Mrs. Peter Beckford

Reynolds painted Mrs. Peter Beckford around 1758, a large full-length portrait that demonstrates his command of the most ambitious portrait scale in the early post-Italian phase of his career. The Beckford family connections to Jamaica's plantation economy placed Mrs. Peter Beckford within the colonial wealth structure that funded so much of Georgian England's cultural consumption; she was related to the extraordinary William Beckford (later of Fonthill Abbey fame) whose portrait Reynolds also painted. Reynolds's large full-length female portraits of this period draw most directly on the example of Raphael's compositional clarity and Van Dyck's aristocratic elegance, filtered through the tonal richness that his study of Venetian painting had added to his technical vocabulary. The Lady Lever Art Gallery's holding of this canvas places it in the same collection as Lady Lepell Phipps and her son, suggesting either a concentrated Lever acquisition of Reynolds's Lady Lever works or a provenance trail that brought multiple canvases to the same destination through the Victorian art market.

Oil on canvas, the portrait demonstrates Joshua Reynolds's command of Grand Manner composition and experimental pigments. The careful modeling of the face reveals close study of the sitter's physiognomy, while the treatment of costume and setting projects appropriate social standing.