Chapter XIV: 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.