Reynolds's technical restlessness was more than merely an effort to uncover the secrets of earlier painters, it was also, as the waspish diarist Joseph Farington astutely noted, an endeavour "to reach something yet unattained either by himself or others". He wanted to be a present and future master rather than merely an old one. This motivation underlay his enormous output—some 2,000 portraits as well as numerous "fancy pictures" and history pieces. It also meant that his original idea for a composition was not necessarily the one that emerged: for example, of The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents, commissioned by Catherine the Great, he noted matter of factly that "there were ten pictures under it, some better, some worse". Reynolds painted by experiment.
This exhibition of 20 paintings as well as other material has sprung out of the Reynolds Research Project, which was instigated to examine the Wallace Collection's own rich cluster of his pictures. The Reynolds who is emerging is a far more complex figure than that of simply a grandee painter but rather a man who, in his desire to "avoid insipidity", was also an Enlightenment empiricist. The contemporary with whom Reynolds is usually paired is Gainsborough but a more fruitful comparison might be made with a non-painter, the fully-fledged scientist-artist Josiah Wedgwood.
A portraitist whose colours have remained undimmed is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (until May 25). John Singer Sargent rarely painted those close to him on commisssion but rather used the intimacy as an excuse for more informal poses and en plein air settings. The 70 paintings here are remarkable not just for their skill but as a record of his wide acquaintance. As a celebrated international figure, born in America and living at various points in both France and England, he was friendly with many of the great artistic figures of his time, and he painted them.
The roster includes W.B. Yeats, Monet, Ellen Terry, Rodin and Robert Louis Stevenson. Both of his surviving Stevenson portraits, for example, are included here—one of him sitting and smoking, the other walking across a room—and they show an elongated figure, totally at ease in the painter's presence.
Indeed, ease is the defining characteristic of almost all the works here, the familiarity of an old friend being enough to disperse any lingering discomfort with the idea of posing. In Group with Parasols of 1904-05, Sargent's subjects have forgotten about him altogether and he paints two men and two women asleep on a sunny bank in a tangle of disordered limbs—an Après Déjeuner sur L'herbe. It is a painting of wondrous facility and spontaneity. When he painted like this, Sargent was a friend with extraordinary benefits.
This exhibition of 20 paintings as well as other material has sprung out of the Reynolds Research Project, which was instigated to examine the Wallace Collection's own rich cluster of his pictures. The Reynolds who is emerging is a far more complex figure than that of simply a grandee painter but rather a man who, in his desire to "avoid insipidity", was also an Enlightenment empiricist. The contemporary with whom Reynolds is usually paired is Gainsborough but a more fruitful comparison might be made with a non-painter, the fully-fledged scientist-artist Josiah Wedgwood.
A portraitist whose colours have remained undimmed is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (until May 25). John Singer Sargent rarely painted those close to him on commisssion but rather used the intimacy as an excuse for more informal poses and en plein air settings. The 70 paintings here are remarkable not just for their skill but as a record of his wide acquaintance. As a celebrated international figure, born in America and living at various points in both France and England, he was friendly with many of the great artistic figures of his time, and he painted them.
The roster includes W.B. Yeats, Monet, Ellen Terry, Rodin and Robert Louis Stevenson. Both of his surviving Stevenson portraits, for example, are included here—one of him sitting and smoking, the other walking across a room—and they show an elongated figure, totally at ease in the painter's presence.
Indeed, ease is the defining characteristic of almost all the works here, the familiarity of an old friend being enough to disperse any lingering discomfort with the idea of posing. In Group with Parasols of 1904-05, Sargent's subjects have forgotten about him altogether and he paints two men and two women asleep on a sunny bank in a tangle of disordered limbs—an Après Déjeuner sur L'herbe. It is a painting of wondrous facility and spontaneity. When he painted like this, Sargent was a friend with extraordinary benefits.
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