MILLICENT AMBER.
His wife.
After a four years' sojourn in Italy Humphrey returned to London and essayed oil-painting, exhibiting whole-lengths in the Academy, but without much success. Miniature painting was his forte, especially also the copying of other men's work in small, and at Knole may be seen many works of this nature.
George Engleheart.
Some ten or twelve years later than the three eminent miniature painters we have been discussing was born George Engleheart, whose best work may often be placed almost on a level with theirs, but not always. He frequently exaggerates the eyes in his ladies' portraits, and his colour is often not agreeable, the flesh tints in his men's pictures being especially sallow. Engleheart, who lived at Kew, was of Silesian origin; he was a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and when only thirty-eight was made miniature painter to King George III., with whom he was a favourite. His fee book discloses that he must have painted nearly 5,000 miniatures, as he painted assiduously between 1775 and 1813, in some years finishing more than 200 per annum. He contributed to the Academy for nearly forty years.
For fidelity of likeness and sound workmanship I should incline to give preference to the male portraits of Engleheart, of which the example shown on p. 233 is a fair specimen.
Five thousand miniatures by one artist alone, of the fair women and brave men of his day, and how many of them are to be seen in our national collections?
At Hertford House, a solitary one, an unknown lady in a white head-dress; in the National Portrait Gallery, not one; at Kensington, three or four, and those not of superlative quality by any means, the excessive size of the head compared with the figure being a marked defect in two of them.
Three Miniatures of the Cobden Family.
Mrs. Cobden Unwin enables me to reproduce in this volume three miniatures of the Cobden family. The father of Richard Cobden, the statesman, was William Cobden, of Dunford, Heyshott, Midhurst, Sussex. He was born at Dunford on September 30, 1775, and died at Droxford, Bishop's Waltham, Hants, on June 15, 1833. The miniature of him here reproduced is by W. Dudman. Dudman was a contributor to the Royal Academy of 1797, and it is possible that this miniature was his sole contribution, since it bears an inscription on the back in Latin to the effect that it was "out of the Royal Academy." Now, inasmuch as he exhibited but once, and that occasion was the same year as the date of the inscription I have just quoted, it seems to demonstrate that this was the identical miniature shown that year, although the name is not given in the catalogue.