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MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

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The Country Press, Bradford :

And 3, Amen Corner,

London, E.C.

PREFACE

The Anglo-Saxon temperament
may be compared to a thing of
steel covered with silk. Very often
the silk is so thin as to bring out
by contrast the varying quality of
the steel just partly veiled by it;
but sometimes the silk is so glossy
and so thick that casual observers
are deceived by it and give no
thought at all to the well-tempered
metal underneath.

A foreign critic, for instance,
when he compares the art of
England with the nation's achieve-
ments in war, in sport, and in
colonization, is apt to be staggered

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

by the immense contrasts that his
study brings to light. It seems to
him that a country which has
done wondrous deeds should
exhibit in all its handiwork the
same conquering vitality, the same
enriching manliness and heroic
enterprise. "Here" the critic says,
"there is steel of the best kind,
while in the arts of England I am
constantly astonished by a silki-
ness of touch and a sentimental
choice of subject which belong,
seemingly, to a nation's decline."
All this has been said by many
critics both foreign and British,
and yet the complaining criticism
has no real depth. Not only do

6

PREFACE

weak nations long for strength
and strong nations for delicacy
and refinement, but, in addition
to that, the complexity of the
British temperament explains every
one of its manifestations. The
Elizabethan crowds on May-day,
singing Robin Hood ballads with
tipsy gaiety and carrying posies of
wild flowers, were not more
typical of the race than was the
secretly growing Puritanism of the
period, which in the hands of
Gosson and his followers not only
formed its early literature during
the progress of the Shakespearian
drama, but began actually to sub-
merge that drama before the death

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

of Ben Jonson. To decide which
was the stronger achievement,
the drama or the Puritanism— to
estimate which of the two had the
more potent historical results-
would be difficult; but each was
an inevitable product of the
British character and genius.

In the same way, too, the ideal-
istic painters of our own time,
painters like George Mason and
Birket Foster, are every bit as
typically British as the unbending
qualities of a Lord Kitchener.
It is because critics are slow to
recognize this fact that they fail to
do justice to the simple ballad-
pictures painted by Birket Foster,

8

PREFACE

painted with a tenderness and
skill that endear him to the people
and make his work enduringly
popular.

Let it not be thought for a
moment that Foster's minute
intricacy of touch denotes a weak-
ness of hand or heart. In painting,
as in music or in surgery, a weak
hand is always clumsy and too
insistent; lightness of touch is a
sure sign of disciplined knowledge
and strength. None knew this
better than the master landscape-
painter of the world, J. M. W.
Turner, whose water-colours are
miracles of infinite minuteness and
delicacy. Birket Foster, during his

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

apprenticeship, came in contact
with the engraved work produced
under Turner's guidance, and
from it he acquired a delight in
exquisite detail that remained with
him all his life, and to which he
gave artistic expression in his own
happy, playful way.

Foster painted in water-colour,
a medium pre-eminently English,
like mezzotint. Another medium
in which Englishmen have excelled
pre-eminently is the reproductive
art of coloured lithography, which
was at its best about a generation
ago. It was then that Mr. George
Rowney and Mr. F. C. McQueen
became its chief patrons, and pro-

10

PREFACE

duced after Birket Foster, as well
as after other painters, a series of
faithful reproductions in colour
that increase year by year in value,
now that the international com-
petition for British work grows
keener and keener. From among
those coloured lithographs the
illustrations in this book were
chosen and reproduced ; and the
subjects represented do justice to
Foster at his best, when depicting
the cottage children and the rustic
life of his own country.

W. SHAW SPARROW

ii

CONTENTS

Preface - - 5

Index of Plates in Colour -13

" In Rustic England : With
Pictures in Colour by
Birket Foster." By A. B.
Daryll - - - - 17

PLATES IN COLOUR
AFTER BIRKET FOSTER.

Frontispiece "Making Hay while
the Sun Shines " -

Frontispiece

TO FACE

Plate 2. "The Pet of the

Common" - - 16

13

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Plate 3. "Bringing Home the

Calf" - - -20

Plate 4. "Within the Wood" 24

Plate 5. "Birds'-Nesting" - 32

Plate 6. "The Rustic Stile"- 40

Plate 7. "The Boat Race"- 48

Plate 8. "Summer Time" - 56

Plate 9. "The Sunflower" - 60

Plate 10. "Filling the Pitcher" 64

Plate 11. "The Cottage Nurse" 68

Plate 12. "Catching Butter-
flies" - - - 72

14

CONTENTS

Plate 13. "The Market Cart" 76

Plate 14. "Coast Scene, Cul-

lercoats" - - 80

Plate 15. "Shrimping" - 84

Plate 16. "Blowing Bubbles" 88

Plate 17. "The Pet Calf" - 92

Plate 18. "Blackberry Gather-
ers" - - - 96

Plate 19. "Birds' -Nesting on

the Common" -100

Plate 20. "A Surrey Lane" -104

Plate 21." The Gardener's

Cottage" - -108

15

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Plate 22. "Returning from

Market" - -112

Plate 23. "The Ride Home" 116

Plate 24. "A Peep at the
Hounds : c Here
they come'"- -120

Plate 25. "Returning from

Pasture— Evening" -124

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IN RUSTIC ENGLAND:
WITH PICTURES IN COL-
OUR BY BIRKET FOSTER

Introduction
Concerning Rustic Art

In the annals of English art
during the period which extends
from the time of Gainsborough to
the present day are recorded the
names of many famous painters of
rustic motives. The people of
this country are, and always have
been, deeply imbued with the love
of rural life, and have consistently
shown their appreciation of the
charms of rusticity. They possess
a quiet but very definite sensibility
to the beauties of nature, and they
relish instinctively the pleasures

17

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

and occupations of the country.
" This western isle hath long been
famed for scenes where bliss
domestic finds a dwelling place;"
and it is not surprising that
English artists, who study the
better characteristics of " this
western isle," should have used
largely the resources of their fancy
in depicting the picturesqueness
of rural poverty, humble but not
squalid, and decently maintained.
Nor is there any cause to wonder
that in the sum total of their
achievements in this direction
their particular genius has hitherto
been manifested more convincingly
than in any work of the same

18

INTRODUCTION

order produced by artists of other
nations.

To the foreigner paying a first
visit to these shores the antique
farmhouses and moss-grown cot-
tages, the winding lanes and green
groves, the velvet margins of quiet
streams, and the many other details
which make up the sweet and
restful picture of English rural
life, always make a strong appeal
by their novel and captivating
loveliness ; and, naturally enough,
perhaps, we owe to an illustrious
foreigner one of the finest and
most faithful word-paintings of
English landscape that is to be
found in our language. "The great

19

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

charm of English scenery," wrote
Washington Irving, "is the moral
feeling that seems to pervade it.
It is associated in the mind with
feelings of order, of quiet, of
sober, well-established principles,
of hoary usage and revered custom.
Everything seems to be the growth
of ages of regular and peaceful
existence. The old church of
remote architecture, with its low
massive portal, its Gothic tower,
its windows rich with tracery and
painted glass, its scrupulous pre-
servation, its stately monuments
of warriors and worthies of the
olden time, ancestors of the
present lords of the soil ; its

20

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INTRODUCTION

tombstones, recording successive
generations of sturdy yeomanry
whose progeny still plough the
same fields and kneel at the same
altar — the parsonage, a quaint
irregular pile, partly antiquated,
but repaired and altered in the
tastes of various ages and occu-
pants— the stile and footpath lead-
ing from the churchyard across
pleasant fields, and along shady
hedge-rows, according to an
immemorial right of way — the
neighbouring village with its
venerable cottages, its public green
sheltered by trees under which
the forefathers of the present race
have sported — the antique family

21

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

mansion, standing apart in some
little rural domain but looking
down with a protecting air on the
surrounding scene : all these
common features of English land-
scape evince a calm and settled
security, and hereditary trans-
mission of home-bred virtues and
local attachments, that speak
deeply and touchingly for the
moral character of the nation."

