That a true artist is always individual, and that his work is always affected by some one or other of his predecessors or contemporaries, would appear to be a paradox: nevertheless it is a proposition that few will dispute. Art has been practised for too long a period, and by too many talented professors, for entirely novel views or treatments of Nature to be possible, and whilst an artist may be entirely unaware that he has imbibed anything from others, it is certain that if he has had eyes to see he must have done so.

I have already stated that Mrs. Allingham’s work, whether in subject or execution, is, so far as she is aware, entirely her own, and it would, perhaps, be quite sufficient were I to leave the matter after having placed that assertion on record. To go farther may perhaps lay oneself open to the charge, qui s’excuse s’accuse. I trust not, and that I may be deemed to be only doing my duty if I deal at some length with comparisons that have been made between her work and that of certain other artists.

The two names with whose productions those of Mrs. Allingham are most frequently linked are Frederick Walker and Birket Foster: the first in connection with her figures, the latter with her cottage subjects.

As regards these two artists it must be remembered that both their and her early employment lay in the same direction, namely, that of book illustration, and therefore each started with somewhat similar methods of execution and subject, varied only by leanings towards the style of any work they came in contact with, or by their own individuality.

That both had much in common is well known; in fact, Mrs. Allingham used to tell Mr. Foster that she considered him, as did others, the father of Walker and Pinwell.

In the case of Frederick Walker, his career was at its most interesting phase whilst Mrs. Allingham was a student. Her first visit to the Royal Academy was probably in 1868, when his “Vagrants” was exhibited, to be followed in 1869 by “The Old Gate,” in 1870 by “The Plough,” and in 1872 by “The Harbour of Refuge.”

It must not be forgotten that the name of Frederick Walker was at this time in every one’s mouth, that is, every one who could be deemed to be included in the small Art world of those days. The painter visitors to the Academy schools sang his praises to the students, and he himself fascinated and charmed them with his boyish and graceful presence. As Mrs. Allingham says, everybody in the schools “adored” him and his work, and on the opening of the Academy doors on the first Monday in May the students rushed to his picture first of all.

To contradict a dictum of Walker’s in those days was the rankest heresy in a student. Mrs. Allingham remembers an occasion when a painter was holding forth on the right methods of water-colour work, asserting that the paper should be put flat down on a table, as was the custom with the old men, and the colour should be laid on in washes and left to dry with edges, and if Walker taught any other method he was wrong. Mrs. Allingham and her fellow-students were furious at their hero being possibly in fault, and asked for the opinion of an Academician. His reply was: “And who is Mr. ——, and how does he paint that he should lay down the law? If Walker is all wrong with his methods, he paints like an angel.”

Mrs. Allingham’s confession of faith is this: “I was influenced, doubtless, by his work. I adored it, but I never consciously copied it. It revealed to me certain beauties and aspects of Nature, as du Maurier’s had done, and as North’s and others have since done, and then I saw like things for myself in Nature, and painted them, I truly think, in my own way—not the best way, I dare say, but in the only way I could.”

Those, therefore, who discover not the reflection but the inspiration of Walker in the idyllic grace of Mrs. Allingham’s figures, and in her treatment of flowers, place her in a company which she readily accepts, and is proud of.

But it is with Birket Foster that our artist’s name has been more intimately linked by the critics, some even going to the length of asserting that without him there would have been no Mrs. Allingham.

Having had the pleasure of an intimacy with Birket Foster, which extended to writing his biography (Birket Foster: His Life and Work, Virtue and Co., 1890), I can emphatically assert that he never held that opinion, but stated that she had struck out a line which was entirely her own, and, as he generously added, “with much more modernity in it than mine.”

There are, however, so many similarities between their artistic careers that I may be excused for dwelling on some of them, for they no doubt unconsciously influenced not only the method of their work but the subject of it.

Drawing in black and white on wood in each case formed the groundwork of their education, and was only followed by colour at a subsequent stage.

