[2] The picture broke new ground for the artist as his first notable portrait of full-length format to place a sitter in a relatively informal pose in a country setting.

In this Reynolds was not only formulating an appropriate way of expressing Gell's social position as a country gentleman, as opposed to the more formal approach he had adopted for portraits of his aristocratic patrons, but also seems to have been reacting to the challenge set by the work of his contemporary and soon to be rival Thomas Gainsborough.

)[6] Nicholas Penny goes further in suspecting Portrait of Philip Gell may have influenced Pompeo Batoni who 'in the same period briefly took to painting British visitors shooting and riding in the Campagna.

'[3] David Mannings writes that this type of outdoor hunting portrait, showing the subject whole-length and life size, derives from Anthony Van Dyck's Le Roi à la chasse, and its immediate precursors in Jacobean courtly painting.

[3]Oliver Millar[7] and Karen Hearn have both argued that Van Dyck's portrait of Alergnon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, 'inspired numerous later grand manner images, including Sir Joshua Reynolds's Philip Gell'.

[8] Aileen Ribeiro points out that although Gell is posed with gun and dog, he is not dressed for hunting but instead wears a semi-formal embroidered French frock suit, white stockings and buckled shoes.

[3] There is speculation that there is a connection between the painting of Philip Gell and the model for Reynolds' well-known child portrait titled The Strawberry Girl.

William Ellis-Rees says 'another suggestion is that the sitter is a child who lived near Hopton Hall in Derbyshire, where Reynolds had once travelled to paint the incumbent, Philip Gell.