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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41497 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations,
+      some of which are in color.
+      See 41497-h.htm or 41497-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41497/41497-h/41497-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41497/41497-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/reynolds00bensuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+Masterpieces in Colour
+
+Edited by--T. Leman Hare
+
+REYNOLDS
+1723-1792
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+IN THE SAME SERIES
+
+    ARTIST.                AUTHOR.
+  VELAZQUEZ.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  REYNOLDS.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  TURNER.                C. LEWIS HIND.
+  ROMNEY.                C. LEWIS HIND.
+  GREUZE.                ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
+  BOTTICELLI.            HENRY B. BINNS.
+  ROSSETTI.              LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+  BELLINI.               GEORGE HAY.
+  FRA ANGELICO.          JAMES MASON.
+  REMBRANDT.             JOSEF ISRAELS.
+  LEIGHTON.              A. LYS BALDRY.
+  RAPHAEL.               PAUL G. KONODY.
+  HOLMAN HUNT.           MARY E. COLERIDGE.
+  TITIAN.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  MILLAIS.               A. LYS BALDRY.
+  CARLO DOLCI.           GEORGE HAY.
+  GAINSBOROUGH.          MAX ROTHSCHILD.
+  TINTORETTO.            S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  LUINI.                 JAMES MASON.
+  FRANZ HALS.            EDGCUMBE STALEY.
+  VAN DYCK.              PERCY M. TURNER.
+  LEONARDO DA VINCI.     M. W. BROCKWELL.
+  RUBENS.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  WHISTLER.              T. MARTIN WOOD.
+  HOLBEIN.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  BURNE-JONES.           A. LYS BALDRY.
+  VIGÉE LE BRUN.         C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  CHARDIN.               PAUL G. KONODY.
+  FRAGONARD.             C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  MEMLINC.               W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
+  CONSTABLE.             C. LEWIS HIND.
+  RAEBURN.               JAMES L. CAW.
+  JOHN S. SARGENT.       T. MARTIN WOOD.
+
+_Others in Preparation._
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--MRS. HOARE AND CHILD. In the Wallace
+Collection, London. (Frontispiece)
+
+This picture is perhaps one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' most beautiful
+compositions. The flesh painting is very fine and the handling of the
+dress remarkably free, its delicate colouring being in beautiful harmony
+with the surroundings. The painter gave us a portrait of the same child
+when he was a boy; it is now in the collection of Baron Albert de
+Rothschild. Sir Joshua made for this picture a sketch in oils which
+hangs in the Gallery at Bridgewater House.]
+
+
+
+REYNOLDS
+
+by
+
+S. L. BENSUSAN
+
+Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
+New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Plate
+     I. Mrs. Hoare and Child                    Frontispiece
+          In the Wallace Collection, London
+                                                        Page
+    II. Nelly O'Brien                                     14
+          In the Wallace Collection, London
+
+   III. The Three Graces                                  24
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+    IV. The Age of Innocence                              34
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+     V. Lord Heathfield                                   40
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+    VI. Portrait of Two Gentlemen                         50
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+   VII. Portrait of Lady and Child                        60
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+  VIII. Duchess of Devonshire and Child                   70
+          At Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There are certain men born to every generation who approach life with
+the complete assurance of distinction in any work that they may have
+chosen for the exercise of their gifts. They are strangers to doubt and
+uncertainty; they disarm Fortune by claiming freely as a right what she
+is accustomed to grant grudgingly as a favour--"they ride Life's lists
+as a knight might ride." One feels that these fortunate few are destined
+for success just as the majority are doomed to failure, that nothing
+save a long series of mishaps can keep them from the goal of their
+ambition. They have the temperament that makes achievement easy, and a
+steadfast determination that the demons of mischance cannot resist for
+long.
+
+When one turns to consider English art in the eighteenth century, the
+name of Joshua Reynolds stands out in a brighter light than any
+other. One would not say that he was the greatest painter of his
+time--Gainsborough's gifts exceeded his in many directions, and Romney
+enters into competition too--but Reynolds was born under a fortunate
+star, and Nature gave him as a birthday present a rare mixture of
+talent, industry, and common-sense, together with a sober judgment that
+could not be turned aside by passion or emotion. Such gifts, if they do
+not always create a genius, may enable their possessor to achieve work
+that has certain affinities with the masterpieces of the immortals.
+Nobody in these days would deny for a moment that Reynolds possessed
+qualifications of the highest order; but ours is an age of hero-worship,
+and we are rather inclined to go beyond our brief in dealing with a
+representative man whose work has survived the criticism (though, alas,
+it has not always survived the atmosphere) of nearly two centuries.
+Reynolds is not the less a great painter because he did not happen to be
+the great man so many of his biographers have seen, nor was he a
+heaven-sent genius of the kind that flutters the musical dovecots from
+time to time. Infant prodigies are hardly known in the world of art,
+and Reynolds started life as a clever young man determined to make a
+name. He became soon a painter strong enough to realise his own
+limitations and those of his age, and to take the best possible steps to
+secure for his own art, and incidentally for that of his country, the
+highest position in the esteem of the world at large. Had there been no
+Reynolds there might have been no Royal Academy--the Institution in its
+earliest days was indebted very deeply to him. Himself far above the
+squabbles of the hour, he raised the Royal Academy into the serene and
+almost untroubled atmosphere in which he lived his life.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--NELLY O'BRIEN. (In the Wallace Collection)
+
+This portrait is one of the best examples of Sir Joshua's art, and was
+painted in 1763. The shadow on the face is most skilfully managed. The
+lace round the arm and the skirt are painted in the artist's best
+manner. It will be remembered that Sir Joshua painted other portraits of
+this fascinating woman.]
