Autobiographical recollections.

Front matter

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Preface

vii it is from these notes and from letters which he collected, that the autobiography you have was composed.

" We have reason to believe that he commenced it about ten years ago, writing in it from time to time. The reason it ends abruptly was not on account of- failing health, but because all the time he could spare from his painting was, during the last year of his life, occupied by him in writing the life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at which he worked hard even a month before his death."

TOM TAYLOR.

AUTHOE'S PREFACE.

My object has been to preserve in these pages some recollections of those chiefly whom I could praise; and of them, not the faults and foibles that are more or less common to all men, but the merits that are rare, and on which alone their claims to distinction rest. I mention this that I may not be charged with dealing too much in panegyric.

C. R. LESLIE.

Contents

Page

Introduction: On Leslie's Pictures xiii

General Characteristics of Leslie as an Artist . . xlvii

Chapter I

Voyage to America — Engagement at sea — French ship vanquished — Youthful bravery — The Newfoundland dog — Residence at Lisbon — Departure from Lisbon — Arrival at Philadelphia .... 1

Chapter II

Desire to be a Painter — George Frederick Cooke — Departure for England

— New Acquaintances — Visits to the Theatre — Allston and Coleridge— Visit to Clifton — Obtain the Academy medals — Fuseli and Westmacott — Visit to Paris — Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare — Fragments of Coleridge — Coleridge at Highgate — Charles and Mary Lamb 15

Chapter VI

Appointment in America — Letter of Lord Egremont — Ai-rival in New York— Sojourn at West Point — Return to England — Samuel Rogers and Stothard — Anecdotes of Stothard — Old Lady Cork — Newton, the Painter . . .80 xii

CONTENTS.

Page

Chapter XI

John Howard Payne — Haydon, the Painter — Haydon's Journal — Haydon's character — The Chalons and Cattermole — British, French, and German Schools — Dessin's Hotel — Peter Powell — Samuel Rogers

— Rogers's " Table Talk " 145

Chapter XII

Prince Saunders — Wilson's Ornithology — Peter Pindar — Matthews " At Home " — Kenney, the Dramatist — Rogers and Maltby . . .162

Extracts from Leslie's Correspondence 171

Appendix

List op the Principal Pictures Painted, and of all the Pictures Exhibited by C. K. Leslie, K. A 357

Introduction

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES.

It has been my lot to be entrusted with the arrangement for the press of two artistic autobiographies— that of Haydon, and that of Leslie. It is difficult to imagine a completer contrast than is formed by the characters, lives, and works of these two painters. Haydon presents to us a nature all self-confidence, passion, and combativeness. He was exclusive in his theories ; reckless in his defiance of difficulties; unscrupulous in the means he took to relieve them ; untiring in his appeals to patrons, and public men, and the public. Regarding himself as a martyr to High- Art, he claimed to the full all the immunities and indulgences that the most lenient and sympathetic judgment could attach to that position. Alternately elated with the most buoyant hope and depressed by the deepest despair — fighting, struggling, appealing, asserting himself his whole life through, he closed a stormy and sorrowful career by suicide. But through all this tempestuous life, he loved his art passionately, and was truly and deeply attached to his wife and his children. His pictures seem to me to reflect at once his lofty aims and his practical short-comings. Their unquestionable power and vigour are marred by ever recurring evidences of haste, slovenliness, coarseness, and lack of taste.

xiv

INTRODUCTION.

In Leslie, on the other hand, we see the man of cautious, trustful, respectful nature from the first. Slow in the formation of his judgment, disposed to defer to others in his art and out of it, but strong in principle, and apt to hold stubbornly to convictions once grasped; not given to court notoriety or publicity, and rather shrinking from than provoking conflict; asking only leave to pursue the even tenor of his way in the practice of the unambitious art he loved, among the quiet friends he valued; equable, affectionate, self-respecting to the point of reserve and reticence ; valuing good taste and moderation as much in art as in manners; averse to exclusive theories or loud-sounding self-assertion in all forms ; closing a happy, peaceful, successful, and honored life, by the calm and courageous death of a Christian, and leaving behind him pictures stamped in every line with good taste, chastened humour, and graceful sentiment— pictures which it makes us happier, gentler, and better to look upon — pictures which help us to love good books more, and to regard our fellow-creatures with kindlier eyes.

