Francis Cotes, R.A. (1726-1770)

The sitter, Peter Pennington Legh of Booths Hall, Cheshire, was born on 26 November 1745, the son of Peter Legh and Anne Wade. His parents had married in 1744 and in 1745 his father began building the family home of Booths Hall. No date of death is recorded for the sitter, whose birth date forms part of a family chronicle, but it can be deduced that he died between 1777 and 1792 (Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman, 4th series, I, London, 1906). The present portrait, executed in 1764, shows him at twenty years of age in a fanciful Van Dyck costume. Another portrait (Fig. 1), which also seems to show Peter Pennington Legh, and which is attributed to Edward Penny, R.A. (1719-1741), is in the collection of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester.