Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
From a Picture by himself in his Majesty’s Collection.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
SIR J. REYNOLDS.
“Sir Joshua Reynolds,” says Burke, “was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country.” Without staying to inquire how far the literal truth of this assertion may be affected by the priority in date of Wilson and Hogarth, not to mention their less illustrious predecessors, it may safely be affirmed, not only that Reynolds was the founder of the English school, but that the most valuable qualities in the art of painting were almost lost sight of throughout Europe when he began his career. In Holland, the rich manner of Rembrandt, feebly sustained by his imitators, had been succeeded by no less opposite a style than that of Vanderwerf; the still more laboured finish of Denner, a native of Hamburgh, followed; while the minute perfection which was in vogue found a more legitimate application in the flower-pieces of Van Huysum. Reynolds was twenty-four years old at the decease of Denner, who had twice visited London, and had been much employed there. The French school about the middle of the last century took its tone from Boucher, a name now almost forgotten, and if remembered, synonymous with the extreme of affectation; he was principal painter to Louis XV. The native country of Claude and Poussin was indeed more illustrious during this time in the department of landscape, as Vernet produced his views of sea-ports about the period alluded to; but this example, however respectable, was itself indicative of a declining taste, and the style of view-painting in the hands of the foreign artists who practised it in Italy, with the Prussian Hackert at their head, had the effect of extinguishing for a time all invention in landscape. The academy at Berlin was under the direction of a Frenchman; Oeser was the greatest name at Leipzic and Dresden; and the south of Germany still imported imitations of the latest Italian styles in fashion. The state of the arts in Spain may be judged of by the fact, that when, in 1761, Mengs, who was himself a native of Germany, repaired to Madrid in the service of Charles III., the chief painters established there were a Venetian and a Neapolitan, Tiepolo and Corrado Giaquinto. The Venetian school, sometimes entirely losing its original character, seemed at least to maintain a consistent degeneracy in the styles of Sebastian Ricci and the above-named Giambattista Tiepolo, both weak and mannered imitators of Paul Veronese, but still preserving, at least the latter, some brilliancy of colour and pleasing execution. With Tiepolo the characteristic merits of the school seem however to have ceased altogether: towards the latter part of the century, the chief employment of the Venetian painters was the restoration of old pictures.[[2]] A particular school was established in 1778 for this purpose, and a description of the extraordinary labours of the artists is preserved in the thirty-eighth volume of Goëthe’s works. In Rome, the talents of Maratta and Sacchi, and “the great but abused powers of Pietro da Cortona,” had been succeeded by feebler efforts, descending or fluctuating through the styles of Cignani, Trevisani, and others, till the time of Sebastian Conca, and Pompeo Battoni. The last-named was approaching the zenith of his short-lived reputation, and almost without a rival (for Mengs was as yet young, and Conca already aged), when Reynolds visited Rome.
[2]. It is worthy of remark that about the same time the sculptors in Rome were as exclusively employed in restoring antique statues.
Laborious detail on the one hand, and empty facility on the other, formed the distinguishing characteristics of these different schools; but however opposite in execution, mind was alike wanting in both. Denner may be considered the representative of the microscopic style; a style, if it deserves the name, which he applied even to heads the size of life; and as mere finish never was, and probably never will be carried to a more absurd length, his name, though comparatively obscure, marks an epoch in the art. The same scrupulous minuteness obtained about the same time in landscape; among the view-painters, Hendrick Van Lint, surnamed Studio, may be named as the most remarkable of his class. Reynolds alludes to him in one of his discourses, as noted, when he knew him in Rome, for copying every leaf of a tree. The opposite style, which aimed at quantity and rapidity, was derived from the expert painters of galleries and ceilings, called “Machinisti,” and more immediately from Luca Giordano. Facility and despatch, at the expense of every solid quality of art, were the characteristics of the school which was represented in the earlier part of Reynolds’s career, principally by Sebastian Conca in Italy, and by Corrado Giaquinto in Spain.
