CHAPTER 9

Sir Joshua Reynolds

THE Fifteen Discourses of Art 1 of Sir Joshua Reynolds are more a system of criticism for painting than a philosophical in­quiry into the universal traits of aesthetic experience: and this is quite natural, for the discourses were delivered by an artist to an audience of artists and connoisseurs with the practical aim of directing the practice of painters and forming the taste of amateurs. Nevertheless, Reynolds repeatedly enters upon the higher and more philosophical issues, and, indeed, the very method and viewpoint he adopts tend to do away with any sharp distinction of aesthetics from criticism: his dialectic plays constantly between the most general issues of psychol­ogy and the most particular questions of technique. As is usually the case in such dialectics, it is not possible to separate for analysis one element or part of the system without prejudicing the intelligibility of the whole, and accordingly, the entire system will be reviewed here, without attempt to single out for analysis Reynolds' views on beauty or sublimity.

Reynolds alone among the philosophical critics and aestheticians of the eighteenth century is generally read today. This circumstance is attributable partly to his stature as a practicing artist, which has transferred an adventitious authority to his critical doctrines. But in part also, Reynolds' still flourishing reputation as a critic is due to the peculiar character of his thought, which, standing in some meas­ure apart from the general current of eighteenth-century empiricism, has better escaped the dogmatic reaction of the nineteenth century.

Yet although Reynolds is widely read and respected today, the co­herency of his doctrine and the purity of his method are usually dis­regarded; both his critics and his defenders interpret his thought in the light of modern preconceptions, philosophical, critical, or histor­ical. It is a matter of importance to this study, as well as of consider‑


able autonomous interest, to re-establish the aesthetics of Reynolds as a system self-consistent, systematic, and fruitful.'

Modern criticism of the theory of Reynolds has concerned itself chiefly with two issues, though neither has been stated in such wise as to admit of a solution. There is, in the first place, a sense of baffling contradictions in the thought of Reynolds, a feeling which has per­sisted since the attacks of Blake and Hazlitt. Roger Fry observes, in his admirable edition of Reynolds' Discourses, that it is not possible to acquit Reynolds "of confusion of thought and inconsistency in the use of words," and he instances (among other inconsistencies) the ap­parently incompatible senses of the central term "nature," used (r) to designate visible phenomena not made by artifice, (2) "in an Aris­totelian sense as an immanent force working in the refractory medium of matter towards the highest perfection of form," and (3) to signify what is inherently agreeable to the mind.' Michael Macklem has more recently attempted to show "how the diversity of meanings at­tached to the idea of nature indicates the diverse principles of neo-classical art," finding that Reynolds concurrently and inconsistently thought of art as producing a general image of nature, as represent­ing an Ideal transcending nature but from which nature is derived, and as affording a wish-fulfilling idealization of the actual.' Thomp­son, too, asserts that "inconsistencies in Reynolds's statements can easily be detected; for the first paper in the Idler appeared in 1759, and the last address was delivered in 1790. Moreover, the artist did not always practice what he preached."' The correlation of theory and practice (a matter often 'brought to the fore in discussions of Reynolds) is not germane to the present analysis; but I may observe that Reynolds' theory involves a hierarchy of genres and styles, and that the "rules" are analogically applicable to each, so that every genre and style has its appropriate excellence (however low in the total scheme) and artists may exercise their talents legitimately at every level. Accordingly, the criteria on which Reynolds based his choice of "fields" were more personal and social than philosophical; his talents lay in the direction of portraiture and coloring, coinciding happily with the demand of his age for portraits executed with fash­ionable splendor of style. In recommending to artists to follow the path which Michael Angelo had marked out, Reynolds says: "I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities, and to the taste of the times in which I live. Yet however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master. . . ." '

 

Joseph Burke specifies more of the contradictions which the Dis­courses display:

In the first Discourse Reynolds recommends an implicit obedience to the rules of art, and adds that the models provided by the great Masters should be considered as perfect and infallible guides. In the third Dis­course he states that there are no precise invariable rules, nor are taste and genius to he acquired by rules; and in the fourteenth, that the mo­ment the artist turns other artists into models he falls infinitely below them. In the sixth Discourse, he says that `by imitation only, are variety and originality of invention' produced. On the other hand, he had al-ready stated, in the third Discourse, that the perfection of art did not consist in `mere imitation.' 7

Those writers who do not emphasize outright contradictions in Reynolds' theory usually escape this conclusion only by discovering a progressive development of his thought. Clough, for instance, traces three stages in this development; the Idler papers constitute the first, and two of the Discourses, "the seventh and the thirteenth, might almost be taken to stand for the whole number, epitomizing as they do his middle and last periods"; the early discourses exhibit Reynolds' "adherence to the standard neo-classical code," but by the time of the thirteenth, "Reynolds makes a tentative advance toward the more popular aesthetic of his time, by referring art to human nature." 8 These hypotheses of self-contradiction and chronological development are obviously devised to account for the reiterated para­doxes which are so prominent a feature of the discourses. In some cases the detection of inconsistencies depends on overlooking or con-founding the several stages which Reynolds prescribes for the edu­cation of artists. More often such obvious misreading is not involved; rather, the inconsistencies are found by juxtaposing passages without regard to the "level" of their argumentative contexts. The reconcili­ation of the paradoxes is readily accomplished if allowance is made for the methodological devices which Reynolds consistently employs.

The second persistent theme in recent discussion of Reynolds is his Platonism or Aristotelianism. Fry argues that "it was probably from a passage in Bellori . . . that Reynolds actually derived his main ideas," and that the ultimate source of such Renaissance art theories was Aristotle.9 Bredvold urges that although "the analysis and formulation of Neo-classical principles for each specific art was generally a form of Aristotelianism," the conception of Ideal Beauty underlying all the arts "is nevertheless a conception which leads be­yond Aristotle, and which Reynolds . . . definitely thought of as


Platonic rather than Aristotelian." 10 Macklem, too, finds both an Aristotelian and a Platonic strain in the Discourses, the first in the conception of specific forms, the second in the Ideal transcending nat­ural experience." In opposition to the consensus, however, Trow­bridge argues that Reynolds "shows a tendency away from Platon­ism much more prominently than any attraction to it," that "the true philosophical affinity of Reynolds' classicism is not Plato but John Locke," and that Reynolds adapted the traditional Platonic theory of painting to be consistent with an empirical metaphysics and psy­chology.' Though denying the Platonism of Reynolds in regard to his philosophic principles, Trowbridge points out that in method Rey­nolds might justly be dubbed a Platonist. This problem of Reynolds' Platonism, then, like that of his doctrinal consistency, depends for adequate statement and for solution upon study of the method of the Discourses, and upon distinguishing problems of method from those of philosophic principle.13

The primary and ubiquitous principle of Reynolds' aesthetic sys­tem is the contrariety of universal and particular. Whether the dis­course is of nature or of art, of invention or imitation, of subject or style, of taste or genius, the analysis proceeds in a dialectic of the one and the many, the changeless and the transient. The distinction of general and particular is the constant analytic device, and universality the invariable criterion of excellence. It is natural, therefore, to see Reynolds as the intellectual descendant of Plato; 14 yet the dialectic of the eighteenth-century critic differs sharply from that of the Gre­cian philosopher. Plato's system did not encourage the demarcation of an aesthetic realm which could be treated in detail apart from moral, social, and theological considerations; and Plato's reference was ultimately to a reality independent of the mind. Reynolds, per contra, despite his analogies between aesthetics, ethics, and science, treats the work of art, its subject, its producer, and its critic in a world of discourse largely divided off from other matters; and the un­changing, the universal, the Nature to which he appeals is con­tingent upon the faculties and functions of the mind—human nature rather than cosmic nature is the source of his philosophic principles: "The first idea that occurs in the consideration of what is fixed in art, or in taste, is that presiding principle . . . the general idea of nature... My notion of nature comprehends not only the forms which nature produces, but also the nature and internal fabrick and prganization, as I may call it, of the human mind and imagination." 15

This shift in orientation is seen in the treatment of the end of art: "The great end of all the arts is, to make an impression on the im­agination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails, and something else succeeds. I think there-fore the true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind." 10

The reference of these and other problems to human nature is characteristic of Reynolds' age; the confinement of the scope of the dialectic to the aesthetic world—the artist, his work (subject and style), and the audience which appreciates or judges it—is the char­acteristic of the system which some critics have taken for a resem­blance to Aristotle; for it is this concentration on an aesthetic realm which permits the elaboration of rules fitted to particular arts. Never­theless, the elements which enter into the discussion (artist, work, and audience) are analogous to the elements of Aristotle's theory of rhetoric rather than to those of his analysis of poetic; and attribu­tions to Aristotle are valid only if by "Aristotle" we mean the inter­pretation of Aristotle by Platonizing critics and philosophers. The real Aristotle was not the author of the theory of Ideal Beauty. The pas-sage usually cited to indicate Aristotle's supposed endorsement of this theory is his remark that "poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the na­ture of universals, whereas those of history are singulars" (Poetics 1451b 6-8). But Aristotle is discussing the probability or necessity by which a poem has an inner coherence independent of accident, whereas Reynolds, like Plato, is discussing the participation of indi­viduals in transcendent universals. Frances Blanshard argues from this passage that Aristotle (like Reynolds) was trying to answer Plato's attack on art, and that this answer consisted in showing that by imitating the general form of a species art gives knowledge of nature's unrealized ends. Reynolds (we are told) took this up, and used the empiricism of Locke and Hume to explain the generalizing process.17 But for Aristotle, to consider art as essentially supply­ing knowledge would be a confusion of the poetic and theoretic sciences.

Reynolds does make occasional excursions outside the restricted domain of art. These may be regarded analytically as relics of the original universal dialectic, though historically it might be more ac-curate to see them as tentative efforts to expand a more rigidly con-

tracted tradition. However this may be, Reynolds frequently stresses the affiliation of aesthetics and ethics, taste and virtue:

It has been often observed, that the good and virtuous man alone can acquire this true or just relish even of works of art. . . . The same disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial, and durable . . . actuates us in both cases. The subject only is changed. We pursue the same method in our search after the idea of beauty and per­fection in each; of virtue, by looking forwards beyond ourselves to so­ciety, and to the whole; of arts, by extending our views in the same manner to all ages and all times."

