Talk:Captain George K. H. Coussmaker

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Biographical Information

The following information was sent to me today by Professor Gregory Urwin of Temple University, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It seems a great shame not to be able to use this information, since it came to me by email. I will put it here for someone else to decide whether or not it may be used.

Subject: Redcoat Images, No. 74

Lieutenant and Captain George K. H. Coussmaker, 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, 1782

Artist: Sir Joshua Reynolds

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [1]

George Keene Hayward Coussmaker was born in Ireland. He joined the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards as an ensign on February 7, 1776. He advanced to the dual rank of lieutenant and captain in the same regiment on December 19, 1778. His next promotion – to captain and lieutenant-colonel -- came on April 4, 1788. He still held that rank in 1793, where John Houlding’s database on 18th-century British Army officers ends. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which owns this canvas, mistakenly gives Coussmaker’s rank as colonel, which was not the commission he held when he posed for Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1782.

Lieutenant and Captain Coussmaker is dressed for an afternoon’s ride in a fairly plain frock coat – plain at least, for a Guards officer. (On state occasions, Foot Guards officers wore coats with gold lace loops around the buttonholes on their cuffs, lapels, coattail pockets.) The scarlet frock coat seen here has dark blue facings, which are edged with gold lace. Coussmaker’s coattails are adorned in the same way. There are no buttons on his cuffs, and his lapels are buttoned across his chest. Coussmaker’s black cocked hat appears to be unlaced. A gold epaulette on the right shoulder denotes Coussmaker’s rank. Since he is off duty, however, he wears neither a gorget nor sash. He sports a white shirt, waistcoat, and breeches, plus a black neck stock. A pair of black riding boots and spurs complete his ensemble. He is armed with a gold-mounted sword (which rests in a scabbard that apparently has silver fittings), and holds a riding crop in his right hand.

Although Foot Guards officers assigned to North America opted for a much plainer and more practical uniform, this portrait by Reynolds certainly captures the debonair spirit of the Guards regiments at the time of the American War of Independence. Anne (talk) 17:42, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]