+
+"I will be a painter, if you will give me the chance of being a good
+one," he is said to have remarked when quite a lad, and this is but
+one of the simple sentences that hold and in a sense reveal the keynote
+of his character. Reynolds was determined to succeed. When he started
+his work there were few people in England who could guide him in the
+right way, and consequently we must not look for any great achievement
+in the early portraits. The painter may be said to have owed his first
+success to Commodore Keppel, who took him on a cruise in the
+Mediterranean and helped him to come into touch with the great
+masterpieces that will probably stimulate artists for all time. In
+return, the painter gave the sailor a measure of fame that his naval
+achievements would hardly have secured.
+
+Italy turned the dross of Reynolds' art to fine gold, and he never
+shrank from acknowledging the debt. Had he stayed in England he might
+have been a greater man than all his contemporaries, save Gainsborough
+and Romney, but he could not have given the world any one of the
+pictures that are reproduced here. Art will not yield to inspiration
+alone. The musician, or the literary man, with very simple education may
+be able to achieve wonders, but the artist who looks to brushes and
+colours for his medium must sacrifice diligently for many years at the
+shrine of technique before his hand can express what is in his brain.
+The years between 1749 and 1752, devoted by Reynolds to studying and
+copying the Vatican frescoes and the pictures of Padua, Milan, Turin,
+and Paris, were invaluable. Indeed he was one of the greatest copyists
+of his time, and Sir Walter Armstrong thinks that one of his copies of a
+Rembrandt is classed among the originals in the National Gallery
+to-day!
+
+Down to the year of the Italian journey the young painter's life had
+been quite uneventful. Born in 1723 at Plympton in Devonshire, where his
+father was a school-master, he was apprenticed in London to Thomas
+Hudson, a portrait painter of the day and a Devon man too. Hudson gave
+his pupil Guercino's drawings to copy. Before the time of apprenticeship
+had expired Reynolds had quarrelled with his master and gone back to
+Devonshire, where he painted work that was of no great importance, under
+the patronage of the first Lord Edgcumbe. At his house Reynolds met the
+Commodore Keppel, whose kindness enabled him to see Italy, and it was
+the sojourn in that real home of art that brought Reynolds back to
+England a portrait painter of the first class.
+
+Michelangelo had impressed him deeply. In later days he never lost an
+opportunity of advising students to sit at the feet of the great master,
+and the influence of the work in the Sistine Chapel may be noted in the
+famous picture of Mrs. Siddons, now to be seen in the Dulwich Gallery.
+Ludovico Caracci and Guido had given him hints that were of infinite
+value in the moulding of his technique; for colour he had gone to
+Titian, Tintoretto, and Rubens, of whom the last named was beginning to
+lose his appeal in the last years of Reynolds' life. Sir Joshua had a
+supreme facility for taking from every artist the best that was in him,
+melting it in the crucible of his own thought, and applying the product
+to his pictures. There is no doubt that the sixteenth-century Venetians
+impressed Reynolds as much as they impressed Ruskin at a later date, but
+in the middle of the eighteenth century the school of Bologna was in
+the ascendant in England, and it is through Reynolds' actions rather
+than his words that we see how Venice had influenced him. Sir Walter
+Armstrong thinks that Reynolds lived well rather than wisely in Italy,
+and that when he came back to town his wild oats were all sown, but it
+is hard to find any justification for the belief that Reynolds was at
+any time of his life a free liver. The pleasures of the table may have
+claimed him when he reached middle age; indeed, Dr. Johnson said to him
+on one occasion, "You complain about the tea I drink, but I do not count
+the glasses you empty," or words to that effect. As far as other forms
+of dissipation go, there is no evidence that Reynolds was ever a victim
+to them. He was always perfect master of his self-control, and when the
+years had toned down certain faults of thought and manner, he became
+mellowed, like old wine, and not less stimulating.
+
+Students of the famous discourses that Sir Joshua addressed annually to
+the Royal Academy after he became first President of the new
+institution, may be justified if they suspect that the great painter
+adopted the same rule in dealing with his students that skilled musical
+composers use when dealing with their pupils. A musican knows that the
+laws of harmony and counterpoint are not fixed, that the musical horizon
+widens year by year, and that rules may often be disregarded by a
+composer who has something to say; but, in order that composition may
+grow from some definite form, it is necessary that the rules should be
+mastered before they are disregarded. So in dealing with things of art,
+Reynolds said much to his audience that his own practice did not bear
+out. He would not hint at his own preferences quite so frankly as his
+canvases did and it is not at all unlikely that he realised as well as
+we do, that while students, like the poor, are always with us, great
+artists are few and far between, and will survive all academic
+limitations.
+
+When Reynolds came back to England in 1752, he went down to Devonshire
+to recruit his health. While his sojourn abroad had been productive of
+so much that had been invaluable to him, he had met with two unfortunate
+accidents. In Minorca he had fallen from his horse and sustained
+injuries that had left his face scarred for all time. In the Vatican he
+had sustained a chill that brought about the deafness destined to be a
+life-long infirmity. So he took holiday in the county he loved so well,
+and after his return he opened a studio in St. Martin's Street, acting
+on the advice of his friend and patron, Lord Edgcumbe. There was no
+period of weary waiting. Thanks to the quality of his work and the
+patronage granted so freely, he began at once to enjoy the success that
+belongs to the popular portrait painter. A little later he moved to
+Great Newport Street, where the accommodation was better suited to the
+growing claims of sitters, and in 1760 he went to 47 Leicester Square,
+now an auction-house, where he lived for the remainder of his life. As
+he moved he raised his prices, but nobody seemed to mind. Everybody who
+was anybody, paid cheerfully. So did some of the other people.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE THREE GRACES. (In the National Gallery)
+
+This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1774 and called,
+"Three Ladies adorning a Term of Hymen." It was bequeathed to the
+National Gallery by the Earl of Blessington. The Graces are the three
+daughters of Sir W. Montgomery. The one on the left kneeling down is the
+Hon. Mrs. Beresford, in the centre is the Hon. Mrs. Gardener, mother of
+Lord Blessington, and on the right is the Marchioness Townsend.]
