mployed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in
their works, he occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers and Van
Dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to
mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. What he thus
learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own
eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own.

"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures,
it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable
for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like
representation of nature, such as we see in the works of Rubens,
Ruisdael, or others of those schools. In his fancy pictures, when he had
fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar
form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he
did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the
natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an
elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This
excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and
taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the Flemish school, nor
indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but
selected by himself from the great school of nature....

"Upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried
to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense
and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting
for which his previous studies had made no preparation.

"The peculiarity of his manner or style," Reynolds continues a little
later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas,
has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... A novelty and
peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so
likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the
practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and
in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for
fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit.
However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a
close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and
which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident
than design; this chaos, th