Book excerpt: A Journey to Flanders and Holland in the year 1781, first published in 1797 in the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is Reynolds's perceptive account of the pictures which he saw in the Austrian Netherlands, the United Provinces and the Rhineland in 1781. The Journey is here published separately for the first time, in a new edition which is also the first to include explanatory notes on the pictures mentioned by Reynolds and to illustrate all those which he discussed in any depth. Harry Mount provides an introduction which sets the Journey in its context and draws on unpublished material from Reynolds's notebooks to give insights into his critical procedures. All in all, this edition of the Journey makes an important contribution both to the history of the reception of Netherlandish art and to our understanding of the development of art theory and criticism in eighteenth-century England.