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Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces
Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792)
1763–65
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 242.6 × 151.5 cm (95 1/2 × 59 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Dressed in Classically inspired robes, Lady Sarah Bunbury pours a libation of oil as an offering to the Three Graces, positioned behind her. Her soon-to-be husband, Charles Bunbury, commissioned this marriage portrait, making her association with the Graces—symbols of fertility and attendants to the Roman goddess of love, Venus—all the more appropriate.
The first president of the Royal Academy in London, Sir Joshua Reynolds urged his fellow artists to paint historical and edifying subjects based on the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. As a portrait painter, he developed a grand style that ennobled the genre by giving his sitters Classical attributes and poses.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
