Reynolds had that love for children and domestic pets which seems inseparable from great and good natures. He would pay the most assiduous court, and make the most gallant advances, to some of the exquisite little models who sat to him, till they became spellbound. And one day, his canary having escaped from its cage, nothing would content the P.R.A. but he must go out into the glaring sunshine, with his weak eyes, and the green shade over them, to spend hours in seeking and whistling for his lost favourite.
The end was approaching. His spirits became depressed, his appetite failed, and on the evening of February 23, 1792, he concluded a blameless life by a calm and peaceful end. The manuscript of Burke’s obituary notice still exists, blotted with the writer’s tears. It was written in the very house where the friends had spent so many happy hours together. Beautiful in its touching eloquence, we regret we have only space for a short extract:—
‘From the beginning Sir Joshua contemplated his dissolution with a composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and his entire submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In the full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, by the learned in science, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him. He had too much merit ever to excite jealousy, too much innocence ever to provoke enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with so much sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.’ And these words were confirmed by the crowds of every calling, position, and class which followed him to the grave.
The body lay in state at Somerset House. There were ninety-one carriages followed, so that, before the first in the line had reached St. Paul’s, the last was still at the entrance of Somerset House. The Annual Register for that year gives a detailed account of the funeral. The pall-bearers were ten Peers, Reynolds’s personal friends, the greater part of whom had been his sitters. And the procession included three Knights of the Garter, two of St. Patrick, and one of the Thistle; three Dukes and four Lords-Lieutenant of Ireland; the whole body of Academicians, painters, authors, actors,—every name distinguished for literature, art, and science. Sir Joshua left numerous legacies; many of his finest pictures were bequeathed to private friends.
He left the bulk of his fortune, for her life, to his sister, Frances Reynolds, with reversion to his niece, Mary Palmer, afterwards Lady Thomond, together with a large collection of his paintings, which were sold and dispersed at her death.
The number of his paintings seems miraculous when the list is read. He was a large contributor to the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy. At the first of these he sent four; at the last (as far as he was concerned, in 1790) he sent but six, only two years before his death. But in the interim his pictures often numbered fourteen, sixteen, and, on one occasion, seventeen, for his talent was only equalled by his industry, and he was a workman as well as an artist, to which fact all his contemporaries bear witness.
No. 4.
THE NIECE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, MARY, OR THEOPHILA PALMER.
Sitting. White gown. Blue sash. Hair falling on her shoulders.