The poet Gray, in a letter written in 1763, observes that 'our skill in gardening or laying out grounds is the only taste we can call our own, the only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure.' In architecture, it is true, England had produced one or two respectable and one really great name; and the fire of London had given Wren a noble field for the display of his genius, but in other departments of art there was an almost absolute blank. Few questions in history are more perplexing, and perhaps insoluble, than the causes which govern the great manifestations of aesthetic genius. Germany, which up to the time of the Reformation was in this respect peculiarly prolificGermany which is now pre-eminently the land of artistic criticism, and which stands in the first rank of artistic productioncan scarcely be said to have produced a single painter of real genius during the long period that elapsed between the death of Holbein and the dawn of the nineteenth century. France, the richest, the most cultivated, the most luxurious nation on the Continent, in spite of a munificent royal patronage of art, was during the same period but little more successful. Many very considerable artists, no doubt, arose; but yet the nation which appears beyond all others to possess the gift of grace and delicacy of touch, which has created the Gobelins tapestry and the Sèvres china, and has governed through a long succession of generations the taste of Europe, could boast of no painter except Claude Lorraine, who had taken absolutely a foremost place; and its art was far inferior to that which grew up in more than one small Italian province, among the canals of Holland, or in the old cities of Flanders. But of all the great civilised nations, England in this respect ranked the last. Dobson, indeed, who had been brought forward by the patronage of Vandyck, and who died at the early age of thirty-six, showed some real talent for portrait-painting, and Oliver, Hilliard, and Cooper some skill in miniature; but still, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, not a single English painter or sculptor had taken a permanent place in European art, and the number of painters, even of third or fourth rate excellence, was very small. The principal, and, indeed, the most congenial, employment of the British artist appears to have been the production

of the gaudy sign-boards which nearly every shopkeeper was then accustomed to hang out before his door.1

This complete barrenness of British art is in many ways remarkable. No real deficiency of imagination can be attributed to a nation which has produced the noblest poetic literature in Christendom; and something had been done to stimulate artistic taste. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and above all, Charles I., had warmly patronised art, and the latter was one of the two greatest collectors of his time. He purchased the cartoons of Raphael and the whole collection of the Duke of Mantua, which was then the most valuable in Europe. He drew over to England both Rubens and Vandyck, and his competition with Philip IV. of Spain was so keen that it is said to have tripled the ordinary price of the works of the great artists.2 In the early years of the eighteenth century the English were already famous for their assiduity in haunting the galleries in Italy,3 and for their zeal in collecting pictures; and their aristocracy possessed ample wealth to enable them to gratify their desires. Catholicism is, no doubt, more favourable to art than Protestantism; but if the change of religion had in some degree impaired the appreciation of Italian or Spanish art, the English were at least in intimate connection with Holland, where a noble school existed which was essentially the creation of Protestantism. A few Italian and a long succession of Dutch and Flemish artists visited England. It possessed, indeed, an admirable school of painting, but it was a school which was represented almost exclusively by foreigners, by Holbein, Rubens, Vandyck, Lely, and Kneller. Foreign writers were accustomed to attribute the utter absence of native talent in art to the aspect of physical nature, and especially to the turbid and depressing gloom of a northern sky; but the explanation will hardly appear sufficient to those who remember that Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Potter, Gerard Dow, Cuyp, and many other artists of consummate power, grew up beneath a sky that is scarcely brighter than that of England, and in a country much less eminently endowed with natural beauty.

1 Spectator, No. 28.

Du Bos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, tom. ii. p.

152 (1733). Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ch. ix.

3 Ibid.

I do not pretend to explain fully this deficiency, but several partial solutions may be given. Puritanism was exceedingly inimical to art, and the Parliament in 1645 ordered that the pictures in the royal collection containing representations of the Second Person of the Trinity, or of the Virgin Mary, should be burnt, and that all the other pictures collected by Charles should be sold. Fortunately this very characteristic edict was not fully complied with. Cromwell succeeded in saving the cartoons of Raphael and other less important pictures for England and the world; but a great portion of the art treasures of the King were dispersed. Many of his finest pictures found their way to the Escurial, and a ply which was exceedingly hostile to art was given to a large part of the English people. In order that the artistic capacities of a nation should be largely developed, it is necessary that the great body of the people should come in frequent contact with artistic works, and that there should be institutions securing the means of artistic education. Both of these conditions were wanting in England. In ancient Greece and in modern Florence all classes of the community had the opportunity of becoming familiar with the noblest works of the chisel or of the pencil; their taste was thus gradually educated, and any artistic genius that was latent among them was awakened. But in England by far the greater number of works of art were in private hands, while Sabbatarian prejudices and the division of classes produced by an aristocratic tone of manners, effectually excluded the great mass of the people from the small number of paintings that were in public institutions. Annual exhibitions were as yet unknown. The country habits of the English nobility turned their tastes chiefly in the direction of field-sports and other outdoor pursuits, and art never occupied the same prominence in their lives as it did in those of the Cardinals of Rome, or of the rich merchants of Florence, Venice, and Amsterdam. The same predilection for a country life induced most of those who were real

