but Constable had resolved to become a painter; and in 1800 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and received some instruction in painting from RAMSAY RICHARD REINAGLE (1775-1862), himself an excellent landscape-painter, who, like his father Philip, also resided several years in Italy, whence he brought many beautiful sketches, from which, as was then the fashion, he composed pictures: he was at one time very successful, and very much employed in portraits likewise: he was a large contributor to the Academy exhibitions. From 1820 Constable resided at Hampstead, the beautiful neighbourhood of which chiefly occupied his pencil for the remainder of his life. "I love," said Constable, to his friend Uwins, "every stile, and stump, and lane in the village: as long as I am able to hold a brush, I shall never cease to paint them :" and in this expression we have the exposition of his style: he was emphatically the painter of country lanes, fields, and hedgeAll his pictures are conspicuous for the simplicity of their subjects a cottage, a corn-field, a village church or green, a brook or lane. He was, further, very fond of giving the effect of dew, and this fancy he carried to such an excess as to make it a characteristic manner; and some of his views are accordingly most obtrusively spotty. Yet some of his larger works, which have now had time to mellow down, are certainly magnificent in effect: the "Corn-field," and the "Valley-farm," in the National Gallery, are both very fine examples. He died in London, on the 30th of March, 1837.'

rows.

SIR AUGUSTUS WALL CALLCOTT, sometimes called the English Claude, was born at Kensington in 1779. He was a chorister boy, and officiated for some years in Westminster Abbey under Dr. Cooke. He, however, adopted painting at an early age; and having received some instruction from Hoppner the portraitpainter, he originally pursued the same branch of art; but eventually, and until the last few years of his life, he devoted himself exclusively to landscapes. And it is to his landscapes, which are commonly distinguished for a beautiful repose, that he owes his reputation in some of his pictures he resembles the early works of Turner. In 1837 he first departed from his usual subjects, and exhibited a picture of "Raphael and the Fornarina," now well known from the print of it by Lumb Stocks, which was distributed to the subscribers of the London Art Union in 1843. His picture of "Milton and his Daughters" was exhibited in 1840. In 1837 he was knighted by the Queen, and in 1844 he was

1 See the "Memoir of the Life of John Constable, Esq., R.A., composed chiefly of his Letters." By C. R. Leslie, Esq., R.A. London, 1842. It contains twenty-two engravings from Constable's works.

appointed the successor of Mr. Seguier as conservator of the Royal Pictures; an office which he held for a few months only. He died on the 25th of November, 1844, and was buried on the 30th, in Kensal Green Cemetery, where his accomplished wife, Lady Callcott, known previously as Maria Graham, had been buried two years before.

JOHN CROME, commonly called OLD CROME, to distinguish him from other younger painters of the name and family, was an older man, but not an older painter, than Constable or Callcott. He was born at Norwich, in the Napoleonic year, 1769, and died in his native city in 1821. Crome was brought up as a coach-painter, an occupation he soon forsook, for the more genial one of a drawingmaster; and it was only his leisure time that he could devote to oil-painting. This he spent diligently in making oil-sketches from nature, chiefly from the neighbourhood of Norwich.

The materials of Crome's pictures are generally exceedingly simple, but he has sometimes produced an admirable effect with them; he was more simple in his choice of subject even than Constable. He exhibited very rarely at the Royal Academy, and his subjects were all views or landscapes, with one exception; a "Blacksmith's Shop," exhibited in 1809. His masterpiece is probably the "View of Mousehold Heath," now in the National Gallery.

Another fine English landscape-painter is RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON, who was born in the village of Arnold, near Nottingham, October the 25th, 1801. His father, a landscape and portraitpainter, took him, when only fifteen years old, to Paris, and there procured him permission to copy in the Louvre. Owing to this circumstance, Bonington's education was chiefly French; he became a student of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and attended occasionally the studio of the Baron Gros. He devoted himself chiefly to landscape-painting, working often in water-colours; but his subjects are mostly marine or river views.

Having obtained considerable reputation in Paris, Bonington visited Italy, where in Venice he found ample materials suited to his especial taste, and he executed some elaborate views there, both in oil and in water-colours. By the exhibition of some few of these works, at the Royal Academy, he acquired great reputation also in England, which has risen still higher since the International Exhibition of 1862, in which Bonington's pictures, figures as well as views, were among the most masterly and effective works in colour, of the whole collection. He died of decline, in London, on the 23rd of September, 1828, shortly after his return from a second visit to Paris, not having quite completed his twenty-seventh year. Sir Thomas Lawrence, writing to a friend after attending Bonington's funeral, remarks, "I have never known in my own time an

early death, of talent so promising, and so rapidly and obviously improving."

Bonington exhibited only four pictures at the Royal Academy: "A Scene on the French Coast," in 1827; and the three following in 1828: "Henry III. of France;" a "Coast Scene;" and "The Grand Canal, with the Church of La Vergine della Salute, Venice."

PATRICK NASMYTH, sometimes called the English Hobbema (I suppose it ought to be the Scotch), was born in Edinburgh in 1786. He was the son and pupil of Alexander Nasmyth, and painted in a similar style. When about twenty years of age he settled in London, where he died, in South Lambeth, August the 17th, 1831. Nasmyth's landscapes are simple in subject, with much detail of execution, but forcible in effect; one of his principal works is a "View of Windsor Castle;" another is a "View in Hampshire," in the possession of Mr. Thomas Baring. Owing to an accident which happened to his right hand, in his youth, he was in the habit of painting with his left.

WILLIAM COLLINS, born in London in 1787, was the son of a picturedealer in Great Tichfield-street, who was a native of Wicklow in Ireland, and the friend of George Morland, of whom he wrote a memoir. The son, from this intimacy, was in some measure the pupil of Morland, who allowed Collins to watch him painting. Collins became the chief support of his family in 1812, when he lost his father. But he early found valuable patrons in Sir Thomas Heathcote, Sir John Fleming Leicester, Sir George Beaumont, and Sir Robert Peel.

His style is landscape, with the out-door incidents of ordinary life prominently introduced, and both naturally and charmingly expressed; as the "Young Fifer," the "Sale of the Pet Lamb," "Bird Catchers," the "Fisherman's Departure," "Hop Gatherers," "Happy as a King," "The Haunts of the Sea Fowl," "Fetching the Doctor," with cottage and coast scenes in great variety; especially Cromer Sands. He painted also a few portraits. Latterly, however, Collins evinced a desire to treat higher subjects; he exhibited “Our Saviour with the Doctors in the Temple," in 1840; and "The Two Disciples at Emmaus," in 1841.

In 1817 he visited Paris; and made a tour in Holland and Belgium in 1828. In 1836 he visited Italy, remaining there nearly two years; in 1840, Germany, and in 1842, the Shetland Islands; each tour affording new materials for his varied subjects. He died in London, of disease of the heart, February the 17th, 1847.3

1 Cunningham, "Lives of the British Painters," &c.

2 "Literary Gazette," 1831.

3 44 Art-Union Monthly Journal," April 1847. His "Life" by his son, 1848.