Francis James by Frederick Wedmore — Read

I leave to a biographer in the Future the task of recording Mr. Francis James's birthplace and of settling the number of his years; of saying, too, where he chiefly lived and chiefly practised. I am concerned with his drawings, and not with the man, except in so far as his drawings must reveal him; and the real man, and not the outside facts about him, a man's work does always to some extent reveal. In the case of Francis James, his work is his water-colours. I know no oil painting by him. I remember no pencil studies. I know no etchings by him, no lithographs by him. And, moreover, modern man though he is, he seems to be able to express himself without the assistance of silver point -- the interesting and difficult medium, the employment of which threatens to become a label of the cultivated. His own work in water-colour is as direct, immediate, uncorrectable as that; but colour is of the very essence of it. Whatever he tackles, whatever he elects to let alone, Francis James is essentially a colourist.

One thing about his life and circumstances I shall here -- taking breath in a parenthesis -- venture to record. As a youth he was never compelled to prepare for a profession. Being a country gentleman who gradually became an artist, Mr. Francis James had a little comfortable means, one may suppose. Is he to be cursed, then, on that account, with the name of amateur? Certainly not. No more than Méryon, who was brought up in the French Navy; no more than W. W. May, the charming marine artist, in early life a sailor, and in late life Keeper of the Painted Hall at Greenwich; no more than Robert Goff, who was in the Coldstream Guards; or Seymour Haden, President of his own Academy, and once such a successful surgeon that he might have been President of the College of Surgeons to boot. In art of any kind -- in Painting, Writing, Modelling -- the spirit in which a man does his work, and not the means that he possesses, or the family that he belongs to, constitutes him professional or amateur. Is his art his chief interest? If so, whatever may be his status upon other grounds, professional artist, serious professional artist, he is, with his books or his pictures. To the serious artist a little money is of endless usefulness, even if it be only a very scanty portion -- three hundred a year and an umbrella -- for that scanty portion, which has caused the fool to eat the bread of idleness, has caused the wise man to work with a will. It has gone some little way towards securing him that deepest boon for the artistic nature, _la liberté du travail_.