Hogarth displayed no little vanity regarding his pretensions as a
portrait-painter. One day, when dining at Dr. Cheselden’s, he was told
that John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, had asserted in
Dick’s coffee-house, that Greene was as eminent in composition as
Handel. “That fellow, Freke,” cried Hogarth, “is always shooting his
bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music, Greene
only a light Florimel-kind of composer.” “Ay, but,” said the other,
“Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyke.” “There
he was in the right,” quoth Hogarth; “and so I am, give me but my time,
and let me choose my subject.”
Writing of himself, Hogarth says:--“The portrait which I painted with
most pleasure, and in which I particularly wished to excel, was that of
Captain Coram, for the Foundling Hospital;” and he adds, in allusion to
his detraction as a portrait-painter, “If I am so wretched an artist as
my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of
the first I painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty
years’ competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the
place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all
their talents to vie with it.”