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by Mengs-that it was the work of the young American. The surprise of the Italians was unbounded; but they congratulated the artist warmly. Mengs himself made his appearance soon after, and, having examined the picture, expressed himself, in regard to West's merits, in terms of the most frank and generous commendation. He proceeded to give him advice as to his future studies, telling him he had no need to come to Rome to learn to paint; but that, after examining everything in the city deserving of an artist's attention, he should go successively to Florence, Bologna, and Venice, and, having made himself familiar with the productions of the great masters preserved in these cities, should then return to Rome, paint an historical picture, exhibit it, and, from the opinion expressed of it, decide on the line of art he should follow.

By this time West had been little more than a month in Rome: but such was the excitement he had undergone, that, as happened to Salvator Rosa, he was taken alarmingly ill; on which his medical attendants insisted that he should go back to Leghorn. From Leghorn he some time after proceeded to Florence, in order to consult an eminent surgeon of that city. It was eleven months before he recovered from this attack. During the greater part of this time he remained in a state of extreme weakness and suffering. But even in that condition he did not neglect the study of his profession. He had a table constructed on which he would draw while he lay in bed; and whenever his strength permitted he had his brush in his hand.

Meanwhile, however, this long illness, during which he was probably subjected to some additional expenses, as well as prevented from making any money, was exhausting his scanty funds, and he had arrived at his last ten pounds before he was completely recovered. But at this crisis unexpected assistance arrived. One day, his old patrons in Philadelphia, Mr. Allen and Governor Hamilton, were dining together at the house of the former, when a letter arrived from Allen's Leghorn correspondent, in which, after the customary commercial advices, the writer added a short account of the reception of West's picture of Mr. Robinson at Rome. Delighted with this success of his countryman and protégé, Allen immediately declared that he regarded this youth as an honour to America, and that he was determined he should not want the means of proceeding with his studies. "I shall send him,” said the generous merchant, “whatever money he may require." The governer joined warmly in the same sentiments, and insisted on sharing with Allen the honour of supplying the necessities of the young artist. The result of this conversation was, that, when West went to his Florence banker to draw his last few pounds, that person, unfolding a letter, informed him that he was instructed to give him unlimited credit.

From Florence, West proceeded to Bologna, and from thence to Venice, remaining some time at each city, in order to study the works of art which

it contained. He then returned to Rome; and, according to the counsel he had received from Mengs, painted two historical pictures, which he exhibited. They were received with great applause. Having now, as he conceived, accomplished every object for which he had been desirous of visiting Italy, he had no other thought than to return to America, when a letter arrived from his father, recommending to him, in the Philadelphian phraseology of that day, first to go for a short time home, meaning to England. Although his heart at this time seems to have been still in America, this proposal was not disagreeable to West, and he prepared immediately for his journey to the land of his fathers. Leaving Rome, he proceeded to Parma, where they elected him a member of the Academy, a similar honour having been previously bestowed upon him by the Academies of Florence and Bologna. He then passed through France, and arrived in London on the 20th of August, 1763. Here he unexpectedly found his old American friends, Allen, Hamilton, and Smith; and was, through their means, and some letters he had brought with him from Italy, speedily made known to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Wilson, the highest names in English art. He soon after, not so much by the advice of his friends as in a well-founded dependence upon his own talents, took apartments in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and commenced the practice of his profession. His sagacity had by this time discovered that London afforded a somewhat more promising field for a painter than Philadelphia; and he thought no more of returning to America. One of the first things he did, in order to make himself generally known, was to paint a picture (on one of the same subjects which he had chosen at Rome), and to send it to the exhibition which then took place annually in Spring Gardens. It appeared here, accordingly, in 1764, and attracted considerable notice. He was some time after invited to dinner by Dr. Drummond, the Archbishop of York, who was so much pleased both with his conversation and the proofs of genius which he conceived his paintings to exhibit, that he contrived to have him introduced to George III. His Majesty's favour, which he immediately acquired, placed the artist's rising fortunes upon a sure foundation, and leaves us nothing more to relate of his struggles to escape from obscurity to distinction. The self-taught boy had now won his way to the highest professional employment, and was soon numbered among the best known painters of the age. It was not the patronage of royalty, however, to which he was really indebted for this elevation. That patronage his own merits chiefly had acquired for him; for all that the happy accidents by which he was assisted could have done for him would have been merely nothing, had not his real talents and acquirements enabled him to take advantage of the favours of fortune. But, with these merits, had he never been noticed at court, he would undoubtedly have found in time a still more munificent patron in the public. The chief benefit (if it was a benefit) which he derived from

the favour of the king was, that it secured to him at once, and from the first, that independence to which he probably would not otherwise have attained except through the exertions of years. On the other hand, had he been obliged to trust merely to the general appreciation of his merits, his success, if not quite so sudden, might have been more permanent; for he lived, as is well known, to find, that to rest his reliance, as he did, on the protection of a single individual, however exalted, was after all but to place himself at the mercy of the most common accidents. After having been chiefly employed for more than thirty years of his life in executing commissions for his majesty—during which time he completed the eight pictures illustrative of the reign of Edward III., in St. George's Hall, at . Windsor, and the twenty-eight (out of thirty-six which were designed) on subjects from the Old and New Testaments, in the Royal Chapelhe suddenly received an intimation, on the king's illness, in 1809, that the works on which he had been engaged were ordered to be suspended; and he was never called upon to resume his pencil. It was immediately after this that he painted his celebrated picture of Christ healing the Sick, one of the noblest he ever produced, which he first exhibited to the public, and afterwards sold to the British Institution for three thousand guineas, a much larger sum than he had received for any of the pieces he had executed at the royal command. He afterwards painted many other pictures on similar subjects; continuing to study and work with unabated industry almost to the very close of his long life. He was always an early riser, and the way in which he spent his day was nearly uniform. The morning hours before breakfast, and generally all the evening after dinner, were given to the study of the subject he was preparing to paint; while, during the intermediate part of the day, namely, from ten till four, he was employed without intermission at his easel. All this labour and devotion to his art, besides the improved skill and excellence which practice gives, enabled West to produce an unusually great number of works. His pictures in oil amount to about four hundred-many of them of extraordinary size, and containing numerous figures. In 1791, on the death of Sir Josuha Reynolds, West was appointed President of the Royal Academy, which had been established in 1768. This honourable office (with the exception of one year) he held till his death, on the 11th of March, 1820, in the eighty-second year of his age.

