"The angel ended, and in Adam's ear
So charming left his voice, that he awhile
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear."
This year, he allowed Sheridan to buy the picture of his wife, "St. Cecilia," at half-price. Reynolds said it was "the best picture he ever painted," and added, in the letter to Sheridan: "However, there is now an end of the pursuit; the race is over, whether it is won or lost."
The next year, in May, 1791, Sir Joshua sat for his picture for the last time to the Swedish artist, Beda, at the request of the Royal Academy of Sweden. He had sent his picture to Florence, on being elected an honorary member of that famous Academy. In October of this year he became almost totally blind.
Burke wrote to his son Richard in January, 1792: "Our poor friend, Sir Joshua, declines daily. For some time past he has kept his bed.... At times he has pain; but for the most part is tolerably easy. Nothing can equal the tranquillity with which he views his end. He congratulates himself on it as a happy conclusion of a happy life. He spoke of you in a style that was affecting. I don't believe there are any persons he values more sincerely than you and your mother."
Reynolds died tranquilly between eight and nine on Thursday evening, February 23, 1792. He was buried in St. Paul's, on Saturday, March 3, ninety-one carriages following the body to the grave. There were ten pall-bearers, the Duke of Dorset, Duke of Leeds, Duke of Portland, Marquis Townshend, Marquis of Abercorn, Earl of Carlisle, Earl of Inchiquin, Earl of Upper Ossory, Lord Viscount Palmerston, and Lord Eliot.
By will he left to his niece Offy, who had married, in 1781, a wealthy Cornish gentleman, Mr. Gwatkin, fifty thousand dollars; to his sister Frances the use, for life, of twelve thousand five hundred dollars; to Burke, ten thousand dollars, and cancelled a bond for the same amount of money borrowed; a thousand dollars to each of his executors; five thousand dollars to a servant who had lived with him more than thirty years; all the remainder of his property, about five hundred thousand dollars, to his niece, Miss Palmer. Such an amount of money earned by an artist, making his own way in life from poverty, was indeed wonderful. The number of his pictures is estimated at three thousand.
Burke wrote of him, the pages blurred with his tears: "Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of coloring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.
"In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candor never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse.