A battle scene smoky with gunfire unfolds in the distance in Reynolds’s portrait of General John Burgoyne, a British military commander who was also a member of parliament, dramatist, actor, and avid gambler. Probably painted in 1766, the portrait may commemorate his role in Britain’s victorious Portuguese campaign against Spain in 1762, as it appears to have been commissioned by Count La Lippe Bückeburg, his senior officer during the campaign. Here Burgoyne wears the uniform of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons and assumes the dashing stance of a hero of the British forces. In the decade after Reynolds immortalized him in this portrait, he was sent to America three times to support British control over its largest colony. In 1777, as commander of the northern forces, Burgoyne surrendered to American troops at Saratoga, allowing America to win the Revolutionary War. Granted permission by Washington to return to Britain, he was forever after associated with this defeat and lived in obscurity for the rest of his life. The gray hue of his hands is probably the result of a fugitive red pigment that started to fade even during Reynolds’s lifetime.