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>> We're in the national gallery in London
and we are standing in front of a painting by
Sir Joshua Reynolds from 1773.
It's Lady Coburn and Her Three Eldest Sons.
Which makes you think it's going to be some portrait
of a society lady very stiff and upright in a dress
and the three little boys in very fancy outfits,
but that's not really what we have at all.
>> No, when you first look at it, it's very pink
and you see these very fleshy, chubby children
sort of tumbling all around her,
holding on to her in the center.
Obviously it's very much focusing on her as mother.
>> Absolutely and this is actually a composition
borrowed from paintings that have gone before it
which are usually allegory scenes of charity
and charity is usually shown as a mother because
the idea of giving of yourself unto others is
usually shown in the allegory as a
mother with children.
This becomes both an allegory of charity which
which is perhaps becomes a comment
on Lady Coburn herself,
as well as being a portrait of her and her children.
>> This is typical of Joshua Reynolds;
he puts people in a position of a historical figure
or of someone from a mythical past.
It's something that he did.
He compounded these two genres together,
very much his own personal style.
>> You get a sense of that here because you do see
this very costly looking gold-orangish robe
that's draped around her.
It looks like it's fur-lined.
>> It's very regal the way it's laid out.
>> Certainly and then that mirrors this
massive amount of red curtain drapery
and you can see some brocade patterning
details in the drapery up at the top
and it's wrapped around a column
at the right which hints at this mythilogical,
classical, ancient Greece and Rome,
that sort of the past.
A little bit of a visual cue.
>> We have that little bit of landscape
pointing out in the background.
Now this could be contemporary
landscape of the 1700s.
Also, that could be a view in Rome where we don't
know where they're setting them here.
>> The other bit of this that connects
pretty directly to the idea of mythological allegory
is the child who's over on the left side
who has this very tender, motherly hand around
his back holding him on her lap.
He is pulled directly from an image of Cupid
that's in a painting that goes by the name of the
Roque Bevieness which is also in the
National Gallery's collection.
Very directly, that sort of a Cupid figure
connecting to ideas of Venus and back into that
mythological genre that Reynolds really liked to do.
Something that is unusual, of course,
is that parrot.
Why would there be a parrot in this picture?
>> The parrot was actually Reynolds' pet.
Not necessarily an allegorical addition,
but it's a pet and the story goes that it was added
to this painting to even out the composition.
Honestly, if you imagine it without the parrot,
that would seem like a weird hole.
>> I wonder what the sitters felt about that
when they got home, unveiled their portrait
and oh, the painter's put his pet in the corner.
>> By this point, Joshua Reynolds was
quite the so-and-so.
He was the first president of the Royal Academy,
the school for painting in London,
and by this point he was very well-established
in his career so to have a portrait painted
by Reynolds would have been very much a
status symbol in and of itself.
Whether or not they like the parrot,
they may not have said anything.
>> My favorite part about this painting,
if you look at the handling of the paint,
is on the baby that's lying across her knee
is the hair.
You really get that feeling of whisping feeling
of baby's hair and it contrasts quite nicely
with that thick empasto that he's used
on the lace on the cuffs.
>> I do think that also was something that Reynolds
was quite well-known for is this contrast of textures.
Look at her cheek or all of the baby flesh almost.
It's so smooth and you don't really see brush strokes
and it feels touchable and then as you say,
there are other areas where the paint is
very thickly applied.
Look at the ribbon hanging down
from behind her neck.
>> The red velvet as well, you can see
the brush strokes on that when you get up close.
They're definitely very much
the presence of the painter is there.
>> The painter has both showed you his skill
and blended it quietly into the background.
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