The picture was in the Collection of Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Nottinghamshire, before it was taken to California.

THE COTTAGE DOOR.

The little group is assembled in front of a thatched cottage, beside which a gnarled and withered tree rises scarred and seared by the storms of many years. Overhanging the roof a large tree droops its feathery Gainsborough foliage and, on the left, half of another feathery Gainsborough tree is waving in the summer breeze. By this tree, and farther back as well, a stream is seen falling in a little cascade beneath a rustic bridge. Luxuriant weeds grow in the foreground and by the side of the cottage, the door of which is open and beside which a peasant’s family is grouped. The mother, in yellowish brown skirt and white bodice, has a suggestion (save for the costume) of the beautiful ladies that sat to Gainsborough. In her arms is a baby. On her right, is a little boy, scantily dressed, who is eating something; in front of her are two children, one holding a bowl and the other dipping from it with a spoon; a fifth child, with one hand on his head and the finger of his left hand in his mouth, looks forward shyly; and the sixth is seated on the ground by his side. “Old pimply-nosed Rembrandt,” as Gainsborough called him, never lighted a scene more beautifully, nor more marvellously than this.

The picture, oils on canvas (57 × 46 inches), is one of Gainsborough’s most mature works and dates from about 1776–1778.

Bought by T. Harvey of Catton, Norfolk, in 1786, it passed to Mr. Coppin of Norwich in 1807. Then it became the property of Sir John Leicester, Bart., created Lord de Tabley in 1826; and at the Sale of the effects of the latter it was bought by Earl Grosvenor, created Marquess of Westminster in 1831. In 1921 The Cottage Door was sold by the second Duke of Westminster to Mr. Henry E. Huntington.

“There is no painter of English birth more widely appreciated than Gainsborough whose art touches every observer, great and simple, learned and unlearned. As we look at his pictures, said Constable, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them. A thread of romance runs through the whole of Gainsborough’s career, from his marriage to a beautiful and well-dowered bride, whose origin is shrouded in mystery, down to the pathetic termination of the long years of jealous rivalry with Reynolds. And romance and mystery are inseparably connected with his pictures—with the portraits of that Duchess of Devonshire, whom tradition has brought us to regard as typical of English beauty, with that masterpiece at Edinburgh, the portrait of Mrs. Graham, hidden from sight for fifty years on account of one of the tenderest of love stories; and with the famous Blue Boy, the secret of whose history still remains undiscovered.”[26]

“Old pimply-nosed Rembrandt and myself were both born in a mill,” Gainsborough used to say, because his father, John Gainsborough, was a manufacturer of woollens in Sudbury. Thomas was born there in 1727. At twelve he was said to be a “confirmed painter.” His first portrait seems to have been a great success. Some one had been stealing pears from the Gainsborough orchard and one day, when young Thomas was sketching there he saw a man’s face peering over the fence. Instantly he made a quick sketch and took it into the house. By means of this sketch the culprit was identified. Gainsborough then enlarged the sketch, painted an oil portrait, mounted it on a board, and stuck “Tom Peartree” up to the delight of all the neighbors and confusion of strangers. This picture was lent to the Gainsborough Exhibition held at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885 and is now in the Elizabethan Mansion in Christchurch Park, Ipswich.

In 1741 Gainsborough went to London and, after studying under Hubert Gravelot and Francis Hayman, took a studio in Hatton Garden and tried to start as a portrait and landscape-painter. A year of failure decided the young artist to return home. In a short time he married Margaret Burr (supposed to be a natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford) and removed to Ipswich. Here he painted chiefly landscapes. About 1760 he settled in Bath and immediately became the fashion. Fourteen years later Gainsborough removed to London, where his success continued and he became the rival of Reynolds. Gainsborough had already in 1768 been nominated by George III one of the thirty-six Academicians on the foundation of the Academy and he exhibited almost yearly at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1788, when there was a misunderstanding about the hanging of his pictures. Gainsborough died in 1788, closing one of the most remarkable careers in art, for this great painter was almost entirely self-taught. Reynolds called attention to this remarkable fact in his Fourteenth Discourse, in which he cites Gainsborough as an example of an artist who has arrived “at great fame without the assistance of an academical education, or any of those preparatory studies which have so often been recommended.”

Yet his genius was such that he attained the greatest eminence in his day and his place in art to-day is in the small circle of the very great ones.

Ruskin did not exaggerate in the least when he wrote: “Gainsborough’s power of color is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colorist of the English School; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die and exists not now in Europe. In management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough. His hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam. He never loses sight of his picture as a whole. In a word Gainsborough is an immortal painter.”

Gainsborough painted about seven hundred portraits and two hundred landscapes. Strange as it may seem, he preferred to paint landscapes. At least he told George III this. And he told his friend Jackson in a letter “I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my viol-da-gamba and walk off to some sweet village where I can paint landskips and enjoy the fag-end of life in quietness and ease.”

This seems strange coming from one of the greatest of all portrait-painters.

