THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY GAINSBOROUGH TO BE PUBLISHED SHORTLY Uniform with this Volume SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS First President of the Royal Academy By SIR WALTER ARMSTRONG London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Royal Aciideiiiy GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS PLACE IN ENGLISH ART BY SIR WALTER ARMSTRONG WITH FORTY-EIGHT PLATES [POPULAR EDITION] London : WILLIAM HEINEMANN New York: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MDCCCCIV All rights reserved The J. PA'!'. n-T-Y A\USEUM CONTENTS PAGE Introduction i CHAP. I. English Art and the Precursors of Gainsborough 19 II. The "East Neuk " of Suffolk 43 III. Gainsborough's Family, Birth and Early Years — His Masters — Gravelot — Hayman .... 53 IV. Return to Sudbury — Early Landscapes — Marriage — Ipswich 80 V. Bath — Gainsborough's Friends there — Garrick — Henderson — Jackson of Exeter — His Sitters — The Duke of Argyll — The Ligoniers . . .110 VI. Pictures Painted at Bath 150 VII. London in 1774 — Gainsborough's Prospects there — His Rivals — The Promise of the Royal Academy — The Countenance of the King — Pictures BETWEEN 1774 and I783 — GaINSBOROUGH AND Reynolds 183 VIII. Last Years in London — Death 211 IX. Gainsborough's Art 225 ILLUSTRATIONS PHOTOGRAVURES Thomas Gainsborough Landscape with Cattle (about 1775) Queen Charlotte (1782-4) . Queen Charlotte (1784-6) . Lady Mulgrave .... The Misses Linley (Mrs. Sheri- dan and Mrs. Tickell) . The " Eldest Princesses " (1786) George Canning as a Boy . Royal Academy . . Frontispiece To face page Messrs. Laurie & Co. . . 16 South Kensington Museum . . 44 Messrs. Laurie & Co. . . 80 National Gallery . . .110 Dulwich Gallery South Kensington Museum Marquess of Clanricarde , 134 182 210 HALF-TONE The Morning Walk (Squire Hallett and his wife) . Portraits in Pencil (1743-4) Admiral Hawkins (1760 ?) Landscape (? 1750-2) . General Honywood . Eliza and Thomas Linley (1768) Landscape (? 1761) . David Garrick . . , . The Painter's Daughters (1758) Lord Archibald Hamilton (1782) The Cottage Door (1772) . Lady Sheffield . . . . The Blue Boy (? 1770) The Lord Rothschild . National Gallery^ Ireland F. Fleischmann, Esq. National Gallery, Ireland Messrs. Agnew & Son The Lord Sackville Mrs. Joseph F. Fleischmann, Esq. South Kensington Museum Baron F. de Rothschild Duke of Westminster, K.G Baron F. de Rothschild Duke of Westminster, K.G vii 12 ao 24 28 33 36 48 52 56 60 64 ILLUSTRATIONS To face page Cornard Wood (1752-4) . . National Gallery ... 72 Richard Brinsley Sheridan (? 1786) Sir Robert Peel, Bart. . . 78 Mrs. Siddons .... National Gallery ... 84 Hon. Mrs. Graham . . . National Gallery, Scotland . 90 Mrs. Robinson .... Wallace Gallery ... 96 Mr. Pearce F. Fleischmanu, Esq. . . 100 H.R.H. Frederick, Duke of York Messrs. A gnew & Sons . . 104 Landscape Sir Charles Darling . . . 118 The Earl of Romney and his sisters, " Marsham Family " . The Lord Rothschild . . . 124 William Pitt .... Messrs. Agnew & Sons . . 130 The Pink Boy . . . Baron F. de Rothschild . . 146 James Plampin .... Mrs. T. Wallis .... 152 Mrs. Mears .... Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. . 158 Mrs. Sheridan .... The Lord Rothschild . . . 164 Gainsborough Dupont . . Sir Edgar Vincent, K.C.M.G. . 170 Mrs. Lowndes-Stone Norton . Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. . 176 The Watering Place (1775) . National Gallery . . . 188 The Mall Sir AAgernon Neeld, Bart. . . 194 Diana and her Nymphs surprised by Actason (unfinished) . Windsor Castle .... 200 David Garrick, Esq. (1768) . Late D. R. Blaine, Esq. . . 206 Mrs. John Douglas (? 1786) . Baron F. de Rothschild . . 216 Mrs. Beaufoy .... Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. . 222 Study for a Portrait (1760) . /. P. Heseltine, Esq. . . 228 Study for a Landscape (1765) . „ „ „ • . 234 Study for a Portrait (? Duchess of Devonshire) 1780 . . George Salting, Esq. . . 240 Study for the Portrait of Lady Clarges British Museum . . . 246 Study for a Portrait . . „ „ ... 252 VUl INTRODUCTION HE pages of a biography, even when the subject is a painter, are scarcely, perhaps, the right place for discussing the nature of art. I am tempted, nevertheless, to hazard such a discus- sion, partly because it seems convenient to confess one's faith, partly because some, at least, of the following conclusions have not hitherto been formulated, so far as I know. There is, of course, a general agreement as to the nature of the Fine Arts among those who, by producing works of art, have given proof to the world that they have a right to an opinion. But unfortunately for a layman in search of truth, artists, as a rule, have neither the time nor the inclination, nor always the capacity, to explain their ideas in any material but that in which they work. " I think in my material," Jacob Maris used to say. To this rule we can, of course, quote a few notable exceptions. Jonathan Richardson, as long ago as 17 1 9, published "The Connoisseur, an Essay on the whole Art of Criticism as it applies to Painting," in which a great deal of truth is obscured by a want of logic. In 1753 Hogarth published his famous *' Analysis of Beauty," in which again we catch glimpses of a sound theory struggling up through inconsequent reasoning and inefficient writing. Then we have the famous discourses I A INTRODUCTION of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but these excite suspicion by the evident dislocation between the president's ideas and his practice, as he stood before his easel. Sir Joshua's example has been followed by other artists who have discoursed. They have devoted their analytical skill not to discover- ing the true grounds of their aesthetic preferences, but to the explanation and justification of works of art from historical, religious, and other comparatively irrelevant points of view. In short, a capacity to create has rarely, if ever, gone hand in hand with a trained gift of analysis. The artist's bent is synthetic, and in philosophical dis- cussions he seldom shows any sufficient faculty for disentangling the essential from the accidental, or, at least, for conveying the result to the outside world. To this even Leonardo was no exception. His guesses at the nature of art show little of the inductive genius of his scientific speculations. Every one who has been much in studios understands that no painter would attempt to help a brother artist by suggestions founded on the notions to which he gaily resorts when he takes up a pen or makes a speech. The true painter selects a subject for the chance it gives of a coherent and effective arrangement of line, colour, and illumination, that is for an arrangement which will produce a significant unity. The question to be answered before a definition of art can be arrived at is, What is the nature of this significant unity ? How is it that one combination of aesthetic elements — of reds, blues, and yellows, of curves and straight lines, of lights, shadows, and reflexes, of sounds, of movements, of flavours — leads to an organic whole, while another does not ? To this question few who formulate systems of aesthetics attempt an answer at all. When they do, they seldom travel beyond the comparatively unimportant question of simple harmony. The science of harmony is INTRODUCTION not music, neither is it painting nor architecture. Its function is rather to avoid the infliction of discomfort on our senses than to convey to the brain a positive and significant sensuous idea. The production of harmony can be taught. Granted an ear or an eye, and you can teach any one to combine given notes, either of sound or colour, in such a way that concord shall result. But you cannot put into your scholars, from outside, the power to vivify their harmonies with an organic pictorial or musical idea, an idea capable of exciting the mind and delighting the senses to which it appeals. Philosophy has too often sought for the root of aesthetic pleasure in the trained intellect, and described it as an intellectual appreciation of the relations between symbols and acquired ideas. The notion that aesthetic enjoyment depends mainly on the primitive constitution of man, on man as a superbly organised animal, rather than as a receptacle for acquired notions, and that it works through a positive and a priori relation between man's senses and the minutest detail of the phenomena which appeal to them, is comparatively new. The chief cause of the long delay in perceiving the real nature of art is simple enough. The discussion had been left to those who had never learnt to see a work of art, as art, at all. They saw its literary, its dramatic, its imitative qualities, but they were quite unaware that a curve can be as expressive as a gesture. Even Lessing, with all his acuteness, could analyse a famous creation without even alluding to the particular quality upon which its aesthetic unity depends. None of the philo- sophers, from Aristotle down to Kant, could have pointed out the aesthetic difference between Palma Vecchio and Palma Gi ovine, between Rubens and De Grayer, between Metsu and Van der Werff, between Velazquez and Murillo, between Stevens and Thorwaldsen, between 3 INTRODUCTION Delacroix and Delaroche, between, in short, any instance of real art on the one hand and its laborious imitation on the other. They have almost invariably considered the objective of the plastic arts to be representation, and their highest form to be idealisation, the imaginative improvement of the objects represented. Their analysis, at its best, has therefore been directed to the comprehen- sion of objective beauty rather than of art. A certain small group of writers is, indeed, uncomfortably conscious that the very materials of art have intrinsic powers of expression, powers to convey ideas, or emotions, without the help of any sort of imitation ; but they seem to find the nature of these powers so elusive that they shrink from the task of tracing them back to their source. Francis Hutcheson, who may fairly be called the pioneer of modern assthetical philosophy, comes so near the truth that, could he have supplemented his gifts with the experience of an artist and a glimpse of the doctrine of evolution, he might, like Aristotle, have both founded a branch of knowledge and carried it to something Hke finality.^ A vast literature has grown up round the subject since the days of Hutcheson, but for the most part it has done little but shift the difficulties. The vital fact in the whole question escapes the thinker who has not trained himself in art, as it escapes those who have, like Ruskin, concentrated their interest on the duties, rather than the nature, of art.f Before we can attempt a definition we must realise * Hutcheson's " Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue" was published in 1725. It was translated into both French and German. t Ruskin laboured under the additional disadvantage of having com- mitted himself to principles at an age when no man has excelled either in the practice or the comprehension of the formative arts. 4 THE MORNING WALK (SQUIRE HALLETT AND HIS WIFE) The Lord Rothschild INTRODUCTION that fine art is a monopoly of man. Art is the primitive human language, developed and enriched by those tenacious races and individuals in whom the necessary machinery has not been obliterated by disuse. Most of us are conscious of a subtle harmonising quality which runs through every outcome of human genius, creating a close kinship between letters, painting, music, sculpture, architecture, acting, dancing, even cooking. The phrase Art and Letters is, of course, illogical. The one term is contained in the other. Literature is simply the most universal branch of art, the most universal because it brings the largest number of faculties into play both in its creators and in those to whom it appeals. It power- fully stimulates the imagination, directs it, and yet leaves it free, which can be said of no other art in the same degree. Like the formative arts, it includes elements which are scientific rather than artistic, depending for their comprehension on knowledge rather than on sense, but the proportions are much the same in all. If we insist on confining the term art to its plastic manifestations, then, indeed, a definition becomes im- possible. A definition must include all that is and exclude all that is not art. Otherwise it is merely the setting up of an arbitrary boundary. What we have to discover is an element that runs through all creative activities and justifies the distinction so often made between a book, or a dress, or a dinner, which is a work of art and one which is not. Coleridge defined poetry as the best words in the best order, and the phrase contains within it all the elements for the definition we seek. What are the best words ? Are they not the words which have the fullest intrinsic connection with the idea they denote ? What is the best order ^ Is it not the order which brings the flow, the sonority, the pulsation of 5 INTRODUCTION verse into essential harmony with the poet's thought ? Here, of course, the important word is essential, and you may ask is there such a thing as an essential harmony between ideas and those symbols by which they are con- veyed from one brain to another. It is now at last beginning to be acknowledged that there is, and that the only possible definition of art must be founded on its recognition. It is strange that with the example of music before it, the world did not long ago come to true con- clusions. To a certain extent the creations of the musician can be analysed and the pleasure they give accounted for, but the most highly trained musician without the inner gift of artistic creation will only, at his best, avoid an outrage to our ears. The science of music goes no farther than that of language, or painting, or modelling. A man may have mastered all these as sciences and yet be unable to hold our attention for five minutes by their use. The vivifying element is art, and that element is always essentially the same in spite of the variety of its appli- cation. Much speculation about the nature of art has been vitiated at its source by endeavours to discover some absolute constituent of beauty. If Hogarth had been content 'to think of beauty as a relative and not as an absolute quality he would never have entangled himself in the absurdity of his *' line of beauty or grace." Many writers since his time, misled by the same unfruitful idea, have failed to distinguish the point at which a dis- cussion of art should part company with one of beautv. The two things have only to do with one another in that they both spring from one cause, namely, the a priori relation between man and every fact of external nature appreciable by his senses, which existed through those long wastes of ages which elapsed before man became man 6 INTRODUCTION as we know him. Art, in short, seems to be the use, for subjective expression, of a power which displays itself objectively in what we call beauty. Every human being who really understands a work of art knows that the materials of the artist afford intrinsic facilities for expression, entirely apart from any imita- tive or conventional use to which they may be put. Speaking broadly, artistic materials include everything by which the senses may be directly touched — sights, sounds, flavours, odours, textures. In each of these and in their combinations lie internal possibilities of significance which established themselves, by action and reaction, between man and his conditions, during the slow evolution of the human brain. Relatively to man's mind these vehicles of expression are a priori, for their elaboration was complete before he became a consciously expressing animal at all. For us the complexities of life and the embarrassments of transferred experience so heavily overlie inherited know- ledge, and the necessity for those unerring senses with which primeval man completed his education is so far superseded, that a systematic training is now required before we can either use or understand the ancient symbols. But deep down in most of us the power still exists, and only so far as we draw upon it can we either create or comprehend a work of art. The original, intrinsic, non-conventional factors in a picture are design, colour, chiaroscuro, and handling. By design I do not mean correctness or even objective significance of draughtsmanship, but the organisation into unity of the linear elements in the conception. Correct, or even pregnant, drawing, is not art, but science. The human form may be rendered in line with vivacity and the most scrupulous veracity, and yet leave our aesthetic emotions entirely untouched. Art exists only when the 7 INTRODUCTION figure, sufficiently drawn, is induced by its movement, lighting, colour, and manipulation to contribute to the force and coherence with which the artist expresses his own emotions. Colour, chiaroscuro, and handling are freer dialects than design ; their grammar is less rigid, the demand for illusion not so liable to be tyrannically used or erected into a test. The objects a painter represents are only vehicles for his aesthetic appeal. Having chosen them, he is obliged to control his rendering with regard for fact, otherwise he would so disturb the spectator that the condition of mind required for aesthetic enjoyment would never be reached. But mere correctness of imitation holds no higher place in a picture than grammar does in a poem. It is an antecedent condition to complete enjoyment on the part of audience or spectator, but no amount of it will constitute art. The demand for accurate representa- tion is of course a greater burden on the formative artist than that for grammar on the poet, but this is no justifica- tion for setting it in the place of art. Poetry is the most artistic because the freest form of literature. Measure is not a restriction, but a privilege. It is upon the prose writer that we place a certain disability when we deny him more than a narrow use of one of the inherent qualities of his material. Poetry may, in fact, be defined as the employment of language in all its powers, prose as its use with one power tabooed. And the distinction throws light on the nature of Art, for the restraint under which prose labours, in being forbidden the full use of the more intrinsic powers of language, has led inevitably to its employment for less sensuous and imaginative purposes than poetry. Ignorance makes demands on the painter which lead to a similar contraction of his sphere. The outcry for elaborate finish, which we hear so often, 8 INTRODUCTION is nothing more than a request to throw away one of the sharpest arrows in the painter's quiver. " Handling," as we see it in its great exponents — Rembrandt, Hals, Velazquez, Gainsborough — sums up and gives point to all other pictorial qualities. Suppress it, and many of the most troubling of pictures would become merely dull.* As an artistic instrument language is resolvable into the quality and succession of naturally significant sounds, and its artistic use lies in the organisation of those elements into the actively coherent support of an idea suitable for expression in such a vehicle. This notion of an intrinsic significance in their elements will alone explain the congruity of the arts, and afford a basis for a definition which shall embrace all forms of art, from the decoration on a Polynesian canoe to a Greek tragedy. Why is '* Othello " the aesthetic masterpiece of Shakespeare ? Is it not simply because the quality of its diction, the sequence, mass, and colour of its scenes, the very pace at which the action moves, are as expressive of the passion of jealousy as the funeral march of Chopin is of the passion of regret ? All art is built up on these relations. To the complete man, nothing perceptible by his senses is dumb. Every curve and movement of our fellow creatures, every look and gesture, is eloquent of their nature and their mood. And so it is with the phenomena of the external world. Every detail of what we see and feel has its meaning — its simple, original value for ourselves — and art lies in the ever-new and personal combination of these meanings into new creations. * Of this an illustration is afforded by the famous Hals in the Wallace Collection, To the beginner in art the Laughing Cavalier seems a marvel. For the connoisseur familiar with the master's best works, its dry, small, and wiry touch would exclude it from the catalogue of his finer things were it not for its happy design. 9 INTRODUCTION As to the origin of the significance, for man, of every stroke upon his senses, that must be sought in the mutual relations between his primitive self and nature. In the long process of evolution, or variation, the organism which is now become man was continually selecting, each act of selection being at once the outcome and the cause of a preference. To this primeval being nature was only known as a minister to sense, and, down to her minutest phenomena, she must have teemed with hints of her value. Man, on the other hand, must have had an internal guide to what was good for himself, and that guide can only have been a reaction ending in a desire for more of what had already gone to the build- ing up of his own special organism. Man and external nature elaborated a language between them, a language at once more universal than any which could be reached by artifice, and definite enough for any purpose to which primitive man could put it. The senses of our primeval ancestor had a capacity of which we — with our load of conventions — can form but a dim conception. For him every change in form, tone or colour had an immediate practical significance. As an animal he was peculiarly destitute of means of defence and offence. Everything necessary for the particular development at which he has now arrived had to have its appeal to his senses, every- thing dangerous its warning. And this went on for age after age, until all the constituents of nature's phenomena took their places in his code, and became signals to control his conduct and ideas. And here we arrive at the point where a definition ot beauty comes in. Beauty has often been defined as fitness ; but obviously that is no real definition, for, although there might be some danger in saying that any beautiful thing is unfit, it is quite certain that many fit INTRODUCTION things, many things which answer their purpose, are not beautiful. But if we go a step farther and say that beauty is fitness expressed we may not be far from the truth. Confining ourselves for the present, for the sake of clearness, to the phenomena of form, and to those phenomena in their most intimate examples, let us see how the above definition suits some of the famiUar objects about us. Fitness alone is clearly no convertible term with beauty so far as men and women are concerned. Our experience tells us that a man may be admirably adapted to all the purposes nature meant to put him to without being a beautiful object. A commanding intellect may be hidden behind shapeless features, the powers of an athlete may be disguised in muscles every curve of which is a discord, all the manly virtues in short, both of body and mind, may reside in a form on which no eye can rest with pleasure. And so with women. A woman may be admirably adapted, intellectually and physically, for her role in the drama of human life, and yet be a mere bundle of apparent incongruities in her outward aspect. Mere fitness, in short, can only be turned into a definition of beauty by giving it so wide a meaning as to deprive it of all capacity for being in itself defined. If, for instance, we include in the term fitness, as applied to a woman, the capacity to please and attract man, we are clearly arguing in a circle. But if we bring in another element and say that to be beautiful a man or woman must express fitness in their forms, we take surer ground. During man's slow evolution, every quality of line and surface had taught him its own meaning, until such utilitarian virtues as solidity, rigidity, elasticity, toughness, had all taken on outward symbols for his guidance, and, therefore, for his eventual delectation. Beauty of shape, then, in woman 1 1 INTRODUCTION is that shape in which the forms, speaking their natural and, to man as he now exists, a priori^ language, declare the presence of fitness for life's utilitarian purposes. This theory of beauty can be tested in objects more remote from our sympathies, and more modern, than the form of woman. Take a railway engine, for instance. The ideas to be suggested by such a machine are power and swiftness, and just in proportion as those ideas find expression in its forms is it grateful to the eye. We have all seen locomotives which consist of vertical and horizontal lines crossing and impinging on each other at right angles. No doubt they do their work efficiently, and they may be economical to build. But they have nothing to do with beauty ; while others in which the curves of the framing answer to the circles of the wheels, in which, to make a bull, the vertical line of the front is not vertical, but slopes backwards as if to offer less resistance to the air, in which the chimney is low and the rest of the external hamper tucked away, as it were, like the legs of a swift in his feathers, express their use with a pleasant felicity, and excite a gentle aesthetic approval in the eye which looks upon them with intelligence. Similar examples could be multiplied ad infinitum if necessary. In fact the most apparently plausible excep- tions to the theory of beauty here propounded turn out on examination to be subtle instances of its application. When Hogarth set out to find some absolute constituent of beauty, he found what, according to my theory, he was bound to find, namely, a symbol of non-use. His line of beauty, a curve bending first to the right and then to the left, expresses want of purpose as clearly, perhaps, as a symbol can. It encloses nothing, it is not even the shortest way from one point to another. It is beautiful in the profile of a woman's back, because there it announces ADMIRAL HAWKINS. ? F. Fleischmann, Esq. INTRODUCTION one fitness — the absence of vertical rigidity — of the spine, but make it the profile of her nose, or her brow, and what becomes of its beauty ? In short, if we look for some absolute constituent of beauty we are met every- where by the same difficulty, that what is beautiful in one connection is hideous in another. We are therefore reduced to the conclusion that beauty in the abstract has no existence ; and, secondly, that it lies in the perfection with which the fitness of any object for its purpose, is expressed in the language elaborated between nature and man during the long process of the latter's evolution. This definition makes beauty, then, a relative quaHty, depending for its perceptibility on man's capacity for the apprehension of certain relations. It implies not only the denial of any absolute constituent, but also the confession that, as even the earliest and once most necessary instincts of man may, after long perversion, have become erratic in their action, the idea of beauty may now sometimes be applied to objects which do not deserve it, and withheld from those which do. It is reasonable to suppose, for instance, that the mere sub- jective enjoyment of harmony in colour has resisted the modifying influence of civilisation more successfully than the perception of its meaning. So that the admiration felt by some people for the hectic flush on the cheek of a poitrinaire means only that their sense of colour has persisted while their sense of its significance has decayed. To sum up, then, what has been said as to the nature of beauty and of art. Among the evolutionary forces to which man owes his existence was a certain intimate relation between his sensitive faculties and the minutest changes in the external phenomena of nature, by virtue of which relation those phenomena had a power of direct appeal to his senses, and therefore of mutual support and »3 INTRODUCTION corroboration. When this power is used by nature her- self to express the fitness of her immediate productions, we call the result beauty ; when, on the other hand, it is used by man to give organic balance and internal beauty to his own creations, we call the result art. The looseness with which an artificial language has to be used has led, of course, to the employment of these terms on many unfit occasions. Things are called beautiful which are so only through some illusive and associative quality. Feats of pure skill, for instance, are admirable in the same way as great knowledge, and they are beautiful only in a figurative sense. Any human activity may have an artistic element in it, but when we call a surgical opera- tion artistic, we really mean that the surgeon has displayed a delicacy of touch and certainty of manipulation which, otherwise applied, might have helped to produce a work of art. The trained human mind, I mean the mind which has trained itself by the study of beautiful and artistic things, exercises a most subtle power in pronouncing on objects which claim attention by beautiful or artistic qualities. It distinguishes instantaneously and uncon- sciously between the beauty of things which have a definite use and those which have not. To the former it allows only a narrow limit of variation, to the latter it grants limits so wide that practically they can put on any shapes they choose so long as those shapes are internally consistent and harmonious. A woman's form, to be beautiful, must conform almost exactly to a standard, all variation being confined to details. A Swiss landscape, on the other hand, need obey no laws except those of stability and harmony ; so long as its forms and colours work actively to bring about an impression at once strong and coherent, it does all our senses require. Its beauty lies in the way its parts mutually corroborate each other, H INTRODUCTION and work towards unity. To put it all very shortly, things of immediate practical use appeal to man by the way in which they proclaim their fitness for that use ; things without such a use, by the essential harmony of their phenomena ; works of art by the evidence they give of the perfection, as a seeing, hearing, comprehending and creating agent, of man himself ; and the vehicle for all these proclamations is an intrinsic relation between the constituents of natural phenomena and the sensory apparatus of man. Man's visual faculties have fallen into such a state of chaos that only after a process of rehabilitation are they now able to appreciate the powers which reside in line and colour. For some reason — not, perhaps, very difficult to guess — his ear is in better order, so that the corresponding powers inherent in sound are accepted with so little demur that the light they throw upon the true nature of art is too often missed. A great obstacle to the satisfactory definition of art has been the propensity to try for definitions by those who really had materials for nothing more than descrip- tions. Until we can point to some element which exists in all works of art and in nothing else, it is waste of time to attempt a definition. It is certain that such a character- istic element exists, and I have endeavoured to trace it and discover how it differs from that of beauty, not so much by its nature as by the fashion of its use. What man wants with a work of art is knowledge of the man behind it, and through that knowledge a comprehension of the highest or at least most essential faculties of his own kind. He arrives at that comprehension through many channels; "tactile values," colour values, pattern values, use values, all these are constituents, but art is only complete when their intrinsic powers of conveying emotion are so directed into one stream as to end in 15 INTRODUCTION unity. Man's interest and admiration are excited not by skill here and knowledge there, but by the fitness of an organisation which competes with the creative powers of nature herself. It may be objected to this theory that it fails to explain some of our admirations. The primitive schools of painting, for instance, show no active comprehension of the unifying power in art. Such unity as they possess springs not from the artist's power to organise, but from the simplicity of his aim. As a matter of fact only those who have devoted themselves to their study do admire the pictures of the early renaissance. Even painters who are masters of their own methods often fail entirely to comprehend the affection inspired by men like Giotto, or Duccio, or Matteo di Giovanni, or even Fra Angelico. To the trained eye these men are admirable for the concentration and intensity which spring from their sincerity. They were on the right path. Their knowledge and even their sympathies were incomplete, but they confined themselves to the expression of what they really felt. They were true to their own emotions, and ventured upon no use of paint except such as their own fervour could suggest. In fact their art was grammatically halting, it was narrow and for the most part unconscious ; but it was real passion faithfully translated into design and colour, and so it had the seeds of immortality within it. Another difficulty is the preference most of us feel, and feel ever more strongly as our knowledge increases, for work in which some one artistic quality is carried to a high development before that in which all qualities are balanced, but on a lower plane. This objection, I think, is more apparent than real. The world is now graduallv consenting to put Raphael below Michael Angelo, i6 LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE (ABOUT 1775) Mcssn. Laurie Co. INTRODUCTION Leonardo, Rembrandt, Titian, and perhaps Velazquez, in the artistic hierarchy, but his fall from the highest place has not been caused by the difFuseness of his talent, but by the recognition that, after all, it was only talent, talent of course of an extraordinarily high order, but not the burning gift that welds all artistic powers into creative genius. Man prefers, in the work of man, the slightest touch of the creative faculty to the most lavish display of the manipulative intelligence. Raphael's gift was critical rather than creative. It was compounded of taste, judgment, invention, and, in his early days, of religious fervour. The essential connection between his emotions and the phenomena of nature was not over- whelming. He felt none of that overmastering desire to express his own individual passions in line, colour, and chiaroscuro, which gave an inevitable unity to the works of the five men I have named. Even in those little early things which were the sincerest he ever did — the "Knight's Dream " in the National Gallery is perhaps the best — the pleasure of control is more visible than the necessity to make. In short, his art depends more on the intelligence with which acquired knowledge is applied, than upon the force with which qualities essential to man's safe exist- ence and full development are expressed in the most immediate of all possible dialects. Compared to Raphael, Rembrandt was a man of one idea, but then see what he did wnth his one idea. In one picture by the Dutchman there is more concentration, more force, more passion, than in all the Italian's works put together. Rembrandt told no stories ; he left them to the pen. To him an artistic theme was something to be justified and enforced by those original vehicles of expression which existed before conventional language tempted man to be irrelevant. A picture can only deal properly with a single moment of 17 B INTRODUCTION time, and so he never tempts us to say, Would that those figures could move ! " A picture is colour, a picture is light and shadow, a picture is tone — and so upon tone, colour, and chiaroscuro he concentrates his power. Art reaches the human brain through the senses, and so to the senses he appeals with all the stupendous vigour which is in him. To the true painter, to the man who rejoices in the miraculous depth and scope of the material in which he works, Rembrandt must always tower far above Raphael. i8 CHAPTER I ENGLISH ART AND THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH NE of the strangest facts in the history of art is the carefully fostered prejudice against which English painting had to fight until yesterday. Nearly all foreign estimates of our pictorial art used to begin by asserting that we had no school at all. Funnily enough they generally went on to disprove their own words, and to show that, even according to their own definition, we had a very decided school indeed. " We understand by a school," says one of the most readable if not the most profound of French critics,* " a certain unity of thought presiding over the choice of subject and its treatment, a certain discipline and harmony in executive processes, a succession of masters marching under the same standard of principle." He then proceeds to describe and criticise English work in such a way as to prove that it fulfils as fully as that of other nations these conditions, and yet his conclusion is that we have " no school properly speaking." To the perfectly candid critic, the critic who is as quick to see beauties as to see faults, England not only has a school, but one of the most decisive, most easily recognised, and most national * Feuillet de Conches, Causeries d'un Curleux. '9 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH of all the schools. On those comparatively rare occasions when English pictures have been exhibited on the other side of the Channel, they have excited a vivid, though often shortlived, interest, and have afforded material for critiques which sometimes ended with a more or less grudging admission that, after all, there might be some- thing to be called a school au dela de la Manche. The apparition of Constable at the Salon of 1821, the en masse of 1855, 1867, 1878, and 1889, came no doubt as successive shocks to the continental theorists, but it can hardly be said that the lesson is finally learnt even now. In 1889, it must be allowed, the English collection on the Champ de Mars was sufficiently eulogised. The French artists, never ungenerous, found a charm in many things which seemed, to us, to have little but novelty to commend them. The new note then sounded was taken up too by the officials, so that quite a respect- able little show of English work is now included in the Luxembourg collections. But this change, so far as it goes, has been brought about, I fancy, not so much by a greater readiness to listen to the best criticism, as by the sudden popularity into which the English school of the eighteenth century has been lifted by the events of the last five-and-twenty years. A quarter of a century ago two English painters of the Georgian era had all the credit to themselves. Reynolds and Gainsborough were famous names, and their works were fought for by those who had enough money in their purses. But the rest of those excellent artists who made the English school of portraiture the greatest school of the eighteenth century excited no enthusiasm whatever. Romney, Raeburn, Hoppner and Lawrence were seldom mentioned, even for faint praise, while those smaller practitioners who are now seen to have formed their quite respectable entourage, 20 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH were absolutely ignored. The change to a better state of things is mainly due, no doubt, to forces which have little enough to do with art. The final cause, if we went deep enough, would be found to be the virgin soil of Western America ! Agricultural depression and the consequent impoverishment of so many old English families coincided with vast accretions of wealth to the more commercial classes, and also with the establishment of a sort of glorified bazaar in which the latter could get rid of some of their superfluous cash. The first exhibition of " works by the old masters, and by deceased masters of the British School," took place at Burlington House in 1870. Public interest was at first excited mainly by the treasures of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which had not been seen in London since the palmy days of the British Institution, but it was soon diverted, in large measure, to the masters of our own school. The splendid series of portraits by Sir Joshua, Gainsborough, Romney, and their contemporaries, took opinion by storm. It was seen that they were not only fine things in themselves, but also superb decorations, suiting as no other pictures did those eighteenth-century interiors which were being re-established. The natural consequence was an immense competition among those fortunate people who, being comparatively unaffected by the price of wheat, had been daily growing richer, while those whose prosperity was rooted in land had been watching a steady shrinking of their incomes. Prices went up until hundreds who had never given a thought to art in their lives were turned by pure curiosity into habitues of Christie's. Attention once excited, a fairer judgment of English painting became only a question of time. We are at last becoming conscious that the school founded, shall I say, by the disciples of Holbein, was a 21 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH real school, a school with principles of its own, with principles rooted in the national idiosyncrasy, principles which are none the less active, unchanging, and easily recognisable, because they have been, in the main, un- supported by any conscious formulation. Truth to your own individuality is as much a principle as any other. It must be confessed that those who used to deny aptitude for the arts to the natives of these islands had some excuse. Even Englishmen themselves were slow to perceive and assert the greatness of their Georgian painters, while during the long centuries which saw the rise and decay of the schools of Italy, the Low Countries, Germany and Spain, the three kingdoms had produced no picture-maker of serious importance. It is true that France was almost in the same predicament, but her poverty in good painters had a compensation in a wealth of decorative art which we could not boast to anything like the same degree. But even Great Britain was not so destitute of re- markable artists before the time of Hogarth as it used to be the fashion to declare. Materials no longer exist, I fear, for any detailed account of what our painters were doing in the centuries which elapsed between the Reform- ation and the Revolution. In the preface to his " Anecdotes " Horace Walpole was able to say with truth that " this country ... has not a single volume to show on the works of its painters." Practically our only literary source of information is that from which Walpole drew his own materials, namely, George Vertue's great collection of notes and memoranda, now in the British Museum. But a sufficient number of mostly anonymous portraits have come down to us to prove that at all periods since the renaissance of the arts a few good English painters existed. A portrait has recently been THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH added to the National Gallery which shows that John Bettes — in Walpole merely a name — was a very good master indeed of the second rank. A number of portraits are sprinkled about Europe, from which we may fairly conclude that Gwillim Street, or Strete, who was probably an Englishman, by no means wasted his time when he was in Holbein's studio. William Dobson, at his best, was an excellent painter ; if he was really the author of the series of Tradescant portraits now in the University galleries at Oxford, he deserves a place very high up in the second class of seventeenth-century masters. The influence of Van Dyck stimulated many other Englishmen and at least one Scot to respectable work. The contents of the National Portrait Gallery are alone sufficient to show that even in the days of Holbein and Van Dyck, British painters were equal to tasks more arduous than any laid upon them. But in spite of all this, England gave but a feeble echo of the great artistic clamour of the continent, and the pictures painted by her own sons between the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth centuries are not of a kind to excite enthusiasm. During the three generations which elapsed between the arrival of Holbein at the Court of Henry VIII. and the acceptance of Charles I.'s invitation by Van Dyck, all English life-size portraiture bore traces of the positive Teutonic manner. With Van Dyck came a lighter and more airy taste, a greater readiness to select and summarise, and, generally, a turn towards that distinction which has ever since been one of the features of English portraiture. Whether this change was entirely brought about by the Fleming's example, or whether it was at least partly due to wider and more national causes will be discussed presently. In any case the Stuarts were to go and the house of Hanover to be well settled on 23 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH their throne, before those tendencies which are now con- fessedly English were to find any conspicuous expression in our native picture-painters. That being so the reader may fairly ask whether the heading to this chapter can be justified. Had the English painters of the eighteenth century any native precursors at all ? Are there any grounds for depriving Hogarth of his credit as creator, ab initio^ of a new school of Art ? The answer, I think, is to be found not by seeking among our few painters of life-size portraits, nor even by quoting once more that name which was so often on the lips of Gainsborough himself, but by remembering that England, like Germany, had a fascinating school of "Little Masters" of her own. The pedigree of our eighteenth-century school runs up through the English miniaturists, through those men who started even before the advent of Holbein, who, having the traditions of the great illuminators of the middle ages in their blood, have handed down to us such delightful records of the men and women who made history in England under the Tudor and Stuart dynasties. In the early ages of English criticism attention was almost entirely devoted to those aspects of art which appealed to the national love of morality, using that word in its widest sense. The treatment of every subject was praised or blamed according to the vigour with which it threw down the gauntlet to the poet, the novelist, the biographer. This was carried so far that, even in the case of Hogarth, who translated dramatic action into line, colour, and chiaroscuro with more success than any other man, before or since, the commentators did their best to persuade their public that he was not so much a painter as a moralist, and that the indelible impression he leaves on the memory was due to 24 GENERAL HONYVVOOD Messks. Agnew & S )N THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH a righteous indignation with his kind, and to his undeni- able opulence of incident. Hogarth's supremacy rests on his gift for combining dramatic significance with esthetic necessity. His men and women do a great deal more than tell a story. They exist in a coherent artistic faishion. Their forms, their movements, their expressions, their sizes, and their places both on the plane of the canvas and in the perspective, their colour and handling, all these work vigorously together to bring our esthetic impressions into line with those moral reactions at which the painter aimed. Hogarth's immortality, in short, depends not at all upon his sava indignatio, but upon the extraordinary skill with which he drove art to support his thesis. He was a good, almost a first-rate, painter, as well, but without his extraordinary felicity of arrangement he could never have taken the place he now occupies in the history of the eighteenth century. All this sounds like digression as well as platitude, but it has a purpose. I began this paragraph by saying that the critics of a generation or two ago gave nearly all their attention to am aspect of art— it is no real part of art itself— which is, after all, the least important. At the present moment there is a tendency to run into another extreme, and to speak as if art began and ended with realisation, or in otJier words as if the rank of an artist ought to be deter- mined by nothing but his power to carry out no matter what conception. Art for art's sake is a phrase too often misunderstood, even by those who are readiest to use it. All artistic materials are so pregnant with expression that the keenest enjoyment may be derived from their use, even when there has been no antecedent preparation in the creative faculties. We are told by a great authority that in literature the subject is nothing, the treatment everything ; but this is only true if we make the word THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH treatment include the mental processes of determination and selection, before materials are touched. In short, criticism should occupy itself more than it does with the artistic fitness of a painter's conceptions, and with the artistic value of his personal and racial modifications of what may be called standard truth. So far as I know there is at present but one writer who has made any serious attempt to differentiate schools on lines approaching to those here suggested, and many of the practitioners of what is called scientific criticism ignore them altogether. The critic who confines an inquiry into the characteristics of a school to the strictly technical side of its productions sets too close a limit to his field. All technique, no doubt, is or should be art, but all art is not technique. I once heard a good painter declare that there is no art outside technique, but such an assertion will only hold water if we give such a generous extension to the scope of the term '* technique " as to deprive it of all definable meaning. The decisions arrived at in the artist's brain are, of course, governed by his knowledge of technical necessities, but technique itself only begins with the carrying out. However, I need not labour this particular point, for it is only a question of definition. Whether we include them in the term technique or not, no one will contend that the mental activities of an artist, or of a school, are, as a fact, less distinctive than the management of materials. The work of Art begins when it takes form in the mind, and the process of selecting impressions is governed by exactly the same esthetic instincts as those which control the hand. The characteristics of a school are, in short, to be found in its ways of seeing nature and selecting among her phenomena, just as much as in its technical methods and predilections. I might go farther, and say that[in the 26 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH former we find a safer test. Technical methods are more liable to change, are more easily influenced by individuals, by fashion, by scientific discoveries, by the accidents of supply and demand. Systems of execution may be taught, and history shows that they vary immensely at different periods with one and the same people. By all this I do not in the least mean that conception is more important than execution in the final result. The two are, of course, mutually dependent. But as conception must, in the nature of things, come chronologically before execution, it afli^ects it decisively in the long run and afli^ords more immediate tests. I shall presently make an attempt to define, or rather to describe, the permanent and unchanging fea- tures of our national art, but first it may be convenient to sketch what I take to be the real track across the cen- turies of English pictorial ideas. During the middle ages the most consummate of the pictorial arts was illumination. It was a metier that could be easily mastered in the monastic solitudes and easily transmitted from one generation of monks to another. It made, moreover, its chief intellectual demand on that quality of patience in which monks were presumably richer than the rest of the world. From the mere decoration of initials it progressed to illustrations, in the modern sense, and finally to portrait miniatures. The scribe begat the feintre ymagier ; the peintre ymagier begat the portraitist in little, whose first works were decorations to the written page, just as the first portraits of the painter at large were set modestly in the corners of votive altar- pieces. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the traditions of the illuminator must have been still alive in England, where the art of decorating manuscripts had 27 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH once reached a level unsurpassed even in France or Italy. The impulse towards a secular use of the art seems to have been given by Holbein. At any rate the first English miniaturist of whom we have any substantial knowledge is his disciple, Nicholas Hilliard ; and yet a phrase used by Hilliard himself suggests that he might have followed other masters had he pleased : " Holbein's manner of limning I have ever imitated, and hold it for the best," he declares in his essay on miniature painting. Certain it is, too, that when we turn from Holbein to the Englishman we find the latter animated by an entirely non-Teutonic spirit. In no portrait by the great German is there any visible pre-occupation with elegance as we understand the word. That he was very far from being insensible to a somewhat formal kind of grace we know from his designs for goldsmithery, but in portraiture he was content with dignity of arrangement and fidelity of interpretation. Even in his most graceful works, such as the Duke of Norfolk's " Christina, Duchess of Milan," we find little trace of that peculiar elegance of move- ment, of that subtly careless harmony of line, in which Hilliard is so rich. One of the best of this master's works is the portrait of himself, now or recently in the collection of Mr. Jeffrey Whitehead. Contrast it with Holbein's miniature of the little Duke of Suffolk at Windsor, and you will see at once the radical difference between the Teuton and the Anglo-Saxon. The Holbein is entirely natural, absolutely sincere, and realised as com- pletely as if it were a life-size portrait. In the Hilliard you will discover a touch of artifice and an abundant slightness of execution. But the movement is full of elegance, while the head and figure are admirable in contour, and occupy the field with extraordinary felicity. Holbein posed his sitters, perhaps even dressed them, 28 ELIZA AND THOMAS LINLEY. 1768 The Lord Sackvili.e THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH with the greatest solicitude, and then copied the result. Hilliard selected like an impressionist, and never lost sight either of elegance or of the exact form and scale of the narrow surface on which his work had to be carried out. And in this he was perhaps the first exponent of the principles which have governed the better English portrait-painters from his day to our own. After Hilliard came the Olivers, Isaac and Peter. Isaac began in a style which may be easily confounded with that of Hilliard, but as time went on he simplified his manner, until at last he painted in a dry, over- systematic fashion which inclines one towards belief in the theory that the Oliver blood was partly French. Two of his finest miniatures are Lord Derby's " Countess of Essex " and the portrait of himself in the Royal Collec- tion at Windsor. The latter is a little miracle of execu- tion, and leaves the slighter art of Hilliard far behind. His larger miniatures — the " Henry, Prince of Wales " and "Sir Philip Sidney," at Windsor; the "Earl of Dorset," at South Kensington — are more ambitious and elaborate, but in them the qualities we are tracing are less conspicuously displayed. Peter Oliver and the Hoskinses — if we accept the tradition of two, father and son — supply the transition from the later and dryer manner of Isaac to the freer and broader methods which began to prevail in the reign of Charles I. This im- provement is generally put down entirely to the credit of Van Dyck, but dates cast some doubt upon such a con- clusion. The change seems to have begun before the Fleming settled in England. We can point to miniatures dated before 1632, the year of his arrival, which are con- ceived and executed entirely in the style associated with his example. Van Dyck paid indeed a short visit to this country in 162 1, and perhaps another ten years later. 29 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH But it was not until 1632 that he came to stay, and began his great series of English portraits. Again it must not be forgotten that the Fleming's manner, both of con- ceiving and carrying out a picture, underwent a notable change when he entered the service of Charles I. Van Dyck was, in fact, one of the most adaptable of all great painters. His art went through four distinct phases, and it passed from one to the other with extraordinary rapidity. Before his Italian journey he painted so like Rubens that it takes some experience to distinguish between the two. In Italy he picked up Venetian colour and Genoese dignity with no apparent effort. Back in Antwerp we find him working in a style compounded of Italian and Flemish elements, and then in England he undergoes a fourth transformation. Is it unreasonable to suppose that such a man would be affected by, as much as he would affect, any new milieu in which he found himself ? The dignity of his Genoese portraits was sug- gested by the Genoese, and so the peculiar distinction which marked his art in England was inspired partly by the grand air of the English aristocracy, partly by the methods he found in vogue with the humble but not inefficient native painters. There is no denying the fact that before he crossed the Channel English miniaturists had already begun to do work displaying, on a minute scale, exactly those characteristics which were only to become conspicuous in Van Dyck after 1632. England and the pupil of Rubens acted and reacted on each other. After his advent the shrinking from the Teutonic preci- sion of Holbein was hastened, but facts as well as proba- bilities are against the theory that the new movement was entirely due to his influence and example. It is extremely difficult to compare, in any convincing way, the work of a miniaturist with that of a painter at 30 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH large. No one, perhaps, will deny that a great artist can show his greatness just as easily on the back of a playing card as on a Sistine ceiling, but the mechanical difficulties of work on a large scale come in to pervert our judgment, and to make us refuse to set a miniaturist on the same plane as an equally gifted person working to the scale of life. It is, therefore, with some diffidence that I venture to suggest that in Samuel Cooper Van Dyck had a suc- cessor equal, in specific endowment, to himself. Cooper had by far the stronger grip on character. In his better miniatures we meet individuals more unmistakable than any we can find in Van Dyck. No portrait by the Fleming, not even the finest of the Charleses or the " Cornelius Van der Gheest *' of the National Gallery, brings us into such intimate relation with a personality as Samuel Cooper continually does. His portraits of Cromwell, of Charles II., of James II., of Edmund Waller, of Monk, to name a few of the best, are historical documents vastly more trustworthy than a State paper. And how profoundly artistic they are also ! Each occupies its narrow surface to perfection, each is a master- piece of design, of drawing, of modelling, and even of colour ; and each stops exactly where it should. There is no effort to tell more than the conditions will allow, no attempt to rival work on a larger scale. Solicitude is concentrated on the heads, and there every touch helps to add intensity to the artist's record of the man before him. A fine Cooper is a triumph of selection, of precision in the right place, of suggestion in the right place, of balance and harmony all over. Some of his virtues were inherited by his pupils and successors, Laurence Crosse, Thomas Flatman — who occasionally came very near to the master himself — ^the Dixons, and others of less import- ance ; but, speaking broadly, the first great period of 31 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH English miniature painting came to an end with the close of the seventeenth century. It fell for a time into the hands of derelict foreigners, dull dogs mostly, whose work is without individuality or charm. It was to revive later and have a second period of glory, but it was never again to develop such a consummate artist as Samuel Cooper. Now what is it that distinguishes our English minia- turists from their rivals on the Continent and gives them their own peculiar charm Is it not, to put it shortly, a finer sense of the limitations of their art ? Do they not show an instinctive perception of those constituents of the intelligent human animal which tell to advantage when reproduced on a very small scale French and German miniaturists almost invariably give their works the air of reduced pictures. On a surface of two or three square inches they reproduce detail so elaborately that the result looks too often like a mechanical reduc- tion. Many of their portraits would lose little or nothing by being enormously magnified, an experiment which would play havoc with any Englishman with, perhaps, a single exception. John Smart's best miniatures are quite extraordinary for their fusion of surface, and for the completeness of their modelling. In these respects, indeed, they excel all other English things of the kind, and even the most elaborate of the French School. But Smart was an exception, to be classed, from the sesthetic point of view, rather with enamellers than with miniature painters proper, and, in any case, he belongs to a period later than that with which we are now concerned. From the days of Nicholas Hilliard down to the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, English miniaturists were distinguished by the qualities to which I have alluded. Both in conception and in 32 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH execution they were more immediately controlled by the peculiar conditions of their art than their foreign rivals. They understood that a portrait no bigger than a crown piece should not aim at the encyclopasdic treatment suitable to an eight-foot canvas. When a sitter pre- sented himself, they saw that certain aspects, certain details of his personality, would lend themselves to reproduction on a minute scale, and would, after fitting treatment, result in a work of art thoroughly organised within itself, bearing a pleasant relation to the surface on which it existed, to the means by which it was created, and to the purpose to which it was to be put. They made no attempt to astonish with their skill or to pose for anything but what they were. In a word they were content to work simply and sincerely under the conditions imposed by their metier. We see then that from the very beginning of any- thing like portrait-painting in England, by Englishmen, certain traditions, habits, or predilections began to establish themselves. Speaking generally, these were confined to the native painters, and were not shared by the foreigners who worked by their sides. To recapitu- late is to be more tedious than ever, but even so I must repeat the idea I wish to impress upon the reader. The really distinguished foreigners who worked here were. Holbein, Cornelis Janssen Van Ceulen, Van Dyck, and Sir Peter Lely ; Rubens was a meteor, who shone in the English sky only for a moment, and Kneller was a nobody. Holbein was practically unaffected by his English milieu. His art was fixed before he came here at all, and we cannot claim to have changed it — except in so far as a Duke of Norfolk was more picturesque than a Swiss burgomaster. Cornelis Janssen, again, was entirely a Dutchman — in spite of the possibility that he 33 c THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH was English by birth — and in Holland he painted his best pictures. Van Dyck was of different metal. His art was modified wherever he went. In Antwerp he realised Flemish ideals ; in Genoa, Genoese ; in England, English. His influence upon the painters in London was as if he had apostrophised them thus : " I see the material you have to work upon and what you are trying to do with it ; quite right, but have more courage ; do it thus, and thus ! " He did not say, like Torrigiano, " You are beasts of English," you are all wrong, begin again at the beginning. He simply put himself at their head, combined their ideals with his own, and worked the combination up to something like perfection. Lely repeated the experiment, from a lower but even more sympathetic standpoint. His equipment came from Van Dyck, but early in his career he began to direct it to very English aims. For one reason and another the great ability of Sir Peter Lely has never won a proper recogni- tion. He worked in declared sympathy with the English genius, and applied the large and sound methods of the Butch and Flemings to the more selective conceptions which he found popular in this country. In most people's minds he is bracketed with the far inferior Kneller, and even by serious critics his pictures are dis- missed as if they were little more than fashion plates. And yet without going even so far as Hampton Court, you may see pictures which prove him to have been the real link between Van Dyck and the English miniaturists on the one hand, and the school led by Sir Joshua, Gainsborough, and Romney on the other. The National Portrait Gallery, among other things, possesses a portrait of the Comtesse de Grammont — La Belle Hamilton " — in which the distinctive features of English painting a century later are foreshadowed with curious complete- 3+ THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH ness.* Reynolds, especially, is anticipated. The fat impasto, the glowing transparent colour, the poetic landscape, t all these suggest a comparison with Reynolds which they can well sustain. The arrangement is less elegant than Sir Joshua would have made it — in this particular indeed the picture is inferior to most Lelys — but for the rest it would, even taken alone, justify what has been said as to its author's place in the development of English painting. And there is no need to take it alone. Other pictures in the same Gallery, the " Nell Gwynn," the " Moll Davis," the " Duke of Buckingham," as well as the famous beauties at Hampton Court, all lead us to the same conclusion. Lely was the first picture painter to show in any considerable degree those characteristics which have been distinctively English ever since his death. But for our own *' little masters," who had worked minutely in the same spirit, he would deserve to be called the real father of our school. As it is, he was a capable Dutchman, with the great tradition of his country in his blood and a generous infusion of that kind of sympathy which makes a Saxon witty — and a little cantankerous !— when he settles west of St. George's Channel. Apart from Van Dyck and Lely, the crowd of foreigners who worked in England stood on one side of any real line of descent in our national Art. They either, like Holbein, drew upon qualities in which the Anglo- Saxon is deficient, or they failed, like the Moreelses, the Honthorsts, and even the really great Cornells Janssen Van Ceulen, to excite his emulation at all. * Strangely enough, in this particular version of her features, Lely has abandoned his usual habit of flattery, and has painted the Hamilton not so very belle. Her identity with the sumptuous " St. Catherine " at Hampton Court is nevertheless obvious, t This may have been adapted by Lely from some landscape by Cornelius Huysmans, to whose work it bears a strong affinity. 35 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH It would be easy to carry this line of argument into other matters, and to show how the perennial charac- teristics of all British art are those we have traced down through the miniaturists to the portrait-painters of the eighteenth century. Virtuosite has never been an English virtue. At no time have our artists, of any kind, made an elaborate mastery of their tools an end for its own sake. Like the Venetians, the best among them have concentrated themselves on the particular aesthetic emo- tion which stirred them at the time. And so in none of our creative activities do we find the diffused patience of the German or the logic of the Frenchman, any more than we find such national peculiarities as the sombre spirituality of the Spaniard or the Dutchman's adoration of his material. The Anglo-Saxon is content to lay down his brush as soon as he has expressed the emotion with which he took it up. Very few English works of art are open to the praise so often lavished on polish. When " Opus Anglicanum " made the needles of English ladies famous all over Christendom, it gave, perhaps, the only example we can point to of an English art excelling that of foreigners in finish. The fact is curious, because the converse is the rule in matters industrial. Guns, engines, cutlery, locks, and many other things which depend for efficiency upon nicety of finish are better made here than elsewhere. Hence we may conclude that the feature in our arts just alluded to is not due to a national incapacity for taking pains. So far as it can be referred to any outside cause, it probably arises from the mere absence of a laborious tradition. During those early centuries when such elaboration as he could compass was demanded from every artist, painting in this country had scarcely begun. Englishmen — and for many reasons it was greatly to their loss — escaped those tentative years 36 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH during which the conscious effort of other schools was given to painful attempts at illusion. Our early masters had comparative freedom before their eyes, and could begin with that free play of selection to which primitive schools could only arrive after a long wrestle with the object. The distinctive features of our national art correspond to the rest of our national character, to its promptness, its energy, its preference of practical con- clusions before logical approaches, and to its comparative neglect, at all times and in all connections, of what the modern critic means by " form." Before bringing this chapter to an end I had better say shortly what I believe our positive national charac- teristics to be. It must be confessed that before any useful idea on the matter can be arrived at a great mass of what calls itself art must be set aside. In England, for a reason not difficult to guess, there has been an enormous production of sham pictures, especially of painted anecdotes masquerading as pictures. Such things do not really belong to the march of art at all. They are the little boys with wooden swords who strut beside the regiment. The people who encourage their makers are those who have more money than culture, a class which is still enormously larger here than in any other country on this side of the Atlantic. The painting, modelling, building, and writing which satisfy their amiable but untutored ambitions, must be excluded from our minds before we can arrive at sound notions about our national capacity for art. Looking first at those characteristics which are common to all the arts, I think we may fairly set down moderation as one of our national virtues, or defects ; a virtue if we look at immediate results, a defect, possibly, if we take into account its influence on the national 37 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH activities as a whole. Nelson was not content with nine ships out of ten when it was possible to capture the tenth. This spirit finds little echo in English dealings with art. The pricking desire which drove the French architects into building cathedrals twice as high as York Minster, and, incidentally, into creating so generous a demand for the subsidiary arts, was far less active in our own builders. The architects of Durham and Norwich, of Lincoln, Salisbury and York, preferred restraint to effort. Their ruling idea was to keep every- thing within easy control, and so to arrive in the end at a comparatively modest but incontestably more har- monious result. The great Church of Amiens is mar- vellous in detail, but as a balanced, artistic creation it cannot be compared to Salisbury, or indeed to any one of those English cathedrals which express a single controlling idea. Such an absurdity as Beauvais could never have been conceived in this country. This national love of moderation runs through all our arts, and saves our artists from one of the most fatal of temptations, the temptation to astonish by skill instead of to please by sincerity. Speaking broadly, all those English painters who deserve to be remembered at all confine themselves to simple ideas. They set about a picture on the impulse of a single pictorial notion, they lay down their palettes as soon as that notion is expressed. There are,, of course, exceptions to this rule. The most ambitious of all painters, the painter who more than any one else forced paint up to and beyond its extremest limit of expression, was an Englishman. And it is just because he so racked his material, stretching it sometimes to the breaking, that the genius of Turner satisfies the painter so much less than the amateur. Putting Turner aside, we may run through all the names in English 38 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH art which deserve to live, and we shall find that restraint, moderation, contentment with what paint can easily do, marks them all. The second characteristic to be noted ies at the root of all true art, and its presence in English painting gives it by far its highest claim to respect. English pictures are seldom without a breath of sincere aesthetic emotion. Our school is conspicuously free from the kind of mis- taken energy which has in other countries so often crushed art under displays of archaeology, theology, and pictorial gymnastics. We have had too many painters whose sole qualification was sincerity, we have had few with the opposite defect, an abundant skill and nothing relevant to say with it. A comprehensive display of our school might interest the mind too little ; it would not chil l the senses as they are chilled by Guide and Guercino, by Cornelius Van Haarlem and Martin Heemskerk, by Coypel and Lebrun. Possessing emotion, the English painter had to be a colourist, for colour is the most sensuous element of the formative arts. In no school, except that of Venice, has the desire for colour expression been so universal as in our own. The key to all fine colour, as colour, is the preservation of inner light, and English painters, even those of the third or fourth rank, have, as a rule, kept that necessity steadily in view. The worst thing about a colour school is that its failures are so aggressive and conspicuous. One picture full of bad colour will do more to spoil the general effect of a collection than a dozten in which design fails of its point, and this fact has often led to cavillings at the right of our school to be called one of colour at all. This question will have to be gone into in detail later on, when we come to discuss Gaimsborough's rank among colourists. At present I 39 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH must pass on to the only other characteristic of Englisk art that need here be alluded to. Strictly speaking, it is not an artistic quality at all, for it is concerned rather with objective reproduction thai with aesthetic expression. Women and children hav2 been painted better in England than anywhere else. English artists have understood them more profoundly, have penetrated more deeply into their distinctive characteristics, have grasped more firmly and displayed with more felicity the perennial differences between man and his companion, than Italian, Spaniard, Frenchman, or Teuton. Raphael and the Venetians painted woman gloriously as a physical type. They reproduced the large, universal constituents of her beauty with a success which has never been excelled. But the Romans of Sanzio and the North Italians of Giorgione, Titian, Palma, Lotto, Paolo Veronese, and Moretto, superb as they are, are curiously animal. Large, grave, and voluptuous, they seem to stand apart from the main stream of life, as if waiting for that maternity which they accept as their only purpose in the world. None of these men and none of their successors fastened upon those subtle results of generations of culture and worship in which the most intimate charm of woman resides. Woman as man's companion, with a set of qualities com- plementary to his own, alert where he is dull, pliant where he is rigid, courageous where he shrinks, and cowering where he is bold ; woman with her personal witchery, her civilised distinction, her promptness to supplement with instinctive wit the primitive forces of man ; woman as mistress, as mother, as, in fact, both prize and cause in all the strife of existence, has been seen with a deeper sympathy and caressed with a lighter hand, by our English painters than by any of their rivals. 