The point you raise about Batoni’s place amongst his contemporaries is a typically thought-provoking one. Having said that, the first thought it provoked in me was an inclination to duck out of answering, hiding
behind the observation that to start drawing up art-historical league tables would, as it were, pull the Batoni canvases off the walls of the provincial Palladian houses in which I am happiest to encounter them, transferring them instead to the competitive and hence to a degree uncongenial field of the art gallery, where the points on which they are scored don’t always relate very closely to the priorities and predilections that governed their commissioning, execution and initial critical reaction.

But on the other hand, there are limits to how long even I can keep this grumpy attitude of principled non-engagement with art, or rather ‘art’, entirely pristine: the category exists, and so do its institutions and books and practitioners, all of which, as I’ll gladly admit in my saner moments, are at least as capable of delighting as they are of frustrating or boring. So, anyway, here goes.

First, your description of what’s distinctive in Batoni’s work (a particular strand of neoclassicism, softened by rococco elements and mediated through a particular sort of personality) seems to me entirely correct. I’d append to this the basic point that he was also very competent: his work is persuasive and confident, without the regular distraction of effects that simply don’t work, which certainly distinguishes him from some of his less successful contemporaries.

Here, though, are a few additional thoughts, framed as questions, if only because my mind isn’t made up about them either. Did it make a difference that unlike even some of the greatest of his contemporaries, Batoni’s experience both of classical artefacts and of Renaissance and Baroque art was life-long and hands-on, as it were, rather than either indirect or brief yet dramatically transformative? Did this easy familiarity make his approach a bit more relaxed, more playful, less intense? And should we care very much whether, again unlike some other broadly comparable portrait painters (portrait painters, especially British ones, being the ones who automatically if unfairly seem the ‘natural’ comparison with Batoni) his own style did not ‘develop’ to any great degree throughout the course of a longish career, except insofar as old age took its toll on his vision and steadiness of hand? Is this a sign of some sort of limitation on Batoni’s part, or is it just an anachronistic if not always conscious obsession with the notion that great art, and great artists, should always somehow be moving forward?

And finally, over at Modern Kicks, you referred to Batoni’s ‘blandness’. It’s a fair comment. Batoni’s work often feels unemphatic, pleasant rather than aggressively ‘great’. But – at the risk of sounding pointlessly perverse – is blandness always a bad thing in a commissioned portrait, in some cases very evidently composed so as to fit in well with existing portraits and perhaps also (for all we know) existing presentational schemes? In other words, are we once again at risk of forgetting that there might be other ways to judge the success and skill of these paintings, other than their ability to out-compete each other against the tendentious blandness of some featureless gallery wall? Is standing out always the best thing to do, or are there moments when fitting in, being agreeable, getting on with the job might actually be better?

Oh no, it’s that anti-art thing again! Maybe the way that Batoni brings me out in anti-art rashes in fact says something about the degree to which it’s possible to defend his work as art?

Still, though, for what it’s worth, if it were up to me, how would I rank Batoni? Well, certainly not ‘great’ in the sense that the morally repulsive David was, or even the unreliable and hard-to-understand Goya – there was clearly more distinctiveness, breadth and complexity in their work than one ever finds in Batoni – but at the same time even at his worst he seems to me, anyway, not unfit to share a room with Reynolds, Vigee-Lebrun, Gainsborough, Raeburn and other significant portrait-painters of his age. (I’ll let someone else make the decision regarding his other, non-portrait works – without a lot more research, that sort of judgement remains well and truly outside my ambit.) And while you are absolutely and memorably right about Houdon, I’d personally nominate as the closest of Batoni’s artistic kinsmen and fellow-travellers that other rather neglected figure, Zoffany. Is anyone from the National Gallery listening?

In any event, JL, I’m delighted you’re enjoying this site – not least because your comments are better than most people’s actual posts, mine included!

On another note, over at MK I made a remark about this post embracing a sort of “hermeneutic consciousness.” That’s perhaps a bit recherche, but what I meant was this: your comments about being bored with art qua art, the urge to connect to the individuals depicted, the reality of their lives and world, the sweep from your own history with the painting of Charles Compton to your recent viewing of it and the almost vertiginous sense of time your conclusion opened up for this reader made me think of Hans-Georg Gadamer writes about art in Truth and Method. To be brief, Gadamer spends a lot of time arguing against Kant’s conception of judgment, arguing that he took what was a broader human capability, a central element of how we understand truth, and narrowed it into mere aesthetic experience. For Gadamer, the encounter with art (and he talks about portraits in particular) isn’t merely aesthetic, it’s meeting with a whole world–”the picture is an event of being” he writes at one point. Charles Compton, his painting by Batoni, your younger self, and the you standing at the National Gallery, were all in a certain way brought together in your experience of the painting–you are indeed a historian, and experienced the painting historically, if that makes any sense. Since I’m only making a muddle let me link to this quote from Gadamer, which I think expresses what I’m getting at far better.