Joseph Wright of Derby, A.R.A. (Derby 1734-1797)

This portrait is one of the six exceptional works, collectively known as The Markeaton Hunt portraits, commissioned by Francis Mundy, circa 1762-63. These represent a high-point in Wright's early maturity, and hold their place in the pantheon of celebrated series of 'non-family' portraits painted in Britain, from Lely's Flag Captains and Beauties, through Kneller's Kit-Cat Club and Knapton's Dilettante Society, and arguably culminating in Lawrence's portraits of Allied Leaders in the Waterloo Chamber, Windsor Castle.

The commission seems to have been made soon after Mundy, aged twenty-three, inherited Markeaton Hall and its considerable estates near Derby, in June 1762. The inspiration behind the idea was presumably the commission of two groups of portraits of friends, both of which included Francis Mundy's father, Wrightson, which had earlier been given to Arthur Devis.

Most of the sitters in the Markeaton Hunt series were more than just friends on the hunting field. In the case of Francis Burdett, Mundy's mother was a Burdett, and Mundy himself married Francis's sister Elizabeth. Francis Burdett, of Foremark Hall, Derbyshire, was born on 22 April 1743, the son of Sir Robert Burdett, 4th Bt., and his first wife Elizabeth, only daugher of Sir Charles Sedley, Bt. On 30 December he married Eleanor, daughter and co-heiress of William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire; their son Francis (1770-1844), one of the most celebrated radicals of his age, succeeded as the 5th baronet.

All six pictures were framed en suite in exceptional rococo frames, of which Paul Mitchell (op. cit.) comments 'Surviving examples of papier-mâché frames are extremely rare and there can be few finer than those made for Wright's Markeaton Hunt group.'