Walter Radcliffe (1733-1803)

Reynolds painted Walter Radcliffe around 1759, a portrait of a member of the Devon gentry. The painting dates from Reynolds's early mature period, when he was establishing the portrait style that would influence British painting for generations. Now in a National Trust property, the portrait demonstrates Reynolds's connections to the Devon society he had known since childhood — he was born in Plympton, near Plymouth, in 1723. 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 straightforward composition and warm, natural coloring are typical of Reynolds's earlier work, before his style became more ambitious and theatrical. The careful likeness and honest characterization demonstrate the qualities that initially built his reputation among the English gentry.