In 1765 the association obtained a royal charter, and.became
known as “ The Incorporated Society of Artists ”; but much
rivalry and jealousy were occasioned by the management of
the various exhibitions, and an influential body of painters
withdrew from the society. They had access to the young
king, George III., who promised his patronage-and help. In
December 1768 the Royal Academy was founded, and Reynolds,
whose adhesion to the movement was for a time doubtful, was
hailed by acclamation its first president, an honour which more
than compensated for his failure to obtain the appointment
of king's painter, Which, the previous year, had been bestowed
on Allan Ramsay: In a few months the king signified 'his
approval of the election by knighting the new president, and
intimating that the queen and himself. would honour him with
sittings for portraits to be presented to the Academy.
Reynolds was in every 'vay fitted for his new position, and
till the late Lord Leighton the Academy never had so good a
figure-head. He did not take any part in the educational work
of the new institution, but on the social side he set the Academy
on the lines it has followed with the greatest worldly success
ever since. It was at his suggestion that the annual banquet
was instituted. To the specined duties of- his post he added
the delivery of a presidential address at the distribution of the
prizes, and his speeches on these occasions form the well-known
“ Discourses” of Sir Joshua. These discourses alone would
be sufficient to entitle their .author to literary distinction;
indeed, when they were first delivered, it was thought impossible
that they could be the production of a painter, and Johnson
and Burke have been credited with their composition, in spite
of the specific denials of both, and of Dr Johnson's indignant
exclamation- “ Sir Joshua, sir, , would as soon get me to paint
for him as to write for him! ” 1 ' »-Sir
Joshua was too prosperous and successful an artist altogether to escape the jealousy of his less fortunate or less capable brethren, and it must on the other side be admitted that his attitude towards some of his contemporaries was wanting in generosity. His relations with Gainsborough, who on his part was in fault, would require more space for discussion than can here be afforded, but he was not just either to Hogarth or to Richard Wilson. It may be added that though Reynolds's friends were genuinely fond of him, his wasnot a nature that could inspire-or feel any great warmth of personal feeling. Cosmo Monkhouse in the Dictionary of National Biography speaks of “ the beauty of his disposition and the nobility of his character, ” but adds: “he was a born diplomatist." The latter phrase gives the real key to his character. Without going so far as fully to endorse the sentiment of Mrs Thrale's famous line about a “heart too frigid ” and a “pencil too warm, ” we must agree with a recent writer that the attitude of Reynolds towards his fellow' men and Women was one of detachment. -Hence we regard Reynolds as a man with tempered admiration, and reserve our enthusiasm for his art. In 1784, on the death of Ramsay, Reynoldswas appointed painter to the king. Two years previously he had suffered from a paralytic attack; but, after a month of rest, he was able to resume his painting with unabated energy and power. In the summer of 1789 his sight began to fail; he was affected by the gutta serena, but the progress of the malady was gradual, and he continued occasionally to practise his art till about the end of 1790, delivering his final discourse at the Academy on the 10th of December. He was still able to enjoy the companionship of his friends, and he exerted himself in an effort to raise funds for the erection of a monument in St Paul's to Dr Johnson, who had died in 1784. Towards the end of 1791 it was evident to the friends of Reynolds that he was gradually sinking. For a few months he suffered from extreme depression of spirits, the result of a severe form of liver complaint, and on the 23rd of February 1792 this great artist and blameless gentleman passed peacefully away.
