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Willing, Thomson

"Some Old Time Beauties After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment"

" Again, there is a whole-length showing her about to descend
some steps to a lawn, her superb shoulders and neck bare, and her hair
highly bedecked with feathers. Walpole writes of another portrait,
drawn by Lady Di Beauclerck, and engraved by Bartolozzi: "A Castilian
nymph conceived by Sappho and executed by Myron, would not have had
more grace and simplicity. The likeness is perfectly preserved, except
that the paintress has lent her own expression to the Duchess, which
you will allow is very agreeable flattering." In the Royal collection
of miniatures at Windsor, are three charmingly executed ivories of her
by Cosway. Lawrence, too, made a chalk drawing of her, which now hangs
at Chiswick House, in the room in which Charles Fox died. This is an
interesting work from being a very early effort of the after-time
President of the Academy, and showing that then he had not attained
the trick of flattering his sitters, even when they were noted
beauties. Angelica Kauffman painted her, and John Downman also made a
portrait replete with elegance and picturesqueness. In fact, the
comely Duchess pervaded the art of the period. Of her Grace of Gordon,
we have, as our ideal presentment of her, the portrait by Sir Joshua.
In it her hair is done up high, and two rows of pearls are intertwined
therein. The dress is of the Charles the First period, and shows the
sweetly modulated shoulders leading up to--
"The pillared throat, clear chiselled cheek,
High arching brows, nose purely Greek,
Set lips,--too firm for a coquette.


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