Art in England | Page 9

labours.
He had many imitators; for there are followers of bad as well as of good examples. Among others, Riario, Johnson, Brown, besides Lanscroon, Scheffers, and Picard, who worked with him under Verrio.
His son and pupil, John Laguerre, manifested considerable ability, and engraved a series of prints of 'Hob in the Well,'[3] which had a large popularity, though they were but indifferently executed. He was fond of the theatre, with a talent for music and singing; painted scenery and stage decorations. He even appeared upon the boards as a singer.
[3] A favourite old ballad farce by Dogget, the comedian.
Laguerre, in his age, feeble and dropsical, attended Drury Lane on the 20th April 1721, to witness his son's performance in a musical version of Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Island Princess;' but, before the curtain rose, the poor old man was seized with an apoplectic fit, and died the same night. He was buried in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The son subsequently quitted the stage, and resumed his first profession. He etched a plate, representing Falstaff, Pistol, and Doll Tearsheet, with other theatrical characters, in allusion to a quarrel between the players and patentees. He died in very indigent circumstances, in March 1748.
Time and the white-washer's double-tie brush have combined to destroy most of the ceilings and staircases of Signor Verrio and Monsieur Laguerre. For their art, there was not worth enough in it to endow it with any lasting vitality. They are remembered more from Pope's lines, than on any other account--preserved in them, like uncomely curiosities in good spirits. To resort to the poet for verses applicable, though familiar:--
'Pretty in amber to observe the forms Of hair, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms; The things we know are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there!'

A SCULPTOR'S LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY.
Horace Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, having deplored the low ebb to which the arts had sunk in Britain during the time of George the First, proceeds to consider the succeeding reign with greater complacency: accounting it, indeed, as a new and shining era. Under George the Second he found architecture revived 'in antique purity;' sculpture redeemed from reproach; the art of gardening, or, as he prefers to call it, 'the art of creating landscape,' pressed forward to perfection; engraving much elevated; and painting, if less perceptibly advanced, still (towards the close of the reign, at any rate) ransomed from insipidity by the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king himself, it was conceded, had 'little propensity to refined pleasure;' but his consort, Queen Caroline, was credited with a lively anxiety to reward merit and to encourage the exertions of the ingenious.
This glowing picture of the period in its relation to the fine arts, contrasts somewhat violently with what we learn elsewhere concerning the poverty of Richard Wilson, the ill-requited labours of William Hogarth, the struggles and sufferings of James Barry, and generally, of the depressed condition of native professors of art during the eighteenth century. That the portrait-painter (the 'face-painter' as Hogarth delighted contemptuously to designate him) found sufficient occupation is likely enough; but, otherwise, the British artist had perforce to limit the aspirations of his genius to the decoration of ceilings and staircases, and to derive his chief emoluments from painting the sign-boards of the British tradesman: if not a very dignified still a remunerative employment; for in those days every London shop boasted its distinct emblem.
Nevertheless it is certain that in George the Second's reign Fashion began to take up with Taste. Dilettanteism became the vogue. Objects of virt�� were now, for the first time, indispensable appendages of the houses of the aristocratic and the rich. A rage for 'collecting' possessed the town, and led to an expenditure as profuse as it was injudicious. Of the vast sums disbursed, however, but a small share came to the native artist. His works were passed over as beneath the notice of the cognoscenti. The 'quality' gave their verdict against modern art and in favour of the ancient masters. A race of old picture-brokers and jobbers in antiquities sprang into existence to supply the increasing demand for such chattels. The London Magazine for 1737, in an article attributed to William Hogarth, inveighs bitterly against these speculators and their endeavours to depreciate every English work in order to enhance the value of their imported shiploads of Dead Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas: the sweepings of the continental art-markets. Auction-rooms were opened in all parts of London for the exhibition and sale of choice objects of every kind, and became the resort and rendezvous of all pretending to wealth and fashion. Agents were to be found at the chief foreign cities eagerly exhuming antiquities for transmission to England: certain of immediate sale and enormous profit