Portrait de Jeffrey Amherst (1717-1797), général britannique

Reynolds painted this in 1765, a strange moment for its sitter. Two years earlier the Seven Years' War had ended with Britain taking all of French Canada, and Jeffrey Amherst had commanded the campaign that captured Montreal. But by 1765 he was back in England without a command and working to hold on to his reputation. Reynolds gives him the trappings of that triumph anyway: he stands in armour with the star of the Bath on his chest, one hand on a baton, his helmet resting on a map of Montreal while tiny boats carry troops down the St Lawrence behind him. Dark storm clouds bank up around his head. The painting now hangs at the Mead Art Museum in the town that took his name, Amherst, Massachusetts.