Portrait of Colonel Charles Heathcote (c. 1771–72): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Colonel Charles Heathcote (c. 1771–72) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Joseph Wright of Derby (British, 1734–1797).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Assuming a relaxed but commanding pose, Colonel Charles Heathcote (1734–1797) stands beside a large oak tree in the foreground of an expansive landscape. He wears military dress, the single epaulette on his right shoulder designating his rank as colonel. Wright’s composition demonstrates his new-found fascination with landscape: while the figure is relatively smoothly painted, the landscape is painted far more energetically, using thickly applied daubs of color.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Colonel Charles Heathcote
• Date: c. 1771–72
• Creator attribution: Joseph Wright of Derby (British, 1734–1797)
• Culture: England
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 127 x 100 cm (50 x 39 3/8 in.)
• Collection: P - British before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2017.100

A detail from the museum

The handful of small-scale, full-length portraits Wright painted early in his career include his earliest experiments in landscape painting.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bemrose, William, W. Cosmo Monkhouse, and Francis Seymour Haden. The Life and Works of Joseph Wright, A.R.A., Commonly Called "Wright of Derby". London, 1885.
• Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. London: Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art; Routledge and K. Paul, 1968.
• Egerton, Judy. In Wright of Derby, p. 75 (under no. 31). Exh. cat. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1990.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.