The changes which took place in this state of things, towards the latter part of the century, may be traced partly to the renewed appreciation of the antique statues (a taste which, however beneficial to sculpture, had an unfortunate influence on the sister art), and subsequently to political circumstances. The fluctuations of taste, however deliberately estimated by retrospective criticism, are indeed generally the result of accident, and depend on causes but seldom derived from a just definition of the nature and object of art. It appears, however, that Reynolds, alone as he was, the founder rather than the follower of a school, enjoyed the rare privilege of making the taste of his time instead of being made by it; and although it would be absurd to suppose that he could be independent of the accidents with which he was brought in contact, it will not appear, upon a candid inquiry, that this great artist was in any respect directly influenced by the practice of his age.
Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton, near Plymouth, in Devonshire, July 16, 1723; he was the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, who taught the grammar school of Plympton. The young artist’s fondness for drawing manifested itself early, and at eight years of age he had become so well acquainted with the “Jesuits’ Perspective,” as to apply its principles with some effect in a drawing of his father’s school, a building elevated on stone pillars. Among other books connected with art to which he had access, Richardson’s ‘Treatise on Painting’ had a powerful effect in exciting his ambition. The earliest known picture he attempted is a portrait of the Rev. Thomas Smart, who was the vicar of Maker, the parish in which Mount Edgecumbe is situated. Reynolds, then a schoolboy about twelve years of age, sketched the portrait of the vicar at church, and afterwards copied it on canvass. This picture is now in the possession of John Boger, Esq., of East Stonehouse near Plymouth. The taste of the young painter becoming every day more decided, his father, urged by the advice of some friends, placed him at the age of seventeen as a pupil with Hudson, who had at that time the chief business in portrait painting, although a very indifferent artist. In 1743 Reynolds returned to Devonshire, in consequence of a disagreement with his master, and set up as a portrait painter in the town of Plymouth Dock, since called Devonport. He here painted various portraits, chiefly of naval officers. One of these works, containing the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Eliot and family, is in the possession of the Earl of St. Germains. The composition of this picture, the artist’s first attempt at a group, approaches the pyramidal form, and Reynolds, after contemplating it when finished, observed, ‘I see I must have read something about a pyramid, for there it is.’ Six other pictures of the artist are preserved in the same collection, at Port Eliot in Cornwall. An admirable picture of a boy reading by a reflected light was also executed about this time. Many interesting works of Reynolds, some of them belonging to his earlier practice, are preserved in the immediate neighbourhood of Plymouth, in the collections of the Earl of Morley, Mr. Pole Carew of Antony, Mr. Rosdew of Beechwood, Mr. Lane of Coffleet, and others. The artist’s early works, although sometimes carelessly drawn, are distinguished by breadth of colour, by freedom of handling, and not unfrequently by great truth of expression: in short, he seems to have contracted none of the defects of Hudson, except, according to some of his biographers, a certain stiffness and sameness in the attitudes of his portraits; defects which he afterwards exchanged for such grace, spirit, and, above all, endless variety, that it was said “his inventions will be the future grammar of portrait painters.” The earliest portrait he painted of himself is in the collection of Mr. Gwatkin of Plymouth, who married a niece of Reynolds: the same gentleman also possesses the last portrait of the artist by himself, together with many other interesting specimens of his pencil. In 1747 Reynolds repaired again to London, and took lodgings in St. Martin’s Lane, then and long afterwards the favourite residence of artists. In 1749 he sailed to the Mediterranean, by the invitation, and in the company of Captain (afterwards Lord) Keppel. Reynolds spent two months in Minorca, where he painted several portraits of military and naval officers, and proceeded thence, by way of Leghorn, to Rome.