And as here taste is analogized to virtue, so it may be identified with the love of truth:

The natural appetite or taste of the human mind is for TRUTH; whether that truth results from the real agreement or equality of orig­inal ideas among themselves; from the agreement of the representation of any object with the thing represented; or from the correspondence of the several parts of any arrangement with each other. It is the very same taste which relishes a demonstration in geometry, that is pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an original, and touched with the harmony of musick.ls

Thus, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful become, when perfected, equivalent: all are Nature.20 The theoretic, the practical, and the pro­ductive sciences, which Aristotle carefully separated, are here, how-ever tentatively, merged: and these easy analogies are not found among the literal writers of the century, however fond many of them are of paralleling ethics and aesthetics.

Nature and Art are related complexly and paradoxically in the aesthetics of Reynolds, for both "nature" and "art" are analogical terms and have multiple meanings in the system. Of course "art"—as opposed to "nature"—always means something learned or made: the works themselves, their subjects (for the great source of inspira­tion and often the model of imitation is the art of the past), the techniques of their production, the training of the artist, and the for­mation of taste in the audience; all are in some sense art. The inter-relation of art and nature is discussed in terms of "imitation." 21 Art imitates nature; yet it is equally true that art may imitate art, and that great art transcends imitation. These paradoxes are made pos­sible by, and are resolved by reference to, the contrariety of general and particular. Imitation in the lowest sense is mere copying of par­ticular art works, an "imitating without selecting" in which the "powers of invention and composition . . . lie torpid." 22 It is distin­guished both from "borrowing" (incorporation of a thought, action, or figure from another painting, which "is so far from having any thing in it of the servility of plagiarism, that it is a perpetual exer­cise of the mind, a continual invention" 2") and from a true and proper imitation of the masters. This higher imitation is a catching of the spirit, a subjection to the same discipline; in a passage often compared to Longinus, Reynolds urges: "Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only their conceptions. Instead .of treading in their footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road. . . . Possess yourself with their spirit. Consider how a Michael Angelo or a Raffaelle would have treated this subject: and work your-self into a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticized by them when completed." 24 Taken in this sense, imitation is "the true and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his profes­sion; which I hold ought to be one continued course of imitation, that is not to cease but with his life." 25 Imitation of one master is discour­aged, a general and eclectic imitation demanded; yet the artist can enter into a generous contention with the men whom he imitates, and by correcting what is peculiar in each, transcend all. The entire course of study which Reynolds lays out for the student is a course in imi­tation, first of the object set before him, then of the manner of great workers in the art, then (while imitation of artists is not discontin­ued) of the abundance of nature itself. This progressive broadening of the object and manner of imitation culminates in the formation of a mind adequate to all times and all occasions.

The last stage of this training directs attention to the imitation of nature rather than of art; and Reynolds can say in one discourse that art is not merely imitative of nature without contradicting other pro­nouncements that it is essentially imitative. When imitation is de­plored, it is imitation of particular nature; when it is applauded, it is imitation of general nature, either of the ideal specific forms of ex­ternal nature or of the principles of the mind. All "the arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in individual nature." 26 For "a mere copier of nature can never pro-duce any thing great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator"; all the arts "renounce the narrow idea of nature, and the narrow theories derived from that mistaken principle, and apply to that reason only which informs us not what imitation is,—a natural representation of a given object,—but what it is natural for the imagination to be delighted with." 27

Indeed, the chief subject of the discourses is "that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by the general and invariable ideas of nature." 28 This general nature is, consistently with Reynolds' philosophical principles, a conception in the mind of the artist; for although the conception is formed by abstraction from ex­ternal reality, the ideal itself has only a potential existence prior to its comprehension. Accordingly, the same distinction between copy­ing (on one hand) and invention, recombination, and improvement (on the other) obtains in the imitation of nature as in the imitation of artists: "Upon the whole, it seems to me, that the object and in­tention of all the Arts is to supply the natural imperfection of things, and often to gratify the mind by realizing and embodying what never existed but in the imagination." 29

It is noteworthy that in the Discourses Reynolds does not advance the peculiarly literal conception of general nature which he expounded in the third of his Idler papers.30 Beauty was there arbitrarily con-fined to form alone, and was found to be the medium or center of the various forms of a species or kind (that form which is more frequent than any one deviation from it—not necessarily an average); this definition carried as corollaries, that the beauty of an individual could not be judged prior to the collection of statistics on its species, and that there could be no comparison in point of beauty between species. Refutations of Reynolds' theory from the eighteenth century to the present day have more often than not directed their battery against this paper, either directly or by, reading the Discourses as an expan­sion of it and criticizing theth accordingly. Thus, Sir Uvedale Price, who attempts to account for beauty by a mechanism partly nervous, partly associational, criticizes the Idler theory sharply, for beauty to Price does not depend on comparison within a species; Richard Payne Knight, who employs an elaborate faculty psychology in accounting for the several "beauties" of the various faculties, sees Reynolds as confining his notions to the intellectual qualities of things exclusively; and Dugald Stewart, attempting to subsume previous theories with the aid of a theory of philosophical language, finds the Reynolds view narrow and inadequate.31 The moderns, diverting attention from the systematic interrelations of Reynolds' ideas to their sources, or the sources of the terminology in which they are couched, rarely see Reynolds' thought as more than a pasticcio; but Roger Fry at least has deemed the theory of the central form worthy of refutation.32

