On a par with this masterpiece stands the portrait represented here of Quinton McAdam, a little boy twelve years old, the only son of Quinton McAdam of Craigengillan, Ayrshire, to whom Burns wrote an “Epistle” addressed to Mr. McAdam of Craigengillan. Quinton McAdam was born in Angus in 1805 and died in 1826 and this picture hung for over a hundred years at Camlarg, the dower-house of Craigengillan until it was purchased by the Agnews of London in 1926. The family still possess Raeburn’s receipt for payment for the picture.

The portrait is painted on canvas (61 × 47 inches), life-size, and represents the boy in light yellowish-brown trousers, dark jacket, and white, ruffled shirt. The light shines beautifully on his satiny, blonde hair. His eyes are violet blue.

MARY HORNECK.

(The Jessamy Bride.)

This canvas (29 × 24½ inches), a portrait of Mrs. Gwyn, better known as Mary Horneck, Oliver Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride,” remained in the possession of the Gwyn family until it was sold at Christie’s in 1889. Subsequently it passed into the Collection of Mr. Henry G. Marquand and thence into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft in Cincinnati.

The “Jessamy Bride” appears in a low-cut, white dress with blue sash and a white cap with a peacock-blue bow and tied under her chin with a narrow, black ribbon, or cord. A black spotted scarf is thrown around her waist and draped over her arms. The complexion is rosy, the eyes are brown, and the hair is powdered à la mode.

Mary Horneck was the daughter of Captain Kane William Horneck of the Royal Engineers and Hannah Mangles, known in her day as “the Plymouth Beauty.” Both were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Captain Horneck died in 1755, leaving his widow in comfortable circumstances and she immediately removed with her three children, Charles, Mary, and Catherine, to London. About 1769 the Hornecks became acquainted with Oliver Goldsmith, who had three years before that date written The Deserted Village, which he dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, then President of the Royal Academy. Goldsmith soon found appropriate names for the Horneck children. Mary was the “Jessamy Bride”; Catherine was “Little Comedy” and Charles was the “Captain in Lace.” They are all three mentioned in Goldsmith’s acceptance to a dinner given by Dr. Baker to the Hornecks and to which the Horneck girls sent an invitation to Goldsmith in rhyme. Goldsmith’s reply was as follows:

It was after Goldsmith’s death that Mary Horneck married Col. Gwyn of the 16th Dragoons, who eventually became an equerry to the King. On his appearance at Court, Fanny Burney noted that “Colonel Gwyn is reckoned a remarkably handsome man and he is husband of the beautiful eldest daughter of Mrs. Horneck.” Of Mary Horneck, now Mrs. Gwyn, Fanny Burney wrote in 1788, she was “as beautiful as the first day I saw her; all gentleness and softness;” and a year later, as “soft and pleasing and still as beautiful as an angel.”

Mrs. Gwyn became a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte and died in London in 1840, at the age of eighty-seven.

Catherine Horneck (“Little Comedy”) married in 1771 the artist, Henry William Bunbury. Their son, Charles John Bunbury was painted at the age of eight or nine, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

John Hoppner born in Whitechapel, London, of German parents, in 1758, was a follower of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and became a Court-Painter and a rival of Lawrence. Hoppner married in 1782 the daughter of Mrs. Wright, the American sculptress and maker of wax-works, who often sat to him as a model. Hoppner exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1780; and, through the patronage of the Prince of Wales, became a fashionable portrait-painter. After the death of Gainsborough and Reynolds, Hoppner and Lawrence commanded the field of art. Hoppner’s charming canvases, which are very characteristic of the period, are gaining in vogue day by day and bring very large prices.

ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY.

Lawrence was only a young man of twenty-one when he sent to the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1790 this portrait of Miss Farren, which was catalogued as The Portrait of an Actress.

The picture, oils on canvas (80 × 57 inches), shows the graceful young woman walking in a beautiful English park with a blue sky overhead, and who has paused for a moment. She wears an ivory-white, satin cloak trimmed with brown fur over a soft white muslin gown. Her gloved left hand is holding a large muff on which is a blue bow.

