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19 September 09 - Museum Art Show Will Highlight Forgotten Local Hero

A long forgotten hero will be remembered and honoured at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in the biggest art exhibition to be held there for some 15 years.

‘Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius’ will run from 21 November 2009 to 20 February 2010 and will help people rediscover the significance of South West born artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, historically considered to be one of the most important of England’s portrait painters.

“Many people are unaware of Reynolds’ success and the massive contribution he made to the arts,” says Exhibitions Officer, Judith Robinson. “Reynolds’ works are in nearly every major museum in the western world including The National Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts . This new exhibition will give visitors to the Plymouth a fantastic opportunity to see acclaimed works, to learn about his life, and to understand the intrinsic connection he had to Plymouth and the South West.”

Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon , on 16 July 1723 as one of seven children, and the son of the village school-master. He went on to become one of Britain 's finest and most fashionable painters specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealisation of the imperfect.

Showing an early interest in art, he was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained for three years.

Reynolds's earliest surviving portraits provide a unique window onto mid-eighteenth-century Plymouth . The area's professional class formed the bulk of his first clientele. Some, like Charles Cutcliffe, must have been his father's friends, as well as those involved in local politics, local clergy, mariners, and members of Reynolds's own family.

Reynolds also attracted the region's landowning and political dynasties: Richard Eliot of Port Eliot; Sir William Morice, 3rd Bt of Werrington; William Trevanion of Caerhayes; and, above all, Richard Edgcumbe, 1st Lord Edgcumbe of Mount Edgcumbe, who was to be instrumental in forwarding Reynolds's career in the decade following the death of his father, aiding him to become the most popular portrait painters of his day, supplanting his old master Hudson.

Working in Devon , however, was limiting for an ambitious artist; there were few good collections of pictures in the county and too small an intellectual community to foster a serious and sustained engagement with the visual arts. Indeed, Reynolds would later describe Plymouth as having ‘the fewest admirers of pictures and prints of any town of its size that he knew of. ’ Something that curators at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery are keen to put right!

Two years in Italy provided opportunity to deepen his artistic knowledge whilst studying important examples of Italian painting. Reynolds returned to England in 1752, and over the next decade built the reputation that sustained his career.

“Reynolds always maintained his connections with his West Country patrons and developed an extensive portrait practice among the social elite of England ,” says Judith Robinson; “He was friends with many of the most creative personalities of the day; a figure to be reckoned with among his fellow artists. By 1761 Reynolds could command a fee of 80 Guineas for a full-length portrait; in 1764 he was paid 100 Guineas for a portrait of Lord Burghersh.”

Professionally, Reynolds' career never peaked. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts, helped found the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy , helping to establish the fine arts in England . In 1768 he was made it’s first President, a position he held until his death.

George III knighted him in 1769, the University of Oxford conferred on him the title of Doctor of Civil Law in 1773, and the same year he was made Mayor of Plympton. In 1784 he was appointed Painter in Ordinary to King George III.

At the age of 59 Reynolds had a paralytic stroke but recovered sufficiently to continue his work for several years. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1792 Reynolds died in his house in Leicester Fields in London and was buried at St. Paul's Cathedral; a simple man from Devon who arguably did more than any man to found an English School of painting.

This new exhibition, developed by Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery with research co-ordinated by the University of Plymouth, will present an overview of Reynolds’ career and, for the first time, highlight two areas that have not been afforded close examination to date, the incredible importance of his work for patrons in Devon and Cornwall and his collection of old master prints and drawings. It will feature works from the museum’s permanent collections such as oil paintings, drawings and prints. Loan items from other regional museums, the National Trust and National Portrait Gallery will also be included, as will portraits by Reynolds belonging to the City of Plymouth that can currently be seen at Port Eliot in St Germans, Cornwall . Other interesting objects such as letters, papers, Reynolds’ glasses, sitter’s book and palette will also be on display.

A series of ticketed lunchtime talks dedicated to Reynolds will be held on Tuesday 1 December 2009 , 12, 19 and 26 January and 2 February 2010 . Themed tours of the exhibition will also take place on Wednesday 2 December 2009 , 13 January and 3 February 2010 .

For more details about the exhibition and its related event programme visit www.plymouthmuseum.gov.uk or call 01752 304774. Admission to the exhibition is free.


JOSHUA REYNOLDS FACTBOX

• Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton on 16 July 1723 .
• His father, the headmaster of the school intended Reynolds for the medical profession.
• Reynolds was 5'6" with dark brown curls. He had a broad face, a cleft chin, and the bridge of his nose was slightly dented; his skin was scarred by smallpox, and his upper lip disfigured as a result of falling from a horse.
• His main patron throughout his life was Lord Edgcumbe.
• Reynolds suffered a severe cold whilst in Rome which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured.
• He was often so busy that his students became responsible for painting the background of his portraits.
• In his life he painted as many as three thousand portraits.
• He founded the Royal Acadamy of Art, and in 1768 was made its first President.
• He was knighted in 1769.
• In 1773 he was made Mayor of Plympton.
• In 1784 he was appointed Painter in Ordinary to King George III.
• He died in 1972 and is buried at St Paul ’s Cathedral.