Robert Craggs Nugent (1702–1788)

Robert Craggs Nugent, painted around 1760 and now at the Holburne Museum, was among the most colorful self-made fortunes of the Georgian period. Born in Ireland to a family of modest Catholic origins, Nugent converted to Protestantism and proceeded to enrich himself through a combination of fortunate marriages — all to wealthy widows — and shrewd political positioning that eventually earned him the earldom of Clare. His career embodied the social mobility that Georgian England made possible for men of intelligence, charm, and flexibility of principle, and his portrait at the extraordinary scale of 235 by 150 centimeters reflects a man determined to announce his achieved grandeur in the most emphatic visual terms. Gainsborough's treatment captures the confidence of successful social climbing without the condescension that might have colored a less generous painter's observation. The Holburne Museum's collection, concentrated on Bath portraiture, preserves this example of Bath's social world at its most socially heterogeneous: a self-made Irish fortune displayed in the same rooms where the hereditary English aristocracy was also being documented and celebrated.

Gainsborough renders the politician with characteristic warmth, the face painted with sympathetic attention to the lively, engaging features that contemporaries described. The handling shows the confidence of Gainsborough's early Bath period, with broader, more assured brushwork than his earlier Suffolk manner.