English: Portrait of grief-stricken Richard St. George (1756/9-1798) at his wife's tomb

Lieutenant Richard Mansergh St George of Headford Castle, County Galway, commissioned this large portrait both to memorialise his wife Anne, who had died in the summer of 1792, and to express his grief at her demise. The cypress trees visible in the background were a recognised symbol of mourning, while the helmet cast aside on the ground refers to Mansergh St George’s vulnerable state. He tried by various means, but unsuccessfully, to ease the pain of his loss and, convinced that he would not see the painting completed, instructed that it should be placed in a locked room to which his sons should have access only when they were old enough. He could not, however, have predicted the circumstances of his own death, killed while investigating rebel activity on his land in County Cork in January 1798.

A career soldier, Mansergh St George had received a severe head injury in the American War of Independence that altered adversely his behaviour and compelled him to wear a silk cap at all times. In Hamilton’s idealised portrait he appears with a full head of hair and more physically robust than contemporary descriptions of him suggest. The exacting description of the tomb and the landscape, as well as the representation of grief itself point to Hamilton’s experience of Italy and its art.