Philip Reinagle began his career as a portraitist having trained with Allan Ramsay. However, during the 1780s and 1790s he began to concentrate instead on landscape and animal painting. During the first decade of the 19th century Reinagle began to specialise in dog painting. This new interest was encouraged by his friendship with the eccentric Colonel Thomas Thornton (1751/2-1853), a keen huntsman and breeder of greyhounds who was also a collector of animal paintings. Reinagle established a reputation as a dog painter through his series of pictures of sporting dogs, which were engraved and published in William Taplin's The Sportsman's Cabinet , London 1803. At least one of the dogs represented in this publication was owned by Thornton.

All objects in this group

Philip Reinagle trained with Allan Ramsay and began his career as a portraitist. He soon moved away from this genre, however, and by 1800 he was known as a landscape and animal painter. The exhibition catalogues of the Royal Academy and the British Institution at this time reveal that he continued to paint landscapes, many featuring cattle or sporting scenes, throughout his life and was still exhibiting in 1827. He painted not only English, Scottish and Welsh landscapes but also Italian and Portuguese scenes. The landscape drawings by Reinagle in the Royal Academy collection are mostly British, featuring views of the Lake District, Snowdonia, Surrey and Yorkshire. Reinagle and his son, Ramsay Richard Reinagle, were adept copyists and in addition to painting their own scenes for exhibition they also painted landscapes in the style of the Dutch masters. Both artists generated extra income by producing copies and carrying out restoration work.

All objects in this group