This painting reflects the interesting complexity of Anglo-French relations during the Revolutionary era. The sitter was commander-in-chief of British North American forces, based at Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he met Louis Philippe, who had been forced into a wandering exile by the Revolution. The two became friends and in 1818 Louis Philippe acquired the original Beechey portrait, probably painted in the 1790s, of which this is a copy. In 1836 Louis Philippe, now ‘King of the French’ (from 1830 to 1848), ordered a copy of his portrait from an otherwise obscure French artist, Amédée Faure, which he gave to the sitter’s daughter, Princess Victoria (by now certain to succeed William IV to the British throne). She hung it as a pair with a Winterhalter portrait of her mother, the Duchess of Kent (RCIN 405186), in the Red Drawing Room at Windsor.

In 1848 Queen Victoria returned the compliment and sent a copy of Winterhalter’s portrait of the Duchess to hang at Versailles with Louis Philippe’s Beechey. In his thank-you letter Louis Philippe describes this Beechey as showing the Duke of Kent as he was ‘in his younger days’ when they first met at Halifax in 1799. This original portrait was sold by Louis Philippe’s heirs and last appeared on the London art market in 1932.

The fort in the background may be intended for Fort Bourbon, Martinique, at the capture of which the Duke of Kent distinguished himself in 23 March 1794.