It is its capacity to inspire
sentiments such as those which
give to this passage its singular
persuasiveness that the scenery of
England has gained its power over
the artistic mind. Its charm has
matured and become perfected

22

INTRODUCTION

through the slow lapse of centuries
and has, by long association, so
affected the modes of thought of
our native painters that it has
made them a school apart, with
aims peculiar to themselves and
owing nothing to their foreign
predecessors in art. For of early
attempts to represent purely rustic
subjects pictorially there are com-
paratively few which can be
instanced. The ancient Greeks, for
instance, concerned themselves
with glorifications of nature, with
idealisations of humanity and with
the presentation of human beauty
at its highest. They chose their
subjects from religious myths for

23

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

the most part, and when they
treated the life of their own times
they preferred to represent their
statesmen, their warriors, or their
athletes, not their peasantry ;
though in the decoration of their
vases they often depicted subjects
from daily life, such as young
men and women exchanging gifts
of fruit, toilet boxes, and other
objects. Towards the middle of
the fifth century the growing im-
portance attached to local legends,
especially to those which gathered
round the hero, Theseus, is par-
ticularly noticeable — probably
Theseus was regarded as the
typical athlete and his contests as
24

PLATE 4

WITHIN THE WOOD

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

* 3T7

aOOW HHT MIHTIW

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Copyright by George Rowney & Co., London.

Reproduced by their hind permission.

INTRODUCTION

having some analogy with scenes
in the gymnasium. This would
to some extent account for the
tendency of the decorations of
the red-figured vases and cups to
become in some sort glorifications
of the Attic athlete, the repre-
sentations of whom, running and
leaping or occupied in various
forms of revelry, are out of all
proportion to other subjects.

The Assyrians, at an earlier
period, chiefly illustrated sporting
and hunting incidents in their
mural reliefs, or battle scenes in
which their kings and great chiefs
took part. The walls which the
artists were called to decorate

25

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

were sometimes those of temples,
but more often of the royal
palaces ; and, if we may judge
from what the exploration of the
Assyrian ruins has revealed, it
would seem that the ancient art
patrons were human enough to
desire that their heroic deeds,
real or alleged, should be heralded
to the world and recalled inces-
santly to their own recollection.
Battle pieces and hunting scenes
were also much favoured by the
Egyptians ; but in their wall
paintings the life of the people —
of the peasantry of the period —
was not entirely disregarded, for
there are in existence fairly
26

INTRODUCTION

numerous representations of bird
catching, fishing, agricultural
work, and of such like occupa-
tions of the workers in the fields.
The Early Italians touched little
on what we should now call
rusticity ; they mostly painted the
symbolical, religious, and histori-
cal subjects which were demanded
by the nobles and church digni-
taries who were then the chief
patrons of the artist. Italian art
is, indeed, with all its richness of
output, curiously lacking in
observation of the simple charm
of rustic life. We have, in fact,
to come down to the nineteenth
century to find an Italian painter
27

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

who was willing to study sym-
pathetically the poor and humble
country folk and to set them
pictorially in right relation to
the rugged grandeur of nature.
The peasantry in the pictures of
Segantini toil with the uncon-
scious grace that comes from
uncomplaining acceptance of their
lot ; the dignity of labour en-
nobles them and gives them their
proper place in the world which
he sought to depict. They have
acquired from their mountain
surrounding something of its
impressiveness and its large sim-
plicity, and they are fully in
keeping with the scenes with
28

INTRODUCTION

which they are associated. His
paintings have really much of the
solemnity and noble simplicity
by which the religious composi-
tions of his artistic ancestors were
distinguished, and yet they bear
throughout the stamp of rustic
beauty.

Spain, also, has produced few
painters of real country life. Like
the Italians, the Spaniards pre-
ferred to represent religious sub-
jects and incidents from the lives
of their contemporaries who
played parts of importance in the
social world. The early painters
were, for the most part, indifferent
to the pictorial opportunities open

29

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

to them in the villages and pastoral
districts ; but some artists, like
Velazquez and Murillo, treated
low-life motives in various pictures
of beggars and street urchins, and
in the " kitchen pieces " which
were in feeling not unlike the
works of so many of the Dutch
painters — scenes in drinking-
booths, inn kitchens, and other
similar places affected by the
lower orders.

A kind of fanciful and
decorative rusticity, without any
serious regard for actuality or
truth to nature, is the keynote of
the attempts made by the earlier
French painters to represent rural

30

INTRODUCTION

life. During the seventeenth
century France scarcely had an
art of her own. Under the
yoke of the Italian tradition her
painters wasted their energies in
tediously repeating the ideas of
other people, and remained wil-
fully blind to the beauties of
nature. To this period of dul-
ness and pomposity succeeded
one of light and gaiety when the
joy of life was expressed by a
very charming convention. The
so-called " pastoral " artists of
the eighteenth century entered
upon an orgie of masquerade
illustrating an unreal and theat-
rical sort of rural existence,

31

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

idealised out of all likeness to the
real thing, but not unpleasing in
its prettiness and delicate charm.
But since the conception of the
characters portrayed in the paint-
ings of these men is essentially
artificial, the attractiveness of
their work lies not so much in
the interest of its action as in
the passion and sweetness of its
decorative sentiment, though
technical merits of the highest
order can by no means be
denied to it. Watteau, Boucher
and Fragonard were the chief
exponents of the artificial atmos-
phere of the mock pastoral style
of the day. Watteau's shepherds

32

PLATE 5

BIRDS '-NESTING

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

3TAjq

•MiTaaH^eaHia

e«3T801 T3Xflia

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Reproduced by kind permission of F. C. McQueen, Esq.

INTRODUCTION

and shepherdesses, whom he
idealised till they resembled
Court ladies in fanciful disguise
rather than the peasants they
were supposed to represent, have
lived by virtue of the exquisite
precision of the painter's methods
and the extraordinary brilliance
and daintiness of his art, and
certainly not because they can be
taken as typical of the country
people of the time.

The writings of Diderot reveal
the fact that towards the end of
the eighteenth century the people
of France were beginning to
rebel against the prevailing want
of artistic sincerity. The nation

33

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

was becoming more and more
studious and serious, and the
philosophy of Rousseau was
steadily taking possession of the
popular mind. The intelligent
men were satiated with the
painted coquetries of that vol-
uptuous era, and many of them
were prepared to reject definitely
enough the artificiality, insin-
cerity and exaggerated refinement
which had too long been forced
upon them by the workers in art.
A " simpler life " movement
began, in fact, and of this move-
ment there is a plain reflection in
the earlier genre pictures of such
an artist as Greuze, — though, it

34

INTRODUCTION

must be admitted, that, after
having in these earlier pictures
preached with some eloquence
against the prevalent sensuality
of the age, in his later pro-
ductions he showed that he
could not altogether free him-
self from the influence of his
surroundings.

However, at a time when
freedom had degenerated into
license, and even into actual
obscenity, it must be counted to
Greuze's credit that he exhibited
" A Father Reading the Bible to
His Children," a pious present-
ment of humble life which
seemed somehow to have strayed

35

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

by accident among the pictures
of the Court painters — pictures
which for many years past had
been quite free from the sus-
picion of any odour of sanctity.
Yet the canvases of Greuze are
not marked by very discrimin-
ating observation of real life ;
they scarcely give us what Zola
called " Nature seen through a
temperament." The conventions
upon which they were based are
too apparent, and reveal too
definitely an artificial and merely
sentimental view of existence.
His figures are always posing,
always over-acting parts that
have been too carefully studied.

36

INTRODUCTION

For this reason a higher artistic
mission may be said to have been
fulfilled by Chardin. Unlike
Greuze, he did not attempt to
moralise on canvas or to make his
characters seductive by affected
graces ; in his pictures we can
perceive far more truly the
atmosphere that comes from
sympathy with the sweetness and
unconscious simplicity of well-
ordered home life.

In the early Dutch and Flemish
art the models for many pictures
were chosen from the peasant
class, but it would be futile to
seek in the works of men like
the Van Ostades, Jan Steen, or

37

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Brouwer, for the true feeling of
open air rusticity, though un-
doubtedly Teniers caught some-
times the inspiration of the
Low Countries with their flower
spangled meadows, fields of grain,
and groves of trees. To a great
extent Rembrandt's uncouth,
heavy-set peasant, made rugged
by hardships and strengthened by
a life-long struggle with adversity,
became the type which was
accepted by his successors. The
Dutch peasant of those days lived
hard, toiled incessantly, and fed
sparingly, but, nevertheless, he
maintained strenuously a very
practical idea of personal enjoy-

38

INTRODUCTION

ment. The work of the Dutch
painters presented essentially a
portrait of contemporary Holland
and its people, and by its faith-
fulness to the subject matter avail-
able resulted in a series of often
humorous but usually brutally
realistic paintings of rollicking
debauchery. The canvases of Jan
Steen, who dealt mostly with the
coarser side of things, are full of
boisterous vivacity ; he depicted
the low comedy of human life in
a spirit of genial toleration, and
even approbation, though now
and again he introduced telling
touches of satire which recall the
pictorial morality of Hogarth.

39

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Van Ostade shows us the
peasant's cottage within and
without, the outside with its over-
growth of vine leaves, the inside
a mere patchwork of rafters and
thatch, squalid and untidy. The
people living in these hovels bear
in face and figure the impress
of their existence, with its con-
stant privations and never-ending
struggle. Even their clothes,
worn and battered into shapeless-
ness, seem to be the cast-ofTs of
previous generations — the boy
wears the tattered garments of
his father and grandfather. From
such materials as these it was not
easy to extract poetry, but yet,
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INTRODUCTION

despite the ugliness of the peasant
life, the greater Dutch painters
made it interesting to a certain
extent ; and Teniers, at least,
produced pictures which had
something of the sprightliness
and sparkle of Watteau's com-
positions. But he was in his way
an idealist ; he did not represent
literally the coarse amusements
of the boors and he glossed over
their poverty as far as he could.
His villagers drink, play games,
dance, and sing, but they seldom
brawl or indulge in the gross
forms of jollity which the other
artists of that period were so
ready to dwell upon.

41

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

It was left to English painters
to raise rustic art to its right
place and to invest it with a
significance that it had scarcely-
possessed before. In a sense the
English rustic school may be said
to have adopted the Dutch tradi-
tion but without servility and
without any excessive acceptance
of the ideas and preferences of
the artists of the Low Countries.
At first, it is true, the imitation
of the Dutch school was too close
and unintelligent, and in the
eighteenth century it caused a
deterioration of a very definite
kind in the treatment of open
air motives by English painters.

42

INTRODUCTION

They were so anxious to observe
certain rules of style that they
forgot nature in evolving the ex-
pression of what they thought
nature ought to be. They manu-
factured pictures in the studio,
and brought together the details
of their landscapes, mountains,
trees, rivers, clouds, and accessory
figures, in accordance with an
accepted recipe. Colour was en-
tirely conventional : greys and
browns predominated, and other
colours were introduced strictly
by rule and with little reference
to the actual hue of the particular
object represented. Geological
formation was wholly ignored,

43

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

and the foliage of trees was
treated in a mechanical fashion,
which was the outcome of a
strict and rigid system.

The beginning of the revival
of landscape in England was due
to the efforts of Wilson and
Gainsborough. Steeped as he was
in classical tradition Wilson must
be assigned a prominent place
among the earlier of our artistic
reformers, though the scope of
his art was limited by his con-
cession to the prevalent opinion
of his contemporaries concerning
nature. They made nature a peg
upon which to hang a mytho-
logical subject set in a correct

44

INTRODUCTION

composition of trees, lakes and
classical buildings. He introduced
mythological personages into his
pictures, but, with some inconsist-
ency, gave them surroundings
which were in a measure realistic.
In his management of these sur-
roundings can be seen a real
effort to arrive at something like
truth of atmosphere and colour,
and at a naturalistic expression of
subtleties of illumination and tone
relation. He was, indeed, the link
between the older formal school
and the later men who devoted
themselves seriously to sincere
nature study ; and his works,
with all their departures from

45

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

strict veracity, compare more
than favourably with the elegant
feebleness of Zuccarelli and the
other complacent mediocrities of
that date who prospered while
Wilson was allowed to remain
in abject poverty.

But by the truly artistic
versatility of Gainsborough the
movement towards better and
saner understanding of the rela-
tion between art and nature was
made certain and decisive. Gains-
borough was not merely a good
landscape painter ; he was one of
the most original artists of any
time or country. His earlier land-
scapes are rather hard and formal
46

INTRODUCTION

and show how much he was
influenced by his knowledge of
the Dutch masters ; but this
influence, if strong at first,
yielded more and more, as time
went on, to the healthier
prompting of his own individu-
ality. He soon came to disre-
gard the traditional formalities,
and, in painting the country he
knew, to seek for the legitimate
pictorial arrangement of the
subject he chose for representa-
tion rather than for a purely
idealised composition of stock
properties. It was his protest
against the old idea that all
natural and ordinary scenes —

47

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

in England at any rate — were
commonplace and unworthy of
the artist's attention, which was
ultimately to bear fruit in the
creation of the true and healthy
spirit of modern art. His can-
vases show no straining after the
impossibly grand and sublime
but rather a love of home scenes
of rural repose and sheltered
quiet. His sympathies were
aroused by a comparatively
limited range of subjects, and
he usually presented his pastorals
under one of two aspects —
either the sky is full of clouds
and the wind is blowing briskly,
or the air is peaceful and the
48

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INTRODUCTION

setting sun casts its slanting rays
across meadow and woodland.
But for the most part his land-
scapes are all brightness and
sunshine, and reflect the tem-
perament of this " good, kindly,
happy man," as Constable called
him.

Gainsborough was fond of
introducing cottage children and
peasant figures to give life and
animation to his pictures, and his
records of quiet country with its
human accessories are the first
signs of the development of a
new purpose in English art- — the
association of man with nature
and the setting of simple folk in

49

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

the surroundings natural to them.
Another powerful factor in this
development was the genius of
Morland, who also owed some-
thing indirectly to his Dutch
predecessors. The art of George
Morland is somewhat akin to
that of Robert Burns ; both
presented nature in her homeliest
garb, and both delighted the
world with the power and beauty
of their manner of expression.
A cheerful, healthy mode of
looking at things is, according
to that able critic, M. Robert
de la Sizeranne, peculiar to
British artists ; and though
Morland painted the poor and

50

INTRODUCTION

humble, and even the vagabond
and the beggar, the charm of his
pictures consists in the air of
rural beauty, health and happi-
ness with which they are per-
vaded. His records of the
country life of his period are
unsurpassable in their truth ;
and he had the advantage of
living at a time when England
was more attractive from the
painter's point of view than she
can claim to be to-day, despite
the still beautiful character of
her rural districts. No District
Councils existed then to abolish
the thatched roofs of cottages
and barns ; quaint signs hung

51

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

from the bay-windowed wayside
taverns ; the women and children
with their scarlet and blue cloaks,
and the men and boys with their
smock frocks and broad-brimmed
hats, were a delight to the artist.
Those were the days, too, of
bustling stage-coaches, of country
ale-houses with their revelries
and jollifications, of turn-pike
roads along which passed streams
of wayfarers on horse or foot.
The navy was then largely
manned by the exertions of the
ubiquitous press-gang, incidents
in whose operations Morland
loved to paint ; and smuggling
was a recognised and picturesque

52

INTRODUCTION

if somewhat hazardous calling ;
while the churchwarden pipe and
the punch-bowl were much in
evidence, and everyone, high and
low, yielded freely to the con-
vivial customs of the time.

In drawing upon the material
provided by an age so robust
and unaffected Gainsborough dis-
played always the greatest refine-
ment of feeling and elegance of
taste, while Morland showed a
preference for a lower type of
study, though he drew with equal
success the characters he selected.
" Those who have visited the
cottage of the peasant, who have
enjoyed rural sports, or engaged

53

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

in rustic occupations," wrote
George Dawe, R.A., " will feel
a peculiar charm in the works of
Morland, arising from associa-
tions which the truth of his
pencil never fails to excite ; but
Gainsborough seems most calcu-
lated to delight those whose ideas
of such employments have been
refined by the descriptions of
pastoral poetry." Both men, in
fact, were essential for the proper
building up of that great school
of open air painting which is one
of the glories of English art ; and
both played their parts with rare
distinction.

Thenceforward the prominence

54

INTRODUCTION

assumed by rustic genre and pure
landscape led to a deeper and
more direct study of nature and
to a more earnest effort to ex-
press the domestic and popular
sentiment. The English rustic
painters, including such men as
Mulready, De Wint, Constable,
William Collins, James Ward,
Creswick, and a very large pro-
portion of our water colourists,
followed the lead of Gainsborough
and Morland, and discovered the
possibility of giving new vitality
to the interpretation of rural
motives by simplicity and sin-
cerity of expression. The ten-
dency of rustic art became

55

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

markedly towards emancipation,
by the efforts of independent
workers, from the slavery of
tradition, and towards a more
personal contemplation and know-
ledge of contemporary life under
every aspect. It grew more and
more to be the art of the people,
a mixture of naturalism and
poetry, no longer appealing only
to a restricted and more or less
fastidious public, but, on the
contrary, adapting its aesthetic
appeal and its moral teaching to
the popular apprehension of the
Anglo-Celtic race.

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BIRKET FOSTER

i Biographical
Between the earlier painters and
those of the present generation,
though somewhat apart from both,
stands a man who has had a con-
siderable share in keeping up the
continuity of the line of artists by
whom the incidents of English
rustic life have been regarded as
fit subjects for treatment. This is
Birket Foster who, in a manner
quite his own, developed and car-
ried on the Gainsborough tradition.
He took rural life, the life of the
cottager — and particularly of the
cottage children — and gathered
from it a vast amount of valuable
material. In the daily events of

57

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

country existence — its common-
places rather than its occasional
tragedies and dramatic episodes —
he found a host of pictorial oppor-
tunities, which he used agreeably
and with a proper sense of the
rural atmosphere. He became in
art what Wordsworth, Thomson,
Cowper, and Gray — and in some
measure Herrick too— were in
poetry, an exponent of Nature
touched but not spoiled by civil-
isation, and of humanity which
retained some of Nature's grace
and unarTectedness. It is the
dainty naturalism of his art that
makes it attractive and gives it a
place among the classics. He felt

58

BIRKET FOSTER

quite rightly one side of Nature—
her delicate prettiness— and he
represented it with a correctness
of sentiment that cannot be denied;
and it is this truth of sentiment
that gives to his work a right to
attention which cannot be so justly
claimed by artists of more tech-
nical strength, and of more com-
manding powers of expression.

Birket Foster owned descent
from an old Quaker family, which
for many generations had occu-
pied a prominent and honourable
position in the county of Durham.
The artist's grandfather violated
the articles of faith to which the
Society of Friends adheres, by

59

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

engaging in the unhallowed pur-
suit of war. During the eighteenth
century he appears to have been
a naval officer of high repute for
courage and energy, and to have
taken part in several encounters
with privateers — for which back-
sliding he doubtless won the
reprobation of his sect. Be that as
it may, the "Pedigree of the
Fosters of Cold Hasledon, in the
County Palatine of Durham"
records the fact that, while occu-
pying the position of store-keeper
at Bermuda, where he carried on
a branch of his father's business,
"he was moved by the spirit (not
the peaceable one of the Quaker,
60

PLATE 9

"THE SUNFLOWER

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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BIRKET FOSTER

but the true spirit of an English-
man) to make up his accounts,
quit his store, collect together a
few sailors, lay aside the Quaker,
mount a cockade, and join a
Lieutenant Tinsley, then fitting
out a small armed vessel against
the Americans. Coming in her to
Portsmouth, after several severe
actions, he got himself recom-
mended to Captain Reynolds as
an officer likely to show him some
business ; was with him in the
jfupiter of fifty guns, when they
went alongside a French frigate
of sixty-four guns, was, in a des-
perate action which ensued, sent
for by the captain, the master

61

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

being killed, and appointed master
in his place ; and managing the
ship for the remainder of the
action, was appointed lieutenant
of the Pelican.

This same Robert Foster was
also a friend of poets, for in 1806
Southey wrote of him " Words-
worth sent me a man the other
day who was worth seeing ; he
looked like a first assassin in
^Macbeth as to his costume, but
he was a rare man. He had been
a lieutenant in the Navy, and was
scholar enough to quote Virgil
aptly. He had seen much and
thought much, his head was well
stored, and his heart was in the
62

BIRKET FOSTER

right place." The last sentence
suggests that perhaps the ex-naval
officer sympathised with the spirit
of the Lake School of Poetry, and
believers in the theory of heredity
will point to this in order to
explain the fact that Birket Foster's
long series of dainty paintings,
which depict so happily the charms
of rural England and the ways of
the poorer country folk, were the
outcome of an inherited attach-
ment to the convictions of the
Lake Poets, as exemplified by
Wordsworth in his famous preface
to the "Lyrical Ballads."

This passage runs as follows : —
" Humble and rustic life was

63

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

generally chosen, because, in that
condition, the essential passions
of the heart find a better soil in
which they can attain their
maturity, are less under restraint
and speak a plainer and more
emphatic language ; because in
that condition of life our element-
ary feelings co-exist in a state of
greater simplicity, and, conse-
quently, may be more accurately
contemplated and more forcibly
communicated ; because the man-
ners of rural life germinate from
three elementary feelings, and,
from the necessary character of
rural occupations, are more easily
comprehended, and are more

64

PLATE 10

"FILLING THE PITCHER"

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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BIRKET FOSTER

durable ; and, lastly, because in
that condition the passions of
men are incorporated with the
beautiful and permanent forms of
nature."

Myles Birket Foster, better
known as Birket Foster, was born
at North Shields on the 4th of
February, 1825, his mother being
a daughter of Mr. Joseph King,
of Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was
the youngest but one of a family
of seven children of whom six
were boys. He received the
greater part of his education in
or near London where his father
came to live when the boy was
about five years old, and he seems

65

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

in early childhood to have fallen
under influences well calculated
to develop the artistic inclinations
which, according to a family
tradition, he manifested even
before he could speak. His first
school, at Tottenham, was directed
by two ladies who seem to have
possessed a great deal more
sympathy for art than is usually
to be found in the presiding
geniuses of establishments of this
character, and who, moreover,
were not unskilful in teaching
the rudiments of drawing. Their
efforts no doubt did much to
encourage the aesthetic instincts of
a boy whose earliest memories

66

BIRKET FOSTER

were associated with the picture
books of Thomas Bewick, the
celebrated draughtsman and
wood-engraver, and one of the
most thoroughly original and
English of British artists. Bewick
was, indeed, alive at Newcastle
when Birket Foster was born at
North Shields ; and it is worthy
to mention that the boy's grand-
father, Robert Foster, the friend
of Wordsworth and Southey, was
also on terms of intimacy with
Bewick.

