Literary Gazette no 319 March 1 1823 p139 (J.Murray)
Westall's illustrations of Crabbe's Poems
Among the charming publications of the Fine Arts which are submitted to our notice, we have not recently seen aught more interesting in subject, or more beautiful in execution, than the work the title of which we have given above. The engravings upon our table are 31 in number; and to avoid the tediousness of detail upon so many single prints, we shall beg leave to select such specimens only as afford sufficient data for needful remark. Mr Westall frequently appears something of a mannerist; and when we reflect upon the multitude of his inventions for the illustrations of books, we shall rather be surprised that he has not oftener repeated himself, than offended by his occasional coincidences. Here, however, the dissimilarity of the poet's characters and images has led to like dissimilarity in the painter; and we observe with satisfaction that Mr Westall never excercised a better judgement in the variety, as well as in the general conception of his designs. Feeling and pathos alternate with whim and humour, and we turn from all the sad reality of lowly life in distress, to the comic incidents of comfort and sportiveness. For instance, from 'The Borough'
'I go, he said; but as he spoke, she found
His hand more cold, and fluttering was the sound;
The gazed affrightened; but she caught at last,
A dying look of love - and all was past!'
The dying man is seated on the chair, his eyes closing in death, and its stamp upon every feature, while his miserable wife clasps his hand in an agony of watchfulness and despair. Luxuriant foliage about the humble hut forms a melancholy contrast to the last sad scene of human wretchedness. A similar subject, with a female sufferer, occurs from Tale VIII; while a pleasant variation is offered in the grotesque Doctor and his puzzled patient taking medicine:
'I feel it not' - 'Then take it every hour;'
'It makes me worse' - 'Why, then it shows its power' Borough
And another (same Poem) which represents the dying Toper having just tossed off a bumper, a jolly friend smoking contentedly by his side, another standing up in convivial merriment, and the astonished nurse presenting the physic cup in utter dismay:
'I go,' he said, 'but still my friends shall say,
'Twas as a man - I did not sneak away;
An honest life with worthy souls I've spent, -
Come fill my glass;' he took it, and he went.
This is very happily hit off, and the waning moon at the casement, and all the accessories accord in composing a clever piece, which is also admirably engraved, as indeed all these are, by Mr C. Heath. A yet merrier piece is the Card Pary:
There, there's your money; but while I have a life,
I'll never more sit down with man and wife.
We do not remember anything of the Artist in so entirely a comic vein, preserving at the same time the most characteristic expression, with all the effect of caricature and all the truth of nature. The Schoolmistress is another excellent print. The rod is on the eve of requisition, and while the urchin blubbering under the fool's cap, may anticipate the certain infliction, it is exemplary to behold with what marvellous industry its companions con their tasks. The Boy (Tales of the Hall) reading his Latin exercises to the Butler and Cook, is a capital fellow to the preceding; but perhaps the greatest effort of art at expression is in the embodying of the following
My father's look was one I seldom saw,
It gave no pleasure, nor created awe;
It was the kind of cool contemptuous smile
Of witty persons overcharged with bile.
To picture this, it must be confessed, was a very difficult task, but Mr Westall has completely accomplished it. Both figures are just what the imagination would conceive. The Miserly Brother finding his brother dead on his bed, when rushing in to chide him, is a fearful lesson, and strikingly told. We are almost relieved by taking our eyes from it to the Sullen Justice and his clerk swearing the luckless Maiden, we were going to say; but we adopt the author's more correct, on account of the incorrectness, appellation of Damsel.: Near her the swain etc. Poor lass! she does not look as if that would be the case either; but perhaps Mr Crabbe knew better and saw farther than Mr Westall. The latter has however made an admirable picture of the actual circumstances.
We must now pause on detail. There is one delightful scenery, with a Mother & child, from the Parish Register Baptisms; and several sea-pieces of perfect fidelity. The Old Sailor & Boy in a Boat during a storm, yields, if at all, to the more gratifying group of the Fisherman's Wife mending the Net, while her children are launching a tiny vessel. These are Hastings Beach on paper. Upon the whole, rustic and higher life - death in various forms - the gay, the grave, the real, the imaginative, are all ably shown as the subjects suggest; and Mr Westall with Mr Heath's assistance, has furnished a work well calculated to go down to posterity with the extrordinary Poems they have been produced to illustrate.
