Art in England

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He was a skilful artist, working with an eye to Sir Joshua's manner, and
following him oftentimes into error, as well as into truth and beauty.
Ridiculing the loose touches of Lawrence, he was frequently as faulty,
without ever reaching the real fascination of his rival's style. He had
not the Lawrence sense of expression and charm; he could not give to his
heads the vivacity and flutter, the brilliance and witchery, of Sir
Thomas's portraits. They both took up Reynolds's theory about it being
'a vulgar error to make things too like themselves,' as though it were a
merit to paint untruthfully. And painting people of fashion, they had to
paint--especially in their earlier days--strange fashions; and an
extravagant, and fantastic, and meretricious air clings as a consequence
to many of their pictures; for the Prince of Wales had then a grand head
of hair (his own hair), which he delighted to pomatum, and powder, and
frizzle; and, of course, the gentlemen of the day followed the mode; and
then the folds and folds of white muslin that swathed the chins and
necks of the sitters; and the coats, with fanciful collars and lapels;
and the waistcoats, many-topped and many-hued, winding about in tortuous
lines. It is not to be much marvelled at that such items of costume as
'Cumberland corsets,' 'Petersham trousers,' 'Brummel cravats,'
'Osbaldistone ties,' and 'Exquisite crops,' should be only sketchily
rendered in paint. Of course, Mr. Opie, who affected thorough John
Bullism in art, who laid on his pigments steadily with a trowel, and
produced portraits of ladies like washerwomen, and gentlemen liking
Wapping publicans--of course, unsentimental, unfashionable Mr. Opie
denounced the degeneracy of his competitor's style. 'Lawrence makes
coxcombs of his sitters, and they make a coxcomb of him.' Still 'the
quality' flocked to the studios of Messrs. Hoppner and Lawrence, and the
rival easels were long adorned with the most fashionable faces of the
day.

VII.

For twenty years Lawrence reigned alone. After the final defeat of
Napoleon, the artist was commissioned by the Regent to attend the
congress of sovereigns at Aix-la-Chapelle, and produce portraits of the
principal persons engaged in the great war. These European
portraits--twenty-four in number--now decorate the Waterloo Hall at
Windsor. In 1815 he was knighted by the Regent; in addition he was
admitted to the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, and became in 1817 a member
of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, an honour he repaid by
painting and presenting to the Academy a portrait of their countryman
Benjamin West. The Academies of Venice, Florence, Turin, and Vienna
subsequently added his name to their roll of members, while, through the
personal interposition of King Christian Frederick, he was presented
with the diploma of the Academy of Denmark. He was nominated a Chevalier
of the Legion of Honour in France, George IV. giving him permission to
wear the cross of the order. Charles X. further presented the painter
with a grand French clock nearly two feet high, and a dessert service of
Sevres porcelain, which Sir Thomas bequeathed to the Royal Academy. From
the Emperor of Russia he received a superb diamond ring of great value;
from the King of Prussia a ring with his Majesty's initials, F.R., in
diamonds. He also received splendid gifts from the foreign ministers
assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and from the Archduchess Charles and
Princess Metternich at Vienna; from the Pope a ring and a colosseum in
mosaic with his Holiness's arms over the centre of the frame; from the
Cardinal Gonsalvi, besides other presents, a gold watch, chain, and
seals of intaglios, and many beautiful bon-bon boxes of valuable stones
set in gold; gold snuff-boxes, etc.; a breakfast set of porcelain from
the Dauphin in 1825, with magnificent casts and valuable engravings from
Canova at Rome. Was ever painter so feted and glorified! And then he had
been, on the death of West, in 1820, elected to the presidentship of the
Academy. 'Well, well,' said Fuseli, who growled at everything and
everybody, but was yet a friend to Lawrence, 'since they _must_ have a
face-painter to reign over them, let them take Lawrence; he can at least
paint eyes!' In 1829, he exhibited eight portraits; but his health was
beginning to decline. He died on the 7th June 1830. He had been painting
on the previous day another portrait of George IV. in his
coronation-dress.

'Are you not tired of those eternal robes? asked some one.

'No,' answered the painter; 'I always find variety in them--the pictures
are alike in outline, never in detail. You would find the last the
best.'

In the night he was taken alarmingly ill. He was bled, and then seemed
better; but the bandage slipped--he fell from his chair into the arms
of his valet, Jean Duts, a Swiss.

'This is fainting,' said the valet, in alarm.

'No, Jean, my good fellow,' Sir Thomas Lawrence politely corrected him,
'it is dying.' And he breathed his last.

