[angel heads.—reynolds.]

Our list of Reynolds’s pictures would be defective without some mention of the famous Angel Heads, which is peculiarly a representative work. It consists of a cluster of little cherubs, representing, in five different expressions, the delicate features of a single face, whose original was Miss Frances Isabella Gordon. Painted in 1786, near the close of his great career, it seems to gather up into a harmonious whole those several aspects of childhood which Sir Joshua’s long and wide experience had revealed to him as the typical movements of the child mind.

The five totally dissimilar expressions embody those varying attitudes of mind which the child may successively assume in any critical experience of its young life. The clear-cut profile of the lower face at the left suggests the face of the child in the Age of Innocence who first confronts the problem of life. The one just above has the thoughtful poise of the little girl Simplicity, pondering over an important question, while the remaining heads stand for those imaginative and emotional moods which complete the cycle of human experience.

[nature.—lawrence.]

The original of this beautiful picture[1] is in the National Gallery at London, and fortunate indeed are they who have the privilege of standing before it to delight their eyes with the blonde loveliness of the sweet faces, framed in aureoles of golden ringlets.

It would be difficult to estimate the incalculable influence which the life and work of Sir Joshua Reynolds have exerted on the progress of art in the past century. The influence of his paintings was supplemented by the series of discourses which it was his duty as President of the Royal Academy to deliver annually on subjects of art criticism. His unparalleled success brought forth many followers and imitators; but among their works few can be selected as worthy presentations of childhood in ideal types.