The fertility and inexhaustibility of power shown by Sir Joshua Reynolds have seldom, if ever, been surpassed in the history of Art. In the "Catalogue Raisonnée" of his paintings, soon to be given to the public, nearly three thousand pictures will be enumerated. Many of these were, of course, finished by his assistants, according to the fashion of the time, but the expression of the face remains to attest the master's hand. (Unless, perchance, the head may have dropped off the canvas entirely, as happened once, when an unfortunate youth, who had borrowed one of his fine pictures to copy, was carrying it home under his arm.)
In the record for the year 1758, we are startled by the number of one hundred and fifty sitters. And although this was probably the busiest year of his life, our astonishment never wanes while observing the ceaseless industry of every moment of his career, during the seventh day as well as the other six; and this, too, in spite of a promise won from him by Dr. Johnson, when on his death-bed, that he would never use his pencil on a Sunday. But the habit of a long working life was too strong upon him, and he soon persuaded himself that it was better to have made the promise than distress a dying friend, although he did not intend to observe it strictly.
Sir Joshua possessed the high art of inciting himself to work by repeatedly soliciting the most beautiful and most interesting persons of the time to sit to him. The lovely face of Kitty Fisher was painted by him five times, and no less frequently that of the charming actress, Mrs. Abington, who was also noted for her bel esprit, and was evidently a favorite with the great painter. There are two or three pictures of Mrs. Siddons by his hand, and many of the beautiful Maria Countess Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, a lock of whose "delicate golden-brown" hair was found by Mr. Taylor in a side-pocket of one of Sir Joshua's note-books,—"loveliest of all, whom Reynolds seems never to have been tired of painting, nor she of sitting to him."
Of his numerous and invaluable pictures of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith and Admiral Keppel, it is hardly necessary to speak. Many of them are well known to us from engravings.
To a painter, this Life is of incalculable interest and value. The account of his manner of handling "the vehicles" is minute and faithful; and if, as Northcote complained, who was a pupil of Reynolds, Sir Joshua could not teach, he could only show you how he worked,—many an artist can gather from these pages what Northcote gathered by looking from palette to canvas. The descriptions of some of the paintings are rich in color, and are worthy of the highest praise.
Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of the few men of genius who have been also men of society. In his note-books for the year, sometimes the number of engagements for dinners and visits would preponderate over the number of his sitters, and sometimes the scale would be about equal. Yet the amount of the latter was always astonishingly large. Perhaps no man, through a long series of years, was more esteemed and sought by the most honorable in society than he; while his diary, with its meagre jottings, brings before us a motley and phantasmagorical procession of the wisest and wittiest, the most beautiful and most notorious men and women of that period, who thronged his studio. We can see the bitterest political opponents passing each other upon the threshold of his painting-room, and, what was far more agreeable to Sir Joshua than having to do with these stormy petrels, we can see the worshipping knight and his lovely mistress, or the fair-cheeked children of many a lady whom he had painted, years before, in the first blossoming of her own youth.
The gentleness and natural amiability of his disposition eminently fitted him for the high social position he attained; but the fervor he felt for his work made him forget everything foreign to it until the hour arrived when he must leave his painting-room. He was fond of receiving company, especially at dinner, and his dinners were always most agreeable. He often annoyed his sister, Miss Reynolds, who presided over his household for a time, by inviting any friends who might happen into his studio in the morning to come to dine with him at night, quite forgetting that the number of seats he had provided was already filled by guests previously asked. The result was what might be expected, and it was often simply bare good fortune if everybody had enough to eat. But, "though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants awkward and too few," the talk was always pleasant, and no invitations to dine were more eagerly accepted than his.
It was on the principle, perhaps, that "to the feasts of the good the good come uninvited," that Dr. Johnson made it a point to be present on these occasions, and was seldom welcomed otherwise than most cordially by Sir Joshua. On one occasion, however, when another guest was expected to converse, Sir Joshua was really vexed to find Dr. Johnson in the drawing-room, and would hardly speak to him. Miss Reynolds, who appears to have been one of the "unappreciated and misunderstood" women who thought she was a painter when she was not, and of whose copies Sir Joshua said, "They make other people laugh, and me cry," became a great favorite with Dr. Johnson, who probably knew how to sympathize with the morbid sensitiveness of the poor lady. She seems never to have tired of pouring tea for him! He, in return, wrote doggerel verses to her over the tea-tray in this fashion:—
"I therefore pray thee, Renny dear,
That thou wilt give to me,
With cream and sugar softened well,
Another dish of tea.
"Nor fear that I, my gentle maid,
Shall long detain the cup,
When once unto the bottom I
Have drunk the liquor up.