Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/643

Painting in England. 613 portraits of Miss Kemble, and of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, in the Grosvenor Gallery — replicas of which are at Langley Park, Stowe, and in the Dulwich College Gallery — all very noble compositions. Sir Joshua had now reached his sixty-sixth year ; the boldness and happy freedom of his productions were undiminished; and the celerity of his execution, and the glowing richness of his colouring, were rather on the increase than the wane. His life had been uniformly virtuous and temperate ; and his looks, notwithstanding the paralytic stroke he had lately received, promised health and long life. He was happy in his fame and fortune, and in the society of numerous and eminent friends ; and he saw himself in his old age without a rival. But the hour of sorrow was at hand. One day, while finishing a portrait, he felt a sudden decay of sight in his left eye. He laid down the pencil ; sat a little while in mute consideration, and never lifted it more. His sight gradually darkened, and within ten weeks of the first attack his left eye was wholly blind. The last time that Reynolds made his appearance in the Academy was in the year 1790 ; he addressed a speech to the students on the delivery of the medals, and con- cluded by expatiating upon the genius of his favourite master, adding — "I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of Michelangelo." On the 23rd of February, 1792, Sir Joshua expired, without any visible symptoms of pain, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was buried in one of the crypts of St. Paul's cathedral, accompanied to the grave by many of the most illustrious men of the land. He lies by the side