work, more beautiful, more delicate, subtle, illusive, certain in its
handicraft; and if the lace cuffs are marvellous, the delicate hands
of a beautiful old age lying in a small lace handkerchief are little
short of miraculous. They are not drawn out in anatomical diagram, but
appear and disappear, seen here on the black dress, lost there in the
small white handkerchief. And when we study the faint, subtle outline
of the mother's face, we seem to feel that there the painter has told
the story of his soul more fully than elsewhere. That soul, strangely
alive to all that is delicate and illusive in Nature, found perhaps
its fullest expression in that grave old Puritan lady looking through
the quiet refinement of her grey room, sitting in solemn profile in
all the quiet habit of her long life.

Compared with later work, the execution is "tighter", if I may be
permitted an expression which will be understood in studios; we are
very far indeed from the admirable looseness of handling which is the
charm of the portrait of Miss Rose Corder. There every object is born
unconsciously beneath the passing of the brush. If not less certain,
the touch in the portrait of the mother is less prompt; but the
painter's vision is more sincere and more intense. And to those who
object to the artificiality of the arrangement, I reply that if the
old lady is sitting in a room artificially arranged, Lady Archibald
Campbell may be said to be walking through incomprehensible space. But
what really decides me to place this portrait above the others is the
fact that while painting his mother's portrait he was unquestionably
absorbed in his model; and absorption in the model is perhaps the
first quality in portrait-painting.

Still, for my own personal pleasure, to satisfy the innermost cravings
of my own soul, I would choose to live with the portrait of Miss