Henry, 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour (Dayton Art Institute): a portrait of a Catholic peer.

Anne Dashwood, later Countess of Galloway (Metropolitan Museum of Art): a female portrait, at the Met.

Augustus Keppel, Viscount Keppel (National Portrait Gallery): another portrait of Reynolds's friend and first great patron.

David Steuart Erskine, Lord Cardross (Wardlaw Museum, St Andrews): another portrait of the antiquary, later Earl of Buchan.

Count William of Schaumburg-Lippe (Royal Collection): a portrait of the German general who commanded in Portugal in the Seven Years' War.

George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney (National Trust): a portrait of the diplomat who led the first British embassy to China in 1793; a figure of the empire's reach into Asia.

George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax (Art Gallery of Nova Scotia): a portrait of the president of the Board of Trade, 'the father of the colonies', for whom Halifax was named.

James Paine, Architect, and his Son (Ashmolean Museum): a double portrait of the Palladian architect and his son.

Lady Diana Beauclerk (Kenwood House): a portrait of the artist and society beauty, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, whose scandalous divorce and remarriage to Topham Beauclerk made her notorious; at Kenwood.

Lady Mary Leslie (Kenwood House): a female portrait in the Iveagh Bequest.

Lady Sondes (Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid): a female portrait; a Reynolds in Spain.

Mary Lloyd, Countess of Rothes (Gunby Hall, National Trust): a female portrait.

The picture

Oil on canvas — National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. A portrait of Susanna Gale, a young woman of the 1760s, seated in a landscape; one of the Reynoldses in the Australian national collections and a specimen of the female portrait of the middle career.

The sitter

Susanna Gale, of a family with West Indian plantation connections, is shown as a young woman in the graceful female manner of the mid-1760s — seated, in silk, against a landscape, the pose gracious and the face composed. The picture reached Melbourne with the National Gallery of Victoria's collecting of British portraits, and it stands, with the Lauderdale in Sydney, for the reach of Reynolds's work into the Australian collections.

The manner

A competent and graceful female portrait of the middle career, in the standard manner; its interest is as a specimen and for its place in the Australian national collection.

History

The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; by descent and the market before.

What to look at

The seated pose; the silk; the landscape; the composed face. Then the Melbourne home, one of the furthest-flung of the collections that hold a Reynolds.

Coda

The Miss Susanna Gale is a graceful female portrait of Reynolds's middle career in the National Gallery of Victoria — a specimen of the standard manner, and a marker of the global reach of an œuvre painted for one nation's ruling class.

The sitter and the West Indies

Susanna Gale belonged to a family with West Indian plantation connections — one of the many such families, enriched by the sugar colonies, who appear in Reynolds's books alongside the old aristocracy — and she is shown as a young woman in the graceful female manner of the mid-1760s: seated in silk against a landscape, the pose gracious, the face composed. The picture reached Melbourne with the National Gallery of Victoria's collecting of British portraits, and it stands, with the Lauderdale in Sydney, for the reach of Reynolds's work into the Australian national collections.

The manner

A competent and graceful female portrait of the middle career in the standard manner — the seated pose, the silk, the landscape, the composed face — its interest is as a specimen of the practice and for its place in the Australian collection. It is one of the furthest-flung of the pictures in this catalogue, a mid-Georgian Englishwoman by the President of the Royal Academy, in a gallery on the far side of the world.

What to look at

The seated pose; the silk; the landscape; the composed face. Then the Melbourne home — one of the furthest-flung of the collections that hold a Reynolds — and the West Indian plantation wealth that, like so much of the age's, stands behind the sitter's family. It was engraved and has descended, through the market, to the Melbourne collection, where it represents, with the Sydney Lauderdale, the reach of the English portrait to the Antipodes.

Coda

The Miss Susanna Gale is a graceful female portrait of Reynolds's middle career, a specimen of the standard manner in the National Gallery of Victoria — and, in this catalogue's chronology, one of the markers of how far an œuvre painted for the drawing-rooms of Georgian Britain has since travelled.

Mrs Susanna Hoare and Child (Wallace Collection): a maternal group of the banking Hoare family, at the Wallace.

