Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2133 page)

The painter’s next place of destination was Mannheim; thence, after a visit to Heidelberg, he embarked on the Rhine — the banks of which, by no means bore comparison with the scenery he had left — and, after a passing look at Mayence and Cologne, he arrived at Rotterdam; which was already well- known to him, from his tour in Holland in 1828. From that place he reached London on the 15th of August, after an eventful absence on the Continent of almost two years.

Having now terminated the narrative of Mr. Collins’s studies on the Continent, it next remains to display the practical result of his travels on his return to his native country, by noticing the public reception and intrinsic merits of the new works that his journey to Italy produced — works, which mark the commencement of the fourth epoch in his pictorial labours, and conduct to the closing scenes in his earthly career.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

1838-1842.

Conjectures in the world of Art about the painter’s future works — His preparations for the next season’s Exhibition — Italian pictures of 1839 — Their reception by the different classes to which they were addressed — Illness, from inflammation of the eyes, at the latter part of the year — Necessity of abstaining from general occupations and amusements, and consequent barrenness of biographical incident, at this period — Pictures of 1840 — Removal of residence, and short tour in Germany — Letter to Mrs. Collins — Appointment to Librarianship of Royal Academy — Departure of Wilkie to the Holy Land — Anecdote of the parting interview of the painter and his friend — Letter to Sir D. Wilkie — Curious effect of soil on constitution — Letter to and from Sir D. Wilkie — Pictures of 1841 — Death of Sir D. Wilkie, on his voyage to England — Letter to Sir R. Peel — Letters to Mrs. Collins — Partial return to English subjects — Letters to the Royal Academy, and to Mr. Eastlake. R.A. — Pictures of 1842 — First discovery of the disease, which afterwards terminated the painter’s life — His departure on a tour to Scotland and Shetland.

As soon as it was known that Mr. Collins had returned to England, the curiosity of the world of Art was highly aroused, upon the subject of his future efforts. The reports that soon spread, respecting his sketches, described their number and variety pretty accurately; but were rather at fault, in estimating the exact use to which they would be turned. It was questioned in one quarter, whether he would not abandon landscape and rustic life altogether, n d enter the lists boldly, with the “Professors of High Art.” Another party doubted this; but thought it extremely probable that he might take to painting classical landscapes, and follow in the steps of Claude and Wilson. A third opinion was, that he would commence a series of Italian cottage and coast scenes, which it was to be feared, however — after his long practice on home subjects — would have little that was strikingly characteristic to recommend them, and would present in heterogeneous combination, a little that was foreign with much that was English. A fourth set of connoisseurs took higher ground, declared that he had made a complete mistake in going to Italy, that his early style was the only style he was fitted for, that Wilkie had inoculated him with his own ill-advised bias for change of subject, and that his new pictures, whatever they might be, would prove utter failures.

Meanwhile, the object of all these conjectures lost no time in preparing for his future labours. His house at Bayswater having been taken as a permanent residence, by the gentleman who had occupied it on his departure from England, his first requisite was to find a new abode. This was, after some trouble, accomplished by engaging a convenient dwelling in the Avenue-road, Regent’s Park precisely in the quiet situation, on the outskirts of London, which Mr. Collins most desired to occupy. Here, as soon as his painting-room could be furnished, he at once entered on the preparation of his new pictures. Chairs, tables, and even the floor, were soon covered with Italian sketches, from which to select subjects. Wilkie’s frequent visits were again resumed; long conversations on Art — now more interesting than ever — were held between the friends; and in a wonderfully short space of time, the machinery of the painter’s home employments, which had been suspended for two years, resumed its wonted regularity and regained its easy progress.

