Born at Plympton Earl, Devonshire, July 16, 1723: Died at London, Feb. 23, 1792. A celebrated English portrait-painter. He was educated by his father, a schoolmaster and clergyman. In Oct., 1741, he went to London and studied under Thomas Hudson. In 1746 he established himself as a portrait-painter in London. By invitation of his friend, Commodore (afterward Admiral) Keppel, he sailed for Italy on the Centurion, arriving in Rome at the close of 1749. Owing to a cold which he took there, he became deaf and never recovered his hearing. After two years in Rome he visited Parma, Florence, Venice, and other Italian cities. He returned to London in 1752, and was intimately associated with Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, and others. The “Literary Club” was established at his suggestion in 1764. In 1768 The Royal Academy was founded, with Reynolds as its first president. His annual addresses form its well-known “Discourses.” In 1784, on the death of Allan Ramsay, he was made painter to the king. Reynolds wrote three essays in the “Idler” (1759–60). His most famous works are his portraits of Johnson, Garrick, Sterne, Goldsmith, the little Lady Penelope Boothby, Mrs. Siddons as the “Tragic Muse,” the “Infant Hercules,” the “Strawberry Girl,” “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy,” etc.

Personal

  I heard yesterday of your late disorder, and should think ill of myself if I had heard of it without alarm. I heard likewise of your recovery, which I sincerely wish to be complete and permanent. Your country has been in danger of losing one of its brightest ornaments, and I of losing one of my oldest and kindest friends; but I hope you will still live long, for the honour of the nation: and that more enjoyment of your elegance, your intelligence, and your benevolence is still reserved for, dear Sir, your most affectionate, &c.

  His native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse. His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity…. Sir Joshua Reynolds was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time…. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and of the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits, he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere…. Few individuals have proved themselves so capable of illustrating the theory of the science they professed, by their practice and their discourses…. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher…. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.

  Poor Sir Joshua! How good—how kind—how truly amiable and respectable! The best of men—whose talents, though an honour to his country, were the least of his qualifications!

  I became first acquainted with him in 1778, and for these twelve years past we have lived in the greatest intimacy…. He was blessed with such complacency and equality of temper, was so easy, so uniformly cheerful, so willing to please and be pleased, so fond of the company of literary men, so well read in mankind, so curious an observer of character, and so replete with various knowledge and entertaining anecdotes, that not to have loved as well as admired him would have shown great want of taste and sensibility. He had long enjoyed such constant health, looked so young, and was so active, that I thought, though he was sixty-nine years old, he was as likely to live eight or ten years longer as any of his younger friends…. I cannot help thinking that we should not have lost this most amiable man for some years, had there not been want of exertion, combined with some want of skill in his physicians…. On his body being opened, his liver which ought to have weighed about five pounds, had attained the great weight of eleven pounds. It was also somewhat scirrhus. The optic nerve of the left eye was quite shrunk, and more flimsy than it ought to have been. The other, which he was so apprehensive of losing, was not affected. In his brain was found more water than is usual in men of his age.

  He had none of those eccentric bursts of action, those fiery impetuosities, which are supposed by the vulgar to characterize genius, and which frequently are found to accompany a secondary rank of talent, but are never conjoined with the first. His incessant industry was never wearied into despondency by miscarriage, nor elated into negligence by success. All nature and all art combined to form his academy…. In conversation he preserved an equable flow of spirits, which had rendered him at all times a most desirable companion,—ever ready to be amused, and to contribute to the amusement of others. He practised the minute elegancies, and, though latterly a deft companion, was never troublesome.

  In his stature, Sir Joshua Reynolds was rather under the middle size. He was in height nearly five feet six inches, of a florid complexion, roundish, blunt features, and a lively, pleasing aspect; not corpulent, though somewhat inclined to it, but extremely active. With manners highly polished and agreeable, he possessed an uncommon flow of spirits, but always under the strictest regulation, which rendered him, at all times, a most pleasing and desirable companion. Such was the undeviating propriety of his deportment, that wherever he appeared, he invariably, by his example, gave a tone of decorum to the society. With a carriage the most unassuming, he always commanded that personal respect which was shown him on all occasions. No man was more fitted for the seat of authority. When acting in a public capacity, he united dignity with ease; in private society he was ever ready to be amused, and to contribute to the amusement of others; and was always attentive to receive information on every subject that presented itself; and by the aid of an ear-trumpet he was enabled to partake of the conversation of his friends with great facility and convenience.

