In his young days he painted the local personages of Devonshire.

Then he made a journey abroad and spent three years in Rome and Venice.

On his return he settled in London, and the most distinguished men and women of the day and their children sat to him.
It seems that he would have liked his lords and ladies to look as heroic or sublime as the heroes or gods of Michelangelo.

Instead of painting them in the surroundings that belonged to them, as Holbein or Velasquez would have done, he dressed his ladies in what he called white 'drapery,' a voluminous material, neither silk, satin, woollen, nor cotton, and painted them sailing through the woods.

The ladies themselves liked to look like nymphs, characterless and pretty, so the fashion of painting portraits in this way became common.
The pictures are pleasing to look at, although so artificial, and after all it was only full-length portraits of ladies that Reynolds treated in this way.