Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, Bt, P.C, MP, GCB (1753-1822)

after John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 – London 1807). Oil painting on canvas, Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, Bt, PC, MP, GCB (1753-1822) after John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 – London 1807). A half-length portrait of a mature man, facing, head turned to the left, gazing to the left, in powdered hair and wearing naval uniform. Father of Frances Maria Warren, wife of the 4th Lord Vernon. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars and was later ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Russia after the Peace of Amiens in 1802. This is a modern copy of the original in the collection of Mr W. Vernon, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, engraved by Ridley and apparently identifiable with the one inscribed Sir Iohn Borlase Warren, Bart:/by Opie, with the (misleading) date 1794 added subsequently, that was lent by Sir John Warren Hayes, and last Bt*., to the National Portrait Exhibition, 1867, no.720, and was given in 1915 to the Ulster Museum, Belfast by the Hon. William John Borlase-Warren-Venables-Vernon. That seems to have been based on the three-quarter-length picture of the sitter in the dress of a captain, but already with the K.B., with a marine setting, which was engraved by James Fittler, after Mark Oates. A head-and-shoulders version of the Oates is in the Greenwich Hospital Collection, on loan to the National Maritime Museum (cf. Concise Catalogue, 1988, p.293). John Borlase Warren also appears as a captain in a naval group portrait (?celebrating the Battle of Camperdown?) sold by the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, at Phillips, 15 Dec. 1987, lot 45. Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire