THE LOW ROAD AND THE HIGH JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY
i
he
picture stood against the wall o£ Sir Joshua
Reynolds's studio, striking a strange note in that centre of elegance. The great English painter scowled
at it in amazement, for, as he later explained, he had never seen a canvas that gave him quite the same
feeling. There was a stiffness about this portrait of a young boy, a dryness of outline and a coldness of
colour, that seemed to stem from the imitators of Sir Peter Lely, the school that Sir Joshua had himself
overthrown, but the practitioners of that school never painted so realistically, with such powerful
sincerity. And what was one to think of the strange animal that was.represented standing on the table
over which the boy leaned? It was some kind of rodent and was eating a nut. The queer, tiny thing nibbled
away quite as naturally as if there really were miniature squirrels in the world that had white membranes
running from their bodies to their legs like the membranes of a bat. Indeed, the animal was so
meticulously drawn one had to believe it really existed.
Sir Joshua turned to Lord Buchan, who had brought the picture
into his studio, and asked the painter's name. Shrugging, the connoisseur replied that he could not
remember; it was a name he had never heard before. The canvas had been left with him by an American sea
captain he had met somewhere, so he assumed it was by an American. Indeed, he was sure of only one thing:
the painter, whoever he was, wished to have the picture exhibited at the Society of
Artists.
Sir Joshua could hardly believe that so
fine a picture could have
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been done by an unknown Colonial. "It exceeds any
portrait Mr. West ever drewl" he exclaimed. But he naturally called in that patron saint of all American
painters.
West took one look at the squirrel that had so
confused Reynolds, laughed, and said he knew that type of animal well; flying squirrels had been part of his
boyhood in Pennsylvania. Then he turned the picture on its back and stared at the frame on which the canvas
was stretched. "That's American pine wood," he said. The picture was certainly by an American, but by what
American? None of the Colonials in England painted in that style or so well. Ecstatically West praised the
"delicious colour worthy of Titian," and although Sir Joshua, who thought the colouring cold, winced at
this, he agreed that the picture was excellent, more than good enough to exhibit at the Society of Artists.
However, there was a rule against showing anonymous pictures; the name of the painter must be discovered
and that at once.
West rushed out and questioned Joseph Wright, a young
compatriot who had, in West's words, "just made his appearance in the art in a surprising degree of merit."
But Wright denied that he had painted the picture. From then on West and Reynolds scratched their heads in
vain; they could think of nobody. Finally Reynolds was forced to send the canvas, although its painter was
still unidentified, to the exhibition with his own pictures. He argued that the portrait was so outstanding
it should be hung despite the rule against anonymous pictures, and the conservative academicians, after
poring one by one over the strange canvas, agreed that an exception would have to be made for so remarkable
a work of art.