ly beyond the reach of either
Hogarth or Gillray.

Joseph Grego says of our artist very justly: "Rowlandson's sense of
feminine loveliness, of irresistible graces of face expression and
attitude, was unequalled in its way; several of his female portraits
have been mistaken for sketches by Gainsborough or Morland, and as such,
it is possible, since the caricaturist is so little known in this
branch, that many continue to pass current."[15] An engraving which came
into my own hands, some years ago, of three young girls by Rowlandson,
might be an exact illustration of these words, and as the above writer
says, be a portrait group by Gainsborough or Hoppner--so refined and yet
so masterly was the treatment. I alluded to this print with others, when
speaking of Rowlandson as what might be here called a "feminist" in my
study of Bartolozzi and his contemporaries, and found illustration there
of this peculiarly charming type of his women in "Luxury" (typified, for
this artist, by breakfast in bed), "House Breakers," "The Inn Yard on
Fire" (where the ladies are making a very impromptu exit), in the lovely
model of "The Artist Disturbed," and (for women of fashion) in the
series (twelve prints in all) of the "Comforts of Bath."

I mention there, too, that delightful print of "Lady Hamilton at Home,"
where poor Sir William (whom the caricaturists never neglected) is
suffering from an acute attack of gout, while "the lovely Emma, in very
classic garb, is watering a flower-pot, and Miss Cornelia Knight, also
dressed after the antique, touches the strings of a lyre, and warbles
poems of her own composition." In treating, however, of Rowlandson's
women, other prints, such as "Tastes Differ," "Opera Boxes," "Harmony,"
"A Nap in Town," and "In the Country," "Interruption, or Inconvenience
of a Lodging House" (published April 1789), and "Damp Sheets" (August
1791), have a strong claim on our notice. Nor must I entirely neglect
here Rowlandson's print called "Preparation for the Academy, or Old
Joseph Nollekens and his Venus" (1800). It is perhaps the Miss Coleman
here upon the model-stand who nearly caused a domestic breach between
old Nollekens and his jealous spouse--the group on which he is at work
being his "Venus Chiding Cupid," which was modelled for Lord Yarborough.
_The Life of the Sculptor Nollekens_, by his pupil John Thomas Smith,
contains some amusing contemporary gossip. He describes the sculptor
much as we see him in this