Timbs’s
Anecdote
Biography.
*
“In the same year (1761) that Reynolds exhibited the large equestrian portrait of Lord Ligonier, now in the National Gallery, he also exhibited the half-length of Sterne, seated, and leaning on his hand. This portrait was painted for the Earl of Ossary, and afterwards came into the possession of Lord Holland, on whose death in 1840, it was purchased for 500 guineas by the Marquis of Lansdowne. ‘This,’ says Mrs. Jameson, ‘is the most astonishing head for truth of character I ever beheld; I do not except Titian; the character, to be sure, is different: the subtle evanescent expression of satire round the lips, the shrewd significance in the eye, the earnest contemplative attitude,—all convey the strongest impression of the man, of his peculiar genius, and peculiar humour.’”
Memoir
of Sterne.
*
“Speaking of Sterne’s physiognomy, Lavater says, ‘In this face you discover the arch, satirical Sterne, the shrewd and exquisite observer, more limited in his object, but on that very account more profound,—you discover him, I say, in the eyes, in the space which separates them, in the nose and the mouth of this figure.’”
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
1608-1641
Aubrey’s Lives
of Eminent
Persons.
“His picture, which is like him, before his poems, says that he was but twenty-eight years old when he dyed. He was of middle stature and slight strength, brisque round eie, reddish fac’t, and red-nosed (ill liver), his head not very big, his hayre a kind of sand colour, his beard turn’d up naturally, so that he had a brisk and graceful looke. He died a batchelour.”
W. C. Hazlitt’s
Life of Sir
John Suckling.