Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd

  • Oil on canvas
  • 30 × 25 inches · 763 × 635 mm
  • Painted circa 1772
    Engraved: Isaac Jehner, as Dionysius Areopagita, a Nobleman of Athens and Disciple of St Paul, in mezzotint, published 15 November, 1776.

Collections

  • John Bentley, Birch House, Lancashire by 1850;
  • Bentley sale, Christie’s, 15 May 1886, lot 67;
  • M. Trollope, West Bilney Hall, East Winch, Norfolk; 
  • and by descent to 2014. 

Exhibitions

  • British Institution, 1850, no.55 as Dionysius the Areopagite, (lent by John Bentley).

Literature

  • E.A. Hamilton, Catalogue Raisonné of the Engraved Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds from 1755 to 1822, London, 1874, p.111;
  • Algernon Graves and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1901, vol.IV, pp.1149-50;
  • Martin Postle, ‘Patriarchs, prophets, and paviours: Reynolds’s images of old age’, The Burlington Magazine, 1988, vol.cxxx, pp.736-37;
  • Martin Postle, ‘Pathos personified’, Country Life, June 1988, p.204;
  • Ilaria Bignamini and Martin Postle, The Artist’s Model: its role in British Art from Lely to Etty, exh. cat. Nottingham (University Art Gallery), 1991, pp.80–81, no.71;
  • Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: the subject pictures, Cambridge, 1995, pp.125-126;
  • David Mannings and Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London, 2000, no.2066, p.528 (as untraced).
  • To be published by Martin Postle in a forthcoming Burlington Magazine article.

Private collection