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Miscellanies by Oscar Wilde
page 23 of 312 (07%)
There is not so much in the East Gallery that calls for notice. Mr.
Leighton is unfortunately represented only by two little heads, one of an
Italian girl, the other called A Study. There is some delicate flesh
painting of red and brown in these works that reminds one of a russet
apple, but of course they are no samples of this artist's great strength.
There are two good portraits--one of Mrs. Burne-Jones, by Mr. Poynter.
This lady has a very delicate, artistic face, reminding us, perhaps, a
little of one of the angels her husband has painted. She is represented
in a white dress, with a perfectly gigantic old-fashioned watch hung to
her waist, drinking tea from an old blue china cup. The other is a head
of the Duchess of Westminster by Mr. Forbes-Robertson, who both as an
actor and an artist has shown great cleverness. He has succeeded very
well in reproducing the calm, beautiful profile and lustrous golden hair,
but the shoulders are ungraceful, and very unlike the original. The
figure of a girl leaning against a wonderful screen, looking terribly
'misunderstood,' and surrounded by any amount of artistic china and
furniture, by Mrs. Louise Jopling, is worth looking at too. It is called
It Might Have Been, and the girl is quite fit to be the heroine of any
sentimental novel.

The two largest contributors to this gallery are Mr. Ferdinand Heilbuth
and Mr. James Tissot. The first of these two artists sends some
delightful pictures from Rome, two of which are particularly pleasing.
One is of an old Cardinal in the Imperial scarlet of the Caesars meeting
a body of young Italian boys in purple soutanes, students evidently in
some religious college, near the Church of St. John Lateran. One of the
boys is being presented to the Cardinal, and looks very nervous under the
operation; the rest gaze in wonder at the old man in his beautiful dress.
The other picture is a view in the gardens of the Villa Borghese; a
Cardinal has sat down on a marble seat in the shade of the trees, and is
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