Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Late 18th-century Portraits I

Benjamin West
The artist's wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Raphael
1773
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Benjamin West
The artist and his son, Raphael
1773
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Benjamin West
Portrait of Queen Charlotte
1777
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

GREATNESS

1. Never to do more mischief to another than was necessary to the effecting his purpose; for that mischief was too precious a thing to be thrown away.

2. To know no distinction of men from affection; but to sacrifice all with equal readiness to his interest.

3. Never to communicate more of an affair than was necessary to the person who was to execute it.

4. Not to trust him who hath deceived you, nor who knows he hath been deceived by you.

5. To forgive no enemy; but to be cautious and often dilatory in revenge.

6. To shun poverty and distress, and to ally himself as close as possible to power and riches.

7. To maintain a constant gravity in his countenance and behaviour, and to affect wisdom on all occasions.

8. To foment eternal jealousies in his gang, one of another.

9. Never to reward any one equal to his merit; but always to insinuate that the reward was above it.

10. That all men were knaves or fools, and much the greater number a composition of both.

11. That a good name, like money, must be parted with, or at least greatly risked, in order to bring the owner any advantage.

12. That virtues, like precious stones, were easily counterfeited; that the counterfeits in both cases adorned the wearer equally, and that very few had knowledge or discernment sufficient to distinguish the counterfeit jewel from the real.

13. That many men were undone by not going deep enough in roguery; as in gaming any man may be a loser who doth not play the whole game.

14. That men proclaim their own virtues, as shopkeepers expose their goods, in order to profit by them.

15. That the heart was the proper seat of hatred, and the countenance of affection and friendship.

 by Henry Fielding, from The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great (1743)

"Jonathan Wild is a person of undeviating criminality; the beautiful consistency of his life is marred by scarce a single generous deed or decent impulse.  From the time of his youthful captaincy over a gang of orchard robbers, when he was invariably the "treasurer of the booty, some little part of which he would now and then, with wonderful generosity, bestow on those who took it," until his consummation on the scaffold or "tree of glory," when he found breath to deliver "a hearty curse" upon the assembled crowd, he showed himself to be "not restrained by any of those weaknesses which disappoint the views of mean and vulgar souls, and which are comprehended in one general term of honesty, which is a corruption of HONOSTY, a word derived from what the Greeks call an ass."  From the title-page to the closing sentence there is an incessant harping on the word "greatness," used in this scheme of irony to mean material success without moral goodness.  And when, near the end, Fielding reduces the career of his infamous protagonist to a list of elementary principles of "greatness," behold! that list exactly defines and delineates the practices by which Fielding saw eminence achieved in the most respected careers of his own 18th century world.  His purpose was to show how a boot-licking society worshiped prestige no matter how gained; his method is to draw a grotesque parallel between the successful man of the great world and the successful criminal of the underworld, and to signify that the one is as little worthy of admiration as the other.  This catalogue of principles, as applicable to a Robert Walpole as to a Jonathan Wild, seems to me to be among the most ingenious and pointed uses of savage irony in English."

 from The Modern Novel (1918) by Wilson Follett

John Singleton Copley
Portrait of Richard Heber
1782
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

John Singleton Copley
Portrait of a lady
1771
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

John Singleton Copley
Portrait of Mrs Sylvester Gardiner, née Abigail Pickman, formerly Mrs William Eppes
ca. 1772
oil on canvas
Brooklyn Museum

George Romney
Portrait of Mrs Andrew Reid
ca. 1780-88
oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

George Romney
Portrait of Jane Dawkes Robinson
1778
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

George Romney
Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton
1791
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

George Willison
Portrait of James Boswell, diarist and biographer
1765
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Thomas Linley the younger
1772
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Thomas Linley the elder
ca. 1765-70
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Samuel Linley
1778
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of the Honourable Mrs Graham
1775
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait  of Mrs Elizabeth Moody with her sons Samuel and Thomas
ca. 1779-85
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London