son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, headmaster of the grammar school.
Early showing great talent for drawing, young Joshua was apprenticed
in 1740 to Thomas Hudson, the portrait-painter, in London. Three years
later he returned home and established himself as a portrait-painter
at Plymouth Dock, where he met William Gandy, a painter, who had no
little influence upon his style. In 1744 Reynolds was back in London
and in 1749 back in Devonshire, this time settling in Devonport. In
this year he met at Mount Edgcumbe young Commodore Keppel (afterwards
Admiral), whose portrait he painted and with whom he formed a great
friendship. Accepting Keppel’s invitation to sail with him on the
_Centurion_ for a Mediterranean trip, Reynolds eventually reached
Rome, where he spent two years. While studying in the Vatican he caught
a severe cold which resulted in a life-long deafness. Returning home in
1753, Reynolds took rooms in St. Martin’s Lane, then the headquarters
of art, and people began to flock to his studio. He then removed to
Newport Street and in 1760 established himself in Leicester Fields (now
Leicester Square), which for thirty years was the _rendez-vous_
for the artistic, literary, and distinguished world of London.
In 1768 Reynolds was unanimously elected first President of the
just-established Royal Academy and in 1769 was knighted by George III.
In 1784 Sir Joshua succeeded Allan Ramsay as Painter-in-Ordinary to the
King. In 1789 his eyesight began to fail and he soon had to relinquish
his art. Sir Joshua died in 1792 and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral
with great pomp. In addition to his enormous list of paintings Sir
Joshua designed the windows for New College, Oxford, and Oxford gave
him the degree of D. C. L. Sir Joshua’s famous _Discourses on Art_
were delivered between 1769 and 1790 at the Academy “to encourage a
solid and vigorous course of study.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee_
LADY BETTY DELMÉ
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
When we think of the thousands of pictures that Sir Joshua painted--all
of them _fine_ and many of them _great_--we stand amazed at the
capacity of the artist who produced them. They were all creations!
The five portraits of little Isabella Gordon known as _Angels’
Heads_ (National Gallery, London), which in lightness, delicacy, and
iridescence have been compared to the petals of a flower and the
melting softness of the rainbow; _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_;
the _Strawberry Girl_; the _Age of Innocence_; _Nelly O’Brien_; _Kitty
Fisher_; _Penelope Boothby_; _Mrs. Abington_; _Lord Ligonier_; _The
Graces Decorating a Terminal figure of Hymen_; _Diana, Lady Crosbie_;
_Mrs. Hardinge_; _Lady Cockburn and her Children_;--all belong to the
first rank of original and artistic achievement.
“Reynolds,” Sir Walter Armstrong writes, “arrived at results scarcely
to be distinguished from those of genius, and did so entirely by the
action of an original mind and a profound taste upon accumulated
materials. His path towards excellence was conscious, discriminative,
judicial. Every step he took was the result of a deliberate choice.
He felt no heats driving him into particular expression in his own
despite. Just as by fairness of mind he produced the effect of sympathy
among his friends, so by unerring judgment he produces the effect of
creation on us who value his art. He appears to me the supreme, if
not the only, modern instance of a painter reaching greatness along
a path, every step of which was trodden deliberately, with a full
consciousness of why it was taken and whither it was leading, and with
the power unimpaired to turn back or to change the goal at any moment.
Superficially the art of Sir Joshua resembled that of Raphael as little
as it well could; mentally the processes of the two men were curiously
alike. Both possessed taste to such a degree that it became genius;
and both were endowed, for the service of their taste, with a mental
industry which is rare.”
It is unfortunate that Sir Joshua experimented so deeply with his
pigments and glazes so that we can see none of his pictures in their
pristine beauty and brilliance. That he was a rare colorist we would
know from _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_ and the _Angels’
Heads_--the former rich and gorgeous and the latter iridescent and
delicate--showing the two extremes.
Here is Sir Joshua’s palette given in the _Farington Diary_ under
date of August 14, 1806:
“Marchi (Sir Joshua Reynolds’s assistant) I called on before dinner to
desire him to call upon J. Taylor to give his opinion of a picture
said to be a portrait of Garrick by Sir J. Reynolds. I desired Marchi
to state to me what colors Sir Joshua Reynolds had placed upon his
palette and the order in which they were laid. He named them as
follows. He used a handle palette as it is called: White; Naples
Yellow; Yellow oker; Vermillion; light red; lake; black. Asphaltum he
used occasionally, but that he had it in a galley-pot. His vehicles
were: Mastick varnish and drying oil made into Macgilp in a pot. Nut
oil which he used with his white in a pot. Mastick varnish _only_,
which he sometimes used alone; and Marchi observed that it caused his
colors to crack and fly off. Wax (white virgin wax) he had in a tin pot
which he melted at the fire when he proposed to use it. This vehicle
Marchi observed caused his colors to scale off from the canvas in
flakes.”
