FINE ARTS.
LAWRENCE'S Portraits of the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Grey, and Prince Metternich.
LAWRENCE did not invest the male branches of the peerage with that elegance of style and manner with which his pencil exalted his female members into ideal loveliness. The want of character in female beauty he supplied, by his taste, with artificial and conventional refinement. Not so with his men ; the character of their faces he either raised into mere gentility, or generalized into respectability or an easy bouhonimie. His male portraits had neither the subtilty and depth of mental cha- racter expressed by TITIAN, nor the moral grandeur of the portraits by Sir Josnua REYNOLDS% nor the gallant bearing and chivalrous air portrayed by VANDYKE : they were courtly, respectable, and genteel ; so thhai'tthe commoner and the peer, the dunce and the genius, met upon
'ound of his canvass. Sir 'Tito mas's
pretty equal terms on the neutral gi peers, in their Windsor or military .'conforms, look like state lacqueys- His diplomatists are most characteeistii. and he should have painted the Congress of Vienna instead of ISABEY. Transcendently beautiful is his picture of Pope Pius : how delicately deli'',sated is the feeble benevolence
and pampered senility of the old man, with flaccid skin and transparent paleness of complexion, contrasted by the yip votr? brilliancy roue
marked teyie. eye-
brows and dark scattered hair ! The purity, ti'
and colouring of this cheld'ccuure of his genius, tl-randeur of the style, and the beauty of the drawing, proclaim the consummate isnksiltlad of the of the master-hand. Had he lived in the age of drill.v ry, instead days of pantaloons and smallclothes, and coats and wiuNtcoats, lie would have dazzled the worshippers of TITIAN with the splendi.2 displays of his art. The genius of LAWRENCE was kept down by buttons and button- holes, lappels and skirts ; neither did furs and frogs great;ly mead the manner—witness his portrait of the late King. But to return to our immediate subject. The Duke of Newcastle, hrhis smart t 1l dress uniform, looks as gay as an ensign ; his blue, stony, glittering sgyes, so cold in their expression, are lighted up with a flash Of bright intelligence; and the sarcastic superciliousness of his face is touched into a succinct- ness and good-humoured railery not characteristic of the individuaL Here it was that LAWRENCE so flatteringly beguiled, by softening into insipidity and an extrinsic air, a repulsive character of face. Earl Grey looks the respectable gentleman,—rather superfluously didactic, however. He seems a firm and somewhat peevish father of a family, with a mant- ling sense of personal dignity, evinced by an austere gravity, and ren- dered more forbidding by the perpending process which appears to be going on in his mind, not very clearly or much to his satifaction. It is a good face, with a turgid, dubitating expression. The attitude and air are natural, and appropriately characteristic.
The portrait of the wily diplomatist Prince Metternich is an interest-
ing illustration of the politics of the present milt. Before the exhibition of LAWRENCE'S works chised, we went to take a last look at that splendid collection, and lingered amongst those fine works, recalling the former impressions they had made upon our mind. The portraits of the Royal Imbeciles Charles the Tenth and his son the Policeman, D'Angou- lame, looked less uninteresting now that they had achieved a master- stroke of stupidity. The Emperor of Austria looked paternal in his kingly state, and Alexander of Russia a modest volunteer. Blucher and Platoff looked like soldiers ; the former in particular, with his eagle face. Our own Sovereign, William the Fourth, looked more of the mere country gentleman, and less of the jolly, kind-hearted man which he proves himself. The portrait wanted that cordial good-nature which characterizes our truly English King. The Duke of Bedford looked like himself, and a counterpart of his portrait by GEORGE HATTER, at Cashiobury. The Marquis of Lansdowne looked like a gentleman pugi- list. Of the other portraits we have before spoken in our view of the ex- hibition.
. been enrraved, and the most successful ones by Mr. Cuustsrs, who was the favourite mezzotint wigiaver derived great advantages from his superintendence of the progress of his platei. Mr. Cousisrs's splendid mezzotint of the portrait of the Pope be- fore mentioned, is one of the most beautiful and successful specimens of engraving. It has all the fleshiness, brilliancy, and rich softness which belong to the original. The finest and most elaborate line engraving could not have produced such effects, nor, we think, have given so com- plete a reduced fac-simile in black and white of that grand picture, as Mr. COUSINS has done in the mezzotint. It is the finest engraving of the finest picture ever painted by LAWRENCE, and one of the most truly pictorial prints we remember to have seen. Mr. Cousirrs's beautiful mezzotints from LAWRENCE of the painter himself, Mr. Croker, the Duke of Wellington, and that brilliant picture of Master Lambtnn, we have before noticed. This artist also has engraved these portraits of Earl Grey and Prince Metternich. The splendour of the proofs of this last we well remember, having seen one fresh from the portfolio of LAWRENCE. The portrait of the Duke of Newcastle is very finely en- graved, in mezzotint, by Mr. TURNER ; who has made a rich and effect- ive picture, though we think the face is not sufficiently prominent.
Previous page
