Hon. Edward Boscawen (1787–1841)

Edward Boscawen, born 1787, was painted by Opie in 1805 as a young man of seventeen, placed at Eton College — one of England's most socially elite schools, whose portrait collection records the sons of Britain's ruling classes. The Boscawen family was one of the most distinguished in Cornwall, with strong naval and political traditions, and the commission of an Eton portrait by Opie — himself Cornish-born — may reflect regional loyalty as much as metropolitan fashion. Opie died in 1807, making this one of his final commissions; by 1805 he was the most senior painter figure in British portrait practice following Reynolds's death in 1792 and Gainsborough's in 1788. The Eton collection's portrait of Boscawen joins hundreds of other images of former pupils spanning centuries of British social history.

A portrait of a seventeen-year-old at Eton in 1805 would follow the conventions of school portraiture — probably three-quarter or half-length, formal dress appropriate to Eton's strict social codes. Opie's mature technique gives the young face a sculptural solidity unusual in portraits of adolescents, where other painters might produce more tentative results.