The picture was very much criticized. On hearing many adverse opinions, Miss Farren wrote to Lawrence:

“One says it is so thin in the figure that you might blow it away; another that it looks broke off in the middle; in short, you must make it a little fatter at all events diminish the bend you are so attached to, even if it makes the picture look ill, for the owner of it is quite distressed about it at present. I am shocked to tease you and dare say you wish me and the portrait in the fire; but as it was impossible to appease the cries of friends, I must beg you to excuse me.” The owner Miss Farren refers to was most probably Lord Derby.

At the death of Eliza, Countess of Derby, the portrait became the property of her daughter, Mary Margaret, wife of Thomas, second Earl of Wilton. From her descendant, Lord Wilton, the picture passed into the Collection of Mr. Ludwig Neumann of Manchester, and thence into possession of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, from whom it was inherited by his son.

This picture is very well known by the famous engraving by Bartolozzi, published in 1792, and re-issued in colors in 1797. On the death of Lady Derby in March, 1797, the Earl of Derby married, two months later, the subject of this portrait, to whom he had long been attentive. In the Farington Diary, under date of October 15, 1797, we read:

“Miss Farren (the actress afterwards Lady Derby) was bridesmaid to Lady Charlotte Stanley (Lord Derby’s daughter). Lord Derby’s attachment to Miss Farren is extraordinary. He sees her daily and always attends the play when she performs. When she came to Knowsley her mother was with her, so careful she is of appearances.”

And again on May 20, 1797: “Lady Gage told Hoppner that when Lady Derby (Miss Farren the actress recently married to Lord Derby) was presented, the Queen advanced to her, which is a great compliment.”

Eliza Farren, born in 1759, was the daughter of George Farren, a surgeon and an apothecary of Cork, who went on the stage and attained a little success. His wife and daughters also followed him and, consequently, Eliza was brought up in the theatre. She played juvenile parts in Bath, acting with her family, and often sang between the acts. At the age of fifteen she appeared in Liverpool as Rosetta in Love in a Village and soon afterwards as Lady Townly in The Provoked Husband. In 1777 she made her London début at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer with great success and for many years she was the favorite actress of the Haymarket and of Drury Lane. When the charming Mrs. Abington left Drury Lane in 1782, Miss Farren was accepted as her successor. Miss Farren’s specialty was the fine and fashionable lady and her big part was Lady Townly. She was greatly admired in the rôles of Lady Fanciful in The Provoked Wife; Berinthia in the Trip to Scarborough; Belinda in All in the Wrong; Angelica in Love for Love; Elvira in The Spanish Friar and also in the Shakesperian parts of Juliet and Olivia in Twelfth Night.

Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol in 1769 and spent his early years in Devizes, where his father was proprietor of the Black Bear Inn. Very early the boy showed remarkable talent for drawing portraits in crayons. He was so successful that he went to Bath, took a studio, and began his remarkable career which reached its climax when he became the foremost portrait-painter in England.

“In 1787 the wish of Lawrence’s heart was realized, and we find the young painter, then eighteen, established in rooms in what was then known as Leicester Fields—the present Leicester Square. He was accompanied to London by his father and on the thirteenth of September of that year he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. Armed with a letter of introduction from Prince Hoare, one of Lawrence’s Bath patrons, a member of the Dilettanti Society and Secretary for Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy, Lawrence obtained an interview with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and as a specimen of his ability and artistic skill he took to the President an oil-portrait of himself, painted in 1786. He was kindly received by the courtly old Sir Joshua, who praised his work and spoke most encouragingly to the young artist. “You have been looking at the Old Masters, I see,” he said, “but my advice is this: Study Nature! Study Nature!”

Three years later the young artist, who was extremely handsome and “romantic” in appearance, exhibited his picture of Miss Farren at the Royal Academy, which attracted much attention.

In 1791 Lawrence made a drawing of a much more beautiful subject, Emma, Lady Hamilton, from which a print was engraved.

