Walter Armstrong

“ They too often lack that inevitable connection with a root idea which should characterise all design. On the other hand, his inventions betray extreme mental activity, and his technique a hand at once firm, delicate, and sympathetic. To some the strange element in his work seems merely fantastic; to others it appears morbid in the last degree, if not worse. One anonymous critic describes his art as 'the mere glorification of a hideous and putrescent aspect of modern life.' A more sober judgment might call him a pagan infected with a modern interest in psychology. ”

“ More exclusively an artist, perhaps, in his work than any painter since the days of Rembrandt, he yet thirsted after the worldly honours and acclamations which are only to be won by men whose productions can appeal to those who are not artists. ”

“ It was about this time that Whistler became strongly affected by the example of the Japanese. For years his work bore much the same relation to Japanese art as all fine painting does to nature. He took from Japanese ideals the beauties he admired, and re-created them as expressions of his own personality. The ‘Lange Leizen,’ ‘The Gold Screen,’ ‘The Balcony,’ the ‘Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine,’ are in no sense Japanese pictures, but they are full of Japanese material. ”

“ As a practical sculptor Sir Edgar Boehm takes a high place in the English school, but as an artist he scarcely deserved the patronage he received. In the large bronze population with which he endowed his adopted country, it would be difficult to find a single true work of art, while some of his productions, notably the Wellington group at Hyde Park Corner, fall lamentably short of their purpose. ”

“ VAN DE VELDE, WILLEM (1610–1693) , painter, born at Leyden in 1610, was in boyhood a sailor, but before he was twenty he had already won a certain reputation as a painter of marine subjects. These he executed sometimes in bistre, heightened with white, sometimes in oil, in black and white. His skill won him the patronage of the Dutch states, who put at his disposal a small vessel, in which he could follow the fleets, and even come to very close quarters, during the numerous actions with the English. ”

“ Brett painted in a scientific rather than an artistic spirit, caring more for detailed veracity of record than for the creation of beauty. In other ways he showed that his heart was more with science than with art. ”

“ Arthur Symons would add a fourth manner, adumbrated in the 'Volpone' initials, in which the grotesque forms of his earlier styles are discarded for acquiescence in nature as she is or may be. The weak point in his art is its capricious-ness. He fails to convince us completely of his sincerity. His peculiarities seem occasionally to have no sounder foundation than a wish to be different. ”

“ Certain sotto voce whisperings of his art were, perhaps, to be accounted for by the want of physical balance of the poitrinaire. Throughout his life he suffered from weakness of the lungs, and his abnormal activity had seemed to his friends to be at least partly due to a desire to forestall death, and, in spite of its imminence, to leave a substantial legacy behind him. Few men have done so much work in so brief a space of time — work, moreover, which was always deliberate and finished in the true artistic sense. ”

“ At first he confined himself to animals, but he soon began to introduce the human figure, choosing subjects of a more or less idyllic character, which lent themselves to the use of the nude. Commencing chiefly as a painter, he gradually devoted himself more and more to modelling, until at last he divided his time pretty equally between the two forms of art. ”

“ VERNON, ROBERT (1774–1849) , patron of art, born in 1774, was of humble origin, and became, through his own exertions, a jobmaster, posting contractor, and dealer in horses in London in a very large way. He amassed a large fortune as contractor for the supply of horses to the British armies during the wars with Napoleon. ”

“ Early in life Doyle had studied art practically, but never attained any great proficiency. For some time, however, he was political cartoonist to 'Fun,' and never entirely abandoned his pencil. A good many portraits by him are in existence, including two 'Cardinal Wiseman' and 'Richard Doyle' in the Irish National Gallery. ”

“ In Ruskin's view, the New Testament 'became' to Holman Hunt, after he quitted worldly subjects, 'what it was to an old Puritan or an old Catholic of true blood' — 'the only Reality.' Holman Hunt's minute search after what he believed to be truth did not permit him to paint many pictures. But all show the same conscientious fidelity to fact, and bright,' if not always harmonious, colouring. JEsthetic unity is too often sacrificed to excess of detail, producing occasionally the crudest effects. ”

