One of the great masters of English painting, Sir Joshua Reynolds was particularly celebrated as an outstanding portraitist. Born in Plympton, Devon, he started his training at the age of seventeen with Thomas Hudson (1701–1779), and, still in his twenties, was already working as an independent portraitist in the 1740s. He spent the years 1749 to 1752 in Italy, absorbing the lessons of antiquity and the Old Masters, as well as the latest innovations.¹ Upon his return to England, he settled in London, where he remained for the rest of his life, soon becoming the most sought-after portraitist of the English nobility, whom he captured with a technique that rivaled in brilliance that of his great forerunner Anthony van Dyck. Although he outshone gifted rivals like Francis Cotes (1726–1770), Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), and Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), he never gained royal patronage in England. However, his position as the influential first president of the Royal Academy secured his dominance in the art world.

The son of a merchant of Huguenot descent, Anthony Chamier (1725–1792) was a close contemporary and friend of Reynolds. He rose to prominence in London as a financier, then retired from business in 1763 and entered government service.² It was at precisely this time of transition that he sat to Reynolds, who noted three appointments with Chamier in November and December in his so-called Pocket Book for 1762. Reynolds’s Pocket Book for 1763 is lost, but there are records in his ledger of two payments from Chamier of forty guineas each between 1762 and 1763.³ Since Reynolds’s standard price for a half-length portrait in 1762 was forty guineas, it seems reasonable to assume that the payments were for two pictures.

The Straus portrait is believed to have been the original, while another version, lost today but known through a mezzotint (fig. 47.1), was owned by Sir Gomer Berry of London.⁴ In the present work, Reynolds shows Chamier seated at his ease, looking up from a book. More than a trope denoting an intellectual sitter, the book here represents a common interest in literature that brought Reynolds and Chamier together as founding members of Reynolds’s renowned Literary Club. Interestingly, in the second version the book has been replaced by a letter, possibly alluding to Chamier’s new occupation as a government servant.⁵

Chamier’s elevated social status is expressed by his elegant suit, which, according to the fashions of the 1760s, consists of coat, waistcoat, and knee breeches all of the same material, worn with a lace-trimmed shirt and silk stockings. Unfortunately, the poor quality of the paints often employed by Reynolds has caused the original crimson red of the suit to fade considerably, muting the once lively color palette of this portrait. Degradation of the materials is also responsible for the darkening of the background, in which many details have become obscured. These details are much more legible in the mezzotint (see fig. 47.1), a reproduction technique greatly encouraged by Reynolds in order to popularize his works. Despite the muted colors and the noticeable effects of over-cleaning, Reynolds’s mastery distinguishes this work. A sense of sympathy and friendship imbues this skillfully captured rendering of the sitter’s handsome features and pensive expression. Reynolds must have admired Chamier, who rose to undersecretary of state, a post offered to him by Lord Sandwich. Although he never spoke in the House, Chamier held the distinction of being one of the very few members of Parliament to have advised against the war with the American colonies.⁶

Chamier commissioned his portrait at a moment when the busiest period of Reynolds’s career was drawing to a close. Between 1759 and 1761 he had painted 150 sitters, including important aristocrats such as Francis Willoughby, 3rd Baron Middleton (private collection), Lord and Lady Pollington and their son John (Leeds City Art Gallery, Doddington Hall), Joshua, 5th Viscount Allen (Auckland Art Gallery / Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand), and Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol (The Collection of Earl of Pembroke, Wilton House, Salisbury). Although royal patronage continued to elude Reynolds, he had certainly acquired a large and distinguished clientele by the early 1760s.

In type, Chamier’s portrait follows those of sitters pensively looking up from a book or papers that Reynolds had made since the early 1750s, both for men and women. The earliest is probably the portrait of a friend, the physician John Mudge of Plymouth, dated 1752. The most celebrated of this group of portraits, however, is that of Horace Walpole, later 4th Earl of Oxford. The letters of this distinguished writer serve as a major source of information on Reynolds’s sitters and his works.⁷ Mark Hallett points out that the painter’s “preoccupation with the imagery of melancholic withdrawal and reflection clearly shaped Reynolds’ own practice in the period,” and that this imagery was “linked in the artist’s mind with a distinctly aristocratic form of aesthetic sensibility.”⁸ Although Chamier was not an aristocrat, his literary preoccupation, facial expression, and elegant pose imbue his portrait with the qualities of a distinguished gentleman. Firm in its composition and refined in its execution, it is certainly an excellent representative of this type of portrait. Apparently well pleased with these portraits, Chamier commissioned a second pair of smaller, oval, bust-length portraits at about the same time. Today, one is in a private collection, and the second is untraceable.⁹ Judging from the photograph of the surviving picture,¹⁰ the painterly technique is a good deal more vivid, a quality that may have been lost in the Straus painting through over-cleaning. The sitter is moved much closer to the foreground, and his head, whose features are easily identifiable as identical to those of the Straus portrait, is turned more toward the viewer. Since there are no attributes or props included in this oval version, the Straus portrait must be recognized not only as the more elaborate but also as the more insightful rendering of the sitter.

—Helga Kessler Aurisch