Elizabeth, Lady Taylor (The Frick Collection): a female portrait, at the Frick.

George, 2nd Earl Harcourt, his Wife and Brother (Ashmolean Museum): a family group of the Harcourts.

Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire (Chatsworth House): a portrait of the celebrated Whig duchess, at the Cavendish seat.

John Parker, later 1st Earl of Morley, and his Sister (National Trust): a child double portrait of the Saltram Parkers.

Lady Elizabeth Compton (National Gallery of Art, Washington): a portrait of a young noblewoman; a Mellon Reynolds.

Master Bunbury (Philadelphia Museum of Art): a child portrait of a son of Henry Bunbury the caricaturist and Lady Sarah's sister.

The picture

Oil on canvas — Royal Academy of Arts, London. A portrait of the architect Sir William Chambers (1723–1796), the designer of Somerset House and the Treasurer and effective co-founder of the Royal Academy — Reynolds's colleague at the head of the institution, and sometimes his rival within it. One of the portraits of the Academy's founding generation.

The architect

Chambers, the King's architect and the builder of Somerset House (which housed the Academy), was the administrative force behind the Academy's founding and its Treasurer; he and Reynolds, the President, were the institution's two heads, and their relations were not always smooth — Chambers had the King's ear, and the tension surfaced in the quarrels of 1790. Reynolds's portrait of his colleague is a document of the Academy's founding partnership, the President painting the Treasurer who built the house they shared.

The manner

A dignified portrait in the manner Reynolds reserved for men of standing and colleagues; the sitter is shown as the architect and administrator he was. It hangs at the Royal Academy with the other founders' portraits, the record of the generation that made the institution.

History

Painted c. 1780; the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

What to look at

The architect's face; the dignity; the manner of a colleague. Then Somerset House, which Chambers built and which housed the Academy Reynolds led.

Coda

The Sir William Chambers is Reynolds's portrait of his co-founder and colleague — the architect of Somerset House and the Treasurer of the Academy — a document of the founding partnership at the head of the institution the two men made together, not always in harmony.

The co-founder

Sir William Chambers was the administrative force behind the Royal Academy — its Treasurer and, as the King's architect and confidant, effectively its co-founder — and the designer of Somerset House, the great public building into whose new rooms the Academy moved and which housed its exhibitions. He and Reynolds, the President, were the two heads of the institution, and their relations were correct rather than warm: Chambers had the ear of the King, and the rivalry surfaced in the quarrels of 1790 that briefly drove Reynolds to resign. The portrait is the President's record of his colleague, the man who built the house they shared.

The manner

A dignified portrait in the manner Reynolds reserved for men of standing and for colleagues — the architect shown as the administrator and man of taste he was, without the Grand Manner's apparatus. It hangs at the Royal Academy with the other portraits of the founding generation, the record of the men who made the institution that gave English art its academy, its exhibition and its authority; the President painting the Treasurer is a document of that founding, not always harmonious, partnership.

What to look at

The architect's face; the dignity of the pose; the manner Reynolds reserved for colleagues. Then Somerset House, the great public building Chambers designed and into which the Academy moved — the house the Treasurer built and the President led.

The picture

Oil on panel, 127 × 101 cm — Royal Academy of Arts, London. Reynolds's own presentation self-portrait, painted about 1780 for the Royal Academy, of which he was President: he stands in the scarlet-and-grey robes of his Oxford doctorate of civil law, one hand holding his spectacles, beside a bust of Michelangelo, his face turned to the viewer in the shadow of his cap. The image of the President as he wished to be seen — the learned man, the theorist, beside the master he preached.

The President and Michelangelo

The self-portrait is a statement of everything Reynolds stood for: the doctoral robes (the honour Oxford gave him, proclaiming painting a learned profession), the bust of Michelangelo (the Grand Manner's sovereign, the name on which he would end his last Discourse), the dignity of the pose. He presents himself not as a face-painter but as a scholar and a theorist, the founder of an academy and the author of a doctrine — the fullest visual statement of the ambition the Discourses argue. The debt to Rembrandt's self-portraits (the shadowed face under the cap, the rich dark colour) is deliberate and characteristic.

The manner

The picture is dark, grand and Rembrandtesque — the face in shadow, the robes rich, the bust looming — and it is among the best-preserved of the self-portraits. It hangs at the Royal Academy, the institution Reynolds made, as the founder's image of himself.

History

Painted c. 1780 for the Royal Academy; the Royal Academy of Arts, London, since.

What to look at

The doctoral robes; the bust of Michelangelo; the spectacles in the hand; the shadowed face. Then the statement — the painter as scholar and theorist, beside the master he could preach but not follow.

Coda

The Royal Academy Self-Portrait is Reynolds's image of himself as he wished posterity to see him — the President in his doctoral robes, beside the bust of Michelangelo, the learned founder of an academy and the author of a doctrine. It is the Discourses in the form of a face.

The President's image

The self-portrait is Reynolds's fullest statement of what he stood for. He shows himself not as a face-painter but as a learned man and a theorist: the scarlet-and-grey robes are those of the Oxford doctorate of civil law conferred on him in 1773, proclaiming painting a liberal profession; the bust beside him is Michelangelo, the sovereign of the Grand Manner and the name on which he would end his last Discourse in 1790; the pose is grave and commanding. It is the visual counterpart of the Discourses — the painter as scholar, the founder of an academy, the author of a doctrine — and it was painted for the Academy he led, as its founder's image of himself.

The Rembrandt manner

The picture is dark, rich and Rembrandtesque — the face shadowed under the cap, the robes glowing, the bust looming out of the gloom — a deliberate homage to the self-portraits of the master Reynolds most admired among the painters of the north and one of whose works he owned. It is among the best-preserved of the self-portraits, and it hangs at the Royal Academy as the founder's presentation of himself to the institution he made: the Discourses in the form of a face, and the ambition of English art embodied in its first President.

Sir William Chambers (Royal Academy of Arts): another portrait of the architect and Academy Treasurer.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 143 × 168 cm — National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. The three daughters of Earl Waldegrave and his wife Maria (Horace Walpole's illegitimate niece) — Laura, Maria and Horatia — grouped at a table, occupied with silk-winding and needlework: one winds silk from a skein held by the second, the third works at a tambour-frame. Commissioned by Horace Walpole for his gallery at Strawberry Hill, it is, with the Montgomery Sisters, the summit of Reynolds's female group portraits, and the one in which the Grand Manner is applied not to a mythological rite but to an ordinary domestic occupation raised, by composition and grace, to the level of the antique frieze.

The three Graces domesticated

Where the Montgomery Sisters danced around the god of marriage, the Waldegrave sisters simply work at their needlework — and the ordinariness is the achievement. Reynolds arranges the three in a frieze-like row, their heads and hands linked by the passing of the silk, so that the domestic task becomes a composition of the Three Graces without a single classical prop; the powdered hair, the white and grey silks, the shared industry make a picture of sisterly harmony that is at once perfectly natural and perfectly designed. Walpole, who commissioned it for Strawberry Hill and doted on the girls, got the picture he wanted: his great-nieces as the Graces, in muslin, at their work.

The composition and the colour

The linked action — the skein, the winding hand, the tambour-frame — gives the three figures a unity of gesture that is the picture's structural triumph; the eye travels from hand to hand along the silk. The colour is restrained and cool — powder, white, silver-grey, a little pink — and the whole is lit with an even, gentle light that keeps the mood domestic. It is the most classical of the groups in feeling and the least classical in furniture, and it is often called the finest.

History

Commissioned by Horace Walpole for Strawberry Hill; by descent and the market; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, since 1952. Engraved and much reproduced.

What to look at

The passing of the silk from hand to hand; the tambour-frame; the three linked heads; the cool silver colour. Then the achievement — three sisters at their needlework, made into the Graces without a single prop.

Coda

The Ladies Waldegrave is the domestic answer to the Montgomery Sisters: the Grand Manner's grace achieved not by myth but by an ordinary shared task, three sisters winding silk raised to the dignity of the antique frieze. It is Reynolds's most perfect female group.

The commission and the house

The picture was Horace Walpole's — he commissioned it for the gallery of Strawberry Hill, his Gothic villa at Twickenham, and it hung there among his antiquarian treasures as the image of the three great-nieces he doted on (their mother Maria was the daughter of Walpole's brother by a milliner). Walpole's letters follow the picture's making and record his delight in it. That the age's greatest connoisseur chose Reynolds, and Reynolds gave him a group of such classical restraint, is a measure of the standing the President had reached by 1780; the picture is at once a private family portrait and a public demonstration of the Grand Manner in its most disciplined form.

The needlework and the meaning

The shared task — the winding of silk — is not merely a pretext for composition; it is the picture's subject. The three sisters, occupied together in a domestic industry, embody the harmony and virtue the age prized in unmarried young women, and Reynolds raises the ordinary occupation, by the frieze-like arrangement and the linking of the hands, to the dignity of a classical relief without a single classical prop. It is the most complete demonstration in the œuvre that the Grand Manner's grace could be found in the everyday, and it is often preferred, for that reason, to the more overtly mythological Montgomery Sisters.

William Frederick, 2nd Duke of Gloucester (Trinity College, Cambridge): a portrait of a nephew of George III.

William Strahan (National Portrait Gallery): a portrait of the printer and MP, Johnson's and Franklin's publisher.

A Fortune-Teller (Kenwood House): a version of the fortune-teller fancy subject, in the Iveagh Bequest.

Charles Burney (National Portrait Gallery): a portrait of the musicologist, author of the General History of Music and father of the novelist Fanny Burney; a member of the Club circle.

Lady Elizabeth Seymour-Conway (Wallace Collection): a child portrait, at the Wallace.

Lady Frances Finch (National Gallery of Victoria): a female portrait, in Melbourne.

Lady Hertford (Temple Newsam): a female portrait.

Mrs Mary Nesbitt (Wallace Collection): a portrait of a society beauty; a Wallace Reynolds.

Portrait of a Gentleman (Musées Nationaux Récupération): a male portrait among the French recovered-art holdings of the Second World War.

Professor Adam Ferguson (National Galleries Scotland): a portrait of the philosopher and historian, a founder of sociology and a figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 229 × 145 cm — National Trust, Waddesdon Manor. A young woman in a white classical robe runs forward with a flaming torch held aloft, against a dark, smoky ground — Thaïs, the Athenian courtesan who, in the legend, incited Alexander the Great to burn the palace of Persepolis. The model was Emily Warren, a celebrated courtesan; the picture is a fancy picture and a history subject at once, and one of Reynolds's most dramatic single figures.

Thaïs and the torch

The subject — Thaïs leading the drunken Alexander and his companions to fire Persepolis, torch in hand — was a byword for the destructive power of a beautiful woman, familiar from Dryden's Alexander's Feast ('Thais led the way, / To light him to his prey, / And, like another Helen, fired another Troy'). Reynolds painted the courtesan Emily Warren in the role, running with the torch, her drapery blown back, the smoke of the burning palace behind — a picture that is at once a portrait of a famous beauty, a history subject, and a fancy picture of the destructive feminine. It caused comment: to paint a known courtesan as Thaïs was a joke the town understood.

The manner

The running figure, the flaming torch, the blown drapery and the dark smoky ground make it one of Reynolds's most dynamic and theatrical single figures — the fancy picture pushed toward history, the beauty pushed toward allegory. The colour is dramatic — the white robe and the orange flame against the dark — and the movement is unusual in an œuvre of standing and seated sitters.

History

Painted 1781; the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor (National Trust). Engraved.

What to look at

The raised torch; the running figure; the blown drapery; the smoke of Persepolis. Then the joke — a real courtesan as the courtesan who fired a palace.

Coda

Thaïs is Reynolds's most theatrical fancy picture: a famous beauty painted as the courtesan who burned Persepolis, running with her torch through the smoke — history, portrait and allegory of the destructive feminine in one dramatic figure.

The courtesan and the role

The model, Emily Warren, was a celebrated courtesan whom Reynolds had known and painted before, and the choice of her for Thaïs — the courtesan who fired Persepolis — was a joke the town understood and relished: a real woman of the town in the role of the archetypal destructive beauty. The picture thus belongs, like the Nelly O'Brien and the Lady Hamilton pictures of Vigée Le Brun a decade later, to the age's frank fascination with the professional beauty as a public figure, given here the dignity and the drama of a history subject.

The manner and the fame

The running figure, the flaming torch and the blown drapery make it one of the most dynamic single figures in the œuvre, and the dark, smoky ground with the orange flame is among Reynolds's most theatrical passages of colour. It was engraved and much reproduced, and it hangs at Waddesdon among the Rothschilds' eighteenth-century French and English pictures as one of the collection's Reynoldses — a fancy picture pushed to the edge of history, and a portrait pushed to the edge of allegory.

The Brummell Children (Kenwood House): a double portrait of the sons of William Brummell (one the future dandy Beau Brummell's brother); in the Iveagh Bequest.

The Infant Academy (Kenwood House): a fancy picture of small children playing at being an academy of art — a charming conceit on Reynolds's own institution; in the Iveagh Bequest.

The Temple Family (National Gallery of Ireland): a family group.

William Fowden (Blackburn Museum): a male portrait.

Admiral Lord Hood (Manchester Art Gallery): a portrait of Samuel, Viscount Hood, the elder of the two admiral brothers and Nelson's mentor.

Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, later 10th Duke of Hamilton (National Galleries Scotland): a portrait of the collector and dandy.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 238 × 145 cm — Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A full-length of George Coussmaker (1759–1801), an officer of the Grenadier Guards, lounging with elegant nonchalance against a tree, his horse's head and neck beside him held by a groom, in a landscape. One of Reynolds's most relaxed and elegant male full-lengths, and the Met's principal Reynolds.

The nonchalant officer

The picture is a study in aristocratic ease: the young Guards officer leans against the tree with crossed legs, one hand on his hip, in a pose of studied relaxation, while his charger — its head and arched neck a superb passage of animal painting — waits beside him. The sitters' book records eleven sittings for the picture (and twenty-one for the horse), an unusual attention that produced one of the most carefully finished of the male full-lengths. The elegance of the pose, the beauty of the horse, and the cool landscape make it a model of the relaxed grand portrait — the officer not at war but at leisure, the image of a class at ease.

The horse

The horse is among the finest Reynolds painted — the arched neck, the intelligent head, the sheen of the coat — and the sitters' book's record of twenty-one sittings for it shows the care he took; the animal is as much the subject as the man. The picture belongs with the Keppel and the Tarleton as evidence of Reynolds's range in the military portrait, from the heroic to the nonchalant.

History

By descent and the market; bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum by Jules Bache in 1949, where it is the museum's principal Reynolds.

What to look at

The crossed-legged lounge; the hand on the hip; the horse's arched neck; the cool landscape. Then the ease — a Guards officer at leisure, the image of a class at rest.

Coda

Captain George Coussmaker is Reynolds's grand portrait in its most relaxed key — an officer lounging with studied nonchalance beside a superbly painted horse — and one of the most elegant male full-lengths in the œuvre, the image of aristocratic ease that the Met holds as its Reynolds.

The sittings and the horse

The sitters' book records eleven sittings for Coussmaker and twenty-one for his horse — an extraordinary attention that reflects both the care Reynolds took over this particular commission and the importance he attached to the animal, whose arched neck and intelligent head are among the finest passages of horse-painting in the œuvre. The result is one of the most carefully finished of the male full-lengths, and one of the most elegant: the officer at leisure rather than at war, lounging against a tree with a studied nonchalance that is the very image of aristocratic ease.

The relaxed grand manner

Where the Keppel and the Tarleton show the military portrait at its most heroic and dynamic, the Coussmaker shows it at its most relaxed — the Grand Manner's scale and dignity put to the service not of action but of ease. The crossed legs, the hand on the hip, the cool landscape, the waiting horse compose a picture of a young Guards officer entirely at his leisure, and it is among the most purely pleasurable of Reynolds's grand portraits. The Met holds it, from the Bache bequest, as its principal Reynolds.

Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Harrington, and a Servant (Yale Center for British Art): a portrait of an officer with a Black servant, of the kind that records the presence of Black attendants in the aristocratic household.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 236 × 145 cm — National Gallery, London. Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833), the cavalry commander of the American war — 'Bloody Ban' to the Americans for the massacre at the Waxhaws — shown crouched, adjusting his sword, amid the smoke and rearing horses of a battle, in the green-and-gold uniform of the British Legion. One of Reynolds's most dynamic and dramatic military portraits, painted when Tarleton returned from America a hero to the British public.

The cavalryman

Tarleton was the most feared British cavalry officer of the American war — brilliant, brutal, and, on his return in 1781, a celebrity and briefly the lover of the actress Mary Robinson (whom Gainsborough painted, in a rival's coup, at the same season). Reynolds shows him in violent action: crouched to adjust his sabre, his horse rearing behind him, cannon-smoke and cavalry in the background, the muscular energy of the man conveyed in a pose of coiled movement rare in the œuvre. The green uniform of his Legion and the dash of the composition make it a portrait of a soldier at the height of his notoriety.

The rivalry

The picture was painted in direct competition with Gainsborough, whose own portrait of Tarleton's mistress Mary Robinson hung near it at the Academy of 1782; the two great rivals painting the two halves of a scandalous liaison in the same exhibition was the season's talk. Reynolds's Tarleton is the more heroic and the more dynamic; it has been called the finest military portrait of the age.

History

By descent and the market; the National Gallery, London, since 1951.

What to look at

The crouch and the sword; the rearing horse; the cannon-smoke; the green uniform. Then the coiled movement, unusual for Reynolds, and the rivalry with Gainsborough that framed it.

Coda

Colonel Tarleton is Reynolds's most dynamic military portrait — the feared cavalryman of the American war caught in coiled action amid smoke and rearing horses — and the centrepiece of the 1782 season's rivalry with Gainsborough over the images of a scandalous pair.

The pose and the energy

The crouching pose — Tarleton bent to adjust his sabre, his weight coiled, the rearing horses and the cannon-smoke around him — gives the picture an energy and a sense of arrested violence that is rare in Reynolds and that suits its subject, the most aggressive cavalry commander of the American war. The green-and-gold uniform of Tarleton's British Legion, the muscular tension of the figure, and the chaos of the battle behind combine into one of the most purely dynamic of all the military portraits, closer to the Baroque battle-piece than to the usual Reynolds full-length.

The rivalry and the reception

The picture's exhibition at the Academy of 1782 alongside Gainsborough's portrait of Tarleton's mistress, the actress Mary Robinson, made it the season's sensation — the two great rivals painting the two halves of a notorious liaison — and it has been admired ever since as one of the finest military portraits in British art. Tarleton's later career (an MP, a general, a defender of the slave trade his Liverpool family had profited by) does not appear in the coiled, heroic young officer Reynolds painted at the height of his American fame.

Cymon and Iphigenia (Royal Collection): a fancy-history subject from Boccaccio (via Dryden) — the boor Cymon gazing on the sleeping Iphigenia; a sensuous reclining nude.

Dr William Hunter (Science Museum): a portrait of the anatomist and obstetrician.

Elizabeth Meyrick, née Keppel (Ashmolean Museum): a female portrait of the Keppel family.

Frances, Countess of Lincoln (Wallace Collection): a female portrait, at the Wallace.

Girl with a Baby (Dulwich Picture Gallery): a fancy picture of a girl holding an infant.

Lady Talbot (Tate/National Gallery): a female portrait.

Lord and Lady Ashburton (Tate/National Gallery): a double portrait.

Mary Robinson ('Perdita') (Waddesdon Manor): a portrait of the actress and royal mistress; at Waddesdon.

Mrs Baldwin in Eastern Dress (Compton Verney): a portrait of Jane Baldwin, who had lived in the Levant, seated cross-legged in Turkish dress; a fashionable turquerie.

Mrs Lydia Gostling (Sudley House, Liverpool): a female portrait.