Sir Joshua Reynolds: His art and his market

If pressed to identify the pre-eminent 18th-century British painter, most art historians would name Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds presided over the artistic life of the nation at a time when the British school of painting not only came into its own, but also became a cultural force to rival anything being produced on the continent. It was during this time, in the second half of the 18th Century, when Britain could have been said to have perfected the art of portraiture. There were many great portraitists at work in these decades; Gainsborough, Romney and Zoffany are but three; but Reynolds, as President of the Royal Academy, could be regarded as their leader.

Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon in 1723. He moved to London in 1740 to work as apprentice to the painter Thomas Hudson and, in 1749, he journeyed to Italy where he travelled and studied extensively.

On his return in 1752, he set up as a portrait painter in London and swiftly became one of the most successful and fashionable artists in the city. Like his greatest rival, Thomas Gainsborough, he produced work that was full of life and character, his handling looser and atmosphere easier than the stiffer work of the generation of painters that preceded him.  

In 1769, he became one of the founder-members and President of the Royal Academy. The foundation of the RA was a seismic cultural moment in Britian. For the first time, there was a Royally patronised national body for the promotion, teaching and exhibition of contemporary art. Reynolds, as President, therefore took his seat at the head of British artistic life. Part of his role was to deliver annual addresses to the Academicians, and these tracts, later published as his Discourses, provided a theoretical framework for British artists to follow. Reynolds instituted that painters should strive for the ideal in their portraits and paint in what he termed ‘the grand manner’, by imbuing their compositions with elements taken from old master Italian painting and, ultimately, antiquity. By borrowing poses from classical statuary and depicting his sitters either in historical costume or as an allegory for something, Reynolds elevated portraiture into the realm of history painting – supposedly the highest echelon of artistic achievement.

Whilst Reynolds did execute a number of pure history paintings, they are generally considered to be less successful than his best portraits. He pioneered the historical portrait and, along with Gainsborough, was one of the first painters to depict childhood as a distinct phase of life, rather than painting children as miniature adults. Reynolds was one of the best-connected men in 18th-Century London. Not only was he at the heart of the capital’s literary and cultural world – Samuel Johnson and David Garrick were close friends – anybody who was anyone, whether they be celebrity courtesans like Kitty Fisher, noblemen or royals, sat to Reynolds during his long career.

Reynolds' early reception

Reynolds’ art has been highly regarded and prized since his death. And although the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood did at one point dub him ‘Sir Sloshua Reynolds’, his work has had few vocal detractors or sustained periods of unpopularity. Many of his pictures found their way into public collections during the 18th Century and there they have found favour with the British public. This is demonstrated by his 1788 picture, The Age of Innocence, thought to depict his great-niece, which was copied in oil paints 323 times between 1856 and 1893, when it hung in the National Gallery.

In the early 20th Century, and especially after the Great War, many British landed families struggled to keep their stately homes financially viable. Whilst some nobles sought the cash injection of an American heiress wife, many more resorted to selling their family pictures to America, often through dealers like Joseph Duveen. As a result, there are a great number of very important Reynolds portraits in the USA.

The top end of Reynolds' market today

There have been some enormous prices paid for works by Reynolds. That said, a huge price is only achievable for an exceptional picture, typically a full-length. The most famous, and one of the most recent, examples must be his portrait of Omai. This painting depicts a Polynesian man who visited London in the 1770s and, due to his far-flung origins, quickly became a sensation. Reynolds’ portrait of him is one of the first full-length portraits of a non-white sitter. The picture, having hung in Castle Howard for over 200 years, was auctioned in 2001 where it fetched over £10m, then the second highest auction price for a British picture and still Reynolds’ record auction price. The painting was then blocked for export and was purchased in 2023 by the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum jointly for an amazing figure of £50m, a price that acknowledges the painting's unique position in British art history.

