While in Rome, he contracted a severe cold which left him partially deaf. Afterwards, he sought the assistance of an ear trumpet that he can be seen holding in Zoffany’s 'The Academicians of the Royal Academy 1771–72'. A self-portrait of c.1775 (Tate, London), shows the artist with his hand cupped against his ear, a visual reference to his growing deafness.

This is the only self-portrait in which he paints himself wearing spectacles. He wears ‘wig spectacles’, specially designed to sit comfortably over a man’s wig, with circular tips at the end of double-jointed temples. By 1783, Reynolds had begun wearing glasses after suffering a stroke the previous year, which caused inflammation in his eyes. Later, in 1789 he experienced sudden blindness in one eye and by January 1791 he had lost almost the entirety of his sight. Two pairs of Reynolds’s spectacles are known to survive, both showing that the artist was short-sighted and is unlikely to have needed them in order to paint this self-portrait. Though his spectacles may hint towards physical frailty, it seems it was a conscious choice to include them, perhaps as an illusion to his artistic virtuosity in spite of his failing health.