The English painters of note begin with Hogarth, though the bad work of Lely and Kneller is cited as English, because executed in England, yet neither of these two men was English, and no lover of art would be proud of them if they were. Hogarth, then, was the father of English painting, and he began on good healthy lines, for he was a naturalist to the backbone, choosing his subjects from his own time; and though he affected to point a moral in his pictures, still there is the grip of reality and insight into essentials in his work which mark him as a great painter. The reader will probably have seen his work at the National Gallery; if not, he should do so at once.

Wilson.

Reynolds.

Gainsborough.

Kauffman and

Fuseli.

Morland.

We pass over Wilson, for in his work is not apparent any love of nature, but only a feeling for classicism. The next name is that of Joshua Reynolds. He was a mannerist, and, though successful in his own time, is very mortal. Close on his knightly heels came one of the true immortals, Thomas Gainsborough, one of the best portrait-painters the world has ever seen. His landscapes, though better than any up to his time, are not good, and his reputation rests chiefly on his power in portraiture, in which he was certainly a master. Naturalism breathes from his canvas; he has seized the very essence of his sitters' being, and portrayed them full of life and beauty. See his portrait of Mrs. Tickell and Mrs. Sheridan in the Dulwich Gallery; you will never forget the charm and the beauty of the ladies, wherever you go afterwards. Mrs. Siddons, in the National Gallery, too, is wonderful. Study well these two, and then go and gaze on a portrait by Reynolds, and we doubt not you will have learnt something of the gulf that separated the two painters. Gainsborough was, to our mind, the first immortal in English art, and fit to rank with Van Eyck, Holbein, Da Vinci, Titian, and Velasquez. Leaving "the Kauffman" and Fuseli to those who can admire them, we pass on to poor George Mor-land, a genius in his own branch of art. This man studied and painted from life, and his pictures bear testimony that he did so, and notwithstanding the drawbacks caused by his unfortunate temperament, his name lives and grows more respected every day, for his study was nature, and so his work will always be interesting.

Bewick

We now come to a great and deservedly well-known name - that of Thomas Bewick, the engraver on wood. Here we have a man working in a humble way, humble that is as compared with painting or sculpture, yet loving and studying nature in every detail, and following her in all her mystery and charm, only daring now and then to add S( me quiet fancy of his own, and yet he lives and his name grows greater every day. A true naturalist and a real artist was he, and his fame will be lasting. When Wilson is archaic, Bewick will be held up for admiration, so powerful is the effect of the honest study of nature in his work. His birds and quadrupeds we all know; but if any reader should not know them, he should at once get a copy and study the cuts in it. Mr. Quaritch has, we believe, recently issued a reprint of the book.

Wood Engraving

Wood-cutting has degenerated. Men of little training and no artistic feeling took it up, and slowly but surely the art decayed until it became purely mechanical, and so it has remained in England. Now it bids fair to be superseded by photo-mechanical processes, as it will undoubtedly be entirely superseded directly a really artistic process of reproduction is discovered for printing with the type. In the United States, however, wood-engraving took a fresh start, and brought photography to its aid, and our opinion is that the effect obtained in photographs printed on albumenized paper became the effect which the wood-cutters aimed for, and the result is a print of wonderful detail and beauty, but for our taste it is too polished and neat, the effect of overlaying is far too visible, and, in short, it does not render nature truly, and though far surpassing anything of the kind done in England, it is, as a work of art, altogether eclipsed by Bewick's work, the reason being that Bewick only took wood-engraving as a medium for the expression of the beauties of nature, every line in his blocks being full of meaning. But the hydra head of commercialism showed itself, and wood-engravers with little or no feeling for or knowledge of nature set to work turning out blocks like machines. Photography will keep these artisans from falling utterly away from nature, yet such work is harmful and of no artistic good to us, though it may please the public. Had there been no constant returns to nature (as there must always be in some measure when a photograph is used) decay would be sharp and speedy, but photography bolsters up the dying art. Lately several woodblocks have been produced cut from photographs, wherein all the beauty of the photographs has been utterly lost by the engraver, and the results are bastard slips of trade; but we shall have more to say on this point later on. One thing at any rate photography can claim: that is so long as it can be practised, art can never slip back to the crude work done in some eras of its decadence. Photography has helped many of these feeble wood-cutters immensely, and the epicier-critic calls these works "precious." It is extraordinary how men will deceive themselves.