A PAPER ON PAINTERS.

By **

UPON making a phrenoscopic examination into the probable origin of the pictorial art, we arrive at a powerful and active mental faculty, which has been not inaptly termed "the imitative." This it is, when preternaturally developed, that " informs the mass" of the painter, and ever restless whilst in obscurity, impels him into professional existence; breathing into his nostrils the breath of genius, and quickening within him a ready and delicate apprehension of whatsoever is picturesque, beautiful, or grand in the material world,-dignified, humorous, or pathetic, in the air-drawn realms of invention.

An inquiry into the progressive march of this faculty, as recorded in the widely-scattered details which form a history of the arts of design, tracing the course of the latter towards perfection, from the first "blind gropings" after form exhibited in such pictorial works of remote antiquity as have been entirely spared, or but lightly touched by time, down to the high state of excellence they have attained in comparatively modern days, would be found at once a delectable and use. ful study. But the proposed limits and prescribed nature of this article, effectually prevent its being here pursued; we therefore turn to the not unworthy task of portraying, as they appear to us, the most prominent features in the life and character of the painter :-one who, with cunning art has long so delighted to embody and transfix in enduring pigments the physical and moral beauties or deformities of others, and whose province it is "to hold the mirror up to nature," and like the poet,

"To catch the manners living as they rise."

A painter, in the proper signification of the word, is a being endowed for the most part with talents of a high and imposing order; and who, through the assiduous cultivation and exercise of those talents, has achieved for himself, in the great scale of society, a singularly interesting if not important position. The respect willingly paid by every right thinking person to his works, from a tacit conviction of the bene ficial effects they are calculated to produce, together with the rank he is permitted to assume, has given him a moral weight in the land we are proud to witness, and which-such is the sacred reverence we bear for art-it would deeply grieve us to see decline.

To possess a name which operates as a talisman upon the coffers of wealth-to associate with and be caressed by the titled, the learned, and the rich-to be admired by the profession, and to receive honours at the hands of princes, are amongst the intoxicating rewards that await the fortunate painter. Yet, as things are at present constituted, every meritorious candidate does not attain to such distinguished eminence, and truth requires us to show that even nobility of the noblest kind is not always successful, and that the painter-albeit with a profession conferring a sense of gentlemanly dignity-is nevertheless

sometimes subject to greater vicissitudes of worldly prosperity than could be wished.

This liability to an uncertain condition of life may be traced to the operation of many causes: among these not the least remarkable will be found, the neglect arising from the caprice of fashion, and the incontrovertible fact, that in this country his talents and utility are neither so generally appreciated nor understood as they deserve to be. The necessary consequence is, that he has too frequently to play a game with fortune wherein the odds are prodigiously against him, and under such a disadvantage it ceases to be a matter for wonder that he is sometimes compelled to yield up the fearful contest and life together; with a frame whose energies have been paralysed by the torpor-spreading touch of poverty, and a spirit robbed even of hope and quenched by neglect.

That the above is no gratuitous assumption, no querulous whine or lachrymose complaint devised solely to impart a colouring of interest to this passing record of the painter, and destitute of foundation in truth, the unhappy lives of many artists will furnish abundant and sorrowful testimony. And in reviewing the respective careers of these gifted men, let it not be overlooked that in their days] they contributed uery largely to humanise and exalt the intellectual character of the people, adding at once to the instruction and delight of mankind; nor let it be forgotten that the recompense they received in return for their labours was a cold, cruel, crushing, and continued slight, from the very nation they edified and adorned; a slight rendered doubly mortifying by the misdirected patronage which fell at the same time in golden showers upon the undeserving for it must indeed be considered a misfortune to be doomed to see triumphant dullness borne joyously and successfully down the stream of life, while the man in whose bosom burns the true "spark Promethean" is carried by a counter current amid the shallows of adversity, there to ruminate darkly and bitterly upon the unjust issues of popular awards.

