File:Portrait of Captain Robert Haldane, of Gleneagles.jpg

English: Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.

Portrait of Captain Robert Haldane, of Gleneagles (1705-1767)

oil on canvas

The sitter was the youngest son of John Haldane, M.P. (1660-1721), and his second wife, Helen, only daughter of Sir Charles Erskine of Alva, 1st Bt. (1643-1690), ninth son of the Earl of Mar. On 29th September 1742 he married Elizabeth (d.1799), daughter of Sir William Oglander, 3rd Bt. (c.1680-1734) of Nunwell, Isle of White. Haldane made a fortune in the service of the East India Company, and was reputedly the first Scotsman to command an East India Company ship. Between 1758 and 1761 he served as Member of Parliament for the Stirling Burghs, and held the title of Provost of Inverkeithing in 1760, and again between 1767 and 1768. In 1760 he acquired Gleneagles, in Perthshire, from his half-brother, Patrick. Patrick had been forced to sell the house in order to discharge the debts incurred by his son, Brigadier General George Haldane, Governor of Jamaica, who had died in Jamaica the previous year, and of whom Reynolds painted a portrait in 1758 (Private Collection).

This portrait, for which payment of fifty guineas is recorded in Reynolds's account book on 8th August 1764, was given by the sitter to his great friend Sir Lawrence Dundas, 1st Bt. (c.1710-1781), the Scottish businessman, landowner and politician. Known as 'the Nabob of the North', in 1763 Dundas bought Aske Hall in North Yorkshire, employing John Carr to substantially remodel the house, transforming it into one of the greatest Georgian houses in the North of England. This picture was presumably intended as as part of the extensive redecoration at Aske, and descended there in the ownership of Dundas's descendants, the Earls of Zetland.

Reynolds had previously painted a very similar version of this picture for Haldane himself, which was retained by his family (Private Collection). That picture has been much repainted, and as such the present work is the best surviving record of the original commission, which is much inspired by Reynolds's full length portrait of Admiral Keppel, painted in 1752-3 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich). The pose also echoes that of Captain Lockhart Rosse (Private Collection), painted perhaps one or two years earlier than Haldane's portrait. Fifty guineas was the full price at this period for an original picture of this size by Reynolds, rather than a studio copy, and the autograph quality of the picture no doubt reflects the importance of Sir Lawrence Dundas as a patron and art collector.