The Box Museum. Plymouth UK
A new, free exhibition that draws on The Box’s extensive collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds paintings – the UK’s single largest public collection of his work outside of London – to explore the enduring connection between the Plymouth-born master painter and the Eliot family of Port Eliot in St Germans, Cornwall.
15 miles west of Plymouth in the Cornish countryside stands Port Eliot. Home to the Eliot family since 1565, the house contains the largest surviving group of early portraits by Joshua Reynolds in the South West. In 2007, many of them joined The Box’s permanent collections through the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu Scheme.
Reynolds was born in Plympton St Maurice in 1723, and became Britain’s foremost portrait painter. As Founding President of the Royal Academy of Art, his approach to the making and teaching of art changed the way art was thought about in this country.
In this exhibition we use 14 of the 23 works that were acquired in 2007 to explore the relationship between Reynolds and the Eliot family - a relationship that began at the dawn of Reynolds’ artistic career, and ended with Edward, 1st Lord Eliot carrying his coffin into St Paul’s Cathedral almost 50 years later. After Reynolds’ death, the family continued to seek out his work for their home.
