Page II. Mrs. Siddons 14 In the National Gallery
III. Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. John Julius Angerstein 24 In the Louvre
IV. Miss Georgina Lennox, afterwards Countess Bathurst 34 In the collection of Earl Bathurst
V. Miss Maria Siddons 40 In the Wallace Collection
VI. Portrait of a Lady 50 In the Wallace Collection
VII. Portrait of Countess Blessington 60 In the Wallace Collection
VIII. King George IV. 70 In the Wallace Collection
The prodigy is no unfamiliar figure in our midst to-day--indeed the world’s wonder children tend ever to increase in numbers and attainments. For the most part they belong to the realm of music; poets and artists must be made as well as born. We are but mildly excited when the papers announce the arrival in town of a child who can play the piano like Rubinstein or the violin like Paganini; we know that though the statement be a gross and misleading exaggeration, we shall at least hear work that is little short of marvellous from hands that might well have known no heavier burden than toys. We know, too, that these precocious children tend to make their début and disappear, making way for others. If they are to develop their promise, a long spell of study is inevitable, and for the most part parents and guardians are more intent upon present profit than future prestige.
The precocious lad whose talent makes him a painter is rare. Natural aptitude for drawing and natural sense of colour are not uncommon, but the possessor of these gifts may remain quite undistinguished. He generally succeeds in doing so in these days when the old traditions of art are despised by the _cognoscenti_, and the genuine faculty of interpretation is not understood or appreciated by the rank and file of those who pay their annual tribute of one shilling to the authorities of Burlington House, and are not always ashamed to frame the colour plates that illustrated papers inflict upon their long-suffering subscribers. Life is harder for the young painter of genius than his contemporary musician of like age. It was not always so, and turning back to the history of England’s accepted artists, the name of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., stands out as one of the most brilliant examples in the history of art, of untutored skill that came near to amounting to positive genius.