To read the list of Gainsborough’s portraits is to run through the Social Register of London and Bath. Gainsborough painted “everybody that was anybody.” The great personalities of the day wanted their portraits “limned” by both Reynolds and Gainsborough, often adding Romney and Hoppner as well. The fourteen years that he lived in Bath Gainsborough’s painting-room was almost as much of a rendez-vous as the Pump Room and his sitters ranged from the most aristocratic and wealthy, such as Earl Spencer, his wife, and little daughter, the future Duchess of Devonshire, to statesmen, like Pitt, and actors like Garrick and Quin. The latter sat three times to Gainsborough. The following little piece of amusing acting usually took place. Quin, suffering from gout, would hobble to the painting-room and tapping at the door would ask “Is Old Grumpus in?” Gainsborough would reply “Come in”; and, placing a chair for his friend and a stool to rest his foot upon, would put on a grave, doctorial look and, resting his chin on his maul-stick, would inquire in the Bath phrase: “Well, how is toe?”

Quin evidently was a critic: “Sometimes, Tom Gainsborough,” he said, “a picture in your rigmarole style appears to my optics the veriest daub,—then, the devil’s in you, I think you a Van Dyck!” And Gainsborough would tell Quin that “nothing could equal the devilism of portrait-painting.”

“Indeed, he told me,” Angelo relates, “at his house in Pall Mall, that he was sure the perplexities of rendering something like a human resemblance from human blocks was a trial of patience that would have tempted holy St. Anthony to cut his own throat with his palette-knife.”

Gainsborough was devoted to music, played several instruments and was a great friend of the oboe-player in the Queen’s Band, John Christian Fischer, who married his daughter Margaret; of John Christian Bach, son of the great John Sebastian Bach; and of Bach’s associate, Charles Frederick Abel, the celebrated virtuoso on the viol-da-gamba, whose portrait Gainsborough painted with his instrument by his side, and which is now in the Huntington Gallery.

Gainsborough’s portrait by Zoffany in the National Portrait Gallery, London, presents a handsome and rather dashing man of about thirty-five with classic features and large, fine eyes with penetrating glance and an intelligent, interior light. Had he not been a painter he might have easily become a beau, or a gallant officer of the Major André type, or of that impudent young dog, Jack Absolute, who captivated Miss Lydia Languish in The Rivals.

It was the same in London as it had been in Bath. Gainsborough became the fashion. He barely had time to fill all the orders that came thick and fast and he enjoyed society and still more his cronies, and, to judge from numerous anecdotes, was not averse to wild companions; but for all that he was generous, sympathetic, outgoing, and much beloved by his friends.

As an instance of his ready wit on one occasion, when he was in court regarding a picture the councillor tried to embarrass him. “I observe,” he said, “you lay great stress on a painter’s eye. What do you mean by that expression!” “A painter’s eye,” replied Gainsborough, without a moment’s hesitation, “is to him what a lawyer’s tongue is to you!”

Gainsborough was sprightly, humorous, and lively in conversation and indeed, in society, to use the word of the period, something of a “rattle.”

Whenever he appeared, either at a morning lounge at Christie’s amidst the enlightened and polite, or at My Lady’s midnight rout surrounded by bowing beaux and curtseying belles, his gaiety enlivened every group. He knew everybody and everybody knew him; he was, however, most at home with the worthies of the auction-room. For some years Garrick was frequently his companion at Christie’s, where the amusement caused by the humor common to both never failed to give an additional zest to the proceedings. Mr. Christie often declared that “the presence of this choice pair added fifteen per cent to his commission on a sale.”

And this was a “choice pair,”—Garrick and Gainsborough!

“We know as little about Gainsborough’s tools and methods of painting as we do of his pigments, but if his daughter’s memory may be trusted, her father worked with paint so thin and liquid that his palette ran over unless he kept it on the level. It is generally agreed that he used very long brushes, and Nollekens Smith who saw him at work, says: ‘I was much surprised to see him sometimes paint portraits with pencils on sticks full six feet in length and his method of using them was this: he placed himself and his canvas at a right angle to the sitter, so that he stood still and touched the features of his pictures exactly at the same distance at which he viewed the sitter.’ The anonymous biographer of the Morning Chronicle who knew the painter excuses his supposed want of finish by saying that he worked with a very long and broad brush. Another contemporary, John Williams (Pasquin), in a biographical note declares that Gainsborough always prided himself upon using longer and broader tools than other men and upon standing farther away from his canvas when at work. That he always stood to paint we know from Thicknesse, but it is obvious that all his work could not have been done with broad tools of hog-hair. Probably he used camel-hair brushes sometimes, as did Gainsborough Dupont, who inherited his uncle’s implements and colors and in painting followed his manner exactly. Dupont left behind him, in addition to a great quantity of hogtools, ‘twelve bundles of camel’s hair pencils.’ Fulcher says that when Gainsborough’s sitters left him it was his custom to close the shutter, in which was a small circular aperture, the only access for light and by this subdued illumination work on his picture and get rid of superfluous detail. No authority is given for this statement, but there can be little doubt that Gainsborough loved to subdue the light in his painting-room. Williams says that it was sometimes subdued to such an extent that objects were barely visible.”[27]

And Osias Humphrey, R. A., tells us a little more, drawing from his memories of Bath,... “Exact resemblances in his portraits was Mr. Gainsborough’s constant aim, to which he invariably adhered. These pictures, as well as his landscapes, were frequently wrought by candle-light and generally with great force and likeness. But his painting-room—even by day a kind of darkened twilight—had scarcely any light and I have seen him, whilst his subjects have been sitting to him when neither they nor the pictures were scarcely discernible.” We also learn that Gainsborough let in more light when the picture reached its finishing stages.

