Part 2

"Having since that period," continues Sir Joshua, "frequently revolved the subject in my mind, I am now clearly of opinion that a relish for the higher excellences of the art is an acquired taste, which no man ever possessed without long cultivation and great labour and attention. On such occasions as that which I have mentioned, we are often ashamed of our apparent dulness, as if it were expected that our minds, like tinder, should instantly catch fire from the divine spark of Raffaelle's genius. I flatter myself that _now_ it would be so, and that I have a just perception of his great powers; but let it be remembered that the excellence of his style is not on the surface, but lies deep, and at the first view is seen but mistily. It is the florid style which strikes at once, and captivates the eye, for a time, without ever satisfying the judgment. Nor does painting in this respect differ from other arts. A just poetical taste, and the acquisition of a nice discriminative musical ear, are equally the work of time. Even the eye, however perfect in itself, is often unable to distinguish between the brilliancy of two diamonds, though the experienced jeweller will be amazed at its blindness; not considering that there was a time when he himself could not have been able to pronounce which of the two was the most perfect, and that his own power of discrimination was acquired by slow and imperceptible degrees."

From the first Reynolds avoided making copies, and had refused lucrative orders. He sketched portions of pictures, such as he thought would help his own comprehension, but he would do no slavish imitation. "The man of true genius," writes Sir Joshua, "instead of spending all his hours, as many artists do while they are at Rome, in measuring statues and copying pictures, soon begins to think for himself, and endeavour to do something like what he sees. I consider general copying," he adds, "as a delusive kind of industry: the student satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something; he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and labouring without a determinate object; as it requires no effort of mind, he sleeps over his work, and those powers of invention and disposition which ought particularly to be called out and put into action lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of exercise. How incapable of producing anything of their own those are who have spent most of their time in making finished copies, is an observation well known to all those who are conversant with our art."

His own precise method of study is not known, but it may be assumed that he was chiefly occupied in reasoning on what he observed. Elsewhere he writes--"A painter should form his rules from pictures rather than from books or precepts; rules were first made from pictures, not pictures from rules. Every picture an artist sees, whether the most excellent or the most ordinary, he should consider whence that fine effect or that ill effect proceeds, and then there is no picture ever so indifferent but he may look at it to his profit." "The artist," he observes, "who has his mind filled with ideas, and his hand made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations of genius, is in reality at a loss how to begin, and is at last delivered of his monsters with difficulty and pain. The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to consider his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his art will follow, without his exertion."

The mode of study which Sir Joshua adopted himself he continually recommends to the students: "Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only their conceptions; instead of treading in their footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road; labour to invent on their general principles and way of thinking; possess yourself with their spirit; consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a Raffaelle would have treated this subject, and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them when completed; even an attempt of this kind will raise your powers.

"We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by others. Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers. We prefer those instructions which we have given ourselves from our affection to the instructor; and they are more effectual from being received into the mind at the very time when it is most open to receive them."

Having stayed in Rome as long as his resources allowed, Sir Joshua visited Florence, Venice, and some of the smaller Italian towns, everywhere adopting the same careful, observant method of study. After an absence of nearly three years he returned to England, feeling himself indeed a mentally richer, wiser man than he set out.

It was after his return from Italy that Reynolds took up his permanent abode in London, then, as now, the only true centre for art or literature. At first he met much opposition; Hudson especially was fiercely critical over Reynolds' new style, saying to him, "You don't paint so well now as you did before you went to Italy." Another eminent portrait-painter of the time, now long since consigned to oblivion, shook his head sadly on seeing one of Sir Joshua's finest portrait works, saying, "Oh, Reynolds, this will never answer: why, you don't paint in the least in the manner of Kneller." And when the artist tried to expose his reasons, his rival, not able to answer him, left the room in a fury, shouting, "Damme! Shakespeare in poetry, and Kneller in painting; damme!"

Nevertheless, Reynolds soon became a favourite with the public, and his painting-room a fashionable resort. To this end his courtly manner and agreeable conversation may greatly have aided. By the year 1760 he had become the most sought for portraitist of his day, and was making as much as £6000 a-year, in those days a very large sum for an artist to earn, especially as the price he charged for his portraits was very low as compared with modern artistic demands.

It was in 1759 that Reynolds first put down some of his artistic ideas in writing. He contributed three papers to the _Idler_, then edited by Dr. Johnson, with whom he had, on coming to London, formed that friendship which lasted all their lives. They are the Numbers 76, 79, and 82, and are reprinted in this volume.

