JOSHUA REYNOLDS. The creation of celebrity. Tate Britain.
Martin Postle, editor. JOSHUA REYNOLDS. The creation of celebrity. 295pp. Tate Publishing. Pounds 29.99. 1 85437 564 4.
Richard Connaughton. OMAI. The prince who never was. 270pp. Timewell Press.
Pounds 16.99. 1 857 25205 5.
Delight beyond servility in the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
In 1781, as recorded by Boswell, the Honourable Mary Monckton, socialite and patroness, debated the qualities of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey with Samuel Johnson.
She insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetick. Johnson bluntly denied it. "I am sure (said she) they have affected me." -"Why (said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about) that is, because, dearest, you are a dunce."
We are to imagine that Miss Monckton was not offended. "Her vivacity enchanted the Sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease", Boswell tells us, just before inserting the anecdote. In the new exhibition of Reynolds's portraits at Tate Britain, there is Miss Monckton, rouged up and certainly vivacious, sitting amid yards of rumpled silk with a spaniel at her feet and parkland behind.
And there, next to her on the gallery wall, is Sterne, his mischievous half smile a seeming indication that Johnson, who thought that A Sentimental Journey was mockery, was right.
