The man was a sturdy Briton, he worked hard all the days of his life, he had a large measure of shrewd common sense, great gifts, high ideals, and sufficient human weakness to make him what the Spaniards call "hombre como alquier otro," a man like any other. His art may stand upon a pedestal but he never did, he was too busy and too unaffected to pose. "I'll be a painter if you'll give me a chance to be quite a good one," he is reported to have said, when a little boy, to his father, the Plympton school-master, and once a painter he worked on and on, enjoying life but never abusing it, until 1789, when he was sixty-six, and apparently in the mellow autumn of his days. Then as he was painting in his studio one July morning, the sight of one eye failed him suddenly. Quite quietly he laid his brushes down. "All things have an end," he said; "I have come to mine." Some two and a half years were left to him but he would not paint any more; he preferred to be judged by the tasks he had accomplished in the light of health. He continued to address the students of the Royal Academy; he consented to remain titular head of that body though Sir William Chambers and Benjamin West, who was regarded as a great painter in his day, looked after the actual work of the high office. He was not a mere cipher in the counsels of the Academy on that account; to the end he had his own way. Very masterful, very human, very kind, he stands out the most prominent figure in an age that produced both Gainsborough and Romney. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: Nelly O'Brien] _Nelly O'Brien_ (_Wallace Collection_) Reynolds painted three portraits of this famous courtesan, all of which have been engraved. The one reproduced here, in which she wears a straw hat that throws a skilfully expressed shadow over her face, and in which she has a Maltese terrier on her lap, is said to be the best. It has been engraved at least three times. --------------------------------------------------------------------