Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/250

514 David Scott had now resolved to become the pupil of art, as he had formerly been of nature; and for this purpose, to repair to Italy, and study in its galleries the productions of those great masters whose excellence had endured the test of centuries, and come out more brilliant from the ordeal. He would there learn the mighty secret by which they had enthralled the world so completely and so long that true utterance of painting which every age and nation can understand. He set off upon his quest in August, 1832, and, after a short stay in London, visited Paris and Geneva, where the Louvre and the Alps alternately solicited his study. Milan and Venice, Parma and Bologna, Florence and Sienna, followed in turn, until he finally settled at Rome, once the nursing-mother of heroes, but now of painters and sculptors, by whom her first great family have been embalmed, that the present world might know how they looked when they lived. It seems to have been only by degrees that the true grandeur of these objects fully dawned upon the mind of David Scott ; for there was within him not only much that needed to be improved, but much to be unlearned and renounced. His impressions upon all the principal works of art are contained in his diary; and these will, no doubt, be studied as a rich suggestive fund of thought by our future young artists who repair to the great Italian fountainhead. But indefatigable though he was in these explorations, the most striking, though the least ostentatious part of his diary, is to be found in the scattered notices that everywhere occur of his own daily occupations, and from eight to sixteen hours seem with him to have been nothing more than an ordinary diurnal measure. The fruits of this diligence, independently of his critical writings upon works of art, are thus summed up by his biographer: "During that short residence in Rome, he made a set of eleven sheets of anatomical drawings, forming one of the most perfect artistical surveys of superficial anatomy ever made, with 137 studies from life, in oil or chalk; and in painting he did four small pictures of the 'Four Periods of the Day;' a copy of the 'Delphic Sybil,' from the Sistine, with a number of studies from the 'Last Judgment;' several exercises in fresco; painted 'Sappho and Anacreon,' a picture with life-size figures; and two or three smaller, but well-finished pictures; and, last and greatest, the picture of ' Family Discord,' or, as it was afterwards called, 'The Household Gods Destroyed.' The size of this last was nearly thirteen feet, by ten and a half. This amount of work, if we consider the time lost, in a new scene and among new habits, and add the designs, sketchbooks, and other little matters which he accomplished, shows us a Hercules in perseverance and impulse." It is interesting to see Scott's own account of the effect produced upon him by this pilgrimage and labour; and this we have in his diary, a short time after his return home, under the date of 16th August, 1834: "The anniversary of my leaving Scotland two years ago the crowning of my desires the journey of art the sacrifice to enthusiasm the search after greatness, in meeting the great men of the present, and the great labours of the past. Among my old pictures and people, I now feel how different I am from the man who left this but so short a time ago. I have looked too much for what was without individual prototype in nature. The veil withdraws and withdraws, and there is nothing left permanent. But I believe I can now meet difficulties practically. Analyzing one's own thoughts and actions studying things in their relations is often a painful task ; but he who has not done so is a child."

Having returned to Scotland inspired with new perceptions, as well as braced