Identifier: fairwomeninpaint00shar (find matches)
Title: Fair women in painting and poetry
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Sharp, William, 1855-1905
Subjects: Women in literature Women in art Women Beauty, Personal
Publisher: London : Seeley New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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pet aversions, as a literaryman is one of mine. But a courtesy is due to him for what follows:hence my complaisance ! In reply to my question he said that, frankly, he had never caredmuch for Fair Women in paint, and now cared less than ever ; that heknew next to nothing of pre-Victorian art or artists ; and then, in thesame breath, he was good enough to specify what are indubitably thethree best things at the Grafton. They are (a) Van Somers Countessof Derby ; (¥) Mary Queen of Scots (unknown painter) ; (c) LawrencesLady Ellenborough. There must be some deep reason for this, I said, when I hadrecovered from my surprise. Why do you choose the comely enoughbut not noticeably good-looking Countess of Derby, or that quite certainlywrongly labelled Queen Mary, or Sir Thomas Lawrences vigorouslypainted but not very winsome Lady Ellenborough ? b 2 20 FAIR WOMEN Because the Countess was a brick. ; Scott should have written aromance about her. Because Ive always understood Mary was the most
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The Countess of Westmoreland. By the Marchioness of Granby. beautiful woman of her time, and Im not going back upon that now,seeing that my faith survived the Mary Exhibition ordeal. Thirdly, be-cause Lady Ellenborough was a caution, and cautions o that ilk have had FAIR WOMEN 21 an irresistible fascination for me ever since the governess whom I adored in my early boyhood ran off to sea disguised as an apprentice, married a Unitarian parson in the States, and died, very much a caution, after an adventurous and kaleidoscopic career, the owner of the chief gambling saloon in San Francisco. This was interesting, but it was not art criticism. I turned despondently away, humming to myself the quatrain from the old north-country nursery-ballad of Rashin Coatie — There was a king and a queen,As mony anes been;Few have we seen,As few may we see. Alas ! there were so many queens of beauty on the walls, and yet my heart was not lost to one of them ! Then I remembered a favourite couplet, by C

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