Portrait of a Man Dressed as a Hussar

This larger-than-life-sized portrait, said to be H.R.H. George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, afterwards, King George IV, shows the subject wearing the uniform of a Hussar, one of the Seventh Regiment of the Light Dragoons (Hussars), a cavalry regiment of the British Army first formed in the late seventeenth century. The subject’s tunic is trimmed with an elaborate silver braid, rose-crimson dolman, and he is shown wearing a shako with crimson and silver tassel on his powdered head. His right hand, holding a pair of gloves, rests upon the hilt of his sheathed saber. The work was once attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), but its true author has remained difficult to identify. Various attributions have been suggested, including Mather Brown (1761-1831) and Richard Cosway (1742-1821).