THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
5> 
 
 > > 
 
 
 f^^Zzs 
 
 e. "i ^t 
 
 ^ ;^ 
 
 > > > > 
 
 JJ* 
 

 I 
 
NOTES BY MR. RUSKIN 
 
 ON 
 
 SAMUEL PROUT 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM HUNT 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 A LOAN COLLECTION OF 
 DRAWINGS 
 
 EXHIBITED AT 
 
 The Fine Art Society s Galleries, 
 
 148 NEW BOND STREET. 
 
 1879-80. 
 

 NOTE. 
 
 I HAVE to thank the kind friends who have 
 contributed drawings. I regret that very many 
 of them have had to be returned, simply because I 
 had already to my hand examples which sufficiently 
 illustrated the lessons I wished to teach in putting 
 
 together these notes. 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 TL 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT has been only in compliance with the often 
 and earnestly urged request of my friend 
 Mr. Marcus Huish, that I have thrown the following 
 notes together, on the works of two artists belonging 
 to a time with which nearly all associations are now 
 ended in the mind of general society ; and of which 
 my own memories, it seemed to me, could give 
 little pleasure, (even if I succeeded in rendering them 
 intelligible,) to a public indulged with far more curious 
 arts, and eager for otherwise poignant interests than 
 those which seemed admirable, though not pre- 
 tending to greatness, and were felt to be delightful, 
 thpugh not provoking enthusiasm, in the quiet and 
 little diverted lives of the English middle classes, 
 1 sixty years since.' 
 
 It is especially to be remembered that drawings 
 of this simple character were made for these same 
 middle classes, exclusively : and even for the 
 second order of the middle classes, more accu- 
 rately expressed by the term 'bourgeoisie.' The 
 great people always bought Canaletto, not Prout, 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 and Van Huysum, not Hunt. There was indeed 
 no quality in the bright little water-colours, which 
 could look other than pert in ghostly corridors, and 
 petty in halls of state ; but they gave an unques- 
 tionable tone of liberalmindedness to a suburban 
 villa, and were the cheerfullest possible decorations 
 for a moderate-sized breakfast-parlour, opening on 
 a nicely mown lawn. Their liveliness even rose, on 
 occasion, to the charity of beautifying the narrow 
 chambers of those whom business or fixed habit 
 still retained in the obscurity of London itself ; and 
 I remember with peculiar respect the pride of a 
 benevolent physician, who never would exchange 
 his neighbourhood to the poor of St. Giles's for the 
 lucrative lustre of a West End Square, in wreath- 
 ing his tiny little front-drawing-room with Hunt's 
 loveliest apple-blossom, and taking the patients for 
 whom he had prescribed fresh air, the next instant 
 on a little visit to the country. 
 
 Nor was this adaptation to the tastes and circum- 
 stances of the London citizen, a constrained or obse- 
 quious compliance on the part of the kindly artists. 
 They were themselves, in mind, as in habits of life, 
 completely a part of the characteristic metropolitan 
 population whom an occasional visit to the Con- 
 tinent always thrilled with surprise on finding them- 
 selves again among persons who familiarly spoke 
 French ; and whose summer holidays, though more 
 customary, amused them nevertheless with the 
 adventure, and beguiled them with the pastoral 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 charm, of an uninterrupted picnic. Mr. Prout lived 
 at Brixton, just at the rural extremity of Cold 
 Harbour Lane, where the spire of Brixton church, 
 the principal architectural ornament of the neigh- 
 bourhood, could not but greatly exalt, by comparison, 
 the impressions received from that of Strasburg 
 Cathedral, or the Hotel de Ville of Bruxelles ; and 
 Mr. Hunt, though often in the spring and summer 
 luxuriating in country lodgings, was only properly 
 at home in the Hampstead road,* and never painted 
 a cluster of nuts without some expression, visible 
 enough by the manner of their presentation, of the 
 pleasure it was to him to see them in the shell, 
 instead of in a bag at the greengrocer's. 
 
 The lightly rippled level of this civic life lay, 
 as will be easily imagined, far beneath the dis- 
 tractions, while it maintained itself meekly, yet 
 severely, independent of the advantages, held out 
 by the social system of what is most reverently 
 called ' Town.' Neither the disposition, the health, 
 nor the means of either artist admitted of their 
 spending their evenings, in general, elsewhere than 
 by their own firesides ; nor could a spring levee of 
 English peeresses and foreign ambassadors be in- 
 vited by the modest painter whose only studio was 
 his 'little back-parlour, commanding a partial view of 
 the scullery steps and the water-butt. The fluctua- 
 
 * See his own inscription, with London in capitals, under 
 No. 132. 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 tions of moral and aesthetic sentiment in the public 
 mind were of small moment to the humble colourist, 
 who depended only on the consistency of its views 
 on the subject of early strawberries : and the thrilling 
 subjects presented by the events or politics of the 
 day, were equally indifferent to the designer who in- 
 vited interest to nothing later than the architecture 
 of the 15th century. Even the treasures of scientific 
 instruction, and marvels of physical discovery, were 
 without material influence on the tranquillity of the 
 two native painters' uneducated skill. Prout drew 
 every lovely street in Europe without troubling 
 himself to learn a single rule of perspective ; while 
 Hunt painted mossy banks for five-and-twenty 
 years, without ever caring to know a Sphagnum 
 from a Polypody, and embossed or embowered his 
 birds' eggs to a perfection, which Greek connois- 
 seurs would have assured us the mother had unsus 
 pectingly sate on, without enlarging his range of 
 ornithological experience beyond the rarities of 
 tomtit and hedge-sparrow. 
 
 This uncomplaining resignation of patronage, 
 and unblushing blindness to instruction, were allied, 
 in both painters, with a steady consistency in tech- 
 nical practice, which, from the first, and to the last, 
 precluded both from all hope of promotion to the 
 honours, as it withheld them from the peril of 
 entanglement in the rivalries, connected with the 
 system of exhibition in the Royal Academy. Mr. 
 Prout s method of work was entirely founded on the 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 quite elementary qualities of white paper and black 
 Cumberland lead ; and expressly terminated within 
 the narrow range of prismatic effects producible by 
 a brown or blue outline, with a wash of ochre or 
 cobalt. Mr. Hunt's early drawings depended for 
 their peculiar charm on the most open and simple 
 management of transparent colour ; and his later 
 ones, for their highest attainments, on the flexibility 
 of a pigment which yielded to the slightest touch and 
 softest motion of a hand always more sensitive than 
 firm. The skill which unceasing practice, within 
 limits thus modestly unrelaxed, and with facilities of 
 instrument thus openly confessed, enabled each 
 draughtsman in his special path to attain, was exerted 
 with a vividness of instinct somewhat resembling 
 that of animals, only in the slightest degree con- 
 scious of praise-worthiness, but animated by a 
 healthy complacency, as little anxious for external 
 sympathy as the self-content of a bee in the translu- 
 cent symmetry of its cell, or of a chaffinch in the 
 silver tracery of her nest, and uniting, through the 
 course of their uneventful and active lives, the 
 frankness of the bird with the industry of the 
 insect. 
 
 In all these points of view the drawings to 
 which I venture, not without hesitation, to call the 
 passing attention of the public, can claim regard 
 only as examples of genius both narrowed and 
 depressed ; yet healthy enough to become more 
 elastic under depression ; and scintillant enough to 
 
io PREFACE. 
 
 be made more vivid by contraction. But there are 
 other respects in which these seemingly unimportant 
 works challenge graver study ; and illustrate phases 
 of our own national mind, I might perhaps say, 
 even of national civilisation, which coincide with 
 many curious changes in social feelings ; and may 
 lead to results not easily calculable in social happi- 
 ness. 
 
 If the reader has any familiarity with the gal- 
 leries of painting in the great cities of Europe, he 
 cannot but retain a clear, though somewhat mono- 
 tonously calm, impression of the character of those 
 polished flower-pieces, or still-life pieces, which 
 occupy subordinate corners in their smaller rooms ; 
 and invite to moments of repose, or frivolity, the 
 attention and imagination which have been wearied 
 in admiring the attitudes of heroism, and sym- 
 pathising with the sentiments of piety. Recalling 
 to his memory the brightest examples of these, 
 which his experience can supply, he will find that 
 all the older ones agree, if flower-pieces in a 
 certain courtliness and formality of arrangement, 
 implying that the highest honours which flowers 
 can attain are in being wreathed into grace of 
 garlands, or assembled in variegation of bouquets, 
 for the decoration of beauty, or flattery of noblesse. 
 If fruit or still-life pieces, they agree no less dis- 
 tinctly in directness of reference to the supreme 
 hour when the destiny of dignified fruit is to be 
 accomplished in a royal dessert ; and the furred and 
 
PREFACE. it 
 
 feathered life of hill and forest may bear witness to 
 the Wisdom of Providence by its extinction for the 
 kitchen dresser. 
 
 Irrespectively of these ornamental virtues, and 
 culinary utilities, the painter never seems to perceive 
 any conditions of beauty in the things themselves, 
 which would make them worth regard for their own 
 sake : nor, even in these appointed functions, are they 
 ever supposed to be worth painting, unless the 
 pleasures they procure be distinguished as those of 
 the most exalted society. No artists of the old 
 school would ever think of constructing a subject 
 out of the herbs of a cottage garden, or viands of 
 a rural feast. Whatever interest was then taken 
 in the life of the lower orders involved always some 
 reference to their rudenesses or vices ; and rarely 
 exhibits itself in any other expression than that ox 
 contempt for their employments, and reproach to 
 their recreation. 
 
 In all such particulars the feelings shown in the 
 works of Hunt, and of the school with which he was 
 associated, directly reverse those of the preceding 
 age. So far from being garlanded into any polite 
 symmetry, his primroses fresh from the bank, and 
 hawthorns white from the hedge, confess at once 
 their artless origin in the village lane, have evi- 
 dently been gathered only at the choice, and thrown 
 down at the caprice, of the farmer's children, and 
 cheerfully disclaim all hope of ever contributing to 
 the splendours or felicities of the great. The bloom 
 
12 PREFACE. 
 
 with which he bedews the grape, the frosted gold 
 with which he frets the pine, are spent chiefly to 
 show what a visible grace there is in the fruits of 
 the earth, which we may sometimes feel that it is 
 rude to touch, and swinish to taste ; and the ten- 
 dernesses of hand and thought that soothe the rose- 
 grey breast of the fallen dove, and weave the couch 
 of moss for its quiet wings, propose no congratu- 
 lation to the spectator on the future flavour of the 
 bird in a pie. 
 
 It is a matter of extreme difficulty, but of no 
 less interest, to distinguish, in this order of painting, 
 what part of it has its origin in a plebeian not to 
 say vulgar simplicity, which education would have 
 invested with a severer charm ; and what part is 
 grounded on a real sense of natural beauty, more 
 pure and tender than could be discerned amid the 
 luxury of courts, or stooped to by the pride of 
 nobles. 
 
 For an especial instance, the drawing of the 
 interior, No. 1 74, may be taken as a final example 
 of the confidence which the painter felt in his power 
 of giving some kind of interest to the most homely 
 objects, and rendering the transitions of ordinary 
 light and shade impressive, though he had nothing 
 more sacred to illuminate than a lettuce, and nothing 
 more terrible to hide than a reaping-hook. The 
 dim light from the flint-glass window, and the 
 general disposition and scale of the objects it 
 falls on, remind me sometimes, however unreason- 
 
PREFACE. 13 
 
 ably, of the little oratory into which the deeply-worn 
 steps ascend from the Beauchamp Chapel at War- 
 wick. But I know perfectly well, and partly acknow- 
 ledge the Tightness of his judgment, though I cannot 
 analyse it, that Hunt would no more have painted 
 that knightly interior instead of this, with helmets 
 lying about instead of saucepans, and glowing 
 heraldries staying the light instead of that sea-green 
 lattice, than he would have gone for a walk round 
 his farm in a court dress. 
 
 'Plebeian not to say vulgar' choice; but I 
 fear that even ' vulgar,' with full emphasis, must be 
 said sometimes in the end. Not that a pipkin of 
 cream in Devonshire is to be thought of less reve- 
 rently than a vase of oil or canister of bread in 
 Attica ; but that the English dairy-maid in her way 
 can hold her own with the Attic Canephora, and 
 the peasant children of all countries where leaves 
 are green and waters clear, possess a grace of their 
 own no less divine than that of branch and wave. 
 And it is to be sorrowfully confessed that the good 
 old peach and apple painter was curiously insensible 
 to this brighter human beauty, and though he could 
 scarcely pass a cottage door around his Berkshire 
 home without seeing groups of which Correggio 
 would have made Cupids, and Luini cherubs, turned 
 away from them all, to watch the rough plough-boy 
 at his dinner, or enliven a study of his parlour-maid 
 at her glass (158), with the elegance of a red and 
 green pincushion. 
 
i 4 PREFACE. 
 
 And yet, for all this, the subtle sense of beauty 
 above referred to, was always in his mind, and may 
 be proved, and partly illustrated, by notice of two 
 very minute, but very constant, differences between 
 his groups of still life, and those of the Dutch 
 painters. In every flower-piece of pretension, by 
 the masters of that old school, two accessory points 
 of decoration are never absent. The first of these 
 is the dew-drop, or rain-drop it may be two or 
 three drops, of either size, on one of the smoothest 
 petals of the central flower. This is always, and 
 quite openly, done to show how well the painter 
 can do it, not in the least with any enjoyment of 
 wetness in the flower. The Dutchman never got 
 a wet flower to paint from. He had his exquisite 
 and exemplary poppy or tulip brought in from the 
 market as he had occasion, and put on its dew-drops 
 for it as a lady's dressing-maid puts on her diamonds, 
 merely for state. But Hunt saw the flowers in his 
 little garden really bright in the baptismal dawn, or 
 drenched with the rain of noontide, and knew that 
 no mortal could paint any real likeness of that 
 heaven-shed light ; and never once attempted it ; 
 you will find nothing in any of his pictures merely 
 put on that you may try to wipe it off. 
 
 But there was a further tour-de-force demanded 
 of the Dutch workman, without which all his 
 happiest preceding achievements would have been 
 unacknowledged. Not only a dewdrop, but, in 
 some depth of bell, or cranny of leaf, a bee, or a 
 
PREFACE. 15 
 
 fly, was needful for the complete satisfaction of the 
 connoisseur. In the articulation of the fly's legs, or 
 neurography of the bee's wings, the Genius of 
 painting was supposed to signify her accepted 
 disciples ; and their work went forth to the 
 European world, thenceforward, without question, 
 as worthy of its age and country. But, without 
 recognising in myself, or desiring to encourage in 
 my scholars, any unreasonable dislike or dread of 
 the lower orders of living creatures, I trust that 
 the reader will feel with me that none of Mr. Hunt's 
 peaches or plums would be made daintier by the 
 detection on them of even the most cunningly latent 
 wasp, or cautiously rampant caterpillar ; and will 
 accept, without so much opposition as it met with 
 forty years ago, my then first promulgated, but 
 steadily since repeated assertion, that the * modern 
 painter' had in these matters less vanity than the 
 ancient one, and better taste. 
 
 Another interesting evidence of Hunt's feeling 
 for beauty is to be found in the unequal distribution 
 of his pains to different parts of his subject. This 
 is indeed, one of the peculiar characteristics of our 
 modern manner, and in the abstract, not a laudable 
 one. All the old masters, without exception, com- 
 plete their pictures from corner to corner with a 
 strictly driven level of deliberation ; and whether it 
 be a fold of drapery, a blade of grass, or a wreath 
 of cloud, on which they are subordinately occupied, 
 the pencil moves at the same tranquil pace, and 
 
16 PREFACE. 
 
 the qualities of the object are rendered with the same 
 fixed attention. In this habitual virtue, the dull 
 and the brilliant, the weak and the mighty, concur 
 without exception ; holding it for their first point of 
 honour to be thorough craftsmen ; and to carry on 
 the solicitude of their skill throughout the piece, 
 as an armourer would hammer a corslet, or a 
 housewife knit a stocking, leaving no edge un- 
 tempered, and no thread unfastened. Modern petu- 
 lance and incompetence lead, on the contrary, to 
 the flaunting of dexterity in one place, and the 
 pretence of ease in another ; complete some portions 
 of the subject with hypocritical affection, and 
 abandon others in ostentatious contempt. In some 
 few cases, the manner arises from a true eagerness 
 of imagination, or kindly and natural desire for 
 sympathy in particular likings ; but in the plurality 
 of instances, the habit allies itself with mistaken 
 principles of art, and protects impatience and want 
 of skill under the shield of philosophy. 
 
 Few modern pieces of oil-painting are more 
 accomplished or deliberate than those of Meissonier : 
 and in the example placed on the table in the 
 centre of the room, his subject was one which he 
 certainly would not have treated, consciously, with 
 prosaic indignity of manner, or injurious economy of 
 toil. Yet the inequality of workmanship has de- 
 pressed what might have been a most sublime picture 
 almost to the level of a scenic effect. The dress 
 of the Emperor and housings of his steed are 
 
PREFACE. 17 
 
 wrought with the master s utmost care : but the 
 landscape is nearly unintelligible, and the ground a 
 mere conventional diaper of feeble green and grey. 
 
 It is difficult to describe the height to which 
 the picture would have risen above its present 
 power, if a ruined French village had been repre- 
 sented with Flemish precision amidst the autumnal 
 twilight of the woods ; and the ground over which 
 the wearied horse bears his dreaming rider, made 
 lovely with its native wild-flowers. 
 
 In all such instances, the hold which a true 
 sense of beauty has over the painter's mind may 
 be at once ascertained by observing the nature of 
 the objects to which his pains have been devoted. 
 No master with a fine instinct for colour would 
 spend his time with deliberate preference on the 
 straps and buckles of modern horse-furniture, rather 
 than on the surrounding landscape or foreground 
 flowers, though in a subject like this he would have 
 felt it right to finish both, to the spectator's content, 
 if not to his amazement. And among the numerous 
 rustic scenes by Hunt which adorn these walls, 
 though all are painted with force and spirit, none 
 are recommended to our curiosity by an elaborate 
 finish given to ungraceful objects. His final powers 
 are only employed on motives like the dead doves 
 in Nos. 139 and 145, accompanied by incidents 
 more or less beautiful and seemly. 
 
