Sir Joshua Reynolds | British painter | Britannica.com Sir Joshua Reynolds William Hogarth Sir Joshua Reynolds, (born July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon , England —died February 23, 1792, London ), portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century. Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of the continental Grand Style. With the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was elected its first president and knighted by King George III . Sir Joshua Reynolds, detail of self-portrait, oil on panel, 1780; in the Royal Academy of Arts, … Royal Academy of Arts, London Early life Reynolds attended the Plympton grammar school of which his father, a clergyman, was master. The young Reynolds became well read in the writings of classical antiquity and throughout his life was to be much interested in literature, counting many of the finest British authors of the 18th century among his closest friends.

Reynolds early aspired to become an artist, and in 1740 he was apprenticed for four years in London to Thomas Hudson , a conventional portraitist and the pupil and son-in-law of Jonathan Richardson. In 1743 he returned to Devon and began painting at Plymouth naval portraits that reveal his inexperience. Returning to London for two years in 1744, he began to acquire a knowledge of the old masters and an independent style marked by bold brushwork and the use of impasto, a thick surface texture of paint, such as in his portrait of Captain the Honourable John Hamilton (1746). Back in Devon in 1746, he painted a large group portrait of the Eliot family (c. 1746/47), which clearly indicates that he had studied the large-scale portrait of the Pembroke family (1634–35) by the Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck , whose style of portrait painting influenced English portraiture throughout the 18th century. In 1749 Reynolds sailed with his friend Augustus Keppel to Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

A fall from a horse detained him for five months and permanently scarred his lip—the scar being a prominent feature in his subsequent self-portraits. From Minorca he went to Rome, where he remained for two years, devoting himself to studying the great masterpieces of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture and of Italian painting. The impressions that he retained from this visit were to inspire his paintings and his Discourses for the rest of his life, for he felt that it was by allying painting with scholarship that he could best achieve his ambition of raising the status of his profession back in England. While returning home via Florence, Bologna, and Venice, he became absorbed by the compositions and colour of the great Renaissance Venetian painters of the 16th century: Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese . The Venetian tradition’s emphasis on colour and the effect of light and shading had a lasting influence on Reynolds, and, although all his life he preached the need for young artists to study the sculptural definition of form characteristic of Florentine and Roman painters, his own works are redolent of the Venetian style.

Later years Leap Second In 1753 Reynolds settled in London, where he was to live for the rest of his life. His success was assured from the first, and by 1755 he was employing studio assistants to help him execute the numerous portrait commissions he received. The early London portraits have a vigour and naturalness about them that is perhaps best exemplified in a likeness of Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753–54). The pose is not original, being a reversal of the Apollo Belvedere , an ancient Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-bc Hellenistic statue Reynolds had seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a British naval officer) is shown striding along the seashore introduced a new kind of vigour into the tradition of English portraiture. In these first years in London, Reynolds’s knowledge of Venetian painting is very apparent in such works as the portraits of Lord Cathcart (1753/54) and Lord Ludlow (1755).

Of his domestic portraits, those of Nelly O’Brien (1760–62) and of Georgiana, Countess Spencer, and her daughter (1761) are especially notable for their tender charm and careful observation. Art & Architecture: Fact or Fiction? After 1760 Reynolds’s style became increasingly classical and self-conscious. As he fell under the influence of the classical Baroque painters of the Bolognese school of the 17th century and the archaeological interest in Greco-Roman antiquity that was sweeping Europe at the time, the pose and clothes of his sitters took on a more rigidly antique pattern, in consequence losing much of the sympathy and understanding of his earlier works. Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies There were no public exhibitions of contemporary artists in London before 1760, when Reynolds helped found the Society of Artists and the first of many successful exhibitions was held. The patronage of George III was sought, and in 1768 the Royal Academy was founded. Although Reynolds’s painting had found no favour at court, he was the obvious candidate for the presidency, and the king confirmed his election and knighted him.

Reynolds guided the policy of the academy with such skill that the pattern he set has been followed with little variation ever since. The yearly Discourses that he delivered at the academy clearly mirrored many of his own thoughts and aspirations , as well as his own problems of line versus colour and public and private portraiture, and gave advice to those beginning their artistic careers. From 1769 nearly all of Reynolds’s most important works appeared in the academy. In certain exhibitions he included historical pieces, such as Ugolino (1773), which were perhaps his least successful works. Many of his child studies are tender and even amusing, though now and again the sentiment tends to be excessive. Two of the most enchanting are Master Crewe as Henry VIII (1775–76) and Lady Caroline Scott as ‘Winter’ (1778). His most ambitious portrait commission was the Family of the Duke of Marlborough (1777). Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children, oil on canvas by Sir … Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W.

Mellon Collection, 1937.1.95 In 1781 Reynolds visited Flanders and Holland, where he studied the work of the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens . This seems to have affected his own style, for in the manner of Rubens’s later works the texture of his picture surface becomes far richer. This is particularly true of his portrait of the duchess of Devonshire and her daughter (1786). Reynolds was never a mere society painter or flatterer. It has been suggested that his deafness gave him a clearer insight into the character of his sitters, the lack of one faculty sharpening the use of his eyes. His vast learning allowed him to vary his poses and style so often that the well-known remark of Thomas Gainsborough , “Damn him, how various he is!” is entirely understandable. In 1782 Reynolds had a paralytic stroke, and about the same time he was saddened by bickerings within the Royal Academy. Seven years later his eyesight began to fail, and he delivered his last Discourse at the academy in 1790. He died in 1792 and was buried in St.

Paul’s Cathedral. Portrait of Charlotte Grote, oil on canvas by Joshua Reynolds, 18th century. 75 × 62 cm. In a private collection Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Reynolds preferred the company of men of letters to that of his fellow artists and was friends with Samuel Johnson , Edmund Burke , and Oliver Goldsmith , among others. He never married, and his house was kept for him by his sister Frances. Sir Joshua Reynolds, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart, 1784; in the National Gallery of Art, … Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1942.8.21 Reynolds’s state portraits of the king and queen were never considered a success, and he seldom painted for them; but the prince of Wales patronized him extensively, and there were few distinguished families or individuals who did not sit for him. Nonetheless, some of his finest portraits are those of his intimate friends and of fashionable women of questionable reputation. Unfortunately, Reynolds’s technique was not always entirely sound, and many of his paintings have suffered as a result.

After his visit to Italy, he tried to produce the effects of Tintoretto and Titian by using transparent glazes over a monochrome underpainting, but the pigment he used for his flesh tones was not permanent and even in his lifetime began to fade, causing the overpale faces of many surviving portraits. In the 1760s Reynolds began to use more extensively bitumen or coal substances added to pigments. This practice proved to be detrimental to the paint surface. Though a keen collector of old-master drawings, Reynolds himself was never a draftsman, and indeed few of his drawings have any merit whatsoever. Trending Topics About the RA | Royal Academy of Arts Benjamin West PRA, Self-portrait of Benjamin West PRA, 1793. Oil on panel. 1015 X 1320 mm. Photo R.A./John Hammond © Royal Academy of Arts. An American in London The story of our second President is a fascinating one. Benjamin West was born in Pennsylvania in 1738 and grew up in a world where art was little known. But with pioneering spirit, he travelled to Europe for his education and found success in Rome.

Later arriving in England, he became a close friend of the King and his ‘History Painter’. He never returned to America but is considered the founding father of the American school of painting. He was so popular that he was elected President by his fellow members with just one opposing vote. He also had a first-rate eye for talent and once comforted a down-hearted young Constable after he’d had a work rejected by the Academy with these words, “Don’t be disheartened young man, we shall hear more of you again; you must have loved nature before you could have painted this.” After Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA, 1723 - 1792, Portrait of Angelica Kauffman RA, Published by John Boydell, 3 September 1780.. Engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, RA. Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Women at the RA We have a somewhat chequered history when it comes to equality of the sexes. Although Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman flew the flag for women in 1768, it took another 168 years before another woman was elected as a full Academician, Laura Knight in 1936.

In 1879, the Council of the day came to the conclusion that our original Instrument of Foundation did not allow for women RAs. Eventually, they relented and passed a resolution to make women eligible, but only on the condition of restricted privileges. A few years later in 1913, we invoked the wrath of the suffragettes and a demonstration was held in the galleries. One woman slashed a portrait of Henry James by Sargent while another hacked at a painting by George Clausen. Catastrophe was also narrowly averted when one protestor attempted to start a fire in the toilets. Joseph Parkin Mayall, Sir John Everett Millais PRA, c. 1884. Photogravure. 166 x 219 mm. Published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. From: F.G. Stephens (ed.), Artists at home photographed by J.P. Mayall, London 1884, pl.[6] Photo: RA © Copyright protected. The child prodigy The beginning of the Victorian period saw us admit our youngest ever student to the RA Schools, the ten year old John Everett Millais in 1839.

He was immediately given the rather unoriginal nickname ‘The Child’. He went on to become one of the most successful artists of the 19th century and a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Brotherhood hoped to emulate the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe, characterised by intricate detail, bright colours and truth to nature. Although the movement’s activity lasted little more than five years, its influence on British art continues to this day. In 1896, Millais was elected President of the RA, but sadly, it was doomed to be a short tenure. He was in poor health at the time, and just six months after his election he was buried in Painters’ Corner of St Paul’s Cathedral. Our story Italian Art The first blockbusters One of our founding principles was to hold an annual exhibition that anyone could enter, and anyone could visit. Today, it’s called the Summer Exhibition and it has taken place every year since 1769, including during both World Wars. From the late 19th century, we began to hold international loan exhibitions. One in particular that went down in history was our Italian Art exhibition in 1930.

The galleries were flooded with masterpieces, including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Raphael’s La Donna Velata and Donatello’s David – but it didn’t pass without controversy. Highly politicised, it was attended by Mussolini as a way of furthering the cause of Fascism. Sir Edwin Lutyens PRA and Royal Academy Planning Committee, Proposed re-modelling of Hyde Park Corner, London: bird's-eye perspective, 1942. Carbon pencil, pen & ink and coloured crayons. 533 x 837 mm. Drawn by an artist in the Office of Philip Dalton Hepworth. Photo: RA © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Reimagining London Our doors remained open during World War Two, just as they had during the First World War, but our President at the time, Edwin Lutyens, had some radical ideas about how London should be rebuilt after the conflict.

Some of the schemes proposed in the RA Planning Committee’s London Replanned report, included a road bridge across the Thames that would obliterate Charing Cross Station, an enormous roundabout behind St Martin-in-the-Fields and the demolition of the existing Opera House in Covent Garden to make way for a new music and dramatic centre. Lutyens’ ideas may have been unpopular with most, but our next President, Alfred Munnings, didn’t do much better in endearing himself to his colleagues or the public… Edwin Whitney-Smith, Bust of Sir Alfred Munnings PRA, 1946. 578 x 533 mm. Bronze on wooden base. Photo: RA / Neil Greentree © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Famous last words Alfred Munnings took office in 1944. He became infamous when during one RA dinner, he drunkenly began to berate modern art and aspects of the Academy itself. After slating Picasso, he moved on to London County Council, who he criticised for exhibiting modern sculpture in Battersea Park, and the Tate for showing Matisse. To make matters worse, the whole tirade was being broadcast live by the BBC.

Munnings had already decided to resign before he made the speech – and made sure he went out with a bang. Our story Sir Hugh Casson PRA, Why not be a Friend, c. 1980. Drawing printed on letterhead paper. Photo: Royal Academy of Arts. Making new Friends The 1970s saw a period of renewal, with the election of one of our most enterprising Presidents, Sir Hugh Casson. Casson had always been one to embrace change and in 1948, he had been appointed Director of Architecture at the Festival of Britain. Relishing the challenge, he set out to celebrate peace and modernity through working with other young architects, 39-year-old Leslie Martin for example, who designed the modernist Royal Festival Hall. Casson’s role in the Festival of Britain was a huge success and he was knighted in 1952. As President of the RA, he began our Friends of the RA membership scheme in 1977, the first of its kind in Europe. Our Friends now number over 90,000.

They come to all our exhibitions for free, enjoy all day access to the Keeper’s House, are invited to special events and are sent RA Magazine three times a year. They’re some of our most loyal supporters: we’d be lost without them. Sackler Galleries CROP Photo: Dennis Gilbert A new view of the RA In 1991, we opened The Sackler Wing, designed by Royal Academicians Norman Foster and Spencer de Grey. With its sleek glass staircase and light-filled atrium, The Sackler Wing introduced elegant new gallery spaces to replace the Victorian Diploma Galleries and is a sensitive union of old and new. The landing before you enter these galleries is also where you will find Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo, his only marble sculpture in the UK and one of the most treasured works in our Collection. Foster himself has spoken of how the design of our Sackler Wing helped lay the groundwork for later projects, including the Great Court at the British Museum, demonstrating “a clear philosophy about how you make modern intervention in historical structures” and create “a meaningful relationship between old and new”.

The Royal Academy’s north-facing Entrance, Burlington Gardens, in 2018 Image: Hayes Davidson An Academy for the 21st century In 1998, we bought 6 Burlington Gardens, a beautiful listed building originally designed by Sir James Pennethorne RA for the University of London in the 19th century. Since 2012, we have hosted exciting contemporary shows in these new galleries, showcasing the work of our Academicians from Richard Rogers to Allen Jones . For our anniversary in 2018 we have exciting plans to link Burlington House with Burlington Gardens. This will open up the RA as never before, transforming our historic buildings – and inviting Friends and visitors old and new to celebrate with us. Come 2018, you will also find a 300-seat lecture theatre, our first dedicated learning centre and totally refurbished gallery spaces, one of which will be devoted to our historic Collection. Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain, 1768–1829, by Geoff Quilley Pp. 1517-1518.

Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain, 1768–1829, by Geoff Quilley Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain, 1768–1829, by Geoff Quilley (New Haven, CT: Yale U.P., 2011; pp. 294. £40). University College, Oxford evan.wilson{at}univ.ox.ac.uk In 1768, Joshua Reynolds became the first president of the newly-founded Royal Academy, and Captain James Cook’s first expedition to the Pacific set sail. The two events are not directly related, but Geoff Quilley uses them as a framework for his dense but rewarding thematic exploration of six decades of British visual culture. He argues that British art retreated from imperial influences and subject-matters in the face of the threat of revolutionary France.

In keeping with the title, the book’s three parts begin in the furthest reaches of Britain’s first empire and converge slowly back to the heart of the maritime nation at Greenwich: Cook’s voyages feature heavily in the essays in Part One; the Atlantic world is the subject of Part Two; and Part Three focuses on images of sailors and naval battles during and … (2014) 129 (541): 1517-1518. doi: 10.1093/ehr/ceu294 First published online: November 16, 2014 » ExtractFree Reynolds, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Joshua born July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon , Eng . died Feb. 23, 1792, London British portrait painter. Son of a clergyman-schoolmaster, he was apprenticed to a London portraitist in 1740. His large group portrait The Eliot Family (с 1746) reveals the influence of Anthony Van Dyck .

The impressions he gained during two years in Italy (1750–52), particularly in Venice, inspired his painting for the rest of his life. He established a portrait studio in London in 1753 and was immediately successful. His early London portraits introduced new vigour into English portraiture. After 1760, with the increasing vogue for Greco-Roman antiquity, his style became increasingly Classical and self-conscious. He was elected the first president of the Royal Academy in 1768. Through his art and teaching, Reynolds led British painting away from the anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of continental academic painting. His Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1769–90), advocating rigorous academic training and study of the Old Masters, ranks among the most important art criticism of the time. * * * born July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon, Eng. died Feb. 23, 1792, London portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century.

Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of the continental Grand Style. With the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was elected its first president and knighted by King George III. Early life Reynolds attended the Plympton grammar school of which his father, a clergyman, was master. The young Reynolds became well read in the writings of classical antiquity and throughout his life was to be much interested in literature, counting many of the finest British authors of the 18th century among his closest friends. Reynolds early aspired to become an artist, and in 1740 he was apprenticed for four years in London to Thomas Hudson ( Hudson, Thomas ), a conventional portraitist and the pupil and son-in-law of Jonathan Richardson. In 1743 he returned to Devon and began painting at Plymouth naval portraits that reveal his inexperience.

Returning to London for two years in 1744, he began to acquire a knowledge of the old masters and an independent style marked by bold brushwork and the use of impasto, a thick surface texture of paint, such as in his portrait of “Captain the Honourable John Hamilton” (1746). Back in Devon in 1746, he painted a large group portrait of the “Eliot Family” (c. 1746/47), which clearly indicates that he had studied the large-scale portrait of the “Pembroke Family” (1634–35) by the Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck ( Van Dyck, Sir Anthony ), whose style of portrait painting influenced English portraiture throughout the 18th century. In 1749 Reynolds sailed with his friend Augustus Keppel to Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain. A fall from a horse detained him for five months and permanently scarred his lip—the scar being a prominent feature in his subsequent self-portraits.

From Minorca he went to Rome, where he remained for two years, devoting himself to studying the great masterpieces of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture and of Italian painting. The impressions that he retained from this visit were to inspire his paintings and his Discourses for the rest of his life, for he felt that it was by allying painting with scholarship that he could best achieve his ambition of raising the status of his profession back in England. While returning home via Florence, Bologna, and Venice, he became absorbed by the compositions and colour of the great Renaissance Venetian ( Venetian school ) painters of the 16th century: Titian , Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. The Venetian tradition's emphasis on colour and the effect of light and shading had a lasting influence on Reynolds, and, although all his life he preached the need for young artists to study the sculptural definition of form characteristic of Florentine and Roman painters, his own works are redolent of the Venetian style. Later years In 1753 Reynolds settled in London, where he was to live for the rest of his life.

His success was assured from the first, and by 1755 he was employing studio assistants to help him execute the numerous portrait commissions he received. The early London portraits have a vigour and naturalness about them that is perhaps best exemplified in a likeness of “Honourable Augustus Keppel” (1753–54; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London). The pose is not original, being a reversal of the “Apollo Belvedere,” ( Belvedere Torso ) an ancient Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-BC Hellenistic statue Reynolds had seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a British naval officer) is shown striding along the seashore introduced a new kind of vigour into the tradition of English portraiture. In these first years in London, Reynolds' knowledge of Venetian painting is very apparent in such works as the portraits of “Lord Cathcart” (1753/54) and “Lord Ludlow” (1755).

Of his domestic portraits, those of “Nelly O'Brien” (1760–62) and of “Georgiana, Countess Spencer, and Her Daughter” (1761) are especially notable for their tender charm and careful observation. After 1760 Reynolds' style became increasingly classical and self-conscious. As he fell under the influence of the classical Baroque painters of the Bolognese school of the 17th century and the archaeological interest in Greco-Roman antiquity that was sweeping Europe at the time, the pose and clothes of his sitters took on a more rigidly antique pattern, in consequence losing much of the sympathy and understanding of his earlier works. There were no public exhibitions of contemporary artists in London before 1760, when Reynolds helped found the Society of Artists and the first of many successful exhibitions was held. The patronage of George III was sought, and in 1768 the Royal Academy ( Royal Academy of Arts ) was founded. Although Reynolds' painting had found no favour at court, he was the obvious candidate for the presidency, and the king confirmed his election and knighted him.

Reynolds guided the policy of the academy with such skill that the pattern he set has been followed with little variation ever since. The yearly Discourses that he delivered at the academy clearly mirrored many of his own thoughts and aspirations, as well as his own problems of line versus colour and public and private portraiture, and gave advice to those beginning their artistic careers. From 1769 nearly all of Reynolds' most important works appeared in the academy. In certain exhibitions he included historical pieces, such as “Ugolino” (1773), which were perhaps his least successful works. Many of his child studies are tender and even amusing, though now and again the sentiment tends to be excessive. Two of the most enchanting are “Master Crewe as Henry VIII” (1775–76) and “Lady Caroline Scott as ‘Winter' ” (1778). His most ambitious portrait commission was the “Family of the Duke of Marlborough” (1777). In 1781 Reynolds visited Flanders and Holland, where he studied the work of the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens ( Rubens, Peter Paul ).

This seems to have affected his own style, for in the manner of Rubens' later works the texture of his picture surface becomes far richer. This is particularly true of his portrait of the “Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter” (1786). Reynolds was never a mere society painter or flatterer. It has been suggested that his deafness gave him a clearer insight into the character of his sitters, the lack of one faculty sharpening the use of his eyes. His vast learning allowed him to vary his poses and style so often that the well-known remark of Thomas Gainsborough, “Damn him, how various he is!” is entirely understandable. In 1782 Reynolds had a paralytic stroke, and about the same time he was saddened by bickerings within the Royal Academy. Seven years later his eyesight began to fail, and he delivered his last Discourse at the academy in 1790. He died in 1792 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. Personality and criticism Reynolds preferred the company of men of letters to that of his fellow artists and was friends with Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith, among others.

He never married, and his house was kept for him by his sister Frances. Reynolds' state portraits of the king and queen were never considered a success, and he seldom painted for them; but the Prince of Wales patronized him extensively, and there were few distinguished families or individuals who did not sit for him. Nonetheless, some of his finest portraits are those of his intimate friends and of fashionable women of questionable reputation. Unfortunately, Reynolds' technique was not always entirely sound, and many of his paintings have suffered as a result. After his visit to Italy, he tried to produce the effects of Tintoretto and Titian by using transparent glazes over a monochrome underpainting, but the pigment he used for his flesh tones was not permanent and even in his lifetime began to fade, causing the overpale faces of many surviving portraits. In the 1760s Reynolds began to use more extensively bitumen or coal substances added to pigments. This practice proved to be detrimental to the paint surface. Though a keen collector of old-master drawings, Reynolds himself was never a draftsman, and indeed few of his drawings have any merit whatsoever.

Reynolds' Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1769–91) is among the most important art criticism of the time. In it he outlined the essence of grandeur in art and suggested the means of achieving it through rigorous academic training and study of the old masters of art. John Woodward Additional Reading Derek Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1958), is an excellent biography for both the scholar and the general reader, as is Ian McIntyre, Joshua Reynolds : The Life and Times of the First President of the Royal Academy (2003). Critical assessments include Ellis K. Waterhouse, Reynolds (1941), an indispensable, scholarly work with 300 plates, and Reynolds (1973), with somewhat longer text but fewer plates; John Steegmann, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1933, reprinted 1977); Nicholas Penny ( ed .), Reynolds (1986), a substantial exhibition catalog; and Richard Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society (1996), which provides an example of cultural criticism and takes an altogether new approach.

A particularly valuable resource is David Mannings and Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, 2 vol. (2000). Another useful resource is John Ingamells and John Edgcumbe (eds.), The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds (2000). * * * Regency History: The Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts by Drawing from life at the Royal Academy from The Microcosm of London (1808-10) The foundation of the Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts was founded on 10 December 1768 when George III gave his personal approval to a document proposing its creation. The Instrument of Foundation listed the names of the 34 founder members including Joshua Reynolds , Benjamin West, Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Sandby, Thomas Sandby, Angelica Kauffman, Mary Moser and William Chambers. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added to the list by the King and known as nominated members rather than founder members. Joshua Reynolds was appointed the first President of the Royal Academy and gave his inaugural speech on 2 January 1769.

Sir Joshua Reynolds from The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds by HW Beechey (1852) Purpose The purpose of the Royal Academy was to establish the professionalism of British art through education and exhibition. Membership was initially limited to a maximum of forty, with new members being elected by current members. Associate membership was introduced in 1769, providing a means of preselecting artists suitable for election to Academy membership when a vacancy should arise. Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy was the first body to provide professional art training in Britain, where artists could come and learn from the best in their profession. In its first year, over 70 students were enrolled. Its famous pupils included J. M. W. Turner, John Soane, Thomas Rowlandson, William Blake, Thomas Lawrence , John Constable , George Hayter and David Wilkie. Royal Academy professors gave lectures to students. During his presidency, Sir Joshua Reynolds gave 15 lectures on art known as Discourses. The annual exhibition The first Royal Academy exhibition ran from 25 April to 27 May 1769 with a display of over 130 works of art. George III visited the exhibition on 25 May.

There has been a summer exhibition of the Royal Academy every year since. The exhibition at the Royal Academy, Somerset House from The Microcosm of London (1808-10) The annual dinner The annual dinner of the Royal Academy was introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds on 23 April 1771. Where did they meet? The Royal Academy initially met in Pall Mall, but moved to part of Old Somerset House in 1771 and then to New Somerset House in 1780, a building which had been designed by William Chambers, one of the founding members and the Academy’s first treasurer. Somerset House from London in the 19th century by TH Shepherd (1829) In 1838, the Academy moved into part of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square where it remained for thirty years before moving into its current home in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in 1868.

Burlington House, Piccadilly Georgian Presidents of the Royal Academy 1768-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Joshua Reynolds biography Joshua Reynolds biography BY DAVID ROSS , EDITOR Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devonshire, on July 16, 1723, the seventh child of Reverend Samuel Reynolds and Theophilia Potter. At the age of 17 Joshua became apprenticed to Thomas Hudson, the most popular portrait painter of the age. After 3 years with Hudson, Reynolds moved to London and tried to establish his own practice, only to return to Devon after two years. From there he graveled to the Mediterranean, and spent several years studying the works of Italian masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo, and classical Roman art. When Reynolds returned to London he made an immediate impact, especially after his formal portrait of Commodore Augustus Keppel in the guise of the Apollo Belvedere became known. With the aide of his patron, Lord Edgecumbe, Reynolds became the most popular portrait painter of his day, supplanting his old master Hudson. Reynolds was able to afford a coach and a grand house in Leicester Fields.

He was so busy that his students became responsible for painting the background of his portraits, leaving him to concentrate on the principle subject. His major paintings were also reproduced in mezzotint, a fine engraving process. Reynolds exhibited regularly at the Society of Artists, and he was named the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. As his eminence grew, he was knighted in 1769, and in 1784 he was appointed principal royal portrait painter. Sir Joshua Reynolds died on February 23, 1792, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. To see in Britain: Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children - Google Arts & Culture Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children Sir Joshua Reynolds1777-1779 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Reynolds sought to elevate British painting , including portraiture, to the lofty realms of classical expression. After traveling to Rome , Florence , Bologna, and Venice , Reynolds became the first president of the Royal Academy, which had been founded in 1768.

Through his teaching at the Academy and the publication of his annual lectures, the Discourses, he urged the adoption of grand classical values and the study of Greek and Roman sculpture and Renaissance painting. In Lady Delmé, Reynolds created an image of idealized, majestic feminine grace that has many precedents in Renaissance art. The pyramidal composition of the sitters, Lady Delmé's encircling arms and quiet manner, and the regal folds of the deep-rose drapery across her knees are reminiscent of Madonna and Child compositions by Raphael . The rich, warm colors of the informal landscape and the beautifully controlled movement of light into the deep reaches of the background owe much to Titian . Finally, Reynolds' sensitive use of everyday, intimate details prevents the portrait from becoming remote and unapproachable. The tenderness with which Lady Delmé holds her two sons, the nuances of personality in the three faces, the realistic costumes of the children, and the attentive posture of the Skye terrier give the painting a worldly, familiar context.

Read more Title: Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children Date Created: 1777-1779 Theme: portrait, family School: British Provenance: Painted for the sitter's husband, Peter Delmé [1748-1789], Titchfield Abbey, Hampshire; by descent to Seymour Robert Delmé, Cams Hall, Hampshire. Charles J. Wertheimer [d. 1911], London.[1] (Christie, Manson & Wood, London); purchased c. 1900-1901[2] by J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr. [1837-1913], New York; bequeathed to his daughter, Mrs. Robert L. Satterlee [d. 1946], who owned it until c. 1930. (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York); sold 15 December 1936 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] Wertheimer's name is in the list of former collections given for the painting on the Duveen Brothers invoice (see note 3). [2]Connoisseur 3 (1901), 206, notes this portrait as recently sold to Pierpont Morgan. [3] The original Duveen Brothers invoice is in Gallery Archives, copy in NGA curatorial files. Author(s): Odin Alice This portrait of Francis George Hare is the most famous picture by Reynolds in France. A young boy with long hair, about two years old, is shown wearing a very young child's clothes. He is dressed in a chiffon outfit, as children of his age and class were. This picture swiftly became famous, and is one of the archetypal images of British art. Simple portrait of innocence or a deeper reflection on the world of childhood? It is rare to see such a natural pose in a portrait, even of a child. It is marvellous how Reynolds encapsulates the innocence of this very young boy. His ringlets, his rosy cheeks, but above all the entirely free pose of his right arm conspire to create a lively and spontaneous figure.

The almost ethereal background of trees and greenery only enhances the feelings of natural harmony, authenticity, and spontaneity. Reynolds creates a perfect setting for this small boy, who looks beyond the frame at something in the distance that no one else can perceive. His white skin, his bright eyes, and his dynamic pose contrast with the somber colors of the background. In creating such a setting, Reynolds wished to demonstrate the primacy of a child's world that cares little for external matters. The subtle echoes between the child's blond hair, the bronze reflections on the tree behind him, and the material that forms the child's belt enliven the picture, thereby emphasizing the child's sweetness. Childhood in a frame Children's portraits are one of the glories of Reynolds's output. Some of them, like that of Penelope Boothby, evoke the sweetness and poetry of childhood. Others highlight instead the humor or simplicity of childhood. More elegant, more conventional, and less tender portraits by other artists serve to remind us how important spontaneity was to Reynolds. The tradition of the "great portrait" had already been subverted, particularly by Gainsborough, who painted a famous portrait of a child, the Blue Boy.

However, by reducing the size of the frame and abandoning the necessity to show the person portrayed standing up, Gainsborough managed to allow a natural freshness to shine through. When Reynolds's picture was engraved by Robert Thew in 1790, the engraving was given the title Infancy, and it subsequently became the archetypal illustration of the young child type in England. Reynolds: a major figure in English art At the start of the eighteenth century, foreign artists dominated painting in England.To change this situation, it was necessary to establish and promote native artists and to create a British art with unique characteristics. In 1768 the British Academy was founded in London. Its aims were rapidly crowned with success, due mainly to frequent exhibitions. Having striven for a long time to have British art recognized, Reynolds became the first president of the Royal Academy. He promulgated a demanding Classical training, which we know about thanks to the discourses he delivered to students at awards ceremonies, which were subsequently published. Recognized for his huge talent, Reynolds was considered one of the greatest English painters at his death in 1792.

Technical description Sir Joshua REYNOLDS (Plympton (Devon), 1723 - Londres, 1792) Master Hare H. : 0,77 m. ; L. : 0,64 m. Legs verbal du baron Alphonse de Rothschild, remis au Louvre par ses héritiers, 1905 , 1905 R.F. 1580 Biography (b. 1723, Plympton Earl, d. 1792, London) Biography English portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century. Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of the continental Grand Style. With the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was elected its first president and knighted by King George III. Early life Reynolds attended the Plympton grammar school of which his father, a clergyman, was master.

The young Reynolds became well read in the writings of classical antiquity and throughout his life was to be much interested in literature, counting many of the finest British authors of the 18th century among his closest friends. Reynolds early aspired to become an artist, and in 1740 he was apprenticed for four years in London to Thomas Hudson, a conventional portraitist and the pupil and son-in-law of Jonathan Richardson. In 1743 he returned to Devon and began painting at Plymouth naval portraits that reveal his inexperience. Returning to London for two years in 1744, he began to acquire a knowledge of the old masters and an independent style marked by bold brushwork and the use of impasto, a thick surface texture of paint, such as in his portrait of Captain the Honourable John Hamilton (1746). Back in Devon in 1746, he painted a large group portrait of the Eliot Family (c.

1746/47), which clearly indicates that he had studied the large-scale portrait of the Pembroke Family (1634-35) by the Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck, whose style of portrait painting influenced English portraiture throughout the 18th century. In 1749 Reynolds sailed with his friend Augustus Keppel to Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain. A fall from a horse detained him for five months and permanently scarred his lip - the scar being a prominent feature in his subsequent self-portraits. From Minorca he went to Rome, where he remained for two years, devoting himself to studying the great masterpieces of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture and of Italian painting. The impressions that he retained from this visit were to inspire his paintings and his Discourses for the rest of his life, for he felt that it was by allying painting with scholarship that he could best achieve his ambition of raising the status of his profession back in England.

