William Bell Scott

“ The boy, who had inherited a rather weakly body, and had been trained with care by a pious mother, while intellectually negative and unable to cope with any kind of learning whatever, had endless perseverance, great strength of application, and all through life remained genial, gentle, simple-minded and modest, his penetration and self-reliance being wholly professional, inspired by his love of nature and his knowledge of his subject. ”

“ We may add that his point of view of the historical characters which he treated is not always just. “Cromwell lifting the Coffin-lid and looking at the Body of Charles” is an incident only to be excused by an improbable tradition; but “The King in the Guard-Room,” with villainous roundhead soldiers blowing tobacco smoke in his patient face, is a libel on the Puritans; and “Queen Elizabeth dying on the Ground,” like a she-dragon no one dares to touch, is sensational ”

“ His sound but hard execution allowed no mystery to intervene between him and his motif, which was always intelligible to the million, so that he escaped all the waste of energy that painters who try to be poets on canvas suffer. Thus it is that essentially the same treatment was applied by him to the characters of distant historical times, the founders of the Christian religion, and the real people of his own day, such as Napoleon at Fontainebleau, or at St Helena, or Maria Antoinette leaving the Convention after her sentence. ”

“ COX, DAVID (1783–1859) , English painter, was born on the 29th of April 1783, in a small house attached to the forge of his father, a hardworking master smith, in a mean suburb of Birmingham. Turning his hand to what he could get to do, Joseph Cox, the father, was both blacksmith and whitesmith, and when the war with France began took to the making of bayonets and horse shoes, on wholesale commission, and immediately the boy David was thought able to assist he was taken from the poor elementary school in the neighbourhood, and set to the anvil. ”

“ Nothing can be more incorrect than this last as a reading of English history, yet we forget the inaccuracy in admiration of the treatment which represents Lady Jane, with bandaged sight, feeling for the block, her maids covering their faces, and none with their eyes visible among the many figures. On the other hand, “Strafford led to Execution,” when Laud stretches his lawn-covered arms out of the small high window of his cell to give him a blessing as he passes along the corridor, is perfect ”

“ DELAROCHE, HIPPOLYTE, commonly known as PAUL (1797-1856) , one of the most accomplished painters of the eclectic modern school, was born in Paris, 17th July 1797. He is always spoken of as one of the most fortunate and successful of men, as well as one of the ablest, since he never appeared to encounter any obstacles or to feel any difficulties. The father of Delaroche was an expert who had made & fortune, to some extent, by negotiating and cataloguing, buying and selling. He was proud of his son s talent, and able to forward his artistic education. ”

“ Not very quick, and with little versatility, he went step by step in one line of study from the time he began to get the smallest remuneration for his pictures to the age of seventy-five, when he painted large in oil very much the same class of subjects he had of old produced small in water-colours, with the same impressive and unaffectedly noble sentiment, only increased by the mastery of almost infinite practice. ”

“ In 1837 Delaroche received the commission for the great picture, 27 mètres long, in the hemicycle of the lecture theatre of the École des Beaux Arts. This represents the great artists of the modern ages assembled in groups on either hand of a central elevation of white marble steps, on the topmost of which are three thrones filled by the architects and sculptors of the Parthenon. ”

“ The Princes in the Tower must also be mentioned as a very complete creation ; and the young female Martyr floating dead on the Tiber is so pathetic that criticism feels hard-hearted and ashamed before it. ”

“ Robert Fleury finished the repairs, and the picture as yet shows no sign of decay. Personally Delaroche exercised even a greater influence than by his works. Though short and not powerfully made, he impressed every one as rather tall than otherwise ”