honourable author has not displayed his usual accuracy. Hogarth was emancipated from his Cranbourn Alley confinement about the year 1718, at which time, I believe, there was not an academy either in that or any other part of London. The first for the use of students in drawing was opened in 1724, by Sir James Thornhill, at his house in Covent Garden. On his death, which was in May 1734, the casts, models, benches, etc., were sent to Mr. Hogarth (who had four years before married Miss Thornhill); by him they were afterwards lent to an academy established at what had previously been _Roubiliac's workshop_, in St. Martin's Lane.

[5] This gentleman was also _a patron_ to the late Mr. Major the engraver, who told me that when very young, and on the point of going to Paris for improvement in his profession, he took two plates of small landscapes, which he had just finished, to Mr. Bowles, who expressed himself much pleased with the performance of them, and _generously_ proffered him two pieces of plain copper, of the same size and weight,--by practising on which, he might still further _improve_ himself. When I add, that one of the engravings delivered to this _patron_ was that very pretty little landscape inscribed EVENING, it is scarcely necessary to say--the offer was rejected.

[6] On a piece of newspaper, dated 1786, and pasted in one of Dr. Lort's books, was the following remark:--

"The _Hogarth mania_ is as strong as ever. On Thursday the 6th of April,--it should have been the first,--the Roman Military Punishments, a paltry work for which no bookseller seven years ago would have offered more than a few shillings, was sold at Greenwood's for six pounds, on account of some trifling plates in it by Hogarth."

In the sale of Doctor Lort's library at Leigh and Sotheby's, in 1790, a copy of Bever's book produced a still larger sum.

[7] In this _improved era_ we have seen examples of _striking portraits_ which every year assume a new title. A head of Dr. Franklin was lately transferred from the book for which it was engraven to the memoirs of a man executed for forgery, whose name it now bears; _another age_ may see the same print honoured with the name of some eminent _pugilist_, who at the close of the eighteenth century _wore the collar of his order_! Such are _the transmigrations of the arts_,--or, if it better please the reader, _the arts of transmigration_. Among the _Paternoster Row classics_, there is no other distinction between a bruiser, a felon, or a philosopher, than arises from the sale of their memoirs.

[8] On the print of Hudibras and the Lawyer is _William Hogart delin. et sculp'._ This Mr. Nichols considers as a proof that _Hogarth had not yet disused the original mode in which he spelt his name_.

From his shop-bill, and every preceding print, I am inclined to think he never had more than _one mode_ of spelling his name. The concluding _h_ being in this instance omitted, might arise from carelessness, or a failure of the aquafortis. His father's Latin letter, dated 1697, proves that _he_ inserted the final _h_, and I can discover no reason why his son should discard it.

[9] For this, and some other assistance, Mr. Tyers presented Hogarth with a gold ticket of admission for himself and friends. On the face, two figures, one nearly naked, the other armed with a helmet and shield, are represented on the point of joining hands:--_motto_ round them, VIRTUS VOLUPTAS; and at the lower part, FELICES UNA. On the reverse, HOGARTH----IN PERPETUAM BENEFICII MEMORIAM.

This ticket is now in the possession of Mrs. Lewis, of Chiswick.

[10] It seems probable that Sir James was very soon reconciled, for we find in the Craftsman of March 10, 1732-3, that when Hogarth painted the portrait of Sarah Malcolm, Sir James Thornhill was present.

[11] The sum and purchasers of each are noticed in the account of the engravings.

[12] Among the papers of a lately deceased Virtuosi, I met with a few MS. sheets, entitled _Hints for a History of the Arts in Great Britain, from the Accession of the Third George_. The following extract proves that painting pictures, _called after_ the ancient masters, was not confined to Italy: we had in England some industrious and laborious artists who, like the unfortunate Chatterton, gave the honours of their best performances to others. The narrative has no date, but some allusions to a late sovereign determine it was a short time before we discovered that there were in our own poets subjects as worthy of the pencil as any found in the idle tales of antiquity, or the still more idle legends of popery:--

"The late edict of the Emperor, for selling the pictures of which he has despoiled the convents, will be a very fortunate circumstance for many of the artists of this country, whose sole employment is _painting old pictures_; and this will be a glorious opportunity for introducing _modern antiques_ into the cabinets of the curious.

