"His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland. Still, born to improve us in every part-- His pencil our faces, his manners our heart."
Most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who "read souls in faces." In 1768 Joshua Reynolds was chosen first President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by George III. He succeeded, on the death of Ramsay, to the office of Court Painter. His "Discourses on Painting," delivered at the Royal Academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. It was supposed by some that Johnson and Burke had assisted Reynolds in the composition of these lectures, but the Doctor indignantly disclaimed such aid, declaring that "Sir Joshua Reynolds would as soon get me to paint for him as to write for him." A lesser honour, though one which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on Reynolds in 1773, when he was elected Mayor of his native Plympton. In the same year he exhibited his famous _Strawberry Girl_, of which he said that it was "one of the half dozen original things" which no man ever exceeded in his life's work. In 1789 the failure of his sight warned Sir Joshua that "the night cometh when no man can work." He died, full of years and honours, on February 23rd, 1792, and was buried near Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral.
[Illustration: MRS. BRADYLL. _By_ REYNOLDS. _In the possession of Sir Richard Wallace, Bart._]
Reynolds was a most untiring worker. He exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the Royal Academy, on an average eleven every year. In the National Gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. Amongst them are _The Holy Family_ (No. 78), _The Graces decorating a Terminal Figure of Hymen_ (79), _The Infant Samuel_ (162), _The Snake in the Grass_ (885), _Robinetta_ (892), and portraits of himself, of _Admiral Keppel_, _Dr. Johnson_, _Boswell_, _Lord Heathfield_, and _George IV. as Prince of Wales_. Mr. Ruskin deems Reynolds "one of _the_ seven colourists of the world," and places him with Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Turner. He likewise says, "considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper."[H]