Famous European Artists

He worked earnestly, saying, "Those who are determined to excel must go to their work whether willing or unwilling, morning, noon, and night, and they will find it to be no play, but, on the contrary, very hard labor."

Young Reynolds made a portrait in 1746 of Captain Hamilton, father of the Marquis of Abercorn, which was the first of his pictures which brought the artist into notice. He also painted Hamilton in a picture with Lord and Lady Eliot. The latter married Hamilton after her husband's death.

"This Captain Hamilton," we find in Prior's Life of Malone, "was a very uncommon character; very obstinate, very whimsical, very pious, a rigid disciplinarian, yet very kind to his men. He lost his life as he was proceeding from his ship to land at Plymouth. The wind and sea were extremely high; and his officers remonstrated against the imprudence of venturing in a boat where the danger seemed imminent. But he was impatient to see his wife, and would not be persuaded. In a few minutes after he left the ship, the boat was upset and turned keel upwards.

"The captain, being a good swimmer, trusted to his skill, and would not accept a place on the keel, in order to make room for others, and then clung to the edge of the boat. Unluckily, he had kept on his great-coat. At length, seeming exhausted, those on the keel exhorted him to take a place beside them, and he attempted to throw off the coat; but, finding his strength fail, told the men he must yield to his fate, and soon afterwards sank, while singing a psalm."

This year, young Reynolds, now twenty-three, painted his own portrait. Says Tom Taylor, in his "Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds," begun by Charles Robert Leslie, the royal academician, and finished by Taylor, "It is masterly in handling, and powerful, almost Rembrandtesque, in chiaro-oscuro. The hair flows, without powder, in long ringlets over the shoulders. The white collar and ruffled front of the shirt are thrown open. A dark cloak is flung over the shoulders."

This year, 1746, Samuel Reynolds died, and the young painter took his two unmarried sisters to Plymouth to provide for them in his new home. Reynolds learned much at this time from William Gandy, whose father had been a successful pupil of Van Dyck. One of this painter's maxims, which Joshua never forgot, was that "a picture ought to have a richness in its texture, as if the colors had been composed of cream or cheese, and the reverse of a hard and husky or dry manner."

Three years later, an unlooked-for pleasure came to Reynolds. He had always longed to visit Rome for study, but his father was too poor to provide the means, and artists, as a rule, do not grow rich early in their career, if at all. The famous Admiral Keppel, then a commodore only twenty-four years old, appointed to a command in the Mediterranean, put into Plymouth for repairs to his ship. Here, at the house of Lord Edgcumbe, he met the young painter, and was so pleased with his courteous manner and frank kindly nature that he offered him passage on his vessel. The offer was gladly accepted, and they sailed for Lisbon, May 11, 1749. From here they went to Cadiz, Gibraltar, Tetuan, Algiers, the Island of Minorca, where Reynolds painted nearly all the officers of the garrison, then to Genoa, Leghorn, Florence, and, finally, Rome. "Now," he said, "I am at the height of my wishes, in the midst of the greatest works of art that the world has produced."

He remained at Rome two years, his married sisters, Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Johnson, advancing the money for his expenses. He studied and copied many of the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and others, and filled several journals with his art notes. Two of these books are now carefully preserved in the British Museum, two in the Sloane Museum, and several in the Lenox Gallery in New York.

At first, Reynolds was disappointed in the works of Raphael, but, said he, "I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance and the prejudice of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of the most humiliating things that ever happened to me. I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was unacquainted.

"I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where the art was at the lowest ebb, – it could not, indeed, be lower, – were to be totally done away with and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel their merits, and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art, and that this great painter was entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world…

"Having since that period frequently revolved the subject in my mind, I am now clearly of opinion that a relish for the higher excellences of the art is an acquired taste, which no man ever possessed without long cultivation and great labor and attention… It is the florid style which strikes at once, and captivates the eye, for a time, without ever satisfying the judgment. Nor does painting in this respect differ from other arts. A just and poetical taste and the acquisition of a nice discriminative musical ear are equally the work of time."

In making the studies from Raphael in the Vatican, Reynolds caught so severe a cold as to produce deafness, from which he never recovered, and was obliged to use an ear-trumpet all his life. He could not help observe the superficiality of the average tourist. He said, "Some Englishmen, while I was in the Vatican, came there, and spent above six hours in writing down whatever the antiquary dictated to them. They scarcely ever looked at the paintings the whole time. Instead of examining the beauties of the works of fame, and why they were esteemed, they only inquire the subject of the picture and the name of the painter, the history of a statue and where it is found, and write that down."

Later, Reynolds journeyed to Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Venice, studying the methods of the Venetian painters. He says, "When I observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, I took a leaf out of my pocketbook, and darkened every part of it in the same gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the subject, or to the drawing of the figures. A few trials of this kind will be sufficient to give their conduct in the management of their lights. After a few experiments, I found the paper blotted nearly alike. Their general practice appeared to be, to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter to be kept as dark as possible; and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or half-shadow. Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and Rembrandt much less, scarcely an eighth: by this conduct, Rembrandt's light is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much; the rest of the picture is sacrificed to this one object."

Reynolds longed to be at home again. So great was his love for England that when, at Venice, he heard at the opera a ballad that had been popular in London, it brought tears to his eyes.

Reynolds settled in London on his return from the Continent, after spending three months in Devonshire. He took a suite of handsome apartments in St. Martin's Lane, his sister Frances, six years younger than himself, being his housekeeper. She failed to make her brother happy, through her peculiar temperament. She was, says Madame d'Arblay, "a woman of worth and understanding, but of a singular character; who, unfortunately for herself, made, throughout life, the great mistake of nourishing a singularity which was her bane, as if it had been her greatest blessing… It was that of living in an habitual perplexity of mind and irresolution of conduct, which to herself was restlessly tormenting, and to all around her was teasingly wearisome.

"Whatever she suggested or planned one day was reversed the next; though resorted to on the third, as if merely to be again rejected on the fourth; and so on almost endlessly; for she rang not the changes on her opinions and designs, in order to bring them into harmony and practice, but wavering, to stir up new combinations and difficulties, till she found herself in the midst of such chaotic obstructions as could chime in with no given purpose, but must needs be left to ring their own peal, and to begin again just where they began at first."

Frances copied her brother's pictures, which copies, Reynolds said, "make other people laugh, and me cry." Dr. Samuel Johnson said she was "very near to purity itself;" and of her "Essay on Taste," "There are in these few pages or remarks such a depth of penetration, such nicety of observation, as Locke or Pascal might be proud of."

Reynolds now painted the portraits of Sir James Colebrooke, the Duchess of Hamilton, the Countess of Coventry, and the Dukes of Devonshire and Grafton. The two ladies were two beautiful Irish sisters. Horace Walpole tells us "how even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at them; how their doors were mobbed by crowds eager to see them get into their chairs, and places taken early at the theatres when they were expected; how seven hundred people sat up all night, in and about a Yorkshire inn, to see the Duchess of Hamilton get into her post-chaise in the morning; while a Worcester shoemaker made money by showing the shoe he was making for the Countess of Coventry."

The latter, the elder and lovelier, died seven years after her marriage, from consumption. The Duchess of Hamilton, Reynolds painted again five years later, and a third time in a red dress and hat, on horseback, the Duke standing near her.

"The evident desire which Reynolds had," writes Northcote, his pupil and biographer, "to render his pictures perfect to the utmost of his ability, and in each succeeding instance to surpass the former, occasioned his frequently making them inferior to what they had been in the course of the process; and when it was observed to him that probably he had never sent out to the world any one of his paintings in as perfect a state as it had been, he answered 'that he believed the remark was very just; but that, notwithstanding, he certainly gained ground by it on the whole, and improved himself by the experiment;' adding, 'if you are not bold enough to run the risk of losing, you can never hope to gain.'

"With the same wish of advancing himself in the art, I have heard him say that whenever a new sitter came to him for a portrait, he always began it with a full determination to make it the best picture he had ever painted; neither would he allow it to be an excuse for his failure to say 'the subject was a bad one for a picture;' there was always nature, he would observe, which, if well treated, was fully sufficient for the purpose."

The portrait of his friend Admiral Keppel, standing on a sandy beach, and back of him a tempestuous sea, did much to establish the reputation of Reynolds. He painted eight other pictures of this brave man, who entered the navy at ten and at eighteen had been round the world.

"Keppel was the first of many heroes painted by Reynolds," writes Leslie, "who was never excelled, even by Velasquez, in the expression of heroism. So anxious was he to do all possible justice to his gallant friend, and so difficult did he find it to please himself, that after several sittings he effaced all he had done, and began the picture again…

"From an early period Reynolds adopted what he strongly recommended in his Discourses, the practice of drawing with the hair pencil instead of the port-crayon; and this constant use of the brush gave him a command of the instrument, if ever equalled, certainly never exceeded, for there are marvels of delicacy and of finish in his execution, combined with a facility and a spirit unlike anything upon the canvases of any other painter. I am far from meaning that in the works of other great masters there are not many excellences which Reynolds did not possess; but what I would note is that, though he was all his life studying the works of other artists, he could not, and it was fortunate that he could not, escape from his own manner into theirs."

