Joshua Reynolds: Experiments In Paint (Wallace Collection) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0900785756 ISBN 13: 9780900785757

Publisher: Wallace, 2015

Synopsis

One of Britain s most important and influential painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) is justly celebrated for his dynamic portraiture, his poignant fancy pictures , his ambitious history paintings and his role as the first President of Britain s Royal Academy. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Wallace Collection, London (12 March-7 June 2015), and the result of the four-year research project, this catalogue focuses on Reynolds's innovative, often highly experimental approaches to the practice and materials of painting. It investigates his radical manipulation of pigments, oils, glazes and varnishes, and traces his experiments with colour, tone and handling. It reveals his continual temptation to rework and revise his pictures, illuminates his highly creative responses to the new exhibition culture of his day and explores his continual adaptations of the art of the Old Masters. In doing so, it encourages us to look at the work of this famous eighteenth-century British artist in a new and often surprising light. Technical analysis of some of Reynolds's most important paintings will be revelatory, and close-up photography and detailed examination of a range of pictures at the centre of which are the Wallace Collection s own outstanding collection of works by the artist will shed light on the fascinating and ongoing process of experimentation that spanned Reynolds s entire career. The book situates Reynolds s practice of experimentation, of both technique and of subject, in relation to that conducted at leading societies of science and learning at the time, and specifically to Josiah Wedgwood, one of Enlightenment Britain s greatest experimentalists in the arts. Finally, it demonstrates how Reynolds s innovations as a painter were often the product of collaboration in part, with his assistants and his students, but, more importantly, with his patrons and subjects, with whom he continually explored the possibilities of gesture, expression, performance and role-play.

About this title

About the Author:

Lucy Davis is Curator of Old Master Pictures at the Wallace Collection; Mark Hallett is Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Martin Postle is Deputy-Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Christoph Vogtherr is Director of the Wallace Collection; Alexandra Gent is Conservator for the Reynolds Research Project; Matthew Hunter is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University; Tessa Kilgarriff is a PhD student at the University of Bristol, working on the topic of theatrical portraiture in 19th-century Britain; John Chu has recently completed a doctoral thesis at the Courtauld Institute of Art, dealing with the fancy picture in eighteenth-century England; Noémi Duperron is preparing a PhD on history painting in 18th-century France and England at the University of Geneva

About this edition

• Publisher: Wallace
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0900785756
• ISBN 13: 9780900785757
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200
• Editor: Davis Lucy, Hallett Mark