Humanist essayist and critic William Hazlitt writes to his wife about his forays into painting after having written extensively on the topic. He shares his difficulty completing a painting inspired by Rembrandt’s “Jacob’s Dream,” a subject which he later described as inimitable.
Sunday evening
My dear Sarah,
I begin on a large sheet of paper though I have nothing new to fill a half one. Both parcels of prints came safe, and I need hardly say that I was glad to see them, and that I thank you exceedingly for getting them to me. I am much obliged to you for your trouble in this as well as about the pictures. Your last letter but one I did not receive in time to have come up to see them before Friday (the day then fixed for the sale) and though I got your letter on Friday time enough to have been with you yesterday morning, I did not feel disposed to set out. The day was wet and uncomfortable, and the catalogue did not tempt me so much as I expected. There were a parcel of Metzus and Terburghs and boors smoking and ladies at harpsichords which seemed to take up as much room as the St. Cecilia, the Pan and St. George, the Danae and the Ariadne in Naxos. Did Lamb go to the sale, and what is the report of the pictures? But I have got my complete set of [Raphael’s] Cartoons, “here I sit with my doxies surrounded,” and so never mind. I just took out my little copy of Rembrandt to look at and was so pleased with it I had almost amend to send it up, and try whether it might not fetch two or three guineas. But I am not at present much in the humor to incur any expense for an uncertain profit. With respect to my painting, I go on something like Satan, through moist and dry, sometimes glazing and sometimes scumbling [sic] at it happens, now on the wrong side of the canvas, and now on the right, but still persuading myself that I have at last found out the true secret of Titian’s golden hue and the oleaginous touches of Claude Lorraine. I have got in a pretty good background, and a conception of the ladder which I learned from the upping stone on the down, only making the stone into gold, and a few other improvements. I have no doubt that there was such another on the field of Luz, and that an upping stone is the genuine Jacob’s Ladder. But where are the angels to come from? That’s another question, which I am not yet able to solve. My dear Sarah, I am too tired and too dull to be witty, and therefore I will not attempt it. I did not see the superscription of the wrapping paper till this morning, for which I thank you as much as for the prints. You are a good girl, and I must be a good boy. I have not been very good lately. I do not wish you to overstay your month, but rather to set off on the Friday. You will I hope tell main your next about Mrs. Holcroft and the books. If the sale had been the 23rd I intended to have come up, and brought them with me. Our new neighbor arrived the day after you went. I have heard nothing of her but that her name’s Armstead, nor seen anything of her till yesterday and the day before on one of which days she passed by our house in a blue pelisse and on the other in a scarlet one. She is a strapped, I assure you. Little Robert and his wife still continue in the house. They returned the coals, but I sent them back thinking they would be badly off perhaps. But yesterday they walked out together, he as smart as a buck, and she skipping and light as a doe. It is supper time, my dear, I have been painting all day, and all day yesterday, and all the day before, and am very, very, tired, and so I hope you will let me leave off here, and bid you a good night. I enclose a 1£ note to Lamb. If you want another, say so. But I hope your partnership concern with Mr. Phillips will have answered the same purpose. I am ever your affectionate,
W. Hazlitt
P.S. Before you come away, get Lamb to fix the precise time of their coming down here.
FURTHER READING
View here a small gallery of Hazlitt’s painterly output