Another top sale that made the press recently was the purchase of Reynolds’ famous portrait of Lady Worsley which, until 2025, hung at Harewood House in Yorkshire, the seat of the Earls of Harewood. This picture was well-known, not just for the sitter’s great beauty, but because Harewood House is open to the public. The painting was acquired privately in 2025 for a figure of ‘around £25m’. Like in the Omai portrait, this sum shows how a very well-known picture with illustrious provenance can, on occasion, fetch a huge price.

The auction market for Reynolds’ work reflects these trends. The highest prices are achieved of course for works of great quality, but beyond that, they tend to be for pictures that have some kind of extra interest. For instance, his portrait of Mrs Baldwin achieved £3.36m at auction in 2004, the 3rd highest auction price for Reynolds. A large part of this picture’s appeal was the sitter’s Eastern dress. Mrs Baldwin was born to British parents in Turkey and, on her return to London, continued to wear Ottoman styles, which, accompanied by her great beauty, made her an object of intrigue and admiration in Georgian London. A painting like this will always harry a higher market value than a rather more prosaic portrait of a less interesting subject.

One constant among the top Reynolds sales is, of course, the attractiveness of the sitter. A sitter with an interesting history is important, but not as important as their good looks. It therefore follows that, on the whole, portraits of women tend to fetch more than those of their male counterparts. There is also the question of provenance. As with all pictures, a traceable provenance is a very important factor. Given the fact that the majority of Reynolds’ work was portraiture, a proportion of his paintings still belong to the families for whom they were painted. As and when these are sold for the first time, this unbroken family provenance often positively impacts the sale price.

Other things to consider

The pictures hitherto mentioned are some of the greatest things Reynolds painted. His output was not, however, completely even. Of course, he could produce dazzling portraits of beautiful sitters, especially when paid handsomely. But, like any portraitist, he was also equally capable of painting rather more run-of-the-mill works, generally when the sitter was less appealing, or when the commission was less ambitious, or remunerative.

Reynolds was also hugely prolific. David Mannings’ comprehensive 2000 catalogue raisonné lists over 2100 original works by the artist. This figure does not include copies made either by Reynold’s studio or by later hands. There will also certainly be plenty more autograph paintings out there waiting to be rediscovered. In short, whilst his greatest pictures are in short supply, there are plenty of opportunities to buy a less important work by Reynolds or his studio, with pictures coming up every month at auctions around the world. Whilst some of his work is of a lower quality, or painted only by studio assistants, it should be reiterated that there remains a good market for good, mid-tier portraits by Reynolds. The following two pictures appeared recently at auction and achieved strong, but sensible, prices in line with their high, but perhaps not superior, quality.

Condition is also another hugely important part of Reynolds’ paintings and their market value. Reynolds was an innovative painter who liked to experiment with mixing his pigments with bizarre materials like bitumen, waxes and varnishes, with the aim of giving his works the patina of a venerable old master painting of the 16th Century. Unfortunately, these materials often proved highly unstable and would lead to cracking and bubbling (especially with bitumised pictures). These chemical reactions are irreversible and often mean that works effected respond very poorly to restoration.

Furthermore, Reynolds often used a pigment called carmine red, which was prone to fading. This has left many portraits’ faces drained of colour and ghostly in appearance as what were once pink flesh tones have now been left white. Sometimes these condition issues manifested so quickly that much of Reynolds’ studio assistants’ time was spent restoring portraits painted by the master only a few years before.

To sum up – Reynolds is a foundational figure in the history of British art. His greatest pictures are masterpieces on level with any other of Britain’s great cultural achievements. Accordingly, his work is capable of fetching great sums. Luckily for buyers, his prolific practice means that there is ample opportunity to acquire works by him. It should be recognised, however, that this profusion of pictures by Reynolds invariably means that a proportion of his oeuvre was executed by his studio or, as mentioned above, compromised in terms of condition.

Dickinson has sold many great pictures by Reynolds. The following two works were sold by us in 2025.