Chapter VII: English, Eighteenth Century 329–428 (10)

and has blended them with the aristocratic dignity of the Lady Sligo, or with the melting sweetness of many of the sketches of Emma. This is what he finds in every first-rate Romney; and he finds much more. He finds pure and unfaded color, the fruit of the painter’s knowledge and of a self-restraint which forbade him to search for complex effects through rash experiments. He finds a quality of painting which, though it wants the subtlety and preciousness that Gainsborough reached instinctively and Sir Joshua by effort, is a quality to which nobody but a master can attain. To be convinced of this we have only to look closely at the brush-work of the eyes in any of the National Gallery Romneys, or the draperies in such pictures as the _Lady Warwick and Children_ or the _Lady Derby_.

“When all is said, Romney remains one of the greatest painters of the Eighteenth Century and one of the glories of the English name.”

We are apt to think that it was easier to conquer a reputation in the Eighteenth Century than it is to-day and that Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, and Raeburn stepped easily into their commanding positions. Let us remember that Horace Walpole mentions the fact that there were two thousand portrait-painters in London in his time!

The story of English Painting previous to the Eighteenth Century is interesting and very different from that of any nation on the Continent.

The Wars of the Roses, which lasted thirty years (1455–1485), coincide with the great developments of Painting in Italy and Flanders. During this period, while York and Lancaster were, like the Lion and the Unicorn, fighting for the Crown, no attention could be paid to the painting of pictures. Up to this period England had had a notable past in portraiture, fresco-painting, and, even more particularly, in the art of illumination and miniature-painting. In the decoration of manuscripts from about 1250 to 1350 the Anglo-Norman painters stood first in this branch of art. The old monastic artists had great traditions to follow and superb models to draw upon, such as the _Book of Kells_ (dating from the Eighth or Ninth Century); and the Winchester School of the Tenth Century stood very high before the advent of the Normans in 1066.

Our own country to-day can show many examples of this splendid work in private collections. After William Caxton set up his printing-press at Westminster in 1471, there was little more need for the laboriously written manuscripts with their exquisite miniature-painting and illumination.

Oliver Cromwell’s Roundhead bandits and other Puritans with their wholesale demolishing and slashing of all art and everything beautiful together with the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed all the paintings that could have told us just what had been accomplished in England at the time when Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Botticelli were creating masterpieces in Italy and when Roger van der Weyden and Memling were painting gloriously in the great realm of the Dukes of Burgundy. Such works as the _Romaunt de la Rose_ and other Anglo-Norman manuscripts give us a hint of what Painting in England must have been; for, of course, English, or Anglo-Norman Painting, in Plantagenet days must have been--as in other countries--an enlarged version of the brightly colored miniatures touched up with gold-leaf in the manuscripts.

Henry VIII seems to have been the first English King who was a patron of art in the modern sense. But there was no English artist of power to be patronized. The German Hans Holbein (see page 240) was made Court-Painter. Holbein painted all the great personages in Tudor England and his influence lasted long after his death. Miniature-portraits were also popular. The greatest artist in this line was Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), a native of Exeter, trained as a goldsmith, a follower of Holbein, and appointed goldsmith, carver, and portrait-painter to Queen Elizabeth (whose portrait he painted many times). Later he was portrait-painter to James I. It was Hilliard, too, who engraved the Great Seal of England in 1587. Hilliard’s pupil, Isaac Oliver (1556–1617?), also a pupil of Federigo Zuccaro, was unsurpassed as a miniature-painter and taught his son Peter (1601–1660), who was famous for his drawings and water-colors as well as for his miniatures. Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), achieved a great reputation as a miniaturist portrait-painter and painted Charles II, Henrietta Maria, all the celebrities of the Court, and also John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. Collectors appreciate his works to-day.

Holbein left no School and there was no one to succeed him. Consequently when Antonio Moro (see page 257), came to England from Spain in 1553 to paint Mary Tudor, he stayed in London for some time painting celebrities.

In Queen Elizabeth’s time another foreign portrait-painter, Federigo Zuccaro (or Zucchero) arrived from Italy with a great reputation, having worked for Pope Gregory XIII and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and also in Antwerp and Amsterdam. Zuccaro painted Queen Elizabeth, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Leicester, and many other English notables.

