A collaborative event organized by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Wallace Collection.

This one-day conference, which accompanies the exhibition Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint at the Wallace Collection, is designed to investigate and contextualise the artist's famously experimental practice. Building upon the technical findings of the Reynolds Research Project at the Wallace Collection, and also on a range of recent conservation projects on Reynolds's paintings, it will explore his distinctive manipulation of paint as a medium. Papers will explore new perspectives on Reynolds's experimental forms of pictorial composition, narrative and allusion, and to look afresh at the dynamic interactions between the artist, his sitters and his models in the studio.

As well as focusing on Reynolds's own art in detail, the conference seeks to place his experimental activities within the context of wider artistic, cultural and scientific practices of the eighteenth century.

Confirmed speakers

Mark Aronson, Helen Brett, John Chu, Cora Gilroy-Ware, Matthew C. Hunter, Rica Jones, Andrew Loukes, Martin Myrone, Marica Pointon, Martin Postle, Sophie Reddington, Lisa Renne and Iris Wien.