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his early days he luckily found half-a-guinea, and then, instead 
of purchasing some beef steaks and a pair of shoes as his wife 
wished, he chose a feast of early green peas! Of his pupil 
W. Hibbart, who made many etchings and engravings for local 
publications, it is scarcely the place to speak here. His work 
with the needle is inferior to Worlidge’s, and so far as I know, 
he neither drew nor painted portraits in miniature. 
Another somewhat remarkable painter of miniatures was 
Charles Sherriff, a deaf and dumb artist, who practised in Bath, 
and gained a great reputation. He exhibited at the Royal 
Academy in 1774 for the first time, and in 1785 the celebrated 
Mrs. Siddons writes that he was more successful in her portrait 
than any other miniature painter she had sat to. Whether this 
portrait is still extant I know not ; it would be a most interesting 
item in the exhibition of Bath miniatures that I have dreams of 
arranging, and it would be delightful to compare Sherriff’s 
rendering of Mrs. Siddons’s stately beauty with that of Sir 
Thomas Lawrence, who at this very time, as a young lad, was 
painting small portraits here. I hope some day to be able to 
speak at length on the work of Lawrence in Bath—not the 
least interesting chapter in the fascinating volume that might be 
written on the connection between our city and the arts. 
It is very annoying to find such scanty notice of many artists, 
and it requires much patience to piece together a few facts to form 
even a disconnected whole. It is still more annoying to find just 
the mention of a name, and not to be able to trace any of the 
artist’s works. Of such miniaturists as Dixon, Langdon, Mrs. 
Phillips, Raines, Vaslet*, Wilkinson, Spornbergt, Sanders, Bell, 
* Vaslet’s portrait of Mason the poet (A.D. 1771) was etched by C. 
Carter, and published in 1785. He practised first at York, and then 
at Bath, and occasionally exhibited at the Royal Academy. 
+ Recently I have seen a very beautiful portrait of a lady of the 
Metcalfe family and a silhouette of her father (?), painted about 1790. 
They are in the same locket, and the latter is signed. 
