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Read Ebook: The Samuel Butler Collection at Saint John's College Cambridge A Catalogue and a Commentary by Bartholomew A T Augustus Theodore Jones Henry Festing
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From a photograph taken by his sister, Mrs. Bridges, in the garden at Langar soon after his return from New Zealand.
This is taken from a photographic group of Butler and three friends. The friends are omitted, as I have failed to identify them.
The camera lucida having failed, his hopes were next fixed upon photography, which, by rapidly and correctly recording anything he felt a desire to sketch, was to give him something from which he could afterwards construct a picture. So he took an immense number of snap- shots, of which many are at St. John's, but he never did anything with them. Nos. 62 and 63, which were done by Sadler from Butler's photographs, show how he would have proceeded if he had not had too many other things to do.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Butler went abroad with his family, his second visit to Italy, for the winter of 1853-4. They travelled through Switzerland to Rome and Naples, starting in August 1853, and Butler thus missed the half-year at school. I am sorry that I have not found any more finished drawing made by him on this occasion.
DOUGLAS YEOMAN BLAKISTON
HENRY FESTING JONES
SAMUEL BUTLER
Probably done when Butler was an undergraduate, and given to St. John's some years ago. I found it in the book wherein I found Blakiston's drawing .
"He painted at home as well as at Heatherley's, and by way of a cheap model hung up a looking-glass near the window of his painting room and made many studies of his own head. He gave some of them away and destroyed and painted over others, but after his death we found a number in his rooms--some of the earlier ones very curious" . This is one of the earlier ones. It is inscribed, "S.B., Feb. 18, 1865." We found also a still more curious one which was given to Gogin, who was interested in it as being the work of an untaught student. See also no. 36.
JOHN LEECH
John Leech died in 1864, the year in which Butler returned from New Zealand. There was a sale of his drawings by his sisters, and I remember going to see them as a boy, but I do not remember when; it was, no doubt, soon after the artist's death. The house was in Radnor Place, Bayswater. His sisters afterwards kept a small girls' school, and my sister Lilian went there. I have placed these Leech drawings here in order of date on the assumption that Butler bought them at the sale. He had another drawing by Leech, which used to hang in his chambers, and was given to his cousin, Reginald Worsley.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Here are shown Butler's books, including Bradshaw's Guide and Whitaker's Almanack, of which he speaks somewhere as being indispensable. I admit that I cannot identify them, but he used to keep them among the books in these shelves. I do not think he ever possessed that equally indispensable book the Post Office Directory. But he had more books than those shown in this painting. Between his sitting-room and his painting- room was a short passage in which was a cupboard, and this contained the rest. I do not remember how many there were, but not enough to invalidate the statement he made to Robert Bridges , "I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary."
Butler was at Dieppe with Pauli in 1866.
This is in the portfolio of miscellaneous drawings, etc., by Butler, Gogin, and Sadler, no. 81.
I showed this to Gaetano Meo, and he remembered that the man was Calorossi, a model, whose brother went to Paris and became known as the proprietor of a studio there. The woman, he said, was Maria, another model. The background is Dieppe. I suppose that Butler did this study in the autumn of 1866, using nos. 10 and 11, the water-colours of Dieppe, or some other sketch made on the spot, for the background. The idea was to make portraits of two heads with a landscape background in the manner of Giovanni Bellini.
Inscribed "Samuel Butler for probationership, December 28th 1868." Done, I suppose, at South Kensington.
Probably also done at South Kensington.
One is inscribed "S.B." and another "Kingston, near Lewes." I suppose that they are all on the South Downs, and they are all early--say 1870.
JAMES FERGUSON
SAMUEL BUTLER
The sambucco or sambuco is the elder tree. Butler, writing of this valley , says: "Here, even in summer, the evening air will be crisp, and the dew will form as soon as the sun goes off; but the mountains at one end of it will keep the last rays of the sun. It is then the valley is at its best, especially if the goats and cattle are coming together to be milked."
This was to have been a picture for the Academy, but he did not finish it. Here are shown women with short skirts and leggings. They dress like this so that they can climb into the ash trees and pull off the leaves which they throw down upon the grass to be mixed up with the hay.
"Butler made three oil sketches at Varallo all the same size, about 16x20. One is the washing place outside the town." . The other two were both done in the Piazza on the Sacro Monte. One was given to the Municipio of Varallo-Sesia; the other to the Avvocato Francesco Negri of Casale-Monferrato.
GEORGE McCULLOCH
SAMUEL BUTLER
Butler was particularly pleased with the dormer windows, an unusual feature in a church roof. This must have been done somewhere about 1877, but there is no evidence. This is one of the pictures given by Alfred.
Evening, looking down the valley.
They are near Faido, but I cannot further identify them.
"Let us," he says, "settle the fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards."
"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."
"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom I can find to have been the best in all ages."
Accordingly Ernest left England and visited "almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable." "At last in the spring of 1867 he returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and Japan. He looked very brown and strong, and so well-favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been staying."
Stained with the variation of each soil Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours.
Butler confided to me verbally that Ernest visited, among other places, Piora, and that he stayed there "when the mowing grass was about."
On a panel with no. 37, Calonico, on the other side.
"I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura church."
"The church is built on a slope, and the porch, whose entrance is on a lower level than that of the floor of the church, contains a flight of steps leading up to the church door. The porch is there to shelter the steps, on and around which the people congregate and gossip before and after service, especially in bad weather. They also sometimes overflow picturesquely, and kneel praying on the steps while service is going on inside."
"The church has been a good deal restored during the last few years, and an interesting old chapel--with an altar in it--at which Mass was said during a time of plague, while the people stood some way off in a meadow, has just been entirely renovated; but, as with some English churches, the more closely a piece of old work is copied, the more palpably does the modern spirit show through it, so here the opposite occurs, for the old-worldliness of the place has not been impaired by much renovation, though the intention has been to make everything as modern as possible."
On the same mount with the sketch-portrait of Robert Doncaster, no. 56.
In the same frame with no. 47.
He made many sketches of the Castle at Bellinzona, this and no. 46 are the only two I have found; none was quite satisfactory because there was no point of view from which the towers composed well behind a good foreground.
This was a favourite view which he often sketched; but I have only found this example.
SAMUEL BUTLER AND OTHERS
Placed here in order of date because the book was published in 1881. Some of the drawings are by Charles Gogin, who did the frontispiece and the Madonna della Neve on the title page, and who also introduced the figures into those of Butler's drawings which have figures; and a few are by me. There are among this lot also several sketches, etc., by various persons which Butler collected as illustrating his "Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art." Some are published in the chapter so headed in the book, but others were not published.
SAMUEL BUTLER
It was over one of the gateways of this Castle that Fortune with her Wheel was to appear in a fresco. See no. 19.
HENRY FESTING JONES
On the same mount with no. 40. A tracing is among the miscellaneous papers given to St. John's. This sketch of Robert was done, I suspect, with the camera lucida, and if so its date must be about 1882-3. Robert Doncaster was the husband of Mrs. Corrie; that is to say Mrs. Corrie, who was Butler's laundress in Clifford's Inn, "lost" her husband. After a suitable interval it was assumed that he was dead and she married Robert Doncaster and was known as Mrs. Doncaster. Robert, who was a half-witted old man, used to hang about the place, do odd jobs, and make himself fairly useful. He died in 1886.
SAMUEL BUTLER
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