On leaving Tottenham, Birket
Foster was sent to the School for
the Children of the Society of
Friends at Hitchen, in Hertford-

67

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

shire, where again he had the
advantage of sound and intelli-
gent instruction in drawing from
Charles Parry, one of the masters
in the school. When, at the age
of sixteen, he came to the end of
his school-life, and the question
arose as to what should be his
choice of a profession, his inclina-
tions towards an artistic career
had fully ripened. But the pursuit
of art was not in those days so
lucrative as it became a few years
later, and several painters of note,
who were intimate friends of the
Foster family, bore witness to the
precariousness of their calling.
Mr. Foster would have preferred

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BIRKET FOSTER

for his son an occupation in
which there were more definite
probabilities of a comfortable live-
lihood, but he found the boy's
aspirations to be so keen that he
wisely refrained from thwarting
them. A kind of compromise was
effected, and though young
Birket's desire was to become a
landscape painter it was arranged
that he should enter the establish-
ment of a Mr. Stone, a die-
engraver, whose place of business
was in Margaret Street. On the
day on which the articles of
apprenticeship were to have been
signed, however, Mr. Stone com-
mitted suicide and consequently

69

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

a fresh scheme had to be devised.
Among the artistic friends of
the Foster family was the well
known wood-engraver, Ebenezer
Landells, who had been a pupil of
Bewick. The advice of Landells
was sought about the boy's future,
and ultimately he offered to give
young Foster the opportunity of
acquiring a knowledge of wood
engraving without requiring him
to be bound by a formal appren-
ticeship. Naturally, this offer was
gladly welcomed because it pro-
vided a very promising way out
of a difficulty : and by its accep-
tance was commenced that con-
nection of Birket Foster with
70

BIRKET FOSTER

Landells which may fairly be said
to have started the young artist
on his long and successful career —
a career, however, of which the
full fruits were earned by Foster's
consistent efforts to interpret
nature's suggestions with intelli-
gence and grace.

In those days the practice of
wood - engraving necessitated a
good deal of artistic study, and
demanded something more than
mechanical skill. The engraver
had to be as much an artist as
the draughtsman whose works he
had to translate, for the draughts-
man was often content to make
the merest suggestion on the

71

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

block, and to the engraver was
left the task of amending the
outline here and of adding neces-
sary details there. His was a
second art growing out of the
first, and it had no little import-
ance because there was then no
known method of presenting the
draughtsman at first hand. In the
sixties was introduced the prac-
tice of photographing the original
drawing upon the wood block —
an improvement on the earlier
process — but even then much was
left to the engraver. In fact, the
real artist whose work appeared
in the final print was rather the
engraver than the draughtsman ;
72

PLATE 12

CATCHING BUTTERFLIES

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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BIRKET FOSTER

sometimes he improved upon the
original by his manner of tran-
scription, sometimes he ruined it ;
but if he had proper qualifications
for his profession he certainly
shared equally with the draughts-
man the credit of giving to the
illustration its full measure of
charm.

To the fact that there was laid
upon the engraver so great a
degree of responsibility the next
important step in Birket Foster's
progress towards success as an
artist was definitely due. When
he first went to Landells he was
naturally unable, through his
ignorance of the technicalities of

73

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

wood engraving, to undertake
any work upon the drawings
which had been sent to the work-
shop for reproduction. So he was
told to experiment upon draw-
ings of his own ; and accord-
ingly he made some designs upon
the blocks given to him for his
first essays in engraving. But
when Landells saw these designs
he declared that they were " too
good to spoil," advised the boy
to become a draughtsman rather
than an engraver, and proceeded
at once to put in his way the
most useful opportunities of ac-
quiring a thorough knowledge of
illustrative work.

74

BIRKET FOSTER

The first thing given him to
do in his new capacity as an
illustrator was the redrawing and
improvement of certain sketches
intended for the illustration of a
book by S. C. Hall and his wife
on "Ireland, its Scenery and
Character," and he was next en-
trusted with the copying of
Stanfield's drawings for Captain
Marryat's " Poor Jack." But, once
started, he did not lack occupa-
tion ; the number of illustrated
books and periodicals with which
his master was concerned was
steadily increasing, and he had
sufficiently proved his capacities,
by what he had already done, to

75

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

take a full share in the work on
hand.

At the moment of his entry
into the workshop the chief pub-
lications upon which Landells
was engaged were the Penny
Magazine and the books pub-
lished by Charles Knight ; but
to these were almost immediately
added Punch and The Illustrated
London JVeyps, with both of which
journals Birket Foster was long
connected. His first contribution
to Punch appeared on September
5th, 1 84 1, and, though for a
while he drew for it only a num-
ber of grotesque initial letters, in
December of that year he did a
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much more important piece of
work, the principal cartoon,
"Jack (Lord John Russell) cut-
ting his name on the beam," a
caricature of a drawing by Cruik-
shank for Harrison Ainsworth's
"Jack Sheppard." The Illustrated
London News was started in May,
1842, and though at the outset
it had few claims to attention as
an artistic publication, it soon
began to improve. As it gained
in popularity more consideration
was given to the quality of the
illustrations and more care was
taken to secure the right kind of
material for them. Consequently
Birket Foster, on the strength

77

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

of his growing reputation as a
draughtsman, was often deputed,
as a special artist, to go about to
various places to make sketches
of subjects and incidents worthy
of pictorial representation. For
instance, he was responsible for
a series of illustrations of Queen
Victoria's visit to Germany in
1845, which were drawn by him
on the block from sketches sup-
plied by Landells.

But while he was busy in this
way with the journeyman work
of illustration, he had not for-
gotten his desire to gain a place
among the artists of his time, and
in his attempts to gratify this de-
78

BIRKET FOSTER

sire he was fully encouraged by
his genial and considerate master.
He used to tell how Landells
would say to him, " Now that
work is slack in these summer
months, spend them in the fields;
take your colours and copy every
detail of the scene as carefully as
possible, especially trees and fore-
ground plants, and come up to
me once a month and show me
what you have done;" and he
was always the first to admit
what a debt of gratitude he
owed to the man who took such
a kindly and rational interest in
his welfare. For this going out to
nature was just what he needed

79

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

to keep him from becoming
stereotyped, and from falling too
much under the influence of the
conventions which are apt to
affect the worker in black and
white.

Moreover, if he had not been
given this desultory but eminently
helpful art training, it would have
been very difficult for him, placed
as he was, to obtain any insight
at all into the technicalities of
the painter's craft. To enter the
Royal Academy schools would
have been scarcely possible for
him, and he was forced to depend
upon what assistance he could
get from people who sympa-
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thised with his aspirations for his
chances of increasing his store of
knowledge. That other lovers of
art besides Landells were ready
to give him this assistance cannot
be disputed, and in proof of this
a story may be quoted from the
excellent biography of the artist
written some sixteen years ago
by Mr. Marcus B. Huish as a
Christmas number of the "Art
Journal": "To obtain the friend-
ship of a collector of pictures
was a great boon to a young
artist, and Birket Foster was
exceptionally fortunate in this re-
spect. For he had not been long
at Landells' before he was taken

81

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

notice of by Jacob Bell, the
chemist, the friend of Landseer,
and the donor of the fine collec-
tion by that artist to the National
Gallery. Landells had recom-
mended the boy to copy en-
gravings, as they would teach
him how to represent colour by
line and tint, and Mr. Bell, who
was a friend of his father, was
only too ready to lend him for
this purpose the Landseer proofs
which were then being engraved
after that artist's works. These,
by rising at an early hour, he
found time to copy. One day,
presenting a pen and ink drawing
after one of these engravings to

82

BIRKET FOSTER

Mr. Bell, he was so pleased with
it that he would have it taken
off at once for Landseer to see,
who, he said, was at that moment
dining with Callcott at Fladong's
Hotel in Oxford Street. But the
boy was shy and would not go,
and he missed an interview which
might have been of much assist-
ance to him ; however the ex-
cellence of the copy was attested
by his selling it elsewhere for
the considerable sum of twenty
guineas."

