Nothing could
be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if
Vanhaken existed."[21]
Note:
[20] Another French writer, the Abbe le Blanc, gives a depressing account
of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one
might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original.
Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the
most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting
the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the
same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in
those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not
painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how
to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160).
[21] He died in 1749.]
_"La peinture a l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus
beau Que la peinture a l'eau."_ About _la peinture a l'eau_, M. Rouquet
says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour
School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in
the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however,
with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's
drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her
ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute.
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