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Transcribers notes:

  1. Italics rendered with underline e.g. _italics_.
  2. Small Caps rendered with all caps e.g. SMALL CAPS.
  3. Ligatures rendered with [ ] e.g. [OE]dipus.




[Illustration: "THE CONNOISSEURS."

ENGRAVED BY PERMISSION OF HENRY GRAVES & CO., LONDON. AFTER THE
PAINTING BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. (SEE PAGE 814.)]




ST. NICHOLAS.

  VOL. XIII.      SEPTEMBER, 1886.        NO. 11.

  [Copyright, 1886, by THE CENTURY CO.]




STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS: ENGLISH PAINTERS.

BY CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT.


When Henry VIII. came to the throne of England, he was a magnificent
prince. He loved pleasure and pomp and invited many foreign artists to
his court. After a time, however, he became indifferent to art, and it
is difficult to say whether he lessened or added to the art-treasures of
England.

The long reign of Queen Elizabeth--forty-seven years--afforded great
opportunity for the encouragement of art. But most of the painters whom
she employed were foreigners.

King Charles I. was a true lover of art. Rubens and Vandyck were his
principal painters, and Inigo Jones his architect; the choice of such
artists proves the excellence of his artistic taste and judgment. He
employed many other foreign artists, of whom it need only be said that
the English artists profited much by their intercourse with them, as
well as by the study of foreign pictures which the King purchased.

In fact, before the time of William Hogarth, portraits had been the only
pictures of any importance which were painted by English artists, and no
one painter had become very eminent. No native master had originated a
manner of painting which he could claim as his own.

Hogarth was born near Ludgate Hill, London, in 1697.

In 1734, he produced some works which immediately made him famous. He
had originated a manner of his own; he had neither attempted to
illustrate the stories of Greek Mythology, nor to invent allegories, as
so many painters had done before him; he simply gave form to the nature
that was all about him, and painted just what he could see in London
every day. His pictures of this sort came to be almost numberless, and
no rank in society, no phase of life, escaped the truthful
representation of his brush.

He was a teacher as well as an artist, for his pictures dealt with
familiar scenes and subjects and presented the lessons of the follies of
his day with more effect upon the mass of the people than any writer
could produce with his pen, or any preacher by his sermons.

Hogarth died at his house in Leicester Fields, on October 26, 1764.

His success aroused a strong faith and a new interest in the native art
of England, which showed their results in the establishment of the Royal
Academy of Arts. A little more than four years after Hogarth's death,
this Academy was founded by King George III. The original members of the
Academy numbered thirty-four, and among them was


JOSHUA REYNOLDS,

who afterward became its first president.

His father, Samuel Reynolds, was the rector of a grammar school at
Plympton, in Devonshire, and in that little hamlet, on July 16, 1723,
was born Joshua, the seventh of eleven children.

When Joshua was but a mere child, his father was displeased to find him
devoted to drawing; on a sketch which the boy had made, his father
wrote: "This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure idleness." The
child found the "Jesuit's Treatise on Perspective," and studied it with
such intelligence that before he was eight years old he made a sketch of
the school and its cloister which was so accurate that his astonished
father exclaimed, "Now this justifies the author of the 'Perspective'
when he says that, by observing the laws laid down in his book, a man
may do wonders; for this is wonderful!"

When about twelve years old, Joshua, while in church, made a sketch upon
his thumb-nail of the Rev. Thomas Smart. From this sketch, he painted
his first picture in oils; his canvas was a piece of an old sail, his
colors were common ship-paint, and he did his work in a boathouse on
Cremyll Beach.

In 1740, when Joshua was seventeen years old, his father tried to carry
out his plan to apprentice him to a druggist, but the boy was greatly
opposed to this. He said, "I would prefer to be an apothecary rather
than an _ordinary_ painter; but if I could be bound to an eminent