STUART’S SITTERS.

A portrait was once returned to Stuart with the grievous complaint, that the muslin of the cravat was too coarsely executed. Stuart indignantly observed to a friend, “I am determined to glue a piece of muslin of the finest texture on the part that offends their exquisite judgment, and send it back again.” A lady once sat to him dressed in the extreme of fashion, loaded with jewelry and gewgaws, besides an abundance of hair powder and rouge. Stuart, being hard up for cash, consented to “raise a monument to her folly.” After the picture was completed, he observed to a friend, “There is what I have all my life been endeavoring to avoid,—vanity and bad taste.”

A gentleman of note employed Stuart to paint his own portrait and that of his wife, who, when he married her, was a very rich widow, but a very ordinary looking person. The husband was handsome, and of a noble figure, and the painter hit him off, to admiration. Not so with the lady; he flattered her as much as he could without destroying the likeness, but the husband was not satisfied, expressed his dissatisfaction in polite terms, and requested him to try again. He did so, without any better success. The husband now began to fret, when the painter losing his patience, jumped up, laid down his palette, took a huge pinch of snuff, and stalking rapidly up and down the room, exclaimed, “What a d—d business is this of a portrait painter—zounds, you bring a potato, and expect him to paint you a peach.”