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Reynolds was born in Plympton St Maurice , Devon, on 16 July 1723, and apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson , with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in ItalyThe Italian Republic or Italy ( Italian: Italia is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north, where it borders France, Switzer, mainly in RomeRome ( Italian and Latin Roma is the capital city of Italy, and of its Lazio region. It is located on the lower Tiber river, near the Mediterranean Sea, at 41°50'N, 12°15'E. The Vatican City State, a sovereign enclave within Rome, is the seat of the Roman, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". From 1753 on, he lived and worked in LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri. He became a close friend of Dr JohnsonDr Samuel Johnson ( September 18, 1709 December 13, 1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson was one of England's greatest literary figures: a critic, poet, essayist, biographer and lexicographer whose bon mots are still frequently quoted in print to, Oliver GoldsmithOliver Goldsmith ( November 10, 1730(?) April 4, 1774) was an Irish writer and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village ( 1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays The Good-natur'd, Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke ( January 12, 1729— July 9, 1797) was an Irish philosopher, Whig politician and statesman, remembered principally for his criticism of the French Revolution and his discussion of "the sublime. He was a founder of the Annual Register and is re, Henry ThraleHenry Thrale (born 1724-30, at the Alehouse in Harrow Corner, Southwark, died 4 April, 1781, London) was an 18th century English MP and a close friend of Samuel Johnson. His family owned a large London brewery. He was the son of the rich brewer Ralph Thra, David GarrickDavid Garrick ( February 19, 1717 January 20, 1779) was an English actor, dramatist and theatre manager, and a pupil and friend of Dr. David Garrick was born in Hereford, England and educated, like Johnson, at Lichfield. Johnson later taught him the class and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts: he encouraged that society's interest in contemporary art and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy as a spin-out organisation.
With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, he was the dominant English portraitist of the second half of the 18th century. Reynolds painted in more of an idealized fashion than his rival. Reynolds was a brilliant academic. His lectures (Discourses) on art, delivered at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790, are remembered for their sensitivity and perception. In one of these lectures he was of the opinion that "invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory." In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, and on 23 February 1792 he died in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.