Reading Lewis Cage: The Young Cricketer (1768), by Frances Cotes RA: Cricket, Art and the Rise of Nationalism in England after the Seven Years War

Abstract

AbstractRecent scholarship has shown how the burst of cultural self‐confidence that followed the Seven Years War fuelled British desire for a national school of art and the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768. This article re‐reads a portrait exhibited at the academy’s inaugural exhibition by leading London artist Francis Cotes. It argues that the portrait of young Lewis Cage was more than a simple portrait of a favourite son; rather, it was both an essay on the contours of contemporary British identity and a worked example of the potential of portraiture to rival the prestige of continental history painting.