A mezzotint after a self-portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds; half length, facing the viewer with his left hand shading his eyes. In his right hand he holds a palette, brushes and maulstick. 1st state of 2. Inscribed below, in scratched letters: Sir Josa Reynolds Pinxt / Publish’d Feby 1st 1795 by SW Reynolds No 6 Broad Steet / Saml Wm Reynolds sculpst / 7s/6d.

This mezzotint reproduces a self-portrait painted by Reynolds probably in the late 1740s, almost half a century earlier, when he was in his mid-twenties. The painting (National Portrait Gallery, London) was tremendously daring for its period, with the artist’s dynamic pose strongly foreshortened, as if seen from a distance. As has always been recognised, it responds to the work of Rembrandt with sensitivity and intelligence, in its immediacy, its carefully controlled tonalities and the striking pattern of light and dark on the face, a favourite device of the Dutch master in his self-portrait etchings. This is the only certain self-portrait by Reynolds to show the artist at work.

This was the first print to be made after that painting, and one of a glut of prints after self-portraits by Reynolds published in the years following his death in 1792, which almost constituted a ‘cult’ of Reynolds – something that the inveterate self-publicist would no doubt have approved. Samuel William Reynolds was himself a young man of 22 when he made this velvety mezzotint, adding to the composition of the painting a simple fictive frame. The painting is now of an unusual horizontal format; the print may record the original vertical format of the painting before it was cut down at top and bottom.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016