Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and lettersCarr, J. Comyns (Joseph Comyns)
General
Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters
Carr, J. Comyns (Joseph Comyns)
Art, Victorian; English literature -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 19th century
“I used to see them both,” he writes, “for several years during the same
time, and so was always being reminded one of the other. They were both
disposed to be a little tyrannical in disposition; they both expected
everything to be done for them. They were both extremely sensitive to
criticism and public opinion, and they both possessed a tender and
intense feeling for music.
“Walker could not play before friends, as the tears would run down his
cheeks, and I have heard Landseer sing with the tears in his eyes.
Landseer had not much voice, but a very sweet pathetic feeling. They
both had strong family affections, and each possessed a devoted sister
who ministered to their every want.
“They each had the same reluctance to show their pictures. Even when
they had gone to the Exhibition, they would fret and worry and make
themselves ill as to what would be thought of them. They both possessed
an intense ambition to excel in Art. Walker once confessed to me that
he meant to be _the_ best artist, or the ‘very top,’ as he said, and
Landseer had quite the same ruling passion.
“They both had a keen sense of humour, and both drew admirable
caricatures. Landseer would, with three or four lines, give you the very
essence of any one’s face, and you know how well poor Fred Walker did
this. They were both very silent about Art, or rather about pictures;
they neither of them had very much education, but somehow were far more
neat in their choice of words than most other artists.
“They both were extremely fastidious in their work, altering and
altering again and again; often a picture took up a year or two.
“Lastly, in dress they were something alike, both very fond of rather a
sporting style, and indeed they were both decided sportsmen in taste.
They were both, too, when I knew them, tinged with a kind of despairing
feeling of melancholy, not of a slow languishing kind, but with a quick
intense fever, covered over with a pretty sparkle of wit and
cheerfulness when in the society of friends. The thing that always
struck me about Walker and Landseer was, that the young man of thirty
was like the other of sixty, and I have often said to Marks, ‘He could
never live, he has already arrived at what is the end of Landseer.’”
Poor Walker died in 1875 at the early age of thirty-five. He had
exhibited once in the Royal Academy after his return from Algiers, and
it was while his picture was hanging upon the walls at Burlington House
that we heard of his sudden death, due to a violent chill he had
contracted during a fishing excursion in Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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