 I must even further guard my last sentence, by 
 the admission that the means by which his utmost 
 
1 8 PREFACE. 
 
 intentions of finish are accomplished, can never, in 
 the most accurate sense, be termed ' elaborate/ 
 When the thing to be represented is minute, the 
 touches which express it are necessarily minute 
 also ; they cannot be bold on the edge of a nutshell, 
 nor free within the sphere of a bird's nest ; but they 
 are always frank and clear, to a degree which may 
 seem not only imperfect, but even harsh or of- 
 fensive, to eyes trained in more tender or more 
 formal schools. This broken execution by detached 
 and sharply defined touches became indeed, in pro- 
 cess of years, a manner in which the painter some- 
 what too visibly indulged, or prided himself; but it 
 had its origin and authority in the care with which he 
 followed the varieties of colour in the shadow, no 
 less than in the lights, of even the smallest objects. 
 It is easy to obtain smoothness and unity of 
 gradation when working with a single tint, but if 
 all accidents of local colour and all differences of 
 hue between direct and reflected light are to be 
 rendered with absolute purity, some breaking of 
 the texture becomes inevitable. In many cases, 
 also, of the most desirable colours, no pigments 
 mixed on the palette, but only interlaced touches 
 of pure tints on the paper, will attain the required 
 effect. The indefinable primrose colour, for instance, 
 of the glazed porringer in the foreground of No. 174 
 could not possibly have been given with a mixed 
 tint. The breaking of grey through gold by which 
 it has been reached is one of the prettiest pieces of 
 
PREFACE. 19 
 
 work to be seen in these rooms ; it exhibits the 
 utmost skill of the artist, and is an adequate justifi- 
 cation of his usual manner. 
 
 Among the earliest statements of principles of 
 art made in the Stones of Venice, one of those 
 chiefly fortunate in obtaining credit with my readers 
 was the course of argument urging frankness in the 
 confession of the special means by which any artistic 
 result has been obtained, and of the limitations 
 which these appointed instruments, and the laws 
 proper to the use of them, set to its scope. Thus 
 the threads in tapestry, the tesserae in mosaic, the 
 joints of the stones in masonry, and the movements 
 of the pencil in painting, are shown without hesita- 
 tion by the greatest masters in those arts, and often 
 enforced and accented by the most ingenious : while 
 endeavours to conceal them, as to make needlework 
 look like pencilling, or efface, in painting, the rugged 
 freedom or joyful lightness of its handiwork into the 
 deceptive image of a natural surface, are, without 
 any exception, signs of declining intelligence, and 
 benumbed or misguided feelings. 
 
 I therefore esteem Hunt's work all the more 
 exemplary in acknowledging without disguise the 
 restrictions imposed on the use of water-colour as 
 a medium for vigorously realistic effects : and I have 
 placed pieces of it in my Oxford school as standards 
 of imitative (as distinguished from decorative) 
 colour, in the Tightness and usefulness of which I 
 have every day more confirmed trust. I am aware 
 
2 o PREFACE. 
 
 of no other pieces of art, in modern days, at once 
 so sincere and so accomplished : only let it be noted 
 that I use the term ' sincere ' in this case, not as 
 imputing culpable fallacy to pictures of more 
 imaginative power, but only as implying the un- 
 biassed directness of aim at the realization of very 
 simple facts, which is often impossible to the 
 passions, or inconsistent with the plans, of greater 
 designers. 
 
 In more cautiously guarded terms of praise, and 
 with far less general proposal of their peculiar 
 qualities for imitation, I have yet, both in my earlier 
 books, and in recent lectures at Oxford, spoken of 
 the pencil sketches of Prout with a reverence and 
 enthusiasm which it is my chief personal object in 
 the present exhibition to justify, or at least to 
 explain ; so that future readers may not be offended, 
 as I have known some former ones to be, by 
 expressions which seemed to them incompatible 
 with the general tenor of my teaching. 
 
 It is quite true that my feelings towards this 
 painter are much founded on, or at least coloured 
 by, early associations ; but I have never found the 
 memories of my childhood beguile me into any 
 undue admiration of the architecture in Billiter 
 Street or Brunswick Square ; and I believe the 
 characters which first delighted me in the drawings 
 of this in his path unrivalled artist, deserve the 
 best attention and illustration of which in my ad- 
 vanced years I am capable. 
 
PREFACE. 21 
 
 The little drawing, No. 95, bought, I believe, 
 by my grandfather, hung in the corner of our little 
 dining parlour at Heme Hill as early as I can 
 remember ; and had a most fateful and continual 
 power over my childish mind. Men are made what 
 they finally become, only by the external accidents 
 which are in harmony with their inner nature. I 
 was not made a student of Gothic merely because 
 this little drawing of Prout's was the first I knew ; 
 but the hereditary love of antiquity, and thirst for 
 country life, which were as natural to me as a little 
 jackdaw's taste for steeples, or dabchick's for reeds, 
 were directed and tempered in a very definite way 
 by the qualities of this single and simple drawing. 
 
 In the first place, it taught me generally to like 
 ruggedness ; and the conditions of joint in mould- 
 ing, and fitting of stones in walls which were most 
 weather-worn, and like the grey dykes of a Cumber- 
 land hill-side. This predilection passion, I might 
 more truly call it holds me yet so strongly, that I 
 can never quite justly conceive the satisfaction of 
 the original builders, even of the most delicate 
 edifice, in seeing its comely stones well set together. 
 Giotto's tower, and the subtly Cyclopean walls of 
 early Verona, have indeed chastised the prejudice 
 out of me, so far as regards work in marble enriched 
 with mosaic and pure sculpture ; but I had almost 
 rather see Furness or Fountains Abbey strewed in 
 grass-grown heaps by their brooksides, than in the 
 first glow and close setting of their fresh-hewn sand- 
 
 c 
 
22 PREFACE. 
 
 stone. Whatever is rationally justifiable in this 
 feeling, so far as it is dependent on just reverence 
 for the signs of antiquity, and may therefore be 
 trusted to, as existing generally in the minds of 
 persons of thoughtful temperament, was enough ex- 
 plained, long ago, in the passages of the Seven 
 Lamps of Architecture, which, the book not being 
 now generally accessible, I reprint in Appendix I ; 
 but openness of joints and roughness of masonry 
 are not exclusively signs of age or decay in build- 
 ings : and I did not at that time enough insist on 
 the propriety, and even the grace, of such forms of 
 literal ' rustication ' * as are compelled by coarseness 
 of materials, and plainness of builders, when proper 
 regard is had to economy, and just honour rendered 
 to provincial custom and local handicraft. These 
 are now so little considered that the chief difficulties 
 I have had in the minute architectural efforts possible 
 at Brantwood have been to persuade my Coniston 
 builder into satisfaction with Coniston slate ; and 
 retention of Coniston manners in dressing or 
 rather, leaving undressed its primitively fractured 
 edges. If I ever left him alone for a day, some 
 corner stone was sure to be sent for from Bath or 
 Portland, and the ledges I had left to invite stone- 
 
 * All the forms of massive foundation of which the aspect, 
 in buildings of pretension, has been described by this word, took 
 their origin from the palaces in Florence, whose foundations 
 were laid with unchiselled blocks of the grey gritstone of Fesole, 
 and looked like a piece of its crags. 
 
PREFACE. 23 
 
 crop and swallows, trimmed away in the advanced 
 style of the railway station at Carnforth. 
 
 There is more however to be noted in this little 
 old-fashioned painting, than mere delight in weedy 
 eaves and mortarless walls. Pre-eminently its repose 
 in such placid subjects of thought as the cottage, and 
 its neighbouring wood, contain for an easily-pleased 
 observer, without the least recommendation of 
 them by graceful incident, or plausible story. If 
 we can be content with sunshine on our old brown 
 roof, and the sober green of a commonplace English 
 wood, protected by a still more commonplace tarred 
 paling, and allowing the fancy therefore not to 
 expatiate even so far as the hope of a walk in it 
 it is well ; and if not, poor Prout has no more to 
 offer us, and will not even concede the hope that 
 one of those diagonally-dressed children may be the 
 least pretty, or provoke us, by the gleam of a riband, 
 or quaintness of a toy, into asking so much as what 
 the itinerant pedlar has in his basket. 
 
 I was waiting for a train the other day at Dover, 
 and in an old-fashioned print-shop on the hill up to 
 the Priory station, saw a piece of as old-fashioned 
 picture-making, elaborately engraved, and of curious 
 interest to me, at the moment, with reference to my 
 present essay. It belonged to the dull British 
 school which was founded on conscientious fol- 
 lowing of the miniature methods and crowded 
 incidents of Dutch painting; and always dutifully pro- 
 posed to give the spectator as much entertainment 
 
24 PREFACE. 
 
 as could be collected into the given space of canvas. 
 There was an ideal village street to begin with, the 
 first cottage gable at the corner having more paint- 
 ing (and very good and pretty painting) spent on 
 the mere thatch of it, than there is in the entire 
 Prout drawing under our notice. Beyond the 
 laborious gable came some delicately-branched trees ; 
 and then the village street, in and out, half a-mile 
 long, with shops, and signs, and what not ; and then 
 the orthodox church-steeple, and then more trees, 
 and then a sky with rolling white clouds after 
 Wouvermans ; but all this, though the collected 
 quantity of it would have made half-a-dozen country 
 villages, if well pulled out, was only the beginning 
 of the subject. Gable, street, church, rookery, and 
 sky, were all, in the painter's mind, too thin and 
 spare entertainment. So out of the gable-window 
 looked a frightened old woman out of the cottage- 
 door rushed an angry old man ; over the garden 
 palings tumbled two evil-minded boys, after the 
 evil-minded boys rushed an indignantly-minded dog ; 
 and in the centre of the foreground, cynosure of the 
 composition, were, a couple of fighting-cocks, one 
 fallen, the other crowing for conquest ; highly 
 finished, both, from wattle to spur. And the absolute 
 pictorial value of the whole, church and sky village 
 and startled inhabitants vagabond boys vindictive 
 dog and victorious bird, (the title of the picture 
 being the Moment of Victory ') the intrinsic 
 value of the whole, I say, being not the twentieth 
 
PREFACE. 25 
 
 part of a Hunt's five-minutes sketch of one cock's 
 feather. 
 
 And yet it was all prettily painted, as I said ; 
 and possessed every conceivable quality that can be 
 taught in a school, or bought for money : and the 
 artist who did it had probably in private life, a fair 
 average quantity of sense and feeling, but had left 
 both out of his picture, in order to imitate what he 
 had been taught was fine, and produce what he ex- 
 pected would pay. 
 
 Take another instance, more curious, and 
 nearer to matters in hand. The little photograph, 
 No. 117 on the south side of the screen, was made 
 in 1858 (by my own setting of the camera), in 
 the courtyard of one of the prettiest yet remaining 
 fragments of 15th century domestic buildings in 
 Abbeville. The natural vineleaves consent in grace 
 and glow with the life of the old wood carving ; and 
 though the modern white porcelain image ill re- 
 places the revolution-deposed Madonna, and only 
 pedestals of saints, and canopies, are left on the 
 propping beams of the gateway ; and though the 
 cask, and cooper's tools, and gardener's spade and 
 ladder are little in accord with what was once stately 
 in the gate, and graceful in the winding stair, the 
 declining shadows of the past mingle with the hard- 
 ship of the present day in no unkindly sadness ; 
 and the little angle of courtyard, if tenderly painted 
 in the depression of its fate, has enough still to 
 occupy as much of our best thought as may be 
 
26 PREFACE. 
 
 modestly claimed for his picture by any master not 
 of the highest order. 
 
 But these motives of wise and gentle feeling 
 would not appeal to the public mind in competitive 
 exhibition. Such efforts as are made by our own 
 landscapists to keep record of any fast vanishing 
 scenes of the kind, are scarcely with good-will ac- 
 cepted even in our minor art galleries : and leave to 
 share in the lustre of the Parisian 'Salon de 1873' 
 could only be hoped for by the author of the com- 
 position from which the photograph, No. 118, is 
 taken, on condition of his giving pungency to the 
 feeble savour of architectural study by a condiment 
 of love, assassination, and despair, 
 
 It will not, I trust, be supposed that in anything 
 I have said, or may presently further say, I have 
 the smallest intention of diminishing the praise of 
 nobly dramatic or pathetic pictures. The best 
 years of my life have been spent in the endeavour 
 to illustrate the neglected greatest of these, in 
 Venice, Milan, and Rome : while my last and most 
 deliberate writings have lost much of their influence 
 with the public by disagreeably insisting that the 
 duty of a great painter was rather to improve them, 
 than amuse. But it remains always a sure ele- 
 mentary principle that interest in the story of 
 pictures does not in the least signify a relative 
 interest in the art of painting, or in the continual 
 beauty and calm virtue of nature : and that the 
 wholesomest manner in which the intelligence of 
 
PREFACE. 27 
 
 young" people can be developed (I may say, even, 
 the intelligence of modest old people cultivated), in 
 matters of this kind, is by inducing them accurately 
 to understand what painting is as mere painting, 
 and music as mere music, before they are led into 
 further question of the uses of either, in policy, 
 morals, or religion. 
 
 And I cannot but recollect with feelings of con- 
 siderable refreshment, in these days of the deep, the 
 lofty, and the mysterious, what a simple company of 
 connoisseurs we were, who crowded into happy 
 meeting, on the first Mondays in Mays of long ago, 
 in the bright large room of the old Water-colour 
 Society ; and discussed, with holiday gaiety, the un- 
 imposing merits of the favourites, from whose pencils 
 we knew precisely what to expect, and by whom we 
 were never either disappointed or surprised. Copley 
 Fielding used to paint fishing-boats for us, in a fresh 
 breeze, 'Off Dover,' 'Off Ramsgate,' 'Off the 
 Needles,' off every where on the south coast where 
 any body had been last autumn ; but we were always 
 kept pleasantly in sight of land, and never saw so 
 much as a gun fired in distress. Mr. Robson would 
 occasionally paint a Bard, on a heathery crag in 
 Wales ; or it might be a Lady of the Lake on a 
 similar piece of Scottish foreground, ' Benvenue 
 in the distance.' A little fighting, in the time of 
 Charles the First, was permitted to Mr. Cattermole; 
 and Mr. Cristall would sometimes invite virtuous 
 sympathy to attend the meeting of two lovers at a 
 
28 PREFACE. 
 
 Wishing gate or a Holy well. But the furthest 
 flights even of these poetical members of the Society 
 were seldom beyond the confines of the British 
 Islands ; the vague dominions of the air, and vasty 
 ones of the deep, were held to be practically un- 
 voyageable by our un-Daedal pinions, and on the safe 
 level of our native soil, the sturdy statistics of Mr. 
 De Wint, and blunt pastorals of Mr. Cox, restrained 
 within the limits of probability and sobriety, alike 
 the fancy of the idle, and the ambition of the vain. 
 
 It became, however, by common and tacit consent 
 Mr. Prout's privilege, and it remained his privilege 
 exclusively, to introduce foreign elements of romance 
 and amazement into this perhaps slightly fenny 
 atmosphere, of English common sense. In contrast 
 with our Midland locks and barges, his On the 
 Grand Canal, Venice,' was an Arabian enchantment ; 
 among the mildly elegiac country churchyards of 
 Llangollen or Stoke Pogis, his ' Sepulchral Monu- 
 ments at Verona ' were Shakespearian tragedy ; and 
 to us who had just come into the room out of 
 Finsbury or Mincing Lane, his 'Street in Nurem- 
 burg ' was a German fairy tale. But we none of us 
 recognised, then, (and I know not how far any of us 
 recognise yet), that these feelings of ours were de- 
 pendent on the mediation of a genius as earnest as 
 it was humble, doing work not in its essence romantic 
 at all ; but, on the contrary, the only quite useful, 
 faithful, and evermore serviceable work that the 
 Society by hand of any of its members had ever 
 
PREFACE. 29 
 
 done, or could ever, in that phase of its existence, 
 do : containing, moreover, a statement of certain 
 social facts only to be gathered, and image of certain 
 pathetic beauties only to be seen, at that particular 
 moment in the history of (what we are pleased to 
 call) civilisation. 
 
 1 As earnest ' I repeat, 'as it was humble.' The 
 drawings actually shown on the Exhibition walls 
 gave no sufficient clue to Prout's real character, and 
 no intimation whatever of his pauseless industry. 
 He differed, in these unguessed methods of toil 
 wholly from the other members of the Society. De 
 Wint's morning and afternoon sketches from nature, 
 with a few solidifying touches, were at once ready for 
 their frames. Fielding's misty downs and dancing 
 seas were softened into their distances of azure, and 
 swept into their hollows of foam, at his ease, in his 
 study, with conventional ability, and lightly burdened 
 memory. Hunt's models lay on the little table at 
 his side all day ; or stood as long as he liked by the 
 barn-door, for a penny. But Prout's had to be far 
 sought, and with difficulty detailed and secured : the 
 figures gliding on the causeway or mingling in the 
 market-place, stayed not his leisure ; and his draw- 
 ings prepared for the Water-colour room were usually 
 no more than mechanical abstracts, made absolutely 
 for support of his household, from the really vivid 
 sketches which, with the whole instinct and joy of 
 his nature, he made all through the cities of ancient 
 Christendom, without an instant of flagging energy, 
 
3 o PREFACE. 
 
 and without a thought of money payment. They 
 became to him afterwards a precious library, of 
 which he never parted with a single volume as long 
 as he lived. But it was the necessary consequence 
 of the devotion of his main strength to the obtaining 
 of these studies, that at his death they remained a 
 principal part of the provision left for his family, 
 and were therefore necessarily scattered. I cannot 
 conceive any object more directly tending to the 
 best interests of our students both in art and history, 
 than the reassembling a chosen series of them for 
 the nation, as opportunity may be given. 
 
 Let me, however, before entering on any special 
 notice of those which Mr. Huish has been able at 
 this time, (and I myself by the good help of the 
 painter's son, Mr. Gillespie Prout), to obtain for 
 exhibition, state in all clearness the terms under 
 which they should be judged, and may be enjoyed. 
 For just as we ought not to match a wood-block of 
 Bewick's against a fresco by Correggio, we must not 
 compare a pencil outline of Prout's with any such 
 ideals of finished street effect as Flemish painting 
 once produced. Prout is not a colourist, nor in any 
 extended or complete sense of the word, a painter. 
 He is essentially a draughtsman with the lead 
 pencil, as Durer was essentially a draughtsman with 
 the burin, and Bewick on the wood-block. And 
 the chief art-virtue of the pieces here exhibited is 
 the intellectual abstraction which represents many 
 features of things with few lines. 
 
