Portrait of Sir William Chambers

Reynolds's portrait of Sir William Chambers from 1780, in the Royal Academy of Arts, depicts the architect who designed Somerset House on the Strand — the building that housed the Royal Academy itself during Reynolds's presidency — in a relationship between painter and architect that was both professional and institutional. Chambers had been appointed Treasurer of the Royal Academy at its founding in 1768, serving alongside Reynolds who was its first President; the two men were colleagues in the project of elevating British art to the status it held in the European tradition. Chambers's architecture — influenced by his studies in Paris and his travels in China (where he developed the pagoda style that influenced British garden design) — represented the cosmopolitan Neoclassicism that Reynolds's 'grand manner' sought to parallel in painting. The Royal Academy's holding of this portrait maintains it in the institutional context for which it was painted, a rare case of a commissioned portrait surviving in its original public setting.

Reynolds presents the architect with characteristic dignity, the warm palette and measured composition creating an image of professional authority and intellectual distinction. The careful rendering of Chambers's features conveys individual personality within the conventions of institutional portraiture.