In the summer of 1789 his sight began to fail; but he continued occasionally to paint till about the end of 179o, delivering his final discourse at the Academy on Dec. 1o. On Feb. 23, 1792, the great artist passed peacefully away.
As a painter Reynolds stands, with Gainsborough, just behind the very first rank. There can be no question of placing him by the side of the greatest Venetians or of the triumvirate of the 17th century, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez. He could not draw the figure properly; nor could he as a rule compose successfully on anything like a monumental scale.
He was all his life devoured by what he calls "a perpetual de sire to advance." The weight and power of the art of Reynolds are best seen in those male portraits, "Lord Heathfield," "John son," "Sterne," "Goldsmith," "Gibbon," "Burke," "Fox," "Gar rick," that are historical monuments as well as sympathetic works of art. In this category must be included his immortal "Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse," now in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, Calif.
In portraits of this order Reynolds holds the field, but he is more generally admired for his studies of women and of children, of which the Althorp portraits of the Spencer family are classic examples. No portrait painter has been more happy in his poses for single figures, or has known better how to control by good taste the piquant, the accidental, the daring, in mien and gesture. "Viscountess Crosbie" is a striking instance. When dealing with more than one figure he was not always so happy, but the "Duch ess of Devonshire and her Baby," the "Three Ladies decking a Figure of Hymen," and the "Three Ladies Waldegrave" are brilliant successes. He was felicitous too in his arrangement of drapery. Few painters, again, have equalled the Reynolds in dainty and at the same time firm manipulation of the brush. The rich ness of his deeper colouring is at times quite Venetian.
In the "Discourses" Reynolds unfolds his artistic theories. The first deals with the establishment of an academy for the fine arts, and of its value as a repository of the traditions of the best of bygone practice. In the second lecture the study of the painter is divided into three stages,—in the first of which he is busied with processes and technicalities, with the grammar of art, while in the second he examines what has been done by other artists, and in the last compares these results with Nature herself. In the third discourse Reynolds treats of "the great and leading princi ples of the grand style"; and succeeding addresses are devoted to such subjects as "Moderation," "Taste," "Genius," and "Sculp ture." The fourteenth has an especial interest as containing a notice of Gainsborough, who had died shortly before its delivery ; the concluding discourse is mainly a panegyric on Michelangelo.
His other literary works comprise his three essays in The Idler for 1759-1760 ("On the Grand Style in Painting," and "On the True Idea of Beauty"), notes to Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, Remarks on the Art of the Low Countries, brief notes in John son's Shakespeare, and two singularly brilliant fragments, imagi nary conversations with Johnson, which were never intended for publication, but, found among his papers after his death, were given to the world by his niece, the marchioness of Thomond.
Sir Joshua left to his niece, Mary Palmer, the bulk of his property, about £ioo,000, with works of art that sold for £30,000 more. There were, besides, legacies amounting to about ii5,000. His body rests in St. Paul's.
In the United States, of the representative paintings by Rey nolds, fourteen are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others are as follows : New York Public Library, "Mrs. Billington as 'St. Cecilia' "; the Frick collection, New York city, "Lady Elizabeth Taylor" and "Lady Selena Skipwith" ; the Frick Collec tion, Prides Crossing (Mass.), "Lady Cecil Rice," "Lady Margaret Beaumont," and "Sir George Howland Beaumont"; the Joseph Widener Collection, Philadelphia, "Portrait of Lady Cornewall" and "Portrait of Nelly O'Brien"; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, "Kitty Fisher" and "Sir Thomas Mills"; A. E. Newton Collec tion, Philadelphia, "Samuel Johnson"; Chicago Art Institute, "Lady Sarah Bunberry"; Cleveland Museum of Art, "Portrait of Mrs. Collyear"; Detroit Institute of Arts, "Sir Brooke Boothby, Bart." See J. Northcote, Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1813), and Sup plement thereto (1815) ; J. Farrington, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1839) ; Leslie and Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds (2 vols., 1865) ; R. Reynolds, Life of Joshua Rey nolds, by his son (1839) ; E. Hamilton, A Catalogue Raisonne of the Engraved Works of J. Reynolds (1755-1820) (1874) ; Graves and Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (4 vols., 1899 1901) ; Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1900; also a shorter work, 1905) ; Lord Ronald Gower, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1902). For Reynolds's literary works, see Malone, The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (3 vols., seven editions 1799-1851) ; Leisching, Sir J. Rey nolds zur Aesthetik u. Technik der bildenden Kiinste (Leipzig, 1893) ; Discourses delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Kt., ed. by Roger Fry (1905) ; M. Osborn, Joshua Reynolds (Ktinstler-Monographien, 1908).