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tures, to the cheap expedient of abstaining from colours, and painting in white and black, was at last forced to give "painting clean over," and to seek a pious asylum from beggary, in the church. It appears, that Queen Elizabeth not only had her portrait painted by Lucas de Heere, Cornelius Ketel, Frederico Zucchero, Isaac Oliver and Mark Garrard, but that she patronized Lysard, who painted the history of Ahasuerus, for her, (Walpole, vol. i. p. 217,) and Petruccio Ubaldini, an Illuminator on vellum, with many other English and foreign painters, whose names have been preserved by Vertue. These facts clearly show, that Edward VI. Queen Elizabeth, and their ministers, entertained a wish to preserve domestic and ornamental painting in this country. But the church exclusion of painting had excited such abhorrence and dislike, or indifference and contempt for pictures, that the public style and the domestic, perished nearly at the same time. The occasional arrival of foreign painters, to practise about the court, cannot be considered an exception to this statement.

In Greece, in ancient Rome, and modern Italy, painting and sculpture, in their very outset, were employed in the decoration of temples, and other public edifices. The subjects were suited to the buildings, of the highest class, religious, heroic, sublime and beautiful. The paintings, statues, and friezes being to be seen from below, generally at a considerable height, or from a distance, required broad effective masses, and grand ideal forms, to make a due impression upon the spectators. Every thing like a littleness of manner must have defeated the end of the artists. Hence, the public or historical style, upon a great scale, and on principles of grandeur, preceded and moulded the domestic style, and the latter, imbibing the great principles of the former, partook of its nobleness and elevation,

although its productions were upon a less expanded scale. Thus, in Greece, and in ancient Rome, the ideal grandeur of the public style was communicated to the small works of art, in Painting, Marble, and Gems, which were the productions of the domestic style. After the revival of the arts in Italy, similar causes produced similar effects. Painting and sculpture being employed, from their cradle, to embellish the churches, municipal buildings, and palaces, the public or historical style, as in Greece and ancient Rome, preceded the domestic style, and the latter acquired grandeur from the former. The highest class of subjects, the highest powers of the mind, the noblest flights of the imagination, and the most sublime objects, connected with the love of country, and public and private virtue, were embodied and called into action by the ancient artists, in every progressive stage of the arts. But the course cannot be reversed; wherever the domestic style takes the lead, the public style, unless sustained by very powerful and constant patronage from the state, must be of a mixed, inferior character, under the direction of individual patronage; subject to an indiscriminate choice of nature, and deficient in ideal grandeur. This has been the case in all those countries, where, in the sixteenth century, the religious changes were accompanied by an exclusion of painting and sculpture from the churches, and other public edifices. Hence, in a part of Germany, in Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, there being no public style to purify and elevate the domestic style, the latter was formed on the gross taste of the multitude, and never rose above the imitation of ordinary nature. The works of the few artists who painted history in those countries, are characterized by a Dutch taste, a Flemish taste, or a German

taste, in contra-distinction from the nobleness and chastity of the Italian schools.

Here we must, again, repeat that the government of England having expelled painting and sculpture from the churches, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and the exclusion of painting having continued, with a few exceptions, to this present hour, it is plain that, without some powerful patronage and support from the government, the public or historical style, introduced by the patronage of the late king, must depend upon the caprices of fashion, or the fancy of the million, and fall into a feeble, bad taste, if not perish altogether, in the course of a few years,

Although the fierce spirit of hostility against the fine arts had lost its activity in the latter part of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, the prejudices, in which that persecution had originated, maintained their ground; insomuch, that towards the end of George the Second's reign, a general apathy and disinclination to painting and sculpture formed a prominent feature in the British court, and in the character of the nobility and gentry, the learned professions, and of all those opulent classes of society which were in possession of wealth and power to patronize British genius. It was customary for the few British noblemen, who had acquired a taste in their travels on the Continent, to invite foreign painters and sculptors into England, whenever a commission was to be executed for the embellishment of their mansions. Owing to these long existing causes, it was an afflicting and disgraceful fact, that, at a period when the British statesmen and legislators, the British admirals and generals, the British fleets and armies, had extended the fame of British

wisdom and valour through the globe-the country of Shakspeare and of Milton, of Locke, of Newton and Wren, could not produce any one historical painter to display the genius of Englishmen in that art. Thus, there being no English historical painters, and no English historical pictures, in 1752, when REYNOLDS finally established himself in London, after his return from Italy, the old inveterate prejudice, that Englishmen were disqualified by nature from attaining to excellence in the higher department of painting and sculpture, continued in full force, discouraging Englishmen of genius from the study of those arts, and reflecting unmerited disgrace upon the British nation.

Whoever entertains a hope of exciting the government to provide, in its wisdom and liberality, for the cultivation, or rather the preservation, of historical painting in this .country, must not fail, distinctly and continually, without fear of being censured for repetitions, to hold up THE CAUSE, CHURCH EXCLUSION, which, from the reign of Edward VI. to that of George III. excluded England from historical painting; THE CAUSE, CHURCH EXCLUSION, which continues, and which (unless immediately counteracted by THE POWER OF THE STATE ITSELF) will ever continue to exclude her from any but desultory flashes of genius in that field.

From his conviction, that the highest department of painting was closed in this country, and rendered impracticable by CHURCH EXCLUSION, that illustrious artist, Reynolds, notwithstanding his splendid powers, his honourable ambition for the attainment of excellence, and his zealous endeavours for the advancement of the British school, did not deem it prudent to attempt history until very late in life, many years after he had been established in London, as the most eminent and popular portrait

painter of modern times, and some years after he had been elected president of the Royal Academy. Barry's biographer bears evidence to this fact, that "it was late in life before Sir Joshua turned his hand to historical painting," (vol. ii. p. 260). BARRY, himself, on his arrival in England in 1771, nineteen years after Reynolds had finally settled in London, or twenty-five after he commenced his profession there, found the President, in his forty-eighth year, only resolving to enter the bistorical field," which shortly after took place." (Barry's Works, vol. ii. p. 560.) This delay on his part fully proves his low opinion of the public taste, or rather that the old dislike and contempt for British historical painting pervaded England. He commenced painting in London as early as 1746, and finally settled in the capital in 1752, after having had the advantages of studying in Italy three years. It is an undoubted fact that his first historical picture, Count Ugolino and his Sons perishing of famine in a dungeon, was not finished and exhibited until the year 1773, when he was in his fiftieth year, and twenty-seven years after his first outset in the metropolis. During the last fifteen or sixteen of those years, we have the testimony of Dr. Johnson, of Reynolds's own declaration, and of his biographers, Malone, Northcote, and Farrington, that his income, by portrait painting, amounted to 6 or £7000 a year, which clearly shows that he was early in possession of a sufficient independence to enable him to pursue historical painting, if he had not considered that the exclusion of pictures from churches, and the anti-historical state of the public mind in painting, formed an insuperable bar to success. His thorough knowledge of human nature, and his intimate acquaintance with the prejudices of the time, taught him a conviction, that if he had set out with painting historical

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