This portrait was purchased in 1871 with the Peel collection and is said to represent the Hon. Mrs. Musters and her son. The composition does not show Sir Joshua at his best, and the painting is perhaps rather thin. The identity is not very clearly established, although the names of Mr. and Mrs. Musters are to be found in Sir Joshua’s account books.
In the following year, 1784, Sir Joshua sent sixteen pictures to the Academy, including the famous Mrs. Siddons, Charles James Fox, and Mrs. Abingdon as Roxalana. Gainsborough had quarrelled with the R.A. and exhibited no more, though he lived until 1788. With December, Dr. Johnson’s strenuous and useful life came to an end; he passed away exhorting his old friend never to paint on Sunday, and to read the Bible. Reynolds has left a very interesting study of the Doctor’s character. In the following year, the President went for the third time to the Low Countries, and bought a number of pictures; he also received the honour of a commission from Catherine, Empress of Russia, and painted the beautiful picture of the Duchess of Devonshire and her baby that hangs at Chatsworth to-day. Walpole said, “it is little like, and not good,” but posterity has declined to accept the verdict. Sir Walter Armstrong considers that it ranks with the “Lady Crosbie” and “Nelly O’Brien” as the “most entirely successful creations” of the artist. In ’87 the President sent thirteen pictures to the Academy, including the “Angel’s Heads” now in the National Gallery. They are studies of Frances Isabella Gordon, daughter of Lord William Gordon, and the picture was given to the Gallery in 1841. A year later, London saw the picture that the Empress Catherine had commissioned, the subject is “The Infant Hercules” and the canvas hangs in the Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg. It is one of the artist’s failures, and he received fifteen hundred guineas for it. This is the date of the famous Marlborough family group that is to be seen at Blenheim.
A year later, when the President sent some dozen pictures to the R.A., his activity came to a sudden end. Some forty years and more had passed since he painted the first of his works that concerns us, and he had not known an idle season. His record would have brought honour to any three men; he had lived as a philosopher should, grateful for the gifts of the gods, and not abusing any. Suddenly, in mid-July of 1789, about the time of the fall of the Bastille, one eye failed him as he worked at his easel; he laid his brush aside. “All things have an end—I have come to mine,” he remarked, with the quiet courage that never deserted him, and he spent what remained to him of life making gradual preparation for the last day, sustained by memories of the past through hours that were not always free from pain and distress. Save for a quarrel with the Academy, arising out of the contest for membership between Bonomi and Fuseli, there was nothing to disturb the closing years of the old painter’s public life, and even in this quarrel, he was the victor. The General Assembly apologised, and Reynolds withdrew his resignation, though Chambers, now Sir William, was obliged to act for him at Somerset House. In December of 1790 Reynolds delivered his final address to the students, the name of Michelangelo being last upon his lips. Little more than a year before he died, the President sat to the Swedish artist von Breda, for a picture now in the Stockholm Academy. West did his presidential work for him in the last months of his life.
Many friends testify to the tranquillity of these last days, though failing sight and the deprivation of the liberal diet to which he was accustomed had lowered the spirits that were once bright as well as serene. Perhaps modern medical science would have availed to lengthen his life, and make the last few years more worth living; but in the eighteenth century one needed a very sturdy constitution to endure the combined attack of a disease and a doctor. Sir Joshua was in his sixty-ninth year—he had lived in the fullest sense all the time—and when one evening in February 1792 Death came to the House in Leicester Square, his visit was quite expected, and was met with a tranquil mind. The body lay in state awhile in the Royal Academy, and was then taken to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and laid by the side of Sir Christopher Wren. To-day we look at the artist’s work with a critical eye—he can no longer thrive by comparison with contemporaries, but must compete with all dead masters of portraiture; and it will be admitted on every side that he holds his own, that before every throne of judgment his best works will plead for him and vindicate the admiration of his countrymen.
It is not the least of his claims to high consideration that his art moved steadily forward, that the last work was the best.
IV
Naturally it is impossible within the limits of a small and unpretentious monograph to give an adequate idea of the range and variety of the labours that occupied Sir Joshua Reynolds for half a century or more, and no attempt will be made in this place to do more than indicate the forces that seem to have directed his brush, the masters whose labour inspired it. It has been pointed out in these pages that Reynolds was a great assimilator. He took from everybody, but he was always judicious, because, quite apart from his executive faculties, he had a critical gift of the first order. One has but to turn to his diaries to realise that his instinct was singularly sound. He could stand before an admitted masterpiece and enjoy all its beauties, without losing sight of any defect however small, and because his mind was beautifully balanced, the small points of objection did not spoil his appreciation of the whole work. They simply taught him what he should avoid. In the very early days of his career, before he had left Devonshire, he made the acquaintance of one Gandy, an artist of some small repute, whose father, also a painter, had studied Van Dyck, and had taught his son to appreciate the fine qualities of Rembrandt. The younger Gandy afforded Reynolds his first glimpse of the world lying beyond the reach of the rank and file of British students, gave him his earliest appreciation of Rembrandt, and taught him to look for that master’s work when he visited Rome. As soon as Reynolds reached Italy, he examined the great masters with a critical eye, and set himself to copy Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Guido, Raphael, and many others. He soon saw that each of these masters had achieved supreme success in some department of their life’s work, and he had the idea of uniting all the excellences that he saw around him, and leaving the defects alone. He sought for the colour of Rubens and Titian the drawing of Raphael, the splendour of design of Michelangelo, and the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt. Naturally this must sound ambitious enough; but we should remember that Reynolds was far from standing alone in his ambitions. Mengs, who did so much to proclaim the merits of Velazquez and achieved a great but temporary success as a painter in Madrid before Goya’s wonderful gifts threw him into well-merited obscurity, had the same ideals, but whereas the best of his accomplishments were but dull and short-lived, Reynolds was able to force some way through all the gifts with which he sought to surround himself and to reach a style of his own. The journey lasted very many years, and the road is strewn with failures, chiefly due to an inability to grasp the secret of a durable glaze and, like many men who came before and after him, the painter had to part company with some at least of his ambitions. Had his own capacity for self-criticism been less, had he allowed his feeling for fine colour to prevail over the sound judgment that bade him look for other and more enduring excellencies, he would not occupy the place he holds to-day, while on the other hand, if a Titian or a Rubens had been able to give him the secret of manipulating pigments, he would have stood side by side with the greatest masters of all time.
PLATE VIII.—DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE AND CHILD.
(Chatsworth House, Derbyshire)