by Alexander Smith.
Originally published in The Argosy (Strahan & Co.) vol.2 #8 (Jul 1866).
In glancing backward over the last century and a half of Scottish history, it will be noticed that distinguished men have come in clusters, and that the intellectual products of these are visible in well-defined belts or zones. Nature there, as elsewhere, built capacious brains, and when her hand was in, it was her habit to build more than one, and so, the clever Scotchmen of a generation have a family resemblance, and the works produced by them have a family resemblance also. Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith came together, and through these we have the philosophic and historical belt. Scott and Galt created the imaginative belt; Jeffrey, Wilson, and Lockhart the critical belt. In any enumeration of eminent Scotchmen the name of Burns cannot be omitted, but then Burns has no place in any such loose generalizations. In his greatness he is the loneliest of all the northern geniuses. He had, strictly speaking, no predecessor, he had no companion, he has had no successor. Critics have delighted to point out that the Farmer's Ingle of Fergusson was the prototype of the Cottar's Saturday Night; but the truth is that Fergusson had no more share in the most exquisite of homely idylls than the leaves of the mulberry-tree on which the silkworm feeds has a share in the silk which is produced. Putting Burns aside, as in some sense a special phenomenon who must be considered by himself if considered at all, the three broadly-marked belts or zones of Scottish mental activity are indicated by the Essays, Moral and Philosophical, and the Wealth of Nations; the novels of Scott and Galt; and the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine. So much one can see looking back on the past; but it would be extremely difficult to say what, since the establishment of the famous Review, and the still more famous Magazine, is the salient outstanding feature of Scottish intellectual life. And the difficulty lies in this, that, ecclesiastical matters apart, there has during the last twenty or twenty-five years been hardly any distinctive Scottish life at all. "Stands Scotland where it did?" asks Macduff; and the answer to-day is, "No. If you seek Scotland you must go to London for her."
The old frontier line has been effaced by the railway and the post-office. The Tweed no longer divides peoples with different interests. Scotland and England have melted into each other and become Britain, just as red and blue melt into each other and become purple; and in the general intellectual activity of the empire it would be as difficult to separate that contributed by north and south as to separate the waters of the Forth and the Humber in the German Ocean, or the taxes gathered on either side of the Tweed in the imperial exchequer. John Bull and Patrick serve in the ranks of the Black Watch and the Greys, and Sandy is a sentry at the Horse Guards. An English professor is the most distinguished disciple of the Scottish Sir William Hamilton; and the representative of a metropolitan constituency—a Scot at least by extraction—is the intellectual descendant of the English Bentham. It is from this interconnection of the two peoples, that for the last quarter of a century there has been so little distinctive Scottish intellectual life. Scotland has overflowed its boundaries, and it has no longer a separate existence in thought or geography. It is not, however, to be supposed that although working under different conditions there is any diminution in the northern vigour. The Scot thinks as shrewdly and acts as prudently in Cheapside as at Aberdeen or at John o' Groat's; and when great things have to be done—when, for instance, a treaty has to be negotiated with China, when a revolted India has to be subdued, when a Life of Frederick has to be written—the doers of those feats of diplomacy, arms, and letters, are not unfrequently found wearing Scottish names. But the difficulty of pointing out any broad, salient, outstanding feature in Scottish intellectual life does not altogether arise from the cessation of that life in the sense it has been explained, but in some degree from the fact that since the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine Scottish intellect and fancy have more and more sought a new manifestation and direction.
