General George Eliott

Mather Brown

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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. (Eliott is also portrayed in John Trumbull’s painting of the scene; 1976.332.)

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art