Object Description
This miniature shows the soldier and politician Charles Fitzroy. Fitzroy fought in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) – at the battles of Minden and Vellinghausen – before beginning a political career which resulted in a peerage in 1780. The likeness here is based on a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds [Royal Collection], whom Spencer knew well (there is an untraced portrait by Reynolds of Spencer at work). Reynolds’s portrait of Fitzroy has traditionally been dated to 1760-1, but this newly identified miniature, dated 1759, confirms that sittings took place months earlier, for Fitzroy was not in England between 1759 and 1762. The miniature may have been commissioned as a memento of Fitzroy for his new wife, at around the time he left for war. Set into a bracelet clasp frame to be worn, Fitzroy had married Anne Warren (d. 1807), the daughter and co-heir of Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Warren, on 27 July 1758. It seems that this portrait of Fitzroy was also copied by Jeremiah Meyer at the same time.
Gervase Spencer was a gentleman’s servant before discovering a talent for art. Although self-taught, his work caught the eye of George Vertue, who described him in 1740 as ‘a young man […] who […] a few years ago was in the capacity of a footman to Dr. W[…] – and now professes liming with some success […] in a curious neat manner and masterly’. His work was commissioned by the royal family, and a portrait miniature of George III is in the Royal Collection at Windsor.