For long Scotland was the best educated and least æsthetic nation in Europe. Beauty and ornament had never been the denizens of the Scottish house or the Scottish street, and at the Reformation they were sternly thrust forth and forbidden to enter the ecclesiastical edifice. In Scotland Beauty was churchless; and on Sundays had to abide with the daisy in the field, the cloud-shadow on the hill-side, and to consort with the Poet, who was a commoner of nature like herself, and labouring under the same social ban. Not the least religious nation in the world, the Scotch were content to worship in barn-like buildings, with windows hard in outline and innocent of colour as those of factories; and Music, suspected of Popish parentage, and of haunting the playhouse and the opera, was turned away from the church door, and had to go romp in the fields with Beauty and the Poet. Untouched by the softening influences of art, the Scottish nation was devout, deep-hearted, humorous, sincere; but it was harsh in manner, deficient in graciousness and suavity. The visitor on coming to Scottish towns was struck by the lack of politeness on the part of the inhabitants. He saw them, unyielding as tides, jostle each other on the pavement. If he asked to be directed to a particular street he not unfrequently received a churlish response. He noted that in these towns statues and public monuments were rare, that they were disregarded and often ill kept; and if a travelled man he drew disadvantageous comparisons between the Scottish towns and the French or Italian ones. This hardness and lack of graciousness, this lack of art and of regard for art, was attributable to a considerable extent to the national poverty and the national faith. There is no social civilizer like art, but art does not grow in poor countries any more than grapes in poor soils. You may keep a poet on seventy pounds a year, and get a good deal out of him, just as our fathers for something like that sum got a tremendous deal out of Burns, but you cannot so cheaply maintain painters and sculptors. If you will adorn your apartments with their works they can at least claim upholsterers' wages. And putting inspiration out of the question altogether, pigments and marble are much more expensive than pens and ink, and the backs of old letters, or excise schedules on a push. On Calvinism you can breed first-rate men, but not so easily first-rate artists. Art delights in minster and cathedral, in painted window and fuming incense, in gorgeous vestments and the voices of singing-men and singing-women, and finds but little sustenance in barn-like churches, discordant psalmody, hard rigid pews, and intrepid, closely-knit, logical discourses.
Scotland was a well-educated country, as countries went, but it wanted artistic susceptibility; and it was only when it became comparatively rich, and when its social atmosphere became a little more genial, that art began to develop itself in any general or unmistakable manner. The picture and the statue came with wealth into the private apartment; the ornate church, the famous man in bronze or marble, came with wealth into the street; and the public eye becoming accustomed to these things, gradually learned to enjoy them. The establishment of the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine was the last distinct phase of Scottish—that is, of Scottish as distinct from British—intellectual life; and at that time Scottish art was in its vigorous youth and quite abreast of Scottish literature, Scotchmen, save in isolated instances, and generally out of their own country, have done nothing very remarkable in literature since; but at home there has grown up a school of art, distinct, vigorous, individual, which has spread far and wide, and which has more than one representative amongst the Forty of the Royal Academy. The pen was long the favourite weapon of the clever Scot, but since John Wilson's time the cleverest men in Scotland have wielded the brush rather than the pen.
The school of Scottish art had at first, as was natural, a good deal in common with the more favourite form of Scottish literature—of poetry more especially. When the northern muse was not piercingly lyrical—tingling to the very marrow in song and ballad—it was for the main part garrulous and manners-painting. Rustic life, its humours, its fun, its jealousies, its petty passions, its coarsenesses even—when these were reflected in some incident like a marriage, a festival, a fair, or a wapinschaw—has always had special attraction for the Scottish muse. This vein of manners-painting is visible from Christ's Kirk on the Green, up through the Gentle Shepherd of Ramsay, the Leith Races of Fergusson, the Jolly Beggars, and Hallowe'en of Burns, to the Anster Fair of Tennant; and in the same way, and to be explained by the same reasons, the Scottish school of painting abounds in admirable representations of rustic life : witness the best pictures of David Allan, the "Penny Wedding," and a dozen others of Sir David Wilkie, the "Curlers" of Mr. Harvey, and the works of many others less distinguished. The Scottish painters have in an indirect, yet most sufficient manner, illustrated the Scottish poets. In this special department Scottish art will take rank with Dutch—with the advantage that it has more esprit and less of mere vulgar swilling and boorishness. In the domain of highest art—just as there is no northern Spenser or Milton—it is behind England, and has perhaps no proper representative, if we except the late Mr. David Scott and the present Mr. J. Noel Paton. In portraiture and landscape the Scottish school excels. In the department of portraiture the Scotch are distinguished by a solidity of basis and treatment, and a direct going at essentials to the neglect of subsidiaries. Any one looking at the men Sir Henry Raeburn, Sir John Watson Gordon, and Mr. Macnee have painted, will see that in the delineation of characteristic heads and faces, of men who are individual and not copies, the national shrewdness, humour, biographical talent and insight, have in the most mysterious way become mixed with the colours. I say the men these artists have painted, for somehow they have not succeeded so well with women. If the Scotch style has a fault it is that of robustness, of solid force and character—elements which are much more masculine than feminine. Given a granite-faced provost of Peterhead, wrinkled all over with shrewd, pawky, tell-tale lines, and there are half a dozen Scotchmen who will paint him so to the life that the spectator will know what kind of a voice he has, whether he has been married twice, and what he usually takes for breakfast. Given an elegant lady, and perhaps Sir Francis Grant is the only Scotchman who can paint her in her self-possession and easy security—high bred to the finger tips, and perfectly comme il faut in the matter of gloves. Sir Henry Raeburn struck the key-note of Scottish portrait painting, and it is vibrating still. In Scottish landscape again—which partake of similar characteristics—the key-note was struck by the Rev. Mr. Thomson of Duddingstone, and his influence is observable not only in Mr. Macculloch's "cold and splendour of the hills," in the Wordsworthian repose of Mr. Harvey's pastoral hill-sides, but in Mr. Peter Graham's "Mountain River in Flood," amongst the landscapes of the Royal Academy of this year the observed of all observers.
