The brush and the sword: How joshua reynolds invented the english hero

This transformation was no accident. Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy and chief portraitist to the English aristocracy, had spent years perfecting a secret formula: the Grand Manner. A magic recipe that turned dukes into gods, actresses into muses, and admirals into legends. But how did a clergyman’s son from Devon, who set off to study in Rome with only a few guineas in his pocket, manage to impose such an ambitious vision of portraiture? And why do his paintings, now hanging in the National Gallery or Tate Britain, continue to define our very idea of English grandeur?

01Italy, or the art of stealing from the gods

Reynolds arrived in Rome in 1749 with a clear mission: to learn to paint like the masters of the Renaissance. But what awaited him in Italy’s churches and palaces went far beyond mere technical lessons. In the Sistine Chapel, before Michelangelo’s muscular bodies, he understood that painting was not about resemblance but transcendence. In Florence, copying Raphael’s Madonnas, he discovered the power of classical poses—those studied gestures that turned a simple woman into a sacred figure. And in Venice, before Titian’s canvases, he marveled at how light could sculpt a face like a sculptor molds clay.

Yet Reynolds was no mere copyist. What fascinated him was how these ancient masters elevated their subjects. A pope by Raphael was not just an old man in white robes—he was an incarnation of divine authority. A courtesan by Titian was not merely a beautiful woman—she was the very personification of desire. Reynolds took frantic notes, filled sketchbooks, and above all, he observed. He noticed that great painters did not simply represent—they interpreted. They took an ordinary face and infused it with mythological, historical, or allegorical dimension.

When he returned to London three years later, he brought back far more than souvenirs: a vision. An unshakable conviction that portraiture, a genre considered minor by the French Academy, could—and should—rival history painting. To achieve this, he needed a method. And this method he would forge by studying the greats, adapting them, and sometimes… plundering them without shame.

02The Grand Manner formula: when the duke becomes Apollo

The Grand Manner was not an invention from nothing. It was a clever blend of classical references, coded symbols, and a touch of well-placed flattery. Reynolds had grasped one essential truth: the English aristocracy, in the midst of imperial ascent, no longer wanted portraits that showed them as they were. They wanted images that transfigured them.

Take Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces (1765). At first glance, it is an elegant young woman in a pale blue silk dress, pouring a libation before a statue of the Three Graces. But look closer. Sarah’s pose is directly inspired by Roman vestals. Her gesture, solemn, evokes ancient rites. The Graces themselves symbolize beauty, joy, and abundance—qualities every lady of high society was expected to cultivate. In a single painting, Reynolds transformed a mere socialite into a priestess of the classical ideal. And above all, he offered his contemporaries an image of themselves far more flattering than reality.

This alchemy relied on a few key ingredients, always the same: Ancient poses: an arm raised like a Roman orator, a bent leg like a Greek warrior., Symbolic accessories: a sword for military honor, a column for stability, a mirror for vanity (or reflection, depending on interpretation)., Sumptuous drapery: fabrics that seem sculpted by the wind, inspired by the togas of emperors. et Dramatic backgrounds: stormy skies for heroes, classical ruins for intellectuals.

But Reynolds’ true genius lay in his ability to adapt these elements to each sitter. An admiral like Keppel became Neptune. An actress like Sarah Siddons transformed into Tragedy personified. And a writer like Samuel Johnson was depicted as a Roman senator, scroll in hand, as if he had just delivered a speech in the Senate. Each portrait was a small theatrical piece, where the sitter played a tailor-made role.

03The workshop of illusions: when painting becomes an acceptable lie

Behind every Reynolds masterpiece lay a bustling studio where magic operated through an almost industrial division of labor. For Reynolds, contrary to the romantic image of the solitary artist, ran a veritable portrait factory.

In his Leicester Fields workshop, an army of assistants busied themselves. Some prepared canvases, others sketched drapery using wooden mannequins. Specialists handled the backgrounds—those stormy skies or classical columns that gave portraits their heroic dimension. Reynolds himself attended only to the essentials: faces and hands. Those parts of the body that, in his view, revealed the sitter’s soul.

Sitting sessions were brief, sometimes rushed. Two hours at most, just enough for Reynolds to capture expression and essential features. The rest was a matter of technique. Assistants filled in details while the master returned later to add final touches—those subtle glazes that gave complexions their pearly glow, those highlights that made eyes sparkle like diamonds.

But this method came at a price. Reynolds was a tireless experimenter, always seeking new techniques to enhance his effects. He mixed wax into his pigments for richer textures. He used unstable blues that, over time, turned green. He layered paint with an audacity bordering on recklessness. The result: some of his canvases, like The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (1788), cracked over the years, like skin stretched too tight.

Yet these flaws never tarnished his reputation. On the contrary, they added a nearly human dimension to his work. As if these cracks were the scars of an art that had dared to demand too much from its materials.

04Light and shadow: how Reynolds stole fire from Rembrandt

If Reynolds’ poses came from antiquity, his way of playing with light owed everything to a northern master: Rembrandt. But where the Dutchman used chiaroscuro to reveal tormented souls, Reynolds turned it into a tool of glorification.

