The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-22 00:00:00

Portraits of the Late W, M, Thackeray.

(From the Times.)
There are three draughtsmen whose portraits in
chalk take rank apart, by virtue of their peculiarly
intellectual and refined quality, no less than their

perfection of drawing. These are Mr. G. H. Watts,
Mr. George Richmond, and Mr. Samuel Lawrence.
That of these three artists Mr. Richmond alone
should have obtained the honours of the Academy
is one of many indications how little the distribution

- ,
of those honours is guided by the true distinction of

the artist, as estimated by the finest tastes.

Each of these draughtsmen has his distinctive
merits. Mr. Richmond stands pre-eminent for the

delicacy, amenity, and refinement of his work. But
in aiming at these qualities he often misses the
strength of strongly-marked heads, and generally
satisfies us least in the portraits of men whose lead-
ing character is power.
Mr. Watts gives evidence of a rarer imaginative
quality. While working under the influence of the
most refined sensibility to beauty, he is as much at
home in expressing power, whether of imagination
(as in his head of Tennyson), of scientific insight (as
in his portrait of Herschel), of practical vigour
and adventurous energy (as in his likenesses of
Rawlinson and Layard), of command (as in his
Sir John Lawrence), or statesmanship (as in
his Gladstone and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe).
If Richmond is the man to draw our foremost
lawyers, divines, politicians, or social celebrities,
we should go to Watts for the greater lights of our
system—our poets, our statesmen, as distinguished
from our politicians—in a word, fur the worthies
whose words and works will stamp ant mould their
time for posterity.
Samuel Lawrence is less known to the public than
either of the contemporaries with whom w© are now
classing him, Even their fame is esoteric, rather
than exoteric; the property of certain sets and
circles rather than of the public. That of Richmond

is wider than that of Watts, but that of Lawrence

is more limited still. This is due partly to his re-
cent absence of some years in the United States,
partly to his voluntary seclusion in the study of the
methods of the old masters, particularly the
Venetians. But real lovers of art are aware of
powers in this painter, however unshowy and little
calculated to win popularity, which fully justify us
in assigning him a place by the side of men like
Watts and Richmond. In colour he has not yet
quite succeeded in what he aims at ; but as a
draughtsman, and working in black and white, he is
one of the largest and most dignified, as well as most
vigorous and truthful portrait designers that this
country has ever had. All good judges who know
his life-size chalk portraits will, we are satisfied,
indorse his opinion.
Mr. Lawrence drew the last portrait for which
Thackeray sat to a painter. It has been photo-
graphed by Mr. Ayling (493, New Oxford-street),
and the photograph is now before us. It requires
no smull merit in a drawing, or photograph from
one, to hold its own against the direct work of the
sun. Whatever may be the demerits of Phoabus
Apollo as a painter, he has qualities which make
him a tremendously formidable rival to the limner,
who has to trust the unaided powers of pencil or

port-crayon. But it only needs a comparison of
Mr. Lawrence's photographed drawing with any of
the heads photographed from Thackeray himself,
to feel that good work of the human brain and hand
—even when it is but the transcript of a living
physiognomy—has in it something which cannot
be got out of the soulless operations of chemicals
and camera. No one who knew and loved Thackeray
could hesitate a moment between the facsimile of
Lawrence's drawing and the finest photograph
ever taken from the noble head of the living
Thackeray. Mr. Lawrence made two portraits of
Thackeray. The first, taken many years ago, for
Lady Ashburton, has been engraved, and may now
be seen in many of the printeellers' windows. It
represents his haughtier or more defiant expression,
with the head held high, as Thackeray's head was
wont to be held when he denounced meanness, fired
up at wrong, or warmed into praise of goodness or
greatness.
The second portrait is the one just photographed,
and is the property of Chief Baron Pollock.
Thackeray knew and appreciated the painter. His
way of giving him the commission for this portrait
was very characteristic of the man. Meeting Mr.
Lawrence at an evening party towards the end of
the strr_taer of 1862, Thackeray said to him, " The
Chief Baron was dining with me the other day, and
we laid our heads together to make a little plan for a
painter-friend of ours to take each of our heads off;
so, Mr. Painter, execute thine office on that dear old
Chief Baron whenever thou canst catch him; on me
at thy leisure." Thackeray's portrait was drawn at
his new house in Kensington Palace-gardens. The
painter made two drawings of the Chief Baron.
Thackeray, when called on to choose between them,
complained, " You make me feel like the ass be-
tween the bundles of hay, but take this one"—
a sideface, which hung in his dining-room at Ken-
sington to the time of his death.
In this portrait of 1862 Thackeray is represented
in an attitude which all who knew him will recog-
nise as characteristic and femiliar,—reading, with
the page held almost perpendicular, and near the
face. There is the power of the nobly-arched brow,
the softness,yet keenness, of the candid eyes, and the
sensibility and sweetness of the delicately-curved
and finely-cat mouth, which in its face so perfectly
redeemed the effect of the nose, early flattened by
the fist of a schoolfellow at the Charterhouse. It
is such a likeness of Thackeray as his friends will
like to have, and would wish strangers to identify
him with. It presents him in the serenity and sweet-
ness of his happier moments, and it is as he looked
in such moments that those who most lament his
premature death must oftenest call him up to re-
membrance.

For such a likeness we have every reason to be
grateful to Mr. Lawrence, and to the photographer's
art, which multiplies copies of such a drawing
cheaply.

Mr. G. A. Sala on the Death of Thackeray.
Mr. Sala, on the arrival of the melancholy news
in America, writes :—" Suddenly I was drawn on
one side, and told that the news by the Africa—
which, late in thd afternoon, had not arrived at
Halifax—had just been telegraphed, and that Mr.
Thackeray was dead. The papers of to-day confirm
this shocking intelligence. The correspondent of a
newspaper is nobody. He has no recognised exist-
ence, no individuality, no feelings, and no heart.
He is only so much talking type transplanted, to be
set up in another country. Thus I am aware that
it would not be pertinent to my charge even to hint
at what I felt on hearing that he was dead whose
hand I had hoped to touch when I came back from
this place, from this country where his name
was held in honour, and his person in affec-
tion—he whose cheery voice I hoped to hear
asking me, What I thought about the Yankees,'
It is within my attributes, however, to testify to
the deep and genuine sorrow with which the news
of this appallingly sudden event has been received
here. It will ba the same at Boston, the same at
Philadelphia, the same in every city- in the States
he visited. Mr. Thackeray left thousands of
friends in this land, and not one enemy ; and the
loss which his family, his friends, and his country
have sustained is shared by all that is worthy of
preservation in American Society. At least twenty
times to-day I have been asked " Will William
Makepesce Thaokeray be buried in Westminster
Abbey ?" and I have been afraid and ashamed to
answer as I thought.

ARCILEOLOGY IN FRANCE.—Tho Moniteur des
Arts states that there were discovered a few days since en
the banks of the Rhone, near Lyons, 45 Gallo-Roman
tombs, the skeletons in which were complete, the face
turned towards the east, and the head supported by a small
earthen urn. One of the tombs only is formed of Roman
tiles of a very large size. No inscriptions, arms, or coins
of any kind have been found in any of the tombs.
WASUINGTON IRVING'S COPYRIGHTS.—111 the
United States ho realised more than £12,000 by the sale of
his books ; from English publishers he received £12,217 lOs
for copyright; the largest payments being
£
" Life of Columbus," £2,100 for the " Conquest of Gra-
lOfo
nada," £1,575 for the " Tales of a Traveller,3;d and xor 1250 the
apiece for "Bracebridge Hall" and 44Tules of the
Al-
hambra,"