DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0288
THE PRINCE OF WALES
147
in his famous lecture on George IV. “Tall and well made,” she writes,
“ he had a handsome face; all his features were noble and regular. He
wore a wig most artfully arranged, the hair of which was separated upon
the forehead, like that of the Apollo Belvedere, a fashion which suited him
admirably. He was good in all bodily exercises, he spoke French very
well, and with perfect ease. He was fastidiously elegant, and his magnifi-
cence was prodigal, so that at one time, it was said, he owed three hundred
thousand pounds, which his father and Parliament at length paid for him.
As he was for a long time one of the handsomest men in the United
Kingdom, he was idolised by women.” As soon as the portrait of the
Prince was finished, he gave it to Mrs. Fitzherbert. That lady had it
mounted in a frame on wheels, like the big mirrors in milliners’ show-
rooms, so that she could have it moved from one room to another.
The anger of the courtly painters of England at the favour accorded
to a French artist by “ Prince Florizel ” did not stop at talk. One of
them published a book in which he attacked French art in general, and
Madame Lebrun’s in particular. The nasty bits were, of course, translated
to her by friends, and she wrote to the author a long letter in which, not
unskilfully or unwisely, she defended her country’s painters’ who, on the
whole, understood the arrangement of draperies, if perhaps nothing else,
better than the English did. She also, while admitting her own deficiencies,
refused to admit the merit which her English critic declared to be her only
one—patience. That, she said, was unhappily a virtue foreign to her
character. At the same time she admitted that she could not easily leave
her works, “ thinking them never sufficiently finished.” Her pictures
were not of that sort of which Whistler declared that “ a work of art is
always finished.”
Madame Lebrun’s portrait of the Prince, who shared with the Comte
d’Artois the title “ First Gentleman in Europe,” was not painted till near
the end of the artist’s stay in England, and a chance reference to its pro-
duction has led us rather far out of the chronological path. She herself,
in her Souvenirs, may show an agreeable disregard for the proper sequence
of incidents, but one who tries to tell her story, with more regard for
accuracy, must not mix up the years quite so freely as she, in old age,
naturally and pardonably mixed them.
Like so many foreign visitors, up to the present day, Madame Lebrun
found the London Sunday “ as triste as the climate.” She declares that
one could not sing or play the piano without running the risk of having
147
in his famous lecture on George IV. “Tall and well made,” she writes,
“ he had a handsome face; all his features were noble and regular. He
wore a wig most artfully arranged, the hair of which was separated upon
the forehead, like that of the Apollo Belvedere, a fashion which suited him
admirably. He was good in all bodily exercises, he spoke French very
well, and with perfect ease. He was fastidiously elegant, and his magnifi-
cence was prodigal, so that at one time, it was said, he owed three hundred
thousand pounds, which his father and Parliament at length paid for him.
As he was for a long time one of the handsomest men in the United
Kingdom, he was idolised by women.” As soon as the portrait of the
Prince was finished, he gave it to Mrs. Fitzherbert. That lady had it
mounted in a frame on wheels, like the big mirrors in milliners’ show-
rooms, so that she could have it moved from one room to another.
The anger of the courtly painters of England at the favour accorded
to a French artist by “ Prince Florizel ” did not stop at talk. One of
them published a book in which he attacked French art in general, and
Madame Lebrun’s in particular. The nasty bits were, of course, translated
to her by friends, and she wrote to the author a long letter in which, not
unskilfully or unwisely, she defended her country’s painters’ who, on the
whole, understood the arrangement of draperies, if perhaps nothing else,
better than the English did. She also, while admitting her own deficiencies,
refused to admit the merit which her English critic declared to be her only
one—patience. That, she said, was unhappily a virtue foreign to her
character. At the same time she admitted that she could not easily leave
her works, “ thinking them never sufficiently finished.” Her pictures
were not of that sort of which Whistler declared that “ a work of art is
always finished.”
Madame Lebrun’s portrait of the Prince, who shared with the Comte
d’Artois the title “ First Gentleman in Europe,” was not painted till near
the end of the artist’s stay in England, and a chance reference to its pro-
duction has led us rather far out of the chronological path. She herself,
in her Souvenirs, may show an agreeable disregard for the proper sequence
of incidents, but one who tries to tell her story, with more regard for
accuracy, must not mix up the years quite so freely as she, in old age,
naturally and pardonably mixed them.
Like so many foreign visitors, up to the present day, Madame Lebrun
found the London Sunday “ as triste as the climate.” She declares that
one could not sing or play the piano without running the risk of having