Le Révérend Randall Burroughes et son fils Ellis

The Reverend Randall Burroughes and His Son Ellis by Johann Zoffany is a father-and-son portrait that combines familial intimacy with the formal conventions of clerical portraiture. The clergyman father and his heir represent the established Anglican gentry who formed an important segment of Zoffany's patronage base. The Church of England in the eighteenth century provided the social and moral framework for gentry life, and clerical portraits occupied a distinct tradition combining professional dignity with familial warmth. Zoffany was the most versatile of George III's preferred painters, equally adept at intimate conversation pieces, theatrical portraits, and formal group compositions. His meticulous attention to costume and setting reflects his training in the German and Italian academic traditions, brought to bear on the specifically English social world his patrons inhabited. The work's presence in the Louvre collection is an unusual destination for a British conversation piece of this type.

The double portrait captures the relationship between father and son through their spatial arrangement and expressions, rendered with Zoffany's characteristic attention to individual features.