e as the face, is but little separated from
it--in fact, only by the dark hair; while all below the face and bosom
is a too heavy dark mass. Portrait-painters are very apt to fail
whenever they colour their back-grounds to the heads of a warm and light
sky-colour; the force of the complexion is very apt to be lost, and the
portrait is sure to lose its importance. The "General on Horseback," in
our National Gallery, (Ligonier,) a fine picture, is in no small degree
hurt by the absence of a little greyer tone in the part of the sky about
the head. By far the best portraits by Sir Joshua--and, fortunately,
they are the greater part--are those in real character. His very genius
was for unaffected simplicity; attitudinizing recipes could never have
been adopted by him with satisfaction to himself. Some of his slight,
more sketchy portraits, as yet unexperimented upon by his powerful,
frequently rather too powerful, colouring, his deep browns and yellows,
are unrivalled. Such is his Kitty Fisher, not long since exhibited in
the British Gallery, Pall-Mall. There the character is not overpowered
by the effect.

Gainsborough was the only painter of his day that could, with any
pretension, vie with Sir Joshua Reynolds in portrait. In some respects
they had similar excellences. Both were alike, by natural taste, averse
to affectation, and both were colourists. As a colourist, Gainsborough,
as his pictures are now, may be even preferred to Reynolds. They seem to
have been painted off more at once, and have therefore a greater
freshness; his flesh tints are truly surprising, most true to life. He
probably painted with a more simple palette. The pains and labour which
Sir Joshua bestowed, and which were perhaps very surprising when his
pictures were fresh from the easel, have lost much of their virtue. The
great difference between these great cotemporaries lay in their power of
character. Gainsborough was as true as could be to nature, where the
character was not of the very highest order. Plain, downright common
sense he would hit off wonderfully, as in his portrait of Ralphe
Schomberg--a picture, we are sorry to find, removed from the National
Gallery. The world's every-day men were for his pencil. He did not so
much excel in women. The bent of Sir Joshua's mind was to elevate, to
dignify, to intellectualize. Enthusiasm, sentiment, purity, and all the
varied poetry of feminine beauty, received their kindred hues and most
exquisite