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Sir Robert Ker Porter, KCH (1777–1842) was a Scottish artist, author, diplomat and traveller.

source

He is believed to have painted the sign of the Battle of Minden at Hilsea. He definitely painted Christ allaying the Storm for the Roman Catholic chapel at Portsea, in 1794.

Todo

There’s a two-year discrepenacy between when Wikipedia says he painted Christ allaying the Storm and when the memorial says the chapel opened.

To be honest the main reason I added this page is so I could drop in this rather fantastic Tomb of Madri-i-Suleiman or of Cyrus, which he drew in ~1818. It looks to me like he was doing the Grand Tour thing although I haven’t see a source that flat-out says that.

Tomb of Cyrus
Tomb of Madri-i-Suleiman or of Cyrus (c. 1818) Sir Robert Ker Porter source

Interestingly, it appears that a lot of his papers are still extant. Too much to hope that he wrote “Thursday - Dear Diary, painted a pub sign. Here’s a sketch of it.”

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A book of sketches dated 1797, and now in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum, made mostly in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, shows conventional competence. It contains some pleasant views of Carisbrooke and German soldiers and French prisoners.

— Sir Robert Ker Porter—Regency Artist and Traveller, R. D. Barnett, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1972 source

So maybe he was hanging around Hampshire for longer than a single commission. I think the sketchbook is in the British Library (Add.MS.18283). Bit hard to tell right now, they’re in the aftermath of a ransomware attack which really shouldn’t have hit archivists (archivists!) as hard as it did.