Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

Rome. Arrived there, he applied

himself diligently to study, maintaining himself, like other poor

artists, by making copies from the antique. English visitors

sought his studio, and gave him commissions; and it was then that

he composed his beautiful designs illustrative of Homer, AEschylus,

and Dante. The price paid for them was moderate—only fifteen

shillings a-piece; but Flaxman worked for art as well as money; and

the beauty of the designs brought him other friends and patrons.

He executed Cupid and Aurora for the munificent Thomas Hope, and

the Fury of Athamas for the Earl of Bristol. He then prepared to

return to England, his taste improved and cultivated by careful

study; but before he left Italy, the Academies of Florence and

Carrara recognised his merit by electing him a member.

 

His fame had preceded him to London, where he soon found abundant

employment. While at Rome he had been commissioned to execute his

famous monument in memory of Lord Mansfield, and it was erected in

the north transept of Westminster Abbey shortly after his return.

It stands there in majestic grandeur, a monument to the genius of

Flaxman himself—calm, simple, and severe. No wonder that Banks,

the sculptor, then in the heyday of his fame, exclaimed when he saw

it, “This little man cuts us all out!”

 

When the members of the Royal Academy heard of Flaxman’s return,

and especially when they had an opportunity of seeing and admiring

his portrait-statue of Mansfield, they were eager to have him

enrolled among their number. He allowed his name to be proposed in

the candidates’ list of associates, and was immediately elected.

Shortly after, he appeared in an entirely new character. The

little boy who had begun his studies behind the plaster-cast-seller’s shop-counter in New Street, Covent Garden, was now a man

of high intellect and recognised supremacy in art, to instruct

students, in the character of Professor of Sculpture to the Royal

Academy! And no man better deserved to fill that distinguished

office; for none is so able to instruct others as he who, for

himself and by his own efforts, has learnt to grapple with and

overcome difficulties.

 

After a long, peaceful, and happy life, Flaxman found himself

growing old. The loss which he sustained by the death of his

affectionate wife Ann, was a severe shock to him; but he survived

her several years, during which he executed his celebrated “Shield

of Achilles,” and his noble “Archangel Michael vanquishing Satan,”-

-perhaps his two greatest works.

 

Chantrey was a more robust man;—somewhat rough, but hearty in his

demeanour; proud of his successful struggle with the difficulties

which beset him in early life; and, above all, proud of his

independence. He was born a poor man’s child, at Norton, near

Sheffield. His father dying when he was a mere boy, his mother

married again. Young Chantrey used to drive an ass laden with

milk-cans across its back into the neighbouring town of Sheffield,

and there serve his mother’s customers with milk. Such was the

humble beginning of his industrial career; and it was by his own

strength that he rose from that position, and achieved the highest

eminence as an artist. Not taking kindly to his step-father, the

boy was sent to trade, and was first placed with a grocer in

Sheffield. The business was very distasteful to him; but, passing

a carver’s shop window one day, his eye was attracted by the

glittering articles it contained, and, charmed with the idea of

being a carver, he begged to be released from the grocery business

with that object. His friends consented, and he was bound

apprentice to the carver and gilder for seven years. His new

master, besides being a carver in wood, was also a dealer in prints

and plaster models; and Chantrey at once set about imitating both,

studying with great industry and energy. All his spare hours were

devoted to drawing, modelling, and self-improvement, and he often

carried his labours far into the night. Before his apprenticeship

was out—at the ace of twenty-one—he paid over to his master the

whole wealth which he was able to muster—a sum of 50l.—to cancel

his indentures, determined to devote himself to the career of an

artist. He then made the best of his way to London, and with

characteristic good sense, sought employment as an assistant

carver, studying painting and modelling at his bye-hours. Among

the jobs on which he was first employed as a journeyman carver, was

the decoration of the dining-room of Mr. Rogers, the poet—a room

in which he was in after years a welcome visitor; and he usually

took pleasure in pointing out his early handywork to the guests

whom he met at his friend’s table.

 

Returning to Sheffield on a professional visit, he advertised

himself in the local papers as a painter of portraits in crayons

and miniatures, and also in oil. For his first crayon portrait he

was paid a guinea by a cutler; and for a portrait in oil, a

confectioner paid him as much as 5l. and a pair of top boots!

Chantrey was soon in London again to study at the Royal Academy;

and next time he returned to Sheffield he advertised himself as

ready to model plaster busts of his townsmen, as well as paint

portraits of them. He was even selected to design a monument to a

deceased vicar of the town, and executed it to the general

satisfaction. When in London he used a room over a stable as a

studio, and there he modelled his first original work for

exhibition. It was a gigantic head of Satan. Towards the close of

Chantrey’s life, a friend passing through his studio was struck by

this model lying in a corner. “That head,” said the sculptor, “was

the first thing that I did after I came to London. I worked at it

in a garret with a paper cap on my head; and as I could then afford

only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap that it might move

along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned.” Flaxman

saw and admired this head at the Academy Exhibition, and

recommended Chantrey for the execution of the busts of four

admirals, required for the Naval Asylum at Greenwich. This

commission led to others, and painting was given up. But for eight

years before, he had not earned 5l. by his modelling. His famous

head of Horne Tooke was such a success that, according to his own

account, it brought him commissions amounting to 12,000l.

