Robert, Lord Clive (1725–1774), in General Officer’s Uniform

Robert Clive had gone out to India as a clerk for the East India Company and come home one of the richest men in Britain. His army's win at Plassey in 1757 put the Company in control of Bengal and its revenues, and put a large fortune in Clive's own pocket. Gainsborough painted him around 1764, the year he was made a Knight of the Bath, in the uniform of a general. Within months he sailed back to Bengal to govern it a second time. The money men like him brought home had a name in England then, nabob, half admiring and half an accusation, and he spent the rest of his short life defending how he had come by his. He died in 1774, at 49.