Brown’s grand-manner portrait of General George Eliott (1717–1790) is a great spectacle that captured both the painter and his subject at the pinnacle of their respective careers. Descended from America’s earliest settlers, Brown grew up in Boston and trained in London under Benjamin West. General Eliott commanded the British garrison against the allied Spanish and French forces at Gibraltar (1779–83). The pyrotechnic portrait shows Eliott during a battle in September 1782, when the British deployed the newly devised technique of heated shot, annihilating the enemy fleet.