Duchess of Devonshire and Child
(Chatsworth)
This picture, sometimes known as "The Jumping Baby," is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. When first seen some people found fault with it, Horace Walpole among the number, but it has gained popularity with age. The composition is very skilled, but the Duchess is perhaps rather too much en grande tenue to appear as nurse.
When we consider the ill fortune of the Incorporated Society and the Society of Artists and remember how actively men intrigued then, as now, it is not difficult to see that the Royal Academy owes a heavy debt to Sir Joshua, who may be said to have nursed it with the greatest care during its infancy and was such a generous contributor to the walls of its annual exhibition that he is said to have sent nearly two hundred and fifty pictures during his term of office. The first Exhibitions were held in Pall Mall, but during Sir Joshua's lifetime there was a move to Somerset House. To 1838 the annual display was transferred to the National Gallery, and in 1869 Burlington House became the centre of activities that increase in volume if not in interest year by year.
It is impossible to compile a list of the distinguished men and interesting women who sat to Sir Joshua, but a very brief resume may be made of some of the most familiar. The three Ladies Waldegrave, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Cockburn and her children, Mrs Master as Hebe, Miss Kitty Fisher, Miss Nelly O'Brien, Mrs Lloyd, the Honourable Lavinia Bingham, Angelica Kauffmann, Mrs Hoare and her baby, Countess Waldegrave and daughter, Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse, The Graces decorating a Terminal Figure of Hymen, the Duchess of Devonshire and baby—here we have a few of the female portraits by which the painter would have achieved success if he had painted no others.
He painted four or five portraits of King George III., two of his wife, and two of George IV. as Prince of Wales; the number of peers is legion. Among statesmen Edmund Burke sat to him five times and Charles James Fox four. Brinsley Sheridan sat twice and Horace Walpole three times. Other men sitters of note were Bartolozzi the engraver, Dr Burney, David Garrick, Dr Johnson, Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith, Gibbon the historian, Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne. Of himself Reynolds painted between forty and fifty portraits.