Charles Coote was a rogue. In the words of Rosalind McKever, co-curator of an extensive and provocative new exhibition of men’s fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), Coote, the first Earl of Bellamont, was “not a very nice man. which only adds to the irony of how he is viewed now”. It’s a verdict McKever delivered with icy understatement and a pointedly raised eyebrow.
The potted biography offered by the National Gallery of Ireland, owner of the most famous portrait of Coote, is less euphemistic, more damning. “The Earl of Bellamont was a vain and pompous womaniser who deserted his wife... and in his will acknowledged six illegitimate children by four different mothers.” Further shade is thrown by the National Gallery: “His appointment as a Knight of the Bath in 1764, and his raising to an earl in 1767, had more to do with political expediency than any real achievement.”
Maybe so. And yet, as immortalised in Joshua Reynolds’s celebrated painting (1773-74), which travelled from Dublin to London for this careless Georgian fop did
