Lambert Brabazon, who was of Irish origin, became Lieutenant in 1758 and Captain in 1782 when this portrait may have been painted. In 1783 he was flag-captain to Sir Francis Drake in the Leeward Islands and at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 he took charge of the impressment service in Dublin. Following the death of Sir Alexander Schomberg in 1803 he took over the command of the ‘Dorset’, the lord lieutenant of Ireland’s yacht, until 1811 (see watercolour by J. T. Serres, PAG9727). In the portrait he is wearing captain’s (over three years) full dress uniform with his own hair, unpowdered. His left hand is on his hip, his right hand on a cannon.

The Irish artist Robert Hunter (circa 1715/20–1803) studied under Robert Pope the Elder and established a considerable practice in Dublin. He was for 30 years the most important painter of the Irish establishment. He helped found the Dublin Society of Artists. He was described by William Carey in 1826 as ‘a walking chronicle of everything relative to the Irish artists and arts’.