beach. But with these unimportant exceptions the painters of landscape in England before 1707 were foreigners. And of the foreign artists only the Van de Veldes, father and son, achieved more than local and temporary fame. Willem Van de Velde the Elder (1610-93) was already a famous painter of sea-pieces when Charles II called him to England in 1675. At Hampton Court may still be seen many of his huge canvases, chiefly important as pictorial chronicles of English naval achievement, but showing also effective use of sea and sky. The eighteenth-century estimate of Willem Van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707) is expressed in Walpole's dictum, "Pre-eminence is no more to be contested with Raphael for history than with Van de Velde for seapieces," and he still ranks as one of the great marine painters. English galleries, both public and private, are rich in beautiful examples of his work. No other name so illustrious occurs in Walpole's annals of this period. Of the other foreign painters it is sufficient to say that they were men whose habits of thought, whose tastes, as well as their technique, had been established in Holland, Flanders, or Italy, and who did their mature work in England because the desire of Charles II to revive the art activities fostered by his father seemed to offer a good professional opening. The fact that they painted in England had hardly more influence on the course of English art than would have been exerted by the importation of their pictures. They founded no schools, they excited little emulation or even imitation. They were merely secondor third-rate workmen who painted along in a manner studiously reminiscent of their earlier masters. Such slight effect as their work had in developing the love of Nature There are fourteen sea-pieces by him in the National Gallery; eight in the Wallace collection at Hertford House; and several at Hampton Court. At Dulwich are two pictures by him, "A Calm” and “A Brisk Breeze" that are especially attractive examples of his style.

in England came from the fact that Englishmen at last saw depicted some of the wild or romantic scenes of their own country, scenes from Scotland and the Isle of Jersey, from the neighborhood of Derbyshire Peak, from along the banks of the Thames. But such slight influence as this attention to local scenery might have had, was, it must be insisted, nearly neutralized by the fact that these representations of English scenery were always so "touched up" in the style of some Dutch or Italian master as to be practically unrecognizable. Instead of observing Nature the artists "composed" pictures, using elements conventionally accepted as picturesque. They trained themselves to see England through the eyes of Salvator Rosa or Ruysdael or Claude Lorraine or the Poussins.

The second period of landscape art in England comprises the forty-eight years between the death of the younger Van de Velde (1707) and the return of Richard Wilson from Italy in 1755. In studying this period a convenient point of depa ture is given by M. Rouquet's “L'état des arts en Angleterre, published in 1755. His only reference to landscape art is in the following interesting but rather vague paragraph:

Rien n'est si riant que les campagnes de ce pays-là, plus d'u Peintre y fait un usage heureux des aspects charmans qui s'y présentes de toutes parts: les tableaux de paysage y sont fort à la mode, ce gen y est cultivé avec autant de succes qu'aucun autre. Il y a peu de maîtres dans ce talent qui ayent été beaucoup supérieurs aux Peintr de paysage qui jouissent aujourd'hui en Angleterre de la premiè réputation.'

M. Rouquet's words seem to imply a much larger amour of successful and popular landscape work than extant pic tures or the meager annals of the time would indicate. Pos sibly in the landscapes that were "fort à la mode" wer

1725.

1 M. Rouquet was a French enamel painter who came to England is

included important Italian works, or the works of foreigners painting in England. There must have been, also, more landscape production than is in any way recorded, so that M. Rouquet doubtless had knowledge of pictures now practically non-existent. And even the following summary of such names and works as have survived a century and a half will give his words a modified justification.

Peter Monamy (1670-1749) was a marine painter of the school of the younger Van de Velde. "The Old East India Wharf at London Bridge," a large and interesting canvas at the South Kensington Gallery, and "The Calm," a small but very attractive picture at Dulwich, go far toward the maintenance of his great contemporary reputation. A second marine painter of much promise was Charles Brooking (1723-59). Of the few pictures by him in London galleries the most delightful is "The Calm," a picture recently added to the National Gallery. A series of his naval reviews was reproduced by Boydell in 1753, and other works were engraved by Canot and Ravenet. Samuel Scott (1710-72), after Van de Velde the most important marine painter of the century, did some of his fine views of the Thames and old Londen bridges as early as 1745. Excellent examples of his work are in the National Gallery and at South Kensington.

There were also during this period several men whose chief pictures were of animals, but with considerable incidental use of landscape. James Seymour (1702-52), known as a portrait painter of fine horses, also painted many huntingscenes where horses and dogs are trooping at full speed through broken country. Contemporary with Seymour was John Wootton (d. 1765) the excellence of whose representations of animals is well shown by his illustrations of Gay's "Fables" in 1731. Wootton was also painting landscapes in the Italian manner before 1751. George Stubbs (1724