Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/47



Rh in March 1798, the two surviving executors issued the following:—

Concerning the very rare and valable Collection of Drawings and Prints, now offered to the Public; it is unnecessary to say more than that it was formed during a long Series of Years, at a very great Expence, with infinite Care, Taste, and Judgment, by that great Master, as well as Judge, of Art, the late much-lamented Sir Joshua Reynolds. His Executors, however, think it their Duty to add, that the Public may be assured that the Whole of the Collection was his intire Property.

Executors."

There is no record or tradition in the family as to the picture which Metcalfe bought with his legacy. Three pictures by sir Joshua were in his collection and the chief of them was the half-length portrait of a boy, familiarly known as "the studious boy," in a red dress leaning forward on a green cushion and holding a pen. This is said to have been exhibited by him at the British Institution in 1813. It was sold at Christie's at the dispersal of the Metcalfe collection on 15 June, 1850, for 162 guineas to James Lenox of New York, and is now a prominent picture in the Lenox gallery.

The arrangements for the funeral of sir Joshua gave much trouble. The executors wished that the body should be conveyed to the rooms of the Royal Academy in Somerset House on the evening before the interment and that his friends should proceed to the grave from that place. The council agreed at once but Sir William Chambers, then as before a mar-plot in its deliberations, interposed with the objection that such a proceeding was outside the terms of their tenure of the rooms. Through the intervention of Benjamin West this difficulty was surmounted by the direct order of the King and the procession passed on the 3rd of