40 THE PRECURSORS OF GAINSBOROUGH This superiority depends on some permanent charac- teristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, for it runs through the whole of our school. We do not need to go to Gains- borough, or Reynolds, or Romney, to find justice done to the fairer half of humanity. English painters of the second and third rank, in fact of as many ranks as you choose to divide the possibilities of art into, can suggest the beauty, the affection and the wit of woman, even when they can do little else. Hogarth, whose purpose scarcely included objective beauty, could not paint an unattractive woman without taking refuge in the grotesque, while such men as Morland, Wheatley, Rowlandson, and even the coarse Gillray, could hardly avoid making their women lovely even in the most unlovely situations. It would not be too much to say that English artists seem to have so compelling a sencc of the qualities which make for female charm that they find it almost impos- sible to suppress them even when their presence is embarrassing. It would be tedious to multiply instances of what I mean, but in these days when everything painted between the accession of George I. and the death of George IV. is so eagerly sought out and displayed, readers can have no difficulty in thinking of many for themselves. Quentin La Tour was a greater artist than John Russell, but the one quality he misses is the charm so readily won by the other. The French miniaturists were better equipped than their English rivals, but not one among them approached Cosway, or Smart, or Engleheart in the comprehension of the feminine armoury. To all this I can only think of one conspicuous excep- tion among the greater English artists. Charles Keene saw most things, but his eye failed to grasp the spirit of the curves which make for human beauty. His women never show the combination of wit with softness, of alert 41 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH intelligence with adaptability, which is the female note. They are born spinsters, independent, angular, and humorous. Putting Keene aside, we may start with the followers of Van Dyck and come down through those of Lely, Hogarth, Reynolds and Lawrence to the present day, and through bad art and good art alike, we shall find running the savour of feminine charm. 42 CHAPTER II THE " EAST NEUK " OF SUFFOLK OW are we to explain the apparently curious fact that no great landscape painter has been born among grandiose scenes ? Those particular districts of Europe which are famous for their beauty have given birth to few artists of any kind, and, so far as my knowledge goes, to not one single landscape painter of the first or even of the second rank. The only school whose members were, in any considerable proportion, natives of districts endowed with much natural sublimity, is the Italian, and that is pre- cisely the school in which landscape painting occupies the smallest part. Switzerland, Tyrol, Southern Italy, the most scenic parts of France, of England and Scotland, of Norway, all these we should search in vain for the birthplace of any recorder of their own or any other country's, charms. Claude was born in Lorraine,Rubens in Westphalia, or perhaps in Antwerp, Ruysdael and Hobbema among the canals of Western Holland. Turner first saw the light a few yards from the Strand, Gains- borough and Constable among the cornfields of SuflFblk Crome at Norwich. Rousseau and Corot were born in Paris, Troyon at Sevres. There is nothing surprising in the fact that no painter, or at most only one, has succeeded 43 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH in doing much with great scenery. Things perfect in themselves do not easily submit to the modulation of the artist. The Parthenon is infinitely less pictorial than a thatched cottage, a Derby winner than a broken-down cart-horse, the Jungfrau than a Netherlandish polder.* Objects with a commanding and balanced beauty of their own are not, as a rule, good themes for the artist. This is quite enough to account for the avoidance of such themes as the Alps by all but greatly daring persons like Turner. But it does not explain why great landscape painters are not born among the mountains. Mountaineers are supposed to be more ajffected than other people by love of home, and their poetry depends more than that of low- landers upon interest in nature's phenomena and a com- prehension of her moods. But here, perhaps, we get a hint of the true explanation. The ideas excited by fine scenery are better fitted for expression in words than in paint, and so the artistic temperaments which come into the world among the hills turn into Wordsworths rather than into Gainsboroughs and Corots. The particular quality in Nature's face which is most valuable to the artist is that which can best be described by the French word intimite. Things not too large, things which can not only be seen as a whole but possessed, as it were, by the eye and the tactile imagina- tion : things which can be sauntered round and realised in their three dimensions, things which fit affectionately * Even a beautiful girl is not really so picturesque as an ugly old woman, but in her case we relax the otherwise peremptory demand for personal expression and allow objectivity to have its turn. Why, in this one instance, we should be so ready to allow imitation to encroach upon creation it is, perhaps, not difficult to understand. The eye has so keen a sense of the subtleties of the human form that the works of Monsieu r Jules Lefebvre, and of others like him, are, perhaps, more creative than they seem. 44 QUEEN CHARLOTTE (1782-4) South Kensington Museum THE "EAST NEUK" OF SUFFOLK into the things about them, which do not brag of their size or sublimity, or of any kind of unusualness ; things in happy measure — country roads pleasantly proportioned to the trees which line them, cottages snuggling, like cosy domestic beasts, under their shading elms, lanes wandering lazily round gentle elevations ; things, above all, which invite the manipulation, the inevitable re- arrangement, of art ; all these attract the landscape painter and give him his true opportunity. Great roads stretching emphatically away to distant horizons, mountains dwarfing everything in their neighbourhood, valleys asserting themselves in some great dominant curve, waterfalls like Niagara, the sea at large and its first cousin the African desert — on these the creative painter, the painter who wishes to make something of his own, instinctively turns his back. They disconcert his powers by setting too wide a gulf between conception and realisation, and force him to confess the weakness of his material rather than to prove its capacity. A painter like Turner, whose boyhood was familiar with the squalor of a great city, may run now and then to another extreme, and wrestle with problems of light and colour which paint can never thoroughly solve. We are some- times told we ought to judge an artist by his intentions rather than by his performances, but to do so would be against the whole spirit of art. In a sense, of course, we allow for intention in making up our admirations, as, for instance, when we prefer the immature but sincere art of the early Bolognese to the empty proficiency of their successors. But, speaking generally, we have a higher respect for the artist who does a modest thing well than for one who does an ambitious thing badly. The ambitious conceptions of a Cornelius have not saved him from being more than half forgotten already, while the manage- 45 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH ment of sunlight in a room keeps de Hoogh still warm in our affections. The intentions of Turner are apt to be non-pictorial as well as over-ambitious. He grapples too often with phenomena which he can only vaguely suggest, and so produces in us a sense of disappointment with paint rather than one of admiration for the painter. The sun playing on the Alps through a gauze of vapour touches the very poignancy of beauty, but no formative art can do more than snatch at it, and excite a memory which soon turns to damn the artist. Sanity, restraint, an absorbing love for his material coupled with a deter- mination to show its power and to veil its weakness — these are characteristics of the perfect artist, and they lead him to prefer comparatively humble tasks, well within his own and his palette's compass, to those in which achievement lags breathless behind desire. It may be that the connection here suggested between the scenes among which an artist spends his childhood and his aesthetic gift is quite imaginary, and that the real explanation of the greater artistic fertility of low- lands is to be sought in nothing more recondite than their denser population. However that may be, the fact remains that such scenery as abounds in the English eastern counties has been the foundation of most great landscape art, and so we may fairly congratulate those painters who made their first steps in life between the Yare and the Thames. Our immediate concern is with the nook of country which lies between the Stour and the Orwell. It is what the French call a cote^ though one on a very modest scale. The hill-side rises in one long steady slope from the Stour, spreads itself into fields diapered with country lanes and fringed with villages, each village with its own flint-armoured church and its own white-coated rectory, and then stoops slowly to the 46 THE ^'EAST NEUK" OF SUFFOLK tidal river, the Orwell, which for a few hours in every day is one of the most beautiful of English streams. The rising flood of population has left this peninsula almost untouched. The builder scarcely knows it, and you may wander in its lanes for hours without seeing a new house, or having to shiver for one of those substitutions of con- trived for accidental picturesqueness which are now belittling so much of England. The lanes are deep and devious, bordered with luxuriant hedges, and overhung with those nobly-drawn trees, heavy with leafage but full of structure and variety, which only England can show. The fields are dark and rich, like those of Brabant. The rivers, like the lanes, creep among the shadows, expanding now and then into broad bosoms of silent water in which the gleaming processions of the clouds are mirrored. The farms and cottages dotted over the fields are small, white and thatched, with high-pitched roofs and tall chimneys, reminding us of the little Dutch homesteads which still sleep among the oaks of Guelderland as they did in the days of Hobbema. It is an ideal nursery for an artist, and the fitness of things was nicely observed when two of our greatest landscape painters first saw the light among its lanes and hedges. And these two men, Gainsborough and Constable, looked upon it all at first with eyes curiously alike. Constable, no doubt, had the more independent spirit. His earliest attempts show that he was determined, from the very beginning, to paint what he saw as he saw it, and not to accept a convention from any one else. Gainsborough, on the other hand, began by taking a lead from the Dutchmen in his choice of subject and treatment. The early works of Constable have a consequent freshness which we do not find in those of Gainsborough. The genius loci nevertheless had a parallel effect on both. It prevented aberrations and it 47 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH taught them style, holding them by the fascination of its simple but consummate beauty during those years in which the young painter is most strongly tempted to force his art. The most exquisite part of all this district is associ- ated more with Constable than Gainsborough. Nothing about Sudbury rivals in beauty the southern slope of the Bergholt peninsula. The bend of the fields down to the Stour, and the short course of that river from the little town of Dedham to its disappearance in the tidal estuary over against Manningtree, form in summer a rich museum of Nature's pictures. At every turn of the lands, at every bend of the stream, fresh combinations present themselves, and each is more delicious than the last. No one with artistic ambitions could walk through such a country and feel no desire to caress it on canvas. Those who know their Constable meet his pictures and sketches at every step, and can recognise, here in a fold of the ground, there in the salutation of some bending tree, the note which arrested his steps, made him spread his camp-stool and open his colour-box. Farther to the west and north the pictures crowd less thickly upon each other. The trees disperse, the voluptuous closeness with which Nature packs her beauties along the margin of the Stour disappears, and is replaced by conditions which give more play to the sky, and to those infinite modulations which tempt the eye to a far horizon. This difference in neighbourhoods is accurately reflected in the pictures of the two great painters. Perhaps had their chronology been reversed and Constable been the first comer, their tastes would have been reversed too. It is difficult to imagine the " Cornfield " painted in 1750 and the Wynants-like scenes of Gainsborough's early years in 1825. Almost from the very beginning Constable was a 48 THE "EAST NEUK" OF SUFFOLK maker of pictures. His earliest landscapes show that he artfully chose a point of view, and that he was keenly alive to the pattern his trees, and lanes, and watercourses were about to make. With Gainsborough it was not so to quite the same degree. Many of his early works are rather studies than pictures. The landscape in oil in the National Gallery of Ireland, here reproduced, is thoroughly characteristic. The influence of Wynants is unmistak- able, but the actual work is obviously governed by the wish to become familiar with the forms, tones and tex- tures of the piece of country selected rather than by the creative impulse. Gainsborough, consciously or unconsciously, spent his early years at Ipswich in laying foundations rather than in producing works of art, and this gives unusual importance to his environment. I have been tempted to dwell upon it because it seems to me exactly the right school for a landscape painter, a school in which there was every provision for learning the rudiments and becoming master of the tools, and practi- cally no temptation to wander outside the true province of art. In a future chapter I shall have to describe some of Gainsborough's still more primitive endeavours, and to show how he, like other boy artists, began by trying to invent compositions out of his head, just as Cuyp invented mountains. But these he soon deserted for the series of elaborate studies on which the splendid freedom of his later years was built. It is not so easy to identify his exact sites as it is in the case of Constable. In the course of two or three days' wanderings round East Bergholt and Dedham, a whole regiment of Constable's pictures can be traced to their source. I have tried to do the same with Gains- borough, but with small success. This is partly due, of course, to the greater lapse of time. A century and a 49 D THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH half divide us from the days when he explored the Suffolk fields. The materials, moreover, for many of his early landscapes are too slight for identification unless the seeker has unusual luck. An old stile overhung by a single tree, the corner of a sand-pit with a winding road beside it, the edge of a waste land which may now be hidden under the suburbs of Ipswich — to look for these is to search for a needle in a haystack. In Gainsborough's time the population of Ipswich was less than ten thousand ; it is now about six times as much. In 1760 its streets were among the most picturesque in England. Mr. John Cobbold, at the Holy Wells, just outside the town, has a series of water-colour drawings of Ipswich made about a century ago. These show the streets and open squares to have been lined with those picturesque half-timbered and elaborately plastered houses of which a few relics still remain to reproach the present age. A town like that, small and trim, and set among those well- wooded undulations which still preserve their charm in spite of tall chimneys and other signs of ' progress,' was bound to affect the prepossessions of an artist. In spite of its transformation we can trace the character of its site in many of Gainsborough's early works. The fall of the ground, the peculiar carriage of the trees, the very sky which rolls above it, seem to strike a note of their own, and that note recurs in many a landscape like the Landguard Fort and Cornard Wood. It is now a hundred and forty years since Gainsborough left Ipswich for Bath, so that even in the lane a mile or so from the town which still bears his name, it would be unreasonable to look for many recognisable features. But in the dis- position of the ground and the lines of hedgerow and coppice we find reminders of his work and confirmations of the assertion he used to make in'after life, that Suffolk 50 THE "EAST NEUK" OF SUFFOLK had made him an artist. The whole question of the influence of East Anglia on her painters is most interesting If we add the members of the Norwich school to Gains- borough and Constable, we are faced by the curious fact that one corner of England at once produced a consider- able school of landscape painters and stamped her own individuality on their works. Put into so many words this seems natural enough, but it is difficult to think of any other instance of so strong a reaction between the artist and his native soil. The Dutch landscape painters loved to get away from the flats and sky-domes of Holland, the French to exchange their native fields for the trees and rocks of Fontainebleau, the non-eastern English to find their themes in Wales, in Scotland, in Italy. Constable, Crome, Vincent and Stark, even Cotman himself, the most eclectic of the school, were all nursed by the soil on which they were born; and if in after years they now and then went abroad for their subjects, it was on the inspiration of their native fields that their most sympathetic work was done. With Gainsborough, no doubt, the case was slightly different. His gift for painting men and women came in to complicate his career. At an early age he deserted the country for the town, and thenceforth his work at land- I scape had to be fitted into the intervals of portraiture and ! controlled by its requirements. His landscapes grew \ steadily less iconic and more ideal, until at last they put I on so generalised an aspect that we feel tempted to call this branch of his activity landscape-painting in the abstract, and its results the souls of landscape without the bodies. But in spite of all this the real fields never lost their power over his fancy. He never sank into artificiality He never saw landscape through the eyes of the scene- 51 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH painter, or the dancing-master, or the Editor of th Classical Dictionary. The true spirit of rural Englanl breathes through all he did, and in his last pictures, is in his first, the roots of his inspiration seek the memorits of his native Suffolk. LORD ARCHIBALD HAMILTON. 17S2 Bakon F. de Rothschild CHAPTER III Gainsborough's family, birth and early years HIS masters GRAVELOT HAYMAN HE first difficulty biographers of Gains- borough have to face lies in that dearth of small but important facts which makes such a contrast between his career and that of his great rival, Sir Joshua. So long ago as 1797 John Thomas Smith, the well known Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, begged Constable to collect informa- tion during one of his visits to the neighbourhood of Ipswich. The result is shown in the following letter : — "East Bkrgholt, 7/^ May, I797- "Dear Friend Smith, "If you remember in my last I promised to write again soon and tell what I could about Gains- borough. I hope you will not think me negligent when I inform you that I have not been able to learn anything of consequence respecting him : I can assure you it is not for want of asking that I have not been successful, for indeed I have talked with those who knew him. I believe in Ipswich they did not know his value till they had lost him. He belonged to something of a musical club in that town, and painted some of their portraits in 53 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH a picture of a choir ; it is said to be very curious. 1 heard it was in Colchester ; I shall endeavour to see it before I come to town, which will be soon. He was generally the butt of the company, and his wig was to them a fund of amusement, as it was often snatched from his head and thrown about the room, &c. ; but enough of this, I shall now give you a few lines, verbatim, which my friend, Dr. Hamilton, of Ipswich, was so good as to send me. . . . " ' I have not been neglectful of the inquiries respect- ing Gainsborough, but have learned nothing worth your notice. There is no vale or grove distinguished by his name in this neighbourhood.* There is a place up the river side where he often sat to sketch, on account of the beauty of the landscape, its extensiveness and richness in variety, both in the fore- and back-grounds. It com- prehended Bramford and other distant villages on one side ; and on the other side of the river extended towards Nacton, &c. Freston alehouse must have been near, for it appears he has introduced the Boot signpost in many of his best pictures. . . "This, my dear friend, is the little all I have yet gained, but though I have been unsuccessful, it does not follow that I should relinquish my inquiries. If you want to know the exact time of his birth, I will take a ride over to Sudbury, and look into the register. There is an exceeding fine picture of his painting at Mr. Kilderby's, f in Ipswich. . . . *' Thine Sincerely, "JOHN CONSTABLE." * Here, perhaps, Dr. Hamilton was mistaken ; " Gainsboroiugh's Lane " is about a mile from Ipswich. t Probably the " Mall in St. James's Park," which then belonged to Kilderbee. 54 FAMILY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS The allusions to Gainsborough in the letters of his contemporaries are curiously few. Romney, who lived an even more retired life, is far oftener mentioned. The chief cause of the silence was, no doubt, Gainsborough's preference for friends of a class to which the pen is a strange and fearsome instrument over those who wrote letters and kept diaries. It must be remembered, too, that his career in London was comparatively short. The years during which habits and a circle of friends are most easily formed were passed in Ipswich and Bath, and what little we can tell about the domestic conditions of the painter we learn mostly from those who knew him in the provinces. He was born in the early days of May 172.7, at Sudbury, in Suffolk. His birthplace still exists. It is a typical " Queen Anne " house, but with the extra touch of Amsterdam not unusual in the Eastern Counties. It must have been nearly new in 1727.* Thomas was the youngest of nine children. His father has been variously described as a clothier, a milliner, a crape manufacturer, a shroud maker, and as, on occasion, a respectable smuggler. We are told that he was a Dissenter, and that his wife, the painter's mother, belonged to the Church of England. Here, however, it is possible that the facts have been reversed. Gainsborough the elder was a handsome man, of good manners, extremely careful of his dress, an excellent citizen, upright in his commercial dealings, kind and considerate with those about him. Stories are told, too, which show him to have been gifted with a vein of humour. One night, says Fulcher, he was * The buildings shown in the engraving by Finden, published by Fulcher, seem to be fanciful creations founded on nothing more sub- stantial than tradition as to what had preceded the existing "Queen Anne " house. Their structure is impossible anywhere off the stage, although, in a vague way, they suggest the style in fashion in the eastern counties before the Revolution. SS iiii THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH travelling homewards in a light cart in which a keg of "free" brandy had been disposed among a number of shrouds, the staple of his more legitimate trade, when he was stopped by an inquisitive exciseman. " What have you in your cart, Mr. Gainsborough " " Til show you," he cried, and snatching up a shroud he wrapped his tall figure in it to the discomfiture of the gauger. Fulcher also tells us that, when in full dress, he always wore a sword, and possessed, moreover, the skill of a ready fencer, being equally expert with both hands. This was an unusual accomplishment for a tradesman, and confirms the notion that Gainsborough senior was a very remark- able person. He refused, we are told, to press for his dues from those to whom payment was inconvenient, and so lost much money. He was also in the habit of fore- going the " toll " on spinners' wages exacted by other masters in his trade; and so, perhaps, we need feel no surprise that, in 1733, when his son Thomas was but six years old, he was gazetted a bankrupt. He died on the 29th of October, 1748, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Gregory, Sudbury. His wife, whose maiden name was Burroughs, seems to have been worthy of her mate. She was well educated, and, we are told, was an accom- plished flower-painter. She lived to see her son well forward on the road to fame, and died at Sudbury on the 24th of May, 1769. She was buried in the graveyard of the Independent Meeting House, which, taken in connec- tion with the fact that her husband had been interred in the churchyard of St. Gregory's more than twenty years before, seems to cast a doubt on the assertions of Fulcher and others as to the religious tenets of Gainsborough's father and mother. It is not likely that the Dissenter was buried in the churchyard and the churchwoman in the shadow of the Independent chapel. Altogether the 56 JOHN GAINSBOROUGH glimpses we catch across a century and a half give a pleasant impression of the painter's father and mother, and this is confirmed by the little we know of their sons and daughters. We are told that the only member of the family who was not a burden on the father was Thomas himself, but this can only be partially true. For all the four daughters were married, Mary to a Dissenting minister at Bath, named Gibbon; Susannah to Mr. Gardiner of the same city ; Sarah to Mr. Dupont, and Elizabeth to Mr. Bird, both of Sudbury. The three elder sons, John, Humphry, and Robert, were all failures from the worldly standpoint, but the little we know of their characters leaves us with a sneaking kindness for them all. The fourth, Mathias, died as a child. John, commonly known about his native town as " Scheming Jack," was the eldest of the family. He really seems, like his younger brother Humphry, of whom I shall have to speak presently, to have been gifted with considerable genius for mechanics. Unfortunately those who have recorded his achievements appear to have been quite destitute of any such gift themselves, and so it is difficult to understand what "Scheming Jack" really did invent. He seems, however, to have hit upon the principle of the turbine, for what else can Thicknesse mean by a " wheel that turned in a still bucket of water " ? A metal turbine, laid on the water in a bucket, would turn as it sank to the bottom. Un- happily, like so many other inventors, Jack had been denied the faculty for contriving links between invention and profits. The cradle which rocked itself and the '* cuckoo which sang all the year round " were toys, but the turbine offered possibilities which some one about him ought to have recognised. A chronometer, built in competition for the Government prize of ;^2o,ooo, which 57 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH was won by Harrison, had better luck, for, although un- successful in the competition, it was awarded a sum of money for its ingenuity. In his " Sketch of the Life of Thomas Gainsborough," Philip Thicknesse describe> a visit he paid to " Scheming Jack " about the year 1768. His account is so interesting that I may be forgiven :or quoting it in full, although it travels to some extent o/er ground already covered. " I never saw John Gainsborough but once," he says, " and that is more than twenty years ago ; but passing through Sudbury, where he has always resided, I visited him as a friend of his brother's, but previously to seeing him had sat an hour with his wife and, I think, seven daughters. It was on a Sunday morning, and I found them all clean, but clothed in the most humble manner. These females seemed all endowed v/ith good sense, but their countenances, even the children's, were overcast with distress. I had taken an opportunity to give the eldest daughter a guinea (for I knew the character of the father) before he appeared; but the mother, perceiving what I had done, said, ' God certainly sent you, sir, for we have a piece of beef for dinner but no bread to eat with it.' I was shocked at this information, and asked her whether Mr. Gainsborough, her brother, did not assist them. * Oh, yes,' said she, ' he often sends us five guineas, but the instant my husband gets it he lays it all out in brass- work to discover the longitude.' At that moment her longitudinal husband appeared. He would not even suffer me to tell him my name, nor that I was a friend of his brother's, but brought forward his brasswork, and after showing me how nearly it was complete, observed that he only wanted two guineas to complete it. I could scarcely detect whether his deranged imagination or his wonderful ingenuity was most to be admired, but I 58 JOHN GAINSBOROUGH informed him that I had not capacity to comprehend the genius of his unfinished works, and therefore wished him to show me such as were completed. He then showed me a cradle which rocked itself, a cuckoo which sang all the year round, and a wheel that turned in a still bucket of water. He informed me that he had visited Mr. Harrison and his timepiece, but, said he, ' Harrison made no account of me in my shabby coat, for he had lords and dukes with him ; but after he had showed the lords that a great motion to the machine would in no way affect its regularity, I whispered him to give it a gentle motion,' " a suggestion which, he seems to say, disturbed Harrison considerably. A man at Colchester made the first smoke- jack, and John Gainsborough walked over to see it. The inventor refused to let the eye of a rival * artist ' fall upon it. He boasted, however, that it would roast a whole sheep, upon which ' Scheming Jack ' declared that he would go home and make one to roast a whole ox, which he did ! " I then took leave," concludes Thicknesse, " of this eccentric and unfortunate man without giving him the two guineas he solicited, and now lament he has lost the aid of his excellent brother, for, alas ! without aid he cannot subsist, and must be verging upon fourscore years of age, for I think he was twenty years older than his youngest brother." John Gainsborough added some little flirtation with painting to his other pursuits, but the only definite knowledge we have of his proceedings in this direction is contained in the tragedy of a signboard, as related by Fulcher. It seems that *' on one occasion he was waited on by the landlord of a village inn, ' The Bull,' who was ambitious of having a new sign * by Gainsborough,' but restricted the price to twenty shillings. John demanded thirty : Boniface, however, was inexorable — he would not 59 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH advance by a single sixpence. The artist described in glowing colours the prospective merits of the picture, and, in addition to other recommendations, mentioned that the bull should be drawn fastened down with a gold chain, in itself worth ten shillings. Still the landlord would not raise his terms. The bargain was struck, the sign painted and hung up before the ale-house, where it swung to and fro, the admiration of the villagers and the envy of all the other publicans, till a heavy shower falling one night washed out every vestige of the animal. . The landlord waited upon 'Scheming Jack' for an explanation. * It is your own fault,' said the indignant painter, ' I would have chained him down for ten shillings and you would not let me ; the bull, therefore, finding himself at liberty, has run away ! "' It was a distempered bull ! John Gainsborough remained an inventor to the end of his life. Fulcher puts some strain on our credulity by asserting that, when very advanced in age, he started from Sudbury on a journey to India, to test his chrono- meter. In any case he got no farther than London, where he was taken ill and died. After his death, says Fulcher, his house at Sudbury was found to be filled with models of every size and shape, nearly all unfinished. Humphry, the second son, was almost a repetition of the first. He had the same mechanical genius and the same inability to turn it to profit. Fortunately he also had a profession, for he was an Independent minister, with a chapel at Henley-on-Thames. His most important inspiration seems to have been that of the steam corn- denser. Here again the accounts which have come down to us are a little vague, but they seem to show that he hit upon the notion of providing a steam- engine with a separate condenser at least as soon as its actual patentee. The story goes that he was called upon, 60 HUMPHRY GAINSBOROUGH at Henley, by a stranger to whom he confidingly explained his models, and that this stranger was in some way con- nected with Watt, who afterwards took out his famous patent. Thicknesse tells us that after Humphry Gains- borough's death, which took place in 1776, his brother the painter gave him, Thicknesse, " the model of his steam-engine : that engine alone would have furnished a fortune to all the Gainsboroughs and their descendants, had not that unsuspicious, good-hearted man let a cun- ning, designing artist see it, who surreptitiously carried it off in his mind's eye." Every one who has ever known an inventor has heard stories like this. But Humphry Gainsborough has better claims to be remembered as a mechanician than such as depend upon hearsay. He anticipated the modern invention of fireproof safes ; he designed an excellent universal dial,* while for a tide mill of his contrivance he obtained a premium of fifty pounds from the Society of Arts. Moreover, he was a conscien- tious minister. His mechanical pursuits were his relax- ation. So exemplary was he in the fulfilment of his clerical duties that he was coveted by the Establishment. He was offered preferment if he would take orders and enter the Church, but resisted the temptation and died an Independent. His death was sudden. He had promised to dine with some friend who lived not far from his own home, but failing to appear at the appointed hour, the friend sallied out on a search and found him lying dead on the road. Of Gainsborough's two remaining brothers, Robert and Mathias, nothing is now to be discovered beyond what Fulcher tells us. It is related that the former eloped with a girl whom he afterwards married, and that • Fulcher's statement that this dial went to the British Museum seems to have no foundation. 61 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH he passed his days in Lancashire. Mathias died as a boy. He was running out of a room with a fork in his hand, when he fell; the prongs ran into his head and killed him. Gainsborough's uncle, the Rev. Humphry Burroughs, was the headmaster of Sudbury Grammar School, and thither in due course the boy was sent to begin his education."*^ His progress in learning was not fast, for every unobserved moment was given to the practice of those elementary forms of art which are dear to the schoolboy. He covered, of course, the title-pages, fly- leaves and margins of his books with sketches of flowers, trees, animals, and men and women. At ten he is said to have spent every holiday with his pencil, and at twelve he was already importuning his parents to make him a painter ; so it is not surprising that he was taken away from school at fourteen. From that age onward he had no further education, and yet his letters show that he knew how to clothe his thoughts in nervous, though careless, English. He was quick, observant and eager, full of interest in life and ready to gather knowledge as he went along. So that in spite of the early date at which his grammars were finally put aside, those few letters which have come down to us show none of the clumsy involution which as a rule marks the style of the half- educated writer. In this respect Gainsborough was an extraordinary contrast to Romney, who seems to have been entirely devoid of the most elementary literary faculty. Gainsborough's earliest serious drawing is said to have been a group of trees, which he afterwards gave, with a number of similar things, to his first patron, Mr. * The old Grammar School at Sudbury, a picturesque, half-timbered erection, dating from the end of the fifteenth century, was pulled down about 1850. 62 HUMPHRY GAINSBOROUGH Philip Thicknesse. " I considered it," writes Thicknesse, "a wonderful performance, noteworthy of a place in one of the painter's best landscapes." The Lieutenant- Governor was probably no bad judge in such a matter, and the drawing may well have deserved his praise. For we have plenty of evidence that Gainsborough began on that surest foundation for success, an infinite capacity for taking pains. The rock on which precocious artists usually wreck themselves is the attempt to create, or at least to interpret, before they know. You must under- stand a tree before you can summarise it, and the best way to understand it is to dissect it with the pencil. Be all this as it may, the boy gave exactly those signs of ability which the people about him were best able to recognise. He did not throw off irresponsible concep- tions in which only an experienced painter could see promise ; he worked hard from nature, reproducing every tree, stump, and stile, as he afterwards declared, in the neighbourhood of Sudbury. Holidays were often begged for this purpose, when the young artist would betake himself into the fields and lanes to spend long summer days in transferring some parts of their beauty to paper. On one occasion the usual sanction from his father, backing up his request for a holiday, was refused, but Tom was equal to the occasion. For a boy of his skill it was easy to write " Give Tom a holiday " in the paternal fist, and the Rev. Humphry Burroughs was deceived by the forgery. Unluckily the trick was dis- covered, and Gainsborough senior paid a horrified tribute to the excellence of the imitation by declaring *' Tom will be hanged ! " Smith * gives an improved edition of this story, according to which the boy was an habitual criminal rather than a "first offender." He tells us that on a * "NoUekens and his Times," vol. ii. p. 149. 63 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH certain occasion a necessity arose for the use of the family warming-pan, and that on the said utensil being taken down from its hook, it was found crammed with forged orders for a holiday. Another story of the painter's childhood has to do with the famous portrait, still extant, known as "Tom Peartree." On several occasions the orchard behind the Gainsboroughs' house had been robbed, the thief always getting off undetected. But one day the boy happened to be drawing among some shrubs in the garden, when he noticed a man leaning over the palings, and watching the laden pear-trees with a wistful eye. As the man gazed the boy portrayed him, and the result- ing sketch was afterwards instrumental in bringing the robber to book. From this sketch Gainsborough painted the portrait in oil which is still in existence. He cut it out, after the manner of those Dutch fire-screens which were once so fashionable, and the story goes that he used to fix it on the orchard fence, where the excellence of the imitation deceived the casual observer as the grapes of Zeuxis did the birds. All these unmistakable signs of a vocation had their effect upon his parents. At the age of fourteen they sent him to London to study in earnest. On the authority, apparently, of Charles Grignon, the engraver, he is said to have boarded with a silversmith, name unknown. In any case there is little doubt that his first school was one of those academies in the neighbourhood of St. Martin's Lane which preceded the great foundation of George III. His first serious master in London was the fascinating artist whom we know as Hubert Gravelot, who varied his work as an illustrator by teaching. So many errors have crept into the biographies — in diction- aries and catalogues — of Gravelot, and he was such an 64 THE BLUE BOY. ? 1770 Duke oi' Westminstek, K.G. HUBERT GRAVELOT interesting person, that I may be pardoned for giving a sketch of his career. It is extracted, in the main, from the only real authorities, the Eloge de Mons. Gravelot* by his brother d'Anville, the famous geographer, and his own works. Hubert Francois Bourguignon, called Gravelot, was born in Paris on the 26th of March 1699.! His father, Hubert Bourguignon, was a master tailor, his mother, one Charlotte Vaugon. Hubert was the second son ; his elder brother, Charles, who afterwards became famous as a geographer, took the name of d'Anville, apparently at the same time as his cadet assumed that of Gravelot. Why the boys should have become dissatisfied with their patronymic it is now impossible to say. But changes of name were in vogue at the time, witness the example of Voltaire, while both " d'Anville " and " Gravelot " were more distinctive than " Bourguignon," and had what was, perhaps, the advantage of dissociating their bearers from the paternal shop. D'Anville tells us that Bourguignon j)ere spent his savings in giving his boys an education above their station, so the father himself no doubt suggested the change. The brothers were sent to the pension Aux Quatre Nations," where the elder seems to have done all the work. He passed through the regular course with distinction, while Hubert escaped to his pencil at every opportunity. Both quitted the pension at the same time, d'Anville to pursue his studies and to win the fame of exact knowledge, Hubert to work at art. This he must have done to considerable purpose. In any * In the Necrologe des Hommes c'elebres de France, vol. for 1774, t The acte de naissance of Gravelot exists in the Parish Registers of St. Germain I'Auxerrois and runs as follows :— "Du Dimanche 29 de Mars 1699, fut baptise Hubert Francois, fils d'Hubert Bourguignon, maitre tailleur, et de Charlotte Vaugon, sa femme. L'enfant est n6 le 26 de ce mois." 65 E THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH case he did enough to set his father contriving in a new direction for his advancement. A post of some sort was procured for him in the suite of the Due de la Feuillade, who was then setting out on a special embassy to the Vatican. The Embassy was arrested at Lyons. There Gravelot spent all his money — on books, he said — and so, when the mission was abandoned, he had to come back with it to Paris. In the French capital he fell into all sorts of dissipation, and that in spite of his passion for reading and poetasting, as well as for work with pencil and brush. Bourguignon pere saw it all with antique displeasure. " he pere de Gravelot^'' says Goncourt, " qui etait . . . du temps de la paternite draconienne a lettres de cachet et d embarquement pour les Isles y'' turned his thoughts to another diplomat ex machind. The Chevalier de la Rochalard, who was under orders for San Domingo, as Governor-General, was a customer of the master tailor. Under his wing Gravelot was duly tucked, to arrive safely at his destination a few weeks later. His first employment in les isles was to make, or rather draw, a map of the Colony, in which, we are told, he showed himself a worthy disciple of his brother. But he was not happy at San Domingo. *' U enfant de Faris^"* says Gon- court, " se sentait hien loin^'' but that can scarcely be the whole explanation, for the child of Paris afterwards made himself happy enough in London for some thirteen years. But, so far as we can tell, Gravelot had no taste which a West Indian Island could gratify, and presently a catastrophe befell which hastened his departure. His father — who really seems to have been the most paternal of parents — sent the young man a consignment of merchandise to the value of fourteen thousand francs. The ship was lost on the voyage, and Gravelot was so overwhelmed with chagrin that he fell into a fever and 66 HUBERT GRAVELOT came near to death. As soon as he was again on his feet he made a rush for home, setting out with only four Spanish doubloons in his pocket. The New World had brought him nothing but experience. Gravelot was now thirty years old, and his career was still to begin. He at last determined to concentrate himself on art, and entered the studio of Jean Restout the second.* This was in 1729-30, and for some two years he seems to have worked hard and improved so rapidly that his name began to be known in the Paris ateliers. But French competition was very strong. The peculiar talent of Gravelot was no rarity in the country of Watteau and Boucher, on the cobble-stones which were already being worn by the feet of Cochin and Eisen, and were soon to bear Moreau le Jeune himself. Of these three Gravelot was in a sense the father, but in 1732 the demand for those little designs which he after- wards poured out in countless numbers was still to be developed, and meanwhile many pencils were at work, upon such things as the Ecole des Gar^ons^ the Ecole des Filles^ and the Petits Comediens.'f To escape all these elbows and to find a clearer road to fortune, Gravelot came to London not later than the end of 1732. In 1734 we find him writing to his brother in terms in- consistent with less than a year or two's experience of this country. At first he busied himself a good deal over geographical questions, sending to d'Anville maps * Jean Restout (born March 26, 1692 ; died January i, 1768) was a son of the first Jean Restout and father of the third. He was one of the most prolific of those uninteresting artists who form the Gallic parallel to the seventeenth-century Bolognese. He was a nephew ,and pupil of Francois Jouvenet. t These are supposed by the Goncourts to be the first engravings published after Gravelot's designs. L'Jr^ du dix-huitilme sleeky vol. 2,, ip. 10. 67 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH of the English counties, levees geometriquement^ and infor- mation generally for his brother's geographical works. But he settled down before long into his own proper groove. The tradition, repeated in most of the diction- aries, that he was invited to London by the engraver Dubosc,* to help in the plates for the English version of Bernard Picart's Ceremonies Religieuses^ seems to have no foundation beyond the bare fact that he worked on that publication. The designs made in the earlier years of his stay are now difficult to identify, and oiFer an opportunity to bibliographers and makers of Catalogues Raisonnes. The earliest engravings after Gravelot on which I have seen a date are the fanciful plates of *' A Marriage " and " The Humours of the Lottery," which were engraved by Remigius Parr,t and are both dated 1740. Long before this he had won a respectable place among the English artists. We know from his letters that he numbered most of the leading men in the more artistic sections of London society among his friends. The correspondence of Garrick, published in London in 1 83 1, includes three letters which show Gravelot to have been on terms of affectionate familiarity with the great actor and his wife. He took an active part in those numerous endeavours to found an English Academy of St. Luke, which preceded the actual birth of the Royal Academy in 1769. He acted as master in more than one of the drawing clubs which sprang up and disappeared during those years of unrest which * Claude Dubosc came to England about 171 2, to assist N, Dorigny on his plates after Raphael's cartoons. He did a good deal of work here, Marlborough's Battles, Picart's Ceremonies Religieuses, a plate after Poussin's "Continence ofScipio," &c., but he seems never to have w^on any reputation in his own country. t Born 1723 ; died after 1750. He must have been a hoy of seventeen when he executed these plates. 68 HUBERT GRAVELOT were brought to a close by the successful collusion of "George III. with the seceders from the Incorporated Society of Artists.* Gravelot's friendship with the Garricks sprang from his employment, not long after his arrival in London, on the illustrations for the 1740 edition of Theobald's Shake- speare. The Goncourts wax merry over this commission. Shakespeare et Gravelot! " they exclaim. " Rien que le rapprochement des noms et rScrasement de Vun par V autre font comprendre h quel degre de ridicule r interpretation de I'aimable Francais devait descendre : elle depasse encore ce qu'on en peut attendre. II faut voir Hamlet dans sa grande scene^ un Hamlet dans une pose d'ahhe galant, la reine en costume dune Gaussin^ le roi en Marquis de Comedie^ ety dans le fond, des jolis petits violons qui se rremoussent et se degingandent comme a une tribune de musique des F6tes Roulantes." Gravelot, in fact, illustrated the poet through the stage, and if his vignettes look strange in our eyes, which are accustomed to the archaeology of the Lyceum and such pictures as Mr. Sargent's " Lady Mac- beth " and Mr. Abbey's "Richard III.," we have to remember that the people of his day were able to shudder with Garrick, although he too quaked before the ghost of * Gravelot's pupil Charles Grignon, or Grignion, was a member of the Committee appointed in 1755, after his master's return to France, to arrange for the foundation of an Academy. Grignon was born in London, of French parents, in 1716. He eventually became a member of the Incorporated Society, to which he remainea staunch until its final decease. His father was a famous watchmaker in Russell Street, Covent Garden, which explains, perhaps, how Gravelot was able to send a watch worth sixty guineas as a present to his brother in 1736. (Letter quoted by Goncourt, loc. at.) Grignon died in 1810, at the great age of ninety- four. Confusion has sometimes arisen between himself and his nephew^ Charles Grignion, (born 1754; died 1804), who was a gold- medallist of the Royal Academy and a moderately successful painter of classical subjects and portraits. 69 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Hamlet's father in a costume not unlike that of an ahbe galant. But here, perhaps, I am a little disingenuous. Gravelot could not have echoed the passions of Shakes- peare, no matter what the moods of the time had been. Voltaire suited him better, but even there we find him avoiding such passages as demanded more than the elegance and gentle satire of a little master. Before Shakespeare, he had lavished his mauvais hon gout national^ as the Gon- courts so happily call it, on the Decameron, as he did afterwards upon various Greek and Latin authors and upon a crowd of English classics, among which " Tom Jones," perhaps, fared as well as any. In 1745 Gravelot returned to France, driven away, says his brother, by the discomfort of residence in a country then at war with his own. His reputation had preceded him, and it was not long before his vogue became so great that none of those little eighteenth-century volumes which we now collect with such fervour was thought complete without a frontispiece and vignettes, or at least culs-de- lampe, of his invention. He also painted pictures, although none can now be certainly identified. The cata- logue of his vente apres deces contains a "lot" thus described : plusieurs tableaux peints par feu M. Gravelot a Londres et a Paris. It is true that they only brought sixteen livres eighteen sous, which appears to give point to d'Anville's declaration that although his "efforts received the approbation of Mons. Boucher, Gravelot gave up painting because he had not begun its practice soon enough, and it cost him too much effort." A picture ascribed to him was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1867. It was then the property of Mr. Ralph Wornum — misprinted "Woman" by Goncourt — after whose death it was acquired by Mr. J. P. Heseltine. It reproduces, in reverse, one of Gravelot's happiest engraved 70 HUBERT GRAVELOT designs, which is known as La Lecture. In execution it is rather English than French, and it shows none of the hesitation, thejgoing more than once over the ground, we should expect in one who found painting too arduous for his powers. It may be by Gravelot, but the attribution must be taken with a query.^^ Apropos of another picture, the Goncourts quote a letter to Lady Hervey, in which he remonstrates with his patroness because she had proclaimed her dissatisfaction with a picture he had on hand, and had taken it away without allowing it to be finished. The commission to illustrate, or rather to embellish, an edition of Voltaire, must have been one of the most gratifying he ever received. His letter of thanks to the sage of Ferney and his publisher, Cramer, is such a little model of good taste that I cannot forbear quoting it in full: " Extremement flatte, monsieur, du choix que M. Cramer faitde moi pour les dessins de la grande edition qu'il projette de vos ouvrages ; si quelque chose pouvait me flatter encore de plus, se serait vous satisfaire. Cest dans cette vue que je soumets a votre revision le choix que fai fait des sujets pour votre Henriade. En pensant qu'il falloit retrouver dans les tableaux lamarche dupoemej'ai eu egard aussi a lavariete qui pouvoit les rendre plus piquants. ^ant au talent que je puis apporter a I' execution, vous en jugerez sur les deux dessins que fai remis a M. Cramer. Concevez, Monsieur, a quel point je souhaite qu'ils se trouvent a votre gre, puisque ce seroit un moyen de participer en quelque fa^on a cette immortalite qui vous est si decidement acquise. * The Mus6e Carnavalet, Paris, has a strange little picture of Voltaire putting on his breeches, which supports the ascription of Mr. Hesel- tine's picture to Gravelot. It is apparently by the same hand, and Gravelot's connection with Voltaire would account for its production. 71 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH C est avec les sentiments d'un de vos plus vifs admirateurs, que je suis. Monsieur, votre tres humble et tres obeissant serviteury Could anything of the sort be simpler or more grace- ful ? It is the Gravelot who spent his substance on books and so much of his early years on the concoction of vers de socike. And Voltaire was so delighted, both with drawings and letter, that he enlisted the artist in a scheme of vengeance on his enemy, Fr^ron. The letter still exists in which Cramer explains what the philosopher requires, and points out in detail how Fr6ron is to be chastised. II faut dessiner une lyre, suspendue agreablement avec des guirlandes de fleurs, et un dne qui brait de toute sa force en la regardant, avec ces mots en bas : Que veut dire Cette lyre ? C'est Melpomene ou Clairon, Et ce Monsieur qui suspire : N'est ce pas Monsieur F . . . . ? Cette plaisanterie doit se mettre h la tete d'un petit ouvrage qui n' attend que cette estampe pour paraitre et que je vous envoierai d'abord. Si vous ne pouvez pas faire cette petite commission, qui feroit grand plaisir a notre cher philosophe, mandez-le moi d'abord. . . ." Gravelot made the design, which was engraved by ChofFard. Deserting the habits of his youth, Gravelot became more or less of a recluse in his declining years. He married twice after his return to Paris, and displayed as a husband qualities as attractive as those which had distinguished him as an artist. His first wife died in 1759 ; he married his second in November 1770, when he was nearly seventy-two, partly no doubt because air increasing affection of the eyes threatened to leave him helpless in his last years. 72 HUBERT GRAVELOT **Z.^ bonhomme aux gros traits ^ aux yeux vifs h Fair lourd, rustique, Anglaise^ h la physionomie d'un patriarche villageois ae Greuze" — that is the comment of the Goncourts on the only two original portraits of Gravelot known to exist. One of these is by Quentin La Tour, engraved by Mazzard ; the other by himself, engraved by Henriquez. He is, indeed, so like a patriarche viilageois de Greuze that he might have been Greuze's actual model. Gravelot died on the 19th of April, 1793. The connection between Gainsborough and Gravelot did not last very long, nor probably was it very intimate. But we may safely say that while he was pursuing his studies in London the youth from Suffolk met no artist whose work was so sympathetic to himself as that of the Frenchman. The figure-drawings of both men belong decisively to the same family. Not only are they similar in method, they betray a search for the same characteristics in the movements of men and women, they show the same delicacy of apprehension, the same love for all that is civilised, unaffected and distinguished in manner and allure. Gainsborough was the freer draughtsman, Gravelot the more precise, and in some cases there is little else to suggest a difference of hand.* Curiously enough, how- ever, it was only in after years that the Englishman grew so like his French teacher. In 1745, when the latter went back to Paris, Gainsborough was still drawing in a painfully tight and elaborate fashion. It was not until about 1760 that he began to produce those drawings which throw back, as it were, to Gravelot. Whether it * The Print Room of the British Museum has long possessed two drawings of one model, ascribed severally to Gravelot and Gainsborough, These might be quoted as examples of the similarity between the work of the two men, could the old ascription be accepted. Both drawings, however, appear to be the work of Charles Grignon. 73 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH was the memory of what he had seen during the twenty- four months spent by the two artists in drawing side by side that had so powerful an influence over him, or whether he and Gravelot had some unrecorded meetings in after years, it is now impossible to say. Some biographers declare that the Frenchman made a second stay in London, about the year 1750, but d'Anville makes no allusion to anything of the kind. All that we can say for certain is that during the years 1742-45 the two were master and pupil, and that the drawings made by the pupil twenty years afterwards bear a startling resemblance to those he had seen growing under his teacher's pencil. In this connection I may again quote from "L'Art du dix-huiti^me Siecle," to show how the mature work of Gravelot strikes a Franfais des Franfais^ and gives point to what I have said as to his effect upon the most gifted of his English pupils : *' ^and il ( Gravelot ) quittait rzAngleterre^ la native elegance de son dessin, ou revenait un souvenir de W ■ztteau^ avait gagne a ce long sejour comme un complement ei un achevement d'' elegance Anglais e. Elk y avait pris cette aristocratic^ cette rarete de distinction^ qui se degage des choses^ des femmes et des hommes de la-has. Elle en emportait le gout de ces jeunes costumes d'honnetetiy de ces chapeaux de failles ingenus de ces robes plates^ de tout ce hlanc simplicite fratche^ blanche pudeur friande de la femme^ qui va devenir bientot chez nous la mode du linon et des fichus menteursy So far as it goes this description would suit the pupil as well as the master. To some of the English- man's earliest figure-pictures the French critic might have applied the lines I have quoted without the change of a word. The touch of distinction, the formal grace, the freshness, innocence, and purity in the allure of his women, especially, are just the qualities to which his attention might have been drawn by Gravelot had not 74 FRANCIS HAYMAN Nature been beforehand, and planted in the Suffolk youth an unrivalled eye for the simplicite fraicke, the blanche pudeur friande de la femme. The contrast between Gainsborough's first master and his second was remarkable, and yet, as teachers, the one was the complement of the other. If Gravelot awoke his native gift for enjoying the rarer and finer aspects of the world and the people in it, Hayman put into his hand exactly the right instrument for its exploitation. As a painter^ Hayman at his best was not greatly inferior to Hogarth. His works are often slovenly in draughts- manship, and are always without grace, lightness, and imagination. But their execution is of the sound, fat, simple kind which was usual in English work during the first half of the eighteenth century, and formed the most desirable soil, as it were, in which to plant the flowers of Gainsborough's fancy. He was, in short, no bad guide for a beginner of genius — so far as the metier was concerned. Francis Hayman was a countryman of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was born at Exeter in 1708. His master was Robert Brown, a pupil and assistant of Sir James Thornhill.* His first regular employment in London was at Drury Lane Theatre, where he painted scenes for Fleetwood, whose widow he afterwards married. He * It was of Brown that the story was told how on a certain occasion his quick wits saved his master's life. The two men were painting the dome of St. Paul's, perched on a scaffold a hundred and fifty feet above the floor. The knight stepped back to admire a head he had just finished, forgetting the gulf which yawned behind him. Another step and he would have been over the edge, when Brown dashed a loaded brush across the newly-painted face. Thornhill dashed forward, shouting, " Good God, what have you done ? " " I have only saved your life ! " quietly answered the scholar. Some of Brown's works, rery much darkened, are still to be seen in the city churches. 75 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH seems to have been brought into contact with Gravelot through his illustrations for Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare, published 1744-6, which were engraved by the Frenchman. These were the first of many designs for books. The most notable, perhaps, were those for Smollett's edition of " Don Quixote " ; of which the ori- ginal drawings are now in the British Museum. His chief work as a painter was the decoration of Vauxhall Gardens. Here he had Hogarth for his collaborator, and some confusion exists between their respective productions. Hayman, however, appears to have been solely responsible for the series of four large scenes from Shakespeare which decorated the pavilion of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The more frivolous designs in the alcoves were appor- tioned between himself and the painter of the " Marriage ^ la modey Other notable pictures by him are, " Moses striking the Rock," at the Foundling Hospital : *' Sir John FalstafF raising Recruits," in which Quin sat for FalstafF, now in the National Gallery of Ireland ; "Garrick as Richard III."; "Sir Robert Walpole in Hayman's Studio," now in the National Portrait Gallery ; and " A Convivial Company," now, or recently, in the possession of Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi, with the painter's own figure, seated on the ground and sketching, in the corner. All these are painted in a sound method, and show a good technical equipment. They are the work of a straightforward, intelligent, and most unimaginative artist, whose ambition was confined to the honest realisa- tion of the simple ideas which came into his mind.* The important part taken by Hayman in the marchings and countermarchings which led to the foundation of the Royal Academy is well known. At present I need say little • Lord Ronald Gower calls Hayman a "miserable dauber," a verdict only to be accounted for by unfamiliarity with his work. 76 FRANCIS HAYMAN more about him, except that tradition declares his nfluence over Gainsborough, outside the studio, to have been often exerted in undesirable directions. It is the fashion nowadays to whitewash all the traditional rakes. The modern biographer tries to prove that Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Adriaan Brouwer, and George Morland were little short of saints, and but for the immortal autobio- graphy no doubt he would do as much for Cellini himself. The evidence of Hayman's conviviality is not strong, how- ever, and in various ways the known facts of his career seem inconsistent with any great irregularity of life. The most definite piece of evidence against him is the story of how he and Quin, the actor, fell drunk into the kennel one night, and exchanged jokes while waiting for the watch to come and pick them up. And yet Quin was a man of cleanly life. But in human character there is no limit to inconsistency, and we shall presently encounter phrases in Gainsborough's own letters which amount to a confession that during those early years in London he saw more of the rackety side of life than was good for a lad of his years. Hayman's most flourishing period was after Gains- borough's pupilage had come to an end. His reputation touched its high-water mark between 1760 and 1769, during the years which saw the throes which led finally to the birth of the Royal Academy. Of this institution he was the first librarian, at a salary, apparently, of ten shillings and sixpence per week. He died on the 2nd of February, 1776, in a house which is now divided into Nos. 42 and 43 Dean Street, Soho. The only relic of Gainsborough's first years in London to which we can point with certainty is a pair of portraits, in pencil, in the National Gallery of Ireland. They represent a middle-aged man and woman of the 77 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH middle — and not the upper middle — classes. A respect- able shopkeeper and his wife, one would say. They are drawn with a hard pencil on a fine water-colour paper, and are in excellent preservation except for a few pentimenti which have been obligingly introduced by some later possessor. So far as I know, they are the only things Gainsborough both signed and dated. On each the sig- nature Tho: Gainsborough fecit^ 1743-44, appears. They were acquired in 1894 from an old house in Carlow. Their authenticity is quite beyond dispute. Allowing for the symptoms of inexperience, they agree precisely with other early drawings. The heads are well modelled, and the costumes drawn with elaborate care, though as yet without facility. Both heads are full of character, and if we could only identify the originals we should probably find that they played some not unimportant part in the young artist's London life. It has been suggested that they represent his father and mother, but their apparent ages do not confirm that idea, neither is tlie character in the man's head what we should expect to find in the honest smuggler of Sudbury ; lastly we have no reason to suppose either that Gainsborough was in his native town in 1743-44, or that his parents were in London. Gainsborough's last year in the capital was passed in an attempt to practise on his own account. He took rooms in Hatton Garden, where he painted portraits at prices varying from three to five guineas, and landscapes for such dealers as were to be found in those days. He also practised modelling, and, we are told, acquired great skill in the rendering of animal forms and movements. It is said that he modelled an old horse with peculiar effect, and that a cast from it was at one time popular in the shops of the Italian formatori. It may well be so, for the drawings of animals — horses, cows, donkeys, 78 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. ? 1786 Sir Robkkt Pkf.l, Bakt. SUFFOLK AGAIN goats, &c. — which fill his sketch-books betray the modeller's interest in structure. The charpente is always well marked and the planes broadly seen. But modelling was not a lucrative pursuit and candidates for five-guinea portraits were few, so after a twelve months' trial of Hatton Garden the boy — he was still only eighteen — returned in a happy hour to his native Suffolk. 