Captain George K. H. Coussmaker

Reynolds painted this young Grenadier Guards officer in 1782, while Britain was losing the American war and its army officers were much in the public eye. You would never guess it from the pose. Captain Coussmaker leans against a tree with his legs elegantly crossed and one hand resting on his horse, the very picture of relaxed aristocratic ease. That ease took work. Reynolds, the most fashionable portraitist in London, recorded 21 separate sittings with the captain between February and April of that year, and around eight more with the horse, which he plainly thought worth getting right on its own.