When Mrs. Siddons entered Reynolds’s studio, he said, as he conducted her to the raised platform:
“Take your seat upon the throne for which you were born, and suggest to me the idea of the ‘Tragic Muse.’”
“I made a few steps,” relates the actress, “and then took at once the attitude in which the ‘Tragic Muse’ has remained.”
When the portrait was finished, Sir Joshua said:
“I cannot lose this opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment,” and he placed his signature on the border of the gown.
All of which are the conditions under which theatrical and meritricious art is produced. The portrait of a woman posing as the “Tragic Muse” may turn out well, but the chances are otherwise.
There are “portrait-painters” who are better than others, and the best of all were Rembrandt and Velasquez, the latter the greatest portrait-painter who ever lived,—so great that his portraits are great as pictures; but not quite in the abstract sense that a painting by Raphael is a picture,—a bright and beautiful song in line and color; not quite in the sense that a painting by Angelo is a picture,—the tumultuous outpouring of a human soul; not quite in the subtle sense that a painting by Whistler is a picture,—a harmony to delight the eye as music delights the ear.
Rembrandt and Velasquez were great in technical directions in their portraiture, and their achievements remain unchallenged; but in the painting of portraits each was something of the “portrait-painter,”—not the facile, commercial painter of to-day, but they painted portraits to earn their living. Now and then the portrait was a labor of love and a great picture, seldom—at least in the case of Velasquez—a matter of drudgery, and therefore a failure.
Velasquez was so happily situated in the court at Madrid, of the king’s household, on friendly terms with the royal family, that he painted their portraits with far more devotion and interest than he could possibly feel towards a stranger.
A portrait of Philip the Fourth by Velasquez ought to be as good a work of art as a bust of Pericles by Phidias,—and that is about the most that can be said in portraiture,—but a bust of Pericles would not be the best that the art of Phidias could do, for his art was not limited by lineaments.