λ JOHN INIGO WRIGHT (BRITISH d.1821)

λ JOHN INIGO WRIGHT (BRITISH d.1821)
Portrait miniature of Edmund Fanning (1737-1818), in general's uniform
watercolour on ivory
gold frame, the reverse with lock of hair and engraved 'The/ Best of Fathers/ died February the 28/ -1818'
oval, 60mm (high)
sold together with a framed print of Fanning by Burnet Reading (b.1770) and a framed commission for Fanning's appointment as Colonel in the King's American Regiment of Foot, dated 25 December 1782 (3)

Provenance: By family descent, presumably (and according to the engraving on the reverse of the case), one of the three daughters who survived him, namely Louisa Augusta (b. c. 1787), Maria S. Matilda (b. 1791), or Margaret William Tryon (b. 1801); Private Collection, UK

Born on 24^th April 1737, Edmund Fanning was the fifth son of Captain James Fanning, an army officer in Long Island, New York and Hannah Smith of Smithtown. Raised in Southold township (now Riverhead) on Long Island, New York, he graduated from Yale College in 1757. He then swiftly moved to Hillsborough, North Carolina, where he would hold various political and military positions of power. In 1760 he was elected a trustee and commissioner of the town and was then admitted to the bar in 1762. He had a very public presence in general in Hillsborough, including a term as judge of the superior court beginning in 1765.

It was his friendship with Governor William Tryon which both accelerated Fanning’s professional rise and decreased his popularity. Indeed, he became a symbol of colonial greed and corruption, and an object of hatred for the Regulator Movement (an uprising in British America’s Carolina colonies, in which citizens protested high fees and excessive taxes imposed by the colonial government). Regulators would open fire on his home in April 1768 and later demolished it in September 1770, before dragging him through the streets of Hillsborough: Fanning was not a popular individual due to what he seemed to personify for those around him. At the Regulators’ perseverance, he was tried for extortion and subsequently convicted. He did not, however, receive explicit punishment, but thereupon resigned from the office of register.

Enraged by his humiliation, he was driven to command a corps of militia at the battle of Great Alamance Creek (16^th May 1771) and helped Governor Tryon significantly to suppress the insurgent Regulators. Tryon then moved to become governor of New York in 1771, and Fanning followed as his private secretary. Upon this move he was immediately appointed surrogate of the province and three years later became surveyor-general of New York. By 1776 he was a true loyalist and was raising and commanding a loyalist corps known as the King’s American Regiment on Foot. During the American War of Independence, Fanning gained a (now largely regarded as underserved) reputation for cruelty.

By the end of the war he became a colonel in the British army and was subsequently promoted to major-general (12 October 1793), lieutenant-general (26 June 1799) and general (25 April 1808). Having been appointed councillor and lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia he married Phoebe Maria Burns at Point Pleasant, Nova Scotia, on 30^th November 1785. They had three daughters and one son: Louisa Augusta, Maria S. Matilda, Margaret William Tryon, and Frederick Augustus. During his colonial career, he was decorated with honorary degrees from various British and American universities and colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth and Oxford.

In 1805 he visited London for a few months, moving to the English capital permanently in 1813. On 28^th February 1818 he died at Upper Seymour Street, leaving behind his wife and three daughters who survived him. Fanning was considered ‘the most successful of the breed’ of loyalist governors of British North America, according to Lord Selkirk’s diary, and it is equally believed that his reputation as a strict and tyrannical example of British colonial policy can be largely dismissed. This fictive impression is rather perceived to have been the product of intra-colonial tensions that fed into the American War of Independence.

The present portrait, once owned by his family, shows Fanning in general’s uniform and likely dates to his move back to London after 1813.

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