his portraits to Sir Joshua Reynolds in London in 1785, Sir Joshua took
him at once into favor and friendship; Sir Thomas Lawrence pronounced
the portrait of _The Macnab_ (the Highland Chieftain) the best
representation of a human being he had ever seen; and Sir David Wilkie
compared Raeburn to Velasquez. Writing to a brother artist from Madrid
in 1828 Sir David remarks:
“There is much resemblance between Velasquez and the works of some of
the chiefs of the English School; but of all Raeburn resembles him
most, of whose square touch in heads, hands, and accessories, I see
the very counterpart of the Spaniard.” Wilkie also wrote to Alexander
Nasmyth from Spain: “There are some heads by Velasquez in Madrid,
which, were they in Edinburgh, would be thought to be by Raeburn; and I
have seen a portrait of _Lord Glenlee_, I think, by Raeburn, which
would in Madrid be thought a near approach to Velasquez.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. C. Fisher_
THE HON. MRS. GRANT OF KILGRASTON
--_Sir Henry Raeburn_]
Dr. John Brown, one of Raeburn’s best friends, described his methods
as follows: “Like Sir Joshua, Raeburn placed his sitters on a high
platform, shortening the features and giving a pigeon-hole view
of the nostrils. The notion is that people should be painted as if
they were hanging like pictures on the wall, a Newgate notion, but it
was Sir Joshua’s. Raeburn and I have had good-humored disputes about
this. I appealed to Titian, Van Dyck, etc., for my authorities; they
always painted people as if they were sitting opposite to them, not
on a mountebank stage, or dangling on the wall. This great question
we leave to be decided by those who know best. His manner of taking
his likenesses explains the simplicity and power of his heads. Placing
his sitter on the pedestal, he looked at him from the other end of a
long room, gazing at him intently with his great dark eyes. Having
got the idea of the man, what of him carried farthest and ‘told,’ he
walked hastily up to the canvas, never looking at his sitter, and
put down what he had fixed in his inner eye; he then withdrew again,
took another gaze and recorded his results, and so on, making no
measurements.”
It is pleasant to catch a glimpse of a painter from another painter.
Farington writes in his _Diary_, Sept 21, 1801:
“I next went to Mr. Raeburn, the portrait-painter most esteemed here
who lives in York Place, New-Town. The house is excellent and built
by himself. His show room is lighted from the top. His painting-room
commands a view of the Forth and the distant mountains. Here I found
pictures of a much superior kind to those I saw at Mr. Nasmyth’s. Some
of Mr. Raeburn’s portraits have an uncommonly true appearance of nature
and are painted with much firmness, but there is great inequality in
his works. That which strikes the eye is a kind of Camera Oscura effect
and from those pictures which seem to be his best, I should conclude
he has looked very much at nature, reflected in a camera. Raeburn and
Nasmyth do not associate much with other artists and hold themselves
very high. Raeburn scarcely indeed with any of the profession. The
prices of Raeburn are 100 guineas for a whole length, 50 guineas half
length, 30 guineas for a kit-cat and 25 guineas for a three-quarter
portrait.”
QUINTON McADAM.
_Sir Henry Raeburn
(1756–1823)._
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
Raeburn was particularly happy in painting portraits of children, full
of naturalness and charm and character; and it will be remembered that
he chose for his contribution to the Royal Academy the lovely _Boy
with a Rabbit_.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
QUINTON McADAM
--_Sir Henry Raeburn_]
On a par with this masterpiece stands the portrait represented here
of _Quinton McAdam_, a little boy twelve years old, the only son of
Quinton McAdam of Craigengillan, Ayrshire, to whom Burns wrote an
“_Epistle_” addressed to Mr. McAdam of Craigengillan. Quinton McAdam
was born in Angus in 1805 and died in 1826 and this picture hung for
over a hundred years at Camlarg, the dower-house of Craigengillan until
it was purchased by the Agnews of London in 1926. The family still
possess Raeburn’s receipt for payment for the picture.
The portrait is painted on canvas (61 × 47 inches), life-size, and
represents the boy in light yellowish-brown trousers, dark jacket,
and white, ruffled shirt. The light shines beautifully on his satiny,
blonde hair. His eyes are violet blue.
MARY HORNECK.
(THE JESSAMY BRIDE.)
