Paintings in the Collection of Henry Clay Frick, 1915 [page 67]

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SIR HENRY RAEBURN (1756-1823) MRS. CRUIKSHANK Canvas, 40 1/2 inches by 50 3/4 inches

THREE-QUARTER length; seated; turned half-way to the left; each hand rests on the arm of the chair; nearly full face; eyes directed toward the spectator. Blue velvet coat edged with fur, over a plain white dress. air arranged in ringlets low on forehead and bound by a blue ribbon. In her right hand a blue velvet toque with ostrich feathers. Gray background.

"I cannot be far wrong in putting down the 'Mrs. Cruikshank of Langley Park' to the years between 1805 and 1808. It is the portrait of a fat, good-humored woman of thirty-eight or forty, the sort of person the middle-aged Scot half a century ago would have called a 'soncy lass." She wears a dark blue-gray very modern-looking velvet mantle over a white dress. Behind her she has a 'systematic' background of Frans Hals. Nothing could be simpler, apparently, than the whole conception; but it is not so simple as it looks. The lady is plump enough to make her contour from chin to knee almost an unbroken line. She has no waist and too much hip; her arms are short and fat, with hands to fit them, and she has no throat; but so cleverly has the painter use his materials, that until we look into matters with this indiscreet eye of the inquiring critic we see none of this. The almost smooth expanse of white satin is so skilfully broken at the edges, the mantle is brought around in such a cleverly supplementary way, that we get a play o line which satisfies the eye without perverting fact. Especially dexterous, or sensitive, is the setting of the head. Its apparent size is reduced by prolonging the line of the ruff with a fold of the dress, on the right." —Armstrong's Raeburn, pp. 76-77.

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