ANECDOTES

OF

PAINTING, &c.

CHAPTER I.

Painters in the Reign of King George I.

WE E are now arrived at the period in which the arts were sunk to the lowest ebb in Britain. From the stiffness introduced by Holbein and the Flemish masters, who not only laboured under the timidity of the new art, but who saw nothing but the starch and unpliant habits of the times, we were fallen into a loose, and, if I may use the word,* a dissolute kind of painting, which was not less barbarous than the opposite extreme, and yet had not the merit of representing even the dresses of the age. Sir Godfrey Kneller still lived, but only in name, which he prostituted by suffer* ["Lege solutis,"—Hor.]

ing the most wretched daubings of hired substitutes to pass for his works, while at most he gave himself the trouble of taking the likeness of the person who sat to him. His bold and free manner was the sole admiration of his successors, who thought they had caught his style, when they neglected drawing, probability, and finishing. Kneller had exaggerated the curls of full-bottomed wigs, and the tiaras of ribbands, lace, and hair, till he had struck out a graceful kind of unnatural grandeur; but the succeeding modes were still less favourable to picturesque imagination. The habits of the time were shrunk to awkward coats and waistcoats for the men; and for the women, to tight-laced gowns, round hoops, and half a dozen squeezed plaits of linen, to which dangled behind two unmeaning pendants, called lappets, not half covering their strait-drawn hair. Dahl, D'Agar, Richardson, Jervas, and others, rebuffed with such barbarous forms, and not possessing genius enough to deviate from what they saw into graceful variations, cloathed all their personages with a loose drapery and airy mantles which not only were not, but could not be the dress of any age or nation, so little were they adapted to cover the limbs, to exhibit any form, or to adhere to the person, which they scarce enveloped, and from which they must fall on the least motion. As those casual lappings and flowing streamers were imitated from nothing, they

seldom have any folds or chiaro scuro; anatomy and colouring being equally forgotten. Linen, from what œconomy I know not, is seldom allowed in those portraits, even to the ladies, who lean carelessly on a bank, and play with a parrot they do not look at, under a tranquillity which ill accords with their seeming situation, the slightness of their vestment and the lankness of their hair having the appearance of their being just risen from the bath, and of having found none of their cloaths to put on, but a loose gown. Architecture was perverted to meer house-building, where it retained not a little of Vanbrugh; and if employed on churches, produced at best but corrupt and tawdry imitations of Sir Christopher Wren. Statuary still less deserved the name of

an art.

The new monarch was void of taste, and not likely at an advanced age to encourage the embellishment of a country, to which he had little partiality, and with the face of which he had few opportunities of getting acquainted; though had he been better known, he must have grown the delight of it, possessing all that plain good-humoured simplicity and social integrity, which peculiarly distinguishes the honest English private gentleman. Like those patriots, it was more natural to George the first to be content with, or even partial to whatever he found established, than to seek for improvement and foreign orna

ment.

But the arts, when neglected, always degenerate. Encouragement must keep them up, or a genius revivify them. Neither happened under the first of the House of Brunswic. I shall be as brief as I can in my account of so ungrateful a period, for though the elder Dahl and Richardson, and a very few more had merit in some particulars, I cannot help again advertising my readers, that no reign, since the arts have been in any esteem, produced fewer works, that will deserve the attention of posterity. As the reign too was of no long duration, most of the artists had lived under the predecessors of George the first, or flourished under his son, where several will be ranked with more propriety. Of the former class

name his will be preserved when their united labours shall be no more, both being immortalized by that unpropitious line of Pope,

Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre.

the same redundancy of history and fable is displayed in the works of both; and it is but justice to say that their performances were at least in as good a taste as the edifices they were appointed to adorn.

Laguerre's father was a Catalan, who settled in France, and became master of the menagerie at Versailles. The son being born at Paris in 1663, Louis the fourteenth did him the honour of being his godfather, and gave him his own name. At first he was placed in the Jesuit's college, but having a hesitation in his speech, and discovering much inclination to drawing, the good fathers advised his parents to breed him to a profession that might be of use to himself, since he was not likely to prove serviceable to them. He however brought away learning enough to assist him afterwards in his allegoric and historic works. He then studied in the Royal Academy of Painting, and for a short time under Le Brun. In 1683 he came to England with one Ricard, a painter of architecture, and both were employed by Verrio. Laguerre painted for him most part of the large picture in St. Bartholomew's hospital, and succeeding so well when little above twenty,