John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire (1723-1793)

John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, painted in 1784 and held by the National Trust, was a diplomat and administrator of considerable experience: Ambassador to Russia under Catherine the Great and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the crisis years of 1776-1780. Gainsborough painted him at full length, the scale appropriate to a man of his political rank, in the restrained but authoritative manner he had developed for male official portraiture. The work belongs to the same year as the Baillie Family portrait, 1784, when Gainsborough's London practice was at its most productive in terms of grand commissions. National Trust properties across Britain hold a remarkable concentration of eighteenth-century portraiture in the domestic settings for which such works were originally made, giving the Hobart portrait a context — a country house wall — that reconnects it to its original function as a statement of family continuity and aristocratic identity.

Gainsborough presents the earl with the restrained elegance of his mature portrait style, using warm tones and fluid handling. The atmospheric softness and subtle characterization are typical of his late aristocratic portraits.