Thomas gainsborough portraits

Still in print today, and widely translated, his groundbreaking Discourses in Art were hugely influential on the development of British art. The son of a Devonshire reverend and schoolmaster, Reynolds received a comprehensive education before being apprenticed to the portrait painter Thomas Hudson aged In , he was invited to join the HMS Centurion on a voyage to the Mediterranean; Reynolds disembarked in Rome and stayed there for two years, studying the Old Masters.

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While in Rome he suffered from a bad cold which left him partially deaf so that he often carried an ear trumpet round with him, and was often depicted carrying the trumpet. Soon after his return, Reynolds set up a studio in London and quickly established himself as a sought-after portrait painter, making important aristocratic connections in the process.

His circle of friends included 18th-century notables such as the writer Dr Samuel Johnson, actor and playwright David Garrick and statesman Edmund Burke. He painted memorable portraits of all of them. Between and , Reynolds set out his theories on art in a series of fifteen lectures in the Royal Academy Schools, published as Discourses on Art.

Reynolds positioned paintings of epic, historic scenes as the highest genre of art, despite the fact that high demand for his portraits meant that he rarely painted them himself. Reynolds used his knowledge of the Old Masters to invigorate many of his portraits.

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His full-length portrait of Captain Keppel depicting the naval commander energetically striding forward is actually based on the classical statue of the Apollo Belvedere. Some artists such as Nathanial Hone felt he was too reliant of Old Masters and painted a picture titled The Conjurer in which prints of Old Masters whirl around the conjurer which was a veiled reference to his practice.

His body lay in the Royal Academy before being moved to St. There is a statue by Alfred Drury, installed in and around this statue which still greets visitors to the Royal Academy today. According to an account by the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, Reynolds stated his opposition to the slave-trade at a dinner with friends around