In devising appropriate figures, the painter demonstrated his mastery of anatomy and expression. Grand settings and symbolic accessories proved the artist's grasp of perspective depth and still-life draftsmanship. Compositions and color schemes had to be carefully conceived to accentuate the principal characters and to clarify the meanings of the incidents. The same desire for profundity in narrative pictures often invested portraits and landscapes with allegorical meanings and poetic overtones. It is vain for poets or painters to endeavour to invent with material on which the mind may work, and from which invention must originate.
Nothing can come of nothing.
Thus, regardless of when and where the events occurred, Reynolds clothed his figures in classical robes and placed them before idealized scenery. In 1771, though, the American artist Benjamin West, who was to succeed Reynolds as the Royal Academy's president, produced a startling shift in convention. West depicted a recent incident, set against a recognizable location, with figures in contemporary dress. Reynolds graciously acknowledged that West's straightforward approach gave a new, more realistic, direction to history painting.