[442] Enthusiasm for art and carelessness of money went to the forming of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s unrivalled collection. Cunningham says: “Of every eminent artist he had such specimens as no other person possessed; not huddled into heaps, or scattered like the leaves of the Sibyl, but arranged in fine large portfolios properly labelled and enshrined.”
[443] Smith could not have seen the whole of Sir Peter Lely’s collection of prints and drawings. These were sold by auction in 1687, the sale lasting more than a month.—Thomas Hudson (1701-79) painted the portraits of members of the Dilettanti Society, and, being wealthy, collected many fine prints and drawings.—Archibald Campbell, third Duke, formed a very fine library.
[444] This name is given as Serre in the three old editions of the Rainy Day—a very misleading erratum. William Score was born in Devonshire about 1778. He became a pupil of Joshua Reynolds, and regularly exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy.
[445] “Sir Joshua Reynolds commenced two of his finest historical pictures without settling in what way the compositions were to be completed, or, indeed, without even thinking of their subjects. The head of Count Ugolino at Knowle, and the Infant Christ in Macklin’s picture, were painted on the canvases long before the artist considered subjects or combinations” (S.).—This historical painting, says Northcote, existed simply as a head of the Count until Burke and Goldsmith praised it, whereupon Sir Joshua had his canvas enlarged in order that he might add the other figures. When finished, the picture was bought by the Duke of Dorset for 400 guineas. It is not Reynolds at his best, and Charles Lamb, who saw it at the Reynolds exhibition held in 1813 in Pall Mall, criticised it rather severely.
[446] Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral at the defeat of the Armada, best known to history as Lord Howard of Effingham. The portrait Smith missed was painted by Frederigo Zucchero, whose (attributed) portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Leicester, Raleigh, and James I. are in the National Portrait Gallery. His Howard is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. The portraits of the Admirals were presented to Greenwich Hospital by George IV. (not William IV.) in 1823. William IV. added five naval pictures in 1835. As will be seen on a later page, Smith’s curiosity about the hanging of these pictures led him to visit Greenwich next day.
[447] Francis Legat, a Scotch engraver, came to London about 1780, and lived at 22 Charles Street, Westminster. Here he engraved “Mary Queen of Scots resigning her Crown” after Hamilton in 1786, and later Northcote’s painting. He died in 1809.
[448] Chantrey’s group, “The Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield Cathedral.
[449] This statue is now in the British Museum.
[450] The Chelsea porcelain manufacture was founded about 1745, and was at the height of its fame from 1750 to 1764 under Mr. Sprimont. The works finally closed in 1784. The Chelsea potters went forthwith to Derby, where they founded the Chelsea-Derby pottery. Remains of the old Chelsea furnaces, in which Dr. Johnson was allowed to test his compositions, are still to be seen in the cellars of the Prince of Wales Tavern, at the corner of Justice Walk and Lawrence Street, Chelsea.
[451] The case of Chelsea china in the British Museum contains similar figures of the Earl of Chatham, George III., a Thames waterman wearing Doggett’s Coat and Badge, etc.