In doing this I must
necessarily repeat some things which I have set forth before, and
which, from the writings of others as well as myself, are well enough
known to many. I can vary my form of expression, but cannot introduce
much novelty into my statements of fact.
In 1848 the British School of Painting was in anything but a vital or
a lively condition. One very great and incomparable genius, Turner,
belonged to it. He was old and past his executive prime. There were
some other highly able men--Etty and David Scott, then both very near
their death; Maclise, Dyce, Cope, Mulready, Linnell, Poole, William
Henry Hunt, Landseer, Leslie, Watts, Cox, J.F. Lewis, and some
others. There were also some distinctly clever men, such as Ward,
Frith, and Egg. Paton, Gilbert, Ford Madox Brown, Mark Anthony, had
given sufficient indication of their powers, but were all in an early
stage. On the whole the school had sunk very far below what it had
been in the days of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Blake, and
its ordinary average had come to be something for which commonplace
is a laudatory term, and imbecility a not excessive one.
There were in the late summer of 1848, in the Schools of the Royal
Academy or barely emergent from them, four young men to whom this
condition of the art seemed offensive, contemptible, and even
scandalous.
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