Another foreigner, Daniel Mytens (1590?–1656), arrived in the reign of James I, became his Court-Painter and continued in the post in the reign of Charles I, until Van Dyck’s popularity sent him back to Holland. Mytens painted in the style of Rubens and Van Dyck. Hampton Court Palace contains many full length portraits by him. A portrait by Mytens of Jeffrey Hudson (see page 191), holding a dog by a leash, hangs in Buckingham Palace.

However, in the reign of Charles I, Anthony Van Dyck (see page 181) dominated Painting just as Holbein had in the reign of Henry VIII. For years after his death every painter tried to follow Van Dyck’s style; but they all missed his distinction, not having his genius to start with.

Civil war and Puritanism killed art completely. Consequently when “Charlie came over the water” and the “King Enjoyed his Own Again,” there was nobody in the kingdom able to paint an acceptable portrait. Again a foreigner met the need. This time it was Peter Lely (1618–1680), who was a Dutchman, born in Westphalia, Germany, the son of Pieter van der Faes, a captain of infantry, who had changed his name to Lely. In 1640 young Lely was in England, painting landscapes and trying to imitate Van Dyck in portraiture. The marriage of Princess Mary to William, Prince of Orange gave Lely his first opportunity and he painted the Royal couple with Charles II, who made him a knight and baronet in 1679. Sir Peter only enjoyed his honors a year, for he died in 1680. Sir Peter Lely painted a great number of portraits, including the “Court Beauties,” which now hang in Hampton Court Palace.

The Court-Painter of Queen Mary II and Queen Anne was another foreigner, Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), a native of Lübeck, a pupil of Ferdinand Bol, Carlo Maratti, and Bernini, with painting experiences in Rome and Venice. Kneller painted portraits of Charles II, Louis XIV, James II, William III, Queen Mary, Queen Anne, and George I. For Queen Mary II he painted the “Beauties” at Hampton Court, in a certain sense a continuation of Sir Peter Lely’s “Beauties.” Kneller was knighted in 1692 and made a baronet in 1715.

Sir Godfrey painted the members of the Kit-Cat Club and every person of distinction in England. In 1705 he settled near Twickenham. Pope wrote an epitaph for Kneller’s monument in Westminster Abbey.

William Hogarth (1697–1764) who now enters the lists, is the first really English painter. Hogarth was a native of London and an engraver as well as a painter. Hogarth became Sergeant-Painter to the King in 1757. He first attracted attention by his prints for Butler’s _Hudibras_ in 1726 and at this time began to paint in oils. In 1731 he painted _The Harlot’s Progress_ and followed this with _Southwark Fair_ and _The Rake’s Progress_ which gave him great fame as a satirist. In 1745 he painted his own _Portrait_ and the _Marriage à la Mode_ (six scenes). The vigor and personality of his portraits, the beautiful coloring of his palette, and the atmosphere of the Eighteenth Century make Hogarth one of the great names in art. England was a long time producing an artist; but when he came he was a very great one.

Hogarth was so pre-eminently a chronicler of the fashions and follies of his time that we are apt to forget his beautiful use of color, and Hogarth’s technique is so solid and so sure that his colors are as fresh to-day as when they were painted.

Hogarth did not believe in his powers of portraiture; but the world does not agree with him. The portrait of _Lavinia Fenton as Polly Peachum in the Beggar’s Opera_, (National Gallery, London) ranks as one of the great portraits of the world. And there are others: _David Garrick and his Wife_ in Windsor Castle; his own _Portrait_ (National Gallery, London); _Archbishop Herring_ (Lambeth Palace); _Peg Woffington_; and many others.

Hogarth’s book _The Analysis of Beauty_ had the following origin. In his own portrait painted in 1745 he drew on a palette in one corner of the picture a serpentine line with the words: “The line of beauty and grace.” So much discussion ensued that Hogarth wrote the book to explain what he meant and to establish a standard of beauty.

The Eighteenth Century saw the great period of English Painting expressed in Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792); Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788); and George Romney (1734–1802). Others of importance were Richard Wilson (1714–1782), famous for his landscapes in many of which ruins were introduced; Francis Cotes (1725–1770), famous portrait-painter; and, lapping over into the Nineteenth Century, Sir William Beechey (1753–1839), who became portrait-painter to the Queen; John Hoppner (1758?–1810), portrait-painter (see page 416); John Opie (1761–1807), historical portrait-painter; Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830); Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823); Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851); John Constable (1776–1837); John Wilkie (1785–1841); and John Crome, known as “Old Crome” (1793–1842).

