enthusiastic industry; and was so exact, that he gave the appearance of reality to the skin and hair of his animals. He should have been Painter in Ordinary to the " Wild Boar of Ardennes." Stanza 10. line 8. There gorgeous Rubens' emblemed Triumphs rise ; The Triumphs of Marie de' Medicis, in the Louvre. This celebrated series of allegories, twenty-one in number, was originally painted at the instigation of the Baron de Vicq, then ambassador from the Archduke Albert and Isabella to the court of France, for Marie de' Medicis. They were placed, on their completion, in the palace of the Luxembourg, whence they have only very recently been removed to the Louvre. Mr. Smith, in his admirable Catalogue Raisonnée of the works of the Dutch, Flemish, and French painters, occupies an entire volume with the productions of Rubens, nearly fourteen hundred of which he enumerates: "This universal painter (says Mr. Smith), from whose prolific pencil proceeded, with a spontaneous facility, an inexhaustible variety and abundance in every class of the art-history, poetry, and familiar life; portraiture, animals, landscape, fruit, and flowers; evinced in each as much excellence as if he had made that particular branch the exclusive object of his study." The only essential quality in which he appeared to be deficient, was refinement. There is a degree of coarseness in many of his pictures, from which not all the power and splendour of their execution, can redeem them. Stanza 10. line 9. And Vandyck's Charles uplifts his mild, reproachful eyes. The portrait of Charles I. standing by his Horse in the Louvre, engraved in so masterly a style by Strange, is unquestionably the finest specimen of Vandyck's art in this branch of painting. For a mere portrait, it is wholly impossible for any picture to be carried further with advantage. As a portrait painter, Vandyck has no equal. HENRY HOWARD, R. A. In the regions of imaginative painting, Mr. Howard has no rival. He seems, indeed, to breathe a purer and more ethereal atmosphere than that which clogs the aspirations of ordinary mortals in this " gross material world;" to have his "mansion" where those immortal shapes In regions mild of calm and serene air, The impersonations of his mind (stored as it is with the most popular fictions of poetical mythology) have a grace and a spirituality about them, which indicate, at a glance, the divinity whence they spring; that they are beings having no sympathy or connexion with the passions and prejudices of ordinary humanity : — Gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play in the plighted clouds. We never enter his Studio, from the crowded street, peopled as it is with the loveliest creations of his fancy, without feeling that all Paradise, Can by the single opening of a door, Let itself in upon us. |