Feminine Portraiture In The Work Of Sir Joshua Reynolds

Feminine Portraiture

Gill Perry’s writing “Women in Disguise: Likeness, The Grand Style and the Conventions of Feminine Portraiture in the Work of Sir Joshua Reynolds” deeply explores the construction and meaning behind the female portrait paintings done by Joshua Reynolds. Joshua Reynolds was a renowned portrait painter and Founder and President of the Royal Academy of Arts. His artistic life consisted much of full length portraits of many men, women, and children. His most significant work, however, was his portraits of women. Gill Perry analyzed his works and has come to the conclusion that the art created by Joshua Reynolds often aimed to be equal to literature, particularly in his feminine portraits. He created non conventional feminine portraits by means of disguise and distinguished ladies with looks of power, which is an unheard of means for feminine portraits of this age.

Gill Perry approaches this subject thoroughly with in depth examples and comparisons.

The first bit of information shared at the beginning of the essay is a quote from Reynolds writings claiming that he wants to heighten the dignity of the art of painting. He considers it to be on the same dignified par as literature and poetry. Gill Perry claims that Joshua Reynolds dignifies painting in a variety of ways. The most prominent aspect of Joshua Reynolds female portraiture is the way that he disguises women as significant figures. This adds a lot of dignity and sophistication to his work because it adds layers of meaning to be interpreted by a viewer. He wanted to break the common interpretations of portraiture. Portraiture was considered to be much about likeness. This meaning that it simply looks like the person or makes a simple statement about the person. These concepts leave much to be

desired.
Reynolds added in factors such as allegorical references to figures in art history and mythology. Gill Perry states that Reynolds would assign roles to the women within the image to raise the educational factor in the art. This automatically makes the art more dignified because it adds intelligence as a factor that creates the meaning of the painting. For example, Reynolds represents Sarah Bunbury as Euphrosyne, one of the Three Graces. This is a clear example of Reynolds increasing the worthiness of his art. Another example of Reynolds increasing the dignity of his art is his use of posing to reference important art history sources. At first glance, the pose of a figure in a specific painting may seem rather normal, but with some inspection, it is shown that Joshua Reynolds was referencing other artists famous work, such as the figures from the Sistine Chapel via Michelangelo. This transforms his work into literature because the meaning behind the art know requires prior knowledge, thought, and research to fully grasp the meaning. This takes his paintings beyond the simple visual image and pushes it to be an informational source and important historical reference.
Gill Perry also states that elevates his works by making a statement against the general consensus of the times. He puts women in roles of clear power and determination. At this time, women were to be nothing but muses for the male artist and simply lower than men overall. The only way for women to obtain any kind of recognition was basically through marriage of a powerful man. Women were painted to be beautiful and objectified. They are often considered nothing more than a muse. Yet, Joshua Reynolds appears to be making a statement in his works about the roles and ranks of women.
The first noticeable thing in his feminine portraits is the calm and determined demeanor that the girls have. This is not necessarily a look of beauty, but a look of intelligence and potentially bravery. These traits were often reserved for male portraits only as men were seen as the only intelligent and brave humans. These intellectual appearances give the women in the portrait a sense of intellect and individuality. It separates them from needing a man to validate them as intelligent beings.This could easily spark a reaction in the audience and has a great impact on female viewers as well. Art was important and had an influence on the viewers of the works. The way he represented women could make people rethink how they feel about women, as they are being represented as intellectual beings of rank, rather than objects of simple beauty.
Reynolds achieves the same thing in the way that he dresses the women in his portraits. Reynolds wanted to move past the common dress and provide women with a sense of rank with historical clothing that provides meaning, over the likeness. Reynolds used a similar historical combination to create a “fancy” outfit for his figures. He packed these with references to classical sources. He accomplished two things by doing this. The first thing is that he beat the idea of clothing going out of style quickly, which eventually makes the portrait less desired. Reynolds claims that a recognizable dress destroys the reputation of the woman purely on its own.The second thing that Reynolds accomplishes with this is the historical significance that adds the educational element, similar to the disguises that he also uses.
There are many strengths coming from Perry’s argument. Gill Perry uses these bits of evidence to point clearly to the thesis they are trying to make. Perry's’ approach is valued because everything clearly points to their thesis with a large amount of strong evidence. Once again, the thesis being that Reynolds wants to make his art equivalent to literature. Multiple cases of evidence come directly from Reynolds himself as something he truly believes. He clearly enforces the literary aspects of his art via making the paintings more dignified with the classical and historical background. The art is meant to be “read into” and understood on a higher level, such as a book. Gill also uses comparisons to other artists and other works of art to make it clear that Reynolds literary intentions were there. It is interesting to know that other artists were struggling with similar issues, such as likeness and disguises.
However, a weakness detected in the argument is that Reynolds wants his art to be read as poetry. Yet, more evidence is suggesting that he wants his art to be educational and informative, rather than being emotional and poetic. Reynolds even wanted his art to be on the cover for a poetry book. More evidence could be used here to enforce the poetic feeling gathered from the painting, rather than a purely informative one. However, the thesis of paintings being like literature, in general, still holds.
Something that could be explored more in this article that would be a nice comparison is Reynolds work outside of feminine portraits. Although his feminine portraits are quite meaningful and support the thesis well, it would be interesting to know more about how they compare to his masculine portraits or portraits of children. These portraits could provide more insight on his literary agenda. It would be useful to know more about how men are represented versus women in his style because that was only somewhat explored in Perry’s writing.
Overall, Perry provided ample support for their thesis of Joshua Reynolds wanting painting to be more like literature, a more dignified type of art. They thoroughly explored his feminine portraiture and provided clues that Reynolds was clearly aiming for dignity in his paintings. Perry made good comparisons between other artists and provided evidence that Reynolds referenced from classical works and historical works, increasing the educational strength in his paintings. He clearly put women in unexpected situations for their time in order to provide them with dignity and meaning. Overall, I agree with Perry’s thesis that Reynolds had literary plans for his works and clearly had an agenda to put himself out there to make his wishes happen.