On his return he settled in London, and the most
distinguished men and women of the day and their children sat to him.
It seems that he would have liked his lords and ladies to look as heroic
or sublime as the heroes or gods of Michelangelo. Instead of painting
them in the surroundings that belonged to them, as Holbein or Velasquez
would have done, he dressed his ladies in what he called white
'drapery,' a voluminous material, neither silk, satin, woollen, nor
cotton, and painted them sailing through the woods. The ladies
themselves liked to look like nymphs, characterless and pretty, so
the fashion of painting portraits in this way became common.
The pictures are pleasing to look at, although so artificial, and after
all it was only full-length portraits of ladies that Reynolds treated
in this way. They were a small part of his whole output. But he and
Velasquez worked in a totally different spirit. Velasquez made the
subject before him, however unpromising, striking because of its truth.
Reynolds liked to change it on occasion into something quite different,
for the sake of making a picture pretty.
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