VIII.

The obsequies of the departed President were of an imposing kind. His
remains were removed from his house in Russell Square to Somerset House.
There the body was received by the Council and officers of the Academy,
and deposited in the model-room, which was hung with black cloth and
lighted with wax candles in silver sconces. At the head of the coffin
was raised a large hatchment of the armorial bearings of the deceased;
and the pall over the coffin bore escutcheons of his arms, wrought in
silk. The members of the Council and the family having retired, the body
lay in state--the old servant of the President watching through the
night the remains of his master.

The body was interred in St. Paul's Cathedral, in the 'Painters' Corner'
of the south crypt, near the coffins of the former Presidents, Reynolds
and West. The Earl of Aberdeen, Earl Gower, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Dover,
Sir George Murray, the Right Honourable J.W. Croker, Mr. Hart Davis, and
Earl Clanwilliam were pall-bearers. Etty, who followed with the other
academicians, writes: 'Since the days of Nelson there has not been so
marked a funeral. The only fine day we have had for a long time was
_that_ day. When the melancholy pageant had entered the great western
door, and was half way up the body of the church, the solemn sound of
the organ and the anthem swelled on the ear, and vibrated to every
heart. It was deeply touching.... The organ echoed through the aisles.
The sinking sun shed his parting beams through the west window--and we
left him alone. Hail, and farewell!'

The produce of the sale by auction of his collection of art works and
treasures, etc., was between fifteen and sixteen thousand pounds. The
estate of the dead man was only just equal to the demands upon it,
however. His popularity ought to have brought him wealth, but, strange
to say, he was always embarrassed. Yet he did not gamble, was never
dissipated, never viciously extravagant; but he kept no accounts, was
prodigal in kindness to his brother-artists, and in responding to the
many appeals to his charity. Perhaps, too, he rather affected an
aristocratic indifference to money. He spent much time in gratuitous
drawing and painting for presents to his friends. It is probable that
his death was hastened by his incessant work, to meet the demands made
upon him for money. Washington Irving saw him a few days before his
death, and relates that 'he seemed uneasy and restless, his eyes were
wandering, he was as pale as marble, the stamp of death seemed on him.
He told me he felt ill, but he wished to bear himself up.' In one of his
letters the painter wrote: 'I am chained to the oar, but painting was
never less inviting to me--business never more oppressive to me than at
this moment.' Still he could play his courtier part in society, and was
always graceful and winning. Haydon, who never loved a portrait-painter
much, yet says of Lawrence, that he was 'amiable, kind, generous, and
forgiving.' Further on he adds: 'He had smiled so often and so long,
that at last his smile had the appearance of being set in enamel.' But
then, Mr. Haydon prided himself on his coarseness, defiance, and hatred
of conventionality, deeming these fitting attributes of the high artist.

It is only as a portrait-painter that Sir Thomas can now be esteemed;
and, as a portrait-painter, his reputation has much declined of late
years. His drawing was often very incorrect, and his execution slovenly.
His colour was hectic and gaudy; and in composition he possessed little
skill. He was a master of expression, however. His heads are wonderfully
animated, and he invested his sitters with an air of high life peculiar
to himself. Conscious and a little affected they might be, but
certainly, through his art, they proclaimed themselves people of quality
and distinction. His attempts in another line of art were few and not
successful. His 'Homer reciting his Poems' was chiefly remarkable for
its resemblance to Mr. Westall's manner, and for containing a well-drawn
figure of Jackson the pugilist. Of his 'Satan calling up the Legions,'
Anthony Pasquin cruelly wrote, that 'it conveyed an idea of a mad German
sugar-baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle.' Over
an attempt at a Prospero and Miranda, he subsequently painted on the
same canvas a portrait of Kemble as Rolla.

And was he a male coquette? 'No,' answers a lady --and it is a question
that requires a lady's answer--'he had no plan of conquest.... But it
cannot be too strongly stated that his manners were likely to mislead
without his intending it. He could not write a common answer to a dinner
invitation without its assuming the tone of a _billet-doux_. The very
commonest conversation was held in that soft low whisper, and with that
tone of deference and interest which are so unusual, and so calculated
to please. I am myself persuaded that he never intentionally gave pain.'

