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Sir Joshua Reynolds
British
1723-1792
Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations
Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life.
Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France.
Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club.
With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds.
Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | Elizabeth Drax, Countess of Berkeley | Portrait of Sir Banastre Tarleton | Castro Urso | Self-Portrait | garrick between tragedy and comedy | Related Artists: Jean BarbaultFrench Painter, 1718-1762, French painter and engraver. A pupil in Paris of Jean Restout II, in 1745 he failed to win the Prix de Rome and at his own expense went to Rome early in 1747. The following year, by which time he was a member of the circle of Paolo Anesi, Philothee-Francois Duflos, Jean-Laurent Legeay and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Barbault made engravings for the Varie vedute di Roma antica e moderna published in Rome. As a painter he was encouraged by Jean-Francois de Troy, director of the Academie de France, who commissioned from him 20 small pictures representing characters from the Turkish masquerade organized by the pensionnaires for the carnival of 1748, of which 11 survive (Beauvais, Mus. Dept. Oise; Narbonne, Mus. A. & Hist.; Paris, Louvre (see fig.); Venice, Col. Cini; and elsewhere). When, by special favour, he became a pensionnaire at the Acad?mie (1749-53), he made a copy (Lille, Mus. B.-A., destr. 1916) for Louis XIV of Luca Penni's fresco the Baptism of Constantine in the Vatican Stanze (it was then attributed to Raphael). While travelling in Rome, Abel-Fran?ois Poisson de Vandieres, Marquis de Marigny, commissioned a series of Italian Costumes, of which some of the originals or replicas remain (Castres, Mus. Goya; Dijon, Mus. B.-A.; Orleans, Mus. B.-A.; Paris, Louvre). In 1751 Barbault depicted the planned procession of the pensionnaires for the carnival in a frieze-like painting (380*3920 mm), the Masquerade of the Four Corners of the World (Besaneon, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.). Many of Barbault's idealized Roman landscapes date from this period (examples Angers, Mus. B.-A.; Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.; Madrid, Mus. Cerralbo; Notre Dame, IN, Snite Mus. A.; and elsewhere), but above all he wanted to be a painter in the grand manner, painting St Francois de Sales Placing Jeanne de Chantal under the Protection of St Vincent de Paul (Rome, SS Giovanni e Paolo) for the beatification of Ste Jeanne de Chantal in 1751. master of st bartholomewactive in Cologne ca 1480/1510 Karel Slabbaertpainted A toebackje still lifein 1641
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