Creative struggles

An examination of the artist’s image is an excellent idea for an exhibition, and it has been thoroughly and effectively realised in this new show of some 70 exhibits at the National. Brainchild of Alexander Sturgis, who has written much of the useful catalogue (£25 in paperback), it explores the ways in which personality and originality have been bound up together in the art of the past 200 years. We are all familiar with the romantic idea of the starving but ennobled artist in the garret; this exhibition questions the plausibility of that myth.

As you enter the subterranean galleries of the Sainsbury Wing, you are greeted by a magnificent self-portrait of the worldly-wise and immensely successful Sir Joshua Reynolds, dressed in the velvet cap and scarlet robes of a Doctor of Civil Law. As the founding father and first president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds did a great deal to promote and augment the change of status enjoyed by artists.