Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

You must not, however, on this account, think too ill of the poor painter. He is subject to human infirmities—so are you—and his hand and eye are not always in tune. He has, too, to deal with all sorts of people—many difficult enough to please. You know the fable of the painter who would please everybody, and pleased nobody. You sitters are a whimsical set, and most provokingly shift your features and position, and always expect miracles, at a moment, too; you are here to-day, and must be off to-morrow. It is nothing, to you that paint won't dry for you, so even that must be forced, and you are rather varnished in than painted, and no wonder if your faces go to pieces, and you become mealy almost as soon as you have had the life's blood in you, and that with the best carmine. And often you take upon yourselves to tell the painter what to do, as if you knew yourselves better than he, though he has been staring at nothing but you for an hour or two at a time, perhaps. You ask him, too, perpetually what feature he is now doing, that you may call up a look. You screw up your mouths, and try to put all the shine you can into your eyes, till, from continual effort, they look like those of a shotten herring; and yet you expect all to be like what you are in your ordinary way. After he has begun to paint your hair, you throw it about with your hands in all directions but the right, and all his work is to begin over again. You have no notion how ignorant of yourselves you are. I happened to call, some time since, upon a painter with whom I am on intimate terms. I found him in a roar of laughter, and quite alone. "What is the matter?" said I. "Matter!" replied he; "why, here has Mr B. been sitting to me these four days following, and at last, about half an hour ago, he, sitting in that chair, puts up his hand to me, thus, with 'Stop a moment, Mr Painter; I don't know whether you have noticed it or not, but it is right that I should tell you that I have a slight cast in my eye.' You know Mr B., a worthy good man, but he has the very worst gimlet eye I ever beheld." Yes, and only slightly knew it, Eusebius. And I have to say, he thought his defect wondrously exaggerated, when, for the first time, he saw it on canvas; and perhaps all his family noticed it there, whom custom had reconciled into but little observation of it, and the painter was considered no friend of the family. For the poor artist is expected to please all down to the youngest child, and perhaps that one most, for she often rules the rest. And people do not too much consider the feelings of painters. I knew an artist, a great humorist, who spent much time at the court at Lisbon. He had to paint a child, I believe the Prince of the Brazils. I remember, as if I saw him act the scene but yesterday, and it is many years ago. Well, the maid of honour, or whatever was her title, brought the child into the room, and remained some time, but at length left him alone with the painter. When he found himself only in this company, his pride took the alarm. He put on great airs, frowned, pouted, looked disdainful, superbly swelling, and got off the chair, retreating slowly, scornfully. The artist, who was a great mimic, imitated his every gesture, and, with some extravagance, frowned as he frowned, swelled as he swelled, blew out his breath as the child did, advanced as he retreated, till the child at length found himself pinned in the corner, at which the artist put on such a ridiculous expression, that risible nature could stand it no longer; pride was conquered by humour, and from that hour they were on the most familiar terms. It was not an ill-done thing of our Henry VIII. when he made one of his noble courtiers apologize to Holbein for some slight, bidding him, at the same time, to know that he could make a hundred such as he, but it was past his power to make a Holbein. And you know how a great monarch picked up Titian's pencil which had fallen. How greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to put slights upon these men—and it is more, it is ungenerous; they may revenge themselves upon you whenever they please, and give you a black eye too, that will never get right again. They can in effigy, put every limb out of joint; and you being no anatomist, may only see that you look ill, and know not where you went wrong. All you sitters expect to be flattered, and very little flattery do you bestow. Perversely, you won't even see your own likenesses. Take, for instance, the following scene, which I had from a miniature painter:—A man upwards of forty years of age, had been sitting to him—one of as little pretensions as you can well imagine; you would have thought it impossible that he could have had an homoeopathic proportion of vanity—of personal vanity at least; but it turned out otherwise. He was described as a greasy bilious man, with a peculiarly conventicle aspect—that is, one that affects a union of gravity and love. "Well, sir," said the painter, "that will do—I think I have been very fortunate in your likeness." The man looks at it, and says nothing, puts on an expression of disappointment. "What! don't you think it like, sir?" says the artist. "Why—ye-ee-s, it is li-i-ke—but——" "But what sir?—I think it exactly like. I wish you would tell me where it is not like?" "Why, I'd rather you should find it out yourself. Have the goodness to look at me."—And here my friend the painter declared, that he put on a most detestably affected grin of amiability.—"Well, sir, upon my word, I don't see any fault at all; it seems to me as like as it can be; I wish you'd be so good as to tell me what you mean." "Oh, sir, I'd rather not—I'd rather you should find it out yourself—look again." "I can't see any difference, sir; so if you don't tell me, it can't be altered." "Well then, with reluctance, if I must tell you, I don't think you have given my sweet expression about the eyes." Oh, Eusebius, Eusebius, what a mock you would have made of that man; you would have flouted his vanity about his ears for him gloriously; I would have given a crown to have had him sit to you, and you should have let me be by, to attend your colours. How we would have bedaubed the fellow before he had left the room, with his sweet eyes! But there, your patient painter must endure all that, and not give a hint that he disagrees in the opinion: or if he speak his mind on the occasion, he may as well quit the town, for under the influence of those sweet eyes, nor man, woman, nor child, will come to sit to him. And consider, Eusebius, their misery in having such sitters at all. They are not Apollos, and Venuses, nor Adonises, that knock at painters' doors. Not one in a hundred has even a tolerably pleasant face. I certainly once knew a rough-dealing artist, who told a gentleman very plainly—"Sir, I do not paint remarkably ugly people." But he came to no good. Not but that a clever fellow might do something of this kind with management, with good effect; get the reputation of being a painter of "beauties," with a little skill, make beauties of every body, and stoutly maintain that he never will have any others sit to him. I am not quite certain, that something of this kind has been practised, or I do not think I should have the art to invent it. All those who sit during a courtship, to present their portraits as lovers, I look upon it come as professed cheats, and mean to be most egregiously flattered; and if the thing succeeds through the painter's skill, within six months after the marriage, he, the painter, is called the cheat, and the portrait not in the least like. So easy is it to get out of repute, by doing your best to please them with a little flattery. You will never get into a book of beauty, Eusebius. Hitherto, the list runs in the female line. The male will soon come in, depend upon it.

