Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/61

 executed) is at Port Eliot, as well as all the portraits of the Eliot family already mentioned, except that of Lady Somers, which is at Eastnor Castle.

In 1749 Commodore Keppel [see ], in the command of the Centurion, put into Plymouth for repairs, met Reynolds at Lord Edgcumbe's [see, first ], and offered him a passage. They sailed for Lisbon on 11 May, and visited Cadiz, Tetuan, Gibraltar, Algiers, and Minorca, where Reynolds painted almost all the officers of the garrison at Port Mahon. Keppel treated him as an intimate friend, allowed him the use of his cabin and his books, and took him on shore with him whenever he could, so that, as Reynolds says in a letter to Lord Edgcumbe, ‘I not only had the opportunity of seeing a great deal, but saw it with all the advantages as if I had travelled as his equal.’ In the same letter (the only one written during his absence which remains, although he is supposed to have corresponded with his sisters) he suggests that Lord Edgcumbe should choose a picture, the larger the better, for him to copy and present to his lordship. At Minorca, his horse fell down a precipice with him, causing the injury to his lip which is to be seen in all subsequent portraits. On recovery he went to Leghorn, Florence, and Rome, where he spent two years ‘with measureless content,’ his sisters, Mrs. Palmer (Mary) and Mrs. Johnson (Elizabeth), having advanced him money for his expenses. At Rome he made copies from Titian, Rembrandt, Guido, Raphael, and other masters, but not from Michael Angelo, whom he admired more than all. He was disappointed at first with Raphael, but the disappointment humiliated him as due to his own ignorance. He made some caricatures, including a composition taken from Raphael's ‘School of Athens,’ into which he introduced most of the English gentlemen then in Rome. His notebooks of this period contain some sketches of old masters, which he afterwards employed for his own pictures. Two of these books are in the British Museum, and contain the sketches which suggested ‘Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia’ and ‘Mrs. Crewe as St. Geneviève.’ Two others are in the Soane Museum, and another was in the possession of Frederick Locker-Lampson, the author of ‘London Lyrics.’ His studies appear to have been directed to penetrate the secrets of the old masters as to composition, relief, and especially the management of lights. He took few notes with regard to sentiment, expression, or colour. He was much attracted by what was florid and facile, and, following the fashion of the day, he paid much more attention to the works of the eclectics, like Domenichino, Baroccio, and Guercino, than a modern student would; and he greatly admired those of Bernini the sculptor. Among the English painters at Rome were John Astley (1730?–1787) [q. v.], Nathaniel Hone [q. v.], and Richard Wilson [q. v.], and he met there his future friends and patrons, Lord Charlemont, Sir W. Lowther, Lord Downe, and Lord Bruce. He went to Naples, and finally left Rome for Florence on 3 May 1752, visiting Fuligno, Perugia, Assisi, and Arezzo. At Florence he painted Joseph Wilton [q. v.], the sculptor. His Florentine journal contains no reference to any painter before Raphael except Masaccio, and shows that he had not yet made up his mind as to the relative merits of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and was inclined to rate Giovanni di Bologna, as a sculptor, as high as the former. In July he left Florence on his return journey, visiting Bologna, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Mantua, Ferrara, and Venice, where he stayed from 24 July to 16 Aug., and took careful notes of many pictures. Thence he went to Padua, Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan, with his first pupil and protégé, Giuseppe Marchi [q. v.], and spent a month at Paris, where he painted M. Gauthier and Mrs. Chambers, the wife of the architect (afterwards Sir William Chambers [q. v.]).

Reynolds arrived in London on 16 Oct. 1752, greatly developed as a man and an artist, but with two permanent physical defects, the scar on his lip from the accident at Minorca, and deafness contracted from the cold of the Vatican while copying Raphael. After three months in Devonshire, where he painted Dr. John Mudge [q. v.] and a young lady (for five guineas apiece), he came to London, and took apartments in Sir James Thornhill's old house, 104 St. Martin's Lane, where he was joined by his youngest sister, Frances, who kept his house for many years. These apartments were soon exchanged for a house in Great Newport Street (No. 5), where he remained till 1760. His first portrait after his arrival in London was one of Marchi in a turban, which belongs to the Royal Academy. Although, on account of the novelty of his style, he met with some opposition, his art was so evidently superior to that of Hudson, Ramsay, Hone, and other followers of Kneller, that, with the aid of Lord Edgcumbe, who persuaded many of the aristocracy to sit to him, and probably of the Keppels and others of his friends, he soon put all rivals at a distance. One of his most serious competitors was Liotard, the Swiss