to
his sitters. The meanest subject was elevated by his art to a position
of dignity. His magic touch made every child charming, every woman
graceful, and every man dignified.

Finally, he possessed in no small degree, though curiously enough
entirely disclaiming the quality, the gift of presenting the essential
personality of the sitter, that which a critic has called the power of
"realizing an individuality." This is seen most clearly in his
portraits of men, and naturally in the portraits of the men he knew
best, as Johnson.

It is a matter of constant amazement in studying the works of Reynolds
to observe his "inexhaustible inventiveness in pose and attitude." For
each new picture he seemed always to have ready some new compositional
motive. Claude Phillips goes so far as to say that in the whole range
of art Rembrandt alone is his equal in this respect. This versatility
was due in a measure to his story-telling instinct. His imagination
seemed to weave some story about each sitter which the picture was
intended, as it were, to illustrate. From Lord Heathfield, refusing to
yield the keys of Gibraltar, to little Miss Bowles, dropping on the
ground in the midst of her romp, through the long range of mothers
playing with their children, there seems no end to the variety of
lively incident which he could invent.

The pose of the sitter suggests some dramatic moment in the imaginary
episode. Often the attitude is full of action, as in the Miss Bowles,
and at times there is a striking impression of motion, as in
Pickaback. So strong is the dramatic effect conveyed by these pictures
that the figures seem actually taken unaware in the very act of
performance, as by a snapshot in modern photography. This quality of
"momentariness," as Phillips calls it, so dangerous in the hands of a
commonplace painter, lends a peculiar fascination to many of
Reynolds's pictures. That he also appreciated the beauty of repose we
see in such portraits as Penelope Boothby and Anne Bingham.

Reynolds's inventiveness was so overtaxed by his enormous number of
sitters that it is scarcely to be wondered at that it sometimes failed
him. Occasionally he resorted to such artificial devices as were
common among his contemporaries. Such fresh inspirations as the
Strawberry Girl and Master Bunbury could come but rarely in a
lifetime. The spontaneity of Miss Bowles is perhaps unexcelled in all
his works.

Reynolds's compositional schemes are of a