DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0335
INTRODUCTION.
291
was scarcely known but as a caricaturist and engraver.
Hudson was the great man of the day, and under his tuition
Reynolds was placed just a century ago. Where, as he
looked around him, did he learn to perceive his own defi-
ciencies ? Where did he find the models on which to
form himself? They say the darkness is the most intense
just before the morning dawns, and like the breaking of the
morn upon the blackness of night, such was the appearance
of Reynolds, after his return from Italy, in 1752. He had
spent only three years there, not in making copies from
famous painters for rich amateurs, but in considering the
principles on which those grand old masters worked, till a
kindred spirit rose upon his mind, and he learned to look
on nature as they did—with love, with reverence, with a
deep spiritual sympathy.
But it will be said that the power to do so existed pre-
viously, in his own sensitive organization and thoughtful
mind—and this is true. In looking over different me-
moirs of Sir Joshua, some things have struck me as
having combined to give to his original genius a certain
direction, and to impress on his works the mental character
that distinguishes them. He has said himself, that the
perusal, when a boy, of Richardson’s book had made him
a painter. It appears to me, that the boy who at eight
years old was ever found with a pencil in his hand, copy-
ing prints out of books, who at the same age had mas-
tered the Jesuit’s Perspective, would have been a painter
in any case: but the perusal of Richardson’s book at the
age of fifteen or sixteen elevated and directed his boyish
enthusiasm; it made him the painter which he afterwards
became. He closed it, he says, “ with the conviction
that Raphael was the greatest man who had ever existed.”
But this was nothing compared with the aspirations of a
still higher kind, produced by the same striking book. It
is impossible, I think, to look back upon the whole tenour
o 2
291
was scarcely known but as a caricaturist and engraver.
Hudson was the great man of the day, and under his tuition
Reynolds was placed just a century ago. Where, as he
looked around him, did he learn to perceive his own defi-
ciencies ? Where did he find the models on which to
form himself? They say the darkness is the most intense
just before the morning dawns, and like the breaking of the
morn upon the blackness of night, such was the appearance
of Reynolds, after his return from Italy, in 1752. He had
spent only three years there, not in making copies from
famous painters for rich amateurs, but in considering the
principles on which those grand old masters worked, till a
kindred spirit rose upon his mind, and he learned to look
on nature as they did—with love, with reverence, with a
deep spiritual sympathy.
But it will be said that the power to do so existed pre-
viously, in his own sensitive organization and thoughtful
mind—and this is true. In looking over different me-
moirs of Sir Joshua, some things have struck me as
having combined to give to his original genius a certain
direction, and to impress on his works the mental character
that distinguishes them. He has said himself, that the
perusal, when a boy, of Richardson’s book had made him
a painter. It appears to me, that the boy who at eight
years old was ever found with a pencil in his hand, copy-
ing prints out of books, who at the same age had mas-
tered the Jesuit’s Perspective, would have been a painter
in any case: but the perusal of Richardson’s book at the
age of fifteen or sixteen elevated and directed his boyish
enthusiasm; it made him the painter which he afterwards
became. He closed it, he says, “ with the conviction
that Raphael was the greatest man who had ever existed.”
But this was nothing compared with the aspirations of a
still higher kind, produced by the same striking book. It
is impossible, I think, to look back upon the whole tenour
o 2