
Thomas Gainsborough · PD
Francis Rawdon, 1. Marquess of Hastings und 2. Earl of Moira
Details
Die Geschichte
When Gainsborough painted this young officer around 1783, the war it points to had just ended, and Britain had lost. Francis Rawdon had gone to America as a very junior officer and fought at Lexington, at Concord, and at Bunker Hill, where at 21 he took over a company whose captain had been killed. A general wrote home that Lord Rawdon had stamped his fame for life. By the time he sat for this portrait he was back in London, a hardened veteran of a lost American war, with his real career still ahead of him. He would go on to govern British India for nearly a decade. The canvas now hangs in Sao Paulo, one of the only Gainsboroughs anywhere in the southern hemisphere.




