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From this period is to be dated the rapid decline of the art in Italy. Da Cortona and Giordana both possessed great powers, but abused them by yielding implicitly to the tasteless suggestions of their employers. Nicholas Poussin, a Frenchman, but grafted on the Roman stock, placed himself in the gap, and endeavoured to stem the torrent of corrupted taste. He reverted for his models to the pure source of Grecian art: indeed, such was his attachment to the ancients, that he has been said to have copied their relics rather than imitated their spirit. The costume, the mythology, the rites of antiquity, were his elements; his scenery, his landscape, are pure classic ground. The wildness of Salvator Rosa opposes a striking contrast to the classic regularity of Poussin. Terrific and grand in his conceptions of inanimate nature, he was reduced to attempts of hiding, by boldness of hand, his inability of exhibiting her impassioned, or in the dignity of character. With Poussin and Salvator closes all record worth notice of the history of the art in Italy.

The first name which claims our attention, in noticing the progress of painting in Germany, is that of Albert Durer. This man's talents were various, his compositions the result of deep study, his thoughts ingenious, his colors brilliant. On the other hand he has been blamed for stiffness and aridity in his outlines, for the absence of taste or grandeur in his expression, for ignorance of costume, of acrial perspective, and of gradation of colors. Lucas of Leyden was Durer's most successful rival, unless we except Holbein, who, if he did not equal him in composition, unquestionably surpassed him, and that greatly, in portrait.

The history of the art in the neighbouring countries of Flanders and Holland is not dis tinct from that of Germany until the appearance of those two meteors of art Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt Van Rhyn. The former of these extraordinary men produced an immense number of works. He excelled alike in historical painting, in portrait and landscape, in fruit, flowers, and animals. He both invented and executed with the utmost facility; and, to show the extent of his powers, frequently made a great number of sketches of the same subject altogether different, and without allowing any time to elapse between them. His figures appear to be the exact counterpart of his conceptions, and their creation nothing more than a simple act of the will. He had great knowledge of anatomy, but was often hurried away by the impetuosity of his imagination, and his ardor for execution. He preferred splendor to beauty of form, and occasionally sacrificed correctness of design to the magic of color. In short, the qualities of Rubens, generally speaking, indicate a mind full of fire and vigor rather than accuracy or profound thought.

It appears evident, from the works of Rubens, that his method of painting was to lay the colors in their place one at the side of another, and mix them afterwards by a slight touch of the pencil. Titian mingled his tints as they are in nature, in such a manner as to render it impossible to discover where they began or terminated;

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the effect is evident, the labor is concealed. Thus Rubens is more dazzling, and Titian more harmonious. In this respect, the first excites the attention, the second fixes it. The carnations of Titian resemble the blush of nature; those of Rubens are brilliant and polished like satin, and sometimes even his tints are so strong and separate, as to have the effect of spots. bens,' says Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a remarkable instance of the same mind being seen in all the various parts of the art. The whole is so much of a piece, that one can scarce be brought to believe but that, if any one of them had been more correct and perfect, his works would not be so complete as they appear. If we should allow a greater purity and correctness of drawing, his want of simplicity in composition, coloring, and drapery would appear more gross." He was truly the father of Flemish art, so remarkable for brilliancy of coloring, for exactness of drawing, and the magic of their chiaroscuro. To these may be added profound arrangement, though not exercised on the most beautiful forms; a composition not destitute of grandeur, a certain air of nobleness in the figures, strong and natural expression; in short. to speak generally, a species of art neither copied from the ancients, nor from the Roman or Lombard schools, and indeed unknown to any other part of the world; and which, during the course of the seventeenth century, furnished those countries wherein it arose with innumerable works of the greatest perfection in their kind.

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Rembrandt was a genius of the first order, if we except what relates to form, and in him the choice of low figures is the more offensive, as his compositions frequently required the very opposite. As his father was a miller near Leyden, his education must altogether have depended on the exertion of great talents, and the study of nature. He studied the grotesque figure of a Dutch peasant, or the servant of an inn, with as much application as the greatest masters of Italy would have studied the Apollo Belvidere or the Venus de Medici. In spite, however, of the most portentous deformity, and without dwelling on the spell of his chiaro-scuro, such were his powers of nature, such the deur, pathos, or simplicity of his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to the meanest or most homely, that the best cultivated eye, the purest sensibility, and the most refined taste, are equally fascinated by them. Like Shakspeare he combined transcendant excellence with many even unpardonable faults, and reconciled us to them. He possessed the complete empire of light and shade, and of all the tints which float between them. He tinged his pencil, with equal success, in the cool of dawn, in the noontide ray, in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness visible. Though made to bend a stedfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave interest to insipidity or baldness, and plucked a flower in every desert.' Rembrandt's manner of painting (says M. Descamps) is a kind of magic. No artist knew better the

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effects of different colors mingled together, nor could better distinguish those which did not agree from those which did. He placed every tone in its place with so much exactness and harmony, that he needed not to mix them, and so destroy what may be termed the flower and freshness of the colors. He made the first draft of his pictures with great precision, and with a mixture of colors altogether particular. He proceeded on his first sketch with vigorous application, and sometimes loaded his lights with so great a quantity of color that he seemed to model rather than to paint. His workshop was occasionally made dark, and he received, through a hole, the light, which fell as he chose to direct it. On particular occasions, he placed behind his model a piece of cloth of the same color with the ground he wanted, and this piece of cloth, receiving the same ray which enlightened the head, marked the difference in a sensible manner, and allowed the painter the power of augmenting it according to his principles.'

It is difficult to determine the progress of painting in France. Miniature painting, and painting on glass, were early cultivated in that country; and in these two kinds the Italians had often recourse to the French artists. The art, for some time encouraged by Francis I., fell into a state of languor from which it did not recover till the reign of Louis XIII. Jaques Blanchard, who has been called the French Titian, flourished about this period; but, as he died young, and without educating any pupils to perpetuate his manner, he cannot be regarded as the master of any school. We have already spoken of Nicholas Poussin, in our review of Italian art, to which he more properly belonged. But the seeds of mediocrity which the Caracci had attempted to scatter over Italy found a more congenial soil, and reared an abundant harvest, in France: to mix up a compound from something of every excellence in the catalogue of art was the principle of their theory, and their aim in execution. It is in France where Michel Angiolo's right to the title of a painter was first questioned. The fierceness of his line, as they call it, the purity of the antique, and the characteristic forms of Raffaelle are only the road to the academic vigor, the librated style of Annibale Caracci, and from that they appeal to the model; in composition they consult more the artifice of grouping, contrast, and richness, than the subject or propriety; their expression is dictated by the theatre. From the uniformity of this process, not to allow that the school of France offers respectable exceptions would be unjust; without recurring again to the name of Nicholas Poussin, the works of Eustache le Sueur, Charles le Brun, Sebastien Bourdon, and sometimes Pierre Mignard, contain original beauties and rich materials. Le Sueur's series of pictures in the Chartreux exhibit the features of contemplative piety, in a purity of style and a placid breadth of manner that moves the heart. His dignified martyrdom of St. Laurence, and the burning of the magic books at Ephesus, breathe the spirit of Raffaelle. The powerful comprehension of a whole, only equalled by the fire which pervades every part of the battles of Alexander,

by Chas. le Brun, would entitle him to the highest rank in history, had the characters been less mannered; had he not exchanged the Argyraspids and the Macedonian phalanx for the compact legionaries of the Trajan pillar; had he distinguished Greeks from barbarians rather by national feature and form than by accoutrement and armour. The seven works of charity by Seb. Bourdon teem with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the plague of David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raffaelle himself.

The obstinacy of national pride, perhaps more than the neglect of government or the frown of superstition, confined the labors of the Spanish school, from its obscure origin at Sevilla to its brightest period, within the narrow limits of individual imitation. But the degrees of perfection attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep respect for the variety of their powers. That the great style ever received the homage of Spanish genius, appears not; neither Alfonso Beruguette nor Pelegrino Tibaldi left followers: but that the eyes and the taste, fed by the substance of Spagnuoletto and Murillo, should without reluctance have submitted to the gay volatility of Lucca Giordano, and the ostentatious flimsiness of Sebastian Conca, would be matter of surprise, did we not see the same principles successfully pursued in the plafonds of Antonio Raphael Mengs, the painter of philosophy, as he is styled by his biographer D'Azara. The cartoons of the frescoes painted for the royal palace at Madrid, representing the apotheosis of Trajan and the temple of Renown, exhibit less the style of Raffaelle in the nuptials of Cupid and Psyche in the Farnesina, than the gorgeous but empty bustle of Pietro da Cortona."

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We conclude this sketch of the history of painting by a brief notice of its progress in our own country. But little is known respecting the existence of painting in England previously to the reign of Henry VIII., who patronised the talents of Holbein and Torregiano, and invited Titian to visit his court. It was but a short period before that these islands had begun to cultivate the elegant arts of life, and to shake off the influence of rude and ignorant manners. choice of subjects, however, prescribed by Henry and his courtiers to those eminent men who then resided in England, was unquestionably to be lamented, and suffers extremely from a contrast with what was done by his rival, Francis I., the French king, who employed and enriched Andrea del Sarto, Rustici, Rosso, Primaticcio, Cellini, and Niccolo, not to aggregate a mass of painted and chisseled treasures for the mere gratification of his own vanity, but to scatter the seeds of real taste throughout France; while, on the other hand, Torregiano and Holbein under Henry, as well as Frederigo Zucchero under Elizabeth, were condemned to Gothic work and portrait painting. The Reformation, however great the satisfaction with which the English people justly regard it, was, without doubt, highly injurious to the cultivation of the prin

ciples of art. The stern spirit of the early reformers led them not only into a total disregard, but into an absolute condemnation, of every thing ornamental or superfluous; and the arts of painting and sculpture, more particularly, owing their principal splendor and success to the munificent patronage of the mother church, fell under the peculiar and powerful ban of her revolted daughter. If, on the contrary, at this juncture, when the national spirit was remodelled, and when that stupendous change laid open almost all that was grand in intellect or spirited in action, the fine arts had participated in the vigorous upspringing, and had received the encouragement instead of the reprobation of those lofty-minded theologians, it is more than probable that England would at this day have had to boast, in addition to her brilliant and recognised claims on the score of literature and science, the glory of exhibiting a national and superior style of historical painting. But, as it was, the injunction of Henry against images (which had been made the instruments of idolatrous delusions in churches), and still more the rigid edicts of Edward VI. and Elizabeth against statues and pictures in general, while they suddenly checked the career of historical and religions painting, seem to have set a mark of disgrace on the arts themselves, and to have left them, for a considerable length of time, a prey to indifference and scorn.

Charles I., it is true, strove to introduce a feeling for the art; and, whilst Rubens sojourned amongst us in the character of an ambassador from the court of Madrid, employed him to paint the ceiling of his newly erected banqueting room (now the chapel) at Whitehall. He also, by countenancing and patronising that prince of portrait painters, Vandyck, as well as other foreigners of talent, conferred on his country a treasure for which we trust she is at length grateful. Charles collected a very considerable gallery of pictures, and, at the instance of Rubens, bought the invaluable cartoons of Raffaelle, now the chief and envied ornament of Hampton Court: he likewise, at a cost of £20,000, purchased the cabinet of the duke of Mantua, and commissioned an artist to copy for him the works of Titian in Spain. But the exertions of Charles were frustrated and intercepted by his unhappy destiny; and the whole of his artistical collection was sold and dispersed by the parliament of 1643, which issued a mandate that all pictures which had the representation of the Saviour or the Virgin Mary in them should be burnt.' As if to complete this unfortunate distribution, so prejudicial to the interests of the art in England, a large part of this magnificent collection, which had been on the Restoration replaced in the palace of Whitehall, was utterly destroyed by the fire which consumed that edifice.

