Product Description
A two-volume catalogue of the paintings of English portrait painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It includes an illustration of nearly all of the artist's works and offers a critical re-examination of each painting, taking advantage of modern methods and the findings of conservation experts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Depends what you're after
I personally think, that these volumes would normally appeal to an art or university library, but the average art lover could find them a tad disappointing for the price.Both volumes are huge - measuring about 12cm wide together on the bookcase; but the text volume is only text and the prints are mostly black and white.
I wouldn't attempt to knock these guys for inaccuracy.They seem to have taken a thorough and methodical approach to the whole subject with the details of each portrait carefully listed and catalogued. However, I do think it's a shame that they didn't go the extra mile and ensure that more of the reproductions were in colour.Reynolds was a superb portrait artist and I don't feel that this catalogue comes even close to really showcaseing his work.
Regarding the colour plates; in the prints volume there are 132 in colour, but a fairly random selection that I think misses a lot of his best portrait work. The rest of the prints are in black and white and listed four to a page.I was also a bit disappointed with the quality of the photography, as I've seen better prints of most of the paintings that I recognised in other publications.
So five stars for the scholarship and research - but in my opinion, for the price, only get it if you really, really love Reynolds. ... Read more

Product Description
Sir Joshua Reynolds' reputation today rests principally on his portraits, his theoretical writings on art and his role as President of the Royal Academy. Yet in his own day Reynolds' subject pictures were among the most widely discussed British paintings of the century. This is the first book to concentrate on this important aspect of Reynolds' work. Covering the period from 1760 to 1830, it shows the way in which these pictures were inextricably linked to Reynolds' aims and practices as a painter, and to the way in which he was perceived by his peers. ... Read more

Product Description
In its first publication since 1819, this book remains one of the most illuminating accounts of the life and career of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the father of English painting.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) was the most fashionable painter of his time. His talent and ambition made him the first English painter of European stature—an especially impressive feat considering portraiture, his chosen field, was often ignored or dismissed. His position at the heart of British intellectual life gave painting a new presence and transformed the way art was made and appreciated in Britain. In Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist’s life and career are illuminated by Joseph Farington, a fellow painter of the next generation and the best diarist of his day. Farington, who knew Reynolds, offers a uniquely astute assessment of his importance to British art. ... Read more

Product Description

That Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) became the most fashionable painter of his time was not simply due to his artistic gifts or good fortune. The art of pleasing, Richard Wendorf contends, was as much a part of Reynolds's success--in his life and in his work--as the art of painting. The author's examination of Reynolds's life and career illuminates the nature of eighteenth-century English society in relation to the enterprise of portrait-painting. Conceived as an experiment in cultural criticism, written along the fault lines that separate (but also link) art history and literary studies, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society explores the ways in which portrait-painting is embedded in the social fabric of a given culture as well as in the social and professional transaction between the artist and his or her subject. In addition to providing a new view of Reynolds, Wendorf's book develops a thoroughly new way of interpreting portraiture.

Wendorf takes us into Reynolds's studio to show us the artist deploying his considerable social and theatrical skills in staging his sittings as carefully orchestrated performances. The painter's difficult relationship with his sister Frances (also an artist and writer), his complicated maneuvering with patrons, the manner in which he set himself up as an artist and businessman, his highly politicized career as the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts: as each of these aspects of Reynolds's practice comes under Wendorf's scrutiny, a new picture of the painter emerges--more sharply defined and fully fleshed than the Reynolds of past portraits, and clearly delineating his capacity for provoking ambivalence among friends and colleagues, and among viewers and readers today.

Product Description
This book includes all the surviving letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Britain's most esteemed eighteenth-century portrait painter. Reynolds's 308 letters-almost double the number included in the last published edition of his letters-are accompanied by detailed notes that illuminate the correspondence and identify the friends, family members, and patrons to whom he wrote.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art ... Read more

Product Description
A Journey to Flanders and Holland is an account of the pictures seen in the Low Countries in 1781 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the celebrated English portrait painter and art theorist. The Journey is here available for the first time in a full critical edition that provides explanatory notes on the text and illustrations of the pictures most discussed. This edition will appeal to all those interested in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art and eighteenth-century British art theory and criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity examines one of England's greatest portrait painters in the social, political, and cultural context of a century that cultivated a very modern notion of fame. This new approach to Reynolds (1723-1792) considers his life and career in terms of a conscious quest for celebrity. Reynolds surrounded himself with the most famous men and women of his time. His portraits served to create, reinforce, and advertise not only his subjects' reputations but also his own. It is, therefore, no surprise that Reynolds made no fewer than 27 self-portraits in which he purposefully perpetuated his well-crafted public image as an artist, an academic, and a knight.

Published to accompany a major Tate exhibition, this book features many of Reynolds's most famous and beautiful portraits. Sections consider the friendships Reynolds cultivated with the famous and infamous figures of his time, among them politicians, courtesans, writers, war heroes, and aristocrats. These flamboyant and influential subjects helped to promote and sustain Reynolds's distinguished career and, ultimately, to secure his enduring popularity with audiences today.AUTHOR BIO: Mark Hallett is reader in history of art at the University of York. Tim Clayton is a former research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. Martin Postle is a Tate curator and an authority on the art of Joshua Reynolds. Stella Tillyard is the internationally acclaimed author of The Aristocrats. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Tate Gallery's description (includes no.s of ill.s)
"Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity features many of Reynolds's most famous and beautiful portraits. Individual sections consider the friendships Reynolds cultivated with the famous and infamous figures of his time: politicians; courtesans; literary figures; war heroes; and aristocrats. These flamboyant and influential subjects helped to promote and sustain Reynolds's distinguished career and, ultimately, to secure his enduring popularity with audiences today."

296pp, 110 colour and 20 black-and-white illustrations

My view: should be in hardcover!!
... Read more