[25] See p. 46.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds_
Whether we have read Boswell or not, we all know something of the work
of Sir Joshua Reynolds. From childhood, almost from babyhood, we are
made familiar with _The Infant Samuel_ and _The Age of Innocence_.
But it is as a portrait-painter that he is most famous and in the
latter half of the eighteenth century there was hardly a single man or
woman of note whose portrait was not painted by him. A few of them are
reproduced in this book.
Born in Devonshire, Joshua Reynolds came to study art in London in
1741. He was then 18 years old and, except for a year or two spent at
Plymouth and two years' study of the old masters at Rome, practically
all his work was done, as Johnson's was, in London.
He was the first president of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768, and
was made a knight in the same year; he was supreme among the artists
of his day as was Garrick among actors and Johnson among men of letters.
He did not have the same hard struggle for fame and fortune as Johnson.
At the age of 35, it is true, he was painting portraits for fifteen
guineas apiece, but his charm of manner, as well as his skill as a
painter, brought him great popularity, and in a few years' time he was
making an annual income nearly four times as great as the total sum
paid to Johnson for his _Dictionary_.
Reynolds was first attracted to Johnson by one of his earliest prose
works--_The Life of Richard Savage_[26].
"Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, that upon his return from Italy, he
met with it in Devonshire, knowing nothing of its authour, and began
to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a
chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being
able to lay down the book till he had finished, when he attempted to
move, he found his arm totally benumbed."
Shortly after this the two men met for the first time at the house of
the Miss Cotterells:
"Mr Reynolds had ... conceived a very high admiration of Johnson's
powers of writing. His conversation no less delighted him; and he
cultivated his acquaintance with the laudable zeal of one who was
ambitious of general improvement.... Johnson at once perceived that
Reynolds had the habit of thinking for himself ... he went home with
Reynolds, and supped with him."
[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
This was the beginning of an "uninterrupted intimacy" to the last hour
of Johnson's life.
Johnson took, or pretended to take, no interest in pictures. He is
reported to have said once that "he should sit very quietly in a room
hung round with the works of the greatest masters, and never feel the
slightest disposition to turn them, if their backs were outermost,
unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he _had_
turned them"!
At another time "Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua's in company
with many painters, in the course of conversation Richardson's
_Treatise on Painting_ happened to be mentioned. 'Ah!' said Johnson,
'I remember, when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my
stairs. I took it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and
truly I did not think it possible to say so much upon the art.'"
But this was merely playful exaggeration. Johnson was at any rate
interested in the portraits of himself, of which Sir Joshua painted
several. One of them was set up in Lichfield:
"TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, IN LEICESTER-FIELDS