Charles II., with the cartoons of Raffaelle in his possession, and with the splendid pictorial ornaments of Whitehall before his eyes, permitted

the absurdities of Verrio, and the dull mimicries of Gennaro to render unsightly the walls of his palaces, whilst the grumme talent of Sir Peter Lely was de, taded in pointing the Cyrocns of Iphy,cnes of hi volgt eis comi This desin

guished artist, the rival, and in many instances the successful rival, of Vandyck, was succeeded by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who, with undoubted natural abilities, suffered the love of gain, when those abilities had lifted him into notice, to pervert his taste and deaden his ambition. In historical painting no British artist had appeared to rival the performances of foreign excellence until Sir James Thornhill, born in 1677, arose to dispute the honors of the palette with La Guerre, whom many among our nobility had employed to decorate their halls and staircases. Sir James Thornhill received a commission from the state to decorate St. Paul's cathedral and Greenwich Hall, in which performances he was assisted by a German artist of the name of Andre. It will not, however, be imagined that much value was set on the talents of these gentlemen, when we state that Sir James's engagement was £2 per square yard! Thornhill's merits, indeed, as an historical painter, cannot be said to demand any very great commendation; still he was the father of English art in that particular, and for a long time had no successful imitator. In the commencement of the reign of George I. (says Sir Horace Walpole) the arts of England were sunk almost to the lowest ebb.' Portraiture, it is true, had been successfully practised by Dobson, Riley, Cooper, Greenhill, Jervas, and Richardson, but by none with any

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remarkable eminence.

It was not, however, to continue always thus; and the time at length arrived when the English artists appeared not only desirous but capable of raising the character of their country in this respect, at least, to a level with that of any other nation of Europe. The principal difficulty in the outset of this event was to rescue the art from the degrading influence of a vicious taste, to retrace the steps of our predecessors (or rather to burst the bandages in which they had enthralled us), and resort at once to the original principle of imitation; which, when pure and select, is the only sound basis of the art. The first step towards this reformation was the establishment of a school for drawing from the living figure. This had been begun by Sir James Thornhill, in most inexplicable conjunction with Sir Godfrey Kneller, who, one would imagine, from his latter works, had left all consideration of the value of such a thing far behind. Thus, however, he assisted in laying the foundation of a remedy for the evil which he, more than any other man, had occasioned. This school Sir James continued at his own house in the Piazza for some years. His death, in 1734, obliged the artists to procure another situation, which was not effected without some difficulty; for the people were so unprepared to regard the study from the naked figure as necessary to artists, that their meetings were even suspected to be held for immoral purposes. Another school was at length formed by Michael Moser, a native of Schaffhausen, and a chaser by profession, and six other artists, principally foreigners, the inanagement resting with Moser. After a while they were visited by Hogarth and others, and a Larger body was formed in consequence, who td is I themselves in Peter's Court, St. Mar

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tin's Lane, in the year 1739. Having acquired some property by combined exhibitions of their works they solicited a charter of incorporation, and, the scheme being sanctioned by his late majesty, their charter was granted in 1765. But, dissensions arising in the body, a secession of many of its principal members took place, and the result was the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768, under the more immediate patronage of the king; Sir Joshua Reynolds being nominated its first president.—Introduction to Edwards's Anecdotes of Painters.

The general taste of the country was, in fact, awakened and purified with respect to art, and, on the success of Hogarth, Reynolds, and Wilson, several societies were formed throughout the kingdom for the avowed purpose of patronising and cultivating it.

