The Artist as Collector: Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Collection of Art - Dr Donato Esposito

A Friends of Kenwood Sunday lecture given by Dr Donato Esposito on Sir Joshua Reynolds as an art collector.
Eighteenth-century London provided a lively and competitive atmosphere in which Sir Joshua Reynolds, founding President of the Royal Academy of Arts, distinguished himself as a foremost collector.
Reynolds promoted the keen study of past art through his annual lectures (Discourses). His art collection functioned as evidence of the intellectual claims he made upon art and reveals much about the privileged position he assumed. His collection of some 10,000 prints and drawings and 300 paintings was extraordinary and wide-ranging, from Leonardo da Vinci to his contemporaries including Hogarth and Kauffmann. The bulk of his collection was bequeathed to his niece and disposed of in a series of spectacular sales in the 1790s and is now widely dispersed throughout the world.
Dr Donato Esposito is an academic and curator who specialises in 18th and 19th century art, collecting and taste. He has worked as Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum and was in 2012-13 an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He curated the tercentennial exhibition Reframing Reynolds: A Celebration at the Box, Plymouth (24 June - 29 October 2023).
Kenwood is home to one of the greatest collections of works by Joshua Reynolds (1723 - 1792) with works which span his long career as 18th century Britain’s foremost painter. Entry to Kenwood House is free.
Introduction music: Concerto grosso in D major, Op. 6, No. 1 by Arcangelo Corelli, which Reynolds would have heard during his Italian travels and back in England.
Produced by Friends of Kenwood
www.friendsofkenwood.org.uk

[@mercelloveras7453]

Thanks a lot for making us to know this very hidden aspect of the great Sir. Joshua Reynolds wich enlarge him. Very interesting lecture.

[@maryjones5710]

The study of a woman and the painting of Rubens wife and son, is a remarkable likeness, they really do seem like the same woman. One of Reynolds pupils may well have painted Reynolds wife.