Alfred, Count D'Orsay

Count Alfred D’Orsay was the most celebrated dandy of the 1830s, an Anglo-French aristocrat whose taste in art, fashion, and society made him a fixture of London’s cultural world. Hayter’s 1839 portrait in the National Portrait Gallery captures a man whose personal style influenced an entire generation. D’Orsay was also an accomplished amateur sculptor and artist, giving him a professional sympathy with portrait painters like Hayter. 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 dandy’s fashionable elegance is rendered with evident relish, Hayter paying close attention to the carefully arranged hair, cravat, and coat that constituted D’Orsay’s famous appearance.