isle in Garter Robes” is the young and gracious oligarch who has thoghtfully assumed the mantle of his station in life against the background of Venetian splendour, relieved by the rococo humour of a pet dog barking in anticipation of a walk. Typically, the familiar was introduced. “Omai” complements the handsom, highly educated and gifted aristocrat as an alternative showpiece of the fashionable world. He is the noble savage whose example instructed society in natural virtue. The leaders of the nation in war and peace were either members of the landowning class entitled to bear arms, or aspirants to it. By far the largest number of portraits by Reynolds depict members of this class which move in the two related worlds of London society and the country house. Reynolds frequently elevated his portraits of fashionable women by association with “istoria”, but his models were seldom taken out of the real world unless the ideal context could be supported by youth or beauty. The small group of portraits of men of genius with whom he was intimate is unique in the history of European portraiture in that they correspond to the judgements he passed in writing his character sketches. The history paintings of Reynolds were nearly all created late in his career, after the second visit to Flanders and Holland when he fell more deeply under the spell of Rubens. They also suggest the influence of Fuselli, but not his neo-classical manner. In fact Reynolds painted remarkably few pictures in the linear bas-relief style, perhaps the closest approximation to avant-garde neo-classicism being the portrait of the “Hon. Mrs. Edward Bouverie and Her Son Edward”. The renewed contact with Rubens liberated his brush, so that from a purely painterly point of view the last decade of his life was one of the richest. Edmund Burke did not apply his a...
