Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.

So lived and died David Wilkie, the most original, and vigorous, and varied of our British painters. When the tidings came to England, the public mind received such a stun as it received on the death of Byron. He was the darling artist of the people, learned or illiterate, for he spoke to all degrees of knowledge and to all varieties of taste. The Royal Academy, of which his works had long been an ornament, and his name a mainstay, was called upon by a large body of artists to express a sense of the genius of which it had been bereaved; but as Wilkie had not reached the highest honours of the forty, etiquette stood in the way, members were heard to cavil, and the Royal Academicians escaped the outrage with which their regulations were threatened by a vote of condolence from the Council to his family. All this looks petty and paltry enough, but Wilkie's honour was amply avenged by a public meeting to vote a public statue to his memory. Sir Robert Peel

presided; and it deserves notice that it was on the day of his own triumph over the Whig administration, the very day on which the Whigs were overthrown. But to prove that art belongs to no political faction, Lord John Russell attended, and

A statue

moved a resolution expressive of the sincere esteem he felt for Wilkie as a man and an artist. was, with slight opposition, voted; a committee formed; and near two thousand pounds subscribed for the purpose. Statues to artists are not numerous: there is one to Reynolds, and one to Northcote - the latter erected in compliance with the painter's will, and with his own money.

The honours paid to Wilkie were the spontaneous offering of public admiration, a reward for the pleasure his works had afforded. In the speeches of several of the committee, his kind and gentle spirit was remembered in words which drew tears from many eyes; and his looks and manners were recalled with a graphic force and effect which proved that words have colour as well as sentiment. David Wilkie was tall and handsome, with light sunny hair and clear blue eyes, and a look of calmness and intelligence sparkling with humour. When Beechey drew his portrait in 1809, he had something of a country air about him, which the artist caught. When Phillips painted him in 1829, that untamed air had been sobered by reflection and intercourse with the world, and his goshawk eyes had parted with some of their wild light. He was punctual in his attendance when, as a student, he had the knowledge of art to attain, as he was when, as an academician, he had become an instructor in his turn; and as he loved brevity and clearness in others, his own style of instruction was simple and clear. When some of the argumentative class of students dissented from his doctrine, which rarely happened, and ventured to

[ocr errors]

see

set up an opinion of their own in opposition, he would convince them in half-a-dozen words. "So," said he once to an artist in my hearing, "you say the proportions are accurate by the compasses; but I say, if the eye is not satisfied, then it is wrong, for the eye is the instrument by which you will be measured.” He would then patiently enter into the meaning and aim of the figure-illustrate all by examples if the students had understood the matter thoroughly; and all this he did with wonderful calmness and clearness. It was by patience of investigation he distinguished himself when a lad in Edinburgh, and it was by this that he triumphed over all obstacles; for he laid it down as a maxim that no man could paint a figure well without feeling to the full the sentiment it was to express. All that he painted was full of meaning, from his rude attempts with keel and charcoal at Cults, to his latest efforts; and all that he drew was stamped with distinct and individual expression from the heads which he pencilled on the flyleaf of his Bible in his father's kirk, to his Maid of Saragossa and his Josephine and the Sorceress. His memory was that of an artist-it retained chiefly, or rather collected, materials suitable to his own purposes all that it stored past was for picture purposes, and had already shape and character. He did not fill his mind with curious lumber, and empty it upon his canvas at random. Sir Walter Scott, his admirer and friend, wrote him a letter full of instruction, unveiling the impressive points of Scottish scenery: it was wasted on Wilkie, for picturesque things he never dealt in while the great poet was thinking on the

hills rendered famous by the sword, and passes rendered immortal in tale and history, the painter was thinking on the groups which Scottish humour required, and of looks which story demanded. Two men slaying a wild deer on the braes of Atholl had more interest for him, as he watched their faces, changing as a cloud, than had the pass of Killiecrankie, rendered sublime by the death of the Great Dundee.

It was set down to the waywardness of genius that Wilkie never painted a scene well when the subject was found for him; but this, it is likely, arose from the subject not being selected by one who perceived the pictorial points. If it is true that a description in words is only excellent if it can be embodied in a picture; then a picture is only excellent if it can be turned into bright words. Yet, how many passages are to be found in poetry on which painting cannot find colours to bestow; and how many pictures have been painted which cannot be described with success? It is well it is so―else either painting would be blotted out of the records of elegance as an useless thing, or verse as a thing unheeded. Those who choose to persevere in this opinion, vended as something very grand and conclusive by Northcote and others, should try to paint the love-bestrung Cestus of Venus; the Rod of Aaron, which he could turn into a serpent; the Enchanted Kirtle, which dismayed Queen Guenever; the Wizard Pail of the northern witch, which could drain the cows of a thousand hills;-while the poet, who thinks verse represents painting, would do well to apply all the powers of prose as well as of

verse to render us brightly back some of the happiest scenes of Wilkie, and Rembrandt, and Correggio. Such flights are beyond the power of either, and this was felt by Wilkie, who knew that art had its limits. I have heard him say that many of the subjects which his friends selected-like new inventions in machinery, were deficient in some notable point, wanted the key-stone of the arch-the leading point of a picture. This, he said, came from men taking words for shapes: art could not work with such illusive materials.

He laid it down as a maxim, that a painter who desired to rise in and through his art, should consider the demand for his commodities in the market, and the character and influence of his purchasers, and fit, as far as art permitted, his works to their taste and mind. In the demand of our island for portraiture, he perceived the domestic feeling of the people: nor was he willing to set it down to selfishness and vanity, since it encouraged a flourishing bough in the tree of art. His notions of portrait-painting were at variance with the general opinion of the country, and yet he was right; he desired rather to paint the mind and character of the individual, than the outer husk or shell; yet the outer husk or case which enclosed the soul and mind, seems to be what the world is most solicitous about. The self-love which rules, since it dictates in this department, puts every sitter on excellent terms with himself; one wishes to be handsome, and as any man can paint a handsome face by following the rules of art, as any one can make a Scotch air by touching the black keys of the

« PreviousContinue »