Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/163

 up, exclaim, "who would know my portrait with such a nose as this?" Therefore, he is said to have generally painted a likeness, before putting in the eyes. On one occasion, a pert young coxcomb, who was sitting for his portrait, stole a glance at the canvass and exclaimed, "why, it has no eyes!" Stuart coolly observed, "It is not nine days old yet," referring of course to the time when a puppy first opens its eyes. STUART'S SITTERS. A portrait was once returned to Stuart with the grievous complaint, that the muslin of the cravat was too coarsely executed. Stuart indignantly observed to a friend, "I am determined to glue a piece of muslin of the finest texture on the part that offends their exquisite judgment, and send it back again." A lady once sat to him dressed in the extreme of fashion, loaded with jewelry and gewgaws, besides an abundance of hair powder and rouge. Stuart, being hard up for cash, consented to "raise a monument to her folly." After the picture was completed, he observed to a friend, "There is what I have all my life been endeavoring to avoid,—vanity and bad taste." A gentleman of note employed Stuart to paint his own portrait and that of his wife, who, when he married her, was a very rich widow, but a very ordinary looking person. The husband was handsome, and of a noble figure, and the painter hit him