of considerable value as records. Old Palace Yard, Westminster (Plate VI) is interesting as showing buildings on the north side of Henry VII’s Chapel of the Abbey, which have long since been demolished. He published works aquatinted by himself, including Westminster, which appeared in 1792. He held classes at which Girtin and Turner attended. The latter used to say, “My early master was Tom Malton.” Edward Dayes was a versatile artist; he painted architectural subjects, into which he frequently introduced figures, such as Furness Abbey (Plate VII), executed miniatures and engraved in mezzotint. He also wrote several works on art. Buckingham House, St. James’s Park, in which a number of the beau monde are seen promenading in the park, is one of his best paintings. An engraving of it by F. D. Soiron, produced in 1793, under the title of Promenade in St. James’s Park, was very popular.

Francis Wheatley, R.A., was a topographical artist, but is better known as a painter of genre subjects, especially by the engravings after “The Cries of London.” Preparing for Market (Plate VIII) is a good example of his latter work, which was somewhat insipid.

The reputation of Thomas Rowlandson, who could paint landscapes with great ability, rests upon his caricatures, which were usually drawn in outline and tinted. He lived a somewhat dissipated life, and possessed an abundant sense of humour, as displayed in the Entrance to Vauxhall Gardens (Plate IX), the noted place of amusement and rendezvous of the fashionable set in the early part of the last century.

John Robert Cozens, the son of Alexander Cozens, was the first artist at this period “to break away from the trammels of topography, and to raise landscape painting in water colours to a branch of fine art.” He travelled abroad and studied principally in Italy and Switzerland. The lake of Nemi, situated in the Campagna, some sixteen miles west of Rome, and reached by the famous Via Appia, has always been a favourite subject with both poets and artists. Near the north rim of the worn-out crater, in which the lake is situated, is the village of Nemi, surmounted by a fine old castle, which passed through the hands of many noble families. Pope, Byron, and others have sung the praises of the lake. Turner has left at least five drawings of it, one of which is engraved in Hakewell’s “Italy.” William Pars, Richard Wilson and other artists of the early landscape school also painted the scene. Cozens made many drawings of Nemi and the vicinity. Two are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and another is in the Whitworth Institute, Manchester. The painting (Plate X), belonging to Mr. R. W. Lloyd, shows the lake with Palazzo Cesarini on a height by its side, and the Campagna in the distance. It is a fine example of Cozens’ work treated in his poetic manner, and into which more colour than usual has been introduced. Cozens’ last visit to Italy was made in 1782 in company with the noted William Beckford, the author of “Vathek.” On his return he gradually lost his reason. It is pathetic to think such was the sad end of a man inspired with such artistic talents. As it has already been stated, he was the pioneer in exalting water-colour painting to a fine art. His footsteps were quickly followed by Girtin and Turner. The history of these two artists, how during their early struggles they were befriended by that art patron, Dr. Thomas Monro, a capable water-colour painter himself, and well qualified to give advice, is too well known to need repetition.

Girtin, during his short career, had no selfish ideas of keeping his knowledge of painting to himself. It was mainly due to his initiation that a club was started amongst a small body of young artists for the study of landscape painting. They met at each other’s houses in rotation. One of its prominent members was Sir Robert Ker Porter, a painter, traveller and author, who afterwards married a Russian princess. He was living, at the time, at 16, Great Newport Street, which had formerly been a residence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and subsequently that of Dr. Samuel Johnson. It was in this house that the first meeting of the club was held “for the purpose of establishing by practice a School of Historic Landscape, the subjects being designs from poetick passages.” Writing in The Somerset House Gazette, in 1823, W. H. Pyne, under the pseudonym of Ephraim Hardcastle, states “this artist (Girtin) prepared his drawings on the same principle which had hitherto been confined to painting in oil, namely, with local colour, and shadowing the same with the individual tint of its own shadow. Previous to the practice of Turner and Girtin, drawings were shadowed first entirely throughout, whatever their component parts—houses, castles, trees, mountains, fore-grounds, middle-grounds, and distances, all with black or grey, and these objects were afterwards stained or tinted, enriched and finished, as is now the custom to colour prints. It was this new practice, introduced by these distinguished artists, that acquired for designs in water colour upon paper the title of paintings: a designation which many works of the existing school decidedly merit, as we lately beheld in the Exhibition of the Painters in Water Colours, where pictures of this class were displayed in gorgeous frames, bearing out in effect against the mass of glittering gold as powerfully as pictures in oil.” Girtin had a partiality for painting in a low tone of colour and frequently on rough cartridge paper, which assisted in giving a largeness of manner to his work. The Landscape (Plate XI) is, however, rendered in a brighter key than his usual practice.

As limitation of space will not admit of giving any account of the life of Turner, already well known, it may be sufficient to say that Lucerne: Moonlight (Plate XII) was painted in 1843, and was originally in the collection of Mr. H. A. J. Munro of Novar. Ruskin, who calls it a noble drawing in his “Notes on his Drawings by the late J. M. W. Turner,” makes a mistake in the title and describes it as Zurich by Moonlight. John Sell Cotman, a member of the Norwich School, was another pioneer who did much for the advancement of water-colour painting. Unfortunately, his work was not appreciated during his career. If he had lived in the twentieth century he would have had no cause for the fits of depression to which he was subject during the greater part of life. It can be well recognised that in the first half of last century the public, who were mainly accustomed to carefully drawn topographical scenes, failed to appreciate such paintings as the Classical Scene (public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@22379@[email protected]#plateXIII" class="pginternal"