A View of Norwich. Canvas 13 x 17½.
Was lent by Mr. Louis Huth to the Old Masters, 1876.
A View near Norwich,
probably that next to be mentioned, was sold in the T. Woolner, R.A., sale at Christie’s, 1875, for £273.
A View near Norwich,
Crome’s contribution to the Exhibition in 1815, was the incitement to an interchange of congratulatory letters between that master and his ex-pupil, James Stark, who was at this time working hard at figure-drawing in London, and proposing to become a student at the Royal Academy School. Crome’s reply, reverently preserved by Mr. A. J. Stark, the inheritor of his father’s art-love, was contributed by him to the memoir prefacing the Sixth Catalogue of the Norwich Art Circle Exhibition. Its assertion of the paramount importance of “Breadth and Dignity in a landscape” furnishes in his own words the key to our painter’s eminence. It is written on a piece of rough cartridge drawing paper.
“Norwich, January, 1816.
“Friend James,
“I received your kind letter and feel much pleased at your approval of my picture. I fear you will see too many errors for a painter of my long practice and at my time of life; however, there are parts in it you like, I have no doubt, so I am happy. You are likely to visit us (but mum is the order of the day about that concern), I wish it might be so; we shall be happy to see you in Norwich.
“In your letter you wish me to give you my opinion of your picture. I should have liked it better if you had made it more of a whole, that is, the trees stronger, the sky running from them in shadow up to the opposite corner; that might have produced what I think it wanted, and have made it a much less too picture effect. I think I hear you say, this fellow is very vain, and that nothing is right that does not suit his eye. But be assured what I have said I thought on the first sight, it strengthened me in that opinion every time I looked at it. (Honesty, my boy!) So much for what it wanted; but how pleased I was to see so much improvement in the figures, so unlike our Norwich School; I may say they were good. Your boat was too small for them (you see I am at it again), but then the water pleased me, and I think it would not want much alteration in the sky. I cannot let your sky go off without some observation. I think the