A PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF GEORGE GORDON, 6TH LORD BYRON England or Scotland, 19th century, after George Sanders (Scottish, 1774 - 1846) Watercolour on ivory Lord Byron wearing waistcoat and neckerchief, after the full length portrait by Sanders 1807-9, in the Royal Collection Signed and inscribed, right hand edge 8.4cm high The present portrait was inspired by the 1807–9 painting of Byron by the Scottish miniaturist and marine painter George Sanders (1774–1846), now in the Royal Collection. The painting depicts Byron having stepped from a boat and standing on the rocky shore of an unnamed lake. He is accompanied by his valet, usually identified as Robert Rushton. Byron is depicted with the wind blowing his hair and his jacket thrown open revealing a tight waistcoat, as he stands on the shore in a pose derived from classical sculpture. Sanders’s painting is important because it was the first portrait that Byron commissioned of himself and dates from the publication of his earliest poems, before he became world famous. The portrait was intended as a memento for his mother before he left on his first trip abroad. Byron, however, was dissatisfied with his portrayal. Byron often criticised portraits of himself. Although Sanders’s portrait was made early in Byron’s career and intended as a private picture, it came to be one of the most popular representations of Byron after his death, when his wind-swept hair and neckerchief became the hallmarks of the “Byronic hero.” Sanders’s whole-length portrait eventually passed to Byron’s friend Sir John Cam Hobhouse, who loaned it to be engraved for an 1830 biography of Byron. Subsequently, in 1834, the head and torso of the portrait, without the landscape background, was used as the frontispiece to another book on Byron, Edward Finden’s Landscape and Portrait Illustrations of Lord Byron’s Life and Works (London, 1834).