_John Hoppner
(1758–1810)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft._
This canvas (29 × 24½ inches), a portrait of _Mrs. Gwyn_, better
known as Mary Horneck, Oliver Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride,” remained
in the possession of the Gwyn family until it was sold at Christie’s
in 1889. Subsequently it passed into the Collection of Mr. Henry G.
Marquand and thence into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft in
Cincinnati.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft_
MARY HORNECK “THE JESSAMY BRIDE”
--_John Hoppner_]
The “Jessamy Bride” appears in a low-cut, white dress with blue sash
and a white cap with a peacock-blue bow and tied under her chin with a
narrow, black ribbon, or cord. A black spotted scarf is thrown around
her waist and draped over her arms. The complexion is rosy, the eyes
are brown, and the hair is powdered _à la mode_.
Mary Horneck was the daughter of Captain Kane William Horneck of the
Royal Engineers and Hannah Mangles, known in her day as “the Plymouth
Beauty.” Both were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Captain Horneck
died in 1755, leaving his widow in comfortable circumstances and
she immediately removed with her three children, Charles, Mary, and
Catherine, to London. About 1769 the Hornecks became acquainted with
Oliver Goldsmith, who had three years before that date written _The
Deserted Village_, which he dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, then
President of the Royal Academy. Goldsmith soon found appropriate names
for the Horneck children. Mary was the “Jessamy Bride”; Catherine was
“Little Comedy” and Charles was the “Captain in Lace.” They are all
three mentioned in Goldsmith’s acceptance to a dinner given by Dr.
Baker to the Hornecks and to which the Horneck girls sent an invitation
to Goldsmith in rhyme. Goldsmith’s reply was as follows:
“Your mandate I got,
You may all go to pot,
Had your senses been right
You’d have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,
I put off being shaved;
For I could not make bold
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,
Or to put on my duds;
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt
And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffman beside
And the Jessamy Bride,
And the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses too,
Little Comedy’s face,
And the Captain in Lace--
(By the bye, you may tell him
I have something to sell him)--
Tell each other to rue
Yon Devonshire crew
For sending so late
To one of my state.
But ’tis Reynold’s way
From Wisdom to stray
And Angelica’s[36] whim
To be frolick like him;
But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser
When both have been spoiled in to-day’s _Advertiser_?”
It was after Goldsmith’s death that Mary Horneck married Col. Gwyn of
the 16th Dragoons, who eventually became an equerry to the King. On his
appearance at Court, Fanny Burney noted that “Colonel Gwyn is reckoned
a remarkably handsome man and he is husband of the beautiful eldest
daughter of Mrs. Horneck.” Of Mary Horneck, now Mrs. Gwyn, Fanny Burney
wrote in 1788, she was “as beautiful as the first day I saw her; all
gentleness and softness;” and a year later, as “soft and pleasing and
still as beautiful as an angel.”
Mrs. Gwyn became a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte and died
in London in 1840, at the age of eighty-seven.
Catherine Horneck (“Little Comedy”) married in 1771 the artist, Henry
William Bunbury. Their son, Charles John Bunbury was painted at the age
of eight or nine, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
John Hoppner born in Whitechapel, London, of German parents, in
1758, was a follower of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He exhibited at the
Royal Academy and became a Court-Painter and a rival of Lawrence.
Hoppner married in 1782 the daughter of Mrs. Wright, the American
sculptress and maker of wax-works, who often sat to him as a model.
Hoppner exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1780; and,
through the patronage of the Prince of Wales, became a fashionable
portrait-painter. After the death of Gainsborough and Reynolds, Hoppner
and Lawrence commanded the field of art. Hoppner’s charming canvases,
which are very characteristic of the period, are gaining in vogue day
by day and bring very large prices.
ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY.
_Sir Thomas Lawrence
(1769–1830)._
_Collection of
Mr. J. P. Morgan._
Lawrence was only a young man of twenty-one when he sent to the Royal
Academy Exhibition of 1790 this portrait of _Miss Farren_, which was
catalogued as _The Portrait of an Actress_.
The picture, oils on canvas (80 × 57 inches), shows the graceful young
woman walking in a beautiful English park with a blue sky overhead,
and who has paused for a moment. She wears an ivory-white, satin cloak
trimmed with brown fur over a soft white muslin gown. Her gloved left
hand is holding a large muff on which is a blue bow.
