for example, for Gainsborough to execute a portrait in its entirety, including landscape settings, drapery
and flesh painting; and Hogarth’s were all his own work. Reynolds often used the services of assistants
for the painting of drapery, landscape and accessories, and for the production of replicas. Gainsborough
commented that assistants often enjoyed more lucrative careers than those who painted portrait heads:
There is a branch of Painting next in profit to portrait, and quite in your power without any more
drawing than I’ll answer for your having, which is Drapery and Landskip backgrounds. Perhaps you
don’t know that whilst a face painter is harassed to death the drapery painter sits and earns five or six
hundred a year, and laughs all the while.
(Quoted by Whitley, 1915, 389)This is slightly disingenuous in view of the fact that the most celebrated portrait artists could charge
higher prices. Many worked with several sitters over the same period of time; for example, when they
made themselves available to welltodo clients staying in the fashionable spa resort of Bath, for the
“season.” Reynolds often saw several sitters each day (Simon, 1987, 130; Reynolds, 1968, 115–140). In
order to make their businesses economic they also worked to a fixed scale of sizes and prices, from what
was termed a “threequarter format” (which could be just head and shoulders) to the larger “kitcats”
(near halflength, with one or both hands), halflengths, “bishop halflengths” (wide enough to
accommodate a pair of lawn sleeves) and fulllength. The use of a “store” of poses (from previous
works), accessories and costumes was common. Gainsborough made extensive use of candlelight in his
sittings, particularly the earlier ones, and often detached large canvases from their frames so that he could
move them temporarily closer to a sitter in order to achieve a better likeness. Reynolds used a mirror in
which sitters could see the current state of their portrait reflected. Artists varied a great deal in the extent
to which they used underdrawings as a basis for their paintings. Reynolds was among those who
avoided use of draughtsmanship, painting heads directly onto canvas. In spite of such efficiencies
portraiture became less popular toward the end of the century when the growing fashion for wallpapers in
domestic interiors meant that there were fewer spaces in which to place such works. In the nineteenth
century, other, more “minor” categories of art such as genre or subject paintings challenged increasingly
the eighteenthcentury dominance of portraiture.
“Grand manner” portraits
The eighteenth century is often seen as a period in which grand, publicfacing art was mitigated
increasingly by the production of works with a less formal, at most semipublic or private function. This
is certainly true of portraiture. Grand portraiture remained important, however, particularly with patrons
and institutions concerned to assert their “high” status. As the “old regime” of dominant royal courts and
aristocracies persisted throughout the century, interrupted only temporarily in France by the Revolution,
so did the conventions of grand portraiture characteristic of the golden age of Louis XIV. Corporations
and other institutions wishing to celebrate their grandeur and prestige helped to perpetuate it. The large
scale baroque configurations of artists such as Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743) and Nicolas de Largillière
(1656–1746) had set the pattern for what came to be known as “historical,” “great” or “grand style”
portraits. Formal, “correct,” ceremonial, genteel or commanding poses (some derived from antique
statuary) and styles of dress, classical allusions and allegorical references to social and political power,
backgrounds of sweeping drapes, country estates or antique columns, set the tone for grand public
statements emulated in the eighteenth century by artists such as Reynolds (Wrigley, 1993, 301; Simon,
1987, 18–19, 54, 76–86, 112; Conisbee, 1981, 4, 113–115, 125, 137). Reynolds also added bitumen to
his black paint in order to cultivate an “old master” look. This technique has led unfortunately to surface
cracking in many of his works. Grand portraits often carried important messages regarding ancestral