II

Joshua Reynolds, the son of a clergyman whose family numbered eleven children, was born in the little town of Plymton, Devonshire, July 23, 1723. Joshua was the seventh child. His father conducted the Grammar school of the village, where he had fine opportunity to estimate the ability of his Joshua. It is possible that the boy, while cultivating a budding interest in drawing, neglected the formal studies, such as Latin and Greek, for on one of those early drawings the father wrote,-" Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." This is the verdict of the father in his rôle of schoolmaster; the schoolmaster in his capacity as father later had the intelligence to abandon his original intention of making a physician out of his son and sympathetically entered into the boy's project of becoming a painter.

Jonathan Richardson had written a book on art which somehow fell into the hands of young Reynolds. In after years Joshua declared that it was the reading of this book that "made him a painter." At the age of seventeen Reynolds entered the studio of Hudson, the pupil and son-in-law of Richardson. To enter as an apprentice he had to pay £120, half of which was borrowed from his sister, Mrs. Palmer. Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter of London, but he was more skilled in painting fashions than in producing faces that one

remembered. To paint a portrait, of course, one had to paint a face, but to Hudson and his school, waistcoats, wigs, and laces were equally important.

After two years in the studio of Hudson, Joshua suddenly left. There is a rumor that Hudson became jealous of the growing fame of his most gifted pupil and dismissed him in a "tiff." It is possible, but equally possible that Reynolds felt that he had learned all he could learn from Hudson and that he might now shift for himself. Incidentally, it would be pleasant to have an income by the painting of the portraits of country gentlemen.

When he was twenty-six years old he met Commodore Keppel at the home of Lord Edgecumbe. Keppel was two years younger than Reynolds and wanted companionship during his voyage to the coast of Africa, so he invited the young painter to accompany him. With the Commodore, a brave and friendly spirit, he visited Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Algiers. At Minorca he painted the portraits of the officers of the garrison, painting with rapidity and receiving three guineas for each portrait.

When he reached Italy he returned no more to the British war-ship. He now reached the Mecca of English artists, the land of the painter's dreams. From Leghorn he hastened to Rome. After Rome came Florence, Bologna, and Venice; especially enjoying at Venice the works of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto.

Writing of his impressions when he first found himself in Rome, he says, "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 undigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where the art was at its lowest ebb - it could never indeed be lower- were to be totally done away with and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it was 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 never affected to feel their merits, and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a new taste and new preceptions 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 (Raphael) was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world."

III

In 1752 Reynolds is again in London. His apprenticeship is ended; he is ready to play the game of winning fame and wealth by the pursuit of his beloved art. With vigorous health, ambition, training at home and abroad, the impressions of a youthful traveler, the mind of a philosopher, and the con

viction that genius in but another name for hard work, what could he not do?

It is interesting to note that the first picture that attracted wide-spread attention was a full-length portrait of Commodore Keppel, who is represented as standing on a stormy sea shore, giving animated directions to unseen figures in the distance. There was a freshness and liveliness to this picture that was something new in the conventional portraiture of that day. London talked about the artist who painted men rather than drapery. And having talked until the topic was threadbare, it next flocked to the studio of the artist, determined to give the painter the opportunity to produce a portrait that should out-Keppel Keppel. The painter prospered even though at first his prices were very moderate, charging but five guineas a portrait. He considered one hundred and fifty portraits a fair year's work. When he had attained fame, his prices ranged from a hundred to a hundred and fifty guineas.

In recording that Reynolds painted one hundred and fifty portraits a year, one must not forget Giuseppe Marchi, the " drapery man." Marchi had attached himself to Reynolds, when the latter was in Italy. He became his devoted follower and helper. He learned to paint almost as well as Reynolds himself, at least as far as the superficial part of the work was concerned. At the same time we must remember that Reynolds was extremely

facile as well as skilful in his workmanship. He was also a prodigious worker. He made it a rule to work whether or not he felt any inspiration. He was fond of society, and he lived in an age when clubs flourished; but he made it a rule never to be seen out of his studio in the day-time, though one writer has wittily observed that he seems to have had equal objection, except when he received company, to be found at home after dark. But when he was enjoying the life of the clubs, he associated with those who could amuse or instruct him. He was a keen observer of outward things, and had that rare quality, -the ability to listen to others. "In his power of listening with intelligence," says a writer in the Quarterly Review, "lies one of the great secrets of his power of making and keeping such dissimilar friends as Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Wilkes, and a host of others, who, at constant feud with each other, were all agreed in their warm attachment to Reynolds."

In 1768, when Reynolds was at the summit of his fame and influence, the Royal Academy of Arts was founded, with Reynolds as its first president. In that same year he was knighted by the king, an act that filled burly Dr. Johnson with so much joy that he broke his rule in regard to the use of wine. Reynolds took great interest in advancing the influence and standards of the Royal Academy. He inaugurated the annual Academy dinner, a function