Perhaps he was not capable of very deep feeling, and liked to test the
effects of his fine eyes. He wooed the two daughters of Mrs. Siddons,
never being quite clear in his own mind which he really loved. He tired
of the one and was dismissed by the other, or so rumour told the story;
however, his friendly relations with the family do not appear to have
ceased. One of the sisters died. 'From the day of her death to that of
his own,' writes a biographer, 'he wore mourning, and always used black
sealing-wax. Uncontrollable fits of melancholy came over him, and he
mentioned not her name but to his most confidential friend, and then
always with tenderness and respect.' It would have been more desirable,
perhaps, that he should have exhibited a little more feeling during the
lifetime of the lady; but perhaps marriage was not in the programme of
Hoppner's courtly rival, of the painter 'that began where Reynolds left
off,' as the sinking Sir Joshua is reported to have declared of him,
rather too flatteringly.

IX.

Haydon notes in his diary, under date 25th May 1832, 'I passed
Lawrence's house (Russell Square). Nothing could be more melancholy or
desolate. I knocked, and was shown in. The passages were dusty; the
paper torn; the parlours dark; the painting-room, where so much beauty
had once glittered, forlorn; and the whole appearance desolate and
wretched--the very plate on the door green with mildew.

'I went into the parlour, which used to be instinct with life; "Poor Sir
Thomas; always in trouble," said the woman who had the care of the
house, "always something to worrit him." I saw his bed-room--small
--only a little bed--the mark of it was against the wall. Close to his
bed-room was an immense room (where was carried on his manufactory of
draperies, etc.), divided, yet open over the partitions. It must have
been five or six small rooms turned into one large workshop. Here his
assistants worked. His painting-room was a large back drawing-room; his
show-room a large front one. He occupied a parlour and a bed-room; all
the rest of the house was turned to business. Any one would think that
people of fashion would visit from remembrance the house where they had
spent so many happy hours. Not they. They shun a disagreeable sensation.
They have no feeling--no poetry. It is shocking. It is dirty!'

Bitter Mr. Haydon. Perhaps it was not that he loved Lawrence more, but
that he loved his patrons less. For the people of fashion who were
caring so little about the dead Lawrence, cared not at all for the
living Haydon.

THE PUPIL OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.

In St. James's Street, London, on the 10th June 1787, was born George
Henry Harlow. His father, an East India merchant for a time Resident at
Canton, had been dead about four months. The widowed mother, only
twenty-seven, and of remarkable personal attractions, was fortunately
left with an ample dower. Mourning her husband, she devoted herself to
her children--five very young girls and the new-born son. Perhaps it was
not unnatural that to the youngest child, born under such
circumstances--the only boy--the largest share of her maternal affection
and solicitude should be given.

He was first placed at the classical school of Dr. Barrow in Soho
Square, then under the tuition of Dr. Roy in Burlington Street; for some
time he was at Westminster. In after-life, in boastful moments, he was
pleased to speak grandly of his classical attainments; of these,
however, he could never adduce any notable evidence. It is probable that
he was at no time a very eager student; he had tastes and ambitions not
compatible with school-learning, and an over-indulgent mother was little
likely to rebuke his want of application, or to desire that her
darling's attention should be fixed upon his books in too earnest a
manner. Certainly before he was sixteen he had left school, and even
then he had devoted much of his time to other than scholastic pursuits.

He was a smart, clever boy, with a lively taste for art, a constant
visitor at the picture-galleries, already able to ply his pencil to some
purpose; yet bent, perhaps, upon acquiring the manner and the trick of
others rather than of arriving at a method of his own by a hard study of
nature. He almost preferred a painted to a real human being--a picture
landscape to a view from a hill-top. He was satisfied that things should
come to him filtered through the canvases of his predecessors--content
to see with their eyes. He was apt to think painting was little higher
than legerdemain, was a conjurer's feat to be detected by constantly
watching the performer, was a secret that he might be told by others or
might discover for himself by examining their works: not a science open
under certain conditions to all who will take the trouble to learn.
These were not very noble nor very healthy opinions to entertain upon
the subject; but at least at the foundation of them was a certain
fondness for art, and there was without doubt promise in the
performances of the young man. Of this Mrs. Harlow was speedily
satisfied, and the friends she consulted confirmed her opinion. It was
determined that he should enter the studio of a painter. Not much care
was exercised in the selection of a preceptor. A Dutch artist, named
Henry De Cort, had settled in London; he produced landscapes of a
formal, artificial pattern--compositions in which Italian palaces and
waterfalls and ruins appeared prominently, formal in colour, neat in
finish, the animals and figures being added to the pictures by other
Dutchmen. There was rather a rage at one time for Italian landscape seen
through a Dutch medium: a fashion in favour of which there is little to
be said. It was not a very good school in which to place George Henry
Harlow. De Cort was pretentious and conceited--worse, he was dull. The
student loved art, but he could not fancy such a professor as De Cort.
He began to feel that he could learn nothing from such a master--that he
was, indeed, wasting his time. He quitted De Cort, and entered the
studio of Mr. Drummond, A.R.A. He applied himself assiduously, 'with an
ardour from which even amusements could not seduce him,' says a
biographer. For, alas! young Mr. Harlow was becoming as noted for his
love of pleasure as for his love of his profession. He remained a year
with Mr. Drummond, and then commenced to sigh for a change.

