collectors to accumulate their treasures in their country-houses, where they were seen only by a few private friends, and were utterly without influence on the nation at large. In the middle of the eighteenth century, England was already very rich in private collections,' but the proportion of Englishmen who had ever looked at a good picture or a good statue was very small. Nor were there any means of artistic education. At Paris the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was established as early as 1648, and in 1665 Colbert founded that admirable institution, the French Academy at Rome, for the purpose of providing young artists with the best possible instruction. In England nothing of the kind existed, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century a poor student of art could find no assistance except by private patronage. The first two Georges were absolutely indifferent to art, and although a fashion of collecting pictures had spread very widely among the English aristocracy, their patronage was neither generous nor intelligent. It was observed that portrait-painting, which touched another sentiment besides love of pure art, was the only form that was really encouraged. Painter after painter, distinguished in other branches, came over to England, but they invariably found that they could succeed only by devoting themselves to the one department which appealed directly to the vanity of their patrons.2 'Painters of history,' said Kneller, make the dead live, but do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the A list of the chief collections in England in 1766 is given in Pye's Patronage of British Art, pp. 145–146, and catalogues of the chief pictures contained in them will be found in a book called The English Connoisseur : an account of whatever is curious in painting and sculpture in the palaces and seats of the nobility and gentry of England (1766). 2 No painter, however excellent, can succeed among the English, that is not engaged in painting portraits. Canaletti, whose works they admired whilst he resided at Venice, at his coming to London had not in a whole year the employment of three months. Watteau, whose pictures are sold at such great prices at present, painted never a picture but two which he VOL. I. gave to Dr. Mead, during the time he resided here. At the same time, Vanloo, who came hither with the reputation of painting portraits very well, was obliged to keep three or four subaltern painters for drapery and other parts.'-Angeloni's Letters on the English (2nd ed. 1756), vol. i. p. 97. So, too, Amiconi, a Venetian historical painter, came to England in 1729, and tried for a time to maintain a position by his own form of art, but,' says Horace Walpole, 'as portraiture is the one thing necessary to a painter in this country, he was obliged to betake himself to that employment much against his inclination.'-Anecdotes of Painting. See, too, Dallaway's Progress of the Arts in England, pp. 455–461. M M living and they make me live.' Hogarth described portraitpainting as the only flourishing branch of the high tree of British art.' Barry complained that the difficulty of subsisting by any other species of art . . . and the love of ease and affluence had so operated upon our youth that the country had been filled with this species of artist.' The Dutch portrait-painter Vanloo, who came to London in 1737, was so popular that, as a nearly contemporary writer tells us, for several weeks after his arrival, the train of carriages at his door was like that at the door of a theatre. He had some hundreds of portraits begun, and was obliged to give as many as five sittings in a day. Large bribes were given by many to the man who kept the register of his engagements, in order to accelerate their sittings, and when that was not done, it was often necessary to wait six weeks.' Vanloo remained in England only four years, but is said to have accumulated in that time considerable wealth. On the other hand, it is very remarkable that, in the next generation, Wilson, the first great English landscapepainter, and Barry, the first historical painter of real talent, were both of them unable to earn even a small competence, and both of them died in extreme poverty. Vertue, who died in 1756, carried the art of engraving to considerable perfection, and was followed by Boydell and a few other native engravers. Kneller, and afterwards Thornhill, made some attempts in the first quarter of the century to maintain a private academy in England for artistic instruction, but they appear to have met with little encouragement, and the reign of George I. is on the whole one of the darkest periods in the history of English art. Early in the next reign, however, a painter of great and original genius emerged from obscurity, who, in a low form of art, attained a high, and almost a supreme, perfection. William Hogarth was born in London, of obscure parents, in 1698. His early years were chiefly passed in engraving arms, shop bills, and plates for books. He then painted portraits, some of them of singular beauty, and occasionally furnished designs for tapestry. In 1730 he secretly married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the fashionable artist of the day, and in 1731 he completed his Harlot's 1 Rouquet, L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre, fp. 59-60. Progress,' which proved to all good judges that, for the first time, a really great native painter had arisen in England. Had his genius been of a higher order, he would probably have been less successful. He had little charm of colouring or sense of beauty, and no power of idealising nature; but the intense realism, the admirable homeliness and truth of his pictures of English life, and the excellent morals they invariably conveyed, appealed to all classes, while their deep and various meaning, and the sombre imagination he sometimes threw over his conceptions, raised them far above the level of the mere grotesque. The popularity of his designs was such that they were immensely imitated, and it was found necessary to pass an Act of Parliament, in 1735, vesting an exclusive right in designers and engravers, and restraining the multiplying of copies of works without the consent of the artist. In the same reign sculpture in England was largely pursued by Rysbrack, a native of Antwerp, and by Roubiliac, a native of Lyons. 