Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a
great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These
remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain
vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of
wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant
pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and
significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and
judicious imagination."
From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet
to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned
above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example,
Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is
now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its
home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date
painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the
novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the
picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good
many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's
residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.
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