THE MALL IN ST. JAMES’S PARK.

Horace Walpole characterized this delightful picture as airier than a Watteau and “all in motion and flutter like a lady’s fan.” It is one of Gainsborough’s latest works, painted in 1786, and one of his masterpieces, oils on canvas (57¾ × 47½ inches). The picture was among those in the painter’s studio at the time of his death. After a few changes of ownership, it passed into the Collection of George Frost, an artist and fellow-townsman of Gainsborough, and then to Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, Bart., Grittleton House, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

The Mall is a perfect epitome of London society in the Eighteenth Century—the London of Austin Dobson.

“The Mall from the days of the Stuarts until the closing years of the Eighteenth Century was the field upon which fashion, and feminine fashion especially, chose to disport itself. Twice a day social London donned its best apparel and took a turn under the trees, once at midday and again, in summer, in its evening clothes after the early dinner. Here fashion met its friends, exchanged its repartees, made appointments for evening rendez-vous at Ranelagh or Vauxhall, ate fruit or bought flowers from Betty’s girl out of St. James’s Street, or drank syllabubs from the red cow’s milk which was one of the attractions of the London parks. Nothing in the external aspect of London more struck the intelligent foreigner than the amenities of the promenade in the Mall. One of these gentlemen concluded an eloquent pæan on the beauty of the lady promenaders, by recording with rapture that of a morning the very ground glistened with the pins which they had dropped. The Mall, indeed, was the very shrine of flounce and furbelow until somewhere about 1795, when fashion unaccountably moved northward to the walk in the Green Park at the back of Arlington Street, and from there later to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

“The very spirit of this life is preserved in Gainsborough’s picture, one of the few canvases in which he represents figures in motion; singular also among his work is that it contains a score or so of figures. There is a central group of four ladies with an attendant cavalier advancing towards the spectator, a pair on the right, two pairs on the left passing each other, others again seated on the right. The accidental episodic quality of such a subject is perfectly conveyed—the transient glance of a passing woman, the turn of the neck appropriate to that attitude, the ground dotted with an occasional dog. Technically it represents Gainsborough at his highest, where the solemn tones of his earlier manner have disappeared, and the very painting itself seems to echo his delight in the mastery of heightened, luminous color.”[28]

MARIA WALPOLE, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER.

The subject of this portrait was famous under three names: her maiden name of Maria Walpole; as Lady Waldegrave; and as the Duchess of Gloucester. She was very beautiful (no one could compete with her but the Gunning sisters); she was very witty and brilliant; and, moreover, she was noted for her rich qualities of heart and character. Her uncle, Horace Walpole, was devoted to her.

Maria Walpole began life under a cloud, but this was soon dispelled and the rest was all sunshine. The Hon. Edward Walpole, second son of Sir Robert, was her father and her mother was a milliner’s apprentice at Bath. Maria was baptized July 10, 1738, at St. James’s, Westminster, and was made legitimate by His Majesty’s warrant. Recognized as a Walpole, everything was done for her. The old London Town and Country Magazine gives us this very good idea of her preparation for life: “Maria’s education was suited to the rank of life in which she has ever figured; and the advantages she derived from it were entirely noticed by every man of taste and discernment who was happy enough to be in her company.”

Horace Walpole brought about her first marriage to the Right Honorable James, Second Earl of Waldegrave, K. G., in 1759; and he wrote to Sir Horace Mann:

“I have married, that is, I am marrying my niece, Maria, my brother’s second daughter, to Lord Waldegrave. What say you? A month ago I was told he liked her—does he? I jumbled them together and he has already proposed. For character and credit he is the first match in England—for beauty I think she is. She has not a fault in her face and person and the detail is charming. A warm complexion tending to brown, fine eyes, brown hair, fine teeth, and infinite wit and variety.”

In another letter Sir Horace wrote: “The second daughter of my brother is beauty itself. Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth, and person all are perfect. You may imagine how charming she is when her only fault, if one must find one, is that her face is rather too round. She has a great deal of wit and vivacity with perfect modesty.”

To George Montagu on May 16, he wrote:

“Well! Maria was married yesterday. Don’t we manage well? The original day was not once put off; lawyers and milliners were all ready canonically. It was as sensible a wedding as ever was. There was neither form nor indecency, both which generally meet on such occasions. They were married at my brother’s in Pall Mall just before dinner by Mr. Keppel;[29] the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel and Charlotte,[30] Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave and I. We dined there. The Earl and new Countess got into the post-chaise at eight o’clock and went to Navestock (Lord Waldegrave’s seat near Brentwood, Essex) alone, where they stay till Saturday night; on Sunday she is to be presented. Maria was in a white and silver nightgown[31] with a hat very much pulled over her face; what one could see of it was handsomer than ever; a cold maiden blush gave her the sweetest delicacy in the world.”

Maria was a friend of the Countess of Coventry, who had attained fame as the beautiful Maria Gunning and used to walk with her in the Park and they must have been a very striking pair, for after the Countess of Coventry’s death, Lady Waldegrave was considered the handsomest woman in England. A month after Maria’s marriage Sir Horace noted in a letter: “My Lady Coventry and my niece Walpole have been mobbed in the park.”