Mr. Thomson, while he lived, was the most distinguished landscape painter of the Scottish school, and he was unique in this, that he was clergyman as well as painter; that it was his work to study the page of nature and the page of revelation. It would be interesting to know, if it were at all now possible, how he conducted this double life—if the artistic and clerical elements played into each other, enriching and assisting—the one bringing reverence and sanctity into his studio, the other bringing pictures into his sermons, When discoursing on the Dead Sea, did he behold in imagination the red hills of Moab looming low on the horizon? If prelecting on the passage, and in the course of his ministrations it is certain that he would prelect—And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw THE PLACE AFAR OFF—one would like to know what mental image he formed of the yet untempled Moriah; was it a Syrian mount or the double-peaked Benledi—the Hill of God of his own country—with the Scottish morning spread above it? One would like to know, if one could, whether Thomson brought the landscape painter with him into the pulpit. Of his quality as a preacher no information can be obtained. The people who bought his pictures did not care for his sermons; the people who listened to his sermons did not care for his pictures. His parishioners regarded his landscape painting as they regarded his violin playing—a pretty amusement enough, but one not in the least befitting the dignity of his cloth. Thomson was no doubt an excellent preacher, after a quiet, elegant, unenthusiastic, charitable fashion. He was in every way an accomplished man. He had a competent knowledge of literature, and when working on his landscapes was in the habit of reciting from the classical and English poets, passages that bore on the scene he was depicting; he was an exquisite musician; he was well read in the natural sciences, and contributed several papers on those subjects to the Edinburgh Review. We know how he painted, we can guess how he preached; but the fact that he was both preacher and painter takes him out of the category of ordinary men. AA solitary, sad-eyed, medieval monk, illuminating missals in a cloistered silence, broken only by the tinkling of refectory or prayer bells, is familiar enough to the imagination; but a modern Presbyterian clergyman, painting pictures on week days and preaching sermons on Sundays; writing papers on optics to the Edinburgh Review and drawing tears in the evening in his drawing-room by his violin performances; throwing down his brushes of a forenoon, placing against the wall a picture of the Bass with a thundercloud blackening over it; going out to see an ailing parishioner, and noting on his way how a sunbeam made gleam the ivies on Craigmillar which a shower had just wet, and returning to receive to dinner Sir Walter Scott fresh from the Bride of Lammermoor, and Sir David Wilkie fresh from Spain and the study of Vélasquez—this complex activity, this variety of duty, this fulness of noble life, is something not very frequently met with.