To mention the sitters who came to Leicester Fields and the company
that gathered there every evening when Sir Joshua was not dining out
would be to list the entire society of London in the Eighteenth Century.
“In these days we are apt to forget that to many of Sir Joshua’s
contemporaries, with the stricter notions of social precedency in vogue
a century ago,” Sir Walter Armstrong notes, “the painter’s station in
London society must have seemed almost an outrage, especially as it had
been won without any kind of pretence or undue submission to those who
were then called the great. Fond as he was of the best that Society
could give, he lived his life in his own way, invited whom he chose
to his table, leaving his guests to shake down among themselves as
best they could, and, so far as we can discover, paying little heed to
prejudices on the matter of birth, and still less to those which had to
do with politics or conventional morality.”
Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower has made this very interesting comparison
of Romney and Reynolds:
“The mighty events which were in progress around him--the war with
the American Colonies, and the supervening naval war with France and
Spain--ran their course without personally affecting him, whereas
Reynolds was in constant touch with the men who were most vigorously
opposing Lord North’s policy, with Burke and Charles Fox; and it
was his own intimate friend of nearly thirty years standing, Admiral
Keppel, whose trial in this very year 1778, formed the central
battle-ground between the Court and the popular party. In all these
things Reynolds was intimately concerned, as he was in the lighter
events of social life, with his constant dinner-parties at Leicester
Fields, his still more constant attendance at the tables of the great
and the assemblies of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Ord, his outings to
Streatham, and his mild flirtation with ‘Little Burney.’ But Romney
lived remote, as remote in his shyness and isolation as Gainsborough
lived in his fondness for a Bohemian world--the world of artists that
painted and played and left war to the soldiers and politics to the
politician. It is true that a couple of years afterwards politics
were brought pretty closely home to both of them, as they were,
_nolentibus volentibus_, to all the householders in London. The
Keppel riots in 1778, celebrating the acquittal of the popular Admiral,
were festive and pleasant enough; noblemen and gentlemen went out
with the crowd; young Pitt, it is said, helped to break Lord North’s
windows; and young Rogers, the banker-poet, to unhinge the gates of the
Admiralty. This was very well and very pleasant; but two years later
the mob improved upon their lesson, and in the Lord George Gordon Riots
London was ablaze.”
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of
Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss._
James Northcote in his _Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds_ notes: “The
picture of a little _Strawberry Girl_ was painted about this time
(1775?) and he considered it one of his best works, observing that no
man ever could produce more than about half a dozen really original
works in his life; “and this picture,” he added, “is one of mine.”
This little girl is about three years old and is shown at three-quarter
length with a handkerchief folded around her head after the fashion
of a turban, the curls escaping from her forehead. She wears a
lightcolored dress with a pinafore caught over her arm. At her neck
is a ribbon bow. Her hands are demurely folded at the waist and over
her right arm hangs a cone-shaped strawberry “pottle.” The background
is composed of large rocks and trees at the right.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss_
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
The picture is painted in oils on canvas (29 × 24 inches) and is a
replica of the original in the Wallace Collection, London.
Leslie and Taylor voiced so well the impression that every one has when
looking at this fascinating work that what they said bears quoting:
“_The Strawberry Girl_ with her pottle on her arm, creeping
timidly along and glancing round her with large, black eyes, might be
Little Red Riding Hood hearing the first rustle of the wolf in the
wayside bushes, could we substitute a red hood for the odd turban-like
head-dress with which the painter has crowned his little maiden, and
which even Sir Joshua’s taste can barely make becoming, and hang on her
arm the basket of butter and eggs for her sick grandmother instead of
the strawberry pottle which gives her a name.”
The model for _The Strawberry Girl_ was Miss Theophila Palmer, Sir
Joshua’s favorite niece, who lived with him and looked after him until
her marriage. Her name Theophila was divided into two pet names. “The”
and “Offie,” upon which Sir Joshua once wrote a playful-verse:
When I’m drinking my tea, I am thinking of The,
When I’m drinking my coffee, I’m thinking of Offie,
So, whether I’m drinking my tea or my coffee,
I always am thinking of thee, my The-Offie.
