SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

was concluded through the mediation of Mr. Cutcliffe; and Joshua was to be boarded, lodged, and instructed during four years for £120. Half of the money was to be raised by Samuel Reynolds in the course of the four years, and the other half was advanced by one of his married daughters, Mrs. Palmer, as a loan to her brother.

that subject." He lost no time in re-ed out in a strange, unexpected manducing the system to practice, and ner to a miracle." The arrangement drew by it the Plympton school-house, which was open below, and rested upon columns at one side, and one end. "Now this," said Samuel Reynolds of his son's performance, "exemplifies what the author of the 'Perspective' asserts in his preface, that by observ. ing the rules laid down in his book, a man may do wonders; for this is wonderful." The commendation sunk into the child's mind, and in the zenith of his fame Reynolds repeated the remark to Boswell. Joshua next tried his hand in taking likenesses, but with only "tolerable success." Year after year he continued to amuse his leisure hours with his pencil, and when the choice of his profession was under discussion "his very great genius for drawing" raised a question whether medicine should not give way to art.

Joshua had been "very much pleased" with a print he had seen, from a picture by Hudson, who was the most popular portrait painter of the day. He was a native of Devonshire, and was shortly expected to pay a visit to Bideford, were Samuel Reynolds had an intimate friend in Mr. Cutcliffe, an attorney. The schoolmaster requested him to show some of Joshua's draw ings to Hudson, and ascertain if he would receive the lad for a pupil. The fond father, with a prophetic faith in the result, pronounced it to be "one of the most important affairs in his life, and that which he looked upon to be his main interest some way or other to bring about." The difficulties proved less formidable than he anticipated. "Everything," he said, "jump

Young Reynolds was received into Hudson's house in November, 1740, and found his highest expectations fulfilled. "He is very sensible of his happiness," his father wrote to Mr. Cutcliffe in December, "in being under such a master, in such a family, in such a city, and in such an employ. ment."

When Joshua arrived in London, painting had sunk to be an ordinary manufacture. "The art," he said, "was at the lowest ebb: it could not indeed be lower." The painters were incapable of appreciating fine works as well as of executing them; for from being trained in a false, conventional taste, they had come to prefer defects to beauties. Reynolds told Northcote that they would have laughed any one to scorn who had ventured to place the masterpieces of Vandyke in competition with the frigid mannerism of Kneller. Hudson was the last of this school who acquired a reputation. There are portraits by him which would not be thought contemptible if they were from the pen cil of an artist without pretensions; but his choicest works are poor performances for the most celebrated painter of a generation. Horace Walpole

age of

speaks of his "honest similitudes," In December of that year he was
which is a correct description of his again in London. His time, in the in-
pictures. They are formal, common- terval, had not been well spent. He
place, matter-of-fact representations; told Malone that "about the
and this degreee of skill, we know nineteen or twenty he became very
from Sir Joshua, could be acquired as careless about his profession, and lived
readily as a mechanic trade. The for near three years at Plymouth, in a
young apprentice, in his ignorance, great deal of dissipation." The age
shared the contemporary opinion of of twenty exactly corresponds with
Hudson's capabilities. Faith and do- the period when he parted with Hud-
cility were serviceable qualities in a son, and became his own master. His
youth who had nearly everything to first taste of freedom from all control,
learn; and a considerable amount of conjoined with his love of sociality,
rudimentary practice could be acquired naturally drew him from his easel to
in the studio of a man who had at indulge in the pleasures of companion-
least the faculty of producing "hon- ship. He said "he saw his error in
est similitudes." "As for Joshua," time, and sat down seriously to his
his father reports, in August, 1742, art about the year 1743, or 1744."
nobody, by his letters to me, was ever This reduces the season of idleness to
better pleased in his employment, in rather less than eighteen months.
his master, in everything. While I Hudson's ill-will, if it had ever exist
am doing this, I am the happiest crea-ed, was of short duration. When his
ture alive,' is his expression." He had
then been a pupil little more than a
year and a half, and by his talents and
enthusiasm he was rapidly eclipsing
his instructor. At the end of two
years he had painted the portrait of
Samuel Reynolds
an elderly female servant, which is
said by its superiority to have roused calls the conduct "exceeding gener-
the jealousy of his master. Acting ous," and a letter to Mr. Cutcliffe, on
under the irritation of envy at per- May 24, 1745, furnishes further proof
ceiving himself outdone by his scholar, of the cordial confidence which had
he is alleged to have dismissed him not survived the brief misunderstanding.
long afterwards on a very frivolous" Joshua's master is very kind to him.
pretence. He had served an appren- He comes to visit him pretty often,
ticeship of two years and nine months. and freely tells him where his pictures
The Hudsons of the day could teach are faulty, which is a great advantage,
him nothing further, and relying on and when he has finished anything of
his local connections he set up at Ply- his own, he is pleased to ask Joshua's
mouth Dock, where before January, judgment, which is a great honor."
1744, he had painted twenty portraits, There are no more records of his son's
and had commissions for ten more. progress from the kind, simple, elated

discarded pupil reappeared in London, and opened a studio at the close of 1744, he got him elected into a club, "composed of the most famous men in their profession," which was a recognition of his right to take immediate rank with them.