Letter from William Gilpin, Vicar's Hill, to Sir George Beaumont, 1802 June 16 : autograph manuscript signed.

Asking where Beaumont intends to spend the summer; writing "You have gotten by heart all the modes of scenery, which lakes & mountains can furnish. I do not know any place, which I should wish more to look into, than that apartment in your mind, where you hang up all the grand ideas you have collected. There I should see the best forms of lakes, mountains, rocks, woods, & rivers without any formality -- without any awkward composition, or mis-shapen objects. I should see them all likewise beautifully inlightened, & the several parts harmoniously connected with each other. Even I who have seen nothing these ten years, could exhibit very beautiful pictures, if I could impress them on my paper, as they appear to my imagination. What choice exhibitions then could you produce, who have, during the same space of time, been laying up the best materials in the greatest abundance?"; asking if Beaumont has ever spent a summer by the sea-coast and saying that "[b]ays, promontories, & winding shores, often form themselves into grand, & beautiful objects"; asking Beaumont to tell him where he and Lady Beaumont decide to go, so he can follow them in his imagination; saying that he was surprised at the success of the sale of his drawings and that the value others placed on his work "raised their credit with me not a little"; asking if Beaumont has used his drawings as the basis for any paintings; recounting "One of the earliest pleasures of my life (which you may suppose was great from my remembering it seventy years ago) arose from my father's shewing me a drawing, which he told me was one of the best he ever made; & which he took, he said, from one of my scratches. If you should tell me something of the same kind, I should yet be child enough to be mightily pleased with hearing it"; discussing the advantages of painting on a small surface, particularly the speed with which such pictures can be produced: "I remember, some years ago, Mr. Locke shewed me a portrait of himself, which had been painted at once, & was but just laid in; which he thought so well, that he would not suffer it afterwards to be touched [...] My conclusion is, that finishing is one of the most artificial parts of painting."