In the _Farington Diary_ (Vol. IV), by Joseph Farington (London, 1924),
we also learn that Miss Theophila Palmer was the “My dear Offy” of
Sir Joshua’s letter, dated Jan. 30, 1781, in which he wished that she
and Mr. Robert Lovell Gwatkin of Kellrow, Truro, Cornwall, her future
husband, “may be as happy as both deserve--and you will be the happiest
couple in England. So God Bless you!”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
DIANA, VISCOUNTESS CROSBIE
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
Fanny Burney, in a description of a reception at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
house in Leicester Square, refers to young Gwatkin, the Cornish Squire,
“making sheep’s eyes at Offy, whose uncle, Sir Joshua was very fond
of her.” “I never was,” he wrote to Offy, “a great friend to the
efficacy of precept, nor a great professor of love and affection, and,
therefore, I have never told you how much I loved you for fear you
should grow saucy upon it.”
The well-known picture of _Simplicity_ is of Theophila Gwatkin,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Gwatkin and this little girl was
also known affectionately as The.
DIANA, VISCOUNTESS CROSBIE.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounced the _Strawberry Girl_ one of his most
original creations. The portrait of _Diana Lady Crosbie_ certainly
ranks as another. All critics are united in considering it one of the
finest productions of the master’s brush. Who but Sir Joshua would ever
have thought of such a pose?
The Honorable Miss Diana Sackville, daughter of Lord George Sackville,
aged twenty-one, was engaged to be married to Viscount Crosbie (son and
heir of the first Earl of Glandore) and was visiting his seat, Ardfert
Abbey, Kerry, Ireland. Lord Crosbie sent for Sir Joshua Reynolds to
come and paint the portrait of Lady Diana; and the story goes that soon
after arriving Sir Joshua caught sight of Lady Diana running across the
lawn. He was so fascinated by her lightness and grace that he begged
permission to paint her as he had first seen her.
Consequently, we have Lady Diana surprised in the act, as it were, of
tripping over the park, holding up her dress with her right hand and
extending her left in graceful attitude. The dress is white silk, bound
at the waist by a gold sash, and beneath the folds of the dress, so
exquisitely painted, the tip of a small slipper is seen. The picture
was painted in September, 1777, and two months later Lady Diana was
married to Lord Crosbie. In 1781, when her husband succeeded to the
title, Lady Crosbie became, of course, Countess of Glandore. She died
in 1814. For painting this portrait Sir Joshua received £78.15.
The picture, oils on canvas (93 × 58 inches), left the Crosbie home
only within recent years to occupy a place of honor in Sir Charles
Tennant’s drawing-room in London. From the Tennant Collection it went
directly to California. The picture has been engraved several times
and the best known engravings are by W. Dickinson (1779); James Scott
(1863); and R. S. Clouston (1890); and “proofs before letters” of these
plates bring very high prices in the auction-rooms.
“Here is a miracle of vivacity,” says Spielmann, “so natural, so
alive, that you almost forget that you are in front of a picture as
you look at this lady who moves across the canvas with outstretched
hand to greet you as you approach. Rarely have animation and movement
been so completely realized on canvas. The design is finely sustained
by the mellow, golden tone of the white dress and the telling note of
the golden scarf, all seen against a convincing landscape that seems
entirely novel in Reynolds’s open-air portraits.”
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
This gorgeous portrait, oils on canvas (93 × 56 inches), was painted
in 1785, when the famous actress was twenty-eight, in the full bloom
of her beauty and fruition of her talents; and it is rightly described
by Mrs. Jameson as “the apotheosis of her genius and beauty.” It is
painted in the “grand style” with rich coloring of amber and purple,
the _Tragic Muse_ seated on a throne among the clouds with her
head lifted as if listening to some inspiring voices and her hand
raised as if to command silence. A coronet of pearls adorns her hair,
and heavy ropes of pearls are wound around her neck and are knotted
loosely in front. Over her lap is thrown a drapery, on the hem of which
Sir Joshua painted his name.
The poetic and dramatic conception of the picture show how much Sir
Joshua admired Michelangelo’s _Prophets_ and _Sibyls_ in the Sistine
Chapel.
In this magnificent work Sir Joshua certainly realized his theories
regarding the “grand style” as expressed in his _Fourth Discourse_
to his pupils: “To give a general air of grandeur at first view all
trifling or artificial play of little lights, or an attention to a
variety of tints, is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must
reign over the whole work; to which a breadth of uniform and simple
color will very much contribute.”