But though we have lamented that in the art pictorial" (as in most others that tend to refine and elevate the human race) the heir of fame is not at all times, and in every instance, adequately rewarded by the community whose interest he unquestionably advances, it gives us, on the other hand, a pleasure intense as it is sincere, to be enabled to state that, apart from the above, and a few minor drawbacks upon his happiness, the painter's life is a life wherein is concentrated much of what is interesting in this care-cankering world; for to him is given an eye which perceives beauties hidden to the profane gaze, in the splendid imagery which nature everywhere presents in boundless profusion to the astonished and delighted senses; a taste exquisitely adapted to relish such scenes, and which, improved by culture, determines at once to what class in art they justly belong, and wherein lie their beauties, and the consequent interest they engender; while the creative spirit-that Manicæan ray emanating from the Divinity-imparts to him a power over the deathless realms of imagination, whereby he can conjure up, arrest, and fix-power superior in this attribute to the magic influence of Prospero-the most gorgeous visions of days departed, and people them with the shadowy manes of the mighty dead!

There is not unfrequently to be seen in the pursuit of his daily bread, an equivocal sort of animal, half man, half monkey, styling himself "an artist," and claiming affinity with the great commonwealth of talent: nor does he deem himself an insignificant member thereof. Perhaps it may not be amiss to inquire into his pretensions, and by setting him up against the man of sterling genius,

acquaint ourselves the better with their relative proportions. Thus, in another art, we find the painter, when he wishes to display the true dimensions of the lofty, placing a wondering Arab against the stupendous portico of Hermontis, or a sable-vested sacristan beneath the magnificent dome of St. Peter.

Fred Frivolous is one of a class whose constituents are much more numerous and widely disseminated than might be supposed, for they are not confined to the metropolis, but may be met with in the lesser as well as greater provincial towns of the kingdom. He is known in the streets, as he hurries from one humble print-shop to another, by the hardworn portfolio he carries under his arm, the affected singularity of his manner, and by the studied negligence and peculiar style of his dress. His features have a squalid, rakish, yet self-important look, and his general appearance is that of a man whose resources are of a very slender and precarious nature.

You see him enter some small shop, and upon directing your attention to the window, perceive in a narrow black and gold frame, half a dozen ghostly-looking miniatures," in this style and in that," (as the card bearing his name expresses it), and varying in price from half-acrown up to a guinea. If you are curious in such matters, and seek his lodgings, it is not unlikely you will be directed to a room (up a third flight of stairs) which is at once his painting, eating, sitting and sleeping room. You find him, palette in hand, dressed in an oily greenbaize coat, and wearing a cap that would seem once to have been of green velvet; he has heard that Titian wore such a covering. He is painting "O tell it not in Gath!"a sign for a neighbouring innkeeper.

Should you care to talk to him about the dignity of the profession, he replies to you somewhat after this fashion,

"Genius, sir, genius will have its way: Morland and Harlowe have set me the example, and to follow them, you will admit to be glorious. Besides, I owed the landlord money, and as he was always dunning me, observing the old sign wanted refreshing, I offered to wipe off my score by doing it. The offer was accepted; it is for a respectable house too, sir, and that with me is every thing."

Occasionally he gets up a lottery or raffle for such pictures as he may have on hand, makes sketches, for some vanity-puffed tradesman, of his country box and ornamental grounds, and drawings for sentimental young women who keep albums. When he is fortunate enough to get one of his best pictures into some minor exhibition, he esteems himself of vast importance, and cares little whether it be placed on the floor or near the ceiling. He talks frequently and boastfully of the

circumstance before his associates,-the lower class of players, et hoc genus omne. He is thought quite a prodigy of talent by milliners'maids and dress-makers; and is admired for his wit and pitied for his poverty by the bar-maid of "the Crown" where he goes to seek for patrons, or, when faced by penury, to dissipate care in the fumes of beer and tobacco.

He has adopted his present occupation more from a distaste for heavier yet more profitable labour, than any particular natural bias inclining him towards it; and in his pursuit of art is destitute of that • fixed and determinate purpose which actuates those whose sincere desire is to excel. Accordingly, he wastes many valuable opportunities. of improvement in futile endeavours to imitate the style of the last reputed good picture he has seen. You learn by his copies that he mistakes manner for merit, and apes the peculiarity of the painter's handling instead of catching the general spirit of his excellence. Thus we find him this week a stippling Denner, and the next a splashing Salvator.

How widely different a man, both in genius and breadth of character, is he whom we have next to describe; animated as he is with a soul that, like a placid lake, is ever delicately susceptible of external impressions, and which, awakening with a smile to the sun of nature, reflects back to Heaven its image, and to earth, the glorious forms and ethereal hues that to earth belong.