PREFACE. 31 
 
 Take the little view in Amiens, No. 7, showing 
 the west front of the cathedral in the distance. 
 That front is enriched with complex ranks of arcade 
 and pinnacle, which it would take days to outline 
 perfectly, and which, seen at the distance assumed 
 in this drawing, gather into a mystery which no fine- 
 ness of hand could imitatively follow. But all this 
 has been abstracted into a few steady lines, with an 
 intelligence of choice and precision of notation which 
 build the cathedral as if it stood there, and in such 
 accurate likeness that it could be recognised at a 
 glance from every other mass of Gothic in Europe. 
 
 That drawing dependent on abstraction of this 
 kind, in which forms are expressed rather as a 
 mineralogist would draw a crystal than with any 
 investing mystery of shade or effect, cannot be 
 carried beyond the point assigned, nor convey any 
 sense of extreme beauty or majesty, when these 
 really exist in its subject, must be conceded at 
 once, and in full. But there is a great deal of 
 scenery in this Europe of ours, not lovely ; and a 
 great deal of habitation in this Europe of ours not 
 sublime, yet both extremely worthy of being re- 
 corded in a briefly crystalline manner. And with 
 scenes only, and dwellings only, of this ruder nature, 
 Prout is concerned. 
 
 Take for instance the general facts respecting 
 the valley of the Somme, collected in this little 
 sketch of Amiens. That river, and the Oise, with 
 other neighbouring minor streams, flow through a 
 
32 PREFACE. 
 
 chalk district intersected by very ancient valleys, 
 filled mostly with peat up to sea-level, but carrying 
 off a large portion of the rainfall over the whole 
 surface of the upper plains, which, open and arable, 
 retain scarcely any moisture in morasses, pools, or 
 deep grass. The rivers, therefore, though with 
 little fall, run always fast and brimfull, divided into 
 many serviceable branches and runlets ; while the 
 older villages and cities on their banks are built of 
 timber and brick, or in the poorer cottages, timber 
 and clay ; but their churches of an adhesive and 
 durable chalk rock, yielding itself with the utmost 
 ease to dexterities of deep incision, and relieving, 
 at first with lace-like whiteness, and always with a 
 pleasant pearly grey, the shadows so obtained. No 
 sensual arts or wealthy insolences have ever defiled 
 or distorted the quiet temper of the northern French 
 race, and in this busy little water-street of Amiens 
 (you see that Prout has carefully indicated its rapid 
 current a navigable and baptismal brook, past step 
 and door water that one can float with and wash 
 with, not a viscous vomit of black poison, like an 
 English river) you have clearly pictured to you a 
 state of peasant life assembled in the fellowship of 
 a city, yet with as little pride as if still in the glades 
 of Arden, and united chiefly for the sake of mere 
 neighbourliness ; and the sense of benediction and 
 guardianship in the everywhere visible pinnacles of 
 the temple built by their Fathers, nor yet forsaken 
 by their Fathers' God. 
 
PREFACE. 33 
 
 All this can be enough told in a few rightly laid 
 pencil lines, and more, it is needless to tell of so 
 lowly provincial life. 
 
 Needless, at least, for the general public. For 
 the closer student of architecture, finer drawing may 
 be needed ; but even for such keener requirement 
 Prout will not, for a time, fail us. 
 
 Five-and-twenty miles down the Somme lies the 
 little ramparted town of Abbeville ; rampart only of 
 the Grand Monarque's time, but the walls of might 
 long ago, in the days of Crecy ; and few French pro- 
 vincial bourgs had then more numerous or beautiful 
 monasteries, hospitals, chapels, and churches. 
 Of the central St. Wulfran, never completed, there 
 remain only the colossal nave, the ruined transept 
 walls, and the lordly towers and porches of the west 
 front. The drawing No. 5, quite one of the best 
 examples of Prout's central time in the room, most 
 faithfully represents this western pile of tracery and 
 fretwork, with the filial richness of the timber houses 
 that once stood round it. 
 
 None of the beautiful ones here seen are now 
 left ; and one day, perhaps, even France herself will 
 be grateful to the wandering Londoner, who drew 
 them as they once were, and copied, without quite 
 understanding, every sign and word on them. 
 
 And as one of the few remaining true records 
 of fifteenth-century France, such as her vestiges 
 remained after all the wreck of revolution and 
 recoil of war had passed over them, this pencil 
 
34 PREFACE. 
 
 drawing, slight as it seems, may well take rank 
 beside any pen-sketch by Holbein in Augsburg, or 
 Gentil Bellini in Venice. As a piece of composition 
 and general treatment it might be reasoned on for 
 days ; for the cunning choices of omission, the delicate 
 little dexterities of adjustment, the accents without 
 vulgarity, and reticences without affectation, the 
 exactly enough everywhere, to secure an impression 
 of reality, and the instant pause at the moment when 
 another touch would have been tiresome, are, in 
 the soberest truth, more wonderful than most of 
 the disciplined compositions of the greater masters, 
 for no scruple checks them for an instant in changing 
 or introducing what they chose ; but Prout gives 
 literal, and all but servile, portrait, only managing 
 somehow to get the chequers of woodwork to 
 carry down the richness of the towers into the 
 houses ; then to get the broad white wall of the 
 nearer houses to contrast with bodi, and then 
 sets the transept turret to peep over the roof 
 just enough to etherialize its practicality, and the 
 black figure to come in front of it to give lustre to 
 its whiteness ; and so on throughout, down to the 
 last and minutest touches : the incomprehensiblest 
 classical sonata is not more artificial the spark- 
 lingest painted window not more vivid, and the 
 sharpest photograph not half so natural. 
 
 In sequence of this drawing, I may point out 
 seven others of like value, equally estimable and 
 unreplaceable, both in matters of Art, and I use 
 
PREFACE. 35 
 
 the word, as will be seen presently, in its full force 
 of History, namely 
 
 No. 9. Evreux. 
 
 No. 10. Strasburg. 
 
 No. 19. Antwerp, 
 
 No. 47. Domo d'Ossola. 
 
 No. 48. Como. 
 
 No. 65. Bologna. 
 
 No. 71. The Coliseum. 
 
 I choose these eight drawings (counting the Abbe- 
 ville), four belonging to North France and Germany, 
 four to Italy, of which the Northern ones do indeed 
 utterly represent the spirit of the architecture 
 chosen ; but the Southern subjects are much more 
 restricted in expression, for Prout was quite unable 
 to draw the buildings of the highest Italian school : 
 yet he has given the vital look of Italy in his day 
 more truly than any other landscapist, be he who 
 he may ; and not excepting even Turner, for his 
 ideal is always distinctly Turnerian, and not the 
 mere blunt and sorrowful fact. 
 
 You might perhaps, and very easily, think at 
 first that these Prout subjects were as much 
 ' Proutized ' (Copley Fielding first used that word 
 to me) as Turner's were Turnerized. They are not 
 so, by any manner of means, or rather, they are so 
 by manner and means only, not by sight or heart. 
 Turner saw things as Shelley or Keats did ; and 
 with perfectly comprehensive power, gave all that 
 
36 PREFACE. 
 
 such eyes can summon, to gild, or veil, the fatalities 
 of material truth. But Prout saw only what all the 
 world sees, what is substantially and demonstrably 
 there ; and drew that reality, in his much arrested 
 and humble manner indeed, but with perfectly 
 apostolic faithfulness. He reflected the scene like 
 some rough old Etruscan mirror jagged, broken, 
 blurred, if you will, but "It, the thing itself still ; 
 while Turner gives it, and himself too, and ever so 
 much of fairyland besides. His Florence or Nemi 
 compels me to think, as a scholar, or (for so much 
 of one as may be in me) a poet ; but Prout's 
 harbour of old Como is utterly and positively the 
 very harbour I landed in when I was a boy of 
 fourteen, after a day's rowing from Cadenabbia, and 
 it makes me young again, and hot, and happy, to 
 look at it. And that Bologna ! Well, the tower 
 does lean a little too far over, certainly ; but what 
 blessedness to be actually there, and to. think we 
 shall be in Venice to-morrow ! 
 
 But note that the first condition of all these really 
 great drawings (as indeed for all kinds of other 
 good,) is unaffectedness. If ever Prout strains a 
 nerve, or begins to think what other people will 
 say or feel ; nay, if he ever allows his own real 
 faculty of chiaroscuro to pronounce itself consciously, 
 he falls into fourth and fifth rate work directly ; and 
 the entire force of him can be found only where 
 it has been called into cheerful exertion by subjects 
 moderately, yet throughout delightful to him ; which 
 
PREFACE. 37 
 
 present no difficulties to be conquered, no discords 
 to be reconciled, and have just enough of clarion 
 in them to rouse him to his paces, without pro- 
 voking him to prance or capriole. 
 
 I should thus rank the drawing of Como (48) as 
 quite of the first class, and in the front rank of that 
 class. Unattractive at first, its interest will increase 
 every moment that you stay by it, and every little 
 piece of it is a separate picture, all the better in 
 itself for its subjection to the whole. 
 
 You may at first think the glassless windows too 
 black. But nothing can be too black for an open 
 window in a sunny Italian wall, at so short a distance. 
 You may think the hills too light, but nothing can 
 be too light for olive hills in midday summer. 
 'They would have come dark against the sky?' 
 Yes, certainly ; but we don't pretend to draw Italian 
 skies, only the ruined port of Como, which is 
 verily here before us (alas ! at Como no more, 
 having long since been filled up,' levelled, and 
 gravelled, and made an ' esplanade ' for modern 
 Italy to spit over in its idle afternoons.) But take 
 the lens to the old group of houses : they will 
 become as interesting as a missal illumination if 
 you only look carefully enough to see how Prout 
 varied those twenty-seven black holes, so that 
 literally not one of them shall be like another. The 
 grand old Comasque builder of the twelfth century 
 arches below (the whole school of Lombardic 
 masonry being originally Comasque) varied them 
 
 D 
 
3 8 PREFACE. 
 
 to his hand enough in height and width but he 
 invents a new tiny picture in chiaroscuro to put 
 under every arch, and then knits all together with the 
 central boats ; literally knits, for you see the mast 
 of one of them catches up the cross-stick stitch 
 we might call it that the clothes hung on between 
 the balconies ; and then the little figures on the 
 left catch up the pillars like meshes in basket-work, 
 and then the white awning of the boat on the left 
 repeats the mass of wall, taking the stiffness out 
 of it, while the reflections of arches, with the other 
 figures, and the near black freights, carry all the 
 best of it, broken and rippling, to the bitter shore. 
 
 But the drawing of the Coliseum at Rome, 
 No. 71, has still higher claim to our consideration ; 
 in it were reserved, and in all points, rarer powers 
 of expressing magnitude and solitude. It is so 
 majestic in manner that it would quite have borne 
 being set beside the photograph of Turner's draw- 
 ing at Farnley ; had it been fair to match mere 
 outline against a finished composition. For Prout 
 was, and he remains, the only one of our artists 
 who entirely shared Turner's sense of magnitude, 
 as the sign of past human effort, or of natural 
 force ; and I must be so far tedious as to 
 explain this metaphysical point at some length. 
 Of all forms of artistic susceptibility, reverent 
 perception of true'" magnitude is the rarest. No 
 
 * Reckless accumulation of false magnitude as by John 
 
PREFACE. 39 
 
 general conclusion has become more clear to my 
 experience than this strange as it may seem at 
 first statement, that a painter's mind, typically, 
 recognises no charm in physical vastness : and will, 
 if it must choose between two evils by preference 
 work on a reduced, rather than an enlarged, scale ; 
 and for subject, paint miniature rather than mass. 
 Human form is always given by the great masters 
 either of the natural size, or somewhat less, (unless 
 under fixed conditions of distance which require 
 perspective enlargement) and no sort or shadow of 
 pleasure is ever taken by the strongest designers 
 in bulk of matter. Veronese never paints shafts 
 of pillars more than two feet in diameter, or there- 
 abouts, and only from fifteen to twenty feet in 
 height. Titian's beech trunks in the Peter Martyr 
 were not a foot across at the thickest, while his 
 mountains are merely blue spaces of graceful shape, 
 and are never accurately enough drawn to give 
 even a suggestion of scale. And in the entire 
 range of Venetian marine painting there is not one 
 large wave. 
 
 Among our own recent landscape painters, while 
 occasionally great feeling is shown for space, or 
 mystery, there is none for essential magnitude. 
 Stanfield was just as happy in drawing the East 
 
 Martin, is merely a vulgar weakness of brain, allied to night- 
 mare ; so also the colossal works of decadent states in sculpture 
 and architecture, which are always insolent ; not reverent. 
 
4 o PREFACE. 
 
 cliff at Hastings as the Rock of Ischia ; and painted 
 the little sandy jut of crag far better than the coned 
 volcano. Fielding asked for no more stupendous 
 summits than those of Saddleback or Wrynose 
 and never attempted the grandeur even of Yorkshire 
 scars, finding their articulated geology troublesome. 
 Sometimes David Roberts made a praiseworthy 
 effort to explain the size of a pillar at Thebes, or 
 a tower in the Alhambra ; but only in cases where 
 the character of largeness had been forced upon 
 his attention, as the quality to be observed by 
 himself, and recommended to the observation of 
 others. He never felt, or would have tried to make 
 anyone else feel- the weight of an ordinary boulder 
 stone, or the hollow of an old chestnut stem, or the 
 height of a gathering thunder-cloud. In the real 
 apprehension of measurable magnitude, magnitude 
 in things clearly seen stones, trees, clouds, or 
 towers Turner and Prout stand they two 
 absolutely side by side otherwise companionless. 
 
 Measurable magnitude, observe : and therefore 
 wonderful. If you can't see the difference between 
 the domes of the National Gallery and of St. Paul's : 
 much more if you can't see the difference between 
 Shanklin Chine and the Via Mala, (and most people 
 can't !) you will never care either for Turner or 
 Prout ; nor can you care rightly for them unless 
 you have an intellectual pleasure in construction, 
 and know and feel that it is more difficult to build 
 a tower securely four hundred feet high, than forty 
 
PREFACE. 41 
 
 and that the pillar of cloud above the crater of 
 Etna, standing two thousand feet forth from the lips 
 of it, means a natural force greater than the puff 
 of a railway boiler. The quiet and calm feeling of 
 reverence for this kind of power, and the accurate 
 habit of rendering it, (see notes on the Sketches 
 of Strasburg, No. 10, and Drachenfels, No. 28) 
 are always connected, so far as I have observed, 
 with some parallel justice in the estimate of 
 spiritual order and power in human life and its 
 laws : nor is there any faculty of my own mind 
 among those to which I owe whatever useful results 
 it may have reached of which I am so gratefully 
 conscious. 
 
 There is one further point and if my preface 
 has hitherto been too garrulous, it must be grave 
 in notice of this at the close, in which Turner, 
 Bewick, Hunt, and Prout, all four agree that they 
 can draw the poor, but not the rich. They acknow- 
 ledge with affection, whether for principal or acces- 
 sory subjects of their art, the British farmer, the 
 British sailor," 5 '" the British marketwoman, and the 
 
 * Including, of course, the British soldier; but for Turner, 
 a ship of the Line was pictorially better material than a field 
 battery; else he would just as gladly have painted Albuera as 
 Trafalgar. I am intensely anxious, by the way, to find out where 
 a small picture of his greatest time may now be dwelling, a 
 stranded English frigate engaging the batteries on the French 
 coast at sunset (she got off at the flood-tide in the morning) ; I 
 want to get it, if possible, for the St. George's Museum at Sheffield. 
 
42 PREFACE. 
 
 British workman. They agree unanimously in ignor- 
 ing the British gentleman. Let the British gentle- 
 man lay it to heart ; and ask himself why. 
 
 The general answer is long, and manifold. But, 
 with respect to the separate work of Prout, there is a 
 very precious piece of instruction in it, respecting 
 national prosperity and policy, which may be gathered 
 with a few glances. 
 
 You see how all his best pieces depend on figures 
 either crowded in market-places, or pausing (lounging, 
 it may be) in quiet streets, you will not find in the 
 entire series of subjects here assembled from his 
 hand a single figure in a hurry ! He ignores, you 
 see not only the British Gentleman ; but every 
 necessary condition, nowadays, of British Business ! 
 
 Look again, and see if you can find a single 
 figure exerting all its strength. A couple of men 
 rolling a single cask, perhaps ; here and there a 
 woman with rather a large bundle on her head any 
 more athletic display than these, you seek in vain. 
 
 He ignores even the British Boat-race and 
 British muscular divinity, and British Muscular Art. 
 
 His figures are all as quiet as the Cathedral of 
 Chartres ! ' Because he could not make them move ' 
 
 For the rest, I think the British gentleman may partly see his 
 way to the answer of the above question if he will faithfully 
 consider with himself how it comes to pass that, always fearless 
 in the field, he is cowardly in the House, and always generous 
 in the field, is yet meanly cunning, and too often malignant, 
 in the House. 
 
PREFACE. 43 
 
 think you ? Nay, not so. Some of them (that 
 figure on the sands in the Calais, for instance), you 
 can scarcely think are standing still but they all 
 move quietly. The real reason is that he under- 
 stood and we do not, the meaning of the word 
 \ quiet.' 
 
 He understood it, personally, and for himself : 
 practically and for others. Take this one fact of 
 his quiet dealings with men, and think over it. In 
 his early days he had established a useful and steady 
 connection with the country dealers, that is to say, 
 with the leading printsellers in the county towns 
 and principal watering-places. He supplied them 
 with pretty drawings of understood size and price, 
 which were nearly always in tranquil demand by the 
 better class of customers. The understood size was 
 about 10 inches by 14 or 15, and the fixed price, 
 six guineas. The dealer charged from seven to ten, 
 according to the pleasantness of the drawing. I 
 bought the 'Venice,' for instance, No. 55, from Mr. 
 Hewitt of Leamington for eight guineas. 
 
 The modern fashionable interest in what we 
 suppose to be art had just begun to show itself 
 a few years before Prout's death ; and he was 
 frequently advised to raise his prices. But he 
 never raised them a shilling to his old customers.* 
 
 * Nor greatly to his new ones. The drawings made for the 
 Water-colour room were usually more elaborate, and, justly, a little 
 higher in price, but my father bought the Lisieux, No. 13, off its 
 walls, for eighteen guineas. 
 
44 PREFACE. 
 
 They were supplied with all the drawings they 
 wanted, at six guineas each to the end. A very 
 peaceful method of dealing, and under the true 
 ancient laws ordained by Athena of the Agora, 
 and St. James of the Rialto. 
 
