Reynolds, equally admiring,
said of him: 'I cannot make out how he produces his effects.' Perhaps
Gainsborough did not know either. He does seem to paint by instinct,
and successive pictures became more pleasing. Buoyant in his life as
in his art, his last words were: 'We are all going to Heaven, and Van
Dyck is of the company.'
Another great contemporary painter was Romney, whose portraits of
ladies are delightful. Figured as nymphs too, they are so buoyant with
bright expressions and wayward locks, that one wishes he had depicted
in their faces a soul.
All over England and Scotland portrait painters flourished at this
time. There were so many English artists that in 1768 the Royal Academy
was founded, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president. It was
to the students of the Royal Academy that he delivered his Discourses
upon Art, setting forth the principles which he judged to be sound.
He was an indefatigably hard worker until within two years of his death
in 1792. All classes of men esteemed and regretted him, clouded though
his intercourse with them had been by the deafness from which he
suffered during the greater part of his life.
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