LAWRENCE’S PORTRAIT OF CURRAN.
One of Lawrence’s most remarkable male portraits is that of Curran: under mean and harsh features, a genius of the highest order lay concealed, like a sweet kernel in a rough husk; and so little of the true man did Lawrence perceive in his first sittings, that he almost laid down his palette in despair, in the belief that he could make nothing but a common or vulgar work. The parting hour came, and with it the great Irishman burst out in all his strength. He discoursed on art, on poetry, on Ireland; his eyes flashed, and his colour heightened; and his rough and swarthy visage seemed, in the sight of the astonished painter, to come fully within his own notions of manly beauty. “I never saw you till now,” said the artist, in his softest tone of voice; “you have sat to me in a mask; do give me a sitting of Curran, the orator.” Curran complied, and a fine portrait, with genius on its brow, was the consequence.
Allan Cunningham, whose Memoir of Lawrence we quote, states how he gradually raised his prices for portraits as he advanced to fame. In 1802, his charge for a three-quarter size was thirty guineas; for a half-length, sixty guineas; and for a whole-length, one hundred and twenty guineas. In 1806, the three-quarters rose to fifty guineas; and the whole length to two hundred. In 1808, he rose the smallest size to eighty guineas, and the largest to three hundred and twenty guineas; and in 1810, when the death of Hoppner swept all rivalry out of the way, he increased the price of the heads to one hundred, and the full-lengths to four hundred guineas. He knew—none better—that the opulent loved to possess what was rare, and beyond the means of poorer men to purchase; and the growing crowds of his sitters told him that his advance in price had not been ill received.
OPIE AND NORTHCOTE.
It was the lot of Northcote to live long in something like a state of opposition to Opie. They were both engaged in historical pictures, by the same adventurous alderman, (Boydell,) and acquitted themselves in a way which, with many, left themselves in a balance. In after life, when Opie had ceased to be in any one’s way, Northcote would recal, without any bitterness, their days of rivalry. “Opie,” said he to Hazlitt, “was a man of sense and observation: he paid me the compliment of saying, that we should have been the best of friends in the world if we had not been rivals. I think he had more feeling than I had; perhaps, because I had most vanity. We sometimes got into foolish altercations. I recollect, once in particular, at a banker’s in the City, we took up the whole of dinner-time with a ridiculous controversy about Milton and Shakspeare. I am sure neither of us had the least notion which was right; and when I was heartily ashamed of it, a foolish citizen added to my confusion by saying, ‘Lor! what I would give to hear two such men as you talk every day!’ On another occasion, when on his way to Devonport, Opie parted with him where the road branches off for Cornwall. He said to those who were on the coach with him, ‘That’s Opie, the painter.’ ‘Is it, indeed!’ they all cried, and upbraiding Northcote for not informing them sooner. Upon this, he contrived, by way of experiment, to try the influence of his own name; but his fame had not reached the enlightened ‘outsides;’ and the painter confessed he felt mortified.”—Cunningham.
ORIGIN OF KIT-KAT PICTURES.
In Shire-lane, Temple Bar, is said to have originated the famous Kit-Kat Club, which consisted of thirty-nine distinguished noblemen and gentlemen zealously attached to the protestant succession of the house of Hanover. The club is supposed to have been named from Christopher Kat, a pastry-cook, who kept the house where the members dined; and who excelled in making mutton-pies, which were always in the bill of fare, these pies being called kit-kats. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, was secretary to the club. “You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club,” says Pope to Spencer. Sir Richard Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanburgh, Manwaring, Stepney, and Walpole, belonged to it.