79 CHAPTER IV RETURN TO SUDBURY EARLY LANDSCAPES MARRIAGE IPSWICH LTHOUGH we have little or no direct information on the point, we can feel but slight doubt as to how Gainsborough spent the months which immediately followed his return home. His native town cannot have offered much encouragement to portrait-painting, while, even if it did, his failure in London must have made him unwilling to commit his fortunes entirely to that pursuit. No doubt he gave most of his attention to landscape, and resumed that study of every tree and stile in the neighbourhood which had been inter- rupted by his life in a city. To this time must be attributed a certain number of rather elaborate compositions which, at first sight, one hesitates to ascribe to Gainsborough at all. The earliest of these belongs to Mr. John Cobbold, of the Holy Wells, Ipswich. It is a long canvas, embrac- ing a wide view, and reminding one in a general way of pictures like the once famous " Claude's Mill." Rocky slopes occupy the foreground, with little figures dotted over them. Waterways intersect the middle distance, while far away a few strange-looking hills rise above the plain. The hills are like Cuyp's mountains ; they are the inventions of a lowlander who had, so far, seen nothing 80 INFLUENCE OF RICHARD WILSON more lofty than the cupola of St. Paul's. The execution is elaborately careful, and in many ways quite unlike any- thing Gainsborough did in after years. But his person- ality can be traced in the figures, in the minuter details of the handling, and in the tendency of the colour-scheme, different superficially though it is from those employed when his eye was on the object. For the scene is no transcript from Nature. It is an "ideal landscape" in the old-fashioned sense, which is another term for a collection of more or less plausible elements marshalled into a picturesque impossibility. The existence of these pictures and of others like them suggests a new theory of Gainsborough's early development which has at least the merit of agreeing with all the known facts. We have seen that he was fourteen when he went to London and eighteen when he left it, ages at which the most pre- cocious artist has not, as a rule, a stiiF backbone. Even at eighteen his art would be an echo from the older men about him. From Gravelot he received a bent towards grace, refinement, and civilisation generally. Hayman taught him to paint simply and eschew experiment. Why should not Richard Wilson, who was thirty-one in 1745, have planted in his mind his first notion of what a landscape should be ? Wilson did not leave London for Italy until 1750, and in the narrow society of the time the two men must have often met. Between their characters there was much in common — Wilson was fond of gay company, and had a reputation not unlike that of Hayman, who was, moreover, one of his intimates. The only difficulty in the way of accepting the landscape painter as one of those who formed the early taste of our hero is the anecdote according to which Wilson never painted a landscape until he went to Rome. The story goes that he called one morning upon Zucarelli, who was 81 F THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH settled in the Eternal City, and that to beguile a wait in the studio he took up a canvas and sketched the view from his friend's window. Zucarelli asked him if he had ever studied landscape ; Wilson answered " No." *' Then," said the other, " I advise you to try for you are sure of a great success." If we suppose that instead of being the first landscape he had ever attempted, this was merely the first taken seriously by any competent adviser, we shall arrive at a more probable account of what happened, as well as at one which was pretty sure to be transformed in time into the more dramatic version. That a born artist like Wilson, and a native of Wales, should Hve to be thirty-six, producing mediocre portraits and almost starving at the work, and should then blossom in a day into a landscape painter of the first class, is too improbable to be accepted on the authority of a tempting anecdote. I prefer to believe that his genius acted in a more normal way, and that the signs of his influence traceable in Gainsborough's earliest landscapes, as they are again in the productions of his maturity, were the result of direct example. As a fact we know that Wilson did paint at least one landscape before he went to Rome, for an engraving after a view of Dover by him, dated 1748, is still extant. Mr. Cobbold's landscape is just such a thing as a young man who admired Wilson's early work would paint. The colour, atmosphere, and rich impasto of the older man were beyond him, but the flow of line, the arrangement of the masses, and the scenic effect of the whole betray the source of his inspiration. To about the same period, or, perhaps, a little later, must belong a curious landscape now in the possession of Sir Charles Darling, and an interesting portrait of Mr. John Plampin, a small full-length figure, with a dog, in a land- scape, the property of Mrs. Wallis, of Balheary House, 82 GAINSBOROUGH'S MARRIAGE Swords. Another picture which must in part be referred to these very early years belongs (1898) to Messrs, Shepherd. The sky and the more distant parts of the landscape agree exactly with the other pictures mentioned. They belong to about 1747-8. The foreground with its large trees and the figures are later, and date from about the same time as the " Cornard Wood." My belief, then, about such things as these is that they represent Gains- borough's first steps as a landscape painter, and were executed, for the most part, during the short time which intervened between his return to Sudbury and his migra- tion to Ipswich with his wife. Soon after his establishment in the county town he received that commission from Philip Thicknesse which inaugurated and may well have begotten those more exact and topographical productions usually known as " early Gainsboroughs." Before touching further upon these, however, I must tell once more, I suppose, the curious story of the artist's marriage. Allan Cunningham, Gainsborough's first serious bio- grapher, thus recounts his introduction to the lady who was to bear his children : *' It happened, in one of his pictorial excursions among the woods of Suffolk, that he sat down to make a sketch of some fine trees, with sheep reposing below and wood-doves roosting above, when a young woman entered unexpectedly upon the scene and was at once admitted into the landscape and the feelings of the artist. The name of this young lady was Mar- garet Burr ; she was of Scottish extraction, and in her sixteenth year, and to the charms of good sense and good looks was added a clear annuity of two hundred pounds. These are matters which no writer of romance would overlook ; and were accordingly felt by a young, an ardent, and susceptible man ; nor must I omit to add that country rumour conferred other attractions — she was said 83 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH to be the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes ; nor was she, when a wife and a mother, desirous of having this circumstance forgotten. On an occasion of household festivity, when her husband was high in fame, she vindicated some little ostentation in her dress by- whispering to iier niece, ' I have some right to this — for you know, my love, I am a prince's daughter.' " So far Allan Cunningham. Fulcher, who wrote a quarter of a century later, confirms his story so far as the name of the young lady, her beauty, and her annuity of two hundred pounds go. But he adds that her brother was in Gainsborough senior's employment as a traveller, and that her close connection with the son began with the painting of her portrait. This took many sittings, and before it was finished the pair were engaged, mainly on the lady's initiative. The tradition of Miss Burr's extraordinary beauty was still fresh in Sudbury when Fulcher wrote, but the secret of her parentage has never been disclosed. The existence and punctual payment throughout her life of the two hundred pounds, an income which would go as far as five hundred will now, seems beyond dispute. Thicknesse, who hated Mrs. Gainsborough and never lost an opportunity of having a fling at her, calls her " a pretty Scots girl, of low birth, who, by the luck of the day, had an annuity settled upon her for life of two hundred pounds." Young women of low birth, in the ordinary sense of that term, don't have two hundred a year settled upon them by the luck of the time. It is pretty certain that some one of ample means and social importance thought himself responsible for Margaret Burr's existence. In his " Diary of a Lover of Literature," * Thomas Green, * Green's " Diary " was partially and privately published at Ipswich in l8lo, with the title, "Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature." It was continued in the Gentleman's Magazine between 84 MRS. SIDDONS From the Picture in the National Gallery GAINSBOROUGH'S MARRIAGE of Ipswich, has this entry under date April 22, 1818 : " Much chat with Mrs. Dupuis respecting Gainsborough, who lived here on the site which Mrs. Tunney's house now occupies. Very lively, gay, and dissipated. His wife Margaret, natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford. Rapid in painting— his creations sudden." Two pieces of evidence, which must be taken for what they are worth, seem to confirm Mrs. Dupuis. Mrs. Gainsborough was very like John, fourth Duke of Bedford, as no one who saw their portraits hanging not far apart at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885 could help perceiving. Curiously enough this portrait of the Duke is believed to be the only oil picture on which Gainsborough ever put his name in full. Again, among the few letters of Gains- borough still extant is the following : "Bath, May 29, 1768. " My Lord Duke, " A most noteworthy honest man, and one of the greatest geniuses for musical composition England ever produced, is now in London, and has got two or three members of Parliament along with him out of Devon- shire to make application for one of the receivers of the land tax of that county, now resigned by a very old man, one Mr. Haddy. His name is William Jackson, lives at Exeter, and for plainness, truth, and ingenuity, at the same time, is beloved as no man ever was. Your Grace has doubtless heard his compositions; but he is no fiddler, your Grace may take my word for it : he is extremely clever and good, is a married man with a young family, and is qualified over and over for the place ; has got friends of fortune, who will be bound for 1834. and 1839. The above quotation is taken from vol. xv. new series, page 471. 85 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH him in any sum ; and they are all making applications to his Grace the Duke of Grafton to get him this place. But my Lord Duke, 1 told him they could not do it without me ; that I must write a letter to your Grace about it. He is at Mr. Arnold's, in Norfolk Street, in the Strand ; and if your Grace would be pleased to think of it, I should be ever bound to pray for your Grace. Your Grace knows that I am an original^ and therefore, I hope, will be the more ready to pardon this monstrous freedom from " Your Grace's, &c., "THO. GAINSBOROUGH." Considering the formality of the time and the social gulf which then yawned between a Duke of Bedford and a provincial " face-painter," considering also the artist's usual style to any one who was at all in the relation of a patron, this letter seems to be curiously familiar, and to suggest, moreover, in one of its phrases, that its writer had some special claim on the good offices of the gentle- man addressed. This particular duke, however, can scarcely have been Margaret Burr's father. The credit or imputation must lie at the door of his elder brother, Wriothesley, whom he succeeded. Here I must leave the question of Mrs. Gainsborough's extraction, confessing that to me some probability seems to lurk about the Bedford hypothesis. After his marriage, Thomas Gainsborough bought his wife home to his father, who welcomed " Master Tom's wife '* with the declaration that she was handsomer than the great local beauty, Madame Kedington. Soon after- wards the newly wedded pair took a house in Friar Street, but before many months had passed they deter- mined on a move to Ipswich. The county town, though 86 EARLY LANDSCAPES small enough, would give better opportunities than Sudbury, and Margaret was probably glad to assert her independence, especially as she was the bearer of the purse. They took a small house in Brook Street, at the modest rent of six pounds, and Gainsborough at once set about recording the beauties of the neighbourhood. A very short time after the move he made the acquaint- ance of a man who was to exercise a considerable influence upon his life and memory, in Philip Thicknesse, Lieu- tenant-Governor of Landguard Fort. The introduction was brought about by "Tom Peartree." According to Governor Thicknesse, the famous portrait had been acquired by one Creighton, printer and editor of the Ipswich Journal^ who used to amuse himself by sticking it up on his garden fence just as Gainsborough had done at Sudbury. Thicknesse, like others, took it for a real man, and, on learning the deception, asked for the artist's address. " I . . . visited Mr. Gainsborough,'* he goes on to say, " and told him I came to chide him for having imposed a shadow instead of a substance upon me. Mr. Gainsborough received me in his painting room, in which stood several portraits, truly drawn, perfectly like, but stiffly painted and worse coloured ; among them was the late Admiral Vernon's, for it was not many years after he had taken Porto Bello, with six ships only ; but when I turned my eyes to his little landscapes and drawings, I was charmed ; these were the works of fancy, and gave him infinite delight." Gainsborough's style in portraiture at this time can still be judged, and to some extent it bears out the criticisms of Thicknesse. His figures, however, were rather quaint and naif than stiff, his colour rather negative than bad. But for us the interesting point is the effect his landscapes had on the Lieutenant- Governor — works of fancy he calls them, a strange 87 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH description for things painted on the lines of the Irish National Gallery picture, and others of the same period. The landscapes which so pleased Thicknesse were pro- bably conceived on the more imaginative system of Mr. Cobbold's picture. So far as can be judged from the engraving, one of the earliest of Gainsborough's more exact and topographical pictures was the view of Harwich Roads and the Mouth of the Stour from the high ground north of Landguard Fort. This was the result of a commission from Thicknesse himself. Unhappily, the picture perished soon after it was painted, in consequence, says the Governor, of having been placed against a wall in the building of which sea water had been used. We only know it from Thomas Major's plate. But the engraving is so good, it suggests so admirably the colour and handling, as well as the more simple characteristics of the master, that I have little hesitation in asserting upon its testimony alone that the original must have been one of the first things done by Gainsborough in this particular style. The picture in the Irish National Gallery corres- ponds to it exactly. A comparatively large landscape, sold at Christie's some five or six years ago, and lately in the possession of Mr. W. H. Fuller, of New York, belongs to the same date. An elaborate objectiveness distinguishes them all. High in tone, grey and restrained in colour, precise in handling, juvenile in their etoffage^ governed by that artistically topographical spirit which seeks beauty through an obedience to Nature which has just a touch of the slavish about it, they afforded a splendid foundation for the breadth and freedom of his later years, and they mark the commencement of the Gainsborough we now love and appreciate. I do not wish to drive my theory too far, but among all the early Gainsboroughs of the usual type (the type which imme- 88 EARLY LANDSCAPES diately follows the primitive style of Mr. Cobbold's picture) seen by me, and those are not a few, I know none so early as the three just alluded to. The " Cornard Wood," in the National Gallery, is rather later. The other early pictures there belong to the time when he began to experiment with grounds and to loosen his hand. Let us turn again for a moment to the " Landguard Fort." It was a wide picture, painted to fit a space over the Governor's chimney-piece. More than half the canvas was sky. The view was taken from the rising ground which is now covered by the southernmost houses of Felixstowe. The tail of this eminence occupies the foreground. Over it are dotted some dainty, artificial, Watteau-esque little figures : an elegant young shepherd asleep ; a pretty girl with her lover, her hat and skirts blown about by the wind ; a man, Thicknesse himself perhaps, resting on a felled tree ; a cart disappearing^ Dutch fashion, over the brow of the hill ; one of those donkeys of which Gainsborough was almost as fond as Constable, climbing the hill on the right. Cows, sheep, and a few wayfarers making for the fort, complete the etoffage. The flats about the "garrison" and the fort itself lie in the middle distance, while beyond it the estuary of the Stour bears a procession of ships up with the tide to Ipswich. Harwich is on the horizon, and above it rolls a finely studied April sky. The picture must have possessed an extraordinary charm, so frank and full of light does it seem in Major's plate. No wonder Thicknesse was delighted with his bargain. " I was much pleased," he says, " with the performance, and asking him his price, he modestly said he hoped I would not think fifteen guineas too much. I assured him that, in my opinion, it would, if offered to be sold in London, 89 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH produce double that sum, and accordingly paid him, and lent him an excellent fiddle, &c." Thicknesse suspected that he had become the owner of a very fine piece of art, and so, not long afterwards, he took the picture to London to show to Thomas Major,* the engraver, who was then *' esteemed the first artist ... in his way." Major admired it so much that Thicknesse pressed him to engrave it, "for both their sakes as well as mine," which he did after receiving a guarantee for the sale of ten guineas' worth of impressions. I have dwelt on this picture at some length because it is one of the few positive landmarks we have in the growth of its author's genius. We know that it belongs to the years between 1747 and 1750; it bears strong internal evidence of being one of the first of those unmistakable creations which are called " early Gains- boroughs," and yet we know that the young painter had been hard at work ever since he was fourteen. All this seems to justify my assumption that most of the pictures he painted in London, at Sudbury, and perhaps during the first six months or so at Ipswich, are in the style of the landscapes belonging to Sir Charles Darling and Mr. John Cobbold, and have yet to be identified. The view in Sufix)lk (Irish National Gallery) was probably painted about the same time as the Landguard Fort. It represents exactly the same stage of develop- ment, the same sincerity, the same conscience, the same artistic inexperience. The tones are high, the handhng precise, the colour only redeemed from coldness by its * Major was born in 1720. He spent much of his early years in Paris, where he was imprisoned by the French Government in 1745 as a hostage for the safety of the French prisoners taken at Culloden. He was afterwards engraver to the king for no less than forty years, and was the first associate-engraver elected into the Royal Academy. He died in 1799. 90 HON. MRS. GRAHAM National Galkeky, Scotland GAINSBOROUGH'S PALETTE transparency in the shadows. A certain dexterity in the brushing is the one thing about it to suggest that its author had already been five or six years at work, and might one day paint the Blue Boy. The scene may still, I think, be identified. If I am not mistaken, it lies on the road between Dedham and Sudbury, about two miles to the westward of the former. The square stump of Dedham Church may just be distinguished in the distance, backed by the long ridge which separates the Stour and Colne valleys. At this time Gainsborough's palette was very simple. Vermilion, blue black, indigo, terra-verte, yellow ochre, Naples yellow, burnt umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and perhaps mummy — these are the pigments we can trace, and he seems to have used them with as little vehicle as possible. He paints on a fine canvas, and seems to have begun with a general glaze of what looks like mummy, into which he painted in a thin but solid impasto. His method is curiously naif in parts, as where he suggests the open mouth of a sort of cave or tunnel in the chalk with a simple dab of semi- transparent brown. His fidelity to high tones and neutral colour gives all his early pictures an air of having been painted in a March east wind. They depend, too, for a great part of their effect on these high windy skies, in which the grey cumuli contrast but slightly with the blue beyond. Between pictures like this and the early work of Constable there is a considerable and most interesting resemblance. Both men were commencing landscape painters with little help from teaching. Both wresded with Nature for her secrets and both tried pretty much the same falls. Constable was bolder with his palette than Gainsborough ; the latter, on the other hand, studied the forms, the " measurements moulded," of the world about him with more solicitude. In spite of these 91 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH differences, we are sometimes startled by the similarity in essentials between them. It is not the sort of likeness which leads to confusion. In some ways, indeed, it would be difficult to name two members of one school who resemble each other less. The likeness depends upon a similarity of aim, which would lead them to select almost identical materials from any scene painted by both. Compare, for instance, Gainsborough's " Landguard Fort " with Constable's " Harwich : Sea and Lighthouse," in the National Gallery. Dress either of them in the colour of the other, and you will make a new Constable, or Gains- borough, as the case may be. The similarity extends even to the pattern made by the clouds in the sky. For the next stage in Gainsborough's progress we may take the " Cornard Wood " as the typical production. Less happy, perhaps, in conception than either of the two pictures already described, it marks a distinct advance in the use of his materials. The handling is freer, the painting fatter, the colour less March-like, the values more convincing, than we found them in the Dubhn picture or in Major's rendering of the "Landguard Fort." The one quality in which he has not progressed is the rightness of artistic judgment which not only conceives a picture well as a whole, but resists the temptation to be irrelevant in detail. "Gainsborough's Forest," as the picture used to be called, is a composition of some twenty to five and twenty trees, near the edge of a wood. A road runs through it near the right of the canvas ; on the left some oaks are mirrored in a pond, one of those dark and silent pieces of water which look as if they were quietly waiting for you. The sense of solitude is removed by several little figures, with a pair of donkeys and a cow. A gleam of sunshine pierces the regiment of rolling clouds to fall on the village of 92 HIS DUTCH MODELS Cornard, whose spire rises at the point for which the road is making. The composition might, perhaps, have been improved by increasing the size and height of the most conspicuous tree, which would take away a certain flatness it has at present, and make the line of the tree tops more amusing. However, it is a little impertinent to criticise Gainsborough on such a point, and I must be content to notice a more indisputable error in judgment which occurs among the details. The painter has so literally followed the accidental facts which faced him in Cornard Wood that he has introduced into his picture one of those puzzles which are more effective in destroying the breadth, the unity of impression, of a work of art than almost any other device you can name. On the left of his canvas he has elaborately painted, on the surface of his pond, the reflections of things themselves invisible. This at once sends the spectator questing for the originals of these intrusive shadows, and changes enjoyment into an irrelevant curiosity. The figures in this picture, as in several more of Gainsborough's early landscapes, are very un-English. It is commonly asserted that he had access to some private collections of Dutch pictures in his early years, and made the landscape painters of Holland, especially Wynants, his models. The aspect of his own early work certainly bears out the assertion, and this introduction of figures recalling those of Jan Both, Thomas Wyck, Lingelbach and others of the same school, supplies a con- firmatory detail. We know from the practice of his later years, when he copied Van Dyck, Rubens, and Murillo, that Gainsborough explored the secrets of his predecessors in that obvious if not always profitable way. I find that, in a sketch I wrote some years ago for the publishers of the Portfolio^ I say of Gainsborough that, "like every 93 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH other painter reared in the eastern counties, he seems to have formed himself on Dutch models. Just as, a generation later, old Crome and his disciples were to mould themselves on the examples of Hobbema and Ruysdael, so Gainsborough seems to have taken the mediocre Wynants for his master. The connection is unmistakable. In his early pictures the method is thoroughly Wynants-like. The conceptions throw back to the Dutchman ; the palette is like his ; the bits of roadside scenery, even the placing of the figures, the oppositions of sky and earth, of cloud and tree, of sandy foreground and forest edge, of empty to crowded spaces, are so identical that the difference could hardly be expressed in words. It is only in the delicacy of his colour and the lightness of his impasto that Gainsborough shows a distinct superiority at this time over his chosen guide. His work, indeed, from the very first has a distinction of which no trace is to be found in Wynants, but this distinction springs entirely from these two points of superiority. Gainsborough never ventured upon the use of full tones until he had mastered the harmonies to be won from greys. In his * Great Cornard Wood,' the typical example of his first period, there is no positive colour. The chromatic scale is almost as quiet as Van Goyen's. The result is that we have a picture as thoroughly at peace with itself, as completely single- minded in its aim, as a Van Goyen or a Ruysdael." Those who have had patience to read what I have just been saying on this picture will understand that I should now modify one or two of these phrases, but, in the main, further study has only confirmed the conclusions of some years ago, except that I now think Gainsborough's likeness to the Dutchman to be less deliberate than I thought it at first. He took hints from them more or 94 HIS DUTCH MODELS less unconsciously. It was as though Wynants were alive and saw what the Englishman was trying to do, and slipped in a whisper of advice now and then. In the light of such things as the two pencil portraits in the Irish National Gallery, we can see that Gainsborough was pre- destined to begin landscape work just as he did, and in no other way. So far as we can now judge, Gainsborough developed more rapidly as a landscape painter than as a maker of portraits. If all his landscapes could be brought together, it would not be difficult, I fancy, to mark stages of progress almost as numerous as the pictures themselves, down, that is, to the time of the Watering Place " and the " Cottage Door," which left no heights to conquer. From the Cornard Wood" onwards, his progress is marked by a continual loosening of the hand, by a gradual warming of the colour and lowering of the tones, and by an increasing felicity of arrangement which led at last to that best sort of composition which evolves unity from apparent accident. The various stages are well marked in the national collection, though not always by important pictures. Confining ourselves to such as certainly belong to the Suffolk period, with which we are at present concerned, the "View of Dedham " should, I think, be named after the "Forest." It is not very happy in arrangement; pictures divided sharply into foreground and extreme distance seldom are ; but it shows a distinct advance in colour and in freedom of execution upon the landscapes already described. The view is taken, I think, from the lane in which Constable painted his " Cornfield."* Next to the "Dedham" I should place the two * This, by the way, is not a view of Dedham, as some of the books call It, but one of Stratford St. Mary, looking at it from the south. 95 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH small landscapes lately presented to the National Gallery by the Misses Lane, the painter's great-grand- nieces. In their case the advance is very clearly marked. The painter's hand is lighter, his colour more luminous, his composition better understood. The better of the two is a little gem in its way. I should say that these two little pictures were painted shortly before he left Suffolk for Bath. They represent his powers at the close of the period when they were habitually exercised in the actual presence of Nature. In the landscapes painted around Ipswich we find, for instance, the species of trees always recognisable, although the fidelity with which the characteristics of an oak are rendered in the " Forest " soon begins to diminish. After 1758, he was to pass his life in cities. His landscapes were in the main to be built up at home, from the sketches amassed during fifteen years of enthusiastic study. The simplicity, the sincerity, I may say the humility, of his early style was to give way to the freedom, the poetry, the superb subjec- tivity of a manner which retained nothing of the Suffolk fields but the love they had inspired for the face of Nature. So far I have said nothing about the portraits painted by Gainsborough during these early years. They are now very difficult to trace, and I suspect them to have been less numerous than has been usually supposed. The most important, perhaps, is the Admiral Vernon of the National Portrait Gallery, which dates from about 1749-50. It is painted with extreme care, the crimson coat especially being rendered in a very juvenile and painstaking fashion. Scarcely less interesting is the half-length of Miss Hippesley in the collection of Sir Charles Tennant. A few portraits-in-little also survive, which clearly date from about the same period as the Cornard Wood " and other 96 EARLY PORTRAITS landscapes of that class. One of these is the group of two women, belonging to Mr. Cobbold, of Ipswich, another is the charming group of a lady and gentleman which used to go by the name of " Thomas Sandby and his Wife " : it was lent by Archdeacon Burney to the Gainsborough Exhibition in 1885, and is now in Paris; another is the single figure of a man lately iii the collection of Mr. W. H. Fuller, of New York, to which I shall have to refer again later ; another is the pair of heads of his two daughters, in the Foster collection at South Kensington. The apparent age of the girls dates the Kensington picture, which must have been painted about 1757-8. It therefore shows his style towards the close of the Ipswich period. From this time also date the beautiful group of his daughters chasing a butterfly,* and two pictures belonging to his great-nephew, the Rev. Edward Gardiner, which represent, the one the painter's elder daughter at about the age of six or seven, the other the same girl a year or two older, with her younger sister. These last two pictures are both reproduced in Mrs. Bell's biography.! 1 should ascribe to the years before 1758 only such portraits as, in style, approach those here named The more sensuous possibilities of the palette were un- explored by Gainsborough until after he left his native county. No picture that we know to have been painted in Ipswich shows any sign of a desire to do more with colour than echo modestly the quieter tints of Nature. It was not until he had settled in Bath, and had made acquaintance with the Van Dyck at Wilton and other fine things in the same neighbourhood, that he awoke to a full * Now in the National Gallery, to which it was bequeathed by Mr. Henry Vaughan. t " Thomas Gainsborough : A Record of his Life and Work," by Mrs. Arthur Bell (N. D'Anvers), 1897. 97 c. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH sense of what could be done with paint. Mrs. Bell reproduces a bust in an oval in which she sees a portrait of General Wolfe. The picture belongs to Mrs. Pym, of Braxted, Kent. Its identification with the hero of Quebec appears to me far from convincing, while its execution points rather to the Bath than the Ipswich period. One of the best examples I have ever seen of his later years in Suffolk was a half-length of Miss Katherine Edgar, in an oval, which was lent to the winter exhibition at the New Gallery in 1897-8 by Mr. George Donaldson. It agreed exactly in execution with the above-mentioned portraits of Gainsborough's daughters, especially in the peculiar radiating brush strokes with which the face was mostly built up. This peculiarity can be traced in Gainsborough's handling down to the end of his life, but in later portraits, such as the " Mrs. Siddons " of the National Gallery, the * Mrs. Graham " at Edinburgh, and a good many others, it disappears in the general fusion of the surface. Mr. Edgar's portrait, also a bust in an oval, will be referred to presently. We have to remember that, living in a house rented at no more than six pounds a year, and having only two girls to keep besides himself and his wife, Gainsborough was under no compulsion to do more than provide a supplement to the family income. We know that he painted many portraits, from a letter of his own in which he speaks of his reluctance to leave home while sitters were biting, but their apparent scarcity compared to other things painted at Ipswich warrants the belief that during those fourteen years his activity in that direction was not so very great, and that the move to Bath was a bolder venture than usually supposed. Another thing con- firms this view, that Gainsborough was in the habit of receiving pupils into the house in Brook Street. The 98 JOSHUA KIRBY name of only one — the son of Joshua Kirby — has come down to us, but a casual phrase in one of Kirby senior's letters makes it certain that the boy had at least one fellow pupil. Joshua Kirby was among the first acquaintances made by Gainsborough at Ipswich. His name has become well known through his role of ^^^^^jz-victim in the cabals which led to the foundation of the Royal Academy. Kirby was born at Parham, in Suffolk, in 171 6, and was conse- quently our hero's senior by some eleven years. In 1738 he settled in Ipswich, where he was employed by a coach and house painter. The beginning of his friendship with Gainsborough is thus recounted by Fulcher : " One day as he (Gainsborough) was sketching near Freston Tower, on the banks of the Orwell, a stranger who was passing paused to watch the progress of his pencil, and after looking on in silence for a few minutes, introduced him- self to Gainsborough as * Joshua Kirby.' A warm friend- ship, strengthened by kindred pursuits, commenced between them. Many a long day's ramble they took together ; many a sketch was made of the quaint old house in the Butter Market, Ipswich ; and many a winter evening did they spend in each other's company, dis- coursing on the art they loved, while the future Mrs. Trimmer, perchance, sat drawing by their side." Most of this reads like guessing. In 1745 the old house in the Butter Market was by no means so singular in Ipswich as it is now. But the fact is indisputable that the two men became fast friends, and that when, about 1753, Kirby settled in London, he left his son William with Gains- borough, to be taught art and the manners of polite society. In a letter from Kirby senior to the boy, written to urge upon him the practice of religion, this sentence occurs : *' My letter may serve as Sunday meditation, and 99 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH let no one see it except Master W., the companion of your studies." So Gainsborough had at least two pupils under his roof. His early friendship with Kirby may help to account for the peculiar mixture of sentiments he felt in later years for the Royal Academy. That it continued unimpaired to the end we may conclude from his wish to be buried beside him in Kew Churchyard. The chief relics of it we now possess are a portrait head of Kirby in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington, and the plate etched by Gainsborough for Dr. Brook Taylor's " Method of Perspective made Easy," which was written by Kirby and published in 1754. Another friendship, started in Ipswich, had such an influence upon Gainsborough's career, and fills so large a place in all the accounts of his life, that in spite of its being an often told story, I shall have to treat it at some length. I mean, of course, the friendship with Thicknesse already alluded to. Philip Thicknesse has, I think, been rather hardly treated by Gainsborough's biographers. All the evidence goes to show that the decisive move in the painter's career was taken not only on his advice but under the actual impulse of his energy. Gainsborough was quite capable of passing his whole life in the back- water of Ipswich, just as Crome did at Norwich. In that case we should, no doubt, still have dwelt upon his works with delight, just as we do on those of Crome. But the world would never have possessed the superb artist who showed that the most dazzling productions of the seven- teenth century could be rivalled in the formal days of the eighteenth. Thicknesse, no doubt, had faults which made him impossible as a patron, but posterity owes him a debt which it should not ignore. Fulcher develops an extraordinary bitterness against him, but his pages put the anti-Thicknesse case so fully that I may as well quote 100 MR. PEARCE Fkom thk Portrait in the Collection of Mr. F. Fi.eischm.ann PHILIP THICKNESSE them here. " Philip Thicknesse," he says, " was ushered into the world under circumstances singularly advan- tageous, yet they proved to him positive misfortunes. Descended from an ancient family and possessed of high connections, these things only served to call attention to his follies, and to make his failings conspicuous. Hand- some and insolent, a soldier and a bully, the father of a peer, and a scandaliser of the nobility, he abused every privilege and neglected no opportunity of self-injury. He had, in a remarkable degree, the faculty of lessening the number of his friends and increasing the number of his enemies. He was perpetually imagining insult, and would snifF an injury from afar. Explanation, concession, apology, everything that would satisfy a gentleman, would not satisfy Philip Thicknesse. Contention was essential to his existence. Presented with a commission in early life, almost the first use he made of it was to fight a duel. He obtained promotion, and libelled his superior officer. Imprisonment could not teach him wisdom, for at the expiration of his term of confinement, his liberty again served as a cloak for maliciousness. At length, having lost friends, health, and fortune, he could think of no better method of revenging himself on mankind than by publishing his biography, wherein his spites, his bickerings, his disappointments, the ill-natured things he did, the mistakes he made, the worth he insulted, are recorded with a minuteness which his most malignant enemy might have envied. How he cured Lord Thurlow of bile, and quarrelled with him about payment ; how he was entrusted with the care of two young ladies in France, and how he confined them in a convent because their dog made a meal of Mrs. Thicknesse's paroquet ; how he befriended an eminent actor in early life, and how ungrateful it was of him not to subscribe for a copy of the " Memoirs '* ; how THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH he was entrusted with some private letters of Lady Wortley Montague (j/V), and how Lord Erskine wheedled him out of the secret of their address ; how he got him- self into the Queen's Bench Prison, and how his release was hailed by the Scotchman who attempted to assassinate Wilkes, and by the veritable Cock Lane Ghost — all these things are told with a solemn gravity, expectant not merely of attention, but of sympathy, approval, and applause. With more than the weakness of Johnson's biographer, he had none of his reverence and devotion. Scarcely a Boswell in intellect, he was a Steevens at heart." There we have the worst view of Thicknesse, vigorously painted. According to this he was a monster scarcely fit to live, who, when not being consciously malicious, was blunder- ing into what might well have been results of malice. A candid perusal of all he wrote about himself and about Gainsborough leaves, I submit, a very different impression on the mind. But before I go into that I had better say in a few words who he was. Philip Thicknesse came of an old Staffordshire family, settled at Barterly or Batterly since the days of Edward I. His father, the Rev. John Thicknesse, was rector of Farthinghoe, Northamptonshire. On May lo, 1749, Philip married Elizabeth, only child of James Tuchet or Touchet, afterwards 5th Earl of Castlehaven in the peer- age of Ireland and i6th Baron Audley in that of England. On the death of Lord Castlehaven the Irish earldom became extinct, but the son of Philip and Lady Elizabeth Thicknesse succeeded to the barony, taking the name of Touchet. He handed on the barony to two successive male heirs, after whom it fell into abeyance between sisters. Lady Elizabeth died in 1762, and Thicknesse married a Miss Ford of Bath. It was with this second wife that Gainsborough had such stormy relations. 102 PHILIP THICKNESSE Plenty of material exists for the formation of a true notion of Philip Thicknesse's character. He wrote his own memoirs in three volumes he published a book of travels;! in 1788, immediately after Gainsborough's death, he published his sketch of the painter's life,t to which frequent reference has already been made. He wrote besides a few volumes on other subjects.§ In addition to these opportunities for learning what Thick- nesse thought of himself, we have his opponents' version* of some of his many quarrels, especially the curious pam- phlet by Dr. M'Kittrick- Adair. H The personality which gradually disentangles itself from all this literature is that of an energetic busybody, filled with a sense, not so much of his own importance, as of a heaven-sent ability to guide his fellow creatures if they would only be reasonable and listen. Men of that stamp are always quick and obstinate in their resentments, and so we find Thicknesse pursuing with his abuse those who had slighted his ideas. But he was not spontaneously malicious. His enmity had to be provoked, though little enough would do it. On the whole he behaved well to Gainsborough. It has some- times been assumed that their acquaintance did not begin until near the close of the painter's life at Ipswich. But all the known facts are against that idea. Admiral * " Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, late Governor of Landguard Fort, and unfortunately Father to George Touchet, Baron Audley." London, 1788-91. t " A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain." London, 1777' i " A Sketch of the Life and Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, Esq." London, 1788. § " A Treatise on the Art of Deciphering " ; " Sketches of Persons «ow Liring"; " Prose Bath Guide for the Year 1788." II " Curious Facts and Anecdotes not contained in the Memoirs of Philip Thicknesse, Esq." London, 1790. (With a caricature portrait of P. T.) 103 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Vernon's portrait, which was in Gainsborough's studio when the Governor paid his first visit, represents a man of about sixty. Now Vernon was sixty-one in 1746, when he resigned his seat in Parliament and retired to Nacton, in Suffolk, so that in all probability his portrait was painted about 1747, a supposition confirmed by Thick- nesse's remark that it was " not many years after he had taken Porto Bello with six ships only," in 1739. Again, Thicknesse says that when he showed the '*Landguard Fort " to Thomas Major, the engraver had just returned from France. But Major arrived in England in 1746 ; he would not linger in France after his release from the durance into which he had been thrown by Louis XV. as a hostage for the safety of the French taken at Culloden. I have already alluded to the internal evidence of the Landguard picture. Other little things point in the same direction, and, on the whole, we may pretty safely con- clude that Thicknesse and Gainsborough were close friends during the last ten years of the Ipswich period. Their friendship hung on more than the Governor's admiration for his friend's art. Thicknesse was something of a musician, and the loan of " an excellent fiddle " seems to have started the painter on that course of half-mastering a long series of musical instruments which was to employ so much of his energy. Thicknesse makes no secret of the fact that Gainsborough soon surpassed him as much on the violin as he did on canvas. Now, if I am right in my reading of his career, Gainsborough was extraordinarily sensitive to the influences about him, and if he had remained in Ipswich all his life, his art would have remained there too. Of course, it developed, and developed steadily, but it showed few of those signs of a rich fruit-time which appeared at once when he found himself in closer contact with the full stream of life and with a few masterpieces of 104 PHILIP THICKNESSE art. Thicknesse claims the credit of the move to Bath, and I do not see why the claim should be refused. He had a house in Bath, and a wide acquaintance among the subjects of Beau Nash. Mrs. Gainsborough, we may fairly conclude from what little we know of her, was rather a drag than a willing assistant in the venture. Thicknesse declares that when part of a house in the Circus, at a yearly rent of fifty pounds, was proposed, she called out in dismay, '* Fifty pounds a year, Mr. Gainsborough ! Are you going to throw yourself into a gaol ? " Upon which the Governor cried that if she disapproved of lodgings at fifty pounds a year, they should take a house of a hundred and fifty, and he (Thicknesse) would pay the rent. So far the Governor seems to have been a valuable, although an occasionally exasperating, friend to the painter. He uprooted him from Ipswich, where his worldly success had been as modest as his art, and planted him in what was at that time perhaps the best centre in England for one who had yet to conquer fame. If Gainsborough had gone straight to London his full success might have been much longer delayed, might never, indeed, have come at all. Looked at in the light of his later achievements his Suffolk portraits have the interest of very early Rembrandts — to which, by the way, they bear a curious resemblance in artistic essentials. But they might easily have failed to attract attention in the London of 1758, and their author was without that social gift, that facility in the making and keeping of desirable friends, which was so useful to Reynolds. In Bath, on the other hand, he found plenty of people ready to have their portraits done, and only the rivalry of William Hoare, the pastellist, to fear. Thanks to the much-abused Thick- nesse he had introductions which at least freed him from 105 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH all danger of obscurity, and, lastly, within easy reach of his new home were collections of famous pictures to supply the necessary stimulus to his own powers. The move to Bath was excellent strategy, and the strategos was rather Thicknesse than Gainsborough. The Governor has led us rather out of our chronology, and we must now retrace our steps a little to speak of some other Suffolk friends. Gainsborough's employments in his native county included the portraiture of parks and country houses as well as of their inhabitants. These commissions [brought him into contact with many useful patrons — among them was the Rev. James Hingeston, vicar of Raydon, near Southwold. Gainsborough painted Mr. Hingeston once, about 1750, and his wife twice, once at the same time as her husband and again at the very close of the painter's life. Indeed this second portrait ot the lady is said to be the last he finished. Fulcher quotes a letter from Hingeston's son to a friend in which he says : " I remember Gainsborough well, he was a great favourite of my father ; indeed his affable and agreeable manners endeared him to all with whom his profession brought him in contact. ... I have seen the aged features of the peasantry lit up with grateful recollection of his many acts of kindness and consideration." In one of the rooms at Raydon hung the picture of the artist's two daughters chasing a butterfly, and the family possessed until recently many souvenirs of his genius. Another patron was Mr. Robert Edgar, of Colchester, whose descendants lived until recently in the Red House, about a mile out of Ipswich. This acquaintance seems to have begun about the end of 1756, for in a letter dated February 24, 1757, the painter tells his friend that his picture shall be finished in two or three days, and sent home to Colchester, framed. A fortnight later he again 106 ROBERT EDGAR addresses Mr. Edgar in a letter too amusing to be left unquoted : " I am favor'd with your obliging letter, and return you many thanks for your kind intention; I thought I should have been at Colchester by this time, as I promis'd my sister I would the first opportunity; but business comes in, and being chiefly in the Faceway, I'm afraid to put people off when they are in a mind to sit. You please me much by saying that no other fault is found in your picture than the roughness of the surface, for that part being of use in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of painting knows an original from a copy by; in short being the touch of the pencil, which is harder to preserve than smoothness; I am much better pleas'd that they should spy out things of that kind, than to see an eye half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drawing when viewed at the proper distance. I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose to the canvas and say the colours smell offensive, than to say how rough the paint lies ; for one is just as material as the other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing of a picture. Sir Godfrey Kneller used to tell them that pictures were not made to smell of; and what made his pictures more valuable with the connoisseurs was his pencil or touch. I hope, sir, you'll pardon this dissertation upon pencil and touch, for if I gain no better point than to make you and Mr. Clubb laugh when you next meet at the sign of the Tankard,* I shall be very well contented. I'm sure I could not paint his picture for laughing, he gave such a description of eating and drinking at that place. I little thought you * This i» not a metaphorical phrase. The Tankard Inn still standi on the high road between Ipswich and Colchester, near the village of Capel St. Mary. 107 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH were a lawyer when I said that not one in ten were worth hanging I I told Clubb of that, and he seemed to think I was lucky that I did not say one in a hundred. It's too late to ask your pardon now, but really, sir, I never saw one of your profession look so honest in my life, and that's the reason I concluded you were in the wool trade. Sir Jaspar Wood was so kind as to set me right, other- wise, perhaps, I should have made more blunders. I am, &c. &c." The roughness complained of by Mr. Edgar's friends was very unlike the ploughed fields of paint to which we have become accustomed since.* Long after he had said good-bye to Suffolk, Gainsborough painted in a fashion that would appear smooth enough now, but at no stage in his career did he show that waxy fusion of surface which is so popular with the ignorant. But I must not here digress into another discussion of his art. For before I can bring this chapter to an end I must say something about what appears to have been his most ambitious effort in portraiture before his migration to Bath. In Constable's letter to John Thomas Smith, quoted at page 53, allusion is made to a musical club in Ipswich to which Gainsborough belonged, and we are told that he combined the portraits of several of the members in a picture of a choir. In Fulcher's time this picture belonged to Mr. Strutt, who thus described it to the biographer : "Though very slight and unfinished, it is exceedingly spirited, and is the more interesting as it was composed from memory. Immediately in front of the spectator are the portraits of Gainsborough himself and his friend Captain Clarke, who is leaning familiarly on the painter's shoulder. The heads of both are turned towards Wood, * The brush strokes in the portrait in question are visible, but other- wise the painting is tight. 108 GOOD-BYE TO IPSWICH a dancing-master, who is playing on the violin, accom- panied on the violoncello by one Mills. The latter figure is merely outlined, Gainsborough declaring that he could not recollect the expression of his ' phiz/ "Gibbs on the opposite side of the table, which is standing in the centre, is sound asleep. There is a sly- piece of satire in this, he being the only musician in the party, and his sleeping would seem to indicate that the performance is not of first-rate quality. It is a candle- light scene, and by the condition of the table some degree of conviviality seems to have prevailed. Gainsborough has his glass in his hand, that of Gibbs stands before him, as also does Clarke's, and one is overturned ; a couple of lights are placed on each side of a music-stand, before which are the two performers. The portrait of Gains- borough possesses much grace, and is very like that exhibited at the British Institution many years ago. He is dressed in a dark claret-coloured coat ; Clarke is in uniform ; Wood, in blue ; and Gibbs, in sober grey. *' When Gainsborough was leaving Ipswich, his friends paid a last visit to his studio, and expressed a wish to have some memorial of his pencil. The good-natured artist complied. One took one sketch ; another, another ; and finally, that I have been describing came into my father's hands." With this pleasant memory of Gainsborough's friend- liness to his friends we may take leave, with him, of his days at Ipswich. 109 CHAPTER V BATH — Gainsborough's friends there — garrick — HENDERSON JACKSON OF EXETER HIS SITTERS THE DUKE OF ARGYLL THE LIGQNIERS ATH in the seventeen-fifties was nearing her apogee. Her popularity as a "resort" was advancing by leaps and bounds. The continent was uncomfortable or impossi- ble for the English, who then, as now, loved change of scene. The population, both floating and resident, of the western city grew day by day, and the transformation of the " four or five hundred mean old houses on the banks of the Avon into the beautiful city stretching up the hills, which charms even eyes familiar with Bramante and Palladio," was progressing gaily. The Woods, father and son, had done most of their work, and the Avon had already been wedded to the hills by streets, squares, and circles of stately if not exactly picturesque stone houses. Beau Nash, though very old, was still alive, and his complete mastery of " his own silly busi- ness " still ensured the success of the public salons. Few European capitals excelled Bath at this time in the oppor- tunity it gave to those who could amuse their fellow creatures. Musicians flocked there, actors and actresses made their reputations on its stage, painters found com- missions more easily than in the capital itself. From I lO LADY MULGRAVE Nat'wnal Gallery BATH the days of Richardson to those of Dickens, no English novelist could neglect its call. Fielding, Smollett, Sheridan, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Bulwer — all these and many more helped to make the names, at least, of the Parade, the Circus, and the Grove, of Pulteney Street and Milsom Street, almost as familiar as Piccadilly or Pall Mall. A season in Bath was a review at leisure of London Society. A pied-a-terre in the western city was almost a necessity. William Pitt built himself a house in the Circus ; the Dukes of Beaufort, Monmouth, Kingston, Chandos, Bedford, and Marlborough, the Earls of Sandwich and Chesterfield, Lord Clive, and a host more, had houses there, and became the subjects of Nash for a part of every year. The nearest parallel to all this in later times has been the annual exodus from England to the Riviera, but in some respects Bath had the advantage over Nice, and Cannes, and Monte Carlo ; its visitors came to their own houses and they were concentrated on a much narrower terrain. The life they led there was not unlike that en- forced in modern Homburg. Hours were more regular than morals. In the "Rooms" the balls began with minuets at 6 p.m. ; country dances were not allowed till 8, tea was served at 9, at the stroke of 1 1 the music stopped and the servants began to put out the candles. Under such a regime sitters found it easy to be at a painter's studio betimes, with their roses blooming on their cheeks. Progress, which has destroyed so many of life's charms, has seldom done England a worse turn than when it made such a career as that of eighteenth-century Bath an im- possibility for the future. Play, no doubt, was high, be- sworded gentlemen pinked each other gaily under the moon, chaperons tore their wigs with cause, and the least popular of pastimes was listening to a sermon. But the existence of a well-managed pleasure metropolis made for III THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH civility, and might, had it survived to our time, have done something to counteract that decay of manners which has made the English the most non-polite of nations. Gainsborough's moves were always happy. He took Bath exactly at the flood, and found no one there to dis- count his success except the mediocre pastellist, William Hoare. I have already described how Thicknesse helped him to the choice of a house, a new one in the Circus, and how he thereby caused sinkings of the heart to Mrs Gainsborough. He also suggested that his own portrait should inaugurate the new campaign. As a decoy it might be useful and would at least serve to justify the praises with which he had prepared for the advent of his friend. He tells us that he sat once to Gainsborough, who, finding that commissions flowed in without the help of a specimen, put the picture aside and never touched it again. This, however, has to do with a story which must be told in its place, and need not be further touched upon here. From the very first the painter seems to have had as many sitters as he could wish. The list of his Bath portraits is a long one, and includes a much greater number of his finest things than is generally supposed. His Bath period, in fact, was not the period of semi- development we too often hear it called. The line of cleavage between Ipswich and Bath is unmistakable, but no such line can be drawn between Bath and London. No sooner had he arrived in the West than he seems to have modified his methods both of conception and execu- tion. The earliest Bath portraits we can find are easier in arrangement, warmer in colour, fatter and broader in the painting, than anything done in Suflblk. Some new influence came into his life with a bound. During his ten or eleven years at Ipswich he had shown curiously little aptitude for spontaneous expansion — that is, for adding 112 BATH new beauties to his art by dint of spurring his own imagination. All the elements of his pictures of 1758 are to be found in those painted in 1750. The six or eight years have given more freedom to the brush and more boldness to the palette ; but the aims are the same. The idea of using colour expressively, as a musician uses the vioHn, has not yet dawned upon his mind. He sees in it little more than a means of differentiating between one surface and another, and the notion of creating with its help alone has still to be adopted from without. The adoption seems to have been made as soon as he arrived at Bath. The new influence in his life could only be the example of men greater and more essentially sympathetic with himself, than those he had previously known and followed. So far as we can now discover the few collections of old masters within reach of Ipswich were practically confined to the Dutch school. Wilts, Somerset and Gloucester, on the other hand, were full of great houses in which, even in 1760, many of the chief masters of the Italian, Spanish, and Flemish schools were waiting to give their message to the first receptive mind which came in their way. Badminton, Corsham, Longleat, Longford, Bowood, and Wilton, besides many less im- portant places, were easily accessible, and we know that Gainsborough had dealings with the owners of them all. The great Van Dyck at Wilton captured him completely. He spent so many hours before it that he was able to re- produce it from memory with wonderful fidelity, and we shall find him afterwards making use of Lord Pembroke's park for the background of one of his best-known pictures. In the middle of the eighteenth century these famous houses were not so rich in works of art as they afterwards became — some of them through the brush of Gainsborough himself — but they all held things which 113 H THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH would be a revelation to one who had passed his life in Suffolk and in London, which then gave no opportunities for this kind of study. Gainsborough was original, but not a born originator. His artistic personality was a new one and the ideas he expressed were his own, but he required an external impetus to set him going. He was like a cask full of good wine ; you have to tap it before you can drink. The consuming desire to declare himself, to exploit his own resources as it were, was deficient. All through his life and in every branch of his activity we find this absence of initiative. He left Ipswich in obedience to Thicknesse ; he left Bath to get rid of Thicknesse ; he painted like a second-rate master till he was over thirty because up till then he had only seen second-rate pictures ; he fiddled, and viola-ed, and oboe-ed because Thicknesse, and Abel, and Fischer set him the example. In fact, he was perhaps the most remarkable instance we can point to of a by no means rare phenomenon — of creative power of the highest kind depending on external incentives for its use. Had Nature endowed him with Sir Joshua's faculty for keeping all his powers afoot at once, for keeping his tancy alert as well as his taste, he would have held an un- rivalled place in the history of modern art. As it was he required to be driven, or rather coaxed, along the road to greatness, and the chief coaxer at this stage of his career was Van Dyck — whom he repaid with a gratitude which lasted till the end of his life. Seven copies after the Fleming were found in Gainsborough's studio after his death, and several others had passed into the hands of friends while he was still alive. The only other masters he copied, so far as we can now discover, were Titian, Velazquez, and Teniers, once each ; Rembrandt and Wynants twice, and Murillo three times. It is curious that such a mediocre artist as Murillo should have won "4 BATH his way so often into such a list, but in things like the "Jack Hill" pictures we are often reminded of the popular Spaniard. Before going on to speak of the pictures painted at Bath, I had better, perhaps, relate what is known of Gainsborough's life there, premising that I have not been able to discover much beyond what Cunningham and Fulcher have already told us. The house in the Circus was scarcely occupied * before his success began. The decoy portrait of Thicknesse was put aside after a single sitting. It was soon bruited about that the new comer could " paint a head as well as Mr. Hoare,*' and sitters flocked in such serious numbers to the studio that a wit was enabled to call it " gain's borough." Between 1761 and 1768, both inclusive, Gainsborough exhibited seventeen pictures, of which only two were landscapes, with the Society of Artists. Among them were portraits of such well-known people as Quin, General Honywood, Colonel Nugent, Garrick, Lady Grosvenor, the Duke of Argyll, and Captain Augustus Hervey. A large number of other known portraits can be fitted in between these, so that we have abundant evidence that the migration from Suffolk justified itself from the first. " Business," says Thicknesse, " came in so fast that he was obliged to raise his price for a head from five to eight guineas." This modest precaution was not effective for very long, and his terms quickly rose to forty guineas for a half-length — what Thicknesse calls a head — and a hundred for a full-length. In 1765 he received, according to an entry in the books of the Corporation of * For a short period after his arrival in Bath, Gainsborough lived in lodgings, first in the Abbey Churchyard (No. 14), afterwards in Ainslie's Belvedere (No. 8). The move to the Circus seems to have taken place at the end of a few months. 115 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Stratford-on-Avon, sixty guineas for the whole length portrait of Garrick. But some uncertainty appears to surround this entry, which may possibly refer only to the frame. Here is the entry, with another which follows it : To Mr. Gainsborough for Mr. Garrick's picture ..... To Mr. Wilson for a picture-frame to the picture of David Garrick, Esq. . . Wheeler, the historian of Stratford, says that Garrick presented his picture to the town, and adds that "the Corporation themselves paid Mr. Wilson for the portrait of Shakespeare." The Corporation books seem to convict Wheeler of inaccuracy, but Fulcher suggests that Garrick was allowed to have the credit of a gift when in reality it had been no gift at all, an explanation more consistent with Garrick's reputation for economy than with his right to be considered a man of nice honour. To me it seems possible that both entries refer to payments for frames, and that in the second the clerk inserted the name of Garrick by mistake for Shakespeare's. On the other hand, we know from a statement in one of Gainsborough's own letters that sixty guineas was, as a fact, his price at this time for a whole length. The increase to a hundred guineas must have taken place later. In 1768 Gainsborough was included in the original members of the Royal Academy, upon which he deserted the Incorporated Society. During the last four years of his stay in Bath he sent seventeen portraits and fifteen landscapes to the new exhibition. Among the portraits were a second Garrick, Lady Sussex and her daughter. Lord and Lady Ligonier, Isabella, Lady Molyneux, and George Pitt, afterwards Lord Rivers. Most of the JACKSON OF EXETER others were anonymous, and therefore difficult to trace with any certainty. Several of these pictures will have to be considered more at length presently. I have enumerated them here merely to show how rapidly Gainsborough sprang into fashion after quitting the obscurity of Ipswich. Most of the gossip which has come down to us about his stay in Bath has to do, however, with his musical tastes rather than with the metier by which he earned his bread. The Royal Academy possesses a series of some twelve letters from Gainsborough to William Jackson * — " Jackson of Exeter " — which leave upon the reader the impression that his love of music was almost as profound as his devotion to the art which has given him immor- tality. I have already quoted the letter he wrote to the Duke of Bedford in favour of Jackson. So far as we know, the request it contained was not complied with, and Jackson was left to make his fortune with music alone. He was, in a sense, the converse of Gainsborough, for, professionally a musician, he spent a good deal of his time before an easel. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and his attempts at landscape were by no means contemptible. The little he wrote upon art is full of good sense. The sixth of his "Thirty Letters "f inquires into the reason why *' those objects which dis- please us, or at best pass unnoticed, in Nature, please us most in painting ? " And, practically, he comes to the perfectly sound conclusion that it is because they are more * An excellent portrait of Jackson, hj Downman, was exhibited last May (1898) at the Fine Art Society's, in New Bond Street. It was in water-colours, and showed the musician not in profile, but in three- quarter face. It was inscribed in Downman's writing : ** Again Wm. Jackson of Exeter, original drawing, 1795." t "Thirty Letters on Various Subjects," by William Jackson. London, 1795. 117 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH easily made expressive of the artist's personality than objects which have a fixed and marked character of their own. Jackson was Gainsborough's junior by three years. He was born at Exeter in 1730, and seems to have made the painter's acquaintance during periodical visits to " the Bath" between 1758 and 1767. In the latter year an adaptation of " Lycidas " with Jackson's music was suc- cessfully produced at Covent Garden. Dr. Wolcot (" Peter Pindar ") was among Jackson's intimate friends ; so were the Sheridans ; while, late in life, he made the acquaintance of Samuel Rogers, the poet, whom he turned into a sort of ante mortem literary executor. Jackson's account of Gainsborough's character is to be found in a volume of essays on various subjects which he puWished in 1798.* I had better, perhaps, quote the more interesting passages here, especially as the friendship between the two men belonged mainly to this Bath period. "In the early part of my life," Jackson begins, "I became acquainted with Thomas Gainsborough the painter, and as his character was, perhaps, better known to me than to any other person, I will endeavour to divest myself of every partiality, and speak of him as he really was. I am the rather induced to this, by seeing accounts of him and his works given by people who were unacquainted with either, and, consequently, have been mistaken in both. " Gainsborough's profession was painting, and music was his amusement — yet there were times when music seemed to be his employment, and painting his diversion. As his skill has been celebrated, I will, before I speak of him as a painter, mention what degree of merit he pro- fessed as a musician. * " The Four Ages ; together with Essays on Various Subjects," by William Jackson, of Exeter. London, 1798. 118 JACKSON OF EXETER *' When I first knew him he hved at Bath, wh re Giardini had been exhibiting his then unrivalled powers on the violin. His excellent performances made Gains- borough enamoured of that instrument, and conceiving, like the servant-maid in the Spectator^ that the music lay in the fiddle, he was frantic until he possessed the very instrument which had given him so much pleasure — but seemed much surprised that the music of it remained with Giardini." (Here, if we are to believe Thicknesse's tale of his violin, Jackson exaggerates a little.) " He had scarcely recovered this shock (for it was a great one to him) when he heard Abel on the viol-di- gamba. The violin was hung on the willow — Abel's viol-di- gamba was purchased, and the house resounded with melo- dious thirds and fifths from morn till dewy eve ! Many an adagio and many a minuet were begun, but none completed. This was wonderful, for it was Abel's own instrument, and therefore ought to have produced Abel's own music ! " Fortunately my friend's passion had now a fresh object — Fischer's hautboy — but I do not recollect that he deprived Fischer of his instrument ; and though he procured a hautboy, I never heard him make the least attempt on it. Probably his ear was too delicate to bear the disagreeable sounds which necessarily attended the first beginnings on a wind instrument. He seemed to content himself with what he heard in public, and getting Fischer to play to him in private — not on the hautboy, but the violin — but this was a profound secret, for Fischer knew that his reputation was in danger if he pretended to excel on two instruments. [It was at this time that I heard Fischer play a solo on the violin, and accompany himself on the same instrument — the air of the solo was executed with the bow, and the accompaniment pizzicato with the unemployed fingers of his left hand.] 119 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH "The next time I saw Gainsborough it was in the character of King David. He had heard a harper at Bath ; the performer was soon left harpless ; and now Fischer, Abel, and Giardini were all forgotten — there was nothing like chords and arpeggios ! He really stuck to the harp long enough to play several airs with variations, and, in a little time would nearly have exhausted all the pieces usually performed on an instrument incapable of modulation (this was not a pedal harp) when another visit from Abel brought him back to the viol-di-gamba. " He now saw the imperfection of sudden sounds that instantly die away — if you wanted a staccato^ it was to be had by a proper management of the bow, and you might also have notes as long as you please. The viol-di-gamba is the only instrument, and Abel the prince of musicians. *'This, and occasionally a little flirtation with the fiddle, continued some years ; when, as ill-luck would have it, he heard Crosdill, but, by some irregularity of conduct, for which I cannot account, he neither took up nor bought the violoncello. All his passion for the bass was vented in description of CrosdilFs tone and bowing, which was rapturous and enthusiastic to the last degree. " More years now passed away, when upon seeing a theorbo in a picture of Vandyke's, he concluded (perhaps because it was finely painted) that the theorbo must be a fine instrument. He recollected to have heard of a German professor — whom, though no more, T shall for- bear to name — ascended per varios gradus to his garret, where he found him at dinner upon a roasted apple, and smoking a pipe. ' ,' says he, *I am come to buy your lute." T'o fuy my lude ? * " * Yes — come, name your price, and here is your money.' ISO JACKSON OF EXETER " * / cannot shell my lude^ " * No, not for a guinea or two, but by G — , you must sell it/ " ' Ody lude ish wert much monnay! It ish wert ten guinea.^ ** ' That it is — see, here is the money.' " * TVell — // / musht — but you will not take it away yourself? ' " ' Yes, yes — good-bye, .* " (After he had gone down he came up again.) *" . . . I have done but half my errand. What is your lute worth, if I have not your book ? * " \Whad poog^ ^aishter Cainsporough ? " « ' Why, the book of airs you have composed for the lute.' " * cAhy py Cot, I can never part wit my poog I ' " ' Pooh ! you can make another at any time — this is the book I mean ' (putting it into his pocket), " ' c/f/^, py Cot, I cannot' " * Come, come, here's another ten guineas for your book — so once more, good day t'ye.' (Descends again ; and again comes up.) ' But what use is your book to me, if I don't understand it ? And your lute — you may take it again, if you won't teach me to play on it. Come home with me, and give me my first lesson.' " * / will gome to-morrow.' " ' You must come now.' " * / musht tress my shelf.' " * For what You are the best figure I have seen to-day.' " * Ay musht be shave.' " * I honour your beard 1 ' " * Ay musht but on my wik.' " * D — n your wig 1 Your cap and beard become 12 1 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH you ! Do you think if Vandyke was to paint you he'd let you be shaved ? ' *' In this manner he frittered away his musical talents ; and though possessed of ear, taste, and genius, he never had application enough to learn his notes. He scorned to take the first step, the second was, of course, out of his reach, and the summit became unattainable. " He hated the harpsichord and the pianoforte. He disliked singing, particularly in parts. He detested read- ing ; but was so like Sterne in his Letters that, if it were not for an originality that could be copied from no one, it might be supposed that he had formed his style upon a close imitation of that author. He had as much pleasure in looking at a violin as in hearing it. I have seen him for many minutes surveying, in silence, the perfections of an instrument, from the just proportion of the model and beauty of the workmanship. " His conversation was sprightly, but licentious — his favourite subjects were music and painting, which he treated in a manner peculiarly his own. The common topics, or any of a superior cast, he thoroughly hated, and always interrupted by some stroke of wit or humour." Jackson goes on to discuss Gainsborough as a painter, but here he gets a little out of his depth, although most of his criticisms have some sort of foundation. He confirms, however, what others say as to his friend's extreme felicity in catching a likeness, and he expresses the bold but not entirely foolish opinion that Gainsborough is seen at his best in his drawings. Some years ago the Royal Academy bought some twelve or thirteen letters addressed to Jackson by Gains- borough.