* CHESWICK, THOMAS, RA., was born in 1811 at Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham, where his fondness for drawing became very conspicuous. He removed to London, with a view to prosecute his artistic studies, in 1828. The same year two of his landscapes appeared in the exhibition of the Royal Academy ; and from that time to the present he has been one of the most regular contributors to the exhibition, besides for many years contributing regularly to the annual exhibition of the British Institution.
Mr. Creswick is one of the most general favourites among living English landscape-painters. His subjects are almost invariably sug. gestive of pleasing associations, so that their very titles contribute to their popularity ; and they are always thoroughly national. Though often faithful transcripts of particular spots, they seldom receive in the exhibition catalogues "a local habitation," their name being for the most part some pleasant poetic one, or else typical of a class, or pointing to some peculiarity of weather or season of the year. Thus, his beat-known pictures we have in the river class 'A Cool Spot, A Shady Olen," A Rocky Stream,' A Greenwood Stream,' ' A Mountain Stream,' and Windiuga of a River ; ' among the wood lands ' A Glade in the Forest," The Chequered Shade,' "The Shade of the Beech Trees;' when he depicts atmospheric appearances we have such titles as 'Rain on the Hills," Passing Showers," Doubtful Weather," Passing Clouds; 'Summer-Time; Early Spring,' and the like.
Among the first pictures by which Mr. Creswick made himself known were his Walsh streams, and, to our thinking, the exquisite combina tions of rocks and light feline with clear swift running water and glimpses of the neighbouring mountains seen in almost matchless perfection in North Wales, were never so charmingly expressed as in Creswick'a pictures. The rivers of his native Yorkshire were however not less happily rendered by him. His Course of the Greta through Bernal Woods,' exhibited in 1842, and some of those admirable scenes known to have been painted from the Wharf° above Bolton Abbey, are certainly among his choicest works. The scenery of \Vales, York
shire, and Cornwall may be said, whatever were the specific titles of his pictures, to have furnished the subjects of his paintings till his Irish tour supplied a uew and wider range : his Glandalough' and one or two more seemed then to imply that he was about to grapple with a bolder and sterner class of subjects, but ho soon returned to his old favourites, carrying with him however a somewhat more sombre tone of colour.
In 1842 Mr. Creswick was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and his merits having received that mark of professional recognition, ho seemed to work with more freedom and decision. He began to venture on larger canvasses and treat of more ambitious themes. But his powers may perhaps be regarded as having reached their maturity in 1847, when he exhibited two of his greatest works England,' and the 'London Road a hundred years ago:' both dis playing in conception and execution many of the best attributes of the landscape art; in the Weald of Kent, and ono or two more, he has successfully repeated the same extensive prospects on a scale of nearly equal magnitude. The next year, 1848, Mr. Creswick sur prised the public by a bold departure from his usual style in two sea-aide views, Home by the Sands,' and a Squally Day,' painted somewhat ha the manner of Collins, but with sufficient originality to prevent any charge of imitation, and with so much truth and beauty as to command general admiration. In 1850 Mr. Creswick painted in the same style, Wind on Shore,' and Over the Sands,' but he appears to have since abandoned his sea-side studies. Another branch of the landscape art in which he has been very successful is that of which the 'Forest Farm,' the Valley and the views of the terrace at Haddon may be taken as the type. Like many other landscape painters Mr. Creswick cannot be regarded as happy iu his figures, yet the pictures he has painted in conjunction with Mr. Ansdell, in which the latter has supplied some capitally painted groups of animals, are not among his most desirable productions. He works best alone.