Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess of Hasting and 2nd Earl of Moira

Thomas Gainsborough · PD

Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess of Hasting and 2nd Earl of Moira


Details

Year
1783
Medium
oil paint
Type
painting
Dimensions
231.5 × 152.2 cm

The story

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.

Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess of Hasting and 2nd Earl of Moira — Thomas Gainsborough — MuseScope