It is clear that Mr. Hoppner, 'portrait-painter to the Prince of Wales,'
had no mean opponent in Mr. Lawrence, 'portrait-painter in ordinary to
His Majesty.'
For a time the rivalry was continued in a spirit of much moderation. The
painters were calm and forbearing, and scrupulously courteous to each
other. Lawrence was too gentle and polite ever to breathe a word against
his antagonist, if, indeed, he did not respect his talents too highly to
disparage them. Perhaps he was conscious that victory would be his in
the end; as Hoppner might also have a presentiment that he was to be
defeated. He was of a quick temper; was a husband and a father; entirely
dependent on his own exertions, though he could earn five thousand a
year easily when fully employed. But certainly the innkeeper's son was
stealing away his sitters: even his good friends the Whigs. He chafed
under this. He began to speak out. He denounced Lawrence's prudent
abstinence from all political feeling as downright hypocrisy. He thought
it cowardice "to side with neither faction, and be ready and willing to
paint the faces of both." And then he commenced to talk disrespectfully
of his rival's art. He claimed for his own portraits greater purity of
look and style. 'The ladies of Lawrence,' he said, 'show a gaudy
dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as
professional chastity.' This was purposed to be a terrible blow to
Lawrence. Of course there was plenty of repetition of the remark, and
people laughed over it a good deal. But in the end it injured Hoppner
rather than Lawrence. The world began to wonder how it was that the
painter to the purest court in Europe should depict the demure and
reputable ladies of St. James's with such glittering eyes and carmine
lips--a _soupçon_ of wantonness in their glances, and a rather needless
undraping of their beautiful shoulders; while the painter to the Prince
was bestowing on the giddy angels of Carlton House a decency that was
within a little of dull, a simplicity that was almost sombreness, a
purity that was prudery! The beauties of George III.'s court were not
displeased to be pictorially credited with a levity they did not dare to
live up or down to; and the ladies of the Prince's court, too honest to
assume a virtue they had not, now hastened to be represented by an
artist who appeared so admirably to comprehend their allurements. Poor
Mr. Hoppner was deserted by the Whig ladies; he had only now the Whig
lords to paint: unless he took up with landscape art, for which he had
decided talent, as many of the backgrounds to his pictures demonstrate.
He grew peevish and irritable. He took to abusing the old masters, and
cried out at the neglect of living men. Examining a modern work, he
would say: 'Ay, it's a noble picture, but it has one damning
defect--it's a thing of _to-day._ Prove it to be but two hundred years
old, and from the brush of a famous man, and here's two thousand guineas
for it.' Northcote tells of him: 'I once went with him to the hustings,
to vote for Home Tooke, and when they asked me what I was, I said, "A
painter." At this Hoppner was very mad all the way home, and said I
should have called myself "a portrait-painter." I replied that the world
had no time to trouble their heads about such distinctions.'
Hoppner now produced but few pictures, and these met with small success.
He looked thin and haggard, talked incoherently, gave way to bitter
repinings and despondency. He resented and misinterpreted, as has been
shown, Lawrence's inquiries as to his health. Certainly there is every
appearance of feeling in Lawrence's letter, where he writes to a friend,
'You will be sorry to hear it. My most powerful competitor, he whom only
to my friends I have acknowledged as my rival, is, I fear, sinking to
the grave. I mean, of course, Hoppner. He was always afflicted with
bilious and liver complaints (and to these must be greatly attributed
the irritation of his mind), and now they have ended in a confirmed
dropsy. But though I think he cannot recover, I do not wish that his
last illness should be so reported by me. You will believe that I can
sincerely feel the loss of a brother-artist from whose works I have
often gained instruction, and who has gone by my side in the race these
eighteen years.' Hoppner died on the 23d January 1810, in the
fifty-first year of his age. To quote Lawrence's letters again: 'The
death of Hoppner leaves me, it is true, without a rival, and this has
been acknowledged to me by the ablest of my present competitors; but I
already find one small misfortune attending it--namely, that I have no
sharer in the watchful jealousy, I will not say hatred, that follows the
situation.' A son of Hoppner's was consul at Venice, and a friend of
Lord Byron's in 1819.
'Hoppner,' says Haydon, 'was a man of fine mind, great nobleness of
heart, and an exquisite taste for music; but he had not strength for
originality. He imitated Gainsborough for landscape, and Reynolds for
portraits.' He held Northcote, Sir Joshua's pupil, however, in great
aversion. 'I can fancy a man fond of his art who painted like Reynolds,'
Hoppner would say; 'but how a man can be fond of art who paints like
that fellow Northcote, Heaven only knows!' There was no love lost
between them. 'As to that poor man-milliner of a painter Hoppner,' said
Northcote, 'I hate him, sir, I ha-a-ate him!'
According to Haydon, he was bilious from hard work at portraits and the
harass of fashionable life. And his post of portrait-painter to the
Prince had its trials. The Carlton House porter had been ordered to get
the railings fresh painted. In his ignorance the man went to Hoppner to
request his attention to the matter. Wasn't he the Prince's painter?
Hoppner was furious!