Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2148 page)

“Believe me, very faithfully yours,

“WILLIAM COLLINS.”

The above letter marks the termination of Mr. Collins’s connection with Academic affairs; to which he ever devoted himself with readiness and zeal. His last interview with his brother Academicians on the common scene of their labours for the public eye, had happened some months prior to the date of this communication, a short time before the opening of the Exhibition of 1846. On one of the days set apart for the members to varnish and touch upon their pictures in their places on the Academy walls, he with some difficulty collected strength enough to join them. As soon as he was discerned slowly and feebly entering the rooms, all his old friends and fellow-students left their labours, and approached him with the kindest expressions of sympathy and welcome, and the most fervent congratulations upon the works that he had produced. Deeply affected — more deeply than he dared to show — at the warm greeting that he received from every one, and at the cordial hopes for his recovery expressed on all sides, he unwillingly left his friends after a passing glance at their pictures and his own. They never again met him within the Academy walls.

Shortly after the date of his letter to Mr. Reinagle, my father made a last attempt to recur to the practice of his Art; which, slight and humble though it was, is deserving of a passing mention, as the closing effort in those pictorial labours, to chronicle which from their beginning has been the object of these pages. Happening — through much the same caprice of imagination which often disposes the eye to see old crags and castles imaged in the embers of a smouldering fire — to observe in the accidental arrangement of some writing and drawing materials placed in and about a small wooden tray at the foot of his bed, certain shades and outlines which resolved themselves to his fancy into the representation of an old ferry-boat lying at a deserted quay, he asked for some drawing-materials, and being propped up with pillows, proceeded to make a small water-colour sketch of the objects which his caprice of thought had called up before him in the manner described. The weary head drooped, and the weak hand flagged often at its old familiar task, as he slowly pursued his occupation; but the sketch was steadily continued. Slight as it was, perhaps comprehensible to the eye of a painter alone, it displayed in its narrow limits his wonted mastery over colour, and light and shade. With its conclusion, his long and happy labours in the Art ceased; from that moment, his pencil, which had never been raised but usefully to instruct, and innocently to amuse, was laid aside for ever!

His medical attendants, finding the dropsy rapidly gaining upon the vital parts, the pulse progressively intermittent, and the action of the heart more and more fatally deranged, believed it to be impossible as the year advanced that he could live to see the end of it. His robust constitution, however, falsified their forebodings. The January of 1847 approached, and he still existed. In this month he was induced by the earnest entreaties of his friends, and through his own continued hopefulness on the subject of his case, to seek the advice of a new doctor. But his disease was now far beyond any human interference. The fresh remedies that were tried, proved too powerful for his weakened frame. Still patient and self-collected, he sunk gradually until the 8th of February; when his intellect — for the first time, during his long and severe sufferings — began to give way. His last moments of mental consciousness, were occupied by him (as if he foreboded the approaching exhaustion of his faculties) in pronouncing an eloquent eulogium upon the Christian faith, and impressing the advantages of its constant practice upon his family, as the best legacy of consolation and hope, that he could leave to them upon his death-bed. After this, though he still recognised those around him, his thoughts wandered. He spoke of his perfect freedom from pain, of his conviction that he was fast recovering, of the number of new pictures that he intended to paint, of the country scenes that he soon proposed to go and sketch. For eight days he remained thus happily unconscious of the awful change that awaited him — but on the morning of the 17th of February, nature suddenly gave way: and in the presence of his family he breathed his last at ten o’clock, quietly and painlessly; the peaceful influences of his religion seeming to preside over his death as gently as over his life.

It had been his desire, even in the earlier stages of his illness, that when he died his body should be examined, in order that a correct estimate of the real condition of his heart should be formed. This was done by four of his medical attendants. Their examination justified the view taken of his complaint by the doctor who had first discovered it — Mr. Richardson. His heart was found to be in a state of disease which, in some respects, exceeded anything in the experience of the four gentlemen who examined it. It was a matter of astonishment to them that his vital energies had lasted so long as they did.

His funeral was private. It was attended by his brother Academicians, Mr. Leslie and Mr. Uwins, by his friend and executor, Mr. John Bullar, by his medical attendant, Mr. Richardson, and by his two sons.

He is buried with his mother and brother, in the cemetery of the Church of St. Mary, Paddington. The grave is marked by a marble cross, erected to his memory by his widow and his sons.

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUSION.

Examination of Mr. Collins’s genius as a Painter — His Originality — His Versatility — Reflections on his Journey to Italy — General Characteristics of his Qualifications for his Pursuit — His Observation — His Taste and Judgment -Examples His Imagination — His Capacity as a Colourist — Examination in detail of “Happy as a King” — Chiaroscuro, Drawing, Composition, etc., etc. — General Remarks — Various Illustrations of Mr. Collins’s personal Character — Conclusion.

SUCH a narrative of the events of my father’s life, and the progress of his works as my materials and my capacity have enabled me to furnish, has here arrived at a close. It is now necessary, before taking leave of the subject, to notice generally those productions of his intellect which remain for the observation of others, and which are therefore of sufficient importance to demand a separate and consecutive examination.

Mr. Collins’s genius as a painter was essentially original. Whatever opinions may be held on the faults or beauties of his pictures, on the rank they may deserve as intellectual efforts, or the evidences they may display of technical knowledge; no doubts can be entertained that they are formed in a style wholly and entirely his own. They present themselves as undeniably impressed with a thoroughly distinctive character, as the offspring of a mind working out its genuine conceptions direct from Nature, and producing works which occupy their own separate position among the original contributions to contemporary Art.

To estimate Mr. Collins’s genius in connection with any one branch of painting, would be to estimate it unfairly. The efforts of his pencil were diffused over a wide field of Art, and attained to a marked variety of production. The list of his works displays him as a painter of the coast and cottage life and scenery of England, — of the people and landscape of Italy, — of Scripture subjects, — and of portraits. Of the results of these labours, thus completely differing in character, none were deemed unimportant: all were purchased by patrons of Art; and such specimens from each class of subject as were resold at public auction during his lifetime, realized as large, and in most cases a larger sum than he had originally demanded for them. It was thus his privilege, while devoting his faculties to varying labours in his pursuit, to encounter failure in none.

Of the prominent share in the production of this versatility of his capacities as a painter, attributable to his journey to Italy, the reader has had opportunities of judging in a former part of these pages. That he should ever have relinquished his first popular range of subjects, was regretted with little justice and less cause by some connoisseurs in the world of Art. Both in motive and result, his departure for Italy was, in reference to his practice as a painter, a most creditable event in his career. Setting forth to study for improvement in the school of Raphael and Michael Angelo, he palpably gained the improvement that he sought, — not only in the Italian works which he produced, but also in his grander treatment of his own peculiar subjects, when they once again engaged his pencil. Ambitious to vary his capacity of pleasing by his pursuit, he fulfilled that ambition by the production of pictures which represented the Divine subjects of Scripture, or illustrated the beauties of the magic soil whence the master-minds of painting derived their inspiration and their birth — pictures which it is to be remembered, now rank among the treasured possessions of many of the most distinguished and discriminating of the patrons of modern Art.

In Mr. Collins’s case, however, as in that of others, where many branches of attainment are followed, one will most generally be found to be practised with superior success, and while estimating his Italian pictures as equal, and in some qualities superior in intrinsic merit to any of his former works, it is necessary to give due importance to those productions of his pencil by which he first won his reputation, and by which he will in future years be longest recollected and best known. His representations of the coast and cottage life and scenery of his native land, were formed in their very nature to appeal to the liveliest sympathies of his countrymen, were associated in the public mind with the longest series of his successes in the Art, and, as most directly and universally connected with his name, must be ranked — however equalled in actual pictorial value by his works on other subjects — as first in asserting his claim to be remembered as one of the eminent painters of the eminent English school.

In reviewing the general characteristics of his genius, his power of observation may not unworthily first fall under remark. This faculty, which is more or less requisite to all practice of Art, was to him, as a painter of rustic character and native scenery, one of the most practically important among the qualifications necessary to success. What he naturally possessed of this capacity he improved by constant use and daily discipline; and thus regulated, it was seldom that the smallest object worthy of remark escaped its vigilance. It descended to the minutest particulars as readily as it paused over the most striking generalities: it noted the patches in the cottage-boy’s ragged waistcoat, and the disposition of the nets that hung on the walls of the fisherman’s hut, as carefully and spontaneously as the hues on the distant woodland, and the sweep of the curving beach; all the stores of material for illustration which it thus collected, it treasured up clearly, correctly, practically. It was one main cause of his success in the Art, for it gave to his pictures one of the most striking and admired of their peculiarities — their inflexible adherence to Nature and truth.

There were, however, two guiding faculties which accompanied his observation, and without which the materials which it had acquired for his Art, must have presented themselves but confusedly and ungracefully, whenever they were called forth. These faculties were taste and judgment; — they directed his observation, and selected harmoniously from all that it preserved. His taste, while it was perfectly catholic in its appreciation of the works of others — finding beauties in all schools of painting, and nursing prejudices in none — was nevertheless exclusive as regarded his choice of subject for himself. It led him intuitively to the contemplation of all in Nature that was pure, tranquil, tender, harmonious; and to the rejection of all that was coarse, violent, revolting, fearful. Throughout every variety of his efforts in Art, this predisposition of his mind is apparent. No hurricanes, thunder-storms, or shipwrecks, are to be found in the whole range of his sea-pieces; they uniformly express those infinitely more difficult subjects of effect, presented by the glow of a fine summer evening; by the gradual departure of the tempest of night, before the calm of morning; by the waves dancing beneath the spring breezes; by the shadows of soft autumn clouds, gliding over the mirror of the sandy beach. The same peculiarity of feeling is observable in his rustic scenes: no representations of the fierce miseries, or the coarse contentions which form the darker tragedy of humble life, occur among them. When his pencil was not occupied with light-hearted little cottagers, swinging on an old gate — as in “Happy as a King” — or shyly hospitable to the wayfarer at the house door — as in “Rustic Hospitality” — it reverted only to scenes of quiet pathos; to children taking leave of their favourite, in “The Sale of the Pet-lamb;” or tearfully making its grave, as in “The Burial-place of a Favourite Bird;” to “The Mariner’s Widow,” sorrowfully indicating to her kind-hearted companions the spot where her husband was drowned; to the fisherman’s wife, anxiously watching with her children for her husband’s safe return, on “The Morning after a Storm.” Thus again, in his Italian scenes, it was not to the midnight assassination, or the death-bed confession, but to the gay Lazzaroni, lounging happily in the street; to the good monk, reconciling the profligate husband to the deserving wife, that he gave the preference on his canvas, in such pictures as “Lazzaroni,” and “The Peace-maker.” In his Scripture subjects also, it was to the wisdom of the youthful Saviour among the doctors; to the Virgin’s meditation of piety and love over her sleeping Son, that he directed his Art; and not to the Agony in the Garden, or the pangs of the cross of Calvary. In
him,
taste was essentially a happy and a kindly gift; for it made him especially the painter for the young, the innocent and the gentle. Throughout the whole series of his works, they could look on none that would cause them a thrill of horror, or a thought of shame.