Reynolds, Sir JOSHUA, P.R.A., portrait and subject painter, was born at Plympton Earls, near Plymouth, on 16th July 1723, the year of Kuebler's death. His father, a clergyman and master of Plympton grammar-school, intended him for the medical profession; but he developed a strong aptitude for painting, was continually studying the plates in Cats's Book of Emblems, Dryden's Plutarch, and the other volumes that came in his way, and at the age of eight had mastered the Jesuit's Perspective, and applied its principles to drawings executed by himself. In October 1740, accordingly, he was sent to London to study art, and placed in the studio of Thomas Hudson, a portrait-painter, of very moderate abilities, much employed at the time. In 1743 he returned to Devonshire, and some of the portraits of local worthies which he then produced still exist. In the following year he was again in London pursuing his art; but in the beginning of 1747, after the death of his father, he settled in Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, where he learned much from a study of the works of William Gandy of Exeter. In 1749 he made the acquaintance of Commodore, afterwards Lord, Keppel, who invited him to accompany him on a cruise in the Mediterranean; and, after painting many of the British officers in Minorca, he made his way to Rome, where he studied Raphael and Michael Angelo, and in the Vatican caught a chill which permanently affected his hearing, and necessitated his use of an ear-trumpet during the rest of his life. He also visited Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Parma, and Venice. Returning to England in October 1752, he soon afterwards established himself in a studio in St Martin's Lane, London, and attracted notice by his portraits of the second Duke of Devonshire and Commodore Keppel. Before long he was in excellent practice, and in the year 1755 he had no fewer than a hundred and twenty sitters, of whom he produced portraits in which the influence of the Italian masters, and especially of Correggio, is clearly visible; works in which he was certainly aided by such assistants as Marchi, but which he impressed with his own character and individuality.
He soon removed to Great Newport Street; and finally, in 1760, he purchased a mansion on the west side of Leicester Square, to which he added a studio and reception-room.
He was now at the height of his fame, and a valued friend of his most celebrated contemporaries. In 1764 he founded the famous literary club of which Dr Johnson, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, Boswell, and Sheridan were members; all of whom were portrayed by his brush. He was one of the earliest members of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and contributed to its exhibitions till 1768, when, on the establishment of the Royal Academy, he was elected its first president; and in the following year he received the honour of knighthood from the king. In 1769 he delivered the first of his Discourses to the students of the Academy, fifteen of which have been published. They are full of valuable and well-considered instruction, and, along with his papers on art in the Idler, his annotations to Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, and his Notes on the Art of the Low Countries (the result of a visit to Belgium and Holland in 1781), show a correct and cultivated literary style. He contributed his picture of Miss Morris as 'Hope nursing Love' to the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, along with his portraits of the Duchess of Manchester, Mrs Blake, Mrs Crewe, and Mrs Bouverie; and in 1771 completed his subject of 'Count Ugolino and his Children in the Dungeon,' usually regarded as his most successful effort in the direction of historical art. In 1784 he succeeded Allan Ramsay as painter to the king; in the same year he finished and exhibited his portrait of Mrs Siddons as the 'Tragic Muse,' in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, undoubtedly his greatest portrait, a work existing in several versions, of which one is in the Dulwich Gallery; and in 1787 he undertook three subjects for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, executing 'Puck,' 'The Witch Scene from Macbeth,' and 'The Death of Cardinal Beaufort.'
Hitherto he had devoted himself with little interruption to his art, having speedily recovered from a slight attack of paralysis from which he suffered in 1782; but in July 1789 his sight became affected, and he ceased to paint, though he was still able to enjoy intercourse with his friends. The following year was embittered by an unfortunate dispute with the Academy regarding the appointment of a professor of Perspective, which led to his resignation of the presidency, a resolution which he afterwards reconsidered and rescinded; and on the 10th of December 1790 he delivered his last Discourse to the students. Gradually his strength sank—for, unknown to his physicians, he was suffering from a painful form of liver complaint—and he peacefully expired on the 23d February 1792.
It is in virtue of his portraits that Reynolds ranks as the head of the English school of art. In the dignity of their style, the power and expressiveness of their handling, the variety and appropriateness of their attitudes, in the beauty of their colouring and the delicacy of their flesh-painting, his portraits have never been surpassed. He was at home alike in portraying the strength of manhood and the grace of the gentler sex; and his pictures of children have an especial tenderness and beauty which have given a world-wide celebrity to works like 'Master Bunbury,' 'The Strawberry Girl,' and 'Simplicity.' His efforts in the higher departments of historical and imaginative art were less successful, and too often these can be regarded only as among the failures of a great artist. In his technical methods Reynolds was unfortunately most careless and uncertain. He was continually experimenting in new processes and untried combinations of pigments, with the result that even in his own lifetime his works deteriorated, especially in their flesh-tints.
Personally Reynolds was a man of fine and varied culture, and he was distinguished by an exquisite urbanity, the expression of a most amiable and equable disposition, which was exceptionally fitted to win and retain friendship. His dignified gentleness, his mild reasonableness, tamed even the fierceness of Dr Johnson; and there was more of truth than is usual in poetic panegyric in the lines of Goldsmith which speak of this painter as
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.
The first great collection of the works of Reynolds was brought together by the British Institution in 1813, and numbered 142 pictures; another gathering was formed by the same body in 1823; 154 examples of his art were included in the South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1867; and 231 were exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883-84. His authentic works have been estimated by Taylor to number between two and three thousand; and from these some 700 engravings have been executed, some of them—such as the mezzotints of J. R. Smith, John Dixon, William Dickinson, Valentine Green, and James M'Ardell—ranking among the finest examples of the art.
See Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight, &c., by James Northcote, R.A. (1813); The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: with Memoir of the Author, &c., by William Beechey, R.A. (1835); Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by C. R. Leslie, R.A., and Tom Taylor (2 vols. 1865); A Catalogue Raisonné of the Engraved Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by Edward Hamilton, M.D. (2d ed. 1884); W. M. Conway, Artistic Development of Reynolds and Gainsborough (1886); and the monograph by Claude Phillips (1894).