George Charles Williamson

“ His religious life is the key to his complex character, as it actuated his whole career. He obtained the gold medal at the Royal Academy for figure drawing in 1770 and exhibited from the beginning of the Academy down to 1805. He was the finest painter in crayons England ever produced, and although he painted in oil, in water-colours and in miniature, it was by his works in crayon that his reputation was made. ”

“ COSWAY, RICHARD (c. 1742–1821) , English miniature painter, was baptized in 1742; his father was master of Blundell’s school, Tiverton, where Cosway was educated, and his uncle mayor of that town. He it was who, in conjunction with the boy’s godfather, persuaded the father to allow Richard to proceed to London before he was twelve years old, to take lessons in drawing, and undertook to support him there. On his arrival, the youthful artist won the first prize given by the newly founded Society of Arts, of the money value of five guineas. ”

“ He was haughtily certain of the value of his own art, and was determined to paint in cold, ashen colouring, with livid, startling effect, the gaunt and extraordinary figures that he beheld with his eccentric genius. ”

“ In 1785 he went to India, visiting the native courts, painting a large number of miniatures, and making many beautiful sketches. His sight failed him in 1797, and he died in Hampstead in 1810. The bulk of his possessions came into the hands of his natural son, William Upcott, the book collector. From him the British Museum acquired a large number of papers relating to Humphry. He was Opie’s first master, and is alluded to in some lines by Hayley. His miniatures are exquisite in detail and delightful in colouring. ”

“ His exquisite pencil portrait drawings, slightly tinted in colour, usually from the reverse, are well known, and many of them are of remarkable beauty. Several volumes of sketches for these drawings are still in existence. Downman is believed to have been “pressed” for the navy as a young man, and on his escape settled down for a while in Cambridge, eventually coming to London, and later (1804) going to reside in Kent in the village of West Malling. ”

“ An artist who is better known to the general collector is William Faithorne (1616–1691) He was the pupil of Sir Robert Peake, the engraver, but derived much of his skill from the time he spent with Nanteuil, whose involved minute style he closely followed, triumphing over technical difficulties with great success. There are important drawings by him in the Bodleian, at Welbeck Abbey and at Montagu House, and two fine portraits in the British Museum. ”

“ It is a strangely individual work, representing Spanish character even more truthfully than did any Spanish artist, and it gathers up all the fugitive moods, the grace and charm, the devices and defects of a single race, and gives them complete stability in their wavering expressions.
Between 1595 and 1600, El Greco executed two groups of paintings in the church of San José at Toledo, and in the hospital of La Caridad, at Illescas. Besides these, he is known to have painted thirty-two portraits, several manuscripts, and many paintings for altar-pieces in Toledo and the neighbourhood. ”

“ He was probably attracted by the prospect of participating in the decoration of the Escorial, and he appears to have settled down in Toledo, where his first works were the paintings for the high altar of Santo Domingo, and his famous picture of “The Disrobing of Christ” in the sacristy of the cathedral. It was in connexion with this last-named work that he proved refractory, and the records of a law-suit respecting the price to be paid to him give us the earliest information of the artist’s sojourn in Spain. ”

“ He continued the active pursuit of his profession down to 1813, when he retired, and his fee-book, still in existence, records the names of his sitters, and the amount paid for each portrait, proving that he painted 4853 miniatures during that period of thirty-nine years, and that his professional income for many years exceeded £1200 a year. During the greater part of his life he resided in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he lived till he retired. ”

“ He prepared the death-mask of Henry II., as in 1547 he had taken a similar mask of the face and hands of Francis I., in order that the effigy to be used at the funeral might be prepared from his drawings; and on each of these occasions he executed the painting to be used in the decorations of the church and the banners for the great ceremony.
Several miniatures are believed to be his work, one very remarkable portrait being the half-length figure of Henry II. in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. ”

“ PLUMBAGO DRAWINGS. What we should now speak of as pencil drawings were in the 17th and 18th centuries usually known as drawings "in plumbago," and there is a group of artists whose work is remarkable for their exquisite portraits drawn with finely pointed pieces of graphite and upon vellum. ”

“ He is one of the most interesting personalities in the little group of water-colour painters which included Frederick Walker and A. B. Houghton, a group whose style was directly derived from the practice of drawing upon wood for book illustration. He was one of the most delightful book illustrators of his day, poetic in imagination, with considerable inventive pow er and an admirable sense of colour. As he died young his works are few, but their promise was so great that had he lived he would probably have attained a very high position His early life was one of considerable privation. ”

“ For more than a generation his work was hardly known, but it is now gaining rapidly in importance, and its true position is more and more recognized. Some examples of the artist’s own handwriting have been discovered in Toledo, and Señor Don Manuel Cossia of Madrid has spent many years collecting information for a work dealing with the artist. ”

“ In some instances in Forster's work the lines representing the modelling of the face are so line as to be quite indistinguishable without the aid of a glass. His work can be studied at Welbeck Abbey, in the Holburne Museum at Bath, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere. ”

“ He married in 1781 Maria Hadfield, who survived him many years, and died in Italy in January 1838, in a school for girls which she had founded, and which she had attached to an important religious order devoted to the cause of female education, known as the Dame Inglesi. ”

“ He lived several years in Tours, and there it was he met his wife, who was the daughter of a jeweller. He is recorded as living in Tours in 1522, and there is a reference to his wife’s residence in the same town in 1523, but in 1529 they were both settled in Paris, probably in the neighbourhood of the parish of Ste Innocent, in the cemetery of which they were buried. ”

“ He died on the 22nd of December 1572, shortly after the massacre of St Bartholomew, and his will, mentioning his sister and his two illegitimate daughters, and dealing with the disposition of a considerable amount of property, is still in existence. ”

“ The earlier miniature painters also drew in this manner, notably Hilliard in preparing designs for jewels and seals, and Isaac and Peter Oliver in portraits By Isaac Oliver there is a fine drawing in Lord Derby's collection ”

“ They are to be distinguished by the peculiar wiry treatment of the hair, and by the large full expressive eyes Plimer invariably gave to his female sitters, eyes resembling those of his own wife and daughters. ”