[Illustration: PLATE VII.--SIMON FRASER, LORD LOVAT, 1666-1747
(In the National Portrait Gallery, London)
Here is the chief of the Fraser clan (patriot or traitor, which you like), a study in reds, browns, corpulency and craftiness, in the act of narrating some of his adventures, or perhaps detailing the various Highland clans on his fingers. Lord Lovat was executed for high treason. Hogarth journeyed to St. Albans to get “a fair view of his Lordship before he was locked up.”]
In no other painting of Hogarth’s that I have seen does he make this striking use of primaries and complementaries. He adopted a different technique for the robust and cheerful portrait of “Miss Lavinia Fenton” (who became Duchess of Bolton) as “Polly Peachum” in the “Beggar’s Opera,” and also for the lively representation of a scene from the opera which he saw at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1723. This vivacious development of the Conversation Piece genre hangs close to “Hogarth’s Sister,” and to the right is the group of his “Servants”--six heads rather less than life size, one of the most quietly beautiful renderings of character, seen with the eyes of affection, with which master has ever immortalised his dependents. After this, the “Calais Gate,” or “The Roast Beef of Old England,” a record of his collision with the Calais authorities, seems grotesque and gratuitously ugly in spite of its Hogarthian _brio_ and beautiful colour. The carrion crow on the top of the gate is an example of his ingenuity in extricating himself from a difficulty. The picture, when finished, fell down, and a nail ran through the cross above the gate. Failing to conceal the rent, Hogarth substituted for the cross a crow, and was quite pleased. In the engraving the cross appears in its rightful place. Carrion crow or cross! It was all one to this capable, confident, eighteenth-century Britisher, who would as lief paint a murderess in the condemned cell as a miss in yellow and laces, a Teniers-like “Distressed Poet” in a garret as a Velazquez-like “Scene from The Indian Emperor,” a “Right Reverend Father in God” as the portrait of Quin the actor, Garrick’s portly rival, in full-bottomed grey wig, lace ruffle, and brown coat richly frogged with gold. There can be no mistake as to the identity. The portrait is inscribed “Mr. Quin.” Note the eloquent eye and the voluble mouth of this hearty eighteenth-century mummer.