There is a story that the beautiful Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire
interested herself in the studies of the young man, and that owing to
her influence and interposition he was admitted into the studio of Sir
Thomas Lawrence in Greek Street. Another account has it that Mr. Harlow
and his mother visited the various painters with the view of selecting
one with whom the student would be content to remain until his period of
pupilage was at an end, and that he himself finally selected Sir Thomas
Lawrence. A premium of one hundred guineas was paid. For this sum the
student was to have free access to his master's house 'at nine o'clock
in the morning, with leave to copy his pictures till four o'clock in the
afternoon, but was to receive no instruction of any kind.' It was
supposed, apparently, that the example of Sir Thomas was instruction
enough. But it is possible that Lawrence, while, with his innumerable
engagements, he was unable to bestow much time upon a pupil, was also,
like Sir Joshua, unable to communicate art instruction. He knew very
little of rules, he was little imbued with academic prescriptions, he
painted rather from an instinctive love of beauty and from a purely
natural quickness in observing expression. Harlow might have said of
Lawrence as Northcote said of Reynolds: 'I learnt nothing from him while
I was with him.' Though it seems hard to say that a student could be
long in the studio of either master and benefit in no way.

The friends of the late Mr. Harlow were greatly distressed that his son
should follow the unprofitable business of the Fine Arts. They hastened
to rescue him from ruin, as they believed. They offered him a writership
in India. He declined their assistance. 'I care not for riches,' he
said; 'give me fame and glory!' They could not comprehend an ambition so
absurd; they thought the young man out of his senses, and left him
accordingly. They were even angry with their friend's son that he would
not permit them to tear him from the profession of his choice.

Harlow was excitable, impulsive, enthusiastic. He was well acquainted
with his own ability; indeed he was inclined to set almost too high a
value upon it. He could bear no restraint. If Lawrence had attempted to
impart instruction to him, he would probably have resisted it with all
his might; he was ill at ease under even the semblance of pupilage; he
declined to recognise his own inferiority; he was angry with the
position he occupied in the studio of Sir Thomas. It would seem to have
been difficult to quarrel with one who was always so courtier-like in
manner, so gentle and _suave_ and forbearing as was Lawrence. But it is
possible these very characteristics were matters of offence to Harlow.
He could not give credit for ability to a man who was so calm and
elegant and placid amidst all the entrancements of his profession. He
thought a great painter should gesticulate more, should sacrifice the
gentlemanly to the eccentric as _he_ did, should be feverish and frothy
and unconventional and absurd as _he_ was. And then he possessed a quick
mimetic talent. He had soon acquired great part of Lawrence's manner.
People are always prone to think themselves equal to those they can
imitate, and he was far ahead of all the other young gentlemen who
entered the studio; indeed it may be said that no one has ever
approached more closely to the peculiar style and character of
Lawrence's art than his pupil Harlow. The master admitted this
himself--if not in words, at least in conduct. He employed Harlow upon
his portraits, to paint replicas, and even to prepare in dead colours
the originals. Of course the painting of backgrounds and accessories was
the customary occupation of the pupils.

For eighteen months Harlow remained in the studio of Sir Thomas. A
portrait had been painted of Mrs. Angerstein. In this Lawrence had
introduced a Newfoundland dog, so skilfully represented as to excite the
warmest admiration. Harlow, perhaps, had had a share in the painting of
this dog, and he loudly claimed credit for it. He is said even to have
intruded himself upon the Angerstein family, and to have represented to
them how greatly the success of the picture was due to his exertions. Of
course this conduct on the part of a pupil amounted to flat mutiny. Sir
Thomas informed of it, sought out his pupil, and said to him: 'You must
leave my house immediately. The animal you claim is among the best
things _I_ ever painted. Of course you have no need of further
instruction from me.' Harlow withdrew abruptly. In a day or two
afterwards he was heard of, living magnificently, at the Queen's Head, a
small roadside inn on the left hand as you leave Epsom for Ashstead.
When the host approached with the reckoning, it was found that the
painter was without the means of liquidating it. It was agreed that the
account should be paid by his executing a new sign-board. He painted
both sides: on one a full-face view of Queen Charlotte, a dashing
caricature of Sir Thomas's manner; on the other a back view of the
Queen's head, as though she were looking into the sign-board, while
underneath was inscribed 'T.L., Greek Street, Soho.' Sir Thomas,
informed of this eccentric proceeding, said to Harlow:--

'I have seen your additional act of perfidy at Epsom, and if you were
not a scoundrel I would kick you from one end of the street to the
other.'

