Gainsborough's "Portrait of Count Rumford", bequeathed to the University by the will of Edmund Cagswell, Converse, has recently been hung in the Gallery of the Fogg Art Museum.

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was born at Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753, of parents who were on both sides of English descent. In the War of Independence he espoused the British cause and in 1776 sailed for England with despatches announcing the evacuation of Boston by the British troops. In 1783 he was advanced to a colonelcy in the "King's American Dragoons" and placed on half pay. In the same year he was knighted by George III. He then entered the service of the Elector of Bavaria and remained at Munich for eleven years. In 1791 he was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire and chose the title Rumford from the name of the town in America to which his wife's family belonged (later Concord, New Hampshire). Rumford was not only celebrated as a soldier and statesman, but was one of the greatest philanthropists and scientists of his day. He was the founder and first recipient of the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society and founder of the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Rumford Professorship in Harvard University.

The portrait by Gainsborough shows Count Rumford in the uniform of the King's American Dragoons. The portrait was published by Mr. Maurice W. Brockwell in Art in America for December, 1917. Mr. Brockwell says: "The internal evidence of the painting shows it to be a late work by Gainsborough, and one of the great English artist's finest achievements in male portraiture. Although neither signed nor dated it a absolutely autograph. The technical characteristics of the picture, the appearance of this famous investigator of light and heat, and the biographical data which we possess of him show that it was painted in August or September, 1783.