“Whoever is delighted with his own picture must derive his
pleasure from the pleasure of another. Every man is always present to himself,
and has, therefore, little need of his own resemblance, nor can desire it, but
for the sake of those whom he loves, and by whom he hopes to be
remembered."[1]
A Face Upon which Time does make an Impression.
Compared to Rembrandt who must hold the record for representing
himself (about ninety times in different media), Joshua Reynolds’s portrayals
of himself are meagre. The Reynolds scholar David Manning has counted about
twenty self-portraits in oil, dating roughly from 1746, before Reynolds left
for Italy, and 1788, four years before his death. Having said that, twenty is
still a remarkable number compared to most artists who only represent
themselves two to three times, Poussin and Annibale Carracci for example. With
Rembrandt we get a sense of a face upon which time makes but little impression.
Though the Dutch genius shows himself growing up and getting old, a visit to an
exhibition of his self-portraits suggests the face of a resigned, imperturbable
soul who surveys us from all periods of his life.[2]
Moreover, we cannot fasten any specific occasions on Rembrandt’s self-portraits
as we can with Reynolds. Nearly all of Reynold’s self-portraits mark an
important event in his life: his dealings with the Society of Dilettanti and
the Royal Society; the mayoralty of his home town of Plympton in 1769; his
Doctorate of Civic Law at Oxford in 1773; and a request for a portrait from the
Florentine Academy in 1775 and various other staging points.[3]
Reynold’s self-portraits are still a remarkable accomplishment because, in the
words of Wendorf, the series of portraits “…reveal a process of physical
accretion and gradual paring away” which is also consistent with pictures of
his famous friends, David Garrick and Samuel Johnson.[4]
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait when Young, 1753-8, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 61.6 cm, Tate Gallery, London. |
 |
| Rembrandt van Rhyn, Self-Portrait as a Young Man, c. 1628, oil on panel, 22. 5 x 18.6 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. |
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait as DCL (Doctor of Civic Law awarded from Oxford 1773 ), 1773, oil on canvas, 127 x 101.6 cm, Royal Academy of Arts, London. |
 |
|
Sir
Joshua Reynolds, Dr Samuel Johnson, 1772, oil on canvas, 75.6 x 62.6 cm, Tate
Britain, London.
|
The Changing Face of Sir Joshua
Tracking Reynold’s self-portraits is relatively easy, though
there are a few copies and variants to throw the scholar off balance. After a
pre-Italian trip drawing and a number of portraits that may have been painted
in Italy, we arrive at the famous image of the painter shielding his eyes with
his hand from his countenance in the mirror (NPG). The general consensus is
that this can be dated to about 1748-49, after Reynolds returned from Italy; it
is one of the few self-portraits that actually shows Reynolds at work. As
Mannings suggests, the way maulstick and palette are shown in this period
conveys symbolically the struggles occurring within the Royal Academy. Compare
Hogarth who shows himself hard at work with the tools of his craft, and
Reynold’s portrayal of himself as an intellectual painter, a pictor doctus, in this case a doctor of
civic law.[5]
By omitting the instruments of painting Reynolds aligned himself with the
tradition of Lely and Kneller completely at odds with Hogarth’s attitude
towards art.[6] With
a lesser-known portrait painter like Soldi who lacked the drive and ambition of
either Hogarth or Reynolds, the palette is hidden in half shadow which may be
significant. Also in these early self-portraits we can detect the influence of
Rembrandt’s experiments with chiaroscuro and expression, though according to
Sir James Northcote, Reynold’s “dark manner” owed something to the Devonshire
artist William Gandy.[7]
Over time Reynold’s appearance changed: he put on weight, developed certain
medical problems such as bad eyesight since he is shown wearing thick
spectacles in his later self-portraits; he also endured “partial deafness,” due
to a cold caught in the winter season in Rome where he intensely studied
Raphael; it may also have been occasioned by complications from a riding
accident in Minorca in 1749.[8]
In 1791 Reynolds also suffered a stroke and though Northcote said that Reynolds
“entertained strong apprehensions concerning the tumour which had been
collecting for some time over his left eye,” Reynold’s autopsy performed by the
celebrated surgeon Sir William Hunter showed, to put in dauntingly medical
language, a “praeternatural enlargement of the liver along with a shrunken and
flimsy right optic nerve.”[9]
(2).jpg) |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait with Artist shading his Eyes, 1748-9 NPG, 60.5 x 73.5 cm, London. |
 |
|
William Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse, 1757,
oil on canvas, 45.1 x 42.5 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.
|
 |
| Andrea Soldi, Self-Portrait, 1743, oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cm, York Art Gallery, York. |
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait as a Deaf Man, c. 1775, oil on canvas, 74.9 x 62.2 cm, Tate Britain, London. |
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait with Glasses, 1788, oil on panel, 75.1 x 63.4 cm, Royal Collection |
As Others saw Reynolds.
