Identifier: fairwomeninpaint00shar (find matches)
Title: Fair women in painting and poetry
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Sharp, William, 1855-1905
Subjects: Women in literature Women in art Women Beauty, Personal
Publisher: London : Seeley New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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whichwas afterwards in the possession of the Earl of Egremont. Thecatalogue for 1778 shows the largest number of pictures hitherto con-tributed ; they included the first Duchess of Devonshire, and a fineportrait of Christie, the founder of the famous firm of auctioneers. Inthe following year a letter to Mrs. Gibbon says : My present situation,with regard to encouragement, &c, is all that heart can wish, and I liveat a full thousand pounds a year expense. It is now pretty generally agreed that the famous Blue Boy, perhapsthe most widely known of all Gainsboroughs, belongs to the year1779, and that the tradition of its origin is authentic. The contentionthat it was painted so early as 1770 appears to rest on no more solidfoundation than the fact that Gainsborough in that year contributed tothe Royal Academy a Portrait of a Young Gentleman, to which MaryMoser, in a letter to Fuseli, thus alludes : Gainsborough is beyondhimself in a portrait of a gentleman in a Vandyke habit. Several
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3(.§aUutirro^JS^/L3llna WatUrt/seas.ePAxSc. JO* 3hu 3 01, y^o THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH 47 other portraits are extant to which these words of the lady R.A. wouldapply. In the more popular version, which refers it to 1779, thepicture figures as the painted refutation of a dictum of Sir Joshuas,and the story agrees so well with what we know of both men that wecling to our right of belief. Gainsborough, influenced perhaps by the example of Vandyke, themaster he admired above all others, had a great fondness for blue. In themajority of his better works the tint in question plays an importantpart. The most conspicuous exception I can call to mind is the Mrs.Graham at Edinburgh, where a warm crimson holds the place he so oftengave to the cooler tint. In the Lady Sheffield, the Mrs. Siddons, theLady Bate Dudley, the Mrs. Beaufoy, the Duchess of Richmond, and ahost of others, blues of more or less coolness occupy the centre of thecanvas. Nothing is more likely than that Reynolds had this peculiari

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