"Sir Joshua Reynolds was on many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of coloring, he was the equal of the great masters of the renowned ages. In portraits he went beyond them. In these he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend upon it from a higher sphere." Edmund Burke") ?>

With the grossness of the rule of the Georges, when eating and drinking and gaming were chief joys of life, came Hogarth. He knew the times in which he lived as well as he knew his name, and he proceeded to paint them much as an author might have written of them. Instead of using chapters, as the literary man would naturally have done, he painted a series of pictures to represent his story. Charles Lamb used to say, when asked to name his favorite books, "Shakespeare first, then Hogarth," showing how he was impressed with the literary quality of Hogarth's work.

In his paintings, Hogarth told mighty truths which were unpleasant to his British audience. When, for instance, he showed in "The Rake's Progress" the eventual downfall of the youth who pursues low pleasures, he represented a fact not at all pleasing to the great body of English youth who then enjoyed such a mode of life. It is needless to say that Hogarth was far from popular and that he languished in body, though never in soul, for the patronage which Reynolds gained almost without an effort.

If Hogarth's work was not popular, its strength showed Englishmen that it was no longer necessary to go abroad for their artists; there was good material in this line as in every other on their own soil.

At about the time Englishmen realized this fact, there were born in England two little boys who, as they progressed in life, showed without a doubt that there could be such a thing as English art on English soil. These two men were Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. The latter's lifetime of sixty-one years was covered by that of Reynolds, who was four years older and who lived four years later.

It is of the first of these artists, Joshua Reynolds, that this sketch is given. The merest mention of this great man's name brings to our minds one of the most brilliant of English literary coteries. Speak the name again and pictures of club dinners and the sound of elegant discourse comes before us. There is Johnson, portly and learned, drinking his nine or ten cups of tea; Goldsmith, bald-headed and snub-nosed, "who wrote like an angel but who talked like poor Poll." Back of Johnson's chair stands that "burr" of a man, Boswell, watching lest any remark of the ponderous doctor should escape him—the only inferior man of that distinguished company and even he destined to write a biography of his friend which will ever stand among English classics. Then there was Burke, the stateliest orator of his time or perhaps of any time, and Garrick, most gifted of actors. Later there was the great historian, Gibbon, and the charming Fanny Burney. Occasionally Mrs. Siddons, queen of actresses and of women, graced that noble assembly, and Reynolds' nieces, Offy and her elder sister.

Reynolds was often host of this gifted circle. He sat at the head of the table and dispensed good cheer, not alone in meat and drink, but in kindly intelligent words was well, or he quietly shifted his ear trumpet to hear more distinctly some interesting discussion. His was ever the part of peace-maker if debate waxed too heated and never in that brilliant company was there silence for lack of thought. As Americans, we are proud to know that in this intellectual coterie were firm friends of the American struggle for representation just previous to our Revolution.

It is a happy and successful life we have to trace. Perhaps to both his happiness and success two famous principles of his were the key—never to be disturbed by little things and always to look for success as the outcome of tireless effort. In the two or three thousand pictures attributed to his hand, it is said that he never began one of them, however hopeless the subject, without determining that that one should be the very best picture he had ever painted.

Joshua Reynolds was born in the most picturesque part of one of the lovliest sections in England, in Devonshire. In the little town of Plympton, four or five miles from Plymouth, the namesake of our New England town of Pilgrim fame, Reynolds was born, July 23, 1723. Samuel Reynolds, his father, was a the descendant of clergymen. He was master of the grammar school of the town and "was passing rich" on one hundred and fifty pounds a year as income. His mother was likewise the descendant of clergymen, so that Joshua's clerical ancestry quite equalled our own Emerson's.

Although the boy was the seventh of eleven children, his parents early planned his future course in life. The father had some knowledge of pharmacy and to this business the young man was destined by parental selection. That he had been carefully guided in his early education by his father, seems evident from his scholarship in later life. He had been a great reader, especially of art works, far in advance of his years. In one place he had read the prophecy that England would one day have her Raphael. In his boyish hopefulness, he wondered if he might not be that Raphael for his country. His father, however, could not look upon painting as a substantial profession and so pushed the matter of the boy's learning pharmacy. Of this business he mastered just enough to prove a serious detriment to him in his experimenting in mixing colors later in life.

One day as he sat in church he covertly sketched the queer little minister on his thumb-nail. A few days later he enlarged the sketch on a piece of a sail canvas, with ship paints. This was his first oil painting and it was one that showed unusual talent in one so young, talent which even a practical father found it impossible to overlook. An early drawing of the lad's is preserved with this comment of his father's written upon it, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Such things convinced Samuel Reynolds of his son's unswerving bent in the line of art work and, like a reasonable man, he gave up his notion of making him a druggist. Instead he apprenticed him to an experienced painter, much to Joshua's joy.

Such a man was not to be found in the village of Plympton nor yet in the larger town of Plymouth, so to great roaring London it was necessary to go. Thus he left the beauty and quiet of his country home, the verdure draped hills, the swiftly flowing trout streams, the dainty ponies of Dartmoor and the "clotted cream" and cider of his native country. To the lover of nature, such as Gainsborough was, it was a change which brought curtailed privileges, but to a man of Reynolds' temperament, loving nature as shown in men, women and children, this change was in the line of his genius and a stepping-stone to his future achievements.

The man to whom Reynolds was apprenticed for four years was Hudson, the most extensive manufacturer of portraits in the great city. The young man was diligent here and drew much from the antique. Well pleased he was, too, for he wrote home, "While doing this I am the happiest creature alive." One of his chance experiences while in this studio he often spoke of with keenest pleasure. He one day met and shook hands with Alexander Pope, the famous poet and so-called "Wasp of Twickenham." His hunch-backed form, his splendid eyes and his thin face deeply impressed the young art student. And what wonder! Would not you and I give a large portion of "our income from dreamland" to shake hands with this man who, though ill and deformed, drew all men to him in his villa at Twickenham?

For some mysterious reason the four years' apprenticeship was cut short at the end of two years. Some give as a reason that Reynolds was ordered to deliver one of his master's canvases, carrying it through the muddy streets. He refused to do this and was dismissed for not obeying orders. Another and more probable reason is that the young artist had out-stripped his master and that the latter sent him away before this should become evident to the public. Whatever the cause, Reynolds returned to Devonshire.