Colonel Alexander Champion (d.1795)

Colonel Alexander Champion of around 1767, at the Cobbe Collection, depicts a British army officer whose career in the Seven Years War and subsequently in North America placed him at the center of the military expansion that was transforming Britain into an imperial power during the mid-eighteenth century. Champion served in the American colonies at a moment when British-colonial tensions were building toward the eventual break, though his specific role in those tensions remains only partially documented. The Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park in Surrey preserves significant British portraits alongside its distinguished collection of keyboard instruments, creating an unusual art-historical context that emphasizes the cultural breadth of Georgian patronage. Gainsborough's military portraits form an important sub-category of his Bath practice: the officer class represented a significant proportion of Bath visitors whose regiments' service created the wealth and status that required portrait documentation. The standard three-quarter-length format at 73.7 by 62.2 centimeters reflects the scale appropriate for a colonel rather than a general officer — sufficient to convey military authority without the full-length grandeur Gainsborough reserved for field marshals and royal dukes.

Gainsborough paints the colonial officer with the confident directness of his mature Bath period, the face rendered with warm, observant handling that captures the sitter's personality. The military costume is treated with efficient precision, the overall effect one of masculine authority and physical vigor.