pon his masterpiece: it is Rembrandt
combined with Ruggieri.

And what movement, what action are in this agitated and convulsive
painting! The clouds and the garments whirl, the gestures are rapid, the
attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every
lip, and a great mute cry seems to rise throughout this entire temple
and throughout this entire lyrical composition.

This cry of a picture, so new for the Eighteenth Century, is Passion.
Fragonard introduces it into his time in this picture so full of tragic
tenderness where we might fancy the entombment of Iphigenia. The
phantasmagoria raises his art to the level of the emotion of the
_Alceste_ of Euripides; it reveals a future for French painting: pathos.

_L'Art du Dix-Huitieme Siecle_ (3d ed., Paris, 1882).

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Callirhoe_ by Pierre-Charles Roy, was written in 1712.--E.S.

THE MARKET-CART

(_GAINSBOROUGH_)

RICHARD AND SAMUEL REDGRAVE

It is said that Sir Joshua at an Academy dinner gave "the health of Mr.
Gainsborough, the greatest landscape painter of the day," to which
Wilson, in his blunt, grumbling way, retorted, "Ay, and the greatest
portrait painter, too." In Gainsborough's own time, the world of Art
patrons seem to have employed his talents as a portrait painter, but to
have disregarded his landscape art. Beechey said that "in Gainsborough's
house in Pall Mall the landscapes stood ranged in long lines from his
hall to his painting-room, and that those who came to sit to him for his
portraits, on which he was chiefly occupied, rarely deigned to honour
them with a look as they passed them." After his death, however, and the
eulogium Reynolds had pronounced on his landscapes and rustic children,
these came to be considered his finest works, and it is usual now to
speak of him as a landscape rather than as a portrait painter. But it is
more than doubtful whether Wilson did not judge more truly of his talent
than Sir Joshua; and without wishing to place him above Reynolds in that
painter's peculiar branch, it is certain that Gainsborough, in his
finest portraits, formed a style equally original, and produced works
that are every way worthy to take rank with those of the great
President. They contrast with the latter in being more silvery and pure,
and in the absence of that impasto and richness in which Reynolds
indulged, but his figures are surrounded by air and light, and his
portraits generally are easy an