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Updated: June 13, 2025
His beautiful wife, now in her early thirties, was much sought in local society circles. Everybody of note who came to Bath visited Gainsborough's studio. Garrick sat to him and played such pranks with his countenance that each time the artist looked up from his easel he saw a new man.
"Er so-so," said Carshaw with a smile borne of memories, which Winifred's downcast eyes just noticed under their raised lids. "What is she like?" she went on. "Let me see! How shall I describe her? Well, you know Gainsborough's picture of the Duchess of Devonshire? She's like that, full-busted, with preposterous hats, dashing rather a beauty!" "Indeed!" said Winifred coldly.
However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence.
I was fast learning how to sympathize with him. Then to Grosvenor House to see the pictures. I best remember Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which everybody knows in engravings.
Look at May, there, with the brow of a Madonna and the tongue of a gutter-devil. And Myrtle for all the world one of Gainsborough's old English beauties stepped down from the canvas to riot out the century in Dawson's dance-halls. And Laura, there, wouldn't she make a mother? Can't you see the child in the curve of her arm against her breast!
The most striking picture in the collection, I think, is Titian's "Bella Donna," the only one of Titian's works that I have yet seen which makes an impression on me corresponding with his fame. It is a very splendid and very scornful lady, as beautiful and as scornful as Gainsborough's Lady Lyndoch, though of an entirely different type.
You'd be left here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive.
Is the Revised Version of the Bible superior to the Old? Who stole Gainsborough's picture? Which are the rarest coins and stamps? Is there any sugar in the blood? Blondes or brunettes? Do monkeys talk? What should you lead at whist? Should directors of insolvent companies be prosecuted? Or classics be annotated? Was Boswell a fool? Do I exist? Does anybody else exist? Is England declining?
He ought never to have seen, or dreamed, of an Apollo six feet high, looking sublime, and sending forth dreadful arrows from the far-resounding bow; he should have looked only to that "child upon the cloud," or rather, he should have seen his little muse as she walks upon the earth we have her in Gainsborough's picture with her tattered petticoat, and her bare feet, and her broken pitcher, but looking withal with such a sweet sad contentedness upon the world, that surely, one thinks, she must have filled that pitcher and drawn the water which she carries without, however, knowing any thing of the matter from the very well where Truth lies hidden.
The story of this beautiful lady seems to belong to the story of Gainsborough's portrait and shall be told here. When she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in Bath to sell tickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from her. When she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a Mr.
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