3 The taste for music was more widely diffused than that for painting; but although it made rapid progress in the first half of the eighteenth century, this was in no degree due to native talent. A distinguished French critic has noticed, as one of the most striking of the many differences between the two great branches of the Teutonic race, that, among all modern civilised nations, the Germans are probably the most eminent, and the English the most deficient, in musical talent. Up to the close of the seventeenth century, however, this distinction did not exist, and England might fairly claim a very respectable rank among musical nations. No feature in the poetry of Shakespeare or Milton is more remarkable than the exquisite and delicate appreciation of music they continually evince, and the musical dramas known under the name of masques, which were so popular from the time of Ben Jonson to the time of the Rebellion, kept up a general taste for the art. Henry Lawes, who composed the music for Comus,' as well as edited the poem, and to whom Milton has paid a beautiful compliment,' See e.g. that noble sketch-the last he ever drew-called 'Finis.' 28 Geo. ii. c. 13. Nichols' Memoirs of Hogarth, p. 37. But first I must put off These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof, Renan. was conspicuous as a composer. Blow, in the last years of the seventeenth century, contributed much to church music; but the really great name in English music was Henry Purcell, who was born in 1658, and died in 1697, and who, in the opinion of many competent judges, deserves to rank among the very greatest composers who had up to that date arisen in Europe. In the early years of the eighteenth century, however, music was purely an exotic. The capital fact of this period was the introduction and great popularity of the Italian opera. Operas on the Italian model first appeared in England in 1705. They were at first sung in English, and by English performers; but soon after, some Italian castrati having come over, the principal characters in the dialogue sang in Italian, while the subordinate characters answered in English. After two or three years, this absurdity passed away, and the operas became wholly Italian. In 1710 the illustrious Handel first came to England, and 'Rinaldo,' his earliest opera, appeared in 1711. Bononcini, who at one time rivalled his popularity as a composer, followed a few years later. An Academy for Music was founded in 1720, and several Italian singers of the highest merit were brought over, at salaries which were then unparalleled in Europe. The two great female singers Cuzzoni and La Faustina obtained each 2,000 guineas a-year, Farinelli 1,500 guineas and a benefit, Senesino 1,400 guineas. The rivalry between Cuzzoni and La Faustina, and the rivalry between Handel and Bononcini, divided society into factions almost like those of the Byzantine empire; and the conflicting claims of the two composers were celebrated in a well-known epigram, which has been commonly attributed to Swift, but which was in reality written by Byrom. The author little imagined That to the service of this house belongs, Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song Comus. Lawes taught music in the house of Lord Bridgewater, where Comus was first represented. 1 Some say that Signor Bononcini Strange that such difference should be that one of the composers, whom he treated with such contempt, was, in his own, and that no ignoble, sphere, among the master intellects of mankind.' The difficulties against which the new entertainment had to struggle were very great. Addison opposed it bitterly in the 'Spectator.' The partisans of the regular drama denounced it as an absurd and mischievous novelty. It had to encounter the strong popular prejudice against foreigners and Papists. It was weakened by perpetual quarrels of composers and singers, and it was supported chiefly by the small and capricious circle of fashionable society. In 1717 the Italian theatre was closed for want of support, but it revived in 1720 under the auspices of Handel. The extraordinary success of the 'Beggars' Opera,' which appeared in 1728, for a time threw it completely in the shade. The music of Handel was deserted, and the Italian theatre again closed. It reopened in the following year under the joint direction of Handel and of Heidegger, a Swiss, famous for his ugliness, his impudence, and his skill in organising public amusements; and it continued to flourish until a quarrel broke out between Handel and the singer Senesino. The great nobles, who were the chief supporters of the opera, took the side of the singer, set up, in 1733, a rival theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, attracted to it Heidegger and most of the best singers, made it their special object to ruin Handel, and succeeded in so governing the course of fashion that his theatre was almost deserted. The King, it is true, steadily supported him, and Queen Caroline, with the tact she usually showed in discovering the highest talent in the country, threw her whole enthusiasm into his cause ; but the Prince of Wales, who was in violent opposition to his father, took the opposite side, and the Court could not save the great musician from ruin. The King and Queen,' says Lord Hervey, 'sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket opera, whilst the Prince, with the chief of the nobility, went as constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields.'2 Handel struggled 6 of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable employment for people of quality, or the ruin of one poor fellow [Handel] so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not.' |