4B3 



DANCE. 



DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON. 



491 



Exhibition in the following years; but it was not till 1824 that he 

 obtained much notice, when a painting in the style which he has since 

 maHe >o familiar, entitled 'Sunset at Sea, after a Storm,' at once 

 secured him a high place among the artists of his day. The picture 

 was purchased by Sir Thomas Lawrence, at a price much above that 

 which the obscure artist had ventured to place upon it; and this 

 practical testimony of the president's admiration added no little to his 

 popularity. Stimulated by his success, he the next year exhibited 

 one of his largest and most elaborate paintings, ' The Delivery of Israel 

 out of Hgypt ;' and the Royal Academy marked its sense of his ability 

 by electing him in the same year an Associate. The best three years 

 were the most productive in Mr. Danby'a career as a painter, several 

 of his most ambitious and best-known poetic and historical landscapes 

 gracing the Academy walls during this period. In 1826 he exhibited 

 'Christ Walking on the Sea;' in 1827 'The Embarkation of Cleopatra 

 on the Cyduus to meet Mark Antony ;' in 1828 ' The Opening of tlie 

 Seventh Seal,' and a 'Scne from the Merchant of Venice.' His 

 pictures were now looked for as one of the chief attractions of the 

 annual exhibition, but his public career was suddenly brought to a 

 tempera^ close. Some family matters caused him in 1829 to leave 

 Knglanl, and he remained absent ten or twelve years, during which 

 time be sent only one or two oil-paintings to the Inhibition. In 1811 

 he returned in full strength with his 'Morning at Rhodes,' 'The 

 Sculptor's Triumph when his Statue of Venus is about to bn placed 

 in the Temple,' and an ' Enchanted Island.' These he followed up by 

 a work of very ambitious character : the ' Deluee ;' a ' Holy Family ;' 

 the ' Contest of the Lyre and the Pipe in the Vale of Tempe 1 ;' ' St. 

 Cloud in the Time of Louis XIV.;' ' The Painter's Holiday;' 'The 

 Last Moment of Sunset ;' ' The Tomb of Christ after the Resurrection;' 

 ' Th Fisherman's Home ;' ' Winter Sunset ;' ' Summer Sunset ;' ' Ship 

 on Fire calm Moonlight far at Sea ;' ' Caius Marius amid the Ruins 

 of Carthage;' ' Departure of Ulysses from Ithaca Morning;' ' A \ViM 

 Sea-Shore at Sunset;' ' A Party of Pleasure on the Lake of Wallen- 

 atadt;' ' Evening Dead Calm ;' &c. 



As the titles will have told. Mr. Danby's pictures are never mere 

 delineations of a particular spot. Many of them are of the most 

 ambitious class of poetic landscape ; and they almost reach their lofty 

 aim. His landscapes display considerable imagination, much poetic 

 feeling, refinement, and rich and harmonious, though somewhat too 

 monotonous colour. He delights especially in depicting the glories of 

 the last moment of sunset, or the early twilight which succeeds it; 

 and he bathes every object in the glowing atmosphere proper to that 

 season. What he wants perhaps is something more of strength, fully 

 to realise his intention ; but as it is, he has marked out for himself a 

 dUtinct path in the landscape art, and in it he hag found no rival 

 Mr. Danby still holds only the same profession*! rank of A.R.A. which 

 he held thirty years 850 ; but this is well understood to be, even with 

 the Academy, no criterion of his real standing as a painter. His not 

 having attained the honours of full membership has arisen from some 

 of those private reasons which at times sway all close corporations and 

 coteries. Mr. D.mby has two sons, who have adopted the profession 

 of painting ; one of them, Thomas Danby, has acquired celebrity by 

 some remarkably faithful pictures of English mountain scenery. 



DANCE. There are two architects of this name, futher and son. 