"A most indefatigable dealer, apprehensive that there might be a difficulty, and enormous expense in procuring from abroad a sufficient quantity to gratify the eagerness of the English connoisseurs, has taken the more economical method of having a number painted here. The bill of one of his workmen, which came into my hands by an accident, I think worth preservation, and have taken a copy for the information of future ages. Every picture is at present most sacredly preserved from the public eye, but in the course of a few months will be smoked into antiquity, and may probably be announced in manner and form following:--

"TO THE LOVERS OF VIRTU.

"Mr. ---- has the heartfelt pleasure of congratulating the amateurs of the fine arts upon such an opportunity of enriching their collections, as no period from the days of the divine Apelles to the present irradiated era ever produced; nor is it probable that there ever will be in any future age so splendid, superb, brilliant, and matchless an assemblage of unrivalled pictures as he begs leave to announce to the connoisseurs are now exhibiting at his great room in ----, being the principal part of that _magnificent bouquet_ which have been accumulating for so many ages, been preserved with religious care, and contemplated with pious awe, while they had an holy refuge in the peaceful gloom of the convents of Germany. By the edict of the Emperor they are banished from these consecrated walls, and are now emerged from obscurity with undiminished lustre! with all their native charms, mellowed by the tender, softening pencil of time, and introduced to this emporium of taste! this favourite seat of the arts! this exhibition-room of the universe; and when seen, must produce the most pleasing and delightful sensations.

"When it is added, that they were selected by that most judicious and quick-sighted collector, Monsieur D., it will be unnecessary to say more; for his penetrating eye and unerring judgment, his boundless liberality and unremitting industry, have ensured him the protection of a generous public, ever ready to patronize exertions made solely for their gratification!

"N.B.--Descriptive catalogues, with the names of the immortal artists, may be had as above."

THE BILL.

"_Monsieur_ VARNISH _to_ BENJAMIN BISTER, _debtor_.

£ _s. d._ To painting the Woman caught in Adultery, upon a green ground, by Hans Holbein 3 3 0 To Solomon's Wise Judgment, on pannel, by Michael Angelo Buonorati 2 12 6 To painting and canvas, for a naked Mary Magdalen, in the undoubted style of Paul Veronese 2 2 0 To brimstone, for smoking ditto 0 2 6 Paid Mrs. W---- for a live model to sit for Diana bathing, by Tintoretto 0 16 8 Paid for the hire of a layman, to copy the robes of a Cardinal, for a Vandyke 0 5 0 Portrait of a Nun doing Penance, by Albrecht Durer 2 2 0 Paid the female figure for sitting thirty minutes in a wet sheet, that I might give the dry manner of that master[13] 0 10 6 The Tribute-money Rendered, with all the exactness of Quintin Metsius, the famed blacksmith of Antwerp 2 12 6 To Ruth at the feet of Boaz, upon an oak board, by Titiano 3 3 0 St. Anthony Preaching to the Fishes, by Salvator Rosa 3 10 0 The Martyrdom of St. Winifred, with a view of Holywell bath, by old Frank 1 11 6 To a large allegorical altar-piece, consisting of men and angels, horses and river gods; 'tis thought most happily hit off for a Rubens 5 5 0 To Susannah Bathing; the two Elders in the background, by Castiglione 2 2 0 To the Devil and St. Dunstan, highly finished, by Teniers 2 2 0 To the Queen of Sheba falling down before Solomon, by Morillio 2 12 6 To a Judith in the Tent of Holofernes, by Le Brun 1 16 0 To a Sisera in the Tent of Jael, its companion, by the same 1 16 0 Paid for admission into the House of Peers, to take a sketch of a great character, for a picture of Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, in the darkest manner of Rembrandt, not yet finished 0 2 6

