While Reynolds was on his memorable journey to Rome, he made several volumes of notes about the pictures of great Italian artists--Raphael, Titian, etc. And one of those volumes is in the Lenox Library, New York City. He made a most characteristic and delightful remark in regard to his disappointment in Raphael's pictures. "I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance ... of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them, as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of the most humiliating things that ever happened to me."
He loved home and country so much that while in Venice he heard a familiar ballad sung in an opera, and it brought the tears to his eyes because of its association with "home."
His young sister, was so undecided in her ways and opinions as to make it impossible for Reynolds long to live with her, but she undertook to be his housekeeper when he returned to London, and she also tried to copy his pictures Reynolds said the results "made other people laugh, but they made me cry."
Reynolds painted the portraits of two Irish sisters--the Countess of Coventry and the Duchess of Hamilton--two of the most beautiful women in all the British Empire. "Seven hundred people sat up all night, in and about a Yorkshire inn, to see the Duchess of Hamilton get into her postchaise in the morning, while a Worcester shoemaker made money by showing the shoe he was making for the Countess of Coventry." Sir Joshua declared that whenever a new sitter came to him, even till the last years of his life, he always began his portrait with the determination that that one should be the best he had ever painted. Success was bound to attend that sort of man.
He painted every picture almost as an experiment; meaning to learn something new with every work, and he spent more than he made in perfecting his art. As he said: "He would be content to ruin himself" in order to own one of the best works of Titian.
His deeds of kindness are beyond counting. He rescued his friend Dr. Johnson from debt--thereby saving him from prison; and when a young lad, "a son of Dr. Mudge," who was very anxious to visit his father on the occasion of his sixteenth birthday, grew too ill to make the journey. Reynolds said gaily: "No matter my boy. I will send you to your father." He painted a splendid portrait of the boy and sent it to Dr. Mudge. This gift of a picture, however, was very unusual with Reynolds, who, unlike Gainsborough who gave his by the bushel to everyone, declared that his pictures were not valued unless paid for. When Sir William Lowther, a gay and rich young man of London, died, he left twenty-five thousand dollars to each of thirteen friends, and each of the thirteen commissioned the painter to make a portrait of Lowther, their benefactor. His work room was of interest: "The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned on casters. His palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The stocks of his pencils were long, measuring about nineteen inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest to the window, and never sat down when he painted." The chariot in which he drove about had the four seasons allegorically painted upon its panels, and his liveries were "laced with silver"; while the wheels of his coach were carved with foliage and gilded.
Sir Joshua knew that it paid to advertise, and as he had no time to go about in that gorgeous chariot he made his sister go, for he declared that people seeing that magnificent coach would ask: "Whose chariot is that?" and upon being told could not fail to be impressed with his prestige. The comical inconsequence of this anecdote concerning a man so important robs it of vulgarity.
The graceful anecdotes told of Reynolds are without number, but one and all are to his advantage and show him to have been good and gentle, a devoted and high-bred man.
PLATE--THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE AND HER DAUGHTER
This is generally considered one of the finest of Sir Joshua's pictures, if not the most beautiful of all. He was such a welcome guest at the houses of grandees that perchance he had noticed the lovely duchess playing with her still more lovely baby, and thought what a charming picture the two would make. As a representation of the artist's ability to portray grace and sweetness it can hardly be surpassed. He painted it in 1786, half a dozen years before his death, and it now hangs in Chatsworth, the home of the present Duke of Devonshire.