The acquisition of this sum
of money was to Birket Foster
particularly opportune, because
by its aid he was able to pay

83

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

a long wished for visit to the
Highlands, which he was specially
desirous to see for the sake of
enlarging his outlook on nature.
His visit to Scotland ended, how-
ever, in disaster; an accident befel
him whereby he broke his right
arm, and an illness followed
which at one time was so serious
that for some days his life was
despaired of. It is characteristic
of him, and a proof of his love
of his profession, that during this
period of enforced idleness when
he could not use his right arm,
he taught himself to draw with
his left hand.

In 1 846 his term of service in

84

PLATE 15

44 SHRIMPING

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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BIRKET FOSTER

the workshop of Landells came
to an end, and he launched him-
self on the world as a fully-
qualified illustrator, ready to
execute any work that might
come in his way. He obtained
his first employment from Henry
Vizetelly, who commissioned him
to draw the illustrations for a
book by Thomas Miller, called
" The Boy's Country Book " ;
and these drawings were so
much appreciated that Vizetelly,
who was not only a publisher,
but undertook printing and
engraving for other firms, gave
the young artist introductions to
many of his clients. Among these

85

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

was David Bogue, who was pre-
paring an edition of Longfellow's
" Evangeline," and was in search
of a quite suitable illustrator for it.
He entrusted the work to Birket
Foster, whose success in carrying
out this eminently congenial
commission can be judged from
the remarks of a critic in the
Athenceum^ a journal little
addicted to superfluity of praise.
"A more lovely book than this,"
he wrote, "has rarely been given
to the public ; Mr. Foster's
designs, in particular, have a
picturesque grace and elegance
which recall the pleasure we
experienced on our first exam-

86

BIRKET FOSTER

ination of Mr. Rogers's " Italy "
when it came before us illus-
trated by persons of no less
refinement and invention than
Stothard and Turner."

These illustrations of " Evan-
geline " undoubtedly laid the
foundation of his fortunes as a
worker in this branch of art.
Bogue gave him immediately
other poems of Longfellow to
illustrate, and a little later sent
him on a tour up the Rhine and
to the Austrian Tyrol to collect
material for some further books.
More work followed quickly
from other publishers, and for
nearly twenty years he was kept

87

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

actively and continuously em-
ployed. During this period he
executed an enormous amount of
illustrative work, marked always
both by careful actuality and by
a quite exceptional minuteness
and delicacy of treatment.

But amid this multiplicity of
engagements he never allowed
himself to lose sight of his
original purpose to make for
himself a reputation as a painter.
From this intention he could be
turned neither by the lucrative
nature of his occupation as a
draughtsman nor by the fact that
his illustrations had earned for
him a reputation great enough

88

PLATE 16

BLOWING BUBBLES

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, RW.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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BIRKET FOSTER

to excite the envy of any picture
painter. He was dissatisfied with
what he held to be ephemeral
fame, and he aspired to produce
something which would give him
a more assured position among
the creative artists of the British
School. In the intervals of his
labours for the publishers he
continued to practise assiduously
painting both in oils and in water
colour, but as he destroyed the
greater part of these exercises
few are now available to show
what degree of proficiency he
attained as a painter during this
earlier part of his career. Those
that remain prove that he
89

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

possessed then, even more than
in his later years, the love of
microscopic exactness and the
desire to record a multiplicity
of small details which are
characteristic qualities in his
later practice.

Twelve years after he left
Landells he finally decided to
withdraw from the ranks of
illustrative draughtsmen and to
devote the rest of his life to
painting only. But though he
came to this decision in 1858,
some few years elapsed before he
could finally clear off the out-
standing commissions which he
had already accepted for book
90

BIRKET FOSTER

illustrations. Gradually, however,
he freed himself from the ties
which he was beginning to feel
irksome, and as he diminished
the calls upon his time he threw
himself more and more into the
pictorial work which made to
him so strong an appeal. As a
first step he spent the summer of
1858 at Dorking in careful and
searching study of nature, and in
the following spring he sent up
some of the results of this
summer's work to support his
application for admission to the
Society of Painters in Water
Colours ; and he also exhibited
a water colour, "A Farm —

91

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Arundel Park in the Distance,"
at the Royal Academy. He failed
to secure election to the " Old
Society" at his first attempt,
but in i860 he was made an
associate, and only two years later
a full member, so that at the age
of thirty-five he had realized his
ambition to be counted among
the most distinguished of English
water colourists.

This change in his position —
and, in 1861, the death of his
father— made him anxious to find
a home away from London, as he
felt that, having now no reason
for remaining in the Metropolis,
he would be better situated in

92

PLATE 17

THE PET CALF

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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some country district, where he
could carry on his nature studies
without interruption. So, on the
invitation of Mr. J. C. Hook, he
betook himself to Witley, in
Surrey, in search of suitable quar-
ters. For a while he occupied a
small cottage there, but eventually
he and Edmund Evans, the well-
known engraver, who had married
Foster's niece, bought and divided
between them an estate of some
twenty acres ; and the artist built
himself upon his share of the land
a house which was in every way
suited to his needs.

The situation of this house was
very happily chosen, and had a

93

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

particular fitness for its purpose
as the dwelling-place of an artist
who proposed to devote himself
almost entirely to the representa-
tion of rural scenery, and who
desired to live in surroundings
which would satisfy fully his love
of pure English landscape. The
site he selected was on the top of
a hill, from which stretched a
most delightful view of rich wood-
ed country, extending over Surrey
and part of Sussex, and backed up
by a great expanse of the South
Downs. Subjects of the type he
particularly enjoyed were all about
him ; without straying many yards
from his door he could find a

94

BIRKET FOSTER

wealth of material which not only
fitted exactly his needs, but had
an ample power of appeal to the
patrons who in increasing numbers
were demanding from him year
by year evidences of his skill.
Away from the noise and squalor
of London, untroubled by the
distractions of a great city, he was
able in this ideal spot to give
himself up fully to those rural
influences which affected so defi-
nitely the manner of his artistic
development, and helped to such
a marked degree to give to his
work its specific style.

The house itself — in which he
lived till shortly before his death

95

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

in March, 1899 — was built chiefly
from his own design, and in its
quaintness of arrangement and
picturesqueness of detail it bore
very plainly the stamp of his taste.
For the decoration of the interior
he applied to William Morris for
a general scheme of ornamenta-
tion, which was provided, but
never fully carried out. But by
the assistance of a number of
prominent artists the various rooms
were quickly given decorative
features of surpassing interest.
Burne-Jones painted for the dining
room a series of panels illustrating
the legend of St. George and the
Dragon, and designed many of the
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stained glass windows and fire-
place tiles ; J. D. Watson executed
two frescoes in the larger of the
two studios ; Charles Keene made
suggestions for the treatment of
some of the quaintest and most
effective of the windows ; and
others of the artist friends whom
Birket Foster had gathered round
him brought their contributions
to the scheme, which, if it lacked
the completeness that would have
been secured by strictly following
the ideas of William Morris, gained
by its very irregularity a special
degree of significance, and was
brought by its comprehensiveness
more fully into touch with the

97

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

convictions of the man who had
planned this house as his home.

