Jan. 28, 1661–62: “The Paynter, though a very honest man, I found to be very silly as to matter of skill in shadows, for we were long in discourse, till I was almost angry to hear him talk so simply.”
2. John Hales. 1666.
March 17, 1666: “This day I began to sit, and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture. He promises it shall be as good as my wife’s, and I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.”
March 30, 1666: “To Hales’s, and there sat till almost quite darke upon working my gowne, which I hired to be drawn in: an Indian gown.”
April 11, 1666: “To Hales’s, where there was nothing to be found to be done more to my picture, but the musique, which now pleases me mightily, it being painted true.”
This picture was bought by Peter Cunningham, at the sale of the Pepys Cockerell collection in 1848, and it was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1866. The eyes look at the spectator, and the face is turned three-quarters to the left. The music is Pepys’s own song, “Beauty Retire.”
“There is a similar picture belonging to Mr. Hawes, of Kensington, which Mr. Scharf, the Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery, thinks is either a replica or a good old copy.”—Rev. Mynors Bright’s edition of the “Diary,” vol. iii. p. 423 (note).
Walpole mentions Hales in his “Anecdotes of Painting,” and says that he lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, and died there suddenly in 1679.
3. Sir Peter Lely. Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.