Richardson, whose tracts ought to be known to every student and amateur of painting, died in 1745, at the advanced age of eighty. He was a bad painter, but his treatises on the art are full of enthusiasm, and of judicious observations on the theory of the art. Of one of these Sir Joshua Reynolds declared, that it had confirmed him in his love of the art, and elevated his ideas of its professors. Richardson contended strenuously for the propriety of painting portraits in the costume of their time; thus striking at the absurd system of flowing robes which had been adopted by Kneller. This suggestion of Richardson's, dictated by common sense, produced the happiest effects. The nonsensical draperies which had invested the represented persons of the gentlemen, together with the ungraceful silk robe which they contrived to throw negligently over the shoulders of the ladies, were laid aside; and the succeeding portrait painters, headed by a son-in-law of Richardson (Hudson, and a Frenchman of the name of Van Loo brother of Carle Van Loo), began to dress their sitters in all the formality of the day; Hudson being assisted by a Fleming of the name of Van Alken, in the representation of the silks and laces. Nor did the reformation stop here: it extended into the region of historical painting: and Hayman, the successor of Sir James Thornhill, perceived the propriety of retaining the costume properly appertaining to those figures introduced into his paintings; no longer, by an unmeaning affectation, changing them into Grecian heroes or Roman centurions. This period might be denominated the infancy of English art; and it is not a little curious, that at the time when painting was verging towards a state of hopeless decline all over the continent of Europe, it should have revived, and that to no small purpose, in these islands, the inhabitants of which had been frequently taunted by foreigners as unable to execute a fine painting.

We shall not dwell on its incipient state of improvement; indeed, the commendations bestowed on the painters alluded to above regard the principle of imitation rather than the thing imitated, since nothing could possibly be more untasteful or repulsive than the stiff, starch, and unsightly uniform (both male and female) of those days. But the principle of attention to actual representation once established, it soon

produced the fruits of a better taste in the art generally; and, accordingly, it was not long before the matchless talent of Hogarth beamed forth in unapproachable splendor to gild the onward progress of the muse of painting, and to herald the appearance of a kindred genius in the person of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Hogarth traced out a departinent in painting which was at once novel and exciting and he filled it:

Within that circle none durst walk but he !

His pictures are pregnant with meaning. Each one tells you a whole history. He had the faculty to grasp all the minutiae of the scene which he placed before you-nothing was suffered to escape.

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'It is the fashion,' says Mr. Charles Lamb, with those who cry up the great historical school in this country, to exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and vulgar class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject which he might choose. Let us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called Gin Lane. Here is plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view: and accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it. The same persons would perhaps have looked with great complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the Plague at Athens. Disease and death and bewildering terror, in Athenian garments, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the limits of pleasurable sensation.' But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colors of the picture, and forget the coarse execution (in some respects) of the print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of people, for whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no hesitation in conferring the palm of superior genius upon Hogarth, comparing this work of his with Poussin's picture. There is more of imagination in it-that power which draws all things to one-which makes things animate and inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects and their accessories, take one color, and serve to one effect. Every thing in the print, to use a vulgar expression, tells. Every part is full of strange images of death.' It is perfectly amazing and astounding to look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman and the half-dead man, which are as terrible as any thing which Michel Angiolo ever drew, but every thing else in the print contributes to bewilder and stupify-the very houses, as I heard a friend of mine express it, tumbling all about in various directions, seem drunk-seem absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of phrenzy which goes forth over the whole composition. To show the poetical and almost prophetical conception in the artist, one little

