Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xii Thomas Bishop and Dr. Abercrombie--Joshua Shaw, Artists' Fund Society and Academy of the Fine Arts--Ivanhoe's Rebecca--John Neagle and David Edwin N 1833 I became acquainted with Thomas Bishop, the painter in enamel, who at that time resided but a short distance from where I lived. He was very old, a good deal past eighty, but was yet singularly robust. One day I saw him in the street walking towards me, and felt surprised at his firm steps, almost strides, and his large figure filling the eye as he approached. Yet when sitting in conversation he looked aged, almost feeble; his thin, delicate features, aquiline nose, gray and sparkling eye are so distinctly impressed on my memory that it seems but as yesterday. I was with him a good deal of an evening, because he pressed me so earnestly to come, and when I failed he complained almost reproachfully, so that I felt constrained to go, whether I ought to have been elsewhere or not. Thus I came to learn much of his eventful history, for he had lived in France, England, and Portugal as well as America, and during stirring times. He resided in Paris at the breaking out of the first French Revolution in 1789. He had studied medicine, and had also learned the art of painting in enamel while there. But the turmoil of the struggle in Paris drove him away and he returned to London, the place of his birth. Had I asked questions or shown curiosity he would have told me everything unreservedly about his life in London, but my habit was to sit quiet and simply listen to whatever he chose to say. One very serious story he told me. An acquaintance of his, a frequent visitor at his house, induced him to undertake the collection of money due him in distant parts of England. On Bishop's return he...
