Portrait of Miss Jacobs

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delivered as a protest against the painting. The “Blue Boy" is, however, by no means the only instance in which Gainsborough has risen superior to masses of blue in the high lights of a picture. In the "Miss Jacobs" the problem is frankly attacked, the blue not being unduly warmed or heightened by artifices, but helped by the delicate, subtly-flushed flesh-tints, the genuine blonde colour of the hair, and the not too obtrusive flowers in the lady's lap. The portrait has been variously described as "A Lady Unknown" (in Roydell's catalogue of prints, which includes J. Spilbury's print after it), and as "The Blue Lady."

The exhibition of 1762 at the Society of Artists' rooms in Spring Gardens-the second there, and third of the entire series-was to the full as memorable as its immediate predecessor. Admission was this time a shilling at the door, and an additional sixpence for the catalogue, with its preface written by Dr Johnson. A well-meant but slightly Utopian feature of the scheme was, that the works sent in by artists were to be reviewed by the committee conducting the exhibition; a price to be secretly set on every piece and registered by the secretary. If the piece should be sold for more, the whole price to be the artist's; but if the purchasers should value it at less than the committee, the artist to be paid the deficiency from the profits of the exhibition. It was at this exhibition that Gainsborough, newly established at Bath, where he already occupied a position similar to that achieved. by Reynolds in London, made a second appearance with a "Portrait of Mr Poyntz," described in the catalogue as "a whole-length of a Gentleman with a Gun." Garrick, the willing prey of all portrait-painters, is depicted by Zoffany in the "Farmer's Return," while

M'Ardell and Fisher exhibit mezzotints after Reynolds. The master's own contributions, three in number, are of high importance :-The full-length of Lady Elizabeth Keppel as one of the Queen's Bridesmaids, which has just been described; the fair Maria, Countess Waldegrave, as "Dido embracing Cupid (the Duc d'Aumale's picture already described); the ever-popular "Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy."

The greatest and most versatile English actor of the age had been first painted by Reynolds in 1759, but this celebrated performance was the first authoritative presentment of the mobile physiognomy, lighted up by the kindly, yet almost painfully penetrating, glance which all the limners of the tragi-comedian have made the salient feature of their portraits. Reynolds, though he painted his friend many times more, has hardly surpassed this rendering, taken apart from its insipid accompaniments; unless it be in the halflength "Garrick as Kitely," painted in 1768, and now in the royal collection at Windsor Castle. In this work, the actor appears in a Van Dyck dress, not absolutely inappropriate, or more than a little anachronistic, seeing that the character portrayed is that in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour." The last-named canvas has much darkened, but the facial expression still appears of exceeding truth and subtlety. In the "Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy," while the main figure is masterly, the Tragedy and Comedy appear rather too much like the rival charmers who, in the Beggar's Opera, compete for the affections of Captain Macheath. It has been claimed for the picture that it is not only Reynolds's finest Garrick, but the finest of all the innumerable canvases in which he is depicted, whether on or off the stage. Certainly neither the smirk

Garrick painted by Reynolds and Gainsborough 75

ing, uxorious Garrick in Hogarth's double portrait, "David Garrick and Eva Maria Violetti his Wife," belonging to Her Majesty the Queen, nor the undoubtedly earnest but terribly forced and grimacing figure in the famous "Garrick as Richard III," painted in 1746 by the same master (now the property of the Earl of Feversham), can compete with it. If it were possible to put aside the far from convincing and, indeed, not a little grotesque attendant figures, and the undignified attitude of the great histrion between the two, it would not be difficult to accede to the claim for supremacy among its fellows put forward by the biographers of the master, did one not bear in mind the great full-length painted by Gainsborough, and first shown at Spring Gardens in 1766 (No. 7 at the Gainsborough Exhibition of 1885 at the Grosvenor Gallery, to which it was lent by the Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon).

In this last canvas, Garrick is portrayed, in a favourite haunt of his villa at Hampton, leaning against a pedestal surmounted by a bust of Shakespeare. It is difficult for those who have once seen this typical Gainsborough to forget the piercing glance, the unconquerable vivacity which he has found means to express, even while leaving to his hero an attitude of complete respose. It is true that it is the vitality rather than the permanent characterisation of the face which has been most completely given, but then this is, after all, the most essential characteristic of the flexible, ever-changing physiognomy. Here we have a perfect realisation of Grimm's description of Garrick, in the Correspondance avec Diderot, as "of middle height, inclined to be little, of agreeable and spirituel features, and with a prodigious play of eye." Not less irresistibly suggested, too, is the peculiar temperament which caused