The Charm of Reynolds
I. HIS ART AND CHARACTER
Portraits painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds are a national asset, and appeal to the general public in this light almost as strongly as they appeal to the smaller section that takes a definite interest in pictures. The value of the portraits varies considerably; it is probable that the artist produced between four and five thousand in his time, sometimes completing three or four in a week for years on end, and even in his more leisured times producing six or seven per month, so it was of course inevitable that their value should not be equal. The very early work painted in Devonshire is of little worth. Italy opened the eyes of Joshua Reynolds as it has opened the eyes of so many British artists since his time. Fortunate in his life the painter was; in a certain sense, unfortunate in his art. The beauty he has committed to canvas had begun to pass before the artist's days were numbered, and many of his most successful works are to-day no more than a pale reflection of their former selves, a remnant most forlorn of what they were. One of his most painstaking biographers and soundest critics, Sir Walter Armstrong, has written, "Speaking roughly, Sir Joshua's early pictures darken, the works of his middle period fade, those of his late maturity crack."
"Despite these drawbacks, the painter's position is unassailable, for it appeals alike to the historian, to the philosopher who looks to the outward semblance for reflection of the spirit behind the mask, and to the artist who finds so much to delight him in the point of achievement to which Reynolds raised portrait painting and can appreciate the larger aspect of work that is visible in some degree to everybody.
The man was a sturdy Briton, he worked hard all the days of his life, he had a large measure of shrewd common sense, great gifts, high ideals, and sufficient human weakness to make him what the Spaniards call "hombre como alquier otro," a man like any other. His art may stand upon a pedestal but he never did, he was too busy and too unaffected to pose. "I'll be a painter if you'll give me a chance to be quite a good one," he is reported to have said, when a little boy, to his father, the Plympton school-master, and once a painter he worked on and on, enjoying life but never abusing it, until 1789, when he was sixty-six, and apparently in the mellow autumn of his days. Then as he was painting in his studio one July morning, the sight of one eye failed him suddenly. Quite quietly he laid his brushes down. "All things have an end," he said; "I have come to mine." Some two and a half years were left to him but he would not paint any more; he preferred to be judged by the tasks he had accomplished in the light of health. He continued to address the students of the Royal Academy; he consented to remain titular head of that body though Sir William Chambers and Benjamin West, who was regarded as a great painter in his day, looked after the actual work of the high office. He was not a mere cipher in the counsels of the Academy on that account; to the end he had his own way. Very masterful, very human, very kind, he stands out the most prominent figure in an age that produced both Gainsborough and Romney.
Nelly O'Brien
(Wallace Collection)