Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/212

 His old master Hudson called at his rooms to see his Turkish Boy, which had caused quite a sensation in the town. After contemplating the picture some minutes, he said with a national oath,—"Why, Reynolds, you do not paint as well as you did when you left England." Ellis, an eminent portrait maker, who had studied under Kneller, next lifted up his voice. "Ah, Reynolds," said he, "this will never answer, you do not paint in the least like Sir Godfrey." When the young artist vindicated himself with much ability, Ellis, finding himself unable to give any good reasons for the objections he had made, cried out in a rage, "Shakspeare in poetry, and Kneller in painting for me," and stalked out of the room. Reynolds' new style, notwithstanding the vigorous opposition he met with, took with the fashionable world, his fame spread far and wide, and he soon became the leading painter in London. In 1754, he removed from St. Martin's Lane, the Grub-street of artists, and took a handsome house on the north side of Great Newport-Street, which he furnished with elegance and taste. Northcote says his apartments were filled with ladies of quality and with men of rank, all alike desirous to have their persons preserved to posterity by one who touched no subject without adorning it. "The desire to perpetuate the form of self-complacency, crowded the sitting room of Reynolds with women who wished to be transmitted as angels, and with men who wished to appear as heroes and philosophers. From his pencil