Have a little pity upon the poor artist, who would, but cannot, flatter—who is conscious of his inability to put in those blandishments that shall give a grace to ugliness—from whose hand unmitigated ugliness becomes uglier—who, at length, driven from towns, where people begin to see this, as a dauber, takes refuge among the farm houses; at first paints the farmers and their wives, their ugly faces stretching to the very edge of the frames, and is at last reduced to paint the favourite cow, or the fat ox—the prodigal (alas! no; the simply miserable, in mistaking his profession) feeding the swine, and with them, and they not over-proud of his doings. Then there is another poor, self-deluded character among the tribe. I have the man in my eye at this moment. It is not long since I paid him a visit to see a great historical composition, which I had been requested to look at. It was the most miserable of all miserable daubs; yet so conspicuously set off with colours and hardness, that the eye could not escape it. It was a most determined eye-sore. The quiet, the modest demeanour of the young man at first deceived me; I ventured to find some trifling fault. The artist was up—still his manner was quiet—somewhat, in truth, contemptuously so; but, as for modesty, I doubt not he was modest in every other matter relating to himself; but, in art, he as calmly talked of himself, Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle, as a trio—that two had obtained immortality of fame, and that he sought the same, and, he trusted, by the same means, and believed with similar powers: as calmly did he speak in this manner, as if it were a thing long settled in his own mind and in fate—and in the manner of an indulgent communication. He lamented the lack of taste and knowledge in the world; that so little was real art appreciated, that he was obliged to submit to the drudgery of portrait. Submit!—and such portraits. Poor fellow! how long will he get sitters to submit? I have recently heard the fate of one of his great compositions. He had persuaded the vicar and church-wardens of a parish to accept a picture. He attended the putting it up. It was a fine old church. With the quietest conceit, he had a fine east window blocked up to receive the picture—had the tables of Commandments mutilated, and thrust up in a corner—damaged the wall to give effect to the picture—and really believed that he was conferring an honour and benefit upon the parishioners and the county. Soon, however, men of better taste and sense began to cry out. The incumbent died. His successor related to me the shocking occurrence of the picture. He had it removed, and the damage done to the edifice repaired. And what became of the grand historical? The church-warden alone, who, in the pride of his heart and ignorance, had paid the poor artist for the colours, gladly took the picture. His account of it was, that it was so powerful in his small room, as to affect several ladies to tears—and that he had covered it with a thin gauze, to keep down the fierceness of the sentiment; for it was too affecting. Now, here is a man, who, if you should happen to sit to him, will think it the greatest condescension to take your picture, and will paint you such as you never would wish to be seen or known. There is a predilection now for schools of design; and the world will teem with these poor creatures.

