Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/87

placed the fifteen new sovereigns on a table where my mother could not fail to see them in the morning. For several years after the sale of “Dogberry,” I continued painting, at rare intervals selling a picture, doing any wood-drawing that came in my way, or portraits at a pound or thirty shillings a piece — living, in fact, from hand to mouth. At this time there was an institution for the exhibition and sale of pictures called the Portland Gallery, opposite the Polytechnic in Regent Street, which was very serviceable to young artists, as, if their work was not too glaringly bad, they could reckon with all but absolute certainty on its being seen by the public. There was a selecting committee, but its judgments were distinguished by leniency rather than severity. By paying at the rate of one guinea per superficial foot, an exhibitor was entitled to the space he required not only on the line, but above and below it. These fees and the commissions on sales paid the working expenses. The exhibition could not be called first-rate, though some good men were among the contributors — notably Robert Scott Lauder, the teacher of Pettie, Orchardson, &c. Here I sold some few pictures, two of them being bought by the late W.J. Broderip, the magistrate and naturalist. He had chambers in Raymond’s Buildings, Gray’s Inn, to which he once