+
+Many artists remain painters all their lives. Meet them in a studio or
+at a private view and they are illuminating; talk about another
+lying outside their immediate interests and they are dumb, or worse, for
+some talk without saying anything, as though they were mere politicians.
+Perhaps we have no right to complain of this lack of mental dimensions,
+but it is permissible to note with pleasure the few cases in which an
+artist reveals himself as an accomplished man of the world. Reynolds
+would never have been content to be nothing more than a painter, and he
+chose his friends so wisely that the living served him as well as the
+dead. If the great artists of Italy had shed light upon his path in one
+direction, what did he not owe to the men of his own generation, whose
+society must have been a source of inspiration to any intelligent man?
+Dr. Johnson himself could only have been inspiring company, even though
+we may think in our heart of hearts that the benefit of the inspiration
+was not without serious drawbacks. Reynolds enjoyed also the intimate
+friendship of Garrick, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and Burke, he consorted with
+many other men who made some mark in the world of thought, and in this
+atmosphere the extraordinary receptivity of his mind must have served
+him to great advantage. He had human weaknesses to live down, and it is
+to his credit that he conquered all or most of them. Like so many honest
+Englishmen, there was a touch of the snob about him--witness his
+correspondence with Lord Edgcumbe during the first visit to the
+Continent. He was not without jealousy, as may be seen from his pettish
+condemnation of the work of Liotard, the miniature painter and
+pastellist, and his references to Gainsborough and Romney, whose
+success and accomplishments galled him not a little. He was vulgar,
+until he learned refinement from the distinguished people with whom he
+was brought into contact--witness the gilded coach and gaudy liveries he
+bought when he established himself in Leicester Square, the coach in
+which his unfortunate sister Frances was compelled to drive in order
+that the man in the street might stare open-mouthed and talk about her
+brother. There is hardly a "Lion Comique," or a lady of the music halls
+drawing prime minister's salary for songs blatant or obscene, who would
+commit such an offence to-day, and against these lapses from taste Sir
+Joshua's acquaintance with the best minds of his day failed to save him.
+Perhaps the atmosphere of Leicester Square in the eighteenth, as in the
+twentieth, century was a little theatrical. Of course the faults of a
+man and the merits of his work are distinct and stand apart from one
+another, but we are too apt to look at Reynolds the man in the light of
+Goldsmith's epitaph, and it is the failing of popular biography to
+supply popular people with a measure of moral equipment that would make
+a saint self-conscious. It is far more interesting to see great men as
+they lived, and understand that, like the rest of us, they had a fair,
+or unfair, share of faults. Had Sir Joshua possessed twice as many
+failings, he would still remain one of the greatest, if not the
+greatest, of British portrait painters. Had he associated all the
+virtues with less achievement, he could not have interested us, because
+happily we do not judge art by the moral standard of the artist.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable side of Reynolds' mind was seen in its
+response to the real truths that underlie all the arts. He held his work
+to be a mode of expressing human experience, he knew that there was a
+domain lying beyond the reach of rules, and bade his students look "with
+dilated eye," sacrificing detail to general effect for the sake of the
+best and most imaginative work. He declared without any reservations,
+that he had found art in England in the lowest possible state, he
+compared some of his contemporaries' work with sign-post painting, but
+his fine courage was only stimulated by the bad conditions that
+prevailed. He sought to raise them, and as a portrait painter, made it
+his business to discover the perfections of his sitters, with the
+result, that, as his genius was wholly interpretative, his pictures
+stand rather less for his sitters than for their time.
+
+A weak man might have succumbed to the temptations that beset Reynolds
+when he had established himself in Leicester Square. He was in a sense
+the darling of society, earning a larger income than had been gained by
+any of his contemporaries, although he painted for prices that a
+third-rate man could gain to-day, if we do not regard the changed value
+of money. But Reynolds never succumbed to society; he conquered it,
+showing himself worthy of all the success that came to him. He did his
+best, he worked hard, relaxing his efforts only when his position was
+unassailable, took his enjoyment temperately, if we consider the age in
+which he lived, and never forgot that his chief aim and object in life
+was to paint portraits, and to paint them as well as he could. There
+were years in which he completed from three to four portraits every
+week, but by the time he was President of the Royal Academy, the output
+had fallen to sixty or seventy a year, no small achievement for a man
+who was at liberty to enjoy all that was best, and brightest, and most
+enduring in London society, and everything most attractive in the
+country.
+
+The life and times of Sir Joshua have a special interest for British
+artists, even apart from his work, because he lived through the years of
+storm and strife that saw the development of the R.A. It is not easy to
+tell in full the story of its establishment without long and detailed
+references to the quarrels and intrigues of the artists of the day and
+even then it is not easy to see the truth clearly through the mists of
+controversy. None of Sir Joshua's biographies goes uncontradicted, and
+it is safe to say that we must be content to forego for all time exact
+knowledge of certain incidents in the life of Reynolds. He had
+considerable reserve, a fair sense of diplomacy, and was not without
+knowledge that there were foes as well as friends in the crowd that
+surrounded him. His contemporaries were often baffled by his silence,
+and the secrets of his tastes and intimate likes and dislikes died with
+him. He had friends, but no confidantes. A brief outline of the creation
+of the R.A. is all that needs be given here.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.
