GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS.

INTRODUCTION.

Art and Artists in England up to the time of Holbein-Holbein -Sir A. Moro-Oliver-Vandyke-George Jameson-Sir Peter Lely-Sir Godfrey Kneller-Sir James Thornhill.

T was not without diffidence that I undertook this work; nor have I forgotten the satiric complaint of my countryman-" Will no one write a book on what he understands?" But the hands which hold the pencil are not always willing or able to hold the pen, and artists of literary attainments are either more profitably employed, or prudent enough to avoid an undertaking where there is more certainty of censure than of praise. I may also urge, in extenuation of my temerity, that as art reflects nature, through nature it must be judged.

The history of art, and the lives, and characters, and works of its earlier professors, are scattered through many volumes, and are to be sought for in remote collections, private cabinets, and public galleries. Our paintings are widely diffused, nor are they all contained in the island; and the biographical materials collected by the indiscrim

inating diligence of Vertue, and brightened here and there by the wit or the sagacity of Walpole, lie strangely heaped together. The other sources of information consist chiefly of the lectures and discourses of the Professors, the accidental notice of the historian or the poet, anecdotes collected by lovers of gossip connected with eminent men, and certain detached biographies, dictated, some by the affection of friends, others by the malevolence of enemies, but most of them drawn up with the hurried indifference of men writing for bread. Of these works some are concise and barren, others overflowing and diffuse, and all are more or less liable to be charged with inaccuracy of criticism, with describing what ought to be, rather than delineating what is.

From materials thus varied and contradictory, it is my wish to extract a clear and concise account of our early art, with the lives and characters of the most eminent British artists. Before the birth of Hogarth, there are many centuries in which we relied wholly on foreign skill. With him, and after him, arose a succession of eminent painters, who have spread the fame of British art far and wide. Of their conduct as men I hope to speak with candour. Of their works I shall express my own sentiments, wherever I have the power of personal examination. Where this is impracticable for many paintings are in foreign lands, some are shut up in inaccessible galleries, and others have perished through time or accident-I shall follow what are generally esteemed the safest authorities.

Though the lives of men devoted to silent study and secluded labour contain few of those incidents which embellish the biographies of more stirring spirits, yet they are scarcely less alluring and instructive. Their works are at once their actions and their history, and a record of the taste and feeling of the times in which they flourished. We love to know under what circumstances a great work of art was conceived and completed: it is pleasing to follow the vicissitudes of their fortunes whose

genius has charmed us-to sympathise in their anxieties, and to witness their triumph.

Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, and Music are the natural offspring of the heart of man. They are found among the most barbarous nations; they flourish among the most civilised; and springing from nature, and not from necessity or accident, they can never be wholly lost in the most disastrous changes. In this they differ from mere inventions; and, compared with mechanical discoveries, are what a living tree is to a log of wood. It may indeed be said that the tongue of poetry is occasionally silent, and the hand of painting sometimes stayed; but this seems not to affect the ever-living principle which I claim as their characteristic. They are heard and seen again in their season, as the birds and flowers are at the coming of spring; and assert their title to such immortality as the things of earth may claim. It is true that the poetry of barbarous nations is rude, and their attempts at painting uncouth; yet even in these we may recognise the foreshadowings of future excellence, and something of the peculiar character which, in happier days, the genius of the same tribe is to stamp upon worthier productions. The future Scott, or Lawrence, or Chantrey, may be indicated afar off in the barbarous ballads, drawings, or carvings of an early nation. Coarse nature and crude simplicity are the commencement, as elevated nature and elegant simplicity are the consummation, of art.

When the Spaniards invaded the palaces of Chili and Peru, they found them filled with works of art. Cook found considerable beauty of drawing and skill of workmanship in the ornamented weapons and war canoes of the islanders of the South Sea; and in the interior recesses of India, sculptures and paintings, of no common merit, are found in every village. In like manner, when Cæsar landed among the barbarians of Britain, he found them acquainted with arts and arms; and his savage successors, the Saxons, added to unextinguishable ferocity a love of splendour and a rude sense of beauty, still visible in the churches which

they built, and the monuments which they erected to their princes and leaders. All those works are of that kind called ornamental: the graces of true art, the truth of action and the dignity of sentiment, are wanting; and they seem to have been produced by a sort of mechanical process, similar to that which creates figures in arras. Art is, indeed, of slow and gradual growth; like the oak, it is long of growing to maturity and strength. Much knowledge of colour, much skill of hand, much experience in human character, and a deep sense of light and shade, have to be acquired, to enable the pencil to embody the conceptions of genius. The artist has to seek for all this in the accumulated mass of professional knowledge which time has gathered for his instruction: and with his best wisdom, and his happiest fortune, he can only add a little more information to the common stock, for the benefit of his successors. In no country has Painting risen suddenly into eminence. While Poetry takes wing at once, free and unincumbered, her sister is retarded in her ascent by the very mechanism to which she must at last owe at least half her glory. In Britain, Painting was centuries in throwing off the fetters of mere mechanical skill, and in rising into the region of genius. The original spirit of England had appeared in many a noble poem, while the two sister arts were still servilely employed in preserving incredible legends, in taking the likeness of the last saint whom credulity had added to the calendar, and in confounding the acts of the apostles in the darkness of allegory.

Henry the Third, a timid and pious king, founded many cathedrals, and enriched them with sculpture and with painting to an extent and with a skill which merited the commendation of Flaxman. The royal instructions of 1233 are curious, and inform us of the character of art at that remote period, and of the subordinate condition of its professors. In Italy, indeed, as well as in England, an artist was then, and long after, considered as a mere mechanic. He was commonly at once a carver of wood, a maker of figures, a house and heraldry painter, a carpenter, an