  Sir Joshua Reynolds had no real or affected peculiarities, which distinguished him from the plain English gentleman: He was subject to no fits of hysteric enthusiasm, asserted no undue pretensions, and thought nothing beneath his consideration which the rank that he held in society appeared to require at his hands. The history of his life will afford but little scope to those who look for romance as inseparable from genius, and think it unbecoming, in men of lofty minds, to climb to fame by a path which might be trodden by others.

  The good-humour of Reynolds was a different thing from that of Hogarth. It had no antagonism about it. Ill-humour with any other part of the world had nothing to do with it. It was gracious and diffused; singling out some, it might be, for special warmth, but smiling blandly upon all. He was eminently the gentleman of his time; and if there is a hidden charm in his portraits, it is that. His own nature pervades them, and shines out from them still.

  I am afraid Sir Joshua, though a bachelor, is not very particular about his studio being kept neat; for I observe, evidently left from yesterday’s campaign, a great ring of brown dust, which I believe to be the Famous Hardham’s 37, the snuff from 37, Fleet Street, that Garrick uses and puffs. There it is all round the easel, dropped in lavish slovenliness—a trail of it marking the artist’s walk between the easel and the throne. It is rather a weakness of Sir Joshua’s, and, in fact, he sometimes sets his wits and beauties sneezing, so that they lose their expression and spoil their attitudes. The six sitters of to-day will not like it. I know he, Sir Joshewa, is so bland and courteous, they will not like to say anything, remembering the story at Blenheim, of how he refused to let the servant the duchess sent sweep up the snuff till he had finished painting, observing that his picture would suffer more injury by the dust than the carpet could possibly do with the snuff.

  I declare, I think, of all the polite men of the age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman.

  Sir Joshua, in Miss Burney’s “Diary,” appears bland, amiable, sensible, unaffected, and essentially kindly. In this the “Diary” is borne out by all the reliable contemporary evidence to character. The conception of him as a cold, calculating, politic, selfish being, a smoulderer instead of a blazer, is a figment of later biographers and critics. Its best foundation is an occasional splenetic remark of Northcote’s, made when he was old, ailing, and querulous, but contradicted by the general tenor of Northcote’s own account of the painter he reverenced, and whom he was always holding up as a pattern to young men.

  It was while studying Raphael’s frescos in the Vatican that Reynolds caught the cold which resulted in his deafness; and thereafter the ear-trumpet of Sir Joshua was as characteristic a part of himself as was the wooden leg a part of the redoubtable Governor Peter Stuyvesant. He even painted his own portrait with his trumpet held to his ear; though, when about the same time he painted Dr. Johnson holding a book very close to his eyes, the great man did not relish this vivid evidence of his extreme near-sightedness, but said to Boswell: “Sir, he may paint himself as deaf as he chooses, but I will not go down to posterity as ‘Blinking Sam.’”

  His personal life is indicative of the spirit that influenced his art. There was nothing erratic, venturesome, or impulsive about either. It is difficult to believe that the man at any time, either in life or in art, possessed such things as fire, passion, romance. He was too calm for either love or hatred, too conservative for brilliancy, too philosophical for enthusiasm. In art he placed less reliance upon inspiration than upon intelligent knowledge, believed the gospel of genius to be work, and thought originality a new way of saying old truths. Such ideas as these form the chief counts in his discourses to the students of the Royal Academy.

  The beauty of his disposition and the nobility of his character were equal to his talents. Without any physical advantages—for he was neither tall nor handsome, and had the great social drawback of deafness—he secured without seeking, and maintained without effort, a position in society which is almost unrivalled. Treating all men on the plain level of common human nature and unactuated by any prejudice, he mixed, as by natural charter, with all classes. His principal passports were kindliness, sincerity, and tolerance; but these were aided by a ready sympathy, of a well-informed mind, gentle manners, and invariable tact and common-sense. The charm of his presence and conversation was all the more irresistible because it was unforced and unfeigned. He was a born diplomatist, and avoided friction by natural instinct; a philosopher who early learnt and consistently acted on the principle not to concern himself about matters of small importance.

Art

  One of the most interesting exhibitions of this season is of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ pictures, which have been sent from all parts of the kingdom by the owners, and which are remarkable, not only for the genius of the master, but as a gallery of all the beauties, wits, and heroes of the last sixty years, who have almost all been painted by Sir Joshua.

  Having emptiness for breadth, plastering for surface, and portrait individuality for general nature. Reynold’s tone is too much toned. Raffaele is pure and inartificial in comparison. Reynolds is a man of strong feeling, labouring to speak in a language he does not know, and giving a hint of his idea by a dazzling combination of images—Raffaele a master of polished diction who conveys in exquisite phraseology certain perceptions of truth…. It may take its place triumphantly by any borreggio on earth. It is very lovely. The whole series are unequaled by an English master.

