ABSTRACT
The aesthetic debate in mid- and late-eighteenth-century England moved between several polarities. Joshua Reynolds's ideology, expressed so well in his academic self-portrait, had one counterpart in William Hogarth's Self-portrait with a Pug of 1745. Reynolds's academic self-portrait incorporated the Old Masters by means of dress, colour scheme, and use of light and, in the case of Michelangelo, as a theatrical prop, like Hamlet's skull, as a cause for meditation. The picture fulfils most of the high ambitions expressed in Reynolds's self-portrait; one wonders, however, what the bust of Michelangelo might have been thinking, as it was emerging into the light. Reynolds and William Blake had both been familiar with the artist's poetry; the President's library contained a copy of the Rime and in his characteristic merging of himself with his hero, Blake misquoted one of Michelangelo's poems in William Upcott's autograph album. A large number of the artist's drawings, entered public museums, were exhibited and were reproduced photographically.
