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. Head and shoulders portrait of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), facing the spectator, her head turned half to the left, wearing a low-cut white shift with a blue mantle draped over her right shoulder; plain dark background.