'There is some privilege in being a scoundrel, then,' answers the pupil,
'for the street is very long.'

So we read of the quarrel of Lawrence and Harlow, one of those stories
so easy to relate and so difficult to disprove. But there are
incoherencies about it. The portrait of Mrs. Angerstein was exhibited at
the Royal Academy in the year 1800, some years before Harlow had become
a pupil of Lawrence's. The speech about the kicking is a very unlikely
one to have proceeded from Lawrence, while it is still more unlikely
that Harlow would have received it so quietly. Had such language passed
between them it is hardly possible they could have been on the footing
of anything like friendship afterwards, yet we find Lawrence assisting
Harlow in his picture of the Kemble family in quite an intimate way.
Certainly there was a quarrel, and Harlow quitted Sir Thomas. A living
writer says, in reference to the sign-board story:--

'I remember to have seen it as early as 1815. Some twenty years
after, missing this peculiar sign from the suspensory iron (where a
written board had been substituted), I made inquiry at the inn as
to the fate of Harlow's Queen's Head, but could not learn anything
of its whereabouts.'

It is not probable that Lawrence was disposed to condemn this more
severely, than as one of those artistic freaks which clever caricaturing
students are every day indulging in.

Thenceforth Harlow determined to set up as a painter on his own account.
He would be a student no longer. He refused to avail himself of the
advantages offered by the Academy--he would not draw there--would not
enrol himself as a student. He would toil no more in the studios of
others--he was now a full-blown artist himself. So he argued. 'Naturally
vain.' writes J.T. Smith, one of his biographers, 'he became
ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion was
often the laughing-stock of his brother artists, particularly when he
wished to pass for a man of high rank, whose costume he mimicked; and
that folly he would often venture upon without an income sufficient to
pay one of his many tailors' bills.' He seemed bent upon exaggerating
even the extravagances of fashion. There is a story of his having been
seen with such enormously long spurs that he was obliged to walk down
stairs backwards to save himself from falling headlong. He had a craving
for notoriety. If the public would not notice his works, at least they
should notice _him_. Somehow he would be singled out from the crowd.
People should ask who he was, no matter whether censure or applause was
to follow the inquiry. So he dressed with wild magnificence and
swaggered along the streets and laughed loudly and talked with an
audacious freedom that was often the cause of his expulsion from
respectable company. A glass or two of wine seemed quite to turn his
brain; he was alert then for any frivolity, and he was not always
content with so restricted a libation, when the consequences were even
more to be deplored.

He now offered himself as a candidate for Academic honours. He was not a
likely man to succeed, yet he did all he could to conciliate the more
influential Academicians, and certainly he had merits that entitled him
fairly to look for the distinction. He painted a portrait of Northcote,
said to be the best that had ever been taken of the veteran artist, and
the number of portraits of him was very great. He also painted Stothard
and Nollekens, and the well-known and admirable portrait of Fuseli.
With this he took extraordinary pains, had numerous sittings, and was
two whole days engaged upon the right hand only--a long time according
to the art-opinion of his day, when it was the fashion to finish a
portrait in a very dashing style of execution, after one sitting, and in
a few hours' time. Mr. Leslie allowed Harlow's portrait of Fuseli to be
the best. 'But,' he said, 'it would have required a Reynolds to do
justice to the fine intelligence of his head. His keen eye of the most
transparent blue I shall never forget.' But the Academy would not think
favourably of Harlow. In later days Northcote sturdily declaimed: 'The
Academy is not an institution for the suppression of Vice but for the
encouragement of the Fine Arts. The dragging morality into everything in
season and out of season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and
turning virtue into a byword for impertinence.' There was only one
Academician who could be found to give a vote for Harlow. This was, of
course, Fuseli. He was accused of it, and vindicated himself--'I voted
for the talent, not for the man!' He was seeking to estimate the fitness
of the claimant for art-honours, by means of perhaps the fairest
criterion. The Academy tested on a different plan. It was hard to say
that Harlow's moral character rendered him unfit to associate with the
painters of his day; yet such was the effect of the decision of the
Academy.

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