LADY BETTY DELMÉ.

_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._

_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee._

This, one of Sir Joshua’s finest group pictures (93 × 57 inches), was painted in 1777, a year in which the artist made many notable portraits including that of Diana, Viscountess Crosbie (see page 345). Lady Betty Delmé is seated at the base of an old beech-tree on her estate between London and Portsmouth, her arm around her children. The little Scotch terrier seems much interested in his master. The whole is a wonderful study in amber and russet tones. The picture came to Mrs. Satterlee from her father, the late Mr. J. P. Morgan.

Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton Earl Plymouth, July 16, 1723, the 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.”

_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.

_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!”

_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.”

_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_:

“The picture of a little _Strawberry Girl_ with a kind of turban on her head was painted about this time (1772) 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 them.’ The picture was exhibited (1773) and repeated several times; not so much for the sake of profit as for that of improvement, for _he always advised as a good mode of study, that a painter should have two pictures in hand of precisely the same subject and design and should work on them alternately; by which means, if chance produced a lucky hit, as it often does_, then instead of working on the same piece, and by that means destroy that beauty which chance had given, he should go to the other and improve upon that. Then return again to the first picture, which he might work upon without any fear of obliterating the excellence which chance had given it, having transposed it to the other. Thus his desire of excellence enabled him to combat with every sort of difficulty or labor.

“The compilers’ theory, then, is: after the sketch of _Mrs. Siddons’s_ portrait was laid in, he took up a fresh canvas, made a replica and worked on both alternately until ‘the lucky hit’ was produced and that appeared to Sir Joshua in the picture finished and exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1784. Notwithstanding the glowing eulogiums passed upon it, a purchaser was not found for it until 1788, when it was sold to M. de Calonne. Sir Joshua did not record the sale in his ledger, or note-book, and it only transpired when Skinner and Dyke sold at their rooms, Spring Gardens, 1795, the English pictures of the Calonne Collection and specified in the Catalogue that M. de Calonne paid Sir Joshua 800 guineas for the portrait of Mrs. Siddons in the character of the Tragic Muse.

“At this time M. Desenfans was Consul-general in Great Britain for the Kingdom of Poland, a writer of marked ability, a recognized authority on art, an extensive picture-dealer, employed by the King of Poland to purchase high-class Old Masters to complete his Collection and who kept up an acquaintance with Sir Joshua, notwithstanding the trick he played of selling him, through Cribb, his frame-maker, the copy of a Claude, specially made by Marchi for the purpose as an original. The compiler’s surmise is, then, that he knew Sir Joshua had the unfinished replica on hand, and came to an understanding with him to complete it in its present form, ‘signed and dated 1789 on the edge of the robe.’ This investigation leads to three inferences; first, that Sir Joshua would not condescend, for any consideration, to sign and date a copy of _The Tragic Muse_ made by Score; secondly, that an astute man of business, such as Desanfans was, would not give £735 for a copy; thirdly, that The Dulwich picture must now be regarded in the same light as the Westminster one--both from the hand of Reynolds; but which was first commenced cannot be ascertained.”

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.

_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._

_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._

It is interesting to compare this picture by Sir Joshua with Gainsborough’s _Duchess of Devonshire_ (see page 373), which is probably the earlier of the two. This picture, oils on canvas (94 × 57 inches), was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776 as No. 233. The Duchess had not long been married when this picture was painted, as her marriage took place in 1774. There is something in the pose that suggests the portrait of _Diana, Lady Crosbie_, which was painted later. The Duchess is represented full-length facing the left, in the act of descending a flight of stone steps, her right hand placed on the balustrade and her left holding her dress very gracefully. The dress is cream-colored cut low in the neck and fashioned with full sleeves. The skirt is gracefully cut and abounds in plaits and draperies. A gauzy scarf is wound around her right arm and floats below. The hair is dressed very fashionably with a long and round curl pinned tightly at the back of the neck and reaching the shoulder, and above the braid which forms a coronal the hair mounts higher and is ornamented by pearls and grey and red feathers. Vines are growing gracefully around the balustrade, beyond which and through the near-by trees we see an open vista of the park with a statue at the left. Presumably this is _Chatsworth_, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire.

_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]

The picture was in the Collection of Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Nottinghamshire, before it was taken to California.

