Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2085 page)

In the following letter, written by the painter from a friend’s house to his family, and in the kind and cheerful answer which it called forth, will be found some reference to the time of his entry on his new sphere of duties, and employments at the Royal Academy.

“To MR. W. COLLINS, SEN.

“Dorking, July 8th, 1807.

“Dear Father, — I think I shall come home either on Saturday or Monday next; but as it will be probably necessary to pay the carriage on or before my arrival, (you understand me) and having got rid of most of my cash, it follows that, as usual, you must raise if possible a certain sum, not exceeding a one pound note, which I think will come
cheaper
to me than any smaller amount. I received the colours the same evening you sent them. I am very much obliged to you; as also for the letter. I live here like a prince.* I was at the theatre, Dorking, a few nights since, which most elegantly gratified the senses, that of smelling not even excepted — there being
four
candles to light us all; two of which, by about nine o’clock, (no doubt frightened at the company) hid themselves in their sockets! There were also four lamps for stage lights, which helped to expose the following audience: — Boxes, six; Pit, sixteen; Gallery, twenty-five!

“I should be glad to know if the Academy is open; and any other information you choose to give, will be very acceptable to yours affectionately,

“W. COLLINS.”

* His usual anxiety to deserve the hospitality of his friends prompted him to ornament a summer-house, belonging to the gentleman with whom he was now staying, with imitations of busts, in niches, all round the walls. They remained there until very lately.

“To MR. W. COLLINS, JUN.

“London, 9th July, 1807.

“* * * We were certain our good friends would entertain you in the most hospitable manner, though we could have had no such ambitious hope of your being treated “like a prince.” However, I trust my good friend Moore will impart a little of his philosophical indifference respecting the good things of this life to you, before you depart for humble home, lest the contrast between living “like a prince,” and being the son of a poor author, may be too much for the lofty notions of your royal highness. Enclosed, for all this, you will find the sum you desired; and, were my funds equal to those of our gracious Monarch — or rather, had I as many pence as he is said to have millions of pounds, be assured you should be infinitely more than welcome to twenty times this paltry sum. You inquire respecting the opening of the Academy, and I can tell you it opened last Monday, notice of which was given to all the students by public advertisement; and I shall be glad if you can, without being pressed to the contrary, come up to town when my friend Moore does — knowing that you can never come in safer, or better company. * * *

“Your affectionate Father,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

A few days after this, the “son of the poor author” quitted his little paternal studio, and with a beating heart entered the Academic lists that were to prepare him for the Artist’s course — then little suspecting that he was destined to add one more to the bright list of modern English painters, who have passed through the schools of the Academy on their way to the gates of Fame.

CHAPTER II.

1807-1816.

Summary of the course of study at the Royal Academy — The painter’s industry in his duties there — Anecdote of Fuseli — Pictures of 1809 — Letter from Mr. Collins, sen. — Pictures of 1810, 1811, and 1812 — Epigram by James Smith — Correspondence with the late Mr. Howard, R. A. — Death of Mr. Collins, sen. — Extracts from the painter’s Journal of 1812 — Pecuniary embarrassments of his family — Pictures of 1813 and 1814 — Election to Associateship in the Royal Academy — Anecdotes respecting picture of “Bird-catchers,” communicated by Mr. Stark — Diary of 1814 — Anecdotes of the painter; of Ellison; and of James Smith — Pictures and Diary of 1815 — Tour in that year to Cromer — Letters — Removal of the painter to a larger house in New Cavendish-street — Letter to the late Sir T. Heathcote, bart. — Pictures of 1816 — Extract from Journal — Serious increase of pecuniary difficulties — Determination to set out for Hastings, to make studies for sea-pieces — Kindness of Sir T. Heathcote in making an advance of money — Departure for Hastings.

IN commencing his course of instruction at the Royal Academy, the student sets out by making drawings from the best casts of the finest antique statues. By this first process his taste is formed on the universal and immutable models of the highest excellence in the Art he is to adopt; and he proceeds to the next gradation in his studies, drawing from the living model, with such fixed ideas of symmetry and proportion as preserve him from confusing the faults and excellencies of the animated form, and enable him to appreciate its higher and more important general qualities, as the ulterior object of one main branch of his professional qualifications. While his ideas are thus preserved from the degeneration which the unavoidable imperfections of the models before him might otherwise inspire, the most perfect outward and mechanical correctness of eye and hand is demanded from him, in his representations of the form; while a readiness in rightly interpreting the position, action, and appearance, of muscles and joints, is instilled by the annual delivery of lectures on pictorial anatomy, by the best professors which that class of English medical science can afford. Nor is this all. While he is thus attaining knowledge of Nature, with ease, harmony, and correctness of pencil; from the study of the living model, he is enabled at the same time to learn colour, composition, and light and shade, by the privilege of copying from pictures by the old masters, in the School of Painting. Here his studies (as in the other schools) are superintended directly by the Royal Academicians, who advise, assist, and encourage him, until he is fit for the last ordeal of his student-life — the composition of an original historical picture, from a subject selected by the Institution to which he is attached. For this work, as for all his other labours, medals and copies of lectures on Art, are awarded by the Royal Academy. He is then left to the guidance of his own genius — either to continue his employments in his own land, or, if he has gained the highest gold medal, to be sent, at the expense of the Royal Academy, to study, for three years, among the great collections of Art which the continental nations possess.

In Sculpture and in Architecture, (as completely as, in the instance of the latter Art, its peculiar features will admit) the same gradations are observed, and the same privileges scrupulously offered — painting, sculpture, and architecture furnishing the travelling student, on each occasion of the grand award of prizes, in impartial rotation. Such is a brief summary of the course of study adopted by the Royal Academy of England — an Institution whose palpable and practical excellencies have ever been as sufficient to excuse error and to confute calumny, as to form the mind of genius, and to elevate the position of Art.

