Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2111 page)

The following short extract from Mr. Collins’s Journal for this year may be deemed not unworthy of insertion, as showing that his success in his profession had not subdued his habitual watchfulness over himself, both as a painter and as a man:

“Sept. 18th, 1827. — I see that in finishing my pictures I am too apt to introduce the darkest opaque shadows, and that consequently, to preserve that breadth which the dead colour has, I must in a great measure avoid using any dark colour lower than ‘raw umber.’ I must not use black or Vandyck brown until the last finishing touches; and then very thinly. Pictures may be too strong in the darks for private rooms, as well as for an Exhibition-room. Cuyp’s and Wilson’s pictures are entirely free from this blackness, and have, I believe, consequently great breadth, glow, and power; and do not require absolutely, as mine certainly do, to be seen with a very strong light.

“Sept. 19th. — I have attained my fortieth year. May that Almighty Being, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is perfect, for Jesus Christ’s sake, guide me through that remaining portion of my life which it may be his holy will that I should pass in this world, directing me in all things.” * * *

In the subjoined letters will be found a continuation of the correspondence on Art between Sir David Wilkie and Mr. Collins, of which the commencement has appeared in the preceding chapter:

“To SIR DAVID WILKIE.

“Hampstead, July 9th, 1827.

“Dear Wilkie, — I had promised myself the pleasure of writing to you upon the opening of the present Exhibition, intending to give you some account of the pictures, and more especially of the really kind things Lawrence said about you at the grand dinner; but of course some more punctual, though not more sincere admirer, has superseded me. An affair, however, of great importance to us all having taken place on Saturday, I write for the purpose of giving some details, which I doubt not will interest you.

“You may possibly know by this time that Lord de Tabley* died about the 20th of last month; but unless you have very recent intelligence of the circumstance, you will be as much surprised as most of the people here, upon finding that, notwithstanding the Parliament was up and the town getting very thin, his executors determined to sell by auction his collection of pictures in Hill-street. The artists in general, but more particularly those who had pictures in the sale, were more than bilious. Turner and Sir Thomas Lawrence did everything in their power to induce the executors to put it off; but they were bent upon turning the pictures into money immediately. I shall set down the prices at which the most prominent were sold.”

* Formerly Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart.

(Here follows in the original a long list of the different pictures sold; the artists being in some instances, so unfavourable was the time chosen for the sale, the purchasers of their own or of their friends’ works. Two pictures by Mr. Collins, disposed of to connoisseurs, are quoted at a hundred and eighty and two hundred guineas respectively. The letter then continues:)

“That these pictures should have sold so well, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which they were presented to the public, is, in my opinion, a strong proof of the high estimation of modern Art; and when we consider the unsettled state of political matters, and the occupation of the public mind upon the great changes in high places, we must not complain. I have said so much about our Art, that I have little room for a thousand other things I purposed saying about ourselves. I long much to hear from you. Let me know how you go on in health; and do say you are coming back again amongst us shortly. We want you much, I assure you. Your absence, and poor Sir George Beaumont’s death, have been taken advantage of, and an unusual supply of chalky pictures adorn the walls of the Academy, to the discomfort of the old school. Hilton, Etty, Lawrence, Mulready, and some others, have not fallen away, however. I am delighted to hear from your sister that you have painted some pictures. Let me know how I can be useful, — do not fear giving me trouble. What sort of news can I pick up for you? I am, as you see by the address of this letter, living at Hampstead; so short a distance from London that I can easily avail myself of its advantages, and miss its discomforts, and study in quiet. I have just painted a picture for Mr. Peel, at the highest price I have ever obtained — five hundred guineas; and am full of commissions. Poor Lord Liverpool has, within these few days, suffered another attack: our friend Jenkinson is with him continually at Coombe Wood. And now, my dear friend, may God bless you and send you home well again!

“I am, dear Wilkie,

“Yours obliged and faithfully,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

“P.S. Joseph has just arrived in London, and is making some capital busts; one he has nearly finished of the Duke of Sussex is excellent.”

“To WILLIAM COLLINS, ESQ., R.A.

“Geneva, 26th Aug., 1827.

“Dear Collins, Your letter gave me great pleasure; filled as it was with news, and such news as I, of all others, sympathized the most in. The ordeal of the De Tabley sale you have all gone through has to me become quite familiar. I admit yours has been both severe and unfair; but you have had the more merit in sustaining it, and it appears to native residents here, as it does to myself, a most creditable display for British Art. Indeed, I wish our artists would think somewhat more of trials of this sort, that must be perpetual, and less of the short-lived triumphs of fresh paint at Somerset-house. We affect, at home, to despise the old masters; but by the same people and the same rules must we hereafter be judged; and our heavy gilt frames and central situations will avail us nothing.

“This is a subject upon which I claim the liberty (being able to do little else) to
talk.
I may call myself a sort of veteran in such contests; and thanks to one of my best friends at home, have come off upon a late occasion with most unexpected success, even before the eyes of a foreign people. The sale of my picture at Munich* made an impression at Rome among all descriptions of artists; and my ideas, known to be peculiar, began to be listened to even by my own countrymen, who began to suspect that what I have so often, as you well know, tried to din into the heads of some friends at home, might after all be right. And here let me assure you, that if the qualities of the picture of the ‘Will’ had any share in its advantageous destination, those of colour were quite the opposite to what would have fitted it for our Exhibition. The whites and some of the flesh tints were too bright, and it was the rich and low tones only that kept it in harmony with the choice Dutch pictures by which it was surrounded.

