square-touch at its strongest and becomes
fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the
facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any
English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to
slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes
even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the
transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist,
are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use
of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon
the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more
convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination
through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his
old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained
in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple
background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against
which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief.
With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his
later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive
brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and
fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of
effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely
possess.

A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his
relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely
convincing way, and to me at least the {79} view of life expressed in
his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which
dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially
evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss
de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no
more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked
by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still
his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of
older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst
his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces,
seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest
and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord
Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of T