"But a second casual visit presented me with a very different object; he was then painting the body, and in his sitting chair a very squalid beggar-woman was placed, with a child, not above a year old, quite naked, upon her lap. As may be imagined, I could not help testifying my surprise at seeing him paint the carnation of the goddess of beauty from that of a little child, which seemed to have been nourished rather with gin than with milk, and saying that 'I wondered he had not taken some more healthy-looking model;' but he answered, with his usual _naïveté_, that, 'whatever I might think, the child's flesh assisted him in giving a certain _morbidezza_ to his own coloring, which he thought he should hardly arrive at had he not such an object, when it was extreme (as it certainly was), before his eyes." Among the many famous portraits of this year and the next was that of the Countess Waldegrave, Horace Walpole's beautiful niece Maria, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester. The earl was the most trusted friend of George II., and, for a short time, prime minister. Walpole mentions the countess being mobbed in the park one Sunday when in company with Lady Coventry, so that several sergeants of the guards marched before and behind them to keep off the admiring crowd. Also that of the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning, afterward Duchess of Argyle, and the sister of Admiral Keppel, afterwards Marchioness of Tavistock. "This is one of the painter's loveliest and best preserved female portraits. The dress is white, with a rose in the bosom, and the expression inimitably maidenly and gentle." This year, Reynolds removed to a fine home in Leicester Square, where he remained as long as he lived, having a suburban home at Richmond Villa. His own painting-room was octagonal, "about twenty feet long and sixteen in breadth. The window which gave the light to the room was square, and not much larger than one-half the size of a common window in a private house; whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned on casters. His palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The stocks of his pencils were long, measuring about nineteen inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest to the window, and never sat down when he worked."