Sir Jahleel Brenton (1770-1844), c.1802 (watercolour, gum arabic, ivory)

Creator: Smith of Barbadoes (attributed) An oval miniature in watercolour on ivory in an oval gilt metal suspension frame. The sitter is shown head and shoulders against a neutral sky background, half turned to his left but looking out to the viewer. He wears the 1795-1812 full-dress uniform of a captain of under three years seniority, indicated by a single epaulette on the right shoulder only. He has short grey hair and blue/grey eyes. The frame formerly had a glazed back which covered some element now missing, possibly hair on an internal mount, from which glue traces remain on the paper backing the ivory. This is also informally inscribed in ink 'Sir Jahleel Brenton', in a 19th-century hand that must be after 1815, the year he became a baronet and KCB in the post-Waterloo honours. The uniform and the sitter's biography suggest the portrait was done about the time of his first marriage, in England in 1802.