LUKE CRADOCK,

who died early in this reign, was a painter of birds and animals, in which walk he attained much merit by the bent and force of his own genius, having been so little initiated even in the grammar of his profession, that he was sent from Somerton near Ilchester in Somersetshire, where he was born, to be apprentice to a house-painter in London, with whom he served his time. Yet there, without instructions, and with few opportunities of studying nature in the very part of the creation which his talents led him to represent, he became, if not a great master, a faithful imitator of the inferior class of beings. His birds in particular are strongly and richly coloured, and were much sought as ornaments over doors and chimney-pieces. I have seen some pieces of his hand painted with a freedom and fire that intitled them to more distinction. He worked in general by the day and for dealers who retailed his works, possessing that conscious dignity of talents that scorned dependence, and made him hate to be employed by men whose birth and fortune confined his fancy and restrained his freedom. Vertue records a proof of his merit which I fear will enter into the panegyrics of few modern paintershe says he saw several of Cradock's pictures rise quickly after his death to three and four times the price that he had received for them living.

He died in 1717, and was buried at St. Mary's, Whitechapel.

PETER CASTEELS

was, like Cradock, though inferior in merit, a painter of fowls, but more commonly of flowers, yet neither with the boldness and relievo of a master, nor with the finished accuracy that in so many Flemish painters almost atones for want of genius. He was born at Antwerp in 1684, and in 1708 came over with his brother* Peter Tillemans. In 1716 he made a short journey to his native city, but returned soon. In 1726 he published twelve plates of birds and fowl which he had designed and etched himself and did a few other things in the same way. In 1735 he retired to Tooting, to design for calico printers and lastly, the manufacture being removed thither, to Richmond, where he died of a lingering illness May 16, 1749.

[JACOPO] D'AGAR,

Born 1640, Died 1716,

the son of a French painter, and himself born in France, came young into England and rose to great business, though upon a very slender stock of merit. He was violently afflicted with the

• So Vertue. I suppose he means brother-in-law. + [His reception in London amply answered his most sanguine expectations, for the Nobility and lovers of the art kept

gout and stone, and died in May 1723, at the age of fifty-four. He left a son whom he bred to his own profession.

[THEODORE NETSCHER.]

Born 1661, Died 1732,

It is certainly a singular circumstance, that Mr. Walpole should have omitted this able artist, who, as we are told by Descamps, (t. iv. p. 41,) passed six years in England, which country he found to be "a second Peru," in the sudden acquirement of great wealth.

He was the eldest son of the celebrated Gaspard Netscher, and his most able pupil, excelling like him, in small portrait, disposed in family groups. Leaving Holland he was much encouraged in the Court of Louis XIV., but in 1715, the States of Holland having sent over six thousand men to the aid of George I. he obtained the office of their treasurer.

His great patron was Sir Matthew Dekker, a London merchant, of Dutch extraction. By him Netscher was introduced to the Royal notice, was favoured by the Prince of Wales (George II.); and was employed by the nobility to paint small family groups, inferior, but not greatly so, to those of his father. In 1722, he returned to Holland

him constantly at work. His merit was such that his portrait is placed in the Gallery at Florence. Pilkington.]

and lived splendidly upon the fruits of his art, acquired in this country. His original friend Sir Matthew Dekker visiting Holland in 1727, endeavoured to persuade him to settle again in England, but without success. He died in 1732.]

No painter of so much eminence as Jervas, is taken so little notice of by Vertue in his memorandums, who neither specifies the family, birth, or death of this artist. The latter happened at his house in Cleveland-court, in 1739. One would think Vertue foresaw how little curiosity posterity would feel to know more of a man who has bequeathed to them such wretched daubings. Yet, between the badness of the age's taste, the dearth of good masters, and a fashionable repu

* He had another house at Hampton, [Middlesex. It is uncertain whether he was buried there, as was another painter, Huntington Shaw, of Nottingham, in 1710; and who is styled in his epitaph" an artist in his own way."]

tation, Jervas sat at the top of his profession; and his own vanity thought no encomium disproportionate to his merit. Yet was he defective in drawing, colouring, composition, and even in that most necessary, and perhaps most easy talent of a portrait-painter, likeness. In general, his pictures are a light flimsy kind of fan-painting as large as the life. Yet I have seen a few of his works highly coloured; and it is certain that his copies of Carlo Maratti, whom most he studied and imitated, were extremely just, and scarce inferior to the originals, It is a well-known story of him, that having succeeded happily in copying [he thought, in surpassing] a picture of Titian, he looked first at the onc, then at the other, and then with parental complacency cried, "poor little Tit! how he would stare!"

But what will recommend the name of Jervas to inquisitive posterity was his intimacy with Pope,* whom he instructed to draw and paint

* Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said he would prove it : "You strictly observe the second commandment, said the Doctor; for in your pictures you make not the likeness of any thing that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth."

+ [Spence informs us, that Pope was "the pupil of Jervas for the space of a year and a half," meaning that he was constantly so, for that period. Tillemans was engaged in painting a landscape for Lord Radnor, into which Pope by stealth, inserted some strokes, which the prudent painter did not ap