‘An Argument in Paint’: Reynolds and Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy

Abstract

Following the work of such important scholars as John Barrell, Stephen Copley and David Solkin, discussion of eighteenth-century art has tended to focus on a dual narrative of civic humanism and Mandevillian economics. This article argues that such a focus has been to the detriment of a third ‘Augustan’ discourse, proposed by Paul Fussell in the 1960s as being evident in the writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Through focusing anew on Reynolds’ well-known portrait of David Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, this article investigates the tensions inherent in the painting, and highlights the Augustan imagery that was visible in Reynolds’ portraits as well as his writing. The Augustan discourse becomes evident when Reynolds’ literary and artistic productions are considered in tandem and in the context of his intellectual and political milieu, influenced by his friends in ‘the Club’, especially Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Within this discourse man is depraved and fallen, the victim of his dual nature, split between reason and imagination. Such duality captures him between outer appearance and inner morality, and particularly vulnerable, therefore, in the eighteenth century, which prioritized ‘polite,’ fashionable concerns. In discussing the portrait of Garrick, pulled between Tragedy and Comedy, this article highlights an eighteenth-century discourse of Augustan, ‘Ancient’ moral concerns that has been obscured by our contemporary debt to the ‘Modern’ attitude, which was its enemy.