Visual art - Celebrity - it's been around since the days of Joshua Reynolds, finds Richard Cork

Joshua Reynolds may have declared history painting the noblest ideal in art, but his immense reputation was rooted in his skill as a hired portrait-ist. The ambitious son of a Devonshire grammar-school headmaster, he became as famous in 18th-century society as the grandees he painted. Everyone, from lofty lords to irresistible courtesans, wanted to meet Sir Joshua. And his renown became so great that when he arrived at fashionable gatherings the guests would all turn round and stare. They even made a lane for him to pass through, whereas when a duke or an earl was announced few people took any notice. Reynolds knew absolutely everybody. One of his pupils recalled how "he rarely dined at home . . . and though the frequent dining out probably shortened his life, it was of great advantage to him in his profession".

Hence Tate Britain's decision to concentrate, in its first ever Reynolds exhibition, on his role in the creation of celebrity. It is a shrewd idea. The artist's yearning for "ideal beauty" can seem laughably quaint unless seen from the vantage of today's obsession with social networking. Then, quite suddenly, he seems far more like a contemporary. Reynolds urged his Royal Academy students that the pursuit of fame was a highly praiseworthy ambition. He was quite unabashed about his fascination with the toffs who paid such exorbitant fees for his services.

When Reynolds died, his coffin was transported to St Paul's Cathedral accompanied by a cortege of 91 carriages. He would have relished that his pallbearers were the most senior peers in the nation. After the grandiose funeral, Edmund Burke drily commented that "everything was just as our deceased friend would, if living, have wished it to be, for he was, you know, not altogether indifferent to this kind of observance".

Nor was he oblivious to the charms of courtesans. Reynolds made sure that, from the late 1750s until his death in 1792, the most desirable courtesans of the period sat for his portraits. Emily Warren, for example, was the subject of one of his most absurdly high-flown portraits, appearing with melodramatic gestures and a flaming torch as ThaIs, mistress of Alexander the Great. Reynolds was equally responsive to the erotic allure of Kitty Fisher, who sprang to renown as a courtesan at an alarmingly early age. He first painted Kitty when she was "scarce 20". She was already at the apex of her profession: a lady of pleasure unattached to any single individual.

Reynolds also painted a sinister MP called George Selwyn, a wit and gambler who proudly admitted to his love of necrophilia and Satanism. This Eton- educated politician sat for Sir Joshua with his pug dog. The belligerent animal stares fiercely out at us, its left paw raised as if ready to strike. But Selwyn looks deceptively listless. Leaning drowsily against his upturned hand, he may be dreaming of his morbid passion for devil worship, coffins, corpses and executions. He used to dress as a woman to avoid being identified at public hangings. One day, Selwyn visited his old friend Lord Holland, who had been suffering from illness. "The next time Mr Selwyn calls," Holland declared, "show him up: if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him, and if I am dead he will be glad to see me."

Reynolds could be an arch-flatterer. He transformed grand ladies into classical goddesses, and aristocratic women never look anything less than statuesque in the full-length effigies he painted for their stately homes. He made the much-feted Omai, the charming young Polynesian who had hitched a ride with Captain Cook from Tahiti to England in 1774, undergo a magnificent metamorphosis. Arrayed in flowing white robes, Omai looks like an antique figure brought back to life.

Yet Reynolds could also be disconcertingly melancholy. Take his painting of John Hunter (sadly not in the show), who is often described as "the father of modern surgery". William Blake satirised him as "Jack Tearguts", and the "Resurrectionists" (or "sack 'em up men") would deliver corpses from London's cemeteries to Hunter's back door. But Hunter's tireless research transformed understanding of anatomy, dentistry, embryology, transplantation and much else besides. Reynolds became his patient, and because he was an artist Hunter treated him without payment - as he did medical colleagues and the poor.

Reynolds painted him in 1786, seated at his desk with skeletal images illustra- ted in a book opened beside him. Hunter looks grave: he seems to be implying that his own head will soon resemble the skulls displayed with such troubling prominence on the page nearby. And the human bones on the wall above him add to the suspicion that this painting is, above all, a memento mori. Reynolds reworked it in 1789, after illness had altered Hunter's face. When Reynolds died, Hunter was called in to perform the melancholy task of a post-mortem. And then, within a year, the ominous prophecy hinted at in Reynolds's portrait was fulfilled with Hunter's own death.

Reynolds's portraits remain as a dazzling testimony to his prodigious abilities as a fame-maker. Tate Britain is right to emphasise this aspect of his work. He defined the most outstanding talents of his age with insight and spectacular stylishness.

"Joshua Reynolds: the creation of celebrity" is at Tate Britain, London SW1 (020 7887 8008) from 26 May to 18 September

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