Reynolds once said to Northcote, "There is not a man on earth who has the least notion of coloring; we all of us have it equally to seek for and find out, as at present it is totally lost to the art… I had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of coloring; no man, indeed, could teach me. If I have never been settled with respect to coloring, let it at the same time be remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that I saw in the works of others, without considering that there are in coloring, as in style, excellences which are incompatible with each other; however, this pursuit, or, indeed, any similar pursuit, prevents the artist from being tired of his art… I tried every effect of color; and, leaving out every color in its turn, showed every color that I could do without it. As I alternately left out every color, I tried every new color, and often, it is well known, failed…

"I considered myself as playing a great game; and, instead of beginning to save money, I laid it out faster than I got it, in purchasing the best examples of art that could be produced, for I even borrowed money for this purpose. The possession of pictures by Titian, Vandyck, Rembrandt, etc., I considered as the best kind of wealth." He said, in order to obtain one of Titian's best works he "would be content to ruin himself."

Reynolds was probably never surpassed in the drawing of the face, but was not always correct in the human form, because of insufficient knowledge of anatomy.

During Reynolds's second year in London, he had one hundred and twenty sitters, dukes and duchesses, members of Parliament, and reigning beauties. That of Mrs. Bonfoy, daughter of the first Lord Eliot, is, says Leslie, "one of his most beautiful female portraits, and in perfect preservation. The lady is painted as a half-length, in a green dress, with one hand on her hip, and the head turned, with that inimitable grace of which Reynolds was master beyond all the painters who ever painted women."

Already Reynolds had become the friend of the great-hearted, great-minded Dr. Samuel Johnson, who came and went at all hours to the artist's home, and who, when about to be arrested for trivial debts, was again and again befriended by the artist's purse. In 1756, Reynolds painted for himself a half-length of Johnson, with a pen in his hand, sitting at a table. This picture is used in Boswell's Life.

For Johnson's "Idler" Reynolds wrote three papers, sitting up one whole night to complete them, and by so doing was made ill for a time.

He also painted a young lad, the son of Dr. Mudge, who was very anxious to visit his father on his sixteenth birthday, but was prevented through illness. "Never mind, I will send you to your father," said Reynolds, and he sent a speaking likeness, which was of course a gift. He seldom, however, made presents of his pictures, for he said they were usually not valued unless paid for.

About this time, Sir William Lowther, a young millionnaire, died, leaving twenty-five thousand dollars to each of thirteen companions. Each companion very properly commissioned Reynolds to paint for him the portrait of so considerate and generous a friend.

In 1758 and 1759, the artist was overwhelmed with work. In one year there were one hundred and fifty sitters, among them the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III.; Lady Mary Coke, afterwards believed to have been secretly married to the Duke of York, brother of George III.; and the fair and frail Kitty Fisher, very agreeable and vivacious, speaking French with great fluency, who died five years after her marriage, "a victim of cosmetics," it is said. Sir Joshua painted seven beautiful portraits of her. The most interesting represents her holding a dove in her lap, while its mate is about to descend to it from a sofa on which she is reclining. There are three of these, one being in the Lenox collection in New York.

Reynolds also painted the famous Garrick this year, and thirteen years later Garrick and his wife. Leslie writes: "Reynolds had to light the eyes with that meteoric sensibility, and to kindle the features with that fire of life which would deepen into the passion of Lear, sparkle in the vivacity of Mercutio, or tremble in the fatuousness of Abel Drugger. He had to paint the man who, of all men that ever lived, presents the most perfect type of the actor; quick in sympathy, vivid in observation, with a body and mind so plastic that they could take every mould, and give back the very form and pressure of every passion, fashion, action; delighted to give delight, and spurred to ever higher effort by the reflection of the effect produced on others, no matter whether his audience were the crowd of an applauding theatre, a table full of noblemen and wits, a nursery group of children, or a solitary black boy in an area; of inordinate vanity, at once the most courteous, genial, sore, and sensitive of men; full of kindliness, yet always quarrelling; scheming for applause even in the society of his most intimate friends; a clever writer, a wit and the friend of wits.

"Mrs. Garrick, though always the delight and charm of Garrick's house, was now no longer the lovely, light-limbed, laughing Eva Maria Violette, for love of whom Garrick, twenty-five years before, had dressed in woman's clothes that he might slip a letter into her chair, without compromising her, or offending her watchful protectress, Lady Burlington, and who had witched the world as a dancer, while she won friends among the titled and the great by her grace, good-humor, and modest sweetness of disposition. In Lord Normanton's gallery is a most fascinating sketch of her, which must have been painted in the first years of Sir Joshua's acquaintance with her. Slight as it is, those who have seen will not easily forget it. In the picture of her sitting with her husband, painted this year, she appears of matronly character, with a handsome, sensitive, kindly face; the dress is painted with singular force and freedom."

