It is characteristic of Sir Joshua Reynolds that, having become President, he should be at great pains to justify his new position. It was not an empty honour, the annual exhibition would need and demand proof of his accomplishment and industry, while, as the Academy was to be a teaching Institution, he saw himself face to face with the necessity of finding time to prepare addresses for the benefit of the students. Perhaps the best praise to be given to these discourses on art is the reminder that they are still in steady demand, indeed, they are the most accessible guide to their author's methods. His grasp of principles, his breadth of view and critical insight are all the more attractive because of the ease and fluency with which they are expressed. To the man who has never held a paint brush as well as to the novice in art and the old experienced hand, there is a definite appeal. He shows one and all that his triumph as a portrait painter is not a mere affair of happy chance, but the logical outcome of certain principles followed without concession. Many moderns will not see eye to eye with him, they may ever hold that he was quite mistaken in many of his views, but the change of fashion and the modification of thought are of less importance than the fact that Sir Joshua accepted, followed, and taught certain theories and lived in the light of them. Nearly one hundred and fifty years have passed since the Academy was established, but it has not produced another teacher like Reynolds. He had not exhausted his honours when he came to be President; in years to come he was to become painter in ordinary to the King and to be entrusted with a considerable commission by that remarkable woman the Empress Catherine of Russia. He was a welcome guest at many of the most beautiful homes in England and he travelled abroad extensively, but nothing kept him from his Presidential duties until the last year of his life brought sickness in their train. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: Duchess of Devonshire and Child] _Duchess of Devonshire and Child_ (_Chatsworth_) This picture, sometimes known as "The Jumping Baby," is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. When first seen some people found fault with it, Horace Walpole among the number, but it has gained popularity with age. The composition is very skilled, but the Duchess is perhaps rather too much _en grande tenue_ to appear as nurse. --------------------------------------------------------------------