BOOKS.

JONES'S RECOLLECTIONS OF CNANTRET..

Wuzx we remember the station from -which Chantrey rose, the position which he reached, and that he had no patrons till he was pretty well independent of mere patronage, he must be considered either as a very lucky man, who climbed the heights of fame with fewer obstacles of fortune than most men, or, which is quite as likely, that his prudence always kept him on the safe aide of life, directing his regard to the solid pudding before the empty praise. There were no terrible hardships or despondencies in his early career, such as frequently beset the path of genius ; or else Mr. Jones has passed them unmentioned; for Chantrey himself was not likely to have suppressed them, as we know from a particular story preserved by Sir HenryRussell. era Clutnirey was born in 1782, at Norton in Derbyshire. His father " cultivated a small property of his own " • and the fu- ture sculptor would seem to have worked upon the farm, since he was accustomed late in life to tell agricultural gentlemen that he had " mowed an acre of grass in a day, thrashed a quarter of corn in a day, and also ploughed an acre of land in a day:" Oiantrefs, father died when he was eight years old, and his mother soon mar- ried again. What kind of schooling he had does not appear ; but when he was sixteen his Mends contemplated placing him with an attorney. Chantrey, however, saw some wood-carving in a shop- window at Sheffield; the innate bent of his mind was touched, though late ; and, his friends consenting, he was bound apprentice to Mr. Ramsay.

"At the house of his master, he met Mr. Raphael Smith, the distinguished draftsman in crayon.

"The works of that ingenious artist soon attracted the attention of young Francis, who took pleasure in seeing Mr. Smith paint, and rendered himself agreeable and serviceable in useful offices about the artist whilst he was pointing ; and he became so impressed with the desire of practising art in a higher class than wood-carving, that at the age of twenty-one he gave the whole amount of his wealth, that being fifty pounds, to his master, to in- duce him to cancel his indentures; for (antrey's impatience to commence his course as an artist would not allow him to wait during the six mouths of his unexpired apprenticeship. With his freedom he began his studies and practice in the liberal arts, and painted the portraits of his friends and others, by which he gained a small sum of money, and having borrowed a little, he ventured to try his fortune in London; but with sagaoious caution he sought employment as an assistant carver in wood, rather than as a paint- er in a metropolis where so many able competitors were ready to impede, contest, and rival his progress."

This immigration to the Metropolis would seem to have taken place about 1803 ; and for the next eight years or so there is a little disorder in the chronology, and Chantrefs progress and profits are not very clearly recorded. liming the peace of Amiens, he went to Paris ; which would imply some surplus means,— unless Mr. Dennis, whom he accompanied, paid -Ws expenses. He went to Ireland% but when, or with what object, does not ap- pear. Rogers the poet employed him as a carver ; he practised. portrait-painting, but for the most part gratuitously; and he con- tinued modelling. His first exhibition was in 1808, a model of the head of Satan. His next work of any consequence was a monument to the Vicar of Sheffield, probably the result of local connexion ; but " his employers obliged him to complete the work in that town, as they suspected his ability [pecuniary, we suppose) to execute anything of importance in marble." He now seems to have crept or stepped into business. Mr. Daniel Alexander employed him to execute four colossal busts of Vincent, Duncan, Howe, and Nelson, for Greenwich Hospital. In 1811 Chantrey married his cousin, Miss Hale, with a fortune of 19,000/. " This money en- abled him to pay off some debts he had contracted, to purchase a house and ground, on which he built two houses, a studio and offices, also to buy marble to proceed in the career ho had began. with a reasonable chance of success." About this time he was in- troduced to Horne Tooke ; for whom he executed a bust, which raised him from an uncertain into a flourishing business ; obtaining for him commissions to the extent of 12,000/. In 1817 he exhi- bited the monument of the Two Children ; and henceforth he was at the head of his profession, acquiring an income which enabled him to exercise a large hospitality and to amass a fortune. Ho died in 1841, and suddenly as regards death itself, though he had been breaking-up for two years before. "lie appeared as usual at his arrival in Belgrave Square. His friend Mr. Jones, the Keeper of the Royal Academy, called at his house on Thurs- day the 25th of 1S ovember 1841, between five and six o'clock, and was to dine; but as this was not in his power, Chantrey walked with part of the way towards Trafalgar Square ; during the walk Chantrey complained of a slight pain in his stomach, but made some jokes on lux friendsuspecting that the pann was cholic. At parting opposite to Bucking- ham Palace lir. Jones advised him to get into a cab, or if he preferred wsnring, attired to retain with him; but, with another joke, he struck his stick fund in the ground, quitted his friend nearly as the clock told seven— at nine, Chantrey had ceased to be."

