in that facile convention, he would never have been hailed as the Father of English Painting, and Sir Walter Armstrong would assuredly never have written in his survey of “Art in Great Britain and Ireland” these words: “At the end of the seventeenth century fortune sent a deliverer.” A deliverer from what? From the thraldom of foreign artists, and artists of foreign extraction, and from the monotonous level of mediocrity into which British art had sunk after the “Kneller tyranny.” Perhaps two parallel lists of portrait painters will be the best exemplification, one beginning with Holbein, who was born just two hundred years before Hogarth, the other with Hogarth--the deliverer. Many minor names are, of course, omitted. BEFORE HOGARTH ENTER HOGARTH Holbein 1497-1543 Hogarth 1697-1764 Bettes ?1530-1573 Hudson 1701-1779 Jonson 1593-1664 Ramsay 1713-1784 Van Dyck 1599-1641 Reynolds 1723-1792 Dobson ?1600-1658 Cotes 1725-1770 Walker 1610-1646 Gainsborough 1727-1788 Lely 1618-1680 Romney 1734-1802 Mary Beale 1632-1697 Raeburn 1756-1823 Kneller 1646-1723 Hoppner ?1758-1810 Richardson 1665-1745 Opie 1761-1801 Thornhill 1675-1734 Lawrence 1769-1830 Vanloo 1684-1745 In pre-Hogarthian days first Holbein and later Van Dyck dominated British art, Van Dyck’s being by far the stronger influence. Indeed it has lasted until to-day. Dobson, a sterling painter, was a pupil of Van Dyck’s. Lely was born at Soest near Utrecht, Kneller at Lübeck, and Vanloo at Aix. The residuum of native-born painters is not very important, and although one might add a score of names to those included in the pre-Hogarthian list, it is obvious that before the day of the “sturdy little satirist,” with his hatred of all things foreign, including the “black old masters,” and his love of all things English, except William Kent and his circle, and such folk as happened to annoy him, art in England had no independent growth. It certainly was not racial, and it was not characteristic in any way of the English temperament or the English vision. After Hogarth, excluding his minor contemporaries, Hudson, Ramsay, and Cotes, the art of Great Britain was illumined by the light of genius, native born, which began with Reynolds and Gainsborough, and spread out in varying and decreasing splendour down to the prettinesses of Lawrence.