This portrait shows Captain Robert Orme (1725–90) at the age of 31, during the war against the French for supremacy in the North American colonies. Reynolds painted it on speculation in the hope of selling it or displaying it to gain more work.
Orme was aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock, commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, and was friends with the young George Washington. On 9 July 1755, General Braddock and his forces were ambushed and defeated by French and Native American riflemen near Fort Du Quesne on the Ohio River. In Reynolds’s portrait, Orme seems about to leap on his horse and ride off with reports of the battle. The dispatch he holds is illegible but may carry news of Braddock’s death. The poses of Orme and his horse are derived from a fresco by Jacopo Ligozzi in the church of Ognissanti in Florence, which Reynolds drew in 1752 in his Italian sketchbook.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Judy Egerton, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings’, London 2000; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
Dating from the mid-eighteenth century, this English carved and gilt frame is crafted from pinewood. The back edge is embellished with a semi-flower and leaf pattern. The pierced centre and corner cartouches feature a convex roundel in the middle encircled with gadroons, while the intermediate cartouches display a sunflower motif. The moulding is adorned with foliate strapwork, alongside shell and flower motifs. This is set against a punch-tooled background, which is only faintly visible, as it has been covered up by the regilding process. This leads to the sanded flat, before a French acanthus-leaf design at the sight edge. The frame was probably originally water-gilded, and subsequently oil-gilded.
Former Director Michael Levy stated that it was made between 1960 and 1962 from ‘strips’, referring to dismantled frame mouldings. The frame was adjusted for this painting, and the enlargement of the rebate is clearly visible on the back. A pencil note describes its previous location: ‘Left of [illegible] window 1 ft from dado top.’ Additionally, there is an exhibition label from the Royal Academy of Arts: ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds, Captain Orme, National Gallery, [no date provided]’.
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