Portrait of Cornelius Smelt, Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, 1826 (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Cornelius Smelt, Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man from 1805 until his death from Cholera in 1832. After the Dukes of Atholl, the Murray family, had sold their rights in the Isle of Man to the Crown under the act of Revestment, they none the less wished to retain the post of Governor. Due to the long absences of the Governor, a post of Lieutenant Governor was subsequently created. Smelt was by nature a liberal, and was appointed to the post as a useful counterweight to the aristocratic and autocratic Murrays. He was thus highly popular with the Manx, and upon his death the Smelt memorial was erected in Castletown, the only such monument to a Lieutenant Governor.