Study of The Right Honourable Michael Angelo Taylor (1757–1834), MP for Sudbury

Michael Angelo Taylor was a veteran Whig politician who had sat in Parliament since 1774, making him one of the longest-serving MPs of his era. Hayter’s study for the House of Commons picture captures an octogenarian whose parliamentary career spanned the American Revolution to the Reform Act. Now in the Parliamentary Art Collection, the sketch preserves the face of a man who had known both Charles James Fox and Lord Grey. George Hayter was the preeminent British history and portrait painter of the early Victorian era, appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1841.

Hayter renders the elderly politician’s lined features with unflinching directness, the advanced age visible in the loose flesh and thin skin. The sketch’s candor gives it historical as well as artistic value.