Major George Hanger, 4th Lord Coleraine (1751-1824) started his career in the Hessian Jäger company and with them sailed to North America. Here he wears the distinctive green coat of the British Legion, a regiment raised in New York that fought during the American Revolutionary War and was loyal to the crown. Coleraine was responsible for leading the light dragoons within the unit, under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton (1754-1833), after whom this distinctive style of plumed and low-crowned helmet was named. Tarleton’s portrait by Reynolds of 1782 (National Gallery, London) depicts the same uniform - a short, tight-fitting dark green coat, with turn-down black collar and cuffs, trimmed with narrow gold braid for officers, with a plain broad sword-belt across the right shoulder. The gilt buttons and buttonholes were purely ornamental as the coat fastened with hooks and eyes. Breeches were of white buckskin or nankeen and worn with topped boots.

After leaving the army, Coleraine returned to a rather dissipated life in London as part of the Prince of Wales’s set, from 1791 serving as his Equerry, much caricatured for his affected manners, dissolute behaviour and financial straits. A macaroni in his youth, Coleraine prided himself on being ‘extremely extravagant’ in his clothing and ‘always handsomely dressed’, claiming (inaccurately) to have worn, at a cost of £180, ‘the first satin coat that had ever made its appearance in this country’ to a birthday ball for the King. This portrait was probably painted for the Prince of Wales in the 1790s. Thomas Beach was based in Bath, though during the summer he travelled around the country houses painting portraits; this one may have been executed at Crichel House, Dorset, which the Prince of Wales rented from 1796-9 and where Hanger could have been a house guest. Beach exhibited a portrait of the Prince of Wales at the Royal Academy in 1797, perhaps executed at the same time and place.