I shall not enter upon the question of the validity of this doctrine; rather, I should like to consider briefly the formal or constitutive question of its appropriateness to Reynolds' system as a whole. I think that, viewed in this light, it is a misstep. The peculiar virtue and merit of a Platonic system of criticism consists in the flexibility or "ambiguity" of its terms, a flexibility which permits their analogi­cal application to a range of subjects and the consequent isolation in those subjects of the universal traits or "ideas" to which the terms refer. If it be asked, how can undefined terms isolate anything? the reply must be, that each such term receives definition in each context by comparison with and opposition to other terms of the system; in each application the meaning of the term emerges from its use in the argument, the "dialectic." If this indeterminacy of terms is a pre-requisite for a Platonic system that is not to be dogmatic, it is appar­ent that Reynolds erred in attempting to tie down so literally the meaning of "beauty" in the Idler papers. Ideality is not to be defined or given statistical delimitation.33

In the Discourses, the first of which was delivered ten years after the Idler papers were written, the freedom of the dialectic is unim­paired by dogmatic definition. Yet Reynolds never abandoned out-right his early theory. In a letter to Beattie in 1782, commenting on the manuscript of the essay on beauty which Beattie had submitted to him, he observes: "About twenty years since I thought much on this subject, and am now glad to find many of those ideas which then passed in my mind put in such good order by so excellent a metaphysician. My view of the question did not extend beyond my own profession; it regarded only the beauty of form which I attrib­uted entirely to custom or habit. You have taken a larger compass, including, indeed, everything that gives delight, every mental and corporeal excellence. . . ." And blandly (if not plausibly) Reynolds subsumes Beattie's system under his own:

What you have imputed to convenience and contrivance, I think may without violence be put to the account of habit, as we are more used to that form in nature (and I believe in art, too) which is the most con­venient. . . . I am aware that this reasoning goes upon a supposition that we are more used to beauty than deformity, and that we are so, I think, I have proved in a little Essay which I wrote about twenty-five years since, and which Dr. Johnson published in his Idler. . . .

May not all beauty proceeding from association of ideas be reduced to the principle of habit or experience? You see I am bringing every-thing into my old principle, but I will now have done, for fear I should throw this letter likewise in the fire [the fate of an earlier and longer reply]. . . 3a


In the discourses, too, Reynolds speaks of "presenting to the eye the same effect as that which it has been accustomed to feel, which in this case, as in every other, will always produce beauty. . . ." 35 But habit is not advanced as the single cause of all beauty, and in the dis­courses the earlier theory is quietly modified by sloughing off all the literal limitations on the concept of beauty. By so doing, Reynolds made his system one of the permanent alternatives of aesthetic the­ory.

It is apparent that beauty, treated in the manner of Reynolds, has the energy and grandeur customarily associated with the sublime; and, indeed, it is difficult to see how there could be more than one ideal type of general nature—Reynolds' mode of reasoning automati­cally obviates the distinction between sublime and beautiful. Yet a distinction so pervasive in the literature of the century is certain to leave its mark; and Reynolds occasionally bifurcates his concept of the beautiful, setting the sublime against the "elegant." These two characters are not co-ordinate; the dichotomy is between a higher beauty, the sublime, and a lower, the elegant. The elegant may be paired.with taste and fancy, while the sublime is connected with genius and imagination; alternatively, the elegant may be judged sensual. But the sublime, in any event, sweeps all before it: "The sublime in Painting, as in Poetry, so overpowers, and takes such a possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to minute criticism. The little elegancies of art in the presence of these great ideas thus greatly expressed, lose all their value, and are, for the instant at least, felt to be unworthy of our notice. The correct judgment, the purity of taste, which characterize Raffaelle, the exquisite grace [ele­gance] of Correggio and Parmegiano, all disappear before them." 37 When Reynolds is treating of art, Raffaelle stands for him "foremost of the first painters," 3e but when attention is directed towards genius and sublimity, then Michael Angelo, though he cannot match Raffa­elle in balance and completeness of artistic equipment, is supreme.

There are passages in which Reynolds' sublime and elegant cor­respond pretty closely in application with Burke's sublime and beau­tiful. Reynolds draws, for instance, the inescapable contrast between the sublime landscapes of Salvator and the elegant scenes of Claude, between bold projections and gentle slopes, abruptly angular and gradually inclined branches, clouds rolling in volumes and gilded with the setting sun, and so forth. It is significant, however, that this coincidence of doctrine occurs in discussion of landscape, pre­cisely where the difference of the two systems is minimum. In landscape, the sublime is not of higher order than the elegant; both Claude and Salvator are painters of the first rank, and the distinction between their styles is literal and descriptive. But in human subjects, the sublime springs from and appeals to higher faculties. The tastes of Burke and Reynolds, to be sure, are less different than their fashions of accounting for their tastes; but the difference in their ac-counts is radical. Burke's literal distinction of beauty and sublimity is often dissolved by Reynolds, and when not abandoned it is so transformed in content and established on so different a foundation that only in isolated contexts does any considerable resemblance ap­pear. Burke's famous distinction had become a verbal commonplace for succeeding aestheticians, to no two of whom did it convey the same meaning.