circumstance may serve. Not content with the dying and dead figures, which he has strewed in profusion over the proper scene of the action, he shows you what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond it. Close by the shell, in which, by direction of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his wife, is an old wall, which, partaking of the universal decay around it, is tumbling to pieces. Through a gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear to make a part in some funeral procession which is passing by on the other side of the wall, out of the sphere of the composition. This extending of the interest beyond the bounds of the subject could only have been conceived by a great genius. The faces of Hogarth have not a mere momentary interest, as in caricatures, or those grotesque physiognomies which we sometimes catch a glance of in the street, and, struck with their whimsicality, wish for a pencil and the power to sketch them down-and forget them again as rapidly; but they are permanent abiding ideas. Not the sports of nature, but her necessary eternal classes. We feel that we cannot part with any of them, lest a link should be broken. It is worthy of observation, that he has seldom drawn a mean or insignificant countenance. If there are any of that description, they are in his Strolling Players, a print which has been cried up by lord Orford as the richest of his productions; and it may be, for what I know, in the mere lumber, the properties, and dead furniture of the scene; but in living character and expression it is (for Hogarth) lamentably poor and wanting; it is, perhaps, the only one of his performances at which we have a right to feel disgusted. Hogarth's mind was eminently reflective; and, as it has been well observed of Shakspeare, that he has transfused his own poetical character into the persons of his drama (they are all more or less poets), Hogarth has impressed a thinking character upon the persons of his canvas. This remark must not be taken universally. The exquisite idiotism of the little gentleman in the bag and sword beating his drum in the print of the Enraged Musician, would of itself rise up against so sweeping an assertion. But I think it will be found to be true of the generality of his countenances. The knife-grinder and Jew flute-player in the plate just mentioned may serve as instances, instead of a thousand. They have intense thinking faces, though the purpose to which they are subservient by no means required it; but indeed it seems as if it was painful to Hogarth to contemplate mere vacancy or insignificance. This reflection of the artist's own intellect from the faces of his characters is one reason why the works of Hogarth, so much more than those of any other artist, are objects of meditation. Our intellectual natures love the mirror which gives them back their own likenesses. The mental eye will not bend long with delight upon vacancy.

'Another line of eternal separation between Hogarth and the common painters of droll or burlesque subjects, with whom he is often confounded, is the sense of beauty, which in the most unpromising subjects seems never wholly to have deserted him. Hogarth himself,' says

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Mr. Coleridge, from whom I have borrowed this observation, speaking of a scene which took place at Ratzeburg, never drew a more ludicrous distortion, both of attitude and physiog nomy, than this effect occasioned; nor was there wanting beside it one of those beautiful female faces which the same Hogarth, in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet, so often and so gladly introduces as the central figure in a crowd of humorous deformities; which figure (such is the power of true genius) neither acts nor is meant to act as a contrast, but diffuses through all, and over each of the group, a spirit of reconciliation and human kindness; and even when the attention is no longer consciously directed to the cause of this feeling, still blends its tenderness with our laughter and thus prevents the instructive merriment at the whims of nature, or the foibles or humors of our fellowmen, from degenerating into the heart-poison of contempt or hatred.' To the beautiful females in Hogarth, which Mr. C. has pointed out, might be added the frequent introduction of children (which Hogarth seems to have taken a particular delight in) into his pieces. They have a singular effect in giving tranquillity and a portion of their own innocence to the subject. The baby riding in its mother's lap in the March to Finchley (its careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting Trench priest) perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much depraved man and woman kind.'

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Sir Joshua Reynolds was the first president of the Royal Academy; and on his return from Rome, at a previous part of his life, carried the art (at least as far as regards portrait-painting) to its very highest point of perfection. The life, the grace, the truth of his portraits have, for a long series of years, demanded and received the tribute of universal admiration. His best specimens are perhaps inferior to no pictures of the same kind in existence, and in some points may be said to exceed the performances of any preceding artist. He not only appears to have always aspired to attain the highest excellence of coloring, but in very many instances he did attain it; there being no one particular in which, generally speaking, he left his contemporaries so far behind him as in the richness and mellowness of his tints, when his colors were successful and permanent.

Though the landscapes Sir Joshua has given in the background of many of his portraits are eminently beautiful, he seldom exercised his hand in regular landscape-painting; but in the historical department he took a wider range; and, by his successful exertions in that higher branch of his art, he not only enriched various cabinets at home, but extended the fame of the English school to foreign countries.

And here it may not be amiss to observe

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