Both, having determined to support themselves, were fain to seek out the engravers and obtain from them a livelihood. Birket Foster at sixteen was fortunate enough to meet in Landells one who at once recognised his capabilities, whilst Mrs. Allingham found a similar friend in Joseph Swain. Again, book illustration was as much in vogue in 1870 as it was in 1842; and by another coincidence both years witnessed the birth of an illustrated weekly, for Birket Foster, in 1842, was employed upon the infant Illustrated London News, while Mrs. Allingham was the only lady to whom Mr. Thomas allotted some of the early work on the Graphic. Differences there were in their opportunities, and these were not always in the lady’s favour. Birket Foster found in Landells a man who looked after his youngster’s education, and, convinced that Nature was his best mistress, sent him to her with these instructions: “Now that work is slack in these summer months, spend them in the fields; take your colours and copy every detail of the scene as carefully as possible, especially trees and foreground plants, and come up to me once a month and show me what you have done.” A splendid memory aided Foster in his studies all too well, for he learnt to draw with such absolute fidelity every detail that he required, that he never again required to go to Nature. That he did so we know from his repeated visits to every part of Europe—visits resulting in delightful work; but what the world saw was entirely studio work, and this tended to a repetition which oftentimes marred the entire satisfaction that one otherwise derived from his drawings. Mrs. Allingham herself, although living close to and engaged on the same subjects, never came across him painting out of doors, and only once saw him note-book in hand.

Chance influenced the two careers also in another way, which might have made any similarity between them altogether out of question. The first commission to illustrate a book which Miss Paterson obtained was a prose work, in which figures and household scenes entirely predominated,—in fact, all her black-and-white work was of this homely nature,—and for some years she had no call for the delineation of landscape. With Foster it was not very different. It is true that his first commission was The Boys Spring and Summer Book, in which he had to draw the seasons, and to draw them afield. But this might not have attracted him to landscape work, for his patron’s next commission was quite in another direction. I may be excused for referring to it at length, for the little-known incident is of some interest now that the actors in it have each achieved such world-wide reputations. Certain of the young pre-Raphaelites, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Millais, had been entrusted with the illustration of Evangeline. The result was a perfect staggerer to the publisher Bogue, who was altogether unable to appreciate their revolutionary methods. “What shall I do with them?” he was asked by the engraver to whom he showed the blocks on which most elaborate designs had been most lovingly drawn. “This,” said Bogue, and wetting one of them he erased the drawing with the sleeve of his coat, serving each in turn in the same way.

After this drastic treatment the Evangeline commission was handed over to Birket Foster. It can be easily imagined with what trepidation he, knowing these facts, approached and carried out his task, and his delight when even the AthenÆum could say, “A more lovely book than this has rarely been given to the public.” The success of the work was enormous. His career was apparently henceforth marked out as an illustrator of verse in black and white, for his popularity continued until it was not a question of giving him commissions, but of what book there was for him to illustrate; and he used laughingly to say that finally there was nothing left for him but Young’s Night Thoughts and Pollok’s Course of Time.15

Thus we see that Birket Foster’s art work was for long confined to subjects as to which he had no voice, but which certainly influenced his art, and it says much for his temperament that throughout it warranted the term “poetical.” In like manner it is much to Mrs. Allingham’s credit that her prosaic start did not prevent the same quality welling up and being always in evidence in her productions.

If I have not wearied the reader I would like to point out some further coincidences in their careers which are of interest.

Birket Foster became a water-colourist through the chance that he could not sell his oil-paintings, which consequently cumbered his small working-room to such an extent that one night he cut them all from their stretchers, rolled them up, and sneaking out, dropped them over Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames; water-colours cost less to produce and took up less space, so he adopted them. Mrs. Allingham abandoned oils after a year or two’s work in them at the Royal Academy Schools, because she gradually became convinced that she could express herself better in water-colours. But she considered that it was a great advantage to have worked, even for the short time, in the stronger medium. It was this practice in oils that made her for some time (until, indeed, Walker’s lessons to her at the Royal Academy) use a good deal of body-colour.

Both artists aspired to obtain the highest rank which then, as now, is open to the water-colourist, namely, membership of The Royal Water-Colour Society, but whilst Birket Foster only attained it in 1860, in his thirty-fifth year, and at his second attempt, Mrs. Allingham followed him in 1875, when only twenty-six, and at her first essay. Both promptly at once gave up a remunerative income in black and white, and having done so, never had cause to regret their decision.

The coincidences do not end even here, for both within a year or two of their election found themselves, the one on the invitation of Mr. Hook, R.A., the other, twenty years later, for reasons we have mentioned, settled near the same village, Witley, in the heart of the country which they have since identified with their names. Here the selection of subjects from the same neighbourhood naturally brought their work still closer together.

Both of them have been attracted to Venice; Mr. Foster again and again, Mrs. Allingham only within the last year or two.

Lastly, few artists have been indulged with so many smiles and so few frowns from the public for which they have catered. Birket Foster considered that he had been almost pampered by the critics, and Mrs. Allingham has never had the slightest cause to complain of her treatment at their hands.

