Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in excellent condition. Year 1948. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> With the eye of a farmer and the mind of a poet he sees “the cattle upon a thousand hills”; he feels the sunlit dewy freshness of “the morning after rain.” He is equally competent to represent events-Londoners watching the fantastic and novel air balloon as in the frontispiece of this book; the rollicking of sailors ashore; or quiet home scenes. Though the painter’s best work was of excellent quality no doubt he sometimes fell below this high standard. An artist who is the father of some thirteen children must needs resort at times to pot-boiling. Is the source of this proverbial expres- sion generally known? It was a gypsy phrase for ready money and it is Ibbetson who records it. “Gainsborough the charming landscape painter was necessitated to take to portrait painting and when questioned why he did it answered ‘to make the pot boil’. From that they have the name.” The story of this child of disaster this man of unrest should be written and read with compassion as well as discrimination. The painter’s span of life coincided with the reign of the Third George and therefore he knew troubled times. He endured at least twelve years of drudgery before he was free to satisfy his cherished desire. At the age of thirty-five worn by hardship bereft of loved ones blindly groping his way after sickness and mental distress homeless seeking oblivion in his cups yet “his perseverance and strong natural genius surmounted all difficulties.” This we have on the testimony of Tate Wilkinson-Drama King of York- shire. Ibbetson worked doggedly clear off his debts; only to discover that all was labour lost: he had been frustrated in his honourable purpose defrauded and led to the brink of ruin. Until he was forty-five life was a continuous struggle with adverse circumstances. Yet despite scars of suffering he kept the treasure of joy: he was the laughing painter. In character Julius was one of “these wayward children of St. Luke”- a designation not confined to the contemporary Academicians to whom the Morning Post. (MP)