Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/65

 establishment of the Royal Academy had made great progress, and it was carried into effect before the end of the year (1768). Reynolds held aloof from the internal dissensions which ended in the disruption of the Society of Artists, and was not consulted respecting the formation of the academy, in which the king took the first step by signifying to West that he would gladly patronise such an association. West, Moser, Cotes, and Chambers (who drafted the plan) forthwith petitioned the king, who took a great personal interest in the scheme and drew up several of the laws with his own hand. But, though not made privy to these proceedings, Reynolds was from the first selected as president, with the consent of the king. This is the more remarkable testimony to Reynolds's position in his profession, as he was not in high favour at court, and George III did not care for his pictures. A meeting of thirty artists named by the king was held at Wilton's house on 9 Dec., at which the laws were accepted, and the officers declared. Reynolds refused at first to attend this meeting, and was persuaded with difficulty by West to do so, arriving just in time to prevent its breaking up abortively. The king's assent was given to the selection on the next day, and the first meeting of the academy was held on the 14th. On the 18th (Sunday) Reynolds, as president, formally submitted the list of officers, council, visitors, and professors, which was approved under the sign-manual. Reynolds immediately took the most active part in organising the academy and its schools, and lost no time in preparing his first discourse, which was delivered on 2 Jan. 1769, and was mainly concerned with the value of academies and the right direction of study. It was badly delivered in a husky voice, and was followed by a dinner at the St. Albans tavern, at which Reynolds presided. The annual academy dinner, with its carefully chosen list of eminent guests, was also founded by Reynolds, and it was he who suggested the appointment of honorary officers, not artists. Among the first of these were Dr. Johnson, professor of ancient literature, and Dr. Goldsmith of ancient history; and other friends of Reynolds like Boswell and Bennet Langton, both of whom were also members of the Literary Club, were afterwards added to the list. Reynolds was knighted on 21 April, and the first exhibition of the Royal Academy was opened on 26 April. He sent four pictures to it, including the beautiful Miss Morris as ‘Hope nursing Love,’ Mrs. Bouverie, and Mrs. Crewe.

Sir Joshua's elevation did not increase the number of his sitters, who soon fell to about fifty or less in the year. He had no doubt by his enormous success and activity exhausted to some extent his ground as a portrait-painter, but the decline was partly due to the pressure of his academical duties. Whether from leisure or choice, he now devoted more of his time to pictures of imagination. Models, boys, beggars, old men, and children now became frequent in the lists of his sitters. A picture of ‘The Babes in the Wood’ was exhibited in 1770, and a study was made about this time from his old model, White, which was afterwards used for his once famous picture of ‘Ugolino,’ exhibited in 1773. This study, exhibited in 1771, was engraved under the title of ‘Resignation,’ and dedicated to Goldsmith, with some lines from the ‘Deserted Village,’ as a return compliment for the poet's exquisite dedication of that poem to Sir Joshua in the preceding year. The exhibition of 1771 also contained two fancy pictures, ‘Venus chiding Cupid for learning to cast Accounts,’ and ‘A Nymph and Bacchus.’ It was about this time that he painted his celebrated picture of Sir Joseph Banks, just returned from his voyage round the world with Captain Cook.

In one way or another, his life was now probably fuller of work than ever, and it also seems to have been fuller of pleasures. Besides the Literary Club at the Turk's Head, at which his attendance was constant, there was the Thursday Night Club (which met at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, and was composed of men of wit and pleasure, like Topham Beauclerk and Lord March), where they drank hard and played high; and the Shilling Rubber Club, held at the Devil tavern, where he met Goldsmith and could indulge more cheaply his love of whist, which he played indifferently. There was also the Devonshire (to which he belonged now or soon after), and the Sunday dinners of the Dilettanti Society. He attended assemblies, balls, and masquerades at Almack's and the Opera House, at Mrs. Cornelys' at Carlisle House, Soho Square, and afterwards at the Pantheon (opened in 1772), and was also to be seen at the theatres, at Marylebone Gardens, at Ranelagh, and Vauxhall. To these gaieties must be added the frequent private dinners with his numerous friends, and those famous ones at his own house, where ‘peers, temporal and spiritual, statesmen, physicians, lawyers, actors, men of letters, painters and musicians’ met in concord, and where, according to Malone, though the wine and the dishes