Having succeeded in the selection of three designs, which he and his friend Wilkie thought well calculated to open the Italian campaign with due completeness and decision, my father suffered nothing to interrupt him in proceeding to realise his new ideas. His mode of life now became as regular as it had lately been varied. He thoroughly appreciated the difficulties to be contended with, in suddenly assuming a new form for his Art; he remembered the outcry raised against Wilkie for abandoning his early choice of subject, and, conscious that his own position with the critics might, for aught he knew, soon become similar to his friend’s, he determined to -neglect no effort to sustain his reputation by exhibiting, in its strongest light, the connection of his journey to Italy with decided improvement in the characteristics of his works.

A visit at Christmas to the country seat of Sir George Philips was the only suspension of his occupations which the painter allowed himself in the year 1838. Knowing that, as the new season approached, his engagements in London society would be such as to leave his employments less completely at his own disposal than during the autumn months, he made good use of his time while it still remained his own; and, on the opening of the year 1839, found his three pictures safely and satisfactorily advancing towards their completion. Indeed, his application to his profession was, at this period, closer perhaps than it had ever been before. His resumption of his labours would have been welcome to him, even as a new phase in the varying life he had lately led, but, recalling as it did, in every sketch that he consulted and every form of composition that he considered, the pleasant studies of the last two years — and ripening, as it could not fail to do, the first fruits of the pictorial hopes and projects of his travelled life — it assumed to him as new and as welcome a charm as if it had been his earliest experiment in Art for the public eye. Wilkie, the most constant and attentive of his professional friends in watching the progress of his new works, thus notices their commencement and conclusion, in two letters to Sir William Knighton:

“Collins is painting from Neapolitan subjects — a new dress for his Art. He is much in request as a lion, and his subjects excite curiosity; so that we hope a line of success may attend him.” At the end of March, when the pictures were being sent into the Royal Academy, Sir David again mentioned his friend’s works, describing their completion thus: “Collins has finished three pictures, and most happily. I took Seguier* to see them, who thought them as fine as Collins ever painted.”

* A great judge of pictures, ancient and modern, since dead.

On the opening of the Exhibition of 1839 (one of the most important for Mr. Collins’s interests to which he had ever contributed), his pictures were thus described in the Catalogue: “A Scene near Subiaco, Roman States;” “Naples Young Lazzaroni playing the game of Arravoglio;” “Poor Travellers at the door of a Capuchin Convent, near Vico, Bay of Naples.”

The “Scene near Subiaco” was composed from sketches made during an excursion to that romantic town, on the painter’s second residence at Rome. The foreground of the picture is the road leading to Subiaco, bounded on each side by high, picturesque hills. In the middle distance, rising over woods and fields, and situated on an abrupt eminence, stands the town — building perched upon building, with a convent and church, like a pinnacle, crowning all. Near a rude penthouse chapel, to the right of the composition, stands an old begging friar, holding in one hand his tin money-box, and raising the other to bless two lovely little peasant children, who are giving him a small copper coin, while their mother stands at a little distance, looking at the group. This incident the painter had often observed in Italy. It is rendered here with the same simple truth to Nature that characterizes his English works. The monk, the woman, and the children, are each as genuine types of their respective classes, as free from false refinement, and as simply and strikingly true, as any fisher boys or cottage children ever painted by his hand. The same unshrinking fidelity to Nature which marks the figures, characterizes also the landscape of this picture. There is no attempt to make the warm warmer, or the bright brighter than in the original scene. By turns airy and delicate, vigorous, glowing, and distinct, the landscape of Italy is reflected in its true colours, and decked only in its native merits. The technical qualities of the picture indicate at all points the painter’s comprehensive study of the principles of the old masters — its breadth of treatment and harmony of colour being especially remarkable to the educated eye. It was purchased by Sir Francis Shuckburgh, Bart.

