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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ested, Ilove painting too much. Finding at last that Gainsboroughs pride wasuneasy under the obligation, he proposed a compromise. When youthink, said the carrier, that I have carried to the value of a littlepainting, I beg you will let me have one, Sir, and I shall be more thanpaid. Several of such acknowledgments were made, and descended asheirlooms to Wiltshires son. They show Gainsborough to have been notbehind his friend in generosity. Among them was the beautiful landscape,The Return from Harvest, in which Wiltshires own waggon, a favouritehorse he had proposed to Gainsborough as a model, and the artists twodaughters, as peasant girls, are introduced. The portrait of Orpin,parish clerk of Bradford-on-Avon, now in the National Gallery, wasanother of these payments. Gainsborough, unlike the great rival of his later years, made no THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH 33 incursions into the ideal. The poetry that informs his work wasintimate and personal ; he had no yearnings after the great manner.
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Lord North. It is to the credit of his good sense and judgment, said Sir JoshuaReynolds, in his famous eulogium of his dead confrere, that he never c 34 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH did attempt that style of historical painting, for which his previousstudies had made no preparation. Neither did he destroy the characterand uniformity of his own style by the idle affectation of introducingmythological learning into any of his pictures. The nearest approachto such an attempt was a projected allegorical portrait of Shakespeare forthe 1769 Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon. A letter to Garrick, dated 1768,shows how uncongenial was the essay. It is also a good specimen ofGainsboroughs lively and trenchant style in correspondence. Bath, 22 August, 1768. Dear Sir,—I doubt I stand accused (if not accursed) all this timefor my neglect in not going to Stratford, and giving you a line fromthence as I promised ; but what can one do such weather as this—con-tinual raining ? My genius is so damped by it, that

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