Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2098 page)

* It may perhaps be necessary to inform the unprofessional reader, that a “three quarter” is a term indicating the size of a particular canvass, and an “unprimed cloth,” a canvass, the surface of which is unprepared with the usual preliminary covering of white paint and size.

In the autumn of this year, Mr. Collins explored, for the first time, the scenery — coast and inland — of Devonshire. That he found in this tour many materials for extending his Art and increasing his variety of subjects, will be perceived in the list of his works yet to be enumerated. His progress and impressions, during his journey, will be found hastily indicated in the following extracts from his letters:

“To MRS. COLLINS.

“Dartmouth, 26th Aug., 1819.

“My dear Mother, — As it is probable I shall stay with Mr. Holdsworth long enough to receive a letter from you, I take the opportunity afforded me of sending a few lines. I am most comfortably situated here, close to the sea, in the house of a sincere and unaffected English gentleman, through whose knowledge of the scenery of this neighbourhood, I am enabled to see much more of the place than under other circumstances I could have expected. Brockedon is with us. I am writing with the sun shining on the sea before me, and this must be an excuse for not sending you a long letter.”

“Plymouth, Sept. 19th, 1819.

“* * * I left Dartmouth and Widdicombe, Mr. Holdsworth’s houses, about a week ago; and I purpose leaving this place for Birham, Sir W. Elford’s, where I yesterday paid a visit, and where I shall remain a few days, and then proceed to Totness, Teignmouth, Sidmouth, and that neighbourhood, from whence I go to Frome. * * * I have just returned from Plympton, the birthplace of the immortal Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of which town he was mayor. I have made a sketch of the town and church, from a field at a little distance, and I prize it much on this great man’s account.”

“Frome, 3rd Oct., 1819.

“* * * Since I wrote to you last I have visited some of the vale scenery of Devon, which is exceedingly beautiful. From Plymouth I went to the river Dart, which I had great pleasure in tracing for many miles on foot. I then proceeded to Torquay, Babbicombe, Teignmouth, Dawlish, and Sidmouth, where I finished my coast tour, and arrived, after sundry bufferings, on Friday evening, at Mr. Shephards’s, since which time I have been delightfully engaged in visiting the beautiful scenes with which this neighbourhood appears to abound; and although it is somewhat inferior to Devon, it is very excellent of its class.

“The weather, during my tour, has been exceedingly favourable, and, although showery at present, is still rich in the produce of picturesque light and shadow. * * * And now for ‘the rub;’ — I am worth, in the current coin of the realm, four of our smallest but one medallions! I shall therefore come upon my London bankers for two five-pound notes, the first halves of which I trust you will see the propriety of sending by return of post. * * * It is too late now to write a longer and better letter, so you must take this with all its faults, as you must the writer, knowing, however, how much he is your affectionate son,

“W. COLLINS.”

In the February of the next year, 1820, having, as will have been perceived by his Diary, lost his election in 1819 by one vote only, the painter gained the reward of much labour, and the compensation for many anxieties, by being chosen a Royal Academician.

Few elections were ever made more completely to the satisfaction of the profession and the public than this. Mr. Collins had now, for a series of years, exhibited works which had stood amongst the foremost attractions of the Academy walls. He had displayed in his choice, treatment, and variety of subject, a genius and originality which had won for him not only the hearty approval of patrons and friends, but of the public at large. Viewed under any circumstances, the honour which he had just received was his undoubted due; and it was not more gladly conferred than gratefully and delightedly acknowledged. To a man whose powers, hopes, and efforts were bound up in his profession, whose darling object was to assist his brethren in raising it to its highest dignity and noblest possible position; whose enthusiasm for his arduous calling lived through all the privations of his early years, and all the bodily suffering that darkened his closing life, this testimony from his fellow-painters of their appreciation of his genius and their approval of his efforts, produced no transitory satisfaction, and was hailed as no common honour. But it had yet a tenderer and a deeper interest than lay in its promise of wider reputation, and its incentive to higher ambition. It brought with it the recollection of the old boyish studio in Portland-street, of the hard labour and crushing failures of those early days of imperfect skill, of the gay prediction of future Academic honours, and the cheerful confidence that he should live to witness them himself, with which his father had then cheered him through all obstacles, and of the bereavement which now, when the honours had really arrived, now, when the “poor author’s” favourite day-dream had brightened at last into reality and truth, made that father absent from the family board, and voiceless for ever among the rejoicings of the domestic circle!

CHAPTER II.

1820-1822.

Remarks — Pictures of 1820 — Notice of John Constable, R. A. — Pictures of 1821 — Tribulations of a new Academician — Curious address to the Academy — Hanging Committee — Election at the Dulwich Picture Gallery — Letter to Mrs. Collins — Reflections — Letter to Mr. Joseph — Projected marriage and visit to Scotland — Pictures of 1822 — Notice, illustrated by Mr. Collins’s anecdotes, of Sir David Wilkie — Journey to Edinburgh, during the visit of George the Fourth — Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott and Sir Adam Ferguson — Design of painting the King’s landing at Leith — Letters to Mrs. Collins — Visit to Blair Adam — Joint production of a sketch by Wilkie and Collins — Progress of the painter’s marriage engagement — Letters to Miss Geddes and Mrs. Collins — Marriage — Anecdote of the Rev. Doctor Alison.

HAVING traced the progress of Mr. Collins in the preceding chapter up to the attainment of one of the great objects of his professional life, his election as a Royal Academician, it may not be irrelevant or uninstructive, to revert for a moment to the contemplation of some of the causes by which his success as a painter was produced.

