LORD HEATHFIELD
1787. National Gallery, London
high-bred grace of which Reynolds was a master beyond all the painters who ever painted women.” This is indeed high praise for what was probably the first female portrait he painted after his return from Italy. But there is no doubt that Reynolds had now acquired enough mastery over his “ignorance” to be capable of producing work which would be comparable with anything he was to do in the future. Tom Taylor notes another half-length painted in the spring of the following year in hardly less glowing terms; it is of Mrs. Molesworth—“a young and lovely brunette, in one of the quaint every-day dresses of the time, closely copied, without the least attempt at ‘idealising’ or ‘generalising,’ with flowers in her hand, a little cap on her head, a prim apron, and a lawn kerchief closely covering her shoulders. It is one of the most attractive of his female portraits, and especially valuable for its literalness.”
That his very earliest works should receive, and indeed deserve, such commendation requires emphasising in order to restore to him a good deal of the credit for the revival of portraiture in England which nowadays is given to his only successful rivals, Gainsborough and Romney. The fascination that Gainsborough’s natural genius throws over his admirers—and Reynolds himself was not entirely unaffected by it—is apt to blind them to the more solid merit of the other, and the fact that Reynolds had achieved so much before Gainsborough had really started painting portraits is apt to be overlooked. In 1751, when Sir Joshua had fairly established his reputation, Gainsborough had only just left his native place and settled in Bath, and it was not until 1774—twenty-one years after Reynolds—that he came to London and seriously competed with him for the public favour. Romney, again, although he was working in London as early as 1761, was never a serious competitor till his return from a two years’ tour in Italy in 1775. For twenty years at least then Reynolds had practically as complete a monopoly of portraiture among the nobility as Kneller had had at the opening of the century, and we have only to think once in forming our estimate of the use he made of it. Scattered throughout our old country mansions in England are hundreds of his works, occasionally in groups as at Lord Lansdowne’s at Bowood, or Lord Albemarle’s at Quidenham, few of which are not prized by their owners as the chief glory of their possessions. In our public galleries are a few comparatively—for the number of his authentic pictures enumerated by Sir Walter Armstrong is something over a thousand—but such as they are, they take their place unquestioned among those of the great masters. Never was an aristocracy more fortunate in their painter.
But youth and beauty and the immortality conferred by Sir Joshua were not exclusive privileges of the nobility. To Lord Mount Edgcumbe and Captain Keppel, Reynolds owed the beginning of his patronage in Court circles, but to the latter he was also indebted for the acquaintance of one of his fairest sitters, Kitty Fisher, the daughter of a German staymaker, who was the most celebrated Traviata of her time. For her biography the reader may refer to Mr. Horace Bleackley’s “Ladies Fair and Frail.” She first sat to Reynolds in April 1759, the portrait being commissioned by Sir Charles Bingham, who was afterwards created Lord Lucan. At that time she was barely twenty years old, and was under the protection of Captain Keppel. Old Lord Ligonier was also one of her many admirers, and is said to have conspired with the King in playing off a joke at the expense of Pitt (Lord Chatham) by introducing Kitty to him at a review in Hyde Park as a foreign Duchess. The King fell in with the idea, and, looking towards Kitty, asked aloud who she was. “Oh, Sir,” said the old General, “the Duchess of N—-, a foreign lady that the Secretary should know.” “Well, well,” said the King, “introduce him.” Lord Ligonier took Pitt up to her and said, “This is Mr. Secretary Pitt—this is Miss Kitty Fisher.” Pitt behaved very well, and without showing the least embarrassment, told her he was sorry he had not known her when he was younger. “For then, Madame,” he concluded, “I should have had the hope of succeeding in your affections; but old and infirm as you now see me I have no other way of avoiding the force of such beauty but by flying from it,” and then hobbled off.
Leslie mentions having seen as many as five portraits of Kitty, which must all have been painted about the same time. In one, a three-quarter length, she holds a dove in her lap. Of this there are three versions, one of which belongs to Earl Crewe, and another to Mr. Lenox of New York (1865).
Another portrait of Kitty is in the possession of Lord Leconfield, at Petworth, Sussex. In this she is leaning with folded arms on a table, facing the painter. This, and a fifth, as Cleopatra dissolving a pearl, are better known by having been mezzotinted. Tom Taylor mentions two more, one belonging to Lord Lansdowne, in profile with a parrot on her forefinger, and another, which he considers the loveliest of all, belonging to Lord Carysfort—an unfinished head in powder and a fly-cap.
Within a couple of years (1761) Reynolds was painting Kitty’s rival, the fascinating Nelly O’Brien, with apparently as much relish and assiduity and even more success. In 1763 he painted the exquisite picture of her which is here reproduced from the original at Hertford House.