Collins (William), R.A.
WILLIAM COLLINS was born in London, in September, 1788. At an early age his father noticed his son’s talent, and sent him to the Royal Academy to pursue his studies. His skill in a short time was such that he became a valuable assistant to his father in his business of cleansing and restoring pictures; and when he rose to paint pictures for himself, his father was at a loss what to do without him.
“The first intimation I gave,” says his father, “of my incapacity to restore, or even line, the pictures without the aid of my son William, was on last Wednesday. There was a beautiful large landscape by Ostade—the figures by A. Teniers. I pointed out the necessary repairs in the sky which were wanted to make the picture complete; and, of course, mentioned Bill as superior to every other artist in that department. The squire listened very attentively until I had done, and then inquired what the expense of such repairs might be. I answered, about two or three guineas. “Oh, d——n the sky! clean it and stick it up without any repairs then!”
In 1807, Collins became for the first time exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and fifteen years later a Royal Academician, He married in 1822. He passed the years 1837 and 1838 studying his art in Italy. He says in his journal: “A painter should choose those subjects with which people associate pleasant circumstances: it is not sufficient that a scene pleases him.” And this advice it is plain he acted upon himself to the end of his career. While living, he had the satisfaction (very rare to the most successful) of seeing his pictures fetch high prices. For instance—for his “Frost Scene” Sir Robert Peel paid him 500 guineas, Mr. Young gave him for his “Skittle Players” 400 guineas; and the same sum was paid him by Sir Thomas Baring for his “Mussel Gatherers.”
The life of Collins was a success from the first year he entered as a student at the Royal Academy; and though his life has been called uneventful, the English artist will ever cherish his name.
He died in 1847, aged fifty-nine. His Life, with selections from his correspondence, is plainly and affectionately told by the artist’s son, Mr. Wilkie Collins, published in two vols., 1848.
COMPLAINT AGAINST THE HANGING COMMITTEE.
The following are given by Wilkie Collins in his Memoirs.
“To H. Howard, Esq., R.A.
Great Portland Street, 1st May, 1811.
“Sir,—Finding one of my pictures put upon the hearth in the ‘Great Room,’ where it must inevitably meet with some accident from the people who are continually looking at Mr. Bird’s picture; I take the liberty of requesting you will allow me to order a sort of case to be put round the bottom part of the frame, to protect it (as well as the picture) from the kicks of the crowd. Even the degrading situation in which the picture is placed would not have induced me to trouble you about it had it been my property; but, as it was painted on commission, I shall be obliged to make good any damage it may sustain.
I remain, sir, your obedient, humble servant,
W. Collins, Jun.”
“To Mr. Collins, Jun.
Royal Academy, May 1, 1811.
“Sir,—I conceive there will be no objection to your having a narrow wooden border put round the picture you speak of, if you think such a precaution necessary, provided it be done any morning before the opening of the Exhibition; and you may show this to the porter as an authority for bringing in a workman for that purpose. I cannot help expressing some surprise that you should consider the situation of your picture degrading, knowing as I do that the Committee of Arrangement thought it complimentary, and that, as low as it is, many members of the Academy would have been content to have it.
I am, sir, your obedient servant, H. Howard, Secretary.”
“THE BIRD CATCHERS.”
Mr. Stark, the landscape painter, supplied the following interesting notice of this famous picture:—
“In order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the process of bird-catching, he (Collins) went into the fields (now the Regent’s Park) before sunrise, and paid a man to instruct him in the whole mystery; and I believe if the arrangement of the nets, cages, and decoy birds, with the disposition of the figures, lines connected with the nets, and birds attached to the sticks, were to be examined by a Whitechapel bird-catcher, he would pronounce them to be perfectly correct. He was unable to proceed with the picture for some days, fancying that he wanted the assistance of Nature in a piece of broken foreground; and whilst this impression remained, he said he should be unable to do more. I went with him to Hampstead Heath; and although he was not successful in meeting with anything that suited his purpose, he felt that he could then finish the picture; but while the impression was on his mind that anything could be procured likely to lead to the perfection of the work, he must satisfy himself by making the effort—even if it proved fruitless. I have perhaps said more on this picture than you may deem necessary; but it was the first work of this description that I had been acquainted with, and the only picture, excepting those of my late master, Crome, that I had ever seen in progress. Moreover, I believe it to have been the first picture of its particular class ever produced in this country; and this, both in subject and treatment, in a style so peculiarly your late father’s, and one which has gained for him so much fame.”
The painter himself has left the following memoranda on this picture:—
“Two days since, Constable compared a picture to a sum; for it is wrong if you can take away or add a figure to it. In my picture of ‘Bird-Catchers,’ to avoid red, blue, and yellow—-to recollect that Callcott advised me to paint some parts of my picture thinly (leaving the ground)—and that he gave credit to the man who never reminded you of the palette.”
