IRISH SCHOOL (19TH CENTURY) Portrait of Richard Colley...

IRISH SCHOOL (19TH CENTURY)
Portrait of Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842)
Oil on panel, 28 x 23cm

Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, was born in Dangan Castle in County Meath and was educated at the Royal School, Armagh, at Harrow and Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. At the age of twenty he entered the Irish House of Commons as the member for Trim. The following year, upon the death of his father he was elevated to the Irish House of Lords as 2nd Earl of Mornington. In 1784 he joined the British House of Commons and soon afterwards was appointed a Lord of the Treasury by William Pitt the Younger. His younger brother, Arthur, was Field Marshal, The 1st Duke of Wellington.

In 1799, he was granted the Irish peerage title of Marquess Wellesley. As a colonial administrator he made his name as Governor-General of India between 1798 and 1805, and he later served as Foreign Secretary in the British Cabinet and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. During his time as the fifth Governor-General of India, while portraying his enemy as a cruel tyrant needing to be put down, he invaded Mysore and defeated Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore, in a major battle. The result of these wars and of the treaties which followed them was that French influence in India was greatly reduced, and that Britain acquired increased influence in the heartlands of central India.