SAMUEL PROUT, ARTIST. 
271 
The earliest mezzotints and lithographs by Prout which I have 
seen representing Devon and Cornish subjects are dated 1813, 
which would be several years after Prout had settled in London, 
and three years after his marriage. They must therefore have been 
reproduced on copper and stone long after the original sketches 
were made, and I expect they represent some of his earliest draw- 
ings of architectural subjects. Most of them are immediately 
local. Pennycross seems to have been a very favourite resort of 
the artist, and there is one very charming study, entitled " Near 
Exeter other bits are from South Brent, Hooe, Totnes, Kingswear, 
then a mediaeval village, almost unique. 
I cannot but think that these early drawings (notwithstanding 
the something like contempt with which Britton spoke of them) 
indicate that Samuel Prout laid here the very best foundation for 
the work he was afterwards to undertake. There are not so many 
old granite and limestone cottages and manor houses about here as 
there were in Prout's time ; most of them have disappeared, but a 
few remain ; and have you not remarked in these, not only the 
charm they possess in outline and colour, and light and shade, but 
the beautiful truthfulness of their construction, and the bold indi- 
viduality of every stone, and the absence of that foe to the pictur- 
esque in architecture — the flush mortar joint] What we do see is 
a dark, open, rugged joint, with moss and wallflowers growing out 
of the crevices. 
These are the subjects Prout got to understand and treat so well 
in Devonshire, and the same truth and honesty with which he 
drew our old cottages and bridges, and the same respect he showed 
for construction in them, characterized his later work when the 
Streets of Eouen and Nuremburg, the Cathedrals of Antwerp and 
Strasburg, the Ducal Palace at Venice, and the Coliseum at Pome, 
were all under his masterful command. The pencil drawing of St. 
Peter's, at Caen, by Prout, lent me by his daughter, serves to illus- 
trate my meaning to some extent. It is a very fine drawing, 
though by no means one of his most important works ; but it is 
no mere outline of beautiful but vague and unsubstantial creations, 
which might do for fairy-land, but a picturesque group of solid 
buildings, carefully and beautifully drawn with just enough of the 
architectural details and no more, and just enough of the construc- 
tion indicated by the individuality given to certain stones to show 
that the artist understood what he was representing. 