[13] Some of the ancient masters acquired a dry manner of painting from studying after wet drapery.--_Webb on Painting._

[14] The annexed letter, which was published about this time, I have been informed was written by Hogarth; add to this authority, of which I have no doubt, I think it carries internal evidence of his mind. It is printed in the London Magazine for 1737, and thus prefaced:

The following piece, published in the St. James's Evening Post of June 7th, is by the first painter in England, perhaps in the world, in his way:

"Every good-natured man and well-wisher to the Arts in England, must feel a kind of resentment at a very indecent paragraph, in the Daily Post of Thursday last, relating to the death of _M. de Morine_, first painter to the French king, in which very unjust as well as cruel reflections are cast on the noblest performance (in its way) that England has to boast of,--I mean the work of the late Sir James Thornhill, in Greenwich Hall. It has ever been the business of narrow, little geniuses, who by a tedious application to minute parts have (as they fancy) attained to a great insight into the correct drawing of a figure, and have acquired just knowledge enough in the art to tell accurately when a toe is too short or a finger too thick, to endeavour, by detracting from the merits of great men, to build themselves a kind of reputation. These peddling demi-critics, on the painful discovery of some little inaccuracy (which proceeds mostly from the freedom of the pencil), without any regard to the more noble parts of a performance (which they are totally ignorant of), with great satisfaction condemn the whole as a bad and incorrect piece.

'The meanest artist in the Emelian square, Can imitate in brass the nails or hair; Expert at trifles, and a cunning fool, Able to express the parts, but not the whole.'

"There is another set of gentry, more noxious to the art than these, and those are your _picture-jobbers from abroad_, who are always ready to raise a great cry in the prints, whenever they think their craft is in danger; and indeed it is their interest to depreciate every English work as hurtful to their trade of continually importing ship-loads of _Dead Christs_, _Holy Families_, _Madonnas_, and other dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the terrible cramp names of some _Italian_ masters, and fix on us poor Englishmen the character of _universal dupes_. If a man, naturally a judge of painting, not bigoted to those empirics, should cast his eye on one of their sham virtuoso pieces, he would be very apt to say: Mr. Bubbleman, that grand _Venus_, as you are pleased to call it, has not beauty enough for the character of an English cook-maid. Upon which the quack answers, with a confident air: 'Sir, I find that you are no _connoisseur_; the picture, I assure you, is in Alesso Baldminetto's second and best manner, boldly painted, and truly sublime: the contour gracious: the air of the head in the high Greek taste; and a most divine idea it is.--Then spitting in an obscure place, and rubbing it with a dirty handkerchief, takes a skip to t'other end of the room, and screams out in raptures, 'There's an amazing touch! A man should have this picture a twelvemonth in his collection before he can discover half its beauties!' The gentleman (though naturally a judge of what is beautiful, yet ashamed to be out of the fashion, by judging for himself) with this cant is struck dumb; gives a vast sum for the picture, very modestly confesses he is indeed quite ignorant of painting, and bestows a frame worth fifty pounds on a frightful thing, which, without the hard name, is not worth so many farthings. Such impudence as is now continually practised in the picture trade must meet with its proper treatment, would gentlemen but venture to see with their own eyes. Let but the comparison of pictures with nature be their only guide, and let them judge as freely of painting as they do of poetry, they would then take it for granted, that when a piece gives pleasure to none but these _connoisseurs_, or their adherents, if the purchase be a thousand pounds, 'tis nine hundred and ninety-nine too dear; and were all our grand collections stripped of such sort of trumpery, then, and not till then, it would be worth an Englishman's while to try the strength of his genius to supply their place, which now it were next to madness to attempt, since there is nothing that has not travelled a thousand miles, or has not been done a hundred years, but is looked upon as mean and ungenteel furniture. What Mr. Pope in his last work says of poems, may with much more propriety be applied to pictures:

'Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold.'

