f art,
and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he
holds in the estimation of the world."

"When I was at Venice," he writes in a note on Du Fresnoy's _Art of
Painting_ about the chiaroscuro of Titian, Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,
"the method I took to avail myself of their principles was this. When I
observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, I
took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same
gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper
untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the
subject or to the drawing of the figures. After a few experiments I
found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to
be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including
in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter
to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or
half shadow.

"Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and
Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt's light
is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture
is sacrificed to this one object."

The results of these studies in Rome and Venice were at once observable
on his return to England in the beautiful portrait of _Giuseppe Marchi_,
one of the treasures belonging to the Royal Academy. It was altogether
too much for the ignorant British artists, and it excited lively
comment. What chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the
whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron Admiral
Keppel. On the appearance of this Reynolds was not only universally
acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest
painter that England had seen since Van Dyck. The whole interval, as
Malone observes, between the time of Charles I. and the conclusion of
the reign of George II. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question
was whether the new painter or Van Dyck were the more excellent.
Reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating
from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of
confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds
and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the
majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the
many illustrious persons whom