School. His fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm upholder of the tradition of Reynolds, so far as in him lay. The old King had always disliked Reynolds, and Hoppner was not well enough advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than this, he openly accepted the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and by so doing opened the door for the admission of Lawrence as royal painter much sooner than was at all necessary. The story of their rivalry is thus—in substance—sketched by Allan Cunningham, their contemporary:—The light of the Prince of Wales's countenance was of itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to Hoppner's easel. Suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in 1759), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of quality—for so are they named in the catalogues—a score of ladies of lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. But by this time another star had arisen, destined to outshine that of Hoppner; though some at that period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor that would but flash and disappear—we allude to Lawrence. Urged upon the Academy by the King and Queen, and handed up to public notice by royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil, became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the Prince's pleasure to befriend. The factions of Reynolds and Romney seemed revived in those of Hoppner and Lawrence. If Hoppner resided in Charles Street, at the gates of Carlton House, and wrote himself "portrait painter to the Prince of Wales," Lawrence likewise had his residence in the Court end of the town, and proudly styled himself—and that when only twenty-three years old—"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty." In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of age—Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been kind—some have said prodigal—to both; they were men of fine address, and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery, the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, Lawrence was soon without a rival.
The preference of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported. It is well said by Williams, in his Life of Lawrence, that "the more sober and homely ideas of the King were not likely to be a passport for any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence Mr. Hoppner for a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of the country."
This rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation—but only for a time. Lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept silence longest; the warm nature of Hoppner broke out at last. "The ladies of Lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." For his own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of style. This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies' feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the Quaker like sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on moral as well as on professional decorum." After this, Lawrence had plenty of the fairest sitters.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
I
THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
In the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for five centuries—from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to the end of the eighteenth—in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Spain, and lastly in France and England. In the nineteenth the story is confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth consideration in any of the others. Only in France and England, where it had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its reach.