Although Reynolds refers to Burke ast a truly philosophical aes­thetician, and although Burke is the only writer so praised, his influ­ence on Reynolds' thought was slight.3D Even the essay on taste pre-fixed to the second edition of the Sublime and Beautiful (to which Thompson and Bryant assign some weight in determining Reynolds' opinions) has no clear relation to the theory of Reynolds.4" For Burke, taste is "that faculty or those faculties of the mind which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagi­nation and the elegant arts," whereas for Reynolds taste is "that faculty of the mind by which we like or dislike, whatever be the subject," a faculty which judges in the productive, practical, and theoretical sciences alike.41 In the system of Burke, the aesthetic ex­cellences rest upon very different foundations from the moral virtues, but throughout the system of Reynolds there runs a recurrent analogy between beauty and virtue, and another between beauty and truth. Burke, in short, operates within a scheme of separate sciences and is in search of closely literal definitions of the aesthetic qualities he treats (even though those qualities pervade both nature and art), while Reynolds tends always to analogize the sciences and to "define" analogically and dialectically. The occasional verbal and doctrinal resemblances, then, are only isolated points of community in systems which are radically and fundamentally distinct.4`

The criterion of taste for Reynolds is of course generality. Not only should the audience whose taste is appealed to be universal (always and everywhere), but it should appeal to general prin­ciples in judging works and their producers. Nature (true art) is dis­tinguished from fashion (false art) by the test of enduring and uni­versal fame. Great works, therefore, "speak to the general sense of

the whole species; in which common . . . tongue, every thing grand and comprehensive must be uttered." 4s Yet at the same time, the artist may envisage an elect few—his great predecessors—as his audience; and this is not a contradiction, for these are the few who have sloughed off fashion and rejected particularity—they are not men, but Man. Indeed, the appeal is never to the untutored taste of the multitude (which will always exhibit local and temporary particularity) but always to the taste the natural potentialities of which have been cultivated by art. For criticism both is an art and is developed through art, requiring for its cultivation the enthusiasm inspired by works of genius: "It must be remembered," says Reynolds, "that this great style itself is artificial in the highest degree, it pre-supposes in the spectator a cultivated and prepared artificial state of mind. It is an absurdity, therefore, to suppose that we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds of it, which, by the heat and kindly influence of . . . genius, may be ripened in us." " There is a hierarchy of criticisms as there is a hierarchy of imitations, each stage more inclusive than the preceding: comparison of works and masters within an art (which first test "must have two capital de­fects; it must be narrow, and it must be uncertain" 45); comparison of arts and their principles with one another; and comparison of all such principles "with those of human nature, from whence arts de-rive the materials upon which they are to produce their effects," which style is at once the highest and the soundest, "for it refers to the eternal and immutable nature of things." "

Taste so conceived is no different from genius, save that to genius there supervenes a power of execution. Indeed, all the elements of the system—artist, audience, style, and subject—are merged when in their perfected state: "The gusto grande of the Italians, the beau ideal of the French, and the great style, genius, and taste among the English, are but different appellations of the same thing."" Genius, then, is only the imaginative power of apprehending general nature; but it is related to the universal in another sense as well, since it involves a collective effort, each artist being inspired by his own predecessors. Many of the Longinian passages in the dis­courses center about this last theme: "Whoever has so far formed his taste, as to be able to relish and feel the beauties of the great masters, has gone a great way in his study," Reynolds declares, "for, merely from a consciousness of this relish of the right, the mind swells with an inward pride, and is almost as powerfully affected, as if it had itself produced what it admires"; 48 I need not quote the eulogy of Michael Angelo with which the discourses conclude. Even the "genius of mechanical performance," the painter's genius qua painter, participates in generality: it consists in "the power of expressing that which employs your pencil . . . as a whole," 4e contracting into one whole what nature has made multifarious by working up all parts of the picture together instead of finishing part by part.

The paradox that genius is the product of art is the chief purport of the discourses: "The purport of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my other discourses, is, to caution you against that false opinion . . . of the imaginary powers of native genius, and its suf­ficiency in great works." 50 Because of the identifications already re-marked upon, the purpose of the discourses can also, of course, be stated in terms of taste ("My purpose in the discourses . . . has been to lay down certain general positions, which seem to me proper for the formation of sound taste" 61) or in terms of the art itself (it became necessary, in order to reconcile conflicting precepts, "to dis­tinguish the greater truth . . . from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the more narrow and confined; that which addresses itself to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye [The] different rules and regula‑
tions which presided over each department of art, followed of course . . ." f2). Keeping, however, to the aspect of the discourses which centers upon genius—it was certainly not Reynolds' view that natural powers have no efficacy, or that an Academy can make a Michael Angelo of any daubing student; a "man can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which he goes to market." " But natural powers are only a potentiality, and as a pro­fessor addressing students, or (more widely) as an aesthetician ad-dressing artists and critics with the view of forming taste and direct­ing practice, Reynolds deals with what is within human powers to alter, not with what is given by nature; the question is, how to realize natural endowment and how to direct its efforts. Thus the relation of genius to rules can be stated variously: the opposition of genius to the narrow rules of any rigid intellectual system is a conventional topic; nonetheless, Reynolds urges, "what we now call Genius, begins, not where rules, abstractedly taken, end; but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer any place. It must of necessity be, that even works of Genius, like every other effect, as they must have their cause, must likewise have their rules. . . ." 54 These rules depend on the imagination and passions. The active principle of the mind demands variety, novelty, contrast; the pas-

sive, uniformity, custom, repose; and perfection lies in a mean. This is all obvious; noticeable is the slightness of the axiomata media under the guidance of which the universal qualities are found or embodied in particular works. But it is generally true of Platonic systems of criticism that instead of "rules" governing the relations of parts in a whole directed towards a specific end, "touchstones" are supplied which facilitate the recognition of the universal virtues in their concrete manifestations. So while Reynolds occasionally vouchsafes a rule (as that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow color), these rules are few and slender, and the emphasis is on a complicated balancing of artists who embody the various aesthetic virtues and defects.