  If I was to compare him with Vandyke and Titian, I should say that Vandyke’s portraits are like pictures (very perfect ones no doubt), Sir Joshua’s like the reflection in a looking-glass, and Titian’s like the real people. There is an atmosphere of light and shade about Sir Joshua’s which neither of the others have in the same degree, together with a vagueness that gives them a visionary and romantic character, and makes them seem like dreams or vivid recollections of persons we have seen. I never could mistake Vandyke’s for anything but pictures, and I go up to them as such; when I see a fine Sir Joshua, I can neither suppose it to be a mere picture nor a man, and I almost involuntarily turn back to ascertain if it is not some one behind me reflected in the glass; when I see a Titian I am riveted to it, and I can no more take my eye off from it than if it were the very individual in the room.

  The influence of Reynolds on the taste and elegance of the island was great, and will be lasting. The grace and ease of his compositions were a lesson for the living to study, while the simplicity of his dresses admonished the giddy and the gay against the hideousness of fashion. He sought to restore nature in the looks of his sitters, and he waged a thirty years’ war against the fopperies of dress. His works diffused a love of elegance, and united with poetry in softening the asperities of nature, in extending our views, and in connecting us with the spirits of the time. His cold stateliness of character, and his honourable pride of art, gave dignity to his profession: the rich and the far-descended were pleased to be painted by a gentleman as well as a genius.

  The colouring of Sir Joshua Reynolds in his best works combines the highest qualities of Correggio and Titian with the brilliancy and luxuriance of the Dutch and the Flemish schools, deprived of their tumidities. The common error that his colours all fail, ought by this time to be entirely effaced. It is too true that this is the case with the colouring of many pictures painted by him during a short period of his life; he thought that he had discovered a mode of rendering colouring more vivid, and employed it without duly considering the chemical qualities of his materials. But he was soon made acquainted with the mistake he had committed, reassumed his durable system with increased beauty and vigour, and continued to employ it till the termination of his valuable labours.

  That the portraits of Reynolds were the best of all likenesses I have no manner of doubt. I know several of his pictures of children, the originals of whom I have seen in middle and old age, and in every instance I could discover much likeness.

  But there is likewise a window, lamentable to look at, which was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and exhibits strikingly the difference between the work of a man who performed it merely as a matter of taste and business, and what was done religiously and with the whole heart; at least, it shows that the artists and public of the last age had no sympathy with Gothic art. In the chancel of this church there are more painted windows, which I take to be modern, too, though they are in much better taste, and have an infinitely better effect, than Sir Joshua’s.

  Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures and Vandyck has nobler subjects, but neither of them enter so subtly as Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper.

  With Reynolds the assurance of the master never bordered on impertinence. He was searching always and to the end, and even those melancholy experiments with pigments and colours which have served to hasten the ruin of many of his pictures, are but the outward sign of a higher intellectual curiosity which is of the very essence of his genius. To the close of his long career his painting preserved the interesting characteristics that in the work of other men belong only to the season of youth and progress: he is little of a mannerist, because he has none of the settled confidence of style which begets mannerism: with each new subject he is moved to new effort and experiment: and though the measure of his success is not always the same, even his failures are not the failures of audacity or self-assurance.

  The individual portrait was the portrait of Sir Joshua. In him the gift of painting men and women was supreme. Not only did he paint them in their habit as they lived, but with such masterly suggestion of character as was practically unknown amongst the men of his generation…. A singularly calm and genial temper was joined to an astonishing alertness of observation, and these gifts were trained by constant and varied practice. Always on the watch for the turn of the head, the uplifting of the hand, the bending or stiffness of the figure, he never seems to have failed to recognise the really differential note of character. And he indicated these things with extraordinary subtlety. In particular, he divined the character of children with unfailing accuracy and sympathy. As has been very perfectly said, Reynolds has the secret of all the characteristic graces of women and children.

  The name of Sir Joshua Reynolds holds a place of honor among the world’s great portrait painters. To appreciate fully his originative power one must understand the disadvantages under which he worked. His technical training was of the meagrest kind, and all his life he was hampered by ignorance of anatomy. But on the other hand he combined all those peculiar qualities of the artist without which no amount of technical skill can produce great portrait work. He had, in the first place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. His was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. Each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own accord in beautiful lines. Reynolds knew, too, the secret of imparting an air of distinction to his sitters. The meanest subject was elevated by his art to a position of dignity. His magic touch made every child charming, every woman graceful, and every man dignified. Finally, he possessed in no small degree, though curiously enough entirely disclaiming the quality, the gift of presenting the essential personality of the sitter, that which a critic has called the power of “realizing an individuality.” This is seen most clearly in his portraits of men, and naturally in the portraits of the men he knew best, as Johnson.

