Lady Lepell Phipps (1723–1780), and Her Son, Charles (?) (1753–1786)

Reynolds painted Lady Lepell Phipps and her son around 1758, a mother-and-child portrait from the early post-Italian period when he was systematically demonstrating the range of his transformed practice. Lady Lepell was the daughter of Nicholas Lepell, a famous beauty of the early Georgian court who had been celebrated in verses by Gay, Voltaire, and Pope; her own portrait thus carried the additional weight of a celebrated mother's legacy. Reynolds's approach to such commissions drew on his Italian study of Renaissance Madonna compositions, which provided both compositional authority and a dignified precedent for the combination of maternal warmth and idealized beauty. The Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight holds the canvas as part of a collection whose British painting holdings were assembled by the soap manufacturer William Lever, later Lord Leverhulme, whose collecting swept up significant British portraiture in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Reynolds's mother-and-child paintings occupy a consistent place in his output across four decades, demonstrating the sustained engagement with this format that Italian study had equipped him to develop.

Executed in Oil on canvas, the work showcases Joshua Reynolds's warm chiaroscuro, with particular attention to the interplay of light across the sitter's features. The handling of drapery and accessories demonstrates the technical refinement expected of formal portraiture.