Thomas Opie

“ Opie is the artlessness and perfect simplicity of her nature. The deepest feeling of her life was her tender love for her father, and if she remained younger than most women do, it may have been partly from the great blessing which was hers so long, that of a father's home. ”

“ It was at the Doctor’s suggestion that his name was changed from Hoppy to Opie, a name worn by a good family in Cornwall, and more likely to attract favourable notice in London, whither they both went together in 1780, their joint expenses being supplied from one purse. Out of this last circumstance grew a dispute and estrangement, 229never fully settled. The communistic arrangement lasted for a short time only. One morning, when Sir Joshua Reynolds was breakfasting with Wolcot and Opie, Sir Joshua remarked of Opie, “Why, this boy begins his art where other people leave off!” ”

“ Opie at the age of sixty, reviving, delighting, as she catches sight of her beloved Paris once more, and breathes its clear and life-giving air, and looks out across its gardens and glittering gables and spires, and again meets her French acquaintances, and throws herself into their arms and into their interests with all her old warmth and excitability. The little grey bonnet only gives certain incongruous piquancy to her pleasant, kind-hearted exuberance. ”

“ There is something very interesting in the impression one receives of the 'Inspired Peasant,' as Alan Cunningham calls John Opie—the man who did not paint to live so much as live to paint. He was a simple, high-minded Cornishman, whose natural directness and honesty were unspoiled by favour, unembittered by failure. Opie's gift, like some deep-rooted seed living buried in arid soil, ever aspired upwards towards the light. ”

“ With a view perhaps to fixing her attention at home, Opie encouraged her to become what she called ‘a candidate for the pleasures, the pangs, the rewards, and the penalties of authorship.’ She had published anonymously before her marriage ‘The Dangers of Coquetry,’ a novel in two volumes, but it attracted no attention. Her first acknowledged book, ‘Father and Daughter,’ appeared in 1801; it was dedicated to her father, and claimed ‘to be a simple moral tale.’ With it were printed, in the first issue, ‘The Maid of Corinth,’ a poem, and some smaller pieces. ”

“ And one day people wake up to find that the friends of their choice have become their home. People are stranded perhaps seeking their share in life's allowance, and suddenly they come upon something, with all the charm which belongs to deliberate choice, as well as that of natural affinity. How well one can realise the extraordinary comfort that Amelia Opie must have found in the kind friends and neighbours with whom she was now thrown! Her father was a very old man, dying slowly by inches. Her own life of struggle, animation, intelligence, was over, as she imagined, for ever. ”

“ Even when dying, and at times delirious, he gave advice about the finishing of pictures which he wished to send to the Academy. It was said of him, that "whilst other artists painted to live, he lived to paint." He was buried in St. Paul's. Opie wrote several works on art, and was Professor of Painting in the Royal Academy. His answer to a troublesome inquirer truly expresses the character of his work. "What do I mix my colours with? Why, with brains." Two of Opie's pictures are in the National Gallery—a Portrait of William Siddons, and Troilus, Cressida, and Pandarus. ”

“ We go on as usual; my dear father I think better on the whole, in body, and, I hope, not gone back in mind. I am at times very low, but there is safety in lowness for some people, and I am one of them. I know a tortoise pace is a safe pace, but still I am dissatisfied with my slow progress. Farewell! dearest Betsy! I remember thy visit with true and grateful pleasure; with kind love to all thy circle,
I am, thy affectionate Friend,
A. Opie.
To Elizabeth Fry, Plashet, Essex.
Dr. Alderson attained the age of four-score, in the spring of this year ”

“ To this gentleman Mrs. Opie addressed a “Quatrain,” on reading his “Defence of his Father,” which subsequently appeared among her published poems. This favour he acknowledged, in a letter dated from Cossey, (near Norwich,) accompanied by a French poem of one hundred lines, which she preserved among her papers. It was very natural that she, whose sympathies were ever so keenly alive to the sorrows of others, should become warmly interested on behalf of these unhappy exiles; and she appears to have formed many acquaintances among them, during the time she spent in London. ”

“ The portraits being shown amongst the doctor’s friends and neighbours, one named Phillips sent to London for a complete set of artist’s materials, which he presented to Opie, who painted with them the portrait of a parrot so naturally that it spread his fame far and near, and started him fairly in art as a portrait painter, his fee for a likeness being seven-and-sixpence. The doctor once asked the lad how he liked painting, to which question Opie replied enthusiastically, “Better than my bread and meat.” ”

“ Opie crowds more wisdom into a few words than almost any man I ever knew; he speaks, as it were, in axioms, and what he observes is worthy to be remembered.’ Sir James Macintosh remarked that, ‘had Mr. Opie turned his mind to the study of philosophy, he would have been one of the first philosophers of the age.’ More convincing still is the testimony of Opie's caustic rival, Northcote, who never allowed his jealousy to interfere with his admiration of the wonderful Cornishman. ”

“ In 1851, after a visit at Keswick, Mrs. Opie, on the 7th of May, travelled to London, and took up her residence with her friends in Russell Square. During her stay she attended several meetings at Devonshire House and Westminster Meeting, and paid numerous visits to her friends and acquaintances. She felt that it was her last visit, and seemed desirous to take a farewell look at all her old haunts; she would go to the various shops she had been wont to frequent, and at every turn was met by some one who recognised and welcomed her. (At Swann and Edgar’s she saw the Duchess of Orléans.) ”

“ She was buried on 9 Dec., in the same grave as her father, in the Friends' burying-ground at Norwich.
Mrs. Opie's poems are simple in diction. Two or three of them are deservedly found in every anthology, and one, ‘There seems a voice in every gale,’ is well known as a hymn (Julian, Dict. of Hymnology, p. 871) . Her novels, which were among the first to treat exclusively of domestic life, possess pathos and some gracefulness of style, but belong essentially to the lachrymose type of fiction, and are all written to point a moral. ”

“ Reynolds told Northcote that Opie was "like Caravaggio and Velasquez in one." In 1782 the painter married his first wife, from whom he was subsequently divorced owing to her misconduct. Although Opie was no longer the wonder of the hour in fickle London, he was achieving more enduring fame. His defective education, both in literature and art, left much to be learned, and he set himself to supply his defects with a laborious zeal which finally affected his brain and prematurely ended his life. His earliest works in London were studies of heads and portraits. ”

“ One thing, at least, from the genealogical point of view, is clear: namely, that the genius for painting still remains in the family of Opie: for 'the great nephew of a great uncle'—as Mr. Edward Opie is pleasantly called in the recently published memoirs of Caroline Fox—has for many years past been a highly successful portrait and genre-painter in the West-country, and a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy for more than a quarter of a century. ”

“ The unwelcome creatures are apt to make their appearance in many a country and many a household, and in default of their natural food to devour all sorts of long-cherished fancies, hopes, and schemes. Some time after his marriage, Opie suddenly, and for no reason, found himself without employment, and the severest trial they experienced during their married life, says his wife, was during this period of anxiety. ”

“ Opie live to see! The English party find rooms at a hotel facing the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine, that token of order and tranquillity, was then perpetually standing. The young wife's feelings may be imagined when within an hour of their arrival Opie, who had rushed off straight to the Louvre, returned with a face of consternation to say that they must leave Paris at once. The Louvre was shut; and, moreover, the whiteness of everything, the houses, the ground they stood on, all dazzled and blinded him. He was a lost man if he remained! ”

“ He was no rapid painter, instinctively feeling his light and colour and action, and seizing the moment's suggestion, but anxious, laborious, and involved in that sad struggle in which some people pass their lives, for ever disappointed. Opie's portraits seem to have been superior to his compositions, which were well painted, 'but unimaginative and commonplace,' says a painter of our own time, whose own work quickens with that mysterious soul which some pictures (as indeed some human beings) seem to be entirely without. ”

“ Pendarves had told her she must do the honours to the young lady as I was not able to attend her. "And so," she added, "I must also dine below, for he told me so." And without waiting for our opinion or reply, she again disappeared, and we soon after saw her laughing with Lord Charles on the lawn, as if she had known him for years.
"How he will show her off," said my mother, "to-day! That young man has more ingenuous malignity about him than any one I ever saw. When I was nursing Seymour at Oxford, he came to see him ”

“ What a library, full of interest! The swords he has, especially. The room round, and commanding his farm, as well as some beautiful willows, and points of view of home scenery. The dinner interesting, the evening not so much so: and it was my last!
Mrs. Opie’s stay in Paris was extended some weeks longer, during which she appears to have enjoyed, with great satisfaction, the opportunities for intercourse with her friends, and for seeing objects of interest around her. She mentions sitting to an artist, for Galignani, and also to her cousin, H. P. Briggs. ”

“ Ophites, a sect of Gnostics who regarded the serpent as a benefactor of the race in having persuaded Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in disregard, or rather in defiance, of the warning of the God of the Jews.
Opie, John, English artist, born near Truro, Cornwall; began to learn his father's trade of carpenter, but turning to art went with Dr. ”

“ Mine has been a lonely lot through life; but I have never felt it painfully so; and I believe the happiest persons are those who have the fewest wants. The great I AM, is more even-handed than we think Him.
In the month of September, Mrs. Opie made her last visit to Cromer. She remained there for a fortnight, and had two rooms on a ground floor of the house in which she lodged, where she could lie in bed, and watch the billows as they rolled. Numerous friends flocked around her; amongst them her very old and valued ones, Mrs. and Miss Hoare, whose daily visits cheered her ”

“ Sorrow does not change a nature, it expresses certain qualities which have been there all along.
So Mrs. Opie came up to London once more, and welcomed and was made welcome by many interesting people. Lord Erskine is her friend always; she visits Madame de Staël; she is constantly in company with Sydney Smith, the ever-welcome as she calls him. Lord Byron, Sheridan, Lord Dudley, all appear upon her scene. There is a pretty story of her singing her best to Lady Sarah Napier, old, blind, and saddened, but still happy in that she had her sons to guide and to protect her steps. ”

“ I have a humble agent at work to procure small sums, as my Irish ladies advise; and have a little money still in hand, which I hope to make more. We shall one day perhaps know scenes here like those in Ireland, and trials which wealth cannot help us to avoid or remove, but “shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”
In the spring of this year Mrs. Opie paid her usual visit to Cromer. While there, the tidings of Dr. Chalmers’ death reached her. ”

“ Oh! he will certainly be a beau in time. Past ten o’clock! I must now say farewell; but let me own that I missed you terribly when I was ill. I have no female friend and neighbour; and men are not the thing on such occasions. Besides, you, on all occasions, would be the female neighbour I should choose. Love to your spouse. Write soon, and God bless you.
In the autumn of 1800 she again visited Norwich, accompanied by her husband; and on this occasion Mr. Opie painted the portrait of Dr. Sayers, an engraving from which is prefixed to the Life of that gentleman by Mr. W. Taylor ”

“ Briggs, the much esteemed relative of Mrs. Opie, had, for some time past, been suffering from pulmonary disorder; and as he expressed a desire to see her, she was prepared to expect the summons, which was not long delayed. On the 9th of January she wrote:—
I do so enjoy my home. In a morning I am only too full of company; but when at nightfall I draw my sofa round, for a long evening to myself, I have such a feeling of thankfulness!—and so I ought. It is well to see how the burden is fitted to the back by our merciful Father. I have been a lone woman through life; an only child! ”