* “The Reading of a Will.”

“After seeing all the fine pictures in France, Italy, and Germany, one must come to this conclusion, that colour, if not the first, is at least an essential quality in painting: no master has as yet maintained his ground beyond his own time without it. But in oil painting, it is richness and depth alone that can do justice to the material. Upon this subject, every prejudice with which I left home is, if anything, not only confirmed, but increased. What Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote, and what our friend Sir George Beaumont so often supported, was right; and after seeing what I have seen, I am not now to be
talked
out of it.

“With us, as you know, every young Exhibitor with pink, white, and blue, thinks himself a colourist like Titian; than whom perhaps no painter is more misrepresented and misunderstood. I saw my sell at Florence his famous Venus, upon an easel, with Kirkup and Wallis by me. This picture, so often copied, and every copy a fresh mistake, is what I expected it to be; deep, yet brilliant, indescribable in its hues, yet simple beyond example in its execution and its colouring. Its flesh (oh, how our friends at home would stare!) was a simple, sober, mixed-up tint, and apparently, like your skies, completed while wet. No scratchings, no hatchings, no scumblings, no multiplicity of repetitions, — no ultramarine, lakes, nor vermillions, and not even a mark of the brush visible; all seemed melted into the fat and glowing mass, solid yet transparent, giving the nearest approach to life that the painter’s art has yet reached.

“This picture is perhaps defective in its arrangement, but in its painting quite admirable. Now, can nothing like this ever be done again? — Is such toning really not to be reproduced? I wish to believe the
talent
exists, and am sure the
material
exists. But we have now got another system, — our criterion of judging is changed: we prefer a something else, or, what is still more blinding, there is a something else that we mistake for it.

“Another picture, with which I was greatly pleased, was ‘The Assumption of the Virgin,’ by Fra Bartolomeo, at Lucca. This picture, painted by a monk before the time of Raphael, and in the retirement of a convent, has, to the fine qualities of the period of Raphael, superadded all the inventions in colour and effect of Rubens and Rembrandt. This is a style for Hilton to follow: brightness and richness are here combined. West used to talk of this picture, and our friend Woodburn used to say he would place it beside the ‘Transfiguration.’

“I perhaps say more of colour than I ought; that, as you know, being with some of our friends the disputable subject. Sir George Beaumont used to say that water-coloured drawings had tainted our Exhibitions. I have observed throughout my travels, this difference between the pictures of the present day and the old masters, that they are never found in the same room, and seldom in the same gallery — collectors never place them together, and artists are contented with the exclusion. The Duke of Bedford seems actuated by the same feeling; he has parted with his old pictures, intending to collect modern pictures in their place: he perhaps judges that they cannot be amalgamated together! this is a prejudice that painters themselves should get rid of. He once asked me to paint a companion to his Teniers — he had then no thoughts of parting with it.

“Your picture for Mr. Peel, I hope you have succeeded in to your mind. Yours is a most enviable style. You are sure now to get full employment; but, for future fame, compete with the old masters; beside whom, modern Art is generally poor in the lights, and opaque in the shadows. From what I have seen of letters and heard from eye-witnesses, I can form in my own mind the whole of the Exhibition it remains quite unchanged. You mention some friends
who have not fallen off.
This is so far good for themselves, but what must it be for the Exhibition?

“If anything occurs worthy notice, write to me. You know the news perfectly that would interest an artist in exile. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Collins, who I hope is, with yourself, well, and enjoying with you the youthful society of your little boy. He is now old enough to learn that there is such a person as his godfather he will be able to speak to me when I return. Give my remembrances to your brother, and should you see them, to Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. My brother will at any time tell you how to direct to me.

“With best regards, believe me, my dear Sir,

“Your very faithful servant,

“DAVID WILKIE.”

From the perusal of these two letters, the reader will gather that the writers agreed in fixing their theoretical and practical principles of painting on the models of the old masters — a form of opinion which, fortunately for the prospects of modern Art, is less uncommon among their brethren now than it was at that time. Unanimous, however, as the two painters were in their convictions on this subject, they differed a little in their method of carrying them out. “Wilkie’s notion of acquiring much of the grand tone of the master colourists, by the excessive introduction of rich, deep browns, into all the darker parts of a picture, was not shared by his friend, who, entire as was his veneration for Sir David’s judgment, and his concurrence in his general opinions, steadily declined — during their whole intercourse with each other — to load his pictures with any prevailing tone of shadow, however lustrous, which he had not seen in the Nature from which they were derived. From Nature he believed that the old masters had drawn the moving principle of those mighty combinations of their Art, of that rich surface, that sublime tone of colour, that magical harmony of individual hues, which he and his brother painter so heartily admired, and so sedulously emulated; and firmly convinced that Claude, Ruysdael, and all “the better brothers,” had done so before him, he persisted in applying himself as attentively to the harmonies of Nature as to the triumphs of Art, for his guiding theory of
chiaroscuro
and colour, as well as for his highest ideas of beauty, proportion and form.

From the Isle of Wight, whither he had repaired in the autumn of this year to collect materials for a picture of Freshwater Bay, to be painted for the Duke of Norfolk, my father thus writes: