d that modern artists have sometimes adopted in painting
sacred subjects, is to imitate the faulty drawing and incomplete
representation of life which are present in the art of the Old Masters.
But this conscious imitation of bygone ignorance beguiles no one who
has once felt the charm of the painters before Raphael.

Reynolds' great contemporary, Gainsborough, has been called 'a child
of nature.' He would have liked to live in the country always and paint
landscapes. He did paint many of his native Suffolk, but in his day
landscapes were unsaleable, so he was driven to the town and to portrait
painting to make a living. Less than Reynolds a painter of character,
Gainsborough reproduced the superficial expression of his sitters.
But he had so natural an eye for grace and beauty, that his portraits
always please. He did not attempt Reynolds' wide range of subjects
or the same difficulties of pose. Of Reynolds he said: 'How various
he is,' but his admiration did not make him stray from his natural
path to attempt the variety of another. Reynolds, equally admiring,
said of him: 'I cannot make out how he produces his effects.' Perhaps
Gainsborough did not know either. He does seem to paint by instinct,
and successive pictures became more pleasing. Buoyant in his life as
in his art, his last words were: 'We are all going to Heaven, and Van
Dyck is of the company.'

Another great contemporary painter was Romney, whose portraits of
ladies are delightful. Figured as nymphs too, they are so buoyant with
bright expressions and wayward locks, that one wishes he had depicted
in their faces a soul.

All over England and Scotland portrait painters flourished at this
time. There were so many English artists that in 1768 the Royal Academy
was founded, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president. It was
to the students of the Royal Academy that he delivered his Discourses
upon Art, setting forth the principles which he judged to be sound.
He was an indefatigably hard worker until within two years of his death
in 1792. All classes of men esteemed and regretted him, clouded though
his intercourse with them had been by the deafness from which he
suffered during the greater part of his life.

Goldsmith, the author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, wrote this character
'epitaph' for him:

Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind.
His pencil was striking, resistless and grand;
His