William Linley

In the early 1790s, Hamilton was working in Rome, where he found numerous sitters among the young English and Irish aristocrats who traveled there as part of the Grand Tour. It is possible this sitter was one of these young men, many of whom commissioned portraits to commemorate their travels. In this pastel, Hamilton makes use of the medium’s refractive qualities to suggest light catching the sitter’s tousled hair, his white cravat, and the brass buttons on his waistcoat. While the pigments in the face have been carefully blended, the artist has left feathery strokes in the hair, whose loose waves lend the sitter an air of naturalness (2022).