British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | thomas townshend and colonel acland | Countess of Harrington | lord george seymour conway | Count of Schaumburg-Lippe | Lady Cockburn and Her Three Eldest Sons |
Related Artists:
Jules Pascin
Bulgarian-born French Expressionist Painter, 1885-1930,American painter, draughtsman and printmaker of Bulgarian birth, active in France. He attended secondary school in Vienna, returning in 1901 to Bucharest, where his family had settled, and working briefly in the office of his father's grain-merchandizing business. He was, however, already becoming passionately interested in drawing, for which he showed precocious talent. At the age of 16 he became the lover of a woman who ran a brothel and was allowed by her to draw the residents. In 1903 he moved to Munich, where he attended the art school run by Moritz Heymann.
Carl Philipp Fohr
German, 1795-1818,German painter and draughtsman. His first drawing lessons, from the age of 13, were from Friedrich Rottmann (1768-1816), the father of the painter Carl Rottmann. In 1810 the Darmstadt Court Councillor, Georg Wilhelm Issel, discovered Fohr sketching at Stift Neuberg near Heidelberg and, the following year, invited him to Darmstadt and provided encouragement and financial support. From 1813 Fohr carried out commissions for Grand Duchess Wilhelmina of Hesse, for whom he produced a Sketchbook of the Neckar Region, a collection of views and historical subjects (30 watercolours; 1813-14) and also a Baden Sketchbook (30 watercolours, 1814-15; both Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.). These far surpassed the usual level attained in this genre in their sharpness of detail, delicacy of colour and pictorial inventiveness. The Crown Princess granted him an annual pension of 500 guilders. From July 1815 to May 1816, Fohr was a student of landscape painting at the Kunstakademie in Munich.
Philip Leslie Hale
1865-1931