George Augustus Frederick Henry (1789–1865), 2nd Earl of Bradford

The 2nd Earl of Bradford was a Tory peer and Lord Chamberlain under Wellington and Peel. Hayter’s portrait study, painted around 1832 and preserved at the family seat of Weston Park, captures the Earl during the tumultuous period of parliamentary reform that his party opposed. The Weston Park collection contains an unusually concentrated group of Hayter’s portrait studies, reflecting the family’s close patronage relationship with the artist. 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.

The Earl’s features are rendered with the firm, direct modeling characteristic of Hayter’s best portrait sketches. A warm undertone in the flesh painting gives vitality to the aristocratic face.