Medallion of Joshua Reynolds

During the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, Wedgwood began to produce small portrait medallions of jasperware that could be made relatively inexpensively and in ample quantities. He began with what he called portraits of “Illustrious Moderns,” which included English poets, painters, philosophers, princes, and statesmen, and would soon include members of Great Britain’s nobility and Kings and Queens. Wedgwood, an ardent support of the American Revolution, valued the American trade, and with the American market in mind, they produced portrait medallions of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington among others.