on, the less obtrusive, possibly more timid, attitude
of Hoppner in the presence of nature gives him a greater claim to our
sympathy to-day. He was apparently preoccupied above all in rendering
the individual characteristics of his sitter; and there are many
instances in his work where a painter can see that he has chosen to
retain certain qualities of resemblance, rather than risk their loss
by an exhibition of _bravura_ painting. Sir Thomas Lawrence is one,
on the contrary, before whose pictures it is felt that the principal
question has been to make it first of all a typical example of his
work.

[Illustration: LADY BLESSINGTON. FROM A PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS
LAWRENCE.

This portrait of the gifted and brilliant woman who, as Lady
Blessington, and the intimate friend of Count d'Orsay, alternately
shocked and ruled the literary London of Byron's time, is
representative of Lawrence's extreme mannerism; but, despite its
"keepsake" prettiness, has great charm. Besides her distinguished
beauty, Lady Blessington offered much, in her life and surroundings,
to inspire a painter. Born in Ireland in 1789, she was forced at
fourteen into marrying one Captain Farmer. She could not live with
him, and they separated after three months. Farmer was killed in 1817,
and the next year she married the Earl of Blessington. Then began that
brilliant social career by virtue of which her fame now most survives.
Her house became the resort of the most distinguished people of
the time; and she herself, by her remarkable grace, cleverness, and
vivacity, ever kept pace with the best of her company. She derived a
large estate from her husband at his death, in 1829; and besides,
for nearly twenty years she had ten thousand dollars a year from her
novels (for she was also an author); but she lived most profusely,
and had finally, in company with Count d'Orsay, to flee from her
creditors. She died in Paris, June 4, 1849.]

Lawrence, born at Bristol, May 4, 1769, was the son of the landlord of
the Black Bear Inn at Devizes; and the child was not yet in his teens
when some chalk drawings of his father's customers gave him a local
reputation. We are told that "at the age of ten he set up as a
portrait painter in crayons at Oxford; and soon after took a house at
Bath, the then fashionable watering-place, where he immediately met
with much employment and extraordinary success." When seventeen, his
success called him to London, where in 1791, though un