[PROFILE PORTRAITS BY RALPH PEACOCK BARBIZON HOUSE ' , HENRIETTA STREET.] Mr.
Ralph Peacock's work as a portrait painter is well known. Examples of his portraiture are to be found in the National Gallery, Millbank, and in several public Galleries in England and the Colonies. He is a careful and conscientious artist who has the knack of being able to paint portraits which are extraordinary likenesses of his subjects. There are a number of these familiar examples of his manner in this, his first one-man exhibition, but its particular interest is due to a large number of small portraits which mark a new departure in his work. All of them show only the head, in profile or almost profile': they are less than life-size. They are painted on a specially prepared white cardboard in oils. The un- finished study of President Hoover illustrates his method. In the first sitting he sketches in his subject with charcoal, which is the basis of the portrait, in the second the painting is finished.
The whole process occupies Mr. Peacock the incredibly short time of four hours, and the result, rather surprisingly, is finished and spirited. Mr. Peacock's young women are not so good as his men or elderly women. The portraits of Mr. E. V. Lucas, Mr. -Robert Aiming Bell, R.A., Lady Frances Balfour, Mrs. Holman Hunt, and that great character in the picture world, the late Mr. David Croal Thomson, show him at his best.
DAVID FINCHAM.
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