Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A. 1723-1792

Commissioned by Henry Thrale for the Library at Streatham Place, Surrey;
By descent to Hester Thrale, his widow, by whom sold Squibb, 10th May 1816, lot 62, bt. by Fanny Chambers, widow of the sitter for £84;
Thence by descent

National Portraits Exhibition, 1867, no.652;
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of Works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. 1723-1792,  1961, no.57;
National Portrait Gallery, Mr Boswell, 1967, no.57;
On loan to Dulwich Art Gallery from 1994-2003

C.R. Leslie and T. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1865, Vol. 2, p.55;
A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1899-1901, Vol.I, pp.161-162;
Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1900, p.199;
Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds, 1941, p.63;
K.C. Balderston,  Thraliana , the diary  of Mrs Thrale , 1942, Vol.I, pp. 470, 473;
Mary Hyde, The Thrales of Streatham Park, 1977, p.180;
Mary Hyde, 'The Library Portraits at Streatham Park', The New Rambler, 1979, p.16;
T.M. Curley, Sir Robert Chambers: Law, Literature and Empire in the Age of Johnson, 1998, p.150;
David Mannings, Joshua Reynolds, A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, 2000, Text Volume, no.343, Plates Volume, fig. 1077;
Ian McIntyre, Joshua Reynolds, 2003, p.258

The portrait which Reynolds painted in 1773 of the brilliant young lawyer, Robert Chambers, is an undoubted masterpiece.  It forms part of the celebrated set of portraits of leading literary and academic characters, all close friends of the artist, which he painted for Henry Thrale to hang in his library at Streatham.  Reynolds was always at his best when painting a sitter whose intellectual powers he admired, and whose conversation he enjoyed, and the charm of Robert Chambers, newly appointed to the judicature in India, is brilliantly conveyed.  Mrs Thrale wrote verses to accompany all these Library portraits, and said of this portrait:

“In this luminous Portrait requiring no Shade,

See Chamber’s soft Character sweetly display’d;

Oh quickly return with that genuine Smile,

Nor longer let India’s Temptations beguile;

But fly from those Climates where moist Relaxation

Invades with her Torpor th effeminate Nation;

Where Metals and Marbles will melt and decay,

Fear Man for thy Virtue, and hasten away”

Robert Chambers was born in Newcastle, the son a local lawyer.  He was educated at the Grammar School, Newcastle’s finest school, and was taught by the celebrated Reverend Hugh Moises.  Amongst his school friends were John Scott (later Lord Eldon) and his brother William (later Lord Stowell), both destined to become distinguished judges.  At the age of seventeen he was awarded an exhibition at Lincoln College, Oxford, taking his degree in 1758.  In 1761 at the early age of twenty-four, he was elected fellow of University College, but he decided to follow his father into the law, and having joined the Middle Temple was called to the Bar in the same year.  In 1766, the great Sir William Blackstone, author of ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England’, vacated the post of Vinerian professor of law, and he was succeeded by the young Robert Chambers.  In the same year, Lord Lichfield, as Chancellor of Oxford, appointed him principal of New Inn Hall, a post that he held for the rest of his life.  Chambers became celebrated as a lecturer, and George III requested a copy of his entire lectures which were placed first in the Royal Library and then in the British Museum.  Early in his career, in 1768, he had been offered the post of Attorney – General in Jamaica which he declined, but in 1773 he was offered a far greater challenge.  In that year the supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal, was established and Chambers was appointed its Second Judge under Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice.  Prior to his departure he was painted by Reynolds, sittings being recorded for July 24 and 27 (both at eleven o’clock), July 29 and November 27 (both at ten), and December 3 (at four), 6 (at two), 7 (at one-thirty) and 13 (at four).  The portrait must have been completed by October, as Dr Johnson refers to it, in a letter to Hester Thrale dated 20^th October 1783, as hanging in the library at Streatham. 

On 8^th March 1774, Chambers married Frances, the beautiful daughter of Joseph Wilton, the celebrated sculptor and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy.  Chambers’ friend Dr Johnson wrote on 5^th March: “Chambers is either married, or almost married, to Miss Wilton, a girl of sixteen, exquisitely beautiful, whom he has with his lawyer’s tongue, persuaded to take her chance with him in the East”.  The introduction had been made by Reynolds and the marriage was to be long and happy.

Chambers set sail for India on 4^th April 1774, with his mother and his new wife.  They travelled in the Anson with three other judges, Impey, Hyde and Lemaistre.  His brother, William, an expert on Hindostan dialects, was already there, and later became interpreter to the Bengal Supreme Court.  His mother died in 1782, and shortly afterwards his son Tom perished when returning to school in England on the Grosvenor which sank off the African coast.  The Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey, was recalled in 1784 and Chambers acted as deputy Chief Justice, until he was appointed to succeed him in 1789.  He held the post for eight years.  In 1797 he was elected President of the Asiatic Society, and in 1799 he returned to England having lived in India for twenty-five years.  Whilst there he and his wife were painted by A.W. Devis, his portrait showing him in the New Court House with a distant view of the Hooglhy River, her portrait showing her in the compound of their house at Bhawanipur.  In 1797 he was painted by Robert Home.    On his return he was offered a peerage but declined, settling instead for a pension of £2,000 a year.  His health had suffered in India, and in the autumn of 1802 he was advised to move to the south of France.  He reached Paris where his wife and family joined him and where he met some old friends, who had travelled to the city following the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens.  He never reached the south of France, and died in Paris on 9^th May 1803.  His body was brought back to England, and he was buried in the Temple Church, where a monument by Nollekens was installed.  There was also a monument to his memory by Flaxman in the chapel of University College, Oxford. 

The origins of the great gallery of portraits at Streatham goes back to the formation of the ‘Club’ in 1764.  Reynolds enjoyed the conversation of witty and intelligent men, and was thus particularly delighted to become a friend of Dr. Johnson.  They met in 1756, when Reynolds was only thirty-three years old, almost fifteen years younger than Johnson, but despite the difference in age they became firm friends.  Johnson encouraged Reynolds’s literary ambitions, and enjoyed the hospitality of the artist’s sister.  The Club was formed in 1764, ostensibly to give Johnson a platform for his conversation, and at first a small and select group met every week at the Turk’s Head.  The nine original members included Burke and Goldsmith, but the numbers soon increased.  Robert Chambers was one of the early members.  In 1766 Reynolds first met Henry Thrale, a prosperous brewer, and became a frequent guest of him and his wife at Streatham Place, his house in Surrey.  Thrale became acquainted with many of the members of Reynolds’s Club, particularly Johnson, who helped choose books for Thrale’s library.  Thrale decided to commission from Reynolds portraits of these friends to hang in his library.  They were painted between 1772 and 1781, and totalled twelve in all (see fig.1), together with a portrait of Thrale’s wife Hester and their daughter.  The latter was different from the others in the group as it showed the sitters full length and in a landscape, whilst the remaining twelve were half length portraits.  In his diary entry for 10^th January 1781 Mrs Thrale set out in verse the characters of all the sitters, and added that “I write them in the order they are to hang”.  This order was Lord Sandys (Private Collection), William Lyttelton, Lord Westcote (Viscount Cobham), Mrs Thrale and her daughter (Beaverbrook Art Gallery), Mr Murphy (untraced), Oliver Goldsmith (National Gallery of Ireland), Sir Joshua Reynolds (Tate Gallery  ), Sir Robert Chambers, David Garrick (The Houghton Library, Harvard), Henry Thrale (The Houghton Library, Harvard), Giuseppe Baretti (Private Collection), Dr Burney (National Portrait Gallery), Edmund Burke (Scottish National Portrait Gallery) and Dr. Johnson (Tate Gallery).  It seems that the Thrale commissions grew as the circle itself grew and ended when there was no more space in the library.  The last to be added was the fine portrait of Dr. Burney in academic dress, painted in 1781 and in many respects the most comparable to that of Chambers.  They are the only two not shown in ordinary day dress.  Letters between Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney indicate that the gallery was virtually complete by January 1781, though the pictures were not hung for several months.  Thrale himself died on 4^th April that year and probably never saw them all in place.  In 1784 Mrs Thrale married Gabriel Piozzi who died in  1821.  Financial difficulties forced the sale of all the portraits in 1816, though Hester Thrale reserved for herself the portrait of her late husband and the portrait of her close friend Arthur Murphy.  The portrait of Chambers was bought at the sale by his widow. 

There were precedents for Clubs commissioning series of portraits.  The most famous example was the series of portraits of members of the Kit Kat Club, painted by Kneller, though these certainly lack the variety and individuality of the portraits by Reynolds.  Knapton painted the early members of the Dilettanti Society, each in fancy dress, and in 1779 Reynolds himself painted two group portraits of the members of that society.  The Streatham portraits are notable for their individuality and their truthful depiction of the very different characters of each of the sitters.  Reynolds disregarded convention in his refusal to hide any physical deficiencies in his friends – Baretti is shown as very short sighted, Johnson as ungainly and Reynolds painted himself as a deaf man cupping his ear.  Many of the portraits show his friends in informal dress and often seem to have been painted at Streatham, a rare example of Reynolds working outside his studio. 

In her diary Hester Thrale wrote with pride and with much justification: “let any other Set be produced & the mighty Superiority of Ours will speedily acknowledged”.  Chambers was known for his good nature and for his academic brilliance.  When Reynolds painted him he was a widely respected lawyer about to embark on a great adventure and soon to marry the beautiful Frances Wilton.  This portrait captures his youthful vigour and his evident good humour, and its undeniable quality places it amongst Reynolds’ very finest male portraits.