It is odd to think of Sir Joshua engaged in painting portrait after portrait of these fascinating but frail ladies with the same care, the same thoroughness, and the same wonderful breadth and seriousness as any of the men and women whose names were foremost in the growing culture and dignity of the nation. With Nelly O’Brien we know that he dined, and the only reason to suppose that he was not on easy terms of familiarity with any of them—if it can be called a reason—is the general dignity of his mind and deportment, as evidenced by his relations with Dr. Johnson, the Burney family, and all the great and learned people of his time. The main thing, however, to be considered is that as an artist he made no difference between the virtuous and the frail. That he was paid for painting them need hardly be mentioned, as that has nothing whatever to do with the question. But that he was as much in earnest with these commissions as with any other is a proof of the perfect balance of his mind, which in view of his sometimes over-academical dignity has rather escaped notice.
In 1770, by which time he was President of the Royal Academy and a knight, he was painting a portrait of Polly Kennedy—for the details of whose tragic history I may again refer the readers to Mr. Bleackley’s book—for Sir Charles Bunbury. “Among the rich collection of pictures by Reynolds at Barton,” says Leslie, “is one representing a young and handsome woman, with aquiline features, marked by the tension of anxiety. One hand is raised and holds a handkerchief. The dress is a rich robe of flowered scarlet and silver brocade, worn over an inner vest of bright colours, with a shawl of green and gold round the waist. It looks like the portrait of an actress, but the veiled look of pain does not belong to the stage; it is meant, I believe, to tell a tale of real and prolonged suffering.”
Whether or not Leslie’s conjecture is justified, it is certain that Sir Joshua wrote to Sir Charles Bunbury about the picture in terms which leave no doubt as to the pains he was at in executing the commission:
Sept. 1770
Dear Sir,—I have finished the face very much to my own satisfaction. It has more grace and dignity than anything I have ever done, and it is the best coloured. As to the dress, I should be glad it might be left undetermined till I return from my fortnight’s tour. When I return I will try different dresses. The Eastern dresses are very rich, and have one sort of dignity; but ’tis a mock dignity in comparison with the simplicity of the antique. The impatience I have to finish it will shorten my stay in the country. I shall set out in an hour’s time.
I am with the greatest respect,
Your most obliged servant,
J. Reynolds.
In the Exhibition of 1784 there appeared the famous Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, of which Sir Joshua painted two if not three originals. One is at Grosvenor House, having been purchased in 1822 by the first Marquis of Westminster for 1760 guineas. (At the sale of Reynolds’s pictures in 1796 it fetched £700.) Another is in the Dulwich Gallery, and a third was given by Sir Joshua to Mr. Harvey, of Langley Park, Stowe, in exchange for a picture of a boar hunt by Snyders, which he admired very much. The Dulwich replica (which, according to Northcote, was painted by one of Reynolds’s assistants) was sold by Reynolds in 1789 to M. Desenfans—whose collection formed the bulk of the pictures now in the Dulwich Gallery—for £735.
In this portrait, for once, we can find a certain reminiscence of Reynolds’s visit to Rome, namely in the resemblance of the attitude to that of Michel Angelo’s Isaiah and the two attendant figures. It is recorded that Mrs. Siddons herself told Mr. Phillips “that it was the production of pure accident: Sir Joshua had begun the head and figure in a different view, but while he was occupied in the preparation of some colour she changed her position to look at a picture hanging on the wall of the room. When he again looked at her and saw the action she had assumed he requested her not to move, and thus arose the beautiful and expressive figure we now see in the picture.” But it is easy to understand that a
