JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723--1792) was born at Plympton, Devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the grammar school. His father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that Joshua Reynolds should be a painter. He preferred to read Richardson's "Treatise on Painting" to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to London to study with Hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. Before this time, however, the young Reynolds had studied "The Jesuit's Perspective" with such success that he astonished his father by drawing Plympton school. There is at Plymouth a portrait of the _Rev. Thomas Smart_, tutor in Lord Edgcumbe's household, which is said to have been painted by Reynolds when twelve years old. It was in 1741 that Joshua Reynolds began his studies with Hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. On leaving Hudson's studio Reynolds returned to Devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year 1746, when his father died, and the painter was established at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, and was painting portraits. Many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which their author had probably learnt from Hudson. Having visited London, and stayed for a time in St. Martin's Lane, the artists' quarter, Reynolds was enabled, in 1749, to realise his great wish, and go abroad. His friend Commodore Keppel carried him to Italy, and Reynolds, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, studied the treasures of Italy, chiefly in Rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the Italian school. Michelangelo was the object of his chief adoration, and his name was the most frequently on his lips, and the last in his addresses to the Royal Academy. A love of colour was the characteristic of Reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that "he came off with _flying colours_." Doubtless the wish to rival the colouring of the Venetians led Reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures. It has been said of him that "he loved his colours as other men love their children." In 1752 Reynolds returned to England, and settled in London, first in St. Martin's Lane, then in Newport Street, and finally in a grand house in Leicester Fields. His course was one of brilliant success. At his house, wit and wisdom met together, and the ponderous learning of Dr. Johnson, the eloquence of Burke, and the fancy of Goldsmith, combined to do honour to the courteous, gentle painter, whom all men loved, and of whom Goldsmith wrote:-- "His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland. Still, born to improve us in every part-- His pencil our faces, his manners our heart."