In the theatrical annals of England the Kemble family rank with the
later Trees and Terrys; and Mrs. Siddons was a Kemble. Sarah Siddons,
the eldest daughter of Roger Kemble, actor and theatrical manager,
was born in 1755 in Brecon, Wales, where her father was managing a
troupe of players. She was the sister of Charles Kemble, the famous
comedian and manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, and aunt of Fanny
Kemble, the noted actress. At an early age, Sarah played small parts
in her father’s company and when she was eighteen was married to a
young actor named Siddons, also in the Kemble company. Soon afterward
Mr. and Mrs. Siddons appeared in _The Clandestine Marriage_ in
the provinces. Sarah Siddons soon attracted Garrick’s attention and
he gave her an engagement at Drury Lane; but she was not a success.
She then went to Bath, where she became a favorite and established her
reputation. In 1783 she reappeared at Drury Lane and this time she took
London by storm. Then she went to Dublin, where more triumphs added
to her confidence as well as to her fame; and, when she returned to
London, it was to Covent Garden, where her brother, John Philip Kemble,
was manager. Mrs. Siddons shone especially in tragedy and achieved,
perhaps, her greatest success as Lady Macbeth. When Byron saw her in
this _rôle_ he wrote: “It was something transcending nature; one
would say that a being of a superior order had descended from a high
sphere to inspire fear and admiration at the same time.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
Mrs. Siddons’s great parts were Lady Macbeth, Portia, Constance,
Isabella, Jane Shore, Almeira, Lady Ann, Calista, Belvedera, and Mrs.
Beverly. In 1812 she retired from the stage with a large fortune and
died in 1831. Thomas Campbell wrote her life in 1834.
All the portrait-painters of the day had Mrs. Siddons sit to them. The
most famous pictures, however, were Reynolds’s _Tragic Muse_;
Gainsborough’s beautiful one in an afternoon costume of light blue,
striped silk, black hat, yellow scarf and muff, in the National
Gallery, London; and two by Lawrence, also in the National Gallery,
London.
“It was probably after his return from his tour of the Low Countries
that Mrs. Siddons, now in the very flush of her popularity, sat to
him. She had not yet acted in Shakespeare, unless her first appearance
as Isabella (_Measure for Measure_) and as Constance (_King John_)
with her brother, John Kemble (for whom her success had procured a
leading engagement at Drury Lane), preceded her first sittings, which
is possible, though not probable. Her fame has been won in such parts
as Isabella (in _The Mourning Bride_), Euphrasia (in _The Grecian
Daughter_), Jane Shore, Calista, Belvedera, Zara, and Mrs. Beverly. The
Royal Family, little as they loved tragedy, had already distinguished
her by every mark of favor. Her house was besieged by the noble and
fashionable. The managers of Drury Lane had gladly supplemented her
modest salary of ten pounds a week by a double benefit; and in June
she had left London--after a series of successes which almost eclipsed
the still recent fame of Garrick--for Ireland and a short round of
provincial performances. Mr. Russell, author of the _History of Modern
Europe_, had sung her praises under the title of The Tragic Muse,
before she left London. His verses are forgotten, but they may have
suggested to Reynolds the subject of his picture. It could not have
been prompted, as Boaden imagines, by an allusion in the epilogue to
_Tancred and Sigismunda_, as her first appearance in that tragedy was
on the 24th of April, 1784, when the picture was already in its place
on the walls of the Exhibition-Room. The conception of this noble work
was no doubt suggested by Michelangelo’s _Isaiah_. Mrs. Siddons told
Mr. Phillips that it was the production of pure accident. Sir Joshua
had begun the head and figure in a different view; but while he was
occupied in the preparation of some color she changed her position
to look at a picture hanging on the wall of the room. When he again
looked at her and saw the action she had assumed, he requested her not
to move; and thus arose the beautiful and expressive figure we now see
in the picture.”[24]
Yet there is still another story, which is told by Mrs. Jameson. Mrs.
Siddons used to describe Sir Joshua as taking her by the hand and
leading her up to his platform with the words: “Ascend your undisputed
throne; bestow on me some idea of the Tragic Muse.” On which, Mrs.
Siddons said: “I walked up the steps and instantly seated myself in
the attitude in which the Tragic Muse now appears.” It is most likely
that both stories are true. Sir Joshua’s leading the Queen of the
London Stage to her throne on his painting-platform with his courtly
compliment was thoroughly in character and that he also encouraged The
Tragic Muse to act her part and create expression as well as take a
dramatic pose, is also most in keeping with the exciting moment. Sir
Joshua undoubtedly foresaw that he had the opportunity of producing his
greatest masterpiece.
