The Life of George Cruikshank in Two Epochs, Vol. 1. (of 2)

bed in a few pregnant sentences, how in his later days the pu

knowledge of academical draughtsmanship told against him not less in 1871 than it would have done half a century before, and no doubt the absence of any capacity for the subtle modulations of colour-nay, the absence even of sensitiveness to these-made his painting in oil a failure when judged by the side even of quite every-day work by every-day artists. Thus it was that no fresh honours came to him when he was still eager for them. The popularity of the great days was a little forgotten by the public in the presence of the failure of the most recent. And then again, advertised poverty is never a helpful thing. We worship merit a little, but success more, and success must have its stamp. The public of Cruikshank narrowed. Of course critics and journalists-the men whose business it is to keep in memory some work that the chance public praises one day and forgets the next-knew that Cruikshank was great, and how he had been great, and having in more than one notable instance said so faithfully during his old age, said so again last mo

is Almanac had failed for lack of readers; and David Bogue had thrown up Cruikshank's Magazine, after the second number-convinced that the artist had outlived his public. His ambition to become a painter was mercifully renewed, with the renewal of his health and mind, through temperance. Full of vigour he used to say,

obtain the academical knowledge, of which he had been deprived, as he had said bitterly, through the improvident habits of his whisky-drinking father. Mr. Charles Landseer says: "He entered as student at the Royal Academy, during my keepership, April 22nd, 1853; but made very few drawings

les Landseer to B.

upon the elderly man to leave him patience for the slow progress from the "Antique" to the "Life." He had been at the "Life" in his own k

fe, the humour that were in them-although they were one and all crude or violent in tone, and betrayed in every part a hand unpractised with the brush, and an eye dead to the delicacies of colour. They were, in truth, such bits of humour or fancy as the master humourist was wont in the old time to throw off at the rate of two or three in a week-only laboriously rendered in oils. The Runaway Knock, for instance, might be a plate in the "Sketch-Book," or in "Points of Humour"-and the remark applies to Grimaldi being Shaved by a

possession of Capta

kby-Lonsdale, Mr. M

elfin life may be seen in scores of his earlier works. Look at

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een aroused; nor could the painter refrain from throwing life into the carved stone head over the street-door. Again, "Disturbing the Congregation" is an etching subject, elaborated. A little boy, in church, has dropped his pegtop, a

at sense of colour which was everywhere manifest in the etchings of his best time-in his designs to Ainsworth, for instance. T

ong time the proper

atre, and on the

y, into the hands

ection to the South

was he from suspecting this, that he was constantly meditating great historical subjects; and actually "got in" upon a spacious canvas the Battle of Agincourt. He even began a scriptural subject, "Christ riding into Jerusalem." But the genius that could realize a street or fairy mob * upon a surface no broader than the palm of the hand, could not paint a battle-piece. Without his outline he was all abroad. The sacred subject remained in th

wds give one exactl

a certain monoton

, yet they are ful

actly alike. There

otion, and fluctuat

owds, especially

true mobiles,-read

disperse before t

ancis Turn

ot much of the work he had planned but never executed; work, nevertheless, on which perhaps he had set great store,

ms of great subjects, with which he felt his genius could cope. He would have grappled with Milton, as we have seen, but hard fate kept him tie

in the possessi

lift that wand

lost clu

d window in A

ed must

her and more peaceful, albeit more circumscribed and less earnest, genius of Leech, had he not been buoyed up and comforted with the self-imposed mission, for which he had

wave, des

pestuous p

bread secured by the sympathetic admiration of a few real friends-to build up that monument of his many-sided genius, his cartoo

to labour in comfort. It has been said the National Temperance League was the means of giving the great painting and engraving to the world; but the truth is, that no temperance association-as an association-took action in the matter. The many earnest men who have this good cause at heart c

who met as a committee were Sir Francis Crossley, John Stewart-the art critic, Mr. Hugh Owen of the Poor Law Board, Mr. John Taylor, and Mr. W. Tweedie, the p

"spending money," or money for his daily wants, while the engraving was in progress. The advances of his supporters were to be refunded out of the proceeds of the sale of the plate. On this arrangement Cruikshank went to work with his usual vigour. The water-colour desi

broad canvas, with the upper row of figures already sketched in. In reply to remonstrances, he gave the reasonable explanation that no man could etch all day long. The committee then agreed that he should work as fast as was prudent at the engraving, and "for rest" take a turn at the big picture. In order further to encourage him, an honorary co

ded a thousand pounds; but in a few weeks, he believed, the public, for whom he had been labouring since the beginning of the century, would fill his coffers, and he would be able to release himself from his obligations. Flushed with hope, he

ecuniary disappoint

uld have excelled a

nothing more than

He was violent, f

gant in all his mov

stage, and thought,

fession in his youth

upe in 1848 (Oliver

Camphor in "Love and

of Windsor"), but

hed amateurs as Dic

however, in his pow

plated-to compensat

h his Triumph of B

, he proposed to p

"I will show them

d be

crowds the artist had expected. Then his trusty friends organised a little soirée in the exhibition room on the 28th of August, and invited him to deliver a lecture on his picture, which he did in his own original manner, giving a reason for every group, almost every figure, upon his crowded canvas. * Still the laggard

Appe

llons, quarts, pints, gills, down to your very smallest liqueur glasses of spirits or wine. He will show you how the church, the bar, the army, the universities, the genteel world, the country gentleman in his polite circle, the humble artisan in his, the rustic ploughman in the fields, the misguided washerwoman over her suds and tubs-how all ranks and conditions of men are deteriorated and corrupted by the use of that abominable strong liquor: he will have patience with it no longer. For upwards of half a century, he says, he has employed pencil and pen agains

ns are drinking 'Healths to the young Christian.' Here are the publicans, filthily intoxicated with their own horrible liquors; yonder is a masquerade supper, 'where drunken masquerade fiends drag down columbines to drunkenness and ruin.' Near them are 'the public singers chanting forth the praises of the "God of Wine."' 'Is it not marvellou

may have a drop.' Here you have a group of women, victims of intemperance, 'tearing, biting, and mutilating one another.' Yonder are two of the police carrying away a drunken policeman. Does not the mind reel and stagger at the idea of this cumulated horror? And what is the win

to the public to come and

oments to waken laughter, wonder, or sympathy. To elderly lovers of fun, who can remember this century in its teens and its twenties, the benefactions of this great humourist are as pleasant and well remembered as papa's or uncle's 'tips' when they came to see the boys at school. The sovereign then administered bought delights not to be purchased by sovereigns of later coinage, tarts of incomparable sweetness which are never to be equalled in these times, sausages whose savour is still fragrant in the memory, books containing beautiful prints (sometimes r

c, the paying p

ago, whilst the similar labour of love which he has devoted to Jack and the Beanstalk is the thumbed and tattered darling of many who do not yet aspire to rank in the rising generation. He must, in fact, be old George Cruikshank, we are afraid, in the number of his years; yet our century has seen no better example of that ever-youthfulness which is one of the most frequent and least doubtful signs of genuine genius. That the name of Cruiksh

nces of passing popularity, as well as in the pages of Fielding, Smollett, Grimm, Scott, and Dickens. Nearly thirty years had passed over his head since he il

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whom he had been bravely toiling so many years? Here was his last mighty labour against the wall, and all the world had been told that it was there. His trusty friend Thackeray had hailed it in the Times. A great committee of creditable men had combined to usher it with pomp into the

t-broken man. In a letter he said that Douglas Jerrold was one of the two or three who answered his summons to Piccadilly. But it was I, then a young art-student, w

work of sixty years; his original water-colour sketches of the Miser's Daughter, the Tower of London, the Irish Rebellion, and indeed a selection from t

ly bought by the Aquarium Company, and is now, unfortuna

us went, and were delighted; but Cruikshank was made to see that the new generation had turned irrevocably to other and less gifted favou

acchus" was taken a

ough the provincial

me than it had obta

eculation was th

were bare

itude to complete the etching. "Following the big picture painfully, wearily," one of the committee writes, "the etching was at last completed; but the long delay had damped the ardour of subscriber

ere absolute quarrels, in the course of these entanglements; for Cruikshank was an unmanageable business man, and prone, as we have seen, to fall out even with his most devoted friends. Still there was so much that was good and lovable in him, that they bore with his foibles and his outbursts, and remained willing to help the brave old man again. His admirer, Mr. Raskin, and his secretary or representative, Mr. Howell, with others, got up a testimonial which cast something approaching a thousand pounds into Cruikshank's lap, and at the same time they offered him five guineas

years of the artist's life; and his pecuniary reward w

ails have been delineated by a hand following the eye of a man past threescore years and ten, the 'Triumph of Bacchus' must be regarded as a phenomenon. Its pictorial merit is slight; but it possesses and commands interest of a very different nature from that excited by a mere picture

t has ir made converts. A member of the Cruikshank committee writes: "An actor one day stood before the painting at South Kensington, gazing at it, and taking in its sad history, till, bursting into tears, he left the museum, took a cab direct for Mr. Cruikshank's house, and signed the pledge for three years. Dr. Richar

ng effort; and, however hyper-criticism might carp or ignorance may sneer at details, nothing but the feeling of a poet, which enables him to compose with a poet's facility, could have sustained the effort so successfully. The general composition contains all the elemental types of pictorial grouping, generalised on the two axioms of balance and variety. So fully has the artist carried out this subtle truth of art-because an essential truth of nature-that it would not be difficult to point out every principle Haydon could extrac

too short to finish such pictures up to their standard, and they should understand that the artist never intended to finish after their fashion. His objects were entirely different: first, to produce his thoughts in a style that could be seen by an audience at a distance; and second, using the work in oil as a basis and a guide for the etching and engraving the more permanent work which is now in preparation. In the first the success is greater than the greatest smoothness could have given, and it would be as reasonable to blame Rembrandt for not finishing those studies in oil he painted to etch from, as to blame Cruikshank for following Rembrandt's example. With this 'Triumph of Bacchus,' as with Yan Ryan's 'Hundred Guilders,' the etching-the print-is the true completion of the work; while the picture is only a portion of the preparatory means to the nobler and more enduring end and aim

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