Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2087 page)

The painter’s position was now seriously changed. Nothing remained to him of the humble possessions of his family: the small relics sacred to him for his father’s sake — the ring, the spectacles, and the snuff-box — even these, he had been forced to purchase as a stranger, not to retain as a son! Insatiate and impatient creditors, unable to appreciate any sacrifices in their favour that he endeavoured to make, harassed him by their alternate disagreements and demands. His mother, overwhelmed in the first helplessness of grief, was incapable alike of consolation or advice. His brother, with the will, and the ambition, possessed little power and found few opportunities of aiding him in his worst exigences. To
his
genius his desolate family now looked for support, and to
his
firmness for direction. They were disappointed in neither.

As the lease had not yet expired, the family still occupied their house in Great Portland-street, — now emptied of all its accustomed furniture and adornments; and, while the elder brother, inspired by necessity, — the Muse not of fable, but of reality; the Muse that has presided over the greatest efforts of the greatest men — began to labour at his Art with increased eagerness and assiduity; the younger made preparations for continuing his father’s business, and contributing thereby his share towards the support of their afflicted and widowed parent. So completely was the house now emptied, to afford payment to the last farthing of the debts of necessity contracted by its unfortunate master, that the painter, and his mother and brother, were found by their kind friend, the late Mrs. Hand, taking their scanty evening meal on an old box, — the only substitute for a table which they possessed. From this comfortless situation they were immediately extricated by Mrs. Hand, who presented them with the articles of furniture that they required.

In the year 1812, my father’s exhibited pictures were:- “Children playing with Puppies,” painted for his generous friend, Sir Thomas Heathcote; and “May-day,” sold to the Rev. Sir S. C. Jervoise, Bart. Both these works were considered to display the same steady progression towards excellence as those which had preceded them. Of the latter, a critic of the time thus writes in one of the public journals:

“Mr. Collins has attained to a very high degree of success in this picture. The characters are various and natural, and of all ages. The groups are well distributed, and employed in a combined purpose, so that each severally assists the humour and action of the whole. There is great mellowness and richness in the humour of the several faces, particularly in the countenance of the drunken chimney-sweeper. Upon the whole, this piece has more imagination, and shows greater knowledge of life, than the ‘Weary Trumpeter,’ by the same artist.”

In the course of this year, Mr. Collins produced a picture, the success of which at once eclipsed the more moderate celebrity of all his former works; it was “The Sale of the Pet Lamb,” purchased by Mr. Ogden. Composed as it was during the season immediately following his father’s death, the simple yet impressive pathos it displayed, was a natural consequence of the temper of his mind at the period of its production. It pleased at once and universally. People ignorant of the simplest arcana of art, gazed on it as attentively and admiringly as the connoisseur who applauded the graces of its treatment, or the artist who appreciated the elabouration of its minutest parts. The sturdy urchin indignantly pushing away the butcher’s boy, who reluctantly and good-humouredly presses forward to lead the dumb favourite of the family to the greedy slaughter-house; the girl, tearfully remonstrating with her mother, who, yielding to the iron necessities of want, is receiving from the master butcher the price of the treasured possession that is now forfeited for ever; the child offering to the lamb the last share of her simple breakfast that it can ever enjoy, were incidents which possessed themselves, unresisted, of the feelings of all who beheld them; from the youthful spectators who hated the butcher with all their souls, to the cultivated elders, who calmly admired the truthful ease with which the rustic story was told, or sympathized with the kindly moral which the eloquent picture conveyed. From this work, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1813, two engravings were produced; and from fourteen to fifteen thousand impressions of the smaller print alone were dispersed among the many who recollected it with admiration and delight.*

* Vide “Literary Souvenir” for 1836. Art. — ”On the Works of William Collins, R.A.”

