Sir Joshua Reynolds

As recorded in James Boswell's "Life of Johnson", on July 17, 1771, Samuel Johnson wrote to portraitist Joshua Reynolds:

'To SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, IN LEICESTER-FIELDS.


'DEAR SIR,--When I came to Lichfield, I found that my portrait had been much visited, and much admired. Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place; and I was pleased with the dignity
conferred by such a testimony of your regard.
'Be pleased, therefore, to accept the thanks of, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,


'Ashbourn in Derbyshire,

'SAM. JOHNSON.


July 17, 1771.'

'Compliments to Miss Reynolds.'

Walter Scott covered Samuel Johnson and his crowd with biographical sketches.  In his "The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott",  he includes this comment concerning Johnson's publication "The Idler":

'In 1752, Johnson was deprived of his wife, a loss which he appears to have felt most deeply. After her death, society, the best of which was now open to a man who brought such stores to increase its pleasures, seems to have been his principal enjoyment, and his great resource when assailed by that malady of mind which embittered his solitary moments.



The Idler, scarcely so popular as the Rambler, followed in 1758. In 1759, Rasselas was hastily composed, in order to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, and some small debts which she had contracted. This beautiful tale was written in one week, and sent in portions to the printer. Johnson told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he never afterwards read it over! The publishers paid the author a hundred pounds, with twenty-four more, when the work came to a second edition.'

James Northcote

May_ 9 (1828) "...I  sat to Northcote, who is to introduce himself in the same piece in the act of painting me, like some pictures of the Venetian school. The artist is an old man, low in stature, and bent with years--fourscore at least. But the eye is quick and the countenance noble. A pleasant companion, familiar with recollections of Sir Joshua, Samuel Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, etc. His account of the last confirms all that we have heard of his oddities..."

From Scott's Journal

James Northcote was an Englishman, whose first career was as a watchmaker, under his father.  He enjoyed drawing, and began painting portraits on his own.  The year Scott was born, 1771, Northcote moved with his brother to London, escaping from his father's watchmaking business. 

Northcote left Devon with an introduction to Sir Joshua Reynolds.  Both men derived from near Plymouth, in Devon, and both had attended the Plympton Grammar School.   Reynolds took Northcote in as a student, and a boarder.

Northcote produced prolificly, creating perhaps more than 1,000 works.  He also wrote, authoring the first full biography of Sir Joshua Reynolds.