Peter Paul Lens, Portrait of an Officer of the Horse Guards, ca. 1740

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Peter Paul Lens, Portrait of an Officer of the Horse Guards, ca. 1740,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1444.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Peter Paul Lens, Portrait of an Officer of the Horse Guards, ca. 1740,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1444.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Peter Paul Lens’s (English, ca. 1714–1755) reputation among the Irish House of Lords as one of the devil-worshipping Blasters and a participant in the so-called Hellfire Club in the 1730s seemed to have no negative effect on his portrait commissions in Dublin and London. Lens remained active through the late 1730s and 1740s, the period during which he likely painted this portrait.¹ Lens depicts the sitter with narrow, almond-shaped eyes, using long blue brushstrokes in the shadows of the face and a dark and heavily stippled background. As was his standard practice, he signed his initials in gold on the front.²

The portrait offers a rare mid-eighteenth-century depiction of the silver breastplate associated with the Horse Guards, a cavalry that wore cuirasses beneath their red frockcoats for protection during mounted warfare.³ Serving as a personal escort to King George II, the last British monarch to command troops in battle, the Horse Guards fought at Dettingen during the War of the Austrian Succession in 1743.⁴ All the officers of the Household Cavalry were British aristocrats, due to their close proximity to the reigning sovereign. A black bow at the back of the sitter’s neck emphasizes the paleness of his face; this is a common feature of Lens’s work due to his use of fugitive flesh-tone pigments, as are the wigs of his male sitters, which, as here, often resemble a helmet of hair.⁵ Lens, having once fallen from grace, nonetheless proved his ability and renewed reputation in securing the commission of this elite officer.

Notes

1. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. A. C. Elias Jr. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997): 2:498–99; Walter Strickland, “Peter Paul Lens, Miniature Painter,” A Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin: Maunsel, 1913). Two known portraits date to 1737 and 1738, the years Lens was in Dublin, suggesting that he was still painting during his participation in the Hellfire Club. See the portrait of Lady Catherine de la Poer signed “P. Lens, 1737,” which belonged to the late Miss Cane in Dublin and is listed in Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe: In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964): 1:491.

2. According to a March 19–23, 2018, conversation with conservator Carol Aiken, the case likely dates to the 1740s; see NAMA curatorial files. Lens’s brother and father also signed their works with a monogram in gold.

3. Brent Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory Battle Tactics 1689–1763 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990), 132. The Horse Guards were formed in 1658 by King Charles II’s exiled followers in the Netherlands. Within the Horse Guards cavalry, the sitter is either an officer of the Life Guards or of the Horse Grenadier Guards, as the Royal Horse Guards wore blue coats, which gave them the nickname “The Blues.” The uniform, whose simplicity may be surprising, is similar to one worn by George II in a painting by Godfrey Kneller (English, 1646–1723); see Portrait of King George II (1683–1760), as Prince of Wales, in a Silver Breastplate, a Red Frock Coat, and a Blue Sash, a Plumed Helmet Resting on the Table Beside Him, oil on canvas, 50 5/16 x 40 1/8 in. (127.8 x 101.9 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “Old Master and British Paintings Day Sale” on December 9, 2015, lot 148. The Household Cavalry were the only British officers to still wear breastplate protection at this time.

4. Barney White-Spunner, Horse Guards (London: Macmillan, 2006), 208. The king is wearing a scarlet coat over a breastplate in a painting commemorating the Battle of Dettingen; see David Morier, George II (1683–1760), ca. 1745, oil on canvas, 114 5/8 x 95 1/2 in. (291.2 x 242.5 cm), Royal Collection Trust, London, RCIN 404413, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/5/collection/404413/george-ii-1683-1760. The brigade sustained fewer than twenty casualties out of two thousand men, owing to their breastplate armor.

5. Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures (London: Methuen, 1963), 92.

Lady Hamilton, by April 27, 1950;

Purchased from Lady Hamilton’s sale, Catalogue of Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, April 27, 1950, lot 80, as A Man, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1950–1958 [1];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] “A Miniature of a Man by Peter Lens, signed, nearly full face, with powdered hair en queue, wearing a breast plate beneath a red jacket, a rather unusual feature.” The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. The lot number is circled and annotated with an “X, £14, 3, 42,” and other marks. The lot number is also circled in the attached price list. According to price list, Leggatt bought lot 80 for £14. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 36, as Unknown Man.

Catalogue of Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, April 27, 1950), 11, as A Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 36, p. 17, (repro.), as Unknown Man.