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Lot Essay
Last recorded in 1935, this recently rediscovered character study of a young girl is a superb example of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s fancy pictures painted in the last quarter of the 18th century.
Fancy pictures or 'fancies' were so-called to distinguish them from traditional commissioned portraits. The term was first coined in 1737 by art critic and historian George Vertue in relation to the paintings of Philip Mercier. However, by the latter part of the 18th century, they had become a genre in their own right, and the appellation was used to describe scenes of sentimental realism of the artist’s own imagining, as well as vignettes from contemporary literature.
Reynolds began to paint fancy pictures in the early 1770s and became increasingly fixated on the genre towards the end of his career. While he could complete the face of a portrait sitter within a matter of hours, his subject pictures often absorbed him for months. As Dr. Martin Postle notes, "it is clear from Reynolds's own preoccupation with them, and the critical coverage they received during his day, that the subject pictures lay at the very heart of Reynolds's practice as a painter" (M. Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures, Cambridge, 1995).
Unlike the majority of his large portraits, which tend to incorporate passages by his studio, Reynolds’ smaller subject pictures were invariably entirely autograph. Nonetheless, an insatiable pubic appetite for the pictures lead them to be extensively copied both during and after his lifetime and, indeed, the large number of extant replicas of the present composition attests to its popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mrs. Jameson, for example, wrote of her admiration for the picture and considered the "cunning exultation in her laugh is most true to nature" (A. Jameson, Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London, London, 1844, p. 410). Dr. Postle, however, records two autograph versions of Girl with a bird (op. cit.). One is unfinished and in a private collection; the other, formerly untraced, has been confirmed by Dr. Postle to be the present picture (written communication, 18 September 2017).
On 8 April 1785 The Morning Herald, previewing Reynolds's proposed exhibits for the forthcoming Royal Academy exhibition, noted: "An Infant Girl, disposed on a grass plat in an easy attitude. The companion to it is a girl fondling a bird. These subjects are fancy studies of Sir Joshua's and do him honour". The "Infant Girl" is very probably identifiable with Reynolds’s celebrated Age of Innocence in the collection of the Tate, London. It is also probable that the companion picture mentioned is the present work.
Fancy pictures or 'fancies' were so-called to distinguish them from traditional commissioned portraits. The term was first coined in 1737 by art critic and historian George Vertue in relation to the paintings of Philip Mercier. However, by the latter part of the 18th century, they had become a genre in their own right, and the appellation was used to describe scenes of sentimental realism of the artist’s own imagining, as well as vignettes from contemporary literature.
Reynolds began to paint fancy pictures in the early 1770s and became increasingly fixated on the genre towards the end of his career. While he could complete the face of a portrait sitter within a matter of hours, his subject pictures often absorbed him for months. As Dr. Martin Postle notes, "it is clear from Reynolds's own preoccupation with them, and the critical coverage they received during his day, that the subject pictures lay at the very heart of Reynolds's practice as a painter" (M. Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures, Cambridge, 1995).
Unlike the majority of his large portraits, which tend to incorporate passages by his studio, Reynolds’ smaller subject pictures were invariably entirely autograph. Nonetheless, an insatiable pubic appetite for the pictures lead them to be extensively copied both during and after his lifetime and, indeed, the large number of extant replicas of the present composition attests to its popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mrs. Jameson, for example, wrote of her admiration for the picture and considered the "cunning exultation in her laugh is most true to nature" (A. Jameson, Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London, London, 1844, p. 410). Dr. Postle, however, records two autograph versions of Girl with a bird (op. cit.). One is unfinished and in a private collection; the other, formerly untraced, has been confirmed by Dr. Postle to be the present picture (written communication, 18 September 2017).
On 8 April 1785 The Morning Herald, previewing Reynolds's proposed exhibits for the forthcoming Royal Academy exhibition, noted: "An Infant Girl, disposed on a grass plat in an easy attitude. The companion to it is a girl fondling a bird. These subjects are fancy studies of Sir Joshua's and do him honour". The "Infant Girl" is very probably identifiable with Reynolds’s celebrated Age of Innocence in the collection of the Tate, London. It is also probable that the companion picture mentioned is the present work.