Mather Brown 1761-1831

Probably Royal Academy, 1791, no.138;

British Institution, 1846, no.12

Dorinda Evans, Mather Brown, Early American Artist in England, 1982, pp.80-82, fig.64;

Judy Egerton, The British School, National Gallery Catalogue, 1998, p.233, cited in note 26

This dashing portrait of the 'Saviour of Gibraltar' was painted in 1788, a few years after Spanish attempts to conquer 'The Rock' had failed.  A consumate tactician and inspirational leader, the sitter was born at Stobs, Roxburghshire, in 1717, the seventh son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, 3rd Bt., and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of William Eliott, of Wells.  He was educated at Leyden University and then the French military academy of La Fere, and when he returned to England he gained his first commission as a Cornet in the 2nd horse Grenadier Guards.  He rose swiftly through the ranks, serving with his regiment in the War of Austrian Succession, and suffering a wound at the battle of Dettingen.  He was promoted to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy in 1754, and two years later he was made an aide-de-camp to George II.  Eliott was charged with the establishment of some regiments of light cavalry, and it was at the head of one of these regiments that Eliott distinguished himself during the German campaigns between 1759-61.  In 1761 he was appointed as second-in-command to the Earl of Albemarle in the expedition to Cuba.  The campaign proved to be arduous, but the capture of Havana was finally achieved.  Soon after his return to England in 1763 he was promoted Lieutenant-General, and with a lion's share of the booty from Havana, he bought himself the estate of Heathfield, in Sussex. 

In 1774 Eliott was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland.  He only held this post, however, for a year since he was appointed as Governor of the fortess of Gilbraltar.  British possession of Gibraltar had been ratified by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, but the Spanish were keen to recapture the island, and forces had long been threatening to besiege the island.  The British decision to appoint an experienced commander was vindicated when combined Spanish and French forces began a siege by land and sea, which lasted between 1779-83.  The ordeal of the siege is recounted by Captain John Drinkwater of the 72nd Regiment in his History of the Siege of Gibraltar, published in 1785, and it is unlikely that Eliott and his garrison would have been able to withstand the siege longer had not Rear-Admiral Lord Howe eventually broken through the lines of naval blockade in october 1782. 

Mather Brown has chosen to depict a moment of high action.  On the morning of 13th September 1782, the Spanish forces had filled ten 'battering ships' with ammunition with which they intended to pound the battlements of the fort.  With great calm, General Eliott directed return fire against these ships, setting them alight in succession, and the burning wrecks of the Spanish ships are visible in the background of the present picture.  Peace terms were signed four months later, and on his return to England Eliott was justly rewarded, Horace Walpole dubbing him 'Rock-Eliott'.  He was made a Knight of the Bath, and on 14th June 1787 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Heathfield.  In this portrait Heathfield wears the star and ribbon of the Order of the Bath.  Heathfield was intending to return to Gibraltar, but two days before his return voyage he died of palsy at his chateau at Aix-la-Chapelle on 6th June 1790.  The sitter married, on 8th June 1748, Anne Pollexfen, daughter of Sir Francis Henry Drake, 4th baronet of Buckland, Devon.  They had a daughter, Anne, and a son, Francis Augustus Eliott, who succeeded him as second Baron Heathfield.  He served as Colonel of the 29th Light Dragoons, the 20th Light Dragoons, and the King's Dragoon Guards, eventually rising to the rank of General.  On his death in 1813 the peerage became extinct.

It is known that Heathfield sat to Mather Brown in September 1788, since The World, in its edition for 9th September 1788, observed that Heathfield was seen to slip as he left Mather Brown's studio.  Mather Brown drew upon the sense of gratitude which the nation felt to the 'Saviour of Gibraltar', and composed an appropriately heroic portrait.  A small, untraced preliminary oil sketch for the finished composition exists which shows that Mather Brown was initially keen to have Heathfield's feet placed further apart, with what appears to be a musket in his right hand and his left arm high in a gesture of action.  The finished portrait shows far greater refinement.  Heathfield's pose is grander and more statesmanlike, and although fierce action continues in the background, the sitter remains calm and controlled.  The present full length portrait clearly derives from both this oil sketch and the half length portrait of Heathfield, now in the Detroit Institute of Art.  Sir Joshua Reynolds was also commissioned to paint Lord Heathfield.  In this portrait Heathfield holds the key to the fortress, but he is rendered in a less oratorical fashion.  This work is in the National Gallery, London. 

It was commissions such as that of Baron Heathfield that thrust Mather Brown to the forefront of portrait painting at the end of the eighteenth century.  In 1789, John Holmes, wrote to Mather Brown's brother, Gawen, exclaiming that Mather was "in the highest state of success...with a great run of business...[he] has not only painted a great many of our nobility but also the Prince of Wales" (a letter from Holmes to Brown 6th March 1789).  Further important commissions followed, and Mather Brown painted King George III in 1790.  Brown's portrait of Baron Heathfield is one of the artist's finest works, a portrait which succeeds in capturing a moment of great historic importance in conjunction with an intimate portrayal of a British hero.