All the problems of genius, of taste, and of art, then, are given their peculiar form in Reynolds' aesthetics by the dialectical method and psychological orientation of the system. Since the root is not a supernal nature but a terrestrial, the ideal universe being a product of imagination, the faculties of the mind play a crucial role. But Reynolds' view of the faculties is neither original nor complex; sense perceives, fancy combines, reason distinguishes. Appropriately, since imagination is the combining and generalizing power, the arts depend upon it for their higher qualities, and upon sense only by a conde­scension to the necessities of human nature. Such condescension is in­evitable, however, and art strives to give each faculty gratification: "Our taste has a kind of sensuality about it, as well as a love of the sublime; both these qualities of the mind are to have their proper consequence, as far as they do hot counteract each other; for that is the grand error which much care ought to be taken to avoid." 5J In the same way, opinion as well as truth must be regarded by the artist, and its authority is proportioned to the universality of the prejudice; "whilst these opinions and prejudices . . . continue, they operate as truth; and the art, whose office it is to please the mind, as well as in­struct it, must direct itself according to opinion, or it will not attain its end." '" Such concessions, however guarded, mark the difference of this system from that of Plato, for whom the highest art of Reynolds would be second-best; for Plato, true art is dialectic, whereas for Reynolds, such an identification is prevented by the laws of the mind. Reason (as discriminating faculty) plays its role not in dictating the subjects of art but in assisting the artist to "consider and separate those different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their original . . . to discriminate perfections that are incom­patible with each other." '7 Reason and taste may be identified with one another in some contexts, but when reason is "grounded on a partial view of things," in contrast with the habitual sagacity of im­agination, it must give way—in art, imagination is "the residence of truth." 'A

The distinction of levels of argument is often accompanied by the bifurcation of concepts and the identification of the concepts on the higher level. This tendency is in Reynolds sometimes imperfectly realized or difficult to trace. Imagination and fancy, for instance, are not consistently or radically distinguished by him; in only one pas-sage are they explicitly contrasted: "Raffaelle had more Taste and Fancy; Michael Angelo more Genius and Imagination. The one ex-celled in beauty, the other in energy. . . . Michael Angelo's works . . . seem to proceed from his own mind entirely. . . . Raffaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the noble struc­ture is his own." 59 The couplings here suggest a difference of de­gree, imagination rearranging more freely and powerfully. Fancy is f sometimes "capricious" and connected with the picturesque.6" But al-though the distinction made familiar by Coleridge is here sought in vain, there is an obvious differentiation of artistic powers paralleling the contrast of the arbitrary, fashionable, and ornamental with the natural, simple, and beautiful. The distinction of sublime from ele­gant, and the identification of taste, genius, and style on the higher level, have been enough insisted upon.

Reynolds' elaborate hierarchy of styles and species is made possible by the differentiation of mental powers and aesthetic characters which has been outlined. One set of distinctions depends upon dignity of subject: history, genre, landscape, portraiture, animal painting, still-life, and so on—many of which classes are themselves susceptible of subdivision. Cutting across this hierarchy of genres is the contrast of a higher and a lower manner. In history, for instance, the grand style of Rome and Florence is set against the ornamental style of Venice and Flanders; and in the lower genres of the art, there is "the same distinction of a higher and a lower style; and they take their rank and degree in proportion as the artist departs more, or less, from common nature, and makes it an object of his attention to strike the imagination of the spectator by ways belonging specially to art.

" 6i Arts employing different means from painting are han­dled similarly in terms of object and manner, although some media may render the lower manner intolerable: sculpture (which Reynolds instances at length) must design in simplicity proportioned to the sim­plicity of its materials. Even the "non-imitative" arts of architecture

and music exhibit parallel distinctions, with the higher quality related to the imagination by association rather than imitation, and the lower connected with utility and sense. The argument is always flexible, however; excellence in a lower style is preferred to mediocrity in a higher (a principle which Reynolds illustrates in the critique of Gainsborough), and it is erroneous to introduce the grand manner into a lower rank to which a different mode of achieving a qualified generality is appropriate. In portraiture, for instance, universality is achieved not by idealizing beyond recognition but by catching the likeness "as a whole." Still another dimension is introduced in dis­cussion of the "characteristical" style, peculiar to the cast of mind of an individual painter; while such peculiarity is not referable to a true archetype in nature, and is not a proper object of imitation, it has its proper excellence in consistency and unity, "as if the whole proceeded from one mind." 62

But Reynolds' attention returns always to the grand style, the key-stone of the arch. The grand style is universal in cause and in effect, in subject and in style; it is beautiful by abstracting from the particu­lar forms of nature, simple by rejecting the influence of fashion. Al-though grandeur requires simplicity-which is truth—it is still con­trary to truth, when truth is particular and historical.63 The grand style concerns itself rather with "that ideal excellence which it is the . lot of genius always to contemplate, and never to attain." 64

Notes to Chapter 9

1.       The discourses were delivered to the Royal Academy, of which Reynolds was first president, on ceremonial occasions from 1769 to 1790; they were pub­lished individually, the first seven were published together in 1778, and the entire fifteen were edited by Edmond Malone, together with the other literary works of Reynolds, in 1797.

