“Amongst the parties present at the inauguration we perceived the fair Cerito, bestowing upon the shrine of her sister artist a wreath funéraire, made from a crown placed upon her head in La Scala, at Milan, before several thousands of her country people. Such feeling impressed all with the highest respect for that fairy child of Terpsichore, and deserves a distinguished place in the history of art. The wreath, together with the palette of the artist, will be placed in a glass case, and fixed at the back of the pedestal. The inscription upon the pedestal will be simply the words ‘To Her,’ without any addition whatever.”—Morning Post, 1844.
EXTRACTS FROM THE PRESS.
“L’Angleterre sera vengée par une femme de l’échec dont Messieurs Foggo sont tombés les victimes. Madame Soyer de Londres nous a envoyé deux morceaux exquis; si nous pouvions disposer d’une couronne au plus digne, c’est assurément à elle que nous rendrions cet hommage; ne pouvant pas présenter de lauriers, donnons lui la première place dans nos colonnes: pour la correction du dessin, la vigueur, le modèle et la pureté du coloris, ce sont là les qualités qui seraient enviées par les plus habiles de nos maîtres. Mais ce que nous admirons par-dessus tout, dans son sens le plus vrai, est la touche delicate, la douceur du coloris, toujours plein de souplesse et de naïveté.”—La Revue des Deux Mondes.
“Une Glaneuse, par Madame Soyer, de Londres, a passé inaperçu. Les critiques et le public se sont bien gardés d’en parler, parce que ce tableau, quoique renfermant de très grandes qualités, ne plaît pas au premier abord. Nous ne connaissons point Madame Soyer; nous ne pourrions même dire si ce nom est un pseudonyme, ou s’il est véritablement celui de cette artiste. Ce qu’il y a de singulier, c’est que jamais aucune femme n’a peint avec autant de verve, de chaleur et d’entrain. Madame Soyer (en supposant toujours que Madame Soyer soit une femme) est aux autres peintres ce que Madame George Sand est aux littérateurs. Nous verrons plus tard si cette femme-peintre se soutiendra, et si ses productions prochaines vaudront celles de cette année.”—La Capitole,
“The appearance of a very beautiful engraving of the picture of ‘The Jew Lemon-sellers’ reminds us of the loss which art has sustained in the death of Madame Soyer. This gifted lady, better known, perhaps, as Miss Emma Jones, has been snatched away in the midst of a career, the opening success of which fully justified the most flattering anticipations of her numerous friends. Some of Madame Soyer’s pictures exhibited here were the subjects of very general admiration, and such of our readers as visited the last exhibition at Paris (where Madame Soyer was even more popular than in England) will recall with pleasure her picture, in the style of Murillo, of ‘The Two Israelites,’ which received so much praise from the French critics. The devotion of Madame Soyer to the art which she so much adorned by her talents is illustrated as much in the number as in the excellence of her works, which form the basis of a lasting and honorable fame. Although but twenty-nine years of age when she died, she had already painted no less than 403 pictures. Many of them are in the possession of the most distinguished collectors in this country.”—Morning Chronicle.
KITCHEN OF THE REFORM CLUB.
“We copy the following, by the Vicountess de Malleville, from the last number of the Courrier de l’Europe. Without subscribing to the justice of all the writer’s remarks, we think, as the opinion of an intelligent foreigner, that the article will be read with some interest.
“‘We now quit the upper regions and follow the secretary of the club, and the politest and most obliging cicerone in the world. Theatrically speaking, we have as yet only seen the stage and its sumptuous decorations from the boxes and pit; we now go behind the scenes, among the scene-shifters and the machinists. But unlike in a theatre, we see no naked walls behind the scenes—no tattered draperies—no floors strewed with sawdust. This fine apartment is the kitchen—spacious as a ball-room, kept in the finest order, and white as a young bride. All-powerful steam, the noise of which salutes your ear as you enter, here performs a variety of offices: it diffuses a uniform heat to large rows of dishes, warms the metal plates, upon which are disposed the dishes that have been called for, and that are in waiting to be sent above; it turns the spits, draws the water, carries up the coal, and moves the plate like an intelligent and indefatigable servant. Stay awhile before this octagonal apparatus, which occupies the centre of the place. Around you the water boils and the stewpans bubble, and a little further on is a moveable furnace, before which pieces of meat are converted into savoury rôtis—here are sauces and gravies, stews, broths, soups, &c.; in the distance are Dutch ovens, marble mortars, lighted stoves, iced plates of metal for fish, and various compartments for vegetables, fruits, roots, and spices. After this inadequate, though prodigious nomenclature, the reader may perhaps picture to himself a state of general confusion, a disordered assemblage, resembling that of a heap of oyster-shells. If so, he is mistaken. For, in fact, you see very little, or scarcely anything, of all the objects above described; the order of their arrangement is so perfect, their distribution as a whole, and in their relative bearings to one another, all are so intelligently considered, that you require the aid of a guide to direct you in exploring them, and a good deal of time to classify in your mind all your discoveries.
“‘The man who devised the plan of this magnificent kitchen, over which he rules and governs without question or dispute, the artiste who directs by his gestures his subalterns tricked out in white, and whose eye takes in at a glance the most difficult combinations in the culinary art—in a word, the chef by whom every gourmet admitted within the precincts of the Reform Club swears, is M. Soyer, of whom it may justly be said that he is not more distinguished as a professor of the science of the Vatels and Caremes, than as a well-behaved and modest man. Allow him, therefore, to give you the history of his discoveries and improvements; let him conduct you into the smallest recesses of his establishment, the cleanliness of which would shame many a drawing-room; and listen to him, also, as he informs you that those precious pictures which crowd his own parlour are from the pencil of a wife who has recently been taken from him by a premature death. Of this you might almost doubt till he again affirms it, for, judging from the poetry of the composition, and the vigour of the colouring and the design, you might swear that these pictures were the work of Murillo when he was young.
“‘Let all strangers who come to London for business, or pleasure, or curiosity, or for whatever cause, not fail to visit the Reform Club. In an age of utilitarianism, and of the search for the comfortable, like ours, there is more to be learned here than in the ruins of the Coliseum, of the Parthenon, or of Memphis.’”—Chambers’s Journal.