General George Eliott

Mather Brown

1790 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Brown’s grand-manner portrait of General George Eliott (1717–1790) is a great spectacle that captured both the painter and his subject at the pinnacle of their respective careers. Descended from America’s earliest settlers, Brown grew up in Boston and trained in London under Benjamin West. General Eliott commanded the British garrison against the allied Spanish and French forces at Gibraltar (1779–83). The pyrotechnic portrait shows Eliott during a battle in September 1782, when the British deployed the newly devised technique of heated shot, annihilating the enemy fleet. (Eliott is also portrayed in John Trumbull’s painting of the scene; 1976.332.)

Artist

Mather Brown

Date

1790

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, 2003 Benefit Fund; Morris K. Jesup, Maria DeWitt Jesup, Dale T. Johnson, John Osgood and Elizabeth Amis Cameron Blanchard and Joel B. Leff Charitable Funds; Iola Haverstick, Dorothy Schwartz and David Hicks Gifts; and Gift of Alice and Evelyn Blight and Mrs. William Payne Thompson, by exchange, 2004