TEFAF Online 2021

Thursday 9 September - Monday 13 September 2021

Open from the 8th of September for a VIP Preview and to the public from the 9th - 13th of September.

6 Mason's Yard
LondonSW1Y 6BU
United Kingdom

The leading portrait painter in England, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was unanimously elected as the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. Reynolds was very highly educated before embarking on his artistic career, and was apprenticed to the painter Thomas Hudson at the age of 17. He later studied in Rome, focusing on the Italian masters of the 16th and 17th century, using their principles to ground and inspire many of his works. Between 1769 and 1790, Reynolds gave a series of fifteen lectures on his theories of art, also published as the Discourses on Art. One of his central points was that all painters and artists should look to the Renaissance and classical art as a model and for inspiration, a theory which would become known as the ‘grand manner’ of painting.

In his eulogy after his death in 1792, Reynolds was spoken of as “the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country.”

Reynolds’s fame and success allowed him to assemble one of the largest collections of paintings, drawings and prints of his day. His splendid collection of several thousand drawings, for the most part consisting of Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries, was inherited after his death by his niece Mary Palmer, later Marchioness of Thomond, and was eventually sold and dispersed at two auctions in London in 1794 and 1798. We are pleased to present three superb 16th century Italian drawings from Reynolds’s collection as part of our presentation for TEFAF Online.

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TEFAF Online 2021