"BURKE, REYNOLDS, AND KEPPEL."
[To THE EDITOR Or THE BrEcTrron."1 SIR,—Your article of December 23rd on Burke, Reynolds, and Keppel quotes a reference by Burke in the "Letter to a Noble Lord" to a picture of Keppel by Reynolds and raises a question as to the identity of this picture. In tho "Life of Keppel," by his great-nephew the Rev. T. Keppel, the picture which, in com- memoration of his acquittal in 1779, keppel gave to Burke is identified with the picture referred to in the "Letter to a Noble Lord," and is said to have become on the death of Burke the property of his widow, and after her death of Lord Fitzwilliam. In 1842 it was at Milton, one of the seats of Lord Fitzwilliam, and there is no record, so far as I am aware, that it has ever passed out of the possession of the Fitzwilliam family. This seems to be the portrait now exhibited at the Exhibition of Old Masters, Burlington House, as " Admiral Koppel (1)," and lent by Mr. G. W. Fitzwilliam.
The pictures of Keppel occupy a unique position in the history of Reynolds's art. To Reynolds, the painter of " men," in an aristocratic age when Englishman and seaman were synonymous terms, Keppel seems to be what Lady Hamilton was to the more democratic and feministic Romney. The number of paintings of Keppel by Reynolds is uncertain, but perhaps your article does not put it too high when it mentions twenty-five. These paintings synchronize with Reynolds's career. The first is dated 1749, when Reynolds was twenty- six and Keppel twenty-four; the last 1782, seven or eight years before Reynolds ceased to paint. Curiously enough, the period dates practically from the introduction of uniform into the Navy, this change being inaugurated in 1748. It is the supreme but unrecognized good fortune of a country of seamen that its first portrait painter, a man with unrivalled divination for character, should have given a series of studies of the sailor type from the beginning to the close of a great career.
Tho discovery of the picture now at Mr. Shepherd's gallery has an interest of its own. While the picture was on view, unfitthered, at Christie's Mr. Shepherd made up his mind that the picture was from Reynolds's hand. For different reasons I came to the same conclusion, and, before Reynolds's signature and the date 1749 were laid bare by cleaning, informed Mr. Shepherd of my belief that the picture was either a Reynolds or a first-rate copy, that the date was 1749, and that the picture portrayed Koppel defying the Dey of Algiers. The reasons for this conclusion were that the Koppel of this picture was obviously earlier than the Keppel of Lord Rosebery's picture by Reynolds in 1752. Now from April 1749 to 1751 Keppel was at sea on his mission to the Algerian pirates. For several nu flats of 1749 Reynolds was on board Keppel's ship as his guest, and accompanied him first to Algiers, then to Minorca, whence, in December, Reynolds left for Rome. I found confirmation of this view in the romantic. piratical atmosphere clinging to the figure as if the painter had actually seen the Algerian pirates and had the idea in painting Keppel that you must set a pirate to beard a pirate. Further in the background one ship is flying a red flag and firing a shot. The ship: with that flag would be Keppel's, and it was a complaint of the Dey that the Commodore's flag was red, betokening blood, and that the last shot of the salute from Commodore Keppel's ship was loaded. All these details pointed to a first-hand knowledge which no painter but Reynolds, the guest on board, could have possessed. Further, the absence of deep shadows on the face, the position of the hands, one hidden, Napoleonwise, in the waistcoat, the other resting on a. stick, point to the Hudsonian manner which did not desert Reynolds till after his return from Rome.
There is a violent contrast between this picture and Lord Rosebery's Reynolds of 1752. The 1749 picture is instinct with the cavalier spirit of England. It might be taken to represent a cavalier in commodore's uniform turned Robin.
Hood or Dick Turpin. Though the figure is standing, so buoyant is it that it might represent a man on horseback moving at the trot. One would expect a nodding plume in the three-cornered hat. The 1752 picture represents Koppel bareheaded on the sea-shore superintending his crew after the wreck of his ship in pursuing a French boat too far in shore. Reynolds is said to have taken the pose of the body from a statue of Apollo. It is not perhaps extravagant to speculate that by an act of imaginative insight Reynolds identified the statue with the figure of Apollo at the opening of the "Iliad" coming down like night from the heights of heaven to the sea- shore and letting fly his arrows at the Greek ship. In a statue Apollo would be holding his bow in his left hand after his shot, with left foot forward, while his right hand would go to his side for another arrow from his quiver. As Keppel is pointing to direct his men, Reynolds has reversed the hands.
The right hand is extended, while the left steadies the sword at Keppel's side. But all the energy of the Apollo of Homer is there, and with the tossing sea behind him Keppel looks as if he were propelled from earth by the elemental force of wind and water.
Among other well-known pictures by Reynolds of Koppel the following deserve mention—that of 1760, known, like the picture of 1752, by an engraving of Fisher. It was painted the year after Quiberon Bay, in which Koppel in Boscawen's old boat, the ' Torbay,' had a hand in the sinking of the Thesee,t and the year before his capture of Belle Isle. One of these pictures belongs to Viscount Falmouth, the other to the Duke of Bedford. These pictures show a gallant upstand- ing captain suggesting by his mingled charm and courage that the brave have the fascination to win the fair.
The picture of 1778, well known through Doughty's magnifi- cent engraving, gives Keppel in command of the squadron that was to intercept-and crush the French fleet, but which could not bring the French to a decisive engagement. This conveys to an extraordinary degree the idea of a watchdog sea-dog.
The portrait in the National Gallery was given to Erskine, cwho defended Keppel at his trial after this indecisive action. Keppel is holding up his sword so ostentatiously that one cannot but think that it represents the scene in which the court martial returned him his sword, and that it epitomizes the words which Fox afterwards used of Keppel in the House of Commons in 1781, and which-were engraved on the box con- taining the freedom given him by the City of London in 1779:
MERSES PROPENE°, PULCHRIOR EVENIT.
This picture is now placed close to that of Lord Heuthfield, who was with Keppel at the reduction of the Havana'', and who was holding Gibraltar at the time when Keppel, as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1782, obtained the order for its relief,' The picture of Keppel holding the order was discovered by Mr. Algernon Graves at St. James's Palace, where it was ascribed to Admiral Barrington. It represents Keppel looking very old, with compressed lips, and eyes alive with expectancy.
The portrait in the National Portrait Gallery given to Dunning, Keppel's counsel, shows Keppel resting on his sword looking proudly but angrily askance, as if according to a con- temporaneous account of his appearance after his acquittal he were half triumphant and half apprehensive of the injury that might accrue to his country if the malevolence of a man's political enemies again had free play.
A fourth " Trial " portrait given to Lee, another of Keppel's counsel, is known by J. Scott's engraving. Keppel wears a kindly dignified expression as if listening attentively to the reading of the verdict of acquittal.
After a careful scrutiny of these and other portraits by Reynolds, one is not so much surprised that he had powerful friends such as Burke and Keppel as that he had the myriad- mindednesi not merely to respond to the impulses of the great in sympathetic friendship, but to assimilate the point of view of the best men of his time and project on his canvas all that each and every one of those best would see in the sitter. He has the eye of Garrick for catching a fugitive expression or gesture, the biographical instinct of Boswell Which registers some gossipy anecdote, the historical gift of Gibbon for recording an historical event, the manly sense and dignity of Johnson, and the alchemy of Burke which fusee imagery, feeling, and thought into one living and noble whole.
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