Portrait of Robert Orme

The artist shows him in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards, standing by his horse in a darkened corner of a forest.

[2] According to the National Gallery, the composition of the painting was based on a sketch of Saint Francis embracing a Sick Man completed by Jacopo Ligozzi in 1752.

[2] Douglas Fordham agrees and describes the painting as an innovative work that updates the established genre of the full-length portrait, which was typically of an aristocrat born to his position, to include a display of the sensibility expected of a gentleman in the 18th century, and to show a man who had achieved his position through his own talents, like Joshua Reynolds who also was not from an aristocratic background.

In that respect, Fordham argues, Orme was symbolic of a changing England where merit was beginning to matter more than connections, both in soldiering and in painting.

It passed by descent to the 5th Earl of Orkney before it was bought by Sir Charles Eastlake at Christie's in 1862[1] or 1863[2] for the National Gallery.