After Sir Anthony van Dyck

Commissioned by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London;
by descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2^nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire;
by descent, at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his nephew, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);
transferred to his son, Henry Hyde, 5^th Baron Hyde and Viscount Cornbury (1710-1753), in 1749, who died without issue;
by descent to his niece, Charlotte (d.1790), eldest daughter of William Capell, 3rd Earl of Essex (1697-1743), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1709-1786), of the second creation;
thence by descent to the present owner

Plymouth City Art Gallery, Paintings from the Clarendon Collection, 1954, no. 17;
Plymouth , City Museum and Art Gallery, on long term loan until 2010

Clarendon State Papers, Bodleian MS Clarendon 92, ff 253-4, no. 18;
G. P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, unpublished MS 1804, Vol II, p. 209;
O. Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London 1963,  p. 111;
O. ter Kuile, 'Daniel Mijtens', Netherlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Vol. XX, p. 92;
Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, Vol. III, pp. 254, 302-303;
G. F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britian, London 1854, no. 21, Vol. II, p. 458;
R. Gibson, Catalogue of Portraits in the Collection of the Earl of Clarendon, Wallop 1977, no. 115 (illus.), pp. 104-105;
S. J. Barnes, N. De Poorter, O. Millar, H. Vey, Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, London 2004, p. 639

The present portrait is an early version of an original portrait by Van Dyck, now untraced. Another good version is at Kingston Lacy, and there is a three-quarter length version among the collection of historical portraits assembled by Sir Harbottle Grimston, now at Gorhambury. The original was almost certainly painted soon after Van Dyck's arrival in England in 1632, and the portrait shows Portland wearing the Order of the Garter, which he recieved in 1633, and holding the staff of office of Lord High Treasurer, in which office he served from 1628 to 1633. The son of Sir Jerome Weston and Mary Cave, he was knighted in 1603, created Baron Weston of Nayland in 1628 and Earl of Portland in 1634. Among his many political offices, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1621.