Lady Maynard (c.1731-1762)

Reynolds painted Lady Maynard around 1760, a portrait of a relatively young woman that demonstrates his post-Italian female portraiture in the period when he was making the decisive transformation from competent professional to the dominant figure in British painting. Lady Maynard moved in aristocratic circles in the English home counties, and her commission reflects the expanding reach of Reynolds's reputation among the provincial gentry and lesser aristocracy who supplemented his grander London clientele. Reynolds's female portraits of this period are notable for their refusal of the heavy-handed flattery that had characterized English female portraiture since Kneller — he sought to combine idealized beauty with individual characterization in proportions that his contemporaries found consistently satisfying. The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at Glasgow holds the canvas as part of a collection that documents the Scottish institutional appetite for British art, particularly portraiture, throughout the Victorian era and beyond. The portrait's condition — identified as showing the influence of Rembrandt in the current description — reflects Reynolds's eclectic approach to historical sources, drawing on Dutch as well as Italian precedents for his compositional and tonal effects.

The portrait is rendered with classical references in poses that characterizes Joshua Reynolds's best work. Oil on canvas provides a rich ground for the subtle gradations of flesh tone and the textural contrasts between skin, fabric, and background that give the image its convincing presence.