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even more impressive here, from the addition of the man going wearily home from his work, of the donkeys-types of plodding labour, and of the windmill-painted not in the pleasant "picturesqueness of ruin," but in the solitude of serviceable"There is a dim type of all melancholy human labour in it,-catching the free winds, and setting them to turn grindstones. It is poor work for the winds; better indeed, than drowning sailors or tearing down forests, but not their proper work of marshalling the clouds, and bearing the wholesome rains to the place where they are ordered to fall, and fanning the flowers and leaves when they are faint with heat. Turning round a couple of stones, for the mere pulverisation of human food, is not noble work for the winds. So, also, of all low labour to which one sets human souls. is better than no labour; and, in a still higher degree, better than destructive wandering of imagination; but yet, that grinding in the darkness, for mere food's sake, must be melancholy work enough for many a living creature. All men have felt it so; and this grinding at the mill, whether it be breeze or soul that is set to it, we cannot much rejoice in " (Modern Painters, vol. iv. pt. v. ch. i. § 11-a passage describing a not dissimilar mill by Turner, set, as this one is, "dark against the sky, yet proud, and on the hill-top"). One may deepen one's impression from the picture by remembering that Crome himself must many a day have returned home-on his pony by the pathway yonder-from his "grinding at the mill" as a drawing master.

It

725. AN EXPERIMENT WITH THE AIR-PUMP. Wright of Derby (1734-1797).

"Joseph Wright, commonly called from his birthplace, Wright of Derby, was born in 1734; his father was an attorney and town-clerk of Derby. In 1751 he visited London, and entered the school of Hudson, the portrait painter, the master of Reynolds. He established himself as a portrait painter at Derby, but acquired his reputation by fire or candle-light subjects, in which he especially excelled. In 1773 he married, and went with his wife and John Dowman, the painter, to Italy, where he resided for two years, chiefly in Rome. He had the good fortune while at Naples to witness a fine eruption of Mount Vesuvius, of which he painted an effective picture; he also painted the

1 Wright on one occasion offered to exchange works with Wilson. With all my heart," said Wilson; "I'll give you air, and you will give me fire."

periodical display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, known as the Girandola. In 1775 he returned to England with his family (a daughter was born in Rome), and set up at first at Bath; but not finding the success he anticipated, he removed in 1777 to Derby, where he was well known and better appreciated; and there he remained until his death in 1797. In 1782 he was elected an associate of the Academy; but finding Edmund Garvey, a landscape painter, elected to the full honours before him, in 1784 he withdrew his name from the Academy books. Like Hogarth and Copley, Wright painted in the solid old English method, and his pictures are still in perfect preservation" (compressed from the Official Catalogue).

A family party is grouped round a table to see an experiment with the air-pump, which was still somewhat of a novelty in England. "The experimenting philosopher is in the act of restoring the air to an exhausted receiver, into which a parrot has been placed to experiment upon. The bird is just recovering its vitality, to the great relief of two young girls present, who thought it dead. The light proceeds from a candle, concealed from the spectator by a sponge in a glass bowl of water" (Official Catalogue).

689.

MOUSEHOLD HEATH, NEAR NORWICH.

Old Crome (1768-1821). See under 1037, p. 471. "A work the simplicity of which is so great that only a master could have imparted to it any character. It represents a vast slope of pale verdure, which, from a foreground covered with flowering grass and heath, rises rapidly towards the sky. Great golden clouds float on the rounded summit of the hill. There is nothing more. With so little subject as this, Crome has yet given the truest representation of solitude and stillness. this plot of ground, which not a breath of wind ruffles, not a sound disturbs, one might imagine oneself as far from the busy town as anywhere in the world. It is the desert in its majesty" (Chesneau: The English School, pp. 122, 123). 1167. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.1

In

J. Opie, R.A. (1761-1807). See under 1208. A portrait of the remarkable woman famous as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and as the mother

1 The portrait was bought as such at the sale of Mr. W. Russell's pictures in 1884; but Mr. C. Kegan Paul-whose Life of William Godwin is well known-wrote to the Times (January 6, 1885) as soon as the picture was hung, throwing doubt upon its authenticity. Mr. Paul, after comparing it with another portrait of her by Opie which is in Sir Percy Shelley's

of Shelley's second wife. She is represented reading, as befits one so thoughtful and intellectual; but there is much womanly tenderness in the face also, and the portrait seems to reflect the brief period of calm that followed her marriage to Godwin (1796) and ended her stormy life (1759-1797). It must have been not long after this portrait was taken that she died in giving birth to the daughter, who, with her mother, was afterwards to be immortalised in Shelley's verse-

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,

Of glorious parents thou aspiring child.

I wonder not-for One then left this earth
Whose life was like a setting planet mild,
Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled

Of its departing glory.

The Revolt of Islam.

129. JOHN JULIUS ANGERSTEIN.

Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A. (1760-1830).
See under 144, p. 445.

