Ford Madox Ford: Memoirs

On the death of his grandfather, Ford Madox Brown:

Upon the top was inscribed “Ford Madox Brown,” and on the bottom, “Wycliffe on His Trial Before John of Gaunt. Presented to the National Gallery by a Committee of Admirers of the Artist.” In this way the “X” of Madox Brown came exactly over the centre of the picture. It was Madox Brown’s practice to begin a painting by putting in the eyes of the central figure. This, he considered, gave him the requisite strength of tone that would be applied to the whole canvas. And indeed I believe that, once he had painted in those eyes, he never in any picture altered them, however much he might alter the picture itself. He used them as it were to work up to. Having painted in these eyes, he would begin at the top left-hand corner of the canvas, and would go on painting downward in a nearly straight line until the picture was finished. He would, of course, have made a great number of studies before commencing the picture itself. Usually there was an exceedingly minute and conscientious pencil-drawing, then a large charcoal cartoon, and after that, for the sake of the color scheme, a version in water-color, in pastels, and generally one in oil. In the case of the Manchester frescoes, almost every one was preceded by a small version painted in oils upon a panel, and this was the case with the large Wycliffe. On this, the last evening of his life, Madox Brown pointed with his brush to the “X” of his name. Below it, on the left-hand side, the picture was completely filled in; on the right it was completely blank — a waste of slightly yellow canvas that gleamed in the dusky studio. He said: “You see I have got to that ‘X.’ I am glad of it, for half the picture is done and it feels as if I were going home.” Those, I think, were his last words. He laid his brushes upon his painting cabinet, scraped his palette of all mixed paints, laid his palette upon his brushes and his spectacles upon his palette. He took off the biretta that he always wore when he was painting — he must have worn such a biretta for upward of half a century — ever since he had been a French student. And so, having arrived at his end-of-the-day routine, which he had followed for innumerable years, he went upstairs to bed. He probably read a little of the Mystères de Paris, and died in his sleep, the picture with its inscriptions remaining downstairs, a little ironic, a little pathetic, and unfinished.