SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. | Girl leaning on a pedestal, or The Laughing Girl

George Francis Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont (1786–1845);

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 21 May 1892, lot 90, to McLean for £194–5s.;

With Donaldson;

With Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell, London, after 1887 (purchased from the above);

T.W. Bacon (purchased from the above for £300 in 1894);

By descent to A.W. Bacon;

By whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 15 March 1978, lot 37 (as The Laughing Girl), where acquired by the family of the present owner.

A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A history of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London 1899, vol. III, p. 1167, and vol. IV, p. 1456;

M. Postle, in D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, A complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London 2000, text vol., p. 532, cat. no. 2076, reproduced plates vol., p. 597, fig. 1626. 

This composition is thought to have been developed by Reynolds to serve as a pendant or 'companion' to Rembrandt's celebrated Girl at a Window in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.¹ Martin Postle, in his analysis of Reynolds' subject pictures (see Literature), divides the variants of The Laughing Girl into two distinct types, A and B. The present version belongs to type B (type A depicting a different girl with her hair parted in the centre and held back with a hairband, dressed in a cream dress and brown shawl). Postle lists four versions of this type as autograph, and lists many more copies, attesting to the success of the composition and the high demand from collectors for works of this nature.

¹ Inv. no. DPG163; see E. van de Wetering, Rembrandt's paintings revisited, a complete survey, Dordrecht 2015, p. 313, cat. no. 200, reproduced.