Young Thomson was born at Dailly, in Ayrshire, of which parish his father was minister in the latter half of the last century, and there, amid the beautiful scenery surrounding him, he nourished his taste for landscape. His father destined him for the sacred profession; and at a very early age, in accordance with a Scottish fashion not yet in abeyance, he was sent to the University of Edinburgh to attend literary and philosophical classes preparatory to entering on the study of divinity. At the lodgings of his elder brother, who had come to Edinburgh some years before, and who in after life became distinguished as a feudal lawyer and an antiquarian, the enthusiastic young man made the acquaintance of Walter Scott, Francis Jeffrey, and others. He stuck to his work during the winter sessions, but in his summer vacations at home he devoted himself to painting and violin playing, to the no small consternation of his father, who could not help marvelling at the strange bird growing up in the quiet, orderly, clerical nest. All this while, whatever might have been his progress, he had no teacher but nature, and it was only during the last year of his theological curriculum that he had the advantage of lessons from Alexander Naismith, and that only for the period of one month. At the age of twenty-one he was licensed; and on the death of his father, in the first year of the century, he succeeded to the Dailly manse and the Dailly pulpit. A year after he married; and in a house rapidly filling with babies he composed his sermons, painted his pictures, and played on his violin. In 1805 he was translated to the parish of Duddingstone, near Edinburgh—a place perhaps the best suited for him in Scotland—where he could walk out into the fields at eventide, like Isaac; where he could watch the purple thunder-gloom gathering on the distant hills, like Claude.
In May, passing along the Queen's Drive in a south-easterly direction—sheep and lambs bleating above, the starling glistening as it sweeps past through the sunshine—you see Duddingstone Loch beneath you, with its stunted and pollard willows, whitey-green in the wind, its banks and promontories of rushes, its dozen swans reduced to the size of water lilies, its cloud-shadows crossed by the trail of low-flying teal. Proceeding some twenty yards or so you come in sight of the little village itself, and note its grey, low-roofed Norman-like church, its scattered houses, the garden slopes behind, and the interstices between filled with plum and apple blossom; its yellow-faced inn in which tradition mumbles Prince Charles slept the night before the battle of Prestonpans, or else the night after; and the swiftly-greening woods beyond, stretching towards Portobello and the sea. As you look down upon it from the drive 'tis a mere toy-village, breathing soft smoke pillars, breathing fruit-tree fragrance. The quietest place in the whole world you would say; not a creature to be seen in the little bit of a street visible; silent as Pompeii itself; motion only on the lake, when the coot shoots across its surface, or when a swan, thrusting its long neck under water, tilts itself upward in its preposterous fashion. And this little clachan of twenty or thirty houses is walled, too, like a Babylon or Nineveh; not one on which six chariots could race abreast—a wall strictly proportioned to modest pretentions. Descending on Duddingstone you find it retired, low-lying, sunshiny, umbrageous; a place in which in summer you may expect plenty of dust in the narrow streets, plenty of drowsy bees around the double-flowered white and purple stocks in the gardens, plenty of flies buzzing in the sunny parlour windows. You see the old low-roofed Norman-looking church—several centuries old some portions of it, antiquaries say—with its pointed windows and flagged roofs; the churchyard heaped and mounded with generations on generations of village dead; the rusty "jougs"—an iron collar in which malefactors did penance of old—hanging on the churchyard wall near the gate of entrance, with its "louping-on-stane," well worn by the hobnails of dead farmers. Near the church is the Manse in which the minister-painter lived, looking out with all its windows on the lake; on ivied Craigmillar in which Queen Mary dwelt; on the low hills of Braid, over which Marmion rode, on which Fitz Eustace
Raised his bridle hand,
And threw a demivolte in air;
and sight of the old Edinburgh of the Jameses, smoke-swathed; and beyond, on the lovely undulating line of the Pentlands, stained, as in these bright spring days, with the white uprolling vapour of the heather-burnings, Duddingstone is the prettiest place in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh in summer—and it is, if possible, still more worth seeing about Christmas. Then the swans are of course gone; the chestnuts have lost their broad drooping fans, and have donned their strange snow draperies; from out the frosty blue white Arthur's Seat looks.down on the little village. At that season Edinburgh flocks Duddingstone-wards. Pedestrians and carriages stand along the margin of the loch; carriages and pedestrians move slowly along the Queen's Drive above. The lake itself is crowded as Vanity Fair; skaters shoot hither and thither; while in a carefully preserved circle, members of the Edinburgh Skating Club go through the most graceful evolutions, and intertwist with each other in the prettiest loops and chains. At a little distance the curlers are busy, their faces red with exercise, their eyes bright with excitement, the on-lookers stamping their chilled feet in the snow, and attempting to breathe a little warmth into their frost-bitten fingers. Everywhere, on great belts of slides, people are working their arms like awkward windmills. Here skims a skateshod Diana—fleet huntress of men! yonder, in a sleigh driven by admirers, sits a lady enveloped in furs. Past your ear whizzes a shinty ball, and down upon you in hot pursuit thereof comes, with a noise like a troop of wild horses, a horde of young fellows, each armed with a cudgel, a long-haired Highlander leading the charge—as Murat was wont to do—several lengths in front. The Highlander is up with the ball, as he turns on it his foot slips, and in a moment the crowd are over him. There is a general mêlée, and then out of the crowd, and in an opposite direction, spins the ball, another fellow leading the pursuit now, the eager crowd streaming behind him like a comet's tail. So around Duddingstone the seasons come and go—so they came and went while Thomson lived there, umbrageousness of summer, pallor of winter; each differing from the other, yet each aiding the painter's education.
