D'Anvers, N.: Thomas Gainsborough R. A. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1902)

HIS ART

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ment of, his manner were the far-famed Blue
Boy of 1779, the Mrs. Beaufoy of 1780, the
Colonel St. Leger of 1782, the Mrs. Siddons of
1784, the Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell of
1785, and the Ladies in the Mall, St. James’s
Park; the last-named one of the very few
subject-pictures painted by Gainsborough, which
Horace Walpole characterized as “ all a-flutter,
like a lady’s fan,” and which excels anything of a
similar kind painted by Fragonard, Lancret, or
even Watteau himself. “ The Mrs. Siddons, the
Mrs. Beaufoy, . . . the Mrs. Sheridan," says Sir
Walter Armstrong, “are delicious melodies in
colour, miracles of distinction, unrivalled records
of the beauty of women. No other painter has
dazzled us with means so slight.” “A com-
parison,” says the same able critic in another
passage, “ between the Mrs. Siddons and the
Mrs. Beaufoy casts a brilliant light upon one
secret of Gainsborough’s success. . . . Look at
the Mrs. Beaufoy and note how an airy, grace-
ful desinvolture governs every line. . . . The
sitter was a beautiful and happy woman with no
duties to the world beyond those of a wife and
mother. And this notion breathes from every
stroke of the painter’s brush. . , . Mrs. Siddons,
on the other hand, was a public character, . . .