Opie is thoroughly English in his manner, having, however, more affiliation to Hogarth and the earlier painters of his century than to his master. A certain hardness and lack of color are his principal defects; but, on the other hand, his work is sincere to a degree which none of the other painters of his time show, preoccupied as were even the best of them by a somewhat conventional type of beauty. He was appointed professor of painting at the Royal Academy in 1805, but delivered only one course of lectures, dying, at the age of forty-six, April 9, 1807. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A LADY. FROM A PAINTING KNOWN AS "THE CORAL NECKLACE," BY JOHN HOPPNER. From the collection of George A. Hearn of New York, by whose courtesy it appears here. Quaint and charming as a picture, of great beauty of color in the original, this is an admirable example of this painter. The original painting is at present on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.] During the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth, the fashionable portrait painters of London were John Hoppner and Sir Thomas Lawrence. The latter, living twenty years longer than Hoppner, was able to generously say of him, in a letter written shortly after Hoppner's death: "You will believe that I sincerely feel the loss of a brother artist from whose works I have often gained instruction, and who has gone by my side in the race these eighteen years." Born in Whitechapel, London, April 4, 1758, Hoppner's first vocation was that of chorister in the Chapel Royal. By lucky accident his first efforts at painting attracted the attention of the king, George III., who granted him a small allowance which enabled him to study in the Royal Academy, where, in 1782, he gained the medal for oil painting. He first exhibited in 1780, and for some years devoted himself to landscape. Gradually changing to portraiture, he was appointed portrait painter to the Prince of Wales in 1789, and in 1793 he was made an associate of the Academy, receiving full membership in 1795. For twenty years and until his death, January 23, 1810, he was extremely successful, and his productions, though less in number than those of Reynolds, or his contemporary, Lawrence, were numerous. In the course of thirty years he contributed one hundred and sixty-six works to the Academy exhibitions. These were chiefly portraits of women and children, and are marked by unaffected grace and appreciation of character. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A CHILD. FROM A PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.