Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2109 page)

“London is at this moment unusually full, and the monied interest in a deplorable way. One really finds some advantage in being too poor to keep a banker. Should you have it in your power to get some slight sketches made for you of the arrangement of the colours in the fine things you have before you, they might be useful.

“I have ventured to employ an engraver, who has just completed a small engraving from one of my pictures, and has begun one from Lord Liverpool’s picture,* which will be a more expensive undertaking. I have engaged Hurst and Robinson to publish for me, and find I am to pay handsomely for everything they do. Callcott accompanied me to Mr. Wells’s in the autumn, and a day or two since I took Mulready to Mr. Peel’s. I find they think more highly of the pictures you and I (I fear I must only say
I
now) so much admire, than I could have expected.

* “Fishermen on the Look-Out.”

“Regretting that I cannot send you a more entertaining letter, (for really there is little to be learned of what our artists are doing,) in return for one so full of novel information — and almost envying you the fine opportunities you have of holding daily converse with the founders of the great style,

“I am, with the greatest esteem,

“Your faithful and obliged friend,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.

“P.S. — Can I do anything for you? Do not scruple to employ me; and when you find yourself able to send a line, I shall be most happy to hear more about your health.”

Foremost among Mr. Collins’s contributions to the Exhibition of 1826, was the celebrated picture of “The Fisherman’s Departure.” The success of this work — painted for Mr. Morrison, M.P., — was most brilliant. Once he repeated it himself, for Mr. Chamberlayne, M.P., and twice it was repeated by others — in two line-engravings, large and small. Among all his productions, none had hitherto more powerfully vindicated his claim to be considered a figure-painter as well as a landscape-painter than this picture, which continued, during its exhibition, to be a centre of attraction to all classes of visitors within the Academy walls. It may be thus described:

It is night; the evening has closed in tranquilly, and the moon is slowly rising behind a mass of dark, thick cloud. Its beams already tremble on the still waters of the sea — dotted, here and there, with a few fishing-boats — and tip with a soft light the jagged edges of a range of cliffs, stretching on the right of the picture all through the scene, from the foreground to the horizon-line. On a small tract of table-land, halfway down the nearest of these cliffs, stands the cottage of the fisherman. At irregular intervals, the tops of its rude gable windows, the thatch of its little outhouse, the meshes of the nets hanging at its simple doorway, partake the radiance that is fast brightening to light the seaward view. Here the “Departure” is taking place; here the fisherman is on the point of quitting his family for a night of toil upon the waters. His tall, manly form, equipped in a thick jerkin, an impenetrable apron, and ponderous boots, is raised to its full stature, as he holds his infant child high in his arms to give it the parting kiss, which the little creature receives, half in terror, half in satisfaction, as he feels his unaccustomed elevation from the ground. By the fisherman’s side stands his eldest boy, half-smothered beneath his father’s heavy watch-coat, which he carries over his shoulder, and furnished with the lantern, the two extra candles, and the loaf of bread, indicating the length of time that must elapse ere the fisherman can return. On the right of the father and son, and a little removed from them, are the rest of the family. The grandfather, whose days of adventure on the deep are over, leans on a rail, occupied in conversation with a woman whose back is turned to the spectator, and whose arm rests on the shoulder of one of the fisherman’s female children. Opposite to this group sits the fisherman’s wife, holding a sleeping child on her lap, and fixing her eyes tenderly and anxiously on her husband. At the extreme left of the picture, a rude wooden flight of steps and rail conduct to the beach beneath. On the top of these, near a boat-hook lying ready across the rail, stands a large Newfoundland dog, looking round impatiently for his master’s signal of departure; while, distant and beneath, is seen a glimpse of the quiet beach, with the fisherman’s boat and companion on the shore awaiting his approach. Such are the objects depicted in this simple and original work. To gain an adequate idea of the extraordinary truth and nature of the figures, of the perfect absence of any artificial refinement on the one hand, or exaggerated coarseness on the other, in the different personages composing the fisherman’s family, it will be necessary — in the numerous cases where a sight of the picture itself must be impossible — to examine the large and admirable line-engraving by Mr. Phelps, in which the pure tone and sentiment of the original work is preserved with a rare fidelity and success.

Besides this picture, my father contributed two others, this year, to the Royal Academy Exhibition: “Young Shrimp-catchers,” — a small, delicate, sea-piece, painted for Sir Abraham Hume; and “Hop-pickers” — a sunny, Kentish scene, rich and brilliant in tone, the background filled with tall hop-poles, through which the light breaks quaintly from a small patch of blue sky — the foreground occupied by a highly-finished group of girls, engaged in their labours on a space of cleared ground. This picture was painted for the late Mr. Wells, of Redleaf.

During the summer, my father’s increasing anxiety to devote himself daily to the study and enjoyment of nature, induced him to quit London and fix his residence definitely at Hampstead. Here, while still within reach of the Great City, he could live surrounded by some of the prettiest and most varied inland scenery that this part of England presents, — scenery, the beauties and pictorial capabilities of which he never wearied of exploring, and was always anxious to communicate to others. Friends of all ranks and occupations, who came to visit him here, found in the painter, not only the warm partizan of the merits of Hampstead scenery, but the practical guide of their walks, and the ready tutor of their taste for Nature. Indeed, at every period of his life, an excursion with him in the country was a privilege thoroughly appreciated by all who knew him. He possessed the peculiar faculty of divesting his profession of all its mysteries and technicalities, and of enabling the most uneducated in his Art to look at Nature with
his
eyes, and enjoy Nature with
his
zest. People who possessed years of acquaintance with scenery to which he was a stranger, found themselves introduced by him to points of view which they had never before discovered, and enabled, for the first time, to separate through his teaching the valuable and the true from the common and the artificial, in landscapes among which from childhood their lives had been past.

