  About the Artwork
  
  
  In this striking portrait, Colonel George Lewis is silhouetted boldly against a smoky sky, the flames of battle glowing in the lower right background. Lewis had served in the British Royal Army during the successful defense of Gibraltar from its prolonged siege by French and Spanish forces from 1779 to 1783. In 1783, the City of London commissioned American-born artist John Singleton Copley to create a monumental painting of the battle in celebration that important victory. Copley spent eight years working on it, making careful portrait studies of the surviving participants before completing the twenty-five-foot-long painting in 1791 (Guildhall Museum, London). In that composition, Lewis leans against a cannon in a group of British soldiers in the lower right.

Lewis’s family commissioned this portrait from Copley, based on his earlier studies, three years after Lewis’s death in 1791. The artist charged a fee of thirty-one pounds and ten shillings and delivered the painting to the Lewis family in February 1794.
  
  
  Title
  Colonel George Lewis
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1794
  
  Artist
  John Singleton Copley
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1738-1815
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 30 1/8 × 25 inches (76.5 × 63.5 cm)
  Framed: 37 9/16 × 32 9/16 × 2 3/4 inches (95.4 × 82.7 × 7 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Manoogian
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  70.560.A
  
  
  Copyright
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