First - President of the Royal Academy -London, England, UK
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Metro2
N 51° 30.525 W 000° 08.359
30U E 698511 N 5710282
Joshua Reynolds, a prominent painter, was the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Waymark Code: WMK9N9
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/05/2014
Views: 4
The Royal Academy of Arts is housed here at Burlington House. This sculpture is located in the courtyard. The work was commissioned in 1917. The artist is Alfred Drury. The life-sized bronze work depicts Reynolds standing with a palette held in his left hand as he raises his right hand with a paintbrush as if looking at his model.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA FRS FRSA (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an influential eighteenth-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first president of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by George III in 1769...
Reynolds was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts, helped found the Society of Artists, and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy of Arts, a spin-off organisation. In 1768 he was made the Royal Academy's first president, a position he held until his death. As a lecturer, his Discourses (delivered between 1769 and 1790) are remembered for their sensitivity and perception. In one lectures he was of the opinion that "invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory." William Jackson in his contemporary essays said of Reynolds ' there is much ingenuity and originality in all his academic discourses, replete with classical knowledge of his art, acute remarks on the works of others, and general taste and discernment'.
Reynolds and the Royal Academy received a mixed reception. Critics include many Pre-Raphaelites, and William Blake who published the vitriolic Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses in 1808. J. M. W. Turner and James Northcote were fervent acolytes: Turner requested he be laid to rest at Reynolds' side, and Northcote, who spent four years as Reynolds' pupil, wrote to his family "I know him thoroughly, and all his faults, I am sure, and yet almost worship him.'"
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