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 state portrait of George I, the 'only picture for which he ever sat in England' (according to Horace Walpole), is not in the Royal Collection, but at Houghton Hall in Norfolk; it was given by the King to his Prime Minister (and first ever), Sir Robert Walpole, who built Houghton Hall. This is a good studio version of that composition. The sitter is shown in robes of State with the collar of the Garter; the regalia rests on a table beside him; in the background appear Westminster Abbey and St Stephen's Chapel.