Numbering The Ladies Waldegrave: Questions of Status and Display

At first glance, it appears as though Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The Ladies Waldegrave (1780) is in two places at once: Strawberry Hill House and the National Gallery, Edinburgh. Despite their visual indistinguishability, however, the former is a copy of the latter created by Factum Foundation in 2018. In this article, I discuss the ontological relation between paintings and their visually indistinguishable facsimiles, along with certain consequences that relation has for display practices. Traditionally, paintings are understood to be ontologically singular; no copy, however faithful, can ever stand in as the work itself. Using The Ladies Waldegrave, I defend ontological singularity while maintaining that these visually indistinguishable facsimiles can be used to promote engagement with, and a better understanding of, originals. Drawing on the philosophical idea that objects have temporal parts, I suggest that what I call suitable facsimiles – copies that are visually indistinguishable from originals – are representations of particular temporal parts of those originals. My proposal allows paintings to maintain their singularity while acknowledging that some copies share a special relationship with the originals such that the former can stand in for the latter. I conclude by considering issues concerning the display of both originals and suitable facsimiles.