ANECDOTES OF PAINTING, &c. CHA P. I. Painters in the Reign of King GEORGE I E are now arrived at the period WE in which the arts were funk to the loweft ebb in Britain. From the ftiffness introduced by Holbein and the Flemish mafters, who not only laboured under the timidity of the new art, but who saw nothing but the ftarch and unpliant habits of the times, we were fallen into a loose, and, if I may use the word, a diffolute kind of paintVOL. IV. A ing, ing, which was not lefs barbarous than the oppofite extreme, and yet had not the merit of representing even the dreffes of the age. Sir Godfrey Kneller still lived, but only in name, which he prostituted by fuffering the moft wretched daubings of hired substitutes to pass for his works, while at moft he gave himself the trouble of taking the likeness of the person who fat to him. His bold and free manner was the fole admiration of his fucceffors, who thought they had caught his ftyle, when they neglected drawing, probability, and finishing. Kneller had exaggerated the curls of full-bottomed wigs, and the tiaras of ribbands, lace, and hair, till he had struck out a graceful kind of unnatural grandeur; but the fucceeding modes were still lefs favourable to picturesque imagination. The habits of the time were shrunk to awkward coats and waistcoats for the men; and for the women, to tight-laced gowns, round hoops, and half a dozen fqueezed fqueezed plaits of linen, to which dangled behind two unmeaning pendants, called lappets, not half covering their strait-drawn hair. Dahl, Dagar, Richardfon, Jervas, and others, rebuffed by fuch barbarous forms, and not poffeffing genius enough to deviate from what they faw into graceful variations, cloathed all their perfonages with a loose drapery and airy mantles, which not only were not, but could not be the drefs of any age or nation, fo little were they adapted to cover the limbs, to exhibit any form, or to adhere to the person, which they scarce enveloped, and from which they must fall on the leaft motion. As those casual lappings and flowing ftreamers were imitated from nothing, they feldom have any folds or chiaro fcuro; anatomy and colouring being equally forgotten. Linen, from what œconomy I know not, is feldom allowed in those portraits, even to the ladies, who lean carelefly on a bank, and play with a parrot A 2 a parrót they do not look at, under a tranquillity which ill accords with their seeming fituation, the flightnefs of their vestment and the lanknefs of their hair having the appearance of their being juft rifen from the bath, and of having found none of their cloaths to put on, but a loose gown. Architecture was perverted to meer houfebuilding, where it retained not a litle of Vanbrugh; and if employed on churches, produced at beft but corrupt and tawdry imitations of fir Chriftopher Wren. Statuary ftill lefs deferved the name of an art. The new monarch was void of tafte, and not likely at an advanced age to encourage the embellishment of a country, to which he had little partiality, and with the face of which he had few opportunities of getting acquainted; though had he been better known, he must have grown the delight of it, poffeffing all that plain good-humoured fimplicity and focial integrity, which pecu liarly |