Nathaniel Hone R.A. 1718-1784

This fascinating orientalist portrait of a gentleman illustrates the increasing interest in the east which had captured the artistic imagination in the late eighteenth century.  Stylistically this portrait is contemporary with Romney's magnificent portrait of Edward Wortley Montagu, as well as Reynolds's masterpiece portraits of Omai and Mrs Baldwin, all painted circa 1775.  In the late 1770s the turban was adopted as a convenient artistic shorthand for the East, and Reynolds painted a number of important portaits of ladies wearing turbans, for example Mary Horneck (Private Collection) and Frances Molesworth, later Marchioness Camden (Huntingdon Library Art Collection).

Walter Strickland records in his Dictionary of Irish Artists that Nathaniel Hone painted a portrait of himself wearing a turban (p.518) and in 1770 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a portrait of the late Tripoli Ambassador (no.109).