Gainsborough

The British school of painting was, compared with those of the other nations of Western Europe, the latest to develop. In Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and even Scandinavia painting and sculpture flourished as early as the Gothic Age, and in most of these countries the Renaissance produced a host of craftsmen whose works still endure among the most superb creations of artistic genius. It is now inexact to say that there was no primitive period in British Art; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, so resplendent on the Continent with pictures and statues reflecting the character, the aspirations, the temperament of the respective peoples that produced them, produced works of art also in these islands. There are ample records of pictures having been painted in England, both religious subjects and portraits, at a very early age, as far back even as the reign of Henry III.; of such remote productions little has been preserved, but there are still extant a few specimens, from the thirteenth century onwards, as well as portraits of Henry VI., Henry VII., and effigies of princes and earls, which cause us to mourn the loss of a large number of paintings; they are at times grotesque and so thoroughly bad as to be a quite negligible quantity as works of art, though no doubt historically interesting.

PLATE II.--RALPH SCHOMBERG, M.D.

This canvas can be seen in the National Gallery, and represents a member of the family of Field-Marshal Duke Schomberg, who was killed in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne. It is painted in the fashion of the time, a full figure in the open air, and is a very fine example of Gainsborough's work.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--RALPH SCHOMBERG, M.D.]

It may be stated for our purposes that until the reign of Henry VIII. the art of painting was non-existent in England. This luxurious and liberal monarch it was who first gave any real and discerning encouragement to art, and the year 1526 must ever be memorable as the one in which was laid the foundation-stone of British Art. In that year the Earl of Arundel returned from a journey on the Continent; he was accompanied by a young man of powerful build, "with a swarthy sensual face, a neck like a bull, and an eye unlikely to endure contradiction." This was Hans Holbein, who was then thirty years of age, and whose fame had already been spread far and wide by the eloquent praises of Erasmus. Whether the monarch appreciated the depth and subtlety of the painter's genius better than did his own fellow-citizens of Basle, or whether his attitude towards him was prompted by a sense of vanity and ostentation is a question of little moment; the fact remains that he succeeded by his favour and a pension of two hundred florins in fixing the painter at the English court, and thus rendered an incomparable service to his country's art. With the exception of a few lengthy excursions abroad, Holbein lived continuously in England for twenty-eight years, until his death of the plague in 1543.