Reynolds

REYNOLDS

MISS NELLY O’BRIEN
1763. Wallace Collection, London
BY RANDALL DAVIES CONTAINING SIXTEEN EXAMPLES IN COLOUR OF THE MASTER’S WORK LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1913 PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON
The chief authorities on the life and work of Reynolds are James Northcote, R.A., his most successful pupil; Henry William Beechey, and C. R. Leslie, R.A., each of whom produced a two-volume work on the subject. The first of these appeared in 1819, seventeen years after Sir Joshua’s death; the next in 1835, and the last, edited by Tom Taylor, in 1865.
Besides these capital works there are memoirs by Joseph Farington, R.A., by Edmund Malone, by William Cotton, by William Mason, and by Allan Cunningham in his “Lives of the British Painters,” all of which appeared in the earlier half of the last century.
From such an abundance of material, to say nothing of modern publications, it is hardly possible to collect everything that is of value within the limits of a short memoir. Only such points as are in themselves essential, or seem significant in relation to the enormous influence of Reynolds on his contemporaries, has it been attempted to dwell upon.
R. D.

When Benjamin West, a native of Pennsylvania, was elected President of the Royal Academy, on the death of Reynolds in 1792, he found the arts in a state of prosperity which could hardly have been predicted when Reynolds began painting in London just half a century earlier. To attribute this happy improvement to his illustrious predecessor alone would have been more than was fair to West himself, and in giving to Sir Joshua the fullest credit for his share in it, the claims of one or two great painters and of more lesser lights than can readily be counted must not be overlooked. But, when all have been fairly considered, it is to Reynolds that the highest tribute is due for having helped, by precept as well as by practice, to raise the arts from the low estate in which he found them at the outset of his career to the proud position in which they stood at the close of the eighteenth century. “He was the first Englishman,” said Edmund Burke, “who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country.”