In 1759, Reynolds painted his first Venus, reclining in a wooded landscape, while Cupid looks in through the boughs. Mason, the poet, writes: "When he was painting his first Venus, I was frequently near his easel; and although before I came to town his picture was in some forwardness, and the attitude entirely decided, yet I happened to visit him when he was finishing the head from a beautiful girl of sixteen, who, as he told me, was his man Ralph's daughter, and whose flaxen hair, in fine natural curls, flowed behind her neck very gracefully.

"But a second casual visit presented me with a very different object; he was then painting the body, and in his sitting chair a very squalid beggar-woman was placed, with a child, not above a year old, quite naked, upon her lap. As may be imagined, I could not help testifying my surprise at seeing him paint the carnation of the goddess of beauty from that of a little child, which seemed to have been nourished rather with gin than with milk, and saying that 'I wondered he had not taken some more healthy-looking model;' but he answered, with his usual naïveté, that, 'whatever I might think, the child's flesh assisted him in giving a certain morbidezza to his own coloring, which he thought he should hardly arrive at had he not such an object, when it was extreme (as it certainly was), before his eyes."

Among the many famous portraits of this year and the next was that of the Countess Waldegrave, Horace Walpole's beautiful niece Maria, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester. The earl was the most trusted friend of George II., and, for a short time, prime minister. Walpole mentions the countess being mobbed in the park one Sunday when in company with Lady Coventry, so that several sergeants of the guards marched before and behind them to keep off the admiring crowd. Also that of the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning, afterward Duchess of Argyle, and the sister of Admiral Keppel, afterwards Marchioness of Tavistock. "This is one of the painter's loveliest and best preserved female portraits. The dress is white, with a rose in the bosom, and the expression inimitably maidenly and gentle."

This year, Reynolds removed to a fine home in Leicester Square, where he remained as long as he lived, having a suburban home at Richmond Villa. His own painting-room was octagonal, "about twenty feet long and sixteen in breadth. The window which gave the light to the room was square, and not much larger than one-half the size of a common window in a private house; whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned on casters. His palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The stocks of his pencils were long, measuring about nineteen inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest to the window, and never sat down when he worked."

He had now raised his prices to twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred guineas for the three classes of portraits, – head, half-length, and full-length, and his income from his work was thirty thousand dollars a year. He purchased, says Northcote, "a chariot on the panels of which were curiously painted the four seasons of the year in allegorical figures. The wheels were ornamented with carved foliage and gilding; the liveries also of his servants were laced with silver. But, having no spare time himself to make a display of this splendor, he insisted on it that his sister Frances should go out with it as much as possible, and let it be seen in the public streets to make a show, which she was much averse to, being a person of great shyness of disposition, as it always attracted the gaze of the populace, and made her quite ashamed to be seen in it. This anecdote, which I heard from this very sister's own mouth, serves to show that Sir Joshua Reynolds knew the use of quackery in the world. He knew that it would be inquired whose grand chariot this was, and that, when it was told, it would give a strong indication of his great success, and, by that means, tend to increase it."

The next year, Reynolds painted, among others, the Rev. Laurence Sterne, "at this moment the lion of the town, engaged fourteen deep to dinner, 'his head topsy-turvy with his success and fame,' consequent on the appearance of the first instalment of his 'Tristram Shandy.'" The picture is now in the gallery of the Marquis of Lansdowne, by whom it was purchased on the death of Lord Holland.

"Sterne's wig," writes Leslie, "was subject to odd chances from the humor that was uppermost in its wearer. When by mistake he had thrown a fair sheet of manuscript into the fire instead of the foul one, he tells us that he snatched off his wig, 'and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room.' While he was sitting to Reynolds, this same wig had contrived to get itself a little on one side; and the painter, with that readiness in taking advantage of accident, to which we owe so many of the delightful novelties in his works, painted it so, for he must have known that a mitre would not sit long bishop-fashion on the head before him, and it is surprising what a Shandean air this venial impropriety of the wig gives to its owner…

"In 1768, Sterne lay dying at the 'Silk bag shop in Old Bond Street,' without a friend to close his eyes. No one but a hired nurse was in the room, when a footman, sent from a dinner table where was gathered a gay and brilliant party – the Dukes of Roxburgh and Grafton, the Earls of March and Ossory, David Garrick and David Hume – to inquire how Dr. Sterne did, was bid to go upstairs by the woman of the shop. He found Sterne just a-dying. In ten minutes, 'Now it is come,' he said, put up his hand as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute.