As painting rose in fame,
tapestry sunk in estimation. The introduction of a lighter and less
massive mode of architecture abridged the space for its accommodation,
and by degrees the stiff and fanciful creations of the loom vanished
from our walls. The art is now neglected. I am sorry for this, because I
cannot think meanly of an art which engaged the heads and hands of the
ladies of England, and gave to the tapestried hall of elder days fame
little inferior to what now waits on a gallery of paintings."
Passing over Holbein, Sir Antonio Moore, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and
Thornhill, we come to the lives of Hogarth--Wilson--Reynolds and
Gainsborough--from which we select a few characteristic anecdotes and
sketches. In noticing Hogarth's early life, Mr. Cunningham has thrown
some discredit on a book, which on its publication, made not a little
chat among artists:--
"Of those early days I find this brief notice in Smith's Life of
Nollekens the sculptor. 'I have several times heard Mr. Nollekens
observe, that he had frequently seen Hogarth, when a young man, saunter
round Leicester Fields with his master's sickly child hanging its head
over his shoulder.' It is more amusing to read such a book than safe to
quote it. Hogarth had ceased to have a master for seventeen years, was
married to Jane Thornhill, kept his carriage, and was in the full blaze
of his reputation, when Nollekens was born.
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