Called 'Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667–1752)'

Reynolds painted this portrait identified as Johann Christoph Pepusch around 1740, though the attribution is uncertain — Reynolds was only seventeen in 1740 and still studying under Thomas Hudson. Pepusch was a German-born composer who settled in London and was musical director of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. The painting's early dating places it among the very first works attributed to Reynolds. Now in the Royal College of Music. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts and the most intellectually ambitious portrait painter of eighteenth-century Britain, combined the social function of the portrait with the elevated aspirations of history painting through his concept of the "Grand Style." His Discourses, delivered to the Royal Academy over fifteen years, codified the academic doctrine of painting in Britain, arguing for the supremacy of the ideal over the particular and the elevated over the mundane. His own portraits attempted to embody this doctrine: sitters placed in settings, poses, and costumes that associated them with the great tradition of painting from Raphael and Titian through Rubens and Rembrandt. Whether or not the attempt always succeeded, it gave British portraiture an intellectual ambition it had previously lacked.

Joshua Reynolds employs classical references in poses and warm chiaroscuro to convey the spiritual gravity of the subject. The treatment of the figures shows careful study of earlier masters, while the palette and lighting create the devotional atmosphere the subject demands.