(_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the copyright._)]
Of course, England has a great part to play in the painting of the sea. It is not for nothing that a nation occupies an insular and maritime position, above all with such a sea and upon such coasts, and the English painter knows well how to give an heroic and poetic cast to the weather-beaten features of the sailor. For thirty years _Henry Moore_, the elder brother of Albert Moore, was the undisputed monarch of this province of art. Moore began as a landscape painter. From 1853 to 1857 he painted the glistening cliffs and secluded nooks of Cumberland, and then the green valleys of Switzerland flooded with the summer air and the clear morning light--quiet scenes of rustic life, the toil of the wood-cutter and the haymaker, somewhat as Julien Dupré handles such matters at the present time in Paris. From 1858 he began his conquest of the sea, and in the succeeding interval he painted it in all the phases of its changing life,--at times in grey and sombre morning, at other times when the sun stands high; at times in quietude, at other times when the wind sweeps heavily across the waves, when the storm rises or subsides, when the sky is clouded or when it brightens. It is a joy to follow him in all quarters of the world, to see how he constantly studies the waves of every zone on fair or stormy days, amid the clearness and brilliancy of the mirror of the sea, as amid the strife of the elements; as a painter he is, at the same time, always a student of nature, and treats the sea as though he had to paint its portrait. In the presence of his sea-pieces one has the impression of a window opening suddenly upon the ocean. Henry Moore measures the boundless expanse quite calmly, like a captain calculating the chances of being able to make a crossing. Nowhere else does there live any painter who regards the sea so much with the eyes of a sailor, and who combines such eminent qualities with this objective and cool, attentive observation, which seems to behold in the sea merely its navigable capacity.
(_By permission of the Corporation of Manchester, the owners of the picture._)]
The painter of the river-port of London and the arm of the Thames is _William L. Wyllie_, whose pictures unite so much bizarre grandeur with so much precision. One knows the port life of the Thames, with its accumulation of work, which has not its like upon the whole planet. Everything is colossal. From Greenwich up to London both sides of the river are a continuous quay: everywhere there are goods being piled, sacks being raised on pulleys, ships being laid at anchor; everywhere are fresh storehouses for copper, beer, sails, tar, and chemicals. The river is of great width, and is like a street populated with ships, a workshop winding again and again. The steamers and sailing vessels move up and down stream, or lie in masses, close beside one another, at anchor. Upon the bank the docks lie athwart like so many streets of water, sending out ships or taking them in. The ranks of masts and the slender rigging form a spider's web spreading across the whole horizon; and a vaporous haze, penetrated by the sun, envelops it with a reddish veil. Every dock is like a town, filled with huge vats and populated with a swarm of human beings, that move hither and thither amid fluttering shadows. This vast panorama, veiled with smoke and mist, only now and then broken by a ray of sunlight, is the theme of Wyllie's pictures. Even as a child he ran about in the port of London, clambered on to the ships, noted the play of the waves, and wandered about the docks; and so he painted his pictures afterwards with all the technical knowledge of a sailor. There is no one who knows so well how ships stand in the water; no one has such an understanding of their details: the heavy sailing vessels and the great steamers, which lie in the brown water of the port like mighty monsters, the sailors and the movements of the dock labourers, the dizzy tide of men, the confusion of cabs and drays upon the bridges spanning the arm of the Thames; only Vollon in Paris is to be compared with him as painter of a river-port.