Joshua Reynolds Edmund Burke, 1774
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery
(1729-1797)
'Burke is an extraordinary man.
His stream of mind is perpetual.'
Samuel Johnson
Burke was a statesman and writer, born and educated in Dublin. Reynolds met him soon after the publication of his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful in 1757. The two were close friends for thirty-five years, Burke strongly influencing Reynolds's views on society and politics. In the 1780s Burke became the leader of the Whig group supporting Charles James Fox, and strongly opposed to the war against revolutionary America. He published the hugely influential Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, decrying the effects of the revolution.