Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-1792)
Angelica Kauffman RA (Chur 1741 – Rome 1807)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1767 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1270 x 1016 mm (50 x 40 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon (Accredited Museum)
On show at
Staircase Hall, Saltram House, Saltram, Devon, South West, National Trust
NT 872180
Caption
In this portrait of her great friend, Angelica Kauffman presents Sir Joshua Reynolds as a man of style and culture. He wears Van Dyck costume which was fashionable during the reign of George III. He sits beside a table strewn with papers and philosophical volumes, behind which is a bust of Michelangelo, an artist revered by Reynolds.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-1792) by Angelica Kauffman RA (Chur 1741 – Rome 1807), signed and dated, top right: Angelica Kauffmann Pinx: / 176[7?]. He is seated three-quarter length facing, his head resting on his right hand. He is wearing 17th-century 'Van Dyck' dress. Books, with whom all three authors Reynolds was friends - Johnson's periodical The Idler, Burke's Sublime and the Beautiful and Goldsmith's The Traveller (1764) - are on a table on the left next to an engraving of an ancient sculpture. A bust of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra which Reynolds painted in his Self-Portrait of 1780 (Royal Academy, London) is behind.
Provenance
Accepted by HM Treasury in part payment of death-duties from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker, 4th Earl of Morley (1877-1951) and transferred to the National Trust in 1957
Marks and inscriptions
Recto: Signed and dated, top right: Angelica Kauffmann Pinx: / 176[7?] Recto: Inscribed, top left: Sr J.Reynolds - in gold paint
Makers and roles
Angelica Kauffman RA (Chur 1741 – Rome 1807), artist