The picture was very much criticized. On hearing many adverse opinions,
Miss Farren wrote to Lawrence:
“One says it is so thin in the figure that you might blow it away;
another that it looks broke off in the middle; in short, you must make
it a little _fatter_ at all events diminish the _bend_ you
are so attached to, even if it makes the picture look ill, for the
owner of it is quite distressed about it at present. I am shocked to
tease you and dare say you wish me and the portrait in the fire; but
as it was impossible to appease the cries of friends, I must beg you
to excuse me.” The owner Miss Farren refers to was most probably Lord
Derby.
At the death of Eliza, Countess of Derby, the portrait became the
property of her daughter, Mary Margaret, wife of Thomas, second Earl
of Wilton. From her descendant, Lord Wilton, the picture passed into
the Collection of Mr. Ludwig Neumann of Manchester, and thence into
possession of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, from whom it was inherited by his
son.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY
--_Sir Thomas Lawrence_]
This picture is very well known by the famous engraving by Bartolozzi,
published in 1792, and re-issued in colors in 1797. On the death of
Lady Derby in March, 1797, the Earl of Derby married, two months later,
the subject of this portrait, to whom he had long been attentive. In
the _Farington Diary_, under date of October 15, 1797, we read:
“Miss Farren (the actress afterwards Lady Derby) was bridesmaid to
Lady Charlotte Stanley (Lord Derby’s daughter). Lord Derby’s attachment
to Miss Farren is extraordinary. He sees her daily and always attends
the play when she performs. When she came to _Knowsley_ her mother
was with her, so careful she is of appearances.”
And again on May 20, 1797: “Lady Gage told Hoppner that when Lady Derby
(Miss Farren the actress recently married to Lord Derby) was presented,
the Queen _advanced to her_, which is a great compliment.”
Eliza Farren, born in 1759, was the daughter of George Farren, a
surgeon and an apothecary of Cork, who went on the stage and attained
a little success. His wife and daughters also followed him and,
consequently, Eliza was brought up in the theatre. She played juvenile
parts in Bath, acting with her family, and often sang between the acts.
At the age of fifteen she appeared in Liverpool as Rosetta in _Love
in a Village_ and soon afterwards as Lady Townly in _The Provoked
Husband_. In 1777 she made her London _début_ at the Haymarket as
Miss Hardcastle in _She Stoops to Conquer_ with great success and for
many years she was the favorite actress of the Haymarket and of Drury
Lane. When the charming Mrs. Abington left Drury Lane in 1782, Miss
Farren was accepted as her successor. Miss Farren’s specialty was the
fine and fashionable lady and her big part was Lady Townly. She was
greatly admired in the _rôles_ of Lady Fanciful in _The Provoked Wife_;
Berinthia in the _Trip to Scarborough_; Belinda in _All in the Wrong_;
Angelica in _Love for Love_; Elvira in _The Spanish Friar_ and also in
the Shakesperian parts of Juliet and Olivia in _Twelfth Night_.
Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol in 1769 and spent his early years
in Devizes, where his father was proprietor of the Black Bear Inn.
Very early the boy showed remarkable talent for drawing portraits in
crayons. He was so successful that he went to Bath, took a studio, and
began his remarkable career which reached its climax when he became the
foremost portrait-painter in England.
“In 1787 the wish of Lawrence’s heart was realized, and we find the
young painter, then eighteen, established in rooms in what was then
known as Leicester Fields--the present Leicester Square. He was
accompanied to London by his father and on the thirteenth of September
of that year he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. Armed
with a letter of introduction from Prince Hoare, one of Lawrence’s Bath
patrons, a member of the Dilettanti Society and Secretary for Foreign
Correspondence to the Royal Academy, Lawrence obtained an interview
with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and as a specimen of his ability and artistic
skill he took to the President an oil-portrait of himself, painted in
1786. He was kindly received by the courtly old Sir Joshua, who praised
his work and spoke most encouragingly to the young artist. “You have
been looking at the _Old Masters_, I see,” he said, “but my advice is
this: Study Nature! Study Nature!”
Three years later the young artist, who was extremely handsome and
“romantic” in appearance, exhibited his picture of _Miss Farren_
at the Royal Academy, which attracted much attention.
In 1791 Lawrence made a drawing of a much more beautiful subject,
_Emma, Lady Hamilton_, from which a print was engraved.
