380 The Miseries of a Portrait -Painter. 



answer to your obliging expression of anxiety to know who it repre- 

 sents. Go into a house in a fashionable street to see a man whose 

 known wealth has prepared you to expect luxuries, and you find as 

 the centre object of a string of pictures Italian, Dutch, and English 

 a bright, half or whole-length frame, containing the portrait of a 

 lady dressed in white muslin or satin, looking very graceful, hair rather 

 blown about, with a blue sky, or a red curtain, or a green tree 

 behind her ; and you learn it is your hostess, Lady So-and-So, by 

 Lawrence. Go into the country, fall ill by the way, take lodgings 

 in some small bathing-place or village at Mr. or Mrs. Brown's ; and 

 in your bedroom you will find the black profile miniature of the late 

 Mr. or Mrs. B., hanging in a small oval black frame over the chim- 

 ney. Speak to any one of your friends, young or old, married or 

 single, in London or out of London ; and you will find that they 

 have either sat for their portrait, do intend to sit, or know people 

 who have sat. It has actually within the last half-century become 

 part of the duty of our lives to expend a certain sum, at the first 

 favourable opportunity, in the purchase of that amount of canvass 

 and paint which may constitute a map of our face, and which we 

 may leave behind us as an affidavit (very often a forged one) of what 

 we have been. Napoleon called us " une nation boutiquiere ; " the 

 definition is incomplete ; he forgot Portrait- painting. 



Such is the degree of our familiarity with the subject of portraits. 

 Now it is not a little odd that such mistakes should yet be made, 

 with regard to the practice of the profession, as those we find cur- 

 rent. We doubt if any could be pointed out of whose nature the 

 public are more ignorant we add contentedly ignorant than that 

 of Portrait-painting. We shall show some of the leading mistakes. 

 Portrait-painting is considered by many persons in the world as 

 an occupation resolving itself into the empirical application of a cer- 

 tain quantity of flesh-coloured paint to a thing we call a canvass, so 

 as to represent a human face to pattern : it is the mere covering, 

 by recipe, a certain oval space or chalk-mark with patches of colour : 

 any one may do it : there is no great difficulty in the matter : the 

 " craft " demands no greater amount of study or ability than is re- 

 quired for, or is found in, house-painting or bricklaying. You take 

 your brushes, you lay on colour, you make the face " like " and 

 the thing is done. Any difficulty you may experience in the appli- 

 cation of the paint is removable by being shown previously the order 

 in which you are to apply the tints. There are others, however, 

 who do admit that the production of a portrait is not an easy 

 matter ; but here again we have a one-sided view. It is not the 

 application of the colours which these persons consider difficult that 

 may be learnt, it is the likeness which is the great mystery it is 

 the making a piece of canvass look like a man or woman we have 

 seen alive and walking about, which is the surprising part of the 

 business. "It is wonderful," said a lady one day to us, "how you 

 can manage to get a likeness : I suppose it must be the same as 

 poetry born with one." Tell one of these wonderers that the like- 

 ness is by far the easiest part of a picture, and you will be j-et 

 down as a person desirous of saying startling things for the sake of 



