General William Keppel, Storming the Morro Castle

Reynolds painted General William Keppel storming the Morro Castle around 1762, one of his most ambitious military action paintings and an unusual departure from the formal portraiture that constituted most of his output. The capture of Havana in 1762 — the most spectacular British military operation of the Seven Years' War — included the storming of the Morro Castle fortress that guarded the harbor entrance, in which William Keppel (younger brother of the Commodore who had given Reynolds his Italian passage) played a leading role. Reynolds's decision to combine portrait with action narrative produced a painting with the compositional ambitions of history painting within the commercial framework of a portrait commission. The work, now in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, reflects the international traffic of British portraiture through the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art market. Reynolds rarely painted military action, but when he did — as here and in the Lord Heathfield portrait — he demonstrated the ability to integrate dramatic movement with portraiture that his formal practice normally kept separate.

The portrait combines the general's likeness with military action. Reynolds's Grand Manner handling elevates the military portrait into history painting.