predominant.” The treatise of Richardson in which Reynolds formed his first acquaintance with the Italian Masters was probably the “Essay on the whole Art of Criticism as it relates to Painting,” which was published in 1719, bound up in one volume with “An Argument in behalf of the Science of a Connoisseur.” This was followed, in 1722, by an account of some of the statues, bas-reliefs, drawings, and pictures in Italy, &c., with remarks by Mr. Richardson, Senior and Junior. The son made the journey, and from his notes they both compiled this valuable work. The father formed a large collection of the drawings of Old Masters, many of which were acquired and treasured by Reynolds.

When he was eighteen years old, Reynolds was sent to London to study painting under Thomas Hudson, the most successful portrait painter at that

MISS BOWLES

1775 Wallace Collection, London

time, with whom he remained for two years. It is said that the relations between master and pupil were not very happy, and that the reason for Reynolds’s abrupt return to Devonshire was the success of one of his portraits which had been hung by accident among Hudson’s productions. However this may be, it appears that Reynolds had not wasted his time in London, and it was during the next two or three years, when he had returned to his native country and settled at Plymouth, that he painted the portrait of himself (with his palette in his left hand, shading his eyes with his right), besides being commissioned to paint Miss Chudleigh, afterwards the notorious Duchess of Kingston, and the Commissioner of Plymouth Dock.

Northcote speaks of Reynolds’s pictures at this early period as being “carelessly drawn and frequently in commonplace attitudes, like those of his old master Hudson, with one hand hid in the waistcoat, and the hat under the arm—a very favourite attitude with portrait painters at that time, because particularly convenient to the artist, as by it he got rid of the tremendous difficulty of painting the hand.” Apropos of which Northcote proceeds to relate an anecdote which he says he had heard so often and on such authority that he apprehended it to be a truth:

“One gentleman whose portrait Reynolds had painted desired to have his hat on his head in the picture, which was quickly finished, in a commonplace attitude, done without much study, and sent home; where, on inspection, it was soon discovered that although this gentleman in his portrait had one hat upon his head, yet there was another under his arm.”

A fine specimen of his accomplishments at this early period is a small “conversation piece”—that is to say, an elaborate family group, painted in the year 1746, which is now in the possession of Lord St. Germans, at Port Eliot, near Plymouth. I have not seen the original, but Mr. George Harland Peck has a small version of it in water-colour, which he was kind enough to allow me to reproduce in the Portfolio Monograph No. 48 (“English Society of the Eighteenth Century in Contemporary Art”). In this composition there are no less than eleven figures, grouped in various attitudes about the steps at a corner of the family mansion. The central figure, standing, is Edward, afterwards created Lord Eliot. On his left are seated his father and mother, Richard and Harriot Eliot. On his right are standing two of his sisters, and Captain Hamilton (ancestor of the Duke of Abercorn) with a child on his shoulders. A boy on his right, two children seated in the foreground, and a Mrs. Goldsworthy on the extreme right of the picture complete the composition.

As the work of a country youth of twenty-three this is certainly a very remarkable performance. Hogarth and some of his minor contemporaries were at this date producing “conversation pieces” of more or less merit, but we must look to Holland or France for anything on this scale. Only once again did Reynolds attempt anything approaching so comprehensive a survey of family portraiture on a single canvas, namely the Marlborough group at Blenheim, containing eight figures besides several dogs, of which a very spirited little sketch in oils is now in the National Gallery.

But Reynolds’s greatest good fortune at Plymouth, as it afterwards proved, was his introduction to Lord Mount Edgcumbe, who became his most valuable patron when he returned to London, and to Captain Keppel, whose kindness enabled him to visit Italy instead of settling down as a provincial portrait painter, with nothing better by way of example than the hopeless decadence that followed as a natural consequence on the slovenly indifference of Kneller. In 1749 Keppel was appointed Commodore of the Mediterranean station, and invited Reynolds to accompany him. He willingly accepted the invitation, and remained in Italy for over three years. How he profited by this opportunity for studying the works of the greatest masters may be gathered from numerous passages in his memoranda and in the “Discourses;” and to discover the secret of his success, both in practice and in precept, we have only to read in his own words the story of the ceaseless activity of a mind unalterably bent on utilising every opportunity for improving his art. Let us begin with the passage in which he confesses to have found himself disappointed with the works of Raphael. “I did not for a moment conceive or suppose,” he writes, “that the name of Raphael and those admirable paintings in particular owed their reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me: I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was unacquainted; I felt my ignorance and stood abashed.

“All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where art was in

PORTRAIT OF TWO GENTLEMEN

1778. National Gallery, London

the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not, indeed, be lower), were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child.”

Ignorance, then, was the first obstacle to be overcome. It was ignorance, as Beechey so truly points out in the introduction to his Memoir of Reynolds, ignorance of the dignity and creative powers of art, that made the works of his predecessors inferior to those of modern times; and it was the light derived from intellectual sources, operating upon a powerful and discriminating mind, that enabled him to attain a higher degree of excellence. “We may fairly assume,” Beechey continues, “that the productions of this admirable painter gave the first great stimulus to British art and showed to British artists the extent of their deficiencies and the means by which they might be remedied ... but we may venture to affirm that if he had never enjoyed the opportunities of comparing the results of his early education with the works of Italian genius, he would never have attained that high superiority which