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.

This is one of a pair of portraits of William and Mary (OM 335 and 338, 405675 and 405674) for which sittings were recorded on the 17 and 20 March 1690 and payment in July 1691 (this one is dated 1690). They both were hanging at Kensington Palace by 1699, although in different rooms. Both King and Queen are shown in robes of state and the images were much copied for British embassies abroad, indication that they functioned as the official images of the King and Queen - the 'State Portraits'.

The Queen is shown wearing robes of State with an ermine-lined cloak and resting her right hand on the orb which is beside her crown on a table on the left; beyond appears Inigo Jones's Banqueting House, which was then part of Whitehall Palace and is now a stand-alone block on the street called Whitehall.