Saylor.org ARTH207: "Sir Joshua Reynolds"

This lecture is entitled Sir Joshua Reynolds, England Embraces the Grand Manor. Now, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who we see right here in a self-portrait dating to 1776, worked primarily as a portrait painter because when he was working towards the end of the 18th century in England, portraiture continued to be the most popular form of painting in England and really the best way to make a living as a painter. You might recall that Gainsborough really carried on this tradition and made a made a distinctly English form of portraiture and Sir Joshua Reynolds carried that forward in a really different way. He did really different things with portraiture, and we're going to take a look at how he did that, but just a real quick contextualization and background of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who's a really interesting character. You might remember, hopefully you remember, that the English had patronized Dutch and Flemish portraitists. So that is the tradition out of which English portraiture grew, and again Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds really declared their own English form of that. Reynolds was really successful so much so that he became president of the Royal Academy. President of Royal Academy, and that's a really big important title, and that happened in 1768. So he is really one of the premier artists working in England, and you can definitely consider him an example of a quintessential English taste in painting. Now unlike a lot of earlier artists, or some early artists, and particularly I'm thinking of Hogarth, who we already looked at, Reynolds wanted English art to kind of follow in the artistic traditions established in places like France and Italy, and you may recall that Hogarth was opposed to that. That's what this kind of subtitle of today's lecture is all about. Sir Joshua Reynolds really sought to elevate English painting to these traditions that he really revered, that the traditions of the Baroque and the classical world of Italy, and basically bringing England into this larger artistic history. Now he traveled to Italy. He was very influenced by what he saw there, ancient art, Renaissance art, Baroque art, and again he wanted to bring England into that artistic tradition, and that is where this term comes in, the Grand Manor, which is simply paintings in a really lofty and elevated style. Lofty, elevated, and these are paintings that artists like Poussin painted, paintings about history and the classical world, very noble, grand themes. This is sort of as opposed to genre scenes, right, still life, scenes of the everyday. That's not what a Grand Manor painting is. It's sort of the opposite of the everyday, the ordinary, and so when this Grand Manor style is applied to portraiture, the goal is, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, I think, succeeded in elevating or seeming to elevate his sitter above the ordinary into a world of grand and abstract ideas. You might get a little hint of this when you take a look at this self-portrait, but I think some of the examples we're going to look at show that even more. So our first example today is this image on the left, and this lady, this beautiful lady here, is the Countess of Harrington. Let's write that down. Countess of Harrington, and this portrait dates to 1779, and this image here is, for the sake of comparison, something we've already looked at. So for now, just focus your attention over here. I think this is a really interesting portrait, and think about portraits we've looked at so far. This is unique. This isn't really like anything we've looked at. So what are we seeing? We see a contemporary woman. Clearly she's a distinct individual, but the way she's set is kind of confusing and strange. It's hard to define really what this space is, where she is, and clearly we have this beautiful landscape behind her, which might remind you of Gainsborough. But there are also interesting classical features included. There's this interesting urn next to her, clearly in a antique style. We have the balustrade behind her, and also notably her dress. What she's wearing is interestingly antique-looking, vaguely antique-looking. It looks sort of like a toga. It doesn't look like a lot of the contemporary dress we've seen in 18th century England. So these are deliberate choices made by Reynolds, and it's very interesting, especially if you can compare this with Hogarth, right? This is Hogarth, the breakfast scene from Marriage a la Mode, which we've already looked at, and hopefully you remember Hogarth's view of the artistic traditions of places like France and Italy, the classical world, and the people who patronize that kind of art. So whereas Hogarth placed his two figures here in the context of all this classical decor as a way of showing their shallowness, their desire to be social climbers, Reynolds is suggesting the opposite about our Countess of Harrington. He is flattering her, whereas Hogarth is mocking the people in his painting. Really the objects here, this urn, these little classical details, are an attempt to elevate her. Hogarth is depicting these people as kind of small and petty, and Reynolds has made his woman, through these same features, kind of timeless and above petty and ordinary things. So very interesting, considering, you know, your perspective, what your viewpoint of objects and ideas does to your paintings. Let's take a look at another example. And again, we're looking at this image on the left. And this is a long title, Captain George K. H. Kussmacher. And it dates to 1782. Now, I think we can see a similar approach to portraiture. We have this dignified person in an interesting landscape setting. And it's showing this captain out for a ride on his horse. He's just, perhaps, just gotten off his horse, and he's resting against a tree in this beautiful landscape setting. But it's really hard, when looking at this painting, not to consider the painting here on the right, which we've looked at, which is Anthony Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I from 1635. And the reason this comes to mind is because, of course, Charles I was English, and Anthony Van Dyck was very popular in England. So the similarities between a sort of gentleman out for a ride, having stepped off his horse, in this quite similar landscape setting, it seems that Reynolds certainly would have known about this painting. And in referencing Van Dyck, he's kind of elevating this captain to this kingly status. But an interesting thing he also does is he's connecting his portrait with the artistic past, with the Baroque period, and kind of not only elevates this man through relationship to an important figure, but through time and history, and this historical reference. So in that way, he has also made this captain here a transcendent figure. So let's take a look at both of these images, kind of side-by-side. So again, here we have our countess, which we looked at before. Here's the captain. And then on the right, we have Gainsborough's Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, which we looked at in a previous subunit. I think it's really interesting to compare these portraits alongside one another, because there's a lot that's very similar, but the end result, I think, is quite different. So I want you to sort of take a second and compare these two. Write down your thoughts. Think of what does it work in these paintings that makes them alike and dissimilar? And just to get you started, I just wanted to remind you, here we have Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, this newly married couple, sitting on their estate, and they're simple people. They're not overly flashy, in a real place. In Reynolds' two portraits, we have real people, but I think there are some significant differences from what I mentioned with Gainsborough's portrait. So I'm not going to say much more, because I want to leave it to you to make some observations and see what you think. So, good luck!