Reynolds

A luminous portrait of the man who transformed British art. Randall Davies chronicles Sir Joshua Reynolds's ascent from provincial Devonshire to the heights of Georgian London, where he became the first president of the Royal Academy and the most celebrated portrait painter of his age. The narrative follows Reynolds through his formative years in Italy, where he absorbed the grand traditions of Raphael and Michelangelo, returning to England with a revolutionary vision: that portraiture could be as noble and intellectual as history painting. Davies illuminates the artist's relationships with the great figures of his era, from Samuel Johnson to the royal court, and examines his seminal Discourses on Art, which shaped generations of British painters. This is not mere biography but a meditation on artistic ambition, the fight against the continental bias that dismissed English art as provincial, and the creation of a distinctly British tradition in painting. For readers curious about the origins of the British artistic establishment and the man who gave it its intellectual foundations.