Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/229

Rh to have been going on between him and the Fine Arts Commissioners. A proposal was made for a fresco of the ‘Marriage of Strongbow,’ but the price proposed (1,500l.) was inadequate and he declined it. In July 1857 he proposed to decorate the royal gallery in the House of Lords, and stated that he was prepared to devote himself to the work until the whole of it was completed. His proposal included the two great wall spaces now occupied by ‘Wellington and Blücher at Waterloo’ and ‘The Death of Nelson,’ and sixteen other smaller panels, for which he subsequently completed three designs in oil, ‘Elizabeth at Tilbury,’ ‘Blake at Tunis,’ and ‘Marlborough at Blenheim.’ His proposal was accepted, and he commenced at once the ‘Wellington and Blücher’ in fresco. After a month's work, discouraged by the great disadvantages in lighting and in other respects under which he had to labour, and convinced that fresco could not stand the conditions to which the painting would be exposed, he resigned his commission. This determination, however, he reconsidered on the understanding (never, it appears, realised) that the defects of lighting, &c., should be remedied. By July 1859 he had completed the great cartoon of ‘Wellington and Blücher,’ and received a testimony of admiration from forty-three of his brother-artists, in and out of the Academy, in the shape of a gold portecrayon and a round-robin. The cartoon was bought by the Royal Academy for 315l. at the ‘Maclise executors’ sale, 1870, and now hangs in their picture gallery. The process of stereochrome, or water-glass, was at this time considered to be the best for mural painting in England, and Maclise was sent to Berlin to study it and report upon it to the commissioners. The first part of his report was made in December 1859, and the second in 1861, ‘after the practice of stereochrome painting of a year and a half.’ By the end of that year the ‘Wellington and Blücher’ (forty-five feet eight inches in length) was quite finished. Considering the size of this work, the care which the artist took to make every detail accurate, and the fineness of the finish, the rapidity of the achievement was extraordinary.

The death of the prince consort (14 Dec. 1861), just as he was bringing this great work to completion, greatly depressed Maclise, whose strength must have been sorely tried by anxiety and closeness of application. Determined to fulfil his promise to devote himself to the decoration of the royal gallery, he undertook no other employment, and completed his design for the great companion to the ‘Wellington and Blücher.’ The ‘Death of Nelson on board the Victory’ was approved 24 Feb. 1863, and the picture was completed by the end of 1864, a performance perhaps still more extraordinary than that which preceded it. The price agreed upon for these, the two largest and finest of all English historical pictures, was 3,500l. each, or 7,000l. They, and the study necessary for them, had absorbed more than seven of the best years of his life. The conscientious energy with which he had completed these works, no less than the price paid for them, contrasted strongly with the action of artist and government in respect of other decorations of the houses of parliament, and more than justified his modest application for further remuneration. The commissioners recommended that an additional sum of 1,500l. should be granted to him in respect of each of the pictures, but it was only on condition of cancelling the agreement with regard to the other panels; and for his designs for these no allowance was made.

In 1865 he sustained a grievous loss in the death of his elder sister Isabella, who had devoted her life to him. He had never married, but had lived with and supported his father and mother and unmarried sister. Now they were all dead, his cordial intercourse with Dickens was at an end, and the long years in the ‘gloomy hall’ had impaired the vigour of his once robust frame. His great pictures brought him little fame. It was not till 1866 that they were uncovered, and then they were received without anything approaching the appreciation they deserved. His correspondence at this period shows great depression of spirit, and he said to William Bell Scott, ‘Nobody cares for the pictures after they are done, or wants them as far as I can see.’ He contracted habits of seclusion and solitude, and when the presidency of the Royal Academy was offered to him after Eastlake's death, he had not the heart to accept it. He is also said to have refused knighthood.

He did not, however, cease to work, and began to exhibit again at the Royal Academy after an interval of seven years. In 1866 he exhibited ‘Here Nelson fell,’ a small version in oil of the wall painting at Westminster, and a portrait of Dr. Quain, showing all his own power of seizing character. In 1867 came a scene from ‘Othello’ and ‘A Winter Night's Tale;’ in 1868 ‘The Sleep of Duncan’ and ‘Madeline after Prayer,’ an illustration of Keats's ‘Eve of St. Agnes;’ in 1869 ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid,’ in which the maid was painted from his niece and favourite companion, Rhoda Banks. She was the daughter of his younger sister, Ann