For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The London Quarterly Review. GAINSBOROUGH.* IT was on the 10th of December, 1788. The students of the Royal Academy had assembled for the distribution of prizes in the old rooms at Somerset House. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the president, then a man of sixty-five and more than threatened with paralysis, rose to address them. The occasion was one which his age and growing infirmities, the rapid nearing of the term of his honored life, and the youth and forward outlook of his audience, must have combined to render almost solemn. He had chosen for his theme the art-work of a great painter who had died some four months before, on the 2nd of the previous August, of a painter also supremely honored in his craft, and who alone among Sir Joshua's contemporaries might fit tingly be put forward as Sir Joshua's rival a painter, moreover, who had not always been on the best of terms with the Academy and its president. One can imagine how eagerly the students bent for ward to listen as Sir Joshua began that fourteenth discourse of his on the "excellencies and defects" in the "character" of " Mr. Gainsborough." Boys will be boys, and possibly some sense of mischief may have mingled with their anticipations. But if they expected that the lion that was alive would growl dislike over the lion that was dead; if they thought to hear undeniable beauties grudgingly admitted, and faults cunningly and curiously discussed; if they hoped to see how jealousy can caricature, and even a great man be very small — why, then, it can only be said that they clearly did not know their president. And as youth is open to high and generous impulse as well as mischievous, doubtless they felt a 1. Exhibition of the Works of Thomas Gains borough, R.A. With Historical Notes by F. G. STEPHENS, Author of " English Children as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds." Grosvenor Gallery. 2. Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. By the late GEORGE WILLIAM FULCHER. Edited by his Son. London: 1856. thrill of noble enthusiasm as he spoke, in stately old-world phrase, of the recent loss of "one of the greatest ornaments of our Academy," and dwelt on the dead painter's genius and industry and pure disinterested devotion to his art. Doubtless too they felt the pathos of the speaker's words we may be sure there was a pathos in the Speaker's voice — when he told them how, a few days before Mr. Gainsborough died, he wrote me a letter to express his acknowledg ment for the good opinion I entertained of his abilities, and the manner in which, he had been informed, I always spoke of him; and desired he might see me once more before he died. I am aware how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot prevail on myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any habits of familiarity: if any little jealousies had subsisted between us, they were forgotten in those moments of sincerity; and he turned towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without entering into a detail of what passed at this last interview, the impression of it upon my mind was, that his regret at losing life, was principally the regret of leaving his art; and more especially as he now began, he said, to see what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he flattered himself in his last works were in some measure supplied. Doubtless, as we have surmised, the pathos of these words was felt by Sir Joshua's audience. Doubtless too they cheered to the echo that prophecy of his, which time has so abundantly justified: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of the art, among the very first of that rising name." The forms of art criticism change very much from generation to generation, and Reynolds's criticism was not even born young. For his criticism is older in tone than that of Diderot, and immeasu 3. Gainsborough By GEORGE M. BROCK-ARNOLD, rably older than that of Lessing; though M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. London: 1881. ("Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists") 4. A Sketch of the Life and Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, Esq. By PHILIP THICKNESSE. Printed for the Author, 1788. when the first of the discourses was delivered, Lessing's "Laocoon " had already breathed, as with the breath of a new life, over the dry bones of the eighteenth cen tury's judgments on art. Accordingly, there is much in Sir Joshua's mode of viewing Gainsborough which one can only regard as obsolete. There is more that is sound and judicious. And it was assuredly most fitting that the survivor of the two greatest painters of the time-yes, not merely the two greatest English painters, but the greatest painters Europe could then produce should speak words of admiration and high regard over the comrade who had fallen at his side. Reynolds and Gainsborough - they were held to be rivals in life and doubt less held themselves to be so, though surely in no mean spirit, and their rivalry has continued after death. Still is it scarcely possible to discuss the merits of the one without instituting the old comparison in praise or blame, and starting again that long vexed question of art precedence. We shall not, however, start it again now, or discuss it further, except to say that in such a rivalry every advantage, apart from inborn artist power, was and is on the side of Sir Joshua. For Sir Joshua had studied in Italy, and came to London with the prestige of his foreign culture and training. He was well versed in the history of his art, a man of literary tastes, the friend of the leading writers of his time Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith. While he was alive, literature lent him all the help that literature can lend to a painter, and it has continued to do so since his death. His life, his pictures, the fair women and children whom he painted with a brush so dainty and caressing, the notable men who sat to him all have been described, discussed, criticised, chronicled. Even apart from his art, the surroundings of his life lend themselves readily to verbal disquisition. And in the dissemination of a knowledge of his art, and consequently of his fame, he received the most superb help from the engraver. Never has painter had his colors more adequately translated into black and white. English mezzotint seems to have leapt at once to its highest point of excellence to do him honor. Its capacity of dealing with