LETTER XIII.

TO MADOX BROWN, HAMPSTEAD.

“The blessed white eyesore” was the picture _Ecce Ancilla Domini_, now in the National Gallery.

14 Chatham Place. [1 January 1853.]

My dear Brown,

This blessed afternoon the blessed white eyesore will be finished. Therefore, if you have any last directions about your pictures now in Green’s hands, you had better give them. Yesterday after giving up the Angel’s head as a bad job (owing to William’s malevolent expression) at about one o’clock I took to working it up out of my own intelligence, and got it better by a great deal than it has yet been. I have put a gilt saucer behind his head, which crowns the _China_-ese character of the picture.

Yours, D. G. R.