Joseph Leeson, later 2nd Earl of Milltown (1730-1801)

Joseph Leeson, later 2nd Earl of Milltown (1730–1801), was an Irish nobleman whose portrait by Batoni in 1751 at the National Gallery of Ireland is one of a significant group of Irish sitters associated with the Grand Tour visit of 1750–1751. Leeson's family — wealthy Dublin merchants elevated to the earldom — were avid collectors who built Russborough House in County Wicklow, one of Ireland's finest Palladian mansions. The portrait of the young Joseph Leeson, painted in Rome at age twenty-one, would have been a centerpiece of the Russborough collection. The National Gallery of Ireland's eventual possession of this work, through the bequest of the Milltown collection in 1902, makes it one of the most important donations in Irish art history — the entire Milltown collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings, Italian works, and Batoni portraits came to the nation at once.

Oil on canvas from Batoni's peak 1751 Grand Tour production. A young Irish earl-to-be of twenty-one would receive the full treatment: luminous flesh tones, fashionable dress, and Roman antiquities in the background. The composition would be three-quarter or full-length appropriate to the social rank being asserted through the commission.