“Hoppner who was ten years older than Lawrence,” writes Lord Ronald
Sutherland Gower, “had been for some time the favorite painter of
George, Prince of Wales, with the result that half the smart ladies of
the town sat to him. But the King, who allowed the Queen’s and Princess
Amelia’s portraits to be painted by Lawrence, became so much interested
in him, that, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in February, 1792,
he decided that the young painter, then not twenty-three years of age
and not yet a full member of the Academy, should be appointed to the
post of Painter-in-Ordinary, an office that had been filled by the late
President. ‘Never perhaps, in the country,’ writes Redgrave, in his
account of Lawrence, ‘had a man so young, so uneducated, so untried
in his art, advanced as it were _per saltum_ to the honors and
emoluments of the profession.’ The King’s favorite painter was the
American, Benjamin West, Sir Joshua’s successor in the Presidential
Chair, and Windsor was filled with his historical pictures, which,
although once valuable, would not now fetch even a modest sum if they
were sold at Christie’s.”
About 1790 Lawrence removed to Old Bond Street, installing himself in
a handsome apartment with his friend, Farington, as his secretary.
Lawrence tried to paint imaginary and historical pictures, but it soon
was evident that portraiture was his forte. The death of Opie in 1807
and of Hoppner in 1810, left him without a rival. On the death of
Benjamin West in 1820, Lawrence was unanimously elected President of
the Royal Academy. Fuseli, a little dissatisfied, exclaimed: “Well!
well! since they must have a face-painter to reign over them, let them
take Lawrence; he can at least paint eyes!” The period between 1820 and
1830 (when Lawrence died) is practically a “Lawrence Age.” Sir Thomas
painted everybody of note from George IV and the Duke of Wellington
to fashionable ladies of no particular distinction save their wealth.
His full-length portrait of George IV in his Coronation robes was so
frequently copied and given by the King to his friends that nearly
every Royal Collection in Europe can show a replica.
The spirit of the age was certainly expressed in Lawrence’s portraits.
We have only to look at such portraits as the _Countess of Blessington_
(Wallace Gallery), _Lady Peel_ (Frick Collection), _Lady Dover and
her Son_, and _La Duchesse de Berri_ to realize how true this is.
These ladies look as if they had stepped from the pages of Akermann’s
_Repository_.
It is always interesting to learn what an artist has to say about his
own work. To Mrs. Jameson, Lawrence wrote the following:
“My thoughts have almost invariably been devoted to Sir Joshua, and,
generally, to the Italian School--Raphael, Correggio, Titian, even
Parmigiano. An admirer of the very finest works of Van Dyck, and
acknowledging the consistent ability of his pencil, I have been less
his votary than, perhaps, hundreds since his time, of distinguished
taste and talent (Gainsborough, for instance), to whose judgment in
other cases I should justly bend. Rubens has been infinitely more the
object of my admiration; but, as you know, presents very little as
example for portrait-painting.
“Sir Joshua continues to be more and more my delight and my surprise.
Rembrandt has another and still higher place in my affection. In my
men, then, I have thought of both, and of Titian and of Raphael, as
the subjects approached their style. In women, of Sir Joshua, Raphael,
Parmigiano, and Correggio. In children, of Sir Joshua and the two
latter. In my portraits of Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons, of the highest
Italian School.”
In 1825 the King of France gave Lawrence the Cross of the _Legion
d’honneur_. Lawrence died in 1830, unmarried, a fashionable “man
about town,” courted, admired, and not unlike Lord Byron, in some
respects. Lord Gower says:
“That his fame underwent a marked decline during the half-century after
his death in this country cannot be doubted; but within the last few
years a reaction has set in, which is tending to place him again in the
forefront of our greatest portrait-painters.
“Both as a man and as an artist Lawrence was impressionable, and in
his work was entirely influenced by the spirit of his period, a period
of affectation that frequently bordered upon vulgarity. If Lawrence’s
art in portraiture had been genius instead of talent of the highest
order, he would have created a public taste instead of slavishly
following that set by the Court or Society of his day. As it was, his
work was the ultimate expression of the curtain and column school of
portraiture, and his success set a fashion that was followed for years
afterwards by innumerable portrait-painters. These, in imitating the
style, missed the spirit and perception by which Lawrence, trammelled
as he was by the absurdities of dress and conventionality of attitude
and surroundings, was enabled to place upon his canvases some
suggestion of the actual identity of his sitters. And it was not until
the advent of George Frederick Watts and the late Sir John Everett
Millais that the effects of the imitation of the obvious points of
Lawrence’s style finally disappeared from English portraiture.
