Portrait of Hugh Montgomerie

Portrait of Hugh Montgomerie
Artist	John Singleton Copley
Year	1780
Type	Oil on canvas, portrait painting
Dimensions	226.3 cm× 148.9 cm(89.1 in× 58.6 in)
Location	Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Portrait of Hugh Montgomerie is an oil on canvas portrait painting by the American artist John Singleton Copley, from 1780. ^[1] It depicts the British Army officer Hugh Montgomerie, later the Earl of Eglinton who commissioned the work from Copley. ^[2] It shows his participation in the Seven Years' War twenty years earlier, with the backdrop making reference to his service against during the campaign against the Cherokees. ^[3]

The work was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1780, the first to be held at Somerset House, in London. ^[4] Today the painting is in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery, in Edinburgh, having been acquired in 1949. ^[5]

References

1. Tobin p.204
2. Kamensky p.393
3. Hoock p.170
4. Kamensky p.396
5. National Galleries of Scotland

Bibliography

• Hoock, Holger. Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750–1850. Profile Books, 2010.
• Kamensky, Jane. A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
• Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley: In England, 1774-1815. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966.
• Tobin, Beth Fowkes. Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-century British Painting. Duke University Press, 1999.