George Tinworth and his Work.
By Edward Salmon.
The Wheelwright's shop.
(With Portrait of Mr. Tinworth when a boy.)
LEXANDER POPE has recorded of himself that he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. That is to say, he wrote poetry because he could not help it. In the same way, the subject of this sketch, Mr. George Tinworth, whose work in terracotta is now, we may safely say, world famous, is an artist because he came into existence one. Like the poet, the true artist must be born; he cannot be made, Being born, his genius will not fail to assert itself against time and all obstacles. A better instance of this truism could not be found than Mr. Tinworth. If his becoming an artist had depended on his early education, he would never have been what he is to-day. Born in a poor neighbourhood, of poor parents, without a relative or friend of artistic sympathy or inclination it is, we think, one of the most extraordinary facts in Nature, and one of the most remarkable proofs forthcoming of the superiority of spirit over matter, of mind over body, that he should from the first have been a sculptor. There was no external inducement to him to become an artist; there was, indeed, every inducement to him to become anything but an artist. But art was part of his nature; it was irrepressible, irresistible; and, like a beautiful flower in a weed-grown garden, a veritable product of mother earth, absolutely untended by man, it sprung into existence, until one day the gardener had it brought before him, and fostered it with a loving care due to a perfect perception of the treasure he had found.
One glance at the pictures which accompany this paper will convey to those of our readers who may never have had an opportunity of examining Mr. Tinworth's work some notion of its excellence from whatever point of view we may look at it. It is almost incredible that Mr. Tinworth is