Among other pictures exhibited by the painter this year, the most important were: “The Bird-catcher Outwitted,” sold to one of his first and kindest patrons, Mrs. Hand; and “The Burial-place of a Favourite Bird,” purchased by Mr. T. C. Higgins. This latter picture aimed at the same pathos of subject as the Pet Lamb; but differed from it in this, — that it did not depend so greatly upon the action and expression of the agents of the story, but was mainly assisted by accessories, drawn from the most poetical qualities in simple and inanimate Nature. The background of this composition is filled by a deep wood, whose sombre array of innumerable leaves seems to stretch softly and darkly into the distance, beyond the reach of the eye. A perfect and melancholy stillness rules over this scene of dusky foliage, and casts a pervading mournfulness to be felt rather than perceived upon the group of children who are standing in the foreground, under the spreading branches of a large tree, engaged in the burial of their favourite bird. One boy is occupied in digging the small, shallow grave; while another stands by his side, with the dead bird wrapped in its little shroud of leaves. Their occupation is watched by a girl who is crying bitterly; and by her companion, who is endeavouring unsuccessfully to assuage her grief. Not devoted — like the sale of the Pet Lamb — to the representation of the stern and real woes of humanity, this picture addresses itself to feelings of a quiet, ideal nature, such as are easily and gracefully aroused by the representation of the most innocent emotions, simply developed, as they exist at the most innocent age.

During the year 1813, the painter continued to lead the studious and retired life to which he had now for some years devoted himself; and, on the tranquil monotony of which new and important events were shortly about to encroach. Whatever time he could spare from his professional occupations was still much absorbed by the attention required by his father’s affairs; which, though fast becoming settled by the self-denial of the family, were still in a disordered condition. No inconveniences attendant upon these matters of business interrupted the rigid and ambitious course of study, to which he was now urging himself with increased vigour. He felt that the Academy and the lovers of Art were watching his progress with real interest, and he determined to fulfil the expectations forming of him on all sides. To the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1814, he contributed two pictures:- “Blackberry Gatherers;” and “Bird-Catchers.” To the British Institution, he sent, in the same year, “The Town Miss Visiting her Country Relations,” purchased by Lady Lucas; and “Fore-noon,” a landscape, (sold to Mr. T. C. Higgins.) The last of these pictures is mentioned and criticised in a Diary which I am about to subjoin, and it is consequently unnecessary to describe it here. “The Town Miss Visiting her Country Relations,” represented a young lady, dressed in the height of the fashion, sitting by a homely cottage fire; and, to the astonishment of some staring children, refusing, with a high-bred disdain of a very second-hand order, the refreshments which one of her uncouth rustic relatives is respectfully offering her. The “Blackberry-Gatherers,” displayed a group of those charming cottage children for which his pencil was already celebrated, standing in a fertile English lane, whose pretty windings are dappled, at bright intervals, by the sunlight shining through the trees above. This picture exhibited throughout the highest finish and truth to Nature, and was purchased by Mrs. Hand. But the work which most remarkably asserted the artist’s originality and power of treatment, was the “Bird-catchers.” The vigour and novelty of this composition — its clear, airy expanse of morning sky; the group of boys standing upon a high bank, watching for birds, and boldly relieved against the bright, pure, upper atmosphere, proved his mastery over a higher branch of the Art than he had hitherto attempted. This work was purchased by the Marquis of Lansdowne; but the painter derived from his successes of this year a yet greater benefit than exalted patronage, and mounted the first step towards the highest social honours of English Art, by being elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

I am here enabled to communicate some interesting particulars connected with the production of the picture of “Bird catchers” — kindly communicated to me by Mr. Stark, the accomplished landscape-painter — which, to those unacquainted with the practice of Art, will convey some idea of the intensity of study required (and in my father’s case invariably given) for the production of a complete picture; while to those still occupied in surmounting the first difficulties of painting, the following extracts will offer encouragement to increased effort, by the practical example of successful perseverance. Speaking of the progress of the “Bird-catchers,” Mr. Stark thus expresses himself:

“I was much impressed with his entire devotedness to the subject — every thought, every energy, was directed to this one object. I remember having attended one of Mr. Fuseli’s lectures with him, and on our return home he said he had endeavoured to apply all that he had heard to this picture; and acting on one observation in the lecture, that ‘breadth would be easily given, if emptiness could give it,’ he determined on introducing more matter into the mass of shadow; and some implements used in the catching of birds were consequently introduced. In order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the process of bird-catching, he went into the fields (now the Regent’s Park,) before sunrise, and paid a man to instruct him in the whole mystery; and I believe, if the arrangement of the nets, cages, and decoy-birds, with the disposition of the figures, lines connected with the nets, and birds attached to the sticks, were to be examined by a Whitechapel bird-catcher, he would pronounce them to be perfectly correct.

“He was unable to proceed with the picture for some days, fancying that he wanted the assistance of Nature in a piece of broken foreground, and whilst this impression remained, he said he should be unable to do more. I went with him to Hampstead Heath; and, although he was not successful in meeting with anything that suited his purpose, he felt that he could then finish the picture; but, while the impression was on his mind that anything could be procured likely to lead to the perfection of the work, he must satisfy himself by making the effort — even if it proved fruitless.

“I have perhaps said more on this picture than you may deem necessary, but it was the first work of the class that I had ever seen, and the only picture, excepting those of my late master, Crome, that I had ever seen in progress. Moreover, I believe it to have been the first picture, of its particular class, ever produced in this country; and this, both in subject and treatment, in a style so peculiarly your late father’s, and one which has gained for him so much fame.”

The subjoined extracts from Mr. Collins’s Diaries of the year 1814, contain several interesting opinions on painting, and show the perfect absence in his character of that spirit of petulant defiance of the opinions of others, which has sometimes conduced to narrow the hearts and debilitate the minds of men of genius, during their inevitable subserviency to the searching examination of criticism and the world. Passages in this Journal, also, remarkably display the leading influence in his intellectual disposition — his incessant anxiety to improve. Throughout life, he set up for himself no other standard in his Art than that of the highest perfection. Every fresh difficulty he conquered, every increase of applause he gained, was less a cause for triumph, than an encouragement to proceed. During the progress of his pictures, the severest criticisms on them ever came from his own lips. He never forgot, to the last day of his practice as a painter, that the inexhaustible requirements of Art still left him a new experiment to try, and a fresh dexterity to acquire:

Journal of 1814.

“January 21st, 1814. — Resolved that I keep a common-place book of Art, as I find the necessity of not depending solely upon my recollection for the many hints I get from the critiques of those who see my pictures; as well as for the purpose of retaining the impressions which I find so easily effaced from the
blotting-paper
memory which I have inherited from Nature, or derived from inattention.

“Two days since Constable compared a picture to a
sum,
for it is wrong if you can take away or add a figure to it.

“In my picture of “Bird-catchers,” to avoid red, blue, and yellow — to recollect that Callcott advised me to paint some parts of my picture thinly, (leaving the ground) — and that he gave great credit to the man who never reminded you of the palette.

“Why would a newly painted carriage ruin any picture it might be placed in? Because the negative tints are the valuable ones. They are the trumpeters to Rembrandt, Ostade, Ruysdall, Vandervelde, Vandyke, and all the great colourists. Reynolds seems to have felt this; for example, look at his pictures of the ‘ Duke of Orleans,’ ‘Sleeping Girl,’ ‘Sleeping Child,’ ‘Holy Family,’ ‘Infant Hercules;’ and, in short, all his best pictures. Titian is perhaps the finest example. His picture of ‘Venus and Adonis,’ has not one positive colour in it. The drapery of Adonis, although to superficial observers a red one, placed by the side of any of our modern painters’ red curtains, would sink into nothing — notwithstanding which, it is really as much richer, as the painter was intellectually, compared with any of the present day.