+
+(In the National Gallery)
+
+This picture was bought at the sale of Mr. Harman's pictures. It has
+been engraved two or three times and is one of the most popular examples
+of the master's work.]
+
+In the year 1760, when Reynolds was approaching the zenith of his fame,
+an art exhibition was held in London, attracted a great deal of
+attention, and became an annual institution. Thereafter, we begin to
+hear of the Society of Artists, which received from George III. a
+certificate of Incorporation in 1765, blossomed out with the
+grandiloquent title of the "Incorporated Society of Artists of Great
+Britain," and published a list of two hundred and eleven members,
+including Joshua Reynolds. An offshoot from this society was known as
+the Free Society of Artists; in the history of art there have always
+been some men "agin the government." Heart-burning and jealousy were
+associated with the work of the Incorporated Society, and William
+Chambers the architect, who had the king's ear, brought about the
+foundation of the R.A. Reynolds took no visible part in the intrigue, in
+fact he was abroad during the months when the squabbles were most
+violent, and when the Presidency was offered to him, he asked for time
+to discuss the matter with Dr. Johnson and Edmund Burke. Apparently he
+had studied Shakspere's "Julius Cæsar." In December 1768, the
+constitution of the Royal Academy was signed by the King, and the
+Incorporated Society was left to linger for a few years in the cold
+shades of opposition and then depart from a world that had no further
+use for it. William Chambers and Benjamin West seem to have done all
+that was necessary to bring King George on to the side of the new
+venture, which had a very wide constitution, and thirty-six original
+members, including two ladies, Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser. William
+Chambers became Treasurer, Dalton was appointed Antiquary, Goldsmith was
+Professor of Ancient History, and Dr. Johnson stood for Ancient
+Literature. Curiously enough, it was the foundation by Captain Coram of
+the Foundling Hospital that led indirectly to the creation of the Royal
+Academy. Hogarth, who was a great friend of Coram, gave pictures for the
+gallery in the Hospital, Reynolds' old master, Hudson, Reynolds
+himself, and Wilson, a contemporary painter of great achievement, did
+the same. Mr. Claude Phillips, whose life of Sir Joshua Reynolds is one
+of the best written and most discerning tributes to the master extant,
+thinks that the success of the gallery at the Foundlings led to the
+opening of the first exhibition of pictures by living masters in 1860.
+The Society of Arts was then six years old, and the Society of Artists
+was established in friendly rivalry. We have remarked that at the time
+when the Incorporated Society of Artists was engaged in the final
+quarrel that led to the foundation of the Academy, Sir Joshua was
+travelling abroad with Richard Burke. His absence from the scene of
+strife is more likely to have been diplomatic than unintentional.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+We have now come down to the year 1769, and may pause with advantage to
+recall some of Sir Joshua's achievements and experiences that have been
+omitted from a rather hurried survey. He has already painted many of the
+most famous men and women of his time, and his contributions to the
+exhibitions of the Society of Artists have been the admiration of all
+who take an interest in pictures. Here some of his most famous pictures
+have been hung, the "Lady Elizabeth Keppel as a bridesmaid," the
+"Countess Waldegrave," "Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy" (now in Lord
+Rothschild's town house) and many others too numerous to be mentioned in
+such a brief review as this.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--LORD HEATHFIELD. (In the National Gallery)
+
+This work which is held by good judges to be one of the most
+characteristic portraits painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds was commissioned
+by Alderman Boydell in 1787. In the background there is a view of the
+Rock of Gibraltar much obscured by smoke, for the picture commemorates
+the defence of the Rock from 1779 to 1783 by Lord Heathfield, then
+General Eliott. The gallant soldier holds the key of the fortress in his
+hand. The picture was purchased by the Government for the National
+Gallery in 1824.]
+
+He has made another pleasant journey into Devonshire, this time in
+company with Dr. Johnson, whose consumption of cider and cream has
+created a mild sensation. He has visited Wilton and Longford, where some
+of his works may be seen to-day; he has enlarged his circle of friends,
+while his acquaintances are as the sands upon the seashore for
+multitude. He belongs to the once famous Dilettanti Society, founded in
+1732 to study antiquities and arts; he has painted his own portrait to
+celebrate his election, and presented it to the Society. It may be seen
+in the Grafton Gallery to-day, together with two groups of members
+painted at a later date.
+
+His drawing has become strong, his modelling firm, and his colour has
+many of the qualities that distinguished the Venetian masters he loved
+so well, but, alas, he has not learned the secrets of permanent
+colouring, and some of his most brilliant glazes are beginning to fade
+before the eyes of the troubled owners of the pictures. He has
+surrendered to the pseudo-classicism of his age, and some of his
+compositions are absurdly indebted to mythology; but the fault was a
+virtue then, and while we complain it is only right to refer the
+grievance to the time rather than to the man, and a study of Boswell
+explains the painter's attitude, even though it cannot justify it.
+
+He has found time to enjoy the pursuits of a country gentleman; he
+shoots and hunts in the best sporting circles. His home in Leicester
+Square is open to all sorts and conditions of men; the leading lights of
+the day--Gainsborough and Romney excepted--are welcome. He keeps a
+liberal but ill-served table, and his friends will find a welcome if
+they call in time for dinner at five o'clock, even if they must
+scramble for a fair share of the meal. He has lost the raw manners of
+early years, _faux pas_ are few and far between. From Johnson he has
+acquired a certain literary style, rather heavy and turgid, perhaps, but
+precise and final. It is possible, but not certain, that "The Club" has
+been established, and that the twelve original members are meeting for
+supper at the sign of the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street. He has pupils,
+for whom he does little or nothing, and assistants who paint draperies
+for him, and receive a little useful instruction now and again.