A portrait of particular interest-for its own excellence, for the connection of the sitter with the National Gallery, and for the relations between him and the artist. Lawrence was closely attached, as we shall see, to Angerstein, and "has expended his best powers on this portrait of the keen-spirited, sagacious old man. In the individual truth of nature and of character, in careful finish and brilliance and depth of colouring, he never surpassed it" (Mrs. Jameson). As for the sitter himself, it is somewhat curious that the man who in a sense founded the National Gallery of England should have been a Russian. Angerstein was born at St. Petersburg, but settled in England when he was fifteen, and from an under-writer at Lloyd's rose by his abilities and assiduity to be one of the chief merchants and bankers of his time. Policies which he took up were by possession, and the authenticity of which is undisputed, pronounced it to be certainly not a genuine portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft. The face, he said, was like, but much older; and he concluded that it was an early forgery, perpetrated for the engraving in the Monthly Mirror in 1796. Sir F. Burton, the Director of the Gallery, replied (Times, January 7, 1885), saying on the contrary that the two portraits were unmistakably alike. In Sir Percy Shelley's she is apparently about twenty-five; here she is nearer forty. Her hair is doubtless powdered in the fashion of the time. She died when she was thirty-eight; and Sir F. Burton concludes that this was the portrait painted for Godwin by Opie, Sir Percy Shelley's being an earlier one.

way of distinction called "Julians." He helped to establish the modern "Lloyd's," and procured the passing of an Act forbidding shipowners to re-baptize unseaworthy vessels. He devised a scheme of State lotteries, and otherwise played an important part in high finance. In 1811 he retired on a

princely fortune, and spent his life between his house in Pall Mall and his country-place at Blackheath. He was well known as a philanthropist and a man of private generosity, but better still as an amateur of the arts. His famous collection, which formed the nucleus of the National Gallery, and contained (as may be seen from Index II.) many of its greatest treasures, was formed with the assistance of Benjamin West and Sir T. Lawrence. Of the latter he was a great friend and patron, and Lawrence was further attached to him in business relations. The painter was a spendthrift and a wretched man of business. He started his professional career deeply in debt, and in spite of his large income he never got out of it. It was to Angerstein that he used to apply for "accommodation," and his income was at one time entirely mortgaged to the banker to liquidate large advances. Angerstein died in 1823, at the age of eighty-eight, and by his will directed that his pictures in his Pall Mall house should be sold. It was the purchase of them by the State that formed the nucleus of the National Gallery.

323. THE RAFFLE FOR A WATCH.

Edward Bird, R.A. (1762–1819)

A scene in a country tavern, such as the artist himself has doubtless often observed, for he was the son of a journeyman carpenter, and was brought up as a japanner. It was genre subjects, such as these, by which he first made his reputation; but on coming up to London and being elected R. A. (1814), he took to historical compositions, of which two of the most important may now be seen at Stafford House.

1238. SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY (1757-1818). Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A. (1760-1830). See under 144, p. 445. "Lawrence made coxcombs of his sitters,” it has been said. But the expression here-in its mingled benignity and penetration is worthy of the great lawyer by whose eloquence and mild insistence the barbarity of our penal code was first abated.

1163. THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS (after Chaucer). T. Stothard (1755-1834). See under 1069, p. 465. The Pilgrims, now safely on their way from the Tabard at Southwark, are ambling along, in the fresh spring morning, through the pretty fields of Peckham and Dulwich, such as they were in Stothard's time when he made expeditions to the Old Kent Road to get his local colour. The Miller, "stout carl" that he is, is riding away well to the front

A whit cote and a blew hood werede he,

A baggepipe wel cowde he blowe and sowne,
And therewithal he broughte us out of towne.

After him, turning round to the company, rides the Host-
A large man he was with eyghen stepe.

The artist has selected the moment when the Host stops his steed, and holding up the lots in his hand, proposes the recounting of Tales to beguile the time. Then, riding five abreast, come (beginning with the farthest from us) the Doctor of Physic, clad in "sangwyn," and with a grave, stern look, as suited one who "knew the cause of every maladye." Next to him we recognise the Merchant by his "forked beard" and "Flaundrisch bevere hat." Then, after the pale-faced Serjeant-at-Law, rides the fat, jolly Franklin-the well-to-do paterfamilias

Whit was his berde, as is the dayesye.
Of his complexioun he was sangwyn.

Well lovede he by the morwe a sop in wyn.

Last in this line is the "verray perfight gentil Knight," great in battles and victories, but without parade. Knight is the Reeve (or bailiff), he—

was a sklendre colerik man,

Exactly behind the

His berd was schave as neigh as evere he can.

He has fallen behind his line, for "evere he rood the hyndreste of the route." By the side of the Knight, but nearer to us, rides his Son, "the yung Squyer, a lovyere, and a lusty bacheler," who, it is easy to see, thinks a good deal of himself, and loves to show his prowess in riding. Behind him is his servant, the "Yeman," clad (like Robin Hood) in Lincoln green, and a pleasant fellow he looks, in his picturesque array—

A Cristofre on his brest of silver schene.
An horn he bar, the bawdrik was of grene.

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