Portrait of Captain Hope


This is a portrait of Captain Henry Hope, British Naval officer. Scottish painter Sir Henry Raeburn painted the piece around 1815. The portrait itself is about average for Raeburn, who painted thousands of subjects over his fifty-year career and later became the royal limner (painter) to King George IV in Scotland. However, for Hope, this painting represented the most famous battle of his career- he had successfully defeated the Americans in a major naval battle in the War of 1812.