Excerpt from The New Universal Biographical Dictionary, and American Remembrancer of Departed Merit, Vol. 4 of 4: Containing Complete and Impartial Accounts of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Station, but More Particularly Those Who Have Signalized Themselves in America
In his colouring, there is firength, roundnefs and1 boldnefs; but his men want dignity, and his womenz grace. The good fenfe of the nation is charaeteri’fedt in his portraits, from which, you may fee that heliv ed’in an age when neither enthufiafm nor fervility was predominant. Yet with a pencil fo’ firm, polfeffed bf a numerous and-excellent colleeiion of drawings, full of the theory, and profound in reflections on: his art, he drew nothing well below the head, and was void of imagination. H’is attitudes, draperies and back-grounds are infipid and unmeaning; fo ill did he apply to his own pra iice the fagacious rules andhints he’befiow ed on others. Though he wrotewith’fire and judg ment, his paintings owed little to either. No man dived deeper into the inexhaufiible fiores of Raphael, or was more fmitten with the native lufire of Vandyck. Yet though capable of tailing the elevationof the one, and the elegance of the other, he could never contrive to fee with their eyes, when he was to copy-nature him felf. One wonders that he could comment upon their works fo well, and imitate them fo little.
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