John Julius Angerstein

Reynolds painted John Julius Angerstein around 1765, depicting the Russian-born financier whose art collection would become the founding nucleus of the National Gallery of London. Angerstein, born in St. Petersburg and establishing himself in London as a Lloyd's underwriter and merchant banker, assembled one of the most distinguished private collections of Old Master paintings in Britain: works by Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude, and Hogarth. When he died in 1823, the British government purchased thirty-eight paintings from his collection for £57,000 — a decision that created the National Gallery and preserved many of his acquisitions as public property. Reynolds's portrait thus connects to a remarkable chain of institutional consequence: the sitter whose likeness Reynolds captured became the founder, however inadvertently, of the national institution that now displays Reynolds's own work. The Saint Louis Art Museum's holding of the canvas reflects the American collecting of British portraits that distributed Reynolds's output across the Atlantic throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The portrait presents the financier with prosperous authority. Reynolds's handling creates an image of cultivated wealth.