Graham Reynolds

Arthur Graham Reynolds (10 January 1914 – 13 October 2013) was an English art historian who was Keeper of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was a leading expert on portrait miniatures and the art of John Constable, for whose works he wrote the catalogue raisonné. Reynolds's approach exemplified traditional scholarship and connoisseurship and he was fiercely opposed to the New Art History of the 1970s.

Early life Arthur Graham Reynolds was born in Highgate, London, in 1914. He attended Highgate School on a scholarship and subsequently went up to Queens' College, Cambridge, to read mathematics but switched to English literature.

Career A volume from Graham Reynolds's catalogue raisonné of John Constable. Reynolds joined the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1937, rising to the position of Keeper of the department of prints and drawings (replacing James Laver) and also of paintings with only a break during the Second World War when he worked for the Ministry of Home Security (1939–1945). He became a leading expert on portrait miniatures and the art of John Constable. In 1968 he was a visiting professor at Yale University. He remained active in art circles, and was appointed a member of the advisory council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in which capacity he served from 1977 to 1984. He was implacably opposed to the New Art History of the 1970s and later which he saw as threatening traditional scholarship and connoisseurship. In 1983 he chose paintings for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Constable's England. whom he married in the City of London in 1943. Outside art, Reynolds had a talent for palindromic poems, some of which were published.

Selected publications Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. An Exhibition to Commemorate the 400th Anniversary of the Birth of N. Hilliard. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1947. Thomas Bewick. A Résumé of His Life and Work. Art & Technics, London, 1949. Costume of the Western World: Elizabethan and Jacobean 1558–1625. George G. Harrap, London, 1951. English Portrait Miniatures. A & C Black, London, 1952. (revised edition Cambridge University Press, 1988) Painters of the Victorian Scene. Batsford, 1953. Catalogue of the Constable Collection. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1960. (2nd 1973) Constable: The Natural Painter. 1965. Turner. Thames & Hudson, London, 1969. ('The World of Art Library' series) A Concise History of Watercolours. Thames & Hudson, London, 1971. ('The World of Art Library' series) Catalogue of Miniatures. Wallace Collection, London, 1980. Constable's England. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1983. The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1984. (two volumes) The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1996. (two volumes) European Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996. (With Katharine Baetjer) British Portrait Miniatures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. (Fitzwilliam Museum Handbooks) The Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Royal Collection Trust, 1999.