"Sir James Thornhill, in a too modest compliance with the _connoisseurs_ of his time, called in the assistance of Mr. Andre, a foreigner, famous for the fulness of his outline, to paint the Royal Family at the upper end of Greenwich Hall, to the beauties or faults of which I have nothing to say; but with regard to the ceiling, which is entirely of his own hand, I am certain all unprejudiced persons, with (or without) much insight into the mechanic parts of painting, are at the first view struck with the most agreeable harmony and play of colours that ever delighted the eye of a spectator. The composition is _altogether_ extremely grand, the groups finely disposed, the light and shade so contrived as to throw the eye with pleasure on the principal figures, which are drawn with great fire and judgment; the colouring of the flesh delicious, the drapery great and well folded; and upon examination, the allegory is found clear, well invented, and full of learning: in short, all that is necessary to constitute a complete ceiling-piece is apparent in that magnificent work. Thus much is in justice to that great English artist.

"BRITOPHIL.

"N.B.--If the reputation of this work were destroyed, it would put a stop to the receipt of daily sums of money from spectators, which is applied to the use of sixty charity children."

[15] The book alluded to is, "_A Tracte containing the Artes of curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Buildinge_, written first in Italian by Jo. Paul Lomatius, Painter of Milan, and Englished by R. H. (Richard Haydocke), Student in Physick." Published 1598.

From this visionary writer he could not borrow much, great part of his book treating of the different important consequences which had resulted from the study of the proportions of the human body. It is dedicated to the Right Worshipful Thomas Bodley, Esquire, warmly recommended by John Case, doctor of physic; and in the following quaint lines, the translator apologizeth for thus employing himself:--

"TO THE INGENIOUS READER. R. H.

"How hard a matter it is to withstand any natural instinct, and habitual inclination whatsoever, the storie of the Syracusane Archimedes (besides divers others to this purpose) may sufficiently persuade; who was so rapt with the sweetness of his mathematical conclusions, that even then when the enemie had entered the gates of the citie he was found drawing of lines upon the sand, when perchance it had bin fitter for a philosopher to have bin advising in the counsell-house.

"Not much unlike to whome I may peradventure seeme, who at this time especially, when the unappeasable enimies of health, sicknesse, and mortality have so mightily prevailed against us, am here found drawing of _lines and lineaments, portraitures, and proportions_, when (in regard of my place and profession) it might much better have beseemed mee to have bin found in the colledge of physicians, learning and counselling such remedies as might make for the common health; or if I must needes be doing about _lines_, to have commented upon this proposition, _mors ultima linea rerum_.

"Howbeit, as I find not him much taxed in the storie for this his diligent carelessness, because he was busied about matters which were not onlie an ornament of peace, but also of good use in warre, so my hope is (ingenious reader), that my sedulous trifling shall meete with thy friendliest interpretation; insomuch as the arte I now deale in shall be proved not onlie a grace to health, but also a contentment and recreation unto sickeness, and a kind of preservative against death and mortality; by a perpetual preserving of _their_ shades, whose substances physicke could not prolong, no, not for a season," _etc. etc._

In his treatise of colours, he makes the following addresse to his faire countrie wommen:--

"Having intreated of so many and divers thinges, I could not but say something of such matters as _woemen_ use ordinarilly in beautifying and imbelishing their faces; a thing well worth the knowledge, insomuch as many women are so possessed with a desire of helping their complexions by some artificial meanes, that they will by no meanes be diswaded from the same." He then enumerates ceruse, plume alume, juice of lemons, oil of tartarie, camphire, and sundry other cosmetics of the day, all which he takes many pages to prove are _enemies to health, and hurtful to the complexion_, and thus adviseth: "Wherefore if there bee no remedie, but women will be meddling with this arte of _pollishing_, let them, instead of those mineral stuffes, use the remedies following.