Paul Pictor was descended of a most respectable family; but whose fortunes, through negligence more than prodigality, had long been declining. He was born in an ancient city on the banks of the romantic Wye, and received at the hands of masters but a commonplace and imperfect education. An intuitive fondness for art began at an early age to discover itself in him,-as the fugitive and rude drawings which have been preserved by his father-at first from feelings of pride, and since of affection-will very remarkably testify.

Whilst yet a boy it was his delight to wander through the picturesque and fragrant lanes, with which that interesting neighbourhood so plentifully abounds; pranking his hat with wild-flowers, the dog-rose and honeysuckle from the hedge, or amusing himself by cracking carelessly the pendulous blossoms of an uprooted fox-glove, and singing joyfully the while out of that pure gladness of heart that sense of indolent enjoyment which results less from the reflection that such things are good and fair to look upon, than the exhilarating influence which nature imparts to the quick-responding and elastic spirits of the unsophisticated. and the young.

This love of the picturesque grew upon him; and, as he approached maturer years, deepened into a passion. He began to discriminate and compare the pictorial qualities of objective nature, and by the exercise of his judgment, to collect and lay down the first great principles of a correct taste. For he drank of the draught which his soul loved neither at lectures nor in schools, but at the great fountainhead whence alone all true notions of material beauty can be derived. He now found fresh sources of pleasure in his wanderings; for a salt was added to them which he knew not before. A row of raggedlooking cottages, backed by a grotesque old pollard-oak or elm, with a

few children to form varied groups as they gambol upon the road, would afford him, while he sketched them, a delight the vulgar never experience; whilst a pool with cattle, a rustic bridge, and some trees to form a vista, through which haply the eye might repose upon a mouldering ruin, or parish steeple, under certain effects of light and shadow, would throw him into a rapture.

The happy days of his boyhood rolled rapidly away; and in his fifteenth year, the world-wise among his relatives, caring little for his inclinations, and less for the decided bent of his genius, determined that he would make a decent tradesman. But the spirit of the youth resolutely resisted this step, and its effect was to induce him the more resolutely to pursue the path which his genius indicated. From this period, then, he adopted art as a profession, and they who knew him, and witnessed the untiring ardour and promising talent he displayed in her service, predicted confidently the eminence which these qualities would at some day insure him. Labouring diligently during the greater portion of the day at his studies, he was not long in obtaining a perfect knowledge of the laws which regulate optical perspective, and a considerable facility in drawing; nor did he fail to turn these acquirements to profitable account. In the evening he loved to stroll out among the meadows, to refresh his eye with natural light, and his languid frame by exercise. How often at these hours would he walk lingeringly, and with a swelling bosom, along the luxuriant banks of his native Wye, to watch the setting sun as it sank behind the storm-blanched hills, and to mark for awhile the rainbow hues of departing twilight, as they streamed down the flood before him, and faded into purple gloom in the distance.

It was after he had spent some months in the study of his art, that a gentleman of some taste and greater generosity, was struck by the merit he saw in some of Pictor's drawings. He noticed and encouraged the youth, procured him good pictures to copy, and casts to draw from, and gave him a few choice works upon the fine arts. Nor did the interest he then took in the young student ever subside; and the feeling which was at first that of patronage on the one side, and of grateful humility on the other, has been converted in the day of the painter's fame, into a friendship deep, lasting, and reciprocal.

The advantages of this connexion to our artist were inestimable: and after nearly exhausting his native place of subjects as well as patrons, he determined, under the advice of his friend, to proceed to London. He accordingly made every necessary preparation, and having received introductions to some virtuosi in town, shortly afterwards made his noiseless début in that great emporium of the arts. Here, for the first time in his life, and not without a sense of alarm, he found himself de pendent upon his own resources, and felt that he, who had attracted some notice in the country, was here lost as it were in a vast crowd of candidates for pictorial honours. He now drew at the Museum, and painted incessantly, on the allotted days, at the National Gallery and British Institution, rendering his hand sure, and silently storing up the professional experiences which qualified him for the great attempts he was subsequently destined to make and be successful in. He won, from many competitors, the silver medal of the Society of Arts, for