Sir Joshua Reynolds, Heads of Angels, 1786
This painting shows the head of five-year-old Lady
Frances Gordon from five
different angles. Reynolds
took the idea from
17th-century Italian
painting: in seeking to
elevate the genre of
portraiture he would borrow
motifs or styles from the
most admired art of the
past. Critics praised
Reynolds’s artistic ability.
One claimed that, ‘The hand
of nature never formed a
finer face than this: not
like the general run … of
cherubims, with ruddy cheeks
and round unmeaning faces,
but sentiment, expression,
and clearness, and warmth of
colouring, that all must
feel, but which the
President of the Royal
Academy alone can describe’.
Tate Gallery label, February 2016
A Child’s Portrait in Different Views:
‘Angel’s Heads’
The five year old Lady Frances Gordon sat to
Reynolds for this unusual portrait
in July and August 1786, and again
in March 1787. Reynolds
generally had very few
portrait appointments during
the summer months, reserving
this time for work on
character studies (known as 'fancy pictures') and
subject pictures. It is not
perhaps surprising,
therefore, that the present composition, which is
composed of a series of
studies of Frances Gordon's
head from five different
angles, is far more
reminiscent of Reynolds's
fancy pictures than his
portraits of named sitters.
Frances Isabella Keir Gordon (1782-1831) was the
only daughter of Lord
William Gordon (1744-1823)
and his wife Frances Ingram
(1761-1841), second daughter
of Charles, 9th
Viscount Irvine (1727-78),
who were married on 6 March
1781. Her uncle was Lord
George Gordon (1751-93),
whose political activities
had sparked the
anti-Catholic riots of 1780.
Reynolds's principal compositional source for the
picture was a red chalk drawing of four cherubs' heads by the
Italian seventeenth-century
artist, Carlo Maratta
(1625-1713), which Reynolds
had acquired in 1779 at the
studio sale of his master
Thomas Hudson (1701-79), and
which is now in the British
Museum. The first critical
notice of the picture
appeared in The Times
in October 1786, before it
was exhibited in public at
the Royal Academy. Here The
Times observed that the
'grouping of four likenesses
of the little cherubic
Gordon into one picture, is
among the prettiest portrait
ideas that have ever been
conceived'. Several months
later, The World, a
newspaper which also kept a
close watch on developments
in Reynolds's studio, noted
that the 'four heads, in one
frame, of Lord William
Gordon's child, are gone
home'. However, a subsequent
sitting with Miss Gordon in
March 1787 indicates that
the painting
had in the meantime been returned
to Reynolds, not least
because in the completed
picture there are five
heads, rather than four, the
additional one presumably
being added during the final
sitting.
Frances
Gordon's mother outlived her
daughter by ten years and,
on her death in 1841, she
presented this picture to
the National Gallery. There
it was extensively copied,
registers of copies kept by
the National Gallery from
1846 to 1895 revealing no
fewer than 314 full-size
copies in oil. The popular
appeal of the picture to Victorian taste is also indicated by its
reproduction on decorative
items, including the cover
of an ivory-bound prayer
book. Numerous photographic
reproductions also exist,
with titles such as 'The
Cherub Choir'. More
recently, an image of the
picture was used on a First
Day Cover to promote the
National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to
Children's 'Year of the
Child'. Perhaps most unusual
is the use of the image in
badges awarded to student
midwives at St. Mary's
Hospital, Manchester.
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Sir Joshua
Reynolds (July 16, 1723 - February 23, 1792) English Rococo
Painter was the most
important and influential of
18th century English
painters, 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. George
III appreciated his merits
and knighted him in 1769.
Reynolds was born in
Plympton St Maurice, Devon,
on 16 July 1723, and
apprenticed in 1740 to the
fashionable portrait painter
Thomas Hudson, with whom he
remained until 1743. From
1749 to 1752, he spent over
two years in Italy, mainly
in Rome, where he studied
the Old Masters and acquired
a taste for the "Grand
Style". From 1753 on, he
lived and worked in London.
He became a close friend of
Dr Johnson, Oliver
Goldsmith, Edmund Burke,
Henry Thrale, David Garrick
and fellow artist Angelica
Kauffmann. He was one of the
earliest members of the
Royal Society of Arts: he
encouraged that society's
interest in contemporary art
and, with Gainsborough,
established the Royal
Academy as a spin-out
organisation. Many of his
works show children in
various states of un-dress.
It is unlikely that such an
interest would escape
criticism in today's world,
regardless of artistic
merit. With his rival
Thomas Gainsborough, he was
the dominant English
portraitist of the second
half of the 18th century.
Reynolds painted in more of
an idealized fashion than
his rival. Reynolds was a
brilliant academic. His
lectures (Discourses) on
art, delivered at the Royal
Academy between 1769 and
1790, are remembered for
their sensitivity and
perception. In one of these
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." In
1789 he lost the sight of
his left eye, and on 23
February 1792 he died in his
house in Leicester Fields,
London. He was buried in St.
Paul's Cathedral.
Further Reading: David Mannings and Martin Postle, Sir Joshua
Reynolds. A Complete
Catalogue of his Paintings,
2 vols., New Haven and
London 2000, vol.1, p.221,
vol.2, p.556, fig.1494
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