 Athena, observe, of the Agora, or Market Place. 
 And St. James of the Deep Stream, or Market River. 
 The Angels of Honest Sale and Honest Porter- 
 age ; such honest porterage being the true grandeur 
 of the Grand Canal, and of all other canals, rivers, 
 sounds, and seas that ever moved in wavering 
 morris under the night. And the eternally 
 electric light of the embankment of that Rialto 
 stream was shed upon it by the Cross : know 
 you that for certain, you dwellers by high em- 
 banked and steamer-burdened Thames. 
 
 And learn from your poor wandering painter 
 this lesson for sum of the best he had to give 
 you, (it is the Alpha of the Laws of true human 
 life) that no city is prosperous in the sight of 
 heaven, unless the peasant sells in its market 
 adding this lesson of Gentile Bellini's for the Omega, 
 that no city is ever righteous in the Sight of 
 Heaven unless the Noble walks in its street. 
 
NOTES ON THE DRAWINGS 
 
 For complete Index see page 99. 
 
 I. PROUT. 
 
 THE reader will find, ending this pamphlet, a con- 
 tinuous index to the whole collection of drawings. 
 In this descriptive text, I allow myself to pause in 
 explanatory, or wander in discursive, statement, just as 
 may seem to me most helpful to the student, or most 
 likely to interest the general visitor. 
 
 I begin with the series of pencil drawings by Prout, 
 which were my principal object in promoting this ex- 
 hibition. Of these I have chosen seventy, all of high 
 quality, and arranged so as to illustrate the outgoing 
 course of an old-fashioned Continental tour, beginning 
 at Calais, and ending at Rome. Following the order of 
 these with attention, an intelligent observer may learn 
 many things not to his hurt. 
 
 Their dates, it will be noticed, are never given by 
 the artist himself except in the day ; never the year 
 nor is there anything in the progress of Prout s skill, 
 or in his changes of manner, the account of which need 
 detain us long. From earliest boyhood to the day of 
 
46 PROUT. 
 
 his death, he drew firmly, and never scrabbled or blurred. 
 Not a single line or dot is ever laid without positive 
 intention,* and the care needful to fulfil that intention. 
 This is already a consummate virtue. But the mag- 
 nificent certainty and ease, united, which it enabled him 
 to obtain, are only seen to the full in drawings of his 
 middle time. Not in decrepitude, but in mistaken 
 effort, for which, to my sorrow, I was partly myself 
 answerable, he endeavoured in later journeys to make 
 his sketches more accurate in detail of tracery and 
 sculpture : and they lost in feeling what they gained in 
 technical exactness and elaboration. Of these later 
 drawings only three are included in this series, 4, 8, 
 and 17 ; their peculiar character will however be at 
 once discernible. 
 
 His incipient work was distinguished by two speci- 
 alties the use of a grey washed tint with the pencil, 
 a practice entirely abandoned in his great time, (though 
 he will always make notes of colour frankly) ; and the 
 insisting on minor pieces of broken texture, in small 
 stones, bricks, grass, or any little picturesque incidents, 
 with loss of largeness and repose. The little study of 
 the apse of Worms Cathedral (32), a most careful 
 early drawing, shows these faults characteristically ; the 
 Prague (23) is as definite an example of his great 
 central manner, and even Turner's outline is not more 
 faultless, though more complete. For the rest, Turner 
 himself shared in the earlier weakness of more sharply 
 dotted and sprinkled black touches, and practised, co- 
 temporaneously, the wash of grey tint with the pencil. 
 The chief use of the method to the young student is in 
 its compelling him to divide his masses clearly ; and I 
 used it much myself in early sketches, such as that of 
 
 * See the exception proving the rule, in a single line, in No, 12, 
 there noted. 
 
PROUT. 47 
 
 the Aventine, No. 104*2, for mere cleanliness and comfort 
 in security of shadow rather than the always rubbing 
 and vanishing blacklead. But it is an entirely re- 
 stricted method, and must be abandoned in all advanced 
 study, and the pencil used alone, both for shade and 
 line, until the finer gradations of shadow are understood. 
 Then colour may be used with the pencil for notation, 
 and every power at once is in the workman's hands. 
 The two first studies in our series are perfect instances 
 of this conclusive method.* 
 
 There were more reasons, and better ones, than the 
 students of to-day would suppose, for his not adopting 
 it oftener. The subjects in Cornwall and Derbyshire 
 by which his mind was first formed, were most of them 
 wholly discouraging in colour, if not gloomy or offensive. 
 Grey blocks of whinstone, black timbers, and broken 
 walls of clay, needed no iridescent illustration : the 
 heath and stonecrop were beyond his skill ; and, had 
 he painted them with the staunchest efforts, would not 
 have been translatable into the coarse lithographs for 
 Ackermann's drawing-books, the publication of which 
 was at that time a principal source of income to him. 
 His richer Continental subjects of later times were often 
 quite as independent of colour, and in nearly every case 
 taken under circumstances rendering its imitation im- 
 possible. He might be permitted by indulgent police 
 to stop a thoroughfare for an hour or two with a crowd 
 of admirers, but by no means to settle himself in a com- 
 fortable tent upon the pavement for a couple of months, 
 or set up a gipsy encampment of pots and easel in the 
 middle of the market-place. Also, his constitution, as 
 delicate as it was sanguine, admitted indeed of his sit- 
 
 * For further notes on the methods of shade proper to the 
 great masters, the reader may consult the third and fourth numbers 
 of my Laws of Fisole. 
 
48 PROUT. 
 
 ting without harm for half-an-hour in a shady lane, or 
 basking for part of the forenoon in a sunny piazza, but 
 would have broken down at once under the continuous 
 strain necessary to paint a picture in the open air. And 
 under these conditions the wonder is only how he did so 
 much that was attentive and true, and that even his 
 most conventional water-colours are so refined in light 
 and shade that even the slightest become almost 
 majestic when engraved, 
 
 C 
 
 Sketch on the spot, of the best time and highest 
 quality, the clouds put in as they stood, 
 the brig as she lay, the figures where they 
 measure the space of sand, and give the look of 
 busy desolateness, which poor Calais crown 
 jewel of England had fallen to in our day 
 Prout's and mine. You see the size of the steam- 
 packet of the period ; you may trust Prout's 
 measure of its magnitude, as aforesaid. So also 
 of belfry, lighthouse, and church, very dear all 
 to the old painter, as to me. I gave my own 
 drawing of the lighthouse and belfry, (No. 104, on 
 the screen) to the author of Rab and his Friends, 
 who has lent it me for comparison.* My drawing 
 of the church spire is lost to me, but somewhere 
 about in the world, I hope, and perhaps may be 
 yet got hold of, and kept with this drawing, for 
 memory of old Calais, and illustration of what was 
 
 * It was exhibited here last year, but is shown again for 
 proof of Prout's fidelity in distant form. 
 
PROUT. 49 
 
 meant by the opening passage of the fourth volume 
 of Modern Painters. (Appendix II.) 
 
 Take the lens* to the gate of the tower (above 
 the steamer) and see how, in such a little bit, the 
 architecture is truly told. Compare Hogarth's 
 Gate of Calais. 
 
 2. Calais Old Pier. 
 
 Turner's great subject. But Turner's being 
 earlier taken, while the English packet was still 
 only a fast-sailing cutter, (steam unthought of !) 
 A perfect gem of masterful study, and quiet 
 feeling of the facts of eternal sea and shore. 
 
 The solemnly rendered mystery of the deep and 
 far sea ; the sway of the great waves entering 
 over the bar at the harbour's mouth ; the ebbing 
 away of the sand at the angle of the pier ; the 
 heaping of it in hills against its nearer side,*f* and 
 the way in which all is made huge, bleak, and 
 wild by the deeper tone of the dark sail and 
 figure, are all efforts of the highest art faculty, 
 which we cannot too much honour and thank. 
 
 3. Studies of French and Netherland Figures 
 
 and Diligences. 
 Exemplary in the manner of abstract, and per- 
 fect in figure drawing, for his purposes. They are 
 poor persons, you see all of them. Not quite 
 equal to Miss Kate Greenaway's in grace, nor to 
 
 * For proper study of any good work in painting or 
 drawing the student should always have in his hand a 
 magnifying-glass of moderate power, from two to three 
 inches in diameter. 
 
 t Compare the sentence respecting this same place, Ap- 
 pendix II., bottom of p. 93, ' surfy sand, and hillocked shore.' 
 
50 PROUT. 
 
 Mrs. Allingham's in face ; (they, therefore, you 
 observe, have mostly their backs to us). But both 
 Miss Kate and Mrs. Allingham might do better 
 duty to their day, and better honour to their art, 
 if they would paint, as verily, some of these poor 
 country people in far-away places, rather than the 
 high-bred prettinesses or fond imaginations, which 
 are the best they have given us yet for antidote to 
 the misery of London. 
 
 4. Abbeville. Church of St. Wulfran. 
 
 Seen from the west, over old houses (since de- 
 stroyed). Of the artist's best time and manner. 
 See Preface, page 33. 
 
 5. Abbeville. Church of St. Wulfran, the 
 
 north - western tower, w r ith old 
 
 HOUSES. 
 Elaborate. Of the late time, but not in the 
 highest degree good. The chiaroscuro of the 
 pinnacles evidently caught on the spot, but not 
 carried through the drawing rightly, and the whole 
 much mannered. Precious, however, for all that. 
 
 6. Photograph of the Porches of St. Wulfran, 
 
 Abbeville. 
 
 7. Amiens. 
 
 One of the best of the best time. See Preface, 
 page 31, and compare the extract from Modem 
 Painters, given in Appendix III., page 94. 
 
 8. Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in St. Jaques, 
 
 Dieppe. 
 One of the best studies of the last period. See 
 further notes on it under the number 17. 
 
PROUT. 51 
 
 EVREUX. 
 
 Perfect sketch of the best time, and most 
 notable for the exquisite grace of proportion in 
 its wooden belfry. No architect, however accurate 
 in his measurements no artist, however sensitive 
 in his admiration ever gave the proportion and 
 grace of Gothic spires and towers with the loving 
 fidelity that Prout did. This is much to say ; 
 and therefore I say it again deliberately ; there 
 are no existing true records of the real effect of 
 Gothic towers and spires except only Prout's. 
 And now I must be tedious awhile, and explain 
 what I mean in saying this, being much, and 
 show it to be true. Observe first everything in 
 grace of form depends on truth of scale. You 
 don't show how graceful a thing is, till you show 
 how large it is ; for all grace means ultimately the 
 use of strength in the right way, moral and physical 
 against a given force. A swan, no bigger than a 
 butterfly, would not be graceful its grace is in its 
 proportion to the waves, and power over them. 
 A butterfly as large as a swan would not be 
 graceful its beauty is in being so small that the 
 winds play with it, but do not vex it. A hollow 
 traceried spire fifteen feet high would be effe- 
 minate and frivolous, for it would be stronger 
 solid a hollow traceried spire five hundred feet 
 high, is beautiful ; for it is safer so, and the 
 burden of the builder's toil spared. All wisdom 
 economy beauty, and holiness, are one ; harmo- 
 nious throughout in all places, times, and things : 
 understand any one of their orders, and do it it 
 will lead you to another to all others, in time. 
 
 Now, therefore, think why this spire of Evreux 
 is graceful. If it were only silver filigree over 
 a salt-cellar, it would still be pretty, (for it is 
 
52 PROUT. 
 
 beautifully varied and arranged). But not ' grace- 
 ful ' (or full of grace). The reason is that it is 
 built, not with silver, but with aspen logs, and 
 because there has been brought a strange refine- 
 ment and melody, as of chiming in tune, and virtue 
 of uprightness and precision of pointedness, into 
 the aspen logs, which nobody could ever have 
 believed it was in a log to receive. And it is 
 graceful also, because it is evidently playful 
 and bright in temper. There are no labouring 
 logs visible no propping, or thrusting, or bearing 
 logs no mass of enduring and afflicted timber 
 only imaginative timber, aspiring just high enough 
 for praise, not for ambition. Twice as high as 
 it ever could have stood in a tree by honour of 
 men done to it ; but not so high as to strain its 
 strength, and make it weak among the winds, or 
 perilous to the people. 
 
 io. Strasburg The Cathedral Spire. 
 
 I have put this drawing quite one of the 
 noblest in all the series out of its geographical 
 place, and beside the Evreux, that you may 
 compare the qualities of grace in wooden and 
 stone buildings ; and follow out our begun reason- 
 ing further. 
 
 Examine first how the height is told. Con- 
 scientiously, to begin with. He had not room 
 enough on his paper (perhaps), and put the top 
 at the side rather than blunt or diminish the least 
 bit. I say 'perhaps,' because, with most people, 
 that would have been the way of it : but my own 
 private opinion is, that he never meant to have 
 room on his paper for it that he felt instinctively 
 that it was grander to have it going up nobody 
 knew where only that he could not draw it so 
 
PROUT. 53 
 
 for the public, and must have the top handy to 
 put on afterwards. 
 
 Conscientiously, first, the height is told ; next, 
 artfully. He chooses his place just where you can 
 see the principal porch at the end of the street 
 takes care, by every artifice of perspective and a 
 little exaggeration of aerial tone, to make you feel 
 how far off it is ; then carries it up into the clearer 
 air. Of course, if you don't notice the distant 
 porch, or are not in the habit of measuring the 
 size of one part of a thing by another, you will 
 not feel it here but neither would you have felt 
 it there, at Strasburg itself. 
 
 Next, for composition. If you ever read my 
 last year's notes on Turner, you must remember 
 how often I had to dwell on his way of conquering 
 any objectionable character in his main subject by 
 putting more of the same character in something 
 else, where it was not objectionable. Now it 
 happens to be one of the chief faults of Strasburg 
 Spire (and it has many, for all the reputation of 
 it), to be far too much constituted of meagre 
 upright lines (see the angle staircases, and process 
 of their receding at the top, and the vertical 
 shafts across the window at its base). Prout in- 
 stantly felt, as he drew the tower, that, left 
 to itself it would be too ironlike and stiff. He 
 does not disguise this character in the least, but 
 conquers it utterly by insisting with all his might 
 on the flutings of the pilasters of the near well. 
 ' How ill drawn these ! ' you say. Yes, but he 
 hates these, in themselves, and does not care how 
 badly he draws them, so only that by their ugly 
 help he can save the Cathedral. Which they com- 
 pletely do : taking all the stiffness out of it, and 
 leaving it majestic. Next he uses contrast to 
 
 E 
 
54 PROUT. 
 
 foil its beauty, as he has used repetition to mask 
 its faults. In the Abbeville, No. 4, he had a 
 beautiful bit of rustic white wall to set off his 
 towers with. Here, in Strasburg, half modernised, 
 alas ! even in his time, he finds nothing better 
 than the great ugly white house behind the lamp. 
 In old times, remember, a series of gables like that 
 of the last house would have gone all down the 
 street. (Compare the effect in Strasburg, No. 11, 
 all contemporary.) Prout will not do any ' restora- 
 tion ' he knows better : but he could easily have 
 disguised this white house with cast shadows across 
 the street, and some blinds and carpets at the 
 windows. But the white, vulgar mass shall not be 
 so hidden, and the richness of all the old work 
 shall gain fulness out of the modern emptiness, 
 and modesty out of the modern impudence. 
 
 Pre-eminently the gain is to the dear old gabled 
 house on the right, which is the real subject of the 
 drawing, being a true Strasburg dwelling-house of 
 the great times. But before speaking more of this 
 I must ask you to look at the next subject. 
 
 12. Old Street in Lisieux. 
 
 This, though it contains so much work, is a 
 hurried and fatigued drawing fatigued itself in a 
 sense, as having more touches put on it than were 
 good for it ; and the sign of fatigue in the master, 
 or perhaps rather of passing illness, for he seems 
 never to have been tired in the ordinary way. The 
 unusually confused and inarticulate figures, the 
 more or less wriggled and ill-drawn draperies, and 
 the unfinished foundation of the house on the 
 right, where actually there is a line crossing an- 
 other unintentionally ! are all most singular with 
 
PROUT. 55 
 
 him ; and I fancy he must have come on this sub- 
 ject at the end of a sickly-minded day, and yet 
 felt that he must do all he could for it, and then 
 broken down. 
 
 He has resolved to do it justice, at least in the 
 drawing No. 13, one of the best in the room ; 
 but there are characters in the subject itself which, 
 without his quite knowing why, cramped him, and 
 kept several of his finer powers from coming into 
 play. 
 
 Note first, essentially, he is a draughtsman of 
 stone, not wood, and a tree-trunk is always wholly 
 Beyond his faculty ; so that, when everything is 
 wooden, as here, he has to translate his stony 
 manner for it all through, and is as if speaking 
 a foreign language. In the finished drawing, 
 one scarcely knows whether the near doorway is 
 stone or wood. 
 
 And there was one character, I repeat, in this 
 subject that specially strained this weak part of 
 him. When a wooden house is in properly wooden 
 style he can always do it, as at Abbeville and 
 Strasburg. But this street at Lisieux is a wooden 
 street in stone style. I feel even tempted to write 
 fine scientific modern English about it, and say it 
 is objectively lignologic and subjectively petro- 
 logic. The crossing beams of the wall-courses, 
 and king-posts of the gables in dormer windows 
 are indeed properly expressive of timber structure ; 
 but all the sculpture is imitative of the forms 
 developed in the stone traceries of the same 
 period seen perfectly in the elaborate drawing, 
 No. 13. 
 
 Those traceries were themselves reciprocally 
 corrupted, as we shall see presently, by the 
 woodwork practised all round them ; but both 
 
56 
 
 PROUT 
 
 the Burgundian and Norman later Gothic was 
 corrupted by its own luxurious laziness, before it 
 took any infection from the forest. Instead of 
 building a real pointed arch they merely put a 
 cross lintel with a nick in it * (a), then softened 
 
 the nick-edges and ran a line of moulding round 
 it (b)\ and then ran up a flourish above to show 
 what a clever thing they had done, (c), and there 
 you are. But there is much more curious interest 
 in this form of wooden imitative architecture than 
 arty mere matter of structural propriety. 
 
 Please compare the Lisieux houses in No. 12, 
 with the house on the right at Strasburg in 
 No. 10. You see there are no pinnacles nor 
 crockets imitated there. All is sternly square 
 upright timber and cross timber cut into what 
 ornamental current mouldings the workman knew. 
 And yet you see the Cathedral at the side is 
 eminently gabled and pinnacular ! Run your eye 
 from the square window of the second story of 
 the house (third from ground), along to the cathe- 
 dral gabled tracery. Could any two styles be more 
 adverse ? While on the contrary, the Lisieux 
 street is merely a ' changing the willow wreaths to 
 stone,' in imitation of the chapel of St. Jaques ? 
 
