Flaxman

“ Except for a brief interval of schooling, under a master whose cruelty he never forgot, the young John Flaxman was kept at home. Unfitted for the play or the exercises of his age, he found in his father's stock-in-trade all the occupation and all the pastime for which he cared. Customers, among whom were men of note in arts and literature, soon began to take an interest in the sickly lad whom they found always busy drawing or modelling behind the counter, or trying to teach himself the classic fables and Latin. ”

“ But, alas! how fondly do we deceive ourselves! what was his chagrin, when, instead of hearing the name of Flaxman, that of Engleheart was pronounced as the successful candidate!
This timely lesson, he declared, so effectually operated upon his conceit, that he was determined ever after to talk less of his own talents, and to endeavour to do justice to those of others, who were also aspiring to the pinnacle of fame.—Sir Joshua Reynolds meeting Flaxman soon after he had received the hand of Miss Denman, in 1782, said to him, "So, Flaxman, you are married; there's no going to Italy now." ”

“ Flaxman replied recklessly that any decent fellow in the neighbourhood was welcome to shoot his birds—a reply which almost brought upon him the resignation of the outraged keeper by return of post. Lady Charlotte wrote and remonstrated with him for neglecting a landowner's duties, inquiring at the same time what he meant to do with regard to 'that young lady.' To which Flaxman replied calmly that he had just come back from the Lakes, where he had done, not indeed all that he meant to do, but still something. ”

“ I should not have spoken so unguardedly."
"I might try to overcome the temptations if I were warned of their nature."
"You are a persevering child, Medoline—but still only a child in heart."
"I am over eighteen, Mrs. Flaxman. I wonder why you and Mr. Winthrop persist in making me out a child. When will I be a woman?"
"Not till your heart gets wakened."
"I wonder when that will be. Does it mean love and marriage, Mrs. Flaxman?"
"It means the former; the latter may not follow with you."
"Why not? But there, I do not want to leave you and Mr. Winthrop and Oaklands. No man could tempt me from you. ”

“ I am not the less glad to have been the occasion to you of pleasant thoughts, and I delight in the genuine admiration you express of that ideal beauty which haunts us ever and makes actual life look sometimes like the coarsest caricature. I like very well what you say of Flaxman, and shall give him the greater heed. And indeed who can see the works of a great artist without feeling that not so much the private as the common wealth is by him indicated. ”

“ Flaxman, brother to a pretty little neighbor of ours in Surrey—Lady Helen Varley—and nephew to Lady Charlotte. I have not seen him here before; but I think the girls like him.’
‘Is he the Flaxman who got the mathematical prize at Berlin last year?’
‘Yes, I believe so. A striking person altogether. He is enormously rich, Lady Helen tells me, in spite of an elder brother. All the money in his mother’s family has come to him, and he is the heir to Lord Daniel’s great Derbyshire property. ”

“ We sat in the carriage at the door of Daniel's cottage. The house seemed full, and quite a crowd were standing outside.
"They have shown the poor thing a good deal of respect," Mrs. Flaxman whispered to me as she glanced at the numerous assemblage.
Suddenly, on the hush that seemed to enfold everything, there broke weird, discordant singing—women's voices sounding high and piercing, the men's deeper and more melodious. The hymn they sang was long, and the air very plaintive, bringing tears to my eyes, and causing the strange, oppressed feeling of the preceding day to return. ”

“ FLAXMAN, JOHN (1756–1826) , sculptor and draughtsman, was born at York on 6 July 1755. According to a family tradition four brothers Flaxman, coming from Norfolk, had fought against the king at Naseby, and the youngest of the four, named John, had settled as a farmer and carrier in Buckinghamshire. From him was descended another John, who towards the middle of the eighteenth century carried on, partly in London and partly in the provinces, the trade of a maker and seller of plaster casts. ”

“ Flaxman, one evening as we drove home under the midnight stars, after one of these entertainments.
"My child, it is natural that people should talk on subjects that most interest them. Not every one has vision clear enough to penetrate beyond the tangible and visible."
"Then, in what are the Cavendish aristocracy better than Mrs. Blake, and that class? Even she talks sometimes to me about God and the soul. She says she and Daniel think a great deal about these of late."
"God only knows; they may be far better in His sight than any of us," Mrs. Flaxman said, wearily. ”

“ Flaxman, expressing my surprise that he should so patiently endure my ignorance, and stupidity.
"It is just like him. He has a world of patience with any one really trying to do good work. I think he begins to understand you better. He is prejudiced against our sex in the mass. He thinks we are more fond of pleasure than of anything else in the world; but if he once finds his mistake, his atonement is complete."
"Why is he so prejudiced?" I asked, hoping Mrs. Flaxman would continue the story Thomas had begun. ”

“ The sculptor and his wife left Italy in the summer of 1794, and travelled to England without any such molestation as they apprehended from the disturbed state of the continent. They established themselves in a house in Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, where Flaxman continued to live until his death. A son of Hayley's, who showed some talent for art, was placed with him as a pupil, but within a few years died of a decline, and is commemorated by a small memorial relief, in Flaxman's best manner, in Eartham Church. ”

“ The latter came to stay with him, and, distressed at the nervous and ailing state in which he found his father, carried him off for a short visit to the Isle of Wight. Flaxman returned from Rome later in the year, and took a lodging in London ‘in the neighbourhood of our dear Romney.’ One of the painter's most interesting pictures of 1795 is the group of Flaxman, with his pupil, Hayley's young son, beside him, modelling a bust of the poet, while Romney looks on. ”

“ The record of Flaxman’s life is henceforth an uneventful record of private affection and contentment, and of happy and tenacious industry, with reward not brilliant but sufficient, and repute not loud but loudest in the mouths of those whose praise was best worth having—Canova, Schlegel, Fuseli. He took for pupil a son of Hayley’s, who presently afterwards sickened and died. In 1797 he was made an associate of the Royal Academy. ”

“ Of more note as an artist, and more closely associated with the sculptor's career, was his half-sister, Mary Ann Flaxman (1768-1833) . She lived as governess in the family of the Hare Naylors for several years, first in Italy and afterwards at Weimar; and from 1810 was an inmate of John Flaxman's house at Buckingham Street until his death. Her work in art was strongly influenced by his example, and shows both talent and feeling. She is best known by the six designs for Hayley's 'Triumphs of Temper,' engraved by Blake, and published in 1803. ”

“ I have seen our excellent Flaxman lately; he is well in health, but has had such a burn on his hand as you had once, which has hindered his working for a fortnight. It is now better; he desires to be most affectionately remembered to you; he began a letter to you a week ago; perhaps by this time you have received it; but he is also a laborious votary of endless work. Engraving is of so slow process, I must beg of you to give me the earliest possible notice of what engraving is to be done for the Life of Romney. ”

“ Mrs. Flaxman interposed desperately. "I think Mr. Winthrop had better permit you to go to New York for some additions to your toilet."
"I will accompany her myself; she might get entangled with widowers on her next trip."
"Not if they are as provoking as the unmarried," I murmured below my breath; but he seemed to catch my meaning.
"They understand the art of pleasing your sex amazingly. I believe you would find them more fascinating than Mrs. Blake, or your new friend, the widow Larkum." ”

“ He lounged out of the room, while Lady Charlotte shrugged her shoulders with a look at her nephew in which there was an irrepressible twinkle. Mr. Flaxman neither heard nor saw. Life would have ceased to be worth having long ago had he ever taken sides in the smallest degree in this ménage. ”

“ This was intended as a receptacle for Flaxman's statue of Burns, but since the removal of that statue to the National Gallery its place has been filled by Brodie's bust of the poet and many interesting relics. ”

“ Flaxman's charming sister, Lady Helen Varley, and her husband; his elder brother, Lord Wanless, unmarried, an expert on armour, slightly eccentric, but still, in the eyes of all intriguing mothers, and to his own annoyance, more than desirable as a husband owing to the Wanless collieries and a few other trifles of the same kind; the Bishop of Markborough; Canon France and his sister; a young poet whose very delicate muse had lodged itself oddly in the frame of an athlete ”

“ The spirit said to him, 'Blake, be an artist and nothing else.' In this there is felicity. His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself solely to divine art. 'Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo or Raphael or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does them in the spirit.' Blake said, 'I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. ”

“ The fallacy is in supposing that all that the first naked or hasty observation does not give, is supplied by science and general theories, and not by a closer and continued observation of the thing itself, so that all that belongs to the latter department is necessarily casual and slight.
Mr. Flaxman enforces the same argument by quoting the rules laid down by Vitruvius, for ascertaining the true principles of form and motion. ”

“ His engravings made small but sure returns, and for the last four years he had turned his attention to water-colour, and in 1780 had even exhibited in the Royal Academy. And he was making friends. Friend Flaxman lived near in Wardour Street, friend Fuseli in Broad Street. Stothard was kind. A young man with sanguine temperament like Blake might expect anything to turn up. ”

“ Blake thus continues:—
'And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life, and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel, my friend and companion from eternity. ”

“ Paul’s, and many other of our cathedrals and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used to meet at Mrs. Mathew’s; but there came a day when the friendship between these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting of an unscrupulous picture-dealer ”

“ The style of the whole work is square and bold beyond conception, and appears as if the great artist had played with his chisel, as he did with his modelling tool: the hand of the Virgin is inimitable.
Nollekens's time was mostly employed in modelling, and in consequence of his great practice, he acquired such dexterity with his clay, that he brought a bust wonderfully forward with his thumb and finger only. Flaxman also principally employed himself in modelling; but though not so dexterous as Nollekens, he kneaded the clay in a rough manner with the hand, under the influence bf a great mind. ”

“ The designs, it is true, are scarcely ever carried to full completion, and are often extremely slight; but the power of mind, eye, hand—the power of grappling with a new subject matter, and making all its parts, so to speak, organic—is in no wise dimmed. The conception is not always such as most students of Dante will be willing to admit as Dantesque, though certainly much more Dantesque than the refined performance of Flaxman, or than any other known to me; it is, at any rate, the highly creative mind of Dante filtered through the highly creative, sympathetic mind of Blake. ”

“ Stothard, Blake, and Flaxman are the names that come freshest to memory in this connection. For a period of fifty years Stothard stands pre-eminent in illustrated literature. Measuring time by poets, he may be said to have lent something of his fancy and amenity to most of the writers from Cowper to Rogers. As a draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak: his figures are often limp and invertebrate, and his type of beauty insipid. Still, regarded as groups, the majority of his designs are exquisite, and he possessed one all-pervading and un-English quality—the quality of grace. ”

“ Blake now supported himself mainly by engraving for the booksellers. For Harrison's 'Novelists' Magazine' he engraved those early and beautiful designs by Stothard which first brought the latter into notice, viz. two illustrations to 'Don Quixote,' one to the 'Sentimental Journey,' one to 'David Simple,' one to 'Launcelot Greaves,' and three to 'Grandison.' Already he had made Stothard's acquaintance, who introduced him to Flaxman, soon to prove an influential and staunch friend. ”