from the portraits of the period of Charles and his father.
Mytens is an artist who can be studied in England nowhere so satisfactorily as at Hampton Court. "Sincere and skilful, but cold and prosaic," an eminent critic calls him;[1] but an examination of the thirteen examples here may serve to justify a somewhat higher estimate of his power. There is perhaps no picture so striking as the Laud which was so long unknown,[2] but the portrait of James, second Marquis of Hamilton, is extremely interesting; and the Duke of Richmond and Lennox (No. 155) is equally attractive. The Count Mansfeldt is not so agreeable a work, but certainly merits the praise of being "sincere."
Next to Mytens, we look naturally at Hampton Court to Vandyke for illustrations of the reign of Charles I. First and foremost is, of course, the replica of the great Windsor picture of the King himself on his horse, with M. Saint Antoine at his bridle. It is a magnificent piece of dignity and colour, not, like so much that came from his studio, entirely of his own hand. A contrast is the voluptuous Mrs. Lemon, Venetian in its richness, and a step, as has been said, towards the still more sensuous presentments of Lely. The "prince of court painters" he was in a sense somewhat different to that in which Mr. Pater