 * Without the nick, mind you, it would have been a grand 
 building pure Greek or pure Tuscan, and capable of 
 boundless good. It is the Nicolaitane nick that's the devil. 
 
PROUT. 57 
 
 It is true, the Lisieux street is contemporary with 
 St. Jaques, and the Strasburg house a century or 
 so later than the Cathedral ; but that is not the 
 reason of the opposition. Had they been either 
 pure French or pure German the two would have 
 declined together and have died together. But in 
 France of the fifteenth century, church, noblesse, 
 and people, were one body, and the people in 
 Lisieux loved and delighted in their clergy and 
 nobles, as the Venetians did, 
 
 ' Pontifices, clerus, populus, dux mente serenus.' 
 
 But Strasbourg is on the edge nay, on the Pole 
 of all divisions. Virtually, from west to east, 
 between Dijon and Berne ; virtually, from north 
 to south, between Cologne and Basle ; virtually, 
 if you have eyes the Diet of Worms is in it ; the 
 Council of Constance is in it ; the Battle of 
 Sempach is there, and the rout of Granson. 
 
 That is a Swiss cottage, with all ecclesiastical 
 and feudal powers flaming up into the sky at the 
 side of It, and the iron lances and lines of them 
 are as lace round the ' Commerce de Jean Dichl.' 
 1 Commerce,' a grand word, which we suppose our- 
 selves here to understand, an entirely vile one, if 
 misunderstood. Human commerce, a business for 
 men and angels ; but inhuman, for apes and 
 spectres. We must look at a few more street- 
 scenes in order to find out which sort Jean Dichl's 
 belongs to. 
 
 14. Bayeux. 
 
 A small sketch, but first-rate, and with half a 
 mile of street in it. Pure and plain woodwork 
 this, with prop and buttress of stumpy stone 
 
58 PROUT. 
 
 healthy all, and sound ; note especially the strong 
 look of foundation, as opposed to the modern style 
 of house-front in most commercial quarters, five 
 stories of brick wall standing on the edge of a 
 pane of plate-glass. 
 
 15. Tours. 
 
 The saints presiding over an old-clothes shop, 
 apparently ; but it may be the fashionable drapers 
 of the quarter. I merely give it as an example of 
 the developed form of bracket, the end of the cross 
 timber becoming a niche, and the prop, a saint not 
 without meaning. Much more strength than is 
 really wanted allowed in the backing, so that 
 these corrugated saints do not by their recessed 
 niches really weaken the structure. Compare 
 photograph, No. 1 1 7, on the near side of the screen. 
 
 6. Rouen. The Butter-tower. 
 
 Built with the octroi on butter not a right 
 way, be it spoken, in passing. All taxes on food 
 of any sort, or drink of any sort, are wrong, 
 whether to build a pious tower, or support an 
 impious government. 
 
 A tired sketch, the house on the left, one of 
 the most beautiful in France, hurried and ill done. 
 
 7. Rouen. Staircase in St. Maclou. 
 
 Almost unique in the elaboration of the texture 
 in marble pillar, and effect of distant light, show- 
 ing what he was capable of in this kind : compare 
 St. Jaques, No. 8, where he gets flickering sun- 
 light through painted glass. There, the effect is 
 pathetic and expressive ; but both texture and 
 
PROUT. 59 
 
 effect of light were mistakes, in St. Maclou ; 
 it does not in the least matter to the staircase 
 whether the pillar is smooth, or the window 
 bright. In earlier times, he would have merely 
 indicated the forms of both, and given his time 
 to gather groups of figures following the circular 
 sweep of the staircase. 
 
 1 8. Ghent. 
 
 Having run south now as far as I care, we will 
 turn back, please, to go through the Netherlands 
 into Germany. Pretty nearly all the Netherlands 
 are in this and the following drawing. Boats, 
 beside houses ; the boats heavily practical ; the 
 houses heavily fanciful ; but both accurate and 
 perfect in their way ; work of a great, though 
 fen-witted, people. The Ghent scene is the very 
 cream of Prout, all that he could best do in 
 his happiest times his Cornish and Hastings 
 boat-study standing him in thorough stead here, 
 though it will fail him at Venice, as we shall sadly 
 see. 
 
 19. Antwerp. 
 
 Altogether magnificent : the noble street-scene, 
 requiring no effort to exalt, no artifice to conceal 
 a single feature in it. Pure fact, the stately 
 houses and the simple market, and the divine 
 tower. You would like advertisements all along 
 the house-fronts, instead, wouldn't you ? and 
 notices of sale at a ruinous sacrifice in the 
 shop-windows, wouldn't you ? and a tramway up 
 the street, and a railway under it, and a gasometer 
 at the end of it, instead of a cathedral now 
 wouldn't you ? 
 
60 PROUT. 
 
 21. Brunswick. 
 
 Dainty still ; a most lovely drawing. I didn't 
 find anything so good in the town myself, but was 
 not there until 1859, when, I suppose, all the best 
 of it had been knocked down. The Stadthaus 
 (see lithograph on the screen, No. 93) is unique 
 in the support of its traceries on light transverse 
 arches, but this innovation, like nearly all German 
 specialities in Gothic, is grotesque, and affected 
 without being ingenious. 
 
 Dresden. 
 
 An exquisite drawing ; and most curious in the 
 entire conquest and calming down of Prout's usual 
 broken touch into Renaissance smoothness. It is 
 the best existing representation of the old town, 
 and readers of Fried rich may care to know what 
 it was like. 
 
 23. Prague. Entrance over the Bridge. 
 
 A drawing already noticed, of the highest 
 quality. The lithograph on the screen, No. 91, of 
 the other side of the tower on the right, enables 
 us to walk back the other way ; it is quite one of 
 the best drawings in the book. 
 
 24. Prague. The Stadthaus. 
 
 Both lovely, and essentially Proutesque, as a 
 drawing. Architecturally, one of the prettiest 
 possible examples of fourteenth century Gothic. 
 The town was all, more or less, like that, once 
 the houses beyond have, I suppose, been built 
 even since the siege. 
 
PROUT. 61 
 
 25. Bamberg. 
 
 I include this drawing in our series, first for its 
 lovely crowd of figures ; and secondly, to show 
 that Prout never attempts to make anything pic- 
 turesque that naturally isn't. Domo d'Ossola and 
 Bologna (47 and 64) are picturesque in the 
 drawings, because they are so in reality and 
 heavy Bamberg remains as dull as it pleases to 
 be. This strict honesty of Prout's has never 
 been rightly understood, because he didn't often 
 draw dull things, and gleaned the picturesque ones 
 out of every hole and corner ; so that everybody 
 used to think it was he who had made them 
 picturesque. But, as aforesaid, he is really as true 
 as a mirror. 
 
 26. Nuremberg, The Frauen kirche. 
 
 Of the best time, and certainly the fullest ex- 
 pression ever given of the character of the church. 
 But the composition puzzled him, the house 
 corner on left coming in too abruptly, and the 
 sketch falls short of his best qualities ; he gets 
 fatigued with the richness in excess over so large 
 a mass, and feels that nothing of foreground will 
 carry it out in harmony. 
 
 28. The Drachenfels. 
 
 When I said that Turner and Prout stood by 
 themselves in power of rendering magnitude, I 
 don't mean on the same level, of course, but in 
 perfect sympathy ; and Turner himself would have 
 looked with more than admiration with real 
 respect at this quiet little study. I have never 
 seen any other picture or drawing which gave so 
 intensely the main truths of the breadth and 
 prolonged distances of the great river, and the 
 
62 PROUT. 
 
 scale and standing of the rock, as compared with 
 the buildings, and woods at its feet. 
 
 The ' standing ' of the rock, I say especially ; 
 for it is in great part by the perfect sculpture and 
 build of its buttresses (the ' articulation ' which, I 
 have just said, Fielding shunned as too trouble- 
 some) that the effect, or rather information, of 
 magnitude is given. 
 
 And next to this rock drawing, the clear houses 
 and trees, and exquisite little boat examined 
 well complete the story of mountain power by 
 their intense reality. Take the lens to them 
 there is no true enjoyment to be had without 
 attention, either from pictures, or the truth itself. 
 
 29. Islands on the Rhine. 
 
 First, the power of the Dragon rock then of 
 the noble river. It seems to have been an 
 especially interesting scene this, to good painters. 
 One of the most elaborate pieces of drawing ever 
 executed by Turner was from this spot. 
 
 30. The Pfalz. 
 
 Hurried a little, and too black in distance 
 but I include it in the series for a most interesting 
 bit of composition in it. The building, from this 
 point of view, had a disagreeable look of a 
 church-tower surrounded by pepper-boxes. He 
 brings it into a mass, and makes a fortress of it, 
 by the shadow on the mountain to the right of the 
 tower, almost as dark as a bit of roof. 
 
 32. Worms. 
 
 An early drawing the only one included in 
 this series is to be compared with the careful 
 water-colour, No. 31. 
 
 33. See under No. 37. 
 
PROUT. 63 
 
 35. Ulm. 
 
 A beautiful drawing of one of the most in- 
 teresting street fountains in Germany. It is 
 given in this sketch, as usual, with entire care 
 and feeling of its proportion. The water-colour 
 drawing, No. 36, shows the little interest he took 
 in copying for the Exhibition, knowing that the 
 British mind was not to be impressed by propor- 
 tion, and only cared for getting things into their 
 frames. The lithograph on the screen, No. 90, is 
 on the contrary, one of his most careful works, 
 and quite true to the place, when I saw it in 
 1835. I suppose it is all pulled down, and made 
 an ' esplanade' of by this time. (See Seven Lamps, 
 p. 182, in Appendix I., p. 91.) 
 
 37 and 33. Swiss and German Costumes. 
 
 I never can understand how these groups are 
 ever designed, or caught, and how they are built 
 up, one by one. No painter who can do it ever 
 tells us how. 
 
 39. Chillon. 
 
 The only drawing I ever saw which gave the 
 real relation of the castle to the size of the moun- 
 tains behind it. 
 
 40. The Dungeon of Chillon. 
 
 I must leave the reader now to make what he 
 may of this and the following drawings as far as 
 47 : all of them, to people who know the old look 
 of the places, will be interesting ; but I have no 
 time to enlarge on them. 
 
 41. MONTREUX. 
 
64 PROUT. 
 
 42. Waterfall under the Dent du Midi, in the 
 
 Rhone Valley. 
 
 43. Village of Martigny. 
 
 46. Brieg. 
 
 47. Domo d' Ossola. 
 
 One of the most exemplary in the room, for 
 intense fidelity to the place, and lovely compo- 
 sition of living groups. Note the value of the 
 upright figure in the balcony on the left, in 
 breaking up and enriching the mass, and joining 
 it with the rest. 
 
 48. Como. 
 
 Enough dwelt on in the preface, p. 36. 
 
 49. The Monument of Can Signorio della Scala : 
 
 at Verona. 
 Note that the low sarcophagus on the left, of 
 much finer time than the richer tomb, has on its 
 side a bas-relief representing the Madonna en- 
 throned between two angels, a third angel presents 
 to her the dead knight's soul, kneeling. 
 
 50. The large drawing of the subject, No. 50, has 
 
 lost all these particulars. Was it all Prout's fault, 
 shall we say. Was there anyone, in his time, of 
 English travellers, who would have thanked him 
 for a Madonna and a dead old Scaliger, done ever 
 so clearly ? 
 
 56. Venice, Ducal Palace from the West. 
 
 57. Venice. Ducal Palace from the East. 
 
PROUT. 65 
 
 58. St. Michael's Mount, Normandy. 
 
 I have put No. 58 in this eccentric manner, after 
 the Ducal Palace, that the reader may feel, for 
 good and all, Prout's intense appreciation of local 
 character, his gaiety with the gay, and his 
 strength with the strong. Cornish-bred, his own 
 heart is indeed in the rocks, and towers, and sands 
 of the fraternal Norman shore, and it fails him in 
 Venice, where the conditions alike of her masquing 
 and her majesty were utterly strange to him. 
 Still, the sense of light, and motion, and splendour 
 above the Riva dei Schiavoni ; and of gloom, and 
 iron-fastness, and poverty, midst the silent sands 
 of Avranches, are rendered by the mirror of 
 him, as if you had but turned its face from sun to 
 shade. 
 
 The St. Michael's is an entirely grand drawing. 
 The St. Raphael's for that is indeed the other 
 name of the Ducal Palace* on this side, has 
 many faults ; but is yet, out and out, the best 
 Ducal Palace that has yet been done. It is not an 
 architectural drawing, does not in the least pre- 
 tend to be. No one had ever drawn the traceries 
 of the Ducal Palace till I did myself. Canaletto, 
 in his way, is just as false as Prout, Turner no 
 better. Not one of them painted anything but 
 their general impressions; and not a soul in England 
 knew that there was a system in Venetian archi- 
 tecture at all, until I made the measured (to half 
 and quarter inches) elevation of it (No. 105 on 
 
 * The angel Michael is the angle statue on the south- 
 west (seen in No. 56), with the inscription, ' With my sword 
 I guard the good, and cleanse the evil.' The angel 
 Raphael holds in his hands the nations' prayer to him, 
 'Raphael, the dreadful (' reverende '), make thou the deep 
 quiet, we beseech thee.' 
 
66 PROUT. 
 
 the screen), and gave the analysis of its tracery- 
 mouldings and their development, from those of 
 the Franciscans at the Frari (Stones of Venice, 
 vol. ii.). This study of Prout's, then, I repeat, 
 does not pretend to architectural accuracy ; and 
 it has even one very considerable fault. Prout's 
 mind had been so formed among buildings solid 
 at the base, and aerial at the top, that he not only 
 could not enjoy, he could not even see, the national 
 audacity of the great builder of the Ducal Palace, 
 in supporting its wall on, virtually, two rows of 
 marble piles ; and, at the further end, just where 
 the shafts at the angle let the winds blow through 
 them as frankly as the timbers of Calais pier,* he 
 blackens them all up inside, as if the backing wall 
 were solid and the arches were only niches. 
 
 For all that, there never was anything so true 
 
 * The real and marvellous structure of the angle is 
 admirably shown in the photograph on the screen, No. \o6a, 
 though the quantity of light penetrating the shafts is a little 
 exaggerated in effect by uniting with the light sides of the 
 shafts. Taking the lens to the photograph, you will see this 
 line is destroyed by the modern gas-lamp stuck across the 
 Italian sculpture, and you may admire at leisure the other 
 improvements made by the art of the nineteenth century 
 on the effect of the piazzetta. The combination of the fore 
 and mizen masts of the huge steamer whose hull, with its 
 boat, blocks out the whole lagoon ; and of the upright near 
 gas-lamp, with the pillar of St. Mark: the introduction of 
 the steamer's painted funnel to form a foundation for the 
 tower of San Giorgio the bathing establishment anchored 
 beyond the pillars, just where the Bucentaur used to lie 
 close to the quay to receive the Doge ; and, finally, the 
 bills pasted on the sheds at the base of St. Mark's column, 
 advising us of improving works of a liberal tone, such as 
 the ' Storia della Natura,' and the ' Misteri della Inquisizione 
 di Spagna.' In this same Loggia of Sansovino's, against 
 which these sheds are built, the ' Misteri ' of the Govern- 
 ment Lottery are also revealed weekly to the popular mind. 
 
PROUT. 67 
 
 to the general splendour and life of the palace 
 done before, nor ever will be again.* 
 
 And in the great drawing (No. 60), lent by Lord 
 Coleridge, the upper story is singularly and grace- 
 fully accurate in the pinnacled Gothic of its central 
 window, and in the various elevations and magni- 
 tudes of the rest. The two upper windows in the 
 shade at the nearest angle are the oldest portions 
 of the Palace visible, and Prout has carefully 
 noted their different curve. The bright and busy 
 figures are true to old times only. 
 
 There are two points technical both and 
 spiritual both which the reader must note in 
 this drawing. 
 
 The first, how thankful Prout is for the clusters 
 of doves along the upper line of the cornice. ' They 
 might as well be jackdaws,' you think ? Well, as 
 aforesaid, Prout is not a colourist, else he would 
 have made his boats black and his doves grey ; 
 but then he would have been Carpaccio, and not 
 Prout. This is really all you can expect him to 
 do for a dove, with his poor Cumberland plum- 
 bago ; and, after all, the glory of the creatures is 
 not in being pigeons, but in being Venetians. 
 Swallow or sparrow, daw or dove, sea-gull by 
 Achilles' isle or chough by Cornish cliff, that 
 they are living with us by shore and altar, under 
 cottage eaves and around palace council chambers, 
 that is their glory, and, if we knew it, our peace. 
 
 The other point is more definitely technical, 
 yet has its lesson in other directions also. I have 
 already again and again insisted on Prout's way of 
 taking up his stitches, and carrying one part of 
 
 * For the building is now being restored, and no man 
 with a heart will ever draw the patched skeleton of it more. 
 
68 PROUT. 
 
 his work into another. Look back to what is 
 said of the Como in preface. He is no more 
 content with his Ducal Palace till he has got it 
 well into fugue with its crowd than he was with 
 these old houses by the harbour. He won't break 
 the corner of its arcade, but just flutes, as it were, 
 a single pillar with the mast of a boat, and 
 then carries the mast down stopping the arch- 
 mouldings for it, observe, as he draws them, so 
 deliberate is he, and, getting well down so to 
 his figures, rivets the rent of the canal across with 
 the standing one, just under Michael Steno's cen- 
 tral window, and then carries all away to the 
 right, with the sitting figures and levelled sails 
 in harmony with the courses of the palace, and 
 to the left, with the boats. Hide one of these 
 foundational forms with your hand, and see how 
 the palace goes to pieces ! There are many com- 
 positions in the room more felicitous ; but there is 
 no other in which the opposite influence to the 
 ' little rift within the lute ' the stitch in time that 
 saves nine is so delicately and so intensely illus- 
 trated as by the service of this single boat-spar to 
 every shaft of the whole Ducal palace. 
 
