Laurence Sterne

In December 1759 a little-known Yorkshire clergyman published the first volumes of a strange, digressive novel, Tristram Shandy, and within weeks he was the most talked-about writer in England. Laurence Sterne came down to London in the spring of 1760 to enjoy the fame, and Reynolds painted him there. No one commissioned it. Reynolds did the portrait to cash in, meaning to sell engravings of a face the whole town suddenly wanted. Sterne leans on a manuscript in his clergyman's gown, a finger at his temple, wearing the sly half-smile of a man who is in on the joke. He rode the celebrity through a few more volumes before consumption killed him in 1768.