When Benjamin West, a native of Pennsylvania, was elected President of the Royal Academy, on the death of Reynolds in 1792, he found the arts in a state of prosperity which could hardly have been predicted when Reynolds began painting in London just half a century earlier. To attribute this happy improvement to his illustrious predecessor alone would have been more than was fair to West himself, and in giving to Sir Joshua the fullest credit for his share in it, the claims of one or two great painters and of more lesser lights than can readily be counted must not be overlooked. But, when all have been fairly considered, it is to Reynolds that the highest tribute is due for having helped, by precept as well as by practice, to raise the arts from the low estate in which he found them at the outset of his career to the proud position in which they stood at the close of the eighteenth century. “He was the first Englishman,” said Edmund Burke, “who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country.”
Looking back, as we now may, over the whole extent of British painting in the eighteenth century, we may say still more than this, namely that while others practised the profession of painting Reynolds dignified it. Painting in England had never been an art, it was little more than a business; and there was small hope of it ever becoming anything better when a really considerable painter like Kneller was content simply to fill his pockets from the profits of an emporium for fashionable portraits without caring in the least as to their quality so long as he got his price.
Kneller, however, was a German. What was wanted for English Art was an Englishman. Sir James Thornhill, and his forceful son-in-law, William Hogarth, were both bold and successful in attempting what they could, each in his particular way, to root the plant in the soil. But neither had the necessary combination of those two qualities, greatness and dignity, which was essential for effecting so great a task as bringing the plant to maturity. Thornhill had the dignity without the greatness, Hogarth something of the greatness without the
CAPTAIN ORME
1761. National Gallery, London
dignity; and it was left to Reynolds, in whom these two qualities, abundantly evident, were blended in such nice proportions, to foster, if not to found, one of the most vigorous schools of painting that the world has ever seen.
Dignity, it may be observed, is a dangerous quality when not accompanied, or alloyed, by others more human. If not nicely balanced it is only too liable to swerve to pomposity on the one hand, or empty affability or condescension on the other. That Reynolds never swayed perceptibly in either direction it would hardly be true to assert. His pedantic observations on his great contemporaries, Hogarth, Gainsborough and Wilson, and the patronising tone of some of his conversations with the younger men, would be less forgivable were it not that one realises how great a man he was. There are many passages in his Discourses that, taken by themselves, are apt to exasperate; but when we consider the work he actually accomplished, the example he afforded, and the knowledge of his art which by his application he added to his natural gifts, we cannot fail to see how paramount his influence has been on the whole course of English Art in his own and succeeding times.
That he was an Englishman is a fact which nowadays it may seem unnecessary to emphasise. But how easy it is to forget that a very considerable number of the painters whose works are included in those of “the British School” were not born in England. That the very greatest of all were natives—namely, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Romney, Lawrence, Constable and Turner—is certainly gratifying to the national pride; and it may be added that with the exception of Romney all of these were born south of the Trent. Scotland has given us Raeburn, and Wales Richard Wilson. But with the exception of the miniaturists, Isaac and Peter Oliver, Nicholas Hilyard and Samuel Cooper, there was no English artist of note before the eighteenth century; the influence of Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and the rest who worked in England, was never strong enough to awaken a response in the country of their adoption. In later and modern times the British School has been enriched from various quarters: by West, Copley, Whistler, Abbey, and Sargent from across the Atlantic; by Alma Tadema from Holland and Hubert von Herkomer from Germany, to mention only a few of the more notable names. But the