Nathaniel Hone the Elder courts controversy when his satirical painting The Conjuror is seen to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds and attack the English fashion for copying Italian Renaissance painting, and is rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts (ostensibly on the grounds that also includes a nude caricature of fellow Academician Angelica Kauffman, which Hone subsequently paints out). To show his reputation is undamaged, Hone organises a one-man retrospective in St Martin's Lane, London – the first such solo exhibition of an artist’s work.