English Masters Of The Eighteenth Century

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Scene IV. The Countess’s Dressing Room
The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the Music Scene are finely imagined and preserved. The preposterous, overstrained admiration of the Lady of Quality, the sentimental, insipid, impatient delight of the Man, with his hair in paper, and sipping his tea, the pert, smirking, conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to him, the transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and then to the wonder of the negro boy at the rapture of his mistress, form a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-colored hair of the female virtuoso throw an additional light on the character....The gross, bloated appearance of the Italian Singer is well relieved by the hard features of the instrumental performer behind him, which might be carved of wood. The negro boy holding the chocolate, both in expression, color, and execution, is a masterpiece. The gay, lively, contrast to the profound amazement of the first.

Scene V. The Duel And Death Of The Earl
‘Silvertongue,’ the young lawyer whom in the last scene we saw passing a masquerade ticket to the Countess, has now been found out. The Earl, who surprised him with his wife, has fought a duel and is dying as the result, while the young lawyer escapes through a window as the Watch enters.

Scene VI. The Death Of The Countess
A bottle of poison on the floor shows that the Countess’s death is self-sought, while the paper near it, with the words, ‘Counsellor Silver-tongue’s Last Dying Speech,’ reveals the end of another leading character in the drama. While the father absentmindedly draws the rings from the fingers of his dying daughter, the half-starved dog ravenously snatching the meat from the table suggests with subtlety the straitened resources of the household as a result of previous prodigal expenditure.

While the merited success of his prints and subject pictures made Hogarth a very prosperous man, he served his simple character to the last, and on one occasion he walked home in the rain, completely forgetting that now he had his own coach, which was waiting for him. He had a town house at 30 Leicester Square (now rebuilt) and a country house at Chiswick, now a Hogarth Museum, and when he died in 1764 he was buried in Chiswick Churchyard.

English Masters Of The Eighteenth Century (continued)