The picture

Oil on canvas, 126 × 110 cm — Wallace Collection, London. One of the most beautiful and best-preserved of Reynolds's pictures: the courtesan Nelly O'Brien (d. 1768) seated out of doors in full sunlight, a straw hat shading her face so that the light is reflected up into it, a little dog in her lap, her striped dress and shawl painted with unusual richness. A portrait of a woman of the town given the tenderness and the care of a masterpiece.

The light

The picture's fame is its lighting: the sitter sits in the open sun with a broad hat, so that her face is in a soft reflected light while the world around is bright — a problem of illumination Reynolds solved with a subtlety that anticipates the plein-air painting of a century later, and that keeps its freshness because he painted it, for once, in stable colours that have not faded. The striped dress, the lace, the dog and the dappled ground are among his most sensuous passages.

The sitter

Nelly O'Brien was a well-known courtesan, the mistress of Viscount Bolingbroke among others; Reynolds painted her several times and evidently with pleasure, and the sitters' books record the sittings. That a woman of her profession should be given a picture of this quality is the essay's point about the class-blindness of the manner: the courtesan is painted as tenderly as any duchess, and the picture outlasts the scandal.

History

By descent and the market; Sir Richard Wallace; the Wallace Collection since 1897, where it is among the most admired of its Reynoldses.

What to look at

The reflected light in the shaded face; the striped dress; the little dog; the dappled ground. Then note the colour, which has not faded — a rare and instructive survival.

The best-preserved Reynolds

The Nelly O'Brien is one of the pictures conservators point to when they want to show what Reynolds looked like before the fugitive colours went: painted, for once, in stable pigments, it keeps the freshness of its flesh, its striped silk and its dappled light, and it is the measure of how much the faded pictures have lost. The lighting problem it solves — a face in reflected light under a hat, in full sun — is one the Impressionists would make a programme of a century later, and Reynolds's solution, arrived at empirically, is among the subtlest things in eighteenth-century painting.

The sitter and the manner

That the picture is of a courtesan, painted with this care, is the essay's argument in one canvas: Reynolds's single manner served the woman of the town as tenderly as the peeress, and the picture outlives the sitter's notoriety. The Wallace Collection, which cannot lend, keeps it as one of its finest English pictures. The dog, the striped silk and the dappled ground reward the close look as much as the famous face; the picture is a lesson in what Reynolds could do when he painted plainly and let the light, not the allusion, carry the meaning.

Reception

The Nelly O'Brien has been, since it entered the Wallace Collection, among the most admired and reproduced of Reynolds's female portraits, and the one most often cited as proof that the painter of the Grand Manner could also be a painter of pure observation. Its preservation makes it doubly valuable — a picture that shows both what Reynolds could do and what the faded pictures have lost — and its subject, a courtesan given the care of a masterpiece, is the standing rebuke to the notion that his manner served only rank.

Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York (National Galleries Scotland): a portrait of the archbishop.

Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York (Saint Louis Art Museum): another version of the archbishop's portrait.

Self-portrait (The Box, Plymouth): a self-portrait at Plymouth.

Sir Charles Pratt, later Lord Camden (Guildhall Art Gallery): a portrait of the great Whig lawyer and Lord Chancellor, the champion of liberty in the Wilkes case.

The Hon. Mary Vernon, Mrs Anson (National Trust): a female portrait.

Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland (Kensington Central Library): another portrait of the politician.

Kitty Fisher as Danaë (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin): the courtesan Kitty Fisher as Danaë receiving the golden shower — another of Reynolds's fancy portraits of the famous beauty in a mythological role; a Berlin Reynolds.

William, Duke of Cumberland (Royal Collection): a portrait of the victor of Culloden.

Admiral Sir Charles Saunders (Royal Museums Greenwich): another portrait of the admiral of Quebec.

Admiral Sir Robert Kingsmill (Tate/National Gallery): a naval portrait.

Edward, Duke of York (Royal Collection): another portrait of George III's brother.

George III (Brighton Museum): a version of the King's portrait.

John Julius Angerstein (Saint Louis Art Museum): a portrait of the merchant and collector whose pictures, bought by the nation in 1824, founded the National Gallery; a portrait of the man behind the collection.

