The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (401 page)

 
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resin
.

An adhesive substance, insoluble in water, secreted by many trees and plants and used in art particularly as a constituent of
varnish
. The resins used by painters in the past are not always easy to identify, but they include both soft resins from living trees (such as mastic, dammar, sandarac, Canada balsam, and
turpentine
), and hard fossil resins (such as copal and amber).

 
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retable
.

An altarpiece that stands on the back of an altar or on a pedestal behind it, rather than rising from ground level. See also
REREDOS
.

 
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(1816–59).
German painter and graphic artist. His biggest work, a cycle of frescos from the life of Charlemagne (Town Hall, Aachen), was once much admired as a great achievement of heroic
history painting
, but today seems hollow and theatrical. The cycle was begun in 1847 but left unfinished because of the madness that ended his career in 1853. Rethel is now mainly remembered for his series of woodcuts
Another Dance of Death
(1849), much in the spirit of
Holbein's
famous depictions of the subject, but satirizing the revolutionary events of 1848, with Death seen as the embodiment of anarchy. Two related woodcuts,
Death as a Strangler
(1847) and
Death as a Friend
(1851), were once extremely popular.

 
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(1912– )
. German-born American art historian; a professor at the University of Chicago 1963–71 and thereafter at the City University, New York. He is the doyen of the field of
Impressionist
and
Post-Impressionist
scholarship, and is famous for two magisterial works,
The History of Impressionism
(1946, 4th edn. 1973) and
Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin
(1956, 3rd edn. 1978). These show his total command of the voluminous material and his remarkable powers of organization and exposition in forming it into a highly readable narrative, and are, by common consent, among the greatest works of art history ever written (even though some critics have accused him of being strong on facts but weak on interpretation);
The History of Impressionism
used to enjoy the ‘distinction’ of being the most stolen book from the
Courtauld Institute library
. Rewald's other writings include studies of many leading 19th-cent. French artists, particularly
Cézanne
(he received a gold medal from Cézanne's home town, Aix-en-Provence, in 1984), and two collections of his articles have appeared,
Studies in Impressionism
(1985) and
Studies in Post-Impressionism
(1986).

 
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(1723–92).
English painter and writer on art, the first President of the
Royal Academy
, the leading portraitist of his day, and perhaps the most important figure in the history of British painting. Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire, the son of a scholarly clergyman, and he was brought up in an atmosphere of learning. He studied painting in London under
Hudson
(another Devonshire man) 1740–3, but set up independently in Devon as a portraitist before his apprenticeship was officially ended. In 1750–2 he was in Italy, where he made an intensive study of the great masters of the 16th and 17th cents. and also of the
antique
(it was while copying
Raphael
in the cold of the Vatican that he contracted his deafness). He not only absorbed the formal language of his models, but also developed a deliberate cult of learning and classical allusion that coloured his whole approach to art. In tune with established art theory, he thought that
history painting
was the highest branch of art, but he believed that portraiture could rise above its traditional status as mere ‘face-painting’ by improving on the deficiencies of nature and using poses and gestures that allude to the great art of the past. Thus, in the work that established his reputation after he settled in London in 1753–
Commodore Keppel
(National Maritime Mus., London, 1753–4)—the sitter's heroic pose is based directly (albeit in reverse) on that of the
Apollo Belvedere
, then regarded as the matchless ideal of male beauty.
Reynolds quickly achieved a leading position in his profession. He had 150 sitters a year by 1758, and by 1764 was earning the enormous sum of £6,000 a year. His success was achieved through hard work and careful business management as well as talent; on the day he was knighted (21 April 1769) his visit to St James's Palace was fitted in between two sittings with clients. Moreover, although he always retained traces of his provincial origins (notably his Devonshire accent), he was completely at home with his eminent sitters. His pupil James
Northcote
said that ‘His general manner, deportment and behaviour were amiable and prepossessing; his disposition was naturally courtly. He…contrived to move in a higher sphere of society than any other English artist had done before. Thus he procured for the Professors of the Arts a consequence, dignity and reception which they never possessed in this country.’ Reynolds's elevation of the status of the artist depended, then, not only on the intellectual quality of his work, but also on his social acceptability, and it is significant that his friends were mainly men of letters—notably Dr Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith—rather than other painters (James Boswell dedicated his celebrated
Life of Johnson
to Reynolds). On the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, he was the obvious choice for President, and he arranged for Johnson and Goldsmith to be appointed to the honorary positions of Professors of Ancient History and Literature. For the next twenty years, until his blindness stopped him painting in 1790, his authority in the Academy was paramount and his fifteen
Discourses
delivered over that period have become the classic expression of the academic doctrine of the
Grand Manner
.
As a portraitist Reynolds is remarkable above all for his versatility—his inexhaustible range of response to the individuality of each sitter, man, woman, or child. The celebrated remark of his rival
Gainsborough
, ‘Damn him! How various he is!’, is echoed in the praise of
Ruskin
: ‘Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him the prince of portrait painters.
Titian
paints nobler pictures and van
Dyck
had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper.’ In spite of his impressive weight of learning Reynolds could at times be utterly direct, and although his huge output necessitated the employment of assistants and drapery painters, and his experimentation with
bitumen
has resulted in some of his pictures being in poor condition, there is much beauty of handling in his work. His finest pictures undoubtedly take their place among the great masterpieces of British portraiture. On the other hand, his history paintings, dating mainly from the end of his career, are generally considered failures. Reynolds's work is in numerous public collections, great and small, in Britain and elsewhere, and many of his finest pictures are still in the possession of the families for which they were painted. His work was so varied that no single collection can be regarded as fully representative.
Frances Reynolds
(1729–1807), Joshua's sister and for many years his housekeeper, was an amateur painter, but evidently not a very good one, for he said of her copies of his work: ‘They make other people laugh and me cry.’