 With respect to these Venice drawings there 
 are two metaphysical problems in my own mind, 
 of extreme insolubility and on which I therefore 
 do not enlarge, namely, why Prout, practical 
 among all manner of Cornish and Kentish boats, 
 could not for the life of him draw a gondola ; and 
 the second, why, not being able to draw a gondola, 
 he yet never gave the grand Adriatic fishing-boat, 
 with its coloured sail, instead. These, and other 
 relative questions still more abstruse as, for in- 
 stance, why he could draw the domes of Dresden 
 rightly, and yet made the Madonna della Salute 
 
PROUT. 69 
 
 look like the National Gallery or Bethlehem Hos- 
 pital I must for the present leave for the reader's 
 own debate, and only at speed give some account 
 of the points to be illustrated by the supple- 
 mentary drawings. 
 
 People often ask me and people who have 
 been long at Venice too of the subject No. 55, 
 where those square pillars are, and what they 
 are. The corner of the Piazzetta from which 
 this view is taken was once the sweetest of all 
 sacred niches in that great marble withdrawing- 
 room of the Piazzetta of St. Mark's. My old 
 sketch, No. 107, shows approximately the colour of 
 the marble walls and pavement of it, and the way 
 the white flowers of the Greek pillars purest 
 Byzantine shone through the dark spots of 
 lichen. The Daguerreotype, No. 1 14, taken under 
 my own direction, gives the light and shade of 
 them, chosen just where the western sunlight 
 catches the edge of the cross at the base of the 
 nearer one ; and my study, No. 108, shows more 
 fully the character of the Byzantine chiselling 
 entirely freehand, flinging the marble acanthus- 
 leaves here and there as they would actually grow. 
 It is iJirough work of this kind that the divine 
 Greek power of the days of Hesiod came down to 
 animate the mosaic workers in St. Mark's in the 
 eleventh century. 
 
 They worked under a Greek princess, of whom 
 
 * My readers continually complain that they can't get my 
 presently issuing books. There is not a bookseller in 
 London, however, who is not perfectly well aware that the 
 said books are always to be had by a post-card sent to my 
 publisher, Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, to 
 whom subscriptions for the object stated in the text are to 
 be sent, (or the books may be had of The Fine Art Society). 
 
 F 
 
7 o PROUT. 
 
 the reader will find some legend (though yet I 
 have not been able to do more than begin her 
 story) in the second number of St, Mark's Rest* 
 In the third I have given some account of the 
 entire series of mosaics which were completed by 
 her husband under the influence of his Greek 
 queen (true queen, mind you, at that time, the 
 Duke of Venice then wearing the king's diadem, 
 not the republican cap) ; and I besought my 
 readers at Venice and elsewhere to help me to get 
 some faithful record of these mosaics before they 
 perished by modern restoration. I have never 
 made a more earnest appeal for anything and 
 indeed I believe, had it been for a personal gift 
 another Splugen drawing, or the like I should 
 have got it by this time easily enough. But 
 there are always twenty people who will do what 
 they feel to be kind, for one who will take my 
 advice about an important public object. And 
 if they only knew it the one real kindness 
 they ca7i show to me is in listening to me under- 
 standing, in the first place, that I know my busi- 
 ness better at sixty than I did at five-and-twenty ; 
 and in the second, that my happiness, such as 
 yet remains to me, does not at all consist in the 
 things about me in my own parlour, but in the 
 thought that the principles I have taught are being 
 acted upon, and the great buildings and great 
 scenes I have tried to describe saved, so far as 
 may yet be possible, from destruction and dese- 
 cration. At this very hour, the committees of 
 Venetian builders are meeting to plot the total 
 destruction, and re-erection according to their own 
 notions, and for their own emolument, of the 
 entire west front of St. Mark's that which 
 Barbarossa knelt under, and before which Dandolo 
 
PROUT. 71 
 
 took his vow for Palestine ! And in the mean- 
 time the Christian populace of all Europe is 
 quarrelling about their little parish reredoses and 
 wax-candles ! * 
 
 And so it comes to pass, that the floor of 
 St. Mark's is already destroyed, together with 
 the north and south sides ; only the west front 
 and roof mosaics are yet left, and these are in- 
 stantly threatened. I have got an absolutely 
 faithful and able artist, trained by Mr. Burne 
 Jones, to undertake the copying of the whole 
 series of mosaics yet uninjured. He is doing 
 this for love and mere journeyman's wages how 
 carefully and thoroughly the three examples in 
 this room (114, 115, 116) will enough show; but 
 he has been six months at work alone, unable 
 to employ assistants, and all that I have yet got 
 for him by the eagerest appeals I could make at 
 Venice and here is some hundred and thirty 
 pounds, and half of that from a single personal 
 friend ! "f 
 
 I will have a little circular drawn up, stating 
 these and other relative facts clearly, before the 
 close of the present exhibition. Before its open- 
 ing, I can allow myself now little more than the 
 mere explanation of what it contains. 
 
 And now I really haven't time to talk any 
 
 * It may perhaps not be quite too late to contradict a 
 report that appeared in some Irish paper, that I had been 
 lately in Dublin, giving some opinion or other about 
 reredoses. I have not been in Ireland these ten years 
 never shall be in Ireland more and care no more about 
 any modern churches or church furniture than about the 
 drop-scene at Drury Lane not so much indeed, if the truth 
 were all told. 
 
 t 128/. i$s. &/., byreport from Mr. Allen, of 12th November. 
 
72 PROUT. 
 
 more, and yet I've ever so much to say, if I 
 could, of the following drawings at Arqua and 
 Nuremberg, JJ and 70. I must at least say at 
 once why these, like Venice and St. Michael's 
 Mount, go side by side. 
 
 In the first place, I believe that the so-called 
 Petrarch's house at Arqua (67) can only be built 
 on the site of the real one it can't be of Petrarch's 
 time ; but the tomb is true, and just looking from 
 that, to the building of Diirer's house (70) which 
 is assuredly authentic and of Rubens's, No. 
 81, what a quantity of the lives of the men 
 we are told by these three slight sketches ! 
 One of the things I hope to do at Sheffield 
 is to get a connected and systematic series of 
 drawings of the houses and the tombs of great 
 men. The tombs, of course, generally tell more 
 of their successors than of themselves ; but the 
 two together will be historical more than many 
 volumes. Their houses, I say; yes, and the things 
 they saw from their houses quite the chief point 
 with many of the best men and women. Casa 
 Guidi windows, often of much more import than 
 Casa Guidi ; and in this house of Albert', its 
 own cross-timbers are little matter, but those 
 Nuremberg walls around it are everything. 
 
 73. Kelso. 
 
 I now gather together as I best may, the sup- 
 plementary drawings which have come in since I 
 arranged my series, and one or two others which 
 did not properly belong to it. This one of 
 Kelso is chiefly valuable as showing his mode 
 of elementary study with washes of two tints 
 one warm, the other a little cooler. The system 
 was afterwards expanded into his colour practice. 
 
PROUT. 73 
 
 74. Entrance to North Transept of Rouen. 
 
 Unfinished, and extremely interesting, as show- 
 ing his method of rubbing in the tint with the 
 stump or his finger, before adding the pencil lines. 
 
 75. Study of Dutch Boats. 
 
 These boat sketches might be multiplied count- 
 lessly and I would fain have given many 
 and talked much of them, but have neither room 
 nor time. Note in this the careful warping of 
 the mast by the strain of the heavy sail. 
 
 j6. Neudersdorf. 
 
 TJ. GUTENFELS. 
 
 Two lovely Rhine realities ; when the river was 
 something better than a steam-tramway. 
 
 78. An old Rhine Bridge, at Rheinfelden. 
 
 A favourite Turner subject, and drawn and 
 engraved with great care in Modern Painters. 
 As a Prout, it is inferior small in manner and 
 forced, but as usual, wholly true to the place. 
 
 79. Munich. 
 
 Notable chiefly for the effort made to draw the 
 attention away from the ugly arcade under the 
 houses by the crowd of near figures. Compare 
 the insistance on beautiful arcades in the Como 
 and Domo d'Ossola. 
 
 80. Ypres. 
 
 Wholly lovely, and to be classed with the 
 Abbeville and Evreux as one of the most precious 
 records of former domestic architecture. 
 
74 PROUT. 
 
 Rubens' House, Antwerp. 
 
 The kind of domestic architecture that destroyed 
 all reverence for what preceded it, and brought us 
 down to what we are. 
 
 Note the beginning of modern anatomies and 
 sciences and pseudo classicalisms in the monstrous 
 skulls of beasts. 
 
 S2. Caen. 
 
 83. Falaise. 
 
 Two of the most careful and finished pieces of 
 his later work, but rather architectural studies 
 than pictures, and alas ! the architecture of the 
 worst school. So little can the taste be really 
 formed without study of sculpture as the queen 
 of edifying law. See notes on Supplementary 
 Sketches. 
 
 86. Portico di Ottavia, Rome. 
 
 All the life and death of Rome is in this quite 
 invaluable drawing : but I have no time to talk 
 of the life and death of Rome, and perhaps the 
 enlightened modern student would only care for 
 a view of the new tobacco manufactory under the 
 Palatine. 
 
 87. Well at Strasburg. 
 
 We don't want wells neither, in these days of 
 wisdom, having Thirlmere turned on for us, or 
 Loch Katrine, at our pleasure. But from the days 
 of Jacob's well till thirty years ago, such things 
 were pleasant in human eyes. 
 
PROUT. 75 
 
 88. Well at Strasburg. 
 
 I close our Prout pencilling with seven examples 
 of his superb work on stone ; all by his own hand, 
 and as literally and thoroughly his, touch for 
 touch, as the pencil sketches themselves, and even 
 more wonderful in their easy mastery of the more 
 difficult material. 
 
 What a disgrace it is to modern landscape 
 painters that this book of Prout's, 'Sketches in 
 Flanders and Germany I should remain, to this 
 day, the only work of true artistic value produced, 
 that is to say, by the artist's own hand, purchase- 
 able by the public of Europe, in illustration of their 
 national architecture ! 
 
 89. Well at Nuremberg. 
 
 This study is one of the most beautiful, but also, 
 one of the most imaginative that ever Prout made 
 highly exceptional and curious. 
 
 The speciality of Nuremberg is, that its walls 
 are of stone, but its windows especially those in 
 the roof, for craning up merchandise -are of wood. 
 All the projecting windows and all the dormers, 
 in this square are of wood. But Prout could not 
 stand the inconsistency, and deliberately petrifies 
 all the wood. Very naughty of him ! I have 
 nothing to say in extenuation of this offence ; 
 and, alas! secondly, the houses have, in reality, 
 only three stories, and he has put a fourth on, out 
 of his inner consciousness ! 
 
 I never knew him do such a thing before or 
 since ; but the end of it is, that this drawing of 
 Nuremberg is immensely more Nurembergy than 
 the town itself, and a quite glorious piece of 
 mediaeval charactei. 
 
76 PROUT. 
 
 90. ULM. 
 
 91. Prague. Tower of the Gate. 
 
 92. Prague. Stadthaus. The realisation of sketch 
 
 No. 
 
 93. Brunswick. Rathhaus. 
 
 94. Coblentz. 
 
 I have always held this lithograph to show all 
 Prout's qualities in supreme perfection, and proudly 
 finish our series of pencil and chalk work with it. 
 
 We now come to a large series of early colour 
 studies, promising better things than ever came of 
 them ; and then the examples of Prout, for which 
 we are simply to blame the public taste he had to 
 meet, and not him. There were no pre-Raphaelites 
 in those days. On the walls at the Scala Palace, 
 in that sketch of Verona, No. 49, Prout has written, 
 conscientiously, ' brick ;' but do you think if he had 
 painted it of brick, anybody would have bought 
 the drawing ? Since those days, all the work of 
 Walker, of Boyce, of Alfred Hunt, of Albert 
 Goodwin, of John Brett (the whole school of them, 
 mind you, founded first on the strong Pre-Rapha- 
 lite veracities which were all but shrieked down 
 at the first seeing of them, and which I had to 
 stand up alone for, against a whole national clamoui 
 of critical vituperation), all that affectionate and 
 laborious painting from nature has familiarised you, 
 now, with birds, and ivy, and blossoms, and berries, 
 and mosses, and rushes, and ripples, and trickles, 
 and wrinkles, and twinkles; and, of course, poor 
 
PROUT. 77 
 
 old Prout's conventional blue wash won't look its 
 best afterwards. Be thankful to them, (and some- 
 what also I say it not in pride, but as a part of 
 the facts to Modern Painters and me) and indul- 
 gent to the old workman, who did the best he 
 could for his customers, and the most he could for 
 his money. 
 
 95. The English Cottage. See preface. 
 
 96. Launceston. 
 
 Had this drawing been brought to me as an 
 early Turner, I should have looked twice, and 
 thrice, at it before saying no. If Prout had only 
 had just ever so little more pride, and some 
 interest in British history, he would have been a 
 painter, indeed ! and no mean pencil draughtsman. 
 But he just missed it and a miss is as bad as a 
 mile, or a million of miles ; and I say nothing 
 more of the series of water-colours here, except 
 only that many a good lesson may be learned 
 from them in chiaroscuro, and in flat tinting, by 
 modest students. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY DRAWINGS 
 ON THE SCREEN. 
 
 There are or ought to be, if I get them toge- 
 ther in time eleven of my own, namely : 
 
 104. Calais. 
 
 104^. The Aventine. 
 
 105. Ducal Palace and Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 106. Ducal Palace, Foliage of South-west angle. 
 
 107. Pillar of the Piazzetta. 
 
 108. Photograph of the pillar of the Piazetta. 
 1 o8#. Chiaroscuro study of the same pillar. 
 
 109. The Casa d'Oro. {On the south wall) 
 
 1 10. Window on the Grand Canal, 
 hi. Abbeville Crocket. 
 
 1 12. Oak-leaf. 
 
 113. Moss and Oxalis. 
 
 I meant when first this exhibition was planned, 
 to have made it completely illustrative of the 
 
PROUT. 
 
 79 
 
 French flamboyant architecture, which Prout had 
 chiefly studied ; but I have been too much inter- 
 rupted by other duties ; and I can only now point 
 out, once more, after thirty years of reiterating 
 this vital fact to architects in vain, that until 
 they are themselves absolute masters of sculptural 
 surface, founded on natural forms, they do not 
 know the meaning of any good work, in any 
 school. 
 
 Sculptural surface^ observe : they fancy they 
 have drawn an ornament when they have got its 
 outline ; but in sculpture the surface is everything ; 
 the outline follows, and is compelled by it. Thus, 
 in the piece of Ducal Palace sculpture, No. 106, 
 the entire value of it depends on the chiaroscuro 
 of its surfaces ; and it would be as absurd to think 
 of sketching it without shade, as a piece of rippled 
 lagoon. And in every minutest finial and crocket 
 of that French flamboyant, the surfaces are studied 
 to a perfection, not less subtle, though relieved by 
 more violent shade. The fast study, No. in, 
 shows the action of the curved stems and flow of 
 surfaces in one of the crockets of Abbeville. See 
 photograph, No. 6, and the study of oak-leaves, 
 No. 112, will show how the natural forms of vege- 
 tation lend themselves to every need of such 
 attentive design. I have painted this bit of leafage 
 in two stages, showing if anyone cares to know 
 it the way Hunt used his body colour ; laying 
 it first with extreme care in form and gradation, 
 but in pure white ; and then glazing over it, 
 never disturbing it, or mixing it in the slightest 
 degree with his clear colour. And it is only by 
 this management of opaque colour that archi- 
 tectural detail can be drawn at speed, with any 
 useful result. See the bit of honeysuckle orna- 
 
8o PROUT. 
 
 ment, for instance, (you must take the lens both 
 to the oak- leaf drawing and this,) at the top of the 
 pillar in No. 108, and fancy the time it would 
 have taken to express the bossy roundness of it 
 in any other way. All disputes about the use of 
 body colour, begin and end in the ' to be or not 
 to be' of accurate form. 
 
 Then there are three drawings of St. Mark's 
 mosaics by Mr. Rooke : 
 
 114. Floral Decoration. 
 
 115. Madonna and David. 
 
 116. The Prophets. 
 
 Then some variously illustrative photographs, 
 &c, namely : 
 
 117. Abbeville. 
 
 118. Picture of Abbeville. 
 
 106a. Venice, the Piazzetta. 
 
 11. Lithograph of Modern Strasburg. {On the 
 east wall.) 
 
 119 (?) Improvements in Modern London. 
 
 Then in the glass case, there is a little bit of 
 real Venetian sixteenth century silk-work put 
 there to show precisely what Shakespeare meant 
 by ' Valance of Venice gold in needlework,' 
 {Taming of the Shrew), and secondly, to show the 
 use of minute points of colour in decoration carried 
 on thus far from the Byzantine schools ; and 
 finally, there is the Meissonier, above referred to, 
 Napoleon, in 18 14, on the Chaussee of Vitry, just 
 after the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube. 
 
PROUT. 8 1 
 
 1 The French horsemen, though inferior to none 
 in the world for audacity and prowess, were over- 
 matched by their opponents and driven back to 
 the bridge of Arcis. Napoleon, who was on the 
 other side, instantly rode forward to the entrance 
 of the bridge, already all but choked up with 
 fugitives, and drawing his sword, exclaimed, 
 "Let me see which of you will pass before me!" 
 These words arrested the flight, and the division 
 Friant traversing the streets of Arcis in double- 
 quick time passed the bridge, formed on either 
 side of its other extremity, and by their heavy fire 
 drove back the allied horse. 
 
 ****** 
 
 1 Napoleon was repeatedly in imminent danger, 
 nearly all his staff were killed or wounded. " Fear 
 nothing," said he, to the generals who urged him to 
 retire : " the bullet is not yet cast which is to kill 
 me." He seemed to court rather than fear death, 
 his air was resolute but sombre, and as long as the 
 battle raged, by the light of the burning houses 
 behind and the flash of the enemies' guns in front, 
 he continued to face the hostile batteries. 
 
 ****** 
 
 1 On leaving Arcis, instead of taking the road to 
 Chalons or to Paris, he moved on the chaussee of 
 Vitry, direct towards the Rhine. His letter to 
 the Empress Marie Louise was in these terms : 
 
 1 " My love, I have been for some days constantly 
 on horseback ; on the 20th I took Arcis-sur-Aube. 
 The enemy attacked me there at eight in the 
 evening. I beat him the same evening. I took 
 two guns and retook two. The next day the 
 enemy's army put itself in array to protect the 
 march of its columns on Bar-sur-Aube, and I 
 resolved to approach the Marne and its environs. 
 
