From Heroic to Romantic: Reynolds’s Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753) and its Legacy

• Published in: Interfaces
• Main Author: Ibata, Hélène
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Interfaces 2024
• Subjects: Reynolds (Joshua); Millais (John Everett); Keppel (Augustus); Cook (James); Lord Byron; portrait naval; portrait héroïque; portrait romantique; naval portrait; heroic portrait; romantic portrait; North West Passage
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.4000/122dl; https://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/8688

Joshua Reynolds’s second portrait of Augustus Keppel (1752-53) – which masterfully blended portrait and history painting, as well as heroic and pre-Romantic mood – contributed to the construction of a semantically fluid pictorial identity, a type of dominant masculinity that could assume a multiplicity of roles, not only in the context of Britain’s imperial expansion, but also in an age of social and intellectual transition. This paper examines its influence on naval portraiture, focusing on John Hamilton Mortimer’s group portrait of Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth (1771) as well as depictions of Horatio Nelson. Further transformations of the paradigm are analyzed, with an emphasis on its ability to depict new types of national celebrities in its Romantic adaptations, as suggested by portraits of Lord Byron, to conclude with John Everett Millais’s ultimate revisitation of the iconography of the naval portrait in his 1874 North-West Passage. Dans son second portrait d’Augustus Keppel (1752-53), qui combine avec adresse portrait et peinture d’histoire tout en conjuguant mode héroïque et émotion préromantique, Joshua Reynolds participe à la construction d’une identité masculine sémantiquement fluide, capable d’assumer plusieurs rôles, dans un contexte d’expansion impériale, mais aussi de transition sociale et intellectuelle. Cet article examine l’influence que le tableau de Reynolds a pu avoir sur le portrait naval, prenant comme exemple Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth (1771) de John Hamilton Mortimer, ainsi que des représentations de Horatio Nelson. Il souligne ensuite la capacité du modèle à dépeindre de nouveaux types de célébrités dans ses déclinaisons romantiques, comme le suggèrent des portraits de Lord Byron, pour conclure sur une résurgence tardive de cette iconographie dans le North-West Passage de John Everett Millais (1874).