Some Famous Illuminated Manuscripts

5.2) Sir Joshua Reynolds(1723-1792)To feel to the full the contrast between Reynolds and Hodarth, there is no better way than to look at their self-portraits. Hogarth's of 1745 in the Tate Gallery, Reynolds's of 1773 in the Royal Academy. Hogarth had a round face, with sensuous lips, and in his pictures looks you straight in face. He is accompanied by a pug-dog licking his lip and looking very much like his master. The dog sits in front of the painted oval frame in which the portrait appears--that is the Baroque trick of a picture within a picture. Reynolds scorns suck tricks. His official self-portrait shows him in an elegant pose with his glove in his hand, the body fitting nicely into the noble triangular outline which Raphael and Titian had favoured, and behind him on the right appears a bust of Michelangelo.

This portrait is clearly as programmatic as Hogarth's. Reynolds's promramme is known to us in the greatest detail. He gave altogether fifteen discourses to the students of the Academy, and they were all printed. And whereas Hogarth's Analysis of Beaty was admired by few and neglected by most--Reynolds's Discourses were international reading.

What did Reynolds plead for? His is on the whole a con sistent theory. "Study the great masters...who have stood the test of ages, " and especially "study the works to notice"; for "it is by being conversant with the invention of others that we learn to invent". Don't be "a mere copier of nature", don't "amuse mankind with the minute neatness of your imitations, endeavour to impress them by the grandeur of [...] ideas".

Don't strive for "dazzling elegancies" of brushwork either, form is superior to colour, as idea is to ornament. The history painter is the painter of the highest order; for a subject ought to be "generally interesting". It is his right and duty to "deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth". So Reynolds would not have been tempted by the reporter's attitude to the painting of important con-temporary events. With such views on vulgar truth and general ideas, the portrait painter is ipso facto inferior to the history painter. Genre, and landscape and still life rank even lower. The student ought to keep his "principal attention fixed upon the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing more, you are still first, class... You may be very imperfect, but still you are an imperfect artist of the highest order".

This is clearly a consistent theory, and it is that of the Italian and even more of the French seventeenth century. There is nothing specifically English in it. But what is eminently English about Reynolds and his Discourses is the contrast between what he preached and what he did. History painting and the Grand Manner, he told the stu-dents, is what they ought to aim at, but he was a portrait painter most exclusively, and an extremely successful one.

Reynold's "Mrs Siddons as the Tragic

Muse": the Grand Manner Taken

Seriously

For anyone coming to the painting with a fresh eye the first impression must surely be one of dignity and solem-nity. It is an impression created not only by the pose and bearing of the central figure herself, and her costume, but also by the attitude of her two shadowy attendants, by the arrangement of the figures, and by the colour. The colour must appear as one of the most remarkable features of the painting.

To the casual glance the picture seems monochromatic. The dominant tone is a rich golden brown, interrupted only by the creamy areas of the face and arms and by the deep velvety shadows of the background. On closer examination a much greater variety in the colour is appar-ent, but the first impression remains valid for the painting as a unit.

The central figure sits on a thronelike chair. She does not look at the spectator but appearsan deep contemplation; her expression is one of melancholy musing. Her gestures aptly reinforce the meditative air of the head and also contribute to the regal quality of the whole figure. A great pendent cluster of pearls adorns the front of her dress. In the heavy, sweeping draperies that envelop the figure there are no frivolous elements of feminine costume to conflict with the initial effect of solemn grandeur.

In the background, dimly seen on either side of the throne, are two attendant figures. One, with lowered head and melancholy expression, holds a bloody dagger; the other, his features contorted into an expression of horror, grasps a cup. Surely these figures speak of violent events. Their presence adds a sinister impression to a picture already eavily charged with grave qualities.At the time the portrait was painted, Sarah Siddons was in her late twenties, but she already.had a soli.d decade of acting experience behind her. She was born in 1755, the daughter of Roger Kemble, manager of an itinerant com-pany of actors. Most of her early acting experience was with her father's company touring through English provincial centres. Her reputation rose so quickly that in 1775, when she was only twenty, she was engaged by Garrick to perform at Drury Lane. But this early London adventure proved premature; she was unsuccessful and retired again to the provincial circuits, acting principally at Bath. She threw her full energies into building her repertory and perfecting her acting technique, with the result that her return to London as a tragic actress in the autumn of 1782, was one of the great sensations of theatre history. Almost overnight she found herself the unquestioned first lady of the British stage, a position she retained for thirty years. The leading intellectuals and statesmen of the day were among her most fervent admirers and were in constant attendance at her performance.

Among the intelligentsia who flocked to see the great actress and returned again and again was Sir Joshua Reynolds, the august president of the Royal Academy. He was at the time the most respected painter in

England, and he also enjoyed a wide reputation as a theorist on art.

Reynolds moved with ease among the great men of his day. Mrs Siddons remarks in her memoirs: "...At his house were assembled all the good, the wise, the talented, the rank and fashion of the age."

The painting is in fact a brilliantly successful synthe-sis of images and ideas from a wide variety of sources.