When Sir Joshua was at the height of his power, he was accustomed to receive six sitters a day, and he often completed a portrait in four hours.
Good prints from his works are now becoming rare and are valuable.
As we close this account of Sir Joshua Reynolds, it is pleasant to remember that so great a man was so good a man, and to believe that Burke did not flatter him when, in his eulogy, he said: "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."
[ [1] An engraving of this picture was given as the frontispiece of St. Nicholas for April, 1876; and our readers will remember also the account of Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of "Little Penelope Boothby" in St. Nicholas for November, 1875, illustrated with a full-page reproduction of the painting.—Ed.
Richard Wilson
was another original member of the Academy, and though not the first English artist who had painted landscapes, he was the first whose pictures merited the honorable recognition which they now have. Wilson's story is a sad one; he was not appreciated while he lived, and his whole life was saddened by seeing the works of foreign artists, which were inferior to his own, sold for good prices, while he was forced to sell his to pawnbrokers, who, it is said, could not dispose of them at any price.
Wilson was the son of a clergyman and was born at Pinegas, in Montgomeryshire, in 1713. He first painted portraits and earned money with which, in 1749, he went to Italy, where he remained six years. His best works were Italian views, and he is now considered as the best landscape painter of his day, with the one exception of Gainsborough.
Wilson died in 1782, and it is pleasant to know that after more than sixty years of poverty he received a legacy from a brother, and the last two years of his life were years of peaceful comfort.
Thomas Gainsborough,
though a great artist, had an uneventful life. He was the son of a clothier and was born in Sudbury, in Suffolk, in 1727. His boyish habit of wandering about the woods and streams of Suffolk, making sketches, and finding in this his greatest pleasure, induced his father to send him to London to study art, when about fifteen years old. He studied first under a French engraver, Gravelot, who was of much advantage to him; next he was a pupil of Francis Hayman at the Academy, in St. Martin's Lane, but Nature was his real teacher.