Mrs. Richard Paul Jodrell

Reynolds painted Mrs. Richard Paul Jodrell around 1775, a female portrait from the height of his career that demonstrates the refined elegance of his mature style. Jodrell was the wife of a scholar and collector associated with the classical studies that formed the intellectual backbone of Georgian cultural life, and her portrait carries the quiet authority that Reynolds associated with women of education and social refinement. Reynolds's female portraits of the mid-1770s represent perhaps the most consistently high level he maintained across any comparable period of his career: the period saw the completion of several of his most celebrated works including The Strawberry Girl and the large full-length of Jane Fleming, and the technical mastery he brought to these major commissions permeates even relatively standard society portraits like the Jodrell canvas. The Detroit Institute of Arts holds a number of Reynolds works, evidence of the sustained American appetite for British portraiture that distributed his output widely across public and private collections in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The portrait presents the sitter with refined elegance and warm palette. Reynolds's mature handling creates an image of sophisticated feminine grace.