Part 3

The second notice is as follows: “Thursday, 11 Nov., 1802. The Public are most respectfully informed that in consequence of the decease of Mr. Thomas Girtin, his Panorama of London exhibiting at Spring Gardens, will be shut till after his interment, when it will be re-opened for the benefit of his widow and children, under the management of his brother, Mr. John Girtin.”

As an example of Girtin’s work we reproduce _The Valley of the Aire with Kirkstall Abbey_ (Plate II), from Mr. Thomas Girtin’s collection.

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

[Born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, 23 April, 1775; worked in Life Academy, R.A. schools, 1792-1799; A.R.A., 1799, R.A. 1802; first tour on Continent, 1802; first part of “Liber Studiorum” issued, 1807; Professor of Perspective, R.A., 1807-1837; _Crossing the Brook_ exhibited 1815; published “Southern Coast” series of engravings, 1814-1826, “Views in Sussex,” 1816-1820, Hakewill’s “Italy,” 1818-1820, “Richmondshire,” 1818-1823, “Provincial Antiquities of Scotland,” 1819-1826, “England and Wales,” 1827-1838, Rogers’s “Italy,” 1830, and “Poems,” 1834, “Rivers of France,” 1833-1835; exhibited _Rain, Steam, and Speed_, 1844; died Dec. 18, 1851.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1790-1804, ’06-’20, ’22, ’23, ’25-’47, ’49, ’50; British Institution, 1806, ’8, ’9, ’14, ’17, ’35-’41, ’46; Society of British Artists, 1833, ’34; Institution for Enc. of F.A., Edinburgh, 1824; Cooke’s Exhibitions, 1822-’24; Northern Academy of Arts, Newcastle, 1828; R. Birmingham S. of Artists, 1829, ’30, ’34, ’35, ’47; Liverpool Academy, 1831, ’45; R. Manchester Institution, 1834, ’35; Leeds Exhibition, 1839.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum; British Museum; National Galleries of Ireland and Scotland; Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Bury Art Gallery, etc. etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Peter Cunningham’s Memoir, in John Burnet’s “Turner and his Works,” 1852; Alaric Watts’s Memoir, in “Liber Fluviorum,” 1853; Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” and “Preterita”; Thornbury’s “Life, etc.,” 2 vols., 1862; Hamerton’s “Life,” 1879; Monkhouse’s “Turner” (in “Great Artists Series”), 1882; C. F. Bell’s “Exhibited Works of Turner,” 1901; Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Turner,” 1902; Finberg’s “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings,” 1910; etc. etc.

REPRODUCTIONS: Armstrong’s “Turner”; Wedmore’s “Turner and Ruskin”; “The Genius of Turner” (THE STUDIO Special Number, 1903); “Hidden Treasures at the National Gallery,” 1905; “The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner” (THE STUDIO Spring Number, 1909); “Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall” (THE STUDIO Special Number, 1912); Walpole Society’s Vols. I., III., and VI.]

Turner’s first exhibited water-colour, a _View of the Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth_ (1790), is a poor imitation of Malton’s least inspired topographical drawings. But he learned quickly. His _Inside of Tintern Abbey_, (1794) shows that before he was twenty he could draw and paint Gothic architecture better than any of the older topographical artists. His pre-eminence as a topographical draughtsman was firmly established by 1797, when he had painted such works as the _Lincoln Cathedral_ (1795), _Llandaff Cathedral_ (1796), _Westminster Abbey: St. Erasmus and Bishop Islip’s Chapel_ (1796), and _Wolverhampton_ (1796).

From 1796 to 1804 Turner’s style changed, chiefly under the influence of Richard Wilson’s works, which he studied and copied diligently. These years saw the production of _Norham Castle_ (1798), _Warkworth Castle_ (1799), _Edinburgh, from Calton Hill_ (1804), _The Great Fall of the Reichenbach_ (done in 1804, but not exhibited till 1815), and the wonderful sketches in the Alps, _Blair’s Hut_, _St. Gothard_, etc. (1802). In these energetic and powerful drawings he aims at getting depth and richness of tone and colour.

