Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses
Edited, with an Introduction, by Helen Zimmern
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664591463
Table of Contents
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' DISCOURSES.
Number 76. Saturday, September 29, 1759.
Number 79. Saturday, October 20, 1759.
Number 82. Saturday, November 10, 1759.
THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY.
THE CAMELOT SERIES.
GREAT WRITERS.
A NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES.
THE NATURALISTS' MONTHLY
A Journal for Nature-Lovers and Nature-Thinkers.
INTRODUCTION.
Sir Joshua Reynolds—to whom is the name unfamiliar? to whom, hearing it, does not appear in mental vision the equally familiar autograph portrait of the deaf artist? This picture, painted originally for Mr. Thrale, shows us the painter "in his habit as he lived," spectacles on nose, ear-trumpet in hand—in short, exactly as he was known to his intimates in his latter days in domestic life. Another autograph picture of the artist in younger life hangs to-day in the National Gallery. Close by is seen the portrait by the same hand of his equally illustrious friend, bluff, common-sense Dr. Johnson, whom he represents as reading and holding his book close to his eyes after the manner of the short-sighted. It would seem that this mode of representation roused Dr. Johnson's ire. "It is not friendly," he remarked, "to hand down to posterity the imperfections of any person." This comment of the doctor's is equally characteristic of the man and his times. At so low an ebb was art and art criticism in those days, that people less learned than Johnson failed to grasp the truth of Reynolds' dictum, now become almost a commonplace, that a portrait but receives enhanced value as a human and historical document if it makes us acquainted with any natural peculiarity that characterises the person delineated. Johnson rebelled against the notion he deduced from this circumstance that Sir Joshua would make him known to posterity by his defects only; he vowed to Mrs. Thrale he would not be so known. "Let Sir Joshua do his worst, … he may paint himself as deaf as he chooses, but I will not be blinking Sam."
In this anecdote, in this juxtaposition of two great names, each thoroughly representative of their epoch, can be traced both the cause of Sir Joshua's success, and of the difficulties against which he had to strive. Reynolds may with truth be named the father of modern English art, for before him English art can