+Northcote, who is to publish his "Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds" nearly
+half a century later, and become the one successful painter from the
+Leicester Square establishment, has met the great man in Devonshire with
+emotions similar to those that Reynolds felt in the far away days when,
+an unknown pupil of Hudson, he saw the great and distinguished author of
+"The Rape of the Lock" in the centre of an admiring and respectful
+crowd.
+
+Who shall do justice to the crowds that thronged the studio? Certainly
+mere words cannot picture the scenes that the old house in Leicester
+Square witnessed in those stirring times. Deafness could hardly have
+been an unmixed evil to a man whose sitters were of the most diverse
+kind. Leslie and Taylor in their voluminous work, "The Life and Times of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds," have written at length upon this aspect of the
+painter's daily life, and have described the constant stream of men and
+women who could not have been placed side by side for five minutes save
+on the walls of the exhibition. Representatives of the most opposed
+school of politics, High Church dignitaries, courtesans, soldiers,
+flaneurs, society women, sailors, ambassadors, actors, children, members
+of the Royal Family, men from the street, like White the paviour--one
+and all claimed the measure of immortality that his brush confers, and
+if his best work could but have retained its qualities, the latter half
+of the eighteenth century would be preserved for us in fashion
+calculated to make future generations envious. Unfortunately, Sir Walter
+Armstrong, the painter's most trenchant latter day critic, is justified
+when he writes: "Speaking roughly, Sir Joshua's early pictures darken,
+the works of his middle period fade, those of his late maturity crack.
+The productions of his first youth and of his old age stand best of
+all." When the worst has been said, it is a glorious heritage that the
+painter left to his country, but who can avoid regrets when thinking
+what it might have been if Reynolds had mastered the secrets of
+permanent colour, if the carmine and lake had endured, and the more
+brilliant effects had not been so largely experimental--if he had given
+them a fair trial in studies before he used them for his best work?
+Perhaps his success left no time for experiments. Sitters were urgent
+and could not wait while the painter studied the question of the
+chemistry of pigments.
+
+There is a curiously sane and optimistic note about all the Reynolds
+portraits. Even where he does not succeed--in painting portrait groups,
+for example--the fault is merely one of composition, he keeps to his
+earliest intention of expressing what is best in the sitter, and seeing
+him "with dilated eye"; he is merely unable to set several figures upon
+the same canvas. Save for ever increasing deafness and a little trouble
+with sister Frances, who keeps house for him and is not cast in the same
+placid mould, nothing occurs to disturb the even tenor of his happy
+life. Intellect rules emotions--either he has no feeling for intrigue or
+he can keep his emotions beyond the reach of prying eyes. Even his
+relations with Angelica Kaufmann, now in her twenty-eighth year, and an
+original member of the Royal Academy, baffle the censors who would fain
+discover that she was the painter's mistress. "His heart has grown
+callous by contact with women," says one of his contemporaries or
+biographers, and this may well be so. Angelica Kaufmann was one of the
+women who attract men, and there is no evidence to show that Reynolds
+was more than a good friend to her. Long years later, when the visits to
+Leicester Square could have been no more than a memory, she attracted
+Goethe, who used to read to her some of his unpublished work. The
+painter's self-control has made some of his biographers angry; they
+write as though fearful lest, on account of his virtue, there shall be
+no more cakes and ale, and ginger shall no longer be hot in the mouth.
+If they could but catch him tripping, he might return to the highest
+place in their affections, and all would be forgiven. There is something
+so human in this attitude that it becomes almost tolerable, though it is
+hard to avoid a smile when one finds that the subject of the relations
+between Sir Joshua and Miss Kaufmann have been discussed quite seriously
+by foreign writers. If Sir Joshua could have made the lady a better
+artist, if it can be shown that he saved her from being a worse one than
+she was, there is something to write about; the subject of their
+personal relations cannot possibly concern the world at large, and is
+not worth a tithe of the ink that has been spilt in attack or defence.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF TWO GENTLEMEN. (In the National
+Gallery)
+
+This picture was painted in 1778 and presented to the National Gallery
+in 1866 by Mrs. Plenge. The gentleman on the right examining the prints
+and holding a violin in his right hand is one J. C. W. Bampfylde, the
+one on the left is the Rev. George Huddersford who was for some years a
+painter and a pupil of Sir Joshua.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+We owe an apology to the new President whom we left standing upon the
+threshold of the Royal Academy, which opened its doors with a first
+exhibition of one hundred and thirty-six pictures! The memory of this
+commendable modesty should not be allowed to fade in these days when
+canvas stretches by the acre over the long-suffering walls of Burlington
+House, when artists appear not singly but in battalions and the cry is
+"still they come." In April 1769 Reynolds received the honour of
+knighthood and this seems to have put the finishing touches to his
+social claims. Henceforward he painted fewer portraits; the records of
+1771 credit him with a mere seventy, and though this figure may make
+modern men gasp, it compares but feebly with the one hundred and
+eighty-four that stood to the credit of an earlier year. The President
+increased the number of his clubs, enlarged his dining circle, became
+more and more dignified, mellow, gracious, and urbane, farther removed
+than before from the turmoil that was going on in art circles of the
+less successful men around him. Having all the cream he required, he was
+not concerned with quarrels about skimmed milk. Some of his biographers
+think that Romney was beginning to compete with the master, and that
+this competition accounts for the diminishing number of his sitters, but
+it is reasonable to suppose that a man who can make his own prices and
+is beyond the reach of want may regard seventy portraits as a very
+satisfactory output for one year, when he has other duties to fulfil and
+is by temperament a lover of the world's good things. Fortune could have
+given him nothing more, unless the hearing that passed in the old days
+of the pilgrimage to Rome had been restored, and if such a miracle could
+have been vouchsafed, the painter's splendid indifference to matters
+that annoy quick, nervous temperaments might have passed, and the latter
+days might have been clouded. If wisdom at one entrance was nearly shut
+out, there was plenty left, as may be gathered from a study of the
+Discourses. Their vitality is proved by the fact that new editions are
+still called for, and many members of the more modern schools of
+painting declare that Reynolds saw some aspects of painting with
+twentieth-century eyes.
