Artwork story
About Captain George K. H. Coussmaker (1759–1801)
The artist and artwork
Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Captain George K. H. Coussmaker in 1782 as an oil-on-canvas portrait nearly eight feet tall. Reynolds was eighteenth-century Britain's leading portrait painter, first president of the Royal Academy, and principal painter to George III. Twenty-three-year-old Coussmaker wears the red coat of the First Regiment of Foot Guards and leans against a tree beside his horse. White breeches, polished boots, sword, gloves, and cocked hat announce rank, but his steady face and relaxed crossed legs make the military display unusually quiet.
The world around it
The portrait belongs to Georgian London's flourishing market for likenesses. From 1768, major portraitists exhibited at the new Royal Academy while aristocratic and middle-class patrons used large paintings to make family, political, and social position visible. Coussmaker had joined the Foot Guards in 1776 as an ensign and lieutenant, the lowest commissioned rank. He later became a lieutenant colonel and left the army in 1795 without serving on active duty. Reynolds therefore presents military identity as status and possibility rather than a record of battle.
A detail to notice
Reynolds's appointment book records twenty-one sittings with Coussmaker and perhaps eight more for the horse. That patient construction produces a scene that looks spontaneous. The horse lowers its head into the foreground, Coussmaker rests against the curving trunk, and loose foliage and sky swirl around the precisely observed face. The diarist Fanny Burney called him shy and quiet but well bred; the portrait balances those traits against the red uniform, sword, and monumental scale. The Met describes the handling as exceptionally free and fluid and says Reynolds apparently painted it without studio assistants. The grand public role and reserved private manner occupy the same canvas.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 93 3/4 x 57 1/4 in. (238.1 x 145.4 cm).
Subject terms include Men, Portraits, and Horses. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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