John Smith, Master of Caius (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge): an academic portrait.

George III (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen): a portrait of the King; a Reynolds in Denmark.

Lady Elizabeth Harcourt, Lady Lee (National Trust): a female portrait.

Miss Beatrix Lister (National Gallery of Art, Washington): a female portrait.

Theodosia Magill, later Countess of Clanwilliam (Ulster Museum): a female portrait, in Belfast.

Nelly O'Brien (Hunterian, Glasgow): another portrait of the courtesan (see the Wallace prime).

James Bourdieu (Museo del Prado, Madrid): a portrait of a London merchant-banker; the Prado's Reynolds.

The picture

Oil on canvas — Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. A full-length of John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore (1730–1809), in Highland dress — kilt, plaid, bonnet and broadsword — the Scottish peer who would be the last royal governor of Virginia and the author of Dunmore's Proclamation of 1775, offering freedom to slaves who joined the British. One of Reynolds's grandest portraits in tartan.

Highland dress

The full-length in Highland dress was a statement in 1765, twenty years after Culloden and the proscription of the tartan: to paint a Scottish earl in the kilt and plaid, with the broadsword and the dirk, in the Grand Manner, was to assert the rehabilitation of the loyal Highland aristocracy into the British establishment. Reynolds painted several such portraits; the Dunmore is among the most splendid, the tartan and the weapons rendered with relish against a Highland landscape.

History

By descent; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where it is among the great Reynolds full-lengths of the Scottish nobility.

What to look at

The tartan and the plaid; the broadsword and dirk; the bonnet; the landscape. Then the sitter's American future, which the picture does not know.

Highland dress and the establishment

The full-length in tartan was a political picture in the 1760s. After the Jacobite rising of 1745 and the Act of Proscription that banned Highland dress, to paint a Scottish earl in the kilt, plaid and broadsword — in the Grand Manner, against a Highland landscape — was to assert the loyal Highland aristocracy's rehabilitation into the British state, a process the raising of the Highland regiments for the Seven Years' War had advanced. Reynolds's tartan portraits are among his most splendid in colour, and the Dunmore is a prime example, the weave of the plaid and the glint of the weapons rendered with relish.

The sitter's America

Dunmore became the last royal governor of Virginia, and in November 1775 issued the proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people and indentured servants who would join the British — a measure of desperation that enraged the planters and drew thousands to the British lines. The Edinburgh portrait, painted a decade before, shows the confident Highland peer before that American history overtook him. The tartan full-length is among the most colourful pictures in the œuvre, and the Dunmore a prime example of Reynolds's relish for the weave and the weaponry; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery hangs it as one of the great images of the rehabilitated Highland aristocracy.

The colour

The tartan portraits are among Reynolds's boldest exercises in colour and pattern — the plaid's weave, the red of the kilt, the glint of the dirk and broadsword against the muted Highland ground — and they show a side of the painter the sober English portraits conceal. The Dunmore is a full-length of unusual splendour, and it is also a political document: the loyal Scottish peer, in the once-banned dress, absorbed into the British establishment that would send him to govern Virginia. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery hangs it among its grandest full-lengths; the tartan, the weapons and the Highland ground make it one of the most immediately memorable pictures in the whole catalogue.

Richard Croftes of West Harling (private collection): a Norfolk gentleman.

Thomas Bowlby (Indianapolis Museum of Art): a male portrait.

The picture

Oil on canvas — Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. A male portrait of the 1760s, identified by tradition, uncertainly, as Robert Pigott of Chetwynd; one of the Reynoldses in the Swedish national collection, and a specimen of the male portrait of the middle career.

The sitter

The identification as Robert Pigott — a Shropshire gentleman — is traditional and not secure; the picture is a characteristic male three-quarter-length of the 1760s, the sitter turned to the viewer in the confident manner of the period. It reached Stockholm with the Swedish crown's or the Nationalmuseum's collecting of British and Continental pictures, and it stands for the reach of Reynolds's work into the Scandinavian collections.

The manner

A competent male portrait of the middle career, in the standard manner; its interest is as a specimen and for its place in the Swedish national collection rather than as a documented masterpiece.

History

The Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; the sitter's identification is uncertain.

What to look at

The face; the confident manner; the reduced setting. Then the Stockholm home, one of the northern collections that hold a Reynolds.

Coda

The Nationalmuseum's Man, possibly Mr Pigott is a representative male portrait of the 1760s whose sitter is uncertainly identified — a specimen of Reynolds's middle manner in the Swedish national collection.

The Swedish Reynolds

The identification of the sitter as Robert Pigott of Chetwynd is traditional and not secure; what can be said is that the picture is a characteristic male three-quarter-length of the 1760s, the sitter turned to the viewer in the confident manner of the middle career, and that it now hangs in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm — one of the northern collections that hold a Reynolds, and a marker of the reach of the English portrait into Scandinavia. It reached Sweden through the collecting of British and Continental pictures by the crown and the museum.

The manner

A competent male portrait of the 1760s in the standard manner — the light on the face, the setting reduced, the pose confident — its interest is as a specimen of Reynolds's middle practice and for its place in the Swedish national collection rather than as a documented masterpiece. It stands, with the Miss Susanna Gale in Melbourne and the Lady Lothian in Mexico City, for the global dispersal of an œuvre painted for one nation's ruling class.

What to look at

The face; the confident middle-career manner; the reduced setting. Then the Stockholm home — one of the northern collections that hold a Reynolds — and the uncertainty of the traditional identification as Mr Pigott of Chetwynd.

The place in the diaspora

With the Miss Susanna Gale in Melbourne, the Lady Lothian in Mexico City and the Lauderdale in Sydney, the Stockholm picture marks the global dispersal of an œuvre painted for one nation's ruling class — the English portrait, through the market of two centuries, scattered across the world's museums. The Nationalmuseum acquired it as part of its historical holding of European portraiture, and it hangs among the museum's British and Continental pictures of the eighteenth century.

The picture

Oil on canvas — Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts. A portrait of Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst (1717–1797), the conqueror of Canada in the Seven Years' War and later commander-in-chief of the British army — the man for whom the Massachusetts town and college are named. A military portrait of the 1760s, and the reason the picture is in Amherst.

The conqueror of Canada

Amherst took Louisbourg, Ticonderoga and Montreal, completing the British conquest of New France, and was the most successful British general of the war in America; Reynolds painted him in the confident martial manner of the mid-1760s. The picture's presence at Amherst College — the institution named, at a remove, for the sitter — makes it a document of the colonial history the sitters' book records, and of the ambivalence that history now carries (Amherst's name is contested for his conduct toward Native Americans).

History

By descent and the market; the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, where it is the college's namesake portrait.

What to look at

The martial pose; the red coat; the face of the conqueror of Canada. Then the name it gave a college.

The conqueror and the college

Amherst's completion of the conquest of Canada — Louisbourg (1758), Ticonderoga and Crown Point (1759), Montreal (1760) — made him the most successful British commander of the Seven Years' War in America and the man for whom Amherst, Massachusetts, and its college were named. Reynolds painted him in the martial manner of the 1760s, and the picture's arrival at the college that bears his name makes it a document of the colonial history the sitters' book records. That history is now contested — Amherst's proposal to spread smallpox among Native Americans is a stain the college has debated — and the portrait carries the weight of it.

History

By descent and the market; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. It is among the Reynoldses in America that came with the twentieth-century dispersal of the country-house collections, and the one most bound up with the history of its home. The portrait is a plain martial half-length, the confident manner of the mid-1760s; its interest is less the painting than the freight of history it carries — the conquest of Canada, the naming of a town and a college, and the modern reckoning with the sitter's conduct.

The picture and its place

As a painting the Amherst is a competent martial portrait of the mid-1760s, the general in his red coat with the confidence of victory; its distinction is its history and its home. That it hangs at the college named, at a remove, for its sitter makes it a teaching object as much as a work of art — a portrait of empire in an institution that now weighs what empire meant — and it stands, in this catalogue, for the many Reynolds sitters whose fame was made in the wars and the colonies the age was winning. The Mead Art Museum's picture is, for the college, both a founder's-name portrait and a document to be reckoned with, and its inclusion here marks the reach of Reynolds's sitters into the making — and the moral accounting — of empire.