Augustus, 1st Viscount Keppel (Royal Collection): another portrait of Reynolds's friend and patron.

Captain John Gell (Royal Museums Greenwich): a naval portrait.

The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (Hermitage Museum): Reynolds's great history painting for Catherine the Great — the vast, dark, allegorical canvas of the infant demigod (and the young Russian empire) crushing its enemies; the summit of his ambition and one of his most damaged works (see the Princeton version in the article entries).

John Barker (Metropolitan Museum of Art): a male portrait.

John Hunter (Hunterian Museum): another portrait of the surgeon.

Lady Sunderlin (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin): a female portrait; the wife of Edmond Malone's brother, in Berlin.

Macbeth and the Witches (National Trust): a Shakespearean history subject, painted for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.

Maria Marow Gideon and her Brother William (Barber Institute): a child double portrait.

Elizabeth Falconer, Mrs Stanhope, as Contemplation (private collection): a fancy portrait of a young woman in a pensive role.

Jane, Countess of Harrington, with her Sons (Yale University Art Gallery): a maternal group.

Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick (private collection): a female portrait.

Admiral Sir Edward Hughes (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest): another portrait of the admiral; a Reynolds in Hungary.

The Hon. Anne Bingham (Althorp): a portrait of a daughter of Earl Spencer.

Robinetta (Tate/National Gallery): the prime of the fancy picture of a girl with a robin.

Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Banker (National Galleries Scotland): a portrait of the Edinburgh banker and memoirist.

Thomas, Lord Erskine (Royal Collection): a portrait of the great advocate and Lord Chancellor.

Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes (Royal Museums Greenwich): a naval portrait of the commander in the East Indies.

The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (Dulwich Picture Gallery): a version of Reynolds's Shakespearean history subject (from Henry VI) for Boydell.

George James Cholmondeley (National Trust): a male portrait.

The Hon. William Windham (National Portrait Gallery): another portrait of the statesman.

The Hon. William Windham (National Portrait Gallery): a portrait of the statesman and member of the Club, Johnson's friend.

John Bligh, Viscount Clifton (Eton College): a portrait; at Eton.

Lady Elizabeth Foster (Chatsworth House): a portrait of the intimate of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who became the Duke's second wife; at Chatsworth.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 153 × 148 cm — Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Charlotte Delaval, Lady Smith, seated with her three children — George Henry, Louisa and Charlotte — arranged around her in an affectionate group against a landscape. A maternal group of the late 1780s and one of the Met's Reynoldses.

The maternal group

The picture is a characteristic Reynolds family group — the seated mother, the children clustered and clinging, the landscape setting — in the tender, informal, Rousseauian mode the age prized. The three children are arranged in the intertwined grouping Reynolds favoured, each caught in a characteristic movement, and the whole is a study of maternal affection raised, by composition, above the merely domestic. It belongs with the Lady Cockburn and the Lady Elizabeth Delmé as one of the maternal groups that are among the surest achievements of the later years.

The manner

By 1787 Reynolds was near the end of his career — the blindness of 1789 was two years off — and the late groups have a warmth and a breadth that the earlier, tighter pictures lack; the Lady Smith is a good example, its handling free, its mood tender. The Met's picture is one of several Reynolds maternal groups in American collections, reflecting the taste that carried the English portrait across the Atlantic.

History

By descent and the market; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

What to look at

The mother and three children; the intertwined grouping; the landscape; the tender mood. Then the late freedom of the handling, near the end of the career.

Coda

Lady Smith and her Children is a late maternal group in Reynolds's warmest manner — a mother and three children in the tender, informal mode the age loved — and one of the pictures by which the American collections hold the English family portrait.

The late maternal group

By 1787 Reynolds was two years from the blindness that ended his career, and the late family groups — the Lady Smith, the Braddyll Family, the Lady Cockburn before them — have a warmth and a breadth of handling that the tighter earlier pictures lack. Lady Smith is shown seated with her three children arranged around her in the intertwined, affectionate grouping Reynolds favoured, each caught in a characteristic movement, against a landscape; the whole is a study of maternal affection in the informal, natural, Rousseauian mode the age prized, raised by composition above the merely domestic.

The manner and the market

The picture belongs with the other maternal groups as one of the surest achievements of the later years, and its presence in the Metropolitan Museum reflects the taste that carried the English family portrait across the Atlantic in the Gilded Age and after. The three children — George Henry, Louisa and Charlotte — are painted with the tenderness and the design Reynolds gave the young, and the free, warm handling of the late manner gives the group its mood.

What to look at

The seated mother and the three clustered children; the intertwined grouping; the landscape; the free, warm handling of the late manner. Then the tenderness, near the end of the career, that the late family groups command.

Major General George Catchmaid Morgan (National Museum Cardiff): a military portrait.

Master Philip Yorke (Kenwood House): a child portrait; in the Iveagh Bequest.

Patrick Home (National Galleries Scotland): a male portrait.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 142 × 113.5 cm — National Gallery, London. General George Augustus Eliott, Lord Heathfield (1717–1790), the defender of Gibraltar through the great siege of 1779–83, stands before the smoke and cannon of the Rock, gripping in both hands the huge key of the fortress on its chain, his face weathered and resolute. One of Reynolds's greatest and most concentrated military portraits, a monument to the most celebrated British feat of arms of the American war.

The key of Gibraltar

Heathfield held Gibraltar for the British through a three-year siege by the combined forces of France and Spain — the longest siege in British history and, at a moment of defeat in America, its one great victory — and Reynolds painted him gripping the key of the fortress, the emblem of the trust he had kept, against the smoke of the guns and the Rock behind. The picture concentrates everything into the weathered face and the gripping hands: no allegory, no borrowed pose, only an old soldier, the key, and the smoke — the Grand Manner reduced to its essence, the man and his deed. It is among the most powerful character studies in the œuvre.

The manner and the condition

The picture is unusually direct — the sitter close, the setting reduced to smoke and rock, the whole force in the face and hands — and it shows Reynolds, near the end, at his most concentrated. It has suffered somewhat from the bituminous darks of the smoke, but the face and the key are intact, and it remains one of the National Gallery's most admired Reynoldses.

History

Painted 1787; by descent and the market; the National Gallery, London, since 1824 (one of the founding pictures of the collection).

What to look at

The gripping hands and the great key; the weathered resolute face; the smoke and the Rock. Then the concentration — the Grand Manner reduced to a man and his deed.

Coda

Lord Heathfield is Reynolds's military portrait at its most concentrated — an old soldier gripping the key of the fortress he held through the age's longest siege, against the smoke of the guns — the grand style reduced to its essence: a man, his deed, and his resolve. It is a monument to Gibraltar and one of the National Gallery's foundations.

Gibraltar and the key

Heathfield held Gibraltar for Britain through the Great Siege of 1779–83 — three and a half years against the combined might of France and Spain, the longest siege in British history and, at a moment of catastrophe in America, the war's one unambiguous triumph. Reynolds painted him gripping in both hands the great key of the fortress on its chain, the emblem of the trust he had kept, against the smoke of his own guns and the Rock behind; the whole force of the picture is concentrated in the weathered, resolute face and the gripping hands. There is no allegory and no borrowed pose — only an old soldier, the key, and the smoke.

The concentration

The Heathfield is the Grand Manner reduced to its essence: not the sitter raised by allusion to a god or a hero, but the man and his deed made monumental by sheer concentration — the close view, the reduced setting, the force in the face. It is among the most powerful character studies in the œuvre and one of the National Gallery's foundation pictures (acquired 1824). The bituminous smoke has darkened, but the face and the key are intact, and the picture remains a monument to the age's proudest feat of arms.

Miss Anna Ward with her Dog (Kimbell Art Museum): a child-and-dog portrait, at the Kimbell.

The Widow Mrs Seaforth and her Child (Lady Lever Art Gallery): a maternal group.

Selina, Lady Skipwith (The Frick Collection): a female portrait, at the Frick.

The picture

Oil on canvas — Princeton University Art Museum. A version or study related to Reynolds's great history painting The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (the vast finished canvas is in the Hermitage), painted for Catherine the Great of Russia as an allegory of the infant Russian empire crushing its enemies. The Princeton picture is one of the works around that ambitious and troubled commission.

The commission

Catherine the Great, through her agents, commissioned from Reynolds a history painting on a subject of his own choosing, and Reynolds — seizing the chance to practise the highest genre for the greatest patron in Europe — chose the infant Hercules strangling the serpents sent by Juno, an allegory readily applied to the young, embattled, triumphant Russian empire. The finished canvas (Hermitage) is enormous, dark, crowded, and much damaged by the bitumen Reynolds used; it was admired by Catherine and has been unloved since. The Princeton picture belongs to the working-out of the composition.

The late history painter

The Infant Hercules is the grandest of Reynolds's attempts at the history painting his Discourses exalted, and its qualified failure — the darkness, the cracking, the inertness beneath the ambition — is the essay's thesis in its largest form: Reynolds's genius was for the face raised toward history, not for history itself. The Princeton version is a document of that great, flawed effort.

History

Related to the Hermitage commission of 1785–89; the Princeton University Art Museum.

What to look at

The infant Hercules and the serpents; the dark grand manner; the ambition. Then the Hermitage's vast finished canvas, and the gap between the reach and the grasp.

Coda

The Infant Hercules is Reynolds's largest bid for the history painting he preached — an imperial allegory for Catherine the Great — and the Princeton picture is a witness to that ambitious, bitumen-darkened, half-failed effort, the measure of where his genius did not lie.

The commission for Catherine

The Infant Hercules was Reynolds's great bid to practise, for the greatest patron in Europe, the history painting his Discourses exalted: Catherine the Great commissioned a history piece on a subject of the painter's choosing, and Reynolds chose the infant Hercules strangling the serpents Juno sent against him — a subject readily read as an allegory of the young, embattled, triumphant Russian empire. The vast finished canvas (Hermitage) is dark, crowded, ambitious, and much damaged by the bitumen Reynolds used; Catherine admired it, and it has been little loved since. The Princeton picture is a work around that commission.

The late history painter

With the Ugolino, the Death of Dido and the New College window, the Infant Hercules is the fullest evidence of the ambition the Discourses set and the practice could not meet: Reynolds's genius was for the face raised toward history, not for history itself, and the great imperial allegory, for all its scale and learning, lacks the life the portraits command. The Princeton canvas is a document of that ambitious, half-failed effort — the President reaching, at the greatest scale and for the greatest patron, for the genre he preached and could not master.

William Hunter (Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow): another portrait of the anatomist.

Admiral Sir Edward Hughes (Colchester and Ipswich Museums): another portrait of the admiral.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 127.5 × 101 cm — State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. A fancy picture: Venus, nude to the waist, smiles as her son Cupid unties the zone — the girdle — at her waist, in a warm, sensuous composition of two figures against a dark ground. One of Reynolds's most admired fancy pictures and, with the Age of Innocence, the highest-profile of the subject-pictures on Wikidata; it went, like the Infant Hercules, to Russia.

Venus and Cupid

The subject — Cupid loosening Venus's girdle, the cestus whose power was to make its wearer irresistible — is a light mythological conceit in the manner of the fancy picture, an excuse for a sensuous study of a beautiful woman and a child. The model for Venus is said to have been a well-known beauty of the town; the picture belongs to the erotic-pastoral strand of the fancy pictures (with the Thaïs, the Bacchante, the Nymph and Cupid known as The Snake in the Grass), and it is among the warmest in colour and the most frankly sensuous.

The manner and the fading

The fancy pictures gave Reynolds his freest, most painterly manner — the warm flesh, the soft light, the dark ground — and the Cupid Untying the Zone is a fine example; but, like so many, it was painted with the fugitive media that have cost the œuvre its colour, and its condition is a caution. It went to Russia in the great migration of English pictures to the imperial collections, and it hangs in the Hermitage among the Reynoldses (the Infant Hercules, the Anna Pitt as Hebe) that the Russian court and nobility acquired.

History

By descent and the market; the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

What to look at

Venus's smile; Cupid at the girdle; the warm flesh; the dark ground. Then the sensuous freedom of the fancy-picture manner, and the fading that has dimmed it.

Coda

Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus is Reynolds's fancy picture at its most sensuous — a warm, painterly mythological conceit of Venus and her son — and one of the English pictures that migrated to the Russian imperial collection, where it hangs among the Hermitage's Reynoldses.

The fancy picture and the sensuous

The subject — Cupid loosening the cestus, the magic girdle of Venus whose power was to make its wearer irresistible — is a light mythological conceit, an excuse for a warm and frankly sensuous study of a beautiful woman and a child, in the erotic-pastoral strand of the fancy pictures that includes the Thaïs, the several Bacchantes, and the nymph known as The Snake in the Grass. Reynolds treated it in his freest and most painterly manner: the warm flesh, the soft light, the dark ground, the tender rendering of the child at his mother's waist. It is among the most openly voluptuous pictures in an œuvre better known for the grave and the grand, and it shows the side of Reynolds that fed the print trade and the collector's cabinet rather than the sitters' book.

Russia and the migration

Like the Infant Hercules and the Anna Pitt as Hebe, the Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus went to Russia — part of the great migration of English pictures into the imperial and aristocratic collections of the north, and a mark of the European reputation Reynolds's fancy pictures enjoyed. It hangs in the Hermitage among the museum's Reynoldses, and it is one of the highest-profile of the subject-pictures.

The condition

The fancy pictures gave Reynolds his freest manner and, too often, his most reckless technique: painted with the fugitive carmines and the resinous media that have cost the œuvre so much of its colour, the Cupid Untying the Zone has suffered, and its present state is a caution as much as a pleasure. But the invention — the warmth, the softness, the sensuous ease — survives the fading, and the picture remains one of the fullest demonstrations of what Reynolds could do when the subject released him from the likeness into pure painting.

The place in the œuvre

With the Age of Innocence, the Cupid Untying the Zone is the most prominent of the fancy pictures in this catalogue, and the two together show the range of the mode — from the tender and innocent to the warm and voluptuous — that Reynolds developed alongside the portraits and that furnished, through the engraving, the parlours and cabinets of a European public. It is the erotic pole of the fancy picture, as the Infant Samuel and the Age of Innocence are its innocent one.

What to look at

Venus's smile; Cupid's hands at the girdle; the warm flesh against the dark ground; the tender rendering of the child. Then the sensuous freedom of the fancy-picture manner — Reynolds released from the likeness into pure painting — and the fading that has dimmed it. It is the erotic pole of the mode, the Age of Innocence its innocent one, and the two Hermitage and Tate majors together define the range of the fancy picture in this catalogue.

Coda

Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus is Reynolds's fancy picture at its most voluptuous — a warm, painterly mythological conceit that furnished the collector's cabinet and migrated, like the Infant Hercules, to the Russian imperial collection. It is the side of the grave President that the Discourses do not mention: the painter of the sensuous, freed by the subject from the sitter, and, for all the fading, one of the fullest demonstrations of what his brush could do.

The reception

The fancy pictures were, through the mezzotints, among the most widely diffused of Reynolds's inventions, and the sensuous mythologies — the Venuses, the Bacchantes, the nymphs — reached a European public that could never have commissioned a portrait; the Cupid Untying the Zone is a prime example of the strand, and its migration to Russia is a measure of the reputation it enjoyed. Alongside the Age of Innocence, it is the fancy picture most prominent in this catalogue, and the two together — the voluptuous and the innocent — map the full range of the mode Reynolds developed beside the portraits, and by which he furnished, and helped to form, the sentiment of his age.

A last word

The Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus is, finally, the answer to anyone who takes the Discourses for the whole of Reynolds: the theorist who ranked the sensuous Venetians below the Roman designers painted, in his own practice, one of the most frankly sensuous mythologies of the century, and prized it enough to send it to the greatest patron in the north. The hand disagreed with the doctrine, and the picture is the disagreement made visible.

Felina with a Kitten (Detroit Institute of Arts): a fancy picture of a girl with a kitten.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 77 × 63 cm — Musée du Louvre, Paris. A small boy of about two — Francis George Hare — in a white dress, his arm raised, pointing at something out of the picture, his face turned up with the open, delighted expression of a child who has just seen something; a landscape behind. One of the most charming of all Reynolds's child pictures, and the Louvre's principal Reynolds.

The child

Master Hare is the child portrait at its most immediate and least posed: the boy is caught in a spontaneous movement — the raised arm, the pointing hand, the upturned delighted face — that has none of the costume-play of Master Crewe and none of the gravity of Lady Caroline Howard, only the openness of very early childhood. The soft curls, the white dress, the landscape and the tender light make it a picture of pure infancy, and it has been beloved since it was painted; it was engraved (as Infancy) and endlessly reproduced.

The manner

The picture shows Reynolds's gift for the child at its freest — the observation of a spontaneous gesture, the tenderness without sentimentality, the design that never overwhelms the life. That it is in the Louvre, and among the best-loved pictures there, is a measure of the reach of the English child portrait; it was bequeathed by Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild.

History

By descent and the Rothschild collection; bequeathed to the Louvre, where it is the museum's principal Reynolds and one of its best-loved pictures.

What to look at

The raised pointing arm; the upturned delighted face; the soft curls; the tender light. Then the spontaneity — a child caught in the act of seeing — which is the picture's whole charm.

Coda

Master Hare is Reynolds's most immediate child portrait — a two-year-old caught pointing, his face upturned in delight — the child painted not in costume or gravity but in pure infancy, and the Louvre's best-loved English picture.

The child caught in the act

Master Hare is the child portrait at its most spontaneous: where Master Crewe plays dress-up and Lady Caroline Howard is grave, the two-year-old Francis Hare is caught in a pure, unposed movement — the arm flung up, the hand pointing, the face turned up in the open delight of a child who has just seen something wonderful. The soft curls, the white dress, the tender landscape light compose an image of early infancy so immediate that it has been beloved since it was painted; engraved as Infancy, it became one of the most reproduced of all the child pictures.

The Louvre's Reynolds

That the picture is in the Louvre, and among the best-loved pictures there, is a measure of the reach of the English child portrait beyond Britain; it was bequeathed by the Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild. It shows Reynolds's gift for the child at its freest and least sentimental — the observation of a spontaneous gesture, the tenderness held in check by the design — and it is, for many, the most purely charming thing he ever made.

Frederick, Duke of York (Royal Collection): a portrait of George III's second son.

George Brydges, 1st Baron Rodney (Royal Collection): a portrait of the admiral who won the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, saving the West Indies; a great naval sitter.

The picture

Oil on canvas — National Portrait Gallery, London. A portrait of Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837), the Catholic widow whom the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) secretly and illegally married in 1785 — a marriage void under the Royal Marriages Act and the Act of Settlement, but binding in the eyes of the Church and of the Prince. A portrait of the most delicate secret of the reign.

The secret marriage

Mrs Fitzherbert's clandestine marriage to the Prince of Wales was the great open secret of the 1780s: legally void (the heir had married a Catholic without the King's consent), it was nonetheless real, and the Prince's public denial of it in Parliament — arranged to secure the payment of his debts — was one of the shabby episodes of the reign. Reynolds's portrait shows the handsome, dignified woman at the centre of the scandal; it is a document of the private history of the monarchy that the sitters' book, alongside its dukes and admirals, also records.

The manner

A three-quarter-length in the elegant female manner of the late 1780s — the sitter in silk with powdered hair, composed and handsome — without allusion; the interest is the sitter and her secret. The picture belongs to the private history of the reign, the counterpart to the state portraits of the royal family.

History

By descent and the market; the National Portrait Gallery, London.

What to look at

The handsome dignified face; the silk; the powdered hair. Then the secret — the void but binding marriage to the future king — that the composed face conceals.

Coda

The Maria Fitzherbert is Reynolds's portrait of the reign's most delicate secret — the Catholic widow secretly and illegally married to the Prince of Wales — a composed and handsome image that conceals the scandal at the heart of the monarchy's private history.

The secret marriage

Mrs Fitzherbert's clandestine marriage to the Prince of Wales in December 1785 was the great open secret of the age: a twice-widowed Catholic commoner, six years the Prince's senior, she was married to the heir to the throne in a ceremony that was void under both the Royal Marriages Act (no royal consent) and the Act of Settlement (a Catholic), but binding in the eyes of the Church and of the Prince, who regarded her as his true wife to the end of his life. The Prince's public denial of the marriage in Parliament in 1787, arranged to secure the payment of his debts, was one of the shabbiest episodes of the reign.

The portrait and the private history

Reynolds's portrait shows the handsome, composed woman at the centre of this scandal — a three-quarter-length in the elegant female manner, without allusion, the interest wholly in the sitter and her secret. It belongs to the private history of the monarchy that the sitters' book records alongside its dukes and admirals and generals, and it is the counterpart, in that private history, to the state portraits of the royal family: the woman the future king considered his wife, and could not acknowledge.