2.       This chapter is adapted from my article, "General and Particular in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Study in Method," JAAC, XI (March, 1953), 231-47, which may be consulted for somewhat fuller treatment both of Reynolds and of the pertinent scholarship.

3.       Roger Fry (ed.), Discourses Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Kt. (London: Seeley and Co., 19o5), pp. 40 and 179.

4.       Michael Macklem, "Reynolds and the Ambiguities of Neo-Classical Criti­cism," PQ, XXXI (October, 1952), 383-98.

5.       E[lbert] N. S. Thompson, "The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds," PMLA, XXXII (1917), 365.

6.       Reynolds, The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Kt., ed. Edmond

346                             Notes to Pages 135—38

Malone (5th ed.; London, 1819), Discourse xv, II, 217. I shall refer to this edition (pagination of all the Malone editions but the first is almost identical) as simply Works.

7.       Joseph Burke, Hogarth and Reynolds: A Contrast in English Art Theory (The William Henry Charlton Memorial Lecture, November, 1941; London:

Oxford, 1943), pp. 23—24.

8.       Wilson O. Clough, "Reason and Genius," PQ, XXIII (January, 1944), 46-50. Reynolds, like Hogarth, Hume, and Burke, is made to contribute to the development of subjectivism in taste, in express contradiction to his announced intention.

9.       Fry (ed.), Discourses, p. 44. Bellori's Idea of a Painter (translated in Dry-den's preface to his translation of DuFresnoy's Art of Painting [pp. v—xiii of the second edition, 17161) is repeatedly cited in this connection. Frederick Whiley Hilles, on the other hand, finds Count Algarotti's Essay on Painting (Englished in 1764) to be the original of Reynolds' theory: see The Literary Career of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Cambridge University Press, 1936), p. 121. Burke makes the' same suggestion. In general, art scholars look for Reynolds' sources in Renaissance and eighteenth-century art critics, while literary scholars search in Johnson and Edmund Burke; but almost all agree in tracing the inheritance back to Plato and/or

Aristotle.

lo. Louis Bredvold, "The Tendency toward Platonism in Neo-Classical Esthetics," ELH, I (September, 1934), 115.

11.   Macklem, "Reynolds and the Ambiguities of Neo-Classical Criticism," PQ, XXXI (October, 1952), 385—86.

12. Hoyt Trowbridge, "Platonism and Sir Joshua Reynolds," ES, XXI (February, 1939), 1.

13.  The Discourses are neatly analyzed in terms of the problems to which they 11 are addressed by Elder Olson in his Introduction to Longinus, "On the Sublime"

. . . and Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Discourses on Art" . . . (Chicago: Packard,

1945). 1 take this analysis for granted here.

14.   The distinctive traits of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, as I here under-stand them, are set forth in Richard P. McKeon's "The Philosophic Bases of Art

f

 and Criticism," MP, XLI (November, 1943), 65—87 and (February, 1944), 129-71. See McKeon's comment on Reynolds, pp. 155—56, n. 3.

15.   Reynolds, Works, Discourse vii, I, 204. Note that this passage from the seventh discourse (like the thirteenth discourse) refers taste to human nature.

,6. Ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 135—36. Again, rules are "not to be determined by narrow principles of nature, separated from . . . [the] effect on the human mind" (ibid., Discourse viii, I, 281).

17.    See the second chapter ("Likeness Generalized: Aristotle and Sir Joshua Reynolds") of her Retreat from Likeness in the Theory of Painting (2d ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1949).

18.     Reynolds, Works, Discourse vii, I, 224—25. Even on the conventional theme of the moral influence of art, Reynolds' statements are cast in characteristic

terms:

"The Art which we profess has beauty for its object; this it is our business to discover and to express; the beauty of which we are in quest is general and intel­lectual; it is an idea that subsists only in the mind; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting; but which he is yet so far able to communicate as to raise the thoughts, and extend the views of the spectator; and which, by a succession of art, may be so far diffused, that its effects may extend themselves imperceptibly into publick benefits, and be among the means of bestowing on whole nations refinement of taste: which, if it does not lead directly to purity of manners, obviates at least their greatest depravation, by disentangling the mind from appetite, and conducting the thought through successive stages of excellence, till that contemplation of universal rectitude and harmony which began by Taste, may, as it is exalted and refined, conclude in Virtue" (ibid., Discourse ix, II, 7—8).

19.             Ibid., Discourse vii, I, 200. Observe that the three examples correspond to the three modes of truth specified.

20.             "The terms beauty, or nature, which are general ideas," Reynolds declares, "are but different modes of expressing the same thing . . ." (ibid., p. 204). Or again, "there is but one presiding principle, which regulates and gives stability to every art. The works, whether of poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which are built upon general nature, live forever . . ." (ibid., Discourse iv, I, 112).

