DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0367
ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
34i
said to be a portrait of Garrick by Sir J. Reynolds. I desired Marchi
to state to me what colors Sir Joshua Reynolds had placed upon his
palette and the order in which they were laid. He named them as
follows. He used a handle palette as it is called: White; Naples Yel-
low; Yellow oker; Vermillion; light red; lake; black. Asphaltum he
used occasionally, but that he had it in a galley-pot. His vehicles
were: Mastick varnish and drying oil made into Macgilp in a pot.
Nut oil which he used with his white in a pot. Mastick varnish only,
which he sometimes used alone; and Marchi observed that it caused
his colors to crack and fly off. Wax (white virgin wax) he had in a
tin pot which he melted at the fire when he proposed to use it. This
vehicle Marchi observed caused his colors to scale off from the canvas
in flakes.”
To mention the sitters who came to Leicester Fields and the com-
pany that gathered there every evening when Sir Joshua was not
dining out would be to list the entire society of London in the Eight-
eenth Century.
“In these days we are apt to forget that to many of Sir Joshua’s
contemporaries, with the stricter notions of social precedency in
vogue a century ago,” Sir Walter Armstrong notes, “the painter’s
station in London society must have seemed almost an outrage, espe-
cially as it had been won without any kind of pretence or undue sub-
mission to those who were then called the great. Fond as he was of
the best that Society could give, he lived his life in his own way,
invited whom he chose to his table, leaving his guests to shake down
among themselves as best they could, and, so far as we can discover,
paying little heed to prejudices on the matter of birth, and still less to
those which had to do with politics or conventional morality.”
Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower has made this very interesting
comparison of Romney and Reynolds:
“The mighty events which were in progress around him—the war
with the American Colonies, and the supervening naval war with
France and Spain—ran their course without personally affecting him,
whereas Reynolds was in constant touch with the men who were most
vigorously opposing Lord North’s policy, with Burke and Charles
34i
said to be a portrait of Garrick by Sir J. Reynolds. I desired Marchi
to state to me what colors Sir Joshua Reynolds had placed upon his
palette and the order in which they were laid. He named them as
follows. He used a handle palette as it is called: White; Naples Yel-
low; Yellow oker; Vermillion; light red; lake; black. Asphaltum he
used occasionally, but that he had it in a galley-pot. His vehicles
were: Mastick varnish and drying oil made into Macgilp in a pot.
Nut oil which he used with his white in a pot. Mastick varnish only,
which he sometimes used alone; and Marchi observed that it caused
his colors to crack and fly off. Wax (white virgin wax) he had in a
tin pot which he melted at the fire when he proposed to use it. This
vehicle Marchi observed caused his colors to scale off from the canvas
in flakes.”
To mention the sitters who came to Leicester Fields and the com-
pany that gathered there every evening when Sir Joshua was not
dining out would be to list the entire society of London in the Eight-
eenth Century.
“In these days we are apt to forget that to many of Sir Joshua’s
contemporaries, with the stricter notions of social precedency in
vogue a century ago,” Sir Walter Armstrong notes, “the painter’s
station in London society must have seemed almost an outrage, espe-
cially as it had been won without any kind of pretence or undue sub-
mission to those who were then called the great. Fond as he was of
the best that Society could give, he lived his life in his own way,
invited whom he chose to his table, leaving his guests to shake down
among themselves as best they could, and, so far as we can discover,
paying little heed to prejudices on the matter of birth, and still less to
those which had to do with politics or conventional morality.”
Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower has made this very interesting
comparison of Romney and Reynolds:
“The mighty events which were in progress around him—the war
with the American Colonies, and the supervening naval war with
France and Spain—ran their course without personally affecting him,
whereas Reynolds was in constant touch with the men who were most
vigorously opposing Lord North’s policy, with Burke and Charles