Sunday 4 April 2010
Friday 2 April 2010
Athenaeum on Richard Westall
The Athenaeum no 447 Dec 17, 1836 p889
Richard Westall RA
The decease of this aimiable man has been for some time expected; and it is unhappily but too well known that, although Mr Westall had attained to an advanced period of his life, he was, during the greater, and particularly the latter part of it, so much oppressed by pecuniary difficulties, as to leave no doubt that mental distress must have contributed to accelerate it.
Mr Westall possessed an elegant and accomplished mind, and was the author of some poems of considerable merit in early life. As an artist, his taste inclined rather to the romantic than the classical. His illustrations of the native bards were conceived with a true poetical feeling, and he entered happily into the genius of his author. He was, perhaps, second only to the immortal Stothard in the abundance and popularity of his designs; and it is difficult to estimate the aid that has been given to the diffusion of elegant literature during the last fifty years, by the charms and force of the beautiful illustrations that our artists have generally supplied.
Mr Westall chiefly excelled in drawings; his oil pictures, though possessing force and beauty, generally skilfully composed and brilliant in colour, will not stand the test of comparison with works containing the true principles of Art. At the time when Lawrence became a leading star in our Exhibitions, Westall was in possession of the town; and he found in the youthful aspirant and future President a formidable competitor; the lead, however, which he till then enjoyed, may be said to have been fairly won; as he, in great measure, the parent of the style of drawing in portrait and poetical composition, which has since brought so high a degree of perfection in our school. If memory does not mislead us, Downman's very tame, not to say lame, productions, though then highly esteemed, were until Westall appeared, the best works to be found of their class in our Academy.
Mr Westall was among the artists employed upon the Shakespeare Gallery & Bowyer's History of England; and several fine pictures came at that time from his hand, proving, to our minds, that had encouragement and demand for such works continued, he might have attained to a high standard of excellence in the historical department of the art. But, unhappily, as is well known, our artists were compelled to submit to the very inferior occupation of working for the booksellers and publishers; and the once lofty arts of design have been reduced to the minutest minimum. From the great facility with which Mr Westall's ready talent enabled him to produce book designs of this character, he was led into a greater degree of mannerism than any of his contemporaries, and which proved highly prejudicial to his fame and reputation. His designs of Milton Paradise Lost & Regained, published by Boydell, are well known, and will be appreciated by every judicious admirer of art, for grace, and sometimes sublimity. A catalogue of the esteemed works of this artist would clearly evince how largely he has contributed at once to excite and gratify that taste of embellishment which is now thought indispensible "to point the moral, and adorn the tale".
Few men have been more universally esteemed in private life than Mr Westall; and, although retiring in his habits, his correct and gentlemanly manners and character always proved a passport to the best society.
Richard Westall RA
The decease of this aimiable man has been for some time expected; and it is unhappily but too well known that, although Mr Westall had attained to an advanced period of his life, he was, during the greater, and particularly the latter part of it, so much oppressed by pecuniary difficulties, as to leave no doubt that mental distress must have contributed to accelerate it.
Mr Westall possessed an elegant and accomplished mind, and was the author of some poems of considerable merit in early life. As an artist, his taste inclined rather to the romantic than the classical. His illustrations of the native bards were conceived with a true poetical feeling, and he entered happily into the genius of his author. He was, perhaps, second only to the immortal Stothard in the abundance and popularity of his designs; and it is difficult to estimate the aid that has been given to the diffusion of elegant literature during the last fifty years, by the charms and force of the beautiful illustrations that our artists have generally supplied.
Mr Westall chiefly excelled in drawings; his oil pictures, though possessing force and beauty, generally skilfully composed and brilliant in colour, will not stand the test of comparison with works containing the true principles of Art. At the time when Lawrence became a leading star in our Exhibitions, Westall was in possession of the town; and he found in the youthful aspirant and future President a formidable competitor; the lead, however, which he till then enjoyed, may be said to have been fairly won; as he, in great measure, the parent of the style of drawing in portrait and poetical composition, which has since brought so high a degree of perfection in our school. If memory does not mislead us, Downman's very tame, not to say lame, productions, though then highly esteemed, were until Westall appeared, the best works to be found of their class in our Academy.
