Colonel Robert Abercrombie

Colonel Robert Abercrombie from 1788 depicts a British military officer who served in India and later in the Napoleonic Wars. Romney's military portraits capture the martial spirit of an era when Britain was engaged in global conflicts. Romney's oil handling was distinguished by fluid, rapidly applied strokes and an instinctive sense of elegant silhouette, producing portraits of apparent effortlessness that concealed careful preparatory drawing. Romney's obsession with Emma Hamilton—whom he painted over sixty times as Ariadne, Medea, Calypso, and dozens of other mythological figures—reveals the Romantic imagination beneath his fashionable surface, his sitter becoming a vehicle for his

The officer's military bearing and determined expression are rendered with Romney's characteristic directness, the uniform painted with precise attention to regimental detail.