 

Chantrey had now succeeded, but he had worked hard, and fairly

earned his good fortune. He was selected from amongst sixteen

competitors to execute the statue of George III. for the city of

London. A few years later, he produced the exquisite monument of

the Sleeping Children, now in Lichfield Cathedral,—a work of great

tenderness and beauty; and thenceforward his career was one of

increasing honour, fame, and prosperity. His patience, industry,

and steady perseverance were the means by which he achieved his

greatness. Nature endowed him with genius, and his sound sense

enabled him to employ the precious gift as a blessing. He was

prudent and shrewd, like the men amongst whom he was born; the

pocket-book which accompanied him on his Italian tour containing

mingled notes on art, records of daily expenses, and the current

prices of marble. His tastes were simple, and he made his finest

subjects great by the mere force of simplicity. His statue of

Watt, in Handsworth church, seems to us the very consummation of

art; yet it is perfectly artless and simple. His generosity to

brother artists in need was splendid, but quiet and unostentatious.

He left the principal part of his fortune to the Royal Academy for

the promotion of British art.

 

The same honest and persistent industry was throughout distinctive

of the career of David Wilkie. The son of a Scotch minister, he

gave early indications of an artistic turn; and though he was a

negligent and inapt scholar, he was a sedulous drawer of faces and

figures. A silent boy, he already displayed that quiet

concentrated energy of character which distinguished him through

life. He was always on the look-out for an opportunity to draw,—

and the walls of the manse, or the smooth sand by the river side,

were alike convenient for his purpose. Any sort of tool would

serve him; like Giotto, he found a pencil in a burnt stick, a

prepared canvas in any smooth stone, and the subject for a picture

in every ragged mendicant he met. When he visited a house, he

generally left his mark on the walls as an indication of his

presence, sometimes to the disgust of cleanly housewives. In

short, notwithstanding the aversion of his father, the minister, to

the “sinful” profession of painting, Wilkie’s strong propensity was

not to be thwarted, and he became an artist, working his way

manfully up the steep of difficulty. Though rejected on his first

application as a candidate for admission to the Scottish Academy,

at Edinburgh, on account of the rudeness and inaccuracy of his

introductory specimens, he persevered in producing better, until he

was admitted. But his progress was slow. He applied himself

diligently to the drawing of the human figure, and held on with the

determination to succeed, as if with a resolute confidence in the

result. He displayed none of the eccentric humour and fitful

application of many youths who conceive themselves geniuses, but

kept up the routine of steady application to such an extent that he

himself was afterwards accustomed to attribute his success to his

dogged perseverance rather than to any higher innate power. “The

single element,” he said, “in all the progressive movements of my

pencil was persevering industry.” At Edinburgh he gained a few

premiums, thought of turning his attention to portrait painting,

with a view to its higher and more certain remuneration, but

eventually went boldly into the line in which he earned his fame,—

and painted his Pitlessie Fair. What was bolder still, he

determined to proceed to London, on account of its presenting so

much wider a field for study and work; and the poor Scotch lad

arrived in town, and painted his Village Politicians while living

in a humble lodging on eighteen shillings a week.

 

Notwithstanding the success of this picture, and the commissions

which followed it, Wilkie long continued poor. The prices which

his works realized were not great, for he bestowed upon them so

much time and labour, that his earnings continued comparatively

small for many years. Every picture was carefully studied and

elaborated beforehand; nothing was struck off at a heat; many

occupied him for years—touching, retouching, and improving them

until they finally passed out of his hands. As with Reynolds, his

motto was “Work! work! work!” and, like him, he expressed great

dislike for talking artists. Talkers may sow, but the silent reap.

“Let us be DOING something,” was his oblique mode of rebuking the

loquacious and admonishing the idle. He once related to his friend

Constable that when he studied at the Scottish Academy, Graham, the

master of it, was accustomed to say to the students, in the words

of Reynolds, “If you have genius, industry will improve it; if you

have none, industry will supply its place.” “So,” said Wilkie, “I

was determined to be very industrious, for I knew I had no genius.”

He also told Constable that when Linnell and Burnett, his fellow-students in London, were talking about art, he always contrived to

get as close to them as he could to hear all they said, “for,” said

he, “they know a great deal, and I know very little.” This was

said with perfect sincerity, for Wilkie was habitually modest. One

of the first things that he did with the sum of thirty pounds which

he obtained from Lord