82 PROUT. 
 
 This evening I shall be at St. Dizier. Farewell, 
 my love. Embrace my son." ' (See Alison, vol. x., 
 pp. 396 to 406). 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more perfect 
 example of the French realistic school than this 
 picture. It is, of course, conventional, and 
 founded on photographic effect the white horse in 
 reality would have looked like a ghost in the 
 twilight, and not one of the details of the 
 housings been in the least visible had these been 
 so, much more should the details of the land- 
 scape have been. But in its kind it is without 
 rivalship, and I purpose that it shall remain in 
 St. George's schools for a monument of War- 
 sorrow, where War has been unjust. 
 
T 
 
 II. HUNT. 
 
 142. 
 
 HE Butterfly. 
 
 Before saying anything more of the Hunt series, 
 I want my readers once more clearly to understand 
 what I have brought it here for ; namely, to show 
 them what real painting is, as such, wholly with- 
 out inquiry concerning its sentiment or story. 
 The Prouts are here for an exactly opposite reason 
 not at all to show you what mere pencilling is, as 
 such but what it can pencil for us of European 
 scenery and history. Whereas this butterfly is 
 here, not at all to teach you anything you didn't 
 know about butterflies ; nor the peach and grapes 
 to teach you anything you didn't know about 
 those familiar fruits ; nor even that boy in his 
 father's boots to teach you anything you didn't 
 know before about boys and boots. They are here 
 merely to show you what is meant by Painting, 
 as distinguished from daubing, from plastering, 
 from rough casting, from chromo-tinting, from 
 tray-varnishing, from paper-staining, and in general 
 from the sort of things that people in general do 
 when you put a brush into their hands, and a pot 
 within reach of them. 
 
 Now that little brown-red butterfly (which Mr. 
 Gurney is so fortunate in possessing) is a piece of 
 
84 HUNT. 
 
 real painting ; and it is as good as Titian or any- 
 body else ever did. And if you can enjoy it you 
 can enjoy Titian and all other good painters ; 
 and if you can't see anything in it, you can't see 
 anything in than, and it is all affectation and pre- 
 tence to say that you care about them. 
 
 And with this butterfly, in the drawing I put first, 
 please look at the mug and loaf in the one I have 
 put last, of the Hunt series, No. 171. The whole 
 art of painting is in that mug as the fisherman's 
 genius was in the bottle. If you can feel how 
 beautiful it is, how etherial, how heathery and 
 heavenly, as well as to the uttermost, muggy : you 
 have an ^ye for colour, and can enjoy heather, 
 heaven, and everything else below and above. If 
 not you must enjoy what you can, contentedly, but 
 it won't be painting ; and in mugs, it will be more 
 the beer than the crockery ; and on the moors, 
 rather grouse than heather. 
 
 Going back to No. 142, you will perhaps ask me 
 why the poppy is so poor and the butterfly so 
 rich ? Mainly because the poppy withered and 
 the butterfly was pinned and permanent. But 
 there are other reasons, of which more presently. 
 
 144. Herring and Pilchard. 
 
 Supreme painting again, and done with his best 
 pains ; for these two subjects, and 
 
 146. Dead Chicken 
 
 Were done by the old man, in all kindness and 
 care, at my own request, for me to give as types of 
 work to country schools of Art. Yet no kindness 
 or care could altogether enable him to work rightly 
 under the direction of another mind ; and the pro- 
 
HUNT. 85 
 
 ject was ultimtely given up by me, the chicken, 
 finished as it is, having been one of my chief dis- 
 appointments. And here anent, let me enter into 
 some general account of the tenor of his drawings. 
 They may be broadly divided into the following 
 classes, into one or other of which every work of 
 importance from his hand will distinctly fall. 
 
 Class i. 
 
 Drawings illustrative of rural life in its vivacity 
 and purity, without the slightest endeavour at 
 idealisation, and still less with any wish either to 
 caricature, or deplore, its imperfections. All the 
 drawings belonging to this class are, virtually, 
 faultless, and most of them very beautiful. It is, I 
 am glad to say, thoroughly represented in this 
 room, which contains several examples of the 
 highest quality, namely, 121, 168, 171, 172. 173, 
 
 175. 
 
 Besides two pieces of still life, (169, and the 
 interior, No. 174), properly belonging to the 
 group. 
 
 Class 2. 
 
 Country life, with endeavour to add interest to 
 it by passing sentiment. 
 
 The drawings belonging to this class are almost 
 always over-finished, and liable to many faults. 
 There are three in this collection 120, 165, 166. 
 
 Class 3. 
 
 Country life, with some expression of its degrada- 
 tion, either by gluttony, cowardice, or rudeness. 
 
 The drawings of this class are usually very clever 
 and apt to be very popular ; but they are on the 
 
 G 
 
86 HUNT. 
 
 whole dishonourable to the artist. There are 
 five examples here, namely, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164. 
 
 Class 4. 
 
 Flower-pieces. Fruit is often included in these ; 
 but they form a quite separate class, being neces- 
 sarily less finished drawings the flowers sooner 
 changing their form. Including the fungi among 
 these, there are eight fine ones in the room, 148, 
 150, 149, 154, 152, 147, 151, 154, 156. 
 
 Class 5. 
 
 Fruit-pieces, on which a great part of the 
 artist's reputation very securely rests. Five first- 
 rate ones are here, and several of interesting, 
 tl ough inferior, quality. 
 
 Class 6. 
 
 Dead animals. Alas ! if he could but have 
 painted living ones, instead of those perpetual 
 bunches of grapes. But it could not be. To a 
 weakly, sensitive, nervous temperament, the per- 
 petual changes of position, and perpetual sug- 
 gestion of new beauty in an animal, are entirely 
 ruinous : in ten minutes they put one in a fever. 
 Only the very greatest portrait - painters Sir 
 Joshua and Velasquez can draw animals rightly. 
 
 I begin with this last class and re-ascend to the 
 highest. 
 
 138. Dead Hare and Game. 
 
 A most notable drawing of early practice, quite 
 wonderful in textures of fur and in work of 
 shadows, but tentative, and in many points 
 failing. 
 
HUNT. 87 
 
 141. Dead Dove. (A.) 
 
 A pure water-colour drawing, before his style 
 was perfectly formed. Full of interest, but too 
 conventional and slight in back-ground. 
 
 139. Dead Dove. (B.) 
 
 Finished work of central time. 
 
 145. Dead Dove. (C.) 
 
 Replica, I suppose, of B, with completer back- 
 ground, and of highest quality. I must be 
 pardoned for saying so of my own drawing ; but 
 of course, after long and affectionate relations 
 with the painter, it would be strange if I had not 
 some of his best works. 
 
 143. Pine, Melon, and Grapes. 
 
 We were obliged to put this drawing low down, 
 for, in spite of its dark background, it killed every- 
 thing we put near it. To my mind, it is the most 
 majestic piece of work in the room. The grapes 
 are the vintage of Rubens, and the shadows are 
 the darkness of Tintoret. It is wholly free from any 
 pettiness of manner, and in force, spring, and suc- 
 culence of foliage it is as if the strength of nature 
 were in it, rather than of human hand. I never 
 saw it until now, and have learned from it more 
 than after my fifty years of labour I thought any- 
 thing but a Venetian picture could have taught me. 
 
 132. 'Love what you study, study what you 
 
 LOVE.' 
 
 All modern painters in a nutshell of a sen- 
 tence, and the painted nutshell perfect. See Pre- 
 face. 
 
88 HUNT. 
 
 130. Grapes. 
 
 Consummate. Can't be better anywhere. 
 
 131. Mr. Sibeth's Quinces. 
 
 All that's best in this kind. 
 
 125. BULLACES. 
 
 Very fine, but conventional in back-ground. 
 
 129. Grapes. 
 
 Perfect work, but wasted. Why he did so 
 many grapes, and scarcely ever sloes, or finely 
 russet apples, or growifig strawberries, always 
 mystified me. 
 
 126. Plums. 
 
 Finest work, but a little dull. My own favourites 
 of his plums were such variegated ones as 133 
 and 135 ; but I somehow never got any. This 
 drawing, however, was the one of which Hunt 
 said to me innocently seeing it again after some 
 ten years ' It's very nice ; isn't it ?' 
 
 128. Plums. 
 
 The bit of oak-leaf here is very wonderful, and 
 interesting as an example, and what Hunt meant 
 by saying to me once, ' I like to see things 
 " Fudged " out.' It is to be remembered, however, 
 that this was his own special liking ; and it must 
 not be followed by the general student. The 
 finest forms of anything cannot be ' fudged ' out, 
 but must be drawn, if possible, with the first line, 
 at least with the last one, for ever. 
 
 149. Dr. D rage's Fungi. 
 
 A perfect gem ; ' Venetian red ' in its best 
 earthly splendour ; it could only be more bright 
 in clouds. 
 
HUNT. 89 
 
 147. Mr. Fry's Hawthorn. 
 
 A little overworked, but very glorious. Soft 
 and scented, I think, if you only wait a little, and 
 make-believe very much. 
 
 155. (Mine.) HAWTHORN AND BIRDS' NESTS. 
 
 The hawthorn this time a little ?^rtfcrworked, 
 but very good : and nests as good as can be. 
 
 148. Lilac. (Mr. Sibeth's.) 
 
 Fine, but curiously redundant. The upper 
 branch by itself, or the lower with only the 
 laburnum, or both together without the third, 
 would have been beautiful ; but two's company, 
 and three's none. 
 
 150. Vase with Rose and Basket with Fruit. ) 
 
 151. Flowers and Fruit. ) 
 
 Two resplendent ones ; everything that he 
 could do best in this kind absolutely right in 
 colour, absolutely in light and shade, and without 
 any rivalship in past or present art. 
 
 162. The Gamekeeper. 
 
 Early study. Please observe that Hunt learned 
 his business, not in spots but in lines. Compare 
 the entirely magnificent sketch of the river-side, 
 No. 124, which is as powerful in lines as Rem- 
 brandt, and the St. Martin's Church, No. 123, 
 which is like a bit of Hogarth. 
 
 157. The Invalid. 
 
 Full of humour ; but there is no place for 
 humour in true painting. So also No. 164, The 
 Young Artist, and the Wasp, No. 163. If I could 
 have the currant-pie without the boy, I should be 
 content. 
 
9 o HUNT. 
 
 161. Gipsies. 
 
 Very powerful ; historic in its kind. 
 
 1 66. Praying Boy. (Mr. Quilter's.) 
 
 Over-finished, as its companion, No. 165, an 
 endeavour at doing what he did not understand. 
 So also the large study of himself, No. 176, with 
 the Mulatto, No. 122, and Wanderer, No. 120. 
 His mode of work was entirely unfitted for full 
 life-size. 
 
 121. Mr. Quilter's Stable-boy. 
 
 172. Mr. Orrock's Shy Sitter, and The Blessing 
 
 (171). 
 
 On the contrary, he is here again in his utmost 
 
 strength and in qualities of essential painting 
 unconquerable. In the pure faculty of painter's art 
 in what Correggio, and Tintoret, and Velasquez, 
 and Rubens, and Rembrandt, meant by painting 
 that single bunch of old horse-collars is worth all 
 Meissonier's horse-bridles boots, breeches, epau- 
 lettes and stars, together. 
 
 The other drawings of the highest class need no 
 commentary. There is not much in the two little 
 candle-lights, Nos. 168, 175, but all that is, of the 
 finest, and the three drawings with which I close 
 our series, 'The Shy Sitter,' No, 172, ' The Fisher- 
 man's Boy,' No. 173, and The Blessing,' No. 171, 
 things that the old painter was himself unspeakably 
 blessed in having power to do. The strength of 
 all lovely human life is in them ; and England 
 herself lives only, at this hour, in so much as, from 
 all that is sunk in the luxury sick in the penury 
 and polluted in the sin of her great cities, Heaven 
 has yet hidden for her, old men and children such 
 as these, by their fifties in her fields and on her 
 shores, and fed them with Bread and Water. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 EVERY human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true 
 magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come 
 It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above 
 all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to 
 his Maker j and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we 
 may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us 
 think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, noj 
 for present use alone ; let it be such work as our descendants 
 will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that 
 a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because 
 our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they 
 look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, ' See ! 
 this our fathers did for us.' For, indeed, the greatest glory of 
 a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in 
 its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, 
 of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, 
 which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing 
 waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in 
 their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, 
 in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, 
 and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the 
 face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its 
 sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten 
 and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the 
 identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations ; it is in 
 that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real 
 light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture ; and it is 
 not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been 
 intrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till 
 its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise 
 
92 APPENDIX I. 
 
 out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as 
 it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, 
 can be gifted with even so much as these possess, of language 
 and of life. The Seven Lamps of Architecture, pp. 171, 172. 
 
 But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent 
 character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture 
 has just this of nobler function in it than that of any other object 
 whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as 
 has been said, the greatest glory of the building consists ; and, 
 therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power and 
 purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible 
 beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and 
 essential characters ; so essential to my mind, that I think a 
 building cannot be considered as in its prime until four or five 
 centuries have passed over it ; and that the entire choice and 
 arrangement of its details should have reference to their appear- 
 ance after that period, so that none should be admitted which 
 would suffer material injury either by the weather-staining, or 
 the mechanical degradation which the lapse of such a period 
 would necessitate. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which 
 the application of this principle involves. They are of too 
 great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within 
 my present limits, but this is broadly to be noticed, that those 
 styles of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above 
 explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose deco- 
 ration depends on the arrangement of points of shade rather 
 than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly gain in 
 richness of effect when their details are partly worn away ; 
 hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should 
 always be adopted when the materials to be employed are 
 liable to degradation, as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone ; 
 and styles in any degree dependent on purity of line, as the 
 Italian Gothic, must be practised altogether in hard and un- 
 decomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or crystalline marbles. 
 There can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible materials 
 influenced the formation of both styles ; and it should still more 
 authoritatively determine our choice of either. Ibid. pp. 178, 
 179. 
 
APPENDIX II. 93 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 The essence of picturesque character has been already 
 defined to be a sublimity not inherent in the nature of the 
 thing, but caused by something external to it j as the rugged- 
 ness of a cottage roof possesses something of a mountain 
 aspect, not belonging to the cottage as such. And this 
 sublimity may be either in mere external ruggedness, and 
 other visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an expression 
 of sorrow and old age, attributes which are both sublime ; not 
 a dominant expression, but one mingled with such familiar 
 and common characters as prevent the object from becoming 
 perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly venerable in its 
 age. 
 
 For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense 
 pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some 
 prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of 
 Calais church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of 
 it ; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign 
 of weakness or decay ; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten 
 away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter 
 sea grasses ; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet 
 not falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, 
 and ugly fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock ; its 
 carelessness of what any one thinks or feels about it, putting 
 forth no claim, having no beauty nor desirableness, pride, nor 
 grace ; yet neither asking for pity ; not, as ruins are, useless 
 and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but 
 useful still, going through its own daily work, as some old 
 fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets : 
 so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in 
 blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gather- 
 ing human souls together underneath it ; the sound of its 
 bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey 
 peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that 
 rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore, the 
 
94 APPENDIX III. 
 
 lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labour, and this for 
 patience and praise. 
 
 I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts 
 that come about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in 
 some sort, it is the epitome of all that makes the* Continent 
 of Europe interesting, as opposed to new countries ; and, 
 above all, it completely expresses that agedness in the midst 
 of active life which binds the old and the new into harmony. 
 We, in England, have our new street, our new inn, our green 
 shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it, a mere 
 specimen of the middle ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to 
 be shown, which, but for its size, might as well be on a 
 museum shelf at once, under cover. But, on the Continent, 
 the links are unbroken between the past and present, and in 
 such use as they can serve for, the grey-headed wrecks are 
 suffered to stay with men ; while, in unbroken line, the 
 generations of spared buildings are seen succeeding each in 
 its place. And thus in its largeness, in its permitted evidence 
 of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of all pretence, 
 of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais tower has 
 an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking because 
 usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of 
 feelings the exact reverse of these. Modern Painters, vol. iv. 
 PP- 2, 3- 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 And, in some sort, the hunter of the picturesque is better 
 than many other pleasure-seekers ; inasmuch as he is simple- 
 minded and capable of unostentatious and economical delights, 
 which, if not very helpful to other people, are at all events 
 utterly uninjurious, even to the victims or subjects of his 
 picturesque fancies ; while to many others his work is enter- 
 taining and useful. And, more than all this, even that delight 
 which he seems to take in misery is not altogether unvirtuous. 
 Through all his enjoyment there runs a certain undercurrent 
 of tragical passion, a real vein of human sympathy ; it lies 
 
APPENDIX III. 95 
 
 at the root of all those strange morbid hauntings of his j a 
 sad excitement, such as other people feel at a tragedy, only 
 less in degree, just enough, indeed, to give a deeper tone to 
 his pleasure, and to make him choose for his subject the 
 broken stones of a cottage wall rather than of a roadside 
 bank, the picturesque beauty of form in each being supposed 
 precisely the same : and, together with this slight tragical 
 feeling, there is also a humble and romantic sympathy, a vague 
 desire, in his own mind, to live in cottages rather than in palaces ; 
 a joy in humble things, a contentment and delight in make- 
 shifts, a secret persuasion (in many respects a true one) that 
 there is in these ruined cottages a happiness often quite as 
 great as in kings' palaces, and a virtue and nearness to God 
 infinitely greater and holier than can commonly be found in 
 any other kind of place ; so that the misery in which he exults 
 is not, as he sees it, misery, but nobleness, ' poor and sick 
 in body, and beloved by the Gods.' And thus, being nowise 
 sure that these things can be mended at all, and very sure 
 that he knows not how to mend them, and also that the 
 strange pleasure he feels in them must have some good reason 
 in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys his 
 dark canal without scruple, and mourns over every improve- 
 ment in the town, and every movement made by its sanitary 
 commissioners, as a miser would over a planned robbery of 
 his chest ; in all this being not only innocent, but even re- 
 spectable and admirable, compared with the kind of person 
 who has no pleasure in sights of this kind, but only in fair 
 facades, trim gardens, and park palings, and who would thrust 
 all poverty and misery out of his way, collecting it into back 
 alleys, or sweeping it finally out of the world, so that the street 
 might give wider play for his chariot-wheels, and the breeze 
 less offence to his nobility. Modern Painters, vol. iv. 
 pp. II, 12. 
 