* Like everything the painter ever wrote, they * These letters were in a portfolio with a collection of drawings made by Mr. Thos, Jackson, William Jackson's brother, who wis 122 LETTERS TO JACKSON are full of animation and of the most transparent sincerity. Unhappily the bent towards licence to which Jackson alludes makes it impossible to print them in full. The passages left out are a little too much in the vein of Squire Western, a Squire Western with a touch of wit, to be printed in 1898. The first seems to be in answer to one of Jackson's, recommending the painter to make his landscapes follow the fashion of Elzheimer, Claude, and Gaspar Poussin. LETTER I " Bath, Aug. 23. **My dear Jackson, " Will it — (damn this pen) — will it serve as an apology for not answering your last obliging letter to in- form you that I did not receive it for near a month after it arrived shut up in a music book at Mr. Palmer's } I admire your notions of most things, and do agree with you that there might be exceeding pretty pictures painted of the kind you mention. But are you sure you don't mean instead of the Flight into Egypt, my flight out of Bath ! Do you consider, my dear maggotty sir, what a deal of work history pictures require to what little dirty subjects of coal horses and jackasses, and such figures as I fill up with ; no, you don't consider anything about that part of the story ; you design faster than any man or any thousand men would execute. There is but one Flight I should like to paint, and that's yours out of Exeter, for while your numerous and polite acquaintances encourage you to talk so cleverly, we shall have but few productions, real and substantial productions. But to be serious (as I minister in Turin in 1780, They were lett to T. Jackson's nephew, Mr. Elmsley, Q.C., who was a county court judge at Derby. Elmsley died in 1862, and left them to his niece, J. Ballard, from whom they were bought for the Royal Academy. 123 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH know you love to be), do you really think that a regular composition in the Landskip way should ever be filled with History, or any figures but such as fill a place (I won't say stop a gap) or create a little business for the eye to be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee. 1 did not know you admired those tragi-comic pictures, because some have thought that a regular History Picture may have too much background, and the composi- tion be hurt by not considering what ought to be principal. But I talk now like old Square-toes. There is no rule of that kind, say you. " But then, says I, Damme you lie ! *' If I had but room and time before old Palmer seals up his packet I'd trim you. I have been riding out with him this morning. I wish I had been with him in Devon- shire. " Adieu, « T. G." LETTER II " My dear Jackson, To show you that I can be as quick as your- self, tho : I shall never be half a quarter so clever, I am answering your letter the very moment I received it from Mr. Palmer. I shall not tease you upon the subject of the flighty as we are now upon a better^ and that which above all others I have long wished to touch upon ; because tho : I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting and love to seem to take things wrong, I can be both serious and honest upon any subjects thoroughly pleasing to me ; and such will ever be those wherein your happiness and our friendship are concerned. Let me then throw aside that damned grinning trick of mine for a moment, and be as serious and 124 THE EARL OF ROMNEY AND HIS SISTERS (MARSHAM FAMILY) The Lord Rothschild LETTERS TO JACKSON stupid as a Horse. Mark then, that ever since I have been quite clear in your being a real genius, so long have I been of opinion that you are daily throwing away your gift upon Qentlemen^ and only studying how you shall become the Qentleman too. Now, damn gentlemen, there is not such a set of enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance. *' They think (and so may you for a while) that they reward your merit by their company and notice ; but I, who blow away all the chaff, and, by G — , in their eyes too if they don't stand clear, know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse ; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it. If any gentlemen come to my house my man asks them if they want me (provided they don't seem satis- fied with seeing the pictures), and then he asks what they would please to want with me ; if they say a picture, * Sir, please to walk this way, and my master will speak to you ' ; but if they only want me to bow. and compliment, ' Sir, my master is walk'd out ' — and so, my dear, there I nick them. Now, if a Lady^ a handsome Lady, comes, 'tis as much as his life is worth to send her away so. But this is lo — " (Here the letter is torn.) " I wish you lived a little nearer so that I could see you often, or a good deal nearer if you please. I have no acquaintance now, nor will I till I can say within myself / approve my choice. There are but very few clevet fellows worth hanging — and that con- sideration makes you the more worthy. " Adieu for want of room, I'll write again very soon. " T. G." We must remember that until quite recently the word ' gentleman ' was used in a quasi-technical sense by artists of every kind. Painters especially used to speak of ' the gentlemen,' where they would now say ' buyers.' 125 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH LETTER III "Bath, Sept. i^th. " My dear Jackson, " Now you seem to lay too much stress upon me, and show yourself to be a serious fellow. I question, if you could splice all my letters together, whether you would find more connection and sense in them than in many landskips joined, where half a tree was to meet half a church to make a principal object. I should not think of my pretending to reproach you who are a regular system of philosophy, a reasonable creature and a particular fellow. If I meant anything (which God knows if I did) it was this, that many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the gentleman ; and that, as many of those creatures are continually courting you, possibly you might forget what I, without any merit to myself, remember from mere shyness, namely, that they make no part of the artist. Depend upon it, Jackson, you have more sense in your little finger than I have in my whole Body and Head ; I am the most inconsistent, changeable being, so full of fits and starts, that if you mind what I say, it will be shutting your eyes to some purpose. I am only sensible of meaning, and of having once said, that I wish you lived nearer to me ; but that this wish does not proceed from a selfishness rather than any desire of correcting any step of yours, I much doubt. I might add perhaps in my redhot way that damme Exeter is no more a place for a Jackson than Sudbury in Sufl^olk is for a G. ! But all the rest you know better than I can tell you, I'm certain. ... I look upon this letter as one of my most agreeable performances, so don't let's have any of your airs. I could say a deal more, but what can a man say pent up in a corner thus " Yours, "T. G." 126 LETTERS TO JACKSON This last letter, unlike the rest, which are addressed to " Mr. William Jackson,'* bears the superscription, " William Shakespeare Jackson, Esq." LETTER IV "Dear Jackson, "Is it true that you broke your neck in going home ? I have not seen Palmer, but only the day after your departure to learn the truth. It is a current report here that the great and the amiable Mr. Jackson got a mischief in going home, that you had tied your horse by the head so fast that his head was dragged off in going down a hill, and that you ordered the driver (like a near- sighted man) to go back for the horse's body, and that the chaise horses frightened at the sight of the boy's riding up upon a horse without a head, took fright and made for Exeter. And that you, unwilling to leave your horse in that condition, took a flying leap out of the window and pitched head foremost into a hollow tree. Miss D — — 1 has heard this story and says if it be true she'll never touch a note again. I hope to hear from either Palmer or Bearing when I see them some more favourable account of you. I'm but little disposed to pity you because you slipped away so d — d sly, without giving me any more time than you had to jump into the hollow tree. Pray, if your d — d long fingers escaped, let's hear from you soon, and in the meantime I'll pray that it's all a lie, &c. Bath, Fei. 6tA {ij6g I). " Will you meet me at London any time, and I'll order business accordingly." LETTER V "My dear Jackson, " I will suppose all you say about my exhibition 127 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Pictures to be true, because I have not time to dispute it with you. I am much obliged to you and wish I could spend a few days with you in town. But I have begun a large picture of Tommy Linley and his sister, and cannot come. I suppose you know the Boy is bound for Italy the first opportunity. Pray do you remember carrying me to a picture dealer's somewhere by Hanover Square, and my being struck with the leafing and touch of a little bit of tree ; the whole picture was not above eight or ten inches high and about a foot long. I wish if you had time that you'd inquire what it might be purchased for, and give me one line more whilst you stay in town. *' If you can come this way home one may enjoy a day or two of your company. I shall be heartily glad. I can always make up one bed for a friend without any trouble, and nobody has a better claim to that title, or a better title to that claim than yourself. '* Believe me, dear Jackson, "Yours most sincerely, "THO. GAINSBOROUGH." « May 11/4 1768. " My compliments attend all inquiring friends, and damn this pen." The picture of Tommy Linley and his sister was pro- bably the group at Knole (Plate V.) which was clearly intended to be larger than it is now. Its apparent date agrees with that of the letter. LETTER VI "Dear Jackson, " If your neck is but safe damn your horse*s head. I am so pleased with your remarks, and your indigo, that I know not which to admire most, or which 128 LETTERS TO JACKSON to think of most immediate use ; the indigo : you leave me in doubt whether there be any more to be got, whereas I am pretty sure of some more of your thoughts now we are fairly settled into a correspondence ; your observations are like all yours, just, natural, and not common ; your indigo is clean, like your understanding, and pure as your music, not to say exactly of the same blue as that Heaven from which your ideas are reflected ! To say the truth of your indigo, 'tis delightful, so look sharp for some more (and I'll send you a drawing), and for your thoughts, I have often flattered myself I was just going to think so. The lugging in objects, whether agreeable to the whole or not, is a sign of the least genius of anything, for a person able to collect in the mind, will certainly group in the mind also ; and if he cannot master a number of objects so as to introduce them in friendship, let him do but a few, and that you know, my Boy, makes simplicity. One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the tune, and so I'm done. " My respects to Tremlett. Bearing did not call upon me. I hear he's gone from Bath. " The harp is packed up to come to you and you shall take it out with Miss ... as I shall not take anything for it but give (it) to you to twang upon when . . ." Indigo is supposed to be an unsafe pigment for the oil- painter, but Gainsborough employed it with remarkable success. In the National Gallery " Mrs. Siddons " it is used with extraordinary boldness, and its enduring brilliancy justifies all the painter says of it to his correspondent. LETTER VII **My dear Jackson, Bath, Sept. zn J. ** I should have wrote to you sooner, but have 129 I THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH been strangely hurried since I left Exeter. In my way home I met with Lord Shelborne, who insisted on my making him a short visit, and I don't repent going (tho' I generally do, to all Lords' houses) as I met with Mr. Dunning there. There is something, exclusive of the clear and deep understanding of that gentleman, most exceed- ingly pleasing to me. He seems the only man who talks as Giardini plays, if you know what I mean, he puts no more motion than what goes to the real performance, which constitutes that ease and gentility peculiar to damned clever fellows, each in their way. I observe his forehead juts out, and mine runs back a good deal more than com- mon, which accounts for some difference betwixt our parts. . . . He is an amazing compact man in every respect and as we get a sight of everything by comparison, only think of the difference betwixt Mr. Dunning almost motionless, with a mind brandishing like lightning from corner to corner of the earth, whilst a long cross-made fellow only flings his arms about like thrashing flails with- out half an idea of what he would be at — and besides this neatness in outward appearance, his store room seems cleared of all French ornaments and gingerbread work, everything is simplicity and elegance and in its proper place ; no disorder or confusion in the furniture, as if he were going to remove. Sober sense and great acuteness are marked very strong in his face, but if those were all I should only admire him as a great lawyer, but there is genius (in our sense of the word). [It] shines in all he says. In short, Mr. Jackson ot Exeter, I begin to think there is something in the air of Devonshire that grows clever fellows. I could name four or five of you, superior to the product of any other county in England. | *' Pray make my compliments to one Lady who is 130 WILLIAM PITT From the Picture in Messrs. Agnevv and Son's possession LETTERS TO JACKSON neat about the mouth, if you can guess, and believe me most faithfully yours «THO. GAINSBOROUGH." LETTER VIII *• My dear Jackson, " I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and the lessons received before. I think I now begin to see a little into the nature of modulation and the intro- duction of flats and sharps ; and when we meet you shall hear me play extempore. My friend Abel has been to visit me, but he made but a short stay, being obliged to go to Paris for a month or six weeks, after which he has promised to come again. There never was a poor devil so fond of harmony, with so little knowledge of it ; so that what you have done is pure chanty. I dined with Mr. Duntze in expectation (and indeed full assurance) of hearing your scholar Miss Flood {^) play a little, but was for the second time flung. . . . I'm sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my viol-da-gam and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint landskips and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease. But these fine ladies and their tea drinkings, dancings, husband-huntings, &c. &c. &c., will fob me out of the last ten years, and I fear miss getting husbands too. But we can say nothing to these things you know, Jackson, we must jogg on and be content with the jingling of the bells, only d it I hate a dust, the kicking up a dust, and being confined in harness to follow the track whilst others ride in the waggon, under cover, stretching their legs in the straw at ease, and gazing at green trees and blue skies without half my taste. That's d d hard. My comfort 131 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH is I have five viols-da-gamba, three Jayes and two Barak Normans.* " Adieu, &c., "THO. GAINSBOROUGH. « Bath, 'June \thy LETTER IX * Dear Jackson, " Methinks I hear you say all friendship is my and all sincerity my only because I have not had time since my hurry of finishing two full lengths and a landskip for the exhibition, to answer your two last letters. But don't be in a hurry to determine anything about me ; if you are, ten to one you are wrong, those who can claim a longer acquaintance with me than Mr. Jackson knowing at this moment but very little of my real temper. I'm heartily sorry that you don't come to reside in Bath, as you expected, not because you are disappointed of the advantage of conversing with me and my books, but because I am deprived of the much greater advantages of sucking your sensible skull, and of the opportunity I might possibly have of convincing you how much I shall always esteem your various and extensive talents, not to mention what I think still better worth mentioning, namely, your honesty and undesigning plainness and openness of soul. They say your mind is not worldly^ no, said I, because it's heavenly. ... I fear, my lad, I shall have it this exhibi- tion, for never was such slight dabs presented to the eyes of a million. But I grow dauntless out of mere stupidity as I grow old, and I believe that any one who plods on in any one way, especially if that one way will bring him bread and cheese as well as a better, will grow the same. * Henry Jaye made viols in the seventeenth century ; they were remarkable for the excellence of their varnish. Barak Norman (1688- 1 740) was also a viol maker. 132 LETTERS TO JACKSON . . . Thanks for the indigo — a little of it goes a great way, which is lucky. — Adieu, &c." LETTER X " Dear Jackson, " I will confess to you that I think it unpardon- able in me not to speak seriously upon a subject of so much consequence as that which has employed us of late ; therefore you shall have my thoughts without any hum- ming, swearing, or affectation of wit. Indeed, my affec- tion for you would naturally have led me that way before now, but that I am soon lost if I pretend to reasoning ; and you being all regularity and judgment, I own provoke me the more to break loose, as he who cannot be correct is apt to direct the eye with a little freedom of handling ; but no more of it. I must own your calculations and com- parison betwixt our different professions to be just, provided you remember that in mine a man may do great things and starve in a garret if he does not conquer his passions and conform to the common eye in chusing that branch which they will encourage and pay for. Now there can- not be that difference between music and painting unless you suppose that the musician voluntarily shuns the only popular branch, and will be a chamber council when he might appear at the bar. You see, sir, I'm out of my subject already. But now in again. If music will not satisfy you without a certainty (which by the by is nonsense, beg- ging your pardon, for there is no such thing in any pro- fession) then I say be a painter. You have more of the painter than half those who get money by it, that I will swear, if you desire it, upon a church Bible. You want a little drawing and the use of the pencil and colours which I could put into your hand in one month, without meddling with your head ; 1 propose to let that alone, if you'U let 133 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH mine off easy. There is a branch of Painting next in profit to portrait, and quite [within] your power without any more drawing than I'll answer for your having, which is Drapery and Landskip backgrounds. Perhaps you don't know that whilst a face painter is harassed to death the drapery painter sits and earns five or six hundred a year, and laughs all the while."^ Your next will be to tell me what I know as well as yourself, viz., that I am an imper- tinent coxcomb. This I know, and will speak out if you kill me for it, you are too modest, too diffident, too sensible, and too honest ever to push in music. " Sincerely, " T. G." LETTER XI ** Dear Jackson, " I suppose I never drew a portrait half so like the sitter as my silence since the receipt of your last resembles neglect and ingratitude, owing to two of the crossest accidents that ever attended a poor fiddler. First and most unfortunately, I have been four times after Bach,t and have never laid eyes on him ; and secondly and most provokingly I have had a parcel made up of two drawings and a box of pencils, such as you wrote for, ever since the day after I received your favour enclosing the Tenths, and directed for you to go by the Exeter coach, * Few painters of the eighteenth century made less use of the * drapery man ' than Gainsborough, but there are some portraits from his Bath period in which the costumes are not by himself, and in Kis later years he called in help now and then. The red curtain behind the " Mrs. Siddons " is not, I think, by his own hand, and a fine portrait of a lady from about 1 776 exists in which the dress is by Peter Tom^s It is painted in exactly the same style as the draperies painted by Tom for Sir Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Cotes, and others. t Johann Sebastian Bach, who was in England at this time. 13 + LETTERS TO JACKSON which has laid in my room by the neglect of two block heads, one my nephew,* who is too proud to carry a bundle under his arm, though his betters, the journeyman tailors, always carry their foul shirts so ; and my d cowardly footman who forsooth is afraid to peep into the street for fear of being pressed for sea service, the only service God Almighty made him for, so that, my dear Jackson, if it was not for your being endowed with Jobe's patience I should think myself deservedly for ever shut out of your favour ; but surely I shall catch Bach soon to get you an answer to your letter, and for the drawings if I don't carry them myself to the inn to-morrow ! — &c. &c. "You hear, I suppose, that all Lords and Members have given up their privilege of franking to ease the Taxes, I'm sorry for it." The last of the collection is a letter asking after Jackson's health, and offering to send Dr. Moysey to see him at his, the painter's, own expense, which seems to prove that music had been to Jackson quite as uncertain a profession as he had feared. It would be impertinent to dilate on this correspondence. In the painter's own phrase he " never drew a portrait half so like the sitter " as the half-length of himself he gives us in these dozen sheets of paper. Frankness, honesty, and an exuberant vitality breathe from every line, coupled with a contempt for the conventional side of life which led him too often into a sacrifice of personal dignity and made his individuality in his later years antipathetic to such a man as Reynolds. They abound too in flashes of insight and in evidence that the painter's judgment was keen and just when he gave it a chance. The sketch of Dunning is full of * Gainsborough Dupont. 135 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH vivacity, and leaves us glowing with the writer's own pleasure in the lawyer's society. LETTER TO GARRICK " Bath, Jaiiy 27, 1 768 " Dear Sir, " I, as well as the rest of the world, acknowledge your riches, and know your princely spirit ; but all will not do, for, as I told you before, I am already overpaid for that shabby performance ; and if you have a mind to make me happier than all the presents London can afford, you must do it by never thinking yourself in my debt. I wished many years for the happiness of Mr. Garrick's acquaintance, and pray, dear sir, let me now enjoy it quietly ; for, sincerely and truly, I shall not be easy if you give way to any of your romantic whimsies : besides, d n it, I thought you knew me too well, you who can read hearts and faces both at a view, and that at first sight too. Come, if you will not plague me any more upon this frightful subject, I will tell you a story about fr si sight. You must know, sir, whilst I lived at Ipswich, there was a benefit concert in which a new song was to be introduced, and I, being steward, went to the honest cabinet-maker who was our singer instead of a better, and asked him if he could sing at sight, for that I had a new song with all the parts wrote out. * Yes, sir,' said he, * I can.' Upon which I ordered Mr. Giardini of Ipswich to begin the symphony, and gave my signal for the attention of the company ; but behold, a dead silence followed the symphony instead of the song ; upon which I jumped up to the fellow : ' D n you, why don't you sing ? did not you tell me you could sing at sight ? ' ' Yes, please 136 PORTRAITS OF GARRICK your honour, I did say I could sing at sight, but not at first sight ^ " I am, dear sir, your most humble servant, "THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. " P.S. — I beg, sir, you will leave the affair of Gossett to me. I shall give him a bill payable at first sight, I assure you." Gainsborough's friendship with Garrick began probably a little later than that with Jackson. The first of the five *' Garricks " he is said to have painted was finished and exhibited with the Incorporated Society in 1766. In 1769 it was already hanging in the Town Hall of Stratford, having in the interval been for a time in the actor's house on the Adelphi Terrace. It is the well-known full length in which Garrick, in blazing scarlet and blue, leans against a " term " of Shakespeare, in a park. The brilhant tints of the costume are managed with the most skilful audacity ; and the face beams with vivacity and wit. Fulcher says the background represents " a favourite haunt in Garrick's retreat at Hampton ; the principal features of the landscape remain much in the same state now as then," and this assertion has often been repeated since.* In 1766 Gainsborough had probably never seen Garrick's " retreat at Hampton," and, as a matter of fact, this background is taken from a place much nearer Bath than London. It is a view in Lord Pembroke's park at Wilton, where the original of Fulcher's " small summer house " is known as the Palladian Bridge, "t Fulcher * E.g., in the catalogue to the Gainsborough Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885. t A similar bridge exists in Prior Park, close to Bath, but there the lie of the land is different. In any case, one of these two parks must have given Gainsborough the idea of his background. 137 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH seems to have indulged a riotous fancy over this portrait in more respects than one. He says that the painter " was unable to catch Garrick's likeness by reason of the constant change in the expression of the actor's counten- ance — now squinting like Wilkes, and now appearing as handsome as Lord Townsend, anon his cheeks were dilated and he puffed and gasped like the Leviathan Johnson, and then his cheeks wore the pinched aspect of Sir John Hawkins, so that the baffled painter was compelled to throw down his brush in despair." The foundation for all this, no doubt, is a paragraph in the obituary notice published by the Gentleman s Magazine within a few days of Gainsborough's death. Therein we are told by the writer that he himself had heard the painter declare that "he never found any portrait so difficult to hit as that of Mr. Garrick ; for when he was sketching in the eyebrows, and thought he had hit upon their precise situation, and looked a second time at his model, he found the eyebrows lifted up to the middle of his forehead, and when he a third time looked they were dropped like a curtain close over the eyes ; so flexible and universal was the countenance of this great player. . . . This portrait did not do any honour to either artist or comedian." I suspect that Gainsborough's half-serious grumblings did not refer to the Stratford portrait at all, which, moreover, is one of his successes from every point of view, but to one of several comparatively quiet but nevertheless masterly half-lengths which were painted about 1770-2. One of these used to belong to Mr. D. R. Blaine. I have seen it, and believe it to be now in America, although I am unable to say in whose possession it is."^ * It was formerly in the possession of Sir Robert Peel, but was sold by the third baronet in 1897, together with the fine portrait of Sheridan reproduced in this volume. 138 LETTERS TO GARRICK Fulcher quotes Sir William Beechey's assertion that *' this picture is an admirable likeness, and one of Gains- borough's best portraits." It shows the actor in a simple black dress, with a tie wig and lace cravat and ruffles. The hands are painted with unusual care and are full of character, their gestures are explanatory, and help the quiet, conversational aspect of the face. In general con- ception, as well as in methods of execution, this Garrick should be classed with things like the portrait of Orpin, the Parish Clerk of Bradford-on-Avon, in the National Gallery. The Parish Clerk is, no doubt, a good deal earlier. Its conception embodies so much of what we shall find Gainsborough saying, in a letter to Garrick, of his scheme for a portrait of Shakespeare which never came to anything, that I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Bell that Gainsborough here made use of a notion which baffled him when he tried to apply it without the help of a sitter. This would date the *' Orpin" about 1768-9. It is a little tight in execution and monotonous in illumination, faults which have almost disappeared in the Garrick. " 1768. " Dear Sir, *' I take particular notice of your friendly anxiety for my recovery, and thank you most kindly for your sharp thought ; but having had twelve ounces of blood taken immediately away, am perfectly recovered, strong in the back and able — so make your sublime self easy. I suppose your letter to Mr. Sharp was upon no other business, so have enclosed it ; but, observe, I thank you sincerely. " Shakespeare shall come forth forthwith, as the lawyer says. Damn the original picture of him, with your 139 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH leave ; for I think a stupider face I never beheld except D k's. " I intend, with your approbation, my dear friend, to take the form from his pictures and statues, just enough to preserve his likeness past the doubt of all blockheads at first sight, and supply a soul from his works : it is impossible that such a mind and ray of heaven could shine with such a face and pair of eyes as that picture has ; so, as I said before, damn that. " I am going to dinner, and after I will try a sketch. I shall leave the price to you ; I do not care whether I have a farthing if you will but let me do it ; to be sure, I should never ask more than my portrait price (which is sixty guineas), but perhaps ought to ask less, as there is no confinement of painting from life, but, I say, I leave it to you, promising to be contented upon honour. I could wish you to call upon any pretence, any day after next Wednesday, at the Duke of Montagu's, because you would see the Duke and Duchess in my last manner ; but not as if you thought any thing of mine worth that trouble, only to see his Grace's landscape of Rubens, and the four Vandykes, whole length, in his Grace's dressing- room," &c. &c. &c. The following letters to the actor refer to yet another version of his features : "Bath, June 22, 1772. " Dear Sir, " I ask pardon for having kept your picture so long from Mrs. Garrick. It has, indeed, been of great service in keeping me going ; but my chief reason for detaining it so long was the hopes of getting one copy like to hang in my own parlour, not as a show picture, but for my own enjoyment, to look when I please at a 140 LETTERS TO GARRICK great man, who has thought me worthy of some little notice ; but not one copy can I make which does not resemble Mr. Garrick's brother as much as himself; so I have bestowed a drop of excellent varnish to keep you out, instead of a falling tear at parting, and have only to beg of dear Mrs. Garrick to hang it in the best light she can find out, and to continue puffing for me in the manner informs me she does. " That you may long continue to delight and surprise the world with your original face, whilst I hobble after with my copy, is the sincere wish of, dear sir, " Your most unaccountable and obedient servant, "THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH. " p.S. The picture is to go to London by the Wilt- shire fly-waggon on Wednesday next ; and I believe will arrive by Saturday morning." "1772. " My dear Sir, " I never will consent that anybody makes a present of your face to Clutterbuck but myself, because I always intended a copy {hy my own hand) for him, that he may one day tell me what to do with my money, the only thing he understands, except jeering of folks. " I shall look upon it that you break in upon my line of happiness in this world if you mention it ; and for the original it was to be my present to Mrs. Garrick, and so it shall be in spite of your blood. *' Now for the chalk scratch ; it is a poor affair, not much like the young ladies ; but, however, if you do not remember what I said in my last, and caution your brother oflFthe same rock, may you sink in the midst of your glory ! " I know your great stomach, and that you hate to be crammed, but by G — I you shall swallow this one bait ; HI THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH and when you speak of me do not let it be like a goose, but remember you are a fat turkey. " God bless all your endeavours to delight the world, and may you sparkle to the last ! "THO. GAINSBOROUGH. « D n Underwood." These letters probably refer to the picture which belongs to Mr. Fleischmann, of Collingham Gardens, of which a second version is in existence. It is possible that the editor of Garrick's correspondence is in error when he ascribes to the summer of 1772 a third portrait, which " represents a front view of Garrick in laced clothes, with a book in the right hand. It is more genteel," he goes on to say, than Sir Joshua's— I mean than that great painter's front view of him. Gainsborough's, though extremely like, gives, what is a common fault, the im- pression of a larger figure than that of the sitter." This may refer either to (i) the portrait painted for Dr. Ralph Schomberg, whose own picture, at full length, is one of the ornaments of the National Gallery ; or to (2) the portrait engraved with exquisite delicacy by John Collyer; or (3) to the portrait now in the possession of Mr. Fleischmann.* It appears from the two following letters, also printed in the Garrick correspondence, that Gainsborough under- took to paint the portrait of Shakespeare already alluded to, to be used, perhaps, at the Stratford Jubilee in 1769 : " Bath, 2 znd Jugust^ 1 772. " Dear Sir, "I doubt I stand accused (if not accursed) all * The half-length of Garrick in the Christ Church common room, Oxford, cannot be accepted as the work of Gainsborough. A replica of Mr. Fleischmann's portrait was offered at Christie's in the spring of 1904, and catalogued, probably rightly, as that painted for Dr. Schomberg. 142 LETTERS TO GARRICK this time for my neglect in not going to Stratford, and giving you a line thence as I promised ; but what can one do such weather as this — continual rainy ? My genius is so damped by it, that I can do nothing to please me. I have been several days rubbing in and rubbing out my design of Shakespeare, and hang me if I think I shall let it go, or let you see it at last. I was willing, like an ass as I am, to expose myself a little out of the simple portrait way, and had an idea of showing where that inimitable poet had his ideas from, by an immediate ray darting down upon his eye turned up for the purpose ; but, con- found it, I can make nothing of my ideas, there has been such a fall of rain from the same quarter. You shall not see it, for I will cut it before you can come. Tell me, dear sir, when you purpose coming to Bath, that I may be quick enough in my motions. Shakespeare's bust is a silly smiling thing, and I have not sense enough to make him more sensible in the picture, and so I tell ye, you shall not see it. I must make a plain picture of him standing erect, and give it an old look, as if it had been painted at the time he lived ; and there we shall fling 'em. *' I am, dear sir, Your most obedient, humble servant, "THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH." An actor with whom Gainsborough had even more intimate relations than he had with Garrick, was the Bath Roscius, John Henderson. The touch of the self-seeker which lurked under the skin of Garrick seems to have always prevented the painter's enthusiastic admiration for his gifts from warming into a close personal affection. It was different with Henderson, whose insouciance and trans- parency reflected Gainsborough's own. The younger H3 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH actor — he was Garrick's junior by twenty years — was, indeed, of an essentially lovable disposition. Although an actor, he was easily abashed. His modesty was such that he was able to judge his own abilities, and was not afraid to tell Palmer, the Bath manager, that his, Henderson's, capacity was being overtaxed by the roles he had to fill. He was a gourmet too, or rather a gourmand, as may be guessed from certain phrases in the following letters, which are apparently the only extant remains of his correspondence with the painter : "Bath, iyth June^ 1773. "Dear Henderson, " If you had not wrote to me as you did, I should have concluded you had been laid down ; pray, my boy, take care of yourself this hot weather, and don't run about London streets, fancying you are catching strokes of nature, at the hazard of your constitution. It was my first school, and deeply read in petticoats I am, therefore you may allow me to caution you. " Stick to Garrick as close as you can for your life ; you should follow his heels like his shadow in sunshine. " No one can be so near him as yourself when you please, and I'm sure when he sees it strongly as other people do, he must be fond of such an ogre, " You have nothing to do now but to stick to the few great ones of the earth, who seem to have offered you their assistance in bringing you to light, and to brush off all the low ones as fast as they light upon you. You see, I hazard the appearing a puppy in your eyes, by pretending to advise you, from the real regard and sincere desire I have of seeing you a great and happy man. " Garrick is the greatest creature living in every respect ; he is worth studying in every action. Every 144 JOHN HENDERSON view and every idea of him is worthy of being stored up for imitation, and I have ever found him a generous and sincere friend. Look upon him, Henderson, with your imitative eyes, for when he drops you'll have nothing but poor old Nature's book to look in. You'll be left to grope it out alone, scratching your pate in the dark, or by a farthing candle. Now is your time, my lively fellow. And, do ye hear, don't eat so devilishly ; you'll get too fat when you rest playing, or get a sudden jogg by illness to bring you down again. . . . '* Adieu, my dear H., *' Believe me yours, &c. «T. G." " Bath, "July 18, 1773. "Dear Henderson, " If one may judge by your last spirited epistle you are in good keeping, no one eats with a more grateful countenance or swallows with more good nature than yourself. '* If this does not seem sense, do but recollect how many hard-featured fellows there are in the world that frown in the midst of enjoyment, chew with unthankful- ness, and seem to swallow with pain instead of pleasure ; now any one who sees you eat pig and plumb sauce, immediately feels that pleasure which a plump morsel, smoothly gliding through a narrow glib passage into the regions of bliss and moistened with the dews of imagina- tion, naturally creates. " Some iron-faced dogs you know seem to chew dry ingratitude and swallow discontent. Let such be kept to under parts^ and never trusted to support a character. In all but eating stick to Garrick ; in that let him stick to you, for I'll be curst if you are not his master. Never 145 ^ THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH mind the fools who talk of imitation and copying. All is imitation, and if you quit that natural likeness to Garrick which your mother bestowed upon you, you'll be flung. Ask Garrick else. " Why, sir, what makes the difference between man and man is real performance and not genius or conception. There are a thousand Garricks, a thousand Giardinis and Fischers, and Abels. Why only one Garrick, with Garrick's eyes, voice, &c. &c. &c. ? One Giardini with Giardini's fingers, &c. &c. ? But one Fischer with Fischer's dexterity, quickness, &c. ? Or more than one Abel with Abel's feeling upon the instrument ^ All the rest of the world are mere hearers and see'rs. *' Now, as I said in my last, as Nature seems to have intended the same thing in you as in Garrick, no matter how short or how long, her kind intention must not be crossed. If it is, she will tip the wink to Madam Fortune and you'll be kicked down stairs. *' Think on that. Master Ford. " God bless you, "T. G." Gainsborough painted Henderson's portrait at least twice. The earlier was already in existence in 1773, the year after Henderson's debut 2Lt Bath, for in a letter bearing that date, the actor tells his Manager, Palmer, that the artist had promised him a " miniature" from it. This portrait was probably the one scraped in mezzo-tint by Jones. The apparent age of the sitter points to about 1772, and a comparison with the Blaine "Garrick," painted 1770-2, confirms the date. The two pictures are curiously alike both in conception and in execution. In each great play is made with the hands, as if to mark the value of those extremities to an actor. It is true that 146 THE PINK BOY Baron Fekdinand de Rothschild SITTERS AT BATH Jones's mezzo-tint was not published until 1783, which might seem to indicate a portrait which was at the Academy in 1780 as the most likely original. But the evidence of age and style contradicts that idea. The 1780 portrait was probably the original of one, not entirely by the hand of Gainsborough, which now hangs in the Strangers' Smoking Room of the Garrick Club. This shows a man some years older than the Henderson of Jones's mezzo-tint. Among Bath sitters we should have to include Chatterton, if we could place any faith in Fulcher's asser- tion at page 89 of his biography, that the "marvellous boy " sat to Gainsborough, and that the portrait " with his long flowing hair and childlike face " is a masterpiece. No such picture can now be authenticated, although a half-length portrait agreeing with Fulcher's description still exists. It was in the possession of Mr. E. Naylor, in Fulcher's time. Considerations of date, age, and locality — to name only these — make it unlikely that Gainsborough painted Chatterton. Among other notable sitters at Bath were John, fourth Duke of Argyll, the General John Campbell who had suc- ceeded his second cousin, the twelfth Earl and third Duke of Argyll, in 1761; and two ladies whose matrimonial adventures have made them famous, the first Viscountess Grosvenor and Lady Ligonier, as well as the latter's husband and her father, George Pitt, afterwards Lord Rivers. It was Lady Grosvenor who, in the phrase of Walpole, " had the mishap of being surprised — at least once — locked into a room " with the Duke of Cumberland, an escapade for which the Duke had to pay handsomely to the injured Viscount. The portrait of George Pitt was at the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, those of his daughter and her husband were there two years later, in 1771. They 147 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH were probably on Gainsborough's easel during the last days ot the first Lord Ligonier's existence, for he died in the spring of 1770 ; and they must have been hanging on the Academy walls when all the world was laughing over the intrigue of his nephew's wife with Alfieri, and its tragi- comic dinouement in Hyde Park. The letters here printed give us some useful glimpses of Gainsborough's life at Bath. Among other things they show that he was by no means a fixture in the western city, but that, on the contrary, he thought little more of a visit to Exeter or even London than we do in these days of railways. This makes it imprudent to base any argu- ments upon the supposed inacessibility of any particular sitter at any particular time. He may have painted por- traits in Exeter, in Bristol, in London itself, or anywhere else within reasonable distance even during the years when he was domiciled in Bath. Another deduction we may fairly draw from the letters is that rather too much has been made by his biographers of his love for music. Jackson was a musician, and so in corresponding with him, if anywhere, we should expect to find that art exalted. Gainsborough no doubt talks about it a great deal, and even goes so far as to declare he would like to disappear from the world with a viol-de-gamba and a brush devoted exclusively to landscape. But this seems to be nothing more than the momentary revolt of a changeable and irresponsible nature against the daily round of bread win- ning. Through it all we can see the man whose real love, whose legitimate and so perhaps less exciting companion, was painting and not music. It may be that the parti- cular branch of art by which alone a competency was to be won in the middle of the eighteenth century, was less con- genial to him than the painting of landscapes. But even then I suspect his laments were due, not to any real 148 LIFE AT BATH preference for a landscape over a portrait, but merely to his impatience of the greater effort required by the latter. Mr. Horsley is my authority for a story which seems to support this idea. He received it from his godfather, Sir Augustus Callcott, who had it from the first Lord Lans- downe. One day, not very long before Gainsborough's death, Lord Lansdowne called upon him at Schomberg House. The painter came out to receive him, and led him through several rooms all hung with his own land- scapes. He pointed to these saying, '* People won't buy 'em, you know," and then carried his visitor into his painting room. There he worked himself into a state of excitement, exclaiming at last, " I'm a landscape painter, and yet they will come to me for portraits. I can't paint portraits. Look at that damned arm. I have been at it all the morning, and I can't get it right." He was working without sitter or model, so perhaps his bad shots were not surprising. On the whole we may fairly conclude that the chief reason for his delight at being able to dismiss a patron and sit down either to his viol-de-gamba or to a landscape, was the mere fact that portrait-painting was his duty, and his other two pursuits his pleasure. 149 CHAPTER VI PICTURES PAINTED AT BATH AINSBOROUGH'S Bath period was one of continuous and very rapid development, but it was in no reasonable sense immature. His mastery of the painter's materials was complete before he left Suffolk. The later portraits painted at Ipswich show no signs of doubt or hesitation. They fail to delight us in the same degree as what he did in the last thirty years of his life, not through any technical incapacity, but simply because his artistic ambitions were not yet sufficiently aroused. Very seldom after leaving his native county did he draw so correctly as he did there, but the sight of fine things opened his eyes to the possibilities of colour, and his art bloomed in the more congenial atmosphere like a rose-tree in June. The notion that a " Bath Gainsborough " is something inferior, that it holds a place in his oeuvre distinctly below the pictures painted in London between 1774 and his death, is quite a delusion. Many of his finest things date from his years at Bath. The " Miss Linley and her Brother," at Knole, was painted there ; so was the fine equestrian portrait of General Honywood, now in the possession of the Messrs. Agnew ; so, as we have seen, were at least five of the "Garricks"; so was Lord Burton's "Lady 150 BATH PICTURES Sussex and Lady Barbara Yelverton"; so were Lord Tweedmouth's two landscapes, and the similar picture now in Mr. Lionel Phillips's possession, and Lord Bateman's "Going to Market," and so, I believe, was the great and famous "Blue Boy" itself. In all of these, with the exception of one of the portraits of Garrick, colour is used with a vigour and success unsurpassed at any subsequent period, and in many, especially in the Linley group, and, of course, the " Blue Boy," the brush- ing is almost as free and the paint at least as fat and rich as in the best things from his later years. But I must keep clear for the present of any detailed critical discussions, and must be content to give a short account of the more notable pictures which belong to this stage of his career. Among the first portraits painted after Gainsborough settled in Bath are two of Robert Craggs Nugent, after- wards first Viscount Clare and Earl Nugent. One of these, a full-length, was the first picture ever publicly exhibited by its author. It was at the Spring Garden Exhibition of the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1 76 1 . It now belongs to Sir George Nugent. A second portrait of the same sitter was painted, probably a year or two after the first, for the Corporation of Bristol, its present owners. Lord Nugent was a little over fifty when he sat to Gains- borough. He was then Member of Parliament for Bristol, and had already been three times married. His first wife was Lady Emilia Plunkett, a daughter of Lord Fingall. His second, Ann, had been twice a widow ; she was a daughter of James Craggs, the Postmaster-General, and a great heiress. His third was Elizabeth, Countess Dowager of Berkeley. Lord Nugent was a poet, but perhaps his best claim on the memory of those who read lies in the haunch of venison he sent to Goldsmith, which gave the author of "Retaliation" the chance of a 151 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH rhyme * Lord Nugent's son, the Hon. Edmund, then an officer in the First Foot Guards, was painted by- Gainsborough in 1 764. The picture was at the Exhibition of the Society of Artists in 1765. It is entered in the catalogue as " An officer, whole length." Gainsborough's single contribution to the Exhibition of 1762 was another whole length, the portrait of William Poyntz, of Midgham, Berkshire, which is now at Althorp. Poyntz was the brother of Georgiana, the first Countess Spencer, and therefore uncle to the famous Duchess of Devonshire. He was an ardent sportsman, and is painted with a gun, bare-headed, under a tree. The entry in the Society's catalogue is " A Whole Length of a Gentleman with a Gun." About the same time was painted the half- length portrait" of his sister, Georgiana, now at Althorp. It is one of the finest of Gainsborough's simpler and less ambitious works, the hands especially being unusually well drawn. Lady Spencer's little daughter, who was afterwards to become so famous and to eclipse her mother in vogue if not in looks, was painted probably at the same time. The little Georgiana was born in 1757, and in Gainsborough's picture she is about five or six years old. It was not her first experience of sitting, for she had been painted with her mother by Sir Joshua before she was two. The catalogue for 1763 has three entries: *'Mr. Quin, whole length," "A Gentleman, whole length," and "A large landscape." As to the portrait of James Quin, Fulcher says he was with difficulty persuaded by his friends to sit to Gainsborough. " If you will let me take your likeness," said the painter, " I shall live for ever " ; and the actor yielded to the flattery. He is shown sitting in a chair with a volume of plays in his hand ; the arrangement of * " Thanks, my Lord, for your venison ; nor finer or fatter Ne'er ranged in a forest, or smoked in a platter ; &c." 152 BATH PICTURES the lighting is something like that in the Parish Clerk." The picture formerly belonged to John Wiltshire, of Shocker wick, near Bath, whose progenitor, the Bath Pickford of the time, may well have been among the friends who overcame the actor's bashfulness. The Wilt- shire collection was sold at Christie's in 1867, when the Quin was bought by the late Duke of Cleveland.* The second entry refers to a portrait of Medlicott, whom Fulcher calls the gay and gallant cousin of Richard Lovell Edge worth, who (Edge worth, I mean) was a friend of Humphry Gainsborough ; the third, a large landscape, cannot now be identified. In 1764 only one portrait, a whole length of some unknown gentleman, was exhibited ; but the next year, 1765, saw not only the already noticed full length of Colonel Nugent, but also the great equestrian portrait of General Honywood, a picture more than ten feet square, in Spring Gardens. This picture has lately passed out of the hands of the Honywood family, and is at the present moment (April 1904) at the Messrs. Agnew's, in Old Bond Street. It represents the general riding across the canvas, from left to right, the proper left and right of the picture. He wears a scarlet uniform, and carries his sword, unsheathed, in his right hand; he has no scabbard. The horse, a rich bay, is too long. The painter has not taken the precaution to draw him in before commencing the figure, and so the fore-quarters are separated from the hind by rather too much middle-piece. This mistake is still more conspicuous in the " Colonel St. Leger " at Hampton Court, where a quite unreason- able amount of horse shows behind the figure. Otherwise the Honywood picture is as successful in design as it is in all other ways. The landscape is one of the finest * It now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland ; a study for the head is at Buckingham Palace. 153 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH backgrounds ever painted, and reminds one of those eques- trian portraits by Velazquez which Gainsborough never saw. It is curious that Reynolds had sent a " General on Horseback" to the exhibition of 1761. Many things point to the probability that Gainsborough made an annual visit to London during the exhibition, and it is quite likely that the apparition of Sir Joshua's " General " suggested the treatment of his own. The year 1766 was that of the Stratford " Garrick," entered in the catalogue as "A Gentleman, whole length." It was accompanied by another gentleman," not now to be identified, by a "A Lady and Gentleman," and "A large Landskip with figures." Gainsborough seems to have pinned his faith to size for the exhibition. The great majority of the portraits he sent there were whole lengths, and most of the *' landskips " are described as large. In 1767 he sent a "Portrait of a Lady, whole length," a "Portrait of a Nobleman, whole length," a "Portrait of a Gentleman, whole length," and "A large Landskip." The " lady " was Lady Grosvenor, the " nobleman," the Duke of Argyll; and the "gentleman," Mr. Vernon, a son of Lord Vernon. The Duke of Argyll's portrait was engraved in mezzotint by James Watson, and pub- lished in 1769. A second portrait of the same duke was painted later, and is now at Inverary. The last year in which Gainsborough sent to the Society of Artists was 1768, when he was represented by "An Officer, whole length," and "A Sea Officer, ditto." The " Officer " was Captain Needham, an ancestor of the present Lord Kil- morey, to whom the picture belongs. The Sea Officer " was Captain the Hon. Augustus Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol. Both are excellent examples of the painter's work at the time, especially the Captain Hervey. He stands with his legs crossed and leans with his left elbow 154 FIRST ACADEMY EXHIBITION on the fluke of an anchor. In the distance a line-of-battle ship rides at anchor rather nearer the shore than seems altogether probable ; but on the whole both arrangement and execution show more thoughtfulness than usual. This picture is at Ickworth. The year 1769 saw the inauguration of the Royal Academy, and Gainsborough was represented by four pictures. These are entered in the catalogue as follows : Portrait of a Lady, whole length;" -Portrait of a Gentleman, ditto;" "A large Landskip ; " and A Boy's Head." The lady was Isabella, Lady Molyneux. She was a daughter of the second Earl of Harrington, and her husband became first Earl of Sefton in 177 1. The gentleman was George Pitt, first Lord Rivers, whom Walpole calls a " venerable Corydon— brutal, and half mad." He was the father of Penelope Pitt, who married the second Lord Ligonier. The landscape cannot be identified, but the "Boy's Head " was probably the picture now, or lately, in the possession of Mr. F. W. Newton, of Barton Grange, near Taunton. Gainsborough was on a visit there about 1766-7. A village boy was employed to wait upon him in the room set apart for his painting, and the story goes that, coming unexpectedly into the studio one day, he found the lad trying to copy something on a piece of board. His attitude and absorbed 'expression caught the painter's fancy, and crying " Stay as you are," he seized a canvas, and rapidly immortalised his young assistant. The boy has a palette and brushes in his hand, and is looking upwards. He wears a red waistcoat, and the background is dark. It may be useful to know that to this 1769 Exhibition Reynolds sent a version, probably the first, of the famous allegory of " Hope nursing Love," for which Miss Morris was the model. It gives some idea of the parallel development of the two men. The motto 155 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH on the title-page of the first Academy catalogue, the pioneer of a long series of a hundred and thirty, which must have caused considerable searchings of mind and note- books to the Academy and its various professors, was Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo. Gainsborough might have taken it for his own motto as well. From the moment of his inclusion in the thirty-six foundation mem- bers, new ambitions began to stir in his breast. Pictures poured faster from his easel ; they gave signs of a con- sciousness on his part that the new institution would ask more and give more than those it had superseded ; and the idea of London, with its peculiar opportunities, one of them a chance to paint kings and queens, began to simmer in his mind. To the exhibition of 1770 he sent six pictures and a book of drawings. None of these have been identified except " No. 86, a Portrait of a Gentle- man," and, with some doubt, "No. 88, a Landskip with Figures," which was probably the " Return from Harvest." The "gentleman" was Garrick, and the picture, in all probability, the beautiful portrait engraved by Collyer. This " Return from Harvest " is an earlier version ot the famous picture presented to Wiltshire, the London Carrier, which was, until recently, in the possession of Lord Tweedmouth. The later version and its companion, "A Landscape, with Figures and Cattle," also belonging to Lord Tweedmouth, were at the Academy in 1771 ; at least they can be identified with reasonable certainty with Nos. 79 and 80, " Landscape and Figures," and " Ditto," in that year's catalogue— the first, by the way, in which the spelling " landscape " appears. The earlier picture was in the collection of the Rev. B. Gibbons, who possessed so many good examples of the English School. It now belongs to Mr. Lionel Phillips, and is at No. 33 Grosvenor Square. Gainsborough 156 JOHN WILTSHIRE painted this subject at least three times. The earliest version, Mr. Phillips's, is the most careful and elaborate ; it has, too, a fine effect in the sky which is wanting in the other two. Lord Tweedmouth's, on the other hand, is more airy and transparent, and has a greater look of having been thrown off at a heat. It has always been one of the most popular of Gainsborough's landscapes, and when sold, in 1 867, it brought the then enormous price of ^^3097 los. A third version is in the possession of Mr. S. G. Holland. It is almost a monochrome, and depends for its charm entirely upon its freedom and spontaneity. Fulcher and others assert that the figures in all these Returns from Harvest" are portraits of Gainsborough's own family. That his daughters sat to him is apparently true, but the figures are too slight and sketchy to be fairly called portraits. Gainsborough's relations with John Wiltshire require to be told. The story goes that Wiltshire steadily refused payment for transporting the artist's works to the London Exhibition. No, no," he protested, " I love painting too much ; " but finding that Gainsborough's pride was uneasy under the obligation, he at last suggested a com- promise. " When you think, sir," he said, " that I have carried to the value of a little painting, I beg you will let me have one, and I shall be more than paid." Several of these payments were made, and for a century the pictures descended in the family. That the " Quin," the " Foote," the "Parish Clerk," and the "Boy and Dog," to say nothing of the two landscapes, all of which were sold in the Shockerwick sale, were all acquired in this fashion we cannot suppose. But in any case Gainsborough is not likely to have been outdone in generosity by Wiltshire. To the exhibition of 177 1 he sent five full lengths, besides two landscapes. They were mostly entered in the usual way, but have been identified— chiefly by the help of 157 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Walpole's annotated catalogues — as "Lady Sussex and Lady Barbara Yelverton," " Lady Ligonier in a Fancy Dress," " Lord Ligonier with his Horse," and "Mr. Nuthall." The fifth, " Captain Wade, the Master of the Ceremonies at Bath " — the great Beau's successor — was entered without disguise. The "Lady Sussex" is now in the collection of Lord Burton, at Chesterfield House. Lady Sussex was the daughter of Colonel Hall, of Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire. Her daughter Barbara eloped to Gretna Green, at the age of fifteen with a neigh- bour, Edward Thoroton Gould, by whom she had a son who succeeded to her own barony of Grey de Ruthyn. Mr. Nuthall was a friend of Pitt's. He died in 1775, ^^^er being frightened by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The " Captain Wade " still hangs ( 1 904) in the Assembly Rooms at Bath. The next year, 1772, was prolific; no less than fourteen pictures were carried off" to London by Wiltshire, but none of these can now be identified beyond a guess. Four portraits and ten landscapes made up the total, but the latter were all " drawings in imitation of oil painting." Several things of this kind are still in existence, and on those rare occasions when they appear in salerooms they excite dispute. They are drawings in water colour, very free in handling and bold in efl^sct, painted on stout coarse paper laid down upon canvas, and varnished. One was sold in London in 1896. I have a photograph of it before me now. In subject it is a variation upon a drawing in the Irish National Gallery. The curious castellated building — it was probably imaginary — is the most conspicuous object in both. In both the road runs past it between groups of trees, but there the resemblance ends. In the imitation oil picture a group of peasants on the one hand, and a string of horses returning from the field on the other, make it more of an orthodox 158 MRS. MEARS Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. VARNISHED DRAWINGS picture. Varnished Gainsborough drawings of a less im- portant kind are not uncommon. In some cases, perhaps, they have been varnished by irresponsible hands, but the painter seems to have had an unaccountable fancy for the process, and in most instances the blame should rest with himself. Anything much more unpleasant than a varnished drawing it is hard to conceive. After 1772 Gainsborough does not reappear at the Academy until 1777, when his address was no longer *' Bath." The reason of his abstention is uncertain. All we know is that Walpole has the following note in his catalogue of 1773: "Gainsborough and Dance, having disagreed with Sir Joshua Reynolds, did not send any pictures to this exhibition." Several portraits can be assigned pretty confidently to these years, among them those of Lord Chesterfield, the Duke of Bedford, the Duchess of Montagu, and Fischer, the hautboy player, who afterwards married Gainsborough's daughter. The " Fischer " is the full length at Hampton Court, which was presented to George the Fourth by the musician's widow, Mary Gainsborough. A portrait of Lord Chester- field may have been painted a little sooner ; it is believed to be the last for which he ever sat. It bears the inscrip- tion "Aged 76, date 1769," but this seems to be a comparatively recent addition and is incorrect, as Chester- field was not 76 until the end of 1770. This is a wonderful picture of age, with a touch of senility creeping over features which still proclaim the former acuteness and intelligence of their owner. A second portrait, whole length, said to have been at the Academy in 1778, five years after Chesterfield's death, as the " Portrait of a Nobleman," is probably the picture which now belongs to Lord Carnarvon. The old Duckss of Montagu was painted more than once. Her first portrait is a bust, in 159 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH an oval, now at Montagu House. It dates from about 1765. Another portrait is at Dalkeith Palace, together with those of George, Duke of Montagu, and Henry, Duke of Buccleuch. These are all half length. To the same time we may refer a portrait of Mary, Lady Carr, now in America, reproduced in the Portfolio * over the mistaken title of *'Lady Ray," and the large group of Mr. and Mrs. Dehaney, of Hayes Park, Kent, with their daughter, which is reproduced by Mrs. Bell. Sir William Agnew's " Duchess of Grafton " may be a year or two later. This duchess was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Sir Richard Wrottesley, Bart. ; she was married to the Duke of Grafton immediately after his divorce from his first wife, Anne, daughter of Lord Ravensworth, who afterwards married her fellow culprit. Lord Upper Ossory, and became by him the mother of the famous little Ladies Anne and Gertrude Fitzpatrick. The fourth Duke of Bedford was at least three times painted by Gainsborough. One portrait is at Woburn ; it is the one which bears Gainsborough's name, and has been already alluded to ; a second was at Blenheim, but is now in the National Portrait Gallery. This duke sucr- ceeded his brother, Wriothesley, in 1732, when he was only twenty-two years of age. It was to the likeness between him and Mrs. Gainsborough, as shown in their portraits, to which allusion was made in our third chapter. But if Mrs. Gainsborough was really a left-handed off- shoot of the Russell family, her father was probably Wriothesley, the second duke, who died without legitimate issue in 1732. Both these portraits are good average examples of the heads turned out in such numbers by Gainsborough. Their merit consists in the strong indi- viduality imparted to the sitters with what is often the * Thomas Gainsborough, 1894, p. 23. 160 THE "BLUE BOY" slightest of means. Their number is very considerable. The National Portrait Gallery has five besides the " Bed- ford " — Lord Cornwallis, Lord Amherst, George Colman, John Henderson, and Stringer Lawrence ; the National Gallery two — Sir Henry Bate Dudley and Miss Gains- borough ; the National Gallery of Ireland one — the Duke of Northumberland ; and many others appear periodically at the Winter Exhibitions at Burlington House. Two portraits of Gainsborough himself are in this class. They are feigned ovals ; so are the " Sheridan," the " Duke of Argyll," the " Lord Archibald Campbell," the "Canning," and the great majority of his heads. The third " Duke of Bedford " is a much more important affair than the other two. It is a full length, standing figure in a crimson costume, and shows Gainsborough, at his best as a painter of men. It hangs in the great drawing-room of the Provost's Lodge, in Trinity College, Dublin.* I now come to the possibility, or rather the strong probability, that the " Blue Boy " itself was painted at Bath. The traditions connected with this famous canvas involve so many inconsistencies that a satisfactory con- clusion is not easy to arrive at. One fact of which there seems to be no doubt is that it represents Jonathan Buttall, an ironmonger who lived at the corner of King and Greek Streets, Soho. It is commonly said to have been painted in 1779, as an answer to a certain passage in the eighth discourse of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was delivered on the loth of December, 1778. Here is the passage : " Although it is not my business to enter into the detail of our art, yet I must take this opportunity of mentioning one of the means of producing that great effect which we observe in the works of the great Venetian painters, as I * Through an unlucky displacement of the MS. slips, this was called a portrait of George III. in the catalogue appended to my first edition. 161 L THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH think it is not generally known or observed. It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish white ; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colours ; and for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colours will be sufficient. Let this conduct be reversed ; let the light be cold, and the sur- rounding colours warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens and Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious." Here Reynolds seems to have fallen into the strange error of confusing colour with tint. His own practice should have warned him of the infelicity of the terms he was using. A cold blue is enough to destroy the splendour of a picture even when it is kept to subordinate parts ; a warm blue, glowing with inner light, makes as fine a keynote as any painter can desire. Sir Joshua's statement comes, in fact, to little more than the truism that a splendid colour-effect cannot be produced with cold colour, for a cold red would be quite as bad as a cold blue. It is difficult to believe that the President was free from back-thought when he penned the lines so often quoted, for, even if we exclude the "Blue Boy," nearly every Academy exhibition must have had a Gainsborough in which blue was the dominant colour. The authentic repartee to the eighth discourse was, no doubt, the National Gallery " Mrs. Siddons," for there Gainsborough has carefully broken every law laid down by the President. All the evidence we have tends to disprove that the " Blue Boy " could have been his answer. In his " Book for a Rainy Day " (p. 305), John Thomas Smith records the following scrap of talk with his 162 THE "BLUE BOY" friend John Taylor.*" The talk took place in 1832, when Taylor was ninety-three years old. " Did you know Gainsborough, sir " " Oh, I remember him ; he was an odd man at times. I recollect my master, Hayman, coming home after he had been to the Exhibition, and saying what an extraordinary picture Gainsborough had painted of a Blue Boy ; it is as fine as Vandyke ! " " Who was the Blue Boy, sir ? " " Why, he was an iron- monger. . . . He lived at the corner of Greek and King Streets, Soho ; an immensely rich man." Now, Hayman died in 1776, three years before the date usually given for the " Blue Boy's " appearance at the Royal Academy, and two years before Reynolds made his pronouncement about the use of cold tints in a picture. Without other evidence we might distrust Taylor's memory or Smith's fidelity as a reporter, but both are corroborated by a third witness. Writing to Fuseli in 1770, Mary Moser, R.A., says, " It is only telling you what you know already of the Exhi- bition of 1770, to say that Gainsborough is beyond him- self in the portrait of a gentleman in a Vandyke habit." Now, Gainsborough painted plenty of *' Vandyke habits," but only one among them fits this assertion of Miss Moser. Of the Blue Boy " only could it be said in 1 770 with any truth that Gainsborough had beaten his own record. The half-length of Lord Archibald Campbell is a fine thing, but its want of " importance " would prevent Miss Moser from applying such words to it, and Lord Archibald was only twelve months old when she wrote her letter I Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild's " Pink Boy * Known as " Old Taylor." He was the son of a Custom House officer, and studied art under Francis Hayman. He was an original member of the Society of Artists and survived all the others. He lived chiefly by teaching, in which he had a great practice. He was born in 1739, and did not die until the 21st of November, 1838. 163 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH is another fine souvenir of Van Dyck, but the sitter is too young to be called a gentleman," the workmanship is too late for 1770, and the whole thing not important enough to justify the lady's description. I may say the same of the " Master Plampin," a boy in a white satin Van Dyck dress ; of Lord Clanricarde's " Canning as a Boy," of Sir Edgar Vincent's Gainsborough Dupont," of Mr. Gardiner's " E. R. Gardiner," of the " Paul Cobb Methuen," and of various other portraits a la Van Dyck. Those who cling to the old tradition quote the style of the " Blue Boy " in support of the notion that it could not have been painted before 1779. I confess that, to me, it now seems, after much and close examination, to point the other way. The loaded impasto, the ruddy carnations, the tendency to brown and beyond it, in the shadows, the preoccupation with force, seem all to belong to about the same period as the group at Knole, and to be inconsistent with the feathery lightness, freedom, and gaiety which mark Gainsborough's work towards the end of his life. The most significant comparison may be made with the National Gallery " Mrs. Siddons." Here again blue, and a franker blue than that of the " Master Buttall," is the dominant note. But the painting is more assured, the handling lighter and more prompt, the shadows more transparent, and the figure as a whole truer to its illumination. It would not be fair to dwell too much on the contrast between the flesh- painting of the " Blue Boy " and that of the " Mrs. Sid- dons," for I fancy the peculiar white bloom of the latter's skin is due to the fact that she sat in her paint. But it must not be overlooked that even in the portraits of pretty women, that of Eliza Linley, for instance, painted about 1770, there is a fulness of colour we do not find ten years later.*" * Further information on the subject of the "Blue Boy" and Jonathan Buttall will be found in the Appendix. 164. MRS. SHERIDAN From the Picture in the Collection of Lord Rothschild THE "BLUE BOY'* Taking everything into account, it seems to me that the old tradition of the " Blue Boy " must be given up, and that the Duke of Westminster's picture, so far from being an answer to Reynolds, was one of the many things which provoked his dictum, Gainsborough replying, if he took the trouble to reply at all, with the " Mrs. Siddons " and those other portraits painted in the last ten years of his life in which blue, canary yellow, and other cool tints are made the centres of the colour-scheme. The subse- quent history of the " Blue Boy" is rather obscure. Jonathan Buttall senior, the father of the sitter, died in 1768, when his widow took out letters of administration of his estate. Nearly thirty years later, in 1796, she seems to have died herself, for the administration was then renewed to the son, the value of the unadministered balance being sworn under £1000. He seems to have realised at once, for his effects were sold the same year by Sharpe and Coxe, the auctioneers. These effects "included premises in Soho and the City, a share in Drury Lane Theatre, many drawings by Gainsborough, and pictures by the same hand and others, wine, and musical instruments."* As to whether the " Blue Boy " was sold on this occasion there seems to be considerable doubt. There is evidence to show that Hoppner, who died in 18 10, had a " Blue Boy " in his possession. A letter exists in which R. B. Hoppner, the painter's son, says he remembers a "Blue Boy" at his father's house, 18 Charles Street, St. James's Square, which he believed to be the property of the Prince of Wales. At the present moment three versions are known. One is the Duke of Westminster's picture ; another was lately in the possession of Mr. W. H. Fuller, but now belongs, I believe, to Mr. Hern, both of * F. G. Stephens, catalogue of the Gainsborough Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885. 165 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH New York. The third, a sketch, was lent by the Comte Boni de Castellane to the exhibition of portraits held in the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in 1 897. The second has sometimes been put forward as an original replica by Gainsborough himself, but it has no serious pretensions to any such rank. It is probably an old copy by Hoppner, whose hand may, I think, be recognised in some other so-called replicas of Gainsborough. Hoppner, as might be expected, could reproduce Gainsborough's colour with a certain measure of success, but the handling of the great master was not quite within his reach. Whether Hoppner or not, the feathery touch of Gainsborough here puts on a suspicion of woolli- ness, and the whole canvas lacks spontaneity, brilliancy, and clearness. Whatever its history, the real " Blue Boy '* is the one at Grosvenor House. In all probability it either belonged to Hoppner, or was put in his charge at some period between 1796 and 18 10. He would then have every opportunity of making the copy which has since led to so much debate. We shall come in good time to pictures painted in 1779, and then I shall have an oppor- tunity of showing how they differ from the Grosvenor House masterpiece.* Among other pictures dating from his last years in Bath are the first portrait of the Duke of Cumberland, * The South Kensington Museum possesses a sketch in pencil and water colour, which pretends to be a first sketch for the " Blue Boy," It is quite unworthy of attention, Gainsborough could draw badly enough when he liked, but he could scarcely put pencil to paper with so little point as we find here. Moreover, the notes of costume on the back are not in the painter's handwriting. A sketch which belonged to the late Mr, Henry Vaughan is apparently genuine, although it is somewhat rubbed and flattened. It is on brownish grey paper, in pencil heightened with white, and shows the figure standing rather more squarely to the front than we see it in the picture. Mr. Vaughan bought his sketch from Mr, Hogarth, the dealer, who was at one time in Sir Thomas Lawrence's employment. 166 CLOSE OF THE BATH PERIOD painted while his little Royal Highness was under the cloud of his intrigue with Lady Grosvenor ; the portrait of Grace Dalrymple, afterwards Mrs. Elliott, now at Welbeck Abbey, and another which used to belong to Lady Cholmondeley ; the " Mrs. Macaulay," which belongs to Mr. E. P. Roberts, and the " Miss Jane Tyler," now in Lord Iveagh's collection. Miss Tyler was the daughter of Dr. Tyler, Rector of Shobdon, and an aunt of Robert Southey. The poet says she was remarkably beautiful, so far as any face can be called beautiful in which the indications of a violent temper are strongly marked." These indications are not to be discovered in Gains- borough's portrait, which was long in the possession of the Bateman family, at Shobdon Court. Mrs. Macaulay was Catherine Macaulay the historian and political pamph- leteeress. She will have to be referred to again later. Some confusion has been caused over the portraits of Mrs. Elliott, through a mistake in the catalogue of the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition of 1 8 8 5. The picture then exhibited was the bust portrait from the collection of the Duke of Portland ; the description in the catalogue was evidently compiled from John Dean's engraving after the full-length formerly in the possession of Lord Cholm- ondeley. Both pictures date from about the same time, although the full length may be slightly the earlier of the two. Dean's engraving, the second state, was published in January 1779. The Duke of Portland's picture is one of the finest things of the sort that Gainsborough ever did. In it the lady's beauty, and her character, both receive full justice. Grace Dalrymple was married while still in her teens to Dr. John Elliott, afterwards a baronet, a distinguished Scottish physician, who was old enough to be her father. Not long after her marriage she eloped with Lord Valentia, who took her to France, and there, 167 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH apparently, transferred her to Lord Cholmondeley, with whom she returned to England. Here she attracted the Prince of Wales, and had a daughter who afterwards became the wife of Lord Charles Bentinck, son of the third Duke of Portland. After a time Mrs. Elliott, who had become too well known in London, as " Dolly the Tall," returned to France, where, between 1786 and 1793, she was one of the many " friends " of Philippe " Egalite." Her " Journal of my Life during the French Revolution " was pubhshed in 1859. It is possible that the date I have suggested for the Duke of Portland's picture may be too early, and that it is identical with the Miss Dalrymple " which, according to Fulcher, was at the Academy in 1782. Some of the finest of Gainsborough's landscapes were painted during the last few years of his stay in Bath. To this period I should refer the great " Watering Place " of the National Gallery, the "Landscape with Cattle," or " Repose," which now belongs to Mr. Harry Quilter, the "Cottage Door," at Grosvenor House, the Highclere " Rustic Children," of which there is a small sketch or replica in the National Gallery, and the famous " Cottage Girl," which passed from the collection of Lord de Dun- stanviUe into that of Mr. Bassett, of Tehidy, Cornwall. It has been usual to refer these and other pictures of the same class to a later time, but I think a mistake has there been made. It was between about 1768 and 1775 that Gainsborough indulged in the rich impasto and low brown tones we find in all these pictures. We can tell this from portraits the dates of which are known. After his estab- lishment in London his opportunities for observing nature became fewer and his time more fully occupied with sitters. Accordingly we find his method in landscape become at once hastier, more conventional, and more suggestive of backgrounds than scenes painted for their own sakes. In 168 CLOSE OF THE BATH PERIOD this new style he sometimes rises to heights unsurpassed at any period of his career. The background, for instance, to " The Morning Walk," equals anything of the kind ever done, either in England or anywhere else, and yet it is scarcely finer than similar things in the " Mall," or the " Duke and Duchess of Cumberland," or the " Mrs. Sheridan," or Lord Gwydyr's "Lord Willoughby d'Eresby," or the superb half-length of*' Squire Hibbert" which was at Burlington House in 1896. All these, how- ever, are painted with a lighter and more feathery touch than landscapes of the " Cottage Door " period. They are higher in tone, and depend more upon inner light for their warmth than upon warm tints. The ever-increasing tendency to lightness, featheriness, and transparency lasted to his death, and gives a distinct character to the produc- tions of his last eight or ten years. We have now come to the eve of Gainsborough's last flitting, to the move from Bath to London. Before re- counting the somewhat remarkable incidents which pro- voked the change, let me just glance back for a moment and attempt such a broad sketch of the man and his surroundings as the information we possess will justify. In the first place, we have to remember that at Bath he was in touch with the full tide of English life, almost as immediately as if he were in London. Bath was a pro- vincial town, but its inhabitants were as nearly cosmopoHtan as those of any city of the day. The list of the painter's sitters shows that even in Pall Mall he could scarcely have had a better chance of artistic fame and social success. The former he won easily ; the latter he failed to win, so far as he failed, because he was without either the desire to succeed or the very special powers required for success. Thicknesse says that of all the men he ever knew Gains- borough had fewest of the gifts necessary to make his 169 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH mark in the great world. By that, of course, he means that the punctilios of society bored him, that the thousand and one little duties which have to be performed if a man means to greatly widen the circle of his acquaintance, neither presented themselves to his mind nor would have seduced his attention if they had. He followed his inclinations, and they mostly led him along the line of least resistance. Like many other men of intelligence and humour, he liked himself best in the society of those with whom he was most at ease, and these were his inferiors rather than his betters. He paid visits to the great houses of the west, he painted their owners and their owners' families, he enjoyed a night or two at Bowood, and we saw from his letter to Jackson that he could appreciate the abilities of a man like Dun- ning, and could sketch his mind as brilliantly as he could the personality of Garrick, But all this cost him an effort. His instinct was to avoid such encounters, and to take his pleasure in the company of Palmer, the owner of the Bath Theatre, of Abel, of Giardini, of Fischer, of Jackson, just as in his youth he had painted the town red with Hayman and Wilson. Anything in the shape of a collet monti was his aversion. Life for him was not a serious business at all. His admiration was lavished on those who kept his animal gifts, high as well as low, in full play, and his sub- stitutes for duty were a warm heart, a natural honesty, and an unwillingness to be the cause of grief to those about him. No real excesses are recorded against him, but many little pieces of evidence combine to prove that he was neither a model of sobriety nor a strictly faithful husband. He might, indeed, in many ways, have sat for Tom Jones : the chief difference between himself and Fielding's creation lying in the touch of irresponsibility, of oddness and eccentricity, which makes it less certain than some of his biographers would have us believe, that the mental 170 GAhXSBOROUGH DUPONT Sir Edgar Vincent, K.C.M.G. PHILIP THICKNESSE AGAIN derangement of his daughters was inherited solely from their mother. As for his family, it seems to have taken him as easily as he took the world. In spite of his peccadilloes he was on excellent terms with his wife, whose mind appears to have been absorbed in housekeep- ing and in the gaieties hinted at in one of his letters to Jackson. That she was not a nonentity we might have seen by her portrait, even if the antagonism of Thicknesse had not been eloquent to the same effect. She was pro- bably the drag on the family coach in one sense and its motive-power in another. She was economical — Thick- nesse says she saved five hundred pounds in a single year — and yet she set up a carriage when they went to London. She hoarded her husband's drawings ; " they will be worth a good deal of money when Tom dies," Thicknesse describes her as saying ; and yet she dressed so richly that she had to justify it by pleading her lofty if left-handed extraction. Knowing what we do of her lord, she must have been a capable woman in her way to steer the family fortunes quietly home as she did. As for the two daughters, they were always odd, and both were seriously deranged before they died. At Bath their lives were pro- bably passed in a round of petty gaieties. When the painter's fear came true and no husbands offered, they no doubt welcomed the change to London. They count for little in their father's Hfe, in spite of the fact that he painted them so often, and his friends make even less of them than the friends of Sir Joshua made of Mary Reynolds. As the remainder of this chapter will be devoted to the relations of Gainsborough and Thicknesse, and espe- cially to the quarrel or misunderstanding which was the immediate cause of the painter's move to London, I must here turn for a moment to the Governor's sketch of his friend, which helps to fill in the outlines I have been 171 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH attempting to trace. ** After returning from a concert at Bath," he says at one place, *' nearly twenty years ago, where we had been charmed by Miss Linley's voice, I went home to supper with my friend, who sent his servant for a bit of clay from the small beer barrel, with which he modelled and then coloured her head, and that too in a quarter of an hour, in such a manner that I protest it appeared to me even superior to his paintings. The next day I took a friend or two to his house to see it, but it was not to be seen, the servant had thrown it down from the mantelpiece and broken it." To this passage Fulcher had a note saying that Leslie, the painter, possessed an exquisite plaster cast from a head of Miss Linley, modelled by Gainsborough, which met with a similar fate. Another story from Thicknesse. " A gentleman, and a friend of mine, had, without letting me know his distress, shot him- self in this city. I found, by some letters from a female which came into my hands from the Coroner, that he was connected with a woman in London, who had painted the distress of her mind in those letters a la Gainsborough. I wrote to her, and her reply to me was of the same cast, and meeting Mr. Gainsborough going to the play when I had her letter in my hand, I showed it to him ; I saw the stifled tear ready to burst from his eyes, and so quitted him ; but instead of going to the play, he returned home, sent me a bank note in a letter wherein he said, ' I could not go to the play till I had relieved my mind by sending you the enclosed bank note, which I beg you to transmit to the poor woman by to-morrow's post.' His susceptible mind and benevolent heart led him into such repeated acts of generosity.' " As I have already hinted, Thicknesse was the first cause of Gainsborough's desertion of Bath, as he had been of the flight from Ipswich. The relations between the 172 QUARREL WITH THICKNESSE two men had been gradually becoming less cordial ever since the first move had been accomplished. Thicknesse himself never seems to have lost his affection for the painter. In all he says about him we never find the least touch of that vindictive desire to wound which he showed so readily in his misunderstandings with others. His animosity is all for " Margaret," whom he seems to have considered a quiet but persistent worker against him in Gainsborough's breast. Dr. M'Kittrick Adair's abusive pamphlet* contains a portrait of Thicknesse, which is so far a caricature that the gentleman is " making a face." Otherwise it seems a straightforward likeness enough. It certainly does not suggest a head that an artist would make any great sacrifice to paint. It is one of those large, rugged, small-featured faces, all forehead, chin, and cheek, which are difficult to endow with interest. Several Gains- boroughs are known which pretend to represent Thick- nesse, but it would be difficult to authenticate any one of them. A small full length is in existence which I suspect to be a hitherto unidentified portrait of him. It is, or was, in the already mentioned Fuller collection at New York. If you look at our reproduction of Major's plate from the view of Landguard Fort you will see, on your left, a youngish man half-lying in a graceful though rather over- conscious pose against a fallen tree. Bearing in mind that this picture was painted for the Lieutenant-Governor it is more than probable that, so far as a figure so small could represent any particular individual, Gainsborough meant this for Thicknesse. Major's engraving is only one-third the size of the picture itself, which perished after it was painted, so it is mainly by the attitude that we must hope to connect this figure with any other. Now Mr. Fuller's picture represents an officer sitting on a bank • " Curious Facts and Anecdotes, &c." 173 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH in practically the same pose as the one in Major's plate. He wears a handsome uniform and carries a sword. The execution is that of about 1753-5, when the Governor was about the age of the person represented. The British Museum owns a portrait of Thicknesse, in chalk, by William Hoare of Bath. It agrees with the figure in the " Landguard Fort." Thicknesse was not an ill-looking person by any means. Humour, vanity and persistence are the most unmistakable qualities traceable in his features. One hesitates a little over the humour ! * A first attempt to get Thicknesse painted by Gains- borough after the move to Bath came to nothing, as we have already seen. A good deal of time and trouble were consumed in an equally unsuccessful endeavour to get the painter to finish another, which was begun some years after the move from Ipsv/ich was made. Soon after the Gainsboroughs settled in Bath, a portrait of Miss Ford, the lady who afterwards became Thicknesse's second wife, was begun — and finished. The story which hangs on this is long, and must be gone into in detail if we are to make the most of the few illuminating events of the painter's life. Thicknesse gives one version of what happened and Allan Cunningham another. I confess that to me the Governor's account, which is the less favourable to Gains- borough, seems the more probable of the two. It agrees better with what we know of the people concerned, and although showing the painter's conduct in a light not entirely agreeable, it tells us nothing we should not be * In 1790, Gillray issued a vicious caricature of Thicknesse, lettered " Lieutenant-Governor Gallstone inspired by Alecto : or the Birth of Minerva — from his head she sprung, a Goddess arm'd." The acces- sories in this precious composition insinuate various outrageous charges against the Governor. Thicknesse died at Boulogne two years later, leaving a will in which he bequeathed his right hand to his son, Lord Audley ! J 74 QUARREL WITH THICKNESSE prepared to hear of a person of his peculiar character. This is what Thicknesse says : " I cannot help relating a very singular and extra- ordinary circumstance which arose between him, Mrs. Thicknesse, and myself ; for though it is very painful for me to reflect on, much more to relate, it turned out fortunately for him, and thereby lessened my concern, as he certainly had never gone from Bath to London had not this untoward circumstance arisen between us ; and it is no less singular, that I, who had taken so much pains to remove him from Ipswich to Bath, should be the cause, twenty years afterwards, of driving him from thence ! He had asked me, when he first went to Bath, to give him the portrait of a little Spanish girl, painted on copper, with a guitar in her hand and a feather in her hair, a picture now at his house in Pall Mall, the study of which, he has often told me, made him a portrait painter ; and as he afterwards painted Mrs. Thicknesse's full length, before she was my wife, he rolled it up in a landscape of the same size, and of his own pencil, and sent it to me to London by the waggon. I was much surprised at the first opening of it, to see the head of a large oak tree instead of Mrs. Thicknesse's head, but I soon found between the two pictures a note as follows : * Lest Mrs. Thicknesse's picture should have been damaged in the carriage to town, this landscape is put as a case to protect it, and I now return you many thanks for having procured me the favor of her sitting to me ; it has done me service and I know it will do you pleasure.* " During our residence in Bath, he had often desired me to sit to him for a companion to it, which I as often declined ; not because I should not have felt myself, and my person too, highly flattered, but because I owed Mr. Gainsborough so much regard, esteem, and friendship, that 175 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH I could not bear he should toil for nothing, knowing how hard he worked for profit. However, during the last year of his residence at Bath, he fell in love with Mrs. Thick- nesse's viol-di-gamba, and often, when he dropped into my house and took it up, offered me a hundred guineas for it." Here follows a passage not easy to construe : At that time I had reason to believe I might not find it inconvenient, ever to remove from my own house in the Crescent, and observing to Mrs. Thicknesse how much he admired her viol, that he had some very good ones of his own, and that she might at any time have the use of either, she consented to give him an instrument made in the year 1612, of exquisite workmanship, and mellifluous tone, and which was certainly worth a hundred guineas." That is, apparently, he persuaded his wife to let Gains- borough have her viol for a consideration. " We then asked him and his family to supper with us," he goes on, "after which Mrs. Thicknesse, putting the instrument before him, desired he would play one of his best lessons upon it ; this, I say, was after supper, for till poor Gainsborough had got a little borrowed courage (such was his natural modesty), he could neither play nor sing I He then played, and charmingly too, one of his dear friend Abel's lessons, and Mrs. Thicknesse told him he deserved the instrument for his reward, and desired his acceptance of it, but said, 'At your leisure give me my husband's picture to hang by the side of my own.' A hundred full length pictures bespoken could not have given my grateful and generous friend half the pleasure, a pleasure in which I participated highly, because I knew with what delight he would fag through the day's work to rest his cunning fingers at night over Abel's compositions, and an instru- ment he so highly valued. Gainsborough was so trans- ported with this present that he said, ' Keep me hungry ! keep me hungry ! and do not send the instrument until I 176 QUARREL WITH THICKNESSE have finished the picture.' The viol-di-gamba, however, was sent the next morning,* and the same day he stretched a canvas, called upon me to attend, and he soon finished the head, rubbed in the dead colouring of the full length, painted my Newfoundland dog at my feet ; and then it was put by, and no more said of it, or done to it. After some considerable time had passed, Mrs. Thicknesse and I called one morning at his house ; Mr. Gainsborough invited her up to his pain ting- room, saying, * Madam, I have something above to show you.' Now, the reader will naturally conclude, as she did, that it was some further progress upon my picture, which, as it was last left, had something of the appearance (for want of light and shade in the drapery) of a drowned man ready to burst, or rather of a ragged body which had been blown about upon a gibbet on Hounslow Heath, for the dog's head, and his master's, were the only parts that betrayed the pencil of so great a master. But upon Mrs. Thicknesse's entering the room, she found it was to show her Mr. Fischer's portrait, painted at full length, completely finished, in scarlet and gold, like a colonel of the Foot Guards, and mine standing in its tatter-a-rag condition by the side of it. Mrs. Thicknesse knew this picture was not to be paid for, and that it was begun and completed after mine. She would have rejoiced to have seen a hundred pictures finished before mine that were to be paid for ; but she instantly burst into tears, retired, and wrote Mr. Gains- borough a note, desiring him to put my picture up in his garret, and not let it stand to be a foil to Mr. Fischer's ; he did so, and as instantly sent home the viol-di-gamba ! Upon my meeting Mr. Gainsborough, I believe the next day, I asked him how he could have acted so very impru- dently ? and observed to him that it was not consistent * One account says Gainsborough took it away in his coach the same night. 177 M THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH with his usual delicacy, nor good sense, that even if he had made a foolish bargain with her, yet it was a bargain, and ought to be fulfilled, for I must own, that had he been a man I loved less, I, too, should have been a little offended. Now reason and good sense had returned to my friend, ' I own,' said he, * I was very wrong, not only in doing as I did, but I have been guilty of a shameful indelicacy in accepting the instrument which Mrs. Thick- nesse's fingers from a child had been accustomed to, but my admiration of it shut out my judgment, and I had long since determined to send it her back with the picture, and so I told Mr. Palmer ' (and so he did), adding, ' Pray, make my peace with Mrs. Thicknesse, and tell her I will finish her picture in my very best manner, and send it her home forthwith.' In a few days after, we three met, and they shook hands, and seemed as good friends as ever ; but days, weeks, and months passed, and no picture appear- ing, either at his house or mine, I began to think it then became my turn to be a little angry, for I suspected, and I suspected right, that he had determined never to touch it more ; and so I wrote him a letter and told him so, adding, that Mrs. Thicknesse was certainly entitled to the picture either from his justice or his generosity — that I would not give a farthing for it, as a mark of his justice, but if he would send it to me from his generosity, un- finished as it was, I should feel myself obliged to him ; and he sent it as it was ! Nothing but knowing the goodness of his heart, the generosity of his temper, and the pecu- liarities of his mind, could have made me even speak to him again, after having given me so deadly a blow, for it was a deadly one ; but I knew, though it seemed his act, it did not originate with him. He had been told that I had said openly in a public coffee house at Bath, that when I first knew him at Ipswich, his children were running 178 QUARREL WITH THICKNESSE about the streets there without shoes or stockings ; but the rascal who told him so was the villain who robbed the poor from the plate he held at the church door for alms ! That Mr. Gainsborough did not believe me capable of telling so gross a falsehood, I have his authority to pro- nounce, for he told me what he said in return. ' I acknow- ledge,' said he, ' I owe many obligations to Mr. Thick- nesse, and I know not any man from whom I could receive acts of friendship with more pleasure,' and then made this just remark (to Thicknesse), ' I suppose,' said he, * the Doctor ( ? Adair) knew I now and then made you a present of a drawing, and he meanly thought, by setting us at variance, he might come in for one himself.' *' The first time I met Mr. Gainsborough after he had presented me with my own unfinished picture, I saw that concern and shame in his face, which good sense, an upright heart, and conscious errors, always discover. I did not lament the loss of his finishing strokes to my portrait, but grieved that it had ever been begun ; he desired that I would not let any other painter touch it, and I solemnly assured him that it should never be touched ; it had, I said, been touched enough, and so had I; and then the subject dropt; but every time I went into the room where that scare-crow hung, it gave me so painful a sensation, that I protest it often turned me sick, and in one of those sick fits, I desired Mrs. Thicknesse would return the picture to Mr. Gainsborough, and that, as she had set her heart upon having my full length portrait, I would rather give Mr. Pine* his fifty guineas for painting it, than be so daily reminded and sickened * Robert Edge Pine, born 174.2 ; died 1790. He, too, painted in Bath and London, and produced a large number of portraits between 1770 and 1790. His works are often ascribed to Reynolds and some- times to Romney and others. 179 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH at the sight of such a glaring mark of disregard from a man I so much admired, and so affectionately esteemed. This she consented to do, provided I would permit her to send with it a card, expressing her sentiments at the same time, to which I am sorry to say I too hastily consented. In that card she bid him take his brush, and first rub out the countenance of the truest and warmest friend he ever had, and so done, then blot him for ever from his memory." Here we have the Thicknesse version. Allan Cunning- ham, quoting a member of Gainsborough's family, adds a detail which puts a different complexion on the story. He says that, so far from the portrait being the only consideration for the viol-di-gamba, Gainsborough took an opportunity, when the Governor was not looking, to slip a hundred guineas into the hand of Mrs. Thicknesse. " Her husband, who may not have been aware of what passed, renewed his wish for the portrait, and obtained what he conceived was a promise that it should be painted. This double benefaction was, however, more than Gainsborough had contemplated ; he commenced the portrait, but there it stopped, and after a time, resenting some injurious expressions from the lips of the Governor, the artist sent him the picture, rough and unfinished as it was, and returned also the viol-di-gamba." I confess that to me this story seems incredible. If the painter gave the hundred guineas privately to his friend's wife, and she never told her husband she had received it, then the conduct of Thicknesse would be comprehensible enough ; but what should we have to think of Gainsborough and Mrs. Thicknesse.? On the other hand, if Thicknesse knew about the payment, how could he have had the audacity to publish his pamphlet within a few weeks of the painter's death, the widow, his inveterate enemy according to his own account, still alive to give him 180 DESERTION OF BATH the lie? It is infinitely more probable that what Cunningham heard was a family romance, invented long after the fact, when no first-hand witness was there to confirm or deny it. The painter's character was quite consistent with the story told by Thicknesse. That, as a rule, he was extrava- gantly generous with the results of his own abilities, we know beyond question. He gave his drawings away wholesale. He parted with his landscapes on the slightest provocation. He painted portraits gratis for any one who excited his affection or admiration. Colonel Hamilton, the musical " bruiser," obtained one of the best of his rural scenes for a solo on the violin. But like all impul- sive, warm-hearted, hot-headed, thoughtless people, he found it difficult, I might say impossible, to carry through an arduous piece of work from a sense of duty alone. It is quite clear that the painting of Thicknesse no longer presented itself to his imagination as an enjoyable task. The man's persistent officiousness had become intensely irksome. We have a glimpse of it in the story just quoted of his bringing a number of friends to the painter's house to see the little clay sketch of Miss Linley's head, thrown off playfully the night before. Such a person would, in time, get terribly on the nerves of a man like Gainsborough. The charms of the viol-di-gamba — an instrument for which the painter seems to have had a positive mania — would blind him for a moment to the intense discomfort, to the practical impossibility, of the task he was undertaking. But when the time arrived for the fulfilment of his bargain, the difficulty of bending his powers, to say nothing of his inclination, to such an uncongenial piece of work became invincible. He would put it off with all sorts of excuses, both to himself and his creditor, until at last the only thing to be done was to i8i THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH abandon the portrait and repay the consideration. Such conduct, of course, is not to be defended from a high moral point of view, but men of Gainsborough's tempera- ment drift into it without any sort of dishonest intention. The machinery for seeing how it looks to the outside world is left out of their composition, and they are to be blamed rather for giving drafts on a quality they do not possess than for failing to honour those drafts when due. Gainsborough was incapable of the prolonged thought and experiment which evoke a triumph from unsympathetic materials. Of all the greater painters who have lived on this earth he was the most entirely the creature of his emotions. It is impossible to survey his work without having the conviction forced upon us that in every instance the degree of his success depended on how a theme affected his imagination at the outset. To some extent, of course, this is true of all artists ; Millais was almost as conspicuous an example of it as Gainsborough ; but the painter of " The Mall " and " The Morning Walk," of the " Eliza and Tom Linley " at Knole, and the " Mrs. Sheridan " at Tring Park, set himself an impossible task when he under- took to compel his fancy. Thicknesse says himself that he drove Gainsborough from Bath, and subsequent writers have accepted his assertion. Knowing what we do of the artist's character, I think it extremely probable that the Governor was right, and that without the chance it offered of shaking himself clear of an acquaintance who had become a daily and hourly cause of discomfort, to himself probably and most certainly to his wife, the painter might never have cared to make the move. Made, however, it was, and in the summer of 1774, nearly thirty years after he had first had a domicile within sight of St. Paul's, the painter and his family were established in the capital. 182 THE "ELDEST PRINCESSES" (1786) South Kcnsiiwtun Museum CHAPTER VII LONDON IN 1774 — Gainsborough's prospects there — HIS RIVALS THE PROMISE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY THE COUNTENANCE OF THE KING PICTURES BETWEEN 1774 AND 1783 GAINSBOROUGH AND REYNOLDS AINSBOROUGH'S migration to London was vastly less of an experiment than his move to Bath. Practically it was scarcely more risky, if indeed it were not less so, than a change from one part of London to another. A connection of the most useful kind was already made, and we have every reason to believe that the artist's person was familiar even to men who had never visited Bath. We know that he was by no means screwed down in Somersetshire. We often hear of him at places nearly as far off as London, and certain phrases in his letters, as well as signs in his work, suggest that during his more than fourteen years in the west he often visited the capital. Many of his Bath sitters belonged to the most influential sections of English society, and his double reputation— as a maker of first-rate likenesses and as an unerring perceiver of the best points of those who occupied his sitter's chair would turn all these into eager advertisers of his merit. Thicknesse, too, was again to the fore. He really seems, according to his lights, to have behaved very handsomely. 183 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH A more tactful person would no doubt have avoided all the causes of trouble between himself and the painter, but a rancorous man would scarcely have taken any further pains to advance the interests of one from whom he had received such a wound to his vanity as that described in the last chapter. But Thicknesse, in spite of all his faults, clearly seems to have felt a very warm affection for Gains- borough, and his first thought when the move to London was decided on was to do something to forward his friend's interests. He could do Httle enough, no doubt, and that little was not, as it turned out, required. But he must receive credit for his intentions. After all this preface it sounds like lathos to have to confess that the Governor's good offices were confined to enlisting the services of a not very important peer, but Fulcher and other writers have been so unfair to Thicknesse that something should be done to adjust the balance. " It was not one or two ill-judged actions, among a thousand great, good, and generous ones I knew him to be guilty of," says Thicknesse, clumsily enough, " which could break off our friendship. ... I was much alarmed lest with all his merit and genius, he might be in London a long time before he was properly known to that class of people who alone could essentially serve him, for of all the men I ever knew, he possessed least of that worldly knowledge to enable him to make his own way into the notice of the Great World. I therefore wrote to Lord Bateman, who knew him, and who admired his talents . . . urging him ... for both our sakes, to give him countenance and make him known, that being all which was necessary. His lordship, for one or both our sakes, did so, and Gainsborough's removal from Bath to London proved as good a move as it was from Ipswich to Bath." The implication, however, in this last sentence cannot be taken seriously. The painter soon found 184 SCHOMBERG HOUSE patrons vastly more important than my Lord Bateman There is a vague tale about an introduction at Bath to some of the young princesses. I cannot trace the story to any solid foundation, but if the introduction ever took place, and it is probable enough, it may have been the medium through which the painter won an early footing in Buckingham House. Certain it is that not long after his arrival in London he was sent for by the King, and that he soon became a persona grata with the Royal Family. But I am getting on a little too fast, and must hark back for a moment to give an account of his establishment in London, and of the state of matters artistic he found there. On his first arrival he took rooms north of the Oxford Road, but immediately set about finding a more promis- ing centre of operations. This he soon discovered in Pall Mall, in the house built nearly a century before by Dutch William's friend, the Duke of Schomberg. It was a large house consisting of a central block with seven windows in a row, and two projecting wings. The west wing and two-thirds of the central block still exist ; the rest was pulled down when the Ordnance Office, as it used to be called, was built. The part which has escaped destruction included Gainsborough's home in London. In 1774 the precincts of the old palace of St. James's were not the sober neighbourhood they have since become. Pall Mall itself, and the little streets close by, especially Cleveland Row, had then many curious denizens. Schomberg House had recently been bought by the eccentric painter, John Astley, who leased one-third of it to Gainsborough at the substantial rent of three hundred pounds per annum, nearly as startling an advance upon Bath as Bath was upon Ipswich. The history of Schomberg House ought to be written ; it would form an amusing chronique scandaleuse. Jack Astley was a peculiar creature, with 185 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH certain affinities to Gainsborough himself. In his youth he had been a fellow pupil with Reynolds under Hudson, and had also been one of his intimate friends in Rome. He is best remembered by an often told mishap which befell him, according to Northcote, who, no doubt, had the story from Reynolds, at that period of his life. Astley was then very poor, but pretended to comparative wealth. One hot day he went with a band of students on a country expedi- tion. As noon approached, the heat grew so oppressive that the other members of the company took off their coats. Astley alone clung to his, and so awoke the curiosity of the rest. At last they compelled him to strip, when it was discovered that the back of his waistcoat was one of his own neglected landscapes ! Astley was a mediocre artist, and very few of his productions can now be identi- fied. He spent three years painting portraits in Dublin, where he posed as a beau, and was accustomed to use his sword as a mahl-stick, to the great admiration of the ladies. But fortune came to Astley by a shorter cut than through his painting-room. He married a widow, Lady Duckinfield- Daniell, who brought him a large income and died immedi- ately afterwards, leaving him her money. It was then that he bought Schomberg House, and married a second time. Before he died he inherited a second fortune from a brother and married a third wife. One wonders whether he ever paid Sir Joshua the 15s. 6d. with which he is debited in the President's account-books ! Leslie calls him a " clever, conceited, out-at-elbows, reckless fellow." He died in 1787. Some six years before this he had let the eastern part of Schomberg House to Dr. Graham, the char- latan, who had turned it into his second Temple of Health. The " celestial bed," the " celestial throne," and the other apparatus of his not very decent quackery were installed under the same roof as the Gainsboroughs and their dogs. 186 SCHOMBERG HOUSE The quack was probably an old acquaintance. He had been at Bath in 1774, 1775, and 1777 ; he had known the Duchess of Devonshire, whom he had met and success- fully treated at Aix-la-Chapelle about 1778 ; his brother William's wife was Catherine Macaulay, the once famous historian and republican pamphleteeress, whose portrait Gainsborough had painted. It was in 1781 that Graham moved all his paraphernalia from the Adelphi Terrace into Schomberg House, and brought with him a young woman who was afterwards to make a considerable noise in the world. This was Emma Lyon or Hart, who is said to have posed as the " rosy, athletic, and truly gigantic (in the sense of * immense ' ^) goddess of health on the celestial throne " — and in a coa vestis — while lectures on various strange matters were read by ladies to ladies. The Temple of Health must have been a rather dangerous neighbour to a man of Gainsborough's temperament, but one cannot help feeling a keen regret that he did not ex- plore its mysteries, so far as we know, and add his version of Emma Lyon's charms to those of Romney.* Graham's tenancy of a part of Schomberg House lasted nearly as long as Gainsborough's, for it was not until the spring of 1788 that the bailiffs were put in and all the "celestial" furniture again dispersed. * Perhaps he did ; it is quite possible that she sat for the " Musidora " of the National Gallery. Gainsborough must have had some special temptation to paint this picture, which is believed to be one of his only tw^o attempts at the nude. The features are those of Emma Lyon refined, the hair is hers, and the rest of the figure agrees with what we find in several of Romney's pictures. A portrait of the " divine lady " in a state of nature, by old James Ward, still exists, or did exist twenty years ago. It agrees curiously with the " Musidora," especially in those fine, muscular legs over which Gainsborough took more pains than usual. Their final attitude is a pent'mento. Judging by its style, the "Musidora" belongs, too, to the years when Emma Lyon was in Schomberg House. 187 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH The year 1774 was not one of the most exciting in English history, but it saw the birth of the American Revolution, in the " boycotting " of the tea ships by the Boston ladies, and the subsequent proceedings in Boston Harbour. It saw, too, the election of Wilkes to be Lord Mayor of London and Knight of the Shire for Middlesex, it saw the Woodfalls at the bar of the Old Bailey, and it saw society stripped of its loose cash through the swindles of Alexander Fordyce, one of Gainsborough*s sitters and the husband of another, the Lady Margaret Lindsay. Men had not much to talk about, however, as we may divine from the fuss made over Omai, the Otaheitan native, who was landed in this country by Captain Cook's fellow voyager, Fourneaux. His movements were chronicled daily, as if he were the Czar. His chief rivals for notice were the highwaymen, the footpads, and the housebreakers. The papers are filled," says the Annual Register for 1774, " with robberies and breaking of houses, and with recitals of the cruelties committed by the robbers, greater than ever before known." And yet every week saw batches of from six to sixteen of these gentry throttled at Tyburn. John Rann, commonly called Sixteen-String- Jack, was twice laid by the heels during these twelve months. The first time he escaped from Newgate, the second he was safely hanged. But all this has little enough to do with Gainsborough. Events which touched him more nearly were the deaths of Goldsmith, of Clive and of the eccentric Paul Whitehead, all of whom would probably have filled his sitter's chair more than once had they lived a little longer. For in those days people were painted as often as they are photo- graphed now. The eight or ten portraits in a year which make a good " practice " for a modern face painter, would have seemed a miserable total to Sir Joshua, or Gains- 188 LONDON IN 1774 borough, or Romney, when in the full tide of their success. The catalogue of those who sat to one or another of the trio includes nearly all the men and women of any note in England. Many sat to both Gainsborough and Reynolds, but Romney seems to have monopolised most of his sitters. Thurlow was right when he spoke of Romney and the President as the heads of two factions. Few clients went from Leicester Fields to Cavendish Square or vice versa, Romney had no connection with either of the palaces, and knew comparatively few of those who were in the forefront of the social movement of the day. Not that his sitters were " middle class " ; far from it ; socially, they belonged to the same couche as those of Reynolds and Gainsborough ; but the great personalities of the time, the Pitts, the Sheridans, the Johnsons, the Camdens, the Georgiana Duchesses, the Foxes, the Garricks, seldom found their way across the Oxford Road when they took the whim to sit. Between Leicester Fields and Pall Mall, on the other hand, it seems to have been a chance which they chose. Sir Joshua has the longer list, as with his social tact and his more definite ambitions, he was sure to have, but we never get the slightest hint that an appearance in the one studio was any hindrance to a reappearance in the other. Rey- nolds and Gainsborough were antipathetic, but an absence of any yearning for each other's company did not lead to the mutual thumb-bitings which really seem to have taken place between Sir Joshua and Romney. Gainsborough could neither feel not provoke malice. The two sayings about his dignified rival which have survived are both laudatory, though one, " Damn him, how various he is," might shock a pedant. Some time elapsed after Gainsborough's arrival in London before he fell seriously to work. His house had to be arranged and all his properties bestowed in their 189 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH new places. These would include — for we hear of no renewal of the friendly pillage which marked his exit from Ipswich — the great collection of unsold landscapes which had been accumulating for at least sixteen years. These were disposed in the hall, on the staircase, and, generally, wherever a sitter, on his way to the painting-room, could be tempted by their beauty. The inside of the house has not been much altered since the painter's time, and it is easy to see how he arranged it for his work. His front door was the one at the western end of the house. It has a commemorative tablet between the windows above. The vestibule, a hall behind that, and then a well staircase led up to the studio, which must have been the large room on the first floor, facing north. As studios went in those days, this would aflbrd good accommodation, although the lighting would scarcely serve for the production of works on modern principles. At the top of Schomberg House there is an elaborate room with a pretty approach, in which we should be inclined to recognise the studio but for the fact that its only window faces south. The London of a century ago was a lighter place than now. It had only about one-fifth of the population, one-tenth of the manufactures, and one-twentieth of the coal fires. Painters were not obliged to sit twirling their thumbs for weeks in winter, and more light came through a small window in six months than the glass wall of a modern studio admits in a year. It is impossible to say for certain who his first sitters in London were. Lord Bateman, to whom Thicknesse addressed his kindly-meant request, may well have broken such ice as there was to break, for he left many pictures by Gainsborough behind him when he died, in 1802. Many of these, however, were painted at Bath, and, curiously enough, most, if not all of them, bear some 190 RELATIONS WITH ROYALTY sort of signature, usually T. G. in a monogram. This, no doubt, was at Bateman's request. The contributions to the Royal Academy did not recommence until 1777, so we have nothing but the internal evidence of the works themselves to go upon in trying to decide which pictures belong to the first three years in London. Fulcher says that the painter was summoned to the Palace before he had been many months in his new surroundings. If so it is difficult to say what has become of the resulting pictures. The earliest royal portraits exhibited by him were those of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, which were at the Academy in 1777, the year of his re- entry ; and among the pictures at Windsor and Bucking- ham Palace it is impossible to recognise any as being earlier in style. In this, however, it is easy to be mis- taken, and Gainsborough's popularity with the family of George III., and especially the " elder princesses," may have begun during the first months after his arrival. Fulcher dates his vogue in London from the time when the King and Queen sat to him. I cannot help thinking that if this had been in 1774, or 1775, I77^» the Academy would not have had to wait until 1778 to see him back again on its walls. He would have been glad enough to show that he had won the royal approval, and, indeed, in the peculiar relations of the Academicians to the King, any failure to send his Majesty's portrait to the exhibition would have been a breach of etiquette. It appears, then, probable that a year or two passed before the royal favour shone upon the artist, and that he began with those two members of the King's family who were most accessible, the Dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester, both of whom had married out of the Blood Royal. During these years he had other things than paint to think about. More attention than ever was given to 191 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH music and its professors, and his brothers occupied a good deal of his time. He had been in the habit of paying a visit now and then to Henley, where Humphry lived, and now that he was so liberally housed he had the clerical inventor up to London, It was probably the last time the brothers ever met. In a letter written on this occasion to his sister, Mrs. Gibbon, we catch a pleasant glimpse of the painter as a family man. "LotiDON, Nov. i^t/i, iyy$. " Dear Sister, "We return you our best thanks for the excel- lent present of fish, which turned out as good as ever was eaten, and came very timely for brother Humphry to take part with us. He went home to Henley to-day, having been with us ten days, which was as long as he could well be absent from his business of collecting the tolls upon the river. He was as well as could be expected, consider- ing his affliction for the loss of his poor wife. We did all we could to comfort him, and wish him every possible happiness, as he is a good creature. My wife has been but very indifferent with the disorder that goes about in all parts of London ; it seems to be a sort of cold attended by a bad cough, and it has gone through our family, ser- vants and all ; but, thank God, we are upon the mending hand ; we don't hear of people dying of it, though 'tis universal. I am glad to hear business in the lodging- house way goes on so well. I know you would willingly keep the cart upon the wheels, till you go to heaven, though you deserve to ride there in something better. I told Humphry you were a rank Methodist, who says you had better be a Presbyterian, but I say Church of England. It does not signify what, if you are but free 192 DEATH OF HIS BROTHER HUMPHRY from hypocrisy, and don't set your heart upon worldly honors and wealth. I wish you long life and happiness, and remain, " Your affectionate brother, "THO. GAINSBOROUGH." Manners have changed so greatly since 1775 that we must be cautious in coming to conclusions from the phraseology of a letter. But the one just quoted seems to show that while such intercourse as Gainsborough kept up with his sisters was affectionate and friendly, there was not much of it. The next letter to Mrs. Gibbon is dated just a year later. Humphry had died in the in- terval, and the painter finds it necessary to give some account of what he is doing towards settling his affairs. ^^Nov. i^th, 1776. *' Dear Sister, I have been going to write to you every post for this month past, but was desirous of acquainting you with what I had done towards settling my brother Humphry's affairs, and therefore postponed writing till I had sold the stock. . . . Mr. Cooper advises me to keep on the house till we can make the most of the steam-engine (as the work, if taken to pieces, perhaps may never be put together again), and also the maid in the house, lest any discovery should be made of it. The goods are sold, but none of the beds, nor have I any account yet from Henley, so as to be able to settle any- thing. We hope both you and Sally continue in good health and good bustling spirits, and join in best affec- tions to you both. " T. G." N THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH The realisation of Humphry's estate and its division among the brothers and sisters had been left to the painter, and one is curious to know how a man of his irresponsible nature acquitted himself of the task. But we hear nothing more of the matter, except that the model of the steam-engine, on which so many hopes had been built, was presented to Thicknesse. Watts' patent for the condenser was taken out in 1769, and renewed in 1775, and so, no doubt, when inquiries were made, Humphry's model was found to be commercially worth- less. The next letter to Mrs. Gibbon which need be printed relates to an event at which the painter had no right to feel surprise, although it probably gave him as much con- cern as one of his sanguine temperament was capable of feeling. His fondness for music and musicians brought him one of the latter for a son-in-law. The intimacy with Johann Christian Fischer which had sprung up in Bath, and had been consecrated in the usual way — by the paint- ing of more than one fine portrait — ended in 1780 with his secret marriage to Mary Gainsborough, the artist's younger daughter. Fischer had the proverbial irrita- bility of a musician, and was eccentric besides ; his bride was handsome, but had already shown signs of the mental derangement by which she was afterwards seri- ously affected ; so happiness could scarcely be looked for from the union. The painter thus announces it to his sister : " Feb. zyd, 1780. "Dear Sister, " I imagine you are by this time no stranger to the alteration which has taken place in my family. The notice I had of it was very sudden, as I had not the least suspicion of the attachment being so long and deeply 194 MARRIAGE OF MARY GAINSBOROUGH seated, and as it was too late for me to alter anything without being the cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my consent^ which was a mere compliment to affect to ask, I needs must give; whether such a match was agreeable to me or not, I would not have the cause of unhappiness lie upon my conscience; and accordingly they were married last Monday, and are settled for the present in a little house in Curzon Street, Mayfair. I can't say I have any reason to doubt the man's honesty or goodness of heart, as I never heard any one speak any- thing amiss of him, and as to his oddities and temper, she must learn to like (them) as she likes his person, for nothing can be altered now. I pray God she may be happy with him, and have her health. Peggy has been very unhappy about it, but I endeavour to comfort her, in hope that she may have more pride and goodness than to do anything without first asking my advice and appro- bation. We shall see how they go on, and I shall write to you further upon the subject. I hope you are all well, and, with best wishes, " I remain your affectionate brother, " THOS. GAINSBOROUGH." Mrs. Fischer was not happy with her husband, and did not keep her health. His peculiarities did not dis- appear with marriage, and hers increased. She became subject to extraordinary hallucinations ; " perhaps the most reasonable," as Fulcher puts it, being that the Prince of Wales was in love with her. The family tradition is that she gave the first unmistakable sign of her malady by going into a Bond Street shop and buying hundreds of yards of white silk, satin, and linen. She separated from Fischer within a year or so of marriage, and they never lived together again. After Mrs. Gainsborough's death, ^95 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH she set up house with her sister, whose mental condition was worse than her own. She gave out that she received no untitled visitors, so that those who had business with her were obliged to invent patents of nobility for them- selves. She died in 1826, a year or two after her elder sister, having previously begged leave to present the King with Fischer's portrait, which her father had painted forty years before at Bath. Gainsborough himself was spared much of the unhappiness the condition of his daughters might have caused him, for he died before their mental failures had become pronounced. After his daughter's marriage the next notable event in Gainsborough's career was his final quarrel with the Royal Academy. 1 must go into this in some detail, as the painter has, in my opinion, suiFered more abuse for his conduct than the facts, so far as they are known, will justify. The usual story is that he painted a group of the three eldest princesses at full length ; that he then demanded for his picture an exemption from the rule that full lengths should be hung above the line ; and that, on this being refused, he took away all his pictures, and never again sent one to the Academy. That such con- duct would be unreasonable there can be no denying, especially in one who had never borne his share in the work of the Academy, but had used it simply for his own convenience and to make his pictures known. But the authentic documents in the case seem to show that the facts have been deliberately perverted, and I must beg for the reader's indulgence while I recapitulate them. Gainsborough sent eight portraits and portrait-groups to the Exhibition of 1783. They were *'The Bailey* Family," now in the National Gallery; "Two Boys (Tomkinsons) with a dog," "Lord Hood," "Lord * This is Gainsborough's spelling. Baillie was the correct form. 196 QUARREL WITH THE ROYAL ACADEMY Rodney," " Lord Rawdon," " Lord Buckingham," " Lady Buckingham," and " The Eldest Princesses," namely, the Princess Royal and the Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth. In the first instance only the frames were despatched to Somerset House. He sent with them a sketch, from which the above names are taken, and a note saying that the frame for the " Princesses" could only come with the picture, as "Their Majesties are to have a private view before it is sent to the Royal Academy." A few days later, obviously when some hint of the place assigned to his Royal group had reached him, he sent to the hanging committee the following remarkable letter : " Mr. Gainsborough presents his compliments to the gentlemen appointed to hang the pictures at the Royal Academy, and begs leave to hint to them, that if the Royal Family, which he has sent for this Exhibition (being smaller than three-quarters) are hung above the line along with full lengths, he never more, whilst he breathes, will send another picture to the Exhibition. " This he swears by God. "Saturday morning." Here Gainsborough describes his picture as "being smaller than three-quarters," and the whole tenour of the letter is quite inconsistent with the notion that the prin- cesses were painted at full length. The picture itself — it is at Buckingham Palace — has been entirely spoilt by being cut down. We are told that some ignorant sur- veyor cut a large strip off the canvas to make it fit a panel over a door. As the picture is now, the two stand- ing princesses are seen not quite to the knees, while the seated one is cut off at the waist. If the figures were 197 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH ever full length, the peccant surveyor must have cut away more than half the canvas, which I find it hard to believe. It seems much more probable that a comparatively modest strip was removed. If we assumed that the original canvas came to about the knees of the girl who is sitting down, we should have a picture of agreeable shape and arrangement, and one consistent with Gainsborough's phrase "being smaller than three-quarters." The sur- veyor's proceedings would then, moreover, become a little less incredible. The well-known mezzotint by Gains- borough Dupont shows, no doubt, the figures at full length. But it was probably scraped from a small replica with the feet introduced. More than one of these is known to exist. The South Kensington Museum has one, which agrees completely with Dupont's plate. It may be said that these small replicas would reproduce the picture as it was, but we have to remember that it was painted for a special panel in Carlton House, which may well have compelled Gainsborough to adopt a size and arrangement he did not choose to perpetuate in an engraving. If I am right in my reading of the facts, Gainsborough has lain all these years under an unfair im- putation, and the discredit of a silly quarrel belongs quite as much to the Academy as to him. I believe his letter to have been provoked by some rumour which had reached him as to the placing of his royal group, which was not a full length, and that he withdrew his pictures because a reasonable complaint was ignored by his col- leagues. Gainsborough was at times, no doubt, too impulsive and hot-headed, but not even he would have written such a letter as that quoted above before he was hurt at all. As a consequence of his quarrel with the Academy, Gainsborough had an exhibition of his own work in his house in Pall Mall, but it fell flat, as well it 198 VISIT TO THE LAKE COUNTRY might, seeing how little fitted the house was for such a purpose. In the summer of 1783, Gainsborough made one of his few excursions in search of the picturesque. Accom- panied by his old friend Mr. Kilderbee, of Ipswich, he travelled into Cumberland and Westmoreland, and spent some weeks among the lakes. He writes to his friend W. Pearce, the Bath doctor : " Kew Green. "Dear Sir, " I don't know if I told you that I'm going along with a Suffolk friend to visit the lakes in Cumber- land and Westmoreland, and purpose when I come back to show you that your Grays and Dr. Browns were tawdry fan-painters. I purpose to mount all the lakes at the next exhibition, in the great style, and you know if the people don't like them 'tis only jumping into one of the deepest of them from off a wooden island, and my reputation will be fixed for ever ! " I took the liberty of sending you a little perry out of Worcestershire, and when the weather settles in hot again, should be much obliged if you and Mrs. P. would drink a little of it and fancy it champagne for my sake. " I doubt whether I can shake you by the hand before I go, but when I come back, I'll shake you by the collar, if you'll promise to keep your hands still. "Believe me, dear sir, " Most sincerely yours, "THOS. GAINSBOROUGH." Mr. Kilderbee found the painter a delightful com- panion, but we do not hear that the expedition included a visit to Robert Gainsborough, who had been settled in Lancashire for many years. Indeed, so far as we can 199 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH now discover, Robert's intercourse with his brothers and sisters ceased with his youth. Gainsborough never carried out his threat of mounting all the lakes in the grand style, but a good many of the landscapes painted in the last few years of his life have mountainous backgrounds obviously studied from the real thing. We reproduced one at the head of chap. ix. in our first edition. Here the foreground is conventional enough, but the hills in the distance are thoroughly true in mass, perspective, and aerial envelope.* To this year 1783 belongs another passage in the artist's life which has a certain interest. Philip de Loutherbourg, the painter of " marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing," f devised an entertainment to which he gave the high-sounding name of eidophusikon. It seems to have consisted in the exhibition of a series of trans- parencies, lighted from behind, representing scenes from the more picturesque parts of the British islands. Gains- borough became quite enthusiastic over it, and went there night after night. The natural result followed. He could not buy Loutherbourg's show and take it home, as he did the German's theorbo, but he could make another for himself. This he did, and part, at least, of his con- trivance still exists. It was at the Grosvenor Exhibition in 1885. It consisted of a sort of box, like a large doll's house, with openings like windows. Into each opening a landscape painted on glass was fitted. There were six of these landscapes with the box, the survivors, no doubt, of many more. I fancy the original machine must have been rather more elaborate than this, and that parts have * Two examples, at least, of this composition exist ; the one mentioned in the text, and another in the collection of the Duke of Westminster, at Eaton Hall. t Peter Pindar's phrase. 200 LAST VISIT TO SUDBURY mow been lost. Some of the descriptions say that the sslides were looked at through a magnifying glass. This rmay be a mistake, but there must have been some arrange- rment for concentrating the light and preventing the ccandles from wasting their rays on the room outside. iAfter the Grosvenor Exhibition closed, two of the slides ^were etched by Mons. Brunet Debaines.* About this time Gainsborough paid the only visit to Ihis native town between his departure for Bath and his cdeath of which any positive record has come down to us. IFulcher quotes some unnamed lady, " until recently Hiving in Sudbury," as remembering the artist's presence iin her father's house, and the sensation he caused with his ifine clothes, his good looks, and his gaiety. The primary (cause of his visit seems to have been to record his vote as ia free burgess of the town, and as "a stern and unbend- iing Tory." Another visit to Suffolk, of a somewhat 'different kind, had been made a few years before by his wife and daughters. He tells the rather curious story himself in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Gibbon : " My family had a great desire to make a journey to Ipswich, to Mr. and Mrs. Kilderbee's, for a fortnight, and last Sunday morning I packed them off in their own coach, with David on horseback; and Molly wrote to me to let me know that they arrived very safe ; but somehow or other they seem desirous of returning rather sooner than the proposed time, as they desire me to go for them by next Tuesday ; the bargain was that I should fetch them home. I don't know what's the matter, either people don't pay them honour enough for ladies that keep * The plates were published by Messrs. Buck and Reid. Two of the " slides " were exhibited in Soho Square in 1824, by Dr. Monro, who bought them from Mrs. Fischer. (See the " Somerset House Gazette" for April 10, 1824.) 201 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH a coach, or else madam is afraid to trust me alone in this great town." Combined with other little hints, this quotation sug- gests that Mrs. Gainsborough was a little pretentious and apt to demand an attention from those about her to which she had no claim except as the wife of a man of genius. The daughters were an echo of the mother in such matters, and so, no doubt, the simple Ipswichians found them rather a disappointment, and let them see that they did so. Whether Gainsborough escorted them back to Pall Mall or not, according to the bargain, history docs not say, but probably he did. None of the glimpses we catch of Mrs. Gainsborough are enticing, and the family traditions point to a woman in whom a considerable in- telligence was combined with narrow ideas, cold feelings, and many affectations of manner. All the little stories which have survived point the same way. The best thing recorded of her is that she practically offered marriage to her Tom, and not he to her. Afterwards, all the little side-lights show her rather as a bore than otherwise. She is terrified at a rent of ;^50 a year; she provokes a pas- sage in Gainsborough's third letter to William Jackson, which, of course, he should not have written ; she allows a flirtation to go on between her daughter and a detri- mental without, apparently, even seeing it ; she makes an improper remark about her pedigree to her niece ; she makes a progress into Suffolk to demonstrate her new importance to her former friends, and has to beat a hasty retreat ; she seduces her husband into a silly and most uncharacteristic affectation over their two favourite dogs ; and, generally, she convinces us that the good terms on which the pair contrived to live, in spite of the irregu- larities of one of them, were due on the one hand to the painter's bonhomie and readiness to take himself for what 202 GAINSBOROUGH DUPONT he was, on the other, to the narrow sympathies and chilly feelings of his wife. These may seem rather drastic con- clusions to arrive at from the very slight evidence at our disposal, but when it all points in one direction — and some of it I have passed over — we may surely risk a guess. As to the coach, it does not seem to have been long kept up. Perhaps it cost more than was conveni- ent, perhaps it was too little used, or perhaps it was found a less effective means of asserting Mrs. Gainsborough's importance than had been hoped. In any case, it disap- peared, and the family was reduced to the use of cabs. Fulcher says that Gainsborough was "too proud to be seen using a hackney-coach " ; Thicknesse, that he dared not drive up to his own door in one for fear of what his parsimonious wife might say. The two assertions neu- tralise each other, and if they contain any truth at all, must refer to some instance now so divorced from its context that we can say nothing about it. The most interesting member of Gainsborough's family is one of whom curiously little is known : I mean his sister's son, Gainsborough Dupont. He was born in 1767, and was consequently only twenty-one when his uncle and master died. He seems to have become a member of the Gainsborough household at an early age, and, if we may take au serieux the reference to him in the painter's eleventh letter to Jackson, to have there imbibed some of the absurdities of the female part of the house- hold. He made good use, however, of his uncle's tuition, and became a good painter and a first-rate scraper of mezzotints. His most important picture is the large group of the " Merchant Elder Brethren of the Trinity House," now on the staircase of their Court-room on Tower Hill. The source of his manner is obvious, but his work has qualities of its own. The picture includes 203 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH about forty figures, and little attempt at grouping is made. But they are well drawn and solidly painted, and the whole is a creditable piece of work. Dupont may be the author of a small portrait in the National Gallery which bears the greater name of his uncle. It is a miniature in oil, presented by the late James Ranme Swinton, the portrait-painter, who believed it to represent Vestris, the dancer. Many theatrical portraits by him are in the Garrick Club. Between 1790 and 1798 he exhibited twenty-six portraits at the Royal Academy. Dupont frequently copied his uncle's pictures. His copies are to be recognised by their duller colouring and the inferior vivacity of their handling. On the whole, his chief claim to remembrance lies in his mezzotints. Some of these are among the finest ever produced, and render Gainsborough's peculiar methods with a felicity unsurpassed by any other engraver. Two of the best are " The Eldest Princesses " and the " Mrs. Sheridan," the latter after the great picture now in the possession of Lord Rothschild. Gainsborough painted several portraits of his nephew, but they are all more or less sketches. The finest, perhaps, is the portrait already alluded to as having passed through the hands of Thick- nesse to those of Lord Bateman ; it was afterwards acquired by Mr. George Richmond, R.A., and now belongs to Sir Edgar Vincent. Van Dyck was in the artist's mind when he painted it, but the Fleming never put so much vivacity into a human head as we see here. It was the result of one sitting of little more than an hour. Another fine portrait, dating from a year or two later, belongs to Lord Ronald Gower.* Gainsborough * It is reproduced in Lord Ronald Gower's biography of Gains- borough, where it is called a portrait of Gainsborough himself. In 204 COLONEL HAMILTON Dupont was the first owner of one of his uncle's most delightful subject pictures, " The Mushroom Girl." Fulcher is responsible for the story. " One day, in high good humour," he says, "Gainsborough offered . . . Mr. Dupont the choice of any picture in the painting room. The * Mushroom Girl,' though in an advanced stage, was not quite finished, and the young artist judiciously selected that picture as affording him an opportunity of observing how his uncle laid in his colors, and proceeded to the completion of his works. The story of Cymon and Iphigenia might have suggested the subject. A rustic beauty has been gathering mushrooms, and, wearied with her ramble, has fallen asleep beneath the shade of a rugged elm. Her head rests upon her arm — a gleam of sunshine, piercing through the leaves of a tree, gives a still more lovely bloom to her cheek. A young peasant stands near, amazed at so much loveli- ness, ... a little terrier looks up at the intruder as if he too feared to wake his mistress by the evident duty of barking." The " Mushroom Girl," originally called " The Haymaker and the Sleeping Girl," belonged to Gainsborough Dupont's nephew, Richard Gainsborough Dupont, until June 1872, when it was sold at Christie's.* Gainsborough Dupont was supposed by some to have been the real author of that portrait of Her Grace of Devonshire which has become so famous as "The Stolen Duchess." Such an idea had, however, no real foundation. The picture for which Mr. Wynn Ellis gave, they say, £62 and received a post mortem profit of £10,^ ^y, had work upon it which was not Gainsborough's, but neither manner it belongs to the last years of the painter's life, and represents a young man of about eighteen or twenty years of age. * It was exhibited by the Messrs. Agnew in 1903. 205 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH was it Gainsborough Dupont's.* Dupont died in 1797, at the age of thirty.t We have seen our painter giving a fine picture to his nephew because he was " in high good humour." That was a very common incident with him, but sometimes he had a quid pro quo. One of the most delightful tales which have come down to us recounts how he parted with " Boy at the Stile " for a solo on the violin. John Thomas Smith tells the story.J It seems that Nollekens once took him as a boy to see Gainsborough in his ]^11 Mall studio. " Upon our arrival," he says, " the artist * After nearly a quarter of a century of seclusion this picture has now reappeared. It was returned to Agnew's in 1902 and shown to all who cared to see it in their gallery in Bond Street. Considering its vicissitudes, it is in good condition. Most of the background, of course, is new ; that was inevitable, as the v/ound, where the canvas had been cut from the stretcher some inch or two inside the frame, had to be concealed. The costume, the hair, and most of the hat, were original. As to the face it was overlaid with a thin, fused skin of paint not characteristic of Gainsborough, but showing his peculiar cracks, and perhaps to be accounted for by supposing he had tried to improve the likeness in Her Grace's absence. It has sometimes been suggested that the Duchess here represented is not the famous Georgiana, but her successor, Elizabeth, who was married by the fifth Duke of Devonshire three years after his first wife's death, and twenty- one years after that of Gainsborough. Neither the features nor the general probabilities seem to me to suit that hypothesis. It is known that Gainsborough had great difficulty in satisfying himself with Georgiana Devonshire's likeness, as most painters have when a sitter is one of those women who wield the charm of beauty without being strictly beautiful. Let us suppose the " Stolen Duchess " to have been one of his failures in the matter of likeness, taken up and again worked upon after sittings had been abandoned. t A great part of his uncle's will is taken up with elaborate pre- cautions against the possibility of the nephew's making some unreason- able claim for remuneration on account of such assistance as he may have rendered in the studio. A legacy of £600 is contingent on no such claim being made. X "Nollekens and His Times," vol. i. p. 184. 206 DWID GARRICK, ESQ. (1768) Late D. R. Blaine, Esq. COLONEL HAMILTON was listening to a violin, and held up his finger to Mr. NoUekens as a request for silence." Colonel Hamilton (who was looked upon not only as one of the first of amateur violinists, but also of gentlemen pugilists) was playing so exquisitely that Gainsborough exclaimed, " ' Now, my dear Colonel, if you will but go on, I will give you that picture of the Boy at the Stile which you have so often wished to purchase of me.' Mr. Gains- borough, not knowing how long Nollekens would hold his tongue, gave him a book of sketches to choose two from, which he had promised him. As Gainsborough's versatile fancy was at this period devoted to music, his attention was so riveted to the tones of the violin that for nearly half an hour he was motionless ; after which the Colonel requested that a hackney-coach might be sent for, wherein he carried off the picture." Such generosity must have been a little injudicious, as well as expensive. When musicians knew that pictures were to be had for half an hour's exercise of their gifts, they would be chary of performing gratis at all ! Smith's account of the rest of this visit must not be omitted. He tells us that after Nollekens had secured his plunder, Gainsborough begged him to criticise a donkey's head which he had just modelled. Nollekens looked at it, and then " ' You should model more with your thumbs,' he said, ' thumb it about till you get it into shape.' ' What,' said Gainsborough, ' in this manner ' having taken up a bit of clay, and looking at a picture of Abel's Pomeranian Dog which hung over the mantelpiece, * this way ' " Yes,' said Nollekens, * you will do a great deal more with your thumbs.' Mr. Gainsborough, by whom I was standing, observed to me, ' You enjoyed the music, my little fellow, and I'm sure you long for this model ; there, I will give it to you ' ; 207 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH and I am delighted with it still." Smith seems to have been fascinated by the painter, and well he might have been. The visit just described warms the hearts of those who read of it after more than a hundred years have passed, although the language used has that touch of stiffness which makes the eighteenth century seem a little dark and dull. To a boy of fourteen the interest implied in the phrase " You enjoyed the music " must have appealed very strongly indeed, and so we need feel no surprise that, in after years, when, unhappily, it was already too late, he should have tried to gather facts about Gainsborough's career. He tells us, however, one curious detail which establishes an unexpected point of sympathy between him and the other ornament of Suffolk, John Constable. It seems he was an extravagant admirer of good penmanship. " I recollect," says Smith, " being with him one day when the servant brought him (a letter) from his schoolmaster in Suffolk, which, after reading, he held at a distance, as John Bridge, the jeweller, would a necklace, first inclining his head upon one shoulder and then on the other ; after which he put it upon the lower part of his easel, and frequently glanced at it " as he worked. Fulcher derides the notion that it was by the penmanship that Gainsborough was here attracted, and I daresay he is right. But that the painter had a respect for calligraphy is more than probable. His own writing, even in the rushing letters to Jackson, is good and legible, while in the few instances in which he signs his name on drawings or pictures, it is written as if to please the writing-master. Constable, too, as I have hinted, had this curious affection for a hand like a copy-book." On those few pictures of his which are signed, his name is simply a magnified edition of Gainsborough's as we see it on the two Dublin drawings already mentioned. 208 GAINSBOROUGH AND REYNOLDS Cunningham says " it was one of Gainsborough's peculi- arities that he never put his name to any of his compositions, and very seldom even the date." This is an unlucky statement for several reasons. In the first place the habit alluded to was no peculiarity. Very few English painters of the last century signed their pictures, and the omission will long be a difficulty in the way of those who attempt to write accounts of the development of the English school. In the case of several painters who had quite a respectable position in the eighteenth century, it is difficult, if not impossible, to point to a single undoubted thing which can be taken as a standard. The fashion seems to have been due to pure accident— to the fact, curious enough in itself, that most of those who worked in this country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, as a rule, non-signers : Holbein, Rubens Van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, &c. &c! Reynolds, so far as I know, only put his name on three of his productions ; I never saw a signed Romney. In refraining from a signature, then, Gainsborough was only following the fashion, but in the foregoing pages I have noted a few exceptions. The pictures painted for Lord Bateman were all signed, either with the full name, or the initials in a monogram. Nothing, not even a Rem- brandt, is easier to identify than a Gainsborough, but for another reason it is a pity that he did not persevere in the way he began, and sign and date everything as he did the two pencil drawings so often alluded to. It would have settled many disputed points as to the chronology of his works, and given a more demonstrable if not a sounder foundation for certain opinions on their sequence. The relations of Gainsborough with Sir Joshua Reynolds throw as strong a light upon his character as those with Philip Thicknesse. The two men were unsympathetic : THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH neither could think or feel like the other ; but so far as real evidence goes, there is nothing to show that any active hostility prevailed between them. The President, with his reserve, his foresight, his spinster-like aversion to any sort of disturbance, appears to have quietly avoided intercourse with one whom, as a man, he could not under- stand. Gainsborough, with his deeper generosity, his quicker impulses, and his wish to please one whose art he profoundly admired, could not leave well alone, but must needs offer to paint Sir Joshua's portrait. The picture was begun, but it ended like that of Thicknesse. After one or two sittings Reynolds left London for his health. On his return he sent to Schomberg House to say he was back in Leicester Fields ; Gainsborough replied that he was glad Sir Joshua's health was re-established, and there the matter ended. A half-finished sketch of Reynolds by Gainsborough is possibly waiting for recog- nition somewhere within the four seas; no portrait of Gainsborough by Reynolds, finished or unfinished, bears it company. Sir Joshua was not fond of working gratis.'' The cortege of portraits into which Gainsborough put all his powers for no more substantial reward than the thanks of intimate and impecunious friends— the Abels, the Fischers, the Giardinis, the Tenduccis, the Bachs, and his own rela'tions— has no parallel in the ceuvre of Reynolds. * In " Conversations of James Northcote, R.A., with James Ward," published in 1 90 1 by Mr. Ernest Fletcher, we find this account of the transaction. " Sir Joshua Reynolds," said Northcote to Ward one evening, " had a high opinion of Gainsborough, and very justly, but Gainsborough and he could not stable their horses together, for there was jealousy between them. Gainsborough, I remember, solicited Sir Joshua to sit to him for his portrait, and he no doubt expected to be requested to sit to Sir Joshua in return. But I heard Sir Joshua say, ' I suppose he expects me to ask him to sit to me ; I shall do no such thing!'" (p. 1 59-) GEORGE CANNING AS A BOY Marquess of Clanricardc CHAPTER VIII LAST YEARS IN LONDON DEATH ROM what has gone before, it will be seen that I am disinclined to agree with the usual belief as to the chronology of some, at least, of Gainsborough's pic- tures. After carefully comparing those portraits of which the dates are known wi th others and with his landscapes, I cannot doubt that hiis period of full maturity began some years earlier than hia:s been generally supposed, and that, to say nothing of tlhte "Blue Boy," such pictures as the National Gallery "'Watering Place," the Duke of Westminster's " Cot- tjage Door," and Lord Carnarvon's " Wood Gatherers,'* were painted rather in the seventies than in the eighties. Typical examples of his latest style are landscapes like the 0)ne at Trentham or Mr. Fleischmann's replica of it, and tihe National Gallery " Musidora," and the " Mall." In all 0)f these a clear transparent airiness is aimed at. The rich brown tones of a few years before have given way to pearly greys, the sombre, mysterious shadows to veils of transparent but iridescent colour, the fat Rembrandtesque iimpasto to a feathery lightness which seems almost to ex- clude the notion of a hand behind it at all. The Musidora " has suffered so much that it can now give but a modified pleasure, but the "Mall" which has 211 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH passed its life in the country and never known the experi- ments of Seguier, remains a superb proof of the master's power on the threshold of old age, and at least equals Watteau's " Embarquement pour Cythere " in the small class to which they both belong. It was painted about two years before its author died. In Hazlitt's conversa- tions with Northcote the old painter is represented as saying " it is all in motion and in a flutter like a lady's fan," but the phrase is Horace Walpole's, and was probably foisted into Northcote's sentence by Hazlitt himself. In any case, the picture is an extraordinary instance of the subjective in painting. It can scarcely be said to represent anything at all. It embodies the emo- tion excited by the scene, and makes visible for us the moving, indefinite, and most personal impression left on the sensory apparatus of the artist. In his portraits Gainsborough could not, of course, give his fancies such a free course as here. But they all show the same atti- tude towards his palette, the same determination to lose pigment in light, air, and immaterial colour. The por- traits of Lady Mulgrave, of Mrs. Puget, of Lord Archi- bald Hamilton, are as light and luminous as a fifteenth- century window. When they first left his studio their iclat must have been dazzling, and it must have required all the prejudice in favour of classic methods and general artistic severity to prevent their taking the town by storm. Even as it was they compelled an admiration which, though betraying symptoms of occasional doubt, was yet driven to set them on a level with the finest things the world had produced. When we remember how novel the art of Gainsborough was, how entirely, to the eyes of his contemporaries, it must have seemed to differ from that of every one about him, and how con- temptuously it treated the fashionable theories of the time 2 I 2 JACK HILL — theories upheld even by men of genius like Reynolds — it is not a little remarkable that it was accepted and understood at all. We have undergone a long process of education in the notions which inspired the painter of the •'Watering Place" and the "Morning Walk," and so it is not surprising that we approach him in a proper spirit ; but the men who realised his genius without any such pre- paration deserve a praise which has not often been earned by the kind of society to which he made his appeal. Gainsborough's biographers speak of him in his last years as possessing a cottage at Richmond, lodgings at Richmond, and a cottage at Kew. Whether all these refer to the same thing or not I have been quite unable to discover. For the last year or two of his life he had a house on Kew Green, for several of his letters are dated thence, and, presumably, he would not have been buried in Kew Churchyard had he not possessed some sort of domicile in the parish. He also, Hke most London artists who have had any dealings with landscape, had at one time a pied-a-terre at Hampstead. From what we know of his private life, it is probable that these retreats were unfamiliar even to his friends. However that may be, no tradition of their exact whereabouts seems to have survived. Fulcher says that " during the summer months he had lodgings at Richmond, and spent his mornings and evenings in sketching its picturesque scenery." Few of the results of such a habit ran now be discovered, but many of his latest figure-pictures, and landscapes in which figures play a dominant part, date probably from those summers in what was then a rural neighbourhood. The famous Jack Hill was found at Richmond. He is said to have been the son of a woodman, but was probably a gipsy. Gainsborough met him on one of his rambles, was struck by his beauty and intelligence, and impulsively 213 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH offered to take him into his house and to provide for his future. The parents consented. The boy was installed in Pall Mall, where he sat for several of the most delight- ful of those pictures in which some have seen an oppor- tunity for connecting Gainsborough's name with that of Murillo. His stay with the painter was not so short, I think, as usually supposed. Certain it is that the pictures in which he figures cover some two or three years. In the " Cottage Interior," the picture engraved by Charles Turner, Jack is a very small boy indeed, not more than five or six years old, while in the " Shepherd's Boy in a Storm," and in a portrait lately in the possession of the Misses Lane, he is between eight and ten. He is said to have run away once during his domestication, and to have been brought back. He was very popular with the ladies of the Pall Mall household, and seems to have been still there when the painter died. It is said that Mrs. Gains- borough got him into the Blue Coat School, but there all trace of him is lost. That Gainsborough went farther afield than Richmond and Hampstead for subjects, towards the end of his life, we know from a few sea-coast pictures belonging to his latest period. One of the finest is in the collection of the Duke of Westminster, at Grosvenor House. Another was in the Leicester Gallery, and is described in Gary's catalogue. The scenery in both of these suggests the low cliflFs along the Sufl^olk coast, between Felixstowe and the Deben. They may have been painted during that visit to Ipswich when he so astonished the natives with his gay manners and fine clothes. After his establishment in London he more than once revisited Bath. One of the pleasantest tales of him which have survived relates to such a visit. A Mrs. Heathcote, who had lost all her children but one boy of five in some epidemic, begged 214. JACK HILL him to paint the child's portrait. " No," he said, " I am here for a rest, and cannot do it." But when she brought the boy to his lodgings, dressed in the everyday clothes he ran about in, the painter relented, and yielded to her simplicity what he had refused to her prayers. Whether Gainsborough was ever at Coleorton, that Leicestershire home of Sir George Beaumont which was afterwards to be associated with the lives of so many English painters, is uncertain. Probably he was, for he was a frequent guest of Beaumont's in London, and the Baronet was fond, all through his life, of getting painters down to his country place. However that may be, Sir George's name will always be connected with the last days of Gainsborough through the curious story related by Cunningham. " Gainsborough was a welcome visitor at the table of Sir George Beaumont, a gentleman of grace- ful manners, who lived in an old English dignity, and was, besides, a lover of literature and a painter of land- scape. The latter loved to relate a curious anecdote of Gainsborough which marks the unequal spirits of the man, and shows that he was the slave of wayward im- pulses which he could neither repress nor command. Sir George Beaumont, Sheridan and Gainsborough had dined together, and the latter was more than usually pleasant and witty. The meeting was so much to their mutual satisfaction that they " made the usual mistake nf trying to repeat it, " and accordingly an early day was named when they should again dine together. They met, but a cloud had descended upon the spirit of Gainsborongh, and he sat silent, with a look of fixed melancholy, which no wit could dissipate. At length he took Sheridan by the hand, led him out of the room, and said, ' Now don't laugh, but listen. I shall die soon. 1 know it. I feel it. I have less time to live than my looks imply — but 215 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH for this I care not. What oppresses my mind is this, have many acquaintances and few friends, and as I wish to have one worthy man to accompany me to the grave, I am desirous of bespeaking you — will you come — aye or no } ' Sheridan could scarcely suppress a smile as he made the required promise ; the looks of Gainsborough cleared up like the sunshine in one of his own landscapes ; throughout the rest of the evening his wit flowed and his humour ran over, and the minutes, like those of the poet, winged their way with pleasure." Such absurdity as there is in the story lies in its Cunningham veneer. The event as it probably occurred is eloquent of the isolation in which men like Gainsborough pass their lives. Endowed by nature with supreme gifts which only a few can under- stand, deprived, almost by the fact of that endowment, of virtues which average minds consider the corner-stones of society, they go through the world in a state of half- bewildered irritation, feeling that people look upon them with a kindly toleration but without that acceptance of them as legitimate personalities which is extended to men vastly their inferiors. Gainsborough, says Constable, was often the butt of his company ; his humour was apt to run away with him, and he would now and then forget his dignity in some too pointed remark. Sheridan bore with him in such moments, and no doubt the painter's strange invitation was prompted by his suddenly perceiv- ing that here at least he had found a kindred spirit. Cunningham says the Beaumont dinner took place in the early part of 1787. The trial of Warren Hastings began on February 12, 1788. Gainsborough was among those who flocked to Westminster Hall at the first sitting. The usual story is that sitting in front of an open window, he suddenly felt a chill at the back of his neck, which developed into malignant disease. The only windows in 216 MRS. JOHN DOUGLAS (? 1786) Bakon F. de Rothschild LAST ILLNESS Westminster Hall in 1788 were thirty feet from the ground. The " chill," no doubt, was the first onset of the disease. On his return home his neck was examined by his wife, who found a hard white mark there about the size of a shilling. She sent for advice, and eventually Dr. John Hunter visited the painter. His first belief was that it was merely a glandular swelling, which would subside with warmer weather. As to whether Gains- borough shared this belief or not we are left in some doubt, however, by a letter to Pearce in which he says : ** I am extremely obliged to you and Mrs. Pearce for your kind inquiries ; I hope I am now getting better, as the swelling is considerably increased and more painful.*' He tried change of air, and stayed for a time in his Kew lodging, but a suppuration came on, and at last Hunter was obliged to confess the swelling was malignant. If this be a cancer," said the painter to Mrs. Gibbon, " I am a dead man," and he set about arranging his affairs. After making his will and appointing his executors, he turned his mind to those friends to whom he wished to bid adieu. And besides friends, there was one other, not a friend, but his chief living rival in the art they both loved. He sent for Reynolds. He did so in the follow- ing pathetic letter which has come into the hands of the Royal Academy since the first edition of this biography was published : "Dear Sir Joshua, *'I am just to write what I fear you will not read. After lying in a dying state for six months, the extreme affection which, I am informed by a friend, which {sic) Sir Joshua has expressed, induces me to beg a last favour, which is to come once under my roof and look at my things — my woodman you never saw — if what I ask 217 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH now is not disagreeable to your feelings, that I may have the honour to speak to you, I can from a sincere heart say that I always admired and sincerely loved Sir Joshua Reynolds. «THO. GAINSBOROUGH." " If any little jealousies had subsisted between us," says Sir Joshua, " they were forgotten in those moments of sincerity ; and he turned towards me as to one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his good opinion, by being sensible of his excellence." Before leaving the room Sir Joshua bent to hear the dying painter's last message — " We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company." At about two o'clock on the morning of August 2, 1788, Thomas Gainsborough died. He was buried in the little churchyard on Kew Green. The grave is on the north side of the church, half way between the church wall and the outer railings. His own expressed wish was to lie near his friend Kirby, under " a stone, without either arms or ornament, inscribed with his bare name, and containing space for the names of such of his family who, after his death, might wish to take up their abode with him." According to his own wish, his funeral was as private as possible. It took place on the 9th of August. Gainsborough Dupont was chief mourner ; the pall bearers were Sir Joshua, Sir William Chambers, West, Bartolozzi, Paul Sandby, and Samuel Cotes ; among the mourners were Thomas Linley, Myers the miniature painter, the husband of Mrs. Trimmer, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. I have had incidentally to say so much about Gains- borough's character, and have so often, moreover, been able to leave him to speak for himself, that little remains 218 HIS CHARACTER to be told. A short risume may, nevertheless, help to define his contours and to make the real man loom for a moment through the mists which have been gathering for a hundred years. The events of his life were so few, and for the most part so unimportant, that the attempt to make a picture at all may well seem overbold. On the other hand, the portrait of an artist has to contain very little compared to that of a statesman, of a soldier, or even of a writer. Our conception of a great painter rests on two things — on his works, which are before us, to be studied with comparative ease, and to be grasped, when we can grasp them at all, without the mental effort required by the philosopher, the statesman, or even the captain ; and, secondly, on those fragments of his daily life which betray his character as a man. Gainsborough's pictures and his place in the history of art I reserve for a final chapter. Here I wish to attempt a sketch of his personality ; to organise into a whole the scraps of evidence left by his friends. About his personal appearance we are sure. He has left several portraits of himself, which are more or less confirmed by at least one other painted by a contemporary. He was tall, well-proportioned, and strong ; his com- plexion was rather florid, and his hair light rather than dark. His face was on the large side, and his features Strongly marked. His forehead was not high, but it was wide, and overhung the eyes as a painter's should. In profile it receded slightly, continuing the line of the nose. The eyes were quick, observant, and rather small ; the mouth was sensitive and undecided, but not weak ; it suggests a man who changed easily, but not on com- pulsion from without. Fulcher and others speak of Gainsborough's general expression as being not altogether pleasant. Curiously enough, th^ farouche touch to which 219 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH they apparently allude is only visible in his own self- portraits. There is no sign of it in the National Gallery portrait by Zoffany, which had the reputation of being an admirable likeness. Painters* dealings with their own physiognomies are not always to be trusted in matters of character. The late Sir John Millais painted his own head for the famous collection in the UfEzi ; but if, a hundred years hence, a biographer were to accept what Millais there says about himself, he would make awofully bad shot at his character. It would be the same with any one who leant too confidingly on Lord Leighton's contribution to the same collection, although in that case, perhaps, exaggeration rather than perversion would be the danger. So far as character goes, I prefer the witness of Zoffany to that of Gainsborough himself, especially as it agrees more completely with what we know of the painter's life. Gainsborough's character as a whole was childishly sincere and transparent. He seems to have been abso- lutely free from pretence, sometimes even from restraint. In early life, when his energies were concentrated on his art, or rather when art had no rival claimants on his energies, he showed himself capable of long and patient effort. No Dutchman ever put more elbow " into a work of art than Gainsborough did into the " Cornard Wood " and other early landscapes. As time went on and other interests stepped in — music, children, convivial friends — his ambitions became more diffuse, and he relied more and more in everything he did on the wonderful facility with which nature had endowed him. The more serious side of life began to be a bore, and his inclinations turned to those demands upon his vitality which could be satisfied at once and without too long a strain. He painted superbly, but he seldom sat down to think out a 220 HIS CHARACTER picture before he attacked the canvas ; he played all sorts of musical instruments, but although Jackson must have been exaggerating when he said he never learnt his notes,"^ it is pretty sure he was no musician ; he wrote lively letters to his friends, but he had no patience to read them over and correct the concords ; he was fond of his family, but kicked against the responsibilities it brought with it ; he incurred obligations to Thicknesse, but was incapable of the effort required to carry them out ; he poured his pictures in wholesale to the Academy exhibitions, but he ignored the Academy's claims on the service of its members. None of these omissions were deliberate ; they were the inevitable result of his character and of a sanguine temperament which, to use an expression for which America must bear the blame, " bit off more than it could chew." Sanguine people like Gainsborough say "Yes" to every proposal which promises joy, and then they not only have no time for duties, they are driven to offend half their playfellows too. Gainsborough's impulses were all good. He probably never did or said a malicious thing in his life. His temperament was such that pleasure for himself meant pleasure to those about him, so that, while he was there, his wife, his children, his friends, received little but pleasure from his existence. But unfortunately those who had no right to his society were treated equally well, and his wife knew what she was about when she shrank from leaving him alone in London. Every witness to his character calls him dissipated, by which, however, they clearly do not mean that he went in for the weak- minded licentiousness of an empty-headed rake, but merely * This statement of Jackson's is inconsistent with his own story of how Gainsborough carried off the German lute-player's " Book of Tunes." 221 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH that his ideas on morality were not strict enough for Ipswich, and that he followed his ideas. In Bath they were probably quite as good as other peoples'. The blots on his conduct which are known to us are his behaviour over the Thicknesse portrait and his general conduct to the Academy and its president. As to his behaviour to Sir Joshua, we must remember that he did offer to paint his portrait, and that he did send for him on his death- bed — acts quite foreign to the colder and more prudent character of Reynolds. Intellectually, Gainsborough was gifted far above the average. He was quick-witted, humorous, and clear- sighted. His thumb-nail sketch of Dunning is admirable as a picture of a cultivated, clear-headed lawyer. And we find it in one of those hasty letters, with never an erasure — a pity this, perhaps ! — to a provincial organist. It must be remembered that his desultory education only lasted a few years. He was famous for his repartees, and for a sort of Gilbertian humour of which one or two specimens have survived. An old grey-headed journey- man called Fowler sometimes sat to him. On the chimney-piece, among other curiosities, stood a beautiful preparation of an infant cranium, a gift from a medical friend. " Fowler, without moving his position, continually peered at it askance, with inquisitive eye. ' Ah ! Master Fowler,' said the painter, ' that is a mighty curiosity.' * What might it be, sir, if I may make so bold ' 'A whale's eye,' was the grave reply. ' No, no, never say so, Muster Gainsborough. Sir, it is a little child's skull ! ' * You have hit it,' said the wag. " Why, Fowler, you're a witch ! But what will you say when I tell you it is the skull of Julius Cassar when he was a little boy ! ' * Laws,* cried Fowler, ' what a phenomenon ! ' " It is, perhaps, a little absurd to go on repeating stories like this, but they MRS. BEAUFOY Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. HIS CHARACTER help to complete the picture, and we have no choice. They all go to prove that our hero was gifted with a peculiar humour which is commoner in Kerry than in SuiFolk. In its use he sometimes overstepped the line, and it was then, no doubt, that the misfortunes befell him to which Constable alludes in his letter to Smith. Such qualities as I have been describing are seldom divorced from hastiness of temper, and this he had abun- dantly. Several stories survive to prove this, such as the tale of the peer or alderman — it is uncertain which — who after carefully posing himself d la Louis XIV. ^ begged the artist not to overlook the dimple in his chin. " Damn the dimple in your chin," shouted Gainsborough, " I will paint neither the one nor the other." Another tale of the same kind tells us how some noble patron rang the bell at Schomberg House and asked the servant who opened the door "whether that fellow Gainsborough had finished my picture } " Unluckily " that fellow " was within hearing. He ushered his visitor into the studio, and after leading him on to admire the finished portrait, and even to pull out his cheque-book to pay for it, he calmly drew a wet brush across the smiling features, ask- ing, " Where is the fellow now } " It was impossible for such a man to hit it off with Sir Joshua. To the Presi- dent he must have been a standing outrage and enigma. After his death Reynolds, generously enough, put down their differences to mutual jealousies, but the real diffi- culty lay in the radical opposition of their natures. What could a man who governed every step he took with an eye to where it would lead him, a man who, so far as we know, never looked at a woman with emotion, a man who left a large fortune behind him, a man who met an over- vivacious remark by shifting his ear-trumpet and taking snuff : what could such a man know of the daily commo- 223 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH tion which filled the brain of Gainsborough ? Reynolds, like most of his successors in office, was born President of the Royal Academy. He had exactly the gifts re- quired for the post. Gainsborough would have ruined the institution in a year. The resentment at his neglect, which has even now scarcely faded out of the traditions of the President and Council, was natural, and yet per- verse. The best service the greatest artist among the Academicians could do them was to leave them alone, to manage in their own way a business for which their apti- tude was so much greater than his. 224 CHAPTER IX Gainsborough's art AINSBOROUGH was the artistic tem- perament made visible and stripped of irrelevance. It would not be rash to call him the first and the best of the impres- sionists. In every task he set himself — or at least in every task he carried through, for we must remember his abortive attempt to paint the source of Shakespeare's inspiration ! — his aim was entirely pictorial. He felt no temptation to be literary, to be anecdotic, to be didactic, to be anything but artistic within the limits of his own emotions and the materials he was using. His pictures are examples of pure reaction between subject and object, and depend more, perhaps, than those of any one else, on the health of the senses by which they are inspired. I say that Gainsborough was the first of the im- pressionists, but between his impressionism and that of the last forty years there is one remarkable difference. The modern impressionist professes to be true to his impres- sions ; his declared idea is to reproduce the broad effect of any scene upon his senses ; but, nevertheless, he so observes and works as to invite an objective test for what he does. His observation is supplemented by analysis, and his pictures are the result of a long process of justification, as it were, applied to the image first received. Degas, 225 P THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH for instance, accepts what his eye tells him of a stageful of ballet-girls, but his conscious labour is given not to enforcing his impression and providing it with an aesthetic raison d'etre^ but to underpinning it — if I may use such a phrase — with a structure of scientific truth. Such a proceeding was quite foreign to the genius of Gains- borough. With him the impression was everything. Once received, it had to be justified not by the truth which underlay it, but by the splendour to which it led. Gainsborough's finest things are all impromptus. Wc might almost say that when he deliberated he was lost. A sympathetic personality had the power to set his brain burning with creation at a touch. In the " Mrs. Siddons," the " Mrs. Graham," the " Mrs. Sheridan," the Mr. and Mrs. Hallett," the " Mrs. Robinson," the *' Duchess of Richmond," the " Mrs. Lowndes Stone-Norton," the " Mrs. Beaufoy," the " Mall," the " Lady Mulgrave," and a host more, we cannot discover the faintest sign of that mental preparation which is so evident in Sir Joshua. The pictures, as we see them, record the images which sprang into the painter's brain as his sitters approached. Beauty and aesthetic unity grew under his hand with an unequalled rapidity. The idea of conscious and deliberate control never obtrudes itself. His art is to that of other painters what conversation is to literature. It is vital, spontaneous, and, within the pattern, unexpected. He paints as a first-rate talker talks. His head is full of his conception, and his fingers do the rest. His brush- strokes are scarcely due to separate acts of volition. They are like the words of the talker, and come spontaneously, in instinctive obedience to the creative will. The happy colour, never muddy or fatigued, trips from his brush ; one felicitous line succeeds another ; delicious textures weave themselves into the inevitable pattern, and the 226 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART picture emerges with delight from the matrix of the exulting brain. All this, however, is true only when the problem to be solved is simple. In such complex matters as groups of many figures, Gainsborough was never successful in hitting upon a quite satisfactory conception. The " Baillie Family " in the National Gallery is a collection of beautiful passages ; it is not a picture. In a less degree we may say the same thing of the "Marsham Family," of the *' Eldest Princesses," and even of such comparatively simple things as the Sussex group or the " Eliza and Tom Linley. " In each of these, separate ideas were suggested by the separate figures, and the painter was deficient in the faculty required for seducing them into a real intimacy. Before Eliza Linley he could only paint what her personality inspired, and so when it became Tom's turn to sit he had to smuggle him into the composition as best he could. The only striking exceptions to this are afforded by those few cases in which his portraits become so far subject-pictures as to suggest an independent title, like Lord Rothschild's " Morning Walk." Here, for once in a way, a detached idea, embracing two persons, slipped in be- fore the simpler conception, and got itself expressed. Judging by results, the invention of some bond of union for a group of portraits is one of the most difficult of artistic problems. Nearly all the great painters have attempted it and nearly all have failed. The " Cornaro Family " of Titian, the " Pembroke Family " of Van Dyck, the Guild pictures of Frans Hals, the " Night Watch " and the " Anatomy Lesson " of Rembrandt, the " Marlborough Family " of Reynolds, the "Ambassadors" of Holbein ; none of these, great as they are, could be chosen to illustrate the value, from the positive side, of 227 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH concentration in art. Even the " Syndics " of Rembrandt has a dramatic rather than a pictorial unity. It was a happy inspiration to make those five men look up expectantly at some interrupter of their counsels ; but even here community of emotion does not lead to a concentrated arabesque. In the " Morning Walk " an equally slight idea is used to win a profounder unity. The tradition is that Mr. and Mrs. Hallett sat to Gainsborough immediately after their marriage, and that his intention was to suggest their first promenade as husband and wife. He has succeeded admirably. Their aspect towards each other, and the aspect of the dog towards both, are eloquent of novel relations, of the man's pride and the woman's tender confusion. It was not often, however, that Gainsborough composed a group as happily as this. In their papers on the Royal Academy in the eighteenth century, the late Mr. Hodgson, R.A., and Mr. Eaton give a fancy sketch of the painter at work, which is probably very close indeed to the truth. *' Gains- borough," they say, " makes an appointment which he thinks of no more, trusting to be duly reminded of it by his faithful Margaret ; he plays on the fiddle with Abel or listens to his son-in-law Fischer's hautboy, and when the hour arrives he sits down (?) before his easel with a mind as blank as the canvas before him. His sitter is a young lady ; he eyes her intently, he chats with her, he draws her out, he gets excited, strange flashes of drollery and absurdity escape him ; she turns in her chair, her face lights up, and inspiration comes to him. * Stay as you are ! ' he exclaims. He sees a picture, he seizes his paletta and begins." That, no doubt, is the way he painted Eliza Linley and Eliza Sheridan, Lady Mul grave and Mrs. Stone-Norton, his nephew Dupont, Mrs. Robinson, and Mrs. Elliott. With Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. 228 STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT (1760) J. P. Heseltine, Esq. GAINSBOROUGH'S ART Graham, with the Duchess of Devonshire, with Master Buttall, Mrs. Beaufoy, and Lady Clarges, he thought a little longer, even going so far in one or two cases as to make an experimental scribble on a sheet of paper. His brain answered with marvellous celerity and purity to a stimulus received through the eye, but any process of conscious incubation was foreign to it. Among the vast number of drawings he has left behind him, only a very few can be identified as studies or sketches for any particular picture, and these are mostly final ; that is, they represent the picture as it was actually carried out. Two of the very few exceptions to this are illustrated by the lithographs in my first edition. Mr. Salting's drawing appears to be a first study for a "Duchess of Devonshire." In it the lady walks away from the light, which falls upon her back and reaches her face more or less round the corner. Beautiful as it is, the arrangement did not please him, and he seems to have at once made another, turning her Grace round to face the window. Characteristically enough the second sketch is more sketchy than the first, but no doubt both were made at the same time and place. This second drawing agrees with the stolen portrait. It is in the Print Room of the British Museum. A less important change of intention is betrayed by the study we reproduce for Sir Charles Tennant's '* Lady Clarges." In the drawing a Pomeranian dog exists behind the harp- strings, which was omitted in the finished picture. He would have been an amusing feature, perhaps too amusing, as he might have reminded one a little of Le Glorieux's cat looking out of the dairy window ! This drawing is also in the Print Room. It is curious that Gainsborough, the least preparatory of artists, should have left more drawings than all other English painters put together (excluding those of our own time), and that a study by 229 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Reynolds, who thought out and elaborated his works so carefully, should be so rare. But if Gainsborough took few preliminary canters, he knew his own mind in the race. Those pentimenti which are so numerous with most men, especially with those who worked more or less impromptu^ are with him curiously few. This is fortunate, for with his light, transparent impasto, such changes of intention would in time have become great disfigurements. Slight corrections of contour, or of the run of a fold, are frequent enough, but these are masked by his lost out- lines and general freedom of handling. It is not often that we find such a pentimento in a finished work as the change in the position of one of Musidora's legs. Gainsborough was not only the first, he was also the most impressionistic of the impressionists. In his best days he painted his impression and nothing else, for his landscape backgrounds are nothing more than the exten- sion over the unoccupied part of the canvas of the senti- ment governing the sitter. The felicity with which, especially in his later years, he combined figures and their setting practically amounts to fusion. In the " Mall " it is difficult to say where the trees end and the dainty promenaders begin, so complete is the envelope of senti- ment which embraces them all. It is the same with the "Mrs. Sheridan," the "Mr. and Mrs. Hallett," the " Mrs. Norton," and in fact with all those pictures dating from the last decade of his career in which his sympathies were closely engaged. In more than one of his letters he alludes to his own incapacity to think out things or to reason in any consecutive fashion. Familiarity with his work convinces us that if he had been compelled, by some external force, to think steadily for half an hour, he would have found it a physical torture. When the right stimulus was offered, in the shape of a beautiful woman 230 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART or a lovely scene in nature, a consummate piece of art was the certain reaction ; but I doubt whether, in the whole course of his life, he ever built up excellence on a germ, or felt the slightest temptation to realise on canvas any scene he had read of in a book. His greatness depends on the quickness with which he perceives beauty and answers to its summons, and on that faculty for artistic synthesis which enables, or rather compels, him to see and select only those notes which make a pictorial chord. And here I am brought back to the idea with which I set out, in the Introduction. Some writers, indeed most of those who have reasoned upon Gainsborough, have pretended to see in his sense of beauty the chief, if not the sole, foundation of his art. It would be easy, were it necessary, to show that some of the worst painters who have ever lived have had a fine eye for beauty, and, so far as mere imitation goes, have reproduced it with con- siderable success. Beauty was the foundation of Gains- borough's art in that it was his sole and only stimulus, but the merit of his pictures as we see them does not lie in the beauty they reproduce, but in the beauty they create, in the extraordinary felicity of his means and in the remarkable aesthetic unity of his results. Technic- ally, Gainsborough was one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of painters. He was not a good draughts- man. Indeed, when we consider how carefully he worked in his youth and how thoroughly he then drew, he must have had a special inaptitude for seeing and remembering the linear proportion of things to be able to draw as badly as he often did in his maturity. Few men who had once been able to draw as well as he did in the "Admiral Hawkins" would fall into the strange errors 231 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH of proportion to be found in some of his finest things. Fifteen years of such drudgery as Gainsborough under- went between 1741 and 1756 should have made correct drawing a second nature with him. That it failed to do so argues a natural disability in this particular direction. As a painter, as a transmuter of a paletteful of coloured earths into light and air, into glowing human flesh and waving trees, he has no superior, and perhaps no equal. Such fault-finding as we have for him is always for his intentions, never for his realisation. What he wished to do he did, what he saw he had not the slightest difficulty in setting down, and when he failed it was not because the material had for once beaten him, but because his ambition slumbered in the absence of its favourite stimu- lant. It may seem audacious to put the technique of Gainsborough, as a painter, above that of any one else when we remember that Rubens, Frans Hals, and Velaz- quez are in the field ; but, as a literal matter of fact, Gainsborough did what not one of those three ever suc- ceeded in doing — because you may say, they did not try — Gainsborough could take an eight-foot canvas, and, with a thousand unerring strokes of his brush, could build up a mosaic of brilliant, pellucid notes of gemlike colour, each one as clear as an amethyst and as light as a snow- flake, and yet the result would be as solid, rich and pro- found as any Velazquez. In his finest things, in eighteen or twenty of the pictures reproduced in this volume and in many more for which we have been unable to make room, it is impossible to point to a faltering passage. From top to bottom, from right to left, the canvas glows with internal light. The opacity which betrays, I do not say the fumbler, but the man whose mastery falters now and then, never chills us for an instant. Everything is cool, clear, and transparent, like the air of a hill-top in 232 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART June. Velazquez rendered, Gainsborough expressed. The Spaniard's preoccupation was with the actual appear- ance of things, the Englishman's with the emotions they suggested. The one man was ready to sacrifice some of the brilliancy, the jewelled luminosity, of his material to the constitution of his object ; the other was determined at all hazards to preserve the sparkle, the vitality, the metamorphic quality, of the substance he was using. Compare, in the great room of Hertford House, Gains- borough's "Perdita" with anything else in the place. Sir Joshua's " Nelly O'Brien," fine as it is, looks like a toy beside it. Even the Velazquez, the Rembrandts, and the Van Dycks lose in tone, colour, vivacity, and air. In this comparison I do not mean to suggest that the one man was right and the others wrong, but merely that they had different aims, and that, as Gainsborough's solicitude was above all for his paint and the feelings it was capable of suggesting and satisfying, he shows, as a painter, qualities we do not find so fully developed in any one else. Even now the technical supremacy of Gainsborough is only grudgingly acknowledged. People too often talk as if the vogue he at last enjoys were a matter of fashion, and as if his pictures were pieces of furniture only a little more dignified than the tables of Riesener and the mounts of Caffieri. And yet nearly all of those who have discussed his art with knowledge have had it borne in upon them, sometimes against their inclinations, what a supreme master of the art of laying on the paint he was. In his famous penultimate discourse to the students of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua betrays an uncomfortable consciousness that the dead artist had arrived at the kernel of the matter, although by an illegitimate road. Like everything else connected with Gainsborough, 233 4r THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH the President's words have been quoted so often that one feels inclined to apologise for reproducing them once more, but here they are. " It is certain," he says, " that all those odd scratches and marks, which, on close exami- nation, are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places, so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time, and is much more laborious to the mind, than any. mode of high finishing, or smoothness, without such attention. His handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learned from others the usual and regular practice belonging to the art I think some apology may reasonably be made for his manner without violating truth, or running any risk of poisoning the minds of the younger students, by propagating false criticism, for the sake of raising the character of a favourite artist. It must be allowed that this hatching manner of Gains- borough did very much contribute to the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures ; as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead colouring, or first painting, escaped in the finishing, when 23+ GAINSBOROUGH'S ART he had determined the parts with more precision ; and another loss he often experiences, which is of greater conse- quence ; whilst he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features, or any of the particular parts. Now Gainsborough's por- traits were often little more, in regard to finishing, or determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a dead colour ; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits were so remarkable." And then he goes on, characteristically enough, to suggest that Gainsborough's fame as a likeness-maker depended not a little on the simple fact that he left so much for the spectator to fill in as he pleased.* These are the sentiments of one who understood art too well to be blind to the remarkable qualities of Gainsborough's painting, while at the same time he was fearful of what might happen to his Guercinos and Sebastien Bourdons, to say nothing of himself, if such very personal and revolu- tionary methods were erected into a standard. Reynolds professed to think Gainsborough's method was tentative, that it represented the nearest approach he * On this matter of resemblance the following extract from a letter written by Paul Whitehead from Bath to Lord Harcourt is amusing. It is dated December 5, 1758: "We have a painter here who takes the most exact likenesses I ever saw ; his painting is coarse and slight, but has ease and spirit. Lord Villiers sat to him before he left Bath, and, I hope, we shall be able to bring his picture to town with us, as it is he himself, and is preferable, in my opinion, to the finest unlike picture in the universe, though it might serve for a sign. He sat only twice. The painter's name is Gainsborough." 23s THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH could make to the "great rules and principles of the art, as they are collected from the full body of the best general practice." Mr. Ruskin is wiser, or at least franker. I may quote part of the famous note in which* he pays his tribute to Sir Joshua's rival. Its occasion, as the reader will remember, was an absurd comparison made by the unhappy critic of 'Blackwood between Gainsborough and F. R. Lee. " Shade of Gainsborough ! '\(he begins) " deep-thoughted, solemn Gainsborough Gainsborough's power of colour is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens ; he is the purest colourist. Sir Joshua himself not excepted, of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. Evidence enough will be seen in the following pages of my devoted admiration of Turner; but I hesitate not to say that in management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely technical art of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough Gainsborough's hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam Gainsborough's masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from dark- ness Gainsborough's forms are grand, simple and ideal Gainsborough never loses sight of his picture as a whole In a word (he) is an immortal painter (and his) excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged and facts of Nature universally apparent." Eighty years of perspective enabled Ruskin to see what Reynolds could not see, that Gainsborough was no isolated eccentricity but an artist whose genius, original and individual as it was, fell into the true line of develop- ment and set an example which would make not for anarchy, but for progress and health. His manner of seeing was English. The particular characteristics he * Preface to Second Edition, vol.i. p. 19, in the edition of 1888. 236 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART pounced upon in his sitters carried on the tradition which had been established by those little masters whom I have ventured to call his true precursors. Grace of outline, elegance of movement, momentariness of expression, beauty, in short, with vitality ; those were his gods, and in his worship he set an example of brilliant simplicity which has had its effect on art ever since. Gainsborough's conceptions are so essentially simple that attempts at any detailed analysis seem out of place. He saw beauty in external nature, and combined it with the beauty created by his own artistic gift. In doing so he followed a few obvious principles, of which he may or may not have been conscious. His men and women are always so posed as to bring out the easy flexibility of the human figure. His heads are set at gentle angles to the vertical axis of the body, his limbs are at easy rest or in quiet movement, his hands and arms — sometimes little more than indications, as in the "Eliza Linley," some- times drawn like Van Dyck, as in the '* Mrs. Mears " — are well placed and eloquent in gesture, while the draperies which float about them suggest the last move- ment they have made. Before a sitter who excites his interest, Gainsborough's imagination never flags. Nothing is perfunctory, although much may be slight. There is always, for instance, a subtle harmony between the pattern made by his figures and that of those land- scape backgrounds against which most of his finest portraits are set. The heavy leafage, without contour and with only a questionable transparency, which occurs in so manyjportraits by Romney and Hoppner, and in not a few by Sir Joshua, never confines one's fancy in a Gainsborough. With him the luminous air plays round the figure and among the trees, and we feel that the 237 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH adorable Mrs. Sheridan, or the fair but foolish Robinson, could rise and walk away into the woods, swinging her hat and unembarrassed by any fear of breaking through the canvas. Gainsborough's embrace was large. He did not forget one part of his task for another. He carried on all the elements of his conception side by side. He did not see in colour, like Reynolds, or in light and shade, like Rembrandt, or in line, like Ingres ; he saw in a com- bination of the three, and as he drove them like a skilful teamster, he kept his eye on beauty as the goal. You cannot divide a Gainsborough into its component ele- ments, as you can the works of most other great painters. It is easy to think of a Rembrandt as a creation in chia- roscuro, of an Ingres as a pattern in line, of a Sir Joshua as a symphony in colour, of a Hals as a feat in brush- ing ; but in a Gainsborough all these elements are so intimately blended, they have been so closely interwoven in his mind as he rapidly gave substance to his conception, that one cannot be dissected from the other. We have to accept them as a whole, and to admit that in his ability to fuse the three elements of pictorial art into unity, or rather in his gift for seeing them as one, he has had few equals and no superior. In writing like this, however, I must guard myself against misconception. I have used the names of certain great artists pretty freely, but I do not wish the reader to suppose that I aim at setting our English master on a pedestal higher than theirs. My comparisons have been strictly limited. Personally I look upon Gainsborough as a greater artist than Ingres or Reynolds, because the gift of spontaneous creation seems to me a rarer and higher gift than the power to elaborate a harmony by hard thinking, or by a respectful study of " the full body of 238 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART the best general practice." Hals, of course, was a mar- vellous executant, but his aims were too superficial to give him any right to stand beside Gainsborough. Who would dream of apostrophising the " deep-thoughted, solemn Hals ? " As for Rembrandt and Velazquez : Rembrandt was the greatest of all modern artists, but, as a technical painter, his range had limitations of which there are no signs in the best work of Gainsborough ; while to Velazquez, the master of all Tenderers^ the Eng- lishman's delight in his material would have seemed as flippant as Whistler's nocturnes did to Ruskin. Putting it as shortly as I can, Rembrandt conceived on a higher plane than Gainsborough, Velazquez painted objects better than Gainsborough, but Gainsborough painted in the abstract better than either. That sounds like nonsense, but I think it is sound sense. Paint can be used in many ways. It can be used to express ideas — Rembrandt's way ; it can be used to render objects — the way of Velazquez ; it can be used to delight us with its own constitution and to play upon our emotions like the notes of a violin; that was the way of Gainsborough. These analogies and gene- ralities are, of course, only partially true. Unhappily the English language was not made by art-critics, and so precision in discussing artistic matters is beyond our reach. We have to do our best with illustrations, analogies, and other figures which have an awkward knack of turning upon their users. However, by dint of ruthless iteration and talking " about it and about it," one does get a notion expressed at last, and so I hope that the reader will at least not misunderstand the contention I have ventured to set up. In all I have said I have made no distinction between Gainsborough's portraits and his landscapes, although, no Z39 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH doubt, I have drawn most of my examples from the former. It seems to me that no real distinction can be made. Many writers and not a few painters have con- trasted the two branches of his art as if they issued from two different men. The finest of Gainsborough's portraits are finer than the finest of his landscapes for exactly the same reason as a park with a beautiful woman in it is more desirable than the same park with nothing in it at all. A picture like the " Mrs. Sheridan " or the " Morning "Walk " is a fine landscape, plus some delightful figures. Some artists who have painted both landscapes and moving tales have followed principles in the one case which they have neglected in the other. Millais, for instance, con- trived elaborately when he told a story, but in landscape took exactly what Nature chose to give him. Gainsborough did nothing of the kind. His art was a simple and sen- suous thing, and whether he painted a portrait, or a scene from nature, or a combination of both, he depended for his effects on the same way of seeing and the same way of reproducing what he saw. The necessity for more preci- sion gives, indeed, to his portraits a certain advantage over his more independent things. The vagueness and excessive conventionality into which he sometimes fell in his later landscapes was impossible in a portrait, and so one cause of comparative failure was avoided. In his pastoral scenes there is one element, of course, not to be found in his other works — I mean his sympathy with rural life, and knowledge of it. Of all landscape-painters he is the happiest in his ^toffage. His peasants hang over their work, loiter at the roadsides, make rustic love to their womenkind, load their carts and drive their beasts of burden, and, above all, decorate the canvas, with no less truth than felicity. Gainsborough alone, so far as my experience goes, can set various groups of little figures, 240 STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT (? DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE) (1780) George Salting, Esq. GAINSBOROUGH'S ART disconnected with each other, in a landscape without damage to the general effect. Contrast such pictures as - those reproduced in Plates X. and XXV. of my first edition with almost any work of those Dutchmen from whom he learnt so much. It is true that with Ruysdael, Wynants, and Van der Heyden the figures were often put in by others ; but that scarcely relieves them of responsibility ; and even where it was otherwise, how often do you find their landscapes furnished like those of Gainsborough His figures are so appropriate, they so happily supplement and give point to their surroundings, that before one of his paysages etoffes we feel inclined to talk of "Figures in a Landscape" instead of a "Land- scape with Figures." I have seen many scores of such things, but I think I could pass an examination in the doings and distribution of the little men and women who people them. I should be hopelessly stumped over Ruysdael or Wynants, were it not that in a good many instances I should remember groups and incidents for the damage they were doing. The sympathy which never failed Gainsborough led him to deal tenderly with the creations of his own brush, and we feel instinctively that he could scarcely, if he tried, put a figure in the wrong place or make a landscape carry more, in the shape of incident, than its back was equal to. We remember how he answered Jackson, when the musician suggested that he should follow in the footsteps of Elzheimer, Claude and Rembrandt, and fill his English lanes with Flights into Egypt. The artistic instinct and common sense which kept him faithful to Hodge and his stud of pic- turesque old horses, prevented anything like a violent transition when he passed from landscape to portrait or vice versa. 241 Q THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH The comparison of Gainsborough with other painters has been a favourite amusement with the critics, the two favourites for the purpose being Van Dyck and Reynolds. The collation with Van Dyck has the sanction of Gains- borough himself, but, in truth, the likeness between the two is only skin deep. The Englishman's ambition re- ceived, no doubt, its first effective spur from the Van Dycks in the neighbourhood of Bath, especially from the great family group at Wilton House. But his indi- viduality was so distinct from, was even, I may say, so opposed to, that of the Fleming, that little more than a superficial resemblance could exist between their works. In character Van Dyck was the ancestor of Reynolds, and Lawrence, and Leighton, rather than of Gainsborough. He was a born courtier, living generously but yet with prudence, painting men and women of various conditions, but never failing to surround them with the air of palaces, controlling his hand to an elegance which is rather that of the pavane than of the minuet, and think- ing, while he worked, rather of the presentment of his sitter than of the essential unity of his art. Taste and judgment of the conscious sort were his guides rather than emotion, and so before his pictures our feelings are more those of objective admiration than of sympathetic excitement. No man ever felt a lump in his throat before a Van Dyck. His finest things are flawless, but they are not records of intense human emotion like the best works of Gainsborough. As for Sir Joshua, he stands vastly nearer to Van Dyck than he does to his own fellow countryman. Super- ficially the likeness between the Englishman and the Fleming is slight enough, but in artistic essentials they have much in common. The tiro can distinguish their work at a glance, but to put the esthetic difference into 242 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART words is not such an easy matter. Between a Reynolds like the "Marlborough Family" at Blenheim, or the Montgomery group, or the " Lord Heathfield," and such Van Dycks as the Wilton picture and Mr. Heywood Lonsdale's portrait of Doge Spinola of Genoa, the difference is mainly one of time, costume, and prudence in the use of pigments. They are all painted with the head; they are all models of taste, thought and reserve, and of a vigour which is more than slightly voulu. The novice, of course, might and often does find a difficulty in discriminating between Gainsborough and Sir Joshua. We may even go farther, and say that, by con- fining ourselves to the less characteristic works of the greater men and to the exceptionally good things by their inferiors, we could, with a little trouble, hang together examples of Sir Joshua, Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, Lawrence, Raeburn, and even Shee and Beechey, which only the trained eye could disentangle, so true is it that few men's individualities are proof against the spirit of the time and the compulsion of example. Speaking broadly, any comparison between Sir Joshua and Gains- borough would have to proceed by contrast, and by dwelling on those points of difference which have been already sufficiently indicated in what has been said of their respective characters. But there is one distinguish- ing feature which is too often minimised, and that is the very different depths to which the two men penetrate in the personalities of the people they portray. Reynolds was essentially an observer. He had little of the deep- seated sympathy which drove Gainsborough into an almost unconscious betrayal of the real personalities of those who found their way to his studio. Reynolds was puzzled by Gainsborough's success in catchmg a likeness, 243 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH and tried to account for it by his want of finish. But Gainsborough's finest heads have more real finish than any Sir Joshua. The true explanation, of course, lies in his quicker sympathies and his more unerring sense of essentials in a character. To take an example which can be verified within the pages of this volume ; look at the two portraits of Mrs. Sheridan, one painted when she was sixteen (" Eliza Linley "), the other when she was about two-and-thirty. Here Gainsborough has seen and immortalised a great deal more than a pretty woman. In the one case he has seen a child with a beautiful soul, into whose countenance experience of a peculiar world has already brought a touch of doubt and pathos. Fif- teen years or so pass, and the same face is again before him, more beautiful than ever, but how different in ex- pression ! These years have brought much happiness to Eliza Linley and many cares ; they have given her pride m the man she loved and confidence in her own capacity. She has found out what life is, and done her best with it, and has come at a happy moment to sit to the man who had painted her as a child. All this is as easily read on Gainsborough's canvas as if it were printed in a book. Sir Joshua painted " Mrs. Sheridan " several times, but none of the pictures convey anything but her beauty; such expression as they have belongs not to the woman, but to the rdle—?>t. Cecilia, Charity, &c.— she happens to be playing for the moment. And this is almost univer- sally the case with him. He often shows a stronger grip than his rival on the intellectual capacities, or at least pretensions, of his sitters, especially when they are men ; but even there he is apt rather to assert than convince. His " Garrick " is taken at a more vivacious moment than Gainsborough would have chosen, but the potential vivacity preferred by the latter is not a whit less telling. 