Studio: international art (10.1897)

Portraits of British Artists

Van Dyck, they have been ignored, and their work shop of Messrs. Peake, the print and picture
merged in that of others. The various portraits by dealers, the work of a painter which struck his
these two artists in the National Portrait Gallery fancy. This artist was Dobson, who through Van
show them both to have been men of undoubted Dyck's patronage rose to be serjeant-painter to the
genius as painters, the portraits of Endymion king, and attended the court during its temporary
Porter by Dobson and of Oliver Cromwell with a residence at Oxford. Mis life, however, ended
page by Walker being two of the most important prematurely and unhappily. Of Robert Walker
pictures in the collection. They both show the little is known outside his paintings. His chief

claim to notoriety hitherto
has been due to the
various portraits of Oliver
Cromwell and other Par-
liamentarian leaders,
which it was his good
fortune to paint. Their
merits, however, have
been but little recognised,
so that it is to be hoped
that the admirable portrait
of himself in the Portrait
Gallery, and the equally
excellent one of William
Faithorne, may go some
way towards establishing
his position as a painter.

In the same room as
the portrait of Walker
hangs that of a painter
who is far better known
to the world, Sir Peter
Lely. Lely was a remark-
ably handsome man, and
the number of portraits
of himself which he
painted may perhaps be
due to a pardonable
pleasure in contemplating
his own features, although
in his later days he had
little leisure for such an
occupation. There is no
portrait of Lely's contem-

W. nORSON FROM TUB PORTRAIT BY HIMSELF . , ,

porary rival and successor,
Sir Godfrey Kneller; but

influence of Van Dyck, and yet both display a kind painters in the reign of Queen Anne are well repre-
of Dutch fondness for subdued and negative sented by Jonathan Richardson, a sterling British
colours. A portrait group of Dobson and his wife by painter, the merit of whose portraits is obscured in
himself is at Hampton Court, and a similar group many cases by the dull and conventional character
was lent by Mr. C. T. D. Crews to the last Winter of the costume and favourite postures of the day.
Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Single portraits Richardson was a pupil of Riley, another English
of Dobson by himself, like the one in this Gallery, painter of great merit; and as Richardson was the
are to be found in other collections. The story instructor of Hudson, who in his turn imparted
is well known how Van Dyck was strolling something of his art to the young Joshua Reynolds,
down Snow Hill to Holborn, when he saw in the the stream of British art may be said to have flown

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