GEORGE KNAPTON | PORTRAIT OF GEORGE PIGOT, 1ST BARON PIGOT (1719 - 1777), GOVERNOR OF MADRAS

By descent in the sitter's family since painted until 1995;

With Ben Elwes Ltd., London;

From whom acquired by the present collector in 2005. 

Pigot served as the British President of the British East India Company on two separate occasions. He was the eldest son of Richard Pigot of Westminster, by his wife Frances, daughter of Peter Goode, a Huguenot who had come to England in the late seventeenth century. Pigot entered the service of the East India Company in 1736, at the age of 17; after nineteen years he became governor and commander-in-chief of Madras in 1755. Having defended the city against the French in 1758-59 and occupied Pondichéry on behalf of the company, he resigned his office in November 1763 and returned to Great Britain, being made a baronet in 1764. After selling the family seat of Peplow Hall, Shropshire, in 1765 he purchased Patshull Hall, Staffordshire instead for £100,000. That year he obtained the seat of Wallingford in Parliament, which he retained until 1768. In 1766 he was created an Irish peer as Baron Pigot, of Patshull in the County of Dublin. From 1768 until his death he sat in the British House of Commons for Bridgnorth.