PLATE III.—MRS. MARK CURRIE.
(From the picture in the National Gallery)
A typical and charming Romney. Miss Elizabeth Close married Mr. Mark Currie on January 18, 1789, and sat to Romney for the first time on the 7th of May in the same year. The painter received sixty guineas for this portrait.
PLATE III.—MRS. MARK CURRIE.
The sun is shining cheerfully in Cavendish Square, and Romney's troubles have been long quieted, forgotten in the pleasure his work gives us. No! I do not feel any sadness in recalling his life. Death pays all debts.
No. 32 looks very spick and span in the bright sunshine, and as I gaze at it I perceive above the tall ground-floor windows two heads of cherubs in stone, just like Sir Joshua's Heads of Angels in the National Gallery. Is it intentional, I wonder? Did the architect of this new house wish subtly to suggest that he, like Lord Thurlow, belonged to the Sir Joshua faction?
Maybe. I don't know, but I shall never pass the house without thinking so. Poor Romney! He hated irony and wit—and irony in stone is more enduring than irony in words or paint.