Another illustration of the difficulties of portrait painters I gave in the same lecture has since been so frequently repeated in the Press that I fear it will be stale to most of my readers--the story of the man who called upon the portrait painter and asked him to paint his father.
"Then how can I paint him?" asked the artist.
"Why, I've just seen your picture of Moses, and surely if you can paint the portrait of a man who died thousands of years ago, you can more easily paint my father, who has only been dead ten years!"
Seeing the sort of man with whom he had to deal, the young artist agreed to paint the defunct gentleman, and the picture in due time was sent home. It was carefully hung on the drawing-room wall, and the newly-blossomed art patron was called in to see it. He gazed at it for some time in silence, his eyes filled with tears, and then, slowly nodding his head, he said softly and reverently, "So that is my father! Ah, how he is changed!"
But out of this lecture comes another story--the story of "The Great Six Toes Trial." I must start at the beginning of its strange, eventful history, the same way as, in my lecture, I began with the origin of portraiture.
Now the late George Augustus Sala, in his leader in the _Daily Telegraph_ on this lecture, accused me of not giving the origin of portraiture. "Mr. Harry Furniss was bold enough to maintain that, although Greek art remained the model art of the world, portraiture had very little to do with it. Mr. Furniss should not tell this story to the prehistoric toad, for that reptile's presumably long memory might enable it to remind the graphic artist that thousands of years ago the art of portraiture was invented by a sentimental young Greek girl, the daughter of a potter of Corinth, Dibutades." In the same article he sneered at "a whimsical caricaturist lecturing his contemporaries," and in his references to me was about as offensive as he could be.
The second stage was my letter to the Editor of the _Daily Telegraph_. That paper not printing it, I sent it, with a note, to the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, who gave both letters a prominent position:
"SIR,--Can you find space for the publication of the following letter which I addressed to the _Daily Telegraph_ in answer to their leader in last Friday's issue, as the insignificant paragraph, 'Greek Portraits,' which alone the _Daily Telegraph_ inserted, in no way states the facts of the case?"