Letters of James Smetham

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fatigue, don't work so finely, and don't draw so much on your imagination. Try and do a few easier subjects than this Noah one. The labour of that has been tremendous. The etching here alluded to was one of the building of the ark, containing many figures, elaborated to a high degree of finish. After a...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fatigue, don't work so finely, and don't draw so much on your imagination. Try and do a few easier subjects than this Noah one. The labour of that has been tremendous. The etching here alluded to was one of the building of the ark, containing many figures, elaborated to a high degree of finish. After a while, when he had completed a respectable number of etchings, which were collected under the title of Studies from an Artist's Sketch Book, he became somewhat dissatisfied with the point as an interpreter of his conceptions, being laborious, and excluding colour. He modified his plan, substituting an oil-colour sketch or drawing in the place of an etching, for which he charged the moderate sum of three guineas; afterwards elaborating the workmanship and charging nine guineas. Of course this narrowed his subscription list; but many of his friends were glad to possess one of his graceful conceptions at so cheap a rate. He called this plan his fortification ?or, as he often wrote it, 40fication; his aim being to supply forty members in the year ? as being a defence against pecuniary needs. It had many advantages and some disadvantages. It gave him the means of expressing himself in numerous colour studies which were adapted to his peculiar capacity. Naturally these varied in quality and value. Some of them were charming in choice of subject, in colour, tone, and sentiment; others less so: but in all was to be traced the hand of the poetic mind, and some of them were so happy as to be called veritable gems. One of these in my own possession represents two male figures in a panelled chamber, one with his legs stretched out before a wood-fire, his hands in his pockets, reflective, listening, the other touching a lute by his side. A side window shows a landscape covered in sn...