Kneller was born in Lubeck, studied with Rembrandt in Amsterdam and by 1676 was working in England as a fashionable portrait painter. He painted seven British monarchs (Charles II, James II, William III, Mary II, Anne, George I and George II), though his portraits of Charles II are not longer in the collection, and in 1715 was the first artist to be made a Baronet (the next was John Everett Millais in 1885). A set of portraits of naval heroes was given by George IV to the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich in 1824. 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. The Duke is shown here in the last year of his life aged 10, wearing a breastplate over a shirt with white sleeves, yellow ribbons at shoulders, and a blue, ermine-lined mantle secured by a brooch.