in 1701, and his half-brother, John (1671–1758), was a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, a fellow of Eton, and headmaster of Exeter school. William Reynolds, the son of this John and the first cousin of Sir Joshua, was a fellow of Exeter College from 1723 to 1741, and succeeded his father as schoolmaster (cf. William Cotton, Account of Plympton, 1859, pp. 34 sq.).
The father, Samuel Reynolds (1681–1746), who graduated B.A. from Corpus Christi College in 1702, was elected fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1705, and was noted for his guileless disposition and ignorance of the world (cf. Fowler, Hist. of Corpus Christi, p. 272). Being also very absent-minded, he was likened by his friends to Parson Adams in Fielding's novel of ‘Joseph Andrews.’ There is a portrait of him, painted by his son, in the Cottonian Library of Plymouth. His salary and emoluments as master of Plympton grammar school were 120l. a year and a house, and he had eleven (or twelve) children, six of whom were living at his death in 1746. Three only of these, his daughters—Mary [see Palmer, Mrs. Mary], Elizabeth (born 1721), and Frances (born 1729)—were connected with the after life of his son Joshua.
Samuel Reynolds was not an energetic master (the scholars of the grammar school at Plympton are said to have dwindled to one during his time), but there is no reason to suppose that Joshua's education was neglected by his father, as Allan Cunningham suggests. He seems to have been a somewhat idle and inattentive boy, as one of his Latin exercises exists on which he has drawn a pen-and-ink sketch, and his father has written ‘This is drawn by Joshua in school out of pure idleness.’ At all events, it was at his father's school that he received what education he had, and this certainly included some knowledge of Latin. But if he showed little disposition for ordinary studies, he mastered the principles of perspective from the ‘Jesuit's Treatise,’ and produced a drawing of the school-house which astonished his father. He also drew some portraits of his friends and relatives; and if his fondness for art was not, as Dr. Johnson said, caused by Richardson's ‘Treatise on Painting’ (see Johnson, Life of Cowley), it was greatly stimulated by a perusal of that work. He copied some prints belonging to his father, especially those in Dryden's edition of ‘Plutarch's Lives,’ and Jacob Cats's ‘Book of Emblems.’ From the latter he appears to have derived suggestions for some of his future pictures, as the ‘Cauldron Scene in Macbeth’ in Boydell's ‘Shakespeare Gallery,’ and the portrait of Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra dissolving the pearl. His first essay in oil-painting was a portrait (still preserved) of the Rev. Thomas Smart, tutor in the family of Richard (afterwards first Lord) Edgcumbe, done about the age of twelve in a boat-house at Cremyll Beach with common shipwright's paint on a bit of sail. In 1740, after some indecision as to whether he should be a painter or an apothecary (Reynolds himself said he would rather be an apothecary than an ordinary painter), he was apprenticed to Thomas Hudson [q. v.], the portrait-painter, for four years, with a premium of 120l., of which half was found by his father, and half advanced by his eldest sister, Mary, the wife of John Palmer, attorney, of Torrington. While with Hudson in London he saw Pope in an auction-room, and managed to shake hands with him. He studied hard, and copied Guercino's drawings, but he quarrelled with his master and returned to Plymouth in 1743. He was back in London in 1744, and on good terms with Hudson, having meanwhile painted some twenty portraits, including Philip Vanbrugh, the commissioner of the dockyard, and several of the family of Mr. Kendal of Pelyn. After his father's death, on Christmas day 1746, he lived till 1749 with two unmarried sisters at Plymouth Dock, and improved his style by the study of the portraits of William Gandy [q. v.] To these years belong portraits of Richard Eliot of Port Eliot (father of the first Lord Eliot) and his wife; of Elizabeth, Eliot's sister, wife of Charles Cocks (afterwards Lord Somers); of the Hon. John Hamilton; Mrs. Field; Commodore Edgcumbe; Mr. Craunch (an old friend of his father's, much interested in his future) and his wife; Captain Chaundy, R.N., and his wife; Councillor Bury and his wife; Alderman Facy; and Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh (afterwards Duchess of Kingston). Other pictures of this period are a portrait group (Reynolds's first), comprising Mr. and Mrs. Richard Eliot and their family, with Mrs. Goldsworthy and Captain the Hon. John Hamilton (d. 1755) [q. v.], a study of a boy reading in a reflected light (signed and dated 1747), which he kept till his death, and two Rembrantesque portraits of himself, one with long hair and dark cloak—still in the possession of the Gwatkin family—and the other (now in the National Portrait Gallery), with palette and maulstick in the right hand, and shading his eyes with his left. The palette has a handle, as all his palettes had. A view of Plymouth and its neighbourhood from Catdown Hill (very carefully