21.               For a study of the senses in which this term may be used, see Richard P. McKeon, "Literary Criticism and the Concepts of Imitation in Antiquity," MP, XXXIV (August, 1936), 1—35.

22.             Reynolds, Works, Discourse ii, I, 32.

23.             Ibid., Discourse vi, I, 175.

24.             Ibid., Discourse ii, I, 35. The direct source of the passage appears to have been The Painting of the Ancients of Franciscus Junius (see Hilles, Literary Career, p. 127).

25.             Reynolds, Works, Discourse vi, I, 181—82.

z6. Ibid., Discourse iii, I, S3.

27.      Ibid., p. 52 and Discourse xiii, II, 121. Once again the discourses, both early and late, appeal to the mind; there is no shift in orientation.

28.      Ibid., Discourse i, I, 9.

29.     Ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 142.

30.      Idler No. 82 (November to, 1759).

31.      Sir Uvedale Price, "An Introductory Essay on Beauty; with Remarks on the Ideas of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Burke, upon That Subject," prefixed to his A Dialogue on the Distinct Characters of the Picturesque and the Beautiful . . . (Hereford, 180,); see infra, pp. 206—7.

Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (3d ed.; London, 1806), i. 5. 23.

Dugald Stewart, Philosophical Essays (Edinburgh, 181o), ii. 1. I. 7; and cf. infra, pp. 294—95.

32.      See Fry's Introduction to the third discourse (Discourses [ed. Fry], PP. 39-47).

33.        On the question of method here mooted, see Paul Goodman, "Neo-Classicism, Platonism, and Romanticism," Journal of Philosophy, XXXI, No. 6 (March 15, 1934), 148-63.

34.      The letter is in Frederick Whiley Hilles, Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Cambridge University Press, 1929), pp. 9o-93.

35.      Reynolds, Works, Discourse viii, 1, 276.

36.      Ibid., Discourse iv, I, 92; the numerous similar passages are trivial, since Reynolds does not regard this as a major distinction. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) supports Reynolds' sense of "elegance"; "elegant" is defined, "1. Pleasing with minuter beauties," and "Elegance, Elegancy" is defined as "Beauty of art; rather soothing than striking; beauty without grandeur."

37.      Reynolds, Works, Discourse xv, II, 204-5.

38.      Ibid., Discourse v, I, 124 and if.

39.     Ibid., Discourse viii, I, 282n.

40.      Thompson, "The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds," PMLA, XXXII (1917), 358; Donald Cross Bryant, Edmund Burke and His Literary Friends ("Washington University Studies—New Series; Language and Literature"—No. 9; St. Louis, 1939) pp. 53-54. Chapter iii of Bryant treats of Burke's relations with Reynolds; Bryant merely follows Thompson on this aesthetic point.

41.      Edmund Burke, "On Taste," Sublime and Beautiful, in Works, I, 67; Reynolds, Works, Discourse vii, II, 199.

42.      Hilles (Literary Career, chap. vii) gives neither Johnson nor Burke much credit for aid in composing the discourses. The revisions with which John-son and Malone touched up the first printed editions of the individual discourses are analyzed in an exhaustive collation of texts by Lauder Greenway, Alterations in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds (New York: Privately printed, 1936); Greenway's conclusion is that the revisions concerned only minutiae of style—Reynolds, in short, wrote his own discourses.

43.      Reynolds, Works, Discourse xi, II, 45.

44.      Ibid., Discourse xv, II, 206—7.

45.      Ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 111.

46.      Ibid., p. 112.

47.      Ibid., Discourse iii, I, 55.

48.      Ibid., Discourse vi, I, 156.

49.      Ibid., Discourse xi, II, 43.

50.      Ibid., Discourse vi, I, 186.

51.      Ibid., p. 145.

52.      Ibid., Discourse xv, II, 188-89.

53.      Ibid., Discourse vi, I, 172.

54• Ibid., p.155.

55.   Ibid., Discourse viii, I, 264. The arts "in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divin­ity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us" (ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 142-43). It is patent that in Reynolds' thought, wish-fulfillment is apprehension of the Ide-al; the distinction of wish-fulfilling idealization of the actual from the transcendent Ideal (which Macklem stresses in "Reynolds and the Ambiguities of Neo-Classical Criticism," PQ, XXXI [October, 1952], 383—98) involves no real opposition.

56.   Reynolds, Works, Discourse vii, I, 201.

57.   Ibid., Discourse ii, I, 26—27.

58.   Ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 113-18.

S9. Ibid., Discourse v, I, 128-29.

6o. Reynolds speaks of "whatever partakes of fancy or caprice, or goes under the denomination of Picturesque" (ibid., Discourse x, II, 37) ; throughout the tenth discourse the picturesque serves to set off effects inappropriate to sculpture, which above all other media requires a chaste gravity—the grand style. I post-pone discussion of Reynolds' views on the picturesque, however, until I treat his correspondence with Gilpin (infra, pp. 199-201).

61. Reynolds, Works, Discourse xiii, II, 127.

6z. Ibid., Discourse v, I, 132.

63.        The painter "must sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth, in pursuing the grandeur of his design" (ibid., Discourse iv, I, 85). Thus, Gothic architecture, "though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with which the Artist is more concerned than with absolute [i.e., historical] truth" (ibid., Discourse xiii, II, 138).

64.        Ibid., Discourse i, I, 8.