“Lawrence’s chief defect was that he turned his art too much into a
trade; he would have attained a far higher position had he contented
himself with painting half the people he did, and his name would have
stood on a higher pinnacle in the Temple of Fame. During the last
twenty years of his life he painted but little more, as a rule, than
the face of his sitter, the rest of the picture being completed by
his pupils; or rather his assistants. This practice has, of course,
lessened the value of his portraits.
“These are grave failings; but on the other side, his great merits are
incontestable and weigh the scale in his favor. Where, except among the
very greatest of those whose fame chiefly rests on their excellence in
the art of portrait-painting--such giants as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt,
Velasquez, and Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Gainsborough--can finer work be
shown them than in such astonishing likenesses as those of Lawrence
when at his best; and the master must be judged by his master-works.
His style, when once he had adopted it, had the great merit of being
a style of its own, of much refinement and excellence in drawing;
although his work was, perhaps, too smooth in technique and somewhat
affected in feeling. His paintings have lasted, whereas those of many
of his contemporaries are mere wrecks and shadows of their former
selves; for he attempted no experiments in glazings and pigments, as
was Sir Joshua’s wont, and his pictures are, as a rule, as fresh as
when they were painted.
“I believe it only fair to place him immediately beneath our
three greatest portrait-painters,--that immortal trio, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, and Romney: at a time when Hoppner, Opie, and Raeburn
were all working, this is high praise.”
PINKIE.
_Sir Thomas Lawrence
(1769–1830)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
This radiant portrait is generally considered to be Lawrence’s
masterpiece. How fresh, how sweet, how breezy it is! “Pinkie” stands
on a high hill with a beautiful low-lying landscape of wooded hills
spreading out and undulating towards the distant horizon. The sky is
dappled with swiftly moving clouds and the morning breeze is blowing
pretty freshly, for Pinkie’s light gown is rippling with it and the
strings of her bonnet are fluttering and flapping rather violently.
These ribbons are pink, matching the sash which holds the diaphanous,
white gown in place. Pinkie’s eyes are brown, large, and lustrous and
her brown hair is touzled by the wind; but she looks at us so sweetly
and brightly that we love her at first sight. How daintily her little
slippered foot is planted on the flower-sprinkled turf! Her airy,
youthful, billowy figure suggests the idea of Spring beneath whose
every footstep flowers instantly appear in full bloom.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
PINKIE
--_Sir Thomas Lawrence_]
How far she has come! Do we not see her home in the distance on the
right, encircled by a crescent of leafy trees and with a wide driveway
through the clearing?
“Pinkie’s” name was Sarah Moulton-Barrett, and she was the only
daughter of Charles Moulton, Esq., and his wife Elizabeth Barrett
Moulton. Pinkie was born March 22, 1783, and the lovely child died at
the age of twelve, the year in which this portrait was painted. It is
interesting to note that Pinkie was the aunt of the famous poet, Mrs.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was the daughter of Pinkie’s brother,
Edward Moulton-Barrett of Coxhoe Hall, Durham, and Hope End, Hereford.
The portrait, oils on canvas (57½ × 39¾ inches), was painted in 1795
and was formerly in the Collection of Octavius Moulton-Barrett, Esq.,
Westover, Calbourne, Isle of Wight, and thence it passed to the Right
Hon. Lord Michelham, K. C. V. O., London. A modern critic rapturously
expresses what every one feels on looking at this enchanting picture:
“If ever canvas was instinct with life, this picture lives and
breathes. If ever the vehicle of oil paint spread on canvas has caught
the wind as it blows, the light that dances in a mischievous child’s
eyes, the breath of life and joy in living, Lawrence, in this picture,
achieved the miracle. You feel, as you look at it, that you could read
small print by its light in the dead of night. The color of it is the
color of sea-downs on a May morning; the joy of it is of the joy of the
first warm day of Spring. And in the little girl’s graceful figure are
comprised whatever things are lovely, whatever things are pure, to the
minds of men.”
INDEX
[Titles of Paintings in this book appear in italics.]
Abbey, mediæval, 170
Abel, Charles Frederick, 361
Act of Supremacy, 244
Adoration of the Kings (Gentile da Fabriano), 74, 77
Adoration of the Lamb (Van Eycks), 157, 168
_Adoration of the Magi_ (Benvenuto di Giovanni), 12–16
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli), 58
Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico), 37
Adoration of the Magi (Memling), 174
_Adoration of the Shepherds_ (Mantegna), 104
Adoration of the Virgin (Lippi), 46
Age of Innocence (Reynolds), 340
Agnolo Gaddi, 18