Many there are, however, who, having considerable ability, have much to struggle against—who love the profession of art, and with that unaccountable giving themselves up to it, are quite unfit for any other occupation in life, yet, from adverse circumstances—ill health, strange temperaments—do not succeed. Many years ago, I knew a very interesting young man, and a very industrious one, too, of very considerable ability as a painter, but not, at that time, of portraits. While hard at work, getting just enough to live by, he was seized with an illness that threatened rapid consumption. The kind physician who gratuitously visited him, told him one day—"You cannot live here. I do not say that you have a year of safety in this climate, or a month of safety, but you have not weeks. You must instantly go to a warmer climate." Ill, and without means, beyond the few pounds he could gather from his hasty breaking-up, he had courage to look on the cheerful side of things, and went off in the first vessel to the West Indies. I saw him afterwards. He gave me a history of his adventures. He went from island to island—became portrait-painter—a painter of scenes—of any thing that might offer; by good conduct, urbanity, gentleness, and industry, was respected, liked, and patronized; lived, and sent home a thousand pounds or two—came to England to see his friends for a few months. I saw him on his way to them. He was then in health and spirits—told me the many events of the few years—and in six weeks the climate killed him. But the anecdote of his turning portrait-painter is what I have to tell. On the passage, they touched at one of the islands, and he found but very little money in his pocket; and, while others went off to hotels, or estates of friends, he went his way quietly to seek out cheap lodgings. He found such, which the good woman told him he could have in three hours. He afterwards learned that she waited that time for the then tenant to die in the bed which he was to occupy. Walking away to pass the time, he met some of his fellow passengers, who asked him if he had been to see the governor. He had not. They told him it was necessary he should go. So thither he went. Now, the governor asked him, "What brought him out to the West Indies?" He replied, that he came as an artist. "An artist!" said the governor. "That is a novelty indeed. Have you any specimens? I should like to see them." Now, among his things, he had a miniature of himself, painted by a man who attained eminence in the profession, and whom I knew well. Here, with an ingenuousness characteristic of the man, he acknowledged to me how, starvation staring him in the face, he stared in the governor's; and the governor being rather a hard-featured man, whose likeness, though he had never taken a portrait, he thought he could hit; when the governor admired the miniature, and asked him, "If it was his?" he did not resist the temptation, and said, "Yes." Upon which the governor sat to him. Then others sat to him; and so he left the island, with a replenished purse, and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over, and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring. And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had no conceit.

But you, Eusebius, need not trust or give your countenance, in the way of the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply portraits for "Saracen's Heads."

Foolish artists themselves, who affect to talk of the great style, and set themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as degrading—as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation indeed! —as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to vanity—view it in another light, and it is feeding affection.