"These papers," observes Northcote, "may be considered as a kind of syllabus of all his future discourses; and they certainly occasioned him some thinking in their composition. I have heard Sir Joshua say that Johnson required them from him on a sudden emergency, and on that account he sat up the whole night to complete them in time; and by it he was so much disordered that it produced a vertigo in his head."

The following year, 1760, the one in which Reynolds removed to his larger residence in Leicester Square, is memorable in the annals of English art. It witnessed the first public exhibition of modern paintings and sculptures, and proved so satisfactory that it was repeated, and finally laid the foundation for what became the Royal Academy. The catalogue to one of these first exhibitions was penned by Dr. Johnson, and is written in his usual pompous style. The worthy doctor had little appreciation for the fine arts, and in a private letter to Baretti, speaking of this innovation, he says: "This exhibition has filled the heads of artists and lovers of art. Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious; since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time--of that time which never can return."

In 1768 the Royal Academy was founded by royal charter, and was opened January 1, 1769. Reynolds had been elected its President, and in accordance with the custom that prevails to this day, received, together with this dignity, the compliment of knighthood. On this occasion he delivered the first of his Discourses, in which, mingled with general instructions concerning the purpose and method of art, we find the needful servile adulation of the reigning sovereign. The second, far more able and to the point, was delivered at the end of the same year on the occasion of the distribution of prizes to the students. It contains his admirable views with regard to copying. From henceforth, on the same occasion, every two years, when the gold medals are given, up to December 1790, Sir Joshua delivered such an address to the students, making in all fifteen Discourses that are read with pleasure to this day. At the last the hall was so crowded that a beam supporting the floor actually gave way with the weight. That outsiders should have been so eager to come is astonishing on this account, that Reynolds, like most Englishmen, had no powers of elocution. His manner in delivering his speeches was shy and awkward, and he often spoke so low that those at some distance could not hear him. His deafness in a measure may have accounted for this, for, like all deaf people, he could not modulate his voice; but yet more, his truly British horror lest he should seem to be posing as an orator.

It was no part of Sir Joshua's prescribed duty as President to deliver an address on the presentation of medals; but, "if prizes were to be given," he himself remarked in the last Discourse, "it appeared not only proper, but indispensably necessary, that something should be said by the President on the delivery of those prizes; and the President, for his own credit, would wish to say something more than mere words of compliment; which, by being frequently repeated, would soon become flat and uninteresting, and, by being uttered to many, would at last become a distinction to none. I thought, therefore, if I were to preface this compliment with some instructive observations on the art, when we crowned merit in the artists whom we rewarded, I might do something to animate and guide them in their future attempts."

It was, perhaps, the fact that Reynolds intended this Discourse to be his last, his farewell to the Academy he had served so long and well, that attracted such a crowd. In it he takes a review of all his past Discourses, and ends with commending to the students the works of his idol, Michael Angelo. It was a source of joy to him that the last word he spoke in that hall was the name of this adored master. "I felt a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of _Michael Angelo_!"

Before the next occasion for a Discourse occurred Reynolds was quietly sleeping his eternal sleep in St. Paul's Cathedral, having died February 23, 1792, after two years' suffering, borne with cheerful fortitude.

There are those who think that English art has rather retrograded than progressed since the days of Reynolds. To those who speak thus it is only needful to tell that Pliny already spoke of painting as a "dying art." After this we need reason with such blind admirers of antiquity _quâ_ antiquity no farther. That Reynolds was a great artist is universally admitted beyond dispute; but to speak of him as the greatest, as unapproachable henceforward, is as absurd as to claim, as did his contemporaries, that anything so able as his art discourses had never been penned. These were above all impressed by the undoubted influence Johnson had upon Reynolds' style, giving it that pedantic ring, that monotony of cadence, that want of colour, which is precisely what we moderns least admire. We should hardly assent to the contemporary lines lauding Dr. Johnson and saying--

"To fame's proud cliff behold our Raphael rise, Hence Reynolds' pen with Reynolds' pencil vies."

But then, in any case, such fulsome flattery is not in accordance with the spirit of our century. We might, too, now-a-days think it dubious praise that Johnson, after reading one of his friend's essays and praising it in general, should pick out one passage in particular with the remark--"I think I might as well have said this myself." More valuable we should consider the praise of Burke, who, writing to Mr. Malone, says, "I have read over some part of the discourses with an unusual sort of pleasure. . . . He is always the same man, the same philosophical, the same artist-like critic, the same sagacious observer, with the same minuteness, without the smallest degree of trifling."

