INTRODUCTION TO HER PORTRAIT, AND BIOGRAPHY.
A general, indeed almost universal, interest has been evinced for the loss of the late Madame Soyer, by reason of her celebrity as an artist, whose close adherence to nature procured for her in France (from her pictures which were exhibited in the Louvre in Paris) the famed name of the English Murillo. Her paintings evinced a great partiality for the same subject, and a like boldness of effect and sentiment were introduced in all her compositions, though never having copied or tried to imitate this celebrated master.[30] The amiable character of a life but too short, induces me to give an engraving from a portrait of herself, the finished touches of which were put upon the canvas but a few days previous to her lamented decease; her career was one, while it lasted, of great success, and must, had it not been so fatally brought to a close, have resulted in the highest fame; as it was, crowned heads of many nations paid homage at the shrine of her talents, and the cultivated sensibility of the aristocracy of this and other civilized nations has at once appreciated her artistic excellences by the spontaneous expression of admiration upon the examination of her works.
I feel, and am proud in the possession of such an emotion, most strongly—I trust not too much so,—upon this sensitive point. Such reasons, together with the fact that Madame Soyer being an English woman, are amongst my motives for giving here a short biography of her private and industrious life, which, although it appeared in nearly every journal of interest at the period of her unexpected death, will yet, I am assured, possess claims upon the sympathy of her countrymen and women.
In the fullness of my own individual regard for her memory and of her rare gifts, and with a view to perpetuate a memorial of her extraordinary genius, I have for some while been adding to my collection, and at any expense, all those of her paintings which may come within my reach.
The last purchase I made was No. 43 in the catalogue, a Buy-a-Broom Girl and Boy, from the celebrated Saltmarsh collection; this, and many of her other works are to be met with in the galleries of men of the greatest taste and judgment.