96 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 I do not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying 
 that greater pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than 
 from the finest. But what do you suppose makes all men 
 look back to the time of childhood with so much regret, (if 
 their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or 
 peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had 
 for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures. 
 That miraculous aspect of the nature around us was because we 
 had seen little and knew less. Every increased possession loads 
 us with new weariness; every piece of new knowledge 
 diminishes the faculty of admiration; and Death is at last 
 appointed to take us from a scene in which, if we were 
 to stay longer, no gift could satisfy us, and no miracle 
 surprise. . . . 
 
 In your educational series is a lithograph drawing, by Prout, 
 of an old house in Strasbourg. The carvings of its woodwork 
 are in a style altogether provincial, yet of which the origin is 
 very distant. The delicate Renaissance architecture of Italy 
 was affected, even in its finest periods, by a tendency to throw 
 out convex masses at the bases of its pillars ; the wood-carvers 
 of the 1 6th century adopted this bulged form as their first 
 element of ornamentation, and these windows of Strasbourg 
 are only imitations by the German peasantry of what, in its 
 finest type, you must seek as far away as the Duomo of 
 Bergamo. 
 
 But the burgher, or peasant, of Alsace enjoyed his rude 
 imitation, adapted, as it was, boldly and frankly to the size 
 of his house and the grain of the larch logs of which he built 
 infinitely more than the refined Italian enjoyed the floral 
 luxuriance of his marble: and all the treasures of a great 
 exhibition could not have given him the tenth part of the 
 exultation with which he saw the gable of his roof completed 
 over its jutting fret-work ; and wrote among the rude intricacies 
 of its sculpture, in flourished black letter, that ' He and his 
 
APPENDIX IV. 97 
 
 wife had built their house with God's help, and prayed Him to 
 let them live long in it, they, and their children.' 
 
 But it is not only the rustic method of architecture which I 
 wish you to note in this plate ; it is the rustic method of drawing 
 also. The manner in which these blunt timber carvings are 
 drawn by Prout is just as provincial as the carvings themselves. 
 Born in a far-away district in England, and learning to draw, 
 unhelped, with fishing-boats for his models ; making his way 
 instinctively until he had command of his pencil enough to 
 secure a small income by lithographic drawing; and finding 
 picturesque character in buildings from which all the finest lines 
 of their carving had been effaced by time ; possessing also 
 an instinct in the expression of such subjects so peculiar as 
 to win for him a satisfying popularity, and, far better, to enable 
 him to derive perpetual pleasure in the seclusion of country 
 hamlets, and the quiet streets of deserted cities, Prout had 
 never any motive to acquaint himself with the refinements, or 
 contend with the difficulties, of a more accomplished art. So 
 far from this, his manner of work was, by its very imperfection 
 in the most perfect sympathy with the subjects he enjoyed. 
 The broad chalk touches in which he has represented to us 
 this house at Strasbourg are entirely sufficient to give true 
 idea of its effect. To have drawn its ornaments with the 
 subtlety of Leonardesque delineation would only have exposed 
 their faults and mocked their rusticity. The drawing would 
 have become painful to you from the sense of the time 
 which it had taken to represent what was not worth the labour, 
 and to direct your attention to what could only, if closely 
 examined, be a matter of offence. But here you have a 
 simple and provincial draughtsman happily and adequately 
 expressing a simple and provincial architecture; nor could 
 builder or painter have become wiser, but to their loss. Works 
 of John Ruskin, vol. iv., Eagle's Nest, pp. 86, 88, 89. 
 
COMPLETE 
 
 INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 PROUT LIST. 
 
 i Calais Town, see p. 48 . 
 
 2 Calais Old Pier, p. 49 
 
 3 Figure Studies, p. 49 
 
 4 Abbeville. West Front of S. 
 
 Wulfran, pp. 46, 50, 54 
 
 5 Abbeville. North-west Tower 
 
 of S. Wulfran, pp. 33, 50 . 
 
 6 Abbeville. Photograph of the 
 
 Porches of St. Wulfran 
 
 7 Amiens, pp. 31, 50 
 
 8 Dieppe. Chapel of the Holy 
 
 Sepulchre, pp. 46, 50 
 
 9 Evreux, pp. 35, 51 . 
 
 10 Strasburg, pp. 35, 41, 52, 56 . 
 
 11 Strasburg. Lithograph, p. 54 
 
 12 Lisieux, pp. 46, 54, 56 . 
 
 13 Lisieux. Water-colour Draw- 
 
 ing, pp. 43, 55 . 
 
 14 Bayeux, p. 57 
 
 15 Shop at Tours, p. 58 
 
 16 Rouen. The Tour de Beurre, 
 
 P. 58 
 
 17 Rouen. Staircase in St. Mac- 
 
 lou, pp. 48, 58 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 The Rev. O. Gordon 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 1 8 Ghent, p. 59 . 
 
 19 Antwerp, pp. 35, 59 
 
 20 Augsburgh .... 
 
 21 Brunswick, p. 60 . 
 
 22 Dresden, p. 60 
 
 23 Prague. The Bridge, pp. 46,60 
 
 24 Prague. The Stadt Haus, 60 . 
 
 25 Bamberg, p. 61 
 
 26 Nuremberg, p. 61 . 
 
 27 Lahnstein .... 
 27<?Broadstairs . 
 
 28 The Drachenfels, pp. 41, 61 
 
 29 Islands of the Rhine, p. 62 
 
 30 The Pfalz, p. 62 . 
 
 31 Worms. Water-colour Draw- 
 
 ing, p. 62 . 
 
 32 Worms. Pencil, pp. 46, 62 
 
 33 Four Studies of Peasants at 
 
 Ratisbonne, p. 63 
 
 34 An Old Water-mill 
 
 35 Ulm, p. 63 . 
 
 36 Ulm. Water-colour Drawing 
 17 Swiss Costumes, p. 63 . 
 
 38 Old Hulk .... 
 
 39 Chillon, p. 63 
 
 40 Chillon. The Dungeon, p. 63 
 
 41 Montreux .... 
 
 42 Waterfall under the Dent du 
 
 Midi 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 Col.T.H. Sale 
 Mr. James Knowles 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 >> 
 Mr. John Simon 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 Mr. W. H. Urwick 
 Mr. A. Keily 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 Mr. G. W. Reid, F.S.A. 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 Mr. Alfred Hunt 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 Mrs. C. S. Whitmore 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 The Fine Art Society 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 43 Martigny. Village 
 
 
 
 
 
 44 A Castle 
 
 
 . 
 
 . Mr. A. Hunt 
 
 45 Mayence 
 
 
 . 
 
 . Mrs. C. S. Whitmore 
 
 46 Brieg 
 
 
 . 
 
 . Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 47 Domo d'Ossola, pp. 
 
 35, 
 
 4 
 
 . Mr. Ruskin 
 
 48 Como, p. 35 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 . Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 101 
 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 49 Verona 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 50 Verona. Water-colour Drawing 
 
 Mr. J. C. Ottway 
 
 51 Verona. Three Pencil Draw- 
 
 
 ings 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 52 Ghent ..... 
 
 Mr. W. J. Stuart 
 
 53 Sunrise 
 
 Mr. W. Scrivener 
 
 54 Martigny Village. Water- 
 
 
 colour ; 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 55 Place of St. Mark's, Venice, 
 
 
 pp. 43, 69 . 
 
 > 
 
 56 Venice. Ducal Palace from the 
 
 
 West, p. 65 
 
 
 
 57 Venice. Ducal Palace from the 
 
 
 East 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 58 S. Michael's Mount, Normandy, 
 
 
 p. 65 . 
 
 
 
 59 The Grand Canal, Venice, 
 
 
 Near the Rialto 
 
 )> 
 
 60 The Doge's Palace, Venice, p. 67 
 
 The Right Hon. Lord 
 
 
 Coleridge 
 
 61 Verona ..... 
 
 Mr. J. Rhodes 
 
 62 Sunset ..... 
 
 Mr. J. C. Scrivener 
 
 63 The Grand Canal, Venice 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 64 The Bridge of Sighs 
 
 
 
 65 Bologna. San Giacomo, p. 35 
 
 }> 
 
 66 Bologna. The Tower of Gau- 
 
 
 senda .... 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 67 Arqua. Petrarch's House 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 68 Arqua. Petrarch's Tomb 
 
 
 
 69 Vauxhall .... 
 
 Mr. H. Moore 
 
 70 Nuremberg. Diirer's House, 
 
 
 p. 72 .... 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 71 Rome. The Coliseum, pp. 35,38 
 
 
 
 ir 
 
102 
 
 INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 72 Rome. The Fountain of Egeria 
 
 73 Kelso, p. 72 . 
 
 74 Rouen, p. 73 
 
 75 Study of Dutch Boats, p. 73 
 
 76 Neudersdorf, p. 73 
 
 77 Gutenfels, pp. 72, 73 
 
 78 An Old Rhine Bridge at 
 
 Rheinsfelden p. 73 
 
 79 Munich, p. 73 
 
 80 Ypres, p. 73 
 
 8 1 Rubens' House, Antwerp p. 74 
 
 82 Caen, p. 74 . 
 
 83 Falaise, p. 74 
 
 84 Old Gateway at Monmouth 
 
 85 Old Hulk . 
 
 86 Portico di Ottavia, Rome, p. 74 
 
 87 Well at Strasburg, p. 74 
 
 88 Well at Strasburg, p. 75 
 
 89 Well at Nuremberg, p. 75 
 
 90 Ulm 
 
 91 Prague. Tower of the Gate 
 
 92 Prague. Stadthaus 
 
 93 Brunswick. Rathhaus . 
 
 94 Coblenz, p. 76 
 
 95 English Cottage, p. 21 
 
 96 Launceston, p. 77 
 
 97 Wreck of an East Indiaman 
 
 98 Frankfort 
 
 99 Marine View 
 
 100 Verona .... 
 
 101 Interior of St. Julien at Tours 
 
 102 A Bridge 
 
 103 View of a Church 
 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr 
 
 . S. G. 
 
 Prout 
 
 Mr 
 
 J. W 
 
 Gibbs 
 
 Mr 
 
 S. G. 
 
 Prout 
 
 Mr 
 
 . S. G. 
 
 Prout 
 
 Mr. 
 
 E. Quaile 
 
 Mr. A. F. 
 
 Payne 
 
 Mr. 
 
 H. Howard-Keeling 
 
 Mr. 
 
 W. H 
 
 . Urwick 
 
 Mr. 
 
 J. C. Robinson 
 
 Mr. 
 
 S. G. 
 
 Prout 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. W. Eastlake 
 
 Hon. H. Strutt 
 
 Mr. A. F. Hollingsworth 
 
 Mr. Safe 
 
 Mr. J. J. Wigzell 
 
 Mr. S. Castle 
 
 Mr. A. F. Payne 
 
 Rev. J. Townsend 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY DRAWINGS. 
 
 103 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY DRAWINGS. 
 
 j 04 Calais .... 
 i04#The Aventine 
 
 105 The Ducal Palace and Bridge 
 
 of Sighs . 
 
 106 Ducal Palace, Foliage of 
 
 South-west Angle 
 137 Pillar of the Piazzetta . 
 
 108 Chiaroscuro Study of the 
 
 same Pillar 
 
 109 The Casa d'Oro . 
 
 1 10 Window on the Grand Canal 
 in Abbeville Crocket 
 H2 Oak-leaf 
 
 113 Moss and Oxalis . 
 
 114 Floral Decoration . 
 
 115 Madonna and David 
 
 116 The Prophets 
 
 117 Abbeville 
 
 118 Picture of Abbeville 
 
 119 Improvements in Modern 
 
 London f . . . 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Rooke 
 
104 
 
 INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 HUNT LIST. 
 
 120 The Wanderer 
 
 121 The Eavesdropper 
 
 122 Head of a Mulatto-Girl 
 
 123 St. Martin's Church 
 
 124 Somerset House . 
 
 125 Bullaces, p. 88 
 
 126 Plums 
 
 127 Black Grapes and Strawberries 
 
 128 Magnum Bonum Plums 
 
 129 Black and White Grapes, p. 88 
 
 130 Grapes, p. 88 
 
 131 Quinces, p. 89 
 
 132 ' Love what you study, study 
 
 what you love/ p. 7 
 
 133 Plums and Blackberry . 
 
 134 Black Grapes and Peach 
 
 135 Fruit 
 
 136 Black and White Grapes 
 
 137 Grapes, Casket, and Peaches 
 
 138 Hare (dead), p. 86 
 
 139 A Pigeon, p. 17 . 
 
 140 Acorn 
 
 141 A Pigeon, p. 87 . 
 
 142 Flowers and Fruit with 
 
 Butterfly, p. 83 
 
 143 Pine, Melon, and Grapes, p. 87 
 
 1 44 H errings and Red Mullet, p. 84 
 
 145 A Pigeon, pp. 17, 87 . 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. J as. Orrock 
 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 
 Mr. F. Wigan 
 
 Mr. Ellis 
 
 Mr. J. C. Robinson 
 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 
 Mr. W. J. Galloway 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Mr. J as. Orrock 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 Mr. Alfred Harris 
 Mr. J as. Orrock 
 Mr. A. W. Lyon 
 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 Mr. J. W. Knight 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 The Fine Art Society 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 "5 
 
 146 Dead Chicken, p. 84 
 
 147 A Bird's Nest, with May- 
 
 blossom, p. 89 . 
 
 148 Lilac and Bird's Nest, p. 89 . 
 
 149 Fungi, p. 88 . 
 
 150 Vase with Rose, and Basket 
 
 with Fruit, p. 89 
 
 1 5 1 Flowers and Fruit, p. 89 
 
 152 Apple Blossom, p. 89 . 
 
 153 Dog-roses and Bird's Nest . 
 
 154 Primrose and Bird's Nest, p.89 
 
 155 Birds' Nests and May Blossom 
 
 156 Primroses . 
 
 157 The Invalid .... 
 
 158 Sunday Morning, p. 13 
 1580' Study of a Head' 
 
 159 The Pitcher Girl . 
 
 159** Sketch for the drawing of the 
 Fly-catcher 
 
 160 Sketch for the drawing of the 
 
 Cricketer .... 
 
 161 The Gipsies, p. 90 
 
 162 The Gamekeeper . 
 
 163 Boy startled by a Wasp 
 
 164 A Young Artist . 
 
 165 Prayer . . . 
 
 166 Devotion . . . . 
 
 167 Girl's Head . . . . 
 
 168 Boy with a lighted Candle . 
 
 169 The Blacksmith's Shop. 
 
 170 By the Wayside . 
 
 171 The Blessing, p. 84 
 
 172 The Shy Sitter . 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Fry 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 
 Dr. Drage 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Mr. R. D. Farnworth 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. S. J. Thacker 
 Mr. J. J. Wigzell 
 Mr. G. Peck 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 
 Mr. H. G. Hine 
 
 Mr. Carl Haag 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 
 
 Mr. John Rhodes 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Mr. Prescott Hewett 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 Mr. W. J. Galloway 
 Mr. W. Beacall 
 Mr. W. H. Urwick 
 Mr. S. J. Thacker 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 
io6 
 
 INDEX OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 173 My Father's Boots, p. 90 
 
 174 An Interior, pp. 12, 18 . 
 
 175 Boy with Lantern, p. 90 
 
 176 Portrait of Hunt (painted by 
 
 himself) .... 
 1 76*Grapes Mu scatel, Peach, and 
 Spray of Raspberries . 
 
 177 Portrait of Saml. Prout, by 
 
 Wm. Hunt 
 
 178 Portrait of Wm. Hunt, by 
 
 himself .... 
 
 179 A Green Melon, Grapes, and 
 
 Plums .... 
 
 180 Shells 
 
 181 Dead Pigeons . . 
 
 182 A Bit of Mont Blanc . 
 
 183 Bird's Nest and Apple Blossom 
 
 184 The Art Critic 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. John Rhodes 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 Mr. J. J. Elliott 
 
 Mr. Sutton Palmer 
 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 
 Mr. Hay don 
 
 Mr. Osier 
 
 Sir John Swinburne, Bart. 
 Mr. Barnes 
 
 Mr. W. Barfoot 
 
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 TO 
 
 THE EXHIBITION. 
 
 Barfoot, Mr. W. 
 
 Barnes, Mr. 
 
 Beacall, Mr. W. 
 
 Brown, Dr. John. 
 
 Coleridge, The Right Hon. Lord. 
 
 Drage, Dr. 
 
 Duncan, Mr. E. 
 
 Eastlake, Mr. W. 
 
 Elliott, Mr. J. J. 
 
 Fry, Mr. 
 
 Galloway, Mr. W. J. 
 
 Gibbs, Mr. J. W. 
 
 Gordon, The Rev. O. 
 
 Gurney, Mr. Geo. 
 
 Haag, Mr. Carl.' 
 
 Harris, Mr. Alfred. 
 
 Haydon, Mr. 
 
 Hewett, Mr. Prescott. 
 
 Hine, Mr. H. G. 
 
 Hollingsworth, Mr. A. T. 
 
 Howard-Keeling, Mr. H. 
 
 Hunt, Mr. A. 
 
 Keily, Mr. A. 
 
 Knight, Mr. J. W. 
 
108 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 Knowles, Mr. James. 
 Lyon, Mr. A. W. 
 Moore, Mr. H. 
 Orrock, Mr. James. 
 Ottway, Mr. J. C. 
 Palmer, Mr. Sutton. 
 Payne, Mr. A. F. 
 Peck, Mr. G. 
 Prout, Mr. S. G. 
 Quaile, Mr. E. 
 Quilter, Mr. W. 
 Reid, Mr. G. W. F.S.A. 
 Rhodes, Mr. John. 
 Robinson, Mr. J. C. 
 Ruskin, Mr. 
 Sale, Colonel. 
 Safe, Mr. James W. 
 Scrivener, Mr. W. C. 
 Sibeth, Mr. Edmund. 
 Strutt, The Hon. Henry. 
 Stuart, Mr. W. J. 
 Swinburne, Sir John. 
 Thacker, Mr. S. J. 
 The Fine Art Society. 
 Townsend, The Rev. W. J. 
 Urwick, Mr. W. H. 
 Wigan, Mr. F. 
 Wigzell, Mr. J. J. 
 Whitmore, Mrs. C. S. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 Printed by Stbavoewayb * Sons, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin'* Lone 
 

 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
 \& 
 
 ^91* 
 
 RECEiv^ n 
 
 JAN22 ; 69-8PM 
 
 LOAN DEP T . 
 
 LD 21A-38m-5,'68 
 (J401slO)476B 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 

 
Lfc45L>; 
 
 u : 
 
 
 mm 
 
 r. 
 
 
 fofelT' 
 
 ^K~rf.'i*^