Lieutenant Robert Haswell, RN (son of John Haswell of Tiverton, Devon)

Reynolds painted Lieutenant Robert Haswell around 1746, one of his very earliest known works, produced when the artist was barely twenty-three and had not yet traveled to Italy. The portrait shows the conventional English provincial style from which Reynolds would later dramatically depart. Now in The New Art Gallery Walsall, the painting documents the beginning of one of the most important careers in British art history. 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.

The painting showcases Joshua Reynolds's warm chiaroscuro, with Grand Manner composition lending the work its distinctive character. The palette and brushwork are calibrated to serve the subject matter, demonstrating the technical command expected of a work from this period.