There were three daughters of this marriage—Laura, Maria, and Horatia—remembered to-day especially for the group portrait Sir Joshua Reynolds painted of them and which belonged to Sir Horace Walpole in 1782.

Lord Waldegrave died in 1763; and on Sept 6, 1766, Maria, now Dowager Countess of Waldegrave, was married privately to H. R. H. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, seven years her junior. The marriage was performed in her own house in Pall Mall by her own chaplain and she thus became the sister-in-law of George III. The secret was kept for some time and the King banished his brother from Court, but after two years the Duke was taken back into Royal favor and the Duchess bore her honors with such grace and dignity that she became very popular at Court.

The portrait represented here, oils on canvas (35½ × 27½ inches), was painted about 1779, or before.

“We hear,” the Public Advertiser printed on May 4, 1772, “that the gentlemen upon the Committee for managing the Royal Academy have been guilty of a scandalous meanness to a capital artist by secreting a whole-length picture of an English Countess for fear their Majesties should see it; and this only upon a full conviction that it was the best finished picture sent in this year to the Exhibition.” Again in 1775 a society reporter for the Morning Chronicle gathered up this piece of gossip: “The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are often going to a famous painter’s in Pall Mall; and it is reported that he is now doing both their pictures, which are intended to be presented to a great lady.”

The picture is nearly three-quarter length and represents the Duchess in a gold-tinted dress with hair dressed high and powdered and wearing lovely pearls. Her head is posed upon her left hand and the arm rests upon a pedestal that is barely visible. There is good reason for thinking this portrait was originally full-length and that it has been cut down. It is interesting to compare this portrait of the Duchess of Gloucester with The Hon. Mrs. Graham in the National Gallery, Edinburgh, who is painted, full length, and is resting her arm, likewise, on a pedestal.

“The introduction of a parapet, or indeed, of any kind of architectural setting in a portrait of kit-cat size is most unusual. The left arm resting on the parapet and the large scale on which the head is here painted, confirm our view that our canvas was originally, as Fulcher claims, a whole length. This canvas to-day is almost exactly kit-cat size. It may well have been cut down to meet the requirements of hanging. Half a century ago such a practice was not unknown, especially in the English Royal Collections. It will be remembered that the lower portions of the canvas of Gainsborough’s Eldest Princesses was very inceremoniously cut away in the early part of the Nineteenth Century.

“A kit-cat, strictly speaking, is a canvas for a portrait less than a half-length, but including the hands, and measuring 36 by 28 inches. It is so called from the portraits of the members of the Club at Barn Elms, who seem to have originally met in the pie-house kept in Shire Lane, London, by one Kit (i.e. Christopher) Cat. These portraits are now in the Baker Collection at Bayfordbury, near Hertford.”[32]

In June 1904 The London Times stated that “The Duke of Cambridge’s pictures, which are now hung on Christie’s walls, form the largest collection of portraits of the reigning house that has ever been offered for sale. All, in fact, represent George III and his family, with their husbands and wives. By far the finest is Gainsborough’s Maria Walpole, Countess of Waldegrave and Duchess of Gloucester, Horace Walpole’s beautiful niece.”

These art-treasures, as well as Gloucester House, had been inherited by the Late Duke of Cambridge from his aunt, the second and last Duchess of Gloucester, who died in 1857.

The sale of this picture created a sensation. Again referring to the London Times (June 13, 1904), we read: “The honors of the day distinctly fell to Gainsborough, whose beautiful portrait of Maria Walpole has established a record price for this artist’s pictures at auction. Bidding was started on Saturday at 5000 guineas and in rather more than half a dozen bids reached 12,000 guineas, at which it was knocked down to Messrs. Agnew & Sons. The price, therefore, quite eclipses the 10,000 guineas paid in 1876 for the famous stolen Duchess of Devonshire, which remained the record price for a Gainsborough until Saturday.”

In the following November, the Majestic brought the $60,000-Gainsborough to New York.

This portrait, when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, was described by Sir Horace Walpole as “very good and like.”

Maria Walpole died in 1807, two years after the Duke of Gloucester, leaving one son and two daughters. Of her other portraits Lionel Cust in The Royal Collection of Paintings, Vol. I, 1905, says:

“The beautiful Countess of Waldegrave was one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s favorite sitters. She sat to him in 1759, after her marriage, for the full-length portrait in peeress’s robes, which belongs to the present Earl Waldegrave, and again in 1761 and 1762, for the well-known portrait in a turban and for the Madonna-like group with her child, which was bequeathed by Frances, Countess Waldegrave, to the Duc d’Aumale, and is now in the Condé Collection at Chantilly. She sat again to Reynolds in 1764, as a widow in mourning for her husband, and more than once again during her widowhood. She sat to him in October, 1767, when really Duchess of Gloucester, for a portrait to be given to her father, Sir Edward Walpole.

“After the marriage had been revealed to the world, the Duchess sat to Reynolds in 1771, for the full-length seated portrait now at Buckingham Palace. This was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1774. This portrait descended to her daughter, H. R. H. Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester, who at her death in November, 1844, bequeathed the portrait to H. R. H. Prince Albert, the late Prince Consort.

“The Duchess of Gloucester sat for the last time to Reynolds in 1779, for a group of herself and her daughter, Princess Sophia Matilda.”

