Richard Porson (1759–1808), Regius Professor of Greek (1792)

Richard Porson from 1796 by Hoppner depicts the brilliant classical scholar who served as Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. Porson was renowned for his extraordinary memory and devastating wit, and his textual criticism remains foundational in classical studies. Hoppner's oil handling favored warm flesh tones over silvery grey half-shadows, producing an immediate vivacity that reflected his admiration for Reynolds and Gainsborough. Neoclassical painting engaged with a wide range of subjects—portraiture, history, landscape, genre—united by a shared formal vocabulary of clarity, restraint, and classical reference.

The scholar's intellectual intensity is conveyed through alert eyes and composed expression, rendered with Hoppner's naturalistic precision and warm coloring.