Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A.
Plympton 1723 - London 1792

Self-portrait in Academic Robes, c.1773-79

in a painted oval, oil on canvas

30 x 25 inches (76 x 63.5 cm.)

PROVENANCE: Private Collection, New York

Joshua Reynolds painted more self-portraits than almost any other British artist, numbering at least thirty known paintings, including the present recently rediscovered work. In this fascinating portrait, Reynolds, aged around fifty years old, portrayed himself in a feigned oval, in the academic robes and cap that he had acquired when he was awarded an honorary doctorate of civil law by the university of Oxford on 9 July 1773. The doctorate was one of a series of honours heaped upon Reynolds in the course of his long and distinguished career.

Reynolds earliest known self-portrait dates from around 1740, a drawing made when the seventeen-year old artist commenced his apprenticeship with the portraitist, Thomas Hudson, in London. During the 1740s Reynolds made three further self-portraits in oils, including the dramatic image, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, where he shades his eyes with his hand, as if looking forward in anticipation to the illustrious career that beckons him. In Italy, where Reynolds lived for three years, between, 1749 and 1752, Reynolds once more painted his own portrait, a work which was, like the present picture, recently rediscovered, and which is now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, in New Haven, Connecticut. In the Yale portrait, and in the present one, painted some twenty-five years later, the artist exudes an air of supreme self-confidence, which borders upon arrogance.

During the 1750s, and 1760s, Reynolds painted at least four more self-portraits, each one presumably commemorating some aspect of his public life; as for instance the picture he presented in 1766 to the Society of Dilettanti, upon gaining membership to this most sociable of clubs. It was, however, during the 1770s that Reynolds worked most intensively upon his self-image, following his election in December 1768 to the Presidency of the newly formed Royal Academy of Arts, and his knighthood by the king, George III, the following spring. In most of these self-portraits – numbering at least ten works – Reynolds depicted himself in his doctoral robes. Perhaps the first of such portraits, and one in which the artist’s pose bears a close resemblance to the present work (albeit in reverse), was painted for the Corporation of Plympton when Reynolds was elected Mayor of his home town in September 1773. However, it was the invitation by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1775 to present his portrait to the Accademia di Belle Arte, Florence, to hang in the celebrated gallery of artists’ self-portraits there, that caused Reynolds to embark upon his most intensive bout of self-scrutiny.

In his self-portrait for the Duke of Tuscany, Reynolds portrayed himself in his academic gown and cap, holding in his hands a sheaf of drawings by Michelangelo. The importance of the commission to Reynolds is suggested by the existence of two unfinished versions of the self-portrait, one of which is presently in the Tate Gallery, while the other is in a private collection. The present self-portrait, which is, like these former works, not entirely finished, may also relate to Reynolds’s Florence portrait composition. However, is it also possible that it post-dates these works, and looks forward to the self-portrait that Reynolds painted around 1779 to 1780 for the Royal Academy, where he famously portrayed himself standing by a bust of Michelangelo – in a composition reminiscent of Rembrandt’s celebrated painting of Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Indeed, the present portrait in which Reynolds’s forehead is shaded dramatically by his cap, is deliberately Rembrandtesque in its play of light and shadow across the face.

The early history of the present self-portrait is not known. It may possibly relate to the untraced self-portrait sold at Christie’s in 1833 by the widow of Reynolds’s friend, Sir George Yonge (26 February, lot 151). Interestingly, Yonge’s own portrait by Reynolds – also in a feigned oval – was the previous lot in the same sale, and Yonge may have regarded the works as pendants, since Reynolds’s portrait is described as ‘A ditto [original portrait] of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by Himself, in a corresponding [carved and gilt] frame’. It is also possible that the self-portrait was among the ten self-portraits sold by Reynolds’s niece, Mary, Marchioness of Thomond, at her posthumous sale at Christie’s in May 1821 – the biggest and most prestigious sale of Reynolds’s work after his death. Although some of these works can be identified with known self-portraits, a number of them remain untraced. They include three ‘unfinished’ works (11, 11a, 11b) sold on 26 May 1821. The first two were sold to the artist, John Jackson, while the third was purchased by none other than J.M.W. Turner, R.A.

Martin Postle

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