THE ENGLISH SCHOOL—THE THREE FOUNDERS

“O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural.”

The English school differs from every other school in the individualism of its members. Each painter of note stands by himself, isolated from his brother artists. It is therefore difficult to write of the art of England according to its school. Sir Peter Lely was not an Englishman; he came from Westphalia. Godfrey Kneller, who succeeded Sir Peter Lely in the royal favour, came from Lübeck. Neither could lay claim to being a member of the English school. England, for the first time, entered into the march of art towards the eighteenth century. The painters who came before that time were of foreign extraction, or greatly influenced by foreign schools. There were the admirable miniaturists—the Olivers, the Hilliards, the greatest of all, Samuel Cooper, called the Van Dyck of miniature painting; but there are no miniatures in the National Gallery.

Three famous English masters are at the head of the English school; they were contemporaries—Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Gainsborough. Hogarth, with his merciless sarcasm, was a moralist painter—moralist first and painter after. Sir Joshua Reynolds was an accomplished student of the classics, a traveller in many countries, a man who knew the galleries of Spain and Italy, who understood the methods of the old masters, and who possessed besides an insight and a genius rare among painters. Gainsborough was a student of nature; he never went abroad; he learnt in the woods of Suffolk how to paint; he was a poet and a wizard of the brush. These three men are the leaders of the English school.

Hogarth was born in London, in the parish of St. Bartholomew, towards the end of 1697. He died 1764. His father had been a village schoolmaster in Westmoreland, who, fired by ambition, came to London to follow a literary career. He failed miserably and became a literary hack to a publisher. His son, William Hogarth, discouraged by his father’s fate, resolved to learn a trade, and he learnt engraving. He made very little money by his engravings, and so he took to painting portraits and strange sarcastic pictures, founded upon his observation of the ridicules and the weaknesses of the time. He was resolved to win; he studied faces, expressions, attitudes. Everything that gave him a clue to the understanding of character he mastered. He was always sketching: wherever he went, his notebook went with him. His portrait, with that of his dog Trump by his side, will help you to understand him (112). Trump and his master, I think, are very like each other. You will admit, as you look at them, that neither the one nor the other was likely to be beaten at anything he undertook to do. They have the same determined expression, the same challenging look. Hogarth said, “I have always found that nature herself is the best and safest course that we can follow in order to acquire the knowledge of our art.” He was not a great colourist, but he was a marvellous observer. We seem to know all the originals of his portraits. Miss Fenton as Polly Peacham (1161); a group of his servants (1374), each one curiously individualised; the “Shrimp Girl” (1162), a vigorous sketch of a jolly fishwife crying out her wares—all these and many others are likenesses that live.

Then we have his sardonic and terrible pictures—a series (113–118) called the “Marriage à la Mode”—very painful to look at. Let us rather look at the “Calais Gate” or the “Roast Beef of Old England” (1464). It is a scene that an Englishman alone could have painted, I am quite sure. Trump must have very much approved of it. A man dressed according to the fashion of cooks in France, wearing a white cap and a large white apron, is carrying a big sirloin of beef. A fat monk, with an approving gesture, is feeling the joint. Behind him is a ragged, half-starved French soldier, also admiring the sirloin. There are Scotchmen and shabbily dressed Irishmen—mercenaries in the pay of France—looking with watering mouths towards the savoury dish. All Hogarth’s pictures are chronicles of the time. We can see in them the bygone days, and they are often a sad spectacle to behold.

“HEADS OF ANGELS” (186)

BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds was born in 1723 and died in 1792. Monsieur Chesneau, in his history of the English school, speaks of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ works “as a magnificent victory of the will.” His originality triumphed over all his studies. We know how impossible it is to mistake a picture by Reynolds in any collection. “I know no man,” says Dr. Johnson, “who has passed through life with more observation than Sir Joshua.” It was this quality that made him the king of portrait painters. He was an extraordinarily gentle and courteous man. “His grace has almost passed into a proverb,” says Burke. It was but the expression of his charming mind, his delightful nature, his affectionate heart. “Heads of Angels” (182) is a token of his sympathetic soul. It was painted for Lady William Gordon, who was broken-hearted at the death of her little daughter. Sir Joshua Reynolds could not speak of her grief; he felt for her, so he painted the child singing in the glory of heaven. If you look at the picture you will see the five faces are one face, bathed in God’s transfigurating light. The picture brought consolation to the bereaved mother.

