Rocznik Historii Sztuki (45.2020)

HARRY MOUNT
OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

Rocznik Historii Sztuki, tom XLV
PAN, 2020
DOI 10.24425/rhs.2020.136889

SHAFTESBURY V. RICHARDSON:
A COUNTERFACTUAL EXERCISE

Towards the end of his Essay on the Theory of Painting, published in 1715, Jonathan Richardson offered
an apology for his book in the form of an anecdote about his fellow painter, Peter Lely. The anecdote goes thus:
A Man of Quality, Sir Peter Lely ’s intimate Friend, was pleas’d to say to him one Day, For God ’s sake, Sir Peter, how
came you to have so great a Reputation? You know I know you are no Painter... My Lord, [answered Lely] I know
I am not, But I am the Best you have.1
The implication is that Richardson’s Theory of Painting, while the work of a man who was no writer, was
also the best the British had. This anecdote not only forms a graceful and self-deprecating coda to Richardson’s
book, it is also very revealing. It demonstrates the insecurity of British art lovers at this time, their painful aware-
ness that their country had yet to produce either painters or writers on art of the highest quality. At the same time,
however, it also betrays Richardson’s pride that his Theory of Painting was the first substantial, and substantially
original, work of art theory published by a British writer. In 1715 Richardson’s Theory of Painting was, indeed,
the best the British had, and as such it exerted a powerful effect on British thinking about the visual arts over
the next fifty years. Richardson’s book was widely read and admired by art lovers, from Horace Walpole to
Sir Joshua Reynolds.2 It was not until Reynolds’s own Discourses began to appear in 1769 that Richardson’s
Theory of Painting was supplanted as the most visible British statement on the theory of art.
It was, however, only a quirk of fate that allowed Richardson to claim that his Theory of Painting was both
the only and the best work of its kind published by a Briton. For at the very time that he was writing the Theory
of Painting Richardson’s contemporary the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury was also writing a book of art theory, a book
that was to have been called Second Characters. Had Second Characters been completed, it would probably
have appeared in about 1715, at pretty much exactly the same time as Richardson’s Theory of Painting. Shaftes-
bury lived long enough to complete only two sections of the book, the introductory ‘Letter Concerning the Art,
or Science, of Design’ and an essay describing an ideal painting of the Judgment of Hercules. Both works were
published separately. The Judgment of Hercules appeared as an individual essay first in French in 1712 and then
in English in 1713, before taking its place in the 1714 second edition of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks in 1714.3

1 J. Richardson (the Elder), An Essay on the Theory of Painting, London 1715, p. 228 [hereinafter: Theory of Painting}.
2 For Walpole, see Anecdotes of Painting in England, London 1828, vol. IV, pp. 24-25 (1st edn London 1762-1771). For Reynolds
see below, n. 12. For his ownership of a copy of Richardson’s Theory of Painting see C. Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist
of the English Enlightenment, New Haven-London 2000, p. 178.
3 A.A. Cooper, 3rdEarl of Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature ofthe Judgment ofHercules (London
1713); Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, [in:] idem, Characteristicks of Men,
Manners, Opinions, Times, 2nd edn, London 1714, vol. Ill, pp. 345-391 [hereinafter: Characteristicks (1714)].