After the pre-Raphaelite revolution, the foundation of the school of Walker indicated the last stage of English art. His influence was far greater than might be supposed from the small number of his works, and fifty per cent. of the English pictures in every exhibition would perhaps never have been painted if he had not been born. A national element long renounced, that old English sentiment which once inspired the landscapes of Gainsborough and the scenes of Morland, and was lost in the hands of Wilkie and the _genre_ painters, lives once more in Fred Walker. He adapted it to the age by adding something of Tennyson's passion for nature. There is a touch of symbolism in that old gate which he painted in the beautiful picture of 1870. He and Mason opened it so that English art might pass into this new domain, where musical sentiment is everything, where one is buried in sweet reveries at the sight of a flock of geese driven by a young girl, or a labourer stepping behind his plough, or a child playing, free from care, with pebbles at the water's edge. Their disciples are perhaps healthier, or, should one say, "less refined,"--in other words, not quite so sensitive and hyper-æsthetic as those who opened the old gate. They seem physically more robust, and can better face the sharp air of reality. They no longer dissolve painting altogether into music and poetry; they live more in the world at every hour, not merely when the sun is setting, but also when the prosaic daylight exposes objects in their material heaviness. But the tender ground-tone, the effort to seize nature in soft phases, is the same in all. Like bees, they suck from reality only its sweets. The earnest, tender, and deeply heartfelt art of Walker has influenced them all.
Evening when work is over, the end of summer, twilight, autumn, the pale and golden sky, and the dead leaves are the things which have probably made the most profound impression on the English spirit. The hour when toil is laid aside, and rest begins and people seek their homes, and the season when fires are first lighted are the hour and the season most beloved by this people, which, with all its rude energy, is yet so tender and full of feeling. Repose to the point of enervation and the stage where it passes into gentle melancholy is the theme of their pictures--this, and not toil.