As a painter Reynolds stands, with Gainsborough, just behind the very first rank. There can be no question of placing him by the side of the greatest Venetians or of the triumvirate of the 17th century, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez; but, if he fail also to equal either Hals or Van Dyck, this is due, not to any defect in his natural capacity, but to deficiencies in his education combined with the absence in his case of that splendid artistic tradition on which the others leaned. He could not draw the figure properly; nor could he as a rule compose successfully on anything like a monumental scale. English painters in his early days possessed a sound technique, and most of 'Hogarth's best pictures are perfectly well preserved as well as beautifully painted but Reynolds was not content with the tried methods Hudson could have taught him. In the' desire to compass that creaminess, that juicy Opulence in colour and texture, of which he conceived, the idea before the Italian journey, and which he found realized in the works of the Venetians and Correggio, he embarked on all sorts of fantastic experiments in pigments and media, so that Haydon exclaimed, “ The wonder is that the picture did not crack beneath the brush! ” The result was the speedy ruin of many of his own productions, and he inaugurated an era of uncertainty in method which seriously compromised the efforts of his successors in the English school. The motive for this procedure may explain if it do not justify it. He was all his life intensely in earnest about his art, devoured by what he himself calls “ a perpetual desire to advance "; and he accounts for his own uncertainty partly from his want of training, and partly from his “ inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence " he saw in the works of others. Now if this mental ene rgy led him into hazardous attempts to find a royal road to the painter's ideal, it acted well upon his design in lending to it a certain intellectual solidity, which gives it an advantage over the slighter, though at times more exquisite, productions of the pencils of Gainsborough or Romney. The weight and power of the art of Reynolds are best seen in those noble male portraits, “ Lord Heathfield, " “ Johnson, " “ Sterne, " “ Goldsmith, ” “ Gibbon, " “ Burke, " “ Fox, " “ Garrick, " that are historical monuments as well as sympathetic works of art. In this category must be included his immortal “ Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse."
In portraits of this order Reynolds holds the field, but he is probably more generally admired for his studies of women and of children, of which the Althorp portraits of the Spencer family are classic examples. Nature had singled out Sir Joshua to endow him with certain gifts in which he has hardly an equal. No~ portrait painter has been more happy in his poses for single figures, or has known better how to control by good taste the piquant, the accidental, the daring, in mien and gesture. “ Viscountess Crosbie" is a striking instance. When dealing with more than one figure he was not always so happy, but the “ Duchess of Devonshire and her Baby, " the .“ Three Ladies decking a Figure of Hymen, " and the “Three Ladies -Waldegrave ” are brilliant successes. He was felicitous too in his arrangement of drapery, often following his own fashion of investing his graceful dames in robes of ideal cut and texture, quite apart from the actual clothe sworn at the time. Few painters, again, have equalled the president in dainty and at the same time firm manipulation of the brush. The richness of his deeper colouring is at times quite Venetian. For pure delight in the quality of paint and colour we cannot do better than go to the “Angels' Heads” of the National Gallery, or the “Nelly O'Brien " in the Wallace Collection.
It corresponds with what has been noted as Reynolds's habit of mind in regard to older art to find him throughout his life hankering after success in what he was fond of calling the “grand style ” in “ historical painting.” His failure here is as notorious as his brilliant success in the field of art for which nature had equipped him. His “ Ugolino, " his “ Macbeth, ” his “ Cardinal Beaufort, " have no real impressiveness, while his greatest effort in the “ historic ” style, the “ Infant Hercules " at St Petersburg, resulted in his most .conspicuous disaster.
It is in the “ Discourses " that Reynolds unfolds these artistic theories that contrast so markedly with his own practice. The first discourse deals with the establishment of an academy for the fine arts, and of its value as being a repository of the traditions of the best of bygone practice, of “ the principles which many artists have spent their lives in ascertaining." In the second lecture the study of the painter is divided into three stages, -in the first of which he is busied with processes and technicalities, with the grammar of art, while in the second he examines what has been done by other artists, and in the last compares these results with Nature herself. In the third discourse Reynolds treats of “ the great and leading principles of the grand style”; and succeeding addresses are devoted to such subjects as “ Moderation, ” “ Taste, ” “ Genius, " and “ Sculpture.” The fourteenth has an especial interest as containing a notice of Gainsborough, who had died shortly before its delivery; while the concluding discourse is mainly occupied with a panegyric on Michelangelo.
The other literary works of the president comprise his three essays in The Idler for 1759~1760 (“ On the Grand Style in Painting, " and “ On the True Idea of' Beauty ), his notes to Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, his Remarks on the Art of the Low Countries, his brief notes in Johnson's Shakespeare, and two singularly witty and brilliant fragments, imaginary conversations with Johnson, which
