The two officers belong to the 25th Regiment serving in Minorca, but the one on the right is a light company officer. Instead of a tricorn hat he wears a low black fur cap with an upright red front bearing an embroidered or silver metal thistle and the motto Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, marking the 25th as a Scottish regiment. The cap has a red skull and a sprig of green leaves. His hair is worn in plaits and not powdered.
His coat follows the pattern worn by officers of the battalion companies, as shown by the other officer, but the skirts have been shortened and are not turned back. The deep yellow facings have gold‑laced buttonholes and gilt buttons, indicating that this is his dress coat. He wears a crimson silk sash around the waist, tied on the right side, and a gilt gorget at the throat.
While the battalion company officer has his sword suspended from a belt worn beneath the waist sash, the light company officer carries his on a narrow shoulder belt, an adaptation of the former waist‑belt. His sword is a Scottish broadsword.
He has a white waistcoat with gilt buttons. The pocket flaps below the waist sash have gilt buttons beneath the flap, while the pockets on the coat itself have gold lace on the flap. His breeches are white, and he wears white garters with short black gaiters.
In the Brown University Digital Repository there is a wash drawing of the 25th in Minorca which served as the preliminary plan for the painting from which this detail is taken. The drawing shows two battalion company officers rather than the battalion and light company officers seen in the finished work. Other light company men appear in the background of the painting but not in the drawing. This suggests that the light company had been formed only very recently, just before the painting was completed. Neither the drawing nor the painting is dated, but the year 1771 is deduced from the progression of the uniforms.
