Portrait of Captain, later Lieutenant Colonel, Henry Francis Mellish (1782-1817), full-length, in military uniform, a cavalry officer with a horse in a landscape beyond

The sitter was Aide de Camp to General Sir Ronald Ferguson in the Battle of Vimiera, and Assistant Adjutant General to the Duke of Wellington during three campains of the Peninsula War. The portrait was originally square in shape and showed Captain Mellish resting his left hand on his horse - as in Reynolds' Portrait of the Marquis of Granby (1766) at St. James's Palace - and it was engraved in this form. Subsequently the picture was cut on the right and the horse replaced by a stone ledge, though the fore-leg and head are still partly discernable. Marshall has shown the earlier composition in the little group of horse and rider in the background to the left.