Lot 106: George Francis Joseph (Dublin 1764-1846 Cambridge) Portrait of the Right Hon. John Robinson,

Surveyor General of Woods to the King, three-quarter-length, in a blue coat, holding a letter in his right hand, sitting in his study beside a desk with a manuscript report of acorns in Windsor Great Park and a volume of Evelyn's Silvae, a wooded landscape beyond oil on canvas 142 x 111.5 cm. (55 7/8 x 43 7/8 in.) John Robinson was appointed by Lord North to be Treasury Secretary in te years before the American War of Independence. He fell our with the eminent Massachussets politician, James Otis, and with whom he had a violent quarrel in a Boston coffee house. His temper was said to be so volatile that he would yield his cutlass before anyone could say "Jack Robinson".