standing on a hill against the sky; the Lady Caroline Montague Scott, a bright-eyed little maiden standing in a snowy landscape, her hands in a big muff; little Miss Cholmondeley valiantly carrying her dog over a brook; the four-year-old Viscount Althorp, a quaint little figure outlined against lovely effects of sky and foliage, are but a few of the children Reynolds has painted with admirable life and charm and in the midst of natural out-door surroundings. Even more elaborate attention is given to the landscape backgrounds in the full-lengths of women. Such portraits as those of the Marchioness Camden, Mrs. Crewe as St. Geneviève, the Viscountess Crosbie, Lady Betty Compton, the Duchess of Devonshire, the countess of Salisbury, Miss Mary Moncton, the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Bampfylde, Mrs. Bonfoy, or Mrs. Carnac, show abundantly the skill with which Reynolds united figures, drapery, and landscape so as to secure a harmonious and decorative general effect.[580] It often happens, indeed, that the faces of these tall aristocratic ladies are hardly remembered, so strongly is the attention caught by the flow of line, the shimmer of fabrics, the abundance of charming scenic detail. Mrs. Jameson says that Reynolds was the first English artist to venture upon light and gay landscape backgrounds. In his portraits of women we do not find the stormy skies, rude rocks, and blustering weather against which Lely’s ladies posed. Reynolds delights in typical English park scenery, with its variety of wood and water, its soft, dim distances, its rich clumps of trees. He often uses, too, the architectural elements appropriate to a park, but never in a hard or obtrusive fashion. His steps and balustrades, his columns and urns, gleam out from masses of foliage or are overhung with a wealth of vines and flowers. The whole effect is rich and stately, suggestive of lovely order and nurture, and is particularly well suited to the fashionable dames who are thus enshrined. In general we may say that Sir Joshua’s use of landscape in portraiture surpasses in amount that of any preceding master, and that his scenic backgrounds are unrivaled in the qualities of naturalness and charm, and in artistic suitability for the personages portrayed.[581] [Illustration: MRS. CARNAC _By Sir Joshua Reynolds_]