‘How various he is’
Andrew Lambirth
Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity Tate Britain, until 18 September The first question: why isn’t this Reynolds show at the Royal Academy, of which Sir Joshua was so famously the founding father? The short answer is that the RA mounted its own Reynolds exhibition nearly 20 years ago, in 1986, and thankfully doesn’t hold the monopoly. It’s certainly time for another in-depth look at him, and the Tate has never shown him solo. The second question is more troubling: what on earth is the Tate playing at? The press release has this to say: ‘He was a brilliant portraitist but also an impresario, a skilled networker, and a master of spin.’ Is this supposed to be a commendation? Does it not occur to the management team of Tate Incorporated that such a description can only demean Reynolds? Far be it from me to claim a spotless reputation for that commercially minded old tuft-hunter, but to equate him with today’s tawdry publicity managers would have the old boy spinning in his grave.
Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), a Devonian on the make though not at all risible, revolutionised British painting by giving it a European standing. He made the Grand Manner his own, producing portraits with the requisite references to Antiquity and the Renaissance, which were also vigorous, original and highly fashionable. If his work sometimes has a coldness, he was, after all, often required to paint the social mask. He was prolific and hardworking, painting well over 100 commissions a year (and as such forced to employ drapery painters), displayed a singular capacity for useful friendships and adored the limelight. He admitted he wasn’t as good at figure drawing as he might have been, and invited too many people to fit comfortably round his table for dinner. He was avid for life and success, and he forced the dull old Establishment to take artists seriously. He was, in many ways, a hero.
His paintings have suffered from his rash use of fugitive pigments (reds, particularly), and a predisposition towards bitumen. He ‘cooked’ his surfaces with varnish, wax and eggs, among other things, and paint often fell off them. His pictures sometimes faded. He was dubbed by an unkind wit ‘Sir Sloshua’ for his speed of execution (wet into wet, hence his constant experiments with drying agents), and he was doubtless out to impress and be a successful man about town. But he also took his métier seriously, curbing his own tendencies towards Rubens and Rembrandt in favour of the more acceptable Italian Masters. He was perceptive and intelligent and a little mad. In short, a painter to be reckoned with.
This exhibition is airily hung, with plenty of space for the paintings to breathe. Comprising some 90 exhibits, it is about half the size of its RA predecessor, and benefits from the restriction. As the show’s curator Martin Postle, who has spent more than 20 years researching the subject, is the first to admit, ‘with Reynolds, less is definitely more’. The work is divided into eight sections or spaces, differentiated by wall-colour and theme, and each containing a group of reproduction Chippendale chairs for the repose of the weary, instead of the usual benches. The visitor is first greeted by a room of self-portraits, from which emerge old favourites such as the National Portrait Gallery’s young Reynolds shading his eyes, and the mature artist in doctoral robes and cap standing next to a bust of Michelangelo, borrowed from the RA’s collection. There’s a recently identified image from c.1750, which surfaced in a private collection only a couple of years ago, a very strange self-portrait from an ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ and old Joshua, movingly informal, in glasses and bottle-green velvet.
In fact, it’s the informal side of Reynolds which appeals most to us today, though the next room celebrates his formal depictions of Heroes. Here the great army and navy commanders of those war-torn years take their bows, under the stern gaze of the Marquess of Granby in pride of place at the top of the room. Note the marvellously de trop martial frame around the rather insipid likeness of Lord Ligonier, which defies reason as the portrait of a 76-yearold man, and the deep gloom into which the sprightly figure of Lord Cathcart is sunk. Looking at the tarry cracked surface of this painting, it’s impossible not to suppose that the colours have faded and the dark tentacles of bitumen have claimed more than their desired share of the original composition. In contrast, mustachioed Captain Hamilton in a Hungarian Hussar’s costume is the epitome of the dashing young hero, rendered in bravura brushwork that catches the eye and helped to launch Reynolds’s own fame.
Down a corridor of mezzotints you can find a room devoted to ‘The Streatham Worthies’, Fanny Burney’s nickname for the literary friends of brewer Henry Thrale. This is one of the two rooms in the exhibition which deserve especial contemplation. Here you can find Dr Johnson and Goldsmith, the short-sighted critic Giuseppe Baretti and Mrs Thrale with her daughter. A charming room, emulating the library for which the portraits were originally made. Next is Room 5, ‘Temple of Fame’, full of boys in pursuit of glory, and containing powerful images of Charles Fox, David Garrick, Sheridan, Gibbon and Sterne. There’s also the satanist George Selwyn, whose pug dog (that symbol of death) has singed ears.
The other gallery to linger in is devoted to Reynolds’s beautiful women friends from the demi-monde. They’re rather squeezed into Room 7, an annexe of Room 6, which is full of Aristocrats and contains some of the least interesting portraits of the whole exhibition (apart from ‘The Ladies Waldegrave’). Among the actresses and courtesans are Kitty Fisher, Nelly O’Brien and ‘Mrs Abington as Roxalana’. The last is a splendid piece of painting, fresh and entrancing. An unfinished portrait of Kitty Fisher, depicted toying with Reynolds’s pet parrot, has all the immediacy and sensitivity that more formal portraits forego. These are small, intimate pictures, but they deserve more space among their louder-voiced peers.
‘Portrait of Omai’, which aroused so much interest in the press recently, principally because of its monetary value, remains with the private owner, who had thought of selling it, though thankfully it has been lent to this show. It’s a striking painting, and the Tate has cashed in on its notoriety by using it as the image for its invitation cards and the cover of the sumptuous catalogue (£29.99 in paperback from Tate Publishing). Hanging in solitary state on the end wall, it forms one of the three high points in the last room of the exhibition, and depicts the first Tahitian to visit London, brought back from the South Seas by Captain Cook. A rather poignant story is recounted of Omai in Henry Hitchings’s engaging new book Dr Johnson’s Dictionary. To improve his grasp of the English language, the good doctor’s masterpiece was Omai’s spare-time reading. From it he learnt that ‘to pickle’ meant ‘to preserve’, and he subsequently greeted the Earl of Sandwich, Admiral of the Fleet, with the novel hope that ‘God Almighty might pickle his Lordship to all eternity’. Well, there’s a cheering thought for any toper, particularly one as rakish as that particular member of the Hell Fire Club.
At the opposite end of this last gallery hangs ‘Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse’, a replica of the original in the Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino. It’s a stirring image though Mrs S. herself was unimpressed by it (‘a poor imitation of the original’) — and shows Reynolds attempting to present portraiture in the more elevated guise of history painting. It’s flanked by a couple of excellent portraits — of the smoulderingly handsome printmaker Francesco Bartolozzi, and the pale and exotically interesting Giuseppe Marchi, the young Roman who became Reynolds’s pupil and principal studio assistant for 40 years. Then comes ‘The Archers’, a Titianesque composition of virile hunters in a sturdy woodland setting, depicting two young aristos in a romantic fantasy. A strange painting in Reynolds’s best manner — how tall would the chap in snuff-brown be if he stood upright? — and a suitably thought-provoking finale before the visitor is gathered into Garrick’s arms for the last dance with Tragedy and Comedy. Altogether a fine exposition and a worthy tribute to the artist of whom Gainsborough expostulated, ‘Damn him, how various he is!’
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