+
+In 1773 Plympton remembered its famous artist and elected him mayor, an
+honour that touched him nearly. One cannot help thinking that it was
+more to him even than the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, conferred in
+the same year by Oxford University _de honoris causa_, though this too
+helped him to paint his own portrait in flamboyant style, and the artist
+loved colour. One portrait of himself was sent to the town of Plympton
+and hung between two pictures that were "old masters" according to the
+leading lights of the Corporation. In truth, they were two of Sir
+Joshua's own early works, and from this simple story we may learn that
+artists come and artists go, but the mental calibre of corporations is
+constant and not subject to change. He sent another picture of himself
+to the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence, where so many Masters stand
+self-committed to canvas in pictures that do not err upon the side of
+making the sitters lack distinction.
+
+The next eight years were uneventful, save for the fact that the
+President was doing some of his best work and enjoying life in the
+fullest and most complete fashion imaginable. Nearly all who knew him
+loved him, and to the great majority of men and women he was just and
+kind. For a man so completely free from emotion and self-revelation,
+Reynolds claimed a very large circle of intimates, and it was hardly an
+age of introspection. Men confessed themselves to their Maker but not to
+their friends; the formalities of life and speech presented an effective
+barrier to the emotions, even the stage was as artificial and pompous as
+it could be. One may perhaps acknowledge an uneasy feeling that David
+Garrick himself would make a very small impression upon a latter-day
+audience, if he confronted it with the mid-eighteenth-century style of
+speech and action.
+
+In 1780 the Academy Exhibition was transferred from Pall Mall to
+Somerset House, where it was destined to remain until 1838, the year of
+its removal to the National Gallery, where it stayed thirty-one years on
+the way to Burlington House. Among the portraits painted by the
+President in that year was one of General Oglethorpe, who, according to
+the "Table Talk" of Samuel Rogers (quoted by Sir Walter Armstrong),
+could tell of the days when he had shot snipe in Conduit Street. In the
+following year Reynolds painted the wonderful picture of the Ladies
+Horatia, Laura, and Maria Waldegrave, one of the few groups whose
+arrangement is beyond cavil. Few will look in vain to that picture for
+any of the finest qualities of Sir Joshua's art. He had very little to
+learn, though in the summer and autumn of 1781 he visited the Low
+Countries, staying in Bruges, Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam, and other
+cities, and showing himself strangely indifferent to the pictures of
+Franz Hals, though these might have been presumed to appeal to any
+portrait painter. His records and impressions of the journey were set
+down most carefully, and are preserved; they show that success had not
+impaired discernment, and that the painter was responsive to most of the
+thoughts that stir educated visitors to the Dutch galleries to-day.
+
+In 1782, the year in which Romney painted his first picture of Mistress
+Hart, afterwards Lady Emma Hamilton, Reynolds sat to his great rival
+Gainsborough, now at the height of his fame and in the last years of his
+life; the two men disliked each other, and the picture was never
+completed. Some say that Reynolds made a hasty remark about his fixed
+determination not to paint Gainsborough's portrait in return, and some
+mischief-maker carried the words to Gainsborough. Others think that the
+touch of palsy or slight attack of paralysis that came to Sir Joshua
+about the time of the sitting, brought it to a close. There must be more
+than this underlying the true story of the affair, for though a visit to
+Brighton and to Bath restored the President's health, the sittings were
+not resumed, even when Reynolds wrote to say he was ready to sit again.
+In 1783 Sir Joshua sent ten portraits to the Academy, while
+Gainsborough, exhibiting there for the last time, sent twenty-five
+pictures, including the famous panels of George III., and his
+children, now in Windsor. But Reynolds added to his fame in this year,
+for he painted the portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Then he
+paid another visit to the Low Countries, to find with regret that
+Rubens' appeal was failing.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF LADY AND CHILD. (In the National
+Gallery)
+
+This portrait was purchased in 1871 with the Peel collection and is said
+to represent the Hon. Mrs. Musters and her son. The composition does not
+show Sir Joshua at his best, and the painting is perhaps rather thin.
+The identity is not very clearly established, although the names of Mr.
+and Mrs. Musters are to be found in Sir Joshua's account books.]
+
+In the following year, 1784, Sir Joshua sent sixteen pictures to the
+Academy, including the famous Mrs. Siddons, Charles James Fox, and Mrs.
+Abingdon as Roxalana. Gainsborough had quarrelled with the R.A. and
+exhibited no more, though he lived until 1788. With December, Dr.
+Johnson's strenuous and useful life came to an end; he passed away
+exhorting his old friend never to paint on Sunday, and to read the
+Bible. Reynolds has left a very interesting study of the Doctor's
+character. In the following year, the President went for the third time
+to the Low Countries, and bought a number of pictures; he also received
+the honour of a commission from Catherine, Empress of Russia, and
+painted the beautiful picture of the Duchess of Devonshire and her baby
+that hangs at Chatsworth to-day. Walpole said, "it is little like, and
+not good," but posterity has declined to accept the verdict. Sir Walter
+Armstrong considers that it ranks with the "Lady Crosbie" and "Nelly
+O'Brien" as the "most entirely successful creations" of the artist.
