OUR PORTRA.T GALLERY.-NO. XXXVIII. BIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, KNT., PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY, How far Ireland should feel a parental pride in the celebrity of those amongst her sons who have become absentees, is a question not very easy to answer. It will be looked upon differently, according to the different views of men as regards the great question of national centralization or localization, the settling of which will of course involve the adoption of one or the other opinion on the subordinate one. But, argue as we will, there is something in our hearts which bids us exult in the fame of a fellow-countryman, wherever it may be acquired, and take to ourselves a reflected ray from the brilliancy of his success. Art in England now owes some of its most eminent names to Ireland: witness Foley and MacDowell-witness Maclise and Danby-witness, above all, the distinguished name of SHEE, which has been raised to the highest pitch of professional distinction, and is honoured by those of all countries who hold the arts in veneration as they exist in their noblest development. To attempt to condense the most interesting particulars of the life of this eminent man within the limits of a cursory sketch, is now our purpose; and we could not have a more pleasing task assigned us, for there is scarcely a circumstance recorded of him, from the beginning to the end of his career, which does not redound to his praise, and help to constitute his biography a moral lesson of success and happiness crowning a long life of honourable exertion. Sir Martin Archer Shee is descended from an old and respectable Irish family, settled for three generations in the county of Mayo, but originally belonging to Kilkenny, where they possessed property, forfeited during the troubles of the seventeenth century. Their lineage, indeed, is traced so far back as the year 250, at which time a direct ancestor, Olioll Olium, was monarch of Munster. The father of the present representative of the family, Sir George Shee, Bart., was a first cousin of Sir Martin, and was created a Baronet in the year 1794. Sir Martin's father, the youngest of four brothers (as a memoir in Messrs. Cadell and Davies's "Collection of Portraits of Eminent Public Characters" informs us), entered into business as a merchant in Dublin, and married the eldest daughter of John Archer Esq., of that city, son of Francis Archer, Esq., of Riverston, in the county of Meath. The issue of this union was the subject of the present sketch, who was born on Usher's-quay in the year 1769. His talents began to show themselves at a very early age; and whilst still a child, he was fortunate enough to have his studies guided by an excellent draughtsman of that day, Mr. Francis Robert West; by which means, before he was twelve years of age, he had obtained the three first medals for drawings of figure, landscape, and flowers, in the academy of the Dublin Society, to which he had been admitted as a student; and in 1787, that is, before he was seventeen years of age, he was presented by that body with a silver palette, bearing an inscription expressive of its approbation of the young student's abilities and industry. Previous to this, however, he seems to have determined to quit his native country, in order to exercise his talents in a wider sphere; and it was the celebrity he attained here, and the profit which this celebrity brought with it, that alone prevented him from removing to London two years earlier. Some small portraits in crayons which he had produced were so much admired as to obtain him the most distinguished practice in Dublin at the age of sixteen, and retard his projected removal for two years. It was with the regret of the patrons and professors of the arts here, and at a serious sacrifice of pecuniary emolument, that he at length withdrew himself from his native city. His desire for improvement, and his wish to become an oil painter, combined to induce him to relinquish these advantages; and, however we may have to congratulate ourselves that he actually decided as he did, it never can be laid to the charge, either of the want of liberality or of taste of the Irish public, that he was suffered to escape from our domestic school of art. From the best authority we have access to, we can pronounce with confidence, that his country afforded him every encouragement and assistance, as well as honour, in its power to bestow; and that to the moment of his departure he was besieged with commissions to execute works, which it required an effort of determination to enable him to decline. The following passage, extracted from a "Memoir of Martin Archer Shee, R.A.," which appeared in The European Magazine for December, 1823, confirms the truth of our statement: 66 Having availed himself of all the means of improvement which the state of the arts in Ireland, and the facilities afforded him by the Academy, would allow-and they were as extensive as their materials could afford-Mr. Shee determined to proceed to London to complete his studies; but the approbation bestowed on some small portraits in crayons which he had executed previous to his intended departure, and the opportunities of occupation which consequently opened to him in this line, induced him to remain two years longer in Dublin, where, at the age of sixteen, he became a professional artist, and obtained the most distinguished practice in that city." We may be thought to have dwelt longer than was necessary on this topic; but we felt a natural anxiety to relieve our country from an imputation which is conveyed, strange to say, in the very paper from which the foregoing extract has been taken, and which, not having been directly contradicted (as far as we are aware), may have impressed such of the friends of this distinguished artist as have derived their knowledge of his history from the article in question, with an erroneous idea on the subject. In the same page from which the passage above quoted is taken, we find the following remarks applied to Sir Martin: "He is indebted to himself alone for the eminence which he has obtained, and the independence which he has realized in his profession. While his country then has to boast of having produced a Shee