308 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

obtained extensive and deserved circulation, and to which many artists, now high in reputation, have kindly and frankly confessed their early obligations.

5. At that period the art of water-colour drawing was little understood at Plymouth, and practised only by Payne, then an engineer in the citadel.¹ Though mannered in the extreme, his works obtained reputation; for the best drawings of the period were feeble both in colour and execution, with commonplace light and shadow, a dark foreground being a rule absolute, as may be seen in several of Turner’s first productions. But Turner was destined to annihilate such rules, breaking through and scattering them with an expansive force commensurate with the rigidity of former restraint. It happened “fortunately,” as it is said,-naturally and deservedly, as it should be said,-that Prout was at this period removed from the narrow sphere of his first efforts to one in which he could share in, and take advantage of, every progressive movement.

6. The most respectable of the Plymouth amateurs was the Rev. Dr. Bidlake,² who was ever kind in his encouragement of the young painter, and with whom many delightful excursions were made. At his house, Mr. Britton, the antiquarian, happening to see some of the cottage sketches, and being pleased with them, proposed that Prout should accompany him into Cornwall, in order to aid him in collecting materials for his “Beauties of England and Wales.” This was the painter’s first recognised artistical employment, as well as the occasion of a friendship ever gratefully and fondly remembered.³ On Mr. Britton’s return to London, after sending to him a portfolio of drawings, which were

¹ [William Payne (1769-1843). In 1790 he moved to London, and became a fashionable teacher, as well as a constant exhibitor with the Society of Artists, Royal Academy, and British Institution. Several of his drawings are in the Victoria and Albert (South Kensington) Museum.]

² [The Rev. John Bidlake, D.D. (1755-1814), for many years headmaster of the Plymouth Grammar School.]

³ [John Britton (1771-1857), contributed an account of this tour with Prout to the Builder of May 29, 1852; it is cited in Roget’s History, i. 344. The Beauties of England and Wales was published 1801-1804. Prout, on his removal to London, boarded and lodged with Britton for about two years.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]