Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/213

 they were sure to be gratified. The force and facility of his portraits, not only drew around him the opulence and beauty of the nation, but happily gained him the merited honor of perpetuating the features of all the eminent and distinguished men of learning then living."

REYNOLDS' PRICES.

"The price," says Cunningham, "which Reynolds at first received for a head was five guineas: the rate increased with his fame, and in the year 1755 his charge was twelve. Experience about this time dictated the following memorandum respecting his art. 'For painting the flesh:—black, blue-black, white, lake, carmine, orpiment, yellow-ochre, ultramarine, and varnish. To lay the palette:—first lay, carmine and white in different degrees; second lay, orpiment and white ditto; third lay, blue-black and white ditto. The first sitting, for expedition, make a mixture as like the sitter's complexion as you can.' Some years afterwards I find, by a casual notice from Johnson, that Reynolds had raised his price for a head to twenty guineas.

"The year 1758 was perhaps the most lucrative of his professional career. The account of the economy of his studies, and the distribution of his time at this period, is curious and instructive. It was his practice to keep all the prints engraved from his portraits, together with his sketches, in a large port