If we talk of English masters, Romney is the name that most
naturally suggests itself, because in the bright clear face and brown
hair and large simplicity of presentment, there is a good deal to
recall that painter. But Romney's colour would look cheap beside this,
and his drawing conventional in observation, however big in style."
To go one better than this, I should have to say the picture was as
good as Velasquez, and to simply endorse Mr. MacColl's words would be
a second-hand sort of criticism to which I am not accustomed. Besides,
to do so would be to express nothing of my own personal sensations in
regard to this picture. So I will say at once that I do not understand
the introduction of Romney's name into the argument. If comparison
there must be, surely Mr. Watts would furnish one more appropriate.
Both in the seeing and in the execution the portrait seems nearer to
Mr. Watts than to Romney. Of Romney's gaiety there is no trace in Mr.
Steer's picture.
The girl sits in a light wooden arm-chair--her arm stretched in front
of her, the hands held between her knees--looking out of the picture
somewhat stolidly. The Lady Hamilton mood was an exaggerated mood, but
there is something of it in every portrait at all characteristic of
our great eighteenth-century artist. The portrait exhibited in this
year's show of Old Masters in the Academy will do--the lady who walks
forward, her hands held in front of her bosom, the fingers pressed
together, the white dress floating from the hips, the white brought
down with a yellow glaze.
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