Cosmo Alexander

The Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander was a dedicated portraitist and an ardent Jacobite. He depicts the sitter wearing a green frock coat with gold and silver braiding and a fur-trimmed red cloak, a costume intended to evoke the uniforms worn by hussar soldiers. Alexander executed the present work, signed and dated 1755, soon after settling in London and about a decade before travelling to the American colonies, where a teenage Gilbert Stuart trained as his apprentice.