THIS work has the advantage of being wanted. In his own day, Thomas Gainsborough achieved both fame and fashion. He has since kept his place in gallery and exhibition, as a master of English landscape and portraiture, through the progress of almost seventy years. Yet no modern artist has been less written about, though his age was that of Pilkington and Horace Walpole. The reading public have hitherto known as little of the man- how he lived, learned, and comported himself, as if his subjects had been the fair and famous of Froissart's Chronicle. There seems to be a fate in matters of biography, whose favors are by no means equally distributed. Doubtless men's habits and characters have much to do with it, but all the whys and wherefores can never be traced out. Gainsborough was, till now, a notable instance of biographical neglect in this life-writing time. But the book before us fills the vacant niche, and merits a welcome alike from the lovers of art, and the readers of memoirs, for good intentions well executed.

Its author, the late Mr. Fulcher of Sudbury, Suffolk, was for many years mayor of that ancient burgh, and a respected member of "the trade," but more note-worthy for a love of letters in general, a volume of poems, and sundry prose compositions, known far beyond its rustic limits. His attention was naturally drawn to the traditions of his native town. Gainsborough had been born there, educated at the old-fashioned grammarschool which had disciplined and turned out the boys of many a generation; and as the task was left to him, Mr. Fulcher set about collecting notes and materials for a life of his celebrated townsman. A sudden death, from disease of the heart, on 19th June, 1855, cut short his literary labors. His only surviving son, however, took up the work, and has given the British public a small but handsome volume, containing as much information on Gainsborough's life, times, and works,

as a less painstaking biographer would have diluted into three post octavos. Corner searchers, who have been lucky enough to stumble on a stray letter or anecdote, may indeed wonder why

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Mr. Fulcher overlooked that." But let it be remembered that till his work appeared, twenty-eight pages in Allan Cunningham's Lives of the Painters, was the only authentic account of the celebrated artist.

As it is, this volume is one of unusual interest, abounding in curious anecdote, graphic description, and critical remarks, both original and collected. There is also appended a complete catalogue of Gainsborough's pictures, with notes touching their whereabouts, history, and sales, which artists and amateurs will value. Samples are, however, the best proof of quality. After relating that the artist was born in Sudbury, in the year 1727-birth-day not recordedthat his father was a member of the ancient woollen trade, which from Edward the Third's plantation of Flemings had flourished in that town --that his mother was a woman of more than common cultivation, who practised flower painting for her private amusement, and died early, the narrative offers this description of the little old town, as it appeared in his boyhood:--

Its then unpaved thoroughfares were at irregular intervals encroached upon by uncouth porches, ornamented with carvings still more uncouth, antediluvian monsters and zoologydefying griffins, whose antiquity was their only recommendation. Doubtless these curious figures often attracted the notice of the young painter on his way to school, and probably employed his earliest pencil. He told Thicknesse, his first patron, that there was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of any beauty, no, nor hedge-row, stem, or post in or around his native town, which was not from his earliest years treasured in his memory. * Whilst

there was so much that was picturesque in the town of Sudbury, the surrounding country was not deficient in grace or beauty. The woodman's axe had not then thinned the old ancestral trees, nor had the railway broken in upon its rustic retirement. Constable,

nurtured amid the same scenery, dwells with lingering fondness on its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow-flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and picturesque cottages.