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.

She stands here—proud, elegant, disdainful, stylish, aristocratic, beautiful, and altogether charming, in her dashing, large, black hat worn at a debonnaire angle, white dress, and light petticoat and light blue sash, looking at us with the most marvellous eyes ever put upon canvas and a mouth that matches them in such naturalness that we expect the Duchess to smile at any moment. Her eyes have such fire and sparkle that they pierce right through us. It is hard to believe that we are looking upon a painted portrait—it must be the Duchess herself who gives us that alert, penetrating, fiery, and mocking glance.

This picture has had a most romantic history. It is the famous “Lost Duchess,” stolen in London, and found after twenty-five years in America.

The Duchess, in some unknown way, fell into the hands of a Mrs. Maginnis, an old schoolmistress, who had it cut down to fit the space over the chimney-piece in her sitting-room and burned up the cut-off piece. Mr. Bentley, a dealer bought the picture from Mrs. Maginnis for £56 and then sold it to Mr. Wynn Ellis, a wealthy City merchant, who sent this Portrait of a Lady to be engraved by Messrs. Henry Graves & Co. This firm, having already engraved the Clifden Duchess of Devonshire, at once identified the subject. When the Wynn Ellis Sale took place at Christie’s, June 6, 1876, this portrait created a great deal of excitement. It was catalogued as follows:

“T. Gainsborough, R. A. The Duchess of Devonshire, in a white dress and blue silk petticoat and sash, large black hat and feathers, 59½ × 45 inches.”

As this portrait of the Duchess was the first “star” that ever rose in an auction-sale, it is worth while putting forward here the contemporary account of an event which has passed into history. The London Times records:

“The sale of the modern pictures belonging to the Wynn Ellis Collection on Saturday last created such a sensation as has never been experienced in the picture world of London. Throughout the week the pictures had attracted a considerable number of visitors, but on the day preceding the sale the interest came to a climax and crowds filled the rooms of Messrs. Christie, Manson, & Woods. Anyone passing the neighborhood of St. James’s Square might well have supposed that some great lady was holding a reception and this, in fact, was pretty much what was going on within the Gallery in King Street. All the world had come to see a beautiful Duchess, created by Gainsborough; and so far as we could observe, they all came, saw, and were conquered by her fascinating beauty.

“When the portrait was placed before the crowded audience a burst of applause showed the universal admiration of the picture. The biddings commenced at one of 1000 guineas, which was immediately met with one of 3000 guineas from Mr. Agnew; and, amid a silence of quite breathless attention, the bids followed in quick succession until 10,000 guineas was announced. Mr. Agnew then called 10,100 guineas and won the battle in this most extraordinary contest. The audience densely packed on raised seats round and on the floor of the house, stamped, clapped, and bravoed.”

And now comes the story!

Twenty days after this sale, on the night of May 26, 1876, the galleries of Messrs. Agnew were entered, the canvas was cut from the stretching frame, and the Duchess was carried off!

Where?

By whom?

The picture was already too well-known to be saleable and to make it still better known photographs of the picture were immediately placed in every shop-window in London. The subject became of universal interest: pictures of the Duchess were printed on every article of merchandise possible; and fashion decreed that once again the Duchess’s huge hat should be the proper thing to wear. For many years afterwards the “Gainsborough Hat” and the “Picture Hat” continued to be worn in country towns across the Atlantic, far away from London, by persons who had never heard of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire.

Sensation No. 2.

In March, 1901, the newspapers all over the world announced that the “Lost Duchess” had been found!

Mr. Morland Agnew, after various negotiations, was handed a parcel in the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago which proved to be the Gainsborough canvas. The discovery had been made by the New York Pinkerton Detective Agency, who found the thief, one Adam Worth alias Henry Richmond, son of a German Jew, who had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who was one of the most famous and clever criminals ever known.

A few days after its return the picture was purchased by Mr. J. P. Morgan at a price beyond £30,000.

Many years before, in 1762–3, Gainsborough had painted in his studio at Bath the Duchess of Devonshire when she was little Georgiana Spencer, aged six, in a white dress, pink ribbons, and dainty cap. At the same period Gainsborough painted portraits of her parents, Earl and Countess Spencer of Althorp, the one of the Countess ranking very high among Gainsborough’s works of the Bath period. The Countess, Margaret Georgiana, daughter of the Hon. Stephen Poyntz, was a very beautiful and extremely wealthy woman and the Earl also possessed enormous wealth and became famed for the magnificent Collection he made at Althorp. The marriage of this couple in 1755 created a sensation and was much talked of in the gossipy letters and memoirs of the day. One eye-witness related: “The bride followed in a new sedan-chair lined with white satin, a black page walking before and three footmen behind, all in the most superb liveries. The diamonds worn by the newly married pair were given to Mr. Spencer by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and were worth £100,000. The shoe-buckles of the bridegroom alone were worth £30,000.”

Lady Harvey related that the wedding-party went from London to Althorp “in three coaches with six horses and two hundred horsemen. The villages through which they passed were in great alarm, some of the people shutting themselves up in their houses, and others coming out with pitchforks, spits, and spades, crying out ‘The invasion has come’, believing that the Pretender and the King of France were both come together; and great relief was experienced when the formidable cavalcade had passed without setting fire to the habitation, or murdering the inhabitants.”

