did not attack foreign art as such, that he passionately admired the Old
Masters.
What manner of man was he who executed thse portraits--so various, so
faithful, and so admirable? In the London National Gallery most of us have
seen the best and most carefully finished series of his comic paintings,
and the portrait of his own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes
shine out from the canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look
with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a
hero; you see him before you, and can fancy what he was --a jovial, honest
London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearly, plain-spoken man, loving his
laugh, his friend, his glass, his roast-beef of Old England, and having a
proper bourgeois scorn for foreign fiddlers, foregn singers, and, above
all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most amusing contempt.
Hogarth's "Portraits of Captain Coram"
Hogarth painted his portrait of Capitain Coram in 1740, and donated
it the same year to the Foundling Hospital.
It was painted on Hogarth's own initiative, without having been
commissioned, and was presented to a charitable institution in the making,
one of whose founder members Hogarth was, and it depicts a friend of his,
the prime mover of the whole undertaking. The very format of the picture
shows that Hogarth was exerting all his powers to produce a masterpiece.
It measures about 2.4 by 1.5 metres, the biggest portrait Hogarth ever
painted.
In producing a work like this, of monumental proportions, where there
was no purchaser to sistort the artist's intentions, Hogarth mst have had a
definite aim or aims, and it is probable that he desired his work to
express something of significance to him at this period of time.
The portrait is conceived in the great style, with foreground plus
repoussoir, middle-ground, background, classical column and drapery. Coram
is depicted sitting on a chair, which is placed on a platform with two
steps leading up to it.
Hogarth makes use of the conventional scheme, traditional in
portraits of rulers and noblemen, with its column, drapery and platform as
laudatory symbols to stress the subject's dignity, a composition, which in
the England of that time, was usually associated with Van Dyck's much
admired but old-fashioned protraits of kings and noblemen. Hogarth's
painting, with its attributes and symbols is not far removed form history
painting. But the subject is a sea-captain, whose social position did not,
by the fixed conventions for this category of picture, entitle him to this
kind of portrayal. His relatively modest position in society is emphasized
by his simple dress, a broad-coat of cloth, by the absence of the wig
obligatory for every parson of standing, and by the intimace and realism
with which the artist has depicted this figure with his broad, stocky body,
shose short, bent legs do not reach the floor.
The mode of depiction refers back to , and creates in the beholder an
expectation of a somewhat schematized and idealized manner of human
portrayal. But by depicting Coram in an intimate and realistic fashion
Hogarth breaks the mould. In one and the same work he has made use of the
means of expression of both the great and the low style. By making
apparent the low social status of his subject, Hogarth seems also to wish
to breach the classic doctrine, whose scale of values provided the
foundation of the theories about the division of painting into distinct
categories, where the nature of the theme determined a picture's place on
the scale "high" to "low".
5.2) Sir Joshua Reynolds(1723-1792)
To feel to the full the contrast between Reynolds and Hodarth, there
is no better way than to look at their self-portraits. Hogarth's of 1745
in the Tate Gallery, Reynolds's of 1773 in the Royal Academy. Hogarth had
a round face, with sensuous lips, and in his pictures looks you straight in
face. He is accompanied by a pug-dog licking his lip and looking very much
like his master. The dog sits in front of the painted oval frame in which
the portrait appears--that is the Baroque trick of a picture within a
picture. Reynolds scorns suck tricks. His official self-portrait shows
him in an elegant pose with his glove in his hand, the body fitting nicely
into the noble triangular outline which Raphael and Titian had favoured,
and behind him on the right appears a bust of Michelangelo.
This portrait is clearly as programmatic as Hogarth's. Reynolds's
promramme is known to us in the greatest detail. He gave altogether
fifteen discourses to the students of the Academy, and they were all
printed. And whereas Hogarth's Analysis of Beaty was admired by few and
neglected by most--Reynolds's Discourses were international reading.
What did Reynolds plead for? His is on the whole a con sistent
theory. "Study the great masters...who have stood the test of ages, " and
especially "study the works to notice"; for "it is by being conversant with
the invention of others that we learn to invent". Don't be "a mere copier
of nature", don't "amuse mankind with the minute neatness of your
imitations, endeavour to impress them by the grandeur of [...] ideas".
Don't strive for "dazzling elegancies" of brushwork either, form is
superior to colour, as idea is to ornament. The history painter is the
painter of the highest order; for a subject ought to be "generally
interesting". It is his right and duty to "deviate from vulgar and strict
historical truth". So Reynolds would not have been tempted by the
reporter's attitude to the painting of important con-temporary events. With
such views on vulgar truth and general ideas, the portrait painter is ipso
facto inferior to the history painter. Genre, and landscape and still life
rank even lower. The student ought to keep his "principal attention fixed
upon the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing
more, you are still first, class... You may be very imperfect, but still
you are an imperfect artist of the highest order".
This is clearly a consistent theory, and it is that of the Italian
and even more of the French seventeenth century. There is nothing
specifically English in it. But what is eminently English about Reynolds
and his Discourses is the contrast between what he preached and what he
did. History painting and the Grand Manner, he told the stu-dents, is what
they ought to aim at, but he was a portrait painter most exclusively, and
an extremely successful one.
Reynold's "Mrs Siddons as the Tragic
Muse": the Grand Manner Taken
Seriously
For anyone coming to the painting with a fresh eye the first
impression must surely be one of dignity and solem-nity. It is an
impression created not only by the pose and bearing of the central figure
herself, and her costume, but also by the attitude of her two shadowy
attendants, by the arrangement of the figures, and by the colour. The
colour must appear as one of the most remarkable features of the painting.
To the casual glance the picture seems monochromatic. The dominant tone is
a rich golden brown, interrupted only by the creamy areas of the face and
arms and by the deep velvety shadows of the background. On closer
examination a much greater variety in the colour is appar-ent, but the
first impression remains valid for the painting as a unit.
The central figure sits on a thronelike chair. She does not look at
the spectator but appearsan deep contemplation; her expression is one of
melancholy musing. Her gestures aptly reinforce the meditative air of the
head and also contribute to the regal quality of the whole figure. A great
pendent cluster of pearls adorns the front of her dress. In the heavy,
sweeping draperies that envelop the figure there are no frivolous elements
of feminine costume to conflict with the initial effect of solemn grandeur.
In the background, dimly seen on either side of the throne, are two
attendant figures. One, with lowered head and melancholy expression, holds
a bloody dagger; the other, his features contorted into an expression of
horror, grasps a cup. Surely these figures speak of violent events. Their
presence adds a sinister impression to a picture already eavily charged
with grave qualities.
At the time the portrait was painted, Sarah Siddons was in her late
twenties, but she already.had a soli.d decade of acting experience behind
her. She was born in 1755, the daughter of Roger Kemble, manager of an
itinerant com-pany of actors. Most of her early acting experience was with
her father's company touring through English provincial centres. Her
reputation rose so quickly that in 1775, when she was only twenty, she was
engaged by Garrick to perform at Drury Lane. But this early London
adventure proved premature; she was unsuccessful and retired again to the
provincial circuits, acting principally at Bath. She threw her full
energies into building her repertory and perfecting her acting technique,
with the result that her return to London as a tragic actress in the autumn
of 1782, was one of the great sensations of theatre history. Almost
overnight she found herself the unquestioned first lady of the British
stage, a position she retained for thirty years. The leading intellectuals
and statesmen of the day were among her most fervent admirers and were in
constant attendance at her performance.
Among the intelligentsia who flocked to see the great actress and
returned again and again was Sir Joshua Reynolds, the august president of
