David Garrick Virtue and Morality" (Edinburgh 1797). At the age of 19, Garrick, who had been educated at Lichfield Grammar School, enrolled in Samuel Johnson's Edial Hall School. Garrick showed an enthusiasm for the theatre very early on and he appeared in a school production around this time in the role of Sergeant Kite in George Farquhar's "The Recruiting Officer". After Johnson's school was closed, he and Garrick, now friends, travelled to London together to seek their fortunes. Upon his arrival in 1737, Garrick and his brother became partners in a wine business with operations in both London and Lichfield with David
David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy Virtue, Garrick starts to succumb to the more immodestly dressed muse of Comedy. It also differs from traditional compositions of this scene, which generally feature detached full-length figures. David Garrick was famous as both a tragedian and comedian, and his earliest known association with the Muses of Tragedy and Comedy was in a 1747 poem by William Whitehead. In 1761, the same year Reynolds finished his painting of Garrick, a pamphlet with the signatures of the Muses of Comedy and Tragedy praised Garrick's theatrical achievements. The historian David Mannings has suggested that the painting's composition was inspired by Guido Reni's