The year after this marriage Mrs. Delany, Horace Walpole’s friend, met “Mrs. Spencer, one of the finest figures I ever saw, in white and silver with all her jewels and scarlet decorations; her modest, unaffected air gives a lustre to all her finery that would be very tinsel without it.”

Is it any wonder that with such parentage Georgiana Spencer should have had brains, beauty, charm, and perfect equipment in every way for that world of society which was her inheritance?

Georgiana was born on June 9, 1757, and was married at the age of seventeen to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, regarded as the “first match” in England. “Georgiana was a lively girl,” said Walpole, “natural and full of grace.” Immediately the Duchess became “the irresistible queen of ton” and the most conspicuous leader of society whenever and wherever she appeared. She dazzled every gathering by her beauty; astonished everyone with her elegant and extravagant dress; and charmed everybody by her wit and her grace. The Duchess was always among the gay butterflies who masqueraded at the Pantheon, promenaded at Ranelagh, danced at assemblies, or played for high-stakes at fashionable gaming-tables. To think of London society in the late Eighteenth Century without the Duchess of Devonshire, is impossible.

Walpole writes that she “effaces all without being a beauty; but her youthful figure, flowing good nature, sense, and lively modesty and modest familiarity make her a phenomenon.”

The Duchess had a clever mind and she delighted in the society of persons of talent. Fox, Sheridan, and Selwyn were among her special friends. The story of her campaigning for Fox with Fox’s sister, Lady Duncannon, and even selling “a kiss for a vote” is told by many pens and by pencils as well, for the Duchess afforded fine material for the caricaturists. The Duchess was much pleased, it is said, by the compliment paid to her during the Fox campaign by an Irishman, who exclaimed: “Sure I could light me pipe at her eyes!” And Gainsborough managed to fix this flaming glance in the famous Satterlee portrait.

Coarse satire attacked the Duchess of Devonshire as it attacks all who enter the political arena; but, on the other hand, there are many tributes from contemporary pens to her sweetness of disposition and to her noble and generous qualities of heart.

In 1806 upon hearing of her death at Devonshire House, Piccadilly, (just lately demolished), the Prince of Wales exclaimed: “We have lost the best-loved woman in England” and Charles James Fox replied: “We have lost the kindest heart in England.”

The Duchess of Devonshire occasionally wrote verse. Her Passage of the Mountain of St. Gothard, dedicated to her children (she had a son and two daughters), was published with a French translation in 1802; an Italian translation was printed in 1803; and a German translation in 1805. This poem gave occasion to Coleridge’s ode with the lines:

Gainsborough could not have made this or any other portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire until after 1782, because, in that year, Bate published in the Morning Herald, the following lines:

Another portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough is also in this country, owned by the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon. It represents a whole length life-size figure leaning against a pedestal and came from the Collection of the late Earl Spencer at Althorp, Nottinghamshire.

THE BLUE BOY.

The Blue Boy is without doubt the most famous picture in the world. When it passed from the Duke of Westminster’s Collection in Grosvenor House, London, by private sale to the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington, the event created a sensation in the art-world, which soon extended to the general public. No painting was ever exploited so widely in the press and when exhibited at the Duveen Galleries in New York, before starting on its journey to California, the Blue Boy attracted unusual crowds.

Before it bade farewell to London the famous picture was exhibited at the National Gallery and the following extract from a letter of Sir Charles J. Holmes, Director of the National Gallery, dated January 24, 1922, to Sir Joseph Duveen, gives an idea of how the portrait is regarded in England:

“My dear Duveen: I saw the last, for the time being anyhow, of the Blue Boy this afternoon at ten minutes past four and feel bound to write these lines to thank you and Mrs. Huntington for the pleasure which the sight of it has given to more than 90,000 people during the last three weeks. It is indeed a most brilliant thing, outshining in its present condition all our English pictures at Trafalgar Square and when the natural mellowing of the varnish during the next two or three years has taken place its perfections will be enhanced. And though its passing from us has been the cause of universal regret, that regret has not been tinged with bitterness. It is generally recognized that while in the process of recovering from the War, the Nation could not have paid the price which its fortunate owner was able to afford.”

The picture, an oil painting on canvas, is large (5 feet, 10 inches × 4 feet) and represents a young boy, Master Jonathan Buttall of London, life-size, dressed in a blue suit, holding a broad-rimmed hat in his right hand and very conspicuously standing forth from a landscape background with a dark, cloudy sky.

The following notes from the Farington Diary, recently published, bring us into relation with the two early sales.

Under date of Dec. 15, 1796, we find:

“Buttall’s sale. I went to Gainsborough’s picture of a Boy in a Blue Vandyke Dress sold for 35 guineas. Several of his drawings were sold in pairs. Some went so high as 8 guineas and a half the pair.”

“May 25, 1802. I painted till four o’clock and then went to Nesbitt’s sale in Grafton Street, where I met Hoppner, who had purchased the Boy in Blue Dress by Gainsborough, which was Buttal’s, for 65 guineas. At Buttalls sale it was sold for 35 to Mr. Nesbitt.”

The picture is in marvellous condition. When Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower saw it in the Duke of Westminster’s Collection before it came to America, he exclaimed:

“The Blue Boy at Grosvenor House has all the glamor and charm of a portrait of a fairy prince.”

