David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy

Reynolds painted David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy around 1761, depicting the greatest actor of the eighteenth-century English stage choosing between the muses of Tragedy and Comedy — allegorical figures who tug him in opposite directions. The painting is a tour de force of Reynolds's Grand Style, elevating a portrait of a living individual to the status of an allegorical composition in the tradition of Raphael and Correggio. Garrick, who dominated the London stage for decades, was Reynolds's close friend. Now in a National Trust property, the painting is one of the most famous images in British art.

Reynolds arranges the three figures in a triangular composition with Garrick at center, pulled in opposite directions. The contrasting coloring of the two muses—dark for Tragedy, light for Comedy—reinforces the dramatic tension.