English: Daniel Gardner (Kendal 1745 - 1805 London)

Portrait of a gentleman standing at a pedestal

Pastel and bodycolour

955 by 660 mm

This striking portrait, which dates to circa 1790, shows a young man of the age of enlightenment leaning on a pedestal and distracted, for a moment, from his work.

Daniel Gardner was born in Kendal in the north of England and received early tuition from George Romney. Upon moving to London in 1770 he joined the Royal Academy Schools, before becoming attached to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s studio. Although heavily influenced by that great painter’s compositions and theories, Gardner chose pastel and paper as his preferred medium. Over time, he perfected a technique in which he worked with finely ground pastel pigments to describe his sitter’s flesh tones, while then playing with the different textural qualities of both watercolor and gouache when completing his compositions. These highly original combinations of techniques proved very successful and they gave him the advantage over his rivals: so much so that he has been described as the most successful English pastellist of the 18th century, ‘surpassing Reynolds in freedom and spontaneity and John Downman in attaining finer color.’