Mr. Collins’s attention, during his attendance at the Royal Academy, was devoted to all branches of its instructions most necessary to the school of painting, towards which his ambition was now directed — the portrayal of landscape and of domestic life. As a student his conduct was orderly, and his industry untiring. Among his companions he belonged to the unassuming, steadily labouring-class — taking no care to distinguish himself, personally, by the common insignia of the more aspiring spirits among the scholars of Art. He neither cultivated a mustachio, displayed his neck, or trained his hair over his coat-collar into the true Raphael flow. He never sat in judgment on the capacity of his masters, or rushed into rivalry with Michael Angelo, before he was quite able to draw correctly from a plaster cast. But he worked on gladly and carefully, biding his time with patience, and digesting his instructions with care. In 1809 — two years after his entrance within the Academy walls — he gained the silver medal for a drawing from the life.

The gentleman who held the offices of keeper of the Academy and instructor of the students, in those days, was the eccentric and remarkable Fuseli. The fantastic genius and bitter wit of this extraordinary man did not disqualify him for the mechanism of his art, or the dogged patience necessary to teach it aright. His character was, in many respects, a mass of contradictions. He spoke English with an outrageously foreign accent, yet wrote it with an energy and correctness not unworthy of Johnson himself. He lived in carelessness of “the small, sweet courtesies of life,” yet possessed, when he chose to employ it, a power of polite sarcasm, before which some of the most polished wits of the day irresistibly trembled. His pictures touched, almost invariably, the limits of the wild and the grotesque, yet he discovered and reprobated the minutest exaggerations of drawing in his pupils’ works. By all the students he was respected and beloved; and by none more than by Mr. Collins, who trembled before his criticisms and rejoiced in his approbation as heartily as any of the rest. Among the few instances of his quaint humour that have, I believe, not hitherto appeared in print, is one that I shall venture to subjoin, as — although it does not illustrate his more refined and epigrammatic powers of retort — it is too good, as a trait of character and a curiosity of sarcasm, to be advantageously omitted.

When Sir Anthony Carlisle was Anatomy Professor at the Royal Academy, he was accustomed to illustrate his lectures by the exhibition of the Indian jugglers, or any other of the fashionable athletae of the day, whose muscular systems were well enough developed to claim the students’ eyes. This innovation on the dull uniformity of oral teaching, added to the wide and well-earned reputation of the professor himself, drew within the Academy walls crowds of general visitors many of them surgeons of the highest eminence who seriously incommoded the rightful occupants of the lecture-room. One night, when the concourse was more than usually great, Fuseli set out from his apartments in the “keeper’s rooms,” to mount the great staircase, and join his brethren in the lecturer’s waiting-room. The effort was a trying one; every step was crowded with expectant sight-seers, a great majority of whom were doctors of station and celebrity. Through this scientific mass the keeper toiled his weary way, struggling, pushing — advancing, receding, — remonstrating, rebuking; until at length he gained the haven of the lecturer’s room, his brows bedewed with moisture, his clothes half torn off his back, his temper fatally ruffled. Under these circumstances, it was not in the nature of Fuseli to consume his own gall: he forced his way up to Sir Anthony Carlisle; and, looking at him indignantly, muttered, as if in soliloquy, (in an accent which the most elabourate distortion of spelling is, alas, incompetent to express) “Parcel of d — d ‘potticaries’ ‘prentices!” Sir Anthony, though the mildest and most polite of men, could not swallow silently this aspersion on the dignity of his professional admirers on the staircase. “Really, Mr. Fuseli,” he gently remonstrated, “I have brought no apothecaries’ apprentices here!” “I did not say
you
did,” was the prompt retort; “but they
are
‘potticaries’ ‘prentices
for all that!”

In 1809, Mr. Collins contributed two pictures to the Royal Academy Exhibition, entitled, “Boys with a Bird’s Nest,” and “A Boy at Breakfast.” He had previously exhibited, at the British Institution, in 1808 (having sent thither five small pictures: — A Study from Nature on the Thames; a Scene at Hampstead; a Landscape, called “A Coming Storm;” and two Views at Castlebridge, Surrey); and he now sent in, as his contributions for the following season, the same number of works. They were described in the Catalogue as, “A Green Stall, — a Night Scene,” (now in the possession of Mr. Criswick); “A View in Surrey;” “Seashore, — a cloudy Day;” “Morning;” and “Evening, — a View on the Thames.” All these pictures, presented under their different aspects the same fundamental characteristics of careful study and anxious finish, still overlaid by the timidity and inexperience of the “ ‘prentice hand.” Some of them were here and there shortly, but kindly noticed, by the critics of the day; and among those sold, the “Boys with a Bird’s Nest” was disposed of to Mr. Lister Parker, the painter’s first patron, and a generous and discriminating supporter of modern art.

For the next three years little is to be noticed of Mr. Collins’s life, beyond the works that he produced; but these will be found of some importance in tracking his progress in his pursuit. Throughout this period he enjoyed the calm uniformity of the student’s life; save when his occupations were varied by a sketching excursion in the country, or interrupted by the petty calamities which his father’s increasing poverty inevitably inflicted upon the young painter’s fireside. The more perseveringly this honourable and patient man struggled for employment and competence, the more resolutely did both appear to hold aloof. The following extract from one of his letters, written during a picture-cleaning tour in the country, will be found worthy of attention. It displays his anxiety to forward the interests of his family in a pleasing light, and alludes, moreover, rather amusingly, to some of the minor characteristics in the composition of the niggard patronage of the day: