utmost perplexity and dismay.

There is no expression of grief except on the part of the dying woman's baby-child, and the old nurse who holds it up for a last kiss. As the tragedy began sordidly, so does it end; and the avaricious father-like the hound that seizes the opportunity to steal the meat from the table-carefully abstracts the rings from his dying daughter's fingers. (Much of the above description is borrowed from Thackeray's English Humourists and Hazlitt's Criticisms on Art.)

108. THE VILLA OF MÆCENAS, AT TIVOLI. Richard Wilson, R.A. (1714-1782). See under 304, p. 430.

A proper subject for an artist to paint for a patron-being the villa of the great art patron of the Augustan age. This picture was painted for Sir George Beaumont. The artist painted four other pictures of the same subject; the first of the series was for the Earl of Thanet, who, going one day with Wilson from Rome to Tivoli in company with Lord North, was so much struck with the beauty of the spot that he commissioned the artist to paint it for him. Wilson chose his point of view, but his patron asked to have Horace's "Bandusian fountain," which is really some miles above Tivoli, introduced to increase the poetic interest. Here, therefore, issuing from the rock on the left, is the celebrated stream represented : thus once more verifying the poet's prophecy (Horace's Odes, iii. 13, translated by Conington)

Thou too one day shalt win proud eminence

'Mid honour'd founts, while I the ilex sing,
Crowning the cavern, whence

Thy babbling wavelets spring.

Horace's villa stood behind the trees on the left, fronting that of Mæcenas. The building to the right of the latter, among the cypresses, was a Jesuit convent; the temple beneath was built in honour of the river-god Tiber.

Wilson's representation of this celebrated spot is marked with much impressiveness of feeling; but the picture is typical also of the defects of his style. Notice the "two-pronged barbarisms in the tree on the left." Wilson's tree-painting is false; "not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had never looked at a tree." The whole picture, too, is "constructed on Wilson's usual principle; the shadows, that is to say, are nearly coal-black, and the darks all exaggerated to

bring out the lights." His "foregrounds are opaque, heavy, and bituminous, whilst large trees with thick black foliage stand on either side. From such a frame, arranged like the dark hall of a diorama, the light shines out brightly and creates some illusion. Suppress the surrounding and the charm disappears" (Catalogue of the Turner Gallery, pp. 6, 9, 54; Two Paths, Appendix, I n.; and Chesneau's English School of Painting, p. 113). 1249.

ENDYMION PORTER.

William Dobson (English: 1610-1646). "Dobson, sometimes called 'the English Van Dyck,' was born in 1610, and was articled to Sir R. Peake, a painter and picture dealer, with whom Dobson's chief education consisted in copying the works of Van Dyck and Titian; he seems to have had some instruction also from Franz Cleyn, the German, who conducted the King's tapestry works at Mortlake. One of these copies had been noticed by Van Dyck himself, who recommended the young painter to the notice of Charles; and after Van Dyck's death Charles made Dobson his sergeant-painter and groom of the privy-chamber. His career was, however, short; he got into difficulties at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was imprisoned for debt. He lived many years at Oxford, but died in St. Martin's Lane, London" (Wornum: Epochs of Painting, p. 496).

A portrait of the Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I., the friend of Ben Jonson and of Herrick (who addresses one of his Hesperides to Mr. Endymion Porter). "Dobson's imperfect artistic training allowed him to perpetrate errors which are almost childish, and which mar the effect of work that is often good in colour and solid in execution. Here the boy's face and the hare are admirable; the principal figure is dignified, and the scheme of colour harmonious; but a landscape composed of a shapeless tree stuck on a hill, and accessories like the astounding capital supporting the inane laurel-crowned bust are vulgarities on a level with the art of the sign-painter" (Times, June 4, 1888).

110.

THE DESTRUCTION OF NIOBE'S CHILDREN. Richard Wilson, R.A. (1714–1782). See under 304, p. 430.

A rocky landscape, into which Wilson has introduced figures from classical story after the manner of Claude and Poussin. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when lecturing at the Royal Academy on Gainsborough, contrasted that master's common sense with Wilson's habit "of introducing gods and goddesses, ideal

beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to receive such personages." As an example he instanced this picture (which, like the "Villa of Mæcenas," its companion, was painted for Sir George Beaumont), by "our late ingenious academician, Wilson." "In a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by the lightning; had not the painter injudiciously (as I think) rather chosen that their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky, with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the children of Niobe. . . . The first idea that presents itself, is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so uncommon a situation as that in which the Apollo is placed; for the clouds on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support him; they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle of a human figure; and they do not possess, in any respect, that romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which alone can harmonise with poetical stories" (Discourse xiv.) Sir Joshua remarks that to manage a subject of this kind, a mind "naturalised in antiquity," like that of Nicolas Poussin, is required; and it is instructive to compare "the substantial and unimaginative Apollo here with the cloudy charioted Apollo in Poussin's 'Cephalus and Aurora”” (XIV. 65, p. 355) (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii, ch. iv. § 16). As for the story: Niobe, proud of her seven sons and seven daughters, " presum'd Herself with fair Latona to compare, Her many children with her rival's two." Latona, stung by Niobe's presumptuous taunts, entreated her children, Apollo and Diana, to destroy those of Niobe: “So by the two were all the many slain."

T.Gainsborough, R.A. (1727-1785). See under XVI. 109, p. 408. Another version of one of Gainsborough's favourite subjects

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.

A "CONVERSATION PIECE."1

Unknown.

1 This picture is not yet numbered or described in the Official Catalogue (June 1888).

1076.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

Unknown.

Supposed to be the poet Gay, the author of the Fables and the Beggar's Opera (see 1161, p. 426). “In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of last century, Gay's face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor night-cap (the full dress and négligé of learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an honest boyish glee-an artless sweet humour. . . . Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and court ladies free and friendly with John Gay-which made Pope and Arbuthnot love him, and melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him" (Thackeray's English Humourists).

1223. OLD WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.

1224.

Samuel Scott (died 1772). See 314, p. 433.

PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL SCOTT.

Thomas Hudson (1701–1779).

A picture of double interest-first as the portrait by one artist of another (for Scott, see 314, p. 433), and secondly, as an example of Reynolds's master. Like Reynolds, Hudson was a native of Devonshire, and it was through a mutual friend that the young Reynolds was placed in Hudson's studio. Hudson was the fashionable portrait painter of the day; and when after two years with him, Reynolds's pictures began to meet with applause, he parted company with his too-promising pupil. Reynolds accepted the disagreement as a blessing in disguise ; for otherwise, he said, it might have been difficult for him to escape from Hudson's tameness and insipidity, and from "the fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin waistcoats" which his master bestowed liberally on all customers. Scott, however, as a fellow artist, was allowed, it seems, to preserve his individuality and even his négligé dress: as a marine painter, he is represented holding a drawing or print of a seapiece. Hudson, it may be noted, estimated the value of his own teaching a good deal higher than Reynolds did. When Reynolds came back from Italy, with the bold and dashing. execution which distinguished him from his predecessors, Hudson's remark was, "You don't paint so well, Reynolds, as when you left England."

112. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

William Hogarth (1697–1764).

See under 1161, p. 424.

"His own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes shine out from the canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a hero; you see him before you, and can fancy what he was—a jovial, honest, London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearty, plain-spoken man, loving his laugh, his friend, his glass, his roast-beef of old England" (Thackeray's English Humourists). One may see a little of his life and character in the accessories also. He puts in his favourite pug, "Trump,” by his side, and rests his picture on books by Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift. The choice is significant. Like Swift, Hogarth was an English Humourist"; he aspired sometimes to work, like Milton, in the grand style; whilst for the general aim of his work, his ambition was to be a Shakespeare on canvas: "I have endeavoured," he says, "to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture is my stage, my men and women my players, who, by means of certain actions and gestures, are to exhibit a dumb show." Finally, there is a chapter of his life told on the palette, in the lower corner to the left, with the "Line of Beauty and Grace" marked upon it, and the date 1745. "No Egyptian hieroglyphic,” he says,

66 ever amused more than my 'Line of Beauty' did for a time. Painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people." Hogarth explained the mystery in 1753 by publishing his Analysis of Beauty, in which he propounded the doctrine that a winding or serpentine line was the source of all that is beautiful in works of art. The jovial, serio-comic character of the man, as one sees it in his face, is well illustrated by the epigram in which he quizzed his own book

"What! a book, and by Hogarth! then, twenty to ten,

All he's gained by the pencil he'll lose by the pen."

Perhaps it may be so-howe'er, miss or hit,

He will publish-here goes-it is double or quit."

The western doors in this Room lead down a side staircase into the Entrance Hall, and thus form an exit from the Gallery. The visitor, who wishes to see the rest of the English School, should return into Room XVI. and thence proceed into the East Vestibule.