I knew a painter, who honourably refused to paint a lady's picture, when he waited upon her on purpose, sent by some injudicious friends to take her portrait in her last days. She had been a woman of great celebrity—she received the painter—but, with a weakness, pointed first to one side of the room where were portraits of earls and bishops, saying, "these are or were all my particular friends"—and then to the other side of the room, to a well filled library—"and these are all my works." "Now," said the painter to me, "I did not think it fair to her reputation to take her portrait—and she had had many taken at better times." Here was one who would not pander to vanity. After all, it is astonishing how few flattering painters there have been. Even he who made Venus, Minerva, and Juno, starting with astonishment at the presence of Queen Elizabeth, certainly made her by far the ugliest of the quartette. You may see the picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or sentimentality.

Do you believe in the story of the origin of portrait—the Grecian maid and her lover? I cannot—for I have often tried my hand, and such frights were the result, that it would have been a cure for love.

For lack of the art of portrait-painting, we have really no idea what mankind were like before the time of our Eighth Harry. What we see could not possibly be likenesses, because they are not humanity. But in Holbein's heads, such as the royal collection, published by Chamberlaine, we begin to see what men and women were. What our early Henrys and Edwards were: what the court or the people were, we cannot know; they are buried in the night of art, like the brave who lived before the time of Agamemnon. Perhaps it is quite as well—"omne ignotum pro mirifico"—and who would lose the pleasure of wonder and conjecture, with all its imaginary phantasmagoria? We might have a mesmeric coma that might put us in possession of the past, if it can of the future—and gratify curiosity wofully at the expense of what is more valuable than that kind of truth. A mesmeric painter may take the portrait of Helen of Troy, and you may knock at your twenty neighbours' doors, and find perhaps a greater beauty, especially if chronology be trusted as to her age at the Trojan war. Would you like to see a veritable portrait of Angelica—or of your Orlando in his madness?

The great portrait-painter—the sun, in his diurnal course all over the world, may be, for aught we know, photographing mankind, and registering us, too; and, if we are to judge from the specimens we do see, the collection cannot be very flattering. Who dares call the sun a flatterer?

 
"... Solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat?"
 

At the very moment that you are sitting to your man, to be set off with smirk and smile and the graces of art, you are perhaps making a most formidable impression elsewhere. You would not like to

 
"Look upon this picture, and on this."
 

Some poor country people have an unaccountable dislike to having their portraits taken. Savages think them second selves, and that may be bewitched and punished; possibly something of this feeling may be at the bottom of the dislike. I was once sketching in a country village, and an old woman went by, and I put her into the picture. Some, looking over me, called out to her that her likeness was taken. She cried, because she had not her best cap and gown on. I was once positively driven from a cottage door, because a woman thought I was "taking her off." I know not but that it was a commendable wish in the old woman to appear decent before the world, and so might have been the fine lady's wish—

 
"Betty, put on a little red,
One surely need not look a fright when dead."
 

