SIR AUGUSTUS WALL CALLCOTT (1779--1844) has been styled the English Claude. He was born at Kensington Gravel Pits, then a pretty suburban spot. He was, for some years, a chorister at Westminster Abbey, but early adopted painting as his profession. Callcott was a pupil of Hoppner, and began as a portrait painter. He soon devoted himself to landscape, with an occasional attempt at history. He became a full member of the Academy in 1810, his presentation picture being _Morning_. His best pictures were produced between 1812 and 1826, during which period he produced _The Old Pier at Littlehampton_ (National Gallery), _Entrance to the Pool of London_, _Mouth of the Tyne_, _Calm on the Medway_ (Earl of Durham). Callcott married in 1827, and went to Italy. On his return in the following year he soon became a fashionable painter. "His pictures, bright, pleasant of surface, and finished in execution, were suited to the appreciation of the public, and not beyond their comprehension; commissions poured in upon him." (_Redgrave._) The Queen knighted him in 1837, and in the same year he exhibited his _Raphael and the Fornarina_, engraved for the Art Union by L. Stocks, which, if it possesses few faults, excites no enthusiasm. In 1840 appeared _Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughter_, a large picture, which overtaxed the decaying powers of the artist. Among Callcott's later pictures are _Dutch Peasants returning from Market_, and _Entrance to Pisa from Leghorn_. As a figure painter he does not appear at his best. Examples of this class are _Falstaff and Simple_, and _Anne Page and Slender_ (Sheepshanks Collection). [Illustration: THE FISHERMAN'S DEPARTURE. _By_ COLLINS. _Painted in_ A.D. 1826 _for Mr. Morrison_.] WILLIAM COLLINS (1788--1847) was born in London, where his father carried on business as a picture dealer, in addition to the somewhat uncertain calling of a journalist. The future painter was introduced to Morland, a friend of his father, and learnt many things, some to be imitated, others to be avoided, in that artist's studio. From 1807 he exhibited at the Academy, of which he became a full member in 1820. He exhibited one hundred and twenty-one pictures in a period of forty years, specially devoting himself to landscape, with incidents of ordinary life. Now he would paint children swinging on a gate, as in _Happy as a King_ (National Gallery); children bird-nesting, or sorrowing for their play-fellows, as in _The Sale of the Pet Lamb_. Collins was also specially successful in his treatment of cottage and coast scenery, as in _The Haunts of the Sea-fowl_, _The Prawn Catchers_ (National Gallery), and _Fishermen on the look-out_. After visiting Italy, Collins forsook for a time his former manner, and painted the _Cave of Ulysses_, and the _Bay of Naples_; but neither here nor in the _Christ in the Temple with the Doctors_, and _The two Disciples at Emmaus_, do we see him at his best. He wisely returned to his first style.