“ The young Frederic Leighton showed an early love for drawing and filled many books with his sketches, but these do not seem to have been of a kind to impress his family very profoundly, and his father, it must be said, disliked the idea of art as a profession. ”

“ After a general education at the North London grammar school in Islington he studied art in London, first at the British Museum, then in the schools of the Royal Academy, to which he was admitted a student in 1836. As a boy he received some advice from Constable and John Jackson. In 1839 he went to Dublin to paint a few portraits. In 1842 he won medals both in the life and in the painting school at the Academy; in 1845 he received the gold medal for historical painting, and in the following year the travelling studentship. ”

“ But in design, as distinguished from draughtsmanship, he is often as nearly great as a man without creative genius can be. His studies of drapery are exquisite, and nothing could well be more rhythmical than the organisation of line in such pictures as the three just mentioned. Leighton contributed designs to George Eliot's novel of 'Romola' and to 'Dalziel's Bible,' which take a very high place among illustrations in black and white ”

“ Holman Hunt now remained in London, painting a few portraits, till 1875. He then left for Neuchâtel, where he was married for the second time. Thence he passed once again to Jerusalem by his old route of Alexandria and Jaffa. He arrived in the course of 1875, and stayed in Jerusalem or the neighbourhood for two and a half years. On the voyage out through the Mediterranean he painted 'The Ship,' which remained the property of the painter till 1906, when in honour of his eighty-first birthday it was purchased by a number of admirers and presented to the Tate Gallery. ”

“ Holman Hunt occasionally practised modelling, and some of his designs, especially 'The Triumph of the Innocents,' show that if he had taken up that branch of art, he might have succeeded better than he did in painting. ”

“ MACALLUM, HAMILTON (1841–1896) , painter, born at Kames, Argyllshire, on 22 May 1841, was the second son of John Macallum, J.P., of the Kames gunpowder works. While still a boy at school he showed a strong inclination towards art. This, however, was opposed by his father, who insisted on his entering a merchant's office in Glasgow, in preparation for an Indian commercial career. In 1864, when he was twenty-three years of age, he finally rebelled, and, winning a reluctant assent from his father, went to London to become a painter. ”

“ Millais, two years younger than himself, was already known among Holman Hunt's fellow-students at the Museum as a precocious genius. At the Academy the two youths made each other's acquaintance, and became friends for life. With another Academy student, Dante Gabriel Rossetti [q. v.] , Holman Hunt was soon on 'nodding terms,' but he did not form a close acquaintance with him till they had left the school. In 1846 Holman Hunt began to exhibit at the Academy, sending from a studio at Hackney a picture entitled 'Hark!' a little girl holding a watch to her ear. ”

“ Boehm's work soon became popular, and, from about 1865 to the end of his life, commissions came to him in an unbroken stream from fashionable patrons as well as from the government. For some years he had almost a monopoly in providing statues of public men and of members of the royal family. ”

“ At one time he is said to have made some sort of a portrait of himself every day. Most of these were destroyed by himself. Self-portraits in oil survive in the McCulloch collection, in the possession of Mr. Douglas Freshfield, and in the Municipal Art Gallery at Dublin; a drawing in black chalk belongs to Mr. Thomas Way, and there are three etchings. The portrait known as ‘Whistler with a large hat’ belongs to Mr. Freer, who also owns a portrait by Fantin-Latour which was cut out from a large group, the rest of which was destroyed. ”

“ His last important work was a statue of the German Emperor Frederick for Windsor Castle. Among his few 'ideal' works the best known, and perhaps the best, is the 'Young Bull.'
Boehm was elected an A.R.A. in 1878, and an R. A. in 1880. He was a member of several foreign academies, lecturer on sculpture at the Royal Academy, and sculptor-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. He was created a baronet on 13 July 1889. He married, on 20 June 1860, Louise Frances, daughter of F. L. Boteler of West Derby, Liverpool. He died in his studio, at 25 Wetherby Gardens, London, very suddenly, on 12 Dec. ”