From 1804 to 1815 his energies were mainly directed to the production of his great sea-paintings, _The Shipwreck_, _Spithead_, etc., his lovely English landscapes like _Abingdon_, _Windsor_, _The Frosty Morning_, and _Crossing the Brook_, and to making the designs in sepia for his “Liber Studiorum” and helping to engrave the plates. His water-colours during these years were not numerous, but they include _Scarborough Town and Castle_ (1811), _The Strid_ (about 1811), _Bolton Abbey from the South_ (about 1812), all three at Farnley Hall, Mr. Morland Agnew’s _Scarborough_ (1810), _Scene on the River Tavey_ (1813)--called by Mr. Ruskin _Pigs in Sunshine_, now in the Ruskin School at Oxford, and the _Malham Cove_ (about 1815), now in the British Museum (Salting Bequest). In these drawings the capacities of water-colour are not forced so much into rivalry with the depth and power of oil painting as in those of the 1797-1804 period.

About 1812 or 1813 Turner began making the drawings which were engraved and published in Cooke’s “Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England.” Between 1815 and 1840 nearly all his work in

water-colour was done to be engraved and published in similar undertakings. Turner’s fame as a water-colour painter rested during his lifetime chiefly on these drawings. Among them are many of the most beautiful works which have ever been produced in this medium. It is a pity, therefore, that they are not more adequately represented in our public galleries. This remark applies particularly to the drawings in transparent colour (like the _Launceston_, for instance, which is here reproduced, Plate IV), for those in body-colour--the “Rivers of France”--are nearly all either in the National Gallery, Ashmolean or Fitzwilliam Museums. But with the exception of _Hornby Castle_ (V. & A. Museum) and most of the originals of the “Rivers” and “Ports of England” series (in the National Gallery), nearly all Turner’s drawings made for the engravers are in private collections. We may perhaps allow ourselves to hope that some time in the future a separate gallery may be founded to do justice to British water-colours, in which such drawings would have to be properly represented.

After about 1840 Turner only worked in water-colours for his own pleasure and for that of a small circle of friends and admirers. The drawings made for his own pleasure are now nearly all in the National Gallery, where they have never been properly exhibited and where most of them cannot be seen by the public. These formed part of the Turners which the Trustees wanted to sell about a year ago. The drawings made for his friends and admirers include the _Constance_, _Lucerne_, and others of what have been called “The Epilogue” drawings. The public is able to catch glimpses of these occasionally at loan exhibitions and in auction rooms.

JOHN SELL COTMAN

[Born at Norwich, May 16, 1782; went to London, 1798; gained prize for a drawing from the Society of Arts, 1800; returned to Norwich, 1806, and opened a school for drawing and design; married, 1809; published a series of etchings, 1811, and became president of the Norwich Society of Artists; published “Norman and Gothic Architecture,” 1817, and “Architectural Antiquities of Normandy,” 1822; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825; appointed Professor of Drawing at King’s College, London, 1834, mainly through Turner’s influence; published his “Liber Studiorum,” 1838; died July 24, 1842.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1800-’06; Associated Artists, 1810, ’11; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825, ’26, ’28-’39; Society of British Artists, 1838; Norwich Society of Artists, 1807-’12, ’15, ’18, ’20, ’21, ’23, ’24; Norfolk and Suffolk Institution, 1828-’33.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery (an oil-painting); V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Norwich Castle Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Memoir in catalogue of Norwich Art Circle’s exhibition of Cotman’s works, July 1888; Laurence Binyon’s “Crome and Cotman” (Portfolio Monograph), 1897, and “Cotman” in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903).

REPRODUCTIONS: The three works cited above, and histories of British water-colour painting by Monkhouse, Finberg, etc., already cited.]

Cotman is the greatest of all the English water-colour painters born after Turner. He is the only one of them whose works can be put beside Turner’s and judged on a footing of equality. When we compare Prout, Cox, De Wint, and even Bonington, with Turner we feel that they must be judged by some less exacting standard than that which we apply to Turner. This is not the case with Cotman. He had not the width and range, the abundance and all-conquering power of Turner, but within his own limits he is every whit as unapproachable.

