Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow, GCVO, PC, MP (1844-1921)

Watts painted Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow in 1868, a portrait of a young aristocrat who would become one of the notable figures of late Victorian public life as a politician and lord-in-waiting. Watts was at the height of his portrait powers in the late 1860s, working simultaneously on his great allegorical programme and a stream of portrait commissions from the British establishment. The 3rd Earl Brownlow was a significant political figure — he served as Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire and as a lord-in-waiting to both Victoria and Edward VII — and Watts's portrait of him at around twenty-four captures a man at the threshold of this public career. The National Trust's canvas, likely associated with the Brownlow family's Belton House in Lincolnshire, preserves the portrait within the aristocratic context for which it was made. Watts's approach to young aristocratic men shows his interest in potential — the character that will shape a career still in formation.

Watts deploys his mature portrait style on a subject in his mid-twenties — warm atmospheric background, careful modelling of the face, and sufficient costume detail to establish the sitter's social position without allowing it to dominate. The relatively young sitter prompted a slightly lighter tonal register than Watts brought to his portraits of older, more heavily experienced men.