24 JULY 1830, Page 21

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE'S PICTURES.

THE exhibition of Sir THOMAS LAWRENCE'S portraits of royal, noble, and distinguished personages, at the British Gallery in Pall Mall, was very properly closed at the King's death, and remained so until his funeral,—several of the pictures being the private property of his late Majesty. During the temporary close of the Gallery, a slight alteration and one or two additions have been made. The portrait of King WIL- x.rAM, in plain clothes, fills now the place before occupied by that of GEORGE the Fourth in his coronation robes. And the place of the then Duke of CLAtiENcE is supplied by a portrait of the Duc D'ANGOITLEME, who, by the by; looks. the Very beau Weil of a police sergeant. His plain single-breasted blue coat, and scanty silver lace trimming, and his very ordinary physiognomy, all combine to give him that appearance which induced a plain matter-of-fact man to exclaim, " 'Why, here's one of Peel's raw lobsters, too !" The picture is not so well finished as some of the other royal portraits ; and the smoke, &c. of which the background is composed, is both muddy and heavy. The cloak over the left shoulder hangs as on a peg ; and the whole pictute is, for LAWRENCE, common- place and uninviting. The additional pictures are-:-the crayon sketch on canvass of the heads a Mr. CAEmuni-'s children - which has been engraved by LEWIS; and the portraits, the heads only painted in, of two sons of Sir WArxisr W. WYNNE,—the elder one is the same as that which has been so beautifully lithographed by SHARP. The colouring: of the faces is:re- markably fresh and clear, and the eyes of the boy.fronting the spectator are almost real. A whoIe-length of Mrs. STEWART MACKENZIE, a well-painted picture, has been added ; -these are the only changes. The exhibition' is deservedly popular ; and the number of visitors and the Interest which they manifest is at once a tribute to the genius of the painter and a favourable sign of the times. ERRATA in the Letter of "An Old Dilettante" in our last number :—for " Alcar- runes," read" Alcamenes "—for" work of Cimabue," read "works, of Cimabue."