Page:The life and times of King Edward VII by Whates, Harry Richard 1.djvu/32

14 LIFE AND TIMES OF EDWARD VII. hand in his father's and the other carrying the company of the Queen and the Princess a broad-brimmed straw hat, looks like a Royal in a beautiful Highland scene, the figure in Dresden china. He had at this little Prince in Highland dress, and talk- time luxuriant curly locks, which sent the ing to a ghillie with a pony, across whose mothers of England into ecstasies of ' I back a dead stag is slung, and with whom admiration. The painters of that time 'there is one of those living, thinking revelled in depicting the wavy masses of deerhounds the great animal painter hair, so good a framework did they afford for the vivacious features and full blue eyes. In Cleland's pic- ture, as in Winter- halter's, the locks are disciplined and parted on the left side shorn, too, of the tumbling effect shown in the draw- ings of the nursery period, but still left falling thickly over the ears. It was the style of the period, and it was continued through youth and man- hood by all as long as nature allowed. The fashion of close cropping became general only in the 'eighties. In Cleland's picture of the Prince at the age of eight there is to be seen an early forecast of the Prince as a young man. Winterhalter painted the Prince in 1847 in a sailor suit, hands in pockets surely an unsailor - like prac- tice. The hair here is still uncut and flowing about the face in formal curls. L,andseer and Thorburn also painted him at this period, the first showing him in PRINCE EDWARD AT THE AGE OF SIX. (From the Painting by F. X. Winterhalter.) delighted to draw. The figure of the Prince is instinct with energy and animation. Thor- burn's picture is in a wholly different vein, and is a con- ception equally characteristic of the artist. It is an interior scene with a landscape out- look. The Queen is seated, and the ; ? Prince is standing at her knee and looking up into her face listening to her words evidently grave and kindly serious words, for the expression on his face is one of fond thoughtful- ness, of wistful wonderment. It is a new interpretation of the life of the child, for the artist caught him at a serious moment ; and these were probably rare, for all other painters depict him with a scarcely repressible gleam of mischief in his eyes, and with laughter playing about the lips. The nation had then no access to these paintings or to reproductions of them, for photography was not to come into use for another