Portrait of the Hon. Peniston Lamb, half-length, in a blue coat and white cravat

The sitter was the eldest son of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne (1748-1828), and Elizabeth (1749-1818), daughter of Sir Ralphe Milbanke, 5th Bt., of Halnaby Hall, Yorkshire. From an early age Peniston was Lord Melbourne's idol and was said to resemble him 'in many points, both moral and physical' (see M. Boyle, Biographical Catalogue of the Portraits at Panshanger the seat of Earl Cowper, K.G., London, 1885, p.320). He showed no prediliction for politics or public life, which his brother William delighted in, and his affair with Mrs Musters, half a generation his senior, the erstwhile subject of portraits by Reynolds and Romney as well as Stubbs, caused much contemporary comment. He was Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire and died unmarried in 1805. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the sitter twice: first in full-length, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773, of him with his mother, and second in a portrait with his two younger brothers William, later 2nd Viscount Melbourne, and Frederick James, later 3rd Viscount Melbourne. A half-length portrait of him by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was sold in these Rooms on 24 November 1998, as lot 43.