Mr Westall was among the artists employed upon the Shakespeare Gallery & Bowyer's History of England; and several fine pictures came at that time from his hand, proving, to our minds, that had encouragement and demand for such works continued, he might have attained to a high standard of excellence in the historical department of the art. But, unhappily, as is well known, our artists were compelled to submit to the very inferior occupation of working for the booksellers and publishers; and the once lofty arts of design have been reduced to the minutest minimum. From the great facility with which Mr Westall's ready talent enabled him to produce book designs of this character, he was led into a greater degree of mannerism than any of his contemporaries, and which proved highly prejudicial to his fame and reputation. His designs of Milton Paradise Lost & Regained, published by Boydell, are well known, and will be appreciated by every judicious admirer of art, for grace, and sometimes sublimity. A catalogue of the esteemed works of this artist would clearly evince how largely he has contributed at once to excite and gratify that taste of embellishment which is now thought indispensible "to point the moral, and adorn the tale".
Few men have been more universally esteemed in private life than Mr Westall; and, although retiring in his habits, his correct and gentlemanly manners and character always proved a passport to the best society.
Athenaeum on William Westall
The Athenaeum Jan 26 1850 p106
Mr William Westall, the landscape painter, died on the 22nd inst in the 69th year of his age. Though little celebrated for his oil pictures, he had a pleasant feeling for landscape nature (lake scenery more especially). He represented, however, what he saw before him with the fidelity of an artist not much alive to the poetry of his art. He worked largely for booksellers; and many volumes for which he supplied matter-of-fact illustrations, from his own drawings as well as from slight sketches of artists and amateurs, evince his skill and the taste and readiness with which he worked. Mr Westall was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1813 and was senior Associate at the time of his death.
Feb 2, 1850 p136
For the following addenda to a paragraph in last weeks 'Athenaeum', we are indebted to Mr Landseer - "In your biographical sketch of Mr W.Westall you have omitted the most noticeable circumstance of his life. He was a circumnavigator, - went round the world with Capt. Flinders; and they were shipwrecked, if I rightly remember, somewhere in Australia. Of the three painters who went round the world with Cook, Vancouver and Flinders - viz Hodges, Webber and Westall - the last was the most accomplished: and his delineations of what he saw had most of the truth of portraiture, - as the engravings in Capt Flinders's book will show. Being, however, a mild and unobtrusive man, whilst the others were pushing and solicitous, he remained an ARA whilst they became Academicians. After his return he had an Exhibition in Brook St; but it was insufficiently advertised, and had but few visitors. The day I was there, there were but three other persons in the room, and one of them was the artist's brother. But the exhibited drawings, consisting chiefly of joss-houses, Indian forest-scenes, with banyan trees, cavern temples etc, were more effective and more richly coloured than the average of their draughtsman's subsequent productions."
Mr William Westall, the landscape painter, died on the 22nd inst in the 69th year of his age. Though little celebrated for his oil pictures, he had a pleasant feeling for landscape nature (lake scenery more especially). He represented, however, what he saw before him with the fidelity of an artist not much alive to the poetry of his art. He worked largely for booksellers; and many volumes for which he supplied matter-of-fact illustrations, from his own drawings as well as from slight sketches of artists and amateurs, evince his skill and the taste and readiness with which he worked. Mr Westall was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1813 and was senior Associate at the time of his death.
Feb 2, 1850 p136
For the following addenda to a paragraph in last weeks 'Athenaeum', we are indebted to Mr Landseer - "In your biographical sketch of Mr W.Westall you have omitted the most noticeable circumstance of his life. He was a circumnavigator, - went round the world with Capt. Flinders; and they were shipwrecked, if I rightly remember, somewhere in Australia. Of the three painters who went round the world with Cook, Vancouver and Flinders - viz Hodges, Webber and Westall - the last was the most accomplished: and his delineations of what he saw had most of the truth of portraiture, - as the engravings in Capt Flinders's book will show. Being, however, a mild and unobtrusive man, whilst the others were pushing and solicitous, he remained an ARA whilst they became Academicians. After his return he had an Exhibition in Brook St; but it was insufficiently advertised, and had but few visitors. The day I was there, there were but three other persons in the room, and one of them was the artist's brother. But the exhibited drawings, consisting chiefly of joss-houses, Indian forest-scenes, with banyan trees, cavern temples etc, were more effective and more richly coloured than the average of their draughtsman's subsequent productions."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)