The lessons of two such lives ought not to be written in vain. For power, passion, and variety ; for curious revelation of character, eloquent criticism, and vivid sketching of men and manners, the little Leslie has left written is altogether unworthy of comparison with those bulky records of himself from which I selected the materials for the autobiography of Haydon. But scanty, and comparatively colourless, as Leslie's remains may be, they are of value in throwing light on the character, as well as on the works, of the painter — that part of him which alone has an interest for us.

Before entering on the subject of Leslie's pictures

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES. xv

in detail, I think it essential to fair appreciation of the painter and the man, to give the reader such knowledge as I can of his method of working, and of his daily habits.

" His painting-room," says his son George, " differed from those of most artists in one point. He never hung up any of his own works or studies on the walls, but had a great many fine examples of other painters — chiefly copies by himself from the old masters. He considered that an artist who fed his eye with his own works was sure to get into a mannered style of painting. He painted in the simplest manner, always trying to get his work like in tone and colour to the object he painted from as soon as possible. He had a particular objection to the practice of preparing his work in one colour, to be afterwards altered to another by glazing. He used to say, that unless you possessed a most extraordinary knowledge of the chemical, as well as modifying, qualities of colours, it was always very uncertain whether you would obtain by that means the exact tint you wanted.

" He was very quick in working, especially in painting heads ; I don't think he ever kept a model more than two hours at a time, and generally finished a head the second day, though he frequently rubbed his work out, if it was not satisfactory to him, and painted it in afresh. I have often sat to him, and he had always finished before I was tired.

" He very seldom praised his own work ; but I have often seen him laughing at some expression that pleased him in his picture.

" In giving instruction to young artists he used to say very little, but he would take the palette and brushes himself, and show them a great deal. He never, however, took this trouble with any student for whom he felt there was no hope. He was kind to all young artists, and never spoke to them in the way of criticism without some qualifying expression, such as, 'I may be wrong,' or 1 Perhaps you are right.'

" His palette was always kept clean, and he put more colour on it than he thought he should use, as he said he hated a starved palette. On the same principle he provided himself with a most liberal supply of brushes, in the choice of which he was a little xvi

INTRODUCTION.

different from most artists I have seen work. He used a great many more sable brushes than any other, and was especially fond of very small ones, with which he put the delicate touches on his heads.

" He worked very steadily and cheerfully, keeping up a sort of whistling at times, which I think he was unconscious of, as he was always absorbed in thinking about what he was painting. I remember him once walking about looking for his palette-knife, which he was holding in his hand all the time.

" He had a very pretty habit of going into the garden before breakfast and picking either a honeysuckle or a rose — his favourite flowers — and putting them in a glass on the mantel-shelf in his painting-room. I hardly ever saw his room in the summer without these flowers, and we have a little sketch of a rose, which he picked and brought into the house so gently that he did not disturb a beautiful little moth on it.

" He took a great interest in astronomy. His knowledge of this science was very slight, but the pleasure he had in the various appearances in the heavens was unbounded, so much so, that he used to say an eclipse seemed to take place on purpose for his pleasure. He once said to me that he thought it very likely that part of our happiness in the next life would be derived from finding out the wonders of the creation which are hidden to us here.

" He entertained the greatest veneration for all celebrated scientific men, and once had a correspondence with Professor Faraday on the blue colour of the sky. The Professor's kind replies delighted my father beyond measure."

