Prettiness and dexterity abounded, but of work of high quality there was for about a century a wonderful dearth, till again the west-country sent forth an artist, who, born about twenty years after Reynolds, attained in his own day to a celebrity almost as great as that of the renowned President of the Royal Academy, and whose work is still looked upon with no small admiration. This was Richard Cosway, whose easy and graceful style was seen to the greatest advantage on the delicate medium of ivory. Some of these, slightly tinted with wonderful delicacy and truth of drawing, are treasured at Windsor. Conspicuous among them are three of the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of which is here reproduced; from this it is easy to understand the unbounded popularity which greeted the artist in his own day, when he and his wife with their eccentricities and extravagances were at the same time the favourites and the butts of society. In his long career he painted everybody, and his imitators and copyists were countless. Hard though as he worked, he never could have painted a tenth of the miniatures which now pass by his name.

Two years after him, and in the same county, was born another boy destined also to shine in the same walk of art, and whose miniatures, though not possessing the same fashionable notoriety as Cosway's, are not inferior to them in design, execution, or colour. This was Ozias Humphrey, who also lived to be a member of the Royal Academy; but he is not so widely known, as he was for some years in India. He painted many of the Royal Family, and several of their portraits are still preserved at Windsor. From them we select one, which is of one of the most lovely women of her day, and whose features are more widely known from her portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Born a Walpole, and widow of a Waldegrave, she became the wife of the Duke of Gloucester, and is still remembered as the beautiful duchess. This miniature shows well the grace and refinement of the art of Humphrey.

In thus recounting some of the past history of miniature painting we have only touched on the names and works of a few of the more eminent past masters of the art. Of others, such as Flatman, Dixon, Crosse, Bernard Lens, Robertson, Chalon, Ross, Newton,