Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/666

636 Painting Fight Interrupted, Giving a Bite, First Love, the Toy Seller , Choosing the Wedding Gown (his most popular work), and the Seven Ages of Man. Charles Robert Leslie (1794 — 1859), a distinguished artist of American birth, practised genre painting of the highest class. The leading characteristics of his works are force of expression, refinement, and feeling for female beauty. His subjects are principally illustrations of popular authors, of which the Merry Wives of Windsor, in the South Kensington Museum ; Sancho Panza, and Uncle Toby and the Widow W adman, both in the National Gallery, are among the most noteworthy. In all these works the figures are wonderfully lifelike and natural — the heroines especially being admirable renderings of ideal creations. But two other men who adopted similar subjects to the three painters noticed above, remain to be mentioned. We allude to Gilbert Stuart Newton (1795—1835) and Augustus Leopold Egg (1816 — 1863). Newton, a native of Nova Scotia, displayed considerable feeling for colour and expression, but was wanting in knowledge of drawing. His Portia and Bassano in the South Kensington Museum, considered one of his best works, is a fine example of his manner. Egg, whose untimely death was severely felt, excelled Newton in drawing, but was inferior to him in colouring. His works are characterized by pathetic beauty, and are mostly pervaded by a subtle sadness. A scene from Le Diable Boiteux, in the National Gallery, is con- sidered one of his finest compositions, but we may also mention the Life and Death of Buckingham, Past and Present, the Night before Naseby, and Catherine and Petruchio.