The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-02 00:00:00

THE LATE SIR WILLIAM C. ROS

The mortal remains of the late Sir William Ross
were deposited in the Highgate Cemetery last
Saturday. For more than two years before his
death a stroke of paralysis had impaired his facul-
ties, and stayed a hand of almost matchless pictorial
skill. His parents were both devoted to the arts,
his father as a drawing-master and minature-
painter, and by. the time he was nine years of age
the proficiency in drawing of " Little Ross," a name
well remembered by his seniors and contemporaries,
was almost unprecedented. At that early age also
he essayed his little hand in the branch of art in
which ho was subsequently to be distinguished,
and we have seen miniatures by him, among them
one of the Duke of Portland, and of Lord John
Bentinck, executed when he was 10 years old.
These are perfectly well drawn, and that of the
young Lord John, then about the same age
as his boy-portrayer, of a truth and delicacy
of colouring prophetic of the painter's ulti-
mate excellence. In the year 1808, at the age
of 13, he was admitted a student of the Royal Aca-
demy, where his innocent manners and assiduous
study attracted the notice of many. The first am-
bition of the young aspirant was to excel in his-
torical art, and from West, then President, who
was deeply interested in the boy, he received much
kind precept, but not the most desirable example.
Large chalk drawings by him at 15 years of age,
for which he received prizes, show a care, beauty
of finish, correct drawing, and comprehension of a
whole, which are astonishing at that age, though
in other respects too faithful to the taste and treat-
ment inculcated by West. The desire for histori-
cal composition adhered so strongly to him that so
late as 1843 a cartoon by Sir W. Ross was exhi-
bited in Westminster-hall, for which he obtained a
premium of £lOO. When he was about 20, however,
he had altered his course, and, as the feeling of the
day expressed it, came down to the branch of art in
which he became unrivalled. He soon attracted the
notice of the higher classes of patrons. In 1819 his
portraits of Sir Tho. D. Acland and Lady Acland were
exhibited ; in 1822 those of the Earl and Countess
of Uxbridge. From that time to 1857, when the
unfinished portraits of the Duke and Duchess
d'Aumale, with their two sons, bore witness to his
suddenly arrested 'and, he may be said to have
painted the chief beauties and highest dignities of
the British aristocracy, and the various members of
the Royal families of England and Belgium. In
1837 he was appointed miniature painter to the
Queen ; in 1838 he was elected Associate of the
Royal Academy ; in 1839 Academician, and in the
same year he was knighted.
This scanty outline is all that need be given here
of the late painters life, which was one of such
simple industry and devotion to his art, and of
such amiability of temper and extreme benevolence
of heart, that even his talent and success, it may
be hoped, failed to raise him up one enemy. But
his art is entitled to a few separate words. There
is no doubt that the perfect mastery of drawing
he had attained, even when labouring in a
false direction, set him far forward in his career
as a miniature painter. No false anatomy
of the
or uncertain outlines ever challenge criticism in
and
eminentlygroups pure
adr:d
those minute forms into which h compressed a
whole school of fine art. But beyond this no trace
of his former studies appear; for, far from partaking
more than simplicity "Grand Style," the composition of his figures
cittnye
wfheeiclihr
.oahrtist
heads
would
becameag agree
e
'atural., and had. that something
to call naivete. None of the
the of
aristocratic beauties,
none of the sweet child
quisite and difficult ache
rien, the latter the most ex-
vementsof his hand, but
may be proud to display the beautiful and touching
records he has left of their
youth and infanes, In
wh it also, in spite of all abstract modern *.
must ever be considered the painter's
chief praise,
theory,.s
colouring, Sir William Ross was equally paadmirable.
No particular master in this quality £o2ms to have
been studied by him, though it is evident that he had
looked lovingly at Rubens, Vandyke, and at our own
great Reynolds. In the colouring of flesh he is by
turns as tender, pearly, and blooming as each of
these painters. No one ever made the comp:exion
of woman and child so delicate, with at once so
much variety of tint and so little sacrifice of truth;
the whitest hands of his highest horn—and these
hands are some of his most precious morsels—have
still real, warm, human blood in them.
light,.
""is
espe-
cially in those minute gradations ofin those
tender distinctions of similar hues—the touchstone
h s,t ne
of a painter's art—that he excelled. That beauti
ful eombination of various whites which we have
aylight hours
often occasion to admire in the late d