The volume in which Mr. Jones has recorded his recollections of his friend is not properly a biography ; neither is it merely the sketches or anecdotes of personal observation. The author begins with the birth and ends with the death ; running over the in- termediate career loosely, but with some regard to the order of time, which a little more inquiry would easily have rendered exact. Of course his reminiscences are ampler for the period of which he has an actual knowledge ; but there, as during the earlier time, he makes use of the materials of others, and with more precision and fulness than for the opening of Chantrey's career. He has,

• Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A. Recollections of his Life, Practice, and Opitioaa. By George Jones, ILA. .Published b3t Mason.

added to his recollections a selection from the correspondence, which, though not very remarkable in its substance, gives a good idea of the open, sportive, jolly nature of the man, when interest or busi- ness was not at stake.

The matter of the book is various enough. A little narrative, a good many anecdotes, frequent critical remarks on the sayings, doings, and opinions of Chantrey, to whom Mr. Jones seems to have " looked up as the phrase is, and an account, not descending to improper disclosure, of the sculptor's domestic habits and economy. There are also extracts from some memoranda, chiefly critical, kept by Chantrey during a foreign tour, and a disquisition or -two by Jones himself, one of which is on the merits and utilities of the Royal Academy. Upon the whole, the book is light and agreeable reading, from its -variety, and the celebrated contemporary names that are continually turning up ; but the style, like the structure, is rather loose.

Although Chantrey was a man of very independent mind, he does not seem to have been altogether free from that species of reverence with which the necessity of patronage induces the artist to regard the great. These stories of George the Fourth do not strike us in exactly the same light as they did Chantrey and Mr. Jones. People are not made easy by saying " be asy "; and the Windsor speech was a vulgar plagiarism from Charles the Fifth and Titian.

"Chantrey, in conversing with Sir Henry Russell, remarked that the Ring was a great master of that first proof of good breeding which consists in putting every one at their ease; for from the throne each word and Feature has its effect. The first day the King said, 'Now, Mr. Chantrey, I insist upon your laying aside everything like restraint, both for your own sake and for mine; do here, if you please, just as you would if you were at home.' While he was preparing the clay, the Ring, who continued stand- ing near him, suddenly took off his wig, and holding it out at arm's length said, 'Now, Mr. Chantrey, which way shall it be ; with the wig or without it ? ' as he did not say what answer he had given, Sir H. Russell asked him. '"Oh ! with the wig, if you please, Sir." It was ray business,' he continued 'to exhibit the King as he was known : everybody was accustomed to see him with his wig, and nobody would have known him without it.' It was evident also that Chantrey saw how it would be agreeable to the Ring to be represented ; and he bad the good sense and good manners to act according

to his Majesty's inclination. • • • " When he had executed and erected the statue of George the Fourth, on the staircase at Windsor, the Ring goodnaturedly patted the sculptor on the shoulder, and said ' Chantrey, I have reason to be obliged to you, for you have immortalized me.' "

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the appendix contributed by Sir Henry Russell. Sir Henry first knew the sculp- tor in 1822, when some friends in India, with whom he had been engaged on public duty, wished his bust. Chantrey had then given up private busts, but this fell without the line of exclusion; and Sir Henry's account of his sittings and of his subsequent visits presents a good idea of Chantrey's mode of working, and of some of his opinions on his art.

"On the day we were to begin," writes Sir Henry Russell, "he appointed me to breakfast with him. My father joined us from London, while we were still at table, and, after some time, he asked Sir Francis when he intended to begin ? 'Begin ? ' said Sir Francis, 'Why, I have begun. I have been at work all the morning, and I am at work now.' The first day, he only made a rough sketch of the face, using for the purpose an instrument with a tube, through which he looked, while with a pencil fixed in one arm of it, he traced an outline of the full size on paper. When my father and I saw the sketch, we both said, it surely had no resemblance, and Sir Francis answered, No, I neither expect nor desire that it should have any, but it gives me all want ; it gives me the relative distance and position of the bony promi- nences, and enables me to prepare the clay. A cast taken after death does the same, and it does no more; the surface of the face has been already changed by the collapse of the muscles, and the character of it is not the same, therefore, after death that it was before.' "

The following is the only specific instance of very narrow means that we find in the volume, and it is probably coloured after the mode of successful men. It has interest on other accounts.

