A general, indeed almost universal, interest has been evinced for the
loss of the late Madame Soyer, by reason of her celebrity as an artist,
whose close adherence to nature procured for her in France (from her
pictures which were exhibited in the Louvre in Paris) the famed name of
the English Murillo. Her paintings evinced a great partiality for the
same subject, and a like boldness of effect and sentiment were
introduced in all her compositions, though never having copied or tried
to imitate this celebrated master.[30] The amiable character of a life
but too short, induces me to give an engraving from a portrait of
herself, the finished touches of which were put upon the canvas but a
few days previous to her lamented decease; her career was one, while it
lasted, of great success, and must, had it not been so fatally brought
to a close, have resulted in the highest fame; as it was, crowned heads
of many nations paid homage at the shrine of her talents, and the
cultivated sensibility of the aristocracy of this and other civilized
nations has at once appreciated her artistic excellences by the
spontaneous expression of admiration upon the examination of her works.
I feel, and am proud in the possession of such an emotion, most
strongly--I trust not too much so,--upon this sensitive point. Such
reasons, together with the fact that Madame Soyer being an English
woman, are amongst my motives for giving here a short biography of her
private and industrious life, which, although it appeared in nearly
every journal of interest at the period of her unexpected death, will
yet, I am assured, possess claims upon the sympathy of her countrymen
and women.
In the fullness of my own individual regard for her memory and of her
rare gifts, and with a view to perpetuate a memorial of her
extraordinary genius, I have for some while been adding to my
collection, and at any expense, all those of her paintings which may
come within my reach.
The last purchase I made was No. 43 in the catalogue, a Buy-a-Broom Girl
and Boy, from the celebrated Saltmarsh collection; this, and many of her
other works are to be met with in the galleries of men of the greatest
taste and judgment.