high-bred grace of which Reynolds was a master beyond all the painters who ever painted women.” This is indeed high praise for what was probably the first female portrait he painted after his return from Italy. But there is no doubt that Reynolds had now acquired enough mastery over his “ignorance” to be capable of producing work which would be comparable with anything he was to do in the future. Tom Taylor notes another half-length painted in the spring of the following year in hardly less glowing terms; it is of Mrs. Molesworth--“a young and lovely brunette, in one of the quaint every-day dresses of the time, closely copied, without the least attempt at ‘idealising’ or ‘generalising,’ with flowers in her hand, a little cap on her head, a prim apron, and a lawn kerchief closely covering her shoulders. It is one of the most attractive of his female portraits, and especially valuable for its literalness.” That his very earliest works should receive, and indeed deserve, such commendation requires emphasising in order to restore to him a good deal of the credit for the revival of portraiture in England which nowadays is given to his only successful rivals, Gainsborough and Romney. The fascination that Gainsborough’s natural genius throws over his admirers--and Reynolds himself was not entirely unaffected by it--is apt to blind them to the more solid merit of the other, and the fact that Reynolds had achieved so much before Gainsborough had really started painting portraits is apt to be overlooked. In 1751, when Sir Joshua had fairly established his reputation, Gainsborough had only just left his native place and settled in Bath, and it was not until 1774--twenty-one years after Reynolds--that he came to London and seriously competed with him for the public favour. Romney, again, although he was working in London as early as 1761, was never a serious competitor till his return from a two years’ tour in Italy in 1775. For twenty years at least then Reynolds had practically as complete a monopoly of portraiture among the nobility as Kneller had had at the opening of the century, and we have only to think once in forming our estimate of the use he made of it. Scattered throughout our old country mansions in England are hundreds of his works, occasionally in groups as at Lord Lansdowne’s at Bowood, or Lord Albemarle’s at Quidenham, few of which are not prized by their owners as the chief glory of their possessions. In our public galleries are a few comparatively--for the number of his authentic pictures enumerated by Sir Walter Armstrong is something over a thousand--but such as they are, they take their place unquestioned among those of the great masters. Never was an aristocracy more fortunate in their painter.