Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds marks a stop in the City of Westminster, where eighteenth-century portraiture meets Britain’s colonial history. A painting from 1782 shows Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington, beside Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas. Stanhope stands in a formal pose, while Marcus holds his helmet as an attendant.
The work appeared at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition in 1783. Its composition follows European portrait traditions associated with Hyacinthe Rigaud and Godfrey Kneller. Research in parish records identified Marcus as a Jamaican-born young man connected to the Stanhope family. Reynolds’s sitter books also record appointments with Stanhope and Marcus in July 1782.
A baptism record found in 2021 links Marcus to Jamaica, then a British slave colony. The painting preserves a rare eighteenth-century record of a Black sitter’s identity in London. It also reveals how social rank shaped whose presence received recognition in British art.
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- City of Westminster
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