"_Of such helpes of Beauty as may safely be used without danger._

"There is nothing in the world which doth more beautifie and adorne a woman than chearfulness, contentment, and good temper. For it is not the red and white which giveth the gracious perfection of beauty, but certaine sparkling notes and touches of amiable chearfulness accompanying the same. The truth whereof may appear in a discontented woman, otherwise exceeding faire, who atte that instant will seem yll favoured and unloovely; as contrariwise, an hard-favoured and browne woman, being merry, pleasaunte, and jocund, will seem sufficient beautiful."

[16] Of this figure he thus writes in his chapter on _Compositions with the Serpentine Line_:--

"We have had recourse to the works of the ancients, not because the moderns have not produced some as excellent, but because the works of the former are more generally known; nor would we have it thought that either of them has ever yet come up to the utmost beauty of nature. Who but a bigot to the _antiques_ will say, that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms, in living women, that even the Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate?"

[17] Hogarth might possibly have some oblique allusion to the manner in which _Cæsar suffered_ in the capitol _of an English theatre.--They might as well have hanged him_; or, _the actor deserved hanging for so personating the character_,--which the reader likes best.

In an early impression of the print I have seen written (I believe by Hogarth) on the pedestal upon which this figure is placed, TU BRUTE. That he greatly disliked Quin, is evident from the following epigram, with the injustice or justice of which I have nothing to do, but to the painter it is attributed:--

"Your servant, Sir," says surly Quin.-- "Sir, I am yours," replies Macklin.-- "Why, you're the very Jew you play, Your face performs the task well."-- "And you are Sir John Brute, they say, And an accomplished Maskwell." Says Rich, who heard the sneering elves, And knew their horrid hearts, "Acting too much your very selves, You overdo your parts."

[18] In the Analysis, he asserts that a completely new and harmonious order of architecture might be produced by making choice of variety of lines, and then again, by varying their situations with each other; in a word, that the art of composing well is the art of varying well. In the frontispiece to Brook Taylor's perspective, he has given an example, by a broken sceptre, somewhat resembling the Roman fasces, and girt round with the Prince of Wales' coronet, as an astragal, through which the fasces rise, and swell into a crown adorned with embroidered stars.

[19] Mr. Shee, in his _Rhymes on Art_, has very happily introduced a similar character, accompanied by _congenial connoisseurs_:--

"No awkward heir that o'er Campania's plain, Has scamper'd like a monkey in his chain; No ambush'd ass, that, hid in learning's maze, Kicks at desert, and crops wit's budding bays; No baby grown, that still his coral keeps, And sucks the thumb of science till he sleeps; No mawkish son of sentiment who strains Soft sonnet drops from barley-water brains; No pointer of a paragraph, no peer, That hangs a picture-pander at his ear; No smatterer of the ciceroni crew, No pauper of the parish of Virtú; But starts an Aristarchus on the town, To hunt full cry dejected merit down; With sapient shrug assumes the critic's part, And loud deplores the sad decline in art."

[20] "The dancing-room is also ornamented purposely with such statues and pictures as may serve to a further illustration. Henry VIII., Number 72, makes a perfect X with his legs and arms; and the position of Charles I., Number 51, is composed of less varied lines than the statue of Edward VI., Number 73, and the medal over his head is in the like kind of lines; but that over Queen Elizabeth, as well as her figure, is in the contrary; so are also the two other wooden figures at the end. Likewise the comical posture of astonishment (expressed by following the direction of one plain curve) as the dotted line in a French print of Sancho (where Don Quixote demolishes the puppet show); Number 75 is a good contrast to the effect of the serpentine lines, in the fine turn of the Samaritan woman; Number 74, taken from one of the best pictures Annibal Carrache ever painted."--Hogarth's _Analysis_, p. 137.

[21] A newspaper of 1781 has the following advertisement:--