"His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow."
Mrs. Jameson says: "The pictures of Reynolds are, to the eye, what delicious melodies are to the ear,—Italian music set to English words; for the color, with its luxurious, melting harmony, is Venetian, and the faces and the associations are English.... More and more we learn to sympathize with that which is his highest characteristic, and which alone has enabled him to compete with the old masters of Italy; the amount of mind, of sensibility, he threw into every production of his pencil, the genial, living soul he infused into forms, giving to them a deathless vitality."
One secret of Reynolds's popularity, outside his genius, was the fact that he never spoke ill of the work of other painters. Northcote says he once asked Sir Joshua what he thought of two pictures by Madame Le Brun, who at that time was the most popular artist in France in portraiture.
"'They are very fine,' he answered.
"'How fine?' I said.
"'As fine as those of any painter.'
"'Do you mean living or dead?'
"'Either living or dead,' he answered briskly.
"'As fine as Van Dyke?'
"He answered tartly, 'Yes, and finer.'