Print made by Pietro Antonio Martini, 1738–1797, Italianafter Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1763–1840, German, active in Britain (1781–88)
Title:
Exhibition of Royal Academy
Date:
1787
Materials & Techniques:
Etching
Dimensions:
Sheet: 15 x 20 1/2in. (38.1 x 52.1cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.12779
Gallery Label:
Reynolds displayed many of his most ambitious portraits at the enormously popular public exhibitions hosted annually by London’s Royal Academy. For example, in this engraved view of the exhibition of 1787, Reynolds’s portrait of the Prince of Wales with a servant may be seen at the very center of the far wall. The entry in the accompanying exhibition catalogue referred viewers only to the painting’s white sitter, “His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.” --This text served as the label to this object in Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art that was curated by Esther Chadwick, Meredith Gamer, and Cyra Levenson, which was on view from October 2, 2014 until December 14, 2014.
