Portrait of an East India Company Captain, circa 1800

The unidentified officer wears captain’s full-dress uniform of the East India Company, 1787–1856. He holds his hat in his left hand and with his right gestures towards his ship, an East Indiaman on the right. The artist’s signature in the lower left corner was previously read as “L. Hensen” or “Henson” but is actually that of Stephen Hewson (d. 1813).

Hewson exhibited at the Free Society, the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy, where he showed a considerable number of portraits, most of unidentified sitters. He married Jane Hodgson in St. Marylebone on 31 January 1771, and they had two daughters, Mary Ann (b. 21 March 1772, d. 1844) and Charlotte (b. 26 December 1773). According to his notices placed in newspapers, Hewson painted views, portraits and miniatures, as well as animals, and he taught painting and cleaned artworks. While based in London (at 75 Great Portland Street in 1780–87, at 48 Frith Street, Soho, in 1788 – 1800, and at 82 Great Titchfield Street in 1802–13), he also visited and worked in Bath, Birmingham, Canterbury, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Leeds, Maidstone, Winchester and York.