Portrait of Jane, Countess of Harrington, with her Sons, the Viscount Petersham and the Honorable Lincoln Stanhope

Reynolds's 1786 group portrait of Jane, Countess of Harrington with her sons Viscount Petersham and Lincoln Stanhope is a late work of particular biographical significance: it was completed in the year before Reynolds's first serious visual crisis, and the sustained compositional control visible throughout the canvas testifies to his ability to maintain quality even as his eyesight was beginning its fatal deterioration. The Countess of Harrington's relationship to Reynolds extended over several years — he had painted Jane Fleming as a young woman in 1778, the celebrated portrait now at the Huntington — and this maternal group portrait documents her transition from celebrated beauty to matriarch. Reynolds's late maternal compositions have a particular warmth derived from his intimate knowledge of the sitters: the formal conventions of the maternal group are deployed with a personal directness that suggests genuine observation rather than merely formulaic production. The Yale University Art Gallery's holding of the canvas reflects the sustained American academic collecting of Reynolds's works across institutions from Harvard to Yale.

The composition places the Countess at center with her sons flanking and leaning toward her — a pyramidal structure Reynolds used throughout his career for group portraits. The landscape background is freely painted, suggesting open parkland. His characteristic warm flesh tones, built through transparent glazes, give the group its luminous quality.