While returning home via Florence, Bologna, and Venice, he became absorbed by the compositions and colour of the great Renaissance Venetian painters of the 16th century: Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. The Venetian tradition's emphasis on colour and the effect of light and shading had a lasting influence on Reynolds, and, although all his life he preached the need for young artists to study the sculptural definition of form characteristic of Florentine and Roman painters, his own works are redolent of the Venetian style. Later years In 1753 Reynolds settled in London, where he was to live for the rest of his life. His success was assured from the first, and by 1755 he was employing studio assistants to help him execute the numerous portrait commissions he received. The early London portraits have a vigour and naturalness about them that is perhaps best exemplified in a likeness of Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753-54; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).

The pose is not original, being a reversal of the Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-BC Hellenistic statue Reynolds had seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a British naval officer) is shown striding along the seashore introduced a new kind of vigour into the tradition of English portraiture. In these first years in London, Reynolds' knowledge of Venetian painting is very apparent in such works as the portraits of Lord Cathcart (1753/54) and Lord Ludlow (1755). Of his domestic portraits, those of Nelly O'Brien (1760-62) and of Georgiana, Countess Spencer, and Her Daughter (1761) are especially notable for their tender charm and careful observation. After 1760 Reynolds' style became increasingly classical and self-conscious.

As he fell under the influence of the classical Baroque painters of the Bolognese school of the 17th century and the archaeological interest in Greco-Roman antiquity that was sweeping Europe at the time, the pose and clothes of his sitters took on a more rigidly antique pattern, in consequence losing much of the sympathy and understanding of his earlier works. There were no public exhibitions of contemporary artists in London before 1760, when Reynolds helped found the Society of Artists and the first of many successful exhibitions was held. The patronage of George III was sought, and in 1768 the Royal Academy was founded. Although Reynolds' painting had found no favour at court, he was the obvious candidate for the presidency, and the king confirmed his election and knighted him. Reynolds guided the policy of the academy with such skill that the pattern he set has been followed with little variation ever since. The yearly Discourses that he delivered at the academy clearly mirrored many of his own thoughts and aspirations, as well as his own problems of line versus colour and public and private portraiture, and gave advice to those beginning their artistic careers.

From 1769 nearly all of Reynolds' most important works appeared in the academy. In certain exhibitions he included historical pieces, such as Ugolino (1773), which were perhaps his least successful works. Many of his child studies are tender and even amusing, though now and again the sentiment tends to be excessive. Two of the most enchanting are Master Crewe as Henry VIII (1775-76) and Lady Caroline Scott as Winter (1778). His most ambitious portrait commission was the Family of the Duke of Marlborough (1777). In 1781 Reynolds visited Flanders and Holland, where he studied the work of the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. This seems to have affected his own style, for in the manner of Rubens' later works the texture of his picture surface becomes far richer. This is particularly true of his portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter (1786). Reynolds was never a mere society painter or flatterer. It has been suggested that his deafness gave him a clearer insight into the character of his sitters, the lack of one faculty sharpening the use of his eyes.

His vast learning allowed him to vary his poses and style so often that the well-known remark of Thomas Gainsborough, Damn him, how various he is! is entirely understandable. In 1782 Reynolds had a paralytic stroke, and about the same time he was saddened by bickerings within the Royal Academy. Seven years later his eyesight began to fail, and he delivered his last Discourse at the academy in 1790. He died in 1792 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. Personality and criticism Reynolds preferred the company of men of letters to that of his fellow artists and was friends with Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith, among others. He never married, and his house was kept for him by his sister Frances. Reynolds' state portraits of the king and queen were never considered a success, and he seldom painted for them; but the Prince of Wales patronized him extensively, and there were few distinguished families or individuals who did not sit for him. Nonetheless, some of his finest portraits are those of his intimate friends and of fashionable women of questionable reputation.

Unfortunately, Reynolds' technique was not always entirely sound, and many of his paintings have suffered as a result. After his visit to Italy, he tried to produce the effects of Tintoretto and Titian by using transparent glazes over a monochrome underpainting, but the pigment he used for his flesh tones was not permanent and even in his lifetime began to fade, causing the overpale faces of many surviving portraits. In the 1760s Reynolds began to use more extensively bitumen or coal substances added to pigments. This practice proved to be detrimental to the paint surface. Though a keen collector of old-master drawings, Reynolds himself was never a draftsman, and indeed few of his drawings have any merit whatsoever. Reynolds' Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1769-91) is among the most important art criticism of the time. In it he outlined the essence of grandeur in art and suggested the means of achieving it through rigorous academic training and study of the old masters of art.

Question: In 1768, Joshua Reynolds became the first president of what British institution?
Answer: Royal Academy