THE COTTAGE DOOR.

_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._

_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._

The little group is assembled in front of a thatched cottage, beside which a gnarled and withered tree rises scarred and seared by the storms of many years. Overhanging the roof a large tree droops its feathery Gainsborough foliage and, on the left, half of another feathery Gainsborough tree is waving in the summer breeze. By this tree, and farther back as well, a stream is seen falling in a little cascade beneath a rustic bridge. Luxuriant weeds grow in the foreground and by the side of the cottage, the door of which is open and beside which a peasant’s family is grouped. The mother, in yellowish brown skirt and white bodice, has a suggestion (save for the costume) of the beautiful ladies that sat to Gainsborough. In her arms is a baby. On her right, is a little boy, scantily dressed, who is eating something; in front of her are two children, one holding a bowl and the other dipping from it with a spoon; a fifth child, with one hand on his head and the finger of his left hand in his mouth, looks forward shyly; and the sixth is seated on the ground by his side. “Old pimply-nosed Rembrandt,” as Gainsborough called him, never lighted a scene more beautifully, nor more marvellously than this.

The picture, oils on canvas (57 × 46 inches), is one of Gainsborough’s most mature works and dates from about 1776–1778.

Bought by T. Harvey of Catton, Norfolk, in 1786, it passed to Mr. Coppin of Norwich in 1807. Then it became the property of Sir John Leicester, Bart., created Lord de Tabley in 1826; and at the Sale of the effects of the latter it was bought by Earl Grosvenor, created Marquess of Westminster in 1831. In 1921 _The Cottage Door_ was sold by the second Duke of Westminster to Mr. Henry E. Huntington.

“There is no painter of English birth more widely appreciated than Gainsborough whose art touches every observer, great and simple, learned and unlearned. As we look at his pictures, said Constable, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them. A thread of romance runs through the whole of Gainsborough’s career, from his marriage to a beautiful and well-dowered bride, whose origin is shrouded in mystery, down to the pathetic termination of the long years of jealous rivalry with Reynolds. And romance and mystery are inseparably connected with his pictures--with the portraits of that _Duchess of Devonshire_, whom tradition has brought us to regard as typical of English beauty, with that masterpiece at Edinburgh, the portrait of _Mrs. Graham_, hidden from sight for fifty years on account of one of the tenderest of love stories; and with the famous _Blue Boy_, the secret of whose history still remains undiscovered.”[26]

“Old pimply-nosed Rembrandt and myself were both born in a mill,” Gainsborough used to say, because his father, John Gainsborough, was a manufacturer of woollens in Sudbury. Thomas was born there in 1727. At twelve he was said to be a “confirmed painter.” His first portrait seems to have been a great success. Some one had been stealing pears from the Gainsborough orchard and one day, when young Thomas was sketching there he saw a man’s face peering over the fence. Instantly he made a quick sketch and took it into the house. By means of this sketch the culprit was identified. Gainsborough then enlarged the sketch, painted an oil portrait, mounted it on a board, and stuck “Tom Peartree” up to the delight of all the neighbors and confusion of strangers. This picture was lent to the Gainsborough Exhibition held at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885 and is now in the Elizabethan Mansion in Christchurch Park, Ipswich.

_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_

THE COTTAGE DOOR

--_Thomas Gainsborough_]

In 1741 Gainsborough went to London and, after studying under Hubert Gravelot and Francis Hayman, took a studio in Hatton Garden and tried to start as a portrait and landscape-painter. A year of failure decided the young artist to return home. In a short time he married Margaret Burr (supposed to be a natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford) and removed to Ipswich. Here he painted chiefly landscapes. About 1760 he settled in Bath and immediately became the fashion. Fourteen years later Gainsborough removed to London, where his success continued and he became the rival of Reynolds. Gainsborough had already in 1768 been nominated by George III one of the thirty-six Academicians on the foundation of the Academy and he exhibited almost yearly at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1788, when there was a misunderstanding about the hanging of his pictures. Gainsborough died in 1788, closing one of the most remarkable careers in art, for this great painter was almost entirely self-taught. Reynolds called attention to this remarkable fact in his _Fourteenth Discourse_, in which he cites Gainsborough as an example of an artist who has arrived “at great fame without the assistance of an academical education, or any of those preparatory studies which have so often been recommended.”

