3-085-247 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of the Children of Lord George Cavendish, 1790. Although the patron was a high-ranking aristocratic officer, the boys are not made to pose as future generals, nor the little girl as a cultivated upper-class lady. On the contrary, they are seen in the wild, in the midst of play. Even if the scene has been arranged, each child exhibits the behaviour befitting his or her age and temperament - quite in keeping with the educational concepts of the Enlightenment. George Cavendish (1784-1809), here seen at left, went on to become a politician and British Army officer before drowning at the age of 24 when his transport ship, HMS Primrose (1807), sank in a storm off the Cornwall coast during the Peninsular War. George predeceased his father George Cavendish, 1st Earl of Burlington (1754-1834).