Miss Jane Porter, Sir Robert’s sister, wrote for Dr. Dibdin a very interesting narrative of this extraordinary work.
“It was two hundred and odd feet long,” says Miss Porter; “the proportioned height I have now forgotten. But I remember, when I first saw the vast expense of vacant canvas stretched along, or rather in a semicircle, against the wall of the great room in the Lyceum, where he painted it, I was terrified at the daring of his undertaking. I could not conceive that he could cover that immense space with the subject he intended, under a year’s time at least, but—and it is indeed marvellous!—he did it in SIX WEEKS! But he worked on it every day (except Sundays) during those weeks, from sunrise until dark. It was finished during the time the committees of the Royal Academy were sitting at Somerset House, respecting the hanging of the pictures there for that year’s exhibition; therefore it must have been towards the latter end of April. No artist had seen the painting of Seringapatam during its progress; but when it was completed, my brother invited his revered old friend, Mr. West, (the then President of the Royal Academy,) to come and look at the picture, and give him his opinion of it, ere it should be opened to the public view. * * * Mr. West went over from the Lyceum, on the morning on which he had called to see my brother and his finished painting, to Somerset House, where the Committee had been awaiting his presence above an hour. ‘What has detained our President so long?’ inquired Sir Thomas Lawrence of him, on his entrance. ‘A wonder!’ returned he, ‘a wonder of the world!—I never saw anything like it!—a picture of two hundred feet dimensions, painted by that boy Kerr Porter, in six weeks! and as admirably done as it could have been by the best historical painter amongst us in as many months!’ You, my dear Sir, need no description of this picture; you saw it; and at the time of its exhibition you also must have heard of, and probably also saw, some of the affecting effects the truth of its pictorial war-tale had on many of the female spectators.
“After its exhibition closed, it was deposited, packed upon a roller, in a friend’s warehouse. Thence, some circumstances caused it to be removed successively to other places of supposed similar security, but in one of which I believe it finally perished by the accidental burning down of the premises. The original sketches of this ‘noble and stupendous effort of art,’ as you so truly call it, are now in my own possession; and you may believe I value them as the apple of my eye. I must not forget to mention, with regard to Seringapatam, that had our British government, at the time of my brother’s ardour for these paintings, possessed a building large enough for the purpose, he would have presented his country with that picture, and three others on British historical subjects, to form a perpetual exhibition for the benefit of its military and naval hospitals. Mr. Pitt lamented to him the impossibility then, of commanding such a building; so the project fell to the ground. The last of these intended four pictures was that of ‘The Battle of Agincourt,’ which my brother afterwards presented to the city of London, where it was hung up in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House. Some alterations in the room occasioned its being taken down for a temporary purpose; but it never saw the light again until last year, when (after above a dozen years oblivion in—nobody knew where), it was accidentally found in one of the vaulted chambers under Guildhall. When disentombed, it was hastily spread out against one of the walls of the great hall itself, and announced, in the newspapers, as a picture of unknown antiquity, of some also unknown but evidently distinguished artist; and most probably it had been deposited in those vaults for security, at the great fire of London, and had remained there, unsuspected, ever since! The hall was thronged, day after day, to see it; and Sir Martin Shee told me, that so great was the mysterious valuation the discovery had put on it, that he heard he had been quoted as having passed his opinion on it, that ‘it was a picture worth £15,000!’ Without proper safeguards behind the canvas, a long exposure on the wall would have injured the picture; and it was taken down again before I came to London, after having heard of the discovery of the ‘Agincourt’—for I immediately recognised what, and whose, the picture was—and hastened to inform the present gentlemen of the city corporation accordingly.”
Such is the affectionate narrative from the pen of the youthful painter’s sister.
ZOFFANI AND GEORGE III.
Zoffani was employed by George III. to paint a scene from Reynolds’s Speculation, in which Quick, Munden, and Miss Wallis were introduced. The King called at the artist’s to see the work in progress; and at last it was done, “all but the coat.” The picture, however, was not sent to the palace, and the King repeated his visit. Zoffani, with some embarrassment, said, “It is all done but the goat.” “Don’t tell me,” said the impatient monarch; “this is always the way. You said it was done all but the coat the last time I was here.” “I said the goat, and please your Majesty,” replied the artist. “Ay!” rejoined the King; “the goat or the coat, I care not which you call it; I say I will not have the picture,” and was about to leave the room, when Zoffani, in agony, repeated, “It is the goat that is not finished,” pointing to a picture of a goat that hung up in a frame, as an ornament to the scene at the theatre. The King laughed heartily at the blunder, and waited patiently till “the goat” was finished.
THE TRUE FORNARINA.
In the year 1644, Cosmo, the son of Ferdinand II. de Medici, undertook a journey, an account of which was written at the time by Philipe Pizzichi, his travelling chaplain. This work was published at Florence, in 1829. It contains some curious notices of persons and things, and, among others, what will interest every lover of the fine arts. Speaking of Verona, the diarist mentions the Curtoni Gallery of Paintings, in which “the picture most worthy of attention is the Lady of Raffaello, so carefully finished by himself, and so well preserved, that it surpasses every other.” The editor of these travels has satisfactorily shown that Raffaello’s lady here described is the true Fornarina; so that of the three likenesses of her said to be executed by this eminent artist, the genuine one is the Veronese, belonging to the Curtoni Gallery, then the property of a Lady Cavalini Brenzoni, who obtained it by inheritance.