Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society (Essays in Art and Culture)
by Richard Wendorf
from Harvard University Press
That Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) became the most fashionable painter of his time was not simply due to his artistic gifts or good fortune. The art of pleasing, Richard Wendorf contends, was as much a part of Reynolds's success--in his life and in his work--as the art of painting. The author's examination of Reynolds's life and career illuminates the nature of eighteenth-century English society in relation to the enterprise of portrait-painting. Conceived as an experiment in cultural criticism, written along the fault lines that separate (but also link) art history and literary studies, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society explores the ways in which portrait-painting is embedded in the social fabric of a given culture as well as in the social and professional transaction between the artist and his or her subject. In addition to providing a new view of Reynolds, Wendorf's book develops a thoroughly new way of interpreting portraiture.
Wendorf takes us into Reynolds's studio to show us the artist deploying his considerable social and theatrical skills in staging his sittings as carefully orchestrated performances. The painter's difficult relationship with his sister Frances (also an artist and writer), his complicated maneuvering with patrons, the manner in which he set himself up as an artist and businessman, his highly politicized career as the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts: as each of these aspects of Reynolds's practice comes under Wendorf's scrutiny, a new picture of the painter emerges--more sharply defined and fully fleshed than the Reynolds of past portraits, and clearly delineating his capacity for provoking ambivalence among friends and colleagues, and among viewers and readers today.
Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity
by Martin Postle
from Tate
Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity examines one of England's greatest portrait painters in the social, political, and cultural context of a century that cultivated a very modern notion of fame. This new approach to Reynolds (1723-1792) considers his life and career in terms of a conscious quest for celebrity. Reynolds surrounded himself with the most famous men and women of his time. His portraits served to create, reinforce, and advertise not only his subjects' reputations but also his own. It is, therefore, no surprise that Reynolds made no fewer than 27 self-portraits in which he purposefully perpetuated his well-crafted public image as an artist, an academic, and a knight.
Published to accompany a major Tate exhibition, this book features many of Reynolds's most famous and beautiful portraits. Sections consider the friendships Reynolds cultivated with the famous and infamous figures of his time, among them politicians, courtesans, writers, war heroes, and aristocrats. These flamboyant and influential subjects helped to promote and sustain Reynolds's distinguished career and, ultimately, to secure his enduring popularity with audiences today. AUTHOR BIO: Mark Hallett is reader in history of art at the University of York. Tim Clayton is a former research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. Martin Postle is a Tate curator and an authority on the art of Joshua Reynolds. Stella Tillyard is the internationally acclaimed author of The Aristocrats.
Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds
by Joseph Farington
from Pallas Athene
Sir Joshua Reynolds (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)
by Estelle M. Hurll
from Dodo Press
Estelle May Hurll (1863-1924) was the author of The Madonna in Art (1898), Raphael (1899), Jean François Millet (1900), Michelangelo (1900), Correggio (1901), Child-Life in Art (1901), The Bible Beautiful (1908), Sir Joshua Reynolds, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Tuscan Sculpture of the Fifteenth Century. "The object of this collection of prints is to introduce the student to Raphael through the pictures which appeal directly to the imagination with some story interest. With this characteristic as the leading principle of choice, the variety of subjects is perhaps as wide as the conditions admit. No attempt is made to represent all the sides of the painter's art; his portraits are ignored and his Madonnas inadequately represented, in order to give place to pictures which awaken as many points of interest as possible. Within these narrow limits Raphael, as an illustrator and a composer, is even in these few pictures clearly represented. "
Sir Joshua Reynolds: Extra illustrated with 140 portraits, views and fancy subjects, in mezzotint, stipple and line illustrating the works of this master
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses On Art
Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)
by David Mannings
from Paul Mellon Centre BA
The Louvre: Constantinople (His Works)
[The new realities] The first Richard Joshua Reynolds lecture at Emory and Henry College, Emory, Virginia, Nov. 19, 1963 (The Richard Joshua Reynolds lectureship in the humanities)
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