Yet his genius was such that he attained the greatest eminence in his day and his place in art to-day is in the small circle of the very great ones.

Ruskin did not exaggerate in the least when he wrote: “Gainsborough’s power of color is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colorist of the English School; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die and exists not now in Europe. In management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough. His hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam. He never loses sight of his picture as a whole. In a word Gainsborough is an immortal painter.”

Gainsborough painted about seven hundred portraits and two hundred landscapes. Strange as it may seem, he preferred to paint landscapes. At least he told George III this. And he told his friend Jackson in a letter “I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my viol-da-gamba and walk off to some sweet village where I can paint landskips and enjoy the fag-end of life in quietness and ease.”

This seems strange coming from one of the greatest of all portrait-painters.

To read the list of Gainsborough’s portraits is to run through the Social Register of London and Bath. Gainsborough painted “everybody that was anybody.” The great personalities of the day wanted their portraits “limned” by both Reynolds and Gainsborough, often adding Romney and Hoppner as well. The fourteen years that he lived in Bath Gainsborough’s painting-room was almost as much of a _rendez-vous_ as the Pump Room and his sitters ranged from the most aristocratic and wealthy, such as Earl Spencer, his wife, and little daughter, the future Duchess of Devonshire, to statesmen, like Pitt, and actors like Garrick and Quin. The latter sat three times to Gainsborough. The following little piece of amusing acting usually took place. Quin, suffering from gout, would hobble to the painting-room and tapping at the door would ask “Is Old Grumpus in?” Gainsborough would reply “Come in”; and, placing a chair for his friend and a stool to rest his foot upon, would put on a grave, doctorial look and, resting his chin on his maul-stick, would inquire in the Bath phrase: “Well, how is _toe_?”

Quin evidently was a critic: “Sometimes, Tom Gainsborough,” he said, “a picture in your rigmarole style appears to my optics the veriest daub,--then, the devil’s in you, I think you a Van Dyck!” And Gainsborough would tell Quin that “nothing could equal the devilism of portrait-painting.”

“Indeed, he told me,” Angelo relates, “at his house in Pall Mall, that he was sure the perplexities of rendering something like a human resemblance from human blocks was a trial of patience that would have tempted holy St. Anthony to cut his own throat with his palette-knife.”

Gainsborough was devoted to music, played several instruments and was a great friend of the oboe-player in the Queen’s Band, John Christian Fischer, who married his daughter Margaret; of John Christian Bach, son of the great John Sebastian Bach; and of Bach’s associate, Charles Frederick Abel, the celebrated virtuoso on the viol-da-gamba, whose portrait Gainsborough painted with his instrument by his side, and which is now in the Huntington Gallery.

Gainsborough’s portrait by Zoffany in the National Portrait Gallery, London, presents a handsome and rather dashing man of about thirty-five with classic features and large, fine eyes with penetrating glance and an intelligent, interior light. Had he not been a painter he might have easily become a _beau_, or a gallant officer of the Major André type, or of that impudent young dog, Jack Absolute, who captivated Miss Lydia Languish in _The Rivals_.

It was the same in London as it had been in Bath. Gainsborough became the fashion. He barely had time to fill all the orders that came thick and fast and he enjoyed society and still more his cronies, and, to judge from numerous anecdotes, was not averse to wild companions; but for all that he was generous, sympathetic, outgoing, and much beloved by his friends.

As an instance of his ready wit on one occasion, when he was in court regarding a picture the councillor tried to embarrass him. “I observe,” he said, “you lay great stress on a painter’s eye. What do you mean by that expression!” “A painter’s eye,” replied Gainsborough, without a moment’s hesitation, “is to him what a lawyer’s tongue is to you!”

Gainsborough was sprightly, humorous, and lively in conversation and indeed, in society, to use the word of the period, something of a “rattle.”

Whenever he appeared, either at a morning lounge at Christie’s amidst the enlightened and polite, or at My Lady’s midnight rout surrounded by bowing _beaux_ and curtseying belles, his gaiety enlivened every group. He knew everybody and everybody knew him; he was, however, most at home with the worthies of the auction-room. For some years Garrick was frequently his companion at Christie’s, where the amusement caused by the humor common to both never failed to give an additional zest to the proceedings. Mr. Christie often declared that “the presence of this choice pair added fifteen per cent to his commission on a sale.”

And this was a “choice pair,”--Garrick and Gainsborough!