The following was the usual distribution of his day: —

" He would rise," writes his son, " about eight o'clock in the winter, and about seven in the summer, when he would walk in the garden before breakfast. He had breakfast at nine, and enjoyed the newspaper very much, taking great interest in politics, or any topic that occupied the public attention. He always read a chapter in the Bible to us all afterwards, and then, about half-past nine or ten, he would commence work, sometimes being

ON LESLIES PICTURES.

xvii read to at the same time. He did not object to the presence of any of his family in his room, but sometimes, when very busy, he would turn us out, especially the younger ones, whom he called ' trudies,' his corruption of intruders. He was never irritated by anything whilst at work, but seemed always calm and happy. He was rather absent in his mind about trivial things. He would sometimes strike a carpet-pin, mistaking it for a lucifer match, and was very apt to forget people's names, unless connected in some way with his art. But if any one possessed a fine picture, however commonplace and uninteresting that person might otherwise be, he always remembered his name, and was always ready to go and see him.

" He lunched at one, and would generally leave off work about four o'clock, when he would go out, but seldom without some object, as to see pictures at the auction-rooms, or to call on people who possessed pictures.

" He dined generally at six o'clock, and, after a nap, would either play at chess, which he was very fond of, or else would read to us from Shakespeare or ' Don Quixote^ and sometimes passages from ' Tristram Shandy.' He was very fond of having friends to see him in the evening, though unless his company possessed some knowledge of the art he took but little pleasure in them."

The Petworth Collection is richest in Leslie's pictures of all our private galleries — having regard to the merit, if not the number, of the pictures it contains. After Petworth must be ranked the galleries of Mr. John Naylor at Leigh ton Hall, Welshpool, Mr. Edwin. Bullock and Mr. Joseph Gillott at Birmingham, Mr. Thomas Miller at Preston, and Mrs. Gibbons in the Regent's Park, London. Our National Gallery, especially the Sheepshanks collection, is, happily, richer than even the richest of these. *

* The Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Essex, Mr. Harris, Mr. Bates, Mr. Bicknell, Mr. Thomas Baring, Mr. Heugh, Mr. Newsham, Mr. W. C. Sole, and other collectors in this country, possess important pictures of this master. There

b xviii

INTRODUCTION.

It is pleasant to me to think that so many of Leslie's pictures should have found a home among the mills of Lancashire and the smoking forges and grimy workshops of Birmingham. They are eminently calculated to counteract the ignobler influences of industrial occupation by their inborn refinement, their liberal element of loveliness, their sweet sentiment of nature, their literary associations, and their genial humour. I can speak from personal observation to the real appreciation of these pictures in such places, not on the part of their possessors only, but among the many, both masters and workmen, to whom these galleries are so liberally opened. Leslie testifies in one of his letters to the extraordinary change which he had lived to see in the source and spread of patronage for the painter. The nobleman is no longer the chief purchaser of contemporary pictures. It is mainly to our great manufacturing and trading towns that the painter has to look for the sale of his works. The class enriched by manufactures and commerce is now doing for art in England what the same class did in earlier times in Florence, Genoa, and Venice, for the art of Italy ; in Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam for that of the Low Countries and Holland. The change may have its evil as well as its good. There may be some risk that it will multiply the manufacture and increase the homeliness of pictures, to say nothing of less direct and obvious ill-consequences.

But against such risks is to be set the likelihood that purchasers of this class will, in the main, insist upon something like fidelity to nature, and truthfulness of expression and sentiment. They are rarely beset by prejudice in favour of old schools or time-honoured conventionalities ; ceteris paribus, they are likely to prefer picare others in America, in the collections of Col. Lenox of New York, and Mr. Joseph Miller of Virginia, U. S.

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES.

xix tures which are the growth of the time, and appeal to the time, to those which belong to the past, and speak to the past — or, in other words — living to dead art.

In Mr. Naylor's collection the painter may be studied in his earliest and latest manners, — in the 6 Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church' (1819), (the original picture painted for Mr. Dunlop), and the ' May Day in the time of Queen Elizabeth' (1821); and in one of the last works of his pencil, ' The Interview of Jeanie Deans and Queen Caroline ' (1859).

The two former pictures demand notice first as works of a time when Leslie was most himself; that is, when he had felt the influence of neither of two painters who materially affected his later practice — Newton on the one hand, and Constable on the other.

Both these pictures are simply painted, with a due admixture of solid and glazing colour; and neither shows the least sign of impaired tone or failing surface. They are as bright and sunny in effect, and as free from crack or decay, as when first painted.

The original 'Sir Roger' is finer in tone than the repetition. Parts of it indicate a close study of Hogarth, especially the old yeoman who stands to receive the Squire's greeting, with his fresh, pretty daughter on his arm. In the latter I recognise the lady who, some four or five years after the picture was painted, became the painter's wife. Sir Roger, in his full suit of crimson velvet, on his way up the pathway to the little church, pats on the head the widow's children, who look up to him with round, wondering eyes. Their mother is a sweet and comely rustic matron. The head of Sir Roger, Leslie tells us in his Life *of Constable, was painted from an old Royal Academician, Mr. Bigg,* likelier to go down to posterity in this picture

* " I thought him," he says, " in appearance and manners, a perfect speci-

XX

INTRODUCTION.

of Leslie's than in any of his own works. The Spectator, who accompanies Sir Roger, is commonplace enough. But he is, after all, but a colourless personage in Addison's own hands. The rustics who line the pathway are all true to nature. Besides the group of the old man and daughter already described, there is a full-blown young woman, sticking a flower into her boddice, and a moon-faced labourer, in a smock frock, looking over 'her shoulder, both quite worthy of Hogarth. Even in this picture — painted in 1819, when the painter was only twenty-four, — there is no observable deficiency either in drawing, colouring, or composition, or in linear or aerial perspective.

I should say at least as much for the ' May-Day,' in which, besides all these merits in the figures, there is shown a power of effective landscape-painting, of which Leslie has left us few examples. The scene may be supposed to be in Kent. The foreground is a knoll, from which the eye ranges over a wide stretch of level and richly cultivated woodland, with a distant manor-house and church. Overhead is a bright spring sky, with wreaths of sunlit cloud. The family and guests of the manor-house furnish the foreground groups, the principal of which is made up of a fantastically dressed gentleman of the court in crimson velvet, and the rustic beauty of the manor to whom he is paying euphuistic court. She timidly accepts his offered hand for the dance, hardly understanding the meaning of his quaint and far-fetched phrases. She wears a tawny robe, over a blue petticoat. To the right of the foreground, a stately Elizabethan dame, in farthingale of scarlet and gold, and am^le ruff, looks on at the sports, while her jester behind her in red, yellow, and green motley, slyly

men of an old-fashioned English gentleman. He was one of the most amiable men who ever existed."

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES.

xxi draws an ass in a lion's skin on the buckler of one of the blue-coated serving-men, who complete the righthand group. A little further off, to the left, are gathered, in reclining groups on the grass, or standing under the trees, the rest of the gentry, who have assembled to watch the shooting at the butts and the May games, in full swing on the green below. You see part of the line of the merry morris-dance, where the meadow falls beyond the foreground. These dancers are drawn and grouped with a spirit and freedom not unworthy of Rubens. Near them stands the old sable-clad schoolmaster— rod in hand, and spectacles on nose — who watches the dancers himself, reverently and fearfully watched the whole time by a group of his small scholars, who clearly are not satisfied that the rod is there by mere inadvertence of habit. On the level sward in the distance sits the May Queen under her arbour, while before her sweeps the merry rout of masquers round the May-pole — Robin Hood and Maid Marian, Much and Scathelock, Little John and Friar Tuck, with the fool, the dragon and the hobby-horse, surrounded by a ring of applauding village spectators. As we look, we seem to feel the fresh soft spring breeze among the trees ; to hear the clashing peal from the steeple, mingled with the pipe and tabor, and the sound of joyous carouse, over beef and ale, from the booth beyond.

