James Wolfe, ca. 1749?

Artist: Highmore, Joseph (1692-1780)

Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 77 x 63 cm
Attributed to Joseph Highmore
(1692-1780)

General James Wolfe led the British attack on Quebec City in 1759 and defeated Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the French commander of the Plains of Abraham. This battle and subsequent British victories changed the direction of history and saw the end of French rule in North America. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were mortally wounded, a dramatic event which immediately made both of them the focus of much popular attention.

There are only a few portraits of Wolfe done form life, most when he was quite young. This portrait is believed to be one of these and shows him in what is likely the uniform of the 20th Regiment of Foot which he joined in 1749 at the age of twenty-two.

National Archives of Canada, negative no. C-003916