Cotman was a member of Girtin’s sketching club, and it is evident that Girtin’s influence counted for much in his early work. From Girtin he learned to rely first and foremost upon full-bodied washes of colour placed exactly where they were wanted and left to dry just as they had flowed from the brush. Cotman’s quite early works can easily be mistaken for poor drawings by Girtin or Francia. But in the drawings produced between 1803 and 1817, we find that he was not satisfied to paint, like the older men, in his studio upon an arbitrarily chosen formula of colouring. In a letter written to Dawson Turner on Nov. 30, 1805, he speaks of his summer sketching tour to York and Durham, and adds, “My chief study has been colouring from Nature, many of which are close copies of that full Dame.” We see one of the results of these studies in what is perhaps his earliest masterpiece, the _Greta Bridge, Yorkshire_ (1806), now in the British Museum. Its colour-scheme is as original as it is beautiful. The colouring is “natural,” but it is Nature simplified to a system of harmoniously coloured spaces, in which light and shade and modelling are suggested rather than rendered.

The distinctive peculiarity of the workmanship of this, as indeed of all Cotman’s drawings, is his reliance on the clear stain or rich blotting of the colour on paper preserved in all its freshness. The aims of representation are forced so much into the background that the artist seems to be mainly intent on the discovery and display of “the beauty native and congenial” to his materials. Mr. Binyon has drawn attention to the unconscious similarity of Cotman’s methods and aims to those of the great schools of China and Japan of more than a thousand years ago.

Among the better-known of Cotman’s drawings of this period we may mention the _Twickenham_ (1807), _Trentham Church_ (about 1809), _Draining Mill, Lincolnshire_ (1810), and _Mousehold Heath_ (1810); these are all reproduced in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903), in which Mr. Binyon’s illuminating essay was published. The beautiful drawing of _Kirkham Abbey, Yorkshire_, here reproduced (Plate III) by the courtesy of Messrs. J. Palser & Sons, is an admirable example of Cotman’s wonderful mastery in the use of decided washes of pure colour.

In 1817 Cotman made his first visit to Normandy, and after this date his colour becomes warmer, brighter, and more arbitrary. After about 1825 he indulges himself freely in the use of the strong primary colours, influenced probably by Turner’s daring chromatic experiments.

DAVID COX

[Born at Deritend, Birmingham, April 29, 1783; scene-painter in London, 1804; President of the “Associated Artists,” 1810; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813; drawing-master at Hereford, 1814-1826; published “Treatise on Landscape Painting,” 1814, “Lessons in Landscape,” 1816, “Young Artists’ Companion,” 1825, etc.; took lessons in oil painting from W. J. Müller, 1839; removed to neighbourhood of Birmingham, 1841, visiting Bettws-y-Coed yearly, 1844-1856; died June 7, 1859.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1805-’08; ’27-’29, ’43, ’44; Associated Artists, 1809-’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1813-’16, ’18-’59; British Institution, 1814, ’28, ’43; Society of British Artists, 1841, ’42.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Birmingham Art Gallery; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Glasgow, Manchester, Bury, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Memoir of the Life of David Cox,” by N. Neal Solly, 1875; Wedmore’s “Studies in English Art,” 2nd series.

REPRODUCTIONS: Solly’s “Memoir”; Masters of English Landscape Painting (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903); “Drawings of David Cox” (Newnes’s “Modern Master Draughtsmen” Series).]

It was not till about 1840, when he was fifty-seven years of age, that Cox managed to break free from the drudgery of teaching. This drudgery during the greater part of his life undoubtedly exercised a mischievous effect upon his art. Besides wasting so much of his time, and thus preventing him from attempting works which required sustained efforts, it forced him to develop a mechanical and facile dexterity of style. He got into the habit of “slithering” over the individual forms of objects, making his rocks and trees as rounded and shapeless as his clouds, in a way that irritates any one who has learned to use his eyes. There is some truth in John Brett’s remark that “the daubs and blots of that famous sketcher (David Cox) were just definite enough to suggest ... the most superficial aspects of things,” though it may have been prompted by envy and exasperation.