244 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART Sir Joshua's portraits of children are delicious, but they, too, are curiously external. He watched them with the same kind of interest as we do animals in the Zoo. We can imagine him saying to himself : " Ah ! that is curious ; so that's the way it plays with a dog ! I'll paint it so." Gainsborough does not watch and search. The mind of a child lies open to him, and he feels no impulse to contrive amusing incidents or quaint attitudes to justify his interest. What he paints is the little soul with ten years' experience of the world, shining out of eyes spark- ling with a vitality only his brush can give. But here I am doing the very thing I was deprecating in others, and setting up an elaborate antithesis between two men who, in my view, had little but their accidents in common. Let me pass on to comparisons which I hope may turn out more fruitful. They are not new ; I don't profess to be the first to see how strongly Gainsborough resembles Rubens on the one hand and Watteau on the other ; but I wish to in- sist a little upon the likeness, because it depends chiefly on those essential qualities on which alone any significant analogies can be based. On certain pictures by Rubens we could found quite a plausible argument that not Van Dyck, but his master, was the real teacher of Gains- borough ; and some of these pictures were at Blenheim, where he must have seen them. The things I mean were all painted late in the Antwerp master's career. There is no necessity to give a complete list, but I may name a few which appear to support my theory. First of all, I may point to the pair of superb portraits which, to our shame, passed some twenty years ago from Blenheim to the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. One represents Sir Peter Paul and Lady Rubens — to decorate them for once with their English honours ! — the other Lady Rubens by 245 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH herself. Then we have " La Petite Pelisse " of Vienna and the more orthodox portrait in the Hermitage; the garden scene at Munich ; and — as I feel inclined to add — the Chapeau de Paille " of the National Gallery. In all of these the pictorial conception and not a little of the technique are quite in the vein of Gainsborough. The first two — which, bearing his habits in mind, we cannot doubt he knew — are specially significant. The " Mr. and Mrs. Hallett " is, in fact, an echo, so far as concep- tion goes, of the finer of Baron Alphonse's two pictures. Gainsborough is no less personal, no less frank and loyal to his own emotions, than Rubens, but I cannot help sus- pecting that, if the Fleming's " Morning Walk " had never been painted, Gainsborough's would never have existed either. Still more striking is the artistic sympathy traceable in the landscapes of the two men. Here again their superficial dissimilarity is great enough, but the deeper we go the more difficult do we find it to discrimi- nate. In all artistic essentials the likeness between such a picture as the small *' Sunset Landscape " in the National Gallery and an average Gainsborough ap- proaches identity. Rubens afi^ected lighter tones, warmer tints, and a more solid impasto, but his way of regarding natural fact and his aspect towards its literal reproduction are quite those of Gainsborough. The likeness persists, too, when we compare their ways of peopling their fields and woods. Both were governed by the same love of unity ; both saw a landscape and its population as a whole. The extraordinary one-ness between figures and their setting which we see in the " Mall " has no parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, outside the work of Rubens. With these two men a background was no decor ; it was part and parcel of the human beings set against it ; it was an adumbration of their thoughts, it might almost be 246 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART called an emanation from them, so subtle is its sympathy. This is due partly to the extremely personal character of the technical methods employed, partly to that faculty for conceiving as a whole and realising at a heat with which both were gifted in so remarkable a degree. Between Gainsborough and Watteau the comparison marches altogether on a lower plane. Superficially the " Mall " is very like a Watteau ; the flutter of the trees, the swing of the ladies' dresses, the way in which the light plays about the scene, will remind the most careless eye of the " Fetes Venetiennes " and the " Embarquement pour Cythere." But although it is, perhaps, the shallowest of all great Gainsboroughs, it is deeper than a Watteau. The life portrayed is the careless life of a Court. These little people are not moved by any profound emotions, but in their allure, in their glances at each other, in their very distribution over the canvas, hints are given of the depths to which the painter's glance, or rather his instinc- tive sympathy, could penetrate. Watteau had little of this insight. His delightful genius fastened on outsides. He was satisfied to note the flow of a robe, the flexibility of a limb, the happy arabesque of a group, for their own sakes, and to make the best pictorial music he could without troubling too much over the souls of things.* Whether Gainsborough ever saw a Watteau or not is doubtful. The Frenchman died six years before he was born, and his pictures did not begin to come here, so far as I can discover, until late in Gainsborough's career. He painted two, however, for his English physician. Doctor Mead, a " Comedie Italienne" and "L' Amour Paisible," which were sold in London in 1754, and these may easily * This is a little over-stated ; for Watteau was at least a great master of facial expression, which implies depth of knowledge. 247 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH have come under the young and impressionable eye of the Englishman. Gravelot, too, possessed several Watteau drawings at his death, with which his pupil may have been familiar. In making these comparisons with Rubens and Wat- teau, my object has been rather to support my reading of Gainsborough's own individuality, than to suggest any serious indebtedness on his part to their example. He was one of the most self-reliant of painters, and if he were familiar with the earlier works I have mentioned they would act on him as justifiers of his own way of seeing Nature and as stimulants to his imagination. In two cases — the " Morning Walk " and the " Mall " — he seems to have consciously measured himself with the Fleming and the Frenchman, but even there he made no concession. Granting that the first idea is borrowed, he treats it in what is, at least, his own dialect of a language common to all three. The one painter whose name was frequently on his lips excited his admiration in an entirely different way. Van Dyck was the complement of Gains- borough. He was cool where the other was impulsive ; he painted as he chose, while the other could not help pamting as he did ; he was distributive, critical, and reserved, while the other was concentrative, sympathetic, and full of abandon. Admiration and comprehension are by no means convertible terms. Gainsborough admired Van Dyck, but he understood Rubens. " We are all going to heaven," he said to Reynolds, " and Van Dyck is of the company." I suspect when he arrived it was in Van Dyck's master that he found his real affinity. The development of Gainsborough has, perhaps, been sufficiently traced in the foregoing chapters, but I feel im- 248 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART pelled to sketch it again here, as lightly as I can, in order to bring out the pattern it made on the art of the eighteenth century. Gainsborough began young, and in his youth he devoted all his energies to that explora- tory art which is the only sure road to success. In all probability he saw few pictures except those of his own immediate companions. His time was given to work from the model and, probably, to the production of such pencil portraits as those in the Irish Gallery. At this time, too, he probably concocted such landscapes as the large one belonging to Mr. Cobbold. After his return to Suffolk he found opportunities of study from the Old Masters, chiefly such Dutchmen as Hobbema, Ruysdael and Wynants. From their works he took hints which he proceeded to put into execution in his own way ; his most unhappy experiment, perhaps, being one with red and brown grounds, which has destroyed the charm of many of his early landscapes. But his art at this time was all experimental. It changed from day to day, and it was not until he had been at work for some ten years that he finally settled down to a method of his own and to single-minded work from nature. By the time he was thirty all this toil had made him master of his tools, and had left him waiting only for a lead to become the greatest painter of his century. The move to Bath took place ; the art of Van Dyck, and, as I believe, of Rubens, opened his eyes to what paint could do, and he blossomed at once. His conceptions grew bolder, his hand freer, his colour more luminous and infinitely richer. The change was so rapid that, in settling the chronology of his works, our difficulty is to believe that so short an interval elapsed between the comparatively stiff and cold half-lengths of his Ipswich time, and, for instance, the "Mr. Poyntz" of 1762, or the "General Honywood" 249 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH of 1764. The latter, especially, is equal in some ways to anything he ever did, and yet only five years divided it from the Edgar portraits, which, in spite of their charm, are clearly the work of a timid executant and a doubting conceiver. After the " Honywood," his strides were longer than ever. In 1768 he paints the Knole " Linley Group," and in 1770 the ''Blue Boy," and then, accord- ing to my chronology, most of the fat, low-toned land- scapes, which have usually been assigned to the latest period of all. Typical examples of this time are Mr. Harry Quilter's " Repose," the " Horses at a Well," of which two or three versions exist, the large " Watering Place " of the National Gallery, the Duke of Westmin- ster's " Cottage Door," and Lord Carnarvon's " Wood Gatherers." Last of all, Gainsborough, like every other magician of the brush, arrives at the tim.e when painting seems to be done with his will rather than with his hand. His canvases are all light, and air, and limpid colour. Heaviness disappears, and there is not a square inch which does not glow like a sapphire and warm us like the sun at noon. To this period belong all his very greatest achievements. The " Linley Group," the " Blue Boy," the " Mrs. Graham," superb as they are, cannot boast the unity, the absolute realisation of an aesthetic thought, which we see in the "Mall," the "Mrs. Norton," the " Mrs. Sheridan," and above all in the " Morning Walk." Sweeping assertions are risky, but I do not think there is much danger in declaring this portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Hallett, now christened more conveniently the " Morning Walk," to be the finest picture painted in the eighteenth century ; if I followed my own conviction I should say since the deaths of Rubens and Velazquez. In pure artistry the only things of its own time to be set 250 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART near it are a few Watteaus, a Chardin or two, and a few pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds — such as the "Nelly O'Brien" in the Wallace Gallery, the "Duchess of Devonshire with her Baby '* at Chatsworth, and Sir Charles Tennant's "Lady Crosbie." I have already confessed that to me Gainsborough at his best touches a height beyond the reach of Reynolds, while as for the two Frenchmen, it is only by the purity of their gift, their freedom as painters from any irrelevant alloy, that they can support the neighbourhood of their English contem- porary. The range and scale, the depth and breadth of Gainsborough, are on another plane from theirs. To put the comparison very low indeed, the painter who can wed concentration to the finest technique on a canvas eight feet by six is not to be measured with those whose powers are but equal to as many inches. And Gainsborough rarely misses concentration. A story has come down to us connected with his way of working which throws a vivid light upon his aims. His habit was, when he had worked for a time upon a canvas, to darken the window of his painting-room, excluding all light but such as streamed in through a round hole in the shutter. By this light he would judge the effect of what he had done, and could see more easily than by a full illumination whether he had reached the unity he aimed at. Probably he used the same test on his sitters ; it would show their enveloppe too. Such an experiment would enable him to see at a glance whether his work were in focus, whether he had succeeded or not in getting the subordination he wanted, or whether, on the other hand, some detail had crept into undesired importance. In a portrait, where the head supplies a natural centre, such a practice would be of the greatest value ; in a landscape it might, and probably did, confirm him in the tendency to emptiness 251 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH of which he has been not unjustly accused. No great painter has restricted himself so invariably to his pictorial intention as Gainsborough. Even Rembrandt, with whom he had points in common* which, if life were longer, we might discuss, was more anecdotic than he. He built every picture round some simple pictorial idea, and as soon as that idea was complete his impulse was td lay down his brush. Sitters are more exacting than land- scapes. To please them he had often, no doubt, to give a head more substance and definition than his own impression required, and so we may have to thank a patron now and then for the fulness and variety of our enjoyment. Modern painting was born in England, as the more candid criticism of to-day is beginning to acknowledge ; so that Gainsborough, as a forerunner, has more than a national importance. In him the quality which is vari- ously called Romanticism, Impressionism, and what not, according to the form it takes, first received full play. From Giotto to Hogarth painting had been a conscious fusion of objectivity and subjectivity. To the question, " What is art " even the greatest artists might have re- plied, "The imitation of Nature." With a few excep- tions their conscious activity was devoted to calling up a balanced and controlled reproduction of the reality before them. Gainsborough was the first to concentrate all his powers on the translation of his own continuing emotion into paint, and to make the vigour, heat and unity of his own passion the measure of his art. Form, in the classic sense, had nothing to say to him. The concentration he won was the concentration not of " Phedre," but of * Especially in his drawings. Between Rembrandt's drawings of landscape and those of Gainsborough the likeness is often curiously exact. 252 STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT British Muskum GAINSBOROUGH'S ART "Othello." It depended on nothing which could be formulated, on nothing which could be put into the critic's balance and weighed against the same ingredient in the work of some one else. It depended on the thoroughness with which passion was expressed in the language he was using, on the intensity of his own sympathies with the most subtle relations in Nature. As for his place in the general hierarchy of art, it depends entirely on his positive qualities. It is easy to see his defects. It is easy to point out that his ambition was narrow, that his culture was small, that his faculty for taking thought was a negative quantity, and that in certain matters of equipment he has been surpassed by many unimportant people. But his art was all art. It was the pure, spontaneous expression of a personality into which no anti-artistic leaven had been mixed. In his finest portraits of women he reaches a height approached by no one else. The "Mrs. Sheridan," the "Mrs. Siddons," the "Mrs. Mears," the "Mr. and Mrs. Hallett," the "Mrs. Stone-Norton," the "Mrs. Robinson," the " Mrs, Graham" — I might go on for half a page — are delicious melodies in colour, miracles of distinction, records of beauty that living woman herself cannot sur- pass. No other painter has so dazzled us with means so slight. Many of his most perfect things are at once superb in colour and scarcely more than monochromes. The "Morning Walk" is one of these. The "Lady Mulgrave" is another; her provoking features are en- framed in a mass of powdered hair which tells with feUcitous audacity against the rich, diaphanous black about her shoulders. The effect is like magic. The flesh painting which extorted the praise of Sir Joshua is here, too, almost at its best, never indeed to be excelled, 253 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH except, perhaps, in the marvellous heads of Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Siddons. The *'Mrs. Puget" is scarcely less fine, and I might run through a long list of similar things, in which one delicious chord is struck, to vibrate in our memories long after the image has faded from our eyes. Is it to Gainsborough's example that the supreme faculty for rendering female beauty which marks our English school is to be traced ? Hardly, I think, for we must remember that from the day that Van Dyck set foot in this country it became the most striking feature of English portraiture. It is the result partly of the beauty of English women, partly of English ignorance of art. If we are to trace it to any man's example, it must be to Van Dyck and his follower, Lely. The atmosphere, as it were, of beauty in which the women of Gainsborough, of Reynolds, of Romney, swim, was be- yond the reach of the two foreigners, but their works show them to have been fully alive to the possibilities afforded by the loveliness of their sitters. Their methods were too academic, perhaps, for complete success, but they at least showed the way, and pointed out to intelli- gent followers how a new ideal could be founded on the beauty which prevails in every class of English women. The more subtle qualities were missed by both. The sympathetic penetration of a Gainsborough could hardly be expected from two men who were, after all, working among strangers, and they had to leave to their successors the glory of making lovely souls shine through lovely features to form the basis for a new art. That Gains- borough was the chief figure of the revival cannot, I think, be contested. He saw deeper, combined with more felicity, and realised with a lighter hand than any one else. His finest things embody an exquisite thought 254 GAINSBOROUGH'S ART with a perfection denied to Reynolds, denied to Romney, denied even to those great men of the seventeenth century with whom he may be most fitly measured. His glory lies between himself and his country. His inspiration came from the beauty about him, and his success from an artistic gift of remarkable vigour and of a purity which has been seldom equalled and never surpassed. CATALOGUE OF PICTURES THE FOLLOWING ABBREVIATIONS ARE USED S. A. = Incorporated Society of Artists. R. A. = RoycLl Academy. G. G. = Grosvenor Gallery. S. K. = South Kensington Portrait Exhibitions of iSdj-S-g. S. K. M. == South Kensington Museum. N. G. = New Gallery. F. W. = Fair Women Exhibition, Grafton Gallery. M. 1857 = Manchester Exhibition, 18^7. C. = Christie's (C 2, 6, 1882 = Christie's Sale, June 2, 1882). PORTRAITS Abel, Charles Frederick. [Locket Agnew, Esq., ex. Earl of Egre- mont, R.A. 1894 ; C. 1892] Full length, seated, to right, at a table on which he is writing music ; a viol-di-gamba and bow resting against his knee ; brown dress, embroidered with gold ; gold-coloured waistcoat ; powdered hair ; his white Pome- ranian dog lies under the table. Background, architecture and a curtain. 861 x 57 Abel, C. F. [W. H. Ciimmings, Esq.] 49 X 39 Abercorn, James, Earl of. W?iole length. Painted 1778 Mez. by John Dean Ageno, Francesco d'. Half length Eng. in stipple by F. Bartolozzi Ailesbury, Anne Elizabeth Raw- don, afterwards Countess of. [Marquess of Ailesbury. R.A. 1881 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; standing full face, right elbow resting on a pedestal ; hands crossed ; black dress, yellow scarf. Her name inscribed in right lower corner of the canvas. 61 X 39 Aldborough, Edward, Earl of. Half length Mez. by S. Einslie Alfred, Prince ; son of George III. [Windsor Castle ; private Audience Chamber] Bust, in loiv-cut white frock. 22J X 16J Althorp, Geo. John, Lord. [Earl Spencer, K.G. M. 1857] Painted 1776 Amherst, Earl. [National Por- trait Gallery] Amyand, Claudius. [Sir Geo. H. Cornewall, Bart. G. G. 1885] Half length. 31 x 26 Andrewes, Mr. and Mrs. R. [— Metcalf, Esq.] An early picture, painted at Auberies, near Sudbury Anstey, Christopher. [ — Anstey, Esq., Bath] Three-quarter length, seated. 50 x 40 (about) Argyll, Archibald, Duke of. Argyll, John, Duke of. [Duke of Argyll] Whole length Mez. by James Watson Argyll, John, Duke of. [Earl of Rosebery, K.G.] Half length Mez. by William Dickinson Ashton, Rev. Thomas, D.D. Half length Mez. by James Macardell Augusta Sophia, Princess. [Windsor Castle ; private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23! x 17J 257 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Aylesford, Heneage, 3rd Earl of, in his Peer's Robes, [ex. Earl of Aylesford. C. 4, 6, 1881] Ayton, John, " Handsome Jack." [Mrs. Barham SafEord. G. G. 1885] Bust : with an injured nose. 24 x 19J Baccelli, Madame. [Lord Mas- ham] Whole length ; dancing, holding out the end ' of a voluminous apron with her left hand, her right hand behind her hack. Dress, blue and white. Formerly at Knole. 90 x 60 Mez. by John Jones. 1811 Baccelli, Madame (small). [Al- fred Beit, Esq.] Bach, Johann Sebastian, [ex. Mudge and Walcot. C. 1874 and 1875] Baddeley, Mrs. [ex. Sir Jos. Hawley, Bart.] Baillie Family, The. [National Gallery] Baker, Wilharn. [Rev. Sir Talbot H. B. Baker, Bart.] Half length, in an oval. Painted about 1765-1770. 30 X 25 Baker, Mrs. William. [Rev. Sir Talbot H. B. Baker, Bart.] Half length, in an oval. Painted about T765-1770. 30x25 Baker, Mrs. [Rev. Sir Talbot H. B. Baker, Bart. R. A. 1882] Full length ; standing to left ; light-coloured dress, cut low, scarf over shoulders ; rocks on right'. 87J X 59 Banks, Sir Joseph. Barry, Mr. [— Johnson, Esq. ex. Kilderbee] In hunting dress. 30 x 25 Bate-Dudley, Rev. Sir Harry, Bart. [Lord Burton. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1884] Full length. Painted at Bradwell, 1785- 86. 88 X 58 Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont Bate-Dudley, Rev. Sir Henry. [National Gallery] Bate-Dudley, Lady, wife of Rev. Sir H. Bate-Dudley, Bart. [Lord Burton. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1884] Full length. 85 X 59 Bateman, John, 2nd Viscount. [Lord Bateman. R. A. 188 1] Bust; to right; long hair, blue jacket, white collar, light brown background. In an oval. Signed T. G. 20 x 25 Bathurst, Tryphena, Countess. [Earl Bathurst. R. A. 1881] Bust ; three-quarter face to left ; powdered hair, dark dress, pearl necklace. In an oval. 25i X 19 Beaufoy, Henry. [F. J. Jervoise, Esq.] Whole length Mez. by William Ward. 1797 Beaufoy, Mrs. Henry. [Alfred de Rothschild, Esq.] Whole length. Yellow dress, with blue lines of ribbon ; bodice trimmed with light blue muslin. 84J x 55 Mark. [G. Beaufoy, Beaufoy, Esq.] Whole length Mez. by Valentine Green Bedford, John, 4th Duke of. [Provost's Lodge, Trinity College, Dublin] Full length, in a crimson dress Circa 90 x 60 Bedford, John, 4th Duke of. [Duke of Bedford] Half length. 30 x 25 Bedford, John, 4th Duke of. [National Portrait Gallery. Formerly at Blenheim. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Bust, feigned oval. In a scarlet coat with Ribbon and Star of the Garter. Inscribed Gainsborough. 30 X 25 Belgrave, Robert, Viscount. [Duke of Westminster, K.G.] Half length; powdered hair, brown coat, yellow waistcoat, white cravat. Landscape background. 50 x 40 Bell, Ralph. [Reginald Bell, Esq. G. G. 1885] Whole length. 91 X 60 Mrs G. G. Bell, Anne (Conyers), [Reginald Bell, Esq. 1885] Whole length, gi X 58 Bennett, Mr., of Cadbury Court, Somerset. [Messrs. Agnew and Son] 30 X 25 258 CATALOGUE Berkeley, Hon. George Cranfield. Whole length Mez. by Henry Birche ? (pseudonym of Richard Earlom). 1793 Blackstone, Sir Wm. [George Salting, Esq.] Half length. 30 x 25 Eng. by John Hall, Bocquet, J. Chap- man, WiLLTAM Ridley, and Philippe AUDINET Blandford, George, Marquess of, and a little Girl. [C. 8, 5, 1897, £3^5] Full length ; blue coat and white waistcoat ! he holds by the hand a little girl in white with blue sash ; background, trees. 90 x 57 Blue Boy, The. See Buttall, Jonathan. Blue Boy. See Portrait, a Page. " Blythe, Mr., of Norfolk." [C. 5, 6, 1889] Bolton, — , Esq. [F. Bolton, Esq.] Bouverie, Hon. Wm., afterwards ist Earl of Radnor. [Earl of Radnor] Bust Bouverie, Hon. Bartholomew, [Earl of Radnor] Bust. Painted in 1774 Bouverie, Hon. Wm. Henry. [Earl of Radnor] Bust. Painted in 1774 Bouverie, Hon. Edward. [Earl of Radnor] Bust. Painted in 1774 Bowlby, Lady Mary (Brudenel). [ — Bowlby, Esq. ; ex. Geo. Richmond. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1872 ; G. G. 1885 ; C. 1896, £lS22 lOS.] Bust. 28 X 25 Boy, Portrait of a. [Sir Walter Armstrong] Red satin dress, with a Van Dyck collar. Seated. Landscape background suggested. Ed. Oval. 30 X 25 Boy, Sketch Portrait of a. [F. W. Newton, Esq. R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Bus t, to right, and looking up. He wears a red waistcoat and holds a palette and brushes. Dark background. 23 x 20 259 OF PICTURES Brisco, Lady. [Lord Iveagh ; ex. Sir Musgrave Brisco, Bart. R. A. 1886] Full length ; standing ; white satin dress trimmed with gold, blue scarf, pearl necklace ; her left hand held out to a spaniel. 89 x 58 Bristol, John Hervey, 3rd Earl of. [Marquess of Bristol] Brooke, Thomas. [Messrs. Agnew and Sons] 50 X 40 Browne, Mr. Browne, Miss. Brummel, Miss. [Lord Iveagh] Brun. See Le Brun. Brunton, Miss Bessy. [F. No- verre, Esq.] Three-quarter length ; seated, in a land- scape. Actress: made her debut at the age of sixteen, in the " Grecian Daughter." 50 X 40 Beaufort, Elizabeth, Duchess of, daughter of Admiral the Hon. Edward Boscawen. [Duke of Beaufort. S. K. 1867] Full length. 93 x 57 Buccleuch, Henry, 3rd Duke of. [Duke of Buccleuch, Dalkeith Palace. S. K. 1868] Three-quarter length. 50 x 40 Mez. by John Dixon. 1771 Buccleuch, Duchess of, and Lady Mary Scott. Mez. dated 1771 Buckingham, Geo. Grenville Nugent Temple, 2nd Earl Temple and ist Marquess of. [Hon. G. M. Fortescue. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter length ; painted 178^. 50 x Eng. in Line by J. K. Sherwin. 1787 Buckingham, Marchioness of. [Hon. G. M. Fortescue] Three-quarter length. Painted 1783 Buckinghamshire, John (Hobart), 2nd Earl of. [Marquess of Lothian. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1887] Full length ; standing, his legs crossed and his left hand resting on the pedestal of a column ; blue velvet coat and breeches, white and gold waistcoat, and robes. Background, architecture and curtain. 91 x 57 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (?) Buckinghamshire, Mary Anne, Countess of. [W. H, Fuller, Esq., New York] Half length ; her head rests on the fingers of her left hand; red silk dress, white satin waistcoat ; blue sash ; powdered hair. 30 X 25 Buckinghamshire, Mary Anne, Countess of. [Marquess of Lothian. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1887] Full length ; standing ; her right arm rests on a parapet on which lie her robes and coronet ; light dress, yellow gauze scarf round waist, black velvet bracelets. Background, architecture and a curtain, gr X 57 Bullen, Mr. [G. Bullen, Esq.] Half length. 30 X 25 Bullock, Lieut. -Col. [Sir Cuth- bertQuilter,Bart,M.P. R. A. 1892] Full length ; standing, in a landscape. Scarlet uniform with green facings. _ A black and white setter, not well-bred, beside him. Burroughs, Mr. (Met. Museum, New York ; Miss Josephine Saville. G. G. 1885] 30 X 24 Burroughs, Mrs. [Louis Huth, Esq. ; Miss Josephine Saville. G. G. 1885] 30 X 24 Burke, Edmund. [Ex. Bishop of Ely] Bute, Earl of. Buttall, Jonathan. " The Blue Boy." [Duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Nearly life size, full length, standing. He is dressed entirely in blue, in a costume of about 1640. He carries his plumed hat in his right hand, his left hand is on his hip ; landscape background, with a stormy sky. 70 X 48 Buttall, Jonathan. " Blue Boy." A sketch. [Count Boni de Castellane, Paris] im. 60c. X im. 09c. Buttall, Jonathan. " The Blue jg^Boy." [Geo. Hearn, Esq., ^ New York] (?) An excellent copy, by Hoppner, of the Grosvenor House picture. 71J x 50J Cambridge, H.R.H., Adolphus Frederick, Duke of, [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23J X 17J Camden, Charles, Earl. [Lord Northbourne. R. A. 1872] Three-quarter length. 49J X 37 Eng. in stipple by F. Bartolozzi. 1793 Campbell, Lord Frederick. [Major-Gen. R. Mackenzie. G. G. 1885] Half length ; to the right — holds his robe across his breast with his right hand. 26 X 18 Mez. by Gainsborough Ddpont Campbell, Lord William. [Miss Campbell Johnstone. S. K. Bust. 30 X 25 Canning, George, as a Boy. [Marquess of Clanricarde. R. A. 1884] See chapter vii. Carlisle, Earl of. [Sir J. D. Linton] Carnarvon, Henry, Earl of. [Earl of Carnarvon] Three-quarter length. 50 x 40 Mez. by William Ward. 1795 Carr, Mary, Lady. [In America] Three-quarter length ; standing, to left. Crimson dress ; flowers in her hair and held to her breast with one hand. 53 x 41 Carr, Mrs. [ex. Price collection] Half length. White dress embroidered with gold, cut low, arms folded. Landscape back- ground. S5i X 27J Carter, Mr. and Mrs. William. [Rev. J. B. Andrewes] Full-length figures, in small, sitting on a bench under trees. An early picture, also painted at Auberies. 36x28 Cathcart, William, loth Lord. [Earl Cathcart] Chapman, Miss. [F. Dowding, Esq.] Painted with curious elaboration. She wears a large cross and black earrings. 24 x 20 Charles L, small copy after Van Dyck. [Sir J. C. Robinson. G. G. 1885] The original is the large picture bought from the Duke of Marlborough for the National Gallery. 17J x 14 Charleton, Dr. [Messrs. Agnew and Son] 90 X 60 Charleton, Children of Dr C 60 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES called " Showing the Way." [Messrs. Agnew and Son] Charlotte, Queen. [Earl o± Powis. R. A. 1888] Full length ; standing ; white dress vt ith irain, black lace shawl ; pearl necklace and bracelet ; wears a miniature of George III. A crown on a table behind her. Background, architecture and Curtain ; sky and trees seen through a window to the left. 94 x 57J Charlotte, Queen. [Abingdon Town Hall. R. A. 1894] Full length (similar to Lord Powis' s)- 94 X 58i. [And similar pictures, sometimes with slight variations, at Penshurst, the Horse Guards, and other places. In the paint- ing of these Gainsborough Dupont probably gave much assistance. '[ Charlotte, Queen. [Windsor Castle ; private Audience Chamber] Bust, full face, the head covered with a black lace mantilla. 23J x i7i Charlotte, Queen. [S. K. Mu- seum] 1^.' A replica of the head at Windsor, with less colour Charlotte, Queen. [Buckingham Palace] Full length ; in a gold-coloured dress ; hands one upon the other ; a spaniel beside her; background, a red curtain with a view through an arch into a garden. 90 x 60 (about) Charlotte, Queen, [ex. Duke oi Cambridge's collection. C. 1904] Small full length sketch A large number of replicas of these por- traits exist, many, apparently, by the hand of Gainsborough Dupont. Charlotte, Queen. [Lawrie and Co.] Bust, in an oval, head covered with a white lace mantilla. 30 x 25 Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Princess, Duchess of Wurtem- berg. [Windsor Castle, pri- vate Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23J x 18 Chatham, Countess of (Mother of William Pitt). [Captain Pretyman] (?) Chatterton, Thomas. [E. Naylor, Esq.] Half length. Green coat; hair falling much over the forehead and reaching to the shoulders ; the face almost in profile. 22X18 Chesterfield, Philip, Earl of, [Earl of Carnarvon] Half length BIez. by Edward Bell 2 Chesterfield, Philip, Earl of. [Earl Stanhope. G. G. 1885] Bust wearing the Ribbon and Star of iht Garter. His right hand rests on a volume lettered " Cicero de Senectute." The canies ts inscribed " Aged 76, date 1769," which ts erroneous. 30 x 25 Chesterfield, Philip, Earl of. [E. I. Shirley, Esq.] Chesterfield, Anne, Countess of. [Earl of Carnarvon. R. A. 1887] Full length ; seated, to left, on a terrace beneath a tree ; blue and white dress ; flowered gauze scarf ; hair turned back and powdered. 86x61 Chesterfield, Philip, 5th Earl of. [Earl of Carnarvon. R. A. 1887] Full length, resting on a bank beneath trees ; red coat, top boots ; his hand on the head of a large dog. Background, landscape. 86x61 Chetwynd, Lord. [C. 1870] Oval. 30 X 25 Child in a Mob Cap. See Parker, Miss. Child, Portrait of a. [W. H. Lever, Esq.] Cholmley, Miss, afterwards wife of Constantine John, Baron Mulgrave. See Mulgrave, Lady Christie, James. [G. H. Christie, Esq. S, K. 1867 ; R. A. 1891] Founder of the famous firm of auctioneers. Three-quarter length ; light grey dress ; curtain background. Painted 1778. 50 x 40 Clanwilliam, Theodosia McGill, afterwards Countess of. [Earl of Darnley. G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. s8 x 40 Clare, Lord. See Nugent. Clarence, William Henry, Duke of, afterwards William IV. [Windsor Castle, private Au- dience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 234 X 17J Clarges, Lady. [ex. J. Price ; ex. J. Ruston ; Sir Charles Tennant, Bart.] Three-quarter length ; seated, facing to the right, and playing on a harp. 50x40 Clarges, Lady. [Edmund Davis, Esq.] I THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Clarges, Miss, daughter of Sir Thos. Clarges. [E. Raphael, Esq. R. A. 1882 and 1895]. Bust ; white dress with green mantle, and a rose. In an oval. 28 J x 23^ Clarges, Sir Simon, Bart. [C, 1878J Clinton, Sir Henry, K.B. [Duke of Newcastle. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter length. 40x50 Clive, Robert, Lord. [Rev. A. Clive] A head Mez. by James MacArdell and Richard PURCELL Clive, Robert, Lord. [— Willes, Esq.] Coghlan, Miss. Half length ; with dark mantle and hood Mez. by John Raphael Smith. 1770 Coghlan, Miss. Half length ; in a light-coloured bodice Mez. BY John Raphael Smith. 1772 Colman, George. [National Por trait Gallery] Eng. in Line by John Hall, 1789, and in STIPPLE Conway, F. M. Henry Seymour. Whole length Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont. 1780 Conway, F. M. Henry Seymour. [Duke of Argyll. S. K. 1867] Full face Copley, John Singleton. Half length Eng. in Line by W. C. Edwards Cornewall, Rt. Hon. Ch. Wol- fram. [Sir G. H. Cornewall, Bart. R. A. 1883] Full length ; seated, to left, in an armchair near a table, face turned to right ; in the Speaker's robes ; background, a curtain. 89 X 58 Cornwallis, Charles, Marquess^ [National Portrait Gallery] Cornwallis, Lady. [Henry Ro- senheim, Esq., Paris] Half length ; blue and white dress, with three-cornered blue hat and white bow or cockade. 28 X 24 Cotton, Lady. [Major King] Cox, Mr. [Miss Cox] Head. 11 X 9 Coyte, George, known as " Coyte alive." [ex. George Coyte, Esq., now in America. R. A. 1888] Bust; to right, nearly full face. Brown coat, black waistcoat, wig. Dark background. Painted 1780 (.'). 29 x 24 Cramer, the Metallurgist. [Sir W. Holbourne, Bart.] Bust. He holds a piece of ore in his hand. Behind him a volume lettered " Cramer on Metals." Through an open window a land- scape. 30 X 25 Crewe, Miss Emma. -^Earl of Crewe] Cruttenden, The Misses. [A. K. Kennedy Parvis, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half lengths. 44X58 Cumberland, Duke of. [Bucking- ham Palace] Full length ; walking to the right ; in crim- son and ermine robes ; background, an archi- tectural interior. 92 X 54 Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23^ X i7i Cumberland, Duke of. [Wind- sor] Head only, on a blank canvas. 54 X 40 Cumberland, Duke of. [Rev. J. Cosby White. G. G. 1885] 13^ X II Cumberland, Duke of. [ex. Sir Wm. Knighton, Bart. C, 1885] Seated, in a landcsape. 36 x 28 Cumberland, Anne (Luttrell), Duchess of. [H.M. the Queen, Buckingham Palace. R. A. 1878] Full length ; standing, right arm leaning on a table, on which is a coronet ; dark red bodice and train, trimmed with ermine ; figured petticoat ; background, landscape and architecture. 93 x 54 Cumberland, Anne, Duchess of [Windsor] Three-quarter length ; turned to right ; pearly grey waistcoat and skirt ; crimson train ; background architecture. Unfinished. This picture now hangs in the corridor. 50 x 40 Cumberland, Anne, Duchess of. [Lady Wilmot Horton. S. K. 1867] Bust, painted in 1766. 25 x 30 262 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Cumberland, Anne, Duchess of. [Lord Wenlock. R. A. 1883] Half length; to right, nearly full face; hands crossed in front ; low dress, dark back- ground. 36J X 28J Cumberland, Anne, Duchess of. Whole length; the head by Gainsborough, the rest by R. Cosway (?) Mez. by Valentine Green. 1783 Cumberland, Ann, Duchess of. [Rev. G. Cosby White. G. G. 1885] ■ 13 X loj Cumberland, Duke and Duchess of, with Lady Elizabeth Lut- trell. [Windsor Castle. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1895] The Duke and Duchess walking, arm in arm, in a garden; Lady E. seated in the background. Oval. 64^ X 49 Cunliffe, Mrs. {n^e Crewe). [Earl of Crewe] D'Ageno. See Ageno. Darnley, John, 4th Earl of. [Earl of Darnley. R. A. 1 877 ; G. G. 1885] Bust; light brown coat; powdered hair. 30x25 Dartmouth, William, Earl of. Half length Eng. in stipple by William Evans Dashwood, Sir Francis. See Le Despencer, Lord. Daughters, with portfolios, por- traits of his ; also called " Mrs. Lane and Mrs. Gainsborough." [C. J. Watkins Brett, Esq. C. 5, 4, 1864] From Sir Thos. Baring's collection Davenport, William Yelverton. [E. H. Davenport, Esq. R. A. 1887] Three-quarter length, to right; he leans against a tree, his gun in his left hand, his hat in his right. Dark coat with red collar, buff waistcoat ■: 50 X 39 Davison, Miss Jane. [W. Beau- mont, Esq.] Dehaney, Mr. and Mrs., with their daughter. [C. 1896, Life-size group, m a landscape. 93 X 57 Derby, Edward, 12th Earl of. [Earl of Derby. S. K. 1867 J Three-quarter length. 50 x 40 Mez. by George Keating. 1785 Devonshire, Duchess of. [Earl Spencer, Althorp. G.G. 1885] Whole length; leaning against a column; a scarf in both hands : her right leg crossed before the left ; no hat. 91 x 58 Mez. by Whiston Barney, 1808 ; and PARTLY IN stipple BY HeNRY MEYER Devonshire, Duchess of. [Vis- count Chfden. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; walking, in landscape ; she wears a light dress and a large plumed hat — arms folded one upon the other. Almost in monochrome. 23 x 15 Devonshire, Duchess of. The " Stolen Duchess" [J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.] 50 X 40 Devonshire, Duchess of. See also Lady Georgiana Spencer. Dodd, Dr. [R. W. Hudson, Esq.] Half length. 30 x 25 Donegal, Arthur, ist Marquess of. [Lord Templemore. R. A. 1877] Standing, cross legp.ed, under a tree; gun in right hand; grey coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Two dogs at his feet. 91 x 59|r Donegall, Anne, Marchioness of. [Lord Templemore. R. A. 1877] Full length; standing, in a garden; blue dress ; white shawl over left arm ; black ribbon round neck. 92 x 60 Douglas, Mrs. John. [Baron F. de Rothschild. ; ex. Hon. P. S. Pierrepont; B. I. 1840. R. A. 1883] See Plate XVII. Drummond, Mr. [Lord Burton. R. A. 1888] Full length ; standing, in a landscape, wiih legs crossed; long blue coat with large brass buttons ; white waistcoat and breeches, with top boots ; powdered hair. 90 X 58 Drummond, Mrs. [Mrs. Fred- erick Ames, Boston, U.S.A. R. A. 1890 ; C. 1893, ;^7035] Three-quarter length ; seated, to right ; her head leaning on her left hand, a drawing in her right ; grey dress, cut low, powdered hair. Busts and a crayon beside her ; background, a curtain. 49J X 39 63 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Drummond, Master [G. Drum- mond, Esq. B. I. 1855] Dudley. See Bate-Dudley. Duncombe, Hon. Anne. [J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., ex. Lord Rothschild]. See also Radnor, Countess of. Painted about 1774. See Plate XI Duncombe, Hon. Frances, after- wards Hon. Mrs. Bowater. [Earl of Radnor] Painted 1774 Dundonald, Isabella (Raymond), Countess of. [Rev. J. M. St. Clere Raymond. S. K. 1867] Bust ; to the right ; reddish dress, cut low. 30 X 25 Dunstanville, Sir Francis Basset, afterwards Lord de. [G. L. Basset, Esq. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1876 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; bare headed, standing near rocks in a landscape. Blue coat. 50 x 40 Dunstansville, Sir Francis Basset, afterwards Lord de. [Lord St. Levan. R. A. 1876 ; G. G. 1885] Bust. 19^ X 24 J- Dunstansville, Frances Susannah, Lady de. [G. L. Basset, Esq, S. K. 1867 ; R.A. 1876 ;G.G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; seated. 50 X 40 Dupont, Gainsborough. [Sir Edgar Vincent, K.C.M.G. ; ex. Geo. Richmond ; Lord Bateman. S. K. 1867] Head to right. 18 X 16 Dupont, Gainsborough. [Mrs. S. E. Browne] (?) Dupont, Gainsborough ; re- produced as a portrait of Thomas Gainsborough in Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower's Life of the Painter. Dupont, Philip. Dupont, Mrs. Philip. Eardley, Lady, and Child (after- wards Lady Saye and Scale). [Lady Wantage. S. K. 1868] Full lengths. 91 x 60 Eardley, Lady. [Viscount Gage] Eden, Sir John, Bart. [Sir J. Eden, Bart. R. A. 1878] Bust ; to left, in an oval ; red coat, white waistcoat. 29 X 24 Eden, Dorothea, Lady. [C. Wertheimer, Esq. R. A. 1878 and 1887 ; C. 1896, ^^5250] Bust. 29 J X 24 Edgar, Robert. [T. Lawrie and Co.] Bust in oval. Lilac coat. Bachground, foliage. 30 X 25 Edgar, Miss Elizabeth. [G. Harland Peck, Esq.] Edgar, Miss Katherine. [Sir Geo. Donaldson,. New G. 1897-98] Half length ; body turned to left, full face : blue dress, blue ribbon round the neck ; flowers in the hair ; background, trees and sky. Oval. 29 J X 24 Edward, Prince, Duke of Kent. [Windsor Castle, private Au- dience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23 J — 17 J Edwin, John. [Garrick Club] Egerton, Anna Maria. [C. 1892] Egremont, Countess of. [Earl of Leconfield] Elizabeth, Princess, afterwards of Hesse-Homburg. [Windsor Castle ; private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23J — 17J Elliott, Grace Dalrymple, Mrs [Duke of Portland, Welbeck. B. I. i860] Bust, life size, turned to right, in an oval. White dress, with pink ribbons; powdered hair. 29 — 25 Elliott, Grace Dalrymple, Mrs. [Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt] Whole length; walking to left, in light flowing dress. Architectural background, with a glimpse of landscape Mez. by John Dean. 1779 Erne and Dillon, The Ladies. [Sir Ch. Tennant, Bart. R. A. 1885] Half lengths ; yellow and pink dresses ; the one lady leaning on the other's shoulder. 39 — 45i Ernst, Mr. [Earl of Leconfield] A Head. He was secretary to Count Bruhl, who married the widow of the first Lord Fgremoni CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Erskine, Thomas, ist Lord. [A. McKay, Esq. S. K. 1868] To waist. 30 — 25 Essex, W. A. Mollis, Earl of, presenting a cup to Thos. Clutterbuck of Waterf ord . [C. j38o. — Clutterbuck, Esq/J Evans, Miss. [C. 1873, £7^7 los.] Fairfield, Mr. [S. Neumann, Esq.] Fairfield, Mrs. [Mons.C.Groult] Family Group, [exors. of Arch- deacon Hony. R. A. 1877] Lady in black dress, gentleman in brown coat and breeches, with red gold-laced waist- coat, walking, the lady holding a httle girl by the hand, gsixga Fane, Hon. Mrs. Henry, of Fulbeck, Lincolnshire. [E. Raphael, Esq. C. 12, 5, 1888, ^3045 ; R. A. 1893] Half length, in an oval. 36x28 Fane, Hon. Mrs. Henry. [Mrs. Thwaites. R. A. 1888 ; C. 1887, ;^5092 los.] Half length; seated, three-quarter face to the tight, arms crossed in lap; black dress, cut low ; red sash, large hat with feathers ; white ostrich feather in right hand; back- ground, a red curtain. 354 x 27J Fane, Mrs. [C. Empson, Esq. ex. Walter Savage Landor] Wife of Admiral Fane. Seated in a garden, caressing a Utile dog. She wears a large beaver hat. Background very boldly treated Fell, Miss, afterwards Countess Zeddlemann. [ex. Gregory ; C. 1875] Festin, John, musician. [Shep- herd Bros.] Finch, Lady Charlotte, after- wards Countess of Sufiolk. [ex. Earl of Aylesford. C. 4, 6, 1881] In a blue and white dress, holding a shuttle Firman, John, of Witham, Essex. [Geo. Josselyn, Esq. R. A. 1880 ; G. G. 1885] Bust ; nearly full face ; brown coat ; dark background. 29 x 24 Fischer, Johann Christian. [Hampton Court. R. A. 1877 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing, leaning on a square pianoforte. Crimson velvet coat, white stock- ings. A violin and an oboe are introducedt 89X56J (?) Fischer, Mrs. (Mary G.). [Mons. R. Kann, Paris] 25iX 2li Fisher, Kitty. [Lord Wolver- ton ; ex. Wynn Ellis] 23x19^ Fitzherbert, Mrs. [Arthur San- derson, Esq. S.K. i868;G.G. 1885] To the waist ; seated ; her head resting on her right hand. Low dress. 30x25 Fitz William, Hon. — . [Fitz- william Museum, Cambridge] Folkestone, Jacob, Viscount. [Society of Arts. R. A. 1877 ; G. G. 1885] Whole length ; standing, in Peer's Robes, a scroll in his left hand, on which the words " Plan of the Society " appear. 93 x 57J Eng. in stipple by Charles Sherwin, but only a half length on the plate Folkestone, Viscountess. [Geo. Holt, Esq.] Ford, Miss Anne, of Bath, after- wards the second wife of Philip Thicknesse. See Thick- nesse, Mrs. Fordyce, Mr. [G. G. 1885] Fordyce, Lady Margaret. [Earl of Rosebery, K.G.] See also Lindsay Half length, seated, to right, head resting on right hand ; dark dress, cut low, trimmed with lace and pearls ; grey hat with feathers ; reddish hair ; dark background with red cur- tain. 30 x 24i Foote, Samuel, [ex. Wiltshire. C. 1867] Fownes, Mrs. [A. F. Somerville, Esq. R. A. 1886] Half length, to right ; three-quarter face ; white satin dress, cut low, with red bows and a sprig of myrtle ; pearl necklace and earrings ; light background. 30x24^ Fox, Charles James, addressing the House of Commons. [Major-Gen. Claude Alexander, M.P. R. A. 1881 ; G. G. 1885] Fox stands on the right, and seems to he speaking with great animation. He wears a blue coat and breeches. 22^ x 30J Franco, Rafael . [Lawrie and Co . ] Full length, seated at a table writing; brownish-yellow coat, green table cloth, red curtain ; St. Paul's in the distance. 6r x 56 265 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Franks, Miss, with a Lamb. [Lieut. -Col. W. Honywood. G. G. 1885] A family portrait. 50x40 Gage, Viscount. [Viscount Gage] Gage, Viscountess. [Viscount Gage] Gainsborough, Humphry. [A. J. Forbes-Leith, Esq.] Painted for Thos. Hall, of Harpsden Court, Henley. 28 X 22^ Gainsborough, Humphry. [J. H. Chance, Esq. R. A. 1886] Half length ; to right ; three-quarier face ; black coat, dark background. 30 x 24 Gainsborough, Thomas (the Painter). [Royal Academy ; Leeds 1868 ; G. G. 1885] Nearly a profile, to the left. In an oval. 29 J X 24 Eng. in stipple by F. Bartolozzi and BY Henry Meyer Gainsborough, Thomas (the Painter). [Earl of Leicester] Similar to the R.A . picture. 30 X 25 ( ?) Gainsborough, Thomas. [Lord Ronald Gower, R. A. 1877] Bust, in a red coat. A Sketch. 2oJ X i6 Gainsborough, Thomas. [Sir W. Agnew, Bart. New G. 1897- iJ Half length ; body facing spectator, head turned to right ; blue coat, striped waistcoat powdered hair, dark background. Oval. 29X 17 (?) Gainsborough, Thomas. [National Portrait Gallery] Miniature on canvas of a young man Painted about 1780, and not a portrait of Gainsborough himself. 5^x4^ Gainsborough, Thomas. [Geo. Richmond. S. K. 1867 ; C. 1897, £6o9^ Bust ; unfinished ; three-cornered hat. Painted about 1754 (?). 23 x 19 Gainsborough, Thomas. [L. Goldschmidt, Paris] (?) Gainsborough, Mrs. [ex. W. Sharpe. S. K. 1868 ; G. G. 1885 ; C. 8, 5, 1897] Half length ; turned to the left ; grey and white dress, blue ribbon about her neck. A plump woman of about 35 to 40 ; painted about 1770 ; quite unlike the accepted por- traits of Mrs. Gainsborough. 30x25 Gainsborough, Mrs. [Sir G. Loder, Bart. R. A. 1882] Bust ; three-quarter face to right ; pink and tehite drapery ; lace cap ; dark background. In an oval. 28x23 Gainsborough and his Wife. [Rev. E. Gardiner. G. G. 1885] 36x28 Gainsborough, Miss Margaret. [John Corbett, Esq. G. G. 1885] 30x25 Gainsborough, Miss Margaret. [National Gallery, ex. Misses Lane. R. A. 1887] Gainsborough, Mary, afterwards Mrs. Fischer. [Sir G. Loder, Bart. R. A. 1882] Bust, to left, seated ; she is playing a guitar> which is lightly sketched in. 30X 26J Gainsborough, the Misses. [S. K. Museum] Gainsborough, the Misses, as Children. [N. G. ex. Henry Vaughan, Esq. R. A. 1886] Full length figures, in a landscape; the child on the left trying to catch a butterfly. 45x41 Gainsborough, Margaret. [Rev. E. R. Gardiner] Gainsborough, Margaret and Mary. [S. Whitbread, Esq. G. G. 1885] 91x59 Gainsborough, John, the Pain- ter's Brother. [W. Sharpe, Esq.] Gainsborough, John, the Pain- ter's Brother . [Henry Graves . Esq. G. G. 1885] 30x24 Gainsborough, Humphry. [J. H. Chance, Esq.] Gainsborough, Humphry. [ex. W. Sharpe, Esq. G. G. 1885; C. 1898] 24 X 20 Gainsborough, John, the Pain- ter's Father. [Mrs. Poole] Gardiner, Edward R. [Rev. E. R. Gardiner. G. G. 1885] Half length ; in a blue Van Dyck dress turned to the right. Oval {signed). 24x20 566 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Gardiner, Miss Susan. [Rev. E. R. Gardiner] Bust. 24x21 J Garnett, John, Bishop of Clogher. Half length Eng. by James MacArdell Garrick, David. [Town Hall, Stratford-on-Avon. G. G. 1885] Whole length; leaning against a bust of Shakespeare, in a park, the Palladian Bridge at Wilton in the distance, gii x 59^ Mez. by Valentine Green. 1769 Garrick, David, [ex. Lord Revel- stoke] Eng. in Line by Joseph Collyer Garrick, David. [Sir Belford H. Wilson, Bart. M. 1857] Head. 18x11 Garrick, David. [D.R.Blaine; Sir Robert Peel, Bart. ; now in America.] Garrick, David. [C. 1904 : bought in] Front face, similar to the following. 30 x 25 Garrick, David. [F. Fleisch- mann, Esq.] Front face ; brownish purple coat ; book in hand. 30 x 25 Garrick, David, with his Father, [ex. Lord Northwick. C.1859] Garrick, Mrs. [Sir Belford H. Wilson, Bart. M. 1857] Head. i8xii Gentleman, Portrait of a. [Sir W. Agnew, Bart. R. A. 1885] Bust. In uniform ; hand thrust into his coat ; powdered hair ; dark background. 29 X24 Gentleman, Portrait of a. [Rev. Sir Talbot H. B. Baker, Bart.] Bust. 28iX23i George III. [Windsor Castle] Full length, in the Robes of the Garter. 95iX58i George III. [Windsor Castle; private Audience Chamber] Bust, to left, in Windsor uniform; oval. 23x17^ George III. [Buckingham Palace] Full length, in Windsor uniform, gi x 60 Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont, and partly in stipple by Hopwood and ANOTHER George III. [Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain. G. G. 1885] Whole length. 91 x 60 George III. [E. J. Shirley, Esq.] George III. [— Waters, Esq.] George IV. See Prince of Wales Giardini, Felice de'. [John Chap- man Walker, Esq. G. G.1885] Half length ; wearing a wig, laced coat, and ruffles ; tight hand in the breast of his coat, hat under his left arm; dark background. 28iX24i Giardini, Felice de'. [Knole (?)] Giardini, Felice de'. [Major Shuttleworth] Giardini, Felice de', [E. Boussod, Paris] Gideon, Lady, afterwards Lady Eardley. [Viscount Gage. R. A. ir- ^ Full length ; standing ; in her fight hand a flower ; white satin dress, grey silk train ; gold-figured scarf about waist. Background, landscape. 84 x 58 Girl, Portrait of a. [George Stanton, Esq. R. A. 1887] Half length; under life size; standing; brown dress ; her left hand on her hip, with her right she holds a bunch of flowers against her waist. Dark background. 34 x 26 Girl, Portrait of a. [Col. Wm. Pinney] Three-quarter length ; to left, head turned to spectator. White dress, blue sash, grey felt hat trimmed with blue, over a lace cap into which a blue ribbon is run. Flowers in her left hand and her uplifted skirt. 30 x 25 Girl, Portrait of a young. [Duke of Sutherland] Half length. 30x25 Glenorchy, Lady. [Hon. Mrs. BaiUie Hamilton . R . A . 1 893 ] Half length ; to left, nearly full face ; brocade dress, green, with black lace ; lace cap fastened under the chin with black lace. Brown background. 29^ x 24 Gloucester, Wm. Henry, Duke of [Earl Waldegrave . R, A. If ~ Full length ; standing, in a landscape ; in uniform, leaning on his sword ; cocked hat in right hand. Unfinished. 91x55 Gloucester, Duchess of. [For- merly in the collection of H.R.H. the Duke of Cam- bridge. C. 1904] Front face, in a dark costume. 50 x 40 167 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Gloucester, Duchess of. [ex. Alfred Beit, Esq.] Three-quarter length ; in a white dress. The head by Gainsborough. 50 x 40 Goddard, Mrs. William, and her Children. [Lady Erie. R. A. 1878] Painted after Mrs. Goddard's death. The two children, girls, are standing in a garden, while their mother appears to them from a cloud. 98 X 72 Goldsmith, Oliver. [Col. Holden. S. K. 1867] Bust ; to left. 23JX 17I Goring-Thomas, Master ; a boy. [Morris K. Jesup, U.S.A.] Full length. 63 x 47 Gossett, or Gosset, the Rev. — . [R. A. 1780] Gould, Sir Charles. [Equitable Assurance Society. R. A. 1783] Full length. Sir Charles was " requested to sit for his picture to be done by Mr. Gains- borough," in 1782 Grafton, Duchess of. [Sir Wm. Agnew. C. i888,;^ioi8; R. A. 1892] Half length ; turned to the left. She wears a brocade dress, cut low in front ; her face is turned to the spectator. In an oval. 30 x 25 Graham, The Hon. Mrs. {nee Cathcart) [National Gallery of Scotland] Full length ; leaning against the pedestal of a column. She wears a crimson petticoat and an over dress of yellowish grey. In her right hand she holds a feather ; feathers in her hair ; background of trees. Graham, Hon. Mrs. {nee Cath- cart), [Miss Graeme. S. K. 1867] To waist. 36 X 28 Graham, Portrait of the Hon. Mrs., known as " the House- maid." [Earl of Carlisle. R. A. 1890] Supposed to be a rejected design for the portrait now in the Scottish National Gallery. She is in the dress of a housemaid, and stands in a doorway with a broom, gt^ x 57J Grattan, Henry. [C. 187 1, £$2$] Gravenor, Dr. [G. Dupont] A tmall picture Graves, Richard. [C. Ford] Half length Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont Greaves, Rear- Admiral. [In America] Grosvenor, Henrietta, Countess of. [Duke of Westminster, K.G.] Half length ; in a Watteau costume ; white hat with pink ribbons. 50 x 40 Guilford, Francis North, 4th Earl of. [Col. North, M.P. S. K. If 50x40 Guilford. See also North. Gunning, Miss. [S. Gooden, Esq.] 30x25 Hallam, Mrs. [Col. Lennard. S. K. 1867] Bust. 30 X 25 Hallett, Mr. and Mrs. [Lord Rothschild. R. A. 1885] Called " the Morning Walk." Life size figures in a landscape, the man in a dark dress with white stockings ; the lady in a light grey dress with greenish-yellow ribbons and large hat. A white Pomeranian dog beside her, 93 X 70. Hamilton, James, 5th Duke of. [Lord Templemore. R. A, 1877] Full length ; standing ; red clothes ; stick in left hand ; dog lapping water ; background, trees and rocks. 92 x 60 Hamilton, Lord Archibald, [Lord Templemore. R. A. 1877] Full length ; standing, cross legged ; leaning on a stick ; green coat, yellow waistcoat, black breeches ; hat in hand. 92 x 60 Hamilton, Anne, Duchess of. [Lord Templemore. R. A. 1877] Full length ; seated, in a landscape ; light brown dress, red cloak trimmed with fur ; arm leaning on a pedestal which supports an urn ; high head. 92 x 60 Hamilton, Lord Archibald. [Miss AUce de Rothschild. R. A. 1 89 1 ; ex. Stover Collec- tion] Bust, in an oval ; blue dress. 25^ x 20 . Inscribed T. Gainsborough Hamilton, John, Duke of. [Miss Alice de Rothschild. R. A. 1 891 ; ex. Stover Collec- tion] Bust, in an oval ; black dress. 25} x 20 Hamilton, Emma, Lady. [ex. Bishop of Ely] 268 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Hammond, Mary, afterwards wife of W. P. Hammond, when young. [Mrs. Warren, Boston, U.S.A.] Half length. 30 x 25 Hampden, Viscount. [Mrs. Rus- ton ; ex. Price Collection. C. 1888 and 1895] Half length, to right; in wig, plum- coloured coat and lace cravat. In an oval. Harbord, Sir Harbord, Bart., afterwards ist Lord Suf&eld. [Town Hall, Norwich. G. G. 1885] Whole length; standing, looking down- wards to the right ; right hand holding a long cane, left elbow on a pedestal which supports a large vase. 93x60 Harborough, Countess of. [Mrs. Watson, Pittsburg, U.^.A.] Harding, Mrs. [Messrs. Agnew and Sons] 40x50 Hastings, Marquess of, and Earl oi Moira Full length in uniform; landscape back- ground. 90 x 60 Hatchett, Mrs. [Archibald Coats, Esq., Paisley] Half length. Oval. 30x25 Haverfield, Miss. [Wallace Col- lection. R. A. 1894] Full length of a child, in a landscape, facing the spectator. She is tying the strings of a black cloak, which partly covers her white dress ; a large white hat with bows ; red shoes. 45iX39i Haviland, James, York Herald. [L. Lesser, Esq.] Three-quarter length. Light fawn-coloured coat. He liolds a book and wears a yellow glove on one hand. Background, a crimson curtain. 50 x 40 {about) Haviland, Thomas. [C. Fairfax Murray, Esq. G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 49x39 Hawke, Lord. [Lord Hawke] Hawkins, Admiral. [F. Fleisch- mann, Esq. ; ex. S. Bicknell ; J. Palmer] Three-quarter length, in naval uniform< blue laced with gold ; large wis ; background, a red curtain. 35IX28J Hawse, Master. [Humphrey Roberts, Esq.] Heathcote, Mrs. Heathcote, Master. [J. Heath- cote, Esq.] Full length; a boy aged 4-5, holding in one hand a black feathered hat, in the other flowers. Landscape background Heberden, Mrs. [Rev. F. G. Jenyns. G. G. 1885] Bust. Oval. 29x24 Henderson, John. [A. McKay, Esq. G. G. 1885] Henderson, John. [Garrick Club] Henderson, John. [National Portrait Gallery] Hertford, Marquess of. [L. Vernon Harcourt, Esq.] Hervey, Captain Augustus, after- wards Earl of Bristol. [Mar- quess of Bristol] whole length ; in naval uniform, standing turned to right ; his left arm on the fluke of an anchor ; telescope in left hand. Back- ground, rocks and sea, with a line of battle ship at anchor Mez. by John Watson. 1793 Hervey, Augustus, [ex. General the Hon. — Phipps. C. 25, 6, 1859] Killed in Lord Howe's action with the fleets of France and Spain, 1782 Hervey, John Augustus, Lord. [Marquess of Bristol. R. A. 1891] Full length, standing ; in naval uniform ; he leans against a gun, a telescope in left hand, a letter in right ; a dog sits beside him ; shipping in the distance. 87 x 59 Heywood, James Modyford ; of Mariston. [C. 29, 6, 1889] Hibbert, Thomas. [Mrs. Hibbert. R. A. 1896] Three-quarter length, standing, facing the spectator, his hat in his right hand ; red coat, powdered hair ; background, trees. 49 x 39 Hibbert, Thomas. [J. N. Hib- bert, Esq. R. A. 1885] Small three-quarter length figure standing in a landscape ; red coat, powdered hair. 15 XII Hibbert, Mrs., wife of Thomas Hibbert, Esq. [Baron Alph. de Rothschild ; ex. J. N. Hibbert, Esq. R. A. 1885] Three-quarter length ; seated ; light yellow- ish dress ; green scarf ; powdered hair ; large hat and feathers ; the arms crossed. 49J x 39 Hill, " Jack Hill." [Geo. J. 269 i THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Gould, Esq., ex. The Misses Lane. R. A. 1887] Half length ; looking to right, holding a bird's nest with eggs in his hand; brown jacket ; landscape background. 30 x 24J Hill, Mr. and Mrs. John. [A. Sanderson, Esq., Edinburgh] Hingeston, Rev. James. [Ed- ward Milles Nelson, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 30 x 25 Hingeston, Mrs. James (young). [Edward Milles Nelson, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 29 x 24 Hingeston, Mrs. James (old). [Edward Milles Nelson, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 29^ x 24^ Hingeston, John, M.D., the younger. [Edward Milles Nelson, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 31 X25 Hippisley, Mrs. (sister of Lady De Dunstanville). [Sir C. Tennant, Bart. G. G. 1885] Half length. 30 x 24 Honywood, General. [Messrs. Agnew and Son] Riding to the right ; in general's full dress uniform, his sword in his right hand; no scabbard ; bay horse ; landscape background. (?) 118 X 114 Hood, Viscount. [Ironmongers' Hall. G. G. 1885] Whole length, in an admiral's uniform, one arm resting on the fluke of an anchor, and holding a telescope. 50 x 40 Hood, Mr. [Mrs. Knapp] Horde, Caroline Anne. [In America ; ex Cote House, Lambourne, Berks] Early Bath period. 30 x 25 Horton, Christopher, of Catton Hall, Derbyshire ; first hus- band of Anne Luttrell, after- wards Duchess of Cumberland. [Sir Geo. Wilmot Horton, Bart. G. G. 1885] Hotchkin, Charles. Son of the Attorney-General for Jamaica. [Forbes and Paters on ; 1901] To the left. Brown coat ; lace cravat ; left hand in coat ; wig ; dark background ; in an oval. 30x25 Half length. 30 x 25 2: Howard, of Corby, Anne (With- am), Mrs. [P. J. C. Howard, Esq. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Bust ; full face ; dark hair bound with pearls ; low dress trimmed with ermine. 29iX24j Howe, Richard, 1st Earl. [Trinity House. S. K. 1868] 96x59 Howe, The Countess. [Lord Iveagh] Howland, Miss Isabel. [Sir George Beaumont, Bart. R. A. 1877 ; G. G. 1885] Half length. Flowered dress ; black velvet necklace with pearls ; high head. 29 x 24J Housemaid. See Graham, Hon. Mrs. Hunt, Dodding. [ex. Albert Levy] 36—28 Huntly, Marchioness of. [Baron E. Rothschild] Three-quarter length, in a large hat. 30 x 25 (?) Hurd, Richard, Bishop of Worcester. [Hampton Court. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter face to left ; in robes ; large wig ; left hand on stole. 30 x 25 Hurd, Richard, Bishop of Wor- cester. [Hartlebury Castle] Hurd, Richard, Bishop of Worcester. [Hampton Court] Nearly full face, to right, in robes; no hands showing. 27x20 Hutchinson, Dr., of Bath. [Messrs. Agnew and Son] , Innes, Lady. [W. H. Fuller, N.Y. ; sold, 1898, bought — Avory, jun.] Half length, in an oval ; yellow dress with white lace ; dark hair, dressed high ; no hands showing. 30 x 25 Jodrell, Richard P. [Mrs. Rus- ton. C. 1888] Johnson, Dr. Samuel. [Lady Wantage. G. G. 1885] Bust. 29 X 24 Johnson, Dr. Samuel. [Jas. Crossley. M. 1857: C. 15, i, 1887] Johnston, Major, afterwards General,of Hawley's Dragoons, [Walpole ; vol. ii. p. 25] CATALOGUE Jones, William. [J. W. North, Esq. G. G. 1885] Bust. 29 X 24 Jordan, Mrs. [G. H. TurnbuU. S. K. 1868] To waist. 30x25 Jordan, Mrs. [Baron Edmond de Rothschild] 75c, X62C Kilmorey, Jack Needham, 12th Viscount. [Earl of Kilmorey, K.P. R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing, in a landscape, wearing a blue coat and breeches and a red waistcoat laced with gold. His right hand rests on his stick, his hat is under his left arm 91x60 Kinloch, Mrs. Isabella, wife of David Kinloch, of Gourdie. [On loan, National Gallery, Scotland] Square to the front, in an oval ; yellow dress, cut low ; brown hair, dressed high ; no hands. 30x25 Kirby, John. [Rev. Kirby Trimmer. S. K. 1868] Half length. 30 x 25 Kirby, Mrs. John. [C. 12, 5, 1888] Half length. 30x25 Kirby, Joshua, and Mrs. Kirby. [Rev. Kirby Trimmer. S. K. 1868] 30x25 Kirby, Joshua. [S. K. M., Dyce Collection] Head only Kirby, Joshua. Half length Mkz. by John Dixon Ladies, Portraits of Two. [J. D. Cobbold, Esq.] One lady seated beneath a tree, on the left ; the other, a young girl, stands beside her with a lamb in her arms ; before them the lamb's mother. On the left a distant landscape with a cloudy shy. Draperies pink. 29x24 Lady, name unknown. [Rev. Sir Talbot H. B. Baker, Bart.] Oval. 33x28 Lady, Portrait of an unknown. Said to be a Mrs. Champion. [Mr. Cobbe, Newbridge Park, Co. Dublin] Half length, in an oval. 30x25 (?) OF PICTURES Lady, Portrait of a. [Miss Alice de Rothschild. R. A. 1 889] Half length ; to the right. White dress, with blue cloak held up by right hand ; pow- dered hair and feathers. 29 x 24 Lady, Portrait of a. [Mrs. Joseph. R. A. 1894] Half length, to right ; blue dress, cut lovi ; a plait of hair falls over her left shoulder, Dark background. In an oval. 28i x 22^ Lady, Portrait of a. [H. Roberts, Esq.] A girl of sixteen or seventeen ; bust, to the right. Brown hair, simply tied up ; blue dress, cut low, with white fichu. g\ x 7J A very early work, painted about 1746-48. It probably represents Margaret Burr, the painter's wife, and may well be the portrait on which he was engaged when they became fiances Lady, Portrait of a. [Sir W. Holbourne, Bart.] Bust white satin dress and blue; in a mantle edged with fur. 30X 25 Lady of the Rhodes family. [Earl of Crewe, Fryston] Lady, name unknown. [Louis Huth, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length ; life size. 30 x 26 Lady in Blue, A. [Alexis de Hitroff, Petersburg] Half length, full face. 30 x 25 Lady, Portrait of a. [ex. Sir Wm. Knighton, Bart.] Lady, Portrait of a. [D. H. King, jun., Esq.] Circular Lady and Child, name unknown. [Rev. John M. St. C. Ray- mond. G.G.I 885] Oval. 17JX15 Lady, Portrait of a, with flowers in her hair. [Arthur Sander- son, Edinburgh] Half length. Painted at Bath. 30 x 25 Lady, Portrait of a. [ex. C. Beckett Denison, Esq. C. 20, 6, 1885] Half length, white dress, and pearl necklace. 31 X 37 Lady, name unknown (Duchess of Gloucester ?). [Edmund H. Turton, Esq. G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Langston, John, of Sarsden, 71 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Oxfordshire. [Countess of Ducie. G. G. 1885] Whole length. 91 x 58 Langton, Mrs. [W. H. Gore- Langton, Esq.] Blue dress Langton, Joseph. [W. H. Gore- LangtonJ Lansdowne, Wm. Petty, ist Marquess of. [C. W. Mansell Lewis. R. A. 1885] Bust, showing right hand : red coat, blue waistcoat, powdered hair ; hat under left arm. In an oval. 29J x 24J Eng. in stipple, by F. Bartolozzi, 1787 AND BY Granger, 1797 Lavinia. [T. Humphry Ward, Esq.] Lawrence, Stringer. [National Portrait Gallery] Le Brun, Francesca Danzi, after- wards Madame. [Leopold Hirsch, Esq., ex. Duchess of Montrose. R. A. 1780 ; R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length; seated in a chair, resting on her left arm ; hair curled and powdered ; white dress trimmed with lace ; game scarf about shoulders. 49J x 39J Le Despencer, Lady. [Lord Iveagh. R. A. 1896] Bust; slightly turned to left, looking to right ; white dress, cut low, black hat and feathers ; dark background. In an oval. 29 X 24 Le Nain, Miss. [Lawrie and Co. ; C. Sedelmeyer, Paris] Half length. 30x25 Lethbridge, Dorothea, Lady. [Sir Wroth A. Lethbridge, Bart. R. A. 1878] Bust ; to right, nearly full face ; lace ker- chief over head and tied under chin ; light dress, with roses and jasmine. 29 x 24 J Lewis, William Thomas, Come- dian. [Sir Charles Tennant, Bart. R. A. 1891] Half length ; to the left, head turned to the right ; fancy dress ; his arms are crossed, in his right hand a sheathed rapier. Dark background. 27J x 24 Leyborne, Mrs. [F. Leyborne Popham. S. K. 1868] 50x40 Ligonier, Viscount. [Gen. Pitt Rivers. R. A. 1881] Full length ; standing, leaning against his 2 grey charger ; in uniform. Landscape back- ground. Painted 177^ 0). 92X60J Ligonier, Viscountess. [Gen. Pitt Rivers. R. A. 1881 ; Agnew's, 1903] Full length ; standing, to right ; leaning against a pedestal on which is a bronze figure ; white dress, open in front, grey and gold sash ; upon a chair to the left are portfolios, draw- ings, &c. Background, a red curtain and a landscape seen through a window. 92 x 61 Lincoln, Earl of (Thos. Pelham Clinton). [Duke of New- castle. S. K. 1867] Full length ; standing. 94x58 Lincoln, Countess of (Anna Maria Stanhope). [Duke of Newcastle. S. K. 1867] Full length ; standing, playing the harp. 95x58 Lindsay, afterwards Fordyce, Lady Margaret. [Earl of Crawford. R. A. 1883 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing, in a landscape ; arms crossed in front ; black dress. 94 x 59 J Linley, Samuel. [Dulwich Gal- lery] Linley, Thomas. [Dulwich Gal- lery] Linley, Thomas, with his sister Eliza, afterwards Mrs. Sheri- dan. [Knole. S. K. 1867 ; New G. 1897-8 ; F. W. 1895] Half length. On the right, Eliza Linley, turned to the right, but with head looking out at spectator. Her brother behind her, with his head at her shoulder. Linley, Miss. See also Sheridan, Mrs. Linley, Eliza (Mrs. Sheridan), [ex. Viscountess Clifden. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; seated, uuder a tree. 23X15 Linley, Miss. [Major Shuttle- worth] Linley, Miss. [Miss Alice de Rothschild] Linley, Miss — . [C. 1903, sold for 9000 guineas to Charles Wertheimer, Esq.] Head in an oval. 30 x 25 Linley, the Misses, afterwards Mrs. Tickell and Mrs. Sheridan. [Dulwich Gallery] See Plate XXIII 2 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Lisle, Portrait of a daughter of John, Lord Lisle, when a child. [C. 9, 6, 1888] Littleton, Lady, sister of Chris- topher Horton. [Rev. Sir Geo. Wilmot Horton, Bart. G. G. 1885] Half length. 31 x 26 Lloyd, Heneage, and his sister. [Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi] Small full lengths, in a landscape ; signed T. G. in a monogram. Painted about 1750-2. 24iX3iJ Loutherbourg, Philip James. [Dulwich Gallery] Low, Miss. [C. 1862] Lynch, William. Half length Mez. by S. W. Reynolds Macaulay, Catherine, nee Saw- bridge, afterwards Graham. [E. P. Roberts, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 30x25 Man, Portrait of a. [Hugh P. Lane, Esq.] Yellowish coat; a spud in his hand. 30x25 Manners, Lord Robert. [Lord Canterbury. S. K. 1868] 50x40 Markham, William, of Becca Hall, Yorkshire ; Private Secretarv to Warren Hastings. [Col. Grant. G. G. 1885] Half length. 30x25 Mary,H.R.H. Princess ; daughter of George III. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23^ x 17J Master in Chancery, in wig and robes, portrait of a. [Earl of Ravensworth. G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Mathews, T. [Fonmon Castle, Cardiff] Mathews, Mrs. T. [Fonmon Castle, Cardiff] Sheridan's antagonist and his wife Maynard, Viscountess (Nancy Parsons). [Comte de Boni Cas- 2 tellane, Paris ; ex. Marquess of Lansdowne. S. K. 1867 ; R. A. 1886] Three-quarter length ; wearing a black lace mantilla. 50 x 40 Mears, Mrs., portrait of (daughter of Sir Benjamin Truman). [Alfred de Rothschild, Esq. ; ex. H. Villebois, Esq. G. G. 1885 ; R. A. 1878] Full length ; standing, one arm resting on a pedestal surmounted by an urn. High- head dress with flowers. Lilac dress, white petticoat and shoes. Companion picture to that of Mrs. Villebois. 84^x55 Medlicott, Mr. [S. A. 1763] Mendip, Lady, wife of Wellbore Ellis, Lord Mendip. [Earl of Normanton. R. A. 1882] Bust, to right ; grey hair, brushed back ; black cloak ; lace cap. In an oval. 28x23 Mendip, Wellbore Ellis, Lord [Ch. Ch. Oxford. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter length ; standing. 50 x 40 Eng. in Line by John Whessell Methuen, Mrs. [T. A. Widener, Esq., Philadelphia] Half length. Oval. 30x25 Methuen, Paul. [Lord Methuen. R. A. 1877] Three-quarter length ; seated ; ted coat, waistcoat and breeches ; right hand gloved and holding the other glove ; wig and sword. 49x39 Methuen, Paul Cobb, son of Paul Methuen. [Lord Methuen. R. A. 1877] Meyrick, Mr. [J. J. Mowbray, Esq.] standing, in a landscape, leaning against a pedestal. Van Dyck dress. 49x39 J Middleton, Surg.-Maj., David. [Miss Paton. R. A. 1877 ; G. G. 1885] Half length ; brown coat, yellow figured waistcoat ; long hair. 29J x 24J- Middleton, Surg.-Maj., David. [Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G.] Similar to the last. Formerly called a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. 30x25 Mills of Saxby, Mr. (Ch. Neck, Esq.] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Minet, Daniel, F.R.S., F.S.A. [William Minet] Half length. 30x25 ? S THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Minet, Mrs. [H. L. BischofE- sheim. G. G. 1885] 28JX22J Eng. bv R. Josey Moljmeux, Lady. [Earl of Sef- ton] Monckton, Hons. Eliza Mary and Henrietta Maria, children. [Viscount Galway. S. K. 1867] 50x40 Monks, Heads of Two, a Study, [ex. Viscount Clifden. G. G. 1885] 34x31 Montagu, Geo. Brudenell, Duke of. [Duke of Buccleuch. S. K. 1868] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Montagu, Henry, Duke of, in Grosvenor Catalogue ; a mis- take (?) for Geo. Brudenell. [Duke of Buccleuch] 50x40 Montagu, Mary, Duchess of (1768). [Duke of Buccleuch, K.G., K.T.] Half length ; crimson silk dress with black lace. 30 X 25 Montagu, Mary, Duchess of. [Duke of Buccleuch, K.G., K. T. S. K. 1868] Three-quarter length ; facing to left. 50 x 40 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Moody, Mrs., and her Children. [Dulwich Gallery] Morgan, Right Hon. Sir Charles, Bart. [Equitable Assurance Society. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing ; hat in right hand. Painted 1783. 90x60 Mott, Miss Juliet, aged 12. [Edmund Backhouse, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. 24x23 Mountmorris, Harvey Reymond, Viscount. [Mrs. Burns. R. A. 1887] Light green coat, lace ruffles, bob wig, hat under left arm. Grey background. 28 x 23 Mountstuart, John, Viscount, afterwards Earl of Bute. pNIarquess of Bute] Half length. 30x25 Eng. in stipple by Caroline Watson 2 Moysey, Abel, M.P. [Henry G. Moysey, Esq., Bathcalton Court, Somerset. G. G. 1885] Full length; in a landscape, standing, front view ; claret-coloured dress ; hat in left hand, stick in right, pgix 55i Moysey, Abel, Esq., Study for a portrait of. [National Gal- lery] Mulgrave, Constantine John, Lord. [Lily, Duchess of Marl- borough] Half length, »» an oval. 30 x 25 Mulgrave, Lord. [ex. H. Bingham Mildmay and Hirsch. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885 ; C. 1897, £73S] Full length ; leaning on a table : in naval uniform, gi x 60 Mulgrave, Lady. [R. A. 1885 ; C 1895, ;^io,500 ; sold to " Campbell "] Bust ; to left, head turned over right shoulder ; white dresi, black silk mantle ; powdered hair. In an oval. 28J x 24. Atwther version of this picture, also ascribed to Gainsborough, was ofiered at Christie's in 1895 and 1897. It was not by the master Mulgrave, Lady. [G. Gould, Esq., U.S.A.] A miniature Murphy, Arthur. Musical Club, Members of a. [J. G. Strutt, Esq.] Nassau, Hon. — . [Duke of Hamilton] Neave, Sir Richard. [Laurie and Co. 1898] Painted at Bath. 18 x 14 Needham, Captain the Hon. Thos. [Earl of Kilmorey. R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Full length; standing, in uniform of the Grenadier Guards, holding a pike in his left hand. 91 x 60 Newhaven, William Mayne, Lord ; of Gatton Park. [Bale Collec- tion. C. 13, 5, 1881] Nelson, Horatio, Viscount, as a Boy. [R. Crozier, Esq. ; B. Ridge, Esq. S. K. 1868] Bust. 30 X 25 NicoUs, Master [The Pink Boy]. [Miss Alice de Rothschild] Full length, standing, in a landscape About 72 X 50. See Plate XXVIII CATALOGUE Norfolk, Bernard Edward, i2tli Duke of Norfolk. [Duke of Norfolk, K.G. R. A. 1880 : G. G. 1885] FmW length; standing; nearly full face; black dress, breeches and cloak; black hat with white feather; trees on left, landscape on right. 