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ADVANTAGE OF A HANDSOME SITTER.

Soon after Gainsborough came to London, he applied to Major James Johnston, of the 1st or Royal Dragoons, requesting him, as a great favour, to sit for his portrait, in order to bring himself into vogue-which he did; and he being a great favourite with the fair sex, and so handsome and fashionable at the time, the picture had the desired effect: after it had been exhibited the usual time, Gainsborough made Major Johnston a present of it, and it is now in the possession of Sir Alexander Johnston.-Note to Walpole, by Cunningham.

GAINSBOROUGH AND THE CARRIER.

One of the painter's acquaintances in Bath was Wiltshere, the public carrier, a kind and worthy man, who loved Gainsborough, and admired his works. In one of his landscapes, he wished to introduce a horse, and as the carrier had a very handsome one, he requested the loan of it for a day or two, and named his purpose; his generous neighbour bridled it and saddled it, and sent it as a present. The painter was not a man to be outdone in acts of generosity: he painted the waggon and horses of his friend, put his whole family and himself into it, and sent it, well-framed, to Wiltshere, with his kind respects. It is considered a very capital performance. From 1761, when Gainsborough began to exhibit his paintings at the Royal Academy, till his removal from Bath in 1774, Wiltshere was annually employed to carry his pictures to and from London:* he took great care of them, and constantly refused to accept money, saying: "No, no! I admire painting too much;" and plunged his hands in his pockets to secure them against the temptation of the offered payment. Perceiving, however, that this was not acceptable to the proud artist, the honest carrier hit upon a scheme which pleased both. "When you think," said he, "I have carried to the value of a little painting, I beg you will let me have one, sir; and I shall be more than paid." In this coin the painter paid Wiltshere, and overpaid him. When Allan Cunningham wrote the above, Wiltshere's son was still in possession of several of these pictures, among which was a portrait of the Parish Clerk of Bradford, very Rembrandtish.

* John Britton, in 1801, saw, in a house in the Circus, more than Efty of Gainsborough's paintings and sketches.

GAINSBOROUGH'S MODELLING.

Gainsborough modelled very rapidly, and with great fidelity. Thicknesse relates, that after returning home from a concert at Bath, where he had been charmed by Miss Linley's voice, he sent his servant for a bit of clay from the small-beer barrel, with which he modelled and then coloured Miss Linley's head, and that in a quarter of an hour, in such a manner that it seemed superior to his paintings. Mr. Leslie had in his possession, some years ago, an exquisite plaster cast of a head of Miss Linley, from a clay model by Gainsborough, probably the above. He would now and then mould the face of his friends in miniature, finding the material in the wax candles burning before him: and the models were as perfect in their resemblance as his portraits.

RETURN OF GAINSBOROUGH TO LONDON.-SCHOMBERG HOUSE, PALL MALL.

In the summer of 1774, Gainsborough returned to the metropolis, nearly thirty years having elapsed since he left the studio of Hayman. An old race of artists had passed away, and a new race had succeeded; and West, Barry, and Fuseli were following in the track already struck out by Hogarth, by Wilson, and by Reynolds.

Gainsborough was now in possession of a splendid income, high in fame. He rented at 3007. a-year part of Schomberg House, in Pall Mall,-another portion being occupied by John Astley, "the Beau," a portrait-painter of little merit. Before Gainsborough had been many months in London, George III. and Queen Charlotte sat to him for their portraits. Peers and commoners followed so rapidly that he could not satisfy his sitters. One disappointed gentleman inquired of the Painter's porter, in a voice loud enough to be overheard, "Has that fellow Gainsborough finished my portrait?" Ushered into the painting-room, he beheld his picture, approved of it, and desired it might be sent home at once, adding, "I may as well give you a cheque for the other fifty guineas." "Stay a minute," said Gainsborough, "it just wants a finishing stroke;" and snatching up a background brush, he dashed it across the smiling features, indignantly exclaiming, "Sir, where is my fellow now?"

In 1777, Gainsborough contributed several Portraits to the

Academy, besides a large Landscape, "in the style of Rubens," says Walpole, "and by far the finest landscape ever painted in England, and equal to the great masters."

The Painter (says Fulcher,) was now in the zenith of his fame. Eminent churchmen, lawyers, statesmen, players, dramatists, sailors, naturalists-Pennant, Howe, Sheridan, Edwin, Burke, Skinner, Hurd, were among his sitters. He had also painted Blackstone, and Clive, and Paul Whitehead; and the literary negro, Ignatius Sancho.

The

Schomberg House, on the south side of Pall Mall, was built about 1650, and is named after the Duke of Schomberg, who was killed at the battle of the Boyne. It was next inhabited by his son. The house was taken by the Duke of Cumberland, "the hero of Culloden," in 1760. bas-relief of Painting over the central door was set up by Astley, the painter: of the caryatidal figures supporting the portico we do not know the artist. Astley divided the house into three; he lived in the centre himself, and Gainsborough in the western wing: he died in a second-floor chamber. Cosway, the miniature painter, succeeded Astley in the centre. Attempts were made to sack and burn the premises in the Riots of 1780. Part of the house was subsequently occupied by Bowyer, for his Historic Gallery; and by Dr. Graham, the quack, for his "Celestial Bed," and other impostures. Payne and Foss, the booksellers, lived here till 1850. The uniformity of this fine specimen of a ducal mansion of the seventeenth century has been spoiled by the eastern wing being taken down, and rebuilt in another style; but Gainsborough's wing remains.

PAINTINGS BY GAINSBOROUGH, IN SCHOMBERG HOUSE.

A tradition long existed that Gainsborough had executed some frescoes upon the walls of Schomberg House during his occupancy of that historic mansion. In 1857, those so-called frescoes, completely begrimed with gas fuligen, were removed from the plaster, and being lined with canvas, proved to be capital oil-paintings, representing pleasing landscapes by this great master, when in all the ease and potency of his brush. They were originally four in number; but a change having been made in the interior construction of the house, at the time of the imposition of the Window Tax, one picture was

destroyed. Three remained, and two of them being lined and cleaned are interesting and unexpected reminiscences of the master. No evidence exists as to the subjects-they are presumed to be "compositia." Both represent mountainous landscapes, with water in the foreground. One of them, with a waterfall, is distinguished by a most masterly breadth of touch and knowledge of effect; the other is of a more quiet, confined, and pastoral character, with a fine golden tone, balanced by sky slightly diapered with that substance which has received the name of arbor Græcum. They are not cabinet pictures, but architectural decorations to be looked at from the distance of eight or ten feet, and were probably thrown off with ease and rapidity. Still, the harmony of tone, and the handling of the brush, show all the spirit of a true master.

GAINSBOROUGH AND REYNOLDS.

Soon after Gainsborough settled in London, Sir Joshua Reynolds thought himself bound in civility to pay him a visit. Gainsborough took not the least notice of the call for some years, but at length returned it, and solicited Reynolds to sit for his picture. Sir Joshua sat once; but being soon afterwards afflicted by slight paralysis, he was obliged to go to Bath. On his return to town, perfectly restored to health, he sent word to Gainsborough, who only replied that he was glad to hear he was well; and never after desired him to sit, or called upon him, or had any other intercourse with him until he was dying, when he sent and thanked him for the very handsome manner in which he had always spoken of him—a circumstance which the President has thought worth recording in his Fourteenth Discourse. Gainsborough was so enamoured of his art, that he had many of the pictures he was then working upon brought to his bedside to show them to Reynolds, and flattered himself that he should live to finish them. This was related by Sir Joshua to Malone.

Reynolds once observed to Northcote, after attentively looking at a picture by Gainsborough, "I cannot make out how he produces his effect;" and Gainsborough, when looking at several of Reynolds's works, in company with Sir George Beaumont, exclaimed, as he glanced from one to another, "D-n him, how various he is!"

"THE BLUE BOY."

This celebrated picture, a full-length portrait of a son of Mr. Buttall, was painted by Gainsborough in 1779, to controvert a point of art. Sir Joshua Reynolds had maintained, in one of his Discourses, that "the masses of light in a picture should be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours, should be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colours." Το refute the President's objection to blue in the mass, Gainsborough painted Master Buttall in a blue dress; in spite of which, says Dr. Waagen, "Gainsborough has succeeded in producing a harmonious and pleasing effect; nor can it be doubted that in the cool scale of colours, in which blue acts the chief part, there are very tender and pleasing harmonies, which Sir Joshua, with his way of seeing, could not appreciate. On the whole, too, he may be so far right that painters would certainly do well to avoid the use of pure, unbroken blue in large masses." Mr. Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, agrees with the opinion of Sir Thomas Lawrence, that in this picture the difficulty is rather ably combated than vanquished. Indeed, it is not even fairly combated, for Gainsborough has so mellowed and broken the blue with other tints, that it is no longer that pure blue colour Sir Joshua meant; and after all, though the picture is a very fine one, it cannot be doubted that a warmer tint for the dress would have made it still more agreeable to the eye." This fine

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picture is in the Grosvenor Gallery; with a Cottage Door and a Coast Scene, by Gainsborough. At Mr. Buttall's death, the Blue Boy was purchased by Mr. Nesbitt; thence it passed to Mr. Hoppner, the painter, who sold it to the first Earl Grosvenor. The Bishop of Ely has a finished sketch of the Blue Boy; and Mr. Charles Ford, of Bath, has the original sketch in oil-dress unfinished.

SEVERE CRITICISM.

Gainsborough painted two portraits of Mr. Bate, then editor of the Morning Post, and subsequently Sir Bate Dudley, Bart. In the second portrait, he is standing in a garden with his dog-a work of great beauty of design and handling. It is

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