Graham Reynolds Art

Graham Reynolds (1914-2013), CVO, FBA, OBE, was born in Highgate, London. He was an English art historian who became a Keeper of Paintings at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Reynolds was a leading expert in the art of John Constable and on portrait miniatures. For Constable’s works, he wrote the standard catalogue raisonné. The catalogue was published in two parts (in 1984 and 1996) of two volumes each, divided at the year when Constable married Maria Bicknell. Reynolds attended Highgate School on a scholarship; he then proceeded to Queen's College, University of Cambridge, to read mathematics but later switched to English literature. His approach exemplified connoisseurship and traditional scholarship and he was ferociously opposed to the New Art History of the 1970s. Early in his career, Reynolds wrote a piece on Jacobean and Elizabethan costume, a résumé of the work and life of Bewick Thomas, and a book on English portrait miniatures that was re-issued by Cambridge University Press in 1988 after being revised. In 1953 the artist produced a survey of Victorian painting. His art brought him to fame and within a short time he had a huge following, both in London and abroad. His art, especially the framed Graham Reynolds art, were and still are in great demand. His art has appeared in many publications including English Catalogue of the Constable Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, Victorian Painting, and Portrait Miniatures. In 1994, he was appointed Honorary Keeper of Portrait Miniatures at the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1974, Reynolds retired from the V&A and moved to Suffolk with his wife. He was appointed a member of the advisory council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art which he served from 1977 to 1984.