MORTIMER.

JOHN HAMILTON MORTIMER was born in the year 1741, but in what month none of his biographers have mentioned. He was the youngest of four children, two of whom were daughters. His father, originally a miller or, as the admirers of the painter write it, the proprietor of a mill-and, according to the same authorities, the lineal descendant of Mortimer, Earl of Marchbecame a collector of the customs at Eastbourne, in Sussex, where he lived in good repute, and acquired the means of giving his sons a respectable education, and of assisting their advance in life. A love of art belonged to the family. The collector's brother, a wandering adventurer, who went from vale to vale, and from town to town, limning faces and landscapes for his subsistence, left many drawings; and, moreover, an altar-piece in Aylesbury church representing our Lord's Supper. These works of a low order as they were had an early influence on the mind of Mortimer; he studied them and copied them, and carrying his speculations farther, began to form original designs from nature and from fancy: his attempts attracted the notice of his father,

who, perceiving his inclination, and perhaps his genius, consented that he should try his fortune in the precarious department of the pencil. The application of a friend, and a premium of a hundred pounds, placed him in the studio of the once famous Hudson.

Mortimer was some eighteen or nineteen years old when he arrived in London. Sir J. Reynolds had more than commenced that career which ended so gloriously for his name, and other artists were making their appearance compared to whom Hudson was but a dauber; we may therefore wonder why he was not placed in some more gifted man's studio. The fame of Hudson was, perhaps, still highest in the provinces; in those days reputation travelled more slowly than now, and the rising sun of Reynolds might not yet have eclipsed that of his old master in the opinion of the people of Eastbourne. Mortimer's first object was to acquire the art of colouring; in drawing he had already made good progress, and the class of subjects to which he wished to dedicate his mind had been early fixed. Bred on the sea-coast, and amid a daring and rugged race of hereditary smugglers, it had pleased his young imagination to walk on the shore when the sea was agitated by storms to seek out the most sequestered places among the woods and rocks; and frequently, and not without danger, to witness the intrepidity of the contraband adventurers, who, in spite of storms and armed excisemen, pursued their precarious trade, at all hazards. In this way he had from boyhood become familiar with what amateurs of art call

"Salvator Rosa looking scenes: he loved to depict the sea chafed and foaming, and fit "to swallow navigation up," ships in peril, and pinnaces sinking; banditti plundering, or reposing in caverns, and all such situations as are familiar to pirates on water and outlaws on land. To this rough sea-coast academy much of that peculiarity which marks the works of Mortimer may be traced; with a certain dash of savage grandeur, it communicated to his style a wild freedom unknown at that period in the productions of the English school.

He soon discovered that little could be learned from Hudson, who to ignorance in his profession added rude and unconciliating manners. These contributed to drive Mortimer, after a short experiment, to the studio of Pine, considered in those days a capital colourist. But he did not remain long even there: he perceived that in working under the opinion and control of another, he was losing his own original mode of execution, that his hand was acquiring a style of a composite kind, and, what was worse, that he was habituating his mind to servility. He who aspires after true fame must never put his head and hand under the control of another. Mortimer now studied more patiently, and with more profit, in the gallery of antique figures opened by the liberality of the Duke of Richmond. This he called his dead school; the school on the shores of Sussex was his living one-and in both he laboured with such success that he gained the notice of Cipriani and Moser, who represented him in such a favourable light

to the peer, that he desired much to have retained him on his establishment for the purpose of painting, as was the fashion of those days, the galleries, and walls, and ceilings of some of his houses. To have subjects dictated and spaces defined, and to be painting under a patron's eye at so much per annum, was unpleasing to one who wished to think for himself, and work when it suited his convenience; the offer was politely declined. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts awarded him several premiums for drawings made from the figures in the Richmond Gallery. "Soon after," says Edwards, in his Anecdotes of Painting, "he was admitted a member of the private academy in St. Martin's Lane. In those seminaries he acquired very considerable knowledge of the human figure, which he drew in a style superior to most of his contemporaries."

The reputation, which all allow that Mortimer about this time suddenly acquired, has been ascribed by the biographers to the picture of Edward the Confessor seizing the Treasures of his Mother, which, in the opinion of Reynolds, excelled the rival painting by Romney so deeidedly as to entitle him to the premium of fifty guineas. The tradition of the studios, however, ascribes his first great start in fame to a source more romantic, or at least accidental. It was the fashion in those days for painters to be largely employed in embellishing ceilings, and walls, and furniture; and it may be remembered that the coach of Sir Joshua Reynolds had the seasons painted on the panels: now the state coach which was to convey the King to the house of lords re

quired repair, and Mortimer was called in by the coach-maker to ornament the panels; which he did so successfully, that the people, who crowded to see their young sovereign, bestowed equal attention on the Battle of Agincourt painted on the carriage. The King, it is added, was so much pleased, that he caused the panel to be taken out and preserved, and extended his notice to Mortimer. To this incident is imputed the King's anxiety for the painter's admission into the Royal Academy. His success in the contest with Romney, however, whether this story of the panel be true or not, made him more widely known, and inspired him with new confidence in his own powers. He soon after produced a large picture of St. Paul preaching to the Britons; and so well was it thought of that the Society of Arts presented him with a hundred guineas, and when exhibited in Spring Gardens it so far excelled the works opposed to it, that some were justified in exclaiming, "We have now got an historical painter of our own!" It was indeed a picture of considerable merit - displaying no little originality of character in some of the heads-and above all, it was the work of a very young man fresh from the country, who had never been abroad and had studied but little at home.

At this period he had acquired the friendship of Reynolds; which I must impute to the merit of the one and the discernment of the other, rather than seek a reason for it, as one of the biographers of Romney has done, in the circumtance that Mortimer was not a painter of