FAMILY LIBRARY — LIVES OF THE PAINTERS.* WE have in our language
one of the most agreeable and the most highly finished works on the history of art that perhaps any language what- ever can furnish : it is the Anecdotes of Painters, compiled originally by VERTU, completed by WALPOLE, edited by DALLAWAY, and pub- lished by MAJOR. The present number of the Family Library is the commencement of a miniature likeness of these princely volumes. Similar pains, on a small scale, has been taken with its decoration and compilation.
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM is not only a poet and an author, but he is also in one walk an artist : in a profession where few are equally en- dowed with the power of wielding both pen and pencil, perhaps a better choice could not have been made than the selection of ALLAN CUN- NINGHAM for a task like the present.
Certainly no person has shown himself under three more distinct phases than this author. As a song-writer, he is joyous and enthu- siastic ; as a novelist, he is cold and wild ; as a biographer, we find him plain, familiar, and straightforward. This first volume contains, besides the introductory sketch of the history of art in Britain, the lives of HOGARTH, WILSON, REYNOLDS, and GAINSHOROUGH,—four spirited and interesting sketches, written by a person with the adequate taste and feeling to appreciate the genius of his subjects, and to dis- criminate between their respective powers. We have no fault to find, beyond a certain occasional homeliness of style, and a too frequent egotism of expression. Such phrases as "John Bull all over "—" the open-sesame, which clears up the mysteries of ancient lore"—" a vi- gorous swing of versification "—these are licences which do not accord either with the destination of the work or the beauty of its illustrations. Of the egotism to which we allude, instances occur in every page : sometimes the first person is merely de trap, in others it is offensive For example-
" 'Iwo pictures, differing much in character, yet of great merit, came from his pencil during the year l785. One was Love unloosing the zone of Beauty— a work which I cannot hope to describe in the language of discretion ; and the other the portrait of the Duke of Orleans, infamous under the name of Egaliti.i—of whom I cannot speak with temperance."
Why should the author intrude upon us here either his discretion or his temperance? or, granting that his discretion may be questionable, why should we be treated to a gratuitous specimen of his intolerance ? Assuredly, a middle-aged man in 1829 might be prevailed upon to speak of even a portrait of the Duke of Orleans of 1785 with tempe- rance: but if he cannot, why in a life of Sir JOSHUA RaYNOLDS should he publish his feebleness? Among the plates which adorn this book, are some of the happiest and the boldest specimens of wood engraving we have ever seen. We would select two for the especial admiration of the public—the land- scape of WILSON'S "Morning," and the " Muscipula" of REYNOLDS. In the former, the poetical richness of the original is hilt:Med with wonderful felicity ; and the combination of harmony and power is reproduced in a manner which we did not think the engraving on wood was capable of—we now think, that when carried to this pitch of per- fection, it is of all modes of engraving the most capable of producing grand effects on a small scale. This eulogy must, however, be under- stood as confined to humorous subjects and landscapes, for the attempts at wood-engraving of portraits in this instance have entirely failed. The head of GAINSHOROUGH is a complete caricature of a drunken noodle ; that of WILSON is little superior. On the other hand, the grace and ease and expression of the " Muscipula," the little girl WHO has taken possession of a mouse in a cage, are truly admirable. In it work of biography, where the anelit of the writer lies chiefly in the skilful arrangeinent of facts and the judicious interlacing of obser- vations, it is difficult to fix upon an adequate specimen: nevertheless we shall not err in quoting the character of HOGARTH, both as a fair example of Mr. CUNNINGHAM'S composition, and as a most interesting topic.
HOGARTH.
"The character of William Hogarth as a man is to be sought for in his *The Lives of the most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects By Allan Cunningham. In three volumes. Vol. I. London, 1829. Murray. conduct, and in the opinions of his more dispassionate contemporaries; his character as an artist is to be gathered from numerous works, at once origi- nal and unrivalled. His fame has flown far and wide ; his skill as an engraver spread his reputation as a painter ; and all who love the dramatic representa- tion of actual life—all who have hearts to be gladdened by humour—all who are pleased with judicious and well-directed satire--all who are charmed with the ludicrous looks of popular folly—and eTh who can be moved with the pathos of human suffering—are admirers of Hogarth. That his works are unlike those of other men, is his merit, not his fault. He belonged to no school of art ; he was the produce of no academy ; no man living or dead had any share in forming his mind, or in rendering his hand skilful. He was the spontaneous offspring of the graphic spirit of his country, as native to the heart of England asindependence is, and he may be fairly called, in his own walk, the firstborn of her spirit.
" He painted life as he saw it. He gives no visions of by-gone things—no splendid images of ancient manners; he regards neither the historian's page nor the poet's song. He was contented with the occurrences of the passing day—with the folly or the sin of the hour ; to the garb and fashion of the moment, however, he adds story and sentiment for all time.
" The morality of Hogarth has been questioned ; and indeed the like has befallen Crabbe. We may smile as we look at his works, and we may laugh— all this is true :—the victims whom Hogarth conducts pass through many va.. Hed scenes of folly, and commit many absurdities ; but the spectacle saddens as we move along, and if we commence in mirth, we are overwhelmed with sorrow at last. His object was to insinuate the excellence of virtue by proving the hideousness of vice;—and if he has failed, who has succeeded; As to other charges, preferred by the malice of his contemporaries, time and fame have united in disproving them. He has been accused of want of knowledge in the human form, and of grace and serenity of expression. There is some truth in this perhaps ; but the peculiar character of his pictures required mental vigour rather than external beauty, and the serene Madonna-like loveliness could not find a place among the follies and frivolities of the passing scene. He saw a way of his own to fame, and followed it ; he scorned all imitation, and by word and works recommended nature for an example and a monitress in art.
" His grammatical accuracy and skill in spelling have been doubted by men who are seldom satisfied with anything short of perfection, and they have added the accusation that he was gross and unpolished. Must men of genies be examples of both bodily and mental perfection ? Look at the varied works of Hogarth, and say could a man, overflowing with such knowledge of men and manners, be called illiterate or ignorant. He was of no college—hut not therefore unlearned ; he was of no academy—yet who will question his excel- lence in art ? He acquired learning by his study of human nature—in his intercourse with the world—in his musing on the changes of seasons—and on the varying looks of the nation and the aspect of the universe. He drank at the great fountain of information, and went by the ancient road ; and till it is shown that his works are without knowledge, I shall look on him as a well-informed man.
" In his memorandums respecting the establishment of an Academy of Art in England, he writes well and wisely. Voltaire asserts that, after the esta- blishment of the French Academy, not one work of genius appeared, for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees with the acute Frenchman ; he declares that the institution will serve to raise and pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short. More —(says Honarth)—will flock to the study of art than what genius sends ; the hope of profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy reli- gion, and Rome is the general store-shop of Europe. The arts owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish maomiticence in art ; in Holland selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England is united with selfishness. Por- trait-painting, therefore,. has succeeded, and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and the demand will continue as new faces come into the market. Portrait-painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a munificent patroness ; historial painting seeks to revive the memory of the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. Paintings are plentiful enough in England to keep us from the study of nature ; but students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never hope to live themselves ; they will learn little more than the names of the painters : true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that is kept by nature.' Ihese are the written words of a man illiterate and gross, who was unacquainted with grammar, and could not spell ! In this free, clear, and pithy way, Hogarth handled the great question of public instruction in art, and his conduct has been imputed to envy of the growing fame of Sir Joshua Reynolds. If those sarcastic strictures arose from envy—of which I find no
traces—the envy of o was met by the contempt of Reynolds ; for never in all his letters and dicourses does Sir Joshua, save once, or so, and that with more of censure than of praise, allude even to the existence of his eminent contemporary. "It is seldom that envy urges such sensible reasons for its opposition. Hogarth disliked a formal school, because he was the pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it would become a manufactory for conven- tial forms and hereditary graces. He satirized some of the dark masters, and laughed at—as well he inight—their legions of saints and Madonnas. He saw their influence in England, and he lamented it and lampooned them ; but he was not, therefore, insensible to the merits of the more eminent masters. Opulent collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of the Romish Church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of imitation. Ifogarth perceived that all this was not according to the natural spirit of the nation ; he well knew that our island had not yet poured out its 'own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry ; and he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors. In this mood lie looked coldly—too coldly perhaps— on foreign art; and perhaps too fondly on his own productions. But even there, where vanity soonest misleads the judgment, he thought wisely. Ile contemplated his own works, not as things excellent in themselves, but as the rudiments of future excellence, and looked forward with the hope that some happier Hogarth would arise, and raise—on the foundation which he had laid —a perfect and lasting superstructure.
" As a painter,' says Walpole, 'Hogarth has slender merit.' What is the merit of a painter ? If it be to represent life—to give us an image of man— to exhibit the workings of his heart—to record the good and evil of his nature —to set in motion before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled— to shake us with mirth—to sadden us with woful reflection—to please us with natural grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring—Hogarth has done all this—and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us one ? I claim a signification as wide for the word painter as for the word poet. But there seems a disposition to limit the former to those who have been formed under some peculiar course of study—and produced works in the fashion of such and such great masters. This I take to be mere pedantry; and that as well might all men be excluded from the rank of poets, who have not composed epics, dramas, odes, or elegies, according to the rules of the Greeks."
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