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 those of George II, including this one, show him as Prince of Wales. In 1715 Kneller 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 the Prince and Princess of Wales (OM 343 and 345, 406073 and 405313) so often copied that they must have been considered the 'official' likeness of the couple. The portraits are dated 1716 and may therefore have been painted during (and because of) the period of six months from July 1716 when George I returned to Hanover and his son was awarded the title 'Guardian and Lieutenant of the Realm' to rule in his absence.

The future George II is shown wearing state robes with Collar of the Garter, his crown on the table to the right. As always with full-length portraits of this date the setting is imaginary but the ornamental plaster on wall is an inetresting insight into the taste of the day. Unfortunately this portrait was separated from its pair (OM 345, 405313) when Queen Victoria used the Princess Caroline in a dynastic hang in the State Dining Room at Buckingham Palace, which survives to this day and which pairs it with Shackleton's portrait of George II (OM 567, 405310).