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.

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. The 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 en

amoured 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." To 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

said that a political opponent of Dudley remarked on this picture, that "the man wanted execution, and the dog wanted hanging."

"GIRL AND PIGS."

The expression of truth and nature in this picture by. Gainsborough, (remarks Northcote,) were never surpassed. Sir Joshua was struck with it, though he thought Gainsborough ought to have made the girl a beauty. Reynolds, indeed, became the purchaser of the painting at one hundred guineas, Gainsborough asking but sixty. During its exhibition, it attracted the notice of a countryman, who remarked, "They be deadly like pigs, but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what one on 'em had a foot in the trough."

MRS. SIDDONS' NOSE.

In 1784, Mrs. Siddons, "then in the prime of her glorious beauty, and in the full blaze of her popularity," sat to Gainsborough. The portrait is a three-quarters length: she is seated; her face appears rather more than in profile; she wears a black hat and feathers, and a blue and buff striped silk dress-in a mass resembling dark sea-water with sunshine on it. Two years before the death of Mrs. Siddons she was seen by Mrs. Jameson seated near her picture; it was like her still, at the age of seventy. Gainsborough, however, found some difficulty in delineating her features-the nose especially; after repeatedly altering its shape, he exclaimed, "Confound the nose, there's no end to it!"

This year, the Council refusing to hang a picture by Gainsborough agreeably to his wishes, he resolved never again to send any paintings to the Academy, and he kept his word. He then opened an exhibition of his own at his house in Pall Mall, but with little success.

GAINSBOROUGH'S WOODMAN, SHEPHERD BOY, COTTAGE DOOR, AND COTTAGE GIRL.

The first of these famous pictures, which won especial praise from George III., remained unsold until after Gainsborough's death, although only his portrait price, one hundred guineas, was demanded. Lord Gainsborough then became its purchaser for the sum of 500 guineas: the painting was subsequently burnt at Eaton Park. Peter Simon's print, and Mr.

Lane's copy of the sketch, show the great merit of the work. The terror of the Woodman, the fear of the dog crouching close to its master, yet unable to turn its face from the descending rain and lightning's flash,-with Gainsborough's powerful colouring, must have been truly splendid. The painter made a model of the Woodman's head from the man who stood for the picture. Northcote thought the Shepherd's Boy in the Shower very superior to the Woodman. Hazlitt says: "What a truth and beauty is there! He (the Shepherd boy) stands with his hands clasped, looking up with a mixture of timidity and resignation, eyeing a magpie chattering over his head, while the wind is rustling in the branches. It is like a vision breathed on the canvas.'

The Cottage Door represents a cottage-matron, with an infant in her arms, and several older children playing around her. The close-wooded nook, and the glimpses of knolls and streams through the trees, are beautiful; and the work has uncommon breadth and mass, with richness of colouring, a sort of brown and glossy goldenness, common in the works of the artist.

The Cottage Girl, with her Dog and Pitcher, says Mr. Leslie, "is unequalled by anything in the world. I recollect it in the British Gallery, forming part of a very noble assemblage of pictures, and I could scarcely look at or think of anything else in the rooms. This inimitable work is a portrait, and not of a peasant child, but of a young lady who appears also in the picture of the girl and pigs, which Sir Joshua purchased."

GAINSBOROUGH'S SENSITIVENESS.

Sir George Beaumont used to relate that he, Sheridan, and Gainsborough, had dined together, and the latter was more than usually pleasant and witty. They agreed to have another day's enjoyment, and an early day was named when they should dine again together. They met, but a cloud had descended on the spirit of Gainsborough, and he sat silent, with a look of fixed melancholy, which no wit could dissipate. At length, he took Sheridan by the hand, led him out of the room, and said, "Now, don't laugh, but listen. I shall die soon-I know it-I feel it-I have less time to live than my looks infer, but for this I care not. What oppresses my mind is this-I have many acquaintances and few friends; and as I wish to have one worthy man to accompany me to