I know no blither, brighter, more exhilarating picture. There is masterly skill, and truth above all, in its distribution of light and shadow, always so difficult in a day-light, open-air picture, with many figures. The well-known engraving by Watt does justice to it.

Next in order of time, to these pictures, come those in the gallery at Petworth. First of these stands ' Sancho and the Duchess.' Of all Leslie's pictures this is probably the most popular, and in none are his peculiar xxii

INTRODUCTION.

merits more gracefully and happily displayed. The incident is fully described in the passage * from Shelton's translation of Don Quixote, which accompanied the picture in the Academy catalogue for 1824.

In the expressions of the actors, the painter has caught the very spirit of the scene. Sancho half-shrewd, halfobtuse, takes the Duchess into his confidence, with a finger laid along his nose ; his way of sitting shows that he is on a style of seat he is unused to. Chantrey sat to Leslie for the expression of the Sancho, and his hearty sense of humour qualified him to embody the character well. The Duchess's enjoyment breaks through the habitual restraint of her high breeding, and the grave courtesy of her Spanish manners, in the sweetest halfsmile — a triumph of subtle expression. The sour and literal Dona Rodriguez is evidently not forgetful how Sancho, on his arrival, had desired her to have a care of Dapple. The mirth of the whispering waiting-maids culminates in the broad sunshiny grin of the mulattowoman. Nor has Leslie ever been happier in the composition of any picture.

All the accessories are painted with fine finish, the nicest sense of propriety, and careful attention to effects of direct and reflected light. Petworth was a treasurehouse to Leslie of old-world wealth in furniture, jewellery, china, and toilet ornaments ; and during his visits there he made careful and numerous studies of such objects. Here he saw and studied such things in their places, which may help to account for the naturalness and propriety with which they are always introduced by him.

The three versions f of this subject are full of varia-

* See correspondence of that year.

f I might have said four, for I have just learnt that there is a fourth Sancho, which had found its way to the United States, and is now in this country, in the gallery of Mr. Farnworth. Leslie painted a good deal upon it after its ar-

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES.

xxiii tions in detail. Leslie never repeated a picture exactly. In the Petworth picture the principal light falls upon the lovely face and white satin robe of the Duchess, and is carried out by the lightish green china vase to the left. In the Vernon repetition, the principal light is focussed by the white and gold pilasters, conducted thence by the Duchess's head and shoulders, and the duenna's white apron, — which is wanting in the Petworth original,— and carried out to the left by the open musicbook and the back of the chair ; while on the right it is continued in both by the shoulder of the mulatto, the head-dress and collar of one of the waiting women, and Sancho's shining bald pate. The Petworth Sancho has blue breeches : the Vernon Sancho is dressed entirely in black and drab. In the original picture the Duchess's inner robe is a pure silvery satin, deliciously painted ; the outer robe a delicate purplish grey ; in the Vernon picture her inner dress is a light golden yellow : her saccque a darker purple lined with green. The wall to the right, in the earlier version, is covered with green tapestry. This tapestry is red, with a blue border in the later one. There is no picture of the Duke on the wall behind the Duchess in the Petworth original, as there is in the Vernon repetition. The dress of the waiting damsel in the foreground of the earlier version is a warm salmon colour ; it is russet green in the other ; and the flower on the toilet-table is red in the former, white in the latter picture. In the quality of its colour the Petworth picture is, to my mind, immeasurably finer than either the version of the subject painted for Mr. Rogers, or that painted for Mr. Vernon.

The lines of the composition are the same in all three pictures ; and the general distribution of the light and

rival here from North America; but not having seen this picture I can say nothing of its variations from the others.

xxiv INTRODUCTION.

shade is identical, though the objects which make up the balance of colour are varied in each, with great pains, and thorough knowledge.

