Major General Sir Henry Willoughby Rooke (1782–1869), CB, KCH

Major General Sir Henry Willoughby Rooke from 1807 by John Hoppner is one of the artist's late military portraits, produced during the height of the Napoleonic Wars. The portrait documents a career soldier who served in the campaigns that defined the era. 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. Neoclassicism (c.1760-1830) revived the austere virtues of ancient Greece and Rome in reaction to Rococo frivolity.

The military portrait renders the general with the dignified martial bearing expected of such commissions, executed in Hoppner's broad painterly manner.