Cox’s reputation nowadays rests to a large extent on the drawings he made after 1840. _Hayfield with Figures_, _The Young Anglers_ (1847), the _Welsh Funeral_ (1850), _The Challenge_ (1853), and _Snowden from Capel Curig_ (1858) were among the fine things produced by the grand old artist during the last years of his life. Such moving and powerful works are stamped with the sincerity, simplicity, and rugged dignity of David Cox’s own character.

SAMUEL PROUT

[Born at Plymouth, Sep. 17, 1783; settled in London, 1811; member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1819; published “Rudiments of Landscape,” etc., 1813, “A New Drawing Book for the Use of Beginners,” 1821, and other drawing books; published lithographs of his Continental drawings, The Rhine, 1824, Flanders and Germany, 1833, France, Switzerland, and Italy, about 1839; died at Denmark Hill, Feb. 1852.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1803-’05, ’08-’10, ’12-’14, ’17, ’26, ’27; British Institution, 1809-’11, ’16-’18; Associated Artists, 1811, ’12; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1815-’51.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Bury Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Ruskin, in “Art Journal,” 1849, “Modern Painters,” and “Notes on S. Prout and W. Hunt”; Roget’s “History of the Old Water-Colour Society,” 1891; “D. N. B.,” “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (THE STUDIO Winter Number, 1914-’15), with text by E. G. Halton.

REPRODUCTIONS: Ruskin’s “Notes,” etc., 1879-’80; “Sketches by Samuel Prout” (THE STUDIO Winter Number, 1914-’15).]

Up to 1819 Prout’s work was confined to the making of English topographical drawings and marine subjects. They show Girtin’s influence mainly, and they are stolid, heavy-handed, and rather dull.

In 1819 Prout went to France, and in 1821 to Belgium and the Rhine provinces. The drawings made from his sketches appeared in the exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and attracted a great deal of interest and admiration, partly on account of their novel subject-matter--for the public was beginning to weary of the numberless views of Tintern Abbey, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon Castles, and other English subjects, with which it had been surfeited during the preceding twenty years--and partly on account of Prout’s boldness of manner and marked feeling for the picturesque. Having struck this successful vein of subject-matter Prout continued to work it till the end of his life, producing a great quantity of water-colours of Continental buildings, all executed on the same general principles, and several series of admirable lithographs from his sketches and drawings.

Ruskin liked Prout and admired his work inordinately. In “Modern Painters” he calls him “a very great man”--which is absurd--and says that his rendering of the character of old buildings is “as perfect and as heartfelt as I can conceive possible.” Some people may prefer the buildings in Turner’s early drawings, in Cotman’s, Girtin’s, and Bonington’s works. But Prout’s work is uniformly successful within its own limitations; it is bold, workmanlike, and picturesque, and its subject-matter is full of inexhaustible interest and delight.

PETER DE WINT

[Born at Stone, Staffordshire, Jan. 21, 1784; apprenticed to John Raphael Smith, 1802; student R. A. Schools, 1809; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810, member, 1811, and 1825; died at 40 Upper Gower Street, June 30, 1849.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1807, ’11, ’13-’15, ’19, ’20, ’28; British Institution, 1808, ’13-’17, ’21, ’24; Associated Artists, 1808, ’09; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1810-’15, ’25-’49.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bury, Norwich, Nottingham Art Galleries, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Peter De Wint,” 1888; Roget’s “History,” etc.; “D. N. B.”

REPRODUCTIONS: Armstrong’s “De Wint”; “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Special Summer Number, 1903).]

De Wint’s work may be described as a cross between that of Girtin and Cotman. Girtin was his first source of inspiration. From him he learned the value of breadth of effect and simplicity of design. From Cotman he learned to distil his colour harmonies from Nature. As a draughtsman he was less of a mannerist than Girtin, and he had not Cotman’s marvellous feeling for the beauties of abstract design.

De Wint had Dutch blood in his veins, and he had a good deal of the Dutchman’s solidity of character and stolid realism. His drawings always look like bits of real life. They are nearer to the common experience of Nature than either Turner’s, Cozens’, Girtin’s, or Cotman’s works. But his homely realism is always restrained by his respect for the medium he worked in and by his innate sense of style.

