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Charles Lennox Cumming (1790–1875), the younger son of a baronet, married the granddaughter of the “Abyssinian traveler,” James Bruce, in 1822 and assumed the name Cumming-Bruce of Roseisle and Kinnaird. While the classical architecture in the background of this painting is identifiable as the Roman ruins at Baalbek (in present-day Lebanon), the significance of these ruins to the sitter is unclear; nothing is known of his early life or presumed travels. However, the portrait was completed only three years after Thomas Phillips’s portrait of Lord Byron, and, given the fashion at this time for “Turkish” dress, it would not have been necessary for the sitter to have any connection to the Middle East to be depicted in this way. The convincing placement of the sitter within an actual recognizable location, the skillful addition of atmospheric effects of light and clouds, and the incidental detail of the two figures in the background put this painting in a different category from images such as Joshua Reynolds’s Mrs. Jane Baldwin, which draw attention to their staged quality. In this sense Geddes’s portrait can be seen as aiming at a kind of authenticity of effect, rather than simple play-acting, which defines a more romantic sensibility in portraiture.

Gallery label for Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-02-07 - 2008-04-28)