English Painters, with a Chapter on American Painters. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

ENGLISH PAINTERS.

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CHAPTER I.

       EARLY ENGLISH ART.

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      THE current English school of art is a creation of a comparatively modern date. It is a mistake, however, to assume that there were no native painters in England under the Plantagenets, and that we were entirely dependent on foreigners for such art as we possessed. The little care which has been taken of early English pictures and their destruction, sometimes accidental, sometimes wilful, have led many to imagine that ancient England had no art of her own. It has been customary to imagine that in Italy alone, in the thirteenth century, existed the Renaissance and growth of modern design. Later research has, however, shown that the Renaissance in painting was not the sudden creation of Giotto, nor that of sculpture the work of Niccola Pisano. The Renaissance in Italy was a gradual growth, and there was in England and in other countries a similar Renaissance, which was overlooked by those whose eyes were fixed on Italy. It has been shown that there were English artists, contemporaries of Giotto and Pisano, whose works were as good as any paintings or sculptures which the Italians produced in the thirteenth century. It is quite true that we know very little of these Englishmen. Some gave themselves to illumination, and produced delicate representations of human beings, as well as of animals, leaves, and flowers. In the British Museum there are several manuscripts of a very early date, which are ornamented with paintings undoubtedly by English artists. The Duke of Devonshire possesses a manuscript, the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, written between A.D. 963 and 970, and illuminated, with thirty drawings, by a monk of Hyde Abbey, named GODEMAN, for Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It is a folio of 119 leaves of vellum, 11½ inches in height by 8½ in width. Other artists painted and gilded the images of wood or stone by their brother craftsmen, and were classed in the humble category of Steyners. They devoted much of their time to heraldic devices, and by degrees passed from the grotesque to the natural, and produced what were styled portraits on board. Painting on glass was a favourite art in this early period, and, although the artists had no more noble title than that of Glaziers, some of their works survive to prove their merits. Many of these craftsmen combined the arts of the painter, sculptor, or "marbler," and architect. Among these obscure pioneers of English art was WILLIAM TORELL, a goldsmith and citizen of London, supposed to be descended from an English family whose name occurs in Domesday Book. Torell modelled and cast the effigy of Henry III. for his tomb in Westminster Abbey, as well as three effigies of Eleanor of Castile, about A.D. 1291. These latter works were placed in Westminster Abbey, Blackfriars' Monastery, and Lincoln Cathedral. The figures in Westminster Abbey show the dignity and beauty of the human form, and are masterpieces of a noble style. The comparison between the effigy of Margaret of Richmond, executed for Henry VII.'s Chapel by the Florentine Torrigiano, and the figures by Torell, is decidedly in favour of the latter. No work in Italy of the thirteenth century excels in beauty these effigies by the English sculptor. At an earlier period than this, during the life of Henry III., some English artists, as well as foreigners, were employed to embellish the cathedrals and palaces of the King. These native craftsmen, who seem to have been at once artists, masons,