Walter Besant. John Brooking’s Studio by A. Forestier.
LUKE ANGUISH, who is anxious to be a painter, learns much of his art from John Brooking, a marine artist. “I went to London and visited him one day at his lodging. He had a single room at the top of a house in a court close to the Fields, where his friend, the dealer, had his shop; it was a good-sited room with a large window looking north. This was his painting-room, and his living-room, bed-room and kitchen-all in one. Never was a room so littered and untidy and dirty. But John Brooking cared nothing for dirt.
He worked there all day long, so long as the light lasted, or he made sketches and studies by the riverside, which he afterwards made into finished pictures in this simple studio, where he stood at his easel, never tired, a limited night-cap on his head, and in his shirt-sleeves, and a tobacco-pipe, broken short off, between his lips.
Walter Besant’s “The World Went Very Well Then.” A. Forestier, Artist.
Source: Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama by Rev. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, 1892. A revised American edition of the readers handbook. Edited by Marion Harland.
Sir Walter Besant (1836-1901) was an English social reformer, freemason and writer who drew attention mainly on the urban mass poverty. In addition to essays and historical essays he wrote numerous novels. His brother Frank was married to Annie Besant (Annie Besant 1847-1933 was a British Theosophy, freethinker, Freemason, women’s rights activist, journalist, writer and politician. She was also the first female student at the University of London, which holds a Bachelor of Science.)