General

  I cannot think that the theory here [in his “Discourses”] laid down is clear and satisfactory, that it is consistent with itself, that it accounts for the various excellences of art from a few simple principles, or that the method which Sir Joshua has pursued in treating the subject is, as he himself expresses it, “a plain and honest method.” It is, I fear, more calculated to baffle and perplex the student in his progress, than to give him clear lights as to the object he should have in view, or to furnish him with strong motives of emulation to attain it.

  Then, as to Sir Joshua’s writings, their spirit is all in delightful keeping with his pictures. One of the few painters he—such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and so on—our own Barry, Opie, Fuseli, and so on—who could express by the pen the principles which guide the pencil. ’Tis the only work on art which, to men not artists, is entirely intelligible.

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, who has the good fortune to be remembered alike by his pencil and his pen, and whose discourses still remain the most sensible and judicious work on the principles of painting, in our language.

  A word as to his style. There is a clearness and perspicuity about it which enables us at once to perceive the drift of his remarks; he does not conceal himself in a dense mass of verbiage, nor does he write ambiguously, hinting at this and suggesting that, but arrow-like goes straight to his point. Withal, there is no baldness; every sentence is carefully constructed, and there are everywhere marks of the labor limæ; perhaps here and there it savours somewhat too much of elaboration. Still, it is a very graceful style; just what we should expect from a cultured, well-tempered mind,—scholarly without pedantry, easy without vulgarity.

  The earliest art-criticisms of any value published in this country were contained in the annual and biennial “Discourses” which Sir Joshua Reynolds, F.R.A., delivered from January 1759 to his retirement in December 1790. They were issued year by year, and collected after his death…. It was, doubtless, through his lifelong companionship with Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith that Reynolds learned to write in the English language only a little less brilliantly than they.

  Nothing is more remarkable in the great career of our master than the genuine literary ability which he developed by degrees, side by side with, yet quite independently of, his artistic capacity. And we must wonder the more when we remember that he received not more than the education of the average school-boy of his time, and in the course of his well-filled and practically uninterrupted career was unable to supplement early deficiencies by any sustained course of reading or study.

  The personal charm and strength of character, which doubtless assisted the universal recognition of his genius, may account in part for the great influence of his writings. His style, though somewhat formal, was graceful, simple, and urbane. He had been trained in the classical school of Dr. Johnson, who “qualified him to think justly,” but fortunately his admiration of the master did not tempt him to forget, in composition, the true principles of imitation which he expounded in the “Discourses.”

  The fame of Sir Joshua’s Discourses is at first sight a little difficult to understand. For a hundred years it has been the fashion to treat them as models of literature and monuments of critical profundity. Their style has been thought so much too good for their putative author, that the great shades of Burke and Johnson have been descried at Sir Joshua’s elbow, controlling his expression and even suggesting his ideas. Again, their reasoning on the foundations of art has been so far accepted by those who ought to know, that they have been put, as a text-book, into the hands of some twenty generations of students. And yet Sir Joshua’s style is good only through its sincerity; and his teaching sound only if meant to be superficial…. To us who have the advantage of a distant perspective, it seems extraordinary that any one should ascribe the eminently human, but somewhat invertebrate periods of Sir Joshua first to Johnson and afterwards to Burke. As a writer Reynolds was, of course, an amateur. He had never been drilled in the use of language, or compelled to notice how the practised writer avoids those involutions and cacophonies which spring from the unguarded expression of complex ideas. He piles relative on relative and participle on participle, until his sentences become so long drawn out that we have to read them twice to grasp their meaning. As interpreted by a good speaker, they would, no doubt, be clear enough. Vocal modulations would bring out the sense. But Reynolds, we are told, had a very bad delivery, and so it is not surprising that his colleagues paid him the compliment of a request to print his sermons!… In reading Sir Joshua, we feel that he is inside his subject, groping his way out. His guesses are often unhappy, and lead him to conclusions which are little else than absurd. But there he is, nevertheless, inside, and doing his best to understand his milieu, and to get a right conception of the whole matter. His methods of expression are imperfect, and leave us with the idea that his conceptions are too complicated to be rendered in such words as he can command.