In 1789, Sir Joshua lost the sight of his left eye, and though this changed his whole life, he retained his calm cheerfulness, and occupied his mind with the exciting topics of the time; for it happened that the storming of the Bastille occurred in the very week in which he gave up his pencil. He still used his brush a very little to finish or retouch works which were still on his hands, but he sadly said: "There is now an end of pursuit; the race is over, whether it is lost or won."
In 1790, troubles arose in the Academy, and Sir Joshua felt himself so badly used that he resigned his presidency and his membership of the institution. The King requested him to return, but he refused until the Academy publicly apologized to him. He then resumed his office, and in December delivered his final discourse.
THE LADIES WALDEGRAVE. (FROM A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.)
The remainder of his life was a gradual decline; his sight grew weaker, and his strength less, until February 23, 1792, when he died easily, never having suffered much pain. The King directed that his body should lie in state in the Academy rooms in Somerset House. The funeral was grand and solemn; the pall-bearers were dukes, marquises, earls, and lords; ninety-one carriages followed the hearse, in which were the first nobles, scholars, and prelates of the realm, with all the members and students of the Academy. He was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul's Cathedral, where Vandyck had already been laid, and where, in later years, a goodly number of painters have been buried around him. In 1813, a statue, by Flaxman, was erected to his memory near the choir of the cathedral, and a Latin inscription recounts the talents and virtues of the great man whom it commemorates.
Having thus traced the story of Sir Joshua's life, it now remains to speak of him more especially as an artist.
His highest fame is as a portrait painter, and as such he was a great genius. He had the power to reproduce the personal peculiarities of his subjects with great exactness; he was also able to perceive their qualities of temper, mind, and character, and he made his portraits so vivid with these attributes that they were likenesses of the minds as well as of the persons of his subjects. In his portrait of Goldsmith, self-esteem is as prominent as the nose; passion and energy are in every line of Burke's face and figure; and whenever his subject possessed any individual characteristics, they were plainly shown in Reynolds's portraits. So many of these pictures are famous that we can not speak of them in detail. Perhaps no one portrait is better known than that of the famous actress, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, as the Tragic Muse. It is a noble example of an idealized portrait, and it is said that the "Isaiah" of Michael Angelo suggested the manner in which it is painted. Sir Thomas Lawrence declared this to be the finest portrait of a women in the world, and it is certain that this one picture would have made any painter famous. Sir Joshua inscribed his name on the border of the robe, and courteously explained to the lady, "I could not lose the honor this opportunity afforded me of going down to posterity on the hem of your garment."
The original of this work is said to be that in the gallery of the Duke of Westminster; a second is in the Dulwich Gallery. In speaking of Sir Joshua as a portrait painter, Mr. Ruskin says: "Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper."
His portraits of simply beautiful women can scarcely be equaled in the world. He perfectly reproduced the delicate grace and beauty of some of his sitters and the brilliant, dazzling charms of others. He loved to paint richly hued velvets in contrast with rare laces, ermine, feathers, and jewels. It is a regret that so many of his works are faded, but after all we must agree with Sir George Beaumont, when he said: "Even a faded picture from him will be the finest thing you can have."
The most attractive of his works are his pictures of children. It is true that they too are portraits, but they are often represented in some fancy part, such as the "Strawberry Girl,"[1] a portrait of his niece Offy; Muscipula, who holds a mouse-trap; the Little Marchioness; the Girl with a Mob-cap, and many others. He loved to paint pictures of boys in all sorts of characters, street-peddlers, gipsies, cherubs, and so on. He often picked up boy models in the street and painted from them in his spare hours, between his appointments with sitters. Sometimes he scarcely hustled a beggar boy out of his chair in time for some grand lady to seat herself in it. It is said that one day one of these children fell asleep in so graceful an attitude that the master seized a fresh canvas and made a sketch of it; this was scarcely done, when the child threw himself into a different pose without awakening. Sir Joshua added a second sketch to the first and from these made his beautiful picture of "The Babes in the Wood." More than two hundred of his pictures of children have been engraved, and these plates form one of the loveliest collections that can be made from the works of any one artist.