These were still the days when art and artists had not migrated from the gloomy studios of unfashionable Bloomsbury to the gleaming palaces of modish Kensington. Sir Charles Eastlake's predecessor had been Sir Martin Archer Shee, who, very faintly disguised, appears in Thackeray's Mr Smee in _The Newcomes_. Gandish, the unappreciated genius of the palette at whose school, on Mr Smee's advice Clive Newcome is placed, is not a caricature at all of the most serviceable art teacher of that period whose real name was Sass and who counted among his pupils John Everett Millais. What has taken place since then is that in the smiles of popular favour, Thackeray's Gandish has blossomed into the Mr Gaston Phoebus of Lord Beaconsfield's _Lothair_. Colonel Newcome thought it a condescension to ask the painter of 'Boadishia' to dinner. That artist's later and transformed self would have resented an invitation at short notice as an impertinence; he would have bluntly excused himself on the plea of being pre-engaged to the Prime Minister,[82] the Heir Apparent, or to Windsor three months ago. The social prejudice, confined to a small section of the upper middle class, against the studio which lingered so long and so unintelligently in England is easily explained. It is identical in its origin with an equally unreasoning and antiquated feeling against doctors, singers and players. This superstition had disappeared in the days of Sir Henry Holland who, half a century ago was a welcome and honoured guest at the most exclusive houses; under men like Sir James Paget and Sir Richard Quain it has long since ceased even to be a memory. In each of these cases money is regarded as passing directly between the patronizing public and the employed professional. The purse is opened at the door of the theatre, the concert hall, or in the consulting room of the physician. That the payment is in the other cases as real though not as sensibly direct is ignored. The terms on which Sir Charles Eastlake was a visitor at the Victorian Court are those that have marked the subsequent relations of his successors with the Crown. The intellectual influences of a whole school of intelligent and highly educated critics following as nearly as they could the example of Mr Ruskin, has shed a dignity on the painter's calling that could not have resulted from material prosperity or the favour of high place alone.