Robert Hay Drummond, D. D. Archbishop of York...

Reynolds painted Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York, around 1764, a prestigious ecclesiastical commission that placed him in the tradition of English portrait painting stretching back through Hudson and Kneller to Van Dyck's portraits of Caroline bishops. The Archbishop of York was the second most senior churchman in the Church of England after the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his portrait required Reynolds to project the combination of spiritual authority and temporal dignity appropriate to one of the most powerful institutional figures in Georgian Britain. Drummond was known as a relatively humane and progressive churchman within the conservative Anglican establishment, and Reynolds's portrait — three-quarter length, in clerical dress — conveys intellectual distinction alongside hierarchical authority. Reynolds painted several senior churchmen throughout his career, finding in their distinctive dress — lawn sleeves, academic gowns — the same compositional richness that military uniform provided in his officer portraits. The Saint Louis Art Museum's holding of the canvas reflects the distribution of Reynolds's ecclesiastical portraiture through the art market to American institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The portrait presents the archbishop with episcopal dignity. Reynolds's handling creates an image of ecclesiastical authority.