+In '87 the President sent thirteen pictures to the Academy, including
+the "Angel's Heads" now in the National Gallery. They are studies of
+Frances Isabella Gordon, daughter of Lord William Gordon, and the
+picture was given to the Gallery in 1841. A year later, London saw the
+picture that the Empress Catherine had commissioned, the subject is
+"The Infant Hercules" and the canvas hangs in the Hermitage Gallery at
+St. Petersburg. It is one of the artist's failures, and he received
+fifteen hundred guineas for it. This is the date of the famous
+Marlborough family group that is to be seen at Blenheim.
+
+A year later, when the President sent some dozen pictures to the R.A.,
+his activity came to a sudden end. Some forty years and more had passed
+since he painted the first of his works that concerns us, and he had not
+known an idle season. His record would have brought honour to any three
+men; he had lived as a philosopher should, grateful for the gifts of the
+gods, and not abusing any. Suddenly, in mid-July of 1789, about the time
+of the fall of the Bastille, one eye failed him as he worked at his
+easel; he laid his brush aside. "All things have an end--I have come to
+mine," he remarked, with the quiet courage that never deserted him, and
+he spent what remained to him of life making gradual preparation for the
+last day, sustained by memories of the past through hours that were not
+always free from pain and distress. Save for a quarrel with the Academy,
+arising out of the contest for membership between Bonomi and Fuseli,
+there was nothing to disturb the closing years of the old painter's
+public life, and even in this quarrel, he was the victor. The General
+Assembly apologised, and Reynolds withdrew his resignation, though
+Chambers, now Sir William, was obliged to act for him at Somerset House.
+In December of 1790 Reynolds delivered his final address to the
+students, the name of Michelangelo being last upon his lips. Little more
+than a year before he died, the President sat to the Swedish artist von
+Breda, for a picture now in the Stockholm Academy. West did his
+presidential work for him in the last months of his life.
+
+Many friends testify to the tranquillity of these last days, though
+failing sight and the deprivation of the liberal diet to which he was
+accustomed had lowered the spirits that were once bright as well as
+serene. Perhaps modern medical science would have availed to lengthen
+his life, and make the last few years more worth living; but in the
+eighteenth century one needed a very sturdy constitution to endure the
+combined attack of a disease and a doctor. Sir Joshua was in his
+sixty-ninth year--he had lived in the fullest sense all the time--and
+when one evening in February 1792 Death came to the House in Leicester
+Square, his visit was quite expected, and was met with a tranquil mind.
+The body lay in state awhile in the Royal Academy, and was then taken to
+St. Paul's Cathedral, and laid by the side of Sir Christopher Wren.
+To-day we look at the artist's work with a critical eye--he can no
+longer thrive by comparison with contemporaries, but must compete with
+all dead masters of portraiture; and it will be admitted on every side
+that he holds his own, that before every throne of judgment his best
+works will plead for him and vindicate the admiration of his countrymen.
+
+It is not the least of his claims to high consideration that his art
+moved steadily forward, that the last work was the best.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Naturally it is impossible within the limits of a small and
+unpretentious monograph to give an adequate idea of the range and
+variety of the labours that occupied Sir Joshua Reynolds for half a
+century or more, and no attempt will be made in this place to do more
+than indicate the forces that seem to have directed his brush, the
+masters whose labour inspired it. It has been pointed out in these pages
+that Reynolds was a great assimilator. He took from everybody, but he
+was always judicious, because, quite apart from his executive faculties,
+he had a critical gift of the first order. One has but to turn to his
+diaries to realise that his instinct was singularly sound. He could
+stand before an admitted masterpiece and enjoy all its beauties, without
+losing sight of any defect however small, and because his mind was
+beautifully balanced, the small points of objection did not spoil his
+appreciation of the whole work. They simply taught him what he should
+avoid. In the very early days of his career, before he had left
+Devonshire, he made the acquaintance of one Gandy, an artist of some
+small repute, whose father, also a painter, had studied Van Dyck, and
+had taught his son to appreciate the fine qualities of Rembrandt. The
+younger Gandy afforded Reynolds his first glimpse of the world lying
+beyond the reach of the rank and file of British students, gave him his
+earliest appreciation of Rembrandt, and taught him to look for that
+master's work when he visited Rome. As soon as Reynolds reached Italy,
+he examined the great masters with a critical eye, and set himself to
+copy Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Guido, Raphael, and many others. He soon
+saw that each of these masters had achieved supreme success in some
+department of their life's work, and he had the idea of uniting all the
+excellences that he saw around him, and leaving the defects alone.
+He sought for the colour of Rubens and Titian the drawing of Raphael,
+the splendour of design of Michelangelo, and the chiaroscuro of
+Rembrandt. Naturally this must sound ambitious enough; but we should
+remember that Reynolds was far from standing alone in his ambitions.
+Mengs, who did so much to proclaim the merits of Velazquez and achieved
+a great but temporary success as a painter in Madrid before Goya's
+wonderful gifts threw him into well-merited obscurity, had the same
+ideals, but whereas the best of his accomplishments were but dull and
+short-lived, Reynolds was able to force some way through all the gifts
+with which he sought to surround himself and to reach a style of his
+own. The journey lasted very many years, and the road is strewn with
+failures, chiefly due to an inability to grasp the secret of a durable
+glaze and, like many men who came before and after him, the painter had
+to part company with some at least of his ambitions. Had his own
+capacity for self-criticism been less, had he allowed his feeling for
+fine colour to prevail over the sound judgment that bade him look for
+other and more enduring excellencies, he would not occupy the place he
+holds to-day, while on the other hand, if a Titian or a Rubens had been
+able to give him the secret of manipulating pigments, he would have
+stood side by side with the greatest masters of all time.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE AND CHILD. (Chatsworth
+House, Derbyshire)
+
+This picture, to which reference has been made in the text, hangs at
+Chatsworth, and has been reproduced by permission of His Grace the Duke
+of Devonshire. Although Walpole sneered at it when he saw it for the
+first time, the composition stands to-day among the most admired of the
+master's works.]
