ortant
masters of the English school, especially in landscape painting and the
representation of rustic figures. His portraits were not as good in color
as those of Sir Joshua Reynolds; they have a bluish-gray hue in the flesh
tints; but they are always graceful and charming. His landscapes are not
like those of any other master. They are not exact in the detail of leaves
and flowers--a botanist could find many faults in them--but they are like
nature in spirit: they seem to have the air blowing through them, they are
fresh and dewy when it is morning in them, and quiet and peaceful when
evening comes under his brush. In many of his pictures he put a cart and a
white animal.

His rustic figures have the true country life in them: they seem to have
fed upon the air, and warmed themselves in the sun until they are plump
and rosy as country lads and lasses should be. His best _genre_ pictures
are the "Cottage Girl," the "Woodman and Dog in a Storm," the "Cottage
Door," and the "Shepherd Boy in a Shower." He painted a picture of a "Girl
and Pigs," for which Sir Joshua Reynolds paid him one hundred guineas.

In character Gainsborough was very attractive, though somewhat
contradictory in his moods. He was generous and genial, lovable and
affectionate; he was also contradictory and impulsive, not to say
capricious. His wife and he had little quarrels which they settled in this
wise: When Gainsborough had spoken to her unkindly, he would quickly
repent, and write a note to say so, and address it to his wife's spaniel,
called "Tristram," and sign it with the name of his pet dog, "Fox." Then
Margaret Gainsborough would answer: "My own, dear Fox, you are always
loving and good, and I am a naughty little female ever to worry you as I
too often do, so we will kiss, and say no more about it; your own
affectionate Tris." Like Reynolds, Gainsborough had many warm friends, and
when he died Sir Joshua himself watched by his bedside, and bent to catch
his last word, which was the name of Vandyck.

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY (1737-1815) was born in Boston, Mass., U. S., to
which place his parents are said to have immigrated from Limerick,
Ireland. The father was descended from the Copleys of Yorkshire, England,
and the mother from the Singletons of County Clare, both families of note.
When young Copley was eleven years old his mother was married to Peter
Pelham, a widower with three sons--Peter, Charles, and William--and who
subsequently beca