The second chapter is devoted to family history, and contains an amusing account of Gainsborough's brother John, familiarly known in Sudbury as 'Scheming Jack,' and, the author says, "more freshly remembered there than the Royal Academician with all his wide-spread celebrity." His schemes were of the mechanical order, and ranged from astronomical instruments to cradles that rocked themselves. The projector was always in want of money to complete his inventions, none of which were ever perfected, except a pair of iron wings. There is also an account of the steady brother, Humphry, who became a dissenting minister, settled at Henleyupon-Thames, studied mechanics in a less expensive but more practical fashion, and disputed, at least through his friends, the steam discoveries with Watt. Then come details of the Painter's boyhood-how he was inclined to play truant, very partial to holidays, in pursuit of which his father's handwriting was occasionally forged, and how his first painting was the portrait of a rustic depredator in the act of stripping a pear-tree. The delinquent was, it seems, brought to the stocks by that picture, and we are told, "his friends now began to think that something might be made of a lad possessing so true an eye and so ready a hand. Consultations were held, opinions canvassed, and his schoolmaster (seeing that Thomas had made such progress in his studies!) recommended his removal to London." Gainsborough at first tried engraving, and fifteen prints by his hand, hitherto unknown to biographers, are mentioned in a note. We are next introduced to his early master, Hayman, of whom it is said that "those who disputed his supremacy in matters of art, never questioned his ability to decide on the comparative merits of the boxers of Smithfield and Moorfields"-that "he occasionally introduced his pugilistic practices into the painting room, and engaged in an encounter with a sitter previous to the taking of his portrait." Such

an example could have no good effect on Gainsborough's youth and morals. The academy in St. Martin's Lane was also no school of improvement :—

Its members consisted for the most part of indifferent engravers, coach painters, scene painters, drapery painters

Of men who might have made good jailors, Nightmen, or tolerable tailors,

and who dogmatised on the subject of art, while they understood few of its principles.

With such knowledge as he could gather in this select academy, the painter, after four years absence, returned to his native town, where his probation was closed by marriage, and the lady is described as possessed of many charms, including a comfortable annuity and a mysterious parentage. The wedding was followed by a removal to Ipswich, as a wider and richer field. Here we are told how he rented a house at six pounds a year, followed his art chiefly by making studies and sketches, was expected to paint and glaze the mansion of a neighbouring squire, struck upan acquaintance with Joshua Kirby, who found him sketching on the banks of the Orwell, and got patronised by Philip Thicknesse, Lieutenant-Governor of Landguard Fort. Of this gentleman Mr. Fulcher says:—

Descended from an ancient family and pos sessed of high connexions, these things only served to call attention to his follies and make his failings conspicuous. Handsome and insolent, a soldier and a bully, the father of a peer and a scandaliser of the nobility, he abused every privilege and neglected no opportunity of self injury. He had in a remarka ble degree the faculty of lessening the num ber of his friends, and increasing the number of his enemies. He was perpetually imagining insult, and would sniff an injury from afar. Explanation, concession, apology, everything that would satisfy a gentleman would not satisfy Philip Thicknesse. Contention was essential to his existence. Presented with a commission in early life, almost the first use he made of it was to fight a duel. He obtained promotion, and libelled his superior officer. Imprisonment could not teach him wisdom, for at the expiration of the term of his confinement his liberty again served as a cloak for maliciousness. At length, having lost friends, health, and fortune, he could think of no better method of revenging himself on mankind than by publishing his biography, wherein his spites, his bickerings, his disap

pointments, the ill-natured things he did, the mistakes he made, the worth he insulted, are recorded with a minuteness which his most malignant enemy might have envied. How he cured Lord Thurlow of bile, and quarrelled with him about payment; how he was entrusted with the care of two young ladies in France, and how he confined them in a convent because their dog made a meal of Mrs. Thicknesse's paroquet; how he befriended an eminent actor in early life, and how ungrateful it was of him not to subscribe for a copy of the Memoirs;' how he was entrusted with some private letters of Lady Wortley Montague, and how Lord Erskine wheedled him out of the secret of their address; how he got himself into the Queen's Bench Prison, and how his release was hailed by the Scotchman who attempted to assassinate Wilkes, and by the veritable Cock Lane Ghost-all these things are told with a solemn gravity, expectant not merely of attention, but of sympathy, approval, and applause.

ers, ruined spendthrifts, and brainless beaux sought amidst its numberless gaieties to minister to their minds diseased, and cure themselves of ennui. Their tastes and habits, their vanities and foibles, their passions and intrigues, afforded ample scope for the satirist, and were soon to furnish subjects for the verse of Anstey, the dramas of Sheridan, and the novels of Madame D'Arblay.

