SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.

BIRTH-PLACE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. JOSHUA REYNOLDS, "the founder of the British School of Painting," was born at Plympton, an ancient town of Devonshire, in a fertile valley, about five miles from Plymouth, and contiguous to the high road leading from Exeter. Here "the lover of the picturesque will find much to please him in the surrounding scenery; and he whose delight it is to linger in the haunts of genius, will stop to contemplate the humble and unassuming residence of the schoolmaster, where Joshua Reynolds first saw the light; and while standing under the arcades of the old Grammar School, will picture to himself the youthful artist, sitting apart from his schoolfellows, regardless of their sports, and seeking pleasure in his own favourite pursuit, with the Jesuit's Perspective in his hand, busily engaged in applying its rules to the delineation of the building."

Joshua was born on the 16th of July, 1723, and was the seventh of either ten or eleven children, five of whom, it is said, died in their infancy. His father, grandfather, and two uncles, were all in Holy Orders. His father, the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, is described in the baptismal register of Plympton,

as

"clerk and schoolmaster": he was a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford; and there is in existence a letter from Young, the author of the Night Thoughts, addressed to Mr. Samuel Reynolds, Fellow of Balliol College. Northcote, and most of Sir Joshua's biographers, have erroneously described the Rev. Samuel Reynolds as the Incumbent of Plympton.† He was master of the Grammar School of the town: "although

Sir Joshua Reynolds and his works. By William Cotton, M.A. Edited by John Burnet, F.R.S. 1856.

A portrait of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, painted by Sir Joshua, which belonged to the late Dean of Cashel, is in the Cottonian Library, at Plymouth.

(says Cotton) possessed of a high character for learning, he appears to have been ill fitted for the office of a schoolmaster, and before his death it is said that the number of his scholars was literally reduced to one." The mother of Sir Joshua was Theophila, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Potter, near Torrington, in the north of Devon. Samuel Reynolds had a ParsonAdams-like absence of mind; and it is said that in performing a journey on horseback, one of his boots dropped off by the way, without being missed by the wearer. Of his humour

it is related that, in allusion to his wife's name, Theophila, he made the following rhyme :

When I say The

Thou must make tea-
When I say Offey

Thou must make coffee.

The house in which Reynolds was born at Plympton was visited by Haydon and Wilkie in 1809, when they saw in the chamber* reputed as the birth-room, an early attempt at a portrait drawn with a finger dipped in ink, showing an air of Reynolds's later works. This and other sketches, Mr. Cotton tells us, have been obliterated by the unsparing hand of some renovator. At the period of Haydon's and Wilkie's visit, the house was occupied by Haydon's schoolmaster. From "the Shrine of Reynolds," as it is called, Wilkie went to the Hall of Guild, where he saw, he says, a very fine portrait of Sir Joshua himself; and portraits of two naval officers, painted before he went to Italy, which for composition were as fine as he ever did afterwards. From the Hall he went to the house of an old lady, who showed him a very early picture by Reynolds, which, in spite of want of spirit, and experience of touch, had much in it which promised future excellence. At the residence of Mrs. Mayo, he likewise saw the portrait of an old man, which, though a little faded, was very finely painted: such was her reverence for it, that she would not allow a servant to clean it with either brush or towel, but caused the dust to be blown off with a pair of bellows; nevertheless, adds Wilkie, the best schemes are sometimes frustrated: a giddy housemaid one day drove the bellows-pipe through the canvas.

* Mr. Cotton has engraved this room, the window of which commands a view of the Grammar School.

BAPTISM OF REYNOLDS.

The father of Reynolds is said to have given him the Scripture name of Joshua, in the hope that such a singular or at least uncommon name, might at some future period of his life lead a patron with a similar prefix to give him a fortune. Malone received this story from Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore; but Northcote has completely refuted it. He says: "I know from undoubted authority, having seen it in Sir Joshua's own handwriting, that he had an uncle, whose name was Joshua, and dwelt at Exeter, and who was his godfather, but not being present at the baptism, was represented by a Mr. Aldwin." This statement has been fully confirmed.

A strange mistake was, however, made in the baptismal entry; and the Joshua of all the rest of the world (Cunningham aptly says,) is a Joseph at Plympton. In the register is: "1723. Joseph, son of Samuel Reynolds, clerk, baptized July the 30th."

On another page is the following memorandum :

"In the entry of Baptisms for the year 1723, the person by mistake named Joseph, son of Samuel Reynolds, clerk, baptized July 30, was Joshua Reynolds, the celebrated painter, who died Feb. 23, 1792." The above was copied by the Incumbent of Plympton, from the register, and communicated to Notes and Queries, in 1853, by a correspondent, who asks: "Was Sir Joshua by mistake baptized Joseph or was the mistake made after baptism, in registering the name ?"

REYNOLDS'S SCHOOL.

The young Joshua entered early the Grammar School at Plympton. Beneath the school-room is an open arcade or cloister, forming a playground for the scholars in wet weather. This cloister was the subject of one of Reynolds's juvenile performances with the pencil, which excited the astonishment of his father. Northcote relates: "Young Reynolds had accidentally read the Jesuits' Perspective, when he was not more than eight years old, a proof of his capacity and active curiosity. He attempted to apply the rules of that treatise in a drawing which he made of his father's school, a building well suited to his purpose, as it stood on pillars. On showing it to his father, who was merely a man of letters, he exclaimed, 'How this exemplifies what the author of the

H

Perspective asserts in his Preface, that by observing the rules laid down in this book, a man may do wonders; for this is wonderful.'"

This drawing is carefully preserved by the Palmer family; and Mr. Robert Palmer has also in his possession three nicely executed pen-and-ink sketches: one a perspective drawing on the back of a Latin exercise, “ De labore,” on which his father, the schoolmaster, has written, “This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure idleness." How little (says Mr. Cotton,) did he guess to what such idleness would tend!

and

He

Another of the above drawings is the interior of a bookroom, or library, apparently copied from a small engraving, with all the minuteness and delicacy of Callot, or Della Bella; the third is a drawing of a fish, also done with a pen, inscribed, apparently by his father, "Copied from nature." Sir Joshua related to Malone that the Perspective happened to be in the parlour-window in the house of his father. made himself at eight years old so completely master of this book that he never had occasion to study any other work on the subject, and the knowledge of perspective then acquired served him ever after. Reynolds also told Malone that his first essays in drawing were copying some light drawings made by two of his sisters, who had a turn for art; he afterwards eagerly copied such prints as he met with among his father's books: particularly those which were given in the translation of Plutarch's Lives, published by Dryden. But his principal fund of initiation was Jacob Catt's Book of Emblems, which his great grandmother, by the father's side, a Dutchwoman, had brought with her from Holland.*

The father seems to have strangely neglected the education of his son. It is true that the boy, like Hogarth before him, was inspired by Richardson's Treatise on Painting, to make private drawings rather than public exercises in school. Northcote, Reynolds's pupil and biographer, reluctantly admits his master's deficiency in classical attainments. "The mass of general knowledge by which he was distinguished," says Northcote, 66 was the result of much studious application in his riper years."

* In Devonshire Reynolds saw the pictures which first fixed his attention; these were portraits by William Gandy, of Exeter, who thus became Reynolds's first instructor. Gandy's father was a pupil of Vandyke.