It has, I trust, been already demonstrated by his Letters and Journals, and by the remarks that have accompanied them, that ardent as was his devotion to his pursuit, it did not so wholly engross his mind, as to leave it unfitted for watchfulness over his moral, as well as his intellectual advancement. From his earliest days of apprenticeship to the Art, his ambition to acquire renown as a painter was never stronger than his desire to preserve uprightness as a man. This guiding principle of his character cannot be too strongly impressed upon those, who are as yet but setting out on the toilsome journey from the porch to the penetralia of Art; for it offers to them, not a circumstance of biographical interest only, but a practical example and encouragement as well. If the circumstances attending the progress of the subject of these pages through the difficulties of his early career be generally reviewed, it will be found that he triumphed over none of the obstacles that beset him by the aid of his genius alone, but by the additional strength and elevation acquired by those higher qualities of personal character which it was his life’s aim to form, and which shielded his intellectual powers against the bitterest enemies that could assail them, — poverty and neglect. His religious dependence on the saving influence of a right performance of his practical duties, as aiding to produce a happy result from his intellectual exertions, never abandoned, because it never deceived him. It nerved his mind to labour on, when distress sank heavy on his household, and his experience of his neglected efforts might well have bid him despair; its effect on his outward bearing and character raised up for him a friend in his extremity, in the person of Sir Thomas Heathcote: its influence preserved his genius, which it had sustained to success, from over-confidence; and strengthening it in its humility, matured it safely in the final completeness to which it was its privilege to attain: and, lastly, as inclining him to receive cordially the opinions of others, it raised him in the esteem of his professional brethren; and, as constantly presiding over the production of his works, in the honest elabouration of their design and execution, and in the conscientious equality of attention given to their slightest as to their most important divisions, it preserved his faculties throughout his career from the danger of being weakened by carelessness, or misdirected by caprice.

These remarks may appear to delay unnecessarily the progress of this Memoir, but they are suggested by the great truth which the career of Mr. Collins illustrates, — that the powers of the mind, however brilliant, are never too elevated to be aided by the moral virtues of the character; and that between the aims of the intellect and the discipline of the disposition, it is intended that there should exist an all-important connexion, which the pride of genius may easily sever, but which the necessities of genius are never enabled to spare.

On now returning to the regular course of the narrative, my father’s pictures contributed to the Academy Exhibition of 1820 first claim attention. They were; “Portraits of Master Cecil and Miss Fanny Boothby,” painted for the Earl of Liverpool; “A Capstern at work, drawing up Fishing Boats;” and “A River Scene — Cottage Girl buying Fish.” In compliance with the rule of the Academy, that each Academician shall, on his election, present the institution with a specimen of his talents, he also painted this year what is called the “diploma picture.” This work displays an extraordinary combination of deep tone and agreeable breadth, with minuteness, incident, and detail. It simply represents two boys fishing; but the water and foliage in the foreground, and the expression and position of the figures, with the village and trees in the distance, are all painted with that skill, industry, and nature, which give to subjects of this description a peculiar importance and charm. This picture was one of those exhibited after the painter’s death at the British Institution, among the works of the old masters. In reference to his other productions this year publicly displayed on the Academy walls, it may not be uninteresting to observe, that the “River Scene,” for which he received a hundred and fifty guineas, produced at the sale of its possessor’s property, (the late Mrs. Hand,) two hundred and thirty guineas. It was a tranquil inland scene, the first fruit of his journey to Devonshire, delicately treated, and wrought to a high degree of finish. The “Cottage Girl” stands with a child, bargaining with a fisherman, on a wooden jetty at the left hand side of the picture. At the right, fishing boats are moored in the river, which winds onward past hill, village, and wood, until it is lost in the distance. Of the sea-piece, (“Capstern at work, etc.,) painted for Sir Thomas Heathcote, and much admired at the time as a new success for the painter in his most popular style, I am not enabled to furnish a particular description. These pictures are thus noticed in my father’s Journals:

“14th Dec., 1819. — I began a coast scene, with fishermen hauling up boats, etc., for Sir Thomas Heathcote. Painted upon this picture until the first of January, when I went to Lord Liverpool’s at Coombe Wood, for a few days. Returned on the 5th, and, from the 6th to the 28th, again employed on it, when I began a picture of the same size for Mrs. Hand. Sir Thomas Heathcote’s picture is painted in linseed oil and turpentine, and macguilph made of the shook-up drying oil and mastic varnish, with gold size, in the slow dryers. Chrome yellow and orange, (Field’s,) and cobalt, (French,) used occasionally. * * * Painted upon Sir Thomas Heathcote’s picture until the 8th February, when I took up Mrs. Hand’s, upon which and the sketch I had occasionally spent a few days, both during the progress of Sir Thomas’s commission, and frequently before I began it. Mrs. Hand’s picture was finished on the 3rd of April; upon this I worked more diligently than usual, though by no means so industriously as I ought to have done. This picture is painted, in all respects, with the same material as Sir Thomas Heathcote’s, excepting the use of chromes; of the yellow chrome I believe hardly a touch, and very little indeed of the orange chrome, (Field’s,) and that mixed with other colours.

“Without pretending to be quite correct, and without reference to my habit of occasionally devoting a few days, at sundry times, to arranging my composition on the large canvass, and of course excepting the time, whether long or short, devoted to the original sketch or sketches, I purpose setting down, (when I can do so,) the actual time consumed upon each of my pictures.

“Sir Thomas Heathcote’s picture of a ‘Capstern at work,’ began 14th December, finished 8th February; deducting five days for absence from home, was painted in about seven weeks.

“Mrs. Hand’s picture of ‘A River Scene — Cottage Girl buying Fish,’ begun 8th February, finished 3rd April; was painted in about the same time, — or rather, the days having much increased in length, this picture has had more time bestowed on it. * * *