Joshua reynolds bio

Summary of Joshua Reynolds

Reynolds was the leading portraitist of the 18^th century, invigorating the genre and raising its status to that of religious and historical works.

Joshua reynolds bio

Well-known and respected during his lifetime, he combined the English style of portraiture with ideas drawn from antiquity and the Old Masters to create fashionable, large-scale images of British high society as well as early celebrities including actors and courtesans.

His images often included theatrical elements including colorful props and costumes, imagined pastoral landscapes, and irreverent classical symbolism. Reynolds played a central role in founding the Royal Academy of Arts, which gave artists an opportunity to display their work publicly for the first time, and as its first president, he was widely respected for his intellectual ideas and his emphasis on education, a focus that was apparent through his lecture series "Discourses on Art".

The Royal Academy became an important breeding ground for n