We choose to be satirical, and call it vanity; but put both anecdotes into tolerably good grave Latin, and name them Portia and Lucretia, and we should have as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you, Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady, too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate family or friends for whose gratification they are painted. I much like the idea of burying them at last. I will show you how estimable these things sometimes are. You remember a portrait I have—a gentleman in a dress of blue and gold—in crayon. Did I ever tell you the anecdote respecting him? If not, you shall have it, as I had from my father. If you recollect the picture, you must recollect that it is of a very handsome man. His horses took fright, the carriage was overturned, and he was killed upon the spot. The property came to my father. One day an unknown lady, in a handsome equipage, stopped at his door, and, in an interview with him, requested a portrait of this very person, not the one you have seen, but another in oil-colour, and of that the head only. My father cut it out, and gave it to her. Many, many years afterwards it was returned to him by an unknown hand, with an account of the accident that caused the death, pasted on the back; and it is now in my possession. The lady was never known. No, Eusebius, we must not deny portrait-painters, nor portrait painting. It is the line in which we excel—and that we have above all others patronized, and had great men too arise from our encouragement—Who are so rich in Vandyks as we are? And some we have had better than the world allowed them to be—Sir Peter Lely was occasionally an admirable painter—though Sir Joshua did say, "We must go beyond him now." There was Sir Joshua himself, and Gainsborough—would that either were alive to take you, Eusebius, though I were to pay for the sitting. I think too, that I should have given the preference to Gainsborough—it would have been so true. Did you ever see his portrait of Foote?—so unaffected—it must be like. I won't be invidious by naming any, where we have so many able portrait-painters—but if you have not fixed upon your man, come to me, and I will tell half-a-dozen, and we will go to them, and you shall judge for yourself—and if you like miniature, there are those who will make what is small great. What wonderful power Cooper had in this way. I recently had in my hands a wondrous and marvellous portrait of Andrew Marvell by him. The sturdy honest Andrew. This man Cooper, had such wonderful largeness of style, of execution too, even in his highest finished small oil pictures—such as in this of Andrew Marvell. We had an age, certainly, of very bad taste, and it was not extinct in the days of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; nay, sometimes under both of these, I am sorry to say, it was even made worse. The age of shepherds and shepherdesses—in the case of Gainsborough, brought down to downright rustics. This, of making the sitters affect to be what they were not, was bad enough—and it was any thing but poetical. But it was infinitely worse in the itinerants of the day—and is very well ridiculed by Goldsmith, who lived much among painters, in his Vicar of Wakefield and family sitting for the family picture. We have happily quite got out of that folly. But we are getting into one of most unpoetical pageantry—portrait likenesses. We have not seen yet a good portrait of Wellington, and the Queen, or the Prince; and if they must send their portraits to foreign courts, let them be advised to learn, if they know not yet how, and we are told they do, to paint them themselves. Montaigne tells us, that he was present one day at Bar-le-duc, when King Francis the Second, for a memorial of Réné, King of Sicily, was presented with a picture the king had drawn of himself. Some how or other, kings and queens are apt to have too many trappings about them; and the man is often chosen to paint, who paints velvets and satins best, and faces the worst. That is the reason we have them so ill done; and even if the faces are well painted, they are overpowered by the ostentation of the dress. Now, the Venetian portrait-painters contrived to keep down the glare of all this ornament, to make it even more rich, but not obtruding. I remember seeing a portrait of our queen, where, in a large bonnet, her face looked like a small pip in the midst of an orange. It would be a good thing, too, if you could contrive to spend a week or so in company with your painter before you sit, that he may know you. Many a characteristic may he lose, for want of knowing that it is a characteristic; and may give you that in expression which does not belong to you, while he may miss "your sweet expression about your eyes." He may purse up your large and generous mouth, because you may screw it for a moment to keep some ill-timed conceit from bolting out, and, besides missing that noble feature, may give you an expression of a caution that is not yours. A painter the other day, as I am assured, in a country town, made a great mistake in a characteristic, and it was discovered by a country farmer. It was the portrait of a lawyer—an attorney, who, from humble pretensions, had made a good deal of money, and enlarged thereby his pretensions, but somehow or other not very much enlarged his respectability. To his pretensions was added that of having his portrait put up in the parlour, as large as life. There it is, very flashy and very true—one hand in his breast, the other in his small-clothes' pocket. It is market-day—the country clients are called in—opinions are passed—the family present, and all complimentary—such as, "Never saw such a likeness in the course of all my born days. As like 'un as he can stare." "Well, sure enough, there he is." But at last—there is one dissentient! "'Tain't like—not very—no, 'tain't," said a heavy middle-aged farmer, with rather a dry look, too, about his mouth, and a moist one at the corner of his eye, and who knew the attorney well. All were upon him. "Not like!—How not like? Say where is it not like?" "Why, don't you see," said the man, "he's got his hand in his breeches' pocket. It would be as like again if he had his hand in any other body's pocket." The family portrait was removed, especially as, after this, many came on purpose to see it; and so the attorney was lowered a peg, and the farmer obtained the reputation of a connoisseur.

But it is high time, Eusebius, that I should dismiss you and portrait-painting, or you will think your thus sitting to me worse than sitting for your picture; which picture, if it be of my Eusebius as I know him and love him, will ever be a living speaking likeness, but if it be one but of outward feature and resemblance, it will soon pass off to make up the accumulation of dead lumber—while do you, Eusebius, as you are, vive valeque.