Reynold’s ‘Herculean’ painting

Barrie Sheppard continues to add to our knowledge of the life and times of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Barrie writes: The Hermitage in St Petersburg holds Sir Joshua Reynolds’ history painting The Infant Hercules Strangling serpents in his Cradle. The work was commissioned by Tsarina Catherine the Great of Russia in 1786,  a commission  prompted, in all likelihood, by the English Ambassador’s observation that the English school of painting was not well-represented in her collection. The commission stipulated only one condition: the work had to be a history painting, its subject and size to be decided by Reynolds himself. This would have appealed, given his view that in the hierarchy of painting genres, history painting was at the top.

Reynolds chose as subject the myth of the baby Hercules strangling snakes in his cradle. He based it on a version of the story by the Greek poet Pindar, a translation made by the 17^th century English poet Abraham Cowley, a version that Reynolds admired.

Questions were raised in some quarters about the choice of the subject matter. Horace Walpole thought a subject related to English and Russian history would be more appropriate; such as a scene showing Peter the Great working in the Deptford Naval Dockyard during his European Grand Embassy tour of 1697-8 – a tour undertaken to study the latest technologies, particularly those of shipbuilding. Reynolds, however, held firm. He knew what his critics apparently did not,  or had overlooked – that the allegorical praise of a ruler’s strength in Herculean terms was not an uncommon motif.

Work on the picture was slow, but Reynolds maintained interest by allowing selected journalists into his painting room to view its progress. After one such visit, ‘The Times’ journalist wrote: Hercules comes forward enriched, and indeed loaded with all the treasures of the pallet -the graces of Nature are united with classical knowledge and allegorical taste.

Reynolds, wisely, made sure Horace Walpole didn’t see the unfinished work. However, Walpole did manage to get access to it when Reynolds’ was absent from Leicester Fields. Walpole had called to see Poussin’s ‘The Seven Sacraments’, purchased by the Duke of Rutland and delivered to Reynolds’ rooms. While there he managed to view the “Hercules”. Writing about it to his friend, Lord Ossory, he compared Reynolds’ chubby infant to the “monstrous craws” of a current rare (peep) show featuring grotesque dwarfs with huge craws (crops) hanging from their chins. Walpole hadn’t seen the show; he’d only heard about it, but that didn’t stop him making the scurrilous comparison.

(At the time, James Gillray made an etching – The Monstrous Craws at a New Coalition Feast – a satire showing the King, his Queen and the Prince of Wales as the craws devouring copious amounts of money into huge bags hanging from their chins.)

The “Infant Hercules…” is huge – 303 by 297 centimetres. The cradled Hercules in the lower right foreground grasps a serpent in each of his chubby fists. Hera, his mother, and her attendant, hover above him. All three figures are highlighted. In the opposite corner of the composition is part of a well-lit, Roman interior that alludes to the classical dimension of the story, and, compositionally, balances the highlighted area of the cradle . A cluster of figures occupies the greater, darkened, part of the picture, all looking with alarm at the drama unfolding. Dominating this group is a warrior with his sword held aloft at the ready, his form providing a strong vertical in the composition. To the left, in shadow, the seer Tieresias looks on.

The picture cost Reynolds a great deal of “sweat’, involving much “touching” and re-touching for over a year before he finally submitted it to the Academy for exhibition of 1788.

The work had a mixed reception, the popular press being particularly derisive. Its appearance at the Academy coincided with a Saddlers Wells production featuring a ten-year-old boy performing “Posture work and Excursions of Strength by the Infant Hercules’. “The Public Advertiser”, unable to resist the opportunity to lampoon, published the following:

 ‘The World’, a weekly newspaper, wrote: With resources such as Sir Joshua has, no subject, however poor, can be worthless. That this however is poor, we call to witness Mythology and Enigma. It is bad enough to paint emblematically – a bad emblem is yet worse! – if the Empire of Russia is to be impersonified (sic), the truth is not in infancy, but in ADVANCED AGE.

In the periodical ‘The Analytical Review’, the Swiss born painter, Henry Fuseli, wrote enigmatically that The Infant Hercules might be called “great if it were more correct; it might perhaps have been correct if it had not attempted to be great.”

Reynolds shipped his “Hercules…” to Russia in 1789, together with a gift of a copy of his Discourses – the first seven that had been thus far published. Catherine responded effusively about the gift, through an envoy, reciprocating with a gold snuff box set with diamonds and decorated with a profile of herself as Empress of Russia. A letter, in French, accompanied the gift, a copy of which was shown to Reynolds, and which, “somehow”, found its way, in translation, into the English press: I have read, and, I may say, with the greatest avidity those discourses pronounced at the Royal Academy of London by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which that illustrious artist sent with his large picture, in both productions one may easily trace a most elevated genius.

But it came without the payment of 1500 pounds! A further request was met with the response that the snuff box was considered payment. Some thought at the time that Catherine’s reluctance to pay may have been due to the idea of her nation being represented by an infant.

When Reynolds died in 1792, the 1500 pounds still had not been remitted. However, his executors took up the matter, and, after one failed attempt, a second was successful and the money was paid into Reynolds’ estate.

Thank you, Barrie, for another fascinating insight into the world of Georgian artists.

Postscript: The National Gallery of Victoria has a satirical image of the infant Hercules commenting on the political situation in 1784 by Thomas Rowlandson. It might well be updated to reflect the current presidential candidates in America!