Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754-1826), Second Earl of Moira and First Marquess of Hastings

By the summer of 1789 Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy and the most sought-after portraitist in Britain, was going blind. He recorded six sittings that June and July for this picture of Francis Rawdon-Hastings, the Earl of Moira, and it was among the last times he painted a sitter from life before his eye failed the following year. Moira was a soldier, a veteran of the American war, shown here in the plain undress uniform of a colonel and aide to George III. He commissioned it as a gift for the king's second son, the Duke of York. When the duke's collection was sold after his death, the future George IV bought the portrait back.