" In going from the parlour to the studio, Our way lay through a passage, an both sides of which there were shelves covered with his models of busts. In one corner stood a head of Milton's Satan, utterin, with a scornful ex- pression, his address to the sun. Sir Francis said, That head was the very first thing that I did after I came to London. I worked at it in a garret, with a paper cap on my head ; and, as I could then afford only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap, that it might move along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned.' This led to the address itself ; and, as my father repeated it, Sir Francis said, he had made him understand one line, which he now found he had never understood before.'

' Till pride,—and worse I ambition threw me down,'

in all our editions of Milton's works, instead of being printed as an excla- mation, as it manifestly ought to be, is made a feeble epithet of ambition. Sir Francis said it was that head that first brought him into notice. • • "Among these models, the two that struck me most were busts of Horne Tooke, and a deaf man. Horne Tooke was represented in a cap like a night- cap. 'I had not seen him since I saw him standing for Westminster against Mr. Fox and Sir Alan Gardner, twenty-five years before, and his face, ere- fore, had got much longer, and more furrowed by age ; but it was still full of life and character, of that sort of life and character which were peculiar to him, and to which Coleridge refers when he calls him 'a stern, iron man.' Chantrey had evidently conceived a high opinion of Horne Tooke's powers, and always spoke of him with great respect. At the other bust it was im- possible to look without seeing immediately that it represented a deaf man. I said I supposed that the expression of deafness was produced by the head being turned eo as to present one ear towards your mouth. Sir Francis said that it was partly that, but that the expression of deafness was conveyed principally by the mouth. 'If you observe a deaf man's mouth, you will always find the lips unclosed when he is attending to you ; they are opened to give your voice access to the throat, through which some of the sound is received, and reaches the drum, in assistance of the ear.' The two busts, and the Head of Satan,' are of course in the collection of Sir Francis's works which has been munificently given to the country by Lady Chantrey. • • • • • •

" I observed that in some of his busts the pupils of the eyes were marked, and others had the ball of the eye left plain. Al this very time he was en- gaged on busts of George the Fourth and the Duke of Wellington ; and he had marked the pupils of the eyes in the Duke's bust, and not those in the

bust of the Ring. I asked hint what it was that guided him in making the distinction? He said, In the expression of some faces the eyes are the fees tore that takes the lead. When that is the case, I mark the pupils - when it is otherwise I do not ; and a very simple experiment always decides which should be done.'

"On the second occasion that Mr. Jones came, he took advantage of his being there, and desired us to walk about for a few minutes, while he tried the effect of marking the pupils on his model. When he had done it he called us back. I told him t, as far as I was capable of forming an opi- nion, I liked the bust better before the eyes were marked, and Mr. Jones said the same. He said, 'You are right, the marks won't do' ; and he im- mediately removed them.

"In the progress of his model with me, it was of the lips only that Sir Francis made a east ; he said he did so, because in the lips, and in them only, colour interfered with form, by producing the effect of light and shade.

• • • • • •

" One day that we were talking of groups, he said the difficulty of pro- ducing them had hitherto proved insurmountable. Neither ancients nor moderns had ever yet succeeded in a single instance. We had not yet learned how to make single figures, and, until we could do that, we had better not think of meddling with groups. We asked him how he disposed of the Loom& ? He said, The instance you have cited is the very thing calculated to sustain my position. I do not admit that the Laoccain is a group. It is a statue of the father: the sons are there not as principals ; they are subordinate in size and inferior in position. They are not small as children—they are little men ; they are put where they are as mere accesso- ries to tell the story. The sculptor knew too well what he was about to mean them for anything else. If he had dared to attempt a group, he would have made them all three upon the same scale.' " The subject of craniology being mentioned, I asked him whether—con- versant as his pursuits had necessarily made him with the shape and struc- ture of heads—he thought he had found any truth in the doctrine of Gall and Spurzheim, and especially whether he had observed any reason to sup- pose that the intellect lay more in the front or the back part of the head ? He said, Yes, I have examined a good many heads of various kinds in my' day. I am not prepared to say that it signifies much whether the brains he before or behind ; but there is one thing, and only one, that I am quite sure of, and that is, that a head is good for nothing if it has not room for them somewhere or other.'

" The last time that I saw Sir F. Chantrey, a few weeks only before his death, he sent for the model of the bust, and said, 'Let us now see what time has all this while been doing.' It was then upwards of twenty years since it had been made. After attentively comparing the bust with he face for some time, he applied his finger to his owl:most:ail, and said, 'Ali, here it is ; what was sharp in all these edges has now become blunt.' Mr. Moore the poet came in just after, and another gentleman with him. Pointing to one among the models, Mr. Moore said, That is the bust of Mr. Pitt.' No,' answered Sir Francis • see what has misled you ; but if you look again, you will find that there is nothing here of the sauciness of Mr. Pitt.' "