Having dwelt at such length upon the interesting concurrences in their careers, I now pass on to a comparison of their methods of work; and here there are many resemblances, but these are no doubt due to the times in which they lived. Birket Foster found himself, when he commenced, the pupil of a school which had some merits and more demerits. Composition and drawing were still thought of, and before a landscape artist presumed to pose as such, he had to study the laws which governed the former, and to thoroughly imbue himself with a knowledge of the anatomy of what he was about to depict. Mrs. Allingham, as I have pointed out, was also fortunate enough to commence her tuition before the fashion of undergoing this needful apprenticeship died out. But Birket Foster came at the end of a time when landscape was painted in the studio rather than in the field. He went to Nature for suggestions, which he pencilled into note-books in the most facile and learned manner, but content with this he made his pictures under comfortable conditions at home. The fulness of his career, too, came at a time when Art was booming, and the demand for his work was such that he could not keep pace with it. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the zenith of his fame his pictures were, in the main, studio pictures, worked out with a marvellous facility of invention, but nevertheless just lacking that vitality which always pervades work done in the open air and before Nature.

Mrs. Allingham’s work at the outset was very similar to this. For her subject drawings she made elaborate preliminary studies from Nature in colour, but the drawing itself was thought and carried out in the house. Fortunately this method soon became unpalatable to her, and she gradually came to work more and more directly from Nature, and when, at Witley, she found her subjects at her doors, she discontinued once and for ever her former method. Since then she has painted every drawing on the spot during the months that it is feasible, leaving actual completion for some time, to enable her to view her work with a fresh eye, and to study at leisure the final details, such, for instance, as where the figures shall be grouped, usually posing, for this purpose, her models in the open air in her Hampstead garden. Her figures are, however, sometimes culled from careful studies made in note-books, of which she has an endless supply. Fastidious to a degree as to the completeness of a drawing, she lingers long over the finishing touches, for it is these which she considers make or mar the whole. Every sort of contrivance she considers to be legitimate to bring about an effect, save that of body-colour, which she holds in abhorrence; but the knife, a hard brush, a pointed stick, a paint rag, and a sponge are in constant request.

Mrs. Allingham is above all things a fair-weather painter. She has no pleasure in the storm, whether of rain or wind. Maybe this avoidance of the discomforts inseparable from a truthful portrayal of such conditions indicates the femininity of her nature. Doubtless it does. But is she to blame? Her work is framed upon the pleasure that it affords her, and it is certain that the result is none the less satisfactory because it only numbers the sunny hours and the halcyon days.

I ought perhaps to have qualified the expression “sunny hours,” for as a rule she does not affect a sunshine which casts strong shadows, but rather its condition when, through a thin veil of cloud, it suffuses all Nature with an equable light, and allows local colour to be seen at its best. In drawings which comprise any large amount of floral detail, the leaves, in full sunshine, give off an amount of reflected light that materially lessens the colour value of the flowers, and prevents their being properly distinguished. Mr. Elgood, the painter of flower-gardens par excellence, always observes this rule, not only because the effect is so much more satisfactory on paper, but because it is so much easier to paint under this aspect. As regards sky treatment, both he and Mrs. Allingham, it will be noted, confine themselves to the simplest sky effects, feeling that the main interest lies on the ground, where the detail is amply sufficient to warrant the accessories being kept as subservient as possible. For this reason it is that the glories of sunrise and sunset have no place in Mrs. Allingham’s work, the hours round mid-day sufficing for her needs.

To the curiously minded concerning her palette, it may be said that it is of the simplest character. Her paint-box is the smallest that will hold her colours in moist cake form, of which none are used save those which she considers to be permanent. It contains cobalt, permanent yellow, aureolin, raw sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium, rose madder, light red, and sepia. She now uses nothing save O.W. (old water-colour) paper. Mrs. Allingham’s method of laying on the colour differs from that of Birket Foster, who painted wet and in small touches. Her painting is on the dry side, letting her colours mingle on the paper. As a small bystander once remarked concerning it, “You do mess about a deal.”

Mrs. Allingham has been a constant worker for upwards of a quarter of a century, during which time, in addition to contributing to the Royal Society, she has held seven Exhibitions at The Fine Art Society’s, each of them averaging some seventy numbers. She has, therefore, upon her own calculation, put forth to the world nearly a thousand drawings. In spite of this, they seldom appear in the sale-room, and when they do they share with Birket Foster’s work the unusual distinction of always realising more than the artist received for them.

The illustrations which adorn this closing chapter have no connection with its subject, but are not on that account altogether out of place; for they are the only ones which are outside the title of the work, two being from Ireland, and two from Venice, and they are associated with two of the main incidents of the artist’s life, namely, her marriage, and her only art work abroad.