A PAINTER OF THE DEAD.
Bacici, a Genoese painter, in the seventeenth century, had a very peculiar talent of producing exact likenesses of deceased persons he had never seen. He first drew a face at random; and afterwards, altering it in every feature, by the advice and under the inspection of those who had known the subject, he improved it into striking resemblance.
COPLEY’S PORTRAITS.
The fame of Copley as a portrait-painter is comparatively limited. I can speak (says Dr. Dibdin) but of four of his portraits from reminiscence; those of the late Earl Spencer, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Colchester, and the late Richard Heber, Esq.—the latter when a boy of eight years, in the dining-room at Hodnet Hall. These portraits, with the exception of the last, are all engraved. That of Earl Spencer, in his full robes as a Knight of the Garter, and in the prime of his manhood, now placed at the bottom of the great historical portrait gallery at Althorp, must have been a striking likeness; but, like almost all the portraits of the artist, it is too stiff and stately. The portrait of the young Heber has, I think, considerable merit on the score of art. There is a play of light and shadow, and the figure, with a fine flowing head of hair, mixes up well with its accessories. He is leaning on a cricket-bat, with a ball in one hand. The face is, to my eye, such as I could conceive the original to have been, when I first remember him a Bachelor of the Arts at Oxford, full, plump, and athletic. In short, as Dean Swift expresses it, “if you should look at him in his boyhood through the magnifying end of the glass, and in his manhood through the diminishing end, it would be impossible to spy any difference.” The contemplation of this portrait has at times produced mixed emotions of admiration, regard, and pity.
“BONAPARTE REVIEWING THE CONSULAR GUARD.”
In the year 1800, M. Masquerier had occasion to go to Paris on family matters. Like a sensible man, who made all his pursuits available to the purposes of his profession, he conceived the happy thought of obtaining permission to make a portrait of Bonaparte, (then First Consul,) and afterwards portraits of his generals the whole of which were concentrated in one grand picture, of the size of life, and exhibited in this country as “Bonaparte Reviewing the Consular Guard.” It appears that Masquerier, through the interest of a friend acquainted with Josephine, got permission to be present at the Tuilleries, where he saw Bonaparte in the grey great-coat, which has since been so well-known throughout Europe. Masquerier remarked that Bonaparte’s appearance in this costume was so different from all portraits which he had seen, that he resolved to fix him in his sketch-book in this identical surtout, the French thinking that the portrait of a great man must necessarily be tricked out in finery. He sketched him just as he saw him, and carried him to England; placing him upon a grey horse, his usual charger, and surrounding him with his staff. The picture told in all respects. The Prince Regent (afterwards George IV.) and Tallien, then in London on his return from Egypt, were among the twenty-five or thirty-thousand visitors who went to see it. Tallien left in the exhibition-room the following testimony to the likeness of the First Consul:—
“J’ai vu le portrait du General Buonaparte fait par M. Masquerier, et je l’ai trouvé tres resemblant.” Tallien, Londres, ce 24 Mars, 1801.”
There is a print of this picture, which is scarce. The original was afterwards sold, to be taken to America. Masquerier netted about 1000l. by this speculation, but the remuneration did not overpay the toil. Such was the reaction, from incessant application and anxiety, that the artist was confined to his room several weeks afterwards.