Observe Lord Heathfield (1787), this governor of Gibraltar depicted after a victorious siege. Light strikes his face at three-quarters, sculpting his features like a bas-relief. His gaze, half-plunged in shadow, seems to pierce the darkness. Behind him, the sky is streaked with lightning, while the keys of the fortress gleam in his hand like a sacred trophy. Everything in this composition is designed to create maximum dramatization. Light does not merely illuminate—it celebrates.

Reynolds pushed this technique to its peak in Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784). The actress, dressed in a blood-red gown, emerges from darkness like an apparition. Light caresses her face and shoulders while the rest of her body seems to dissolve into shadow. The result is both theatrical and sacred—as if Siddons embodied all of Greek tragedy herself.

This mastery of light was not just a technical matter. It was a philosophy. Reynolds believed painting should idealize, transcend reality. And to do this, one had to know how to play with shadows, create contrasts that magnified the subject. As he wrote in his Discourses on Art: "The painter must not content himself with copying nature. He must improve it, sublimate it."

05The price of glory: when sitters became gods despite themselves

Reynolds did not merely paint portraits. He sold dreams. And his clients, hungry for grandeur, were willing to pay dearly for these illusions.

Take The Marlborough Family (1778). The Duke of Marlborough, hero of the War of Spanish Succession, is depicted as a Roman patriarch surrounded by his family. His children play at the feet of a statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom. His wife, in a golden silk gown, holds a mirror—symbol of vanity, but also reflection. Everything in this composition is designed to evoke Italian palace frescoes. Except that… the duke was not a Roman. He was an eighteenth-century English aristocrat, with all his flaws and weaknesses.

Yet no one complained. On the contrary. Commissions poured in, and Reynolds could charge up to eighty guineas per portrait—a colossal sum at the time. His sitters even accepted that their features be improved. Noses too long were shortened, receding chins strengthened, wrinkles erased. Some, like Captain Robert Orme, even complained that their portraits did not resemble them. Reynolds would reply with a smile: "But this is how posterity will see you."

This quest for the ideal had a downside, however. By idealizing his sitters, Reynolds often erased their individuality. His women, in particular, became archetypes rather than people. Lady Sarah Bunbury was not Sarah Bunbury—she was a priestess of the Graces. Mrs. Siddons was not an actress—she was Tragedy incarnate. In his pursuit of grandeur, Reynolds sometimes sacrificed human truth on the altar of classical beauty.

06The legacy: when portraiture became a political weapon

Reynolds did not merely revolutionize portraiture. He created a visual language that would serve the ambitions of the British Empire for over a century.

His portraits of military figures, like Commodore Keppel or Lord Heathfield, were not mere representations. They were political manifestos. By depicting these men as ancient heroes, Reynolds helped forge the myth of an invincible England, a nation chosen by history to dominate the world. These paintings, exhibited at the Royal Academy, became instruments of propaganda. They reminded the British of their superiority, their manifest destiny.

Even his portraits of intellectuals served this cause. Samuel Johnson (1772), depicted as a Roman senator, was not just a writer—he was the symbol of a British culture asserting itself against France. And The Age of Innocence (1788), that portrait of a rosy-cheeked child, embodied the ideal of a pure, innocent England promised a radiant future.

Today, these images may seem dated, even kitsch. But at the time, they played a crucial role in constructing national identity. They gave the British an image of themselves that would accompany them through the Napoleonic Wars, colonial expansion, and beyond.

07The final act: when the light fades

Reynolds’ later years were marked by a cruel paradox. As he reached the pinnacle of his fame—president of the Royal Academy, official painter to the court, friend to the greatest minds of his time—his sight began to fail. In 1789, he lost the use of one eye. The toxic pigments he had handled all his life, the long hours spent painting under artificial light, had finally taken their toll.

Yet even weakened, he continued to work. He dictated his final Discourses on Art to his students. He painted a few more portraits, including The Infant Hercules, an allegory of British strength that would crack over time, as if symbolizing the fragility of his own genius.

When he died in 1792, it was like a king of art. He was buried in St. Paul’s, alongside England’s great men. His funeral was a national event. But criticism soon followed. The Romantics, like Turner, reproached him for his rigid classicism. The realists, like Hogarth before them, mocked his excessive idealization. Even his admirers acknowledged that his work, brilliant as it was, sometimes lacked the human truth that made Rembrandt or Goya great.

Yet his legacy was immense. Without Reynolds, there would have been no Thomas Lawrence, the prodigy who would carry English portraiture to its nineteenth-century apogee. Without him, Gilbert Stuart might never have painted that George Washington who became the very image of nascent America. And without him, the very idea of British grandeur might have taken a very different form.

Today, when you contemplate Lord Heathfield at the National Gallery or Mrs. Siddons at the Huntington Library, you are not merely looking at portraits. You are seeing fragments of an era when England still believed in heroes. When a simple brush could turn a man into a god and a woman into a muse. When art was not just about beauty, but about power.

And if you listen closely, you might still hear the rustle of silk gowns in the corridors of the Royal Academy. The murmur of polite conversation. The whisper of brushes on canvas. And somewhere in the shadows, the mischievous laughter of Reynolds, the magician who taught England to see itself as greater than it was.