The Rogers picture brought eleven hundred and fiftyguineas at the sale of the poet's gallery. Mr. Leslie was present. A country dealer seated beside him, who had been absent from the room when the picture was knocked down, seeing that Mr. Leslie had noted the prices in his catalogue, asked to look at it. " Good gracious me ! Eleven hundred and fifty guineas for Leslie's picture ! Did you ever hear of such a price, sir?" "Monstrous, is it not?" said Leslie, who told the story to his family with great glee on his return home.

The Petworth picture is singularly rich and harmonious in effect, and transparent throughout in its painting. It is, I think, altogether, for expression, composition, and colour, the finest example of the painter, and exhibits him in the very prime of his powers, and while under the influence of Newton as a colourist and workman. But the surface has cracked slightly, owing to the incautious use of glazing colours — asphaltum, above all, that most fatal to durability of all pigments. The repetitions, though less glowing, are both in perfect preservation,' and are solidly and simply painted, with a very cautious use of glazing. They both belong to the period when Constable's influence had superseded Newton's, and when Leslie was satisfied that his pictures should look white and chalky while fresh, in the faith that they would mellow with time. His practice exemplifies the only" case in which the colour of pictures does really change for the better. Leslie's later works have mellowed in a very noticeable degree. I can myself perceive that even his latest and weakest pictures — the ' Jeanie Deans ' for example —

ON LESLIE'S PICTURES.

XXV have improved wonderfully "in the short period which has elapsed since they were painted.

After the ' Sancho,' the most interesting picture at Petworth is the i Catherine and Petruchio.' This is the first version of the subject, of which the Sheepshanks' picture is a repetition with variations. For example, the remains of the meal on the table to the right of the spectator are quite different in the two, though touched in both with a precision worthy of Teniers. In this case also the colour of the Petworth picture is superior in glow and power, and I did not detect in it any sign of cracking. In their disposition of colours, the two pictures are very much alike ; but we have only to compare the satin gown, which is the object of Petruchio's rage, in the one and in the other, to recognise how much more powerful Leslie was in his management of colour in 1832, than at the later date of the Sheepshanks' picture.

The ' Introduction of Gulliver to the Queen of Brobdingnag,' (1835) appears to me a mistake in subject, and a very inferior work of the painter's in all technical respects. Instead of the Brobdingnagians looking like giants, Gulliver looks like a pigmy. The colour, tried by Leslie's own standard, is violent without being rich, and for the first and last time, as far as I know, in Leslie's pictures, appears to me unrefined and inharmonious.* The only passage of humour worthy of the painter is the face of the old lady, who is curiously examining the strange little creature through her eye-glass, and the look of the farmer's little girl who is crying for the loss of her plaything. The other Petworth pictures — ' Lady Carlisle carrying the pardon to her Father in the Tower, and 'Charles II. at Tillietudlem ' — must be classed

* Another picture very closely resembling this in the quality of its colour, is the ' Columbus,' now in the Collection of Joseph Gillott, Esq.

XXVI

INTRODUCTION.

in the second rank of the painter's works. The first subject is hardly a paintable one. It is impossible to convey, by a momentary expression, the conflict in the Duke's mind between the temptation of liberty, the stubbornness of parental authority outraged by his daughter's marriage against his will, and the haughty consciousness of innocence, which kept him so long a prisoner when the least submission or effort might have opened his dungeon door. Nor is there anything very available for t*he painter in the Duke's " three magi," — Harriot, Warner, and Hughes ; nor does one see very clearly what part Raleigh is taking in the action of the picture. Perhaps the point of effect, after all, is in the contrast of the eager, fluttering young woman, and the serene abstraction of the two learned prisoners, and their three aged companions in study, thus startlingly broken in upon. The stately old lady of Tillietudlem gives a better opportunity to the painter, and he has indicated her delighted pride in the King's salute, in his happiest manner. There is Lesliean humour too, in the introduction of Cuddie Headri gg as an attendant stripling, gazing, open-mouthed, upon the royal visitor.