[24] Forty years before these recollections of ours begin, Foley
Street, of the history of which we have already written, was
comparatively splendid, and inhabited by persons of distinction. Fuseli
had lived in Queen Ann Street East. The neighbourhood was much affected
by artists. Mulready had lodged in Cleveland Street, not far off;
Newman Street, always artistic, but now so dull and grimy, was then
thronged with painters and sculptors; Benjamin West had built himself
a gallery there; Stothard (at No. 28) and Banks were numbered among
its past, and then present inhabitants. A. E. Chalon was living at No.
71 in Great Titchfield Street; Shee was in Cavendish Square, in the
house which had been occupied by F. Cotes and G. Romney; Collins, who
was born in Great Titchfield Street, was then at 118, Great Portland
Street, and had a house in New Cavendish Street in 1815; Northcote
still worked in his gloomy den, 39, Argyll Street; and Edridge, then a
fashionable miniature-painter, was at 64, Margaret Street, Cavendish
Square; Constable at 63, Upper Charlotte Street, now 76, Charlotte
Street, next house on the north side to the church; W. Daniell resided
in Cleveland Street, No. 9. Thompson was at No. 11; James Ward at
6, Jackson at 7, Dawe at 22, and Howard at No. 5, in Newman Street;
Leslie, as well as Flaxman, in Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square; the
former, with Allston, was at No. 8, the latter at No. 7; Hilton was
not remote, at 10, Percy Street; De Wint in the same house; James
Heath in Russell Place, Fitzroy Square, No. 15; Hazlitt, then painting
portraits in considerable numbers, lived at 109, Great Russell Street,
Bloomsbury. Even so early in the century as the period of which we
now write, some painters had flown to the then far west region of
Kensington; thus, Wilkie sought the quiet of Phillimore Gardens; and
Mulready had settled in the Gravel Pits on the Bayswater Road.
[25] See, on a later page of this volume, Mr. Ruskin’s criticism on
“Shoeing,” quoted with the account of the pictures painted in 1846.
[26] It has been stated, and probably with truth, that Edwin Landseer
obtained a medal, or a silver palette, from the Society of Arts, and at
an earlier date than that in question here. But as artists rarely set
much store on lay awards of similar kinds to this, it is only necessary
to mention this matter. Contributing a work in a competition like that
in view can hardly be classed with the act of exhibiting pictures in
the Royal Academy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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