This is true; Sir Joshua's polished mind and calm philosophical observation makes itself felt in every line of his writings.

There was a time when envious calumny disputed the authorship of these Discourses, attributing them now to Burke, now to Johnson. The imputation is too futile to need refutation. There are those who deny to any man the merit of having written his own works, commencing with Homer and Shakespeare. This is a strange craze of the critical mind. Seeing the work is the result of a human hand, why not, for example, allow that Shakespeare wrote what he claims as his own, in lieu of attributing the authorship to Lord Bacon? Again, why should there not have been a Homer as there was a Dante, in lieu of an aggregation of men? A very petty and despicable envy, or the frantic desire of saying something new and strange to attract attention to ourselves, may be pronounced the motor force of such theories.

Reynolds' Discourses may be described as the first attempt in the English language at what may be called a philosophy of art. To this day there are in English few works of this character. A science corresponding to the German _Aesthetik_ does not exist in English, for what modern cant has dubbed æstheticism, the child's play of "passionate Brompton" and languishing South Kensington, must on no account be confounded with a real serious study that in German universities fills a special chair. The cause for this lack is no doubt to be sought in the vastly diverse genius of the two nations. The German is nothing if not abstract; the Englishman nothing if not positive; and on this account the English take art, as well as all else, from the practical side. To mention but a few German works of this character. Hegel has written a philosophy of the fine arts scarcely less valuable to art-students and painters, and perchance even as unknown to the latter--for artists are rarely readers--as the works of the same class written by Winckelmann and Lessing. Reynolds addressed an audience not merely of readers and theoreticians, but of actual workers, practical students; and he strove, therefore, to combine theory with positive facts, hoping thus to bridge over the gulf which made, and still unhappily makes, English art-students learn their profession too much by mere rule of thumb. That Reynolds' work is neither final nor all-embracing goes without saying. The mere fact that these lectures were delivered but rarely, forming no designed sequence, would have hindered such an end, even had Reynolds' knowledge been sufficient to accomplish it. Under the circumstances, it is sufficiently remarkable that they really form so complete a whole as they undoubtedly do. The one leading idea that informs them is the necessity for the student to study the works of the great masters, above all of the Roman and Tuscan schools; and on this doctrine, then so new, Reynolds could not insist enough. In his last Discourse, with great modesty he sums up so ably what he has achieved, that it is best to let him speak for himself. After saying how unequal he had been to the expression of his ideas, he continues:--

"To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally unprovided with materials; I had seen much, and I had thought much upon what I had seen; I had something of a habit of investigation, and a disposition to reduce all that I had observed and felt in my own mind to method and system; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to consider the opinions which were to be given out from this place, and under the sanction of a Royal Academy; I therefore examined not only my own opinions but likewise the opinions of others.

"In revising my discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be assured that I have in no part of them lent my assistance to foster _newly-hatched unfledged opinions_, or endeavoured to support paradoxes, however tempting may have been their novelty, or however ingenious I might, for the minute, fancy them to be; nor shall I, I hope, anywhere be found to have imposed on the minds of young students declamation for argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have pursued a plain and _honest method_; I have taken up the art simply as I found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved painters. That approbation which the world has uniformly given, I have endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions of this kind will admit; by the analogy which painting holds with the sister arts, and consequently by the common congeniality which they all bear to our nature. And though in what has been done no new discovery is pretended, I may still flatter myself that from the discoveries which others have made from their own intuitive good sense and native rectitude of judgment (in allusion to the works of the old masters) I have succeeded in establishing the rules and principles of our art on a more firm and lasting foundation than that on which they formerly had been placed."

It is worthy of note, as yet another proof of Sir Joshua's justice of judgment and objectivity, that, speaking of portrait-painting (_Discourse III._), he puts it low in rank among the various departments of painting. He strove with all his power to elevate English art methods, to lead artists to practice what he named the "grand style," and it was on this account that he ever and always held up to imitation the gods of his idolatry, Michael Angelo and Raffaelle. What he writes concerning _pittori improvisatori_ may well be laid to heart to-day when Impressionism threatens to swamp genuine study and careful draughtsmanship. Indeed, looked at from all sides, Sir Joshua's _Discourses_ worthily take rank among the English classics, and it has been truly said that "with Reynolds' literature was the playmate of art, and art became the handmaiden of literature."

That detractors have not been lacking is a matter of course, but Reynolds, like others, can console himself with Goethe's lines--

"Die schlechsten Früchte sindd es nichtt Woran die Wespen nagen."

Some of these objections merit reproduction. Who can read, for instance, without a smile, the words of Blake, that sweet, childlike mind, which was at once so penetrative and so uncritical? The smile will of course be one of gentle sympathy, such as one ever accords to that wayward genius. He writes in his notes--

"Whether Reynolds knew what he was doing is nothing to me. The mischief is the same whether a man does it ignorantly or knowingly. I always considered true art and true artists particularly insulted and degraded by the reputation of these discourses; as much as they were degraded by the reputation of Reynolds' paintings, and that such artists as Reynolds are, at all times, hired by Satan for the depression of art; a pretence of art to destroy art."

Once Blake finds a passage after his own heart: "A firm and determined outline is one of the characteristics of the great style of painting!" Against which is written, "Here is a noble sentence! a sentence which overthrows all his book."

With no more than justice he remarks on the very weakest feature in Sir Joshua's system: "Reynolds' opinion was, that genius may be taught, and all pretence to inspiration is a lie or deceit, to say the least of it. If it is deceit, the whole Bible is madness." Of the _Third Discourse_ he energetically avers: "The following discourse is particularly interesting to blockheads, as it endeavours to prove that there is no such thing as inspiration, and that any man of plain understanding may, by thieving from others, become a Michael Angelo." Again--

"No real style of colouring now appears, Save through advertisements in the newspapers; Look there--you'll see Sir Joshua's colouring; Look at his pictures--all has taken wing."

Again, when Reynolds tells his hearers that "enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge,"--"And such is the coldness with which Reynolds speaks! And such is his enmity! Enthusiastic admiration is the first principle of knowledge and its last. How he begins to degrade, to deny, and to mock! The man, who, on examining his own mind, finds nothing of inspiration, ought not to dare to be an artist. He is a fool and an amusing knave suited to the purposes of evil demons. The man who never in his mind and thought travelled to Heaven is no artist. It is evident that Reynolds wished none but fools to be in the arts, and in order to compass this, he calls all others rogues, enthusiasts, or madmen. What has reasoning to do with the art of painting?"

It is evident that Blake has not always fully followed Reynolds' meaning. Indeed, Sir Joshua is at times a little obscure, a circumstance his detractors did not overlook, nicknaming him Sir Obadiah Twylight, and classifying his style as "sub-fusk."

Concerning this _Third Discourse_, which deals with the grand style and the right imitation of nature, an anecdote is preserved. West was at the time painting his picture of the "Death of Wolfe." When it was understood that he meant to paint the characters as they actually appeared on the scene, the Archbishop of York called on Reynolds and asked his opinion concerning this. Both visited West and endeavoured to dissuade him. West, firm in his rejection of the classic dress, replied, "I want to mark the place, the time, and the people, and to do this I must abide by truth."

When the picture was finished he called Sir Joshua to see it. Reynolds seated himself before the canvas and examined it with interest for half-an-hour, and then, rising, said, "West has conquered; he has treated the subject as it ought to be treated." So just was Reynolds' mind that he could admit the truth even when it opposed his own theories.

Ruskin has also contributed his quota to the Reynolds controversy. Writing in his favourite antithetic style, he says:--

"Nearly every word that Reynolds wrote was contrary to his own practice; he seems to have been born to teach all error by his precept, and all excellence by his example; he enforced with his lips generalisation and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing the patterns of the dresses of the belles of the day; he exhorted his pupils to attend only to the invariable, while he himself was occupied in distinguishing every variation of womanly temper; and he denied the existence of the beautiful at the same instant that he arrested it as it passed, and perpetuated it for ever."

Thus to Sir Joshua's lot, as to all who put themselves before the world, has fallen a portion of praise and blame; but the best praise that can be accorded a man's work is that it should survive him, and continue to arouse interest long after his death. This most certainly is the case with regard to Reynolds' _Discourses_, and therefore to them may apply what he has himself said as to the duration of masterpieces. Not faultless, not all-embracing, but full of historical and individual interest, of keen and careful observation, of judicious thought, they merit the attention of the modern reading public--a public far more largely interested in art than ever existed in the day when their writer lived and painted and lectured.

HELEN ZIMMERN.

TO THE KING.