Mrs Hartley as a Nymph with a Young Bacchus

Reynolds painted Elizabeth Hartley, one of Georgian London's most celebrated actresses, as a nymph with a young Bacchus around 1773. Hartley's fame on the London stage was considerable — she was celebrated for her classical beauty and her performances at the Haymarket and Covent Garden theatres — and Reynolds's decision to cast her in mythological costume reflects the same instinct that had produced the Kitty Fisher as Danae of a decade earlier: the actress's theatrical persona made her natural material for mythological treatment. The composition draws on Italian treatments of the Bacchic subjects that Reynolds had encountered in Rome and Venice, filtered through his own sentimental approach to idealized beauty. Hartley's theatrical connections placed her within the world of Reynolds's closest social circle — Garrick, Johnson, and the literary figures who gathered around the stage as well as the literary clubs — making the commission as much a personal engagement as a professional one. The National Gallery's holding of the canvas places it in the collection where many of Reynolds's most significant mythological and allegorical compositions are preserved.

Reynolds's rich, warm palette and soft handling create the idealized beauty his Grand Manner demanded, though his experimental pigments have led to the cracking and fading visible in many of his portraits today.