Fortune smiled on the painter's settlement in that gay city. "His house," as a wit of the day said, "became Gains-borough." Charges were gradually raised from five to one hundred guineas, and in process of time pictures were sent to the London exhibitions. Half the cele

brities of his day were painted by Gainsborough during his Bath residence. He satisfied the vanity of Quin, patronized, in the best sense, young Henderson, won the friendship of Garrick, and failed in a fancy portrait of Shakespeare. But, passing much of interest and amusement, we

select the following description of a picture justly celebrated as an example of combined landscape and portrait painting; it is the portrait of General Honeywood::

Through a richly-wooded scene, wherein the sturdy oak and silvery-barked birch are conspicuous, the soldier, mounted on a bay horse, appears to be passing. His scarlet dress contrasts finely with the mass of surrounding foliage. Nothing can be easier than his attitude, as with one hand he curbs in his charger, and with the other holds his sword, which seems to flash in the sunbeams. Gainsborough has painted no scabbard—an implied compliment, perchance, to the General's bravery.

The painter's devotion to the kindred yet contrasting art of music appears to have been ardent and constant. The excellent fiddle which Governor Thicknesse lent him was not the only instrument upon which he practised. We find him exchanging pictures for fine-toned violincellos, and sometimes for well-played airs. In the same fashion he repaid the friendly service of Wiltshire the carrier, whose genuine love of art was evinced by his conveying pictures free of all charge to the academy; and the details of this peculiar friendship are amongst the most edifying in the volume. Lastly came a quarrel with Governor Thicknesse, having its source somewhere between a viol-di-gamba and an unfinished portrait, and its terminus in the artist's removal to London.

Nearly thirty years had elapsed since Gainsborough left the studio of Hayman. His old master was still living, but had survived his friends and fame. Jervas and Hudson, Lambert and Wootton, were no longer the reigning artists; not to paint like Sir Godfrey Kneller was no longer criminal. The old race of artists had indeed passed away, and a new race had succeeded. the back woods of America there had arisen one, who, realizing his boyish definition of a painter when his only preceptors were a tribe of wild Indians, had become a companion of kings and princes. From the town of Cork, nurtured among sailors, and acquiring his

From

knowledge of the art under unexampled privations, there was now in London a young man producing historical designs not unworthy of the past. Already a contributor to British art, though but a student in Italy, was that wondrous Swiss, whose imagination loved to body forth the mysterious and the terrible. England might hope to found a school, when West, Barry, and Fuseli were

following in the track already struck out by Hogarth, by Wilson, and by Reynolds.

Gainsborough's London life was brief but brilliant. "Men eminent in the church, in the law, in the state; players, dramatists, sailors, naturalists -Pennant, Howe, Sheridan, Edwin, Burke, Skinner, Hurd, were among his sitters. He painted Blackstone and Clive, Paul Whitehead and Ignatius Sancho." Finally he rose to royal portraits, being patronized by George III., and there is an interesting anecdote of his court-days, given on no less authority than that of the Princess Augusta :—

One of the little princes died while Gainsborough was at Windsor, and the day after, as the king passed by the room in which the painter was employed, he saw him at work. The king desired a page to tell him to discontinue painting for the present. The page hesitated the king repeated his command. "When your Majesty knows what Mr. Gainsborough is doing, I am sure-' The king understood him--Gainsborough was making a portrait of the dead child.

"

These shining times were varied by the elopement of one of his daughters with the notable but unsteady musician, Fischer, by comments from Peter Pindar, and a dispute with Sir Joshua Reynolds about cold colours, which brought forth the famous Blue Boy. It also appears that the landscapes on which Gainsborough's fame now chiefly rests were labours of love rather than of profit. His sitters scarcely deigned to notice them where they "stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting room;" and for one of his finest pieces, the Woodman in the Storm, the artist could not find a purchaser, thongh he asked but portrait price. It was sold, after his death, for six hundred guineas. Among many sayings on landscape paintings, quoted in Mr. Fulcher's volume,

we recommend that of Loutherbourg, the first introducer of panoramas to the London public :

He maintained that no English landscape painter needed foreign travel to collect grand prototypes for his study. The Lakes of Cumberland, the rugged scenery of North Wales, and the mountainous grandeur of Scotland, furnished inexhaustible subjects for the pencil.