His work is well represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum by drawings like _Bray on the Thames, from the Towing Path_, _Hayfield_, _Yorkshire_, and _Westmoreland Hills, bordering the Ken_, all lent to that Museum from the National Gallery; and of his famous works in private collections we may mention _Cookham-on-Thames_, recently in the Beecham Collection, _The Thames from Greenwich Hill_, once in the collection of James Orrock, and _Near Lowther Castle_.

For all his “objectivity,” his steadiness of poise, his calm strength of character, De Wint’s work is intensely personal and original. The number of admirers of his manly and felicitous work has steadily increased since his death, and can only go on increasing as the public gets more opportunities of seeing his noble works with their superb mosaic of rich, deep, and harmonious colour.

RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON

[Born at Arnold, near Nottingham, October 25, 1802; received some instruction from Francia at Calais, 1817; studied at the Louvre and Institute, and under Baron Gros, at Paris; first exhibited at the Salon, 1822; made lithographs for Baron Taylor’s “Voyages Pittoresques dans l’ancienne France,” “Vues Pittoresques de l’Ecosse” (1826) and other works; visited England with Delacroix, 1825; died during a visit to England, 1828.

EXHIBITED: Salon (Paris), 1822 (Water-Colours), ’24 (Water-Colours), ’27 (Oils and Water-Colours); Royal Academy, 1827, ’28; British Institution, 1826-’29.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: Louvre; National Gallery; National Portrait Gallery (a small drawing of himself); V. and A. Museum (Oil and Water-Colours); British Museum; Wallace Collection; Manchester Whitworth Institute; Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow Art Galleries; National Gallery of Ireland.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: “Annual Register” and “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1828; Cunningham’s “Lives,” etc.; Redgrave’s “Dictionary”; THE STUDIO, Nov. 1904; Catalogue of Bonington’s Lithographs, by Aglaüs Bonvenne (Paris), 1873; “Influence de Bonington et de l’Ecole Anglaise sur la Peinture de Paysage en France,” by A. Dubuisson (Walpole Society’s Vol. II.).

REPRODUCTIONS: “Series of Subjects from Bonington’s Works,” lithographed by J. D. Harding (twenty-one plates), 1828; Monkhouse’s and Hughes’s works cited above.]

Bonington was the most brilliant of the later school of topographical artists--those who used the full resources of water-colour for the production of pictorial effects. The drawings he produced during his short life--for he died at twenty-six, may be divided into purely topographical subjects, like the _Street in Verona_ (V. and A. Museum); river and coast scenes, like the _Rouen_ (Wallace Collection); and figure subjects, in which historical costume played the chief part, like the _Meditation_ and several other drawings in the Wallace Collection.

His drawings are amazingly dexterous, firm and large in handling, finely composed, and wonderfully rich in tone and colour. His influence on English artists was considerable, particularly on W. J. Müller, T. Shotter Boys, and William Callow.

As he worked mostly in Paris his best paintings and drawings are generally to be found in the French private collections. That is probably why he is better known and more warmly appreciated in France than in England. An authoritative book on Bonington’s life and work is much needed. Just before the war broke out it was rumoured that a work of this kind, the joint production of Monsieur A. Dubuisson and Mr. C. E. Hughes, was about to be published by Mr. John Lane. Such a work will be doubly welcome, for it will help us to realize the amazing quantity of work Bonington managed to produce in his short life, and its wonderful quality; and it should benefit Bonington’s reputation by drawing attention to the large number of drawings and paintings to which, in our public and private collections, his name is wrongly and ignorantly given.

MYLES BIRKET FOSTER

[Born at North Shields, February 4, 1825, of an old Quaker Family; educated at the Quaker Academy at Hitchin, Herts, where he had lessons from Charles Parry, the drawing master; apprenticed to Ebenezer Landells, the wood-engraver, 1841-1846; engaged chiefly on book-illustration till 1858, after that time devoted mostly to painting; Associate “Old” Water-Colour Society, 1860, member, 1862; painted in oils 1869-1877, after which he abandoned it in favour of water-colours; died at Weybridge, March 27, 1899.

EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1859, ’69-’77, ’81; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1860-’99; Society of British Artists, 1876; Royal Scottish Academy, 1871, ’75.

WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery; V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); Birmingham, Manchester, and Bury Art Galleries.