+
+Artists tell us that painting should be no more than a harmony of colour
+and line, that it should not attempt to cross the borderline that
+separates painting from literature. They are justified in their
+attitude, but at the same time we cannot discuss painters in terms of
+paint, or tell of our admiration of their work by expressing that
+admiration on canvas. Those of us who are not painters, can only
+approach art through literature, and seek to find in a man the
+explanation of his works, and in the works, the revelation of the man.
+
+Joshua Reynolds possessed a master mind. He had wonderful capacity for
+synthesis and analysis, and something akin to the skilled physician's
+gift of diagnosis. As soon as he had built up the foundations of his own
+art and found a new method of presentation, he turned all his mental
+capacity to the study of the people who sat for him. As soon as he had
+achieved technique, the other gifts that no technique could develop came
+into play, and then his work revealed its extraordinary qualities, side
+by side with the few limitations that beset his mode of life. In
+society, Reynolds would seem to have been courtly and reserved. He did
+not expand to women as he did to men, for he looked upon women and
+children as subjects for classical treatment. He made them extremely
+beautiful; he gave them graces and gifts that flatter the imagination of
+those who gaze upon his pictures to-day: but there are not too many
+portraits of women among those painted by Reynolds in which there is a
+large quality of humanity. He suppresses a great part of the human
+interest that may have been in them, and replaces it with beauty of
+colour and line. Now and again, of course, he is very fortunate. When he
+painted the great courtesans of his day, Polly Fisher, Nelly O'Brien,
+and others of that frail sisterhood, the qualities he omitted left the
+sitters quite human. There was no suggestion of the classic about them.
+A Nelly O'Brien at her best is just a woman, while some of the
+high-born ladies at their best became a little too cold, a little too
+stately, a little too well-posed for the wicked world they lived in.
+Even when we consider the famous "Jumping Baby" that hangs at
+Chatsworth, it is impossible to avoid the thought that if the little one
+had really been so happy and so playful, the mother's fine feathers must
+have been considerably ruffled, and she must have made haste to give the
+child back to the nurse.
+
+His children, too, are seldom of this world. Reynolds was a hardened old
+bachelor with an eye for beauty. He had not studied Bellini and
+Correggio for nothing, and many of his little ones are far more like
+Italian angels in modern dress than English boys and girls. Of course
+there are notable exceptions. "Master Crewe as Henry the Eighth" is
+delightfully English. "The Strawberry Girl" is another picture painted
+in hours of delightful inspiration, but "The Age of Innocence," for all
+its supreme beauty, has a certain quality of conception that is
+artificial. To look at Reynolds' women and children is to feel assured
+that the painter lived a celibate life, and that the stories about
+intrigues with Angelica Kaufmann and others are misleading and
+unfounded. We have but to turn to the work of his great contemporaries,
+Gainsborough and Romney, to see the difference between women in whose
+veins the blood runs red, and women who feed on nectar and ambrosia and
+were never seen at a disadvantage in their lives. It seems to the writer
+that women and children were to Reynolds fit and proper subjects for the
+exercise of his gifts, but at the same time, folk in whom he had no
+abiding interest. Men interested him, and when he turned the best of his
+attention to them, he gave the world work that will endure just as long
+as the pigments he put down upon the canvas.
+
+The picture of Admiral Keppel, hanging to-day in the National Portrait
+Gallery, was the first ripe fruit of the painter's Italian journey, and
+had produced in the world of art something akin to a sensation.
+Thereafter Reynolds stood alone as the representative eighteenth-century
+painter of great men. His rivals could not approach him there. He seemed
+to see right into the heart and brain of the men who sat for him, to
+realise clearly and judiciously the part they were playing in life, and
+he strove to set it down in such a fashion that the character and
+capacities of the sitter should impress themselves at once upon those
+who saw the portrait. Other painters might give one aspect of a man,
+but Reynolds' vision was far larger--it was completely comprehensive;
+when he had dealt with a subject, it was well-nigh impossible to
+approach it again, save in the way of imitation. There was a finality
+about the treatment that must have baffled and exasperated his rivals.
+The portraits of Charles James Fox, David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, to
+name a few, are masterly in their simplicity, in the directness of their
+appeal, and in the splendid expression of character through features. To
+satisfy the claims of Reynolds' brush it was absolutely necessary that
+his sitters should have character, even if it was a bad one. That is why
+the portraits of courtesans arouse attention in fashion that women whose
+characters were undeveloped either for good or for evil will never
+succeed in doing.
+
+It is not always easy to realise what Reynolds' work was like at its
+best, because so many of his canvases have either lost their original
+tints or have suffered the final indignity of restoration. In his search
+after the secret of the Venetians he made many elaborate experiments at
+the expense of his sitters, and pictures that were remarkable in their
+year for colour that aroused the enthusiasm of connoisseurs grew old
+even sooner than the sitters. His solid foundations decomposed, the
+surface colour of many a celebrity is now as pale as the sitter's own
+ghost may be supposed to be. Here there is perhaps some excuse for
+looking at Reynolds' work from the literary standpoint, because though
+the harmony of line may remain, the harmony of colour has gone beyond
+recall, and there are some at least of Reynolds' pictures in which the
+colour, had it been preserved, would have been the most effective
+quality. At times the great artist's draughtsmanship was far removed
+from excellence. And yet when criticism has said its last word, the name
+and fame of Sir Joshua Reynolds will remain the pride of British art and
+the admiration of the civilised world.
+
+
+The plates are printed by BEMROSE DALZIEL, LTD., Watford
+
+The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41497 ***