Art Museum Curator Melissa Yuen (left) and Art History Associate Professor Romita Ray pose with Sir Joshua Reynolds鈥檚 "Tuccia, The Vestal Virgin," on view in the exhibition "Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art."
Recently Discovered Reynolds Portrait Inspires Ray Smith Symposium
From social media to television, popular culture is saturated with images of the rich and famous. But long before TV and the internet, portraiture elevated certain individuals while erasing others, promoting hierarchies of wealth, privilege and power. Exemplifying this historic trend in European art is a portrait titled “Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin” (1786) in the collections of the .
Recently cleaned and restored, the painting was made by聽 (1723-92), the first president of the 聽in London and the leading British portrait painter of his time. On view at the museum for the first time in five decades, as part of the exhibition “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art” (through Spring 2029), the painting inspired this year’s聽聽on the politics of portraiture.
Depicting Rebecca Lyne (Mrs. Seaforth) as Tuccia, a Vestal Virgin, the image represents Reynolds鈥檚 reliance on Classical and Renaissance art to animate many of his portraits鈥攁n approach to portrait-painting that he advocated in his highly influential book “.”
Drawing upon the Vestal Virgins or priestesses of ancient Rome, Tuccia鈥檚 story highlights the virtue of chastity. However, Lyne was known to be the mistress of Richard Barwell, a powerful and wealthy East India Company merchant and administrator whose portrait Reynolds had also painted鈥攎aking the decision to present her as a symbol of chastity an intriguing choice, notes , associate professor of art history in the College of Arts and Sciences. Clothed in Bengal muslin鈥攁n Indian luxury鈥攈er face blushing with powdered rouge and her hair curled into ringlets, Lyne embodied the ideal of 18th-century British beauty.
鈥淗er portrait was displayed for six consecutive exhibitions at Thomas Macklin’s Poet’s Gallery in London, talked about in the newspapers, then circulated widely as an engraving鈥攆unctioning much like a viral image would today,鈥 says Melissa Yuen, curator at the Art Museum.
The Portrait That Disappeared
Gifted to Syracuse University in 1968 by Theodore Newhouse, brother to Samuel Irving 鈥淪.I.鈥 Newhouse Jr., the portrait was in storage for nearly 50 years and was long considered “missing” by leading Reynolds scholars. The rediscovery came in 2017 when Ray identified the painting in the museum’s collection. Working with undergraduate research assistant Tammy Hong 鈥18 and museum staff, Ray confirmed the painting’s authenticity.
鈥淐uriosity led me to the painting while researching the museum鈥檚 collections of 18th-century art for my art history classes on European art,鈥 says Ray. 鈥淚magine my excitement when I stumbled on what was potentially a 鈥榣ost鈥 portrait painted by Reynolds鈥攁nd that too, one with such strong ties to East India Company history, one of my areas of specialization. It also presented an ideal opportunity for my undergraduate advisee Tammy Hong to dive into a fabulous research project.鈥
Yuen, who played a key role in the painting’s conservation and research, says the Reynolds portrait is one of the most significant European paintings in the museum’s collection.
To better illuminate the painting鈥檚 story, Yuen located and acquired a 1796 print engraved by P.W. Tomkins of the original painting and arranged for the work’s restoration at聽聽in Owasco, New York.
There, conservator Raphael Shea removed layers of old varnish, revealing brighter colors and more vivid details, while also stabilizing the deteriorating gilded frame. Yuen also engaged with staff at the Duke of Roxburghe’s collection at Floors Castle located in southeast Scotland to study another version of the portrait.