HAYDON’S “JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.”
“Went to Spring Gardens,” says Collins, “to see Haydon’s picture of ‘The Judgment of Solomon.’ In this most extraordinary production there is everything for which the Venetian school is so justly celebrated; with this difference only, that Haydon has considered other qualities equally necessary. Most men who have arrived at such excellence in colour, have seemed to think they have done enough; but with Haydon it was evidently the signal of his desire to have every greatness of every other school. Hence, he lays siege to the drawing and expression of Nature, which, in this picture, he has certainly carried from, and in the very face of, all his competitors. Of the higher qualities of Art are certainly the tone of the whole picture; the delicate variety of colour; the exquisite sentiment in the mother bearing off her children; and the consciousness of Solomon in the efficacy of his demonstration of the real mother. In short, Haydon deserves the praise of every real artist for having proved that it is possible (which, by the way, I never doubted) to add all the beauties of colour and tone to the grandeur of the most sublime subject, without diminishing the effect upon the heart. Haydon has done all this; and produced, upon the whole, the most perfect modern picture I ever saw; and that at the age of seven-and-twenty!”
SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
Among the correspondence of Collins occurs the following characteristic letter to him from this celebrated writer.
“To W. Collins, Esq., A.R.A.
Highgate, December, 1818.
“My dear Sir,—I at once comply with, and thank you for, your request to have some prospectuses. God knows I have so few friends, that it would be unpardonable in me not to feel proportionably grateful towards those few who think the time not wasted in which they interest themselves in my behalf. There is an old Latin adage: ‘Vis videri pauper, et pauper es.’ Poor you profess yourself to be, and poor therefore you are, and will remain. The prosperous feel only with the prosperous; and if you subtract from the whole sum of their feeling for all the gratifications of vanity and all their calculations of lending to the Lord, both of which are best answered by conferring the superfluity of their superfluities on advertised and advertisable distress—or on such as are known to be in all respects their inferiors—you will have, I fear, but a scanty remainder. All this is too true; but then, what is that man to do whom no distress can bribe to swindle or deceive? who cannot reply as Theophilus Cibber did to his father, Colley Cibber, who, seeing him in a rich suit of clothes, whispered to him as he passed, ‘The.! The.! I pity thee!’ ‘Pity me! pity my tailor!’ Spite of the decided approbation which my plan of delivering lectures has received from several judicious and highly respectable individuals, it is too histrionic, too much like a retail dealer in instruction and pastime, not to be depressing. If the duty of living were not far more awful to my conscience than life itself is agreeable to my feelings, I should sink under it. But, getting nothing by my publications, which I have not the power of making estimable by the public without loss of self-estimation, what can I do? The few who have won the present age, while they have secured the praise of posterity, as Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Southey, Lord Byron, etc., have been in happier circumstances. And lecturing is the only means by which I can enable myself to go on at all with the great philosophical work to which the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years of my life have been devoted. Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-oblivion, presents an asylum. Yet sometimes, spite of myself, I cannot help bursting out into the affecting exclamation of our Spenser (his ‘wine’ and ‘ivy garland’ interpreted as competence and joyous circumstances),—
“Thou kenn’st not, Percy, how the rhyme should rage!
Oh if my temples were bedewed with wine,
And girt with garlands of wild ivy-twine,
How I could rear the Muse on stately stage!
And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,
With queen’d Bellona in her equipage—
But, ah, my courage cools ere it be warm!”
But God’s will be done. To feel the full force of the Christian religion, it is perhaps necessary, for many tempers, that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert’s ‘Temple,’ which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness—in short, only to laugh at—than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read ‘Herbert,’ I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled ‘The Flower,’ is especially affecting; and, to me, such a phrase as ‘relish versing,’ expresses a sincerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified, ‘and once more love the Muse,’ etc. And so, with many other of Herbert’s homely phrases. We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent transatlantic friend [Mr. Allston]. I need not repeat that your company, with or without our friend Leslie, will gratify your sincere,
“S. T. Coleridge.”
THE PAINTER’S SYMPATHISERS.
Collins was much amused on one occasion by the remark of some fishermen. Having made a careful study of some boats and other objects on the beach, which occupied him the greater part of the day, towards evening, when he was preparing to leave, the sun burst out low in the horizon, producing a very beautiful, although totally different, effect on the same objects; and with his usual enthusiasm, he immediately set to work again, and had sufficient light to preserve the effect. The fishermen seemed deeply to sympathize with him at this unexpected and additional labour as they called it; and endeavoured to console him by saying, “Well, never mind, sir; every business has its troubles.”