In the pretty Duddingstone Manse Thomson established himself, and there, for thirty-five years, his life flowed on peacefully, prosperously, honoured by high and low. As a clergyman, he was much esteemed by his parishioners, consisting mainly of well-to-do folks who lived in villas, and small market-gardeners who brought their produce into Edinburgh, and washerwomen who worked for the inhabitants of the city, washing the clothes in the loch, and bleaching and drying them on the slopes of Arthur's Seat, where they caught the scent of the broom. To the former class the minister commended himself by his accomplishments, his gentlemanly manners, and his distinction; to the latter by his liberality and kind-heartedness, and his frank ways going in and out amongst them. The price of many a landscape came to the poor people, when sickness or distress was prevalent, in the shape of bottles of wine or even of comforts more substantial. It was at Duddingstone that Thomson first devoted himself to landscape painting as a profession. Craigmillar was before his eyes every time he looked out of his window, and this subject he frequently painted—often with grand effect by moonlight. While at Dailly he distributed landscapes amongst his friends, at Duddingstone he accepted payment. The first picture was sold for fifteen guineas, and the artist, it is said, was so startled with the mighty sum, that it was only when Mr. Williams, the delineator of Greek scenery, whom he had consulted on the subject, told him that the work was worth three times as much, that he could comfortably consign the coins to his breeches pockets. As his reputation rose the demand for his works increased, and in his heyday of health and artistic prosperity he was in the receipt of 1800l. per annum. Some idea of Thomson's industry may be gathered from the prices he received. For a picture thirty inches long and from twenty to twenty-five inches broad, he got twenty-five guineas; for one forty-eight or fifty inches by thirty-six, his price was fifty guineas. These were high prices for a Scottish artist at that date; and for the works executed for the Duke of Buccleuch—and which may be seen at Bowhill—he received still higher sums. His passion for his art grew with his years, and he searched the country for subjects for his easel with greater ardour than he searched the Scriptures for texts for his sermons. His pulpit at Duddingstone had to be filled of course, but then the capital was near and probationers plentiful. By the time the young artist left the Manse on Saturday afternoon, the probationer had arrived with a couple of sermons in his carpet-bag. In company with his friend Mr. Williams—Grecian Williams, he was called, familiarly and affectionately, from, those pictures already alluded to on which his reputation mainly rests—he searched the country for ancient houses with trees around them, picturesque glens, castles beetling over the sea, and bare moors with a group of old Scotch firs, their bronze trunks and black-green crowns standing up in the fires of autumn sunset. The two friends sketched together and were each the other's critic. In these passionate sketching pilgrimages, extending over many years, Thomson visited the most picturesque districts of Scotland, and painted Dunstaftnage, Dunluce, Wolf's Crag, the Falls of Kilmorack, Glenfinlas, Lochs Awe and Etive; nay, he even penetrated as far as Skye and painted the magnificent peak of Ben Blaven, and the edges of Cuchullin holding dark communion with the cloud. Being a clergyman, Thomson, although urged upon to do so, would never become a member of any incorporated body of artists; but he always sent his pictures to the Exhibitions of the Royal Scottish Academy. From 1808 to 1840 he contributed to those exhibitions one hundred and nine works, He was also strangely disinclined to exhibit in London, and as a rule, Englishmen are not acquainted with his pictures. In the beginning of the year 1840 his health began to fail: although no improvement took place during summer, he still worked on at picture and sermon. Conscious that his end was nigh, on a lovely October afternoon he desired to be taken to a window, and propped up by pillows, that he might watch once more the setting sun. It was a last interview between the ancient friends; an eternal farewell-taking. The sun set ruddily. Thomson was dead next morning. He was twice married—happily both times—and his portrait, by his son-in-law, Mr. Robert Scott Lauder, hangs in the Scottish National Gallery.