“ In 1839 he exhibited a portrait of a child at the British Institution. In 1840 he painted his first subject pictures, exhibiting at the Academy that year 'Malvolio before the Countess Olivia' and 'Othello and Desdemona.' From that time for many years he was faithful to subjects from Scott, Steme, Goldsmith, Mohdre, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dickens, and the 'Spectator,' all of which gave him the opportunity of dressing up his models in picturesque clothes, and of incurring the odium of those young men who, as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, were presently to vilify his ideals. ”

“ His genius was essentially Germanic, finding expression not in the intrinsic powers of the material in which he worked, but in the forceful detail of his representations. He ignored the virtues of concentration and subordination, and endeavoured to say as much as he could on every subject he treated. ”

“ To a certain extent, however, Armstead now rose above the tradition in which he had been reared, and his later works show little of the fluid modelling and superficial elegance which characterised his master. He was industrious and business-like; one commission always led to another, and down nearly to the end of his life he was one of the best employed sculptors of his time. Armstead's most important works are the marble reliefs on the south and east sides of the podium to the Albert Memorial and four bronze statues—rhetoric, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine—on the same structure ”

“ He soaked in knowledge and skill, nevertheless, and became a fine draughtsman, a painter who could produce the results he aimed at, and a master of etching. His life in Paris was varied by excursions into other parts of France, during which he was never idle. In 1858 he published a set of thirteen etchings known as ‘The French Set,’ the material for which had been mostly gleaned in eastern France the year before, or in 1856. ”

“ The portrait of the duke of Abercom, a full length in a duke's parliamentary robes, was left unfinished at the painter's death. It is in the Masonic Hall, Dublin. In 1900 Osborne was offered knighthood in recognition of his distinction as a painter. He was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1883, and a full member in 1886. He was delightful in every relation of life and enjoyed great popularity with all his friends. ”

“ His general education was obtained at a school on a site now filled by the Carmelite convent and church, Kensington, and his early training as an artist at Sass's academy in Bloomsbury. In due time he became a student at the Royal Academy, where he won the gold medal in 'the antique.' Before he was twenty he earned the praise of Sir David Wilkie for an ambitious picture called 'Rent Day at Haddon Hall in the Sixteenth Century.' The first picture he exhibited was 'Rival Musicians,' but the first sent to the Royal Academy was 'The Pride of the Village' (1839) , now in the Tate Gallery. ”

“ But a tragic element was brought into his life by the conflicting strains in his own character. A love of pose, which found vent in eccentricities of dress, in extravagant paradox and biting epigram, gave him social notoriety. ”

“ The years between 1866 and 1872 were busy. He exhibited more often than before or after. The chief pictures of this period were a ‘Valparaiso,’ ‘Sea and Rain,’ ‘The Balcony,’ and the famous ‘Portrait of my Mother.’ Whistler's uncomfortable relations with the Royal Academy began with the exhibition of this last-named picture. Rejected at first, it was only hung through the insistence of one member of the council. After 1872 Whistler exhibited no picture at Burlington House. ”

“ During his first twelve months in London he was chiefly occupied with a series of sixteen etchings of the scenery and life of the Thames, including ‘The Pool,’ ‘Thames Police,’ and ‘Black Lion Wharf.’ He was much at Wapping, and etched the life of the neighbourhood and its framing. The chief pictures of the same period were ‘The White Girl,’ ‘The Thames in Ice,’ and ‘The Music Room.’ In 1861 he visited France again, painting on the coast of Brittany. ”

“ He was a member of the 'Secessions' of Vienna and Munich, and in 1911, after his death, his work was awarded a memorial gold medal at Barcelona.
Swan early gained a reputation among the more discriminating collectors in this country, and from about 1880 until the time of his death the only things which debarred him from a wide popularity were his own fastidiousness and consequent slowness of production. Few artists have lavished so much care on their work before allowing it to leave their studios. ”