[94]

CHAPTER III.

Painters in the Reign of King George II.

It is with complacency I enter upon a more shining period in the history of arts, upon a new æra; for though painting made but feeble efforts towards advancement, yet it was in the reign of George the Second that architecture revived in antique purity; and that an art unknown to every age and climate not only started into being, but advanced with master-steps to vigorous perfection, I mean, the art of gardening, or as I should chuse to call it, the art of creating landscape. Rysbrack and Roubiliac redeemed statuary from reproach, and engraving began to demand better painters, whose works it might imitate. The King, it is true, had little propensity to refined pleasures; but Queen Caroline was ever ready to reward merit, and wished to have their reign illustrated by monuments of genius. She enshrined Newton, Boyle, and Locke: she employed Kent, and sat to Zincke. Pope might have enjoyed her favour, and Swift had it at first, till insolent under the mask of independence, and not content without domineering over her politics, she abandoned him to his ill-humour, and to the vexation of that

misguided and disappointed ambition, that verted and preyed on his excellent genius.

per

To have an exact view of so long a reign as that of George the Second, it must be remembered that many of the artists already recorded lived past the beginning of it, and were principal performers. Thus the style that had predominated both in painting and architecture in the two preceding reigns, still existed during the first years of the late king, and may be considered as the remains of the schools of Dahl and Sir Godfrey Kneller, and of Sir Christopher Wren. Richardson and Jervas, Gibbs and Campbell, were still at the head of their respective professions. Each art improved, before the old professors left the stage. Vanloo introduced a better style of draperies, which by the help of Vanaken became common to and indeed the same in the works of almost all our painters; and Leoni, by publishing and imitating Palladio, disencumbered architecture from some of the weight with which it had been overloaded. Kent, Lord Burlington, and Lord Pembroke, though the two first were no foes to heavy ornaments, restored every other grace to that imposing science, and left the art in possession of all its rights-Yet still Mr. Adam and Sir William Chambers were wanting to give it perfect delicacy. The reign was not closed, when Sir Joshua Reynolds ransomed portrait-painting from insipidity, and would have excelled the greatest masters in

that branch, if his colouring were as lasting, as his taste and imagination are inexhaustible-but I mean not to speak of living masters, and must therefore omit some of the ornaments of that reign. Those I shall first recapitulate were not the most meritorious.

["Strong objections were certainly often made to Sir Joshua's process or mode of colouring; but perhaps the best answer to all these, is the following anecdote. One of the critics who passed for a great patron of the art, was complaining strongly to a judicious friend, of Sir Joshua's "flying colours," and expressing a great regret at the circumstance, as it prevented him from sitting to Sir J. for his portrait. To all this his friend calmly observed to him, that he should reflect that any painter who merely wished to make his colours stand, had only to purchase them at any colour shop; but that it should be remembered that every picture by Sir Joshua was an experiment in art, made by an ingenious man—and that the art was advanced by such experiments, even where they failed. When he was once pressed to abandon lake and carmine, and such fading colours, as it was his practice to use in colouring the flesh; he looked upon his hand and said "I can see no vermilion in this!"

"It must be observed, however, that he did use vermilion in all his later works, finding by experience the ill effects of more evanescent colours in his early productions." Northcote. Sir J. Reynolds was an unwearied experimentalist with respect to the composition of his colours. He is said to have purchased a Parmegiano, and some of the school of Titian, for the sole purpose of examining the colours, by destroying the pictures. His late and thinly painted pictures stand extremely well, as the Ugolino, Cardinal Beaufort, Portrait of Lord Heathfield, &c.]

HANS HUYSSING,

born at Stockholm, came over in 1700, and lived many years with Dahl, whose manner he imitated and retained. He drew the three eldest Princesses daughters of the King, in the robes they wore at the coronation.

CHARLES COLLINS

painted all sorts of fowl and game. He drew a piece with a hare and birds and his own portrait in a hat. He died in 1744.

COOPER

imitated Michael Angelo di Caravaggio in painting fruit and flowers. He died towards the end of 1743.

BARTHOLOMEW DANDRIDGE,

son of a house-painter, had great business from his felicity in taking a likeness. He sometimes painted small conversations, but died in the vigour of his age.

DAMINI,

an Italian painter of history, was scholar of Pelegrini. He returned to his own country in 1730, in company with Mr. Hussey, whose genius for drawing was thought equal to very great masters.*

* [Very interesting notices of GILES HUSSEY, too long for insertion, are given by Barry, Fuseli and Edwards. Chalmers' Biog. Dict.]

JEREMIAH DAVISON

was born in England, of Scots parents. He chiefly studied Sir Peter Lely, and with the assistance of Vanaken, excelled in painting sattins. Having got acquainted with the Duke of Athol at a lodge of free-masons, he painted his grace's picture and presented it to the society. The Duke sat to him again with his Duchess, and patronized and carried him into Scotland, where, as well as in London he had great business. He died the latter end of 1745, aged about fifty.

JOHN ELLIS,

born in 1701, was at fifteen placed with Sir James Thornhill, and afterwards was a short time with Schmutz; but he chiefly imitated Vandrebank, to whose house and business he succeeded; and by the favour of the Duke of Montagu, great master of the wardrobe, purchased Vandrebank's place of tapestry weaver to the crown, as by the interest of Sir Robert Walpole, for whom he bought pictures, he was appointed master-keeper of the lions in the Tower. In these easy circumstances he was not very assiduous in his profession.

PHILIP MERCIER,

Born 1689, Died 1760,

of French extraction, but born at Berlin, studied