'Yes, sire,' persisted Verrio, 'but that was soon paid away.'
'At that rate, you would spend more than I do to maintain my family.'
'True, sire,' answered the painter; 'but does your Majesty keep an open table as I do?'
Verrio designed the large equestrian portrait of the king for the hall of Chelsea College, but it was finished by Cooke, and presented by Lord Ranelagh. On the accession of James II. he was again employed at Windsor in Wolsey's tomb-house, which it was intended should be used as a Roman Catholic chapel. He painted the king and several of his courtiers in the hospital of Christchurch, London, and he painted also at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
But soon there was an end of his friends and patrons, the Stuarts. James had fled; William of Orange was on the throne; a revolution had happened little favourable to Signor Verrio's religion or political principles. There is a commendable staunchness in his adherence to the ruined cause: in his abandoning his post of master-gardener, and his refusal to work for the man he regarded as a usurper; though there is something ludicrous in the notion of punishing King William by depriving him of Verrio's art. He did not object, however, to work for the nobility. For some years he was employed by Lord Exeter at Burleigh, and afterwards at Chatsworth. He was true to his old execrable style. He introduced his own portrait in a picture-history of Mars and Venus, and in the chapel at Chatsworth he produced a dreadful altar-piece representing the incredulity of St. Thomas. He painted also at Lowther Hall. For his paintings at Burleigh alone he was paid more money than Raphael or Michael Angelo received for all their works. Verrio was engaged on them for about twelve years, handsomely maintained the while, with an equipage at his disposal, and a salary of £1500 a year. Subsequently, on the persuasion of Lord Exeter, Verrio was induced to lend his aid to royalty once more, and he condescended to decorate the grand staircase at Hampton Court for King William. Walpole suggests that he accomplished this work as badly as he could, 'as if he had spoiled it out of principle.' But this is not credible. The painting was in the artist's usual manner, and neither better nor worse—and his best was bad enough, in all conscience. His usual faults of gaudy colour, bad drawing, and senseless composition were of course to be found; but then, these were equally apparent in all his other works. Later in life his sight began to fail him, and he received from Queen Anne a pension of £200 a year for his life. To the last royal favour was extended to him, and he was selected to superintend the decorations of Blenheim. But death intervened. The over-rated, overpaid, and most meretricious painter died at Hampton Court in 1707. There is evident error in Dominici's statement that the old man met his death from drowning on a visit to Languedoc. Walpole, summing up his merits and demerits, says, rather curiously, 'He was an excellent painter for the sort of subjects on which he was employed, without much invention and with less taste!'
The father of LOUIS LAGUERRE was by birth a Catalan, and held the appointment of Keeper of the Royal Menagerie at Versailles. To his son, born at Paris in 1663, Louis XIV. stood godfather, bestowing on the child his distinguished Christian name. The young Laguerre received his education at a Jesuit College, with the view of entering the priesthood, but a confirmed impediment in his speech demonstrated his unfitness for such a calling. He began to evince considerable art-ability, and, on the recommendation of the fathers of the college, he eventually embraced the profession of painting. He then entered the Royal Academy of France, and studied for a short time under Charles Le Brun. In 1683 he came to England with one Picard, a painter of architecture. At this time Verrio was in the acme of his prosperity. He was producing allegorical ceilings and staircases by wholesale. He had a troop of workmen under him, obedient to his instructions, dabbing in superficial yards of pink flesh, and furlongs of blue clouds. Verrio was happy to secure forthwith so efficient an assistant as Laguerre, and soon found him plenty to do. In nearly every work of Verrio's after this date, it is probable that Laguerre had a hand. He seems to have been an amiable, kindly, simple-minded man, without much self-assertion or any strong opinions of his own. He was quite content to do as Verrio bid him, even imitating him and following him through his figurative mysteries, and floundering with him in the mire of graceless drawing and gaudy colour and ridiculous fable. He had at least as much talent as his master—probably even more. But he never sought to outshine or displace him.
'A modest, unintriguing man,' as Vertue calls him, he was quite satisfied with being second in command, no matter how ignorant and inefficient might be his captain.
John Tijon, his father-in-law, a founder of iron balustrades, said of him, 'God has made him a painter, and there left him.'
He worked under Verrio in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and at Burleigh; he executed staircases at old Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, at Buckingham House, and at Petworth; assisted in the paintings at Marlborough House, St. James's Park; decorated the saloon at Blenheim; and in many of the apartments at Burleigh on the Hill 'the walls are covered with his Cæsars.'
William of Orange gave the painter lodgings at Hampton Court, where it seems he painted the Labours of Hercules in chiaro-oscuro, and repaired Andrea Mantegna's pictures of the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar.