The sixth volume issued by the Walpole Society to its
members contains some valuable contributions to the history of English art. Mr. Finberg writes on two exquisite portraits, probably of Lord Bristol and Lord Pembroke, by Cornelius Johnson, the early Stuart painter who numbered the boy Milton among his many sitters. Mr. Finberg also describes one of Turner's early sketch-books, identifying the subjects and reproducing some of the drawings of South Wales, Kent, and Oxford. Mr. Finberg has unearthed from George Vertue's papers information about Gawen Hamilton, a hitherto unknown Scottish portrait-painter who was a formidable rival to Hogarth but died young in 1737. His painting of a group of artists, including Kent, who built the Horse Guards, Gibbs, and Rysbrack the sculptor, is in the National Portrait Gallery. A first Instalment of the records of the Society of Artiste of Great Britain, the precursor of the Royal Academy, is given, and Mr. Rimbault Dibdin contributes an entirely new and exhaustive account of Liverpool artists in the eighteenth century.
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