Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces

Reynolds's Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces, painted 1763-1765 and now in the Art Institute of Chicago, is among his most intellectually ambitious portraits — a painting that places a real contemporary woman in a scene of classical religious ritual, elevating her not through flattery but through the kind of aesthetic idealization that he argued in his Discourses to the Royal Academy was the proper aim of the 'grand manner.' Lady Sarah Lennox had been romantically connected to the young George III before his marriage, and her subsequent disastrous marriage to Sir Charles Bunbury made her a figure of public sympathy and social interest. Reynolds chose the allegory of sacrifice to the Graces as his fictional context — a painting-within-a-painting strategy in which the sitter performs a classical role while remaining visibly herself. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired this work as a centerpiece of its British eighteenth-century collection, and the painting represents Reynolds's most successful fusion of his portrait and history-painting ambitions.

The ambitious composition combines portraiture with history painting conventions. Reynolds's handling of the classical drapery and sacrificial scene demonstrates his academic ambitions, while the portrait likeness maintains naturalistic warmth.