It is very difficult to decide which is the best of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portraits in the National Gallery—which is the most charming of these lovely ladies who smile down so serenely upon us, and who are so full of elegance, refinement, and grace. Is it the portraits of the daughters of Sir William Montgomery as “The Graces Decorating a Statue of Hymen” (79)—fair girls whose likenesses seem blown upon the canvas; or is it that of “Mrs. Hartley and Child” (1924), sometimes called “A Nymph with the Infant Bacchus”? In her hair is a rose, round her waist a scarlet sash; she holds her child, who is crowned with ivy on her shoulder. Which is the most delightful of the children? Is it “Samuel” (162), kneeling as he hears the mysterious voice calling to him, or is it the enchanting little girl sitting under a big tree called “The Age of Innocence” (307), or is it Robinetta (892) with her sweet and mischievous face? Which is the most heroic of the men? Is it Lord Heathfield (111), standing undaunted with superb obstinacy before the port of Gibraltar, holding the key of the fortress in his hand, the smoke of the artillery behind him; or is it Dr. Johnson (887), in all his ugliness and all his greatness, all his wonderful sweetness and all the irritability of his nature speaking to us?

Gainsborough’s art (1727–1788) is intrinsically different from that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, while it bears to it a superficial likeness. He is the poet of the brush, nurtured by the influences of the sun and the wind. Born at Sudbury, near Ipswich, he came to London when he was fourteen years old to learn the rudiments of art, but he was depressed by the teaching he got in schools and academies. Four years later he returned to his beloved woods of Suffolk. Fame found him out, but he still continued to study and to dream of nature. While Reynolds applied all the subleties of the varied methods he had mastered, Gainsborough loved the simple truth. In 1774 he returned to London, and all society flocked to his studio. Great ladies wished to be painted by him, and Gainsborough represented all that was noblest and sweetest in them. In this lies the great difference between the art of Gainsborough and that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Gainsborough’s portraits are the result of his single attitude of mind before the truth. Reynolds is swayed and led by a thousand reminiscences and influences. Both results are beautiful, but both are the outcome of different principles. Gainsborough’s masterpiece is “The Blue Boy,” in the Duke of Westminster’s gallery. It was painted as a protest against the dictum Sir Joshua laid down in one of his lectures, that blue cannot be made the dominant colour in a picture. Gainsborough took up his palette and painted that marvellous boy in his dazzling royal blue costume. All the portraits he has painted pass like a dream before me—a dream of fair women and brave men, with noble souls.

There is Mrs. Siddons (683) in her blue and white dress, her heavy black feathered hat, dignified, beautiful, and melancholy. There is “The Village Clerk” (760), the story of a simple and kindly life written in wrinkles upon the old face. The limpid eyes are turned towards the light. Every countenance that Gainsborough painted bears the stamp of truth. If we look at his landscapes we shall acknowledge that he deserves the title of “The Father of English landscape.” All nature in her simplicity, her infinite variety, is in these landscapes. There is a lane near the river Orwell, close to Ipswich, in which I have often stood. It is called Gainsborough’s lane. Tradition says that here he painted one of his most famous landscapes. I have felt there how nature loved her poet-painter and revealed to him all her delicate delights. Look at “The Market Cart” (80), the golden picture of a loaded waggon; the horse has just passed from the shaded pool on to the high road beyond. Look at “The Watering Place” (109). Do we not feel that it is a hot summer day, that the trees are enchanted by the sunlight, that the cattle are weary and glad to step into the cool water? Oh Gainsborough, wizard who make us feel what you felt under the spell of nature! Then there are Gainsborough’s animals. How dear they are! Was ever an old horse painted with more loving understanding than this faithful and laborious animal (1484), tied by the halter to the ancient tree that is the symbol of his waning years.

“We are going to Heaven and Van Dyck will be of the company,” whispered Gainsborough, as he lay dying, to Sir Joshua Reynolds. A misunderstanding had parted the two great artists, but they met again in the reconciling presence of death, and these were the last words that Gainsborough spoke.