The four ragged little Neapolitan vagabonds, playing the game of “Arravoglio,” and forming the subject of the second of Mr. Collins’s pictures, were members of a class of “Lazzaroni,” whose habits he took the greatest delight in studying. Generally haunting the beach — now basking in the sun — now swimming round their father’s fishing-boats — playing, eating, sleeping, the livelong day, and sometimes, by way of variety, picking the pockets of English “Milords,” — these happy little rascals lead a life more akin to the existence of the “Thelemites” of Rabelais than to that of ordinary mortals. Their great game was “Arravoglio,” which consisted in bowling a ball through a ring just large enough to let it pass, and fixed upright in the ground. To accomplish this successfully, required great skill and exactness, and a particular swing of the body, which is illustrated in Mr. Collins’s picture by the figure of one of the boys, who is just throwing the ball, while his companions are looking on. Every one of the attitudes, every inch of the rags, every peculiarity of the gestures of these “dolce-far-niente” urchins, was drawn by the painter from Nature, while his models were far too much occupied in their game to attend to him as he sat sketching them on the side of a fishing-boat, at a little distance. Thus produced, this picture has a quaint originality — perfectly removed from caricature or coarseness — which it is impossible to describe. The mountains of Castellamare, as seen from the beach at Naples, make the distance of the picture, which expresses the sultry glow of a hot Italian day with graphic eloquence and truth. It was purchased by Mr. John Baring.

The “Poor Travellers at the Convent Door” presented an union of extreme delicacy of treatment with great brilliancy of effect. The landscape part of the composition, displaying rich undulating lines of woody and rocky landscape, sweeping downwards to the sea-shore, and suffused in the light of a tender morning sky, speckled here and there by faint fleecy clouds, is finely contrasted in colour with the sober hue of the convent, which, backed by trees, occupies the high ground in the composition. A lay-brother is just opening the door in answer to the bell rung by a woman with two children, who is asking for charity and refreshment for herself and her other companions; one of whom is a wild, uncouth lad, leaning on a stick, the other, a little girl resting wearily on the ground; not in a studied attitude of indolent grace, but with her limbs stretched out straight before her, in the natural listlessness of perfect fatigue. This picture, differing from its companions in its extreme delicacy of treatment, was assimilated to both in its fidelity, as an illustration of the scenery and people of Italy. It was purchased by Mr. Marshall.

The general reception of these works among the different classes to which they were addressed, was most encouraging. The painter’s Academic brethren marked their sense of their merits by the excellent positions they gave them on the Academy walls; the largest of the three being hung in a “centre” in the East Room. They were all sold before they left Mr. Collins’s painting-room; and commissions for new pictures were received by him from the Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir Thomas Baring, and Mr. Marshall. With the patrons of Art, therefore, their success was immediate. Among those professionally and practically connected with painting, the main point noticed in them was the remarkable improvement they exhibited in the artist’s style. Some among these critics, who had always acknowledged his originality and highly estimated his genius, had formerly lamented, as drawbacks to the excellence of his pictures, an occasional timidity in drawing, and a too frequent predominance of excessive and over-wrought finish, which they attributed to his almost morbid anxiety to labour his efforts to the highest pitch of excellence that he could attain. But now, on examining his Italian works, they one and all remarked the new force and boldness he had acquired in drawing the figure, and the increased degree of vigour, variety, and brilliancy of execution to which he had arrived. “Should you at some future time,” said they, “depart from Italian, and return to English subjects, the benefit you have derived as a painter, from your journey to Italy, will enable you to excel all you have hitherto done, even in the branch of Art that you have made your own.” With the general public, the improvement in my father’s style thus noticed, combined with the complete change of subject which his works now presented, afforded abundant matter for observation. It was amusing to see many of the gazers at his new productions, looking perplexedly from catalogue to picture, and from picture back to catalogue, to assure themselves that they really beheld any of “Collins’ works” in the bright southern scenes displayed before them. Whatever their opinions were on the change in the painter’s subjects, there was no falling off in the interest with which his new experiments were regarded. The “Scene near Subiaco,” and its companions, were examined with the same general attention which had formerly been bestowed on “The Fisherman’s Departure,” or “The Stray Kitten.”