Britton, John [Hrsg.]: The fine arts of the English school: illustrated by a series of engravings from paintings, sculpture, and architecture, of eminent English artists ; with ample biographical, critical, and descriptive essays (London, 1812) [Cicognara, 14]

A

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, KNIGHT;

BY

JAMES NORTHCOTE, ESQ. R. A.

WITH AN ENGRAVED PORTRAIT BY W. BOND, FROM A PICTURE BY

©it Joshua iaepnoto0.

In the early part of the last century, the progress which the British nation had
made in matters of taste, particularly in the department of painting, was not
equal to the general advances made in Science and Literature. Philosophers,
Statesmen, Poets, and Warriors, had already exalted and dignified the character
of Great Britain, but no Englishman had then appeared to raise the Fine Arts
to a degree of eminence proportionate to the other glories of the country.
An opportunity so favourable for the exercise of high talents, and ardent
emulation, was the fortunate lot of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This illustrious
Painter, and distinguished ornament of the English nation, was born at Plympton,
in Devonshire, on the 16th of July, 1723. He was the son of the Rev. Samuel
Reynolds and Theophila Potter, and was the seventh of eleven children, five
of whom died in their infancy. It has been said that young Joshua was for
some time instructed in the Classics by his father, who assiduously cultivated
the minds of his children; but as it is known that the son did not display any
marks of classical learning in the earlier part of his life, it is most probable
that the mass of general knowledge which afterwards so eminently distinguished
him, was the consequence of great application to study in his riper years: a