“Hoppner who was ten years older than Lawrence,” writes Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, “had been for some time the favorite painter of George, Prince of Wales, with the result that half the smart ladies of the town sat to him. But the King, who allowed the Queen’s and Princess Amelia’s portraits to be painted by Lawrence, became so much interested in him, that, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in February, 1792, he decided that the young painter, then not twenty-three years of age and not yet a full member of the Academy, should be appointed to the post of Painter-in-Ordinary, an office that had been filled by the late President. ‘Never perhaps, in the country,’ writes Redgrave, in his account of Lawrence, ‘had a man so young, so uneducated, so untried in his art, advanced as it were per saltum to the honors and emoluments of the profession.’ The King’s favorite painter was the American, Benjamin West, Sir Joshua’s successor in the Presidential Chair, and Windsor was filled with his historical pictures, which, although once valuable, would not now fetch even a modest sum if they were sold at Christie’s.”

About 1790 Lawrence removed to Old Bond Street, installing himself in a handsome apartment with his friend, Farington, as his secretary.

Lawrence tried to paint imaginary and historical pictures, but it soon was evident that portraiture was his forte. The death of Opie in 1807 and of Hoppner in 1810, left him without a rival. On the death of Benjamin West in 1820, Lawrence was unanimously elected President of the Royal Academy. Fuseli, a little dissatisfied, exclaimed: “Well! well! since they must have a face-painter to reign over them, let them take Lawrence; he can at least paint eyes!” The period between 1820 and 1830 (when Lawrence died) is practically a “Lawrence Age.” Sir Thomas painted everybody of note from George IV and the Duke of Wellington to fashionable ladies of no particular distinction save their wealth. His full-length portrait of George IV in his Coronation robes was so frequently copied and given by the King to his friends that nearly every Royal Collection in Europe can show a replica.

The spirit of the age was certainly expressed in Lawrence’s portraits. We have only to look at such portraits as the Countess of Blessington (Wallace Gallery), Lady Peel (Frick Collection), Lady Dover and her Son, and La Duchesse de Berri to realize how true this is. These ladies look as if they had stepped from the pages of Akermann’s Repository.

It is always interesting to learn what an artist has to say about his own work. To Mrs. Jameson, Lawrence wrote the following:

“My thoughts have almost invariably been devoted to Sir Joshua, and, generally, to the Italian School—Raphael, Correggio, Titian, even Parmigiano. An admirer of the very finest works of Van Dyck, and acknowledging the consistent ability of his pencil, I have been less his votary than, perhaps, hundreds since his time, of distinguished taste and talent (Gainsborough, for instance), to whose judgment in other cases I should justly bend. Rubens has been infinitely more the object of my admiration; but, as you know, presents very little as example for portrait-painting.

“Sir Joshua continues to be more and more my delight and my surprise. Rembrandt has another and still higher place in my affection. In my men, then, I have thought of both, and of Titian and of Raphael, as the subjects approached their style. In women, of Sir Joshua, Raphael, Parmigiano, and Correggio. In children, of Sir Joshua and the two latter. In my portraits of Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons, of the highest Italian School.”

In 1825 the King of France gave Lawrence the Cross of the Legion d’honneur. Lawrence died in 1830, unmarried, a fashionable “man about town,” courted, admired, and not unlike Lord Byron, in some respects. Lord Gower says:

“That his fame underwent a marked decline during the half-century after his death in this country cannot be doubted; but within the last few years a reaction has set in, which is tending to place him again in the forefront of our greatest portrait-painters.

“Both as a man and as an artist Lawrence was impressionable, and in his work was entirely influenced by the spirit of his period, a period of affectation that frequently bordered upon vulgarity. If Lawrence’s art in portraiture had been genius instead of talent of the highest order, he would have created a public taste instead of slavishly following that set by the Court or Society of his day. As it was, his work was the ultimate expression of the curtain and column school of portraiture, and his success set a fashion that was followed for years afterwards by innumerable portrait-painters. These, in imitating the style, missed the spirit and perception by which Lawrence, trammelled as he was by the absurdities of dress and conventionality of attitude and surroundings, was enabled to place upon his canvases some suggestion of the actual identity of his sitters. And it was not until the advent of George Frederick Watts and the late Sir John Everett Millais that the effects of the imitation of the obvious points of Lawrence’s style finally disappeared from English portraiture.

