The Magazine of Art 1879

That the name of Briton Riviere should suggest to some minds that our present subject is a Frenchman is not strange. It has, however, only the remotest foundation in fact, and it would perhaps be difficult to find a better or more thorough specimen of an Englishman than the eminent artist himself. The circumstance that that he is a descendent of an old Huguenot family, which emigrated to and settled in this country two hundred years ago on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, is the whole and sole plea that could be set by France for claiming him as her son-a plea surely entirely invalid. His grandfather, Mr D V Riviere, was a student at the Royal Academy, where he gained a medal, and exhibited later on many works of great merit in water-colour. William, son of this gentleman (and brother of H P Riviere, of the “Old Water-colour”), born in London in 1806, and father of Mr Briton Riviere, following the footsteps of his sire, eventually became the head of the drawing school at Cheltenham College, and later on, by his zeal and energy at Oxford, managed to get art introduced into the curriculum of the university. Prior to this he had been favourably known in London through his works for the competition for decorating the Houses of Parliament. Thus the present inheritor of the honoured name found in his father the most natural and the fittest of masters, and he tells me that from an early age (he was born in London, August 14^th, 1840) he studied drawing and painting; first at Cheltenham, and then at Oxford. The classic influence of the latter place was not without its effect on the young artist. He became a member of the university, graduating BA in 1867, and MA in 1873. This distinction, however, in nowise tempted him from his devotion to art, nor did it first lead him to search, as might have been expected, in the pages of Greek and Roman literature for his pictorial themes. In the years 1858 and 1859 he exhibited at the Royal Academy pictures entitled “Rest From Labour,” “Sheep on the Cotswolds,” and “On the road to Gloucester Fair,” but it was not until 1866 that his work obtained much recognition, or was so hung to allow of its critical examination. “The Poacher’s Nurse,” a dog licking his master’s hand, was sufficiently well placed to show the excellent promise which its execution gave; and in the following year, 1867, one at least of the compositions exhibited by the artist fulfilled this promise, and at once gained for him a large meed of public approbation. It was entitled “The Long Sleep” (hung at the oil exhibition of the Dudley), and though extremely painful in sentiment it left no doubt of his powers. An old man, having died sitting in his chair, is watched with wondering disquiet by his two faithful dogs, whose intelligence, displayed in the expression of their eyes, already divines that all is not right, and hints plainly at the depths of sorrow into which they will be plunged when they realise the sad truth.

A water-colour drawing, now in the collection at South Kensington, called “A Game of Fox and Geese,” originally exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1868, carried Mr Riviere’s reputation prosperously on, until the Royal Academy’s first year at Burlington House in 1869 found him represented by a pathetic subject simply named “Prisoners,” a dog and his master with the indissoluble bond of sympathy between them under misfortune being the prominent sentiment expressed. An important engraving by Stacpole has made everybody familiar with the chief work of the painter in 1870. We have all been touched by “Charity,” and have regarded, with a lump in our throats, the outcast child upon the street doorstep sharing her last crust with two equally outcast dogs. The picture was awarded a medal at the International Exhibition of Vienna. Continuing to devote some time to water-colour, Mr Riviere showed, as in the “Fox and Geese,” that, not withstanding his tendency to the pathetic, he could still on occasions be mightily humorous, and in “Suspicion,” two sparrows in the snow eyeing doubtfully a fallen apple, hung at the Dudley in 1871, we had a rare specimen among others of this side of his genius. The first classical theme on which he treated was also one with which he made his first unmistakable score, and “Circe and the Friends of Ulysses” (1871) may be said now to be world renowned, having obtained for its painter a medal at Philadelphia, and having been engraved, as he himself declares “by Stacpole in a manner to give me the greatest delight.” “Come Back,” likewise exhibited in 1871 at the Royal Academy, offered a striking contrast to “Circe,” being a domestic drama in which a prodigal daughter, returning to the home from whence she has strayed, is recognised by the old dog. “Daniel,” in 1872 offered an entirely suitable subject, and the large and original treatment of it won for our artist a vast increase in renown, as may be imagined by our engraving.

