| |
More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
|
Joshua Reynolds
|
|
|
(1723–92, kt 1769)
Britain's leading portrait painter, remarkable for his range of response to his sitters ('Damn him, how various he is!' said his leading rival, Gainsborough). He set up as a professional portrait in Devon in about 1743 and, like Rembrandt, developed an early and abiding interest in self-portraiture. After a spell in Italy (1749–52) he set up a studio in London in 1753.
His years in Italy gave him a knowledge of classical ideals and a taste for the richness of Venetian colour, together with a conviction that painting was among the most dignified of callings and its practitioners worthy of equivalently high status. His own career greatly furthered this notion. He was rapidly successful and wealthy, coping with 150 sitters a year by 1758; and he was a natural choice in 1768 to be first president of the *Royal Academy.
|
|
|
|
|
In his Discourses, delivered almost annually to the students of the academy, he offered a powerful testimony to what he called the Grand Manner in art. In doing so he made himself the bugbear of emerging romantics such as William *Blake. He was himself unsuccessful in history painting, which he considered the highest form of art, but he often added solemnity to his portraits through learned allusions or classical accessories. He is unsentimentally direct in his best portraits of children.
|
|
|
|
|
In spite of suffering from deafness he was a sociable man, at ease both in the aristocratic world of his sitters and in literary London. He was a close friend of *Johnson; the Club they founded together was his idea, and Boswell dedicated his life of the great man to Reynolds. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, the first artist to be granted this honour since another great portraitist of the English aristocracy, Van *Dyck.
|
|
|
|