Overall: 37cm (14.5in) x 32.5cm (12.7in)
Oil on tin. English School quarter length portrait of field officer (major or above) indicated by an epaulette to each shoulder, looking slightly left, the subject in uniform comprising red coatee with buff facings, silver buttons and lace. Contained in period oval gilt wood frame applied with fleur-de-lys, within a later outer frame. Oval: 23cm x 18.5cm.
Our sitter’s powdered hair dates him to the mid 1790s when Tory Prime Minister William Pitt introduced a new tax on hair powder. Those wishing to use hair powder had to obtain an annual certificate for the privilege at a cost of one guinea. In its first year it raised some £200,000 to help fund the war with Revolutionary France. There were exemptions for junior ranks of the army who were obliged to continue using it. Elsewhere the tax hastened the fashion for natural hairstyles, particularly amongst Pitt’s political opponents as an expression of solidarity with the revolutionary French. Perhaps the fleur-de-lys adorning the oval mount are an expression of the sitter’s allegiance to the French royalist cause and that he is perhaps one of the many émigré officers in British service in the 1790s.