Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton and 5th Duke of Brandon, 1756 - 1799 (with Dr John Moore, 1730 - 1802, and Sir John Moore, 1761 - 1809, as a young boy)

This group portrait at National Galleries Scotland depicts Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton (1756–1799) with his physician Dr. John Moore and the physician's young son John Moore, later a celebrated general. The three-figure grouping combines the conventions of aristocratic portraiture with the emerging interest in intellectual and professional companionship — the duke with his doctor rather than merely with servants or courtiers — that characterised Enlightenment portrait culture. The younger John Moore, depicted as a boy, would become one of the British army's most celebrated commanders, dying heroically at the Battle of Corunna in 1809. His presence in the portrait thus acquires retrospective significance: the boy seen here would become the man whose death, commemorated by Charles Wolfe's famous poem, became one of the defining elegies of the Napoleonic wars. Hamilton's portrait was painted during his Roman period when such Scottish aristocratic commissions reached him through his network of Grand Tour connections.

The three-figure grouping requires Hamilton to balance the compositional hierarchy — the duke as principal sitter — with the evident humanity of the companions. The child John Moore occupies the lower register of the composition, his scale establishing his youth while the two adult figures frame him in a manner that anticipates his future significance.