Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/148

 his joke and his glass, and of an evening would frequent the parlour of a favourite inn in the Market Place, where he was something of an oracle, and it is said that, especially at the last, he was sometimes more convivial than was prudent.

He was in his fifty-third year and in the fulness of his power as an artist when he was seized with an attack of inflammation, which carried him off after an illness of seven days. On the morning of the day he was taken ill he stretched a canvas six feet long for what he intended to be his masterpiece, a picture of a water frolic on Wroxham Broad, for which he had already made the sketch. His last recorded speeches were worthy of himself and his art. On the day of his death he charged his eldest son, who was sitting by his bed, never to forget the dignity of art. ‘John, my boy,’ said he, ‘paint, but paint for fame; and if your subject is only a pigsty, dignify it!’ and his last words were, ‘Hobbema, my dear Hobbema, how I have loved you!’ He died at his house in Gildengate Street, Norwich, 22 April 1821, and was buried in St. George's Church. In the report of his funeral in the ‘Norwich Mercury’ it is recorded that ‘the last respect was paid to his memory by a numerous attendance of artists and other gentlemen. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Vincent came from town on purpose, and Mr. Stark was also present. An immense concourse of people bore grateful testimony to the estimation in which his character was generally held.’

An exhibition of his paintings was held in Norwich in the autumnal session of 1821, when 111 of his works were gathered together, including those remaining unsold in his studio.

The art of Old Crome, though based in method upon that of the Dutch masters, and approaching in feeling sometimes to them and sometimes to Wilson, was inspired mainly by Nature and affection for the locality in which he passed his days. It was thus purely personal and national, like that of Gainsborough and that of Constable, not daring to express highly poetical emotion or to produce splendid visions of ideal beauty, like that of Turner, but thoroughly manly and unaffected, and penetrated with feeling for the beauty of what may be called the landscape of daily life. This he felt deeply and expressed with unusual success. The singleness of his aim and his constant study of nature gave freshness and vitality to all he did, and prevented ordinary and often-repeated subjects from becoming commonplace or monotonous. The life of the painter passed into his works. The low banks of the Wensum and the Yare, with their ricketty boat-houses, the leafy lanes about Norwich, the familiar Mousehold Heath, the tan-sailed barges sailing through the flats, the jetty and shore at Yarmouth sparkling in the sun, were painted by him as all men saw them, but as no one but himself could paint them. He found rather than composed his pictures, but the artistic instinct was so strong within him that his selection of subjects was always happy, and, even when most simple, attended by a success which no effort of creative imagination could excel. An instance of such fortunate finding, accompanied by wonderful sympathy of treatment, is the ‘Mousehold Heath’ in the National Gallery (Trafalgar Square), where a simple slope rising bare against a sky warm with illuminated clouds suffices, with a few weeds for foreground, to make a noble and poetical picture, full of the solemnity of solitude and the calm of the dying day. He painted it, he said, for ‘air and space.’ As a specimen of his sometimes rich and gem-like colouring the ‘View of Chapel Fields, Norwich,’ with its avenue of trees shot through with the slanting rays of the sun, could scarcely be surpassed. Always original, because always painting what he saw as he saw it, he was yet, perhaps, most so in his trees, which he studied with a particularity exceeding that of any artist before him, giving to each kind not only its general form and air, but its bark, its leafage, and its habit of growth. His oaks are especially fine, drawn with a comprehensive knowledge of their structure, and as if with an intimate acquaintance with every branch. It has been said that ‘an oak as represented by Crome is a poem vibrating with life,’ and that ‘Mr. Steward's “Oak at Poringland” and Mr. Holmes's “Willow” are two among the noblest pictures of trees that the world possesses, for, with all the knowledge and all the definition, there is no precedence given to detail over large pictorial effect.’ Another picture by Crome, although an early one, deserves notice from its size and beauty. This is the ‘Carrow Abbey,’ exhibited in 1805, and now in the possession of Mr. J. J. Colman, M.P.

An exhaustive examination of Crome's art is impossible here. Enough has been said to show that he was one of the most genuine and original, as he was undoubtedly one of the most enthusiastic of English artists, and that his name deserves to be remembered with those of Gainsborough and Constable as one of the men of genius who founded the English school of landscape. It was not till 1878 that the London public had an opportunity of doing justice to the merit of Crome and the rest of the Norwich school. Of fifty-six examples of the school shown that year,