When George III was asked by Lord Eglinton to sit for the most fashionable portrait painter of the day, Joshua Reynolds, he replied: ‘Mr Ramsay is my painter, my Lord.’ Reynolds tried to gain royal notice with two speculative ventures – a portrait of George III as Prince of Wales (OM 1011, 401034) and an oil sketch for a depiction of his marriage to Queen Charlotte (OM 1012, 404353) – both of which remained on his hands. Reynolds was knighted by George III, made first president of the Royal Academy and Principal Painter to the King upon Ramsay’s death in 1784, but never asked to paint anything. That the Royal Collection has a fine group of Reynolds is entirely thanks to George IV, who commissioned portraits like this one at the end of the artist’s life and acquired many examples of his earlier work.

Assuming that this was a commission it must have been planned as a pair to the portrait of Admiral Keppel, painted a couple of years earlier (OM 1024, 405900); the two portraits have never been separated since. Admiral Rodney sat for Reynolds on 2, 5, 9 and 14 May 1788 and 2 March 1789. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1789. It was engraved by Scriven. A copy by Shepperson was sent to Greenwich in 1825. There is a miniature copy by Grimaldi at Windsor.

Rodney entered the Navy in 1732. He became Commander-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands and Barbados in 1779. He defeated a Spanish squadron off Cape St Vincent in 1780 and two years later he defeated the French in the Battle of the Saints. He was a friend of the Prince of Wales, whom he described as ‘our great, amiable and Royal friend’.

This portrait now belongs to set of four full-lengths of naval heroes (OM 849, 405901, OM 851, 405902, and OM 1024, 405900), two by Reynolds and two by Hoppner, hung within the Entrée Room at St James’s Palace. This arrangement dates from 1832 when all four were in the King’s Closet at St James’s. The matching frames for all four were made in 1808 by Edward Wyatt, whose bill specifies payment for carving and gilding 16 corners with ‘Dolphins, Anchors, Coral, Oak, &c’.