Lt.-Col. George Thomas Thomas

This well-executed silhouette has been painted on card and finely gilded to show the details of the sitter’s coat and hair. A hand-written inscription on the reverse names the sitter as George Thomas Thomas.

George Thomas Freeman was the younger of two boys born to Arthur Freeman of Antigua and his wife Margaret Thomas. Their grandfather was Governor of the Leeward Islands. It was in 1789 that George Thomas and his brother Inigo changed their surname to Thomas, having inherited sizeable estates through their mother’s family.

As a Colonel in the 11th Dragoons of Willingdon, George would have seen action during the French Revolutionary and the Peninsular Wars. He did not marry and died in the town of his birth, Willingdon in Sussex, in November 1827, aged 56. He bequeathed real estate and enslaved persons to his older brother with his English-held assets going to his three sisters and their children.

With the expected light toning to the background card, the silhouette is in fine condition and resides in the original papier-mâché frame with a decorative surround and bunch of grapes hanger. A fragment of the artist’s trade label remains on the reverse.