Which qualities make Joshua Reynolds's portraits of Nelly O'Brien and Georgiana, Countess Spencer notable?

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Joshua Reynolds: self-portrait — Joshua Reynolds Joshua Reynolds, detail of self-portrait, oil on panel, 1780; in the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Joshua Reynolds's portraits of Nelly O'Brien (1760–62) and Georgiana, Countess Spencer, and her daughter (1761) are considered especially notable for their tender charm and careful observation.1

These works belong to a period in Reynolds's career characterized by a sense of naturalness and vigor before his style became more rigidly classical and self-conscious later in the 1760s. While Reynolds is often recognized for his efforts to elevate British painting through the formal rhetoric of the Grand Style, these domestic portraits are distinguished by the sympathy and understanding he brought to his subjects.1