life. At last he reached Rome, where he spent
two years, supported partly on slight earnings
in copying for tourists—a work he disliked and
did not get much of—partly by advances of money
from his married sisters, Mrs. Palmer and Mrs.
Johnson. It was Mrs. Palmer who had lent
also half the premium for his apprenticeship to
Hudson. When he was a thriving painter he
could pay his money debts to those of his own
household who had helped him to become so.
Reynolds at Rome put himself under no teacher,
but studied and copied, chiefly occupying himself
with the works of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle.
It was at this time of his life, while copying
from Raffaelle, that he caught a severe cold in the
chambers of the Vatican, which produced the
deafness that obliged him to use an ear-trumpet
for the other forty years of his life.

After two years at Rome, Reynolds, aged
twenty-eight, visited Naples, Perugia, Arezzo,
Florence. After spending at Florence nearly
two months, he went on to Bologna, Modena,
Reggio, Parma, Mantua, Venice, where he could
not afford to stay more than three weeks. He
left Venice with a young pupil, Giuseppe Marchi,
for companion, and stopping on the way four
days at Milan, thence made haste to Paris. At
Lyons, Reynolds had found only six louis left in
his purse. Two he gave to Marchi, wherewith
to get to Paris as well as he could, the other
four carried himself thither. Marchi walked
the whole way, and joined Reynolds eight days
after his arrival. At Paris, Reynolds stayed a
month, and then came home in company with
his old master, Thomas Hudson, who had been
paying Italy a flying visit.

Back in England, Reynolds's health needed
attention, and he rested for three months in
Devonshire, painting during that time only a
couple of portraits. Then he was urged by
Lord Edgcumbe to lose no more time in
establishing himself as an artist among the
Londoners. He returned, therefore, now thirty
years old, to London, where he took handsome
apartments at 104, St. Martin's-lane—in that
year, seventeen 'fifty-three, the fashionable
quarter for the artists—and had his youngest
sister, Frances, to keep house for him. He and
his sister Fanny were not very like minded, for
she, whom Dr. Johnson, however, most highly
respected, was as fidgety as he was placid.
She painted miniatures, and had artistic aspirations,
but after some time, in Reynolds's most
prosperous days, her reign over the household
ceased, and she was succeeded by her sister
Palmer's daughters, Mary and Theophila, or
Offy.

When Reynolds settled in London, Hogarth,
who had ceased to paint portraits, had achieved
his greatest works, had attempted, in the grand
style, Paul before Felix, and was about to
produce his Analysis of Beauty. Hudson
was the fashionable face painter, and Francis
Cotes ranked next to him. The fashionable
portrait was of an inanimate wooden gentleman
in periwig and embroidered velvet, one
hand upon the hip, the other in the waistcoat,
and of a lady, half length, in white satin,
with coloured bows and breastknots, or in
flounced brocade with deep lace ruffles. The
features were correctly copied, although lifeless.
Reynolds brought a new manner to town. He
knew little or nothing of artistic anatomy, but
with quick observation, an intense sentiment of
grace, and a fine feeling for colour, he seized
upon every good accident of light, every happily
expressive gesture, and brought the essential
character of his sitters into his rich transcripts
of their faces. As his father dabbled in physic
and chemicals, he may have acquired, as a boy
his taste for experiments in colour.

In Italy his note-book was filled with the
most practical memoranda of the way of managing
their lights by the great painters, and of
what seemed to be the mechanical details of
their art. The result of his later experimenting
upon grounds, vehicles, and mixtures, is that a
few of his pictures have stood well, but most of
them have cracked, peeled, and otherwise suffered
more or less by course of time. An artist to
whom he had lent one of his works, a picture
of a child, to copy, was carrying it home, when
a chance swing of his umbrella by a passer-by
struck it on the back, and the face and hands
of the child dropped clean off the canvas. It
is probable that, as people learnt to dread this
peeling and cracking of his works, mistrust of
their beauty, as too perishable, counteracted in
some degree the effect of his great reputation,
and, together with the raised price, caused the
decline that took place in the number of his
sitters. Yet it was held by many that a faded
Reynolds would be better than the fresh work
of another man. At first, however, there was
no question about durability, the life of
Reynolds's portraits, so unlike the sign-post style
then prevalent, spoke for itself. His price,
which had been three guineas for a head before
he went to Italy, and five after his return, was,
very soon after his settlement in London, upon
his removing from St. Martin's-lane to 5, Great
Newport-street, made equal to Hudson's: twelve
guineas for a head, twenty-four for a half length,
and for a whole length forty-eight. A few years
later, Hudson and Reynolds both raised their
prices to fifteen, thirty, and sixty guineas, so
that the success of Reynolds did not destroy
Hudson's business. Yet the success was rapid
and great. Reynolds's industry kept pace with
every requirement. His friend Lord Edgcumbe
sent him noble sitters, applying chiefly to those
with strong features, whose likeness could be
most conspicuously hit, and every picture he
sent home brought Reynolds friends and
customers. In the fifth year of his town work, he
was then thirty-five years old, he had one
hundred and fifty sitters. He employed an assistant,
Peter Toms, and two pupils besides Marchi,
who all helped at his draperies; but whatever
his industry, he never degenerated into a mere
manufacturer of portraits. James Northcote,
who went to him as a pupil more than a dozen
years later, says of Reynolds, that the evident
desire he had to make his pictures as perfect as