performance; the parted lips and animated face seem to indicate that he must, when taken, have been discoursing on a favourite subject. Mr. Fulcher, whose Life we quote, adds; "it is said that Chatterton also sat to Gainsborough, and that the portrait of the marvellous boy, with his long flowing hair and child-like face, is a master-piece."

Upon the latter, a Bristolian correspondent of Notes and Queries, Second Series, No. 35, states this presumed portrait was not painted for Chatterton, but some youth in Bristol, name unknown, and that it was picked up at an old-clothes shop in the Pithay, in that city. It has been also proved to be the son of a Mr. Morris, who painted it, the name upon the back having been altered to Chatterton. Mr. Fulcher received his information from a Mr. Naylor, the possessor of the portrait: it reached down to the boy's waist: he is dressed in green, apparently a charity-coat; this is worthy of note, for Chatterton was placed at Colston's Charity School, and remained there till July 1, 1767, when he had not quite attained the age of fifteen; so that, while he was in the garb of a charity-scholar, Chatterton may have sat to Gainsborough.

Gainsborough painted several portraits of himself, two of which stood in his gallery at the time of his death, but with their faces modestly turned towards the wainscot. Miss Gainsborough gave one to the Royal Academy,-its members presenting her with a silver vase, designed by West, "as a token of respect to the abilities of her Father." This vase is now in the possession of the painter's great-nephew, the Rev. Gainsborough Gardiner, of Worcester.-(Fulcher.)

Two of his finest female portraits (whole lengths) are in the Dulwich Gallery: Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell. Mrs. Sheridan was Maria Linley, the first wife of R. B. Sheridan. Madame D'Arblay said her beauty surpassed almost any she had ever seen, and Reynolds thought it nearly divine. Gainsborough, we have related, modelled Maria Linley, at Bath; he had often watched the wondrous grace of her light form; he had been charmed with the gentleness, the modesty, and feminine sweetness, of her who was "half-way between a woman and an angel."

All our living princes and princesses in Gainsborough's time were painted by him, the Duke of York excepted, of whom he had three pictures bespoken.

Gainsborough painted, under interesting circumstances,

Master Heathcote, a little boy four years of age, holding in one hand his black hat and feathers, and in the other a bunch of flowers. The painter chanced to be on a visit at Bath, when a destructive sickness was raging in different parts of the kingdom. The parents of Master Heathcote, having lost their other children by the epidemic, were anxious to secure a portrait of the one yet spared to them. They applied to Gainsborough, who declined, as he had visited Bath for recreation; but, on hearing the circumstances of the case, he requested Mrs. Heathcote to let him see her son. The next morning, the boy, dressed in a plain white muslin frock, with a blue sash, was taken to Gainsborough. "You have brought him simply dressed," he said; "had you paraded him in a fancy costume, I would not have painted him; now I will gladly comply with your request."

Mr. Fulcher describes Gainsborough's portrait of Dr. Schomberg as one of the finest pictures in the world: he is looking towards the spectator, and is dressed in velvet, in colour something between pink and crimson; the landscape background is admirably painted.

DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES.

Of these Gainsborough made, perhaps, more than any other artist, ancient or modern. Jackson had seen, at least, one thousand, not one of which but possessed some merit, and some in a transcendent degree. These were executed in oil and water colours, in chalks-black, white, and coloured,—in leadpencil, sepia, bistre, and Indian ink. Many of these studies. were in black and white, applied thus: a small bit of sponge, tied to a bit of stick, served as a pencil for the shadows, and a small lump of whiting, held by a pair of tea-tongs, were the instruments by which the high lights were applied,—a method of execution to which a lady applied the appropriate epithet of " mopping."

One of Gainsborough's finest drawings is a portrait of Pitt, in crayons, purchased by the Earl of Normanton at the sale of Sir Thomas Lawrence's pictures: on the portrait Sir Thomas had written the words, "unique and inestimable." These studies were executed with marvellous rapidity, Mr. Richmond has a head of young Dupont, in oil, which Thicknesse says, was painted in an hour, a work of most masterly execution, equal to anything by Vandyke.-Fulcher.

GAINSBOROUGH'S SEA-PIECES.

He painted but four. "He never pretended," observes Jackson, "to the correctness of rigging, &c., but I have seen some general effects of sea, sea-coast, and vessels, that have been truly masterly." He usually introduced the sea and a ship by way of background to his portraits of sailors, as in those of Admiral Vernon, Captain Augustus Hervey, and Captain Roberts, the companions of Captain Cook in his last voyage round the world. "In the Exhibition of 1781, he had," says Walpole, "two pieces of land and sea, so free and natural, that one steps back for fear of being splashed."

