Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Tom Taylor says: "The Mrs. Crewe should class as one of his loveliest pictures—most touching and pathetic in the expression given by the attitude rather than the face; for the eyes are cast down on the book, and the features are nearly hidden by the hand which supports the head. The landscape is beautiful in color, and powerfully relieves the figure, clothed in a simple white dress, the light of which is distributed through the picture by the sheep feeding or resting about their pretty shepherdess. Walpole notes the harmony and simplicity of the picture, and calls it, not unjustly, 'one of his best.'"

Each year, Reynolds's discourses were eagerly listened to at the Academy. "A great part of every man's life," he said, "must be spent in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention is little but new combination. Nothing can come of nothing. Hence the necessity for acquaintance with the works of your predecessors. But of these, who are to be models—the guides?" The answer is, "Those great masters who have travelled with success the same road.... Try to imagine how a Michael Angelo or a Raphael would have conducted themselves, and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and observed by them. Even enter into a kind of competition with these great masters; paint a subject like theirs; a companion to any work you think a model. Test your own work with the model.... Let your port-crayon be never out of your hands. Draw till you draw as mechanically as you write. But, on every opportunity, paint your studies instead of drawing them. Painting comprises both drawing and coloring. The Venetians knew this, and have left few sketches on paper.... Have no dependence on your own genius; if you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor—nothing is to be obtained without it.... Without the love of fame you can never do anything excellent; but by an excessive and undistinguishing thirst after it you will come to have vulgar views; you will degrade your style, and your taste will be entirely corrupted.... I mention this because our exhibitions, while they produce such admirable effects by nourishing emulation and calling out genius, have also a mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them."

To Barry, the artist, who was in Rome, he wrote: "Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or indeed in any other art, must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object, from the moment he rises till he goes to bed. The effect of every object that meets the painter's eye may give a lesson, provided his mind is calm, unembarrassed with other objects, and open to instruction. This general attention, with other studies connected with the art, which must employ the artist in his closet, will be found sufficient to fill up life, if it were much longer than it is.... Whoever has great views, I would recommend to him, whilst at Rome, rather to live on bread and water than lose those advantages which he can never hope to enjoy a second time, and which he will find only in the Vatican.... The Capella Sistina is the production of the greatest genius that was ever employed in the arts.... If you neglect visiting the Vatican often, and particularly the Capella Sistina, you will neglect receiving that peculiar advantage which Rome can give above all other cities in the world. In other places you will find casts from the antique, and capital pictures of the great masters, but it is there only that you can form an idea of the dignity of the art, as it is there only that you can see the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael. If you should not relish them at first, which may probably be the case, as they have none of those qualities which are captivating at first sight, never cease looking till you feel something like inspiration come over you, till you think every other painter insipid in comparison, and to be admired only for petty excellences."

In 1770, Sir Joshua painted a picture called "The Babes in the Woods," which is now in the collection of Viscount Palmerston. Reynolds loved to find picturesque beggar children on the street, and would send them to his studio to be painted. Northcote says he would often hear the voice of a little waif, worn with sitting, say plaintively, "Sir,—sir,—I'm tired!"

"It happened once," says Leslie, "as it probably often did, that one of these little sitters fell asleep, and in so beautiful an attitude that Sir Joshua instantly put away the picture he was at work on, and took up a fresh canvas. After sketching the little model as it lay, a change took place in its position; he moved his canvas to make the change greater, and, to suit the purpose he had conceived, sketched the child again. The result was the picture of the 'Babes in the Wood.'"

This year, Sir Joshua brought the thirteen-year-old daughter, Theophila, of his widowed sister, Mrs. Palmer, to live with him in London, and three years later her elder sister, Mary, who afterward became the Marchioness of Thomond. He painted Theophila, called Offy, as "A Girl Reading," at which the young miss was offended, saying, "I think they might have put 'A Young Lady.'"

Sir Joshua offered to take to his home the sons of his other sister, Mrs. Johnson—he had not forgotten how these two sisters had loaned him money when he was poor—but Mrs. Johnson declined his offer, fearing the temptations of London, and being greatly opposed to her brother's habit of painting on Sundays. One son went into the church and died young; another went to India, and Reynolds took great interest in his welfare. Later, two of Mrs. Johnson's daughters lived with Sir Joshua.

In 1773, he painted and exhibited "The Strawberry Girl," which represents Offy Palmer, creeping timidly along, and looking anxiously around with her great black eyes. Sir Joshua always maintained that this was one of the "half-dozen original things" which he said no man ever exceeded in his life's work. Later the picture was purchased by the Marquis of Hertford for ten thousand five hundred dollars.

F. S. Pulling, of Exeter College, Oxford, says, in his Life of Sir Joshua: "What a love Reynolds had for children, childless though he was himself! What a marvellous knowledge of their ways, and, even of their thoughts! With the peer's son or the beggar's child it was the same. The most fastidious critic finds it impossible to discover faults in these child portraits; the whole soul of the painter has gone into them, and he is as much at home with the gypsy child as with little Lord Morpeth. As Mr. Stephens well observes, 'Reynolds, of all artists, painted children best ... knew most of childhood, depicted its appearances in the truest and happiest spirit of comedy, entered into its changeful soul with the tenderest, heartiest sympathy, played with the playful, sighed with the sorrowful, and mastered all the craft of infancy.... His 'Child Angels' was not painted till 1786. It consists of simply five different representations of the same face, that of Frances Gordon. The perfect loveliness of this picture is beyond dispute.... These are human faces, it is true, but can you imagine any purer, more innocent, more gentle faces?... I, for one, am perfectly content to accept these faces as those of the most lovely beings God ever created."

A picture of a nymph with a young Bacchus, really the portrait of the beautiful young actress, Mrs. Hartley, "whose lovely face and lithe, tall, delicate figure had rapidly won for her the leading place at Covent Garden," is now in the possession of Mr. Bentley, who refused an offer of ten thousand dollars for it.