There is hardly a miniature by this eminent man which is not worth
careful consideration, and in the power of delineating character and
setting before us the actual feelings of his sitters, Cooper had no
rival, while one of the great features of his work is its amazing
variety. Moreover, the manner in which he adapted his technique, his
colour scheme, and his ideas of composition to the special circumstances
of the person whom he had to delineate, is very remarkable. His
portraits of men are perhaps more attractive than those of women,
although he was well able to convey the fascination of a woman's face;
but the strong, rugged men of his period were portrayed by him with
quite extraordinary power, and he created a method of portraiture
entirely his own, and filled it with individual characteristics. Two
splendid examples are amongst our illustrations in colour (Plate VIII.),
_Lady Fauconberg_ and _Colonel Lilburne_, both from the collection of
Mr. Hodgkins.
Of his contemporaries it will suffice to mention one or two, and perhaps
the best of them was David des Granges, whose work is represented in our
illustrations in colour by a portrait of _Rachel Fane, Countess of
Bath_, from the collection of Mr. Hodgkins (Plate IX., No. 2). Of this
artist and his parentage we know a little, thanks to the researches of
Mr. Lionel Cust in the registers of the Huguenot Church in London. It
seems probable that Des Granges, although baptised in the Huguenot
faith, did not continue in that communion, because in 1649 he is
mentioned in some papers belonging to the French Dominicans as a
Catholic, and he was a very close friend of the celebrated artist Inigo
Jones, who was also a Catholic. The portrait of the architect by David
des Granges, representing Inigo Jones at the age of 68, is at Welbeck
Abbey, signed with the initials D.D.G., and is one of the best works by
him with which we are acquainted.
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