a man who united all the combined charms of poetry and painting-he himself has nothing to boast of that reflects credit on his countrymen. If it depended upon them, he would be unknown in the world of science and art." And the writer goes on, in a tone of "soure severitie," to stigmatize the national character as made up of mingled jealousy, vanity, and illiberality. Whether such be the true estimate of our qualities, it is not our present business to inquire; but there was certainly nothing in the treatment of our distinguished countryman, as detailed by the writer of that article, to warrant such a tirade; on the contrary, every fact he has given (and he expressly says that he can "vouch for their authenticity") tends to falsify his estimate, and redounds to the credit equally of the public, the schools, and the individuals with whom Sir Martin was connected in Ireland. In thus noticing a passage accidentally lighted upon in our researches after information for the sketch before us, it is pleasing to reflect how much the lapse of twenty years has done to assuage that literary jealousy which then embittered the style of the two countries towards each other-a jealousy which was evidently, more than any real grievance, at the bottom of the ill-humour of this anonymous scribbler. Once arrived in London, the young Shee was not long in obtaining the notice of his illustrious countryman, Edmund Burke, who, in this instance, as in that of Barry, was the means of having an early share in the advancement of a genius in this branch of the arts. Burke introduced him to Sir Joshua Reynolds, with whom he speedily contracted a close intimacy, and through his influence he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where he laboured with unwearied diligence for some years, commencing in 1788, the date of his arrival in the British metropolis. Mr. Shee first exhibited with the Royal Academy in the year 1790, and immediately obtained both credit and employment. Eight years afterwards—viz., in 1798 he was elected an associate of the institution: the next year he succeeded to the establishment of Mr. Romney, the artist, in Cavendish-square; and the year following was honoured by the diploma of Royal Academician. He was no longer a single man. On the 19th of December, 1796, he had married Mary, eldest daughter of James Power, Esq., of Youghal, county Cork. At no period of the world, perhaps, was so magnificent a display of the treasures of art open to the curiosity of genius, as when at Paris in the year 1802 the collected spoils of the nations crowded the gallery of the Louvre, and attracted from every country such worshippers as found it desirable to condense the grand pilgrimage of Europe in a single visit to the shrine enriched at once with all the objects of their reverence. The energetic and aspiring Shee lost no time in availing himself of this singular opportunity; and, through the politeness of some members of the French Institute, he was afforded an opportunity of being introduced to Napoleon, then First Consul, on the interesting occasion of that body making their public report on the state of the arts, manufactures, and commerce in the Republic. So far we have viewed the subject of our sketch in his professional character exclusively. In that character it is that he is most widely and most favourably known; and we may safely say so much without being charged with intentional disparagement either of his literary merits or of his private worth. It is as a painter that he will go down to posterity: like Reynolds, he will be the artist of history, though, like him, the prized of the literary circles of his day, and the venerated intimate of his cotemporaries. But notwithstanding the paramount place his professional history must occupy, it is due to the character of his literary performances to devote a separate inquiry into them, informing the few who are ignorant of the fact, and reminding those who may have forgotten it in the long period that has elapsed since he has appeared before the world in the character of an author, of the celebrity the poetical performances of Shee attained amongst the most refined and polite portion of the British public. These effusions did not pretend to importance, either in form or spirit, but obtained, perhaps from the very modesty of their dress, an amount of approbation sufficient to constitute the fame of a less conspicuous or more ambitious author-being, indeed, amongst the very few literary attempts of the day which escaped the lash of that formidable youth, whose indiscriminate acts of vengeance were not the less galling because they were the result of unprovoked and injudicious provocation. The following lines of Byron, from the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," convey a compliment, the more emphatic from the contrast it forms with the usual tenor of his notices : "And here let Shee and genius find a place, The poet's rival, but the painter's friend." In the year 1805, Mr. Shee published the first part of a poem, entitled, "Rhymes of Art; or, The Remonstrance of a Painter." In this little artistic treatise for it may be deemed such, from its matter and style-the painter has cast into the poetic mould, as that most appropriate to the subject, the enthusiastic warmth of his feelings as a disciple of the art, and given not only to his descriptions, but to his didactic injunctions, a glow which elevates them to the standard of true poetry. But what makes the work principally valuable in the hands of a painter are the notes, which form a sort of running commentary on the text, and convey a body of practical information scarcely to be equalled in any work of the kind-certainly in none of such limited dimensions. This performance at once introduced him to the most select literary circles; and the celebrity it gained, added to his ardent desire to render his extensive stores of practical and theoretical knowledge available to his profession, decided him on publishing the three remaining parts, which he accordingly did in 1809, under the title of "Elements of Art," with a success as decisive as that which crowned the first. From this poem we extract the following passage, which affords proof that the author's powers are not overrated. |