These few words explain the spell that the picture seems to cast upon every one who sees it, for whenever The Blue Boy has been exhibited crowds have stood enraptured before it.

Regarding Mr. Nesbitt’s connection with the picture we have the following story from the Rev. J. T. Trimmer, Vicar of Marston-on-Dove, Derbyshire:

“Many years ago there resided at Heston a Mr. Nesbitt, a person of substance and a companion of George, Prince of Wales. He once possessed Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and in the following way. He was dining with the Prince. ‘Nesbitt,’ said the Prince, ‘that picture, (pointing to the Blue Boy) shall be yours.’ At first he thought the Prince must be joking, but, finding he was decidedly serious, Nesbitt, who was a beau of the first water, made all suitable acknowledgments for H. R. H.’s generosity and next morning the Blue Boy arrived, followed in due time by a bill for £300, which he had the satisfaction of paying. I heard Mr. Nesbitt many years ago tell the story at my father’s table.”

From Mr. Nesbitt the Blue Boy came into possession of John Hoppner, the artist, who sold it to Earl Grosvenor. Then, of course, The Blue Boy passed as an heirloom to his successor, the Duke of Westminster. For many years The Blue Boy hung in Grosvenor House, London, in the same room with Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, the two most famous portraits of the two most famous English painters. And it is one of the romances of art that these two portraits should have crossed the Atlantic and to be again united, as it were, this time in a California mansion.

Gainsborough had doubtless some reason for painting this portrait; but it is not the reason usually given,—namely that it was done in refutation of a theory expressed by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1778. Apart from the reasons now accepted to disprove this theory, the picture is too joyously painted for a controversial and academic tour de force.

One of Gainsborough’s latest biographers, Mr. William T. Whitley,[33] discovered the following in a number of The European Magazine (August 1798), which would seem to give the real reason for the genesis of Gainsborough’s famous portrait:

Mr. Gainsborough

“One of the finest pictures this great artist ever painted, and which might be put upon a par with any portrait that ever was executed, is that of a boy in a blue Vandyke dress, which is now in the possession of a tradesman in Greek Street. Gainsborough had seen a portrait of a boy by Titian for the first time, and, having found a model that pleased him, he set to work with all the enthusiasm of his genius. ‘I am proud,’ he said, ‘of being of the same profession with Titian, and was resolved to attempt something like him.’”

So much has been written about this portrait and the copies that have been made of it that great confusion has resulted, and the constant repetition of the same story by writers has tended to obscure rather than to clarify the subject. However, the theory now accepted is that the portrait of The Blue Boy first appeared in public at the Royal Academy in 1770, sent there by Gainsborough himself,—a theory supported by a letter written by Mary Moser, R. A. to Fuseli, then in Rome, in which she said: “It is only telling you what you know already of the Exhibition of 1770, to say that Gainsborough is beyond himself in a Vandyke habit.” Another argument in favor of this date is found in a conversation with an old artist, John Taylor, recorded by J. T. Smith in his Book for a Rainy Day.

The person, chiefly, if not wholly, responsible for the first suggestion of the theory that Gainsborough painted the picture to disprove Sir Joshua Reynolds’s pronouncement regarding color seems to have been John Burnet, the engraver of some of Wilkie’s pictures and a writer on art. The legend began to be circulated in 1817, when Burnet published his Practical Treatise on Painting, where, after challenging the rules laid down by Sir Joshua, he says: “I believe Gainsborough painted the portrait of a boy dressed in blue, now in the possession of Lord Grosvenor, to show the fallacy of this doctrine.”

That seems to be all there is to it; and, once started, the story became widespread and was handed on from pen to pen and from lip to lip, until nearly everybody believes it.

Let us turn, however, to some of the authorities. First to F. G. Stephens:

“Master Jonathan Buttall was the son of Mr. Jonathan Buttall, an ironmonger in an extensive way of business, living at 31 Greek Street (at the corner of King Street), Soho, between 1728 (if not before) and 1768, when he died. According to the Book for a Rainy Day, he was ‘an immensely rich man.’ The younger Buttall continued in the business of his father until 1796, when his effects were sold by Sharpe and Coxe, the well-known 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. It has been asserted that a Blue Boy (for there can hardly be a doubt that more than one version of the work exists) was sold on this occasion.

“A story has been credited that The Blue Boy was produced by Gainsborough to refute a dictum of Sir Joshua Reynolds, delivered in his Eighth Discourse to the Students of the Royal Academy, December 10, 1778: ‘It ought, in my opinion to be indispensably observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow color, yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colors be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colors; and for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colors will be sufficient. Let this conduct be reversed; let the light be cold and the surrounding colors 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 or Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious.’

“It is obvious that the Eighth Discourse may have been delivered covertly to depreciate a picture which had been exhibited eight years before, but this is not likely; or it may be assumed that the painting was produced to demonstrate the futility of the President’s counsel. It is obvious that Gainsborough might, and probably did, find occasion to illustrate a principle which is apparently opposed to the dictum of Reynolds, without reference to the Eighth Discourse, or previous utterance of the P. R. A. Van Dyck repeatedly employed masses of blue in draperies, with results which are at least equal to those of the picture before us. The Children of Charles the First at Windsor is an example of the fact.[34] Leslie and every practical critic recognized that Gainsborough had evaded the full and just method of controverting the declaration of Sir Joshua rather than successfully assailed it.

