I never seem to get used to his incursions into beauty. The surprise recurred in Paris at the exhibition of the “Cent Portraits de Femmes.” I walked round the galleries playing the game of suggesting the names of the painters without referring to the catalogue. Among the portraits was one quite small, the head of a girl, fresh as a lark’s song, an impromptu, a premier coup, colour simple, drawing gay. I ascribed it to Raeburn. It was Hogarth’s “Miss Rich,” owned by M. Max Michaelis. Then I paused and looked at the other Hogarths. Ah! there was that rendering, one of the most delightful of his portraits, of “Peg Woffington,” lent by Sir Edward Tennant, not “dallying and dangerous” on a couch as in the version at the Garrick Club, but very charming, with a touch of primness that suits her. Here is Hogarth as true artist, the vision clear, the treatment direct. Note the daintiness of the flower in her bosom, the delicious colour of the dress, and the importance of the accent of the knot of black ribbon against the gleaming pearls. Oh yes! Hogarth knew his business!
PLATE VI.—SARAH MALCOLM
(In the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh)
A portrait of the notorious Sarah Malcolm, charwoman and murderess, who was hanged near Mitre Court, Fleet Street, in 1733, for a triple murder. She was painted by Hogarth, in the condemned cell, two days before her execution. Mrs. Malcolm looks rather an attractive if a somewhat cunning matron, and her dress is certainly becoming. The painting, in tone and characterisation, is very pleasant, and we can forgive her the ostentatious display of the rosary.
He painted Mrs. Woffington eight times. This one, pretty, plain Peg, with the rose in her corset, is my choice. The other two Hogarths at the “Cent Portraits de Femmes” exhibition were “Miss Arnold” from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, a robust work, forceful and somewhat heavy, and lacking the naïveté and charm of “Peg Woffington,” and the notorious “Sarah Malcolm,” charwoman and murderess, who was hanged near Mitre Court, Fleet Street, on the 7th of March 1733, for a triple murder. Says Dr. Trusler: “The portrait of this murderess was painted by Hogarth, to whom she sat for her picture two days before execution.” Mrs. Malcolm is rather an attractive if a somewhat cunning matron, and her dress is certainly becoming. The painting, in tone and quiet characterisation, is very pleasant, and we can forgive her the ostentatious display of the rosary.
If only it had been possible to send “The Shrimp Girl” to Paris. That brilliant impressionist sketch, done long before the era of impressionism, would have astonished the French critics who are not already acquainted with it. Indeed, “The Shrimp Girl” is something of a miracle. She cries out from Hogarth’s works, a tour de force, done without premeditation, in some happy hour when the unerring hand unerringly followed the quick eye. It is an inspiration. One may say of it as Northcote said of Frans Hals: “He was able to shoot the bird flying—so to speak—with all its freshness about it, which even Titian does not seem to have done....” “The Shrimp Girl” was sold at Mrs. Hogarth’s sale in April 1790 for four pounds ten shillings, and was purchased for the National Gallery in 1884 for two hundred and sixty-two pounds ten shillings. After Mr. Sidney Colvin’s eulogy in The Portfolio, one may go to almost any extreme in expressing admiration for “The Shrimp Girl” and other of Hogarth’s paintings. Said Mr. Colvin: “Even Reynolds and Gainsborough, colourists often of an inexpressible loveliness, tenderness, and charm, were fumblers in their method compared with Hogarth.... Without a school, and without a precedent (for he is no imitator of the Dutchman), he has found a way of expressing what he sees with the clearest simplicity, richness, and directness.”
Simple, rich, and direct is his portrait of “Garrick and his Wife” at Windsor Castle, a finished epic, quite unlike that lyrical sketch of “The Shrimp Girl.” “Garrick and his Wife” was painted in 1757, when Hogarth was sixty. It is a flamboyant, decorative picture. Garrick, in blue and gold, is seen seated at a table in a moment of inspiration, pen in hand, cogitating the prologue to Foote’s “Comedy of Taste.” His wife, in a pink dress and white fichu, stands behind him, preparing to take the pen from his hand. She is alert and gay, he is invoking the muse; a charming picture, but if you look closely you will observe that Garrick’s eyes are coarsely painted, “evidently by another hand.” Thereby hangs a tale, a typical Hogarthian tale of wars in words, and in this case in deed too. Hogarth painted Garrick many times, receiving as much as two hundred pounds for his fine portrait of the “English Roscius” as Richard III.; but they quarrelled over the “Garrick and his Wife,” and Hogarth in a fit of irritation drew his brush across the face, disfiguring the eyes. The picture was never delivered, never paid for, and on Hogarth’s death his widow generously gave it to Garrick. It passed into the possession of Mr. Locker of Greenwich Hospital, who sold it to George IV. In the memoirs of Mr. Locker’s son is the following passage: “This picture is so lifelike that as little children we were afraid of it; so much so that my mother persuaded my father to sell it to George IV.” That is a strange way for a picture to arrive in a royal collection. The King also owns the quaint, merry, crowded, landscape conversation-picture called “A View of the Mall, St. James’s Park,” but this evocation of the beau monde of the day promenading in cinnamon coats and peach-bloom breeches, and the ladies in every Chanticler colour and vagary, has been attributed by some authorities to Samuel Wale, R.A.
Mr. Fairfax Murray is the fortunate owner of “A Fishing Party,” a small picture, nineteen by twenty-one and a half inches, which shows that Hogarth, besides his other gifts, was a master in romantic composition. On the border of a lake sit the fishing party—a charming lady, a nurse, and a child in the full light, and a reflective gentleman in the shade. The baby holds the rod, the pretty mother guides it, and the float toys with the water. I protest that you rarely if ever see in these days so charming a portrait group composition as this designed by the Father of English Painting, who virtually had no forebears, and who turned from one branch of art to another with something of the ease of myriad-minded Leonardo. I suspect he studied the grace of Van Dyck’s compositions.
Some of the early Victorian members of the New English Art Club would find it disadvantageous to pit themselves against the technical accomplishment of his tight, highly-finished “Lady’s Last Stake.” The subject is banal, and half-a-dozen Dutchmen could have painted this interior with more quality of surface and closer observance of light, but it is “done,” and the paint has not faded and cracked as have so many works painted two hundred years later.