One serious disadvantage, however, which West brought upon himself, by the almost exclusive attention he had given to painting from his earliest years, was, that he remained to the end of his life a somewhat illiterate man. It has been asserted, that to spell his words correctly, when he had anything to write, was a task of no little difficulty to the President of the Royal Academy. This neglect and ignorance of everything not immediately appertaining to the department of their own favourite study has been, perhaps, as frequently exemplified by painters

as by any other class of self-educated men. The celebrated Claude Lorraine could scarcely write his name. Our own Hogarth, although by the assistance of a friend he appeared on one occasion as an author, affected to despise literature, and, indeed, every species of mental cultivation, except the knowledge of the art of painting; nor did he much exaggerate when he professed to have himself little or no acquaintance with anything else. It would be easy to mention other instances of the same kind. They ought to serve as warnings to the individual who, with an ardent desire for knowledge, has no one to guide him in its acquisition, of a risk to which he is peculiarly exposed. Even the great artists we have named, with capacities that might have compassed any attainments in iterature or philosophy, must be held, notwithstanding all they did, to have neglected a duty they owed to themselves, or, at least, to have followed a lamentably mistaken course, in disregarding that general cultivation, without which excellence in any department of art may almost be said to lose the character of a liberal accomplishment.

CHAPTER XXXI.

OTHER ENGLISH PAINTERS-SPENCER; HIGHMORE; HANNAM; WRIGHT; GILPIN; GAINSBOROUGH; BARRY; LAWRENCE.

MANY others of our recent English painters have been almost as entirely their own instructors as West was. JARVIS SPENCER, who was celebrated as a miniature painter in the latter part of the last century, was originally a menial servant, and while in that condition used to amuse himself by attempting to draw, when no one suspected what he was about. At last, one of the family in whose service he lived having sat to an artist for a miniature, the performance, when it was finished, was seen by Spencer, who immediately remarked, very much to the surprise of everybody, that he thought he could make a copy of it. He was allowed to try his skill, and succeeded to admiration. His master, upon this discovery of his servant's genius, very generously exerted himself to place him in his proper sphere, and to make him generally known; and Spencer, as we have said, rose eventually to great eminence in the department which he cultivated. JOSEPH HIGHMORE, who painted, among other well-known works, the Hagar and Ishmael in the Foundling Hospital, and long enjoyed high reputation, both for his historical pictures and his portraits, taught himself the art which he afterwards practised with so much success, while he was serving his apprenticeship in a solicitor's office and was without any one to give him a lesson. Highmore died in 1780. Another painter of that day, of the name of HANNAM,

Wright -Gilpin Gainsborough.

387 whose works, however, have not attracted much attention, was originally an apprentice to a cabinetmaker; and, having acquired some skill in painting by his own efforts, used to be allowed by his master to spend as much of his time as he chose in executing pictures for those who gave him commissions, on condition of his handing over the price to that person, who found that he made more in this way than he could have done by keeping Hannam to his regular work. RICHARD WRIGHT, who about the same period was much celebrated for his sea-pieces, rose from the condition of a house and ship painter, having taught himself to draw while he followed that trade in his native town of Liverpool. The late Royal Academician, SAWREY GILPIN, so celebrated especially for his faithful and spirited delineations of animals, was also originally apprenticed to a ship-painter. He lodged in Covent Garden, and there being a view of the market from the window of his apartment, Gilpin used to amuse himself in making sketches of the horses and carts, with their attendants, as they passed, or formed themselves into picturesque groups in the square. GAINSBOROUGH, the great landscape painter, again, led by his different genius, used, while yet a mere boy, to resort to the woods and pasture fields in the neighbourhood of his native town of Sudbury, and there to employ himself unweariedly, often from morning until night, in sketching with his untutored pencil the various objects that struck his fancy, from a flock of sheep, or the shepherd's hut, to the stump of an old tree. It was to these studies of his earliest years, undoubtedly, that Gainsborough was indebted both for that perfect truth and fidelity by which his works are distinguished, and for that deep feeling of the beautiful in nature which has thrown over them so great a charm. He learned also in this way a habit of diligent, minute, and accurate observation, which never left him; and it is both interesting and instructive to read the account which has been given of the unrelaxed zeal with which he continued to pursue the study of his art even to the last. "He was continually remarking," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of the habits of his more mature years, " to those who happened to be about him, whatever peculiarity of countenance, whatever accidental combination of figures, or happy effects of light and shadow, occurred in prospects, in the sky, in walking the streets, or in company. If in his walks he found a character that he liked, and whose attendance was to be obtained, he ordered him to his house; and from the fields he brought into his painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, and animals of various kinds; and designed them, not from memory, but immediately from the objects. He even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table, composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water; all which exhibit the solicitude and extreme anxiety which he had about everything relative to his art; that he wished to have his objects embodied,

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