In addition to Reynold’s self-portraits there are examples
of the painter portrayed by other artists. The first of these is Reynold’s
likeness by Angelica Kauffman. Easily the warmest portrayal of the Director of
the Royal Academy, the sitter turns as if to answer a question from the woman
he called “Miss Angel” whose visit to JR’s own studio was imagined by an
Edwardian painter, Margaret Dicksee. In
the midst of favoured books like Goldsmith’s “The Traveller,” Johnson’s Idler, Burke’s treatise on the sublime
and the beautiful all presided over by Daniel da Volterra’s brooding bust of
Michelangelo, the effect of this portrait is of the private, relaxed scholar
more than the public learned theoretician. The mood of Kauffman’s portrait is easy and
friendly, but in another work by the American artist Gilbert Stewart, the
general atmosphere is of awkwardness and discomfort. Famous as the painter of
George Washington, a very difficult sitter, Stuart should have been able to
take Reynolds in his stride. But, as Wendorf says, the Stewart portrait was a
“failure” since it does not show the artist as a painter, but as a reserved
self-conscious individual idly toying with his snuffbox- the “very cool man.”[10]
Apart from other artist’s depictions of Reynolds there are written accounts of
artists by those who knew him and moved in the same social circles. One of these is the Life of Reynolds by
Sir James Northcote, an artist from Plymouth who lived with Reynolds for five
years before setting up as a portrait painter on his own. In 1813 Northcote
published his life of Reynolds which remains the main source for information
about him.[11] Though
Northcote is appreciative of Reynold’s portraits whose compositions are
“unquestionably excellent,” possessing “a degree of merit superior to mere
portraits, they assume the rank of history.”[12]
In assessing Reynolds as a historical painter, Northcote was less generous
stating that in comparison to his portraits, they were “defective.”[13]
Leslie is perhaps more reasoned when he points out that Reynolds went to great
history painting, such as the Raphael Stanze and Michelangelo’s Sistine because
they contained portraits, or in the latter’s case the “individuality of
portrait,” a genre that Reynolds was to elevate as in his famous portrait of Sarah Simmonds as the tragic muse. Something of Reynold's deficiencies as a history painter can be seen in his Death of Dido which is perhaps overcooked with its hot colours, and which sacrifices coherent structure for poetic effect. [14]
Northcote’s reservations about Reynolds’s knowledge of anatomy, (repeated by
Leslie who stresses Reynolds’s lack of education at an academy) though, have to
be reconciled with the report that Samuel Reynolds, Joshua’s father, had
anatomical prints in his possession; and Leslie said that Reynolds had made
“some progress” in that science.[15]
Also, Reynolds was friends with eminent surgeons like Sir William Hunter who
frequently lectured on that subject at the R.A. and of course was to perform
the President’s autopsy.[16]
 |
| Gilbert Stewart, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1784, oil on canvas, 91.6 x 76.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington. |
 |
| Angelica Kaufmann, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1767, oil on canvas, 127 x 101.5 cm, Saltram House, Devonshire, National Trust, Morley Collection. |
 |
|
James Northcote, Self-portrait at 81, 1827, oil
on canvas, 76.8 x 64.6 cm, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, London.
|
 |
| George Dance, Northcote writing his Life, 1799, graphite on paper, Tate Britain, London. |
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Death of Dido, 1775-81, oil on canvas, 147.5 x 239.2 cm, Royal Collection. |
 |
| D. George Thompson, “A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds,” published by Owen Bailey, after James William Edmund Doyle, stipple and line engraving, published 1 October 1851, 18 1/4 in. x 25 1/8 in, National Portrait Gallery, London. |
The Other Reynolds: Frances, the Artist’s Sister.
