The head has distinction and hauteur, albeit the face is
sweetly ingenuous. And the eyes! Well, Sir Thomas always excelled
here! Never, since Titian, has painter given us such "strange sweet
maddening eyes,"--
"Fathomless dusk by night, the day lets in
Glimmer of emerald,--thus those eyes of hers!"
This picture now hangs in the gallery of Stafford House, and was
mezzotinted by Cousins, in 1844, and included in the published
collection of the artist's works. This volume is representative of the
artist. It opens with that perennially delightful picture of the
"Calmady Children," called "Nature,"--one of the very best and
sweetest representations of child life ever made. Here is the
elemental artlessness of nature, and here the beatitude of innocence.
Another child-picture is the portrait of Lady Emily Cowper, afterwards
Lady Ashley, called "The Rosebud." Among the ladies shown are Lady
Leicester, Lady Lyndhurst, and Lady Georgiana Agar Ellis, the picture
of the latter being surpassing in its elegance. That majestically
maternal picture is here of Lady Gower and Lady Elizabeth Leveson
Gower,--not our Elizabeth Mary, but she who became Duchess of Argyll.
The Countess of Grosvenor was a lady of high character and most
affable manners, and held her exalted position with a dignity of
demeanor and a bearing worthy of a descent from the noble Gowers,
lords of Sittenham.
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