Note 487 — Chapter XXVII · PAINTERS AND ARCHITECTS.

Charles Jervas, who lived in this reign, and had been a pupil of Kneller, was a very good painter. He taught Pope to draw and paint, and Pope wrote an 'Epistle to Mr. Jervas,' in which he belauded him, as did also Steele[487] when he called him 'the last great painter Italy has sent us, Mr. Jervas'—alluding to his return from studying in Italy. He married a widow worth 20,000l., and the praise he received with the affluence of his circumstances rendered him inordinately vain, as the two following anecdotes will show. He made a good copy of a Titian, and he thought he had actually outdone that master; for, looking from one to the other, he complacently observed, 'Poor little Tit! how he would stare!' The Duchess of Bridgewater sat to him for her portrait, that picture of which Pope says—