Sir Joshua Reynolds was an English painter who specialised in portraits. John Russell said he was one of the major European painters of the 18th century. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting, which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts and was knighted by George III in 1769.
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
A conversation piece refers to a group portrait in a domestic or landscape setting depicting persons chatting or otherwise socializing with each other. The persons depicted may be members of a family as well as friends, members of a society or hunt, or some other grouping who are shown sharing common activities such as hunts, meals, or musical parties. It was an especially popular genre in 18th-century England, beginning from the 1720s, largely due to the influence of William Hogarth. Similar paintings can also be found in other periods and outside of England. The setting of various figures "conversing" in an intimate setting appears to call for small-scale paintings, but some artists treated this subject manner in the Grand Manner, with almost life-size figures.
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland.
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to specialize in portraits.
Benjamin West, was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as The Death of Nelson, The Death of General Wolfe, the Treaty of Paris, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky.
Catherine Maria Fischer, known as Kitty Fisher, was a prominent British courtesan. From her teenage years onward, Fisher developed a carefully molded public image, which was enhanced by acknowledgement from Sir Joshua Reynolds and other artists. By emphasizing Fisher's beauty, audacity, and charm, portraits of her, along with newspaper and magazine articles promoted her reputation, prompting spectators to view her with awe. She was one of the world's first celebrities who was not famous for being an actress, musician, or member of the royalty, but simply for being famous. Her life exemplifies the emergence of mass media publishing and fame in an era when capitalism, commercialism, global markets, and rising emphasis on public opinion were transforming England.
The Blue Boy is a full-length portrait in oil by Thomas Gainsborough, owned by The Huntington in San Marino, California.
Whistlejacket is an oil-on-canvas painting from about 1762 by the British artist George Stubbs showing the Marquess of Rockingham's racehorse approximately at life-size, rearing up against a plain background. The canvas is large, lacks any other content except some discreet shadows, and Stubbs has paid precise attention to the details of the horse's appearance. It has been described in The Independent as "a paradigm of the flawless beauty of an Arabian thoroughbred". The Fitzwilliam family, heirs of the childless Rockingham, retained the painting until 1997 when funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund allowed the National Gallery, London to acquire it for £11 million.
Grand manner refers to an idealized aesthetic style derived from classicism and the art of the High Renaissance. In the eighteenth century, British artists and connoisseurs used the term to describe paintings that incorporated visual metaphors in order to suggest noble qualities. It was Sir Joshua Reynolds who gave currency to the term through his Discourses on Art, a series of lectures presented at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1790, in which he contended that painters should perceive their subjects through generalization and idealization, rather than by the careful copy of nature. Reynolds never actually uses the phrase, referring instead to the "great style" or "grand style", in reference to history painting:
Arthur Devis was an English artist whose father, Anthony, was progenitor of what became a family dynasty of painters and writers. The place of Arthur Devis in art history is generally as painter of the type of portrait now called a conversation piece. After moving to London and apprenticeship to a Flemish topographical artist there, he switched to portraiture and acquired a considerable reputation, although this success did not last. Unable to adapt to later fashionable artistic currents, his commissions declined and his work was largely forgotten after his death until the 20th century revival of interest in the conversation piece.
Fancy pictures are a sub-genre of genre paintings in 18th-century English art, featuring scenes of everyday life but with an imaginative or storytelling element, usually sentimental. The usage of the term varied, and there was often an overlap with the conversation piece, a type of group portrait showing the subjects engaged in some activity.
Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children (1779) is an oil on canvas portrait by Joshua Reynolds. It was given to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1937. The NGA describes the work as a "majestic group portrait".
Mark Louis Hallett is an English art historian specialising in the history of British art. He is the Märit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Scottish art in the eighteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects, in the eighteenth century. This period saw development of professionalisation, with art academies were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Art was increasingly influenced by Neoclassicism, the Enlightenment and towards the end of the century by Romanticism, with Italy becoming a major centre of Scottish art.
Mary Palmer was a British author from Devon who wrote Devonshire Dialogue, once considered the "best piece of literature in the vernacular of Devon." She was the mother of painter Theophila Gwatkin and sister of the artists Sir Joshua Reynolds and Frances Reynolds and of the pamphleteer Elizabeth Johnson.
Portrait of Mai (Omai) (also known as Portrait of Omai, Omai of the Friendly Isles or simply Omai) is an oil-on-canvas portrait of Omai, a Polynesian visitor to England, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, completed about 1776.
The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton; a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.
Captain Robert Orme was a British Army officer who took part in the Battle of the Monongahela on 9 July 1755 at the beginning of the French and Indian War, during which he was injured. He served with the young George Washington, with whom he became friends, and soon after his return to England in 1755 was painted by Joshua Reynolds.
David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy is a 1761 painting by the English painter Joshua Reynolds, depicting the actor and playwright David Garrick caught between the Muses of Tragedy and Comedy. It is regarded as one of Reynolds's most studied and well-known paintings, and is now in the collection of Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire.