Mrs. Siddons also related that when Sir Joshua was putting the last
touches to the work he said: “I cannot resist the opportunity for going
down to posterity on the edge of your garment,” upon which he painted
his name and the date 1784 on the hem of the robe.
However, Sir Joshua had already done this ten years before in the
portrait of _Lady Cockburn and her Children_, in the National Gallery,
London, where the name and date make a decorative finish to Lady
Cockburn’s amber-colored robe trimmed with white fur thrown across her
lap and that famous picture was begun in 1773 and finished in 1775.
_The Tragic Muse_ was greatly admired when it first appeared. _The
Public Advertiser_, April 28, 1784, said:
“It is impossible to be too lavish in its praise; it is, indeed, a most
sublime and masterly performance and undoubtedly one of the very best
that ever was produced by Sir Joshua. He seems to have conceived and
executed it with enthusiasm. Mrs. Siddons is drawn in the character
of _The Tragic Muse_, the composition is in a grand style, the figure
possesses great dignity, and that fine expression of countenance for
which the original is preëminent and almost unrivalled. Sir Joshua has
been said to paint the _mind_; and perhaps there never _was_ a more
striking instance of it than in this performance. The accompanying
genii ready to administer the dagger or the bowl have also great
expression, and in the effect of the _tout ensemble_ there is a
grandeur and a solemnity suited to the subject and highly worthy of
universal admiration.”
It is illuminating, too, to dip into the _Farington Diary_ (London,
1925), and note in 1801:
“Opie thinks the Mrs. Siddons by Sir Joshua the finest picture he
knows. Opie thinks the picture of Mrs. Siddons much superior to any of
the Titians which were brought by Day from Rome.
“Bourgeois mentioned that Sir Joshua had said the principle to work
upon is to fix a high light and a lowest depth to which all other
lights and dark parts should be subordinate.”
In 1808 we read:
“Lawrence spoke with the highest admiration of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
portrait of _Lord Heathfield_ now at the European Museum, having
been sent there by Boydell to be sold for 350 guineas. He said this
picture and the portrait of _Mrs. Siddons_ by Sir Joshua are the top
of his Art.” And again in the same year: “We looked at the picture of
_Mrs. Siddons_ by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lawrence said, it was his best
picture. I said, it was a high refinement of Rembrandt. Mr. Smith[25]
said he gave £320 for it, which was not half what Calonne paid. It cost
the latter £800.”
On the authority of Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower in _Sir Joshua
Reynolds_ (London, 1902), we learn:
“There is another version of _The Tragic Muse_ in the Dulwich Gallery.
This was sold by Reynolds to M. Desenfans for seven hundred guineas
in 1790 and the date on the hem of her garment is 1789, from which it
appears that he completed this five years after the Grosvenor House
picture. Both of these may be regarded as the authentic work of the
master. There is a replica also of _The Tragic Muse_ at Langley Park,
near Stowe, which is said to have been given by Reynolds to Mr. Harvey
in exchange for a painting by Snyders of a _Boar Hunt_; and another was
in the possession of Mrs. Combe in Edinburgh. I think there is no doubt
that these replicas are by the hands of Reynolds’s assistants.”
Mrs. Siddons in the Dulwich Gallery (canvas 93 × 57 inches) described
as follows:
“She sits on a throne in front view and looks up towards the right; the
right arm and the left elbow rest on the throne; with the hand raised
as if listening to some inspiring voice; a coronet on the back of her
hair; wearing an amber brown dress, with rows of pearls round her neck;
across her lap is a robe, on the hem of which Sir Joshua has inscribed
his name. Paid for, February 1790, Mrs. Siddons, sold to Mr. Desenfans
£735.”
The picture was purchased from Sir Joshua in 1790 by Noel Desenfans
and by him bequeathed to Sir Francis Bourgeois, R. A., by whom it was
left to Dulwich College. It hangs in the picture gallery there. It is
interesting to note that the date on the hem of the robe is 1789--five
years after the Duke of Westminster’s picture! Some critics think that
Sir Joshua also painted this replica himself.
Leslie and Taylor mention in their _Life of Reynolds_ that they failed
to find any note relative to Score’s making a copy of _The Tragic
Muse_; but they draw attention, on the contrary, to the following
extract from Northcote’s _Life of Reynolds_: