3-038-976 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Sketch," by Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, 1871. 'This small "Sketch" in water colours: which we have engraved from the Exhibition for the Benefit of the Distressed Peasantry of France, is by Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, a lady known to possess rare natural gifts in art. Its peculiar merits may nevertheless, be easily overlooked in the exhibition. But that it has peculiar merits will be apparent on examination. And that these merits are to be found in the treatment alone is evident, for the subject - a child holding a fan of peacock's feathers, and a green apple standing beside a parrot - is nothing. Yet we could defy any "expert" to discriminate this sketch, if unnamed, from one by a very skilful professional...It is a study of colour, full of genuine artistic instinct, and such as a first-rate colourist would not be ashamed of. The combination of the crimson dress, peacock's feathers, apple, carpet, parrot, large-leaved plant, and the golden background in bold light and shade, is throughout truly artistic; and the feeling evinced for the subtler interchange of colour and for the semitones of chromatic harmony bespeaks a colourist faculty of quite exceptional endowment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.