The Strawberry Girl

As the first President of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds exerted an unmatched influence on eighteenth-century British culture. In a series of "Discourses" presented in 1769-90 he advocated an artistic programme of idealized nature, edifying subjects, and invention achieved by imitating and improving upon the Old Masters. The Discourses were translated into three languages for an international readership that included Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great. In this "fancy picture" Reynolds departed from his standard conventions. A product of the artist's imagination, or "fancy," the genre usually featured children in natural settings, accompanied by sentimental literary or anecdotal elements. Images of children increased from the mid-eighteenth century, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings initiated an understanding of childhood as a distinct stage of human development. This painting is one of several versions, possibly created by Reynolds in order to experiment with his technique.