GAINSBOROUGH'S LANDSCAPES.

Finishing was not the painter's aim; for he usually painted with a very long and very broad brush, stood very far from his canvas, and in a room with very little light. Portraits were not his forte; yet, during fifteen years, he had contributed to the Artists' Society and the Academy, about fifty portraits, and but eleven landscapes, with some drawings. "Gainsborough's landscapes," says Sir William Beechey, "stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his paintingroom; and they who came to sit for their portraits, for which he was chiefly employed, rarely deigned to honour them with a look as they passed." To the Exhibition of 1780, however, Gainsborough contributed no less than five landscapes, which Walpole has characterised as charming, very spirited, &c., one especially is worthy of any collection, and of any painter that ever existed."

The first master Gainsborough studied was Wynants, whose thistles and dock-leaves he has frequently introduced into his early pictures. The next was Ruysdael; but his colouring is less sombre, though the pencilling of the Englishman was less accurate than that of the Fleming. He has sometimes very happily seized upon the best manner of Teniers. In a view of company in St. James's Park, he even excelled Watteau.* He made Snyders his model for animals.

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The late Sir William Curtis was so warm an admirer of

* The View in the Mall of St. James's Park, painted in 1786. Northsays: "It is all in motion and in a flutter like a lady's fan. Watteau is not half so airy." Most of the figures are portraits, and Gainsborough has introduced himself, sketching the gay assemblage.

Gainsborough's landscapes, that, during an illness, he had one hung in his chamber, that he might see it through the opening of his bed-curtains.

Gainsborough's earlier landscapes are imitations of the manner of Wynants; they have the same clayey and sandy grounds, and a similar arrangement of objects to that which is seen in the smaller pictures of that eminent master. He had a second manner, more original and more English, but rather heavy. His last manner may be seen in the Market Cart and the Watering-place, in the National and Vernon Galleries. The Market Cart was purchased at Lord Gwydir's sale, in 1828, for 1,1027. 10s. Lord Northwick possessed a duplicate of this fine picture in his gallery at Cheltenham.

GAINSBOROUGH AND LEE.

The appearance in Blackwood's Magazine of a critique on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1842, the writer of which preferred Mr. Lee, R.A., to Gainsborough, drew from Mr. Ruskin the following admirable exposé of the critic's shortcomings in his craft. The controverted passage is: "He (Mr. Lee,) often reminds us of Gainsborough's best manner; but he is superior to him always in subject, composition, and variety.'

"Shade of Gainsborough !-deep-thoughted, solemn Gainsborough-forgive us for re-writing this sentence; we do so to gibbet its perpetrator for ever, and leave him swinging in the winds of the Fool's Paradise. It is with great pain that I ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like Mr. Lee's, they are well-intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant reference to nature. But I believe these qualities will always insure him that admiration which he deservesthat there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guidance, and answer his efforts with delight; and therefore, that I need not fear to point out in him the want of those technical qualities which are more especially the object of an artist's admiration.

Gainsborough's power of colour (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift,) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colourist-Sir Joshua himself not excepted-of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists

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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. Now, Mr. Lee never aims at colour: he does not make it his object in the slightest degree-the spring-green of vegetation is all that he desires; and it would be about as rational to compare his works with studied pieces of colouring, as the modulation of the Calabrian pipe to the harmony of a full orchestra. Gainsborough's hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud-as swift as the flash of a sunbeam; Lee's execution is feeble and spotty. Gainsborough's masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from darkness; Lee's (perhaps necessarily, considering the effects of flickering sunlight at which he aims) are as fragmentary as his leaves, and as numerous. Gainsborough's forms are grand, simple, and ideal; Lee's are small, confused, and unselected. Gainsborough never loses sight of his picture as a whole; Lee is but too apt to be shackled by its parts. In a word, Gainsborough is an immortal painter; and Lee, though on the right road, is yet in the early stage of his art; and the man who could imagine any resemblance or point of comparison between them, is not only a novice in art, but has not capacity to be ever anything more. He may be pardoned for not comprehending Turner, for long preparation and discipline are necessary before the abstract and profound philosophy of that artist can be met; but Gainsborough's excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged, and facts of nature universally apparent.”—Notes to Preface to Modern Painters, vol. i. second edition.