Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHARTER III First sketching expedition?More water-colours?W. J. Linton’s offer?
Whistle and Answer ?Ragged School teaching?Illness and death of Edwin. C. H. Mitchell was now starting upon a sketching tour in Devonshire and made an offer to Shields that he should accompany him, and assist him, as usual, by painting figures into his landscapes. The offer was joyfully accepted, and leaving his brother Edwin in charge of the little house in Manchester, Frederic Shields and Mitchell set off together. No doubt this introduction to open-air work, which led to his painting out of doors for many months after, had an incalculable effect in enabling him to resist the disease which proved so fatal to every other member of his family, as well as in removing him from the immediate danger of infection, which was little dreamed of in those days. Of this excursion he writes: ?
I drew all day unweariedly under the stimulus of the strange scenes and life about me. A rugged old fisherman attracted me, and in three hours I painted in water-colour a vigorous full-length which Mitchell sold on his return for 20. This opened my eyes to powers unsuspected by myself until placed in this hothouse of rich subjects, and to the market value of my brush, and determined me to work on my own account. Mitchell offered me 5 as a share of the price, but I replied that he had paid me the weekly wage agreed upon, and he had also borne all travelling expenses, so that I could not judge myself entitled to accept the gift. I bade my kind employer Early Portrait Study Pencil. About 1856 W. J. LINTON’S OFFER 47 farewell on his return from Manchester, and made my own way over Exmoor to Porlock, which I had noted in passing through it in the coach as rich in rustic wealth of personalities and subjects. …
