Samuel William Reynolds

Samuel William Reynolds (4 July 1773 – 13 August 1835) was an English engraver, painter and gardener who specialised in landscape painting and landscape architecture. Reynolds was a popular engraver in both Britain and France and there are over 400 examples of his work in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Biography Reynolds was born on 4 July 1773. His father was born in the West Indies, the son of a planter, but, being sent in his youth to England for education, settled there permanently, and married Reynolds' mother, Sarah Hunt.

Reynolds studied in the schools of the Royal Academy, and under the mezzotint engravers Charles Howard Hodges and John Raphael Smith. His earliest dated mezzotint is a portrait of George, Prince of Wales, from May 1794.

In 1797 he engraved a plate of The Relief of Prince Adolphus and Marshal Freytag after Mather Brown, which shows a complete mastery of the art, and during the next twenty years produced many fine works, including The Vulture and Lamb, The Falconer, Leopards, Vulture and Snake, and Heron and Spaniel, all after James Northcote; A Land Storm, after George Morland; portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir J. F. Leicester, and Lady Harcourt, after Joshua Reynolds; portraits of Lady Elizabeth Whitbread and the Duchess of Bedford, after John Hoppner; The Jew Merchant, after Rembrandt; and The Rainbow, after Rubens.

Early in life Reynolds secured for himself and his family the friendship and patronage of Samuel Whitbread, and, through his connection with Drury Lane Theatre, became intimate with Thomas Sheridan and Edmund Kean. He frequently visited the theatre to assist the latter in making up his face for the part of Othello. Reynolds had many pupils, the ablest of whom were Samuel Cousins, David Lucas, and John Lucas (1807–1874). He was also a skilful landscape-gardener, and laid out the grounds of Southall and Mount Edgcumbe.

He died of paralysis at Ivy Cottage, Bayswater, London, where he had lived for many years, on 13 August 1835. His collections, which consisted chiefly of his own drawings and engravings, were sold at Christie's in the following April. By his wife, Jane Cowen, to whom he was married in 1793, and who survived him some years, enjoying an annuity from the Whitbread family. Reynolds had two sons and three daughters.

His elder son of the same name, Samuel William Reynolds Jr. (1794–1872), was also a noted mezzotint engraver and landscape painter. Of his daughters, Elizabeth, an able miniaturist, married engraver William Walker (1791–1877), and Frances exhibited miniatures at the Royal Academy (1828–1830).

A small portrait of Reynolds, etched by Edward Bell, was published by A. E. Evans in 1855. Another portrait was painted by his friend Ary Scheffer. In a humorous watercolour drawing by A. E. Chalon, representing artists at work in the gallery of the British Institution in 1805, Reynolds, seated at his easel, is a prominent figure. A portrait of his wife was painted by John Opie.