which was essential for effecting so great a task as bringing the plant to maturity. Thornhill had the dignity without the greatness, Hogarth something of the greatness without the

CAPTAIN ORME

1761. National Gallery, London

dignity; and it was left to Reynolds, in whom these two qualities, abundantly evident, were blended in such nice proportions, to foster, if not to found, one of the most vigorous schools of painting that the world has ever seen.

Dignity, it may be observed, is a dangerous quality when not accompanied, or alloyed, by others more human. If not nicely balanced it is only too liable to swerve to pomposity on the one hand, or empty affability or condescension on the other. That Reynolds never swayed perceptibly in either direction it would hardly be true to assert. His pedantic observations on his great contemporaries, Hogarth, Gainsborough and Wilson, and the patronising tone of some of his conversations with the younger men, would be less forgivable were it not that one realises how great a man he was. There are many passages in his Discourses that, taken by themselves, are apt to exasperate; but when we consider the work he actually accomplished, the example he afforded, and the knowledge of his art which by his application he added to his natural gifts, we cannot fail to see how paramount his influence has been on the whole course of English Art in his own and succeeding times.

That he was an Englishman is a fact which nowadays it may seem unnecessary to emphasise. But how easy it is to forget that a very considerable number of the painters whose works are included in those of “the British School” were not born in England. That the very greatest of all were natives—namely, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Romney, Lawrence, Constable and Turner—is certainly gratifying to the national pride; and it may be added that with the exception of Romney all of these were born south of the Trent. Scotland has given us Raeburn, and Wales Richard Wilson. But with the exception of the miniaturists, Isaac and Peter Oliver, Nicholas Hilyard and Samuel Cooper, there was no English artist of note before the eighteenth century; the influence of Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and the rest who worked in England, was never strong enough to awaken a response in the country of their adoption. In later and modern times the British School has been enriched from various quarters: by West, Copley, Whistler, Abbey, and Sargent from across the Atlantic; by Alma Tadema from Holland and Hubert von Herkomer from Germany, to mention only a few of the more notable names. But the

THE STRAWBERRY GIRL

1773. Wallace Collection, London

number of British artists is now so great, to say nothing of their strength, that these accessions count for little in the great stream whose fountainhead, to return to the point from which we start, was Joshua Reynolds.

It was at Plympton in Devonshire that Reynolds was born, on July 16, 1723. His father, the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, was headmaster of a school in the parish. His mother’s maiden name was Theophila Potter. He was the tenth of eleven children—no uncommon number for a country parson in England. He is said to have been called Joshua in expectation of possible benevolence from an uncle of that name who lived in the neighbourhood. Perhaps this was an afterthought, for his name is entered in the register of baptisms at Plympton as Joseph.

Like many, if not most, of his fellow-geniuses he developed a taste for the arts at a very early age. His father, with that lack of foresight which may almost be called a characteristic of parents, is known to have endorsed one of his sons earliest efforts, executed during school-hours, “Done by Joshua out of pure idleness.” “His first essays,” Malone tells us, “were copying some slight drawings made by two of his sisters, who had a turn for art; he afterwards eagerly copied such prints as he met with among his father’s books, particularly those which were given in the translation of Plutarch’s lives published by Dryden. But his principal fund of imitation was Jacob Catts’s Book of Emblems, which his great-grandmother by the father’s side, a Dutchwoman, had brought with her from Holland.”

Trivial as these anecdotes of early efforts may in very many cases be held, it is here of the very greatest interest to compare the beginnings of Reynolds’s genius with those of his only formidable rival, Gainsborough. For in both we so plainly see “the child the father of the man” that, were it not that we have both of the accounts on sufficiently trustworthy authority, we might well suppose them to have been supplied merely to feed the popular imagination of what ought to have been. “A beautiful wood of four miles in extent,” Allan Cunningham tells us, “was Gainsborough’s first inspiration when but a child, in Suffolk. Scenes are pointed out where he used to sit and fill his copy-books with pencillings of flowers, and trees, and whatever pleased his fancy; and it is said that these early attempts of the child bore a distinct

LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN

1773. National Gallery, London

resemblance to the mature works of the man. At ten years old he had made some progress in sketching, and at twelve he was a confirmed painter.”

Reynolds’s father was not long, however, in awaking to Joshua’s talents, for the boy was not more than about eight years old when, after perusing a book entitled “The Jesuit’s Perspective,” he made a drawing of Plympton School which effected a complete revolution in the state of the parental mind. “This is what the author of the ‘Perspective’ asserts in his preface,” cried the worthy father, “that by observing the rules laid down in this book a man may do wonders—for this is wonderful!”

After this portentous revelation Joshua was allowed to devote himself more seriously to his favourite pursuit, and his classical studies were sacrificed to the more congenial occupation of drawing likenesses of his relations and friends, and to the perusal of Richardson’s treatise on painting, which gave him his first acquaintance with the beauties of the great Italian Masters.

To the author of this work, Jonathan Richardson the elder, some slight tribute is due in speaking of the formation and development of the English School of Painting, so far at all events as it was influenced by the study of the Italian Masters. Horace Walpole considered him one of the best painters of a head that had appeared in this country. “There is strength, roundness, and boldness in his colouring,” he says, “but his men want dignity and his women grace. The good sense of the nation is characterised in his portraits. You see he lived in an age when neither enthusiasm nor servility were