Joshua Reynolds

{"Id":406,"Name":"Joshua Reynolds","Biography":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESir Joshua Reynolds (July 16, 1723\u0026ndash;February 23, 1792)\u003C/strong\u003E was the most important and influential of eighteenth-century English painters, specialising in portraits and promoting the \u0022Grand Style\u0022 in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EReynolds was born in Plympton St Maurice, Devon, on 16 July 1723, and apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=1973\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EThomas Hudson\u003C/a\u003E [1701-1779], with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, mainly in Rome, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the \u0022Grand Style\u0022. From 1753 on, he lived and worked in London. He became a close friend of Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=2368\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EAngelica Kauffmann\u003C/a\u003E [1741-1807]. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts: he encouraged that society\u0027s interest in contemporary art and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy as a spin-out organisation.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EWith his rival \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=189\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EThomas Gainsborough\u003C/a\u003E [1727-1788], he was the dominant English portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. Reynolds painted in more of an idealized fashion than his rival. Reynolds was a brilliant academic. His lectures (\u003Cu\u003EDiscourses\u003C/u\u003E) on art, delivered at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790, are remembered for their sensitivity and perception. In one of these lectures he was of the opinion that \u0022invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory.\u0022 In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, and on 23 February 1792 he died in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He was buried in St. Paul\u0027s Cathedral.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cu\u003ESource:\u003C/u\u003E\u003C/strong\u003E\u003Cli type=\u0022square\u0022\u003EDerived from an entry on \u003Ca href=\u0022http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Reynolds\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003Ethe artist\u003C/a\u003E in the Wikipedia.\u003C/li\u003E\u003Cp\u003E","Awards":null,"HasAlbums":false,"HasPortraits":true,"HasRelationships":true,"HasArticles":false,"HasDepictedPlaces":false,"HasLetters":false,"HasLibraryItems":false,"HasProducts":true,"HasSignatures":false,"HasVideos":false,"HasMapLocations":true,"TotalArtworks":80}