I am here enabled, after a long absence of any such matter, to present a short extract from my father’s Journal of this year. The dearth of material from his diaries in the more advanced passages of this work, has doubtless been already remarked. It is unfortunately the too faithful reflection of the aspect of the diaries themselves, which present, at this period of his life, nothing more than bare numerical entries of the days and hours devoted in succession to the production of his different pictures. But what the public may lose by this in his biography they have gained in his works; for the absence of extractable matter in his journals, during the maturity of his career, is to be attributed, in a great measure, to the continued increase of his devotion to his Art, — a devotion which made him jealous of every hour not directly occupied in the furtherance of his studies; and therefore careless of assigning to his personal affairs a place on paper, as memorials of the past, after they had ceased to hold a place in his attention as occurrences of the present.

JOURNAL OF 1826.

“March — Began Mr. Peel’s ‘Frost Scene.’ Sir William Beechey called, and was astonished at the time I spent on my pictures: he said it was his opinion that Vandervelde painted Mr. Holdsworth’s picture with ease, in two days. Although I do not agree with him in this opinion, I think Vandervelde, as well as many finished painters of the Dutch school, preserved the spirit of their work, by painting much faster than most people seem aware of; and I am persuaded that my own pictures would be better were they done with less timidity and anxiety; as nothing can replace the want of that vigour and freshness, which things done quickly (with a constant reference to Nature) necessarily possess. * * *

“Wednesday, 9th — Whilst supporting Shockley, the gardener, who was upon a high ladder gathering our pears, his knife fell from his hands, when he called, and I looked up; the knife fell into my face and cut the left side of my nose. That it did not strike my best eye, (which is my left,) that it did not penetrate my head, and that it struck where it did, and produced so little injury, I owe entirely to the great mercy of Almighty God, May this event open my eyes to the goodness of my Creator, and keeping alive the sense of humble gratitude that I feel, enable me to ‘look to my stewardship’ and ‘redeem the time, through the might of Jesus Christ.’

“After the attendance of the surgeon, laid down and read. During the rest of the day, kept quiet and did no painting.

“* * * July 21st — Resolved to work five hours a day, keeping a debtor and creditor account; each day I spend out of my study, being entered on the debtor side.

“* * * Of spiritedly executed pictures, it is commonly said:- ‘Tis not intended for close inspection.’ — The real lover of painting, derives the highest gratification from this very sort of execution. However highly finished a picture may be, the beauty of the execution is in fact lost, when (as some wise- acres say) ‘it requires a magnifying-glass to enjoy such handling.’ Denner, Vanderwerf, the younger Mieres, and those who are interested in the sale of such works, have to answer for this.” * * *

The “Frost Scene,” mentioned at the commencement of the foregoing extracts, as “begun,” was the composition which the painter proposed to execute on the liberal terms of Sir Robert Peel’s commission of the preceding autumn. To paint a large “ snow- piece,” combining full illustration in landscape with stirring incident in figures, had long been an object of his ambition; and he gladly seized the opportunity which the freedom of subject and size, now conceded to him, so pleasingly bestowed, to gratify his own wishes, as well as to deserve the honourable confidence that had been reposed in his genius. Through the autumn and winter of this year, the picture, begun under these circumstances, proceeded slowly, surely and anxiously, towards completion. The flattering terms of Sir Robert Peel’s commission had already become widely talked of in London society; and the painter felt that the completion of his arduous and responsible undertaking was awaited with as much impatience by those who envied, as by those who rejoiced, in his successes. His accustomed anxiety to achieve the highest excellence in his works was doubled during the progress of this picture. As the winter advanced every “frost scene” that Nature presented to his eye was studied as elabourately as if, instead of one, a series of “snow-pieces” had been expected from him. Among the figures introduced in his composition were a man and woman, mounted on a pillion. All Hampstead was ransacked without success for this old-fashioned article of travelling equipment; and the painter — determined, even in the minor accessories of his picture, to trust to nothing but Nature — had begun to despair of finishing his group, when a lady volunteered to hunt out a pillion for him, in the neighbourhood of Hackney, where she lived. Nor, when she had procured it, did she remain satisfied with simply obtaining the model. When the painter arrived to see it, he found her ready to illustrate its use. Her gardener hired an old horse, strapped on the pillion, and mounted it; while his mistress placed herself in the proper position, behind: the complete series of models, human, animal, and mechanical, remaining at the painter’s disposal, until he had made a careful study of the whole. The group thus completed, was one of the most admired in the picture for its fidelity and nature; and the manner in which the requisite study for it was obtained, is here mentioned, in order to add one more to the numberless instances of the obligations of genius to the interference and enthusiasm of the gentler sex.

A letter, written by Mr. Collins about this period, answering an application for advice upon the future direction to be given to the productions of a juvenile prodigy, whose efforts in the Art had been submitted to his judgment, contains, in a small compass, so many judicious hints upon the caution necessary to be observed in such cases, in discriminating between empty ambition and real capacity, as to make its insertion likely to prove useful to others who may be placed under the same serious responsibility, of deciding on the future career of some “infant phenomenon” in the world of Art. The letter was expressed as follows:

“To —

“London, July, 1826.

“My dear Sir, — I have frequently thought your subject over, and am now not much nearer a decision than when I began; for, truly, it is a matter involving much of the boy’s future happiness. That the drawings and picture are surprisingly clever for a child, every one must admit; but, whether the impulse under which they were produced, will be sufficient to carry him on — whether his constitution will support him under the fatigue of many years’ study — and whether his love of painting will bear the trials of lack of encouragement, and the other ills to which a person is liable, by entering our profession, are questions which, at this very early period of the boy’s experience, no one on earth can answer.