Generations to come will not take their impressions of this great man's appearance from these unsatisfactory canvases, or from the cuts in old-fashioned illustrated papers, in which all public men are drawn in a purely conventional tailor's advertisement fashion, with perfect-fitting coats, trousers without a crease, faces of wax, and figures of the fashionable fop of the period. The camera killed all this. But the photographer, although he cannot alter the cut of the clothes, can alter, and does alter, everything else. He touches up the face beyond recognition, and the pose is the pose the sitter takes before the camera, and probably quite different from his usual attitude. So it will be the caricatures, or, to be correct, the character sketches, that will leave the best impressions of Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary individuality.
MR. GLADSTONE—CONVENTIONAL PORTRAIT.
I heard Mr. Gladstone express his own views on portraiture one evening at a small dinner-party. My host of that evening had hit on the happy idea of having portraits of the celebrities of the age painted for him by a rising young artist. It was curious to note Mr. Gladstone as he examined these portraits. His manner was a strange comment on the political changes which had taken place, for as he came to the portraits of those of his old supporters who no longer fought under his colours, he would pass them by as though he had not seen them, or if his attention were called to any of them he would seem not to recognise the likeness, and pass on till his eye lighted on some political ally still numbered among the faithful, when he would at once pronounce the portrait excellent, and dwell upon its merits with apparent delight. A portrait of Mr. Labouchere, however, he generally failed to recognise. The portrait represented the Member for Northampton in a contemplative mood, certainly not characteristic of his habitual demeanour in the House.
"I have found," said he, "the artist I have been looking for for years. I have found an artist who can paint my portrait in four hours and a half; he has painted three in thirteen hours; that is Millais."
I was much surprised by this curious criticism on portrait painting. Surely, if the portrait of the great orator is to be painted in four hours and a half, the same limitation, if carried out, would confine the greatest speech ever made to a period of four-and-a-half seconds!
Someone pointedly asked Mr. Gladstone whether he liked Millais' portraits.
"Well," he replied, evading any brutal directness of reply, "I have been very much interested with his energy; he is the hardest-working man I ever saw."