Honourable Augustus Keppel

work by Reynolds

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Last updated

June 29, 2026

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Augustus Keppel was an English admiral and politician whose naval career concluded with a politically motivated controversy during the American Revolution. He served actively in the Seven Years' War and was part of the expedition that captured Havana in 1762. Keppel was also a Member of Parliament and a Whig supporter.1

Sir Joshua Reynolds, a prominent English portrait painter and aesthetician, painted a likeness of the Honourable Augustus Keppel in 1753–54. This portrait is noted for its vigor and naturalness, with Keppel depicted striding along the seashore, a pose that introduced a new dynamism to English portraiture.2

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Joshua Reynolds
Later years
…exemplified in a likeness of Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753–54). The pose is not original, being a reversal of the Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-bc Hellenistic statue Reynolds had seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a British naval officer) is shown…
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…exemplified in a likeness of Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753–54). The pose is not original, being a reversal of the Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-bc Hellenistic statue Reynolds had seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a British naval officer) is shown…
Read More