Birket Foster's life in Surrey
was quiet and uneventful, but he
was certainly not isolated there,
and absence from the Metropolis
did not cause him to be separated
from his friends. His house,
indeed, became a kind of meeting
place where many men famous in
the art world foregathered — Sir
John Gilbert, J. W. Whymper,
Edmund Evans, Mr. Orchardson,
Mr. Hook, and a host of others,
among whom, perhaps most
frequently of all, was included
Fred Walker, who was on such
intimate terms with the members
98

BIRKET FOSTER

of the Foster family that they
looked upon him as almost one
of themselves. Existence at "The
Hill," as the house was called,
was not hedged round with
needless formalities and was not
spoiled by the worship of con-
ventions which would have jarred
hopelessly with the artistic atmos-
phere of such a place. Birket
Foster was too devoted to the
profession which he followed
with brilliant success to allow
the pursuit of social trivialities to
hamper him in his work. He
laboured strenuously, and he was
astonishingly prolific in his pro-
duction ; and if in his art he had

99

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

— as all artists must have who
chiefly occupy themselves with
one class of subject — a strongly
defined manner of expressing
himself, he kept his mannerism
pure and wholesome to the last,
and never diverged from that
course of practice which he had
marked out so clearly in his
earlier years.

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2 His Work as an Illustrator

" If the history of design in
England be ever written, the
book -illustrator will assume a
more prominent place than is
usually assigned to him," wrote
the late Cosmo Monkhouse. "A
great deal of what is strongest,
most living, and most national in
English art lies between the
covers of books. In the history
of modern painting our portrait
painters and our landscape
painters more than hold their
own against those of other
nations, but the same can scarcely
be said of our classical and his-

101

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

torical painters. It is not in our
galleries, but in our books, that
we must seek for this kind of
strength." In accepting this pro-
nouncement it is impossible to
deny to Birket Foster a place of
the highest importance among
the men who have written their
names large in the history of
English art. His contributions to
book-illustration were both enor-
mous in quantity and consistently
excellent in quality, and, great as
was his share in establishing the
continuity of our rustic art, his
part in the natural development
of illustration in this country was
not less distinguished.

102

BIRKET FOSTER

During his long and busy-
career he had special chances of
observing the way in which illus-
trative art was growing in favour
both with artists and the public,
and of noting developments in
connection with it which were as
valuable as they were remarkable.
When he first began his expe-
riences in the workshop of
Landells, the famous "Annuals,"
illustrated with steel engravings,
were waning in popularity because
apparently people had become
rather surfeited with books of
this type. The steel engraving
of that period, influenced as it
was by Turner and the group of
103

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

admirable executants who trans-
lated his works into black and
white under his immediate direc-
tion, had been carried to a pitch
of perfection which it had never
reached before, and which it has
certainly not approached since ;
and by the middle of the nine-
teenth century its decline was
beginning. But by a fortunate
chance there came just then the
commencement of that great
growth of illustrated weekly
newspapers and other periodicals
which has continued with un-
abated vigour for more than fifty
years. At first, wood- engraving
was the transcribing process
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almost universally adopted in the
production of these periodicals ;
and there arose in consequence a
great school of engravers who
interpreted with really surprising
fidelity the drawings furnished by
the artists. This school flourished
exceedingly during that palmy
period known as the " sixties,"
and though it was, not long after,
killed by the invention of photo-
graphic process reproduction, it
added much that is memorable to
the sum total of the art achieve-
ment of this country.

Birket Foster had practically
ceased to be an illustrator by the
time that "process" had gained

105

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

sufficient hold to come effectively
into competition with wood en-
graving, so that the whole of his
work in this direction was ex-
pressly intended to pass through
the hands of the engraver, and
was designed with careful con-
sideration— based upon intimate
personal experience — for the tech-
nicalities of wood-cutting. For
this reason all his illustrations
have a special character and a
special charm — the charm of
absolute fitness and perfect adap-
tation. They suggest that their
distinctive qualities could not
have been retained by any other
method of reproduction, and that
1 06

BIRKET FOSTER

wood engraving alone would give
them the daintiness of detail and
the delicacy of effect which make
them so peculiarly persuasive.

Perhaps the most prolific of
all the years which he devoted to
illustrative work was 1857, when
he was approaching that impor-
tant moment in his life at which
he decided that his place was to
be for the future among the
painters rather than the draughts-
men. In this year were published
nine books for which he provided
the illustrations — " The Poets of
the Nineteenth Century," "The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"
" Rhymes and Roundelays in

107

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

Praise of a Country Life," " Minis-
tering Children," " The Course
of Time," Barry Cornwall's
" Dramatic Scenes and New
Poems," " The Lord of the
Isles," Bloomfield's " The Far-
mer's Boy," and the book — of
which the text was written by
Henry May hew — on " The
Upper Rhine : the Scenery of its
Banks and the Manners of its
People," which was a companion
volume to " The Rhine," pub-
lished in 1855. Both these
books on the Rhine owed their
existence to Birket Foster's
shrewdness in making the most
of all opportunities which came
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in his way. When he was sent
by David Bogue, shortly after the
publication of his " Evangeline "
illustrations, on a trip to the
Austrian Tyrol to make drawings
for the adornment of an edition
of " Hyperion," he availed him-
self of such an excellent chance
of securing a series of sketches of
the Rhine scenery ; these sketches
were engraved on steel, and writ-
ten round by Mayhew, and were
utilised as material for a couple of
attractive and popular publica-
tions.

To compile a list of the books
for the illustration of which he
was wholly or partly responsible
109

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

would be a considerable under-
taking ; he did so much that an
exhaustive record would be almost
incredibly voluminous. But among
the more memorable of his efforts
must be counted the edition of Sir
Walter Scott's poems issued by-
Messrs. A. and C. Black, of Edin-
burgh, in 1853-1855 5 " A Pic-
turesque Guide to the Trossachs,"
"Poetry of the Year," and "A
Holiday Book for Christmas and
the New Year," in 1852; Martin
Tupper's " Proverbial Philoso-
phy," Gray's "Elegy written in
a Country Churchyard," aL'
Allegro," " II Penseroso," and
" The Blue Ribbon : a story of

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BIRKET FOSTER

the Last Century," in 1854 ;
"The Task," by Cowper, " The
Traveller," by Goldsmith, and
"The Poetical Works of George
Herbert" in 1856 ; and in 1857
the remarkable series of volumes
already mentioned. In 1858,
1859 and i860 he was hardly
less active, for in these three
years he illustrated " The Poems
of William Bryant," "The Poeti-
cal Works of Edgar Allen Poe,"
Milton's "Comus," Robert Fal-
coner's "Shipwreck," Thomson's
"Seasons," "Poems and Songs
by Robert Burns," " Poems by
William Wordsworth," " The
Poetical Works of Thomas Gray,"
in

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

" The Poems of Oliver Gold-
smith," Wordsworth's "Deserted
Cottage," passing with equal zest
and success to Byron's "Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage," Shakes-
peare's " Merchant of Venice "
and " The Tempest," Moore's
"Lallah Rookh," and " Poems by
James Montgomery," with many
other standard works by British
authors. Although he decided in
1858 to take no further commis-
sions for illustrations, those which
he had in hand occupied him for
some years longer, and it was
not until 1863 that his activity
in this branch of art really ceased.
After that date his drawings ap-

112

PLATE 22

RETURNING FROM MARKET

AFTER

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

BORN 1825— DIED 1899.