During Thomson's life Duddingstone Manse was not more remarkable for exquisite picture painting and violin playing than for the distinguished men occasionally gathered under its roof. When Thomson came up to Edinburgh as a student he made the acquaintance of Scott and Jeffrey, and during life that acquaintance remained unimpaired. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, and John Clerk (Lord Eldin), who with a Homeric conviviality, broad humorous speech, and eccentric manners, combined a love of art, and had made an admirable collection of paintings, drawings, prints, and etchings, were frequent visitors at the Manse. John Wilson, as great a landscape painter in words as Thomson in colours, occasionally dropped in on the minister to discuss the Greek and Latin poets with him, and to see what landscape was smiling or glooming on his canvas. I am indebted for the following note concerning the painter's artistic friends to Mr. W.B. Johnstone, Curator of the Scottish National Gallery, and himself an admirable artist, the extent of whose information on such matters is only equalled by his courtesy in imparting it:—
"I think Thomson preferred the company of artists to that of literary men or lawyers, and after painters he liked to have musicians about him. During his earlier career there were few artists of sufficient standing to be associated with him on equal terms. I can only call to remembrance Alexander Naismith, Raeburn, and H.W. Williams, who could be ranked pari passu. But when Thomson was at his best Naismith had become an old cynical man; and although it is said that Thomson had taken lessons from him, their styles were wide apart, and Thomson's was more generally admired. Raeburn, engrossed with the study of character and expression in the human face, looked on landscape as a mere accessory to art. He was intimate with Thomson, admired his genius and general accomplishments, respected his social position; but the congeniality of feeling between the men may be doubted from the following transaction. They agreed to exchange pictures; Raeburn was to paint Thomson's portrait, and in return Thomson was to paint a landscape. Thomson sat to Raeburn and the portrait was painted, and although Thomson repeatedly offered to fulfil his part of the agreement, Raeburn declined to give up the portrait, and accordingly it has never been out of the possession of Raeburn and his family. Grecian Williams was a man after Thomson's own heart. They were about the same age, they were ardent worshippers of nature, which they looked on exactly in the same preconceived idea or aspect, viz., the classic form; and no petty jealousy could have place between them, as the one worked in oils the other in water colours. Williams was possessed of some literary taste, was quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, and was, like Thomson, on terms of intimacy with most of the principal Edinburgh men. William Allan and Andrew Wilson were on friendly terms with the minister, and were with him occasionally at the Manse; but Thomson had now achieved a high position, and a number of clever young artists were springing up, and he took pleasure in having them rather than their elders around him. Of the young artists Robert Scott Lauder and William Simson were most frequently at the Manse. Lauder was there almost daily;-his admiration of Thomson was unbounded. The rich tones of colour he generally attained in his own pictures much resembled those Thomson often successfully produced, and Thomson's liking for the young artist was confirmed when he afterwards became his son-in-law. Simson's style was not what Thomson aimed at, yet the feeling for nature and the admirable execution impressed Thomson most favourably, and many of the figures, vessels, etc., in Thomson's pictures are evidently the work of this artist's dexterous hand. Thomas Duncan was an occasional visitor. Thomson marked him as a rising man, and Duncan had a high respect for the talent of Duddy, as he styled the minister (who was rather slovenly in his dress, the front of his waistcoat being generally besmeared with snuff), but their aims in art were widely apart; Duncan could never get up, or cared to evince the same admiration for a landscape as for a figure picture. Thomson showed a great liking for Horatio Macculloch, and when he came up from Glasgow or Hamilton, where he then resided, to the opening of the annual exhibition at Edinburgh, he had him always to dine at the Manse. Many other young artists, Sir Francis Grant, the President of the Royal Academy, then commencing his career, E.T. Crawford, Robert Gibb, and others, were kindly noticed by Thomson and asked to his house. He kept almost an open house, and when distinguished artists came from London, Wilkie or Turner for instance, his young friends were always invited to dine at the Manse, in order that they might meet and be introduced to the brilliant strangers."