88 x 54 Norfolk, Charles, Duke of. [Duke of Norfolk, K.G.] Full length Eng. in Line by John Keyse Sherwin 1790 North, Lord, afterwards Earl of Guilford. [Sir W. Agnew, Bart. R. A. 1893 ; New G. I 897-1 898] Half length; seated; to left; holding a paper in both hands; blue coat, grey back- ground; very brilliant in colour. Un- finished. 29 X 24 Northumberland, Hugh, ist Duke of the new creation. [Duke of Northumberland] Whole length. In robes of the Garter Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont Northumberland, Hugh, Duke of. [National Gallery, Ireland] Bust, in an oval. Crimson coat crossed by the Ribbon of the Garter. 29 x 24 Norton, Mrs. Lowndes-Stone. [Alfred de Rothschild, Esq.] Full length ; walking to the left ; pale rose coloured dress, blue gauze scarf, which she holds up with her left hand ; a dog follows her. 84i X 55. See Plate XXXIII. Nugent, Robert Craggs, Earl. [Corporation of Bristol, R.A. 1880; G. G. 1888] Three-quarter length; seated, near a table, turned to the right; red coat and a wig; on the table Acts of Parliament. Inscribed " Rt. Hon. Robert Nugent, Esq., unanimously re-elected Member for Bristol, December 26th I759-" 48x38 Nugent, Robert Craggs, Earl. [Sir George Nugent, Bart. ; ex. Stowe. G. G. 1885] Gainsborough's first exhibited picture. Full length, standing. 91x58 Nugent, Lieut.-Col. [Sir George Nugent, Bart. G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing. 91x59 Nuthall, Squire. [G. Harland Peck, Esq.] 29x24 Octavius, H.R.H. Prince. [Wind- sor Castle] Bust, in an oval. 23 J x 18 27 OF PICTURES Octavius, H.R.H. Prince. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 22^x16^ Eng. in stipple by T. Cheesman. 1806 Octavius, H.R.H. Prince. [Buckingham Palace] A miniature. 6x4! Officer, Portrait of a Military (? Thicknesse). [W. H. Fuller, Esq., New York] Full length, in small. He sits on a bank, near a tree stump, his left foot resting on a balk of timber. Scarlet and gold uniform, with white waistcoat. In his left hand a dress sword. 25x30 Officer, Portrait of a Naval. (C. 15, I, 1887] Old Man with a Dog, Portrait of. [Sir George Beaumont, Bart. G. G. 1888] 24x22 Orpin, Parish Clerk of Bradford- on-Avon. [National Gallery] Palmer, Sir Robert Palmer. [Sir Reg. Beauchamp, Bart. G. G. 1885] Full length, standing. Painted 1785. 90x58 Palmer, R. [Sir Reg. Beau- champ, Bart. [G. G. 1885] Half length. 30 x 25 Palmer, John, M.P. [Hon. J. G. Johnson, Philadelphia : ex. Price Coll.] Half length ; green coat ; head resting on left hand; right hand holding a book. 29 x 24 Peacock, Mrs. [C. 1893] 30x25 Pearce, WiUiam. [J. Rubens Powell, Esq. G. G. 1885] Bust. 24i X 20|- Pearce, Dr. [F. Fleischmann, Esq.] Bust, in an oval. 30 x 25 Peartree, " Tom Peartree " Head and shoulders of a man, on a shaped panel. About 20x24 Pembroke Family, The. [ — van Andre, Esq. ; ex. R. Lane and Viscount Chfden. G. G. 1885] A reduced study from the picture by Van Dyck at Wilton House. 40 x 50 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Pennant, Thomas, F.R.S. [Earl of Denbigh. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Half length ; to the left ; in a blue coat faced with red ; holding a book. 37 x 29 Eng. in Line by J. K. Sherwin, 177S ; and J. W. Harding, 1812 Eng. in stipple by William Ridley, 1793 ; AND R. Stainer, 1793 Perryn, Sir Richard. Three-quarter length Mez. by Gainsborough Dupqnt, 1779 Phillips, C. J. [Mrs. Warren, Boston, U.S.A.] Phipps, Lady Augusta. [Abel Buckley, Esq.] Phipps, Cap. Charles, [ex. Nor- manby ; C. 1 890] Pitt, George. See Rivers Pitt, William. [Earl Amherst. G. G. 1885] Bust. 29 X 24 Pitt, William. [Cap. Pretyman] Three-quarter length. 50 — 40 (?) Pitt, William. [Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. S. K. 1867] Head. 24 x 20 Pitt, William. [Earl of Harrowby] Half length Pitt, William. [Earl Bathurst. R. A. 1881 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; similar to picture at Lincoln's Inn. 49^ x 39 Pitt, William. [Lord Iveagh] Pitt, WUliam. [E. V. Kenealy, Esq. S. K. 1868] Bust ; in an oval, on back, " Painted 1787." 38x25 Pitt, William. [Lincoln's Inn. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; standing ; to the right, leaning on arm of chair across which are thrown his robes as Chancellor of the Exchequer ; blue coat, white waistcoat 49 x 39 Pitt, William. [Earl of Nor- manton. R. A. 1883 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Pitt, William. [Sir Robert Peel, Bart.] Three-quarter length. 50X40 Eng. in Line by J. K. Sherwin, i 89 and BY Wm. Bromley, 1808 Pitt, William. [Duke of Rich- mond. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Pitt, William. [Earl of Rose- bery] Pitt, William. [Earl Stanhope, G. G. 1885 ; B. I. 1862] Bust. In an oval. 30 x 25 Pitt, William. [W. Wells, Esq. G. G. 1885] Head. 13x11 Pitt, William. [Messrs. Agnew and Son, 1904] Blue coat ; in an oval. 29 x 24 Plampin, John. [Mrs. Wallis] Small full length, in a landscape. Blue coat, white breeches. About i8x 24 Plampin, John. [R. Almack, Esq.] Half length. Brown coat, blue satin waist- coat, embroidered. Painted 1777 [Fulcher]. 30x25 Plampin, John Jun. [R. Oliver- son, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length ; in a Van Dyck dress. 30 x 25 Plampin, John, Jun. [R. Al- mack, Esq.] A boy, in a white satin Van Dyck dress, holding a book. Painted 1766 [Fulcherli. 30x25 Popham, Edward, M.P. [F. Ley borne Popham. S. K. 1868] Three-quarter length. 49 x 39 Popham, Mrs. [F. Ley borne Popham, Esq.] Portman, Mrs. [Viscount Port- man, Bryanston] Full length ; seated, turned to the left ; in a greyish-white dress with black lace. A rose in her right hand. 82x58 Portrait, (?) a Page . [Comte Boni de Castellane, Paris. R. A. 1894; C. 1892, ;^I302] Full length ; walking to right ; blue dress, white stockings ; a plumed hat in right hand, a cloak over left arm ; long auburn hair. Curtain and landscape background. 64 x 43 Powis, Countess of. [Earl of Portsmouth] Powis, Edward Clive, Earl of, as a Boy. [Earl of Powis. G. G. 1885] Three-qimrter length. 49x39 Poyntz, William, of Midgham, 76 CATALOGUE Berks. [Earl Spencer, K.G. G. G. 1885] Life size, full-length figure, in a shooting dress, carrying a gun ; legs crossed, one arm resting against a tree. Landscape back- ground. 91x60 Price, Sir Uvedale. Three-quarter length ; seated in an arm- chair ; books near him ; on the wall behind hangs a Gainsborough drawing of landscape. 50x40 Primrose, Lady Dorothy. [Earl of Rosebery, K.G.] Prince Hoare. [Royal Academy ; R. A. 1883] Bust ; profile to right ; plum-coloured coat ; dark background. Painted by Prince Hoare and Thomas Gainsborough. 22 x 29 Princesses, The Eldest. [Buck- ingham Palace] Half length ; two, in yellow dresses- stand- ing ; the third, in blue, seated. 45x55 (about) Princesses, The Eldest. [South Kensington Museum] Mez, by Gainsborough Dupont. 1793 Puget, Mrs. (nee Hawkins, daughter of the Bishop of Raphoe). [Baron Alphonse de Rothschild ; ex. Col. John Puget. C. 8, 5, 1897, ;^504o] Bust, in an oval ; full face, powdered hair, mhite and gold dress, lilac sash and pearl necklace. 37x22 J Purling, John. [Hastings N. Middleton, Esq. G. G. 1885] Bust, in an oval. 30x24 Quin, James. [Arthur Seymour, Esq. ex. Duke of Ceveland, K.G. S. K. 1868] Whole length. 92 x 60 Quin, James. [H.M. the King] Quin, James, as Falstaff. [C. 1896, ;^io5] Radnor, Anne, Countess of. [Earl of Radnor)] In evening dress. Painted in 1778 Radnor, William, ist Earl of. [Earl of Radnor] Bust. 30 X 25 Radnor, William, ist Earl of. [Earl of Radnor] Half length, in peer's robes. 50X 40 Ramus, Mr. [R. A. 1783] 3F PICTURES Ramus, The Misses. [Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. C. 1873, £661 s ; 1889, ;^997S] Burnt at Waddesdon Rawdon, Lady Ann Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Ailes- bury. [Marquess of Ailesbury. R. A. 1881] Three-quarter length ; standing, to left ; leaning on pedestal ; hands crossed ; black dress, yellow scarf ; background, a red curtain. 61x39 Rawdon, Lord. [Marquess of Aylesbury. R. A. 1783] Raymond, The Rev. Samuel. [Rev. John M. St. Clere Ray- mond. G. G. 1885] Bust. 30x25 Richards, Mrs. " The Beautiful Florist." [John Bowman, Esq. R. A. 1880] Half length ; to left, nearly full face. Red dress, white fichu ; left hand holds a sprig of flowers between the breasts. Dark background. Painted 1768. 30x25 Mez. by Jonathan Spilsbury. 1768 Richardson, Samuel. [Sir W. Holbourne, Bart.] 25x20 Richmond, Charles, 3rd Duke of. [Duke of Richmond] Richmond, Mary Bruce, Duchess of. [Leopold de Rothschild, Esq. F. W. 1894] Full length ; standing ; Hue dress. 91 x 60. See Plate XVIII. Rivers, George Pitt, ist Lord. [Gen. Pitt Rivers. R. A. 1769 and 1 881] Full length ; standing, to left ; in uniform, cocked hat in left hand, right hand on his sword. Painted lyfxj 0)- 91JX60 Robert, Captain. [Mrs. Whit- comb] Robinson, Mrs. (" Perdita "). [Isaac Espinasse. S. K. 1868] To waist. Oval. 29 x 24 Robinson, Mrs. ("Perdita "). [Wallace Gallery. R. A. 1 894] Full length ; seated, to right ; low cut white and blue dress ; her hands in her lap ; in her right hand a miniature ; a Pomeranian dog beside her. 90X58J. Robinson, Mrs. ("Perdita"). [Windsor Castle] Sketch for the picture in the Wallace Gallery. 30x25 77 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Robinson, Mrs. (" Perdita "). [Miss Alice de Rothschild] Rodney, George, Lord. [Earl of Rosebery, K.G. R. A. 1783] Whole length ; standing on deck of his ship. Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont. 1788 Rodney, Lady. [J. H. McFad- den, Esq. ex. Lord Revel- stoke. R. A. 1890 ; C. 1893, £2415] Three-quarter length; standing, to the fight ; blue dress, cut low, gauze scarf in left hand; powdered hair. Dark background. 49x39 J Romney, Countess of. [Lady E. Marsham] Half length. 30x25 Romney, Earl of, and his sisters. [Lord Rothschild] Four children, one boy and three girls, picking nuts at the edge of a wood. Whole figures, life size. About 93x30 Rosebery, Niel, 3rd Earl of. [Earl of Rosebery, K.G.] Rowley, Miss, afterwards Lady Cotton. [Major King. R. A. 1886] Bust, nearly full face ; red dress, cut low with blue bow ; lace scarf ; grey background. In an oval. 274x22 J Rowe, Squire. [Sir WiUiam Agnew, Bart.] Royal, the Princess, with the Princesses Augusta and Eliza- beth. [S. K. M.] See Eldest Princesses Royal, the Princess, with Prin- cesses Augusta and Elizabeth. [Windsor Castle] Royal Family ; group of the children of George III. de- scending the steps of a lodge in Windsor Park. [ex. Sir G. Warrender, Bart. ; C. J. Nieu- wenhuys, Esq. Sold in 1848 for £s2S ICS.] Russell, Mary. [Lord Iveagh] Rutland, Duke of. [Duke of Rutland] Sackville, Geo., ist Viscount. [Countess Delawarr. S. K. 1867] Half length, seated. 50 x 40 Sackville, Lord George. [Knole] Sackville, Miss. [Lord Bateman G. G. 1885] Bust. 30 X 25 Sackville, the Hon. Caroline, [ex. Lord Bateman. C. 27, 5, 1882] Painted for her aunt. Lady Bateman St. Leger, Lt.-Col. [Hampton Court. G. G. 1885] Whole length ; standing against his horse ; in uniform ; his right arm resting on a broken tree-trunk, his left hand on his sword. Land- scape background. 96 x 70 Eng. by Gainsborough Dupont. 17S3 St. Leger, Lt.-Col. [Miss Alice de Rothschild] Repetition of the last Sancho, Ignatius. [H. Steven- son, Esq. C. 17, 3, 1888] " Painted at Bath in one hour and forty minutes, Nov. 2gth, 1768." 29x24 Eng. in stipple by F. Bartolozzi ; Fron- tispiece to Sancho's " Letters," 1781 Sandby, Thomas, and his wife. [ex. Archdeacon Burney. Now in France. B. I. 1859 ; R. A. 1877 ; G. G. 1885] Small full-length figures seated on a bench under trees ; the man wears a red coat and breeches and a cocked hat ; the woman a pink and white dress, a blue fringed petticoat, and a straw hat. 28 J x 25 This picture has been alternately called " Portraits of Gainsborough and his Wife," and " Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. T. Sandby." It dates from about 1752, when Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough were too young for these figures, neither can any serious likeness to them be traced Sandwich, Earl of. [Painted Hall, Greenwich] Full length. Painted 17%^. 90x60 Eng. in Line by J. K. Sherwin. 1788 Sandwich, Earl of. [Earl of Cork] Sandwich, Earl of. [C. Sedel- meyer, Paris] Saye and Sele, Lady. See Eard- ley Schomberg, Ralph, M.D. [Na- tional Gallery] gr x 6o\ Scott, Lady Mary Mez. 1771 Scroope, Egerton, Mrs. [R. B. Angus, Esq., Montreal] Half length. 30 x 25 278 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Sefton, Isabella, Countess of. [Earl of Sefton] Sequeria, Dr. [Cecil F. Raphael, Esq.] Seymour, Lady Horatio. Sheffield, Sophia Charlotte (Digby), Lady, wife of Sir John Sheffield, Bart. [Miss Alice de Rothschild. G. G. 1885] Whole length ; walking, in a landscape . Blue and white dress, blue hat; her left hand supports a scarf, her nght hangs by her side. Landscape background. 91 x 60 Sheffield, Lady. [Mons. R. Kann, Paris] Small replica (?) of the last named Sheffield, Lady. [George Hearn, Esq., New York] Another replica. About 30x23 Sheridan, the Sheridan Family [D. Jardine, Esq., Liverpool] Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. [J. S. Muskett, Esq.] Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. [Sir R. Peel, Bart.] Sheridan, Mrs. See Linley, Eliza Sheridan, Mrs. [R. B. Lord Rothschild. R. A. 1886] Whole length ; salmon pink dress ; blue sash ; lace scarf. 83x58. Se« Plate XXXI. Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont. The plate offered for sale c. 1797 Sheridan, Thomas, when a Boy. [B. I. 1 8 14] i8x 12 Sheridan, Mrs. [Lord Iveagh] Siddons, Mrs. Sarah. [National Gallery] 49i X 39 Skinner, John. [Christ Church, Oxford. G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 50x40 SkTOner, Sir John. [Lincoln's Inn. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Somerville, Hon. George. [A. F. Somerville, Esq. R. A. 1886] Bust ; to right ; three-quarter profile ; red coat; left hand thrust into a fur-trimmed waistcoat. In an oval. 39 x 24^ Sophia, Princess. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, as a young girl. 22JX ifrj Sparrow, Miss. [L. Huth, Esq.] Half length, in an oval. 30X 25 Spencer, John, ist Earl. [Earl Spencer, K.G. B. I. 1859; S. K. 1867 ; S. K. M. 1876 ; G. G. 1885] Bust ; looking to the right ; claret-colourtd coat and red waistcoat. 30x25 Spencer, Margaret Georgiana (Poyntz), Countess. [Earl Spencer, K.G. B. I. 1859 ; S. K. 1867 ; S. K. M. 1876; G. G. 1885] To the waist; seated; wearing a riding dress; hands crossed. 30x25 Spencer, the Hon. Georgiana, afterwards Duchess of Devon- shire. [Earl Spencer, K.G. B. I. 1859; S. K. 1867; S. K. M. 1876 ; G. G. 1885] To the waist ; hands folded in front of her ; wears a cap and a low white frock trimmed with pink ribbons. Painted when the little lady was about six years old. 30X 25 Starkie, Master. [Col. Le Gendre Starkie. R. A. 1892] Le Gendre Piers Starkie, of Montroyde, aged 12. Half length; red coat, long fair hair curling over shoulders ; dark background. In an oval. 29i x 24J Stanhope, Charles, 3rd Earl. [Earl Stanhope. S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length ; seated ; in his peer's robe. Left unfinished at the artist's death. 30x25 Stanley, John. Half length Eng. in stipple by Mary Ann Rigc. 1781 Sterne, Lawrence, [ex. Bishop of Ely] Stevens, Wm., D.D. [Rev. G. Corby White. R. A. 1780 and 1876 ; B. I. 1814 ; G. G. 1885] Three-quarter length. 49 J x 39 J Eng. in stipple by P. Conde. 1801 Stone, Mrs. Lowndes. [Lord. Hillingdon] Suffield, Lord. Sussex, Augustus Frederick, Duke of. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in an oval. 23JX17J 79 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Sussex, Hester, Countess of, and Lady Barbara Yelverton. [Lord Burton. G. G. 1885] Whole length figures in a landscape ; the lady seated, the child standing by her ; turned in the right. 88 x 60 Sykes, Sir Francis, of Basildon Full length ; in a landscape, with two horses, a groom, and a dog. Probably the largest picture Gainsborough painted. About 144 X 120 Burnt in the Pantechnicon in 1874 Tarleton, Colonel. Taylor, John, Esq. [John Tay- lor, Esq., Birmingham] Taylor, Mrs. John. [John Tay- lor, Esq., Birmingham] Taylor, Lady. [Thos. Glen Arthur, Esq., Ayr ; ex. Lord Thurlow] Half length. 30x25 Taylor, Lady. [W. G. Raphael, Esq.] Tenducci, Justus Ferdinando, the Male Soprano. [Gray Hill, Esq. R. A. 1870 ; G. G. 1885] Half length ; seated, in a grey coat ; turned to the right, looking at a sheet of music held in the left hand ; lips parted as if to sing, and raised brows. 26JX24J Tenducci, J. F. [Sir Audley Neeld, Bart.] A replica of the last named Tenducci. [Garrick Club] Tennant, William, of Need wood House, Staffordshire. [A. J. Forbes-Leith, Esq.] Thicknesse, Captain Philip (?). [Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart., M.P.] Half length ; blue uniform slightly braided with gold. In an oval. ^0x 25 (about) Thicknesse, Mrs. [C. J. Wert- heimer, Esq. C. 1869 and 1870 ; R. A. 1894] Full length ; seated, to right ; her legs are crossed, her left arm rests on some music books which lie on a table beside her, and her head leans on her left hand ; her right arm is round a mandolin, which lies in her lap ; grey dress, cut low ; curtain background, with a viol-di- gamba beside the curtain. Inscribed " Wife to Phil. Thicknesse, Esq.," and " Gains- borough." 76^x52 This picture is erroneously described in the R.A. catalogue for 1894 as that of " The Hon. Mrs. Thicknesse." It represents Thicknesse's second wife, nee Ford, and not Lady Elizabeth (Touchet), his first Thomson, Sir Charles. Three-quarter length Mez. by Richard Earlom. 1800 Thornton, John. [Marine Society ; S. K. 1867] Full length. 92 x 61 Thornton, John, of Clapham ; unfcle of S. "Wilberforce. [John Thornton, Esq. B. I. 1814 ; S. K. 1867 ; G. G. 1885] Whole length ; life size Mez. by Valentine Green. 1782 Tickell, Richard. [Lord Hilling- don. C. 1874, £1627 los.] Tomkinson, the Masters. [R. A. 1783] Two boys with a dog Tomkinson, Henry and Edward. [Henry J. Tollemache, Esq. R. A. li " Two youths in a landscape ; Henry in a blue coat, standing, leans his left arm on his brother's shotdder ; the latter wears a red coat and is sitting on a bank, with a book. 82 X Tomkinson, James, of Nantwich and Dorford Hall. [H. J. Tollemache. R. A. 1892] Half length ; seated in an arm chair, to the right ; blue coat, white wig ; red curtain background. 35 x 27 Tracy, Thomas C, Viscount. [Lord Burton ; ex. Lord Sudeley] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Tracy, Viscountess. [E. M. Denny, Esq. ; ex. Lord Sudeley] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Trevelyan, Sir George. [Sir W. C. Trevelyan, Bart. S. K. 1868] Three-quarter length. 50x40 Trevelyan, Miss Susanna. [Sir W. C. Trevelyan, Bart.] Three-quarter le^rgth ; in a dress of white silk embroidered with gold ; background, trees The costume of this picture was altered by Reynolds, if we may credit Fulcher Trimmer, James, husband of Sarah (Kirby) Trimmer. [C. 12, 5, 1888] Truman, Sir Benjamin. [H. Villebois, Esq. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing, near a piece of 280 CATALOGUE ( water. He wears a brown coat and breeches, with a yellow waistcoat ; a stick in the right hand, his hat in the left. 93 x 59 Truman, Sir Daniel (?). [ex. Henry Villebois, Esq. R. A. 1878]' Full length; standing, in a landscape beside a stream. Broivn coat and breeches, yellowlwaistcoat ; stick in right hand. 93 x 59 Truman-Villebois. William and John. [Henry Villebois, Esq. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Two boys ; seated ; building a house of cards near the base of a pillar in a garden ; drab clothes with wide, open collars. Their hats are on the ground beside them. 61x51 Tryon, Miss. [Mrs. Magnay. R. A. 1881] A girl of 15; half length; to the right; three-quarter face ; white and pink dress trimmed with lace, white cap, pink bow. 28x24 Turner, Sir Edward. Whole length Eng. by James MacArdell. 1762 Tyler, Miss, of Bath. [Lord Iveagh ; ex. Lord Bateman. R. A. 1881 ; G. G. 1885 ; C. 27, 5, 1882] Half length ; seated ; her head leaning on her left hand ; pink dress, cut low, background, a red curtain. 30 x 24 Unworth, W. C. Painted 1764 (Fulcher) Eng. by H. Robinson. 1836 Vernon, Lady. [Hon. M. For- tescue] LiTH. 1835 Vernon, Admiral. [National Portrait Gallery] Vernon, Edward. Three-quarter length Mez. by James MacArdell Vernon, George, Lord. [Hon. George Venables Vernon] Half length Mez. by John Dean Vestris, M. [Louis Huth, Esq. G. G. 1885] Biist, in an oval. 23^x224 Villebois, Mrs. [Alfred de Roth- schild, Esq. ; ex. H. Villebois, Esq. R. A. 1878 ; G. G. 1885] Full length ; standing ; in court dress ; blue dress trimmed with pearls ; blue train, )F PICTURES white satin petticoat, white satin shoes ; hair done very high, with feathers. 88 x 57 Villiers, Lord . [Painted 1758] Wade, Captain. Master of the Ceremonies at Bath. [Assem- bly Rooms, Bath] Full length, in red coat, white waistcoat and Breeches. Architectural background. About 96X 60 Wade, Master. [Rev. E. Wade] Dressed in a scarlet coat ; landscape bach- ground. Oval. 8x6 Wakefield, Mrs. (Priscilla Bell), and Mrs. Gurney (Catherine Bell), with a Gentleman in a blue coat). [Alfred Head, Esq. S. K. 1868] 47x36 Waldegrave, John, 3rd Earl, [Dudbrook, Essex] Half length; looking to right; red coat, heavily laced ; hat under left arm ; powdered wig ; in an oval. 30 x 25 Waldegrave, Countess, after- wards H.R.H. the Duchess of Gloucester. See Gloucester Wales, George, Prince of, after- wards George IV. [Windsor Castle, private Audience Chamber] Bust, in the Windsor uniform. 23ix i7i Wales, Prince of. [Earl of Zetland. S. K. 1867] Full length; standing beside his horse. ICQ X 70 Wales, Prince of. [Lord Iveagh] Wales, Prince of, with Mrs. Fitzherbert, Lord Radnor, and R. B. Sheridan, in a Boat, [ex. Mrs. Norton] Wales, Prince of. [Marquess of Lothian] Wales, Prince of. [Miss Alice de Rothschild] Wales, Prince of. [ex. S. Men- dell, Esq. ; W. B. Beaumont, Esq. G. G. 1885] Half length. Oval. 30x25 Wales, the Prince of. Whole length Mez. by John Raphael Smith. 1783 Mez. again by J. R. S. No date 81 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH MeZ. AGAIN BY J. R. S. 1785 Eng. in Line by Anthony Cardan. Pub. IN Brussels Wales, Prince of, and Princess Royal, [ex. Sir T. Baring. B. I. 1840] As children Walker, Joseph. [C. 5, 6, 1889] Walker, Mrs. [Mrs. Eson Wil- kinson. G. G. 1885] Half length. 30x25 Warren, Richard, M.D. [College of Physicians. S. K. 1867] Three-quarter length. 50 x 40 Mez. by John Jones. 1792 Warwick, Francis, Earl o f [Earl of Warwick] Half length Me2. by James Watson Watson, Mrs. Mary Ehza (Hon. Mrs. Watson). Three-quarter length Mez. by Thos. Park West, Benjamin, P.R.A. Eng. 1785 Westminster, ist Marquess of, [Duke of Westminster] Whichcote, Sir Thomas, Bart. [Sir George Whichcote, Bart. R. A. 1897] Three-quarter length; standing, leaning with left hand on a wooded bank ; blue coat, white waistcoat, yellow breeches ; hat in right hand. Painted 17S6. 49iX39i Whitbread, Samuel, M.P. [Vis- count Eversley. S. K. 1868] To waist. 36 X 28 Whitehead, Paul. Half length. Oval Eng. in Line by Joseph Collyer. 1776 Whitehead, Samuel, [ex. Lord Eversley. C. 1896, ;^i837 los.] Wilkinson, Squire John. [Ed- mund Davis, Esq.] 93x56 Willes, Sir Edward. [C. 26, 5, 1894, £37^] Three-quarter length Eng. in stipple by James Heath. 1792 William Henry, Prince, Duke of Clarence. Half length Mez. by Gainsborough Dupont Willoughby, Miss. [J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. R. A. 1895] Three-quarter length ; seated, to right, in a landscap ; blue dress, cut low ; large straw hat with blue ribbon ; yellow scarf ; hair falling in curls over her shoulders ; a flower in her left hand. 49 x 39 Willoughby d'Eresby, Lord. [Lord Gwydyr] three-quarter length, m a landscape; he wears a blue coat and buff breeches, and is hitching the bridle of his horse to a tree. About 72x54 Windham, William. [Miss Sped- ding] Wolfe, General (?). [ex. Mrs. Gibbons. Sold two or three times, lately belonged to P. and D. Colnaghi] Bust ; in Jtniform of Blues ? Oval Wolfe, General. [Manchester Gallery] Woman, young, seated with crossed hands. [Count Boni de Castellane, Paris] 88c. X 70C. Wrottesley, Miss. [ex. Lord Churchill. C. 12, 5, iT""" Yates, Mrs. [America (?)] York, H.R.H. Frederick, Duke of [Messrs. Agnew and Sons.] Scarlet uniform. 28i x 23J Yorke, PhiUp. Three-quarter length Eng. in Line and stipple by E. Scriven Yorke, Lady. [Knoedler & Co., New York] Young, Dr., author of " Night Thoughts." [C. 5, 6, 1889] 282 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES LANDSCAPES A Sea Piece. [L. Lesser, Esq.] Asses in a Landscape. [Sir J. Clarke Jervoise, Bart. G. G. 1885] In the centre two asses and a dog ; an old man leans on a staff ; a cottage on the right ; in the distance a church tower. 23 x 35 Bamford, Suffolk, Scene at. [Messrs. Graves & Co. C. 27, 5, 1882 ; G. G. 1885] A meadow, with a large willow on left ; a cow standing in centre ; another with a sheep beyond. Early. 23 x 36 Boy on a White Horse, descend- ing a hill, [ex. Dr. Freckleton] 25x29 Charter House, View of the. [Foundling Hospital] A very good example of his art at about 1^54-6. Circular. 20J inches in diameter. Coast Scene, with Cattle. [J. Dillon, Esq. M. 1857] "Cornard Wood," or "Gains- borough's Forest." [Na- tional Gallery] 48X 60 "Cottage Door," The. [John Claude Daubuz, Esq. R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Replica of the picture at Grosvenor House. 56x46 "Cottage Door, The." [Earl of Normanton. R. A. 1882] Replica of the picture at Grosvenor House. 58x47 " Cottage Door, The." [Sir Geo. Beaumont, Bart. G. G. 1885] Near a cottage surrounded by trees are a young man and a woman with three children. Between the trees an open country is visible ; a hill in the distance. 75x61 " Cottage Door, The." [Duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House. B. I. 1834 and 1859 ; U. E. 1862 ; R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] An old cottage on the banks of a small stream, closely surrounded by trees ; a shattered old trunk rises on the left, on the right a young and graceful tree. Before the cottage stands a young mother with a baby in her arms ; round her five other children, one of them, a boy, feeding another, a girl, with a spoon. Fulcher calls this one of Gainsborough's latest pictures, but in style it belongs to about 1776 — 8. 50 x 2 "Cumberland Lakes, The." [Duke of Hamilton] "Edge of the Common, The." [W. H. Fuller, Esq., New York] A road winding over a sandy knoll, near some palings ; horses and a herdsman on the road ; two men on some tree trunks in the fore- ground. 25 X 30 Forest Scene. [Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower. G. G. 1885] In the centre a large oak, near it a sandpit, with a woman and a donkey. 13 x 14 J Gipsy Scene, [ex. J. H. Ander- don, Esq. R. A. 1878] opening in a wood ; three figures and two donkeys. Early. iiixi4 ' Girl at the Stile, The. " [W. H- St. Quinton, Esq. R. A. 1 896] A road through a wood, along which a waggon with three horses makes its way ; a girl with a yoke and pails leans against a stile on the right, talking to the waggoner ; evening effect. 57x47 Going to Market. [Lord Iveagh " Harvest Waggon, The. " [S. G. Holland, Esq.] study (?) for Lord Tweedmouth's picture. " Harvest Waggon, The." [Lionel Phillips, Esq. ex. Rev. B. Gibbons. R. A. 1890] A country road running through a shallow gorge. On the road a harvest waggon with woman and children in it has stopped to allow a young girl to mount in0 it, which she does by the wheel. 47x58 " Harvest Waggon, The." [ex. Lord T weedmouth . B . 1 . 1 8 1 4 ; R. A. 1880 ; G. G. 1885] A large waggon is halted near some trees in a landscape. The driver has stopped his team in order that a peasant girl may mount, which she does by the wheel. This girl is said to be a portrait of the Painter's daughter ; the other daughter is already in the waggon. This was one of the pictures given to Wiltshire in payment of his services as a carrier of pictures to the exhibitions in London. 48 x 57 " Horses drinking at a Spring." [Sir Charles Tennant, Bart, ex. Lord de Tabley ; J. L, Parker ; Earl of Lonsdale] Some replicas and many old copies of this picture exist. 48 J x 39 "Labourers Returning." [Ar- thur Sanderson, Edinburgh] 50x40 3 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH "Market Cart, The." [H. Roberts, Esq.] Small replica (?) of the picture in the National Gallery. 29J x 24i " Milking Time." [James Ross, Esq., Montreal] 44x23 " Pack-horse Bridge, The." [T. Hardcastle, Esq. G. G. 1885] Pack-horses crossing a bridge, accompanied by two men on horseback ; a shattered tree- trunk in the foreground on the right. 12^x13! " Rural Courtship." [Rev. E. R. Gardiner. G. G. 1885] A woodland scene, with a distant view of a church; in the foreground a woman milking a cow ; by her side a peasant leaning on a faggot. 50 X 40 "Rustic Children," or "The Wood Gatherers." [National Gallery (Vernon Collection)] A small sketch for picture belonging to Lord Carnarvon. i8 x 14^ Eng. by G. B. Shaw. Rustic Dwelling, A." [Mrs. Geo. Henry. G. G. 1885] Two women and two children near the door of a cottage ; one woman nursing a child ; large trees bend towards the cottage, one of them nearly bare of leaves ; a stream in front. 49x39 Rustics with Donkeys, tional Gallery] I5iX20i [Na- " Sand Getters, The. " [T. Hard- castle, Esq. R. A. 1883 ; G. G 1885] A woodland scene. In the foreground are two men, one holding a sack while the other fills it with sand ; two donkeys stand near ; a man with sheep on the right. 24* x ig J Sandpits. [R. Hobson, Esq.] Seaside Landscape. [Mrs. Clarke Kennedy. G. G. 1885] An old building, with a background of trees, stands on the rocky shore ; fishermen are pulling a net to the land ; on the right a boat and a large anchor. 41X50J [Duke of West- Shore Scene. minster] A windy day on a coast like that at Felix- stowe. Two women and one man are on the beach ; two boats are near the shore. 48 x 60 (?) Thames, View at the Mouth of the. [Sir Reg. Beauchamp, Bart. R. A. 1878 ; G. G, 1885] A wide view of the river and its banks, with boats under sail. In the foreground a group of figures round a boat near a pier 62x75 The Country Cart. [D. Jardine, Esq.] The Drover's Cart. [C. Stewart, Esq., New York] "The Mall in St. James's Park [Sir Audley Neeld, Bart.] Groups of ladies walking in the central avenue of the Mall behind Carlton House. In the foreground, two dogs ; towards the right, tethered cows, at a stall, just as they may be seen to-day. In the extreme right the Painter making his sketch . 47 x 37 [National Jones Place." [Na- Place." [Na- " The Market Cart. Gallery] 72j~6oJ Eng. by E. Goodali, and in Jones's " Na- tional Gallery " " The Watering tional Gallery] 23x30 " The Watering tional Gallery] 58x71 Eng. by W. Miller and in Jones's " Na- tional Gallery " "The Watering Place." [Na tional Gallery] Small replica (?) 0/ the last. i6Jx 21* View in Shropshire. [J. P. Morgan, Esq. G. G. 1885] In the distance, a conical hill ; in the mid- distance, a wooded country ; in the foreground, a stream running through a brightly illumi- nated landscape ; on the farther bank two cows and a goat in the shadow of trees. 48 x 58 View near King's Bromley. [W. L. Elkins, Esq., Phila- delphia. C. 1894, ;^378o] Cows, four figures, dog in a boat. 46 x 65I " View of Dedham." [National Gallery] 24iX3oJ " Watering Place, The." [E. P. Clarke, Esq.] In the centre cattle drinking ; on the left a fallen tree, a peasant girl with a man ; a figure descending a slope. " Windmill, The," [J. S. Muskett, Esq.] View near Sudbury. 24x19 Eng. by S. Middiman. 184 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES "Wood Gatherers, The." Also called "Cottage Children" and " Rustic Children . ' ' [Earl of Carnarvon. R. A. 1881 ; G. G. 1885] A girl carrying a child, and a boy with a bundle of sticks, the latter seated. 57i x 4^4 Woodland Scene. [Alfred Eales White, Esq.] Said to have been painted near Corfe, Taun- ton, Somerset. 25 x 30 "Woodman, The," Evening, [ex. Robt. Willoughby, Esq. ; ex. Mrs. Poignard. C. 8, 5, 97] A man loads a donkey with sticks while a bare-legged boy and a woman with a child in her arms stand by. 40 x 54 A Landscape. [E. Jesse, Esq.] Woodedbank, with gipsies. 12x8 A Landscape. [O. Roe, Esq.] "A very early work."—F. 45x42 Landscape. [Sir W. Agnew, Bart. G. G. 1885] The brow of a hill, with broken woodland on right and left ; in the centre a road with peasants and a horse and cart ; a village in the distance. 17x35 Landscape, [ex. J. H. Ander- don, Esq.] Three cows under a bank on which is a willow ; a boy on the ground, with a dog ; two peasants moving from the spot Landscape, [ex. J. H. Ander- don, Esq.] In the centre a group of large trees ; between their stems the tower of a village church ; cattle drinking ; two children seated in the fore- ground. Landscape. [T. G. Arthur, Esq.] Painted in imitation of Teniers ; game- keeper and dog introduced. 44 x 58 Landscape. [Samuel Barton, Esq. M. 1857] Landscape, near Ipswich. [J. H. McFadden, Esq.] Landscape. [Alfred Beit, Esq.] Landscape. [Sir Charles Ten- nant, Bart.] Landscape, with Figures. [R. H. Benson, Esq.] Landscape, pastoral. [Messrs. Agnew and Sons] Landscape. [jNlessrs. Agnew and Sons] II X I3i Landscape, Blind Man on a Bridge. [Sir Geo. Beaumont, Bart. G. G. 1885] A small stream crossed by a rustic bridge, over which a blind man is being led by a dog ; on the left a mass of foliage with the sun shining through. 40x50 Landscape, with Cows. [Alfred Beit, Esq.] Landscape. [R. H. Benson,"Esq. R. A. 1887 ; New G. 1898] View over a wooded valley ; figures and a horse. 15 J x 20 J Landscape, [ex. D. R. Blaine, Esq.] A purple distance of undulating country, like that in the neighbourhood of Bath. Wooded and broken foreground ; a horseman and a cow. 17x24 Landscape. [ — Bryant, Esq.] A pond, with a peasant and cattle. 24 x 30 Landscape. [ — Bryant, Esq.] Entrance to a forest ; a woodman sitting on a fallen tree ; two other figures ; a town in the distance. 24 x 30 Landscape. [The Lady Burdett- Coutts ; ex. Thomond and Rogers' Collections] Peasants in a cart crossing a rapid stream, near a group of trees ; in the foreground a man with a horse. Landscape. [The Lady Burdett- Coutts ; ex. Rogers' Collec- tion] A cottage on a bank, near a stream, which cattle and sheep are about to cross. A man watering a horse. Landscape, with Waggon. [Ven. Archdeacon Burney. G. G. 1885] A hollow road, with a waggon on it; on the left a group of trees ; in the distance a church. 19 X 23 Landscape, " The Road in the Forest." [Charles Butler, Esq. ex. Perkins Collection] Cattle coming over the dip of a hill, in the centre. 40x58 Landscape, with Cattle and Figures. [ — By as, Esq., Philadelphia] Landscape, [ex. Viscount Clif- den. G. G. 1885] In the mid-distance a cottage on a knoll ; in the foreground three figures, behind them two trees ; in the distance a church spire. 9^X12 Landscape. [J. D. Cobbold, Esq. A juvenile performance, made up of elc- 285 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH menis borrowed from various old masters. On the left a village inn and other htUldings on a bluff, from the edge of which rises a tall ash tree. In the centre a lake, on the right another tall tree. The distance is made up with sheets of water, abrupt hills, and villages. The fore- ground sprinkled with figures, a youth on an ass, a girl with a bundle on her head, and leading a small boy ; two women washing clothes; a boy sitting on the ground; cattle and sheep. 36 x 50 Landscape. [Mrs. Martin Col- naghi] On the right a bluff with a tree on the top of it ; cow, calf, and sheep ; two donkeys, on one a boy ; to the left a distant view with a rustic bridge. Early. 13x14 Landscape. [Mrs. Martin Col- naghi] In the centre of the foreground a mountain stream flowing through a deep bed, crossed by a rustic bridge on which are two cows followed by a herdsman ; mid-distance, woods surround- ing a square-towered building ; distance, bold hills; about 1780. 16x18 Landscape. [Mrs. Martin Col- naghi] An oil sketch; a cottage on the left ; a pond in the foreground. 10 x 12 Landscape. [Mrs. Martin Col- naghi] Piece of water crossed by a rustic bridge ; on the right, bare trees ; on the left, leafy trees ; b/tyond the pond, two cows. 15X 12 Landscape, with fallen Tree and Cattle. [R.Cook, Esq. G. G. 1885] The stem of a large oak, partly stripped of its bark, lies across the foreground; near it two herdsmen and three cows ; in the distance a sandy road, a village, and a church. 40 x 37 Landscape. [ — Curtis, Esq. ex. Rev. — Coles, of Basing- stoke] Scene near Bath; the city in the mid- distance; a group of figures in the wooded foreground. 60 x 48 Landscape. [F. Dowding, Esq.] Road scene with a peasant and donkeys. 24x20 Landscape. [F. Dowding, Esq.] Three pollard willows, and a road with a cart. 16x12 Landscape, [ex. Mrs. Edgar. G. G. 1888 (No. 218): B. I. 1861 (No. 214)] Rising ground with a shepherd boy leaning on his crook, and some sheep. Storm clouds. 31 X 26 Landscape, with Cattle and Figures, [Earl of EUesmereJ Landscape. [C. E. J. Esdaile, Esq. R. A. 1887] On a road winding through a wood are three men, and a woman on horseback ; the woman with a basket of eggs on her lap ; in front two cows drinking; to the right, a church tower ; evening effect. 47 x 66 Landscape R. A. I [Fred. Fish, Esq. Clearing in a wood; on the left a cottage on the right, cattle. 14x19 (oval). [F. Fleischmann, 24X 18 ;?; Landscape. Esq.] A road rising to the right in a rocky land- scape; sheep dotted about; mountains in distance. One of Gainsborough's latest works. 72x37 Landscape, similar to the last. [Duke of Sutherland, at Trent- ham] Landscape ; a Sketch. [Lord Foley] Landscape. [J. E. Fordham, Esq. R. A. 1878] Wooded, with stream in the foreground- i3ixiii Landscape, " The Woodman's Return." [ex. Dr. Freckleton] He fares along a tree-bordered road; a village church in the distance. Given by the Painter to his Bath Physician, Dr. Chorlton. 38x49 Landscape. [W. H. Fuller, Esq., New York] On the left a smooth river, reflecting the light ; a dog barks at a swallow ; on the right sandbanks, crowned with trees, and with a road skirting them ; on the road two cows, two sheep, and a distant pedestrian ; more to the right two groups of figures, a man and woman with a donkey, and a man and woman with a cow. Early, about 1752-4. 36x62 Landscape, " The Market Cart." [W. H. Fuller, Esq., York] On the left a building with a boat-shed attached; on the right a country-road, along which a cart makes its way towards a distant village. Painted about 1756. 20x24 J Landscapes, Two, with Cattle. [Duke of Hamilton] 12—13 Landscape ; a Sketch. [Earl of Hardwicke. ex. Kilderbee Collection Landscape. [Sir Robt. G. W. Herbert, K.C.B. G. G. 1885] " Perhaps a copy from some Dutch Master ' (Grosvenor Cat.). 40X so 286 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES Landscape. [J. P. Heseltine, Esq. R. A. 1878] A Study ; rocks and wood ; water in mid- distance, iiixisi Landscape. [J. P. Heseltine, Esq. G. G. 1885] storm effect ; an old oak on the right has a mass of large-leaved weeds at its foot, iii x Landscape. [Mrs. Hibbert. R. A. 1885] A stream running through a wooded valley > on the right, sheep; blue sky with clouds- 24^x29! Landscape, with Pigs. [Mrs. Hills, Redleaf] Suffolk period. Signed " T.G." in a mono- gram. 25 X 30 Landscape. [Sir W. Holbourne, Bart.] A lady speaking to a woman seated on the roadside with her baby ; background, trees with sunshine bursting through. lox 12 Landscape, Going to Market. [HoUoway College, Egham. ex. Sir Henrv Hoare, Bart. C. 1883, ;^2835] Peasants and colliers on horseback, going to market in early morning, along a tree-covered his ide. Landscape. [George Holt, Esq., Liverpool] Landscape, with Figures. [Jo- seph Humphrey, Esq.] A woman riding on an ass and carrying a child, a foal beside them ; a woman walking with a basket. On the left, a rustic cottage I among trees ; on the right, rising ground with a cow; in the centre a valley and distant hills, with sheep on a knoll. 21 x 16 Landscape. [W. P. Hunt, Esq.] View from " Gainsborough's Lane," near Ipswich; evening effect. 12x10 Landscape, " Skirts of a Wood." [Louis Huth. R. A. 1884] In the foreground a man carrying a scythe ; lower down, a woman driving a cow, followed by a dog. 16x21 Landscape, with Cattle and Figures. [Lord Iveagh] Landscape, with Mountains. [Lord Iveagh] Landscape, with Cattle and Figures. [D. Jardine, Esq.] Landscape, with Cattle. [Earl of Jersey. R. A. 1895] The slope of a wooded hill ; in the foreground three cows and a girl ; a boy lower down the 287 slope, with a dog ; other figures and a distan t landscape beyond. In the left foreground a large pollard willow. 47i x 58 Landscape, "The Mill." [Hon. T. G. Johnson, Philadelphia] Landscape. [Mrs. Joseph] An open glade in a forest — towards the left a pond, overhung by trees ; in the immediate foreground a stump cutting across the line of the pond ; on the right a bank shaded by trees and dotted over with sheep. The sun is in the picture and forms a fine effect. 29 x 35 Landscape. [Mrs. Joseph] Undulating country, a dell in the centre ; many willow-trees. 27^ x 36 Landscape, with Cattle. [Mar- quess of Lansdowne, K.G.] A herdsman drives some half dozen cows down a sloping road to the left. Fine effect of light. Painted about 1780. 45 x 60 (?) Landscape, with Cattle. [Lawrie and Co.] Four cows, white, black, red, and dun ; a woman milking the dun cow ; man carrying away milk in two pails ; beyond the woman a trunk of a tree ; on the left a cottage with two trees beyond it ; on the right a flat country, with a square towered church. 43x21! Landscape. [Lord Leconfield] Landscape. [Lord Llangattock] Landscape. [Edward McDer- mott, Esq. G. G. 1885] Small woodland scene ; group of trees on the left ; a stream trends from the foreground into the distance, figures are on its bank ; a clear sky with white cloudlets. i2X 14 Landscape, unfinished. [William Maxted, Esq. G. G. 1885] Said to be the last landscape on which Gainsborough worked. 30x25 Landscape, with Cattle. [J. P. Mellor, Esq.] Landscape. [Howard Morley, Esq., Shockerwick House, ex. Wiltshire and Goldsmid Col- lections. C. ;^3225] 47x58 Landscape, " View in Epping Forest." [J. S. Muskett, Esq.] 24X 13 Landscape. [National Gallery] 8ix6i Landscape [National Gallery] 8ix6i Landscape. [National Gallery, Ireland] A road, partly Hooded with water, runs through sandpits ; m the extreme distance a THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH village (? Dedham) church. Small figures in the distance and an old white horse above the sandpit on the right. A fine showery sky. Early. i8iX24 Landscape, with Mountains. [Sir Audley Neeld, Bart.] Broken and wooded foreground, with water on left ; cottage in mid-distance ; shepherd on a height ; pigs and sheep ; high mountairts in the distance. 16x20} Landscape, with Wayside Cottage. [E. Miller Nelson, Esq. G. G. 1885] A woman with a baby at her breast and [ two boys are before the cottage door; a girl carrying a jug on her head and followed by a dog approaclies the cottage ; near the cottage a pond ; in the distance a man driving cows. 29i X 24 Landscape, with Cows, &c. [Duke of Newcastle. G. G. 1885] A woodland glade, in which a boy is herd- ing cows, sheep, and goats ; in front two milk- maids, a boy, and two dogs fighting. 46 J x 27 Landscape. [Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle] Scene on a common, with boys and donkeys. 24 X 42 Landscape, " Ploughing." [Lord North. G. G. i 885] A heath, with a mill on a bank ; a man ploughing, accompanied by a boy ; large white clouds rising in the sky. 17x21} Landscape. [Lord Penrhyn. R. A. 1882 ; G. G. 1885] Skirts of a wood ; a waggon drawn by two horses, in which are a woman and a child, goes along a raised road towards the right, followed by a man and woman on foot; donkeys and dog in foreground; sheep and shepherd beyond. 54 x 74 Landscape. [Metropolitan Mu- seum, New York] Replica (?) of the picture belonging to Lord Penrhyn. 55}'<74i Landscape. [H. F. Pfungst, Esq.] On the left a young man and a girl sit on a bank under trees through which the sunlight pours ; in front of them two cows on a rough road ; to the right a tumbling stream, then more rising ground, with a ruined building upon it, overhung with trees. 30 x 25 Landscape. [Pittsburg, U.S.A.] Similar in general arrangement to the pic- ture belonging to Mr. H. J. Pfungst, but later. 40x50 (?) Landscape. " Gad's Hill Oak." [C. 1876, lz2S los.] 49x39 Landscape, [ex. Colonel William Pinney. Sold July, 1898] z On the right an undulating country inter- sected by waterways ; on the left a high sandy bluff crowned by a cottage ; near the cottage two men with a donkey, a white cow, ar.d a dog ; lower down a man with a red cow ; in the foreground a pair of lovers, and a horseman allowing his horse to drink. Cumuli in a clear sky. Early, about 1754-6. 36x48 (about) Landscape. [C. T. Praed, Esq. G. G. 1885] Waste land, near the edge of a copse ; a man seated on the ground near a pack-horse. 14 x Landscape. [D. B. Preston, Esq. G. G. 1885] Formerly in the possession of the Coyte family, of Ipswich. 48 x 58 Landscape, [ex. Sir R. Price, Bart., M.P., of Foxley ; and Lord Bateman] Study of beech-trees at Foxley ; Yazor Church in the distance. Signed " T. Gains- borough, 1760." Landscape, " Evening," or " Re- pose." [Harry Quilter, Esq. ex. Kirkman Hodgson, ex. James Price] A group of cattle — in which an old white horse is contrasted with a black cow — is gathered under the shade of trees near a fountain ; a peasant lies on the grass, asleep ; an evening sky. 47 x 38 Presented by Gainsborough to his daughter, Mrs. Fischer, on her marriage. Landscape. [Pandelli Ralli, Esq.] A wooded country. Landscape. [J. E. Reiss, Esq.] Landscape. [H. Roberts, Esq.] Sandy hillocks round a pond ; many oaks ; a woman with a red petticoat ; on the extreme left a cottage with group of figures before it ; donkeys in the centre ; fine showery sky. 24x36 Landscape. [H. Roberts, Esq.] Two horses and three cows ; herdsman. 24iX35. Late (1784 ?) Landscape. [H. Roberts, Esq. ex. C. Tyrrel (F.)] Sudbury (?) ; woodland scene ; on the ex- treme left, a cottage ; near it a man in a red coat, in a cart with a white horse ; in the centre a clump of trees ; on the right a small wooden bridge over a quiet stream ; on it two figures ; meadow with cattle in distance. 16} X 21 Landscape. [Sir J. C. Robinson, New G. 1897-1898] In the foreground two donkeys ivith a foaU and two youths near a tree ; in the background ruins ; in the distance a village. 24 x 29 Landscape, "The Broken Egg." CATALOGUE OF PICTURES [Sir J. C. Robinson. New G. 1 897-1 898] On the left a horse and cart with calves ; the driver is kissing a girl who holds a basket of eggs, one egg has fallen and broken ; in the centre a man ; on the right a cottage with_ a woman and some pigs ; a church in the dis- tance. 37i X 49 J Landscape, with Cattle. [Sir J. C. Robinson] Landscape, with Cattle and Figures. [John Rohde, Esq. G. G. 1885] 29x38 Landscape, " Evening." [John Rohde, Esq. G. G. 1885] i6x 20 Landscape, "Evening." [John Rohde, Esq. G. G. 1885] 8x 12 Landscape. [John Rohde, Esq. G. G. 1885] A small landscape with a river and bridge Sxii Landscape. [John Rohde, Esq. G. G. 1885] Woodland scene ; in front some small oaks, and close to them five sheep, one of which scratches its ear ; on the left a shepherd lean- ing on his staff. 14X 11 Landscape, [ex. Rev. J. Lucy B. Rose. C. 1875, £2>6^S\ A party of rustics on a road, approaching the spectator. The party consists of a girl on a white pony and three other peasants with four horses, a youth walking by them with a rabbit slung over his shoulder and accompanied by a dog ; a boy with sheep on a hill in the mid- distance, and another boy resting under an old tree. A pool of water and a felled tree in front, church in distance. 40 x 50 Landscape. [J. W. Russell, Esq. M. 1857] Landscape, "A Cottage Door." [Duke of Rutland. R. A. 1889] A cottage on the skirts of a wood. A woman with six children and an older girl before the door; a man carrying a faggot approaches followed by a dog; sheep in the middle distance. 57X47 Landscape, with Cattle and Figures. [Duke of Rutland. R. A. 1889] The slope of a wooded bank ; in the fore- ground a shepherd talking to a seated girl, near them sheep and two cows ; a third figure on the right; distant landscape beyond. 58iX47i Landscape. [Duke of Rutland] Cattle near a sheet of water. 2 Landscape. [Duke of Rutland] A house, with a party of country people in front of it. Landscape. [Duke of Rutland] With a herd of cattle. Landscape. [A. Sanderson, Esq.] On the right, a castellated building, on a height ; on the left a grove of trees ; in the centre figures and horses. Water colour varnished in imitation of oil painting. 40 x 50 ? Landscape, [ex. David P. Sellar, Esq. R. A. 1885] Skirts of a wood; on the right a seated beggar; blue sky with dark clouds. 30^^x34^^ Landscape. [Shepherd Brothers] On the left a road, down which a peasant is leading a one-horse cart in which a woman with a market basket is seated ; beside the road is an oak coppice. To the right a man asleep, and a herdsman driving two cows towards the distance. In the distance an extensive land- scape, with a bridge, and a towered building on a hill. 36 x 6oi Landscape. Cattle passing a Bridge. [H. M. Skrine, Esq., Warleigh Manor, Bath] Given by Gainsborough to Mr. Bowles of North Aston, in exchange for a violin (Fulcher) Landscape, with Figures. [G. B. Smith, Esq. G. G. 1885] In the centre the hollow trunk of a large old oak ; near it a man and woman ; in the distance a rough bank crowned with trees. 25x30 Landscape. [ex. — Smith ; Messrs. Tooth] 47i X 59 Landscape, with Cattle. [Mrs. Thos. Swift Taylor. G. G. 1885] Late evening effect. A man playing on a flute. Cattle. Painted for Mr. Parker, of A shbourne, Derbyshire. 38 x 26 Landscape. [Sir Charles Ten- nant, Bart. R. A. 1884 and 1895] On a high knoll, to the right, figures and cattle ; towards the left, several boats ; nearer the centre, figures which have just landed. 30x244 Landscape. [R. G. Thomas, Esq. R. A. 1881] Skirts of a wood ; a waggon drawn by two horses, with a woman and child in it, goes along a road to the right, followed by a man and woman on foot ; cattle and sheep in fore- ground ; distant view beyond. 53x37!- Landscape, with Cows and Bridge. 3 T THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH [Thos. Thompson, Esq. G. G. 1885] A rustic bridge across the deep bed of a narrow stream, in which stand three cows; near them a boy on a horse and a girl. 24ix Landscape, with Cattle. [W. R. M. Thoyts, Esq. R. A. 1876 ; G. G. 1885] Eight cows in the foreground; on the right a broken tree leaning inwards ; a herdsman, a woman and a dog on the right. 49 x 39 Landscape. [ex. Lord Tweed- mouth. B. I. 1814 : R. A. 1880, G. G. 1885] Said to be a view near Bath. Rocky fore- ground, with open distance in the centre ; in front a pond with three cows and a goat ; on the left a youth talking to a girl. Companion to the " Harvest Waggon." 48X 58 Landscape, with Cattle. [Lieut.- Col. Unthank. R. A. 1891] In the foreground a pool shadowed by high trees ; on the left cattle drinking ; on the right two figures. 14 x 12* Landscape. [Lieut.-Col. Un- thank. R. A. 1 891] In the front, a pool ; on the hillside above, a man ploughing with two horses ; on a hillock to the right a windmill. 19 x 24 Landscape. [Lieut.-Col. Un- thank. R. A. 1891] A waggon, in which are a man and a woman, drawn by two horses, moving to the right, across a, heath. 19x24 Landscape, with Figures. [Lord Wantage, ex. Benoni White. G. G. 1885] An o-pen glade, with, on the left, a sunlit distance ; a boy riding a white horse and lead- ing another; a man carrying a bundle of sticks. 40x50 Landscape, with Cattle, [ex. Wells Collection. G. G. 1885] Three cows collected on a hillock beside a stream ; trees on the right ; a glimpse of open country near the centre. 13J x iij Landscape. [Sir Thos. Which- cote, Bart. R. A. 1877] Shepherd with a girl and a dog in the fore- ground; cattle and sheep near ; rocks and trees to right and left ; distant hills in centre. 43X47i Landscape ; Evening. [D. T. White, Esq. ex. Wells Col- lection] In the distance mountains; in the mid- distance a church tower ; in the foreground large trees with a boy riding one horse and leading another. Landscape and Figures. [Sir W. Williams- Wynn, Bart.] A woman with a pitcher on her shoulder turns towards a boy, in a rocky, woody scene ; he seems to be weeping 24X 18 Called " Hagar and Ishmael " in the Cata- logue of the British Institution in 1814, and under its present title in 1853 Landscape. [Lord Windsor. R.A. 1874] View looking along a road at the edge of a wood ; distant view on right, cottage on left ; sheep on the road and a man beyond. 11 J x' Landscape, " Dragging theNets." [Geo. J. Gould, Esq. SUBJECT PICTURES, &c. Abraham and Isaac. (After Mu- rillo.) [S. H. 1789] 41x33 An Old Woman and Child, on a Donkey. [Lord Methuen] Small (F.) A Peasant Girl. [ex. W. P. Hunt, Esq.] " A carefully finished miniature " (F.) Aremberg, Due d'. (After Van Dyck.) [Rev. E. R. Gardiner. S. H. 1789] 37x3 A Similar Picture. Etched by T. Gainsborough. Beggar Boys, The. [Duke of Newcastle. R. A. 1885] Half -figures of two boys; one holdint a pitcher, the other looking up. 29 x 24 Beggar Boys, Two. [Duke of Newcastle. M. 1857] Boys and Fighting Dogs. [Lord Iveagh] A shepherd boy trying to prevent an.oth»r from interfering with two fighting collies. Mez. by Henry Birche. 1791 590 CATALOGUE i Child (Jack Hill) with a Cat. [Met. Museum, New York, ex. Sir W. Knighton] Evening. The child stands against a dilapidated fence. 58 x 46 Mez. by Charles Turner. 1809. Conspirators, The. (After Ve- lasquez) 38x31 Cornaro Family, The. (After Titian.) [Marquess of Lans- downe, K.G. S. H. 1789] 36x22 "Cymon and Iphigenia," or "The Mushroom Girl." [C. 1863, ? xA.gnews, 1903] 50x40 Diana and Actaeon. [Windsor Castle] This picture is quite unfinished, but is of great interest through its unusualness in the work of Gainsborough. On the right Action looks over a bank at Diana and her nymphs ; horns have already settled on his head ; in the centre and on the left, the goddess and her attendants, eight nude figures, occupy a sort of river bed, with a waterfall beyond. Back' ground of leafy trees. 62^x73 J Dog, A Pomeranian. [A. W. Gould, Esq. R. A. 1885] Life-size, standing, to left. Dark back' ground. 24 x 29 Dog, Portrait of a Favourite, which belonged to Sir George Beaumont, Bart. [Sir George Beaumont, Bart., G. G. 1885] 17JX24 Dogs, Two, Favourites of Sir George Beaumont, Bart. [Sir George Beaumont, Bart. G. G. 1885] 32x29 Dogs, Portraits of a Pomeranian Dog and Puppy. [W. R. M. ; Thoyts, Esq. R. A. 1876; G. G. 1885] K. F. Abel's favourite dogs. The picture used to hang over the mantelpiece in Gains- borough's studio. 32 X 43 Foxhunt. [Earl of Rosebery K.G. R. A. 1878] Three hounds after a fox ; one has just caught him by the neck, another by the htnd leg. 71 X 43 Gipsies' Repast, The. [ex. Wilt- shire Collection] 21 PICTURES Gipsies, The. [C. 27, 5, 1882] Engraved. Eight or nine figures engaged in preparing a meal under a wide spreading oak. 36x28 Girl and Pigs. [Earl of Carlisle. (?) ex. Calonne Collection] A cottage girl sitting and watching pigs feeding. Mez. by Richard Earlom. 1783 Girl and Pigs. [ex. Rev. B. Gibbons] An inferior version of the picture belonging to Lord Carlisle, Hen and Chickens. [Rev. E. R Gardiner. G. G. 1885] 23JX25 " Hobbinol and Ganderetta." Two children, one sitting and one kneeling, a cat beside them. Eng. in Stipple by P. W. Tomkins. 1790. Horse, An Old. [National Gallery ; ex. Misses Lane. R. A. 1887] A white horse, resting his head on the branch of a tree. 22x25* Inigo Jones. (After Van Dyck.) [S. H. 1789] 28x23 Interior of a Cottage, with Children by the Fire. [ex. Sir W. Knighton] " Jack Hill " warming himself before the fire ; a girl in the background eating porridge. Daylight effect. 58x46 Mez. by Charles Turner. 1809. Jewish Rabbi. [Hampton Court After the picture {No. 190) by Rembrandt in the National Gallery. The Rembrandt formerly belonged to the Duke of Argyll, who may have allowed Gainsborough to make this copy. 30 X 26 Landscape. (After Wynants ?) [J. S. Muskett, Esq.] A two-horse waggon descending into a valley ; a sandbank in the foreground. 24 x 19 Man, Portrait of a. (After Van Dyck.) [S. H. 1789] 26 X 21 Man's Head, A. (After Rem- brandt. (?) The " Rabbi," at Hampton Court.) [S, H. 1789] sgx 24 Mushroom Gatherer, The. [W. E. Alexander, Esq. R. A. 1887] ii THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Full length — small — of a girl kneeling on the ground and picking mushrooms. (Un- finished.) 50x40 Mushroom Gatherer, The [Agnews, 1903] Musidora. [National Gallery] Probably a portrait of Emma Lyon, or Hart, afterwards Lady Hamilton. She is seated on the bank of a stream, overshadowed by trees ; she is draped in a chemise ; one foot is in the water, from the other she is loosening a sandal. The position of the legs has been changed by Gainsborough. Life size. Oval. 72X 60 Engraved by P. Lightfoot. Peasant Boy, A. [Miss Clarke] An early work (F.) Pembroke Family. (After Van Dyck.) [ — Van Andre, Esq.] Portrait. (After Van Dyck.) [S. H. 1789] Richmond and Lennox, James Stuart, Duke of. (After Van Dyck.) [S. H. 1789] 80x57 Rustic Amusements. Two children playing with a donkey, bumf at Exton Park. Rustic Children. Kann, Paris] [Mons. R. "Showing the Way." Charleton. See Spanish Peasants. [After Mu- rillo.) [Colonel Blathwayte] Still Life, [Arthur Sanderson, Esq.] Duck, lobster, two teal, two straw-covered flasks, lemons, &c. 25x50 COPIES The Broken Egg. [Wadsworth Athenaeum] The Cottage Girl. [G. L. Bassett, Esq. R. A. 1876] A bare-foot girl carrying a dog under one arm and a jug in the right hand. 68 J x 49 The Cottage Girl. Also known as " Lavinia " A bare-footed girl carrying a bowl of milk ; in the background a woman milking a cow. Eng. in stipple by John Whessel. 1806 Eng. in stipple by F. Bartolozzi. 1790 The Shepherd's Boy in the Storm. A boy (Jack Hill ?) sheltered on the wind' ward side of a tree. A collie beside him. High wind and rain. Mez. by Richard Earlom. 1781 The Three Trees. (After Rem- brandt.) [Earl of Craven (F.)] The Tired Ploughman. [ex. Northwick Collection] Tristram and Fox. [National Gallery, ex. Misses Lane. R. A. 1887] The favourite dogs of Gainsborough and his wife. Woodman and his Dog in a Storm, The. [S. H. 1789] Bought at the Schomberg House sale by Lord Gainsborongh for ^500, and destroyed by fire at Exton Park. 92x61 Eng. by Simon. 1790 Wrestlers, a Sketch, [ex. G. Dupont] 292 INDEX Abel, musician, 114, 119, 120, 131, 146, 170, 176 Adair, sec M'Kittrick Adelphi Terrace, 137, 187 Agnew, Sir William, 160 Agnew, Messrs., 150, 153, 205, 206 Althorp, 152 Amherst, Lord, 161 Argyll, John, 4th Duke, 115, 147, 154, 161 Art, 2, 10, 13-14, 15, 24, 25, 26-7, 37, 252 Astley, John, 185 Bach, J. S., 134, 135, 210 " Baillie Family, The," 196 Bateman, Lord, 151, 184, 190, 204 Bath, 97, 105, iia-113, 115, 147, 158, 161. 168, 183, 187, 190, 209, 214, 249 "Bath Gainsboroughs," 150 " Bearing, Mr.," 129 Beaumont, Sir George, 215, 216 Beauty, 10-13, I4. 231; female, 254 Bedford, John, 4th Duke, 85, 159, 160 Bedford, Wriothesley, 3rd Duke, 86, 160, 161 Beechey, Sir WiUiam, 139, 243 Bell, Mrs. A., T. Gainsborough, 97, 98. 139, 160 Bergholt Peninsxila, 48, 49 Bettes, John, 23 Blaine, Mr. D. R., 138 Blenheim, 245 " Blue Boy," 91, 151, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 211, 250 Boucher, Mons., 67, 70 Bourguignon, H. F., see Gravelot Bourguignon, Charles, see D'Anville " Boy and Dog," 139, 196 " Boy at the Stile," 206, 207 Bristol, 151 British Museum print room, 229 British School of Deceased Masters, First Exhibition, 21 Brown, Robert, 75 Buccleuch, Duke of, 160 Buckingham Palace, 185, 191, 197 Burney, Archdeacon, 97 Burr, Margaret, 84 ; Burroughs, Rev. H., 62, 63 Burton, Lord, 150, 158 Buttall, Jonathan, 161, 164, 165 Buttall, Master, 164, 229 Buyers, see Gentlemen, 115 Calcott, Sir A., 149 " Campbell, Lord Archibald," 161, 163 " Canning as a Boy," 164 Carnarvon, Lord, 159, 211, 250 Carr, Mary Lady, 160 Castellane, Comte de, 166 Chambers, Sir William, 218 Chatterton, 147 Chesterfield, Lord, 159 " Clarges, Lady," 229 Clarke, Captain, 108 Clutterbuck, 141 Cobbold, Mr. John, 50, 80, 82, 89, 90, 97, 249 Colman, George, 161 CoUyer, John, 142, 156 " Colonel St. Leger," 153 Colour, 39 Constable, John, 20, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51, (letter) 53. 91, 108, 208, 216, 223 Cooper, Samuel, 31-2 '.' Cornard Wood," 50, 83, 89, 92-3, 95, 96, 220 " Cornfield," 48, 95 " Cornwallis, Lord," 161 Cotes, Samuel, 134, 218 Cotman, J. S., 51 "Cottage Door," 95, 168, 169, 211, 250 " Cottage Girl," 168 " Cottage Interior," 214 Creighton, of Ipswich, 87 Crome, 43, 51, 94, 100 " Crosbie, Lady," 251 293 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Crosdill, 1 20 Cumberland, Duke of, 147, 166 ; and Duchess, 169, 191 Cunningham,, Allan, 83, 84, 115, 174, 180, 215, 216 Cuyp, 49, 80 "5DALRYMPLE, Gtace," 167 D'Anville, Charles, Gravelot, 65, 68, 70 Darling, Sir Charles, 82, 90 Dean, John, 167 Dean Street, Soho, 77 Dedham, 48, 49, 91 ; " View of," 95 Degas, 225 " Dehaney," Mr. and Mrs., 160 Devonshire, 130 Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, 115, 187, 205-6, 229, 251 Dobson, William, 23 Donaldson, Mr. G., 98 Don Quixote, Hayman's, 76 Downman, 117 " Drapery and Landskip Back- grounds," 134 Dubosc, Claude, 68 " Duchess, the Stolen," 205, 206 Dudley, Sir H. Bate, 161 Dunning, Mr., 130, 135, 170, 222 Dupont, see Gainsborough Dupont Dupuis, Mrs., 85 Dyce Collection, 100 East Anglia Influence, 51 Eastern Counties and Landscape Art, 46, 94 Edgar, Mr., 98, 106-7, 108, 250 Edgar, Miss Katherine, 98, 250 Elliott, Mrs., 167, 168, 228 ; see also Dalrymple Exeter, 118, 126 Female portraiture, 254 Fischer, J. C, 114, 119, 120, 146, 159, 170, 177, 194, 210 (for Mrs., see Gainsborough, Mary) Fleischmann, Mr., 142, 211 Flood, Miss, 131 " Foote," 157 Ford, Miss, 174, 175 Fordyce, Alexander, 188 " Forest," see Cornard Wood Foster Collection, 97 Fulcher, 55, 56, 60, 61, 84, 99, 100, 106, 108, 115, 116, 137, 139, 147, 152, 157, 168, 172, 184, 191, 201, 203, 208, 213 Fuller, Mr. W. H., of New York, 88, 165. 173 2 Gainsborough, Humphry, 57, 60- 61, 153, 192-3, 194 Gainsborough, John, 57-60 Gainsborough, Mary (Mrs. Fischer), 159, 194, 195. 201 Gainsborough, Robert, 199, 200 Gainsborough, Thomas, sen., 55, 56 Gainsborough, Thomas, birthplace, its scenery, 47, 48, 50 ; Ipswich training, 49 ; reminiscences, 53- 4 ; family, birth and early years, 55-64 ; sent to London, 64, 144 ; first two masters, Gravelot and Hayman, 65-77 ; adverse influ- ence outside studio, 77 ; early pencil portraits, 78, 95 ; working in Hatton Garden, 78 ; return to Sudbury (at eighteen), 80; early landscapes, 81, 82-3 ; courtship and marriage to Miss Burr, 83-4, 202 ; site of Ipswich home, 85, wife's parentage, 65, 86 ; '' Land- guard Fort," 89 ; earliest pic- tures still unknown, 90 ; his palette, 91, 212 ; resemblance to Constable, 91-2 ; Dutch models, 93-4, 249 ; progress in landscape, 95 ; early portraits, 96 ; Ipswich means, 98 ; pupils, 99, 100 ; friendships — Kirby, 99, 100 ; Thicknesse, 100-106 ; Rev. J. Hingeston, 106 ; Edgar, 106 ; starts music, 104 ; leaves Ipswich for Bath, 105-6, 115 ; Suffolk portraits, 97, 107, 108 ; Bath portraits a success, 112, "5. 235 ; absence of initiative, 114; patrons and prices, 115, 116, 147, 151 ; love of music described by William Jackson, 119-122; his forehead, 130; sick of portraits, 131 ; his musical instruments, 132, 149, 176 ; portrait price, 140 ; mo- bility, 148 ; preference for land- scape, 148-149 ; Bath pictures, 150-8; visits London, 154; at Taunton, 155 ; relations with John Wiltshire, 157 ; foundation Royal Academician, 156; ex- hibits, 155, 156, 159; his por- trait heads, 160-6 ; repartee to Rej'nolds, 162, 165 ; finest land- scapes, 168, 240 ; habits, 170 ; Thicknesse quarrel, 174-180 ; quits Bath, 169, 175 ; Royal patronage, 185, 191 ; London home, 185, 190 ; death of brother Humphry, 192-3 ; daughter's marriage, 194 ; daughter's mental affliction, 195 ; quarrel with Royal INDEX Academy, 196-7; peep-show, 200; generosity, 206-7 ; relations with Sir J. Reynolds, 209-10, 217, 234 ; last illness, 216,217; death, 218; burying place, 213, 218, 222-4 ! character and humour, 181-2, 210, 220 ; appearance, 219; his art, 47, 225-255 Letters to — Duke of Bedford, 85 Mr. R. Edgar, 107-8 W. Jackson, of Exeter, 117, 123-135 (5) D. Garrick, 136 (2) J. Henderson, 144 (3) Sister, Mrs. Gibbon, 192-3, 201 Royal Academy, 197 Dr. Pearce, 199 Sir Joshua Reynolds, 217-8 Gainsborough, Thomas, A Record, see Bell Gainsborough, Thomas, A Sketch, P. Thicknesse, 58 Gainsborough, Thomas, Allan Cun- ningham, 83 Gainsborough, Thomas, Essays on various Subjects, W. Jackson, 117 Gainsborough, Thomas, Papers, Mr. Hodgson, R.A., and Mr. Eaton, 228 Gainsborough, Mrs., 86, 105, 112, 160, 171, 192, 202, 214, 221 Gainsborough, portraits of Misses, 97, 106, 171 Gainsborough, Dupont, Mr., 13c, 164, 198, 203-4, 205, 206, 218, 228 " Gardiner, E. R.," 164 Gardiner, Rev. Edward, 97 Garrick, David, 68, 115, 116, 136, 138 [Stratford "Garrick," 116. 137. 138-9; Blaine "Garrick," 138, 146], 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 156, 170, 244 Garrick, Mrs., 140, 141 Garrick Club, 147, 204 Gentleman' s Magazine, 138 "Gentlemen," i.e., buyers, 115, 185 George III., King, 64, 69, 191, Giardini, 119, 120, 130, 136, 146, 170, 210 Gibbon, Rev., of Bath, 57 Gibbon, Mrs., 57, 192, 193, 217 Gibbons, Rev. B., 156 Gibbs, portrait, 109 Gloucester, Duke of, 191 " Going to Market," 151 Gould, E. T., 158 Gower, Lord Ronald, 204 " Grafton, Duchess of," 160 Graham, Dr., 186 " Graham, Mrs.," 98, 226, 228, 250, 253 Gravelot, Hubert, 64, 65-75, 81, 248 ; letter to Voltaire, 71 Green, T., Diary, 84 Grignon or Grignion, Charles, 64, 69 Grignon or Grignion, Charles, jun., 69 Grosvenor, first Viscountess, 115, 147. 154 Hall, Colonel, 158 " Hallett, Mr. and Mrs.," see Morn- ing Walk Hals, Frans, 9, 77, 227, 232, 238, 239 "Hamilton, Lord Archibald," 212 Hamilton, Colonel, 181, 207 Hamilton, Dr., of Ipswich, 54 " Hamilton, La Belle," Lely's, 34 Hampton Court, 153, 159 Hanover Square, 150 Harwich, 88, 89 ; Constable's, 92 Hatton Garden, 78 " Hawkins, Admiral," 231 Hayman, Francis, 75-7, 81, 163, 170 Henderson, John, 143, 144, 145, 146, 161 Hertford House, 233 " Hervey, Capt.," Earl of Bristol, 115, 154 Heseltine's, Mr. J. P., La Lecture, 70, 71 " Hibbert, Squire," 169 Hilliard, Nicholas, 28, 29, 32 Hingeston, Rev. J., 106 " Hippesley, Miss," 96 History Pictures, 124 Hoare, Wm., 105, 112, 115, 174 Hodgson, R.A., Mr., 228 Hogarth, Wm., i, 6, 12, 22, 24, 25, 41, 75, 76, 252 Holbein, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30, 33, 209, 227 Holland, Mr. S. G., 157 " Honywood, General," 115, 150, 153-4, 249, 250 " Hood, Lord," 196 " Hope Nursing Love," 155 Hoppner, John, 20, 165, 237 " Horses at a Well," 250 Horsley, Mr. R. A., 149 Hunter, Dr. John, 217 Hutcheson, F., Beauty and Virtue, 4 Huysman, Cornells, 35 295 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Impressionists, 225, 230 Indigo, 129, 133 Ipswich, 50, 53, 86, 87, 97, 99, 100, 109, 112, 113, 117, 136, 150, 175, 201, 222, 249 Irish National Gallery, 49, 76, 77, 88, 90. 95. 96, 153. 158. 161, 249 Jack Hill, 115, 213, 214 Jackson, W., of Exeter, 85, 1 17, 122, 126, 130, 132, 135, 148, 170, 202, 208, 221, 241 Jaye, Henry, 132 Keene, Charles, 41 Kew Green, 199, 213, 217, 2x8 Kilderbee, Mr., 54, 199, 201 Kilmorey, Lord, 154 Kir by, Joshua, 99, 100 Kirby, William, 99 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 34, 107, 209 ''Lady Sussex and Lady Yelver- ton," 116, 150, 158 " Landguard Fort," 50, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 173, 174 " Landscape with Figures and Cattle," 156, 157, 168, 241 Lane, Misses, 96, 214 Lansdowne, Lord, 149 La Tour, Quentin, 41, 73 Laughing Cavalier, Hals, 9 Lawrence, Stringer, 161 L'Art du dix-huitieme Siicle, De Goncourt, 74 Lely, Sir P., 33, 34-35, 209, 254 " Ligonier, Lord, with his Horse," 158 Ligonier, Lady, 116, 147, 158 Lindsay, Lady Margaret, 188 " Linley and her Brother, Miss," 128, 150, 151, 227, 244 Linley, Miss, 164, 172, 181, 227, 237 Linley, Thomas, 218 " Little Masters," English, 24, 237 London in 1774, 185, 190 Loutherbourg, Philip de, 200 Lyon, Emma, 187 Mac AULA Y, Miss Catherine, 167, 187 M'Kittrick-Adair, Dr., 104, 173, 179 Major, Thomas, 88, 89, 90, 104, 173. 192 "Mall in St. James's Park," 53, 169, 182, 211, 226, 248, 250 " Marsham Family," 227 Mears, Mrs., 237, 253 Medlicott portrait, 153 21 " Methuen, P. C," 164 Miniaturists, 27-33 Molyneux, Isabella, Lady, 116, 155 Montagu, George, Duke of, 140, 159, 160 Montagu, Duchess of, 140, 159, 160 Moreau le Jeune, 67 " Morning Walk," or Mr. and Mrs. Hallett, 169, 182, 213, 226, 228, 230, 240, 246, 248, 250, 253 Morris, Miss, 155 Moser, Mary, R.A., 163 Mountainous Countries non-produc- tive of Artists, 43, 44 Moysey, Dr., 135 " Mulgrave, Ladv," 212, 226, 228, 253 MuriUo, 93, 114, 214 " Mushroom Girl," 205 Music and Painting, 133, 149 " Musidora," 187, 211, 230 National Characteristics in Paint- ing, 37-42 National Gallery, 17, 31,96,97, 129, 139, 142, 161, 164, 168, 196, 204, 211, 227, 246, 250 National Gallery, see Irish National Portrait Gallery, 23, 34, 76, 96, 160, 161 " Needham, Capt.," 154 Newton, Mr. F. W., 155 Nollekens and his Times, 63, 206 Norman, Barak, 132 Northcote, James, 210, 212 Northumberland, Duke of, x6i " Norton, Mrs.," 226, 228, 230, 250, 253 Norwich School, 51, 100 "Nugent, Earl," 151 " Nugent, Col. Hon. Edmund," 115, 152, 153 Nugent, Sir George, 151 " Nuthall, Mr.," 158 Oliver, Isaac, 29 Oliver, Peter, 29 " Opus Anglicanum," 36 " Orpin," the Parish Clerk, 139 > Oxford, Christ Church, 142 " Paget, Mr.," 212 Painting and Music, 133, 149 Painting, Modern, 252 Palmer, Mr., of Bath, 123, 124, 127, 144, 146, 170-1, 178 Plampin, Mr. John, 82 Plampin, Master, 164 " Parish Clerk, The," 139, 153, 157 Parr, Remigius, 68 Pearce, Dr. W., 199 INDEX Peel, Sir R., 138 Pembroke, Lord, 113, 137 " Perdita," 233 Perspective, Taylor's Method of, 100 Phillips, Mr. Lionel, 150, 156 Picture, What it ought to be, 129 Pine, R. E., 179 " Pink Boy," 163 Pitt, Lord Rivers, 116, 147, 155 Portland, Duke of, 167 Poyntz, William, 152, 249 " Princesses, The Eldest," 197-8, 204, 227 QuiLTER, Mr. Harry, 168, 250 Quin, James, 77, 115 "Quin, James," 152, 153, 157 Raphael, 16, 17, 18, 40 Rembrandt, 9, 17, 18, 114, 209, 227, 228, 233, 238, 239, 252 Renaissance, The, 16 " Repose," 250 Restout, Jean, 67 " Return from Harvest," 156, 157 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 25, 134, 135, 142, 152, 154, 159, 161-162, 165, 171, 186, 188, 189, 209, 210, 217- 18, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 230, 233. 235, 236, 237, 238, 242, 243, 245, 248, 251, 254 Discourses, 2, 122, 233-5, ^75 Richardson, J., The Connoisseur, I Richmond, 213 Rivers, George Pitt, Lord, 116, 147, 15s " Robinson, Mrs,," 238, 253 " Rodney, Lord," 197 Romney, George, 21, 55, 62, 187, 189, 209, 237, 243, 254 Rothschild, Baron Alphonse de, 245, 246 Rothschild, Lord 204 " Roughness of the surface," 107 Royal Academy, 68, 76, 99, 100, 116 117, 123, 155, 156, 191, 196, 197, 204, 221, 228, 233 Rubens, 30, 93, 140, 209, 232, 236, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250 Riiskin, Mr., 4, 236, 239 " Rustic Children," 168 Russell, John, 41 Salting, Mr., 229 " Sandy, Thomas, and Wife," 97 Schomberg, Dr. Ralph, 142 Schomberg House, 149, 185, 186, 190, 210, 223 ' Sefton, First Earl, 155 Shakespeare, Gravelot's illustra- tions, 69, 70 2( Shakespeare, F. Hayman's, 76 Shakespeare, proposed portrait, 139, 140, 142, 143, 225 Shelborne, Lord, 130 Shepherd, Messrs., 83 Sheridan, R. B., 138, 161, 215, 216. 218 " Sheridan, Mrs.," 169, 182, 204, 226, 228, 230, 238, 240, 244, 250, 253. 254 Shockerwick Sale, 157 " Siddons. Mrs.," 129, 134, 162, 164, 165, 228, 253, 254 Signed Pictures, 209 Smart, John, 32, 41 Smith, J. T., S3, 63, 108, 162, 206, 208 Society of Artists Incorporated, 69, IIS, 116, isi, IS2, 154 Society of Arts, 61 South Kensington, 29, 97, 100, 166, 198 Sou they, Robert, 167 Spencer, Georgiana, Countess, 152 Spring Gardens, 153 Stark, James, 51 Stratford-on-Avon " Garrick," 116, IS4 Stratford St. Mary, 95 Street or Strete, Gwillim, 23 Strutt, Mr., 108 Sudbury, Suffolk, 48, 55, 56, 62, 63, 79, 84, 86, 90, 112, 114, 126, ISO Suffolk, SO, S2, 108, 150, 201, 208, 214, 223, 249 Suffolk, " View in," 90 Sussex Lady, 116, 150, 158, 227 Tankard Inn, 107 Taunton, 155 Taylor, Dr. Brook, Perspective, 100 Taylor, John, 163 " Technique," 26, 231 Temple of Health, 1 86 Teniers, 114 Tennant, Sir Charles, 96, 229, 251, Theobald's Shakespeare, 69 Thicknesse, Philip, 57, 59, 61, 63, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 100-106, 112! 114, IIS, 169, 171, 173, 174, 183, 194, 209, 221 Thicknesse, Philip, Sketch of the Life of T. G., s8, 63, 103, 171-2, 175-180, 184 Thicknesse, Lady E., 102 Thicknesse, Mrs., n^e Ford, 102, 177, 179, 180, 204 Thomhill, Sir James, 75 Titian, 17, 40, 114, 227 " Tom Pear tree," 64, 87 Toms, Peter, 134 7 V THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Tremlett, Mr., 129 Trimmer, Mrs., 99 Trinity College, Dublin, 161 Turner, J. M. W., 38, 43, 45, 46, 236 Tweedmouth, Lord, 150, 156, 157 " Tyler, Miss Jane," 167 Van Dyck, 23, 29-31, 34, 93, 97, 113, 114, 140, 163, 204, 209, 218, 227, 233, 237, 242, 243. 248, 249, 2 54 Vaughau, Mr. Henry, 97, 166 Velazquez, 9, 17, 114, 232, 233, 239, 250 " Vernon, Admiral," 87, 96, 104 Vernon, Mr., 154 Vertue's Collection, George, 22 " View of Dedham," 95 " Villiers, Lord," 235 Vincent, George, 51 Vincent, Sir Edgar, 164, 204 Voltaire, 65, 70, 72 " Wade, Capt.," 158 Wallace Gallery, 233, 2t;i Wallis, Mrs., 82 Walpole's Catalogues, 158, 159 "Watering Place," 95, 168, 211, 213, 250 Watson, James, 154 Watteau, 67, 212, 245, 247, 248 Westminster, Duke of, 165, 168, 200, 211, 214, 250 Westminster Hall, 217 Whitehead, Paul, 188, 235 Wilson, Richard, 81, 82, 170 Wilton, 97, 113, 242, 243 Wiltshire, John, 141, 153, 156, 157, 158 " Wolfe, General," 98 Women and Children Portraiture, 40-42 " Wood Gatherers," 211, 250 Wood of Ipswich, 108 Wood, Sir Jasper, 108 Wynants, 49, 93, 94, 114, 241, 249 YELVERTON,Lady Barbara, 150, 158 ZOFFANY, J., 220 Zucarelli, 81 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson Co. London &' Edinburgh