Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds was the leading English portrait painter of the eighteenth century and the first President of the Royal Academy. He gave his sitters dignity by borrowing poses and grandeur from the Old Masters, in what he called the Grand Style.

Born in Plympton, Devon, he trained in London with Thomas Hudson and spent two years in Rome studying Michelangelo and Raphael. Returning to London, he painted officers, aristocrats, actors and children, producing some two thousand works. He was knighted in 1769. His Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse and The Age of Innocence are among his most famous paintings, and his work is at the National Gallery, Tate Britain and the Wallace Collection.

His portraits of naval officers such as Commodore the Honourable Augustus Keppel show his confident, heroic style.