Word: sirs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...When Sir Joshua Reynolds died, wrote the man who most disliked him, the poet and engraver William Blake, "All Nature was degraded;/ The King drop'd a tear into the Queen's Ear,/ And all his Pictures faded...
...factual truth of this can be assessed by anyone who visits the Reynolds retrospective now running at London's Royal Academy. Reynolds' paintings have long since faded, mimicking his reputation. "Sir Sploshua," as others called him for his generous and Rubenesque handling of wet paint surfaces, had an imp of fakery lodged in his breast. He was determined to produce, for his clientele of the great, the tone and mellowed appearance of European seicento art. To this end he would whip up weird mayonnaises of wax, turps, asphaltum, eggs, resin and oil. "Varnished three times with different varnishes, and egged...
Perhaps the most endearing portrait is that of the eccentric Richardson. Directing Guinness in an Old Vic production of Richard II, Sir Ralph had only a few words of advice. Holding up a sharpened pencil, he said, "Play it like this pencil, old cock." Guinness admits that he was not greatly illuminated, and his Richard was a failure of which he is still ashamed...
...later years Richardson always had a silver tankard of champagne waiting for those who visited him backstage. Once, when Guinness came by, he rose and made a military-style toast: "To Jesus Christ. What a splendid chap!" Another time, when they were both starring in Doctor Zhivago, Sir Alec walked into Richardson's hotel suite in Madrid. "Who can one hit," said Richardson, "if not one's friends?" -- and punched him in the jaw. By the time Guinness raised himself from the floor to ask what was going on, Richardson was sound asleep in an armchair...
...really have any interest for me anymore." He likes movies, but he loves the stage and is even now on the lookout for a good play. At the moment Alan Bennett (The Old Country) is his favorite English playwright; David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross), his favorite American. Between roles, Sir Alec and his wife Merula play country folk in a home 55 miles southwest of London, near Winchester. "Farmland round and about," he says. "It's a very simple house, and it's always untidy, always dusty and ill cared for, it seems to me. But we love...