“The picture before us is known to have been exhibited at the British Institution with a collection of Gainsborough’s works—the first formed independently of the artist and his wife—in 1814, under the title of Portrait of a Youth and again at the same place, in 1834, as ‘117, A Young Gentleman in a Landscape; the Picture known as The Boy in Blue.’ It was at Manchester in 1857; the International Exhibition in 1862; and at the Royal Academy in 1870. The last occasion evoked the discussion above alluded to, when the other Blue Boy became prominent. The question may be summed up by saying that probably the younger Buttall had a version of his own portrait, while the Prince had another.

“Reynolds, by the way of supporting his own dictum, produced A Yellow Boy in the ‘Portrait of Charles, Earl of Dalkeith’ with an owl and a dog, which was No. 132 at the Grosvenor Exhibition, in 1884. ‘A Portrait of a Lady,’ by Gainsborough, known as ‘The Blue Lady’ was at the British Institution in 1859; ‘The Pink Boy’ (Master Nicholls, grandson of Dr. Mead), by Gainsborough, was at the Academy in 1879, No. 39; it has recently been sold to a member of the Rothschild family. The Blue Boy is at once the complement and the antithesis of Mrs. Graham (born Cathcart), now in the Scottish National Gallery (Edinburgh).”

Turning now to M. H. Spielmann in British Portrait Painting:

“In the view expressed by the late F. G. Stephens and others—an opinion I am inclined to share—the portrait known as The Blue Boy, more properly Master Jonathan Buttall, belongs to the year 1770, or thereabouts, and not to a period ten years later, as is argued by those who desire, in the face of internal evidence, to apply to it a passage—usually cited incorrectly—in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Eighth Discourse (delivered in 1778), against the use of masses of cold blue. The stricture could not possibly apply to this picture, which triumphs by virtue of its warm blue, as it does by nobility of pose (more suggestive of a prince, as we imagine a prince should be, than of the son of a wealthy ironmonger of Greek Street), by the well controlled power and dignity made manifest throughout and by the brilliant brush charged with fat paint. The finely posed head with its admirably expressed character of boyhood and a good deal of sturdy doggedness behind the intelligent eyes, is rendered a little more heavily than is Gainsborough’s wont; but that it is a masterpiece of portraiture, as it is of color, cannot be challenged. This portrait, which from its manner may be believed to have been painted eight years before the father’s death and not two years after it, is the first to show Gainsborough’s outstanding genius as a painter of independent thought and striking modernity. At the same time it should be pointed out an earlier Blue Boy by him exists in the portrait of his nephew, Edward Gardiner, painted in 1768.

“Here in Master Buttall is Gainsborough’s first great invention both in matter and manner, almost a challenge to Van Dyck’s reputation, but painted in a scheme of color Van Dyck never thought of, and would probably never have tried if he had. In handling it is Gainsborough’s first link with Watteau in its broken tints and fearless lightness of handling of the drapery, in its fascinating play of light and shade, its delightful silhouette and cast shadows. It is difficult to imagine how the composition could be bettered; the picture, by itself, had no others come from the same brush, would have immortalized the painter.”

Finally, Sir Walter Armstrong agrees, too, with the Stephens theory:

“Those who cling to the old traditions 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 observation, 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. Siddons, 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 fullness of color we do not find ten years later. 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 that 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 color scheme.”

Buttall and Gainsborough continued their relations. Buttall was one of the “few friends Gainsborough respected and whom he desired should attend his funeral at Kew. Buttall outlived Gainsborough seventeen years and died in December, 1805, as the Morning Herald notes: “Died, on Friday last, at his house in Oxford Street, Jonathan Buttall, Esq., a gentleman whose amiable manners and good disposition will cause him to be ever regretted by his friends.”

GENERAL PHILIP HONYWOOD.

When Gainsborough exhibited this portrait in London in 1765 it created quite a stir, as it was a departure from the style of any portrait by that artist; and when it was sent home to Mark Hall, the seat of the Honywood family in Essex, a new room had to be built in order to accommodate it, as the canvas measures nearly ten feet square (96¾ × 82¼).

This has the reputation of being the finest equestrian portrait ever painted by Gainsborough. Fulcher writes of it:

“Never was the amenity of landscape more happily displayed. Through a richly wooded scene wherein the sturdy oak and silvery-barked birch are conspicuous, the soldier, mounted on a bay horse, appears to be passing, wearing a scarlet dress which contrasts finely with the mass of surrounding foliage. Nothing can be easier than his attitude, as with one hand he curbs his charger and with the other holds his sword which seems to flash in the sun. The picturesque design of this portrait, its brilliant coloring, its bold yet careful execution, Gainsborough never surpassed. No wonder that George III wished to become the possessor of it and no wonder that Horace Walpole wrote of it in his catalogue ‘very good.’ Of the nine pictures which decorated the walls of Mark Hall grand staircase, three were by Gainsborough and included the remarkable portrait of General Honywood. It is the largest work by that master and has the reputation also of being the finest equestrian portrait ever painted by Gainsborough, competing only with Van Dyck’s Portrait of Charles I in the Prado Gallery, Madrid, with which it has more than once been compared.”