Warren Hastings
4 of 49 portraits of Warren Hastings
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- Extended Catalogue Entry
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Warren Hastings
by Richard Cosway
watercolour and bodycolour on ivory, 1787
2 1/4 in. x 1 7/8 in. (57 mm x 48 mm) oval
Transferred from National Gallery, 1994
Primary Collection
NPG 6286
On display in Room 5 on Floor 3 at the National Portrait Gallery
Sitterback to top
- Warren Hastings (1732-1818), Governor-General of India. Sitter associated with 49 portraits.
Artistback to top
- Richard Cosway (1742-1821), Miniature painter. Artist or producer associated with 101 portraits, Sitter in 16 portraits.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Ingamells, John, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p. 241
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 287
- Walker, Richard, Miniatures: 300 Years of the English Miniature, 1998, p. 77 Read entry
Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India (1772-85) and largely responsible for transforming the East India Company from an organization of armed traders into a full-scale civil administration, was a much-painted subject. There are portraits by Joshua Reynolds, Tilly Kettle, Stubbs, Lemuel Francis Abbott, Beechey and Lawrence. The portrait by Cosway was painted at the beginning of Hastings' impeachment, a seven-year trial which ended in acquittal, but broke his health.
Events of 1787back to top
Current affairs
Social reformers Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood and others.George III shows first signs of mental instability in November.
Art and science
Painter Robert Barker takes out a patent on the Panorama..Astronomer William Herschel discovers the two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon.
The original Lord's Cricket Ground holds its first cricket match.
International
Captain William Bligh sets sail for Tahiti on The Bounty.First performance of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni at the National Theatre, Prague.
A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone.
Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
Bahamas become a British colony.
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