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I apostrophised him, and he seemed to sympathise, and bowed his head as if ashamed to look me in the face. Haydon's detestation of portrait-painting probably arose from the secret consciousness that he was not successful in this branch of his art.
Madame Porta then perceived the mistake she had made in not exercising her talent for "genre" painting, which might, by this time, have brought her reputation. She now attempted portrait-painting. But here she was forced to compete against a crowd of artists in greater need of money than herself.
Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized herself by many successful efforts of genius both in poetry and prose; and Miss Reid excelled the celebrated Rosalba in portrait-painting, both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons.
Portrait-painting was the only lucrative branch of art, and the Academy was almost entirely in the hands of the portrait-painters, who gave little encouragement to works of imagination. The burden of the patron, which had been removed from literature, still rested upon painting, and the Academicians found it more to their interest to foster the ignorance than to educate the taste of the patron.
Under the influence of his humor they took seats about the pretty, candle-lit table as gay a group as the city held apparently; for Alice was of that temperament which responds quickly and buoyantly to humor, and Frank Congdon never took anything quite seriously except his portrait-painting. He could do a cake-walk with any one, but he would not discuss art with the unsympathetic.
They took their uncle one day to see where William the Silent was assassinated, and the next to observe how Rembrandt's theory of guild portrait-painting differed from Van der Helst's, with a common enthusiasm. He scrutinized with patient loyalty everything that they indicated to him, and not infrequently they appeared to like very much the comments he offered.
There was probably no one on board in whom he would have found a sympathetic listener, or even a psychologically interesting nature. His love of art, however, never deserted him. At Hobart Town he started a studio, and returned to sketching and portrait-painting, and his conversation and manners seem not to have lost their charm.
When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small text traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognisably presented to the view of others.
Vandyke seems to have brought portrait-painting into fashion; and very likely the king's love of art diffused a taste for it throughout the nation, and remotely suggested, even to his enemies, to get their pictures painted. Elizabeth has perpetuated her cold, thin visage on many canvases, and generally with some fantasy of costume that makes her ridiculous to all time.
It was his first acquaintance with dress-clothes. He had, indeed, dined once or twice at the tables of the Westmoreland gentry in the course of his portrait-painting experiences. But there had been no 'party, and it had been perfectly understood that for the Kendal bookseller's son a black Sunday coat was sufficient.
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