Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, 1714-82

Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker served during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, rising to high command in the Royal Navy. Romney's portrait captures the veteran officer with the dignified authority appropriate to his rank. Romney's oil handling was distinguished by fluid, rapidly applied strokes and an instinctive sense of elegant silhouette, producing portraits of apparent effortlessness that concealed careful preparatory drawing. Romney's obsession with Emma Hamilton—whom he painted over sixty times as Ariadne, Medea, Calypso, and dozens of other mythological figures—reveals the Romantic imagination beneath his fashionable surface, his sitter becoming a vehicle for his

The naval uniform and decorations are painted with attention to detail, while the face is rendered with Romney's characteristic economy and psychological insight.