JOSHUA REYNOLDS

Lot 63
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Estimation :
30000 - 40000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 39 000EUR
JOSHUA REYNOLDS
Portrait of Paul Henry Ourry Oil on canvas 72 x 60 cm Portrait of Paul Henry Ourry Oil on canvas, 28.3 x 23.6 in. "Prince of Portraitists" This was the nickname of Joshua Reynolds, who during the 18th century established himself in England as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, portrait painter of his time. Trained in the family library, he continued his apprenticeship in the studio of the painter Thomas Hudson (1701 -1779). Then, in order to perfect his training, he left England in 1749 to do his Grand Tour during which he discovered Italy. There, for a little over two years, he worked on copying frescoes and sculptures, immersing himself in the art of the great masters who had preceded him. When he returned to London, he immediately specialized in portraiture with a new bourgeoisie that was particularly eager to assert its social status. Born with the Industrial Revolution, this new social class also evolves in a world bathed in the Spirit of Enlightenment, which values the individual, notably through self-representation. The painter also evolved within an intellectual and political nebula. In 1768, he was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of London where he became a great theorist and where fifteen of his speeches were published. The institution also amplified the artistic emulation in London at the time, a phenomenon linked to the growing demand of the new bourgeoisie mentioned earlier. Since the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical quarrels and the slowdown in religious commissions linked to them, the portrait had developed particularly strongly. The presence of Anton Van Dyck (1599 -1641) during the 17th century supported this phenomenon and helped to spread a Nordic influence on the genre. Also a fierce rival of Thomas Gainsborough (1727 -1788), each sought to develop his own pictorial innovations in order to better distance himself from the other in pictorial modernity. Reynolds then chose to place his character
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