Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds was an influential 18th century painter who specialized in portraits. He was born in Plympton, Devon in 1723 and passed away in London in 1792 at the age of 68. Since a young boy, Reynolds showed interest in art and became an apprentice to famous portrait painter Thomas Hudson, who had also been born in Devon. After working with Hudson for four years, Reynolds returned to London in 1744 and lived with his three sisters at Plymouth Dock following his father’s death. In 1749, Joshua Reynolds met Commodore Augustus Keppel and was invited to join the Commodore on his ship HMS Centurion for a voyage to the Mediterranean. Reynolds spent two years travelling from Livorno to Rome after his ship voyage studying the “Grand Style.” Reynolds was one of the earliest members in the Royal Society of Arts and played a major role in founding the Society of Artists of Great Britain. In 1768 Reynolds was made the first president of the Royal Society of Art and held the position till his death. He also was a major contributor to establishing The Club, which involved wealthy well-known aristocrats coming together on Friday nights for dinner and discussing major events occurring in London at the time. Joshua Reynolds was forced into retirement when he lost vision in his left eye in 1789.
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter. What is most significant about Gainsborough was that all though, Reynolds and him painted around the same time and both belongs to the Royal Society of Arts, they were actually rivals. Thomas was born on May 14th 1727 in Suffolk, England and passed away on August 2nd 1788 in London at the age of 61. In 1769 he became known as a founding member of the Royal Society but his relationship with the organization was never stable and Gainsborough removed most of his work from the exhibitions. He became responsible for painting portraits s of the King and Queen of England but he never received credit. The King credited Thomas’ rival, Reynolds, as the painter of the portraits. Gainsborough became famous for his feathery brushwork and a sense of rich color in most of his paintings. He was noted for the speed in which he would apply paint to the canvas and unlike other painters; Gainsborough preferred to work directly from a landscape and not from earlier sketches.
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