IV

people visited the Grafton Gallery this summer in th
Ideal. Their immediate emotion must have beer
pontment. In the first rom there were many picture
much to recommend them, but few who could boasti
To the fairest
ne might say, with the po

“I.. ', I thark
Bause n

2 with a

f

1

ner thy lovelings,

s more lovely still."

ries, like Mr. Prang and his co
sts interested in technique rather th.
aty in the portraits, could always t
nd read over and over that Machiave ́i
"possibly more celebrated for, &c." : b;
ly at first wander disillusioned from canva
to room, uncertain whether to find a damagi
f conscius Flora of Palma Vecchio, or in
dious court-ladies of Lely, or in the lovely
of Hoppner and Romney; in the imposi

a of Sir Frederick Leighton, or the green hd of
Lianca of Mr. Watts, or the Ellen Terry of M-

some bat 'ra-modern Lady Colin Campbell

shrines - many, and to spare.

the pubne have, at the Grafton, for once found the

ient. The majority is united in the conviction that the

of beauty or painted by our English masters, Gainsborough, per, and Romney: in particular, at the last named.

Lawr...

:

enlisted a well-known amateur; a lady who is herself an acknowledged Fair Woman; and an eminent portrait-painter and asked each to specify the three best portraits, everything considered, the type, the technique, all in all. My friend the connoisseur hesitated, asked some questions, hesitated again, again qualified with several "ifs" and "considerings and "in its own ways," but finally declared for (a) Romney's Countess of Mansfield. (b) Hoppner's Mrs. Michael Angelo Taylor as Miranda. (c) Lely's Countess of Grammont.

The Fair Woman's choice was, of course, doubly interesting. I hoped it might include one portrait of a living woman at least and was even mean enough to try to bias her. To be sure, I thought she bore a resemblance to one of the portraits in the Centre Room, but may have been mistaken. She was long in deliberating, and begged that each of the three might be named with a fellow of equal, or nearly equal, charm; but this was an evasion of the difficult quandary towards which she had been inveigled, and could not be permitted. Her final personal choice was for (a) Zurbaran's Spanish Lady; (b) Titian's Catarina Cornaro ; (c) Lely's Countess of Grammont.

Now came the turn of the portrait-painter, and here, surely, the best testimony lay. But he began with Franz Hals' Maria Voogt Claasdr and Holbein's Margaret Tudor and Jan Vermeer's delightful Girl Playing the Guitar, and before he got further I interrupted him, with the reminder that what was wanted was the pictorial type which most appealed to him as a man rather than as a craftsman, though artistic beauty and worth were to be potent factors in his judgment. After a long argument about the authenticity of each of these fine paintings, we agreed to believe in the genuineness of the Holbein, though not in the sitter's being that sister of Henry VIII., who, as spouse of James IV. of Scotland-who lost wife, kingdom, and life at Flodden eleven years after his marriage was grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots; and to attribute the Franz Hals and the Jan Vermeer to-well, I won't say whom ! At this juncture an eminent critic positively assured us that the Holbein was by one of the several brilliant French painters who worked in the manner of the great German master, that the Hals was really by Jan Anthonisz van Ravensteyn, and that not Jan Vermeer of Delft, but a somebody else of another place (both names, alas, unknown to us) painted the charming

B

guitar-player. We stood, trying to recover from our bewilderment, when we were joined for a moment by another equally eminent critic, who

came up with a blithe air and conjectured we were admiring that fine early Rembrandt which the catalogue gave as a Franz Hals. The next moment he had descried a fellow-enthusiast in the exciting game of hap