This painting depicts the eighteenth-century politician and aristocrat John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire. Among his many political roles, the sitter served as MP for Norwich, Privy Councilor to King George II, Envoy to the Imperial Court at Saint Petersburg, and finally Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between the years 1776-1780.

Educated at Westminster School and later Christ's College, Cambridge, Hobart dedicated his life and career to politics. After holding several political positions in Norfolk during his youth, and completing a tour of Italy in 1746-1747, he ascended to the Earldom of Buckinghamshire at the age of thirty-three in 1756, heralding a new era of progress at the Hanoverian court. Just prior in December 1755, he was appointed Comptroller of the household to King George II, and in January 1756 became a Privy Councilor. Hobart's proximity to the monarch led to an appointment as a Lord of the Bedchamber, a post which he held for over a decade. Under the reign of the new monarch George III, Hobart was entrusted to lead an envoy for negotiations at the court of Catherine the Great in 1762. Although his spell in Saint Petersburg ended in a political stalemate, he was given a magnificent tapestry of Tsar Peter the Great by the Empress, a work of art that remains at Blickling Hall.¹ Upon his return to England, Hobart rejected the generous offer of becoming Ambassador to Spain. A decade later, in 1777, he received his most significant appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His tenure in this role, which continued until 1780, was marked by concessions regarding free trade with Britain. Hobart died at Blickling in 1794, several years after his loss of office, and was buried underneath a pyramid mausoleum there designed by Joseph Bonomi the Elder (1739-1808).

This portrait derives from the same sitting as Thomas Gainsborough's full-length portrait of the Earl that survives at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, today in the care of the National Trust (fig. 1). This grand and imposing image, dated to circa 1784, shows the Earl wearing the robes of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; the portrait contains several floral sprigs, perhaps playful representations of shamrocks, alluding to Hobart's position. Another three-quarter length portrait, presumed to have been produced for Hobart's London home, was offered at auction in 2018.² Surprisingly, until 2010 the identification of this bust-length portrait remained unknown. It was sold from the collection of Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson (1840-1929), 1st Baronet in 1923 as a portrait of General Thomas Bligh (1685-1775), an identification proven untenable by the time of Katharine Baetjer's 2009 catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's British paintings collection. This misidentification of the sitter undoubtedly stemmed from the sitter's jacket, the blue color and gold embroidery of which resembles that of a Navy officer. Importantly, this uniform does not accord with Buckingham's biography. Although the exact meaning of its appearance here remains a mystery, Hugh Belsey has connected it with a contemporary anecdote about Hobart, who is said to have taken "principle delight in... an old coat,”³ perhaps a humorous remark on the opulent and fussy robes captured in Gainsborough's full-length portrait.

¹ Saint Petersburg Manufactory, after a design by Louis Caravaque, Peter The Great at the Battle of Poltava. Norfolk, Blicking Hall, The National Trust.
² Christie's, London, 5 July 2018, lot 58.
³ Belsey 2010, p. 214.