HISTORY OP ART. 



297 



and Michel Angolo, which he carotuliy ntud.od; and <>n iui 

 return ho Moon rose to eminenoo in his own art. Hi* social 

 position i.i- wan the MOM of a Dovonnhiro rector gave him un 



foil notion to society; and when tho Itoyal Academy of 

 Painting was found.-d, in 1768, Reynolds was mado its (ir-t 



id, :iiul received the honour of knighthood. Tim 

 foundation of the Academy in it>i-lf marked tho growing 

 import i i in England. Sir Joshua devoted himself 



almost entirely to portrait-painting, and was particularly happy 

 in Ins treatment of children. There is something peculiarly 

 idyllic and touching in his handling of such themes. lli-i 

 "Strawberry Girl," his "Infant Samuel," and many others 

 of his childish pictures arc universal favourites. They have 

 an unspeakable purity and gracefulness of their own. Ho 

 knew how to represent the innocence and roguishnesa of 



beautiful. Tho < famous "Dachas* of 



Devonshire " are among bin best-known work*. A* a landscape- 

 p.unt.-r, ii.uMMborough struck the key-note of the i 

 school in bin love for typical and purely Kugluh scenery, as 

 well as in the simplicity and quiet delicacy of his tn$a 

 His works are redolent of the truly English feeling of home 

 and country peacefulness. He had also an extraordinary 

 knack of hitting off striking effects with a few casual touches 

 ot Ins hasty brush. 



We can find room for only one later name, that of Joseph 

 Turner, the moat distinguished amongst all oar great masters of 

 landscape-painting. Turner was born in London about 1 T'/J, 

 and lived till 1851, so that his life links together a past and a 

 present generation to a remarkable extent. The son of a hair- 

 dresser in Coveut Garden, ho picked up his love for nature among 



VENICE. (By Turner.) 



childhood with exquisite tenderness and fidelity, and his 

 delineation of female beauty in "Kitty Fisher" and other 

 portraits is unsurpassed for grace and truthfulness. Sir Joshua 

 died in 1792. His name still perhaps remains the very greatest 

 in all tho annals of English art. 



Not unlike Reynolds in style and sentiment was George 

 Romney, born at Dalton, in Lancashire, in 1734. He also 

 devoted himself largely to portraits, though he likewise pro- 

 duced many historical and fanciful pieces. His delicacy and 

 softness are scarcely inferior to Reynolds', and his tone is 

 perhaps even more poetical and graceful. The dancing group 

 of the children of the first Marquis of Stafford gives a very 

 good idea of his half-classical, half-English fancy. 



More strictly contemporary with Reynolds was Thomas 

 Gainsborough, who was born in Suffolk in 1727. Gainsborough 

 was one of our earliest great landscape-painter?, and he also 

 largely devoted himself to portraits, which indeed have 

 always had a tendency in England, till very lately, to mono- 

 polise too much the time and attention of our greatest artists. 

 His portraits of children are almost as famous as Sir Joshua's 

 for their airy lightness, and his women are often surprisingly 



the cabbages and carts of the great market. He began painting 

 in water-colours, and though he afterwards produced most of his 

 greatest works in oils, yet he always retained his love for his 

 earliest medium. Turner's landscapes are quite unique in their 

 peculiar wealth of colour, their extraordinary glow, their bold 

 effects of light and shade, and their keen sympathy with 

 natural beauty. He had an ardent imagination which led him 

 to idealise whatever he saw, while at the same time his 

 idealisation was always wonderfully subordinated to the truth- 

 ful delineation of external nature. He copied exactly what ho 

 saw, yet he managed in doing so to transfuse it with his own 

 brilliant fervour so as to make it something very different from 

 what it appeared to the common or untutored eye. His sea 

 pieces are especially grand and striking. In his later years a 

 defect of vision seems to have somewhat blurred his fine eye 

 for nature, and some of his last pieces are extremely hazy with 

 yellow light, and very lacking in distinctness of form. Their 

 originality often reaches the length of positive eccentricity. 

 Many of his finest works he left as the property of the nation. 



Since the end of the last century, English art has blossomed 

 out so fully that it would be impossible to follow it farther in 



