At the cosmopolitan exhibition of pictures in Lichfield House in
1851, there was a picture to which a painful story attaches, and which we relate as it has come to us. The painting was one of considerable size, represent- ing John the Baptist preaching, executed at Rome by M. Haberzettel. It attracted much admiration, and the Pope offered to buy it for a considerable sum. M. Haberzettel, proud of his performance, felt bound to reserve it for his own Sovereign ; and he carried it to St. Petersburg for that purpose. He was preceded by tales, how, under pretence of loyalty, he meant to make a better market for his picture ; and the Emperor received him with such marked slight that he was driven from the court. He came to England; was patted on the back by several friends, Russians included, while he had money in his pocket ; but when he had expended that, the man who was under the frowns both of Autocrat and Fortune was left by his friends. He still worked at his art, and was labouring to complete a very large lithograph of his picture, but poverty hindered him. At length he obtained a small ad- vance, and it is probable that the joy at that circumstance was the cause of his sudden death. He has left a widow destitute of means or of help from her own countrymen ; crippled even in the endeavour to procure the com- pletion of that lithograph which her husband had nearly finished, and which would be remarkable as a work of art, even if these collateral circumstances did not call for a special attention to a case in which the bereaved and help- less companion of a meritorious artist finds herself; in a foreign land, threaten- ed with the last extreme.
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