I had it
over the mantel-piece, but he wouldn't let it stay."
Yes--I could just manage to see it--the first portrait of Jack's I
had ever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the place of
honour--say the central panel in a pale yellow or _rose Dubarry_
drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the light
through curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became
the picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
half-light, all the characteristic qualities came out--all the
hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation
by which, with such consummate skill, he managed to divert attention
from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of
detail. Mrs. Gisburn, presenting a neutral surface to work
on--forming, as it were, so inevitably the background of her own
picture--had lent herself in an unusual degree to the display of
this false virtuosity. The picture was one of Jack's "strongest," as
his admirers would have put it--it represented, on his part, a
swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling
and straining, that reminded one of the circus-clown's ironic
efforts to lift a feather.
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