The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Volume 2: Containing his Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland (Now First Published), and his Commentary on Du Fresnoy’s ‘Art of Painting

This two-volume posthumous edition of the writings on art of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), one of the greatest of eighteenth-century artists and the first president of the Royal Academy, was published in 1797. Volume 2 contains his previously unpublished Journey to Flanders and Holland, which describes and comments on the paintings Reynolds examined on a two-month tour in Europe in 1781. (He visited galleries in Dusseldorf, Cologne and Aachen as well as the Low Counties.) This is followed by a long Latin poem on the art of painting, by the French artist Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy (1611-68), together with a translation by William Mason, and extensive commentary by Reynolds. Appendices include essays by Pope and Dryden on du Fresnoy’s poem, and chronological and alphabetical lists of painters and their genres from Cimabue to the late seventeenth century. The book is completed by an index covering both volumes.