Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-joshua-reynolds-444" aria-label="More by Sir Joshua Reynolds" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Sir Joshua Reynolds</a>
A Childs Portrait in Different Views Angels Heads
Presented by Lady William Gordon 1841
angel
body
children
fine art and design, named works
girl
Gordon, Frances Ker
head / face
individuals: female
Maratti, Carlo
named individuals
objects
people
portraits
religion and belief
universal religious imagery
<p>This painting shows the head of five-year-old Lady Frances Gordon from five different angles. Reynolds took the idea from 17th-century Italian painting: in seeking to elevate the genre of portraiture he would borrow motifs or styles from the most admired art of the past. Critics praised Reynolds’s artistic ability. One claimed that, ‘The hand of nature never formed a finer face than this: not like the general run … of cherubims, with ruddy cheeks and round unmeaning faces, but sentiment, expression, and clearness, and warmth of colouring, that all must feel, but which the President of the Royal Academy alone can describe’.</p><p><em>Gallery label, February 2016</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
10 March 2003 – 12 July 2004
2004-07-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-03-10
Royal Academy
Collection based display
12 February 2005 – 25 September 2005
2005-09-25
12 February 2005 – 1 May 2005
2005-05-01
2005-02-12
Palazzo dei Diamanti (Ferrara, Italy)
2005-02-12
Joshua Reynolds
Exhibition
30 November 2012 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
1 December 2012
2012-12-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-30
Gallery 14
Collection based display
5 April 2023 – 10 March 2024
2024-03-10
5 April 2023 – 10 September 2023
2023-09-10
2023-04-05
Dulwich Picture Gallery (London, UK)
18 October 2023 – 10 March 2024
2024-03-10
2023-10-18
Musée Marmottan Monet (Paris, France)
2023-04-05
Berthe Morisot: Impressionism and the Eighteenth Century
Loan-out
A Child’s Portrait in Different Views: ‘Angel’s Heads’
support: 749 × 629 mm
frame: 890 × 770 mm
Presented by Lady William Gordon 1841
<p>The five year old Lady Frances Gordon sat to Reynolds for this unusual <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portrait</span></a> in July and August 1786, and again in March 1787. Reynolds generally had very few portrait appointments during the summer months, reserving this time for work on character studies (known as '<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/fancy-picture" title="Glossary definition for 'Fancy Picture'"><span>fancy pictures</span></a>') and subject pictures. It is not perhaps surprising, therefore, that the present <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, which is composed of a series of studies of  Frances Gordon's head from five different angles, is far more reminiscent of Reynolds's fancy pictures than his portraits of named sitters. 

</p><p>Frances Isabella Keir Gordon (1782-1831) was the only daughter of Lord William Gordon (1744-1823) and his wife Frances Ingram (1761-1841), second daughter of  Charles, 9<sup>th</sup><sup></sup><sup></sup> Viscount Irvine (1727-78), who were married on 6 March 1781. Her uncle was Lord George Gordon (1751-93), whose political activities had sparked the anti-Catholic riots of 1780. 

</p><p>Reynolds's principal compositional source for the picture was a red <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/chalk" title="Glossary definition for 'Chalk'"><span>chalk</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> of four cherubs' heads by the Italian seventeenth-century artist, Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), which Reynolds had acquired in 1779 at the studio sale of his master Thomas Hudson (1701-79), and which is now in the British Museum. The first critical notice of the picture appeared in The<i> </i>Times in October 1786, before it was exhibited in public at the Royal Academy. Here The Times observed that the 'grouping of four likenesses of the little cherubic Gordon into one picture, is among the prettiest portrait ideas that have ever been conceived'. Several months later, The World, a newspaper which also kept a close watch on developments in Reynolds's studio, noted that the 'four heads, in one frame, of Lord William Gordon's child, are gone home'. However, a subsequent sitting with Miss Gordon in March 1787 indicates that the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> had in the meantime been returned to Reynolds, not least because in the completed picture there are five heads, rather than four, the additional one presumably being added during the final sitting. <br/><br/>Frances Gordon's mother outlived her daughter by ten years and, on her death in 1841, she presented this picture to the National Gallery. There it was extensively copied, registers of copies kept by the National Gallery from 1846 to 1895 revealing no fewer than 314 full-size copies in oil. The popular appeal of the picture to <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/v/victorian" title="Glossary definition for 'Victorian'"><span>Victorian</span></a> taste is also indicated by its reproduction on decorative items, including the cover of an ivory-bound prayer book. Numerous photographic reproductions also exist, with titles such as 'The Cherub Choir'. More recently, an image of the picture was used on a First Day Cover to promote the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's 'Year of the Child'. Perhaps most unusual is the use of the image in badges awarded to student midwives at St. Mary's Hospital, Manchester. 

</p><p><b>Further Reading:<br/></b><b><br/></b>David Mannings and Martin Postle, <i>Sir Joshua Reynolds. A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings</i>, 2 vols., New Haven and London 2000, vol.1, p.221, vol.2, p.556, fig.1494

</p><p>Martin Postle<br/>November 2000</p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>This painting shows the head of five-year-old Lady Frances Gordon from five different angles. Reynolds took the idea from 17th-century Italian painting: in seeking to elevate the genre of portraiture he would borrow motifs or styles from the most admired art of the past. Critics praised Reynolds’s artistic ability. One claimed that, ‘The hand of nature never formed a finer face than this: not like the general run … of cherubims, with ruddy cheeks and round unmeaning faces, but sentiment, expression, and clearness, and warmth of colouring, that all must feel, but which the President of the Royal Academy alone can describe’.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2016-02-23T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
angel body children fine art and design, named works girl Gordon, Frances Ker head / face individuals: female Maratti, Carlo named individuals objects people portraits religion and belief universal religious imagery