large masses of light and shade, its smooth delicacies of texture, and surface of velvet and peach bloom, suited to absolute perfection a style of art in which generalization went for so much, and definiteness of detail for so little. A whole school of engravers clustered round his pictures, and have left us works which, like his own, are priceless: priceless, not only with the pricelessness of rarity, and because the copperplates then in use yielded so few impressions - that is the collector's valuation but priceless with the better pricelessness of perfection. No such advantages were Gainsborough's. His art training was of the scantiest, and purely English. He never went abroad. He painted in the provinces only till he was forty seven. He did not belong to the literary set. We catch no glimpse of him as moving among the writers, talkers, and wits of his time. The information collected about his life is really very meagre. For twenty pages that have been written about Reynolds scarce one has been written about him. He has not been specially fortunate in his biographers. When we look in any large collection, such as that at the British Museum, through the superb series of engravings from Reynolds's works, and then through the portfolios of comparatively moderate capacity containing the engravings from Gainsbor ough, the difference is very marked.* Clearly the great masters of mezzotint were carrying their devotion elsewhere. And yet, notwithstanding every disadvan tage, such is the power of pure craftmanship, so does a painter's ultimate rank depend upon his art-gift alone, that Gainsborough was held, even in his own time, to stand almost on a level with the great president, nor has posterity placed him much lower. Whence did the man get that art-gift of his? Who can answer that? What Mr. Galton, with help or hindrance of the most careful pedigree, has yet explained the genesis of a man of genius? Why should this special product of the English middle * Curiously enough, as regards drawings, the case is reversed. The British Museum is not at all rich in drawings by Reynolds; but the collection of drawings by Gainsborough is large, and very characteristic and interesting. Space only prevents us from making greater use of it in illustration. class in the eastern counties have bloomed | been wealth to the struggling painter. so superbly? Gainsborough was now nineteen, and his wife a year younger. influence on the painter's career, first "dragging him from the obscurity of a country town," and afterwards, by quarrelsomeness and foolish wrangling, driving him from Bath to London. How far Gainsborough would have admitted the truth of Thicknesse's account of their mutual relations seems open to a good deal of question. Gainsborough was dead when Thicknesse wrote, and Thicknesse we hope it is not uncharitable to say so, after the lapse of a century -was a man whom one might easily suspect of habits of exaggeration. Still there is little reason to doubt that his patronage was of service at the outset of the young painter's career. An engraving of a picture of Landguard Fort seems to testify to the reality of some early commissions, and it is quite likely that the engraving was, as Thicknesse says, undertaken at his instance and chiefly at his expense, and did "make Mr. Gainsborough's name known beyond the circle of his country resi dence." Nor is it unlikely that Gainsborough, after practising his art in Ipswich, with more or less success for some fourteen years, was greatly influenced by Thicknesse's persuasions in leaving that town for Bath in the year 1760 or there. abouts. At first sight, indeed, it might fairly seem that the stock did not possess char- Shortly after marriage, the youthful acteristics of any extraordinary promise. couple went to live at Ipswich, renting Nor were the surroundings either, to all ah! happy and primitive days — a suitaappearance, particularly propitious. The ble house for £6 a year. Here Gainsborfather was a tradesman (milliner, clothier, ough fell in with Mr. Philip Thicknesse, crape-maker, shroud-seller), a good man lieutenant governor of Landguard Fort, a and true, who brought up his nine children somewhat absurd, fussy, and contentious reputably, and lived and died deservedly person, who, according to his own ac respected. The mother, we are told, count, exercised the most determining "was a woman of well-cultivated mind, and, amongst other accomplishments, excelled in flower-painting." Fortunately for England, there were thousands of such couples flourishing in other places besides Sudbury, in Suffolk, where Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough lived. Thomas, the youngest of the nine children, came into the world, probably on some day in May, in the year 1727; went in due time to the local grammar school; drew profusely, as schoolboys will, but with a freedom and promise which does not fall to the lot of many schoolboys; acquired little booklore perhaps, as we should estimate it in these days of competitive examinations, but learned, on the other hand, to love every outward feature of the surrounding country, so that, as he afterwards told Mr. Philip Thicknesse, his patron parasite, "there was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of any beauty, no, nor hedgerow stem or post in or around his native town, which was not from his earliest years treasured in his memory." Clearly a boy with a painter's vocation; and so, at the age of fifteen, he was taken to London, and studied art according to the very indifferent opportunities then available. Thus three years passed, and then a year in trying to make a living as a painter in the metropolis. After which he returned to Sudbury, painted landscapes or portraits according as demand arose - painted, indeed, when there was no demand, for the pure pleasure of painting- and wooed and won a certain Miss Margaret Burr, of doubtful parentage, but very fair to look upon (at least according to report, for her portrait at that time belies it), and possessed of an annuity of £200 a year, which must have Excepting London, and perhaps not even excepting London, there was at that time no place in England where a rising portrait-painter had better opportunity of winning fame and fortune than at Bath. For Bath was then in its meridian splen. dor. Fashion thronged to take the waters, and fashion was not without vanity, and had ample leisure, and the wherewithal to boot, and then Mr. Gainsborough painted so charmingly. So for fourteen years or |