He was fully alive to the sources of inspiration which this city of the arts contained. In the midst of his enthusiasm, however, he was secretly humiliated by discovering in himself an absence of all relish for the grand works of Raffaelle in the Vatican. Richardson had inspired him with the most exalted admiration of Raffaelle; and whatever may be supposed, Reynolds could not be entirely unacquainted with the subjects and designs of the works alluded to. Indeed, in some notes of his own that have been preserved, he only confesses a feeling of disappointment, and afterwards says, “In justice to myself, however, I must add, that though disappointed and mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raffaelle, and these admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind: on the contrary, my not relishing them, as I was conscious I ought to have done, was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was unacquainted; I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed; all the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (indeed it could not be lower), were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind.” The union of candour and docility with good sense, which the above account evinces, was the means of emancipating Reynolds from the taste or fashion of the day. Instead of enrolling himself among the scholars of Pompeo Battoni, as he was strongly recommended to do before his departure from England by his kind patron Lord Edgecumbe, he endeavoured during the practice of his art to penetrate the principles on which the great works around him, particularly those of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, were produced. His general theory will be found embodied in his writings, and if his principles sometimes appear to be pushed too far, we may perhaps attribute it to the wish to counteract certain prevailing errors among his contemporaries. It is a general notion that, considering the difference in style between the paintings of Reynolds and those of the great models he professes to admire (Michael Angelo received his more especial homage), he could not have been sincere in acknowledging so thorough a conviction of their excellence. To decide fairly on this difficult and often-discussed point, it is necessary to remember the state of the arts when Reynolds formed his style. The great vice of the age was a routine practice, seldom informed by any reference to the general nature of the art, and as little remarkable for a just discrimination of its various styles. In such a state of things it cannot excite surprise that a sagacious and unprejudiced mind, in endeavouring to retrace the leading principles of the art, should at the same time see the necessity of modifying them in their application to a particular, and in some respects a limited, department. As portrait painting, the imitation of individuals, was to be Reynolds’s chief occupation, it certainly did not occur to him that the abstract representations of Michael Angelo, or even of Raffaelle, could be fit models for him to follow, as far as execution was concerned. He saw however that these masters were probably right even in this respect, when the dignity and purity of their aim, and when subject, place, and dimensions are duly considered. His imitation of them therefore began when he endeavoured to define the end and object of the particular style of art which he himself professed; and although he soon concluded that it required a widely different treatment, he failed not to translate, if we may so say, the causes of the grandeur he admired into the language which belonged to his own department. What he considered the distinctive and desirable requisites of portrait painting to consist in, may be best learnt from his own works. In the first place, the more delicate refinements of colouring and chiaro-scuro, by no means essential in the grander and more abstract department of the art, are indispensable where the imitation is confined to a single and generally a defective person. It is thus that Rembrandt made up the sum of beauty by the fascinations of gradation and contrast, while the forms he had to deal with were often of the most ordinary description. The just imitation of the colour of flesh, the most beautiful and at the same time the most nameless hue in nature, has ever been considered the triumph of imitative art, and confers value and dignity on the work wherever it is fully accomplished. Again, it must be remembered that the domain of expression begins with the accidents of form; that it belongs to and often recommends individuality and redeems deformity; and that its vivid interest is to be sought less in the abstract personifications of Michael Angelo, far less in the higher region of beauty which the Greeks justly placed above the atmosphere of the passions, than in the varieties of accidental nature. Reynolds seized on the delicacies of expression as strictly harmonizing with the individual forms he had to copy: and, while thus adding a charm to his class of art, he became at the same time the abler portrait painter; for the character and expression of the individual are the chief points which are demanded. Lastly, the conduct and execution of his pictures were in strict conformity with the same principles, and may be said to have been dictated by the largest view of the nature and means of the art.
In his works the attention is always attracted by the important objects, or diverted from them, when diverted, only to conceal the artifice which thus commands the eye of the spectator. It is evident that the general degree of completeness will depend on that of the principal object; and assuming that Reynolds’s style of painting a head was sufficiently elaborate (it is generally less so than Vandyck’s), the unfinish of the accessories could hardly be otherwise than it is, consistently with due subordination. The truth of this consistency of style was ultimately acknowledged, and although so opposite from what had before been in fashion, and so different in many respects from what the vulgar admire, the pictures of Reynolds soon won the favour of the public. If the admiration of his works had any ill effect, it was that it tended to produce an imitation of the same mode rather than of the same consistency.