Francis Beckford 1755-6

Oil on canvas

support: 1283 x 1016 mm

frame: 1570 x 1300 x 85 mm

approx.painting

Suzanna Beckford 1756

Among the most striking features of this portrait is Mrs. Beckford's lavish sacque dress (à la Francaise), of turquoise blue and silver watered silk, with matching silk trimmings on the bodice. The necklace, shoulder mantle and sleeve ruffles are of fine silk lace. Her jewellery includes clip-on earrings (called 'snaps'), probably made of paste, and on her wrists are two black silk bracelets mounted with portrait miniatures. Owing to the increasing pressure of business, Reynolds probably restricted his own contribution to the subject's pose and her head, leaving the detailed painting of her dress to a professional 'drapery' painter, or possibly to his young Italian studio assistant, Giuseppe Marchi.

Lord Ligonier 1760

Lord Ligonier 1760

Oil on canvas

support: 2794 x 2388 mm

frame: 3235 x 2810 x 200 mm

painting

Presented by King William IV 1836

Lady Anstruther 1761

Sir John Anstruther commissioned this portrait of his wife, Janet, along with his own portrait (now in a French private collection). Lady Anstruther, the daughter of a Scottish merchant, was renowned for her beauty and for her reputation as a flirt. Despite her social elevation through marriage to a baronet, on at least one occasion Lady Anstruther was taunted in the streets for her supposed gypsy descent. In Reynolds's portrait, she glides serenely through the grounds of a landed estate, her dress and deportment asserting her right to be recognized among the ranks of the aristocracy.

Mrs Richard Cumberland

Mrs Richard Cumberland ?1763

Oil on canvas

support: 749 x 635 mm

painting

Purchased 1955

Joshua Reynolds painting

Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life.
Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France.
Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club.
With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement and, on 23 February 1792, he died in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Professionally, Reynolds' career never peaked. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts, helped found the Society of Artists, and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy of Arts as a spin-off organisation. In 1768 he was made the RA's first President, a position he held until his death. As a lecturer, Reynolds' Discourses on Art (delivered between 1769 and 1790) are remembered for their sensitivity and perception. In one of these lectures he was of the opinion that "invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory."

Reynolds and the Royal Academy have historically received a mixed reception. Critics include many of the Pre-Raphaelites, and William Blake, the latter having published his vitriolic Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses in 1808. To the contrary, both J. M. W. Turner and James Northcote were fervent acolytes: Turner requested he be laid to rest at Reynolds' side, and Northcote (who lived for four years as Reynolds' pupil) wrote to his family "I know him thoroughly, and all his faults, I am sure, and yet almost worship him." The word worship is second cast; originally Northcote had written adore.