MARY STUART.
(H.M. the King.)
As this present work is neither a history of miniature painting nor a dictionary of artists, I need not attempt to enumerate the numerous inferior miniature painters to whom reference is made in the above extract; but I may say a few words about some men who belong to this period, and whose names and works are often met with by the collector. Earliest amongst these was William Wood, a Suffolk man, born 1760. His work is distinguished at any rate by harmony of colour and correct drawing. He was President of the short-lived Society of Associated Artists and exhibited at the Academy for twenty years (from 1788 to the year of his death), contributing over a hundred portraits. I should place Thomas Hargreaves, born at Liverpool, in 1775, in much the same category as Wood. His father was a woollen draper, who articled his son as an assistant to Sir Thomas Lawrence. Hargreaves's work bears the impress of that master's style. He painted W. E. Gladstone and his sister as children.
Then Henry Edridge, who was born in 1769, and lived to see George IV. on the throne, should not be overlooked. His early works are on ivory, but he is best known by his spirited and refined drawings on paper, the figures in which are slightly touched in, whilst the heads are carefully finished; good examples of them may be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He became an Associate of the Academy, and his advancement in life is said to have been due to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who allowed him to copy his paintings in miniature; but the drawings by Edridge to which I have just made reference do not show the influence of Sir Joshua. He died in 1821, from grief at the loss of a favourite daughter, aged seventeen, and an only son.
Between the years 1786 and 1821 there were no less than 260 examples of Edridge's work shown on the walls of the Academy.
John Downman was a contemporary of the foregoing and also a fellow-associate of the Academy; but his portraits, though delicate and minute, hardly come under the definition of miniatures. John Linnell, the landscape artist, was a miniature painter at the outset of his career, as was Sir Henry Raeburn.
Mrs. Mee, born Anne Foldsome, is a lady miniaturist who is fully represented in the Royal Collection at Windsor, having been patronised by George IV. when Prince of Wales. I do not like her work, but all credit must be given to her for her exertions to support a widowed mother and eight brothers and sisters.
S. COOPER.