Of the painter's kindness to his

less fortunate relatives we have many an instance. It is also related that he revisited his town, that he quarrelled with the academy about the hanging of a picture, that he failed in getting up a rival exhibition, as most men do who strive against the tide, and at last comes the ever recurring tale "he died." The summons came by cancer, but it was preceded by a reconciliation with Sir Joshua Reynolds. The original grounds of the estrangement have not been ascertained by our author, but he remarks:

There was naturally a spirit of rivalry between the two painters, to which circumstances probably contributed. Gainsborough, a Tory, be it remembered, was patronized by George III., who employed him in the execu tion of the famous Windsor portraits, when Reynolds was in the zenith of his fame. Sir Joshua, whose political opinions were more liberal, was a favorite of the Prince of Wales and of the Fox family, and, possibly for that reason, was neglected by the king. But, we believe, the natures of both artists were cast in too noble a mould to admit of petty personal animosities - each regarded the ether as a foeman worthy of his steel.' Reynolds once observed to Northcote, after attentively contemplating a picture by Gainsborough, I cannot make out how he produces his effect;' and Gainsborough, when looking over one of the academy's exhibitions in company with Sir George Beaumont, in which there was an unusual number of Reynolds's works, exclaimed, as he glanced from one to another, "D-n him, how various he is."

We take leave of Mr. Fulcher with his impartial summing up of the man and the artist :

In person, Gainsborough was handsome, of a fair complexion, regular features, tall, and well proportioned. His forehead, though not high, was broad and strongly marked, his nose Roman, his mouth and eye denoting humour and definement-the general expression of his face thoughtful, yet not altogether pleasant. The most casual observer would have seen that much lay there; one gifted with greater insight would have said also, that something was wanting there. * 營 * * The great defect in his character was a want of that evenness of temper which Reynolds so abundantly possessed. It was a maxim with Sir Joshua never to regard, or be affected by, small things. He would have painted the dimple in the alderman's chin; and had any one enquired in Leicester Fields- Has that fellow Rey

nolds finished my portrait?' he would have "shifted his trumpet and only took snuff." Gainsborough was equal to an emergency, but could not bring his philosophy to bear on trivial occasions. A conceited sitter, an ill-dressed dinner, a relative visiting him in a hackney coach, disturbed his equanimity; yet when his daughter formed a matrimonial engagement without consulting him, he was calm and collected, unwilling "to have the cause of unhappiness lay upon his conscience." He has been accused of malevolence, but to such a feeling his heart was a stranger. Soon angry, he was soon appeased, and if he was the first to offend, he was the first to

atone.

"Gainsborough's chief excellence consists in the natural grace, the unaffected truth with which he invests his subject. Children at their play, chasing a butterfly, or gathering wild flowers; women returning from a woodland ramble, with mantling cheeks and careless costume; men at their field sports, or taking their morning's ride-these are the designs of his portraits, and in these he stands alone. Able as are his paintings at Dulwich and Hampton Court, it is not only by the pictures of St. Leger and Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell that the artist's powers are estimated; in many a stately mansion,

And

of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam," is known to all. That style of coloring, brilliant, sunny, harmonious, is admired by all. Those sequestred cottage homes, those picturesque peasant children, those market carts and harvest waggons, are loved by all. although Reynolds doubted if Gainsborough looked at nature with a poet's eye, and Fuseli sneeringly said, "posterity will judge whether the name of Gainsborough deserves to be ranked with those of Vandyke, Rubens, and Claude," yet the lovers of sylvan England, like Constable, regard his landscapes with joyous emotion; and, like Sir William Curtis, derive solace from contemplation of those tranquil scenes, even while sickness wrings the brow; feeling that so long as one of these works remains, earth has still a little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonored, and defaced."

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