[Illustration: FURSE. FRONTISPIECE TO "STORIES AND INTERLUDES."]
Amongst portrait painters by profession _Walter Ouless_ will probably merit the place of honour immediately after Watts as an impressive exponent of character. He has assimilated much from his master Millais--not merely the heaviness of colour, which often has a disturbing effect in the latter, but also Millais' powerful flight of style, always so free from false rhetoric. The chemical expert Pochin, as Ouless painted him in 1865, does not pose in the picture nor allow himself to be disturbed in his researches. It is a thoroughly contemporary portrait, one of those brilliant successes which later occurred in France also. The Recorder of London, Mr. Russell Gurney, he likewise painted in his professional character and in his robes of office. In its inflexible graveness and earnest dignity the likeness is almost more than the portrait of an individual; it seems the embodiment of the proud English Bench resting upon the most ancient traditions. His portrait of Cardinal Manning had the same convincing power of observation, the same large and sure technique. The soft light plays upon the ermine and the red stole, and falls full upon the fine, austere, and noble face.
Besides Ouless mention may be made from among the great number of portrait painters of _J. J. Shannon_, with his powerful and firmly painted likenesses; of _James Sant_, with his sincere and energetic portraits of women; of _Mouat Loudan_, with his pretty pictures of children, and of the many-sided _Charles W. Furse_. Hubert Herkomer was the most celebrated in Germany, and is probably the most skilful of the young men whom _The Graphic_ brought into eminence in the seventies.