Dimensions
165 x 243 x 40mm
Ian McIntyre's enthralling new work is the first biography of Sir Joshua Reynolds for over forty years. It traces the creative and personal life of the boy from a small town in Devon who became the most celebrated artist of his time, exercising a powerful influence on the development of British painting.
Reynolds became an artist almost by chance; his father, a parson-schoolmaster, initially thought of making him an apothecary. A lucky opportunity allowed him to spend two years in Rome, an experience which transformed him in a few short years from a provincial 'phiz-monger' into the most sought after portrait painter of the day. The friend of Johnson, Burke and Goldsmith, he was for almost forty years a prominent figure in the artistic and social life of eighteenth-century London.
A benign exterior concealed powerful stirrings of ambition. One of the few disappointments was the elusiveness of royal patronage, but when the Royal Academy was founded in 1769, it was unthinkable that anyone else should occupy the President's chair.