The climax of Mr Riviere’s pathos was perhaps reached in 1873 in “All that was left of the Homeward Bound;” and if I might be induced to question whether it is fair for an artist endowed with powers like his, so to wring our hearts, as he does, by the perpetuation of such a scene as this, of the young shipwrecked girl lashed to a spar floating with a starving dog clinging to her way upon the wide world of waters.

A contrast to this picture was offered in the very noble canvas of “Argus” – a most happy combination of classic lore and animal painting. Induced, no doubt, by the success attending his efforts in the region of ancient literature, the painter next caught a suggestion from Euripides. In 1874 “Apollo” became on of the pictures at the Royal Academy, and admirably adapted was the situation selected for exhibiting the cunning of the artist’s hand. Very apt to be the lines from “Alcestis” taken for the catalogue description, and in reprinting them we shall convey perhaps the best idea the picture possible where space is brief:

“Apollo’s self

Deigned to become a shepherd in thine halls

And tune his lays along the woodland slopes;

Whereat entranced the spotted lynxes came

To mingle with thy flocks: from Othry’s glen

Trooped tawny lions; e’n the dappled fawn

Forth from the shelter of her pinewood haunts

Tripped to the music of the sun-god’s lyre.”

The sleeping lions at the mouth of her cave, under the name of “Genius Loci,” was the second canvas of the year. Alternating his mood once more to the modern tragedy and everyday life, the limner in 1875 gave us “war Time,” “The Last of the Garrison,” and a portrait, “E Mansel Lewis, Esq.” (life size, with horse and dogs upon the sea shore), familiar doubtless in the memory of most observers of art progress. The first of these three took a medal at Philadelphia.

Versatile always, the very humorous picture which we reproduce of “A Stern Chase is always a Long Chase,” was one of the most striking of Briton Riviere’s in 1876, and it came in charming opposition to the second of the same year, “Pallas Athene and the Swineherd’s Dogs.

“A Legend of St Patrick” spoke for itself, and in 1877 added another commentary on the versatility of the artist’s mind. “Lazarus,” exhibited the same season, was a further made by the rising tide which bore onward our subject’s fortunes and lifted him into his Associateship (January, 1978).

So little time has elapsed since, in 1878, everybody was commenting with admiration on the work described in the Royal Academy catalogue as –

“They say the lion and the lizard keep

The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep-

That I may be forgiven for not drawing the reader’s attention more directly to such a noble and remarkable production.

Animal painting will ever claim in this country a high regard for all classes. The Englishman’s love for dumb creatures (as in our arrogance we are pleased to call them) is certain in itself to secure a fair field for the artist who makes them his study; and we may assuredly congratulate ourselves that, conspicuously in the front rank of the able and talented successors to be honoured-I had almost written deeply reverenced-position held by Edwin Landseer, we can number so entirely original genius as Briton Riviere. Each mood of mind to which he gives expression tells us how capable he is, for it would be difficult to say in which he shows at his best, and whether we see him dealing with such subjects as that just mentioned, or with three others from his brush the same year, viz “., “An Anxious Moment,” “Sympathy,” and “Victims,” we discover him to be equally at home.

In passing, for instance, in the present year of 1879, from, say, “The Poacher’s Widow” to that picture of his to be hung in an adjacent galley called “In Manus Tuas, Domine,” there was something very significant in the large range of thought and idea which they indicated on the part of the artist. One was struck instantly by the fact of what inestimable price to a painter are high culture and a wide and liberal education. By this means his natural gifts are increased a thousand-fold in value, and his mind stored with poetic and classic memories and associations.

Briton Riviere’s scholarly attainments tell with a marked effect in the practice of his profession. But for them his genius would scarcely have been developed to its full capabilities; and though, no doubt, he would always made his mark as an artist no matter what his early surroundings had been, it is surely quite clear that to the cultivation of his mind is due, in great part, the completeness and refinement which, amongst other qualities, especially distinguish his work.

Who should say how much more elevated and noble might be the English school of painting were a university education (or something approaching it) considered as indispensably requisite to a painter for his career as it is for those who follow medicine, law or divinity?