Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/145

Rh latter is the most beautiful of all the ladies, and is painted with all Lely's art. The picture shows the height of his powers and their limits. A lovely girl, with a fair face and light brown hair, dressed in dark red relieved by some gold brocade, she assumes, like Lady Bellasys, the favourite character of S. Catherine, but an air "grand and gracious," rather than of devotion, is expressed in her portrait. It is a beautiful picture of a beautiful subject, but of higher qualities of character and mind the painter can give no idea.

Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, a woman of abandoned character and malignant influence, whose name is connected with almost every scandal of English society for fifty years, makes a striking picture. She is beautiful, proud, resentful, impressive: the painter, having to choose from many bad qualities, has chosen her pride for the dominant note of his composition; and he has made of her perhaps the most striking of all his portraits. It is original, speaking, personal. We can see as she lived the woman who ruled Charles Stewart when she was young, and raised John Churchill when she was old; and Mr. Pepys calls it "a most blessed picture."

IX The Beauties preserve for ever the luxury, and fashion, and recklessness of Charles's court. His own portrait is nowhere in the collection: only in a curious