Self Portrait of the Artist as a Deaf Man

Reynolds's self-portrait holding an ear trumpet from around 1775 is among the most personally revealing and historically poignant images in his self-portrait series. Reynolds began to experience hearing loss in the late 1760s — probably from exposure to cold during his Italian years — and by the 1770s was significantly deaf, requiring the ear trumpet he depicts himself using with characteristic directness and even humor. The willingness to paint himself with this disability stands in contrast to the flattering conventions of the formal portraits he produced for clients; in his own image, Reynolds was consistently honest about aging and impairment. The self-portrait series as a whole constitutes an artistic autobiography of extraordinary depth, from the early ambitious self-presentations to the later works where age and disability are acknowledged without self-pity. Reynolds's deafness had significant social consequences: it excluded him from the full enjoyment of the theatrical and musical events that Georgian society valued highly, and his biographers note that it contributed to a growing withdrawal from social life in his later years. Now in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the self-portrait documents a dimension of Reynolds's personal experience that his professional output elsewhere suppressed.

The self-portrait presents the artist with characteristic warmth and directness. Reynolds's handling of his own features demonstrates both self-knowledge and artistic authority.