The Rivals – Gainsborough vs Reynolds

Barrie Sheppard continues his exploration of the lives of two great English artists. Barrie writes: Thomas Gainsborough (born 1727) was married. His wife, Mary, was the illegitimate daughter of the young Duke of Beaufort. The Duke’s family didn’t acknowledge her so she had no title, but an annuity of two hundred pounds was bestowed on her. The couple had two daughters, Mary and Margaret (Polly and Meg).

Sir Joshua Reynolds (born 1723) remained single throughout his life. When asked why, he replied that of the women he had liked he found that after a time he became indifferent to them, indifference being a poor basis for a good marriage.  His sister, Frances, lived with him and ran the household in Leister Fields, until she left in middle life. Reynolds was able to replace her with his two nieces, one of whom described him as a skinflint.  Frances described him as a tyrant.

Gainsborough was generous, often careless with money, recklessly buying musical instruments, giving paintings away, and spending on dubious exploits when in London. Wife Mary, however, was more cautious, and wise. She maintained a keen control of the income he earned from his portrait commissions. So much was her control that he kept secret from her the small revenue he gained from his landscapes. On his deathbed, fearing that he was leaving her financially insecure, he apologised to her, She, however, was able to reassure him by confessing that over the decades of their marriage she had squirreled away ten thousand pounds!

Reynolds had no money worries, due to the success of his practice and the scale of his fees, and, perhaps too, his parsimony in the home; although he was very generous in the dinner parties he regularly put on for his friends, friends such as Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and others. Nor did he have the concerns of a father raising children, particularly daughters, of having to educate them and see them well-married, or set up with a sustaining occupations. (None, that is, of the worries that plagued Mrs Bennett in Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice.)

No such freedom from family cares for Gainsborough, whose two daughters were of constant concern. The older daughter, Mary, who suffered from depression, married the musician Johann Christian Fischer. He had first paid amorous attention to the younger Margaret, only to switch his affections to Mary, leaving Margaret morose with a broken heart. Then, soon into his marriage to Mary, he abandoned her. Over time, her condition worsened to such an extent that when the family was living in London, she became convinced that the Prince of Wales, whose palace was near the Gainsborough’s residence in Pall Mall, was in love with her.

Sir Joshua was singular in his devotion to portrait painting, being happiest when working. He did, though, take evening pleasures in his dinner parties and his clubbing (he belonged to seven). He was methodical and his practice was well organised. By it, he amassed a fortune, spending a large portion of it on collecting works by the great masters.

Gainsborough, on the other hand, had enthusiasms beyond portrait painting, “painting faces” as he described it: enthusiasms, such as his love of landscape, his peccadilloes and his tendency to become irritated with his sitters all of which mitigated against the smooth working of a portrait practice. It was said of him that painting portraits was his work; landscapes were his pleasure, among others.

About music he was passionate too.  He collected instruments, mixed with the leading musicians of his time and place, such as Johann Christian Bach, Johann Christian Fischer and Carl Friedrich Abel. He took every opportunity to play his instruments, much to the amusement and sometimes annoyance of his friends, for he played them badly. But that didn’t deter him. And, he could write. His letters sparkle with colour, wit and a natural feel for simile and metaphor. He was also at home, frequently, on horseback.

Inspiration came to Reynolds from the Italian greats Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, his eight years study of them in Italy leading to his view that beauty in art lay in it being true to nature, true to Ideal Nature, that is. Accordingly, his finishes were refined, polished – academic. Gainsborough was more flexible, a fact reflected in his brushwork, which was freer, open and feathery, more like that of the late Rembrandt. He was inspired by the masters of the Dutch Golden Age: by such greats as Ruysdael, Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, and, most of all, Van Dyck.

Neither man was a reader. Reynolds, however, was compensated by the conversations he enjoyed with intellectuals such as Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick, at the clubs of which he was a member, particularly the famous “Club” which he, with Johnson, founded. Conversation was big in the 18^th century, it sometimes being described as the “Age of Conversation”.

Reynolds suffered deafness in one ear, which he compensated for with an ear trumpet. However, his deafness was sometimes an asset: he would put to his good ear when  what was being said displeased him. And in later life, he lost the sight in his left eye.

Gainsborough suffered no such afflictions, but he did become seriously ill after a trip to London, an illness he put down to an indiscretion with a prostitute, although it is not clear that it was an STD. The illness confined him to his bed for three months, scaring him into vowing to abandon his peccadilloes.  However, he did have a narrow scrape with death at a social function in the newly built Assembly Rooms, just a stone’s throw from his house in the Kings Circus, Bath. A large chandelier fell from the ceiling missing him by only a few feet! Had it not, he would have certainly been killed.

Both Reynolds and Gainsborough died of cancer (1792 and1788 respectively). Sir Joshua’s growth originated in his eye; Gainsborough’s on the back of his neck. On his deathbed, Gainsborough wrote to Reynolds, his rival:

… The extreme affection which I am informed by a Friend which Sir Joshua indices me to beg a last favour, which is to come once under my roof and look at my things, my “Woodman” you never saw, if what I ask is not disagreeable to your feeling that I may have the honour to speak to you. I can from a sincere Heart say that I always admired and sincerely loved Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua did “come”.

Thank you, Barrie, for continuing the ‘soap opera’ of the Georgian artists. We look forward to the next installment!