Hon. William Windham

Reynolds painted William Windham around 1787, creating one of his finest late male portraits and a record of one of the most intellectually distinguished politicians of the late Georgian era. Windham was a Norfolk landowner and member of the Tory-turning faction who combined an extraordinary parliamentary reputation as an orator with serious intellectual interests — he was a friend of Samuel Johnson, contributing a Greek epigraph to Johnson's Dictionary, and a member of The Club. His later career as Secretary at War during the French Revolutionary Wars placed him at the center of British responses to Napoleon, where his hawkish position consistently argued for vigorous military resistance rather than accommodation. Reynolds and Windham were connected through Johnson's circle, and the portrait carries the quality of characterization that Reynolds brought to his closest social acquaintances. Now in the National Portrait Gallery, the canvas is among the finest of Reynolds's male portraits in his last fully active years before blindness ended his practice.

The portrait captures the politician with intellectual authority. Reynolds's handling creates an image of cultivated statesmanship.