All this shows a kindly, composed, generous disposition, far above professional vanity and rivalry, which is pleasant to contemplate. Turner was frequently at the Manse, and we all know the story how when the minister took the brusque painter into his studio and showed him his works, he called out, "You beat me in frames, Thomson!" On another occasion, at Duddingstone, when Francis Grant and Mr. Horsman, M.P., were present, Grant, who then resided in Regent's Park, near the Zoological Gardens, asked the great painter to dine with him. "I'll be very glad," cried Turner, jocosely; "I often come to see the wild beasts feed."
Thomson, during his lifetime, was the greatest Scottish landscape painter, and even yet he is one of the greatest which the northern school has produced. His style was based on classic models, he was a devout student of Claude and the Poussins, but this study of the old masters of landscape was supplemented by a constant reference to nature. He worked constantly in the open air, and face to face with his subject. While a young man, and living in his father's manse at Dailly, he would frequently go out at two o'clock on a summer morning, and walk several miles to watch the effect of the early sunbeams penetrating the tree branches, retiring step-by step to note the changes of the light. Many of the old fastnesses on the Scottish coast he sketched on the spot. Although defective in drawing, he was fond of colour, and by repainting on his pictures succeeded in producing a surface which increased the richness and lustre of his tints. But his gains in this way were not entirely clear. In the hurry and excitement of his task, he often worked over his surface before the under colours were dry; and as in laying on his colours he used various kinds of medium, or vehicle, to attain brilliancy and depth of tone, many of his pictures have suffered by contracting, cracking, and separating—are now but the dim ghosts of themselves—the battle flag, shot-torn, smoke-stained, as compared with the original silken sheet. An incomplete draughtsman, Thomson had yet fine general ideas of form and the effect of grand lines. His works are always bold, picturesque, vigorous, and they never fail to impress the imagination. He is always great in masses, and having by that means touched the soul of the spectator, he allows the spectator to supply the details. He pours himself, so to speak, on the key of the position in gloomy brigades of strength, and, having won that, is satisfied—he does not waste himself in skirmishing, however brilliant. There is no play in his pictures. The truth is, he was always a little divided in his allegiance between nature and the Poussins. He was all for nature in his sketch in the open air, he was all for Poussin while working in his studio. His pictures, with their incontestable fine qualities, are just a little too like pictures. Nature smells of oil, somehow. Bold and noble as was his imagination, able to cope with scenes of gloom and piled-up rocky wildness, he lacked a tender sense of beauty and an exquisiteness of colour. His picture of the Trosachs, in the Scottish National Gallery, is ugly almost, the hills are lumpy and unrelieved by the grace of twinkling birch woods; and there are no distant peaks, as in nature, softened by miles of airy azure. Light, which laughs and plays, and sleeps smilingly when it does sleep, is sad hearted in this work as a mute at a funeral, In colour, again, Thomson, although often grand and imposing in a broad general way, is seldom what can be called exquisite—the world with a sun shining upon it is not cloaked in drabs, russets, dark greens, and blacks, as the artist loved to attire her. Thomson's pictures have many of them lost their pristine brilliancy and freshness, but even when straight from his hand one can hardly conceive them to be other than deficient in this respect.
The stranger entering the Scottish National Gallery, after he has passed
Tintoretto's "Venetian Senators," Vandyck's "Italian Nobleman in Armour,"—who seems one of "God's spies," watching every person in the room, listening to every word they utter—and the seven or eight glowing Ettys, will probably seek the works of the first great master of Scottish landscape. There are seven of them, four the bequests of the late Professor Pillans, "Bruce's Castle of Turnberry," a sunset, grand, and sombre, but cracked through the use of some pestilent vehicle, will give some idea of what Thomson was at his best. While "The Frith of Clyde, with Benlomond in the distance," "Ravensheuch Castle, near Kirkcaldy, Sunset," are beautiful reminiscences of that richness and depth of tone which distinguished this artist's works while they were fresh from his hand. And having satisfied himself with these, if he will step across the room and study Mr. Horatio Macculloch's "Inverlochy Castle," he will see what progress in the painting of landscape has been made in Scotland during the last twenty years—how far it has receded from Claude and the Poussins, how much closer it has come to nature.