 The elder OEOBOE DANCE was architect to the Corporation of 

 London, and erected in 1739-40 the Mansion House, a structure, 

 which, although certainly far from being in the happiest or most 

 refined taste, by no means deserves the obloquy that has been heaped 

 upon it ; for if in some respects uncouth, it is at all events a stately 

 mass, and has a 'monumental' look. The elder Dance also built 

 the churches of St. Botolph, Aldgate; St. Luke; and St. Leonard, 

 Shop-ditch. He died February 8th, 1768, and was succeeded in his 

 appointment of City Surveyor by his eldest son, 



GEORGE DAXCE, Jun. (born in 1740), whose talent acquired for the 

 family name far higher distinction. Not only trained up to architecture 

 as a pursuit in which a safe and certain career, if not a brilliant one, 

 was opened for him, he had applied himself to the study of it with a 

 diligenci! exceeding what was required by the routine of that day, 

 and he further possessed both a natural and cultivated taste for the 

 floe art* generally, poetry included. He certainly stamped something 

 of poetry, as well as energetic character, on the very first public work 

 he executed ; nor had he long to wait for the opportunity by which 

 he signalised himself, for Newgate, the "proudest of prisons," was 

 begun by him in 1770. This structure, one of the few truly monu- 

 mental pieces of architecture in the metropolis, has been chiefly 

 extolled for its striking degree of character ; yet Newgate might have 

 been equally prison-like in aspect had it been merely a dismal mass, 

 utterly devoid of all aesthetic charm ; it was by conferring upon it 

 the latter by breaking up the monotony of such a mass go as not at 

 nil to disturb unity, but enhance it not to dissipate parts into 

 littleness, but blend and condense them into one impressive whole 

 that Dance showed himself a great artist let us say, a great tragic 

 architect. Truly felicitous ig the manner in which, by being divided 

 into boldly distinct and well articulated parts, the composition 

 acquires artistic play without losing anything of its severity. Truly 

 Mi'-i'otu also is the effective relief both as to perspective and light and 

 lhade thrown into it, not according to the u*ual practice of bringing 

 parts forward, but of recessing them, and placing masses in the rear 



of others, so that the general line of front is preserved unbroken in 

 its lower part. The great drawback on this otherwise masterly com- 

 position is the centre compartment, or "governor's house." Well 

 intended as is the kind of contrast between that part and the rest, 

 the contrast actually produced is far from the happiest, the character 

 given to the centre being by far too much like that of an ordinary 

 dwelling-house, ths windows being so many, iu proportion to the space 

 they occupy, as absolutely to crowd it and cut it up, to destroy breadth 

 and repose, and to occasion an air of littleness. The attic story espe- 

 cially is a most paltry termination to the centre of such a pile ; but in the 

 original design the centre of the edifice was crowned by a pediment, 

 which would have given variety to the whole composition, without 

 any sacrifice of dignity : the alteration appears to have been made in 

 order to provide an additional story, which however might just as well 

 have been concealed within the roof. The proximity of Newgate 

 perhaps deprived the late Giltspur Street Compter of some of the 

 celebrity it might else have obtained as a piece of architecture ; and 

 yet the same proximity was not altogether favourable to the other, 

 the fenestration in the design of the Compter being decidedly better 

 than that of the governor's residence in Newgate. Dance derived 

 much more fame from St. Luke's Hospital than from the Compter, 

 though far less worthy of admiration : it is in fact a mere horrible 

 reality without any aesthetic beauty infused into it. As to the front 

 of Guildhall, erected by Dance in 1789, there can be but one opinion. 

 Its ugliness we might tolerate, its absurdity we might excuse, but 

 ugliness, absurdity, and excessive paltriness, without a single redeem- 

 ing feature, combine to render it quite unendurable. Among Dance's 

 minor works are the Shakspere Gallery, Pall Mall, now the British 

 Institution, and the Theatre at Bath, neither of which possesses any 

 great beauty or merit. 



Dance was not only one of the earliest members of the Royal 

 Academy, but held for several years the office of Professor of Archi- 

 tecture ; yet he never delivered any lectures, nor do; a he seem to have 

 exhibited drawings at its exhibitions. Still if he neither lectured nor 

 wrote upon that branch of art which he pursued as a profession, he 

 gave the world evidence of his ability in a department of art wholly 

 unconnected with architecture, by publishing a series of portraits 

 (chiefly profiles) of the public characters and artists of the day, which 

 appeared iu two volumes, folio, 181 1-14, and were engraved by William. 

 Daniell, R.A., in imitation of the original drawings. Dance held his 

 appointment of City Surveyor till 1816, when he resigned in favour 

 of his pupil, the late W. Montague; but he survived his retirement 

 from practice several years, and died at his house iu Govver Street, 

 January 14th 1825, at the age of eighty-four. He was buried in 

 St. Paul's, near Wren and Rennie. 



His younger brother, NATHANIEL DANCE, third son of the elder 

 George Dance, be^an his career as a painter, in which profession he 

 acquired some celebrity, but his fine figure and captivating address 

 having obtained for him the hand of the wealthy Yorkshire heiress, 

 Mrs. Durnmer, he abandoned painting, and purchased and destroyed 

 all his former productions which he could meet with. On his marriage 

 he had taken the name of Holland in addition to his own, and he was 

 made a baronet in 1800. The income he acquired with his lady was 

 about 1S,000. per annum, and as the Dummer estates were entailed, 

 lie contrived to amass for himself about 200,000^. Sir Nathaniel 

 Dance Holland died very suddenly at Winchester, October 15th, 1811. 



DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON, a popular French dramatist 

 and actor of the times of Louis XIV., was born in 1661, and studied 

 at Paris under the Jesuit Lavue. His preceptor, observing that his 

 talents were far from ordinary, wished him to devote himself to the 

 religious profession, but Dancourt preferred the law, and acquired 

 some reputation as an advocate. He shortly however fell iu love with 

 the daughter of the comedian La Thoriliore, an attachment which 

 induced him to quit his legal studies and appear on the stage. Having 

 married Mademoiselle La Thoriliere, he became one of the king's 

 comedians, and even ono of his greatest favourites. An anecdote is 

 told of his being saved from falling by Louis, who caught his shoulder ; 

 and in the days when this story was current, a king who under any 

 circumstances put forth his hand towards a subject was reckoned full 

 as condescending as one of the goda of antiquity who came down to 

 aid some favourite hero. After remaining thirty-eight years in tha 

 service of the king, he retired to his estate at Berri, where he passed 

 the remainder of his life in devotional exerci.-es, and wrote some psalms 

 and a sacred tragedy, which is not extant. He died in 1726, having 

 superintended the erection of his own tomb, leaving two daughters, 

 who were both actresses, and both married into families of distinction. 

 The works of this author occupy six volumes : they were most of them 

 successful at the time they were written. The greater number of them 

 are farces, the scene of which lies mostly in low life. There is a 

 drollery about them and a smartness in the dialogue which will always 

 render them amusing, bub the interest they possessed at the time of 

 their appearance is now lost. Dancourt, being an unlearned man, 

 sought for subjects among incidents which he himself witnessed, and 

 which were often well known to the public. Au author whose chief 

 excellence lies in happily delineating events of a local interest may be 

 sure of popularity, but equally sure that his popularity will be but 

 transient. Dancourt is believed to have had many assistants in the 

 composition of his plays. 



