Richard Westall's Crabbe illustrations

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.