Chapter 2, much like Chapter 1, traces the first several decades of an eighteenth-century life, dwelling on what childhood can reveal about a whole society; when lives might be said to begin in a given culture; and how the protagonist moved within his world to reach mid-life. Its focus is the artist--philosopher Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds’s life embodies a deep conflict in British society of the time—the conflict over empire. We see Reynolds’s character develop gradually as both conservatively sceptical about Britain’s recent expansionist thrust into the world and keenly eager to make the most of all that imperial commerce was now bringing into his native country. Reynolds’s ambivalence is also reflected in his art theories, local politics, and even domestic life. While narrating his rise to artistic pre-eminence (and a philosophical devotion to neoclassical aesthetics), the chapter also shows how Reynolds built increasingly close friendships to key male literary figures of the time—especially Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Through his connection to the Tory Johnson and the Whiggish Burke, we get a glimpse into Reynolds’s otherwise elusive, hard-to-read political views—especially during Britain’s greatest imperial push to date, the Seven Years War.