“Lawrence’s chief defect was that he turned his art too much into a trade; he would have attained a far higher position had he contented himself with painting half the people he did, and his name would have stood on a higher pinnacle in the Temple of Fame. During the last twenty years of his life he painted but little more, as a rule, than the face of his sitter, the rest of the picture being completed by his pupils; or rather his assistants. This practice has, of course, lessened the value of his portraits.

“These are grave failings; but on the other side, his great merits are incontestable and weigh the scale in his favor. Where, except among the very greatest of those whose fame chiefly rests on their excellence in the art of portrait-painting—such giants as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez, and Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Gainsborough—can finer work be shown them than in such astonishing likenesses as those of Lawrence when at his best; and the master must be judged by his master-works. His style, when once he had adopted it, had the great merit of being a style of its own, of much refinement and excellence in drawing; although his work was, perhaps, too smooth in technique and somewhat affected in feeling. His paintings have lasted, whereas those of many of his contemporaries are mere wrecks and shadows of their former selves; for he attempted no experiments in glazings and pigments, as was Sir Joshua’s wont, and his pictures are, as a rule, as fresh as when they were painted.

“I believe it only fair to place him immediately beneath our three greatest portrait-painters,—that immortal trio, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney: at a time when Hoppner, Opie, and Raeburn were all working, this is high praise.”

PINKIE.

This radiant portrait is generally considered to be Lawrence’s masterpiece. How fresh, how sweet, how breezy it is! “Pinkie” stands on a high hill with a beautiful low-lying landscape of wooded hills spreading out and undulating towards the distant horizon. The sky is dappled with swiftly moving clouds and the morning breeze is blowing pretty freshly, for Pinkie’s light gown is rippling with it and the strings of her bonnet are fluttering and flapping rather violently. These ribbons are pink, matching the sash which holds the diaphanous, white gown in place. Pinkie’s eyes are brown, large, and lustrous and her brown hair is touzled by the wind; but she looks at us so sweetly and brightly that we love her at first sight. How daintily her little slippered foot is planted on the flower-sprinkled turf! Her airy, youthful, billowy figure suggests the idea of Spring beneath whose every footstep flowers instantly appear in full bloom.

How far she has come! Do we not see her home in the distance on the right, encircled by a crescent of leafy trees and with a wide driveway through the clearing?

“Pinkie’s” name was Sarah Moulton-Barrett, and she was the only daughter of Charles Moulton, Esq., and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Moulton. Pinkie was born March 22, 1783, and the lovely child died at the age of twelve, the year in which this portrait was painted. It is interesting to note that Pinkie was the aunt of the famous poet, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was the daughter of Pinkie’s brother, Edward Moulton-Barrett of Coxhoe Hall, Durham, and Hope End, Hereford.

The portrait, oils on canvas (57½ × 39¾ inches), was painted in 1795 and was formerly in the Collection of Octavius Moulton-Barrett, Esq., Westover, Calbourne, Isle of Wight, and thence it passed to the Right Hon. Lord Michelham, K. C. V. O., London. A modern critic rapturously expresses what every one feels on looking at this enchanting picture:

“If ever canvas was instinct with life, this picture lives and breathes. If ever the vehicle of oil paint spread on canvas has caught the wind as it blows, the light that dances in a mischievous child’s eyes, the breath of life and joy in living, Lawrence, in this picture, achieved the miracle. You feel, as you look at it, that you could read small print by its light in the dead of night. The color of it is the color of sea-downs on a May morning; the joy of it is of the joy of the first warm day of Spring. And in the little girl’s graceful figure are comprised whatever things are lovely, whatever things are pure, to the minds of men.”