REYNOLDS’ PRICES.

“The price,” says Cunningham, “which Reynolds at first received for a head was five guineas; the rate increased with his fame, and in the year 1755 his charge was twelve. Experience about this time dictated the following memorandum respecting his art. ‘For painting the flesh:—black, blue-black, white, lake, carmine, orpiment, yellow-ochre, ultramarine, and varnish. To lay the palette:—first lay, carmine and white in different degrees; second lay, orpiment and white ditto; third lay, blue-black and white ditto. The first sitting, for expedition, make a mixture as like the sitter’s complexion as you can.’ Some years afterwards I find, by a casual notice from Johnson, that Reynolds had raised his price for a head to twenty guineas.

“The year 1758 was perhaps the most lucrative of his professional career. The account of the economy of his studies, and the distribution of his time at this period, is curious and instructive. It was his practice to keep all the prints engraved from his portraits, together with his sketches, in a large portfolio; these he submitted to his sitters; and whatever position they selected, he immediately proceeded to copy it on the canvass, and paint the likeness to correspond. He received six sitters daily, who appeared in their turns; and he kept regular lists of those who sat, and of those who were waiting until a finished portrait should open a vacancy for their admission. He painted them as they stood on his list, and often sent the work home before the colors were dry. Of lounging visitors he had a great abhorrence, and, as he reckoned up the fruits of his labors, ‘Those idle people,’ said this disciple of the grand historical school of Raphael and Angelo, ‘those idle people do not consider that my time is worth five guineas an hour.’ This calculation incidentally informs us, that it was Reynolds’ practice, in the height of his reputation and success, to paint a portrait in four hours.”