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peared in books very rarely, and
he could no longer be numbered
among our illustrators, for the
few examples of his work which
were used in this way were re-
productions of his water-colour
paintings and not black and white
designs prepared expressly for
illustrative purposes.

No one who attempts to reckon
up the work done by Birket
Foster during the earlier years
of his career can fail to be
struck by the way in which pub-
lishers seemed to turn to him
instinctively as the one pre-
eminent illustrator of poetry, and
especially of those poems which

"3

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

deal with English rural life. The
reason for this becomes suf-
ficiently apparent when his art
is analysed, for he was markedly
inspired by the poetic sentiment
of rusticity, and attained perhaps
more perfectly than any other
artist of our school the atmos-
phere suitable for such scenes
as our poets have delighted to
depict. He drew English land-
scape and the country people of
England with shrewd discernment
and yet with a refinement of
artistry that gave to all his inter-
pretations of nature an uncom-
mon seductiveness. The beauty
of his subjects roused him to the
114

BIRKET FOSTER

readiest response, but his eager-
ness to woo nature always in her
smiling moods did not lead him
into merely empty prettiness —
there was usually a high degree
of breadth and large simplicity
in his designs, despite their com-
plexity of detail.

He loved especially to intro-
duce into his illustrations, as into
his water colours, young people
who, as Isaac Walton quaintly
puts it, "have not yet attained so
much age and wisdom as to load
their minds with any fears of
many things that will never be " ;
and if he idealised these rustic
children into a perfection of good

115

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

behaviour, and represented them
habitually as being of a " mild,
sweet, and peaceable spirit," he,
after all, did not try to do more
than show them at their best.
They had to have a certain, not
impossible, daintiness so as to
assort with those poetic aspects
of the life of the fields which
made upon him the strongest
impression. And there was the
same idealised realism in the
older peasants who at times
played parts in his drawings. His
toilers stand erect ; they are not
bowed down and hopelessly
struggling against fate ; they
carry out their appointed tasks

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with a due measure of pleasure
and interest, unlike the sombre,
resigned and melancholy beings,
uncouth, slow-moving, and coar-
sened by their painful existence,
who have been painted so often
by Millet, Segantini, and Josef
Israels. The joy of life can be felt
in his pictorial versions of the
bright, robust, and wholesome
English poetry, and he threw
into all he did the glamour of
summer with its smiling skies
overhead and its depths of cool
shade in the sylvan glades below.
We may reasonably rejoice — all
of us whose recollections of our
childhood take us back to the
117

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

time when Birket Foster's illus-
trations filled the books we read
— that we were brought up in
such a cheery school. He did
something to save us from the
tendency to pessimism which
afflicts the young people of to-
day ; and we should be grateful
to him always both for his kindly
guidance and for the delight with
which his smiling pictures are
welcomed in our English homes.

118

BIRKET FOSTER

3 Note on the Illustrations

The dainty freshness of senti-
ment which distinguished the
whole mass of Birket Foster's
work in black and white is even
more plainly perceptible in his
water colours. In search of
material for his work he travelled
much both in the British Isles
and abroad, and there were few
beauty spots in England, Scot-
land, Wales, and Ireland, France,
Italy, Switzerland, Spain and
Germany which he had not
visited. But the nature which he
worshipped and particularly loved
to paint was the nature of the
119

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

green dales, the rippling streams,
and the wooded hills of Surrey;
and the people whose quiet and
simple lives suggested the motives
for so many of his compositions
were the dwellers in this same
delightful county. The genius of
his art was derived in very great
measure from the inspiration he
received in his Surrey home, set
as it was among surroundings
which called into activity all his
rare capacity for appreciating
and interpreting the beauty of
English rusticity. He would
enter there intimately into the
very heart of nature and could
read her secrets with a confi-

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dence that was never misplaced.
In one small corner of the vast
field of life in which it is the
artist's privilege to range, he found
enough to satisfy himself and the
people whose approval he desired.
Out of the simplest materials he
could construct the whole delight-
ful edifice of his art. The labourer's
thatched cottage overgrown with
honeysuckle, and standing in its
little strip of garden with its trim
hedge and its tiny flower beds bor-
dered with box, was the scene of his
pictorial dramas, and the actors
were the peasant children, con-
tented with their humble lot and
untroubled by any of the care of

121

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

life, who gathered about the door
or played upon the village green.
All that he had expressed in his
illustrations of the poems of our
writers of pastorals he gave more
fully, more convincingly, and with
more charm and subtlety, in his
paintings. That he made many suc-
cesses with his studies of foreign
subjects is by no means to be
denied, but, on the whole, his best
work as a painter was done in Eng-
land, and it is the essentially Eng-
lish character of his art that makes
so strong its hold upon the taste of
the people who live in this country.
He is one of the few artists of the
Victorian era whose productions

122

BIRKET FOSTER

have more than maintained their
market value, and are still eagerly
sought after by collectors ; and
assuredly there is a measure of
hopefulness in the evidence which
the sale-rooms afford of the still
increasing appreciation of his
records of nature.

It would seem to imply that
there is existing amid all the
haste and flurry of modern exis-
tence a genuine love of the old-
time charm of rural life, and that
the poetic aspect of quiet rusticity
has even now a real power to
persuade. The popular aspirations
after the simple life may prove to
be more than a mere craze of the
123

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

moment if they are based upon
an actual understanding of the
truths which Birket Foster strove
so consistently to teach. And to
decry such art as his — as men of
what is called the advanced
school are wont to do — is indis-
putably unwise. Because there
was no particular audacity in his
technical methods, because he
dealt with little things and left
alone the grimmer facts and the
more startling problems of our
social condition, it does not
follow that his contribution to
British art was unimportant or
that there is nothing to be learned
from the study of his pictures.
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BIRKET FOSTER

No one, of course, would desire
to see imitators of his manner-
isms, followers who would repeat
his tricks of style without under-
standing the sentiment by which
he was profoundly inspired; but an
artist who would present rusticity
with the same poetic daintiness,
the same exquisite tenderness of
feeling, and the same honest sim-
plicity, would indeed be welcome
now. We want badly someone to
remind us what we should lose
if we allowed our sensitiveness to
the beauty of country life to
become dulled; and until this
new prophet of nature appears it
will be well for us not to lose our

125

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

faith in Birket Foster or to allow
ourselves to be persuaded to
despise what he did.

The illustrations which are
given here may fairly be claimed
as amply representative. Such
subjects as the " Surrey Lane,"
"The Gardener's Cottage,"
" Summer Time," " The Pet of
the Common," "The Ride
Home," "Birds' Nesting," "Black-
berry Gatherers," " The Rustic
Stile," "The Boat Race," and
" Bringing Home the Calf," are
typical of what may be termed
his anecdotal rusticity — nature
notes into which the slenderest
thread of story is introduced to
126

BIRKET FOSTER

make more interesting a frank
study of landscape. Others like
" A Peep at the Hounds," "The
Cottage Nurse," " Making Hay-
while the Sun Shines," " Within
the Wood," and the broader and
more serious, " Returning from
Pasture — Evening," show well
what he could do with more
complex material and with motives
that required a greater degree of
elaboration; and the "Coast
Scene, Cullercoats," is instructive
as an instance of his fairly fre-
quent departures from the life
of the fields and as an illustration
of the adaptability of his methods
of craftsmanship. The vignettes
127

IN RUSTIC ENGLAND

have a technical interest because
they belong to a class of illustra-
tive art in which he excelled ;
one that was formerly extra-
ordinarily popular and that was
perhaps carried to its greatest
perfection by Turner. Birket
Foster's vignettes, whether in
black and white or colour, were
always exquisitely proportioned
and most delicately managed ;
and they certainly deserve a place
of honour in any record of his
achievement.

THE END.

128

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