Portrait of Francis Lind (1752/3-1840), three-quarter-length, seated at a window, a one-keyed Simpson ivory flute in his right hand

The sitter was the son of Captain Francis Lind, M.D., of the 14th Regiment of Foot and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Major Montague Farrer. He was born on 13 February 1753 and married his cousin, Ann Cooper, on 12 October 1785. He served in the Indian Civil Service. Dated by Alex Kidson to 1775-6 (op. cit., p. 367), the sitter is depicted reclining before a music stand, holding in his right hand a one-keyed Simpson ivory flute. Kidson notes that the romantic view through the window behind the sitter probably represents a scene in the Lake District. The sitter’s mother, who commissioned this portrait and one of his younger brother, Edward George Lind (Ibid, no. 801), was living in Cumberland at the time. Edward’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter of James Ainslie, M.D., later sat for Romney in the spring of 1787 and 1788 (Ibid, no. 802). There is a memorandum on the fly-leaf to Romney’s 1776 diary: ‘Mrs. Lind, Carlisle, to be sent on Friday morning to the Castle Inn’ - presumably the address to which the portraits of the Lind brothers were to be sent.