Portrait of Lieutenant-Colonel William Sydenham and his wife, in an Indian landscape with units of the Madras artillery drawn up on parade and St. Thomas' Mount, Madras, in the background

William Sydenham (1752-1801) was the son of Samuel Sydenham and Alice (née Chapman) of Minehead. He joined the East India Company's Madras Artillery and became Lieutenant in 1768. In 1776 he married Miss Amelia Prime, niece of General Horne, and had three sons and a daughter. At the time of the war with Tipu Sultan, the Artillery was divided into two battalions, and Major Sydenham was promoted to the command of the 1st Battalion and became Major-General. He died in Madras aged 48 years. His obituary in the Madras Gazette praised his 'integrity, zeal and ability' and talked of how he gained the 'love and esteem of the country at large'. His widow returned to England where she later died in 1835.
Sydenham was also painted by John Smart in 1786. There are also two known portraits of him dated 1795 and 1796 by John Russell who was a close friend. Lady Sydenham sat for a miniature by Richard Crosse, circa 1770.
Home was born in Hull. His parents wanted him to become a doctor but he ran away aged 12, becoming a stowaway on board a whaler bound for Newfoundland. He returned to London and entered the Royal Academy Schools. He studied in Rome and Dublin before going to India in 1790, where he had highly successsful portrait practices in Madras, Calcutta and Lucknow. In 1802 he was appointed Secretary to the Asiatic Society, whose rooms he decorated with portraits and in 1814 he was appointed Court Painter to the Nawab of Oudh. He retired extremely wealthy to Kanpur in 1825 where he remained for the rest of his life.