English Painters with a chapter on American painters

The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Painters, by Harry John Wilmot-Buxton

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Title: English Painters

       with a chapter on American painters

Author: Harry John Wilmot-Buxton

        S. R. Koehler

Release Date: March 25, 2012 [EBook #39265]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH PAINTERS ***

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Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

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ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY.

————

ENGLISH PAINTERS

BY H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON, M.A.

WITH A CHAPTER ON

AMERICAN PAINTERS

BY S. R. KOEHLER.

ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY OF ALL AGES.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, per volume, 5s.

Architecture: Classic and Early Christian. By Professor

T. Roger Smith

and JOHN SLATER, B.A. Comprising the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Early Christian. Illustrated with 212 Engravings, including the Parthenon, the Erechtheum at Athens, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, the Colosseum, the Baths of Diocletian at Rome, Saint Sophia at Constantinople, the Sakhra Mosque at Jerusalem, &c.

Architecture: Gothic and Renaissance. By Professor

T. Roger Smith

and

Edward J. Poynter

, R.A. Showing the Progress of Gothic Architecture in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and of Renaissance Architecture in the same Countries. Illustrated with more than 100 Engravings, including many of the principal Cathedrals, Palaces, and Domestic Buildings on the Continent.

Sculpture: A Manual of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman. By

George Redford

, F.R.C.S. With 160 Illustrations of the most celebrated Statues and Bas-reliefs of Greece and Rome, a Map of Ancient Greece, Descriptions of the Statues, and a Chronological List of Ancient Sculptors and their Works.

Painting: Classic and Italian. By

Edward J. Poynter

, R.A., and

Percy R. Head

, B.A. Including Painting in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Pompeii; the Renaissance in Italy; Schools of Florence, Siena, Rome, Padua, Venice, Perugia, Ferrara, Parma, Naples, and Bologna. Illustrated with 80 Engravings of many of the finest Pictures of Italy.

Painting: German, Flemish, and Dut ch. By H. J.

Wilmot-Buxton

, M.A., and

Edward J. Poynter

, R.A. Including an Account of the Works of Albrecht Dürer, Cranach, and Holbein; Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, and Memline; Rubens, Snyders, and Van Dyck; Rembrandt, Hals, and Jan Steen; Wynants, Ruisdael, and Hobbema; Cuyp, Potter, and Berchem; Bakhuisen, Van de Velde, Van Huysum, and many other celebrated Painters. Illustrated with 100 Engravings.

Painting: English and American. By H. J.

Wilmot-Buxton

, M.A. Including an Account of the Earliest Paintings known in England; the Works of Holbein, Antonis More, Lucas de Heere, Zuccaro and Marc Gheeraedts; the Hilliards and Olivers; Van Dyck, Lely, and Kneller; Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough; West, Romney, and Lawrence; Constable, Turner, and Wilkie; Maclise, Mulready, and Landseer; and many other celebrated Painters. With 80 Illustrations.

Painting: French and Spanish. By GERARD SMITH, Exeter Coll., Oxon. Including the Lives of Ribera, Zurbaran, Velazquez, and Murillo; Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Le Sueur, Chardin, Greuze, David, and Prud'hon; Ingres, Vernet, Delaroche, and Delacroix; Corot, Diaz, Rousseau, and Millet; Courbet, Regnault, Troyon; and many other celebrated Artists. With 80 Illustrations. Nearly ready.

The Valley Farm. By CONSTABLE. A.D. 1835.

In the National Gallery.

ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY

ENGLISH PAINTERS

BY H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON, M.A.

WITH A CHAPTER ON

AMERICAN PAINTERS

BY S. R. KOEHLER

LONDON

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON

CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET

1883

(All rights reserved.)

PREFACE.

THIS brief sketch of the rise and progress of Painting in England has been drawn from a variety of sources. The little that can be traced of artistic work previous to the end of the fifteenth century does not fill many pages. Ignorance, carelessness, and iconoclastic rage all contributed to the defacement of paintings which we have every reason to believe at one time abounded in our churches and public buildings, as they did at the same period in Italy; and there is good evidence that some of our early English artists are not to be despised.

Our forefathers were too much engaged in the rough contests of war to care much for the arts of peace. In the sixteenth century several foreign artists of more or less celebrity were induced to visit and stay in England. Foremost of these was Holbein, and to his example English artists are deeply indebted. In the next century there were a few excellent miniature painters, whose work is not to be surpassed at the present day, and then came a succession of foreigners—Rubens and Van Dyck from Flanders, Lely and Kneller from Germany, and a host of lesser men, who seem to have in a great measure monopolized portrait painting—then in vogue among the nobility—for more than a hundred years.

Early in the eighteenth century came Hogarth, followed by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney, and from that time to the present, Art has year by year progressed, till now English Painters have become a recognised power in the state, and contribute, in no small degree, to the enlightenment, pleasure and refinement of the age.

H.J.W.-B.

November, 1882.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Age of Innocence. By Sir J. Reynolds.

In the National Gallery.

PAINTING IN ENGLAND.

———

BY H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON.

ENGLISH PAINTERS.

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, 11½ inches in height by 8½ 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.

From St. Ethelwold's Benedictional. By Godeman, a Monk of Hyde Abbey. A.D. 970.

An Illuminated MS. in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.

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 humanæ 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