A fact not known to many art historians, let alone the
museum-going public, is that Sir Joshua had a sister who was a painter.[17]
Frances Reynolds was Sir Joshua’s younger sister and from the first she showed
talent in drawing which she compared to her brother’s first efforts, not
without criticism of the latter. There are many conflicting views of Frances
that emerge from the rumour mill of the eighteenth-century. The negative opinions
stem from Northcote who declared to the critic William Hazlitt that Frances’s
portraits were “an exact reproduction of all her brother’s defects.” She
painted her friend Samuel Johnson, but he declared the portrait “not Johnson,
but Johnson’s grimly ghost.”[18]
Though sibling rivalry has played a part in her anonymity, it should be borne
in mind when assessing her art that there would have been social restrictions
on Frances’s development since as Reynolds rose in society it would not have
been appropriate for his sister to paint in a similar way without violating
social codes. It seems that Frances was sentenced to painting reduced versions
of her brother’s work whilist remaining in his house; she still harboured
ambitions however as she painted large oils in secret in another part of the
house.[19]
As her brother’s stock rose considerably, Frances’s hopes of painting
diminished and she left his house and went to Windsor where she turned to
writing her Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, which Dr
Johnson encouraged her to publish in 1781.[20]
To be fair to Reynolds, he did provide handsomely for his sister in his will;
and so she was able to move to a large house in London which housed all her
pictures as well as some of her brother’s collection which went under the
hammer in 1795.[21] Though
not an exceptional painter, Frances’s portrait of the actor and philanthropist,
Hannah More, is a fine painting, and she certainly deserved more recognition
than she got. She seems to have been disposed towards melancholy which is
captured in some of her writings.[22]
 |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of the Artist’s Sister, Frances, 1764-65, oil on canvas, 75 x 61.2 cm, Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth. |
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| Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1764-65, oil on canvas, 74 x 61.5 cm, Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth. |
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| Frances Reynolds, Hannah More, c. 1780, oil on canvas, 73.6 x 60.9 cm, Bristol Museums and Art Galleries. |
 |
|
Angelica Kauffman, Self-Portrait, 1770-75, oil
on canvas, 29 ins x 24 ins, National Portrait Gallery, London.
|
 |
| Samuel William Reynolds (after Sir Joshua Reynolds), Frances Reynolds, 1824, mezzotint, National Portrait Gallery, London |
Influence of Rembrandt on Other 18th Century English
Self-Portraits.
As the Rembrandt scholar Christopher White has said, in the
eighteenth-century Rembrandt was recognised as the supreme exponent of the
self-portrait genre.[23]
Rembrandt’s self-portraits were also used as models for straight portraits as
in Hudson’s Charles Erskine and
Hogarth’s John Pine. Some artists,
perhaps taking their cue from Rembrandt’s own pupils, liked to import
Rembrandt’s own self-portraits in their own. Thomas Barker of Bath used what he
believed to be Rembrandt’s likeness (now in the Mauritshuis) as a model, but
this has now been demoted to a humble tronie,
halfway between history and portrait painting, albeit still by Rembrandt’s
hand. And the English artist Henry Bone seems to have been fascinated by
Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits, and the Standard
Bearer which he probably thought was Rembrandt’s own likeness. As for Reynolds
himself, he would have learnt about
Rembrandt as an apprentice with Thomas Hudson who possessed paintings and
drawings by the Dutch master. The future Director of the Royal Academy would
also have known of Rembrandt through reading Richardson’s Essay on the Theory of Painting; he also saw Rembrandt’s art in
Italy in 1750 and later copied one of his works. Much later in 1781 Reynolds
embarked on a visit to Flanders and Holland when he made notes (published after
his death in 1792). More will be said about Reynold’s Dutch excursion as well
as his collection of Rembrandt paintings, drawings and copies next week.
 |
| Thomas Hudson, Charles Erskine, 1737, mezzotint, 13 in x 9 in, National Portrait Gallery, London. |
 |
| Thomas Barker of Bath (1769-1847), Self-Portrait, c. 1800, oil on canvas, 57 x 44.5 cm, Holborne Museum, Bath. |
 |
|
Henry Bone, Portrait of Rembrandt (After
Rembrandt), 1808, pencil drawing squared for transfer, 6 x 4 ½ inches, National
Portrait Gallery, London.
|
 |
|
Henry Bone, (after Rembrandt), Standard Bearer, 1821,
pencil drawing squared in ink for transfer, September 1821, 10 in. x 8 1/4 in, National
Portrait Gallery, London.
|
 |
| Rembrandt van Rhyn, Standard Bearer, 1636, oil on canvas, 118.8 x 96.8 cm, Paris, Private Collection. |
 |
|
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait when Young,
1753-8, oil on canvas, 73. 7 x 61 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
|
Slides.
1) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait with Artist shading his Eyes, 1748-9 NPG, 60.5 x 73.5 cm, London.
2) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait when Young, 1753-8, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 61.6 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
3) Att to Rembrandt van Rhyn, Self-portrait with a Gorget and Beret, c. 1629, Indianapolis Museum of Art, oil on panel, 42.8 x 33 cm.[24]
4) Rembrandt van Rhyn, Self-Portrait as a Young Man, c. 1628, oil on panel, 22. 5 x 18.6 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.[25]
5) Andrea Soldi, Self-Portrait, 1743, oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cm, York Art Gallery, York.[26]
6) William Gandy, John Patch Senior, Surgeon, oil on canvas, 121 x 82 cm, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
7) William Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse, 1757, oil on canvas, 45.1 x 42.5 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.
8) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait as a Figure of Horror, 1784, chalk on paper, Tate Britain, London.
9) Rembrandt van Rhyn, Self-Portrait, “Wide-Eyed,” 1630, etching and burin, 51 x 46 mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.[27]
10) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait with Glasses, 1788, oil on panel, 75.1 x 63.4 cm, Royal Collection.[28]
11) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait as DCL (Doctor of Civic Law awarded from Oxford 1773 ), 1773, oil on canvas, 127 x 101.6 cm, Royal Academy of Arts, London.[29]
12) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allegorical Portrait of Dr James Beattie, 1773, oil on canvas, 122 x 155 cm, University of Aberdeen.[30]
13) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1778-80, oil on canvas, 73.5 x 61 cm, National Trust, Knole, Kent.
14) Angelica Kaufmann, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1767, oil on canvas, 127 x 101.5 cm, Saltram House, Devonshire, National Trust, Morley Collection.
15) Margaret Dicksee, Angelica Kauffman visiting Sir Joshua Reynold’s Studio, 1892, location and details unknown.
16) Gilbert Stewart, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1784, oil on canvas, 91.6 x 76.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
17) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Samuel Johnson, 1772, oil on canvas, 75.6 x 62.6 cm, Tate Britain, London.
18) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait as a Deaf Man, c. 1775, oil on canvas, 74.9 x 62.2 cm, Tate Britain, London.[31]
19) D. George Thompson, “A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds,” published by Owen Bailey, after James William Edmund Doyle, stipple and line engraving, published 1 October 1851, 18 1/4 in. x 25 1/8 in, National Portrait Gallery, London.[32]
20) George Dance, Northcote writing his Life, 1799, graphite on paper, Tate Britain, London.
21) Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Death of Dido, 1775-81, oil on canvas, 147.5 x 239.2 cm, Royal Collection.[33]
22) James Northcote, Self-portrait at 81, 1827, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 64.6 cm, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, London.
23) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of the Artist’s Sister, Frances, 1764-65, oil on canvas, 75 x 61.2 cm, Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth.
24) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1764-65, oil on canvas, 74 x 61.5 cm, Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth.
25) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-portrait, aged eighteen, chalk, Uffizi, Florence.
26) Frances Reynolds, Hannah More, c. 1780, oil on canvas, 73.6 x 60.9 cm, Bristol Museums and Art Galleries.
27) Richard Samuels, Portraits in the Character of Muses in the Temple of Apollo, 1779, oil on canvas, 52 in. x 61 in., National Portrait Gallery.[34]
28) Angelica Kauffman, Self-Portrait, 1770-75, oil on canvas, 29 ins x 24 ins, National Portrait Gallery, London.
29) Samuel William Reynolds (after Sir Joshua Reynolds), Frances Reynolds, 1824, mezzotint, National Portrait Gallery, London.[35]
30) Thomas Hudson, Charles Erskine, 1737, mezzotint, 13 in x 9 in, National Portrait Gallery, London.
31) Unknown artist, self-Portrait of Rembrandt (After), etching, late 17th to early 18th century, 5 7/8 in. x 3 1/2 in, National Portrait Gallery, London.
32) Thomas Barker of Bath (1769-1847), Self-Portrait, c. 1800, oil on canvas, 57 x 44.5 cm, Holborne Museum, Bath. [36]
33) Rembrandt van Rhyn, Head of a Man with a Feathered Beret, oil on panel, 62.5 x 47 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague.
34) Henry Bone, Portrait of Rembrandt (After Rembrandt), 1808, pencil drawing squared for transfer, 6 x 4 ½ inches, National Portrait Gallery, London.
35) Henry Bone, (after Rembrandt), Standard Bearer, 1821, pencil drawing squared in ink for transfer, September 1821, 10 in. x 8 1/4 in, National Portrait Gallery, London.
36) Rembrandt van Rhyn, Standard Bearer, 1636, oil on canvas, 118.8 x 96.8 cm, Paris, Private Collection.[37]
37) James Macardell, John Pine (after Hogarth and Rembrandt), mezzotint, circa 1740-1765
13 in. x 8 7/8 in, National Portrait Gallery, London.
38) Sir Joshua Reynolds, Self-Portrait when Young, 1753-8, oil on canvas, 73. 7 x 61 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
[2]
The exhibition Rembrandt by Himself
(London, National Gallery, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1999) showed 86
self-portraits by Rembrandt and a few by his pupils.
[3]
Richard Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The
Painter in Society, (Yale University Press, 1996), 37. See also John
Steegman, Portraits of Reynolds,
Burlington Magazine, Vol. 80, no. 467, 1942, 31-34.
[4]
Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 38.
[5]
Mannings, “The Sources and Developments of Reynold’s pre-Italian Style,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 117, No. 865, (Apr 1975), 219.
[6]
Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 39.
[7]
The “Gandy thesis” has been encouraged by Northcote’s statement in his Life (19) that he was told by Reynolds
that the Gandy portraits he saw “were the equal of Rembrandt.”
[8] Northcote,
Life, (320) for the cold anecdote,
though no source. Earlier in the Life
(25), Northcote says that Reynold’s lip was so bruised due to falling off his horse
into a ravine that he may have been obliged to have part of it cut off; this
bloody alteration is conspicuous in his NPG self-portrait; Leslie, Life and
Times, 50.
[9] Northcote,
Life of Reynolds, 294. Northcote says that “there was a considerable
degree of inflammation which rendered him fearful that his right eye might also
be affected.” After the surgeons had discussed it they concluded that it had to
do with “extravasated blood, and had no connection with the optic nerve.” Patrick
Trevor-Roper The World through Blunted Sight: An Inquiry into the Influence
of Defective Vision on Art and Character, (Souvenir Press, 1977, rep.
1997), 133, speculates- and nothing is proven- that a “’malignant melanoma’
within the eye may have provoked the fatal damage to the liver, or perhaps
Reynolds like Turner, had succumbed to an alcoholic cirrhosis.” According to
Northcote (295), two weeks before his death, “it was discovered that
[Reynolds’s] disorder was occasioned by a diseased liver, which had had
confined him three painful months to his bed.” Northcote: “…but on his being
opened by Mr Hunter, a preternatural enlargement of the liver, to more than
double the usual size, sufficiently accounting for his depression and his
death, Life of Reynolds, 296.
[10]
Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 40-41.
[11]
Other biographies include Charles Robert Leslie’s Life and Times of Reynolds
published in 1865.
[12]
Northcote, Life of Reynolds, 309.
[13]
Northcote, Life of Reynolds, 311.”As an Historical painter, he cannot be placed in the same rank which he
holds in the line of portraiture. The compositions of his portraits are
unquestionably excellent, whilist his historical pictures are, in this respect,
often very defective. They frequently consists of borrowed parts, which are not
always suited to each other. Though many times inaccurate and deficient in the
style of drawing, they must, however, be allowed to possess great breadth,
taste, and feeling, and many of them fine expression. His light poetical pieces
much excelled those of a narrative or historical character.”
[14]
Leslie, Life and Times, 49-50.
[15] Northcote,
Life of Reynolds, 13.Leslie, Life and Times, 17.
[16]
Gwynn, Memorials, 220-221.
[17]
For an outline of Frances Reynolds, Wendorff, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 68-82.
Also, Germaine Greer’s comments in The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women
Painters and their Work, (Picador, 1979), 30-33.
[18]
Gwynn, Memorials, 52.
[19] Wendorf,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, 77; Greer is damning of Reynolds, and of
bluestockings like Fanny Burney who attributed Frances’s failure as a painter
to “her habitual perplexity of mind.” As Greer puts it. “There is, alas,
nothing surprising in in the fact that a man who genuinely cared about painting
and the nurturing of young, and female, talent, should have been unable to
tolerate it in his own little sister, whom he sought to treat as a domestic…He
was, in a word, frightened of her, the little sister who had laughed at his own
childish attempts to draw,” The Obstacle Race, 32. According to
Northcote’s Life of Reynolds (13), “his sisters had a turn for art”
before their brother; and he states that Reynold’s “first essays were made in
copying several little sketches done by them. “Frances found an ally in Hester
Piozzi who in addition to being supportive of the sister, found the brother
wanting in scholarship and knowledge. Leslie, Life (8) rejected
the idea that Reynolds had been inspired by his sisters to draw; instead he
believed that art was “in the blood” of the Reynolds family.
[20]
Leslie reproduces Madame d’Arblay’s detailed description of Frances’s character
as “singular” in his Life and Times,
90.
[21]
According to Northcote (304), Reynolds’s will stipulated £2,500 for Frances “in
the funds for life.”
[23]
Christopher White, David Alexander and Ellen D’Oench, Rembrandt in 18th
Century England (Yale Centre for British Art, 1983), 23.
[24] Rembrandt
by Himself, no. 8.
[25] Rembrandt
by Himself, no. 5.
[27] Rembrandt
by Himself, no. 20.
[28]
On the RC website: “Painted in 1788, this was the last self-portrait Reynolds
executed and described by Boswell as the best. It was described (somewhat
optimistically) in the Carlton House inventory as a 'most Capital picture in
the highest preservation' and valued at 300 guineas.”
[29] Rembrandt
in 18th Century England, no. 43.
[30] In
1773, James Beattie sat for no less five hours while Reynolds painted his
portrait. Subsequently, Reynolds added the allegorical figure of Truth subduing
possibly Prejudice, Scepticism and Folly. One of these is supposed to have the
features of Voltaire. On seeing the finished picture Oliver Goldsmith
admonished Reynolds. "Sir, Dr Beattie's book on Truth will be forgotten
within a decade, but Voltaire will live for ever." Or words to that
effect. The portrait is strikingly life-like, at odds with the painted
allegories. This commission is interesting because we learn that Sir Joshua
placed a large mirror opposite to the sitter's face. Though Beattie may have
flattered himself that JR was letting him see every stroke of the brush, modern
scholars believe Reynolds painted from the reflection in the glass. Reynolds
confirmed in a letter that he intended a likeness to Voltaire. “..I did intend
to tell a sort of white lie, that it was finished; but on recollecting that I
was writing to the author of truth, about a picture of truth, I felt that I
ought to say nothing but the truth. The truth then is, that the picture will
probably be finished before you receive this letter; for there is not above a
day’s work remaining to be done…As for Voltaire, I intended that he should be
one of the groupe.”
[31]
Johnson said of Reynold’s “deaf” self-portrait that “he may paint himself as
deaf as he chooses; but I will not be blinking Sam [in response to JR’s
portrait of SJ.”
[32] L
to R: Boswell, Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, Paoli, Burney, Warton,
Goldsmith.
[33]
Reynolds’s comments on a Dido (not named but Guercino) transfixed with a sword
in the Palazzo Spada in 1751, Leslie, Life and Times, 54.
[34]
Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin) (1743-1825), Poet and writer. Elizabeth
Carter (1717-1806), Scholar and writer. Elizabeth Griffith (1727-1793),
Playwright and novelist. Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), Painter. Charlotte
Lennox (née Ramsay) (1720-1804), Writer. Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge)
(1731-1791), Historian and political polemicist. Elizabeth Montagu (née
Robinson) (1718-1800), Writer and leader of society.
Hannah More (1745-1833), Religious writer. Elizabeth
Ann Sheridan (née Linley) (1754-1792), Singer and writer. NPG link.
[35]
The original of this may be the portrait “with gypsy hat” mentioned in Leslie’s
Life and Times, 122.
[36] Rembrandt
in 18th Century England, no. 6.
[37]
Bone probably saw this in George IV’s collection where it was catalogued as
“Rembrandt in the Character of a Standard-Bearer, ” then eventually to Baron de
Rothschild in 1840. See Rembrandt: The
Master & his Workshop, no. 26.
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