1 According to Pye, the first public exhibition of British Works of Art was about 1740, when Hogarth presented a portrait to the Foundling Hospital, and other artists followed his example. In 1759 a meeting of artists resolved

to establish an annual exhibition, and in the following year they, for the first time, carried their intention into effect. Pye's Patronage of British Art, p. 286.

collectors to accumulate their treasures in their country-houses, where they were seen only by a few private friends, and were utterly without influence on the nation at large. In the middle of the eighteenth century, England was already very rich in private collections,' but the proportion of Englishmen who had ever looked at a good picture or a good statue was very small. Nor were there any means of artistic education. At Paris the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was established as early as 1648, and in 1665 Colbert founded that admirable institution, the French Academy at Rome, for the purpose of providing young artists with the best possible instruction. In England nothing of the kind existed, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century a poor student of art could find no assistance except by private patronage. The first two Georges were absolutely indifferent to art, and although a fashion of collecting pictures had spread very widely among the English aristocracy, their patronage was neither generous nor intelligent. It was observed that portrait-painting, which touched another sentiment besides love of pure art, was the only form that was really encouraged. Painter after painter, distinguished in other branches, came over to England, but they invariably found that they could succeed only by devoting themselves to the one department which appealed directly to the vanity of their patrons.2 'Painters of history,' said Kneller, ' make the dead live, but do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the

A list of the chief collections in England in 1766 is given in Pye's Patronage of British Art, pp. 145-146, and catalogues of the chief pictures contained in them will be found in a book called The English Connoisseur : an account of whatever is curious in painting and sculpture in the palaces and seats of the nobility and gentry of England (1766).

2 No painter, however excellent, can succeed among the English, that is not engaged in painting portraits. Canaletti, whose works they admired whilst he resided at Venice, at his coming to London had not in a whole year the employment of three months. Watteau, whose pictures are sold at such great prices at present, painted never a picture but two which he

'VOL. I.

6

gave to Dr. Mead, during the time he resided here. At the same time, Vanloo, who came hither with the reputation of painting portraits very well, was obliged to keep three or four subaltern painters for drapery and other parts.'-Angeloni's Letters on the English (2nd ed. 1756), vol. i. p. 97. So, too, Amiconi, a Venetian historical painter, came to England in 1729, and tried for a time to maintain a position by his own form of art, but,' says Horace Walpole, 'as portraiture is the one thing necessary to a painter in this country, he was obliged to betake himself to that employment much against his inclination.'-Anecdotes of Painting. See, too, Dallaway's Progress of the Arts in England, pp. 455–461.

M M

living and they make me live.' Hogarth described portraitpainting as the only flourishing branch of the high tree of British art.' Barry complained that the difficulty of subsisting by any other species of art. . . . and the love of ease and affluence had so operated upon our youth that the country had been filled with this species of artist.' The Dutch portrait-painter Vanloo, who came to London in 1737, was so popular that, as a nearly contemporary writer tells us, 'for ⚫ several weeks after his arrival, the train of carriages at his door was like that at the door of a theatre. He had some hundreds of portraits begun, and was obliged to give as many as five sittings in a day. Large bribes were given by many to the man who kept the register of his engagements, in order to accelerate their sittings, and when that was not done, it was often necessary to wait six weeks.' Vanloo remained in England only four years, but is said to have accumulated in that time considerable wealth. On the other hand, it is very remarkable that, in the next generation, Wilson, the first great English landscapepainter, and Barry, the first historical painter of real talent, were both of them unable to earn even a small competence, and both of them died in extreme poverty. Vertue, who died in 1756, carried the art of engraving to considerable perfection, and was followed by Boydell and a few other native engravers. Kneller, and afterwards Thornhill, made some attempts in the first quarter of the century to maintain a private academy in England for artistic instruction, but they appear to have met with little encouragement, and the reign of George I. is on the whole one of the darkest periods in the history of English art. Early in the next reign, however, a painter of great and original genius emerged from obscurity, who, in a low form of art, attained a high, and almost a supreme, perfection. William Hogarth was born in London, of obscure parents, in 1698. His early years were chiefly passed in engraving arms, shop bills, and plates for books. He then painted portraits, some of them of singular beauty, and occasionally furnished designs for tapestry. In 1730 he secretly married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the fashionable artist of the day, and in 1731 he completed his Harlot's Rouquet, L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre, pp. 59–60.