The sitter was the great hope of the Protestant Succession: he was born a few months after the 'Glorious Revolution' to Queen Mary's younger sister, Anne (later Queen Anne), and her husband, George of Denmark. He thus represented the only direct heir to the Stuarts (he was the grandson of James II) who was male and Protestant. His premature death in 1700 precipitated the Act of Settlement of 1701 and the selection of Sophia, Electress of Hanover (granddaughter of James I), as the legitimate heir to the throne. Sophia's son George I duly succeeded upon the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Little is known of William Wolfgang Claret except that he may have studied with Sir Peter Lely. This work identified Claret as the artist (and Gloucester the sitter) on the reverse of the original canvas. Queen Anne's inventory describes it as by Claret 'after Kneller'; two other (now lost) paintings of the Duke of Gloucester are similarly listed as 'Claret after Kneller'. No original of this composition exists, but it may well be based on a lost Kneller of c. 1700 and should be compared with OM 342, 405613. The ten-year-old Duke is shown wearing robes and collar of the Order of the Garter, the Garter on his left ankle; his plumed hat of the Order rests on a covered table.