His opportunity came, however, when he met with Colonel Sir John Guise. An enthusiastic connoisseur of art, a collector of pictures (he left his collection to Christchurch College, Oxford), an heroic soldier, with a turn for fantastic exaggeration and romancing, which moved even Horace Walpole to protest, and call him “madder than ever,” Guise was just the man to be interested in the personality and the inventive schemes of Le Blon. Easily he persuaded the artist to come to London, and, through his introduction to many influential persons, he enlisted for Le Blon the personal interest of the King, who granted a royal patent, and permitted his own portrait to be done by the new process, of which this presentment of George I. is certainly one of the most successful examples, happiest in tone-harmony. Then, in 1721, a company was formed to work under the patent, with an establishment known as the “Picture Office,” and Le Blon himself to direct operations. Everything promised well, the public credit had just been restored after the South Sea Bubble, the shares were taken up to a substantial extent, and for a time all went well. An interesting prospectus was issued, with a list of colour-prints after pictures, chiefly sacred and mythological, by Maratti, Annibale Carracci, Titian, Correggio, Vandyck, some of them being identical in size with the original paintings, at such moderate prices as ten, twelve, and fifteen shillings. Lord Percival, Pope’s friend, who, like Colonel Guise, had entered practically into the scheme, was enthusiastic about the results. Sending some of the prints, with the bill for them, to his brother, he wrote: “Our modern painters can’t come near it with their colours, and if they attempt a copy make us pay as many guineas as now we pay shillings.” Certainly, if we compare Le Blon’s _Madonna_ after Baroccio--priced fifteen shillings in the prospectus--for instance, with such an example of contemporary painting as that by Sir James Thornhill and his assistants, taken from a house in Leadenhall Street, and now at South Kensington, we may find some justification for Lord Percival’s enthusiasm. For colour quality there is, perhaps, little to choose between them, but as a specimen of true colour-printing, and the first of its kind, that _Madonna_ is wonderful, and I question whether, in the later years, there was any colour-printing of mezzotint to approach it in brilliance of tone. Then, however, accuracy of harmonies was assured by adopting Robert Laurie’s method, approved in 1776, of printing from a single plate, warmed and lightly wiped after application of the coloured inks.