Joshua Reynolds

Home / Museum / Search ARC Museum

Joshua Reynolds

49 artworks

painter, writer and collector

Born 7/16/1723 - Died 2/23/1792

  • Artworks
  • Biography
  • Relationships
  • Images of the Artist
  • Products
Grid
List
Block
Map
HD

Mrs. Siddons As the Tragic Muse

1784

Oil on canvas

240 x 148 cms | 94 1/4 x 58 1/4 ins

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, United Kingdom

HD

Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces

1763-1765

Oil on canvas

95 x 59 cms | 37 1/4 x 23 ins

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States

HD

Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bt.

1788

Oil on canvas

49 x 39 cms | 19 1/4 x 15 1/4 ins

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States

HD

Theophilia Gwatkin

Oil on canvas

29 x 24 cms | 11 1/4 x 9 1/4 ins

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States

HD

Mrs Musters as Hebe

1785

Oil on canvas

239 x 144.8 cms | 94 x 57 ins

Kenwood House, London, United Kingdom

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

HD

Captain Robert Orme

1756

Oil on canvas

240 x 147 cms | 94 1/4 x 57 3/4 ins

National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

HD

Francis Rawdon Hastings

c. 1789

Oil on canvas

240 x 147.9 cms | 94 1/4 x 58 ins

Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, London, United Kingdom

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

HD

General Sir Banastre Tarleton

1782

Oil on canvas

236 x 145 cms | 92 3/4 x 57 ins

National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

HD

Colonel George K. H. Coussmaker, Grenadier Guards

1782

Oil on canvas

238.1 x 145.4 cms | 93 1/2 x 57 ins

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, United States

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

HD

Lady Sunderlin

1786

Oil on canvas

236 x 145 cms | 92 3/4 x 57 ins

Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany

Credit: Web Gallery of Art

back to the artworks

Mode

Sir Joshua Reynolds (July 16, 1723–February 23, 1792) was the most important and influential of eighteenth-century English painters, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.

Reynolds was born in Plympton St Maurice, Devon, on 16 July 1723, and apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson [1701-1779], with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, mainly in Rome, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". From 1753 on, he lived and worked in London. He became a close friend of Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann [1741-1807]. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts: he encouraged that society's interest in contemporary art and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy as a spin-out organisation.

With his rival Thomas Gainsborough [1727-1788], he was the dominant English portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. Reynolds painted in more of an idealized fashion than his rival. Reynolds was a brilliant academic. His lectures (Discourses) on art, delivered at the Royal Academy 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." In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, and on 23 February 1792 he died in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Source:
  • Derived from an entry on the artist in the Wikipedia.

    • Mode