The Reinagles were a family of artists and musicians of Hungarian origin. Philip was the eldest child of Joseph and Annie Reinagle and was probably born in Edinburgh where his parents settled after moving to the U.K. At the age of fourteen he was sent to London to become an assistant to the Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay and he later studied at the newly-founded Royal Academy Schools. However, the death of Ramsay in 1784 gave Reinagle's career a new direction as he promptly took up painting animal and sporting subjects instead of the portraits and copies he had been obliged to produce for his employer.

Reinagle exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1773 onwards and was elected an Associate in 1797. However, he waited a further fifteen years for his elevation to the rank of Academician. Following his election Reinagle presented as his Diploma work this brooding, if slightly grotesque, painting of a confrontation between a vulture, an eagle and a hyena over a dead hare [2]. Reinagle depicted nature 'red in tooth and claw' and aligned his painting with contemporary theories of the Sublime by setting the fighting animals on a desolate ledge among towering, rocky crags intended to encourage the viewer to contemplate the immensity of the natural world.

In addition to his work as a painter, Reinagle was also a successful illustrator. In the mid-1790s he was commissioned to provide some of the plates for George Shaw's Museum Leverianum, containing Select Specimens from the Museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever. This collection included natural history specimens such as live and stuffed birds, shells and fossils. Reinagle made many studies from the collection which was open to the public in London between 1774 and 1806. The watercolour sketches of "Purple Parrots" [3]
found in the South Pacific were almost certainly from Lever's museum and were used as details in one of a set of paintings Reinagle produced for Houghton Hall in Norfolk.

Reinagle gained commissions from a number of aristocratic patrons including the eccentric greyhound breeder and collector of sporting art, Colonel Thornton (1751/2 - 1853) of Thornville Royal in Yorkshire. He also worked for Henry Willoughby, 5th Lord Middleton who was a well-known hunting enthusiast. This drawing [4] is one of several preparatory sketches of dogs, horses and riders from Lord Middleton's hunt which Reinagle presumably intended to paint.

Although Reinagle was fairly successful he supported a large family and often had financial difficulties. As a sideline he and his son Ramsay Richard made extra income by restoring and making copies of Old Master paintings but such activities were detrimental to his reputation. Reinagle died at his home in Chelsea, London, in 1833.

Click here to view more works by Philip Reinagle in the Royal Academy Collection