one of our portraits is missing ! CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819–1875)
Photo: Nigel Hawkes Charles Kingsley by Cato Lowes Dickinson (1887)
In the little panelled Hall of my College here at Cambridge, with its beautiful gallery and double staircase, a pair of portraits, strangely contrasted, gaze at each other across the long tables. One is Lely’s famous portrait of Pepys, smiling, foppish, complacent, every curve of the good-natured, sensuous, bourgeois face full of rich satisfaction, lively zest, and efficient self-importance1… Opposite him hangs a very different portrait. He has lived, too, one can see, this strong, sturdy, sanguine man, with his flashing eye, his great aquiline features, and compressed lips… He has enjoyed life and enjoyed it fiercely; but something has held him back from joy, and fixed his gaze firmly on pain; and whatever else he has tested and renounced, he has never yet sounded the depths of hope and love. A C Benson, The Leaves of the Tree (1911) 1 Traditionally attributed to Sir Peter Lely, this painting is now thought to be by John Greenhill, and to date
from c 1673.
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