Robert Clive (1725–1774), 1st Baron Clive

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive—Clive of India—was the soldier and administrator whose victories at Plassey (1757) and Buxar had established British dominance in Bengal, making him simultaneously the architect of British India and the target of parliamentary investigations into the fortunes he acquired. Dance's portrait, painted around 1773, captured Clive at a crucial moment: wealthy, ennobled, but increasingly under parliamentary scrutiny for corruption and the methods used to acquire his Indian fortune. He died by his own hand in 1774, his portrait by Dance thus becoming one of the last images of a man whose career had more radically altered the course of history than any English soldier since Marlborough.

Dance presents the empire builder with the gravitas appropriate to a baron and former Governor of Bengal, though the sitter's troubled expression may reflect the depression that plagued Clive and led to his suicide in 1774.