Animating the Canvas: The Art of Joshua Reynolds

In this lecture, Mark Hallett, Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, will investigate the dynamic portraiture of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the leading figure in Georgian London’s art world.

The talk will explore the workings of the artist’s celebrated male and female portraits in detail, and place them in the context of the thriving exhibition culture of the period. The lecture follows the recent publication of Professor Hallett’s book Reynolds: Portraiture in Action by Yale University Press, praised by the TLS for bringing ‘Reynold’s actions as a portraitist alive on the page’.

The lecture also anticipates the major Wallace Collection exhibition Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint, which opens in March 2015, and which is to be co-curated by Professor Hallett and the Wallace Collection’s Lucy Davis.