DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61291#0055
HIS ART
39
ness of the versatile actor, Garrick himself was
so pleased with this particular portrait that he
asked his friend to paint for him an ideal por-
trait of Shakespeare, a task which caused the
artist a vast amount of worry, as betrayed by a
letter he wrote to Garrick, in which he said: “ I
have been several days rubbing in and rubbing
out my design of Shakespeare, and hang me if
I think I shall let it go or let you see it at last.
I was willing, like an ass that I am, to expose
myself a little out of the simple portrait way,
and had a notion of showing where that in-
imitable poet had his ideas from, by an im-
mediate ray darting down upon his eye, turned
up for the purpose; but, confound me, I can
make nothing of my ideas, there has been such
a fall of rain from the same quarter.”
In another letter Gainsborough writes that
“ Shakespeare shall come forthwith ”; but the
portrait was never finished, an incidental proof
of the artist’s inability to paint what he had not
seen.
Gainsborough’s first portrait of Eliza Linley
was a clay model he made of her head after a
concert at which she had sung at Bath. Un-
fortunately the model was thrown down and
broken by a servant the very next day, and a
39
ness of the versatile actor, Garrick himself was
so pleased with this particular portrait that he
asked his friend to paint for him an ideal por-
trait of Shakespeare, a task which caused the
artist a vast amount of worry, as betrayed by a
letter he wrote to Garrick, in which he said: “ I
have been several days rubbing in and rubbing
out my design of Shakespeare, and hang me if
I think I shall let it go or let you see it at last.
I was willing, like an ass that I am, to expose
myself a little out of the simple portrait way,
and had a notion of showing where that in-
imitable poet had his ideas from, by an im-
mediate ray darting down upon his eye, turned
up for the purpose; but, confound me, I can
make nothing of my ideas, there has been such
a fall of rain from the same quarter.”
In another letter Gainsborough writes that
“ Shakespeare shall come forthwith ”; but the
portrait was never finished, an incidental proof
of the artist’s inability to paint what he had not
seen.
Gainsborough’s first portrait of Eliza Linley
was a clay model he made of her head after a
concert at which she had sung at Bath. Un-
fortunately the model was thrown down and
broken by a servant the very next day, and a